Zuora, Inc. (NYSE:ZUO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Todd McElhatton: Yes. I think just maybe they close up there, Adam is, I don’t think its customers are being cautious of jumping into the subscription business. He saw that with Gannett. You saw that with the automobile manufacturers. They’re saying, hey, our businesses are shifting, and we won’t be able to offer this. But there are some places where it’s like, oh, I need to make this transformation, or you’re seeing those decisions take longer. And we’ve taken that into account for the balance of this year and next year.

Adam Hotchkiss: Got it. All super helpful. And so when you think about that 11% to 14% for next year, is it fair to say the primary piece of the sort of slower growth relative to being something like north of 20% would be specifically around sort of that net expansion rate and customer cautiousness rather than a slowdown in the new pipeline, though fully understanding that you’re indicating that there is some slowdown there because of the extending deal cycles?

Todd McElhatton: Yes. I think what I would say is, and I think you’re asking about how did we get to the 11%. And when I really thought about that just to derisk of the different scenarios, what we said is, let’s assume that what we’re seeing in the second half now is that continue through next year, but that also gets a bit worse. And that’s how we’re looking at it. We certainly think that could hit us both on transformations that people are doing, and again our existing customers, being very cautious on pre-committing for incremental volume or taking on additional products from us, but we do expect the customers we have. They’re great enterprise customers. They are a growing business. We will be a growing business, that they will take on some of those, but again, wanting to be really cautious on what we’re seeing.

Tien Tzuo: One silver lining all this in terms of customer base. And so I don’t know that I would go so far to say this is all customer base and our new logos. I think it’s a balance, because if you look at the customer base, we do have a very, very sticky product. And just like nobody’s going to want to take on — people are slow to take on big projects, they’re not going to do it, they’re certainly not going to do a big project to replace an existing mission critical system. And so we feel really good about sustainability, and resiliency of our customer base. The question really is, how much is your volume going to grow? What is your appetite for new innovations? We think the appetite certainly there. But as long as there’s uncertainty in the economy, I think it’s, we need to be prudent. And we’re going to adjust our plans around that.

Adam Hotchkiss: Got it. Thanks Tien. Thanks, Todd.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew DeGasperi with Bemberg. Your line is now open.

Andrew DeGasperi: I had one specifically in terms of trying to drill down a little more in the end markets, and specifically the geographies. Would you say the weakness that you were seeing is broad based, would you collide any geographies, particular has been worse than another? And then similarly, and it makes me think attraction and media. But is there any kind of end market specifically that was bad as a tech — beyond tech if there’s something else? And how would you compare that to what happened during COVID?

Tien Tzuo: Let me jump in on the geography side. The overall, as we say the pipeline continues to grow. And the continued customer interest there, we definitely have some softness and demand due to the general macro. And then, we saw some softening in the second half, as well. The bottom-line, it’s similar to our peers. We are seeing impact from macro, but a very strong interest in both the products. And also, as you said, the growth in the pipeline.

Todd McElhatton: I think the other thing that’s really important, Andrew to keep in mind is, when we’re seeing things take longer or push, we’re not seeing a change in the competitive profile. We’re not seeing that those deals are being lost, or just saying it’s taking customers longer to make a decision.

Tien Tzuo: I think this is also very different than COVID. I think the big thing is, I don’t know, March or April, we knew what was going on. But in June, July, it was pretty clear that, it was going to be a V-shaped recovery, if you will, right? Here the uncertainty is going to continue. And I’m no economist, but it certainly feels like we have to predict for a situation where were the economic uncertainty where we will be able to tame inflation in the U.S. What’s going to happen with energy in Europe, those questions may not be resolved for a few quarters.

Todd McElhatton: The other thing I’d add about the COVID comment, when we went through COVID, I think there was also two other things that were a bit of overhang. We had customers that maybe we hadn’t targeted correctly. And we saw a fair number of those churned, they probably weren’t good fits with us. And then we’d also oversold the volume. And now what you’re seeing is, we’ve got a really tight correlation between the committed volume that we have and what customers are using.

Tien Tzuo: Yes, we are very different companies.