MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ:MDB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Brent Bracelin : Dev, the big surprise for us here is the momentum you’re seeing in that EA business. We’re seeing some of the peers obviously see moderation just as the overall tech market starts to do more belt tightening. What drove the strength in EA this quarter, specifically? And if you could provide any color by industry, that’s really the question here, what type of industry is driving the momentum and driving the upside here in EA specifically?

Dev Ittycheria : Yes. Thanks, Brent. I think what we saw in EA is just evidence that customers are really viewing MongoDB to be an important part, if not a standard, in their tech stack. And once you are viewed as a critical element of the tech stack, people are more comfortable investing more aggressively, especially in this environment where people do need to modernize their legacy platforms to drive more efficiency and lower cost as well as drive more agility. So I think that’s, I think, why we’re seeing the upside on EA. And so we feel good about that. And obviously, this shows you that customers also like optionality by building apps on MongoDB, they can truly run their apps anywhere, not only on-premise but on any hyperscaler and obviously switch between on-premise or any hyperscalers. So that is also a very compelling benefit to customers in this environment.

Brent Bracelin : Helpful color. And then a quick follow-up for Michael here. Short-term deferred growth did slow. I didn’t know if there was an impact on payment timing or if you saw a similar slowdown in RPO. So could you just kind of walk through short-term deferred and why it slowed? And if we should expect a similar slowdown in RPO?

Michael Gordon : Yes. So what I would just point you to, Brent, is that we’ve talked about that deferred in general and sort of calculated billings more broadly, is not a particularly relevant metric for us, as we’ve talked about for a few years now, as we continue to make it as easy as possible for customers to adopt usage of our platform, which then allows them to subsequently expand. We have deemphasized upfront commitments and tried to streamline that sort of upfront part of the negotiation. And so that has a natural consequence from a balance sheet perspective as sort of flowing through there. And that’s where you see it. And that’s why we tend to talk about that as being less relevant for our business.

Operator: One moment for our next question. And it comes from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays.

Raimo Lenschow : Congrats from me as well, and two quick questions. Michael, on staying on that EA, one, was there anything like in terms of Q4 deals that kind of got pulled into Q3, et cetera, that make like the Q3 performance like that there were one-off? I consider or was it just like a general performance being better. And then one for Dev, like in this sort of environment, there tends to be — well, there is a tendency to go back to the established platform. What are you seeing in terms of new customer projects starting and going to Mongo, but also in terms of cleanup of like legacy Oracle, legacy IBM and stuff like that and people consolidating on the platforms of those movements? Are those initiatives happening as we speak?

Michael Gordon: Raimo, thanks for the question. On the pull forwards, no, we did not see any particular pull activity. The only thing I’d call out, which I mentioned in the script on the EA, is we saw a little more multiyear in EA, which under 606, drives a little more revenue, but no pull forwards.

Dev Ittycheria : Yes. In regards to the question about…

Michael Gordon : Engagement at current level.

Dev Ittycheria : Yes, platform. So we are definitely seeing customers continue to choose us and standardize us in terms of using Atlas. And the breadth of the platform is really attracting customers to use MongoDB in a wide variety of ways. And so we feel really good about the win rates. We feel really good about our engagement with customers. And obviously, you saw that in the new customer wins. The new customer wins were quite strong.

Operator: One moment for our next question. And it comes from Sanjit Singh with Morgan Stanley.

Sanjit Singh: Thank you for taking the question and very impressive set of Q3 results. Dev, if I go back to the pandemic, some of the initiatives that you guys put in place that really served you well coming out of the pandemic, you saw the new customer adds really accelerate in 2020 as you sort of focus on sort of just onboarding customers at lower overall spend levels. In terms of the playbooks that could unfold in 2023, what sort of your playbook that you’re going to be focusing the team more on sort of the app modernization use case? Is it going to be about further accelerating the customer adds? How are you sort of thinking about the sales playbook as we go into calendar 2023?