Proto Labs, Inc. (NYSE:PRLB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Rob Bodor: Sure. Well, we’ve continued to drive expansion and we’ve continued to invest in our sales force as well. In the Americas, we’ve invested in a new sales leader. And I think all of those things, as we’ve been rolling out more and more of these capabilities and engaging our customers with our broader offerings, we saw a particularly nice uptick in the take rate in the quarter as a result of that.

Greg Palm: Okay. And is it across sort of all offerings, injection molding, CNC, 3D printing? Is it more concentrated with a specific service?

Rob Bodor: So I think we saw growth pretty broadly across multiple services. And I would say that it was more in kind of larger production orders and longer lead time offerings where we saw the most growth.

Greg Palm: Okay, and then just wanted to follow up once on the guidance because it is a significantly, but it is quite a bit more of a seasonal decline in Q4, as Jim had stated. But are you able to maybe quantify order rates in October versus what you’re seeing in what you saw in Q3? And is there any sort of added level of conservative basis on what you’re seeing in October? Just wanted to clear that up.

Dan Schumacher: Yes, no, I mean, we’re using a similar model that we’re looking at. I mean, the challenge, Greg, right now is the macro backdrop and what is going to happen during the holiday season, which is pretty uncertain. But as I said earlier, I think the only thing that has changed from an order rate perspective, maybe Q3 and Q4, is that CNC was a touch softer to start October, which is why I put the guide where it was using kind of our order trend and our seasonality model.

Greg Palm: Okay, fair enough. I will leave it there, thanks.

Operator: Our next question is from Brian Drab with William Blair. Please proceed.

Brian Drab: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and shockingly good result in a tough environment. So congratulations.

Rob Bodor: Thanks. Brian.

Brian Drab: Can you comment a little bit further on the gross margin trajectory. Hubs had such a strong quarter in terms of gross margin. Does that moderate? It sounds like you did reiterate the longer term guidance for that to be lower than what you did in the third quarter. So how does that look into the fourth quarter and beyond? And then also, I guess with things slowing down a little bit, there’s some deleveraging in the fourth quarter. Just some comments on gross margin, please.

Rob Bodor: Yes. So from the Hubs gross margin perspective, we really kind of made the changes coming out of Q1, which is where we saw a higher gross margin than the range in Q2 and Q3. And to be honest, we want to see how we can continually evolve that model in different macro markets before we change that range as of now. Right. So it is – we are very pleased with the results from what we’ve had adjusted there. And I would think we should see something similar in the fourth quarter for that margin. But like I said, I think we want to see in different macro conditions and so forth that we can continue to maintain that margin before we would adjust the range. You’re right. On the factory side, there’s a lot of inefficiency that happens within the factory around the holiday period.

Right. So we’ve got people taking holiday and vacations. We have to augment that more with contractors and overtime. And so we should see the factory margin come down a twitch [ph] in the fourth quarter as it normally does.

Brian Drab: Okay. So overall, company gross margin down somewhat in the fourth quarter sequentially. Okay?

Rob Bodor: Yes.

Brian Drab: Okay. And then I’ll just ask one more question for now, I guess the developer count is down a little bit and the revenue is up a lot. And I’m just wondering if you could comment on are we maybe entering a phase for Proto Labs where we’re going to see sustained higher revenue per developer? And this is obviously a metric that a lot of people use to build their models around to some extent and that stepped up significantly. Revenue per developer, do you expect that to be sustainable?