VTEX

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the VTEX Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended June 30, 2022. I'm Julia Barro Fernandez, Investor Relations Director for VTEX. Our senior executives presenting today are Geraldo Thomas Jr., Founder and Co-CEO, and Ricardo Camata-Sodré, Finance Executive Officer. Additionally, Mariano Gomira de Faria, Founder and Co-CEO, and Andres Polidoro, Chief Financial Officer, will be available during today's Q&A session. I would like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements related to such matters as continuous growth prospects for the company, industry trends, and product and technology initiatives. These statements are based on currently available information and our currently assumptions, expectations, and projections about future events. While we believe that our assumptions, expectations, and projections are reasonable in view of the currently available information, you are cautioned not to place any reliance on these forward-looking statements. Certain risks and uncertainties are described in the risk factors and forward-looking statement sections of BTEC Form 20F for the year ended December 31st, 2021, and other BTEC filings within the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our investor relations website. Finally, I would like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, we may discuss some non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our second quarter 2022 earnings press release available on our investor relations website. Now, let me turn the call over to Geraldo. Geraldo, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Julia. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. We're excited to announce that once again this quarter, our GMV outperformed the overall e-commerce market. That was driven by two key factors. First, our existing customers' GMV growth outpaced the market. demonstrating the resiliency of our enterprise-focused customer base. Second, new customers join our platform, demonstrating their trust in the VTEX platform to add value even under the volatile macroeconomic conditions. As a testament to that, in Q2, our GMV grew year-over-year 27.6% in USD, while global and Latin American e-commerce growth was flattish to single-digit growth at most. We continue seeing VTEX consolidating its leadership position in Latin America. During the quarter, we delivered solid results in special events, such as hot sales in Mexico and Tax-Free Day in Colombia, giving us confidence in the ramp-up of Mexico and the consolidation of more mature markets such as Colombia. Additionally, we continue making solid steps forward in our international expansion, something that was noticed by industry experts, which I will address later on. Over the past couple of years, we were in hyperinvestment cycle, an important phase for VTEX that allow us to roughly triple our headcount and create a menu of future growth opportunities. Now, as part of the plan, It is only natural for us to prioritize the opportunities created and leverage our current structure to continue delivering strong growth. With this, Pretex is doubling down on the most promising growth opportunities in our menu. This prioritization of growth opportunities and setting of our optimal structure came up with a hard decision that included a layoff of 193 employees. We deeply appreciate and thank the hard work and commitment of those employees who were impacted by the layoff. We are happy to inform that approximately 50% of them have already found new opportunities, and we will continue helping to reallocate the remaining form of a Texas. Pursuing strong growth in a sustainable manner is not something new to us. Vitex was born in Latin America. We practically self-funded our growth until $100 million in AR in 2020. We welcome and we are actually excited about demonstrating how we at Vitex can deliver strong and consistent top-line growth while being disciplined with our investments. We're confident in the future growth of the company and we feel the power of having all Vitex's aligned in pursuing the enormous opportunities that we have in front of us. The underlying long-term trends from the sector continue to be attractive. In the shorter term, some of our key priorities for the remaining of the year will be to continue helping our customers outperform the market, keeping improving our gross margin, and optimize our expenses to gain operational efficiency. On helping our customers outperform the market, we will continue innovating to provide the infrastructure our customers need to accelerate their operations and stay relevant to consumers through multiple sales channels and fulfillment channels. A great demonstration of how that translates into value-add to our customers is that in the second quarter of 2022, as already mentioned, how customers gmv outperformed the latin american e-commerce market on gross margin i'm extremely proud that we've been able to increase our non-gap subscription gross margin by 370 bps on a year-over-year basis this margin expansion was mostly driven by technology improvements such as the migration of some of our cloud environments to more efficient processes, operating systems and frameworks, among other initiatives. We also improved our service gross margin, which contributes to an overall non-gap gross margin improvement of 510 bps on a year-over-year basis. We expect to continue showing improvements in this line going forward, while also providing best-in-class service levels to our customers. On expenses, we will show significant operational leverage in the second half of the year without jeopardizing our growth in the short, medium, or long term. As I mentioned before, we calibrated our organizational structure in order to deliver our adjusted priorities which resulted in that one-off layoff expenses in Q2, on top of the already anticipated additional Q2 expenses related to Vitek's data. An event that is key for positioning our company among prospects, partners, and existing customers. In Q3, we expect to have a clean P&L that will start to clearly demonstrate the trajectory of our operating needs. now moving to our commercial updates in the second quarter we continue attracted premier brands and retailers some new customers that went live this quarter that didn't have online store presence in their respective countries before were elo thumb up zeb brands in brazil group step unders in colombia and brf in chile additionally New customers that migrated from other platforms that went live this quarter was Pernambucanas and Eric in Brazil, Garbarino in Argentina, Granger and Citric in Mexico, Yamaha in Colombia, Momentum Textiles in the US, and Invitadissima in Spain. On top of that, we continued building entrenched, sticky relationships with our existing customers. Some premier brands and retailers that expanded their operation with us opening new online stores in new countries during the second quarter were AB InBev added Dominican Republic in addition to nine other countries in Latin America. And Sugo added Mexico in addition to other four countries in Latin America. As mentioned last quarter, While the average number of months our new customers are taking to implement Vitek's platform continues to be above the historical average, we see no structural changes in the demand for the Vitek's platform. Therefore, we continue to be encouraged by the long-term opportunity we have ahead of us. On that note, in May of this year, Vitek was named a contender in the forced wave. B2C Solutions Key to 2022. The Forrester report stated that Vitex has recently begun to succeed in its mission to gain a foothold in markets outside Latin America, and that Vitex is strong in digital products and subscriptions. We're proud of this recognition, and we will continue to work hard on our international expansion as we see a strong fit from our product and sales traction is increasing according to plan in these new geographies. We know we cannot do all this alone. We believe in the multiplying force of collaboration. One of our key competitive advantages is our ecosystem, and that's why we will continue to nurture and expand our partner. Aligned with our payment partnership strategy shared last quarter, we are excited to announce that we launched a partnership with Adyen, a global payment platform of choice for many of the world-leading companies. We're confident that the partnership brings a powerful value proposition to the ecosystem. Both companies are committed to enabling enterprise brands and retailers to start having an omnichannel operation. that drives business growth and provides a consistent customer experience in offline and online channels. We're also focused on generating partnerships with independent software vendors, or RSVs, to boost innovation and keep expanding the offering and customization layers available in our platform. The text acceleration program picks innovative e-commerce-related solutions that can meet the needs of our customers. The project is focused on fostering the global e-commerce ecosystem by integrating third-party apps with the Vitex App Store. In the second quarter of 2022, we included a few new partners in this program. One of them was MailWeb. who launched an app called Bizu in Brazil that helps customers have detailed control and analytics of their e-commerce operations. Another one was WooUp, who added the CRM capability to our ecosystem, which enabled us to already win customers. Before wrapping up, I'd like now to revisit our four strategic priorities. focusing our innovation update section and success cases from our customers. Pernambucanas, a retailer which sells clothing and home appliances technologies with two business units and more than 400 stores in 200 cities in Brazil, chose Vitex for its headless approach. They wanted to implement continuous customization in their website and mobile app while avoiding any limitations. Additionally, they wanted a solution that enabled them to keep a consistent experience between channels, providing a true omnichannel experience. The internal team from Pernambucanas, with the support of the Vitex team, was able to implement this complex case in only five months, achieving our client's goal to reformulate online experience in an impressive timeline. Last quarter, we mentioned that we were going to have our first live shopping event in the U.S. Now, looking back at the results, our customer experience and made time increase in conversion rate from viewers during that event, which led them to consider leveraging live shop not only for product launches, but also for sales events social media campaigns, and product demonstrations. Livestream is a global trend, and we are encouraged to see our solution continue to penetrate our customer base. In fact, this quarter, we had 231 live shopping events, which represents a quarter-over-quarter increase of almost 80%. Briggs & Stratton World's largest producer of air-cooled petrol engines for outdoor power equipment chose VTAC in the U.S. for the B2B project with three different business units supporting multi-language and multi-current with one single account. They used it to run their operation with two different platforms and decided to relaunch with us in a single e-commerce platform. resulting in a more consistent user experience, improving maintainability of the platform, leveraging all of our out-of-the-box e-commerce features, including, for example, our quick order app, which provides a frictionless process to place orders. Embargo Zalobestia, a home appliance retailer in Spain with 20 physical stores, chose us to help them with our robust omni-channel capabilities in order to scale up their sales and unify their multiple sales channels. The company has been experiencing a high growth trajectory over the last five years. In fact, they were recently included in the list of top 1,000 highest growth companies in Europe by the Financial Times. Their in-house developer website was facing difficulties scaling up Given the growth of SKUs, the customers wanted to grow both their physical and online operations, generating synergies between them, a clear need for robust omnichannel capability. They were also focused on improving the overall performance and usability of the website. They are now leveraging VTech, improving their checkout statistics, conversion rates, and other key commerce performance metrics, while also building a true omni-channel strategy by integrating the physical stores and other sales channels. On the developer platform of choice for digital commerce, we're proud to announce that we continue attracting developers to our local platform, gaining momentum in the community and scaling our capabilities. Monthly active developers accessing VTech's development portal increased to more than 28,000 in the second quarter of 2022, from more than 24,000 in the first quarter of the same year. Wrapping up the operational update section, I would like to thank our 1,560 VTechs that are working to fulfill our mission.

as well as our customers partners and investors now i will turn the call to ricardo so he can cover our financial progress report for the quarter thank you geraldo hi everyone it's a pleasure to be here update you on our financial performance for the second quarter of 2022 this quarter our revenue increased to 38.7 million dollars a year-over-year increase of 25% in U.S. dollars and 20% on an FX-neutral basis. Subscription revenue reached $36.6 million in the second quarter of 2022 from $29.7 million in the same quarter last year, a year-over-year increase of 24% in U.S. dollars and 17% on FX-neutral basis. This quarter, subscription revenue accounted for 95% of total revenue versus 96% in the same quarter last year, explained by the implementation of our backlog, which leads to increases in our services revenue. Non-GAAP subscription gross profit was $26.6 million compared to $20.4 million in the second quarter of 2021. Non-GAAP subscription gross margin was 72.5% in the second quarter of 2022 compared to 68.8% in the same quarter of 2021. The 370 basis points year-over-year margin expansion reflects operational hosting improvements as we migrate non-core hosting services and optimize our code's cloud and computing usage. On top of the non-GAAP subscription gross margin expansion, we also improved our services gross margin, which led to an overall non-GAAP gross profit reaching $25.7 million, representing an year-over-year increase of 36% and a margin improvement of 510 basis points. Our non-GAAP total operating expenses increased to $43.3 million in the second quarter of 2022, from $29.4 million in the same period last year. This resulted in our non-GAAP loss from operations to be $17.5 million during the second quarter of 2022, compared to $10.4 million in the second quarter of 2021. The increase in expenses and loss from operations were primarily due to VTAC's day and one-off layoff expenses. both accounting for slightly more than $5 million, with BTEX Day representing the majority of this amount. Along this line, and reinforcing Geraldo's previous comments, we expect not only to continue delivering gross margin improvements, but also to see significant operational leverage in our expenses in the second half of 2022. Leverage on the expenses side will come from our already well-invested structure as well as a result of the hard decision of laying off 193 employees, a decision we handle with transparency, respect, and utmost responsibility. Our end market and business model make us confident in our ability to demonstrate attractive capital allocation, achieving top-line growth for many years to come. Our non-GAAP operating income margin from existing stores has ranged between 35% and 15% in 2020 and 2021 respectively, giving us a clear path to continue executing our growth plan while also seeing our potential operating margin opportunity. As of the three months ended June 30, 2022, VTEX had a negative $12.7 million free cash flow compared to $14.7 million negative free cash flow in the second quarter of 2021. Since the beginning of 2022, we've been working digitally to optimize our working capital, which resulted in an improvement in cash flow despite the one-off expenses already mentioned. This improvement in working capital is a result of operational improvements in our collection of receivables, as well as procurement optimization in our prepaid expenses and accounts payables. Regarding our future outlook, We continue to see macroeconomic uncertainty impacting our new stores' average time to implement the Vitex platform, as well as generating volatility in our existing customers' GMV performance. We had a solid performance in Q2, and for the second half of the year, we will continue focusing on helping our customers outperform the market, while also improving our gross margin and operating income margins. In the third quarter of 2022, although we are entering into cleaner comps, macroeconomic conditions remain uncertain. Therefore, we are currently targeting revenue in the 37.0 to 38.0 million dollar range for the third quarter of 2022, implying a year-over-year growth of 18% in U.S. dollars and 20% on FX neutral basis in the middle of the range. For the full year 2022, despite the incremental volatility, we maintain our FX-neutral year-over-year revenue growth target of 24% to 27%, implying a range of $158 to $162 million based on July average FX rates. VTEX is well-positioned to navigate the current environment. We have clear visibility of our path to breakeven. We are capitalized. with over $250 million liquidity in the balance sheets. Considering our excess liquidity after funding our organic growth plans, we see three key areas as potentially interesting capital allocation opportunities. We could use part of this capital to pursue M&A opportunities, although the bid and ask gap between public and private markets may pose short-term challenges. Over the medium and long term, this could be an interesting capital deployment opportunity. We could also use part of this capital to accelerate our international expansion. Although in the early and intermediate stages of international expansion, capital should be deployed with caution, over the medium and long term, as we see clear evidence of commercial traction, this could be an interesting capital allocation. Finally, As approved by our board of directors, we now have shares repurchases as an additional tool for capital deployment, which could be useful in moments of market dislocations. We will always digitally evaluate these options and allocate capital in the best interest of long-term shareholders of the company, based on the evaluation of market conditions and applicable legal requirements. Wrapping up today's call, we are clearly adding value to our customers by helping them outperform the market. We continue to have a strong backlog undergoing implementation. We have an expanding gross margin and expect to deliver operating income margin improvements in the second half of the year. All these together give us confidence in our business today and in the long-term opportunity we have ahead of us. We'll continue focusing on what makes Vitex unique our blue-chip and resilient customer base, the quality of our platform's technology, product, and features, and a strong and difficult-to-replicate ecosystem. With that, let's open it up for questions now. Thank you.