Jeffrey Kalowski
Analyst · Barclays Capital. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Corey. We're pleased with our strong performance in the fourth quarter with results that exceeded both our original guidance and our preliminary results announced on January 23. Total Q4 revenue was $57.7 million, an increase of 28% year-over-year. Product revenue was $34 million, increasing 38% year-over-year, driven by strong bookings in both VM and IDR with expanding recurring revenue. In addition, we had a onetime benefit from the impact of revenue previously deferred in 2017 that met the criteria for revenue recognition in the fourth quarter. Maintenance and support revenue was $12.5 million, increasing 20% as we saw an ongoing migration of perpetual customers to our cloud products, and our professional services revenue was $11.2 million, an increase of 13% year-over-year. We continue to have high visibility into our revenue forecast with 84% of our Q4 revenue having been on the balance sheet as of the first day of the quarter. And 70% of our Q4 revenue was subscription-based recurring revenue versus 66% in Q4 2016. And our recurring revenue grew 36% year-over-year. Value of our annualized recurring revenue increased to $164.9 million at year-end, a 36% increase year-over-year. You did see that about half of our new VM bookings during Q4 were InsightVM. And with the announcement of our shift to subscription-only for most of our customers, we expect that the majority of our product bookings going forward will be subscription-based. As a reminder, we define ARR as the annualized value of all recurring revenue-related contracts in place at the end of the quarter. During our transition from perpetual to SaaS, we believe this metric is the most relevant when evaluating the health of our business. Total deferred revenue grew 33% year-over-year to $224.5 million at the end of Q4. Calculated billings for the fourth quarter were $93.6 million, up 44% year-over-year with broad-based strength highlighted by another strong quarter from IDR and ongoing strength in the VM market. Average contract lengths were 25 months for total billings, which compares to 24 months in Q4 of the prior year. Consistent with what we experienced in Q3, in Q4, we were again pleased to see the customers for InsightVM, as well as our other SaaS offerings committed to more multiyear deals than we had forecast, resulting in higher contract wins. As we said at our Investor and Analyst Day in December, given the mixed shift from perpetual to SaaS, our billings are resulting in more recurring revenue and greater lifetime customer value. Also as Corey mentioned, 2018 quotas for our sales reps are now based upon ARR. Consequently, billings and contract lengths will no longer be a meaningful comparison to prior periods during this transition as they don't capture the benefit of a higher subscription mix and growth of our annual recurring revenue. Looking at the business geographically, North America revenue in Q4 was $49.5 million, an increase of 30% year-over-year. Rest of world revenue increased 18% year-over-year and contributed 14% of total revenue in the fourth quarter compared to 16% in Q4 2016. While our rest of world revenue growth was a little slower this quarter due to a large services deal recognized in Q4 '16, we had a strong Q4 and 2017 as our bookings outside of North America grew much better than the overall business. And we will continue to invest globally to drive momentum in this under-penetrated market. Our customer count increased by 13% year-over-year. And we ended Q4 with more than 7,000 customers globally. We again experienced higher ASPs through better customer penetration and more product multi-product sales, more large deals and increased recurring revenue, which are important parts of our growth strategy. And overall, we had strong growth in new customer bookings, and as Corey mentioned, we had cross-selling bookings growth of approximately 60%. Our renewal rate increased to 122% in Q4, driven by our strong up-sells and cross-sells. And our expiring renewal rate, which measures the renewal of the prior year's revenue run rate, was 89% in the fourth quarter. Turning back to the P&L. Non-GAAP total gross margin for Q4 was 72% compared with 75% in the prior year period. Non-GAAP product gross margins were 78% in Q4 and as expected, were down from 87% in the prior year period due to increased usage of our SaaS platform and managed services offerings. Our non-GAAP maintenance and support gross margin increased to 84% in Q4 from 83% in the prior period. In aggregate, our product plus maintenance gross margins were 80% in Q4 as compared to 86% in the prior period and 82% in Q3 2017. As we migrate more customers to the platform, we think it is important to continue to look at this gross margin on a combined basis. Our non-GAAP professional services gross margin was 41% in Q4 compared to 40% in the prior year period. Consistent with 2016, Q4 margins benefited due to a higher percentage of stand-alone or unbundled services being performed and recognized within the quarter. As we said at Investor and Analyst Day, going forward, we expect our total gross margin to stay in the low to mid-70s on both a 605 and 606 basis. Reviewing our Q4 non-GAAP operating expenses. R&D expenses were $12.1 million or 21% of total revenue, flat from 21% in the prior year period. In Q4 of this year, R&D expenses were reduced by approximately $400,000 due to capitalized internal-use software costs relating to our SaaS product development. We will continue to invest and innovate to support our SecOps platform. Sales and marketing expenses were $30.3 million or 53% of revenue in Q4 compared to 52% in the prior year period, mainly driven by higher headcount and higher commissions, given the strength of our Q4 billings. We remain focused on investing in our sales team to drive higher recurring revenues as we build scale and leverage in the business and drive to projected non-GAAP operating profitability in 2019. G&A expense was $6.9 million or 12% of revenue in Q4, an improvement compared to 14% of revenue in the prior year period. As a result, Q4 non-GAAP operating loss was $7.6 million or a margin of negative 13% compared to a non-GAAP operating loss of $5.5 million or a margin of negative 12% in Q4 2016. While our operating loss was within our guidance range for Q4, the strong bookings resulted in higher commission expenses, which are booked upfront and exceeded the revenue benefit we realized in the quarter. Otherwise, we would have exceeded the high end of our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $6.3 million for the fourth quarter compared to a loss of $4.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2016. Non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.17 in Q4 2017 compared to a non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.13 in Q4 2016. Our operating cash flow for Q4 was $8.2 million. We ended Q4 total cash and investments of $92 million compared with $85 million as of September 30, 2017. Cash and investments for the year was approximately flat as we generated $13.3 million of operating cash flow, offset by the $15 million that we paid for the acquisition of Komand. And in January, we raised $31 million from the sale of our stock in our secondary offering. To quickly summarize full year 2017, total revenue was $200.9 million, increasing 28% year-over-year. 2017 non-GAAP operating loss was $26.3 million, an improvement from $29.3 million in 2016. For the full year 2017, our non-GAAP operating loss margin improved to 13.1% from 18.6% in 2016. 2017 non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.60. For the full year 2017, cash flow from operations was $13.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year was a loss of $21.5 million, an improvement compared to a loss of $25 million in 2016. Moving to our Q1 and full year 2018 guidance. For 2018, we are adopting ASC 606 under the modified retrospective method, which means that we will report under both 606 and 605 each quarter during 2018. In order to provide some additional transparency during this transition, we'll give guidance under both ASC 606 and ASC 605 for revenues and non-GAAP offerings. As we previewed at our Analyst Day, you will see an impact primarily to our revenues and our sales expense as we move to ASC 606. The reduction in 2018 revenue under ASC 606 relative to ASC 605 is due to reduced ratable perpetual revenues caused by the extension of amortization periods from the contract length, which has historically been approximately 2 years to the customers' estimated economic life of 5 years and the loss of bundled services revenues, which were delivered as of December 31, 2017. However, were recorded in deferred revenue recognized ratably over the contract period under ASC 605. As services were already delivered, no revenue will be recognized under ASC 606. These impacts to revenue are anticipated to be greatest in the first quarter of 2018 and to decrease throughout the year. The actual differences in revenue under ASC 606 and ASC 605 is subject to the dollar value of our 2018 bookings, the mix between subscription and perpetual and contract lengths of perpetual deals. Operating expenses under ASC 606 relative to ASC 605 will be reduced by the capitalization and amortization of sales commissions. With that, here's our guidance. For both Q1 and the full year 2018, we anticipate ARR to grow over 30%. For Q1 2018 on a 606 basis, we anticipate total revenue to be in the range of $50.1 million to $52.1 million as the impact of the adoption of ASC 606 will be greatest in Q1. We anticipate non-GAAP operating loss to be in the range of $10.1 million to $8.8 million. We anticipate non-GAAP net loss per share for Q4 2017 to be in the range of $0.22 to $0.19. This is based on an anticipated 45.1 million weighted average shares outstanding. On a 605 basis, we anticipate total revenue to be in the range of $54.6 million to $56 million. This equates to year-over-year growth of 21% to 24%. We anticipate non-GAAP operating loss to be in the range of $7.4 million to $6.5 million. For the full year 2018 on a 606 basis, we anticipate total revenue to be in the range of $225 million to $234 million. This equates to an impact of approximately $11 million to $14 million from ASC 605. We anticipate non-GAAP operating loss to be in the range of $26 million to $20 million. We anticipate non-GAAP net loss per share for Q4 2017 to be in the range of $0.55 to $0.42. This is based on an anticipated 46.4 million weighted average shares outstanding. On a 605 basis, we anticipate total revenue to be in the range of $239 million to $245 million. This equates to year-over-year growth of 19% to 22%. We anticipate non-GAAP operating loss to be in the range of $25 million to $21 million. We also continue to estimate the shift in product mix will impact our growth in operating cash flow. And as a result, we expect 2018 operating cash flow to approximate 2017. As we transition our business to subscription and focus on ARR growth, billings will no longer be a good indicator of the growth in our business. Therefore, we will not be providing guidance for billings for 2018, although we do anticipate slight growth for the year. With that, we appreciate your time and support. And now I will turn the call back to Corey for closing comments. Corey?