Zuora Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 28, 2024

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Zuora 4th Quarter Fiscal Year 20 24 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Thank you. Luana Wach, Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Zuora's Q4 fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. On the call, we have Tim Zuo, Zohr's Founder and Chief Executive Officer and Todd McElhadden, Zohr's Chief Financial Officer. Robbie Trauber, our President and Chief Revenue Officer, will be joining us for the Q and A session. During today's call, we will make statements that represent our expectations and beliefs concerning future events that may be considered forward looking under federal securities laws.

Speaker 1

These statements reflect our view only as of today and should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward looking statements or outlook. These statements are subject to several risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results differ materially from expectations. For further discussion on the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC. And finally, unless otherwise noted, all numbers except revenue mentioned today are non GAAP.

Speaker 1

You can find a reconciliation from GAAP to non GAAP results for both the current and the prior year in today's press release. A press release and a replay of today's call can be found on Zuora's Investor Relations website at investor. Zuora.com. Now, I'll turn the call over to you, team.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Bhawana, and thank you, everyone, for joining Zuora's Q4 fiscal 2024 earnings call. I'd imagine there are quite a few questions based on the information we shared in our filing a few weeks ago. You all saw that our Q4 ARR growth fell short of where we were trying to land. We'll go through the details of the quarter. But the bottom line is this, in an uncertain year we strengthened our position in the marketplace by focusing on what was in our control, namely celebrating new logo acquisition, continuing to innovate our market leading multi product portfolio, investing in the success of our customers and delivering balanced growth and profitability.

Speaker 2

For the full fiscal 2024, subscription revenue was within the high end of guidance at $383,400,000 up 13% year over year. ARR grew 10.4% falling short of we were hoping to land. And the trailing 12 month DBRR ticked 2 points lower, primarily from 1 large churn, which I'll talk about later on the call. At the same time, non GAAP operating income improved by over $44,000,000 year over year exceeding the high range of our guidance by nearly $3,000,000 a big, big highlight for the year. And our adjusted free cash flow improved $72,000,000 year over year allowing us to generate over $44,000,000 of cash in a year.

Speaker 2

In Q4, we also saw the biggest year over year increase in new logos that we've seen in 8 quarters. And in the quarter, nearly 60% of our customers who renewed in Q4 actually increased their spend with us. To put all this in context, let's go back to the start of the fiscal year. Like many other companies, 1 year ago, we were seeing signs of a general slowdown in IT spending. Many expressed that the office of the CFO was an area that could be affected And there's a general consensus that there was going to be a slowdown in the digital transformation projects that have driven technology spending over the previous few years.

Speaker 2

And so we adjusted. Specifically, we said we would do 2 things. 1st, as we've been highlighting in the last few earnings calls, we shifted to doing faster lands at a lower ACV. But of course, still focus on what we believe is the sweet spot of the markets, large enterprises and fast growing disruptors. In other words, the leaders of today and of tomorrow.

Speaker 2

2nd, we said we would strike a good balance between growth and profitability and we committed to making progress towards the rule of 40 framework. As it turns out, this was the right approach. As the year progressed, we did indeed see a pause in digital transformation projects. In FY 2024, we saw fewer 7 digit ATV new logo deals and in Q4 we did see these deals continue to push. However, our strategy of pursuing smaller, faster lands allowed us to sign almost 30% more new logos in fiscal 2024 as compared to the previous year.

Speaker 2

In fact, if you just look at Q4, we signed on over 40% new logos compared to Q4 of last year. And this is with some fantastic companies including Sony Network Communications who will be bringing on approximately 1,500,000 subscribers. For In for, a global leader in business cloud software for industry specific markets with over $3,000,000,000 in annual revenue. For one of Europe's largest airlines, they selected Zuora to scale their exclusive travel program with new strategic offerings. We're one of the leading brands of private member clubs and hotels with over 70 locations around the world or even a leading marketing SaaS platform used by 80% of the Fortune 1,000.

Speaker 2

Fantastic companies all around. We also saw sales cycles shorten. In fact, when I look at new logo deals between 100 ks and 500 ks ACV, these deals closed 25% faster as compared to FY2023. Now while this new logo strategy meant lower top line growth, we also executed on our commitment to deliver balanced growth and profitability and we did it by rapidly expanding our bottom line. In fact, we ended the year at 24 against the rule of 40 metric, which exceeded what we initially set out to do.

Speaker 2

When you net down the year, we executed on the strategy we set out at the start of the year. We were agile, enabled to quickly adapt to market conditions. We focused well on the things that were in our control, specifically profitability and free cash flow and as such we now enter FY 2025 in a stronger position. Now what enabled the strategy of course is our differentiated technology and our amazing customer base. First, our products are built on a differentiated cloud architecture, one that I call loosely coupled but tightly integrated, meaning our customers can start with any of our products, but then as they add additional products and modules over time, everything just works together.

Speaker 2

So you can start with revenue or start with building or Zephyr or payments and then expand within our portfolio. Here's just two examples from Q4. The first one is Toast, a leading restaurant technology management software company used by approximately 106,000 restaurant locations with over $3,900,000,000 in annual revenue. Now Toast was a Zuora revenue customer in Q4. I'm proud to say that they added Zuora filling.

Speaker 2

Toast needed an enterprise grade monetization platform that can keep up with their rapid growth in a flexible solution capable of managing their dynamic business models. The second example is The Globe and Mail, Canada's leading national news brand with over 6,000,000 monthly users. After going live with Zuora building in Q4, they added Zephyr to help them accelerate the growth of their digital new subscription through greater pricing and bundling flexibility. 2nd, we put a lot of work this year into shortening our deployment times to get our customers live on our monetization technology even faster. For example, you might remember, early in the year we announced a new deal with TELUS Corporation, Canada's 2nd largest communications technology company with more than $20,000,000,000 of annual revenue and in Q4 they went live in just around 90 days, which is pretty amazing.

Speaker 2

4, The Associated Press, an independent global news organization that reaches 4,000,000,000 people every day. In Q4, they went live on Zephyr with this new donations capability as they continue to grow their direct to consumer offering. 3rd, our product is sticky and allows our customers to grow with us. This past year we had the best retention rate since we went public. We are at the core of what our customers do.

Speaker 2

And once we are live, we become an important part of their DNA. And we've seen that when we sign on a new customer, they become a long term growth engine. As we look at our cohorts, even after 5 years and beyond, these companies continue to show consistent growth with us. And this is why we describe ourselves as a long term durable business. In fact, we saw it in Q4 when a leading CRM platform renewed with Zuora Billing and over time as our customers they have increased their billing volume by over 8x.

Speaker 2

4, after a long time customer Bridgestone, the world's largest tire and rubber company acquired Azuga's fleet management platform, they expanded to work with us. In Q4, Azuga went live on Zuora to power its software solutions as Bridgestone progresses towards their goal to drive 20% of their revenue from recurring services by 2025. Finally, we have a proven committed field organization, which in my biased view is the best in the industry to help ensure our customer base continues to benefit from our technology. And here's how we saw this come to life last year. Our customers with multiple products as well as our highest ARR accounts, they have the highest level of customer satisfaction.

Speaker 2

Our customers say our platform is flexible and powerful, but still easy to use. In fact, one of our top ten customers recently awarded us as their top innovation partner, recognizing how our innovation enabled them to introduce new licensing metrics that drove a greater impact on their business. So now let's look forward to FY 2025. The headline is we remain committed to our strategy of faster, lighter lands and adding great new logos to our installed base. This is the right strategy and over the long run it makes us a stronger company.

Speaker 2

Let me highlight 3 areas that we are focused on of improvement in one particular area of opportunity. First, unfortunately, there are 2 large churns that are affecting our revenue growth for this upcoming fiscal year. It's important to call out that we do not believe these indicate a broader trend across our business, but I believe it's important to highlight to you all. The first instance we saw in Q4 was a large customer that had experienced macro headwinds in their industry and they faced digital transformation budget cuts. It's important to note that this customer was not yet live.

Speaker 2

That being said, as we reflect on what we could have done better, we do believe that faster go lives will continue to reduce the likelihood of these events and so you will see us continue to focus on this area. The second one is the churn that we are going to see in Q1 and this is factored into our guide. This is a company that signed on a number of years ago and they had a digital transformation vision that unfortunately has not yet become a reality and their processes are still very much traditional one off transactions. Now these anomalies do not change the strategy we have in place, but they do highlight the continued need for us not only to close the right type of customer, but also continue to focus on reducing time to go live. 2nd, another area we are working on is what I'll call consumption billing.

Speaker 2

Now we've got consumption billing since day 1, but of course we cannot rest on our laurels. In fact, we believe as more technology companies adopt AI, artificial intelligence, they will need to shift more of their pricing model to consumption based pricing models. And so you're going to see this is an area that we will double down on. And I'm pleased to announce that since we launched Advanced Consumption back in June, we've had over 40 customers purchase the product including 7 go lives. 3rd, in fiscal 2025, you're also going to see us continue to focus on improving our go to market efficiency.

Speaker 2

You're going to see us leaning into higher quality demand generation and efficient pipeline capabilities and we've made changes in our marketing and alliances leadership to drive this. We will continue to invest in our partnerships with leading system integrators to help us down this journey. The last thing is the potential opportunity and it's around the office of the CFO. When you look at the horizontal application stack, almost every application area has gone into the cloud with one big exception and that is a company's core ERP systems. Now most people will say that at some point in the future a trend has to kick in to move ERP into the cloud.

Speaker 2

And obviously when that happens, we believe this is something that will benefit us. Now, we're not saying it's going to happen this year and we're not going to build that into our plan. What we are going to do is continue to focus on signing on some great new logos with the confidence that this will only make us stronger if and when the market for ERP projects reflects. To summarize, as I look back on fiscal year 2024, the strategies we put in place the start of the year have put us in a good position for fiscal year 2025. We will continue to add new logos at a faster pace.

Speaker 2

We will continue to invest in our market leading multi product portfolio that has been proven over and over again to be critical for driving success with the recurring revenue models. We will continue to invest in amazing customer success and we will continue to commit to delivering balanced growth and profitability. Finally, I want to thank all of our CEOs that contributed to our success in FY 2024. We would not be who we are today without your vision and your commitment. With that, I will pass the call over to Todd to review our financials.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Dean, and thanks for joining our call. In Q4, we met our guidance on subscription revenue and total revenue while exceeding the high end range for non GAAP operating income and full year adjusted free cash flow. In fact, our focus on efficiency yielded a significant $72,000,000 improvement on our full year adjusted free cash flow compared to last year. At the close of the quarter, we announced a workforce reduction and our preliminary expectations for AR growth and DBRR for Q4 fiscal 2024. The revised expectations were driven by the macroeconomic pressures we talked about as well as an unexpected customer churn we experienced.

Speaker 3

We significantly improved our bottom line and accelerated our new logo growth. In light of slower top line growth, we're focused on driving profitability as we make progress towards the rule of 30 by Q4 of fiscal 2025. Subscription revenue in Q4 was $100,200,000 growing 12% year over year in both constant currency and as reported. For the full year, subscription revenue was 383 point $4,000,000 representing 13% growth year over year as reported and 15% in constant currency. As we continue to expand our partnerships with SIs, our professional services revenue decreased by 22% year over year, ending Q4 at $10,500,000 and represented 9.5% of total revenue.

Speaker 3

For the full year, professional services revenue was $48,300,000 a year over year decline of 16%. Total revenue for Q4 was $110,700,000 up 7% year over year and for the full year was $431,700,000 up 9%. Non GAAP subscription gross margin in Q4 was 82%, an improvement of over 280 basis points year over year. For the full year, our non GAAP subscription gross margin was 82%, which represented an improvement of over 2.30 basis points. Throughout the fiscal year, we realized continued margin performance from optimizing our hyperscalers and increasing efficiency.

Speaker 3

Non GAAP professional services gross margin for Q4 was negative 10%, a decline of 2 15 basis points year over year. This was driven by our continued investment in our customers. For the full year, our non GAAP professional services gross margin was negative 4%. Looking ahead in Q1, we expect margins to be consistent with Q4 with sequential improvements throughout fiscal 2025. Our Q4 non GAAP blended gross margin was 74%, an increase of over 5.50 basis points year over year.

Speaker 3

Our full year non GAAP blended gross margin was 72%, an increase of over 460 basis points. In Q4, non GAAP operating income exceeded the high end of our guidance by nearly $3,000,000 coming in at $15,900,000 compared to $2,200,000 in the prior year and representing a non GAAP operating margin of 14% for the quarter. For the full year, our non GAAP operating income was $47,500,000 resulting in an operating margin of 11% or a 10 point improvement compared to last year. The operating margin improvements for Q4 and the full year are the result of disciplined spending as we remain committed to improving our bottom line. Despite the top line headwinds, we have laid a path to achieve a rule of 30 exiting fiscal 2025.

Speaker 3

As a reminder, we define the rule of 30 as a sum of year over year subscription revenue growth plus non GAAP operating margin. Our fully diluted share count as of the end of the quarter was approximately 180,200,000 shares using both the treasury stock and if converted methods. Let's look into some of the metrics for the quarter the year. As we disclosed in our SEC filings several weeks ago, seller based retention ended at 106%, down 2 percentage points both quarter over quarter and year over year. As Tien noted, our DVR this quarter was impacted by an unexpected churn from a large customer that had yet to go live.

Speaker 3

In fact, this customer faced large budget cuts for the year given the impact of the macro environment on their business. This abnormal customer specific churn created a 1 point headwind in both ARR growth and EVRR. It's worth noting that this year we reached record levels of overall gross retention. We remain confident in our customer retention and product stickiness as we have a differentiated product portfolio that is mission critical for our customers. Our total RPO ended the year at $594,000,000 growing 19% year over year.

Speaker 3

Non current RPO grew 31% year over year to $271,000,000 The strong RPO figures were driven by a number of large multi year renewals in Q4. We ended the quarter with 461 customers with a contract size at or above $250,000 in average contract value. This was up 8% sequentially and up 30% year over year. This cohort represents 84% of our business as we further expand into the enterprise space. This quarter we closed 4 deals with an ACV of $500,000 or more down from 6 last year.

Speaker 3

This includes one deal over $1,000,000 down from 2 last year. In the current environment, we continue to see less of large transformational deals and more of a lighter land that will allow for future expansion. In fiscal 2024, we processed $139,900,000,000 of billing transactions and payment volume, a growth of 10% year over year. In addition, we processed CAD212,800,000,000 of revenue volume, a growth of 12% year over year. As a reminder, we provide these metrics on an annual basis as quarterly volumes ebb and flow.

Speaker 3

ARR landed at $403,100,000 at the end of Q4 and grew 10.4%. Adjusted free cash flow was $14,600,000 in the quarter, a significant improvement of nearly $32,000,000 over Q4 of last year. Adjusted free cash flow for the full year exceeded our guidance by over $7,000,000 at $44,300,000 representing a $72,000,000 increase over the prior fiscal year. Turning to the balance sheet, We ended the quarter with $514,200,000 in cash and cash equivalents, a sequential increase of $20,000,000 Total CapEx for the quarter was CAD3.1 million and CAD10 1,000,000 for the full year. Before turning to guidance, I want to provide a bit more context regarding our recent organizational changes.

Speaker 3

In late January, we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by roughly 8% net as we drive efficiency and optimization throughout the organization. In connection with this reduction, we incurred approximately $7,000,000 of restructuring charges in Q4. We also expect to occur approximately CAD1 1,000,000 in the first half of fiscal twenty twenty five. These charges which were excluded from our non GAAP results consisted primarily of cash expenditures related to severance payments, healthcare costs and job placement benefits for the impacted employees. These actions are part of our enhanced efforts in driving efficient and profitable growth.

Speaker 3

Now turning to guidance. Enterprises continue to scrutinize their investments. We anticipate this trend will continue in the office of the CFO throughout fiscal 2025 and as such are being judicious with our guidance. In addition, our professional services business will continue to be a smaller portion of our total revenue mix as we support our partners in leading customer implementations which is consistent with the trends we've seen this past year. Now turning to guidance.

Speaker 3

I want to remind you that Q1 has 2 fewer days than Q4. For Q1, we currently expect subscription revenue of $98,000,000 to $99,000,000 professional services revenue of $9,800,000 to $10,800,000 total revenue of $107,800,000 to $109,800,000 non GAAP operating income of $14,000,000 to $16,000,000 and non GAAP net income per share of $0.06 to $0.07 assuming a weighted average shares outstanding approximately 146 point 9,000,000. For the full fiscal year 2025, we expect subscription revenue of $410,000,000 to $414,000,000 professional services revenue of $41,000,000 to $45,000,000 total revenue of $451,000,000 to $459,000,000 non GAAP operating income of $79,000,000 to $81,000,000 and non GAAP net income per share of $0.40 to $0.42 assuming a weighted average shares outstanding of approximately $151,500,000 We also expect to be at an annual share dilution of approximately 4% for fiscal 2025. For this purpose, dilution is calculated by the number of equity awards granted net of forfeitures during the fiscal year divided by the total shares outstanding at the end of the fiscal year. For the year, we expect DBRR of 104% to 106% and ARR growth of between 8% 10%.

Speaker 3

As Tim noted, these metrics reflect the headwinds we saw in Q4 and early Q1 due to churn activity by 2 customer specific instances. We have made tremendous progress with our bottom line and as I stated in prior quarters, we will continue to balance growth and profitability. We remain committed to our goal of exiting fiscal 2025 at a rule of 30 run rate. We expect our adjusted free cash flow to be $80,000,000 for the full year. This represents a $35,000,000 improvement year over year.

Speaker 3

In closing, while the macro backdrop continues to impact us in the near term, we are focused on showing disciplined bottom line leverage. We continue to focus on accelerating new logos with our strategy to land lighter and to expand alongside our customers. This will bring us runway for accelerated growth in the second half of the year. We will keep our retention rate strong while improving profitability margins and increasing free cash flow generation. With that, team, Robbie and I will take your questions and I'll turn it over to the operator.

Speaker 4

Your first question comes from

Operator

the line of Adam Hajusz from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess to start on the new logo side, I know you mentioned Sony and In for and the increase in total new logos that adds on a year over year basis. Just any more commentary on the types of customers you're adding besides the ones you mentioned? What from a product perspective a typical lighter land like and how we should think about landing contract values versus the 8 net adds that you noted on the 250 ks plus side.

Speaker 5

Just any incremental color there would be helpful.

Speaker 2

Yes, absolutely. So in addition to Sony import, I think we noted on 3 more customers. You can see it's a fairly diverse mix actually. There was an airline that I mentioned, it's Jean here. There was a membership club, right, with 70 locations and there was definitely a traditional SaaS company.

Speaker 2

I would not say the mix has changed too much. I would say that we continue to focus on technology companies, right? SaaS companies continue to do well, especially as they gear up for perhaps to churn in the IPO markets at least the private ones. And we still continue to see healthy growth in our media segments as well. In terms of the type of deals, obviously, it's an arbitrary number, but we thought that $100,000 to $500,000 is a good indication but the deal is not too small, not too big.

Speaker 2

And that's really where, like I said, we saw a pretty dramatic decrease in sales cycle time. So I'd say that's how to think about the business.

Speaker 5

Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks. And then Todd, I think you mentioned previously that ARR growth for the past fiscal year would be a good indicator of growth for fiscal 2025 and it looks like there's a little bit of deceleration now baked into the guidance. So just curious how much of that is the 2 logo churns you mentioned versus maybe some incremental conservatism now that you're getting more of a view on the macro?

Speaker 5

Just any incremental color on the dispersion there would be useful.

Speaker 3

Hey, thanks a lot, Adam. So as you said, we had a one turn or one customer in Q4 that was a pretty significant churn that's going to give us a point of DVR headwind and same thing on the ARR as we move into next year. When we took a look at just some of the larger deals, those deals continue to elongate in cycle. And when we took a look at one of some of the things that continue to push out into the future, we've got another point there. And then the last one was there is a large customer and both of these churns that we've talked about, these are non they're not in our core verticals.

Speaker 3

And so not standard, one was not live. The other was an old company, actually they do porta potties. And was trying to make a digital transformation, didn't happen. And so that's giving us another point. So if I take those three things together, those are the three points that we're seeing.

Speaker 3

And as we're just seeing elongated sales cycles, I think we wanted to be really judicious and not assume that we're going to have some of the larger deals that we had because that's really put a lot of headwind on us this year. So we're going to assume for all of next year that we're landing lighter and then we have those 2 churns that obviously bring through the entire year from an AR growth. And that's really what we've seen from a headwind perspective.

Speaker 5

Okay. All really helpful. Thanks, team. Thanks, Todd.

Speaker 3

Hey, thanks a lot, Adam.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Chad Bennett from Craig Hallum. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Just curious on kind of the math behind the narrative of our best retention rate since going public considering the churn.

Speaker 2

I guess is that a gross retention number?

Speaker 6

Just kind of how do we think about that considering the churn?

Speaker 3

Chad, that absolutely is a gross retention rate. And like I said, we were running well below where we thought we'd be. We actually ended up landing right on plan for the full year. We had that unexpected churn, large company really facing some big macro headwinds. Maybe just give you

Speaker 2

a little bit more color.

Speaker 3

Was a company that had not gone live, not in our core vertical, right up until before it churned, they were actually talking to us, they were looking to expand and bring Zuora revenue on. And then literally on a dime, it's like not only we're not going to do the revenue thing, we're canceling the whole project and we're canceling all of our IT projects that aren't live. So that was something that was a surprise to us. So that's really what we're driving on it. And again next year we've got a timing issue, the linearity seems to be moved forward.

Speaker 3

When we take a look at the full year, that is what's driving it. And again, our customers are really sticky. And once they go live, we tend to keep them for a long time. And our top 100 customers, only 5 customers haven't gone live yet.

Speaker 6

Okay. And just curious, just were we recognizing subscription revenue from these 2 customers that didn't go a lot or have not went live or are not going live? And if so, for how long?

Speaker 3

So, I don't have the exact dates when they went live, but as soon as we sign a contract, we begin recognizing our revenue as anybody in the SaaS organization does, because we do stand up that environment. They need that environment as they are working in their internal processes. So I think if any SaaS company now as soon as they sign the contract depending on how it ramps that is part of our revenue. So that was part of our run rate and it was in the ARR.

Speaker 2

Yes. The second company just to be clear, they have been live for over 5 years. And so they have big ambitions for a digital transformation project. But if you look at their internal the overhead of using our system ultimately, it just wasn't a the overhead of using our system ultimately it just wasn't a good fit.

Speaker 6

Got it. And then maybe just one last one if I could. Just on the service line and the gross profit there, we're clearly running at a negative gross profit. And I think the thought was going back a couple of years is we're going to kind of sacrifice service revenue to invest in the channel and offer them up that implementation revenue. And what we get back for that is obviously subscription revenue growth that doesn't seem like it's transpiring.

Speaker 6

And then the other avenue is we're investing in our customers direct and our service revenue is going down materially year over year.

Speaker 2

Should we be running this at a negative gross margin business at this point?

Speaker 3

Chad, I think for the full year, our objective is to run it slightly below where we are from a standpoint of the loss from Q4. And I just remind you, Q4 is always a little bit special for us. We have in the U. S, which is a big chunk of our business is 60 some percent. We have a Thanksgiving week and then we have the end of the year shutdowns that a lot of companies have.

Speaker 3

And so when you take those, we just have a lot fewer billable days and that continues to put pressure on it. From another standpoint, we do invest in customers. We're also investing in partners. Those are some of the investments we continue to evaluate them. But at this point, we believe those are prudent and those do help us drive top line subscription growth that has a very positive almost 83% margin this company.

Speaker 4

And I think Chad, the other point to it is, yes, we are part of the first and that it is important. And we do see, I mean, our source pipeline is an example, 1 at 1.5 times year over year through our partners.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thank you for taking my questions.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Chad.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Schultz from Baird. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just appreciate all the color you provided around guidance. Kind of curious if you could dig into some of the more recent buying patterns and deal closure rates you're seeing from customers, excluding those 2 large customers that churned. Have customers been incrementally more cautious with our budgets now compared to late 2023? Just trying to get a better understanding of the buying environment that's embedded within guidance.

Speaker 2

Yes, this is Tina. I'll chime in there. If anything, you can sort of see a tale of 2 cities, right? There's 2 spectrums, if you will. What we're seeing in overall customers have remained really interested.

Speaker 2

Recurring revenue models are really important. The shift to subscriptions is really important. The technology sector, if anything, AI is pushing more and more people to do consumption based billing models. And so from an overall trend for what we do and the market's need for what we do, we feel really, really good. When it comes to specific deal cycles, we're seeing 2 ends of the spectrum, right?

Speaker 2

On the smaller deals, and let's call it less than $500,000 we're actually seeing those deals close faster and we're seeing good, good healthy demand. I think there's just simply more scrutiny. You talk about $1,000,000 $1,500,000 $2,000,000 ARR deal, multiply that by 3 or 5 sometimes, right, because they really see it as a long term investments. You're talking about a sizable approval. Those things just continue to have a lot of scrutiny.

Speaker 2

Is there something out there that says do those start to loosen up? Perhaps, but it's not something that we're going to count on and we're going to build into our models.

Speaker 3

I think one other thing, Patrick, that's also really important to note is these aren't lost deals. Matter of fact, when we look at our win rates, they're at record levels. And in fact, some of the companies that are doing bundling and giving away the subscription billing, we're seeing over 80% win rate against those. So it's real important to note, this is absolutely a macro phenomenon. This is not where we're not being successful against competitors.

Speaker 3

And in fact, I think another interesting thing is during the year, we actually took 17 deals away from our competitors, both high end and low end, where they said they really needed an enterprise solution at scale and they came to Zuora because what they had wasn't doing what they needed.

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean that's absolutely true. If you think about all the customers that we mentioned on the call, I can think of at least 3 or 4 or 5 of those that are competitive win backs where maybe they picked a competitor 2, 3 years ago, realized it doesn't have the functionality they need and they want them coming back to us.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thanks. That's very helpful. Appreciate the color there. And then maybe one quick follow-up too.

Speaker 7

Just on the go to market investments, you guys mentioned that's going to be a big for you guys this year, improving the go to market efficiency. Could you maybe talk about some of the investments you're making around this motion and how you're thinking about the partner channel investments for this year?

Speaker 3

Thanks, guys.

Speaker 4

Hi, it's Robbie. We are making sure that as we look at go to market, we're keeping all of our credit areas exactly flat. We're focused very much on the marketing, the pipeline areas in terms of how we create more demand around those 2 areas and make that fast moving in that sense.

Speaker 2

Yes, maybe I'll add a little color on that. Think about it as how do we generate demand. We generate demand primarily through 2 ways. We do it through ourselves and we do it through our partners. We really like the partner demand.

Speaker 2

Those partners have been previous calls we mentioned those deals close at a higher close rate they tend to be bigger. Yes, once you get into the 7 digit deals our partners feel this too. There's just a bit more scrutiny on those deals, but partners remain really, really important for us. And then on the pipeline side, how we view demand, is it through what the industry calls SDRs or BDRs. I think there's a transformation there.

Speaker 2

I think AI is going to help and I think we're going to be able to find ways to be much, much more productive in that group.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Patrick.

Speaker 2

Awesome. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Vafi from Canaccord. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for the questions. Just wondering, does it sound like perhaps one of those 2 customers could come back at some point when those IT projects begin again? And then just kind of wanted to make sure there was really no competitive influence on those deals?

Speaker 8

And then I have a quick follow-up.

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean the company that did not go live, there was that industry is definitely hitting headwinds, if you will. And so absolutely, I mean the business that we're in, in that company is subscriptions, is recurring revenue is really important. That's why this did take us by surprise. And so I'm certainly optimistic that eventually we'll have another shot to work with them and make them successful.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. And then on the workforce reduction, could you maybe drill down a little bit and was it broad based across the company? Was there certain areas where there was a little bit more reduction? And how do you see that reduction affecting the R and D and the go to market?

Speaker 3

Thanks a lot, Joe. So this action was really focused on efficiency, a little smaller than what we had done last time about 8% net and they give us $15,000,000 of savings for the year. And so maybe I would put it into the following buckets. First bucket is what we did in product and technology. And when we think there as COVID started out, we did a lot of hiring especially offshore.

Speaker 3

And when we did that, we hired a lot of generalists and we also let people kind of be scattered throughout wherever they were. And we found that this just wasn't really effective for us. We need especially these generalists and folks to be where they're able to collaborate and get into an office and we just weren't seeing productivity from them. And so those were some reductions that we made the decision to make. So from a standpoint of we were able to get more efficient there, but we were seeing very little but we're just getting a lot smarter on how we're generating pipeline.

Speaker 3

What we're doing through partners, what we're doing through marketing, how we're spending our outbound. We just learned there are certain things that are really productive and there's other areas that aren't. And the last is we got really focused on G and A. There's a lot of areas we've invested in the last 2 years on process and technology that's just allowed us to get a lot more efficient and we're dropping those to the bottom line. So overall, I think we got the right structure and we still have the investment that we need to deliver the leading product and go to market organizations.

Speaker 8

Great. Thanks for that color. And then just I'm going to squeeze one more in. I know you were targeting rule of 30 and you're targeting it again here. But given kind of a couple of the moving parts on the top line and then the cost reductions,

Speaker 2

Do you see yourself getting to

Speaker 8

the rule of 30 slightly differently than you were previously or the last time you provided that outlook? Thanks a lot

Speaker 3

guys. Joe, we've been really disciplined. We said at the beginning of the last year that we weren't sure exactly how things were going to go. If we didn't see the ability to put dollars on the top line that we continue to put through the bottom line. I said at the beginning of last year that we would do 6% plus profit, we delivered 11%.

Speaker 3

We're going to continue to do that. So obviously, if you take a look at where we've given the guidance, that's going to imply that we're over a 20% operating margin at the end of the year. So yes, it'll probably be a little bit more on the bottom line, but we've certainly got opportunity to accelerate on the top line. So I feel like we've got a lot of different avenues and a lot of different function or a lot of different avenues for how we can get to that rule of 30 regardless what the environment looks like.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Riley from Needham. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hi, everyone. This is Michael on for Josh today. Thanks for taking my question. I just have two quick ones here. First, what are you seeing in terms of invoice volume growth returning to maybe a more normalized level over time?

Speaker 7

And then could you help us understand the impact of lower invoice growth to the NRR? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. I'll go ahead and feel that. Maybe Todd, you can jump in. But look, I think we said invoice volume was 10%, revenue volume was 12%. If you compare that to the growth of the GDP in the large countries, you can certainly see that our customer base continues to grow and continues to have a much healthier outsized growth compared to the general economy.

Speaker 2

So we're in the right part of the market. We're in the right part of the customer. Understand, right, how does that correlate to us? Think what you've seen us do and we've been pretty public about it over the last 3, 4 years is simply reduce our reliance on invoice volume growth for our own growth. And so you've heard us talk about our multiple vectors of growth or multi product land and expand strategy.

Speaker 2

Today, we can grow by certainly volume and revenue schedules, revenue growth through invoice volume, but we can also grow by additional cross sell products, right, billing customers that buy revenue and vice versa. You heard us talk about that in the call. Or even within of these products, we continue to launch new innovations, say, fraud detection in the billing product, SSP in the revenue product and the like. And we can certainly sell additional modules and capabilities within a product that they already have. And so our goal is to give our sellers right a broad toolbox if you will a tool bag to bring value to our customers.

Speaker 2

And as long as we continue to do that you're going to see us ability to grow with our customers.

Speaker 3

Yes. Maybe Michael, the only thing I would follow-up with is, we've talked in the past maybe 30% or so of our revenue is driven by that volume metric. But you can't have we don't have a natural correlation for the 10% to 12% growth because as our customers get larger, they get big economies of scale and that's one of the reasons that there's not an easily correlation for that. And I think team hit it right. That's certainly a driver for us and as we've seen especially the SaaS market which is more than 50% of our business as we've seen growth rates come down, that's been a headwind for us this year.

Speaker 3

We think we'll see this year that we get to the end of that headwind. But that certainly has caused a bit of a headwind for us and as we accelerate that will be something that we'll be able to take advantage of. But we also have multiple other avenues where we can grow. And the fact that we have a $600,000,000 opportunity within our installed base outside of volume, we think gives us a lot of ability to also grow within our installed base.

Speaker 7

Awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Operator

And we have time for one more question and that comes from the line of Brent Thill from Jefferies. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Hello. Thanks for the question. This is Elan Liani on for Brent Thill. My first question is, most companies are telling us that the environment is improving. So other than the macro piece, is there anything structural that we should be aware of?

Speaker 3

And my second question is on the recent layoffs. How much of those this cost savings from the layoffs are being reinvested versus flow back through to margins? You can help quantify that, that would be helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Let me fill the first one and I'll let Todd deal the second one. Look, we all read the news just like you all, right? Is there a general sense that maybe in the U. S.

Speaker 2

At least we dodged a recession or a soft landing? Is there a general sense that, hey, maybe the feds will start to lower interest rates. Was it going to be the start of the year? Was it going to be the end of the year? I'd say we're picking up the same level of optimism in the air that other companies are.

Speaker 2

But then I don't know if you've obviously been following some of the announcements today. You certainly see other companies be a little more muted in their expectations of what revenue growth will look like this coming year. So I think in this uncertain environment, it's good to be prudent. That's why I like our strategy, right? I like our strategy of saying, look, regardless of what's going on the macro, we can continue to sign on new logos.

Speaker 2

We might be doing it at a smaller ACV, a smaller land, but that leads to faster sales cycles, that leads to more customers. We've got a proven engine that once we get the customers and we get them live, we can grow with them. You heard the stat about 60% of our customers who renew this year actually grew their spend with us. And so we feel good about the strategy that allows us to continue to set ourselves up for to be in a great position for long term durable growth regardless of what happens in the overall macro.

Speaker 3

And the only thing I'd also add to what Tim said is, I probably talked to 20 plus CFOs in the most recent quarter. And when I talk about to all of them, I think everyone's being very cautious in their outlook as they start thinking about this year. So I think the guidance that we've given is really prudent based on the macro from what we're seeing and hearing from our customers. On your second question, as I noted on the last call was that there was about $15,000,000 of that savings will go to the bottom line for the year. So appreciate the question.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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Key Takeaways

  • Zuora reported FY24 subscription revenue of $383.4 M (+13% YoY) and ARR growth of 10.4%, falling short of targets, while non-GAAP operating income rose by over $44 M and adjusted free cash flow improved by $72 M to $44.3 M.
  • In response to an IT spending slowdown, the company pursued “faster, lighter lands” with smaller ACV deals, signing 30% more new logos in FY24 (40% more in Q4) and cutting sales cycles by 25% for mid-sized deals.
  • Zuora strengthened profitability, exiting FY24 with a 24 “rule of 40” score—achieving an 11% non-GAAP operating margin, up 10 points—and aims to reach a “rule of 30” by the end of FY25.
  • Customer retention and expansion remained robust, with record gross retention, nearly 60% of Q4 renewals increasing spend, and rapid go-lives such as Toast adding Zuora Billing and TELUS deploying in 90 days.
  • For FY25, Zuora guides to subscription revenue of $410–414 M, ARR growth of 8–10% (including two one-off churns), and will invest in consumption billing and go-to-market efficiency while maintaining disciplined profitability.
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Earnings Conference Call
Zuora Q4 2024
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