Twilio lower after Northland details relationship with Airbnb

Airbnb, which currently has 3M homes in 191 countries on its platform, currently utilizes Twilio (TWLO) for SMS and push notifications, Northland analyst Michael Latimore told investors earlier today in a research note. The analyst spoke with several customers and partners, including Airbnb and Zendesk (ZEN), at Twilio's user conference this week. For push notifications, Airbnb uses two vendors, and for SMS, the platform uses Twilio, Vonage's (VG) Nexmo, and a likely small regional player based out of China, Latimore writes. He notes that Airbnb has seen 400% volume growth over the past two years with similar forecasts for the future. Airbnb said 80% of its volume goes to Twilio, the analyst notes. Latimore adds, "Airbnb employees noted that they found the new products announced during the keynote to be intriguing, suggesting a potential for a further expanded relationship." Despite Latimore's belief that an expanded relationship is possible, investors seem to have concerns that Airbnb could diversify away from Twilio, with the shares down in early trading by 3%, or 86c, to $25.19. The analyst has an Outperform rating on the stock with a $30 price target.