Splunk Inc. Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick from Deutsche Bank.

Brad Zelnick : Congrats on the strong execution in the quarter. Gary, we’re clearly in an environment where customers are wanting to do more with less. And with some of the changes that you’re enacting as we think about the go-to-market and having this single sales point of contact. I’m just thinking in what ways can Splunk ensure that you’re the platform of choice for customers to consolidate requirements? And is that part of what’s inspiring the changes that you’re making in the field as well?

Gary Steele: No, that’s exactly right because 1 of the things that we do see to your exact point is we see customers wanting to find ways to consolidate suppliers, they want to find ways to simplify their environment because it ultimately will be more cost efficient to run. And so we see that even today, and I would even go back to 1 of the examples that we provided in our prepared remarks, where existing customer took out competitive solution that had been using someone else’s SIM solution and moved to Splunk SIM solution. I do think that this creates an environment with this revised selling model to capture more of that consolidation.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Steve Koenig from SMBC.

Steve Koenig: Gray, thanks for getting me on here. I’ll ask a multipart question, it’s pretty short. So the first part is, can you give us a little color on the big revenue beat this quarter? Was it — to what extent was deal duration factor here? And then secondly, you are doing an awful lot as 1 person here, and the shift seems to be stabilizing how are you spending your time? How have you been spending your time? And how do you expect that to change over the next 12 months? What things are you focused on?

Gary Steele : Thanks, Steve. So to answer the first part of the question on the beat, the beat came in 2 forms. So 1 was we obviously saw less cloud mix — and that was — that came in at 56%. And so that was slightly down from our expectations. And so you had more term that obviously drives revenue up. And then the contract term was slightly up as well. So the combination of those 2 things then provided for that broader revenue beat. And then going to the second part of your question, where am I spending time. Obviously, I’m spending time on driving these cost efficiencies. That’s a priority because I think at the end of the day, all of you will want to value the company on the amazing free cash flow that we will deliver. And so clearly, focused on that side of things.

But I continue to spend a lot of time with customers and being in market with our sales team to really understand how people are thinking about buying and making sure that I’m understanding the role that Splunk is playing in their future plans. So that’s another critical element. And then obviously, the third big area for me is to continue to recruit a world-class team, and I’m super encouraged by what we’re seeing on the CFO front and look forward to announcing someone soon.

Operator: Our final question comes from the line of Mike Cikos from Needham & Company.

Mike Cikos : I did want to circle up very quickly on the cloud migrations and those expansions that we’re talking about. And I just wanted to see I know that we’re talking about the single seller model and you guys supporting customers in this hybrid environment. But is there anything that Splunk can do or is doing to get in front of customers and help them with these migration plans kind of to support those cloud ARR metrics that you guys are moving towards?