Brian Carolan
Analyst · BMO Capital Markets
Thanks, Bob, and good morning, everyone. I'll now cover some key financial highlights for the third quarter of fiscal year 2014. Total revenues for the quarter were $153.3 million, representing an increase of 20% over the prior year period and 8% sequentially. We reported software revenue of $79.2 million for the quarter, which was up 20% year-over-year and 12% sequentially. During Q3, our software growth continues to be driven by a strong demand for data protection for virtualized environments, source-side deduplication and snap-based modern data protection solutions. We continue to see strong demand for our capacity-based licensing models, which has a direct correlation to the underlying volume of data under management. Capacity-based license sales represented 77% of our Q3 software revenue, which was slightly down from 80% in Q2 FY '14 and up from 72% in the prior year period. We anticipate that capacity-based licenses will continue to account for the majority of our software revenue despite quarter-to-quarter fluctuations. Let me provide you an update on the new pricing models, which Bob touched on during last quarter's earnings call. Please note, these models will be positioned as options to our current capacity-based pricing model. During Q3 FY '14, we began to opportunistically offer term-based pricing structures where customers can rent the software licenses for a period of time as opposed to owning a perpetual license. In addition to term-based pricing options, we have started to also market test a value-layering pricing structure versus our current bundled capacity charge. The value-layering approach allows customers to more easily purchase the specific solution sets they require. Both the term and value-layering pricing models are being well received in market testing. The rollout of these models is being done through a well thought out, deliberate process and we expect customer adoption to be modest in the near term. For the quarter, software revenues derived from indirect distribution channels increased 19% over the prior year period and represented 85% of software revenue. Our direct revenue represented the balance and increased 31% over the prior year period. Please remember, most sizable deals are driven by our direct sales force even though they are transacted through the channel. Let me now comment on enterprise deal mix. Software revenue from enterprise deals, which we define as deals over $100,000 in software revenue in a given quarter, increased by 24% over the prior year period and 18% sequentially. Enterprise deals represented approximately 61% of software revenue. The number of enterprise deals increased 14% year-over-year and 22% sequentially. Our average enterprise deal size was approximately $284,000 during Q3 '14 compared to $260,000 in the prior year period and $295,000 in Q2 FY '14. Software revenue from non-enterprise deals increased 14% over the prior year period and 4% sequentially. We continue to expand our SMB distribution channel. The revenue mix for Q3 FY '14 was 52% software and 48% services. And from a services revenue perspective, our maintenance attach rates and renewal rates remain strong. Services revenue for Q3 was $74 million, an increase of 19% year-over-year and 4% sequentially. For the quarter, revenue from U.S. operations generated 55% of total revenues, resulting in a 13% year-over-year increase, while revenue from international operations generated the balance, resulting in a 29% year-over-year increase. The growth in revenue in our international locations is primarily due to increases in Europe, Canada and Asia Pacific, as we expand our international operations. And for the 9 months ended December 31, 2013, revenue from U.S. operations generated 58% of total revenues, resulting in a 17% year-over-year increase, while revenue from international operations generated the balance resulting in a 24% year-over-year increase. From a distribution perspective, many of our global resellers and strategic partners had strong growth. Arrow, our largest U.S. distributor, continues to be a strong partner for CommVault. For the quarter, revenue transacted through Arrow was approximately 30% of total revenue, growing 31% year-over-year and 2% sequentially. We added approximately 400 new customers in the quarter, bringing our historical customer count to approximately 19,500 customers. Sales through our Dell relationships accounted for approximately 11% of total revenues for the quarter. Total quarterly Dell revenues were down 28% year-over-year and 38% sequentially. As noted on prior earnings calls, we have taken proactive steps to broaden our distribution through non-Dell channels. These actions will lead to the further decline of our percentage of total revenues transacted through Dell. We expect to see Dell revenue further decline below 10% of total revenues over the next few quarters, as we continued to disengage from Dell other than on an opportunistic basis. When Dell-related revenue as a percentage of total revenue drops below 10%, we will stop disclosing Dell's specific information. Now moving onto gross margins, operating expenses and EBIT margin expansion. Gross margins were 88.2% for the quarter due to the mix of software and services revenue. Total operating expenses were $91.2 million for the quarter, up approximately 13% year-over-year and 8% sequentially. Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of total revenues decreased to 44% in the current quarter, which was down from 47% in the prior year period. Non-GAAP operating margins were 27.7% for the quarter, resulting in operating income or EBIT of $42.5 million. On a year-over-year basis, Q3 EBIT increased by 42%. Q3 EBIT margins increased by 440 basis points year-over-year and increased 110 basis points sequentially. Net income for the quarter was $26.9 million and EPS was $0.54 per share based on a diluted weighted average share count of approximately 49.9 million shares. On a year-over-year and sequential constant currency basis, foreign currency movements did not have a material impact on Q3 revenues. FX movements positively impacted earnings per share by approximately $0.01, both year-over-year and sequentially. I would now like to spend a few minutes discussing our operating expense investments for the remainder of fiscal 2014. We had better-than-anticipated operating margin improvement in Q3 due to lower-than-planned headcount additions, as well as below-targeted spending on several investment initiatives. We added 40 net employees in fiscal Q3 and ended the quarter with 1,936 employees. This was below our internal hiring targets, and we will roll the Q3 headcount hiring shortfall into Q4's hiring plan. We expect to increase our rate of hiring in Q4 compared to Q3, with a heavy focus on the recruitment of sales and front-end technical support teams. Our planned additions to sales, services and support headcount are critical in order for us to achieve our targeted FY '15 and FY '16 growth rates. Please keep in mind that a typical sales rep and sales engineer each take about a year to become fully productive. So in the short term, as we continue to hire, they will have a negative impact on short-term margins. Our inability to add enough sales and technical field personnel has been an issue for us throughout FY '14. Fixing this issue will be the top priority for our new Chief Human Resources Officer, Jesper Helt. Jesper joined CommVault earlier this month, and we're excited to have him on our management team. His bio can be found on our website. I would like to highlight one additional key spending increase in Q4. Historically, we see a large sequential increase in employer-paid FICA expense in Q4 because many of our employees in the U.S. reach the FICA limit well before the end of the calendar year. This year, we expect our FICA expense in Q4 to be approximately $2 million higher than Q3. I will now address the current Street consensus revenue growth rates and our anticipated EBIT margin improvement for fiscal 2014 and 2015. As Bob indicated, we are comfortable with the current Street consensus revenue growth rates for fiscal 2014. Due to the overachievement of forecasted EBIT margin in the first 9 months of fiscal 2014 and lower-than-planned investment levels, we now believe we can improve operating margins for fiscal 2014 by approximately 225 to 250 basis points. For fiscal 2015, we believe we can again deliver solid, double-digit revenue and EBIT growth. However, we expect fiscal 2015 operating margin improvement to be muted due to our fiscal 2014 overachievement, as well as our plan to increase the rate of our operating expense investments in the fourth quarter of FY '14 and fiscal 2015. These investments include additional go-to-market resources and expenses to better position the company for our All Things Data strategy. We need to make these investments in order for us to achieve our targeted FY '15 and FY '16 growth rates. Such investments are expected to have a negative impact on short-term margins. While we expect to accelerate our rate of investments in fiscal 2015, we still anticipate strong, above-industry EBIT growth in absolute numbers. We will provide more specifics on FY '15 during our Q4 FY '14 earnings call. In summary, we remain committed to our $1 billion plan while maintaining operating margins in the mid-20s over the next few years. Let me now comment on tax rates and share count. We will continue to use a pro forma tax rate of 37% for the remainder of FY '14 and FY '15. Our GAAP tax rate for Q3 FY '14 was 37%, and we expect our full year FY '14 cash tax rate to be in the range of 16% to 20%. Our cash tax rate will remain lower than the GAAP tax rate through fiscal 2014 and into fiscal 2015. For fiscal 2014, we anticipate that our diluted weighted average share count will be approximately 49.5 million to 50.5 million shares. For fiscal 2015, we anticipate that our diluted weighted average share count will be approximately 51 million to 52 million shares. Please note that certain executive officers of CommVault hold approximately 400,000 outstanding stock options, with an exercise price of $6 that will reach the end of their 10-year term in the next 6 months. We expect that all of these stock options will be exercised prior to their expiration. Now moving on to our balance sheet and cash flows. As of December 31, our cash and short-term investment balance was approximately $500.5 million, up 3% from the end of September. Cash flow from operations was $30.2 million. Free cash flow, which we define as cash flow from operations, less capital expenditures not related to the new headquarters, was $28.8 million, which was up 10% year-over-year and 24% sequentially. The increases are a result of change in working capital on the balance sheet, as well as higher operating income and revenue. During Q3 FY '14, we expended approximately $19.6 million on construction costs for our new campus headquarters. We expect to spend approximately $25 million in Q4 '14, but the timing of our cash expenditures is dependent on the progress of construction, which is currently on schedule. By the end of FY '14, we will have expended approximately 60% of the total cost of the project. Our estimate of the total cost remains in the range of $130 million to $135 million. Please keep in mind that we'll fund these expenditures from our existing cash balance. As of December 31, 2013, our deferred revenue balance was approximately $192.8 million, which is an increase of $31.2 million or 19% over the prior year period and up $1.6 million or 1% sequentially. Please remember, the vast majority of our deferred revenue is maintenance revenue, not software revenue. As our fiscal Q4 is typically a significant quarter for us in terms of maintenance support renewals, we would expect sequential deferred revenue growth to accelerate operating cash flows in the fourth quarter. Lastly, for the quarter, our day sales outstanding, or DSO, was 58 days, which is up from 53 days in Q2 '14 and up from 51 days in the prior year quarter. The change is due to linearity within the quarter. That concludes the financial highlights. I will now turn the call back over to Bob. Bob?