John Pagliuca
Analyst · Jason Ader of William Blair. Jason, please go ahead
Thanks, Howard, and thank you all for joining us today. About six weeks ago, we had our 2022 company-wide kickoff event. Our leadership team discussed the state of our industry, where N-able is on our journey and why we feel confident about the future. I thought it would be useful to recap a few themes from our kickoff. In 2021, we rallied around the phrase, forward together as we became a standalone company and laid the foundation for success in 2022. With our 2021 mission accomplished, we’ve turned our focus squarely to elevating and accelerating our business. And therefore, our rally cry this year is earned more N-able fans. A fan is more than just a customer, what we call an MSP partner or our growing employee base of N-ablites. Fans also include prospects, strategic partners, industry analysts, media, investors and more. Earning more fans has important implications because in order to do so, we must execute on key objectives such as helping our partners solve their problems, better connect our brand to the market and enhance the overall experience for MSP partners and N-ablite employees alike. As we continue to execute, a growing fan base will be another indicator of success. Two months into the New Year, the environment in 2022, in many ways, still looks a lot like 2021. With the world learning to cope with what may become an endemic phase of COVID, the new normal for work doesn’t look like it’s going away. As such, our industry tailwinds, which include increased IT complexity, labor scarcity and rising cyber threats remain as strong as ever. I want to briefly double-click into each of these. First, IT complexity is best captured by the concept of hybrid everything. In a work from anywhere world, SMEs rely on MSPs to manage IT workloads, digital assets and identities across the on-prem and public cloud environments. Second, labor scarcity limits SMEs from self-managing their own IT stacks and serves as a catalyst for outsourcing their IT management and security to MSPs. Increasingly, we are seeing large enterprises use MSPs to co-manage their IT assets. Not surprisingly, MSPs are struggling with labor scarcity too. They need to do more with less labor. And that’s where we had a lot of value. Third, given the proliferation of security threats, cyber threat management is now a core risk management function. Empowered by our security stack, MSPs have the wherewithal to secure their end customer environments. We ended 2021 on a high note with new bookings in the fourth quarter at the highest level in 2021 and up year-over-year. Fourth quarter revenue grew 13% in constant currency and exceeded the high end of our outlook. Our data protection and security portfolios continue to deliver standout growth driven by continued robust demand for our N-able Microsoft 365 cloud-to-cloud backup and N-able EDR solutions. In fact, our EDR offering, which is built on SentinelOne’s best-in-class technology and seamlessly integrated into our platform, now sits on over 1 million endpoints, while our Microsoft 365 backup offering protects over 25,000 end customer domains and over 900,000 exchange mailboxes. During the fourth quarter, we appointed two new leaders to our data protection business. Chris Groot, an N-able veteran, who is promoted to General Manager of Data Protection and the addition of Stefan Voss as VP of Data Protection, Product Management. Stefan joins us most recently from Dell where he was Chief Product Owner of a portfolio of data protection products. As the market continues to shift toward cloud native infrastructure, we’re excited about how our cloud native data protection as a service solution is positioned. We provide complete protection for our customers across endpoint devices, servers and Microsoft 365 via a unified console in a single pane of glass, built on our proprietary TrueDelta technology. Our backup and restore functionality allows for 5 times less storage for the same number of restore points compared to competing solutions, enabling a higher service level and lower cost. Data protection is a priority for us. And the up-leveling of leadership underscores our commitment to helping MSPs better protect both their businesses and those of their customers. Now as I did in our last earnings call, I want to continue the practice of sharing notable customer wins. First, we won a six-figure ARR deal with a Belgium-based MSP that chose us for RMM, EDR, data protection and password management, replacing a competitive RMM solution and two, separate backup solutions from leading data protection vendors. Despite having invested in customizations built around their previous RMM vendor, this MSP ultimately chose N-able due to our tight integrations and easy-to-use interface. While our Automation Manager and NetPath network traffic analyzer were big pluses too. Second, we sold a near six-figure ARR deal with a Connecticut-based MSP that included RMM, EDR and data protection, also replacing a competitive RMM vendor in two data protection vendors. In this case, our powerful and cost-effective data protection offering for endpoints, M365 and virtual machines led the win, while our seamless integration facilitated the multiproduct land. Third, we landed a five-figure ARR standalone data protection deal with an Australian-based MSP, including both N-able backup for devices and M365 backup. We believe this deal speaks to the increasing recognition of our fully cloud-based data protection portfolio as well as our international breadth. Finally, as a testament to the enterprise-grade quality of our solutions, in the quarter, we landed a 200,000 ARR direct deal with a Fortune 500 company. Now to be clear, we don’t focus on internal IT departments. But we nonetheless get inbound requests at times. And in this case, we were invited to bid in an RFP process. This company was looking to consolidate its unified endpoint management solution on to one vendor. Not only did our RMM exceed their patch management and remote control needs, but our other out-of-the-box features like network topography, asset warranty tracking, automation manager and report manager helped us secure this win. We also had some notable expansion deals in the quarter. First, a long-standing partner that already uses multiple N-able products added over 200,000 of EDR. This security-focused partner promotes four core pillars to its SME customers as part of an essential security hygiene, manage cash management, manage EDR, a differentiated advantage backup solution and a multifactor authentication and making their decision, this partner value the power of our EDR solution, seamless integration with our platform and other products and our differentiated partner success and support. Second, we had a significant cross-sell data protection also over 200,000 of ARR including N-able Microsoft 365 backup and recovery testing. This partner was using us only for a small number of RMM nodes prior to seeing a differentiated data protection portfolio. We believe this expansion deal was a real testament to about the technological prowess and value proposition of our data protection solutions. We also had several large additional EDR cross-sell deals as more of our existing partners acknowledge the need to upgrade to a best-in-class solution given the heightened risk environment. Our traction and expansion deals has been amplified by our continued investment in partner success resources, such as the MSP Institute, our Head Nerds program, MarketBuilder campaigns and partner care and technical support teams. In 2021, N-able Head Nerds gave over 10,000 sessions of consultation to partners across boot camps and one-on-one trainings. We have our goal set to exceed over 15,000 consultations this year. Over the last several months, we’ve introduced more targeted efforts to increase partner engagement, including through quarterly strategic business reviews with partners, which lead to increased account retention and new opportunities. We continue to augment training for our PSMs so that they are best equipped to identify and address MSP pain points. And for MSPs to prefer a more hands-off approach, we will be introducing more self-guided onboarding and adoption programs throughout the course of this year. Now I want to turn to some fourth quarter product and go-to-market highlights. First, we started multiple private previews of products to be generally available in 2022. In most of 2021, we are focused on product security and platform hardening, causing a delay in new product introductions. Earlier this month, VGA DNS filtering which is a cloud-based, AI-driven, content filtering and threat protection service. Additionally, we continue to improve our data protection capabilities, including a 30% performance increase for virtual servers and M365 data stores. As I look to the rest of this year and beyond, we are extending our core strength in monitoring to cloud and hybrid environments. We will continue to introduce key capabilities with our cloud native data protection portfolio, and we are planning to introduce additional powerful yet easy-to-use security solutions. We are pleased to return to a more normal cadence of product launches this year, and are targeting multiple new offerings per year going forward. As organizations continue to adopt new and diverse solutions, including Windows 11, new versions of the Apple operating system and new cloud capabilities, N-able’s portfolio will continue to expand capabilities to ensure that MSPs can manage, monitor and secure the broadest range of platforms. In addition, we will be enhancing our security and data protection offerings to ensure MSPs are able to provide the latest technologies and protection to SMEs across the globe. On the sales and marketing front, we improved the conversion rate on our website as we upgraded landing pages that better reflect the enabled brand value. And we are seeing good progress in our channel expansion efforts as we continue to support our distribution partners around the globe with dedicated salespeople. In these situations, our salespeople bring a deeper level of knowledge on our products. While the distribution partner is primarily responsible for the account management and customer care. In fact, overall sales productivity has improved sequentially each year in 2021. And finally, we generated a 15% quarter-over-quarter increase in our total sales pipeline, which we believe is primarily attributable to more targeted customer acquisition efforts. I will circle back at the end with some closing thoughts. But now I will turn over the call to Tim to discuss our financial results and outlook.
Tim O’Brien: Thank you, John, and thanks to all of you for joining us on the call today. I want to start off by recognizing the significant contributions made by our team in 2021, whether it be building out of our financials and G&A functions, increased investments in systems and security and rebranding to N-able. I’m proud of what we have accomplished in 2021 and how the foundation we have laid sets us up well for success in 2022. Now I will review our full year and fourth quarter financial results and then discuss our financial outlook for 2022. We finished 2021 just ahead of our outlook with total revenue of $346.5 million, representing 14% year-over-year growth on a reported basis and 12% on a constant currency basis. Subscription revenue was $336.8 million, representing 97% of total revenue and grew 1 percentage point faster than total revenue on both a reported and constant currency basis. Total revenue in the fourth quarter was $89.5 million, representing 12% year-over-year reported growth or 13% on a constant currency basis. FX turned out to be roughly a percentage point of headwind versus roughly neutral when we gave our guidance in November. Subscription revenue was $87.3 million, representing approximately 13% year-over-year growth or 14% on a constant currency basis. Other revenue, which primarily represents maintenance revenue from our discontinued legacy license model was $2.3 million, down 11% year-over-year and consistent with prior quarters. We ended the quarter with 1,678 partners that represent $50,000 or more of ARR, a 14% year-over-year increase. Partners with over $50,000 of ARR represents 47% of our total ARR, up from 42% a year ago. Our quarterly performance continued to be driven by our security and data protection solutions and in particular, our N-able EDR and N-able Microsoft 365 cloud-to-cloud backup solutions. As John mentioned, new bookings in the fourth quarter were our best bookings quarter in the year. While we don’t comment on bookings every quarter, it’s noteworthy this time. Our bookings in Q4 surpassed those of Q4 of the previous year, which was prior to both the SolarWinds cyber incident and the rebrand to N-able, two events that hurt new customer acquisition for most of 2021. This is an encouraging sign and gives us confidence as we move into 2022. Dollar-based net revenue retention, which is calculated on a trailing 12-month basis, was 110%. Our net revenue retention has been driven by a balanced mix of both cross-sell of additional services and device expansion as well as consistent gross retention rates in the 86% to 87% range. Turning to profit and margins. Note that unless otherwise stated, all references to profit measures and expenses are calculated on a non-GAAP basis and exclude the items outlined in the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations provided in today’s press release. Also note that historical financials for all of 2020 and the period of 2021 prior to the effective spin-off date of July 2019 included operating expenses that were prepared using carve-out allocation methodology while we were still a part of SolarWinds. Therefore, our stand-alone financials are not directly comparable to those prepared prior to the effective spin-off date. Full year 2021 gross margin was 86.8% compared to 87.4% in 2020. Fourth quarter gross margin was 86.6% compared to 87.1% in the fourth quarter of 2020. Full year 2021 adjusted EBITDA was $113.3 million, which is at the midpoint of our financial outlook range and represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of 32.7%. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was $27.8 million, representing a 31% EBITDA margin and reflects investments to drive revenue growth acceleration in 2022 and beyond. Unlevered free cash flow was approximately $43.5 million in the full year and $10.1 million in the fourth quarter. Unlevered free cash flow contains some non-recurring items, including elevated CapEx for office build-outs to support stand-alone operations and a couple of cash-neutral transfers between N-able and SolarWinds. Excluding these items, unlevered free cash flow in 2021 would have been over $70 million, representing approximately a 62% conversion from adjusted EBITDA. CapEx was $34.8 million or 10% of revenue for the full year and $12.5 million or 14% of revenue in the fourth quarter. Excluding the onetime office build-outs that I just mentioned, CapEx would have been approximately 8% of revenue for the full year. Non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.35 for the full year based on 169 million weighted average diluted shares and $0.07 in the fourth quarter based on 180 million weighted average diluted shares. We ended the year with approximately $67 million of cash and had an outstanding loan principal balance of $349 million, representing net leverage of approximately 2.5 times. Now I will provide our financial outlook for the first quarter and full year. For the first quarter of 2022, we expect total revenue in the range of $90.1 million to $90.6 million, representing approximately 9% year-over-year growth or approximately 11% growth on a constant currency basis. The expected deceleration in revenue growth in the first quarter is due primarily to a slowdown in new customer acquisition for most of 2021, following the disruptive impact of the SolarWinds cyber incident and rebranding to N-able as well as delays in new product introductions in 2021. Accordingly, we expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of $26.5 million to $27 million, representing approximately 30% margin at the midpoint. For the full year 2022, we expect total revenue of $384 million to $388 million, representing 11% to 12% year-over-year growth on a reported basis or 13% to 14% growth on a constant currency basis. We expect full year adjusted EBITDA in the range of $118 million to $122 million or approximately 31% margin at the midpoint. Given that nearly half of our revenue is generated outside of North America, I want to provide some guidelines around the impact of FX movements. For both the first quarter and full year, we are assuming exchange rate of 1.13 for the euro and 1.35 for the British pound. As a proxy, every cent of euro is about $900,000 of revenue impact, while every cent of the pound is about $300,000 of revenue impact for full year 2022. For example, given that the dollar has been appreciating, if we had used FX rates at the time we gave fourth quarter guidance in November, our full year revenue outlook would have been approximately $4 million higher. As implied in our full year outlook, on a constant currency basis, we expect year-over-year revenue growth to accelerate throughout the year. With respect to expenses and profit, while our revenue mix is approximately 50% international, our expenses are more heavily indexed to the U.S. Therefore, the FX impact to revenue is not perfectly offset by the FX impact to expenses. So based on current rates, we will experience a modest net headwind to adjusted EBITDA in 2022, primarily driven by the euro. In addition, our first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin outlook reflects hiring we made ahead of returns on go-to-market and product investments that we expect to realize in the back half of the year. Our first quarter and full year margin guidance implies that adjusted EBITDA margin will improve in the second half of the year. CapEx will normalize this year into the range of 4% to 5% of total revenue. We expect adjusted EBITDA conversion to unlevered free cash flow to be approximately 70% in 2022. We expect total weighted average diluted shares outstanding of approximately 180 million for the first quarter and approximately 181 million for the full year. Finally, we expect our non-GAAP tax rate to be approximately 25% in both the first quarter and the full year. Now I will turn it over to John for closing remarks.