Cloudflare Inc (NET) 2023 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Thanks for joining us today to discuss Cloudflare's financial results for the second quarter of 2023. With me on the call, we have Matthew Prince, Co-Founder and CEO; Michelle Zatlyn, Co-Founder, President and COO; And Thomas Seifert, CFO. By now everyone should have access to our earnings announcement. This announcement as well as our supplemental financial information may be found on our Investor Relations website.

感謝您今天加入我們討論 Cloudflare 2023 年第二季的財務表現。米歇爾‧札特林 (Michelle Zatlyn)，共同創辦人、總裁兼營運長；還有財務長 Thomas Seifert。現在每個人都應該可以看到我們的收益公告了。本公告以及我們的補充財務資訊可在我們投資者關係網站上找到。

As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements during today's discussion, including, but not limited to, our customers', vendors' and partners' operations and future financial performance; our anticipated product launches and timing and market potential of those products, our anticipated future financial and operating performance and our expectations regarding future macroeconomic conditions. These statements and other comments are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties, much of which is beyond our control. Our actual results may differ significantly from those projected or suggested in any of our forward-looking statements.

提醒一下，我們將在今天的討論中做出前瞻性陳述，包括但不限於我們的客戶、供應商和合作夥伴的營運和未來財務表現；我們預期的產品發布以及這些產品的時間和市場潛力、我們預期的未來財務和經營業績以及我們對未來宏觀經濟狀況的預期。這些聲明和其他評論並不能保證未來的表現，並且受到風險和不確定性的影響，其中許多是我們無法控制的。我們的實際結果可能與我們的任何前瞻性陳述中預測或建議的結果有很大差異。

These forward-looking statements apply as of today, and you should not rely on them as representing our views in the future. We undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call. For a more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could impact our future operating results and financial condition, please see our filings with the SEC as well as in today's earnings press release.

這些前瞻性陳述自今天起適用，您不應依賴它們來代表我們未來的觀點。我們不承擔本次電話會議後更新這些聲明的義務。有關可能影響我們未來經營業績和財務狀況的風險和不確定性的更完整討論，請參閱我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件以及今天的收益新聞稿。

Unless otherwise noted, all numbers we talk about today, other than revenue, will be on an adjusted non-GAAP basis. You may find a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures that are included in our earnings release on our Investor Relations website. For historical periods, a GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation can be found in the supplemental financial information referenced a few moments ago.

除非另有說明，我們今天討論的除收入以外的所有數字都將基於調整後的非 GAAP 基礎。您可以在我們的投資者關係網站上的收益報告中找到 GAAP 與非 GAAP 財務指標的對帳表。對於歷史時期，可以在剛才引用的補充財務資訊中找到 GAAP 與非 GAAP 的對帳。

We would also like to inform you that we will be participating in Stifel's Tech Executive Summit on August 29 and the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference on September 6.

我們也想通知您，我們將參加 8 月 29 日的 Stifel 技術高管高峰會和 9 月 6 日的高盛 Communacopia 和技術會議。

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Matthew.

現在我想把電話轉給馬修。

Thank you, Phil. We had a strong quarter in spite of continued macroeconomic uncertainty. In Q2, we achieved revenue of $308.5 million, up 32% year-over-year. We added 196 new large customers, those that pay us more than $100,000 per year, and now have 2,352 large customers, up 34% year-over-year.

謝謝你，菲爾。儘管宏觀經濟不確定性持續存在，但我們本季業績表現強勁。第二季度，我們實現營收3.085億美元，年增32%。我們新增了 196 個大客戶，這些客戶每年向我們支付的費用超過 10 萬美元，現在我們共有 2,352 個大客戶，較去年同期成長 34%。

Our focus on go-to-market improvement is already paying off. After we saw sales cycles increase 20% in Q1, discipline around deals had them returned to levels closer to what we saw last year. While our customers and prospects continue to be very careful around their IT spend, our improved execution led to a record quarter in new ACV bookings.

我們對市場進入改善的關注已經取得了成效。在我們看到第一季銷售週期增加 20% 之後，圍繞交易的紀律使其恢復到接近去年的水平。雖然我們的客戶和潛在客戶在 IT 支出方面仍然非常謹慎，但我們執行力的提升使新 ACV 預訂量創下了新紀錄。

My sense, talking to customers, is that while the macro environment is still challenging, it has stabilized. And for the first time in several quarters, sentiment among IT buyers does not appear to be getting worse. Our dollar-based net retention ticked down to 115%, down 2% quarter-over-quarter. Dollar-based net retention is a lagging indicator, so it will be slower to reflect the go-to-market improvements we are seeing.

與客戶交談中我的感覺是，儘管宏觀環境仍然充滿挑戰，但已經趨於穩定。而這是幾個季度以來第一次，IT 買家的情緒似乎沒有變得更糟。我們的美元淨留存率下降至 115%，季減 2%。基於美元的淨留存率是一個滯後指標，因此它將更慢地反映我們所看到的市場進入狀況的改善。

It's also important to note that we did not see any new competitive pressure or churn throughout the quarter. Instead, the lower dollar-based net retention is due to slower expansion from some of our existing customers. We expect that our focus on go-to-market operational excellence will improve this metric over time.

還值得注意的是，我們在整個季度沒有看到任何新的競爭壓力或客戶流失。相反，以美元計算的淨留存率降低是由於我們部分現有客戶的擴張速度放緩。我們期望，我們對市場卓越營運的關注將隨著時間的推移改善此指標。

Our gross margin held stable at 77.7%, still above our long-term target of 75% to 77% and in line with 77.8% last quarter. We delivered an operating profit of $20.3 million, our fourth consecutive quarter with a record operating profit. We also meaningfully outperformed on free cash flow, generating $20 million during the quarter, which represents a free cash flow margin of 6.5%. I'm proud that our team has proven we can not only execute in good times, but also be disciplined and deliver operational improvements while we're in more challenging times.

我們的毛利率維持穩定在 77.7%，仍高於 75% 至 77% 的長期目標，與上季的 77.8% 持平。我們實現了 2,030 萬美元的營業利潤，這是我們連續第四個季度創下營業利潤紀錄。我們的自由現金流也表現出色，本季創造了 2,000 萬美元的自由現金流，相當於 6.5% 的自由現金流利潤率。我很自豪，我們的團隊已經證明我們不僅能夠在順境中執行，而且能夠在更具挑戰性的時期嚴格遵守紀律並實現營運改善。

We continue to see very strong pipeline growth. Q2 was another record for new pipeline generation. As we discussed last quarter, we made significant changes in our sales team to proactively address underperformance. That went very well, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our top performers are invigorated. We saw a marked improvement in the average account executive productivity. At the same time, we've implemented robust onboarding, enablement and training programs. Combined with the record number of applicants we're seeing for sales roles, this makes for the right formula to build a world-class sales organization.

我們繼續看到非常強勁的管道成長。第二季又創下了新管線生成的新紀錄。正如我們上個季度所討論的那樣，我們對銷售團隊進行了重大調整，以積極解決業績不佳的問題。無論從品質或數量來看，一切都進展順利。我們的優秀員工充滿活力。我們發現客戶經理的平均生產效率有了明顯提升。同時，我們實施了強大的入職、支援和培訓計劃。結合我們看到的銷售職位申請人數的創紀錄水平，這是建立世界一流銷售組織的正確方法。

And our team is armed with great products to sell. Last quarter alone, Forrester recognized Area 1, our e-mail security product, as a leader. IDC recognized us as a leader for 2 reports, in Zero Trust and Network Edge Security-as-a-Service. And we were the only new vendor recognized by Gartner for secure service edge.

我們的團隊擁有出色的產品可供銷售。光是上個季度，Forrester 就將我們的電子郵件安全產品 Area 1 評為領導者。 IDC 在零信任和網路邊緣安全即服務兩份報告中將我們評為領導者。我們是唯一獲得 Gartner 認可的安全服務優勢新供應商。

Our developer platform, Cloudflare Workers, continues its explosive growth. We reached 10 million active workers applications in Q2, up 250% since December and 490% year-over-year. R2 continues to grow and now stores over 13 petabytes of customer data, up 85% quarter-over-quarter. We have 44,000 distinct paying customers with R2 subscriptions, and brand-name customers are beginning to adopt it as their primary object storage solution.

我們的開發平台 Cloudflare Workers 持續爆炸性成長。我們在第二季度的活躍工人申請量達到了 1000 萬份，自 12 月以來增長了 250%，同比增長了 490%。 R2 持續成長，目前儲存了超過 13PB 的客戶數據，較上季成長 85%。我們擁有 44,000 個擁有 R2 訂閱的不同付費客戶，而名牌客戶也開始採用它作為主要的物件儲存解決方案。

That seems like a good segue to introduce some other customer wins in the quarter. One of the fastest-growing generative AI companies expanded their relationship with Cloudflare, signing a 1-year $1.7 million contract, less than a year after first starting to use our platform. Like many AI companies in the space, this customer relies on a multi-cloud architecture for training and processing requests. R2 lets them unlock the best prices and performance across multiple cloud providers. In their words, "We see Cloudflare as a strategic foundational glue across all our services. Cloudflare continues to be our best strategic partner of all partners." That's great to hear for many customers, but especially fun coming from a company that's doing such cutting-edge work.

這似乎是一個很好的過渡，可以介紹本季其他一些客戶的成功案例。一家成長最快的生成式 AI 公司擴大了與 Cloudflare 的合作關係，簽署了一份為期 1 年、價值 170 萬美元的合同，而這距離該公司開始使用我們的平台還不到一年。與該領域的許多人工智慧公司一樣，該客戶依賴多雲架構進行訓練和處理請求。 R2 讓他們能夠在多個雲端供應商之間獲得最優惠的價格和效能。用他們的話來說，“我們將 Cloudflare 視為我們所有服務的戰略基礎粘合劑。在所有合作夥伴中，Cloudflare 仍然是我們最好的戰略合作夥伴。”對許多顧客來說，聽到這個消息是件好事，而對於一家從事如此前沿工作的公司來說，這則消息尤其令人高興。

These days feel like membership in the CEO club is predicated on saying AI as many times as possible in your earnings call script. I have to confess, I still find it a bit awkward. When we first pitched Cloudflare to venture capitalist back in 2010, at one point, I described as, "The first AI-powered security company for the cloud." The eye rolls around the table were so intense that I'm still a bit scared. But more than a decade later, here we are. And by our estimates, Cloudflare is the most commonly used cloud provider across the leading AI startups. They're using R2 to help arbitrage the lowest GPU cost to train their models. They're using our security tools themselves powered by AI or what our team would prefer to call machine learning to protect their own AI systems. And increasingly, they're using the edge of our network to perform inference. We are continuing to invest in this area and believe that we are uniquely positioned to win the inference market, which we believe will be substantially larger than the AI training market.

這些天來，感覺加入 CEO 俱樂部的前提是在你的收益電話會議腳本中盡可能多地提到 AI。我必須承認，我還是覺得有點尷尬。當我們在 2010 年首次向創投家推廣 Cloudflare 時，我曾將其描述為「第一家由人工智慧驅動的雲端安全公司」。桌子周圍的人眼光如此敏銳，我還是有點害怕。但十多年後，我們仍然在這裡。根據我們的估計，Cloudflare 是領先的 AI 新創公司最常使用的雲端供應商。他們正在使用 R2 來幫助套利最低的 GPU 成本來訓練他們的模型。他們自己正在使用我們基於人工智慧（或我們團隊更願意稱之為機器學習）的安全工具來保護他們自己的人工智慧系統。而且他們越來越多地使用我們網路的邊緣來進行推理。我們將繼續在這一領域進行投資，並相信我們在推理市場方面擁有獨特的優勢，我們相信推理市場的規模將遠大於人工智慧訓練市場。

In Q2, we held our developer week, highlighting 10 major announcements and features to extend Cloudflare Workers as the preeminent developer platform for the leading AI companies. Q3 will feature our annual birthday week, and we have a lot more in store to provide the picks and shovels to enable AI companies to build the future.

在第二季度，我們舉辦了開發者週活動，重點發布了 10 項重大公告和功能，以擴展 Cloudflare Workers 作為領先 AI 公司的卓越開發者平台的地位。第三季將是我們一年一度的生日週，我們也將提供更多幫助，幫助人工智慧公司建立未來。

Beyond AI, Cloudflare's Zero Trust solutions were another big winner in Q2. A Fortune 500 technology services company expanded their relationship with Cloudflare, signing a 3-year $7.2 million contract for $25,000 Zero Trust fee. That brought their annual spend with us to over $5 million. They first became a customer in Q3 last year using our application security products. Six months into the deployment, one of their senior executives said, "Cloudflare is like magic, and brought us into an ongoing competitive Zero Trust proof of concept." Cloudflare's Access and Gateway products were chosen over first-generation Zero Trust competitors due to our rate of innovation and ability to consolidate all their security onto a single pane of glass.

除了人工智慧之外，Cloudflare 的零信任解決方案是第二季的另一個大贏家。一家財富 500 強技術服務公司擴大了與 Cloudflare 的合作關係，簽署了一份為期 3 年、價值 720 萬美元的合同，並收取 25,000 美元的零信任費用。這使得他們在我們這裡的年度支出超過 500 萬美元。他們去年第三季首次成為使用我們應用安全產品的客戶。部署六個月後，他們的一位高層表示：“Cloudflare 就像魔術一樣，帶領我們進入了持續競爭的零信任概念驗證階段。” Cloudflare 的 Access 和 Gateway 產品之所以能夠擊敗第一代零信任競爭對手，是因為我們具有創新速度快，並且能夠將所有安全性整合到單一玻璃板上。

One of the largest online recruiting platform expanded their relationship with Cloudflare, signing a 25-month $2.4 million contract and bringing their annual spend over $5 million. With more than 90% of their employees remote, they were looking for a comprehensive Zero Trust solution and evaluated us against every leading vendor in the market.

最大的線上招聘平台之一擴大了與 Cloudflare 的合作關係，簽署了一份為期 25 個月、價值 240 萬美元的合同，使其年度支出超過 500 萬美元。由於超過 90% 的員工都在遠距辦公，他們正在尋找一個全面的零信任解決方案，並將我們與市場上所有領先的供應商進行了評估。

They decided to go all in on Cloudflare with 15,000 seats for Access, Gateway, CASB, data loss prevention, browser isolation and Area 1 Email Security. I'm especially proud of how quickly we were able to onboard them, less than a month to fully replace their first-generation Zero Trust vendor. That's awesome.

他們決定全力投入 Cloudflare，為存取、網關、CASB、資料遺失防護、瀏覽器隔離和 Area 1 電子郵件安全配置 15,000 個席位。我對我們能夠如此迅速地讓他們加入感到特別自豪，不到一個月就完全取代了他們的第一代零信任供應商。太棒了。

An Australian technology company expanded their relationship with Cloudflare, signing a 1-year $2.2 million contract, bringing their total spend with us to over $5 million. This customer started out on our pay-as-you-go plan in 2016. This quarter, they signed a Zero Trust deal to protect their expanding workforce. They're also broadening their use of Cloudflare's developer platform with both R2 and Durable Objects.

一家澳洲科技公司擴大了與 Cloudflare 的合作關係，簽署了一份為期 1 年、價值 220 萬美元的合同，使其在我們這裡的總支出超過 500 萬美元。這位客戶於 2016 年開始使用我們的即用即付計畫。他們也透過 R2 和 Durable Objects 擴大了 Cloudflare 開發平台的使用範圍。

Sticking down under, a leading Australian health care provider expanded their relationship with us, signing a 3-year $2.8 million contract. We are replacing their hodgepodge of first-generation Zero Trust vendors with 12,000 seats of Access, Gateway, browser isolation, CASB, data loss protection and Area 1 Email security. This is another example of a customer looking to consolidate vendors and choosing Cloudflare for their holistic network security solution.

一家澳大利亞領先的醫療保健提供者堅持留在澳大利亞，擴大了與我們的關係，簽署了一份為期 3 年、價值 280 萬美元的合約。我們正在用 12,000 個存取、網關、瀏覽器隔離、CASB、資料遺失保護和 Area 1 電子郵件安全席位取代他們雜亂無章的第一代零信任供應商。這是客戶希望整合供應商並選擇 Cloudflare 作為其整體網路安全解決方案的另一個例子。

Here's another cool one. A Fortune 500 social network expanded their relationship with Cloudflare, signing a 3-year $2.4 million contract. They initially became a customer a year ago, building on top of Workers and using our global network to authenticate the security of one of their messaging products. They approached us again, looking to add increased privacy onto another product with our privacy gateway solution. They view Cloudflare as a leader in privacy based on our co-development of the Oblivious HTTP standard. And they admire us as one of the only other companies that truly understand scale. As privacy is increasingly top of mind, we believe there will be more and more of these sort of strategically beneficial relationships.

這是另一個很酷的。財富 500 強社交網絡擴大了與 Cloudflare 的合作關係，簽署了一份為期 3 年、價值 240 萬美元的合約。他們最初在一年前成為客戶，在 Workers 基礎上建立並使用我們的全球網路來驗證其一款訊息產品的安全性。他們再次與我們聯繫，希望利用我們的隱私網關解決方案為另一款產品增強隱私性。基於我們共同開發的 Oblivious HTTP 標準，他們認為 Cloudflare 是隱私領域的領導者。他們欽佩我們，因為我們是唯一真正懂得規模的公司之一。隨著隱私越來越受到關注，我們相信這類具有戰略意義的互惠關係將會越來越多。

I think I've only said AI 11 times so far, putting me way behind Satya. So let me end with one more AI customer win. Another generative AI company expanded their relationship with us, signing a 3-year $1.3 million contract. They came to us for our developer platform, signing up as a pay-as-you-go customer. Because their developers loved us test, they approached us about a security need and signed a deal to use our application security and Zero Trust products. They're only 100 seats, but they're growing like crazy and building Cloudflare deep into their whole stack.

我想到目前為止我只說過 11 次 AI，這讓我遠遠落後於 Satya。最後，請容許我再以一位 AI 客戶獲勝的經驗作為結束。另一家生成式人工智慧公司擴大了與我們的關係，簽署了一份為期 3 年、價值 130 萬美元的合約。他們來到我們這裡是為了使用我們的開發者平台，並註冊成為現收現付客戶。因為他們的開發人員喜歡我們的測試，所以他們就安全需求與我們聯繫並簽署了使用我們的應用程式安全和零信任產品的協議。他們只有 100 個席位，但他們正在瘋狂發展，並將 Cloudflare 深入他們的整個堆疊中。

Whether you're a Fortune 500 industrial company that use us for application security and are now hiring AI developers to use our Workers' platform to drive innovation across your business or you're a 100% AI startup that started using our developer platform and then realized you can get the same security as the biggest Fortune 500 companies, that's what's really unique about Cloudflare. We've built the cloud that connects the world securely, reliably and efficiently.

無論您是一家財富 500 強工業公司，使用我們的應用程式安全保護，現在正在聘請人工智慧開發人員使用我們的 Workers 平台來推動整個企業的創新，還是一家 100% 人工智慧新創公司，開始使用我們的開發者平台，然後意識到你可以獲得與最大的財富 500 強公司相同的安全性，這就是獨特之處。我們建構了安全、可靠、有效率地連結世界的雲端。

With that, I'll turn it over to Thomas. Thomas, take it away.

說完這些，我會把話題交給湯瑪斯。湯瑪斯，把它拿走。

Thank you, Matthew, and thank you to everyone for joining us. During the second quarter, I'm pleased to share that we've seen improvements in terms of the impacts from the external challenges that we highlighted last quarter. Specifically, also still somewhat elevated from historical levels, sales cycles shortened in part due to the implementation of more efficient processes and tactics.

謝謝你，馬修，也謝謝大家的參與。在第二季度，我很高興地告訴大家，我們在上個季度強調的外部挑戰的影響方面已經看到改善。具體而言，與歷史水準相比，銷售週期仍略有上升，部分原因是實施了更有效率的流程和策略，銷售週期有所縮短。

Our pipeline close rates have also shown improvement as we continue to refine our go-to-market strategies and operations. Furthermore, we observed a notable uptick in collections on our accounts receivable, which we believe reflects a rebound in customer confidence and financial stability.

隨著我們不斷完善我們的市場進入策略和運營，我們的通路關閉率也有所改善。此外，我們注意到應收帳款回收金額明顯上升，我們認為這反映了客戶信心和金融穩定性的反彈。

We also continue to maintain our strong commitment to being fiscally responsible and active good stewards of investors' capital. We delivered our fourth consecutive quarter of record operating profit. We also prudently allocated capital with a focus on maximizing shareholder value by taking action to retire our 2025 convertible notes during the second quarter.

我們也將繼續堅定地致力於履行財務責任並積極做好投資者資本的管理者。我們連續第四個季度實現創紀錄的營業利潤。我們也在第二季採取行動註銷 2025 年可轉換票據，審慎分配資本，重點在於最大化股東價值。

Turning to revenue. Total revenue for the second quarter increased 32% year-over-year to $308.5 million. From a geographic perspective, the U.S. represented 53% of revenue and increased 30% year-over-year. EMEA represented 27% of revenue and increased 38% year-over-year. APAC represented 13% of revenue and increased 23% year-over-year.

談到收入。第二季總營收年增32%至3.085億美元。從地域來看，美國佔營收的53%，年增30%。歐洲、中東和非洲地區佔總營收的27%，年增38%。亞太地區佔總營收的 13%，年增 23%。

We were pleased to see notable performance in the EMEA and APAC regions with both achieving record new ACV bookings in the second quarter. The strength in APAC was primarily driven by large customer deals, and we are seeing security become an even higher priority in EMEA, given the geopolitical situation in the region.

我們很高興看到 EMEA 和 APAC 地區的出色表現，均在第二季度實現了創紀錄的 ACV 預訂量。亞太地區的強勁表現主要得益於大型客戶交易，而考慮到該地區的地緣政治局勢，我們看到安全在歐洲、中東和非洲地區變得更加重要。

Turning to our customer metrics. In the second quarter, we had 174,129 paying customers representing an increase of 15% year-over-year. We ended the quarter with 2,352 large customers, representing an increase of 34% year-over-year and an addition of 196 large customers in the quarter. In fact, we added a record number of customers spending more than $500,000 on an annualized basis with Cloudflare. And the second quarter was also one of our highest quarterly additions of customers spending more than $1 million annually, including our largest Zero Trust contract to date.

轉向我們的客戶指標。第二季度，我們擁有 174,129 名付費客戶，較去年同期成長 15%。截至本季度，我們擁有 2,352 名大客戶，年增 34%，本季新增 196 名大客戶。事實上，我們新增了創紀錄數量的客戶，他們每年使用 Cloudflare 的支出超過 50 萬美元。第二季也是我們新增客戶數量最多的季度之一，新增客戶年消費超過 100 萬美元，其中包括迄今為止最大的零信任合約。

Our dollar-based net retention rate was 115% during the second quarter, representing a decrease of 200 basis points sequentially. Importantly, renewal rates in the second quarter were consistent with the quarterly average in 2022, which was an all-time high for the company. Instead, similar to the last 2 quarters, the decline in DNR was again primarily driven by slower expansion in our larger customer cohorts. We calculate DNR by comparing the annualized revenue from paying customers 4 quarters prior to the annualized revenue from the same set of customers in the most recent quarter. As a result, this will be a lagging indicator of Cloudflare's underlying business trends. Based on our visibility, we believe the deceleration in DNR is nearing a bottom.

我們第二季的美元淨留存率為 115%，比上一季下降了 200 個基點。重要的是，第二季的續約率與 2022 年的季度平均值一致，這是該公司的歷史最高水準。相反，與過去兩季類似，DNR 的下降主要歸因於我們較大客戶群擴張放緩。我們透過比較前 4 個季度付費客戶的年化收入與最近一個季度同一組客戶的年化收入來計算 DNR。因此，這將成為 Cloudflare 潛在業務趨勢的落後指標。根據我們的觀察，我們相信 DNR 的減速已接近底部。

Moving to gross margin. Second quarter gross margin was 77.7%, representing a decrease of 10 basis points sequentially and a decrease of 120 basis points year-over-year. Network CapEx represented 11% of revenue in the second quarter. For fiscal 2023, we now expect network CapEx to be 10% to 12% of revenue, underscoring the scalability and efficiency of our network even as we onboard new workloads, including AI.

轉向毛利率。第二季毛利率為77.7%，較上季下降10個基點，較去年同期下降120個基點。網路資本支出佔第二季營收的 11%。對於 2023 財年，我們目前預期網路資本支出將佔收入的 10% 至 12%，即使我們加入包括 AI 在內的新工作負載，這也凸顯了我們網路的可擴展性和效率。

Turning to the operating expenses. Second quarter operating expenses as a percentage of revenue remained consistent sequentially and decreased by 8% year-over-year to 71%. Our total number of employees increased 11% year-over-year, bringing our total headcount to 3,389 at the end of the quarter. During the second quarter, we address consistently low-performing sales capacity with a focus on upgrading our customer-facing talent to improve growth, increase productivity and drive long-term success we will continue to pace hiring for the year based on market conditions and remain committed to raising the bar on new hire additions given talent opportunities available in the market.

談到營運費用。第二季營業費用佔營收的百分比與上季持平，年減 8% 至 71%。我們的員工總數年增11％，本季末的員工總數達到3,389人。在第二季度，我們致力於解決銷售能力持續低迷的問題，重點是升級面向客戶的人才，以促進成長、提高生產力和推動長期成功。

Sales and marketing expenses were $125.4 million for the quarter. Sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue decreased by 1% sequentially and decreased to 41% from 44% in the same quarter last year. Research and development expenses were $53 million in the quarter. R&D as a percentage of revenue decreased by 1% sequentially and decreased to 17% from 20% in the same quarter last year. G&A expenses were $41 million for the quarter. G&A as a percentage of revenue increased 1% sequentially and decreased to 13% from 15% in the same quarter last year.

本季銷售和行銷費用為 1.254 億美元。銷售及行銷佔營收的比例較上一季下降1%，從去年同期的44%降至41%。本季研發費用為 5,300 萬美元。研發費用佔營收的比例比上一季下降了1%，從去年同期的20%下降到了17%。本季的一般及行政開支為 4,100 萬美元。一般及行政開支佔收入的百分比比上一季增加 1%，從去年同期的 15% 下降至 13%。

Operating income was $20.3 million compared to an operating loss of $891,000 in the same period last year. Second quarter operating margin was 6.6%, an increase of 700 basis points year-over-year. These results highlight our continued focus on becoming more efficient and more productive, not just during the currently uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, but also because operational efficiency is a long-term competitive advantage.

營業收入為 2,030 萬美元，而去年同期的營業虧損為 891,000 美元。第二季營業利益率為6.6%，較去年同期成長700個基點。這些結果凸顯了我們持續致力於提高效率和生產力，不僅是在當前不確定的宏觀經濟背景下，而且因為營運效率是一種長期競爭優勢。

Turning to net income and the balance sheet. Our net income in the quarter was $33.7 million or a diluted net income per share of $0.10. We ended the second quarter with $1.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities. Free cash flow of $20 million in the second quarter or 6% of revenue compared to negative $4.4 million or 2% of revenue in the same period last year. Remaining performance obligations, or RPO, came in at $1 billion, representing an increase of 8% sequentially and 36% year-over-year. Current RPO was 75% of total RPO.

轉向淨收入和資產負債表。本季我們的淨收入為 3,370 萬美元，每股攤薄淨收入為 0.10 美元。截至第二季度，我們持有的現金、現金等價物及可供出售證券為 16 億美元。第二季自由現金流為 2,000 萬美元，佔營收的 6%，去年同期為負 440 萬美元，佔營收的 2%。剩餘履約義務（RPO）為 10 億美元，季增 8%，年增 36%。目前 RPO 佔總 RPO 的 75%。

Before moving to guidance for the third quarter and full year, I would like to begin with our expectations and the provisions we have factored into this outlook. Despite being encouraged by the forward progress we delivered during the second quarter in terms of shortening sales cycles and improving close rates, mixed macroeconomic data points serve as a reminder that we are operating in a business environment that showing signs of stabilization continues to be challenging to predict. As a result, we remain prudent and cautious in our outlook for the second half of the year, and we are fully committed to continuing to adapt our tactics and strategies in response to these external variables.

在談到第三季和全年的預期之前，我想先談談我們的預期以及我們在這一預期中考慮到的準備金。儘管我們在第二季度在縮短銷售週期和提高成交率方面取得了進展，令人鼓舞，但好壞參半的宏觀經濟數據點提醒我們，我們所處的商業環境是否會出現穩定跡象仍然難以預測。因此，我們對下半年的展望依然保持審慎和謹慎，並完全致力於繼續調整我們的策略和策略以應對這些外部變數。

Now turning to guidance. For the third quarter, we expect revenue in the range of $330 million to $331 million, representing an increase of 30% year-over-year. We expect operating income in the range of $20 million to $21 million, and we expect diluted net income per share of $0.10, assuming approximately 347 million shares outstanding. We expect an effective tax rate of 11%.

現在轉向指導。我們預計第三季營收將在 3.3 億美元至 3.31 億美元之間，年增 30%。我們預計營業收入將在 2,000 萬美元至 2,100 萬美元之間，假設流通股約為 3.47 億股，我們預期每股攤薄淨收入為 0.10 美元。我們預計有效稅率為11%。

For the full year 2023, we expect revenue in the range of $1.283 billion to $1.287 billion, representing an increase of 32% year-over-year. We expect operating income for the full year in the range of $81 million to $85 million. And we expect diluted net income per share over that period to be $0.37, assuming approximately 345 million shares outstanding. We expect an effective tax rate of 9% for 2023.

對於 2023 年全年，我們預計營收將在 12.83 億美元至 12.87 億美元之間，年增 32%。我們預計全年營業收入在 8,100 萬美元至 8,500 萬美元之間。我們預計該期間每股攤薄淨利潤為 0.37 美元，假設流通股約為 3.45 億股。我們預計 2023 年的實際稅率為 9%。

After having achieved positive free cash flow in the second half of last year and, again, during both the first and second quarters of this year, we anticipate generating significant free cash flow for the full year 2023. For modeling purposes, we continue to expect free cash flow to trend upward on an ongoing basis, but anticipate variability in our free cash flow generation quarter-to-quarter.

在去年下半年以及今年第一季和第二季實現正自由現金流之後，我們預計 2023 年全年將產生可觀的自由現金流。

In closing, our team remains committed to driving operational excellence, ensuring long-term growth and delivering significant shareholder value. I'd like to thank our employees for their continued dedication to our mission, customers and partners. And to our shareholders, we greatly value your continued support.

最後，我們的團隊將繼續致力於推動卓越運營，確保長期成長並為股東帶來重大價值。我要感謝我們的員工對我們的使命、客戶和合作夥伴的持續奉獻。對於我們的股東，我們非常感謝你們一直以來的支持。

And with that, I'd like to open it up for questions. Operator, please poll for questions.

現在，我想開始回答大家的提問。接線員，請投票詢問問題。

(Operator Instructions). And we will take our first question from Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen.

（操作員指令）。我們將從 TD Cowen 的 Shaul Eyal 那裡回答第一個問題。

Matthew, can you talk about some of your displacement activity this quarter? And maybe my second part of the question will be, do you see AI as accelerating your displacements and win rates?

馬修，您能談談本季的一些置換活動嗎？也許我的問題的第二部分是，您是否認為人工智慧會加速您的置換和勝率？

Yes, Shaul, I really appreciate the question. And we've had a lot of noise on the line from the operator. So hopefully, we can get things muted. Apologies for that. So I think that when we look at displacement, it really is across 3 different parts of our business. So the first area is our traditional application security business. And in that space, we continue to displace a number of traditional hardware vendors, the people who are providing web application firewalls, load balancers, funding various services that people had in those areas. We also see point cloud solutions that are doing just one of those things getting displaced by us, where we can very much pick up a significant amount of their business. And that's been the case for quite some time.

是的，Shaul，我非常感謝您的提問。我們在電話中聽到了接線員發出的許多噪音。因此，希望我們能夠讓事情變得平靜。我對此表示歉意。因此我認為，當我們考察位移時，它實際上涉及我們業務的三個不同部分。第一個領域是我們傳統的應用安全業務。在這一領域，我們繼續取代許多傳統的硬體供應商，這些供應商提供 Web 應用程式防火牆、負載平衡器，並為人們在這些領域提供的各種服務提供資金。我們也看到點雲解決方案正在被我們取代，我們可以從中獲得大量業務。這種情況已經持續了相當長一段時間。

The second part of our business, which is our Zero Trust business. The first is sort of the front door of your business, the second is kind of the backdoor of your business. The Zero Trust business is about protecting employees and data. In that case, we're more and more going head-to-head with the other first-generation Zero Trust providers, so the Zscalers, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco umbrellas of the world. And again, we really like our win rates in this space. And in a number of the examples that I cited, we were specifically either in competitive solutions there or in some cases, where we were actually doing takeouts of people who have made that on the first generation of Zero Trust providers wanted to upgrade to us for better ROI, a much better user experience, much faster, more performing network. And I think that, that's one of the areas that I'm the most excited about.

我們業務的第二部分是零信任業務。第一個是您企業的前門，第二個是您企業的後門。零信任業務旨在保護員工和資料。在這種情況下，我們將越來越多地與其他第一代零信任提供者展開正面交鋒，包括 Zscalers、Palo Alto Networks、思科等公司。再說一次，我們真的很喜歡我們在這個領域的勝率。在我引用的許多例子中，我們要么專門提供競爭解決方案，要么在某些情況下，我們實際上是在收購那些使用第一代零信任解決方案的供應商，這些供應商希望升級到我們這裡，以獲得更好的投資回報率、更好的用戶體驗、更快、性能更好的網絡。我認為這是我最興奮的領域之一。

The third area is really our Workers business, which is our developer platform. And in that space, it really depends on what's going on. Increasingly, we're doing takeouts from object store where people are moving data off of more traditional object stores on to R2, which is our object store. But a lot of times, we're are also just moving individual applications or individual functions to us. And so it's not a complete displacement. Oftentimes, people will use us alongside a more traditional hyperscale public cloud, but we can see that working together.

第三個領域其實是我們的 Workers 業務，也就是我們的開發者平台。在那個空間裡，這確實取決於正在發生的事情。我們越來越多地從物件儲存中進行取出數據，人們將數據從更傳統的物件儲存轉移到 R2，這是我們的物件儲存。但很多時候，我們也只是將單一應用程式或單一功能轉移給我們自己。所以這並不是完全的取代。人們通常會將我們與更傳統的超大規模公有雲一起使用，但我們可以看到它們之間的協同作用。

In the AI space, in particular, I think that -- again, it's such a new space that I don't know that we're displacing people as much as we're just helping AI companies get what they need. And the two big areas around that are first around training, where GPU scarcity is significant and the cost with the traditional hyperscale public cloud and moving data to wherever there's cheap GPU capacity or even available GPU capacity makes it cost prohibitive. And so R2, because we don't charge for egress, has been just a real boon for a lot of AI companies to be able to adopt wherever they can find the cheapest GPU at any moment in time.

特別是在人工智慧領域，我認為——再說一次，這是一個新領域，我不知道我們是否在取代人類，而我們只是在幫助人工智慧公司獲得它們所需要的東西。圍繞這一問題的兩個大領域首先是訓練，其中 GPU 稀缺性非常顯著，而使用傳統超大規模公有雲以及將資料移動到廉價 GPU 容量甚至可用 GPU 容量的地方的成本過高。因此，由於我們不收取出口費用，因此 R2 對許多 AI 公司來說是一個真正的福音，使他們能夠在任何時候隨時隨地採用能夠找到最便宜的 GPU 的 GPU。

And that, again, has been an area where a lot of that growth has come from.

而這又是實現大量成長的領域。

And then increasingly, we think that the inference market is really going to be fought between 2 areas. One is going to be on your device itself. If you have a driverless car, you don't want when a ball is bouncing down the street and the kid is chasing after it. For that decision on whether or not to put on the brakes, you have to go out to the network. Now you want that to live in the car itself. And so a lot of inference and models can be run on devices. But we think if they're not run on devices, if they have -- if they're too large, if they need too much capacity from either a GPU or memory or network access space, in those cases, it's going to make sense to run it in the network itself. And in that sense, Cloudflare is uniquely positioned to win in that inference market for those models that make sense, not to run on the device themselves, the more complicated models that make sense to run in -- out at the edge of the network, and that's exactly what we're starting to see from more and more of these really innovative AI start-ups.

然後我們越來越認為推理市場實際上將在兩個領域之間展開競爭。其中一個位於您的裝置本身上。如果你有一輛無人駕駛汽車，你肯定不希望看到一個球在街上彈跳，而孩子則在後面追著它。要決定是否踩煞車，你必須藉助網路。現在你想讓它存在於汽車本身。因此許多推理和模型可以在設備上運行。但我們認為，如果它們不在設備上運行，如果它們太大，如果它們需要太多的 GPU 或記憶體或網路存取空間，那麼在這些情況下，在網路本身上運行它是有意義的。從這個意義上說，Cloudflare 在推理市場中擁有獨特的優勢，因為它的模型更有意義，不需要在設備本身上運行，更複雜的模型更適合在網路邊緣運行，而這正是我們從越來越多真正創新的人工智慧新創公司中開始看到的。

And we will take our next question from Matt Hedberg with RBC Capital Markets.

下一個問題由 RBC Capital Markets 的 Matt Hedberg 提出。

Great. Thomas, I had a question for you. Obviously, good results this quarter, and there was a lot of optimism in your portion of the prepared remarks. You talked about sort of like better win rates, shorter deal cycles, et cetera. When I look though at sort of the sequential growth for Q3 and Q4, it's a bit higher than what we saw in the first half. I just -- what are some of those main factors that are giving you sort of increased optimism for the second half? And does guidance assume the macro stay constant or maybe even improve a little bit?

偉大的。湯瑪斯，我有個問題想問你。顯然，本季的業績良好，而且您在準備好的發言部分中表達了很多樂觀情緒。您談到了更好的贏率、更短的交易週期等等。當我查看第三季和第四季的連續成長時，發現它比上半年的水平要高一些。我只是—哪些主要因素讓您對下半年更加樂觀？指導是否假設宏觀保持不變或甚至略有改善？

Well, thank you, Matt. We saw the first data points that what you called made me be a bit more optimistic. We think -- we still think we need to apply a good portion of cautions to our outlook. One data point doesn't really make a trend. At this point, we do not assume that the macroeconomic environment is improving significantly. We still see significant mixed macroeconomic data points that we factored into our guidance. And then therefore, as we said, prudent and cautious, not over-interpreting just on one data point.

好吧，謝謝你，馬特。我們看到了第一個數據點，你所說的話讓我變得更樂觀。我們認為——我們仍然認為我們需要對我們的前景保持相當謹慎的態度。一個數據點並不能真正形成趨勢。目前，我們並不認為宏觀經濟環境正在顯著改善。我們仍然看到重要的混合宏觀經濟數據點，我們已將這些數據納入我們的指導範圍。因此，正如我們所說，要謹慎小心，不要過度解讀一個數據點。

Got it. That's helpful. Maybe just a quick follow-up. Sort of double clicking on the strength that you saw this quarter. There was a lot of conversations about shorter sales cycles, better win rates. Have you noticed any quantifiable benefit from your new CRO mark as he's come onboard and maybe improved through the sales focus?

知道了。這很有幫助。也許只是一個快速的跟進。有點像是雙擊您本季看到的優勢。關於縮短銷售週期、提高成功率的討論很多。隨著新 CRO 的加入，您是否注意到了您的新 CRO 標記帶來的可量化收益，並且可能透過銷售重點得到了改善？

We are making good progress, both in terms of restructuring our team, in terms of adapting our tactics and strategies, how we move up market. But you have to remind -- remember that bringing on new people takes ramp time, a little bit shorter in the mid-market, a little bit longer in the enterprise segment. We have not seen most of those improvements yet, and we do not expect to see them over the course of the remainder of this year. So we are making really good progress, but we have been cautious in terms of what we factored in, in the guidance we've given for the second half.

我們正在取得良好進展，無論是在重組團隊方面，還是在調整我們的策略和策略方面，以及如何擴大市場方面。但你必須提醒——記住，引進新人才需要時間，在中端市場中時間稍短，在企業領域中稍長。我們尚未看到大部分改進，我們預計在今年剩餘時間內也不會看到這些改進。所以，我們正在取得非常好的進展，但是，我們對下半年的預測和考慮因素非常謹慎。

We will take our next question from Trevor Walsh with JMP Securities.

下一個問題來自 JMP Securities 的 Trevor Walsh。

Great. Maybe, Matthew, just for you first. A lot of the comments around AI seems to focus more around the developer piece and Workers specifically, which you kind of have as your -- part of your act 3. Does that become more something accelerated into more of an act 2 for that part of the platform? Can you just maybe talk a little bit about kind of the changes of the game from that perspective?

偉大的。也許，馬修，首先只是為了你。關於人工智慧的許多評論似乎更集中在開發人員部分和工人身上，你將其作為第三幕的一部分。您能否從這個角度談談遊戲的變化？

Sure. Thanks, Trevor. I think that -- I mean, I think the order of the acts is pretty -- I would still say act 1 is application security, act 2 is Zero Trust and act 3 is Workers. But I would say that we have been very pleasantly surprised at how quickly the Workers' platform is taking off. But we are not, at this time, optimizing that platform for how can we bring as many dollars out of it as possible. We think that studying developer platforms across history, what we've seen is what you really need is adoption.

當然。謝謝，特雷弗。我認為——我的意思是，我認為這些行為的順序是相當合理的——我仍然會說第一幕是應用程式安全，第二幕是零信任，第三幕是工人安全。但我想說，工人平台的快速發展讓我們感到非常驚訝。但目前，我們還沒有優化該平台，以便從中獲取盡可能多的收益。我們認為，透過研究歷史上的開發者平台，我們發現真正需要的是採用。

And so what I'm encouraged by is that every single day when new companies are starting, when new trends take off like AI had, that people are turning to this. And I think it's -- I don't think that this is a flash in the pan. This isn't a polyester kind of new wardrobe that is going to look good for a little while, but quickly fade. This is something that's real. And we're seeing that more and more companies, more and more experienced developers are turning to the Workers' platform in order to be able to deliver something that they can't get from the traditional hyperscale public cloud.

令我感到鼓舞的是，每天當新公司成立時，當新趨勢像人工智慧一樣興起時，人們就會轉向它。我認為——我不認為這只是曇花一現。這不是聚酯纖維材質的新衣服，它不會在短時間內看起來不錯，但很快就會褪色。這是真實存在的事情。我們看到越來越多的公司、越來越多經驗豐富的開發人員正在轉向 Workers 平台，以便能夠提供他們無法從傳統超大規模公有雲獲得的東西。

And so I think that any great work of a fiction or otherwise, the -- some of the excitement often comes in the later chapters. And so I don't want to diminish it by saying that it's act 3, but I -- and I think there's a huge opportunity there. But I also don't want to lose the fact that we had many customers this year really dive into our act 2 products, and we're making incredible gains in that space as well. So I think we've got a really exciting second and third act.

因此我認為，任何偉大的作品，無論是小說還是其他作品，一些令人興奮的情節通常都會出現在後面的章節中。因此，我不想說這是第三幕而貶低它，但我認為這是一個巨大的機會。但我也不想忽視這樣一個事實：今年我們有很多客戶真正深入研究了我們的第二幕產品，而且我們在該領域也取得了令人難以置信的收益。所以我認為我們將迎來真正令人興奮的第二幕和第三幕。

Awesome. I appreciate the color. Maybe just a quick follow-up for Thomas. Of the 196 large customers that you added in the quarter, could you maybe provide a little bit of color around? Are those current customers crossing into that threshold? Or is there a preponderance or even like an even split of new customers kind of just landing of that size? Can you just give us maybe a general sense of kind of where that pool of customers is coming from?

驚人的。我很欣賞這個顏色。也許只是對托馬斯的一個快速跟進。您在本季新增了 196 位大客戶，能否提供一些具體資訊？那些現有客戶是否已經跨入這個門檻了？或者是否存在主導甚至均勻分佈的新客戶數量，以這樣的規模湧入？能否大概介紹一下這些客戶來自哪裡？

In the past, it was pretty even, 50-50 between new customer sign-ons the defender expansions. I would say in the last quarter, specifically, we have probably a larger share of new customers signing up right beyond the $1 million range. So it shifted slightly away from expansion into a new logo sign-on.

在過去，新客戶簽約和後衛擴張的比例是相當均衡的，各佔50%。我想說，具體到上個季度，我們簽約的新客戶中，金額超過 100 萬美元的份額可能更大。因此，它略微從擴張轉向了新的標識登入。

And we will take our next question from Jonathan Ho with William Blair.

下一個問題由 William Blair 的 Jonathan Ho 提出。

This is John Weidemoyer for Jonathan. I'd like to get some clarification, if I could, on -- and better understand your net retention rate. If I understood you correctly, you had indicated in your prepared remarks that the retention rate is a lagging indicator that should benefit from your go-to-market and sales replacement initiatives and such. But then I believe you also said that was impacted by large -- by largest customer cohorts. I wouldn't expect large customers to be quite as impacted. I wouldn't think that large customers would be impacted so much by your sales or go-to-market because their existing customers or most -- a lot of them would be. Could you help me understand what -- how that would impact retention rate and what kind of some of the moving parts are there?

我是約翰·魏德莫耶，代表喬納森發言。如果可以的話，我希望得到一些澄清——並更好地了解您的淨保留率。如果我理解正確的話，您在準備好的發言中指出，保留率是一個滯後指標，它應該受益於您的市場進入和銷售替代舉措等。但我相信您也說過，這受到了最大客戶群的影響。我並不認為大客戶會受到這麼大的影響。我認為大客戶不會受到您的銷售或上市行為的太大影響，因為他們的現有客戶或大多數客戶都會受到太大影響。你能幫助我理解這會如何影響保留率以及其中有哪些活動部件嗎？

Right. Well, just to make sure, the expansion rate stayed high. Expansion in the large customer cohort was a little bit lagging. That is what we already saw in the prior quarter. It's also one of the reasons for my previous answer that the large customer growth was pretty much coming more biased towards new logos than it was coming from expansion.

正確的。好吧，只是為了確保，擴張率仍然很高。大客戶群的擴張稍微落後了。這就是我們在上一季已經看到的情況。這也是我之前回答的原因之一，即大量客戶的成長更多來自於新標識，而不是擴張。

Expansion, as I said in my prepared remarks, as far as the lagging indicator because it's pretty much a look back to the 4 prior quarters. That is what you compare to the new sign-ons. So any movement we see in an existing quarter will take time to show up in DNR. We see -- we think we are seeing broadening of the DNR development. So we are quite hopeful we'll move that upwards to where -- and beyond where we came from. But because we are so conservative in how we measure DNR, it's an all-in across all customer cohorts. It's very much a lagging indicator. So it will take a while before all the improvement that we are initiating in getting expansion going again will show up in DNR.

正如我在準備好的發言中所說的那樣，就滯後指標而言，擴張基本上是對前 4 個季度的回顧。這就是你與新登入者進行比較的結果。因此，我們在現有季度中看到的任何變動都需要時間才能在 DNR 中體現出來。我們看到——我們認為我們正在看到 DNR 發展的擴大。因此，我們非常希望能夠進一步提升這一水平——甚至超越我們原來的水平。但由於我們在衡量 DNR 方面非常保守，因此它對所有客戶群都適用。這在很大程度上是一個滯後指標。因此，我們為再次開始擴張而進行的所有改進要體現在 DNR 中還需要一段時間。

Okay. And if I could just ask for -- you mentioned that some of these initiatives, you wouldn't expect to see the new sales folks and whatnot being fully productive through the end of the year, that makes sense. Can you talk about your progress on the implementation of the sales processes kind of when -- where you might think you're like halfway done, fully done at what point in time? And have you identified further process improvements since our last talk a quarter ago?

好的。我可以問一下——您提到在其中一些舉措中，您不會期望看到新的銷售人員等在年底前完全投入工作，這是有道理的。您能否談談您在實施銷售流程方面的進展？自從我們一個季度前上次談話以來，您是否確定了進一步的流程改善？

Yes. So I'll take that. I think that Mark is doing a really great job looking across the organization. I think one of the things that we really highlighted last quarter was that we had some underperformance across the org. And we addressed that. What I was -- that's -- I, over the course of the last 3 months, have kept very careful sort of my fingers on the pulse of the organization, met with a ton of our team. And what I'm hearing from the team is that they're super invigorated. They appreciate the additional training and enablement that we've implemented, and that we're seeing our sales team get the tools that they need in order to make sure that they can close great deals.

是的。所以我會接受。我認為馬克在整個組織中做得非常出色。我認為我們上個季度真正強調的事情之一是我們整個組織的表現不佳。我們解決了這個問題。我過去 3 個月來一直非常謹慎地掌握著組織的情況，並與我們團隊的大量成員會面。我從團隊那裡聽說他們非常有活力。他們很欣賞我們實施的額外培訓和支持，我們看到我們的銷售團隊獲得了他們所需的工具，以確保他們能夠達成大量交易。

And we, again, still have a very strong pipeline. And I think that what you'll see is that, that gets reflected as we have those new reps that are coming on, as we do more enablement with our existing reps. And that, I think, is something that's very bullish for what we have going forward.

而且我們仍然擁有非常強大的產品線。我認為，您會看到，隨著我們為現有代表提供更多支持，新代表的加入也反映了這一點。我認為這對我們的未來發展非常有利。

We will take our next question from Brent Thill with Jefferies.

下一個問題我們將由 Jefferies 的 Brent Thill 來回答。

Matthew, if you take your crystal ball out in the second half of the year, I'm just curious if you feel things are starting to slowly improve. It seems like a lot of your security peers are starting to see some decay. And perhaps you're gaining some share here relative to your architecture and the platform. I'm curious if you can kind of maybe stitch the back half together in how you see it at a 40,000-foot view.

馬修，如果你在今年下半年拿出你的水晶球，我很好奇你是否感覺事情開始慢慢好轉。看起來很多安全同行都開始看到一些衰退。也許您在架構和平台方面獲得了一些份額。我很好奇，您是否可以將後半部分按照您在 40,000 英尺高空看到的樣子拼接起來。

Yes. I don't know how accurate my crystal ball is. But I think that -- I want to say that it feels like things are improving. It feels like things are plateauing. Q1 was really hard. The fact that we had in 1 quarter sales cycles increase 20% was a very big and frightening occurrence. And I think that we were pretty early in earnings seasons call that there was a real concern across IT buyers, but that got reflected by many companies that came after us. What we saw in Q2 was that sales cycles returned back to be more in line with what we were seeing last year in 2022. 2022 was still elevated in the several years prior to that.

是的。我不知道我的水晶球有多準確。但我認為——我想說感覺事情正在好轉。感覺事情正在趨於平穩。 Q1 確實很難。事實上，我們在一個季度內銷售週期就增加了20%，這是一個非常大且令人恐懼的事件。我認為，我們在獲利季節的早期就意識到了 IT 買家的真正擔憂，但這種擔憂在我們之後的許多公司中也得到了體現。我們在第二季度看到，銷售週期已恢復到與 2022 年去年看到的水平更加一致。

So what it feels like to me is that we're in for a grind. And not Cloudflare in particular, but across the entire economy. And that grind is going to be hard, but I think it is actually serving us quite well because it's forcing us towards operational excellence. And across our entire team, people are digging in, they're working hard and they're making sure that every process is as efficient as possible.

所以對我來說感覺我們陷入了困境。這並非僅僅針對 Cloudflare，而是針對整個經濟。雖然這個過程會很艱難，但我認為它實際上對我們很有幫助，因為它迫使我們實現卓越營運。我們整個團隊都全力以赴、努力工作，確保每個流程盡可能有效率。

And I think that you're right. One of the things that is unique about us versus a number of others is, as we look at our products that we've been able to achieve very high gross margins, I think that's the best -- one of the best indicators that we have a really differentiated platform. And as customers are looking for ways to consolidate their vendors to find how to get more ROI out of everything they're doing, they are turning to us. And our team is ready, and we have the right products. And so I think the grind that's ahead is actually something that is going to be hard, but it's something that I think I'm looking forward to. And we're going to become a better company as a result of it.

我認為你是對的。我們與其他公司相比的獨特之處是，我們的產品能夠實現非常高的毛利率，我認為這是最好的——我們擁有真正差異化平台的最佳指標之一。當客戶正在尋找整合供應商的方法以從他們所做的一切中獲取更多的投資回報率時，他們就轉向了我們。我們的團隊已經做好準備，我們也有合適的產品。因此，我認為未來的艱辛實際上將會非常艱難，但這是我所期待的事情。我們將因此成為一家更好的公司。

We will take our next question from Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley.

下一個問題我們將由摩根士丹利的 Keith Weiss 來回答。

Definitely, glad to hear things are stabilizing. Matt, I wanted to dig into the comment that you made, both in the press release and the conference, call about Workers and then Cloudflare being a really good platform for inference. Can you talk to us about sort of the underlying technical why -- of why you think -- it's still pretty early days with these technologies, and we're also trying to figure out kind of how inference plays out over time. So I think your view would be helpful to the overall kind of industry conversation as well as the Cloudflare conversation on why you guys are well positioned.

確實，很高興聽到情況正在穩定下來。馬特，我想深入探討你在新聞稿和會議上發表的評論，關於 Workers 和 Cloudflare 是一個非常好的推理平台。您能否與我們談談背後的技術原因——您認為這些技術還處於早期階段，我們仍在嘗試弄清楚推理隨著時間的推移將如何發揮作用。因此，我認為您的觀點對於整個行業對話以及 Cloudflare 關於您為何處於有利地位的對話都會有所幫助。

And then the follow-up is for Thomas. Whenever we hear inference, we're thinking that this is a GPU-intensive and compute-intensive type stuff and typically lower gross margin. It sounds like you're pretty comfortable that this isn't impacting the gross margins in the near term. Is that just because it's still relatively early days and relatively small volumes? Or should we be thinking that this could -- as this ramp, this could potentially have a gross margin impact over time?

接下來是湯瑪斯的後續報導。每當我們聽到推論時，我們都會認為這是 GPU 密集型和計算密集型的東西，而且毛利率通常較低。聽起來您很放心這不會在短期內影響毛利率。這僅僅是因為現在還處於早期階段且交易量相對較少嗎？或者我們應該認為，隨著這種增長，這可能會隨著時間的推移對毛利率產生影響？

Yes. So Keith, I appreciate both the questions. They're really, really important to understand, the advantages that we have in this space. So first of all, what are the challenges with inference? And I think there are really two. One seems like a bigger deal, and it's probably actually not as big a deal. And the other, it doesn't seem like it's a big deal, but it is a really big deal. And in both, I think that they shape how we think the inference market is going to work out.

是的。所以 Keith，我很感謝這兩個問題。了解我們在這個領域的優勢真的非常重要。那麼首先，推理面臨哪些挑戰？我認為確實有兩個。一件事看起來很重要，但實際上可能沒那麼重要。另外一件事，看起來不是什麼大事，但實際上卻是一件大事。我認為，在這兩種情況下，它們都決定了我們對推理市場運作方式的看法。

So the one that kind of feels like it's a bigger deal is around performance, which is that if you're playing with the various generative AI companies, if you're trying to do something, that wait time between when you submit a query and when you get back a response, that's going to become a bigger and bigger differentiator between different AI platforms. And so anything that you can do in order to make that performance as fast as possible is advantageous. And one of the ways to do that is to move the actual inference as close as possible to the person who's requesting it.

因此，感覺更大的問題是效能問題，也就是說，如果你與各種生成式人工智慧公司合作，如果你想做某事，那麼從你提交查詢到得到回應之間的等待時間，將成為不同人工智慧平台之間越來越大的區別。因此，為了盡快實現該性能，您可以採取任何措施，這都是有利的。而實現這一目標的方法之一就是讓實際推理盡可能地接近提出請求的人。

And so again, we think that inference will primarily be done on device or very close to where the end user is inside the network. We won't get -- again, if the ball is bouncing across the street, you want that inference to be done on the device, on the driverless car itself. So we won't win every inference task. But there will be a lot that makes sense to be running in the network where we have, again, almost infinite network capacity, almost infinite storage and memory and very, very significant CPU and GPU resources to be able to run those inference tasks.

因此，我們再次認為，推理將主要在設備上進行，或在網路內部非常接近最終用戶的位置進行。我們不會——再說一次，如果球在街上彈跳，你會希望在設備上、在無人駕駛汽車上進行推斷。所以我們不會贏得每一個推理任務。但是在網路上運行很多東西是有意義的，我們擁有幾乎無限的網路容量、幾乎無限的儲存和記憶體以及非常非常重要的 CPU 和 GPU 資源來運行這些推理任務。

That I actually think will be a lot lesser of the 2 advantages for us. The larger one, which again doesn't feel like it is a big a deal, but we're already seeing it play out some of the regulatory efforts that are happening around the world is that a lot of times for the inference tasks, the data that's there is very private. And people -- and governments want that to stay as close to the actual end user as possible.

事實上，我認為這對我們來說這兩個優勢就小得多。更大的問題，雖然這看起來似乎不是什麼大問題，但我們已經看到它在世界各地發揮作用的一些監管努力，那就是很多時候對於推理任務來說，其中的數據是非常私密的。人們和政府都希望這能夠盡可能貼近實際的最終用戶。

So we've already seen action in Italy that has restricted the use of certain AI tools because it sends data out of the country. What Cloudflare can uniquely do, because we're positioned across more than 250 cities worldwide when the vast majority of countries worldwide, is that we can actually process that information locally. So again, we think that on device, we're very close to where the user is on Cloudflare's network. It's is going to be the place where inference is going to take place.

因此，我們已經看到義大利採取了行動，限制某些人工智慧工具的使用，因為它們會將資料發送到境外。 Cloudflare 的獨特之處在於，由於我們的業務遍布全球 250 多個城市，覆蓋全球絕大多數國家，因此我們實際上可以在本地處理這些資訊。因此，我們再次認為，在設備上，我們非常接近用戶在 Cloudflare 網路上的位置。它將是進行推理的地方。

I'll tell you a quick stab at your second question as well, and then hand it off to Thomas for anything that he would add. I think the thins that's...

我也會快速回答你的第二個問題，然後將其交給托馬斯，讓他補充任何內容。我認為那是…

I'll ask like one clarification. So in that world view, it sounds like you think we're going to see more kind of smaller open source and distribution of a lot of very small models versus like a world view that everything is going to come up into a big GPT or random model over time. Is that correct?

我會問一個澄清問題。因此，在這種世界觀中，聽起來您認為我們將看到更多小型開源和大量非常小的模型的分發，而不是像世界觀那樣，隨著時間的推移，一切都會變成一個大的 GPT 或隨機模型。那正確嗎？

Not necessarily, but we run enough capacity out of the edge of our network that we can run fairly large, I mean very, very, very large models out at our network. And what I think is a little bit confusing is most of -- if you're trying to do the training of the models, then having the absolute latest, greatest GPU, the H-100 from NVIDIA right now, there's a lot of constraint in getting those chips. But there's actually a sweet spot for inference tasks, which isn't necessarily at the absolute cutting edge of the models.

不一定，但是我們在網路邊緣運行了足夠的容量，所以我們可以在網路上運行相當大的模型，我的意思是非常非常大的模型。我認為有點令人困惑的是——如果你想要對模型進行訓練，那麼擁有絕對最新、最棒的 GPU，即 NVIDIA 的 H-100，在獲取這些晶片方面會受到很多限制。但推理任務實際上存在一個最佳點，這並不一定是模型的絕對前沿。

And so Cloudflare is not the right place to actually process the training of models. That makes much more sense to do in a more traditional, centralized data center model, much like -- much of the traditional hyperscale public clouds. And in those cases, you have to have the latest, greatest GPUs. But when you're doing inference, again, a lot of that is going to run on your device and a lot of that is also going to run inside the network. And we're going to be able to, with a much lower CapEx spend, leverage the edge of our network in order to be able to do that processing extremely efficiently. And maybe we don't need the H-100, maybe we can live with an A100 or whatever it is, again, a generation or two behind, but that's also the difference between training and inference. An inference doesn't need necessarily the latest greatest GPU. Does that make sense?

因此，Cloudflare 並不是實際處理模型訓練的合適地點。在更傳統的集中式資料中心模型中這樣做更有意義，就像許多傳統的超大規模公有雲一樣。在這些情況下，您必須擁有最新、最好的 GPU。但是當你進行推理時，很多運算都會在你的設備上運行，很多運算也會在網路內部運行。而且，我們將能夠以低得多的資本支出，利用我們的網路優勢，以便能夠非常有效率地完成處理。也許我們不需要 H-100，也許我們可以接受 A100 或其他什麼，同樣，落後一代或兩代，但這也是訓練和推理之間的區別。推理不一定需要最新最好的 GPU。這樣有道理嗎？

Yes, it's super helpful.

是的，非常有幫助。

Keith, what I would add is I always remind people to truly understand the competitive mode of Cloudflare and the efficiency of their -- the business model. You have to start with a network and how it's efficiently targeted using off-the-shelf hardware, completely integrated homogeneous software effect that allows you to run every product on every server in every location. So you have this now massive globally distributed network that is not only efficiently designed to handle large volumes of data, but also large volumes of simultaneous requests. And that makes it already today very well suited for inference tasks, which by nature often involve processing request simultaneously, so -- and it requires less computational power than training model.

基思，我想補充的是，我總是提醒人們真正了解 Cloudflare 的競爭模式及其商業模式的效率。您必須從網路開始，並了解如何使用現成的硬體、完全整合的同類軟體效果來有效地定位它，從而使您可以在每個位置的每台伺服器上運行每個產品。因此，您現在擁有這個龐大的全球分散式網絡，它不僅可以高效地處理大量數據，還可以處理大量的同時請求。這使得它今天已經非常適合推理任務，推理任務本質上通常涉及同時處理請求，因此 - 它所需的計算能力比訓練模型要少。

So I think the architecture of the network itself puts us in this really advantageous position. And that's why we are so confident that the business model is going to hold, and it's one of the reasons why we're able to even get a CapEx ratio down for the year despite the fact that AI workloads are putting -- are being put more and more on our network. So you really -- as I always say, go back and really understand the efficient architecture of the network itself, and you'll find the answer there.

所以我認為網路本身的架構使我們處於真正有利的地位。這就是為什麼我們如此有信心該商業模式能夠保持下去，這也是為什麼儘管人工智慧工作負載越來越多地施加到我們的網路上，我們仍能夠降低今年的資本支出率的原因之一。所以你真的——正如我常說的，回去真正理解網路本身的高效架構，你就會在那裡找到答案。

And we will take our next question from Andrew Nowinski with Wells Fargo.

我們將回答富國銀行的安德魯諾溫斯基的下一個問題。

I wanted to shift gears and ask about Zero Trust. Is there any more details you could provide on that record Zero Trust contract you talked about? And whether that was a displacement of another vendor and maybe why they selected Cloudflare? And then I have a quick follow-up.

我想換個話題，問一下關於零信任的問題。關於您提到的創紀錄的零信任合同，您還能提供更多細節嗎？這是否是另一家供應商的取代，以及他們為什麼選擇 Cloudflare？然後我有一個快速的後續問題。

Sure. I think that in almost all of the Zero Trust deals that we see, we are at least in competition with some of the first-generation Zero Trust vendors. In many of them, it's -- there's an incumbent vendor, and we are displacing them. Usually, when that happens, it's because the usability of the existing Zero Trust vendor has been really bad. It's crazy that with some of the leading Zero Trust vendors, if you try to use your laptop when you're on a United Airlines WiFi flight that the captive portal on United Airlines doesn't work. That's obviously unaccepted -- maybe that was acceptable in the pandemic when no one was traveling. But now that people are traveling, that's something that just doesn't hold up anymore.

當然。我認為，在我們看到的幾乎所有零信任交易中，我們至少與一些第一代零信任供應商處於競爭狀態。在許多領域，都有現任供應商，而我們正在取代他們。通常，當這種情況發生時，是因為現有零信任供應商的可用性非常差。瘋狂的是，對於一些領先的零信任供應商來說，如果您在乘坐聯合航空的 WiFi 航班時嘗試使用筆記型電腦，聯合航空的強制門戶將無法運作。這顯然是不可接受的——也許在疫情期間沒有人旅行的情況下，這是可以接受的。但現在人們開始外出旅遊，這種做法就不再有效了。

And so I think the thing that has been an advantage of Cloudflare is that because we almost think of ourselves at times as a consumer company and we have a Zero Trust product that you can download to your phone right now and use, it's 1.1.1.1, that is running on so many millions of devices. And as we work with device manufacturers to actually build our network directly into their application, those things give us the visibility to be able to focus on performance, to be able to focus on end-user experience and to be able to directly replace oftentimes what have been those sort of first-generation Zero Trust vendors that frankly don't have the same user experience and the same performance. And so in many of these cases -- in all the cases, we're at least competing with the other more traditional Zero Trust vendors. And in many cases now, we're displacing them.

因此，我認為 Cloudflare 的優勢在於，我們有時幾乎將自己視為一家消費品公司，並且我們擁有一款零信任產品，您可以立即下載到手機上並使用，它是 1.1.1.1，正在數百萬台設備上運行。當我們與設備製造商合作，將我們的網路直接構建到他們的應用程式中時，這些事情為我們提供了可視性，使我們能夠專注於性能，能夠專注於最終用戶的體驗，並且能夠直接替換那些坦率地說沒有相同用戶體驗和相同性能的第一代零信任供應商。因此，在許多情況下——在所有情況下，我們至少都在與其他更傳統的零信任供應商競爭。現在在很多情況下我們正在取代他們。

That's great. And then as a follow-up, I think most people assume that Microsoft's new Entrust solutions will be targeted at that SMB sector at the lower end of the market. But that is a market that I think Cloudflare can also serve. So I'm just wondering what you're seeing in terms of competition with the new Entrust solutions?

那太棒了。然後作為後續問題，我認為大多數人認為微軟的新 Entrust 解決方案將針對低端市場的 SMB 領域。但我認為 Cloudflare 也可以服務這個市場。所以我只是想知道您認為新 Entrust 解決方案的競爭情況如何？

Yes, that's my sense of how Microsoft is thinking about this. And in fact, Microsoft has long been a really great partner of ours. And specifically, and even their announcements of this, we looked for ways to actually highlight the part of the market that's the SMB market. But we're not satisfied just winning the SMB market. We're winning some of the largest enterprises. And I think that's the biggest enterprises that have the most interest here.

是的，這就是我對微軟對此想法的看法。事實上，微軟一直是我們非常好的合作夥伴。具體來說，甚至在他們宣布這一消息時，我們都在尋找方法來真正突出中小企業市場這一部分。但我們並不滿足於僅僅贏得中小企業市場。我們正在贏得一些最大的企業的青睞。我認為這些是這裡最感興趣的最大的企業。

And so I think Microsoft has been a great partner to Cloudflare. We're directly integrated into their Edge browser. The network that we have delivers them very unique benefits, but we also respect them as a competitor. And so I think what we have as an advantage is that network, a network that they use themselves. But it's something where, over time, I think their entry into the market has just validated the market. It's defined it. And we look forward to competing in the places that we do and cooperating in the other places where we don't. And what we see is that what customers really want is a network provider that can protect your front door and your back door.

所以我認為微軟是 Cloudflare 的絕佳合作夥伴。我們直接整合到他們的 Edge 瀏覽器中。我們的網路為他們帶來了非常獨特的優勢，但我們也尊重他們作為競爭對手。因此我認為我們的優勢就是這個網絡，一個他們自己使用的網絡。但隨著時間的推移，我認為他們進入市場就驗證了市場。它已經定義了。我們期待在我們開展業務的地方競爭，並在我們不開展業務的地方合作。我們看到，客戶真正想要的是一個可以保護你的前門和後門的網路供應商。

What customers really understand is that there's a reason that we have accountants and auditors, and those are separate things. And that -- what customers really want is they want a solution that works across not just one vendor's products, but the entire IT stack. And I think that's what we see time and time again as the reason why customers are selecting Cloudflare Zero Trust solutions.

客戶真正理解的是，我們設有會計師和審計師是有原因的，他們是不同的角色。客戶真正想要的是一個不僅適用於一個供應商的產品，而且適用於整個 IT 堆疊的解決方案。我認為這就是我們一次又一次看到的客戶選擇 Cloudflare Zero Trust 解決方案的原因。

And we will take our next question from Mark Murphy with JPMorgan.

我們將回答摩根大通的馬克墨菲的下一個問題。

Matthew, can you elaborate on your vision for how Cloudflare can protect companies from leaking sensitive data out and maybe having some of that land inside a generative AI model? What kind of opportunity do you see? And since that traffic to Microsoft and open AI is so tremendous in that area and you have the partnerships there that you've mentioned, is there a role you can play directly to try to help control some of the data flows in that Azure Open AI service?

馬修，您能否詳細闡述您對 Cloudflare 如何保護公司免於洩露敏感資料並將其部分儲存在生成式 AI 模型中的願景？您看到了什麼樣的機會？由於該領域流向微軟和開放 AI 的流量如此巨大，而且你們在該領域也有提到的合作夥伴關係，那麼你們能否直接發揮作用，嘗試幫助控制 Azure 開放 AI 服務中的某些資料流？

Yes. I think that this is an area that we really listened to what customers' concerns were and built a product that specifically addresses the concern that you're highlighting because it's one that is on the mind of just about every GC and CISO that's out there. And that is whether they're telling their employers or not, the best data is that almost half of workers at -- in knowledge industry companies are using AI in one way or another in their jobs. And the risk with AI is that if you send a piece of information up to one of these models, it gets incorporated in the same way that if your 2-year-old hears a bad word, it's really hard to get them to unlearn that thing. And so the key is really making sure that the data doesn't actually leave.

是的。我認為，在這個領域，我們真正傾聽了客戶的顧慮，並創造了專門解決您所強調的顧慮的產品，因為這幾乎是每個 GC 和 CISO 所關心的問題。無論他們是否告訴雇主，最好的數據是，知識產業公司中幾乎一半的員工都在工作中以某種方式使用人工智慧。人工智慧的風險在於，如果你將訊息傳送給其中一個模型，它就會被納入其中，就像如果你兩歲的孩子聽到一個髒話，你就很難讓他們忘記這個髒話。因此，關鍵是要確保資料不會真正遺失。

And so what we've created is leveraging our existing data loss protection products, the DLP products, and making them specific to tag data in such a way that you can say, here's a piece of information, maybe it's from our marketing website. I am totally fine with that going out to the public Zero Trust -- actually, not Zero Trust, out to the public AI vendors and being able to train on that. In fact, it's great if they're trained on my marketing messages.

因此，我們所創造的是利用我們現有的數據丟失保護產品，即 DLP 產品，並使它們特定於標籤數據，這樣您就可以說，這是一條信息，也許它來自我們的營銷網站。我完全同意向公眾推出零信任——實際上，不是零信任，而是向公眾推出 AI 供應商並能夠在此基礎上進行培訓。事實上，如果他們接受過有關我的行銷訊息的培訓，那就太好了。

Here's another piece of information, which is much more sensitive where maybe I'm going to restrict that specifically to my own internal or sandboxed solutions that are the AI training models for that. And then maybe there's something else. That sort of cliche example is the secret formula of Coca-Cola or maybe what all of your internal pay schemes or maybe that you don't ever want to get out to anything. And so we've used our DLP solutions in order to specifically address the concern that CISOs and general counsels have about data leaking out. And what we think that, that can do is, over time, add not only those controls, but then start to add things like this particular task has a certain value, so I'm going to send that to maybe GPT 3.5 rather than GPT 4 to save money on that.

這是另一個訊息，它更加敏感，也許我會將其限制在自己的內部或沙盒解決方案中，即針對該問題的 AI 訓練模型。也許還有其他的事情。這種陳腔濫調的例子是可口可樂的秘密配方，或者可能是您所有的內部薪酬計劃，又或者可能是您永遠不想公開的任何事情。因此，我們使用了 DLP 解決方案來專門解決 CISO 和總法律顧問對資料外洩的擔憂。我們認為，隨著時間的推移，我們可以做的不僅是添加這些控件，然後開始添加像這個特定任務這樣具有一定價值的東西，所以我打算將其發送到 GPT 3.5 而不是 GPT 4，以節省這方面的資金。

And so we think that because of the position we're in, because so much of the AI universe relies on us that it puts us in a great position to not only provide the security to the AI companies, but also provide security anyone who is using AI in their business. And so we can benefit from both sides of the equation.

因此，我們認為，由於我們所處的地位，由於人工智慧領域的很大一部分依賴我們，這使我們處於一個有利的位置，不僅可以為人工智慧公司提供安全保障，還可以為任何在業務中使用人工智慧的人提供安全保障。這樣我們就可以從等式的兩邊受益。

And we will take our final question from Alex Henderson with Needham.

最後一個問題由 Needham 的 Alex Henderson 提出。

I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the fairly massive change in tone between the 1Q call and the current call, which highlights an improvement in pretty much every metric that you track. And specifically, maybe call out some of the differences between various geographies, whether the improvement was in large enterprise, was it also in the mid-market in the SMB market. Can you give us some granularity as to where that tone is changing? Because ultimately, you've called out the euro, one of the advanced bell weathers over the last year. And if you're seeing that change in an inflection in tone, I would love to know where it is coming from.

我希望您能稍微談談第一季電話會議和當前電話會議之間相當大的語調變化，這突顯了您追蹤的幾乎所有指標都有所改善。具體來說，也許可以指出不同地區之間的一些差異，無論是大型企業的改進，還是中小型企業市場的中端市場的改進。能否具體說明一下這種語氣所發生的變化？因為最終，你已經指出歐元是去年的先行風向標之一。如果您發現語調發生了變化，我很想知道它來自哪裡。

Yes, I'll start and then Thomas will have some more. I think that Q1 was scary because having a 20% increase in your sales cycle in a single quarter -- and we've seen sort of -- or something around that, around 20% of an increase, but over the entire course of 2022. And so when that then spiked in Q1, what we didn't know was whether that was going to -- whether we were going to be another 20% longer in sales cycles in Q2. And thankfully, that's not what happened. It came back down. But again, I wouldn't say that it's come back down to a point where we feel super optimistic about the macro. I think the macro is still very hard, and the next period of time is going to be a grind. But it is -- we didn't have the same just explosive expansion in sales cycles that I think we and a lot of other peers in the industry saw in Q1.

是的，我先開始，然後湯瑪斯還會再吃一些。我認為第一季的情況很可怕，因為單季的銷售週期增加了 20%——我們已經看到了——或者大概是這個數字，大約 20% 的增長，但在整個 2022 年期間都是如此。值得慶幸的是，事實並非如此。它又落下來了。但是，我不會說它已經回落到我們對宏觀經濟感到超級樂觀的水平。我覺得宏觀還是很難的，接下來的一段時間會是一段磨合期。但事實是——我認為我們和業內許多其他同行在第一季並沒有經歷銷售週期的爆炸性擴張。

And so I think that has been -- that's what led to the conservatism that we had in Q1. And I think that, that returning to something which, again, is still elevated but not -- but it's back to what we were seeing in -- more around what we're seeing in Q4, that is -- I think that's the primary driver at least from my perspective in terms of what -- maybe is what you put it as a more optimistic tone.

所以我認為這就是導致我們在第一季採取保守態度的原因。我認為，這種回歸仍然處於高位但不是——而是回到了我們在第四季度看到的水平——也就是說——我認為這是主要的驅動因素，至少從我的角度來看——也許這就是你所說的更樂觀的基調。

Any sense of -- specifically, any verticals or any categories or geographies or any size business that changed most dramatically?

有沒有感覺——具體來說，任何垂直行業、任何類別、任何地區或任何規模的企業發生了最顯著的變化？

Let me give you some more color. We saw a lot -- we saw forward improvement. We talked about this. We also saw a lot of inconsistencies in this -- in the environment that made it much harder to predict what the second half is going to carry. APAC was very promising. As we said before, we saw a lot of very large deals, especially coming from APAC. The European business was very much security-driven and very encouraging, probably because of the very specific geopolitical situation. Europe is in -- then the Americas were more muted in general. We saw very specific performance, really good performance in the Middle East, but also in South America. North America was probably more muted than anything else. Vertical-wise, there's not a lot to talk about, but it's a very consistent performance. I would say there's not one vertical that I would pick out in terms of overall underperformance.

讓我給你多點顏色看看。我們看到了很多——我們看到了前進的進步。我們討論過這個。我們也看到其中存在著許多不一致之處——在這種環境下，我們很難預測下半年會發生什麼事。亞太地區前景十分光明。正如我們之前所說，我們看到了很多非常大的交易，尤其是來自亞太地區的交易。歐洲業務很大程度上受到安全驅動，而且非常令人鼓舞，這可能是因為非常特殊的地緣政治局勢。歐洲也是如此——而美洲則大致比較平靜。我們看到了非常具體的表現，在中東和南美的表現都非常好。北美可能比其他地方更沉悶。垂直方面，沒有太多可談的，但表現非常一致。我想說，從整體表現不佳的角度來看，我沒有挑選出任何一個垂直產業。

And ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to turn the conference back to Matthew Prince for closing remarks.

女士們、先生們，現在我想請馬修‧普林斯致閉幕詞。

I just want to take a second to thank everyone at Cloudflare. Again, as the macro environment continues to be challenging, I'm proud of how our team has stepped up and executed towards operational excellence. Everyone is working incredibly hard to help live up to our mission of helping build a better Internet. So thank you to all the Cloudflare employees, to all of our customers and all of the investors, and we really appreciate everything that you're doing for us.

我只想花一點時間感謝 Cloudflare 的所有人。再次，由於宏觀環境持續充滿挑戰，我為我們的團隊如何邁出並實現卓越營運而感到自豪。每個人都在竭盡全力幫助我們實現建立更好的互聯網的使命。因此，感謝所有 Cloudflare 員工、所有客戶和所有投資者，我們非常感謝你們為我們所做的一切。

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

女士們、先生們，今天的電話會議到此結束，感謝你們的參與。您現在可以斷開連線。