Jim Offerdahl
Analyst · B. Riley & Company
Thank you, Gene and thank you again to everyone who joined our call. Today, we are reporting results for our first quarter of fiscal 2017 ended July 31, 2016. As a reminder, all the non-revenue financial measures I will discuss are non-GAAP unless I state that the measure is GAAP. Also as Linda noted, we changed our adjusted EBITDA definition to align with the definition used by our SaaS peers to report adjusted EBITDA. For the first quarter, we achieved total revenue of $50.1 million, up 2% year-over-year and above our guidance range of $48.8 million to $49.3 million. We achieved SaaS revenue of $47.8 million, up 2% year-over-year. Advertising revenue for the quarter was $2.3 million, up 12% year-over-year, as we stabilized our legacy advertising revenue while ramping our shopper advertising solution. Given the ramp speed of shopper advertising, we now expect our advertising revenue to grow 25% to 35% in fiscal 2017, up from 20% to 30% that we noted last quarter. We achieved positive adjusted EBITDA of $3.9 million in the first quarter, up significantly from a loss of $1.3 million in the same period a year ago. Under our old definition, our adjusted EBITDA was positive $1.9 million, well above our guidance range of negative $0.5 million to $1 million and also significantly better than our loss of $3.3 million last year. These adjusted EBITDA achievements were driven by higher than expected revenue and continued management of our headcount. Our GAAP loss per share for the quarter was $0.06. Our non-GAAP loss per share was $0.00, well above our guidance of a loss of $0.03 to $0.05. We achieved positive cash flow from operations of $129,000, positive for the fourth quarter in a row and a significant year-over-year improvement of $6.5 million despite hosting prepayments and prior year bonus and commission payments, all typical in our first fiscal quarter. We launched 65 clients in the first quarter and ended the quarter with 1,397 active clients, up 4% from a year ago. Annualized SaaS revenue per average active client in the first quarter was $137,000. Our client retention rate was 95.2%, a slight improvement from Q1 of last year as well as from last year’s average. As we noted two quarters ago, we discontinued sales to the small business market. And even though losses of such clients continued to impact our client retention rate, they have had minimal impact to our revenue, given our focus on selling to midsize and enterprise clients and prospects. A good way to illustrate the impact of such focus is to look at our SaaS revenue retention rate. This rate is calculated for a particular period by comparing the trailing 12 months revenue for all of our active customers at the end of the prior period to the trailing 12 months revenue for the same customers at the end of the current period. We are pleased that our SaaS revenue retention rate at the end of fiscal 2016 was approximately 102%, demonstrating that even though dollar churn was elevated in our core business in fiscal 2016, we were able to replace such churn with up-sells and cross sells to our existing clients. Moving to our P&L. Cost of goods sold under our new adjusted EBITDA definition now excludes amortization of capitalized software development costs such that gross margins for the first quarter were 68.4%, up 220 basis points from the same period last year due primarily to economies of scale. Under our old adjusted EBITDA definition, gross margins were 64.1%, up 210 basis points from Q1 of last year. Our sales and marketing expenses for the first quarter were $14.5 million or 29% of revenue, down from $17.7 million or 36% of revenue in the same period last year, as we have continued to tightly manage such expenses and focus on midsize and enterprise clients and prospects in North America and EMEA. Looking forward, we expect price stabilization, improving sales productivity and additional quota carrying reps to translate into higher bookings dollars and efficiency in fiscal 2017. R&D expenses for the first quarter were $9.8 million or 20% of revenue, as compared to $9.6 million or 20% in the same period last year. G&A expenses for the first quarter were $6 million or 12% of revenue, down from $6.3 million or 13% of revenue in the same period last year. We ended the quarter with 766 employees, down 68 from a year ago and achieved annualized revenue per average employee of $263,000, up 12% from the same period last year as we have continued to manage headcount across all functions. Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow, we ended Q1 with DSOs of 70, a significant improvement from 95 in Q1 of last year, reflecting strong collections, improved CSAT and quote to cash processes. Our deferred revenue balance of $68.2 million at the end of Q1 compared to $65.4 million at the end of Q1 last year and $65.2 million at the end of Q4 last year. We ended the quarter with $92 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. We recently chose to pay down another $5 million on a credit line such that as of today, we have $37 million debt outstanding, $20 million less than a year ago. CapEx was $2.8 million, which included $2.1 million of capitalization of developed software as we continue innovation on our new products. Now, I would like to finish with our financial outlook. For the second quarter of fiscal 2017, we expect total revenue to be in the range of $50.3 million to $50.9 million. With our new definition, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $4.1 million to $4.7 million. Non-GAAP loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.00 to $0.02 based on 82.9 million weighted average shares outstanding. For the full fiscal year 2017, we are raising our revenue guidance to be in the range of $202.3 million to $204.3 million, reflecting our Q1 performance as well as a relative strength of our pipelines and our churn performance. As I noted earlier, we now expect advertising revenue to grow 25% to 35% for fiscal 2017, up from 20% to 30% we noted last quarter. We expect adjusted EBITDA with our new definition to be in the range of $15.3 million to $17.3 million, an improvement at the midpoint of over $7 million from fiscal 2016. Non-GAAP loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.01 to $0.05 based on 83.1 million weighted average shares outstanding. In summary, we continue to deliver improving financial metrics while investing in key growth opportunities. We are on very sound financial footing to support such growth and we are excited what the future holds for Bazaarvoice. Before I turn the call back to the operator, note that we will be presenting at the Deutsche Bank Conference on September 13 in Las Vegas. We will also be hosting our Investor Day on October 13 in New York City. With that, operator, please turn the call over for questions.