GoDaddy - Q2 2024
August 1, 2024
Transcript
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. At GoDaddy, our mission is to empower everyday entrepreneurs and make opportunity more inclusive for all. Our customers are a constant source of inspiration. One customer, who has been with us for over 10 years, runs a recruiting services company, wrote to us recently and said, "In today's business environment, having partners that add real value is easier said than done. I'm happy to have GoDaddy on my extended business team." That is our goal, to be the extended business team for millions of micro businesses. Our strategy is relentlessly focused on creating customer value and transforming it to shareholder value through better conversion, attach, and retention. Our profitable growth model drives our North Star to maximize free cash flow over the long term.
The GoDaddy team is executing against this plan to drive innovation and operational efficiency, leading to our strong Q2 results. This includes meaningful expansion of free cash flow, delivering 35% growth. Additionally, applications and commerce bookings grew 24%, and normalized EBITDA margin expanded more than 400 basis points. Our key growth and margin initiatives are driven by the innovation powered by the GoDaddy software platform. Our aspiration is to deliver seamlessly intuitive experiences that start to be magical, and this is fueled by GoDaddy's unique scale and data. GoDaddy Airo, our AI-powered experience, is one of the results of this aspiration. I am excited about Airo's ability to reinvent multiple interactions with our customers, from domain search, to insights on how they can improve their websites, to growing their businesses.
Airo is now rolled out to all new and existing customers across our English-speaking markets, and it is poised for further expansion into over 90 countries in the coming months. Airo has already transformed the experience for our new customers. In Q2, we passed an exciting milestone. Over 1 million new customers have discovered Airo, and over a half a million of them actively engaged with the experience. With strong traction on discovery and engagement with new customers, the focus has moved to monetization with them. One example is the rollout of a paywall for a full website immediately after Airo has built a Coming Soon page. This rollout followed a limited controlled experiment in which websites plus marketing conversions improved 12%.
Early data also shows that Airo leads to better product retention, which we will begin to understand more fully as these cohorts enter their renewal periods in the coming quarters. In parallel, we are building the engine to connect Airo with our existing base of 21 million customers. Our approach here is a different go-to-market motion, but the goal is the same: discovery, then engagement, and then monetization. As we shared at our Investor Day, monetization of our base with Airo represents one of the larger future opportunities for GoDaddy. We are also investing more in Gabby, our internal AI-powered guide assist bot, which can now communicate in over 60 languages. Now rolled out globally, Gabby is helping our guides work and serve customers more efficiently.
While our investments in Airo and Gabby are about the future, 2024 growth continues to be driven by our key initiatives: pricing and bundling, seamless experience, and commerce. Pricing and bundling continued to drive growth, led by productivity, and was a significant contributor to the growth in applications and commerce bookings. We have started to apply our platform data, machine learning, and experimentation capabilities to the next set of product bundles as we look at opportunities for next year and beyond. Our seamless experience initiative overperformed versus our expectations as we removed friction in both purchase and renewal paths across multiple products. At our scale, small improvements in conversion and renewal rates through better user experience and robust technology provide measurable financial results. In our continued effort to take weight away from our customers, we expanded the use of AI-generated content.
For example, in Managed WordPress, we have optimized templates and enhanced models to generate content for multiple pages, making it easier for our customers to build and publish websites. On commerce, we are delivering on our 2024 target of driving higher-margin subscription revenue with the recent launch of two new SaaS plans: Point of Sale Plus and Invoicing Plus. These plans offer premium features and discounted transaction fees to merchants. They drive value for our customers by offering tools that simplify their operations, including real-time inventory management, online ordering, and customizable branded templates for invoices and emails. Annualized GPV also continued to grow at a fast pace, with the primary driver again being conversion within our existing base of customers. In closing, we continue to deliver on our key initiatives, unlocking new avenues of growth and value creation for the long term.
The GoDaddy team shares an unwavering determination to fearlessly push boundaries and prioritize, continuously experiment, meticulously track results, and aim for improvement each day. I am thrilled with the speed of execution as we continue striving to exceed customer expectations, propel profitable growth, and create enduring shareholder value. With that, here's Mark.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Thanks, Aman. We are pleased to announce our strong Q2 results, which demonstrate our commitment to execution and continued progress towards our North Star of maximizing free cash flow over the long term. Our North Star continues to be bolstered by two key pillars: sustained double-digit revenue growth in our applications and commerce segment, increasing 15% in the Q2, and further expansion of our normalized EBITDA margin to 29%. We continued to build on our strong track record here, delivering free cash flow of $323 million in the quarter. We also continued to implement our disciplined capital allocation strategy, focusing on share buybacks and reducing our fully diluted shares outstanding at the end of the quarter to 145 million.
We remain laser-focused on providing value for our customers by delivering seamless experiences that are easy to use, driving better attach, conversion and retention. At the same time, we continue to refine our operations to deliver profitable growth while investing in exciting initiatives such as Airo, which will provide benefits for years to come. Moving to our financial results for the quarter. Total revenue grew to $1.1 billion, up 7% on a reported and constant currency basis, exceeding the high end of our guided range for the quarter. ARPU grew 6% to $210 on a trailing 12-month basis. Our customer count declined slightly to 20.9 million, reflecting the expected headwinds from our proactive divestiture and migration efforts that also impacted revenue by approximately 100 basis points.
Meanwhile, our customer retention rate is an impressive 85%, and over 50% of GoDaddy's customers have two or more products with us. For our high-margin applications and commerce segment, we drove 24% growth in bookings and 15% growth in revenue to $406 million, delivering at the high end of our guided range. Growth in revenue and bookings was largely due to the continued strong performance of our growth initiatives across all major applications and commerce product offerings, particularly our productivity solutions. The segment EBITDA margin improved to 44%. In addition, ARR for applications and commerce grew 14% to $1.5 billion. Our core platform segment delivered bookings growth of 4% and revenue growth of 3% to $719 million, in line with our guided range.
Core platform's performance this quarter reflected continued strength in both primary domains, up 7%, and aftermarket, up 10%, partially offset by hosting divestitures. Segment EBITDA margin for core platform grew to 31%. Lastly, ARR for our core platform segment was $2.3 billion, up 2%. One quick update on domains under management. This quarter, in connection with the work related to our brand migration efforts, we determined that domains under management were overstated at the end of Q4 2023 by approximately 1.4 million domains, primarily related to European TLDs. Following correction of this disclosure, coupled with the impact from the divestiture completed at the end of Q1, domains under management as of June 30 were approximately 82.1 million domains.
While we understand this metric may be closely followed, this is not a key operating or financial metric, and it does not impact our forecast or progress towards our North Star. Moving to profitability, normalized EBITDA grew 25% to $332 million and delivered an expanded margin of 29%, up over 400 basis points and exceeding our guide. On bookings, we delivered 11% growth in the Q2 on a reported and constant currency basis, achieving $1.3 billion. As a reminder, bookings primarily represent the cash collected during the period. Subscription bookings grew over three points ahead of subscription revenue. Unlevered free cash flow for the quarter grew 30% to $369 million, and free cash flow grew 35% to $323 million.
Capital expenditures were down 52% from data center divestitures. Through July 30, we repurchased 4.1 million shares year to date, totaling $521 million. Cumulative shares repurchased under our current authorizations totaled $3.1 billion and 38.3 million shares. We have $915 million remaining under our current authorization. We have reduced gross shares outstanding since January 2022 by 23%, ahead of our three-year targeted reduction of 20%. We had 145 million fully diluted shares outstanding at the end of the quarter. As we have shared previously, we plan to be in the market every quarter, subject to market conditions and other factors, with a minimum offset to share-based compensation dilution.
On our balance sheet, we finished Q2 with $445 million in cash and total liquidity of $1.4 billion. Net debt was $3.4 billion, representing net leverage of 2.4x on a trailing twelve-month basis. Shifting to our outlook, given our strong performance in the H1 of the year, we are raising our full-year revenue guidance. We now expect the full year's revenue to be between $4.525 billion and $4.565 billion, representing growth of approximately 7% at the midpoint. We are targeting Q3 total revenue in the range of $1.13 billion-$1.15 billion, also representing growth of approximately 7% at the midpoint of our range.
We are also raising our expectations for application and commerce to deliver mid-teens growth for Q3 and the full year. In our core platform segment, we expect revenue to deliver low single-digit growth in the Q3 and full year. With our proven track record of margin expansion, we are committed to maintaining our operational discipline to drive further leverage in our model. We expect normalized EBITDA margin for Q3 to be approximately 29%. Additionally, we remain on track to deliver a 31% normalized EBITDA margin in Q4 and approximately 29% for the full year. Given our nearly one to one normalized EBITDA to free cash flow conversion ratio, we are also raising our unlevered free cash flow target to $1.45+ billion , and free cash flow target to $1.3+ billion.
We remain committed to our disciplined capital allocation approach, and we will continue to evaluate all opportunities for shareholder return according to our rigorous returns-based framework. We have made impressive progress driving profitable growth in line with our North Star in the H1 of 2024, and we remain dedicated to the path we laid out at our Investor Day, executing on our strategy with a combination of durable top-line growth and expanded profitability. Our substantial cash generation, strong balance sheet, and disciplined capital allocation framework are important pillars of our investment thesis that create enduring value for our shareholders. With that, we will have Christie Masoner from our Investor Relations team open up the call for questions.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Mark. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand feature at the bottom of the webinar screen to be added to the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Josh Beck from Raymond James. Josh, please go ahead.
Trevor Young (Director and Senior Internet Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you so much for taking the question. I wanted to start with ANC bookings rising from the low to mid-20s this quarter. Maybe help us think through and unpack the major drivers. You obviously cited bundling and productivity, and how those could maybe change as we look ahead. And then related, anything that we need to be cognizant of when we think about comps for ANC bookings, you know, in the H2 and into 2025 as well?
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Hey. Oh, go ahead, Aman.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
I guess both of us want to take it. Hey, Josh, thanks for the question. Super excited about the momentum in ANC bookings, 24% growth. And, you know, we're bringing to the table the full power of the GoDaddy scale and data as part of a GoDaddy software platform. So whether it's pricing and bundling or our seamless experience improvements or commerce, you know, obviously, they're all helping ANC growth, and we're bringing these capabilities to a broader set of our product suite. So, you know, as we look into the future, you know, we continue to be very excited about being able to implement these capabilities across our entire product suite in both sort of scenarios with new customers and with existing customers as well. And I'll let Mark take some of the financial pieces.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Hi, Josh. You know, we continue to see momentum across all the product groups within ANC, and for the H1 of the year, Q2 followed Q1 with, you know, double-digit growth in every area for bookings. You know, when you asked about comps, keep in mind, Q2 compared to last year was a you know, easier comp for us, so it did give us some benefit going forward as reported this quarter. But it doesn't change the overall momentum of the bundling that's going on.
Trevor Young (Director and Senior Internet Equity Research Analyst)
Super helpful. And maybe just, just a quick follow-up on, Airo. Really helpful metrics. I think you mentioned a million discovered, half a million engaged. You know, if we maybe double-click on that engaged group, maybe, you know, what are some of the, the early standouts from, you know, adoption point of view? And when you think about the curve and, and, and the quarters ahead, obviously, it hasn't been out that long, you know, is this the right cadence, to think about, in, in terms of number of customers, ramping with, with that suite?
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, you know, the new customers engaging with Airo is happening at a tremendously fast pace. I couldn't be more excited about it. I think, you know, crossing the million milestone, but more importantly, the engagement with the product, right? We've talked about the three-step process of discovery, engagement, then monetization, and for new customers, we're really seeing, seeing goodness there. As I talked about in the prepared remarks, you know, we're starting to add paywalls and monetizing a little bit on, on the new customers, but we're gonna learn a lot more about that when those customers come up for renewal, right? And you asked about the areas where we see the most engagement, but, you know, one, one of the areas where we're seeing the most engagement is actually with website.
You know, a lot more domain customers sort of discovering the fact that GoDaddy has not just website capability, but automated AI capabilities to just build a one-page website for them, which now they can actually customize a little bit, too. So, you know, customers are really, I think, enjoying this, and, and our view is that that engagement is going to sort of lead to more monetization options in the future. And then, you know, of course, we have the very large base of existing customers to bring Airo to, and that's a slightly different go-to-market motion, but ultimately it's the same discovery, engagement, and then monetization. And, and sort of our energy's going to be more and more focused on the existing as the new does better and better.
In terms of overall timeline, it actually mirrors very well, you know, if you go back and look at our commerce rollout first with new and then with existing. So, so we feel pretty good about it.
Trevor Young (Director and Senior Internet Equity Research Analyst)
Great to hear. Thanks, Aman and Mark.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Thank you.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thanks, Josh.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from the line of Trevor Young from Barclays. Trevor, please go ahead.
Trevor Young (Director and Senior Internet Equity Research Analyst)
Great, thanks. First one, just on aftermarket solid, double-digit growth there, with it looks like about 20 points coming from ATV. Is the strength there becoming a bit more durable or broad-based in your view, maybe extending to the larger piece of that business where it's like sub $10,000 domains? Or is it more about just a narrow few, you know, high-priced transactions skewing the trends upwards? And then what's baked into guidance for the back half of the year for aftermarket?
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah. Thanks, Trevor. You know, we're seeing strength, I would say, overall in the volume related to aftermarket, and we've talked about that coming into the year, and obviously it's continued through Q2. We are seeing the return of larger transactions in the H1 of the year. Hard to predict. You know, we do believe that macro, you know, impacted related to those larger transactions, but they, they were definitely stronger in the H1 of this year versus what we saw last year. As far as the guide going forward, you know, we, we continue to call what we can see in front of us. You know, it's hard to predict those large transactions, so we don't plan on them being there in any way, shape, or form.
You know, they come in kind of hard and fast, and close pretty quickly when they do come in. So again, we try to be prudent and just call based on the volume we're seeing at the lower end, and we continue to think that overall this platform will be a lower single-digit grow over time, although we may see volatility from quarter to quarter based on some of these larger transactions.
Trevor Young (Director and Senior Internet Equity Research Analyst)
That's helpful, and just as a follow-up, on the free cash flow guide, it looks like raising the unlevered free cash flow for the full year $150 million, and regular free cash flow about $200 million. Can you distill the drivers of that change or rank order them? Is it, you know, the stronger flow through of top line, or maybe stronger bookings, or any, you know, one-time items to be mindful of?
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah. I wouldn't say there's any one thing to call out. It is continued strong bookings, continued normalized EBITDA and interest as well, you know, 'cause we repriced some of our debt, so that's on the free cash flow part of it. But it's a combination of just, you know, better momentum across the board and translating into our free cash flow and unlevered free cash flow.
Trevor Young (Director and Senior Internet Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you, Mark.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from the line of Jain Li from Evercore. Jan, please go ahead.
Jain Li (Internet Equity Analyst)
Great. Thanks a ton for taking the question, and congrats on a really nice quarter here. I want to circle back on the AMC bookings. Can you kind of is that booking strengths primarily coming from the productivity pricing, or is Airo conversion or Airo-driven conversion improvement a big part of that acceleration as well? And if you can talk a little bit about just the top of funnel that you're seeing going into AMC, just given the current macro macro backdrop.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, maybe we'll take a bit of that, Jain. Thanks for the question. On AMC, you know, all the components of AMC, as Mark said, contributing to the growth. Of course, it's being led by productivity, as we stated in our remarks, but GPV continues to grow very well. Our website business continuing to grow very well as well. With respect to Airo, even though we love the engagement and, you know, and the discovery for new customers, it's still very small in terms of a contributor on the monetization side. So you're not really seeing much of Airo, and maybe I'll ask Mark to touch on that a bit more and come back to the last part of your question.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah, and I think that's right. You know, we are entering the monetization, but it's really early stage. Didn't have a meaningful impact on Q2. Don't have enough data points to really build in anything related to our guide or our forecast related to it, but you know, the early signs are very positive, and we are starting to cross into seeing data around monetization today.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
And then just on the macro, you know, Q2 continued to be pretty steady in terms of demand coming in the door, and obviously, you know, we have the global footprint, so it's a little bit different by region. But broadly, you know, we would say it was a steady quarter in terms of macro.
Jain Li (Internet Equity Analyst)
Got it, and if I may, ask a follow-up on the margins. So net EBITDA margin beat this quarter, but you're maintaining the full-year guide. Is there some sort of timing in terms of expenses, like shifting to the back half? Or, you know, if you continue to see upside in margins, would you expect to kind of flow that through to the bottom line or any sort of reinvestment that's that you're thinking as well?
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Nothing to call out at this, at this point. We're on a good pace. We're continuing to expand our margins, as we said we would. There's nothing in particular we have to call out right now. Everything's on track, and, and, you know, you know, we are on track for the 31% exit rate that we talked about at the beginning of the year.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thanks.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Porter from Morgan Stanley. Elizabeth, please go ahead.
Elizabeth Porter (SVP of Wealth Management and Financial Advisor)
Hi, thank you so much. I had a quick follow-up on, on Gabby. Aman, I noticed that you talked about Gabby as highlighting that it can serve customers more efficiently. You know, how should we think about Gabby? Is it more of a cost opportunity, or is there a chance to turn customer service, you know, actually more into a revenue center, as guides can drive, you know, better upsell and cross-sell?
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, thanks, Elizabeth. Our core ethos around, whether it's Gabby or all of our capabilities in care, is that we always want to provide a superior experience at the same or lower cost, right? And in Gabby, we're super focused on making the guide slowly into a super guide. And whether it's the service side or support side or the sales side, Gabby is able to partner with the guide and allow them to sort of explore things with the customer that otherwise it may be difficult because Gabby has access to a lot more data, you know, given our scale. Of course, on the sales side, you know, care continues to drive 9% of our bookings. You know, we get a lot of calls in.
We've got 14 million contacts, 6,200 guides, and Gabby has access to all that information to just make the guide better and better. So you'll, you'll see both, you know, you'll see improved customer experience, and you'll see, you know, more leverage on the cost.
Elizabeth Porter (SVP of Wealth Management and Financial Advisor)
Great. And then follow up on the ANC bookings. You know, it sounds like momentum there can be pretty durable with, you know, multiple factors driving the growth. You know, I'm hoping that you could share any finer points on, more specifically, the pricing and bundling strategy, about, you know, how broadly it's been rolled out, whether from the product portfolio side or the customer base side, just to understand the durability of this growth driver. Is this something that you should roll out, you know, over the course of the year, or it could actually be a multi-year tailwind?
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, as we talked a little bit about in the Investor Day, Elizabeth, we see the pricing and bundling initiative as a multi-year initiative for us. So while we've, you know, while productivity is leading the way this year and, you know, other products and bundles are a little bit behind it, right, we expect that over the next few years, we'll be able to apply the same tools and capabilities across the GoDaddy suite, right? It's really about capturing all the data, all the customer insight into the GoDaddy software platform, being able to drive and bring the customer the sort of unique offering that works for them. And as, you know, as we do that more and more, we actually think it's gonna become stronger over time.
Yes, we, you know, we're looking forward to pricing and bundling and seamless experience trying to be working together over multiple years.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah, and you know, just keep in mind, too, it's for new and renewals. So as renewals come up, you know, you have the ability to sell in to the existing customer base, and that becomes a compounding factor. So more bundles hit more renewals, keep on going. That's why we think it's gonna be a multi-year journey.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, and I think, you know, the comps will play a little bit. You know, we're coming into some harder comps in, you know, in the H2 of the year. But overall, the way we look at the return from these tools is, you know, they're continuing to set the pace for the company, where overall bookings are pacing ahead by a point or two of revenue. And that, you know, that sets us up very clearly for the next year and the future as well.
Elizabeth Porter (SVP of Wealth Management and Financial Advisor)
Great. Thank you so much, and congrats on a strong quarter.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thanks Elizabeth.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes from the line of Vikram Kesavabhotla from Baird. Vik, please go ahead.
Vikram Kesavabhotla (Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, can you hear me?
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
We can.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Hey, Vik.
Vikram Kesavabhotla (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Hey, thanks. I just wanted to ask first on capital allocation, you know, Mark, going back to the Investor Day, you talked about kind of three main priorities in terms of the use of cash across repurchases, debt pay downs, and acquisitions. I just wanted to clarify kind of where do repurchases currently rank within those uses of capital today, and kind of how do you do that in terms of priority or most attractive uses of cash flow right now? And then my second question, I wanted to put a finer point on the ANC bookings growth comments. You know, that number has accelerated now a few quarters in a row.
You know, I realize you don't guide to a specific number on that, but as we look at the Q3 directionally, I mean, should that continue to accelerate from the Q2 levels, or should we expect it to moderate? And if you could talk through some of the puts and takes there, that would be great. Thanks.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
I'll start. I'm sure Aman will add on here. You know, on capital allocation, the strategy remains the same. You know, we're gonna look at it from quarter to quarter. You know, we've laid out our North Star, and our North Star continues to be our ability to generate free cash flow and obviously look at that on a per-share basis and continue to grow that at the CAGR we've set out there. Now, everything we look at has to be set against that backdrop. You know, we still believe buying back our stock is a high ROI for us, and we continue to look at that from quarter to quarter based on, you know, other factors that are going on in the market. So no change there.
You know, active discussion quarter to quarter, looking at what, what's out there and looking at the different opportunities that can really drive that LTV we talk about, talked about at Investor Day. On the bookings and our pace there, now, you know, just a couple factors. One, we expect for the year bookings to outpace revenue by about one to two points, and that's based on the momentum we're seeing in ANC and also some of the other areas. And we think that's gonna set us up nicely for 2025. But, you know, we also, we'll get more difficult comps as we go throughout the year. So I wanna say the pace and the momentum are there.
Whether the percentages move a little bit based on tougher comps, you know, we'll see as we go out throughout the year and into 2025. But the overall pacing is still strong, and we're really happy with our ability to continue to get to that second and third products within our customer base today.
Vikram Kesavabhotla (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Thank you.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Thanks, Vik.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes to the line of Arjun Bhatia from William Blair. Arjun, please go ahead.
Willow Miller (Senior Equity Research Associate)
Hi, I'm Willow Miller in for Arjun Bhatia. Thanks for taking our questions. So shifting gears a bit and focusing more on commerce, in your prepared remarks, you called out the new Point of Sale Plus and Invoicing Plus SKUs, offer discounted transaction fees to merchants. Are you only offering discounted transaction fees here, or is there opportunity for volume-based advantage pricing, in other areas, to attract more and larger customers to GoDaddy Payments?
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thanks, Willow. You know, as you'll probably remember, you know, we have the best value for money in terms of payments pricing out there, given the you know, given the offering we're bringing to market. What these new SaaS plans do is they start to engage our customers into a deeper set of capabilities. So for example, with an Invoicing Plus plan, customers are able to build a more custom invoice and put a logo on it or, you know, be able to email that out in a very easy way, and that's us just expanding, you know, what this sort of tool set that our customers can use with GoDaddy in a very, very easy way.
On the pricing piece, you know, we've had pricing being an advantage for us, you know, since we came out with commerce and payments, and we've continued to use that advantage, and we absolutely look at multiple avenues to, you know, as we grow this business, to continue to maintain that differentiator and create the value for the customer, while also creating value, you know, for the company and the shareholder.
Willow Miller (Senior Equity Research Associate)
Great. Well, thanks for taking our question.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thank you.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes to the line of Clark Jeffries from Piper Sandler. Clark, please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking the question. First, a clarifying one. Aman, you know, you said improved conversion by 12%. I wanted to put that into context. Is that 12% improved conversion as a measure of 100% of users in the funnel, or is that an improvement of 12% higher dollar value? If you could just clarify that point first.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, as I noted, Clark, you know, I wanted to provide a data point of a controlled experiment. So, you know, that was an experiment in the path where a customer that buys a domain gets a coming soon page, and we tried two or three different ways to provide a paywall to see which one engaged the customer more. And it was the conversion from that free page to a paid plan that increased by 12%, and that's typically on a unit basis. But the main point here is that, you know, by putting ourselves in the situation where customers are engaged with Airo, we're opening up all these new possibilities where...
You know, this, this was a website example, but as you're aware, Airo today has nine cards that customers can engage with, and we're improving the way we engage customers across more and more of those capabilities that are just available to them when they buy a domain name. So as we get more of that engagement, you know, we're gonna continue to share with you how we're sort of stepping into the monetization. And, you know, I wouldn't over-index on any one of those pieces. It's more that how together all of those things lead to a completely different engaged customers, which we think, you know, in the long term, is just very, very valuable to lifetime value.
Clarke Jeffries (Senior Research Analyst)
Understood. And then just one follow-up. You mentioned the rollout to, non-English-speaking countries. You know, what is the percent of the base that is English-speaking today? I mean, we have that international versus domestic breakout, but I'd imagine there is a sizable contribution there from English-speaking countries.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, I don't think we've disclosed, you know, English-speaking versus non, but you, you know, our larger markets are English-speaking, but we have, you know, businesses in over 100 countries, so there is a sizable number of customers, and in many of those countries, there's great opportunity because GoDaddy is still early, and we're able to, you know, bring domains to customers there in a, in a, at our scale and with our capabilities. So, you know, we continue to be excited about what it is, what, what we're bringing to the market. In terms of our actual English markets, our biggest markets are UK, Canada, and Australia, so those are our bigger businesses. So, you know, maybe you can do a bit of math if, if that's what you're looking for.
Clarke Jeffries (Senior Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yep.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes to the line of Ygal Arounian from Citi. Ygal, please go ahead.
Ygal Iranian (Director of Internet Equity Research)
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Back to ANC bookings acceleration. We got this a lot last quarter in the translation to the top line guide in particular. You know, at this point, we're 9 points ahead on the ANC bookings acceleration or ANC bookings relative to the revenue. I understand we have some tougher comps, but you know, how should we be thinking about how that translates, and maybe why aren't we seeing it more? And on the comps, have you guys disclosed what the comps are prior for Q of 2023? I may have missed it. If you did, that could help kind of help people paint the picture to the revenue translation.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
I'll take that H1, Ygal. You know, just a reminder, you know, we, we have transaction revenue and subscription revenue, and within ANC, we have a mixture of both, and we, we saw a good performance today, this quarter in commerce, which is a transactional revenue, but we're also seeing good performance in the other areas, which are subscription. So the timing of the revenue related to the bookings acceleration can be anywhere from immediately within the quarter to over a period of time, and will start to contribute to revenue as we go out, you know, through further quarters. So we saw some contribution this quarter. We'll continue to see that as we get to the rest of this year, and obviously, in 2025, we'll have momentum going in there.
But remember, it's a combination of both, right? So, we can hit in different periods, depending on the nature of the bundle, the transaction, or the combination of the products they buy.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Just, Ygal, on the bookings numbers for ANC, I believe, you know, you can always take it offline.
Ygal Iranian (Director of Internet Equity Research)
Okay. And then, on the bundling, understanding productivity is the focus now, and then there's more opportunities coming in the future. Maybe just a hit on, what's next in the pipeline, if you can. You know, I get that it's gonna come over time, but, we heard mostly about email and security. Any more details around some of the key bundles that you expect to roll out, I think would be really helpful. Thank you.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
You know, you all, ultimately, we want to go across the board, right? Like, the approach is really about the customer and not about the product, right? We're trying to create this value for the customer and their whole relationship with us, so all the products are going to sort of see something over the next year or two. You know, nope, not making any promises on it, but some of the products in ANC that we're very excited about is, for example, the websites business, you know? Just a couple of days, you know, completely unrelated to us, TechRadar Pro named Airo as the number one AI website builder for micro businesses. So, you know, we're definitely getting some momentum in that business, and with Airo, we think there's some great opportunity there. But that's not the only one.
You know, our other products, many of them are at significant scale, and, you know, will lend themselves well to bundling in different ways.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah, I think the advantage we have now with the consolidated technology stack is we have the ability to see what bundles really are attractive to our customers, and we're starting to analyze that data, and that starts to give us a path forward. Airo only helps that even further as we look at, you know, the behaviors and the engagement. It allows us to start to position those bundles as to what value we can give to the customer.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, and there is a little bit of an order of operations. They go where, you know, we have to hit certain renewal cycles to be able to see the customer behavior, right? So that, you know, it's not the thing that we can just everything happen on in one quarter, one day. There is a progression of this program working over the next two, three years, getting to the real value for our customers.
Ygal Iranian (Director of Internet Equity Research)
Right. Okay, thank you.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thank you.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Thanks, Ygal.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes to the line of Alex Luthinger from UBS. Alex, please go ahead.
Speaker 11
Hi, you got Chris on the line. Just maybe going back to the attached comments, it's been a couple quarters now that you've said that, over 50% of customers have two-plus products. Just curious if you could put a finer point on, existing customers versus new customers. Are new customers coming in, do they have a higher propensity to go to two, three, fourplus type of attach versus the existing base?
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yeah, you know, Chris, we're very excited about the Airo offering, right? We're engaging customers with a lot more products right away, but the metric that Mark talks about is that's paid product. So we, you know, what we'll see happen is as we engage customers across these products, you know, when they come to those renewal cycles, we expect to see sort of that number continuing to grow. But broadly, our new customers adding more products has been a good trend for us.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah, and this has been something that's building over time. You know, I think the metric we gave out at the end of the year was, you know, customer new customer detach at a rate 25% faster than they were, you know, three, four years ago. And that trend continues, right? Our customers are coming in with intent. They're engaging at different levels, and just to hit on the finer point that Aman said, you know, we count that two-plus product when they pay, not when they engage. And that, you know, that means it can come in at a renewal, it come after a free trial. So it takes time, but they are definitely engaging at a higher level and rate than we saw in the past.
Speaker 11
Got it. Very helpful. Maybe just one follow-up on ANC incremental margins. It's now been a couple quarters where you're over 60% margins. It really seems like you guys are sticking to a very cost-controlled approach here. Any reason why this may be one-off here and not the right way to be thinking about it over the medium term?
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah, there's nothing to call out on a one-off basis. This is just, you know, the three things we had talked about that would drive our profitability going forward. You know, ANC growing, which is our higher margin business and being more of the pie over time, will create a tailwind to our overall normalized EBITDA margin. As we start to, you know, tap into global talent pools, use Gabby more, that'll create leverage within our PNL up and down. And then, you know, we continue our journey on operational simplification. We're trying to make sure we're fit for purpose going forward, that we're agile, and we continue to have that ability to, you know, not only invest in the business and invest in new technology, but have an efficient back office operation.
So those three pillars still remain intact, and you know, what we're seeing now is the ANC bookings and growth really becoming that tailwind that we had talked about coming into the year.
Speaker 11
Thanks, Mark.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Our next question comes to the line of Naved Khan from B. Riley. Naved, please go ahead. Hi, Navid, you're muted.
Naved Khan (Managing Director)
Yeah, thanks. Can you hear me now?
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
We can.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yes.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Yes.
Naved Khan (Managing Director)
Great. So apologies if somebody already asked this. I jumped on a little late, but, a question I have is on your 3Q guidance, specifically, you know, the EBITDA guide. Why are you guiding to compression in margins, quarter-over-quarter? And also given that ANC continues to be the bigger piece of the business, and that's the higher margin business, so just kind of unpack that for me, and then I have a follow-up.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
Yeah. I think we're happy with our margin expansion through the year. We continue to look at opportunities and look at product mix, and how the momentum is moving. We overperformed in Q2 on our margin. We believe that will continue into Q3 at the same levels, and obviously we talked about our Q4 exit rate will remain at the 31%, keeping us to 29% for the year. Because our bookings are doing well, and obviously we talked about our guidance related to revenue, a lot of that percentage falls to the bottom line in an absolute dollar, and allows us to feel good about raising our free cash flow and unlevered free cash flow guidance as well.
Naved Khan (Managing Director)
Got it. And then, Aman, on your, on your comments about, you know, now having, like, 9 cards in Airo. I think I think you started with maybe five or six, if I remember correctly. Have you seen an improvement in conversion every time you, you add a card or, and then optimize the experience around that? Just give us some color around, around these launches, and what the effect is on conversions and attach rates.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Naved, they're picking on a really interesting thing, where as we introduce more, we've got to be very careful to keep the experience simple for our customers. So actually, there are a number of experiments that continue to evolve what the cards look like to get higher engagement with the customers. You know, there's all sorts of different things, from cards disappearing, to changing the order, to graying out, to saying it's done, to you know, like, the teams are trying lots and lots of different combinations, and frankly, there is more we want to include in Airo, and we only when we make this simpler, you know, can we add the new things. So yes, that's a constant area of focus for us, but it's also the beauty of our scale, right? We have a breadth of products that we can bring to our customers.
That's a lot of value we can pack in with a humble domain name, you know, and if we can get the discovery and the engagement, we know we can get the monetization. You know, at our scale, we're doing lots and lots of experiments. You know, we have teams that are well-trained in understanding how to do this work well and, you know, we're pretty excited about it. That's one of the reasons, you know, as Mark likes to say, that, you know, Airo might be small today and, you know, it's not in our guidance, but we're very excited about what it represents in the future for us.
Naved Khan (Managing Director)
So, maybe just to sort of follow up on that, if I asked you where are you on that journey with Airo, you know, if it's a nine-inning game, how would you kind of place yourself?
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
We are in an early inning now.
Mark McCaffrey (CFO)
I was gonna say we're in the first pitch, right? So, there's a lot to go and a lot of exciting things going on there.
Naved Khan (Managing Director)
Excellent. Thank you, guys.
Christie Masoner (VP and Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you. That concludes our Q&A. I'll turn the call back to Aman for closing remarks.
Aman Bhutani (CEO)
Thank you, Christie. Thank you all for joining, and a quick shout-out to all GoDaddy employees for Airo being named the number one AI website builder just recently, and just I think it sets a great tone for us as a company. It's always good to see somebody recognize our work. So thank you very much, and, we'll see you next quarter.