Twilio - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Twilio second quarter earnings conference call. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Mr. Bryan Vaniman for opening remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

Bryan Vaniman (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Lisa. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Twilio's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Our prepared remarks, earnings press release, investor presentation, SEC filings, and a replay of today's call can be found on our IR website at investors.twilio.com. Joining me today for Q&A are Jeff Lawson, Co-founder and CEO; Elena Donio, President, Twilio Data and Applications; Khozema Shipchandler, President, Twilio Communications; and Aidan Viggiano, Chief Financial Officer. Due to an issue with our external website vendor, the prepared remarks were only recently posted to our IR website. Thus, the team will be reading these live at the outset of the call. As a reminder, some of our commentary today will include non-GAAP financial measures and key metrics.

Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results and further information related to guidance, definitions, and key metrics can be found in our earnings press release and the appendix of our prepared remarks, both of which can be found on our IR website. The information provided and discussed today also will include forward-looking statements, including statements about our future outlook and goals. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that are described in more detail in our most recent periodic reports filed with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and our subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, which are available on our website and at sec.gov. Forward-looking statements represent our beliefs and assumptions only as of the date such statements are made.

Actual results may vary significantly, and we expressly assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. I'd also like to highlight that following our recent reorganization into two business units, beginning this quarter, we will be reporting our revenue and non-GAAP gross profit results in two segments: Twilio Communications and Twilio Data and Applications. With that, I'll hand it over to Jeff to open the prepared remarks.

Jeff Lawson (CEO)

Thank you, Brian. We closed out a strong second quarter, over-delivering on both our revenue and profit targets and generating record quarterly non-GAAP income from operations of $120 million. We begin the second half of the year energized by the progress we've made to date in communications, confident that we've laid the foundations to reaccelerate growth in our data and applications business over time, and optimistic about AI's potential to be an accelerant for Twilio's vision. We remain committed to continuing to deliver against our profitability targets in any financial environment. We've made substantial strides on our path to GAAP profitability and have substantially increased the operating margin profile of our business. In Q2, we reduced GAAP loss from operations by over 50% year-over-year.

We drove a continued reduction in stock-based compensation and delivered $72 million of free cash flow in the quarter. As a result of our strong performance in the first half of the year, we're raising our full-year non-GAAP income from operations guidance to $350 million-$400 million. A business transformation as big as what Twilio is taking on takes time. It requires tactical focus in the short term and a bold vision for what's possible in the long term. Twilio's Act One: Communications, has been a success in terms of scale and efficiency. Our communications business continues to deliver against the objectives we've set, driving efficient growth while we target ongoing operating leverage in the coming years.

Now we're building Act Two, based on our belief that Twilio's data asset, when combined with the power and reach of our communications platform and accelerated by AI, can unlock value for businesses that we are uniquely positioned to deliver through our innovative combination of product offerings. While I don't expect the road ahead to be linear, we've embarked on a massive market opportunity, one that has the ability to transform the status quo for customer engagement. Now to where we are today. In communications, we delivered a strong quarter and are encouraged by continued signs of stabilization across our customer base. The efficiency actions we took have proven to be the right ones, and the business is delivering with a more streamlined operating profile. Following our largest email deal in Q1, the team signed our largest-ever messaging deal in Q2, an exciting milestone for Twilio at this scale.

As a part of our efforts to focus on doing fewer things better, we also recently completed the divestitures of Twilio's IoT and ValueFirst businesses. The usage-based nature of our Communications business makes it sensitive to macro conditions. The team continues to manage towards gross profit growth and driving leverage. Khozema will share where the team is focused on driving further efficiencies while capitalizing on our growth opportunities through the second half of the year and beyond. In Data and Applications, we're continuing to focus on executing against our go-to-market rebuild efforts. We now have sales reps ramped in our most critical areas, and we are optimistic that our bookings will improve towards the end of the year and that revenue growth will reaccelerate during 2024. Elena will share more about our progress here as well.

In June, we previewed our vision for CustomerAI, which we have designed to layer predictive and generative AI capabilities across our platform at every customer touch point. As I shared last quarter, I believe the real value unlocked for artificial intelligence will be pairing large language models with first-party data sets. We believe this is where Twilio is most differentiated through our data asset Segment. Segment's customer profiles will become even more data-rich with AI, accelerating our data and communications flywheel. By training large language models for customers with their data that lives inside Segment, Twilio will help customers enter the AI race multiple steps ahead of their peers. Twilio's ability to drive that level of differentiating customer value proposition has the potential to be a significant tailwind for our business.

We're also excited to be building an ecosystem of partners and integrations, including Google, Databricks, Frame AI, and OpenAI, to power some of CustomerAI's generative capabilities, as well as AWS to power predictive AI use cases within Segment. I can't wait to showcase several of the products that will advance our CustomerAI vision at SIGNAL on August 23rd, just a few weeks away. I'm proud of the team for navigating through a lot of change as we reorient the company over the last several quarters.

This is a team that has executed well against our plans, as evidenced by the speed in which they have adapted to the new structure of the business, driving greater efficiency and having delivered over $220 million of non-GAAP, non-GAAP operating income through the first two quarters of 2023, exceeding our financial targets and building a foundation that sets us up to continue to achieve our goals and capitalize on the tremendous opportunity ahead. I remain confident that we have the right team, the right plan, and solutions to deliver meaningful value to our customers and look forward to sharing our progress today. I'm going to hand it over to Elena.

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

Thanks, Jeff. Twilio Data & Applications delivered $125 million in revenue in Q2, up 12% year-over-year, with a non-GAAP gross margin of 81.7%. During the quarter, we continued to execute against our plan to mature our sales organization, invest in new AI-powered products and capabilities, and expand our pipeline in an environment where buyers are facing increased budget scrutiny. I'm pleased with our progress to date. We have more work ahead. Since last quarter, we've announced several exciting partnerships and new product capabilities that reflect our unique position in the market. In July, IDC ranked Segment as the number one CDP by worldwide market share in 2022. We recently announced a partnership with Databricks to develop a bidirectional integration that will help Segment customers unlock even more value from their data.

Additionally, we're partnering with Google to bring generative AI into Flex and transform how brands personalize their customer interactions. Finally, we unveiled CustomerAI, infusing generative and predictive AI capabilities into Segment, Engage, Flex, and Communications. Our SIGNAL conference is just two weeks away. We plan to showcase new innovation and an exciting roadmap built around our CustomerAI vision. Our software products are resonating in the market, as evidenced by multiple notable customer wins in the quarter. A long-standing communications customer that provides software solutions to health and wellness providers signed a deal in Q2 with Segment CDP to deliver personalized customer experiences, increase trial to paid subscription rates, and drive improved patient outcomes. Follett, a leading provider of education technology, will leverage our entire suite of Segment products, including Connections, Protocols, Audiences, Journeys, and Unify.

We won this competitive deal because of Segment's faster time to value and the ease of use in leveraging Segment's APIs to connect to additional tools throughout their future as a customer of ours. Fortune Media, a multinational media company, was a competitive win due to the flexibility of Segment Connections and the power of our Profile API, allowing Fortune Media to obtain a single view of their end users, furthering the ability to personalize and improve the overall engagement experience. A large financial services company based in Israel committed to a comprehensive contact center solution, leveraging Flex and our Conversations API for our custom-built AI chatbot with seamless agent handoff, allowing them to scale while improving the customer experience.

A Fortune 100 property and casualty insurance provider that we signed an eight-figure deal with in Q3 of 2022, scaled to over 15,000 agents during the quarter by leveraging new capabilities in Flex, allowing for enterprise scale. This Flex Scale initiative, which was launched in limited availability in February, allows Flex to support customers scaling up to 30,000 agents concurrently in a single account. As I mentioned last quarter, we've made good progress with our transition to a dedicated sales model for Segment and Flex, and we've rebuilt a specialized sales motion with highly skilled reps. Training and enablement was a key focus for us for Q2, and we delivered increased in-person training sessions and improved overall sales capacity across the board.

I'm excited that for the first time in over a year, the majority of our Segment sales team has been in seat for at least 9 months. We've seen early signs of traction with these efforts, including a strong increase in pipeline generation within Flex and significant improvement in Segment pipeline conversion from Q1. While I'm encouraged by our progress and some of these early signals, we continue to navigate a challenging macro, which has led to some instances of higher renewal contraction and lower expansion. Competitive terms remain low and stable, but we're seeing instances of greater price sensitivity with some of our small and mid-market size business customers. To address this, we're implementing initiatives designed to give customers, particularly small and mid-sized businesses, more flexibility to start small, deploy quickly, and expand to leverage more Segment capabilities as their business grows.

We feel good about the steps we've made to improve execution, but there's more work ahead to get our Data and Applications performance back to where we believe it should be. Going forward, we'll continue to focus on onboarding and ramping our teams, optimizing our marketing campaigns, and driving more top-of-funnel activity. We'll also focus on giving our customers more accessible entry points to our products and delivering faster time to value. We believe we're laying a solid foundation for long-term growth for the business, and I'm confident that this will lead to improved bookings toward the back end of this year. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Khozema.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Thank you, Elena. Twilio Communications delivered $913 million in revenue in Q2, up 10% year-over-year, with a non-GAAP gross margin of 48.2%. As a team, we continue to focus on driving growth with a more streamlined cost structure and generating meaningful profits. I'm pleased with our team's ability to quickly adapt to the organizational changes we made earlier this year, which is evidenced by the results we delivered in Q2. Once again, Twilio is named a leader in IDC's recent 2023 CPaaS MarketScape Report. Leveraging this leadership position, our go-to-market team has been focused on proactively driving cross-sell opportunities across our broad portfolio of communications products, and we're seeing meaningful traction.

As an example, last quarter, we highlighted our largest email deal in Twilio history, and this quarter, we signed our largest messaging deal ever with the same leading marketing automation company, bringing their total commitment to Twilio to more than $100 million. Additionally, a Fortune 500 entertainment customer that has been using our messaging, account security, and Voice APIs recently chose Twilio to exclusively power a critical customer onboarding initiative, increasing their ongoing messaging spend with Twilio by $1 million a month. We continue to see an exciting runway for efficient growth in our communications business against a $50+ billion TAM, and we believe our innovations in AI can help accelerate market share gains in the coming years. We are bringing AI ML capabilities to life in our core communications products, including the release of Fraud Guard for Verify.

In Q2, we signed an expansion deal with a leading employment company to enhance their multi-channel, high-touch customer relationship model via our messaging, voice, and email APIs. Fraud Guard was an instrumental component of this deal. We also piloted SMS Pumping Protection in the second quarter, which leverages AI to automatically detect and block artificially inflated SMS traffic via our Messaging API. This product prevented meaningful losses on behalf of our pilot customers, and as a result of the successful pilot, we've recently moved it into private beta. We also released Twilio Voice Intelligence into public beta, an AI-powered capability, allowing our customers to extract data insights from their call recordings, unlocking process automation and data-driven decision-making at scale. A global financial services institution and a long-standing programmable voice customer is one of our first major customers to adopt this product.

Leveraging Voice Intelligence has proven to continually increase the quality of their customer service and ensure robust compliance. We're also continuing to focus on our sales-assisted, product-led growth motion, and in Q2, we made great strides in returning to our self-service roots. During the quarter, we rolled out several updates to drive greater pricing transparency. We also implemented a decentralized solutions engineering team, removed layers of leadership and specialist teams, and arranged our international go-to-market team to be centrally managed. We are thoughtfully deploying our go-to-market resources to spend time on our largest existing and prospective customers to drive greater efficiencies and customer wins in the coming quarters. We are encouraged by our growth trajectory in Q2, but still see a choppy macro, which also means we have less visibility in this environment.

We're seeing volume growth across a number of our verticals, but we are still experiencing volume weakness in a few verticals, including social and messaging and crypto. On balance, we remain hopeful about Q3 and beyond, and we believe we have a good setup to continue to drive operating leverage and growth moving forward with a much more efficient go-to-market model. It is worth noting that we have made a commitment to our carrier partners to block unregistered US-bound 10DLC, SMS, and MMS traffic as of August 31st. We expect this will have a modest negative impact on revenue growth in Q3 of up to 100 basis points, and it could yield a potential headwind of 200-300 basis points on growth in Q4.

While the majority of our traffic is already registered, we are actively working with customers who are not yet compliant to get their traffic registered in advance of the deadline. I'm excited by the progress we made during the first half of the year as the team successfully navigated the operational and organizational changes we implemented, together with the challenging external environment. We're executing well, and as volume stabilization continues, we believe we're in a strong position to leverage our scale, large customer base, and leading set of communications products to continue to win new business everywhere we can. While driving further efficiencies, we are confident revenue growth will re-accelerate over time. With that, I'll turn it over to Aidan to discuss the financials.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Thank you, Khozema. We continue to execute on our plans to drive greater efficiencies across our business and establish an accelerated path to profitability. We've made solid progress against our targets, delivering record quarterly non-GAAP income from operations in Q2 and continuing on our path towards GAAP profitability.

While we have more to accomplish, I'm pleased with the traction we've achieved to date and the results our team delivered in the quarter. Second quarter revenue was $1.038 billion, up 10% year-over-year on a reported and organic basis. Communications revenue was $913 million, up 10% year-over-year. Data and Applications revenue was $125 million, up 12% year-over-year. IoT and ValueFirst revenue was $25 million, and is included in our Communications revenue for Q2. Adjusting for these recent divestitures, total Q2 revenue would have been $1.013 billion, up 11% year-over-year. While the market remains dynamic, we saw continued stabilization of volumes across our usage-based products throughout the quarter, which helped drive our revenue beat.

As we referenced during our Q1 earnings call, our Q2 growth rate was negatively impacted by headwinds from customers in the crypto industry. Total Q2 organic revenue growth, excluding crypto customers, was 14% year-over-year. We anticipate a similar headwind in Q3, after which the impacts will start to moderate. Our Q2 Dollar-Based Net Expansion Rate was 103%. This is directly correlated to the overall growth trends we're experiencing across the business. Dollar-Based Net Expansion Rates for the Twilio Communications and Twilio Data & Applications business units were 103% and 99% respectively. Q2 non-GAAP gross profit grew 13% year-over-year, representing a non-GAAP gross margin of 52.2%. This is up 130 basis points year-over-year, and down 10 basis points quarter-over-quarter, driven predominantly by product mix.

Non-GAAP gross margins for our Twilio Communications and Twilio Data & Applications businesses were 48.2% and 81.7% respectively. Q2 non-GAAP income from operations was $120 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 11.6%. This is significantly ahead of expectations, primarily due to the revenue beat and our ongoing efforts to maintain cost discipline across the business. Q2 GAAP loss from operations was $142 million, which includes expenses associated with the February restructuring action, a loss associated with the ValueFirst divestiture, and a real estate impairment charge, all totaling $55 million. Stock-based compensation as a percentage of revenue was 14.7% in Q2, excluding $300,000 of restructuring costs, down 120 basis points quarter-over-quarter.

Lastly, for Q2, we generated $72 million in free cash flow. This is an area of focus for us as we drive greater profitability in the business. We're delivering against the plans we outlined in February. The progress that we demonstrated in Q2 shows that the changes we made in the business are yielding the intended efficiency gains and profitability results. We've also continued to execute against our $1 billion share repurchase program that we commenced in February. We completed the first $500 million of repurchases in early July, ahead of our original six months target. We intend to continue to make progress against the balance of our share repurchase authorization moving forward. While we feel confident about the strength of our competitive positioning and market opportunity, we're continuing to plan and run the business prudently, given the dynamic external environment.

For Q3 guidance, we're initiating a revenue target of $980 million-$990 million, representing year-over-year reported revenue growth of 0%-1%, and 3%-4% on an organic basis. The organic growth rate excludes our ValueFirst and IoT businesses, both of which were recently divested. As mentioned above, these growth rates reflect a few hundred basis point headwind from crypto customers, as well as the potential 100 basis point headwind associated with the 10DLC registration changes that Khozema highlighted. We expect Q3 non-GAAP income from operations of $75 million-$85 million. This takes into account approximately $10 million of expenses for our SIGNAL conference, which will take place this month.

Given our strong first half performance, we're raising our full year non-GAAP income from operations guidance to $350 million-$400 million. We made meaningful progress over the first half of the year, but there's still more work to be done. I'm confident that we are taking the right set of actions that will enable us to continue to drive focused execution and deliver increased value to our shareholders in the quarters to come. With that, I'll hand it back to Jeff for some final remarks before we transition to Q&A.

Jeff Lawson (CEO)

Thank you, Aidan and team. I just wanted to close by reminding folks, if you haven't already heard enough through our prepared remarks, that indeed, our annual Signal conference is coming up on August 23rd. Customer AI, which we previewed in June, it's going to be taking center stage, and I'm really excited to be sharing the product details behind Customer AI at Signal. Customer AI, the set of capabilities that it, it brings, will help bring together our leading communications platform and our leading customer data platform with AI in the middle. I can't wait to see what customers build on top of Customer AI. With that, why don't we turn it over to your questions?

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. Once again, everyone, it is star one, if you have a question today. We'll go first to Meta Marshall, Morgan Stanley.

Meta Marshall (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thanks. Jeff, you may have just alluded to this, that we'll hear more at SIGNAL, but I just wanted to get a sense of, you know, how kind of the increase AI visibility or capability, you know, has changed the roadmap for Twilio, and just, you know, where are customers in the knowledge of how they want to actually approach some of these AI projects? You know, are they to the point where they know what they want to implement, or is it still kind of an education phase? Thanks.

Jeff Lawson (CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question, Meta. You know, I talk to a lot of customers, so what I find is that customers are still very much in a learning mode and planning for the future mode, but not necessarily in a deploying things actively mode. I think it's a really constructive conversation. When I look at CustomerAI and what we can do with artificial intelligence, I think this is the glue that brings together Segment and Twilio Communications into this one customer engagement platform that we've been talking about for quite a while. I think AI is arriving even sooner than we thought in terms of generative AI, to be able to bring a lot of those benefits to the table.

We're already seeing the benefit of a bunch of AI, whether it's Verify with our new Fraud Guard product, in some of our compliance and authentication products. I think this is like, you know, this isn't even, you know, the first inning, this is like still doing warm-up pitches, in terms of the AI game here. We're really excited, though, to bring some new products to market, as well as to really speak to much more detail about the vision for CustomerAI at SIGNAL. I think this is a massive accelerant in our ability to deliver value between data and communications and can become a, a great tailwind for the company.

Meta Marshall (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great, thanks.

Operator (participant)

Next question is Taylor McGinnis.

Taylor McGinnis (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, hi. Thanks so much for taking my question. Maybe just on the Data & Applications part of the story. If I'm trying to bridge, you know, the gross margins were down 250 basis points year-over-year, and then you re- reported an NRR of 99% in that segment. I know you talked about some greater renewal contraction and some price sensitivity, but just as we look ahead, like, do you see, I guess, more risk to the gross margins in that segment? Then just in terms of the top line, when we think about the 12% growth you just reported, that's still, you know, well above, like, the 99% NRR.

Any, you know, direction or color you can just give in terms of, you know, how you see that business progressing throughout the year, and if there could be, you know, a trough in the level of growth that we could see? Thanks so much.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Sure. Why don't I start, Taylor? This is Aidan. I'll go through gross margins, and then I'll hand it over to Elena to talk about DBNE and revenue growth. You're right that TDNA margins were down year-over-year. That's actually primarily driven by accounting, and in particular, accounting for capitalized software. The initial capitalized software balance following the acquisition of Segment was written off, and that's typical post an acquisition. That boosted the gross margins in the 2021 and 2022 period. As product development and innovation has been ongoing post-acquisition, that balance is building back up to a more normalized level. Now that we're kind of three years, or approaching three years post-acquisition, that should start to normalize, but that's really what's driving the year-over-year decline.

The business is still obviously very high margins at 82%, and you know, there are always these pluses and minuses, you know, period to period, but we feel pretty good about that, gross margin rate. We don't see it moving, materially in the future. Why don't I hand it over to Elena with that?

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

Sure. I'll hit a couple comments on growth. Our current growth is really reflective of bookings that have happened in prior quarters, and we've talked over the last couple of quarters about a deceleration in booking performance, which is now coming to bear in the revenue line, which we expect to inflect and turn back up as we see bookings improve this year. We've talked a lot, I think, historically about the work that we're doing to improve that bookings trajectory. Everything from building out, hiring, enabling, and preparing that team to go out and win in the market. And also working to make sure that we're breaking through during a tough economic climate. A couple of other things impacting growth are our turning contraction numbers.

They've been impacting us, a little more than we'd like in the near term. We have some Segment customers that are right-sizing their spend levels, mostly as their own businesses have contracted over time. We see some instances of sensitivity, particularly in the SMB space, where those customers, at times have had some viability issues. All of that taken together, so some contraction in our bookings performance and some increased customer contraction in turn, though not competitive, but is sort of a signal of what's happening in the market. Our growth has been sort of moderated here in the near term. I want to reiterate that we do expect bookings to continue to improve as that team comes online and we break through the tough macro, and that revenue performance will follow into next year.

Taylor McGinnis (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Thanks so much. Congrats on the quarter.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is Mark Murphy, JP Morgan.

Mark Murphy (Managing Director, Software Research)

Thank you very much. Khozema, just given that the messaging business is usage-based, and therefore it is macro-sensitive, as you noted, can you just comment on the stability that you're seeing there? Specifically, I'm just wondering, should we read that as stabilizing around 10% year-over-year growth, or stabilizing around $900 million in quarterly revenue, or are you being something else there? Can you just comment on whether that, that trending continued to improve at all in June and July?

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah. Hey, Mark, good question. Maybe just start off with kind of the first part. What we see overall is that volumes have stabilized, and we're not trying to imply really either of the things that you said, either that, you know, we're gonna turn in, kind of regular 10% revenue growth quarters, nor that...

... you know, we're gonna see the business kind of flatline. I'd say it's probably kind of closer to being in the middle of that somewhere. While we've seen volume stabilize, we haven't necessarily seen them inflect up, but obviously, we're encouraged by the quarter that we just put up in Q2. I'd say across the board, we've generally seen that most of the sectors in which we operate have seen pretty good, revenue and volume growth. There have been a couple downs, which we called out, in the prepared remarks. Notably, we have seen some contracting activity in messaging and, social, meaning social messaging. And, I think that had it not been for some of those items, like we would have seen obviously a pretty decent growth in the quarter beyond where we where we ended up landing.

I think we also called out some of the 10DLC dynamics, you know, that are coming up in Q3, Q4. We think that's kind of a good thing, obviously, for the industry over the long term. That's kind of the way that I would characterize it, is that volumes have stabilized. We're not seeing them inflect quite up yet, but based on our execution against sales targets, we're very encouraged about how that translates to financial results for next-

Mark Murphy (Managing Director, Software Research)

Khozema, super quick follow-up because you mentioned it. Does, does that headwind from blocking unregistered traffic continue at 200-300 basis points into 2024? I'm just trying to understand. It seems like it widens from Q3 to Q4, and then does, does it, presumably kind of moderate a little bit in 2024?

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah, another good question, Mark. The way to think about it is, is that basically the way that we have made the agreement with the carriers is that 8/31 is the deadline. You're just not gonna see the impact in Q3 in the same way that you would in Q4. That's kind of the discrepancy between 100 bips in quarter versus 200-300 bips in the next quarter. I think the other dynamic that you want to think about is, is that the vast majority of this traffic is already registered and compliant. I think as we get into 2024, like, we're not really talking about the impacts, but we think it'll kind of more or less normalize.

Mark Murphy (Managing Director, Software Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Michael Turrin, Wells Fargo Securities.

Michael Turrin (Senior Software Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, great. Thanks. I appreciate you taking the question. If we just look at the revenue upside you delivered in Q2, it's more pronounced than we've seen in a number of quarters. I'm wondering, is most of that just tied to the stabilization commentary you're making on the usage side and results that are coming in ahead of what you're expecting? Just if there's any commentary you can add around if those usage trends at all changed as the quarter progressed, meaning, did we start at a lower point and potentially build back up, or is that stabilization holding somewhat consistent? I think that, that color is just useful as we all just try to parse through what's ahead here. Thanks.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks, Michael. To answer your first question in terms of, you know, the, the, the larger piece, we came in about 5% ahead of the midpoint of the guidance range. That is, as you say, it's largely as a result of the volume stabilization that we noted. We saw that-- we called it out in May. We saw that volume stabilization continue through the rest of the quarter, and that's really what drove the outperformance. We're pretty encouraged by that. I mean, the market's still very dynamic. It's still, you know, usage-based business for, for the vast majority of our business. We are susceptible to changes, and we'll continue to plan prudently as a result.

In terms of the volume trends, what I would say is relatively constant throughout the second quarter, but a different trend than we saw kind of coming out of 2022 and in the early stages of Q1. We felt pretty encouraged by the fact that it was relatively constant across the months in the second quarter.

Michael Turrin (Senior Software Equity Research Analyst)

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Ryan Koontz, Needham & Company.

Ryan Koontz (Senior Analyst)

Thanks for the question. I have one for Khozema on the communication side. As you think about kind of the journey into more and more automation, can you give us an idea kind of where you are today, in terms of automation, and where you expect to be, say, one year from now in terms of, you know, deal screening, onboarding, delivery, execution? Just any, any color on that journey be helpful. Thank you.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah. Hey, Ryan, I just want to clarify one part of your question. Do you mean automation vis-à-vis the kind of description that we gave back to kind of our product-led growth, kind of self-serve routes?

Ryan Koontz (Senior Analyst)

Yes, I do. Thank you.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Okay. Yeah, so I, I would say, you know, for the most part, like we obviously took a, a number of like, really significant headcount actions, right? In the, the latter part of 2022, and then the beginning part of 2023. The way that we think about the business going forward is, is that we continue to see, like, a lot of growth potential for the business in the future, and we want to basically, you know, kind of stabilize our costs. I think the way to do that is largely going to be through automation. You know, Jeff talked about AI and, and the promise of a lot of the things that we could do from a customer perspective.

I also think there's a lot of those things that we could do, internal to the company as well in terms of aiding with some of that automation. There are a number of areas, you know, that we're starting to explore, in currently, and I think that, that could be really interesting. You know, for the most part, I would say that we've seen, really good profit generation, in terms of the business. I think we continue to see additional profit generation as we move forward, and I think in large part, that's going to come through some combination of additional growth and then just being able to hold the cost line and probably generate some productivity in the cost line. The bulk of that will largely come through, automation or automation efforts.

Ryan Koontz (Senior Analyst)

Sure. That's helpful. I just. A quick clarification. Would you say maybe you're halfway there in terms of what you want to see operationally, or for the most part, you're there?

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

I wouldn't say we're there. I mean, I, I'd be a little bit careful about qualifying exactly where we are on the journey. Personally, I mean, I do see a lot more opportunity for us to drive volume leverage, and so I think we'll just kind of play through and, and see where we go into next year.

Rishi Jaluria (Managing Director)

Sure. Thanks. Thanks much.

Operator (participant)

Kash Rangan, Goldman Sachs, has the next question.

Kash Rangan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thank you very much. Curious to get your take on how you characterize the outlook for potentially accelerating bookings growth and how that might translate to better revenue growth rate for 2024. If you can talk about the demand signals that you're seeing at the front end of the pipeline from an external perspective, and some of the things that you're, you see better from an internal perspective, of course, with the realignment of the organization, you have better footing with your internal. What are, what are the things that, that encourage you as you see the demand signals outside in conjunction with some of the operational improvements that you've made internally, that make you feel better about second half bookings and potentially better growth in the years ahead? Thank you so much.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Hey, Kash, just so we're clear, was that a question for one of the business units in particular?

Kash Rangan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I mean, you could take it, you could take it for both units or in aggregate. Thank you, Elena. Appreciate it.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Okay, great. Yeah, sure. Why don't I hand it to Khozema and Elena, they can cover their, their respective business units.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah, I would say, you know, Kash, like, the, the way that, you know, kind of I answered the prior question, like, we've done a lot, obviously, to make the, the sales motion a lot more efficient and the communications part of the business. We obviously took some material headcount actions. I, I think on balance, like we're seeing really, really strong profitability, which is what we committed to investors. I think we're at least encouraged by some of the growth that we've seen, particularly in Q2. I think the, the, the signal in particular that we're watching inside the company, to kind of more precisely answer your question, is that we are hitting our sales targets. Sales targets obviously take some time to show up into revenue.

Based on our ability to continue hitting sales targets, and based on what we've seen, I'm, I'm certainly more encouraged that, that, that translates into financial results into 2024, and I think ends up being a pretty good setup. You know, as Aidan alluded to, like, it's, obviously a kind of a choppy environment and, you know, this being kind of the usage side of the business, like, we're gonna plan prudently in terms of that. Certainly not gonna add any cost back into the business, but, we feel pretty good about the setup based on the way that we've hit sales targets, the way that we've stabilized the team, the way that we have generated profit through a pretty tough external environment. I'd say that's a, that's a pretty good setup going forward.

With that, why don't I turn it over to Elena to talk about TDA?

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

Sure. Let me hit a couple of high points, and then if there's Your, your question had a lot of dimension to it, so if we miss anything, please, please do feel free to circle back. You know, we're really focused on the data and application side of the business, on the inputs, the things we can control. We're focused on making sure that we've got the right folks in seat, the right process, the right methodology, and the right enablement, and I feel really good about our progress there. We are starting to see some improvement in the pipeline as well. Top of funnel continues to be really strong, so we think there's a robust demand environment out there. We are starting to see some improvement in things like conversion through the pipe. Lots of work left to do.

It's not exactly where we'd like it. Again, I've, I've talked in historical quarters about this being in a bit of a rebuild, and we feel good about our progress against that rebuild mode. Again, we'll see bookings continue to improve this year, which will, will translate into revenue next year in 2024. I think, you know, there's reason to be optimistic here. There's also a, a long road ahead as we continue to, to work toward that improvement in net new business acquisition. At the same time, working on making sure we're managing through churn and contraction, and that we've got a lot of reasons for customers to embrace us, deploy quickly, and stay a good long time. We're doubling down on our efforts there as well.

Kash Rangan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Would you consider hiring to meet the, what could be improving demand environment as you go into 2024?

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

Personally, in, in TDA, I'll let Khozema talk about how he feels about that question from a Comms first effective. We have just gotten to the point where our reps are largely onboarded and ramped. I really want to see those productivity metrics getting up to where we'd like them before we layer on-

Kash Rangan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Mm-hmm

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

... the next degree of headcount, add teams, expand to new markets, and things like that.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah, I basically agree with Elena on the communication side. I think we're, we're in a spot where we like the way that we've sized the team, the efficiencies that we've gotten out of it. As I alluded to earlier, I still think there's additional volume leverage to be, to be gained there. If we saw a really accelerated market opportunity, it's not off the table, but it's not in the plan.

Kash Rangan (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is Nick Altmann, Scotiabank.

Nick Altmann (Equity Research Analyst)

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Maybe one for, for Jeff or Elena. You guys had called out this $100 million customer, which is a pretty monumental deal, and a big theme this year is sort of around this notion of vendor consolidation. Historically, some of your larger customers had maybe multi-source CPaaS vendors. So I wanted to ask, you know, two parts around this specific deal. One, was this sort of a deal where, you know, the customer sort of consolidated CPaaS relationships and kind of went all in on Twilio? Then maybe as a second part, is this sort of a strategy that you're leaning into this year? Can you just provide maybe any color, around, you know, what's the sort of level of customer appetite for, for these sort of consolidation deals?

I think that'd be really interesting. Thanks.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah. Hey, Nick, this is Khozema. It, it was actually a Communications customer, so I'll answer your question. I, I, I think the short answer to the first question is yes. It was an opportunity for us to help one of our really important customers consolidate their spend all onto Twilio across a number of channels. I think what was particularly a differentiating feature of this deal was our ability to kind of optimize traffic patterns. Like, I think that's a really important aspect of the way that some of these, like, really sophisticated customers want to do business. They want to make sure that the right signals are reaching their customers at the right times, and, and that effectively ends up being like a, a, a kind of prioritization and queuing process that we're really good at.

I think in terms of strategy going forward, we're certainly looking at any opportunity where we have the ability to consolidate, spend, and, and constantly take share. I think we do have a lot of those opportunities, across the board, frankly, whether it's with different customer segments or even internationally. So I think that is gonna be a part of the strategy that you'll see from us going forward. But let me add one other point, actually, but not at the risk of price. Like, I think that's one thing that we've done a pretty good job of holding firm, is making sure that we don't take price downs, making sure that we show discipline in terms of gross profit, so that we're always hurdling, so that we generate op profit.

I think you can kind of see that in, in our gross margins, and I think you'd, you'd find that we're generally priced higher than the competition.

Nick Altmann (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, guys.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Thanks, Nick.

Operator (participant)

We will now hear from Derrick Wood, TD Cowen.

Derrick Wood (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Khozema. I'll stay with you and maybe kind of on that last topic around gross margins. Just wondering if kind of within your restructuring efforts, if you've made any notable changes around kind of incentives for sales teams or other business leaders to focus on driving gross margins? I guess whether you have or not, are there levers you can lean on to help drive more improvements in gross margins in the near to medium term?

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Yeah. Hey, Derek. The way that we've reoriented our sales comp is basically to pay on a gross profit basis. Now, there's one caveat to that. We're only gonna take a gross profit deal if we can see that it hurdles and generates op profit. So we're clearly not gonna take margin that ends up resulting ultimately in a bottom line loss. That is an important change that we made in the compensation plan for our reps. I wouldn't say necessarily that we're biasing the business, especially the communication side, to necessarily generate higher gross margin. I think we do have opportunities in terms of cross-sell, for example. I think there's a lot that we can do, for example, in terms of selling more voice or email as just as examples into messaging customers.

We'll continue with that as, as part of the strategy. I think the idea though, really is, you know, ensuring that the unit economics of every one of these customers is solid, that those of the business overall are solid. As long as we can go and efficiently get incremental gross profit dollars, we'll, we'll do that in communications.

Derrick Wood (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Thanks, Derrick.

Operator (participant)

Up next is Matt Stotler, William Blair.

Matt Stotler (Partner, Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. This is Alex on for Matt. Thanks for taking our questions. One for me on the international strategy. With the new SaaS first strategy, what, if any, implications are there for the international business, and how do you expect international revenue to trend as a % of total revenue going forward?

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

Can you explain what you mean by SaaS first?

Matt Stotler (Partner, Research Analyst)

Yeah, just the software, the split of the business and the software-focused strategy.

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

I, I'll take a crack at this one, and then if anyone else wants to jump in, they can. It's late at time. I'll speak first to our Data and Applications business. We operate in a number of international markets. We haven't seen market change in the balance between US versus international bookings growth, for example. We're, we're, you know, committed to the markets that we serve. We're not necessarily looking to open up into new markets in the very near term. We think there's an enormous TAM right here in our core markets. The good news is that there's demand across all of our international markets. We see improvement in performance across sort of each of those, each of those theaters.

We're able to service those markets as well, from a software perspective, in terms of sort of, everything from, functionality and capability to our, standards on, privacy and, and data protection and things like that. I don't know, Ko, or anyone else, if you have anything else to add?

Khozema Shipchandler (President, Twilio Communications)

I'll just add on the communications side. I mean, I think we continue to see a lot of opportunity, internationally. I mean, that's historically been, a set of markets that we've been under-penetrated in from a communications, perspective. So there's a lot of additional growth. I think what we found is, is that a lot of the customers in those markets are actually not being serviced by anybody. So I think there's a lot of open field running there. In addition to that, as you may remember from our Investor Day last year, the unit economics are actually quite good as well internationally. So we think there's a lot of, gross profit dollars out there to go and consume. So I think similar to Elena, like, it's not like we have to open up necessarily in 10 more markets.

We want to be very cost efficient about the way that we do it, but we do see a lot of opportunity out there, and we're gonna continue winning it.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Maybe I'll just add one more thing. This is Aidan. If you're, if you're asking because you've seen the international % of revenue come down slightly, quarter-over-quarter, you know, that's just really largely a function of, you know, the crypto, you know, dynamics that we've been talking about. A lot of that, volume is concentrated internationally, and so I wouldn't read too much into it if that's where you were going.

Matt Stotler (Partner, Research Analyst)

Got it. Perfect. Thanks, guys. That's helpful.

Operator (participant)

Next question is Alex Zukin, Wolfe Research.

Alex Zukin (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I, I guess maybe, Jeff or Elena, for you, you, you called out re-acceleration in revenue for next year. Is, is that attributable to-- First of all, is that, is that aspirational? Is that, you know, a comment on a particular quarter that you see that happening next year? If we look at the data and apps business, like, do you see-- Is that business gonna trough in Q4, given the bookings commentary from before, and, and you see that re-accelerating in, in the early part of next year? How much, if any, would you expect kinda AI driven revenue or products or initiatives to kinda contribute to that next year? I have a quick follow-up.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Let me take a, let me take a, the first point here, and then if Jeff wants to add anything on the AI side, he can do that as well. We're not committing to specific timelines on the real re-acceleration in terms of when in 2024 it happens. What I will say, oh, and, and growth is always aspirational. We, we definitely are looking forward to that happening. I'll say that it's, it will be reflective of bookings improvements that we're gonna see this year. That is a big-- It's a function of the rebuild that we've been undergoing and the addition of our ramped reps and the coming up the curve with those individuals that are newly in seat.

The bookings are happening now, happening towards the back half of this year as well. That will translate in 2024. Hope that's clear, but we're not doing a, a quarter-by-quarter review.

Jeff Lawson (CEO)

Then I can speak to the AI part of your question. Look, Segment is the centerpiece of our CustomerAI strategy, because that is where the proprietary data sets of our customers live. It is the sum of what they know about their customer, and therefore, how they're gonna unlock the value in that data to go personalize, like, every touch point they have with their customers. Now with generative AI, you can do it so much more efficiently and so much more in an individualized basis, that it opens up tremendous new opportunities. That said, I think that AI as a monetization, like, vector for the company, I think it follows, right? I think that's probably what you're seeing in, you know, most companies out there, which is AI is in its earliest stages now.

Buyers are interested in hearing what we have to say. They are interested in the products we're bringing to market. Obviously, those products are brand new because Generative AI really just started hitting a stride of utility in the last six months, right? No one's got mature products yet, really, to speak of. That speaks to where the whole market is in this journey. From my conversations that I have had with customers, they're liking our vision, and I think that can turn into sales of Segment as companies start to get their data ready for what the coming AI future has for them. That will be a key part of our selling value proposition going forward.

Alex Zukin (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Got it. Got it. Aidan Viggiano, maybe for you, just on free cash flow, you guys are doing a great job on the operating income front. You raised that number for the year. How should we think about that op income to free cash flow conversion, both this year, but realizing this year has some one-time issues, maybe even more so next year? That would be super helpful.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Alex. It's, it's Aidan. As it relates to free cash flow, maybe I should talk a little bit about, you know, the performance in the quarter. We, we generated $72 million in the quarter. That number actually included $30 million of restructuring payments. Adjusting for those non-recurring payments, we generated about $100 million, and that's a record free cash flow quarter for us. Really proud of, of really kind of posting those results. It's really a function of, like, when you look at the drivers, it's really the higher profitability, both the non-GAAP line as well as lower restructuring costs. As you think about going forward, we're not gonna put out any new kind of framework in terms of how to think about it.

I, I will just say there's always some level of timing and variability in cash flow, so, so I wouldn't expect that performance is necessarily linear. You know, it's a huge focus for us. We'll continue to look for avenues to both drive efficiency out from a cost perspective, as well as grow the free cash flow profile of the business over time.

Alex Zukin (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you. I don't know why I said Tim. Thanks, Aidan.

Aidan Viggiano (CFO)

No, no worries, Alex.

Operator (participant)

The next question is Philip Leydig, Mizuho.

Siti Panigrahi (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, this is actually Siti Panigrahi from Mizuho. My question is, Elena, when you look at Data & Applications, you have products scattered to different kind of LOBs. You have Flex more on customer support and Engage more on marketing. Are you seeing any demand, specifically in a particular segment? Are you more optimistic about any particular segment? And as you're executing on your go-to market, how are you rebuilding your sales folks? Is it more one, you know, same sales guys targeting all these products, or are you building different verticals? Any color would be helpful.

Elena Donio (Executive and Board Member)

Sure. We, when I, let me just start with like a little bit of the history. We started talking, I think, four or five quarters ago, about the need to sort of rebuild the sales team in a specialized manner. That meant having individuals that were very, very familiar with each customer and who they are and what they need from us, what they expect in the, the software offerings, how they think, how they buy. We have a team specific to Segment in the CDP space. That organization focuses predominantly on sort of the data buyer, which is oftentimes part of a product organization in a, in a consumer space. And, the marketer, and that's really sort of part and parcel of who the Segment buyer is. In, in Flex, we're talking about a contact center buyer.

More and more, we're excited about how these two teams come together in a customer experience umbrella, and how Segment is really positioned so well to operate within the context of Flex, to provide, for example, a world where an agent has access to the latest and greatest, customer information as they're doing their job. While we have teams that are focused on those specific buyers, we think underneath the hood, where everything comes together in front of that end user, they're both really, really useful. We spent time over the last couple quarters, making sure that they're interoperable and connected. And we're starting to see that pay off in terms of, of customer interest and demand in that capability. I think you started off a little bit with what that rebuild has looked like.

Again, we started this a number of quarters ago, essentially going out to the market and rehiring from these specialized sales organizations that we just, for example, in Segment, crossed the threshold where the majority of those reps are now, what we consider ramp sales equivalent. Are sort of beginning to operate at full quota, full quota potential. Again, this is really the key to making sure that we re-accelerate bookings, as we'll see here in the back half of the year, and again, that'll translate into revenue next year.

Rishi Jaluria (Managing Director)

Thanks for the color.

Operator (participant)

Our final question today comes from Rishi Jaluria, RBC Capital Markets.

Rishi Jaluria (Managing Director)

Oh, wonderful. Thanks so much for, for squeezing me in. I wanted to go back to the, the, the topic of, of AI and your opportunity there. Maybe can you drill a little bit into how you feel you're more differentiated versus your peers to really capitalize on, on the AI opportunity, but both when it comes to kind of the pure play communications providers, as well as o- others within kind of the broader CDP landscape when, when it comes to Segment? Thanks.

Jeff Lawson (CEO)

You know, look, I just think the combination of communications, workloads, and the data asset of the CDP is the, is the killer combination, right? When I think about communications alone, right, communications need to get smarter. Most of our customers do not wanna just send out more communications. They wanna send more effective communications. As we move the company from a company that sends, you know, communications, to one that sends more effective communications, that requires data, and that requires personalization under understanding of who the recipient of all those messages are. Now, you go look at Segment, and Segment is the, you know, leading CDP in the market per IDC. It has amazing real-time technical capabilities. It has ETL, reverse ETL, profile capabilities. It is really, you know, the composable CDP. Every part of that composability is right there in the Segment product.

We can address a great many parts of that market, while com- while customers are building up their data assets that are gonna power, AI. We're bringing together these, these two parts of the company in a way that is extraordinarily differentiated. I mean, I don't see any other communications company with a CDP, and I think to go forward to build value as a company, communications has to have data, and it has to be unlocking better communications, not just more communications. On the flip side, in the CDP, we have the most advanced CDP on the market. I think on both sides, we have a very differentiated product, then you bring them together, and nobody has that capability.

Rishi Jaluria (Managing Director)

All right, wonderful. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Everyone, that does conclude today's Twilio earnings call. We would like to thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.