VTEX - Q4 2022

Transcript

Moderator (participant)

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's VTEX fourth quarter 2022 financials results conference call. My name is Megan, and I'll be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the conference over to Julia Vater Fernández with VTEX. Julia, please go ahead.

Julia Vater Fernández (Director of Investor Relations)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the VTEX earnings conference call for the quarter ended December 31st, 2022. I'm Julia Vater Fernández, Investor Relations Director for VTEX. Our senior executives presenting today are Geraldo Thomaz, Jr., Founder and Co-CEO, and Ricardo Camatta Sodré, Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Mariano Gomide de Faria, Founder and Co-CEO, and Andres 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 related to such matters as continuing growth prospects of 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, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

Certain risks and uncertainties are described in the risk factors and forward-looking statement sections of the VTEX Form 20-F of the year end of December 31st, 2022, and other VTEX filings within 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 conference call, we may discuss some non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of those measures to the nearest comparable GAAP measures can be found in our fourth quarter 2022 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, Jr. (Founder and Co-CEO)

Thank you, Julia. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining our fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. 2022 was a year filled with uncertainty and volatility for the industry. Despite the challenges, our customers' performance and business model demonstrated resiliency and the ability to navigate the ever-changing environment smoothly. In 2022, e-commerce in Latin America grew single digits, while our GMV growth reached 31%, exceeding the market performance by more than 20%. VTEX customers' same-store sales increased to 17% on an FX neutral basis, indicating that in addition to new customer adds, existing customers performed above the curve and contributed significantly to our outperformance versus the overall market. As we move forward, our focus for 2023 is clear. We aim to consistently drive growth above market performance, improve our gross margin, and optimize expenses to gain operational efficiencies as we scale.

Our goal is to provide a reliable solution to our customers so they can solely focus on expanding their business, while at the same time we continue to strengthen our comprehensive range of assisted sales products to enable our customers to grow their GMV. Our global expansion journey is evolving with solid steps made in the U.S. and Europe. We also announced that customers going to other countries such as India and South Africa this year. We expect to continue to deliver consistent and tangible results, aiming to become the global backbone for commerce. Reflecting on the performance of the last quarter of 2022, we're delighted to report that our business has seen resilient growth. Although GMV and revenue were below our expectations, we have solidified our position as a regional leader and expanded our reach beyond Latin America.

Specifically, in Q4, our GMV increased by 34% year-over-year in U.S. dollars and 29% on an FX neutral basis, reaching almost the $4 billion mark in a quarter. That's more than our GMV for the entire year of 2019. It's worth noting that the retail industry faced challenges during the Q4 of 2022 due to lower than expected sales volumes around Black Friday and the holiday season. Despite being impacted by this trend, our business maintained strong performance with Q4 same-store sales improving quarter-over-quarter. This demonstrates our business strength, resiliency, and ability to navigate challenging macroeconomic environments. Throughout our company history, we have established solid and long-term relationships with our customers, as evidenced by the growing number of stores and countries per customer.

In 2022, we were honored to have the trust of over 2,600 customers with a total of 3,400 stores across 38 countries. Our top 100 customers in 2022 averaged 5.9 stores per customer, with operations in 34 countries, an improvement from 4.8 stores per customers in 2021. In the fourth quarter, we kept making significant commercial progress. We are proud to have attracted and onboarded several premier brands and retailers. In fourth quarter of 2022, we added several new customers who previously did not have any online presence in the countries they started operating with us. This include Reebok in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru, Superpão and Bretas in Brazil, InPost Fresh in Poland, and Old Navy in Mexico. We've also added customers that migrated from other platforms.

This includes companies that went live in Q4, such as Oba Hortifruti in Brazil, Garmin in Colombia, Auchan in Romania, and Danone Font Vella in Spain. These brands are well established in their respective markets, and we are excited to have them on board as they will help us expand our reach and strengthen our position in these regions. In addition to attracting new customers, we also focus on strengthening our relationship with existing customers by supporting their expansion efforts.

During the fourth quarter, several premier brands and retailers chose to expand their operation with us by opening new stores and further integrating with us. This includes Belcorp, who added stores in Mexico and Peru, currently operating four countries in Latin America. Electrolux, who added a store in Brazil, currently operating in six countries in Latin America. Samsung, who added B2B in Brazil, currently operating both B2C and B2B with us.

Carrefour, who integrated more than 150 physical stores into their omnichannel operations in Brazil. These brands' decision to expand their operation with us is a testament of our platform strength, relevant value proposition, and the trust we provide to our customers. We are excited to continue supporting them in reaching consumers in new geographies and leveraging their physical stores' asset base. I would like to briefly mention a significant event this quarter, the Black Friday month, November. VTEX achieved a GMV of $1.75 billion, an increase of 32% in USD compared to November 2021, and 27% on an FX neutral base. We were particularly proud of two accomplishments during the holiday season.

The dependability of our network, which provided scalability, reliability, and security while giving our customers peace of mind with 100% of time during Black Friday and Cyber Monday week. The growth in volumes in countries such as Mexico and the United States, both of which joined the top five countries with the highest year-over-year GMV dollar increase among all VTEX countries, demonstrating international expansion tangible results. 2022 was a year where we were excited to announce many outstanding partnerships, such as the one with Adyen, AWS, EBANX, Facebook, Instagram, MercadoLibre, Mercado Pago, PayPal, Stripe, and TikTok. In Q4, we added deals with ClearSale and Nuvei, among others. We entered into a partnership agreement with ClearSale, a company specialized in digital anti-fraud solutions in Brazil and with global expansion ambitions.

ClearSale's plugin give us customers the peace of mind and trust to maintain approval rates and avoid false positives. According to ClearSale, it increases average customers approval rate by more than 10%. With Nuvei, we entered into our global partnership that will provide greater flexibility and customizations for retailers as VTEX expands deeper into Latin America and new markets across Asia-Pacific, North America and Europe. This new partnership is already available for VTEX customers around the globe. Retailers and brands benefit from Nuvei advanced acceptance rate optimization capability, seamless on board, and a fully customized approach to accelerated revenues. Shifting to our customer success story, I'm eager to share with you some examples that demonstrate the capability of our platform and how our customers have achieved exceptional results. A leading global kitchen and laundry appliance company, through its global account, has continued to expand its partnership with VTEX.

Our global contract signed by VTEX U.S. branch was a crucial factor in successfully launching their high-end home appliance brand in Europe. Our customer is now utilizing a composable approach in EMEA with VTEX new customized checkout solution, which allow customers to have more flexibility in their checkout page by leveraging VTEX APIs with all Store Framework components. Their high-end home appliance brand have fully adopted the headless approach in the front end with its new e-commerce website for Ireland. With that, they can now select the tools they need to create a tailored user experience and quickly build content-rich shopping experiences without starting from scratch. Motorola leveraged its global contract to launch its online store in India. The localization provided by VTEX in that region was crucial for the successful implementation, particularly during the local regulatory compliance framework.

On top of that, the easy integration of third parties helped Motorola to enable multiple 3PLs, third-party logistics. Motorola has also highlighted that the VTEX customer success team was extremely helpful in addressing all technical challenges without needing third-party vendors. They went live with a new homepage layout, including different banners and sections that were extremely easy to customize for their non-technical team. As a result, Motorola has benefited from a fast checkout process and an intuitive website navigation, which has increased its conversion rates. We continue to attract new customers in Europe, including Auchan, one of the world's largest retailers with a relevant presence across Europe. Who went live with VTEX in Q4 to relaunch its online operations by introducing new features to enhance the customer experience in Romania.

The new platform is more user-friendly and offers new integrated functionalities that can be accessed from any device, including fresh product delivery, along with new delivery and pickup locations. VTEX is also helping Auchan with website page loading speed and mobile adaptability. There are still more features for customers and user-generated content improvements to come. Auchan aims to provide a first-class online shopping experience that complements what consumers already find in their physical stores by leveraging our solution. The grocery industry is undergoing a digital transformation, with e-commerce operations being the fastest growing subsector, according to a report by Statista. VTEX, through its fresh store platform, has established itself as the go-to partner for retailers offering this type of services.

It does this by leveraging its omnichannel capabilities and time-saving features for speed and flexibility, increasing efficiency and boosting sales by integrating brick-and-mortar inventory and onboarding third-party sellers from a wider product selection with no added operational costs. Additionally, VTEX Distributed Order Management system allows retailers and brands to handle complex fulfillment scenarios, leveraging multiple commerce channels to offer various delivery options while streamlining operations. This enable grocery commerce channels to provide fast in-store and curbside pickup by assembling orders from multiple inventory sources, such as pickup locations, distribution centers, and other brick-and-mortar stores, resulting in optimal fulfillment. For example, Cencosud, a large conglomerate with a range of products from grocery to home improvement, trusts VTEX to run their 14 brands operation. The company has been operating with us since 2016.

With VTEX new Speedy Delivery feature capability, they increased their conversion rates, accelerating sales and customer satisfaction level. VTEX highly customized solution is helping them to sort different categories and sessions, improving their search tools and modules to show the best promotions and delivery times for their customers. Along these lines, Carrefour, a leading French multinational corporation specializing in retail, selected VTEX in 2020 to operate in Brazil, the second largest market worldwide, among other Latin American countries. Carrefour has a strong presence in Brazil with 817 stores, including 241 hypermarkets and 41 supermarkets offering both grocery and non-grocery products. The company select us to significantly improve its performance in order management, marketplace, and omnichannel service.

This migration was made possible due to the scalability offered by VTEX, which allowed for seamless control of the vast number of SKUs in their catalog and the sheer volume of clients in their database. More recently, in Q4 of 2022, Carrefour integrated their physical stores with our OMS capability, including the ability to orchestrate multiple omnichannel strategies, personalized search based on previous purchases, click-and-collect options, improved home delivery services, and an integrated POS system, among others. These enhancements will leverage Carrefour physical stores asset base and undoubtedly lead to an improved customer experience and increased operational efficiency for Carrefour. Our Live Shopping feature, a native live streaming application that enables brands and retailers to utilize VTEX Commerce Platform to create engaging one-to-many or one-to-one Live Shopping experiences, is boosting engagement and conversion rates, attracting more customers to our base.

This feature is opening up new growth opportunities for our customers by streamlining the process of starting, planning, managing, and monitoring the performance of Live Shopping events. This quarter, we had 302 events with a 21% increase quarter-over-quarter, and there were 912 events in 2022. To conclude the operational update, I would like to express my gratitude to our 1,347 VTEX employees who are dedicated to making our declared future a reality, as well as 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. It's a pleasure to be here updating you on our financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2022. As highlighted by Geraldo, our Q4 GMV performance reached 34% year-over-year in U.S. dollars and 29% in FX neutral. This quarter, our revenue increased to $45.5 million, a year-over-year increase of 23% in U.S. dollars and 20% in FX neutral.

Subscription revenue reached $42.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 from $34.5 million in the same quarter last year, a year-over-year increase of 24% in U.S. dollars and 20% in FX neutral. This helped us achieve a revenue of $157.6 million for 2022, showing a 25% growth in U.S. dollars and 22% on a FX neutral basis. Although below our expectations, given weak market performance during Black Friday week and the cancellation of the tax-free day in Colombia, our relative performance versus the overall market give us confidence in our future growth projections. Our revenue from existing stores increased to $113.8 million in 2022, representing a net revenue retention of 105% on a FX neutral basis.

When analyzing the number on an annual basis, we see a stable net revenue retention compared to last year. Although still volatile, given macro uncertainty, the exit net revenue retention pace for this year was higher than the annual average. This indicates that the net revenue retention is returning to its historical rate of around 110%, driven by same-store sales approaching historical levels after many quarters of being impacted by tough COVID comps and physical stores reopening. On top of our existing stores growth, we continue attracting new stores, adding $21.3 million in revenue to our base, representing 20% of our 2021 VTEX platform revenue. Our sales efficiency measure as new store revenues from the current year divided by the non-GAAP sales and marketing expenses from the prior year decreased this year as we anticipated last year it would.

Although that resulted in lower unit economics, our LTV/CAC remained healthy and still over 6x. The decrease is due to the fact that we invested during 2021 a higher portion in regions where our sales efficiency is lower, such as the U.S. and Europe, accounting for 35% of sales and marketing expenses. Additionally, not part of our initial expectations, during 2022, we also experienced the elongations in our customers' implementation and ramp-up times, which also impacted this metric, pushing revenues further out, as mentioned in the previous quarters. With that said, towards the end of 2022, we have already made meaningful adjustments in our sales and marketing expenses to improve our sales efficiency ratio. Among new customers, we are excited to announce that we continue to gain traction in the high end of the market.

Number of customers with revenue above $250,000 per year reached 94 from 76 in 2021. Their number of stores reached 557 from 424 in 2021, representing a year-over-year increase of 24% and 31% respectively. We have consistently demonstrated improvement in this metric, which we believe is the strongest validation of the suitability of our product for even the most demanding customers within this segment. We continue expanding our geographical reach with revenues outside of Brazil accounting for 45% of our total revenues. In a three-year FX neutral CAGR, Latin America, excluding Brazil, grew 57%, while the rest of the world grew 78%.

Regarding our FX neutral year-over-year growth in 2022, Brazil grew 24%, Latin America, excluding Brazil, grew 14%, and the rest of the world grew 47%. The growth in Latin America, ex Brazil, this year was influenced by a larger share of customers with relevant physical stores that were fully operational in 2022, which generated a rebalancing between their online and offline operations. Additionally, although Argentina saw lower growth rates given its macro situation, countries like Mexico are experiencing significant growth and gaining a larger share in the mix. Latin America holds immense potential. 2022 growth rates do not fully reflect it, especially as Mexico continues to gain momentum and 2023 starts to have a cleaner year-over-year comps. Now, moving down our P&L.

Non-GAAP subscription gross profit was $31.4 million compared to $24.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Non-GAAP subscription gross margin was 73.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to 69.9% in the same quarter of 2021. The 360 basis points year-over-year margin expansion shows the commitment of our team to keep improving our margins. We also continue improving our services' non-GAAP gross margin, resulting in an even higher non-GAAP gross margin expansion, 514 basis points year-over-year. Our performance has remained steady compared to last quarter's 73.8% non-GAAP subscription gross margin, declining only 30 basis points.

This is mainly due to us scaling our infrastructure to handle increased sales during Black Friday week and the Día sin IVA event in Colombia, which did not materialize as expected. Despite this, we anticipate further improvements in 2023 as we continue to implement our migrations and code optimization plans. Our non-GAAP total operating expenses decreased to $29.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 from $32.4 million in the prior quarter and $36.5 million in the same period last year. The current results reflect the organization restructuring we implemented in the second quarter of 2022 and further marginal optimizations following the third and fourth quarters of 2022.

As a result of the better than expected gross margin improvements and controlled expenses with the top line showing resilience, our non-GAAP operating income improved from a negative 29.3% margin in the same quarter last year to a positive 4.6% margin in the fourth quarter of 2022. This represents a 33.9 percentage points improvement year-over-year. It's important to remember that the operational break-even achieved in Q4 is not yet sustainable, as our industry experiences a positive seasonal trend during the fourth quarter, which has contributed to our current performance. With that in mind, we reaffirm that by the fourth quarter of 2023, we will be able to sustainably achieve positive non-GAAP operating income.

As of the three months ended December 31st, 2022, VTEX had a +$2.5 million free cash flow compared to a -$3.3 million free cash flow in the prior quarter, and a -$21.3 million free cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2021. Our strong cash generation result this quarter was primarily driven by our strong operational P&L performance. On the share repurchase program we approved in August of 2022, as of December 31st, 2022, the remaining balance available for share repurchases under this authorization is almost $17 million. We've purchased slightly less than 3.3 million shares at an average price of $3.90 per share. We expect to continue executing our plan based on the evaluation of market conditions and applicable legal requirements.

Before moving to our Q1 and full year 2023 outlook, I'd like to remind the audience that from a business perspective, we think about our P&L as a combination of two P&Ls, our existing stores P&L and our new stores P&L. You'll find this reference in slide 28 of our fourth quarter earnings presentation. VTEX existing stores revenue, excluding our SMB platform, represented almost 85% of total revenues, while our new stores revenue, also excluding our SMB platform, represented approximately 15% of total revenues. Comparing our P&L breakdown for 2022 and 2021, I would like to make a couple of comments. This year, our gross margin reached 67%, approximately 600 basis points higher than the overall gross margin from 2021.

It's noteworthy that both existing and new stores had significant improvements in their gross margin profiles, with existing stores showing 5 percentage points year-over-year improvement, and new stores reaching 10 percentage points year-over-year improvement in gross margin. Previously discussed, we optimized our expenses in 2022, and even though we don't have yet a full year clean P&L, we can already see how operating margin for existing stores increased from 15% in 2021 to low 20s in 2022, as well as operational margin losses from new stores improved by 16 percentage points. A result, we had an overall operational margin improvement of 11 percentage points year-over-year, with more to come this year since we are exiting the year with our operational margin approaching a sustainable break-even. We move forward with our business outlook, it is important to note that the macroeconomic conditions remain uncertain.

Compared to historical averages, we continue to see an elongated sales cycle related to an increase in the average time to implement the VTEX platform and longer ramp-up times from new customers. Despite these challenges, which mostly impact our new stores time to revenue, we remain confident in our ability to help our customers outperform the market and control our costs and expenses to deliver meaningful operational leverage.

Considering the uncertain macro conditions, we are currently targeting revenue in the $41.0 million-$41.5 million range for the first quarter of 2023, implying a year-over-year growth of 19% in USD and on an FX neutral basis in the middle of the range. Also, given the persistent macroeconomic volatility for the full year 2023, we target a FX neutral year-over-year revenue growth between 15% and 19%, implying a range of $183 million-$189 million based on February FX rates. With that, let's open it up for questions now. Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. Our first question comes from the line of Marcelo Santos with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Marcelo Santos (Executive Director)

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question, I want to explore a bit more the gap between GMV and revenue growth. I think in the previous quarter, there was already some gap, but it widened to, I think more than 10 points in U.S. dollars. Just wanted to understand the moving parts here. The second question is regarding the selling expense. I think that was maybe the most noteworthy line. It declined to, I think, around $11 million. This is the lowest level since the first quarter of 2021, sorry. Could you please describe a bit what is this just the results of the headcount cuts? What, what else in there, and this is a sustainable level going forward? Thank you.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Hi, Marcelo. Thanks for the question. I'll take the first one. As we mentioned in the Q&A from last quarter's earnings release, it is crucial to note that the company's revenue is derived from fixed fees and a take rate on our customers' GMV. 2/3 of the revenue comes from the take rate, while the remaining 1/3 comes from fixed fees. Considering that it is natural to have a lower implied take rates in Q4 because the seasonal strong GMV dilutes the fixed fee portion of our revenue.

For instance, the implied take rate of the fourth quarter of 2022, although below the fourth quarter of 2021, was in line with the fourth quarter of 2020. These changes in implied take rate is simply a function of our revenue model and mostly driven by mix. It is important to mention that we are not seeing pricing pressure when comparing like-for-like figures. On these points regarding mix, as mentioned in the prepared remarks, we are adding larger customers to the base who come with a lower variable take rate following our price table.

Finally, it's worth noting as well that we are passing through inflation to the fixed fee component of our contracts in most countries. While this is more challenging to achieve in developed economies, we have managed to do so in Brazil and are beginning to implement in some countries in [LATAM] outside of Brazil as well. For the second question, I'll pass it over to Mariano.

Mariano Gomide de Faria (Founder and Co-CEO)

On the second question, we see a good momentum to do the adjustment from what we saw in the 2021 and 2022. We keep seeing a strong pipeline in Brazil, Latin, and in rest of the world, you can expect good contracts and good kind of momentum coming from out of United States and Europe. The cuts that we did in the expenses do not expect to generate any write-off of opportunity. Is in the opposite side. We are seeing with a lean team, we can absorb more and more the opportunities of this uncertainty that we are seeing in the market. We don't expect any decrease of our sales operations in terms of performance.

Marcelo Santos (Executive Director)

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Fred Mendes with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Fred Mendes (Director)

Hello. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for the call. I have two questions as well. I mean, the first one, it just calls your attention, this second, let's say, reduction in headcounts. Obviously, the world is changing fast, but why, just trying to understand a little bit of the strategy and the impact on the team. Then, the second one, also on the strategy, it's very clear that VTEX is focusing more and more on becoming profitable, and obviously the growth is not the same for a lot of reasons. Just wondering how is the discussion, the relationship with the ecosystem, especially the guys who do the implementation, the distribution, when you're doing this shift towards increasing profitability. Thank you.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz, Jr. (Founder and Co-CEO)

Fred, thank you. Thank you for the question. This is Geraldo, getting the answer. How are you? We are maintaining this disciplined operational model, and we're achieving to achieve our short, medium, and long-term growth objectives and potential. We don't feel like we're missing opportunities giving the adjustment made, like Mariano said. It's actually the opposite. We feel that being leaner and more agile will enable us to quickly adapt, and generate value in these uncertain times. The current growth rate is below naturally on our long-term growth potential, considering the macroeconomic conditions. Although we adjust the team to face the current demand, I would say that we still and will continue to be very strong in our investment for the long term.

You see that our R&D team, they're very strong until today, and we're still investing and eventually growing the team a little bit during the year. As Mariano said, we're adjusting the sales team for the current demand. I think in the end, we're well-positioned to continue winning market share, and this will enable us to come out stronger once the market stabilize, so we can deploy additional capture to capture the outstanding market opportunity that we have in front of us.

Fred Mendes (Director)

Perfect. Very, very clear, Geraldo. Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Clarke Jeffries with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Clarke Jeffries (VP)

Hello. Thank you for taking the question. The first one is on guidance. Ricardo, is it safe to say that the most important, you know, factor contemplated in the revenue guidance is this dynamic around deployment times, looking at the sort of trend lines of existing so-store contribution, new store contribution, is that really the sort of meaning behind all of this? Then, you know, with reference to that exit rate being higher than 105%, do you expect 2023 to be a year where it's above 105%?

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Thanks for your question. Yeah, it's fair to say your assumption. As mentioned in the prepared remarks, we continue to see macro uncertainty. This environment of high interest rates and inflation may impact consumer consumption, which may impact our same-store sales and the revenue growth from our existing stores. As I also mentioned, the more relevant impact is that we continue to see a stable but longer than average implementation times and ramp-up times, which impacted our new store revenue growth during part of 2022, and we expect to impact the full year of 2023. These two factors contributed, combined result in a potentially lower growth in 2023, which we reflected in our guidance.

Having said that, we believe we have made the necessary adjustments to come out stronger once this macro situation is resolved. We are capturing market share, as Geraldo mentioned, and we have a well-invested structure to support our long-term growth, which we believe is above the current growth rates that are impacted by the macro scenario.

Clarke Jeffries (VP)

Certainly. One follow-up, you know, great to see 20%+ margins on the existing store cohort, higher margins on the new cohort, especially considering that was a full year number. I'm sure there's, all said and done, the cost reduction initiatives in the second half mean that it's a higher rate if we were to annualize it. Do you expect those trends to continue in the next year? Would you expect existing stores to maintain that kind of 20 handle in terms of margins? Any sense for dynamics in terms of margins on new store and all other revenue, be that SMB and services?

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Yeah. Hi, Clarke. No, that's a good question. The disclosure that we are making on the P&L, splitting between existing stores and new stores, it's an annual cut, that's a 2022 full year margin. This 22% margin, it reflects the full year. As you mentioned, we are exiting as a higher margin because we made adjustments right in the middle of the year, right? We continue to see a good operational leverage in our model, so it'll be expected in 2023 for the existing stores to have a higher margin than in 2022. We'll continue to operate in a disciplined way, but given the operational leverage, that should help us moving forward.

Clarke Jeffries (VP)

Thank you very much.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Beck with KeyBanc. Your line is now open.

Maddie Schrage (Associate)

Hey, guys, this is Maddie on for Josh. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question for you is, how are you guys thinking about LTV/CAC compared to maybe the historical average? Do you have a goal for that metric going forward? Do you think that we've hit the bottom in terms of the headcount, where it's at? Thanks.

Ricardo Camatta Sodré (CFO)

Hi, Maddie. Thanks for the question. Happy to take the first one. Regarding LTV/CAC, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, it continue to stay above 6x, and we believe this level is a healthy level for a company like ourselves. We also look at the internal rate of return and the payback time of our customers since we have a pretty low churn. We don't wanna rely on cash flows that are coming from the customers that are far off in advance later in the future. We do believe that the 6x LTV/CAC is a healthy metric for us to pursue. Sorry, on the second question, could you repeat, please?

Maddie Schrage (Associate)

Yeah. I was just wondering if we've hit the bottom in terms of the headcount number or if there might be more reductions implied?

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz, Jr. (Founder and Co-CEO)

I can take that. I can take that. You know, like, I would say that for R&D, we're very comfortable with the head count that we have. And when we might slight, very increase a little bit depending on the talent that we find in the street that wants to join VTEX. For the sales and marketing, I would say that it seems to me that, yes, we reached to a bottom, but, you know, like this is very variable with the actual demand that we find. Eventually, if we didn't hit the bottom of the demand, eventually we might adjust in the future again. But that's not what we are, we're projecting right now.

Maddie Schrage (Associate)

Very helpful. For my follow-up, I was just wondering if you guys can give an update on how the AWS partnership is going? Secondarily, if you could say if B2B trends are seeing the same sorts of headwinds as B2C or if there's any difference there? Thanks.

Mariano Gomide de Faria (Founder and Co-CEO)

Mariano here. AWS is one of the foundations partner of VTEX. In the go-to market of the United States and Europe, they are helping us a lot. We are part of the marketplace solution of AWS. AWS reps are kind of matching resources with VTEX reps in the field and offering B2B and B2C solution. We already signed some deals together and more deals will come. They are incredible, penetrated company in the United States and Europe, and we are surfing this incredible partnership. On the second question on B2B, yes, we are seeing in the United States particularly a solid trend on B2B signatures on our contracts. We already released some public names on the B2B, we are consistently seeing signatures quarter-over-quarter on the B2B market.

Maddie Schrage (Associate)

Wonderful. Thank you, guys.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andre Salles with UBS. Your line is now open.

Andre Salles (Director)

Hi. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I have one question regarding competition here. We have seen some movements in Brazil from other platforms which are more focused on smaller business, trying to target larger customers here. Are you seeing substantial changes here in the competition environment in Brazil, especially in your lower base clients, or this is more or less specific movement? Thank you.

Mariano Gomide de Faria (Founder and Co-CEO)

Thank you. Thank you for the question. Mariano here. We of course, saw a kind of every year we do have a new player trying to penetrate Latin America, and they can come from the high-end or the low end. We saw a Shopify penetrating the Latin American market. On our low SMB solution, Loja Integrada, we didn't see any kind of a huge growth changes in what we expect, so we are on track of what we expect from the company. Yes, there are some kind of flipping from the other vendors to Shopify, but we continue to see a consistent growth from our SMB business.

Andre Salles (Director)

Got it. Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'll pass the conference back over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Geraldo do Carmo Thomaz, Jr. (Founder and Co-CEO)

In conclusion, while 2022 may have presented some challenges, we are optimistic about our ability to drive growth and overcome obstacles in 2023 despite the uncertain macroeconomic environments. We're committed to delivering exceptional service and support to our customers and expanding our operations in key regions. We look forward to the opportunities and progress that the new year will bring. Thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm looking forward to updating about our progress in our next earnings call. Thank you.

Moderator (participant)

That concludes the VTEX fourth quarter 2022 financial results conference call. Thank you for your participation. I hope you have a wonderful day.