Ofer Katz
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thank you Micha and good morning everyone. We delivered strong execution in Q1 amid a volatile macro environment. January and February were as expected. In March we started to see the impact of the shifting macro landscape within our marketplace, particularly in Europe. Revenue came in near the top end of guidance at $86.7 million, up 27% year-over-year, driven by 11% growth in active buyers, 17% in spend per buyer, and a 240 basis points expansion in the take rate. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.9 million, above the top end of our guidance, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.5%. First quarter revenue was a record for us, on top of the tremendous growth we had over the past two years. This scale allowed us to be adjusted EBITDA positive in a first quarter for the first time this early in the year when we typically front load investments. We remain highly efficient with our marketing investments for both brand and performance marketing. Brand marketing is a continuous, long-term investment; when coupled with high levels of customer satisfaction, the awareness builds intangible brand equity over time. We are pleased with how the brand investments are materializing. We recently conducted a survey that indicated Fiverr had the strongest freelancer brand in the U.S. and that brand awareness increased 30% from Q1 2021 when we last did the survey. Our performance marketing, tROI was around 4 months in Q1, about the same as the previous quarter and still well within our 12-month target threshold. As we move upmarket, we are targeting higher lifetime value customers with bigger wallets and better retention potential which allows us to lean into performance marketing a bit more. On a longer-term basis, for cohorts that have been with us for 5 plus years, we are seeing overall life time value to CAC of over 5 times. For cohorts we acquired at the beginning of COVID, we are already seeing life time value to CAC of nearly 3 times, in just two years. The strong unit economics gives us the confidence to continue to invest in performance marketing throughout various macroeconomic conditions. As Micha mentioned, we are going upmarket across the organization. Our product teams are solving more complex problems and providing more intuitive tools, our operations team is vetting high quality supply and ramping customer support, and our upmarket marketing capability is expanding. In our operating metrics we see buyers who spend over $500 contribute to 64% of our marketplace, up from 63% last quarter and 59% in 1Q '21. According to our study, companies with 20 to 200 employees on average spend $15,000 a year on freelancers. We believe there is a significant potential to grow buyers' spend levels by increasing wallet share from our existing buyers and adding high-value buyers. We also continue to invest in category expansion in order to increase cross category purchases and expand our TAM. We are pleased that our take rate continued to grind higher with deeper penetration of value added services. During the quarter, Promoted Gigs continued to grow and contribute to our take rate expansion, as we improved sellers' targeting capabilities and bidding conversion. The program continues to enjoy strong seller retention, as the sellers pay only when they get a click to their listing page and the automatic bidding formula sets guard rails to optimize seller ROI. On Seller Plus, we continue to roll additional features into the program such as buyer insights and buyer request notifications. The growth of these two programs continues to demonstrate our ability to command a strong take rate by building products, expanding our offerings, and providing value to our community. Now, let’s turn to our guidance. For the second quarter of 2022, revenue is expected to be $86 million to $87.5 million, representing year over year growth of 14% to 16%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be $3 million to $4 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4% at the midpoint. For the full year of 2022, we now expect revenue to be in the range of $345 million to $365 million, representing year-over-year growth of 16% to 23%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $10 million to $17 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 3.8% at the midpoint. We have reduced and widened our guidance range to reflect the higher variability in the changing macro landscape as Micha discussed at the start of the call. January and February were solid as expected. In March and April, our business was impacted by a mix of macro factors, with Europe being particularly vulnerable. Compared to what we expected at the beginning of the year, in March our European revenue was below trend by low double-digits and the U.S. by a few percentage points. In April, Europe revenue was further impacted although more moderately and the U.S. was stable. As a reminder, Europe contributed to just under 30% of our revenue and the U.S. approximately half. Our direct exposure to Russia and Ukraine was less than 1%. The midpoint of our revenue guidance reflects our current expectation of our business based on the trends we are seeing now. The high-end of our guidance assumes an improvement in the macro environment that drives a rebound in consumer and business spending. The low end of our guidance contemplates a continued deterioration in Europe and moderate contagion to the rest of the world. At the midpoint, we expect active buyers to grow in the low single digits for the full year and be largely flat in Q2 as we lap the large cohorts from the first half of last year. Spend per buyer is expected to grow in the low-to-mid teens year-over-year for 2022 with a steady sequential cadence. Take rate is expected to be steady with modest upside. The large improvements we saw in 2021 should moderate to less than 100 basis points for full year 2022. On the expense side, we do not expect to materially adjust our investment levels for the year as growth continues to be our top priority. We expect to continue investing in personnel for customer support and engineering and expect modestly lower gross margin and higher R&D as a percentage of revenue for the year. Sales and marketing as a percent of revenue should improve slightly. While our steadfast investment strategy is tempering the progress towards our long-term target model, we remain committed to achieving long-term adjusted EBITDA margins of 25% as our business scales. With that, we’ll now turn the call over to the operator for questions.