Outbrain Inc.

Welcome Outbrain Incorporated third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This time all participants are in listening mode. Question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to your host, Anthony Rasmus.

Thank you. Sir, you may now begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Outbrain's third quarter 2022 results. Joining me on the call today, we have Outbrain's co-founder and co-CEO, Jerome Goli, co-CEO, David Kostman, and CFO, Jason Kiviat. During this conference call, management will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. These risk factors are discussed in detail in our Form 10-K filed for the year ended December 31, 2021, as updated in our Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2022, and in subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commissions. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the call's original date, and we do not undertake any duty to update any such statements. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the company's third quarter earnings release for definitional information and reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures. Our earnings release can be found on our IR website, investors.outbrain.com, under the News and Events section. With that, let me turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Anthony. We are pleased to report that we exceeded the high end of the guidance we provided for Q3, both for extra gross profit and adjusted EB done. And we are raising our guidance for the full calendar year 2022. We are encouraged by our tremendous momentum and significant market share gains with premium publishers, and by the fact that we are continuously broadening our value proposition for enterprise brands and performance advertisers, reaching over 1 billion unique users on the open web. At the same time, we are driving business efficiencies through consolidation of activities in lower cost geographies, acceleration of automation, and strict cost controls. In July, we implemented the headcount reduction process as a continuation of cost reduction steps we started taking already in March. In total, we took our annual cash costs down by approximately $50 million versus our original 2022 plan. Let me start with the supply side of our marketplace. As mentioned, we migrated some of the largest, most premium publishers to the Outbrain marketplace, including the global Daily Mail Group properties, Fox News in the U.S., and many others. We also renewed deals with many publishers, including Meredith and Politico. These highly strategic, large supply partners are additive to the major wins we've been reporting since the beginning of the year, and they enabled us to experience double-digit growth of our ad impressions year over year. resulting in our highest level of impressions ever. We are very excited by the addition of these partners and believe that our leadership position among the world's most premium publishers is stronger than ever. According to similar web data, for example, in the U.S. and Israel, we are the exclusive partner for four out of the top five news publishers. In Germany, it is six out of the top ten, and in France, it is eight out of the top ten. And as we expand with more partnerships, we're also deepening our impact by driving demand, not just through the feed where we reached close to 60% smart logic adoption in desktop and over 80% adoption in mobile, but also through mid article placements known for higher brand awareness and viewability, and therefore attracted to large enterprise brand advertisers. As a data point, We have currently more than 100 header binning integrations with publishers and continue to expand it with our thousands of publishers. Let's move to the demand side. As we discussed last quarter, these huge supply winds coincide with general softness on the advertiser side, which is reflected mostly in cost per click or CPC. Our diverse demand mix of enterprise brands and performance advertisers has provided some stability as we see outcome-driven performance brands driving more revenues in Q3, which is keeping our marketplace at close to 100% fill rate. Pricing in our marketplace remains the current headwind, given the macroeconomic situation. In Q3, we've seen CPCs decline more than 20% versus the same period last year, including the unfavorable impact of foreign exchange. This decline was partially offset at an RPM level to continuous click-through rate algorithmic improvement. In terms of geographies, we continue to see more headwinds in Europe, including on a constant currency basis. In terms of segments, although our advertiser base is diversified, we've seen weakness in automotive and finance, while trends in travel, entertainment, and tech have been stable to positives. To sum it up, we continue to focus on our core and execute tightly and strategically on key priorities. On the supply side, we've built massive high-quality exclusive open web supply for multi-year period. And on the demand side, we're expanding beyond our strong performance business to more brand budget. Therefore, we believe we are well positioned for medium-term and long-term growth which depends mostly on our ability to execute and gain incremental share of wallet with advertisers. On the financial front, we are pleased that we exceeded the high end of our guidance for Q3, and we are moving cautiously on any expenses to ensure that we act responsibly in the current environment and are focused on profitability for 2023. With that, I will now turn it over to Yaron. Thanks, David.

In Q3, we formally launched Keystone at an event with over 40 top global publishers. Responses have been very positive, and we are now in the implementation phases with three additional publishers that will join the four design partners that we previously mentioned. It is clear that revenue diversification is one of the top priorities for many of the best publishers around the world, and it is clear that they are lacking the technology needed to enable their diverse revenue growth at scale. Many publishers are adding paywalls, registrations, e-commerce, newsletters, video, et cetera. We are all seeing and feeling that as consumers of content and news. Yet today, most publishers will make manual decisions on how to carve up their real estate, whether it's a pop-up prompt to register a sidebar box for video or a navigation box to e-commerce offers. These manual real estate decisions are then typically shown to large swaths of users without personalization or optimization. Keystone is a technology platform that helps make automated, personalized decisions designed to help grow publishers of various business KPIs by tailoring different content and offers to different users. Keystone leverages significant technologies and algorithms from AppRain's core advertiser and publisher products. and we're leveraging our core publisher sales teams and publisher relationships in our go-to-market. Our design partners have been reporting to us a 30-plus percent improvement of user engagement where they have implemented Keystone as compared to their prior baseline and a list of their business KPIs for these Keystone placements. So while Keystone is in its infancy, we're encouraged with the early excitement from publishers that joined the September launch and from the results reported by our design partners so far. I'm pleased that we are staying true to our core business and we see tremendous growth opportunities in it. Whether through Keystone, mid-article brand placements, video intelligence, or our header bidding partnerships that David mentioned, we continue to deepen the value Outbrain creates as a strategic partner to some of the world's best media owners and brands. Now, on to Jason Kiviat, our CFO, to discuss the financials.

Thanks, Jeroen. As David mentioned, despite seeing steeper than expected FX headwinds on our top line, we beat our Q3 guidance to both expect gross profit and adjusted EBITDA. Revenue was approximately $229 million, a decrease of 3% year-over-year on a company currency basis and 9% on an as-reported basis. The decrease year-over-year is driven by lower yields, owing largely to the headwinds on advertising demand affecting our industry. These headwinds were partially offset by growing our supply from winning new, quality, long-term partnerships and from expanding our ad impressions and click-through rates on existing partnerships. Adding new media partners in the quarter contributed 11 percentage points for approximately $28 million of revenue growth year-over-year, and our net revenue retention was 81%, reflecting the impact of the demand environment, reducing modification levels on our platform. The net revenue retention rate for Q3 reflected the net positive growth of ad impressions, as well as improvements in click-through rates, being more than offset by the lower CPCs on the demand side that David spoke to, as well as FX headwinds. As a reminder, 60% of our business is outside the U.S. Ecotech's profit was $53 million, a decrease of 20% year-over-year on a company currency basis, and 23% as reported. As we noted last quarter, the steeper decline of excess gross profit year-over-year versus revenue was driven by several factors. One, an unfavorable mix of revenue. Two, lower performance on certain media partners, driven in part by the demand headwinds we're seeing. And three, the impact of onboarding and optimizing significant new supply partners, which is challenged by the weaker-than-normal demand environment. We expect to go out of this headwind in the coming quarters, assuming no further deterioration in the macro environment. Moving to other costs of revenue, which increased approximately $3 million year-over-year, driven by our investments to increase serving capacity in order to facilitate yield growth through our algorithmic and optimization improvement efforts. These areas have been large growth accelerators in recent years. Our belief is that when demand stabilizes and recovers, we will be positioned to return to revenue growth through technology and product improvements, which will generate operating leverage on these investments. Operating expenses decreased approximately $17.7 million year-over-year to $49 million in the third quarter. Approximately $16.5 million of the decrease is non-recurring and was triggered by our IPO as it relates to the incremental stock-based compensation expense recognized last year for awards with an IPO performance condition. Excluding this one-time impact, operating expenses decreased $1.2 million year-over-year driven by a few offsetting factors. We had higher personnel-related costs reflecting increased headcount, including from our VI acquisition in January, effectively offset by lower variable compensation costs and FX spatial ability year-over-year. As noted in the prior quarter, we also are seeing higher marketing, T&E, and facility expenses as activity impacted by COVID returned to more normal operations this year. These increases were more than offset by the impact of a one-time insurance recovery received in the current year. As mentioned last quarter, we implemented a series of cost reduction efforts to adjust the current business engine, and we continue to focus our attention on driving greater efficiencies in our operations. Adjusted EBITDA was 1.7 million in Q3. On a constant currency basis, adjusted EBITDA was approximately break-even due to the favorable impact of FX on operating expenses, primarily from the euro, Israeli shekel, and British pound. Next, moving to liquidity. The uses of cash in the quarter included the majority of the remaining cash consideration paid for acquisition of VI, as well as continued share repurchases. Free cash flow, which we define as cash provided from operating activities plus capex and capitalized software costs, is a net use of cash in the period of approximately $16 million. This is primarily driven by lower profitability and the timing of cash receipts and payments around period ends. I'll point out that when you look at the balance sheet, you will now see investment in marketable securities balances in both the short and long-term assets, totaling $207 million. In total, we ended the quarter with $345 million of cash, cash equivalent, and investment on the balance sheet, and $236 million of long-term convertible debt. Lastly, we announced previously that on February 28th, our board authorized a $30 million share repurchase program. Through October 31st, we have repurchased approximately 5.8 million shares for a total of $27.8 million, including commissions, with remaining availability under the program of $2.2 million. Now, turning to our outlook. As discussed today and in prior quarters, the volatility of demand we've seen this year is ongoing, which results in continued uncertainty and a more cautious approach. With that context, we have provided the following guidance. For Q4, we expect expat gross profit of $57 million to $60 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA of $4 million to $6 million. For full year 2022, we are increasing our expectation of expat gross profit and adjusted EBITDA to at least $232.5 million and $23.2 million, respectively. This guidance assumes no further material changes in macro conditions.

Now, I'll turn it back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you, and I'll begin the question and answer session.

To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchstone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. This time we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster.

First question will be from Ross Sandler, Barclays, please go ahead. Mr. Sandler, is your line on mute? All right. We'll move on to our next question, which will be from Laura Martin.

Liam, please go ahead.

Hi. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Hi, Laura.

Hi, hi, hi. So, a couple. So, net retention of about 80% is pretty low. And your competitor reported that they spent $20 million and a quarter guaranteeing new business. So I'm wondering if you are losing out clients to your primary competitor.

Okay, let me take that. Hey, thanks for that question. So if you look at new business, actually, our new business was 30% higher than the competitor for 2020. So we reported $28 million of new business. What we are talking about when we talk about wins, we're talking really about major publisher wins. I would say that in aggregate, on an annual basis, we probably moved over to our marketplace well north of $100 million of business. And these are names like Daily Mail, obviously Top Name, Fox, and others.

Hey, this is Jason. I'll just add on that to give some color to that 81%, Laura. We actually added page views or impressions, our primary supply metrics, net of any churn. So we grew that on the same store sale basis year over year. So there really wasn't meaningful churn. It was really all in the demand and the average CPCs paid by advertisers, I think Dickie said in his prepared remarks. 20% plus down year over year on just pricing. And you're talking about 81% because we did grow the actual supply net of any churn. And we also grew through our technology, our click-through rate. So we grew clicks in both ways, but it was pricing that was down year over year.

Okay. Two more parameters that we highlighted in the call today in terms of the leadership position. We highlighted some of the major market position. If you also look at the number of impressions, we have a record number of impressions. So when we talk about wins, these are massive size wins, long-term, and very good deals for us.

Okay. Can we talk about Keystone? You know, this is where Yaron and I disagree, but So Keystone sounds to me, Arne, like it's highly customized. In order to help companies digitize their back end, every company is different and they're going to want a lot of sort of, I don't know, maintenance, care to understand their business. Is Keystone really a business that is scalable the way your core business is where you can just build a single platform and suddenly everybody plugs in? Or is there going to be a lot more employee sort of hand-holding Why do you guys, can the margins ever be as high as your core business, please?

Yeah, so it shares a lot of the, and thanks, Laura, for the question. It shares a lot of the fundamental attributes of our core business because, as I said on the call, we do leverage a lot of the core product and technology for Keystone. And so we know how to work with these publishers. We've been doing this for decades. almost 15 years with many of them. And again, it uses, leverages a lot of our core abilities, both human and technology. That said, this is a new type of business. It is a SaaS business. And so the level or the interaction that they expect and we expect to provide as a And, you know, in the long term, our bet with this is that it really takes us one step above in terms of the strategic relationship that we have with these partners. So we think it's a good investment on that.

Okay. And finally, Microsoft. Could you guys update us on what's going on with Microsoft and you guys?

So generally, we don't talk about loyalty to David. We don't talk about specific customers, but Microsoft remains a super large partner, a very important partner for us. We're very excited about the progress they're making generally on the advertising side, and this bodes well for our partnership with them.

Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Next question will be from Ross Sandler.

Barclays, please go ahead.

Hey, can you hear me this time, guys?

Hey, perfect.

All righty. Okay. How do we think about framing 2023 growth at this point? I mean, we're seeing what's happening broadly in the industry, but how are you guys thinking about it as we head into next year? And then, Jeroen, the comment you made about Keystone early partners seeing 30% improvement in engagement was pretty interesting. Is that an ad engagement increase or is that like overall viewership increasing 30%? Could you just unpack a little bit more about what's driving that and what you meant there? Thanks a lot.

I'll take maybe the first question. Hey, Ross. So we're not giving a specific guidance for 23, but we are very focused on profitability, cash flow generation for next year. You saw we were cautiously guiding up for Q4. I think we're going to see the ability to leverage the massive supply winds. Again, I highlighted the scale of them. So as time goes by and we optimize further and improve the performance of these deals, this is long-term supply that we already have. So I think that's going to allow us to continue to grow. And what we need to do next year is we need to take a share of wallet. I think also You know, the demand side follows the supply. So when you have these massive supply wins that are highlighted, many of the advertisers also falling, they want to be on these sides. These are sites that are what we call tent poles or anchors in every market makers in every market. So we feel pretty good about the ability even in a rough economic environment, to just take a bigger share of wallet. This is also why we are accelerating growth with enterprise brands. So we have a very strong performance business, but we're also doing a lot to be able to access more existing budgets of enterprise brands.

Hey, Ross, Jeroen here. I'll take the second question. about Keystone. So first of all, the 30 plus percent that I mentioned is the number that's being reported to us by some of the design partners on the improvement of the user engagement they're seeing on Keystone implemented placements on their properties versus the baseline they had before. Now just to try to use a metaphor here, The way they use it pre-Keystone, the way they use their real estate is by making largely manual decisions, which apply to pretty much all their users. So it's almost like, say, a Spotify where once a week they choose the song that everyone can listen to, and that's it. And that's the song that's recommended to everyone. They don't make personalization and optimization on those individual users. So with Keystone, we take those same placements and we're now personalizing and optimizing it the way we do so well in the newsfeed itself. And so that's how they're seeing the increase in user engagement, and this is not on their ad spots, but rather on the other business KPIs that they're trying to drive, whether it's internal e-commerce or subscriptions or reducing churn.

So it's on those KPIs where we can increase their engagement. Thank you. Next question will be from Aaron Boone, J&P Segurities.

Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Just as we think about modeling, can you guys double-click on take rates and just talk about how we should think about that near term? Understood the macro is difficult in terms of predicting demand, but is there just directionally, how should we start to think about take rates as being stable, starting to improve, or what direction? Yeah.

Sorry, I was given a long answer on mute there.

Thanks. No, I was just saying, thanks, Andrew. It's Jason. You know, we've spoken before, you know, how when we enter deals, we focus on the exact dollars, not necessarily the take rate, but obviously we gave some color last quarter and this quarter on the call just on some of the factors that impact our overall take rate. Obviously, one of them, you know, always going to be mix of just, you know, what types and sizes and geographies of partners we're generating more or less revenue from in a period. And then obviously, you know, the demand impact is certainly, you know, the biggest driver on our margin change this year. Of course, a bunch of our partnerships are variable rates that are based on and impacted negatively by the negative macro trends and the lower demand and lower yields we're seeing from it. Now, there is obviously some in our control, of course, as well. We've added a lot of quality, good supply in these things. in our history, take a few quarters to ramp up and optimize and scale. And we've done that in the past routinely. And so there's certainly some in our control to keep improving and obviously some that's also just going to be macro driven as well. You know, we don't see rates going, you know, significantly lower or higher in the next couple of quarters. I mean, it's not something we guide to, of course, but to help you with your modeling, I would say, you know, we don't expect them to go materially lower than where they are right now.

Let me just add, Andrew, to that. When you look at the RPM composition, it's sort of CTR. We still saw improvements year over year. in Q3 and, you know, we talk a lot about the supply, but the interesting thing is that the demand and many of the advertisers just need to be on those market maker sites. So we expect that it takes time to ramp up some of these deals, but it also brings a lot of new advertisers to the marketplace. And we talked about that phenomenon of the better blanket. the more demand we will get into it. And because of those massive supply ones, there's much more demand that wants to be in as part of our marketplace, not just on this new site. You know, we also feel it's going to create positive dynamics and be able to leverage the algorithmic improvements that we still see into a much larger scale. So we're not, we're not building on any improvement on, on pricing in the, in the, in the short and mid term.

And then I guess just a bigger picture question for me is just thinking about how do you guys harden demand, right? Like what do you guys need to do to create more truly always on budgets that are on the platform? I'll leave a broad open-ended question there. Thanks so much.

Sorry, I will repeat a little bit. I think creating that exclusive platform huge supply base attracts the demand. I mean, advertisers want to be on those big sites. So it doesn't only help impressions, which we had record levels. And as I said, we added about a note of $100 million of new business that's coming from competition, but also that attracts a much larger number of advertisers. Our growth into mid-article, header bidding, video intelligence is also allowing us to be much more attractive and relevant for enterprise brand budget and also there by the way we're very much focused on budget that are looking for additional measurable outcomes and and we see good traction with that so that that's why you know we're cautiously optimistic that we even within the current environment we will continue to execute be very focused on the core business and we will be able to see the growth coming from this growth of supply that's bringing in more demand that's making the marketplace more more attractive.

Andrew, you're on here. Maybe just to add one thing about that. As we mentioned on the call, we do have demand at a fill rate of near 100%. And so we have the demand, including for this much growth in new partnerships. This really is a pricing thing due to the macro.

Thank you.

And again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question will be from Swetha Kajuria of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Okay, thank you. Could you, David, please talk about how you're thinking, specifically thinking about cost management next year? I know you commented the focus is going to be on profitability and cash flow generation, which makes sense. What specifically are you thinking about for next year. Thank you.

Hi, Shredda. So we are, if you recall, I mean, we started, I mean, already cautioning a little bit on the outlook in March of this year. So when we saw some weakness in Europe, so we started already taking actions internally. Since March, we did a more cost reduction, more concerted one in July. And right now we're focusing on a few things. It's a We have a development center in Ljubljana. We're moving more resources to there. We're generally looking at shifting sort of resources to lower cost areas. We increased investments in automating processes, more self-serve. And we're looking at generally where are the opportunities in terms of integrating, consolidating. So we accelerated integrations of BI into our core. We accelerated certain things with the mantle. So we are very focused on all the operational things that we can control. And these are, I would say, the main areas.

Okay, thank you. And then, Jason, how should we think about your guidance for the quarter in terms of how much conservatism may be baked into it And what sort of is accounted for to get to your low and high end of the guide? Thanks.

Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, let me just start maybe just with what we've kind of seen in the year and the quarter and just to frame that a little bit. You know, so obviously, you know, we've talked we've talked earlier in the year about the large step downs in demand that we saw, which are really, you know, at the end of Q1 and our biggest ones that we've seen were in Q2. We haven't seen any kind of change in demand quite as meaningful, you know, since then, as far as, you know, budget cancellations, which were which were really first in Europe and then and then, you know, maybe more in U.S. after that. for various macro reasons. And obviously FX has been a headwind all years. As you know, 60% of our business is outside the US. But August and September showed more of what I'll call like a relative stability, I guess, compared to H1. And we've seen that continue into the early part of Q4 as well. I think a few things to say why, you know, one is just the, you know, you're only just talking about diversity of advertisers. We have obviously verticals, but also type, you know, a lot of our A lot of our performance marketers have taken on, their budgets have been a little bit more resilient, you know, particularly in the U.S. in these last couple months. And they've taken on a bigger portion of our advertiser mix, which has been a little bit more stable. We've also just seen positive signs. You know, we're cautiously optimistic, I guess, from both U.S. and Europe. in the last month or two, including Germany, which is our second largest market we've talked about and was hit as hard as anyone by the demand headwinds this year. It gives us some cautious optimism and, you know, expecting a more normal seasonal list in the back half of Q4. And obviously, all these quality supply ones we're talking about, just scaling into them, you know, is assumed in our guidance. I'd summarize it with, you know, we're using October run rates, October FX rates. We're cautiously optimistic on the seasonal list in the back half of the quarter, which is typically our strongest time of the year. And we expect to continue scaling and performance of our new supply. And of course, there's been no material deterioration in the macro conditions. So I hope that gives some color.

I just want to add on your cost point. I mean, we talked about 50 million of reductions this year versus our plan. We are obviously in final stages of budgeting 2023. I think we are ruthlessly prioritizing, and we're looking at all the costs in terms of how the outlook is for 2023, and we will do whatever is necessary to really ensure profitability for next year.

Okay. Thanks, David. Thanks, Jason.

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the call back over to Mr. Yolanda Lai for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Operator, and thank you all for joining us today for Q3 Earnings. We're pleased with beating our guidance for Q3 and raising our full year guidance despite the tough macro conditions. This quarter continued a record year of winning significant new long-term partnerships with some of the largest and most premium publishers globally. which gives me the confidence that our superior technology and strong commitment to our partners will pay off in stronger growth and profitability.

Thanks for your time, and looking forward to updating you here next quarter. Thank you. This concludes our conference. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.