Stuart Miller
Analyst · Terry Tillman with Truist. Please go ahead
Thank you, Marty. As mentioned on our last call, we began to see a more predictable cadence to closing deals at the end of the second quarter, suggesting that our customers and prospects were settling into a new normal. That pace accelerated in the third quarter across a broad range of our solutions, particularly global statutory reporting, management reporting and capital markets. Both transaction volume and average deal size came in above our expectations in the third quarter, doing so with almost no help from price optimization. As a result, we are raising guidance for Q4, which I will discuss later. Before covering our Q3 financials, I want to provide an update on a regulatory matter. On October 21st, the European Union granted its member states the option to delay compliance with the ESEF mandate for one year to help companies free up resources for more urgent pandemic related matters. We expect all EU member states to exercise the option. The one year delay has had no material impact on our outlook for EMEA. Turning now to our financials. As always, I will talk about our results and guidance on a non-GAAP basis. Refer to our press release for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP and GAAP results and guidance. I’ll address our performance against Q3 guidance first. We beat Q3 20 revenue guidance at the midpoint by $3.5 million. Higher subscription revenue accounted for most of the beat. We succeeded in collecting a high percentage of the receivables that we had held in reserve at the end of Q2. The pandemic had less of an impact on selections that we had anticipated in June. In addition, we closed more deals early in the quarter, and we sold and delivered some capital markets deals within the quarter. We beat guidance on Q3 operating income by more than $9 million. The revenue beat I just mentioned accounted for just over a third of the swing. The remainder of the beat relative to guidance included lower travel and entertainment costs, reduce expenses from shifting marketing and internal events to a virtual format, recovery of bad debt expense, higher PTO usage and decreased occupancy costs. Now turning to a comparison of Q3 2020 to Q3 last year. We generated total revenue in the third quarter of $88.1 million, an increase of 18.8% from Q3 2019. Breaking out revenue by reporting line item, subscription and support revenue was $75.9 million, up 20.4% from Q3 2019. New logos and new solutions help drive strong revenue growth in Q3 2012. 51% of the increase in S&S revenue in Q3 came from new customers added in the last 12 months. The balance of the increase came from companies who’ve been our customers for more than a year. Professional services revenue was $12.2 million in Q3 2020, an increase of 9.8% from the same quarter last year. Setup and consulting accounted for the gross. Turning to our supplemental metrics. We finished Q3 with 3,583 customers, a net increase of 129 customers from Q3 2019 and a net increase of 71 customers from Q2 2020. New customers subscribing to an ESEF solution accounted for 20% of the gross number of new logos in the quarter. Our revenue retention rates remain strong. Our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 94.9% in the third quarter of 2020, compared to 94.5 for the same period last year. Consistent with our experience over the long-term, almost half of the attrition in the quarter came from M&A, delistings and bankruptcies. With add-ons, our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 110% for the third quarter of 2020, compared to 112.8% in Q3 2019 and 107.9% in Q2 2020. The number of larger subscription contracts continues to increase. In the third quarter of 2020, we counted 785 contracts valued at over $100,000 per year, up 28% from Q3 the prior year. The number of contracts valued at over $150,000 total 383 customers in the third quarter, up 47% from Q3 2019 results. Moving down the P&L. Gross profit totaled $66.9 million in Q3, up 25.6% in the same quarter a year ago. Consolidated gross margin was 75.9% in the latest quarter versus 71.8% in Q3 2019, a net expansion of 410 basis points. Breaking out gross profit, subscription and support gross profit totaled $64.3 million, equating to a gross margin of 84.7% on S&S revenue and expansion of 140 basis points compared to Q3 2019. Professional services gross profit in the third quarter was $2.6 million, equating to a 21.6% gross margin, compared to 7% in Q3 2019. Research and development expense in Q3 totaled $21.8 million, up by 0.6% from Q3 2019. R&D expense as a percentage of revenue improved to 24.7% in Q3 2020 and 27.8% in Q3 2019. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter increased 6.5% from Q3 2019 to $32.8 million. Savings on T&E and a shift to virtual marketing events partially offset higher expenses from headcount growth in our sales team. General and administrative expenses totaled $8.7 million in Q3, up $600,000 compared to Q3 2019. G&A expenses as a percentage of revenue improved 110 basis points to 9.8%. We posted an operating profit of $3.6 million in Q3 2020, compared to an operating loss of $6.3 million into Q3 2019. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow statement. At September 30, 2020, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $524 million, an increase of $15.3 million compared to the balance at June 30 2020. Net cash provided from operating activities in Q3 2020 totaled $7.8 million, compared with cash provided of $4.7 million in the same quarter a year ago. At September 30, 2020, we classified $5.2 million of receivables to a credit reserve account, up from $4 million of receivables at September 30, 2019. This reserve account reduced deferred revenue by an equal amount, and therefore, it reduced billings at the end of the quarter. Remaining performance obligations on subscription contracts continue to vary from deferred revenue, as we implement multiyear contracts with annual billing terms for some customers. Turning to our guidance. We are factoring in the expected impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and results of operations based on information available to us today. For the fourth quarter of 2020, we expect total revenue to range from $90.2 million to $90.7 million. We expect subscription revenue to grow at a faster rate than services revenue in Q4. As a reminder in Q4 2019, we posted a one-time increase of $2.5 million in professional services revenue due to a regulatory change. We expect non-GAAP operating income to range from $500,000 to $1 million in Q4. For the full year 2020, we expect total revenue to range from $348 million to $348.5 million. We expect non-GAAP operating income to range from $3 million to $3.5 million. Turning to 2021. On a preliminary basis, we expect total revenue to exceed $401 million in 2021. We expect the growth rate of subscription and support revenue to continue to outpace the growth rates of professional services revenue. We expect non-GAAP operating loss as a percentage of revenue to be a low single-digit in 2021. We plan to offer detailed guidance on our outlook for 2021 on our next call. We will now take your questions. Operator, we are ready to begin the Q&A session.