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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good afternoon. My name is Chanel, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the LivePerson Q2 2014 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] On the call today, we have Dan Murphy, Chief Financial Officer; and Robert LoCascio, Chief Executive Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Murphy.
DM
Daniel R. Murphy
Analyst
Thanks very much. Before we begin, I would like to remind listeners that during this conference call, comments that we make regarding LivePerson that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause such statements to differ materially from actual future events or results. These statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations today may change over time, and we undertake no obligation to inform you if they do. Results that we report today should not be considered as indication of future performance. Changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, regulatory and other factors could cause LivePerson's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the projections or forward-looking statements made today. For more detailed information about these factors and other risks that may impact our business, please review the reports and documents filed from time to time by LivePerson with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, please note that on the call today, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures in talking about the company's financial performance. We report our GAAP results, as well as provide a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial measures in our earnings release. You can obtain a copy of our earnings release by visiting the Investor Relations section of our website. We will start the call with a review of the financial and operational highlights, and then Rob will discuss the go-forward vision for LivePerson. For the second quarter of 2014, revenue exceeded our guidance range. In addition, our GAAP, EPS, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income were all at the high end of our guidance range. Our sales team delivered…
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Thanks, Dan, and thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call. We had another strong quarter as we achieved our 48th consecutive quarter of growth, and I want to thank the team for their hard work and commitment to our strategy and execution on the vision. Over the past 24 months, I've been talking about how there's been a real change between consumer and brand in the digital world, and the consumer is definitely in-charge. And the consumers' voice is a massive voice, and it could be either very positive or very negative as an impact on companies. Now I remember my first job and my boss said to me, "If you don't do good for a customer and they're unhappy, they can tell 10 of their friends." And I remember, wow, that's a big number. But when you look at today, if the customer is unhappy, they can tell millions of people instantly, and there's a great case study of this. Only 2 or 3 weeks ago, if you were following, a Comcast customer, decided that he was going to take an 8-minute call that he was having with customer support. He's trying to cancel his service. And I won't go into the details. You should really Google it. There's actually like tens of thousands of things written about it right now. It was a terrible call. The customer support rep wouldn't let him cancel. Borderline unfunny, but the result was this: In a matter of days, 5 million people listened to that recording. And instantly, every network picked it up, played it, CNBC, CNN, and even, like, Forbes wrote an article entitled Comcast PR Nightmare Can Befall Midsized Companies: Your Company Could Be next. So when you think about digital, it presents a great challenge and opportunity for…
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from Shyam Patil with Wedbush Securities.
SD
Shyam Patil - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division
Analyst
Over the past -- it seems like over the past few quarters, you guys have done a good job of winning larger deals. And just curious, kind of going forward, how you're pipeline looks for the million-plus dollars deals. And is that something that you view as being important for the overall growth trajectory? And when you look at the platform, is the platform helping you increase the average deal sizes as you're able to sell it to larger enterprises?
DM
Daniel R. Murphy
Analyst
That's a good question. Thanks, Shyam. Thank you. So from a deal perspective, we've invested in the sales organization, and our goals has been for them to get more strategic selling, and we're seeing some of the benefits of that happened over the last couple of quarters. We do want our sales guys to go out and look for those larger deals and get those larger opportunities out of the gate, and our customers are willing to sign up those deals. And from a platform perspective, it absolutely helps in talking about the direction that we're going, and from an engagement perspective and digital adoption. So it definitely helps from a selling perspective.
SD
Shyam Patil - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division
Analyst
Great. And in the past, you talked about new leadership for the small business segment. How do you think about -- or how should we think about the timing for improvement for the small business group? It seems like the mid-market enterprise group is growing really nicely. The small business group could probably see some improvement. How do you guys just think about the timing for that?
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Okay. We're very focused on it right now. When we see the business, you'll see it as, really, 2 segments. One is what we call full service or strategic, and that's the plus-million dollars. And the rest, we call self-service, which was previously small business. So it's important to the strategy. Obviously, we just changed the website, and that's important. It's going to be like an e-commerce play for us. Buy marketing. Get people to put their credit cards in. Get them from a trial to conversion into a full-time client. So it's starting. We're just kind of looking at the funnels, looking how the consumers are going through the new website, but it's starting right now. So I would say we should expect growth coming up. But like I said, we just started launching the website and just started to get some information on it, but it's important to us. Very important.
SD
Shyam Patil - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division
Analyst
Great. And this is my last question. Rob, you mentioned Comcast not being a customer. If you could just talk about who they are using and what's been the hurdle there in winning that business.
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Yes, I mean, obviously, it's on our target list and -- but they're predominantly a voice shop today. I don't know what they're using on the digital side. But the majority is still going through voice. So obviously, it's -- we've got a lot of the cable companies today, a lot of the telcos, but we're focused on it.
OP
Operator
Operator
Your next question is a from Richard Baldry with Roth Capital Partners.
RD
Richard K. Baldry - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division
Analyst
Can you talk a little bit about the sequential growth? It's I think the best number I can recall, and it was sharply above what we've seen you do before on a dollar basis. Was there anything unusual in that? Anything you feel is more one-time oriented? Or do you feel like sort of breaking through deployment backlog? Sort of any breakdown on that, just kind of gauge how sustainable it is as a new growth level.
DM
Daniel R. Murphy
Analyst
Yes. I mean, so from a sequential perspective, it was a strong sequential quarter growth. We did -- we talked to a few -- a little bit about some of the larger deals we did in Q1, and those went live in Q2. So it had follow-on impact for Q2. Overall, our confidence level is shown by us increasing the guidance to $204 million to $207 million, up from $199 million to $204 million. So were comfortable with the increase in the guidance, and that was good quarter, second quarter. And we look forward to continue in Q3 and Q4.
RD
Richard K. Baldry - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division
Analyst
And any on the expense side, if we look at R&D, G&A, if you look year-over-year, they're pretty flat numbers. So your allocation into sales and marketing has certainly gone up significantly. Can you talk about how sustainable sort of those levels of spending in R&D and G&A are? How leverageable you're seeing there? Any sort of maybe currency benefits that are helping that?
DM
Daniel R. Murphy
Analyst
So the currency benefits our small, but from a sustainability perspective, what we expect is G&A to level out, if not start to go down over time. We did have some investments to make from an infrastructure perspective. And then R&D, we've been investing in the platform over the last couple of years. And as we start to roll out the platform, we'll get more feedback, and I expect R&D to be at the levels that it is today, if not slightly higher.
RD
Richard K. Baldry - Roth Capital Partners, LLC, Research Division
Analyst
And then last one. The -- given the success that you saw with large deals, can you talk about how well you think the sales force has ramped now. If you did some significant changes there? How you feel about the productivity there? How much productivity gain do you think is left? And how much of the growth is in our sales force? How increase will come from headcount versus productivity over the rest of the year, maybe into '15?
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Yes, there's a lot of productivity I still think we can get into the current sales force. We've started the process of obviously working with our customers with a different conversation, a different offering. So I think there's a lot of productivity in there, and that's where we're focused on, taking the current team we have. But they're doing a really great job. We set out on a strategy 2 years ago, and made changes in the sales team and the current leadership. And everyone who's in that team is doing a great job in working with our customers and getting the platform out into the market.
OP
Operator
Operator
Your next question is a from Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.
MD
Michael Latimore - Northland Capital Markets, Research Division
Analyst
I guess the strong sequential growth, is that partly attributable to just improving deployment timelines as well? Or had those relatively constant for a couple of quarters now?
DM
Daniel R. Murphy
Analyst
Yes. So Mike, great question. We did have some improvement in our deployment timelines. It was an issue back in early 2013, in the first quarter of 2013, but our team is focused on it. And obviously, with the rollout of the LiveEngage platform, our expectation is to reduce as much friction in the deployment as possible. And what we're seeing on the small business side is a matter of hours or minutes of people being able to deploy that campaign or take their first chats. So we did have some improvement in our deployment timelines.
MD
Michael Latimore - Northland Capital Markets, Research Division
Analyst
And can you just update us on LiveEngage 2.0 for your enterprise market? What's the timeline there for getting it more widely penetrated in your current customer base, let's say?
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Yes, we're looking at -- towards the end of the year after the Aspire conference is really where we're going to show the number, obviously were out showing them the new platform there. They're using the older platform of LiveEngage, but we were out there showing it to them. They're excited. And then at Aspire is when we'll really showcase some of the stuff we're doing on the enterprise side.
MD
Michael Latimore - Northland Capital Markets, Research Division
Analyst
And the -- so you're landing, obviously, big deals before this next version comes out. I mean, do the customers ask about how to convert over to the next version? And kind of what's your comment around that?
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Yes, like -- as I've said in the past, it's not hard to convert. In our practice, some PCs you can use to make an upgrade into the next version of the platform. And so some people are going to start using the reporting system that's in there, some are going to use the Agent Console. So the way we designed it is so that we wouldn't have these hard cutoffs, but there are some features that are in it that they want, they can move over when they want to move over. It doesn't -- as you can see in the numbers, it doesn't reduce our ability to, obviously, sell, and we're selling used cases. Increasing sales, decreasing cost, we can do with each platform. So when they're ready, we'll move them. But obviously, they have a reason to move because it's got a lot more in it.
MD
Michael Latimore - Northland Capital Markets, Research Division
Analyst
Yes. And then the consumer business, it's kind of the first real uptick in a while. Can you just give a little more detail around that?
RL
Robert P. LoCascio
Analyst
Yes. It's -- we are focused on some other categories, especially in the education and tutoring side. They've done a very good job with that business. And it's just they're starting to expand. There's some great mobile plays going on over there. So they've got a mobile play that they're getting some very good traction in. So we're really happy with that. And as I've -- it's 7 years ago we bought them, but -- that company, originally, but they've done a very good job recently. And they've got people running it and doing a great job in bringing it to the next level.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you for joining today's conference call. You may now disconnect.