Executive Summary / Key Takeaways

• Zenvia (NASDAQ:ZENV) is undergoing a significant strategic transformation, shifting its core business from a traditional Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider to a comprehensive, AI-powered Customer Experience (CX) Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, Zenvia Customer Cloud (ZCC), primarily targeting the Latin American market.
• The Zenvia Customer Cloud, officially launched in October 2024, is the company's new growth engine, projected to achieve 25% to 30% revenue growth in 2025, reaching approximately BRL 200 million, with robust gross margins around 70%.
• Aggressive streamlining efforts, including a 15% workforce reduction in January 2025, are expected to generate BRL 30 million to BRL 35 million in cost savings for 2025, significantly improving the G&A to revenue ratio and driving EBITDA recovery.
• While the legacy CPaaS business remains volatile and competitive, Zenvia's strategy to acquire clients at tighter margins is designed to generate EBITDA without additional G&A, with CPaaS margins expected to normalize closer to 20% by Q4 2025.
• The company is actively pursuing balance sheet deleveraging through liability management and opportunistic divestment of non-core assets, aiming for cash generation to align with its capital structure from the second half of 2025.

The Dawn of a New CX Era: Zenvia's Strategic Transformation

Zenvia Inc. (NASDAQ:ZENV) stands at a pivotal juncture, having embarked on its fourth strategic cycle centered on the Zenvia Customer Cloud (ZCC). This marks the culmination of a multi-year transformation from its origins as an SMS provider two decades ago to a leading cloud-based CX solution in Latin America. The company's journey reflects a deep understanding of the evolving customer engagement landscape, where AI is no longer a futuristic concept but a strategic imperative for businesses seeking to redefine customer connections.

The industry is witnessing a profound shift as companies integrate AI into their CX strategies to enhance efficiency, reduce response times, and deepen customer relationships. Customers now expect fluid, personalized, and consistent experiences across a multitude of channels, from WhatsApp and Instagram to email and traditional chat. Zenvia's overarching strategy is to empower businesses to unify these disparate interactions, injecting intelligence, context, and scale into every conversation, irrespective of the channel. This strategic pivot is foundational to Zenvia's long-term vision of becoming the premier AI CX SaaS provider in Latin America.

Technological Edge: The Zenvia Customer Cloud and AI Integration

At the heart of Zenvia's investment thesis lies the Zenvia Customer Cloud, a unified, multi-channel platform designed to manage the entire customer journey. This core technology differentiates Zenvia by addressing the common industry challenge of fragmented customer experience solutions. Historically, companies often relied on separate software for marketing, sales, customer support, and engagement, leading to disjointed data and inefficient operations. ZCC unifies these processes into a single software, interface, login, contract, and business model, allowing for seamless sharing of customer data across all touchpoints.

This integrated approach offers tangible benefits. Zenvia reports a remarkable "15x" higher cross-adoption rate for new modules within ZCC compared to its previous standalone offerings. This indicates significantly improved customer stickiness and a more efficient pathway for clients to expand their usage. The platform is inherently AI-driven, embedding six to seven pure AI features. These include co-piloting capabilities for sales and customer support, full automation of customer experiences, analysis of past interactions for brand perception, and AI for marketing campaign optimization. These AI functionalities are designed to help customers automate tasks, reduce operational costs, and enhance efficiency, thereby delivering greater value to their end-users.

Zenvia's monetization strategy for ZCC is also technologically differentiated, shifting from a traditional per-seat SaaS model to a volume-based pricing model. Clients pay based on the number of interactions they have with their end customers and prospects. This model, enabled by the extensive use of AI, minimizes reliance on human agents and allows Zenvia to capture more revenue as customers deepen their usage and generate more interactions. This approach aligns Zenvia's growth directly with its customers' success in engaging their audiences, creating a scalable and mutually beneficial revenue stream. The company's roadmap includes further data-driven and AI-driven features, evolving into agents that automate processes like churn prevention, cross-selling, and ads optimization, further solidifying its technological moat.

Competitive Positioning in a Dynamic Market

Zenvia operates in a highly competitive and volatile market, particularly within its legacy CPaaS segment. Direct competitors include global players like Twilio (TWLO), RingCentral (RNG), and 8x8 (EGHT), which offer broad cloud communications and contact center solutions. Zenvia differentiates itself through its strong regional focus on Latin America and its integrated, AI-powered Zenvia Customer Cloud.

While global competitors often provide extensive API ecosystems (like Twilio) or robust unified communications suites (like RingCentral), Zenvia's strength lies in its localized approach and the seamless integration of its CX tools. This allows Zenvia to offer a more efficient and user-friendly solution for Latin American businesses, particularly Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), which are identified as a key growth engine for ZCC. Zenvia's humanized AI automation, facilitated by its unified platform, aims to exploit potential complexities in competitors' broader, more modular offerings. The company's ability to provide a 360-degree customer view through its integrated data offers a competitive edge in generating actionable insights.

However, Zenvia's smaller scale and regional focus present vulnerabilities. It faces challenges in product diversity and operational execution compared to more mature global platforms. The enterprise segment for its legacy SaaS solutions remains tough and competitive, partially offsetting ZCC's growth. To counter these pressures, Zenvia is expanding its partner ecosystem, including a new franchise model launched in Q1 2025, which is already contributing approximately 15% of new Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) in Brazil. This model is being tested for international expansion, aiming to become a major sales channel for ZCC.

Financial Performance and Operational Discipline

Zenvia's financial performance in recent quarters reflects both the challenges of its transitional phase and the early successes of its strategic pivot. In Q2 2025, the company reported strong top-line growth of 24%, primarily fueled by CPaaS. However, consolidated adjusted gross profit fell to BRL 69 million, with gross margin at 24%, due to intense competition and lower-margin volumes in CPaaS, alongside temporary impacts from the ZCC ramp-up. Despite these pressures, SaaS gross profit showed its first increase since Q2 2024, rising 5% year-over-year to BRL 45 million, with margins slightly up to 55%, driven by the ZCC transition.

The CPaaS segment, while contributing significantly to revenue (72% of total in Q2 2025), experienced a sharp drop in gross profit and margin due to strong volumes from lower-margin clients and increased carrier costs. Management expects CPaaS margins to normalize closer to 20% by Q4 2025 as these costs are passed through. For the full year 2024, CPaaS revenue grew 25% year-over-year, while SaaS grew at high single digits.

A critical highlight of Zenvia's operational discipline has been its aggressive cost control. G&A expenses decreased by 25% in the first half of 2025, reaching BRL 48 million, and the G&A to revenues ratio dropped to 9% in Q2 2025. This significant improvement stems from a 15% workforce reduction announced in January 2025, projected to generate BRL 30 million to BRL 35 million in cost savings for the year. This streamlining effort has been ongoing since late 2022, resulting in a 760 basis point reduction in the G&A to revenue ratio over two years, from nearly 23% to 12% in 2024.

Normalized EBITDA for Q2 2025 came in at BRL 11 million, below expectations, but the trailing 12-month normalized EBITDA as of June 2025 remained resilient at approximately BRL 100 million. The company's EBITDA minus CapEx metric, a key indicator of cash flow generation, turned positive in 2023 and improved significantly in 2024, reaching almost BRL 75 million on a trailing 12-month basis. This demonstrates an improving ability to generate cash from core operations.

Outlook, Guidance, and Risk Assessment

Zenvia's outlook is firmly anchored in the accelerated growth of Zenvia Customer Cloud. Management is confident in delivering 25% to 30% growth from ZCC in 2025, targeting approximately BRL 200 million in revenues with gross margins around 70%. This confidence is supported by ZCC revenues growing 23% in the first half of 2025 and an 80% increase in total usage in Q2 2025 compared to Q1. For the legacy SaaS businesses, a flattish to 5% growth is anticipated, reflecting the concentrated investment in ZCC. The CPaaS segment is expected to return to a more normalized 5% to 8% growth rate, with margins recovering to around 20% by year-end.

The company anticipates a progressive recovery in overall profitability throughout 2025, building a solid foundation for 2026. CapEx for 2025 is expected to remain at 2024 levels, allowing for EBITDA growth to outpace capital expenditures. Zenvia is also actively working to deleverage its balance sheet, with net debt to EBITDA improving from over 10 times in late 2022 to 2.2 times by September 2024. Efforts include liability management, such as renegotiating grace periods on loan amortizations, and opportunistic divestments of non-core assets to optimize its capital structure. The recent appointment of Piero Rosatelli as CFO and IRO, with his extensive background in technology investments, underscores the company's commitment to financial strategic execution.

However, investors must acknowledge several risks. The CPaaS market's inherent volatility and intense competition will likely continue to pressure margins. The enterprise segment for SaaS legacy solutions also faces a tough competitive environment, potentially offsetting some of ZCC's growth. Furthermore, forward-looking statements are subject to uncertainties, including Zenvia's ability to innovate rapidly, respond to evolving market needs, successfully integrate new customers, manage international expansion, and navigate regulatory changes. The ramp-up phase of Zenvia Customer Cloud, while promising, could still face unforeseen challenges in customer migration and adoption.

Conclusion

Zenvia is undergoing a profound and deliberate transformation, pivoting its core identity towards an AI-powered CX SaaS leader in Latin America. The Zenvia Customer Cloud represents not just a new product, but the strategic culmination of two decades of industry expertise, designed to unify fragmented customer journeys and drive efficiency through advanced AI. This technological differentiation, coupled with a scalable volume-based pricing model and aggressive cost management, forms the bedrock of its investment thesis.

While the company faces ongoing competitive pressures in its legacy segments and the inherent volatility of the CPaaS market, the clear strategic focus on ZCC, its strong growth trajectory, and the commitment to deleveraging the balance sheet paint a compelling picture for future profitability. Zenvia's ability to execute on its ZCC growth targets, further optimize its operations through AI, and successfully enhance its capital structure will be critical determinants of its long-term value creation. The company's journey from an SMS provider to an integrated AI CX SaaS platform positions it to capitalize on the accelerating demand for intelligent customer engagement solutions, making it a noteworthy consideration for discerning investors.