LivePerson, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to LivePerson's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Matt and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks, the management from LivePerson will conduct a question and answer session and the conference participants will be given instructions at that time. To give everyone the opportunity to participate, Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Adalia Rodriguez. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Matt. And good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on the call today is Rob Locascio, LifePersons founder and CEO, and John Collins, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that during today's call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, and other statements about future results. These statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions as of today and are subject to risk and uncertainty. Actual results may differ materially due to various factors, including those described in today's earnings press release and the comments made during this conference call, and in 10Ks, thank yous, and other reports we file from time to time with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Also, during this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings press release. Both this press release and supplemental slides, which include highlights for the quarter, are available in the investor relations section of LifePerson's website. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Ron. Ron?

Thanks, Adalia. Thank you all for joining LifePerson's first quarter 2021 earnings call. Over the past years, we've demonstrated LifePerson's clear leadership in conversational commerce. This quarter validates another data point showcasing the massive potential of conversational commerce and strength of our strategy and execution. Revenue increased 38% year-over-year to $107.9 million in the first quarter and grew approximately 6% quarter-over-quarter, exceeding the high end of our guidance. This acceleration on growth was fueled by a combination of growing wider and deeper with existing customers as well as adding new large brands. In Q1 2021, we signed eight deals of seven-figure annual contract value, four of which were new logos. We also expanded into target verticals such as healthcare and government. Total annual contract values signed in the quarter hit a record high, increasing more than 120% year over year. And the fact that this grew significantly faster than overall revenue is a great leading indicator for future acceleration. Volume on our conversational cloud in the first quarter reached an all-time high, even exceeding Q4 2020 peak volume during the holiday season. Overall platform volume at the end of March increased nearly 40% year over year, while automation volume accelerated by almost 50% year over year. Messaging volume that was partially or fully automated increased quarter over quarter and reaching more than 70% of the total messaging volume. A key highlight I'd like to share about Q1 was our focus on capturing massive opportunities, helping brands create conversational sales and marketing journeys for their customers. You may remember that we prioritized these revenue-generating use cases to own the entire customer lifecycle from marketing to sales to customer care, and Q1 showed strong execution around this strategy. Our gain-share business, driven largely by commerce, experienced a solid top line and robust pipeline for upcoming quarters across North America and EMEA. LivePerson's innovative marketing programs also contributed to this momentum. As we continue to adapt to the virtual selling environment, we've developed a new breed of top-notch remote marketing events. During the quarter, we added a large online event with expert-led educational masterclasses, community building activities, and peer-to-peer connection. In total, 119 executives across 79 leading brands joined the multi-day retreat. We plan to hold these events every quarter and anticipate they will continue to positively impact contract signings and pipelines. Now I'd like to highlight a few stories about brands leveraging live person's expertise and technology to drive digital transformation across care, commerce, and additional innovative use cases. The first is our win of a multi-year, seven-figure contract with huge potential for expansion with one of the top three healthcare companies in the world. This company generates hundreds of millions of calls across their key lines of business at the cost of billions of dollars each year. In the immediate future, we will assist the brand in reducing operating expenses and raising member satisfaction by shifting calls to messaging and introducing automation at scale. Over the long term, our proactive messaging and social messaging capabilities will help the brand build a stronger connection to its end customers by giving them the ability to more proactively self-manage their own health. Together, we'll unify the consumer experience across channels to develop a more intimate and long-term connection between the brand and its members. Live person's expertise in asynchronous messaging, our robust suite of conversational AI capabilities, and the fact that our platform is turnkey ready for transforming large enterprises were the key factors in winning this new logo. Another new logo win of the quarter was a seven-figure deal with one of the largest automotive manufacturers in the U.K. Like many other companies, the brand was challenged due to headcount churn as its contact center shut down and customer satisfaction ratings were hurt as well as revenue. LivePerson's conversational cloud will operate at the brand's central hub for messaging, creating a holistic experience for every stakeholder, including OEMs, over 3,000 global retail dealers, and the brand's employees and customers across channels. First, we'll transform their global contact centers to help them with customer care retention. They expand into commerce use cases with our highly differentiated two-way proactive messaging, which has generated a customer response rate as high as 35% for several brands already using it. For example, whenever a vehicle recognizes that its brakes need to be fixed, a proactive outbound message will be sent straight to its owner, enabling it to self-serve and book service from anywhere with a dealership. This kind of use case truly represents a large revenue-generating opportunity for the brand, especially when they have millions of connected vehicles globally. Key drivers include of this would include LivePerson E to navigate user interface, outstanding AI capabilities, and the ability to take payments and scale with automation across all channels. I'd like to share an example of an existing client, a global multi-billion dollar jewelry retailer that is taking full advantage of AI-powered messaging's potential drive to sales. We signed our first deal with the customer in Q3 2020 and expanded it this quarter. We started by launching both web messaging and a QR code experience that lets customers message with their jewelry consultants from any device. That basic start achieved 70 million messaging-driven sales in just $70 million in sales in just a few months. To date, over 900,000 messages, conversations have taken place with daily average sales conversion rate of 15%. With our new deal, we're expanding into new endpoints, proactive messaging and conversational ads. This expansion will also meet the retailer's demand for full NLU capabilities, payment within messaging, and direct IVR deflection. Incredible results the brand has achieved prove AI-powered messaging is not just about customer care, but also marketing and sales journeys that give customers the power to purchase when they want. Speaking of expansion, in Q1 2001, we signed one of the largest expansion deals in our history, with a multibillion-dollar North American satellite radio company. They started their journey with LivePerson in late 2019 with IVR deflection for their customer care operation. Over the year, they've massively expanded with their service with us multiple times through our gain share model, not only in customer care, but also by moving into commerce through in-app and proactive messaging. With this latest expansion, we will fully migrate their current technology onto LivePerson's platform, We envision the consumer experience with AI-powered messaging replacing costly voice calls. Live person exciting product roadmap combined with our AI expertise and scalability are key factors for us to expand the deal within a matter of weeks. One of my favorite product launches of the quarter is a loyalty program for Dunkin', one of the biggest fast food chains in the U.S. The brand was looking for new ways and new channels to build continuous connections with customers. They're adding QR codes on food packaging, giving customers the ability to easily scan the code, download their app, and sign up for the loyalty program via an automated SMS message sent from the bot, and a free donut. This program and packaging is starting to roll out in over 9,000 Dunkin' stores in the United States. We continue to innovate, not only in the AI sphere, but also in extending our platform to new channels, including social. We believe that social messaging will help meet the strong demand for from our customer care for a fully integrated messaging experience. Brands can now message social conversations, including public and private messages, at scale, increasing the surface area of automation touchpoints and the other capabilities within the conversational cloud, currently enabling brands to manage customer care and social within our platform, and our long-term vision is to provide an end-to-end social solution for care and marketing powered by AI and automation. Several of the world's largest brands have signed on to use our social capabilities or plan to use as part of joint roadmaps. Our partner ecosystem also continues to expand, both in terms of go-to-market and introducing new joint solutions with industry leaders. We recently announced that Tech Mahindra has joined other live person partners, including T-Tech, Infosys, and IBM Global Business Solutions, in strengthening our go-to-market reach and sales distribution. In fact, one of the seven-figure deals in our targeted government vertical was driven by a partner, Simultaneously, after a quarter of ramping and developing the pipeline, we closed important new logo deals with Infosys in Q1. We also announced a partnership with Medallia, offering brands the ability to seamlessly integrate conversations and customer engagement analytics to help them measure and respond to customer and employee signals in real time. We consider these collaborative partnerships significant indicators of our leadership position in conversational AI. Finally, in Q1... We were approached by Citi, one of our longstanding conversational cloud banking customers, to help bring an at-home rapid testing option for COVID to its employees. They asked us to build an app we call Bella that would take the power of our conversational AI that they use in their contact centers and see if we could apply it to at-home rapid testing. The goal was to have an AI solution that would take the employee through a conversational AI guided experience every day that could boost home testing confidence, create positive user experience, and provide the digital enablement that can help Citi create an additional level of mitigation in their offices, returning their employees back to office. Working closely with the Citi team, in a matter of weeks, we launched the Bella app on the conversational cloud. I'm really proud of what the team delivered and even proud to say our platform has been instrumental in providing additional measures to create a safe work environment for thousands of employees who would feel more comfortable getting back to physical workplace. We're looking at other opportunities within our corporate customers that will keep you updated on our progress with this COVID-19 testing program. Given all of the momentum and opportunity we continue to experience, we entered Q2 laser focused on retail, e-commerce, and sales and marketing use cases. while continuing to innovate in customer care. We're committed to bringing our complete vision for conversational commerce to life for our customers through our industry-leading AI and messaging capabilities. Our large and growing partner network, comprehensive revenue generating and gain share offerings, and compassionate and trusted conversational AI remain key pillars for our strategy as we lead conversational commerce in Q2 and beyond. And with that, I'll turn over the call to John to provide operational update and more color on our guidance. John?