SPS Commerce Inc (SPSC) 2013 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SPS Commerce Q1 2013 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Stacie Bosinoff, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator and good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on SPS Commerce's first-quarter 2013 conference call. Joining me on the call today is CEO and President, Archie Black and CFO, Kim Nelson.

Before turning the call over to the Company, I will read our Safe Harbor statement. We will make certain statements today, including with respect to our expected financial results, go-to-market strategy and efforts designed to increase our traction and penetration with retailers and other customers. These statements are forward-looking and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this call and we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please refer to our SEC filings, as well as our financial results press release for a more detailed description of the risk factors that may affect our results. These documents are available at our website, SPSCommerce.com and the SEC's website, SEC.gov. In addition, we are providing a historical data sheet for easy reference on our investor relations section of our website, SPSCommerce.com.

During our call today, we will discuss adjusted EBITDA financial measures and non-GAAP earnings per share. In our press release and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted on our website, you will find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP and adjusted EBITDA measures, including reconciliations of these measures with comparable GAAP measures and with that, I will turn the call over to Archie.

Thanks, Stacie and welcome, everyone. We had a great start to the year with both revenue and adjusted EBITDA ahead of guidance, reflecting strong execution and continued momentum in our growth strategy. Total revenue grew 44% to $23.8 million and adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 million. Recurring revenue grew 47%.

This quarter, we have continued to expand our customer base and upsell our existing customers while generating additional leads through our viral network. Our analytics product continue to be a competitive offering and we are seeing great traction with our point-of-sale solutions.

As the retail ecosystem becomes more complex, suppliers are now positioning themselves as a strategic asset to the retailers they serve and in some instances can even be responsible for creating increased sales through more collaborative inventory and demand planning. We see this happening in the largest retailer supplier relationships and we believe the trend will continue as more retailers and suppliers work together in more collaborative ways.

For example, a greater number of suppliers are realizing the power of being able to analyze point-of-sale data to more efficiently match inventory with demand to more rapidly grow their business. This quarter, Burt's Bees Babies, a specialty brand supplier and an existing SPS Commerce customer, signed up for point-of-sale analytics. Burt's is a fast-growing supplier and wants to gain insight into consumer demand and store-level inventory quantities. Burt's saw the strategic value in our robust analytics capabilities and our expertise with their retail customers with the end goal of reducing overall inventory levels and increasing sales.

The largest retailers and suppliers are also setting trends in delivery methods, collaboration and e-commerce. They are embracing the power of the consumer. With consumers' ever rising expectations for endless variety, the best price and instant availability, retailers and suppliers must embrace advanced capabilities like drop-shipping and even same-day delivery services. Additionally, e-commerce has brought to the mainstream the value of having a wide variety of products and availability options.

Brick-and-mortar stores are realizing they need to embrace these e-commerce-driven consumer expectations and are working in conjunction with suppliers for store and store promotion, availability and delivery concepts. For example, one of our multibillion-dollar suppliers uses individual retail stores as another sales channel. They have historically been using our point-of-sale data to view what products are selling in specific stores. Now they are taking this one step further and using the data strategically to propose purchase orders to individual stores to increase sales based on demand and consumer preferences specific to that store.

The industry is evolving faster than ever before and these megatrends are creating a tailwind for our business. Our enterprise cloud service makes it easy for trading partners to take advantage of these trends quickly and easily. No one else in the market has the scale, combined with the robust product footprint that enables suppliers and retailers to embrace these trends and create productive business value from them.

We are also seeing traction from retailers focused on collaborating around point-of-sale information. For example, this quarter, we rolled out a SharedView enablement campaign with Beall's, a Florida-based department store retailer. SharedView allows both Beall's and its suppliers to view the same sales inventory screens. By doing this, retailers and suppliers can work together to understand how to most productively match supply with demand. Beall's recognized the value of using SPS's service to provide meaningful insights to all suppliers and collaborate with them around a single source of information to better match demand with inventory across our entire supplier base.

Looking to the rest of the year, we are very excited by our business and the market opportunity. We will continue to be focused on recurring revenue by growing our customer count and upselling those customers. As we sit at the forefront of these megatrends, we will continue to lead the industry and enable our customers to do the same. With that, I will turn it over to Kim to discuss our financial results.

Thanks, Archie. As Archie mentioned, we had a great first quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $23.8 million, a 44% increase over Q1 of last year and represented our 49th consecutive quarter of revenue growth. The increase in revenues is a result of an increase in recurring revenue customers and an increase in what we refer to as wallet share, which is the annualized average recurring revenue per recurring revenue customer. Recurring revenue grew 47% year-over-year. The total number of recurring revenue customers increased 12% year-over-year to approximately 18,400. Wallet share increased 31% to $4634. Excluding the Edifice acquisition, wallet share increased 13% year-over-year.

As you look at these two metrics, it is important to remember that they work in concert with each other and it is really the mix of the two that we focus on. Total operating expenses for the quarter were $16.5 million and represented 70% of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 million compared to $1.9 million in Q1 of last year. We ended the quarter with total cash of approximately $72.5 million.

Now turning to guidance, for the second quarter of 2013, we expect revenue to be in the range of $24.2 million to $24.7 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $2.7 million to $2.9 million. We expect fully diluted earnings per share to be approximately breakeven with fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 15.7 million shares. We expect non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.11 to $0.12 with stock-based compensation expense of approximately $1.1 million and amortization expense of approximately $720,000.

For the full year, I am pleased to announce that we are increasing our revenue guidance. We expect revenue to be in the range of $99 million to $100.5 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $12.3 million to $12.8 million, keeping with our approach of investing any upside back into the business. We expect fully diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.03 to $0.05. We expect fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 15.8 million shares.

We expect non-GAAP diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.49 to $0.51 with stock-based compensation expense of approximately $4.4 million. We expect amortization expense for the year to be approximately $2.9 million. For the remainder of the year, you should model a 39% effective tax rate calculated on GAAP pretax net earnings. We expect to pay nominal cash taxes in 2013 due to our NOLs.

In summary, Q1 was a great start to the year with recurring revenue increasing 47%. Looking to the rest of the year, we will continue to execute against our growth strategy to take advantage of the large market opportunity we see in front of us. And with that, I would like to open the call up to questions.

(Operator Instructions). Laura Lederman, William Blair.

Thank you for taking my questions. One, can you give us a sense for the organic growth rate taking out acquisition for total revenue and also for recurring revenue? And then I have one follow-up as well.

Sure. For the quarter, the organic numbers from a GAAP revenue was 24% and from a recurring revenue was 24% as well.

Great. Can you talk a little bit about competition with Edifice and who you are seeing there and in general, is that coming in above expectations, just a sense of how that business is doing and who it is competing with.

Yes, so far, the business is performing extremely well and we are seeing continued momentum in analytics overall. We look at it as one portfolio and it was an enhancement to our portfolio. And we see a host of smaller competitors. We see a host of different competitors. But actually the biggest competitor, Laura, that we see is that this is very new to the retail environment. Again, the vast majority of retailers do not yet share data and so this is -- we are, for the most part, in a lot of greenfield opportunity today.

Thank you so much. I will pass it on and congratulations for a nice quarter.

Tom Roderick, Stifel Financial.

Hey, guys, good afternoon. So I want to ask a high-level question here, Archie. Just in terms of your thoughts on the overall market, particularly as it relates to the overall market in the US, how do you guys think about the addressable market today and where we are for penetration in that market? Because it certainly seems like you are focused on the US and that has just been pretty smooth sailing for quite a long time. Are there any signs that you can pick up that you might be getting to a more penetrated state where you might look to expand internationally? Just any thoughts broadly on the overall addressable market. Thanks.

Tom, two different thoughts. One, we do think there is a long-term huge opportunity internationally, but we continue to see more market opportunity in North America and we think we are in the early of a lot of megatrends here. So we are investing internationally; it is just at a smaller scale and again, on the analytics side, I think we are in the very, very early days. The biggest thing is more retailers are starting -- we are starting to see a trend where they are embracing the collaboration out of necessity and ability to survive in the future. So we think we have a lot of room domestically and we will continue to invest internationally.

Okay. Second question, just in terms of the product roadmap for the analytics segment. So you acquired Edifice last year and you have had TPI for a while. Can you talk about how those two products are merging or complementing each other and how you are seeing them sort of be taken by the installed base here?

Yes, so under TPI is a wide range of business analytics and then there is the point-of-sale sellthrough. We really look at the Edifice solution along with the prior SPS point-of-sale solution as really a portfolio solution so that we can now sell to the customer the appropriate solution. Again, we had a solution, they had a solution and as we are selling to Burt's Bees Babies, we can -- as opposed to selling the product we have, we can find what is appropriate for that customer. So it is a much more customer-centric sale because we now have a complete portfolio.

The analytics side is in its early days. I mean the point-of-sale data is lightly shared still today and the quality and the magnitude of the data is still very lightweight. So this is going to be a long-term runway, but we need to also be conscious of where retail is going and again, we think there is a real big opportunity continuing into the future.

Okay, last one, Kim, for you. Just the structure of the salesforce, can you give us a sense as to how many sales heads you have added and then just a reminder what that goal is to add for the year? And also what did the channel contribute this quarter?

As it relates to salesforce, we exited the quarter at 158, which was a net up of three within the quarter. Our philosophy as it relates to sales heads, there is a lot of opportunity in front of us. We want to continue to add salespeople. We will add them to the level that we can and still hit our profit expectations. Profit definition is adjusted EBITDA and for this year, that is the guidance range of $12.3 million to $12.8 million.

As it relates to channel sales, last year, channel sales represented about 14% of new business. Although we don't update that metric on a quarterly basis, we are seeing nice continued traction in there and more and more business coming from channel sales.

Very good. Thank you. Nice job, guys.

Scott Berg, Northland Capital.

Hi, Archie and Kim. Congratulations on a nice quarter. Hey, Archie, could you characterize -- I guess attach rates is probably the right word for the analytics products. Are you seeing new customers buy, whether it is TPI or Edifice or any of the analytics products, together at the same time right away with the EDI integration solution or is it typically more just an upsell today?

It tends to be a one sale or the other out of the gate and then an upsell later, primarily because one of the advantages of software as a service is there is not a bundling approach. We are after long-term recurring revenue. So people will usually have one project on their sites. Now that isn't to say that we don't see and sell as a bundled approach.

As far as attach rates upselling, again, probably the primary difference with a sales process today is that we now have to add Edifice point-of-sale solution, which was really geared more towards the larger suppliers, it's more robust and more advanced and the prior SPS point-of-sale solution, which is really geared more towards the smaller suppliers, we now have a more comprehensive selling process that we can sell whatever is appropriate to that supplier. So when we go into a Burt's Bees Babies, we are selling them what they need as opposed to saying this is the product we have. We really have a portfolio that allows us to service end to end.

Great. And my last question for either you, Archie, or Kim, ARPU was up nicely in the quarter organically, up 13% year-over-year. That is a little acceleration over the last couple of quarters, which has been kind of in that 9% to 11% range. What was different from the new sales pattern in the quarter to drive that higher?

So as it relates to ARPU, there is many different aspects that will drive that number up, right? It is going to be a combination of mix of business. So for example, as your prior question was specific on analytics, if a customer is with us and then decides to purchase one of the analytics products, that will impact ARPU. It would not impact the customer count if they were already a customer. Channel sales would be another example. They tend to bring us to larger customers. That has an impact relative to ARPU.

What I would tell you is, although there are two metrics we provide, which is customer and ARPU, really the combination of both of them is what translates into that recurring revenue. So I would just remind folks that, yes, there is two components, but, at the end of the day, that the combination of the two is what drives that recurring revenue.

Thanks. I will jump back into queue.

Michael Huang, Needham & Company

Thanks very much. Just a couple of questions for you guys. First of all, so when you guys think about upsell activity, is there any way to qualify what is coming from these suppliers that are adding additional connections versus adding more product and is there any distinguishable trend kind of around what you are seeing there?

So we provide the ARPU number, which really would -- it would have a combination of all of that in that number, Michael. The other data points we provide -- so on an annual basis, we talk about the analytics product, which would be for the most part a product -- a customer upsell and that was 12% of new business within the quarter. We don't dissect that to say of the total growth how much is coming from one piece or the other. I would tell you that they are all important and meaningful in that of just customers adding connections, upselling customers and attracting larger customers.

Got you. And so when you guys look at the cross-section of your pipeline, are you seeing any interesting trends there either by the size of customer or the size of opportunity? So I guess I am trying to understand whether or not, just on average, are you seeing the same supplier add more connections upfront or what are you seeing out there that might be a little bit different than what you have seen in the past?

I think the trend over the last two to three years is we are attracting larger and larger suppliers. We are clearly moving upstream and we are seeing and doing business with larger suppliers, which equates to larger deals. So that is a trend and I anticipate that that is a trend that will continue.

Okay. And last question for you and I apologize if this is slightly ignorant here, so I think you had mentioned that you had a case where a supplier and retailer were sharing a real-time view of inventory data through a product maybe called SharedView. Is that part of the analytics suite or is that another product and how is that priced?

That is an analytics product and essentially here is the way to think about it is a retailer -- if a retailer shares point-of-sales data with a supplier, a supplier will take that data and put it in a format that they want using hopefully our analytics tool, but it will combine with other retailers' data and it will be around their product SKU. SharedView is designed so that the screen that the retailer and supplier are looking at are specific for that retailer. So as a merchant and as a supplier, we can look on our screen and analyze and walk through the inventory and sales and what is happening. And so it is the same data, but the screen is fixed basically for that retailer.

And again, that is paid for by the supplier, right?

That is paid for by the supplier.

Okay, great. Thanks.

Richard Davis, Canaccord.

Thanks. So Archie, historically, it has always been kind of antagonistic, my understanding, kind of between suppliers and retailers. Like the retailers are like, ahhh, we want to keep that data. What is changing or -- I know you talked about whether there is need for better responsiveness, but is it just that or is it because -- is it because I mean I thought I remember back in the day the previous forecasting if I was a supplier was oftentimes just driven by ship to distribution center, not to the point of sale. Is it just that it became smart all of a sudden or what is changing that?

Well, I don't think it is overnight, but there is a general trend where suppliers and retailers -- the overused term collaboration. If they are really going to collaborate, they need to have data to be able to collaborate on. And almost every retailer has fewer category managers today than they had four or five years ago. So if you want to push some of that responsibility to the supplier and have a supplier truly collaborate with you, you have to give them the information.

So there is a growing trend that, in the case I gave you with the multibillion-dollar supplier, obviously it was self-serving, but they were clearly helping the retailers saying, store by store, here is what product we think you should be carrying and here is where you are light and here is where you are heavy because good suppliers really realize that retailers are a channel. They are not actually an end customer.

So it is a slow trend. The trend began with the large suppliers and the largest retailers realizing that is where the value is and that continues to drive down. It is still in the early stages though. The majority don't do that yet.

Now do you have the functionality yet to do like on-shelf management and those kinds of things? In other words, can you help me all the way down to the store level or is that perhaps in the future someday?

It is dependent on the capabilities that the retailer has. If a retailer has that data and is willing to share it and depending on the timeframe how often they are willing to share it, the reality is there is a lot of things as you look out in the future. I think we will become more sophisticated. We are in the early stages where just having retailers share simple weekly data is not yet the norm. So I think that is step one. We are in a position where we believe we will be in a position to support those changes as they become more sophisticated, but we are in the very early stages of even sharing basic data.

A little bit of walk before you run?

Yes, we are ready to run, but the industry needs to walk.

Exactly. Okay, cool. Thanks.

Patrick Walravens, JMP Securities.

Great, thank you. Hi, guys. Hey, Kim, can you repeat for me just what the organic growth rate was?

Sure. GAAP and recurring revenue were both at 24%.

Okay, great, thank you. And then, Archie, how often are you replacing some existing solution and when you do, what gets replaced?

Well, almost all channel sales are probably a replacement of software because those tend to be the bigger companies that are doing (technical difficulty). In general, it will be a replacement of software, do it yourself. They have software, they have hardware, they have built it themselves.

On the low end, we are a lot of times replacing the old fax machine where they are literally faxing out purchase orders and receiving them that way. And then oftentimes, we are also competitive services where people are outgrowing their smaller competitor to SPS Commerce because they want business analytics. They do have e-commerce needs, they do trade with many retailers that aren't in others' network. So those are switches as well. So a little bit (multiple speakers).

And then last question for you is just where are you on M&A? It sounds like Edifice has pretty much integrated, so what sorts of things are you looking for?

So again, we believe we have a huge organic growth opportunity and we are focused first and foremost on that organic growth. We are out looking. We will look for capabilities. We don't believe we have any big gaping holes, but we will look for continued capabilities on the product side or customer acquisitions. But the threshold is, one, we have to pay a reasonable fee for the business that we are going to buy and two, it can't do anything that will get in the way of us executing on our organic growth opportunity because that is really where the biggest opportunity is is the organic growth. So we are out looking and if we find opportunities, we will take advantage of them.

Thank you.

Jeff Houston, Barrington Research.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. The first one has to do with price increases. Is that something you would consider or does that just kind of come naturally as your supplier customers have more volume and retailer connections?

We have historically not been real aggressive on price increases. We have let the customers grow by adding additional value to the customers. I think over time it is something we will look at. But, right now, we are in the very early phases of a very large market opportunity and we think that we want to be the disruptive force in that market. So right now, it is not on the top of our minds pricing increases.

So it sounds like it is more of just as your supplier customers are successful, they have more volume and retailer connections. You have price increases that way and not through directly increasing the amount paid for each function?

That is correct. When a customer signs a contract, they know that if they do more business with us, they will pay more, we are adding more value. So that is built-in. We don't have to have a conversation with a customer per se or a pricing conversation; it just happens.

Okay. Then switching gears a bit, regarding implementation times, how does that vary for larger suppliers and what are some of the hurdles that you have to face that doesn't really exist for smaller suppliers?

Well, the scale of the -- obviously, the project is larger. Obviously to integrate to 100 retailers compared to one that is not integrated such as the larger project, but what we call time to value where there are some transactions flowing can be very, very quick in these large projects. A lot of it is -- comes down to what the capabilities are at the customer side and what systems they have, do the systems have easy capabilities of exporting and importing data. So there is a lot of different variables. The time to value can be very quick on large deals.

All right. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). Jeff Van Rhee, Craig-Hallum.

Great, thank you. Nice quarter, guys. A couple of questions for you. Just Archie, first, what percent of customers are using forms versus a direct connect to an ERP or other right now?

Well, the vast majority are not integrated from a numbers standpoint because the dollar level is very small. From an economic standpoint, it is probably closer to an equal mix. The integrated product is growing faster than the non-integrated product, which is obviously another way of saying we are moving upstream, we are getting larger and larger customers.

So again, the way we sell the product is somewhat similar to what we do on the point of sales, what is appropriate for the customer. If you're doing business with 80 retailers and you have 30,000 transactions, you need to be integrated. On the other hand, if you are doing business with one retailer and doing eight transactions a month, you shouldn't be integrated, it is not worth the effort. So integrated is growing faster than nonintegrated.

And economics being 50/50, you are referring to the revenue picture of integrated versus non at this point right now?

Yes.

Okay. And then so has that changed materially in the last 12 months?

Well, it continues -- the integrated continues to be a more meaningful, a larger percentage because that is a product that is growing faster than the nonintegrated product.

So if it is 50/50 now, what would it have been a year ago?

Well, I am not saying it is 50/50. They are relatively in the same ballpark, but the pace of the integrated is significantly faster than the nonintegrated.

Okay. In terms of channel deals, how is the competitive landscape there different than a traditional, more direct deal?

On the channel sales, the channel sales group is structured by an ERP system and each ERP system has a different set of competitors. It does tend to be a set of competitors that is more software-oriented, but each ERP will have a different set of competitors. So it is completely different competitors a lot of times.

And so how would the win rates in channel deals that seemingly would be more competitive compare with the direct deals? What is the difference?

The channel sales, again, if you take it, it depends what segment you are looking at. If you're looking at a segment where you have a small customer that has never done anything before and is using faxes, the win rates are extremely high when they are coming through a retailer program. If you are looking at an integrated customer that is coming through a retailer enablement campaign to a channel sales program, the channel sales would actually be higher because you are teed up by the channel sales partner that has seen SPS Commerce in action and is our champion in those deals.

Last one from me, the channel partners and the channel push, how has the number of channel partners changed year-over-year?

So Jeff, last year, we had over 100 different channel partners give us a lead and I don't have what that was a year prior in front of me, but it is up significantly. Maybe the better way -- I have the revenue numbers in front of me if that would be helpful. So from the revenue, meaning new business, last year was about 14%. The year before was about 10%.

Okay, great. Thank you.

With no further questions, at this time, I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much for listening today and supporting SPS Commerce. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. You may all disconnect and have a wonderful day.