Earnings Labs

Bandwidth Inc. (BAND)

Q3 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 31, 2024

$24.09

-0.15%

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Transcript

David Morken

Management

Thank you, Sarah. Welcome to Bandwidth's Q3 2024 earnings call. We're pleased to report solid momentum in Q3 carrying us into the end of the year with record revenue and profitability performance, strong conversion to free cash flow and continued operating discipline. Given the over performance in the quarter, we are raising our full year outlook on both the top and bottom lines. These results are driven by the trust our customers place in us to deliver their business critical services, and I'm deeply grateful to our customers and our bandmates who make this possible. I also want to take a moment to thank God for the opportunities he has provided to us all. In September, we hosted Reverb24, our first ever user conference at our campus in Raleigh, North Carolina. The event was a huge success as we engaged with over 100 customers and prospects in person and 1,400 more streaming globally. This was truly a milestone moment in our 25 year history and a strong proof point that the world's large enterprises rely on Bandwidth to transform their customer and employee experiences. As one customer told us afterwards, I have a much better understanding of Bandwidth, your capabilities and your culture. Kudos to your team for a great event and an amazing showcase. Let's take a quick look at the takeaways from Reverb. [Audio-Video Presentation] At Reverb, we're proud to have announced our plan to develop an industry first nomadic emergency services solution for markets outside the U.S. as well as progress on a new number reputation management solution for trusted calling and also a new centralized message registration center for faster and easier texting campaign registration. These innovations cross all three of our key customer categories, global communications plans, programmable services and direct enterprise. In addition to…

Daryl Raiford

Management

Thank you, David, and thanks everyone for joining us today for this very special episode of Bandwidth's earnings announcement. Building on our over performance for the first half of the year, Bandwidth delivered a record third quarter. Total revenue reached a $194 million marking a 28% increase and adjusted EBITDA grew to $24 million, representing a 74% increase year-over-year. Both metrics surpassed the upper range of our guidance. Drilling down into our third quarter results, again, total revenue rose to a $194 million with cloud communications revenue of $139 million, up 15% from last year. Our cloud communications revenue benefited from growth across all our products and customer categories. And as a reminder, we go to market serving three customer categories within cloud communications revenue, direct enterprise customers, programmable customers and global communications plans customers. We grew revenue 30% year-over-year in our direct enterprise customer category. The flexibility and control to build custom communications environments that enhance both customer and employee experiences using the Maestro platform continues to resonate with enterprises. Our programmable services category grew 55% year-over-year. We experienced strong demand for messaging, which represented 24% of cloud communications revenue and was driven by commercial customers in ecommerce, financial services and health care as well as $8 million recognized from political campaign messaging. In fact, for the last 12 months ended September 30 compared to the same period last year, our commercial messaging revenue grew 32%, a very tangible demonstration of our ability to acquire new customers and take market share. For global communications plans, our Q3 revenue grew 5% year-over-year, slightly ahead of our expectations, reflecting stable momentum. In terms of operating metrics, our Q3 net retention rate was 117%, an increase of 6 percentage point from last quarter. Political campaign revenue contributed approximately 2 percentage points. Our…

A - Sarah Walas

Operator

Thank you, Darrell. And as he said, we will now move into the question-and-answer session. We'll be joined by our Chief Product Officer, John Bell to provide additional insight on your innovation road map questions. [Operator Instructions] Let's jump in. Our first question will be from Ryan Koontz with Needham. Ryan, you can go ahead with your question and be sure to hit the green join button. Hey Ryan. Are you ready? I don't hear you. All right. We're going to take another question and we'll come back to you, Ryan. Okay? All right. Our next will be Jim Fish with Piper Sandler.

Jim Fish

Analyst

Well, I'm happy that I get to be the first one on this. Nice quarter, guys, especially even when normalizing everything and I appreciate all that color, Daryl. Maybe just to dive into on the RCS side of things, which is kind of a hot topic here in the space. Relatively kind of, I'll say not new, but a big sign up with Google here. I guess, what do you guys see playing out with RCS versus SMS volumes on the messaging side and how that could impact your gross margins moving forward?

David Morken

Management

Thanks, Jim and good to see you. I'm joined today by my Band mate, John Bell, with whom I've had the pleasure of working for 13 years. He's our Chief Product Officer, and I'd like to ask him to handle your good question about RCS and what we've talked about today.

John Bell

Analyst

I'd say it's still early days for RCS and RBM, which use cases will work best for which technologies still early along with the economic impact of it. So we're still navigating it, but I think if there's still a lot of uncertainty about how all the different channel channels will balance out over time, as we move forward.

Jim Fish

Analyst

And then you guys talked about the driver or I'm sorry, voice coming in a little bit higher than you guys were expecting. Just trying to understand what was the cause of that?

David Morken

Management

We've had broad usage in voice across the different enterprise verticals and categories that we serve. Contact center certainly continues to be a focus for us both in that period and going forward. But very pleased both domestically and internationally with the usage of voice as a driver that we pointed out.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

Our next question will be from Arjun Bhatia with William Blair. We don't hear you. Did you approve the use of your microphone? All right. Okay. We'll come back. We'll come back to you, Arjun. Our next question will be Will Power with Baird. Will, be sure to hit the green join button.

Will Power

Analyst

Maybe just come back universal platform. Great to hear some of the highlights. It sounds like a real success. And may maybe for Johnson who's on stage, I just, love to kind of hear what kind of feedback you're getting, from customers. And I guess, if you kind of break it down, I mean, David went through a lot. I mean, you've rolled out a lot at Reverb. Are there a couple of things that we should really be focused on as investors that could be bigger drivers over the next couple of years? And I guess, coupled with that again, what's kind of resonate with customers as you get feedback?

David Morken

Management

Thanks Will. John?

John Bell

Analyst

Yes. I think when you when you look in totality of what we rolled out, it really represents Bandwidth's open approach towards the market. Our integrations to all the major UCaaS, CCaaS, AI platforms, really important. And then I'd also point out our programmable voice API that we've rolled out globally as well-being really important. As we see more and more new entrants into our market, many of them are coming from different technical backgrounds. And so having that programmable voice platform helps us serve those new entrants with the technologies they're familiar with. And so, I think looking at the integrations and the technical breadth that we're taking globally, really important to us for the long-term.

Will Power

Analyst

And then maybe, for maybe, David or Daryl, just thinking about the messaging growth, excluding political -- just be great to get any other color you could distilled out from us in terms of key drivers and how those core kind of core trends trended versus recent periods here?

David Morken

Management

So in, one of the customer examples that we cited in the period, Will, we talked about how use of our universal platform API for messaging was a key driver in winning them away from their incumbent. Deliverability and demonstrating that the messages sent, received on time and accurately is a huge insights product that we offer that differentiates us for the commercial customers. And I think that that value will continue to resonate in the next year, as we think about messaging used through the universal platform. In terms of the financial contributions of messaging, [NetPolitical], we'll pause and ask Daryl if you'd like to add to anything.

Daryl Raiford

Management

No, thank you, David. We're really pleased with the performance of our commercial messaging in the third quarter. It again performed off the second quarter very well. If we take commercial messaging ex surcharges, ex political it grew 18% in the third quarter off of 18% in the second quarter. We're really happy with that figure. That's more than double our nearest competitor in the space. And that nearest competitor includes surcharges. So we're happy with the growth there. And the healthcare company that David highlighted, the healthcare platform, where they had deliverability issues with that competitor and we were able to onboard as just a customer highlight, onboard them successfully in the third quarter. It's the attraction of the platform and our customer service and operations that seems to resonate really well with our commercial messaging customers.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

Our next question will be from Eamon Coughlin with Barclays. Eamon, be sure to hit the green join button. He was there and he's gone. We're going to move on to Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Meta, be sure to hit the green join button. Meta, we're going to move on. We're going to try Austin Cole at -- no. We're going to go to Arjun Bhatia with William Blair. We're going to give this one another shot. Arjun? We still don't hear you. Why don't you send me your question, I'll read it. Okay. We'll go to Austin Cole with JMP Securities. Austin, hit the green join button. We'll try Pat Walravens with JMP.

Pat Walravens

Analyst

And how's the volume? The volume's working too sweet. It's not that hard, honestly. So I'm not sure what's going on. Okay. So, congratulations. It's awesome. So, Dave, I mean, you have all these product announcements. You've got the nomadic global. You've got number reputation management. Just the AIBridge. I mean, it's incredible how much product you guys are delivering, but which of these is most likely to move the needle soonest, so from an investor's point of view?

David Morken

Management

That's a very insightful question. And I would welcome that opportunity to speculate actually. Because I think it's anybody's best guess. But removing friction from things like porting and doing things in a single universal user experience across expanding country footprint are very tangible, very immediate and very relevant to the decision makers we talk to today. Those are actionable. They're gritty. And that's where I would -- that's what I would guess.

Pat Walravens

Analyst

And then, Darryl, you addressed this already a little bit but it's already coming up. So, I'm getting the -- but this political messaging is a one-time benefit. What's the response to investors who are skeptical who are saying you're having a one-time benefit? Just give us the top two or three points.

Daryl Raiford

Management

Well, look, no one should dismiss the political campaign customer because they also participate in both market engagements, which is commercial and civic engagement. So we grow across all of those three forks. We're really pleased with that. No one should dismiss our commercial revenue growth at now two quarters in a row, twice our nearest competitor. We're really pleased with the profit growth for the year. We're really pleased to have raised our guidance, our revenue guidance $27 million, $7 million in cloud communications with several million dollars of that coming from commercial revenue. And we're looking forward to continuing that momentum. I don't think that there's an honestly, I don't think that there's a criticism in their growing twice the nearest competitor.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

I would only add to that, Pat. We'll certainly have to wait to guide ‘25 later. But I don't think I'm speaking out of turn, Daryl, when I suggest that we'll continue to grow profit next year. So despite anyone talking about one time political contribution will continue to grow profit next year.

Daryl Raiford

Management

So over the last several years, everyone has seen high quality profit growth out of our business model. And indeed, the model taking just this last quarter growing gross profit 22% on 15% revenue growth, growing our EBITDA to the extent that we did. We intend to keep extending that profit growth, whether there is a cyclical political campaign headwind or not. That is the -- that's the nature of our commercial business. It is taking market share and we're very pleased with that.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

We are going to try Eamon Coughlin again with Barclays.

Ryan Mac

Analyst

I'm Ryan Mac. Congrats on a great quarter. We are hearing more interest from customers on generative AI use cases. Given the complexity and uptime requirements for these use cases, could Bandwidth have an edge for enterprises looking to activate around these voice AI use cases?

David Morken

Management

I'll begin and then invite John Bell to pile on. It's certainly the case being vertically integrated and having a universal footprint all our own that we have the ability to see quality to promise quality and to deliver it in vital media and signaling use cases for voice, handing it off, sending and receiving it across important jurisdictions and doing that in a regulatory compliant way. So, yes, if you're doing AI use cases, you want to work with a provider that is responsible for the entire tech stack. But let me pass it over to John.

John Bell

Analyst

Yes. I agree. And we're watching AI, a number of different AI models being used by enterprises. And so providing them the flexibility and the freedom of choice of which platforms they're choosing to use, making sure they can easily integrate into the communications stack is what's really important. And so we believe that the foundational investments we've made in the universal platform are really applicable to this future.

Ryan Mac

Analyst

And then just trying to get a better understanding for political expectations for 4Q. Should we expect similar results to 3Q or a little more?

John Bell

Analyst

We recognized $8 million of political campaign revenue in cloud communications in the third quarter and inherent in our guide of around $25 million now after experiencing 338, the remainder of 11 we're expecting in the fourth quarter. So we are expecting a bit of a growth in terms of this last quarter.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

And our last question will come from Meta Marshall at Morgan Stanley. Meta, be sure to hit the green join button. I don't know if we're going to get Meta, but I do -- I'm going to give her one more second and I'm going to read Arjun's question while we're waiting for Meta to come up. So Arjun at William Blair asked, on messaging, the growth is exceptional. Where is the incremental share in usage coming from? Is that new customer from competitors or existing customers expanding? Or are these net new use cases that are coming live that didn't exist previously?

David Morken

Management

So it certainly is a combination of existing and new customers with existing customers always out contributing just based upon the basic business we have with some stellar enterprise brands. Use cases always are evolving into creative and exciting new ways for end users. But there's nothing fundamentally different or unexpected about the way in which our customers are going to market with messaging, using our platform both domestically and now also internationally.

Daryl Raiford

Management

I'd like to echo David's comments. They're on the mark and I want to punctuate them with our net retention rate. Our net retention rate without the political tailwind is 115% for the quarter. And we're very, very pleased with that. That demonstrates Arjun that demonstrates a combination of new -- with our revenue growth, a new customer and a very nice growth rate among the existing customer cohort from last year. So we're seeing it's very broad.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

And Arjun did have one additional question. With the strong growth in global communications, are we already seeing AI drive more volume in voice or is that still to come?

David Morken

Management

It is already a launched, adopted and growing part of our Maestro platform. Our AIBridge product now offers five partner integrations that are exciting. So, yes, it has begun.

Sarah Walas

Analyst

And that – yes, I don't think we're going to be able to hear Meta. So sorry, Meta. We will talk to you very shortly. We have a call with you scheduled, so we'll follow-up there. And this concludes our question and answer session. Thank you all for joining today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.