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Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) (ERIC)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, May 6, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day everyone and welcome to the Vonage Holding Corporation First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Just a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. At this time for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the conference over to your Hunter Blankenbaker, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Blankenbaker.

Hunter Blankenbaker

President

Great, thank you Marcus, and good morning and welcome to our first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Speaking on the call this morning will be Alan Masarek, Chief Executive Officer and Dave Pearson, CFO. Also joining us are Joe Redling, Chief Operating Officer and Clark Peterson, President of Telesphere. Alan will discuss the company’s strategy and first quarter results, and Dave will provide more detailed view of our first quarter financial results. Slides of the company’s today’s discussion are available on the IR website. As referenced on slide two, I would like to remind everyone that statements made during this call maybe forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These and all forward-looking statements are made upon management’s expectations and depend on assumptions that maybe incorrect or imprecise. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. More information about those risks and uncertainties is highlighted on the second page of the slides and contained on our SEC filings. The caution list that is not to rely unduly on these statements and disclaim any intent or obligation to update it. During this call we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures, a reconciliation to GAAP is available on the IR website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Alan.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Hunter and good morning, everyone, thanks for joining us. I’m excited to discuss our Q1 results. On our last earning’s call, I reported on my first full quarter as CEO and I outlined a new direction for the company that included maximizing the profitability of consumer services, while aggressively growing organic revenues and pursuing inorganic growth at Vonage business. In addition, I wanted to establish Vonage as a leading business brand. Reinvigorate the company’s culture by returning it to its innovative and disruptive routes and investing our people so that Vonage becomes a destination place to work. I’m proud to report that we are well on our way towards achieving these goals. A few highlights of our Q1 results. We generated consolidated revenue of $220 million, reflecting a $5 million sequential increase. We generated consolidated EBITDA of $38 million, a 28% year-over-year increase and up $3 million sequential. And within Vonage business, we achieved year-over-year organic revenue growth of 49%. We also closed on the SimpleSignal acquisition on April 1 and today we announced an agreement to acquire gUnify, a company whose technology platform will integrate our Telesphere communications platform with SaaS based business applications like Google for Work, Zendesk, Salesforces sales cloud, Clio among others. I’ll discuss these acquisitions in more detail in a moment, but for now let’s move on to a deeper look at the quarter, and I’ll start with Vonage business, which is how we now collectively brand all of our business acquisitions including VBS, Telesphere, SimpleSignal and now gUnify. Vonage business had an outstanding quarter and is well positioned for future growth. Revenue grew to $42 million, up 49% year-over-year organic increase and a 120% increase on a GAAP basis. We had a 26,000 seats and set a new record for bookings in a…

Dave Pearson

CFO

Thanks, Alan and good morning, everyone. I’m pleased to review our financial results for the first quarter of 2015. More diving into the results, I’d like to review with here some changes we’re making in our reporting. As I noted we would on last quarter’s call, we have now updated our income statement and summary operating data which I will also refer to as TPIs, give investors more detail on Vonage on a consolidated basis as well as each of our consumer and business operations. We believe these changes will enable investors to better compare Vonage to our peers in the SaaS space and take into account the growing proportion of Vonage business revenue which is expected to account for nearly one quarter of 2015 consolidated revenue. Specific reclassifications we made to the income statement include combining sales and marketing into one line item to reflect the increasing materiality of selling expenses, given however our product to sell business. This category includes traditional sales and marketing expenses [indiscernible] media and sales commission, as well as sales and marketing personal salaries, benefits and IT, Tiers 1 and 2 customer care and credit card processing fees. We also created a new income statement line item called engineering and development. This item reflects the cost of developing new products and technologies and supporting our service platforms. Because our networks include to mature Vonage consumer VoIP platform and the Telesphere platform where we are purchasing license to BroadSoft through CapEx. Thus, effectively paying for R&D performed by BroadSoft, our engineering and development as a percentage of revenue is less than some of our peers. With the removal of sales and engineering and development class from G&A, G&A now consists of cost related to overhead function that just corporate personal, stock compensation and facilities stock.…

Hunter Blankenbaker

President

Okay, great. Thank you, Dave. Marcus, could we initiate the first question please?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of George Sutton of Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question.

George Sutton

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Thank you, nice results guys.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Greg.

George Sutton

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

So, as I looked through the reorganization and distribution that you talked about in the four different channels, could you give sense of what the distribution capacity looks like now versus with prior to this change? And I’m wondering if you could also give us some more about a productivity metric or something that [indiscernible] side of it as well.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

I’ll start and then I can turn over for more. So, the traditional distribution in Vocalocity which we later branded VBS was the telesales model. And that is been a very successful kind of a linear growth model where we add sales resources on the phone and spend more on basically a search – from a search perspective add online lead generation at the top of the file that we then convert via telesales. The Telesphere and SimpleSignal side, they’ve all – they’ve both traditionally sold through the indirect channel, so the master agents and subagents that are supported by our indirect channel managers and then also feet on the street direct sales model. We now have collectively 30 indirect channel managers servicing that master agent and subagent channel, and we service all the majors. We have tremendous covers in the master agent channel, and the subagents as well. And then on the direct side, on the enterprise direct side, we are hiring rapidly to fill in regional markets and we have teams already in place in four markets likely will be in seven markets by the year end in terms we have hubs, we have sales people where based dispersed more geographically but sort of – if you will sort of thought today in four cities by the end by seven and will grow from that basis even more. As for metrics I’ll turn over to Carl to just – but this is all, some of this is still in formation.

Carl Sparks

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Yeah, let me just add to what Alan said, I think the – really the powerful thing about this is as we address the 1 to 1,000 group in all customers and really have that unique ability to address such a broad market, having a distribution channel segment of the way they are really allow us to uniquely address to follow different market segments the way that they should be addressed and really with the distribution channels that best applied. I think also on the marketing side, having distribution channels now all under the Vonage business umbrella and all working more in a conservative way to address these market segment really allow us do a lot more on the marketing side to drive the [indiscernible] and the TDC and all of the different marketing mechanisms in a way that will allow us to address the whole market segment but all under the same umbrella through distribution channels that are really working in communism.

George Sutton

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Thanks.

Dave Pearson

CFO

Greg. And I have a follow-up to that marketing. Ted Gilvar gave a interview recently I believe in advertising, he was talking about some of the more aggressive things we’re planning to do from a marketing perspective. My understanding is that there is still shifting dollar from consumer through the business side and the things he is doing talking about sound exciting aren’t necessarily going to be more expensive that are [indiscernible].

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Yeah George, this is Joe Redling, that’s exactly right. We are shifting the investment from consumer to fund sort of the Vonage business branding campaign that will support all of the channels we just addressed.

George Sutton

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Okay. Lastly, like on gUnify, I really like the differentiator methods and the partnership potential. Could you give us a sense of what stage gUnify was in, is it going to be GA right away and it will be exclusive to use?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

It is GA right now, it’s end market. The company has really very low levels of revenue, so this is largely the technology platform that we’re buying and a very talented development team. Today they have licenses to several other BroadSoft service providers and we’re going to continue to support them but we’re maintaining, picking our options out. And what we like to do ultimately is we want to own the industry standard for how you connect the Telesphere platform broadly but the underlying comp players BroadSoft to all of the relevant SaaS business applications. And again I think we just – we create a level of differentiation which is really powerful.

George Sutton

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Okay, thanks guys.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed.

Gregory Burns

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Good afternoon. In relation to the consumer business a little bit better than we were looking for this quarter, but still declining I guess some of that is on delivery, but I was wondering how are you positioning your tour business now, is it mostly focused on international subs? What is the positioning of end market of that finalized? And then how should we think about the structural decline of that business, do you foresee it finding out or reaching some level of stability in the near future?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

So Greg, this is Alan. I’ll start and I’ll turn over to Joe. So the – as Dave reported, this was all very purposeful and it’s simply an allocation of marketing dollars, I think it was in the investment dollars to go after customers that generate the right LTV at the end of the day. And so the management of the existing consumer business is focused on being efficient on the marketing and very – and by virtue of the marketing acquiring more productive customers that are sticky and that in a variety of other mechanisms lower the churn. Now, while we’re doing that and you’re seeing the results [indiscernible] more profitability. While we’re doing that, we are continuing to invest in product development to bend the curve back, to add more values to products so that we will being to see the benefit overtime of our products being ever more attractive to the consumer population. That’s the macro view of what we’re doing, then I’ll turn over to Joe, but I’m pleased that we’re beating the numbers and again it’s just the result of what we’re doing.

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Yeah Greg, I think the way to think about this is where, as we try to drive more efficiency into the consumer business. There is a couple lever, right, one is our acquisition costs, right which we are really shifting to much more measurable to direct response vehicles and we’re seeing those results, we’re getting much more efficient in our acquisition. That leading to us having the ability to our channel as we optimized each of our channels whether it’s selling digital or direct mail that we can actually acquire customers that have a lower churn profile in their early stage of their life. And as we improve that we can actually improve customer life time value. So we’re really measuring ourselves based on customer economics going forward, it’s not about how many gross lines you can apply or how many profitable customers can we acquire at the right price. If we can deploy more resources against the business side we will do that, the returns on the business side is obviously greater than what we see in consumer because of customer life with the stickiness of the business product. To answer the first part of your question, we continue to target both domestic users of VoIP and residential as well as IOB. So, that half of our base that we lead today, we continue to focus the key targets on the IOB side in a particular channel that are relevant. So we continue to focus on the optimization of our spend there.

Gregory Burns

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Okay. And then in terms of your EBITDA guidance, I guess you maintained it at least $135 million for the year, but based on for what you put up this quarter I guess that implies [indiscernible] that target, that low end of the target of slow down or lower EBITDA for the rest of the year. So should we like planning to increase, planning to increase over the next couple of quarters?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

So this is Alan, I made a decision and I think it was direct to maintain our underlying guidance, and we’ve only adjusted it for SimpleSignal. We have one quarter in the books and we’re making – we’re doing a significant remixing of sales and marketing. So I think just wanted to be prudent and we’re going to maintain the existing guidance, but we’re feeling good about the year.

Gregory Burns

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And then our next question comes from the line of Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed.

Catharine Trebnick

Analyst · Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. In the prepared remarks you said that the line something above we’re growing at 25% or was 25% of the business. Do you have a year-over-year growth rate or quarterly query on that?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Catharine, it’s actually 25% of the revenues for Vonage business in Q1 came from customer with greater seats.

Catharine Trebnick

Analyst · Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed

Okay.

Dave Pearson

CFO

Yeah, a lot of that – a lot of those customers come from Telesphere which we’ve only owned for quarter and two weeks, so we don’t track that year-over-year of that number remains solidly above 25%, and all of the channel reorganizations and direct sales. In general reorganizations that we talk about are meant to put on the gas in that space as well as the top market as well as the low end.

Catharine Trebnick

Analyst · Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed

All right, thanks. And then the other question is on your direct sales and on your channel partners. On your channel partners, how many have you between Telesphere do you have now in total? And are there like large partners in that group like CDW and arrow and can you give us more background just on the channel partner, I know your competitors are building off their channel partners, just trying to get a magnitude of where you are with the competitive landscape. Thanks.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Sparks, why don’t you take that on the channel partners?

Carl Sparks

Analyst · Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed

Sure. And Catharine, we’ve been well entrenched on the indirect channel side for years and years of the Telesphere and SimpleSignal has as well. And now we’ve also incorporated indirect channel distribution sales executives from VBS now in combined channel. So I’ll talk about the number of agents but just to mention, we have now 31 indirect channel representatives all over the country who have real strong relationships that go over years and years in the past either with our company at Telesphere, SimpleSignal from the past or from prior companies, and so you have deep relationships on the indirect side. And we have master agent and really the larger agents are booked to hundred large master agents, and as Alan said in the script, thousands of subagents underneath those master agents. But they are – some of the names you mentioned, they are those common stuff that you would expect with the larger master agents in the country on the communication side as well as some bars. And they have a very robust group of subagents underneath them. And we are – we’re very well connected with them and as Alan mentioned on indirect channel expo that we have as the channel partners expo it was a very clear message to them there that Vonage means business now, and we’re serious about this and they took notice and we just create traction out from the indirect partnerships we have that are very numerous.

Catharine Trebnick

Analyst · Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed

Thank you. Keep up the good work and I’ll talk to you after the call. Bye-bye.

Carl Sparks

Analyst · Catharine Trebnick from Dougherty. Please proceed

Thank you.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Catharine.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please proceed.

Tim Klasell

Analyst · Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please proceed

Hi there, this is Tim Klasell in for Mike Latimore. So starting on Telesphere here, can you guys just talk a little bit about the pipeline or how the backlog will remain for Telesphere now versus when it was first acquired?

Carl Sparks

Analyst · Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please proceed

Sure, yeah and I think as Alan mentioned and I mentioned, we’re not differentiating between Telesphere and the Vocalocity and then also going forward in including SimpleSignal, particularly given how we reorganize the channel for us is less about the product and the old silo workout the channels that we approach. I think the best way to say it is we continue to believe that we’re going to have 40% organic growth in the business area which includes Telesphere, SimpleSignal and VBS when you mix that all together and put those channels together and implicit in that is that the old Telesphere make a very significant contribution to that. And we talked about that entity having had revenues in the $40 million range in 2014 and we talked about multiple which we bought it, which implies revenues for that group, the old group we were measuring it that way of in the mid $50 million range. But a lot of that is going to get mixed in, so we’re not tracking it the way that you asked the question.

Tim Klasell

Analyst · Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please proceed

Great, okay. And then you guys mentioned about year-over-year improvement in consumer churn, I think you quote last sequentially. Do you see that being sustainable going forward in 2015?

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please proceed

Tim, yeah this is Joe Redling. Yes, we do. We’re seeing encouraging results both on the new customer front and our tenured base, I think the optimization of the front end of our acquisition machine is, as Dave mentioned in his prepared remarks we started that process in mid last year looking at our channels and really focusing in on the quality of the customers we’re acquiring and really seeing the benefits of that now. So we expect that to continue.

Tim Klasell

Analyst · Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Please proceed

Okay, great. Thank you guys.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Tim.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Good morning, gentlemen. Let me add my congrats on the good results.

Dave Pearson

CFO

Thanks, Dmitry.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Couple of questions. First of all, nice pick up there on gUnify, but do you discuss how much you’re paying for that platform acquisition? And then secondly, they just had relationship what brings central that they’ve announced recently. Do you plan to [indiscernible] that relationship, what sort of a status there is going forward?

Dave Pearson

CFO

Sure. In terms of what we paid we’re not disclosing the actual price but it’s very small and it’s essentially the acquisition of a product and a team and the technology, and I mentioned it’s not going to have a significant effect on our balance sheet one way or the other. As it relates to, and I think Alan covered it correctly in the answer of the prior question, right now we don’t have plans to remove the product from anywhere that it is and it really is about making this the global standard and one of the global standards this I think has a bridge between the comp layer and the CRM layer.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Okay, great. And then on the VBS side, could you talk about kind of – is there target plans for the test count additions this year, if it is at all possible to share that with us that would be great. And just to kind of get a sense of what’s base of higher units sale on that side? And then also on the sales and marketing, I noticed you were down about $9 million from a year ago on the absolute dollar basis. What were some of the drivers there that you’ve kind of cut out the – some of that sales and marketing spend and what’s the trajectory there that is going forward?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Dmitry I think, let me start with the second half. Almost entirety of that reduction volume was on the consumer side sequentially down $10 million, that’s a combination of kind of reduction as we said in previous calls, reduction at general market media base stock continued optimization of the existing selling channel and reduction of non-working media which is sort of reset our agency relationships in Q4 and Q1. So that’s the majority of those savings. In terms of the Vonage business ramp up without getting any specifics on headcount we continue and invest in the sales force. We continue to scale as well as continue to invest in infrastructure in terms of engineering, to focus on continuing to improve our systems, billing, on boarding and etcetera to support the high growth that we’re seeing in that segment.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

[Indiscernible].

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

I’m sorry Dmitry, you broke up a little there.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Oh okay, I was going to say if there is any sort of place or whether you will consider splitting up how many [indiscernible] VBS versus kind of the total company headcount?

Dave Pearson

CFO

No, we don’t have any plans to do that. I think it’s fair to say that the growth in fully headcount is primarily happening there and a lot of that is within telesales which is – and to a lesser expense care, which is where we’d be deploying most number of heads. I think it’s also fair to say given the way Alan described as operating as a company, that there are going to be people particularly in headquarters but in all of our locations who are going to be working on multiple products and that could be consumer, that could be up market to be the smaller end, which is why we’re not planning to break it out, it just not possible to have a break line on lot of those people.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Okay, understood, thanks Dave. And then lastly I guess [indiscernible] I know you mentioned that in the prepared remarks but what’s little confusing to me is it went up from 1.6% to 2.2% where the year ago you had Vocalocity with the SMB business and you added over mid market and you focus with Telesphere and SimpleSignal yet the churn went up. So what is it [indiscernible] take a wild guess here but can you discuss what happened there?

Dave Pearson

CFO

I’ll comment on the mass then I think Joe can comment on the qualitative fees. The implicit in your question is that Telesphere somehow drive up the churn and that is not the case here. Telesphere has a small number of, a very small number of accounts that happened to be very large, small relative to the number of Vonage consumer accounts and the number of Vocalocity accounts. So that did not factor materially into the churn. When we start reporting revenue churn, we’ll actually – I think you’ll actually see the effect of Telesphere, revenue churn is substantially lower than an account churn, and I think it’ll be a much more clear metric as we add in SimpleSignal. I think Joe can then address kind of what’s happening with the shareholder account.

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Yeah, so we as Alan mentioned are direct model on acquisition incredibly efficient and scalp, so we’re continuing to grow the small end of the SMB market at a rapid pace. Well we have the scale or we should continue to scale our infrastructure. We have incredible visibility on the consumer side in terms of predictive model where we manage churn on the consumer side, and what the reorganization of the company they support are leveraging all those assets across the board, and very focused on the small business sector, on the smaller company sizes to get much better with that. So we are, again as I said earlier, investing in building systems, infrastructure, network monitoring everything you would think we would do as we scale that to a relatively large business.

Dmitry Netis

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

[Indiscernible], I don’t know, many guys actually do that, so thanks for that. And keep up the good work.

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Dmitry Netis from William Blair. Please proceed

Thank you.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is a follow-up from Greg Burns. Please proceed.

Gregory Burns

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Yes, just a follow-up on that last question about the churn. You have a sense of the churn and those lower VBS customers is voluntary or involuntary, is it kind of economic related? And you had a sense of where they’re reporting to, if they’re leaving for another solution?

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Greg, this is Joe. Yeah, our composition is pretty similar to last year, we are still seeing a large share of our churn related to non-pay, the smaller these accounts are the we’ve more business failure in this segment. So our composition of churn hasn’t changed much, so the business grows the numbers get bigger. So we’re very focused on that drilling down on the non-pay sector. We’re not seeing anything material on any sort of competitive switching.

Gregory Burns

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Okay. And lastly, in terms of the – kind of the BroadSoft focus acquisition strategy, now that you’re gaining scale and you’ve kind of made yourself like a meaningful [indiscernible] and looking to kind of roll off that market. Are you seeing more inbound interest from some of these smaller players in the market looking for an exit strategy? And also when you’re bidding for assets, are there any other maintenance [indiscernible] these BroadSoft providers?

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Please proceed with your question

Yes, I think we have very good visibility on what’s out there in the BroadSoft area particularly because Clark Peterson is head of the cloud communications alliance which is essentially the BroadSoft users group. We had – I think that both BroadSoft users know who we are now just because of the deals that we’ve done before and we’ve also I think formed a very good working and close working relationship with BroadSoft. So, I think that gives us a lot of visibility and good connectivity with BroadSoft and these other players. We clearly have been people who I think are more incline to try to sell because there is a bid in the market or at least they look at it that way, and I think that we do continue to be a potential buyer of those assets. I think we’ve proven that we’re going to do it if we do it on a discipline basis and we think that there were enough of amount there, so we can’t do it on a discipline basis. And that looking in that area continues to be the high priority for us.

Gregory Burns

Analyst · Gregory Burns from Sidoti & Company. Please proceed

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Michael Rollins with Citi Bank. Please – Citigroup sorry, please proceed. Q – Michael Rollins: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Just first question is, do you have a preview maybe what the revenue churn like with prices if you look at the 1Q result, can you just help us [indiscernible] how to think about NRR churn or the revenue churn in aggregate? And then secondly, if you just think more broadly about the sales productivity and expansion as you described in the segmentation of distribution channels. So where would you say is [indiscernible] opportunity over the next 12 months of watching? Thanks.

Joseph Redling

Analyst · Michael Rollins with Citi Bank

So, I’ll take the churn part of that. So on the revenue churn I mentioned that it is, when we look at it for 1Q it is substantially lower. What we’re focused on is getting SimpleSignal in and being able to present to the market that calculation which I think would be most meaningful. We’re not in a position to talk about it now but what you see obviously, and we talked about it when we acquired Telesphere is that the churn in Telesphere, the churn amongst larger accounts generally is lower. And when you have a three year contract by definition with NPLS and the full bundle by definition you have much lower churn. At the same time we’re also getting much higher ARPU at the higher level, and so you can see how the dynamic between account churn which does not differentiate between an account of two lines and an account with a thousand and revenue churn and that is why it is substantially lower.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Let me take it on distribution, this is Alan. So, I think the best way to think of it is where the growth is going to come from is sort of where the market is and the maturity of the different channels. In telesales which again is principally top of the formal regional that’s converted via telesales. There is a linear relationship in terms of how we – as we add sales infrastructure and are buying more keyword searches, branded and non-branded and we’re feeling that funnel. Interestingly we’re not limited by sales people growth, the limitation is been infrastructural, so that’s where we’re investing very quickly to make sure that we can support as we grow, so that’s one. So we expect telesales and continue to run really, really nicely at the smaller end of the market. As I mentioned 90% of U.S. employer based businesses have fewer than 20 employees and they’re rapidly embracing the cloud. I also announced that we’re moving to an online, so we’ll have sales sign ups that we’ll roll out later this quarter so that we can lower our acquisition cost even more by having a fully touch list acquisition model or certain of the – with the low end of the market. Then go now over to the channel side. The channel side is a very mature market or a very mature distribution channel. We’re stepping in the midst of bringing three companies together that is [indiscernible] or in aggregate 31 indirect channel managers spread across the country reporting up to four regional channel managers, addressing the full swop of master agents and thousands of subagents around the country. We’re still in midst of [indiscernible] that, I’m in Africa I’m heading down to Atlanta tonight because we have a sales meeting for the indirect channel managers tomorrow at Atlanta. So as we organize that ever more tightly, we’re expecting really good results in that channel. Finally, in the direct side, feet on the street for us that’s the least mature channel because we’ve had the dealers, number of people but we are aggressively adding, and I mentioned we’re in four markets today. Again these people are distributed with a report to regional hubs, four of those regional offices are already staffed, we’ll likely have seven by end of the year, these are major metropolitan markets and growing more thereafter. Q – Michael Rollins: Thanks for those details.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Sure.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed.

Bill Vogel

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

Hi, thank you. I wanted to follow-up on the issue with master agents and other indirect channel partners. Are you at this point continuing to add those folks or are you finding with SimpleSignal and Telesphere that you really have the number that you’re looking at? And if you are so adding, is it an aggressive rate or a more relaxed based?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Clark, why don’t you take that?

Clark Peterson

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

Sure. Thanks Bill for the question. Yes, it’s really the later the master agents and what’s really been a great thing about the acquisitions that we’ve done here with SimpleSignal and the combination with VBS and direct team is actually it was very complimentary. And so together we already cover all the main master agent all over the country. We have really the tier master agent partners that we would ultimately want around board and [indiscernible] through these different relationships. So really now the focus is working with both the masters and other subagents to get their mind share, to help them understand our whole portfolio of products that we now offer the combined entity, and really was all coming under this Vonage business brand and all the marketing behind that means to them. And so it’s really going after them and getting the mind sharing and helping and giving them all the tools that now they have with [indiscernible] and then agent portals and all these things that we have we think that are very unique to our offering besides the products in the back office and also the network team plus with NPLS all over the country. All these combined is an incredibly unique and powerful portfolio for them to sell, so that’s really our target as to get out and help them understand what this all means to them as a partner for us.

Bill Vogel

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

That’s very helpful.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Bill, now let me just make one follow-up. As I said in my prepared remarks, we used the term think Vonage first, and it’s kind of a mantra here. Those channel partners, masters and subs call on the entire range of customers from the very small and simple to the very large and complex. We have a product portfolio that covers the first, the full range. So we want them to think Vonage first regardless customer opportunity. In the past if they have let’s say a large complex opportunity when Telesphere was a separate company, they might think what’s called Telesphere for that one. They might have a smaller one, they might think, well I’ll work with the formal Vocalocity for this one. We brought it all together under one unified team, all our unified branding in light so that they think Vonage first regardless of the customer opportunity.

Bill Vogel

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

Great, thank you. I’d like to take a question one step further with the SimpleSignal acquisition, are they bringing characteristics or tools that help the agents think about Vonage first, because many of the things that Clark, you mentioned Telesphere already had.

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Well, Clark why don’t you answer that as well?

Clark Peterson

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

Sure. And really on two fronts build, they brought some very unique relationships that are complimentary at the master agent level. They actually had a deep, deep long term relationship with the largest master agent in the country, and so that really complimented us as well as other master agents who have that really filled any gaps that were there. So they brought not only those distribution partners but on the product side, they really bring a lot worth all of the work they’ve done with Google App work and they’ve been using gUnify in the past, so they’re very familiar with gUnify and being able to get us all off the speed very quickly on that as well as on Telesphere had used gUnify in the past. But SimpleSignal has don’t a lot of work both on all the application side as well as on video bridging and the cloud are some of the main things that they really bring from the product portfolio that we think are great in it. And they also had, just like Telesphere had a great reputation with all the indirect channel partners. So when we at the channel show and on that day announced that Signal and Telesphere are now coming together under that Vonage umbrella brand. It was a big message to the indirect partners, so I think the roll we expected in the indirect channel partner community.

Bill Vogel

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

Again, thank you. And so one additional question, if you look for additional acquisitions, do you anticipate that they will also be able to be bring you each characteristics as SimpleSignal did or at this point does it really become a market share gain?

Alan Masarek

Chief Executive Officer

Hi Bill, I’ll take that one. I mean clearly there is an opportunity to buy customers and potential customers accretively. That being said, most of the things that we’re looking at also have a very strategic angle to them, i.e., adding something with the SimpleSignal example is a great one, with the experience with the edge router, the experience in between Vonage business and Telesphere used to play as well as a broader regional presence I think is one – that’s a template for others and I think there are those out there that have strengths and capabilities that I think would be additive to us beyond the accretive customers. We do look at it as okay, if we were just buying these customers would this be a good deal, and the things that we do check out box but I also think there is more strategic opportunity out there as well and with things that [indiscernible] with that both of those characteristics.

Bill Vogel

Analyst · Bill Vogel from Team Capital. Please proceed

Thank you, both.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session for today’s conference. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Blankenbaker for closing remarks.

Hunter Blankenbaker

President

Great. Thanks Marcus. We really appreciate everyone’s time today and your interest in Vonage and we look forward to speaking with you throughout the quarter. Thank you.