Unity Software Inc. (NYSE:U) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Nollen: Great. Thanks. Actually, perfect segue into my question from the last bit there, which is about the ironSource integration. Could you just talk a little bit more about, I guess, what was not an immediate integration when the acquisition was made? Now it sounds like you feel like you have completed the acquisition. I’ve noticed some fairly big-name departures from ironSource. If there’s anything you could talk about that? And then, could you just clarify about the $72 million in credits? Is this something that was done to roll people onto the LevelPlay platform back in the day? And then, why is that being unwound now?

Jim Whitehurst: Well, let me maybe start on the work stuff. Well, I mean, naturally, when two companies come together, first off, you need to make sure that you’re retaining the right people, you have a continuity of business, and then over time, you bring the pieces together. And so, we were working on that through the course of last year, and that kind of culminated ultimately, without say, kind of a full integration at the end of the year as we kind of came into January as part of our overall restructuring. So, we’re in a little bit more of a functional organization. So for the first time, we have one owner of commercial for — kind of a CRO for the ads business across both Unity and ironSource, and we have one leader of product and technology across both.

So, we, frankly, had two data science teams until January. We now have one. We had two different kind of data engineering teams. We now have one. And so, naturally, just how you think about sequencing that in an acquisitions kind of takes a period of time. And so, we are there now, and we feel like these single teams and singular focus will serve us well. As part of that naturally, the founders who ran kind of ironSource were kind of ready to step back and create room for people within ironSource to come in and take roles. And so, as part of that whole integration, I think they decided it was time to step back. I still talk to many of those leaders every week. They’re heavily engaged and care about the success, obviously, of their baby in ironSource, but more broadly for Unity as we go forward.

Luis Visoso: Yeah. To the second part of your question, Tim, so we’ve communicated this for some time now. There were some incentives that ironSource provided to their customers before the merger, right? And some of those integration fees were returned to us, and we recorded those as revenue throughout the year. So, what we wanted to make sure is that you all had all transparency in what those amounts were. So, we included that in the table on — where we show a revenue by quarter for Grow. So, most of the difference between that and our reported number is the integration fees that were returned. The only difference is $15 million from Luna, which basically spreads consistent throughout the year. So, you can assume $3 million to $4 million per quarter, but everything else is related to the integration fees that were returned to Unity. So, we’re just giving you that exact number so you have it. It’s in the base.

Tim Nollen: Okay, great. All very helpful. Thank you.

Daniel Amir: Thanks. So, next question is from Michael Funk at Bank of America.

Michael Funk: Yeah. Thank you for the questions. So, a couple, if I could. Looking at the revenue and the margin guidance for the year, I think you said 25%-plus EBITDA margin exiting fourth quarter. It seems like trajectory that could be predicted throughout the year would imply a higher margin by fourth quarter. So, just curious if that is maybe the headcount reduction benefit going away in second half or reinvesting back into the business. So that’s the first question is the — on the EBITDA margin.

Luis Visoso: Yeah. Hey, Michael. We’ll be including our guide, as Jim mentioned. We also want to make sure that we’re properly investing back as — back to one of the first questions during the meeting. So, we’re hitting the right balance. We want to be a Rule of 40 company, and we think we can be close to that towards the end of the year. So that’s what we’re trying to achieve and we clearly see a path to get there. But we’re driving — as you’ve seen, we’re driving our margins and cost efficiencies hard but never at the expense of growth.

Michael Funk: Okay. So, the comment was hopefully Rule of 40 company by the end of the year. Was that correct?

Luis Visoso: Yeah, that would be our target.

Michael Funk: Okay. And then the last one, if I could, on the competitive environment you mentioned in the shareholder letter, competitive intensity impacting the business. Can you expand on that comment, please?

Luis Visoso: Yeah, I mean, on the Grow side, we’re just seeing a more intense competitive environment, right? And you’ve all seen some of our competitors’ report numbers, some of them have been better than ours, so it’s just been more intense. And some of the innovation they brought to the market has been strong. And as Jim said, we were busy doing integration work, and now we have very — we know what our gaps are and we have aggressive plans to close those in the very short period of time. So, we’re working towards. So that’s what we referred to in the notes.

Michael Funk: Great. Thank you so much.

Luis Visoso: Sure.

Daniel Amir: Great. So, next question is from Chris Kuntarich at UBS.

Chris Kuntarich: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe the first one on the multiplayer business, you guys talked about shifting the service to orchestration and managed solutions. Can you just unpack this a bit? And then maybe just how we should be thinking about this margin profile going forward?