Stephen Vintz
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question
Thanks Amit. As Amit mentioned, we're pleased with our results for the first quarter and remain excited about our long-term opportunity for cyber exposure. However, we're currently cautious around the near-term environment and macro uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Let's talk about our results for the quarter, then turn our attention to guidance. First, please note that with the exception of revenue, all financial results we will discuss today are non-GAAP financial measures, unless otherwise stated. As Andrea mentioned at the start of this call, GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release issued earlier today and posted on our website. Now, onto our results for the quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $102.6 million, which represents 20% growth over the same period last year. Revenue in the quarter exceeded the midpoint of our guidance range by approximately $2 million. Revenue was aided by strong execution across the globe, notably in EMEA and some large deals in APAC. As a reminder, Tenable has a very sizeable international footprint with operations in over 30 countries and customers in over 160. This gives us a very broad go-to-market capability that is not dependent upon closing a few large individual transactions in the quarter to achieve growth. Over time, we've been able to achieve growth on our customer base to over 30,000 by selling annual prepaid subscriptions, which has resulted in 93% recurring revenue. Calculated current billings defined as the change in current deferred revenue plus total revenue recognized in the quarter grew 22% year-over-year to $99.2 million. We added 319 new enterprise platform customers this quarter and 24 net new six-figure customers. This brings the total number of customers spending in excess of $100,000 annually to 665. The takeaway here is we achieved solid growth in new enterprise platform customers, but less of the new logo deals were large six-figure deals. Activity levels remain healthy in the quarter and there was a good customer engagement. But the uncertain economic environment did impact our ability to close some deals in the quarter. However, we were pleased to see the conversion on many new opportunities that were advanced in our pipeline and across various industries and geographies. I'll now turn to expenses and profitability, where we have seen significant reduction in non-GAAP op loss. Gross margin was 83% this quarter down from 85% in Q1 last year and up from 82% last quarter. Our gross margin reflects increased demand for our cloud-based Tenable I/O platform, which we are delivering more efficiently as we scale. Let's turn to operating expenses. Sales and marketing was $55.4 million this quarter compared to $49.3 million in the first quarter last year and $57.7 million last quarter. This represents 54% of revenue for the quarter, which was down from 61% in Q1 2019 and 59% in Q4 of 2019. It's worth noting that the first quarter reflects continued investment in sales, primarily related to hiring more quarter carrying sales reps, as well as cost for a worldwide sales kickoff and industry events such as RSA. This was offset by lower non-capitalizable sales commissions relative to seasonally strong fourth quarter sales and to a lesser degree lower spend on travel. Further and perhaps more importantly, we realized leverage in the quarter from the optimization of sales overhead in our target markets, which we expect to be a source of leverage in the future. R&D was $23.9 million compared to $19.9 million in the first quarter last year and $20.4 million last quarter. As a percent of revenue, R&D was 23% compared to 25% in the same period last year and 21% last quarter. Sequentially higher spend reflects the full quarter impact of our investment in our operational technology offering via the acquisition of Indegy, as well as further development activities to enhance Lumin and other cloud data products. G&A was $13.8 million compared to $11.9 million in the first quarter last year and $12.6 million in Q4 2019. As a percent of revenue G&A was 13% this quarter last quarter and down from 15% last year. Non-GAAP loss from operations was $7.7 million compared to a loss of $13.2 million in Q1 last year and $11.1 million last quarter. Non-GAAP operating margin was negative 8% compared to negative 16% for the first quarter last year and negative 11% last quarter. Overall, we are very pleased with a significant progress we've made in our operating margin, which reflects our ability to efficiently scale our business and we believe positions us well for continued improvement for the remainder of the year. All of this translated to significant EPS upside as our non-GAAP net loss per share from the first quarter was $0.09, which was $0.09 to $0.10 better than expected. To summarize, $0.02 to $0.03 of the beat [ph] was attributed to better than expected revenue, while approximately $0.07 resulted from better operational efficiency and lower costs. Now, let's turn to the balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $226.7 million in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. Turning to cash flow, we achieve $3.9 million of positive free cash flow, which is our first quarter of positive cash flow as a public company. This compares favorably to a free cash flow burn of $3.2 million in Q1 of last year. As a side note, the construction of our new headquarters is progressing and nearing completion with an estimated $5 million of net cash backs remaining across Q2 and Q3. With the results of the quarter behind us, I'd like to discuss our outlook for Q2 and the rest of the year. I'll start by echoing Amit's comments. With over 90% recurring revenue, 80% gross margin, high renewal rates, and strong unit economics we're confident in our progress towards becoming a Rule of 40 company. A leading indicator of the strategy is that we turn free cash flow positive this quarter and expect to generate positive cash flow for the whole year and beyond. Given the fluidity of the current environment, we will continue to manage the business in a disciplined way and we'll make changes as necessary. With that as a backdrop, let's turn to guidance. For the second quarter, we currently expect revenue to be in the range of $101 million to $103 million. Non-GAAP loss from operations to be in the range of $5.5 million to $3.5 million, non-GAAP net loss to be in the range of $6 million to $4 million, non-GAAP net loss per share to be in the range of $0.06 to $0.04, assuming 99.8 million weighted average common shares outstanding. While we're able to provide this outlook for Q2, we have noticeably less visibility for the full year, especially for calculated current billings. CCB is not only a reflection of new ACV bookings in the quarter, but also early renewals and multi-year prepaid deals. Since the crisis began, we have been stressed testing our model and running a number of scenarios based on various assumptions. Given the level of uncertainty around the duration of the health crisis and the rate and pace of economic recovery, and the extent to which all of these factors will affect our customers and the industries in which they operate, there's a wide range of outcomes for the full year which we are confident we are prepared for. However, assigning I got arranged for the full year just does not feel appropriate. Our expectation for our business in the current environment is as follows; growth in new logos will likely be lower. Upsells into our installed base is also expected to be slower, but feel less of an impact. Renewal rates are expected to remain healthy, but will likely experience a modest decrease from our high historical levels. While there's uncertainty created by the current environment, what we do know is that we will remain nimble and deploy our go-to-market resources where we see opportunity as the global recovery unfolds. We will also continue to revisit the efficacy of our cost base to ensure we strike the right balance between investment and our desired operating leverage. Before turning back to Amit, I want to provide some perspective on what we're seeing so far in the second quarter. Overall, we are pleased with the size and maturity of our pipeline and activity levels. But keep in mind, like many software companies, we're backend loaded and our performance will depend on how we yield against those opportunities. In summary, Tenable remains well-positioned to deliver strong growth and profitability over the long-term. We've developed a comprehensive foundational cyber exposure platform that provides significant value to our customers. We are potently managing the business through the current challenging macro-economic environment, while continuing to execute on our long term strategy. We believe our ability to remain on track to generate positive cash flow for the full year is a sign of the strength in our business. And now I'll turn the call back to Amit for some closing comments.