Lior Shemesh
Analyst · Barclays. Your line is open
Thanks, Nir. Our continued focus in delivering the best-in-class products, particularly innovations within our AI suite and Studio platform, as well as solid business fundamentals, resulted in accelerated growth this quarter. With Rule of 40 now well within reach this year, I'm even more excited about the growth opportunities and continued momentum expected in 2025 and beyond. I will share more about our updated full-year outlook and general thinking around our go-forward financial algorithm shortly. First, turning to results. In the third quarter, bookings grew to $450 million or 16% growth year-over-year. This marks our third consecutive quarter of bookings growth acceleration, driven by increased Studio adoption, early tailwinds from our AI offering and stronger-than-expected commerce growth. Additionally, we witnessed better-than-expected renewal bookings from our high-intent users, higher trending ARPS, and solid conversion. Q3 revenue growth also accelerated, finishing at $445 million, up 13% year-over-year. Total revenue was driven by accelerating growth across both Self Creators and Partners businesses. Partners growth accelerated to 30% year-over-year this quarter, finishing at $155 million. Growth was primarily driven by ramping Studio contribution as new agencies adopted the platform and Partners already-owned Studio renewed and increasingly built more projects. As a result, bookings attributable to Studio subscriptions accelerated sequentially this quarter with 75% of bookings from new partners deriving from Studio accounts. We also saw early benefit from Studio templates, which boosted utilization and subscription purchases. We expect Studio strength to continue to translate into Partners momentum and greater lifetime value. Our Self Creators business saw a second consecutive quarter of revenue acceleration. Momentum in the business is growing as expected, driven by the AI tailwinds Avishai mentioned earlier, strong cohort behavior with better-than-anticipated absorption of the earlier implemented price increase and slowly encouraging demand trends also contributed to this quarter's growth. We expect Self Creators revenue to continue to pick up momentum through the next couple of years. Growth will be driven by the transformative product initiatives we're working on now, more meaningful benefits from AI as key offerings mature and adoption ramps, and our reinvigorated strategic focus on this business now that our foundational Partners' investments are complete. Importantly, we anticipate Self Creators growth to accelerate while the robust profitability profile of this business continues to improve. Growth across Self Creators and Partners was underpinned by the strong commerce performance you heard about from Nir. Better GPV growth, coupled with a stable sequential take rate, resulted in transaction revenue growth accelerating to 23% year-over-year, finishing at $54 million. Notably, Partners contributed to more than 50% of GPV in the third quarter. While growth continued to ramp across our business, margins also improved. Total non-GAAP gross margin in Q3 was 69%, up slightly compared to the previous quarter. This was a result of better non-GAAP Business Solutions gross margin driven by improving payments gross margin and strength in our higher-margin business applications. We now anticipate non-GAAP gross margin of approximately 69% for the full year, up from 68% to 69% previously. Non-GAAP operating costs increased slightly quarter-over-quarter, primarily due to a planned step-up in sales and marketing expenses. Higher spend was largely around branding activities related to Studio and to a lesser extent, greater acquisition spend in response to the slowly encouraging demand trends we saw as we progressed through the quarter. Outside of these particular sales and marketing buckets, our operating expense base was stable compared to the previous quarter. Non-GAAP operating margin remained strong at 20% of revenue. Q3 free cash flow totaled $128 million or 29% of revenue, due to continued strong top line growth and an efficient operating cost base. These results allowed us to surpass the Rule of 40 this quarter, the first time since early 2021. Now let's turn to expectations as we exit 2024 and my thoughts gearing up for 2025 and beyond. For the full year, we are increasing the outlook in our bookings, revenue, and free cash flow to reflect impressive year-to-date performance. Importantly, we expect accelerating momentum across both Self Creators and Partners, as well as contribution from growth initiatives and strong business fundamentals to continue through the rest of the year. We now expect total bookings for the full year to be $1,822 million to $1,832 million or 14% to 15% year-over-year growth. This is an increase from the 13% to 14% growth we had previously anticipated. This new outlook now reflects 2H bookings growth accelerating to 17% year-over-year at the high end of expectations, up from the 16% previously anticipated. This also indicates an impressive exit rate of 18% for the year. For full year revenue, we are revising the outlook upwards to $1,757 million to $1,764 million or 13% year-over-year growth. On the cost side, we expect non-GAAP total gross margin of approximately 69% for the full year and non-GAAP operating expenses to be 49% of revenue, a slight improvement from our previous guidance of 50%. As a result of these increased growth expectations and anticipated stable operating costs, we now expect to generate free cash flow, excluding headquarter costs, of $483 million to $488 million or approximately 28% of revenue. This is an increase from the $460 million to $470 million or 26% to 27% of revenue previously expected. Finally, we anticipate ending 2024 with approximately 63 million of fully diluted shares. Stronger cash flow generation in conjunction with this share count expectation, translates to a higher free cash flow per share trajectory for the full year than previously anticipated. The high end of our increased expectations puts us on track to exceed the Rule of 40 for the full year. This is a target that has guided us for the past few years as we balance growth and profitability at Wix. Achieving this milestone one year earlier than anticipated showcases the tremendous efforts of our team and successful execution of our lofty growth initiatives without sacrificing margin. However, we are not laying off the gas. We remain committed to continuing to make progress over and above this milestone. I believe there is still much room for further growth acceleration and ample margin expansion in 2025 and beyond. The sustained bookings acceleration we've seen this year along with ramping tailwinds from Studio, AI and our expanding commerce platform are expected to directly translate into revenue growth in 2025. We also anticipate to continue to benefit from improving business fundamentals and the higher-quality user base we've built over the past few years. Additionally, soon-to-come AI tools, as well as the transformative product initiatives we are currently working on for Self Creators are expected to create incremental layers of growth in the outer years. Importantly, we have the right employee base and cost structure currently in place to support a variety of growth scenarios. As a result, we expect to continue to maintain a stable operating cost trajectory even as we sustain growth momentum in the coming years, allowing incremental top line dollars to flow directly to the bottom line and margins to continue to expand healthily. There is a lot to be excited about and I look forward to sharing more details in a few months. Operator, we are now ready for questions.