Earnings Labs

LivePerson, Inc. (LPSN)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Tue, May 8, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Martina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to LivePerson’s First Quarter 2012 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call to LivePerson’s CFO, Dan Murphy; and Robert LoCascio, Chairman and CEO. You may begin your conference.

Dan Murphy

Management

Thanks very much. Before we begin, I’d like to remind listeners that during this conference call, comments that we make regarding LivePerson that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause such statements to differ materially from actual future events or results. These statements are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The internal projections and beliefs upon which we base our expectations today may change over time and we undertake no obligation to inform you if they do. Results that we report today should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Changes in economic, business, competitive, technological, regulatory, and other factors could cause LivePerson’s actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the projections or forward-looking statements made today. For more detailed information about these factors and other risks that may impact our business, please review the reports and documents filed from time to time by LivePerson with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, please note that on the call today, we will discuss some non-GAAP financial measures in talking about the company’s financial performance. We report our GAAP results, as well as provide a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial measures in our earnings release. You can obtain a copy of our earnings release by visiting the investor relation section of our website. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to LivePerson’s Chief Executive Officer, Robert LoCascio.

Robert LoCascio

Management

Thanks, Dan and thanks everyone for joining us today. I’m pleased to report we are starting the year off on a strong note. During the quarter, our core business demonstrated continued strength with B2B revenue increasing 23% over the prior year period. We also had a very strong bookings quarter. First quarter bookings came in an unseasonably high at $6.1 million, which represents more than a 60% increase from the prior year’s first quarter and around 10% of the pipeline consisted of new products. As we have discussed in the past, in the first half of 2012, we are focused on continue to build our new product pipeline. We remain focused on rolling out the products more broadly across our customer base, while expanding the depth and reach of our core chat product offerings. Along those lines, we continue to make considerable investment in building out our sales team and training them on the value-based selling model we implemented last year. During the quarter, we added six quota-carrying sales reps, which is in addition to six head during the fourth quarter. We’re also starting to increase our overall marketing investment in order to build awareness and demand in the marketplace. To that end, I just got back from UK, where we kicked off the first three Aspire customers summits. Our Aspire events bring customers together to share success stories and best practices and to learn about our latest innovations. With over 300 people on attendance, it was an important opportunity for us to connect with these leading European companies and really give them an opportunity to exchange ideas, learn about our new products and connect with each other. It definitely was one common threat among these organizations, a strong desire to create deeper, more meaningful relationships with their customers. And…

Dan Murphy

Management

Thanks, Robert. Last year was a big year for LivePerson as we put in place the building blocks that will ultimately drive the long-term vision of the company. We’ve made and continue to make investments in the business specifically from a people and product perspective. While we have world class chat products, we’ve also been able to bring to market this next generation of intelligent engagement solutions that we introduced last year. As we discussed in last quarter’s call, while we are building the new product pipeline with the goal of setting the stage for growth in 2013, the dynamics of some of our financial metrics become more closely aligned with our growth goals. I will just add a bit further in terms of how we’re setting expectations around both top and bottom line growth as well as from a margin perspective. Let’s get into the details of the quarter first. Overall, we are pleased with the performance of the quarter as a whole. We demonstrated solid quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, had another strong quarter from a bookings perspective and continue to generate steady cash flow. EPS came in at the top of our guidance range, adjusted EPS and EBITDA per share came in at the midpoint of our guidance range. First quarter B2B revenue was $32.9 million, a 23% increase as compared to the prior-year quarter. Total revenue was $36.8 million, a 21% increase as compared to the prior-year. Revenue from consumer operations for the first quarter was $3.9 million, which is a 5% increase over the first quarter 2011. EBITDA per share for the first quarter of 2012 was $0.16, in line with the first quarter of 2011. First quarter GAAP earnings per share were $0.06, also on par with the first of quarter 2011. Adjusted net income per…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Nathan Schneiderman from ROTH Capital. Your line is open. Nathan Schneiderman – ROTH Capital: Hi, Rob and Dan. Thanks very much for taking my questions. It looks like you had a really terrific start to the year in terms of bookings and deal counts. My sense is that may be the business segment revenue was perhaps a little bit light of what you were thinking given your results versus the guidance. But I was hoping you could clarify what you think happened there and just give us a little more details on why you think there is a little bit of a shortfall in that particular line item?

Dan Murphy

Management

Thanks, Nate. So, the short answer is PFP is a variable portion from a revenue perspective and it came up a little bit short of expectations in the first quarter, primarily related to timing of clients that we expected to go live and the volume. Nathan Schneiderman – ROTH Capital: Okay. And maybe just to clarify on that, if the PFP had come in line with the – maybe you could share with us, what was your expectation as a percent of revenue? I think it was this year was 16% in the quarter, last year it was 17%, but what was your expectation as a percent and what was the negative impact on revenue by being at 16% versus that particular number?

Dan Murphy

Management

Sure. Our expectation was to be approximately 10% of overall revenue slightly under. And from a guidance perspective, we missed the revenue by about $200,000 from a revenue perspective, and one of our larger customers didn’t meet the volumes that they anticipated as well. Nathan Schneiderman – ROTH Capital: Okay. And then, I guess, my final question area for you. Rob, I was hoping you could give us a little more detail on this new connection framework fit you discussed. Do you see it as a product offering that kind of in general fits into a new product category like an Insights or a Marketer. And then can you clarify is this the product meant for enterprise and mid-market customers, small business customers or both. How you see it impacting your business and the kind of demand you think you’ll see for this particular product. Thanks very much.

Robert LoCascio

Management

So, yeah, this product actually has been – is driven by the product owner who owns chat. And so what’s happening now is we’re going to start expanding chat as a product to include these, all these other things like video and voice. So really it’s the chat product, we’re not going to introduce – we’re going to put a name in everything, but it’s going to be chat that is now morphing to extend into these other areas. And as I mentioned on example of the consumer electronics company, (inaudible) what they are doing, they really wanted to replicate the store experience. And so we basically put all of these pieces together for them in a very integrated approach, so you can go on line, you can give video with someone who works at their company, they can ask questions and they even have a way in which you can see products getting configured by video. Or you can go to a chat and then upgrade into audio or then they can screen share, they can even do a translation on the fly, speaking one language and they will translate on the fly and do another language. So we know that the majority of contact centers are still voice-enabled. And so what we want to do is really get more of those seeds, with the integration of voice and video and chat, we think this is a good strategy and the chatter, the person wants to chat thinks it’s a good strategy and product to do that. So you should see chat now more into this and it will go across enterprise mid-market and small business, so it’ll be offered across all three areas. Nathan Schneiderman – ROTH Capital: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Shyam Patil from Raymond James. Your line is open. Shyam Patil – Raymond James: Hi, thanks. Dan, following up on your comment earlier about, slight shortfall in the PFP business, it seems like AT&T is going through some changes right now and companies exposed to them, I’ve seen some weakness. Can you talk about maybe Telco in general and AT&T specifically and if you expect to be impact as many changes they’re making, either positively or negatively?

Dan Murphy

Management

Sure. I mean from a Telco prospective, it continues to be one of our strongest verticals and our customers are actually growing with us. And AT&T specifically is one of our larger customers and from a volume perspective, there is a lot more competition in the Telco space. But from a volume perspective, we didn’t – we didn’t reach the volumes that we expected from AT&T in the quarter. Shyam Patil – Raymond James: Great. And then you built up a pretty nice cash balance now. Can you talk a little bit about how you plan to deploy that, may be what areas you’re looking at for M&A?

Dan Murphy

Management

There is nothing that we can specifically comment at this point. We’re generating nice cash from the business and the cash is flowing up a decent amount of money. And we’ve been investing organically in the business as we talked about on previous calls, in putting money into customer facing activities and obviously our product and head count. Shyam Patil – Raymond James: Got it. And just my last question, I missed the enterprise and mid-market growth rates that you may have given. I was wondering if you could give those again?

Dan Murphy

Management

So from a B2B perspective, we grew the business 23% quarter-over-quarter.

Robert LoCascio

Management

Year-over-year.

Dan Murphy

Management

Year-over-year, sorry. And the overall business grew 21% year-over-year. Shyam Patil – Raymond James: Okay. Thanks.

Dan Murphy

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Fetyko from Janney Capital. Your line is open. Richard Fetyko – Janney Capital: Hi, guys. Thanks. Just on the sales process of the new product versus the core products, how that’s coming along? I know you had some products specialists running around, selling LP Marketer and LP Insights and just I guess what’s the strategy there, if you’re going to have the broader sales force that (inaudible) products in future as well?

Robert LoCascio

Management

Yeah, I think we feel things are progressing nicely as I said close to 10% of the bookings number was new products and about close to 5% in Q4. So and they’re just an overlay. They are the product owners, but the entire sales force is outselling. We’re definitely not at capacity, so we’re very far from capacity. We got a lot of new reps who are getting up to speed on just the overall product lines. And so we definitely have not – don’t have leverage right now like I’d say sales and marketing machine. So, but they are doing a really job in tactically getting out there, getting from a customers and their demand. And part of it is, they raise demand in our customer base to just get these products. So even if you’re rep who isn’t fully up to speed, you are calling on customers and you’re telling them what we have and we’re seeing some nice demand. So I think, our goal of getting the multi-product strategy going, we feel really good with and this has been our best Q1 bookings quarter in the history of our company, which is a real little, I think a sign for what’s going and the capacity of where we can go. Richard Fetyko – Janney Capital: So, just to be clear, all customer – all sales reps are up selling all products at this point or they are?

Robert LoCascio

Management

Yes. So, every rep has been trained in with new selling methodology called ISIS and everyone has been – is out selling it. But there’s lot of new reps. So these reps are going to come up to speed just on the core products, but everyone has to sell it and everyone has in their quota new products, so they got to make their quota by selling the products. Richard Fetyko – Janney Capital: I see. Okay. Thanks, guys.

Dan Murphy

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Your next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore from Northland Capital. Your line is open. Ryan McDonald – Northland Capital: Hi, guys. This is Ryan McDonald for Mike Latimore. I’m just curious, roughly what percent of revenue in bookings do you expect from new products this year? I mean is it similar to the 10% that you are currently at?

Robert LoCascio

Management

We expect less than 5% to come from revenue to come from new products and we haven’t given guidance on bookings, approximately 10% of our bookings in the first quarter were for new products. Ryan McDonald – Northland Capital: Okay. Okay. And then, do you see Pay-for-Performance growing at the same rate as the overall business this year?

Robert LoCascio

Management

Right now slightly behind. We expect to see customers to get up and running. But we’ll continue to drive PFP and our expectation was that it would grow closer or slightly behind the overall business as we rolled out some of our new products. Ryan McDonald – Northland Capital: Okay. And then just one follow-up with that, I mean, have you seen any interest in Pay-for-Performance for LP Marketer area?

Robert LoCascio

Management

We have had customers that have talked to us about it, PFP model for the new products. And we’re actively engaged in some discussions, but our goal is to get as much product adoption or new product adoption as possible and we’ll work with our customers around the pricing. And if Pay-for-Performance is right for us on our end customer, we’ll absolutely take a look at it. Ryan McDonald – Northland Capital: All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions in the queue. I’ll turn the call back to the presenters.

Robert LoCascio

Management

Thank you. And we’ll see you on Q2 call.

Dan Murphy

Management

Thanks, everybody.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.