Guidewire Software, Inc. (NYSE:GWRE) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Rosenbaum: Well, I think for sure, there’s a part of this that we had to work very hard to ensure that the product was ready to be implemented by partners and Diego and team have done a fine job with this. That’s great to see and partially driving this. I also think as we’ve talked about, this is kind of all part of the overall plan for the company and focusing our services organization on real strategic implementations, the new product introductions and the really expert type of work that we think we can add unique and differentiated value relative to maybe like one of our general partners in the ecosystem. And so — we’re just — this is simply seeing that strategy sort of come to fruition a little bit faster than we might have expected when we scoped out the beginning of the year, but it’s very much in line with where we want to head as a company.

Ken Wong: Got it. Thank you very much.

Mike Rosenbaum: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rishi Jaluria with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Richard Carlin: Hi. Thanks. This is Richard Carlin on for Rishi Jaluria. Thanks for taking my question. So first one for me is just on some of the services side. You mentioned a couple of times throughout the call that you accelerated kind of this road map here with transitioning services. And I know you’ve mentioned it on past calls a lot. So just kind of one on down, was there anything in particular that drove the decision to accelerate that? And then the second part of that question is just on the gross margin side, it sounds like going to be a little bit pressured this year, but as we think about that recovering to those pre-cloud margin levels, is there any time for kind of when we should expect that? Thanks.

Jeffrey Cooper: Thanks for the question. On the urgency around driving the shift, I think it was largely a reflection of we had been working to enable some of these early cloud programs and doing that in a posture that was often very low or negative margin. So there clearly was — some of the urgency around this was returning to a more sustainable long-term margin profile for our services business. And we think that this is the right posture to take in order to do that. So that’s kind of what drove the urgency. And then as you think about long term, we are working through that transition. We have capacity to do a bit more services revenue than we expect to see this year. And as we kind of look ahead and get to a bit higher utilization rates, we think kind of returning the services organization into a sustainable, kind of low double-digit margin profile feels about right.

We could certainly do better than that. If we have a particularly strong year, but that feels like the right profile to shoot for in the long term.

Richard Carlin: And then just a follow-up. It sounds like just based on what we’re hearing, the traction on the data analytics portfolio seems to be doing pretty well, especially solutions like predict and HazardHub. So I guess, just any update there on what you’re seeing from customers and any areas where you think there’s maybe room for better attach rates or some of that portfolio? Thanks.

Mike Rosenbaum: Yeah. Thanks for the question. It’s certainly one of the things we talk about every week is driving those attach rates and making sure that we’re positioning the products together, and it’s nice to hear that you’re hearing that. We certainly are, too. that — we called it out and the description of some of the deals that we were able to get across the finish line this quarter. It is just really the added benefit of thinking about the InsuranceSuite applications in conjunction with analytics and really putting the analytics in front of the users at the point of decision such that they can practically add value to the business operations, efficiency and decision quality that we’re able to deliver with the products.

It’s really great to see. So yes, we’re continuing to drive those attach rates. And maybe we expect them to generally slowly improve as we proceed throughout the year, better position the products, and we’ll see how that goes through the second half of the year, but certainly very satisfied with the momentum and the progress that we’ve made. The hazard upside, like we’re really very excited about just the general use case and even beyond the Guidewire customer base. As we think there’s a lot of companies out there that could benefit from the sort of flexibility and the sort of ease of access to a very significant amount of data and risk profiling that we provide with that solution. And so we’re excited not just to drive the attach to the deals that we’re doing for InsuranceSuite and the core applications, but also thinking beyond our typical sort of focus area in terms of the market and figuring out ways that we can expose this to a broader audience because we’re just very, very excited about what that product can do for the insurance industry.

Richard Carlin: Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Mike Rosenbaum: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dylan Becker with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Dylan Becker: Hey, guys. Don’t want to believe the point here on services because I think it’s a pretty clear positive. But maybe another way of asking it, too, is this kind of an entire Guidewire decision? Or is the ecosystem kind of coming to you and validating that the market opportunity is resonating and there’s capacity for that and maybe what that means as we think about kind of the relationships that those SIs have with larger institutions as we think about transitioning maybe more of these core books of business from some of the larger insurance carriers.