Verint Systems Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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September 6, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • Verint delivered $26.5 million of new SaaS ACV bookings in Q2, drove 17% year-over-year SaaS ARR growth, but elongated sales cycles shifted ~$8 million of deals into Q3 and prompted a full-year new SaaS ACV forecast cut from $112 million to $102 million.
  • The majority of Q2 bookings included AI-powered specialized bots, showcased at the Engage conference, with customers deploying teams of bots to automate single tasks, lower labor costs and achieve rapid ROI.
  • Fiscal 2024 revenue guidance was reduced to $910 million (down $25 million) due to booking timing shifts, while maintaining adjusted EBITDA of $250 million and diluted EPS of $2.65, driven by ongoing SaaS gross-margin expansion.
  • Recurring revenue momentum continues, with 86% of software revenue now recurring (versus 84% a year ago) and on track to reach 88% for the full year, as the transition from perpetual to SaaS licensing largely completes.
  • Q2 deal activity included over 20 orders above $1 million TCV—such as a $20 million U.S. financial-services win—and more than 100 new logos (e.g., Samsung, Philip Morris), while the pipeline grew ~20% year over year, indicating robust demand despite longer sales cycles.
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Earnings Conference Call
Verint Systems Q2 2024
00:00 / 00:00

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Welcome to Verint Systems, Inc. Q2 Fiscal 24 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.

Operator

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Matthew Frenkel, Investor Relations and Corporate Development Director. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and thank you for joining our conference call today. I'm here with Dan Bodner, Verint's CEO Grant Highlander, Verint's CFO and Alan Moden, Verint's Chief Corporate Development Officer. Before getting started, I'd like to mention that accompanying our call today is a slide presentation. If you would like to view these slides in real time during the call, please visit the IR section of our website at verint.com, Click on the Investor Relations tab and click on the webcast link and select today's conference call.

Speaker 1

I'd also like to draw your attention to the fact that certain matters Discussed on this call may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other provisions of the federal securities laws. These forward looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by These forward looking statements are made as of the date of this call and as except as required by law, Verint assumes no obligation to update or revise them. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of how these and other risks and uncertainties Could cause Verint's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these forward looking statements, please see our Form 10 ks for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2023, Our Form 10 Q for the quarter ended July 31, 2023 when filed and other filings we make with the SEC.

Speaker 1

The financial measures discussed today include non GAAP measures As we believe investors focus on those measures and comparing results between periods and among our peer companies, please see today's slide presentation, our earnings release Considered in isolation from, as a substitute for, or superior to GAAP financial information, but is included because management believes it provides meaningful supplemental information regarding our operating results when assessing our business and is useful to investors for informational and comparative purposes. The non GAAP financial measures the company uses have limitations and may differ from those used by other companies. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dan. Dan?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Matt. Today, I will start with a review of our Q2 and H1 key metrics, including bookings and revenue dynamics. Then I will review the latest innovation in our CX Automation platform and our AI powered specialized bots. Finally, I will provide a midyear update on our expectations for the second half of the year. In Q2, we delivered solid performance across key SaaS metrics, including SaaS new bookings, Renewals and SaaS ARR.

Speaker 2

We believe our SaaS momentum reflects our differentiated CX Automation platform And the growing customer interest in our AI capabilities. Let me start with Q2 and H1 bookings and deal activity. In Q2, New South ACV bookings came in at $26,500,000 Up strongly from Q1 and consistent with our average quarterly level throughout last year. As discussed on our prior call, in Q1, we saw elevated sales cycles due to the macroeconomic environment An approximately $11,000,000 ACV of deals shifted to the right out of Q1 relative to our expectations. We are pleased to report that this $11,000,000 of Q1 deals We're subsequently all booked in Q2.

Speaker 2

During our last call, we also shared our expectations Of more than $50,000,000 of New South ACV bookings for the first half, our actual results came in at $42,000,000 Elongated sales cycles persisted in Q2, leading to over $8,000,000 ACV of deals Shifting to the right and out of Q2. Based on our current forecast, we expect the majority of which to be booked in Q3. Given our experience in the first half of bookings shifting to the right in both Q1 and Q2, We're assuming the economic conditions will remain the same in Q3 and Q4, resulting in approximately $10,000,000 of bookings shifting from H2 into next year. For the year, we now see $102,000,000 of new SaaS ACV bookings compared to our prior expectations of approximately $112,000,000 Grant will discuss later the expected progression of our bookings throughout the year. Now let's take a closer look at our Q2 deal activity and recent market trends.

Speaker 2

In Q2, we continue to have significant wins across existing and new logos. With respect to existing customers, we received more than 20 orders in excess of $1,000,000 TCV As large enterprises across the globe continue to expand and adapt more applications from our platform. These orders included a $20,000,000 TCV order from a leading financial services company in the U. S, A $6,000,000 PCB order from a leading telecom company in Europe And a $6,000,000 TCV order from 1 of the largest banks in the Asia Pacific region. With respect to new logos, in Q2, we again added more than 100 new logos, including large brands Such as Samsung and Philip Morris.

Speaker 2

New low gross customers typically start with small orders And our objective is to have them expand in our cloud platform over time. Another customer trend that is important to note is strong interest in our AI capabilities. I'm pleased to report that the majority of the new SaaS ACV booked in Q2 Includes 1 or more Verint specialized bots. We believe the market is in the early stage of the AI adoption cycle InVerint is well positioned with Verint da Vinci AI at the core of our platform. In summary, in H1, we saw elevated sales cycles, which impacted the timing of our bookings.

Speaker 2

At the same time, we saw positive trends, including increased interest in very specialized box, Resulting in pipeline growth, strong renewal rates consistent with the prior year, more than 100 new logos And the average term length of new orders remaining close to 2.5 years. Our solid Q2 new SaaS ACV bookings combined with strong SaaS renewal rates drove SaaS ARR growth of 17% In Q2 and on a year over year basis, following strong SaaS ARR growth in the Q1, We believe SaaS ARR is a very useful operating metric for management as it normalizes all SaaS contracts To reflect a consistent and annualized ratable view that is closely aligned With a SaaS cash flow generation. As a reminder, from an accounting perspective, Our bundled SaaS contracts are recognized ratably, while our unbundled SaaS contracts are recognized largely upfront Under ASC 606 accounting standards, this difference is addressed by the SaaS ARR metric. Going forward, we intend to report SaaS ARR on a quarterly basis to help investors better understand our SaaS growth trends. Turning to platform innovation.

Speaker 2

During Q2, we held our Engage customer conference In which we showcased our latest AI innovation, brands are looking to leverage AI To increase CX Automation, so they can achieve their strategic objectives of elevating customer experience and reducing Labor costs. Verint's open platform is designed with CX Automation at the center. In Q2, we unveiled many new bots As part of the large team of specialized bots currently available in our platform, these bots are designed to augment the human workforce and deliver significant customer ROI. Customer reaction has been extremely positive. And as I mentioned earlier, the majority of the new SaaS ACV we booked in Q2 included 1 or more bots.

Speaker 2

With regards to pricing of bots, it's important to note that customer level of consumption It's related to the volume of data processed by the bots and type of bots and not just to the size of the customer's human workforce. We believe bot consumption in our platform will increase over time given the cost of deploying the varying bots is much lower than the cost of hiring additional people. Let's take a look at the customer ROI As you can see from the slide, Each bot is designed to perform a single task and is focused on helping a specific human role. Customers can deploy a team of bots from the Verint platform to assist roles across All enterprise customer engagement functions. For example, a financial services company with 2,000 Customer engagement employees and with an average call handle time of 5 minutes can save 1,000,000 of dollars annually By deploying a team of varying bots.

Speaker 2

In this example, the customer is deploying 3 bots. The RevPAR bot To assist the agent with automating the after call work and potentially reducing their work by 60 seconds per call, The containment bot significantly increased the agent's capacity by having the bot respond to 30% of Consumer's questions and the Compliance Bot to assist customer service management To automate the compliance monitoring program, to significantly reduce compliance errors and avoid fines. The customer can deploy additional BOSS from the Verint platform for automating different tasks and to generate even greater ROI. In summary, we believe that Brands' investment in bots It's more cost effective than increasing the size of the human workforce. This dynamic should drive increased consumption from our platform and increase our TAM over time.

Speaker 2

Next, I would like to discuss the trends that we see for the second half of the year. First, our potential to SaaS transition is progressing as planned and we are on track to achieve 88% For software revenue to come from recurring sources for the year. As a reminder, most of our remaining perpetual revenue comes from the financial services company with a preference for on premise deployments, and we expect them to remain on premises for the foreseeable future. Therefore, the revenue headwinds that we experienced From the perpetual transition over the last couple of years and during the current year are expected to be behind us next year. 2nd, regarding Saks revenue growth, we had 16% growth in the first half And we expect growth in the second half to improve slightly, resulting in full year growth of 18% to 20% or approximately $530,000,000 of SaaS revenue at the midpoint.

Speaker 2

Supporting our expectations for H2 SaaS revenue growth is a combination of new bookings And a significant amount of renewals scheduled in Q4, which Grant will discuss later. Turning to our outlook for total revenue, margins, adjusted EBITDA and diluted EPS. For revenue, we are adjusting our annual outlook to $910,000,000 due to the macroeconomic environment. For margin, we now expect faster growth and operating margin expansion and are pleased to be in a position to maintain our earnings outlook. For the full year, we expect $250,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA and $2.65 of diluted EPS, reflecting mid single digit growth at the midpoint of our outlook.

Speaker 2

In summary, Verint's open platform is at the center of CX delivering AI powered specialized bots to augment the workforce. We believe our bot consumption model is very attractive to customers. In Q2, solid new SaaS ACV bookings combined with strong renewal rates Drove 17% growth in such ARR. We now expect the current macroeconomic environment to Persist in the second half, resulting in approximately $10,000,000 of new slice ACV bookings shifting into next year. We're adjusting our revenue guidance and maintaining our earning guidance driven by ongoing improvement in our gross margin.

Speaker 2

And our strong margins and cash flow generation provide us flexibility And we intend to continue executing on our previously announced stock buyback program. Now let me turn the call over to Grant to discuss our financials in more detail. Grant?

Speaker 3

Thanks, Dan. Good afternoon, everyone. Our discussion today will include non GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between our GAAP and non GAAP financial measures is available, as Matt mentioned, in our earnings release and in the IR section of our website. Differences between our GAAP and non GAAP financial measures Include adjustments related to acquisitions, including fair value revenue adjustments, amortization of acquisition related intangibles, Certain other acquisition related expenses, stock based compensation expenses, separation related expenses, Accelerated lease costs, IT facilities and infrastructure realignment, as well as certain other items It can vary significantly in amount and frequency from period to period.

Speaker 3

Starting with our Q2 P and L metrics, Revenue came in at $210,000,000 Non GAAP gross margins expanded to 70%, up more than 70 basis points year over year. And non GAAP diluted EPS came in at $0.48 Turning to our SaaS metrics. New SaaS ACV bookings came in solid at $26,500,000 up strongly from Q1. The percentage of our software revenue that is recurring increased to 86% compared to 84% a year ago in the same period. And SaaS ARR came in strong with a 17% increase year over year.

Speaker 3

Earlier this year, we introduced SaaS Annual Recurring Revenue or SaaS ARR. SaaS ARR is an operating metric that represents the annualized quarterly run rate value of active or signed SaaS contracts as of the end of a period. Management uses SaaS ARR to understand the annual recurring value of customer contracts at the end of a reporting period and to monitor the growth of our recurring business as we shift to SaaS. One of the benefits of SaaS ARR is that it normalizes all SaaS contracts to reflect a consistent and annualized ratable view, Despite the different accounting treatments for unbundled SaaS, which is recognized upfront under ASC 606 and for bundled SaaS, which is recognized ratably over the term of the contracts. The reason this is important is that our Of unbundled SaaS and bundled SaaS bookings can vary quarter to quarter and impact year over year growth trends in SaaS revenue.

Speaker 3

This is exactly what happened in Q2. Non GAAP SaaS revenue increased 10% year over year Compared to our 17% increase in SaaS ARR, reflecting the growth on normalized routable basis. The new SaaS ACV booking level in Q2 this year was similar to the level we achieved in Q2 last year. However, the mix of SaaS bookings was weighted more towards bundled SaaS. To address the fact that our SaaS bookings mix Can vary quarter to quarter.

Speaker 3

Going forward, we intend to disclose SaaS ARR on a quarterly basis. Let's take a closer look at the bookings dynamics in Q2 and how it impacted our Q2 SaaS revenue. As Dan mentioned, during H1, we experienced elongated sales cycles due to the macroeconomic environment. For Q1, we previously discussed our expectations to book $27,000,000 ACV, of which $16,000,000 closed And $11,000,000 shifted out of Q1. These $11,000,000 ACV worth of deals were subsequently booked in Q2.

Speaker 3

Similarly, we were expecting around $34,000,000 ACV in Q2, of which we booked $26,500,000 and over $8,000,000 shifted out of Q2. Important to note that the slip deals similar to Q1 We're not lost and the majority of which is expected to be booked in Q3. In addition to the shift To the right, I'd also like to highlight our mix of the bookings. Of 8,000,000 ACV we didn't book in the quarter, Approximately 50% or $3,500,000 were for unbundled SaaS deals. Since revenue from the unbundled SaaS deals Are recognized upfront with a standard term of 3 years.

Speaker 3

The revenue impact from the $3,500,000 deal shortfall was $11,000,000 of revenue in Q2. As a result, the unbundled SaaS deals were the primary reason For our Q2 SaaS revenue and total revenue coming in below the prior expectations we discussed of a slight sequential increase from Q1's level. Turning to fiscal 'twenty four guidance. We expect the shift to the right we experienced in H1 due to the macroeconomic environment to continue into H2 and believe it's prudent to adjust our outlook for new SaaS ACV bookings for the year. Our original outlook for the year It was for approximately 11% new SaaS ACV growth or $112,000,000 and we now Expect around $10,000,000 of our bookings to shift out of the year.

Speaker 3

Our current outlook for the second half is $60,000,000 of new SaaS ACV bookings, taking the full year to $102,000,000 flat with last year. As a result of the booking shift, We are adjusting our SaaS revenue outlook for the full year to a range of 18% to 20% growth. Let me give you some additional color on our annual guidance. With respect to revenue, we expect $10,000,000 ACV bookings shift to have a $25,000,000 impact to our revenue this year and are adjusting our revenue outlook to $910,000,000 While we are adjusting our revenue guidance for the year, we expect greater gross margin and operating margin expansion from accelerated improvements in our SaaS margins. As such, we are maintaining our outlook of 2 point $0.65 of diluted EPS for the year.

Speaker 3

Our diluted EPS guidance, along with our adjusted EBITDA guidance of 250,000,000 Represents 5% growth year over year for both metrics. We also continue to expect 190,000,000 of non GAAP cash from operations before one time items. Regarding below the line assumptions, We expect interest and other expense on average of $750,000 per quarter. Net income from non controlling interest Should be about $200,000 per quarter. Our cash tax rate should be about 10% and we expect around 75,000,000 Fully diluted shares outstanding.

Speaker 3

Let me also discuss how we see the second half of the year progressing. Starting with Q3, for bookings, we expect new SaaS ACV bookings to come in at a level similar to Q2. For revenue, we expect the sequential increase from Q2 to around $215,000,000 driven by continued SaaS growth. And for gross margins, we expect another gradual sequential increase in Q3. Turning to Q4.

Speaker 3

For bookings, we expect new SaaS ACV bookings to grow sequentially from Q3, Taking H2 to $60,000,000 in total. For revenue, we expect to finish the year very strong With around $267,000,000 up $52,000,000 sequentially from Q3. While this seems like a significant increase sequentially, most of this increase is coming from unbundled SaaS renewals Being concentrated in Q4 this year. In fact, we expect approximately $55,000,000 of renewal revenue in Q4 compared to only $15,000,000 in Q3. And for gross margins, we expect a larger sequential increase in Q4, driven by the significant sequential revenue increase from the concentration of renewals.

Speaker 3

Next, I will discuss how the trends we are seeing this year should benefit our financial model next year. Let me provide you with some details on these benefits. Starting with revenue growth next year, we see 3 positive trends. First, we see a high level of interest in our latest AI and bot innovation and we expect customers to consume more from our platform over time due to the strong ROI of our solutions. 2nd, while sales cycles are elongating, Our pipeline is growing and we believe there is pent up demand.

Speaker 3

And 3rd, with SaaS ARR growing strongly And perpetual revenue leveling off, the headwinds we have had from declining perpetual revenue will be largely behind us. With respect to cash flow, we expect our cash generation to grow at a double digit rate next year, Faster than our revenue growth. Behind this expectation is the positive impact to our cash flow from our SaaS ARR growth as well as the fact that some one time expenditures associated with our post COVID office realignment will be behind us. Turning to our balance sheet. We continue to be in a very good financial position.

Speaker 3

Our net debt remains well under One times last 12 months EBITDA and is further supported by our strong cash flow. We expect our balance sheet to get even stronger going forward as we benefit from the foundation we laid since the spin, resulting in continued improvement in margins and cash flow. And regarding our $200,000,000 stock buyback program, To date, we have repurchased close to 100,000,000 worth of shares and we are committed to completing our previously announced program. In summary, in Q2, we delivered solid performance across key SaaS metrics, including a 17% increase in SaaS ARR. Despite our strong SaaS momentum, we experienced some deal slippage in H1 and believe it's prudent to adjust our bookings and revenue outlook for the full year.

Speaker 3

At the same time, We expect more gross and operating margin expansion and are pleased to be in a position to maintain diluted EPS guidance and expect mid single digit growth for diluted EPS and adjusted EBITDA this year. Finally, our ability to deliver innovative CX Automation and drive significant customer ROI positions us to increase consumption in our platform and sustain long term growth. And before we take questions, I'd like to mention that we'll be hosting an Investor Day in December to highlight our latest innovations and review our financial model in more detail. With that operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

And thank you. And one moment for our first question. And our first question comes from Ryan MacDonald from Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions and I appreciate the thorough walk through on the updated guidance expectations. And Dan, maybe you could just We could start there and just provide a little bit more color on maybe what changed, I guess, so materially, if you will, between First and second quarter and how you're looking into the back half. And I guess to the extent that in the conversations you're having, do you feel like we're getting to A trough point in terms of the sales cycle elongations or what's your viewpoint on sort of the timeline of how long this persists for?

Speaker 2

Yes. So what we saw in Q1 continued in Q2. So we now assume it will continue also in Q3 and Q4. And that's basically elongated sales cycle. So we mentioned $11,000,000 that got pushed out of Q1 to the right and we booked them in Q2 And that was good.

Speaker 2

We were happy to see that it's not elongated multiple quarters, but we closed that shortfall in Q2, but then we had similar to the magnitude of $8,000,000 of deals shifting to the right from Q2 and we mentioned we didn't lose them and we expect to book them later in the year. So there is a shift right. And it's basically when you look at the trends, it's basically just More scrutiny, more approval cycles by customers. We didn't see any other trend changes. New logos, we had more than 100 new logos in Q2 as well and in Q1 and throughout last year.

Speaker 2

In terms of the average deal length, very similar, about 2.5 years. We saw the deal sizes, so we had 20 Over $1,000,000 distributed deals, so that's for large enterprises. We did see actually the number of total deals increased 30% year over year On similar booking in this Q2 versus last Q2, so that suggests that there is more deals but smaller. But that could be part of the macro environment, but also part of the new bots that we announced in Q2. And we mentioned that half of the deals in Q2 included 1 or more bots.

Speaker 2

And we see that customers as they look at AI, they tend to start Small and then increased consumption over time. So that's kind of another change. But generally no change to renew rates, no change to win ratio. It's really Longer sales cycles and then what we did today is we basically took the same Trend into Q3 and Q4, we now assume that $10,000,000 of new SaaS ACV will be pushed into next year. So we talked about $112,000,000 this year and we now adjusted that outlook to $102,000,000 So, no material change in the shift to right of Newstart ACV, But as Grant explained, at the same time, we think that a lot of the unbundled SaaS deals Are being pushed and also SaaS, what we saw is unbundled SaaS is becoming bundled SaaS.

Speaker 2

And because when we apply the 606 accounting, bundled SaaS It is runable unbundled SaaS is upfront revenue. Obviously, as we see less unbundled SaaS, the revenue impact is more significant. So what was not a big impact of booking is creating a $25,000,000 adjustment to our revenue outlook. But gross margin expanded as we move more to SaaS and SaaS bundle, we get better gross margin. So that offset the Impact of the revenue adjustment and we are maintaining operating margins, so EBITDA $250,000,000 and EPS 2 So that's kind of the impact for this year.

Speaker 2

Now since you're asking when that's going to be over, So one interesting thing to note is that our pipeline for the next 12 months actually grew 20%. And that suggests that while this elongated sales cycle, there's also pent up demand. And we actually saw that in prior slowdowns, prior years that we had slowdowns that Pipeline has grown and when things improved in the macro environment, there was an uptick also in new bookings. So We hope to see that soon, but the pipeline suggests that there's still good demand for our open platform and bots.

Speaker 4

Super helpful color there. Maybe just double clicking on the growing pipeline opportunity, Dan. At the Engage conference, you had talked about some of the new product offerings and obviously one of the big debuts was open CCaaS. And I think the strategy around that was to sort of help Darren, get more sort of at bats or shots at net. Are you seeing the desired effect From Open Seacast yet or what's the conversations been like since Engage?

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Speaker 2

I think that Customers and partners are really excited about an open platform. I think the industry was looking for a truly open platform That allows them to focus on CX Automation, which is ROI driven, elevating customer experience, reducing the labor cost. And this is exactly where Open Platform is. We have some very good industry coverage, industry research coverage. Since then, we're getting really good momentum with these partners.

Speaker 2

We just announced the Microsoft partnership Recently, so we were selected by Microsoft to be not only in their marketplace, but also Their salespeople when they sell Verint, they get commission, which is obviously the most important element of being in a true partnership. And our Microsoft partnership is just one more to many. But I think it's driven by open platform And our ability to work with anyone in the industry to bring value to customers and also fits Very seamlessly into the customer existing environment. They can keep their existing telephony. They can keep their existing CRM, vendor and they can move forward with innovation to deploy bots And help to the workforce augment the workforce with AI.

Speaker 2

I think that's all very compelling to customers.

Speaker 4

Excellent. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll hop back in the queue.

Operator

And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Peter Levine from Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Speaker 1

Great. Thanks guys for taking my question here. Maybe if I look at top of the funnel metrics, were you As successful at converting leads or adding leads at a similar level versus expectations are your plans? And then second, do you feel like you have enough salespeople? Did you experience any sales churn?

Speaker 1

I'm just trying to get a better understanding if the folks You do have on the front lines, are they achieving their quota? Just a general sense of do you have enough coverage, I think, in this market To kind of hit the numbers that you're putting out here for the second half.

Speaker 2

Yes. So The leading indicator is obviously the pipeline and then the progression in the pipeline. And I think the pipeline is growing, but That's good, but also we see elongated sales cycle. So everything takes longer and smaller deals where customers can Experiments with AI is definitely quick because they see the ROI quickly and it's not big investments. And because we have a consumption based pricing model, we also make it easier for them to sell To buy at an initial consumption level and then increased consumption over time.

Speaker 2

So from a sales force perspective, obviously, They would rather get the big deals, which get them big commission, but having 100 new logos, More than half of the deal was BOSS consumption. That's obviously feeding the market with a lot of Initial purchases that will grow over time because when people are moving to the cloud platform, the open cloud platform, it's It's much easier for them to increase consumption. They don't have to go through the whole sales process again. When it comes To the size of the workforce the sales force, I believe we have the right size. We have people with lots of very deep relationship with customers that go many years back.

Speaker 2

And they know customers personally. They also understand the customer challenges. They understand what customers are trying to solve. So we're not just trying to sell technology. We really bring to our ROI driven solutions.

Speaker 2

In terms of the sales commissions, we pay Commission is based on obviously new bookings, but also renewals and renewals are very important for achieving our goals. And we also pay salespeople accelerators for selling more innovation to our customers. So Well, we just reduced our booking expectations by $10,000,000 for the year, dollars 10,000,000 ACV for the year, But as salespeople are more successful in selling cloud innovation, they can get accelerators. And I hope that we'll see Many people coming to our President Club next year as they achieve quarters.

Speaker 1

Maybe a follow-up to, I think, Ryan's first question was, given that you don't really have visibility into when we'll trough out here. So one is, what are your hiring plans into the second half? And then what are your initial hiring plans as you think about fiscal 2025?

Speaker 2

Yes. That's a very good question. So right now, our guidance It seems flat, operating expenses in Q3 and Q4, so similar to Q1 and Q2. So we have no hiring plans, And we're going to maintain the level of expense that we have now. And I think in this environment, it's positioned us to Really focused on getting the salespeople we have today to build the pipelines and as I said before to push more innovation Into our customer base and new logos.

Speaker 2

And as soon as we see signs that the End of demand that we see in our pipeline growth is starting to materialize, then we obviously can change that view and resume hiring. But right now, for the remainder of the year, our guidance assumes that things will remain the same.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Operator

And thank And our next question comes from Mason Maron from Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hi. Thanks for taking my question here. So I wanted to focus on your existing customer base within with regards to guidance. Are you seeing existing customers reduce licenses? Or are you seeing any change in the churn based on the macro environment?

Speaker 5

Any color there would be

Speaker 2

The only change is the 2 changes that we see are Yes. I call longer as they bring more executive into the approval cycle. And there's definitely growing interest in BaaS. And We launched the BOTS in June in our Engage customer conference. I think some of the analysts and investors, you were there and you saw the Really, excitement.

Speaker 2

Customers were thrilled with the bots. We have now about 30 plus bots in our platform. We will introduce 15 more this year And we expect to introduce about 30 more next year. So very, very rapid innovation and that's because da Vinci AI is the core of the platform And it helps us to bring not just Variant AI, but any commercial Gen AI to bring it into the platform, Train it quickly on data and release new bots that augment the workforce to do different tasks. So that's clearly exciting customer.

Speaker 2

So On one hand, they look at the sales cycle on the other hand, more interest in Boston growing pipeline. So No, we didn't change no change in renewals. Our renewals were strong in Q2. Gross renewals, Low to mid-90s and more than 100 percent NRR, plus NRR. So renewal rates didn't change.

Speaker 2

We saw big deals. We saw same term lengths, Close to 2.5 years, so no different in behavior, no really difference in behavior Other than the Elegant sales cycle and the BOSS interest.

Speaker 5

Thank you for that. And then on the deals that have Been pushed out. Are you seeing any clustering in a particular vertical or industry perhaps?

Speaker 2

Not at all. Not at all. It's very random. It's some things are pushed out 2 weeks Then we know we already got some Q2 deals in Q3. So some of the deals are pushed just by a little, other deals are pushed by month.

Speaker 2

No rules, no industry pattern. It's really company by company and just a generally cautious Approach to IT spending.

Speaker 5

Got you. Last one for me is, you've talked a lot about your AI bots. How should we think about that impacting on like a per customer ARPU basis? Any rule of thumb regarding like an ARPU uplift that you're seeing from customers that are adopting?

Speaker 2

So we talked last quarter on a potential 10x uplift that we see in our customer base. And that's based on analyzing our top customers. This clearly The spend on labor is very large in customer engagement. We talked about $2,000,000,000,000 labor spent annually And bots are really good at doing just one thing, right? Each bot is automating one task and it's very Easy for customers to kind of compare the price of their bot to the savings that they create.

Speaker 2

And obviously, they can Deploy large team of bots and save more than just on one task, but that makes them very easy to deploy from the platform. The bots are deployed, embedded in workflow, so there's no disruption to people while they're doing their normal work. They're getting help from bots. So So it's a very, very good way for customers to start to increase automation or what we call CX automation, customer experience, elevation and automation At the same time, it's very easy. So we think and that's what we mentioned that we'll see Increase in our in bot consumption in our base.

Speaker 2

We have new logos that start small and Our goal is that they will increase both consumption over time and that creates a whole new TAM That didn't really exist before AI that Verint is leading the way in terms of bringing AI to the fingertips of the agents.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Operator

And thank you. And I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Matthew Frankel for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Justin, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Of course, as always, feel free to reach out to me with any follow-up questions you have. And I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Have a good night.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now

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