Bazaarvoice Inc. (NASDAQ:BV) has seen three different insiders purchase shares thus far in 2016, but we will discuss only the most recent insider buying. Marc Cannon, Executive Vice President – Client Services, bought 10,000 units of common stock on Monday at $3.11 apiece, lifting his ownership to 78,616 units.
Bazaarvoice operates as a data analytics and e-commerce software maker that helps retailers boost sales, market share and brand awareness to some extent by collecting and displaying consumer-generated content such as ratings and reviews, customer stores, social posts, among other things. The company achieved sustained growth in the number of active clients and top-line figures in the past several quarters through the continued expansion of its social commerce platform. Bazaarvoice had revenue of $149.06 million for the nine months that ended January 31, up from $142.86 million reported for the same period of the prior year. The increase in the company’s top-line figure was driven by an increase of $6.4 million in SaaS revenue (fees from the sale of subscriptions to its hosted social commerce solutions), partially offset by a decline in Advertising revenue of $0.2 million. What’s more, the increase in SaaS revenue was attributable to $12.5 million generated from new launches of active clients using the company’s platform and solutions, offset by a decrease in revenue from existing clients due to increased competitive pressure. Bazaarvoice reported 52 net new active client additions for the nine months that ended January 31, while the active client retention rate was 84.2%. This compares with net new active client additions of 196 and active client retention rate of 89.3% reported for the same period of the prior year.
The shares of the e-commerce software maker have lost 46% in the past 12 months and are down 29% year-to-date. Just recently, analysts at Credit Suisse cut the price target on Bazaarvoice to $5 from $9 but reiterated an ‘Outperform’ rating, citing higher-than-expected levels of dollar churn in SaaS, which implies that the company’s SaaS customers are expected to cancel their recurring revenue subscriptions more than expected, and weakening of the advertising business. The smart money sentiment towards Bazaarvoice increased significantly in the final quarter of 2015, with the number of funds tracked by Insider Monkey with stakes in the company climbing to 22 from 14 quarter-on-quarter. Those 22 funds amassed almost 32% of the company’s outstanding common stock at the end of December. Robert G. Moses’ RGM Capital reported ownership of 7.23 million shares in Bazaarvoice Inc. (NASDAQ:BV) through the round of 13Fs for the December quarter.
