Q4 2020 Earnings Call
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I would now like the hand, the conference over to your Speaker today, Peter Lowry Docomo, Vice President Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome on the call today, we have Josh James our founder and CEO, Bruce, though our CFO and Julie kill or Chief Communications Officer, Julie will lead off with the are Safe Harbor statement and then on the call Julie Thanks, Pete Our press release was issued before market open and is posted on the Investor Relations section of our.
Website, where this call is also being webcast.
Statements made on this call include forward looking statements related to our business under federal Securities law, including statements about financial projections, the plans and expectations for our go to market strategy.
Expectations for sales and new business initiatives and our financial condition. These statements are subject to a variety of risks uncertainties and assumptions.
For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties. Please refer to documents we filed with the FCC in particular today's press release and our most recently filed annual <unk> annual report on form 10-K, and I'm. Most recently filed quarterly report on form 10-Q.
In addition, our business faces risks associated with the Cobot 19 outbreak.
These documents contain and identify important risk factors and other information that may cause our actual results could differ materially from those contained in our forward looking statements.
In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of del Mar performance.
Oh, the then revenue unless otherwise stated we will be discussing our results of operations on a non-GAAP basis.
These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or nice selection from GAAP result.
Please refer to the tables in our earnings press release for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measure.
With that let me hand, it over to Josh Josh.
Thank you Julie and Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining the call.
I know a short notice, but we think it's important to share a strong Q4 performance for Q as soon as possible, particularly particularly given this crazy time that we're in.
We know as it relates to covert 19. This is a trying time and in times like these are most important focus is on our people and their families in regard to everyone's health and wellbeing weeks ago, we implemented common sense protocols, including putting restrictions on nonessential travel supporting work from home initiatives and changing the format of our annual user conference to online only.
Our thoughts are certainly with everyone who is affected at this time.
I'm going to keep my section short short and Sweet I want to make take <unk> I want to take a more reflective view and highlight the progress. We've made since we became a public company and then Bruce will cover this quarter's details.
So this is our seventh reported quarter as a public company in the last seven quarters alone. We've made significant progress on a number of metrics.
Number one our year over year subscription revenue growth has averaged 28% and has never been below 24% for any quarter number two our subscription gross margins have improved from 71%.
When we went public to 77% today.
Number three our gross retention rate has improved from 82% to 91% this quarter.
Number four are contracted annualized recurring revenue is now over $160 million a size and scale that gives us the ability to cash flow positive quickly if we need to.
Number five.
Our customers under multi year contracts have increased from 38% of our customer base. When we went public to 55% today.
Number six.
Over that same time period, our operating expenses have decreased from $55 million per quarter to $53 million per quarter, Despite our growth and recurring revenue.
Number seven.
We have decreased our quarterly cash burn from $36 million a quarter to now $15 million.
And lastly, number eight we've been able to accomplish all of this with the same head count level, we had about four years ago.
We still have sufficient capacity to continue to deliver significant value to our customers.
Also with an ample amount of cash to run our business. However, we need to in whatever environment. We're in.
I'm very pleased I'm very pleased with these accomplishments in this past quarter, including signing one of the world's largest companies Amazon as a customer and I look forward to continuing to execute well against this large market opportunity before us.
The path to achieving a cash flow positive position.
With the cash on our balance sheet has become clear every quarter.
And with that I'll turn it over to the Bruce. Thank you Josh we're pleased to deliver solid Q4 accounts across all guided metrics I'll now review the details behind this performance followed by providing first quarter fiscal 2021 full year guidance.
Our better than expected Q4 was driven by higher renewal rates strong up selling into our installed base and the entirety of our business delivering above expectations.
Our enterprise team capped off a record breaking second half of the year.
Our corporate team produced the largest them out of new AC.
TV business for the company and whats well above our beginning of the quarter expectation.
It is noteworthy that we achieved our results with minimal contribution from large deals.
With our top five new business deals comprising only 5% of our billings this quarter.
Our focus has been on increasing our recurring revenue base and I'm pleased that our subscription revenue grew 24% year over year, driven by an improved mix of new subscription versus services revenue and by improving retention rates.
I also wanted to highlight how encouraged I am by the continued improvement in our existing customer lifetime value or LTV profile.
As both retention and recurring gross margins continued to show incremental improvement I.
A significant benefit of the SaaS model is that strong improving LTV fundamentals provide a core.
Financial visibility in periods of external market uncertainty.
Our recurring revenue base is broadly spread across a wide range of industries, we do not have significant concentration in any one industry with no industry, representing more than 15% of A.R. and most representing significantly less than that.
As John I also mentioned our gross retention rate was 91%. In addition to better than expected retention Q4 billings benefited from about 2 million of renewals in connection with Upsells.
We had expected these renewals to come in the first quarter fiscal year 2021.
This did not affect our reported retention rate, but it does influence our Q1 billings guidance.
We achieved a net revenue retention rate of 120% in our North America enterprise business.
We now have 55% of our customers under multiyear contracts at the end of Q4 compared to 42% at the end of Q4 last year.
Our remaining performance obligations for our PEO grew 17% compared to the same quarter last year.
Our Q4 revenue was 46.2 million a year over year increase a 17% subscription revenue represented 86% of total revenue.
International revenue in the quarter represented 25% of total revenue compared to 24% in Q3.
Our subscription gross margin was 77% up more than two percentage points from 74% in Q4 of last year.
We plan to obtain additional leverage out of our subscription cost of revenue overtime as we continue to effectively manage our datacenter operations through finding efficiencies better utilization of certain services and continuing to optimize our software that runs the double platform.
We believe we can achieve subscription gross margins of over 80% in the long term.
In Q4 operating expenses increased by just under 7% from last year.
Even though revenue increased by 17% year over year.
We did take a taught by cost reduction actions in Q4, and our non Japan APEC region.
Due to underperformance relative to the investments we have been making in that region.
We will redeploy those savings in North America, where we're finding great success.
The net effective increased revenue, while effectively managing costs allowed us to improve our operating margin by 12 full percentage points from the same quarter last year.
Our net loss was 23.7 million and net loss per share was 85 cents. This is based on 28 million.
Weighted average shares outstanding basic and diluted.
Turning now to our balance sheet as of January 31, we had cash cash equivalents and short term investments of approximately 99 million and amount. We believe is more than sufficient to allow us to become cash flow positive.
Our adjusted net cash used in operations was 15.3 million an improvement of.
9 million over the prior quarter, and a 45% reduction compared to Q4 the prior year.
Now to discuss what we expect in Q1 fiscal year 21.
We are very aware of the uncertain environment and our planning for different scenarios.
Our guidance does not factor in a downturn our slowdown because at this point, we have not felt any material effects on our business.
In fact in Japan.
Whether it's more societal upheaval, we continue to close business.
We believe this is in part because our product set our products that help drive revenue.
Find efficiencies and help businesses operate remotely.
I would say that relative to companies that rely on large amounts of new business from new customers.
We are in a better position because our current topline is driven by a large dickey renewal base.
The majority of which is under multiyear contracts.
Our new business comes mostly from current customers.
That are easier to sell to that obtaining new customers.
And most of our quota carrying reps, primarily so over the phone, which is an asset when traveling as restricted.
Also we've been able to grow our business without increasing costs.
And have demonstrated an ability to control and even cut costs if needed.
We're entering fiscal year 21, with 20% more pipeline than we had at the same time last year as result of all the work we've we've been doing to improve marketing operations.
Run the sales place.
Form relationships with partners and automate the proof of concept process.
With that as background, we expect Q1 billings of between 40 million them 44 million.
Had 2 million and renewals not been built in Q4, our billings guidance would have been 42 million to 46 million.
We're planning for fiscal 21 billings to be between 205 million and 210 million.
Were planning on our Q1 operating expenses to be up from Q4.
Although we're excited about having double palooza online.
And have over 5000 registered rents already our operating expenses are driven impart by our annual user conference costs.
That cannot be recovered.
And higher payroll related expenses in Q1.
For the year, we expect our operating expenses to be up slightly from fiscal year 20.
We expect Q1 adjusted net net cash used in operations of approximately 14 million.
Full year adjusted net cash used in operations of approximately 50 million.
We believe we will be able to exit this year with a quarterly cash burn rate that gives investors the confidence they're looking for that we can achieve our cash flow positive status with the cast we have on the balance sheet.
Not a formal guidance for the first for the first quarter fiscal year 21, we expect GAAP revenue to be in the range of $46 million 47 billion.
We expect non-GAAP net loss per share basic and diluted of one dollar for dollar eight.
This assumes 28.4 million weighted average shares outstanding basic and diluted.
For the full year fiscal 21, we expect GAAP revenue to be in the range of 192 million to 198 million representing year over year growth of 11% 14%.
We expect non-GAAP net loss per share basic and diluted of $3.22 to 3032 cents.
This assumes 29.2 million weighted average diluted shares outstanding basic and diluted.
In closing, we're pleased with our results for Q4.
I look forward to our fiscal 21 year.
Please join US on March 18 for double Palooza online.
And our analyst and Investor program.
You can register for those that demo Palooza dotcom.
With that we'll open up the call for questions.
Operator, please do so.
Thank you.
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My first question comes from the line.
With Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Good morning, and thank you for taking the questions and congrats on the beat on billings this quarter.
Bruce I wanted to talk a little bit about guidance and thank you for walking through some of the assumptions on on on Q1 and for the full year, specifically as it relates to the enterprise sales.
Sales team how are you thinking about the potential travel disruptions I understand you have.
Quite a lot of Kerry quota carrying capacity I'm doing inside sales, but in terms of just.
The enterprise sales for us how much of how much contribution sort of assumed and full year guidance now what sort of disruptions are you anticipating in terms of the ability to close deals because of you know people now the office or you know just not getting enough faced headed for those customers.
Yeah. So.
We one of the.
Nice assets, we have going into the quarter as just a strong pipeline that's been building nicely up at this point.
And we think those activities that we've been doing.
Ought to continue to build the pipeline.
Even against the fact that are some of our sales team not all of it but some of that has historically.
Conducted the meeting some person.
We think in this environment.
Give in corporate America, and maybe across the World generally is all facing the same issue.
And we are all.
Making the best efforts, we can run the business as normal.
So I think and part of it to hopes that part of its thing.
Is that.
We're all going to be quite accommodating of doing business over the telephone in fact.
It might be and like generate a new normal that's even more healthy than the historical way we've done business.
The other comforting fact is that.
A lot of business, particularly in the enterprise, we get from our current customers and that's very that so much easier to do over the phone because the relationships already developed.
So we you know a very aware of what the pipeline is for enterprise. So what the activity levels are we think we've just baked and.
Normal.
Caution into the numbers nobody really knows.
How the of.
How the current environment is going to play out, but we generally think.
We're well positioned.
Have a lot going for us and we'll continue to keep the business activity as high as possible even against this.
Travel slowed down, but it's not a travel stopped as to travel slowdown.
Understood and maybe for my follow up is just to.
A follow up on your remarks in a more ads. This adverse scenario can just sort of walk through the levers you have that those at your disposal to sort of could you can make progress on the cash cash burn side of the equation appreciate it. Thanks.
Yes, well on the topline, we're just going to really step up the activity from the telesales effort.
And.
No just get even more aggressive although we think we can do and probably deploy more resources to protect the topline.
On the cost structure.
We have just.
Ample room to operate today, which really translates into.
We have the capacity the cut back the costs, if we need to.
Well I'll note that Josh and I have been through this before.
We we know when we get to a point where.
Theres, a real slowdown facing us it's pretty clear in L.A. it was going to happen.
And we took aggressive action.
And if we get to that point, we'll have to do the same we hope it doesn't play out that way, but you know the reality is that.
If the world's going to slow down that we're going to have to react to it.
So we're looking at the cost structure.
A very.
Very aggressively and.
They pointed out my notes.
We had already made a move what we did not like the return where we're getting on our investment or we'll redeploy it.
Well do that with a different lens, if we find the slowdown as we are facing a slowdown.
I appreciate it Bruce Thanks, Josh.
Thank you. My next question comes from the line of Bhavan, Suri with William Blair and company. Your line is now.
Hey, guys, let me Echo my congrats, especially on the LTV to CAC metrics I was really good to see.
I guess I wanted to just push a little bits centuries question just on on guidance you know Josh you touched on you know quarters seen growth at less than 24%.
The Guy it's both revenue and billings seems conservative just any more color and what else you baked in there sort of I know Bruce you said sort of normal conservatism.
Think about the pipeline is 20% higher than what it's been you've seen net dollar retention rates go to 120% for enterprise just trying to censor the conservatism of the level of conservatism baked in here I'll, given you're not expecting sort of a global slowdown just just trying to send that part yes, Josh I would say first that we are.
The the metrics that you just quarter to the ones that we're seeing that are really positive.
We're seeing a lot of.
Greet positivity also coming from the suit the sales plays that we're running the.
The new messaging, that's really resonating with our team and how they get out in front of our customers.
The way that customers are talking to us about future plans and how you go through and look at the big deals that you get in a quarter and most of them or customers that have been a customer for a few years and their standardizing on you. So there's a lot of there's a lot of great things taking place.
But at the same time, we're definitely aware that the worlds a different place than it was two months ago.
So, although we haven't seen material impact on our business we haven't seen.
Things happened to the contrary like Bruce mentioned in Japan.
Where there are much more of a lock down than we are in the U.S.
All the kids got sent home over 50 employees over there call in a saying we're going to work from home because no one's watching our kids.
So we were very curious about how that business was going to perform and yet we're getting new new deals in new contracts.
So I think I don't know Thats exactly how the U.S. responds if we're in a similar situation, but businesses still getting done so as Bruce mentioned I think people are going to be pretty.
Open to trying to do business over the phone. This is a different kind of an environment and the bubble bursting in 2000 or.
You know the the bank mill down that we had in 2008. This is I think kind of a call to to the humankind. We've got a band together and figured this thing out and I think we're going to see a different response when it comes of that doesn't mean, it's not going be negative an overwhelming but I think it's going to be.
Different kind of set of experiences than than we've had before in other downturns. Yeah. I think I think I just have to take this.
This a moment just to say.
We set guidance.
Way, we we normally do but it would be very imprudent for us sitting here today, saying, what's going on the environment to expect a big beat.
So I just got stating the obvious given the Mark it's really just based on the macro environment.
Got it got it Super helpful. And then I just wanted to touch a little bit Isle bake offs. Specifically are you talked the last couple quarters doing more bake offs seeing really good win rates on those opportunities. We can demonstrate the nature of the platform just love to understand how that wasn't Q4.
And how much of a focus are you guys sort of thinking about that in 2021, just think about your sales plays the idea of bake offs, bringing data and how you're thinking sort of about investing in that area. Given the win rate. So let us know how to quarter was the plan around sort of those plc is big cost between 21. Thank you.
Yeah. Those people see is definitely go well for us and it's it's not.
Not necessarily a huge area of investment relative to anything new that we're doing other than the expense associated with doing it.
But it's it's a motion that we certainly understand it I think is more getting the sales reps to have that be one of the steps that they automatically go too.
Making sure that they don't shied away from it making sure that they all understand that hey, when we do this park our close rates go up and so I think it's a motion that you're seeing the sales team and the management team. The sales management team. We understand that this is extremely helpful for us and she'll can still continue to see us do it more and more.
And if you look at the the big contracts that we won last quarter and the same thing the big ones in our pipeline today and almost all those cases, there's there's a plc, that's taking place as well that really helps convince those customers and get some comfortable with with standardizing in a meaningful way.
Got it. Thank you guys. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Pat Walravens JMP Securities. Your line is now.
Oh, great. Thank you.
And congratulations on Q4 you guys.
Thanks, Pat So Josh I guess.
My first question would be are you seeing it may be too soon but so are you seeing any.
Your customers or prospects.
Got it budgets or delay projects.
Yet because of the.
The current environment.
We havent seen them cut projects and were delayed projects yet we've just seen.
A lack of travel.
We've seen a lack of conferences and thats definitely something that I think I'm sure everyone is trying to adjust to you look at your marketing pipeline in your budget in the way, it's allocated and you've got a bunch of you mentioned there.
And that means you got to generate those leads a different way so flexing other muscles that you have.
In business is still getting done there's still individual meetings that are taking place people aren't going to conferences and not going where there is.
A ton of people that are that are in close contact with each other but.
Especially in the enterprise space the big meetings are still taking place. So it's not something that we're seeing affect our business. Yet. It's just you kind of reinsurance or not recognize that changes taking place.
But hopefully there's a there's a new normal and we get to new normal relatively quickly.
If theres not a normal quickly than we're prepared we're prepared for that as well.
But that's why I highlighted Japan. It was it was fascinating to me and actually shocking to me when.
I'm land then my bet at night, and I get to get an alert on my phone from don't want to pick it up in Oh, you just closed the deal in Japan like what I think we closed the deal in Japan and two days later it seemed to happen again I'm like this is kind of crazy and one of wasn't new logo even so.
I think the the great.
Comfort. We also have is something that Bruce mentioned, but the fact that a big chunk of our new revenue that comes in every quarter.
His upsells from our current customer base that we invested a lot to build.
But that I think gives us some.
Not as much risk as you might see otherwise since you can go back to that customer base, where they're already familiar with you and you can do business over the phone and through video conferencing.
Awesome. Thank you and then.
Can you just talk about the you mentioned that you did a deal to Amazon and in that same vein.
It's not the partnership with Mark with Microsoft and what's going on with sounds like.
Yes, our ecosystem continues to evolve and envelop we're very excited about it we're continuing to invest in the to into it.
You know those acquisitions that all took place in a short period of time it created an opportunity for a lot of people looking for a new dance partner. We also had many customers come to us and say.
We really like we've been do with US for the last couple of years can you help us do this with.
And get this data out to all of our customers. So it's the ecosystem is really starting to become a part of our business that you have a lot of confidence in the future of and Microsoft's part of that Amazon is a part of this.
And then the.
Amazon as a customer mentioned that I made.
That's outside of the ecosystem, that's just them as a traditional customer.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick with Credit Suisse. Your line is now.
Excellent. Thanks, so much for taking the question and congrats as well.
On a nice close to the to the year I was hoping to get an update on on your go to market and it was surprising actually the here that your top five deals in the quarter representative no more than 5% of bookings just because you know for most software companies that are selling valuable solutions into enterprises.
You would think Q4 is actually when the magic happens that's what you're seeing that large deals. So just as you think about the target market and how you're going after it and we think about the stratification from large enterprise down to the SMB wherever you are making the investments and and focusing the reps and where are you incentivizing them to go this year.
Well, we've got our reps split up into a few team. So we have a strategic accounts team which is essentially.
The fortune 500, and I'm, the private 100, and so yes, that's there that's their patch and they go into to sell into there and and if you look at our big customers. Yes. This last quarter I think that was more making the point that we.
We were able to hit our numbers without anybody swing it in a meaningful way and maybe would have even been larger I had we had any monster deals in there, but if you look at our top 10 customers base by a or are they grew the total number grew pretty substantially you have some.
Really big customers, we have all 10 of our customers are more than $1 million in air our top 10.
So we have definitely a really healthy strong big strategic enterprise business and.
We also have a business that's focused on the $1 billion to $5 billion in revenue band.
And a bunch of folks that are focused on that and then we have a corporate team that's focused on sub $1 billion, that's 100% done over the phone and then we have entered our international business. After that so that's how we break it down.
When you put budson seats focused on different patches and you end up getting sales in those areas. So it's not really about incentives that we put its more about the people that we put in those seats.
That makes sense, Josh and maybe if I can follow up with one for Bruce it's great to hear all of the.
The evidence that that's driving strong net net expansion and retention you talked about can you maybe give us a sense of the different levers whether its price increases numbers seats for existing use cases.
New use cases and company divisions that you're breaking into how should we think about the dimensions there. Thanks.
Yeah. The two two big drivers are you know within a certain used case certainly expanding the number of users.
And we're getting better and better at making that move be much more substantial than we have in the past.
And the other is certainly I would say almost unlimited number of use cases.
So we're finding.
Once we're in an account.
And they really experience I call. It the magic Adele mall that they can finally do things on their phone today than ever do before I get information they never thought with available to them.
You know in real time.
Just spills over to the executives who are sponsoring this counterparts.
And that we're getting very very good at making the case internally and helping our champion spread the use within groups and then what we do that we're also very good at bundling that into a reasonable size deal and our deal sizes have been going.
Up on average so those are those are two big levers and.
Yeah, we intend to be.
Pursue those quite aggressively, particularly given this environment because again.
It's just so much easier to work with the customer you already have.
And we know we have.
Use case after use case after use case.
Demonstrates very high value.
With support from.
The business people within our customer base. So those are two of the big key levers we have the we'll certainly take advantage of going forward.
Thanks first.
You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Derrick Wood with Cowen and company. Your line is now open.
Thank you good morning, Oh, I got my congratulations on a quarter first one Josh I'm, obviously, a pension can talk the consolidation in the space in 2019, I mean, how how are you feeling about the competitive landscape and I'm wondering that obviously you guys are seen strength on the corporate side do you think.
That has anything to do with kind of the change in the competitive landscape some of the independent vendors getting acquired and that opening up more opportunity for you.
Yeah, I mean, we're definitely the consolidation is has made us the strong independent and.
The one also thats agnostic for our customers in terms of where they can where they can store their data and.
They want to have someone that can partner with all of the big vendors because most of our customers use all of those vendors and as you know some of our competitors went to those went to those big vendors. So.
That's that's definitely made us the I think a very attractive partner when it comes the ecosystem and then I think it's just also been really fun to have people recognize our business I mean, we have customers and partners.
Who seem to recognize some of those metrics I talked about the beginning the fact that weve never had a cut a a quarter grow less than 24% or subscription revenue that we have a gross margin and 77% gross retention rate 91%.
We're getting to be a decent size in terms of scale. We've got a lot of multiyear contracts you know more than 55% and then to also see that all that take place when we've got our cash burn down to 15 million, where there's clearly a huge focus on getting that number as low as possible as quickly as possible.
I think we're just in a really good spot to be create partners for our customers and our partners over the long haul.
Got it thanks.
Bruce maybe one for you services revenue was down year over year I think there was a tough comp with some one time and there are a year ago, but how are you thinking about your services business and and whether you want to grow or perhaps shrinkage and tried to leverage more partners, but what's the assumption as you look at your guidance for the new here.
Yeah, I mean, we really don't think of it as a separate business I mean services is there to make sure that we deliver the value to the customer they expect as fast as possible.
And you know that just a you're right in that it had a tough compare to compared to last year because of some of the one time.
Items that we reported on.
So we'll just I mean generally it'll be steady stay the same percentage roughly because there's just not a lot of variability and.
You know what customers generally asked for it it's pretty standard. So you know our real focus is just get the recurring revenue up that's really the margin rich cast Gendrive generating engine and services is just there to support it so model wise.
It can change as a percentage of revenue on the new business side from time to time, but you know the there's not a big focus on it.
We don't want to see a lot of variability in the in it we don't mind, if it shrinks actually because if we're able to deliver this value with less services, that's I see good for business and our opinion.
So that's just that's our philosophy behind how we think about that line item.
Right.
Thank you.
Q.
Thank you.
Question comes on the line of Jennifer Lowe with <unk>. Your line is now.
Great. Thank you I wanted to follow up on the question that Brad asked a little bit earlier around the different.
Roles within the sales organization you'd mentioned that there is some cost savings in Asia Pac that were being reinvested into the U.S.. So maybe to get more specific on that you know as you invest into the U.S. sales organization. You know how are you apportioning those investments between the different strategies as.
Sales personnel and is that being informed at all by some of that the uncertainty on the macro cyber potentially telesales might be a little bit more durable or or is it you know how are you thinking about the appropriate places to put those investments.
The real metric that we're focusing on his attack.
So we know high return items versus low and we're just going to rebalance kind of the attack portfolio.
Just optimize will we get out of it and that's across both sales and marketing.
So the problem with they pack was it was.
You know they had nice growth and then we demand as we get CAC in line with certain benchmarks and it did not happen and so we just had to be.
Brutal what the dollars and say, we're just going to reallocated to other isn't business that have higher returns on our money and that's that's the basic way we do it can be across the portfolio of 50 different thing.
We're continuing to do that because we just have to get CAC in a position that lets us get the growth. This business deserve. So we're just funky reiterating an iterative and iterating and I'm very impressed what I'm seeing what we're doing.
The sales play some marketing operations, that's just putting so much more rigor into that and then we have new chief revenue officer, who is just extremely disciplined with data.
Metrics in cadence and between the two that gives us a lot of input and determining where the dollars how to go and we're really going to be aggressive about it this year.
[laughter] also and you know <unk> and again fine I'm proud to good questions. Brad I you know I. It was also a little surprised cannot see more large deals in Q4, and I know you've talked in the past about some of these deals that slipped out of earlier in the year that we're kind of kicking around out there to maybe two questions on that first.
Did some of those deals that have been in the pipeline convert in Q4 are those still in the pipe heading into fiscal 21, and secondly, you had to the extent that some of those large deals get didn't necessarily land in Q4 is that sort of a purposeful.
<unk> on your perspective, and just in terms of how you're selling and entered of some of the revamps being made in their go to market strategy and we should expect that going forward or is it just good idiosyncrasy of when things close.
Yes, I think I think I think we're over indexing on that that comment that we made we shouldn't we may we made it with a different intention.
But when you look at the business, we have more large deals in our pipeline than we've ever had so.
That's a big a big part of a business going forward and most of its driven because customers are using our product and they are coming to us and saying.
We need to standardize on what we're doing with you and we have a handful of really large.
You will see is they're taking place right now.
So that's definitely a big part of a business and we'll continue to be a big part of our business. The particular on that quarterly you're referencing.
I think one of those deals had no decision, but the rest of those deals either closed or are in the pipeline still.
And I would add.
Going into this uncertain environment for us to be able to post the numbers, we did without the big deals, which is actually what I want to see happening I want to see basic basic.
You know grow not relying on them and then when they come and I'd like to see outsize growth yeah. So.
The fact that we have smaller transactions higher volumes.
Not overly reliant on the monster deals just to kind of hit our guidance I think just a very positive attribute of our financial profile as we sit here today.
Great. Thank you.
Hey, Matt.
Our next question comes from the line of Jack and with Needham and company Your line.
Well good morning. Thanks for taking my question I was wondering if you could just drill down a little bit more on what sales place books are really resonating for you. These days is it something focusing specifically on the office of the CFO or CMO or what else is really.
Helping you these days.
Yeah, I think Jack this is John Miller.
Yeah, Chief strategy Officer, Let me, let me take that a little bit. This is the this is an initiative that I've been driving so a couple a couple of things. One is you know we've really kind of.
Been able to solidify the messaging for the company.
Down to some some key value propositions and we just tell our customers that we offer them be I leverage cloud scale in record time.
And each of those three components of that statement are really core value propositions that most selling into customers.
And where we're seeing that matter is in the lines of business, where we've been focusing the sales team. So those would be the finance organization sales organization, the marketing organization and the product organization.
And these organizations are all driven by the need to get results very very fast and they have to do it at scale and they do that by leveraging these systems that they've got in place and the investments that they've already made.
So as we as we work with the sales team to hone the value proposition into those four lines of business.
I wouldn't say that theres, one that standing out in particular, there all moving moving quite nicely in the sales team is absorbing those value props to go directly to those lines of business and solve business problems.
The deliver.
Deliver these kinds of business result at really incredible speeds. Unlike any other systems that they are using.
Great well appreciate the perspective on that just as a follow up then could you maybe just update us in terms of maybe some of the process is that you have now to ensure that I T is not necessarily an impediment to to your sales cycle and how do you make sure that I T doesn't view Duma was potentially a competitive to what they're doing.
Sure sure good question, well and I'll go I'll go back to that to that statement B. I leverage cloud scale in record time.
When we talk about leverage what we mean is that the systems and investments that that I T has put in place or other investments that are that are in place around your employees other processes.
In the vast majority of cases, there's not a reason to rip does statement the those investments out it's about getting leverage from that.
Lot of those systems are great at what they do they have either got a first mile problem or last mile problem, how do I get data into them more efficiently how do I get data out of the more efficiently and in a more insightful actionable way and so there's a very strong complement there and so our position with I.T. is a very complimentary one.
Where we're helping them leverage their investments and get you'll get a time to value that.
As it is much shorter than they have experienced in the past we view it very complementary.
Great Thanks, and congratulations on the results.
Thank you.
Thank you.
No further questions in the queue at this time.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating you may now disconnect.
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