EarningsCall · BLZE Q1 2024

spk18: All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star, then two. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

spk21: Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Backblaze's first quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call with me today are Gleb Budman, co-founder, CEO, and chairperson of the board, and Frank Patchell, Chief Financial Officer. Today, Backblaze will discuss the financial results that were distributed earlier this afternoon. Statements on this call include forward-looking statements about our future financial results, use of our IPO proceeds, results from new features and offerings, the impact of price changes, partnerships and sales and marketing initiatives, our ability to compete effectively and manage our growth, and our strategy to acquire new customers and retain and expand our business with existing customers. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those described in our risk factors that are included in our annual report on Form 10-K and our other financial filings. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. All forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them except as required by law. Our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results may be found in our earnings release. which was furnished with our Form 8K filed today with the SEC. You can also find a slide presentation related to our comments in the webcast, which will also be posted to our investor relations page after the call. Please also see our press release or presentation for definitions of additional metrics, such as NRR and gross customer retention rate. Before I turn the call over to Gleb, I'd also like to mention that in the latter portion of our call, as in prior calls, we will be addressing questions from investors that we gathered through the Say Technologies platform. Thank you for joining us, and I would now like to turn the call over to Gleb.

spk15: Thanks, Mimi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a record start across our key financial metrics. This quarter, revenue grew at 28 percent, eight percentage points better than last year. We achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of positive 6 percent versus negative 12 percent a year ago. And finally, cash usage this quarter was only $600,000, a dramatic improvement from the $13 million of cash used this same period last year. Not only have we delivered accelerated business growth and improved efficiency, but we have also delivered product innovations that serve our mission of supporting customers and partners with the best storage cloud. Before diving into our business results, I want to speak to a customer trend that we're already benefiting from today and which we see accelerating. A few months ago, we conducted a survey of more than 400 IT decision makers. A majority of the respondents indicated that they prefer to choose from best-of-breed solutions when selecting vendors. And yet, the cloud landscape has been historically defined by Cloud 1.0, where a few diversified cloud providers aim to lock customers into their platforms and take away customer choice. You may have heard that Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure recently announced free egress for their customers. They may have done this to mollify regulators because the Cloud 1.0 model is a walled garden by design, but this move does not at all address what customers actually want because it only applies to customers who leave those platforms completely. What customers really want is to freely use their data with multiple cloud services. These fake free egress announcements are only free exit not free egress. And underscore that Cloud 1.0 just doesn't work that way. Businesses want Cloud 2.0, an open cloud ecosystem where businesses can use their data wherever and however they want to. It's better for them, better for innovation, and ultimately better for the broader economy. And Backboys is built for Cloud 2.0. First, Our egress is actually free, allowing customers to use their data without fear of crippling bills or limits on who they work with. Second, we have a robust partner ecosystem, which gives customers easy access to the best of breed platforms they need. Third, we provide a trusted, durable platform that provides strong performance. And last, we continue to deliver innovations that support customers in using the best of breed services they want. A great example of this last point is our newest innovation called Event Notifications. Event Notifications gives customers the ability to build automated workflows across different best of breed cloud providers. For example, a customer can upload a video to B2 Cloud Storage And event notifications will automatically trigger a compute process at another provider that prepares the file for streaming. Currently, similar offerings in the market only trigger actions within one platform or require complex and restrictive workarounds to work with other providers. We designed event notifications to be platform agnostic, empowering customers to build workflows from the services they want. cutting out significant inefficiencies and costs in the process. The product launched in private preview just three weeks ago, and we already have over 100 organizations that have requested to join the early release. Event Notifications was also recognized as Product of the Year for cloud computing and storage at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference, a major trade show for the media and entertainment industry. I'm very encouraged by the early reception and the potential for our services to become increasingly strategic for our customers. Including event notifications, Backblaze has announced four major releases over the past six months, from the Shards Dash performance upgrade to enterprise control for business backup to our Powered by Backblaze program, I am proud of our team for delivering features that differentiate us and strategically position us as the de facto cloud storage provider for the open cloud. In Q1, we also made significant progress in our compliance and security programs, including StateRamp and the Motion Picture Association's trusted partner network. Focusing on compliance and security, is another key element in our effort to make our services as easy to adopt as possible. In this case, for the state and local government and educational industries and the media and entertainment industry. At the same time, we continue to expand and enrich our partner network. Recently, Backblaze and Kerasoft, which is one of the largest privately held IT software and services companies in the world, announced that we've been added to their NASPO value point contract, which eases the procurement process in government and education. Our partners also continue to help us facilitate and win deals with larger customers. Recently, the media team of one of the world's largest retailers needed a trusted location to hold their creative work. Their preferred reseller recommended adopting Backblaze. Our performance, ease of use, and affordability won the deal. In addition, our sole focus is a best-of-breed provider for cloud storage means that this retailer doesn't need to worry about any conflict of interest. With a vendor like Amazon, that obviously wouldn't be the case. Additionally, a number of meaningful partners have already joined our Powered by Backblaze program, which we announced just last quarter. One of the most recent companies to join Powered by is Axel AI. Their new Axel AI cloud leverages our cloud platform to deliver AI-powered media search tools. In the broader AI space, we're seeing a growing number of partners and customers utilizing the value of B2 cloud storage for AI workflows. Since the beginning of 2023, the number of AI companies using B2 for data storage has doubled with a wide range of use cases, such as wildfire management and monitoring, manufacturing optimization, satellite data analysis, and much more. I'm very proud of what the team has achieved to not only reach our record financial results, but to also deliver our platform and product innovations. I believe these put us in a strong position to deliver the transformational power of Cloud 2.0. I love seeing what businesses can do after we help to free their data from legacy platforms. Before I hand off the call, Today we announced that our CFO, Frank, is planning to retire this year. A search for his successor is already underway, and Frank intends to remain with us to help ensure a smooth transition to our new CFO. We're all hugely thankful for everything Frank has brought to the team, but we'll say our gratitude and celebration of his many accomplishments for his departure later this year. Until we hire and onboard his replacement, Frank will continue to help us drive great results.

spk16: I'll pass the call to Frank now to review our financial results.

spk17: Frank?

spk16: Thank you, Gleb, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. As Gleb mentioned, I'm planning to retire once we've identified my replacement and completed the onboarding process. There will be time for goodbyes when we get there, but until then, it will be business as usual, and I'm happy to turn to the record business results we have to share today. As a reminder, unless otherwise noted, I will be referring to non-GAAP metrics and the growth rates mentioned are year-on-year. We remain focused on two key metrics, revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA, which is defined in our earnings release. As Gleb mentioned, we have made significant strides in strengthening our financials from a year ago. This quarter, compared to last year, we accelerated our growth rate while expanding our adjusted gross margin, significantly improving adjusted EBITDA margins, and meaningfully reducing cash usage. The tremendous strides made over the year were positively impacted by the operating leverage inherent in our business. We have continued to execute and build a strong and consistent track record as a public company. Our Q1 revenue totaled $30 million, an increase of 28% year-over-year versus 20% the same period as last year. B2 cloud storage revenue was $14.6 million, reflecting 47% growth. Computer backup revenue totaled $15.3 million, reflecting 14% growth. Turning to our net revenue retention, or NRR, total company NRR was 112%. with B2Cloud storage at 126% and computer backup at 101%, which continued to show quarter-on-quarter improvement. Working down the P&L, adjusted gross margin increased about 500 basis points year-over-year to 77%, reflecting the price increase we put in place in Q4 of last year and further operating efficiencies at our data centers. This quarter, adjusted EBITDA was a positive 1.9 million or 6% of revenue, reflecting a substantial 18 points higher than the same period last year. Over the past year, we have significantly ground revenue while carefully managing expenses and increased operating efficiencies. This quarter, we also had slower headcount additions, which was offset by an increase in payroll taxes related to the recent stock price appreciation. Turning to the balance sheet, cash and short-term investments, including restricted cash, totaled $32.8 million at the end of Q1 2024 versus $33.4 million at the end of Q4 2023, reflecting just $600,000 in cash usage. Even after removing the benefit of options proceeds, cash usage for the quarter was about $4.9 million compared to $13.7 million in Q1 of last year, an almost $9 million improvement. The reduction in cash usage benefited from the price increases we put in place last quarter and operating expense discipline. Moving on to our guidance, for the second quarter, we expect revenue to be in the range of 30.7 to 31.1 million. We expect Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin between 6 and 8 percent. For the full year 2024, we are reiterating revenue guidance of 126 to 128 million and adjusted EBITDA guidance range of 8 to 10 percent. For year end 2024, we continue to project having at least $20 million in cash. So to wrap it up, we are very pleased with our Q1 performance. We had a record start to the year where we accelerated growth and continued to drive more operating leverage. I will now pass the call back to Gleb.

spk15: Thanks, Frank. I'm proud of our record financial results and technology innovations. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for joining us on this journey as we help lead the industry shift to cloud 2.0. I'm excited to see many of you at the Oppenheimer conference tomorrow and the Needham and Craig Hallam investor conferences later this month. And with that, I'd like to open it up for questions. Operator?

spk18: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will now pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Simon Leopold with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

spk02: Hi, guys. This is Victor Truen for Simon. I wanted to follow up on the egress fee comment that you guys made. Acknowledging that Google and AWS free quote-unquote egress has a number of strings attached, do these moves at least slightly alleviate concerns from customers whose primary concern was vendor lock-in and maybe close the gap slightly versus back ways when considering egress fees?

spk15: Hey, Victor. This is Glad. Thanks for the question. So the short answer is no. So what they've really done is free exit, not free egress. And the thing about it is that in the past, before these, customers could exit the clouds and some of us as open cloud vendors would actually cover the costs of having them leave those traditional cloud providers. But what customers really want is to be able to actually use their data. So the barrier that they have put in place for what they're doing is you have to fully 100% stop using their platforms. that's not what these customers are trying to do. They're trying to actually use their data. And so an example I think I've shared in a prior earnings call was a customer that had previously been entirely on AWS, had some outages and wanted to use multiple cloud services to improve durability. They actually added Backblaze, made us the primary, made AWS the secondary, and decrease their cost in half overall because our partnership with one of the cloud CDNs enabled them to transfer data for free. And therefore, they could double their durability, decrease their overall cost in half, and improve their overall infrastructure. So that's the kind of thing that the customers want. These free exit moves don't help with that at all for customers.

spk02: Okay, got it. So the full, you know, the kind of migration away was never really, you know, an issue anyways is kind of what you're saying. Exactly. Because, okay. And I just, let me see. Can you give us an update? I don't know if you spoke about this in your pre-recorded comments around the AI-focused solutions that you mentioned last quarter that you guys are working on and developing. Can you give us an update around that? you know, and kind of your progress around that.

spk15: Sorry, Victor, I'm not sure about an AI solution we talked about developing, but what I'll tell you is that we were focused on helping customers with their AI use cases. Okay. We shared some of the examples, like the wildfire example and the and the satellite navigation example that I mentioned on the call, just to give maybe a little more color on those. So as the customers are building their AI workflows, they need a place where the data itself lives, the foundational data platform for all that information. And more and more customers are coming to Backboys to have Backboys be that foundational data platform. So I gave a couple examples of that on the prior earnings call. In the case of our customer that does wildfire analysis, what they're trying to do is take camera footage, look at all the potential wildfires out there, and then triage them using AI. And the data for all that underlying analysis is on Backblaze. What the satellite navigation company is trying to do is, help create better global navigation and they're using ai to make the models better especially in places where tall buildings and other things get in the way of creating those models they're using ai to make those models better and they're using backblaze as the foundational data platform for their ai workflows so that's what we're doing we're providing that really high performance highly durable highly available platform which supports them in building these workflows because of our support for the open cloud ecosystem.

spk02: But didn't you mention some specific focus? I'm sorry, kind of like investment. Let me think. Yeah, last quarter, you said the head of sales will turn his focus to our AI initiatives, which are aimed to help support customers. Okay, so that's what you were referring to. It wasn't a specific focus. Okay, got it.

spk15: Right. So as we bring on a new head of sales, our current head of sales, Neal, will be stepping into the role focused on our AI initiatives. By AI initiatives, What I don't mean is product launches. What I mean is the opportunities in the AI space that we have to help customers because we do think that there are plentiful opportunities that we can help. There are many customers who are already doing it, and we would like him to take on the role of really understanding how we can further help more customers with it.

spk02: I see. So it's like a marketing initiative to help customers understand, you know,

spk25: that plays this role in being able to accomplish those things. That's more of what you were referring to.

spk15: It's a two-sided, yeah. It's both inbound and outbound. So it's both going out and helping educate more customers and also understanding what their use cases and needs are and bring more of that insight into the organization so we can evolve with their needs.

spk24: Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Victor.

spk18: Thank you. The next question is from Zach Cummins with B Reilly Securities. Please go ahead.

spk09: Hi, this is Ethan Wydell calling in for Zach Cummins. Thanks for taking my questions. To start, could you maybe speak a little bit to the different levers that you can possibly pull to sustain your strong growth in the B2 closet storage area?

spk15: Sure, happy to touch on some of those. So the first one is just go to market. When we went public, we talked about that 80% of all of our revenue was self-serve. So customers show up to the website, prospects show up to the website, they enter and you want a password, they enter a credit card and they sign up and go. They don't ever talk to a human. And 20% was with our sales-assisted motion. And those customers were about 20 times bigger. And so at IPO, we said we wanted to lean into that sales motion in addition to continuing to optimize our really efficient self-serve motion. So we've added resources and investment to the self-serve side. We've done things like – optimizing the way the website works, and we continue to do that to drive more self-serve business. And we've seen year-on-year growth, quarter-on-quarter, with the number of paying customers on the self-serve side. We believe we continue to have opportunity for that. We also have built up the sales motion, and we've done that with Salesforce. people. We've brought on some additional salespeople this quarter for some of the upmarket motion and the channel side. So we've we've last year we kicked off an initiative to build out our channel efforts. And so we've been starting to lean more into that. So the go to market motion overall is one way to drive growth. And then the other is the innovation. So I highlighted on the call Shards Dash, Enterprise Control, Powered By, and now Event Notifications, those are all innovations which help us expand into new markets, expand our opportunity with existing markets, and also upsell to our existing customer base.

spk09: Thank you. That's really helpful. And then can you speak to maybe if there's been any uptick or downtick in churn?

spk16: Hi, this is Frank. I can speak to that. We're really pleased about the churn statistics that we've seen. We think of it as customer retention. Our customer retention has remained at 91% overall. And that considers the fact that we did do a price increase in quarter four. So it's been very, very strong. We also look at our renewal rates. Our computer backup customers are continuing to renew at very strong rates, actually a little stronger than we thought. So it's actually kicking up our deferred revenue nicely, and the customer retention there is quite strong as well.

spk01: That's good to hear. Thank you.

spk18: Thank you. The next question comes from Jason Ader with William Blair. Please go ahead.

spk04: Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon, guys. A few questions. First, just maybe some commentary on the macro environment and how it might have changed or not since last quarter. And then just some questions for you, Frank, just on the numbers. So 14% growth in computer backup. What is driving that? Is that just the price increase? But it's definitely a better growth rate than what we've seen over the last four quarters. And then on the B2 growth rate, it's a little bit worse than what we saw last quarter and then also last year-ago quarter, you know, 49 and 47. This quarter it was 43. So just what's going on there, how we've seen some deceleration on cloud and why we've seen some acceleration on computer backups.

spk15: Jason, I'll start with the first bit of it, and then I'll let Frank address the questions you asked him directly. So on the macro side of things, we aren't seeing anything massively different. What I will say is that I think we've all seen that the Fed has kept interest rates where they are. bulk of our focus in terms of our customer base is the small to mid market customers who are certainly sensitive to the macroeconomic environment. And so we're being cautious about where that's headed, but we haven't seen anything too significant one way or the other with customers. We continue to sign up customers. Obviously we had a strong quarter overall, And, you know, that's driven by customers continuing to stay with us and continuing to sign up.

spk16: I'll talk about the growth rates of the product side. So actually we're pleased with our growth rates. The first one is that in computer backup it is 14% this quarter, which is very strong. That is due to the price increase, but it's also due to what I was referring to before, which is very high renewal rates. Because remember, every month we have more and more customers renewing off of their one-year and two-year contracts. So, those renewal rates have been particularly high. For the full year, we did see 10 percent. We said that, and we're remaining at that amount. So, we are still thinking in that double digits. One of the things that's starting to contribute to the revenue side is B1E, which is our enterprise version. That is an upsell version for existing accounts, and we're seeing some uptake there already, even though it's just been introduced. And also, we have some new customers coming in on B1E as well, and we're very excited about that. That enterprise is really aimed at larger companies as we move up market, so good things there. On computer backup, it's I mean, excuse me, on B2, the growth there at 47% this quarter in revenue was a bit higher than we thought. That's why we were at the top of our range. We are pleased with that. It is due to the combination of the price increase and the new business. But you're right. As we move through the year, we're saying that our total growth for the entire year will be about 40%. And the reason for that is in quarter four, we'll be lapping our price increase. So there's a little bit less growth. There's less growth there in that quarter. But overall, we do like what we see.

spk04: Yeah, sorry, I misspoke. I meant B2 Cloud ARR growth was lower than last quarter. It was 43%, I believe, 49% last quarter, and then 47% a year ago. So that's what I was trying to get at.

spk16: I see. So ARR, it's not a great, it's not a perfect predictor for our business because of the ups and downs and the calculation wobbles a bit. We calculated off of the last month of the quarter. So we have a higher month because we have so much pay-as-you-go revenue that every day is important. So it wobbles a little bit based on the calculation methodology. But we still think that our growth rate's there. are well above the market or the growth rates of the market. So we do feel good about it.

spk05: Thank you.

spk18: Thank you. The next question comes from Bruce Goldfarb with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

spk10: Hello, Frank. Congratulations on the great results. Thanks for taking my questions. In terms of the market segments, can you compare mid-size company demand with SMV demand? Where you're saying ? Go ahead.

spk15: Yeah, it's an interesting question, Bruce, and thanks for the question. What I'll say is that we've been doing the smaller size of the mid-market for a while, and we have volume there, right? We have about 100,000 customers overall using B2, so we have volume there. On the larger end of the mid-market, it's an up-market momentum that we've been doing more recently, and so I think it's harder to gauge the kind of statistics in that part of the market to be a strong indicator of overall market demand. I think what we are seeing is that customers in the upper market are interested in the value proposition we provide, which is part of why we decided to put more focus there. The platform provides a lot of value for a larger customer because if they have more data, they have more needs around that data, and they have the opportunity to optimize their platform further by using Backblaze. So I think that while it's hard to draw statistical significance from what we're seeing to the broader market trends, I think we're pleased with the interest and engagement that we're seeing in the upper mid-market. And just to make sure it's clear, when we talk about moving up market, this is not Fortune 500 and the federal government. These are companies that are up to about 1,000 employees.

spk11: Thank you. Yeah, that does.

spk10: That does. Thank you. And then in terms of competition, have you seen competitors, have they kept their rates stable or have they also rolled out price increases?

spk15: So I would say that some of the competitors have rolled out price increases. A number of them have kept their rates the same. But when we talk about the same, the traditional Cloud 1.0 providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, their default rates are three, four, five times our rate for storage. And on top of that, they charge a lot more in transaction fees, and then on top of that, they charge egregious egress fees. So, while they may not have raised rates, their rates are much, much higher than ours.

spk11: Thank you.

spk10: And then, are you still, do you still anticipate cash generation by mid-25?

spk16: Yes, yes, that's right. At the end of 2024, we said that we'd have at least $20 million and that we will have total cash flow break even. We're approaching that by mid-2025.

spk10: Great. Thank you. Congrats again on the results.

spk16: Thank you. Thanks, Bruce.

spk18: Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mimi for some questions gathered off the line. Mimi? Thank you, MJ.

spk21: First question is for Frank. This investor would like to know, you know, I would really like to see dividends. Are there any in the future?

spk16: We're not planning dividends for the foreseeable future. And the reason is, is that We are in a $50 billion market that's underserved in small and mid-sized companies. So we really are investing in our growth, and we think that's best for our investors.

spk21: The next question is for Gleb. Does Backblaze have a plan to attract younger clients like university or secondary school students, granting them a special fee, thus then Backblaze would have them for years to come?

spk15: So as far as keeping customers for years to come, I think it's a good point. Because of the high retention, Frank talked about 91% gross customer retention, which means customers stay with us for something like a decade. Certainly having customers join the platform is great as they stay on for a very long time. In terms of university and secondary schools, products and platform work really well for them by default. In part, that's because on the computer backup side, it's unlimited, so it's just easy and they don't have to worry about it. On the B2 side, we actually provide a free tier, so they can start with a limited amount of data and just use it for free, and it's very, very inexpensive to use it at their scale typically. So it's actually a great set of services specifically for their use cases as it stands.

spk21: Next question is also for you, Gleb. Will there be any plans this year to pioneer any revolutionary strategies that will put Backblaze ahead of its competitors?

spk15: So I think in terms of revolutionary strategies, I think one of the things we've talked about is this trend to Cloud 2.0 and how we facilitate that. So I think most of the traditional competitors are still aiming for that walled garden approach. And the reality that we see is that more and more customers want to use an open cloud with best of breed providers and get all the benefits that that entails. And so that strategy and the things that we're doing to support that, and they talked about event notifications, which enables customers to create automatic workflows between these different providers is a great way of helping to lead that shift. So I think that's probably the one I would mostly highlight. Other than that, I think as the strategies that we're pursuing are enabling us to already grow faster than the market and take market share. So I think between the go-to-market motions that we're doing and the product innovations that we're coming out with, I think we're well-positioned to do that.

spk21: And again, what are the most important goals for the next 12 months?

spk15: So in terms of goals, I guess first with financial goals. So financial goals, we want to continue driving revenue growth. Like Frank said, it's a $50 billion market. We believe there's a lot of opportunities, and so driving revenue growth is key. The second part is continuing to drive efficiency, and that's reflected in our positive EBITDA growth. And the third financial one is driving towards that total cash flow positive stature so that the business is just running on its own steam. So that's on the financial side. On the business side, continue to drive that upmarket growth. So with the new sales executives that we've hired in Q1, with a new head of sales that we're in the process of hiring right now, driving that upmarket growth. The second is continuing to drive the overall go-to-market motion and the channel motion. And then the last one is really taking those innovations that we've shipped and getting them into the hands of more and more customers. I think those are probably the main ones that I would like to highlight.

spk21: The next question we have is a follow-up from last quarter. Last quarter, my question received an incorrect answer. Backblaze cannot backup files synced by OneDrive due to reparse point flags assigned by Microsoft. Will Backblaze develop a solution such as a B2 integration to backup OneDrive cloud to cloud? or are we left with the safe versus synced files?

spk15: So that's probably a nuanced question for an investor call, but I very much appreciate both the person asking the question being a customer, that's key for us, and for digging in as well. So what I'll say is we don't have on our roadmap a plan to develop a one cloud drive integration directly. We do have partners that do that and we would love for you to use one of our partner products along with B2. It's part of the whole open cloud approach that we're working toward is supporting a broad ecosystem of partners with our B2 cloud storage. The computer backup service itself, which sounds like the one that you're primarily using, the computer backup service is really designed to backup all of the data on the laptops and desktops that customers are using so people can just sleep peacefully at night, that those machines and the data on them are protected. B2, with our partner ecosystem, supports all of the potential other use cases.

spk21: Next question for Gleb. Do ongoing developments in AI present any opportunities for backblaze?

spk15: So I think I touched on that a little bit earlier. But yes, the short answer is I think that AI is a multi-year, possibly multi-decade opportunity for backblaze. When you're working with AI use cases, you're working with a lot of data and analysis and use of that data. You need somewhere to put that data where it is durable where it's available, where it's performant, and where you can afford to do that. And then you want to use that data with all of the myriad other best of breed services being developed for AI. And there's a variety of them constantly coming out every single day. And so by being a leader in the open cloud movement and providing a great storage platform, I think we have a great opportunity to do that. I'll mention also another company that's I talked with recently they're in the process of coming out with a service that's going to create video, AI videos at scale. They're talking to us about leveraging the Backvoice platform because it provides efficiency, connectivity with the CDN providers that it would distribute that video to. I talked about another customer with one of our folks this morning that they do web-scale data analysis for an AI company, and they're leveraging Backblaze as the underlying foundational platform for all of that data that they're capturing. So I think that the number of use cases and opportunities here are just endless.

spk21: The next question is, what is the decision threshold to compete for larger clients? meaning companies above 1,000 employees?

spk15: So we absolutely have customers that are above 1,000 employees. Our target that we focus on is customers below that in large part because we think it's the most underserved part of the market where we can have a good velocity of solving and addressing many of those customers' needs. Having said that, we do help customers larger than that, particularly ones that have a lot of data and use cases that are well-suited to an easy-to-use, affordable storage platform. We don't actively try to compete for the Fortune 500 companies or the federal government because of the complexity of the technology. features and functionalities that they need, which are not those same features and functionality that the mass market of mid-market companies need. So we believe we're really well suited for customers below 1,000. We are well suited for many of the customers above 1,000. And we will work to address, to solve those customers' needs when it's a good fit.

spk21: And at what point is the risk of hiring more sales and customer relations staff worth the reward?

spk15: So I mentioned that in Q1, we actually hired a number of new account executives on the sales team, specifically because we see the opportunity of closing more upmarket deals with additional people. So we're constantly evaluating our go-to-market motions. and determining what's working and what can be improved. In general, that evaluation is what drives when we invest further in those areas.

spk21: And this is our final question. As a software engineer, Backblaze's B2 API was much more difficult to integrate than I would expect from a company that boasts the simplicity of its developer experience. What are Backblaze's plans to improve developer experience and make B2 adoption by the average developer easy?

spk15: First of all, I'll say again, thank you for being a customer. Thank you for integrating with our platform. I love it. I am surprised that you found that the experience was more difficult than you expected. It sounds like you may have been using the prior B2 API. We have since also introduced an S3 compatible API so that it is a drop-in replacement for any service that is compatible with Amazon's S3 offering. We've also created a whole new docs section on our website that we launched mid last year, which has been very popular and provides examples and samples of code snippets and more. And what I'll say is that we also would love feedback. So if you have feedback on what that experience was, what you would like to see different, please email productfeedback at backblaze.com, and we would love to hear it.

spk21: That's the final question. I'm going to hand the call back to MJ. MJ?

spk18: Thank you, Mimi. At this time, we don't have any more questions in our queue. And this will conclude our question and answer session. So I'd like to turn the call back over to Gleb Budman for closing remarks.

spk15: I want to say thank you to everybody for joining the call. Thank you for hearing about our quarter and the innovations that we had there. And we will look forward to seeing some of you at the conference tomorrow and next month and the rest of you on this call next quarter. Thank you so much.

spk18: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you.

spk12: music music music music

spk18: Hello and welcome to the Backblaze first quarter 2024 conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to Mimi Kong, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

spk21: Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Backblaze's first quarter 2024 earnings call. On the call with me today are Gleb Budman, co-founder, CEO, and chairperson of the board, and Frank Patchell, Chief Financial Officer. Today, Backblaze will discuss the financial results that were distributed earlier this afternoon. Statements on this call include forward-looking statements about our future financial results, use of our IPO proceeds, results from new features and offerings, the impact of price changes, partnerships and sales and marketing initiatives, our ability to compete effectively and manage our growth, and our strategy to acquire new customers and retain and expand our business with existing customers. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including those described in our risk factors that are included in our annual report on Form 10-K and our other financial filings. You should not rely on our forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. All forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions and beliefs as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update them except as required by law. Our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results may be found in our earnings release. which was furnished with our Form 8K filed today with the SEC. You can also find a slide presentation related to our comments in the webcast, which will also be posted to our investor relations page after the call. Please also see our press release or presentation for definitions of additional metrics, such as NRR and gross customer retention rate. Before I turn the call over to Gleb, I'd also like to mention that in the latter portion of our call, as in prior calls, we will be addressing questions from investors that we gathered through the Say Technologies platform. Thank you for joining us, and I would now like to turn the call over to Gleb.

spk15: Thanks, Mimi. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We had a record start across our key financial metrics. This quarter, revenue grew at 28%, eight percentage points better than last year. We achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of positive 6% versus negative 12% a year ago. And finally, cash usage this quarter was only $600,000, a dramatic improvement from the $13 million of cash used this same period last year. Not only have we delivered accelerated business growth and improved efficiency, but we have also delivered product innovations that serve our mission of supporting customers and partners with the best storage cloud. Before diving into our business results, I want to speak to a customer trend that we're already benefiting from today and which we see accelerating. A few months ago, we conducted a survey of more than 400 IT decision makers. A majority of the respondents indicated that they preferred to choose from best-of-breed solutions when selecting vendors. And yet, the cloud landscape has been historically defined by Cloud 1.0, where a few diversified cloud providers aim to lock customers into their platforms and take away customer choice. You may have heard that Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure recently announced free egress for their customers. They may have done this to mollify regulators because the Cloud 1.0 model is a walled garden by design, but this move does not at all address what customers actually want because it only applies to customers who leave those platforms completely. What customers really want is to freely use their data with multiple cloud services. These fake free egress announcements are only free exit not free egress. And underscore that Cloud 1.0 just doesn't work that way. Businesses want Cloud 2.0, an open cloud ecosystem where businesses can use their data wherever and however they want to. It's better for them, better for innovation, and ultimately better for the broader economy. And Backboys is built for Cloud 2.0. First, Our egress is actually free, allowing customers to use their data without fear of crippling bills or limits on who they work with. Second, we have a robust partner ecosystem, which gives customers easy access to the best of breed platforms they need. Third, we provide a trusted, durable platform that provides strong performance. And last, we continue to deliver innovations that support customers in using the best of breed services they want. A great example of this last point is our newest innovation called Event Notifications. Event Notifications gives customers the ability to build automated workflows across different best of breed cloud providers. For example, a customer can upload a video to B2 Cloud Storage And event notifications will automatically trigger a compute process at another provider that prepares the file for streaming. Currently, similar offerings in the market only trigger actions within one platform or require complex and restrictive workarounds to work with other providers. We designed event notifications to be platform agnostic, empowering customers to build workflows from the services they want. cutting out significant inefficiencies and costs in the process. The product launched in private preview just three weeks ago, and we already have over 100 organizations that have requested to join the early release. Event Notifications was also recognized as Product of the Year for cloud computing and storage at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference, a major trade show for the media and entertainment industry. I'm very encouraged by the early reception and the potential for our services to become increasingly strategic for our customers. Including event notifications, Backboys has announced four major releases over the past six months, from the Shards Dash performance upgrade to enterprise control for business backup to our Powered by Backboys program. I am proud of our team for delivering us and strategically position us as the de facto cloud storage provider for the open cloud. In Q1, we also made significant progress in our compliance and security programs, including StateRamp and the Motion Picture Association's trusted partner network. Focusing on compliance and security is another key element in our effort to make our services as easy to adopt as possible. In this case, for the state and local government and educational industries and the media and entertainment industry. At the same time, we continue to expand and enrich our partner network. Recently, Backblaze and Kerasoft, which is one of the largest privately held IT software and services companies in the world, announced that we've been added to their NASPO value point contract. which eases the procurement process in government and education. Our partners also continue to help us facilitate and win deals with larger customers. Recently, the media team of one of the world's largest retailers needed a trusted location to hold their creative work. Their preferred reseller recommended adopting Backblaze. Our performance, ease of use, and affordability won the deal. In addition, our sole focus is a best-of-breed provider for cloud storage means that this retailer doesn't need to worry about any conflict of interest. With a vendor like Amazon, that obviously wouldn't be the case. Additionally, a number of meaningful partners have already joined our Powered by Backblaze program, which we announced just last quarter. One of the most recent companies to join Powered by is Axel AI. Their new Axel AI Cloud leverages our cloud platform to deliver AI-powered media search tools. In the broader AI space, we're seeing a growing number of partners and customers utilizing the value of B2 Cloud Storage for AI workflows. Since the beginning of 2023, the number of AI companies using B2 for data storage has doubled with a wide range of use cases, such as wildfire management and monitoring, manufacturing optimization, satellite data analysis, and much more. I'm very proud of what the team has achieved to not only reach our record financial results, but to also deliver our platform and product innovations. I believe these put us in a strong position to deliver the transformational power of Cloud 2.0. I love seeing what businesses can do after we help to free their data from legacy platforms. Before I hand off the call, today we announced that our CFO, Frank, is planning to retire this year. A search for his successor is already underway, and Frank intends to remain with us to help ensure a smooth transition to our new CFO. We're all hugely thankful for everything Frank has brought to the team, but we'll save our gratitude and celebration of his many accomplishments for his departure later this year. Until we hire and onboard his replacement, Frank will continue to help us drive great results.

spk16: I'll pass the call to Frank now to review our financial results.

spk17: Frank?

spk16: Thank you, Gleb, and thanks everyone for joining us today. As Gleb mentioned, I'm planning to retire once we've identified my replacement and completed the onboarding process. There will be time for goodbyes when we get there, but until then it will be business as usual. And I'm happy to turn to the record business results we have to share today. As a reminder, unless otherwise noted, I will be referring to non-GAAP metrics and the growth rates mentioned are year-on-year. We remain focused on two key metrics, revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA, which is defined in our earnings release. As Gleb mentioned, we have made significant strides in strengthening our financials from a year ago. This quarter, compared to last year, we accelerated our growth rate while expanding our adjusted gross margin, significantly improving adjusted EBITDA margins, and meaningfully reducing cash usage. The tremendous strides made over the year were positively impacted by the operating leverage inherent in our business. We have continued to execute and build a strong and consistent track record as a public company. Our Q1 revenue totaled $30 million, an increase of 28% year-over-year versus 20% the same period as last year. B2Cloud storage revenue was $14.6 million, reflecting 47% growth. Computer backup revenue totaled $15.3 million, reflecting 14% growth. Turning to our net revenue retention, or NRR, total company NRR was 112%, with B2Cloud storage at 126% and computer backup at 101%. which continued to show quarter-on-quarter improvement. Working down the P&L, adjusted gross margin increased about 500 basis points year-over-year to 77%, reflecting the price increase we put in place in Q4 of last year and further operating efficiencies at our data centers. This quarter, adjusted EBITDA was a positive 1.9 million, or 6% of revenue, reflecting a substantial 18 points higher than the same period last year. Over the past year, we have significantly ground revenue while carefully managing expenses and increased operating efficiencies. This quarter, we also had slower headcount additions, which was offset by an increase in payroll taxes related to the recent stock price appreciation. Turning to the balance sheet, cash and short-term investments, including restricted cash, totaled $32.8 million at the end of Q1 2024 versus $33.4 million at the end of Q4 2023, reflecting just $600,000 in cash usage. Even after removing the benefit of options proceeds, cash usage for the quarter was about $4.9 million compared to $13.7 million in Q1 of last year, an almost $9 million improvement. The reduction in cash usage benefited from the price increases we put in place last quarter and operating expense discipline. Moving on to our guidance, For the second quarter, we expect revenue to be in the range of $30.7 to $31.1 million. We expect Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin between 6 and 8%. For the full year 2024, we are reiterating revenue guidance of $126 to $128 million and adjusted EBITDA guidance range of 8 to 10%. For year-end 2024, we continue to project having at least $20 million in cash. So to wrap it up, we are very pleased with our Q1 performance. We had a record start to the year where we accelerated growth and continued to drive more operating leverage. I will now pass the call back to Glenn.

spk15: Thanks, Frank. I'm proud of our record financial results and technology innovations. Thank you to our employees, customers, partners, and investors for joining us on this journey as we help lead the industry shift to Cloud 2.0. I'm excited to see many of you at the Oppenheimer conference tomorrow and the Needham and Craig Hallam investor conferences later this month. And with that, I'd like to open it up for questions. Operator?

spk18: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will now pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Simon Leopold with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

spk02: Hi, guys. This is Victor Truen for Simon. I wanted to follow up on the egress fee comment that you guys made. Acknowledging that Google and AWS free quote-unquote egress has a number of strings attached, do these moves at least slightly alleviate concerns from customers whose primary concern was vendor lock-in and maybe close the gap slightly versus back ways when considering egress fees?

spk15: Hey, Victor. This is Glad. Thanks for the question. So the short answer is no. So what they've really done is free exit, not free egress. And the thing about it is that in the past, before these, customers could exit the clouds and some of us as open cloud vendors would actually cover the costs of having them leave those traditional cloud providers. But what customers really want is to be able to actually use their data. So the barrier that they have put in place for what they're doing is you have to fully 100% stop using their platforms. That's not what these customers are trying to do. They're trying to actually use their data. And so an example I think I've shared in a prior earnings call was a customer that had previously been entirely on AWS, had some outages and wanted to use multiple cloud services to improve durability. They actually added Backblaze, made us the primary, made AWS the secondary, and decrease their cost in half overall because our partnership with one of the cloud CDNs enabled them to transfer data for free. And therefore, they could double their durability, decrease their overall cost in half, and improve their overall infrastructure. So that's the kind of thing that the customers want. These free exit moves don't help with that at all for customers.

spk02: Okay, got it. So the full, you know, the kind of migration away was never really, you know, an issue anyways is kind of what you're saying. Exactly. Because, okay. And I just, let me see. Can you give us an update? I don't know if you spoke about this in your pre-recorded comments around the AI-focused solutions that you mentioned last quarter that you guys are working on and developing. Can you give us an update around that? you know, and kind of your progress around that.

spk15: Sorry, Victor, I'm not sure about an AI solution we talked about developing, but what I'll tell you is that we were focused on helping customers with their AI use cases.

spk22: Okay.

spk15: We shared some of the examples, like the wildfire example and the and the satellite navigation example that I mentioned on the call, just to give maybe a little more color on those. So as the customers are building their AI workflows, they need a place where the data itself lives, the foundational data platform for all that information. And more and more customers are coming to Backboys to have Backboys be that foundational data platform. So I gave a couple examples of that on the prior earnings call. In the case of our customer that does wildfire analysis, what they're trying to do is take camera footage, look at all the potential wildfires out there, and then triage them using AI. And the data for all that underlying analysis is on Backblaze. What the satellite navigation company is trying to do is, help create better global navigation and they're using ai to make the models better especially in places where tall buildings and other things get in the way of creating those models they're using ai to make those models better and they're using backblaze as the foundational data platform for their ai workflows so that's what we're doing we're providing that really high performance highly durable highly available platform which supports them in building these workflows because of our support for the open cloud ecosystem.

spk02: But didn't you mention some specific focus? I'm sorry, you know, kind of like investment. Let me think. Yeah, last quarter, you said the head of sales will turn his focus to our AI initiatives, which are aimed to help support customers. Okay, so that's what you were referring to. It wasn't a specific focus. Okay, got it.

spk15: Right. So as we bring on a new head of sales, our current head of sales, Neal, will be stepping into the role focused on our AI initiatives. By AI initiatives, What I don't mean is product launches. What I mean is the opportunities in the AI space that we have to help customers because we do think that there are plentiful opportunities that we can help. There are many customers who are already doing it, and we would like him to take on the role of really understanding how we can further help more customers with it.

spk02: I see. So it's like a marketing initiative to help customers understand, you know,

spk25: that plays this role in being able to accomplish those things. That's more of what you were referring to.

spk15: It's a two-sided, yeah. It's both inbound and outbound. So it's both going out and helping educate more customers and also understanding what their use cases and needs are and bring more of that insight into the organization so we can evolve with their needs.

spk24: Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Victor.

spk18: Thank you. The next question is from Zach Cummins with B Reilly Securities. Please go ahead.

spk09: Hi, this is Ethan Wydell calling in for Zach Cummins. Thanks for taking my questions. To start, could you maybe speak a little bit to the different levers that you can possibly pull to sustain your strong growth in the B2 closet storage area?

spk15: Sure, happy to touch on some of those. So the first one is just go to market. When we went public, we talked about that 80% of all of our revenue was self-serve. So customers show up to the website, prospects show up to the website, they enter and you want a password, they enter a credit card, and they sign up and go. They don't ever talk to a human. And 20% was with our sales-assisted motion. And those customers were about 20 times bigger. And so at IPO, we said we wanted to lean into that sales motion in addition to continuing to optimize our really efficient self-serve motion. So we've added resources and investment to the self-serve side. We've done things like rebates. optimizing the way the website works, and we continue to do that to drive more self-serve business. And we've seen year-on-year growth, quarter-on-quarter, with the number of paying customers on the self-serve side. We believe we continue to have opportunity for that. We also have built up the sales motion, and we've done that with Salesforce. people. We've brought on some additional salespeople this quarter for some of the upmarket motion and the channel side. So we've we've last year we kicked off an initiative to build out our channel efforts. And so we've been starting to lean more into that. So the go to market motion overall is one way to drive growth. And then the other is the innovation. So I highlighted on the call Shards Dash, Enterprise Control, Powered By, and now Event Notifications, those are all innovations which help us expand into new markets, expand our opportunity with existing markets, and also upsell to our existing customer base.

spk09: Thank you. That's really helpful. And then can you speak to maybe if there's been any uptick or downtick in churn?

spk16: Hi, this is Frank. I can speak to that. We're really pleased about the churn statistics that we've seen. We think of it as customer retention. Our customer retention has remained at 91% overall. And that considers the fact that we did do a price increase in quarter four. So it's been very, very strong. We also look at our renewal rates. Our computer backup customers are continuing to renew at very strong rates, actually a little stronger than we thought. So it's actually kicking up our deferred revenue nicely, and the customer retention there is quite strong as well.

spk01: That's good to hear. Thank you.

spk18: Thank you. The next question comes from Jason Ader with William Blair. Please go ahead.

spk04: Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon, guys. A few questions. First, just maybe some commentary on the macro environment and how it might have changed or not since last quarter. And then just some questions for you, Frank, just on the numbers. So 14% growth in computer backup. What is driving that? Is that just the price increase? But it's definitely a better growth rate than what we've seen over the last four quarters. And then on the B2 growth rate, it's a little bit worse than what we saw last quarter and then also last year ago quarter, you know, 49 and 47. This quarter it was 43. So just what's going on there, how we've seen some deceleration on cloud and why we've seen some acceleration on computer backups.

spk15: Jason, I'll start with the first bit of it, and then I'll let Frank address the questions you asked him directly. So on the macro side of things, we aren't seeing anything massively different. What I will say is that I think we've all seen that the Fed has kept interest rates where they are. bulk of our focus in terms of our customer base is the small to mid market customers who are certainly sensitive to the macroeconomic environment. And so we're being cautious about where that's headed, but we haven't seen anything too significant one way or the other with customers. We continue to sign up customers. Obviously we had a strong quarter overall, And that's driven by customers continuing to stay with us and continuing to sign up.

spk16: I'll talk about the growth rates of the product side. So actually, we're pleased with our growth rates. The first one is that in computer backup, it is 14% of this quarter, which is very strong. That is due to the price increase, but it's also due to what I was referring to before, which is very high renewal rates. Because remember, every month we have more and more customers renewing off of their one-year and two-year contracts. So, those renewal rates have been particularly high. For the full year, we did see 10%. We said that, and we're remaining at that amount. So, we do, are still thinking in that double digits. One of the things that's starting to contribute to the revenue side is B1E, which is our enterprise version. That is an upsell version for existing accounts, and we're seeing some uptake there already, even though it's just been introduced. And also, we have some new customers coming in on B1E as well, and we're very excited about that. That enterprise is really aimed at larger companies as we move up market, so good things there. On computer backup, it's I mean, excuse me, on B2, the growth there at 47% this quarter in revenue was a bit higher than we thought. That's why we were at the top of our range. We are pleased with that. It is due to the combination of the price increase and the new business. But you're right. As we move through the year, we're saying that our total growth for the entire year will be about 40%. And the reason for that is in quarter four, we'll be lapping our price increase. So there's a little bit less growth. There's less growth there in that quarter. But overall, we do like what we see.

spk04: Yeah, sorry, I misspoke. I meant B2Cloud ARR growth was lower than last quarter. It was 43%, I believe, 49% last quarter, and then 47% a year ago. So that's what I was trying to get at.

spk16: I see. So ARR, it's not a great, it's not a perfect predictor for our business because of the ups and downs and the calculation wobbles a bit. We calculated off of the last month of the quarter. So we have a higher month because we have so much pay-as-you-go revenue that every day is important. So it wobbles a little bit based on the calculation methodology. But we still think that our growth rates there you know, are well above the market or the growth rates of the market. So we do feel good about it. Thank you.

spk18: Thank you. The next question comes from Bruce Goldfarb with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

spk10: Hello, Frank. Congratulations on the great results. Thanks for taking my questions. In terms of the market segments, can you compare mid-size company demand with SMB demand? Where you're saying ?

spk11: Go ahead.

spk15: Yeah, it's an interesting question, Bruce, and thanks for the question. What I'll say is that we've been doing the smaller size of the mid-market for a while, and we have volume there. We have about 100,000 customers overall using B2, so we have volume there. On the larger end of the mid-market, it's an upmarket momentum that we've been doing more recently, and so I think it's harder to gauge the statistics in that part of the market to be a strong indicator of overall market demand. I think what we are seeing is that customers in the upper market are interested in the value proposition we provide, which is part of why we decided to put more focus there. The platform provides a lot of value for a larger customer because if they have more data, they have more needs, around that data, and they have the opportunity to optimize their platform further by using Backblaze. So I think that while it's hard to draw statistical significance from what we're seeing to the broader market trends, I think we're pleased with the interest and engagement that we're seeing in the upper mid-market. And just to make sure it's clear, when we talk about moving up market, this is not Fortune 500 and the federal government. These are companies that are up to about 1,000 employees.

spk11: Thank you. Yeah, that does. That does.

spk10: Thank you. And then in terms of competition, have you seen competitors, have they kept their rates stable or have they also rolled out price increases?

spk15: So I would say that some of the competitors have rolled out price increases. A number of them have kept their, their rates the same. But when we talk about the same, the traditional cloud 1.0 providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, their default rates are three, four, five times our rate for storage. And on top of that, they charge a lot more in transaction fees. And then on top of that, they charge egregious egress fees. So while they may not have raised rates, their rates are much, much higher than ours.

spk11: Thank you.

spk10: And then are you still, do you still anticipate cash generation by mid-25?

spk16: Yes, yes, that's right. At the end of 2024, we said that we'd have at least $20 million and that we will have total cash flow break even. We're approaching that by mid-2025.

spk10: Great. Thank you. Congrats again on the results.

spk16: Thank you. Thanks, Bruce.

spk18: Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mimi for some questions gathered off the line. Mimi?

spk21: Thank you, MJ. First question is for Frank. This investor would like to know, you know, I would really like to see dividends. Are there any in the future?

spk16: We're not planning dividends for the foreseeable future, and the reason is is that We are in a $50 billion market that's underserved in small and mid-sized companies. So we really are investing in our growth, and we think that's best for our investors.

spk21: The next question is for Gleb. Does Backblaze have a plan to attract younger clients like university or secondary school students, granting them a special fee, thus then Backblaze would have them for years to come?

spk15: So as far as keeping customers for years to come, I think it's a good point. Because of the high retention, Frank talked about 91% gross customer retention, which means customers stay with us for something like a decade. Certainly having customers join the platform is great as they stay on for a very long time. In terms of university and secondary schools, products and platform work really well for them by default. In part, that's because on the computer backup side, it's unlimited, so it's just easy and they don't have to worry about it. On the B2 side, we actually provide a free tier, so they can start with a limited amount of data and just use it for free, and it's very, very inexpensive to use it at their scale typically. So it's actually a great set of services specifically for their use cases as it stands.

spk21: Next question is also for you, Gleb. Will there be any plans this year to pioneer any revolutionary strategies that will put Backblaze ahead of its competitors?

spk15: So I think in terms of revolutionary strategies, I think one of the things we've talked about is this trend to cloud 2.0 and how we facilitate that. So I think most of the traditional competitors are still aiming for that walled garden approach. And the reality that we see is that more and more customers want to use an open cloud with best of breed providers and get all the benefits that that entails. And so that strategy and the things that we're doing to support that, and they talked about event notifications, which enables customers to create automatic workflows between these different providers is a great way of helping to lead that shift. So I think that's probably the one I would mostly highlight. Other than that, I think as the strategies that we're pursuing are enabling us to already grow faster than the market and take market share. So I think between the go-to-market motions that we're doing and the product innovations that we're coming out with, I think we're well-positioned to do that.

spk21: And again, what are the most important goals for the next 12 months?

spk15: So in terms of goals, I guess first with financial goals. So financial goals, we want to continue driving revenue growth. Like Frank said, it's a $50 billion market. We believe there's a lot of opportunities, and so driving revenue growth is key. The second part is continuing to drive efficiency, and that's reflected in our positive EBITDA growth. And the third financial one is driving towards that total cash flow positive stature so that the business is just running on its own steam. So that's on the financial side. On the business side, continue to drive that upmarket growth. So with the new sales executives that we've hired in Q1, with a new head of sales that we're in the process of hiring right now, driving that upmarket growth. The second is continuing to drive the overall go-to-market motion and the channel motion. And then the last one is really taking those innovations that we've shipped and getting them into the hands of more and more customers. I think those are probably the main ones that I would like to highlight.

spk21: The next question we have is a follow-up from last quarter. Last quarter, my question received an incorrect answer. Backblaze cannot backup files synced by OneDrive due to reparse point flags assigned by Microsoft. Will Backblaze develop a solution such as a B2 integration to backup OneDrive cloud to cloud? or are we left with the safe versus synced files?

spk15: So that's probably a nuanced question for an investor call, but I very much appreciate both the person asking the question being a customer, that's key for us, and for digging in as well. So what I'll say is we don't have on our roadmap a plan to develop a one cloud drive integration directly. We do have partners that do that and we would love for you to use one of our partner products along with B2. It's part of the whole open cloud approach that we're working toward is supporting a broad ecosystem of partners with our B2 cloud storage. The computer backup service itself, which sounds like the one that you're primarily using, the computer backup service is really designed to backup all of the data on the laptops and desktops that customers are using so people can just sleep peacefully at night, that those machines and the data on them are protected. B2, with our partner ecosystem, supports all of the potential other use cases.

spk21: Next question for Gleb. Do ongoing developments in AI present any opportunities for backblaze?

spk15: So I think I touched on that a little bit earlier. But yes, the short answer is I think that AI is a multi-year, possibly multi-decade opportunity for backblaze. When you're working with AI use cases, you're working with a lot of data and analysis and use of that data. You need somewhere to put that data where it is durable where it's available, where it's performant, and where you can afford to do that. And then you want to use that data with all of the myriad other best of breed services being developed for AI. And there's a variety of them constantly coming out every single day. And so by being a leader in the open cloud movement and providing a great storage platform, I think we have a great opportunity to do that. I'll mention also another company that's I talked with recently they're in the process of coming out with a service that's going to create video, AI videos at scale. They're talking to us about leveraging the Backvoice platform because it provides efficiency, connectivity with the CDN providers that it would distribute that video to. I talked about another customer with one of our folks this morning that they do web scale data analysis for an AI company, and they're leveraging Backblaze as the underlying foundational platform for all of that data that they're capturing. So I think that the number of use cases and opportunities here are just endless.

spk21: Next question is, what is the decision threshold to compete for larger clients, meaning companies above 1,000 employees?