RingCentral - Q2 2023
August 7, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to RingCentral's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Vlad Shmunis, Founder, Chairman, and CEO; Tarek Robbiati, Incoming CEO; and Sonalee Parekh, CFO. Our format today will include prepared remarks by Vlad, Tarek, and Sonalee, followed by Q&A. We also have a slide presentation available on our investor relations website that will coincide with today's call, which you can find under the Financial Results section at ir.ringcentral.com. Some of our discussion and responses to your questions will contain forward-looking statements regarding the company's business operations, financial performance, and outlook. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call.
For a complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to our business, please refer to the information contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as today's earnings release. Unless otherwise indicated, all measures that follow are non-GAAP with year-over-year comparisons. A reconciliation of all GAAP to non-GAAP results is provided with our earnings release and in the slide deck. For certain forward-looking guidance, a reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial guidance to the corresponding GAAP measure is not available as discussed in detail in the slide deck posted on our investor relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Vlad.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our second quarter earnings conference call. This has been a busy quarter for RingCentral. I know you've likely seen the exciting news that Tarek Robbiati has been appointed as RingCentral's next CEO, effective August 28th. I will be transitioning to Executive Chairman on that date. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to Tarek, and we'll talk more about this later on in this call. I also want to take a moment to say a few words about Mo Katibeh, who will be leaving the company in the coming weeks to pursue other opportunities. Mo has played a pivotal role building out our team, evolving our product roadmap, expanding our partner ecosystem, shaping our winning culture, and driving meaningful efficiencies in the business. On behalf of myself, the board, and the entire team, we wish Mo all the best in his future endeavors.
On the corporate development side, last week, we announced the acquisition of the Events and Session product lines from Hopin, a leading provider of online audience engagement technology. Hopin Events allows users to easily set up complex virtual and hybrid events and fits well with our video strategy of delivering more personalized and engaging video meetings and event experiences for customers, all at a competitive price point. The technology from Hopin provides us with a complete video portfolio that now includes meetings, webinars, rooms, and virtual and hybrid events. I would like to welcome Hopin Events and Hopin Session talented teams to the RingCentral family. Let's turn to the quarter. This is my 40th earnings call as the CEO of RingCentral. On our first earnings call, nearly 10 years ago, we reported $161 million in ARR.
Today, this number stands at over $2.2 billion. Ten years is a long time, and I am proud to say we have not ever missed our financial guidance during this period, and today is no exception. Q2 was another solid quarter as we continue to execute against our plan of delivering sustainable, profitable growth and continued innovation. For the second quarter, total revenue grew 11%, above the high end of our guidance range, and ARR grew 12%. Operating profit margins increased eight percentage points versus last year to 19.4%, another quarterly record and well above our outlook. These improvements demonstrate the leverage in our model and our disciplined approach to spending. The profit improvement also translated to another quarter of record-free cash flows. We're delivering this increased profitability while also continuing to invest in innovation, which is the lifeblood of our company.
RingCentral was founded and grew on the complementary megatrend of connectivity, mobility, and cloud computing. RingCentral has been an early pioneer, leveraging and contributing to all these important innovations. Now there is a new megatrend emerging that may prove to be the most impactful of all, and that is conversation intelligence. RingCentral again expects to be the beneficiary of and a contributor to this major innovation. Conversation intelligence is highly relevant for business communications as it has the potential of enhancing employee productivity, improving customer service, and positively impacting business outcomes. We saw the potential of conversation intelligence several years ago. In December 2020, we acquired DeepAffects, a conversation intelligence company, which is now the foundation of our RingSense AI platform. In March of this year, we announced our first commercial product, RingSense for Sales. Since March, we have introduced significant new updates to RingSense for Sales.
Earlier today, we announced 2 new products, RingSense for Phone and RingCX, our new native intelligent omnichannel contact center. A few words about these products. First, RingSense for Sales. We've been innovating at a fast pace. We have added many features to address customer feedback and improve our competitive positioning. Some of these enhancements include: 10 integrations with leading third-party applications such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Outlook Calendar, and Gmail Calendar. Deal scoring, which makes it easier for leaders to track pipeline health and see whether deals are progressing or are at risk. AI coaching, which helps sales agents improve interactions based on AI-analyzed customer sentiment and effectiveness of their pitch. AI-driven win-loss analysis, which provides effective selling insights from conversations to improve win-loss rates. Second, RingSense for Phone.
Leveraging conversation intelligence, RingSense for Phone enables organizations to apply AI to their voice conversations and leverage deep insights to boost productivity and collaborate more efficiently. A few key highlights include live transcription and closed captioning, and post-call summaries, insights, and sentiment analysis. RingCentral is hosting billions of minutes of voice traffic for many millions of users. RingSense for Phone will allow them to be more effective on live calls, as well as gain important insights via post-call analysis. Together, we believe it will lead to more efficient and productive conversations, so as to drive improved business outcomes. Last but not least, RingCX. We have seen great success selling RingCentral MVP with RingCentral Contact Center that is powered by NICE inContact. With our CCaaS business that is now well in excess of $300 million of ARR, we have conclusively proven the case for UCaaS and CCaaS integration.
Our joint solution with NICE inContact is well differentiated as it integrates our respective Magic Quadrant leading products into a unified offering from a single provider. We continue to invest in this partnership and see significant continued potential. In listening to our customers, we've recognized an additional need for a native, intelligent contact center solution that would also be better suited to simpler use cases. That is why we are now introducing RingCX. RingCX is a powerful product that offers a native, integrated, 20-plus omni-channel experience for agents and administrators. It also includes AI-powered transcripts, summaries, and conversational insights, as well as workforce engagement management via an OEM partner integration. We believe RingCX will also be well-received because of its ease of use, ability to be quickly deployed, and its disruptive pricing.
RingSense for Sales, RingSense for Phone, and RingCX are all currently in controlled availability, with expected general availability by the end of this year. It is early, but we're getting good initial feedback. In summary, it was another solid quarter, highlighted by our strong innovation and operational execution. Now, back to the CEO succession. When I founded RingCentral over two decades ago, we were a tiny, unfunded startup with an ambitious mission to improve how businesses around the world communicate internally and with their customers. From those humble beginnings, we have become a recognized leader in our space and one of the largest pure-play SaaS companies in the world. September 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of our IPO. Given the strong position we're in today, operationally and financially, I believe this is the right time for a CEO succession, and Tarek is the right person for the job.
Tarek is a highly accomplished senior business leader. He has been a key member of our board since January, which has given him an opportunity to get to know our business, our team, and our culture. I believe Tarek is in a unique position to hit the ground running on day one. As for myself, my plan is to stay actively engaged in the business, focusing on what I love most: strategy, innovation, and product development. I'm incredibly proud of what we have accomplished together and am energized about the future. With this, I will now turn the call over to Tarek for some additional remarks.
Tarek Robbiati (Incoming CEO)
Thank you, Vlad. I consider it a distinct privilege to be RingCentral's second-ever CEO. On behalf of the board, let me express our immense gratitude for all you have built. You took this company from an idea to a multi-billion dollar global enterprise, serving approximately 6 million paying end users and bringing together an expansive 15,000 partner ecosystem. I believe our potential is vast, and we have an enduring foundation on which to build our future. Vlad and I are aligned on RingCentral's core principles, people and customers first, ever-present drive for innovation, and a commitment to delivering results for all our stakeholders. These will continue to be cornerstones of our operations as we drive greater performance and profitability through the focused execution of our strategic initiatives.
Importantly, on behalf of the board, and from me personally, I would like to thank Mo for the contributions that he has made during his tenure, and wish him the best of luck. Now, let me turn the call over to Sonalee to go over the quarter in more detail.
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
Thank you, Vlad. I'm very much looking forward to continuing our partnership in your new role. Tarek, I'm equally excited to be working with you again. I'd also like to thank Mo for his valued contributions and partnership, and wish him the best of luck going forward. I'll now provide highlights from the second quarter, and then discuss our business outlook for the third quarter and full year. Subscriptions revenue of $514 million was up 11% year-over-year and above our guidance range. ARR was 12% versus last year to $2.22 billion. Growth was driven by strength within key industry verticals, where our products are mission-critical, such as professional and financial services, healthcare, retail, and public sector. Additionally, contact center ARR was roughly $330 million, up from roughly $300 million at the end of 2022.
The strong traction we are seeing in Contact Center is driven by continued demand from customers for a leading integrated UCaaS plus CCaaS solution. An example of the power of our platform is our recent competitive win with Republic Airways, one of the largest regional airlines in the U.S. The company's legacy tools required frequent maintenance. Their on-prem phone system also did not integrate well into their Contact Center, which Republic Airways relies on to quickly reach its pilots and flight attendants, to provide them with any urgent scheduling changes. RingCentral's industry-leading five nines reliability for the past 20 quarters, advanced call routing, and integrated cloud Contact Center will help Republic Airways solve these challenges, all while saving them money. Importantly, Republic Airways plans to utilize our new RingCentral for Teams 2.0 embedded app, which continues to see great traction in the marketplace.
Moving to profitability, I'll be referring to non-GAAP results unless otherwise noted. Our subscription growth margin was 82%, consistent with last quarter. Overall, ARPU was again above $30, as customers continue to value our differentiated offerings. Our solid ARPU supports our strong growth margin. Operating margin rose 800 basis points versus last year to 19.4%, another quarterly record. The increase was driven by operating leverage and efficiencies generated across the business, most notably in sales and marketing, which was down 490 basis points versus last year. Sales and marketing expense improved due to the efficacy of our marketing spend, as well as the headcount actions we took last November. As a reminder, those actions did not impact customer-facing salespeople. Our increasing profitability translated into record quarterly free cash flow of $81 million on an adjusted, unlevered basis.
The improvements to our free cash flow continue to be driven by operating leverage, efficiency throughout the business, and improving our free cash flow conversion. Our robust free cash flow generation allows us to employ a dynamic capital allocation strategy that includes evaluating organic and inorganic investments, repurchasing shares, and addressing our convertible debt maturities. This quarter, we were able to execute against all three of these vectors. First, during the second quarter, we paid $427 million to repurchase $461 million in aggregate principal amount of our 2025 convertible notes. The repurchase was funded with cash on hand and $400 million from our Term Loan A. We also entered into a swap agreement that fixed the floating interest rate on our Term Loan A.
The fixed interest on our Term Loan A is approximately 6.6% and can step down modestly as we further deleverage. This results in a weighted cost of debt of approximately 1.6% following the repurchase. Based on our second quarter results, our trailing twelve-month net leverage ratio is 3.3x, and based on our 2023 outlook, we continue to expect our net leverage to be less than 3x as we exit the year. Second, in the quarter, we repurchased approximately $100 million of shares at an average price of approximately $30. Additionally, during the second quarter, our board approved a new share repurchase authorization for $125 million, effective through December 31st, 2023. Lastly, as Vlad mentioned, last week, we acquired assets from Hopin to augment our video offering.
While we are excited about the addition, we expect the acquisition to have an immaterial impact on our revenue and expenses in 2023. Before I provide our third quarter and full year guidance, I'd like to provide you with additional details on the macro trends we are seeing in the market today. Macro trends are largely consistent with last quarter. Sales cycles remain elevated versus last year, and customer buying decisions continue to go through additional layers of approval. We are also seeing less upsell within our existing base as customers have slowed hiring and rationalized their employee counts. Importantly, marketing-driven lead flow remains consistently strong, demonstrating continued demand for on-prem to cloud conversion. Now, turning to guidance.
For the third quarter of 2023, we expect subscriptions revenue growth of 9%-10%, total revenue growth of 8%-9%, non-GAAP operating margin of 18%-18.5%, and non-GAAP EPS of $0.75-$0.78. Note that we are reinvesting a portion of the operating profit outperformance we delivered in the second quarter into innovation and go-to-market activities in the third quarter. Specifically, there are areas of strength in select verticals where investment, including in AI, are expected to drive greater product differentiation and incremental demand. Now, moving to the full year, 2023, we continue to expect subscriptions revenue growth of 11% and total revenue growth of 10%-11%. We now expect non-GAAP operating margin of 18.5%-19%.
At the midpoint, this is up more than 600 basis points versus last year and 25 basis points above our prior outlook. Non-GAAP EPS of $3.11-$3.25. Note that this outlook is inclusive of interest expense from our Term Loan A, which our prior outlook of $3.19-$3.25 did not include. Additionally, last quarter, we noted that we would be able to achieve $280 million in free cash flow much earlier than our original target of 2024. I'm pleased to share that we now expect to achieve adjusted unlevered free cash flow of $270 million-$290 million in 2023, roughly a full year earlier than we had originally expected.
We are well on our way as we have already generated $142 million in the first six months of 2023. Our updated target demonstrates the power of the operating leverage inherent in our business. It also speaks to the progress we are making on our efficiency initiatives, all while continuing to invest in innovation and targeted go-to-market activities. In summary, Q2 again demonstrated our ability to execute against our strategy of driving profitable, healthy growth with robust free cash flow generation. We believe our leading differentiated product offerings and focus on innovation, coupled with our scale and attractive business model, positions us well for continued success. With that, let's 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. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. In the interest of time, please limit yourselves to one question. Our first question is from Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Meta Marshall (Equity Research Analyst)
Great, thanks. Vlad, sorry to see you stepping aside after so long. Look forward... really enjoyed working with you. I guess just in terms of, you know, Tarek obviously has been on the, on the board, but just why you felt like he was the right choice, you know, what your kind of ongoing engagement with the company will be and, you know, maybe deciding to go with somebody kind of outside of, of traditional software realms. Thanks.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Right. Hi, Meta. Okay, firstly, I'm not quite stepping aside. I'm transitioning to an executive chair role. I intend to stay actively involved, less so on the governance side. Obviously, Tarek will be, you know, a real CEO, no questions asked. I'll be around and working on innovation, product introductions, long-term vision and strategy, et cetera. I... By the way, for-
... disclosure. Tarek is here in the room with us, so he can also answer some of the questions directly. We both, I believe I speak to both for both of us, we see it as a partnership moving forward. We specifically, you know, discussed that quite at great length. I also want to, you know, remind you and the rest of the folks, Tarek has been on the board since December of last year. He's been an active board member, both member of our audit committee and comp committees. He knows the company very, very well.
It was very important for me and the board to have a seamless transition, to have someone who understands the business, understands the landscape, very importantly, shares our values, shares our strategy, that being profitable growth. Both words are being very important, profitable and growth. Tarek is a well-known heavy hitter in both of those on both of those dimensions. Look, to your question, why not someone from the software industry? Tarek is from the software industry, and he's had a number of major accomplishments, specifically both at HPE and prior. To tell you what, Sonalee, our CFO, she's been working with Tarek and for Tarek for a number of years. Maybe you can shed some light.
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
Yeah, absolutely. Hi, hi, Meta. So yes, I've known Tarek for over 25 years and did have the pleasure of working and reporting directly into him when we were at HPE, where he did a spectacular job of really shifting the HPE portfolio to much higher growth areas, such as Aruba, and he was a huge proponent of investing at the edge, which is where we saw a massive amount of growth. Obviously, HPE is a much larger, you know, revenue base, so sometimes you don't see it in the aggregate amount, but the Aruba business was a significant grower. He was also very central to the GreenLake and as a service pivot. Finally, the high-performance computing and AI divisions, which all grew, you know, well above the overall portfolio.
Tarek has vast experience, you know, as both, and a very strong track record as both a CEO and CFO, and has successfully scaled businesses whilst also driving growth and importantly, profitability and cash flow. We think he's just very, very well-rounded.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Terry Tillman with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.
Terry Tillman (Research Analyst)
Yeah, I mean, I have a question, but I do want to ask an extra, and I think I, I, I should be able to. Vlad, are you, are you still going to be on these calls answering our provocative questions? Then I will ask my question.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Look, I, I want to, I want to reiterate, you know, Tarek is going to be the CEO, but I would say is, as appropriate, Tarek wants me to participate, maybe on a case-by-case basis. Look, I'm around, you know? I'm not sailing into the sunset. I still have, you know, immense interest, not just, not just financial, but also financial, in this company's success. You know, as you know me, I tend to speak my mind, for better or worse, so I don't think that that's going to stop anytime soon, either.
Terry Tillman (Research Analyst)
Well, congrats to you both. My question for the call is, actually, Sonalee, I think in the past you've talked about ARR bookings, how that would trend ahead of top-line growth. You know, we only have two quarters left, and, you know, I don't know what kind of visibility you have in the second half, but could you give us an update on how you're thinking about ARR bookings for the year and the growth rate there? Thank you.
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
Yeah, sure, Terry. As you know, we don't typically guide on ARR. We do have good visibility on the second half, and that's why, you know, we guided and reiterated very much our, our full year guide today and raised our, our guidance on operating margin, as well as, you know, provided more color around free cash flow. When you think about ARR, you know, in, in terms of providing you color, we did about $60 million of bookings in the quarter. That means we've generated about $120 million of net new ARR bookings in the first half of 2023.
If you think about how our business has historically been slightly more second half weighted, whilst not guiding specifically, we think if typical seasonality holds, it's absolutely something that we should be able to achieve. Just if you didn't ask specifically around the guidance, but, you know, we are reiterating the full year on both revenue and subscription revenue. You know, on margins, we strongly exceeded the 2Q outlook by about 200 basis points, which is up 800 basis points year-over-year versus Q2 of a year ago. You know, because of that, we raised the midpoint of the margin guidance by 25 basis points.
For the full year, we're now looking for 18.5%-19% margins. We continue to expect to exit the year at at least 20%, and, you know we will always strive to do more.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Samad Samana with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Samad Samana (Research Analyst)
Great. Good evening, thanks for taking my questions. I'll echo Vlad, it's been, it's been great working with you, and look forward to still talking to you every now and then. Maybe just a question on the seat cost side of the business. I know you, you mentioned where the new product fits into the world, but I guess if you can double-click on that? Maybe who do you see, is that more of a greenfield opportunity, or are you targeting replacements? If, if so, who would that be that you're going after with that product? Then I actually have a CCaaS ARR follow-up as well.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Sure. Okay, well, thank you, Samad. As far as RingCX, is I think what, what you're asking about in that announcement. Look, what do we have that's unique? We have a CCaaS business as part of our portfolio that's well over $300 million in ARR. It actually makes us one of the largest CCaaS providers in the world. There is a twist here, and the twist is that we are playing, and playing extremely well, in the unified UCaaS, CCaaS communications market, okay. This is where people-- we have this integration. It's unique to this day between us and in contact, NICE inContact, and obviously, it's been playing extremely well. Okay. Now, what is the-- what's the new opportunity?
Firstly, we are frankly, up until now, not as we were locked out, but we don't really tend to see pure play requests, line of business requests. If somebody needs a, just a contact center, you know, they would likely not even involve us in an RFP. With RingCX, RingCX, we expect to be getting those opportunities and participating directly. That's the thing number one to to remember. Secondly, NICE inContact is a fantastic product. Gartner has it right. They are up into the right and one of the two co-leaders without any question. It's also an enterprise-grade product. It's a high-end product, and unfortunately, that means complexity, and that means, you know, fairly healthy pricing.
We see an opportunity, this is where the greenfield comes in, to come in, not just necessarily into smaller businesses, but into businesses with simpler requirements, okay? You know, they can be small, or they can be very large. It depends on, you know, how they've organized their contact center. We believe that RingCX will be a viable player. It will compete, you know, well based on features, based on the fact that it is AI first. It is a next-generation product built on next-generation, pure cloud architecture. Pricing will be competitive, if not disruptive. Look, I tell you, people, you, you know, certainly not the, the, the, the least of them, have been asking: "Okay, well, where is your own contact center?" Here is the answer. Here it is.
We're in beta now. Early results are promising or better. You know, feedback has been great. We're obviously learning on that feedback and incorporating, and, you know, expect more to come. I tell you, with me now having more time to concentrate on, you know, little housekeeping items, like getting products out, expect, you know, expect it will be a strong player in that area.
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
If I could just add something there. You can just imagine that with proprietary economics, the contribution margin on RingCX will be RingCX, will be much higher than what we drive today on RCCC.
Samad Samana (Research Analyst)
Understood. Maybe, Sonalee, just a quick question on the CCaaS, on the ARR disclosure, that $300+ million or the data that you gave, it implies really robust growth, right? It's like north of 30%. One, I want to see if that math is right, and then for UCaaS, that would make it kind of more like high single-digit. Is that the right way to think about those two growth rates for the go-forward future?
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
Yeah. I think a couple of points I'd make. Yes, we are very pleased with how the CCaaS business is growing. The last time we updated you, we said that we'd update you every other quarter on where we are. This quarter, you know, proud to say we're now at $330 million of ARR. And, you know, what I would say there is that we've seen great success, obviously, in, in selling RingCentral MVP with RingCentral Contact Center. Over 60% of our large 1 million plus TCP deals include both UCaaS and CCaaS.
What I would say there is we really are uniquely positioned, relative to all of our competitors, to offer that both, you know, UCaaS and CCaaS in one single-- from one single vendor, which is what we truly believe, particularly enterprise customers, are looking for. In terms of what we're seeing on the UCaaS business, we still are growing well above the market in terms of revenue market share, absolutely. If you look at any of the third-party data, you know, Synergy, Gartner, et cetera, you know, we are continuing to take revenue share there. I would say, absolutely, CCaaS growing well above the market, and UCaaS still continuing to take revenue share relative to the overall market.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Brian Peterson (Research Analyst)
Hi, thanks for taking the question, and, and congrats to, to Vlad and Tarek. Sonalee, I wanted to follow up with you. You, you mentioned that on some of the efficiencies that you've recognized, you're going to be reinvesting in the third quarter. I'd love to understand, you know, how much of that is more product-oriented versus go-to-market oriented? How should we be thinking about, you know, potential efficiencies going forward, should, should those be reinvested as well? Thank you.
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
Yeah. Great question. You know, as I said earlier, we strongly exceeded our Q2 profit margin outlook. It was about a 200 basis point beat, so we were at 19.4%. You know, we still need to invest in the business. There are areas of strength that we are seeing in select verticals where investment, including in AI, and, you know, Vlad has said he's gonna spend more time there, are expected to drive greater product differentiation and incremental demand. In Q3, we will be investing in those areas, given the opportunity we see. Part of that will include investing in, you know, some of the higher-performing marketing channels that we believe will drive more sales. That being said, you know, if you look at the overall full-year margin outlook, that is very much still increasing.
You know, we, we do want to balance both investment for growth and profitability. You know, you've heard us call this out in, in prior calls, but upsell has been an area of the business where we've seen some challenges, and we do feel that, you know, the new products being introduced will deserve investment and also will drive, you know, that upsell motion that we expect to see as the macro recovers.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Kash Rangan (Research Analyst)
First of all, Vlad, I've got to say congratulations on a 10-year stint as public company CEO. Bigger congratulations on hiring a former equity analyst from Lehman Brothers as your CEO. The future of our industry, my industry, is really, really bright, it looks like. Having said that, I actually want to ask Tarek a question, if that's okay. First of all, very impressive that you speak six languages. Maybe over a beer one day, you'll tell me how you managed to do that. That's very impressive. I'm curious, Tarek, to get your take on what is it that, that you've learned about the company that you can share with us, being on the board, that gives you the conviction to step into the hot seat and take questions from people like us?
I look forward to working with you. What about... You, you've got tremendous background. I mean, you know, being an equity analyst many years back, and you've been in the tech industry for a long time. What do you see as RingCentral's primary challenge? Every company has challenges, so what do you think is RingCentral's primary challenge going forward? What is gonna be the, the secret sauce that you bring with your background, whether it's, you know, pivoting towards a new segment of the market or these acquisitions? I wanna just be cognizant that there are challenges, and how do you envision overcoming them in your future? Thank you so much. Congrats.
Tarek Robbiati (Incoming CEO)
Well, thank you very much for, for the intro. You made me feel a bit younger because when I was an equity analyst, it was 25 years ago, and we were with the same team with Sonalee. Thanks for reminding me of this. Let me answer first in by saying, I see a tremendous opportunity at RingCentral and a vast potential. The opportunity that exists in UCaaS and CCaaS combined, that Vlad has mentioned, is, is quite formidable, and it's something that I'm very keen on capitalizing on for the future and realizing that full potential. Those use cases that you've heard about from Frontier Airlines are very telling.
These are use cases where communications become more pervasive all the way from inside the office with a contact center, all the way on to field workforces or sales forces, any way you wanna look at them. These are unique use cases that RingCentral can pursue, and I'm very keen on, on making sure that we continue at RingCentral to innovate and to grow. Because the practical reality is that in this industry, the very first lever for value creation is growth, and we intend to continue to dial up the growth here for all our stakeholders and obviously our shareholders. What stands in the way? To be honest, it's a bit early for me to say what stands in the way.
It's true that I have the vantage point of having spent nine months on the board of Ring, and think I know it somewhat, but I have to spend more time under the hood, so to speak, really in the operations of the business to figure out what stands in the way. I will start doing so immediately upon my first full-time day on the 28th of August. Between now and then, you know, we're not gonna be waiting. I'm gonna be spending some time with the management team, making sure I understand where they're coming from, so that we can have a real solid operation moving forward.
Operator (participant)
As a reminder, please limit yourselves to one question in the interest of time. The next question is from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.
George Sutton (Senior Research Analyst)
Thank you. My congrats to Vlad, and welcome to Tarek. I am curious, Sonalee, you had mentioned that marketing-driven lead flow had been really the strength in this quarter. I was just as interested that there was no mention of the large partnerships, the Avayas and Mitels and Frontiers and AT&Ts of the world. Can you just give us an update on the partnership side of the business?
Sonalee Parekh (CFO)
Yeah, absolutely, with pleasure. you called out Avaya, Mitel, specifically, we also have AWS, and I'll talk to the GSPs, Global Service Providers as well. Avaya, as you know, has recently emerged from bankruptcy. They continue to execute on their new go-to-market motions that were enabled as part of our updated contract with them. you know, we've seen slightly better traction and execution from Avaya this quarter. you know, as I said earlier, we do expect more of a back-end loaded impact from Avaya, and we continue to expect that. Mitel also continues to contribute seats at a healthy clip.
On AWS, while it's still early, we have started to see some really good traction in the pipeline there, and we're starting to see the first deals beginning to close. We're on track to be live on the AWS Marketplace later this year. In terms of the GSPs you, you talked to, one of the ones that I would specifically call out is Charter, where we're continuing to see extremely strong execution there. As you know, there are a couple of other GSPs that have recently come online, particularly in Europe. You know, we're seeing more and more traction with Vodafone as well.
We have, you know, the legacy partners that are fully ramped and continue to contribute, but then importantly, we have these new ones that we're beginning to see, you know, very solid impact from. That's, that's the story for, for partnerships. As you know, they remain a very, very important part of our overall go-to market. You know, we see a lot of scope for all of those partners to continue contributing for the rest of this year and, and beyond to our overall growth.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Matt Stotler with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Matt Stotler (Research Analyst)
Hey, thank you for taking the questions. You know, Vlad, you know, sorry to see you go, but obviously you'll, you'll still be engaged, so look forward to chatting occasionally going forward. Tarek, congrats on the new position. Maybe just 1 question on a geographic-specific question. There were a number of press releases over the course of the quarter, specific to India, with regulatory compliance, office openings, planned hires, et cetera. I would love to just double-click on the opportunity you see in that geography, how that might layer into the, the, the business over time, and then how you think about, you know, the competitive landscape there relative to what you see elsewhere around the globe.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Right. Well, thank you, firstly. Look, as far as India is concerned, firstly, it's great that we think we're actually literally the first foreign service provider to be allowed to offer this kind of services in the area, so it's a huge accomplishment. Look, our primary or first foot forward, let's say, would be to extend India into our global office technology. What it means, if you have a U.S. or some other international-based business with offices in India, then we would be able to deliver a local dial tone in a legal manner. That's really where we're seeing most of the demand at this point. Secondly, as you all know, we have a strong and growing GSP practice.
With this announcement, and more importantly, with this capability, we are now much more likely to be able to partner with local service providers in powering up their B2B offerings in the area. Lastly is an opportunity to engage directly. Again, that's a little bit farther down the list for us. We first need to, you know, do, do, do the first two, but certainly an opportunity. Needless to say, India is, you know, second-largest country in the world, population-wise. By far the largest, where we can legally do business, given, you know, other restrictions in China. Definitely an area of growth for us as we look forward.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Jim Fish with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Speaker 13
Hey, this is Quentin on for Jim. Vlad, we wanted to echo the congratulations and well wishes for the new role and look forward to working with you, Tarek. On the Microsoft Teams 2.0 opportunity, we continue to hear strong results from this product across your channel partners. You know, when Microsoft talks about their 17 million PSTN users on the platform, do you think all 17 of those, you know, 17 million of those players make sense as the addressable market for the 2.0 opportunity, or are you more focused on the G2K players? Then maybe just on the penetration side, how do you, how do you see that, that penetration of the opportunity today? Thank you.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. Well, look, it's super hard to talk about all, you know, when you're talking about large numbers. Again, as we look at the landscape, Microsoft is packaged into E1, E3, and E5 tiers. E1 and E3 have no business telephony included. Can be upsold, but not included. E5 does have it, but, you know, it's still positioned behind us, features-wise, and, you know, global reach-wise. Look, it's been our major introduction last quarter, this past quarter. It continues to do well. We, I think on earnings, in this, in prepared remarks, we talked about Republic Airways...
Importantly, they're a Teams customer, and the plan is for them to be using, our embedded dialer as, you know, part of the technology suite that they're standardizing on. We continue, and you've heard me say this before, Teams has been, and we believe for the foreseeable future, will continue to be a growth driver for us. We were, I would say, at parity up until Q1 or late Q1. I don't think we're at parity anymore. I think we're leading now as far as quality, and user experience that our integration has to offer, so it is basically the best integration that we know of in the marketplace. Very importantly, you saw some of these other announcements from us, and in particular, RingSense for Phone.
I just want to stress that that will also be available in the Microsoft version of our packaging. By the way, as a side comment, it will also be made available to all of our 15,000 partners, including GSPs and strategics. Okay? It will all play, play in together, will make us stronger. You know, rest is GTM and, you know, getting the at bat. Actually, with Tarek's joining and his, you know, absolute focus on operational excellence and efficiencies, you know, we're having pretty high hopes here that we will be getting more at bats, you know, in all segments, you know, not the least being enterprise.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Siti Panigrahi with Mizuho Securities. Please go ahead.
Siti Panigrahi (Equity Research Analyst)
Well, thank, thanks for taking my question. I, I also extend my best wishes to Vlad and Tarek. Tarek, looking forward to work- working with you. I want to ask about your growth at this point. I understand you talked about various factors influencing growth, but now that, let's say, Avaya m- coming... You know, reemerging out of bankruptcy and there are partnerships that's coming back, when do you think the growth will trough, and when should we think-- What are the drivers you think all this product you talk about, when do you think we'll start seeing growth to reaccelerate again?
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
Yeah. Well, look, obviously, you know, we've guided how we've guided and, you know, this is probably not the best time to make forward-looking remarks. You, you'll just have to wait until, you know, our guide after this present quarter and, you know, how we guide next year and, and beyond. Directionally, for the first time in a fairly long time, RingCentral now has is a true multi-product company, and we have a full quiver of product offerings addressing needs of both employees, so EX, as well as contact center centers and, and customers, so CX. If you look at just the announcements, you know, this past quarter, we've augmented and completed our video portfolio with Hopin's assets.
For those of you who are new to this story, Hopin has been a unicorn, really high flying. They've pioneered the virtual and then hybrid events markets. They have a number of, you know, who's who names amongst their customers and an extremely well-received product. We were just very fortunate to be able to acquire this asset from Hopin. Now we have video meetings, rooms, webinars, and now events and not just virtual events. Obviously, you know, with COVID being no more, purely virtual events are less interesting. Still interesting. Air-airfare is still expensive, by the way, okay? Hybrid events, which is where Hopin has been making, you know, investments prior to us getting involved, and we continue to, to, to double down.
I can tell you that. This comple-- That really does complete our portfolio there. In particular, Microsoft doesn't seem to have an events product, so this would be one good area to differentiate. Look, in general, what we find is if we're in an account and they ex- and the customer gets, you know, exposed to Ring, those customers tend to stay with us, you know? We view all of these are as, you know, as springboards, to, to get into accounts and then, you know, lend and expand from there. That's just on the video side.
We have RingCX, and I already addressed that, where now we have our own native, standalone as well as integrated, contact center product, that, you know, we think will be disruptive, on features, on positioning, on pricing, and on just the value that, that, that it generates, okay? So that's two. There is this whole, AI opportunity. Look, it's interesting, news late coming-late-breaking news here is that Zoom, I guess, changed their terms of service and, you know, is now announcing that they will be training... on, you know, their customers' data. Well, we don't do that. You know, we have other means of, training, training the system.
Training that we are doing and intend to be doing will be on customer's own data to, you know, enhance results for that particular customer, not, no, you know, not intermixing. We think that with that, and the fact that we are moving billions upon, upon billions of minutes, we're serving millions of direct customers. If you think about it, it's tens or hundreds of millions of callers who get to experience RingCentral. The fact that we, given the scale, you know, breadth and depth of our network and partnerships, that we're now able to interweave intelligence into all of those conversations, that's, that's a big step. Look, again, without changing the guide, we think we're well positioned.
We think, you know, the product is, you know, is well differentiated, more so than in, you know, any time in, in the last few years. The team is in, is, is, is energized. You know, Mo has done an outstanding job in keeping the ship steady last few years or last 18 months. Now we have, you know, new blood coming in, with Tarek, and I'm sure he'll be bringing in his own ideas and, his own playbook that, you know, we, we, we think will further enhance. Again, you know, upward and onward, and, you know, hopefully, we won't let anyone down.
Operator (participant)
The next question is from Ryan Koontz with Needham. Please go ahead.
Ryan Koontz (Managing Director and Research Analyst)
Thanks for the question. I wanted to follow up on the AI capabilities. Sounds like you've got a great team there, from DeepAffects. How do you think about the infrastructure requirements for that in-house, versus, you know, building your own versus public cloud partners? Can you talk a little bit about that and how that can affect the model going forward on cash flow, et cetera? Thank you.
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
100%, 100% public cloud. No infrastructure. Very short answer, but-
Operator (participant)
This concludes-
Vlad Shmunis (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)
All public cloud, all, all, all high margin.
Operator (participant)
This concludes our question and answer session, and the conference is also now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.