Coveo Solutions Inc.

Good afternoon. My name is Sylvie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Caveo second quarter 2023 financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. Thank you. Mr. Moon, you may now begin your conference.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. With me on the call are Louis Taitou, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Coveo, and Jean Laviguerre, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to note that certain statements made during this conference call are forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws including those regarding our future plans, objectives, growth, and expected performance, including our outlook for the third quarter and fiscal year 2023. These forward-looking statements are given only as of the date of this call. While we believe any forward-looking statements we make are reasonable, actual results could differ materially because the statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. We do not undertake or expressly disclaim any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Further information on these and other factors that could affect the company's financial results is included in filings we make with Canadian Securities Regulatory Authority, including under the section titled Risk Factors in the company's most recently filed annual information form, which is available on our CEEDAR profile at www.ceedar.com. Additionally, some of the financial measures discussed on this call are either non-IFRS measures or operating metrics used in our industry. A discussion on why we use non-IFRS financial measures and operating metrics and where applicable, a reconciliation schedule showing IFRS versus non-IFRS results are currently available in our press release and our MD&A dated as of today, which may both be found on our investor relations website at ir.coveo.com and our CDAR profile. Please note that unless otherwise stated, all references to any financial figures are in U.S. dollars. Lastly, slides accompanying this conference call are available for viewing and accessible on our IR website under the News and Events section. I'll now turn the call over to Louis to begin. Louis?

Thank you, Paul, and thank you all for joining us today. I am pleased to report second quarter results that reflect our strong relationships with customers, who view Coveo as a mission-critical partner that helps them optimize business outcomes and our commitment to improve our operational efficiency. We believe the current macroeconomic environment is driving enterprises in all industries towards solutions that provide tangible ROI and that our differentiated, scalable, AI-powered platform can deliver rapid time-to-value through relevant search, personalization, recommendations, and merchandising. It is our firm belief that digital transformation is an imperative, no matter the economic cycle, and that businesses must invest in true personalization to effectively compete in the new digital experience economy. With the Coveo Relevance Cloud Platform, each interaction is a true one-to-one personalized experience powered by AI and machine learning, regardless of whether a user is authenticated or anonymous. By treating individuals as people and not personas, our platform can drive significant improvements in revenue, profitability, and customer and employee satisfaction. For the second quarter ended September 30th, we delivered year-over-year SaaS subscription revenue growth of 47% and total revenue growth of 43%. Please note that FX represented an approximately 3% headwind against our year-over-year growth rates for both SaaS subscription and total revenue. Our net expansion rate for the quarter remains strong at 111%, demonstrating our continued traction with customer retention and strong cross-sells and upsells with our existing customer base. Our revenue growth, seasonally lower expenses related to vacations taken during the summer months, favorable FX movements, and continued focus on operational efficiency resulted in an adjusted operating loss of $4.7 million for the second quarter, significantly ahead of our guidance. And based on these continuous improvements in efficiency, We will also be meaningfully improving our adjusted operating laws guidance for the fiscal 2023. All lines of business continue to grow double digits organically on a trailing 12-month basis. The trend of an elongation of sales cycles due to the current macroeconomic environment persisted in fiscal Q3, in particular for larger deal sizes and those within our workplace line of business. These deals are oftentimes requiring additional layers of approval and taking longer to close than before. In the second quarter, we continued to land a number of new logos and had the strongest commerce bookings quarter in the history of the company. Examples of new commerce customers in the quarter include a global online manufacturer and retailer of licensed sportwear and merchandise, a large European-based electrical retailer specializing in household appliances and electrical, and the Lottery and Gaming Crown Corporation located in Canada. In our service line of business, which included a solid year-over-year increase in Salesforce integration bookings, notable new customers include a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, a global provider of industrial software solutions, and CrowdStrike Holdings, a NASDAQ-listed provider of cybersecurity software and solutions. We also completed expand transactions across all of our lines of business, including a multinational semiconductor manufacturer, United Healthcare Services, Motorola, Honeywell, Salesforce, and many others with whom we continue to grow our relationships. I would now like to take a moment to highlight some recent examples of customers using Coveo's platform to optimize business outcomes and provide personalized, relevant digital experiences. Back in the third quarter of fiscal 2022, we first highlighted a significant expand transaction with Informatica, a leading provider of cloud data management solutions, and I'm pleased to report the partnership continues to thrive. They have continued their growth as a global leader in the space, and along the way have expanded their use of Coveo as a key part of their digital transformation strategy. Today, Coveo helps to power their internal and external digital experiences, including in marketing, documentation, knowledge, service, marketplace, and professional services, leveraging Coveo in their service organization, They have reported annual cost savings of more than $3.5 million related to improved case deflection. We are also working with Coupa, a global technology platform that provides business-spent management solutions. They have implemented Coveo in self-service and contact center use cases, helping them save significant support costs by increasing case deflection and self-service success rates. Coveo is now supporting Coupa in onboarding a new all-in-one support platform experience for their customers, which is expected to further improve their support metrics and costs. Lastly, Coveo has partnered with a global e-commerce technology group and brand owner based in Europe that controls dozens of brands and has more than 200 clients on their platforms. Following a successful pilot that delivered a multimillion-dollar uplift in revenue alongside added merchandising capabilities for their in-house teams, they're working to deploy Coveo's personalization solutions across additional brands within the group. The next phase of the partnership involves a combined go-to-market strategy leveraging Coveo's commerce and merchandising solutions as a value-added service for other retailers. to mention some new product features for our commerce and service customers that further differentiate our offerings and help improve revenue, profitability, and customer satisfaction and loyalty by providing personalized relevant content. We have made new enhancements to the Coveo merchandising hub to allow social proofing or badging to be easily and scalably deployed on product listing pages of those of our commerce customers. Deploying badging on these pages, which are often amongst the most visited on commerce sites, has the potential to generate significant increases in conversion and revenues for our customers. In service, we launched the Quantic Insights Panel component to enable administrators to easily deploy a next-generation Coveo Hosted Insights Panel in Salesforce. This new capability can help to drive rapid time to value and innovation, as managers can easily update the inside panel configuration and functionality in real time via the Coveo admin console. These new product enhancements were initially made available to a select group of customers via an early access program, and based on the success, they will now be generally available to all customers in this and the subsequent quarter. We continue to prioritize research and development as a strategic investment focus and will provide more exciting product updates as they become available. To conclude, as we approach our first anniversary as a public company, I'm incredibly proud of what we've accomplished so far, and I'm excited for the future of Coveo as we continue to help enterprises succeed with our Relevance Cloud platform. With the investments we have made in our people and technology today, we believe we've built a strong foundation that will allow us to continue to execute on our growth plans while also continuing to accelerate our path to profitability. With that, I will now hand the call over to Jean to discuss our quarterly results in more detail.

Jean? Thank you, Louis, and thank you again, everyone, for joining us on today's call. Bookings in the quarter were strong, especially in commerce, which had its largest bookings quarter ever. Commerce bookings in the second quarter benefited from the two commerce deals that closed early in the quarter that we discussed during our last earnings call. One of those deals was with a global e-commerce technology group and brand owner, as highlighted earlier. And the other was a large cross-sell of Coveo's commerce capabilities to a legacy Qubit customer. In addition to these, in the second quarter, we saw the first enterprise sale of the Coveo platform to a new customer by Qubit sales personnel, which was the global manufacturer and retailer of licensed sports merchandise and collectibles Louis had also highlighted. Despite our strong second quarter bookings growth, we continue to see larger deals getting pushed due to current macroeconomic environment, including some workplace deals. Often, additional layers of approval are now being required and deals are taking longer to close. The strength of the U.S. dollar had a negative impact on our top line performance for the second quarter, with approximately 20% of our revenue in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. However, more than 50% of our costs are in Canadian dollars, and this, combined with the seasonality of expenses related to accrued vacation and our continued focus on operating efficiency, had a positive impact on our second quarter adjusted operating loss. As such, and given the current effects and macroeconomic environment, we have improved the midpoint of our full year adjusted operating loss guidance by $8.5 million while maintaining our revenue guidance for the fiscal year. Moving to our second quarter results, tax subscription revenue was $25.5 million, an increase of 47% year over year, and total revenue came in at $27.9 million, growing 43% year over year. Note that in both cases, the strengthening of the U.S. dollar represented an approximately 3% headwind to growth. Organic SaaS subscription revenue growth was greater than 30% on a constant currency basis, with the strengthening of the U.S. dollar representing an approximately 2% headwind. Please note, all figures include the contribution from our Qubit acquisition, which was completed on October 14, 2021. Current SAS subscription remaining performance obligations as of September 30, 2022, came in at $88.7 million, growing 51% compared to a year ago. Our net expansion rate as of September 30, 2022, was 111%, representing our traction with upsells and cross-sells and continued strength in gross retention rates. This falls comfortably within our net expansion rate target range of 105% to 115%. Turning to our operating results, our second quarter gross profit percentage came in at 76% compared to 78% for the same period last year. Adjusted gross profit percentage, which normalizes for the effects of share-based payments and related expenses, and acquisition-related compensation was 78% for the second quarter, a decrease of 1% compared to a year ago. Product gross profit percentage was 82% in the quarter in line with the prior year, and our adjusted product gross profit percentage was 83% for the quarter, a 1% increase compared to the year-ago period. Professional services gross profit percentage was 16% for the quarter, compared to 35% for the same period last year, while adjusted professional services growth profit percentage was 24%, a 14% decrease compared to the prior year period, and priorly driven by the lower professional services growth margin of QBIT, which we continue to improve. Offering loss for the quarter was 11.6 million, and adjusted operating loss for the quarter was 4.7 million. As discussed, Our adjusted operating loss for this quarter was favorably impacted by the weakening of non-US currencies compared to the US dollar. Net loss came in at 9.9 million compared to net loss of 61.9 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2022. Finishing with guidance, for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, we expect SaaS subscription revenue to be between 25.6 and 26.1 million, representing growth of 21 to 23% year-over-year. Total revenue in the range of 27.6 to 28.1 million, representing growth of 19 to 21% year-over-year. Adjusted operating loss in the range of 5 and 6 million, and between 104.8 and 105.3 weighted average shares outstanding. Please note that our third quarter guidance assumes an FX headwind against both SAS subscription revenue and total revenue of approximately 3%, similar to the second quarter. For the fiscal year 2023, we expect SAS subscription revenue to be between $101.5 and $103 million, representing growth of 30% to 32% year over year. Total revenue in the range of 110 to 111.5 million, representing growth of 27 to 29% year over year. Adjusted operating loss in the range of 23 and 25 million. And between 104 and 105 million weighted average shares outstanding. This guidance does take into account some of the macroeconomic uncertainty we are seeing in the market today. It also assumes FX rates roughly in line with where they are today for both growth and adjusted operating loss. Before we move to Q&A, I would like to remind members of the financial analyst and institutional investor community of our first Capital Markets Day being held at the TMX Market Center in Toronto on November 17, 2022. Registration information is available on our investor relations website at ir.caveo.com. or by emailing our investor relations department at investors at caveo.com. We hope you can join us during this important half-day event where you will meet other members of our team and learn more about our differentiated AI-powered platform. And with that, operator, you may now open the line for questions.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question at this time, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. you will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. And if you would like to withdraw from the question queue, please press star followed by two. And if using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please press star one now if you do have a question. And your first question will be from Thanos Motopoulos at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Could you provide a bit more color in terms of your commentary on the lengthening sales cycle? So you said it's predominantly on workplace and larger deals. Is it affecting all verticals and all deal sizes, however? Or are you not seeing it really in commerce? And then just any geographical nuance? I mean, clearly, you're still getting over the finish line given your solid quarter. But yeah, what do you think?

Yeah, so I think overall, you know, what we're seeing is no different than every other software company, Thanos, which is a little more scrutiny in terms of approvals. So, you know, from pipeline to closed sales, a little elongated. You know, what we're seeing, however, is clearly not that these deals aren't going away, number one. Number two, more focus, which is really the strategy that we're deploying, much more focus on deals where we can demonstrate ROI, and effectively our solution, as you know, drives ROI. In the workplace area, we're seeing a little more weakness, which is why we're shifting to service and commerce, because we can demonstrate ROI, because we think companies And we are seeing companies making more investments in anything that can increase their revenue or reduce their costs, while the workplace type of solutions, as you know, tend to be a little more soft ROI. But overall, the deals aren't going away, and we continue to see the tailwinds for especially the types of applications of our platform that generate ROI.

Yeah, great. That's great, Louis. And Thanos, if I can also, as you know, Thanos, we had our best quarter for commerce. That was our best quarter ever, right? So we're really pleased as much as we're absolutely seeing some elongated sales cycles for workplace, given the software ROI. Commerce right now, certainly very pleased with that, with attraction. And Europe also was a good quarter for us. I know we've seen a lot of companies that showing some difficulties in Europe, but for us, it was a good quarter as well. So really pleased on turning on both counts there.

Great. And then could you provide an update in terms of the ramp of some of the newer partnerships, such as with SAP and Adobe?

Yeah, we haven't announced anything yet as it relates to different things in that area. You know, we continue to be very strong in those ecosystems, working with clients for both, you know, I would say predominantly Salesforce, SAP, and Adobe. And as I think we commented earlier on earlier calls, our customers, our large enterprise customers of those companies, they have strong balance sheets and they continue to invest in high ROI solutions. So we're pleased with those partnerships and they remain a key portion of our strategy.

Great. I'll pass the line. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Next question will be from Itai Kidron at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Jean. Maybe you can talk about, hi, guys. Maybe you can talk about linearity in the quarter. Any comments on that?

Yes, certainly, Itai. Thank you for the question. So does your question pertain to the top line or to the bottom line?

Top line.

Top line. Okay. So typically, Itai, like most enterprise, you know, software companies, you know, we tend to, you know, the, you know, July, August tend to be, you know, quite slow. Of course, you know, so deals do, do type, do tend to come in, you know, later during the quarter, you know, typically the next quarter, December quarters are, you know, is our strongest during, during the fiscal year. So, so, so certainly from that perspective, you know, while we did, we did see some, some of those sales cycle aggregated. as we mentioned earlier, it was still, you know, very strong for commerce, uh, a tie, uh, really, you know, Europe as well. Uh, it was, uh, we, we had some good traction there as well, even as you know, in, in, in Europe, summer tends to be a little, a little slower there, you know, and, uh, so overall, not, you know, nothing that was a whole, you know, was that different except for those new larger deals. We, you, we did see some additional, uh, checks, some additional, uh, you know, questions from, uh, from customers where we need to educate them a little bit more on the ROI of our solution. Ultimately, as Louis mentioned, you know, did take a little longer, but ultimately, you know, I think we, we had a, we're happy with the strong, the strong bookings this quarter that we reported.

Okay. John, can you talk about cash burn? What's your philosophy here? How do you think about timeline to breakeven and, Is what you're seeing here from a macro standpoint, is it giving you any pause from a hiring standpoint? Any cost-cutting measures that you have in mind? Or put differently, what is it that you need to see to take an aggressive stance on the cost side?

Yeah. Thank you for the question, Natalya. It's a great segue because right now, certainly as a management team, we're extremely focused on accelerating our path to profitability. I'm sure, Ty, that you've seen us on the adjusted operating loss front. You've seen us beat, consensus was around 6 million. We came in at 4.7. So really pleased with the performance. Then with this quarter, when you look at the guidance for the entire fiscal year, we've improved our guidance on the adjusted operating loss by a full 8.5 million. That's almost 800 basis points. So, so clearly you can, you know, we're, we're hearing the markets, we're hearing investors that they want an accelerated path to profitability. Certainly from our perspective, we're being extremely frugal on, you know, all, you know, everywhere, sales and marketing, R and D, GNA, all three of them as a percentage of revenue came in, come in lower than the previous quarter. So you'll, you're still seeing us, you know, being more efficient. So, so certainly from that perspective, when you think of your initial question, it's high with regards to cash. You know, so we burned, you know, for first six months, we've burned about 2 million of cash for six months. So certainly pleased with that cash burn, right? When you look at, we've got over 200 million in the bank account right now. How much cash it will take us to get to profitability, you know, will be... you know, maybe 30, 40 million, but it will be a much smaller number that will leave aside some cash for us, of course, for our, you know, to still keep a very strong balance sheet as well, cash from M&A, though we'll be disciplined there as well. So certainly I think you should expect us within the next, you know, two years to report, you know, guidance to, you know, to cash flow breakeven from that perspective.

Okay. But just to reiterate, have you frozen all hiring at this point? Like what's your, what's your philosophy on incremental headcount additions right now?

No, no, no, we have not. If you go on our website, you'll see over 30 jobs being open right now. No, this is less than you would have seen over the previous quarters where we were closer to, you know, 50, 60. So, so look, we're still being very disciplined. No question right now that, that as we're seeing those, we've talked about those sales cycles, right? We need to be more cautious with regards to how we manage costs. So right now, still being very disciplined. R&D is an area, as Louis mentioned, that we're very excited with some of the innovation we're bringing to market, especially commerce and service. So from that perspective, it's a disciplined approach. But as you saw, right, 8.5 million less with regards to our guidance for adjusted operating loss. Clearly, we're being very cautious, but certainly no important cost cutting right now that is in the works at Coveo.

I appreciate the call. Thank you.

Thank you, Etai.

Next question will be from David Weiss at Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hi, David. Hi, congrats on the quarter. Thank you. So, yeah, so we've been obviously monitoring some of the overall environment in the tech businesses that are sort of aligned with your TAM. You mentioned obviously strong activity in terms of commerce and with the bookings. What about on the service side of the business? Have you seen any strength or potentially weakness in that aspect of it? No.

No, we continue to see strength in both commerce and service, and we think that will continue to, obviously, we're conscious about the, we read the same news, but what we're seeing in our business are some significant growth tailwinds associated with any solution that can either increase revenue or reduce costs. And, you know, our service value proposition is essentially around enabling more self, driving more self-service and customer satisfaction while avoiding to increase costs in a growth environment while reducing costs in, you know, in a company that, for a company that's not growing. And we continue to see that this is important because You know, companies, especially in a tougher environment, the first thing they want to do is preserve their customers, keep their current customers happy and their current revenue streams and their ability to upsell to those and cross-sell to those customers. And that's what we allow them to do. So for that reason and because we can demonstrate the financial returns of those solutions and we're really strong on that, we do not see or foresee any weakness in that area.

Okay, great. And just one more here on more like the top line aspects of sort of related to that. So you disclosed in October 25, that you've surpassed 50 customers among leading finance, insurance and fine tech firms. Any details on the cadence of reaching that milestone? Was this seem to accelerate more recently? Or has Coveo steadily been building customers in that area over time? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, we're building customers predominantly across a certain set of verticals. We're very strong in the tech sector and the financial services sector and the retail sector, as well as manufacturing, B2B commerce and healthcare. And so we continue. So for us, these are very important milestones. We just released our FinServ offering. So those are vertical solutions. And, you know, customers in those verticals, you know, like to see deep expertise and black belts in their vertical specifically. And that's the business model that we're deploying. So, yes, it is an important milestone and we expect more.

Okay, great. And then perhaps just on your commentary regarding improving operating loss margins, Just to be back into what's implied for Q4 of 23, in particular, you see some, I would say, year-over-year strength there in margins. Could you actually discuss some of the drivers of that? Is that the seasonality that you mentioned earlier, or do you expect that sort of cadence to continue going forward? Thanks.

Yeah, thank you, David. Just to clarify your question, so are you talking about the December quarter or the March quarter? So you referred to Q4, so is Q4 calendar or Q4 fiscal?

Rather Q4 fiscal.

Q4 fiscal, yeah, yeah. No, so you're correct in stating that, yeah, that the March quarter will be the adjusted operating loss right now that we're guiding towards is higher than the December one. I think you're correct. There's some synonymy with regards to vacation that we see typically around, you know, in December that we don't see in the March quarter. As well, we have annual salary raises that kick in on Jan 1st. So that's certainly, when you look at those elements, that's why we're seeing a little bit of a higher adjusted operating loss in Q4 fiscal than Q3 fiscal. Though we will still, of course, right now, every department, we're asking everyone to be very cautious with how they're spending and investing right now. But right now, you know, we are being cautious with this guidance for when you're looking to for fiscal, you know, adjusted operating loss. Hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question will be from Paul Treiber at RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, Paul. Thanks very much and good afternoon. Just a similar question to the last one, but just in regards to Q3, so the December quarter, it looks like the operating loss, the midpoint of guidance is a little bit larger than Q2. Was there anything in Q2, FX or otherwise, that was a bigger help in Q2 that you don't expect in Q3?

Yes, thank you for the question, Paul. No, that you're absolutely correct, right? So we benefited from about approximately 600,000 in those accrued vacations. So as you know, we have a lot of employees in R&D in the province of Quebec. And as you know, so summers tend to be short, which is why we see a lot of vacation in July and August. So certainly when we look, we fast forward to the December quarter, we're certainly not expecting, you know, that kind of a, of a reduction in the salary expense from vacation when you compare December to September. Does that answer your question, Paul?

Yeah, that's helpful to understand some of those moving parts. The second one is just on the bigger picture, and you mentioned your path to profitability a couple of times. How do you look at the balance between longer-term path to profitability versus sustaining investments or growth? What do you see as a trade-off? How do you think about it? Um, you know, as you manage your business over the next couple of years.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay.

I was just going to qualify. I was just going to qualify that it's, it's, it's really around, um, you know, we're not, we're not sacrificing the growth, growth opportunity in exchange of, you know, gains in operating leverage. Um, we're really not. And, and, and that was John's response earlier with regards to, to hiring and et cetera. You know, we continue to hire in, in, in key areas such as, uh, R and D and, um, and, uh, sales and marketing. Um, but it's, it's, it's really a lot about around strategy and efficiency gains for the company where, you know, we can focus on, on certain markets and, uh, and the minutiae of our marketing around where we can gain customers that provide the best financial return relative to, you know, both short and long term relative to our efforts. And elsewhere within the company, you know, driving a lot of consciousness around efficiency. And I would add on top of that and turn it over to Jean, that, you know, the talent that the talent landscape has changed, you know, for us positively over the past six months. You know, we're seeing a much more healthy talent environment where we can get great talent and we can also, you know, demand, you know, efficiency, you know, and all of that combined, you know, provides a good environment to manage that mix, but never at the expense of growth.

Yeah, thank you, Louis. So, Paul, that's a great question. It's a question that every core of the board management level we discuss. So our view right now is when we look at the rule of 40, for us, a dollar in growth does not equal a dollar in adjusted operating loss margin. So we clearly view for us 1.5 to 1, favoring growth. As you know, growth is certainly very challenging for everyone. And certainly from our perspective, you know, we, we will, we will continue to make investments where, where we see, you know, and of course, of course in the discipline approach, but where, you know, we're at, you know, 110 million in revenue this year, we're still in the early innings of this, of this great market we're in. Right. So, so certainly we'll keep making these investments. This being said, we understand we're in 2022, not in 2021 anymore. And, and, and Paul, you, I'm sure you've, you've, you've seen and appreciate the fact that, you know, adjusted operating loss, you know, being reduced by 8.5 million for this fiscal year. You know, we are absolutely marching towards an accelerated path to profitability versus, you know, when we went public. But certainly trying to balance those and not in a one-to-one fashion, rather on 1.5 to one fashion. I think that's the, if I can summarize, I think the best way that we're thinking about one versus the other. Does that answer your question, Paul?

Yeah, that's very helpful. Then my last question, just on the elongating sales cycles, you mentioned a comment about ROI and customers are looking to, I guess, understand or do more work on understanding the ROI. What are the strategies that you're implementing to try to showcase the ROI, prove the ROI, and maybe try to tighten up those sales cycles?

I love that question. You know, we've always been huge believers of triangulating the financial returns of our solutions, and that goes all the way back into the product. A few years ago, we started making investments in the product in the area of analytics and dashboards and et cetera, and key metrics that actually understand again, the financial benefits. And so we're in a great position to be able to show that to customers. We've also accumulated over the years a number of use cases where customers themselves will testify and will attest their own measurements and so on, which can come as proof points in the sales cycles. So we run what's called a BVA team, a business value assessment team, in the sales cycle where we basically, Paul, won't engage with a customer unless we have a clear view of the ROI that we can provide, which also allows us to command the kind of price points and maintain the price points of Coveo. We're typically the most expensive or the highest price solutions, I would argue, we're the cheapest solution given the benefits that we create. And so that's part of our fabric, and we're certainly emphasizing that. I'll go further than that. I think we actually believe as a firm that in 2023, with the economic backdrop and so on, the only solutions that we'll sell are going to be the ones that are not technical solutions, are going to be the ones that can either increase revenue or reduce costs. And we're geared precisely, our business model is geared 100%. towards achieving that.

Thank you for taking my questions.

Yep. Thank you. Next question will be from David Kwan at TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, guys. I just wanted to clarify, I guess, as it relates to the fiscal 23 revenue guidance here, I guess despite the better than expected Q2 that you guys delivered, Is it just the unchanged nature of the guidance mostly due to, I guess, the continued cautious view you guys have from a macro environment perspective as well as FX? Or is there anything in there related to maybe the slower high plans or anything else from a cost perspective?

No, I think you're right on, David. I think when you look at FX, right, 3% headwind, if we assume, you know, that – exchange rates remain the same, right? So 3% of headwinds from that perspective, number one. Number two, as you correctly stated, right? So we are seeing those sales cycles taking a bit longer. We're seeing additional steps. So here we need to err on the side of cautiousness. This being said, while we reaffirm guidance for the year, we're certainly, you know, we've vastly improved our adjusted operating loss guidance, right, by 8.5 million. So from that perspective, I believe that we're delivering what investors want, which is, you know, keep maintaining on the top line, but being more efficient in how we invest our money. So certainly we believe that right now, you know, this has been a great quarter of delivering on both top line and bottom line, both looking at September as well as the guidance.

Thanks, Sean. And on the gross margin side, it came in a bit ahead of my expectations. In particular, the gross margin of the professional services was higher than what I was looking for, which I assume was probably related to Qubit. So I wonder if you can provide some color as to what happened this quarter and kind of your expectations going forward.

Yeah, no. So kudos really to the R&D team, right? Not only are the R&D team, of course, focused on innovation and And hopefully you can join us in Toronto at our Capital Markets Day on November 17th, but you'll see a lot of that innovation. But on top of that, these folks are super cost-conscious, right? So we're, as you know, we're spending a ton with all of those, with the likes of AWS, GCP and the like, but we're being very disciplined. So you're seeing a 1% improvement in adjusted product growth profit Um, so, so, you know, very pleased with that with regards to, with, to professional services, David, I think you need to be a little bit careful. It tends to be a little choppier right on that one. Right. So, so yes, you're right. I think we, uh, the team are, are, you know, are the, uh, the executive who is responsible for this super discipline. And I think the integration of Qubit with Coveo has been, uh, has been going well. It has been a change certainly from, from. for the Qubit team and the way they were handling professional services, they were thinking of professional services. I think we've kind of helped them to think a little bit differently and a little bit more along the lines of how, you know, we looked at it. And I think, which is why you're seeing, you know, those, you know, those good margins on the professional services side, but keeping in mind that it will be a little bit choppy on that front.

Thanks. And just the last question, maybe it's also for Jean, but Louis, feel free to jump in. Just given the abundance of cash we've got on the balance sheet right now and now even benefiting more from custom narrow than expected losses, I think you've got some pretty good flexibility in terms of how to deploy it. You guys have talked about M&A kind of being a key focus here, but any thoughts on share buybacks? I'm just curious how a buyback, whether it's NCIB or anything else, might rank in terms of priorities for capital allocation.

Yeah, so thank you for the question. I think it's a great one. It's the one that we've debated certainly at the board. But right now, when we look at the market opportunity that we have in front of us, when we look at the return on that capital, we believe that right now that the best way for us moving forward, we've been public, as Louis said, right? We're coming up to our first year anniversary. We're very excited with the market operancy, as you know, AI, machine learning in our market, very much very early. So we're still seeing a ton of opportunities for us to consolidate the market and all four lines of business. This being said, David, as you know, it does take some time, right, for the private market multiples to come down, right, to come anywhere close to where the public comps are. So I think Nick Goode, who is our chief corporate dev officer, is super disciplined. And right now, while we're still looking at many companies and talking to many companies, you will feel that we're taking a very disciplined approach, waiting for those private multiples to be a little bit more in line with what we're seeing in the public markets. And then you'll see us being a little bit more aggressive with more qubits, more two-sows, more of those technology tuck-ins we still see a lot of opportunities there. But I think we'll just ask you to be a little bit patient as those multiples hopefully converge on both sides. So, Louis, anything else you'd like to add on the strategy there?

No, I think you've covered it. I would say, David, that right now, we've had our strongest commerce quarter ever, and we continue to see tailwinds in that area. We're focusing a lot of our efforts, a lot of our energy on improving that offering. And right now that's happening for the most part organically. And we think it's a good use of our time. I understand we have quite a bit of capital on the balance sheet, but, you know, Well, we still want to be disciplined here, and I'm sure we'll find a good way to deploy that capital when the time comes, as Jean says, that in a disciplined fashion, we see it's a good return for the investors.

So it sounds like share buybacks aren't high up on the priority list then? That's correct. All right. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please slowly press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. And your next question will be from Kingsley Crane at Canaccord. Please go ahead. Hi, guys.

This is Gabriel Rhodes. Hi, this is Gabriel, actually, for Kingsley. But, yeah, we were actually very excited to see the commerce numbers doing well, so I was just wondering if you guys could give more color on, like, what percentage of booking now is,

in commerce or in e-commerce if you guys could give more detail on that on like comparison to other sectors like service uh yeah so so we don't we don't actually break down exactly you know percentages uh for each line of business um but what i can tell you certainly right now is that commerce is our fastest growing line of business services are largest when you look at percentage of arr you know Service is our largest line of business, as you are probably aware, right? But when you look at, you know, but of course, we've been in the service line of business for, you know, for 10 plus years. E-commerce is more recent, right? We've been in that market for three plus years, and it's been very exciting, both organically and, of course, with the acquisition of Qubit. Again, we're very excited that the next Capital Markets Day will be showing you the products merchandising hub, you know, that, that will be integrated. That's really Qubit technology coming, you know, converging with Coveo, you know, commerce. So, so with that, certainly that is the fastest growing line of business, which is commerce, both on B2C and B2B front. With regards to, you know, workplace, as Louis mentioned, it's the one that it's all certainly very, you know, it's choppier. And right now, because of its softer ROI, this one tends to be more of a, of a cross sell. Once we've landed a customer, a commerce or a service customers and, and website for us is this easy entry points, you know, it's got lower price points, but it's still an easy entry point. You know, when we partner with the likes of Adobe and the like to, to, to get into you know, some customers and then to also cross sell of course. So, so that's those are the ideas, but certainly very excited of course with, with commerce and, especially having our best commerce quarter ever.

Awesome. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And thank you for providing more color on that. On the sales, on like the deal elongation and such, we were wondering if you also could provide more color on like, has there been any shift on contract duration? Like, do they still remain on around three-year deals? Or has there been any pressure on that? Has there been a shift there?

No, we have not seen an important shift. We're still very close to three years when you do the dollar average weighted term length. It's still very close to three years. Most of our customers, I go back to Louis' point where certainly when they look at the ROI that we're providing them with, they tend to, in exchange for a longer term, we guarantee them for the next three years, their subscription fee will be the same. There will be no increase, right? So that's a trade-off that we're willing to make, right, in exchange for committing those three years. So customers tend to really partner with us for the long haul. And when you look at our net expansion rate, you know, that's over 110%. Really, I think it just speaks volume to the gross renewal rate and, of course, the upsells and cross-sells. with those customers.

Awesome. Thank you very much. Congrats on the quarter. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question will be from Richard C. at National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi, Richard. Hey, how are you? Thanks for the comments on the sales cycles. I'm just wondering, maybe you can kind of... Give us a bit of context in terms of the funnel and pipeline coverage, you know, appreciating that, you know, the current environment to make decisions may be tougher, but what does that funnel look like?

Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Thank you for bringing that up. You know, the headline is we continue to be pleased with our progress and how we're gaining efficiency with sales and marketing. and we did improve our efficiency quarter over quarter as well as year over year in the conversion. We see good pipeline generation, especially right now at the top of the funnel. We saw a little dip in July in pipeline conversion. I think every company did because it was... I guess we refer to it as the holiday revenge. It was hard to talk to anyone after the pandemic. It sounds like everybody was on holiday, but that's just a minor thing. Overall, Richard, we feel good about the top of the funnel right now and how it's continuing to increase.

Okay, great. And then the other one for me has to do with organic growth, and I appreciate... I think you said it was sort of double digits on a trail in 12 months. What is sort of the split of that organic growth between sort of new labels and expansions? And how would that compare versus last year?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Richard. So right now, what we've seen historically has been more like 60-40, new logos versus existing logos. Over the last couple of quarters, as certainly we've seen the economy softening, it's kind of flipped, right? So we've seen a little bit more, so 40 on new logos, 60 on the expand front. If you recall, Richard, for example, last quarter, we reported that you know, that amazing win, right, millions of dollars, as you know, with one of the large global software companies where for both their age, for all of their agents worldwide, for, you know, for, of course, their website, for support, as well as, you know, providing our technology within their products, and they had 400,000 customers, right? So, of course, those types of large deals, of course, tend to also, you know, favor the cross-sell and up-sell, right, versus new logos that we've seen. But we've also seen it this quarter as well, you know, so that tendency. So which is not unusual, of course, as Louis mentioned, you know, with, you know, sales cycle being a little bit, you know, taking a little bit longer, a little bit more checks from procurement. But so that's how it's reflected certainly in the split there.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you, Richard.

Thank you. And at this time, gentlemen, we have no other questions. Please proceed with your closing.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. So we'd like to thank all of you for joining the earnings call today. We believe, again, that Coveo remains uniquely positioned. We're helping companies optimize business outcomes using AI. And we think that that kind of digital transformation is not slowing down. Tactically, we look forward to updating you in the future and perhaps interacting you at our Capital Markets Day next week in Toronto. We hope to see most, if not all, of you. And with that, operator, you can please end the call.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your line.