PagerDuty, Inc. (NYSE:PD) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Oliver: And Howard, that was going to be my follow-up was just on that relative to the — your philosophy on the guide outlook for that — for the rest of the year, not passing through the — [ to be ]? And then obviously, you called out billings in your prepared remarks, which I know for you guys have always bounced around. Nevertheless, they are sort of forecasted to be relatively weak to the rest of the year. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Is that conservative or what? Thank you.

Howard Wilson: Yeah. So we take a prudent view of our guidance, both from a top line and from an operating margin perspective. So as we’ve looked at the revenue guidance for the full year, we obviously have the impact of the slower growth in H1 creating like an impact in the second half of the year with lighter bookings. It translates into that lagging indicator of revenue in the second half. But we’ve also not factored in any improvement in the macro environment in our outlook for the rest of the year. And from an operating margin perspective, we’ve really taken a view of controlling the controllables. We still are continuing to invest, we want to ensure that we have the right sales capacity, as I mentioned, to be able to reaccelerate growth as the economy improves. And we’ve also ensured that we are continuing to execute on what we see as a large $38 billion TAM.

Robert Oliver: Great. Thanks again, guys.

Operator: Okay. Moving next to — from RBC, [indiscernible] please go ahead.

Unidentified Participant: Hi. This is [indiscernible] on for Matt Hedberg. Thanks for taking my questions here. I had one for Howard, it’s good to see that you guys have continued to show leverage in the model. by the cost actions that you’ve taken over the past couple of quarters. Cash flow was also very strong this quarter. Can you talk more about how you think about the free cash flow progression for the remainder of the year and as we look towards fiscal ’25?

Howard Wilson: Thanks for the question, [indiscernible]. In terms of free cash flow, you’ll notice that it often over the course of the year follows a fairly similar trend that’s seasonal in terms of movement often related, we are often a few percentage points better on the operating — our free cash flow over the operating margin for the full year. But that does move around through the quarter. So our expectation for the full year would be that it would be a couple of points better. I think the expense shift that you saw, for example, from Q2 into Q3, that led to better than expected free cash flow in Q2. But as a result, that takes away some free cash flow in Q3.

Unidentified Participant: Got it. And then you recently had a CRO change with David leaving in February and Jeremy taking the weans. Now with two quarters of him in charge, what are some things he’s focused on? And have you seen any disruption in the sales organization given the change?

Howard Wilson: You’re on mute.

Jennifer Tejada: In fact, I’m really pleased with how Jeremy has settled in. He’s someone who’s been in our business for nearly seven years. He is a deep domain expert understands the product very well and has done a fantastic job of really focusing the sales force on up-leveling the conversation to a multiproduct sale, having more strategic discussions at a higher level with the CIO, the CTO, and in some cases, the CFO and he’s really leading the charge for the company around operations, cloud messaging and really helping to build awareness for that. I think that it would be easy to sort of scapegoat a change in management, what we’re really seeing is the impact of a macro. And in fact, Jeremy and his leadership team have adjusted very quickly.