Xero Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Xero Limited half-year 2022 results conference call. I am joined by Xero's Chief Executive Officer, Steve Damos, and Chief Financial Officer, Kirsty Godfrey-Billy. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Please limit your questions to one question at a time. If you wish to ask a further question, please rejoin the queue. I'd now like to hand the call over to Steve Amos, CEO of Xero. Please go ahead.

Well, kia ora. Tēnā koutou katoa from Wellington, New Zealand. Thank you for joining our investor briefing today covering Xero's financial and operating results for the six months ending 30 September 2021. I'm Steve Amos, Xero's CEO, and I'm with Kirsty Godfrey-Billy, our CFO. Just before I go over today's agenda, I do want to start by acknowledging that COVID-19 does continue to create uncertainties for many people, and I hope that you and those you care about are safe and well. The first item on our agenda is a business update, including a review of Xero's performance during the half. I'll also touch on our strategy and areas of investment before I pass to Kirsty to cover our financial results in detail and Xero's FY22 outlook. We'll then move to your questions. First and foremost, Xero delivered a strong result, reflecting the benefit of investments made over a number of years in our products, go-to-market and people capabilities. In fluctuating global operating conditions, we've continued to demonstrate our ability to execute our strategy. Adoption of digital solutions by small business continues to gather pace, driven by a number of factors, including government policy initiatives, innovation in access to financial services and new ways of working. We continue to monitor the macroeconomic environment and are positive about the critical role small business will and continues to play in the global economic recovery. These factors, the size of the opportunity and our momentum give us continued confidence in our long-term strategy. So moving to a summary of our results on slide five, you'll see that this is a strong result across multiple metrics. Key amongst these is operating revenue. which grew to more than a half a billion dollars in the half, and subscribers, which grew to more than 3 million. Both were up 23% on prior year, and in the case of revenue, 26% on a constant currency basis. Net subscriber additions totaled 560,000 over the prior year, or 272,000 over the six months in the half. Annualised monthly recurring revenue, or AMRR, grew to exceed $1 billion, increasing 29%. This largely reflects subscriber growth of 23% and higher ARPU. ARPU increased 5% versus the prior year period, and Kirsty will talk more about our actions that contributed to this movement in her remarks. Subscriber lifetime value, or LTV, increased substantially to $9.9 billion from $6.2 billion, with continued low levels of churn a factor. During the half and consistent with our outlook for the year, we increased investment spend back to pre-pandemic levels, which led to reductions in our EBITDA, net profit and free cash flow when compared to the prior year period. EBITDA for the half year of 98.1 million decreased by 19%. We reported a net loss after tax of $5.9 million, down 40.4 million. Free cash flow declined by 47.9 million to 6.4 million. This increase in investment reflects our commitment to execute our strategy and pursue our long-term opportunity and aspirations. Our ability to do this is to a large extent a function of the strength of our business model and the sustained revenue momentum shown on the next slide. Xerox delivered high sustained levels of annual top line growth over the last few years against what has been a challenging COVID backdrop. Touching on the first half of FY22 specifically, Core accounting revenues grew 18% or 20% on a constant currency basis and this was largely in line with our subscriber growth of 23%. Price changes during the period have contributed modestly to operating revenue in the half in all regions outside of North America and rest of the world where the communicated price changes will take effect in the second half. Platform revenues grew 104% or 37% if we adjust for the inclusion of revenues from acquired businesses, as take-up and usage of financial services and adjacent products continues to grow. I'd now like to discuss the results of our operations by geography. All markets contributed positively to this group-wide outcome, although the pace of growth varied, as you'd expect, given the differing conditions in each market. So starting with Australia and New Zealand on slide seven. In Australia, revenue increased by 22% to $225 million, We added 124,000 subscribers in the half, reaching 1.24 million in total. Earlier this year, we welcomed Joseph Lyons as our MD of Australia and Asia. Joe moved into the role from the role of EGM of Global Partner Sales and succeeded Trent Innes, who departed Xero after eight years of leadership and a great contribution to Xero. New Zealand's revenue increased by 13% to $72 million. We added 34,000 subscribers in the half to reach 480,000 subscribers in total. In these two markets where cloud adoption is relatively high, it was pleasing to see Xero delivering double digit subscriber growth. We believe this points positively to the high potential levels of adoption in our international segment. Turning now to our international segment and starting with the UK. Revenue increased by 24% to $133 million. Net subscriber additions of 65,000 for the period brought subscribers to a total of 785,000. Despite deadlines for the implementation of making tax digital for income tax being deferred by HMRC, we continue to invest in best-in-class cloud-based compliance as reflected by the launch of Xero's personal tax product, In The Half. We've also just announced Alex von Schurmeister as our incoming Managing Director of UK and EMEA. Alex brings more than 25 years of relevant leadership experience, having worked in e-commerce, payments and telecommunications. And from next month, Alex will succeed Gary Turner, who announced in July he would step down as MD after 12 years in the role with Xero. And I look forward to having Gary as an advisor to us beyond his tenure as MD. In North America, we added 23,000 net subscribers, more than double the addition seen in the first half of last year. Subscribers reached 308,000, which is 23% up on the prior year period. Revenue increased by 5% to $30 million. In constant currency, revenue grew 14%, with the US being one of the markets most impacted by currency movements in the period. The revenue result also reflects our continued focus on serving customers through the Partner Channel, and also a price reduction to standalone HubDoc plans in the second half of FY21. In terms of partner engagement, we signed new agreements and expanded existing partnerships with a number of accounting firms across the US and Canada, such as Liberty Tax, Bernard Robinson & Co, and Paget. I'm also happy to confirm that Xerocon is returning next year. We have announced Xerocon New Orleans in May, and we're looking forward to connecting with our existing and new partners at our zero-con events again. We continue to invest more in the localisation of our product for North America. For example, we delivered enhanced provincial sales tax tools in Canada for a number of provinces and improved balance sheet and other reporting in the US. Our aspirations for North America are beyond what you see in our performance right now. We see a significant opportunity to bring our compliance playbook to address an estimated TAM of small businesses of more than 30 million. I'll talk more about our work here in my discussion about our investments shortly. In our rest of world markets, revenue grew 72% or 85% in constant currency to $46 million. This includes the majority of the revenue contribution from plan day. We ended the period with 201,000 subscribers in rest of world after adding 26,000 in the half. 6,000 plan day subscribers were added at the beginning of the period from the acquisition. We've continued to deliver good progress in Singapore and South Africa. Both businesses are scaling rapidly in attractive markets. And in South Africa, we expanded our VAT e-filing beta, so now customers have the ability to make end-to-end VAT lodgements directly with the South African Revenue Service. To better meet local customer needs in Singapore, we introduced Singapore dollar billing in the half, and this has had good take-up from new and existing customers. Moving to slide nine, Platform revenue now accounts for a double digit portion of Xero's operating revenues. I'd like to spend some time discussing the activity indicators for the three largest contributors to this very important, strategically important part of our business. Plan day, payroll and payments. Plan days performed well in our six months of ownership. This has been a period characterized by some volatility within the countries and service sectors that plan day targets, but the demand for the product remains strong. We continue to work towards the launch of Plan Day in our other markets in the near future. On the left, we show the number of Plan Day employee users each quarter since September 2020. An average employee use increased by approximately 20% from the prior year period in the three months to end September 21. The middle chart shows employees paid through zero payroll over the same time. This has grown by 19% since this time last year across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK where we offer the product. The right-hand chart shows monthly invoice payment value has grown by more than 40% since September 2020. Over the next few slides, I'm now going to update you on progress we've made on investments to support execution of our strategy. Now, the main area of investment is our people, where we continue to attract and retain great talent. In a competitive labour market, hiring with a focus on product and technology teams saw our FTEs grow to more than 4,000. This was a 30% increase year on year or 22% excluding acquired businesses in line with growth across our business. In August, we adjusted our flexible work policy and we introduced new permanently remote roles which seek to take advantage of an expanded potential talent pool. Now highlighting some of the product developments that teams have delivered in the half. These include a comprehensive set of updates to bank reconciliation, one of Xero's most used features. The look and feel of Bankrec was refreshed as part of a broad technology initiative that's going to see similar changes across many other Xero products and features in the future. We've also leveraged machine learning to increase the accuracy of Bankrec. We launched a new suite of forecasting tools called Xero Analytics and Analytics Plus. These are powered by AI, artificial intelligence, and enable more meaningful conversations between our customers and their advisors around cash flow. And looking to the small business platform, our invoice lending platform WADL entered an agreement with Australia's largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, to support a new and innovative invoice financing offer. We also enhanced the XeroMe app to include the functionality of XeroExpenses. XeroMe works with our payroll solution so that employees or our customers can access their payslips, leave timesheets and now make expense claims all in the one app. Moving to slide 11, In August, we progressed our platform strategy with the introduction of the next evolution of our app marketplace, the Xero App Store. The Xero App Store lets small businesses choose their own toolkit of apps to manage their business, and there are now more than 1,000 connected apps within our ecosystem to choose from. Using machine learning, we've made it easier for small business customers to discover apps through personalized app recommendations and the search function in the App Store. Through the Xero App Store, We're also providing app partners with greater support and features to scale their businesses and reach more customers. With the launch of the Xero App Store comes a shift to a more commercial model with Xero receiving a referral revenue share of 15% of subscriptions for new customers who sign up through the App Store. Turning to the next slide, today we've announced we're acquiring Locate Inventory, a US-based cloud inventory management provider. This transaction will enable us to better support the inventory needs of small businesses and enhance our e-commerce capability. Our plan is to embed Locate's talent and capability within Xero to enhance our inventory management solution and help meet increased demand for inventory and cash flow management tools by small businesses. Customers will be able to track and manage inventory in real time across multiple locations and channels, including a number of Xero's e-commerce partners. The new inventory solution is expected to launch to US customers first before being made available in other markets. As a further step to enhance our e-commerce capability, today we've launched a new integration with Shopify, available in the Xero App Store and the Shopify App Store. This will help Xero customers to simplify reconciliation, interpret sales data, and use various insights within Xero to support running their business. We've also joined the Shopify Plus Certified App Program This program is for a select group of Shopify partners that support the advanced needs of their global merchants. So I want to finish my remarks with slide 13 and some comments on our strategy and approach to investment. Our strategic priorities are to drive cloud accounting adoption, grow the small business platform and build Xero for global scale innovation. We've made good progress on these through fluctuating global operating conditions as evidenced by our H1 FY22 results. And progress on M&A aligned with our aspirations to provide small businesses with access to financial services and workforce management. What you see in Xero today is a result of investments made over many years. The investments we're making now are crucial to realising the significant long-term growth opportunities we have. So with that in mind, I want to share with you some further detail about the areas of investment we're currently focused on to support these priorities. Firstly, in driving cloud adoption or cloud accounting adoption, the cloud accounting market is still young and under-penetrated. We're early in adoption of cloud accounting and business applications by the 45 million plus small businesses we estimate there to be across our existing markets. Three areas of focus in investment are North America. We're focused on building products and functionality to better meet the needs of our customers. Our product roadmap is key to our execution in North America. We're exploring how we might leverage partnerships and acquisitions alongside our product development plans in this important region. We also continue to explore products that extend our TAM towards customers with less complex needs. And for our accounting and bookkeeping partners, we're continuously working to create more modern practice and compliance tools to help them better serve their clients and run their practices. Under the small business platform, our focus areas are providing more seamless access to financial services within zero workflows, particularly in the areas of payments and access to capital, and leveraging our acquisition of Plan Day to bring together our capabilities in the areas of payroll and expenses to better support employing SMEs and their employees. We estimate the TAM opportunity here is more than 100 million employee users. Finally, to support our third strategic priority, building for global scale innovation, Our efforts include investing in the technology, product and business capabilities to enable a number of critical functions. These include reaching and communicating with our customers in flow and in real time through our product and digital platforms. Continuously evolving our product and technology to fully leverage AI and machine learning in order to generate data-based insights that help our customers better manage their businesses. An investment in our people, capabilities and operational processes. The timing of the contribution from these investments will differ depending on a number of factors, such as macro conditions in regions, timing of government initiatives and timing of delivery. We'll provide more insight on the nature of these investments and key delivery milestones as we go forward. We remain extremely confident in the opportunity ahead of zero to build our customer and partner base and to deliver on our purpose. Before I conclude, I want to acknowledge that this half has been challenging for many of our teams around the world. as they work under varying restrictions and conditions due to COVID-19, I really want to thank them. I really want to thank them for their hard work as they continue to do all they do to support our customers and partners. So now I'll pass to Kirsty to cover our financial results and discuss Xero's FY22 outlook.

Thanks, Steve. As Steve said, I'll now take us through our financial results for H1 FY22 in more detail, starting on slide 15. The results show Xero has delivered consistent momentum over the first half of FY22. As you can see on the left, AMRR grew by 29% to $1.1 billion, driven by subscriber growth of 23%. We also saw APU increase by 5%. The charts in the middle and on the right show EBITDA of $98 million and free cash flow of $6.4 million. EBITDA fell $22.7 million and free cash flow declined $47.9 million versus the prior year period. The decline in these profitability indicators capture the increase in operating expenses anticipated by guidance provided at our FY21 results. The expenses represent product and technology investment commitments and a return to more normal rates of sales and marketing spend. Moving to the next slide, The strength of Xero's business model continues to underpin assessed metrics, including growth in LTV. On the left, you can see Xero's total LTV increased by $3.8 billion versus the prior year period to just under $10 billion. By segment, LTV increased by 55% in ANZ and 80% within international markets. Growth in both subscribers and LTV with subscriber was strong in Xero's international market, assisted in part by our plan date acquisition. Before I discuss the drivers of these outcomes, I want to touch on some of the related quality metrics. These are LTV per subscriber, CAC, or customer acquisition cost months, and LTV to CAC. These aren't on the slide, but you'll find them in the appendix. The increase in total LTV has come from the 23% increase in subscribers, together with a 31% increase in LTV per subscriber, to nearly $3,300. CAC months decreased from 14.8 months at the end of FY21 to 14.2 months. This reflects consistent trends within the ANZ segment and some improvement in our international segment in H1. The LTV to CAC ratio increased to 7.4 from the 6.4 at the end of FY21. CAC per gross subscriber addition was essentially unchanged in the period, meaning the change in this ratio was primarily from the growth in LTV per subscriber already mentioned. Now on the right hand side, we've given you some additional disclosure around the drivers of LTV. This chart shows the development of Xero's LTV over the first six months of the year, broken down by driver. With the exception of FX and other movements, all of the underlying contributors have trended positively over the period. APU represents the monthly recurring revenue per subscriber at the end of the period. Within the first six months of the year, APU increased by 7% in constant currency to $31.32. Gross margin increased again to an 87.1%. I will discuss churn in further detail on the next slide, and the fall in churn was the largest single contributor to the uplift in LTV. New subscribers added in the half were the second largest contributor to the movement in LTV, with the acquisitions of PlanDay and TickStar also adding to the overall movement as shown on the slide. I now want to come back to APU and churn. On the left of slide 17, we show the main contributors to the movement in Apu over the first half. Overall, Apu has increased by just over $2, driven by the following. Price increases communicated to customers in May were effective in the three major markets of Australia, New Zealand, and the UK from mid-September. Collectively, these were one of the largest drivers of the Apu increase. The acquisition of Plan Day also had a relatively large positive impact on APU. On acquisition, Plan Day added approximately 6,000 subscribers, with a typical monthly APU quite a bit higher than a regular zero subscriber. While FX movements were unfavourable in the period, product mix and other factors, including take-up of financial services and ecosystem, accounted for the remainder of the APU increase. The right-hand chart shows the movement in churn seen in the period relative to long-term trends. Churn fell across the group to an all-time low of 0.88%. The trend towards lower levels of churn has been observable across all of Xero's markets. We believe the disruption caused by the pandemic has enhanced awareness of the value and importance of cloud accounting to our small business customers and accountants and bookkeepers. However, we remain mindful of potential cyclical risks and the SME segment's exposure to the macro environment. Having discussed our progress on LTV, I'd now like to touch on our gross profit and expenses. On the left-hand chart, further cost-to-serve efficiency gains contribute to improved and gross margin. This increased 1.4 percentage points versus the prior year period to 87.1%. The improved margin profile, combined with a 23% increase in operating revenues, saw gross profit increase by 25% to $440 million. It's worth noting that acquisitions completed this period have had no meaningful impact on gross margin for the group. The largest of these, Plan Day, has a contribution profile that is largely consistent with Xero's existing operations. Turning to the chart on the right, total operating expenses increased by 46% versus the prior year period to $422 million. This equated to 83.4% of operating revenue, inclusive of integration costs incurred in the period. Looking at operating expenses by type, the way we've run the business in this half versus the same period last year is evident in sales and marketing costs. These increased from 32% of operating revenue in the prior year to 37%. Sales and marketing costs have proven effective at driving the strong subscriber additions achieved in the period. But we have also taken specific actions to support brand awareness campaigns across TV, online, and out of home. We launched a number of innovative campaigns in the period, including targeted sponsorship of sporting events, such as the Lions Tour of South Africa, and use case examples including Channel 9's The Block, a popular reality TV show in Australia where contestants and the resident accountant on site use Xero for tracking their renovation budgets, spending invoices and managing receipts. We continue to see the return on investment on brand awareness spend as attractive, particularly in newer markets where Xero has less presence compared to ANZ. Product design and development costs accounted for 33% of operating revenue, up from 27% in the prior year period, but in proportion to the level of spending seen in the second half of FY21. Our investment into product remains crucial to supporting customers and delivering on our long-term product and strategic plans. G&A costs were largely consistent with levels seen in the past at 13% of operating revenue. Integration costs associated with the acquisitions of Waddle, PlanDay and TickStar are included in all of these operating expense measures, but in isolation amount to just under $3 million. So to sum up, the strong gross margin and revenue progress in the period has enabled investment into CAC and product development that continues to support our long-term aspirations. Moving to slide 19. Here we have our summary income statement for H1 FY22 are showing year-on-year changes. Operating revenue increased 23% to just under $506 million. Revenue growth for the year was ahead of growth in subscribers, helped by the ARPU factors I've already mentioned, and the contribution from the businesses acquired over the last year. Collectively, these added $19 million to operating revenue in the period. As already discussed, gross margin improved to 87.1%. To elaborate on some specific examples of operating expense movements, which you can find in Note 5 of our interim report, advertising and marketing costs have more than doubled over the prior year period and are now back to similar nominal levels to those in previous periods. Travel costs increased almost tenfold, but are still at a small fraction of pre-pandemic levels due to lockdowns and continued travel restrictions. but these costs would be expected to change further as travel moves back to pre-pandemic levels. A relatively large increase in consultant and contractor costs reflects the more limited use of these resources in the prior year period. These costs support our strategic investment into product and the integration of recent acquisitions. The movement in costs has resulted in an EBITDA margin of 19.4%, a decrease of 10.1 percentage points. A net loss of just under $6 million was $40 million lower than the prior year period. This was primarily due to the operating expense envelope I've discussed, but there are some other items to flag. These are impairment charges totaling just under $3 million related to the software and other intangibles, and finance costs include a non-cash charge of $3 million related to the unwind of the discount applied to acquisition earn-out. Prior to payment of these earnouts, the related amounts are recognised as the contingent consideration liability on the balance sheet and are subject to discounting that amortises through the income statement as a non-cash interest charge. Adjusting to this charge, underlying finance costs were consistent with the prior period. Moving to slide 20, cash generation and other movements in the period brought Xero's overall liquid resource to almost $1.2 billion at 30 September. This comprises cash and cash equivalents, short-term deposits, and undrawn committed debt facilities of $150 million. Deducting our total debt term liability of $883 million, our net cash position at the end of first half was $125 million, down $132 million from the end of FY21. The main movement in our cash position over the period came from $136 million in acquisition payments. These mostly comprised initial cash considerations for the acquisitions of Plan Day and TickStar, which were completed at the start of the period. Before I move on to the outlook, I wanted to recap our approach to capital allocation. We continue to prioritise reinvestment of cash that we generate in order to support our strategy and the potential we have to create significant long-term value. Day to day, most of our investment will focus on the areas of go-to-market and product development to drive top-line growth. We also continue to evaluate potential investment opportunities, including M&A, that can further enhance or complement our strategy. Now to our outlook on the last slide. You can read our full outlook statement here, but I'll point out a couple of key elements. You'll remember the last 18 months have seen us shift from an initial rapid response to the uncertainty of the pandemic progressively back towards a long-term focus growth setting. Our guidance on operating expenses for FY22 continues to reflect this and remains unchanged, except for the acquisition we have announced today. We expect total operating expenses, excluding acquisition integration costs, as a percentage of operating revenue to be in a range of 80% to 85%. In addition, we expect integration costs associated with all the acquisitions announced since the start of FY21 to increase total operating expenses as a percentage of operating revenue by up to 2% for FY22. Given our performance in the first six months of the year, it is worth emphasizing that both elements of the operating expense guidance relate to Xero's full year performance for FY22. And lastly, as previously stated, Plan Day is expected to contribute approximately three percentage points of additional operating revenue growth in FY22. That concludes our presentation. Thanks to everyone for joining us online and by phone today. I'll now pass over to the moderator for your questions.