GitLab Inc. (NASDAQ:GTLB) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Koji Ikeda: Hey, guys, thanks for taking the questions. Sid, from all of us at BoFA, we’re waiting for you. Just maybe one question from me. Brian, can you remind us, maybe how much of the business exposed to SMBs out there? And really kind of in the context of the recent developments in the financial industry over the past week, what sort of consideration that maybe the SMBs could be hindered out there was incorporated into the guidance? Thanks, guys.

Brian Robins: Yeah. Thanks, Koji. We — obviously, that was one consideration when we came up with the guidance. If you look at the technology vertical overall, the technology vertical is less than 20% of our ARR. It’s about 20% of ARR. If you look at technology startup companies which we identified with 200 or less employees, it’s less than 5% of ARR. Enterprise continues to be roughly about 60% of our ARR. We talked about being around 10% to 12%, and so the SMB is relatively small. It’s around the 10 — call it the 10% of our total ARR. And then if you look at verticals, yeah, we don’t really have one vertical that makes up the majority of our ARR. We’re spread across all the different verticals. And so from that perspective, it’s a long-tail business.

Koji Ikeda: Got it. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for taking the question.

Brian Robins: I appreciate, Koji.

Operator: We’ll now hear from Karl at UBS.

Karl Keirstead: Okay, great. Brian, just to carry on from that conversation. Did you see disproportionate weakness in the tech vertical that you just sized at 20% of ARR given that one of your comments was that you saw contractions due to layoffs and given that the layoffs were — have been disproportionately tech vertical? I would assume that that’s been a little bit of a weaker vertical for you. Is that the case?

Brian Robins: You know, it’s a good question, I didn’t get a chance to specifically go in and look vertical by vertical by vertical. I did go back and look at the net dollar retention rate. And I did find it interesting that if you look at the net dollar retention rate, the ratio of change that we saw was the same between seats, upgrades and , and that was actually for all years back seven years except for one year where we had some anomalies, all acted relatively about the same. And so that — you need to dive further into that, but that led me to believe that it was more of a broader macro impact than a particular vertical impact. I think all companies today are sort of feeling the demand side slow a little relative to purchases.

Karl Keirstead: Okay. And maybe a second one for you, Brian. Just trying to gauge how conservative your guidance is. One way to do that is to look at your most recent cRPO guidance and your subsequent revenue guidance. The fact that you just put up a quarter with 51% cRPO growth, it’s hard to think that that translates to 26% revenue growth. So at first flash, your guidance feels conservative, but I want to throw that at you. Maybe the cRPO metric is an imperfect predictor and it’s only capturing a portion of the next 12-month revenue growth and you’re anticipating net new bookings are weaker. Do you mind unpacking the correlation between those two metrics?

Brian Robins: Yeah. Happy to do. I mean, we’ve talked about historically how billings and some of the metrics weren’t directly correlated, but transit, directionally correct. And so, the cRPO growth for the quarter was 51% and then we did guide to right about 25%. And so, there has been no change in our guidance philosophy and we try to factor everything that we see into that, and that’s where we landed.

Karl Keirstead: Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Brian Robins: Thanks, Karl.

Operator: Next, we have Rob from Piper Sandler.

Brian Robins: Rob, you are on mute.

Rob Owens: You think after couple of years I’d figure this out, but you know me, so. Brian, could you unpack maybe gross retention rates and the trends you’re seeing on that front? Trying to understand what would create a situation within the guidance that would have Q1 down quarter-over-quarter, kind of given it’s a subscription model. I understand there could be some timing issues with regard to what’s self-managed versus cloud. But just trying to understand, A, what the gross retention rate trend looks like, and B, what could cause that Q1 to be down? Thanks.

Brian Robins: Yeah. Absolutely, Rob. Thanks for the question. From a gross retention rate perspective, it has declined a little, but it’s still up in the 90s, sort of low-to-mid 90s from a gross retention rate perspective. And so, I still believe that the — every company has become a software company and that the well-documented ROI and the payback period helps drive those renewals and those retention rates. And so, ultimately, I believe that that will be a lift to revenue over the long term and so — yes.

Rob Owens: And thoughts around the Q1, what could create a — I guess, a negative sequential compare?

Brian Robins: It’s — as we go through, we look at basically all different components, churn, contraction, time to close deals and so forth. And so, if — obviously, if you had more churn and contraction than you anticipated, you wouldn’t be able to recognize that revenue. So there are some headwinds to revenue that we — from a Q1 perspective as well, we’re in the process of going through our SSP analysis. That’s the annual analysis we have to do for 606. And so, we factored all that based on what we knew at the time into the guidance.

Rob Owens: Great. Thanks, Brian.

Operator: Up next, we have Derrick from Cowen.