LivePerson, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to LiveParson's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Denae, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks, the management team from LiveParson will conduct a question and answer session, and 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 call over to Mr. Chad Cooper, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Denae. Joining me on the call today is John Collins, Interim CEO and CFO. 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, November 8, 2023, and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially due to various factors, including those described in today's earnings press release and in the comments made during this conference call, as well as in 10-Ks, 10-Qs, 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. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings press release. Both the press release and the supplemental slides, which include highlights for the quarter, are available on the investor relations section of LivePerson's website. With that, I will turn the call over to John.

John?

Thank you, Chad, and thank you all for joining us today. I'll begin with a brief recap of recent changes to the business, followed by an update on strategy and customer wins, and conclude with the discussion of third quarter financials and guidance. Several years ago, LivePerson envisioned that asynchronous messaging and AI-powered automation would become the channels of the future for customer service and support. Time savings, convenience, and dynamic visual content make messaging a superior consumer experience to voice. while AI-powered automation enables cost-effective scalability for the enterprise. We embraced this vision, replatformed the business, and emerged as a leading provider of asynchronous messaging and conversational AI for many of the world's largest enterprises. Today, LivePerson is arguably the most scaled provider of messaging and AI-powered automation for customer service and support, but we believe our current growth and profitability do not reflect the market opportunities. During the pandemic, we made several opportunistic investments into non-core business lines that reduced our focus and ability to allocate resources effectively. Recognizing the need for change, we began a multi-quarter restructuring process last year that included shuttering or divesting non-core businesses and right-sizing our cost structure, which enabled LivePerson to return to profitability last quarter. Since last quarter, we have refocused the company on our core strengths, those that have delivered a meaningful return on investment to our enterprise customers by enabling them to efficiently shift legacy voice interactions to digital channels and AI-powered automation. Based on projections available from Gartner and Forrester, the combined markets for conversational AI and customer service and support are estimated to grow approximately 20% year over year in 2024. Considering the demonstrable return on investment our customers are realizing and growing traction we're seeing with generative AI, which I'll elaborate on shortly, we are well positioned to meet this growing demand. Our return to core strength embraces the key reasons large enterprises continue to choose LivePerson as their trusted partner, including our enterprise-proven platform, agent workspace, and open architecture for third-party AI, extensive voice-to-customer dataset, unified voice and messaging analytics, managed services for enterprise digital transformation, and guardrails for human-in-the-loop feedback that enable safe and secure adoption of generative AI. Because of these platform strengths and the demonstrable return on investment that they unlock for our customers, shifting legacy voice interactions to messaging and AI-powered automation continues to be the most compelling market opportunity for live person. Significantly, growing traction with generative AI is also driving increased platform usage, new logo acquisition, expansions, and renewals. To elaborate briefly on that trend, as a reminder, we launched a suite of generative AI enhancements to the platform in May. including voice AI, which meaningfully enhanced our ability to shift legacy voice interactions into digital channels and AI-powered automation. Since then, we've seen many of our customers leverage voice AI for precisely this use case, validating the continued consumer preference for digital channels over legacy voice. For example, a large hospital customer who was an early adopter of voice AI is using voice automation to deflect 40% of voice calls to messaging, which meaningfully reduces costs and time to resolution. Voice AI is also delivering a return on investment in applications that directly interface with the end customer, including a customer using voice automation to call leads from the CRM, asking serious questions and determining the next best action. An aerospace customer is also using voice automation integrated with large language models to help customers find and purchase relevant tools and components. In addition, we're seeing strong adoption for internal use of generative AI, including co-pilot or agent assist, which improves productivity, and summarization, which reveals actionable insights for optimizing customer service experience and cost-efficiently scaling service interactions through automation. In terms of new deals where generative AI was essential, in the third quarter, we signed a seven-figure new logo and a seven-figure renewal. And early in the fourth quarter, we signed a seven-figure expansion with one of the world's largest banks. We're also observing a sequential increase in platform uses attributable to generative AI, reinforcing that the renewed focus on our B2B core strengths, coupled with strategic investments in generative AI, have strongly positioned us to meet accelerating enterprise demand for digital transformation and AI-powered automation. As for overall customer wins, we signed a total of 50 deals in the third quarter, including four seven-figure deals, three of which were new logos, 31 expansions and renewals, and 19 new logos overall. Enterprise bookings were up sequentially, with total bookings approximately consistent with the second quarter. In terms of trends, LivePerson continues to be a platform of choice for financial services. In the third quarter, we signed two large credit unions as new logos, one with over 300,000 members and assets totaling $5 billion. We also signed a key financial services expansion and renewal, including a seven-figure upsell with a leading Australian bank, and two partner-led expansions with a large European-based multinational bank and a leading South African digital bank. As I mentioned a moment ago, one of the world's largest banks recommitted to live person early in the fourth quarter, signing a four-year, eight-figure TCV renewal, including a seven-figure upsell to leverage recently launched generative AI capabilities alongside expanded adoption of the wider platform. In the third quarter, we also signed a seven-figure new logo win to power a conversational marketplace and renewals and expansions with a leading cruise line and an amusement park and entertainment business. Notably, we continue to see strategic renewal, expansion, and new logo wins against strong competition in the third quarter, including against Salesforce, Cisco, Genesis, and Google Dialogflow. Looking to build on this go-to-market momentum, I want to note that Our in-person executive events have historically accelerated the sales cycle with customers and prospects. Next week, on November 14th, we will be hosting more than 1,000 people at a hybrid in-person virtual customer event called Spark, during which we will unveil our new conversational intelligence suite, which includes Report Center, Analytics Studio, and our latest LLM-powered innovation, Generative Insights. Before moving on to our third quarter financials, I also want to provide an update on our partner strategy and its impact on our go-to-market motion. As CIOs drive transformational initiatives across the enterprise, they are challenging strategic partners like LivePerson to build an open and flexible architecture. We built our platform to be agnostic to the source of AI and develop leading AI orchestration capabilities across the customer service suite. LivePerson's open platform lets brands seamlessly couple our conversational insights, AI, and agent engagements with channels, AI, and automation from key partners like Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. This is a powerful solution that enables a live person to capture greater enterprise volumes by providing differentiated cross-platform orchestration for consumer interactions. To further extend our open platform, we launched the Partner Marketplace in the second quarter of this year, which gained meaningful momentum in the third quarter when we closed a seven-figure deal with a new partner that enables real-time personalization via third-party CDP integration. A large bank adopted our Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration, which is expected to drive 5 million annual proactive engagements for the bank. And a large telco adopted our Affinity integration and is already seeing millions in incremental monthly revenue, which we monetize through a revenue sharing agreement. In addition, innovative systems integrators and DPOs are positioning LivePerson as the center of a digital-first architecture to accelerate migration from legacy contact center vendors and as an alternative to voice-centric CCaaS providers who are not optimized for asynchronous operations. In the third quarter, we partnered with a top five global consulting firm on AI-focused services programs for two of Australia's largest telcos, totaling seven figures in value. And as mentioned earlier, multiple leading international banks also expanded their business through partners. Given market trends and momentum in our partner ecosystem, We plan to continue strategic investments into partners and integrations to fuel growth going forward. As for third quarter financial results, total revenue was $101.3 million at the top end of our guidance range. As discussed last quarter, we expected a high seven-figure revenue contribution from Medicare reimbursement in the third quarter. This value was approximately $7 million. B2B core recurring revenue was 84% of total revenue, and non-graph gross margin improved approximately 400 basis points sequentially to 77.9%. Adjusted EBITDA of $10.6 million was consistent with the expectations we set last quarter, landing above the midpoint of our guidance range. Turning to our standard financial reporting segments, within total revenue for the third quarter, revenue for B2B declined 4% year-over-year, and revenue from hosted software declined 16% year-over-year. As discussed in prior quarters, the primary drivers of these declines were the wind-down of non-core business lines, including COVID-19 testing, gainshare labor, and pandemic-driven gainshare variable revenue. Normalizing for these business changes, total B2B core revenue declined 1%, while B2B core recurring revenue within hosted grew 4% year-over-year, driven by upsells with existing customers. Professional services revenue declined 49% year-over-year, driven by the completion of the engagement with the Clare JV in the first quarter. Excluding revenue from the Clare JV, professional services revenue declined 10% year-over-year, driven by a one-time fee from a major telco customer in the third quarter of last year. From a geographic perspective, U.S. revenue declined 20% year-over-year, while international revenue declined 3%. Again, the primary driver of these declines was the wind-down of non-core business lines, including revenue related to the Clare JV, gainshare labor, and pandemic-driven gainshare variable revenues. Net revenue retention was below our target range of 105% to 115%, but up sequentially, consistent with previously set expectations. We continue to expect sequential improvement in net revenue retention in the fourth quarter. RPO decreased 27% year-over-year to $313 million, due primarily to completing the professional services engagement for the Clare JV. For the third quarter, ARPC grew 13% to $595,000, driven in part by upsells from our largest customers. In terms of guidance, for revenue in the full year 2023, we are maintaining our midpoint of 394 million, but narrowing the range to 389 million to 399 million. This range is exclusive of the 7.2 million contribution from Casamba in the first quarter of this year. Inclusive of the first quarter revenue contribution from Casamba, we expect 2023 revenue to range from 396 million to 406 million. As for B2B core recurring revenue, we expect it to equal approximately 86% of total revenue consistent with previously set expectations. For full year adjusted EBITDA, we are maintaining our midpoint of $25.5 million, but narrowing our range to $22 million to $29 million. The implication for revenue in the fourth quarter is a range of $89.7 million to $99.7 million. The sequential decline in revenue is primarily attributable to the one-time medical reimbursement we recognized in the third quarter. we expect B2B core recurring revenue to equal approximately 89% of total revenue in the fourth quarter. As for adjusted EBITDA, in the fourth quarter, we expect a range of zero to seven million. To conclude, our results today demonstrate another quarter of execution consistent with prior guidance. Notably, we have right-sized our cost structure, returned profitability, and effectively reallocated people and capital to drive growth from our B2B core platform, which has a strong record of delivering meaningful return on investment to our enterprise customers by enabling them to efficiently ship legacy voice interactions to digital channels in AI-powered automation. Strategic investments in generative AI and our partner ecosystem have meaningfully contributed to new logo wins, expansions, and renewals in the last two quarters. And as discussed, this trend is continuing in the fourth quarter. Looking forward, thanks to the commitment and innovative work of the entire LifePerson team, we are well positioned to meet accelerating customer demand for digital transformation and AI-powered automation.

And with that, I think we can open the line for Q&A. Operator?

Thank you, Sal.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and then two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1 now. The first question that we have comes from Ryan McDonald from Needham & Co. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question and congrats on a solid quarter here. John, I'm just curious, you talked about some of the vertical strength in the quarter and Good to see sort of financial services and some nice telco deals. But as you look across the verticals in sort of willingness, sort of demand for the new AI solutions, how much comfort are you seeing in terms of adoption at this point versus more of just being in the evaluation phase? And as you think about that within the competitive dynamic, do you think that's helping or hurting the business at this point? Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Ryan. I think as I discussed in the prepared remarks, we are seeing real net new economics from generative AI. We're signing new logos and retaining business and expanding business because of the new capabilities that we have with generative AI. And in relation to the third parties that we're working with, the partnership strategy that we have, some of those relationships that are driving seven figures of value this year are directly related and even solely related to generative AI applications. So it's much more than just testing at this stage.

Super helpful. Maybe just as a follow-up, I'm interested to hear about the Spark event coming up next week and sort of the unveiling of the new suite here. What should we expect in terms of the rollout timeframe for the new suite after you introduce it next week? Thanks.

Yeah, we expect some of these products to be GA at the event. And so it'll be an exciting time to see how customers can leverage those. And again, generally available in November.

Excellent. Thanks again for taking my questions.

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Peter Levine from Evercore.

Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions here. Maybe the first one, John, can you maybe talk to us directionally about net retention or even gross retention, you know, mid-market and below and how that differs from the enterprise? If you're seeing anything.

Yeah, we have refocused the business in a lot of ways on the core and the essence of that core is really our enterprise base. So we're talking here kind of mid six figure and above type customers with thousands of seats. As we go down market to the lower end of mid market and small business, we have strategically placed less focus there just given resource constraints. And so NRR or GRR both are lower at that end of our customer base than in the enterprise.

Thanks. And then Bob, You know, I guess to follow up to Ryan's question around, I think the monetization of these new Gen AI products is, you know, how much of the products would you view as more of a retention tool versus like an ARPU uplift? Or is it the reverse where you can actually get higher ARPU from these customers? Just obviously given the competitive landscape and where this market's going, curious to know how your pricing or how your customers are actually doing it.

Yes, it's a mix for sure. I mean, to some extent, we've had some customers that renewed or expanded two years ago during the height of the pandemic and had very large volume expectations that, as we've discussed in prior quarters, weren't necessarily being met this year, hence some of the headwind to NRR. However, with generative AI, we're starting to see those customers re-accelerate their overall volume because the use cases are so compelling. So to some extent, it's helping in that regard. But as I mentioned in response to an earlier question, it's also driving net new business. And so that is taking the form of new volume on the platform that's facing the end customer, but also internal use cases to increase volume. internal agent productivity, uh, like copilot and summarization.

Perfect. And if I could squeeze one final one in, I know you haven't got it to calendar 24, but directionally, you know, when does the model kind of trough out and we can see, you know, start to see revenue reacceleration. Thank you.

Yeah, I obviously will have more to share on 2024. Uh, and when we print the fourth quarter and come back on this call in February, Broadly speaking, though, I think we're beginning to see a rebuild of that momentum and go to market. Clearly, the metrics have been sequentially improving over the last two quarters, and I expect that general trend to continue.

Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, just another reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then 1 now. The next question we have comes from Zach Cummins from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, John. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you just walk us through some of the assumptions for your Q4 revenue guidance? I know you have some Medicare payments that likely are not going to be occurring again in Q4, but just curious on assumptions for both revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance.

Yeah. Hey, Zach. So we do have potentially some small amount one to two million worth of additional Medicare payments that may come through in the fourth quarter we also are monitoring the timing of delivery of certain larger professional services engagements and then as is typical in the fourth quarter it is our peak season for most customers and so we tend to have higher reserves during that peak season conservatively speaking We have a wider range there, but given the trend, the general trend of stability being very high and improving sequentially over time, we don't necessarily expect those reserves, but there's some conservatism built into the range for that reason as well.

Understood. And I know there was a question around kind of the potential timeline to see a trough in the top line of the business. How are you thinking about just managing margins here over the next several quarters? I know you've done a great job of really rationalizing costs in the last few quarters. So what is your approach to balancing that profitability versus maybe continuing to invest in some of the strong demand you've seen on the Gen AI side?

Yeah, I think we've done the hard work, right? We've had a... essentially ongoing restructuring since Q1 of 2022, culminating in a large event in Q1 of 2023. We've wound down the non-core business lines, and most of that is behind us now. So I think we're in a good position in terms of the cost structure to try to improve profitability through top line growth. And as I mentioned before, while we're not ready to guide 2024, I think it's important to understand that we've had sequential improvement over the last two quarters and that we expect that to continue. So broadly speaking, I think the cost structure is in a reasonable place after a lot of hard work and we're now refocused on the core to drive top line to improve profitability.

Understood. Well, thanks for taking my questions and best of luck with the rest of the year. Thanks, Zach.

Thank you. The final question we have comes from Mark Shuffle from Loop Capital Markets.

Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. And, John, as long as you just give us a brief update on how you think the sales force is progressing here, particularly given the earlier restructuring and strategy changes over the past year.

Yeah, we're holding quarter carrier headcount flat, and these are all ramped quarter carriers, quarter over quarter. We're seeing, as I alluded to in the last call, some increased qualified pipeline entering the fourth quarter relative to what we had entering the third quarter. And so, broadly speaking, there's indicators that we're rebuilding that go-to-market momentum, and I highlighted some of that in the prepared remarks, both in terms of trends in financial services, but also within our partner ecosystem, which is adding tangible impact. So broadly speaking, I think productivity is improving. Our efficiency with respect to marketing spend is improving as well. And we have slightly, again, slightly more pipeline entering the fourth quarter than we did entering the third. So indicators are positive here.

Great, thanks. And I realize Wild Health is less of a focus these days, but I was wondering if you'd just give us an update on that business in the quarter and just your general thoughts on how you view the business.

Yeah, as we've discussed previously, Wild Health is a valuable asset to that person, but not necessarily strategic to its core and is run on a standalone basis at this time. I don't have further updates beyond what I had provided previously for wild health growth, which has moderated relative to the expectations we had very early in the year when we first launched 2023, but remain consistent with the expectations we set last quarter.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

The next question we have comes from Jeff Sundry from Craig Hallam Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Great, thanks. John, on Wild Health, just I guess two offshoot questions. One, what was the margin on that business? What was the impact from a gross margin? I imagine that was highly profitable revenue. And then somewhat of a tale to that question is how are you thinking about gross margins for Q4?

Yeah, Jeff. So the As you, just to recap, we took all of the expense for the wild health-based Medicare revenue that didn't occur in Q4. And in Q3, we don't have that expense. So there is clearly a bump to non-GAAP gross margins as a result of that one-time Medicare reimbursement, which we recognized $7 million in the third quarter. So that moved the needle for gross margin up by one to two points. So as we think about gross margin on a normalized basis, it would be within 76 to 78% that we expect broadly for the business in the fourth quarter, independent of the wild health contribution.

Okay, very helpful. And then on the retention, I know the goal is 105 to 15. You know, maybe just expand on that a bit. I mean, how close are you to 100 if Why are you below 100? Where are customers going if they're leaving? Is it just less usage? Just maybe a little expansion on the retention, where you are, where you're going, and why we're where we are now.

Yeah, I think a lot of reasons for why we are where we are at the moment, a lot of it relates to a defocusing and restructuring wind down of non-core and just a lot of tumult that fortunately isn't the rear view mirror now. And we're rebuilding that go to market motion. And I think the indicators are positive, as I mentioned previously. To be more specific, a lot of the NRR headwind relates to lower volumes coming off the forecast from the pandemic that they're renewing now. rather than full-on cancellations moving elsewhere. And then I think with regard to the expectations moving forward, as I mentioned in relation to a question earlier, there is a blended NRR that we're reporting here, which includes some of the lower end of the market that we service, lower end of mid-market, and some of those customers are not really where we're putting a lot of support at the moment. And so if we were to isolate the enterprise customer base, that NRR would be much closer, if not within the range that we have. But the wider blended rate is still below that 105 target. Again, though, we expect sequential improvement moving forward.

And just one follow-up on the volumes, the post-pandemic volume resets. I mean, is there a way to quantify, like, what percent of the contracts are reset to rational volume levels for what they're actually consuming as opposed to pandemic. How far through that transition are we?

I think we'll be fully through that transition by first or second quarter of next year, Jeff.

Okay. Okay. And then if I could, just one last one, sorry. And on bookings, I know last quarter you said it was the best bookings quarter, I believe, since early 22. If I caught it on this call, you said this was up sequentially from that number. How are the bookings this quarter relative to expectations relative to a year earlier? And I know it's a multi-part question, but the customer count is down. Do you think that's going to continue and you're just going to post bigger deals, or do you expect that to reverse?

Yeah, a couple of clarifications. So in the prepared remarks, I said that overall bookings were consistent, approximately consistent with last quarter, but enterprise bookings, deal values were actually up sequentially. So despite the lower deal counts, again, emphasizing the strategic focus on our enterprise customer base, we did increase overall ACV sequentially while bookings were approximately the same.

Okay, I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of our call today. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.