nCino, Inc. (NASDAQ:NCNO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Josh Beck: Very helpful, Pierre. And then maybe a follow-up around the Rule of 30. Obviously, you’ve been able to certainly contemplate that in the outlook this year, even with a lot of, I think, headwinds, probably nobody would have really been able to foresee just a few months ago. But as we move forward into the future years, should we look at fiscal ’24 as a real stepping up in terms of the operating margins of the business that could moderate in future years? Or is it something that’s just a bit more of an inflection point. Just curious on how we should just kind of roughly think about that framework in the future years.

Pierre Naude: Yes. So FY ’24, which we’re in right now, we committed to the Rule of 30. I think to change from a pure growth company to a profitable growth company was strategically important to us. I think the ability of this team that they’ve shown they can execute and they can do that. We believe the cost basis of the business is now right in line with our execution expectations. The building of product, our go-to-market strategy, we cover the SAM well. So I feel good about all of those line items. If you look longer term, we want to be a marquee profitable growth company, which means we have to grow beyond the Rule of 30 over time. But I’m not going to give specifics because we’ll have to look at market conditions. But overall, our aspirations, as you know, have always been very bullish.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Charles Nabhan with Stephens. Your line is open.

Charles Nabhan: Most of my questions have been asked, but I wanted to ask a quick one on the independent mortgage market. Specifically, the market obviously had quite a few layoffs last year. But where we stand today, in the conversations you had, do you feel as though the majority of your customers have right-sized their customer — their employee bases at this point.

Greg Orenstein: Yes. Clearly, we’ve been watching the mortgage market adjust to this new environment and really the extra capacity or the excess capacity that it has being run out of the system. We saw that in last year. And again, we had heightened elevated churn as a result of that. And coming up with the guidance for this year, we are still assuming some heightened elevated churn. Obviously, we’re optimistic that some of it is behind us or most of it is behind us. But as we think about this year, it’s really time will tell. But with what happened last year and what played out you’d like to think you’re on the other side of it without confirming that it’s passed us completely.

Charles Nabhan: Got it. And just a quick follow-up on competition. You compete against institutions of all sizes across your markets. And just curious if any — there’s potential for dislocation at the lower end of your competition set that could potentially that you could potentially take advantage of going forward. I know — again, I know it’s early, but just wanted to get some commentary on the potential market dynamics.

Josh Glover: Yes, absolutely. We’re always proud of our product, and we start with that when you look at the nCino company’s story. If you’re looking at a company that has been profitable now for two quarters, we will be cash flow positive this year. And despite the shift to profitable growth and the margin expansion that we discussed earlier, we will put $100 million into our product this year. So that stability and that commitment to investment is a great validation point as banks select their partner. And we do believe that that discipline and execution that we’ve shown is going to differentiate us as they evaluate vendors.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jackson Ader with SVB MoffettNathanson. Your line is open.

Jackson Ader: The first one is. Were any of the deal closure or bookings issues in the fourth quarter? Do you think any of those had to do with the timing of the workforce reduction that was announced?

Pierre Naude: We’ve had no feedback to that point. We didn’t see any negative impact from that, and we didn’t see any negative feedback from a market perspective. Those specific cases are very large banks, that is scrutinizing their deals and making sure they do the right thing at the right time. They have to align all their resources to be in line with large projects like that. And then those are typically the factors that comes into play.

Jackson Ader: Okay. Yes. That’s fair. And then following up on Saket’s question earlier. Greg, you mentioned still strong, healthy pipeline, but I’m curious — pipeline coverage, right, like pipeline coverage ratio relative to a year ago, is that up, down or flat from what it has been in previous years?

Greg Orenstein: Yes. And I’ll actually — Josh, you will probably want to answer that.

Josh Glover: Absolutely. As we look at — and we set our goals here, we’re going to look at a few things. Obviously, when we look at the existing pipe for fiscal period, we’ll look at deals that we’re able to pull forward from a farther period. We’ll look at deals that might slip and then we look at the pipeline generation, demand generation that we’re doing. So at this point, as we evaluate the pipeline and try to make sense of what’s going on in the news, we feel confident that we have the coverage that we need to execute on the plan that we just put forward.

Greg Orenstein: Jackson, that’s something we’ve always reinforced, is covering the SAM with the market opportunity we have. It’s critical that we do that. We obviously factor that in, getting back to your first question around the workforce reduction that we did in January, again, making sure that we’ve got folks in the right places so that we can continue to focus on our growth aspirations.

Pierre Naude: Yes. Let me make one more comment about that because people hear that event and the headlines are there, et cetera. But if you look at the size of the Company and the size of the reduction, it was less than 7%. I reminded that one of my customers the other day when we went public and these are public numbers, in 2020, we spent $38 million in R&D. And this year, as Josh mentioned to you earlier, we’ll spend over $100 million. This company is committed to innovation. It’s got a platform approach. It’s got a seasoned executive team and people who’s motivated to change this market over time, and our customers are seeing that. It’s deep partnerships and that level of innovation and commitment as well as account assignments and salespeople on the field, we maintained in place, and I feel pretty good about that. We will get through this short period and then we’ll take more market share.