Bruce Felt
Analyst · Morgan Stanley
Thank you, Josh. We're pleased to deliver a solid Q4 against across all guided metrics. I'll now review the details behind this performance followed by providing first quarter and fiscal 2021 full year guidance.
Our better-than-expected Q4 was driven by higher renewal rates, strong upselling into our installed base and the entirety of our business delivering above expectations. Our enterprise team capped off a record-breaking second half of the year, our corporate team produced the largest amount of new ACV business for the company and was well above our beginning of the quarter expectation. It is noteworthy that we achieved our results with minimal contribution from large deals, with our top 5 new business deals comprising only 5% of our billings this quarter.
Our focus has been on increasing our recurring revenue base, and I'm pleased that our subscription revenue grew 24% year-over-year, driven by an improved mix of new subscription versus services revenue. And by improving retention rates.
I also want to highlight how encouraged I am by the continued improvement in our existing customer lifetime value, or LTV, profile, as both retention and recurring gross margin continue to show incremental improvement. A significant benefit of the SaaS model is that strong improving LTV fundamentals provide a core financial visibility in periods of external market uncertainty. Our recurring revenue base is broadly spread across a wide range of industries. We do not have significant concentration in any one industry with no industry representing more than 15% of ARR and most representing significantly less than that.
As Josh also mentioned, our gross retention rate was 91%. In addition to better-than-expected retention, Q4 billings benefited from about $2 million of renewals in connection with upsells. We had expected these renewals to come in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. This did not affect our reported retention rate, but it does influence our Q1 billings guidance. We achieved a net revenue retention rate of 120% in our North America enterprise business.
We now have 55% of our customers under multiyear contracts at the end of Q4 compared to 42% at the end of Q4 last year. Our remaining performance obligations, or RPO, grew 17% compared to the same quarter last year. Our Q4 revenue was $46.2 million, a year-over-year increase of 17%. Subscription revenue represented 86% of total revenue. International revenue in the quarter represented 25% of total revenue compared to 24% in Q3.
Our subscription gross margin was 77%, up more than 2 percentage points from 74% in Q4 of last year. We plan to obtain additional leverage out of our subscription cost of revenue over time, as we continue to effectively manage our data center operations through finding efficiencies, better utilization of certain services and continuing to optimize our software that runs the Domo platform. We believe we can achieve subscription gross margins of over 80% in the long term.
In Q4, operating expenses increased by just under 7% from last year, even though revenue increased by 17% year-over-year. We did take a cost reduction action in Q4 in our non-Japan APAC region due to underperformance relative to the investments we have been making in that region. We will redeploy those savings in North America, where we're finding great success. The net effect of increased revenue, while effectively managing costs, allowed us to improve our operating margin by 12 full percentage points from the same quarter last year. Our net loss was $23.7 million and net loss per share was $0.85. This is based on 28 million weighted average shares outstanding, basic and diluted.
Turning now to our balance sheet. As of January 31, we had cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of approximately $99 million, an amount we believe is more than sufficient to allow us to become cash flow positive. Our adjusted net cash used in operations was $15.3 million, an improvement of $0.9 million over the prior quarter and a 45% reduction compared to Q4 of the prior year.
Now to discuss what we expect in Q1 and fiscal year '21. We are very aware of the uncertain environment and are planning for different scenarios. Our guidance does not factor in a downturn or slowdown because at this point, we have not felt any material effects on our business. In fact, in Japan, where there is more societal upheaval, we continue to close business. We believe this is in part because our product set helps drive revenue, find efficiencies and help businesses operate remotely.
I would say that relative to companies that rely on large amounts of new business from new customers, we are in a better position because our current top line is driven by a large sticky renewal base, the majority of which is under multiyear contracts, our new business comes mostly from current customers that are easier to sell to than obtaining new customers, and most of our quota-carrying reps primarily sell over the phone, which is an asset when traveling is restricted.
Also, we've been able to grow our business without increasing costs and have demonstrated an ability to control and even cut costs if needed. We're entering fiscal year '21 with 20% more pipeline than we had at the same time last year, as a result of all the work we've been doing to improve marketing operations, run the sales plays, form relationships with partners, and automate the proof of concept process.
With that as background, we expect Q1 billings of between $40 million and $44 million. Had the $2 million in renewals not been billed in Q4, our billings guidance would have been $42 million to $46 million. We're planning for fiscal '21 billings to be between $205 million and $210 million. We are planning on our Q1 operating expenses to be up from Q4. Although we're excited about having Domopalooza online and have over 5,000 registrants already, our operating expenses are driven in part by our annual user conference costs that cannot be recovered and higher payroll-related expenses in Q1.
For the year, we expect our operating expenses to be up slightly from fiscal year '20. We expect Q1 adjusted net cash used in operations of approximately $14 million, and expect full year adjusted net cash used in operations of approximately $50 million. We believe we will be able to exit this year with a quarterly cash burn rate that gives investors the confidence they're looking for that we can achieve our cash flow positive status with the cash we have on the balance sheet.
Now the formal guidance. For the first quarter of fiscal year '21, we expect GAAP revenue to be in the range of $46 million to $47 million. We expect non-GAAP net loss per share, basic and diluted, of $1.04 to $1.08. This assumes 28.4 million weighted average shares outstanding, basic and diluted. For the full year fiscal '21, we expect GAAP revenue to be in the range of $192 million to $198 million, representing year-over-year growth of 11% to 14%. We expect non-GAAP net loss per share basic and diluted of $3.22 to $3.32. This assumes 29.2 million weighted average shares outstanding, basic and diluted.
In closing, we're pleased with our results for Q4, and I look forward to our fiscal '21 year. Please join us on March 18 for Domopalooza online and our analysts and investor program. You can register for those at domopalooza.com.
With that, we'll open up the call for questions. Operator, please do so.