Kevin Jones
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Go ahead Bryan
Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. I'll discuss quarterly highlights and touch on some customer case studies, and then Amar will go into detail on the financial results. Turning to Slide 5. As a best-in-class, pure-play cloud solutions company, Rackspace Technology is well positioned in a market that is booming. Over the past five years, our cloud partners, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure have grown their revenues tenfold. In the third quarter alone, AWS grew 39%, Azure grew 48% and Google Cloud grew 45%. To put things in context, in 2020, incremental new cloud spending with our hyperscaler partners was $22 billion. That total is expected to grow to $34 billion in 2021. And next year, analysts estimate that new cloud spending will grow again to approximately $44 billion. As they move their business to the cloud, customers are grappling with the pace of change, especially midsized and commercial businesses, and state and local governments. They need help and Rackspace Technology is poised to be their partner of choice, wherever they are in their cloud journey. In the third quarter, we took several steps to solidify our market-leading position. The financial results reflect this. Revenue, core revenue, non-GAAP operating profit and non-GAAP EPS all grew at a healthy year-over-year clip. We delivered strong operating cash flow of over $100 million for the third quarter in a row. For the first three quarters of 2021, operating cash flow is now in excess of $300 million. We continue to introduce timely new product and service offerings that help our customers get the most out of their cloud investments. Our new elastic engineering model has seen fast adoption, and we have expanded it to several new areas. And we are very excited about the launch of Rackspace Data Freedom, a new storage solution based on robust Rackspace-developed technology that gives customers a cloud-adjacent storage option to manage costs and increase data fluidity across multiple cloud platforms. Our broad customer base puts our finger on the pulse of the cloud market. Our service development strategy is driven by those insights. Because of this, Rackspace Data Freedom is targeted at a massive wide space in the cloud market and addresses a pain point that we see and hear about every day from our customers. Having our ears so close to such a diverse customer base, especially midsized and smaller businesses, is a key Rackspace advantage. On the ESG front, earlier this month, we launched our first comprehensive ESG report since returning to the public markets. I'll talk more about this later in the presentation. We are investing in our employees and culture to differentiate Rackspace Technology as an employer of choice in the current war for talent. This helps us attract prospective employees and retain our most valuable assets are dedicated Rackers. These investments are delivering results. In the third quarter alone, we were recognized as one of the 50 most engaged workplaces by Achievers, a top 50 workplace in the country for Latinas by Latina Style, and a Top Place to Work for Mothers, Fathers and Parents working remotely by Parents at Work. Turning to Slide 6. We continue to deliver revenue growth well into the double digits. Total revenue was up 12% and core revenue was up 15% compared to last year's third quarter. Non-GAAP operating profit was up 6%, and non-GAAP EPS was up 32%. We expect a strong fourth quarter for bookings and believe we will hit our full year new business bookings target of $1 billion. In the third quarter, new sales bookings were $200 million. On Slide 7, a key growth strategy for Rackspace Technology is to forge partnerships that bring best-in-class cloud solutions to our customers. Accordingly, in the third quarter, we strengthened our relationships with leading cloud solutions companies such as Snowflake, Datadog, Cloudflare and Platform 9 partner in Q3. We are investing in staffing up our team of Snowflake-certified engineers over the next few quarters. With Datadog, we were recently named a Gold Tier Partner and we're working closely with them to develop mutual go-to-market sales motions. We are developing a tailored Elastic Engineering service for Cloudflare to help our customers customize, optimize and manage their security platforms. As I noted on our most recent earnings call, channel partner development is a priority for Cloudflare in 2022. As you may remember, earlier this year, we invested in Platform 9, a SaaS-managed Kubernetes platform that builds and operates clusters across edge, private and public clouds. For Platform 9, we are bringing these solutions to market to help make Kubernetes simple to own, operate and scale. Strong partnerships like these and creative joint go-to-market solutions are exciting growth opportunities for Rackspace Technology alongside managed public cloud and our private cloud offerings. Now I'd like to share some case studies demonstrating the value that Rackspace Technology delivers for its customers. First, one from the Middle East. On Slide 8, BFC Group is a major Fintech company based in Bahrain, providing global money transfers, foreign exchange and currency and payment solutions. BFC needed to modernize its core applications to better support a physical business model, while accelerating a digital transformation and preparing for international expansion. At recommendation of AWS, BFC Group selected Rackspace Technology as a support partner for migrating its core application to the cloud and providing ongoing management and consultancy services. Using a comprehensive solution, including AWS and a long-term contract for Rackspace Security Essentials, we helped the company create a flexible and stable platform, allowing it to focus on what it does best, helping customers move their money around the world. BFC Group saw an immediate uplift in critical measures of performance such as transactions processed per second and improved customer experience. On Slide 9, Arthrex is a privately-held medical device company based in Florida. Arthrex is a pioneer in the field of arthroscopic surgery and has developed over 13,000 innovative products addressing a range of orthopedic procedures. Arthrex wanted to reimagine and modernize the post-surgery experience by creating a digital communications portal that will give surgeons customizable templates that could quickly populate and make available for patients to access on demand. In just 12 months, Rackspace Technology built this communications portal on AWS alongside a mobile app to download media and metadata from Arthrex's medical imaging technology. The solution both increased patient satisfaction and reduced the administrative burden on surgeons. Turning to Slide 10. Last week, Rackspace Technology published its first comprehensive ESG report since going public in 2020. Suffice it to say, investing in ESG has always been part of the company's DNA and is an extremely high priority for me, our executive leadership team and our Board of Directors. ESG is not something we do because it's fashionable. It is part and parcel of our existence as a company and is rooted in how we work every day. The ESG report demonstrates that Rackspace Technology is 100% committed to being a thoughtful steward of our planet's natural resources and an employer of choice for the most talented professionals in the technology industry. Additionally, it highlights our focus on being a force for good in the communities we serve and a transparent shareholder and customer-focused publicly-traded company. This report is simply the first step in providing our constituents with improved transparency into our ESG initiatives. We are devoted to continuous improvement in this area, and those efforts will be fully visible to shareholders as we move forward. I encourage you to download and read the ESG Report, which can be found on our website. Now Amar will take you through the financials. Amar?