Q4 2024 Cellebrite DI Ltd Earnings Call
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Speaker Change: Welcome to the Cellebrite fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results conference call.
Speaker Change: At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation.
Speaker Change: If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star and 1 on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and 2.
Speaker Change: So others can hear your question clearly, we ask that you pick up your handset for best sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance today, please press star and zero. I would now like to turn the call over to your first speaker today, Mr. Andrew Kramer. Mr. Kramer, the floor is yours.
Andrew Kramer: Thank you, Jim, and welcome everybody to Cellebrite's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results call. I'm joined today at our headquarters just outside of Tel Aviv by our primary speakers. Tom Hogan, Cellebrite's interim CEO, and Dana Gerner, Cellebrite's CFO.
Ron and I'm on.
Andrew Kramer: our Chief Products and Technology Officer, and Marcus Jewell, our Chief Revenue Officer, will be available during the Q&A.
There's a slide presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks.
Andrew Kramer: Please advance the slides and the webcast viewer to follow our commentary.
Andrew Kramer: We will call out the slide number we're referring to in our remarks. The call is being recorded and a replay of the recording will be made available on our website shortly after the call, along with a transcript of the event.
Andrew Kramer: Now, let's start with slide number two, a copy of today's press release and financial statements including the GAAP and non-GAAP reconciliations, this slide presentation, and the quarterly financial tables and supplemental historical financial information for each quarter of the past three years are available on the Investor Relations website at Investors.Celebrite.com.
Andrew Kramer: Also, unless stated otherwise, our discussion of our fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial metrics, as well as the financial metrics provided in our outlook, will be done on a non-GAAP basis only, and all historical comparisons are with the comparable periods in 2023.
Andrew Kramer: In addition, please note that statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact
Andrew Kramer: constitute forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause matters expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements not to occur. They could also cause actual results to differ materially from historical results and or from forecasts.
Andrew Kramer: Some of these forward-looking statements are discussed under the heading Risk Factors and Elsewhere in the company's annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC on March 21, 2024, and as amended on April 12, 2024. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.
Andrew Kramer: Slide number three provides an agenda of the topics that we'll cover on today's call.
Andrew Kramer: And with that being said, I'll now turn the call over to Tom Hogan. Tom?
Andrew Kramer: Andy, thanks and thanks everyone for joining us today. As most of you know, I assumed the role of interim CEO effective the start of January.
Tom Hogan: I'm pleased to share that Cellebrite delivered a solid fourth quarter to Capistrong 2024 in which we exceeded our original revenue and adjusted EBITDA targets and delivered at the higher end of our ARR expectations.
Tom Hogan: Dana will review our quarterly and annual financial performance in detail, but at a high level, slide four helps illustrate our continued success.
Tom Hogan: in expanding share of Wallet across our install base and converting that top-line growth into year-over-year improvements in our profitability and free cash flow.
Tom Hogan: On a full-year basis, we delivered a Rule of 50 performance in 2024 with 25% ARR growth and 25% adjusted EBITDA margins, which is also at the high end of our committed Rule of X range of 45 to 50.
Tom Hogan: Strong fundamental performance has once again resulted in another solid year of cash generation with $122 million in free cash flow in 2024.
Tom Hogan: As a cloud-ready, AI-powered market leader with a true end-to-end platform for accelerating justice, the opportunity to help our customers make their communities safer while fueling further value creation at Cellebrite remains significant.
Tom Hogan: With multiple macro tailwinds, we believe, show no signs of fading, we enter 2025 with a commitment to sustain top-line growth and to generate attractive profitability and free cash flow.
Tom Hogan: Dana will share greater detail about our 2025 outlook in a few moments. In the meantime, I'd like to focus the balance of my commentary on key developments to start this year, as well as celebrate top strategic priorities for 2025.
Tom Hogan: Let's start on slide five with a topic that I'm guessing is top of mind for many of you, the status of our CEO search. As previously shared on our last quarterly call, we're working with a tier one executive search firm that has the global remit to surface exceptional candidates.
Tom Hogan: Our priority remains a proven leader with SAS, cloud, and AI software expertise, a global track record, prior exposure to the public sector, and preferably domain-specific expertise.
Tom Hogan: Interest levels have been high given the unique position of Cellebrite as a high growth market leader with equally strong cash flows and I think perhaps most importantly a clearly mission-driven organization.
Tom Hogan: We remain highly selective as we seek an executive whose profile is commensurate with the growth, impact, and quality of this company and pleased with our progress thus far.
Speaker Change: In the meantime, I jumped in as CEO on Jan 1, and I can promise you we're moving with continued pace and urgency.
Speaker Change: I've had the opportunity to lead three companies as the CEO and have held senior leadership positions at several other market-leading firms.
Speaker Change: But I can tell you with complete conviction, there is no other organization I've been prouder or more pleased to lead. Every man and woman at Celebrite, from the board down to our newest hires, is committed to accelerating our journey.
Speaker Change: Celebrite is executing and is truly making the world a better, safer place. Simply said, while we're all looking forward to the appointment of a new world-class leader, we aren't waiting for that event and we're operating with the speed that our customers, employees, and stakeholders expect.
Speaker Change: I want to briefly highlight a few other important milestones since our last call.
First, we relaunched and expanded Customer Advisory Board.
Speaker Change: This forum brings together 12 to 14 senior-level decision-makers at some of our largest and most innovative customers to discuss topical, forensic, and investigative challenges, review trends, policies, and best practices, and explore emerging technologies.
Speaker Change: We held our inaugural meeting in December in Washington, D.C., and we'll host similar sessions this year in the EMEA and ASIAPAC regions.
second
Speaker Change: In early January, we announced an important change to the structure of our board. In keeping with the governance best practice of separating the chairman and CEO duties, Adam Klammer, managing partner of TruWin Capital and former lead independent director, has assumed my former role as board chairman.
Speaker Change: We also announced the appointment of Michael Capellas as a new director, assuming Adam's prior role as our lead independent. Most of you will know Michael's distinguished track record.
as a technology leader.
Speaker Change: having led organizations like Compaq and MCI as the CEO as well as serving as a director on multiple global leaders including his current role as the lead independent director at Cisco.
Speaker Change: Aside from his general management experience, Michael brings two specific skill sets that I think will be invaluable to our next chapter.
Speaker Change: As a legacy CIO, Michael brings to the board unique technical depth and perspective.
and just as important, his history of driving.
Speaker Change: Corporate strategy will complement the strengths and skills of our current board. To further leverage those skills, our board this week launched a new technology and strategy committee, which Michael will chair with Adam Klammer and Troy Richardson as committee members.
Speaker Change: Third, we hosted our annual sales kickoff event in Orlando in late January. Nearly 400 Cellebrite employees, including many of our most recently hired sales representatives, attended this event, which included a keynote from one of our many important partners, Amazon Web Services.
Speaker Change: The energy and excitement, as you would expect, were palpable and the event was a great start to our 2025.
Speaker Change: As we look forward to 2025, we'll maintain the majority of our priorities while complementing and augmenting them with new and important events and areas of focus.
Speaker Change: On the event front, we're very excited about the launch of our inaugural Case-to-Closure Summit.
Speaker Change: This CELEBRITE user conference will convene roughly 500 law enforcement, intelligence, and corporate clients from around the world.
Speaker Change: The event will take place in late March in Washington, D.C., and will deliver hands-on training, educational workshops, and insights from industry experts covering best practices and emerging trends.
Speaker Change: We believe this event will be a seminal moment and celebrates history and a harbinger of the trusted influence we bring to digital investigations.
Speaker Change: Slide six outlines our 2025 priorities. We'll continue the migration of our digital forensics install base to the Insights product suite.
Speaker Change: 2024 exceeded our expectations from both a financial and client satisfaction perspective.
Speaker Change: We close 2024 with roughly 20% of the installed base migrated, as compared to our initial goal of 10%, and enter the new year with the objective of increasing this figure to roughly 50-plus percent.
Speaker Change: More importantly, the early feedback from migrated clients has been exceptional, with most reporting significant improvements in the speed and efficiency of their investigative processes.
Speaker Change: Our insights migration is also driving important growth with increased attach rates for our unlock capabilities. Our unlock penetration increased to the high 30% range at the end of 2024.
Speaker Change: Second, as we mature the power of the C2C platform, we're focused on the growth of our Guardian and Pathfinder solutions.
Speaker Change: Guardian is a key offering within the Celebrite cloud platform which is rapidly gaining traction with investigators, analysts, and prosecutors.
Speaker Change: As part of the Cellebrite cloud platform, Guardian offers management, review, and analysis of digital evidence while protecting the chain of custody and meeting stringent data integrity requirements.
Speaker Change: Our Guardian ARR generated triple-digit percentage growth year-over-year for the second quarter
Speaker Change: as the number of customers with both Insights and Guardian nearly tripled and the volume of stored data quintupled.
Speaker Change: Pathfinder, which is our AI-enabled analytics solution, also delivered strong results in the quarter with year-on-year ARR expansion in line with expectations of growth in the 35 to 50 percent range.
Speaker Change: This asset is critical to investigators as they navigate the mountains of digital artifacts needed to identify high-value patterns, connections, and other evidential insights that are next to impossible to glean quickly through manual review.
Speaker Change: On the technology front, we'll continue to leverage our investments in the cloud and AI, which we view as critical for driving broader adoption of our solutions.
Speaker Change: ARR from our cloud-based offerings nearly doubled to 17% of total ARR in 2024. Aggressive expansion of cloud-based ARR over the coming years will bring multiple benefits to both our clients and our shareholders.
Speaker Change: AI is an equally critical technology for investigations, enabling greater speed, efficiency, and efficacy.
Speaker Change: We've been at the forefront of AI for over a decade, but see an enormous opportunity to advance our mission and our value as we further expand our capabilities. To that end, we announced just last week powerful new Gen AI features for our Guardian solution.
Speaker Change: Next, we continue to invest in accelerating our growth within the U.S. federal sector. This sector delivered strong results in 2024 with AR growth in the mid-20% range.
Speaker Change: We expect that with our recently formed Cellebrite Federal Solutions Unit and its associated clearances, we'll continue to sustain solid growth through 2025 while expanding pipelines
Speaker Change: that will position us for acceleration in 2026 and beyond. A great example of potential pipeline expansion involves our FedRAMP initiative, which enables the Cellebrite cloud platform to meet the U.S. government's demanding security and technical requirements.
Speaker Change: We've made important progress on this front, having announced just yesterday that we achieved FedRAMP Ready status at a high-level designation, which is reserved for only the most secure and rigorous suppliers.
Speaker Change: We're focused on achieving the final milestone of full authorization within the next one to two quarters.
Speaker Change: We'll also maintain our important footprint in the private sector where CelebRITES data collection solutions help enterprises and service providers advance corporate investigations and e-discovery.
Speaker Change: We're encouraged by early progress in expanding our sales pipeline through our exclusive partnership with Relativity, along with the broader adoption of our Endpoint Inspector offering.
Speaker Change: In addition to these areas of focus, we've launched a company-wide initiative to elevate the customer experience and to modernize our processes throughout the customer lifecycle.
Speaker Change: We're advancing a range of programs including investments in new systems, incentives, dedicated and focused resources, and new processes.
Speaker Change: Over time, we believe this effort will drive improvement in multiple metrics like time-to-value, agility, contracting ease, post-sale support, and more, all things that should ultimately drive continuous improvement in our gross retention rates.
Speaker Change: To be clear, these metrics are already strong, but we're confident with added focus we'll have the opportunity to deliver further gains. I would add that all of these investments are fully contemplated in our 2025 outlook.
Speaker Change: Ultimately, we expect this initiative will enable the scale we aspire to while protecting the service levels and trust we have built over the past two decades.
Speaker Change: Finally, underpinning these priorities is the ongoing commitment we make to support our most important asset, the passionate and committed men and women at Celebrite.
Speaker Change: Our goal is to extend Cellebrite's reputation as the place to be in enterprise software.
Speaker Change: Let's turn to slide 7 for the conclusion of my remarks.
Speaker Change: Celebrite continues to execute. We remain positioned as the market leader in an important segment with sustained macro tailwinds.
Speaker Change: Crime persists, and the use of digital technologies in the pursuit of crime and violence continues to escalate.
Speaker Change: Headcounts and justice remain constrained, while attrition rates and law enforcement remain high. There's only one solution to closing this chasm, which is the application of advanced technologies.
Speaker Change: Our outlook for the coming year reinforces our conviction that linking our technology with the brave professionals dedicated to justice is the clear path forward.
Speaker Change: I want to thank our analysts and shareholders for their continued trust and support. I also want to thank my colleagues at Celebrite for their hard work, commitment, and for their warm welcome as I transitioned from chair to CEO.
We're all inspired every day by the good we do.
Speaker Change: Democratized nations around the world depend on all of us to accelerate justice and we're energized by that challenge.
Speaker Change: With that, I'll ask Dana to take you through the details and outline our commitments for 2025. Dana? Thank you, Tom.
Dana Gerner: Well, I'm excited to walk you through the drivers that supported a rule of safety performance in 2024.
Speaker Change: This is a type of balanced mix between top-line growth and profitability that we envisioned when we went public in mid-21.
Speaker Change: More importantly, I'm pleased that our outlook for 2025 is aligned with our long-term objectives of consistently delivering the rule of X performance between 45 and 50.
Speaker Change: Let's start our review on slide 9. In addition to reviewing our fourth-quarter results, I will highlight our full-year performance on the PROCREATE.
Speaker Change: Our ARR grew 25% year-on-year to $396 million, largely driven by increased spending within our installed customer base.
Speaker Change: It's noted on the slide, our growth retention was approximately 92%, which reflects a notable meaningful improvement over 2023.
Speaker Change: due to a lessening impact associated with a voluntary exit from certain markets in prior years and strong public sector renewal rates, most notable within our U.S. federal customers.
Speaker Change: Geographically, the 2024 ARR mix was in line with the prior quarters and mirrored the 4-year revenue mix. The Americas represented 54% of total ARR, with the United States at 34% and Asia-Pacific at 12%.
Speaker Change: In terms of growth rate by geography, the Americans grew 29% thanks to a strong finish with our federal, state and local, and Latin America customer segments. ARR grew 31% in Asia-Pacific region followed by 18% expansion in EMEA.
Speaker Change: Let's turn to slide 10 to dive a little deeper into the AR goal drivers from a product family perspective.
Speaker Change: This slide also highlights several specific deals that have contributed to our growth.
Speaker Change: If so noted, we feel, in fact, we continue to experience very strong demand for our offering that examiners use to lawfully access the most advanced smartphones.
Speaker Change: All three of the deals on this slide involve customers who upgraded to Insight while leveraging our advanced unlock technology.
Speaker Change: We are also pleased to see certain customers extending their use of Insights beyond traditional lab environments out into the field. And just as important, we make good progress with cross-selling and up-selling Guardian and Pathfinder into existing and new buying centers within our installed base.
Speaker Change: Two of those deals reflect the growing interest we see in our broader C2C portfolio.
Speaker Change: On a combined basis, ARR for Guardian and Pathfinder grew close to 50% in 2024, and the two areas are now approaching 10% of our ARR on a combined basis, up from the mid-single digit only just one year ago.
Speaker Change: Turning to slide 11, we delivered fourth quarter revenue of $109 million, enabling us to finish 24 with full year revenue of $401.2 million.
Speaker Change: The 17% growth in total Q4 revenue over the same period last year was primarily fueled by a 28% increase in subscription services and a 21% increase in total subscription software.
Speaker Change: Celebrite's 2024 full-year revenue growth of 23% was primarily driven by a 26% increase in total subscription software, augmented by modest growth in non-recurring hardware revenue, and partially offset by Fed Professional Services revenue.
Speaker Change: Consistent with historical trends and our expectations at the start of last year, we generated 54% of our total 24 revenue in the second half of the year, and I will make sure to cover our business seasonality in the context of our 25 guidance.
Speaker Change: Let's move to slide 12 for a view of our non-GAAP gross margins and non-GAAP operating expenses which exclude share-based compensation, amortization of intangible assets, and acquisition related expenses.
Speaker Change: Our Q4 growth margins of 84.4% reflect slightly higher incremental cost for hosting and the impact of increased hardware sales associated with Pathfinder deals and Insights adoption.
Speaker Change: Our food year 24 gross margins were at 85%, up from 84.2% in the prior year, due primarily to the growth in high-margin software and strategy improvements within our professional services.
Speaker Change: In terms of operating expenses, Q4 operating costs were $65.1 million, a 13% yearly increase. This primarily reflects higher personnel costs across research and development and sales and marketing, and increased IT expenditure associated with scaling our business.
Speaker Change: For the year, operating costs increased 14%, primarily due to increased personnel costs, higher spending on marketing activities, and a greater investment in mobile research programs.
Speaker Change: We ended 24 with 5,167 employees, which was in line with our plans entering the year. We are currently planning to expand our workforce by approximately 15% in 2025.
Slide 13, Reviews of Profitability and Cash Position.
Speaker Change: We generated meaningful operating leverage for both the quarter and the year. We delivered Q4 adjusted EBITDA of $28.8 million, or 26% on a margin basis. The year-over-year improvement of two full percentage points primarily reflects a solid growth margin and improved spending across the board.
Speaker Change: For the food year, our adjusted EBITDA of $99.4 million grew 60% from the prior year, enabling us to produce a 24.8% margin, a significant improvement from the 19.1% in 2023.
Speaker Change: Our Q4 non-GAAP operating income was $26.9 million with non-GAAP net income of $26.1 million or $0.10 on a fully diluted basis.
Speaker Change: It's worth noting that our average weighted diluted shares outstanding for the Q4 grew 21% due to the combination of the warrant redemption and the vesting and issuance of shares tied to various price triggers.
Speaker Change: We delivered a 50% increase in diluted EPS despite a 10% increase in our weighted average number of diluted shares outstanding, resulting from various capital markets milestones in the second half of last year.
Speaker Change: We end the 2024 with $483.8 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investment, an increase of $70.2 million from a third quarter, and an increase of $152 million from year-end 2023.
Speaker Change: Free cash flow for the fourth quarter, which we define as a net cash provided by operating activities, less capital expenditure, and the purchase of intangible assets,
Speaker Change: with $61.7 million, a 59% increase from last year's Q4, due primarily to strong fundamental results and effective management of our working capital.
Speaker Change: For the full year, our free cash flow was $121.5 million, a 29% increase over the prior year.
Speaker Change: Now, let's move to slide 14 for Outlook, along with some insights on the factors and trends that we believe will shape this year. As a reminder, we have historically generated the majority of our ARR revenue and adjusted EBITDA in the second half of every given year, and we anticipate that this seasonality will continue to shape the complexion of Celebrite's 2025 performance.
Speaker Change: More specifically, our 2025 ARR expectations range from $480 to $495 million, or a 21% to 25% increase over 2024.
Speaker Change: This reflects our expectations for continued progress in several dimensions, such as upgrading customers who use our legacy digital forensic solutions to insight, further growth for our cloud-based solutions, and increased penetration of Guardian and Pathfinder.
Speaker Change: For the first quarter, we expect solid ARR votes despite a couple of transitory headwinds.
Speaker Change: First, as you know, we set a high bar for ethics and integrity in terms of where we conduct business.
Speaker Change: Our decisions to exit certain countries are expected to modestly impact our first-quarter results, and this has been factored into the Q1 guidance.
Speaker Change: Nevertheless, given the broader strength of our customer relationships, we see potential to drive modest continuous improvement in our retention rate in 2025 against the 92% level we reported in 2024.
Speaker Change: Second, although we review certain and ongoing geopolitical changes in the U.S. and elsewhere, it's a potential net positive for Cerebrite over the next several years. The timing of these real-time regime changes is expected to modestly delay Q1 purchasing activity within certain agencies.
Speaker Change: Again, this dynamic is fully contemplated within our Q1 outlook. Even with these short-term headwinds and normal seasonality, we still expect ARL to grow between 22 and 24 percent to $406 to $411 million in the first quarter.
We expect full year 2025 revenue.
Speaker Change: to range from $480 million to $490 million, which represents 20% to 22% growth over 2024. We anticipate that growth from subscription software will be complemented by modest expansion of non-recurring professional services and hardware sales.
Speaker Change: In line with historical trends, we expect approximately 53% to 55% of food year revenue to be generated in the second half of the year.
Speaker Change: These dynamics primarily reflect our expectations for product mix in conjunction with the timing of typical year-end spending activities associated with our U.S. federal customers in September and most other accounts at the December year-end.
Speaker Change: as we increase the investment required to build out the hosting infrastructure to further scale our SaaS offering and expand our customer success organization.
Speaker Change: We anticipate 2025 non-gap operating costs in the range of $295 to $310 million, with a relatively moderate sequential increase from Q4'24 to Q1'25.
Speaker Change: We are focused on maintaining a very attractive profit profile. We expect 2025 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $113 to $123 million
Speaker Change: or 24% to 25% of total revenue. We expect higher adjusted EBITDA and higher adjusted EBITDA margins during the second half of the year, which aligns with historical trends in our 2025 topline outlook.
Speaker Change: We expect Q1 adjusted EBITDA ranging from $22 to $24 million, which supports E-overview margins improvement to approximately 21%.
Speaker Change: In terms of a weighted average diluted share count, we expect Q1 to be approximately 250 to 255 million shares.
Speaker Change: with $255 to $265 million outstanding for the full year. In summary...
Speaker Change: We close a very successful 2024 with a stunning fourth quarter performance.
We made considerable strategic, operational, and financial progress in 2024.
Speaker Change: the combination of which leaves us well positioned to sustain our momentum into 2025.
Speaker Change: We move forward focused on capitalizing on the opportunities we see to further expand our business in ways that we expect will drive long-term shareholders' value.
Speaker Change: The floor is now open for your questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and two. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when posing your question to provide optimal sound quality. Thank you. Our first question today comes from the line of Shaul Eyal at TD Cowan. Please go ahead.
Thank you.
Shaul Eyal: Thank you. Good afternoon, Tom, Dana, Andy. Good morning. Congrats on the consistent execution, great 2024 and the initial 2025 guidance.
Tom, thanks for the color on the CEO search.
Shaul Eyal: Can you double-click for us, what do you guys stand in that respect?
Shaul Eyal: You know, when we think about, like, you know, entering nature.
Shaul Eyal: of your current tenure, have you met already with some candidates or where does it currently stand?
I may need my follow-on question, Tom.
Shaul Eyal: Now, a number of U.S.-based companies with a specific cyber focus have brought up growing uncertainty as it relates to federal and government spending.
Shaul Eyal: given the incoming administration, but it would appear this topic bears very little impact, if at all, when I'm listening to the commentary, kind of looking at the blogs and guidance. So maybe can you share with us what your customers are relaying to you in that respect? Thank you so much.
Yeah, let me take, so I'll take them in order.
Shaul Eyal: You know, as I said, 90 days ago first, having me join 18 months ago in the exec chair role and committed to kind of a 50% workload and engaging closely with Yossi and the rest of the executive team,
Shaul Eyal: allowed us to be very deliberate and thoughtful and selective in this transition and and so we have not kind of blinked on that and so you know the play that we're running here is
Shaul Eyal: We will continue to do that until we feel satisfied that we have a world-class person worthy of leading the men, women, and mission at Celebrite.
Shaul Eyal: click down you know to your question I'd say the search firm would probably tell you that you know the first net they cast contemplated probably north of a hundred and fifty potential candidates
Shaul Eyal: that was then sort of down selected to 30 to 50.
We've interviewed
I would say probably at least a dozen.
Shaul Eyal: And all of these people, or most of the people we've met with, are qualified to do the job.
And so the thing, so we are very optimistic.
Shaul Eyal: that we will land the proverbial, you know, the choking proverbial godspec in somebody that's...
Shaul Eyal: that checks all those boxes. The only thing I can't tell you right now, which I'm sure everybody would like to know is, well, what's the estimate for time? What timeline should we expect?
And I don't want to
Shaul Eyal: make that commitment because it takes two to tango and given that our selective approach and
Shaul Eyal: The fact that there's two parties to that transaction, we will fill it as fast as we can with those criteria, but I can't and I won't commit right now to what specific time frame. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of color.
Thank you.
The second question...
Basically, what's happening, and Dana mentioned...
Speaker Change: modest, and I would underscore modest, headwinds. And it's not just in the U.S., we've.
Speaker Change: There's been some regime changes and disruption in other countries in Europe.
Speaker Change: has delivered, again, a modest headwind. And if, you know, if I read between the lines, sort of, I think the question you're asking is, gosh, you know, we just saw a print from Palantir with some blowaway numbers.
Speaker Change: Why do you have any headwinds? And I would emphasize two things. Number one, in Donna's comments, she also, we are highly convinced.
Speaker Change: Fentanyl traffic and deaths, or you look at issues around border control.
Speaker Change: I mean, these are areas where Cellebrite's assets can play an enormously helpful, positive role. So we think some of the themes from the administration changes will actually help us.
Speaker Change: That short list of things are not things that are at risk. These are opportunities and transactions that we have very high confidence will still close, so.
That's it.
Thank you so much. Good luck. Appreciate it.
Speaker Change: Our next question comes from Bob and Shaw at Deutsche Bank
Speaker Change: Great, thanks for taking my question. Tom, earlier in your remarks you spoke about kind of launching the Executive Advisory Board. Kind of exiting that event, what were some of the biggest pain points your customers are kind of talking about dealing with? And how is Celebrate helping solve some of them? How are these conversations kind of impacting your thoughts on product roadmap?
and Shaul Eyal.
Speaker Change: Yeah, you know, I might ask, I think Marcus is on the line, who's our Chief Revenue Officer. I was not at the first meeting because I was still in my board role, but I believe Marcus participated and probably give you, I got the second, he'd probably give you the first hand.
Marcus Jewell: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the question. So, look, there's three main drivers which our customers are seeing. One is...
Speaker Change: 90% or so of cases now require digital assets for proof in public safety. And so there is an explosion in the capacity of the phone. You all know phones are getting more powerful, apps are getting more powerful.
Speaker Change: and the funding of the DFU in terms of people can increase dramatically so what we're looking at is efficiency tools that's really the drive of what we do time
Time of prosecution is key.
Speaker Change: And therefore, the main drivers are not only the extraction of the phone, but then our analytical platform, which allows us to then make insights to lead to faster case disclosure.
Speaker Change: That's really the overriding driver that we're seeing. The second thing, then, is more lightweight product requirements for investigators in the field to be able to make insights a lot quicker without necessarily having to do full extractions of the cell phone. So both...
Speaker Change: our platforms for Insight and Pathfinder for our terminology are taking us to those areas.
Speaker Change: Super helpful. Just as a follow-up to Dana, just any way to quantify the decision to exit specific countries and what that impact is for 1Q? And as you think about that 30% unlock attached at your SYNC to Insights, what can you do that's maybe a little bit in your guys' control to drive that adoption higher?
So I think
Speaker Change: Stepping out of certain countries is still something that we look at very closely. It was less than 2% in 2024. We still have some coming and joining the list this year, but we are seeing lesser and lesser sizable countries from a business perspective. And as such, we believe that this will contribute to our gross retention rate, improvement of anything between 0.5% to a little bit less than 1% in 2025 and 2026.
Speaker Change: Can you repeat the second question because I couldn't hear you well? Sorry, just the 30% unlock attach that you talked about to your Insights customers, what can you do to drive that attach rate higher?
Speaker Change: So, we believe that each and every customer of ours in the public sector must have an ANLO capability. And what we've done through the introduction of Insights, we have actually introduced a
Speaker Change: And we actually see that one of the drivers, of course, in 24 was the fact that also the smallest agency started.
Speaker Change: onboarding themselves to these capabilities. We believe that this trend will continue with the continuous transition to insight.
Thanks for taking my questions.
Speaker Change: Our next question will come from Eric Martin Newsy at Lake Street
Speaker Change: Yeah, you talked about the C2C penetration, the goal for 2025, taking that 15% up to 50%, and I was just curious if you've got any new initiatives, lessons learned from 2024 that you're rolling through to meet or exceed that goal in 2025?
Speaker Change: Maybe I'll start and then Marcus will speak about a few things that he's doing in his go-to-market organization.
Speaker Change: brings it very naturally, the connection between the insights for connection.
in a first analysis to Guardian, to the management of...
Speaker Change: Thank you for joining us for today's session on digital evidence and the collaboration between Digital Forensics Unit and investigators and from there to the FedFinder. Marcus, would you like to speak about your go-to-market adjustments?
Marcus Jewell: Yes, of course. So continuing to evolve from a very well-established point solution into the platform, we are investing in specialist sales into the investigator persona.
Speaker Change: We are now changing our go-to-market approach as well. We used to be very heavily involved in industry events. We now run our own events.
Speaker Change: and I can only tell you that I've been shocked in my career to see the attendance. We are literally sold out at every event and we believe that we will be heading to be sold out for our major customer event that we're holding in April in DC.
Speaker Change: There is a lot of pent-up demand and so we're addressing those people with vertical experts.
Speaker Change: in order that can walk the walk and talk the talk of how an investigation works.
Speaker Change: and take them through how the tools and demonstrate some of the AI personas that we have which can speed those processes up.
Speaker Change: So, in short, it's a combination of making our message a lot clearer by pushing it out directly ourselves.
Speaker Change: and then using a very specialist sales force, which are very focused on the investigative flow and extending our presence outside of the lab where we're well known. They're the two factors.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Our next question will come from the line of Brian Essex at J.P. Morgan.
Hi, this is Charlotte Biedek on for Bryan Essex.
Speaker Change: Congrats on a great quarter. Overall, it was great to see roughly 20% of the installed base migrate to Insights compared to your initial outlet for 10%.
Speaker Change: Overall, are you viewing the trajectory of thin-solid-base converting to be a quicker timeline and how should we expect that over the next couple of years? I know you spoke briefly about next year, but is the overall timeline going to be quicker than expected? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Well, we still believe that the transition, or most of the transition, is a three-year journey.
We believe that we will...
transition most of our customers by the
Speaker Change: I would say around 10% of a tail of multi-year deals and late-leggers to adopt the new solutions. So we are still looking at intensifying the conversion in 2025. I believe Tom mentioned reaching 50% of the install base already on Insights by the end of 2025.
Great, thank you. And I know you're a Gen-AI
Speaker Change: You just announced it a couple days ago, if anything, but has there been initial feedback overall? Like what have you heard from your customers? Any detail would be great, thank you.
Thanks for watching!
That's Ronan to jump in on that one.
Hey, great to take it.
Speaker Change: So, look, our customers are definitely excited about the leverage of AI, especially in the realm of boosting efficiency, efficacy, and really helping across the full value chain. Cellebrite has been delivering AI capabilities for a decade now.
Speaker Change: Obviously, there is a renewed interest with the advents of GNI.
Speaker Change: fully receptive of that. Maybe I'll say the most important thing.
Speaker Change: that they look for that is not just that we're delivering great capabilities but we can always ground
our conclusions and, you know, an influence.
Speaker Change: Back to the original evidence, that's the most important thing, that we keep utmost defensibility of what we have, and there is always an officer in the middle, as we call it.
to make sure that what AI delivers is actually something
Speaker Change: surveys that we conduct annually, and we specifically ask that group about that question. How do you see...
Speaker Change: AI and the numbers were roughly a third of people said AI will be a contributing element of crime so be used in a nefarious not-so-good way but they also said that we think I think the number was in the 60s
Speaker Change: felt like AI would be a major enabler in the pursuit against crime and leveraging it both from a effectiveness, speed, efficiency perspective. So the fact that
Speaker Change: You know, that community is already raising their hand and basically two out of three are saying we want and we need advanced AI to help combat the case volumes and the proliferation of...
Speaker Change: of Technology and Digital Assets in the Pursuit of Crime. So I think, you know, that's a data-driven answer that I think is pretty positive.
Thanks and congrats on the good results.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question will come from Jeff Rhee at Craig Hallam.
Jeff Rhee: Great, thank you. Hi guys. So, a couple for me. First, maybe Tom, on the FedRAMP, you know, thanks for the update and the timeline. Talk for a minute, if you would, about the opportunity in federal. I get a lot of questions on it. Where you are now as a percent of revenues, you know, you've clearly got some pretty impressive federal customers already. So, what does FedRAMP gain you from where you are? Maybe fill in a few gaps there, if you would.
Jeff Rhee: Yes, so your point is spot-on. We have a very high profile across federal currently, but the change that I think this brings
Number one, there are certain...
Jeff Rhee: programs that require FedRAMP certification. And by the way, I want to make a point for those that aren't familiar, there are various levels of FedRAMP certification. They're tied to the complexity and sophistication and security requirements.
And as you would expect...
Jeff Rhee: It's easier to get low than it is to get medium, as it is to get high. And when we embarked on this journey...
Jeff Rhee: We said, look, if we're going to be a bear, we're going to be a grizzly.
and we don't want to be locked out of anything.
where we can be helpful in the federal government.
at the time.
Jeff Rhee: and Pursued High and the fact that we got FUDRAMP ready.
Jeff Rhee: It means most of the heavy lift is done, and now we have the ability to start talking to end customers or some of the big GSIs that are running these programs, and they now know that it's just a matter of time before we get the ATO to actually operate. So, you know, if you ask...
Jeff Rhee: Gosh what does that do to your TAM? Our estimate is it roughly doubles our TAM. Now we don't we don't know that for fact but it's our sense that just based on the tentacles and the relationships we have in federal
that once we get fully authorized to operate...
Jeff Rhee: it doubles the aperture of opportunity. So we're, which is, as you know, given that federal is roughly down to what, 20% of our current business, it gives us some nice opportunity and headroom for growth in federal.
Speaker Change: Yep. Okay, great. That's very helpful. And then one last question.
Speaker Change: As it relates to the investigative unit and the migration there, obviously a massive new TAM there, you know, you've got a dominant installed base, and if you can break that open and directly connect into the investigative unit, you know, obviously a lot of opportunity. Maybe for Marcus, just, you know, you commented, we've got some data points, I mean, it's shown some good growth rates, albeit from relatively small bases as a percent of mix, but I just want to dial in a little closer, like, give us a sense of your satisfaction
Speaker Change: I am going to give you a few minutes to think about what it takes to penetrate the IU. I think you said you're putting in some specialists, but just kind of where are we in the innings wise, in terms of sort of, hey, we've got it figured out now. We can really stomp on the gas versus we're still in the early innings of figuring it out. Just some color there would be great. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, sure. So thanks for the question. It's a good catch. So I would say we're mid-innings. Like if you want to use a baseball analogy for a Brit, we'll give it a go.
Speaker Change: We basically have a thesis which is proven out now. We have enough of a sample size, the end number's big enough to know what the transaction type looks like, what the route to market is.
Speaker Change: What I will say that we still need to discover is the investigative unit is interesting because each company has it set up slightly differently.
Speaker Change: So we're taking a multifaceted approach to that to make sure that we understand the learnings.
Speaker Change: It's clear that we now have the momentum on our side, and I think this year will be the final tuning, and as we enter into 2026.
Speaker Change: We will have a very very easily repeatable stream or much easier repeatable stream that we can get more wood behind So I would say we've got a good thesis for proving that thesis But it's still early in that market as you know the time is immense
Speaker Change: And the final thing, I'm never satisfied with the growth rate because it's my job to grow as fast as possible. So we're always trying to find ways to grow that faster.
Got it. Much appreciated.
Speaker Change: Thank you, Mr. Rhee. Our next question will come from Mike Sikos at Needham.
Speaker Change: Great, thanks for taking the questions here guys and just to continue on the theme on the go-to-market and the opportunity there with that investigative persona
Mike Sikos: I just wanted to soundboard this. Where are we in building out that investigative persona sales motion? Is that supposed to be a specialist sales overlay or is this a separate speedboat that's going alongside your existing team that's historically pursued those DFUs?
Mike Sikos: because our specialists on is the higher level and the larger deals so looking particularly at the expansion of Guardian and Pathfinder if you're familiar with those products.
Mike Sikos: would be what those people drive. But we can also, Insights is also acquirable, and we're seeing that from investigative units. There's some functions in there that you saw earlier in our.
Mike Sikos: Customer announcements with quick view and triage and other bits which allow investigators to use that technology as well. So the minute we have a combined motion where it's not an overlay team, it's a specialist team. They are calling directly on the heads of those units.
Mike Sikos: and demonstrating. And all I can say is, you know, the uptake of interest is huge. I mean, every time we do an event, we are literally with no bluster sold out.
Mike Sikos: And we are quickly assigning budgets and getting budgets granted to us for that.
Mike Sikos: In the U.S., we're also doing some very smart work on the grant side, linking into major crimes to make sure that the investigators are aware with our grant writing team that there is money available from federal government to fund state and local. So we're approaching it from a demand creation and a budget creation and an awareness approach, and we're satisfied with where we are.
Thank you for joining me.
Mike Sikos: Awesome. Awesome. And then if I could just cycle back to the U.S. federal, great to see that mid-twenties ARR growth, putting you, call it about in line with overall company growth. I know the company just set up Celebrate Federal Solutions this past summer, and the beltway can take
Speaker Change: time, right? Is it fair to think that CFS and US Federal are still largely in pipeline building mode this year? Does guidance in any way contemplate early green shoots following the launch when we think about calendar 25?
Speaker Change: Yeah, I think you've nailed it. So do we think we might benefit from these changes to some extent this year? Yes, but we really think the bulk of the benefit and the acceleration in the business
Speaker Change: starts to flow in 26. And again, this is all part of the modeling for our guidance for 25. And it's exactly for the reasons you described.
Speaker Change: here is to sustain the growth we've enjoyed, but we want to see a big uptick in pipeline and deal size and opportunity for 26.
Terrific. Thank you very much guys. Appreciate the time.
Speaker Change: And our next question will come from the line of Tober Zilberman at Bank of America.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Hey guys, if I take a look at the numbers, the magnitude of your EBITDA beat is a little bit lower than it was in previous quarters. And when I look at guidance next quarter, it's more or less in line with the STREET. I just wanted to get your puts and takes there.
Speaker Change: Yeah, so I'll take it. Hi, Tomer, thank you. Well, Q4 is, in some cases, a heavy-loaded quarter. We have had some
Speaker Change: especially around marketing activities and IT infrastructure and security activities, which will go with us into 2025 and it would impact the following quarters. I would say that.
Shaul Eyal...
Speaker Change: From a seasonality perspective, it provides a lesser top line, and while the OPEX is going to be subsequent from the previous quarter, so we traditionally see lower Q1 EBITDA than the rest of the year, and this is why it was my comment around seasonality, to make sure that when you look on the full year, and you look at previous years' seasonality of EBITDA, it will be more accurately spread over the year.
Shaul Eyal: Got it, Dana, and you also mentioned earlier that you expect modest improvement against the 92% growth retention rate this year, and I think earlier in the Q&A you mentioned that you expect half a percentage benefit from lesser citable countries. Can you give us directionally how much?
Shaul Eyal: I guess upside or whatever you want to call it to that 92% number, is it only going to be this half a percent to a percent from this intentional churn or do you see other levers to grow that?
Speaker Change: Well, in our investor day, we spoke it's a long-term target of 92%. We've reached it in 2024 through a very hard work for sales organization and customer experience.
Speaker Change: We believe that most of the improvements will come from those abandoned customers, we call them, and I would like to leave it as is for this time being.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I would just I'll add that you know, there's there's there's you know guidance But but also internal operating plans that then govern, you know The spend for the company and we want to be good stewards of cash flow and profitability and so on all that said Do we think there's an opportunity as we look out over the next one to three years?
Speaker Change: to take that number up, the answer is absolutely yes. And one of the priorities I highlighted in my front end is a string of things we're doing.
Speaker Change: that I think will fuel that, and depending on timing, it could help us sooner than planned, but we think it's prudent to plan at the numbers that Dana shared.
Got it. Thank you very much. Yep.
Speaker Change: Our next question will come from Louis De Palma at William Baird. Blair.
Thanks for tuning in.
Tom, Donna, Marcus, Ronan, and Andy, good morning.
Good morning.
Speaker Change: Good afternoon. It seems, Tom, that the transition from chairman to CEO has gone
Speaker Change: Smoothly, my main question is, what is the main alternative to customers using Guardian today? It seems that the growth there has been pretty staggering, but is...
Speaker Change: Are many of your existing install base using USB thumb drives, local storage, and
Speaker Change: online cloud storage so is this low-hanging fruit for you guys to penetrate?
Thank you.
packaged offering enterprise class software perspective.
Speaker Change: It's our view, and clearly we have a bias, that we are the best and arguably the only, call it, repository for collaboration and rigorous chain of custody that's tailored to true evidence.
Speaker Change: in some of those requirements versus other repositories that I would argue are
Speaker Change: optimized for lower level storage, rich media, high volumes, and so so which is a different question than what's the alternative today and maybe what are you know the obstacles, but we do think
Speaker Change: strength of our IP and the purpose-built nature of the product is a perfect fit for the market.
Thanks Tom. Louis, thanks for the question.
We are meeting so many customers.
Speaker Change: And the one thing that you get again and again, they are looking at us as a digital investigation leader. In that respect,
They are not looking for a storage solution.
Speaker Change: And, they need much more than another alternative to where to put the data. There are multiple solutions for that, but when you look for a solution that actually drives...
Speaker Change: their needs, which is a digital investigation solution. That's where Cellebrite comes in, and they might have other solutions for other things.
Speaker Change: And what we deliver is not just the way to how to, you know, extract the data, manipulate it, understand it, store it, disseminate it, analyze it. That's the full thing that they look for, and that's where we want to be.
Speaker Change: Great, and can I just have one one follow-up as the
Speaker Change: The stock price appears to be down 7% on the comments of a federal disruption. And so I was wondering what percentage of revenue generally comes from
Speaker Change: The U.S. Federal Vertical and and generally speaking is is the revenue on a recurring nature subscription economic model such that
Speaker Change: Like, most of the revenue impact would be new bookings rather than existing revenue being disrupted. Thanks.
Speaker Change: I think what is clear, and Marcus, you know, feel free to back me up, is that, as we said before, the federal government in the U.S. is around 20% of our revenue. It is almost entirely, except for services, a subscription business.
Speaker Change: And most of the business usually come new business, I'm not speaking about renewal, it's coming mostly...
Speaker Change: in Q3 of the year. With this current situation in the U.S., what we see is a little bit lagging behind on signing on new business.
Speaker Change: We don't see any impact on our renewal business, which means that...
Speaker Change: The federal government is continuing doing business with us on an ongoing basis. And we feel very comfortable to see that, you know, the moment things will stabilize a bit, we'll continue seeing a very healthy growth this year, as we've seen previously.
Great. Thanks, Dana, and thanks, everyone.
Speaker Change: That concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. Mr. Kramer, I'm happy to turn the floor back to you and to the management team for any additional or closing remarks.
Speaker Change: Thank you very much, Jim. And thank you very much to all of our analysts, shareholders, prospective shareholders, and others who tuned in this morning. We look forward to continued discussions, dialogue, and meetings with you over the coming weeks and months. Look forward to speaking with you then. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's Celebrite fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results conference call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.