Amplitude Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 20, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

And Co Founder of Amplitude and Chris Harms, the Company's Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, management will make forward looking statements, including statements regarding our financial outlook for the Q1 and full year 2024, the expected performance of our products, our expected quarterly and long term growth, investments and overall future prospects. These forward looking statements are based on current information, assumptions and expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these statements. Further information on the risks that could cause actual results to differ is included in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You're cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements and we assume no obligation to update these statements after today's call except as required by law.

Operator

Certain financial measures used in today's call are expressed on a non GAAP basis. We use these non GAAP financial measures internally to facilitate analysis of our financial and business trends and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. These non GAAP financial measures have limitations and should not be used in isolation from or as reconciliation between these GAAP and non GAAP financial measures is included in our earnings press release, which can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.amplitude.com. With that, I'll hand the call over to Spencer.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Yao, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm excited to welcome you to the Amplitude Q4 and 2023 earnings call. We have a lot to share today and we're going to cover it in 3 main sections. 1st, our financial results for Q4 and 2023 overall. 2nd, the maturation of amplitude in 2023, including an update on innovation and customer wins.

Speaker 1

And thirdly, our views on 2024. Let's start with the Q4 and full year financial highlights. Our 4th quarter revenue was 71,400,000, up 9% year over year. Annual recurring revenue was 281,000,000 up 8,000,000 from the end of the 3rd quarter. We've grown our customer base to more than 2,700.

Speaker 1

511 of those customers pay us more than $100,000 per year, up from $480,000 at the end of 2022. We also have 39 who pay us more than $1,000,000 a year, up from 30 at the end of last year. Lastly, we delivered almost 10 percentage points of non GAAP operating margin expansion year over year. We also generated $1,500,000 of free cash flow in Q4 and $2022,000,000 of free cash flow in 2023. Q4 was our largest quarter for net ARR in 2023, marked by broad based growth across all customer sizes.

Speaker 1

It was also the largest quarter of new enterprise logo wins in the company's history. While total churn was still high, it was lower than previous quarters. 2023 was a big year for Amplitude. I'm proud of how the team delivered. First, we made great progress in stabilizing the business, focusing on what we can control.

Speaker 1

We delivered margin expansion and positive free cash flow even against slowing growth. 2nd, we launched our plus plan in October, helping us to serve the lower end of the market much more effectively with a product led growth motion. In doing so, we provided ourselves the ability to further up level our go to market efforts, which we initiated early this year. We are scaling our strategic sales efforts across different buyers, focusing on high potential accounts up and down the stack. We are targeting the lower end of the market with our product led growth motion and using an inside sales team to address the in between.

Speaker 1

3rd, we had our strongest year ever for product innovation. I've said before, this is the best way to drive value long term. So I'd like to recap a few key areas. I just mentioned our Plus plan and we are off to a great start. It's early days on our own product led journey.

Speaker 1

There is more to test and iterate on, but we like what we see so far. Plus is tracking ahead of an early internal expectations. There are almost no signs of cannibalization, and we continue to see 5 figure deals in the signup process. We previewed session replay with customers last year and launched it publicly 2 weeks ago. Session replay helps our customers reconstruct a user visit by capturing how they interacted with a website, app or digital product.

Speaker 1

It's a tool used by product marketing and data teams to understand user behavior, diagnose product issues and improve outcomes. Session replay is powerful because it is tightly integrated with amplitude analytics and our broader platform. As a result, companies can get quantitative and qualitative insights to understand what their customers are doing and why. We are already getting strong feedback and encouraging early traction with customers already ripping and replacing point solutions with our session replay offering. They tell us they love being able to watch sessions without having to lead charts and that they are excited to do everything in one platform.

Speaker 1

As we continue to demonstrate with experiment and CDP, many workflows are better with amplitude analytics at the core. In addition to plus and session replay, we introduced a suite of AI powered capabilities, including Ask Amplitude to shorten the learning curve when you're getting started and data assistant to make data governance effortless. We believe AI will dramatically improve the caliber of digital products and experiences. We also improved our CDP solution, bringing it close to parity with market leaders in terms of connections. This led to an increasing number of companies choosing the powerful combination of analytics, experiment and CDP as their starting point.

Speaker 1

We also released numerous product bets explicitly designed to help us win simple and win the enterprise. It's easier to get started with Amplitude with dashboard templates for B2B SaaS, media, fintech and marketing analytics. Customers can now quickly send data to Amplitude in a low code fashion. Personalized homepages deliver out of the box insights to users right when they log in. Collaboration is a competitive differentiator for Amplitude and allows us to expand to different teams within the enterprise.

Speaker 1

We launched team workspaces to make cross functional collaboration even easier. Last but not least, we welcome Francois Agenstaedt as our new Chief Product Officer in December. Many of you may recognize Francois from Tableau. He was there for 13 years and led the product organization. I have huge respect for the work Tableau has done in the data space and inspired a lot of Amplitude's own approach.

Speaker 1

The same is true for Francois. He is a world class product leader and an inspirational storyteller who helped Tableau scale to beyond 1,000,000,000 in ARR. I am thrilled he is joining us on the next phase of our journey. Let's turn our attention to customers. Quarter for new enterprise logo wins in the company's history.

Speaker 1

We saw more traction with traditional companies, too. We both landed and grew with companies like Polaroid CrossFit, I fit Culver's, Lithia Motors, Rover, Crafton, Strava and Spartan Nash. In Q4, Driveway, a Lithia Motors Company, moved away from their existing analytics provider and went all in on amplitude across their Web properties. Ross Sherman, Driveway's VP of Digital Innovation, told us that Amplitude was the best solution to iteratively improve Driveway's experience so they can meet customers in their moment of need. Buying or selling a vehicle online is an emotional decision, with Amplitude now positioned to ingest all of DriveRay's web session telemetry.

Speaker 1

Its team can easily understand customer insights and test new features. This will improve the customer lifecycle, unlocking the full potential of its ecosystem. We also won a large aerospace company this quarter. Airlines rely heavily on this company's digital products to manage their most critical aerospace needs, including warranties, repairs and key safety updates. Every error results in unwanted ground time for aircraft, which costs their customers 1,000,000 of dollars per minute.

Speaker 1

Their team realized it needed to use data to better meet their customers needs. It had been using a legacy Martech solution for years, but it lacked adoption, trust and relevance. In Q4, they turned to Amplitude. With Amplitude Analytics, they will help customers better leverage their online portals, quickly dive into data related to critical issues and easily fix problems in a timely manner. We'll also aim to help them more effectively use their R and D dollars and improve roadmap prioritization.

Speaker 1

Another one I'm excited about is with DFL Digital Sports, a subsidiary of Deutsche Fusbal Liga, the German Professional Football League. DFL Digital Sports is rapidly growing, so it needed a new partner that could handle traffic spikes, connect the web and mobile experience and provide deep insights. In Q4, it shoot. It shows Amplitude Analytics to help grow its global fan base. We'll be partnering with DFL Digital Sports to help them reach their most important acquisition goals, including conversion and audience creation and management.

Speaker 1

With Amplitude, they'll also be able to create personalized fan engagements, investigate issues causing drop off and discover new areas of opportunity. Let's talk about what's ahead for Amplitude this year. It is too early to signal an all clear on the macro environment, especially with layoffs persisting across our digital native heavy customer base. However there is early evidence to suggest recent renewal cohorts are doing better. We are also starting to see clear examples of companies who are on stronger footing, starting to grow following their initial reset.

Speaker 1

While slower growth is a reality for this year, nothing has fundamentally changed about our long term opportunity. Digital products and experiences will continue to proliferate. There's increasing recognition that legacy web traffic and marketing centric approaches are no longer sufficient. We see continued validation that our strategic approach, a digital analytics platform with product analytics at its core, is the right one to win in the long term. We will continue to execute with urgency, drive product innovation aggressively and widen our lead over our competitors.

Speaker 1

We will continue to make bold strategic bets. This will all help to drive business growth towards the end of the year and set us up for greater success in the future. Here are the key areas of operational focus. We will continue to improve the effectiveness of our sales motion. We made substantial progress across the board last year, but there's plenty more to do to go from good to great.

Speaker 1

Our named account approach drives focus and prioritization. This increases our opportunity set materially. Targeted high potential account dollars grew by 50%, while we almost have the number of accounts that we go after. We're leading with value and selling more strategically everything from industry specific use cases to more sophisticated account engagement. We will continue to elevate our platform value proposition with experiment CDP and now session replay.

Speaker 1

We offer an all in one digital analytics platform that enables teams to create products that adapt to users, not the other way around. We know that our customers want a single provider for all their analytics needs. We see many opportunities to grow cross sell and displace point solutions With Francois now on board, we expect that our pace of product innovation will be even more aggressive. I have been intentional about up leveling accountability, maturation and execution at Amplitude throughout 2023. We are demonstrating progress.

Speaker 1

We will continue to drive profitable growth and invest for the future. At the foundation, our team remains persistent and adaptable. I'm optimistic about what we'll accomplish in 2024 and beyond. With that, thank you for your interest in Amplitude. I'd now like to turn it over to Chris to walk through the financial results.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Spencer. Thanks to everyone joining us today. I take pride in our recent performance. We exited 2023 with Q4 being our largest quarter for net ARR for the year. It was also the largest quarter of new enterprise logo wins, which were a positive indicator to the momentum we are building as part of the win the enterprise pillar of our broader strategy.

Speaker 2

Total churn was still high, but I'm encouraged that it was lower than previous quarters. And I'm also encouraged that for the Q3 in a row, actuals were in line with what the forward looking indicators were projecting. We came in above our guide on Q4 operating profit and delivered positive free cash flow for the 3rd consecutive quarter. We're demonstrating fiscal responsibility and proving ourselves strong stewards of shareholder capital by delivering 13 points of free cash flow margin improvement year over year, even against slowing growth and a stubbornly challenging macro environment. Now onto the 4th quarter results.

Speaker 2

As a reminder, all financial results that I will be discussing with the exception of revenue and balance sheet figures are non GAAP. Our GAAP financial results, along with a reconciliation between GAAP and non GAAP results, can be found in our earnings press release and supplemental financials on our IR website. 4th quarter revenue was $71,400,000 up 9% year over year. Total ARR exiting Q4 increased to 281,000,000 dollars an increase of 10% year over year and $8,000,000 sequentially. Here's more details on key elements of ARR.

Speaker 2

New ARR was evenly split between land and expand, exemplified by broad based new ARR across our customer segments. Churn remained elevated and slightly lower in absolute dollar terms than Q2 and Q3, consistent with our expectations. Full term accounted for just under 2 thirds of the total amount in the quarter. As expected, in period NRR dropped to 98%, and NRR on a trailing 12 month basis declined sequentially to 101%. Spencer alluded to early evidence of recent renewal cohorts doing better.

Speaker 2

1st year gross retention patterns from customers acquired in the second half of twenty twenty two onward is on average 5 to 10 points higher than cohorts across 20202021. Non analytics ARR across the 30,000,000 threshold at the end of 2023. Our base of $1,000,000 $100,000 customers grew year over year. Double clicking into these metrics, customers who spent more than $1,000,000 increased to 39, up from 30 customers the end of last year. Customers who spend more than $100,000 continue to represent approximately 3 quarters of our ARR base.

Speaker 2

Gross margin was 77% for the 4th quarter, up 3 percentage points year over year. Total operating expenses were $53,000,000 flat sequentially and down 1% year over year. Operating profit was a positive $2,300,000 or 3% of revenue, almost a 10 percentage point improvement on a year over year basis. Net income per share was $0.04 based on $129,200,000 of fully diluted shares compared to a loss of $0.03 with 113,100,000 shares a year ago. Free cash flow in the quarter was positive $1,500,000 or 2 percent of revenue.

Speaker 2

For the full year 2023, free cash flow was positive $22,400,000 dollars or 8% of revenue, a 13 percentage point improvement over last year's margin of negative 5%. Now on to our outlook. We've taken many steps to stabilize the business, up level execution and revisit how we allocate capital. We are selectively investing in key areas to ensure we successfully reaccelerate growth. The top of our list are continued product innovation, platform expansion, product led growth, professional services and business application infrastructure to better enable our go to market efforts.

Speaker 2

For the Q1 of 2024, we expect Q1 revenue to be between $72,100,000 $72,700,000 representing an annual growth of 9% at the midpoint. We expect a non GAAP operating loss between $2,800,000 $2,200,000 And we expect non GAAP net loss per share to be between negative $0.01 and $0.00 assuming basic shares outstanding approximately 120,500,000. For the full year, we expect revenue to be between 291.5 $294,500,000 and annual growth rate of 6% to 7%. We expect non GAAP operating income between negative $1,000,000 and positive $2,000,000 And we expect non GAAP net income per share to be between 0 point 0 $6 and $0.08 assuming shares outstanding approximately 133,000,000 as measured on a fully diluted basis. Here's more color for your modeling purposes.

Speaker 2

Consistent with what we conveyed in November of 2023, we expect churn to remain at elevated levels through Q2 2024 and at similar levels to recent quarters. As we've characterized previously, primary driver to these elevated levels of churn are multiyear contracts from 2021 and 2022 that are being optimized upon renewal. As reflected in our 2024 revenue guidance, we are implying that healthy new business trends in the first half of twenty twenty four will be substantively offset by churn during this period. Specific to quarter to quarter dynamics, we expect Q2 revenue to be down slightly from Q1 due to the timing of anticipated churn within each of the respective quarters. We expect in period NRR to remain below 100% and NRR to trough in the mid-90s this year.

Speaker 2

Both metrics should increase as we exit 2024. We expect year over year ARR growth will trough in Q3 of this year in mid single digits. Gross margin should be between 76% and 77% for the year due to the aforementioned investments in professional services. While we have guided to operating profit for fiscal year 2024, we expect to generate a non GAAP operating loss in the first half of twenty twenty four due to the timing of certain events, such as employee tax resets and a higher concentration of discretionary spending. These items include certain marketing programs and events like the sales kickoff.

Speaker 2

Expect to continue to be free cash flow positive for the full year. We expect diluted share count to increase by 3% to 5% in FY 'twenty four. But I am happy but not satisfied with what we achieved in 2023. I am confident of the path we are setting for ourselves through 2024 and into 2025. We will continue to drive profitable growth.

Speaker 2

We will continue to deliver a rapid pace of product innovation and platform expansion. Our go to market efforts will be even more targeted and effective, which we believe will drive much higher sales productivity, NRR and revenue acceleration. With that, I'll open it up for Q and A. Over to you, Yao.

Operator

Thanks. Thanks, Chris. Please turn your microphone and camera on and let me just solve to one question and one follow-up in the interest of time. Our first question will come from Koji Ikeda of Bank of America followed by Taylor McGinnis from UBS. Koji, go ahead please.

Speaker 3

Hey guys. For some reason I can't turn my camera on here, but let me just ask the question here. So maybe a question, 2 questions, one for Spencer, one for Chris. So Spencer, starting with you, how does the demand environment feel today, February 2024 versus February 2023? It sounds like things are better, lapping of optimizations, sounds like some green shoots and renewal cohorts.

Speaker 3

I know you're talking to so as you're talking to new customers, are the pain points the same? I mean, are are you having same types of conversations, same types of prospects or have things changed? And if so, maybe you could talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 1

Yeah, for sure. I think demand for what we do has always been strong. Whether I look at now, whether I look at year a year ago, whether I look at many years ago, this is a top priority for many product and data teams for them to understand how it is their end customers are using the product, and, you know, we're seeing that in both tech companies as well as the traditional enterprise. In terms of now versus a year ago, I'd say it's maybe slightly stronger. I think there's still pressure on a lot of digital native and tech companies as they're optimizing spend.

Speaker 1

Companies continue to go through layoffs. I think the big thing that changes for us is structurally stuff gets a lot better as we go through the first half, as we talked about once those earlier renewal cohorts wash out. And then I think I have to give a lot of credit to the last piece of that. I give a lot of credit to the changes that Thomas has driven across go to market to mature our motion. That's really a big part of what led to our success in Q4 with a record number of enterprise lands.

Speaker 1

That's what led to our ability to deploy a plus plan where we have self-service motion, and we can then take those resources and focus them up market and higher potential accounts. And so it's just it's both, you know, I'd say that the primary drivers is, our demand's always been there. It's it's our execution is getting better.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thank you. And then a follow-up for Chris here. ARR just grew 10%, added $8,000,000 net new sequentially, as you said, the best of 2023. And last quarter, you said there's a high correlation of kind of this year's ARR as an indication of next year's growth, but you are guiding to 6%.

Speaker 3

I did hear you on your commentary of kind of the puts and takes there, but just trying to understand a little bit further that 400 point delta, the finishing ARR growth to the next year guide. Is it just added conservatism or just take heed to what you said in your prepared remarks? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. No, there is a spread acknowledged. There's the kind of the really the role that Q1 and Q2 are going to play in terms of our expectation and the drag on our net ARR from the anticipated churn and the impact that they're going to have on the 2024 revenue. That's the primary driver to that obvious disconnect.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thanks so much, guys. Thank

Operator

you. Great. Taylor McGinnis, you're up next, followed by Rob Oliver at Baird. Taylor, go ahead, please.

Speaker 4

Yes. Hi, team. Thanks so much for taking the question. So just with the rise of layoff activity that we've seen in tech, can you talk about where we stand in terms of the timeline of license rationalization and what's embedded in the guide? So it seems like the guide implies a steady deceleration throughout the year, but it looks like in 1Q, you're assuming similar growth to 4Q.

Speaker 4

So is that just because of you're assuming now these tougher renewals are going to continue into the second half? Maybe it's just conservatism, but I guess why could we not see an acceleration if churn starting to improve some of these new cohorts look better? Maybe you can just give a little bit of color there.

Speaker 2

Yes. Look, I'll take that on. I've talked about churn. I've talked about it being at commensurate levels with what we saw Q2, Q3, Q4. Commensurate level doesn't mean down and we did say that Q4 was down relative to Q3 Q2 and Q3.

Speaker 2

Kind of with those elements in play, I'll remind you that my guide for or I didn't guide it specifically, but my signaling for Q4 kind of net ARR was a number much closer to 0. Like I was very pleased with our over performance, very pleased it was very broad based. And I guess that same level of tempering, both what we hope to achieve in Q1 and Q2 from a new ARR perspective is just being offset as I try to be prudent about how to approach it with what we see from churn. And I'll just remind you, churn, we definitely have gotten our arms around, right, for Q2, Q3, Q4, while it's been an elevated number, one of the positives I take away from that is at least the indicators gave us pretty good signaling to that. So all of those different ingredients, kind of the stew is kind of what has shaped how I'm thinking about those elements.

Speaker 4

Perfect. And just as a follow-up question. So it seemed like this past quarter, the pace of NRR deterioration was starting to subside. But you talked about NRR troughing in the mid-90s and 2Q revs being down sequentially. So is there something specific to the 2Q renewal base that you're trying to fly coming up?

Speaker 4

I guess, is it larger? Does it greater tech exposure? Maybe you can just help us think through what that base looks like maybe relative to what we've seen in the last couple of quarters.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So remember, we do not have an evenly distributed renewal base. We are definitely highly concentrated in Q1 and Q2 relative to where we are in Q3 and Q4. And our ability to have our arms better around our customers, the role of the multi years and kind of where we think they're going to reset on their renewals. All of those are just taking shape to how we're thinking about the precision to Q1 and Q2 and how we think about the kind of the cyclical nature of being in a mechanically different place as we talked about in Q3 and that therefore is kind of forming our trough.

Speaker 4

Awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Operator

Great. Next question, Rob Oliver from Baird, followed by Tyler Radke from Citi. Rob, go ahead please.

Speaker 5

Yeah, great. Thanks, Yao. Thanks, guys. Good afternoon. My question is, I think, probably a bit of a follow-up to Taylor's.

Speaker 5

You guys clearly have made some tremendous strides on managing that churn. There's been a lot of changes in go to market, a lot of internal optimization of the process. So I guess what I'm wondering is when you look out to that big cohort that's coming out in Q2, in terms of what you guys can control, because some of it's just natural, there's fewer lower headcount. But in terms of what you guys can control, maybe talk about some of the opportunities to get other products into the hands of these customers or other ways to maybe get the platform sale going. Spencer, I know in your prepared remarks, you mentioned session replay as an example.

Speaker 5

So maybe talk a little bit about like, you know, some of the ways you guys can maybe, you know, work those those contracts a bit better? And then I had a quick follow-up.

Speaker 1

Totally. So I divide it into 2 big ones. There's the operational of how we manage a particular account, and then there's the strategic in terms of how we approach our entire customer base. On the operational side, we've gone through a lot of maturing of our go to market team over the last year. And I think you're starting to see the results in terms of our ability to forecast and understand where things are going to be further out.

Speaker 1

We're also able to have conversations with much more senior executives than we were before. A great example is one of our large food delivery customers, multimillion dollar customer with us, been with us for 6 or 7 years. We were stuck at the director level in terms of our conversations for many years. And we just had a conversation with them about a month ago with the VP of Data Engineering. And that was a completely changed the dynamic.

Speaker 1

They were skeptical of continuing to invest in Amplitude in the past because they're like, hey, this thing keeps growing in terms of cost without bound. And I don't know necessarily know. Yes, it's popular and used by a lot of end users at my company, but I don't necessarily know and understand the value it's driving. We had the conversation, we said, hey, we're gonna work through doing an enterprise license agreement. So you don't have to worry about how stuff scales and work with you on the pricing side.

Speaker 1

And then that helped him direct the organization to lean into us. And so it's like those conversations repeated again and again and again. We're focusing on getting into much senior levels, getting executive business reviews, talking about the value that we're driving. On the strategic side, I think the call out was great. I'd point to a few different things.

Speaker 1

So first, while it's early, we do see that customers on multiple products have higher retention rates. And so that's a big focus for us this year, both across experiments, CDP, and now a session replay as well, just to get those attached as much higher. As Chris mentioned, non analytics products are at only 30,000,000 in ARR. So still a small portion of our customer base. We have an opportunity to penetrate way more.

Speaker 1

And the early signs there are that if you do, the retention rate gets significantly better. So that's been very good. The other element I talked to is the fact that we launched the plus plan allows us to take resources and focus it on the higher value accounts. And so instead of running the same go to market motion that you do for a multimillion dollar customer with a $10,000 customer, we're starting to specialize it a lot more and introduce things like premium professional services at the high end in order to make sure those customers get deployed and grow with us successfully. So there's a lot, you know, as as as I've been talking about, there's we're not happy with where it's at.

Speaker 1

There's a lot we're doing both operationally and strategically. And, as those 2021 2022 cohorts finish coming up for renewal, we expect that to get structurally better in terms of our growth.

Speaker 5

Great. That's super helpful. Thanks. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Great. Tyler Radke from Citi, followed by Nick Altman from Scotia. Tyler, go ahead please.

Speaker 6

Yes, thanks. Yael and hey everyone. So just starting off on the quarter, I mean a question for Chris, it looked like the revenue performance was a little bit light of the midpoint of guidance and I think historically you typically show some upside relative to that guidance range. So it looks like ARR was solid. So was there anything unusual to call out in terms of linearity in the quarter, maybe more back end loaded?

Speaker 6

And then the follow-up question is, as we just think about the guidance for 2024 with sequential revenue declines in Q2, it does imply a pretty larger pace of sequential revenue increases in Q3, Q4. Can you just talk about the visibility and confidence you have in the new business side of that for that to be for that to play out? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, both very fair questions. It's like pretty straightforward answers. As it pertains to Q4 and actually any quarter, we do have in period revenue, overages, professional services, but it was overages. Overages did not come in at a consistent level with where it had. The plan beat that I had wove into the midpoint did not materialize, and we came in about $200,000 below that.

Speaker 2

It is a small part of our top line, but it did drop off in Q4 below the expectations. And then that prompted me to do the postmortem and make sure that I was more appropriately gauging it for how we look to 2024. As it pertains to your second question on the quarter over quarter, the churn that we've identified for Q1 is very back end loaded. And some of the large ones that we're expecting are actually happening March 30th, March 31st. But that's not the same case in Q2.

Speaker 2

The ones that we've identified as really leading in, those are month 1 and early parts of month 2 of the quarter. So while the ARR the associated churn that we're kind of conveying as a consistent number, the timing of when those happened in the quarter and their associated impact is what's in play. And yes, Al and I just felt that was appropriate to add because I think one of the things we've conveyed Q2, Q3 was look, there are 2 forces that are in play. Spencer just spoke to what we're seeing at the high end, both in digital native and traditional enterprises, where we're doing a lot of rightsizing. That's just the nature of what was driving that.

Speaker 2

Yes, there was some loss churn there, but that's by far the small minor to the major, which has been just partial churns. And reminder to everyone, like we count both partial and fully lost in our GDR numbers. The second theme that's there is at the low end, right? It's the venture capital funded companies where they are struggling to survive. And I alluded to in the prepared remarks that 2 thirds of our churn in Q4 was lost churn, very much driven by what's happening in that venture capital digital native community and as they're struggling to survive.

Speaker 2

And clearly, that will be a temporary environment that we're going to face at that end of our market. But that too will change and we look forward to being in a much different position in our execution muscle when those market forces change and get the most out of that opportunity.

Operator

Sorry, Arjun, you're on mute.

Speaker 7

Yep. Perfect. All right. Sorry. Yep.

Speaker 7

Thanks. That's helpful. And then one, maybe for Spencer again. Just as we're thinking about category evolution, I think there was a time even for Amplitude where we kind of started to go down a different buyer persona into the marketing org. I'm curious if you think that's something that's still inevitable in the product analytics category and how fast do you think that might occur, both with Amplitude and the broader industry?

Speaker 1

I think it's a longer term phenomenon. I mean, we launched a whole bunch on the marketing side, and we've been deliberate about targeting that persona. But most companies we work with, it's still kind of 2 separate personas and 2 buying centers and they have their own tech stack. So while eventually I look 5, 10 years out, I expect to see it be quite different. In the short term, they're still quite distinct.

Speaker 1

Now that all said, we want to get ahead of it. So we're doing quite a bit, as I mentioned, on making sure that we're able to speak to value to that persona and tackle them and displace a lot of the legacy players. The other thing I'll call out on the suite offering is that I we've always been very aggressive on the innovation front. The part I'm excited about Francois to join is to help us how in terms of how he tackles the organization of that innovation so that we can continue. We have 4 products now.

Speaker 1

How do we continue to come out with the 5th and the 6th and the 7th and make sure we win everyone in this broader category by having the best offering in terms of the full platform. So we're going to continue to do more there, whether it's to tackle marketing or to tackle some of the other use cases when you think about digital analytics broadly.

Speaker 7

All right. Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Last question, Nick Altman from Scotia. Nick, go ahead please.

Speaker 8

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Chris, you mentioned overages were a bit light in in Q4. I guess, how should we read into that exactly, and and what does the guidance sort of embed from an overage perspective?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Great question. Look, it is a it is a small part of our top line, But when it moves a few 100,000 in any quarters and in period revenue, it can just impact. And it did kind of came in lower than what our historical models had suggested for Q4, which definitely prompted us to update how we were looking at that heading into Q1 and the rest of 2024. But it was one of these where a a small part of the equation just moved in a different direction than what our historical trend lines would suggest.

Speaker 2

In terms of the core of your question, what's undermining it, I think, are underpinning it. It is it's a function of where we are in both rightsizing contracts. Part of the optimization, the other side of that coin is customers increasing their levels and expanding and upselling in a period where it's now part of the subscription base. And when those happen and I'm not offsetting any overages, it was just a fine tuning to our model that I had to take a lesson out of Q4 and apply it going forward.

Speaker 8

Okay. And just to clarify, the revenue guidance for this year, what does that kind of imply from an overage perspective versus versus this year? So sort of not any overages embedded in the guidance.

Speaker 2

There is. I actually have less overages built in into the 2024 guidance than what we delivered in 2023.

Speaker 8

Okay. And then, my second one is just, you guys have said, like, the renewal cohort has been trending sort of above expectations. Churn actually improved a little bit in the quarter, but you're still kind of circling 2Q as potentially a little bit of a higher churn quarter. You talked about a sequential step down from 1Q on the top line. I guess how much visibility do you guys have into that?

Speaker 8

And, and is it isolated to a couple of large customers? Is it a cohort of customers who have, you know, large multiyear deals that they purchased when the macro looked a lot different? Maybe just help us understand the visibility into that 2Q renewal base and and why you expect things to get a little bit worse there.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Many facets to that question. Let me try to hit them all. First, as it pertains to the mix of renewals and expected churn, it's not just Q2, right? It's Q1 and Q2.

Speaker 2

And I've tried to convey that those are commensurate levels with what we generally saw across Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2023, acknowledging Q4 was a little lower than Q2 and Q3. So I wanted to clarify, it's not just Q2, but that once we get to Q3, we go from an environment where the multiyear contracts are representing 50% of the renewal base to them reflecting less than a quarter of the renewal base. So just a mechanically different environment in Q3 and Q4 in terms of the impact that these can have. 2nd piece I want to facet I wanted to get upon. You heard me kind of with pride for the entire organization is that for 3 consecutive quarters Q2, Q3, Q4, Thomas and team really had their arms around our churn exposure.

Speaker 2

And what their leading indicators were suggesting to me came in very consistent with our actuals were. Now, while nobody's pleased with the levels those came in, I take a recap half full view on that, that we really got our arms around that, which we didn't have when I arrived, right? That was one of the things I tried to highlight in my first earnings call. So as it pertains to our visibility, it is both at an account level, very much up and down the stack, driven by the kind of account executive ownership culture that Thomas started to drive back April, May of last year that Nate with his arrival has continued to drive and us just being much closer as reflective of Spencer's anecdote of we're getting much closer to strategic level than just the buyer. So our pulse with our customers as we're going through renewals is much better.

Speaker 2

3rd facet to it, right, our ability to convey the platform in its entirety and the additional capabilities that experiment and CDP and now session replay could bring is something we're doing to offset that churn and the team is getting better and better about it. One of them we still 80% of our customers still are assuming over 80% of our customers are still analytics only. So we have an opportunity to kind of offset what's ahead of us. But as I said, at the core, much of it is these large digitally native and traditional company enterprise contracts that we signed in 2021 2022 that we know are going to get optimized. And we know or we expect that the role of our SMB venture capital backed are going to continue at a similar pace.

Speaker 2

So many facets to how we're looking at this, many identifying the maturations that we've developed to be able to be better about it. And as I've tried to share since November, I think we're just in a different mechanical situation come Q3 of this year. And I look forward to being able to evidence that when we get into that time period.

Speaker 8

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Great. Thank you. With that, I'm seeing no further questions in the queue. We'll be at the Morgan Stanley Global Technology Conference in March. Details will be posted on the IR website.

Operator

Thank you very much for attending our Q4 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.

Speaker 1

Thank you all.

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Earnings Conference Call
Amplitude Q4 2023
00:00 / 00:00