Q4 2023 Sonos Inc Earnings Call
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Good afternoon, My name is Krista and I'll be your conference operator today at this time I would like to welcome everyone to so no its fourth quarter and fiscal 'twenty twenty-three conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and.
Answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad and if you would like to withdraw your question. Please press star one again. Thank you I will now like to turn the conference over to James Boot Galanis head of Investor Relations James You May.
Again.
Thanks, Krista good afternoon, and welcome to Sony fourth quarter, and fiscal 2023 earnings Conference call I'm, James Borgwarner and with me today are CEO, Patrick Spence and CFO and Chief Legal Officer, Eddie Lazarus for those who joined the call early today's hold music is a sampling from our new Sone Us radio HD exclusive station.
Lazy day country before I hand, it over to Patrick I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion will include forward looking statements regarding future events and our future financial performance. These statements reflect our views as of today, only and should not be considered as representing our views of any subsequent date. These statements are also subject to material risks and uncertainties that could.
Cause actual results to differ materially from expectations reflected in the forward looking statements and discussion of these risk factors is fully detailed under the caption risk factors in our filings with the SEC. During this call. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures for information regarding our non-GAAP financials, and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures. Please.
Refer to todays press release regarding our fourth quarter and fiscal 2023 results posted to the Investor Relations portion of our website. As a reminder, the press release supplemental earnings presentation and conference call transcript will be available on our Investor Relations website investors <unk> Com I would like to also note that for convenience, we have separately posted an investor presentation.
Our Investor Relations website, which contains certain portions of our supplemental earnings presentation I will now turn the call over to Patrick.
Thank you James and Hello, everyone earlier today, we announced our Q4 and fiscal 2023 results, which came in roughly in line with the midpoint of our guidance for revenue and adjusted EBITDA.
Revenue of $1, six 6 billion was down 6% year over year or down 3%, excluding foreign exchange and adjusted EBITDA was $154 million.
While our business is more resilient than many of our competitors. Thanks to our strong brand and loyal customer base. It was a challenging year in the categories in which we play today.
The good news is that we've retained strong market share positions in the countries. We play despite our competitors offering deep discounts throughout the year.
In fact, we recorded our highest market share in home theater in both the United States and Germany. This year since 2019.
This is a testament to the strength of our brand our product portfolio and the execution of our team.
We know we're in a down part of the business cycle. When it comes to home audio and we know that eventually consumers will return there.
There are strong secular trends that will help drive our business over the long term.
From home is going to be an enduring phenomenon.
<unk> will be increased home consumption of video content and as the touring success of Taylor Swift and Beyonce attest music and the Joy. It brings remains an essential and thriving part of our culture.
<unk> benefits from all of this.
In fiscal 2023, we once again proved that we're willing to make necessary changes towards driving sustainable profitable growth.
We made the difficult decision to right size our expense base in mid June when we conducted a 7% reduction in force and substantially reduced our real estate footprint.
I am confident that we are investing at the right level to achieve our long term growth objectives, and our plan is to strictly limit any future headcount growth to initiatives that will drive incremental growth.
We appointed three highly successful executives to key leadership roles at Sonus, they've hit the ground running and I have high expectations for their contributions they will make across marketing sales and product both in fiscal 'twenty four and the years to come.
Most importantly, we further expanded our lead over the competition by doing what we do best producing great products. This year's new product introductions, we're focused primarily on raising the bar in our existing categories to ensure that picking sonus over the competition is the easiest decision in the world.
We already had great products on the market with the one and move but these products are often a customer's first donuts purchase. So it is critic of critical importance that we continue to innovate and further separate ourselves from the competition.
This is why we launched moved to our new and improved premium portable all in one speaker, which we're confident is the best on the market.
And our customers agree sales are ahead of expectations and moved to is rated four nine out of five stars on Sonus Dot Com drew.
Driven by the immense benefit of a higher fidelity stereo sound stage deeper base and 24 hour battery life. It is a similar story for the two ore speakers, we launched earlier this year.
We had the best in class all in one at an entry level price point with <unk> hundred and the best Dolby Atmos speaker on the market with <unk> 300 <unk>.
Time magazine recently named the <unk> 301 of the best inventions of 2023.
The downcycle in consumer discretionary spending put a damper on the revenue growth from these products in fiscal 2023, but it will be best in class for years to come and they will drive our brand and category strength well into the future.
As we start our new fiscal year I would like to take a moment to reintroduce the key pieces of the <unk> story.
Why we are different from virtually every other consumer electronics company out there.
We have a large and growing installed base of Arden, Sony supporters, who consistently purchase additional products to expand their sonar system.
They generate buzz for our new product launches the eagerly flock to our retail partner stores to test and purchase of our new products. They preorder from a direct to consumer channel Sonus Dot com.
After local custom installers to outfit their homes with our products and most importantly, they singer appraises to their friends and family as evidenced by word of mouth being one of the top contributors to our household growth.
Our installed base is a layer cake of cohorts of new households acquired over the last 18 years.
Each year, our business is driven by both the acquisition of new homes that enter our install base and by our loyal customers, who continue to make subsequent purchases overtime.
In recent years, our customers have started with an average of one six products and within a three year window over one third of those customers have repurchased additional products at a relatively steady clip.
As more recent years' cohorts continue to age early indications are that their behavior is consistent to that of the pre COVID-19 cohorts, which we've illustrated on page 31 of the earning deck earnings deck and page 15 of the Investor presentation.
We see tremendous opportunity to drive purchase participation, even higher being via marketing efforts and new product introductions.
This steady consistent behavior across our installed base is why we saw average products per household grow to 3.05 at the end of fiscal 2023, which is up from $2 98 in the prior year.
Simultaneously through price optimization and favorable product mix, we've increased the revenue we generate per product sold we expect this trend of driving greater lifetime value across our cohorts to continue.
As we've noted in the past 40% of our households are single product households, today, whereas our average multi product household has four four products.
We're starting to get into the range. We have previously discussed of four to six products for every household we estimate the converting our single product households to the average multi product households, install size represents a $6 billion revenue opportunity now.
This highlights the long runway, we have to further monetize our install base and give us confidence in our ability to eventually deliver on our long term financial targets today.
Today, we have just 2% of the $100 billion global audio market and a 9% share of the households in our core markets.
To be prudent we have built our fiscal 2024 plan with the assumption that the weak consumer demand we saw in this quarter will persist.
Obviously, we cannot control the conditions affecting our categories, but we can control the products, we will bring to market. So that's what we've concentrated our efforts on.
As I said fiscal 2023 with a year of raising the bar in our existing categories.
Fiscal 2024 will be different.
This year marks the beginning of a multiyear product cycle, which will will demonstrate the payoff of the investments we've made in research and development over the past few years.
In the second half of the year, we will be launching a major product in a new multibillion dollar category that will complement our current offerings excite customers and drive immediate revenue.
All told we expect to generate over $100 million from new product introductions. This year with this exciting new product accounting for a large portion of this revenue in the second half.
Our expectation of revenue between $1 6 billion and $1 7 billion is effectively flat to fiscal 2023 at the midpoint.
This is far short of what we believe the growth rate for a company can be in normal times, but we believe this is prudent given that we have been in a post pandemic downswing in the cycle for our categories that may not yet be at its end.
As I've lived through multiple times in my 25 years in Tech, we fully expect that consumer behavior will normalize in time and our relentless focus on innovation execution and an exciting product roadmap will result in us returning to low double digit revenue growth.
We also expect to return to our annual target range GAAP gross margin in fiscal 2024 and are setting our guidance midpoint at 45, 5%.
We fell short of where we wanted to be in fiscal 2023, but we have line of sight to improvement in fiscal 2024, which Eddie will discuss shortly.
We will be monitoring and adjusting expenses that are necessary to drive some margin expansion this year.
We've already taken the extraordinary step of holding salaries flat this year, except for a small number of employees receiving promotions.
We have been and will continue to work the balance between constraining cost in a down environment with prioritizing investments to deliver the new products and services that will yield significant revenue and margin expansion this year and the following years.
Bringing it altogether, we are targeting $165 million of adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint of guidance, which is a margin of 10% up 70 basis points from fiscal 2023, despite our guidance for revenue to be flat at the midpoint.
Once we return to a normalized demand environment, we will make more swift progress towards our target of 15% to 18% adjusted EBITDA margins.
As we navigate this challenging environment, we do so with a strong balance sheet more than $200 million of cash and no debt.
That is after repurchasing $55 million of stock in Q4 more than we've ever done in a single quarter.
We recognize the importance of returning capital to shareholders and mitigating dilution to our share count.
To that end I am pleased to announce that our board of directors has authorized a new $200 million share repurchase repurchase program.
We have an exciting few years ahead of us and believe that repurchasing stock at these levels is a great use of capital.
We improved our cash generation in fiscal 2023 and expect to continue to do so in fiscal 2024.
We will continue to pursue a balanced capital allocation strategy between organic investment returning capital to shareholders and opportunistic M&A to accelerate our roadmap and drive profitable growth.
In closing I want to reiterate that we are laser focused on what we can control and our long term commitment is to drive both top and bottom line growth.
We are positioning the company and our capital allocation to accelerate our growth as our categories regained their footing and we are excited to enter new categories. As you will see later this year.
Our investments in R&D over the last several years will begin to pay off more significantly this year and should drive accelerating growth in fiscal 'twenty five in fiscal 'twenty six as economic conditions normalize.
The opportunity ahead remains large and our ability to capture a disproportionate share only improves with the proactive measures we have and will continue to take.
Well it certainly turbulent in the short term I have great confidence that our plans will drive value for our shareholders over the long term.
Now I will turn the call over to Eddie to provide more details on our results and our outlook.
Thank you Patrick and Hello, everyone.
As Patrick observed we finished the year characterized by three things first softening consumer demand in our categories as we work through economic transition following the pandemic.
Second.
Important improvements in our product lineup that will serve us for years to come.
And third a tight focus on costs to match the softer demand environment.
Turning to the numbers.
2023 revenues were $1 six 6 billion.
A year over year decline of three 3% constant currency and five 5% reported.
Foreign exchange was a $39 million headwind to revenue a very significant portion of that headwind flowed through to reduce gross profit and adjusted EBITDA.
Product registrations, which reflect consumer demand grew 5% year over year, whereas products sold which reflects sales to our retailers and installers in our DTC channel declined 9% year over year.
The variance between these two figures represent the reduction in channel inventory levels that we saw across both the retailer and installer channels.
This reduction puts us in a healthy channel inventory position across our channels and geographies as we enter the holiday season.
Products sold declined by more than revenue on a percentage basis due to a 4% increase in revenue per product sold.
This increase resulted from some price increases and favorable product mix, partially offset by increased promotional activity and FX headwinds.
Performance varied significantly on a regional basis.
Revenue in the Americas was up slightly year over year, which continued our unbroken streak of increasing revenue every year in the Americas. Since we went public in 2018.
By contrast revenue in EMEA declined, 10% and in APAC, 32% year over year.
The softer performance in EMEA and APAC relative to the Americas reflects the particularly difficult macroeconomic environment affecting those regions, which impacted both retailers sell in and run rate registration trend.
On a channel basis retail and other which includes Ikea and other business initiatives declined 7% and was cumulatively 55% of sales.
As previously noted EMEA and APAC were particularly challenged in the year, whereas the Americas were more resilient.
DTC was roughly flat year over year and was 24% of sales.
Installer solutions came in at 21% of sales declining 7% year over year as our dealers work down channel inventory.
As we called out on previous calls we entered FY2023 with too much stock in the installer channel and thanks to registration significantly outpacing selling we're entering FY 'twenty four and a much cleaner channel inventory position.
GAAP gross margin was 43, 3% down 220 basis points year over year.
Gross margin was impacted by a return to normal level of promotional activity versus FY 'twenty to higher component costs, a 120 basis point FX headwind and over 100 basis points of excess component provisions, partially offset by fewer spot component purchases price increases and lower air freight expense.
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While this year's gross margin is below our annual target of $45 to 47%.
I am confident that we can get gross margin back into this range in fiscal 2024.
Adjusted EBITDA was $154 million, representing a margin of nine 3%.
The year over year decline was driven by lower revenue gross margin contraction and ongoing investments in our product roadmap.
non-GAAP adjusted operating expenses were $612 million in fiscal 2023.
There were a number of moving pieces impacting our expense base in the year, including lower bonus payout for our employees deferred program spend to protect profitability and the 7% risk we announced in mid June.
Taking these factors into account, we estimate that our normalized expense base was approximately $665 million.
Over 40% of revenue.
I will discuss this further while providing guidance, but I would note that the midpoint of our guidance for FY 'twenty four assumes operating expenses stay roughly flat to this normalized FY2023 level.
We ended the year with $220 million of cash and no debt free.
Free cash flow was $50 million, an increase of $125 million year over year.
This result was primarily driven by working capital improvements, resulting from our focus on better managing our inventory.
Our total inventory balance ended the year at $347 million.
Down 24% year over year.
I am proud of our team's efforts to work down our finished goods balance sheet.
We are entering the holidays carrying $108 million less inventory on our balance sheet than we did in Q4 of fiscal 2022.
Okay.
Finished goods were $282 million up 17% sequentially as we build inventory into the holidays.
A component balance of $65 million was up 12% sequentially.
As previously discussed.
We expect our component balance to continue to increase in the near term before reaching a peak sometime in this fiscal year.
Further managing our owned inventory and improving cash conversion remains a top priority and we expect to exit the first quarter and an even better inventory position.
We completed our $100 million share repurchase authorization by repurchasing 4 million shares for $55 million at an average price of $13 71 per share representing three 1% of common shares outstanding as of Q3.
For the full year, we repurchased six 6 million shares at an average price of $15 25 per share, which was more than all of which more than offset our equity grants for the year, taking our basic share count down by $1 7 million shares.
Net reduction of one 3%.
As Patrick mentioned, our board announced a new $200 million share repurchase authorization.
Turning capital to shareholders and managing dilution remains a high priority within our balanced capital allocation framework.
And finally before turning to guidance I'll now quickly recap our Q4 results.
We reported revenues of $305 $1 million towards the higher end of our guidance range of $290 to $310 million.
Revenue in the Americas increased 2% year over year, which was relatively in line with our expectations for the quarter.
Revenue in EMEA, and APAC declined by 9% and 28% respectively year over year due to softening demand.
As we noted last quarter, we see the challenging macroeconomic climates in both regions weighing on our results.
Q4 gross margin came in below our expectations at 42% up 270 basis points year over year, but down 400 basis points sequentially from Q3.
This decline was due to timing of recognition of Contra revenue related to select channel fill ahead of the holiday season, and higher excess component provisions.
Gross profit dollars increased three 2% year over year.
Adjusted EBITDA was $6 3 million slight.
Slightly above our expectations, primarily due to lower operating expenses.
Total non-GAAP adjusted operating expense of $135 $6 million declined by $14 million or 9% from Q3 due to lower bonus bonus accrual and a full quarter's impact of our mid June risks.
Now for our fiscal 2020 for guidance.
We expect revenue in the range of one six to $1 7 billion representing.
Representing a year over year decline of 3% at the low end and growth of 3% at the high end and roughly flat year over year at the midpoint.
Embedded in this guidance is the key assumption that we will generate more than $100 million of revenue from new product introductions in FY 'twenty for the lion's share of which will come from the new multibillion dollar category that we will be entering in the second half of fiscal 2024.
Because of the timing of our new product launches and their associated revenue contributions. We expect the shape of this year to defer from past years with the first half half representing somewhere between 51% to 53% of our full year's revenue.
Our guidance assumes that the weak consumer demand we saw in Q4 of fiscal 'twenty three persist throughout fiscal 'twenty four with the low end assuming trend softened somewhat further.
Any recovery in run rate trends of our categories broadly, we drive upside to our guidance.
We expect GAAP gross margins in the range of $45 to 46%, which would bring us back into our annual target range with a midpoint of 45, 5%.
This implies GAAP gross profit dollars flat to up 9% year over year with the midpoint being 5% growth, we foresee improvements in component costs favorable product mix fewer spot component purchases and lower excess component provisions all contributing to our recovery from the <unk> 43.
<unk>, 3%, we reported in fiscal 2023.
As a reminder, fiscal.
Fiscal 2020, Three's GAAP gross margin was impacted by approximately 120 basis points of FX headwind and over 100 basis points of excess component provisions.
We will continue to guide GAAP gross margins as we have done in the past, but to make it easier to model our business, we have begun providing GAAP to non-GAAP gross profit and gross margin reconciliations of such non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be $45 four to 46, 4%.
Approximately $7 million of stock based comp and amortization of intangibles allocated to GAAP cost of revenue.
Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $150 million to $180 million, representing a margin of nine 4% to 10, 6%.
At the midpoint adjusted EBITDA is $165 million, representing a 10% margin up from nine 3% in fiscal 2023.
non-GAAP operating expenses are expected to be between 39 and 40% of revenue.
At the midpoint this is approximately $649 million.
Decrease of 2% year over year from our normalized non-GAAP operating expense base in fiscal 2023.
We have other expense reduction initiatives underway as well as we relentlessly seek out cost savings as Patrick mentioned earlier, we are entering a period of harvesting the fruits of our past investments, enabling us to strictly limit hiring going forward and future head count growth will be tied to a significant incremental benefit.
Two our growth ambitions.
In the event that we see topline performance tracking ahead of our outlined expectations, we will balance investment and allows some of the incremental gross profit dollars to flow through to adjusted EBITDA.
We are not providing formal guidance for free cash flow in fiscal 2024 at this time however.
However, we do expect to significantly improve our conversion ratio from the 33% we saw in fiscal 2023.
As for Q1.
We expect to see revenue increased sequentially by approximately 90% to 100% roughly in line with past seasonality.
Note that the 113% sequential growth observed in Q1 of fiscal 2023.
It was driven by nonrecurring factors related to past supply constraints, including a significant amount of amp backlog that was cleared in the quarter as well as the launch of sub many.
We expect GAAP gross margin for Q1 to be a bit below the low end of our annual guidance range of $45 to 46%.
And non-GAAP operating expenses to increase by $45 million to $50 million sequentially, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin in the mid teens.
Last but not least to touch briefly on a Google litigation.
We suffered a setback in our litigation against Google in the Northern District of California.
When when the district court overturned the jury verdict, awarding us $32 $5 million for googles infringement of one of our zones <unk> patents.
We disagree with this ruling and others. The court made and we have already appealed.
On a positive note an administrative law judge comprehensively rejected Google's second case against US at the International Trade Commission with a different judge having already indicated that you would be ruling against Google in the first of the cases they had filed.
And finally last week the federal circuit held oral argument on the appeal and cross appeal from the case, we brought against Google at the ITC, where the commission ruled that Google infringed five valid sonar patents covering the setup synchronization equalization and volume control of smart speakers.
Once the appeals process and we will be free to pursue damages case based on these patents that is pending but stayed in the federal District Court in Los Angeles.
While the road has been long in the journey has a ways to go we remain confident that we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to whole Google accountable for infringing on our patents and that we will obtain a handsome return on our investment in defending our innovations.
To wrap up I'd, just like to commend our team for all their works to a challenging year.
It speaks volumes about the strength of both our brand and our product portfolio that we were able to continue our strong market share performance. Despite everyone else in the industry deeply discounting their products.
We will continue to drive innovation and quality is that sets us apart in good times and bad and we can't wait to show you one of the things that we've been working on in the second half of the year.
With that I'll turn it over to questions.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Tom Forte from D. A Davidson. Please go ahead.
Great.
Thank you for the thoughtful comments as always.
Two quick initial questions and then one quick follow up so in my first two quick ones.
Are you seeing disproportionate numbers and your sales for lower priced items, and then arc suite, how are consumers responding to your promotions.
So Tom where we're not seeing.
Anything special at the low end in fact.
The average sales price of our products went up 4% this year year over year and it had gone up significantly the year before as well.
So we're seeing.
The premium this is working for us.
And.
Remind me the second question I'm, sorry, yes. So thank you for that from Howard So promotions, yes.
They are responding.
The consumer is definitely looking for promotions, there's just no doubt about that we've seen over performance.
In the fourth quarter and that was one of the things that.
Hit our gross margin and we've taken that into account.
In computing are.
Our guide for fiscal 'twenty four.
Great and then my second follow up question.
So you're looking at to gauge future demand.
As housing starts or anything else I think the challenge for everyone right now in consumer electronics.
Try to determine when the demand returns I'm curious what high level data points, you're looking at.
Yes, Tom Youre exactly right I mean, I think that is the challenge for everybody and I think.
Having been in this cycle for about a year now we're just being very prudent about how we look at our business and what we're hearing from our channels our planning as we go through it and so we.
We're looking at all the data points that you probably look at but at the same time I think we really before we would say.
Things are normalizing, we'd want to see it in our actual numbers and that's going to be our approach for right now is.
You heard from US we have been prudent and assumed that the the environment. We've seen in 'twenty three will continue.
And until we start to see something different in our categories or our results we.
We won't.
Change our perspective on that.
Great. Thank you Patrick Thank you Eddie.
Your next question comes from the line of Steve Frankel from Rosenblatt. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and let me just backtrack for one minute and could you repeat.
The Q1 revenue guidance are you, saying.
Just remind me again exactly what youre, saying there.
Net.
Our revenue guidance.
Right. So the revenue for Q1.
We expect to be up.
Sequentially from Q4 dollars, 90% to 100%, which reflects typical seasonality between Q4 and Q1.
Okay, Great and then given whats going on with the consumer and what your partners like best buy are doing in terms of inventory.
Are you contemplating doing anything different in 2004 to drive more business C or D to C channel.
No I mean, the one thing we've been working on Steve is we do experiment.
With the what we're trying to do on a customer relationship management through our DTC, so trying to tap into that $6 billion opportunity with our existing customers.
We have a team that is.
<unk> is focused on trying to tap into that group and experimenting with a variety of offers and information and reach out and some of these things and so there are activities there.
That will be occurring during the year to try and.
Accelerate repurchase if you will.
So there is something that there is always things that we're doing in DTC I would say that our experiments.
Experiments to see how we might drive sales, particularly with our existing base and then we will usually take those learnings and share those with all of our large retail partners as we go through it but.
We believe there continues to be opportunity in every channel and we have a plan with each of our partners and in DTC that attempts to drive growth as well. So we certainly don't see it as trading off from one channel to the other.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Steve.
Your next question comes from the line of Greg <unk> from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Awesome. Thank you guys for taking my questions Patrick maybe if we if we start and take a step back it's clear that your flywheel was still working last year right. You saw you are kind of important installed base metrics grow again year over year some of them on an absolute basis accelerated but revenue was down obviously.
And is expected to be flat next year. So maybe my question is how should we pair those two dynamics together the flywheel is working but it's not translating into growth what changes that.
Yeah, and I think this is it gets to the fact that we.
<unk> held.
Held.
Our strong market share position despite in our categories sales overall being down 10% to 20% year over year and so.
And that's with <unk> with <unk>.
Tons of discounting by our competition as well and consistently throughout the year, but pretty unprecedented from everything that I've seen and so the fact that we can hold our own in an environment like that the model continues to work with people come back if anything that part of the flywheel, where we have existing customers returning to purchase helps us in a period like this.
Because that is different than most consumer electronics company and creates.
Creates revenue.
That helps make sure that we can work through this period and then Eric I think through both the combination of the new product.
Categories that were going into plus consumers coming back to purchasing audio products electronics as we go into that I think will allow us to get back to where we want to be from.
Our growth perspective overall on the revenue front and so I think it's one of those periods. We obviously had up cycle. The previous couple of years and now we've had a challenging 2003, and we're going to be prudent in how we look at 'twenty four given what we've seen.
Over the last year, and but I also know having been at this for a long time that these things are cyclical and we will see people coming back.
To the category and we are going to be in an excellent position when they do and in the meantime, we're also going to focus on going into new categories that present, new opportunities with new customers and we know that those customers will come back and purchase more products too and so those things combined will put us in a good position to return to growth.
Okay No that's awesome. Thank you for the color there and then.
Patrick you also made the comment that we're kind of sitting ahead of a multiyear product cycle, we'd just love for you to expand on why you believe that is.
That's that really is a result of the investments we've been making.
The last few years and so I.
You talked about last year at this time. The fact, we are going to for new categories.
We went into one last year, which are shown as pro which is more of a slow build in terms of that one but a big opportunity for us long term. The one will get into this year has more immediate benefits too.
Our business in terms of we go through that and so.
We have more coming and we feel like we're in a good position now where we will be able to leverage those entries into new categories to drive.
Good growth in each of the fiscal year ahead, and so that's something that we're very excited about we know it's difficult on your side too.
<unk> four things you don't know about like a roadmap and we felt it was important this year to give an indication.
Of the new category, we will be entering as it's quite.
<unk> so what we're what we're laying out for fiscal 2024.
And but obviously, we don't get into the roadmap on a tick tock basis, but it's something that we've been investing in and we feel is going to going to.
Going to help us as we try to drive that kind of consistent growth every year.
Okay. That's helpful and maybe just a quick follow up on that.
You've never necessarily share that $100 million, new product contribution type of metric. Historically, just just curious if you can give us any color on maybe how that compares to past years just to help us gauge how truly important you believe this new product and kind of new market could be for you and thats. It from me.
Thanks, so much.
Thanks, Eric.
This category is a multibillion dollar category. So we're super excited about it and Super excited for where your plan that team has been doing a great job.
Every category is little different in terms of where we've been timing the.
The existing customer base, we have in all of those things and so we wanted to just give people.
An idea of the kind of impact they could expect from this year and so.
We're super excited about it and looking forward to this category and the ones we have to follow as well.
Your next question comes from the line of Jason Haas from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions I'm curious if this recent unfavorable ruling changes your litigation strategy at all.
Ted will have any impact on on a.
Future.
Court cases, if there's any implications from that.
It doesn't change our strategy.
The judge in Northern California.
Adopted what we think is a.
Sure.
Legal doctrine that bears that simply doesn't bear on our case and that.
The fact that he.
Brought to bear to support the ruling alright are inaccurate and we so we intend to appeal, we feel very strongly that we have a good chance on appeal.
So it doesn't otherwise.
Affect our strategy. It also doesn't have implications for our other cases.
The.
The next big damages case that we will be teeing up in California.
And a different court involves five completely different patents. So there is just no overlap in either <unk> or in terms of the patents. So way. So we're just full steam ahead on the current strategy.
Got it that's good to hear and then as my follow up I'm curious if you could talk about where you think your share gains are coming from as you mentioned.
I think it's been a few quarters now you've mentioned that competitors have been very promotional.
It's good to see in light of that you picked up share. So just curious if you had any sense of where those are coming from.
Yes.
I would say home theater has been a particular strong part and I think that's a testament to our portfolio.
Youll recall, we haven't introduced anything new in home theater over the last year. Despite some of our competitors doing so so I think it just speaks to the quality of our product portfolio and the execution by our team at retail our DTC team and making sure that we're making it clear why.
Why our products in that category are better than the others that are at their.
Leveraging so so great communications marketing go to market efforts around those kind of things and then our strong customer base that speaks loudly to their friends and family about the quality of <unk> products and I. We've been believers in this model for 18 years, and we've seen the power of it and I think.
In challenging times, even though you see the power of it because we haven't had to discount like so many across the industry have and we've held up well and so I think it comes from building a strong loyal customer base with a great innovative product portfolio over 18 years.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Fuhrman from Craig Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question it looks like the repeat customer metrics were really strong and being nice growth in the number of units owned per customer.
Curious if youre if youre seeing.
<unk> two helping to bring in new customers as you were expecting to after that came out and then just thinking about the new category that you plan on entering later this fiscal year do you think that's something that's really going to be appealing more to new customers or do you see that more as a natural extension to your or to your existing customers.
Yes.
Yes, Thanks, Alex I think the.
The thing I E.
Ways.
What would I say, so pleased with and every product launches how.
How strong the turn out from our existing customers is ultimately for whatever product is that we're building in.
Bringing to the world and we have a very strong following that follow so move to lots of existing customers coming in and purchasing that product and kind of in line with what we'd expect for new and as we as we enter these categories. We certainly expect that.
<unk> customers will go out and buy.
<unk>, maybe multiple and then over time, we expect any of the products that we're working on to help bring new customers.
The sonus ecosystem and that's what we typically see through everything that we build and so.
We have our eye on trying to achieve kind of both of those things that usually phases, where we will see the existing quickly jump on it added to their collection and then.
We will start to bring in new and as you know we have long product life.
Life as well so I think it works very well from a return on investment perspective too.
Great. That's really helpful. Patrick Thank you very much.
If you'd like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone Keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Jake <unk> from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, Thanks for taking my question.
I just wanted to double click on what is the internal thinking on product philosophy product velocity in the number of product launches for fiscal 'twenty four and then further.
How should we think about <unk>.
When is the right time to get marketing dollars behind <unk> Pro and drive up customer awareness. Thank you.
Yes.
No changes to our at least two new products every year as we.
Think about what it is that we're building.
And as we've laid out and why we wanted to give some indication this year, we happened to be entering.
A very large multibillion dollar category. So I wanted to give a little color.
On that but the overall philosophy remains trying to.
To introduce at least two new products every year fiscal 'twenty three was definitely a year of raising the bar in existing categories in fiscal 'twenty. Four is a story of entering new categories, which we're very excited about on the Sonus Pro front, we continue to see good traction in the.
In the in.
In the companies that were in today.
And we're doing some things.
Our side to make it easier for customers to be able to sign up for that service.
And I think as we do that and we learn.
If we've got that right then we can pour some gas on that fire and take it from there. So that's kind of the way we're thinking about that we've got lots of plans and exciting ideas of how we do more in Sonus pro so stay tuned for that overtime.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Brent Thill from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Thanks. So much this is David Lafitte go on for Brian two if I may maybe to start can you just walk through your expectation for promotions this holiday quarter, and how that level of promotion compared to prior years. I know you guys have pointed to deeper discounts that your competitors. So just curious how youre thinking about being.
Being competitive on price this holiday season.
Okay.
So we arent going to change our philosophy, which is really around.
Promotional moments as opposed to being on promotion all the time.
But in the holiday season is the time for that.
Black Friday, cyber Monday is a crucial component of the quarter.
And we are going to be putting out some very interesting and compelling offerings during that period.
So I don't think youre going to see a significant departure from past practice.
But we have always promoted during this period and we will do so again.
Got it that's helpful and then maybe to follow up.
I don't know how much visibility you guys have here, but it looks like you guys did about $33 million in legal and transaction related costs. This year, which is roughly up 50% from last year I think primarily related to the Google litigation is there any color that you provide.
Provider that you have visibility into what that expense could look like in 'twenty four as you guys.
Keep on the gas as it relates to the Google litigation.
We would expect it to be very very significantly lower.
Last year was an unusual year in that we had multiple trials.
Including two that we had to prepare for the ITC only one of which turned out went forward.
The trial in Northern California, which was very hotly contested.
We don't have anything.
Comparable to that on the map for 24, so at least as things stand at the moment.
I'd expect the expense to go down very dramatically.
Super helpful. I appreciate it guys.
We have no further questions in our queue at this time I will now turn the call over to Patrick Spence for closing remarks.
Thanks, Krista and just three quick things for my end first we are at the beginning of a multiyear product cycle, we have a product roadmap that builds on the success you have seen thus far growing products per household and revenue per product as you'll see from the new cohort data, we released today and the earnings slides, our flywheel is real and our lifetime value of our cohort.
This gets turbocharged when we enter new categories, starting with the one we enter in the second half of fiscal 2020 for the runway to continue to monetize our install base is very long.
While the environment remains challenging our market share performance shows that we are holding our own our innovation brand and product portfolio continued to enable us to lead this category without having to sacrifice margin. The way all of our competitors have we are well positioned to accelerate revenue growth back to low double digits as our categories returned to normal and these headwinds subside and finally, we feel good.
The size of the team we have now we don't see a need to add a lot more people to deliver on our long term growth objectives. As you saw from our actions in fiscal 2023, we're always managing and optimizing our expense base to ensure the business will deliver sustainable profitable growth. We are confident we have a path to drive our EBITDA margins to our long term target of 15% to 18%.
Thank you for your time, and we look forward to updating you again next quarter.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.
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Joe.
Okay.
Keith.
Okay.
Yes.
Hey, Dan.
Yes.
John Campbell.
Sure.
Okay.
Yes.
Okay.
Sure.
Yes.
Okay.