Confluent Inc (CFLT) 2023 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Confluent Q2 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Shane Xie from Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Jay Kreps, Co-Founder and CEO; Steffan Tomlinson, CFO; and Rohan Sivaram, our Incoming CFO.

大家好。歡迎參加 Confluence 2023 年第二季度收益電話會議。我是投資者關係部的謝恩·謝（Shane Xie），聯合創始人兼首席執行官傑伊·克雷普斯（Jay Kreps）也加入其中。斯蒂芬·湯姆林森，首席財務官；以及我們即將上任的首席財務官 Rohan Sivaram。

During today's call, management will make forward-looking statements regarding our business, operations, financial performance and future prospects. These include statements regarding our financial guidance for the fiscal third quarter of 2023 and fiscal year '23 and growth in a market opportunity and market share. 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. We assume no obligation to update these statements after today's call, except as required by law.

在今天的電話會議中，管理層將就我們的業務、運營、財務業績和未來前景發表前瞻性聲明。其中包括有關我們 2023 財年第三季度和 23 財年財務指引以及市場機會和市場份額增長的聲明。這些前瞻性陳述存在風險和不確定性，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 SEC 提交的 10-Q 表格中。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。

Unless stated otherwise, certain financial measures used on today's call are expressed on a non-GAAP basis, and all comparisons are made on a year-over-year basis. We use these non-GAAP financial measures internally to facility analysis of a 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. 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.

除非另有說明，今天電話會議中使用的某些財務指標是在非公認會計準則基礎上表示的，所有比較都是在同比基礎上進行的。我們在內部使用這些非公認會計準則財務指標來促進財務和業務趨勢分析以及內部規劃和預測目的。這些非公認會計原則財務指標具有局限性，不應孤立地考慮或替代根據公認會計原則準備的財務信息。這些 GAAP 和非 GAAP 財務指標之間的調節包含在我們的收益新聞稿和補充財務信息中，您可以在我們的投資者關係網站 Investors.confluence.io 上找到這些信息。

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

這樣，我就把電話轉給傑伊。

Thanks, Shane. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. We delivered a great quarter. The ninth time in a row, we exceeded the high end of all guided metrics.

謝謝，謝恩。大家下午好，歡迎參加我們的第二季度財報電話會議。我們交付了一個出色的季度。我們連續第九次超過了所有指導指標的高端。

Before going into further detail on the quarter, I'd like to share some organizational news. Steffan Tomlinson will be stepping down from his role of Confluent's CFO and will be joining Stripe as their CFO. Rohan Sivaram has been named Confluent's next Chief Financial Officer. Rohan is a seasoned finance and operations leader with nearly 2 decades of experience at leading companies across financial services, cybersecurity and data infrastructure. Rohan joined Confluent pre-IPO in 2020. He's been instrumental to the success of our organization across corporate finance, investor relations, treasury and business operations. Over the last 3 years, I've had the opportunity to work very closely with Rohan and could not be more excited to see him assuming this new role as our CFO.

在進一步詳細介紹本季度之前，我想分享一些組織新聞。 Steffan Tomlinson 將辭去 Confluence 首席財務官的職務，並加入 Stripe 擔任首席財務官。 Rohan Sivaram 被任命為 Confluence 的下一任首席財務官。 Rohan 是一位經驗豐富的財務和運營領導者，在金融服務、網絡安全和數據基礎設施領域的領先公司擁有近 20 年的經驗。 Rohan 於 2020 年在 IPO 前加入 Confluence。他對我們組織在企業融資、投資者關係、財務和業務運營方面的成功發揮了重要作用。在過去的三年裡，我有機會與 Rohan 密切合作，看到他擔任我們的首席財務官這個新角色，我感到無比興奮。

And Steffan, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for everything you've done for us. You've had an impact on every aspect of Confluent, including growing and scaling our operations, building a world-class team and taking us through all 9 quarters of earnings as a public company. Thank you, and best of luck with your new role.

斯蒂芬，我想花點時間感謝你為我們所做的一切。您對 Confluence 的各個方面都產生了影響，包括發展和擴大我們的業務、建立世界一流的團隊以及帶領我們作為一家上市公司完成所有 9 個季度的盈利。謝謝你，祝你在新角色中一切順利。

Thank you, Jay. It's been an amazing experience and career milestone to work with you and the talented team at Confluent. You've built a deeply differentiated platform that's powered our robust growth, which positions the company very well for the future.

謝謝你，傑伊。與您和 Confluence 才華橫溢的團隊合作是一次令人驚嘆的經歷和職業里程碑。你們建立了一個高度差異化的平台，為我們的強勁增長提供了動力，為公司的未來奠定了良好的基礎。

I couldn't think of a better leader than Rohan to help guide the company to the next level as Confluent's new CFO. Rohan is truly an exceptional leader. We've known each other for nearly a decade and worked closely at both Confluent and Palo Alto Networks. Congratulations, Rohan. You'll do great in your new role.

我想不出有比 Rohan 更好的領導者作為 Confluence 的新任首席財務官來幫助引導公司邁向新的水平。羅漢確實是一位傑出的領導者。我們已經認識近十年了，並且在 Confluence 和 Palo Alto Networks 都密切合作。恭喜你，羅漢。你會在新的角色中表現出色。

Thank you, Steffan. Congratulations to you as well. It's been a pleasure working with you over the years, and I'd like to wish you the very best in your next role.

謝謝你，斯特凡。也祝賀你。多年來與您合作非常愉快，我祝愿您在下一個職位中一切順利。

We have a world-class innovation engine and an amazing team at Confluent. We are a market leader in a $60 billion TAM, and we're just getting started. I very much look forward to driving efficient growth in the years ahead.

Confluence 擁有世界一流的創新引擎和出色的團隊。我們是 600 億美元 TAM 的市場領導者，而我們才剛剛開始。我非常期待在未來幾年推動高效增長。

Now back to you, Jay.

現在回到你身上，傑伊。

Thanks, Rohan. Turning now to our Q2 results. Total revenue grew 36% to $189 million. Confluent Cloud revenue grew 78% to $84 million, and non-GAAP operating margin improved 24 points. We have driven more than 30 points of margin improvement in the last 18 months and are well on our way to breakeven in Q4 this year. Achieving this sustained level of high growth despite ongoing market challenges underscores the mission-critical nature of data streaming and reinforces our product leadership.

謝謝，羅漢。現在轉向我們的第二季度業績。總收入增長 36%，達到 1.89 億美元。 Confluence Cloud 收入增長 78%，達到 8,400 萬美元，非 GAAP 運營利潤率提高 24 個百分點。過去 18 個月裡，我們的利潤率提高了 30 個百分點以上，今年第四季度有望實現盈虧平衡。儘管市場面臨持續挑戰，但仍實現持續的高增長，凸顯了數據流的關鍵任務性質，並鞏固了我們的產品領先地位。

In May, we hosted Kafka Summit at London in 2023. This year, more than 1,500 members of the community from over 50 countries joined us in person with greater than 2,300 joining in virtually. On our Q1 earnings call, we talked about the opportunity for monetizing Kafka and Confluent Cloud. This was emphasized at Kafka Summit with the unveiling of core, the next generation engine that powers Confluent Cloud. We shared with the audience some of the architectural elements that enable our cloud to drive a 10x advantage in performance while delivering a 60% TCO improvement.

今年 5 月，我們在倫敦舉辦了 2023 年卡夫卡峰會。今年，來自 50 多個國家的 1,500 多名社區成員親自參加了我們的活動，還有超過 2,300 名虛擬參加者。在第一季度財報電話會議上，我們討論了 Kafka 和 Confluence Cloud 貨幣化的機會。 Kafka 峰會上強調了這一點，並推出了為 Confluence Cloud 提供支持的下一代引擎 core。我們與觀眾分享了一些架構元素，這些元素使我們的雲能夠在性能方面實現 10 倍的優勢，同時將 TCO 降低 60%。

Our Kafka business has phenomenal growth ahead of it. Modern data architecture is increasingly centered around streaming, and this has driven Kafka to be adopted by hundreds of thousands of organizations, including over 75% of the Fortune 500. This open-source user base is growing rapidly, and we are still in the early days of monetizing it. The inherent TCO and performance advantages of our cloud offering meaning that in addition to the natural growth of this user base, we believe we can dramatically improve the proportion that is monetized as usage shifts to the cloud and can be captured by a managed service. If that were the extent of Confluent's opportunity, that would be a very exciting prospect and enough to sustain our growth for many years. But Kafka is just the start.

我們的卡夫卡業務將迎來驚人的增長。現代數據架構越來越以流為中心，這使得 Kafka 被數十萬個組織所採用，其中包括超過 75% 的財富 500 強企業。這個開源用戶群正在快速增長，而我們仍處於早期階段將其貨幣化的日子。我們的雲產品固有的 TCO 和性能優勢意味著，除了用戶群的自然增長之外，我們相信，隨著使用量轉移到雲，我們可以大幅提高貨幣化的比例，並可以通過託管服務捕獲。如果這就是 Confluence 的機會，那將是一個非常令人興奮的前景，足以維持我們多年的增長。但卡夫卡只是一個開始。

In this call, I want to outline the evolution Confluent is driving in the streaming space and how we stand to benefit from it. This evolution is the rise of the data streaming platform. Kafka is the foundational layer in this platform, but I'll outline today the 5 key areas of capability that significantly extend the reach and value of streaming infrastructure and that we think are essential elements to the rise of data streaming platforms. The key capabilities of the DSP are the ability to stream, connect, govern, process and share. These capabilities capture the full life cycle of streaming data, how to get it, process it, use it, manage it and share it between systems.

在這次電話會議中，我想概述 Confluence 在流媒體領域推動的演變以及我們如何從中受益。這種演變就是數據流平台的興起。 Kafka 是該平台的基礎層，但今天我將概述 5 個關鍵功能領域，這些功能可顯著擴展流基礎設施的範圍和價值，並且我們認為它們是數據流平台崛起的基本要素。 DSP 的關鍵功能是流傳輸、連接、管理、處理和共享的能力。這些功能捕獲流數據的完整生命週期，包括如何獲取數據、處理數據、使用數據、管理數據以及在系統之間共享數據。

Kafka is the stream of data. It allows companies to produce and consume real-time streams of data at any scale with strong guarantees on the delivery of data. It is the foundational hub of data exchange in a modern data architecture. And today, it comprises the substantial majority of our Confluent Cloud revenue. But these other capabilities are not mere add-ons. They are essential components of the emerging platform and represent significant opportunities for monetization for Confluent that are still early in their realization. I'll walk through each of these capabilities, discuss the evidence that each is growing into a broadly adopted portion of the DSP and talk about how Confluent is adding these capabilities to Confluent Cloud.

卡夫卡是數據流。它允許公司生產和消費任何規模的實時數據流，並對數據的交付提供強有力的保證。它是現代數據架構中數據交換的基礎中心。如今，它佔據了我們 Confluence Cloud 收入的絕大部分。但這些其他功能不僅僅是附加功能。它們是新興平台的重要組成部分，代表著 Confluence 仍處於早期實現階段的重要盈利機會。我將詳細介紹其中的每一項功能，討論每項功能正在發展成為 DSP 中廣泛採用的部分的證據，並討論 Confluence 如何將這些功能添加到 Confluence Cloud 中。

Our Kafka business in Confluent Cloud is growing very fast, but even today, these non-Kafka components are growing even faster. Over time, we expect these capabilities to drive the majority of our cloud revenue, even as they help to accelerate the use of Kafka as the underlying stream.

我們在 Confluence Cloud 中的 Kafka 業務增長非常快，但即使在今天，這些非 Kafka 組件的增長速度甚至更快。隨著時間的推移，我們預計這些功能將推動我們的大部分雲收入，即使它們有助於加速使用 Kafka 作為底層流。

Let's start with connectors. Connectors may seem mundane, but they are, in fact, a key capability. Indeed, many ETL and integration products differentiate in large part on their pool of connectors. They are central to our vision as well. To build a central nervous system for your business, you have to be able to connect all of your systems to capture the real-time streams of data. Confluent Cloud makes it possible to run any Kafka connector in a cloud-native way, making them serverless, elastically scalable and fault tolerant. This has driven the development of over 120 connectors created and known by Confluent to some of the most common enterprise systems. However, the ecosystem of connectors is far larger than just these.

讓我們從連接器開始。連接器可能看起來很平常，但實際上它們是一項關鍵功能。事實上，許多 ETL 和集成產品的差異化在很大程度上取決於它們的連接器池。它們也是我們願景的核心。要為您的企業構建中樞神經系統，您必須能夠連接所有系統以捕獲實時數據流。 Confluence Cloud 使得以雲原生方式運行任何 Kafka 連接器成為可能，使其成為無服務器、彈性可擴展和容錯的。這推動了 Confluence 創建和已知的 120 多個連接器的開發，這些連接器適用於一些最常見的企業系統。然而，連接器的生態系統遠不止這些。

There are many hundreds of open source connectors to less common systems that are available. We are still early in monetizing this area in Confluent Cloud as fully unlocking it requires ease of use across cloud networking layers and disparate data in SaaS systems. We took a major step towards this in Q2 with the release of our custom connectors offering, which allows running any open source connector inside Confluent Cloud, expanding our reach beyond the set of connectors we ship with out of the box. We believe this is still in the early phases of full unlock. On-premise, in our Confluent platform product, Connect has approximately an 80% adoption rate, but we are still in the early days of ramping that level of usage in our fully managed offering, Confluent Cloud.

有數百個開源連接器可用於不太常見的系統。我們在 Confluence Cloud 的這一領域貨幣化方面仍處於早期階段，因為完全解鎖它需要跨云網絡層和 SaaS 系統中的不同數據的易用性。我們在第二季度朝著這個目標邁出了重要一步，發布了自定義連接器產品，該產品允許在Confluence Cloud 內運行任何開源連接器，從而將我們的業務範圍擴展到我們隨帶的開箱即用的連接器集之外。我們相信這仍處於全面解鎖的早期階段。在我們的 Confluence 平台產品中，Connect 的本地採用率約為 80%，但我們仍處於在完全託管的產品 Confluence Cloud 中提升這一使用水平的早期階段。

As data streaming use cases grow and real-time data flows across internal systems and applications, it's critical that users can discover, monitor and reason about the security and integrity of that data. You need to control who has access to the data, to find how that data is allowed to evolve and visualize and monitor where it ultimately goes. Creating a central nervous system for data is only possible if you can stream data safely. What do these governance concerns have to do with streaming you might ask. Well, it turns out the governance concerns come into play precisely when data moves between systems, when it's exchanged between teams or is transported between regions or is processed from one form to another. In other words, data governance needs to rise directly from the primary use of data streaming.

隨著數據流用例的增長以及實時數據在內部系統和應用程序之間流動，用戶能夠發現、監控和推斷數據的安全性和完整性至關重要。您需要控制誰有權訪問數據，找出數據如何發展、可視化和監控其最終去向。只有能夠安全地傳輸數據，才能創建數據中樞神經系統。您可能會問，這些治理問題與流媒體有什麼關係。事實證明，當數據在系統之間移動、團隊之間交換、區域之間傳輸或從一種形式處理為另一種形式時，治理問題就會發揮作用。換句話說，數據治理需要直接從數據流的主要使用中產生。

Because Confluent handles these movements and processing, we are uniquely positioned to directly integrate governance of that movement automatically and seamlessly in a way that no other vendor can with a bolt-on product. This is the role of stream governance, one of our first moves up the stack into a large product opportunity for Confluent. Streaming governance is our fully-managed governance suite that delivers a simple, self-service experience for customers to discover, trust and understand how data flows across their business. we have taken a freemium approach to stream governance, giving basic functionality to every customer and more recently, starting to monetize with our Stream Governance Advanced offering. 2/3 of our Confluent Cloud customers are using Stream Governance today. And revenue growth from Stream Governance Advanced is the fastest of any product we've launched today.

由於 Confluence 負責處理這些移動和處理，因此我們具有獨特的優勢，可以自動、無縫地直接集成該移動的治理，這是其他供應商無法通過附加產品實現的。這就是流治理的作用，這是我們首先將堆棧升級為 Confluence 的大型產品機會之一。流治理是我們完全託管的治理套件，可為客戶提供簡單的自助服務體驗，幫助客戶發現、信任和了解數據如何在其業務中流動。我們採用免費增值方法進行流治理，為每個客戶提供基本功能，最近，開始通過我們的流治理高級產品獲利。目前，我們 2/3 的 Confluence Cloud 客戶正在使用 Stream Governance。 Stream Governance Advanced 的收入增長是我們今天推出的所有產品中最快的。

The next area of the DSP is stream processing. This is an easy one to understand. Data processing is a key component of any major data platform and SQL and other processing layers are a key component of modern databases. Stream processing extends these processing capabilities to real-time data streams. We believe that Apache Flink is emerging as the de facto standard for stream processing. Flink has the most powerful implementation of stream processing of any technology, open source or proprietary, fully realizing streaming as a generalization of batch processing and making it available across a rich ecosystem of programming languages and interfaces. It is widely popular in the open source community and is used by some of the most technically sophisticated companies in the world, including Apple, Capital One, Netflix, Stripe and Uber.

DSP 的下一個領域是流處理。這是很容易理解的。數據處理是任何主要數據平台的關鍵組件，而 SQL 和其他處理層是現代數據庫的關鍵組件。流處理將這些處理能力擴展到實時數據流。我們相信 Apache Flink 正在成為流處理的事實上的標準。 Flink 擁有所有技術（開源或專有）中最強大的流處理實現，完全實現流處理作為批處理的通用化，並使其可在豐富的編程語言和接口生態系統中使用。它在開源社區中廣泛流行，並被世界上一些技術最先進的公司所使用，包括蘋果、第一資本、Netflix、Stripe 和 Uber。

We've discussed the criticality of stream processing to our strategy in the past. The easiest way to understand the potential in this area is to understand that for each stream in Confluent Cloud today, there's likely to be some application code processing or reacting to that stream of data. That application code represents complex software engineering and the opportunity for Flink from the customers' point of view is to simplify that development effort. From Confluent's point of view, this allows us to monetize not just the data but the application itself, while helping the customer to realize efficiencies in both the development and operational costs that are possible with a cloud-native stream processing layer.

我們過去已經討論過流處理對我們策略的重要性。了解該領域潛力的最簡單方法是了解，對於當今 Confluence Cloud 中的每個流，可能會有一些應用程序代碼處理或對該數據流做出反應。該應用程序代碼代表了複雜的軟件工程，從客戶的角度來看，Flink 的機會是簡化開發工作。從 Confluence 的角度來看，這使我們不僅可以將數據貨幣化，還可以將應用程序本身貨幣化，同時幫助客戶實現雲原生流處理層可能實現的開發和運營成本效率。

We took a major step forward on our Flink strategy this last quarter when we announced the early access program at Kafka Summit, opening up this offering to the first customers who are now actively using the platform. Early feedback is very encouraging with particular enthusiasm for the direct integration into the other capabilities of Confluent Cloud. For customers, this means their streams of data in Kafka are automatically available for processing in Flink SQL and that everything works together with a shared model of governance and security. We're incredibly excited about this product and look forward to its broad availability later this year.

上個季度，我們在 Kafka 峰會上宣布了早期訪問計劃，向第一批正在積極使用該平台的客戶開放此產品，從而在上個季度的 Flink 戰略上向前邁出了重要一步。早期的反饋非常令人鼓舞，尤其熱衷於直接集成到 Confluence Cloud 的其他功能中。對於客戶來說，這意味著他們在 Kafka 中的數據流可以自動在 Flink SQL 中進行處理，並且一切都與共享的治理和安全模型一起工作。我們對這款產品感到非常興奮，並期待它在今年晚些時候廣泛上市。

The final capability is about making it easy to share data streams. Sharing within a company has been a mainstay of our platform for some time. However, now we have extended that between companies with a feature we just launched at Kafka Summit, stream sharing. This intercompany sharing is a pattern we noticed was gaining startling traction in our customer base in recent years. Customers in financial services and insurance needed to integrate and provide key financial data streams with a complex set of providers. Customers in travel needed to exchange real-time data on flights between airports, airlines, bookings companies and baggage handling companies. Retailers and manufacturers had to ingest real-time streams from suppliers to manage an end-to-end view of their inventory or supply chain. Oftentimes, these companies would have teams working out complex systems to mediate this sharing, only to realize on further discussion that on both sides, the foundational layer that they were opening up was the same. It was Kafka.

最後一個功能是讓共享數據流變得容易。一段時間以來，公司內部共享一直是我們平台的支柱。然而，現在我們已經在公司之間擴展了這一功能，我們剛剛在 Kafka 峰會上推出了流共享功能。我們注意到，這種公司間共享的模式近年來在我們的客戶群中獲得了驚人的吸引力。金融服務和保險領域的客戶需要與一組複雜的提供商集成並提供關鍵的金融數據流。旅行中的客戶需要在機場、航空公司、預訂公司和行李處理公司之間交換航班的實時數據。零售商和製造商必須從供應商處獲取實時流，以管理其庫存或供應鏈的端到端視圖。通常，這些公司會有團隊開發複雜的系統來協調這種共享，但在進一步的討論中才意識到，雙方開放的基礎層是相同的。是卡夫卡。

Stream sharing allows these companies to enable this interorganizational sharing for any of their existing streams and to do so in a way that enables the same governance and security capabilities that they'd use internally with added capabilities to address the additional concerns allowing access from external parties. This means extending our central nervous system vision, something that spans the company to something that spans large portions of the digital economy. By doing this, the natural network effect of streaming, where streams attract apps, which in turn attract more streams is extended beyond a single company, helping to drive the acquisition of new customers as well as the growth within existing customers.

流共享允許這些公司為其任何現有流啟用這種組織間共享，並以一種能夠實現與內部使用相同的治理和安全功能的方式，並添加附加功能來解決允許外部各方訪問的其他問題。這意味著擴展我們的中樞神經系統願景，從整個公司擴展到數字經濟的大部分領域。通過這樣做，流媒體的自然網絡效應（流媒體吸引應用程序，進而吸引更多流媒體）擴展到單個公司之外，有助於推動新客戶的獲取以及現有客戶的增長。

It's essential to understand that these 5 capabilities: stream, connect, govern, process, share are not only additional things to sell, they are all part of a unified platform and the success of each drives additional success in the others. The connectors make it easier to get data streams into Kafka, which accelerates not just our core Kafka business, but also opens up more data for processing in Flink, adds to the set of streams governed by Stream Governance or they're shareable by stream sharing.

重要的是要了解這 5 種功能：流、連接、治理、處理、共享不僅僅是額外的銷售內容，它們都是統一平台的一部分，並且每一項功能的成功都會推動其他功能的成功。連接器使數據流更容易進入Kafka，這不僅加速了我們的核心Kafka 業務，而且還開放了更多數據以便在Flink 中處理，添加到由流治理管理的流集合中，或者可以通過流共享來共享它們。

Applications built with Flink drive use of connectors for data acquisition and read and write their inputs from Kafka. Governance and sharing add to the value proposition for each stream added to the DSP. Each of these capabilities strengthens the other 4. The full value of this will not be realized overnight. Cloud infrastructure takes time to mature and reach completion. Each of these areas is earlier in the S-curve of maturity and adoption than Kafka. But over time, we think these will directly contribute revenue larger than Kafka itself in addition to driving further consumption of Kafka.

使用 Flink 構建的應用程序驅動使用連接器進行數據採集並從 Kafka 讀取和寫入輸入。治理和共享增加了添加到 DSP 的每個流的價值主張。這些能力中的每一項都可以增強其他 4 項能力。其全部價值不會在一夜之間實現。雲基礎設施的成熟和完成需要時間。這些領域在成熟度和採用的 S 曲線上都比 Kafka 更早。但隨著時間的推移，我們認為除了推動 Kafka 的進一步消費之外，這些還將直接貢獻比 Kafka 本身更大的收入。

Most importantly is what these capabilities let our customers to do. As these parts come together, they comprise a data platform that is as complete as data warehouses, data lakes or databases have grown to be over the years. We think this data streaming platform will be of equal size and importance to these other platforms, serving as the fundamental nervous system for a modern company. This complete platform resonates with companies of all sizes, industries and geographies, serving an endless number of use cases.

最重要的是這些功能可以讓我們的客戶做什麼。當這些部分組合在一起時，它們就構成了一個與多年來不斷發展的數據倉庫、數據湖或數據庫一樣完整的數據平台。我們認為這個數據流平台將與其他平台具有同等的規模和重要性，成為現代公司的基本神經系統。這個完整的平台與各種規模、行業和地區的公司產生共鳴，服務於無數的用例。

One segment of our customer base that has been under particular pressure in this macro environment is digital native tech companies who are under increasing pressure to drive new efficiencies. But this is also a high-performing segment of our business, a testament to our execution and the TCO advantages of our platform. This includes customers like Instacart, Netflix, Plaid and Square. We are seeing particularly strong traction in this segment in India, including customers like Meesho.

在這種宏觀環境下，我們的客戶群中承受著特別壓力的一部分是數字原生科技公司，他們面臨著越來越大的提高效率的壓力。但這也是我們業務的一個高績效部分，證明了我們的執行力和我們平台的 TCO 優勢。這包括 Instacart、Netflix、Plaid 和 Square 等客戶。我們看到印度這一細分市場的吸引力尤其強勁，其中包括像 Meesho 這樣的客戶。

Meesho is a high-growth Indian e-commerce company, who last year was one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the world. It was the fastest shopping app to cross 500 million downloads and regularly sees huge traffic spikes that see over 1 million requests per second. Kafka is used broadly across Meesho's business, including its real-time recommendation engine to deliver great user experience for customers and sellers. But manually configuring and tuning open source Kafka wasn't aligned with their overall push for sustainable solutions and driving business efficiencies. So they migrated to Confluent Cloud. Confluent now processes its shopping transactions and is a key part of the architecture that delivers exceptional experiences for its buyers and sellers.

Meesho 是一家高速增長的印度電子商務公司，去年是全球下載次數最多的購物應用程序之一。它是最快的購物應用程序，下載量突破 5 億次，並且經常出現流量高峰，每秒請求超過 100 萬個。 Kafka 在 Meesho 的業務中廣泛使用，包括其實時推薦引擎，可為客戶和賣家提供出色的用戶體驗。但手動配置和調整開源 Kafka 與他們對可持續解決方案和提高業務效率的總體推動並不相符。因此他們遷移到 Confluence Cloud。 Confluence 現在處理其購物交易，是為買家和賣家提供卓越體驗的架構的關鍵部分。

Policygenius is an online insurance marketplace that covers more than 30 million customers in their life, disability, home and auto insurance needs. Today's customers demand real time in all aspects of their life, even when shopping for insurance. By combining modern tech with real agents, Policygenius delivers quotes from leading insurance companies side-by-side in minutes and helps customers do their selection and purchasing process. Initially, they relied on the competitor's Kafka compatible data streaming technology to stream policy information to their agents, but they found themselves spending too much time supporting the platform and were caught off guard by surprise costs. And as they look to expand use cases, they needed a more complete data streaming platform they could grow alongside them. After 2 months trialing Confluent as a pay-as-you-go customer, they went all in on Confluent Cloud in Q2. With Confluent Cloud, Policygenius can save money while helping their customers feel good about finding the right insurance online.

Policygenius 是一個在線保險市場，覆蓋超過 3000 萬客戶的人壽保險、殘疾保險、家庭保險和汽車保險需求。如今的客戶在生活的各個方面都需要實時性，甚至在購買保險時也是如此。通過將現代技術與真實代理人相結合，Policygenius 可在幾分鐘內並列提供領先保險公司的報價，並幫助客戶完成選擇和購買流程。最初，他們依靠競爭對手的 Kafka 兼容數據流技術將政策信息傳輸給他們的代理，但他們發現自己花費了太多時間支持該平台，並且對意外成本感到措手不及。當他們希望擴展用例時，他們需要一個更完整的數據流平台，以便與他們一起成長。經過 2 個月的試用 Confluence 作為即用即付客戶的試用後，他們在第二季度全力投入了 Confluence Cloud。借助 Confluence Cloud，Policygenius 可以節省資金，同時幫助客戶在網上找到合適的保險。

Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a leading biotech company that uses advancements in AI and biology to accelerate and industrialize the discovery of new drugs. Traditional drug discovery is often slow and expensive, relying on manual bespoke processes and experiments influenced by human bias. Recursion, on the other hand, runs over 2 million experiments per week to generate a massive biological and chemical data set to train machine learning models that discover new insights beyond what is known in scientific literature. Confluent is the backbone stream infrastructure for experimental data that feeds their AI models with more than 23 petabytes of real-time biological and chemical data, improving the predictions of the models. This approach rapidly accelerates the time it takes to discover and develop drugs and ultimately is how they improve the lives of patients all around the world.

Recursion Pharmaceuticals 是一家領先的生物技術公司，利用人工智能和生物學的進步來加速新藥的發現並使其產業化。傳統的藥物發現通常緩慢且昂貴，依賴於受人為偏見影響的手動定制流程和實驗。另一方面，遞歸每週運行超過 200 萬次實驗，生成大量生物和化學數據集，用於訓練機器學習模型，發現科學文獻中已知的新見解。 Confluence 是實驗數據的主幹流基礎設施，為 AI 模型提供超過 23 PB 的實時生物和化學數據，從而改進模型的預測。這種方法迅速縮短了發現和開發藥物所需的時間，並最終改善了世界各地患者的生活。

In closing, I'm pleased with our strong second quarter results. Our results show that data streaming has emerged as a mission-critical component of the modern data stack, and our rapid pace of product innovation puts us in an excellent position to continue capturing more of the $60 billion market opportunity.

最後，我對我們第二季度的強勁業績感到滿意。我們的結果表明，數據流已成為現代數據堆棧的關鍵任務組成部分，而我們產品創新的快速步伐使我們處於有利地位，可以繼續抓住更多 600 億美元的市場機會。

With that, I'll turn the call over to Steffan to walk through our financials one last time.

說完，我會把電話轉給史蒂芬，讓他最後一次了解一下我們的財務狀況。

Thanks, Jay. We delivered another strong quarter, beating our guidance on all metrics. Key highlights for the second quarter include robust top line growth, strong customer expansion and substantial margin improvements. These results underscore our leadership position in a $60 billion data streaming market and our team's track record of driving durable and efficient growth.

謝謝，傑伊。我們再次實現了強勁的季度業績，所有指標均超出了我們的預期。第二季度的主要亮點包括強勁的營收增長、強勁的客戶擴張和利潤率的大幅提高。這些結果凸顯了我們在價值 600 億美元的數據流市場中的領導地位以及我們團隊在推動持久和高效增長方面的記錄。

Turning now to the results. RPO for the second quarter was $791.4 million, up 34%. Current RPO, estimated to be 65% of RPO, was $514.8 million, up 41%. Our growth rates in RPO, while healthy, were impacted by a continuation of lower average deal sizes, a result of customer scrutinizing their budgets in the current environment. Despite the budget scrutiny, we remain encouraged that customers continue to derive value from using Confluent and consume more than their commitments, which is reflected in our revenue, but not in our RPO results.

現在轉向結果。第二季度 RPO 為 7.914 億美元，增長 34%。目前的 RPO（預計為 RPO 的 65%）為 5.148 億美元，增長了 41%。我們的 RPO 增長率雖然健康，但受到平均交易規模持續下降的影響，這是客戶在當前環境下仔細審查預算的結果。儘管有預算審查，但我們仍然鼓勵客戶繼續從使用 Confluence 中獲取價值，並且消費超過他們的承諾，這反映在我們的收入中，但沒有反映在我們的 RPO 結果中。

In Q2, we added 140 net new customers, ending the quarter with approximately 4,830 customers, up 17%. The growth in our large customer base remained robust, driven by continued expansion of use cases. We added 69 customers with $100,000 or more in ARR, bringing the total to 1,144 customers, up 33%. These large customers contributed more than 85% of total revenue in the quarter. We also added 12 customers with $1 million or more in ARR, bringing the total to 147 customers, up 48% and our $5 million plus cohort continue to grow.

第二季度，我們淨增加了 140 名新客戶，本季度末客戶數量約為 4,830 名，增長 17%。在用例持續擴展的推動下，我們龐大的客戶群保持強勁增長。我們新增了 69 名 ARR 為 100,000 美元或以上的客戶，使客戶總數達到 1,144 名，增長了 33%。這些大客戶貢獻了本季度總收入的85%以上。我們還增加了 12 名年收入 100 萬美元或以上的客戶，使客戶總數達到 147 名，增長了 48%，並且我們的年收入超過 500 萬美元的客戶群體繼續增長。

Our expansion momentum shows that Confluent is the platform of choice for data streaming from early-stage adoption to cross-company standardization and ultimately, the central nervous system of our customers' modern tech stack. For Q2, NRR was above 130% and GRR was above 90%. NRR for cloud was above 140%, reflecting the power of the industry's only cloud-native platform made possible with Quora.

我們的擴張勢頭表明，Confluence 是數據流的首選平台，從早期採用到跨公司標準化，最終成為客戶現代技術堆棧的中樞神經系統。第二季度，NRR 高於 130%，GRR 高於 90%。雲的 NRR 超過 140%，反映了 Quora 打造的業界唯一云原生平台的強大功能。

Turning to the P&L. Total revenue grew 36% to $189.3 million. Subscription revenue was very strong and grew 39% to $176.5 million and accounted for 93% of total revenue. Within subscription, Confluent Platform grew 16% to $92.9 million, exceeding our expectations and accounted for 49% of total revenue. Q2 marks the second quarter this year in which Confluent Platform overperformed relative to expectations and was driven by strength in regulated industries such as public sector and financial services. These industries are still in the early stages of moving workloads to the cloud, but have a high demand for on-prem data streaming.

轉向損益表。總收入增長 36%，達到 1.893 億美元。訂閱收入非常強勁，增長了 39%，達到 1.765 億美元，佔總收入的 93%。在訂閱方面，Confluence 平台增長了 16%，達到 9290 萬美元，超出了我們的預期，佔總收入的 49%。第二季度是今年第二個季度，受到公共部門和金融服務等受監管行業實力的推動，Confluence 平台的表現超出預期。這些行業仍處於將工作負載轉移到雲的早期階段，但對本地數據流的需求很高。

Confluent Cloud revenue grew 78% to $83.6 million. We guided sequential revenue growth of $7.5 million to $8 million for Q2. The actual sequential increase came in at $9.9 million, exceeding the midpoint of our guidance range by $2.2 million, and it was driven primarily by higher-than-expected consumption from select customers. From a product mix standpoint, cloud revenue accounted for 44% of revenue compared to 34% of revenue a year ago and cloud as a percentage of new ACV bookings exceeded 50% for the seventh consecutive quarter.

Confluence Cloud 收入增長 78%，達到 8,360 萬美元。我們預計第二季度收入環比增長 750 萬美元至 800 萬美元。實際環比增長為 990 萬美元，超出我們指導範圍的中點 220 萬美元，這主要是由特定客戶的消費高於預期推動的。從產品組合的角度來看，雲收入佔收入的 44%，而去年同期為 34%，雲佔新 ACV 預訂量的百分比連續第七個季度超過 50%。

Turning to the geographic mix of revenue. Revenue from the U.S. grew 30% to $113.9 million. Revenue from outside the U.S. grew 45% to $75.4 million.

轉向收入的地理組合。來自美國的收入增長了 30%，達到 1.139 億美元。來自美國以外的收入增長了 45%，達到 7540 萬美元。

Moving to the rest of the income statement. I'll be referring to non-GAAP results, unless stated otherwise. Total gross margin was 75%, up 440 basis points and above our FY '23 target range of 72% to 73% Subscription gross margin was 79.1%, up 230 basis points. Gross margin outperformance was driven by our strong Confluent Platform margin, the continued improvement in efficiency, optimization of underlying hardware profile and increased multi-tenancy in Quora, our core Kafka engine in Confluent Cloud.

轉到損益表的其餘部分。除非另有說明，我將指的是非公認會計準則的結果。總毛利率為 75%，上升 440 個基點，高於我們 23 財年 72% 至 73% 的目標範圍。認購毛利率為 79.1%，上升 230 個基點。毛利率的優異表現得益於我們強大的 Confluence 平台利潤率、效率的持續提高、底層硬件配置文件的優化以及 Quora 中多租戶的增加（Quora 是我們在 Confluence Cloud 中的核心 Kafka 引擎）。

Turning to profitability and cash flow. Operating margin improved 24 percentage points to negative 9.2%, representing our fourth consecutive quarter of more than 10 points in improvement. Q2 operating margin was driven by subscription revenue outperformance and our continued focus on driving efficiency across the company. We drove improvement in every category of our operating expenses with the most pronounced progress made again in sales and marketing, improving 14 percentage points, and we're pleased to achieve $0.00 net income per share in Q2. We have included all related shares outstanding amounts used to calculate historical and guided net loss or income per share in our earnings presentation on our website. Free cash flow margin improved 8 percentage points to negative 18.6% and ended the second quarter with $1.85 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

轉向盈利能力和現金流。營業利潤率提高了 24 個百分點，達到負 9.2%，連續第四個季度提高了 10 個百分點以上。第二季度營業利潤率的推動因素是訂閱收入表現出色以及我們持續致力於提高整個公司的效率。我們推動了運營支出各個類別的改善，銷售和營銷方面再次取得了最顯著的進步，提高了 14 個百分點，我們很高興第二季度實現了每股 0.00 美元的淨利潤。我們已將用於計算歷史和指導淨虧損或每股收益的所有相關股票已發行金額納入我們網站上的收益演示中。自由現金流利潤率提高了 8 個百分點，為負 18.6%，第二季度末現金、現金等價物和有價證券為 18.5 億美元。

Now turning to our outlook. I'd like to provide context on how our approach to guidance continues to evolve in response to what we're seeing in the business environment. At the beginning of the year, we prudently took into consideration and have been navigating the tough selling environment and the macro-related factors of additional budget scrutiny and changes in customer buying behavior, both of which have led to sales cycle elongation. We've learned through the first half of this year that customers are more inclined to sign shorter-duration contracts, start with smaller initial deal sizes and are okay consuming more than their committed contracts, which has been reflected in our results. Our point of view is the choppy macro environment we've seen will continue throughout the remainder of the year. Even with these macro dynamics at play, our data streaming platform continues to grow at outsized rates. Our subscription revenue growth of 39% in Q2 tells the story.

現在轉向我們的展望。我想提供一些背景信息，說明我們的指導方法如何根據我們在商業環境中看到的情況不斷發展。年初，我們審慎考慮並應對了嚴峻的銷售環境、額外預算審查和客戶購買行為變化等宏觀相關因素，這兩者都導致了銷售週期的延長。今年上半年我們了解到，客戶更傾向於簽署期限較短的合同，從較小的初始交易規模開始，並且可以消費比承諾的合同更多的金額，這已反映在我們的結果中。我們的觀點是，我們所看到的動蕩的宏觀環境將在今年剩餘時間內持續下去。即使存在這些宏觀動態，我們的數據流平台仍繼續以驚人的速度增長。我們第二季度的訂閱收入增長了 39%，這說明了這一點。

From a product mix standpoint, Confluent Platform, which is prevalent in regulated industries, has overperformed relative to our expectations. We expect Confluent Platform to continue to perform well in the second half, trending above the expectations we had at the beginning of the year.

從產品組合的角度來看，在受監管行業中普遍存在的 Confluence Platform 的表現超出了我們的預期。我們預計 Confluence Platform 在下半年將繼續表現良好，趨勢高於我們年初的預期。

Our cloud business continues to be a bright spot given the high net retention rates, product market fit, strong TCO and ROI it delivers to customers. We expect cloud to continue to grow at a substantially higher rate than the rest of the business in the second half. We'll continue to monitor the signals of our business and proactively manage the rate and pace of investments. If the macro sentiment improves, we'd expect to benefit from that, but it's too soon to call.

鑑於其為客戶提供的高淨保留率、產品市場契合度、強大的總體擁有成本和投資回報率，我們的雲業務仍然是一個亮點。我們預計下半年雲計算將繼續以遠高於其他業務的速度增長。我們將繼續監控業務信號並主動管理投資的速度和節奏。如果宏觀情緒改善，我們預計會從中受益，但現在下結論還為時過早。

Moving on to our guidance. I'm pleased to share that we're raising total revenue, gross margin, operating margin and EPS for both the quarter and the year. For the third quarter of 2023, we expect revenue to be in the range of $193.5 million to $195.5 million, representing growth of 28% to 29%. Cloud revenue to be approximately $92.2 million, representing growth of 62% and accounting for approximately 47% of total revenue based on the midpoint of our guide. Implied in that is a sequential revenue add of approximately $8.5 million, which is above our prior quarter guidance range of $7.5 million to $8 million for Q2 '23. Non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately negative 10% and non-GAAP net loss or income per share to be in the range of negative $0.01 to $0.00. For the full year 2023, we expect revenue to be in the range of $767 million to $772 million, representing growth of 31% to 32%. Non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately negative 10% and non-GAAP net loss per share in the range of negative $0.05 to negative $0.02.

繼續我們的指導。我很高興地告訴大家，我們本季度和全年的總收入、毛利率、營業利潤率和每股收益均有所提高。對於 2023 年第三季度，我們預計收入將在 1.935 億美元至 1.955 億美元之間，增長 28% 至 29%。根據我們指南的中值，雲收入將達到約 9220 萬美元，增長 62%，約佔總收入的 47%。這意味著連續收入增加約 850 萬美元，高於我們上一季度 23 年第二季度 750 萬美元至 800 萬美元的指導範圍。非 GAAP 營業利潤率約為負 10%，非 GAAP 淨虧損或每股收益將在負 0.01 美元至 0.00 美元之間。 2023 年全年，我們預計收入將在 7.67 億美元至 7.72 億美元之間，增長 31% 至 32%。非 GAAP 營業利潤率約為負 10%，非 GAAP 每股淨虧損在負 0.05 美元至負 0.02 美元之間。

Additionally, we are raising our FY '23 target range for non-GAAP gross margin to approximately 74%. For Q4 2023 targets, we continue to expect to land within the range of 48% to 50% for cloud as a percentage of total revenue, but likely at the lower end due to the factors we called out before and the strength in our Confluent Platform business impacting product mix shift, and we continue to expect to achieve breakeven for non-GAAP operating margin. The timing of free cash flow margin breakeven will roughly mirror that of our operating margin.

此外，我們還將 23 財年非 GAAP 毛利率目標範圍提高至約 74%。對於 2023 年第四季度的目標，我們繼續預計雲佔總收入的百分比將保持在 48% 至 50% 的範圍內，但由於我們之前指出的因素以及我們 Confluence 平台的實力，可能會處於較低水平業務影響產品組合轉變，我們繼續期望實現非公認會計原則營業利潤率的盈虧平衡。自由現金流利潤率盈虧平衡的時間將大致反映我們營業利潤率的時間。

In closing, I'm pleased with the continued momentum we see across Confluent Platform and Confluent Cloud. Our market-leading data streaming platform is winning, and we're continuing to execute well in a choppy macro environment. Looking forward, we are well positioned to drive durable and efficient growth.

最後，我對 Confluence Platform 和 Confluence Cloud 的持續發展勢頭感到高興。我們市場領先的數據流平台正在獲勝，並且我們在動蕩的宏觀環境中繼續表現良好。展望未來，我們已做好充分準備，推動持久、高效的增長。

Now Jay, Rohan and I will take your questions.

現在傑伊、羅漢和我將回答你們的問題。

Thanks, Steffan. To join the Q&A, please raise your hand. And today, our first question will come from Jason Ader with William Blair, followed by Wells Fargo.

謝謝，斯特凡。要加入問答，請舉手。今天，我們的第一個問題將由傑森·阿德爾和威廉·布萊爾提出，其次是富國銀行。

Thanks, Shane, and good luck to you, Steffan. You really do have the midas touch with your job choices. But my question is on the consumption side. Confluent Cloud has been out for a few years now. Are you seeing a trend where customers are overconsuming more than they previously had? And you talked about kind of the annual commitments that they're making. Are they tending to make lower annual commitments because of the economy and, therefore, overconsume more? And then how does that manifest in the numbers?

謝謝，肖恩，祝你好運，斯特凡。你的工作選擇確實具有點石成金的能力。但我的問題是在消費方面。 Confluence Cloud 已經推出幾年了。您是否發現客戶比以前過度消費的趨勢？您談到了他們做出的年度承諾。他們是否會因為經濟形勢而傾向於減少年度承諾，從而導致過度消費？那麼這如何體現在數字上呢？

Yes. That's a great question and that dynamic is present. I would attribute it to 2 facts. Internally, we have been really shifting our go-to-market to emphasize driving consumption. More use cases coming on to the platform as quickly as possible even outside of the term of new commitments. And then externally, yes, there's real market pressure. And so companies are being very thoughtful about how -- what they commit to upfront, how much they pay ahead, et cetera. And so both those dynamics are present. And that is reflected in the really strong consumption results. I think it's ultimately healthy. This is kind of the intention of these consumption models and certainly how we treat consumption vendors internally. But it does show up when you look at the kind of RPO-CRPO split and RPO versus kind of revenue performance for Confluent Cloud.

是的。這是一個很好的問題，而且這種動力是存在的。我將其歸因於兩個事實。在內部，我們一直在真正轉變我們的市場策略，以強調推動消費。即使在新承諾期限之外，更多用例也會盡快進入該平台。然後在外部，是的，存在真正的市場壓力。因此，公司正在非常仔細地考慮如何——他們預先承諾什麼，他們提前支付多少費用，等等。所以這兩種動力都存在。這反映在真正強勁的消費結果上。我認為這最終是健康的。這就是這些消費模式的意圖，當然也是我們內部對待消費供應商的方式。但當您查看 RPO-CRPO 劃分以及 RPO 與 Confluence Cloud 的收入績效對比時，它確實會顯現出來。

All right. Then one quick follow-up just on FedRAMP. When are you guys expecting to get FedRAMP-authorized for Confluent Cloud?

好的。然後是 FedRAMP 上的快速跟進。你們預計什麼時候獲得 Confluence Cloud 的 FedRAMP 授權？

Yes. We haven't given any public time line for that. It's obviously a big focus for us, and we've seen really strong results in the public sector, even though we're effectively kind of fighting with one hand tied behind our back. So we're very excited about that coming online.

是的。我們還沒有給出任何公開的時間表。這顯然是我們的一個重點，我們在公共部門看到了非常強勁的成果，儘管我們實際上是在用一隻手綁在背後進行戰鬥。因此，我們對此上線感到非常興奮。

Congrats to you, Rohan.

恭喜你，羅漢。

All right. Thanks, Jason. We'll take our next question from Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo, followed by Goldman.

好的。謝謝，傑森。我們將接受富國銀行邁克爾·特林（Michael Turrin）的下一個問題，然後是高盛。

I apologize the video operator seems to be not too kind on my side, but quick question just on cloud. Obviously, a big point of focus came in strong in Q2. Just wondering if you can add commentary on the progression you saw during the quarter, visibility you have into rest of year as a result. And then it looked like 3Q guidance is now sequentially down a touch as a starting point versus where Q2 came in. Was there anything unexpected that came through in Q2? Or maybe just help us think through the progression of what you're expecting to see on cloud from here?

我很抱歉視頻操作員似乎對我不太友善，但只是在雲上快速提問。顯然，第二季度出現了一個重要的焦點。只是想知道您是否可以對本季度所看到的進展以及您對今年剩餘時間的可見性添加評論。然後，看起來第三季度的指引現在比第二季度的起點連續下降了一點。第二季度有什麼意外的情況發生嗎？或者也許只是幫助我們思考一下您期望從這裡在雲上看到的進展？

Yes. We saw really great results on consumption. I would say, particularly as said, larger customers drove kind of overperformance there. We didn't think that, that indicated necessarily equal overperformance on each subsequent quarter. But overall, the trajectory for cloud consumption is very strong, and we feel really good about it. So I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Steffan?

是的。我們在消費方面看到了非常好的結果。我想說，特別是如上所述，較大的客戶推動了那裡的超額業績。我們認為，這並不表明隨後每個季度的表現一定相同。但總體而言，雲消費的軌跡非常強勁，我們對此感覺非常好。所以我不知道你是否想添加任何內容，Steffan？

Yes. The only other thing I'd add is, at the beginning of the year, we had called for sequential increases in cloud revenue and we've been delivering that in Q1 and Q2. We had guided $7.5 million to $8 million for Q2, and we came in $2.2 million above the midpoint of the range. And so when you take out a little bit of that overperformance and you look at our guide for Q3, that will -- that is a sequential increase relative to our original guide in Q2. So the underlying strength and drivers of the cloud business, very strong, and we are seeing adoption across cohorts and we're seeing very good adoption in the marketplace.

是的。我唯一要補充的是，在今年年初，我們曾呼籲連續增加雲收入，並且我們已經在第一季度和第二季度實現了這一目標。我們對第二季度的指導價為 750 萬至 800 萬美元，我們的收入比該範圍的中點高出 220 萬美元。因此，當你拿出一點超額表現並查看我們第三季度的指南時，就會發現，相對於我們第二季度的原始指南，這是一個連續的增長。因此，雲業務的潛在優勢和驅動力非常強大，我們看到各個群體的採用，並且我們看到市場上的採用非常好。

That's helpful. Just a follow-up, if I may, on the subscription gross margin. You continue to drive -- ramp your -- now 79%. Can you just help us think through any further potential leverage there and the trade-offs on total gross margin between the cloud mix and what you're seeing there?

這很有幫助。如果可以的話，我只是對訂閱毛利率進行跟進。你繼續駕駛——提高你的——現在79%。您能否幫助我們考慮一下那裡的任何進一步的潛在槓桿作用以及雲組合與您在那裡看到的總毛利率之間的權衡？

Yes. There's a number of factors that contribute. I mean there's kind of 2 things going on under the covers. On one hand, the percentage that is Confluent Cloud has gone up. And of course, Confluent Cloud, being a managed service, has a lower gross margin than Confluent Platform, which is pure software. At the same time, Confluent Cloud gross margin has been rapidly improving. And that's due to a number of factors, but in particular, the improvements in Quora, more emphasis on the multi-tenancy in the system, improvements in the underlying hardware profile that we use, improvements in the software stack really top to bottom to drive efficiency. So we're very excited by the progress there. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Steffan?

是的。有很多因素起作用。我的意思是有兩件事在幕後發生。一方面，融合雲的比例有所上升。當然，Confluence Cloud 作為一項託管服務，其毛利率低於 Confluence Platform（純軟件）。與此同時，Confluence Cloud的毛利率也在快速提升。這是由於多種因素造成的，但特別是 Quora 的改進，更加強調系統中的多租戶，我們使用的底層硬件配置文件的改進，軟件堆棧的改進確實從上到下推動效率。因此，我們對那裡的進展感到非常興奮。我不知道你是否想補充什麼，Steffan？

I'd just say it's been a real bright spot. Our progression in gross margin, it's a demonstration of the value that we're delivering to our customers and it's also a reflection of the fine engineering work, engineering optimization work and also the discipline we have on pricing. So it's been a real positive, and we've been able to drive that gross margin higher both on the Confluent Cloud side and the Confluent Platform side.

我只想說這是一個真正的亮點。我們毛利率的進步，證明了我們為客戶提供的價值，也反映了精細的工程工作、工程優化工作以及我們在定價方面的紀律。所以這是一個真正的積極因素，我們已經能夠提高 Confluence 雲端和 Confluence 平台端的毛利率。

Congrats to both of you, Rohan and Steffan.

恭喜你們倆，羅漢和斯特凡。

Thanks, Michael. We'll take our next question from Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs, followed by Barclays.

謝謝，邁克爾。我們將接受高盛 (Goldman Sachs) 的卡什·蘭根 (Kash Rangan) 提出的下一個問題，然後是巴克萊 (Barclays)。

Jay, a nice quarter. Steffan, we'll definitely miss you. And Rohan, huge congratulations. Great to watch what your trajectory over the past several years. So one for you, Jay. When you look at -- we thought we're going to have a recession this year and it looks like we have dodged one. If the economic conditions do stabilize, how do you see Confluent Cloud versus Platform, not to make it one versus the other, they're both the great products. But when customers start to get back to priorities, do you think we'll get back to a more platform upside or rather a cloud upside because in this downturn, I think the on-prem component of many software companies that have hybrid business models has taken a little bit more precedence, I don't know why. And the cloud adoption generally has slowed a bit. Do you think that we go back to cloud adoption if the economic conditions do stabilize?

傑伊，一個不錯的季度。史蒂芬，我們一定會想念你的。還有羅漢，熱烈祝賀。很高興看到你過去幾年的軌跡。傑伊，這是給你的一份。當你看時——我們原以為今年會出現經濟衰退，但看起來我們已經躲過了一次。如果經濟狀況確實穩定下來，您如何看待 Confluence Cloud 與 Platform，而不是說它們是一對，它們都是很棒的產品。但是，當客戶開始回到優先事項時，您認為我們會回到更多的平台優勢還是雲優勢，因為在這次經濟低迷時期，我認為許多擁有混合業務模式的軟件公司的本地組件已經稍微優先一點，我不知道為什麼。雲的採用總體上有所放緩。您認為如果經濟狀況穩定下來，我們會重新採用雲技術嗎？

And one for you, Steffan, if I could. When we look at the cloud business, the use cases, are you getting basically identical use cases as to the on-prem? Or are you seeing a new set of use cases that really is pulling away the cloud momentum in a different direction? Maybe it's a different set of customers, a different set of industries, a different set of use cases or different geographies. I'll take this option to ask you a bit of a technical question because we're going to miss you in a couple of months. So anyway, I'll throw that out.

如果可以的話，斯特凡，也給你一份。當我們查看雲業務、用例時，您是否獲得了與本地部署基本相同的用例？或者您是否看到了一組新的用例，它們確實正在向不同的方向拉動雲動力？也許是不同的客戶群、不同的行業、不同的用例或不同的地理位置。我會選擇問你一些技術問題，因為幾個月後我們會想念你的。所以無論如何，我會把它扔掉。

Yes, put him to the test.

是的，考驗他一下。

On the way, that's fair.

在路上，這是公平的。

It's a great question, Kash. So yes, I mean it's a little bit speculative. I do think that you're on to something there, though. What we have seen is 2 behaviors. One I already alluded to, which is this very strong consumption relative to commit. So people just being thoughtful about commits, but then actually using more than they had committed to.

這是一個很好的問題，卡什。所以是的，我的意思是這有點投機。不過，我確實認為你有所作為。我們看到的是兩種行為。我已經提到過，這是相對於承諾而言非常強烈的消耗。因此，人們只是對承諾深思熟慮，但實際上使用的內容卻超出了他們承諾的內容。

I do think there's also a set of customers that are being a little bit more thoughtful about the pace of their cloud migration. So I've heard of people pulling back entirely. We haven't seen that in our customer base, like people are moving to the cloud. But they're kind of trying to get the last dollar out of their on-premise environment, thoughtful about which workload moves and when, a little bit more hesitant to have parallel spend and the result of that has -- I think, has driven some of the success of Confluent Platform in addition to the public sector thing which we alluded to.

我確實認為還有一些客戶對雲遷移的步伐更加深思熟慮。所以我聽說人們完全撤退了。在我們的客戶群中，我們還沒有看到人們正在遷移到雲端。但他們試圖從本地環境中拿出最後一美元，考慮到哪些工作負載轉移以及何時轉移，對並行支出更加猶豫，而其結果——我認為，已經推動了除了我們提到的公共部門之外，Confluence 平台的一些成功。

It's not a bad thing for us. It is our strategy to be able to span all of these environments and connect them. And we think that strength in one drives strength in the other. And so we're happy to serve the customers in the environment that they're using. That's very much our approach on the product side. But I do suspect that, yes, where we do see kind of an acceleration or a little bit of a loosening of the purse strings in the IT budgets, I do think you'd see a little bit faster push in the cloud. And if that speculation were correct, then that would probably drive our cloud business further.

這對我們來說並不是一件壞事。我們的策略是能夠跨越所有這些環境並將它們連接起來。我們認為，一個人的力量會帶動另一個人的力量。因此，我們很高興在客戶正在使用的環境中為他們提供服務。這就是我們在產品方面的方法。但我確實懷疑，是的，當我們確實看到 IT 預算有所加速或錢包有所放鬆時，我確實認為您會看到雲計算的推動速度更快一些。如果這種猜測是正確的，那麼這可能會進一步推動我們的雲業務。

Yes. And as it relates to the second question, just around use cases, there's the traditional set of use cases that we've talked about a lot, but I'd like to just focus a moment on some of the GenAI, AI and ML use cases that we're seeing. Customers are really starting to do and have been doing a number of things. First is they're building real-time context data and using that to PowerChat interfaces with their customers. We've seen them also provide product recommendations based off of demographics and buying patterns. And then we've also seen technology that deploys AI assistance to drivers and helping with fleet logistics.

是的。由於它與第二個問題有關，圍繞用例，我們已經討論了很多傳統的用例集，但我想重點關注 GenAI、AI 和 ML 的一些使用我們看到的案例。客戶確實開始做並且已經做了很多事情。首先，他們正在構建實時上下文數據，並將其用於 PowerChat 與客戶的交互。我們看到他們還根據人口統計數據和購買模式提供產品推薦。然後我們還看到了為駕駛員部署人工智能輔助並幫助車隊物流的技術。

And then finally, I would say customers are also building a real-time ML and data science pipeline to power their new fraud detection platform. So there are lots of use cases that companies have already been using our technology for, but then with all the advances that are being made, they're going to be using our technology even more so in the future.

最後，我想說客戶還在構建實時機器學習和數據科學管道來為其新的欺詐檢測平台提供支持。因此，公司已經在很多用例中使用我們的技術，但隨著所取得的所有進步，他們將來會更多地使用我們的技術。

Good luck with the next venture. Great working with you, Steffan.

祝你下次創業好運。和你一起工作很棒，史蒂芬。

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

非常感謝。欣賞它。

Thanks, Kash. We'll take our next question from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays, followed by Deutsche.

謝謝，卡什。我們將接受巴克萊銀行的雷莫·倫肖 (Raimo Lenschow) 提出的下一個問題，然後是德意志銀行。

All the best from me as well, Steffan and Rohan. I've just 2 quick questions. First, if you think about the cloud momentum that you have at the moment, what are you seeing in terms of pipeline there in terms of what's going to drive to grow going forward? Is that going to be more like existing use cases with heavier consumption? Or do you see like early signs of more people going back to cashless questions of people just thinking about like, okay, I need the next use. What are you seeing there? That's the first question.

我也祝 Steffan 和 Rohan 一切順利。我只有兩個簡單的問題。首先，如果您考慮一下目前擁有的雲動力，那麼您認為那裡的管道是什麼，將推動未來的增長？這是否會更像消耗較大的現有用例？或者你是否看到更多人回到無現金問題的早期跡象，人們只是在想，好吧，我需要下一次使用。你在那裡看到什麼？這是第一個問題。

The second one is with the recent changes at New Relic, is there any update you have there in terms of how that's going because that's obviously a big reference customer for you and it's important for you?

第二個問題是 New Relic 最近的變化，您是否有任何關於進展情況的更新，因為這顯然對您來說是一個重要的參考客戶，並且對您來說很重要？

Yes. To the first question, I want to make sure I understand it right. You're saying what's kind of the pattern of consumption that we're seeing? Is it more use case driven? Or is it more something else? Help me understand the kind of nuance that you're driving...

是的。對於第一個問題，我想確保我理解正確。你是說我們現在看到的消費模式是什麼樣的？它更受用例驅動嗎？或者還有別的什麼？幫助我理解你所駕駛的細微差別......

Yes, so it's more like -- is it more use cases? Or are the streams getting bigger? Or is it just like a whole new projects in different departments of the different -- of the customers?

是的，所以它更像是——有更多的用例嗎？或者流變得越來越大？或者它就像不同客戶的不同部門的全新項目一樣？

Yes. Yes, that's a great question. So yes, I would say, generally, our expansion is driven by either new use cases or conversion of existing use cases that are using the open source. Obviously, there's some expansion of existing use cases like there's more data. But of course, there could be less data in some other use case. On net, I don't know that businesses are just getting bigger at a large rate year-over-year.

是的。是的，這是一個很好的問題。所以，是的，我想說，一般來說，我們的擴展是由新用例或使用開源的現有用例的轉換驅動的。顯然，現有用例有所擴展，例如有更多數據。但當然，在其他一些用例中數據可能會更少。在網絡上，我不知道企業是否正在逐年大幅增長。

The other area of expansion is the new product capabilities that we're adding. We have a consumption model as a layer on, customers can kind of in a very frictionless way to use more of that. For Confluent Cloud, thus far, it has been kind of largely driven by Kafka, but we are expecting over time, some of those other components to drive. So those are kind of the 3 vectors, expansion in the use of capabilities, expansion in the kind of raw volume of data and expansion in use cases today. The spread of use cases is definitely the one that drives us.

擴展的另一個領域是我們添加的新產品功能。我們有一個消費模型作為一層，客戶可以以一種非常無摩擦的方式使用更多的模型。對於 Confluence Cloud 來說，到目前為止，它很大程度上是由 Kafka 驅動的，但我們預計隨著時間的推移，其他一些組件也會被驅動。這些就是 3 個向量：功能使用的擴展、原始數據量的擴展以及當今用例的擴展。用例的傳播無疑是我們的驅動力。

And then, to the New Relic question, yes, they've progressed in their deployments and we're seeing what we would expect out of their adoption.

然後，對於 New Relic 的問題，是的，他們的部署取得了進展，我們正在看到我們對他們的採用所期望的結果。

All right. Thanks, Raimo. We will take our next question from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank, followed by Piper Sandler.

好的。謝謝，雷莫。我們將接受德意志銀行的布拉德·澤尼克（Brad Zelnick）的下一個問題，然後是派珀·桑德勒（Piper Sandler）。

Nice quarter. And congrats, Steffan. We'll miss you at Confluent, but I couldn't think of a better, more capable successor than Rohan. So congrats to you, Rohan. Really excited to see you in the new role.

不錯的季度。恭喜，斯特凡。我們會在 Confluence 懷念你，但我想不出比 Rohan 更好、更有能力的繼任者了。恭喜你，羅漢。很高興看到你擔任新角色。

Jay, on stream processing, it's good to hear the encouraging early feedback and in particular, around the integration points with the rest of your platform. You talked about still being in the early stages of S-curve adoption. I want to make sure nothing's changed in terms of the time line and impact that you initially expected when you did the deal. And if you can remind us of any milestones we should look for in the years ahead to appraise your progress with Flink?

Jay，關於流處理，很高興聽到令人鼓舞的早期反饋，特別是圍繞與平台其他部分的集成點。您談到仍處於 S 曲線採用的早期階段。我想確保您在完成交易時最初預期的時間安排和影響方面沒有任何變化。您能否提醒我們在未來幾年中應該尋找哪些里程碑來評估您在 Flink 方面的進展？

Yes. Yes. So yes, we are very pleased with the progress to go from kind of a standing start to having a real like cloud stream processing layer that customers can use is a big deal. It's currently in early access, meaning it's being used by a handful of customers. We're working with them, getting feedback. It will go into kind of open availability and then GA. And those are kind of the milestones to expect from us.

是的。是的。所以，是的，我們對從一種站立式起步到擁有一個真正的、可供客戶使用的雲流處理層的進展感到非常高興，這是一件大事。它目前處於早期訪問階段，這意味著它正在被少數客戶使用。我們正在與他們合作，獲取反饋。它將進入某種開放可用性狀態，然後進入正式發布階段。這些是我們期望的里程碑。

In GA is when it will start to take on production workloads. But to be clear, with any cloud infrastructure, there is a longer ramp as you kind of reach the full completion of future sets or available across every cloud with every networking type that will continue. And then, of course, customers have to ramp their spend to the point where it moves Confluent's numbers overall and that will happen use case at a time. And so a certain amount of patience is important in these areas. This is what we saw with our Kafka business, where -- at first, it was a small thing in the cloud. And then as we really hit that kind of the right point on that maturity curve, it ramped much faster.

在 GA 中，它將開始承擔生產工作負載。但需要明確的是，對於任何云基礎設施，當您完全完成未來的集合或跨每個雲以及將繼續的每種網絡類型可用時，都會有一個更長的斜坡。然後，當然，客戶必須增加支出，直到能夠移動 Confluence 的整體數字，而這將在用例中一次發生。因此，在這些領域保持一定的耐心非常重要。這就是我們在 Kafka 業務中看到的情況，起初，它只是雲中的一個小東西。然後，當我們真正達到成熟度曲線上的正確點時，它的增長速度要快得多。

I think we can do that a little bit quicker with some of these additional components because they are natural attached to Kafka, but there still is a curve that ramps. And so yes, to your question, we're exactly on the schedule that we originally intended, which is kind of amazing for such a complicated software project. We're really pleased with how the team is integrated and I think the product we built is even better than I imagine. So I'm very excited about it. But yes, it will ramp over the course of next year and really kind of contribute most meaningfully in '25.

我認為我們可以使用其中一些附加組件更快地做到這一點，因為它們自然地附加到 Kafka，但仍然有一個斜坡曲線。所以，是的，對於你的問題，我們完全按照我們最初預期的時間表進行，這對於如此復雜的軟件項目來說有點令人驚奇。我們對團隊的整合方式非常滿意，我認為我們構建的產品比我想像的還要好。所以我對此感到非常興奮。但是，是的，它會在明年加速發展，並在 25 年做出最有意義的貢獻。

And if I could just ask a follow-up and something that I get asked about from investors. One of your smaller private competitors completed a Series C capital raise recently. And I've just seen many markets where you have a venture-backed player that can come -- can enter and maybe more easily afford to operate at a loss and pressure price. Any thoughts or updates competitively? And is this something that you worry about that you face in the market?

我是否可以詢問後續情況以及投資者向我詢問的問題。您的一家規模較小的私人競爭對手最近完成了 C 輪融資。我剛剛看到許多市場，有風險投資支持的參與者可以進入，並且可能更容易承受以虧損和壓力價格運營的情況。有什麼想法或更新競爭嗎？這是您在市場上面臨的擔憂嗎？

Yes. You're probably talking about Redpanda. Yes. Yes. We pay attention to any of the earlier competitors. We've had a sequence of those almost since the company started. Pulsar was the thing for a while and then kind of went away. There's been other systems before that. So we pay attention to all of them. We compete very effectively with them. Even one of the customer stories today was actually a customer bias that was one of their reference to customers that, that's now a customer of ours. And so we feel good about that setup.

是的。您可能正在談論 Redpanda。是的。是的。我們關注任何早期的競爭對手。幾乎從公司成立以來，我們就已經經歷了一系列這樣的事情。 Pulsar 流行了一段時間，然後就消失了。在此之前還有其他系統。所以我們關注所有這些。我們與他們進行非常有效的競爭。即使今天的一個客戶故事實際上也是一種客戶偏見，這是他們對客戶的參考之一，現在是我們的客戶。所以我們對這個設置感覺很好。

Overall, if you look at what's happening in the space that we're in, there's 2 big trends that I think actually make it hard for really any competitor, but particularly a smaller competitor. The first is this movement to the cloud and the expectation on a true cloud-native service, right, which is a really serious investment to build something like that.

總的來說，如果你看看我們所處的領域正在發生的事情，我認為有兩大趨勢實際上讓任何競爭對手都陷入困境，尤其是規模較小的競爭對手。首先是向雲的遷移以及對真正的雲原生服務的期望，對吧，這是構建類似服務的一項非常嚴肅的投資。

The second is the broadening of the space from kind of just Kafka to a full data streaming platform like the full set of capabilities. Kind of think of it as going from word versus word perfect to Microsoft Office, right? And if you look at those 2 trends, they're just very strongly prevalent in the world. And they're actually hard for competitors to do -- hard for some of the cloud players to do for a whole set of reasons, particularly hard for smaller start-up to do. I think we're actually lucky to be at the scale, to be able to sustain the investment to do both of those things right and kind of drive that progress forward. And I think it's exactly where this space is going. And so that's the bet that we've got, and I think that sets us up well against the full spectrum of the competitive landscape.

第二個是空間的拓寬，從 Kafka 擴展到像全套功能這樣的完整數據流平台。可以將其視為從文字與文字完美到 Microsoft Office，對嗎？如果你觀察一下這兩種趨勢，就會發現它們在世界上非常普遍。事實上，它們對於競爭對手來說很難做到——對於一些雲廠商來說，由於一系列原因很難做到，特別是對於小型初創企業來說更難做到。我認為我們實際上很幸運能夠達到這樣的規模，能夠維持投資以正確地完成這兩件事並推動進步。我認為這正是這個空間的發展方向。這就是我們的賭注，我認為這使我們能夠很好地應對全方位的競爭格局。

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

謝謝，布拉德。我們將回答 Rob Owens 和 Piper Sandler 提出的下一個問題，然後是瑞穗。

Jay, I appreciate the commentary around patience with regard to stream processing and budgets. But more curious if you could provide color around early adoption, just how long it takes some of these companies to migrate existing offerings over to your service as we think about potentially that adoption curve.

Jay，我很欣賞關於流處理和預算方面耐心的評論。但更好奇的是，您是否可以提供有關早期採用的信息，當我們考慮潛在的採用曲線時，其中一些公司需要多長時間才能將現有產品遷移到您的服務。

Yes. Yes, there's kind of 2 patterns for adoption for us. One is the net new use case of which there's plenty happening even in a tighter economy. Kafka open source adoption continues a pace, and many use cases for that are actually just coming and directly starting on our cloud. That will be true for Flink and some of these other components as well.

是的。是的，我們有兩種採用的模式。其中之一是淨新用例，即使在經濟緊縮的情況下也會發生很多事情。 Kafka 開源採用繼續加快步伐，許多用例實際上剛剛出現並直接在我們的雲上開始。對於 Flink 和其他一些組件來說也是如此。

And then the conversions. And the conversion, it depends. The kind of bigger the setup that a company has, the more complicated that is. But they often move it a bit at a time. And so we don't have to kind of eat the apple all in one bite. And so yes, that time frame depends. There's companies that are very disciplined and can move actually a very large setup in a couple of months. Even though there may be hundreds of applications, there's other areas where that will take longer. It really depends on the setup with customers.

然後是轉換。和轉換，這取決於。公司的設置越大，就越複雜。但他們經常一次移動一點。所以我們不必一口氣把蘋果吃完。所以是的，這個時間框架取決於。有些公司非常有紀律，實際上可以在幾個月內搬遷一個非常大的設置。儘管可能有數百個應用程序，但在其他領域可能需要更長的時間。這實際上取決於客戶的設置。

The nice thing about these additional DSP components, the rest of the data streaming platforms is it has a very strong attach to Kafka. And so the initial adoption need not be new customers coming from the streets. It need not even be new use cases. It can kind of drive direct attach off what you're doing already with Kafka and so it kind of pulls in and starts with our existing customers. And the nature of these consumption models, this is their biggest strength, right?

這些額外的 DSP 組件和其他數據流平台的好處是它與 Kafka 有著非常強的聯繫。因此，最初的採用不一定是來自街頭的新客戶。它甚至不需要是新的用例。它可以直接推動您已經使用 Kafka 所做的事情，因此它可以吸引並從我們現有的客戶開始。而這些消費模式的本質，這就是他們最大的優勢吧？

There's obviously a ton of complexity with consumption. It's very friendly to the customers and customers like it, especially in this kind of environment. But one of the superpowers that I think ABS really proved is that ability to expand in a low friction way to other components. And particularly in the streaming space where the core stream of data is the thing that everything else hooks on to. It's the thing you need governance for. It's the thing that connectors produce. It's the thing that the Flink is processing. That kind of draws in those other components. And so that's the first target for us is get that attach rate with the existing customer base up before we're kind of going out and trying to convert existing Flink users.

消費顯然非常複雜。它對顧客非常友好，顧客也喜歡它，尤其是在這種環境下。但我認為 ABS 真正證明的超能力之一是以低摩擦方式擴展到其他組件的能力。特別是在流媒體領域，核心數據流是其他所有事物所依賴的東西。這就是你需要治理的事情。這是連接器生產的東西。這是 Flink 正在處理的事情。這種方式會吸引其他組件。因此，我們的首要目標是在我們嘗試轉化現有 Flink 用戶之前，提高現有客戶群的附著率。

Great. And for Steffan, I appreciate the commentary around where we're at in the economy and some of the challenges that are out there. But maybe you could speak to us just about top of funnel and what you guys are seeing from that perspective, from a velocity perspective.

偉大的。對於斯特凡來說，我很欣賞他對我們的經濟狀況以及所面臨的一些挑戰的評論。但也許你可以和我們談談漏斗的頂部，以及你們從這個角度、從速度的角度看到的東西。

Sure. Thanks. Our pipeline -- we had a really strong pipeline quarter last quarter, which is a good leading indicator. And we also are measuring a number of sign-ups that we have for our pay-as-you-go business. And those continue to be robust. But as we've mentioned over the last 3 or 4 earnings calls, the progression of stages from top of funnel all the way through committed contracts and then ultimately through expansion, et cetera, just some of that business has just slowed down and we've been factoring that into how we not only forecast our business on the top line, but we've also been making operational changes around how we're investing in the business. And we come at this from the lens of ensuring that we're driving that top line growth as high as we can, but also delivering the profitability that we've communicated to The Street, and we've been able to do that.

當然。謝謝。我們的管道——上個季度我們的管道非常強勁，這是一個很好的領先指標。我們還正在衡量即用即付業務的註冊數量。這些仍然強勁。但正如我們在過去的三四次財報電話會議中提到的，從漏斗頂部一直到承諾合同，然後最終通過擴張等各個階段的進展，只是其中一些業務放緩了，我們’我們不僅將這一點考慮到了我們的營收預測中，而且還圍繞我們的業務投資方式進行了運營變革。我們從確保我們盡可能高地推動營收增長的角度出發，同時也實現了我們向華爾街傳達的盈利能力，而且我們已經能夠做到這一點。

So the top of funnel metrics actually look pretty good, but it's -- we're trying to increase the deal velocity and the conversion rates. And those are the things that our team has been working on. And I think about it like what Erica and Stephanie and Jay and other folks in the organization are spending their time on it. It's those conversion rates, it's the deal velocity and we're making progress there. And as I also mentioned in the prepared remarks, to the extent that the economy improves, we should benefit from that just like other companies would. But in the meantime, it's like we're navigating through and ensuring that we're delivering on our commitments.

因此，漏斗頂部的指標實際上看起來相當不錯，但我們正在努力提高交易速度和轉化率。這些就是我們團隊一直在努力的事情。我認為這就像艾麗卡、斯蒂芬妮、傑伊以及組織中的其他人在這方面花費的時間一樣。這是轉化率，是交易速度，我們正在這方面取得進展。正如我在準備好的發言中提到的，只要經濟有所改善，我們就應該像其他公司一樣從中受益。但與此同時，我們正在探索並確保我們兌現我們的承諾。

We will take our next question from Gregg Moskowitz with Mizuho, followed by Needham.

我們將接受瑞穗格雷格·莫斯科維茨（Gregg Moskowitz）和李約瑟（Needham）提出的下一個問題。

Steffan, we'll certainly miss you being a part of Confluent. But congrats to Rohan on a very well-deserved promotion. Jay, can you speak to the monetization opportunity for screen sharing, both in terms of landing more customers and driving more interconnect between organizations? How are you expecting that this is going to evolve?

Steffan，我們一定會想念您成為 Confluence 的一員。但恭喜羅漢獲得了當之無愧的晉升。 Jay，您能否談談屏幕共享的盈利機會，無論是在吸引更多客戶還是推動組織之間加強互連方面？您預計這將如何發展？

Yes. That's probably the hardest one to forecast. What was shocking to me was how prevalent this pattern had become and how much work it was for customers to do it. So despite the fact they were doing a lot of this by hand with kind of custom code, they were writing, just across every industry, that seem to be popping up. And that was what made us really feel strongly enough that we needed to invest in productizing it, even in a time period where we're operating relatively leanly.

是的。這可能是最難預測的。令我震驚的是，這種模式變得如此普遍，而且客戶需要做多少工作才能做到這一點。因此，儘管事實上他們使用自定義代碼手動完成了很多工作，但他們在每個行業中編寫的內容似乎都在不斷湧現。這讓我們強烈地感覺到我們需要投資將其產品化，即使是在我們運營相對精簡的時期。

The opportunity is really to drive the spread. And so if you see what happens in a lot of these industries is there's a whole ecosystem of data flow. And once the mechanism for that gets set up, it really doesn't change and tends to drive any new entrant or provider or aspire that taps into that to also adopt the same layer. And kind of network effect, that's certainly something we would see within a company as we spin up and get to scale. At a certain point of time, you have to ask for permission not to use Confluent, instead of to use Confluent. That's obviously a really good point to get to.

這個機會確實可以推動傳播。因此，如果您看到許多這些行業中發生的情況，就會發現存在一個完整的數據流生態系統。一旦建立了該機制，它實際上就不會改變，並且往往會推動任何新進入者或提供商或渴望利用該機制也採用同一層。以及某種網絡效應，這肯定是我們在公司內部發展並擴大規模時會看到的東西。在某個時間點，你必須請求許可不使用 Confluence，而不是使用 Confluence。這顯然是一個非常好的切入點。

Being able to do that within an industry or within a sector is even better because that can drive the acquisition of new customers. And that to me is the thing I'm most excited about, more so than the kind of direct monetization, which is obviously an opportunity as well, but that ability to kind of become a standard for the exchange of data in different sectors and industries.

能夠在一個行業或一個部門內做到這一點就更好了，因為這可以推動新客戶的獲取。對我來說，這是我最興奮的事情，比直接貨幣化更令人興奮，這顯然也是一個機會，但這種能力成為不同部門和行業數據交換的標準。

All right. Makes a lot of sense. And then a bit earlier in answer to another question, Steffan talked about some of the AI-oriented use cases that are occurring for Confluent. Along with this, are you also seeing an uptick in GenAI POCs? Is that something that's really building? Or is it a little too early for that yet?

好的。很有道理。早些時候，在回答另一個問題時，Steffan 談到了 Confluence 正在發生的一些面向人工智能的用例。除此之外，您是否也看到 GenAI POC 有所增加？這是真正正在建設的東西嗎？或者現在還為時過早嗎？

Yes. Yes, we've definitely started to see that come up a lot more in our customers. Kind of more traditional machine learning was there as one of the driving use cases for a long time. And now this has become a very significant topic of interest for customers, a lot of experiments happening. So yes, I think that's very promising for us.

是的。是的，我們確實已經開始看到我們的客戶越來越多地出現這種情況。很長一段時間以來，更傳統的機器學習一直是駕駛用例之一。現在這已經成為客戶感興趣的一個非常重要的話題，正在進行大量的實驗。所以，是的，我認為這對我們來說非常有希望。

We'll go to Mike Cikos with Needham next, followed by Bank of America.

接下來我們將與尼達姆一起拜訪邁克·西科斯，然後是美國銀行。

And I'll pass on my comments, too, Steffan, we'll miss working with you. But congratulations to Rohan in stepping up to the CFO role here. Two questions. First, on the cloud guidance that we have today for Q3. I think in the prepared remarks, management alluded to maybe a smaller set of customers who drove some of that 2Q outperformance and that's why we're seeing the incremental revenue growth in Confluent Cloud declining in Q3 versus Q2. Again, the incremental growth is still growing, but it's at a slower pace versus what we saw in 2Q. So my question is really, can you help us think about the volume of those customers that drove that Q2 outperformance? And anything else that you can allude to, whether it's a particular vertical or what a specific use case or maybe more onetime in scope that drove that sizable beat that we're looking at in Q2 here? Just for context, when we think about how it's flowing through in Q3.

我也會轉達我的意見，Steffan，我們會懷念與你合作的時光。但祝賀 Rohan 晉升為首席財務官。兩個問題。首先，關於我們今天發布的第三季度的雲指導。我認為在準備好的發言中，管理層提到可能是少數客戶推動了第二季度的出色表現，這就是為什麼我們看到Confluence Cloud 的增量收入增長在第三季度與第二季度相比有所下降。同樣，增量增長仍在增長，但速度比我們在第二季度看到的要慢。所以我的問題是，您能否幫助我們考慮一下推動第二季度表現出色的客戶數量？您還可以提到其他任何內容，無論是特定的垂直領域還是特定的用例，或者可能是在範圍內推動了我們在第二季度看到的大幅增長的一次性情況？僅供參考，當我們考慮第三季度的情況時。

Yes. There was a set of customers that drove a portion of that we alluded to. Different events in each case, but yes, some streaming services that were kind of ramping up. Large sporting event in Asia Pacific that was bringing stuff online. So there's a bunch of different factors that kind of led to a ramp-up that we didn't think necessarily made sense to project forward in eternity, but we thought it was a great uptick in the business.

是的。有一組客戶推動了我們提到的一部分。每種情況下都有不同的事件，但是是的，一些流媒體服務正在加速發展。亞太地區的大型體育賽事將內容帶到網上。因此，有很多不同的因素導致了業務的增長，我們認為這些增長不一定有意義，但我們認為這是業務的巨大增長。

Got it. Got it. And then, one, if I could ask over to Steffan here. But on the guidance, for the negative 10% operating margin guidance that we have for Q3, the slight erosion versus what we just saw in Q2. And I'm just trying to sanity check that. Were there any growth in expenses that may be pushed from Q2 to Q3? Or can you help us think through why we are looking at a wider operating loss when thinking about that margin in Q3 versus what we just saw out of the June quarter?

知道了。知道了。然後，第一，我是否可以向這裡的斯特凡詢問一下。但就指導而言，我們對第三季度運營利潤率指導為負 10%，與我們剛剛在第二季度看到的相比略有下降。我只是想進行健全性檢查。是否有任何費用增長可能從第二季度推到第三季度？或者您能否幫助我們思考為什麼在考慮第三季度的利潤率與我們剛剛在六月份季度看到的利潤率時，我們會看到更大的營業虧損？

Yes. I mean there's -- what we're talking about is effectively roughly flat quarter-on-quarter and way better than what we had originally thought for Q3. So what we have going on is there's some -- we look at the top line growth, we look at margin and we look at the key drivers as we construct the overall guidance. And there was nothing that was pulled forward or pushed out in Q2. We are just forecasting where our head count is going to land, timing of head count and so it's effectively flat quarter-on-quarter and way better than what we thought at the beginning of the year relative to where we thought operating margin would be in Q3. And we also raised numbers for Q4 profit as well. So overall -- or for the full year, I should say. So overall, we feel good about that.

是的。我的意思是，我們所說的季度環比實際上大致持平，並且比我們最初對第三季度的預期要好得多。因此，我們正在做的是一些——我們在構建總體指導時關注營收增長、利潤率和關鍵驅動因素。第二季度沒有任何東西被提前或推出。我們只是預測我們的員工數量將下降到什麼程度，員工數量的時間安排，因此實際上季度環比持平，並且相對於我們認為的營業利潤率，比我們年初的預期要好得多Q3。我們還提高了第四季度的利潤數字。總的來說——或者我應該說是全年。總的來說，我們對此感覺良好。

Thanks, Mike. We'll take our next question from Brad Sills with Bank of America, followed by MoffettNathanson.

謝謝，邁克。我們將接受美國銀行的 Brad Sils 的下一個問題，然後是 MoffettNathanson。

Congratulations, Rohan. And Steffan, you'll be missed. I enjoyed working with you. I wanted to ask a question about the partner channel. It was a key theme at your Analyst Day. So any progress there? Anything incremental here? It seems like it's kind of a newer -- not a new focus, but an incremental focus, if you will, on some of the ISVs and SIs. So any update there, please?

恭喜你，羅漢。還有斯特凡，我們會想念你的。我很高興和你一起工作。我想問一個關於合作夥伴渠道的問題。這是分析師日的一個關鍵主題。那麼有什麼進展嗎？這裡有什麼增量嗎？這似乎是一個較新的——不是一個新的焦點，而是對某些 ISV 和 SI 的增量關注（如果你願意的話）。請問有更新嗎？

Yes. That has been an area of investment and kind of increased focus for us maybe in the last 6, 9 months. And it's actually manifested in some pretty positive early signs a couple of ways. So a couple of the SIs where we've seen really strong traction. And we think if that continues, that can be a substantial tailwind over time. We've seen this actually reflected in the uptick in pipeline that Steffan called out, that was an area that was a little behind our expectations, maybe a year ago. It is now performing above plan now, which has been really a kind of strong turnaround in the area. And so we were really happy to see.

是的。在過去的 6、9 個月裡，這一直是我們投資的一個領域，也是我們更加關注的領域。它實際上以多種方式體現在一些非常積極的早期跡像中。我們在幾個 SI 中看到了非常強大的吸引力。我們認為，如果這種情況持續下去，隨著時間的推移，這可能會成為一個巨大的推動力。我們已經看到這實際上反映在斯特凡所說的管道增加中，這個領域可能有點落後於我們的預期，也許一年前。現在它正在執行上述計劃，這確實是該地區的一種強有力的轉變。所以我們真的很高興看到。

So yes, I think both of those are positive signs. And of course, kind of key discussions in the technology landscape, we announced a program around the technology partners and this is an area that -- I think it's particularly strategic in making sure that we have the integrations into all these different systems, either upstream or downstream that want to plug in, deliver streams of data out to everything else in an organization or pull it in and do some kind of analytics or AI or machine learning on top of it. That's a program that we've launched that has really seen strong demand, and I think it's very exciting.

所以是的，我認為這都是積極的跡象。當然，在技術領域的關鍵討論中，我們宣布了一項圍繞技術合作夥伴的計劃，這是一個特別具有戰略意義的領域，以確保我們能夠集成到所有這些不同的系統中，無論是上游系統還是上游系統。或者想要插入的下游，將數據流傳遞給組織中的其他所有部分，或者將其拉入並在其之上進行某種分析或人工智能或機器學習。我們推出的這個計劃確實看到了強勁的需求，我認為這非常令人興奮。

Wonderful. One more, if I may, please. When we think of the success you've had over the years, a lot of this is driven by need for real-time streaming and next-generation applications. But I know there's also a good mix of deals here that involve modernization of existing data platforms and providing that real-time capability to a lot of legacy applications. So just curious, any observation there on that mix of deal activity coming from net new activity versus replacement and refresh in modernization of existing infrastructure?

精彩的。如果可以的話，請再來一張。當我們想到您多年來所取得的成功時，很大程度上是由對實時流和下一代應用程序的需求推動的。但我知道這裡還有很多交易，涉及現有數據平台的現代化以及為許多遺留應用程序提供實時功能。所以只是好奇，對來自淨新活動與現有基礎設施現代化的替換和更新的交易活動的組合有何觀察？

Yes. There's -- that's exactly right, that our business has always been a mixture of connecting into the old and connecting into the new. And I actually think it's kind of one of the secrets of our success. When you think about a lot of new technologies, the message behind it is ultimately like, hey, if you delete all the things that you built over the years and rebuild it with us, it will be better, right? And the reality is it's just not that practical for a large successful organization. It's running some major part of the economy on software. They built over 30 years to delete it, rebuild it.

是的。這是完全正確的，我們的業務一直是連接舊的和連接新的混合體。事實上我認為這是我們成功的秘訣之一。當你想到很多新技術時，它背後的信息最終是這樣的，嘿，如果你刪除你多年來構建的所有東西並與我們一起重建它，它會更好，對吧？現實情況是，對於大型成功組織來說，這並不那麼實用。它在軟件上運行著經濟的一些主要部分。他們花了30多年的時間來刪除它，重建它。

And so the really cool thing about data streaming in Confluent is it's about how do you connect into all the old things, the mainframes and relational databases and on-premise systems. But then also how do you open that up and really create the backbone for the architecture that you want to have, the new applications, the new systems, the things that are driving customer interaction and the things that are helping you run the business more effectively and that's kind of proven out. You would see that in our adoption. The kind of digital native customers. We've featured some of them. They're starting from scratch. There's no mainframe offload projects there. This is the architecture that they want to have.

因此，Confluence 中數據流的真正酷之處在於如何連接到所有舊事物、大型機、關係數據庫和本地系統。但是，您如何打開它並真正為您想要的架構、新應用程序、新系統、推動客戶交互的事物以及幫助您更有效地運營業務的事物創建主幹這已經被證明了。你會在我們的收養中看到這一點。數字原生客戶的類型。我們精選了其中一些。他們從頭開始。那裡沒有大型機卸載項目。這就是他們想要擁有的架構。

But you would also see in our customers, these very traditional organizations that have been around for decades or more and have built up software estates over that time. And so yes, I think with a little pressure on the economy, you probably see somewhat fewer of the kind of net new applications. But in many ways, that kind of hook into the systems that you have. The push on modernization for the sake of efficiency becomes more important. And that is -- those are all use cases that we feel.

但您也會在我們的客戶中看到，這些非常傳統的組織已經存在了幾十年或更長時間，並且在這段時間內建立了軟件資產。所以，是的，我認為，在經濟承受一點壓力的情況下，你可能會看到這種淨新應用程序的數量有所減少。但在很多方面，這種方式都與你現有的系統掛鉤。為了效率而推進現代化變得更加重要。也就是說，這些都是我們感受到的用例。

Thanks, Brad. I guess we'll take our last question from Sterling Auty with MoffettNathanson.

謝謝，布拉德。我想我們將回答 Sterling Auty 和 MoffettNathanson 提出的最後一個問題。

This is Billy Fitzsimmons on for Sterling Auty. It was talked about in the prepared remarks that there's still some macro choppiness out there. Two questions, and you can tackle them however you like. First, maybe expanding on some of the things that were already said. What changes have you made from a go-to-market standpoint over the last couple of quarters and adjusting to macro? And how has that impacted the pipeline and top funnel today? And then separately, when you look across your customer verticals and customers by geography, are there any material changes you've seen, either positive or negative in terms of consumption over the last quarter?

我是斯特林·奧蒂的比利·菲茨西蒙斯。在準備好的發言中談到，宏觀經濟仍然存在一些波動。兩個問題，你可以隨心所欲地解決它們。首先，也許可以擴展一些已經說過的事情。在過去幾個季度中，從進入市場的角度以及宏觀調整的角度來看，您做出了哪些改變？這對今天的渠道和頂級渠道有何影響？然後，當您分別查看垂直客戶和地理位置客戶時，您是否看到了上一季度消費方面的重大變化，無論是積極的還是消極的？

Yes. To the first question in terms of what changes have we made, it's probably too long of a list to go through. I mean just in great detail, I think we went through virtually every aspect of the go-to-market and looked at, hey, what's the efficiency of marketing spend, what are the customer targets that are most likely to convert, what's holding up in this market, how are we presenting TCO analysis and showing the value of our offering and how are we doing that not just for new deals, but for customers we already have to make sure that they feel very confident in the investment that they've made and that they're comfortable with future expansion. That list goes on and on and on. So that's been a very significant effort.

是的。對於第一個問題，我們做了哪些改變，這個清單可能太長了，無法一一列舉。我的意思是非常詳細，我認為我們幾乎經歷了進入市場的每個方面，並研究了，嘿，營銷支出的效率是多少，最有可能轉化的客戶目標是什麼，是什麼在阻礙在這個市場中，我們如何呈現TCO 分析並展示我們產品的價值，以及我們如何做到這一點，不僅針對新交易，而且針對客戶，我們已經必須確保他們對自己的投資非常有信心並且他們對未來的擴張感到滿意。這個清單一直在不斷地列下去。所以這是一項非常重要的努力。

I think any kind of economic pressure shows in really clear relief where there's gaps. And in a way, that's good. It actually lets us improve and get better. To some extent, you're kind of learning to swim faster because you're swimming against the stream. And so I think that has been a healthy thing for the company versus an environment a few years back where there was a certain tailwind and all kinds of things worked that maybe shouldn't. Looking at sectors and parts of the economy we've seen, which is interesting, pretty strong trends in EMEA and APAC. That's been positive.

我認為任何形式的經濟壓力都會在存在差距的地方表現出真正明顯的緩解。從某種程度上來說，這很好。它實際上讓我們進步並變得更好。在某種程度上，你正在學習游得更快，因為你是在逆流游泳。因此，我認為，與幾年前的環境相比，這對公司來說是一件健康的事情，當時有一定的順風，各種事情可能不應該起作用。看看我們所看到的經濟部門和部分，有趣的是，歐洲、中東和非洲和亞太地區的趨勢相當強勁。這是積極的。

One of the things we touched on in this call was our commercial business has done really well through this. They've had to adapt. They have a pretty strong chunk of the tech companies, both maybe kind of newly public, private, that are under pressure. And so they've really adjusted kind of how they serve that market, but they've continued to show success, which I think is really promising. So those are a few of the things that we've noticed. There's always some kind of shift in the industry to industry, but we're kind of very broadly across the industry. So most of that doesn't show up in something that we can move the business overall. But yes, those are a few of the highlights.

我們在這次電話會議中談到的一件事是，我們的商業業務通過這一舉措做得非常好。他們必須適應。他們擁有相當大一部分科技公司，可能都是新上市的、私營的，都面臨著壓力。因此，他們確實調整了服務該市場的方式，但他們繼續取得成功，我認為這非常有希望。這些是我們注意到的一些事情。行業與行業之間總是會發生某種轉變，但我們在整個行業中的變化非常廣泛。因此，其中大部分內容並沒有體現在我們可以整體推動業務發展的方面。但是，是的，這些只是其中的一些亮點。

All right. Thank you, everyone. That concludes today's earnings call. Thanks again for joining us. Have a good, everyone. Bye.

好的。謝謝大家。今天的財報電話會議到此結束。再次感謝您加入我們。祝大家一切順利。再見。

Thank you.

謝謝。

Thanks, all.

謝謝大家。