Tenable Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the tenable fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press story zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce our host, Aaron Carney. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Tenable's fourth quarter 2024 financial results. With me on the call today are Steve Vince, our Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, and Mark Thurmond, our Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to this call, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the quarter. You can find the press release on our IR website at tenable.com. We will make forward-looking statements during the course of this call, including statements relating to our guidance and expectations for the first quarter and full year 2025, growth and drivers in our business, changes in the threat landscape in the security industry and our competitive position in the market, growth and customer demand for and adoption of our solutions, including Tenable One and cloud security, the potential benefits and financial impact of our potential acquisition of Vulcan Cyber, and our ability to successfully integrate Vulcan Cyber's operations, planned innovation and new products and services, and our expectations regarding long-term profitability and free cash flow. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these statements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as a prediction of future events. Forward-looking statements represent our beliefs and assumptions only as of today and should not be considered representative of our views as of any subsequent date. And we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or outlook. For further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports that we file with the SEC. In addition, all of the financial results we will discuss today are non-GAAP financial measures, with the exception of revenue. These non-GAAP financial measures are in addition to and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. There are a number of limitations related to the use of these non-GAAP financial measures versus their closest GAAP equivalent. Our press release includes GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations for these measures. Before I turn the call over to Steve, for those of you who may be interested, we have set up a tribute site for our late CEO, Amit Yaran. We welcome any of you that have stories to share to post them. You can find the site at www.tenable.com forward slash remembering Amit Yaran. I'll now turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Erin. I'd like to take a moment to express our heartfelt gratitude for the outpouring of condolences and memories shared in honor of our late CEO, Amit Yoram. The messages we've received from the investment community, as well as friends and colleagues, past and present, have been deeply moving and meaningful. Amit was a trailblazer whose independent and fun-loving spirit shone brightly. His integrity and transparency were qualities many of you value deeply, and his presence is irreplaceable. Mark and I remain steadfast in our commitment to honoring his legacy by continuing to advance Tenable's mission of building a more secure digital future. That said, I'm pleased to join the call today alongside Mark Thurman as we host this call as co-CEOs. We're excited to share our strong results for the quarter, outline our priorities for 2025, and discuss the strategic rationale behind our pending acquisition of Vulcan Cyber. This quarter we delivered exceptional results, exceeding expectations on all of our guided metrics. We achieved 11% CCB growth, which exceeded the midpoint of our guidance by 7.5 million. Operating margin was 25%, which was significantly better than our expectations. We also generated 86 million in unlevered free cash flow, which was also better than expected. In short, we saw strong performance across our business, primarily driven by continued demand for exposure management and cloud security. These results reflect our commitment to evolve our business to address adjacent high-growth markets and deliver incremental value to our customers. As I mentioned earlier, one of the areas of outperformance in the quarter was exposure management, highlighted by Tenable One reaching a record 40% of new business sales. The compelling value that our unified exposure platform delivers is rooted in helping customers identify and focus on the exposures that matter most to their business. Providing these actionable insights through enhanced analytics is the foundation for a holistic approach to risk management and is the driving force behind the strong adoption of Tenable One. In order for our customers to better understand and reduce risk, they need a comprehensive platform that not only contextualizes and prioritizes risk data from systems we assess, but also one that aggregates risk data from their other security providers. Extending our leadership and exposure management by adding third-party data sources and associated remediation workflows across the security stack is a priority for us this year. This brings me to motivation behind our recent announcement of our agreement to acquire Vulkan Cyber. The acquisition of Vulkan will augment our existing data capabilities and accelerate our ability to deliver on the future of exposure management in two ways. First, it will enhance our ability to aggregate and consolidate vast amounts of data into a singular, unified cyber risk data set within Tenable One. Specifically, Vulkan will allow us to integrate data from more than 100 third-party security products, such as endpoint security, cloud security, application security, and vulnerability assessment. These extensive data aggregation capabilities, when combined with our own extensive risk data, will help customers consolidate all exposures across their security stack into a singular, prioritized view from which they can remediate threats. By leveraging this unified risk data set, we believe Tenable will be positioned to advance AI-driven exposure management to transform how customers predict, prioritize, and mitigate risk across the security stack. This brings me to the second key motivator for the acquisition. We expect that Vulcan will accelerate our ability to deliver automated remediation capabilities, sometimes referred to as mobilization. CISOs and their security teams will be able to act faster and more efficiently, resolving their exposures across their security environments with greater precision. With these enhanced remediation capabilities, Tenable One will help ensure that security issues, along with corrective guidance, get into the hands of the security team members to address exposures quickly, wherever they may exist in their environment, whether it be the data center, in apps, in the cloud, and so on. In short, this pending acquisition underscores our commitment to bring the most comprehensive exposure management platform in the market. Another theme for us this year is expanding our footprint in cloud security. This quarter, our cloud security sales more than doubled. with significant wins across both public and private sectors. What differentiates Tenable in this space is our ease of use, pace of innovation, and the ability to offer CNAP integrated with our exposure management platform. Tenable has the ability to assess hybrid environments that most organizations operate in. Few organizations exist solely on premise or just in the cloud. On-premise data centers, private clouds, and public clouds are all part of the equation. And our exposure management approach integrates these disparate environments into a unified strategy. So, in summary, we believe we have strong momentum in exposure management, including cloud security. Consistent with the commentary we provided last quarter on our growth drivers, we believe we will continue to see outsized growth in exposure management, highlighted by our increasing scale in cloud security over the ensuing years. To continue to execute on this growth algorithm, in 2025, we plan to increase our investment in product development and go-to-market, all while continuing to expand our operating and free cash flow margins. We remain firmly committed to a balanced growth approach and returning capital to our shareholders through our share repurchase program, all of which is intended to create long-term value to our shareholders. I'd like to turn the call now over to Mark Thurman.

Thank you, Steve. For the last five years, as the Chief Operating Officer, I've had the privilege of working with thousands of customers worldwide, as well as partners and employees to understand their challenges firsthand and ensure we deliver solutions that make the biggest impact for their organizations. I'm incredibly proud of what we've accomplished together and excited to continue executing on our strategy as we move forward. A key area of focus for us and one I'm very passionate about is making sure we are delivering the solutions our customers need. This is the motivation behind our investment decisions and our long-term strategy. This also requires us to work closely with customers and partners with feet on the street, understanding purchasing behaviors and priorities. While we have historically added hundreds of new customers and even more expansion deals in past quarters, there are consistent themes among these deals. I'm going to take some time to highlight customer examples that encompass the broader theme we are experiencing. As Steve mentioned, we're seeing tremendous strength in Tenable One and cloud security, but it's also worth emphasizing that vulnerability management remains foundational to customer security programs. For many customers, VM continues to be the starting point for exposure management as it lays the groundwork for understanding and addressing an organization's risk. We believe this sets us apart from the competition. A great example is a major telecom provider that has relied on Tenable VM for years. They are working hand-in-hand with us to transform their entire approach to exposure management. This Fortune 100 company is leveraging Tenable One to help unify risk findings for more than 50 security tools. including those for cloud, on-prem, endpoints, and OT systems. As part of this transformation, they've even created a dedicated exposure management team to support the initiative. While VM continues to be a great starting point with existing customers, we are seeing a shift in new customer interest and behavior. Increasingly, we are seeing new customers adopt Tenable One as their starting point with Tenable. This quarter alone, we closed multiple six-figure Tenable One deals, including VM, across industries like healthcare, banking, retail, and tech, as organizations of all kinds grapple with understanding risk in their fragmented hybrid environments. Tenable One resonated deeply with a major financial services company that needed a holistic view across multiple asset types, including external assets, cloud infrastructure, containers, and Active Directory. The customer quickly recognized the power of Tenable One's visibility and risk prioritization, which provided them with actionable insight to reduce their exposure. As a result, this turned into a seven-figure expansion deal. As Steve alluded to, our exposure management value proposition is also driving significant traction in cloud security. When Markey Wynn this quarter was with a major international healthcare agency, they needed a centralized view of their hybrid attack surface, including their cloud environment. In a competitive bake-off against the top cloud players, we won because our unified platform approach, which delivered critical vendor consolidation, cost savings, and operational efficiencies. Most importantly, we help them meet their $1 billion cost-cutting mandate while ensuring consistent risk prioritization across their entire attack surface at scale. These customer examples illustrate the trust we've earned and the opportunities we're seeing in the market. They also highlight the transformative potential of exposure management as organizations move toward a more holistic approach to managing cyber risk. We are extremely optimistic about the exposure management market opportunity and are excited about the long runway ahead of us as we continue to focus on organic and inorganic investments that align with our customer goals. Over the past year and a half, we have added key technology to our exposure management platform. Vulcan is no different. This acquisition will directly respond to the needs of our customers who are overwhelmed with scattered security products, siloed views, and resource-constrained teams. And it underscores our commitment to building the most comprehensive exposure management platform on the market. Importantly, we are executing in the market with a continued focus on sales efficiency. We have driven sales productivity higher over the last few years, and we intend to continue to drive leverage in this while not sacrificing market opportunities. With that, I will turn it back over to Steve to dive into the financials.

Thanks, Mark. I will now turn to our results for the quarter. As I mentioned earlier, calculated current billings to find as revenue recognized in the quarter, plus the current change in current deferred revenue grew 11% year-over-year to $302.2 million. This outperformance was largely driven by Tenable One and cloud security. Current RPO growth was 11% year-over-year, consistent with CCB growth. During the quarter, we added 485 new enterprise platform customers and 135 net new six-figure customers. This was a strong quarter for us and is indicative of our growing deal sizes. Our net dollar expansion rate was 108% this quarter. Our renewal rate remains strong. Now on to the P&L for the quarter. Revenue was $235.7 million, which represents 11% year-over-year growth. Revenue in the quarter exceeded the midpoint of our guided range by $4.7 million. Our percentage of recurring revenue remained high at 95%. Gross margin was 82% this quarter, up from 81% last quarter, and is in line with expectations. Gross margin for the full year was 81%, up from 80% last year. Going forward, we continue to expect gross margins to be in the high 70s to low 80% range. Sales and marketing expense was 80.1 million, down from 83.1 million last quarter, and as a percentage of revenue was 34% compared to 37% last quarter. Sales and marketing expense was lower sequentially on an absolute dollar basis and percentage basis, primarily due to improved sales efficiency, partially offset by higher sales commissions attributed to our sales performance, and seasonally high renewal base in the quarter. For the full year, sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue was 37%, down from 42% last year, representing a 450 basis point improvement, reflecting the strength of our go-to-market model. Looking ahead, we plan to add capacity this year, but expect sales and marketing spend as the percentage of revenue will continue to trend lower in 2025. R&D expense was $32.5 million, which was down from $35.6 million last quarter. R&D expense was lower this quarter in comparison to last quarter, primarily due to foreign tax credits received associated with investments and scaling our global engineering capabilities. R&D expense as a percentage of revenue was 14% this quarter, down from 16% last quarter. For the full year, R&D expense as a percentage of revenue was 15% compared to 14% last year. G&A expense was $20.5 million, which was down from $21.1 million last quarter. G&A expense as a percentage of revenue was 9% this quarter and for the full year, which was flat relative to last quarter, as well as for the full year of 2023. Income from operations was 59.4 million and exceeded the midpoint of our guided range by 11.4 million. Operating margin for the quarter was 25%, which was 400 basis points better than the midpoint of our guided range. Operating margin for the full year was 20%, representing a 500 basis point increase from the prior year. We're very pleased with our ability to continue to drive leverage in the business as operating margins have doubled from 10% for 2022 to 20% in 2024. EPS for the quarter was 41 cents, which was 7 cents better than the midpoint of our guided range. Now let's turn to the balance sheet. We finished the quarter with $577 million of cash in short-term investments. Accounts receivable was $259 million, and total deferred revenue was $833 million. Current deferred revenue was $650 million, which gives us a lot of visibility into expected revenue over the next 12 months. We generated a record 86 million of unlevered free cash flow this quarter, which is up compared to 61 million last quarter. For the full year 2024, we generated 238 million of unlevered free cash flow, exceeding the guide from our Q2 earnings call. We feel confident that we can continue to expand our operating free cash flow margins over the ensuing years. As we have done so, for every year since our IPL. In October 2024, our board of directors increased the repurchase authorization under our share repurchase program by 200 million. During the quarter, we repurchased 1.2 million shares of our common stock for an aggregate purchase price of 50 million. Thus far, we have repurchased almost 2.7 million shares for 115 million since November of 23. and have 185 million of remaining authorization. With the results of the quarter behind us, I'd like to discuss our outlook for Q1 in the full year 2025. Our guidance excludes the impact of the potential acquisition of Vulcan Cyber, which we expect to close shortly. For the first quarter, we currently expect revenue to be in the range of 232 to 234 million. Non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 42 to 44 million. Non-GAAP net income to be in the range of $35 to $37 million, assuming interest expense of $7 million, interest income of $5.2 million, and a provision for income taxes of $3.6 million. And non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.28 to $0.30 per share, assuming $124 million fully diluted weighted average share is outstanding. For the full year, we currently expect calculated current billings to be in the range of $1.4 billion to $1.5 billion. Revenue to be in the range of $971 million to $981 million. Non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $213 to $223 million. Non-GAAP net income to be in the range of $189 million to $199 million, assuming interest expense of $28.3 million, interest income of $21 million, and a provision for income taxes of $13.4 million. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $1.52 to $1.60 per share, assuming 124.5 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding. And unlevered free cash flow to be in the range of 285 to 295 million. Let me provide some context related to our tenable standalone outlook. The CCB outlook we're providing today is consistent with the directional comments we provided last quarter. The one thing I would note is that our outlook is incrementally more cautious for U.S. Federal due to the transition of a new administration. It's early in the year, so we look forward to updating you on our progress throughout the year. Our guidance for operating income reflects our emphasis on profitable growth. We typically front load our investments in sales and marketing and R&D early in the year. In terms of quarterly flow, we expect operating margins to generally increase throughout the year as some of these investments take hold. For the full year, our guide reflects a 200 basis point improvement over 2024. It's worth noting that on a standalone basis, we expected to deliver 285 to 295 million of unlevered free cash flow in 2025, which is above the target that we previously provided. Our long-term expectation of 35% plus unlevered free cash flow margins over time is unchanged. Now, separate from the outlook and related commentary I just provided, Vulcan is expected to contribute an additional 50 basis points of growth to CCB and revenue for the full year with a de minimis contribution to Q1. In terms of quarterly flow for the rest of the year, we expect the top line financial impact of Vulcan to occur largely in the second half of the year as we prioritize the product integration into tenable one and go to market with the expansive remediation workflow ops in the second half of the year. Bulkin is also expected to add $11 to $13 million of operating expenses and reduce unlevered free cash flow by $20 million, including transaction costs. We expect the transaction to be accretive in the first half of next year and for the full year 2026. So with that, Mark and I would like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today. We're very excited about the opportunity ahead and look forward to updating you throughout the year. We hope to see you at the Morgan Stanley, Susquehanna, and Cantor Fitzgerald conferences in the coming weeks. We'd now like to open the call for questions.

Great, thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we pull for questions. First question is from Sackett Kelly from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Hey guys, thanks for taking my question here. And let me just start by saying I know the team will continue to honor Amit's legacy of better security and I'm sure he'd be proud of these results today. Thank you, Sackett. Absolutely. Maybe on the business, Steve and Mark, You know, there's a good bit of noise out in the VM space right now. Maybe the question is, how do you sort of feel Tenable is doing competitively? And do you think there's an opportunity to maybe extend your lead in VM and exposure management in 2025?

Hey, Zach, a good question. I'll start here. First, we feel really good about the momentum we have in VM. We saw better than expected growth in VM. We beat CCB by $7.5 million from the midpoint of the guided range. VM was certainly a contributing factor, and it came in better than what we were expecting at the onset of the quarter. We had a lot of large wins and competitive displacements, and VM continues to be a foundational starting point for exposure management. Notwithstanding the results for the quarter, our outlook for VM for the upcoming year and even beyond has not changed. from the growth algorithm provided last quarter. We expect VM growth to be in the mid single-digit range going forward. We think those are the right expectations to have.

Yeah, and I'll just add, from a customer and field perspective, we're definitely very, very bullish on what we saw from the VM perspective. We had some of the highest win rates against the competition in Q4 from a VM perspective. And when you really are talking to customers, and as we're separating ourselves from a tenable one perspective and differentiating, we are seeing competitive displacement. The environment, I will also add, there was a threatening environment that was out there with Salt Typhoon, with some of the telcos, which were leading to even more displacement from a competitive perspective. So we were very optimistic. We really, really were positive about what we saw in Q4 in regard to competitive displacement and our differentiation from a VM and Tenable One perspective.

Very helpful. Thanks, guys. Next question is from Brian Essex from J.P. Morgan.

Please go ahead.

I'm sorry, Brian, your line is live.

Sorry about that. Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question, and good to see a solid set of results here. You know, Steve, maybe for you, could we unpack some of the comments that you made on the federal caution in the quarter related to guidance? I know you guys have a lot of government business, a lot of it state and local, but on the federal side, you know, what is it that you're seeing, you know, real time that's kind of giving you a little bit more caution? Obviously, you see news stories, but Maybe if you could relate, you know, where you're seeing some softness, where you're seeing stability, just to gauge the level of caution that you see and kind of what's driving that caution around the guys.

You bet. Hey, it's Mark. I'll kind of jump in on that one. So, you know, we actually saw this a little bit in Q4 from a CR perspective with a bit of an overhang in Q4. And now as we have the new administration kind of taking hold, we are seeing a little bit of a distraction. We are not seeing any changes in budgets. We are not seeing any changes in projects being canceled. But there is a little bit of gray area as there's some moving seats and there's some freezes in hiring that We're just putting a little bit of gray area in regard to timing of some of these transactions in the federal space. We have, I think, very strong pipeline and momentum in the Fed space. We're just being a bit cautious based on all of the different factors and really the moving seats that are taking place, which we expect and anticipate to get cleaned up, but that is why we're taking the outlook in the Fed space here in Q1.

Great. And any appetite for disclosing maybe the federal exposure, kind of disaggregate that from the state and local? I know you usually give a total government number, but just to get a better sense of the exposure there.

You know, about 15% of our total sales come from public sector. That includes U.S. federal as well as state and local and a number of other agencies. We'll say here that what we're modeling for the full year is something slightly lower. Again, as Mark said, we're just taking a more cautious approach here given the new administration, given the overhang of continuing resolution, and we think that's the right expectation to set. It's still extremely bullish on the outlook and the opportunity. We have tremendous foothold in federal and civilian and intel, and we expect those will be tailwinds of growth for us, but certainly some cautionary remarks just given some of the change that's taking place.

Very helpful. Thank you, Steve.

Next question is from Hansa Sadarwala from Morgan's family. Please go ahead.

All right, great. Thank you for taking my question, and I'll echo my condolences on the passing from me to his family and to the entire Tenable team.

Thank you, Hamza.

Steve, or excuse me, Mark, you know, you talked about cloud security sales, I think, doubling year on year. I'm wondering, you know, we're seeing a lot of consolidation in the security market and in the cloud security market more recently as well. To what extent is that coming from your existing customers or net new customer lands? Thank you.

Yeah, so kind of what we're seeing, and we highlighted with Tenable One, we actually saw a significant uptick in new customers actually joining Tenable, being part of the Tenable One platform. But we see a massive opportunity. We have huge, one of the largest install bases of any cyber company on the planet. And we are going out there with this Tenable One message. And cloud security is a huge part of that consolidation message. I highlighted one of the examples of a health agency which was a seven-figure cloud deal. This was all about consolidation. It was all about a hybrid environment where they had on-prem vulnerability needs and assets. They had cloud. They had operational technology. So what we are seeing with exposure management is getting that full visibility of that attack surface, and cloud is a massive part of it. And that's why we're seeing that business double. That's why we're very optimistic about our cloud bookings and revenues in 2025. And I think you're going to continue to see that trend. Customers are definitely looking for that consolidation play, and exposure management fits really, really nicely in that talk track.

Thank you.

Our next question is from from . Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Let me also offer my condolences. Steve, I had a question about your European, maybe international operations. How did they perform this quarter versus the US operations? And maybe I know you've mentioned the competitive landscape, but maybe can you break it for us what you're seeing on the legacy front versus some of the maybe emerging private competitors front? Any color will be extremely helpful. Thank you.

Sure. Well, Tenable is a global company. We sell in 160 countries and You know, we have a presence in 40 different countries. And demand's not monolithic, and it can change from quarter to quarter. This quarter, we saw, you know, particular demand on the international front, specifically in Europe and even in particular in the Middle East. Continues to be tailwinds of growth for us. Certainly areas of Latin America, some of our largest deals came out of those two theaters. We're pleased to see that. And I think as a whole, as we look out into 2025, one of the things we mentioned early in the call was that we plan to add capacity, plan to make investments, and so we're going to invest in those markets where we're seeing opportunity, where we're seeing growth. Competitive dynamics really haven't changed that much from quarter to quarter. You see the traditional VM incumbents for vulnerability management. And in cloud security, we're seeing good traction there. Not only are we demonstrating an ability to sell cloud security standalone and win those deals outright, but we're also selling it as part of the broader solution. And with regard to the latter, our strength is really selling into environments where customers have hybrid needs. Most customers don't have workloads that are completely on-prem. They don't have workloads that are 100% in the cloud, so hybrid environments, the ability to secure both and be able to deliver insights with respect to those environments is certainly a big part of the value proposition we're delivering.

Thank you so much. Very helpful.

Our next question is from Gray Powell from BTIG. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question. And before I ask it, I just wanted to offer my condolences on Amit as well. I had a lot of respect for him. But, yeah, in terms of the question, just on the billings guidance, can you give us any color on how you're thinking about linearity for the year versus prior years? And is there any reason why maybe this year be more back and loaded, particularly with some of the comments you made on U.S. Feds?

Sure.

Well, with regard to our outlook for the full year, the CCB outlook we're providing today is consistent with the directional comments we made last quarter. You know, the one thing, as we called out earlier, is that we're incrementally more cautious than U.S. federal. We also talked about the impact of the bulk in acquisition. When closed, it will contribute roughly half a point of CCB growth. That will be more towards the back half of the year, in part because we're prioritizing the product integration first. We're building those capabilities natively into our 10 of the 1 platform. We'll be in market with more expansive solutions during the course of the year, and we expect it to contribute more fully to CCB, you know, the second half of the year. So notwithstanding Fed and certainly the impact of the acquisition, we would expect our same seasonal flow.

Understood. Okay. Thank you very much.

Our next question is from Rudy Kessinger from DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I guess just kind of similar to Grace's question on CCB, but actually on revenue, you know, the guide kind of implies like a pretty modest acceleration in revenue growth rate year-to-year throughout the year. I'm curious, any colors you can provide there? Is Q1 a tough compare or just what maybe is driving that in the guide, especially considering maybe some more conservative assumptions around Fed, which is more Q3 heavy?

Yeah, I mean, revenue is really an output of sales, and CCB is a good proxy of that. There's a number of factors that go into our revenue forecast, such as the mix between subscriptions and perpetual licenses, services, things of that sort. So, overall, we feel like, you know, the assumptions are appropriate given our outlook in sales. And I would say there's nothing here discreet that's getting that higher. you know, more an extrapolation of what we're seeing in the current quarter for the full year. Okay, that's it for me. Thank you.

Next question is from Roger Boyd from UBS.

Okay, thanks for taking my questions. I'll add my condolences for Amit. The industry lost just a great person. I wanted to ask about customer ads. The 100K plus ACV number looked pretty good. I think the overall enterprise customer ads maybe a little bit weaker. Any color on what you're seeing across the cohorts? I know you mentioned kind of better traction up market. What are you seeing with kind of mid-market SMB? Thanks.

Yeah, well, first of all, this was a quarter of large deals. So, yes, we added over 400, I think 485 new enterprise platform customers. We added 185 net new six-figure customers. And one of the things that Mark talked about earlier was the strength in large deals, the ability to transact six and even seven-figure deals. Obviously, that corresponds with the broader product set. We're going to market with a very expansive cloud offering. We have an integrated platform. We're securing and assessing more areas of the attack surface for our customers. And consequently, we're covering more of those assets. So we're pleased to see these bigger bytes up front, larger LANs. and not only the ability to bring on new customers, but also expand relationships with existing customers. So certainly, large deals figure prominently this quarter.

Yeah, and I'll just add exactly what Steve just said. Not only did we see great big expansions coming out of our larger install base, but some of the largest competitive wins that we had were in Fortune 500 companies. So we were displacing competition in very, very large enterprise customers, which obviously helped us grow pretty significantly here in Q4. Also, we balanced that, though, with outstanding mid-market growth. So we saw excellent global mid-market growth. This was a very, very exciting trend that we had seen all the way through Q4. And it wasn't just a U.S.-based market. Phenomenal. We saw across the globe in EMEA, Asia, and LATAM. So not only were we able to win in these large enterprise accounts, getting expansion, getting big competitive displacement, but that mid-market messaging truly resonates, right, from a tenable one perspective, and we saw great growth around the globe in mid-market, too. So it was an exciting thing in regard to not only the size of the deals, but the growth rates that we saw.

Really helpful color. Thanks, guys.

Our next question is from Patrick Colville from Social Bank. Please go ahead.

This is Joe Vandrick on for Patrick Colville. You touched on it a bit in the prepared remarks, but I'd love to hear a bit more about Vulcan Cyber. Why Vulcan? And I know you touched on data integration and automated remediation, but is there application security posture management at focus as well?

Thanks. Hi, very good question. I think the best way to think about Vulcan is is twofold. First, Vulkan enhances, as you mentioned earlier, everything we do by bringing in and ingesting massive amounts of data from third-party security products such as Endpoint and Cloud and application security and even vulnerability assessment. They have fairly robust data model for aggregation, deduplication, prioritization, and even normalization of this vast amount of data. Second, Vulkan enriches the data that we have and provide broader, more intelligent remediation capabilities. For example, you can automatically launch a web application scan of an external domain with our WAS product, and when that domain itself is discovered with our ASM offering, they provide rich remediation workflow ops on the back end. So the final piece I would say here, notwithstanding the ability to ingest data, notwithstanding the ability to drive more and deeper, richer remediation capabilities, it accelerates really our AI strategy. We'll have more expansive data, more expansive data sets that allow us to solve critical challenges to our customers. AI certainly will be a multi-year cycle. It's a force multiplier on the kinds of insights that we can deliver with the risk data that we're managing for our customers. So we're really excited about the acquisition. It certainly complements what we're doing today and certainly provides broader and richer capabilities on many levels for us.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Next question is from Joshua Tillman from Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

This is Patrick on for Josh, and I just want to echo both of our condolences today. Can you give us a sense for how you're thinking about the trend of NRR for 2025? It's good to see it stabilize this quarter, but what's factored into the guidance from that perspective? Thanks.

We don't disclose. We talk about, we provide a guide for CCP. We do it on an annual basis. And one of the things that we talked about earlier was There's no significant changes to the seasonal quarterly flow that we experienced last year that we expect for this year with the exception of two things. Number one, we're expecting lower contribution from the Fed. We're taking a cautious tone there and approach given the new administration and the overhang of continuing resolution. So we're expecting to contribute minimally in the first quarter and to some extent into Q2. The second thing is we have the acquisition of Vulcan. And when closed, it'll add a half a point of CCB growth We said that'll be more so the back half of the year, given the fact that we're prioritizing the product integration and building some of those capabilities natively into our Tenable One exposure management platform.

Next question is from Adam Borg from Spiegel. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks, guys. You got Max Persico on for Adam Borg. Just wanted to ask if you could give an update on what kind of traction you're seeing with the channel. And then as you look out into 2025, where is Tenable going to be investing most across SDIs, VARs, MSSPs, and et cetera? Any color on that would be super helpful. You bet. So all of the above.

We obviously, one of the greatest differentiators Tenable has as a company is we are a 100% channel company, so we don't do direct business. So we get an enormous amount of leverage from our partner and ecosystem. And so Q4 was no different. And when you look at what we now are doing with Tenable 1, with cloud security, and now adding Vulkan, and it's really important to keep this in mind with Vulkan. is we are going to our existing buyer. We are going to the folks that we have champions and coaches within the install base and talking to them about exposure management and now fulfilling exposure management from third-party assets, ingesting that, and by also doing this automated remediation workflow. The channel will benefit greatly because the channel all around the globe, right, over 5,000 partners, they have exposure management and VM practices. So now that we're able to integrate with Tenable One Vulcan, being able to go to the channel, the training, the enablement, the onboarding will be very quickly. It will very quickly happen, almost seamlessly, because it's the Tenable One story. So we'll be investing in MSSPs. We'll be investing in resellers. We'll be investing in distribution. We saw a record quarter in regards to some of our channeling business in Q4, and we're expecting a phenomenal year coming out of the channel in 2025. And it's really going to be driven by Tenable One, cloud, and exposure management now with Vulcans.

Next question is from Jonathan Hill from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hi, and let me also echo my condolences as well with Amid. Definitely a large loss here for the entire community and for his family. I just wanted to see if you could maybe give us a sense of where we are in terms of executive search and And perhaps some thoughts on what you're looking for. This is definitely tough shoes to fill, and so any color would definitely be appreciated. Thank you.

Hi, Jonathan. This is Steve. The board is running a search and evaluating internal and external candidates, but there's no designated timeline, and they're focused on ensuring we, of course, have the right leadership at this company going forward. In the interim, the board has expressed complete confidence in me and Mark to be able to lead this company going forward. I can't speak for the main criteria, but certainly someone who has the ability to continue to execute on the vision and continue to refine and enhance the vision over the course of time. The one thing I will say is that Amit was certainly the driving force behind the strategy and the vision for Tenable, but collectively the management team had a very heavy hand in shaping it, influencing it, refining it, and evolving it. that's something we plan to continue going forward. Thank you.

Next question is from Mike Psychos from Needham & Company. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking the questions, guys, and I apologize if there's any background noise on my side. I think the first question, if I could, I just wanted to check. I know we've centered some of the commentary on this incremental caution that's being introduced with respect to U.S. feds. versus the CCB guide being relatively maintained versus where we were a quarter ago, despite that Q4 upside. So is it fair to assume that were it not for this incremental caution around U.S. Fed, you guys would be lifting the CCB guide for this coming year by that 4QB, or is there any way to kind of quantify that incremental caution that's being introduced here today?

No, I think that's certainly a fair characterization. Look, the quarter came in better than expected. It's early in the year. Our outlook for the full year reflects some of the directional comments we made last quarter. The difference here is that we're modeling a lower contribution from Fed. Fed historically has been strong for us. Long term, we expect it to continue to do so. It's fair to say there's a little more uncertainty given the transition of the new administration and other things that we talked about here. So I think that's a fair characterization of the outlook.

Terrific. And then for the follow-up, I know that we've spoken about this additional capacity that's coming online as well. Is it fair to think that, again, you guys are talking about the strength in Q4 with these large six and seven figure deals. Is that a capacity really to help you land with these larger deals? Or can you help us, again, provide some additional context for where that capacity is expected to go.

Yeah, in terms of the capacity we're adding, given how the second half of the year has played out, we have confidence to add capacity. I think we're very pleased with the level of productivity that we're seeing in the sales organization. It's inflected higher during the course of the year. We discussed at the beginning of the year that we expect sales and marketing as a percent of revenue to trend lower during the course of the year, and it certainly did so. We're putting more product in the hands of our sellers. And so the investment here really reflects the strength that we're seeing. One thing I want to make clear is that we're not capacity constrained. We have the ability to not only hit and exceed the guide that we provided today, but certainly be able to drive significant upside. So the capacity we're adding today really speaks to opportunity, you know, maybe perhaps the second half of the year, more so in 2026.

Very good. Thank you very much, guys. Good luck.

Our next question is from . From Robert Beard. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. Again, I'll echo condolences for Amita as well as his family and words of support for the entire team. They're accountable. Just on the federal note, public sector, of course, there are notable events, U.S. other segments, the being or is undergoing administration-related uncertainty. Just looking ahead, right, as you are favoring your approach to not only address the unique procurement cycles and compliance requirements of public sector, which you anyways have worked over years now, but still early days, but are you starting to be trying to appeal to the new kind of goals or cost-conscious and mindset and framework which is moving towards? I'm sorry. I know you guys are discussing

Yeah, I'm sorry. You're a bit inaudible right now. I'm having a tough time hearing you. So why don't we go on to the next question, and maybe if it clears up, we can come back. Operator, let's go to the next question.

Once again, I just want to join the queue. Answer no further questions. I'm going to forward back to management for closing comments.

Well, great. Thank you for joining us today. We're excited to be here and update you on our progress for the fourth quarter as well as share our outlook for full year 25. And we hope to see you at the Morgan Stanley, Susquehanna, and even Canterford General Conferences in the coming weeks. Thank you. Thank you.

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.