Stephen Vintz
Analyst · Goldman Sachs
Thanks, Amit. As Amit mentioned earlier, we're very pleased with our results for the first quarter, highlighted by attractive top line growth, a sizable beat in non-GAAP EPS and exceptional free cash flow, which is a testament to the inherent operating leverage in our recurring revenue model. I'll discuss our results for the quarter momentarily. But first, please note that all financial results we will discuss today are on a non-GAAP financial measure basis, with the exception of revenue. As Erin mentioned at the start of this call, GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release issued earlier today, which is posted on our website. Now on to our results. Revenue for the quarter was $123.2 million, which represents 20% year-over-year growth. Revenue in the quarter exceeded the midpoint of our guided range by approximately $4 million. Our percentage of recurring revenue remains high at 94%, which is primarily a result of our annual prepaid subscription model. Revenue in the quarter was aided by strong demand for both new and renewal business. In terms of new business, we had 331 new enterprise platform customers, which is up from the 319 we added in Q1 of last year. Of particular note, this is the first quarter since the start of the pandemic in which new enterprise platform adds are up on a year-over-year basis. In terms of large deals, we added 29 net new 6-figure customers in the quarter, which is also up year-over-year. This brings the total number of customer spending in excess of $100,000 annually to 866, a 30% increase year-over-year. This demand is also reflected in our calculated current billings. CCB, defined as the change in deferred revenue plus revenue recognized in the quarter, grew 20% year-over-year to $119.5 million. As Amit highlighted earlier, we attribute the strength in the top line to the growing importance of Cyber Exposure, further accentuated by recent SolarWinds and Microsoft attacks. Cyber Exposure is also a key component of digital transformation, which continues to be a top priority for many organizations. While some of our customers took a measured pace of investment last year as a result of the pandemic, we are starting to see early indications of a stronger spending environment attributed to pent-up demand. Some early indications of this demand surfaced in Q1 in our middle market business, where sales cycles tend to be much shorter compared to those in the large enterprise market. The good news here is that enterprise performance was strong in the first quarter and has healthy pipeline and activity levels that could potentially further benefit from this trend. It's also worth noting that we're seeing an accelerated adoption of Tenable.io and associated add-on modules that is positively impacting our cross-sell efforts, which will be further rated by the launch of Tenable.ep, which commands a notably higher selling price versus our core VM offering. This also positively impacted our net dollar renewal rate. I'll now turn to operating expenses. which include incremental investments, offset in part by continued efficiencies in our business. I'll start with gross margin, which was 83% this quarter and 84% last quarter. Our gross margin continues to be very healthy and reflects increased investment in our public cloud infrastructure to support a broader set of predictive analytics and a more expansive data lake. As a reminder, we plan to continue to make incremental cloud investments throughout the year, including all said related costs. As such, we expect our gross margin for the full year 2021 to moderate by approximately 100 basis points, reflecting higher cloud adoption. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter was $52.3 million, which is up from $50.8 million last quarter. Sales and marketing increased sequentially, primarily due to incremental investment in demand generation activities and sales headcount-related costs, including an increased number of quota-carrying sales reps. This quarter represents the second consecutive quarter of increased sales and marketing investment, which we attribute to the increasing confidence in our business and a broader base of demand with the pandemic starting to abate. Despite the higher levels of investment, sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue was approximately 42% or 50 basis points better than last quarter. R&D expense for the quarter was $22.7 million, which is up from $20.4 million last quarter. As a percent of revenue, R&D expense was 18% compared to 17% last quarter. Given our best-of-breed approach, innovation remains a top priority, and we plan to continue to invest throughout the year. G&A expense was $13.7 million compared to $12.5 million last quarter. As a percent of revenue, G&A expense was 11% this quarter, which is flat compared to last quarter. Income from operations was $13.9 million in Q1 compared to $15.4 million last quarter. Operating margin was positive 11% for Q1 compared to positive 13% last quarter. I'd also like to provide some commentary regarding the tax provision. As a reminder, our Q1 outlook provided in February assumed a non-GAAP tax provision of $1.5 million. However, discrete benefits recognized in the quarter in foreign jurisdictions that were previously not contemplated actually swung us to a non-GAAP tax benefit of approximately $1 million. Now all of this resulted in significant EPS upside for the first quarter as our non-GAAP earnings per share was $0.13, which was $0.08 better than the midpoint of our guided range. The beat was a combination of better-than-expected top line results, good cost management despite the incremental investments in our business and the discrete tax items I just mentioned. Now let's turn to the balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $340 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments, an increase of approximately $48 million compared to last quarter. Total deferred revenue at March 31, 2021, was approximately $429 million, giving us a lot of visibility into revenue headed into Q2 and the remainder of the year. Turning to cash flow. We generated $37.6 million of positive free cash flow in the quarter, which compared quite favorably to free cash flow of $3.9 million in Q1 last year. Over the last 12 months, we've generated approximately $78 million of positive free cash flow. With high recurring revenue, high gross margins and high renewal rates, we feel confident that we can continue to generate attractive levels of free cash flow while continuing to invest in the business. That said, Q1 does tend to have higher collections given the seasonally strong bookings in Q4. So free cash flow is expected to moderate in Q2. Plus we will have the acquisition-related costs and the incremental OpEx associated with Alsid. This is all expected to result in modestly positive free cash flow in Q2 with higher levels in the second half of the year. With the results of the quarter behind us, I'd like to discuss our outlook for the second quarter and full year 2021. While our assumption is that the health crisis will continue to create some uncertainty, our strong start to the year gives us greater confidence in the business environment now versus last quarter. I'd also like to provide some commentary on Alsid, which closed yesterday. When we announced the acquisition in February, we indicated that Alsid would add 1 point of incremental CCB and revenue growth and $15 million to $20 million of incremental OpEx for the remainder of the year. Our outlook for Alsid today has not changed. In Q2, Alsid is expected to have minimal CCB and revenue impact, given sales cycles and the write-down of the acquired deferred revenue, while operating expenses will include 2 months of activity. With that said, I will review the outlook for Q2 and the full year 2021. With the second quarter, we currently expect revenue to be in the range of $124 million to $126 million. Non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $7 million to $8 million. Non-GAAP net income to be in the range of $5 million to $6 million, assuming a provision for income taxes of $1.5 million. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.04 to $0.05, assuming 114.5 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding. And for the full year, we currently expect calculated current billings to be in the range of $575 million to $585 million. Revenue to be in the range of $520 million to $524 million. Non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $34 million to $38 million; and non-GAAP net income to be in the range of $28 million to $32 million, assuming a provision for income taxes of $3.5 million. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.24 to $0.28, assuming 115.5 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding. As a matter of clarity, the guidance we are providing today reflects not only the expected contribution from Alsid, but also our Q1 beat and $1 million improvement in revenue and a $0.02 raise in EPS for Tenable on a stand-alone basis. In summary, we're pleased with the results of the quarter, which gives us increasing confidence that we remain well positioned to deliver compelling growth and profitability over the long term. And now I'll turn the call back to Amit for some closing comments.