Couchbase, Inc. (NASDAQ:BASE) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: Great. Thank you. This is [Dion] (ph) for Sanjit. I first have a higher level question sort of on the AI strategy that you laid out. I mean, it really resonates. And the way that we trying to you sort of think about these impacts are mostly in two ways, right, the new workloads related to AI apps, and then the migration which, in many cases, gets accelerated through AI. When you’re thinking about kind of those two opportunities and I think you spent lot time talking about the first one of those two, where do you see kind of the big opportunities one or two years out? And then, what are you doing today to position for both or maybe for the bigger ones more so than the other ones? Anything that you can kind of share around your strategy, both on the migration side as well as kind of the new workloads side that you already talked about?

Matt Cain: Yeah, look, I appreciate the question. I think if we step back and say why is — why we are all so excited about AI, we think it’s the next great catalyst for applications, both existing and new. And we talk a lot about the demand for rich, personalized, customized applications that we use in our personal and professional lives. And the demands on the database to be able to bring all that data to light, combine operational and analytical capabilities, leverage services like indexing, eventing and search in a single platform, that’s never been more relevant. And if you think about the amount of data that’s going to need to be processed to further bring light with even more personalization and customization for future applications, that lends itself very well to the Couchbase platform that was built for scale and performance from cloud to edge with TCO benefits.

We’re spending a lot of time with large customers today on their future plans of AI, and us being a platform that is strategic to them for their existing applications. At the same time, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we had a net new customer in an emerging geography that is an AI company for smart cities that realized the Couchbase was the platform that they needed to process all their data and enable the application that they’re building. So, as we have always done, we take an architectural approach to the data layer. And then, upon a solid foundation, integrate services in a compelling way for both customers and developers. You combine all that with the Capella consumption model, and we’re really bringing a lot of capabilities together in a seamless way that quite frankly other vendors just aren’t architected to do, certainly at the scale and performance.

And so, I think we’re going to be able to get at both migrations and new workloads. As we look at the effect on our business, because of the size of some of our existing customers, when we monetize a migration that can be a little bit of a bigger contribution out of the gate, but we certainly spend a lot of time and attention on new logos. So, we’ll be able to track the trending of which one is a bigger impact over time. But you’d be hard-pressed to find any customer that is thinking about a future data platform strategy that isn’t inclusive of AI. And we think an integrated platform is the winning strategy and we’re excited about our path forward.

Unidentified Analyst: Makes a lot of sense. And then maybe just one quick follow-up question. Just when I’m thinking about reconciling the customer numbers, I think you have 12 customers this quarter, which was a step up from last quarter, but still maybe compared to your commentary around pushing down market around kind of view customer momentum, particularly around Capella, seems still a little bit low compared to some of the levels that you put out last quarter. Is there any way that you can help us think about sort of the new customer signings piece versus the customer churn piece? Is that churn piece still kind of weighing down that net add number? Or any kind of more granularity you can share on that, that would be super helpful.

Greg Henry: Yeah, happy to give some color there. So, to your question, yes, we are still seeing a bit more churn on our smaller customers like we did last quarter, which are macro impacted. They do not have a big dollar impact. Our gross ads are performing well and in line with what we’ve seen historically. And as we mentioned in the script, Capella logo count actually is up 20% quarter-over-quarter. So, we’re actually very pleased with how Capella is performing. We’re still working through some of that smaller business churn. But overall, we think that we’re going to start seeing sort of more favorable impacts to the customer count as we move forward through the second half of the year.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. That makes sense. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Raimo Lenschow: Perfect. Thank you. Can you speak a little bit to what you see in terms of pipeline and how pipeline is evolving? It looks like this quarter things continue to improve for you. But like if you think about like early stage pipeline as you think about the back part of the year, what are you seeing there? And then, I have one quick follow-up.

Matt Cain: Raimo, the simple answer is we feel really good about it. And hopefully, you’ve come to appreciate the level of detail that we have in how we measure that, everything from expansions in the back half, how we expect those to grow migrations to Capella, new logos and understand the dynamics that are different there, the early stage Capella progression in terms of trials into active deals. And so, I think as we look across the entirety of the pipeline, both in terms of size, scale, velocity, those metrics look really good. And we feel confident about the demand of the product, and quite frankly the execution of the go-to-market team to continue to grow and nurture the pipeline for the back half and beyond. But overall, I think it’s an exciting mix of opportunities and indicative of the optimism we have in the business as we go forward.

Raimo Lenschow: Yeah. And then, as we think about the professional services going forward and when you speak about revenue, subscription revenue was obviously better. Like, how do you think about the glide path there in terms of — that professional services obviously then going to be a little bit of a headwind all the time. Like, how do you think about managing that journey, Greg? Thank you. Congrats from me as well.