Snowflake Inc. (SNOW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Sanjit Singh : Makes total sense. And then I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of sense of the consumption, the cohorts and how they’re sort of behaving. So you’ve talked quite positively about the top 10 customers and obviously, new customers don’t contribute even though that’s coming in at a very fast clip. But if we strip out just the top 10 customers and the new customers, that sort of core customer base, how has those underlying expansion trends materializing over the quarter and as we’ve gotten past the October quarter into November, December, what are some of the underlying trends for the core of the business outside of the top 10?

Mike Scarpelli: Yes. Well, let me clarify something on the top 10, when I said six are growing faster than the pace of the company. We actually have three that actually sequentially were down in the quarter, which was expected, and those are some of those companies we talked about early in the year, and they’re all in the technology sector that wouldn’t surprise you if you knew their names. But what I will say is we continue to see strength, in particular, in financial services, the advertising and media space. Where we do see weakness is we do see weakness in APJ and a lot of that has to do with the fact the FX is really impacting them. And then you do see weakness — I didn’t see it in the bookings but in consumption in the more of the SMB customers.

We do see that as we call them our corporate accounts, but these are the 500 or less employees and I definitely did see some consumption weakness, but I want to stress, I didn’t see they need bookings that they have that added RPO, but definitely out of consumption.

Operator: Our next question is with Alex Zukin from Wolfe Research.

Alex Zukin : So I guess if I — it sounds like there’s a lot of nuance across a lot of different industries and customer sizes and geographies. If we think about the guidance for next year, are you guiding to — you mentioned the guide for next quarter, it’s prudent to assume a more riskier or a more prudent scenario around the continuation of macro trends. What are you assuming for next year? Is there a linearity where you’re assuming a second half better than the first half or continuing to get worse? Walk us through some of the puts and takes around that guidance trajectory.

Mike Scarpelli: I’m factoring in that we’re going to continue to stay consistent where we are right now through the balance of next year. And if the things turn around, that’s upside for us. And as I said, this is just as we’re doing planning right now, we’re not expecting things to change. And I really don’t know and probably maybe you have a better sense, but all I can do is forecast based upon what we see today.

Alex Zukin : Got it. And for some of the customers or cohorts that you’re seeing where like they’re sequentially declining, are you starting to see kind of we’re working with them around a new baseline? Like basically, when do some of these optimization patterns kind of rebase and start growing in some of these new areas like Streamlit and others that you’re out there in the market with?

Mike Scarpelli: Well, what I would say is these are three customers that’s unique to them with the challenges that they’ve been placing or had in their businesses that have been pretty public. And I think too one of the reasons why as I said, technology has underperformed. We are seeing a lot of technology companies you’re hearing in the news that are either freezing hiring or cutting headcount and they’re definitely looking to optimize on cost. But these three customers, in particular, I think we’re at their baseline right now. And as long as their businesses kind of stabilize and grow, then we’ll see some growth out of them, but I’m not factoring any growth in them this quarter.

Operator: Our next question is with Brad Zelnick from Deutsche Bank. Our next question will be with Gregg Moskowitz from Mizuho.

Gregg Moskowitz : Congratulations on delivering very healthy product revenue in this environment. My question relates to Q4, where obviously the product revenue guidance was below where consensus was. And I’m curious, how much of this Mike is a reflection of a moderation in consumption in the month of November or over the last six weeks, as you said, in APJ and across the SMB as opposed to embedding more conservatism amid the existing macro uncertainty. Would you say it’s tilted more towards one versus the other?

Mike Scarpelli: Well, the way we do our forecast is based upon historical performance, and we definitely did see a slowdown in the month of October, not that dramatic, but we typically would see week-over-week growth and we saw a number of weeks where it was pretty flat. I will say November is starting to tick back up again, and that’s all factored into the guidance given the macro backdrop we have right now.