Stuart Miller
Analyst · Stifel
Thank you. As Matt indicated, we’re pleased with our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2016. In particular, we’re pleased to generated positive operating cash flow of nearly $10 million in Q4. We expect operating cash flow to be a breakeven or better for full year 2017 and annually thereafter. That the improvement in our cash flow outlook is primarily due to expanding revenue and a faster rate in our headcount growth rate. I will begin by reviewing our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2016 results and then I’ll comment on our first quarter and full year 2017 financial outlook. Thereafter, we’ll open up the call to your questions. We generated total revenue in the fourth quarter of $46.4 million, an increase of 16.3% from Q4 last year. Breaking out revenue by reporting line item, subscription and support revenue was $38.3 million, up 19.4% from Q4 2015, 50.7% of the S&S revenue increase in Q4 came from new customers, added in the last 12 months. The remaining 49.3% of the increase came from deeper penetration of our existing customer base. The average contract value on subscription and support from all customers continue to rise. Professional services revenue was $8 million, an increase of 3.4% from Q4 2015. Higher customer count and services for non-SEC use cases accounted for most of the growth in services revenue. Services revenue grew at a single-digit rate for two reason, sales cycles on larger non-SEC deals were longer as we discuss last quarter, and we have automated part of documents set-up that no longer requires billable hours. Turning to our supplemental metrics, we finished Q4 with 2,772 customers, a net increase of 248 customers from Q4 of 2015, and a net increase of 76 from Q3 of 2016. Our subscription and support revenue retention rate excluding add-ons was 95.4% for the month of December 2016, compared with 95% in September 2016 and 95.8% in December 2015. Customers being acquired were ceasing to file SEC reports accounted for over half of the revenue attrition consistent with our experience today. With add-ons, our subscription and support retention was 107.4% for the month of December 2016 compared with 108.7% in September 2016. Increased subscription revenue on non-SEC use cases from existing customers continued to be the primary driver of our add-on revenue retention rate. Moving down to the income statement, I’ll talk about our results before stock-based compensation, in other words on a non-GAAP basis. Please refer to our press release for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP and GAAP results. Gross profit was $33.4 million in Q4, up 14.9% from the same quarter a year ago, representing a gross margin of 72% compared to a gross margin of 72.9% in the Q4 of 2015. Now breaking out gross profit, subscription and support gross profit was $31.2 million equating to a gross margin of 81.4% on S&S revenue, compared to $24.6 million or 82.5% gross margin in the Q4 of 2015. Gross margin from S&S contracted 61 basis points due to an increase in employee compensation as well as increased server costs. Professional services gross profit in the fourth quarter was $2.2 million, equating to a 27.1% gross margin, compared to $2.7 million or 34.1% gross margin in the same period last year. Turning to operating expenses, research and development expense in Q4 was $14 million, an increase of 8.5% from Q4 last year due to increased compensation and additional staff as we continue to dedicated more resources to enhance our Wdesk platform. R&D, expense as a percentage of revenue improved this quarter to 30.1% which is 215 basis points better than Q4 last year because revenue expanded at a faster rate in headcount growth. Sales and marketing expense declined 3.1% in Q4 to $17.6 million, driven primarily by a reduction in consulting and recruiting fees, travel and advertising expenses. We continue to focus on improved operating efficiency as sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue this quarter improved 760 basis points to 37.9% from 45.5% in Q4 last year. General and administrative expenses were $5.6 million in Q4, a decrease of 17.2% compared with $6.7 million in Q4 of 2015, due to improved operating efficiencies and a reduction of the accrual for incentive compensation expense. G&A expense as a percentage of revenue in the latest quarter declined to 12% an improvement of 485 basis points from Q4 2015. Operating loss was $3.7 million in Q4 of 2016, compared to a loss of $8.7 million in the same period last year. Workiva’s operating margin improved over 13.7 percentage points in Q4 2016 versus the same quarter a year ago, primarily because the growth rate in revenue exceeded the growth rate in headcount. Net loss is $3.8 million for Q4 2016 compared to the net loss of $7.2 million in Q4 2015. We posted a net loss per share of $0.09 in Q4 2016, compared to a net loss per share of $0.18 in the same quarter a year ago. Turning to our balance sheet and our statement of cash flows; at December 31, 2016, cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaled $62.7 million, and the increase of $8.9 million compared with the balance at September 30. In Q4 2016, net cash provided by operating activities was $10 million, compared with a use of cash of $5 million in the same quarter a year ago. Workiva’s operating cash flow improved from negative $21.6 million in 2015 to a negative $10.4 million in 2016. At December 31, 2016, total deferred revenue increased $18.7 million from September 30th. Long-term subscriptions support deferred revenue increased $6.3 million in Q4, driven by customer contract renewals for multi-year terms. Short-term subscription support deferred revenue increased $8.4 million in Q4 driven by new sales and conversion of renewals from quarterly to longer terms. We continue to make steady progress on converting quarterly contracts to annual contracts. Services deferred revenue increased $3.9 million during the quarter, reflecting a typical build-up that we see just ahead of the 10 cases. Now recapping our full year 2016 results, total revenue was $178.6 million, up 23% year-over-year. Subscription and support revenue was $143.1 million increasing 23.1% over 2015. Professional services revenue was $35.5 million, up 22.6% from the prior year. So our revenue mix in 2016 was about 80%, subscription support 30% professional services. Moving down to P&L and again focusing on non-GAAP expenses. Gross profit was $127.9 million rising 20.9% year-over-year and representing a 71.6% gross margin. Operating loss was $29.3 million, compared with the loss of $30.7 million in the prior year. Operating margin improved 608 basis points in 2016, mainly because our revenue growth exceeded our headcount growth rate. Headcount is largest driver costs of Workiva and grew just 4.5% in 2016. Net loss was $29.7 million in 2016 and net loss per share was $0.73, which compares to net loss of $32.4 million in 2015 or $0.81 a share. Before I address guidance, I’ll review the seasonality of our business model. Seasonality effects as mentions of our financials revenue since its cash flow, first revenue. Our professional services revenue peaks in Q1 because many of our SEC customers followed 10-K in the first quarter and hire Workiva to help them with XBRL tagging. The utilization rate for our professional services team runs close to 100% in the first quarter every year. Utilization rates run lower in the other quarters. The second area of seasonality relates expenses, our sales and marketing expenses peak in the third quarter since we hold we hold our annually user conference in September. The third area of seasonality is cash flow. Workiva typically pays cash bonuses in the first quarter also as we delivered professional services in the first quarter we burned off to time deferred revenue related to services that were invoiced during the prior year, which shows up as a use of cash on that line items in Q1. So, operating cash flow is typically the lowest in Q1 relative to the other quarters. Now, turning to our guidance for 2017, our guidance on a non-GAAP loss from operations and non-GAAP loss per basic shares excludes the impact of stock-based compensation. Please refer to our press release for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP and GAAP guidance. For the first quarter of 2017, we expect total revenue to range from $50.3 million to $50.7 million. We expect GAAP operating loss to range from $10.1 million to $10.5 million. Non-GAAP operating loss is expected to be in the range of $5.8 million to $6.2 million. We expect GAAP net loss per share to range from $0.25 to $0.26. Non-GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.14 to $0.15. Our loss per share guidance assumes 41.1 million basic and diluted shares outstanding. Our guidance for the full fiscal year 2017 is as follows. We expect total revenue to range from $203 million to $206 million. We expect GAAP operating loss to range of $47.7 million to $50.7 million. Non-GAAP operating loss is expected to be in the range of $29 million to $32 million. For the full year 2017 we expect operating cash flow to improve to breakeven or better and we expect annual operating cash flow to remain at breakeven or better thereafter. We expect GAAP net loss per share to range from $1.18 to $1.26. And finally, non-GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.72 to $0.80. Our loss per share guidance for the full year assumes 41.3 million basic and diluted shares outstanding. Here is some color commentary on our guidance. So our 2017 guidance builds on a few points that we articulated our last call. First, we expect to continue market share growth in SEC, continued solid growth in bookings for our non-SEC used case in 2017. We assume the sale cycle in the larger SOX internal control, enterprise risk management and regulatory risk areas will remain relatively long. Second, we expect to recognize some revenue related to our partnerships later in the year. Third, we expect a modest amount of revenue from enterprise deals also later in the year. Fourth, we planned to continue to control operating expenses in a way that helps us to achieve both our revenue growth and cash flow goals. Finally, we expect IPO and M&A activity will remain at levels similar to those in 2016 and we believe M&A and delisting will continue to account from majority of our churn. Before wrapping up I would like to comment on the political environment. The new administration at Washington has promised de-regulation on multiple fronts including repealing or modifying parts of the Dodd-Frank Act. We think it's too early to predict specifically what might change in legislation or regulations, it could affect our business and we will continue to closely monitor developments in this area. While it's too early for prediction we want to provide some context. We maintain a broad relationship with many of our financial services customers, broad in the sense of multiple used cases. Stress testing is just one use case. Our subscription revenue related to Dodd-Frank stress testing accounted for less than 1% of our aggregate subscription revenue last year. Stretching the analysis to our related area CCAR which applies only to the largest bank holding companies, our subscription revenue in 2016 also accounted for under 1% of our aggregate subscription revenue. We are hearing from our financial services customers that senior management and their respected Board of Directors want to continue to see stress testing analysis even if the regulators no longer require it. Stress testing is a good tool for risk management. To wrap up, Workiva posted another strong quarter, we are pleased with the progress we are making on cash flow and operating margin, demand remains robust for our solutions and we remain focused on executing our growth plan to capitalize on our multibillion dollar market opportunity. And we are ready to take your questions. So operator we begin the Q&A session.