Definitive Healthcare Corp. (NASDAQ:DH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Musslewhite: Yes, I even build on that and say, as we look to grow to multiple million dollars of value that we can deliver on a per therapeutic area, even a per drug brand name area, those services are super valuable to expanding our relationship and pulling through large data sales part of it. So, early days on that, but I’d see it as a key component of those relationships and really strengthening our relationships with enterprise clients along the way.

Rick Booth: And just to balance that. We’re not seeking PS revenue as an end of itself. What we’re really seeking is to become an incredibly important strategic partner to those large customers. And ultimately, we are a product-driven, product-driven company.

Joe Vruwink: Sure. No, that’s well understood. Thank you very much.

Operator: And we’ll move next to Allen Lutz with Bank of America.

Allen Lutz: Thanks for taking the questions. Rick, I want to go after the CRPO dynamic in a little bit of a different way. So, if we look at the past three quarters, growth is 10%, 8%, 7% and obviously, that trend has moderated a lot over the past eight quarters or so, but it seems like it’s stabilizing here. If we take a step back, enterprise customers are increasing, and I would assume that some of these small customers that churned off the platform or kind of anniversarying as a headwind. Do you get a sense that those two things are the case? And is it fair to assume that CRPO may be stabilizing from here? Just trying to get a sense of where you think that part or where that KPI is moving over the next few quarters? Thanks.

Rick Booth: It’s a great question. I think many of the factors that you talked about resonate. We’re not in the habit of guiding CRPO, especially given the importance of the fourth quarter and the fact that we’ll be issuing guidance after the fourth quarter. So, I don’t have much to add in terms of the specifics on CRPO.

Allen Lutz: Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator: Your next question will come from Brian Peterson with Raymond James.

Johnathan McCary: Hi, thanks for taking the question. This is Jonathan McCary on for Brian. So for a different direction here. We’ve seen some of your health care software vendors still kind of referenced slower clinical trial starts and I realize that oftentimes you guys further down the development pipeline. But is that any sort of a leading or coincident indicator for stage? Or maybe if not, what are some of the other KPIs you guys are tracking to maybe see when you’ll see an inflection point in the macro here? Thanks.

Robert Musslewhite: Yes. Look, we have really, really good data for many stages of the drug commercialization process. So, we have great KOL data that helps early in the process. We have great market sizing data that helps early in the process, and we certainly have all kinds of ways we sort drugs once the decision has been made to go ahead and commercialize and take it to market. So, I’m not sure I understand the first — understand the first part of your question. But certainly, development continues, it’s important to us to have companies continuing to develop drugs, and we play a big role in helping support their success in doing so.

Rick Booth: Yes. And we do not specifically look ahead to macroeconomic indicators or outside statistics in that way. We’re in the early days of a large market opportunity, we’re focused on growth. We’re always out there pitching. And the more time that we spend with prospects and customers, the faster that we will rebound as conditions change.

Johnathan McCary: Thanks.

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. We’ll move next to Jared Haase with William Blair.

Jared Haase: Hey guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Robert, I wanted to follow-up on, I think you mentioned in the prepared remarks, that you still see a solid demand generation environment. And I think you specifically mentioned seeing a record number of demos. Would love to get a little more color. I’m just curious if anything has changed in terms of sort of your messaging to get demos in front of clients? Or beyond that, if anything has changed in terms of how willing you guys are to offer free trial just to get the product in front of users in what’s obviously a challenging environment?

Robert Musslewhite: Yes, good question. We’ve — number one, I’d say our marketing team has done an incredible job on free trials. It’s a huge inbound channel for us. So, that’s been delivering record numbers of inbound leads. As that team is really focused on lots of innovative ways to find people and bring them to our side and get them in signing up for free trial. I’d say the sales team has also done a really nice job executing on outreach where they self-generate demos. That’s both our inside sales and our outside sales reps calling and setting up demos with people on their prospect list. And then we continue to be really active at industry events, important ones where a lot of our clients’ traffic, I was at [Indiscernible], and we had a lot of our team there.

That’s a great conference for us. There are several of those each order that are really important for us to get out in front of clients and we have the chance to be in person and get them over to see what we’re doing and understand the new and product investments that we’ve made. And then I pile on top of that, we have a lot of good things to talk about. If you go back to Jason’s remarks, we’ve done a tonne this year to strengthen our data, to strengthen our products, strengthen our platform. So, we have a lot of exciting messages, and I think that really helps with the interest as well. So, I’m really pleased with where we are on the top of the funnel, again, where the challenge has still been a little bit elusive is getting that stuff down through the bottom of the funnel, but we’re working hard at that, and that’s something that obviously, with some macro improvement, we be in great shape on that front.

But even in macro, I hope we can move the needle on that as well.

Jared Haase: Okay, great. And then maybe just a quick clarification. On the clients that churned came back, are you aware of any of these clients that — do they try another data and analytics solution for a short period of time? Or do they have any other replacement that they came back to you? And then also, would love to hear if those clients that are coming back or they’re coming back at kind of a similar ARR scope as the previous engagement.

Robert Musslewhite: Yes. So, I mean to generalize a little bit because there’s a lot — we’re talking about a lot of clients, both in and out. But I’d say on the question of have gone to others, generally not. Like most of what we’re seeing in this environment is people with budgeting challenges. So they’re opting to go without for a period of time. And depending on how painful that is for people the stronger emphasis to get them back in. So, it’s generally people feeling budget challenged. They don’t get on somebody else. When they get the budget back, they come back. And I’d say there’s all kinds of ways of coming back. But in general, I’d say they come back at same or greater ARR. They realize what they missed, when they come back and talk to us.