Confluent Inc (CFLT) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Confluent Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Shane Xie from Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Jay Kreps, Co-Founder and CEO; and Steffan Tomlinson, CFO.

大家好。歡迎來到 Confluent 2022 年第四季度收益電話會議。我是投資者關係部的 Shane Xie，聯合創始人兼首席執行官 Jay Kreps 也加入了我的行列；和首席財務官 Steffan Tomlinson。

During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements regarding our business, operations, financial performance and future prospects, including statements regarding our financial guidance for the fiscal first quarter of 2023 and fiscal year 2023.

在今天的電話會議上，管理層將就我們的業務、運營、財務業績和未來前景做出前瞻性陳述，包括關於我們 2023 財年第一季度和 2023 財年財務指導的聲明。

These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these statements. Further information on risk factors that could cause actual results to differ is included in our most recent Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

這些前瞻性陳述受風險和不確定因素的影響，可能導致實際結果與這些陳述預期的結果存在重大差異。有關可能導致實際結果不同的風險因素的更多信息包含在我們最近向美國證券交易委員會提交的 10-Q 表格中。

We assume no obligation to update these statements after today's call, except as required by law. Unless stated otherwise, certain financial measures used on today's call are expressed on a non-GAAP basis and all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis.

除非法律要求，否則我們沒有義務在今天的電話會議後更新這些聲明。除非另有說明，否則今天電話會議中使用的某些財務指標是在非 GAAP 基礎上表示的，所有比較都是基於同比。

We use these non-GAAP financials measures internally to facility analysis of our financial and business trends and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. These non-GAAP financial measures have limitations and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP.

我們在內部使用這些非 GAAP 財務措施來促進對我們的財務和業務趨勢的分析，並用於內部規劃和預測目的。這些非 GAAP 財務措施有局限性，不應孤立於或替代根據 GAAP 編制的財務信息。

A reconciliation between these GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our earnings press release and supplemental financials, which can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.confluent.io.

這些 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務措施之間的對賬包含在我們的收益新聞稿和補充財務中，可以在我們的投資者關係網站 investors.confluent.io 上找到。

References to profitability on today's call refer to non-GAAP operating margin unless stated otherwise. For planning purposes, we will be holding Investor Day 2023 in New York City on Tuesday, June 13. Please save the date.

除非另有說明，否則今天電話會議提到的盈利能力指的是非 GAAP 營業利潤率。出於計劃目的，我們將於 6 月 13 日星期二在紐約市舉辦 2023 年投資者日。請保留日期。

With that, I'll hand the call over to Jay.

有了這個，我會把電話交給傑伊。

Thanks, Shane. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call. We ended fiscal year 2022 with fourth quarter results once again exceeding the high end of our guidance on all metrics.

謝謝，謝恩。大家下午好。歡迎來到我們的第四季度財報電話會議。我們以第四季度業績結束了 2022 財年，再次超過了我們所有指標指導的高端。

Total revenue grew 41% to $169 million. Confluent Cloud revenue grew 102% to $68 million, and non-GAAP operating margin has improved 20 percentage points. We're pleased with these results, especially in light of the macroeconomic pressure we saw in the quarter.

總收入增長 41% 至 1.69 億美元。 Confluent Cloud 收入增長 102% 至 6800 萬美元，非 GAAP 營業利潤率提高了 20 個百分點。我們對這些結果感到滿意，尤其是考慮到我們在本季度看到的宏觀經濟壓力。

On today's call, I wanted to provide an update on how the macroeconomic environment is impacting our business, how we're adjusting for it and how we continue to drive innovation and differentiation and capture the massive market opportunity ahead. I'll start with a few things that haven't changed.

在今天的電話會議上，我想就宏觀經濟環境如何影響我們的業務、我們如何對其進行調整以及我們如何繼續推動創新和差異化並抓住未來的巨大市場機會提供最新信息。我將從一些沒有改變的事情開始。

As we've discussed in previous earnings calls, we began seeing customers institute additional budget inspection in pockets across geographies in June, and this dynamic has continued. The main impact on our business has been elongated deal cycles with customers.

正如我們在之前的財報電話會議中所討論的那樣，我們開始看到客戶在 6 月份對各個地區的口袋進行了額外的預算檢查，並且這種動態仍在繼續。對我們業務的主要影響是延長了與客戶的交易週期。

Our overall win rate remains robust, our pricing is steady, and we have been able to close a substantial amount of deals pushed from prior quarters. This is quite encouraging because it reflects the strong vote of confidence by our customers and the strategic value and cost savings our platform brings to them.

我們的整體贏單率保持強勁，我們的定價穩定，並且我們已經能夠完成前幾個季度推進的大量交易。這是非常令人鼓舞的，因為它反映了我們客戶的強烈信任以及我們平台為他們帶來的戰略價值和成本節約。

Now here's what has changed. The increased level of budget scrutiny appears to have become the new norm. More deals took longer to get approval and some expansions were slower than in the past. This is evident in the number of deals that pushed to calendar 2023, which impacted our RPO growth and net retention rate in the fourth quarter.

現在這裡是發生了什麼變化。預算審查水平的提高似乎已成為新常態。更多的交易需要更長的時間才能獲得批准，而且一些擴張比過去更慢。這從推遲到 2023 年的交易數量中可以明顯看出，這影響了我們第四季度的 RPO 增長和淨保留率。

While the vast majority of the deals are still in our deal path, this does indicate that increased scrutiny continues to exert pressure on large deals and new business. We think that this combination of higher interest rates and economic uncertainty puts pressure on the purchasing environment.

雖然絕大多數交易仍在我們的交易路徑中，但這確實表明加強審查繼續對大型交易和新業務施加壓力。我們認為，利率上升和經濟不確定性的結合給購買環境帶來了壓力。

The result is a substantially different environment for tech than what we were operating in a year ago. We are setting our plans for 2023 in light of this and making some changes in how we operate. We have taken steps to adjust our cost structure to accelerate our time to profitability by 1 year, while still maintaining approximately 30% revenue growth.

結果是技術環境與我們一年前的運營環境大不相同。鑑於此，我們正在製定 2023 年的計劃，並對我們的運營方式做出一些改變。我們已採取措施調整成本結構，以將盈利時間縮短 1 年，同時仍保持約 30% 的收入增長。

Specifically, we've undertaken a restructuring of our workforce, optimizing for top strategic priorities and high ROI business areas. This includes a reduction of our workforce by approximately 8%. We're also taking steps to rationalize our discretionary spend and real estate footprint.

具體而言，我們對員工隊伍進行了重組，針對首要戰略重點和高投資回報率業務領域進行了優化。這包括將我們的員工減少約 8%。我們還在採取措施合理化我們的可自由支配支出和房地產足跡。

We don't take the decision to restructure our workforce slightly. We're saying goodbye to many friends and colleagues across the company. We thank them for their important contributions to Confluent, and are making sure that the departing team members are taken care of. I want to be clear that we're making this change without reducing our focus on the long term.

我們不會決定對我們的員工隊伍進行輕微重組。我們要與公司的許多朋友和同事道別。我們感謝他們對 Confluent 的重要貢獻，並確保離職的團隊成員得到照顧。我想明確表示，我們正在做出這一改變，但並未減少對長期的關注。

It's essential that Confluent dominate the $60 billion market in front of us, and the cuts we have made do not compromise that ambition. While the restructuring will help streamline sales and marketing spend, we're preserving quota-carrying capacity and continuing to prudently invest in our go-to-market to drive new business and durable growth in the years ahead. We will also continue to support appropriate levels of R&D investment to ensure our product is the long-term winner in our space.

Confluent 必須在我們面前主導 600 億美元的市場，而我們所做的削減不會損害這一雄心。雖然重組將有助於簡化銷售和營銷支出，但我們將保留配額承載能力，並繼續審慎地投資於我們的上市，以推動未來幾年的新業務和持久增長。我們還將繼續支持適當水平的研發投資，以確保我們的產品是我們領域的長期贏家。

Despite the difficulty of the change, the resulting efficiency allows us to pull in our target of non-GAAP operating margin breakeven by 12 months. This means that exiting Q4 of this year, we will have shown a 41 point increase in non-GAAP operating margin in just 24 months. Exiting 2023, less than 1 year from now, we will be a market leader in a deeply strategic space, operating a profitable business and driving sustained high growth in a very large market.

儘管變革很困難，但由此產生的效率使我們能夠將非 GAAP 營業利潤率收支平衡的目標提前 12 個月。這意味著今年第四季度結束後，我們的非 GAAP 營業利潤率將在短短 24 個月內增長 41 個百分點。到 2023 年，從現在開始不到 1 年，我們將成為具有深度戰略空間的市場領導者，經營盈利業務，並在一個非常大的市場中推動持續高速增長。

This market leadership is driven by our platform differentiation and the significant TCO advantages we deliver to our customers. To better illustrate that, let me share our customer story. Wix is the leading website development platform in the world, which in turn serves around 1 billion unique visitors each month.

這種市場領先地位是由我們的平台差異化和我們為客戶提供的顯著 TCO 優勢推動的。為了更好地說明這一點，讓我分享一下我們的客戶故事。 Wix 是全球領先的網站開發平台，每月為大約 10 億獨立訪問者提供服務。

Data streaming is at the heart of many of the digital experiences their clients create from online bookings to e-commerce to personalized content. And Wix' data streaming journey, like so many others, began with open-source Kafka. They quickly discovered, however, that the open-source approach required heavy DevOps resourcing and resulted in challenges with scale, time to market, reliability and latency.

數據流是他們的客戶創建的許多數字體驗的核心，從在線預訂到電子商務再到個性化內容。與許多其他公司一樣，Wix 的數據流之旅始於開源 Kafka。然而，他們很快發現，開源方法需要大量的 DevOps 資源，並帶來了規模、上市時間、可靠性和延遲方面的挑戰。

Ultimately, they chose Confluent Cloud to mitigate risk, reduce costs and increase productivity. That migration quickly resulted in a 90% ROI. This is just one of many examples that shows the strength in the underlying demand for our data streaming platform. This is because Confluent serves operational workloads that are directly responsible for driving the core operations of our customers, making this a key element of a digital strategy going forward.

最終，他們選擇了 Confluent Cloud 來降低風險、降低成本並提高生產力。該遷移很快帶來了 90% 的投資回報率。這只是顯示對我們的數據流平台的潛在需求強度的眾多示例之一。這是因為 Confluent 服務於直接負責推動客戶核心運營的運營工作負載，使其成為未來數字戰略的關鍵要素。

In fact, IDC projects that by 2025, event streaming technologies will be used by 90% of the Global 1000 to deliver real-time intelligence to improve outcomes such as customer experience. And in a separate study, IDC found that of the companies that are currently using streaming data, over 80% have plans to invest in new streaming capabilities in the next 12 to 18 months.

事實上，IDC 預計，到 2025 年，90% 的全球 1000 強企業將使用事件流技術來提供實時情報，從而改善客戶體驗等成果。在另一項研究中，IDC 發現，在目前使用流數據的公司中，超過 80% 的公司計劃在未來 12 到 18 個月內投資新的流媒體功能。

Today, our product is the category leader in data streaming platform technology, bar none. The key focus for us is ensuring we continue to stay ahead as this category grows and evolves. One critical element of these investments that I want to discuss today is stream processing, that is technology to enable our customers to build applications on top of the real-time data streams that Confluent provides.

今天，我們的產品是數據流平台技術領域的領導者，無可匹敵。我們的重點是確保我們在這一類別的增長和發展中繼續保持領先地位。我今天要討論的這些投資的一個關鍵要素是流處理，這是一種使我們的客戶能夠在 Confluent 提供的實時數據流之上構建應用程序的技術。

A simple way to understand the importance of stream processing is by analogy to the world of data addressed in traditional databases. A database solves 2 problems. It acts as a store of data and it executes queries that process the data. This combination of data and processing is what makes databases so easy and ubiquitous.

理解流處理重要性的一種簡單方法是類比傳統數據庫中處理的數據世界。一個數據庫解決了2個問題。它充當數據存儲並執行處理數據的查詢。這種數據和處理的結合使數據庫變得如此簡單和無處不在。

A similar combination of capabilities is needed as we move from data at rest to data in motion. In the world of data in motion, data isn't just stored. It's a continual stream that updates as the world changes. The natural complement to this is stream processing. That is building applications that continuously update, react or respond to changes in the world. The core of Kafka acts to storage streams and to be a hub for connectivity, kind of like a central nervous system that transmits the real-time impulses of what's happening in the business.

當我們從靜態數據轉向動態數據時，需要類似的功能組合。在動態數據的世界中，數據不僅僅是存儲的。它是隨著世界變化而更新的持續流。對此的自然補充是流處理。那就是構建持續更新、反應或響應世界變化的應用程序。 Kafka 的核心是存儲流並成為連接的樞紐，有點像傳輸業務中發生的實時衝動的中樞神經系統。

Stream processing acts a bit like the brain, taking real-time action on the impulses the nervous system conveys. Increasingly, businesses of all kinds are leveraging stream processing to drive the data-driven applications that better serve customers and drive intelligence and efficiency in their operations. Confluent has long contributed to the emerging stream processing ecosystem around Kafka with Kafka Streams, an application development library for stream processing and ksql.

流處理有點像大腦，對神經系統傳遞的衝動採取實時行動。各類企業越來越多地利用流處理來驅動數據驅動的應用程序，這些應用程序可以更好地為客戶服務並提高運營的智能和效率。 Confluent 長期以來一直通過 Kafka Streams 為圍繞 Kafka 的新興流處理生態系統做出貢獻，Kafka Streams 是一個用於流處理和 ksql 的應用程序開發庫。

This quarter, we took a major step in furthering these capabilities with the acquisition of Immerock, a stream processing company that offers a fully managed service for the open-source project, Apache Flink. Immerock has joined Confluent to help us add a fully managed Flink offering to Confluent Cloud.

本季度，我們通過收購流處理公司 Immerock 為進一步增強這些功能邁出了重要一步，Immerock 是一家為開源項目 Apache Flink 提供完全託管服務的流處理公司。 Immerock 已加入 Confluent 以幫助我們將完全託管的 Flink 產品添加到 Confluent Cloud。

This is a very exciting step for Confluent and I want to explain a little bit about our strategy in this area. We've watched the excitement around Flink grow for years, and saw it gaining adoption among many of the most sophisticated technology companies in the world, including Citi, Goldman Sachs, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Netflix, Uber and Apple.

對於 Confluent 來說，這是非常令人興奮的一步，我想稍微解釋一下我們在這一領域的戰略。多年來，我們目睹了圍繞 Flink 的熱情不斷增長，並見證了它在世界上許多最先進的技術公司中的採用，包括花旗、高盛、Pinterest、LinkedIn、Netflix、Uber 和 Apple。

This popularity has been driven by a rich feature set, including a powerful processing model that generalizes both batch and stream processing. It is battle tested at scale on some of the largest real-time processing workloads on the planet.

這種流行是由豐富的功能集推動的，包括一個強大的處理模型，它概括了批處理和流處理。它在地球上一些最大的實時處理工作負載上進行了大規模的實戰測試。

And perhaps most importantly, it has an incredibly smart innovative community driving it forward. In short, we believe that Flink is the future of stream processing and by adding it to Confluent Cloud, we can significantly advance our data streaming platform and help our customers getting more value from their data streams.

也許最重要的是，它擁有一個非常聰明的創新社區來推動它向前發展。簡而言之，我們相信 Flink 是流處理的未來，通過將其添加到 Confluent Cloud，我們可以顯著提升我們的數據流平台，並幫助我們的客戶從他們的數據流中獲得更多價值。

In terms of our product plans, we plan to launch the first version of our Flink offering in Confluent Cloud later this year. We want to follow the same key principles we've brought to our Kafka offering, building a service that is truly cloud native is a complete and fully integrated offering and is available everywhere across all the major clouds.

就我們的產品計劃而言，我們計劃在今年晚些時候在 Confluent Cloud 中推出 Flink 產品的第一個版本。我們希望遵循我們引入 Kafka 產品的相同關鍵原則，構建真正的雲原生服務是一個完整且完全集成的產品，並且在所有主要雲中隨處可用。

We think this combination of an open popular interface offered with a deeply differentiated cloud-native core is the key to success for cloud data systems. We think that over time, this offering can be a substantial driver of growth in our business, comparable in size to Kafka itself.

我們認為這種開放的流行接口與高度差異化的雲原生核心的結合是雲數據系統成功的關鍵。我們認為，隨著時間的推移，此產品可以成為我們業務增長的重要推動力，其規模可與 Kafka 本身相媲美。

Adding this new offering will allow us to better monetize the compute and application development around data streams in addition to the core stream data, expanding spend of existing customers. Further, by making streaming easier, we pull more workloads into our streaming platform. In addition, the processing of streams generates more streams, helping to accelerate the growth of our Kafka, connector and data governance products.

添加此新產品將使我們能夠更好地從核心流數據之外的數據流計算和應用程序開發中獲利，從而擴大現有客戶的支出。此外，通過讓流媒體更容易，我們將更多的工作負載引入我們的流媒體平台。此外，流的處理會產生更多的流，有助於加速我們的 Kafka、連接器和數據治理產品的增長。

In this way, stream processing accelerates consumption in a multiplicative fashion, which we think will be a very positive tailwind for growth as these capabilities come to maturity. To help execute both this initiative as well as our overall product strategy, I'm pleased to announce that Shaun Clowes joined Confluent last quarter as our Chief Product Officer.

通過這種方式，流處理以乘法方式加速消費，我們認為隨著這些功能的成熟，這將對增長產生非常積極的推動作用。為了幫助執行這一計劃以及我們的整體產品戰略，我很高興地宣布 Shaun Clowes 上個季度加入 Confluent，擔任我們的首席產品官。

Shaun joins us from MuleSoft, where he served as CPO. And before that, Atlassian, where he served as Head of Growth. Shaun is a technologist, passionate about the space and is the right person to lead the team through the data streaming era. And finally, I'd like to share that Larry Shurtz has stepped down from his role as Chief Revenue Officer. Larry, we wish you all the best, and thank you for your many contributions in helping us scale and evolve our sales team.

肖恩從 MuleSoft 加入我們，在那裡他擔任 CPO。在此之前，他在 Atlassian 擔任增長主管。 Shaun 是一名技術專家，對這個領域充滿熱情，是帶領團隊度過數據流時代的合適人選。最後，我想分享拉里·舒爾茨 (Larry Shurtz) 辭去首席營收官一職的消息。拉里，我們祝你一切順利，並感謝你為幫助我們擴大和發展我們的銷售團隊所做的許多貢獻。

We will not be looking to backfill this role. Larry reported into Erica Schultz, our President of Field Operations, and we'll revert to our prior org structure with Erica managing the theater sales leaders directly.

我們不會尋求回補這個角色。 Larry 向我們的現場運營總裁 Erica Schultz 匯報工作，我們將恢復到之前的組織結構，由 Erica 直接管理影院銷售主管。

In closing, the demand for data streaming remains strong. We've accelerated our plan to become profitable by the end of the year, and we'll continue to invest in building the data streaming platform that will become the central nervous system of every company.

最後，對數據流的需求依然強勁。我們已經加快了年底實現盈利的計劃，我們將繼續投資建設數據流平台，這將成為每個公司的中樞神經系統。

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Steffan to walk through the financials.

有了這個，我會把電話轉給 Steffan，讓他了解財務狀況。

Thanks, Jay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start with a brief recap of the full year results. In fiscal year 2022, we accomplished our stated goals of driving high revenue growth and improving annual operating margin.

謝謝，傑伊。大家下午好。首先，我想簡要回顧一下全年業績。在 2022 財年，我們實現了推動收入高增長和提高年度營業利潤率的既定目標。

Total revenue grew 51% to $585.9 million. Confluent Cloud revenue grew 124% to $211.2 million with substantially improved unit economics, and operating margin improved 11 points.

總收入增長 51% 至 5.859 億美元。 Confluent Cloud 收入增長 124% 至 2.112 億美元，單位經濟效益大幅提高，營業利潤率提高 11 個百分點。

I'd like to take a moment to thank all of our team members at Confluent, our customers and partners for their contributions throughout the year.

我想花點時間感謝 Confluent 的所有團隊成員、我們的客戶和合作夥伴全年的貢獻。

Turning to the fourth quarter. As Jay mentioned, the results exceeded the high end of our guidance on all metrics, highlighted by strong revenue growth, Confluent Cloud momentum, robust customer additions and substantial margin improvements. These results are a testament to the mission-critical and strategic role of our data streaming platform and our proven ability to drive high growth while improving efficiencies and profitability in a challenging economic environment.

轉到第四季度。正如 Jay 所提到的，結果超出了我們對所有指標的指導的高端，突出表現在強勁的收入增長、Confluent Cloud 勢頭、強勁的客戶增加和顯著的利潤率提高。這些結果證明了我們數據流平台的關鍵任務和戰略作用，以及我們在充滿挑戰的經濟環境中推動高增長同時提高效率和盈利能力的成熟能力。

RPO for the fourth quarter grew 48% to $740.7 million. Current RPO, estimated to be 62% of RPO, was approximately $456.2 million, up 43%. Both metrics were lighter than we expected. In addition to what Jay discussed earlier, we saw less urgency by customers to sign deals in the last couple of weeks than we typically would see in a calendar Q4 primarily in our enterprise business as some customers evaluated macro and opted to delay their purchases to FY '23.

第四季度的 RPO 增長 48% 至 7.407 億美元。目前的 RPO，估計為 RPO 的 62%，約為 4.562 億美元，增長 43%。這兩個指標都比我們預期的要輕。除了 Jay 之前討論的內容之外，我們發現客戶在過去幾週簽署交易的緊迫性低於我們通常在日曆 Q4 中看到的主要是我們的企業業務，因為一些客戶評估宏觀並選擇將他們的購買推遲到 FY '23。

We didn't see any material changes in discounting, contract duration or win rates relative to the previous quarter, and I'm pleased to report that a number of these Q4 push deals have closed in Q1, which points to the underlying demand for our solution. Dollar-based net retention rate in the quarter was also healthy, just under 130%.

與上一季度相比，我們沒有看到折扣、合同期限或贏單率發生任何重大變化，我很高興地報告，許多第四季度的推送交易已在第一季度完成，這表明對我們的潛在需求解決方案。本季度以美元為基礎的淨保留率也很健康，略低於 130%。

NRR for cloud and hybrid were both comfortably above 130% with hybrid NRR continuing to be the highest. Gross retention rate remained strong and was above 90%, reflecting the strength of our product differentiation and TCO advantages against alternative solutions, including open-source Kafka. New customer additions continue to rebound since our paywall removal in March. We added 290 net new customers during the quarter, ending at approximately 4,530 total customers, up 31%.

雲和混合的 NRR 均輕鬆超過 130%，其中混合 NRR 仍然是最高的。總保留率保持強勁並超過 90%，反映了我們的產品差異化強度和 TCO 優勢相對於替代解決方案，包括開源 Kafka。自 3 月份我們移除付費專區以來，新客戶的增加繼續反彈。本季度我們新增了 290 名淨新客戶，客戶總數約為 4,530 名，增長了 31%。

New customer additions were driven by Confluent Cloud. The growth in our large customer base was also robust. We added a record 70 customers with $100,000 or more in ARR in the quarter, bringing the total to 991 customers, up 35%. These large customers contributed more than 85% of total revenue.

Confluent Cloud 推動了新客戶的增加。我們龐大客戶群的增長也很強勁。我們在本季度增加了創紀錄的 70 名 ARR 為 100,000 美元或以上的客戶，使客戶總數達到 991 名，增長了 35%。這些大客戶貢獻了總收入的85%以上。

We also had a record quarter of customers with $1 million or more in ARR, adding 20 customers during the quarter, an all-time high, bringing the total to 133 customers, up 51%. And we ended FY '22 more than doubling our $5 million-plus ARR customers from a year ago, including a growing number of $10 million plus ARR customers.

我們還創下了 ARR 達到或超過 100 萬美元的客戶的季度記錄，本季度增加了 20 名客戶，創歷史新高，使客戶總數達到 133 名，增長 51%。與一年前相比，我們在 22 財年末將超過 500 萬美元的 ARR 客戶增加了一倍多，其中包括越來越多的 1000 萬美元以上的 ARR 客戶。

Turning to revenue. Total revenue grew 41% to $168.7 million. Subscription revenue grew 44% to $155.3 million and accounted for 92% of total revenue. Confluent Cloud as a percentage of new ACV bookings was greater than 70% in Q4, which represented our fifth consecutive quarter of cloud exceeding 50% of total new ACV bookings. As Cloud accounts for a larger share of new ACV bookings, Confluent Platform will have lower ACV and less upfront revenue.

談到收入。總收入增長 41% 至 1.687 億美元。訂閱收入增長 44% 至 1.553 億美元，佔總收入的 92%。 Confluent Cloud 在第 4 季度佔新 ACV 預訂的百分比超過 70%，這代表我們連續第五個季度雲超過新 ACV 預訂總量的 50%。由於雲在新 ACV 預訂中所佔份額較大，Confluent Platform 的 ACV 和前期收入將較低。

This upfront dynamic was reflected in Confluent Platform revenue, which was $87 million, up 17% and accounted for 52% of total revenue. Confluent Cloud revenue was $68.4 million, up 102%, and accounted for 41% of total revenue compared to 28% of revenue a year ago. This translates to a record sequential revenue add of $11.5 million for Confluent Cloud compared to $9.9 million last quarter and $7 million a year ago.

這種前期動態反映在 Confluent Platform 收入中，為 8700 萬美元，增長 17%，佔總收入的 52%。 Confluent Cloud 收入為 6840 萬美元，增長 102%，佔總收入的 41%，而去年同期為 28%。這意味著 Confluent Cloud 的連續收入增加了創紀錄的 1150 萬美元，而上一季度為 990 萬美元，一年前為 700 萬美元。

Our Confluent Cloud momentum was driven by our continued focus on use case expansion decreasing time to value for customers and supporting their mission-critical workloads with strong consumption across industry verticals.

我們的 Confluent Cloud 勢頭是由我們持續關注用例擴展來推動的，它可以縮短客戶實現價值的時間，並通過跨行業垂直領域的強勁消費來支持他們的關鍵任務工作負載。

Turning to the geographic mix of revenue. Revenue from the U.S. grew 35% to $100.5 million. Revenue from outside the U.S. grew 50% to $68.2 million.

轉向收入的地域組合。來自美國的收入增長了 35%，達到 1.005 億美元。來自美國以外的收入增長了 50%，達到 6820 萬美元。

Moving on to margins. I'll be referring to non-GAAP results unless stated otherwise. Total gross margin was 73% and subscription gross margin was 78.7%. The unit economics of our cloud offering continued to improve, driving another quarter of healthy gross margin despite a continued revenue mix shift to Confluent Cloud. Moving forward, we anticipate total gross margin to fluctuate between 70% and 72%.

繼續討論利潤率。除非另有說明，否則我指的是非 GAAP 結果。總毛利率為 73%，訂閱毛利率為 78.7%。我們的雲產品的單位經濟效益繼續改善，儘管收入組合持續轉向 Confluent Cloud，但又推動了四分之一的健康毛利率。展望未來，我們預計總毛利率將在 70% 至 72% 之間波動。

Turning to profitability and cash flow. Operating margin improved 20 percentage points to negative 21.5%. Through proactive expense management, productivity and efficiency initiatives and a disciplined investment approach, we drove improvement in every category of the P&L, with the most pronounced progress made in sales and marketing, improving 8 percentage points and gross margin improving 5 percentage points.

轉向盈利能力和現金流。營業利潤率提高 20 個百分點至負 21.5%。通過積極的費用管理、生產力和效率舉措以及嚴格的投資方法，我們推動了損益的各個類別的改善，其中銷售和營銷取得了最顯著的進步，提高了 8 個百分點，毛利率提高了 5 個百分點。

Net loss per share was negative $0.09 using 286.7 million basic and diluted weighted average shares outstanding. Free cash flow margin improved 4 percentage points to negative 18.3%. And we ended the fourth quarter with $1.93 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

使用 2.867 億股基本和稀釋加權平均流通股，每股淨虧損為負 0.09 美元。自由現金流利潤率提高 4 個百分點至負 18.3%。第四季度結束時，我們擁有 19.3 億美元的現金、現金等價物和有價證券。

Turning now to the Immerock acquisition. Immerock is a pre-revenue company and we'll be absorbing the company into our engineering team. We closed the acquisition in Q1, and we expect no material impact on our financials in FY '23.

現在轉向對 Immerock 的收購。 Immerock 是一家尚未盈利的公司，我們將把該公司併入我們的工程團隊。我們在第一季度完成了收購，我們預計不會對我們 23 財年的財務狀況產生重大影響。

The additional expenses have been incorporated in our guidance. Looking forward to FY '23. As Jay discussed earlier, we've made a decision to accelerate our path to profitability by 1 year from Q4 '24 to Q4 '23 while resourcing the company to deliver approximately 30% annual revenue growth rate in 2023.

額外費用已包含在我們的指南中。期待 23 財年。正如 Jay 之前討論的那樣，我們已經決定將我們的盈利之路從 24 年第四季度到 23 年第四季度加快 1 年，同時為公司提供資源以在 2023 年實現約 30% 的年收入增長率。

Over the last 2 years, we've made significant and prudent investments in the business as we address our $60 billion market. We've more than doubled our company head count, and we've actively been managing the growth rate of spend, and it has trended down from 68% in FY '21 to 39% in FY '22.

在過去的 2 年裡，我們針對 600 億美元的市場對業務進行了重大而審慎的投資。我們公司的員工人數增加了一倍多，我們一直在積極管理支出增長率，它從 21 財年的 68% 下降到 22 財年的 39%。

And it's expected to go down to approximately 15% in FY '23. We're seeing strong returns on our investments as we continue to grow our market share and extend our product lead with a highly differentiated platform. On the go-to-market side, 50% of our sales reps are now fully ramped, and we expect the mix to be in the range of 55% to 60% exiting this year.

預計在 23 財年將下降至約 15%。隨著我們繼續擴大市場份額並通過高度差異化的平台擴大我們的產品領先地位，我們看到了豐厚的投資回報。在上市方面，我們 50% 的銷售代表現已全面上崗，我們預計今年退出的比例將在 55% 至 60% 之間。

Additionally, compared to last year, we have improved visibility into our FY '23 revenue streams as approximately 60% of revenue comes from current RPO, coupled with the strong growth in $100,000-plus ARR customers, which contribute more than 85% of revenue each quarter.

此外，與去年相比，我們提高了對 23 財年收入流的可見性，因為大約 60% 的收入來自當前的 RPO，加上 100,000 美元以上的 ARR 客戶的強勁增長，每個客戶貢獻了超過 85% 的收入四分之一。

And our NRR remained very healthy, just under 130%, which supports our growth. Given this backdrop, we believe accelerating our path to profitability by 1 year, while continuing to deliver high growth is the optimal decision especially as companies are now operating in an environment of high interest rates and macro uncertainty.

我們的 NRR 保持非常健康，略低於 130%，這支持了我們的增長。鑑於這種背景，我們認為將我們的盈利路徑加速 1 年，同時繼續實現高增長是最佳決策，尤其是當公司目前在高利率和宏觀不確定性的環境中運營時。

Now I'll turn to our outlook. We believe our guidance appropriately incorporates both the macro challenges we see in the market and the impact of budget scrutiny as a new norm, which elongates our deal cycles in all customer accounts across geographies.

現在我將談談我們的前景。我們認為，我們的指導適當地結合了我們在市場上看到的宏觀挑戰和預算審查作為新常態的影響，這延長了我們在所有地區的所有客戶賬戶中的交易週期。

For the first quarter of 2023, we expect revenue to be in the range of $166 million to $168 million, representing growth of 32% to 33%. Confluent Cloud's sequential revenue add to be approximately $5 million. As we expected, there is a decline in sequential add relative to Q4 and is consistent with what we've seen in prior years.

對於 2023 年第一季度，我們預計收入將在 1.66 億美元至 1.68 億美元之間，增長 32% 至 33%。 Confluent Cloud 的環比收入增加約 500 萬美元。正如我們預期的那樣，與第四季度相比，連續添加有所下降，這與我們前幾年看到的情況一致。

Similar to last year, we expect Cloud sequential revenue add to increase every quarter with a more pronounced increase in the second half of the year. Exiting Q4 '23, we expect Cloud to reach the milestone of approximately 50% of total revenue.

與去年類似，我們預計雲連續收入每個季度都會增加，下半年增長更為明顯。在 23 年第四季度結束後，我們預計 Cloud 將達到約佔總收入 50% 的里程碑。

We expect non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately negative 27% and non-GAAP net loss per share to be in the range of negative $0.15 to negative $0.13, using approximately 290 million weighted average shares outstanding.

我們預計非 GAAP 營業利潤率約為負 27%，非 GAAP 每股淨虧損在負 0.15 美元至負 0.13 美元之間，使用約 2.9 億加權平均流通股。

For the full year 2023, we expect revenue to be in the range of $760 million to $765 million, representing growth of 30% to 31%; non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately negative 15% to negative 14%; and non-GAAP net loss per share in the range of negative $0.28 to negative $0.22 using approximately 297 million weighted average shares outstanding.

對於 2023 年全年，我們預計收入將在 7.6 億美元至 7.65 億美元之間，增長 30% 至 31%；非美國通用會計準則營業利潤率約為負 15% 至負 14%；非 GAAP 每股淨虧損在負 0.28 美元至負 0.22 美元之間，使用約 2.97 億加權平均流通股。

As discussed earlier, we're now targeting to exit Q4 2023 with breakeven non-GAAP operating margin. We also expect the timing of breakeven free cash flow margin to roughly mirror that of our operating margin. With the exception of more pronounced seasonality in Q1 of FY '23, primarily due to our corporate bonus program and onetime charges associated with our restructuring.

如前所述，我們現在的目標是在 2023 年第四季度以盈虧平衡的非 GAAP 營業利潤率退出。我們還預計盈虧平衡自由現金流量利潤率的時間將大致反映我們的營業利潤率。除了 23 財年第一季度更明顯的季節性因素外，主要是由於我們的企業獎金計劃和與重組相關的一次性費用。

Finally, we'll continue to actively manage share count and stock dilution. And on an annualized net dilution basis, we're driving net dilution from 4.7% in FY '22 to 3% to 4% for FY '23. Our goal over the long term is to bring that dilution down even further. In closing, we've established a proven track record of delivering on our financial commitments in both stable and uncertain economic environments.

最後，我們將繼續積極管理股票數量和股票稀釋。在年化淨稀釋的基礎上，我們將淨稀釋從 22 財年的 4.7% 提高到 23 財年的 3% 到 4%。我們的長期目標是進一步降低稀釋度。最後，我們已經建立了在穩定和不確定的經濟環境中履行我們的財務承諾的良好記錄。

With our leading data streaming platform and a unique go-to-market model that's showing increased leverage, we believe we're well positioned to capture our large market opportunity ahead. Looking forward, we're confident in our ability to drive another year of high revenue growth as we march towards non-GAAP operating margin breakeven exiting Q4 FY '23.

憑藉我們領先的數據流平台和獨特的上市模式，我們相信我們已經做好準備抓住未來的巨大市場機會。展望未來，隨著我們在 23 財年第四季度實現非 GAAP 營業利潤率盈虧平衡，我們有能力推動又一年的高收入增長。

Now Jay and I will take your questions.

現在傑伊和我將回答你的問題。

(Operator Instructions) And today, our first question will come from Sanjit Singh with Morgan Stanley, followed by William Blair.

（操作員說明）今天，我們的第一個問題將來自 Sanjit Singh 和 Morgan Stanley，然後是 William Blair。

I guess my first question -- and Jay, I think you addressed this in your formal comments just around some of the elongation and sort of the sales cycles that you saw at the end of December. Is there any sort of other patterns that you would sort of call out, whether it's more on the Confluent Cloud side of the house versus Confluent Platform, any sort of market segments, industry segments on that were notably weaker than expected? Or was this kind of more of an across-the-board dynamic around budget scrutiny that you saw on like the deals in Q4?

我想我的第一個問題 - 傑伊，我想你在正式評論中就你在 12 月底看到的一些銷售週期的延長和某種形式提出了這個問題。是否有任何其他類型的模式，你會說出來，無論是在房子的 Confluent Cloud 方面還是在 Confluent Platform 方面，任何類型的細分市場，行業細分市場明顯弱於預期？還是您在第四季度的交易中看到的這種圍繞預算審查的全面動態？

Yes. Sanjit, great question. So yes, the most pronounced thing for us was it seemed to mostly impact the enterprise segment of our business. The commercial segment didn't really feel it. The -- it was across geographies. So previously, I would say it was more pronounced in EMEA and APAC.

是的。 Sanjit，好問題。所以是的，對我們來說最明顯的是它似乎主要影響了我們業務的企業部分。商業部門並沒有真正感受到它。它是跨地域的。所以以前，我會說它在 EMEA 和 APAC 更為明顯。

We also saw an impact in the Americas. So beyond that, it was probably the larger transactions tend to feel, I think, a little more pressure scrutiny, et cetera, kind of as you would expect. So nothing beyond that. I wouldn't say that there's a strong industry pattern, I wouldn't say that there was much beyond that, that would really show it. We were pleased that gross retention was really strong.

我們也看到了對美洲的影響。因此，除此之外，我認為，較大的交易往往會感受到更多的壓力審查等，就像你所期望的那樣。所以除此之外別無他法。我不會說有一個強大的行業格局，我不會說除此之外還有很多，那真的可以證明這一點。我們很高興總保留率非常高。

Yet again, in a difficult environment. We saw no meaningful impact there. But it did slow down some of the expansions as well as some of the new lands.

再一次，在困難的環境中。我們在那裡沒有看到任何有意義的影響。但它確實減緩了一些擴張以及一些新土地。

And then, Steffan, I could just sort of connect some of the dots on the financials. The Confluent Cloud revenue in Q4 was excellent, record quarter for Confluent Cloud revenue. The RPO was certainly weaker. And then when I look into the 2023 guidance, revenue guidance, it only came down, I think, $5 million. You sort of narrowed the range.

然後，Steffan，我可以把財務上的一些點聯繫起來。第四季度的 Confluent Cloud 收入非常出色，創下了 Confluent Cloud 收入的季度記錄。 RPO 肯定更弱。然後當我查看 2023 年的收入指導時，我認為它只下降了 500 萬美元。你有點縮小了範圍。

What gives you confidence that like the revenue is sort of set at sort of the right level, just given some of the dynamics you're seeing out on the macro?

是什麼讓你有信心將收入設定在適當的水平，只是考慮到你在宏觀上看到的一些動態？

Well, we took into consideration our current outlook on the macro, and we really focused on a few things. One is our current RPO exiting Q4 gives us about 60% visibility to our total revenue number in FY '23, which is actually 5 points higher visibility than we had this time last year.

好吧，我們考慮了我們目前對宏觀的看法，我們真正關注的是幾件事。一個是我們目前退出第四季度的 RPO 讓我們對 23 財年的總收入數字有大約 60% 的可見性，這實際上比去年這個時候高出 5 個百分點。

We also have more proportionally sales reps that are fully ramped than are ramping, and we see that growing out throughout the year. And then lastly, we just came off of a quarter where we saw a very robust growth in $100,000-plus customers and $1 million plus customers.

我們也有更多比例的銷售代表完全增加而不是增加，而且我們看到全年都在增長。最後，我們剛剛結束了一個季度，我們看到 100,000 美元以上客戶和 100 萬美元以上客戶的增長非常強勁。

And those cohorts contribute north of 85% of revenues. And so we have the right product for the right market, and we feel like '23 will be a decent setup for us.

這些群體貢獻了超過 85% 的收入。因此，我們為合適的市場提供合適的產品，我們覺得 23 年對我們來說將是一個不錯的設置。

We'll take our next question from Jason Ader with William Blair, followed by Deutsche Bank.

下一個問題是 Jason Ader 和 William Blair，然後是德意志銀行。

Obviously, macro issues are affecting everyone, including you guys. I do want to talk a little bit about sales execution. Larry is leaving. I know some other folks are leaving and then you have this reduction in force. How much has sales execution been a contributing factor here to the performance? And if there are any issues, what are you doing to address those? And I have a quick follow-up.

顯然，宏觀問題正在影響每個人，包括你們。我確實想談談銷售執行。拉里要走了。我知道其他一些人正在離開，然後你的力量就會減少。銷售執行對績效的影響有多大？如果有任何問題，您將如何解決這些問題？我有一個快速的跟進。

Yes. I think the bulk of what we're seeing is a very different macro environment than what we were operating in, call it, whatever, 9 months ago. That obviously reveals opportunities for improvement, but I think the bulk of what's changed is that.

是的。我認為我們所看到的大部分是一個與 9 個月前我們所處的環境截然不同的宏觀環境。這顯然揭示了改進的機會，但我認為大部分改變的是那個。

Okay. And then as a quick follow-up for you, Jay, were you seeing something in deals where it was increasingly clear that you needed a Flink solution?

好的。然後作為對你的快速跟進，傑伊，你是否在交易中看到一些東西，你越來越清楚地需要一個 Flink 解決方案？

Yes. There wasn't anything where it was like preventing us from winning, if that's kind of what you're getting at, where it's like a, we can't land this customer without this. We feel like stream processing is incredibly important to us strategically over the long term.

是的。沒有任何東西可以阻止我們獲勝，如果這就是你想要的，就像一個，沒有這個我們就無法吸引這個客戶。從長遠來看，我們認為流處理在戰略上對我們來說非常重要。

So it wasn't like a defensive move, like, oh, if we don't have this, we're not going to be able to continue growing, based on Kafka. We're not going to be able to continue winning customers. What we felt was, there's an opportunity to go after something that could be as big as Kafka and has a very similar trajectory, has an extremely high attach rate to Kafka itself, and fits into our kind of overall vision.

所以這不像是一種防禦性舉措，比如，哦，如果我們沒有這個，我們將無法基於 Kafka 繼續增長。我們將無法繼續贏得客戶。我們的感覺是，有機會追求像 Kafka 一樣大的東西，並且具有非常相似的軌跡，對 Kafka 本身俱有極高的附加率，並且符合我們的整體願景。

And where we could get really some of the key people who had helped drive it forward as part of the company, and that was kind of too good to pass up even in a tighter environment where we're being thoughtful about each dollar.

在那裡我們真的可以找到一些幫助推動它作為公司的一部分的關鍵人物，這太好了，即使在我們正在考慮每一美元的更嚴格的環境中也不能放棄。

We'll go to Raimo Lenschow with Barclays first, we'll come back to Deutsche.

我們先去巴克萊銀行的 Raimo Lenschow，然後再回到德意志銀行。

Can I follow on there, Jay, a little bit -- like you're all trying to get to the bottom of same-story. If you think about what you're selling, it's very mission-critical, like these are kind of proper projects. You don't do this for fun. But I also (inaudible). What are you seeing in the -- in your conversation with clients about like a -- that need that urgency to do things. And I have one follow-up for Steffan.

傑伊，我可以繼續講下去嗎，傑伊，就像你們都在試圖追根究底一樣。如果你想想你在賣什麼，它是非常關鍵的任務，就像這些是合適的項目一樣。你這樣做不是為了好玩。但我也（聽不清）。你在與客戶的談話中看到了什麼——需要那種緊迫感來做事。我有一份關於 Steffan 的後續報告。

Yes. Yes. I think that one of the things that's really an asset to us in times like that, this is exactly what you said, right? And I think that shows up in the gross retention. I think for us, it's also showed up in the consumption.

是的。是的。我認為在那樣的時代對我們來說真的是一筆財富，這正是你所說的，對吧？我認為這體現在總保留率上。我認為對我們來說，它也體現在消費中。

Like we've seen consumption against commitments to track really well. So the projects are going forward. People are kind of getting the value out of it. But I think each of these projects now gets more scrutiny, and that is a drag on doing business. And it shows up in a bunch of different ways, whether that's pressure on the kind of analysis of TCO and ROI whether it's kind of the shift of projects around within organizations, I think companies are just putting more scrutiny on everything they're doing and that impacts us.

就像我們已經看到消費與承諾的跟踪非常好。因此，這些項目正在進行中。人們正在從中獲取價值。但我認為這些項目中的每一個現在都受到了更多的審查，這對做生意是一種拖累。它以多種不同的方式出現，無論是對 TCO 和 ROI 分析的壓力，還是組織內部項目的轉移，我認為公司只是對他們所做的一切進行更多審查，這影響了我們。

But -- yes, I think it's a huge asset to serve production use cases, which are, in some sense, a direct part of how the company grows, operates, makes more money. And I think that's one of the good things about the streaming area.

但是——是的，我認為為生產用例提供服務是一項巨大的資產，從某種意義上說，這是公司發展、運營和賺更多錢的直接部分。我認為這是流媒體領域的好處之一。

And then 1 quick follow-up on more numbers. So if I think about the -- you kind of moved the profitability goal 1 year forward, which is kind of a big change and it takes a lot of effort from the organization. Can you talk a little bit about the compromises you have to think about there?

然後 1 快速跟進更多數字。因此，如果我考慮 - 你將盈利目標提前了 1 年，這是一個很大的變化，需要組織付出很多努力。你能談談你必須考慮的妥協嗎？

Was that certain growth projects you kind of maybe kind of deemphasize? It doesn't sound like it's the sales force getting impacted. Like, just talk a little bit about like the puts and takes you have to kind of go through to get to that because that's quite a big effort.

您是否有點不重視某些增長項目？聽起來不像是銷售人員受到了影響。就像，只是談論一些你必須經歷的事情，因為這是一個很大的努力。

Yes. Yes. I mean any change like this is a little bit disruptive. And so I think that's the -- probably the biggest impact for us is just making sure that we get off to a fast start at the beginning of the year. We're not so disrupted that, that impacts execution.

是的。是的。我的意思是像這樣的任何變化都會有點破壞性。所以我認為這對我們來說可能是最大的影響就是確保我們在年初快速開始。我們並沒有被打亂到影響執行的程度。

It's obviously also just a harder thing to go through. We felt like, look, after a couple of years of very fast growth, where we kind of roughly doubled headcount in that time period, there was opportunities for efficiency, right? And despite being very thoughtful in planning and where we were deploying resources we thought there was opportunities to get more efficient.

這顯然也是一件更難經歷的事情。我們覺得，看，在經歷了幾年的非常快速的增長之後，我們在那個時期的員工人數大約翻了一番，有提高效率的機會，對吧？儘管我們在規劃和部署資源方面考慮周全，但我們認為有機會提高效率。

So for us, it was kind of a question of how do you do that? Are you going to do it more slowly, kind of in place? Are you going to do it more quickly? As we got, I think, a better read on just, hey, what's the environment for '23, what's the environment overall in tech, what makes sense for us, we feel like it made sense to do it more quickly.

所以對我們來說，這是一個如何做到這一點的問題？你打算慢點做，有點原地嗎？你打算做得更快嗎？我認為，隨著我們得到更好的閱讀，嘿，'23 的環境是什麼，技術的整體環境是什麼，對我們有意義的是什麼，我們覺得更快地做到這一點是有意義的。

And that kind of, I think, shows a little bit of what's possible for the business in terms of efficiency or is at least one good step in that direction. And it seemed like in the environment, it just made sense to do that now.

我認為，這種方式顯示了企業在效率方面的一些可能性，或者至少是朝這個方向邁出的良好一步。看起來在環境中，現在這樣做是有意義的。

And we're also doing it, preserving our ability to drive top line growth, and continue to invest in our innovation engine. And we are able to balance the moves that we made to preserve our long-term sustainable competitive advantage.

我們也在這樣做，保持我們推動收入增長的能力，並繼續投資於我們的創新引擎。我們能夠平衡我們為保持長期可持續競爭優勢而採取的舉措。

Yes, I think that's exactly right. I mean as we went into this, the kind of key analysis is would you have to give up on something that's going to make the company great, whether that's in the development of the product or how we're growing the business, how we're kind of capturing the opportunity. And we felt like we could do it without doing that. And I think that was one of the big things that was necessary for us to act on.

是的，我認為這是完全正確的。我的意思是，當我們進入這個領域時，關鍵分析是你是否必須放棄一些能讓公司變得更好的東西，無論是產品開發還是我們如何發展業務，我們如何“重新抓住機會。我們覺得我們可以不這樣做。我認為這是我們必須採取行動的重要事情之一。

We'll take our next question from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank, followed by Bank of America.

我們將從德意志銀行的 Brad Zelnick 那裡回答下一個問題，然後是美國銀行。

Great. It's nice to see you all. I've got one question for, I guess -- first for you, Jay. Jay, just as we think about the changes that you've made and you've got Larry moving on, what is it that gets you comfortable that there's not risks exiting this year with 55% to 60% sales rep productivity and it might inspire some additional unanticipated turnover? And then I've got a follow-up.

偉大的。很高興見到大家。我想我有一個問題要問——首先是問你，Jay。傑伊，正如我們考慮你所做的改變並且你讓拉里繼續前進一樣，是什麼讓你感到舒服，因為今年沒有風險以 55% 到 60% 的銷售代表生產力退出，它可能會激發靈感一些額外的意外營業額？然後我有一個後續行動。

Yes. I think we continue to have a kind of steady hand running the go-to-market organization. So Erica Shultz has run the larger field organization. Larry reported into her. She previously directly managed the 3 sales theater VPs and is kind of taking them over directly.

是的。我認為我們繼續有一種穩定的方式來管理進入市場的組織。所以 Erica Shultz 負責管理更大的現場組織。拉里向她報告。她之前直接管理 3 位銷售劇院副總裁，並打算直接接管他們。

And so actually, I feel like in a time where there's like a fair amount of macroeconomic uncertainty, that org structure is actually good. You want to have kind of a short path between leadership and what's happening out on the street. So I feel pretty good about that.

所以實際上，我覺得在宏觀經濟存在相當大不確定性的時代，這種組織結構實際上是好的。你希望在領導力和街頭髮生的事情之間有一條捷徑。所以我對此感覺很好。

Okay. That's good enough. And maybe just for you, Steffan, I'm just trying to reconcile Confident Cloud Q1 guidance versus the really strong results that you're coming off of in Q4. Is there any reason to think that consumption was perhaps unusually strong in Q4 in some way that might not repeat? And/or are there any reasons to be more concerned and conservative about consumption rates in Q1?

好的。這已經足夠了。也許只是為了你，Steffan，我只是想調和 Confident Cloud Q1 指導與你在 Q4 中取得的真正強勁結果。是否有任何理由認為第四季度的消費可能以某種可能不會重複的方式異常強勁？和/或是否有任何理由對第一季度的消費率更加關注和保守？

Well, the dynamic that we called out relative to Q4 to Q1, where the net sequential add is lower in Q1 than Q4 is a natural dynamic that happens in consumption models you as look kind of across the board. At companies in our peer group, you see similar fact patterns.

好吧，我們稱之為相對於 Q4 到 Q1 的動態，其中 Q1 的淨順序添加低於 Q4 是消費模型中發生的自然動態，你看起來有點全面。在我們同行組的公司中，您會看到類似的事實模式。

We did see a very strong Q4. It candidly came in higher than we expected, and that goes back to the mission criticality and what we're driving in terms of consumption for our customers and the value that we're driving. When we look at the progression for Cloud throughout the year, we are looking at seeing increased sequential net adds throughout the year post Q1 and for Confluent Cloud on exiting Q4 to be roughly 50% of total revenues.

我們確實看到了非常強勁的第四季度。坦率地說，它比我們預期的要高，這可以追溯到任務關鍵性以及我們在為客戶消費方面所推動的以及我們所推動的價值。當我們查看 Cloud 全年的進展時，我們看到第一季度後全年的連續淨增加增加，而 Confluent Cloud 在第四季度退出時約佔總收入的 50%。

And so we're doing all of that in an environment that is just -- it's just more challenged to do business in. So we've reflected all of that in our guide, both in our total revenue guide and our Cloud guide. And we're adding effectively the same amount of revenue that we did Q1 of last year.

因此，我們在一個環境中完成所有這些工作——在其中開展業務更具挑戰性。因此，我們在我們的指南中反映了所有這些內容，包括我們的總收入指南和我們的雲指南。我們實際上增加了與去年第一季度相同的收入。

In Q1 of last year, that environment was a lot different than where Q1 of this year is. So nothing to be like concerned about. We're looking at incredibly high growth rates for Confluent Cloud for the year, and that continues to show continue -- that to show up in our numbers.

去年第一季度，這種環境與今年第一季度有很大不同。所以沒什麼好擔心的。我們正在尋找今年 Confluent Cloud 令人難以置信的高增長率，並且繼續顯示繼續 - 這將顯示在我們的數字中。

And just to pile on that. One of the aspects -- we talked about this last year when we were in Q1. One of the aspects that leads to this is just the kind of life cycle of software projects, they tend to get funded at whatever the company's beginning of the year is and developed and then kind of roll out.

並以此為基礎。其中一個方面——我們去年在第一季度談到了這個問題。導致這種情況的一個方面就是軟件項目的生命週期，他們往往會在公司年初的任何時候獲得資金並開發然後推出。

And so obviously, there's expansion and consumption happening throughout the year, but it is more things -- more new things come out in, call it, whatever, Q3, and then a little bit less at the beginning of the year as kind of the new things are getting built.

很明顯，全年都在發生擴張和消費，但更多的是——更多的新事物出現，不管怎麼說，第三季度，然後在年初的時候會少一點，因為新事物正在建立。

And so you would see this, I think, for like a MongoDB and some other companies as well, where it has a little bit of that patten.

所以你會看到這一點，我認為，對於像 MongoDB 和其他一些公司來說，它也有一點這種模式。

We'll take our next question from Brad Sills with Bank of America, followed by Piper Sandler.

我們將接受來自美國銀行的 Brad Sills 的下一個問題，然後是 Piper Sandler。

Great. Good to see you all. Question for you, Jay, or Steffan, on just investment priorities. Obviously, you're saying that this reduction will not affect those strategic investment areas. I think at the Analyst Day, you had outlined security, data compliance, enterprise -- just any update on those cycles? What -- how does this change that at all? Or are those still very much the focus areas?

偉大的。很高興見到你們。 Jay 或 Steffan 就投資優先事項向您提問。顯然，你是說這種減少不會影響那些戰略投資領域。我認為在分析師日，您概述了安全性、數據合規性、企業——這些週期的任何更新？什麼——這到底是如何改變的？或者那些仍然是重點領域？

Yes, absolutely. So like on the product development side, there's no change. There wasn't a big product area that we cut or stopped developing. We're able to maintain the major investments that we had with what we planned for this year and those cuts taken into account.

是的，一點沒錯。所以就像在產品開發方面一樣，沒有變化。我們沒有削減或停止開發的大產品領域。我們能夠維持我們今年計劃的主要投資，並將這些削減考慮在內。

This did cut across different areas of the company and there's a number of factors that were included in kind of making cuts. But our priority, as I said, was kind of really making sure that we had full funding for what we consider the kind of key strategic priorities, both on the product side and on the go-to-market side.

這確實跨越了公司的不同領域，並且有許多因素被包括在某種程度上的削減中。但正如我所說，我們的首要任務是真正確保我們為我們認為的關鍵戰略優先事項提供充足的資金，無論是在產品方面還是在上市方面。

And in terms of markets we wanted to get into, with that we wanted to drive growth both for this year but also for setting ourselves up coming into next year and beyond. So -- yes, no major change.

就我們想要進入的市場而言，我們既希望推動今年的增長，也希望為明年及以後的發展做好準備。所以 - 是的，沒有重大變化。

Understood. No, that's great. And then one on Confluent Cloud please. Exiting the year at 50%, just a tremendous trajectory. I think in fiscal '20, you exited the year at 15%. So just a remarkable result there on the Cloud. If you could just articulate for us why have you seen such success in the Cloud?

明白了。不，那太好了。然後請在 Confluent Cloud 上發布一個。今年以 50% 的成績結束，這是一個巨大的軌跡。我認為在 20 財年，你以 15% 的速度退出了這一年。因此，在雲上取得了顯著的成果。如果您能為我們闡明為什麼您在雲中看到如此成功？

What is it about Confluent Cloud versus, say, other categories where we've seen perhaps a slower ramp in public cloud infrastructure and these types of mission-critical workloads that you guys are supporting?

Confluent Cloud 與我們看到的公共雲基礎設施和你們支持的這些類型的關鍵任務工作負載的其他類別相比有何不同？

Yes. I think that one of the things that's easy to miss is how high the bar is for a cloud product. And so if you look at our investment, you would have seen a similar pattern where you're like, hey, they're putting a lot of work into this thing, and it's driving some small portion and we're doing that for many, many years.

是的。我認為很容易忽略的一件事是雲產品的門檻有多高。所以如果你看看我們的投資，你會看到類似的模式，嘿，他們在這件事上投入了大量的工作，它推動了一小部分，我們正在為很多人做這件事， 很多年。

And the reason for that is that this kind of cloud infrastructure, like a lot of the iceberg is below the water. And until you kind of meet certain minimum criteria in terms of security and scalability and operations and availability in different clouds around the world, it's just very hard to capture the market.

原因是這種雲基礎設施，就像很多冰山一樣，都在水下。除非您在全球不同雲中的安全性和可擴展性以及運營和可用性方面滿足某些最低標準，否則很難佔領市場。

And so coming into an area that's a big wall to climb, once you're on the other side of the wall, then it protects you, I think, from competition to make them up and want to do the same thing. So I think it's been a great thing for us.

所以進入一個需要攀登的大牆的區域，一旦你在牆的另一邊，我認為它會保護你免受競爭來彌補他們並想做同樣的事情。所以我認為這對我們來說是一件好事。

But yes, it was, I think, just kind of reaching that critical threshold. And then in terms of how we operated that led to that, I would say it was mostly just full commitment, like we myself, some of the other people who founded the company or joined earlier had a background in running kind of data systems internally as a service.

但是，是的，我認為，它只是達到了那個臨界閾值。然後就我們如何運作導致這一點而言，我想說這主要是完全的承諾，就像我們自己一樣，其他一些創立公司或較早加入的人具有在內部運行某種數據系統的背景一項服務。

And we just kind of knew that, that was going to be the model in the public cloud that there was no future for licensed software as the delivery model once people have access to these kind of cloud services. So we knew it was kind of do or die on the conversion.

我們只是知道，一旦人們可以訪問此類雲服務，這將成為公共雲中的模型，即授權軟件作為交付模型沒有未來。所以我們知道這在轉換上是一種生死攸關的事情。

And so we leaned in early on in a very significant way where really the whole engineering team moved to that. Every cloud metric was kind of elevated in importance to match a much larger number on the software side of the business and really kind of held to that internally, even though we're really pushing one part of the business up.

因此，我們很早就以一種非常重要的方式傾斜，整個工程團隊都轉向了這一點。每個雲指標的重要性都有所提升，以匹配業務軟件方面的更大數量，並且在內部確實保持這一點，即使我們確實在推動業務的一部分。

And I think that was necessary early on. It's very hard to get what's effectively a very different product going in an early company because you have to effectively build 2 successful products. So I think that helped us kind of get it to that whatever escape velocity where it could then kind of grow and capture a lot of the opportunity that was, I think, always there for folks operating in the cloud.

我認為這在早期是必要的。在一家早期的公司中，很難讓一個非常不同的產品有效地運行，因為你必須有效地構建 2 個成功的產品。因此，我認為這有助於我們達到任何逃逸速度，然後它可以增長並抓住很多機會，我認為，對於在雲中操作的人們來說，這種機會總是存在的。

We'll take our next question from Rob Owens with Piper Sandler, followed by Guggenheim.

我們將從 Rob Owens 和 Piper Sandler 提出下一個問題，然後是 Guggenheim。

Obviously, seeing pressure worldwide here, but just curious if there was anything unique to call out positive or negative from the various theaters that you're participating in?

顯然，在這裡看到了世界範圍內的壓力，但只是好奇是否有任何獨特的東西可以從您參與的各個劇院中發出正面或負面的聲音？

Yes. It's mostly what I described. The biggest unexpected thing for us has been just the continued strength for us at the commercial business. We kind of ascribe that to the fact that we think we're just still severely underpenetrated in that segment.

是的。這主要是我所描述的。對我們來說，最出乎意料的事情就是我們在商業業務方面的持續實力。我們將其歸因於我們認為我們在該領域的滲透率仍然嚴重不足的事實。

So even though I think they are also feeling lots of pressure, there's just lots of opportunities. And I think it also has a very good product market fit with our cloud offering. And so it's been nice to see that continue to grow because it was a part of the business we were very excited about coming into this year, and it's nice to see its continued growth.

所以儘管我認為他們也感受到了很大的壓力，但也有很多機會。而且我認為它也有一個非常適合我們的雲產品的產品市場。所以很高興看到它繼續增長，因為它是我們今年非常興奮的業務的一部分，很高興看到它的持續增長。

But beyond that, yes, it was across different industries that we saw pressure. We were pleased to see that, like, by and large, we're not losing deals. They're delayed, they go through more scrutiny, they may slip out of the quarter, but a lot of the things that we saw delayed in previous quarters did close, either in Q4 or in the first part of Q1. And so we've been excited to see that. It just exerts pressure.

但除此之外，是的，我們看到了來自不同行業的壓力。我們很高興看到，總的來說，我們沒有失去交易。他們被推遲了，他們接受了更多的審查，他們可能會退出本季度，但我們在前幾個季度看到的很多被推遲的事情確實在第四季度或第一季度的第一部分結束了。所以我們很高興看到這一點。它只是施加壓力。

Great. And then, Jay, I know entering COVID, you saw a few customers actually revert back to an open source solution and then come back to Confluent. And in your prepared remarks, you talked about it requiring heavy DevOps resourcing.

偉大的。然後，Jay，我知道進入 COVID，你看到一些客戶實際上恢復到開源解決方案，然後又回到 Confluent。在您準備好的發言中，您談到它需要大量的 DevOps 資源。

So as we're seeing the global recession happen, are you seeing customers actually choose open source as a viable alternative at this point? Or is that kind of past behavior more so in the past?

因此，當我們看到全球經濟衰退發生時，您是否看到客戶此時實際上選擇開源作為可行的替代方案？還是過去的那種行為更是如此？

Yes. It's past behavior. So we've been -- that was a concern many people had. And the feeling was, "Hey, it must be cheaper just to use the open source." But one of the really important things to understand about this area is these cloud services are not like a premium offering of the open source. It is actually more expensive to hire a team of engineers to operate this stuff. It's more expensive in terms of people. It's more expensive in terms of cloud infrastructure. It takes longer. It's just more.

是的。這是過去的行為。所以我們一直 - 這是許多人的擔憂。感覺是，“嘿，使用開源一定更便宜。”但了解這一領域的真正重要的事情之一是這些雲服務不像開源的高級產品。僱一個工程師團隊來操作這些東西實際上更昂貴。就人而言，它更昂貴。它在雲基礎設施方面更昂貴。這需要更長的時間。只是更多。

And so for that reason, once you have a really good cloud offering, it's not very appealing to downgrade unless for whatever reason the customer is not like actually succeeded with it or somehow not getting the value. But just based on the kind of basic TCO of the 2 things, it should be a big win. And we've been pleased to see that actually play out in practice.

因此，出於這個原因，一旦您擁有非常好的雲產品，降級就不是很有吸引力，除非出於某種原因，客戶並不喜歡真正成功或以某種方式沒有獲得價值。但僅僅基於這兩種東西的基本 TCO，它應該是一個巨大的勝利。我們很高興看到這在實踐中真正發揮了作用。

That was the theory early on as we had, I think, a pretty immature cloud offering, we didn't always see that. We did see some customer losses earlier as there was pressure. We felt like we were in a very different situation as we were kind of coming into harder times this year.

這是我們早期的理論，我認為，一個非常不成熟的雲產品，我們並不總是看到這一點。由於存在壓力，我們確實在早些時候看到了一些客戶流失。我們覺得我們處在一個非常不同的境地，因為我們今年有點困難。

And we were -- we talked about that on these calls, but it's been nice to see that play out that we haven't seen the kind of churns at all of the same magnitude. And in fact, gross retention has held very steady throughout this.

我們是——我們在這些電話中談到了這一點，但很高興看到我們沒有看到同樣嚴重的那種流失。事實上，總保留率在整個過程中一直保持穩定。

We'll take our next question from Howard Ma with Guggenheim, followed by Cowen.

我們將從古根海姆的霍華德馬那裡接受我們的下一個問題，然後是考恩。

So my question is for -- it's for either Jay or Steffan. And it's a clarifying question about, Jay, a comment that you made in your prepared remarks about near-term spend rationalization not impacting Confluent's long-term growth opportunity.

所以我的問題是——它是給 Jay 或 Steffan 的。這是一個澄清的問題，Jay，你在你準備好的關於近期支出合理化不會影響 Confluent 的長期增長機會的評論中發表的評論。

Because it seems like -- so Cloud is holding strong. And in your response to an earlier question, you said rationalization, it was really about optimizing operational efficiencies that I do identify but not necessarily impacting growth. So despite the pull forward profit target, is your baseline growth assumption over the midterm now, is it necessarily lower than before?

因為它看起來像 - 所以 Cloud 很強大。在你回答之前的問題時，你說合理化，這實際上是關於優化我確實確定但不一定影響增長的運營效率。因此，儘管有前瞻性的利潤目標，但您現在中期的基線增長假設是否一定比以前低？

Or could there still be a scenario where your midterm growth expectations are unchanged, but you just figure out how to do it more profitably?

或者仍然會出現這樣一種情況，即您的中期增長預期沒有改變，但您只是想出如何更有利可圖地做到這一點？

I definitely think that there's an aspect of us just figuring out how to do things more efficiently and willingness to make adjustments faster in that respect. There's obviously areas where there's trade-offs. And so -- nothing in life is free.

我絕對認為我們有一個方面正在弄清楚如何更有效地做事，並願意在這方面更快地做出調整。很明顯，有些地方需要權衡取捨。所以——生活中沒有什麼是免費的。

But -- like, yes, we felt that we were able to make this change without significantly changing. Now I would say, look, there is something impacting growth, which is -- we are in a macroeconomic environment that's very different from a year ago, and that's a headwind.

但是 - 就像，是的，我們覺得我們能夠在不進行重大更改的情況下進行此更改。現在我想說，看，有一些因素影響了增長，那就是——我們所處的宏觀經濟環境與一年前截然不同，這是一個逆風。

And so I think when we were considering what we were going to do on the expense side, we were taking into account that we were going to be facing this headwind and likely growing slower than we would be if that was not the environment that we were operating in.

所以我認為，當我們考慮在費用方面要做什麼時，我們考慮到我們將面臨這種逆風，並且如果不是我們所處的環境，我們的增長速度可能會比現在慢經營於。

Okay. And I just have a quick follow-up for Steffan. On the Platform side, Steffan, I forget if you mentioned this in your prepared remarks, but if -- or I might have missed it. But was there any notable change in contract duration on the Platform side that resulted in lesser license revenue recognition than in prior quarters? And also, is there any migration from the Platform to Cloud that's worth calling out?

好的。我只是對 Steffan 進行了快速跟進。在平台方面，Steffan，我忘記了你是否在準備好的發言中提到了這一點，但如果——或者我可能錯過了。但是，平台方面的合同期限是否有任何顯著變化導致許可收入確認低於前幾個季度？而且，是否有任何值得呼籲的從平台到雲的遷移？

Thanks, Howard. There was no material change in contract duration. But what you're seeing drive the change in license revenue is really the profile of new ACV that's coming in the door. And the new ACV is Confluent Cloud. It was very, very healthy this quarter. And we saw just less new platform deals come in because as the industry is all heading towards cloud.

謝謝，霍華德。合同期限沒有重大變化。但你所看到的推動許可收入變化的實際上是即將推出的新 ACV 的概況。新的 ACV 是 Confluent Cloud。這個季度非常非常健康。我們看到新的平台交易越來越少，因為整個行業都在走向雲。

With that said, Confluent Platform is still an important part of our portfolio. And we're going to continue to see contribution from Platform, but it's really about -- like, Cloud is the story here. And even going back to a prior comment that was made, even in a tougher macro environment, we just came off of a quarter where we posted record Cloud sequential growth.

儘管如此，Confluent Platform 仍然是我們產品組合的重要組成部分。我們將繼續看到來自 Platform 的貢獻，但它真的是——就像，Cloud 就是這裡的故事。甚至回到之前的評論，即使在更艱難的宏觀環境中，我們也剛剛結束了一個季度，我們發布了創紀錄的雲連續增長。

And we're calling for very meaningful Cloud expansion over 2023. And that goes back to the testament of the value that we're delivering in our Confluent Cloud model.

我們呼籲在 2023 年進行非常有意義的雲擴展。這可以追溯到我們在 Confluent Cloud 模型中提供的價值的證明。

We'll take our next question from Derrick Wood with Cowen, followed by Wells Fargo.

我們將從 Derrick Wood 和 Cowen 那裡回答下一個問題，然後是 Wells Fargo。

Great. I guess, first, Jay, I wanted to touch on the Immerock acquisition. What does Flink excel at that improves upon the capabilities of Kafka streams or ksqlDB? And how should we think about maybe the R&D shift as you bring Apache Flink in? Are there some technologies that you'll look to deemphasize going forward? Or what's the balance across the stream processing technologies that you have?

偉大的。我想，首先，Jay，我想談談對 Immerock 的收購。 Flink 在 Kafka 流或 ksqlDB 的功能上有哪些優勢？當您引入 Apache Flink 時，我們應該如何考慮研發轉變？是否有一些您希望在未來不再強調的技術？或者您擁有的流處理技術之間的平衡是什麼？

Yes. Yes, it's a great question. So -- yes, Kafka Streams is effectively -- it's kind of an application development library that helps you do stream processing with Kafka. So it's very easy to use in embedded applications. It tends to serve more kind of micro service use cases.

是的。是的，這是一個很好的問題。所以 - 是的，Kafka Streams 是有效的 - 它是一種應用程序開發庫，可幫助您使用 Kafka 進行流處理。所以在嵌入式應用中使用起來非常方便。它傾向於服務更多種類的微服務用例。

What Flink brings to the table is, I think, really the most complete, well-thought-out framework for stream processing, it generalizes batch processing with real-time streaming. So you can kind of run thing, something at a point in time and then have it keep running up into the future. It supports a variety of programming languages, so Python, Java, SQL.

我認為，Flink 帶來的是真正最完整、最深思熟慮的流處理框架，它用實時流概括了批處理。所以你可以在某個時間點運行一些東西，然後讓它一直運行到未來。它支持多種編程語言，如Python、Java、SQL。

It has probably the best scalability and performance. It has, I think, the most active community. So there's really a whole set of things that have brought together including the sophistication of the types of processing and applications it supports. And all of that together made us feel like, yes, this really does add beyond what we were able to do with Kafka Streams and ksql and is kind of worth the investment. It doesn't change our support for those technologies. As with any cloud service, we'll continue to help customers with those really indefinitely.

它可能具有最好的可擴展性和性能。我認為它擁有最活躍的社區。所以確實有一整套東西匯集在一起，包括複雜的處理類型和它支持的應用程序。所有這些加起來讓我們覺得，是的，這確實增加了我們使用 Kafka Streams 和 ksql 所能做的事情之外，值得投資。它不會改變我們對這些技術的支持。與任何云服務一樣，我們將繼續無限期地幫助客戶解決這些問題。

And Kafka Streams, in particular, has a nice kind of area as an embedded library for customers. But we do see this as very much the future of stream processing and kind of the technology of choice for customers over time.

尤其是 Kafka Streams，它有一個很好的區域作為客戶的嵌入式庫。但我們確實認為這是流處理的未來，也是客戶隨著時間的推移選擇的技術。

Got it. Very helpful. A couple of quick ones for you, Steffan. On the restructuring side, can you just give us a sense as to where the cuts are coming from? And in particular, I guess, it would be nice to know kind of like post restructuring, what kind of growth you have in quota-carrying sales headcount kind of year-over-year and how you're thinking about -- given the longer sales cycle, how you're thinking about the glide path for net revenue retention in 2023?

知道了。非常有幫助。 Steffan，給你幾個快速的。在重組方面，您能告訴我們削減的來源嗎？特別是，我想，很高興知道有點像重組後的情況，你在配額銷售人數方面有什麼樣的同比增長，以及你是如何考慮的 - 考慮到更長的時間銷售週期，您如何看待 2023 年淨收入保留的下滑路徑？

Well, the restructuring was done with the lens of preserving our ability to continue to grow in high-growth mode and really getting to the efficiencies that we think that we can get to. And so what does that mean?

好吧，重組的目的是保持我們在高增長模式下繼續增長的能力，並真正達到我們認為可以達到的效率。那麼這是什麼意思呢？

We're looking at -- in sales and marketing, we did have, from a headcount standpoint, the most impact there. But those are primarily like non-quota-carrying folks. We also took a look at G&A and then lastly, I would say, R&D. But we were very much focused on ensuring that all of the decisions we made were in the preservation of us continuing to have high growth with improving profitability and efficiency.

我們正在研究 - 在銷售和營銷方面，從員工人數的角度來看，我們確實在那裡產生了最大的影響。但那些主要是像非配額攜帶的人。我們還查看了 G&A，最後，我想說的是 R&D。但我們非常專注於確保我們做出的所有決定都是為了保護我們繼續保持高速增長，同時提高盈利能力和效率。

And one of the things that we mentioned earlier was -- if you look at the last couple of years, we have made very meaningful investments across the board in support of us growing into what is a very meaningful company in a very large market. And there's always an opportunity to rationalize and get more efficient. So the theme that we have this year is efficient and profitable growth, and that's what we're driving towards. I'm sorry, what were the other couple of questions?

我們之前提到的一件事是——如果你看看過去幾年，我們已經進行了非常有意義的全面投資，以支持我們在一個非常大的市場中成長為一家非常有意義的公司。並且總是有機會合理化並提高效率。因此，我們今年的主題是高效和盈利的增長，這就是我們正在努力實現的目標。抱歉，其他幾個問題是什麼？

Just the other one was the glide path of net revenue retention rate as we see longer sales cycles continue?

另一個是隨著我們看到更長的銷售週期繼續下去，淨收入保留率的下滑路徑？

Yes. So our net retention rate this quarter came in just a shade below 130%. We gave a little bit of color commentary that Confluent Cloud and our hybrid customers were north of 130%. We continue to see very strong progress with those 2 products and customer sets. As we think about the glide path over time, we're very clear about being above 125% from a total company standpoint and also looking at just higher net retention rates for our cloud and our hybrid customers as that's like where the puck is going.

是的。因此，本季度我們的淨保留率略低於 130%。我們給出了一些顏色評論，Confluent Cloud 和我們的混合客戶超過 130%。我們繼續看到這兩種產品和客戶群取得了非常強勁的進展。當我們考慮隨著時間推移的下滑路徑時，我們非常清楚從整個公司的角度來看超過 125%，並且我們的雲和混合客戶的淨保留率也更高，因為這就像冰球的去向。

We will go to Pinjalim Bora with JPMorgan first.

我們將首先與摩根大通一起去Pinjalim Bora。

Two quick ones. Maybe update us on just the customer behavior going into January so far towards the end of January. Is it deteriorating? And it's kind of stable? You did mention you have closed a few deals, so I was just wondering.

兩個快的。也許在 1 月底之前向我們更新 1 月份的客戶行為。它在惡化嗎？它有點穩定？你確實提到你已經完成了幾筆交易，所以我只是想知道。

Yes. Yes. I would say the results in January so far have been in line with the kind of plan we put together for the quarter and guidance. So we've been pleased to see that play out as we hoped.

是的。是的。我想說到目前為止，1 月份的結果與我們為本季度和指導制定的計劃一致。因此，我們很高興看到這一切如我們所願。

Got it. And great to see the acceleration to get to breakeven. I wanted to ask -- I think I was doing the math was about $55 million in terms of cost coming down, I believe. I was trying to understand how much of that is driven by the RIF, how much of that is kind of optimization of discretionary spend that you talked about, how much of that is kind of real estate. I would think that real estate optimization probably will take time. So trying to understand those mix. And then, I guess, how should we think of that profitability going forward?

知道了。很高興看到加速實現收支平衡。我想問——我認為我在計算成本下降大約 5500 萬美元，我相信。我試圖了解其中有多少是由 RIF 驅動的，其中有多少是您談到的可自由支配支出的優化，其中有多少是房地產。我認為房地產優化可能需要時間。所以試圖了解這些組合。然後，我想，我們應該如何看待未來的盈利能力？

Yes. Yes. So it's definitely a mixture of all those things. We haven't broken out exactly how much is due to each thing. But -- yes, absolutely, we're kind of optimizing real estate footprint. Just kind of post COVID, we have a better of what we actually need.

是的。是的。所以它絕對是所有這些東西的混合體。我們還沒有具體說明每件事有多少。但是 - 是的，絕對是，我們正在優化房地產足跡。只是一種後 COVID，我們有更好的我們實際需要的東西。

We had already a plan for the year prior to this action that would have shown very meaningful operating margin improvement. And so then this is kind of added on top of that, which is kind of what lets us make big improvements. And if you look at this last year, we had about 20 points of improvement over the last 12 months from Q4 to Q4 in non-GAAP operating margin.

在採取這一行動之前，我們已經制定了一年的計劃，該計劃將顯示出非常有意義的營業利潤率改善。因此，這是在此基礎上添加的，這使我們能夠做出重大改進。如果你看看去年的情況，在過去 12 個月中，我們的非 GAAP 營業利潤率從第四季度到第四季度提高了大約 20 個百分點。

And so this is kind of roughly that again between the RIF and the existing improvements and the additional growth in revenue.

因此，這在 RIF 與現有改進和收入額外增長之間大致相同。

(Operator Instructions) And our next question goes to Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs.

（操作員說明）我們的下一個問題是高盛的 Kash Rangan。

Somewhat static here. Nice to see you guys, Jay, Steffan and Shane. Question for you. When you look at Flink, Jay, for you, how much work needs to be done to Flink to make it as solid as -- in terms of research and development, product development came pretty -- as a core platform is taking so many years to come to shape.

這裡有點靜態。很高興見到你們，Jay、Steffan 和 Shane。給你的問題。當你看 Flink 時，Jay，對你來說，Flink 需要做多少工作才能使它像——在研發方面，產品開發很漂亮——作為一個核心平台需要這麼多年成形。

What is the path ahead for Flink? And when you said Flink could be as large as Kafka, I'm curious to see if there's any pent-up demand that customers have been asking for. I know you highlighted a few customers, including us. What are they saying that you could do better with Flink that could cause them to allocate bigger budgets? And I have one for Steffan.

Flink 未來的路在何方？當你說 Flink 可以和 Kafka 一樣大時，我很好奇是否有客戶一直要求的任何被壓抑的需求。我知道您強調了一些客戶，包括我們。他們說你可以用 Flink 做得更好，這可能會導致他們分配更多的預算？我有一個給斯特凡。

Yes. Yes, there's a couple of things there. I mean, I -- Flink, the technology, I think, is in good shape. It's a successful piece of technology that's in, right? To turn it into a managed cloud service is a ton of work. It's just a huge amount of work.

是的。是的，那裡有幾件事。我的意思是，我認為 Flink 技術狀態良好。這是一項成功的技術，對吧？將其轉變為託管雲服務需要大量工作。這只是一個巨大的工作量。

That's something we'll work on for many years, right? And so we'll release a product, but there'll be more and more to do. That kind of cloud-native bucket that we talk about for the rest of our offering, it's a big bucket. It really matters to customers. And so -- yes, there'll be ongoing work in that dimension in the years to come. That's one of the reasons why it's really important to have these core people who are driving that technology forward.

這是我們會努力很多年的事情，對吧？因此，我們將發布一個產品，但要做的事情會越來越多。我們在其餘產品中談論的那種雲原生存儲桶，它是一個大存儲桶。這對客戶來說真的很重要。所以 - 是的，未來幾年將在該方面進行持續的工作。這就是為什麼擁有這些推動該技術向前發展的核心人員非常重要的原因之一。

It's not just a matter of kind of getting the open source and putting it on some servers, which we wouldn't need an acquisition to do. You need to really kind of reimagine the technology as a cloud service and how would -- what -- how should that work? What would that be like? That's what kind of creates the good product.

這不僅僅是獲得開源並將其放在某些服務器上的問題，我們不需要通過收購來做到這一點。你真的需要將這項技術重新想像成一種雲服務，以及它應該如何——什麼——如何運作？那會是什麼樣的呢？這就是創造好產品的方式。

And then in terms of -- yes, what -- the reception from customers has been fantastic. People are very excited about Flink. They're very excited about Confluent. They're very excited about the pairing together. For many of our customers, they were already using Flink with Confluent. And so -- yes, absolutely, people are excited.

然後就——是的，什麼——客戶的反響非常好。人們對 Flink 非常興奮。他們對 Confluent 感到非常興奮。他們對這次配對感到非常興奮。對於我們的許多客戶，他們已經在使用 Flink 和 Confluent。所以——是的，當然，人們很興奮。

Some people are like, "What took you so long?" So yes, it's great to hear. We think that there is -- as with Kafka, there is a substantial existing installed base. And in an environment like this where there's some pressure and there's less kind of net new software projects overall coming out, having that existing installed base to grow into is obviously a really nice second dimension of growth beyond just kind of landing with the new things.

有些人就像，“你怎麼花了這麼長時間？”所以是的，很高興聽到。我們認為，與 Kafka 一樣，現有大量安裝基礎。在這樣一個存在一些壓力並且總體上出現的淨新軟件項目較少的環境中，擁有現有的安裝基礎顯然是一個非常好的第二個增長維度，而不僅僅是新事物的落地。

Got it. One for you, Steffan. Well, how do you look at the -- given the headcount reductions, how do you think about cost of customer acquisition, lifetime value? It looks at the commercial business did well, Cloud is definitely inflecting away from the platform. Given all that, how should we look at those metrics? Are they getting better or about the same pre-cloud?

知道了。一個給你，斯特凡。那麼，你如何看待 - 鑑於裁員，你如何看待客戶獲取成本，終身價值？看起來商業業務做得很好，雲肯定正在遠離平台。鑑於所有這些，我們應該如何看待這些指標？他們是在變好還是在雲前一樣？

Yes, thanks for the question, Kash. As we look through 2023 and beyond, as more of our business is coming from Cloud and there's the self-serve option or onboarding, et cetera, our LTV to CAC should be improving over time.

是的，謝謝你的問題，卡什。展望 2023 年及以後，隨著我們越來越多的業務來自云，並且有自助服務選項或入職等，我們的 LTV 到 CAC 應該會隨著時間的推移而改善。

And we've made some progress this year, the year that just ended in terms of optimization. But when we look at LTV to CAC over the longer term, we see that improving on an annual basis. And that's a reflection of both the restructuring that we're doing, but then also the profile of the revenue streams that are coming in that are just a lower cost of customer acquisition.

今年我們在優化方面取得了一些進展，這一年剛剛結束。但是，當我們從長期來看 LTV 到 CAC 時，我們會發現這種情況每年都在改善。這既反映了我們正在進行的重組，也反映了即將到來的收入流的概況，這只是較低的客戶獲取成本。

Our last 2 questions today come from Eric at KeyBanc, first, followed by Fred at Credit Suisse.

我們今天的最後兩個問題首先來自 KeyBanc 的埃里克，然後是瑞士信貸的弗雷德。

Jay, this is for you. I wanted to get your thoughts on kind of how you keep that net expansion rate pretty strong in that 130% range going forward. Just given what is kind of a more technical sales as you kind of evaluate kind of the lower workforce going forward? Just how do you keep customers keep expanding at this pretty impressive rate while also trying to balance that profitability?

傑伊，這是給你的。我想了解一下您如何在未來 130% 的範圍內保持淨擴張率相當強勁。考慮到在您評估未來的低層勞動力時，什麼是更具技術性的銷售？您如何讓客戶以這種令人印象深刻的速度不斷擴張，同時還要努力平衡盈利能力？

Yes. I think there's a number of things that go into that. One is just we have a consumption model. So it's very possible for customers to use either other parts of the product or use the product for new uses, and making that as easy and frictionless as possible.

是的。我認為這涉及到很多事情。一個是我們有一個消費模型。因此，客戶很可能會使用產品的其他部分或將產品用於新用途，並儘可能輕鬆無摩擦。

There's a lot we can do and are doing to continue to drive that, making sure that, that folds well into the motion that the sales team has. We're actually at our sales kickoff event right now. And that's one of the big focuses for us is making sure people understand how to play well with that consumption motion, how the product help drive them into new use cases helped drive that expansion.

我們可以做很多事情並且正在做很多事情來繼續推動這一點，確保它很好地融入銷售團隊的行動中。我們現在實際上正在參加我們的銷售啟動活動。對我們來說，重點之一是確保人們了解如何很好地應對這種消費行為，產品如何幫助推動他們進入新的用例，從而推動這種擴張。

I think it's a huge area of opportunity for us and then making sure that we have the right use cases, that we have the right senior connections and organizations that kind of blessing is critical to really get broad in organizations and get to larger dollar spend in organizations.

我認為這對我們來說是一個巨大的機會領域，然後確保我們有正確的用例，我們有正確的高級聯繫和組織，這種祝福對於真正擴大組織範圍並獲得更大的美元支出至關重要組織。

Especially in this environment, people need to know what it's for. And then we're coupling that with this -- we've really gotten very good in the last year, and I think getting better still at the kind of TCO and ROI story. What is it that you're getting out of this?

尤其是在這種環境下，人們需要知道它是乾什麼用的。然後我們將其與此結合起來——我們在去年確實變得非常好，而且我認為在 TCO 和 ROI 方面仍然做得更好。你從中得到了什麼？

I think all of that helps you kind of continue to expand in an account in a way that the customer feels good about and wants to accelerate rather than something that they see as a problem that has to be solved.

我認為所有這些都可以幫助您以客戶感覺良好並希望加速的方式繼續擴展帳戶，而不是他們認為必須解決的問題。

Our last question goes to Fred Lee with Credit Suisse.

我們的最後一個問題是瑞士信貸的 Fred Lee。

Listen, my question is also on the pull forward of profitability. And big picture, considering how early we are in streaming, what gives you have the confidence that you're addressing the market as completely as possible, not compromising any growth prospects? I know you've touched on this a little bit, but it sounds like you're reducing some sales and marketing coverage.

聽著，我的問題也是關於盈利能力的提升。總體而言，考慮到我們在流媒體領域的發展有多早，是什麼讓您有信心盡可能完整地應對市場，而不損害任何增長前景？我知道您已經稍微談到了這一點，但聽起來您正在減少一些銷售和營銷覆蓋面。

Is this because if you think back to the [GSE] and you ask software companies then back coming out of 2008, the most they talk about the fact that they slowed down their investment. So again, the question is just around your confidence level that this is the right thing to do.

這是因為如果你回想一下 [GSE] 並且你問軟件公司然後回到 2008 年，他們談論最多的是他們放慢了他們的投資。再次重申，問題在於您對這是正確做法的信心程度。

Yes. What gave us confidence was just looking at it project by project and investment by investment in a very thorough way. And having, I think, a very clear picture of what we want the company to be in a year, but also in 3 years and 5 years and making sure we can solve for that. Then we have enough people to go do it. I think you could look at this the other way.

是的。給我們信心的只是以非常徹底的方式逐個項目、逐個投資地審視它。我認為，對於我們希望公司在一年內以及 3 年和 5 年內實現的目標有一個非常清晰的畫面，並確保我們能夠解決這個問題。然後我們有足夠的人去做。我想你可以換個角度來看待這個問題。

Companies that have been on this very fast growth trajectory, there is some opportunity for optimization. If we were cutting 20%, I think we would be giving up quite a lot, right?

一直處於這種非常快速的增長軌道上的公司，有一些優化的機會。如果我們削減 20%，我想我們會放棄很多，對吧？

Cutting a little bit, I think, makes sense given the environment. It's a hard thing to do. It's hard to have people leave the company, but I think it makes sense given the larger environment. And I think it's possible to do that without making big sacrifices in terms of what we need to build and the product that we want to have and also in terms of how we want to go to market and where we want to be set up to expand.

我認為，考慮到環境，削減一點是有道理的。這是一件很難的事情。很難讓人離開公司，但我認為考慮到更大的環境，這是有道理的。而且我認為可以做到這一點，而無需在我們需要構建的內容和我們想要擁有的產品以及我們希望如何進入市場以及我們希望在哪裡建立擴展方面做出重大犧牲.

I see. And then just on the product side, I know it's new. But can you talk a little bit about some of the early adoption trends of Stream Designer and Stream Governance?

我懂了。然後在產品方面，我知道它是新的。但是您能談談 Stream Designer 和 Stream Governance 的一些早期採用趨勢嗎？

Yes. Yes. Yes, we've seen great results. They're a little different, right? So Stream Governance is a paid offering, the Stream Governance Advanced that we just announced. And Stream Designer is free. So customers just use it, it accelerates their usage of ksql, of connector, of Kafka itself.

是的。是的。是的，我們看到了很好的結果。他們有點不同，對吧？所以 Stream Governance 是一種付費產品，我們剛剛宣布的 Stream Governance Advanced。 Stream Designer 是免費的。所以客戶只是使用它，它加速了他們對 ksql、連接器和 Kafka 本身的使用。

And so -- yes, we've seen a ton of early adoption of Stream Designer. That's been very exciting for us to get -- to see people playing with this. We think that, that kind of easy to use interface is one of the keys to really making stream processing go broad, whether it's with ksql case or Flink or whatever.

所以——是的，我們已經看到大量早期採用 Stream Designer。這對我們來說非常令人興奮——看到人們在玩這個。我們認為，那種易於使用的界面是真正使流處理變得更廣泛的關鍵之一，無論是 ksql 案例還是 Flink 或其他。

That interface on top is a really critical investment for us that makes this stuff really easy to deploy within customers and kind of take the stream processing area beyond these apex companies that have already really gone big with it.

頂部的接口對我們來說是一項非常重要的投資，它使這些東西很容易在客戶中部署，並且在某種程度上將流處理領域帶到了這些已經真正做大的頂尖公司之外。

And then Governance is just one of these topics. It's top of mind for every customer. And we've seen really, really great results for that now emerging product as a business. We've seen a lot of consumption driven by that.

然後治理只是這些主題之一。這是每個客戶的首要考慮。我們已經看到這個新興產品作為一項業務取得了非常非常好的結果。我們已經看到了很多由此驅動的消費。

And that was a little bit unexpected. We thought that was going to satisfy a need and maybe unblock customers and other things. But in fact, we've seen it actually really outperform our expectations so far, and we're excited about what's possible for that in the year ahead.

這有點出乎意料。我們認為這將滿足需求並可能解除客戶和其他事情的阻礙。但事實上，到目前為止，我們已經看到它實際上確實超出了我們的預期，我們對未來一年的可能性感到興奮。

And it's not surprising. I think there are kind of 2 pressures on organizations. On one hand, they need to like do more with data and put it to use to be successful. On the other hand, they have just increasing numbers of restrictions on how they do that. And the risk associated with it. So if you give them tools that help balance those 2 pressures, it obviously meets with a great reception.

這並不奇怪。我認為組織面臨兩種壓力。一方面，他們需要喜歡用數據做更多事情並將其用於成功。另一方面，他們對如何做到這一點的限制越來越多。以及與之相關的風險。因此，如果您為他們提供有助於平衡這兩種壓力的工具，顯然會受到熱烈歡迎。

All right. Thanks, everyone. This concludes today's earnings call. We really appreciate you joining us. Take care.

好的。謝謝大家。今天的財報電話會議到此結束。我們非常感謝您加入我們。小心。