Commvault Systems - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Commvault Fiscal Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mike Melnyk, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Mike Melnyk (Head of Investor Relations)

Morning. Welcome to our earnings conference call. I'm Mike Melnyk, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Sanjay Mirchandani, Commvault CEO, and Gary Merrill, Commvault CFO. An earnings presentation with key financial and operating metrics is posted on the investor relations website for your reference. Statements made on today's call will include forward-looking statements about Commvault, future expectations, plans, and prospects. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Please refer to the cautionary language in today's earnings release and Commvault's most recent periodic reports filed with the SEC for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results to be materially different from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. Commvault does not assume any obligation to update these statements. During the call, Commvault's financial results are presented on a non-GAAP basis.

A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP can be found on our website. Thank you for joining us. Now I'll turn the call over to Sanjay for his remarks. Sanjay?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Thank you, Mike. Good morning. I'm pleased to report our Q1 results met our expectations and position us well for fiscal year 2024. Let me share some highlights. Total ARR, the metric we use to measure the growth of our recurring revenue streams, increased 15% year-over-year to $686 million. Our subscription ARR grew 32% year-over-year to $500 million. Metallic, our hyper-growth SaaS platform, grew ARR 72% year-over-year and now exceeds 4,000 customers. All of these showcase the strength of our subscription-based recurring revenue model that we've been driving to over the past several years, and we did it while delivering 22% EBIT margins and continuing to return cash to shareholders through share repurchases. Our strategic objective is clear: to be the leading cloud-first data protection company in the industry.

This requires constant innovation, execution excellence, and the ability to rapidly evolve with the ever-changing data protection market. Our customers have reached an inflection point, driven by four major forces that are shifting the data protection demands and expectations of the modern enterprise. One, they're experiencing unique and complex challenges on their hybrid cloud journeys. Two, customers shouldn't have to choose between a software and SaaS. At this point, it should be a natural and seamless decision with a modern, unified platform. Three, the world of data protection and data security are converging and require customers to consider a new approach. Lastly, the advancements in artificial intelligence have opened the door to improved customer experiences and increased value. Let's discuss each of these. The first, and perhaps most important, is the industry-wide move towards the hybrid cloud.

According to a recent report, 82% of IT leaders say that they have adopted hybrid cloud, nearly half of which are embracing multiple public clouds. As a result, data is distributed across multiple environments. It's fragmented and in flight. Managing this new reality can become untenable in costs, complexity, and security delivered at scale. To manage all of this, today's hybrid enterprises are doing nothing at all or a patchwork of anything from basic cloud native backup to point solutions, some SaaS, some software, each intended to solve a piece of the puzzle. Rather than holistically simplifying and managing everything, this only increases more complexity and cost. This is where Commvault comes in. Which leads me to the second major force. Customers crave the power and simplicity of a single as-a-service solution. Today, customers are forced to make unnatural choices that are inefficient and unsustainable.

Instead, they need the best of both worlds, software and SaaS, in a single solution. Our cloud-based data protection platform does just that, as software or SaaS on the same control plane. Not only do we help customers reduce complexity, our unified platform has the best total cost of ownership and greater value than any solution that we compete against, cloud native or software. This is revolutionary for the industry and positions us as the company to beat within the category. Both existing and new customers are embracing this technology. I'll discuss three examples. First, we won an M365 deal with Netcare, a publicly traded South African healthcare company. The company cited the simplicity and cost efficiency of our single platform versus the existing cloud native solution as the key decision-making criteria.

Second, Thesis, a SaaS-based student learning system, chose Commvault to drive six-figure cost savings versus its cloud native tools. Third, a Fortune 1000 food manufacturer and an existing Commvault software customer expanded with our SaaS solution to protect thousands of Office 365 users. With each of these customers, we were the natural choice, given our proven mission-critical capabilities, our ability to operate between technologies and workloads, our cost advantages, and our capability to accommodate future cloud use cases on our platform. These examples are consistent with the trends we've seen every quarter since the launch of our SaaS platform. 40% of our SaaS customers use another Commvault product, and 30% use multiple SaaS offerings. Software and SaaS are complementary and accretive to our business, which brings us to the third course.

As the line between data protection and data security blurs, customers are rethinking their approach to modern cyber resilience. Ransomware threats are on the rise again in 2023. Data from cryptocurrency trading firm Chainalysis indicates cyber ransom payments more than doubled in the first half of 2023. A report by Cybersecurity Ventures notes that cybercrime will account for over $10.5 trillion in costs by 2025. Of course, ransomware is only part of the modern era of pervasive autonomous threats, in conjunction with other malicious data exfiltration and data destruction activities. This is increasingly driving the need for a layered security approach that includes predictive threat analytics to defend both backup and production workloads, and ironclad cyber resilience in the case of a breach.

No amount of preemptive defense can take the place of unfailing rapid recovery, and no amount of security is 100% successful. The two must operate hand in hand. Building on the early success of our ThreatWise cyber deception offering, in June, we offered new security capabilities across our portfolio. These were designed to help customers proactively and reactively secure, defend, and recover their production workloads while strengthening their backup infrastructure. These advanced security features are managed and delivered through the simplicity of our new Cloud Command interface, which provides global visibility and smart insights across all workloads, monitoring backup, health, and security posture. We also expanded our security ecosystem to include product integrations with Microsoft, Palo Alto, SentinelOne, and CyberArk. While others in the industry provide limited point solutions, Commvault offers a platform that protects and enables customers to recover both production and backup environments.

Finally, the fourth force impacting data protection is the topic that's driving an unprecedented frenzied adoption of AI across every enterprise. The rise of generative AI is ushering in a new era, one that is increasingly automated and autonomous and moving faster than one can imagine. We've been using AI and machine learning for years in our technology and our operations. Further leveraging AI-driven automation across our platform, we can help customers rapidly recover and also constantly optimize, manage, and control every aspect of their data protection capabilities. We're continuing to incorporate AI-based roadmaps across our offerings, and we'll take a very considered point of view around the right way to apply this new technology as it matures. How organizations secure, defend, and recover their most precious asset, their data, is fundamentally changing due to these forces. The bottom line is we can no longer look at each separately.

The future of our industry depends on our proven ability to offer a seamless, automated, and cost-effective approach to these hard problems. In the fall, we'll be announcing some exciting capabilities and offerings that will further empower customers and redefine the industry. With that, I'll turn it over to Gary to discuss the numbers. Gary?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Thanks, Sanjay. Good morning, everyone. Coming off a strong finish to fiscal year 2023, we are off to a solid start to fiscal year 2024. As a reminder, we have recast our P&L presentation effective this quarter, which is led by our term licensed software and SaaS offerings, which are now approaching 50% of total revenue. The revenue from these arrangements is referred to as subscription. Combining them in a single line item allows the investment community to have an enhanced understanding of our results. Our fiscal Q1 results were driven by 11% year-over-year growth from our subscription business, which increased to $97 million as a result of the accelerating contribution of SaaS revenue. Q1 perpetual license revenues were $13 million. Our go-to-market motion is led by subscription. Perpetual license sales are generally sold in certain verticals and geographies.

Q1 customer support revenue was $77 million, which includes support for both our term-based and perpetual software licenses. The year-over-year decline was in line with our expectations as a result of the cumulative impact of the strategic conversion of certain perpetual customers to our subscription offerings. Moving from revenue results to ARR now. Total ARR in Q1 was $686 million, an increase of 15% year-over-year, outpacing our annual growth expectations. In Q1, subscription ARR, which includes both term-based arrangements and SaaS contracts, grew 32% year-over-year to $500 million, crossing a major milestone and nearly doubling over the past eight quarters. As Sanjay noted earlier, SaaS ARR continued its strong growth, up 72% year-over-year to $113 million.

SaaS net dollar retention for Q1 was 118%, with our SaaS offerings being a primary driver of customer expansion. Now, I'll discuss expenses and profitability. Fiscal Q1 gross margins were 82.9% and reflect a 70 basis point year-over-year impact of our accelerating SaaS revenue, which carries a higher cost of sale than software. Fiscal Q1 operating expenses were $119 million, down 3% year-over-year. We ended the quarter with global headcount of approximately 2,800 employees, including additional inside sales reps we onboarded during the quarter to drive our velocity SaaS motion. We are managing our people, facilities, and third-party expenses by focusing investment on our most critical resources. We will continue to evaluate our resource base against the market demand environment. Non-GAAP EBIT for Q1 was $44 million, and non-GAAP EBIT margins were 22%.

The strong earnings result was driven by continued operating expense discipline relative to our top-line revenue. Moving to some key balance sheet and cash flow metrics. We ended the quarter with no debt and $275 million in cash, of which $81 million was in the United States. Our Q1 free cash flow was $38 million, up 76% year-over-year. Key drivers of free cash flow are deferred revenue from SaaS and the strength of our subscription software renewals, which typically include upfront payments on multiyear contracts. In Q1, we repurchased $51 million of stock under our repurchase program, representing 135% of Q1 free cash flow. Now, I'll discuss our outlook for fiscal Q2. We continue to believe that ARR and free cash flow should be viewed as primary KPIs of our underlying business momentum.

For fiscal Q2, we expect subscription revenue, which includes both the software portion of term-based licenses and SaaS, to be $95 million-$99 million, representing 24% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect total revenue to be $193 million-$197 million, with year-over-year growth of 4% at the midpoint. At these revenue levels, we expect consolidated gross margin to be approximately 82.5% and EBIT margins of approximately 20%. As I mentioned on our last earnings call, we are executing some foundational go-to-market changes, which include amplifying our discrete focus on our land and expand opportunities, while also scaling our motion to secure our growing subscription renewal base. We continue to hire additional inside sales reps focused solely on the SaaS velocity market as we refine our segmentation model.

Some of these investments will continue into fiscal Q2. We expect that these go-to-market refinements should drive enhanced field sales productivity as we exit the fiscal year. Our projected diluted share count for fiscal Q2 is 45 million shares. As of June 30th, we have $205 million remaining on our existing share repurchase authorization. We expect to continue with our existing practice of repurchasing at least 75% of our annual free cash flows. Finally, as noted on page two of this morning's earnings press release, we are also reconfirming our existing guidance for all provided metrics for the full year, fiscal 2024.

We remain confident in our full-year outlook, given the ongoing momentum in our SaaS business and the seasonally stronger trends we historically see in the second half of the fiscal year, including a larger term software renewal opportunity and potential for improved large deal traction. I will now turn the call back to Sanjay for his closing remarks. Sanjay?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Thank you, Gary. Our customers are facing hard problems as they modernize their data protection approach across a hybrid cloud environment. Our ability to offer them a streamlined, unified approach that is powered by AI will be a welcome change and a true differentiator in our industry. We're the only company with a trust tested track record, vision, and proven execution to deliver this value at scale. Now, we'll take your questions.

Mike Melnyk (Head of Investor Relations)

We're ready for the to begin Q&A. Can we take the first question, please?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our question comes from Aaron Rakers of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. A couple, if I can, real quickly. I'm, I'm just curious, guys, you know, congrats on the, on the execution in the quarter. Just, you know, given the current macro backdrop and the spending environment that, that some are concerned about with regard to enterprise, I'm just curious of how you, how you'd characterize the linearity through the quarter, you know, deal activity, any kind of deal, you know, deal shrinking in terms of size or any pushouts, you know, and, and just kind of overall kind of context of what you're seeing from enterprise customers, spend wise right now.

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Hey, Aaron, good morning. It's Gary. I can take this question. Our linearity from a, from a fiscal Q1 perspective is what we typically see in our fiscal Q1s. The some of the macro trends that other companies have mentioned were obviously also experienced, we have not seen from a linearity perspective, the impact on that. I think where we're consistent with some of the recent trends in the market is the deal size value, okay? We, we do see some, some pressure on the ASPs of our larger deals, most of that is driven really by term length, okay? The quantity of the deals and the volume of the enterprise deals is still strong. It's still actually consistent with even year-over-year levels.

What we do see, a little bit of a downtick in the ASPs, on compression of term. As customers are continuing their journey to the cloud, right, they continue to focus on optimization of the workloads that they have and being able to make sure that they're ready for their next turn. With some of that, they take a little bit of a step back, and some of the deal size lengths start to compress a little bit. Our average length of our term deals in fiscal Q1 was about two years.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Mm-hmm. Just to give some context, that was, you know, what, what was that last quarter? What was that, a year ago?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yeah. we're down... Our average term on our subscription deals is down about 10% year-over-year. It's mid-single digits declining sequentially.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Yes. Yes, that, that's, that's helpful. I appreciate all that color. As a quick follow-up, I'm just curious, one of the, one of the things that we've thought about, you know, on the, on the Commvault story as we moved into fiscal 2024, was just this, this base of renewal opportunity, you know, setting itself up and, you know, really comping relative to what, what the subscription revenue looked like three years ago or so. Can you help us appreciate the cadence of the renewal base of business, you know, through this year? It, it sounds like a potentially pretty material step up into, into the back half of the year when we, when we look at the metrics you're giving around renewals and, you know, net dollar retention, et cetera. Just, you know, help us frame that.

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Sure. Aaron, I, I can touch on that also as well. The renewals in our business typically follow the linearity that we typically see across the broad portfolio of our go-to-market motion, which means that we'll see a higher renewal value in the second half. That goes for both renewal opportunities and conversion opportunities. We'd expect probably about 60% in the second half versus relatively maybe 40%, roughly, in the first half. Some of, though, the term length discussion I had on your previous question applies to the renewals, as some of renewals also see some of that. They're seeing change in dynamics on term length as well.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Yes. Then the final quick question, and I'll cede the floor, is, you know, you, you beat operating margin this quarter, you know, 22%. I think you guided around 20%. I know you're guiding around 20% this next quarter. Appreciating that you gave the full year, you know, reiterated the full year guidance of up 50-100 basis points year-on-year, I'm just curious to how you're thinking about the flow-through of operating margin. Is there incremental investments you're making relative to what you thought of coming into this year? Why wouldn't we see some upside to that $50 million-$100 million continue to flow through as we think about the back half of the fiscal year as well?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

You know, Aaron, we're at this point, we're keeping our guidance for the full year for all the reported metrics consistent. There's obviously opportunity for operating margin leverage and expansion, especially as the top line accelerates, which we'd expect some of that to happen, as, as I mentioned, more, more in the back half. Where I'm sitting here today is that fundamentally, all the core tenants of our business are consistent, and we're confident in where we're at for the first half. I think maybe revisiting where we're at, exiting Q2 for the back half is, is what we'll, we'll look to do.

Aaron Rakers (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Yes, that's very helpful. Thank you, Gary.

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Sure. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Howard Ma at Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Howard Ma (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thank you. I have a question for, for Sanjay and also a question for Gary. I guess I'll start with Gary. It's actually, it's two questions. I mean, the first is, is a shorter one, but I guess I'll start with, can you, can you address the reason for the Metallic net retention rate dip? You know, it's down about 7 percentage points versus last quarter.

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Howard, good morning. Thanks, thanks, thanks for the question. We don't look into one quarter as a, as a, as a trend for the long term for, for Metallic. When you look at the, at the net dollar retention, at 118%, we still believe it is a, a strong result, and it's still driving a lot of expansion. Typically, in the net dollar retention calculation, right, the, the base gets bigger and bigger and bigger, which also contributes to it. That's good. We have a growing base. Therefore, you'll start to see the, the calculation, kind of moderate and kind of in that 118% or so. From a actual expansion opportunity, we're really pleased with where we're at to be able to grow off that.

We're now approaching 4,000 Metallic customers, the ability and the opportunity for us to drive that number through that 4,000 customer base is an amazing opportunity that we look forward to kind of driving in the second half.

Howard Ma (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, that, that's fair. My, my second question is, it's related to what, to what Aaron was asking is: Can you just talk about, Gary, the key underlying assumptions that give you confidence in achieving total and subscription ARR guidance this year? As, as we model out the balance of the year, can you just talk about any notable year-over-year comps? You know, you mentioned the back end weighted, or the second half weighted renewal cycle, in response to Aaron's question. Can you also talk about, is there anything else we should look out for? You know, for instance, I know fiscal 3Q is probably an easier year-over-year comp this year.

You know, just anything else in, with respect to subscription, or, or Metallic?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yeah, a couple of things, Howard, I can touch on. First, before I get to the second half, even if I look into the current quarter, we're in fiscal Q2, right? Typically, that's our seasonally softest quarter, especially, especially in, especially in Europe. As we start to look at the second half of the year, we're still confident in the opportunity and the guidance that we gave for the second half. If you look at that subscription revenue line, each quarter, we get a nice tailwind of recognized revenue from SaaS. The predictability of our subscription revenue starts to firm up every single quarter because a larger portion of that becomes SaaS revenue, which is the amortization of the ARR.

When I take that, Howard, and I tie it to the seasonally stronger, especially in the large deal expectations on the term license software that we typically see in the second half, all of that still contemplates all of the kind of macro trends we currently see today. We haven't seen anything substantially worse since I gave guidance roughly 90 days ago. We're still confident in kind of what we see. The only really, I'll say, notable, change that we're seeing some modest change in, is the term length, which I, which I already addressed. Despite that, we're still confident in those full year, in those full year numbers.

Howard Ma (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, Gary. That's helpful. For Sanjay, can you just talk about where Commvault is in with respect to the go-to-market evolution, and if investments such as, you know, you've built out a dedicated inside sales force for Metallic, you have expanded partnerships with Salesforce and AWS, and not to mention your exclusive relationship with OCI. Are these already starting to benefit Metallic, or are these additional legs of growth to come?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Little of both. You know, these are, these are investments. We're fueling up multiple engines of growth for, for Metallic. You know, traditionally, our sales force has carried, carried the bag for, for Metallic alongside our partners. We're, you know, we're seeing great progress with the big, the large hyperscalers on, on go-to-market, across, you know, across the world, actually. You know, we, we are also building out our own velocity inside sales engine as, as one of, as one of the, one of the other engines. They're all, they're all coming together nicely in different stages. We think, you know, over the course of the year, you'll see, you'll see us share more about how these are working and, and, and coming together.

You know, it's the strategy we set, I think, late last year, fiscal year, and we're rolling it all out as we speak. We're quite pleased with where we are.

Howard Ma (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jim Fish, from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Jim Fish (Managing Director)

Hey, guys, thanks for the questions. Gary, for you, with, with going through the transition, I know we've talked about this at great length, but where are you with perpetual maintenance contribution? Really, the crux of my question is, is when you expect perpetual maintenance to be the minority in the sense of ARR and revenue trends, start to converge as opposed to the, the large divergence we have this year. Is there any way to think about what you're seeing with perpetual maintenance renewal rates versus, you know, this point last year?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks, Jim. Good morning. I, I can, I can handle that. A couple of different pieces I'll talk to you first, and I'll get to your specific question on revenue. First, if you take a look at ARR, that, we're now up to well over 70%. We're approaching 75% of our ARR from non-perpetual, from the non-perpetual base, so from subscription and SaaS. You can see we're making excellent progress there. When I translate that to the P&L and specifically how that gets reflected into that sub- customer support revenue line, okay? A larger portion of that continues to be driven by subscription.

If, if I kind of take a step back and can maybe quantify that for you, about a year ago, I would say about 70% of our customer support revenue was driven from perpetual contracts. That's now down to about 60%, a year later. We're, we're driving, minimum about 10 points change in that balance. I think where you're going is as we kind of roll that forward a little bit, over the next one to two years, we'll start to see that subscription to be the, the primary driver and more than the majority of which driving, which driving that. Some of what you're seeing, Jim, if you look at kind of the, the year-over-year growth of that customer support line, you see it kind of start to moderate, right?

It's kind of in line with the expectations of that customer support line, but it's starting to moderate at with the, with the annual decreases that we're starting to see on a quarterly basis.

Jim Fish (Managing Director)

That's very helpful. And Sanjay, for you, how have the new marketing campaigns gone in terms of building net new pipeline? Is there any concern around, you know, the Office 365 competitive environment that, you know, you have some of your competitors out there being aggressive on price or, you know, even Microsoft coming in and, and just one day kind of bundling it into, say, like an E5 or E7 or whatever they wanna come up with at that point?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Well, we're... Jim, you know, hopefully, you've seen our new map marketing campaigns, and, and, we're a lot more bold, a lot more direct. It's been having some impact on, on the funnel and the pipeline. You know, and, and it's bringing a lot of hits to our freemium sort of SKUs on, on, on Metallic. It's, it's working the way we want it to, and there's a lot more visibility around what we do. Overall, in our, you know, in our new approach with marketing, we're very pleased, and the impact it's, it's starting to have, there's a lot of excitement there. On Microsoft 365 specifically, I think you're referring to, you know, Microsoft's recent announcement on some archival capabilities, of which we're, you know, we're part. It's more of a platform kind of announcement.

It legitimizes the need for Microsoft 365 backup, which for the longest time, you know, customers were made to believe they didn't need it. What they really need is a life cycle of data management, on one of the most used apps in most enterprises. We have, you know, we believe we have the best approach to that, the best solution there. Competitive pressure has always been there, you know, and it's not a price thing. It's also important for customers to understand where their Office data is written to. You could, you know, you could get a service that looks like ours, but the data is written to some cloud you don't know, or to some data center you don't know.

Ours is end-to-end, our, all, all the, the Microsoft 365 is end-to-end on Azure, and, and everything that comes with that. We, we, we... You know, it's a value proposition. We think we've got a great value proposition. It, it dovetails wonderfully with, with our, with our software capabilities, which is important for customers. It's not, it's not an island unto itself. You know, we have competitive SKUs. Helpful, guys. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, Sanjay, just curious on the outlook geographically. As we look at Q1, the Americas is roughly flat, international up about 1%. Are we looking for any change in that based on the full year guide? Is that, you know, would we still see for, you know, roughly similar growth rates for the two different geographic segments?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Eric, it's Gary. I can jump in and handle the question on geographic. Yeah. The performance overall for fiscal Q1 was roughly the same. The Americas, as you stated, was roughly flat year-over-year. International was up 1% year-over-year. Within international, relatively, though, we're seeing stronger results throughout Europe relative to Asia Pacific. As I think about trends geographically into the second half, I would expect a little more growth out of the Americas as a lot of the renewal opportunities we have, right? We have a much higher renewal opportunity in our subscription software business, which gives us some of that transparency into the opportunities in the second half, but much of that is concentrated in the Americas region.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Then you talked about continued investment in sales into Q2. Can you give us some specifics there as far as the, the number of, reps that we currently have and how many more we plan to add in Q2?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yeah. So, so Eric, if, if, if I think about some of the work that we're doing within go-to-market, it's really driven around that discrete focus that we're trying to provide in our business and trying to build and enhance new, new routes, new routes to markets. Much of, much of what we're doing is reallocation of, of resources through, through the business to provide that discrete focus tied to three key areas. One is driving net new land and expand business. The second is continuing to secure our renewal motion, and the third is building out that velocity motion solely dedicated on SaaS.

If we think about where any incremental, I'll say, net new investments are primarily coming from, it's primarily coming from the third, as we build out that inside sales motion to derive that, that velocity, piece of the market dedicated to SaaS. All of that is reflected within, within the guidance. Much of that happened during fiscal Q1, and there's just some, some final pieces that we'll, we'll, we'll move towards into fiscal Q2.

Eric Martinuzzi (Senior Research Analyst)

I understand. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jason Ader at WB. Please go ahead.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

Yeah, thank you. Hey, Sanjay, can you give us a, just a quick competitive landscape and market share update, both for the enterprise side of the data protection market and also the mid-market?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Yeah. It's from a competitive point of view, you know, I, I, I shared some of the direction that we were taking, where the forces we see in the market and how our portfolio lines up very uniquely for, for where customers are, are headed and the hard problems they have. You know, over the course of, over the course of the, you know, past couple of quarters, we've done a few things that are, that are separating us in the, in the short term very well. You know, one... I'll give you an example.

We, we launched a support for boost on Data Domain, which is, which gives us incredible performance in that install base. That's a large install base. We're seeing a lot of good traction, for example, in that, okay? That, that's just one example. We're also seeing some of our competitors struggle in a tough macro environment, okay? We've always been focused on, on responsible growth, and we'll continue to. We continue to innovate, we continue to streamline our go-to-market. We've amped up our, our, our marketing, and, you know, we're definitely, we're definitely taking share in SaaS. It's, it's, it's, it's white space. We're growing there.

You know, and, and I think as a platform goes, with the new security enhancements that we've put out, nobody does what we do, okay. Now coming in the fall, we've got a whole, whole bunch of new capabilities that we're bringing to market, based on customer input. We, we, we feel very well positioned technically. I'd say over the last couple of quarters, we're definitely, you know, we're definitely taking share from some of the more legacy players.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

Who do you run into the most in the enterprise, and then who do you run into most in the mid-market today?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

I mean, it's never clear. It's never just nobody else there. It, it's always competitive. You see the usual suspects. As, you know, and, and in the, in the mid-market, we're also starting to get, get some good penetration with, with Metallic. We're seeing some of the smaller players, niche players there. It's, it's the usual suspects.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

Okay. Then, Gary, for you just, did you provide any guidance on customer support, the customer support line for FY 2024?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yes. Absolutely. The trends that you see from a customer support line will continue into Q2 and into the back half of the year. I would expect that the customer support line will be down on a year-over-year basis for full year FY 2024, somewhere in that mid- to high single-digit range from a year-over-year, which is kind of where we're currently trending now. I think one of the things that's important, and it follows up, I think, one of the questions that Jim had asked about that customer support line is that, as we're quickly approaching where the majority of that line will become subscription revenue related from a customer support and not perpetual, and currently we're about 60% is perpetual.

I think we'll get to close to 50/50 by the end of the year or early next fiscal year, which then helps over the longer term, actually, to moderate that line, and some of those declines will start to fade away.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

Okay, just to be clear, when you do a term license, that's a subscription, you separate out the support part from the software and that goes in the customer support. Is that the right way to think about it?

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Confirmed. Yes.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

Okay.

Gary Merrill (CFO)

Yes.

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Hey, Jason, Sanjay again. I just wanted to add one more thing. One of the, you know, one of the things we're getting some lift from is vendor consolidation. You know, as customers sort of look at spend and commitments and what they've got in the install base, they're looking to consolidate, and we're a great consolidator in that space. Also, as data security spend and data protection spend come together with in this environment, the TCO equation, we win. So those are some of the trends we're seeing that are assisting, giving us lift as we take share. I mean, just one data point. With Metallic, we've exceeded of, you know, 4,000 customers. That's a customer acquisition machine. So we are taking share.

You know, if, if, if you think that 60% of those customers are new to Commvault, and 40% of those customers very quickly have another Commvault product that is not SaaS, you see the, you see the, you know, the, the stickiness of what we've got there.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

Got you. 60% of the 4,000 are net new Commvault?

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

Roughly net new to... Yeah.

Jason Ader (Partner and Co-Group Head–Technology, Media, and Communications)

All right. Thank you, guys. Good luck.

Sanjay Mirchandani (CEO)

And thank you. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Sanjay Mirchandani, President and CEO, for closing remarks.

Mike Melnyk (Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Amber. This is, this is Mike Melnyk, Investor Relations. Thanks for joining today. As a reminder, all our earnings materials are available on the investor relations website. Feel free to reach out to us for any follow-up. Thanks for joining. We'll speak to you again in the fall.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.