Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ:PRGS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ittai Kidron: Okay. And then on the financial side, you gave a quite interesting review on the enhancements you’ve made at the portfolio. But tying this to Anthony’s comments on the year, it sounds like there’s literally zero core growth that you are expecting with the business outside of the incremental contribution from MarkLogic that didn’t — was not caught in 2023. So, the guide meaning, we really assumes zero growth in the core. I’m just trying to think why, with all the changes in the portfolio, there’s no better opportunities for you to monetize these? Maybe going back to the first question, all the generative AI enhancements, are none of them revenue generating? Are they all just experience enhancing? Is there no better way to squeeze a little bit more out of this?

Anthony Folger: Yes. Hey, Ittai, it’s Anthony and it’s a good question. Part of this really is — and I mentioned a little bit, the timing of contract renewals within the business in 2024, we do have a lot more term based — sort of the on-prem, term-based subscription model. And so the timing of when those contracts renew or when they’re set to renew will influence the revenue quarter-to-quarter. But again, I also alluded to the fact that we had pretty good ARR growth last year. Multiple products contributed to that growth. And we expect stability in a demand environment. So, again, quarter-to-quarter things may move a little bit, but over the course of the year, I would expect to see ARR growth. That’s relatively consistent with 2023.

Ittai Kidron: Very good. Thank you. Good luck.

Yogesh Gupta: Thank you, Ittai.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Fatima Boolani with Citi. Your line is open.

Fatima Boolani: Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. Either for Anthony or Yogesh, it was interesting to hear that MOVEit had a strong performance in the quarter. It was enough for you to call it out in your prepared remarks. And appreciating that it was an incident for the business, I’m very curious as to how customers have responded. I mean, it seems almost counterintuitive that it was a contributing factor to some of the strength you saw. So I just wanted to unpack that a little bit because it seems counterintuitive [indiscernible]. And then I have a follow-up, please.

Yogesh Gupta: So, good to hear from you, Fatima. I’ll answer part of it, maybe Anthony can add as well. From my perspective, right, we have actually done everything in our power to help our customers harden their environments, deal with the incident that they faced and move forward and we continue to do so. I am really proud of what the team has done and we’re really proud of being able to keep our customers and the customers have been loyal to us. It’s been a really wonderfully positive set of outcomes. Obviously, huge challenge and still a lot of unresolved legal issues and regulatory issues. But from a customer perspective, we continue to be very positive about MOVEit. Anthony, do you want to [indiscernible].

Anthony Folger: No, I would agree. I think there’s — MOVEit performed well certainly in the first half of 2023 and it held up in the second half of 2023. I would say we keep an eye on the pipeline and we want to make sure that we can continue to close deals. And retention rates have, I think, remained fairly strong, but we’ll measure that over the course of the year, right. We want to see how the retention plays out over time, so I’ll dial back, Yogesh, a little bit. I’ll be the conservative one to say. Yes, it was a very good year and I think we’re very pleased with the outcome of the topline. But we’re still cautious. And we’re still — I would say very focused on where our customers are at and wanting to understand renewal trends and also wanting to make sure that we can continue to build the pipeline. So I think it’s — it held up well for sure. Yes.

Fatima Boolani: Okay, that’s helpful. And since you brought up retention rates, it’s a good segue into my question around what you’re thinking about net retention rates underneath the hood as you tell us and talk to us about consistent ARR growth trends consistent with this year? And the spirit of the question really is, we did see net retention rate this quarter dip about 100 basis points, so it’s not dramatic. I think you’ve been operating in the 101, 102 zip code pretty consistently. So, maybe to ask the prior [Technical Difficulty] we expect some of those innovations in the portfolio pull up the socks so to speak on net retention rate or any other commentary you might be able to share as you think about net retention rate trajectory in 2024?

Anthony Folger: Yes. Sure, Fatima. I can take that. I think in the back half of 2023, we do have churn from time to time. And I think Yogesh has mentioned this before. Sometimes it’s factors that are outside of our control like M&A. And so, I think any slight dip we saw in the back half of the year was associated with a very small number of contracts and one, in particular, where there was two global financial institutions merged and the party that was using our technology did not come out on top in the integration. And so sometimes those things happen. And we measure net retention rates on a trailing 12-month basis. So I think as we move through the first half of 2024, we would expect retention rates to be maintained and then start to sort of normalize and improve in the back half of the year again.