Stuart Miller
Analyst · Stifel Nicolaus. Your line is open
Thanks. As Matt indicated, we are pleased with our results for the fourth quarter and full year 2017, which is where I’ll begin my remarks and then I’ll comment on our first quarter and full year 2018 financial outlook and thereafter will take your questions. We generated total revenue in the fourth quarter of $54.5 million, an increase of 17.5% from Q4 2016. Breaking out revenue by reporting line item, subscription and support revenue was $45.5 million, up 18.8% from Q4 2016. 50% of the S&S revenue increase in Q4 came from new customers added in the last 12 months. The remaining half of the increase came from deeper penetration of our existing customer base. Professional services revenue was $9 million in Q4, an increase of 11.3% from the same quarter in 2016. We expect the growth rate of subscription revenue to continue to outpace the growth of services revenue in 2018. Turning to our supplemental metrics, we finished Q4 with 3,063 customers, a net increase of 291 customers from Q4, 2016, and a net increase of 72 from Q3, 2017. Our customers are passionate and loyal supporters of our solutions as demonstrated by our subscription support revenue retention rate of 96% for the month of December 2017 compared with 96.5% in September 2017 and 95.4% in December of 2016. Customers being acquired or ceasing to file SEC reports, accounted for a majority of revenue attrition, consistent with our experience to date. With add-ons our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 107.6% for the month of December 2017, compared with 108.6% in September 2017 and 107.4% in December 2016. Today we are introducing a new metric to help investors track our progress in selling larger subscriptions. Each quarter we plan to share the number of our customers with annual contract value or ACV at greater than $100,000 and at greater than $150,000. As we define it for this disclosure, ACV equals quarterly subscription revenue times four. Our press release today includes the historical data for ACV of a $100,000 plus. We had 324 customers in the fourth quarter up 37% from 236 customers in Q4, 2016. For ACV of $150,000 plus, we had a 146 customers in the fourth quarter, up 52% from 96 customers in Q4 last year. Moving down the income statement, I'll talk about our results before stock-based compensation that is on a non-GAAP basis. Please refer to our press release for a reconciliation on our non-GAAP and GAAP results. Gross profit was $38.8 million in Q4, up 16.1% from the same quarter a year ago. Gross margin was 71.1% in the latest quarter compared to a gross margin of 72% in Q4, 2016. Now breaking out gross profit, subscription and support gross profit was $37 million, equating to a gross margin of 81.2% on S&S revenue compared to $31.2 million, or a gross margin of 81.4% in Q4, 2016. Professional services gross profit in fourth quarter was $1.8 million, equating to a 19.9% gross margin, compared to $2.2 million or a 27.1% gross margin in the same period last year. We increased the headcount in compensation of our professional services teams to support initiatives in new markets and distribution channels. Turning to operating expenses, research and development expense in Q4 was $18.2 million, an increase of 30.5% from Q4 last year, due to higher compensation and consulting expenses. R&D expense as a percentage of revenue increased this quarter to 33.4%, compared to 30.1% in Q4 last year, due to the higher level of investment in our platform to support our goal of accelerating our growth rate. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter increased 20% from Q4 last year to $21.1 million. Sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue this quarter rose 80 basis points to 38.7% from Q4 last year. Most of the increase is attributable to higher head count in compensation for our sales team, reflecting our investment in the rollout of our enterprise strategy. General and administrative expenses were $7.8 million in Q4, an increase of 41% compared with $5.6 million in Q4, 2016. G&A expense as a percentage of revenue in the latest quarter rose to 14.4%, an increase of 240 basis points from Q4, 2016, due to growth in administrative headcount to support regulatory compliance in growth in our line functions, higher compensation and one time severance costs. Consistent with the guidance that we provided on our last call, operating loss was $8.4 million in Q4, 2017, compared to the net loss of $3.7 million in Q4, 2016. Workiva's operating margin decreased 740 basis points in Q4, 2017, versus the same quarter a year ago, primarily due growth in headcount and compensation. Net loss was $8 million for Q4 compared to the net loss of $3.8 million in Q4, 2016. We posted a net loss per share of $0.19 in Q4, compared to a net loss per share of $0.09 in the same quarter year previous. Turning to our balance sheet and statement of cash flows, we are pleased to have generated positive operating cash flow in 2017. We expect operating cash flow to be positive again in 2018. At December 31, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $76.7 million a decrease of $1.1 million compared with the balance at September 30, 2017. In Q4, 2017 net cash used in operations was $6.2 million, compared with cash provided of $10 million in the same quarter a year ago. A larger net loss, payment of cash bonuses to employees and an expansion of accounts receivable were partially offset by higher differed revenue in Q4. At December 31, 2017, total deferred revenue increased $5 million from September 30, 2017. Short-term subscription and support deferred revenue rose $4.7 million in Q4, driven by new sales and conversion of contract renewals from quarterly to annual terms. We continue to make steady progress on converting quarterly contracts to annual contracts which should wrap up in Q1 2019. Services deferred revenue remained flat from the prior quarter. Long-term subscription support deferred revenue decreased $363,000 in Q4. Recapping our full year 2017 results, total revenue was $207.9 million up 16.4% year-over-year. Subscription and support revenue was $169.3 million increasing 18.3% over 2016. Professional services revenue was $38.6 million, up 8.6% from the prior year. So our revenue mix is 2017 was 81.4% subscription and support and 18.6% professional services. Moving down to P&L and again focusing of non-GAAP expenses, gross profit was $148.8 million, rising 16.3% year-over-year and representing a 71.6% gross margin. Operating loss was $24.8 million compared with a loss of $29.3 million in the prior year. Operating margin improved 447 basis points in 2017 compared to 2016 results. Net loss was $25 million in 2017 and net loss per share was $0.60, which compares to net loss of $29.7 million or $0.73 per share in 2016. Now to provide some context for our financial guidance, I want to comment on our adoption of ASC 606, which is effective January 1 this year. We chose the modified retrospective transition approach. We will report under ASC 606 in 2018 and plan to provide a reconciliation between ASC 605 and ASC 606 each quarter during 2018. The guidance we provide today reflects our implementation of ASC 606. Application of ASC 606 will affect our income statement and balance sheet in 2018. ASC 606 will not affect our cash flow of course. Adoption of ASC 606 requires an opening adjustment to retain earnings on January 1. The opening adjustment will have a favorable impact on our retained earnings estimated to be in the range of $7 million to $9 million. We’ll share the details of the opening adjustment when we discuss our first quarter results. Application of ASC 606 for Workiva in 2018 includes acceleration of recognition of professional services revenue on certain contracts, longer deferral of the incremental cost of obtaining a contract and increases in accounts receivable differed revenue, accrued expenses and other current liabilities. We expect ASC 606 will have an unfavorable impact of approximately $2 million on professional services revenue in Q1. For the full year and assuming we deliver the same services in Q4, 2018 as we did last year, we expect the net impact of ASC 606 will not be significant on total revenue. Due to the deferral or the recognition of customer acquisition costs under ASC 606, we expect operating expenses to benefit by approximately $4.5 million for the full year 2018. In addition under ASC 606, we expect an increase in accounts receivable to be offset equally by a rise in differed revenue and accrued expenses and other current liabilities. Turning to our guidance for 2018, our guidance on a non-GAAP loss from operations and non-GAAP loss for basic share excludes the impact of stock based compensation. Please refer to our press release for a reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP guidance. For the first quarter 2018 we expect total revenue to range from $57.3 million to $57.8 million. Due to the adoption of ASC 606 we expect the growth rate for professional services revenue in Q1, 2018 to be in the low single digits relative to Q1 last year. We expect GAAP operating loss to range from $13.7 million to $14.2 million; non-GAAP operating loss is expected to be in the range of $7.8 million to $8.3 million. We expect GAAP net loss per share in Q1 to range from $0.33 to $0.34, non-GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.19 to $0.20. Our loss per share guidance assumes 42.6 million basic and diluted shares outstanding. For the full-year 2018 we expect total revenue to range from $234 million to $236 million. We expect the growth rate of our subscription revenue to continue to outpace the growth rate of our services revenue. We expect GAAP operating loss to range from $57.1 million to $59.1 million. Non-GAAP operating loss is expected to be in the range of $32 million to $34 million. We do expect to post positive operating cash flow for the full year 2018. We expect GAAP net loss per share to range from $1.35 to $1.40. And finally, non-GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.77 to $0.82. Our loss per share guidance for the full year assumes 43.4 million basic and diluted shares outstanding. Building an enterprise grade platform takes time and investment, which are necessary commitments to generate additional sales. As Matt indicated, we have accelerated investments in our platform and talent over the past few quarters to continue our plan of capitalizing on customer demand for an enterprise wide Wdesk platform. Our investments are focused on additional functionality, greater scalability, data connectors, talent training, packaging, partnerships and other initiatives towards our goal of accelerating revenue growth. Our guidance on non-GAAP operating loss today, reflects the full run rate of these investments. The crucial pieces of our enterprise plan are now in place, which is allowing us to slow the rate of hiring in 2018. Our plans to capture larger enterprise deals and achieve our long term financial targets remain unchanged. Our 2018 guidance reflects the fact that we’re in the middle of executing our strategy. As we discussed last fall, we expect to see progress from our enterprise strategy in bookings in the second half of 2018 and in revenue in 2019. We are encouraged by the growing number of customers with larger contracts and also by our pipeline of larger contracts. In summary, Workiva posted another strong quarter. Demand remains robust for our platform and we remain focused on executing our growth plan to capitalize on our multi-billion market opportunity. We are now ready to take your questions. Operator, we’re ready for the Q&A session.