Warren Jenson
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thanks Scott and good afternoon, everyone. As you listen to my remarks, hopefully you will hear three themes emerge. First durability and consistency, amidst the sea of industry change, there is one constant and that's that we have delivered. Next, we are moving from application to enterprise and playing with competitive advantage. And finally, our enterprise platform Safe Haven is showing up in our numbers in a big way and is opening up entirely new markets for LiveRamp. Q3 highlights, please turn to Slide Four. First, perform, we posted another solid quarter. Revenue of $141 million was up 17%, subscription revenue up 19% while ARR increased 16%. Our net new customer count increased by 20% this quarter and our brand average ACV was up up 16%. Our $1 million customer count is now 86% up six sequentially and up 30% year over year. Net retention was 110 and platform net retention 109, driven by an acceleration in Safe Haven adoption. CRPO was up 25% and marketplace was up 12% in line with our expectations. As expected, our results continue to be negatively impacted by wholesale contraction as shown on Slide 22. We continue to expect this impact to be $30 million for the year and it was $8 million for the order. Excluding this, total revenue increased 26% and international of 29%. Subscription revenue was up 30% and ARR of 28% and net retention would've been 120% and platform net retention 117%. In short, while we don't discount the impact of wholesale contraction, our numbers remain solid. Operationally, we again demonstrated leverage. Gross margin was 77% up 330 basis points. This was our seventh consecutive quarter of profitability. Our operating margin was 10% and EBITDA 14% and most importantly, operating cashflow was $25 million and year to date positive $19 million. Lastly, we repurchased $5 million of stock in Q3. In addition, we have taken advantage of recent market conditions and repurchased an incremental $9 million so far in Q4. Year to date, we have repurchased approximately $58 million. Next our trended performance. Please turn to Slide Five. On this slide, we have presented a set of trended metrics. All comparisons are done on a trailing 12 month basis. Since LiveRamp emerged as a public company, amidst the sea of industry change, there is one constant. We have delivered. We've delivered growth, significant expansion of our million dollar customer count, gross margin expansion, incredible EBITDA growth and meaningful capital return to our share owners. Again, while we, by no means claim perfection, one thing is for certain. We have delivered on our commitments through thick and thin. That's durability and consistency. From application to enterprise, a look at Safe Haven, our enterprise platform. I said this on our last call, but it bears repeating. Our opportunity just keeps getting bigger. The market is embracing our platform. Today, I'd like to highlight three things. First, why we are winning and what's our competitive advantage? Next, international is a growth lever and finally highlight the global adoption of Safe Haven as our enterprise platform. As I said, it's now showing up in our numbers big time. So why are we winning? What's our competitive advantage? Please turn to slow. Here's what makes our Safe Haven platform important, unique and enterprise grade. When it seems there are countless clean room technologies, the answer is simple. Our Safe Haven platform brings together things others can't, or they are just learning about. Neutrality, we don't buy or sell media. We are cross cloud and enable our Safe Haven clients to collaborate with anyone regardless of their data infrastructure. Privacy, we are the leader in global privacy and privacy enhancing technology. The sophistication and importance of our Data Fleets acquisition cannot be overstated. Identity federation and activation. Our approach in the scale of our integrations are hallmark of LiveRamp. Next, future proof, with ATS, we are helping global brands, future proof, their approach to identity and allowing them to do this consistently across all geographies and finally scale. We are setting the pace with permission based collaboration technology. Remember we created the category and have been building and testing our Safe Haven platform for more five years. So what does this mean to a brand? Please turn to Slide 17. These are but a few of the use cases, our platform is enabling for a typical retailer. Safe Haven is not a single application, rather a real enterprise offering that provides our clients seamless data connectivity. It creates common identity across their internal data sets and further leverages identity to then connect their data to their advertising, marketing and customer service applications. And finally, it provides a platform for collaboration with their partner ecosystem. This is why we are winning and why LiveRamp Safe Haven is becoming essential data infrastructure. No one can do what we can do. Safe Haven and international, the new growth lever is taking shape. Our Safe Haven platform coupled with ATS has opened the world to LiveRamp. Let me share an example of a recent win jd.com. Please turn to Slide 18. Jd.Com is the second largest e-commerce platform in the world and is now using our Safe Haven platform to collaborate with their CPG partners. Our solution will be hosted on the JD cloud and available through their marketplace offering, again evidencing our multi-cloud capability. Jd.Com will be using ATS and Ramp ID to make this possible. Like with other international brands, including Carrefour, boots, orange, indeed.com, Unilever, P&G, Kelloggs and our other Safe Haven customers, this opens up a world of possibilities for jd.com. Using the JD cloud platform, leading global CPGs can leverage their first party data on JD, keep it secure and private using Ramp I'd, link on and online activities and access a Safe Haven environment for data collaboration. Internationally, this is now showing up in our numbers. Safe Haven now represents over 50% of our international ARR. Our international ARR is up 17% this quarter, 35% ex-wholesale and international bookings on a trailing 12 month basis are up close to a 100%. In summary, international is fast becoming an important long term growth lever for LiveRamp. Global Safe Haven adoption. Next, Safe Haven adoption is not just showing up internationally, but also in our overall numbers too. Please turn to Slide 19. In a very short period, Safe Haven is working its way into our installed base. It's the data enablement platform of the future. And as Scott mentioned, we're thrilled to welcome Walmart as a Safe Haven customer. Consider the following, Safe Haven now represents approximately 20% of our ARR. Our average customer ARR is over 1 million and now in the US, we have over 60% share of big box retail. This is particularly important given the explosion in retail media and perhaps most importantly, we are benefiting from a strong global network effect. Again, no one can do what we can do. We are playing competitive advantage and we are enterprise grade. Now on to guidance. Please turn to Slide 13 and 14. For the full year, we are raising our guidance. We now expect revenue of approximately $526 million or roughly 19% growth and non-GAAP operating income of approximately $41 million. For Q4, this would imply revenue of approximately $139 million a non-GAAP operating income of roughly $2 million. A few other callouts for Q4. Subscription net retention to be roughly 106, give or take. The sequential decline is being driven by an expected lower relative contribution from usage based revenue. In Q4, we expect wholesale contraction to impact this metric by roughly eight points. Gross margin to be roughly 75%. And finally, as you model Q4, the sequential increase in OpEx is largely being driven by one time seasonal items. Now let me conclude with a couple final thoughts. First, make no mistake, the trends are clear. Amidst a ton of industry change over the last several years, LiveRamp has delivered and finally, this was another powerful quarter. Amazon now joins Microsoft and 500 other publishers using ATS. Walmart and jd.com are now safe Haven customers. In the exploding world, the retail media networks and data collaboration, our Safe Haven enterprise platform is the global standard. On behalf of all my LiveRamp colleagues, thanks to our customers and to you, our share owners. Operator, we will now open the call to questions.