AvePoint, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVPT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So that’s why at my earlier comment, we think that that will drive a lot of the business growth in the coming quarters and years. So yes, both of those platform play, as well as the necessity around proper information management to drive a better outcome with AI is going to be the major theme going forward. And by the way, we’re not a stranger to AI. We’ve been a longtime consumer of cognitive services on Azure, which is basically the front end to OpenAI for a number of years now. We have solutions that does these detection of ransomware attacks, for example, and auto classification taxonomy generation, as well as data analytics services using previous paradigms in AI, of course, now infusion of Gen AI architecture, so yes these are things are major themes that’s going to carry forward in driving momentum for the business.

Derrick Wood: Got it, thanks there. And a follow up for Jim on the ARR guidance. If I look at what it implies for net new ARR, it’s down quarter-over-quarter in the Q4, and I think the same thing happened last year. But could you just remind us why this is the case in a Q4? Does it have something to do with spiking government strength in Q3, or what are the dynamics that have net new ARR going down sequentially?

James Caci: Yes, good question, Derrick. So yes, part of that is what you just said. That’s definitely part of it. I think the second half of that really deals more with the macro environment we see. When we came into Q3, we kind of set the expectation that we’d be somewhere between $24 million and $25 million of incremental ARR in the second half of the year. And so we still feel really good about that. And obviously we’re pleased with how we performed in Q3. I think some of it is a little bit of the government sector, the public sector. But again, we’re just thinking about the macro environment, the uncertainties, and again, still feel very comfortable with that original set of getting somewhere between 2024 and 2025. We have a small raise for ARR for Q4, and we feel comfortable about that in light of the macro environment right now.

Derrick Wood: Thank you.

James Caci: Thanks, Derrick.

Operator: The next question is from Jason Ader with William Blair. Please proceed.

Jason Ader: Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, guys. Just wanted to ask you, on first off on the revenue growth guidance for Q4 12% that would be quite a bit lower than where it was in the first three quarters of the year and certainly lower than where it’s been historically. Is there something unique going on in Q4? Is it just Macro? Maybe just help us square why the revenue growth would decelerate as much as that.

Tianyi Jiang: Sure. Thanks, Jason. So maybe it’s two factors, right? One is what you called out in terms of the macro environment. Again, just trying to plan for uncertainties. And then the second piece might be that in Q3, even though our term license revenue is down 10% year-over-year, it is higher than what our expectation was coming into, really the second half of the year. And so, in essence, right that term license revenue is going to pull a little revenue out of future periods and have it land in Q3, which helped a little bit with the beat we saw in Q3, but it also then negatively impacts Q4. So again, I think it’s more the macro, but we’re trying to take those factors into play.

Jason Ader: Understood. Okay, great. And then on the gross revenue retention, you’re in the mid 80s right now. You’re primarily an enterprise focused company that’s definitely on the low end of companies that sell into the enterprise. Can you help us understand why your gross revenue retention isn’t higher? I know you have aspirations to get it to 90% plus. What needs to happen for you to get to that 90% plus? And then also, when somebody does churn off, like what’s the main reason somebody’s churning off?