ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:ZI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Henry Schuck: Yes. We are anticipating monetizing the upgrade path.

Tyler Radke: Okay, thanks very much.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Joshua Reilly with Needham Company. Your line is open.

Joshua Reilly: Yes, thanks for taking my question. I believe the single seat SKU was released either last quarter or early into Q4, can you just give us a sense of how widely this has now been deployed to customers or prospects? And then are you seeing any impact positively in terms of customer retention on the very low end from the single feet SKU? Thank you.

Henry Schuck: We really released a single-seat SKU in Q4 of last year, early Q4 or late Q3. And we’ve seen the number of customers and the revenue associated with them tick up every month since we released it. So we feel good about that, but it’s still super early on that — on the single-speed SKU, which you can only buy through a PLG motion. And so it’s really early, but the trajectory is really positive.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Taylor McGinnis with UBS. Your line is open.

Claire Gerdes: Hi, there. This is Claire Gerdes on for Taylor. I wanted to press there a little more. If we assume that NRR remains the same in 2024 at 87%, then that would imply new customers, I believe, has to grow in the mid-single digits from a decline last year. One of the things that you mentioned was record new customer bookings. Could you comment what you saw in 4Q that would give comfort outlook and maybe what level of new logo growth you saw that could help give visibility for the year. Thanks.

Henry Schuck: I’ll start Cameron. Throughout the year, relative to the customer base, new business demand and close stayed strong. We saw that continue throughout the year. And then at the end of the year, we brought on the most new logos we’ve had in a quarter. We had great metrics around the new sales motion. And then we had many customers who had left to come back to us as well. So we feel pretty good about our ability to forecast demand on the new business side. and see it continuing strength throughout 2024. Go ahead, Cameron.

Cameron Hyzer: Yes. And then I think the other dynamic that is interesting is that based on the market and what we’ve done within the company, our mix of ramps AEs is up significantly from where it was during the course of ’23. So I think we are seeing kind of our strongest players in the field stay with us. They had a good Q4, as Henry mentioned earlier in his remarks. And I think seeing that continue as something that we’re excited about.

Claire Gerdes: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Your line is open.

Frank Surace: Hi, this is Frank on for Raimo. I wanted to ask one on the margin guide. How should we think about the puts and takes in the full year guide? And are you assuming any change to rep productivity or the mix of advanced functionality there? Thank you.

Henry Schuck: So with respect to margins, we are continuing to invest heavily into the AI functionality that we’ve put out there, and we think that, that’s a really important factor where we can deliver value for our customers going forward. That frankly, between the engineering investment there as well as the actual infrastructure investment, that includes LOM models and so forth. That is probably a few hundred basis points of margin. Most of that, we’ve identified other areas of business where we feel we can be more efficient and drive value that way. So I’d say that, that is the kind of biggest focus is that particularly as we’re early on with the CoPilot platform, there’s a there’s an investment cost related to that. But then as that grows, we’ll be able to harvest operating leverage against that.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Rishi Jaluria with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Rishi Jaluria: Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking my question. I just wanted to go back to the comments made on maybe wanting to embrace more self-service and PLG. I guess, part one, when we’ve talked about this in the past, you said the unit economics on self-service just wouldn’t work themselves on. It seems like there’s maybe a little bit of a different tone around that? What has changed? And what sort of investments do you need to make in whether it’s pricing and packaging or product to get that? And maybe alongside that, at least when we’ve gone through the trial, you still can’t get public pricing and you still have to go through sales people to get on ZoomInfo. So I’m assuming that’s still a work in progress. Maybe if you could just walk us through what that progress looks like and where you intend that to get to.

Henry Schuck: Great. I think today, the no touch, no salesperson motion is live. It has just opened up to a certain a certain set of traffic to our website. So not every person who shows up on the website is guided through the PLG motion. We’re treating that as a lead nurture model. So if a lead can’t get to a sales rep because of the score, the score of that lead being below a certain threshold, we’ll put that into the self-service motion, and it’s limited to certain geographies and certain sizes and industries as it exists today. . As we learn more about the motion, learn more about the conversion rates, we’ll continue to increase the traffic into that specific motion. And so that’s probably why you’re not seeing it. But we’ve had a number of transactions that are self-service that have come through since we launched this in Q4.

Those transactions are increasing. And so we continue to see good trajectory there, and we’re eating our way into a more fulsome PLG motion. It’s less about building the product there. In fact, our [indiscernible] product that you would gain access to in that motion has one of the highest NPS scores across all of our products. It’s more about releasing more and more traffic end users into that specific motion and away from a sales-led motion.

Rishi Jaluria: All right, got it. Thank you so much.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Pat Walravens with JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Austin Cole: Great, this is Austin Cole on for Pat. I wanted to ask a more product-related question with CoPilot. I understand it’s powered by an thoracic. I wanted to ask about if there’s anything you can tell us about the architecture, how you guys are connecting your data to anthropic how you guys are getting context? Is there a vector database as part of the architecture. Any detail there would be helpful. Thank you.

Henry Schuck: Yes. The product is not fully operated by Anthropic. Anthropic is one of our AI partners that’s plugged into a variety of different insights and motions that we’re running with CoPilot. We’ve also built our own internal LLM that we’re leveraging. We’re also leveraging open AI in a number of different places. And so we are — we internally have certain things that we run against our own LLM, certain things we run against Anthropics, certain things we run against open AI, and we’re constantly balancing across those three different places. And so, so far, we feel pretty good about that structure and leveraging each one in its respective area.

Austin Cole: Okay, I appreciate that clarification. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist. Your line is open.

Terry Tillman: Well, I’ll make it easy. I’ll just ask one question, and thanks for fitting me in. maybe Cameron, in terms of the top line growth for the year, the low end to the high end, what is baked in, in terms of having meaningful success as the copilot upgrade path. And then secondly, I mean, it’s really in the second-half. If you’re going to have success or traction, would it be back-end loaded more fully in 4Q? Thank you.

Cameron Hyzer: And certainly, we’re not planning to make copilot generally available until the middle of the year. So certainly, any success that we would have would be back-end loaded reality, we did not incorporate kind of meaningful success from CoPilot anywhere in the guidance range. I think the guidance range is more the world gets worse, it gets closer to the bottom. And obviously, we’re not able to impact that through co-pilot. At the top end of the range, I think it’s the well kind of stays consistent to its slightly better based on some of the other factors that’s people not down selling as much given that they’ve down sold historically as well as our mix of business is starting to create a little bit of a tailwind for us in terms of larger customers tend to renew better.

So I wouldn’t peg much, if anything, even within the range on meaningful success with the copilot. Obviously, if it helps a little, it will push us closer to the top of the range, but we haven’t said that it’s going to be a big driver.

Terry Tillman: Thank you. That’s helpful.

Operator: And I’m showing no further questions at this time. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

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