eGain - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and welcome to the eGain Fiscal 2024 First Quarter Financial Results Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star, then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Byers of MKR Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jim Byers (SVP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to eGain's Fiscal 2024 First Quarter Financial Results conference call. On the call today are eGain's Chief Executive Officer, Ashu Roy, and Chief Financial Officer, Eric Smit. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during this conference call, management will make certain forward-looking statements which convey management's expectations, beliefs, plans, and objectives regarding future financial and operational performance. Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words such as believe, plan, intend, expect, anticipate, or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are protected by Safe Harbor provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ in material respects.

Information on various factors that could affect eGain's results are detailed on the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. eGain is making these statements as of today, November 2nd, 2023, and assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of the forward-looking information in this conference call. In addition to GAAP results, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as non-GAAP operating income. The tables included with the earnings press release issued today include reconciliation of the historical non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. And, our earnings press release can be found by clicking the Press Releases link on the Investor Relations page of eGain's website at egain.com. Along with the earnings release, we will post an updated investor presentation to the Investor Relations page of eGain's website.

Lastly, a phone replay of this conference call will be available for one week. Now I'd like to turn the call over to eGain's CEO, Ashu Roy.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. We are off to a good start to our fiscal year. Both our top and bottom line results exceeded our guidance and Street consensus for the quarter. Our Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, at 12%, was 600 basis points better than the year-over-quarter. Turning to business highlights, we closed some nice new logos in the first quarter, including a large North American industrial distributor and a top 10 Canadian bank. We also saw continued expansion across our client base during the quarter. Some expansion clients included a large California state agency, one of the largest U.S. utilities, a U.K. financial services company, a global insurance provider, and a U.S. health plan management provider. Looking at the market, the macro environment remains challenging. At the same time, we see continued pickup in evaluations and decision-making in our pipeline.

These include new opportunities as well as re-engagement from opportunities that were on hold. But what we are really excited about is the launch of AssistGPT, our newest product that we announced at the customer event in London in September. It's a first-of-its-kind solution that leverages generative AI to automate knowledge management, reducing human effort by up to 80%. The result is direct, consumable answers served to contact center agents, reducing the cost of service. AssistGPT allows businesses to confidently use AI in the context of reliable knowledge content, effective controls, and rich analytics within eGain's compliance, composable, and scalable knowledge platform. Given the continued focus in the market on reducing business cost and improving agent experience, we believe that AssistGPT presents the biggest bang for the buck for businesses looking to invest in projects that improve business cost and improve agent experience.

In fact, Gartner in 2022 recommended knowledge management as the number one technology investment for customer service. Now, with an offering like eGain AssistGPT, this recommendation can become a reality. Speaking of Gartner, we are excited to note that Gartner recently published its 2023 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement, and we were named a visionary this time. Last time around, we were in the niche category. The report from Gartner highlights our operationalized AI capabilities, our composable architecture, and our rich product functionality. We, as a team, could not be prouder. Turning to market awareness, our customer event in London in September was a resounding success. We had a record number of attendees, and we had exciting customer success stories shared on stage, including presentations from RSA, a global insurance company, Tryg, a Nordic insurance giant, and ALD Automotive, the largest vehicle leasing company in Europe.

In addition, Cathay Pacific, one of our recent clients, presented their knowledge journey with eGain, along with Deloitte, our SI partner on this project. Finally, our AssistGPT announcement and deep dive demos generated a lot of buzz among customers and prospects. With our focus on knowledge management, and particularly for customer service, our product innovation and improved analytics recognition positions us well as macro conditions improve. To conclude, three points I want to make. The first, cost adjustments in our business over the last couple of quarters has helped improve our profitability, even as we continue to invest in product innovation and customer success. While new logo acquisition is still relatively slow in this market, we are seeing increased pipeline activity from both new RFPs and re-engagement from deals previously on hold.

Finally, the market opportunity to help automate knowledge management for customer service is global, it's exciting, and it's large, and we are well positioned to capitalize on it as conditions improve. With that, I'll ask Eric Smit, our Chief Financial Officer, to add more color around our financial operations. Eric?

Eric Smit (CFO)

Thanks, Ashu, and thanks everyone for joining us today. As Ashu noted, we delivered a significantly improved bottom line performance in the first quarter, reflecting the adjustments we made to operate more profitably in the current environment, while continuing to invest in product innovation and customer success. Let me share more detail about our financial results for Q1 before getting into our outlook and guidance for Q2 and fiscal 2024. Starting with revenue, total revenue for Q1 was $24.2 million, above our expectations, but down 2% year-over-year. When looking at revenue by region, North America accounted for 79% of total revenue this quarter, up from 77% in the year ago quarter. North America continues to be our primary focus and market where we see the greatest opportunity.

Total revenue for North America was 19 million, essentially unchanged year-over-year, where in contrast, total revenue from Europe was $5.2 million, down 8% year-over-year. Looking at non-GAAP gross profits and gross margins, gross profit for the quarter was $17.6 million, for a gross margin of 73%, compared to 76% for the prior year quarter, and 74% last quarter. Now, turning to operations. Non-GAAP operating costs for the quarter came in at $15 million, a 14% improvement from $17.5 million in the year ago quarter, reflecting the expense controls we have implemented. Looking at our bottom line, non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $3.8 million, or $0.12 per share.

This is up approximately 90% on a dollar basis from non-GAAP net income of $2 million, or $0.06 per share in the year ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 12%, up 600 basis points from 6% in the year ago quarter. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flows, we generated very strong cash flow from operations for the quarter of $8.1 million, or a 34% operating cash flow margin. During the quarter, under our share repurchase program, we purchased approximately 83,000 shares for $517,000, at an average price of $6.23 per share. Of the $20 million authorized, $13.7 million remained available under the program at the end of the quarter. Our balance sheet remains very strong.

Total cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter was $79.8 million, up from $71.5 million a year ago. Now, turning to our customer metrics. As I've mentioned on previous calls, given our increased focus on North American markets, I'll share some additional customer metrics on a regional basis. LTM dollar-based SaaS net retention for North America customers was 103%, while the EMEA customer retention was 84%, due to the churn we've discussed on previous calls, resulting in our overall NRR dropping to 97%, compared to 103% a year ago. SaaS ARR for North America customers increased 4% year-over-year, while total SaaS ARR decreased 1%.

Looking at ARR by product hub, knowledge now makes up 45% of our total SaaS ARR. The number of $1 million ARR customers remained relatively constant year-over-year. Looking at our remaining performance obligation or RPO, total RPO decreased 13% year-over-year to $82.4 million, while our short-term RPO was $59.7 million, up 3% year-over-year. Now, turning to our guidance. For the second quarter of fiscal 2024, we expect total revenue of between $23 million-$23.6 million. Turning to the bottom line, for Q2, we expect GAAP net income of $800,000-$1.4 million, or $0.03-$0.04 per share, which includes stock-based compensation expense of approximately $1.5 million and depreciation and amortization of approximately $125,000.

We expect non-GAAP net income of $2.3 million-$2.9 million, or $0.07-$0.09 per share. Looking at the fiscal 2024 full year, ending June 30, 2024, we are reiterating our previously provided total revenue guidance of between $96 million-$98 million. With our increased profitability, we are increasing our non-GAAP net income guidance to $12.1 million-$12.6 million, or $0.37-$0.39 per share, up from $0.33-$0.35 per share. We are reiterating our GAAP net income guidance of $6.6 million-$7.1 million, or $0.20-$0.22 per share, where we estimate share-based compensation expense of approximately $5.5 million and depreciation and amortization expense of approximately $500,000.

Looking at weighted average shares outstanding, we expect approximately 31.6 million for the second quarter and 32.3 million for the full year. So in summary, we delivered top and bottom line results ahead of both our projections and Street expectations. We are seeing positive results from the adjustments we made to our business operations to operate more profitably and generate increased cash flow in the current environment, while we continue to invest in product innovation and customer success. While the macro environment remains challenging, we are seeing increased RFP activity and re-engagement from deals previously put on hold, and our new business sales team is working hard to close these deals. We also see significant growth opportunity ahead of us with our new AssistGPT offering, which is a first of its kind solution to automate knowledge for customer engagement.

The opportunity for eGain is significant, and we remain well positioned to capitalize on our expanding market opportunity with our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation. Lastly, before I close, on the investor relations calendar, eGain will be in New York later this month, meeting with investors at two investor conferences. We will be at the 12th Annual Roth New York Conference on Wednesday, November 15th, and at the annual Craig-Hallum Alpha Select Conference the following day on Thursday, November 16th. We hope to see you at these conferences. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we will now open the call for questions.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Richard Baldry with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Richard Baldry (Senior Analyst)

Thanks. Can you talk about sort of the early indications you're getting on where the greatest interest is in the AssistGPT? I'm sort of curious if there's, you know, certain verticals that seem to be looking at things faster. Is it, you know, to replace, you know, human interactions or, you know, for an ROI-based sale, or maybe to automate things they previously didn't want to address because they thought the human side was maybe too expensive? Just a little more color around, you know, where you're seeing sort of the first opportunities.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

Sure. So Rich, this is Ashu here. So, with AssistGPT, we have applied generative capability across the whole platform. But where there is real interest in the market is around helping improve productivity in the knowledge creation, curation, and improvement, optimization kind of cycles, right? That part of the assistance that we are automating with GPT is what seems to be most exciting to people, because with knowledge management, that has always been one of the challenges. So, for example, you know, with the new solution we have, we are seeing improvement in productivity of that knowledge management team going up by, you know, 3-4x, right? Up to 80% improvement in sort of automation. So that's what we are seeing as the biggest pull.

We are also seeing interest in agent assist, but that area is kind of... There are many providers who have that. We have it too, but the knowledge management part is where the real excitement seems to be driven at this point.

Richard Baldry (Senior Analyst)

And you talk a little about what maybe your early thoughts are around pricing mechanisms, you know, how much of a premium offering this would be, or sort of an extension to existing things, just to kind of give us an idea of, you know, how much this might expand your addressable market.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

That's a great question. Right now, we are making it super easy for people to try it and not create a barrier in terms of pricing up front, but it's based on actual usage of the generative capability on the platform. That's the incremental fee. It's a little bit like, how many sessions, so how many GPT requests you make in our platform, we are pricing that, and that's kind of the incremental, revenue generation for us. But the part we are focusing on today is, and the initial market launch is driving more adoption, and that's the approach we are taking.

Richard Baldry (Senior Analyst)

You know, and there's obviously a lot of hype around the generative side of the world. So do you feel like the low-hanging fruit is obviously going after existing customers who know you, have a track record with you, would feel comfortable sort of quickly evaluating, adopting, or, you know, is this really kind of opening new opportunities where people are seeking out vendors capable of offering solutions in the space rapidly with sort of some credibility? You know, so we get an idea for, you know, how you're gonna be attacking the market from that direction. Thanks.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

Yeah. At this point, I think what we see with market interest is people, even in the new logo, conversations, people want a, a platform for knowledge that includes generative capability, but not just generative capability, right? So in the enterprise where we are selling, generative is a great addition and differentiation and excitement, but there's still a core need for a knowledge hub, for all the core need of correct content, controls, analytics, all of the rest of it. So that's, that's the place where we are focusing now.

Richard Baldry (Senior Analyst)

Great. Thanks for your help.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

Welcome.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Daniel Hibshman, with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Daniel Hibshman (Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. This is Daniel on for Jeff Van Rhee. Just on the improvement in pipeline activity, some of that reengagement you're seeing of clients that were in a sales cycle and previously were on hold. Just maybe if you could give us any additional color on those conversations, what those conversations are like, what's driving, you know, those customers to reengage, if there's any common themes, either in terms of the conversations or the verticals that are coming back, just any additional thoughts there.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

So one dimension we see is businesses seem to have gotten back into evaluating and running RFPs and structured sort of buying process. We're seeing that happening much more often now. So tire kicking is much less than, say, six months ago. So that's a big change we are seeing across the board. So many, many more of the early stage conversations are resulting in time-bound RFPs. So that's one change. We are seeing that across the board. In terms of verticals, I would say, financials and insurance seem to be fronting that. There's more excitement in that space, on a vertical basis, but others are also getting in, so it's not that it's only in financial services and insurance, but yeah, that sector seems to be leading the others.

Daniel Hibshman (Research Analyst)

And then maybe just one follow-up for me. In terms of the macro headwinds, just if we can dial that in a little bit in terms of, do you see this mostly as general tech budget pressure? Is it, you know, particular to the contact center? Is this particular to knowledge management? Is it uniquely the combination of general macro pressure, as well as people taking a step back to assess AI and their roadmap? Maybe just give us some additional thoughts on the nature of the headwind.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

Yeah, I would say the AI assessment seems to have run its course a little bit, not entirely. I'm sure there are quite a few companies that are still doing that, but we see people who are coming back from their assessments and saying, "All right, we need AI. We also need AI in the context of a knowledge platform, so that we can actually use it and rely on it." Right? So that's one, one thing I'll comment in the macro sense. I would say the other big comment would be just the overall geopolitical uncertainty and the economic environment. I think that budgets are still fairly cautious. That's the sense we get, but we do see items being budgeted for calendar 2024.

So, so there is a little bit of loosening of the purse strings, but not as much as one would expect in a, in a sort of more stable economic environment.

Daniel Hibshman (Research Analyst)

Thanks so much for the answers.

Ashu Roy (CEO)

Welcome.

Operator (participant)

As there are no further questions, I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Eric Smit (CFO)

Thanks, operator, and thanks everybody for listening to the call. We look forward to hopefully seeing some of you at the investor conferences later this month and providing the updates at the end of our next quarter. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.