Vertex, Inc. (NASDAQ:VERX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: Super helpful. And then the record high NRR was great to see. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about, break that down a little bit, what’s been resonating? Is there any CPI component to that? Is there any CPI component baked into ’24 that might look a little different? Just kind of any help on breaking apart NRR.

David DeStefano: There’s basically, George, there’s three components to what drives our NRR. About 50% of it comes from the cross-sells of new offerings into our install base. About 25% comes from selling more of an existing product to the customer. We call them entitlements, where they’re going through revenue bands and we end up — it costs them more. And then the last 25% comes from price increases. I think the execution in fourth quarter really reflects consistent performance across all three with a little bit of uptick in the cross-sell and entitlements area, but nothing unique in the price area. We’re pretty disciplined in our price increases. That’s really not fueling the bulk of this at this point.

Operator: The next question comes from Adam Hotchkiss of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Adam Hotchkiss: Thanks for taking the questions. And David, you mentioned some of the new logo wins in Europe. I’m curious how you view the competitive environment there, given it seems there’s a lot of interest across the Office of the CFO, to get involved with some of the new e-invoicing regulations. Are your go-to-market teams seeing any of this and RFPs companies looking to get ahead of this today? Or do you think there’s going a little bit more of a reactionary type of focus from companies in Europe given some of the delays in regulation? Appreciate it.

David DeStefano: Thank you, Adam, for the question. The beauty and the benefit of and the pain of working in the indirect tax space is unless there is true pain, there is not advanced budget for it. One of the things we’ve learned over the years is, you want to have the right solution just in time to solve the problem, but getting there too soon doesn’t always generate additional revenue because there’s not a lot of discretionary spend. I think we see that consistently playing out here and that’s why I feel like we can be very strategic with our decision-making as we move forward here. Our Europe team has done a great job of building a very strong customer reference base, which is essential in the indirect tax community. Certainly, with some of the offerings we brought forward like Chain Flow Accelerator, which is really differentiated in the SAP space.

And if you think about again, one of our larger ecosystems along with Oracle is SAP and we’re enjoying some really nice positioning inside of the SAP customer environment right now. I still feel like we’re very well-positioned in that space.

Adam Hotchkiss: Great. That’s really helpful color. And then John on margins, just curious if there’s anything you’re contemplating this year from an incremental investment perspective, given the evolving, e-invoicing environment around, Pagero or those considerations would be beyond this year?

John Schwab: Yes. I think from a margin perspective, again, we talked a little bit about where we stand and kind of what we feel about the future. I don’t anticipate anything significant coming that’s not already contemplated in our guidance. I think we feel good about the increases we have made here in R&D and kind of bringing things together and I think we feel like we’re going to stay that path and continue to work with the partners that we’ve kind of been talking to certainly from an e-invoicing standpoint. But we’ve got real good momentum and traction regarding some of the R&D efforts and some of the other areas for additional new products and things going forward. I don’t anticipate a big wholesale change in terms of how we’re thinking about investment to get after additional spend.

Operator: The next question comes from Samad Samana of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Samad Samana: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the great numbers. First one, maybe John for you, if I just look, you guys have seen growth get much, much stronger, but OpEx has been very, very limited in terms of expansion since December of 2022. Should we think about the company being kind of at the right level of OpEx? How should we think about maybe that’s going forward? I know you’ve given margin guidance, but just philosophically help us to understand if we’re at the right place in terms of headcount and maybe where expenses should trend? And then I have a follow-up for you, David.

John Schwab: Yes. Thanks, Samad, for the question. I think, as we’ve talked about it before, a significant amount of our investments took place in the years leading up to 2023. Middle of the year of 2023, we did see an inflection point we felt with the go live of the ERP system in a number of the other areas really getting to the level that we had anticipated when we undertook the journey. I feel very good about where that is. I think we will continue to expand from a headcount standpoint, because again, there’s growth opportunities and things that are out there that we’ll get after. But we do anticipate and as you would see from our guidance, getting leverage out of our cost infrastructure. Again, we’ve talked about G&A, we’ve talked about some level of selling and marketing expense seeing that there.

We’re always being opportunistic from an R&D standpoint. We feel good about where we are now from a headcount standpoint, from an expense standpoint, but there is some level of growth built into it. But again, you’ll start to see that leverage really come through now that those big investment dollars are past us.