VTEX - Q3 2023

Transcript

Julia Vater Fernández (Investor Relations Director)

Hello everyone, and welcome to the VTEX Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. I'm Julia Vater Fernández, Investor Relations Director for VTEX. Our senior executives presenting today are Geraldo Thomaz Júnior, founder and Co-CEO, and Ricardo Camatta Sodré, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Mariano Gomide de Faria, founder and Co-CEO, and André Spolidoro, Chief Strategy Officer, will be available during today's Q&A session. I would like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements relating to such matters as continued growth prospects for the company, industry trends, and product and technology initiatives. These statements are based on currently available information and our current assumptions, expectations, and projections about future events. While we believe that our assumptions, expectations, and projections are reasonable in view of the currently available information, we caution not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Certain risks and uncertainties are described on the Risk Factors and Forward-Looking Statements sections of VTEX's Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2022, and other VTEX filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our investor relations website. Finally, I would like to remind you that during the course of this call, first call, we might discuss some non-GAAP measures. Our reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our third quarter 2023 earnings press release, available on our investor relations website. Now, let me turn the call over to Geraldo. Geraldo, the floor is yours.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz Júnior (Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

Thank you, Julia. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining our third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I'm pleased to announce that VTEX delivered another quarter of strong results. We achieved a 35% year-over-year growth in GMV, driven by the resilience of the same-store sales of our existing customers and the successful go-lives of new stores. On the latter, despite the ongoing uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, we're pleased to continue to see a stabilization of the ramp-up periods and the implementation times, which, as mentioned before, also contributes to our robust performance. Turning briefly to our financial results, as Ricardo will delve into it later, I'd like to highlight two points. First, we've surpassed our revenue projections, reaching $50.6 million this quarter and a 31% growth year-over-year.

Second, we achieved our breakeven target from a non-GAAP operating income and free cash flow basis, one quarter before our expectation. This is a clear testament of our focus on growth and the power and scalability of our team. Efficiency is ingrained in our DNA, amplifying our results and bringing us closer to becoming the backbone for commerce. Additionally, we delivered a 36% year-over-year gross profit growth and held expenses steady while accelerating our growth under uncertain macro, demonstrating our business model's resiliency and operational leverage. Now, let's go into some operational updates. In Q3, we added several new customers that migrated from other platforms, including Naldo in Argentina, Havan, Preçolândia, and PicPay B2B in Brazil, Handwheel in Canada, ICB Food in Chile, Copidrogas, Grupo Brica, Eurosuper, and Martelsa in Colombia, V&A and Farmacias del Ahorro in Mexico, and Beautycounter and Pierce Manufacturing B2B in the U.S.

In addition to attracting new customers, we also focused on strengthening our relationship with existing customers, actively supporting their growth initiatives. During the third quarter, several premier brands and retailers chose to expand their operations with us by opening new online stores and further integrating with us. This includes Calvin Klein, who added a new store in Ecuador, now operating in 9 countries in Latin America. Pharmaprix, who added its Simplicity brand in Argentina, now operating with 3 stores in Argentina and 1 in Uruguay. Kibon, who added a store in Panama, now operating in 6 countries in Latin America. And Whirlpool, who added its KitchenAid brand in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, the UK, and Italy, now operating in Latin America, EMEA, and APAC.

We're excited to provide an update on one of the new customers wins we shared during our Investor Day. Beautycounter, a Carlyle portfolio company, successfully migrated from its legacy platform to VTEX. This migration enabled the consolidation of all their channels into a unified commerce experience. VTEX, globally recognized as the number one unified commerce platform provider by Gartner, has demonstrated its ability to launch large and complex projects in the U.S. This accomplishment represents a significant milestone in our global expansion journey, and we are committed to a partnership with Beautycounter.

Furthermore, in addition to the new customer acquisition and the existing customers expanding their operation with us, two significant events this quarter underscore our progress in solidifying our position as the global enterprise digital commerce platform, where forward-thinking CEOs and CIOs is smart enough their investments. The success of our VTEX Connect LATAM in Mexico, and our inclusion in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for digital commerce.

We saw remarkable growth at our second VTEX Connect LATAM in Mexico, expanding from over 3,000 to over 7,000 participants. The impressive success of VTEX Connect in Mexico demonstrate our opportunity to continue expanding Latin, especially in Mexico. The event featured 60+ global e-commerce experts and success stories from VTEX customers like Accor, Dior, Levi's, Reebok, and Samsung. We also introduced AI-AR-driven improvements focused on customer experience and operational efficiency, such as AI in live shopping, which automates product recognition during live streams, eliminating the need for a production team. AI for the intelligent search to personalize customer experience and boost conversion rates. And AI in pick and pack, which enhances fulfillment efficiency, adapting to demand fluctuations for precise resource allocation.

On the industry experts recognition front, VTEX was named a visionary in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce for its ability to execute and completeness of vision. VTEX was also ranked second for the staff following use cases: B2C digital commerce, B2C and B2B digital commerce on the same platform, and complex business models. Additionally, VTEX was the top-rated digital commerce platform by Gartner Peer Insights over the last 12 months. We are both humble and excited about the recognition, underscoring our commitment to helping enterprises achieve agility and cost-effectiveness by choosing the best components for their business. Continue our commitment to fostering our ecosystem and offering our customers the most comprehensive solutions. We're thrilled to announce two partnerships that have materialized this quarter. First, we're partnering with Cielo, a leading name in payment solutions in Brazil.

Their expertise in accrediting establishments for card payments and Pix will expand our payment offerings, ensuring our customers access robust solutions in the Brazilian market. Additionally, we've joined forces with PayU, extending our reach across Latin America. These partnerships cover Brazil and all Latin countries, offering a comprehensive payment ecosystem with diverse options, including credit card and alternative methods like PSE in Colombia. Our mission is to create a seamless payment experience to our customers in the region. These partnerships showcase our dedication to delivering top-tier solutions and enhancing the customer experience. Now, before leaving the stage to Ricardo, I would like to share a couple of success cases from our customers that demonstrates the tangible impact and potential of our platform. At the core of our organization, our customers are in the spotlight, and their success will always remain our focus.

The Foschini Group, a leading South African retailer with a diverse portfolio of 26 brands, successfully transformed its commerce landscape by partnering with VTEX. They launched the innovative Bash Marketplace, consolidating 18 brands into one, while retaining the flexibility for each brand to customize its marketplace. Since the platform launch, there has been a remarkable 72% increase in multi-brand orders, showcasing the effectiveness of the marketplace and a surge in app sales, accounting for over 35% of total online sales within just two months. Its conversion rate surpasses both mobile web and desktop by over 200% and 80%, respectively. Furthermore, TFG achieved a remarkable 33% improvement in page load speed, contributing to enhanced user experience. Sorte Online, a leading Brazilian lottery intermediation platform, chose the VTEX headless solution to meet their unique business needs.

This decision aimed to enhance their go-to-market strategy, focused on flexibility, experimentation, and improved availability. After migrating to VTEX, Sorte Online saw significant conversion rate improvements across multiple channels, thanks to reduced latency and VTEX's scalability, enabling seamless management of high traffic without downtime. A U.S. aftermarket vendor partnered with VTEX to enhance their B2B online experience, improve customer interactions, and optimize product tracking. By seamlessly integrating VTEX with their ERP system, they achieved efficient data exchanges and utilized a unified B2B commerce platform, enhancing both sales operations and buying experiences. VTEX data redundancy and an extensive product catalog allowed customized dealer experience without extensive development. This adaptability, combined with VTEX platform flexibility, underscores the transformative power of modern digital commerce in delivering seamless and enhanced customer experiences.

Naldo, an Argentine retail brand, specializes in appliances, electronics, and beauty products, with a presence in 14 states and over 70 physical stores, chose the VTEX platform to manage its extensive range of SKUs in the marketplace efficiently. Naldo has implemented payment and promotion features and logistics integrations with third parties, enhancing their ability to seize sales opportunity and improve their customer experience. Farmaconde, a major Brazilian chain with numerous physical stores, partnered with VTEX to implement omnichannel capabilities. They integrated over 160 of their stores with VTEX, harnessing regionalization, intelligent search, and third-party solutions from the VTEX ecosystem, like Mercado Pago and Google Analytics, for enhanced customer experiences and business performance monitoring. Carioca, a premium men's fashion brand in Brazil with 11 physical stores and 200 points of sales, chose VTEX composable architecture for their digital commerce platform.

They implemented features like the wishlist using VTEX IO to enhance the customer experience. Carioca also leverages VTEX Shipping Network for efficient delivery and integrate with Google Analytics for user-friendly sales data visualization. This integrated solution significantly improved performance, results in a 7x increase in order conversion rate, a 25% boost in average order value, and a 60% reduction in shipping costs. A global clothing and accessories retailer operating in 39 countries through 11 online stores and 10 marketplaces recently adopted an innovative approach. They integrated VTEX Headless CMS with an app that directly retrieves content and seamlessly integrates into the store framework using native components. This implementation empowers them to customize and oversee web page content effortlessly, as they can easily define structure and reposition sections. They've improved their performance by reducing errors and safeguarding against content loss.

Pague Menos, a leading player in pharmaceutical retail, swiftly integrated Extra Farma into their digital ecosystem using VTEX IO store framework. In just 29 days, this strategy integration led to remarkable results: a substantial increase in sales, a 200% boost in conversion rate, significant audience growth, and reduced operational costs, enhancing the financial efficiency of the Pague Menos group while uniting both stores seamlessly. This quarter, we achieved significant success with our live shopping solution. Notably, Patbo, in collaboration with VTEX, hosted a live shopping event during New York Fashion Week, becoming the sole Brazilian brand to do so. The results were outstanding, with Patbo experiencing a remarkable 300% sales increase and a 125% boost in orders, and a remarkable 79% rise in average order value.

This event underscores the growing prominence and effectiveness of live shopping as a dynamic sales channel. Additionally, at VTEX Connect LATAM, live shopping took center stage, hosting seven 40-minute events from customers such as KitchenAid, which experienced a remarkable 152% sales spike in their event. In Argentina, Taustore did an event at the most relevant night TV show, attracting over 75,000 viewers and achieving a 700% sales boost compared to the previous month. To conclude this session, I would like to express my gratitude to our 1,276 VTEX employees dedicated to making our declared future a reality, and to our customers, partners, and investors. I will now hand the call over to Ricardo to discuss our financial performance for the quarter.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Thank you, Geraldo. Hi, everyone. I'm pleased to share VTEX Q3 2023 financial results with you. In the nine months of 2023, our performance was consistently strong, surpassing expectations and resulting in positive free cash flow one quarter ahead of schedule. Our Q3 GMV grew by 35% in US dollars, and 28% on an FX neutral basis, with Q3 revenue reaching $50.6 million, a 31% year-over-year growth in US dollars, and 25% on an FX neutral basis. Our existing customers remain resilient, and new customers exceeded our expectations with faster than expected go lives. In Q3 2023, our subscription revenue hit $47.5 million, marking a solid 30% year-over-year growth in US dollars, while services revenue climbed from $2.2 million-$3.1 million, largely due to new project implementations.

In Q3 2023, our subscription gross margin continued to increase. Non-GAAP subscription gross profit rose to $36.2 million from $26.9 million in Q3 2022, a 35% increase year-over-year, with the margin at 76.2%, compared to 75.3% last quarter and 73.8% in Q3 2022. The 247 BPS year-over-year margin increase reflects our commitment towards efficiency and customer success. The margin increase resulted mainly from optimizing our hosting costs and architecture. We are excited about the progress and remain dedicated to delivering further margin improvements in the future.

Now, our overall non-GAAP gross profit rose to $35.8 million from $26.3 million in Q3 2022, a 36% increase year-over-year, with the margin at 70.7%, compared to 68.0% in Q3 2022. This achievement was driven by hosting improvements that I just mentioned, and an improvement in our services gross margin in the quarter, as we started dialing back on the hyper care mode for Q new customers in U.S. and Europe. In Q3 2023, our non-GAAP total operating expenses stood at $34.1 million, remaining steady compared to our previous quarter.

Therefore, our expenses as a percentage of our revenues significantly improved from 83% in Q3 2022, and 71% last quarter, to 67% in Q3 2023, demonstrating our commitment towards efficient expense management, while also accelerating our business under uncertain macro conditions. In Q3 2023, we achieved positive non-GAAP operating income, a quarter earlier than expected. Our Q3 2023 non-GAAP operating margin reached a positive 3.4%, compared to a negative 15.5% margin on the same quarter last year. The significant 19 percentage points year-over-year increase was exclusively driven by revenue growth and gross margin improvements, as non-GAAP total operating expenses actually slightly increased year-over-year. Furthermore, we saw a solid 6.1 percentage points improvement in our non-GAAP operating income margin on a quarter-over-quarter basis.

These trends underscore our commitment to profitable growth, subscription cost efficiencies, and stable expenses aligned with market demand and sales efficiency, demonstrating our dedication to strengthening financial performance while sustaining high revenue growth. We are delighted to announce that for the three months ending on September 30, 2023, VTEX achieved a positive free cash flow of $2.7 million. This is a significant improvement from the negative free cash flow of $3.3 million reported in the previous quarter and the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Our positive non-GAAP operating income and improvements in our payables and collection efforts primarily drove this free cash flow result. Before I move to the outlook for Q3 and fiscal year 2023, I would like to update you on our share repurchase program.

As of September 30, 2023, the remaining balance under the current authorization was nearly $10.1 million. We've purchased 1.9 million shares at an average price of $5.533 per share. Considering the previous plan that concluded on August 8, 2023, the total repurchased shares amounted to 9.0 million shares, with an average price of $4.16 per share and a total cost of $37.9 million. As we look to the future, we are thrilled about VTEX's remarkable adaptability and resilience. Regardless of market conditions and their inherent volatility, VTEX has consistently surpassed market expectations while delivering strong long-term performance metrics. For the fourth quarter of 2023, we are currently targeting revenue in the $55.0 million-$57.0 million range.

Implying a year-over-year growth of 22% on a FX neutral basis in the middle of the range. For the full year 2023, considering the current performance of the company, we are increasing the bottom and the top of the range, now targeting the full year to end between 22%-23% on FX neutral year-over-year basis, implying a range of $196 million-$198 million based on October average FX rate, and assuming a devaluation of Argentina's currency aligned with the market futures rates. As we continue executing our profitable growth plans, we anticipate year-over-year improvements in the non-GAAP operating income margin quarter 2023. We hold strong confidence in VTEX's distinctive value proposition, centered on empowering our customers to achieve profitability and sustainable growth by reducing their total cost of ownership and simplifying their commerce infrastructure.

Our commitment to incorporating physical stores as the centerpiece of the omni-channel experience, position us to provide the rapid growth and profitability our customers aspire to. We'll continue to work towards building outstanding success cases with our customers, offering innovative solutions and seizing opportunities to ensure long-lasting success for our dedicated employees, valued customers, innovative partners, and long-term investors. The future is filled with exciting prospects that we are eager to pursue. With that, let's open it up for questions now. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

If you would like to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Marcelo Santos with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Marcelo Santos (Senior Equity Research Analyst and LatAm TMT)

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity to make questions. I have two. The first is, if you could comment, what were the main countries that posted a positive surprise and allowed the VTEX to beat the original guidance? So just wanted to see where the surprise came more from. And the second question is more about the service margin. It was negative, but it was one of the, let's say, lowest negative margin that you ever print, at least that we have history as a reported company, as a listed company. What's the dynamics in there? Why is it so low now? And is there some change in the way you do the services? So if you could comment on that, I would be glad. Thank you.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Hi, Marcelo. Thanks for the question. Great questions. So I'll take this one. Ricardo Sodré here. So on the overperformance versus the guidance in Q3 2023, our robust performance can be attributed to multiple factors with new customers' additions playing a significant role, both coming from new ACV signings and the go live of ACVs that were signed in previous quarters. On the latter, we continue to observe a promising trend in regards to the stabilization of our sales and implementation cycle, which had a positive impact in our results. Also on existing customer base, same store sales, we continue to see, you know, growth in the teens level, outperforming the market and slightly above our internal expectations for Q3.

On the country-specific, as you ask, we continue to see a robust performance across the board. Brazil performed pretty well in Q3. And we also saw the global U.S. and Europe outperforming the overall company. As you know, we provide more detailed numbers on the geographic breakdown on an annual basis. So when we publish Q4 in next quarter, we can, you know, give more details on the geographic breakdown. And looking forward, you know, we acknowledge the potential impact of an uncertain macro scenario on the same-store sales of existing customers and the sales cycle for new customers. Nevertheless, our competitive position remains strong, and we are focused on delivering value and enabling growth for our customers.

With a pipeline of promising projects implementation and favorable trends in sales cycle stabilization, we are pretty confident in the sustainable growth trajectory that we have. On the second question on the services gross margin, as mentioned in the prepared remarks, we are gradually evolving the Hypercare mode for project implementation for a few new customers in U.S. and Europe for our more ongoing regular modes. So just to recap, the Hypercare mode is how we call our deliberate commercial decision to closely support the implementation of relevant new customers in U.S. and Europe, to ensure their successful go lives.

As a result of this strategic move, we were able to create strong relationships with flagship signed customers, ensuring a high quality integration and onboarding experience, and advancing our expansion into these new geos with reputational cases. Also with the hyper care, we can more actively guide our customers into the vision of commerce that we believe in. At that time, we commented that this decision was going to impact our services gross margin in the short term, but that this was going to position us better in these new regions in the medium to long term. In Q3, as a demonstration of that, we had the go live of the B2C of Beautycounter, as you can see in Beautycounter.com, and also the B2B of Pierce Manufacturing and Oshkosh Company.

We have a relevant pipeline of go lives to come over the next two quarters as well. We are encouraged to see the improvement in services gross margin after the go live of these new customers. Now, we still have other relevant global customers under implementation, and some services gross margin volatility is natural in our business. But looking further out, we expect gross margin to continue improving.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz Júnior (Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

Perfect. Very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from the line of Maddie Schrage with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Maddie Schrage (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Hey, guys, and thanks for taking my question today. I was wondering if you guys could talk a bit about if you're seeing any price sensitivity when it comes to merchants or even the customer base, and if you could comment on what you're seeing top of funnel. And secondly, I'm wondering if you guys could comment on what you're seeing in terms of seasonal spend that we've seen so far in Q4 between October and now November. Thanks.

Mariano Gomide de Faria (Co-Founder & Co-CEO)

Hi, Mariano here. On the, on the price, I can, I can tell you that the high interest rate is bringing a tough environment for all the retailers all over the world. And, of course, the retailers are now looking for a more efficient solutions. So we, we see this as an opportunity. VTEX positioning as a complete and composable platform, allowing customers to be very lean and fast when they need it, but also compose and be custom when they want it. So in terms of price, we see a mood bringing the discussion of the TCO of a commerce platform as something that was not in the table, and now it is, but we see this as a huge opportunity for us as well. On the second, I will, I will invite Sodré to answer.

Yep.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Yep. Happy to, Mariano. So Maddie, regarding the holiday season, how we are seeing it, so we continue to see uncertainty in the macro environment, which makes it challenging to have clear visibility into the holiday season. Last year, we observed a shift in the seasonality a bit, with sales spreading out all over November instead of concentrating around the typical Black Friday event or week. And there is, you know, currently conflicting information regarding holiday season expectations. So we are approaching predictions for sales cautiously. Consumers appear to be eager to make holiday purchases, but they seem to be seeking significant discounts before committing to buying. And on the retailer side, it remains uncertain to which extent they can afford to sacrifice margins to offer substantial discounts and boost sales.

So as a result, we are closely monitoring both the end consumer and our customers' activity, to assist the latter in performing well during the holiday season. Most importantly, we're taking steps to ensure our customers can entirely rely on our platform during this critical time of the year.

Maddie Schrage (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Super helpful. Thanks, guys, and congrats on the quarter.

Operator (participant)

Again, for any questions, simply press star one on your telephone keypad, and your next question will come from the line of Leonardo Olmos with UBS. Please go ahead.

Leonardo Olmos (Executive Director and LatAm TMT Equity Reserch)

Hello? Sorry about that. Can you hear me?

Operator (participant)

Yes, we can hear you.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz Júnior (Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

Yeah, we can hear you well.

Mariano Gomide de Faria (Co-Founder & Co-CEO)

Yes. Yes, Leonardo. Yes, we can hear you.

Leonardo Olmos (Executive Director and LatAm TMT Equity Reserch)

Yeah, I was on the webcast, so I was a bit delayed. So can you discuss a little bit the product approach? So if you can talk a little bit about B2B in Brazil, how has that been evolving and all the product launches that you have in the Q3, how is that being accepted by the market in Brazil? Thank you.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz Júnior (Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

Well, thank you, Leonardo. So first of all, B2B, it seems, it's appearing as a very appealing offer at VTEX. It's not constrained to Brazil. You know, you just saw the announcement that we announced a PicPay B2B as a go live. But you know, Brazil is accelerating the sales of B2B a lot. But not only Brazil, Latin America, U.S., we're selling B2B scenarios everywhere. And the beauty of our platform, if you saw, you know, the Gartner reports, the critical capability reports, we are the number two platform in B2C and B2B in the same platform.

This creates a big advantage for our customers because they can, they can deal with one single control panel for both channels, and this also creates a big advantage for us as a product, because we don't redo a lot of the core things that we need to have in both scenarios. So B2B, for us, is some specialization that we developed in some modules at VTEX, so that it works nicely with B2B. B2B also is very customizable, so we have like a customer called Pierce Manufacturing in the U.S., launching a B2B operation with us. And this case is, you know, you can see that we have the inventory of all the sales that Pierce Manufacturing did in the past, for the parts of each truck that they sold, and all it's customized in our platform.

So, B2B is actually specialization of our e-commerce platform, and we are investing a significant amount of energy, specializing even more our modules or with features just like, buying organizations, capacity to customize with master data. There's several things that we are doing to be more competitive, but we, we're very competitive so already.

Leonardo Olmos (Executive Director and LatAm TMT Equity Reserch)

Thank you. And, another question: can you discuss a little bit the market in Argentina? We've been talking so much about political, but can you talk about the retail market and how you're seeing things for year-end? Thank you.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Hi, Leo. Ricardo here. Happy to take on Argentina. So on the overall retail market, I think there was some news in the local newspapers in Brazil, talking about how consumers are purchasing—accelerating their purchases in Argentina. So we see some of that happening. But more broadly, regarding the country, we are, you know, closely monitoring the situation in Argentina and the uncertainties surrounding this year's election. Argentina represents roughly 10% of our revenue, and while we are... You know, we have successfully navigated changing political and economic conditions in Argentina over the years. We are aware of the challenges and complexities that come with operating in this market.

And as mentioned in the earnings release, for our Q4 guidance, we are assuming that the Argentine peso will devalue in line with the FX market futures, losing roughly half of its value in December. So considering that, we have part of our revenue in Argentina, US dollars, this level of FX devaluation would result in a revenue impact of high single-digit, roughly, $ million in 2024, and only half of that would flow through to operating income. Therefore, it's a one-off and pretty small impact on our overall business. And having said that, we are confident that despite this potential headwind, VTEX should continue to improve its operating margin and maintain an attractive, FX neutral growth rate, as we are very well positioned in the country.

We have a strong competitive position in Argentina, and the underlying growth of the country over the years could be attractive for us.

Leonardo Olmos (Executive Director and LatAm TMT Equity Reserch)

Yeah, sounds great. Thank you very much, and sorry for my background noise. Have a good evening, everyone. Bye-bye.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Thanks, Leo.

Operator (participant)

Your next question will come from the line of Franco Granda with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Franco Granda (Research Analyst)

Hi. Yeah, good afternoon. Thank you for taking our questions, and congrats on the solid quarter here. I was hoping you could share some statistics with us to highlight or maybe to better characterize the performance of some of the recent product introductions, namely the ones that you talked about back in June at VTEX Day. Thanks.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz Júnior (Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

Happy to do that. Mariano can compliment me if necessary. So we're very excited with developing capabilities to empower the workforce of our customers. Live shopping is one of them. The personal shopper is another one, the sales app. All these keep deliver the functionality of delivering from store also gives more roles to the salesperson inside the physical stores. These are things that we're very excited with, and it's very aligned with the broad range of customers that we serve. There's a lot of our customers that can benefit from delivery from store, from integrating the store, the salespeople, the salesperson into the digital experience.

This is also very powerful for B2B scenarios as well, when you have salespeople serving and helping the sales of the manufacturer that is doing the B2B business. So this is something that we're very excited. On this topic, there's also the pick-and-pack capability, that it's a tool that enables streamlining of the process of delivering from store. You know, like there's no similar tool in the market for to streamline such a process. We are developing some capabilities on top of AI. There's naturally the natural path for this, which is our search, our recommendation. These are all AI aids features that we are developing even more. But we're not doing only that. Our new...

All these new tools that I just mentioned to you, they are all. They have also AI capabilities embedded on that, because we're very excited with these, with these capabilities. VTEX is also very committed in delivering security capabilities to our customers. Privacy, compliance, these are also something that we're very excited to deliver to our customers so that they can rely on a robust platform that is elastic and secure, so we can process their data and keep the data as safely as possible.

Franco Granda (Research Analyst)

Great. Now, thanks for the detailed answer there. And I was hoping to also get an update in regards to some of the new customers that you talked about during your analyst day. You did give us a few on those, but any updates on Casino and what they're doing there, how their expansion is going, and whether they're planning to expand across entire company in France? Thanks.

Mariano Gomide de Faria (Co-Founder & Co-CEO)

Yeah. Happy to get this as well. In our investor day, we disclosed Hearst and Casino. The implementation with Hearst is advancing well and as is scheduled, so we expect to provide a further update soon. As you know, we disclose our clients when they go live. That's the line that we chose to communicate our company. Casino is undergoing a big change. It's a change in control, a huge reorg, so it's a situation that adds meaningful challenges. And we keep you updated if there is any relevant developments on that. And now, it's worth mentioning that implementation timelines can be lengthy, which is why we decided to reveal new customer names only upon their successful go live.

I know that sometimes you become anxious, but we believe that's how we're gonna generate more value for the long term of the company. So we want to reinforce that the go lives basis will be our standard practicing on communicating new clients, just to manage expectations. Thank you so much for the questions.

Franco Granda (Research Analyst)

Yeah. No, of course. Thank you. And a very brief follow-up on that. Maybe if you could speak to the sales cycles, the timing of those quarter-over-quarter, and then year-over-year, if possible. Thanks again.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Hi, Franco. Ricardo here. Yeah, happy to. So as we mentioned, this quarter, and we also mentioned last quarter, we are seeing an encouraging stabilization of the sales cycles. They are not back to their historical average, but we are not seeing them worsening, and they have shown a slight improvement quarter-over-quarter. Now, on a year-over-year basis, I would say it's more stable as we saw sales cycle deteriorating along last year, right? So starting, like, in April, until towards the end of the year, it was when we saw most of the movement. So it's encouraging to see this stabilization to a slight improvement in the sales cycle.

When we say sales cycle, we are thinking about not only the time it takes to negotiate the contract and sign the contract with the customer, but also the time it takes to implement the software and the customer to go live, and then the initial ramp up of a new customer. So we're thinking about this whole cycle.

Franco Granda (Research Analyst)

I appreciate the call. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Geraldo for any closing remarks.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz Júnior (Co-Founder and Co-CEO)

VTEX is entering an exciting phase, reaping the initial rewards of our global expansion investments. We've shown consistent execution and financial results, reaching break even and generating cash a quarter ahead of schedule. Our solid quarter, marked by sustainable gross margin improvements and expense discipline, demonstrates the success of our business model, even in uncertain macro conditions. We serve a multitude of models and customer touch points, from B2C, B2B, B2B2C, to physical stores and marketplaces, including live shopping and conversational commerce, among others. VTEX is becoming the platform of choice for forward-thinking leaders, and this is just the beginning. Thanks to our customers, partners, investors, and our dedicated team who make it all possible. We look forward to keep you updated at our next earnings call. Have a wonderful week.

Operator (participant)

That will conclude today's meeting. You may now disconnect.