Squarespace, Inc. (NYSE:SQSP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Anthony Casalena: Well, it’s certainly a major focus for us. And we’ve got a combination of things that contribute to our GPV, right? Obviously, physical products is a big one and remains important to us, and we continue to work on features for larger sellers to ensure that they can process using Squarespace. Services-based commerce is, of course, where we’ve been focusing a little bit more of our product efforts as of late, we saw Refresh courses and our products for classes and courses is rolling out. Services for project-based sellers starting in the form of invoicing and then Tock and Acuity, both have a GPV component as well, Tock a take rate on the prepaid bookings and then Acuity having a take rate on more stuff related to the appointment booking, and the processing of the payment for the appointment in person or over SMS.

And so we have a — there’s just so many things flowing into that GPV number. And we’re — some are very early, right? Like the classes and course, the invoicing stuff. I mean, this is two months old, it will take some time before that can actually affect a number like the number we’re showing at $1.5 billion in the quarter. So we expect some of that stuff to pick up. Again, we’re going to have these macro seasonal events as well that will sometimes be tailwinds to one category, sometimes be headwinds to some categories, and it’s a conglomeration of those that remains important. But growing that across these multiple ways to sell and with Squarespace Payments, I think, is a compelling position to be in terms of having a GPV be a positive impact on the business.

Nathan Gooden: Which we did see a nice turn this quarter, specifically on Acuity, reverting to double-digit growth this quarter. We have 6% growth this year or this quarter year-over-year is an acceleration from what we’ve seen in the past quarter. So as Anthony said, I think as these come to fruition the investments that we’re making in these areas, I would expect that this continues to tick up.

Operator: Our next question comes from Deepak Mathivanan from Wolfe Research.

Zach Morrissey: This is Zach on for Deepak. I just wanted to — I guess, the first one on the kind of usage-based pricing test. Just hoping you could provide kind of more color on kind of the early learnings from this initial test? And kind of what are the mile markers that you need to see before we can see a kind of more broad test or roll out of this kind of initiative?

Anthony Casalena: Sorry, what was the beginning of the…

Nathan Gooden: Usage-based pricing.

Anthony Casalena: Usage-based pricing. Yes. So we really haven’t executed on a usage-based pricing test in a way that I kind of want to. We did a minor test trying to bundle some products together but also do kind of — the way we were doing the usage-based testing was around grouping like it was more like range based instead of like how I would like to scale true usage-based pricing. So I would consider usage-based pricing test not executed at this point. But just given our current billing system, we wanted to see if there was something we could squeeze out with some repackaging. And it turns out the form of that test didn’t work. But that’s fine, I mean we run countless tests, and some don’t work and some do. And so you’ll continue to see more from us.

We have a lot of ideas about more usage-based pricing, especially in products outside the website product like Acuity, where there’s a very natural way to scale pricing based on usage that we haven’t executed on yet. So lots to come with that in 2024, and I expect some of those to be quite impactful.

Zach Morrissey: Great. And then just the second one, just on the kind of marketing strategy. I know you’re not kind of guiding to next year formally yet. But kind of with the revamped attribution model, kind of the new product that you’ve announced in the Refresh international expansion opportunities, do you see kind of opportunities to lean into marketing heading into next year or kind of realizing the efficiencies and this could be a source of leverage kind of going forward?