Earnings Labs

Gen Digital Inc. (GEN)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, May 13, 2016

$19.29

+1.39%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.71%

1 Week

+0.77%

1 Month

+13.10%

vs S&P

+11.64%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to Symantec's fourth quarter 2016 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Doros. Please go ahead, sir.

Jonathan Doros - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Good afternoon and thank you for joining our call to discuss fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016 earnings results. By now, you should have had the opportunity to review our earnings release and supplemental information. We've also posted the earnings materials and prepared remarks to our Investor Relations Events webpage. Speakers on today's call are: Mike Brown, Symantec's CEO; Thomas Seifert, Executive Vice President and CFO. This is a live call that will be available for replay via our webcast on our website. I'd like to remind everyone that all references to financial metrics are non-GAAP unless otherwise stated. Implied billings refer to revenue plus the change in sequential deferred revenue excluding the portion of Veritas deferred revenue. We provide year-over-year constant currency growth rates in our prepared remarks, except for statements about net income and EPS. Please note, non-GAAP financial measures referenced during this call are reconciled to their comparable GAAP financial measure in the press release and supplemental materials posted on our website. Today's call contains forward-looking statements based on the environment as we currently see it. Those statements are based on current beliefs, assumptions, and expectations, speak only as of the current date, and as such involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Please refer to cautionary statement in our press release for more information. You will also find a detailed discussion about our risk factors in our filings with the SEC, and in particular, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended April 3, 2015. All non-GAAP revenue and expenses exclude the impact of Veritas. However, continuing operations deferred revenue on the balance sheet includes a portion of Veritas deferred revenue from Symantec and Veritas bundled contracts entered into prior to operational separation. The…

Jonathan Doros - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, operator. We'll now take some questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we'll take our first question from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays.

Raimo Lenschow - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I have two quick questions, if you're okay with that. First one is, if you look at the drivers for the Enterprise Security business that you laid out for 2017, can you talk a little bit more about those? Because at the moment, so I get the – and I get licenses going through being suffering, deferred is going to be better, but then you have that as an ongoing theme. So are we flying blind a little bit because we don't know what's going on, or can you help us a little bit understand on the different puts and takes there? And then I have a follow-up, please. Thomas J. Seifert - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Let me take that question. We're not flying blind like many other enterprise software security companies. We are dealing with similar changes in how new products are sold and how buying preferences are changing. That should not be a surprise. We have seen the first impacts of that in Q4, and we try to anticipate that with the guidance we give for fiscal year 2017. Fiscal year 2017, if you compare original expectations to where our guidance is now, I think there are three moving parts. For sure there is a deferred revenue tailwind from our performance in Q4. We said, we overachieved our deferred revenue expectations by about $30 million. That is a tailwind moving into 2017 for sure. We have adjusted our assumptions on product mix and yield and the linearity we see because of that. And we put some conservative up on the numbers to make sure that this transition is predictable from a communication perspective. If I had to give color, then that is probably a 70:30 mix in terms…

Raimo Lenschow - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, that helps, and then a question on the Consumer side. Now that you have more guys on subscription in the U.S. and then they're turning into Europe, et cetera as well, what's the story around the OEM business? You mentioned on the call, you have less business from OEM because your other demand drivers are working. But should you not be able to monetize the OEM channel better given that your customer lifetime value should be better with subscription? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's exactly right. So as we look at the business today, we're still seeing declines from the OEM channel. So of our total customer mix, OEM is a much smaller proportion. That's what we reflected in the prepared remarks. However, you're correct. If we look at the customer lifetime value, given the higher retention rates, we have higher lifetime values for customers, which will allow us to be more competitive as we look at OEMs that we might want to bring on in the future, and we are having those discussions now. But as we've said so many times in the past, this isn't about adding revenue as fast as possible. It's really about making sure that revenue is profitable. So we're not going to be quick to jump into any deal that doesn't look attractive to us.

Raimo Lenschow - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Did I see something in the guidance... Thomas J. Seifert - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Let me add to that. I think the strength and the changes in the business model are really that we are interacting with our customers directly. And I think this direct access and communication with our customers has helped us to rebuild the business model and get to the subscription and enrollment rates we enjoy today. We always have to be aware that an OEM deal is an indirect model to get to business, and that's why what Mike said is so important. For us adding and keeping the profitability and the health of the business segments, we have worked hard to achieve that, is key. That doesn't mean that we do not engage into OEM deals, but they have to be well thought through, and they have to add to the model we've put in place. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think you might have been going rather to the question of whether the guidance included any OEM deals, and the answer to that is no.

Raimo Lenschow - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Yes. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We've assumed no OEM deals in the guidance we talked about.

Raimo Lenschow - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Raimo Lenschow - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Andrew Nowinski with Piper Jaffray. Andrew James Nowinski - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Good afternoon, thanks a lot. I just have a few questions for you. First, I think you said you're seeing ATP pricing well in excess of 100% of your current SEP recurring revenue. Is that pricing all incremental to your SEP recurring revenue, or is that more of a replacement? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes, it's incremental. So we're seeing a number of factors when we're selling ATP, Andrew. The first is that we're seeing the SEP maintenance pricing or the renewal pricing hold much more firmly, so that's a positive. We're seeing the renewal rates for SEP improve. And in some cases, we're able to expand our footprint as customers are expanding the number of SEP endpoints that are under protection; so those are all three very positive trends. And then additionally, we sell ATP as a subscription, which we're selling for multiples of what the SEP, or SEP, renewal rate is. So it's at least 100%, and in many cases much bigger factor than that. So when you put that all together, we're pretty excited about what we're seeing, both with the adoption of ATP, and with what the revenue uplift can be. Andrew James Nowinski - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Okay, got it. Thanks, and then just a quick question on your sales capacity. I think you said you're adding 20% more quota-carrying field sales reps, but can you give us any color on how your sales force was structured maybe even prior to the sale of Veritas? I guess, what I'm trying to understand is, did you lose sales reps as part of that split so that net increase to the sales force is less than 20%? Or are you actually giving us of the net increase there with the 20%? Thomas J. Seifert - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes, it's a net increase. So of course we separated the sales force, but that happened at the beginning of fiscal year 2016, Veritas and Symantec, so we're saying relative to the base we started with in FY 2016, we've now added 20% more quota-carrying. And we're doing that by just adjusting the mix of what folks are doing within sales, so fewer folks in sales that were non-quota-carrying. We were adjusting that down to give more capacity in the field itself. Andrew James Nowinski - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Got it, thanks.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Matt Hedberg with RBC Capital Markets.

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great, thanks for taking my questions. I had another question on your Consumer business. It sounds like you're not assuming any real uplift from OEMs. I'm also curious; to what extent could you talk to us about your renewal assumptions embedded in that guidance? And then maybe you've talked about this Indian telco deal before. Do you assume any uplift from that deal kind of in your down 6% to down 3%, guide? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: From which deal, did he say?

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

The Indian telco. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: The Indian telco. Yes, so you're correct, we're not assuming any OEM deals in the guidance, so the guidance would change if we do an OEM deal. We haven't really given renewal rates as you know for the Consumer business, but we have seen a dramatic improvement for those customers who are already on the subscription. They renew automatically, there's no – what we used to call an auto-renewal process. So if someone's credit card is current, they basically get notified that their subscription is continuing and they don't need to take any action. And as with so many Consumer products that we're all familiar with, the retention rates for those customers in a subscription is so much higher. So we're seeing the benefit of that. We commented that we particularly saw that in March and April, as we're now seeing the one-year anniversary of when we moved those customers into subscription. And then the Indian telco that we announced, which is one of the examples of monetizing mobile protection for consumers, we expect that to contribute to FY 2017's revenue for Norton.

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then for Thomas, can you help us with your cash flow assumptions from ops next year? I know, you guys have talked about, kind of, I believe a $700 million rate ex one-time items. Is that kind of the right way to think about cash flow from ops next year? Thomas J. Seifert - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I'd say yes, the $700 million is still the right baseline. Before we hit the one-time impacts like from restructuring, we just talked about the restructuring charge we expect to incur over the next two years, $230 million to $280 million. It will not be exactly even across the two years, so you would have to be – expect a little bit more front-end loaded, 60% in the first year, 40% in the second year, but net of these effects, there's a natural run rate of $700 million in the near-term, and then improving once we take full benefit of the $400 million of cost reduction.

Matthew George Hedberg - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley. Keith Eric Weiss - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Excellent, thank you guys for taking the question. I wanted to dig into the Symantec Endpoint Protection business and the impacts on the competitive environment that you've seen from now having the new ATP solution out there. One of the better cases around Symantec has been these Next Generation Endpoint vendors are starting to wear away at the base, so I guess a two-part question. One, can you comment on how well that base is sustaining? And two, does the new product change that competitive dynamic at all? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Keith. We're seeing that our Endpoint Protection is holding up quite well, in fact growing as I mentioned, even in the face of some other parts of the portfolio that are declining, so we continue very enthused about how SEP is doing. And I think that's because many of these other Endpoint Protection companies out there, one, require you to put an additional agent on to get a level of protection, and two, are boasting about some level of protection that goes beyond antivirus. Symantec's Endpoint Protection or SEP already has that. We already, as we've talked about so many times before, we are already putting multiple protection engines into the SEP capability, and we continue to add to that. In fact, one of the 12 new products that I've talked about, coming for this fiscal year that started with ATP is the next generation of our SEP offering, which includes, as we talked about, some of those key capabilities, more detection in the cloud, which shift some of the workload to the cloud versus the agent itself, makes it so much more…

Operator

Operator

We'll now go next to John DiFucci with Jefferies.

John DiFucci - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Thank you. It seems you were surprised at the customer uptake of subscription-based products or their buying behaviors. I'm just curious. Are there any other things that are surprising you now that you're seeing in the market in terms of customer buying patterns, either something more challenging for you or even something more beneficial? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'd say we think that this trend towards more subscriptions business is going to be beneficial for us in the long run. It provides a headwind near term, but we think it's obviously going to make us much more predictable long term, and we think it frankly will provide more staying power with existing customers by getting them on a subscription basis, the same way we're already seeing that benefit in the Norton business. So I'd say as we have invested in our portfolio to bring some solutions out that are more cloud-based, we expect that to directly coincide with customer buying preferences. The other key trend I'd say is a real positive for us is the increased focus on the endpoint. As networks become more porous, there are more cloud-based workloads, there's less emphasis on next-generation firewall. That doesn't mean they're not going to be important or that those vendors are not going to be successful, but we're seeing that there's more of an emphasis on what can you do to protect those workloads in the cloud. Even with those workloads in the cloud, endpoint still has to be protected, and then that also lends some tailwind to our information protection offerings, which clearly are very beneficial for customers that are doing workloads in the cloud.

John DiFucci - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Thanks, Mike. If I might follow up, it goes with that endpoint comment. It seems like in security anyway, from observation, it doesn't seem like anything really goes away, but we get more and more technologies. And Symantec has been a company for years now and not the only one that says listen, we have to help our customers to integrate this. And there's some talk out there of some companies trying to provide everything as a platform, and there's also talk that maybe that's not the best way to go, and so there's little bit of debate out there. But the real problem here is the customer needs something because it seems like it's getting – and when I talk to customers anyway, they just want someone to bring it all together for them, and it just seems like it's just too difficult to do. But you said something about the agentless ATP functionality that's going to work in concert with others' endpoint. I find that really interesting. Is there any work right now being done within Symantec that is still trying to pull everything together, whoever's products those are, whether those I guess peers and sometimes competitors are working with you or not necessarily working with you? Is this just a pipe dream, or is this something you think can still really happen? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think it's a bit of a mixed bag, John. I think, thinking you're going to get everything all under one console is a bit of a pipe dream, and the reason is because the problem becomes ever more complex. The attack surface, when you consider mobile, cloud-based, IoT, any of the productivity enhancing trends in IT bring their own security issues along with it. So as the attack surface expands, it's difficult to think I'm going to consolidate everything under one pane of glass. However, one of the key thrusts behind our unified security strategy, and we talked about our platform approach, is to bring more of that visibility under a single pane of glass. I talked in my prepared remarks about how we're doing that with ATP. I think in the future, you could see our threat protection and information protection be brought together under one pane of glass, and that's much broader than anyone else in the industry, in our view, has the capability to do. So pipe dream to think it's all going to happen and it's going to happen near term, but we are clearly moving in that direction.

John DiFucci - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Great. Thomas J. Seifert - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Also our capability, Mike talked in his prepared remarks that we will provide APIs to put our ATP on top of other competitors' endpoints. I think that certainly a move from our perspective in this direction of having more visibility in one console and providing visibility to our customers, even if the traditional endpoint protection is not coming from us. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right, perfect example.

John DiFucci - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Thank you, John.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Walter Pritchard with Citi.

Walter H. Pritchard - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Hi. I'm wondering if you could help us understand on billings for next year. It seems like almost revenue is becoming difficult to use as a basis to see how you're performing in the business, in this year where you have the significant transition going on. Any guidance around billings or anything directional relative to what you're growing billings right now for next year? Thomas J. Seifert - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: We talked about our implied billings performance in Q4. I think it's also fair to say that, if we follow the arguments and the trends and cycles we outlined over this fiscal year 2017, we expect to enter fiscal year 2018 with a deferred revenue balance that's going to be up year over year, reflecting the shift in a more ratable structure. So we expect our deferred revenue balance for ES to be up 3% to 5%. I think that gives you an indication of the direction which we are going. And we will, over the course of the Q1 and Q2, move ourselves in a position where we can report better and more detailed billings data moving forward.

Walter H. Pritchard - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. And then for – I'm not sure for which one of you, but on the ES business, could you talk about what percentage of that business you see as a growth business versus how much of that business is still a business where you'll have to work through headwinds in 2017 and possibly 2018 as parts of that may still decline? Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think we've talked historically about the fact that 60% of the portfolio is growing and about 40% is declining. We talked about the key areas. If we look over the year, certainly our SEP, Endpoint Security has been growing. We've seen DLP grow at some very fast rates. We saw that up double digit for the year, even though it was down for the quarter. We're going to expect to see obviously fast growth in these new offerings. We saw that with ATP. We've got a number of new cloud offerings coming. We've got the first analytics applications coming for unified security, so a number of key growth areas. What we've talked about declining is Endpoint Management. So that's about $100 million business now for us. It's been in decline for some time. One of the new offerings which we're calling the Unified Endpoint Management and Security is going to essentially replace, because it incorporates both Security Policy Management, as well as the traditional Endpoint Management or Configuration Management. So we expect that will, to a large degree, over the time that it's introduced in FY 2017, replace what we've had with traditional Endpoint Management, which is an on-prem product.

Walter H. Pritchard - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Pat Walravens with JMP Group.

Pat D. Walravens - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · JMP Group.

Oh, great. Thank you. Mike, let me first say that, I'm sorry to see you go. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Pat D. Walravens - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · JMP Group.

Look, that's just my personal view, but seems to me that there's been enough leadership change at this company already. That being said, and I realize this could change with the new CEO, but I would love to hear your thoughts as to whether it makes sense to split this business even further at this point to be even more focused, or if things are sort of good where they are. Michael A. Brown - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Pat, I think you already probably knew my answer to that before you asked the question. We took a long look at the configuration of the business back the summer two years ago, and decided that it made sense to be a security company. And that's when we made the decision about Veritas. I think all three of the businesses that – or all three of the product line areas we have today, so in Enterprise Security, our Website Security product line, plus the Enterprise Security business that we've been refocusing on, and then Consumer Security, are all contributing very significantly, both to the strategy, and we talked about that before we wouldn't have access to all that information about the threat landscape if you took away any one of those key product areas. And then, I think that helps us to bring more to what customers are looking for, so they can buy more from fewer vendors, back to the question we were talking about, I think it was with John a few minutes ago. Customers are looking to do more with fewer vendors rather than continue to proliferate this best of breed buy from 100 different vendors and integrate. So I think the breadth gives us a lot of advantage when we're working with customers.

Pat D. Walravens - JMP Securities LLC

Analyst · JMP Group.

Terrific. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And that concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn things back to Jonathan Doros for any closing remarks.

Jonathan Doros - Vice President-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you for joining us on the call, today. If you have any follow-up questions, please email Investor Relations. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, everyone. That does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.