Progress Software Corp (PRGS) 2020 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Progress Software Corporation Q1 2020 Investor Relations Call.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Brian Flanagan.

Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Keith.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us for Progress Software's Fiscal First Quarter 2020 Earnings Call.

With me today is Yogesh Gupta, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Anthony Folger, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that during this call, we'll discuss our outlook for future financial and operating performance, corporate strategies, product plans, cost initiatives, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on our business and other information that might be considered forward looking.

This forward-looking information represents Progress Software's outlook and guidance only as of today and is subject to risks and uncertainties.

Please review our safe harbor statement regarding this information, which is available in today's earnings release as well as in the Investor Relations section of our website at progress.com.

Progress Software assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this call whether as a result of new developments or otherwise.

Additionally, on this call, the revenue, operating margin, diluted earnings per share and adjusted free cash flow amounts we refer to are on a non-GAAP basis.

You can find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP numbers in our earnings release issued today.

Today, we published our financial press release on our website.

This document contains the full details of our financial results for the fiscal first quarter 2020, and I recommend you reference it for specific details.

Today's conference call will be recorded in its entirety and will be available via replay on our website in the Investor Relations section.

With that, I'll now turn it over to Yogesh.

Thank you, Brian.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for attending our first quarter earnings call.

Let me start off by saying a few words about the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The global spread of this virus has created a health crisis that has disrupted the lives of billions of people, and what's more, the situation continues to evolve daily.

In response to this public health crisis, our priorities are clear: Number one, we have a responsibility to keep our employees healthy and safe; Number two, we must continue to provide the products and services our customers and partners need and rely upon; and last but not least, we must do our part in preventing the spread of the virus in the communities where we live and work.

The macroeconomic impact of the virus has been widely discussed but is still largely unknown.

For Progress, we did not see any specific impact on our business in Q1, and the feedback from recent customer and partner conversations leaves us cautiously optimistic that we are well positioned to weather this potential impact in Q2 and beyond.

However, given the current level of global uncertainty, it would be shortsighted to expect that we're completely immune, and this is reflected in our updated 2020 expectations for revenue, EPS and free cash flow.

Anthony will provide more details on these revised expectations, which also include a significant negative FX impact due to the recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar.

That said, I remain bullish on our long-term strategy and prospects for delivering meaningful shareholder value.

Turning to our Q1 results.

As you've seen in this afternoon's press release, we delivered a strong first quarter with year-over-year revenue growth of 27% and year-over-year growth in earnings per share of more than 50%, both ahead of our internal plans and above the high end of the guidance ranges we previously provided.

These results were driven by strength in our business across the board in virtually all product lines.

Highlights included a 6-figure new customer win for our Ipswitch MOVEit product as well as our largest Sitefinity cloud deal ever, which was a 6-figure subscription booked with a large university.

Our Q1 results reflect not only the success of the Ipswitch acquisition but also our efforts to standardize our processes and improve operational execution across our business.

One area where we've continued to drive improvements in execution is in our indirect sales channels.

Those of you who have followed us for some time know that one of our key strengths over our 35-plus year history has been our channel partner relationships, including the ISVs that built their applications on top of OpenEdge, the OEMs that embed DCI into their products and now the resellers and distributors that sell our Ipswitch products.

To maintain and augment that strength, we recently launched Progress Accelerate, a global program to provide channel partners with the tools they need to accelerate their growth and customer success.

This branded program centralizes and expands all of our successful channel partner initiatives into one offering, providing training and enablement, a dedicated account manager, joint marketing planning and support, and incentive programs.

We're already seeing tangible benefits from these initiatives.

For example, we have improved Ipswitch's sales execution by leveraging our common sales processes, programs and resources.

This is part of the reason why the Ipswitch products have continued to perform better than our original business case.

And by providing a better experience for all of our channel partners, we make it easier for them to maximize the value of their relationships with Progress.

This helps keep them competitive, implies better retention and continued stability in our recurring revenue streams.

Along with our continued product investments, it's programs like this that keep our businesses healthy.

For OpenEdge, that means maintaining our maintenance renewal rates at well over 90% and ensuring that our 1,700-plus ISV partners continue to win new customers and grow their SaaS revenues.

For DCI, it means remaining the undisputed leader in the premium data access market and the choice of 9 of the top 10 BI analytics vendors for their data connectivity with best-in-class security, scalability and support.

And for our DevTools products, that means continuing to help our 2 million-plus developers build better, more engaging web and mobile applications in less time.

Overall, our goal is to build an increasingly stronger business, and our success in Q1 reflects those ongoing efforts.

Now I'd like to provide more color on the impact to our business of the COVID-19 virus.

Like many other companies, we have taken aggressive steps in response to the incredible disruption caused by this pandemic.

From the outset, our management team has been meeting daily to assess the rapidly changing situation, decide on our courses of action and provide the most up-to-date information to our employees and customers.

Substantially, all of our workforce has been working from home for weeks now, as we have leveraged our distributed infrastructure and systems.

We've also eliminated all travel and replaced in-person events and meetings with virtual gatherings where possible, using modern communication methods to maintain business continuity.

We are pleased with how our business has responded to this disruption and the flexibility and dedication demonstrated by our employees.

Our global teams are already adept at virtual collaboration across our geographies and have continued to remotely provide the high level of support that our customers and partners are accustomed to.

Our product organization continues to work diligently on features and enhancements across our product portfolio, and our product road maps and release plans are on schedule.

As I've said many times, our business is resilient, and we do not have significant exposure to the industry verticals that are likely to be hardest hit by this crisis.

Furthermore, a high percentage of recurring revenue and the mission-critical nature of our core software offerings and the applications that they power fuels my optimism that we will be able to deliver solid results despite the uncertainty.

We will continue to monitor the macroeconomic environment and our customer and partner ecosystem as the situation unfolds, and we remain confident in the long-term opportunity ahead of us.

Speaking of the long-term opportunity, let's now turn to a discussion of that.

As you know, our strategic focus moving forward is to complement our stable businesses with accretive M&A in the infrastructure software space with a goal of doubling the size of our business in 5 years.

While our target is to complete 1 or 2 acquisitions per year, we remain disciplined in our approach.

We target businesses that are not only complementary to our business in terms of product, audience and growth profile but also meet our financial criteria, which include: one, high levels of recurring revenue; two, operating margins after synergies consistent with our margin structure; and most importantly, generate a return on our investment that is above our weighted average cost of capital.

M&A in this space represents a huge market opportunity and one that Progress is uniquely suited to address.

As one data point, venture capital firms have invested more than $50 billion in over 10,000 infrastructure software companies over the last decade.

Of course, many of these never become viable businesses.

Those that remain are often too small to scale, but many have stable, sticky customer bases and high levels of recurring revenue, making them perfect candidates for our strategy.

From a pipeline breadth perspective, we've been reviewing approximately 50 deals per quarter, and Q1 was no exception.

Many of these companies are in the $40 million to $80 million revenue range, the ideal size for us, but in many cases, too small for other strategic or PE buyers to pursue.

The available pool of targets is large enough to support our acquisition strategy for many years, making this a viable path for delivering long-term value.

The opportunity exists, so let's now talk about how we're well positioned to take advantage of it.

When we look at our revenue, more than 70% is recurring in nature, and as we've discussed previously, our retention rates are consistently well above 90%.

Coupled with our efficient operating model, this translates into a very durable, predictable top line, best-in-class operating margins for enterprise software and very efficient free cash flow conversion.

With net leverage of 0.6x and $225 million available within our current credit facility, we have the financial capacity to execute on our strategy.

We're also well positioned from an operational perspective.

We have real expertise with recurring revenue models, where customer retention is key to long-term success.

And we can leverage our own operational and back-office infrastructure to achieve meaningful cost synergies.

Our success in sourcing, executing and integrating Ipswitch is a testament to our ability to execute this strategy.

And we're further strengthening our capabilities in this area by adding resources for both identifying and integrating future M&A opportunities.

Not surprisingly, macroeconomic conditions are impacting M&A globally, and while they may create a headwind for deal timing, they could also create tailwinds for valuations.

And our strong liquidity and debt capacity positions us well in the coming months.

As always, we remain disciplined in our approach.

So in closing, our business is healthy, and we had a very strong Q1, sustaining the momentum we achieved during 2019.

We will continue to monitor the external environment and remain very confident that our business is durable and diverse enough to provide a solid performance even in this period of market uncertainty.

The guidance changes that Anthony will discuss are the direct results of that uncertainty and do not reflect any wavering confidence in the health of our core business.

Lastly, we are well positioned both financially and operationally to execute on our targeted M&A strategy, driving real shareholder value through accretive acquisitions in the infrastructure software space.

As you know, Anthony Folger joined us as CFO in January, and I'd like to turn the call over to him now to review our Q1 performance and outlook for Q2 and full year of 2020.

Anthony?

Thanks, Yogesh.

Thanks, Brian.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us.

I'd like to start by saying that I'm thrilled to be joining the Progress team at such an important time for the company.

Progress has embarked on an exciting evolution, shifting focus to accretive M&A in order to drive growth and scale, and I'm confident in this team's ability to successfully execute and capture the market opportunity that Yogesh described earlier.

I look forward to speaking with the Progress investor community personally in the coming quarters, and I'm certain you'll share my level of excitement about the opportunity in front of us.

Turning now to our first quarter results.

Total revenue was $113.8 million, well above the high end of the guidance range we provided back in January.

This overperformance was driven by higher-than-anticipated revenue from our DCI, MOVEit and Sitefinity products.

We continue to be pleased with the performance of Ipswitch with Q1 revenues from our Ipswitch products slightly ahead of our expectations.

We also saw stability in our OpenEdge partner channel with another solid quarter of SaaS-related billings from our ISVs, who have deployed their applications in the cloud.

In addition, maintenance renewal rates for both our ISV partners and direct customers continue to be strong coming in at well over 90% again this quarter.

On a year-over-year basis, total revenue increased 27%, driven by the acquisition of Ipswitch and the timing of DCI contract renewals with certain OEM partners.

The year-over-year impact of exchange rates on our first quarter revenue was negative $700,000, generally in line with our expectations.

I'd like to take a moment now to discuss how the timing of DCI contract renewals with certain OEM partners impacts our top line.

As we've mentioned on previous calls, ASC 606 generally requires immediate revenue recognition of our multiyear term license agreements with certain OEM partners who embed our DCI product into their solutions.

As a result, our revenues can fluctuate materially depending on when these contracts renew.

This timing was a benefit for us in 2019 and again, in the first quarter of 2020.

For the full year 2020, however, we expect that DCI revenue will decrease when compared to 2019 driven by fewer scheduled renewals during 2020.

This obviously makes year-over-year comparisons for DCI more challenging, and it's the reason why we believe annual contract value remains the most effective way to evaluate our DCI business.

We continue to expect ACV to be $32 million to $33 million for 2020, consistent with our actual performance in 2019.

Turning now to expenses.

Our total costs and operating expenses for the quarter were $65.8 million, up 11% compared to the prior year quarter.

This year-over-year increase is driven by the acquisition of Ipswitch, partially offset by lower expenses in the rest of our business where we continue to operate more efficiently.

Operating income was $48 million, up $17.7 million or 59% compared to Q1 2019, and our operating margin was 42%, an increase of 800 basis points on a year-over-year basis.

On the bottom line, earnings per share of $0.76 for the quarter represent growth of 52% year-over-year and is $0.05 above the high end of our guidance range.

This overperformance on the bottom line compared to guidance was driven by our top line performance coupled with lower salary and benefit costs resulting from slower-than-anticipated hiring.

Moving on now to a few balance sheet and cash flow metrics.

We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $177 million and debt of $295 million.

DSO for the quarter was 49 days, an improvement of 7 days both sequentially and when compared to Q1 of last year.

Deferred revenue was $181 million at the end of the first quarter, up $39 million compared to Q1 of 2019 due primarily to the addition of Ipswitch's deferred revenue balances.

Adjusted free cash flow was $33 million for the quarter, up almost $9 million or 37% from the $24 million we achieved in Q1 of last year.

This growth in free cash flow was driven by the acquisition of Ipswitch, our lower DSO and the previously mentioned improvements to operating leverage in our business.

During the first quarter, we repurchased 425,000 shares of Progress stock at a total cost of $20 million, and at the end of the quarter, we had $230 million remaining under our current share repurchase authorization.

I would now like to turn to our outlook for Q2 and the full year 2020.

First, let me state that, thus far, we are not experiencing any meaningful disruption across our sales channels due to the COVID-19 crisis.

However, we recognize the reality of a much more challenging economic environment in the coming weeks and months and felt it necessary to incorporate some of these potential challenges into our outlook despite the uncertainty.

When we assess our business and how it could be impacted by the slowdown in activity that's occurring globally, it's important to highlight some of the characteristics that have made Progress' business so durable.

Specifically, our products power mission-critical applications across a variety of industries, and the cost, effort and time required to replace our solutions would be prohibitive in most cases.

Over 70% of our revenue is recurring, and our retention rates have consistently been well over 90%, and all of our technical and professional services can be delivered remotely without disruption.

That's not to say our business is immune to a global economic slowdown, and in developing our current outlook, we assumed that a meaningful slowdown in the demand environment will negatively impact our ability to acquire new customers and expand existing customer installations and the timing of certain maintenance contract renewals and customer collections.

Despite these potential negative impacts, we have maintained our prior outlook for operating margin largely due to the operating efficiencies we realized in the first quarter and the changes in how we are conducting business during the COVID-19 crisis, which Yogesh previously mentioned.

It's also important to note that we transact in multiple currencies.

So in addition to the slowdown in economic activity resulting from the COVID-19 crisis, we also expect our business to be negatively impacted by the recent significant moves in exchange rates.

With that, for the second quarter of 2020, we expect revenue between $95 million and $101 million.

This contemplates a $3 million reduction for the COVID-19 crisis, a $2.5 million reduction for the anticipated negative impact of foreign exchange and a widening of our typical quarterly guidance range to account for greater uncertainty; earnings per share of between $0.60 and $0.64, which includes an anticipated negative impact of foreign exchange of approximately $0.02.

For the full year 2020, we expect revenue between $428 million and $438 million.

This contemplates a $10 million to $13 million reduction for the COVID-19 crisis, a $7 million reduction for the anticipated negative impact of foreign exchange and a widening of our guidance range to account for greater uncertainty.

As I mentioned, we also expect our operating margin to be approximately 39%, consistent with prior guidance; adjusted free cash flow between $125 million and $135 million, the reduction in our outlook being driven by the COVID-19 prices and the recent movements in exchange rates; earnings per share of between $2.73 and $2.80, which includes an anticipated negative impact of foreign exchange of approximately $0.06.

Our annual EPS estimate contemplates a tax rate of 21%, approximately 45 million shares outstanding and the impact of 60 million of share repurchases we are targeting to complete by the end of 2020.

To summarize, we're very pleased with our Q1 results and the positive momentum in our business during the quarter.

However, we recognize the reality of the COVID-19 crisis, its potential impact on economic activity, and we've adjusted our outlook accordingly.

In closing, we believe our high level of recurring revenue, coupled with consistently strong retention rates, positions us well to weather the economic challenges brought on by the COVID-19 crisis.

In addition, the strength of our balance sheet and consistency of our cash flows give us confidence to continue to execute against our strategy of scaling our business through accretive M&A.

With that, I'd like to open the call for Q&A, and I'd ask that you keep your remarks to your primary question and one follow-up.

(Operator Instructions) We'll take our first question from Steve Koenig with Wedbush.

Welcome, Anthony.

One for you and then a follow-up for Yogesh.

So -- and also housekeeping, the $60 million share repurchases, does that include the Q1?

And then I want to ask you, Anthony, in terms of your guidance here on COVID-19, on that impact, how -- the environment is pretty uncertain, so it's clearly difficult to make adjustments and know with much certainty what they're going to do.

How did you go about adjusting the timing of deals as well as kind of the seasonality in the year?

How does that get impacted in your view?

And kind of what assumptions did you make to arrive at the new guidance?

Sure.

Thanks, Steve, and good to chat from my end as well.

To answer your first question, the share repurchase of $60 million includes the repurchase activity from Q1, so all in, that would be $60 million for the year.

And then on the guidance question, yes, you're right.

I mean it's a really uncertain environment right now.

We went through all the leading indicators that we had in the business, and we're really not seeing much impact.

And so we basically went product by product and looked at the different revenue streams in terms of where the likely impact would show up from a meaningful slowdown in activity.

And we looked at new customer acquisition.

We looked at expansion, and we looked at maintenance renewal.

We took each of them down, but I would say that the priority order and the magnitude of the impact, because of the size of the maintenance base, was probably maintenance, #1, and then expansion and new customer acquisition.

And it was going product-by-product transaction types we had to consider, and we had to look at each of our products quarterly and adjust the existing forecast that we had.

Now there's more art than science, unfortunately, to how we're putting the outlook together right now just due to all the uncertainty.

But one thing is for sure, that the economic activity is slowing down.

It's a global issue.

We expect our business to be impacted.

I think this is our best view into that right now.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, great.

I'll leave that question there and then move on to Yogesh.

You got any commentary on how does the current environment impact your ability to get deals done, whether it's availability of deals, whether it's their willingness to sell to you, whether it's valuations and/or ability just to execute on the transaction.

How do those factors roll into your thinking about getting the M&A -- keeping that M&A on track with your plan?

So Steve, thank you for the question.

So from a progress operational perspective, we are actually in good shape, right?

We do -- most of our marketing activity is electronic and is virtual.

Most of our conversations are virtual.

Most of our new sales, new license sales in the business happen with products like Sitefinity and Ipswitch products, which, as you are aware, are lower-end prices, and therefore, significant amounts of those happen in -- through a lot of online engagement.

So our ability on our side to execute transactions, I don't believe is being hampered.

What we do believe is happening and what we expect to happen is that customers basically not being able to transact because their businesses are impacted, their decision-making is delayed, their ability to collect and pay us gets deferred, those kind of things, right?

So Steve, really, from our perspective, we really see no direct impact from our internal execution perspective.

It really is the demand side.

And on the demand side, again, as I said, it is more about delays with people if they may decide to not do something for 2 months, 3 months, 6 months.

One of the challenges, Steve, in terms of this uncertainty also is the level of timing.

And we're all hoping that this will be short in terms of the disruption, but at the same time, we also know that it can be quite long.

So that is also a challenge we're trying to figure out what -- but on an execution side, we are very comfortable through the fact that we can do the deals we can execute.

We can connect with our customers.

We can basically make this happen.

And Yogesh, I used the term deals probably too loosely, and by the way, that's very helpful color on your execution.

I'm also wondering about your ability to conduct M&A in this environment and the availability of targets to sell themselves to you.

Any color on that?

I see.

I see.

Sorry, Steve.

I misunderstood.

That was good information though.

I'll take whatever I can get.

Okay.

So on the M&A side, again, we don't really see challenges for us to be able to do deals.

From, again, our perspective, our dealer execution side, we have a strong team.

We have the financial wherewithal and the ability to execute those deals from a financial perspective.

We have a -- both an untapped revolver and as well as an expansion facility, so $100 million untapped revolver, revolver plus a $125 million expansion in our current debt itself.

Plus, as you know, we have a strong balance sheet to begin with today.

So from a financial perspective, we don't see real challenges.

It will make some of the due diligence work -- might be a little more difficult since we can't travel and they can't travel as much.

But I think in today's day and age, a lot of data get shared electronically anyway.

And really from a plus positive side perspective, valuations today are different than they were 4 weeks ago, right?

It's kind of an interesting -- and by the way, they are yoyo-ing, right?

I -- so I don't -- I think however, no matter where they end up, I do believe that there's opportunity for valuations to be less than what they were before, and that creates opportunities as well.

I also think, Steve, that there'll be companies out there who otherwise were getting funded well or thought they could survive a bit longer.

Then they'll basically look at this, and they'll see challenges in their business.

And maybe they were thinking they could grow 10% and do well, but instead of that, they're going to come in flat this year or approximately flat and makes them again more likely to be open to conversations with us.

So I see this as really an opportunity on the deal-making side.

We'll take our next question from Mark Schappel with Benchmark.

Yogesh, starting with you.

Given the uncertainty in the marketplace here, why not suspend your guidance as a few of the other software vendors have done?

Mark, good to speak with you as well, and appreciate the question.

So we wanted to make sure that we provided the level of visibility we have today, right?

I mean I've been always a transparent -- have always taken a transparent approach, right?

And then you know that.

And so we want to share the level of knowledge we have.

We know the significant FX impact already.

It's because of the way the dollar has moved against both the euro and the pound.

And at the same time, we see that there are early signs that some of the new business could get delayed or extended beyond the time frames that we're talking about.

So that's on that side.

On the other side, we have a very strong recurring revenue business, and we have really strong customer retention.

And so when you think of it that way, right, we felt that it was important to highlight the fact that we feel confident that the range of impact, even though there is uncertainty, even though there is unknowns related to this, that the range is, in our view, right, rather limited.

And again, from an impact of this crisis perspective in terms of it impacting our revenues, that impact for the year is between $10 million and $13 million, which is whatever rate, between 2% and 3% of our top line expectation.

So that to us is a -- is actually one of our strengths that we have a business that is quite stable.

And because of how efficiently we run, we're still able to reiterate that we will make 39% operating margin, right, which is 100 basis points greater than last year and 400 basis points greater than 2 years ago.

So I think all those things were part of the rationale to share information with folks like yourselves and our shareholders as to what we see in our business.

Great.

And then an additional question here.

Could you just give us an idea of how your -- how you see a professional services business holding up and how the company just plans to manage business offering professional services?

Absolutely.

Yes, Mark.

So it's actually interesting.

Even before the coronavirus impacted the way people do business, the vast majority of Progress professional services was being delivered remotely.

We have rather limited set of people that used to go to on-prem anyway.

Of course, since this, 100% of it is being delivered remotely.

We are seeing no disruption in the project.

And as far as we are seeing, we're not seeing delays in ongoing projects either.

So at least from -- I know that some other companies have seen different things in their business, but from our perspective and from our professional services business, we are not seeing a project impact at least today.

Okay.

And then finally here, on the M&A front with respect to the 50-or-so companies that you see each quarter, what percentage of those would you say are marginally profitable or might have some cash issues?

Well, I think it varies, right?

I think probably, I would have to sort of go back and look, so I believe that probably in the 20% to 30% or maybe even a bit more, maybe even up to half.

But really, we see across the board.

I mean we actually see companies that are extremely profitable that are being run really well to companies that are actually quite significantly burning cash.

It's a fascinating world out there, Mark, and I don't know whether this change in the economic environment will change sort of where -- how that shakes out but -- where the companies will focus differently.

But we see across the board.

And I think there's a significant number of them that are actually barely breakeven or negative.

We'll take our next question from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti & Company.

Welcome aboard, Anthony.

I'm looking forward working with you.

Yes, me as well.

Thank you.

[Water] in this time.

So to continue on the M&A.

You say you [see] about 50 companies each quarter.

So what should we be looking at in the cash?

Have you walked away from something that was too expensive then, that might be more interesting now that would be easier to -- for you to execute on without maybe doing a whole lot more of that due diligence this time?

So sorry, Anja, I'm having a very hard time hearing your question.

I know it was about M&A, and I know it was about some companies we are seeing.

But I really am sorry.

Could you please repeat?

Yes, sorry.

So of the companies you've met, is there any you'd be walking away from that's just, because it was too expensive, that might have come down, but you already maybe did a lot of the due diligence on, so it would be easier for you to execute on that in this kind of environment?

Okay.

So yes, okay.

I got it.

I think you -- let me make sure that I heard your question.

I think you asked whether there were companies that we walked away from because they were too expensive, that now the valuations might have come down and we could potentially participate in it and they become more attractive now.

And so to answer that question, all along, right, in these processes, there are companies that we walk away from.

I do believe that the timing is still too early to see whether there is a meaningful change in valuation.

So I don't think that this is something that, in the last 3 weeks, we can finally say, oh, yes, now valuations are less.

Public company valuations are well known.

Private company valuations, as you can imagine, right, folks, the sellers have to come to realize that they need to reset their expectations.

We are expecting that.

Anecdotally, we are seeing that, but I won't really say that there are opportunities that we walked away from that now we can certainly reengage on, Anja.

Okay.

And then also, you mentioned hiring in the first quarter was slower than anticipated.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

And are you still trying to hire in this environment?

Or how is that going to impact your sales?

So -- yes, so Anja, regarding hiring, in Q1, we had an aggressive plan to hire, and it has been difficult to hire before this.

And so we are in competitive locations as you know, such as Boston and India and so on.

So we were not able to get to our hiring targets.

We are continuing to hire where needed.

But obviously, we're also looking at things very carefully as to where those real needs are.

So we are being prudent, but we're not really changing in any meaningful way how we operate, right?

There are cost savings from things like no travel and then there's cost savings from less events and those kind of things.

But overall, we are continuing to run our business.

We are delivering products on time.

We are supporting our customers just as well as we were doing before around the globe, 24/7.

We are servicing our customers in terms of professional services engagements.

We are communicating with them from a sales and marketing perspective as much as we were doing before.

So I actually -- the work hasn't changed.

We are focused on running the company well, and we will continue to do so.

We'll take our next question from Matthew Galinko with National Securities.

So we're seeing some positive comments from companies that are able to -- that are -- that have products that can enable secure remote work given this environment.

And so I'm curious if there's anything, particularly in Ipswitch's portfolio, that are maybe seeing a little bit more sell-through or interest that might be a counterbalance a little bit to the headwinds that you expect to see in this environment?

So Matt, as we've looked at each product, as Anthony mentioned, right, we -- and analyzed each product and we looked at and said are there some products that might get a little bit of a benefit.

Clearly, IT infrastructure availability and performance management becomes even more critical in today's day and age and in this environment, and it was even a month ago.

So obviously, the WhatsUp Gold product addresses that need and -- but overall -- and secured data transfer is potentially another area that can benefit, but really, there are a couple of challenges that I want to point out, right, that those products also have a -- along with the DevTools products, right, new business acquisition.

And the new business acquisition is where we expect to see a significant impact from our -- from what we are trying to do.

We're expecting there the slowdown and extension of time frames.

We also have, Matt, to be honest, right, $7 million of FX headwind on the top line.

It is dramatically different than it was 4 weeks ago, right?

And so when you look at it from that perspective, we actually have a rather muted impact on our revenue number that we are contemplating and that we are envisioning at this point given the uncertainty in the market.

Got it.

All right.

And then maybe, say, follow-up would be with respect to your capital allocation.

I know you talked about your target buyback allocation for fiscal '20.

But just in light of the market volatility we've seen and some of the decline in your share price, that's fairly steep.

Do you think about -- just walk us back through how you think about leaning a little bit more heavily into the buyback versus M&A?

And sort of how you view that opportunistically compared to opportunistic M&A?

Yes.

So a great question, Matt.

Obviously, with our strong cash flow and the opportunity to really allocate our capital in the most shareholder-friendly way is what we focus on all the time.

So our first priority, of course, is our dividend, right?

We pay approximately 25% of our annual free cash flow to shareholders in the form of dividends, which, as you know, in September, we increased by $0.04.

And so -- and the board reviews that every quarter.

And so the dividend is, of course, number one.

The second thing from our perspective really is now should we apply the capital towards buybacks versus M&A.

And reality is, even though share purchases provide a solid low-risk return, accretive M&A that meets our disciplined criteria provides a much better return.

And so we look at it from the perspective of what is best for our shareholders, what is the best place to apply capital.

And so we, of course, have the flexibility to increase or change or even suspend our buybacks based on whether or not we're able to do M&A and what we're doing from an M&A perspective.

So our Board reviews that every quarter.

We make sure that we look at the trade-off between possible M&A and buybacks.

And again, if we can find the right M&A deals, we believe that, that is -- even at the current valuation that Progress is at, it really does offer a much better return for our shareholders.

Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude today's question-and-answer session.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference back to Brian Flanagan for additional remarks.

Great.

Thank you all for joining the call today.

As a reminder, we plan on releasing financial results for our fiscal second quarter of 2020 on Thursday, June 25, 2020, after the financial markets close and holding the conference call the same day at 5 p.m.

Eastern Time.

And I'll now turn the call over to Yogesh for his closing remarks.

Thanks again, Brian.

During this time of uncertainty, we, as a business, will always do what we've always done before, which is to continue to provide great products and high levels of support to our long-standing customers and partner base.

The company is financially really strong and healthy, and while our 2020 results may be impacted by this crisis, we will continue to be focused on the long-term opportunity we have to create value through accretive M&A.

I want to thank all of you for joining us today, and I look forward to speaking with you again during the next quarter's conference call.

Stay safe, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference.

We appreciate your participation.

You may now disconnect.