Q1 2023 Global-e Online Ltd Earnings Call

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Greetings and welcome to the Global E-First Quarter 2023 earnings call.

This call is being simultaneously webcast on the company's website and the investors section under news and events.

For opening remarks and introductions, I will now turn the call over to Erika Manion at Sapphire Investor Relations. Go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. With me today from GlobalE are Amir Shlokit, co-founder and chief executive officer, Ofer Karim, chief financial officer, and Nir Debi, co-founder and president. Amir will begin with a review of the business results for the first quarter of 2023.

OFRA will then review the financial results for the first quarter of 2023, followed by the company's outlook for the second quarter and full year of 2023. We will then open the call for questions.

Certain statements we make today may constitute four looking statements in information within the meeting of Section 27A of the Security's Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Security's Exchange Act of 1934, and the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securaries' litigation reform act of 1995 that relate to our current expectations.

of future performance. Actual outcomes may differ materially from the information contained in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those set forth in the section titled Risk Factors and are prospectus filed with the SEC on September 13, 2021, and other documents filed with or furnished to the SEC.

These statements reflect management's current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the day of this call. You should not put undue reliance on any forward-looking statements.

Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee that future results, level of activity, performance, and events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or will occur. Except as required by applicable law, we make no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements.

certain metrics we'll be discussed today.

Excuse me. Certain metrics we will discuss today are non-GAAP metrics. The presentation of this financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for or superior to the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP.Thank you for watching the symphy which is in the chat showing what you understand about

We use these non- GAAP financial measures for financial and operating decision making and as a means to evaluate period to period comparisons.

We believe that these measures provide useful information about operating results, enhance the overall understanding of past financial performance and future prospects, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in its financial and operating operational decision making.

For more information on the non-GAAP financial measures, please see the reconciliation tables provided in our press release dated May 22, 2023.

Throughout this call, we will provide a number of key performance indicators used by our management and often used by competitors in our industry. These and other key performance indicators are discussed in more detail in our press release dated May 22, 2023. I will now turn the call over to Amir, co-founder and CEO .

Thank you Erica and welcome everyone.

With the financial results of Q1, which we are releasing today, we are off to a great start for the year, with 55% year-over-year growth in GMV, which totaled $704 million.

Revenue is for the quarter, we're $117.6 million, growing by 54% compared to the same quarter last year.

and adjusted gross profit margin was 41.4% for the quarter, up from 39.1% last year.

Our adjusted EBDOT came in at $14.5 million compared to only $3.3 million in Q1 of last year.

These strong results, which came in above our guidance, manifest our continued strong execution across the business.

our effectiveness in controlling costs, and the fact that macro conditions during the quarter were slightly more favorable than what was initially anticipated going into 2023.

Later in this call, also we'll review in greater detail our Q1 results. And you will provide you with our guidance for Q2 as well as our updated guidance for the full year of 2023, which we are raising today.

But before we do that, I would like to share with you some of the exciting developments we have seen across the business during the past quarter.

First and foremost, we continue to see great interest in our services coming from brands all around the globe, as more and more merchants turn to the direct-to-consumer channel as their key focus growth channel.

To name just a few, in Q1 we saw renowned brands like Carbon 38, Doan, Psycho Bunny, Maui & Sons, Lulus, Jigsaw and Rebecca Minkoff go live, as well as the merchandise store of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team.

We continue to push into A-pack with brands such as Charsten Keith, Porcelain Skin and Buying by the only Going Live in Singapore, Unreal Forgoing Live in Australia, Object IO Going Live in Japan, and more.

In parallel, we launched our first Portuguese merchant called Islo.

and continued to onboard celebrity brands and social first brands such as Kylie Cosmetics by Kylie Jenner or Maison Francaise Croujean, part of the LVMH group.

Whose Bacca at WUSP perfume was the number one perfume shared by influencers on TikTok in 2022.

During the quarter, we also continue our efforts to expend our business with existing merchants.

Notable examples would be numerous expansions of our engagement within the LVMH group.

With two additional brands, RepoCy and Pucci, joining the platform, Kenzo going live, and Volga returning on an additional batch of close to 30 markets, which are now operated by globally.

Another notable example would be Disney Europe , which now utilizes globally to support sales to the United Kingdom, one of its top global markets.

Regarding our partnership with Shopify, on the direct integration side, we continue our work on adding new features to our native integration, as well as providing support for Shopify's new checkout extensibility.

In parallel, we continue to migrate merchants from our legacy third party integration into the new native one and add newly signed merchants directly onto the native plugin as we go. On the white label solution front, we continue to work in close collaboration with Shopify's teams towards the rollout of Shopify Market's Pro.

a fully integrated merchant of record solution intended for merchants looking to scale to new markets quickly and easily.

Market's Pro is currently in early access mode in the US, and we are seeing a high level of interest for merchants and encouraging initial results from those early access merchants that have been going live since September of last year.

Along with Shopify, we believe Markets Pro remains on track to general availability in the US in the summer to be followed by the UK later in the year.

Finally, I would like to mention a different and exciting aspect of our activity, which is the potential of using AI to improve our service levels and potentially increase the efficiency of our operations.

We have already been using machine learning and AI models for several years now.

helping our teams to automate large-scale recurring tasks, such as the classification of large product catalogs for duties and taxes, for example.

More recently, our internal AI task force has conducted several proof of concept exercises in various functions of the company, demonstrating some of their potential.

We believe that the amazing advancements made in the field of AI lately, resulting in the proliferation of highly sophisticated, yet easy to use large-scale models.

should present over the coming quarters and years many opportunities to incorporate AI-powered tools and capabilities across different parts of the organization.

These, in turn, could enable us to drive significant cost efficiencies over the coming years. While further improving the level of service and insights we can give to both merchants and consumers.

We are conscious of our exciting developments to share from all corners of the business, all contributing to our belief that we can continue to exhibit high growth rates as we capture more and more of the vast greenfield opportunity that lies ahead of us. And do it in a sustainable way.

maintaining cost controls, and best-in-class efficiency.

But in the interest of time, and in order to leave ample time for any questions you may have, I will now hand it over to offer our CFO to take us through the quarterly numbers in more depth, as well as present our updated guidance.

Thank you, Amir, and thanks again, everyone, for joining us this morning for a quarterly earnings call.

We are pleased to begin 2023 with a very positive momentum.

Q1 was another strong quarter of solid growth and healthy margins as we continue to execute well on all fronts.

I'd like to point out again that in addition to our gap results, I'll also be discussing certain non-gap results. Our GAAP financial results, along with the reconciliation between gap and non-gap results, can be found in our earnings release.

As Amir mentioned, our rapid growth in GMV continued in Q1 as $704 million of GMV was generated on our platforms, an increase of 55% year-over-year.

as they continue to develop their direct to consumer business and expand their activity with global E and from new merchants onboarding our platforms around the globe.

In Q1 we generated total revenue of $117.6 million, up 50% year-over-year, with both revenue streams continuing to grow rapidly.

Service fees revenues were $50.4 million up 58% year over year and fulfillment services revenue were up 52% to $67.3 million.

We have continued to experience higher-paced growth in our US outbound revenue as our strong momentum in the US continues, driven also by the US bias of the border-free portfolio. In Q1 2023, US outbound revenue was up 100% year-over-year.

Our penetration efforts to A-PAC and the Middle East remained on track and continuing to bear fruit. While the share of GMV coming out of this new out-on-market is still relatively low, transaction volumes have grown by almost four X year-over-year.

Non-Gab Ross Profit, Outpaced Revenue Growth, as we continue to leverage our scheme.

In Q1, non-gab gross profit was $48.7 million, up 63% year-over-year, representing gross margin of 41.4% compared to 39.1% in the same period last year.

driven by the higher share of services revenue and the ongoing efforts to improve efficient fees. Gapros profit was $45.9 million, representing a margin of 39%.

Moving on to operational expenses, we continue to invest in the development and enhancement of our platform with a significant effort around the development of the Shopify Markets Pro white label solution towards general availability in the US as Amir mentioned.

R&D expense in Q1, excluding stock-based compensation, was $16.8 million or 14.3% of revenue compared to $12.5 million or 16.4% in the same period last year.

Total R&D spending Q1 was $22.9 million. We also continue to invest in sales and marketing to expand our presence and to further build our pipeline while continuing to be mindful of efficiency.

We have expanded our presence in Europe , including people on the ground in Italy and Scandinavia, and continue to enhance our presence in Australia and Japan.

Sales and marketing expense, excluding Shopify related amortization expenses, stock-based compensation, and acquisition related intangibles amortization, was $10.5 million or 8.9% of revenue compared to 8.2 million dollars or 10.7% of revenue.

in the same period last year. Shopify warrant related amortization expense was $38.2 million. Total sales and marketing expenses for the quarter were $51.8 million.

General administrative expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, acquisition-related expenses, and acquisition-related contingent consideration, with $7.4 million or 6.3% of revenue, compared to $6.2 million or 8.1% of revenue in the same period last year.

Total GNA spending Q4 was $13.1 million. Adjusted EBDA totaled $14.5 million, representing at 12.3% adjusted EBDA margin. Increasing from $3.3 million of 4.3% margin,

in the same period last year, which was negatively impacted from the flow consolidation.

Net loss was 43.1 million dollars compared to a net loss of 53.6 million dollars in the year ago period driven mainly by the amortization expenses related to the shockified warrants and to the transaction related intangibles.

Switching gears and turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statements, we ended Q1 2023 with $212 million in cash and cash equivalent, including short-term deposits and marketable securities.

Cash flow used by operating expenses was $29.5 million compared to $5.3 million a year ago, driven by typical Q1 post-peak working capital dynamics and a $12.2 million payment of held-back acquisition-related proceeds.

Moving on to our financial outlook and guidance for Q2 2023 and our updated 2023 Fullyer guidance which reflects the resilience and the continued momentum of the business.

For Q2 2023, we're expecting GMV to be in the range of $755 million to $785 million. At the midpoint of the range, this represents a growth rate of 44.2% versus Q2 of 2022.

We expect Q2 revenue to be in the range of $125 to $130 million. At the midpoint of the range, this represents a growth rate of 46.1% versus Q2 of 2022.

For adjusted EBITDA, we are expecting a profit in the range of $15-18 million.

For the full year of 2023, we are raising our guidance and now expect G&V to be in the range of $3.4 to $3.55 billion, representing nearly 42% annual growth at the midpoint of the range.

Revenue is expected to be in the range of $562 to $590 million, representing a growth rate of nearly 41% at the midpoint of the range.

For adjusted EBIDA, we are expecting a profit of $70-77 million.

In conclusion, we are focusing on disciplined execution to create value for the merchants and tap on the market opportunity in front of us. We strive to continue our growth journey while exerting ongoing efforts to improve efficiencies.

enabling sustainable top line growth and acceleration of catch generation.

And with that, Amir Nirenai are happy to take any of your questions. Operator?

Thank you. At this time we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys.

In the interest of time we ask that you reach keep to one question and one follow up. Thank you.

Our first question comes in line of Will Nance with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Hey guys, good morning. Yeah, I wanted to ask about what you're seeing in the APAC market. Have you seen any notable shifts in consumer spending? We've seen a lot of talk around the shift away from goods and toward services. Just wondering if you're seeing any impact and maybe one for if you could just remind us how large, APAC consumer and mountain revenues is of percentage total revenue that'd be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, so we haven't seen any significant change in APAC consumption. APAC is a significant market for us, but not one of the largest Europe and the US are larger in share.

And we haven't seen it has been relatively stable at least for us. We haven't seen any shift in consumer preferences from our side.

Got it, that's helpful. And if I could just follow up on, you mentioned that the macro ended up being a little bit better than what you'd expected at the beginning of the year. I know you talked about taking a conservative posture heading into the current environment on the last quarter's call. Just if you could maybe just remind us what you're building in for macro as anything changed in terms of what you're assuming for the rest of the year.

We saw solid demand from consumers and that was translated into a nice growth of existing clients. However, the uncertainty still remains. Macro is still not very stable. There are some negative drivers.

So, we haven't changed our view towards the next three quarters regarding the year. We still stayed with the same assumptions and we remained fairly conservative due to that.

Understood. Appreciate you taking my questions.

Thanks, Will. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cody Acada with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question. Please proceed with your question.

Hey guys, good morning and thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask you a question, maybe in the likes of new merchant growth versus GMB per merchant assumptions in the guidance. It sure sounds like you guys are adding new merchants at a very healthy clip, so maybe help us understand as you think about the guidance.

What are you guys baking in from a new merchant growth or GMD expansion per merchant for their guidance this year?

Hi, it's Neil, thank you for the question.

So basically, we are optimistic for the rest of the year as what we've seen yield to date. We had a record deal in finding new merchants into the platform.

and we hope to maintain that going forward for the rest of the year. So all in all a good trajectory. We haven't seen, I would say, any delays in merchants' decision making due to macroeconomics.

in order to decide to put the budgets and integrate globally into the solution. So far the pipeline looks robust. We look forward to maintaining it for the rest of the year.

And as well, we look forward for some contribution, mainly in Q4 coming out of Market Pro once it goes into a general availability.

Got it, Overno. That's super helpful. And a mirror in my follow up here is on AI, and you mentioned it in your prepared remarks. And I wanted to dig into that a little bit more. Thinking about how you are thinking about the AI benefit for customers. And maybe do.

breaking it out into two buckets, you know, maybe, uh, how customers might use it, you know, using the AI to drive faster ROI, you know, either from faster onboarding onto the global e-platform or even expansion of some of those big brands that you have that, you know, that have many brands and many different geographies, you know, that's, that's number one, or is it more for driving enhanced?

that you've mentioned, which is increasing or using these models to greatly enhance the level of insights that we can generate for our merchants based on our data, based on our accumulated proprietary data.

This is obviously something, as you know, that we've been doing for a while now, but we believe there is great potential in using AI-based tools to dramatically enhance the quality, the granularity, and the time to market for us.

and make it even more actionable for our merchants and therefore drive better performance overall for them on our platform. So that's definitely one big bucket. The other bucket I would say is more internal, which is kind of driving efficiencies all across different functions in the organization.

in our know-how so uh... these are i would say the the two main buckets one is more uh... outbound that kind of our our merchants will enjoy uh... directly the other one is more internal where we as uh... as a company will enjoy uh... internally but that's that's currently the way we view the the two main

buckets that we'll pursue. Thank you, thank you Amir. Super helpful, thanks so much.

that we will pursue. Thank you, Mayor. Super helpful. Thanks so much. Thank you, Cody.

Thank you. Our next question comes from a line of James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley . Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, good morning and thanks this morning everybody. Wanted to touch on quickly the US. Obviously you highlighted that it's growing very quickly and it certainly was bright spotted around 100% over your growth. Can you help us disaggregate that growth generally on an organic basis versus...

what came from the border-free acquisition and provide some commentary with respect to how you are thinking about that region and how it what your assumptions are within your outlook.

So thanks James for that. It's all fair. Most of the growth is organic. Border free has contributed, but the lioncher of the growth is organic. And it's driven by our ongoing strong momentum that we have in the US.

Some bias towards direct-to-consumer and sort of new-age brands, celebrity-endorsed and so on, which are growing faster than average. And also, I would say the stabilization of the environment in Europe , because the largest market for US merchants is obviously Europe .

and that has contributed to a certain extent as well. Got it, got it. And then I wanted to ask about the interaction with Shopify and just get a better sense of what controls the pace of penetration and onboarding with Shopify merchants.

You know, Moon, how we think about it, it looks like a very sizable, outstanding GMV opportunity. Is that something where you can kind of push the accelerator or is it more of an organic cadence and how should we think about that in 2023?

We're into the rest of 2023 and into 2024.

Hi, James, it's Neil. So basically I would break it into two separate buckets. When you look at the globally, I would say, a third party solution provided in the Shopify native checkout, which is a regular solution, this will continue to grow and will continue to grow fast. We have been growing very nicely.

since we gained exclusivity on Shopify every and a half ago and it continues to grow nicely to date. In parallel to it, we expect to see acceleration on the Markets Pro.

which is a Shopify own solution powered by globally. And this will start to take effect as of Q4 as we expect following the general availability in the US in the summertime. And we expect to see much more of the effect coming into 2024 on this solution.

So the combination of both, we do expect to see an acceleration into 2024 in realizing potential on Shopify. Got it, got it. Thank you.

we do expect to see an acceleration into 2024 in realizing potential on Shopify. API thank you for your time seeing the 2021

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Samad Asamana with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A fair minute, I'll follow up for you on the guidance. Just kind of reconciling the strong one Q and maybe with the revision implies for the rest of the year. Any changes in what you're assuming for NRR for the rest of the year, or what you're assuming in terms of the timing of go-lives is that for, you know,

we, due to the uncertainty, we remained a bit on the conservative side. We did see some positive signs in Q1, as we said, the demand from consumers was relatively positive or at least more positive than we initially.

delays, projects are running on time. In general, some usual delays, we are able to launch a bit earlier than expected, but nothing notable on that. We remain optimistic regarding the remaining of the year, but again in terms of...

gets the service revenue caper higher, including something like multi-local, just maybe any updates there, I mean, I mean, I don't know, I'm in the corner and how many progress there looks in, and how we should think about that, maybe being a source of further modernization as year progresses.

So then basically we have seen progress in multiple arenas, for example we have seen a high adoption of our new capabilities around duty drawback in different parts of the world for European merchants, for US merchants.

an additional contribution coming out of the man generation and our ability to drive traffic into sites that we are currently working on. So we do believe that there will be a lever, I would say, to continue and see a gradual increase in the take-ways over time.

Great, thanks again for your presence.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line, a Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. So just one for me. So it's interesting to see with customers like Disney Europe , like the expansion so early on, but also with LVMH, who's been a customer for a while. So I'd love to understand kind of the land and expand dynamics as we've progressed through 2023. Are customers looking to kind of go multi-region to start, or how do we think about that land versus expand motion this year? Thanks, guys.

So I think we have started in that, especially with the larger merchants, where they scale up or that they have presence, physical presence around the world, either direct presence or v

those brands would typically do opt over time to go into a more multi-local mode of work and this we support, we do see that over time. In some of the larger brands you also see regional decision making, so once you land into a...

and such as the image where you have multiple success stories that just create the gravity centers for others to follow because they do share breast practices, they do give a corporate advice and on the back of it we do see a significant growth within groups. In terms of a friend and a friend we hope...

Thanks, Jim.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Beck with Cuban Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you for taking the question. I wanted to ask a little bit about Border Free. Obviously, it's becoming more integrated into the platform, and I imagine there's some opportunity, particularly on the fulfillment side. Maybe just where you are with respect to

the phasing of synergies and kind of how we should be thinking about that as we progress through the year. So in terms of hydro-shakes Neil, in terms of border free, I think we see the realization of the goals that we aim for in the acquisition.

The first one would be related to the demand generation capability, the marketing assets, where we started to build on the infrastructure we acquired from Boulder Free in order to launch a more sophisticated demand generation services for the entire global group.

part we have realized I would say the first synergy which is actually utilizing the premium standard services of Pitney Bowes into Canada giving access to our US-based brands into a standard solution that has a great SLA.

and great reporting attached to it. And all in all, we did see also the ability to leverage the professional team as well as the services and some of the services we acquired from Borderfree in order to accelerate the development of globally on...

live by the end of 2024.

It's super helpful. And then maybe just a follow-up on MarketsPro. Obviously, this is a segment generally, you know, SMB, self-service that you've spent less time in historically, looking at the company's history.

So what are you really hoping to, I guess, learn during the early access or really refine? Is it really the onboarding components? Is it really the integration with the Shopify admin and really how merchants become aware of it? What are some of I guess the key objectives that you really need to overcome during this kind of early access?

part of the process so that you're really well positioned as you go into formal launch later in the year.

Sure, basically the early access allowed both us and Shopify to fine-tune, I would say, the model to make sure that we give as much benefit as globally can give, but at a very light touch model.

That's on one hand and the other thing is that it allows us to fine-tune, as you mentioned, also the onboarding process to see that we don't have leakage or things that are, I would say, overcomplicated for an SMB, the onboarding steps towards being activated on Markets Pro. So we do them both.

we fine-tune what are the benefits and how do we give the most benefit as part of working with this subset. And on the other hand, we fine-tune the onboarding process in order to get to general availability without more I would say the business benefit we can bring while making it as easy as possible to switch on.

what are the benefits and how do we give the most benefit as part of working with this subset. And on the other hand, we fine-tune the onboarding process in order to get to general availability without more, I would say, the business benefit we can bring while making it as easy as possible to switch on. Makes sense. Thanks, Nir.

Of.

Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Brent Braceland with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

This is Hannah Rudolph on for Brent this morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just one for me. We've heard from other companies that there has been some softening from the luxury consumer. It sounds like you've seen better than expected demand there, but just wondering if you could talk about specifically what you've seen in the luxury goods category, especially among your existing customers and existing brands. Thanks. Thanks.

brands and gaining more markets for their current a luxury a client of us however we have seen more accelerated growth for mass market retailers this year but but but I don't think that luxury slows down it's just for us didn't grow as fast as we have seen

with the with mass markets retailer

with mass markets retailer.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you'd like to join the question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Coed with Autonomous Research. Please proceed with your question.

Hey guys, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So another one on Shopify Markets Pro for me. Shopify mentioned on their earnings call that 100,000 of their merchants currently use either Shopify Markets or Shopify Markets Pro today. So I was hoping you could just remind us of the additional value added services.

question it's new. Shopify Markets Pro actually adds on top of Shopify Markets the ability to enjoy a full suite of services of merchants on record which actually takes all the heavy lifting of in-country registrations for duty and tax, filing and whatever is required from the merchant and moves it.

into Shopify and globally making it, I would say, virtually seamless for the merchants. So it's much more comprehensive than just having the suite of services taken, but actually the merchant needs to manage a lot of components by himself. In terms of the growth of the...

2024 and 2025 we do expect it to reach significant numbers Super helpful. Thank you. And then just as a follow-up Just more broadly aside from Shopify. I was hoping you guys could touch on your biggest investment priorities here and then

One is geographical expansion, as Ofer mentioned in the call. We are opening more geographies in terms of outbound markets, so expanding our ability to support merchants from additional countries. And we are also investing in further developing.

our offerings around multi-local and additional services, as was mentioned earlier in the call. In addition, we are investing and will continue to invest in areas such as data, both in general and as many as possible.

of new brands onto the platform. So definitely lots to do and lots to invest in all around the platform, all contributing to our growth trajectory.

Super helpful. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Slocket for any final comments.

Thank you everyone for joining us today and we very much look forward to seeing you again on our future earning schools. Before we adjourn, I would just like to take this opportunity to say once again a big thank you to all our wonderful team members throughout the world whose hard work and total dedication to the success of our merchants.

remains a true driving force behind our continued growth and success. So until next time, goodbye to you all and take care. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Please do not disconnect your lines at this time.