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spk05: My name is Savannah, and I will be your conference operator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Thrive Second Quarter 2022 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. All lines present, please unmute to prevent any background noise. And after the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. Thank you.
spk01: And I would now like to turn my conference over to Cameron Lessard. Please go ahead.
spk09: Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Thrive's second quarter 2022 financial results. With me on today's call are Joe Walsh, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Grant Freeman, Chief Customer Officer, and Paul Routh, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that shortly before today's call, we issued a press release announcing our second quarter 2022 financial results. We also published a Q2 investor presentation on our website at investor.thrive.com. Please note that the information regarding your quarterly performance and guidance can be found towards the back of the presentation. I would like to remind listeners that some of the comments made on today's call and some of the responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements about the operations and future results of the company. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties described in the company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Thrive has no obligation to update the information presented on the call. Also on today's call, our speakers will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe will provide useful information for investors. Reconciliation of those measures to GAAP will be posted on the Investor Relations website. With that introduction, I would like to turn the call over to Joe Walsh.
spk12: Thank you, Cameron, and thanks to everyone for joining our call today. Hopefully you've seen our press release and the strong financial results we delivered in the second quarter, which exceeded all our guidance measures. We made tremendous progress on our strategic priorities that enabled this quarter's performance and our outstanding performance for the first half of 22. As a result, we're raising our full year guidance. Total SAS revenue for the quarter was up 26% over last year, and the 52.2 million in quarterly sales figure marked the highest in the history of Thrive SAS. We hit 50,000 SAS subscribers, up 11% year over year. It was the strongest growth we've had in a couple of years. We said for this year that we would have more of a balance between subscriber growth and ARPU growth. We both are double digit in this quarter. We also meaningfully overperformed on adjusted EBITDA in SaaS. This happened in part because of some progress we made where we kind of over-delivered on our ability to hire some engineers through our Vivial acquisition. We picked up a couple of excellent a number of excellent React developers that would have otherwise been a recruiting process. So that saved us some money. We also have been much more efficient with our overall SaaS marketing efforts. And so that's allowed us to invest less, spend a little less than we thought we would need to. We initially guided to a loss in SaaS of 21 to 25 million for the year. We now believe the SaaS EBITDA loss will narrow and Paul will provide updated guidance in his remarks. Marketing services continues to show predictability and resilience in billings with high EBITDA margins. We've made some really big gains in our active users of our software this year. It's been one of the big stories of the year, one of the things I've mentioned before. It's our North Star, the thing that we're the most focused on. And so to make such a quantum jump that we've made this year, we think is a leading indicator on how we're going to do in the future. And so to update you on some of those recent engagement trends Our Chief Customer Officer, Grant Freeman, is with us. Grant?
spk08: Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. I am excited to be here today to update you on the progress being made as our clients continue to increase and deepen their engagement with our software platform. As I've shared before, our North Star is an engaged client, and I'm pleased to report that we have seen a 30% increase in engaged users over the first half of the year. Now, this has been accomplished by, first, focusing on selling to the right clients. making sure that they are ready to implement our software at the point of purchase. Next, we clearly identify the problem that they want to solve and help them understand the impact that problem is having on their business. After that, we create a customized onboarding experience, ensuring we deliver a best-in-class time to first value. And finally, we deploy additional human and tech touches that encourage deeper engagement in our software across the entirety of their journey with us. You know, one of the great things about our client base is who we sell to. We don't have a ton of restaurants and retail establishments. Our clients tend to be those who are almost always needed. An example that comes to mind is if you have a plumbing issue, you're probably still going to call the plumber regardless of economic conditions. Or if you have a dental issue like a cavity or a toothache, you're probably going to contact a dentist. We find that these businesses are more resilient to any softening of demand in the marketplace. Now we also see these businesses as being primed for modernizing the way they operate so they can gain efficiencies and accelerate growth. You know, every Thrive prospect receives a customized demo of our software where we show them how our platform will solve their problem before they purchase. We have found that this motion yields higher engagement and low churn. It ensures our platform is a fit for the needs of that SMB. Because of this, when we dive deeper into the data, One of the things we notice is an increase in usage of Thrive software features that help businesses be more efficient when dollars are tight. Let me go ahead and share a few examples. We help businesses make sure their calendars are full. Our scheduler and automated reminder features ensure customers of our clients show up for scheduled appointments, whether at a beauty salon or for roofing estimates. We help eliminate no-shows. We offer far more than tech support. We offer coaching to our clients. Recently, we have been working with owners who have been impacted by supply chain shortages. An example that comes to mind is a garage flooring company that was not receiving the epoxy supplies needed to run his business. We brainstormed with him and encouraged him to communicate with existing and new customers, sharing with them that he now provides garage cleanouts, which requires no supply chain impacted supplies. This allowed him to generate revenue and keep his crews busy while waiting for epoxy. We've also been helping clients with cash flow. A great example of this is because of our integrated CRM and our estimating and invoicing tools, customers can more quickly issue estimates and then invoices upon completion of services. This reduces outstanding balances and gets them paid faster. Furthermore, if they offer ThrivePay, their customer can also pay quickly and efficiently and, in many cases, help them save on fees, which goes straight to the bottom line. It's important to understand that our entire client success team knows that our onboarding and 24-7 service is a key differentiator for Thrive's model. We have the attitude that no small business should be left behind. We coach and inspire small business owners during onboarding, focusing on solving the main problem the client is trying to resolve within the first 10 days. We focus on their engagement with our software because we know that at the end of the day, it helps them succeed. A recent industry study among small businesses found that four out of five SMBs cited increased productivity, increased profitability, and a better customer experience for those businesses who had shifted to cloud-based tools. And that's really no different than the feedback that we get from our own clients. So let me just share with you a couple of quotes about a couple of their experiences with investing in technology. One of our clients said, No more repetitive reminders to staff, less phone calls to clients, more time spent giving spectacular client service. Another one shared, from allowing potential customers to book their own appointments, to receiving payments, to sending follow-up confirmation messages, to reviews, among many, many other aspects, I see Thrive benefiting my business in categories dang near across the board. All these efforts culminate in our highest engagement numbers to date and corresponding low churn for the first half of the year. Clients are using the product more than ever, and they are staying with us because they realize that Thrive, they have more than just a platform. They have people helping them succeed. And that's something we're very proud of. So with that, let me turn this back over to Joe.
spk12: Thank you, Grant. You and your team have done an excellent job of helping our customers find time to first value and getting them onboard in a smooth way that's contributed to strong usage. And that usage, that engagement, for me is a forward indicator of as to how we're going to do in the future, it's also a great indicator of how we're going to do on net revenue retention going forward. Because as those customers become more engaged and as they succeed, they tend to buy more. And growing the ARPU, growing the revenue per customer, having those add-on sales is a big part of our product roadmap going forward into the future. So thank you for that. Thank you for enabling that. Appreciate all that you guys are doing. Next, I'd like to turn to Paul Rouse. our CFO.
spk02: Paul?
spk00: Thank you, Joe. As a reminder, we are going to focus on total SAS and total marketing services results, which includes both domestic and international operations. This is how we provided guidance to start the year and will be the case going forward. We do feel this will be more important in modeling the business. Okay. Let's talk about our second quarter results, starting with our SAS business. Second quarter total SAS revenue was $52.2 million ahead of our guidance range. This represents an increase of 26% year over year and 8% quarter over quarter. Fueling this increase in revenue was a balance between ARPU and subscriber growth, both increasing 11% year over year. Annualized spend per client was approximately $4,300 for the second quarter. Second quarter SAS adjusted EBITDA loss was a negative $2.2 million and better than our alpha. As Joe said in his remarks, the reason for the overperformance was due to key engineering talent we acquired in the Vivio acquisition and more efficient and effective marketing efforts, particularly in our new acquisition channels. Season net dollar retention was 91% in the second quarter. As a reminder, season net dollar retention represents clients that have been with us for over one year. Monthly churn remains stable in this quarter. Moving over to marketing services, second quarter total marketing services revenue was $281.8 million and ahead of our guidance. The reason for the overperformance was due to stronger than anticipated digital revenue and the addition of Vivial. When we acquired Vivial back in the first quarter, we assumed a higher level of client churn as we worked to integrate the sales and client success teams. This did not happen. And in fact, we have seen better renewal rates for Vivial products than our original expectations. Vivial contributed $30 million to marketing services revenue in the quarter. Second quarter, total marketing services adjusted EBITDA was $118.2 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 42% due to a strong print publication quarter. Second quarter, total marketing services billings, excluding Vivial, was $216.4 million, a decline of 17% year-over-year and within our expectations, which has been consistent for many years. As reported in prior earnings calls, we are providing Billings an additional operational metric to give our investors better insight into our operational performance. The Billings data will show a very consistent and steady decline in our marketing services business. which is shown to be lumpier on an accounting basis, given the extended live cycles of our print directories. This is provided in our second quarter investor presentation available on our investor relations website. Turning now to profitability and leverage for our consolidated business. Second quarter consolidated adjusted gross margin was 71%. Second quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $116 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 35%. Finally, our net debt position was $542.4 million in the second quarter. Our leverage ratio for the second quarter, in accordance with our credit facility, is 1.5 times net debt to EBITDA and well below our covenant of three times. Our pension obligation is now $115.7 million. Now let's discuss updated guidance for 2022. For the second quarter 2022, we expect total SAS revenue in the range of 53.7 to $54.2 million, and an adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of 4.8 to $5.3 million. For the full year 2022, we are raising our guide of total SAS revenue in the range of $209.5 to $211 million, representing growth of 23% year-over-year. We are updating our SAS EBITDA loss outlook in the range of $16 to $19 million, which is an improvement of our previous guidance of $21 to $25 million loss. For the full year 2022, We are raising our guide for total marketing services revenue in the range of $955 to $970 million, and raising our adjusted EBITDA in the range of $335 to $340 million, representing an EBITDA margin of 35%. Now back to you, Joe. Thanks, Paul. A few more items before we go to Q&A.
spk12: We hired Tammy Cannizzaro as our chief marketing officer. Tammy comes to us with a proven track record and over 20 years experience building tech companies, building category leaders, working within the SaaS space. She will play a pivotal role in our growth strategy going forward. I wanted to comment on marketing center. We rolled out in the spring the fact that we were doing centers as a strategy and that we would have a marketing center coming out later in the year. Well, the beta has gone really well. We learned a lot. in the direct contact working with customers on the product. We now have got a couple of limited sales teams out selling Marketing Center. And our plan is to roll out Marketing Center to the whole sales organization before the end of the year. So 23 should be a time when you'll see Marketing Center come to life and start to see some revenue from that. And we're looking forward to additional centers even beyond Marketing Center. I want to talk a little bit about growth. You know, there's a big debate out there in the market about growth and speed of growth and how much cash people use. We are really disciplined stewards of cash. We're really careful with cash. And this is that moment, you know, every dog has its day. This is the perfect company for the climate that we're in. We have a big edge. The advantage of 400,000 standing accounts that on average have been with us for over 10 years. So these are long established companies that provide vital services in their community. This is, you know, your air conditioning doesn't work. These are the basics. And our customers are very resilient. That's part of why our marketing services business performs in such a steady way. And it's benefiting our SaaS company because the SaaS business has the ability to have a conversation with this giant zoo of customers. And those conversations are resulting in more and more conversions. There isn't any way to stop the transition that's taking place where small businesses are following big ones into the cloud. That's going to happen. The pace might speed up or slow down, but it's happening and it's continuing to happen. And you can see it in our results here to date. We're doing really well. And you can see it in the guidance that Paul's given you for how we're going to do for the year.
spk02: So with that, let's turn it over to Q&A operator.
spk01: Thank you. And as a reminder, that is star one if you would like to ask a question.
spk05: Our first question will come from Arun Badia with William Blair. Please go ahead.
spk06: Perfect. Perfect. Thank you guys for taking the question. Joe, maybe I want to start with you. Obviously, you know, one of the benefits that you have is you have a pretty broad platform that can kind of be this operating system for your customers. As you're talking to customers and you're seeing the trends in this macro environment, are you starting to see customers consolidate, spend on Thrive more because you do have capabilities because they do trust you? Or is that something that you anticipate will come in the future as they eliminate perhaps some of these point solutions that they may be using?
spk12: Yeah, there's definitely a bit of that that goes on. You know, we find that if I go back a couple of years, almost all the customers that we were working with were what I called the unclouded. They had really nothing in the cloud and we were introducing them and bringing them in for the first time. And there's still some of that. But increasingly now, we're beginning to find customers that have put a toe in the water. They've used one or two point solutions or they've done something in the cloud. And they're asking the question, Isn't there some more integrated, more complete solution so I don't have to have multiple sticky notes on my computer where I'm logging in and out of different things? And it's somewhat unwieldy to use many point solutions taped together because the data doesn't share back and forth. And it's difficult to train your staff to know how to get into these. The user interfaces are different and so on. So we very definitely are now seeing people that are using point solutions come on with us. and then over time, you know, more consolidate with us. One of the positives of Thrive is we have an app marketplace inside of Thrive where a lot of the commonly used tools that are out there we offer in our app store. So there's a full integration already in place. So if you come to us and you say, well, look, you know, I'm already using MailChimp. I'm already using Constant Contact. I'm already using, you know, QuickBooks or MyOB or Xero or whatever. we can just connect those and they work seamlessly in the data shares. So we do find sometimes one of the conversations that comes up is, I'm already using this. And we say, no problem. That works perfectly. That'll help you get off to a good start. As far as whether they or could they or might they drop that point solution, I certainly have seen stories, examples where that's happened. I won't say it's a massive trend, but I do feel like we're in a stronger place with such a broad application. There's true labor saving in Thrive. And if you're having a hard time hiring staff or you're looking to make your business more efficient or cut costs, Thrive is a definite way to do that.
spk02: Got it. That's very helpful.
spk06: And then just one more, if I can, on In terms of your customer acquisition motion, you mentioned just at the end there that you have this advantage of the 400,000 accounts that have been with you for a decade. When you look at your customer acquisition motion going forward, do you sense that, hey, maybe we'll lean more into that marketing services base and try to transition those customers faster or are you still kind of keeping that a third, a third, a third framework that you've pointed to before in terms of new business that's coming to the software side?
spk12: As of this writing, as of right this minute, we're still running that third, a third, and a third. I mean, it certainly would be an option for us. I've read some of the stuff where people have all these doomsday scenarios that the market's going to be awful in the future or something. That would certainly be a hideout for us to go deeper into that if we wanted to. But I have to say, we haven't seen any doom and gloom so far. We're continuing with that third to third to third. Things are actually going very, very well right now. And I would just also add, Arjun, that if times got really tight, some of the loss-making SaaS companies that are running around the internet hocking their wares, they might actually have some of their losses curtailed, and it may be less competitive out there to find prospects that are coming down through the funnel. So that could be another outcome. It may not all just be a bad thing. There may be also some good guy to that.
spk06: Got it. Perfect. Thank you for taking my questions, and congrats on the quarter, guys.
spk02: Thanks, Bob. Sorry.
spk01: Our next question will come from Scott Berg with Needham. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hi, Joe and Paul. Congrats on the great quarter. Joe, I wanted to start off on the customer growth in the quarter. Your subs ads was pretty positive. You mentioned double digits plus in the quarter. Are you seeing anything different in terms of the types of customers you're able to attract to the platform? Maybe it's, I don't know, initial size of customer, your landing cadence, or maybe even something different geographically?
spk12: Not hugely, but you've asked the question, so I'll try to parse a little bit and answer it. We are, as we continue to innovate the software, and our roadmap is going faster and faster and faster because we've got a lot more engineers now than we had, say, a year ago. One of the things we're doing is making the software easier to use, making it more interoperable with other tools in the market. And also, some of the things we're solving for are some of our power users. And our power users tend to skew a little bit larger. And I don't mean they have hundreds of employees. I'm saying that instead of having two or three, they maybe have 23. And so we are becoming a better and better tool for that really established little bit bigger business. And so I would say it's subtle, but there is a slight movement up market happening in our customer base. Now, please don't write down that they're moved to enterprise because that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that, you know, the selection of us getting instead of Chuck and two trucks, we're getting Chuck with seven trucks, you know, a little bit bigger, small businesses, you know, are kind of being targeted by our business advisors. And this is really making a lot of sense to them and is more suited. So I would say there's ever slight, ever so slight upward movement within that within that base. And I think that bodes well longer term. for more upsell, selling more seat licenses and all the things that go with it. Our long-term plan, as you know, is to grow our net dollar retention to be kind of 100 and to drive a business with a little bit larger ARPU than where we currently are.
spk03: All right, so the title of my note is Thrive Moves Into the Large Enterprise.
spk10: I like that. Thank you.
spk03: Yeah, kidding, obviously. All right, and then a... Kind of a follow-up, I know Arjun asked the question before about becoming stickier, because I know there's a lot of concerns just in general about any software vendors selling into smaller businesses, given the macro backdrop. But how do you think about the payments business right now? You're still seeing nice growth there, but as you think about payments maybe on a per-customer basis, how is, I guess, like the ARPU trend per customer on payments trending? And I don't know if it's a valid... kind of metric or thought process to think about your business. But more holistically, are you seeing any trends around maybe the invoices your customers have, which maybe might be the health of their own business?
spk12: Yeah, it's funny. I see it every single day at noon. I get a little automated report that pops onto my phone every single day at noon. I can see how many transactions occurred in the last 24 hours for what dollar amount. And so I can literally see like when 4th of July came along, everything slowed down and quieted down. You can see every little tiny pebble in the road. It's unbelievable. Overall, the trend is strongly up for us. Our payment tool is being adopted by more and more businesses. So the number transacting per week, per month is rising week over week, month over month pretty quickly. And we're continuing to see that adoption and that growth. And so I don't have a perfect barometer on the market because we keep adding more merchants and keep adding more transactions. So I'm not looking at it. But I have to say, I can see things like the 4th of July, that whole beginning of July was just super soft. People took off before the 4th. They took after the 4th. You know, you could just see it in the numbers where everything just softened up coming into it, stayed soft through it, and then you could see it come back. And, you know, in the payment volume and payment transaction. I think that was just probably a barometer on the, you know, people just taking some time off. You know, that was all. But all in all, ThrivePay is rocking, man. It just continues to pick up steam.
spk02: Great. That's all I have. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks, Scott.
spk01: And as a reminder, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. Our next question will come from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.
spk11: Thank you. Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Paul. Thanks for taking questions. Maybe sticking with the SAS theme, if you could just update us on your verticalization efforts more generally and within that accelerated net new customer growth that we're seeing. any verticals standing out where you're, you know, perhaps having a little bit more success?
spk12: Well, our verticalization program continues. You know, we continue to work around Thrive Home, Thrive Health, Thrive Legal. There are, you know, product managers around those verticals and there's a, you know, as soon as we find out you're one of them, we sort of slot you into that whole kind of funnel process and and tune the experience. Same thing when you bought Thrive early on and we find out what your vertical is, we customize around you and the terms and the tools and the elements that you need. So it's a gradual process. I have to say we have a lot of engineering priorities. That's not the only one that we're working on, but it is continuing to get more and more tuned to those verticals and we're continuing to have a lot of success with it. I can't say that we've seen any big change in which verticals are leading. We tend to do very well in service businesses. Obviously, everything around home services, everything around personal services, the chiropractor, doctor, dentist, just everything around psychotherapists, just everything around personal services. and a whole lot around car services and things like that. Which is not to say we don't have anything other than services, but that definitely is our strongest area. And that's part of why we feel good about resiliency in a potentially challenging market, because we really are not into optional or luxury items. This is my tooth hurts. I'm going to go get it fixed. But I haven't really seen a lot of change in who's flowing in. You know, I have to say, you know, the Vivial acquisition that we made, we made, you know, in hopes of penetrating that base and bringing those customers over. And that's going really, really well. So we're delighted with that. That would be, I guess, one trend that we've seen. But we did say for the year that we would – if you remember last year, you guys were asking us, geez, a lot of your growth is coming from ARPU expansion. It would be better if you had a balanced approach. I think this quarter we were exactly 11 and 11. We're double-digit on both. So maybe we hit the sweet spot on the balance beam now.
spk11: Very good. And maybe just one more for me. In relation to the updated and upgraded EBITDA guide, maybe just talk about free cash flow expectations for the remainder of the year. Have they sort of increased in line with projected EBITDA, working capital, puts and takes, et cetera?
spk12: I want to bring Paul in and let him make some comments. Paul?
spk00: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we're pretty happy with the trend in free cash flow. So, yeah, so that's moving along pretty nicely along with the guidance.
spk01: And we will take our next question from Zach Cummins with B. Reilly. Please go ahead.
spk10: Yep. Thanks. Good morning. Congrats, Joe and Paul, on another strong quarter here. Joe, since you mentioned it, I mean, can you give us any sort of update on the Vivio acquisition? It seems like it's off to a great start here. So just what you've seen thus far and what sort of opportunity is still available to you on the SaaS side?
spk12: Yeah, it's gone really, really well. You know, I want to caution that Divio wasn't a huge company or a huge acquisition. But, you know, our hope was to integrate it quickly. And we have done that. I say that in past tense because almost all the integration is actually done. There's some things that are just rolling out now, but we figured them all out and we're just executing. In terms of the SaaS opportunity, we've been pleasantly surprised in a couple of areas. I'll start with the people. We picked up a lot of excellent people. I think Paul mentioned in the prepared remarks that we picked up some great engineers that were just a really nice surprise to us. We've picked up people in all different kinds of functions that we've added to our team, which we're excited about. But I think the most important is we picked up a large group of business advisors. came to us from Vivio that brought over their relationships, that brought over their customers, that are delighted with how good the Thrive product offerings are. And right now I'm referring to on the marketing services side. And they're having really good success at bringing those customers into Thrive software. It's kind of a whole new wing of the zoo that just opened, right, that we're hunting in. And it's going really well. And It's still early days. There's a lot more to go. You know, the Vivio transaction happened at the end of January. It obviously took us a few weeks to get things organized and going. You know, they were selling, you know, by the beginning of May. And so we're really pretty early on in biting into, you know, that Vivio customer base. But it's going well, and I expect, you know, customers coming out of that cohort not just for a year, but beyond a year, just as customers are still coming out of the original old DEX media footprint. I think that they'll be coming out of the Vivio footprint for a long time to come. So that'll be a source of strong growth for us for a while.
spk10: Understood. And a final question for me, can you just talk more about your international strategy? It seems like everything with census has gone pretty well. And now since you've hired a new president to lead those efforts, what could we be looking at in terms of entering new markets?
spk12: So Thrive Australia has gone really well. The marketing services side of that business has outperformed, you know, all of our plans and all our expectations. So it's delivering the cash, the EBITDA, all the stuff that we wanted. It's been stable as a rock. And culturally, it's a bit of a love-in. We really, really like these guys, and they seem to like us too. It's gone really well. So we're happy with that. On the SaaS side in Australia, we've laid down a really great foundation. We were really careful with how we started. And we've got incredible client engagement, incredible NPS scores, very strong brand awareness of the Thrive brand as we've rebranded from Census. And a recent employee survey that we did said that our employees are super excited about the future of the company and its chances of being successful and their career within it. So all of that's really good. And then we're seeing strong, strong SaaS uptake and growth when we look at quarter over quarter over quarter. It's accelerating beautifully there. So I think Thrive Australia will be a source of additional thrive subscribers and additional growth for us for a long time to come and that that should be feathered in and layering into your kind of your growth plans and growth models earlier this year we entered Canada we entered Canada initially just online only with a small kind of online only sales process and you know we've had a steady flow of sales coming in from Canada and Marie Caron our leader our president for international who's Canadian by background, by the way, is very well connected in Canada and is working on a number of initiatives that we'll be announcing in the future that will amp up and ramp up the pace at which we build out in Canada. So we're really, really pleased with that. And again, I feel like that as we go into 23, you'll see Canada each quarter contribute more and more and more to our overall growth. And We do have plans for other geography, other country entries. I'm not ready to announce that right now. But when you're thinking about it or modeling or kind of doing your Lego work on how our future is going to go, I think you can assume that you're going to have additional countries layering in. And they'll start at zero or very small, and then they'll start to ramp up. And that's part of the sort of geometric pattern of how we see building and sustaining growth. You'll remember we sort of gave it our investor day that we feel like there's a billion-dollar SaaS business here and eventually a $4 billion SaaS business. And we're not going to get all of that out of the U.S. We feel like these other markets, while most of them are behind the U.S. in terms of SaaS adoption, are coming along. And there's an advantage to that first mover advantage, getting in early, getting established, You know, right now, if you do a poll of small businesses about what software is available to them, Thrive now pops up in the top five of consideration of possible choices in Australia because of the marketing work that we've done there to set the table. So, you know, you can look at what we've done in Australia, and there might be a little bit of an analogy there for what we may be able to do in some other markets. So international will be, you know, when you think about international, just figure that that's going to be growing rapidly. really briskly as Marie begins to execute.
spk02: Understood. That's helpful. Well, thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck in the coming quarter. Thank you.
spk01: And our last question will come from Patrick Schultz of Baird. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, guys. Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my question. So you touched on the macro environment a little bit, but can you talk a little more about your efforts to push that net dollar retention closer to 100% over time? And what are the main drivers behind ARPU? And how could these metrics be impacted in a macro slowdown?
spk12: Sure.
spk07: That's a great question.
spk12: Thank you very much for that. Yeah, I mean, look, let's be honest. Our net dollar retention has been bouncing around a little bit. It actually goes back a little bit during this quarter. It's not some big change of direction. Our core... you know, our core churn, which we measure our, you know, what we call our season churn, has been stable now for five quarters. Really, we're getting down. It's like a golf score. We're down around par. When you're dealing with very small businesses, it's going to be tough to get much lower than kind of the 1.7% churn, season churn that we're running at. You know, and you guys have asked me this before, and I've said, you know, could we get down another tenth of a point or two maybe, but that would be flawless at that point. So that core season churn number has been very stable for five, maybe even six quarters, just chugging along in that area. We're down around par. We did put a tremendous amount of emphasis on new subscriber acquisitions to try to drive into double digits, which as I said earlier, we were at 11%. And we also put a lot of energy in the Vivial integration. And we crushed those and really over delivered on those. So, you know, very, very happy with how the team has done on that. You know, one of the byproducts is there's a little bit of a bubble in that NDR number. So you asked the question, how do I see that getting to 100%? I'm really comfortable that we're going to be able to do that. We mentioned at the investor day, this strategy we call our center strategy. And that's essentially building out more more functionality for our customers so that we can grow with them as they're prepared to adopt more and more SaaS tools, as they're prepared to put their payroll into the cloud. And they're ready to use more sophisticated marketing tools. And we're able to offer them cloud choices to do these things. And we've announced and mentioned that we'll have Marketing Center being sold by the whole Salesforce before the end of this year. And that will be a contributor to ARPU growth, contributor to net dollar retention as we go into 23. And we have other centers planned. And beneath just centers, which are great big rollouts of things, we also have some smaller add-ons to customers. You know, simple things like buying more seat licenses or there's some other functionality. I guess we haven't announced some of these things, so I'm just pausing because I guess I can't talk about them. But There are a couple of other very simple utilities that are coming along that customers are going to be able to use that will help them with their day-to-day business. There will be some small add-ons that will be small for the customer but meaningful across 50,000-plus customers as they adopt it. So our roadmap is really all about driving net dollar retention to 100%. And, you know... We're at just a little over 4,000 a customer. I think you'll see that gradually rise to 5,000 and then 6,000 over time. And I don't think that's a huge burden for a really established local business. So that's kind of how we're thinking about it.
spk02: Great. Thanks so much for taking my question. Congrats on a great quarter. Thank you very much.
spk01: And that will conclude today's question and answer session. I would now like to turn our call back over to Joe Walsh for closing remarks.
spk12: Thanks, Savannah. Appreciate that. So thank you, everybody, for your attention today and listening. And we are really, really proud of our results this quarter. And more importantly, we're super excited about looking ahead to 2023 and the momentum that we have as a business. I mentioned during the questions here that we've got a number of new vectors of growth that are just starting out that are going to be gaining traction and really building going into next year. And that gives us a lot of confidence of being able to sustain good, solid growth through next year without a lot of crazy spending. You know, I know we follow what's going on. You know, there's a desire for a path to profitability. And, you know, we've had some what we consider fairly minor investments and EBITDA loss that we've been running in our SaaS business. You can see that we're actually narrowing that this year And as we look ahead to next year, we don't see a lot of brand-new adventures and brand-new investments. So I think that we're going to be able to harvest the investments that we've made, and that path to profitability should be clear and evident with us. So we think we can run a very stable business. And we have tapped into the SMB trend. I mean, the trend in software, really, is small businesses moving the cloud we think that's a you know very big deal and uh and we're sitting right in the center of it so um one of the questions i think that um a lot of our sort of software peer companies face is you know do they need to raise capital and those of you that are familiar with our story know that you know we're throwing off a ton of cash we don't need to raise capital we have no plans to raise capital we can go forever just the way we are chugging along on our own self-generation of cash. So, you know, we think that, you know, I guess every dog has his day, right? There's a moment for everybody. Having a 400,000 customer base with customers on average more than 10 years with you that like you, that you have a strong relationship, we have NPS to prove it. You've got a seasoned business advisor force that's got relationships with those people and they're adopting the cloud in a steady way. Nobody's going to put that genie back in the bottle. People aren't going to go back to paper. I mean, the pace at which that revolution happens might speed up or slow down a little, but it's going to keep coming. So we think that there is a, you know, a really substantial opportunity for us as a company. We think that we're in pole position to tap into this enormous global total addressable market. We already have a fully scaled, based on this quarter, you know, 200 plus million dollar a fully scaled SaaS business that's already been cash flow positive. We are making small investments now, but it's already a profit-making machine. So we think this is a very low-risk place to invest, and we think that there's an enormous upside. So thank you very much for following us. We appreciate it and look forward to talking to you in the future. Thanks.
spk01: That will conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.
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