Tricia Plouf
Analyst · Evercore ISI. Please proceed
Thanks, Darryl, and good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased with our second quarter results, which exceeded our expectations. Our over-performance was led by strong monthly retention and solid growth additions in our subscription business and continued strong growth in our other business. Total revenue for the quarter was $168.3 million, up 43% year-over-year. Within our subscription business, revenue was $120.4 million in the quarter, up 30% year-over-year, or 27% on a constant currency basis. Total enrolled subscription pets increased 22% year-over-year to approximately 643,000 pets as of June 30. Average monthly retention, which is calculated on a trailing 12-month basis was 98.72% compared to 98.66% in the prior year period, which we attribute to our ongoing investment in service levels. As a reminder, our blended retention rate is influenced by our mix of business during periods of accelerated growth, first-year retention may act as a headwind to overall retention. Monthly average revenue per pet for the quarter was $63.69, an increase of 7.2% year-over-year or 4.4% on a constant currency basis. In the first half of this year, we saw ARPU increased 7%, and the cost of paying veterinary invoices on a per-pet basis also increased approximately 7%. While we continue to make progress on our pricing initiatives, we currently estimate needing an additional 1% in ARPU increases to ensure that we are pricing more consistently to our 71% value proposition. Our subscription cost of revenue includes the cost of paying veterinary invoices and variable expenses. As a percentage of subscription revenue, the cost of paying veterinary invoices for our subscription business was 72%, and variable expenses increased slightly to 10%, both reflecting continued investment in people, systems and claims automation capabilities. We continue to be encouraged by the impact we are seeing to retention from these initiatives, which are designed to deliver a more differentiated member experience and over time to reduce frictional costs. Our other business segment is comprised of revenue from other products and services that generally have a B2B component and different margin profiles than that of our subscription business. In total, other business revenue was $47.9 million for the quarter, an increase of 88% year-over-year, due primarily to an increase in pets enrolled within this segment. Cost of revenue for our other business segment was $44 million compared to $23.5 million in the prior year period. The year-over-year increase is consistent with the increase in segment revenue over the same period. Total fixed expenses, which are shared services that support both our subscription and other line of business, were 4% of revenue in the quarter, an improvement from 5% in the prior year period. After the cost of paying veterinary invoices, variable expenses and fixed expenses, we calculate our adjusted operating income. As Darryl mentioned, we view our adjusted operating income as the critical measure of our scale and discipline, since it represents the profit we generate before investing in growth and other strategic initiatives. For our subscription business, our target adjusted operating margin remains at 15%. In the quarter, our total adjusted operating income was $18.5 million, which is up 32% over the prior year period and our total net loss was $9.2 million, which I will discuss in more detail momentarily. Approximately, 90% of our adjusted operating income was generated from our subscription business during the quarter at $16.6 million, or 14% of revenue. The variance from our 15% target was primarily due to the investments in our member experience we discussed earlier. We have made the strategic decision to invest in these initiatives in the near term as they drive retention and referrals, but we do expect them to scale longer term. During the quarter, we invested $17.1 million of our adjusted operating income to acquire approximately 56,000 new subscription pets. This resulted in a PAC of $284 in the quarter, an estimated 34% internal rate of return for a single average pet within our internal rate of return guardrails. Given our strong balance sheet and scale, we are also investing in new product development and international expansion. These initiatives are included in development expenses as they are pre-revenue and were $1.1 million in the quarter. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA of $0.2 million in the quarter compared to $5.5 million in the prior year period. Depreciation and amortization were $3.2 million during the quarter, an increase of $1.4 million from the prior year period. This increase was primarily due to the amortization of assets from our software acquisition in the fourth quarter. Total stock-based comp expense was $6.5 million during the quarter, up from $2.2 million in the prior year period. This is in line with our projection of $67 million in stock-based compensation per quarter for the remainder of this year. As a result, net loss was $9.2 million, or a loss of $0.23 per basic and diluted share, compared to net income of $1.4 million, or $0.04 per basic and diluted share in the prior year period. As compared to the prior year period, the increase in stock-based compensation impacted net loss by $0.11. And the increased depreciation and amortization impacted net loss by $0.04 per share. I'll now turn to cash flow. Operating cash flow in the quarter was negative $2.2 million compared to positive operating cash flow of $4.9 million in the prior year period. The year-over-year decrease in operating cash flow reflects our accelerated pet growth and investment in development initiatives I discussed earlier. We have also increased our investment in capital expenditures compared to the prior year totaling $2.9 million during the quarter. The increased capital expenditure is primarily related to software, driving our member experience and new product initiatives. This resulted in free cash flow in the quarter of negative $5.1 million. At quarter end, we held cash and investments of over $219 million and no debt. I'll now turn to the outlook for the full year of 2021, which we are updating to account for our over-performance in the first half of the year, including benefits from FX. We now expect total revenue in the range of $687 million to $692 million. Subscription revenue for the full year is expected to be in the range of $495 million to $498 million, representing 28% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. At these revenue levels, we would expect total adjusted operating income of around $76 million, an increase of 34% over the prior year, with over 90% being generated from our subscription business. Of the $76 million in adjusted operating income, we would expect to invest approximately $69 million in acquiring pets within our subscription business, which add our targeted internal rates of return, results in a PAC of around $280. We believe the most value is created through the compounding effects of cost effective pet acquisition, while operating within our internal rate of return guardrails of 30% to 40%. For the full year of 2021, we continue to expect to spend $3 million to $5 million on development initiatives discussed earlier, as well as on our other business pet acquisition. For the third quarter, total revenue is expected to be in the range of $177 million to $179 million. Subscription revenue is expected to be in the range of $127 million to $128 million, representing 28% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. Also keep in mind, that our revenue projections are subject to conversion rate fluctuations between the US and Canadian currencies. For our third quarter and full year guidance, we used an 80% conversion rate in our projections, which was the approximate rate at the end of July. Thank you for your time today. Operator, we will now open up the call for questions.