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Veeva Systems Inc. (VEEV)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Mar 4, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Veeva Systems Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rick Lund, Investor Relations Director. Please go ahead.

Rick Lund

Analyst

Thanks Laura. Good afternoon and welcome to Veeva’s fiscal fourth quarter and yearend earnings call for the quarter and year ending January 31, 2014. With me on today’s call are Peter Gassner, our Chief Executive Officer; Matt Wallach, our President; and Tim Cabral, our Chief Financial Officer. During the course of this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding our trends, strategies and the anticipated performance of the business. These forward-looking statements will be based on management’s current views and expectations, and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the risks listed in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our most recent 10-Q, which is available on the company’s website at www.veeva.com, under the Investors section, and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Forward-looking statements made during the call are being made as of today. If this call is replayed or viewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. Veeva disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. We will provide guidance on today’s call, but will not provide any further guidance or update on our performance during the quarter, unless we do so in a public forum. On the call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP metrics that we believe aid in the understanding of our financial results. A reconciliation to comparable GAAP metrics can be found in today’s earnings release, which is available on our website, and as an exhibit to the Form 8-K filed with the SEC just before this call. With that, thank you for joining us and I will turn it over to Peter.

Peter Gassner

Analyst

Thank you, Rick. I will first summarize our financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year, then provide a few highlights before turning it over to our CFO Tim Cabral, for a detailed overview of our financials. We had a strong Q4 with revenue of $62.8 million up 58% from a year ago. Full year total revenue was $210.2 million by 62% from the year prior. We also continued to deliver solid profitability with a non-GAAP operating margin of 23% for the quarter and 22% for the year. We have had a great year, and I would like to thank our employees. It’s a lot of fun to work with such a talented, dedicated group of people. The spirit of teamwork makes Veeva a great place to work. And thanks to our customers for putting your trust in Veeva. Our growth is a reflection of our customer success. We are executing well against our strategy to become one of the most important technology partners to the life sciences industry. I believe we are in the very early days of what will be a significant industry cloud opportunity. As customers move to more flexible tailored solutions and capitalize on unique data sets. Last year we broadened our product portfolio. We grew Veeva CRM and the Veeva Vault content management platform and application suite. Late in the year, we introduced a Veeva network product line for customer master data management. At the end of the fiscal year $198 life sciences companies relied on Veeva Solutions. This includes 147 Veeva CRM customers, 69 for Veeva Vault and 6 for Veeva Network. In all, they utilized Veeva in more than 80 countries around the globe. Our CRM business has had healthy growth in the quarter and the year. We are very pleased…

Tim Cabral

Analyst

Thanks Peter. Q4 was a strong quarter and exceeded our guidance on the top and bottom line. Total revenue was $62.8 million up from $39.8 million one year ago, a 58% increase. These results were well above our guidance of $57 million to $58 million. This capped off a full year in which total revenue was $210.2 million up from $129.5 million in fiscal 2013, a 62% increase. For the fourth quarter, subscription revenue was up 89% to $45.7 million from $24.1 million last year. This strong performance in subscription revenue in Q4 was driven by growth with new and existing customers and increase contribution from Vault to Network. There were several deals signed in Q4 on an accelerated timeframe that were originally forecasted to fall in later quarters. In addition more deals closed earlier in the quarter than normal. The combination of the ongoing momentum in our business and these unexpected items in Q4 contributed to strong upside in the quarter. We continued to see strong growth within our existing customer base as they expand their use of our solutions across new divisions, new geographies and new products. These factors drove a 166% revenue retention rate for the full fiscal year 2014. As a reminder, this metric compares annualized subscription revenue of all customers at the end of the previous year with the annualized subscription revenue from that same group of customers at the end of the current year. It therefore measures the growth of our business within existing customers net of attrition. Our number one value at Veeva is customer success. So I’m particularly proud of this metric as I believe that it speaks to a very high level of satisfaction among our customers. Services revenue for the quarter was $17.1 million up from $15.7 million year-over-year. In…

Operator

Operator

At this time we will begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Karl Keirstead of Deutsche Bank. Karl Keirstead – Deutsche Bank: Thanks very much, and congratulations on a good quarter. And my question is on the salesforce.com tenure extension, I think you mentioned in the press release that it shouldn’t have any material impact on the margins, but I guess my question is, is there any change in the language vis-à-vis or a preferred partner status, that might create more or less room for salesforce to potentially enter the pharma and biotech markets with their own proprietary CRM product, is it tightening up, or is it really no change from the status quo?

Peter Gassner

Analyst

I think, way to answer that, basically no change from the status quo, what it is, it’s a long-term partnership that’s been working for both salesforce.com and our customers and also ourselves, so we’ve extended it. We have always been salesforce.com’s preferred partner for that segment for our target market. The rules of engagement are largely the same; I think we tightened them up in some corner areas just because we’ve had more experience with the agreement over time, but largely the same. salesforce.com is definitely a partner and not a competitor in our market. Karl Keirstead – Deutsche Bank: Got it. Okay, that’s helpful. And, if I could ask one follow-up to Tim. Tim, you mentioned a few things pulled forward, the RevRec on some deals as well as the closing partner you had some deals. And I’m wondering what was behind that, what happened in the end market demand that caused some stuff to close a little earlier and pull it forward if you like?

Tim Cabral

Analyst

Yes, Karl. Thanks for the question. It really there – I don’t think there was a trend in the end market that necessarily dictated some of the pull forwards that happened or the early closure of some transactions earlier in the quarter that enabled subscription revenue contribution. I think we really – I think we talked about before, we work with our customers and they really dictate the timing of their need and when we want, when they need those extra users and want to close deals or need, our solutions they want to close deals. So no macro trend Karl there, it’s just a number of larger deals that made an impact this quarter. Karl Keirstead – Deutsche Bank: Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from Jennifer Lowe of Morgan Stanley. Stan Zlotsky – Morgan Stanley: Hey guys, it’s actually Stan Zlotsky sitting in for Jennifer. And thanks for taking my question. I want to start off first with the network product, six customers already live actually the product only was G8 back in October, that’s a very impressive number. What – well, all those customers really part of the pre – of the beta product or some of them new customers that were signed after the GA and they subsequently already went live?

Peter Gassner

Analyst

But specific to that question, the eight customers on network and it’s going to have to – we might have to check – we might have to check on that one to see if there were any of them that were not involved in the beta program, I would say most of them were. But, your question – I think in your question you said that six of them were live, let me just correct that, so there is six network customers today, one of those six is currently live, it is one of the smaller biotechs in the U.S., so five of the customers are still in their implementation projects. Stan Zlotsky – Morgan Stanley: Okay. All right. So that actually – that makes it little bit more sense. Okay. And just to switch gears a little bit, Tim you pointed out that you think billings will be – calculated billings was down on quarter-on-quarter in 1Q which makes sense. Just may be help us understand a little bit more of the magnitude of the decline quarter-on-quarter, is it more along the lines or what you saw that actually – now as you saw last year?

Tim Cabral

Analyst

Yes. I think that’s a good guide to the starting point Stan. I do think that with the pull forward some material deals into Q4 as we discussed, you might see that to be a little bit bigger than sequentially you saw last year. And also, as the business and the renewal base grows year-over-year, that seasonality will feel a little bit larger quarter-to-quarter as we move forward. Stan Zlotsky – Morgan Stanley: Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And the next question is from Richard Davis of Canaccord. Richard Davis – Canaccord: Hey, thanks. I know it’s still early days, but with regard to Network, roughly kind of how does that market – the addressable market that you’re going after breakdown kind of between firms that targets that have kind of a fully finished out MDM system versus kind of the piece parts kind of thing because I’m trying to think about triangulating the relative sales opportunities, greenfield versus kind of we can replace over the next few quarters and years. Thanks.

Peter Gassner

Analyst

Okay, sure. So I think that in the U.S. probably top 50 or so companies have kind of a well thought out MDM strategy. They have software. They’ve built custom applications on top of whatever software platform they have and they are buying data from multiple places. Outside the U.S., it’s not always the same in terms of kind of a real MDM strategy and installed software. But, what is consistent is that everywhere around the world whether it’s a large company or a small company, whether it’s in an emerging market or an industrialized market, they have to have a customer master. And so, to answer your question specifically, I think probably, if I have to guess probably half of our opportunity is kind of rip and replace mature things, and half of it is probably creating an MDM infrastructure for a company that could never afford one. And that’s somewhat of the value and the beauty of software-as-a-services that we can provide a world-class solution for companies that didn’t used to be able to afford one either smaller companies in the U.S. and Europe, or large companies in smaller markets. Richard Davis – Canaccord: Great. That’s very helpful. Thank you, so much.

Operator

Operator

And next, we have a question from Tom Roderick of Stifel. Tom Roderick – Stifel: Hi, guys. Good afternoon. So the first question I want to ask you is just on Vault, and it seems like you’ve been making some very material progress with Vault and traction with major customers there, pretty short order. So I guess the question is. with respect to these deals particularly seven figure deals that closed in the quarter, can you talk a little bit about sales cycle, how long you had to work with each of those customers to achieve kind of an enterprise grade rollout. And as you look at your pipeline, do you see similar opportunities where perhaps you’re in one region and they’re already talking about enterprise wide rollouts, curious as to what you’re seeing in terms of visibility there going forward as well? Thanks.

Peter Gassner

Analyst

Thanks Tom. Yes, we did see – it’s just really strong momentum in Vault. And you asked about the sales cycles and the length of the sales cycle, it’s important to know that especially those large deals that we’re talking about, those represent real early adopters. So in some sense, those sales cycles probably started three years ago when we started Vault because you’re starting to get the word out the familiarity, you’re starting to collect the requirements from the customers keep close to them. But I would say the – what you would consider the classic part of the sales cycle for those opportunities in those cases were six to nine months sales cycle, and I think that will be pretty representative. Now, Vault does have – generally the same characteristic like CRM where we will start small and then we will expand to different divisions, different applications, different geographies, and we see this in Vault. We see some of the Vault applications will expand for example in the eTMF area; they might start with a small set of trials and then expand to the complete set of trials. And promotional materials, we might see it started with one region and expand to another region. And this is what we see in Vault, which is also very similar to CRM. Tom Roderick – Stifel: Great. Follow-up question, turning the tables here over to look at the salesforce.com deal extension, just a brief browse to the AK, it looks like there is no material impact or any sort of impact in the model. But, can you confirm that, that we shouldn’t expect any hit to gross margins. And then, a further extend to that question, can you help us understand what the nature of the true-up payments are as you look at 2020 and 2025, just want to make sure I understand the longer term impact to that. Thanks.

Tim Cabral

Analyst

Yes, Tom. This is Tim. I’ll take that. I can definitely confirm that with the new extension of the agreement, we do not see an impact to our cost of goods sold or our gross margin model from a CRM base – CRM perspective. In terms of the nature of the true-up payments, I think they are very traditional true-up payments in any minimum commitment agreement where we will take a look at what we paid sort of extension starting point to-date at the end of a five-year period, and look at what that looks like compared to that minimum commitment and then what’s the next minimum commitment. And one thing to note, that’s a little bit different as we’re actually starting to – the fees that we’re starting to pay today actually in the March month will start to go towards the new commitment actually. So for the first milestone at 6.5 years of payments, or nearly 6.5 years of payments and then the back half will be five years of payments. Tom Roderick – Stifel: So in other words – I’m sorry, go ahead.

Peter Gassner

Analyst

I’ll just add, we’re comfortable with that we’ll meet those minimum payment commitments. Tom Roderick – Stifel: Okay. That’s helpful. I’ll follow-up back in queue. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Brendan Barnicle of Pacific Crest Securities. Brendan Barnicle – Pacific Crest Securities: Thanks so much. Matt, I wanted to follow up on cross questions about the bigger deals and get your perspective on anything you saw on sort of the sales as on execution side, they might be driving some of those large transactions.

Matt Wallach

Analyst

Brendan, do you mean the big Vault deals or do you mean just in general? Brendan Barnicle – Pacific Crest Securities: In general.

Matt Wallach

Analyst

Well, I think the competitive dynamics really haven’t changed that much lately. I think that on the CRM side, we have a lot of examples of major global rollouts within the largest companies. And so when the next company comes up to look for a new global CRM standard, we really have more references now than anyone else. So to certain extent, it’s getting a little easier to win that next big deal. But and it’s really from the service delivery side and being able to prove that the product works well in every major region. But in general, I don’t feel like the competitive environment has really changed on the CRM side. These large Vault deals, it actually feel a lot like the big CRM deals did in the beginning, I mean this is – we’re kind of legacy replacement guys. So on the CRM side, this was how quickly can we replace the client-server Siebel stuff after it had been acquired by Oracle. And so we got good at how do you talk to an IT team, how do you talk to an operations team, how do you talk to a business team about what that change would be like and what it enables. In Vault, it’s very much the same thing, it’s how fast can you replace the legacy client-server system from Documentum or from OpenText or from whoever competitor and the applications that they built on top. And so the conversation to actually feel very similar, the similar type of sale where we have to sell the IT guys that this is going to enable them to be a better partner to the business, we saw the operations guys that they’re able to run the platform more efficiently and with more flexibility than they used to before. And so the business guys that they’re able to actually create additional business value and to streamline their business processes. So I think at the high level, it kind of feels the same has it used to. Brendan Barnicle – Pacific Crest Securities: Great. And I had a follow-up on Vault, maybe this is best for Peter, but if I remember it right, Vault did not built on the salesforce platform, if you could just remind us of why Vault has gone a different rather than the CRM product?

Peter Gassner

Analyst

Yes, Vault is built on our own platform which we have assembled from a variety of open source tools and our own intellectual property. And the fundamental reason, Vault is a content management platform, it deals with the content rendering, document versioning, that type, it’s that type of a platform. And so especially when we built the Vault platform, when we built Vault, that was not a type of application that you can build well on force.com. So we have to build our own platform because of the nature of the application really. Brendan Barnicle – Pacific Crest Securities: Great. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And the last question will come from Jason Maynard of Wells Fargo. Jason Maynard – Wells Fargo: Hi, guys. Good afternoon. I really just had two questions more focused on some of your assumptions for next year. And specifically what I love to get some color, or if you can quantify to the extent you want. How are you thinking about incremental contributions compared to this year from some of the newer products? And then the second point would be, you made some comments about international perhaps growing a little bit faster becoming a bigger percentage, I’m just curious how you’re thinking about the international contributions growing faster, if you can put some numbers around it, or maybe talk about what you’re thinking about from your additional sales and marketing investments in some of the international segments? Thanks.

Peter Gassner

Analyst

Thanks. So first about the assumptions of the new product lines. We’re really happy with our three product lines. We set up Veeva CRM and we’re just having incredible customer success in that area. And that’s creating value for our customers certainly and it’s also creating a halo effect for Veeva as we deployed to more geographies with Veeva CRM and more customers. So we are really happy with that. And we think that will grow and that’s leading – that’s providing the cover for Vault to Network, those products are younger, right? CRM is on version 20, Vault on version 7, Network on version 2. But, Vault is tracking in a similar way that CRM was tracking at the same stage in its life, and so what we expect is the percentage of our revenue that are coming from non-CRM applications will be increasing over time as our Vault to Network get to the appropriate stage in their life cycle. Then as far as global, Veeva started in the U.S., when we started seven years ago. And I guess for the first roughly four years of the company or three-and-a-half, all of our revenue was basically from the U.S. So since then we have been expanding to other geographies in our percentage of revenue has been moving more towards the outside. And I think that trend will continue slightly but not dramatically.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.