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spk05: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the WICS Q3 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising you your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Emily Liu with Investor Relations. Emily, please go ahead.
spk01: Thanks, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Wix's third quarter 2023 call. Joining me today to discuss our results are Avishai Abrahami, our CEO and co-founder. Mir Zohar, our president and COO, and Lior Shemesh, our CFO. During the call, we may make forward-looking statements, and these statements are based on current expectations and assumptions. Please consider the risk factors included in our press release and most recent Form 20F that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, we will comment on non-GAAP financial results and key operating metrics. You can find all reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results in the earnings materials and in our interactive analyst center on the investor relations section of our website, investors.wix.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Abhishek.
spk07: Thanks, Emily, and good morning, everyone. We delivered... a tremendous third quarter that exceeds both growth and profitability expectation for another consecutive quarter. Revenue in Q3 grew to $394 million, which is $3 million above the high end of our guidance. We generated more than $62 million of free cash flow, or 16% of revenues, ahead of our expectations. As a result of our outperformance even today we are again raising revenue and free cash flow guidance for the year. And we now expect to finish 2023 ahead of the margin target set at our analyst day in August. As we begin to wrap up an outstanding year, I want to spend most of my time today talking about products that we expect will be our primary growth engine going into 2024 and the years to come. WIC Studio and AI. Like prior quarters, our partners' business was a meaningful driver of our strong top-line performance in Q3, drawing 38% year-over-year. We continue to find success with professionals through ongoing dialogue to better understand their needs and best-in-class product innovation that resonates with the community. As we spoke about at our Analyst Day in August, we took all that we have learned from partners over the years that created Wix Studio, a new cornerstone product for partners. The reception, feedback, and early KPIs have been incredible. The resounding consensus is that Studio provides agencies with everything they want and more for all of their web creation and project management needs. Users particularly love Studio responsive AI technology that simplifies high touch and time sensitive tasks such ensuring consistent design across web pages on different screen sizes. They are also enjoying their AI code assistant inside the new Wix IDE, which allows them to write cleaner code and detect errors easily. More importantly, Studio optimized partners' workflow and productivity while elevating their own client offerings, ultimately helping them scale their business. Features like workflow management, dashboard-enabled agencies to easily manage all of their clients, projects, and teams in one place. And client kits allow partners to provide seamless hand-off experience with built-in tutorials for their end clients, saving time and resources. We already have thousands of studio sites live and many active generating GPP. The total number of registered studio accounts and conversion of existing sites to Studio have exceeded our own expectations. All of this early sign of success could not have been possible without the team that traveled across 12 cities over two months to bring Studio to life for countless educational workshops, Q&A forums, and onboarding sessions. This tool gave us the opportunity to hear directly from hundreds of partners around the globe, and it allowed partners to learn from each other. WIC Studio is now fully live to all partners. We have a strong team that continues to execute well and a growing community of professionals excited about WIX. These factors are what give me confidence in the long period of growth in this business. We did not let off the gas in terms of product innovation as we continue to add our own industry-leading AI and GenAI product offering. As we spoke about at an analyst's We have nearly a decade of working with AI and machine learning to reduce friction and enable better creation by leveraging AI for co-creation for our users. Earlier this week, we released our latest AI products. The first was AI MetaTag Creator, a groundbreaking SEO tool powered by AI, and our first AI powerful feature within our collection of SEO tools. Safe creators looking to generate SEO-friendly tags for each of their pages and professionals looking to enhance their efficiency and make real-time adjustments will benefit from this product. The second was our conventional AI chat experience for businesses. This feature, which is now live, paves the way to accelerate onboarding using AI in order to get businesses online more quickly and efficiently. These new tools continue to demonstrate our leadership in utilizing AI to help users of all types to succeed online. It has been a busy year at Wix, filled with many product and financial milestones, but we are not done yet. We expect to continue this strong momentum into the fourth quarter and accelerate profitable growth even further. Finally, before I turn it over to Neil, I'd like to end with a quick thought. The terrorist attack in Israel a month ago was terrible beyond imagination. But we have navigated unprecedented challenges before and ultimately emerged stronger from them. This war is no different, even against the current backdrop. I am more confident than ever in the strength of our global team and the execution of our strategy and growth trajectory. With that, I will hand it over to Neil.
spk08: Thank you, Avishai, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Following the strong performance that we've seen so far this year, I want to revisit the key growth pillars we spoke about at our analyst day, which we expect will drive our business in the coming years. First, as Avishai mentioned, Q3 was another quarter of accelerating growth in partners' revenues. We expect growth in the partners' business to continue with a long runway of opportunity ahead, particularly as Wix Studio ramps. The initial months of Wix Studio have been fantastic with more partners coming to Wix and an increase in projects per partner. We also continue to see partners adopting more business solutions products and driving meaningful growth in GPV. Combined, these behaviors give us confidence that the compounding growth in partners' cohorts and revenue will continue. Compounding partners' growth is complemented by re-accelerating growth in our stable and profitable self-created business, which we saw once again this quarter. We expect our market-leading product innovation as well as our powerful AI products and technology to drive higher conversion, monetization, and retention as we maintain our leadership position in the website building space. Avishai spoke about the AI chat experience for business, and in its early weeks, we have already seen its positive impact on conversion and revenue. We have more AI products in our pipeline that we believe will continue this trend, and I'm confident that our innovation paired with macro recovery will return our self-creator's business to double-digit growth. The third pillar of our strategy is business solutions growth. We saw outstanding transaction revenue growth in Q3, increasing 22% year-over-year, highlighting higher GPV as well as increased adoption of Wix payments. We expect continuous increases in transaction revenue and GPV as well as better adoption of business applications will drive growth across both partners and self-creators. This quarter was a continuation of the momentum in growth we experienced in the first half of the year, and it increases our excitement about what's to come in the years ahead. Finally, I'd like to briefly address our operations amidst the ongoing war in Israel. With all of our employees accounted for and our business continuity plan in place, there has been no disruption to our business, and we do not anticipate any significant impact on operations going forward, even as the war continues. As a reminder, all of our infrastructure and internal networks are cloud-based and located completely outside of Israel. Importantly, our users have not experienced any disruptions to performance or support throughout this period. As we have shared, less than 5% of our global workforce were called up to military duty, and we have already implemented contingencies to take on their responsibilities. In the immediate weeks following October 7th, as we focused on the well-being of our employees and their families, we experienced slight delays to some product development timelines. In response, we shifted priorities and efforts to successfully mitigate impact on our product pipeline. We intend for these delays not to impact our overall product development plans. Over the last several weeks, we have successfully launched a number of products, including the full global rollout of Studio, as well as our newest AI capabilities. We will continue to introduce new products and features in the coming quarters as planned. Our people in Israel are obviously adjusting to a new work environment. We are supporting them in any way we can. including with the implementation of a work routine that prioritizes the physical safety and mental well-being of our team and their families. In addition to supporting our WIC teammates, our global team has implemented multiple initiatives to support our users and broader community during this time as well. We are leveraging our robust platform, global footprint, and technological expertise to connect those in need with vital resources assist small businesses impacted by the war, and ensure the reliability of our platform for those who are depending on it the most. The resiliency of this incredible team, along with the support of our community of users and partners, give me confidence in our growth strategy as we all look forward to better times. With that, I will hand it over to Lior to walk through our financials, outlook, and progress against our refreshed three-year plan. Lior?
spk06: Thanks, Nir. We carried forward our positive momentum into Q3 with another quarter of results that exceeded both growth and profitability expectations. Our exceptional performance year-to-date enabled us to increase full-year guidance again and provide increased confidence in our ability to achieve and even exceed the milestone in our three-year plan provided at our Analyst Day in August. We now expect to exit the year with free cash flow margin of 20% to 21%, which is within striking distance of the minimum of 25% free cash flow margin targeted for 2025. Additionally, we also expect to generate more than $3.5 of free cash flow per share in 2023, above the $3 per share anticipated in August. As a result of robust free cash flow generation and careful dilution management throughout the year, Notably, following the second consecutive quarter of positive gap net income in Q3, we expect to achieve positive gap net income for full year 2023 with gap profitability expected to be achievable in 2024 as well. I'm incredibly proud of this achievement as it puts us ahead of the gap target in our three-year plan. Moving on to the details of the third quarter. Total revenue of $394 million was up 14% year-over-year and exceeded the top end of our guidance range by $3 million as we continue to execute on our strategic initiatives. Total bookings were $389 million, up 10% year-over-year. Strong top-line growth was again driven by our partners' business. Partners' revenue grew 38% year-over-year in Q3, marking a third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth. With parcels now contributing to more than 40% of overall GPV, total GPV in QT grew 14% year-over-year. This growth in GPV coupled with an increased take rate as merchants continue to adopt weak experiments resulted in transaction revenue growth accelerating to 22% year-over-year this quarter. Before I move on to profitability, I want to take a moment to highlight our B2B business. After three years since the signing of our first partnership, our B2B business has scaled tremendously and is now profitable on a standalone basis. Today, we are able to integrate with any large business looking to bring the power of Wix to their customers without additional meaningful technological investments from our end. As a result of this achievement, as well as the uncertain macro environment, we are now able to offer partners pay-as-you-go terms and will no longer recognize unbuilt contractual obligation in bookings beyond 12 months. One example of this evolution to our B2B model is the strategic partnership we signed with Intuit earlier this quarter. This partnership represents significant potential in the future, but will be recognized based on usage on an ongoing basis. We believe this shift opens our pipeline to more partnership opportunities going forward. Moving on now to the profitability improvements made this quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin of 68% was up approximately 280 basis points compared to the prior year quarter. We continue to benefit from a more optimized cost structure as well as better gross margin in our payments business. We generated a full consecutive quarter of positive non-GAAP operating income, which was 15% of revenue. Q3 included non-recurring increases to compensation as well as increased marketing activities associated with WIC Studio, both according to our annual budget. These increases in operating expense were partially offset by continued execution on our streamlined marketing strategy, as well as lower headcount and overhead expenses compared to the prior year quarter. As a result of our continued growth in linear cost structure, we generated stronger free cash flow than expected this quarter. Free cash flow grew 28% year-over-year to over $62 million, or 16% of revenue. and accelerates our path to achieving the targets in our three year plan. Note that this excludes CapEx related to the build out of our headquarters. Now I want to finish with our outlook for Q4 in 2023. We expect the revenue in Q4 to be 400 to 405 million representing 13 to 14% growth year over year. Following our revenue outperforming few to date, we are increasing our full year outlook again We now expect total revenue to be approximately 1.558 billion to 1.563 billion, representing approximately 12% to 13% year-over-year growth, an increase from our previous expectation of 11% to 12% year-over-year growth. We also expect accelerating profitability as we exit 2023. We are increasing our outlook for free cash flow for 2023 to 235 million to 240 million, or approximately 15% of revenue. This indicates an exit free cash flow margin of 20 to 21% this year, putting us much closer to our minimum 25% of free cash flow margin anticipated for 2025. This compares to our previous free cash flow outlook of 200 to 210 million, or approximately 13% of revenue, and an exit rate of approximately 15%. This updated free cash flow outlook, along with careful dilution management throughout the year, also enables us to increase our free cash flow per share target for the year. Following the incredible performance so far this year, I'm more confident than ever in our ability to achieve our three-year plan as we accelerate along our expected path to the Rule 40 with a free cash flow margin target of at least 25% in 2025. Operator, we are now ready for questions.
spk05: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please limit to one question and one follow-up. Stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Trevor Young with Barclays. Trevor, please go ahead with your question.
spk11: Great. Thanks, guys. First, just any insights on the slight deceleration bookings, particularly in light of the easier compare? It looks like it deceled both on a reported basis and XFX. And then second question, on a geo basis, what drove that market acceleration in Europe and Asia, and what drove the slowdown in North America that partially offset that?
spk06: So I would answer both of the questions. This is Lior. So with regard to the bookings, it came in where we expected. I think that it also works mentioning the B2B partnership, and I spoke about it briefly before. We see actually a very positive changes to this business. As I mentioned before, we completed with product and integration with previous customers, with previous partners, so we don't have to do it again. It means that it's not necessary for us to demand, you know, any kind of commitment from our partners going forward. Also, you know, when you look at the macro environment, people, our partners, obviously are not willing to provide a long-term commitment. By the way, as I am not willing to do that with regard to my vendors. So from now on, we are not going to recognize a multi-year commitment as part of booking, at least that is more than one year. So it's going to have a kind of a negative effect on booking short-term, but not long-term. But it's not going to have any impact on revenues. It's important to mention. Second reason to your question, we had a slightly higher percentage of monthly play, partly driven by new subs from B2B partnerships, as well as in other specific geographies. Again, there is no impact on revenue, just about the booking. Third reason, I believe, is because of the fact that that was the first full quarter of slapping price increase. from spring 2022. However, we benefited from compounding growth in power to cost driven by business solution. So it's even kind of more than compensated for that. I believe that, you know, going forward, we need to remember that we have not yet benefited from strong growth engines that we have, for example, studio that we just launched. but also all the AI tools that we already see the contribution in terms of increased conversion, but also increasing revenue. With regard to the second question about the geo growth, so in the slide of last quarter, we had a mistake, meaning that Europe was not 2%. It was 9%, going up to 11% this quarter, actually accelerating. So, that kind of explains part of the confusion that we have in the geo.
spk11: Great. Thank you for that clarification.
spk05: Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Egal Aronian with Citi. Egal, go ahead with your question.
spk10: Hey, good morning, guys. First of all, best wishes to you guys and your families and everyone and hope you guys are doing okay and wishing for better times in Israel and the region. I have two questions. First, just on the acceleration in partners and in studio and the impact that's driving there. I think typically when you guys launch new products, it feels like it takes a little bit more time you start seeing a more meaningful impact, and it's coming through the numbers. Are you seeing it? Has that been a notable driver of the acceleration in third quarter, or is it really more still to come? You're seeing some good early signs, but it's not contributing a lot to the numbers yet. And then on the AI side, just to follow up on the comments around driving better conversion. So a lot of new AI products coming through. Can you just expand on that comment on conversion, what you're seeing in the KPIs around conversion, monetization, and retention? Thanks. Yeah.
spk06: So I will start with the first question about partners. So you're absolutely right. We still don't see a significant impact of Studio because we just launched it. I think that this is why we are so excited about it. The entire growth that we see right now are coming from our previous product and everything that we've done with partners, including Editor X. Not necessarily Studio. And we need to remember that we still see the compounding effect of it, meaning that any agency that joined a few quarters ago, we see the benefit of it right now, buying more and using more payments, for example, or Google Ads. So we see a tremendous increase in business solution. A big part of it is because of partners. The reason why we are so excited is because we believe that Studio is a great platform engine for us to continue and increase growth for partners in the future. We are going to see some of it next year.
spk07: I believe your second question was in regards to what kind of effect we're seeing from different AI products that we are launching, mostly in regards to improvement in conversion. We do actually see an improvement in conversion, which is probably the most important KPI by which we measure our success in deploying new products. The reason for that is that with AI, we're able to ask the user better questions and to understand in a smarter way what it is that the user is trying to achieve. From that, we're able to generate a better starting point for their business on top of Wix. And that is not just the skeleton. We are also able to fill in a lot of the information and a lot of the content that the user would normally have to fill in manually. The result is that the amount of effort and knowledge that you need to create a website for your business on Wix is dramatically reduced. And from that, we are able to see very good results in terms of improvement of conversions.
spk00: Thank you.
spk05: Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Andrew Boone of JMP Securities. Andrew, please go ahead with your question.
spk03: Good morning and thanks for taking my question. We as well are also thinking about you guys. I wanted to tie back the comment of self-created growth returning to double-digit with sales marketing going forward. Historically, you guys have had a very strong framework between those two items, and so can you just talk about how we should expect your marketing and performance marketing specifically to either ramp as we think about self-creators getting back to double-digit growth or anything else you want to unpack there?
spk06: Andrew, so this is Lior. I believe that looking at the history of Wix, almost the entire growth that we managed to deliver in the past was due to products. Obviously, Avishai mentioned, for example, the AI tools that we just launched, and we see a tremendous increase and potential upside for the future. To be more specific about conversion, for example. We also see a much bigger usage of our business solution tools like payments, for example. So looking at everything and, you know, including and hopefully, you know, the market and the macro recovery in the future, we do believe that we'll be able to gain a double-digit growth for self-creators.
spk03: Great. Thank you. And then I just want to touch on gross profit margins. Can you just help us unpack the improvement there and how do we think about that? going forward, any change from analysts? Thanks so much.
spk06: So yeah, certainly. So we saw this year a tremendous improvement in margins, you know, in growth margin. And it came mostly from two places. The first one is a lot of improvements and savings that we had with our infrastructure, most of the hosting activities. So we had a lot of savings over there, but also about our care organization. So for example, benefiting from all kinds of AI tools that enable us to be more efficient. So I believe that that was most of the improvement that we've seen this year. I believe that next year we are going to see some more improvement. I'm not sure that it will be drastic this year, but we're certainly going to see more improvement, especially around being more efficient, but also from the fact that we see a much better gross margin coming from the business solution, for example, payments. As tech rate is increasing, we are able to generate more margins out of transaction revenue. I believe that this is something that will continue also next year and will drive gross margin up again next year. Thank you. The question was just about the gross margin or the overall profitability, for example, the operating expenses.
spk03: I was going to keep it gross profit margin. I'll let somebody else go and ask that. Thank you.
spk05: Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Chris Zeng with UBS. Chris, please go ahead with your question.
spk12: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking our question. So I have the first question regarding the marketing expense this year. You lowered the guide for the market expense by about 200 basis points as a percentage of revenue. Can you maybe unpack the drivers of the reduction, how much from the more direct response channels, how much from the partner spend that you previously expected? to go up and also can you talk about the the return environment right now on the acquisition marketing as a lot of competitors mentioned leaning more into the more direct channel versus the partner spend uh hey chris it's near i i think i'll kick this off uh and you can go into maybe a little more for the financial aspects if needed but
spk08: Generally, already last year, we communicated our change in marketing strategy that worked extremely well for us. We leveraged the strength of our brand against buying traffic, understanding that we can get better ROI simply because the brand is compensating because it strengthened so much throughout the last few years. Throughout this year, we communicated continuing this strategy, but also basically deploying a lot of marketing dollars towards the release and the launch of Wix Studio. Now, we explained and we put most of that spend in the second half of the year. But if you remember, when we shared the cadence of the release of Wix Studio, Q3 was mainly about an internal launch. So we were launching to our existing partners and therefore we didn't need to spend and to use most of the marketing budget. So the plan was always to put more of it to use in Q4. Even Q3, by the way, within the plan of the internal plan, we managed to create some savings, which was great. But the goal was to put more of it towards Q4. That being said, looking at the first few weeks of the launch of Studio, the adoption is fantastic. It's higher than we even expected. So we believe that the actual deployment of the marketing dollars will be done more gradually between Q4 and heading into 2024.
spk12: All right, that's super helpful. And I guess if you can also comment on the return environment, and I think that's also kind of related to the self-curators, the grocery debt story, and how you're thinking about probably just putting some dollars in or incremental dollars in the acquisition marketing.
spk06: So with regard to the self-curators, there's not much of a change from the last quarter. The thing that we show that the change that we've made is consistent and stable. We managed to generate, obviously, the same amount of collection with less investment in marketing. And, you know, I think that it's great to see that this strategy is actually working due to the fact that the brand becomes much, much stronger. Right now, you know, the return is – obviously has changed dramatically compared to the beginning of last year, which is less than one quarter. I believe that we see the strength of our brand. We believe that this is something that can continue and sustain also over the next couple of years. So we do not see any significant change over there for sales creatives.
spk12: Thank you very much.
spk05: Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Bernie McTernan of Needham & Company. Bernie, please go ahead with your question.
spk02: Great. Thanks for taking the questions and just reiterating thoughts and prayers with you guys and the Wix team. Maybe just on self-creator, talking about getting back to double-digit growth, how much of that can you control versus waiting on the macro? Um, you know, anything that you can call it like technology or maybe even just marketing wise to, to, you know, that you control to get that growth back to double digits.
spk08: Hey Bernie, it's near. So I think, you know, on the stuff creator, uh, obviously backward environment is something we cannot control and we don't anticipate to control. But we do believe that a lot of our product innovation is towards generating that growth in any environment. And obviously, you know, if there's a recovery, that can be even a plus to that growth. From what we've seen already, first and foremost, I think that the AI innovation that we are aiming for, and Avishai just explained how does the AI drives conversion, and this is the first milestone or the first part of a much deeper and wide product around AI and the creation for self-creators that we plan. Obviously, that improvement in conversion can be a big driver for growth. And marketing is something that follows product. So if the conversion improves, then obviously we can consider what more do we want to do in terms of the marketing towards self-creators. But from that standpoint alone, we think there's a significant potential for growth. The other side of it is the business solutions. The business solutions, although they're growing much faster on the partner side, they are also growing significantly on the self-created side. And we've seen that both on the side of GPV and growth and adoption of selling an e-commerce platforms, whether it's stores or scheduling or restaurants or hotels or events, and we have a very wide variety, which is a big part of our strength. So the GPV growth is definitely a driver there, as well as other solutions that are more business solutions, email marketing, Google advertising, et cetera. So our belief is, yes, we can drive it. That's in our control, and hopefully recovery will come on top of it.
spk02: Understood. And then just to follow up on WIC Studios, I know it's really early days, but adoption higher than expected. Anything you can comment just in terms of tangibly what you're seeing, whether it's the partners being more efficient or you think you're taking share of their workload, just We'd love just to get some, you know, more tangibles in terms of just like exactly what's happening as the, you know, adoption occurs of Wix Studios.
spk07: Well, I think that there is a variety. There are many different kinds of partners that are using Wix Studio. And I think that when you look at more of the freelancers or the people that do it part-time, then it is just The more familiar user interface, which is very similar to a lot of design software. So traditional design software, if you know how to use that, it's very easy for you to adopt to Wix Studio. And then because of the power of the AI tools, you can create very strong, very professional websites because the AI will continue and finish for you the thing that would normally require you to specialize in different variations of web designs. In the case of the more professional, companies where they what we're seeing is that the way we built it is that it enables you to finish things very quickly in kind of a sketch mode and then take that sketch mode and make it into a real live website while having the ability to go really below the hood into the CSS into the code and change it to the exact specification that you want What it means is that overall, in terms of an operation, you save a tremendous amount of time. You can do things that before that would require to hire very expensive people to do the specific things. And then, so the overall thing, right, is to increase efficiency while even going into making better projects. So we're seeing different values and different kind of partners, of course.
spk05: Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Ken Wong with Oppenheimer and Company.
spk09: Great.
spk05: Ken, go ahead with your question.
spk09: Thank you for taking my question. Obviously, I wanted to touch on the Intuit Mailchimp agreement. I think the earlier press releases seem to lean largely towards utilizing their CRM, their marketing tools. You mentioned it's a bilateral agreement. Can you help us understand how much of a commitment there is to potentially using the Wix website builder? And then just following up on the shift to shorter duration B2B deals, I mean, should we assume the same level of exclusivity with these partners going forward? Yes, any comments on those two would be great.
spk08: Hey, Ken, it's Mir. I'll tackle the first Intuit question and then hand it over to Lior. So I think, you know, in terms of what we intend to do together on the mailship side and maybe also other functions on the Intuit portfolio, First, I think what's very interesting for us is from the conversations we've had with their fantastic team over the last few quarters, it's very clear that there's a lot of overlap in terms of the profile of the Wix users and the Intuit users, but very little overlap in terms of the offering, meaning that we are complementing each other in many ways and in many different places. The idea for us is to map these places and start hooking up the user flow in a way that will be as seamless as possible for the end customer, but will be able to deliver the core values of Wix and the core value of Intuit, of MailChimp to the best possible way and the best possible experience for the end customer. It means from our standpoint that eventually we will have better products offering where they're spending a lot of efforts and we're not. And they'll have much better offering on the digital presence and the creation tools that where we're spending a lot and they're not. And the combined upside will be a very healthy experience for the end user who will be willing to pay for more services. So, you know, our hopes is we're going to generate something here which is a win-win-win, you know, Intuit, Wix, and the, obviously, most importantly, the customers and the users. Lior, you want to take the B2B?
spk06: Yeah, sure. So, Ken, to your question, there is no change in the type of the arrangements, meaning that if we have exclusivity, it will remain exclusive. I believe that the only change is about the fact that we will not recognize as booking anything that is beyond one year. I believe that it's, first of all, more conservative. Second, there's no need. I believe that we have the best product right now in the market to serve partners. They want to bring the power of Wix to their customers. And we are the best alternative in order to do that. I think that it's also saving them R&D cash, R&D money, and provide them with the best solution. So this is something that will continue. The second reason, obviously, why it doesn't make sense to recognize as booking any commission that is longer than one year, is because of the lumpiness of this business. You can have a huge agreement in one quarter, the other in the following quarter, there's no other, no huge agreement. So it's kind of, you know, making this business kind of lumpy between the quarter and it doesn't make sense. And in any case, it doesn't involve any impact on revenue. So I believe that that would be, you know, the best decision. And secondly, you know, it's open more larger time for us because then you don't negotiate on the commitment. You negotiate on the assets, on what is more important in order to make this partnership successful.
spk09: Perfect. Thank you.
spk05: Stand by for our final question. Our final question will come from Mark Vigetowitz with the Benchmark Company. Mark, please go ahead with your question.
spk04: Thank you and good afternoon. Just a follow-up on the gross margin question. Just curious how much more runway you have over the next 12 months on customer care leverage there and how meaningful that's been in terms of driving gross margin leverage versus you know, other lever points like hosting efficiencies. And then the second question, just curious how meaningful was the B2B partnership contribution to REQ partners' revenue and any expectations as you look into 24 in that regard? Thanks.
spk06: So I start with the first question. I'm not going to provide details about, you know, how more efficient we can be with care. It's always the case, by the way, we always look for more ways to be and more means to be more efficient. I did mention that we are going to see some contribution and some more efficiency around gross margin next year. But it can be also from the fact that we are more efficient in payments. We are more profitable in payments as we scale up this business. And obviously, there will be more cases where we can drive efficiency. So, of course, we are going to do that. But I'm not going to go into the details of it. With regard to the contribution of partners, of the B2B partnership for this year, so, of course, it was more significant than last year. And, you know, it's a SaaS business as any other SaaS business. So it will be more significant in the following years. This is like the nature of it. But I must say that most of the improvements that we see in our partners' business actually coming from the fact that we are getting more and more agencies. I did mention many times in the past that we see that as like the most, the strongest growth driver that we have. It's mostly coming from more and more agencies joining WICs and the compounding effect of it.
spk04: Thanks much, Sofel.
spk05: This concludes the question and answer session. Thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
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