SEMrush Holdings Inc (SEMR) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Hello, and welcome to the Semrush fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 earnings call. My name is Alex, and I'll be coordinating the call today. (Operator Instructions)

您好，歡迎參加 Semrush 第四季和 2023 年全年財報電話會議。我叫亞歷克斯，今天我將協調通話。（操作員說明）

I'll now hand it over to your host, Brinlea Johnson of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

現在我將把它交給主持人投資者關係部的 Brinlea Johnson。請繼續。

Good morning, and welcome to Semrush Holdings fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 conference call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after market close on Monday, March 4. With me on the call is our CEO, Oleg Shchegolev; our President, Eugene Levin; and our CFO, Brian Mulroy.

早安，歡迎參加 Semrush Holdings 第四季和 2023 年全年電話會議。我們將討論 3 月 4 日星期一收盤後發布的新聞稿中宣布的結果。與我一起參加電話會議的是我們的執行長 Oleg Shchegolev；我們的總裁尤金·萊文；以及我們的財務長布萊恩·馬爾羅伊 (Brian Mulroy)。

Today's call will contain forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning our expected future business and financial performance and financial condition, expected growth, adoption and demand for our existing and any new products and features, our AppCenter expansion, industry and market trends, our competitive position, market opportunities, sales and marketing activities, the sufficiency of our staffing levels, our guidance for the first quarter of 2024 and the full year 2024, and statements about future pricing and operating results, including margin improvements, revenue growth and profitability.

今天的電話會議將包含根據 1995 年私人證券訴訟改革法案的安全港條款做出的前瞻性陳述。前瞻性陳述包括但不限於有關我們預期的未來業務和財務業績及財務狀況、對我們現有產品和任何新產品和功能的預期增長、採用和需求、我們的 AppCenter 擴展、行業和市場趨勢、我們的競爭地位、市場機會、銷售和行銷活動、我們的人員配備水準、我們對2024 年第一季和2024 年全年的指導，以及有關未來定價和經營業績的聲明，包括利潤率改善、收入成長和盈利能力。

Forward-looking statements are statements other than statements of fact and can be identified by words such as expect, can, anticipate, intend, plan, believe, seek or will. These statements reflect our views as of today only and should not be relied upon as representing our views at any subsequent date, and we do not undertake any duty to update these statements.

前瞻性陳述是事實陳述以外的陳述，可以透過預期、能夠、預期、打算、計劃、相信、尋求或意願等詞語來識別。這些聲明僅反映我們今天的觀點，不應被視為代表我們在任何後續日期的觀點，並且我們不承擔更新這些聲明的任何責任。

Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. For a discussion of the risks and important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q and our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as our other filings with the SEC.

前瞻性陳述所涉及的事項存在風險和不確定性，可能導致實際結果與這些前瞻性陳述有重大差異。有關可能影響我們實際結果的風險和重要因素的討論，請參閱我們向美國證券交易委員會提交的最新 10-Q 表格季度報告和 10-K 表格年度報告，以及我們的向 SEC 提交的其他文件。

During the course of today's call, we refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. There is a reconciliation schedule showing the GAAP versus non-GAAP results currently available in our press release issued yesterday after market close, which can be found at investors.semrush.com.

在今天的電話會議中，我們提到了某些非公認會計準則財務指標。我們昨天收盤後發布的新聞稿中有一份顯示 GAAP 與非 GAAP 結果的核對錶，可在 Investors.semrush.com 上找到。

I also wanted to highlight that starting with our guidance for the first quarter and full year 2024, we are updating our guidance measures and non-GAAP definitions. We will no longer provide guidance for non-GAAP net income, and instead will guide to both non-GAAP operating margin and free cash flow margin. Definitions for these are presented in our earnings release.

我還想強調，從 2024 年第一季和全年的指導開始，我們正在更新指導措施和非 GAAP 定義。我們將不再提供非 GAAP 淨利潤指引，而是同時指引非 GAAP 營業利潤率和自由現金流利潤率。這些的定義在我們的收益報告中給出。

We are also updating our definition of non-GAAP income from operations on which GAAP operating margin is calculated to exclude amortization of acquired intangible assets, acquisition-related costs, restructuring costs, and other one-time expenses outside the ordinary course of business, for example, our exit costs incurred primarily in 2022, in addition to the current exclusion of stock-based compensation. To be clear, all currently and previously reported historical actuals reflect our prior definition, which only excludes stock-based compensation.

我們也更新了非公認會計原則營運收入的定義，計算公認會計原則營業利潤時不包括收購的無形資產攤銷、收購相關成本、重組成本和正常業務過程之外的其他一次性費用，例如，除了目前排除的股票薪酬之外，我們的退出成本主要發生在2022 年。需要明確的是，當前和先前報告的所有歷史實際情況都反映了我們先前的定義，其中僅排除基於股票的薪酬。

The updated definitions will be reflected when we report our first quarter 2024 financials. With our year-end earnings release, we are also providing a reconciliation from the old definition to the new definition for the periods presented. In anticipation of this change, we are now providing guidance using this updated definition. We believe this update will allow investors to better understand our financial performance, better align with the measures used internally by management in operating our business, and permit a better evaluation of the efficacy of the methodology and information used by management to evaluate and measure our performance.

更新後的定義將在我們報告 2024 年第一季財務數據時反映出來。在年終收益發布中，我們也提供了所呈現期間從舊定義到新定義的調節表。考慮到這一變化，我們現在使用此更新的定義來提供指導。我們相信，此更新將使投資者更了解我們的財務業績，更好地與管理層在經營我們業務時內部使用的措施保持一致，並更好地評估管理層用於評估和衡量我們業績的方法和資訊的有效性。

And with that, let me turn it over to Oleg.

接下來，讓我把它交給奧列格。

Thank you, and good morning to everyone on the call. I am pleased with our team's ability to execute in 2023. We succeeded in accelerating ARR growth, increasing our pipeline of new customers, and expanding our platform as we continue to drive towards sustained profitability.

謝謝您，祝所有參加電話會議的人早安。我對我們團隊在 2023 年的執行能力感到滿意。隨著我們繼續努力實現持續獲利，我們成功地加速了 ARR 成長，增加了新客戶管道，並擴展了我們的平台。

In the fourth quarter, we delivered revenue of $83.4 million, up 21% year over year. And for the full year, revenue grew 21% to $307.7 million. Importantly, we also generated strong profitability exceeding our guidance, reporting non-GAAP net income of $11.4 million in the fourth quarter, while closing out the full year with $16.3 million in non-GAAP net income. As demonstrated by our 2024 guidance, our business is focused on driving strong, sustainable growth, expanding profitability, and generating free cash flow.

第四季度，我們營收 8,340 萬美元，年增 21%。全年營收成長 21%，達到 3.077 億美元。重要的是，我們還創造了超出預期的強勁盈利能力，第四季度非 GAAP 淨利潤為 1,140 萬美元，全年非 GAAP 淨利潤為 1,630 萬美元。正如我們的 2024 年指導方針所示，我們的業務重點是推動強勁、可持續的成長、擴大獲利能力並產生自由現金流。

Before handing it over to Eugene and Brian to talk about the quarter in more detail, I would like to touch on a few highlights about our strategy to continue to scale of the business and capture our significant market opportunity. On our last call, I talked about our strong competitive positioning as the platform of choice for businesses to improve their online visibility. I also discussed our differentiation in the market due to our unique data assets and positive industry dynamics.

在交給尤金和布萊恩更詳細地討論本季之前，我想談談我們繼續擴大業務規模和抓住重要市場機會的策略的一些亮點。在我們上次的電話會議上，我談到了我們作為企業提高線上知名度的首選平台的強大競爭地位。我還討論了由於我們獨特的數據資產和積極的行業動態而在市場中的差異化。

We firmly believe our success and ability to grow is more about factors that are within our control and less about competitors. We have a significant greenfield market opportunity ahead of us and we continue to focus on educating our customers about the value of our unique data assets and diverse portfolio of products.

我們堅信，我們的成功和成長能力更取決於我們控制範圍內的因素，而不是競爭對手。我們面臨著巨大的綠地市場機遇，我們將繼續致力於讓客戶了解我們獨特的數據資產和多樣化產品組合的價值。

To put it simply, businesses need to be seen online and in places where consumers are. We help customers in a number of ways. We help them organize their websites in order to rank highly for search engines to find them and to be woven into conversations in social media. We assist them with their keyword strategies to achieve higher rankings.

簡而言之，企業需要在網路上和消費者所在的地方被看見。我們透過多種方式幫助客戶。我們幫助他們組織網站，以便在搜尋引擎中排名靠前，以便找到他們並融入社交媒體的對話中。我們協助他們制定關鍵字策略，以實現更高的排名。

Also, we help businesses optimize the location-specific elements about their site so that they show up in the local listings. Clients also need to gather intelligence about consumers and competitors, and our platform provides them with those capabilities.

此外，我們還幫助企業優化其網站的特定位置元素，以便它們顯示在本地列表中。客戶還需要收集有關消費者和競爭對手的情報，我們的平台為他們提供了這些功能。

To illustrate our solutions, consider how a potential customer's journey might look. A customer would come to Semrush initially seeking to elevate their digital presence with higher rankings on search engines, higher levels of customer engagement, and more visibility across several marketing channels. They would start by researching their competitors' ads and selected keywords to figure out which ones have the best ROI potential. They would then use our Ads Launch Assistant to run campaigns using those keywords.

為了說明我們的解決方案，請考慮潛在客戶的旅程可能會是什麼樣子。客戶來到 Semrush 最初是為了透過在搜尋引擎上獲得更高的排名、更高水平的客戶參與度以及跨多個行銷管道的更高知名度來提升他們的數位形象。他們首先研究競爭對手的廣告並選擇關鍵字，以找出哪些廣告具有最佳的投資回報潛力。然後，他們將使用我們的廣告啟動助手來使用這些關鍵字來執行廣告活動。

As they begin to understand the limitations of relying only on paid media, they would then use our platform to make their physical store more easily discoverable on Google maps. Their subscription to Semrush Local would automate their online listing updates in over 70 directories, and then the platform would track their rankings in maps for keywords.

當他們開始了解僅依賴付費媒體的限制時，他們就會使用我們的平台讓他們的實體店在 Google 地圖上更容易被發現。他們訂閱 Semrush Local 將自動更新 70 多個目錄中的線上列表，然後平台將追蹤他們在地圖中的關鍵字排名。

Of course, they would also want to use our social tool and leverage our AI features to respond to reviews quickly, while, at the same time, generating content with those high-value keywords included. As a result of their engagement with our tools, they could choose to share valuable data with us, which we could then use to further increase the accuracy and predictability of our algorithms.

當然，他們也希望使用我們的社交工具並利用我們的人工智慧功能來快速回應評論，同時產生包含這些高價值關鍵字的內容。由於他們使用我們的工具，他們可以選擇與我們分享有價值的數據，然後我們可以使用這些數據來進一步提高演算法的準確性和可預測性。

To complete this hypothetical example and to demonstrate the breadth of our platform, they would also likely want to use our tools to find niche influencers which they can collaborate with to better enhance their brand visibility and credibility. With the help of AI Social Content Generator, they could then create reels and videos in seconds for Instagram and TikTok to capitalize on organic promotion opportunities.

為了完成這個假設的例子並展示我們平台的廣度，他們也可能希望使用我們的工具來尋找利基影響者，他們可以與之合作，以更好地提高他們的品牌知名度和可信度。在人工智慧社交內容生成器的幫助下，他們可以在幾秒鐘內為 Instagram 和 TikTok 創建捲軸和視頻，以利用有機推廣機會。

This hypothetical customer journey highlights the growing trend of businesses of all sizes investing more time, effort, and resources into enhancing their online visibility, which is a trend Semrush will continue to benefit greatly from. We believe businesses that are best able to analyze, plan, and execute their digital marketing activities will have the potential for exceptional results. And as you can see, our platform provides all the tools in one place, where they can do this.

這個假設的客戶旅程凸顯了各種規模的企業投入更多時間、精力和資源來提高線上知名度的成長趨勢，Semrush 將繼續從這一趨勢中受益匪淺。我們相信，最有能力分析、規劃和執行數位行銷活動的企業將有潛力取得卓越的成果。正如您所看到的，我們的平台在一個地方提供了所有工具，他們可以在其中執行此操作。

We have also created a network effect as we share highly actionable insights with our customers. And they, in return, share their proprietary data with us. This dynamic makes our algorithms stronger and even more predictive, enabling a flywheel effect. The stronger and more predictive our algorithms are, the happier our customers are, which fuels new ARR growth.

當我們與客戶分享高度可行的見解時，我們也創造了網路效應。作為回報，他們與我們分享他們的專有數據。這種動態使我們的演算法更強大，更具預測性，從而實現飛輪效應。我們的演算法越強大、預測能力越強，我們的客戶就會越高興，從而推動新的 ARR 成長。

Looking ahead to 2024, we are focused on continuing to grow our core business, upselling and cross selling our offerings, expanding our platform, and exploring new acquisition opportunities. In conclusion, I am very optimistic about 2024, and I am excited about our strong competitive market position and ability to capitalize on future growth opportunities.

展望 2024 年，我們的重點是繼續發展我們的核心業務、追加銷售和交叉銷售我們的產品、擴展我們的平台並探索新的收購機會。總之，我對 2024 年非常樂觀，我對我們強大的競爭市場地位和利用未來成長機會的能力感到興奮。

I will now turn the call over to Eugene and Brian to discuss the results of the quarter and our outlook in more detail.

我現在將把電話轉給尤金和布萊恩，更詳細地討論本季的業績和我們的前景。

Thank you, Oleg. We delivered another solid quarter and continue to focus on our three main growth pillars that set us up for long-term, durable growth; and we are making progress on each front. To review, we are focused on, one, increasing new user growth with our existing offerings; two, driving expansion revenue by delivering higher value to our customers by cross-selling and upselling within our base; and three, adding new products to our portfolio.

謝謝你，奧列格。我們又實現了一個穩定的季度業績，並繼續專注於我們的三大成長支柱，這為我們實現長期、持久的成長奠定了基礎；我們在各方面都取得了進展。回顧一下，我們的重點是，第一，利用我們現有的產品增加新用戶的成長；第二，透過在我們的基地內進行交叉銷售和追加銷售，為客戶提供更高的價值，從而推動收入成長；第三，在我們的產品組合中新增產品。

Let me provide updates from this quarter. First, we continued increasing new user growth. We have nearly 108,000 paying customers today, but there are tens of millions of marketers and small business owners that we believe will benefit from our platform and product offerings. In Q4, we achieved solid net new customer additions and registrations with a more efficient sales and marketing engine than we've seen in prior quarters.

讓我提供本季的最新情況。首先，我們持續增加新用戶成長。如今，我們擁有近 108,000 名付費客戶，但我們相信還有數千萬行銷人員和小型企業主將從我們的平台和產品中受益。在第四季度，我們透過比前幾個季度更有效率的銷售和行銷引擎實現了穩定的淨新客戶增加和註冊。

Looking at this further, organic marketing is one of many channels companies leverage to enhance their online presence. It has multiple benefits, and our tools provide the data and technology that allows customers to fine tune, analyze, and measure the impact of various organic marketing initiatives.

進一步來看，有機行銷是公司用來增強網路形象的眾多管道之一。它具有多種優勢，我們的工具提供的數據和技術使客戶能夠微調、分析和衡量各種有機行銷計劃的影響。

Over the past year, we have seen some considerable improvements in optimizing our sales and marketing spend, where we pivoted towards our organic efforts to boost our own online presence. Much of our success can be attributed to leveraging our own Semrush tools and following recommendations to deliver very successful results.

在過去的一年裡，我們在優化銷售和行銷支出方面取得了一些顯著的進步，我們將重點轉向有機努力，以提高我們自己的線上影響力。我們的成功很大程度上歸功於利用我們自己的 Semrush 工具並遵循建議來交付非常成功的結果。

While every marketing channel has its place in an effective marketing strategy, organic marketing can be more cost effective in the long run. And importantly, it is trustworthy. You are more likely to trust an organic search result for relevance and quality than a paid ad that anyone can place based on your search needs. Organic marketing is like owning a house where you're building equity, whereas paid media can be like renting a house where you get to live there, but, when you're done paying, you don't own any real estate.

雖然每個行銷管道在有效的行銷策略中都佔有一席之地，但從長遠來看，有機行銷可以更具成本效益。而且重要的是，它是值得信賴的。與任何人都可以根據您的搜尋需求放置的付費廣告相比，您更有可能信任自然搜尋結果的相關性和品質。有機行銷就像擁有一棟房子，你可以在其中建立資產，而付費媒體就像租一棟房子，你可以住在那裡，但是，當你付完錢後，你並不擁有任何房地產。

As Oleg highlighted, Semrush's tools are focused on boosting company's organic presence, in contrast to the focus that companies like Google and Facebook have on paid advertising. This is one of Semrush's key competitive differentiators and something that we believe provides us with a clear path in the ecosystem. The efficiency with which we generated our results this quarter demonstrates the power of organic strategy.

正如 Oleg 所強調的那樣，Semrush 的工具專注於提升公司的有機影響力，這與 Google 和 Facebook 等公司的重點是付費廣告形成鮮明對比。這是 Semrush 的關鍵競爭優勢之一，我們相信它為我們在生態系統中提供了一條清晰的道路。我們本季產生業績的效率證明了有機策略的力量。

Turning to the second growth pillar, we have a strategy to cross-sell and up-sell our customers in an effort to expand our average ARR per customer, which, as reported today, is over $3,100. Our cross-sell focus is on search engine optimization, search engine advertising, social media, local marketing, digital PR, content marketing, and competitive intelligence. These are our core competencies, where we believe Semrush clearly differentiates itself in the marketplace, and we saw continued success in Q4.

談到第二個成長支柱，我們制定了交叉銷售和追加銷售客戶的策略，以努力擴大每個客戶的平均 ARR，據今天報道，該平均 ARR 超過 3,100 美元。我們的交叉銷售重點是搜尋引擎優化、搜尋引擎廣告、社群媒體、本地行銷、數位公關、內容行銷和競爭情報。這些是我們的核心競爭力，我們相信 Semrush 在市場中明顯脫穎而出，並且我們在第四季度看到了持續的成功。

Before we talk about our third growth pillar, which is adding new products to our portfolio, I'd like to take a few moments to discuss a segment of our customer base that we believe represents a significant growth engine for us. Companies that fall into this broad segment are businesses that tend to have multiple marketing team members that are each Semrush users, and they generally have significantly higher ARPU, or average revenue per user, than our average customer. While this is a reasonably broad description, the point I'm trying to demonstrate is that they are different from our solo-preneur and small business customers.

在我們談論我們的第三個成長支柱（即在我們的產品組合中添加新產品）之前，我想花一些時間討論我們認為代表我們重要成長引擎的客戶群部分。屬於這一廣泛細分市場的公司往往擁有多個行銷團隊成員，每個成員都是 Semrush 用戶，而且他們的 ARPU（每用戶平均收入）通常比我們的普通客戶高得多。雖然這是一個相當廣泛的描述，但我試圖證明的一點是，他們與我們的個人企業家和小型企業客戶不同。

What's exciting about these more sophisticated accounts is that they add additional products to their subscription at a healthier clip than our average customer. So their ARPU grows rapidly as they leverage more Semrush tools to achieve their business goals. And two, their net revenue retention is meaningfully higher than our average.

這些更複雜的帳戶的令人興奮之處在於，他們以比我們的普通客戶更健康的方式向其訂閱添加其他產品。因此，隨著他們利用更多 Semrush 工具來實現業務目標，他們的 ARPU 會迅速成長。第二，他們的淨收入留存率明顯高於我們的平均值。

This cohort of accounts already comprises a meaningful double-digit percentage of our ARR, and we expect that this will grow significantly as time goes on. We believe that these high-level metrics covering ARPU growth and net retention demonstrate that the adoption of our products within these more sophisticated accounts points to a bright future for this customer segment and will help support strong, sustainable growth for Semrush overall. We also believe that the relative strength of this customer set gives us increased confidence that our new enterprise product will be met with strong adoption, further supporting our goal of driving strong, durable growth on both top line and bottom line.

這組帳戶已經占我們的 ARR 的兩位數百分比，我們預計隨著時間的推移，這一比例將顯著增長。我們相信，這些涵蓋ARPU 成長和淨保留率的高級指標表明，在這些更複雜的客戶中採用我們的產品將為該客戶群帶來光明的未來，並將有助於支持Semrush 整體強勁、可持續的增長。我們也相信，該客戶群的相對實力使我們更有信心，我們的新企業產品將得到廣泛採用，進一步支持我們推動營收和利潤強勁、持久成長的目標。

This leads me to our third growth pillar, expanding our product portfolio. During 2023, we launched numerous AI apps and tools and added multiple apps to the AppCenter. We officially launched an enterprise SEO product into the market. Although we are in the early stages and this will take time to be a material contributor to our overall revenue, the early signs we are seeing are very encouraging. Our enterprise offering has the opportunity to create a meaningful inflection of our ARPU, as this product carries ARPUs that tend to be 10 to 15 times our client average.

這引出了我們的第三個成長支柱，即擴大我們的產品組合。2023年，我們推出了眾多人工智慧應用程式和工具，並為AppCenter添加了多個應用程式。我們正式向市場推出企業SEO產品。儘管我們還處於早期階段，這需要時間才能對我們的整體收入做出實質貢獻，但我們看到的早期跡象非常令人鼓舞。我們的企業產品有機會對我們的 ARPU 產生有意義的影響，因為該產品的 ARPU 往往是我們客戶平均值的 10 到 15 倍。

We believe our early adopter customers are experiencing significant returns on their investments after migrating to the platform. Features like automated workflows, corporate-level access controls, customizable dashboards, and built-in professional services are helping our customers drive meaningful improvements in efficiency while also delivering significant time and cost savings.

我們相信，我們的早期採用者客戶在遷移到該平台後將獲得可觀的投資回報。自動化工作流程、企業級存取控制、可自訂儀表板和內建專業服務等功能正在幫助我們的客戶顯著提高效率，同時節省大量時間和成本。

To support this anticipated growth in our enterprise product, we spent the last several months analyzing our go-to-market infrastructure and sales motion and making the requisite adjustments. As a result of this very detailed exercise, we reallocated the headcount of several SMB-focused sales teams into more enterprise-facing roles. We believe this will result in optimized LTV-to-CAC ratios as we leverage our product-led, low-touch sales strategy down-market while we shift more of our investment focus to the high-value enterprise area.

為了支持我們企業產品的預期成長，我們在過去的幾個月分析了我們的上市基礎設施和銷售活動，並做出了必要的調整。透過這項非常詳細的工作，我們將幾個以中小型企業為中心的銷售團隊的人員重新分配到更多面向企業的角色。我們相信，這將優化 LTV 與 CAC 比率，因為我們在低端市場利用以產品為主導的低接觸銷售策略，同時將更多的投資重點轉向高價值企業領域。

In summary, I am very pleased with our success driving new customer growth, our success up-selling and cross-selling, and our ability to expand our product portfolio and move upmarket.

總而言之，我對我們成功推動新客戶成長、我們成功的追加銷售和交叉銷售以及我們擴展產品組合和進入高端市場的能力感到非常高興。

I will now turn the call over to Brian who will provide a more detailed discussion of our financial performance and guidance. Go ahead, Brian.

我現在將把電話轉給布萊恩，他將更詳細地討論我們的財務表現和指導。繼續吧，布萊恩。

Thanks, Eugene. Before I discuss our results in more detail, I'd like to remind you what I highlighted last quarter on my plan for the finance organization. As I sit here one quarter later, my confidence has only grown stronger in our ability to drive durable growth over the next several years as we further penetrate our served markets. Evidenced by our recent results and guidance, I see an opportunity for us to do this while also making significant improvements to our profitability.

謝謝，尤金。在更詳細地討論我們的結果之前，我想提醒您我上季度在財務組織計劃中強調的內容。一個季度後，當我坐在這裡時，隨著我們進一步滲透所服務的市場，我對我們在未來幾年推動持久增長的能力的信心只會越來越強。我們最近的業績和指導證明，我看到了我們這樣做的機會，同時也顯著提高了我們的獲利能力。

To bring this to fruition, our finance team focuses on data and metrics for decision-making throughout the organization. Because Semrush has such a valuable customer data set, we have the ability to segment our user base to understand their buying patterns, retention dynamics, and interest in new products, among many other things.

為了實現這一目標，我們的財務團隊專注於整個組織決策的數據和指標。由於 Semrush 擁有如此寶貴的客戶資料集，因此我們能夠對用戶群進行細分，以了解他們的購買模式、保留動態以及對新產品的興趣等。

You heard Eugene talk about this a moment ago. And taking that example of how our corporate accounts have extremely robust characteristics for growth, retention, and ARPU, we rigorously analyze this data and allocate our investments in sales, marketing, and product accordingly.

你剛才聽到尤金談到了這件事。以我們的企業客戶如何具有極其強勁的成長、保留和 ARPU 特徵為例，我們嚴格分析這些數據，並相應地分配我們在銷售、行銷和產品方面的投資。

We expect the outcome of doing this on a regular basis to result in a disciplined approach that enables us to capitalize on our biggest opportunities while simultaneously driving operating efficiencies. We expect this ROI framework will apply to our capital allocation decisions, whether that is for internal projects, external M&A, or the optimization of our capital structure.

我們期望定期這樣做的結果將產生一種嚴格的方法，使我們能夠利用最大的機會，同時提高營運效率。我們預期這個投資報酬率架構將適用於我們的資本配置決策，無論是內部專案、外部併購或資本結構的最佳化。

With that, I'd like to turn to our fourth-quarter results in more detail. We had a very strong quarter across the board. Our revenue in the fourth quarter was $83.4 million, growing 21% year over year. For the full year, revenue increased 21% to $307.7 million. Growth was driven by new customer additions and expansion of our average revenue per customer as we continue to execute on our cross-sell and up-sell strategy.

說到這裡，我想更詳細地談談我們第四季的業績。我們的季度表現非常強勁。我們第四季的營收為 8,340 萬美元，年增 21%。全年營收成長 21% 至 3.077 億美元。隨著我們繼續執行交叉銷售和追加銷售策略，新客戶的增加和每個客戶平均收入的擴大推動了成長。

Our dollar-based net revenue retention for the fourth quarter was 107%. We expect our dollar-based net revenue retention to trough within the next quarter or two as we increase adoption of our full portfolio of products, tools, and add-ons within our installed base.

我們第四季以美元計算的淨收入保留率為 107%。我們預計，隨著我們在安裝基礎上增加對完整產品組合、工具和附加組件的採用，以美元為基礎的淨收入保留將在未來一兩個季度內觸底。

Annual recurring revenue for the quarter grew 23% to $337.1 million compared to a year ago. We reported significant improvement in our operating margin, which was up approximately 2,500 basis points year over year. This improvement is the result of a number of factors.

該季度的年度經常性收入較去年同期成長 23%，達到 3.371 億美元。我們的營業利潤率顯著改善，較去年同期成長約 2,500 個基點。這種改進是多種因素共同作用的結果。

First, our gross margin improved 100 basis points year over year to 83.6%. Gross margin benefited from higher revenue and our continued ability to gain scale and leverage from our efficiently engineered platform. We continue to expect strong gross margins above 80% in the near term and view the way in which our stack is engineered as a key competitive differentiator. Our healthy gross margins also provides us the flexibility to invest below the gross profit line, which gives us a structural advantage in the market.

首先，我們的毛利率年增100個基點至83.6%。毛利率得益於更高的收入以及我們透過高效設計的平台持續擴大規模和發揮槓桿作用的能力。我們繼續預期短期內毛利率將超過 80%，並將我們的堆疊設計方式視為關鍵的競爭優勢。我們健康的毛利率也為我們提供了在毛利線以下進行投資的靈活性，這使我們在市場上具有結構性優勢。

Second, we continue to execute on our commitment to drive efficiencies, carefully manage expenses, and further expand our profitability. In the short time I've been here, I have implemented policies and programs to objectively examine spending initiatives. And I believe there are additional opportunities to drive durable growth while also expanding our profit margins through focus and discipline. During 2023, across the company, we carefully managed expenses and maintained our headcount.

其次，我們持續履行提高效率、謹慎管理費用並進一步擴大獲利能力的承諾。在我來到這裡的短時間內，我已經實施了政策和計劃來客觀地審查支出計劃。我相信還有更多機會來推動持久成長，同時透過專注和紀律來擴大我們的利潤率。2023 年，我們在整個公司範圍內謹慎管理開支並維持員工人數。

Moving down the income statement. During the fourth quarter, we had positive non-GAAP net income of $11.4 million and $16.3 million for the full year, both surpassing the high end of our guidance range. The strong non-GAAP net income relative to our guidance was the result of the flow through of our operating performance and the accounting treatment for gains on investments we made in 2021 and 2022.

將損益表向下移動。第四季度，我們的非 GAAP 淨利潤為 1,140 萬美元，全年淨利潤為 1,630 萬美元，均超過了我們指導範圍的上限。相對於我們的指導而言，非公認會計準則淨利潤強勁是我們的經營業績流動以及我們對 2021 年和 2022 年投資收益進行會計處理的結果。

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments of $238.6 million, up from $230.1 million in the previous quarter. Our cash flow from operations in the fourth quarter was $11.6 million.

轉向資產負債表。截至本季末，我們的現金和現金等價物以及短期投資為 2.386 億美元，高於上一季的 2.301 億美元。第四季我們的營運現金流為 1,160 萬美元。

Turning to guidance. I am very confident in the underlying trends in the business and capabilities of our team to continue on the path to deliver strong growth and profitability. Our business is very strong, and we are encouraged not only by what we have accomplished so far, but we are optimistic about what we see as the opportunities in front of us.

轉向指導。我對業務的基本趨勢和我們團隊的能力非常有信心，能夠繼續實現強勁的成長和獲利能力。我們的業務非常強勁，我們不僅對迄今為止所取得的成就感到鼓舞，而且對我們面前的機會感到樂觀。

Looking at the first quarter, we are off to a strong start with respect to net new customer additions, as we're seeing a similar seasonal pattern to previous years where customers that paused their subscriptions in fourth quarter returned to the platform in Q1, a trend we attribute to the holidays.

看看第一季度，我們在新客戶淨增加方面有了一個良好的開端，因為我們看到了與前幾年類似的季節性模式，即在第四季度暫停訂閱的客戶在第一季度返回了該平台，我們將這種趨勢歸因於假期。

As mentioned in the forward-looking statements, we are now guiding to revenue, non-GAAP operating margin and free cash flow margin. For the first quarter of 2024, we expect revenue in a range of $84.7 million to $85.3 million dollars, which translates to growth of approximately 20%. Because we are already two months into first quarter, this range is a bit narrower than what we expect to normally provide during the remainder of 2024. We expect first quarter non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately 8%.

正如前瞻性陳述中所提到的，我們現在對收入、非公認會計原則營業利潤率和自由現金流利潤率進行指導。對於 2024 年第一季度，我們預計營收在 8,470 萬美元至 8,530 萬美元之間，相當於成長約 20%。由於第一季已經過去兩個月了，因此這個範圍比我們預計在 2024 年剩餘時間內通常提供的範圍要窄一些。我們預計第一季非 GAAP 營運利潤率約為 8%。

For the full year 2024, we expect revenue in a range of $364 million to $368 million dollars, which translates to growth of 18% to 20%. We expect full-year 2024 non-GAAP operating margins to be between 10% and 11%, and full-year free cash flow margins to be in the range of 7% to 8%. To help you with your modeling, the difference between our non-GAAP operating margin and our free cash flow margin is the result of interest income offset by capital expenditures and cash taxes.

對於 2024 年全年，我們預計營收在 3.64 億美元至 3.68 億美元之間，這意味著成長 18% 至 20%。我們預計 2024 年全年非 GAAP 營業利潤率將介於 10% 至 11% 之間，全年自由現金流利潤率將介於 7% 至 8% 之間。為了幫助您進行建模，我們的非公認會計原則營業利潤率和自由現金流量利潤率之間的差異是利息收入被資本支出和現金稅抵消的結果。

Finally, our guidance assumes a Euro exchange rate of 1.08. As a reminder, approximately 30% of our expenses are denominated in Euros. In closing, we are confident in our ability to grow and scale our business and remain committed to a disciplined and a balanced approach to spending. We are focused on driving improved efficiency and profitability, even while we invest in future growth opportunities that we expect will deliver long-term value to our shareholders.

最後，我們的指導假設歐元匯率為 1.08。請注意，我們大約 30% 的開支以歐元計價。最後，我們對發展和擴大業務的能力充滿信心，並繼續致力於遵守紀律和平衡的支出方式。我們專注於提高效率和獲利能力，同時投資未來的成長機會，預計將為股東帶來長期價值。

With that, we are happy to take any of your questions. Operator, please open the line for questions.

因此，我們很樂意回答您的任何問題。接線員，請開通提問線。

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Surinder Thind, Jefferies.

謝謝。（操作員說明）Surinder Thind，Jefferies。

Thank you. So Brian, just starting with the margin part of the story here. Can you maybe walk us through the thought process of how you're balancing the growth with the profitability? It looks like the margin trajectory appears to be well ahead of expectations of, I think, where everybody. But just, any color commentary there?

謝謝。布萊恩，我們先從故事的邊緣部分開始。您能否向我們介紹一下您如何平衡成長與獲利能力的思考過程？我認為，利潤率軌跡似乎遠遠超出了所有人的預期。但只是，有什麼色彩評論嗎？

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for the question. Look, this trade-off between growth and profitability is something that we think about every day, and it's a really extremely important question. It's something we need to get right.

是的，早安。謝謝你的提問。看，成長和獲利能力之間的權衡是我們每天都在思考的問題，這是一個非常重要的問題。這是我們需要做對的事。

So our goal at Semrush is to achieve what we call it an efficient frontier. So essentially, we're going to continue to invest in the business so long as that investment drives results and growth, but we don't want to spend past that, where the incremental return doesn't justify that incremental investment. And for '23, '24 and for the foreseeable future, we do see opportunities to invest in the business and drive durable growth.

因此，我們 Semrush 的目標是實現我們所謂的高效前沿。因此，從本質上講，只要投資能夠推動業績和成長，我們就會繼續對業務進行投資，但我們不想超出這個範圍，因為增量回報不足以證明增量投資的合理性。對於 23 年、24 年以及可預見的未來，我們確實看到了投資業務並推動持久成長的機會。

Now Oleg and Eugene mentioned this in the prepared remarks, where we have an extensive market opportunity and we've been able to deliver a really good durable growth over the last few quarters. We're uniquely positioned to capitalize on that opportunity.

現在，奧列格和尤金在準備好的發言中提到了這一點，我們擁有廣泛的市場機會，並且我們能夠在過去幾個季度中實現真正良好的持久增長。我們處於獨特的位置，可以利用這個機會。

We have 108,000 paying customers, over 1 million free users. We're expanding our portfolio, and that's creating a really good compelling cross-sell and upsell growth sector for us.

我們擁有 108,000 名付費用戶，超過 100 萬免費用戶。我們正在擴大我們的產品組合，這為我們創造了一個非常引人注目的交叉銷售和追加銷售成長領域。

So as we said, our business is very strong. We're encouraged by what we've seen, and we're really optimistic about what the business has in store for us going forward. So I say this just to say, look, growth is our priority. We're going to be investing in the business, and efficiency and profitability is really important to us.

正如我們所說，我們的業務非常強勁。我們對所看到的情況感到鼓舞，我們對這項業務為我們未來的發展感到非常樂觀。所以我這麼說只是想說，看，成長是我們的首要任務。我們將對業務進行投資，效率和獲利能力對我們來說非常重要。

This framework, we outlined in '23, and we're continuing to operate with that framework in '24. We're after efficient growth. So we committed to sustained profitability the last year. We originally guided zero to $3 million of non-GAAP net income and ended up landing the year at $16.3 million, which was a $40 million-plus increase in net income.

我們在 23 年概述了這個框架，我們將在 24 年繼續使用該框架。我們追求的是高效率成長。因此，我們去年致力於持續獲利。我們最初指導非 GAAP 淨利潤為 0 至 300 萬美元，最終全年目標為 1,630 萬美元，淨利潤增加了 4,000 萬美元以上。

So we're really pleased to see the results. We're going to continue with that framework in mind, being disciplined and balanced, and making sure that we have the appropriate trade-off between investing in the business, driving growth, but also doing that in an efficient way.

所以我們很高興看到結果。我們將繼續牢記這個框架，保持紀律和平衡，並確保我們在投資業務、推動成長和以有效的方式實現這一目標之間進行適當的權衡。

That's helpful. And then in terms of just the new enterprise platform, getting it to general availability. Any insights at this point from the initial set of users? And then, how are you thinking about, given it's an enterprise sale customer acquisition costs, maybe payback period for something like that?

這很有幫助。然後就新的企業平台而言，使其全面可用。目前，最初的用戶群有什麼見解嗎？然後，考慮到這是企業銷售客戶獲取成本，您如何考慮類似的投資回收期？

Thank you for the questions. So early traction is very good. We are really working hard every day to scale our ability to onboard customers and delight them. But first batch of customers that we brought into the product, they're all very happy. A lot of them see great ROI, especially some of the early customers who use our link recommender workflows. So there, we'll see -- already seen good results in terms of traffic improvements.

謝謝你的提問。所以早期的牽引力非常好。我們每天都在努力工作，以擴大我們吸引客戶並取悅他們的能力。但我們引進該產品的第一批客戶，他們都非常高興。他們中的許多人都看到了巨大的投資報酬率，尤其是一些使用我們的連結推薦工作流程的早期客戶。因此，我們將看到—在交通改善方面已經看到了良好的成果。

So yeah, we expect general availability in first half of this year. Working really hard, a lot of very positive traction. In terms of sales motion, really, we just train several sales reps. We made a couple of new hires, people who have experience selling up market.

所以，是的，我們預計將在今年上半年全面上市。工作非常努力，有很多非常積極的牽引力。在銷售動作方面，實際上，我們只是訓練了幾位銷售代表。我們聘用了幾位新員工，他們都有銷售市場的經驗。

But also, when you go to, let's say, $50,000 per year range, you don't need an entirely new sales team. So we already have a lot of A players, and we just reallocated resources effectively from our SMB selling team to our enterprise selling team. We'll build several new workflows in our CRM systems, like adding a lot of CPQ components and other standard components for enterprise selling.

而且，當您達到每年 50,000 美元的範圍時，您就不需要全新的銷售團隊。所以我們已經有很多一流的球員，我們只是有效地將資源從我們的中小企業銷售團隊重新分配到我們的企業銷售團隊。我們將在 CRM 系統中建立幾個新的工作流程，例如添加大量 CPQ 元件和其他用於企業銷售的標準元件。

But it's really just normal course of business. Everything is relatively straightforward, and we're seeing very good ROI. If anything, we actually seeing much better ROI when we use the enterprise sales reps versus what we've seen historically with SMB sales reps. And even SMB segment, we were making tons of money through our sales teams. And in enterprise, we're seeing efficiencies even much better.

但這確實只是正常的業務流程。一切都相對簡單，而且我們看到了非常好的投資報酬率。如果有什麼不同的話，那就是當我們使用企業銷售代表時，我們實際上看到了比我們過去使用中小企業銷售代表更高的投資回報率。即使是中小企業領域，我們也透過我們的銷售團隊賺了很多錢。在企業中，我們看到效率更高。

Thank you. Just --

謝謝。只是--

A few things, just to add on the financial side. Just a few things to add on the financial side. we're really excited about the opportunity that enterprise provides for us. Eugene and Oleg had mentioned that it presents in ARPU inflection for us, where the price of one is about 10 to 15 times what our average ARR is per paying customer. And of course, the customer acquisition costs are going to be higher, but we're preparing for that.

有幾件事，只是在財務方面補充一下。只是在財務方面需要補充一些內容。我們對企業為我們提供的機會感到非常興奮。Eugene 和 Oleg 提到，它為我們呈現了 ARPU 變化，其中一個的價格大約是我們每個付費客戶的平均 ARR 的 10 到 15 倍。當然，客戶獲取成本將會更高，但我們正在為此做好準備。

And I'd say two things. One is we're not going to see a significant change to our expense to revenue ratio on sales. As Eugene mentioned, we're driving efficiencies in our SMB selling motion and are able to reinvest it back into enterprise. And we've already started making investments and building a foundation for enterprise focus on three main things.

我想說兩件事。一是我們的銷售費用與收入比率不會有重大變動。正如尤金所提到的，我們正在提高中小企業銷售行動的效率，並能夠將其重新投資回企業。我們已經開始進行投資並為企業重點關註三個主要方面奠定基礎。

First is bringing people and talent into the organization that are able to build relationships with senior-level executives and move on from a transaction to more of a partnership with the customers we serve. We're building out a deal that's going to have -- a deal that's already started to build and navigate through the negotiation and procurement dynamics that come with an enterprise deal.

首先是將人員和人才引入組織，使其能夠與高階主管建立關係，並從交易轉向與我們服務的客戶更多的合作夥伴關係。我們正在製定一項即將達成的交易——一項已經開始建立並引導企業交易附帶的談判和採購動態的交易。

And of course, we're building out an enterprise selling motion and process within our CRM system that facilitates the process from demand generation through the negotiation and close of the deal. So yes, enterprise is different, the cost structure is different, but we have the foundation in place. And we're now starting to scale that up to be able to prepare for future growth.

當然，我們正在 CRM 系統中建立企業銷售動議和流程，以促進從需求產生到談判和交易結束的整個流程。所以，是的，企業不同，成本結構不同，但我們有基礎。我們現在開始擴大規模，以便為未來的成長做好準備。

Thank you. I appreciate the additional color.

謝謝。我很欣賞額外的顏色。

Thank you. Scott Berg, Needham and Company.

謝謝。史考特‧伯格，李約瑟公司。

Hi, everyone. Congrats on the quarter. This is Rob Morelli on for Scott. So customer additions were lighter than expected, but net new ARR added in the quarter versus that customer count was quite high. Is this a result of signing larger customers this quarter or are you seeing better cross-sell activity to existing customers to drive that net new ARR added? Thank you.

大家好。恭喜本季。我是羅布·莫雷利 (Rob Morelli) 替補斯科特 (Scott)。因此，新增客戶數量低於預期，但本季新增 ARR 淨值與客戶數量相比相當高。這是本季簽約較大客戶的結果，還是您看到現有客戶的交叉銷售活動有所改善，從而推動了淨新 ARR 的增加？謝謝。

Yeah. Hey, Rob. Thanks for the question, really good question. So I think we should step back and just talk about our growth vectors, and then I'll simply get to the fourth quarter. So we've been very focused on three main growth vectors. One is to continue to expand our net new adds.

是的。嘿，羅布。謝謝你的問題，非常好的問題。因此，我認為我們應該退後一步，只討論我們的成長向量，然後我將簡單介紹第四季。因此，我們一直非常關註三個主要的成長載體。一是繼續擴大我們的淨新增人數。

We're at nearly 108,000 paying customers. And we believe we're in the early innings of adoption. There's millions of marketers and business owners out there who will gain value from our platform. And we're going to continue on that path in executing that strategy and extending out of the number of net new adds. In 2023, we did add 12,000 net new paying customers, so we're really pleased with that progress.

我們有近 108,000 名付費客戶。我們相信我們正處於採用的早期階段。有數百萬行銷人員和企業主將從我們的平台中獲得價值。我們將繼續沿著這條道路執行該策略並擴大淨新增數量。2023 年，我們確實淨增加了 12,000 名新付費客戶，因此我們對這項進展感到非常滿意。

The second growth vector is around cross-selling and upselling. We do have a very extensive platform and portfolio of products, and we continue to invest in that. And to your point, yes, that is creating an inflection point in ARPU. We're able to increase our cross-sell and expansion and then drive ARR up.

第二個成長向量是交叉銷售和追加銷售。我們確實擁有非常廣泛的平台和產品組合，並且我們將繼續對此進行投資。就你的觀點而言，是的，這正在創造 ARPU 的轉折點。我們能夠增加交叉銷售和擴張，然後提高 ARR。

And then finally, we have very strong gross profitability. Our gross margin's at 83.6% in the fourth, and that's up 100 basis points. And it creates a structural advantage for us to be able to reinvest back into the business to enable strong partnerships and develop products that continue on that trajectory.

最後，我們擁有非常強勁的毛獲利能力。第四季我們的毛利率為 83.6%，上升了 100 個基點。它為我們創造了結構性優勢，使我們能夠對業務進行再投資，以建立牢固的合作夥伴關係並開發繼續沿著這一軌跡發展的產品。

For the fourth quarter specifically, note one thing. It is a seasonally low quarter for us. So because we have so many customers, nearly 108,000 paying, and we extend from solo-preneurs all the way up to Fortune 500, there is a cohort of smaller customers that tend to pause their subscriptions during the holidays and then they return in the first quarter. We're actually seeing very good traction in January and February and seeing that trend play out. So it's one quarter, and something we just attribute to a seasonality dynamic.

特別是對於第四季度，請注意一件事。對我們來說，這是季節性低迷的季度。So because we have so many customers, nearly 108,000 paying, and we extend from solo-preneurs all the way up to Fortune 500, there is a cohort of smaller customers that tend to pause their subscriptions during the holidays and then they return in the first四分之一.事實上，我們在一月和二月看到了非常好的牽引力，並看到這種趨勢正在發揮作用。所以這是一個季度，我們只是將其歸因於季節性動態。

Got it. Thanks for the additional color. And then Oleg, you mentioned acquisitions in 2024. How should we think about that opportunity here? Small tuck-ins or are you looking to execute on something more strategic? Thanks.

知道了。感謝您提供額外的顏色。然後奧列格，您提到了 2024 年的收購。我們該如何看待這個機會？是小規模的投入還是您希望執行更具策略性的事情？謝謝。

Over time, we put a lot of attention to strategic acquisitions. And I would say we will be focused more on sales related to digital PR and content marketing. Of course, we'll give more attention to all these opportunities, what we have in front of us.

隨著時間的推移，我們非常關注策略收購。我想說，我們將更加關注與數位公關和內容行銷相關的銷售。當然，我們會更加關注擺在我們面前的所有這些機會。

And financially, we're well positioned to engage in M&A. So we have nearly $250 million on the balance sheet. We're projecting 7% to 8% free cash flow margin in '24. And we're starting to see private valuations get much more in line. So our appetite for M&A is something that will -- we'll keep everybody updated, but for sure, something we'll look at in 2024.

從財務角度來看，我們有能力進行併購。因此，我們的資產負債表上有近 2.5 億美元。我們預期 2024 年自由現金流利潤率為 7% 至 8%。我們開始看到私人估值變得更加一致。因此，我們對併購的興趣是——我們會向大家通報最新情況，但可以肯定的是，我們會在 2024 年關注這一情況。

Got it. Appreciate the color. Congrats, guys.

知道了。欣賞顏色。恭喜，夥計們。

Thank you. Adam Hotchkiss, Goldman Sachs.

謝謝。亞當·霍奇基斯，高盛。

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. How would you characterize what the competitive environment looks for you -- looks like for you in the enterprise? For those businesses that aren't using Semrush today in the multi-user category, what are they typically doing in online visibility? And then how does your view on that inform the enterprise sales motion that you're going after?

偉大的。感謝您提出問題。您如何描述您所在企業的競爭環境？對於那些目前在多用戶類別中未使用 Semrush 的企業，他們通常在線上可見性方面做什麼？那麼您對此的看法如何影響您所追求的企業銷售行動？

If you talk about -- thank you. If we talk about the competitive environments, look, in our core business, we don't see any kind of significant activities from our competitors. At the same time, Enterprise, now, we are very optimistic about what product could you launch, which had a very good traction and we see very positive feedback from our customers.

如果你談論——謝謝。如果我們談論競爭環境，那麼在我們的核心業務中，我們沒有看到競爭對手進行任何重大活動。同時，Enterprise，現在我們對你們能推出什麼產品非常樂觀，它有很好的吸引力，我們看到客戶的回饋非常正面。

And it is a little bit hard to talk about our competitors here -- or we can talk about it just from point of view of our customers. And once again, we received very positive feedback, and we don't see any kind of significant activity from our customers, which is like a greenfield opportunity. And we built a very different enterprise solution if we compare to other players, what they'll (inaudible)

在這裡談論我們的競爭對手有點困難——或者我們可以只從客戶的角度來談論它。我們再一次收到了非常正面的回饋，我們沒有看到客戶進行任何重大活動，這就像一個綠地機會。如果我們與其他參與者相比，我們建立了一個非常不同的企業解決方案，他們會做什麼（聽不清楚）

Just to add a couple of points, we already have 5,000 clients who are large corporations, and they are perfect targets for us to sell our upmarket products. And those customers don't really use anything else. Usually, some of them do. But most of those deals, like Oleg said, they're greenfield deals where you're not really competing with anyone.

補充幾點，我們已經擁有 5,000 個大公司客戶，他們是我們銷售高端產品的完美目標。這些客戶實際上並沒有使用任何其他東西。通常，他們中的一些人會這樣做。但正如奧列格所說，大多數交易都是綠地交易，你並不真正與任何人競爭。

And in general, even when deals are competitive, we see very good win rates. So I think that market dynamics, that is very favorable for leading brands like Semrush, where our product is so much better that there is a lot of greenfield opportunity for us in existing user base. But also, even when we have go head to head with other, let's say, enterprise SEO players, our product portfolio is very, very strong.

總的來說，即使交易具有競爭力，我們也看到非常好的贏率。因此，我認為市場動態對於像 Semrush 這樣的領導品牌非常有利，我們的產品要好得多，在現有用戶群中為我們提供了許多新機會。而且，即使我們與其他企業 SEO 玩家正面交鋒，我們的產品組合也非常非常強大。

In terms of adoption rates for other products, there's definitely going to be a big factor in product portfolio that we bring upmarket. So the first candidates for enterprise-level products would be those categories where we already have a strong traction, which is, for example, competitive intelligence, or our local marketing products, or our digital PR products. Again, there's quite a lot of traction already across the board, and those will be good products for us to add to the portfolio of enterprise products.

就其他產品的採用率而言，我們推出高端市場的產品組合肯定是一個重要因素。因此，企業級產品的首要候選者將是那些我們已經擁有強大吸引力的類別，例如競爭情報、本地行銷產品或數位公關產品。同樣，全面的吸引力已經相當大，這些將是我們添加到企業產品組合中的好產品。

Okay. Great. That's really helpful. And then, what are your updated thoughts on free to paid conversion? Any changes in the way you're approaching free customers either through the product additions that you're making or in-platform marketing that's given you a little bit more visibility into what the opportunity there looks like?

好的。偉大的。這真的很有幫助。那麼，您對免費到付費轉換的最新想法是什麼？透過添加產品或平台內行銷，您接觸免費客戶的方式是否發生了任何變化，使您能夠更清楚地了解那裡的機會是什麼樣的？

Adam, I can take that. The way we think about free users -- and we're really pleased to see it grew 30%, so we're now over 1 million. We think about free users in three ways. First is we're training the next generation of marketers. So we're in over 60 universities as a core part of the curriculum and investing in that next generation to ensure that we can sustain durable growth when that next generation comes into the workforce and looks to Semrush to be able to facilitate and add value to the work they're doing every day.

亞當，我可以接受。我們對免費用戶的看法——我們很高興看到它增長了 30%，所以我們現在已經超過 100 萬。我們從三個方面考慮免費用戶。首先，我們正在培訓下一代行銷人員。因此，我們在 60 多所大學中作為課程的核心部分，並對下一代進行投資，以確保當下一代進入勞動力市場時，我們能夠維持持久增長，並希望 Semrush 能夠促進並增加價值他們每天所做的工作。

We also use it to test products. So we often put free products into the marketplace, and we get a lot of free user adoption. And then over time, as we get traction and we get feedback and we fine tune that technology, we monetize it. And we did that with the social media platform that we launched a while ago, and then monetized it in the third quarter.

我們也用它來測試產品。因此，我們經常將免費產品投入市場，並獲得大量免費用戶的採用。然後隨著時間的推移，當我們獲得牽引力並獲得回饋並微調該技術時，我們就會將其貨幣化。我們透過不久前推出的社群媒體平台做到了這一點，然後在第三季將其貨幣化。

So you'll often see products being pushed in, an expansion of our free user base, and then it -- them coming back out when we convert them to paid. And then finally, there are a cohort of users who are small customers who are very early in their journey and can leverage the free version to start training their marketing capabilities and ultimately converting into a paying customer in the future.

因此，您經常會看到產品被推出，我們的免費用戶群擴大，然後當我們將它們轉換為付費用戶時，它們又回來了。最後，有一群用戶是小客戶，他們處於旅程的早期，可以利用免費版本開始培訓他們的行銷能力，並最終在未來轉化為付費客戶。

So, we don't look at free users as a near-term metric to convert directly into a paying customer. It's more of a longer-term source of developing a foundation and building our business in the long run.

因此，我們不會將免費用戶視為直接轉換為付費客戶的近期指標。從長遠來看，它更像是發展基礎和建立我們業務的長期來源。

Okay. Really helpful color. Thanks a lot, Brian.

好的。真的很有幫助的顏色。非常感謝，布萊恩。

Thank you. Clarke Jeffries, Piper Sandler.

謝謝。克拉克·傑弗里斯，派珀·桑德勒。

Hi. This is Wayne Trinh on for Clarke. Thanks for the question. I want to go back to the pricing you announced back in Q3. I believe it was 8% to new customers. Have you tested this on existing? And how much of it is factored into guidance?

你好。這是克拉克的韋恩鄭 (Wayne Trinh)。謝謝你的提問。我想回到您在第三季宣布的定價。我相信新客戶的稅率是 8%。你在現有的基礎上測試過這個嗎？其中有多少被納入指導？

I can start with the guidance and then Eugene can add some color on pricing in general. But yes, we did do about an 8% price increase in the third quarter. So we got about a half a year of the revenue. We did mention at that time that it was about $3 million to $4 million of incremental ARR. So half of that in '23 and the other half coming through in '24. We're really pleased with the results we saw there.

我可以從指導開始，然後尤金可以在整體定價上添加一些色彩。但是，是的，我們在第三季確實將價格上漲了 8% 左右。這樣我們就得到了大約半年的收入。我們當時確實提到，增量 ARR 約為 300 萬至 400 萬美元。所以一半是在 23 年完成的，另一半是在 24 年完成的。我們對在那裡看到的結果感到非常滿意。

Eugene, you should talk through more on our pricing. We have a very strong pricing asset and something that we're looking at all the time. But for now, in our guidance, we've, of course, baked in the impact from the pricing changes that we made in 2023.

尤金，你應該詳細討論一下我們的定價。我們擁有非常強大的定價資產，也是我們一直在關注的東西。但目前，在我們的指導中，我們當然已經考慮了 2023 年定價變動的影響。

Yeah. So there was part of the question about increasing prices for existing customers. So we did that as well, but for a very, very small cohort of existing customers. And when you do those kind of pricing changes, you do, like, different scenarios, and reality was much better than we expected. So I think it's a really good proof that our product provides so much value that people are willing to buy it at higher prices. And of course, we use this information as we think about the future.

是的。因此，存在一個關於為現有客戶提高價格的部分問題。所以我們也這麼做了，但針對的是非常非常小的現有客戶群。當你進行此類定價更改時，你會遇到不同的情況，而現實情況比我們預期的要好得多。所以我認為這很好地證明了我們的產品提供瞭如此多的價值，以至於人們願意以更高的價格購買它。當然，我們在思考未來時會使用這些資訊。

I think the real question is when exactly we do more changes. But even right now, we are already optimizing monetization in several of our add-on products. For example, social media product prices have changed recently, and we will keep doing those changes when it makes sense. We're also doing big pricing research for core plants to finalize our thoughts about price elasticity and willingness to pay.

我認為真正的問題是我們什麼時候做更多的改變。但即使是現在，我們也已經在一些附加產品中優化貨幣化。例如，社群媒體產品價格最近發生了變化，我們將在有意義的時候繼續進行這些變化。我們也正在對核心工廠進行大規模的定價研究，以最終確定我們對價格彈性和支付意願的想法。

And again, when time is right, we'll do more. But there's, unfortunately, nothing to report right now. But we're very, very optimistic about our ability to improve monetization.

再說一次，當時機成熟時，我們會做得更多。但不幸的是，目前沒有什麼好報告的。但我們對提高獲利能力非常非常樂觀。

Great. Thank you. And I guess I saw net retention dip down a bit more this quarter. Is the pricing the main factor in that? And I guess two months into Q1, what are you seeing so far? And what are you looking for in terms of a sign of a trough in recovery? Thank you.

偉大的。謝謝。我想本季我看到淨保留率下降了一些。價格是其中的主要因素嗎？我想第一季已經過兩個月了，到目前為止您看到了什麼？您在尋找復甦低谷的跡象嗎？謝謝。

That's a great question. Our NRR, net retention rate, is very strong, and we're really pleased to see the traction we're making on retaining customers, renewing them, and, of course, expanding them as they adopt more and more of our expanding portfolio. The net retention rate metric is actually a bit of a lagging indicator. So we have seen ARR and revenue reaccelerate.

這是一個很好的問題。我們的 NRR（淨保留率）非常高，我們非常高興看到我們在留住客戶、更新客戶以及隨著他們越來越多地採用我們不斷擴展的產品組合而擴大客戶方面所取得的進展。淨保留率指標其實是一個有點滯後的指標。因此，我們看到 ARR 和收入重新加速。

We did deliver 23% growth on ARR and then 20% and 21% growth, respectively, in Q3 and Q4 for revenue growth. NRR lags behind about two to three quarters just because it's measuring over a 24-month period. So we'll see that trough in the next quarter or so. And then, as we continue to execute on our strategy to cross-sell and up-sell, which is a very important and successful growth vector for us, and then move upmarket and start to see the advantage of our 10 to 15x average ARPU on enterprise, we'll start to see that flow through that metric.

我們確實在第三季和第四季實現了 ARR 成長 23%，營收成長分別為 20% 和 21%。NRR 落後大約兩到三個季度，只是因為它是在 24 個月的時間內進行測量的。因此，我們將在下個季度左右看到這個低谷。然後，隨著我們繼續執行交叉銷售和追加銷售策略（這對我們來說是一個非常重要且成功的成長向量），然後轉向高端市場，並開始看到我們 10 至 15 倍平均 ARPU 的優勢企業，我們將開始看到該指標的流動情況。

Okay. Great. Appreciate it.

好的。偉大的。欣賞它。

Thank you. Elizabeth Porter, Morgan Stanley. .

謝謝。伊莉莎白‧波特，摩根士丹利。。

Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to hit on a macro quickly. Any sort of changes -- did you see any changes in Q4 as it relates to Q3? And any initial observations as we head into 2024? And also if there's any differences you're seeing between smaller or larger customers. I know you're kind of moving upmarket with that opportunity. But just if there was any sort of differences to call out between those two customer cohorts, that'd be very helpful. Thank you.

偉大的。非常感謝。我想快速找到一個巨集。任何類型的變化 - 您是否看到第四季度與第三季度相關的任何變化？當我們進入 2024 年時，有什麼初步觀察嗎？另外，您是否發現小客戶或大客戶之間有任何差異。我知道你正在利用這個機會向高端市場進軍。但如果這兩個客戶群之間存在任何差異，那將會非常有幫助。謝謝。

Thank you for the question. We already mentioned seasonality things what we see every year, and probably this year, it was a little bit stronger. At the same time, first quarter looks very strong.

感謝你的提問。我們已經提到了我們每年都會看到的季節性因素，今年可能會更強一些。與此同時，第一季看起來非常強勁。

And if you think about environments, it's very stable. It's good demand for all our products, for our core products and for new things what we launched last year, and even for things like local listings and AI features and content marketing and so on. It's good demand. I would say environment is very stable.

如果你考慮一下環境，你會發現它非常穩定。對我們所有的產品、對我們的核心產品、對我們去年推出的新產品，甚至對本地列表、人工智慧功能和內容行銷等，都有很好的需求。這是一個很好的需求。我想說環境非常穩定。

Yeah, welcome back, Elizabeth. Just on the question on the segmentation, Eugene mentioned earlier that we do have a cohort of more sophisticated enterprise accounts that are growing faster. They do adopt our expanding portfolio at a faster clip. Their retention rate and expansion rates are higher.

是的，歡迎回來，伊莉莎白。就細分問題而言，尤金之前提到，我們確實擁有一群更複雜的企業客戶，而且成長速度更快。他們確實更快地採用了我們不斷擴大的產品組合。他們的保留率和擴張率更高。

We are going to share a bit more about that and the stability it provides to the business and the ability to up-sell with our enterprise platform. We'll talk more about that in the next couple of quarters.

我們將更多地分享這一點以及它為業務提供的穩定性以及透過我們的企業平台進行追加銷售的能力。我們將在接下來的幾季詳細討論這一點。

Great. Thank you. And then, just as a follow-up. Your tools are able to drive a lot of efficiency for customers and their sales and marketing spend. You mentioned also using some of your tools internally. So just hoping to double-click to hear about how you are integrating kind of your own tools, particularly some of the AI initiatives, into your business, and what types of improvement you're seeing kind of within sales and marketing, and where that could go. Thank you.

偉大的。謝謝。然後，作為後續行動。您的工具能夠大幅提高客戶及其銷售和行銷支出的效率。您提到還在內部使用一些工具。因此，只是希望雙擊了解您如何將自己的工具（特別是一些人工智慧計劃）整合到您的業務中，以及您在銷售和行銷方面看到了哪些類型的改進，以及這些改進在哪裡可以去。謝謝。

Thank you. So using a lot of our own products, it's really, for us, almost a benchmark. Our products need to be so good that our own teams would use it. And our teams are very picky, and they can buy anything. And most of the time, they choose Semrush for almost everything they do.

謝謝。因此，使用許多我們自己的產品，對我們來說，這幾乎是一個基準。我們的產品需要足夠好，以便我們自己的團隊能夠使用它。而且我們的團隊非常挑剔，他們什麼都可以買。大多數時候，他們所做的幾乎所有事情都會選擇 Semrush。

But to sort of like to double-click on this particular question, once AI improved in terms of content creation, we very, very quickly decided to scale up our content production operation. And we're not just producing more content now, but we are also making content of a higher quality, both in terms of how it ranks but -- and in terms of how people read it and engage with it. So really, just different volumes of content production, different quality.

但是，就像雙擊這個特定問題一樣，一旦人工智慧在內容創建方面得到改進，我們很快就決定擴大我們的內容製作業務。我們現在不僅製作更多的內容，而且還製作更高品質的內容，無論是在排名方面還是在人們如何閱讀和參與方面。所以實際上，只是內容製作量不同，品質不同。

And the tools that we use, of course, we use, for example, our organic and keyword research to understand topics that are relevant for our audience but maybe not covered yet through our content. And then, of course, we use our content writing tools, such as Writing Assistant, Content Shake, to really put our content production on steroids and just shape a lot of great content very efficiently.

當然，我們使用的工具，例如，我們使用我們的自然和關鍵字研究來了解與我們的受眾相關但可能尚未透過我們的內容涵蓋的主題。然後，當然，我們使用我們的內容寫作工具，例如Writing Assistant、Content Shake，來真正提高我們的內容製作速度，並非常有效地塑造許多精彩的內容。

We also, of course, use our products, especially competitive intelligence, to find audience overlaps, to improve our affiliate marketing partnerships. We use the same tools to identify good digital asset acquisition. So sometimes, we buy content instead of just building it ourselves.

當然，我們也使用我們的產品，尤其是競爭情報，來發現受眾重疊，以改善我們的聯盟行銷合作關係。我們使用相同的工具來識別良好的數位資產收購。所以有時，我們會購買內容而不是自己建立內容。

So, tons and tons of applications. Of course, our social media teams use our social media posts. Of course, our influencer marketing team uses our influencer marketing tools. Our PR is using -- the PR team is using our PR tools. But that -- like I said, that's pretty much given, right? Because, like I said, one of the success criteria for us in product in terms of how we measure quality of our products is that our own teams use it.

因此，有大量的應用程式。當然，我們的社群媒體團隊使用我們的社群媒體貼文。當然，我們的影響者行銷團隊使用我們的影響者行銷工具。我們的公關正在使用中——公關團隊正在使用我們的公關工具。但這——就像我說的，這幾乎是給定的，對吧？因為，就像我說的，就我們如何衡量產品品質而言，我們產品的成功標準之一是我們自己的團隊使用它。

Great. Thank you.

偉大的。謝謝。

Thank you. Mark Murphy, JPMorgan.

謝謝。馬克墨菲，摩根大通。

Hey, thanks for taking the question. This is [Arti] on for Mark Murphy. You guys talked about this kind of shift of resources from the SMB up to -- upmarket, and I think that makes a lot of sense. But do you guys expect any headwinds as you guys are kind of shifting those resources away from the SMB and as you kind of get those fires going in the upmarket? Thanks.

嘿，謝謝你提出問題。這是馬克墨菲 (Mark Murphy) 的 [Arti]。你們談到了這種資源從中小企業向高端市場的轉移，我認為這很有意義。但是，當你們將這些資源從中小型企業轉移到高端市場時，你們是否預期會遇到阻力？謝謝。

Thank you for the question. So no, we actually see both sides of the market being great. It's more of just number of customers that we already have that are large enterprises reached a certain point where we just couldn't ignore that. When you have thousands of customers who come to you on a regular basis and they say, I'm willing to pay more money, but you have to build this and this and this for me.

感謝你的提問。所以不，我們實際上看到市場的雙方都很棒。更多的是我們已經擁有的客戶數量，這些大型企業達到了我們不能忽視的某個程度。當你有成千上萬的客戶定期來找你時，他們說，我願意付更多的錢，但你必須為我建造這個、這個、這個。

As volume of those conversations increases, we started to realize how big is the opportunity there doesn't mean we're unhappy with what we see on SMB front. On SMB front, we're adding a lot of great products, especially with our recent focus on AI capabilities. We're seeing a lot of traction in all those products.

隨著這些對話量的增加，我們開始意識到那裡的機會有多大，但這並不意味著我們對在中小企業方面看到的情況不滿意。在中小企業方面，我們添加了許多出色的產品，特別是我們最近對人工智慧功能的關注。我們看到所有這些產品都具有很大的吸引力。

We've recently launched monetization of our social media tools. That is doing great. We have very good traction with our local marketing products with a lot of SMBs using it on a regular basis, pretty much daily. So, yeah, I don't think there is any kind of headwind. We're very excited about both sides of the market. At the end of the day, small companies need more traffic and big companies need more traffic, and we're there to help.

我們最近推出了社群媒體工具的貨幣化。那真是太好了。我們的本地行銷產品具有非常好的吸引力，許多中小型企業定期（幾乎每天）使用它。所以，是的，我認為不存在任何阻力。我們對市場的雙方都感到非常興奮。歸根究底，小公司需要更多流量，大公司需要更多流量，我們隨時為您提供協助。

And one thing I'd add, just building on Elizabeth's question is, Elizabeth was asking about our use of AI. That's a big contributor to the efficiencies we're seeing in the business. So we're now automating over 40% of the customer interactions. And the use and continued expansion of that is giving us a lot more efficiency on the SMB side and giving us the capability to be able to reinvest that into Enterprise, which is why we're saying our (inaudible) sales won't expand overall despite the investment.

我要補充的一件事是，伊莉莎白的問題是，伊莉莎白詢問我們對人工智慧的使用。這是我們在業務中看到的效率的重要貢獻者。因此，我們現在將 40% 以上的客戶互動自動化。它的使用和持續擴展使我們在中小企業方面獲得了更高的效率，並使我們能夠將其再投資到企業中，這就是為什麼我們說我們的（聽不清楚）銷售額不會整體擴大儘管有投資。

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you.

偉大的。這非常有幫助。謝謝。

Thank you. At this time, we currently have no further questions, so I'll hand back to Oleg for any further remarks.

謝謝。目前，我們沒有進一步的問題，因此我將向奧列格詢問進一步的評論。

Thank you for your support. We are very pleased with our results and our execution in 2023, and we are very optimistic about our future. Once again, I thank you all for your support and keep -- and I look forward to keep you updated on our progress.

感謝您的支持。我們對 2023 年的成果和執行情況感到非常滿意，並且對未來非常樂觀。我再次感謝大家的支持與支持，並期待向您通報我們的最新進展。

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.

感謝您參加今天的電話會議。現在您可以斷開線路。