Axon Enterprise - Q4 2022

Transcript

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Okay. Welcome everyone to our Q4 2022 Update. I hope you've all had a chance to read our shareholder letter at investor.axon.com. Our prepared remarks today are meant to build on the information and tables in that very robust letter. During this call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements made today are pursuant to and within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We discuss these risks in our SEC filings. Before we turn the call over to Rick, we will play our quarterly earnings video. Go ahead and settle in. It's about a 10-minute video.

Speaker 13

Hey, everyone. Today, we're reporting to you from TASERCON, a new conference where we put out some big news. In November, we told you about our moonshot goal to cut gun-related deaths between police and the public by 50% in 10 years. Investors who've been with us for a while might recall that 2 years ago, our CEO and founder, Rick Smith, announced that we were doubling down on research and development in less lethal technology in hopes of launching our next weapon sooner.

Well, we did it, and it's here. On January 24th, we launched TASER 10. Given the level of time and investment that went into this weapon, we're gonna spend some extra time on it today. We want to give you a sense of the culture, innovation, and care that drives success across our company. That said, remember that TASER segment revenue represents about 45%-50% of our business, and the other half is a growing enterprise cloud software suite, body cameras and in-car dashboard cameras, the Axon Air platform, and more. TASER 10 is a giant leap in technology that represents a continuation of a less lethal journey that began 30 years ago. We are ushering in a new era in less lethal technology.

Why does an officer ever need to use lethal force? Police don't use lethal force because it's lethal. They use it because it's reliable. It's the most effective way to stop a threat. Today, public safety has limited opportunities to stop a threat with a less lethal weapon. When less lethal tools don't work, people die. That is the problem we felt obligated to solve. It was a matter of global safety. We were working truly around the clock to find a solution to a problem that was and is costing lives. We had conversations with both public safety and the community. We really involved the true end users. The only motivation we needed was the knowledge that when this product launches, lives will be saved.

We owe public safety and communities a better way to stop threats without having to take a life. The TASER 10 is that weapon. It begins a new era in less lethal technology. When we set out to develop our next generation TASER energy weapon, we couldn't make a weapon that was simply a small step above our last model. We needed a weapon that would begin to shift how the world looks at less lethal technology. The key is to find common ground. We want people in the community to be safe and feel safe. When it came to the design process, we really brought in all the key stakeholders, both public safety and community members. I challenged my team to create this revolutionary new TASER weapon in just a few years.

Rick has a history of being an incredible innovator. For outsiders, it might appear to be an unrealistic timeline, but if you know Rick, you know anything is possible. For Rick, this was never about money or profit. This is about the mission. He'd remind us on a daily basis that lives were being lost. As a team, we knew that there was no excuses. We just had to figure out a way to get it done. It was a massive engineering and design challenge. The stakes were high. We had to do it right, and we had to do it responsibly. There was just not a lot of room for error. We faced some major roadblocks during the development of TASER 10, including the cartridge deployment mechanism.

It's really all about the misses. You look at the causes of ineffective use of a TASER energy weapon, and everything indexed back towards, "I just need more rounds." We had to find a way to get public safety more cartridges and more capability in the same size weapon. We also knew that trust in the weapon was going to be key, which is why we focused so heavily on reliability. The threshold wasn't, "Can we do it right?" It's, "Can we not do it wrong? It's emotional to see this product come to life because I truly do think it will change the world. It will change how people think about less lethal options. I've been working on developing and improving TASER technology for 30 years. I've dedicated my entire career to the idea that we can and we must find a way to stop threats without taking lives.

I'm the first to admit TASER weapons aren't perfect, but TASER 10 is a hell of a step towards making TASER energy weapons the most reliable and effective force option in the world. When officers try TASER 10 for the first time, their jaws really drop. This weapon can be used at almost twice the distance of our previous models. That's pretty incredible. When someone steps back and deploys their weapon from 35 feet, even 40 feet, they're astonished. That's when they realize this device is truly groundbreaking. It's important that the TASER 10 can be effective at stopping threats in situations where a firearm may have been the only option in the past. At the end of the day, community members and officers want to make it home, and by improving the effectiveness of TASER technology, we can help make sure that happens.

On top of the distance, TASER 10 having 10 cartridges is a real game changer. Currently, TASER energy weapons have 1 to 2 cartridges. Officers in the field now have significantly more chances to stop a threat with a less lethal weapon, increasing the possibility of an effective outcome. Because this weapon only deploys 1 cartridge at a time, officers now have even more control over creating a large enough probe spread to really cause immobility. This device is part of a larger movement within Axon to make change at a faster pace. Axon has a moonshot goal to cut gun-related deaths between police and the public by 50% in the next 10 years.

The first major step in accomplishing this moonshot goal is the TASER 10. We're all ushering in the future with this piece of technology. TASER 10 is the start of the conversation that will include better training and better relationships between public safety and the community. I hope that when agencies hear about TASER 10, they're excited knowing that they're gonna be able to protect and serve their communities more safely and more effectively than ever before. I hope that officers feel relieved knowing that they'll have a tool designed to keep them safe and avoid having to take a life. I hope communities feel more confident that they can count on public safety to make sure that they get home safe.

We built a tool that is significantly more effective than any TASER energy weapon ever, so public safety doesn't have to transition to a firearm. We're trying to shrink the pool of decisions where it's life or death, where it's me or them, where that one decision dictates whether or not someone ever goes home. TASER 10 is designed to save lives. It's that simple. With TASER 10, we can and will reduce the number of gun-related deaths worldwide, and I think that's as powerful a reason to believe in this product as anything else.

It's that once in a career product that you work toward and dream of. It's the culmination of decades of work and thousands of forward-thinking individuals who came together in the hopes of making the world a safer place. I feel a sense of true hope watching this technology be adopted, and I can't wait to see where the coming years will take us. We're excited about the future and already executing against our 2023 plan. We do want to take a moment to reflect on our 2022 performance. Axon delivered a banner year with a new management team who led a phenomenal close across all metrics, from revenue growth to profitability to free cash flow generation.

Looking to 2023 and beyond, stay tuned to our earnings call to get an exciting three-year outlook from Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer, Brittany Bagley. You can expect Axon to exhibit compelling revenue growth, financial discipline that drives bottom-line leverage, and strong management of working capital and cash. On the product front, you can count on us to invent and deliver at scale across our product suite, including our SaaS software platform, our body cameras and Fleet in-car cameras, and more. We are also primed to win new markets, including U.S. federal, international, justice, and commercial enterprises. We're excited to continue to deliver on behalf of all stakeholders, including our shareholders. We make a wealth of information available to you at investor.axon.com. Check it out and see you next quarter.

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

All right. Thank you, Andrea and Angel. Great job. To our investors, I hope you can feel the passion that comes through in that video, and I'm just so humbled to be a part of this team. The formula that has really worked for us is when we focus on what are the most important problems we can solve, that gets us solving the things that are also the most valuable problems for our customers, and that ultimately is what puts up the results that you see from last year. TASER 10 is the most sophisticated, accurate, and effective TASER energy weapon we've ever created. It's a huge leap forward. Future generations may simply take for granted the existence of these truly capable, less lethal technologies as if they had always existed.

Like all technological advancements that drive our society forward, that is our goal. The customer reception has been fantastic. We are incredibly humbled to be at the forefront of breakthrough technology and societal change. Our 2022 standout performance with revenue up 38%, strong profitability and cash flow follows multiple years of exceptional results, even through difficult macro environments. Axon's history of superior execution can be traced to a few key things. Our vision and mission, our long-term strategic thinking, that attracts just an amazing team of passionate and talented people, and our relentless focus on customers. We build upon a solid foundation of customer trust. Finally, our conviction to double down on investments to drive unprecedented change and cumulative growth. A prime example of this is the foresight we had more than a decade ago to start building a software business.

In 2022, our recurring high margin cloud revenue comprised more than 30% of the company total. It's great to see our long-term strategies continuing to bear fruit. To that end, I'll take a moment to talk about areas where we're currently investing to ensure that Axon continues to drive value creation well beyond the 2025 planning horizon we're sharing today. The future of policing will include more robotic security, full stop. We stood up our Axon Air program a few years ago. We continue to invest in that. We view drone and robotics technology first and foremost as a way to extend visibility and communications for first responders. Robotic security is already playing an increasingly important role in search and rescue, natural disaster response, crime and accident scene reconstruction, and a new category of DFR, or Drone as a First Responder.

We see potential for robotic security to play a greater role in de-escalation. Numerous high-profile cases, we've all seen these tragedies on the news, have inspired police departments to do everything possible to reduce the frequency of use of force incidents. Substituting a robot for a human can help in many types of scenarios. One example is high-risk entry with SWAT teams. We see the opportunity to reduce the need for people as police officers to enter a home with firearms drawn, for example. Another area we see coming is the fusion of intelligence ecosystems that integrate with public safety, allowing video from multiple types of cameras and sensors to port into one system, both to assist in real-time response and to support investigations. We're also excited about these recent advances in generative AI.

Nearly six years ago, we published a vision video with the idea that artificial intelligence could one day extract key information from body camera videos, which, together with a brief oral description from the officer, could be used to write the police report for that officer. Well, that vision no longer feels like science fiction. This vision was part of our thesis and our focus in building out our cloud infrastructure over the past decade. We're excited to see what capabilities we will be able to leverage over the next few years to delight our customers and to make our public tax dollars much more efficient by automating many mundane, yet very time-consuming tasks. Finally, when we build for the future, we collaborate with our trusted constituencies. We work with governments, city councils, public safety, and our Ethics & Equity Advisory Council. This council provides invaluable feedback.

They ask us the hard questions and help us to see around corners. We look to them for assistance in ensuring ethical design, then we continue to work with our council leaders who are each dynamic, highly successful, and impressive individuals in their own right. With that, I'd now like to turn it over to our COO, Josh Isner, to talk in more detail about the business. Josh?

Josh Isner (COO)

Thanks a lot, Rick. Last August, I talked about 4 major areas of focus for the back half of 2022. I'm pleased to report that we delivered on all fronts. First, we are driving discipline and prioritization across the business. We say no to many opportunities. When we do say yes, we win. The results of our efforts include a phenomenal close to the year, with revenue up 44% in the back half and more than 50% in Q4 alone. Then a game-changing product launch of TASER 10 just a few weeks later. The second area I talked about was investing to penetrate our total addressable market. In our shareholder letter today, we introduced a new TAM analysis which outlines a $50 billion opportunity and shows growth in our core markets.

That core TAM, which includes our SaaS categories, cameras, professional TASER, Axon Air, VR, and a customer base that includes U.S. federal, international, and commercial enterprise grew from $34 billion to $45 billion in our updated analysis. Much of the TAM we pursue today is in areas where our investments have helped position us as a leader and as a pioneer. We see ourselves as the best position to deliver on the future of policing that Rick discussed a moment ago. I'm very pleased to see us deliver on our promise to generate strong cash flow. For the full year, we delivered $195 million in adjusted free cash flow. This was an 84% conversion on adjusted EBITDA of $232 million.

This allowed us to maintain a net cash position roughly flat to last year while investing CapEx to drive global scale and deploying $83 million in strategic ecosystem investments to ensure we stay at the forefront of industry innovation. We are assembling a world-class team from top to bottom, some of whom you see on the call here today. This team brings financial discipline, a next play mindset, and the capability to drive outside outcomes for the next five years and beyond. We are building a culture where we expect to deliver on our commitments to employees, to customers, and to our investors. Looking forward to 2023, working with Brittany, we have streamlined our company-wide bonus metrics to four core items. The entire organization is incentivized to measure, drive toward, and exceed the following. Number 1, revenue. Top line growth remains a top priority.

Number two, adjusted EBITDA margin, which Brittany will take you through in a moment. Number three, new market expansion in the U.S. federal government and international markets. Number four, new product adoption, ensuring that the products we are building continue to be adopted and used by our customers. We never stop helping our existing customer base to walk up the value chain and take advantage of our new software features. Finally, before Brittany lays out our three-year plan to achieve $2 billion in revenue, I wanted to provide some color on what we think will help us build toward that milestone. Our path to $2 billion in revenue and beyond will be driven by a combination of selling new products into our existing markets and by selling existing products into new markets.

We continue to introduce new products that deliver value to our existing customer base of U.S. state and local law enforcement. We believe we will continue to grow our share of wallet in that market. Items such as TASER 10, Fleet 3, Virtual Reality, Axon Records, Axon Dispatch, Axon Air, and the multitude of evidence.com add-ons will continue to drive growth amongst our state and local U.S. customers. In parallel, we will continue to grow international, federal, and enterprise, leveraging our core product portfolio. Not only will the combination of these two simultaneous motions create top-line growth opportunities for the future, well beyond 2025, but they will also provide multiple paths to our annual revenue guidance year-in and year-out. With that, I'll turn it over to Brittany.

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Thank you, Josh. It's particularly gratifying to see broad-based strength across the business and our strong 2022 execution. Both software and hardware are driving robust performance. Notably, Axon Cloud now represents about a third of our business, carrying best-in-class metrics on growth and net revenue retention. In 2022, cloud revenue grew 50% to $368 million, with a 73% gross margin. Annual recurring revenue has grown to $473 million, and the net revenue retention is 121%. We are incredibly proud of the fantastic job Axon has done selling hardware and subscription bundles. 90% of total revenue in 2022 was tied to a subscription, compared to just a few years ago, when less than half of revenue was subscription-based.

Following on Josh Isner's commentary regarding the TAM opportunity, our updated analysis more closely aligns with our focus as an organization. Axon's core TAM of $45 billion across SaaS categories, cameras, professional TASER, Axon Air, and VR reflects opportunities in a customer base that includes public safety, U.S. federal, international, and commercial enterprise. At the same time, the consumer personal protection market remains an opportunity, and I'm currently recruiting for a permanent GM to lead the business. However, as we noted in our shareholder letter, we are reframing our analysis on this market from $18 billion to $5 billion in terms of total TAM. Almost $5 billion is still a large opportunity that we're interested in pursuing, but we are right-sizing our focus to better reflect the enormous opportunity we see in our core business.

You'll also note that in Q4, we recognized eight and a half million of cloud revenue that we had previously underreported. This revenue relates to work that was completed in prior periods and was unrecognized due to our ERP implementation in 2021. While the impact is immaterial to our financials, it did result in a material weakness. Remediating this will be a focus in 2023, and we have laid out a detailed plan in our 10-K. Against the backdrop of an exceptional 2022 and an improving demand environment, we are thrilled to be sharing another robust outlook for the year ahead. Additionally, now that I've had some time to dig into the business, we are introducing three-year financial goals. Looking at 2023, my key financial priorities for the year are the following. First, executing against our financial objective of delivering revenue growth of 20%.

Working toward long-term gross margin improvement. We feel confident in the levers we can pull on gross margin over time, which include investing in automation, improving manufacturing efficiency, further growing our software revenue mix, and offsetting inflation with pricing. In 2023, we are balancing these opportunities against ramping TASER 10 in the first half of the year and continuing to catch up on our Fleet in-car camera installation. Our Fleet business carries a lower margin up front and transitions to high-margin recurring software revenue over time. Controlling operating expenses by enhancing our financial discipline. In 2023, we are still digesting large investments we made in 2022 and investing for growth. We are guiding to 20% adjusted EBITDA margin, which implies 50 basis points of improvement year-over-year. Delivering on our ecosystem vision by leveraging strategic partnerships, investments, and potentially M&A.

Fifth, setting us up to ensure we are on the path to hitting our 3-year goals. Turning to those goals, our 2025 outlook for more than $2 billion in revenue is underpinned by our confidence that we can deliver on the 20% CAGR that we've communicated previously, and as Josh laid out the drivers. Over the next 3 years, we also expect to drive gross margins and leverage our operating expenses to achieve approximately 25% adjusted EBITDA margins. We are excited to demonstrate the increasing profitability of the business, and this represents significant expansion of more than 500 basis points. We are also focusing on cash flow, and through prudent management of working capital and CapEx, we are targeting adjusted free cash flow conversion above 60% on adjusted EBITDA. This allows us to both invest in our business and deliver attractive free cash flow generation.

Finally, we have heard you on share count dilution, and while we will spend the next few years working through existing stock comp expenses, we are committing to bring our dilution down on a go-forward basis. Personally, I'm incredibly energized by the runway we see over the next three years. Axon enjoys a compelling business model, delivering subscriptions to a stable and growing end user market. We enjoy low global TAM penetration, strong customer relationships, and innovative R&D capabilities that are building solutions to meet a critical market need. With that, I would like to open it up to questions.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Okay, thank you. Do we have everyone in gallery view? Awesome. Sami Badri from Credit Suisse, you're up.

Sami Badri (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Yes, thank you very much. Just have a couple. first one is for Rick. you know, I think Brittany just mentioned that TASER 10 is gonna be ramping up in 2023. One thing I think that you laid out in the video is just the feature set and what TASER 10 actually proposes to a lot of your customers. Would there be customers that feel very strongly about maybe a early shipment or an early refresh of their actual TASER non-lethal weapon? Would they have to stick to kind of the plan or subscription type timeline that they've already signed and are subscribed to?

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

A great question. I have never seen demand this strong in a new TASER launch, in my history in the business, which is great news. The subscription model does, you know, already have our customers on an upgrade pathway, but I'm working closely with Brittany and Josh on a customer basis, we are getting a lot of inquiries for people that want to upgrade early. Obviously, the revenue accounting on our contracts with the multiple deliveries is a bit complex. We're taking those on a case-by-case basis.

We believe that overall, we will be able to find ways to accommodate customers to be able to take early upgrades in ways that also, you know, work for our shareholders and for, you know, that are profitable for us and help our customers get this capability sooner without the need for any big one-time expenditures by just being able to bring forward and adjust. Obviously, we hope they'll also upgrade to some of our other new capabilities that we're launching, like some of our new VR and other things. We think this really the business model continues to set up a win-win for us and our customers. One great example is the ability for us to accelerate their upgrade cycles.

Sami Badri (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Got it. Thank you. Next one is for Josh. Josh, you talked about how compensation will be measured by four key drivers. One of the drivers was actually selling other products or cross-selling. Will that include ecosystem partners that are part of your Axon Cloud feature set also being pulled through in the sales motion? Is that very isolated to just Axon products and services?

Josh Isner (COO)

Great question, Sammy. I'd say, anytime we're a sales agent, there is a revenue impact when we sell through a partner's product. To set expectations, I think that'll be a relatively small part of our overall revenue for next year. It's part of it. When you look at the rep level commission plans, we do have a new product sales team that is essentially compensated in large part in momentum of both new products and partner sales. That's how we solve for that.

Sami Badri (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Got it. Then one last one for Brittany. Brittany, for the 500 basis points of expansion by 2025, is this going to be back half loaded across these three years just because of the comment you made regarding some of the products? Well, the comments you made and the comments made in the actual press release regarding margin neutrality for some of these products, and then as they ramp up with software, does that-

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

I think Sami froze, but I think we got the gist of his question, so we can answer it.

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. I'm taking the gist of the question to be when might we get to that 25% margin? You know, we're really looking to make sure we get there by 2025, Sami. Like, there are a bunch of those puts and takes that we're looking at both for 2023. Certainly part of getting to the OpEx leverage that we've talked about is getting to that $2 billion in revenue. We need to pull those levers, and it's nice that we have multiple different levers to get there, both from a gross margin and an OpEx standpoint.

Sami Badri (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Hey, Jonathan Ho at William Blair, you are up.

Jonathan Ho (Research Analyst)

Hi, good afternoon. Congratulations on the strong results. I guess I wanted to dig a little bit more into your comments about what's underpinning your confidence for the 2025 guidance. You know, is there something that's maybe changed with some of your market assumptions or, you know, one part of the business that's proving stronger than you anticipated to, you know, give you that extra degree of confidence to extend that 20% guide?

Josh Isner (COO)

Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan. Actually, I think it's very much that we have a lot of confidence in all of our product categories and market categories that continue to grow significantly year-over-year. As I'm sure you're aware, you know, we've talked about in the past that we do measure 5-year normalized bookings as kind of a forward-looking indicator of what revenue will look like into the future, and not only on a growth basis, but on a year-over-year basis. We continue to be optimistic about the results we're seeing and the 5-year bookings growth and that 5-year bookings growth rate.

You know, it's a combination of seeing a lot of really exciting indicators in our new markets, seeing our new product scale and seeing some of the reinforcements in terms of future revenues that the look into bookings provide.

Jonathan Ho (Research Analyst)

Excellent. Excellent. Then just with regards to the TASER 10, pace of adoption, you know, can you remind us what happened when TASER 7 was released? Do you worry at all about maybe customers delaying orders, you know, to purchase the 10? I'm just wondering if there's any sort of linearity that we need to worry about here, just given the step function improvements that you've made or above step function improvements. Thank you.

Josh Isner (COO)

Yeah, absolutely. Without going into too much detail there, I think the TASER 10 forecast is exceeding year one of the TASER 7 actuals from five years ago. We're encouraged to see that, and it speaks to the value and, you know, utility of the product. I would say that, you know, it's something we're managing very closely in terms of both, you know, early upgrades and new customer shipments. It provides certainly one path to meet our guidance for the year or exceed our guidance for the year. There are several paths toward that goal as well. You know, we don't wanna get too far out of our skis here.

We wanna make sure that the product we ship is a very high quality one that scales, very well in the field. As we do that, we'll certainly continue to ship all the other high demand products that we offer, to combine for a really nice year this year.

Jonathan Ho (Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Thank you. Next question, Erik Suppiger from JMP.

Erik Suppiger (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

There we go. A couple questions here. First off, looks like your TASER revenue was down sequentially. I'm curious, was there any reason for that? Conversely, the Axon Cloud, and the sensor revenues were up sharply. What was causing that? I think you had some supply chain constraints that were a factor last quarter. What happened with those various dynamics?

Josh Isner (COO)

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just timing of shipments and orders. I think toward the end of the year, as, you know, we looked at the year and the upcoming product launch, we wanted to be thoughtful about, you know, with a product launch a couple of years away, just maintaining flexibility for our customers as we knew some might be interested in the next one. We tried to manage that as best we could, and we're very excited to see the supply chain opening up on Fleet. I think you'll notice that was a big item, you know, in terms of the volume of Fleet that shipped in Q4. We expect that to continue throughout the year.

As you mentioned some of the supply chain challenges historically, we're cautiously optimistic that we're past kind of most of the storm there and feeling good about having the opportunity to ship certainly record-breaking amounts of Fleet 3 this year. Of course, you know, plenty of TASERs, body cameras, and some of our other solutions as well.

Erik Suppiger (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Can you give us a general idea of how much of your installed base has been migrated to the TASER 7 at this point?

Josh Isner (COO)

You know, I don't have the exact number in front of me, but I'd say, you know, over the last year, in terms of the amount of CEW shipped, TASER 7 was above 80%-85% of the total there. I think that speaks to the fact that much of the market had moved over from our legacy smart weapons into TASER 7. Now, you know, we have the opportunity to, of course, upgrade all of our early TASER 7 customers. As Rick mentioned, I think there'll be some, you know, that are more recent that will be interested as well. We're very excited to get as many TASER 10s out there as we can.

Erik Suppiger (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Very good. Thank you.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Keith Housum at Northcoast. Go ahead.

Keith Housum (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. As we look at the TASER 10 coming out, first off, you guys announced a specific date that it's going to be deployed? Second, if we look at, you know, past rollouts of the TASER weapons, there's obviously been some challenges in terms of the gross margin recognition in those first few quarters. Perhaps you guys can address, you know, steps you guys have taken over the past several years to identify and address those issues and what you guys are doing different with this rollout to protect your gross margins?

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

I mean, I, you know, I think it goes to everything from how we design the product to how we design our manufacturing capabilities. We've talked about how, when we get to scale, which will happen in the second half of the year, We are calling it out as a little bit of a potential headwind in the first half of the year. As we get to the second half of the year, it'll be gross margin neutral. I think the team learned a lot from the T7 launch and took those learnings into T10, and we're thoughtful and careful on the gross margin front.

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

Yeah, I'll add a little bit there. The Fleet 3 was the first major product to launch under the new regime. You know, with Hans Moritz running our R&D and, you know, Jeff Kunins and his team running engineering and building in, and others in NPI. Basically what we saw with Fleet 3, we injected probably 6 to 12 months of additional pre-release testing to really validate the product. That paid off in a big way, where Fleet 3 is a very sophisticated product, but it's had, among the lowest, you know, out of the box return rates and customer bugs reported of any product we've ever shipped. TASER 7...

I'm sorry, TASER 10 went through a very similar, it has been in testing, you know, with a highly automated production line, for probably 6 to 9 months leading into the launch here. The level of testing compared to, you know, previously when we were maybe a less mature company and still making that transition from the more entrepreneurial days, that there's just a lot more time, effort, and expense that goes into the upfront testing. That is paying dividends in the stability and reliability at which we're able to scale these without some of the, you know, challenges we had with T7 in particular come to mind.

Keith Housum (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. have you started shipping?

Josh Isner (COO)

TASER 10 will start shipping in March.

Keith Housum (Senior Research Analyst)

In March. Okay. Just if I could, you know, Brittany, perhaps you have some little context or color regarding the convertible note offering you guys did in terms of plans that you guys have to use that cash.

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Yeah, of course. One, I would say, you know, as you can tell, because it's been a little bit of time now, it was very much opportunistic from our side to strengthen the balance sheet and to give ourselves a bit more flexibility from a capital standpoint. We, we think we found a time to get attractive terms in the market. We're very pleased that we were able to proactively get ahead of that. I think you heard me talk about how, you know, we have been investing in our ecosystem partners, how we might potentially consider M&A as we look going forward.

We wanna make sure that when we find something that is appealing from an M&A standpoint, that we're able to be on our front foot and move quickly and smartly going forward on that. We spent a lot of time on that convertible offering, talking about what might we look for from an M&A standpoint, 'cause that was top of everybody's mind. A little color is, I think if you look at our M&A history historically, that's probably a pretty good indication where we're really looking for either technology or talent that will support our future product roadmap and/or our moonshot goals and mission.

Keith Housum (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Thanks, Keith. Paul Chung at JPMorgan.

Paul Chung (Analyst)

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Just another follow-up on kind of the pace of operating leverage, you know, through 2025. You know, the pace accelerates a bit in 2024 and 2025 to get to that 25%. How do we think about the OpEx space kind of relative to gross margin expansion? You know, longer term, can you still get to that 30% mark you've mentioned in the past?

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. I think, you know, we're really looking at the three-year guidance. That's not to say we might not get to 30% at some point, but I think this is really meant to sort of replace that in like, okay, we have a plan in a concrete way to get to 25% by 2025. Then we'll start looking out from beyond there in terms of where we will go. I wouldn't say we're pulling that, but maybe we're phasing that out and focusing on what is actionable and in front of us and what we really see a path to right now, and that's that 25% in 2025.

I think, you know, you are correctly interpreting that we've got some puts and takes in 2023, we're not putting a stake in the ground specifically on any 2023 gross margin guidance. We do expect to see both improvement on gross margin and OpEx leverage to get to that 25%. You know, perhaps over time, with a little bit more under our belts, we'll be able to quantify the pieces a bit more. For right now, we're just really looking on driving both of those together to hit that 25%. Again, it's about 50 basis points of leverage in 2023. You know, you are all correctly picking up on more of that improvement will come in 2024 and 2025.

Paul Chung (Analyst)

Okay, great. Just to follow up on cash flow, can you expand on kind of the, you know, the big upside relative to prior guide and, you know, you're above your target kind of conversion rate this year or in back in 2022. How do we think about free cash flow conversion in 2023 and the puts and takes there? You know, is at least 60% conversion longer term, somewhat conservative given the tough macro backdrop you guys hit 80%+ mark, can we be at that 80% mark pretty consistently? Thank you.

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. No, those are all excellent questions. I might go in reverse order, which is, I don't wanna say that we'll be at that 80%+ consistently. We're looking to be at that 60%+ consistently. The reason that we're there rather than the 80%+, even though we did a phenomenal job on free cash flow generation this year, is, if you look at 2021, I would say we did a less phenomenal job on free cash flow generation. If you look at sort of 2021 and 2022 together, you know, you actually get back to that roughly 60%, 65%-ish percent free cash flow generation on average between those two years.

Some of the things that lead to that just are, you know, investing in working capital and investing in inventory as we continue to grow our Hardware business, continuing to invest in CapEx, like automation. You know, we have a number of those puts and takes that we've looked at, and based on places that we are investing in our cash flow, we really think that that 60% target on an annual basis is what we're looking for. Might mean we do better some years, but I think as you look over a three-year period, and as we've looked back, that's probably the right expectation level to set while we are growing at the kind of rates we're growing at. You know, if we aren't growing at 20%+ anymore, would we revisit that free cash flow target?

Yes, certainly. At those types of top-line growth rates, we think that's the right balance in terms of what we're flowing through.

Paul Chung (Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Thank you. Will Power at Baird.

Will Power (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. I got a couple of questions. I guess I better start with TASER 10, probably for, you know, either, you know, Rick or, you know, Josh. You know, we're, I guess, a little over a month past TASERCON. I wonder if you have any additional feedback, comments you could share from agencies that have been using the device in the field, any comments around level of use, effectiveness, etc. I guess the second part would just be with regard to supply chain components for both the devices and cartridges as you move through the year here.

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

I'll start off. We continue to get great feedback from the field. I think we've now had something approaching, 40 or so, different uses. I think we've had, the one that I mentioned at TASERCON, where, it was fired at, in a running situation at something like 40 feet and the person stumbled forward and the wires broke, but the agency then closed and the other officer had a TASER 7. Ultimately, Taser won the day in that use. We categorized that as a partial effectiveness of the T10. We did have only one other case, where it was not effective, and that was one where it was in close quarter use.

An officer fired the first dart, and it turned out the second officer had not been trained on the TASER 10 yet, and actually ran in and got between the operator and the subject before he fired the second dart. One of the things we took away from that is actually making sure we work with our partners, that they train all officers in how the new system functions. The good news is, we're continuing to see very high effectiveness. Since TASERCON, we presented to the major city chiefs and the major county sheriffs with just very significant interest across the board. I talked to 1 major county sheriff that has had a fair number of shootings already this year with firearms, and they basically ran through with me of the cases they've had this year.

They think TASER 10 could have changed the outcome in every one of them, which was a pretty remarkable statement. I was actually with another major city chief today that told me in her agency, she thinks TASER 10 could have alleviated about two-thirds of their shootings as she enumerated them. We're continuing to get very positive feedback. I'm about to go on an international tour to the first one I'll do since the TASER 10 launch and start talking to some international customers where I think that might be the greatest growth potential internationally. Because internationally, we don't see many agencies individually issuing TASERs the way they do in the United States. TASER 10 could reach a level of capability where it could become the primary defensive weapon.

I think that means in many countries, you know, where they don't have many guns in the hands of the public, but the officers are carrying a firearm, in those countries, we might actually see them begin to move to TASER 10 as their primary weapon. I'll be very clear, we don't see that happening in the U.S. because of the gun culture and the ready availability of firearms in the general public. They will continue to carry both. This enhanced capability in different countries could really be a, a market expanding phenomenon. What was the second part of your question? I think I was gonna let Josh take it.

Josh Isner (COO)

Yeah. It was just about component availability, I think. Is that right, Will?

Will Power (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah. Supply chain components both for devices and cartridges. What does that look like?

Josh Isner (COO)

Yeah, absolutely. Our supply chain team, as always, has just done a fantastic job staying ahead of the curve in, you know, what are less challenging times than maybe a year or 2 ago. Any time you launch a new product, there are a lot of revisions and moving parts leading up to that. Ultimately, we feel really good about our capacity not only this year, but continuing to build out our automation capabilities to more exponentially expand our capacity into the future. Certainly, we have plenty of inventory to support our revenue guidance and beyond for this year. Next year, you know, we're aggressively planning for even higher demand.

Will Power (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, great. If I could just add a question on software, continued strong traction across Axon Cloud. Maybe kind of two-part there too. What's kind of driving the continued DEMS adoption? It feels like, you know, that continues.accelerate, I guess, in some respects. I guess in tandem with that, maybe just any kind of update what you're seeing with respect to Axon Records and other products out of, you know, kind of that core Axon Evidence/DEMS category.

Josh Isner (COO)

Maybe I'll start with the DEMS question and then hand it over to Jeff for Records. The reason I wanna take this one, Will, is to give Jeff a huge shout-out for the work he's done over the last few years. He's essentially built a team that not only has delivered on the core ecosystem, but continues to build out the last mile types of features and products that make the product not only that much more valuable to our core market, but also more attractive to our kind of up and coming markets in federal and international. So, you know, his team has just done a great job continuing to identify opportunity and market needs and then executing well on the plan to deliver those capabilities.

Just that flywheel continues to lend itself to more customer interest and more happy customers that will buy more over time. So, that's been, you know, the backbone of our DEMS adoption. Maybe, Jeff, I'll kick it over to you on records.

Jeff Kunins (Chief Product Officer and CTO)

Sure. No, that's awesome to hear and couldn't agree more about the power of everything we've done to continue to make the overall suite more attractive, both in aggregate and in the piece parts.

I think, you know, just building on what Josh said, that also combines with the power of our OSP flywheel model, because as we, you know, continue to both add new capabilities into the bundles and add where appropriate new tiers of the bundle, that just makes it, again, easier and easier for agencies to make 1 simple choice to get access to this very Amazon Prime or Microsoft CAL-like basket of both hardware and software benefits that they buy at a price that feels great to them, even for the subset of the components that they know they wanna use up front.

Then as they go forward, all of those additional benefits in the basket feel free, because they've already made, the what feels to them like a good deal price for the basket, and that drives the flywheel. On top of that, even those who aren't yet in those programs, a la carte are more and more and more seeing the value of those add-ons and incrementally growing ARPU, as well as adding new logos. On the Records side, again, we continue to be both, humble and really excited and optimistic about the continued growth and trajectory. Just sort of using the same numbers we've talked to you about over the last couple of quarters. You know, with growth now we have over 50 agencies, that represent over 8...

almost 18,000 sworn officers live on at least one module of Axon Records. That includes now 16 agencies who are already using the product to fully replace their legacy RMS. That includes, you know, at this point, major cities such as Tucson and Baltimore, Virginia Beach, and Fresno.

Will Power (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Thanks so much. We have three analysts left in the queue.

Josh Isner (COO)

Hey, AJ?

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Yeah.

Josh Isner (COO)

Just real quick. I think Will deserves a shout-out for the best T-shirt on the call today. That's the 10 shots and 45 feet from the TASER 10. Great, great fashion sense, Will.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

100%. Thank you so much. Love it. We have 3 analysts left in the queue, and we're happy to go past the top of the hour so we can make sure we get to everyone. We love the engagement. Jeremy Hamblin, Craig-Hallum. Go ahead, Jeremy.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks. Congrats on all the momentum in the business. Just wanted to start with a high-level question. You know, in terms of thoughts around M&A strategic investments, you guys have a pretty robust balance sheet that has been building. Wanted to get a sense in terms of what you might be looking at on a go-forward basis in terms of sale, scale, size of potential opportunities, whether it's, you know, strategic investment or M&A. Then to get a sense, are there any guidelines, you know, that you're looking at in terms of whether or not a deal is accretive or dilutive? You know, obviously you've kind of changed some of the, you know, the viewpoints on, you know, stock-based comp, and so forth, so, you know, to reduce future dilution.

Wanted to get a sense for how you guys are looking at that.

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. No, it's a great question. you know, for us, it really is about either finding technology or teams that fit in well with our mission and/or our business model. There are multiple parameters that we are looking to evaluate companies on. It's always sort of a multifaceted equation for us as we think through them. That's not to say that we aren't looking at whether or not something is, you know, financially attractive to us, but it could be across different metrics. It could significantly increase our, you know, TAM. It could help us get, you know, conviction on supporting that 20% growth long, long, long term or, you know, it could be accretive to our gross margins or EBITDA margins.

There, there isn't sort of one set of things we're looking at, but we're really looking at ways that we can find companies that tuck into our ecosystem. We're looking to really integrate the technology and present, you know, a holistic Axon solution as we look forward. you know, then I'll just note that that dilution number is really sort of an organic dilution number. I think we have a strong balance sheet. I think we can certainly use cash for that. If we were going to use equity, I would consider that separately from what we're doing from just an internal stock comp expense standpoint.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Great, that's helpful. A couple product questions. First, coming back to TASER 10, wanted to get a sense, you know, you offered some guidelines around bundled pricing. Wanted to get an understanding for versus the TASER 7, what your kind of net ASP might look like on a go-forward basis, you know, vis-a-vis, you know, kind of 10% higher ASP. Obviously, you know, there may be higher cartridge use, you know, given the product. That's one on the TASER 10. Secondly, you had a pretty massive quarter in Axon Fleet. You know, I think by far almost double what you've ever done in a quarter. In fact, almost as much as you've done in any years.

I wanted to just get an understanding of, you know, was that a couple of really big orders, or is there something specific to that product that you've really gained traction and now maybe we're past certain life's, you know, cycles on prior contracts where you guys are just gaining more share? Any color there would be super helpful.

Josh Isner (COO)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks a lot for the question. Nice to see you, Jeremy. On TASER 10 ASPs, we're not gonna get too prescriptive there, but I'd say, you know, you should expect an uplift over previous generations and that's part due to the handle price and also part due to the number of cartridges in the bundle relative to previous models. I think we published the list prices on the website, so you can kinda derive from that, you know, what type of uplift to expect. It will be in our bundles, so there'll be a slight inherent discount, you know, associated with any product in a bundle. You know, at a high level, that's kind of the story with TASER 10.

With Fleet 3, yeah, no outsized orders, like just a lot of volume. You should expect that to continue. Maybe even higher levels this year. The product has great product market fit. It's a well-built, well-designed product. The ALPR functionality associated with it is in high demand. ALPR is one of our fastest-growing software add-ons across the business. I think, you know, historically, you might remember our Fleet 1 system, which was more or less a body cam attached to a windshield. Fleet 2 was the moment where we got to parity.

Fleet 3 was the moment where we really surged ahead of the market and became the, you know, the highest, or, you know, the largest selling in-car video system in public safety. Actually, I think that's a path you can expect from a lot of our products over time, where we reach parity with one version, and then we really accelerate ahead. We're really excited about the progress with Fleet 3. Blake Bullock, our product manager, and our entire team on Fleet 3 has just done a fantastic job there, and we're really proud of the progress. Still a lot of work to do, but encouraging to see, you know, that product take shape as the highest demand in-car video system in public safety.

Jeff Kunins (Chief Product Officer and CTO)

Yeah, just to add briefly, again, I think Fleet 3 is like the perfect example of the power and the beauty of us being both an IoT, you know, Hardware Devices company and a Cloud Software company under one roof. You know, we can deliver an end-to-end experience that not only functionality-wise, but then economically really feeds off of itself as part of our flywheel.

Not only is Fleet 3 hands down the best straight-up hardware in-car camera system that's ever been released, but in combination with the revolutionary improvements we made to, you know, democratize access to great ALPR, it makes it an extraordinarily attractive software add-on to buy that they can either buy up front or they can easily add at any point later with just the flick of a switch, and the whole thing works end-to-end with the rest of our suite.

Jeremy Hamblin (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Best wishes.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

Thanks, Jeremy. Okay, thank you. We have two folks left. Alyssa Shreves is on for Tim Long at Barclays. Go ahead, Alyssa. Alyssa, you're off mute, but we're not hearing anything come through. Okay. Let's go to Josh Reilly from Needham. Josh, go ahead and ask your question.

Josh Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Thanks for taking my questions. It seems like there's more opportunity for you guys to have some competitive takeaways in body cams in the U.S. based on our discussions, with customers. Is that what you're seeing today, or would you characterize more of the growth in 2022 as a greenfield with officers who didn't have a body cam at all?

Josh Isner (COO)

You know, I think, Josh, the nice part is it's a combination of both. You know, we continue to sell high volumes of body cameras to new customers, but we also continue to see existing customers buy more and deploy more widely. Then, of course, buy, you know, more and more of our features that are, you know, on top of the body camera, and peripheral products like Fleet and virtual reality and drones and so forth. It's a nice, healthy mix across the board, and we're very excited about that. You know, we wanna diversify the number of ways we can achieve these types of results. I think we're doing that, and we're very excited about that trend.

Josh Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. Can you just remind us, is there any seasonality around any of your products or just the overall business that we should be aware of as we're modeling revenue for 2023? How could the TASER ramp impact the first couple quarters of the year's TASER revenue, if at all?

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

I think, again, like, you know, we've got a number of ways to deliver in each quarter. It's, of course, you know, if we start out with, you know, strong shipments of TASER 10 then, you know, that makes the path easier, but that's not our only path. We're excited about the fact that between, you know, all of our hardware products and just the growing base of software revenue that we have in the business, that, you know, we've been thoughtful about our guidance here. We believe it's very achievable. We continue to expect to grow 20% year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter.

We'll continue to execute here and make sure that, you know, between TASER shipments and all of our other products that we're very thoughtful about how we guide.

Brittany Bagley (CFO and Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. Specifically, I would say, Josh, we're not calling out anything unique on the shape of the year, I would expect pretty typical seasonality for us. Even with T10 coming in, like, we still have really nice, strong T7 performance. You know, we've got a lot of puts and takes, to Josh's point, I would say, you know, for your model, think about normal seasonality.

Josh Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks, guys. Nice performance.

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

Thanks, Josh. Hopefully it gets a little warmer where you are. Well, it doesn't look too nice outside today.

Josh Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Yeah, we had a blizzard last week, so it's actually. This is a lot better.

Andrea S. James (Chief Communications Officer and Investor Relations Head)

I love it. Alyssa, should we try one more time? Okay. We will get you next. Oh, go ahead. Okay. We'll make sure you've got good audio for next time, and we'll get you on the next quarterly call. Let's have Rick Smith close us out.

Rick Smith (CEO and Founder)

All right. Well, again, it's always such a pleasure to be able to share results like this. You know, Josh, Brittany, the whole team, some of the other names you heard, a lot of people working really passionately and hard to turn these results in. Couldn't be more excited to see how this year unfolds with TASER 10, you know, Fleet 3, our software products really starting to scale themselves as you're seeing the financial results. A lot of exciting things to look forward to. We look forward to seeing some of you at Accelerate in April, at our shareholder meeting, which I believe is coming up in May. We'll be back to share Q1 results here in a few weeks as well. Thanks, everybody.

We appreciate the opportunity to work for you on such an amazing mission.