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spk06: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cricut Quarter 3 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during your session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jim Stuba, Senior Vice President of Finance. Jim, please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on Cricut's third quarter 2023 earnings call. Please note that today's call is being webcast and recorded on the Investor Relations section of the company's website. A replay of the webcast will also be available following today's call. For your reference, accompanying slides used on today's call, along with a supplemental data sheet, have been posted to the Investor Relations section of the company's website, investor.cricket.com. Joining me on the call today are Ashish Arora, Chief Executive Officer, and Kimball Schill, Chief Financial Officer. Today's prepared remarks have been recorded, after which Ashish and Kimball will host live Q&A. Before we begin, we would like to remind everyone that our prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements, and management may make additional forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our strategies, business, expenses, and results of operations in response to your questions. These statements do not guarantee future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. These statements are based on current expectations of the company's management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the risk factors section of Cricut's most recently filed Form 10-Q. Actual events or results could differ materially. This call also contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the date of this broadcast, November 7th, Cricket assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking projection that may be made in today's release or call. I will now turn the call over to Ashish. Thank you, Jim.
spk03: Q3 was strong from a profitability perspective with operating income up 36% year-over-year despite a 1% sales decline. As we mentioned before, in 2023, we are focused on profitability and remain disciplined in our investments to generate value over time. We view our business through a long-term lens, and these investments will help us return to meaningful sales growth in the future. We continue to see retailers taking a conservative view with open-to-buy dollars and consumers being careful with discretionary spend, especially on higher ticket items. As the category leader, we are focused on the things that we can control. We continue to innovate and grow interest in the category, which will ultimately drive customer acquisition. We're excited about the future of our platform and the opportunities ahead. Before going into updates on our key priorities, I want to highlight some exciting new product launches in Q3 that demonstrate our commitment to innovation. First, JoyExtra. We launched Cricket JoyExtra in Q3. It was available for purchase starting on September 7th. Targeted primarily at new creative users and broadening our market with a printer-friendly compatible format, Cricut Joy Extra is designed to help makers create the most popular projects, especially full-color stickers as well as custom cards, T-shirts, and much more, yet is compact enough to fit into any space. Second, Cricut Venture. On the last earnings call, I mentioned we launched Cricut Venture, which became available for purchase on July 25th. Cricut Venture is the largest and fastest connected cutting machine on the Cricut platform and represents the fourth all-new architecture of connected machines in our history. The feedback from our users and independent reviewers on both machines has been very positive. Now on to an update on our priorities. Recall that we have four priorities, new user acquisition, user engagement, subscriptions, and accessories and materials. I will briefly review these items and provide some detailed commentary on our new platform innovations. New user acquisition. We ended the quarter with 8.6 million total users approximately in line with our expectations. We continue our focus on new user acquisition to grow our member base, engaging on our platform, which ultimately drives our monetization flywheel. We have previously shared that our funnel is healthy and we see an opportunity in holiday to pull consumers through the funnel who have been pausing in their purchase decisions. We are encouraged by recent Amazon Prime Day results that appear to confirm our research that consumers looking for a deal will act for the right value. As discussed last quarter, we are continuing our plan for deeper, shorter-lived promotions during holiday to convert more of these consumers. As we enter Q4, we continue to focus on driving awareness for cricket and our category by driving excitement by getting people talking about and making with cricket with friends and family and across social media. We know that cricket is a key part of holiday season for makers across the globe. We plan to position cricket as a key buy or gift of the season, from supporting sales promotions to executing holiday marketing campaigns that bridge awareness to revenue. Turning to the international side of our business, we're excited to see a return to sequential and year-over-year revenue growth of 36% year-on-year, with international representing 21.5% of total company revenue in the quarter, compared to 15.6% in Q3 2022. We ended the quarter with 3.64 million engaged users compared to 3.56 million a year ago. As a reminder, we count an engaged user as one who cuts a project at least once a quarter. Engagement embodies the core of our platform where we help users discover, make, and share their projects. Our goal is to expand the breadth of makeable content and help users discover content that inspires them. We then want to make it easy for them to design and make their project and ultimately share on the platform for others to be inspired. Although we're still in the early days of executing on an engagement strategy, we see several positive signs resulting from our efforts to drive engagement throughout our members' journey on our platform. Let me share a few examples of what we are working on. A key onboarding metric we look at is the number of days new members cut within their first 30 days after registering their machines. This metric is a strong leading indicator of the long-term engagement of a member on our platform. Over the past year, we have mentioned initiatives such as quicker learn classes, assisted learning plans, and other improvements in our out-of-box experience. In Q3, we saw an increase in this key onboarding metric compared to a year ago, as well as the share of members who engage in our educational content. Content plays a key role on our platform. We've been focused on delivering the depth and breadth of images. We have now crossed 600,000 images available to our Cricket Access members. The growth of our library over the past year has been possible thanks to the great success of our Contributing Artists program. We're also making strides in the discoverability of our content so members can increasingly find content that is relevant to them. In Q3, we launched personalized content on the Design Space homepage, where each member gets recommendations based on their past activities on our platform. Before, all users in each country saw exactly the same content. We are pleased with the click-through rates of our members with this new personalized content. We will continue to invest in personalization along with growing our cricket library of images. A unique differentiator of our platform is projects. With projects, our members can discover full project ideas that they can then customize or just make them as is. Unlike inspiration found on other platforms, projects in design space are not just a visual inspiration that needs to be recreated from a blank canvas. but actual makeable content. In Q3, we also made improvements to our project search algorithm to provide better visibility to members of community projects, which are projects made and shared on our platform by other members, not created by Cricket. As a result, we saw a significant increase in the number of members deciding to make their project based on a community project. By way of context, we see our library of community projects as a key area of growth for our platform. Community projects will increasingly be a fresh source of inspiration and makeable content for our subscribers, as network effects accelerate the amount of makeable content, which in turn inspires others to discover, make, and share projects. While providing more visibility to the diverse creations from our community, we are also making improvements to facilitate and stimulate project sharing. As we are successful in unlocking this opportunity, community projects will become a massive opportunity for growth and will create a competitive mode that will be hard for others to replicate. As we broaden our library of images and projects, it is important that our users are able to find the content they are looking for. I've already talked about the personalization technologies we are investing in. In addition, we are also focused on improving search. We launched semantic search in early Q3 and are actively testing and optimizing it. Machine learning powers semantic search. We are already seeing significant search conversion gains for multi-word queries and are actively training the machine learning model on Cricut and cutting machine specific terms to further improve the results. The common thread across all of our engagement efforts is to help users discover content that inspires them and matches their skill level and time availability so they can find fulfillment in making and sharing their creations. Paid subscribers were in line with their expectations and increased 261,000 year over year, but decreased 23,000 sequentially in Q3, ending with approximately 2.7 million paid subscribers. Recall, we communicated our expectation that paid subscribers could be flat to down in the second half of the year. While we have a positive outlook on subscriptions, lower new user ads compared to prior years puts pressure on our subscriber growth rate and attach rates throughout the second half of the year. As of today, I'm pleased to say that in the month of October and thus far in November, our paid subscriber count has been positive. To be clear, positive paid subscriber growth is our plan. We have a rich roadmap to continually increase the value proposition for subscribers, including an ever-growing suite of premium design tools, along with content strategies described previously. Our goal is to make it incredibly compelling to sign up as a subscriber to leverage our software and services. As our engagement efforts bear fruit, we expect to see a boost to subscriptions. Accessories and material sales declined 12% year-on-year. As we've highlighted before, we are on a two-year journey to transform this business. Consistent with prior comments, we will continue our promotional cadence in this category to remain price competitive for consumers. We see that when we are in the price range of our competitors, we get our fair share. We have a strong focus on optimizing our products for lower costs so we can compete better in the market with improved margins while still creating a differentiated offering that works seamlessly with our machines and platform. For example, along with the launch of Cricut Joy Extra, we released several innovative new materials like printable waterproof sticker sheets, iron-on and vinyl that leverage standard inkjet printers and then work seamlessly with our print and cut technology to produce full-color projects in a single cut layer. We are intensely focused on the overall consumer experience, and we are motivated to work with those retailers that help us create a great experience both on the shelf and for actual usage of our ecosystem. I have never felt so encouraged and excited about the Cricket platform. We are in the early days of this transformation while remaining profitable. We are driven to continue to innovate while exhibiting both long-term focus and current discipline. As we look ahead into Q4 and beyond, I'm excited about the future innovations of our platform and products that will continue beyond what I've detailed previously to help users discover, make, and share. With that, I will turn it over to Kimball.
spk04: Thank you, Ashish, and welcome, everyone. In the third quarter, we delivered revenue of $174.9 million, a 1% decline compared to prior year. We generated $17.2 million in net income, a 38% year-over-year increase in our 19th consecutive quarter of positive net income as we continue to invest in our key priorities. Breaking revenue down further, revenue from connected machines was $49.5 million, down 6% over Q3 2022. We continue to experience the effects of softness in consumer discretionary spending and retailer caution in inventory commitments. Revenue from accessories and materials for the quarter was $49.1 million, down 12% over Q3 2022, and was primarily driven by a decrease in project materials. As Ashish referenced, we have more work to do here. Subscriptions revenue for the quarter was $76.3 million, an 11% increase over Q3 2022, reflecting targeted investments in cricket access and the expansive improvements made over the last several quarters. In terms of geographic breakdown, international revenue was $37.6 million, up 36%, compared to $27.6 million in Q3 2022. As a percentage of total revenue, international was 21.5%, compared to 15.6% of total revenue in Q3 2022. Turning to users and engagement, I am pleased to share we ended the quarter with over 8.6 million total users, or a 16% growth over Q3 2022. We ended the quarter with over 3.6 million engaged users, which was a 2% increase from Q3 last year and essentially flat sequentially. We ended the quarter with approximately 2.7 million paid subscribers, up 11% from Q3 2022, but down 23,000 sequentially. Our subscription attach rate declined to 31% in Q3 2023 and from 33% last year. As discussed in earlier calls, there is some natural subscriber attrition. So subscriber growth will be muted until we increase the pace of machine sales and new user acquisition. Moving to gross margin. Total gross margins in the third quarter was 46.8% and improvement compared to the 46.2% in Q3 2022 and reflects a higher amount of subscription revenue as a percentage of total revenue. Breaking gross margin down further, gross margin from connected machines was 15.9% compared to 6.1% in Q3 of last year. The increase in margin was primarily due to less promotional activity as a percentage of revenue and a favorable product mix compared to Q3 2022 as our end-of-life maker machine continues to represent a smaller percentage of machine sales. Subscriptions gross margin for the quarter was 89.3% compared to Q3 2022 of 90.6%. Third quarter gross margin for accessories and materials was 12.1%. This compares to 29.2% in Q3 2022. The decline in margin was driven primarily by inventory impairments. Without the impairments, gross margin would have been approximately 30%. Our full year expectations for A&M margins remain unchanged. Looking into Q4, for both connected machines and accessories and materials, margin pressures for capitalized warehousing and operations expenses will accelerate as we reduce inventory levels. Also, Q4 is typically our lowest gross margin quarter. Machine sales are seasonally higher with the holidays, which will naturally pressure margins, since machines carry lower gross margins than other products and will represent a higher percentage of revenue in that quarter. Total operating expense for the quarter was $58.2 million and included $11.7 million in stock-based compensation. Total operating expense was down nearly 10% from $64.4 million in Q3 2022. The $6.2 million decrease in total operating expense included a $4.5 million reduction in bad debt allowance. Operating income for the quarter was $23.7 million, or 13.5% of revenue, compared to $17.4 million, or 9.8% of revenue in Q3 last year. Our tax rate of 32.5% was higher than normal, compared to 29.5% in Q3 last year, due to an increase in stock-based compensation difference due to the decrease in stock price upon vesting versus the stock price at the grant date. We delivered our 19th consecutive quarter of positive net income. That income was $17.2 million or $0.08 for diluted share compared to $12.4 million or $0.06 for diluted share in Q3 2022. Turning now to balance sheet and cash flow. We continue to generate healthy cash flow on an annual basis, which funds inventory needs and investments for long-term growth. Year-to-date, we have generated $196 million in cash from operations compared to $630,000 a year ago, ending with a cash and cash equivalence balance of $173.6 million. We remain debt-free. Recall we are generating higher levels of cash as we work to bring inventory more in line with pre-pandemic norms. Accordingly, inventory decreased by $180.2 million from a year ago to $303.6 million at the end of the quarter. In Q2, we announced a $234.6 million special shareholder dividend, of which $232.2 million was distributed in July, with the remainder to be paid upon vesting of restricted shares. During the quarter, we used $347,000 of cash to repurchase 39,000 shares of our stock. We have $26.9 million remaining in the repurchase program as of the end of Q3. After the end of the quarter and through October 31st, we used $6.9 million of cash to repurchase 821,000 shares of our stock, which results in $20 million remaining in the repurchase program as of November 1st. Much of our outlook remains consistent with what I have communicated in our prior earnings call, but I do want to highlight a few additional items. During Q3, and specifically in July, we paid the special dividend, which will result in a lower cash balance and lower interest income in the second half of the year. We expect to continue generating healthy cash flow from operations and to end the year with substantial cash and no debt. Consistent with our commentary last quarter, we continue to see softening consumer spend in our category and retailers taking a conservative approach to inventory commitments. Retailers did not restock to historical normal levels in Q3. As a result, we are taking a prudent and prioritized approach in our planning as we look ahead. Leveraging our consumer analytics, we plan to execute deeper Q4 promotions for machines combined with comprehensive marketing plans to address consumer concerns about affordability and consumer reluctance to spend. we remain cautious because it is difficult to predict how consumers and retailers will respond to these initiatives. Typical revenue seasonality is 60 percent in the second half. Given the current macro environment, we expect second half revenue to be softer as a percentage of full year revenues and expect a lower sequential growth rate in Q4 compared to historical norms. In terms of new user growth, we still expect to add fewer new users in 2023 than we did last year. We have a positive outlook on subscriptions and expect to end Q4 with more paid subscribers than we had in Q3. As we look to 2024, however, new user growth rates may put pressure on our subscriber growth and attach rates, which could result in a similar seasonal subscriber pattern as we observed in 2023. Gross margins will continue to be pressured for multiple reasons. First, the mix of revenue in Q4 is more weighted toward machines, which carry lower gross margins. Second, on physical products, Higher fixed costs as a percentage of revenue in warehousing and capitalized operations expense will be more pronounced in Q4 as inventory levels decrease. Third, accessories and materials will also have a promotional cadence to remain price competitive. As a result, we expect full-year accessories and materials margins will be similar to Q4 2022's gross margin. We expect operating margins to be similar to 2022 full-year margins. we remain focused on managing our profitability while investing in areas with the highest impact. Should macro conditions worsen, we will continue to make adjustments as needed, just as we demonstrated in 2022. We expect to continue generating healthy cash flow from operations and remain committed to our long-term operating margin targets of 15% to 19%. Our proven model has demonstrated that when we operate at scale and drive top-line growth, these margins are achievable. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.
spk06: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by as we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Eric Woodring at Morgan and Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, thank you. This is Maya on for Eric. First question, just as we look at the percentage of engaged users, it dropped to a new low of 42% in the quarter. Where do you think engagement bottoms and how should we think about that metric in 4Q? I know it's usually obviously a seasonal uptick and then I have a follow-up, thank you.
spk03: Maya, thanks. This is Ashish. Let me take that, and thanks for the question. You know, clearly engagement, as we've highlighted before, is one of the top priorities for the company. And, you know, we definitely have seen some promising results and promising things, but, you know, too early to declare victory. So let me kind of give you some color on that, and, you know, hopefully it'll answer your question as well. So as you said, percentages are down year on year for engagement, but the number of engaged users were up by about 80,000 driven mostly by the fact that we have a larger number of users, but the number of engaged users were up 80,000. Now, when we ask, you know, we dug into this, and when we ask users who have not been on the platform for the last 90 days or more, they kind of highlight a number of things. But the first thing they highlight is that over 80% of them actually want to be on the Cricket platform. They like it. They want to engage with Cricket more. So then we ask them, well, why didn't you do that? And the top reasons among many, one is life just got too busy, I didn't have time, I couldn't think of a reason to make something, and even when I had a reason, I couldn't find a project easily. So what we are focusing on, basically to capitalize on the opportunity we have in engagement, is to innovate on the platform to make it easier for them to make things where it takes less time, to send them triggers and identify reasons that they want to come back to the platform. Like, for example, reminding them saying, hey, you made for a birthday last year. It's time to make a birthday, a birthday project. Or a friend that you follow on the platform made something. And finally, just give them the right inspiration and the right content so that they can make it. So a lot of our innovations, and I think it's a series of things that we are doing. But let me give you an example that we kind of highlighted in our script. So we introduced this personalization ribbon which identifies, based on users' interest, things that they would be interested in. And we saw a pretty significant engagement with that content. So again, we're going to continue to work on a variety of initiatives. Many of these are showing promising signs, but obviously they have to at some point add up to impact the overall metric that we report on publicly. One thing that we do want to highlight is that our conviction and belief is that the more people come back to the platform, more often to be inspired, to discover content, the more likely they will be to make. So again, like I said, some good promising results on the micro initiatives, but we have to still see how they all add up to improve the metric overall.
spk05: Great, thank you. And then you talked a little bit about how retailers continue to be cautious in 3Q. As you look into October and then November to date, kind of are you starting to see retailers restock more significantly? Or is it kind of that same cautious retailer behavior?
spk04: So, Maya, this is Kimball. Thanks for the question. We are seeing retailers continue to be cautious even as we move into Q4. We also continue to see consumers, you know, and discretionary spend under pressure. That said, we have a large SAM with a huge opportunity in front of us, notwithstanding Kennedy's short with headwinds. Our research shows us that the funnel is healthy and, you know, we have a Promotional strategy in q4 that we've talked about where we're going to have some deeper live promotion So some deeper shorter live promotions to to accelerate some of those consumers through the funnel that tell us that they are Waiting for a deal or they're saving money to to buy a cricket We saw the the recent Prime Day performance. We're encouraged by that But it's still a little early for us to say how holiday works out for for consumer demand we're so we're watching that very carefully and But in some instances, we believe retailers have suboptimized inventory purchases for holiday.
spk03: And let me just kind of add to that and reinforce some of the things that Kim will mention, right, which is that, you know, we made a deliberate strategy for the majority of the year based on the headwinds we were seeing to build the top of funnel and the middle of funnel. So as we kind of continue to pull people through the funnel, you know, right before they convert, they basically highlight a few different reasons why they haven't, you know, hit the purchase button, which is, I'm saving money, I'm looking for a special deal, I'm worried about expenses. So our Q4 strategy, as Kimball said, was very much driven by let's promote and let's understand the elasticity of those promotions. We think that, you know, we clearly saw the results on Prime Day. We definitely are working with retailers to highlight some of our concerns. We think that there will be some money or some money left on the table as these consumers either, you know, buy something else or, you know, go online to purchase these products. But, you know, again, we go into the holidays, you know, basically based on data that some of the consumers will actually respond to the promotions, and we're actually pretty excited about it.
spk05: Great. Thank you so much.
spk06: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Adrian Yee at Barclays. Your line is open.
spk01: Hey, good evening. This is Paul Carney on for Adrian. I wanted to just drill down on accessories and materials on the gross margin performance, hoping you can give us some more color on what's driving the year-over-year decline in gross margin. It's down to 12%. I know there was how much of this was the excess inventory reserve versus kind of just deleverage on higher fixed costs and then bigger picture on accessories and materials. How do we get back to a point where accessories and materials, the gross margin contribution, becomes a larger part of the story, the razor blade part of the story, or when things are working? Do you see anything different on kind of accessories and materials getting back to that point? Thanks.
spk04: Oh, this is Kimball. Thanks for the question. First, your question on gross margins. So, accessories and materials gross margins in the quarter would have been 30% but for the write-downs, right? And A&M is our broadest category, and it's the category where we see the most competition. And we launch a lot of products in that category, and some do well, some don't do as well. And as we look at velocity and do periodic look-backs, GAAP requires that we write down excess inventory. As we have kind of gone through the last couple years and had declining sales in this category, that has exacerbated somewhat that velocity factor as we do these look backs. And so that's really what weighed down the margins this around the quarter. On the revenue side of the equation, we do see competition here, but as Ashish mentioned, that when we are closer to price with our competitors, we win our fair share. And so we are focused on how we maintain share in this space. Engagement continues to be a headwind because when consumers are cutting less, they're using fewer materials, and that puts pressure on their demand. And then, again, there's an element of the retailer conservative approach to restocking inventory that also is weighing on our revenues currently. We're about eight months into a two-year journey to remake this business. I just want to highlight that we have a strong conviction that we have a right to play and win in this space. We have an integrated platform, and we design and materials work seamlessly with our platform. And as we rebuild this business over the next coming quarters, right, we're focused on making sure we have the right products at the right price with the right cost structure so that we can win and also help our retailers with their margins also.
spk03: And then I'll just add that, you know, as we drive engagement, you know, that's the most structural variable that lifts all boats. And I think we need to just make sure that we continue to do that over time.
spk04: Yeah, and I would just call out that these improvements aren't going to be like a light switch, right? You'll see incremental improvement over time.
spk01: Perfect. Thanks. I'll pass on.
spk06: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Mark Altschwager at Baird. Please go ahead. If your line is muted, please unmute it. Please rejoin the conference call if you can't hear. Our next question comes from Mark Altschwager at Baird.
spk07: Can you hear me now?
spk06: Yes.
spk04: Yes, we can hear you.
spk07: All right, this is Amy on remark, so thank you for taking our questions. You noted in your prepared remarks that subscriber growth and attach rates could remain under pressure in 2024. So at this point, can you provide us any more color on your initial expectations for 2024?
spk04: So I'll talk to the subscriber piece first, right? As we called that this year, we're adding fewer new users than we did last year. And at our current rate of adding new users, saw that, and we talked to this in Q2 and this quarter, that at the current rate of new user ads, that we could be flat to slight decline on subscribers. And to the extent that growth rates in new user acquisition is moderate, we'd expect to see the same seasonal pressure next year, which means that we'd be expecting to add subscribers in Q1 and Q2, and potentially flat to maybe down in Q3, depending on exactly how those new user acquisitions play out. In terms of Q24, or sorry, in terms of 2024 outlook, I think it's a little early for us to call that out. And we've talked about the headwinds that we're seeing currently in Q4. We've talked about the promotions that we have planned, and we are watching those closely to see what resonates with consumers and what elasticity we see as we go through those promotions. And that's really going to inform us as we think about especially the first half of 2024.
spk03: And, you know, again, I think if you look at all the four priorities that we have, you know, subscriptions, acquisition, engagement of materials, we feel that we are furthest along in our subscriptions roadmap. It's where we have a ton of innovation coming. We are focusing on driving search, improving services, content. So generally our level of confidence in that part of the portfolio is high. As Kimball said, in addition to that, as we look at acquisition, as we acquire new members and penetrate our SAMs, the more we acquire, the more it helps our subscriber base. So our ability to succeed in acquisition is going to directly have a positive impact on subscriptions in terms of acquiring new customers. Our efforts on engagement is going to have a positive impact on our ability to retain those subscribers. So I think, again, it's hard to talk about how the economy is going to shape out and how some of the consumer spending will happen. But again, as we look at the medium to long term we have a high degree of confidence in our subscriptions roadmap and strategy.
spk07: Great. Thank you. And then this year, you know, you continue to expand the capabilities of your subscription platform while introducing new cutting capabilities with the Joy Extra and Venture Machines. Was there any sell-in benefit in the quarter related to that Joy Extra launch? And then could you also speak to any particular areas of opportunity you see in the innovation pipeline?
spk04: Thank you. So there was some sell-in benefit in the quarter, but not enough that we're splitting it out separately. It's still in distribution and being placed in retailers. So it's not It's not fully set in all locations where we expect to see it.
spk03: It's actually very late in the quarter, right, when we launched our extra. So, again, we're just kind of rolling out. We've had really, really strong reviews, great feedback from our existing and our new consumers. For venture, just to add to your question, we obviously did not see any sell-in benefit. So there's no artificial pull-in of revenue, I would say, for venture because it's only distributed online. So sell-through revenues match pretty well. I think our innovation strategy is to continue to drive for affordability and approachability on machines, on materials. But again, I will reinforce the the biggest innovation that's going to benefit and ultimately help us cross the chasm is going to be all the effort that we are working on the platform to drive engagement and to make it easy for people to discover, make, and share their projects so that it ultimately drives network effects. I think that's kind of – there's a lot of innovations coming, but that is the core backbone of how all innovations play off each other.
spk06: Great. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Azia Merchant at Citigroup. Your line is open. Great. Thank you for taking my question.
spk08: So the international growth was particularly strong, and you highlighted that in your prepared remarks as well. Maybe you can talk to us about, you know, is it just off a small base or what's been some of the driving factors that you see on the international front and how we should think about, you know, sales and marketing expenses in the December quarter as you continue to drive maybe perhaps the international growth or even domestically if you've talked about your various initiatives. And then I have a follow-up. Thank you.
spk04: Okay, Essia, thanks for the question. This is Kimball. Yeah, we're excited about our international performance. We're up 36% year-over-year, and it represents almost 22% of revenue in the quarter, which is up from a year ago. International benefited from retailer expansion within different countries, as well as also online expansion. That said, we are, you know, Excited about our SAM, both in North America and internationally, we have a huge opportunity in front of us. And while we benefited relatively in international in the last quarter, we still have a huge opportunity ahead of us in our domestic business as well. Turning to your question on marketing spend in Q4, as part of the deeper promotion strategy, we talked about being able to create buzz around some of those promotions and adding a number of influencers. I think we shared the number of targeting additional 200 influencers to help us advertise our promotions and our product. We've added almost 300 at this point, and we continue to execute on that broader marketing strategy in the quarter.
spk08: Okay. And then just on cash flow generation, you know, obviously very healthy here. Can you talk to us about... The return of cash on this one, like what we should be modeling for the outer quarters, seems like the repurchase of shares was a little bit lower this quarter than the prior quarters. Are we expecting more of this to continue, given you guys have a balance still remaining in your share buyback?
spk04: Thank you. So we have a business that generates cash. And we've talked about in the last couple of quarters that we're generating more cash this year than we normally would as we bring pandemic-level finished goods inventories down in line with historical norms. And so we highlighted almost $200 million worth of cash generated this year versus quarter to date versus 600-something thousand the prior year. So we are producing a lot more cash. And the the $234 million dividend that we paid in Q3 reflected a right-sizing of our balance sheet. And we continue active with our buyback program. We buy within, you know, outside of our open trading windows. We're trading within kind of safe harbor provisions for volume, but we also have price targets at which we're more active versus less active And so that's part of what played into the Q3 purchases. But as we highlighted in the month of October, we also spent $6.9 million to purchase an additional 821,000 shares. So, you know, we will be active in buyback, but, you know, we have a pricing strategy that we adjust from time to time.
spk06: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I would now like to turn it back to Jim Suva for closing remarks.
spk02: Thank you, Amber, and thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. We have a large opportunity over the long term to drive new user growth and increase engagement. We believe the initiatives we are deploying now will position us well in the future. The Cricut platform continues to not only strengthen but also provide increased value to our users. We will continue to manage the business for sustainable, profitable growth and generate healthy cash flows. I'm excited about the opportunities ahead of us. We will be at the Roth MKM 12th Annual Deer Valley Investor Conference in Deer Valley, Utah on December 14th and look forward to seeing everyone then. If you have additional questions, please email me at jsuva at cricket.com. This now concludes this earnings call and you may disconnect. Thank you.
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