Veeva Systems Inc. Class A

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Aviva Systems Physical 2022 First Quarter Results 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 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Atok Eric, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and welcome to DBA's fiscal 2022 first quarter earnings conference call for the quarter ended April 30th, 2021. As a reminder, we posted prepared remarks on DBA's Investor Relations website just after 1 p.m. Pacific today. We hope you've had a chance to read them before the call. Today's call will be primarily used for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Peter Gassner, our Chief Executive Officer, Brent Melvin, our Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Schala, EVP Strategy. During the course of this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding trends, our strategies, and the anticipated performance of the business. These forward-looking statements will be based on our current views and expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the risks listed in our earnings release and on the risk factors included in our most recent filing on Form 10-K. Forward-looking statements made during the call are being made as of today, May 27, 2021, based on the facts available to us today. If this call is replayed or viewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. VIVA disclaims any obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements. We may discuss our guidance on today's call, but we will not provide any further guidance or updates on our performance during the quarter unless we do so in a public forum. On the call, we may also discuss certain non-GAAP metrics that we believe aid in the understanding of our financial results. A reconciliation of the comparable GAAP metrics can be found in today's earnings release and in the supplemental investor presentation, both of which are available on our website. With that, thank you for joining us, and I will turn the call over to Peter.

Thank you, Atul, and welcome to the call, everyone. We had an outstanding Q1 with results well ahead of guidance due to significant outperformance in development cloud and continued strength in commercial cloud. Total revenue in the quarter was $434 million, up 29% year-over-year, with subscription revenue up 26% to $341 million. Non-GAAP operating income was $181 million, or 42% of total revenue. You will find further details about the quarter in our prepared remarks posted on our website at OnePacific today. At this point, I would like to open up the call to questions for Brent, Paul, or myself.

And ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask a question that is star one. And your first question comes from a line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks, Norman. Congrats on the really strong results. So obviously we saw an acceleration in the vault services revenue. I know this has come up in the past, but Brett, how do I think about the vault services as an indicator of what's going on in the broader business? Is that a future indicator, a coincidence? Just try to help me frame that a little bit.

Thanks, Brian. Yeah, so services in general is not a good leading indicator, I would say. One thing to keep in mind is there's just a lot of variability in services revenue. And why is that? Different products have different service requirements, and customers have different needs based on their in-house capabilities. But what I will say, we're very pleased with the overall service business, the strength that we saw on the development side and broadly.

Got it. Okay. Just maybe on the quality strength, I know we heard that as a narrative last quarter. You know, Peter or Paul, I don't know who wants to take that, but just, you know, what you're seeing in terms of the quality product and how that's really ramping up with customers. Thanks, guys.

Yeah. Thanks, Brian. This is Paul. Yet we did have another strong quarter overall in quality, really broadly across Development Cloud, but in quality in particular. And, you know, I guess I started at the highest level, the unified vision that we have, and Development Cloud is working. And quality is just a perfect example where we're bringing together documentation with quality management, with training. and they're all progressing really, really well. Customers are buying into that overall vision, and then they're rolling out and kind of driving to that vision over time. So we had really strong performance in quality ops and really in all of the areas. And companies are looking to modernize in the quality space, and they're looking to Viva to be that partner to help them there. So we're really pleased with that progress. Thanks, Paul.

And your next question comes from a line of Donald Hooker with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Good afternoon. Thank you. Just like to hear maybe a little bit more if you would all share with us some of your thoughts around the pharma sales force globally. Seemed like from the prepared comments, you're walking back some of your concerns or maybe pushing them out. Can you just maybe expand on your thinking there?

Yeah, sure. I can give you some color on that. This is something we watch and keep an eye on very closely. There's always some variability up and down every quarter, but We haven't seen any of the reductions so far that we've talked about, I guess, two quarters ago now. But having said that, I guess maybe the context and the color behind that, these are significant changes. The industry hasn't yet hit a new steady state and stabilized yet in terms of what the field structure is going to look like. So these are big changes for pharma companies, which is why I think it will take a little bit longer, and I think we'll start to see that impact. closer to the second half of this year and then likely through the end of next year. So I wouldn't classify it as a walking back. I'd classify it more as just happening a little bit more over time.

Okay. And then I guess in recent quarters there's been a lot of buzz around decentralized clinical trials. across the CRO space and pharma in general. Does that require for you guys any incremental investment? Is there something else you would need? There's a whole bunch of these decentralized clinical trial companies coming to market. I'm just wondering for you all, is that maybe a new product area or is that sort of what you already have? Is there something else you need there?

Yeah, decentralized trials, that's part of what we call digital trials. So that's moving clinical trials to paperless and patient-centric. Decentralized trials itself refers to most often to being able to do parts of the trial process with the patient in the patient's home, still supervised by a caregiver, but that may be through an in-home nurse or that may be through a Zoom call, something like that. So we do have significant technology investment in that area, and that will be ongoing. That's things like MyViva for Patients, for example. That will fit into decentralized clinical trials, what we're doing for e-consent, our SiteConnect product, and then we'll connect that into our clinical suite for the sponsors. So it's a big opportunity and area investment, but for us it will be a bit broader. It's what we call digital trials.

Okay, maybe I'll just throw one last one in. It's just kind of one from left field for me. I guess, have you all ever thought about or any kind of thought about expanding sort of into more preclinical functionality? Is there any opportunity there? I guess maybe the argument being with all these more advanced biotherapeutics and cell and gene therapies, is there a greater need to link together workflows and perhaps across clinical and preclinical and discovery and all that? Is there sort of an expansion opportunity there for you at some point over time?

I'll play left fielder today, and I got that one out of left field. So we broadly characterize that as preclinical. Some people would also characterize that as the research area of pharmaceutical. That's not an area where we're focused at this time. When you keep an eye on it, then you never say never in the future. But there's no ongoing investment or product from Viva at this time. I would say it's lightly connected. that would be an area that would be lightly connected to the rest of our products. And we have no plans this time. Thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Ken Wong with Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Ken, your line is open.

Sorry about that new button. This is an extension of the last question to some degree. Peter, when we talk to our contacts in the life science industry, a theme that keeps popping up is kind of this past year led to a potential reimagining of clinical workflows from trial to submission to post-production, which could potentially lead to a replatforming for many customers. How much truth is there in that particular statement, do you think? And then just given your end-to-end stack, is it fair to assume that Viva would be a potential beneficiary of such a replatforming?

Ken, that's fair to think that the customers are definitely reimagining things. COVID, across all industries, has caused people to think maybe some assumptions that they had in the past were not valid. and so now they're trying to question everything more open to innovation i think tremendous downsides of code in terms of loss of life and freedom mobility that type of thing but um it is spurring innovation adversity creates innovation so that is what's going on so there's question questioning um when we look at re-platforming i think really what i see from the customers is yeah reimagining efficiency digital data investment and Yeah, I think we're getting a slight tailwind from that. Again, though, we have a long cycle with our customers, so it's not something that you're going to immediately see. But that will be a continued and moderate tailwind for us for the next three, four years, really. And, you know, it's a positive trend when customers look to innovation because our product footprint is well-positioned. We did a lot of things as we moved into digital last year, especially with MyViva and the digital trials, and Viva Engage did a position as well. So I think we're in a good position and in a favorable position, Ken.

Very helpful, Peter. Thanks for the insight. More customer interest there. sense if there's a good amount of pent-up demand for when you guys finally roll out the rest of the prescription data and kind of across U.S. and to the extent international at some point?

Yeah, so, you know, we're certainly focused on the U.S. market at this point in that in data cloud as patient data. We will, as you mentioned, have prescriber and sales data over time. So the focus right now is patient data. It's on building a product and longitudinal patient data, and it's working in the early market. So we're really proud of the success and the value that we're creating for customers in the early market. In terms of pent-up demand, this is a long journey. We're investing for the long term here. We're excited about the innovation, and our customers are excited about the innovation we can deliver, but they recognize that this is really a long-term play. So we're in it for the long haul, and we're excited about the progress we've made so far.

Great. Thanks, Paul.

Thanks, Ken.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, that is star 1. And your next question comes from the line. I'm sharing with William Flair. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, guys. This is Dylan Becker actually on for Vivant tonight. Congrats on the quarter. I appreciate you taking our questions.

I guess first, you noted kind of several customers throughout the quarter.

looking to standardize across your clinical suite and leverage those solutions. It makes a lot of sense to have all of this data across a common platform, right, to accelerate the development. So I guess the question is, how should we be thinking about the importance of further standardization as a future driver, supporting the cross-sell efforts, especially related to some of the... I'm doing this, Peter.

I'll take that one.

What's going on is they're looking for an integrated suite. Standardization on technology is nice, and that's useful. They will get a common vendor that they can trust, common way to do audits, common way to do integrations, that type of thing. But the real benefit that they're looking for is common business practices. So when we have the clinical operation, clinical data management suite, and there can be seamless flow across there, That's what's exciting people, and that'll just be a long-term competitive advantage for VEDA because clinical trial efficiency, that is extra important to life sciences companies. That's the essence of a life sciences company, getting products approved to market quickly. So it's not the standardization of technology, but it's the seamless business process that they're looking for.

Right, right. Yep, thank you. And then maybe one for Paul, too, and I don't want to dig kind of too deep into it, but I guess can you talk about – we just kind of mentioned some of the early traction around the data cloud piece, but as this kind of is a driver of sustainability on the commercial side as well and kind of some of the releases that we've seen from IQVIA in recent days here, can you remind us if and kind of what any impact this might have on that data cloud segment as well?

Yeah, there's no impact, you know, in terms of, you know, IQVIA and, you know, there's obviously been a lot of noise in the marketplace and kind of their anti-competitive behaviors that, you know, they have a history of, but that really has no impact at all on data cloud. Data cloud's our own product. It's data that we're sourcing and innovating in a really different way for the marketplace. So no material impact that we – no impact at all, I should say, around data cloud.

Perfect. Thank you guys very much.

And your next question comes from a line of Stephanie Davis with SVB Learing.

Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thank you for taking my question, guys, and congratulations on a really strong quarter. We've seen a pretty meaningful uptick in funding for health tech companies that compete with the Vault suite of products. So I love your early take on how you're thinking about these players. Should we think of them as more pure play competitors that are just subscale? Or is there a potential partnership and integration that can maybe increase the value of Vault as a platform?

It's definitely just pure. Yes, certainly. Not just in health tech overall. The market, early markets, are washed with capital right now, and so you get multiple new entrants. Now, you get lower quality entrants on the average because you're getting diffusity and money in a surplus. So I think that's what's going on. In terms of some of those, many of those will be competitors in one of our application areas. They will be a competitor in one of our application areas. I think that's overall good for the industry. It will sharpen Viva's competitive focus and lead to product innovation. And then some of them will be partners and really fit into the Vault platform nicely. Those will tend to be smaller, more practical, lower-funded companies, because the high-funded companies, they have to go for the highest, highest markets, I think that's, you know, that's fine. It's good competition. I think it'd be difficult for them in many ways because the pharmaceutical companies are not looking for a quick wind flash in the pan like that. They're really looking for a long-term partner that has the full suite. So overall, I view that trend as positive for Adidas.

Well, continuing that thought of the less funded players will probably be most likely partners. How do you think about M&A for growing in that space?

Yeah, M&A, I would say not different in that space versus other places that we've been in. We would look for M&A for growth. So where we can get a seed of something that will really either help the industry overall and thereby help Beaver. You saw that with Fink, right? We completed that acquisition. We completed the migration of those customers. We did the acquisition five years ago, completed that acquisition. That was good for the industry. Brought their DNA into Viva, made our products better. You would see what we did with CrossX. We bought CrossX. They had a certain asset. We're leveraging that asset and bringing it into data cloud. So that's what we would look for. We'd look for seeds of innovation that we can grow.

Very helpful.

And those will often find those – Sorry, I didn't finish. Sorry.

No, continue.

That's a good question for you. Those will often come in the smaller companies, actually, those seeds of innovation.

Impressive. So I just have a quick one because I feel like Otto has done so much work on this. He would kill us if we didn't at least mention it on the call. He's a very nice guy. He's not going to kill anybody. He's not going to kill anybody. He might scold. He might scold. In some of the recent announcements.

Yeah, certainly a lot of noise. IQVIA issued a really intentionally misleading information campaign. But that situation there with their anti-competitive behavior, the case is all upside for Viva because the status quo is this restricted data environment that IQVIA has created. So that's the status quo. And nothing about the recent press release from IQVIA is really about the case.

So our case, we expect a jury trial in 2023, and we are confident in our case and expect to win. Now, if we did win, that would really provide more choice for the industry, and that would be an accelerant for commercial cloud if we would win.

But we'll see. That's in 2023. All right. Very helpful.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And your next question comes from a line up on Reddit with Stiefel. Please go ahead. Your line is up there.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Great to hear from you all. Congratulations on the great results. Peter, I'm glad Stephanie just kind of poked at the IQVIA thread there a little bit. Customers saying to you about this fairly sort of acrimonious in the public arena between, you know, many, many of your customers.

customers use both parties.

Are they getting nervous at all that perhaps IQVIA data might not be accessible inside of your CRM systems in the long run, that that could create some issues with respect to your core positioning on that front? I'd love to hear what they're saying to you and then Personally, you know, are they opening up and saying, hey, you know, we really, really do want the choice, and it's about time we get this choice. So I'd love to know which way they're pushing on that thread. Tom, I'll take that one.

You know, this is not positive for this. The kids fighting on the lawn, they don't really care. You know, who started the fight or why, it's just noise for them. So they don't appreciate it. I would say, I think they generally know that it's caused by IQVIA, but still, it doesn't matter. They don't appreciate it. They're not nervous with IQVIA. Our customers, they're life sciences companies. They're really, you know, Viva and IQVIA, we are the partners with suppliers to the industry, so I don't feel any nervousness from our customers. They knew that If IQVIA would do something like not allow their data into Viva CRM, A, they'd find another way to analyze that data, and B, you know, they wouldn't appreciate that from IQVIA to end up IQVIA losing business. So they're not willing to be pushed around by IQVIA. Where they get into this is about is choice. So I think with data cloud, for example, that's really enthusiastic for the customers. They want us to hurry, get that mature faster, have a full complete faster, and More choice is always a positive for Viva. Noise about fighting in press releases, that's not a positive. Sorry, more choice is a positive for customers. Noise about lawsuits is never a positive for customers. Great.

That's excellent, Peter. I appreciate that. This is a little bit more in the weeds, but, Brent, question for you. I mean, we look at these gross margins, and they're at all-time highs here. um seemingly you know no reason why they can't continue i guess the one thing that stood out to me in the prepared remarks was the discussion point that that the last zinc customers transitioned over to promo mats and and it just sort of brings to mind any time you can kind of end of life you know customers on one platform and move them all over to a modernized version there might be lasting benefits to the gross margin line there um how should we think about other opportunities across the platform outside of that, and is this kind of a high watermark for gross margins, or then how do we get higher from here?

Yeah, I mean, thanks for the question. Yeah, this was an outstanding quarter, obviously, from an op margin perspective, the highest op margin quarter that we've had to date. And how I think about it is we're in growth mode right now. We're continuing to invest for customer success. And, you know, we're aggressively hiring, specifically in the products, sales, and services area. Business consulting is a focus area. So we think that will pay off long-term from a growth perspective. There's some other things that are in that are important. in play regarding our gross margins as you look out during the course of fiscal year 22. We do expect travel to return to some level normalization. There's services utilization was running at an all-time high this quarter as well. So there's a lot of things that happened in Q1 that drove the high margin percentage. So all in all, pleased with it. Great opportunity to continue to get leverage out of the model as we continue to sell best the vault product space as well.

Yeah, great point. OK, I appreciate it. Great job. Thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Brad Sills with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, this is Sherry on for Brad. Congratulations on a great quarter. I wanted to ask about the outside life sciences opportunity. You touched a little bit on your prepared remarks, but can you maybe provide some updates on, you know, where you are today and where you are in terms of building out that go-to-market organization? Thank you.

Hi, Sharon. This is Peter. Yeah, we're on track with the outside of life sciences. There we're focused on consumer goods and consumer practice goods and chemicals. To add some customers and expand in existing customers, we believe we're on track to sort of in the $100 million range of business for 2025. So we're on track for that. I'm really pleased with the customer success. And, you know, that's what's fueling our business there. So all's going well outside of iScientist.

And then are you seeing any changes in the appetite for events, services, businesses, or physician's world as COVID has started to dissipate? Thanks again.

Yeah. Hey, Sherry. This is Paul. Yeah, we are starting to see that demand return. And I guess I characterize the demand around digital events, which is ramping up. That's been ramping up for some time now, and we're really we focused our business onto supporting customers doing digital events. But we're also starting to see a little bit of an uptick in more of the in-person events as companies are starting to think about, you know, the reopening and getting back face-to-face. So, yes, it is, you know, I expect that kind of demand to continue going forward. The good news is we're focused on supporting both. So as customers, you know, prefer, we can support whether it's digital or whether it's in-person.

Awesome. Thank you so much. And your next question comes from a line of with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Perfect. Thank you so much, guys. Wanted to switch for a second to Billings and obviously a very strong start to the year. Is there anything in Billings that we need to be mindful of as far as maybe like one time in the quarter and how the strength of Billings to start the year informed your overall confidence in the Billings guidance increase for the full year?

Yeah, thanks, Dan. Yeah, so in Q1, we had outstanding billing results, you know, growing at 26%. There were no one-time items in the quarter to note that that was a tailwind or a headwind to that number. So that beat definitely formed our guide, a good portion of our guide as we looked out for the year. So good broad-based strength with, you know, DevCloud and services both contributing nicely. I would say in the beat, probably about two-thirds of that was on the subscription side and about a third in services. So overall, really good contributions to the Billings growth rate.

Got it. Perfect. And I wanted to just go back to one of the earlier questions around the headcount. the overall reduction headcount across the healthcare and the pharmaceutical sales industry. How does that inform your thinking around commercial cloud growth for the remainder of this year?

Yeah, so the reductions have not a meaningful impact on the rest of this fiscal year. We've accounted for you know, that into our modeling already. So we don't anticipate any material impact one way or the other. It's already accounted for in our guidance. And typically those kinds of things, whether, you know, we saw a smaller or a larger reduction, you know, one, we've modeled it in, and two, those things tend to play out over time based on renewal cycles. So, you know, really no change there.

I guess what I was trying to say is in as much as maybe the potential headcount cuts would come in the back half of this year or begin to maybe impact you and you guys are on the long-term strategic annual plus contract, Is there potential where we could see upside to the commercial cloud subscription revenue line if those cuts don't materialize like you guys have been talking about for the last couple of quarters?

Yes. So Stan Sprint. So for the fiscal year, so in my prepared remarks, I mentioned it. So we didn't see any increase in the reductions in Q1. And we do expect that to increase in the second half of the year. And that increase, in fact, is included in our guide. So we contemplated that into the second half of fiscal year 22. Got it.

Thank you, guys.

And your next question comes from a line of Sterling office with JP Morgan Chase and company. Hey, this is drew on for Sterling. Um, you mentioned the return to travel and normalization of some of the operating expenditures. Are there any, um, cost savings that you think are sustainable in the model? Um, after the post in the post COVID environment.

Yeah, so I'll talk about fiscal year 22 and what we're seeing a bit. So we're seeing travel start to return to normalization, and that's going to progress, you know, starting, you know, in the next couple months as we work through the balance of the year. I believe that the advance will largely be virtual for the balance of the fiscal year 22. All of that's been contemplated into our guide, and that's why I explicitly stated about 175 bps of tailwind. You know, over time, how much of that will be permanent, you know, time will tell. I don't feel, you know, confident with the information at hand to give you a number on that.

Got it. Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Chris Merwin with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi. I'm Chris. Thanks for taking my question. Just on Engage, sounds like that was a tailwind to growth in the quarter. How penetrated is that product across the CRM customer base today, and how should we think about the runway there?

Yeah, this is Paul. You know, Engage, we talked about last quarter as being roughly 60% penetrated in the overall Engage market. So if you think about the broader Engage opportunity, we have – We've captured roughly 60% of the market, and we'll expect to see continued growth and engage normalizing to where it was. We obviously had a significant bump in Q4 given the conversion, but that will play out over time where it will be more of a normalized growth rate going forward.

Got it. And then given the recent investments in headcount, I'm curious about customer adoption with profits. Thanks.

Yeah, so CrossX is generally independent of, you know, the kinds of reductions that you're seeing. I would say that there is, you know, an overall shift to, you know, companies operating more digitally and trying to reach customers in new and different ways. And fundamentally, CrossX's business is based on supporting media and advertising and marketing, which is digital. So we saw good strength this quarter in CrossX, and we anticipate that strength will continue going forward.

Great, thank you.

And your next question comes from the line of Ryan McDonald with Needham. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question, and I apologize if it's repeated. I got dropped temporarily here. But I wanted to ask on the prepared remarks about the commentary around VisaLink and the business consulting services. I think it's been an interesting dynamic that the comment around it doubling here over here in terms of consulting. It's not the first time we've heard that, and it seems to be an emerging trend. Peter, I'd be curious just to hear thoughts on what do you think is causing sort of this increased reliance on consulting services from customers, and how does this change your view, if at all, on how the component of service as a percent of total revenue and how that grows going forward? Thanks.

In terms of the percentage revenue and how that goes going forward, I don't expect any material change there. Consulting business is growing, but it's still small when you look at the bulk of our business, which is actually subscription and professional services. Consulting is a bit higher value now. service that focuses on business process, business process type things, not just implementing our software. So it's growing, but it's never going to be the biggest part of Viva, that type of thing. But it is complementary. So it's been very complementary. And consulting needs will go up a little bit as we have multiple products. So one of the things that consulting is very good for is stitching together the business processes that are needed when you're implementing processes, for example, across clinical and regulatory or commercial and medical. So that's where you get a lot of the value when you redesign these business processes, roles, and responsibilities. So necessary and view it as the icing on the cake, but it's not the cake.

Excellent. Thanks for taking my question.

Your next question comes from a line of Tyler Radke with Citi. Go ahead, your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. YC calling in from Thailand today. Congrats on the result. That looks pretty strong. And then I just have a quick question regarding we're starting to see more customers going in full suite, especially in the last quarter and current quarter in quality and regulatory, and including new customers all in in commercial cloud. So I'd just like to see how is this full suite deal trend coming in versus your expectation initially? And then also, what are some of the implications that we might see going forward? Thanks.

The full suite, that can happen also on the R&D side and the commercial side. Generally, that will be with smaller biotechs because they're nimble. They don't have existing infrastructure. They want to get started in a very modernized way, and they just go along with it. So I expect that trend to continue sort of as it is, maybe accelerate a bit in the small biotechs. But that's not really so applicable to our large enterprises because they have, you know, lots of people, lots of processes, and they have to pick the parts that they optimize.

All right. And that concludes all questions at this time. I'd like to turn this call back over to Peter for closing remarks.

All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. I'd like to thank our customers for their continued partnership and our employees for their commitment to customer success. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation.