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Operator
one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Cameron Lessard, head of investor relations. Mr. Lessard, please go ahead.
Lessard
Thank you, operator. Hello, and good day to everyone. Welcome to Thrive's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On the call today are Joe Walsh, chairman and chief executive officer, and Paul Rouse, chief financial officer. A copy of our earnings press release and investor presentation can be found on our website at thrive.com or in the investor section at investor.thrive.com. Please acknowledge comments made on today's call and 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 this conference call. Finally, 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 our website. With that introduction, I would like to turn the call over to Chairman and CEO, Joe Walsh.
Joe Walsh
Good morning, Cameron, and thank you all for joining us on the call today to discuss our third quarter results. I'd like to dive in here with two big ideas. The first is our SaaS revenue beat guidance on both the revenue and the EBITDA line, all while carrying additional overhead that was allocated because we had lesser revenue in marketing services. So this is really a standout quarter, and it shows the strength that's developing in our SaaS business. Secondly, we finally got behind us this looming third quarter we've been talking about for well over a year. where revenue recognition was going to be light for the quarter and would optically make it look like we had weak revenue. So we generated roughly $7 million in adjusted EBITDA, but $37 million in cash flow. And so it sort of underscores the strength of this overall business. And the management team is very much in control of the cost and able to look, in this case, more than a year ahead and tell you how this was going to turn out. So we're using that cash to strengthen our balance sheet, to pay down debt, It shows kind of the strength of the marketing services business, even though it's declining. It's still very, very resilient and very forecastable. I'd like to take you through our SaaS quarterly highlights. SaaS revenue grew 19% year over year, and sequentially it grew 8%. SaaS adjusted EBITDA was much better than guidance, despite the impact of marketing services operating expenses. SaaS adjusted gross profit improved 25% year-over-year, delivering an adjusted gross margin of approximately 67%. Client growth was up 29% year-over-year, and engagement, our North Star driving engagement, was a 22% growth. We're really pleased so far with Command Center. You know, it's just been in beta this last period, but our team has been working closely with early adopters and making weekly updates. and we'll wrap up this beta period very soon. With little to no promotion, we've received over 15,000 signups. We've connected thousands of channels, streamlined over 3 million messages, and we've seen positive signs from nearly 10,000 phone calls and hours of video meetings. So, you know, during the beta period, we found a few bugs you would, wouldn't you? We've really solidified and strengthened the product, and we're ready a little later this month to go out with our full general release. We're achieving sign-ups to Command Center in two ways. First, we're offering unassisted online sign-ups, which take less than 60 seconds, really easy to sign up. And we've seen these users, in many cases, self-upgrade and actually purchase, where they're buying more channels or more seats or somehow expanding. Those that haven't expanded will monitor their usage and their engagement, and those with the highest usage we'll actually turn over to our sales force to contact them, work with them, and discuss future expansion opportunities. These are what I guess you would call real hand raisers. Second, we're leveraging our global sales force. With Command Center and their toolkit, business advisors are well positioned to provide value as trusted partners. This will help them drive more demos and sales to our other centers in the future. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Paul Rouse and let him take us through our third quarter financial results. Paul?
Cameron
Thanks, Joe. As a reminder to listeners, we are going to focus on our two segments, SaaS and marketing services, which includes results from domestic and international operations. We feel this is more beneficial in modeling and understanding the business. Additional detail between domestic and international for each segment can be found in the appendix section of the investor presentation. Okay, let's jump into the results, beginning with our SAS segment. Third quarter revenue was $67.4 million, an increase of 19% year over year and 8% sequentially, and above our guidance range. Third quarter SAS adjusted gross margin expanded to 66.6% versus 63.5% in the prior year. representing a 310 basis point increase year over year and a 150 basis point increase sequential. SAS adjusted gross margins will see continued expansion with the promotion of centers. And we believe they will continue to expand with the upsell motion from the new command center product, which is now widely available to all of our customers. SAS adjusted EBITDA was negative 504,000 and significantly exceeded our guidance range of negative 3.5 to 4 million. Let me provide a bit more color on our SAS adjusted EBITDA margin. As previously communicated, we allocated operating expenses as a percentage of revenue between our two segments, SAS and marketing services. Due to materially lower great revenue in marketing services, SAS carried significantly more operating expense during the quarter, which negatively impacted or adjusted EBITDA and resulted in a slight reported loss in the third quarter compared to continued and sustained margin improvements over the past several quarters. However, I am pleased to report that we were able to substantially narrow this EBITDA loss more than $3 million by effectively managing our go-to-market channels and customer acquisition initiatives. This is a testament to the strength of our team and our ability to execute on our strategic plan. As Joe said in his opening remarks, we are now past the print directory revenue recognition dynamic. We remain confident in our long-term growth prospects and are focused on accelerating profitable growth in our SaaS business, and we will continue to invest in our key growth priorities while managing our operating expenses carefully. SaaS subscribers grew to approximately 66,000 at the end of the third quarter, an increase of 29% year over year. SaaS ARPU decreased to $365 in the third quarter and represents a 3% decrease year over year. With our new product-led growth strategy, we anticipate continued subscriber growth, but monthly ARPU may face some headwinds due to pricing mix. While our SaaS subscribers are ramping, they are signing up for lower introductory packages than our current average ARPU. For example, Our popular marketing center offering is currently priced at $199 and $349 per month in the U.S. As we move forward, this will allow us to upsell and cross-sell additional products, which will benefit net dollar retention in the future. Third quarter seasoned net dollar retention was 92%, an increase of 300 basis points sequentially. As discussed previously, with the introduction and expansion of our new centers, like Marketing Center, Paid Command Center, and other products such as ThrivePay, Signatures, Website Builder, and other marketplace apps and integrations will make it easier to upgrade customers while providing excellent customer service and support, enhancing our opportunity to expand our NDR. Moving over to marketing services, third quarter revenue was $116.5 million within the midpoint of our guidance. Third quarter marketing services adjusted EBITDA was $7.8 million, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7%. This was expected due to the timing around revenue recognition of our print directories lengthening from 15 to 18 months. Third quarter marketing services billings was $159.5 million, representing a decline of 19% year over year. Third quarter consolidated adjusted gross margin was 60%. Third quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA was 7.3 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 4%. Finally, our net debt position was 377 million at the end of the third quarter. Our leverage ratio was 1.8 times net debt to EBITDA, which was well below our covenant of three times. the company generated an additional $37 million in free cash flow in the third quarter and used $42.5 million to pay down our term loan, including the additional $10 million of payments made in October. We have made $105 million in year-to-date term loan debt repayments in 2023. Lastly, in regard to warrant expirations on August 15th, Approximately 8.3 million warrants expired, unexercised, and the company no longer has any warrants outstanding. Warrant folders exercised approximately 1.2 million warrants, resulting in the issuance of 646,000 shares of common stock, resulting in minimal dilution and generating 15.8 million of cash proceeds for the company for debt paydowns. Now let's turn to guidance. We are raising our full year SAS revenue guidance to the range of $260 to $261 million. We are also raising our full year SAS EBITDA guidance to the range of $9 to $9.5 million. For the full year 2023, we are lowering our outlook for marketing services revenue in the range of $650 to $655 million. and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $177 to $179 million. The reasons for the revision is that we are facing some FX pressure and have proactively made the decision to retain more of our marketing services sales force and enter into a new commission structure in an effort to drive higher productivity and growth in our SaaS business. We ultimately view this as an investment that will benefit our SaaS business in future periods. I'll now turn the call back over to Joe.
Joe Walsh
Thank you, Paul. Our international business is continuing to develop nicely. We now have all centers available in all markets. That's really just as recently as just the last couple of months. And that's part of our optimism as we look ahead to next year. We believe with more centers to sell, our international business will continue to develop at a nice pace. I wanted to comment on Marketing Center. Marketing Center is a platform that's a lot closer to the old advertising and marketing services that our marketing services business sells. And therefore, we're finding more application, more traction, if you will, with those marketing services customers. So I think you will see us do a really good job of more deeply penetrating the zoo, if you will, now that Marketing Center is really kicking along and we've got a bunch of happy customers and the referral network is spreading and the word of mouth is spreading and confidence is there in the sales force and things are beginning to build. So I think you'll see more penetration there. In Paul's remarks, he raised guidance for our SaaS business. We're delighted that the SaaS business is continuing to really develop. The metrics are improving. We're driving to a rule of 40. You're seeing net dollar retention expand, gross margins expand. You're seeing an overall acceleration. As we look ahead to next year, we expect Revenue growth will accelerate, and we expect margins will expand in the SaaS business. And we're continuing to push toward being a best-of-breed, rule-of-40 business. And we won't be 40 next year, but that's the direction that we're driving toward. And growth in both revenue growth and margin expansion will help us to get there. So that's our thinking on the quarter. Operator, why don't we open it up for questions?
Operator
Certainly. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star 1 on your telephone keypad to queue up for a question. Our first question comes from the line of Arun Bhatia with William Blair. Your line is open.
Arun Bhatia
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Joe, one of the things that jumps out this quarter, I mean, I think it sticks out, in a good way, is the net new customer additions on the SaaS business. I think you added 10,000 customers quarter over quarter. It seems like, I'm sure Command Center has something to do with that, but can you just unpack that a little bit and then talk about how you capitalize on these new customer ads and drive expansion down the line? Because it seems like a huge opportunity for you.
Joe Walsh
Yeah, thanks for the question. Command Center doesn't have a whole lot to do with it because the Command Center, which is still in beta, we're going to remove the beta later this month, most of those signups are just free, freemium, and they don't go in the customer account. There are a number of those that, after they signed up, matriculated through and self-upgraded and are now paying. Those are paying customers, but we've had no sales effort against it. Salesforce hasn't been involved in selling anything. So what you're seeing mostly is uptake of marketing center. And so, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, the marketing center is much, much closer to the purpose for which people were buying our marketing services. And so we're hunting in the zoo with more effect. We're getting more traction. And that's working out really well. And in terms of the second part of your question, a lot of them came in at the lower level or the entry level price. And there were even some distinct groups that we did some promotional stuff to move them over to allow us to decommission some older systems. And so that's why you see a little bit of a tug down on ARPU. It's not a permanent problem. There's actually quite a bit of scope to increase them over the next period of time. So it's sort of coiling the spring, if you will, for net dollar retention in the future.
Arun Bhatia
Perfect. Yeah, that's great to hear on Marketing Center. And sorry, Paul, you mentioned lowering the marketing services guidance. Part of that was driven by FX. Can you maybe just expand a little bit on that? What was the, is this mostly the acquired businesses that are having an impact with the census and others? And maybe if you can just touch on some of the sales restructuring that's going on there and how we can expect that to play out over the next year or so.
Cameron
Sure, sure. The FX pressure we were experiencing in our plan was related to Australia and New Zealand. the sales restructuring, you know, we look forward all the time. So we're trying to think what's best for 2024. So we thought, you know, given that we now have a marketing center and with success we were having during the third quarter, you know, we should really maintain the sales force we have right now and put the right commission structure in place to drive revenue now and come out into the into 2024 very strong. So we made an investment in ourselves there. And we think that's the best long term move for the company. And that's the thinking behind that.
Arun Bhatia
Okay, got it. Thank you, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions.
Joe Walsh
Thanks, Arjun.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Scott Berg with Needleman Company. Your line is open.
Scott Berg
Hi, everyone. Congrats on the nice quarter, and thanks for taking my questions here. I guess we've got a couple. Joe, I want to start with, or maybe it was Paul's statement, but a statement on expecting SaaS revenue growth to accelerate in 24. I guess what gives you the confidence in that statement? Customer additions on the SaaS side were obviously strong, but the macro is still kind of weighing out there. Just help us maybe understand the puts and takes of where that confidence comes into play.
Joe Walsh
Yeah, I mean, it really comes back to if you look at where we've been coming from, we've been coming from selling really one center in one stroke, kind of two countries. And as we look forward to 24, we're all singing, all dancing, selling the full platform now with three centers, a fourth coming next year, and doing it in all markets. And so that's kind of where the confidence comes from. We're getting a lot of traction now with Marketing Center. It's really moving. You know, we talked earlier last year about how we kind of kept it slow in the beginning to make sure we got it figured out, and it's moving quite briskly now. So, you know, you're right. The macro is not all better. It's not wonderful. I'm not saying that we'll have massive acceleration, but we do believe there'll be acceleration next year just based on selling the full platform in all markets.
Scott Berg
Okay, great. And then from a follow-up question perspective, I know the question was just asked about customer additions, but what was different with SaaS customer additions this quarter versus last quarter? If I go back to my notes in the second quarter, you know, Joe, you kind of pulled back from top of the funnel marketing to some of those customers because they weren't converting as strong as what you've seen historically. But why kind of the influx maybe in this quarter?
Joe Walsh
We basically went hard into the zoo. We really went after a lot of the standing marketing services customers with Marketing Center. And, you know, we've talked about this a little bit in the past, Scott. If you think about what the business center does, our original, you know, biggest center does, it's a CRM and it requires some amount of business process change to adopt it and incorporate it into your company. Marketing center is a lot closer to the marketing services products they've been buying in the past. It's more kind of apples to apples, maybe red apples going to green as opposed to, you know, the business center, which isn't like an orange. It's a very different thing. And so we're finding a pretty easy conversation there. And so It's increasing our optimism about how we'll do, let's say, in 24, driving deeper into the zoo for penetration. And as you've already known, we've already discussed, that's our best customer acquisition channel is when we're able to go call on standing accounts. We already know them. They already know us. They're paying us. Their credit's good. Like, it's nice as opposed to going out into the outside world trying to meet new people. So... What you're seeing is an acceleration of our drive into the base. And if I may, you know, there's a little bit of cannibalization there, too, where we're not only just adding a center, but in some case, you know, moving some of those customers over into marketing center. You know, we do have a melting iceberg in our marketing services business. We aren't doing anything to really grow that business. We're not working hard at growing it. We're sort of harvesting cash out of it. And if I'm honest, we look forward to the day when our predominant revenue stream is SaaS. And SaaS is a higher and higher percentage of revenue every year. And there's a crossover point in the not distant future for us. And so to the extent that we're able to kind of migrate some of the marketing services customers that land nicely onto our marketing center platform, we consider that a double win because we really have now moved them onto a modern platform where they get much higher level of engagement and service, they get better value, and it speeds up the day that we do that crossover.
Scott Berg
Excellent. Thanks for taking my questions.
Operator
Thanks, Scott. Our next question comes from the line of Rob Oliver with Baird. Your line is open.
Scott
Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Joe, I had one for you, and then Paul, I had a follow-up for you. So, Joe, just on Command Center, it sounds like really encouraging trends here through the beta. I'm curious to hear just on the usage of Command Center. You guys had some tiered pricing out there for Command Center, and just curious what you're seeing within usage patterns and how that could play out in terms of where your customers may land in those tiered pricing plans.
Joe Walsh
Well, as we said, you know, it is still in beta and, you know, it's early. But, you know, we're seeing people hook up a unified inbox and pull together all the different communications that are coming from different areas. You know, and we're hearing things like, you know, I'm not missing messages anymore. I mean, who goes and always checks every one of your social outlets, you know, every day? It's kind of a laborious thing to do. And it's pulling it all together into one place. And there are customers, not big numbers yet, very small numbers, but we've had some customers discover Command Center online, go and download it in sort of 60 seconds, start using it, say, wow, this is all really cool, move through and buy another center, like buy a business center, you know, like move all the way through the process and self-upgrade and buy more stuff. So it's really early. And there was some early... little glitches and things during the beta period that we worked out. So we're super optimistic about what that will mean in terms of helping us meet new qualified customers, ideal clients in the future. So, you know, the numbers are very small of people that have self-upgraded and are buying, and we haven't sold anybody Command Center yet. But we're super optimistic about what it will look like as it comes off beta, becomes generally available, and we begin to actually promote it. and tell people about it and spread the word.
Scott
Got it. Very helpful caller. Thank you. And then, Paul, just curious if, you know, any revenue impact since it starts to go live this quarter was contemplated in your guidance relative to command center for the quarter. Thanks, guys.
Cameron
Command center, very little. That's really something you're going to see more in the out-year periods that It's really driven by the success of Marketing Center and the optimism. Marketing Center we have is the optimism in the fourth quarter. Okay, great. Thanks again.
Joe Walsh
Yeah, I'm just going to add a little tiny bit to that answer just for the whole audience. Because it's a freemium motion in Command Center, while we're excited about it, we don't see any revenue really this year. And even in the first half of next year, it will be a relatively slow ramp of revenue. Not of users. We think users are going to go through the moon, and it's going to be a really powerful tool for us to enter new markets, meet new customers, kind of spread a blue ocean of excitement about what we're doing. But revenue will follow later because we want to deliver value to those customers before we ask them for any money. So it's not like some of the other centers where there were sales-driven motions where as soon as you rolled it out, you started selling it. Next question.
Operator
Our next question comes from the line of Zach Cummins with B Reilly Securities. Your line is open.
Zach Cummins
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Joe, I just wanted to ask a little bit more about Marketing Center. Can you just give us a sense of how much opportunity is left within the existing zoo? It seems like it's really been a focus in the near term, but just trying to get a sense of how much more runway there is to go in terms of adoption on that side. A lot.
Joe Walsh
A whole lot. We've got nearly 400,000 customers. Right now we've got 60-odd thousand that are buying some kind of center from us. There's a lot. I mean, I can't really think of a reason why over the balance of this decade, virtually all small businesses won't adopt some of these tools. And since they're our customer and they have a relationship with us, the average has been with us for 15 years on average, why wouldn't they give us a chance? Why wouldn't they talk to us? I'm quite bullish that we're going to be able to penetrate our way through that base. And I will tell you, you know, approaching them with marketing-related products and services is easier than approaching them with a full business process change and they need to sign up for a CRM and really change the way they do business. It's easier this way. Maybe we should have done them in a different order. I'm not sure, but it is what it is. But we're definitely getting more traction now And I'm quite bullish that that will carry through next year, and you'll see zoo hunting as a bigger piece of the puzzle of customer acquisition. And relying less on outbound and inbound marketing and spending money to acquire customers just continues to drive better margins in the SaaS business as well.
Zach Cummins
Understood. Regarding the decision, the restructuring within marketing services that maintain more of those salespeople, should we think of that as more of just a one-time margin impact here in Q4, or what's the right way to think about that in terms of continuing to manage margins across the marketing services business?
Joe Walsh
Yeah, so if we kind of back the camera up a little bit and think about the big picture of what we're doing here, we're taking a marketing services business and we're we're running it on a harvest for cash. We're not really making any efforts to grow that business. And so if you think about over the last number of years you've been following the company, we've been variabilizing all the costs against marketing services in advance of revenue decline. So we sit down in the summer before 2023, and we map out what revenue is likely to be. And it's incredibly projectable and predictable what those revenues are going to be. And we lay out what our costs should be to continue to deliver high margins. And so one of the number one levers that we've used to variabilize the cost of the business is adjusting the number of feet on the street, how big that sales force is. So we're reaching a point, kind of an inflection point now, where marketing services and, excuse me, SaaS is getting to be a much, much bigger percentage of our overall revenue and carrying more overhead. And so, we actually have the luxury now of not necessarily shrinking that sales force into that number. And so there's a little bit of cost that you see show up in it, but we think that will quickly convert into stronger SAS revenue as we go into the future. So it's not so much adding anything, it's just slowing down the action that we've been taking. And directionally, this is not meant to be specific guidance, but directionally, SaaS will be approaching 40% of revenue next year. And within the next bunch of quarters, actually cross over and become our predominant revenue stream. And so we're looking more and more at how to grow our SaaS business as opposed to just how to manage margin on the marketing services business. It's really just kind of a transitory thing that's taking place inside the business. It's gradual. It's not all at once. Does that make sense to you?
Zach Cummins
Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for answering my questions.
Operator
Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Dan Moore with CJS, your line is open.
Dan Moore
Good morning. Maybe just one or two others. Maybe this time last year, you kind of gave the outlook for marketing services EBITDA, you know, given... the change in the billing cycle? When we look to 24, how do we think about marketing services, Ibadal, relative to your 23 guidance under the current printing cycle?
Joe Walsh
Well, let's start with the printing cycle. Clearly, more books come back next year, so there'll be a little bit of a comeback in marketing services. That's on the good side, and And marketing services is continuing to perform in a reliable, steady, eddy way. I'll point you to our billings. You can look back many, many, many quarters and look at how consistently it performs. Having said that, given the traction that we're getting with the new products that we're coming out with, we're feeling like we can go more aggressively into that zoo, not just doing add-on sales, but even a little bit of self-cannibalization. And so we're doing the work right now on what the 24 plan will be. And in our February earnings call, we'll guide you on what next year is going to look like. But I think directionally, we probably will be, as I mentioned before, growing the SaaS business a little faster and possibly modeling a little bit more of a decline in marketing services as we really cannibalize that ourselves and penetrate that ourselves. And we think overall that's a healthy thing because rather than sitting and letting the iceberg just melt on its own, we're going in there with a real actionable product and we're moving people to a much higher engagement, much more modern platform. It's also helping us reduce costs on the other side of the business because as we move people over, we can wind down and turn off some legacy systems that they're on. So there's a lot of moving parts in this, but when I think about next year, I think about more books showing up in the pub schedule next year, so that's a good guide to marketing services, but maybe us leaning on it from cannibalization a little harder than we have in the past.
Dan Moore
That's helpful, and I haven't seen, if you've put out a supplemental deck, I haven't seen it yet, so forgive me, but not seeing any change in that sort of 20% annual decline in billings at all?
Joe Walsh
We don't anticipate that, no. Cameron, do you have anything to add to that?
Lessard
With the cannibalization, it might waver a little bit over time, but not in the future.
Joe Walsh
And again, we're doing the work now on how much we think we can do next year, and we'll be very communicative with you as to what that is, but I would expect... we'll lean on marketing services a little harder in order to grow SAS a little faster. That's helpful.
Dan Moore
Thank you again. All right. Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Emily Needham with 400. Your line is open.
Lessard
You can just end the call.
Operator
This concludes the Q&A session as well as the call. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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