Zendesk - Q4 2021
February 10, 2022
Transcript
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Great. Well, thank you very much. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call and thank you for joining us today. I'm Jason Tsai, Head of Investor Relations at Zendesk. Joining me on the call today are Mikkel Svane, our Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board, and Shelagh Glaser, our Chief Financial Officer. During the course of today's call, we may make forward-looking statements such as statements regarding our future financial performance, product development, growth prospects, ability to attract and retain customers, and ability to compete effectively. The assumptions, risks, and factors that could affect our actual results are contained in our earnings press release and in the Risk Factors section of our prior and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our upcoming annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2021.
We undertake no obligation to update these statements after today's presentation or to conform these statements to actual results or to the changes in our expectations, except as required by law. Please refer to today's earnings release for more information regarding forward-looking statements. During this call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for or in isolation from, our GAAP financial information. You can find additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations with the comparable GAAP financial measures in today's earnings press release and shareholder letter and for certain non-GAAP financial measures for prior periods in the earnings press release for such prior periods, all of which are available on our Investor Relations website. Lastly, this presentation may contain information regarding the business, operations, and financial results of Momentive and its subsidiaries.
Such information has been prepared by Momentive, and Zendesk does not represent or warrant the accuracy of such information. With this brief introduction, I would turn the call over to Mikkel for opening comments.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Thanks so much, Jason, and welcome everyone to our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. First, as some of you may have seen in a separate press release that we issued this afternoon, our Board of Directors received an unsolicited, non-binding proposal from a consortium of private equity firms to acquire Zendesk for between $127 and $132 per share. With the assistance of independent legal and financial advisors, our Board thoroughly reviewed the proposal and concluded that the offer significantly undervalues the company and is not in the best interest of our shareholders. The Board continues to believe strongly that the continued execution of a strategic plan, including the proposed acquisition of Momentive, will generate substantial additional long-term value for shareholders.
The Board unanimously recommends a vote for its proposal to approve the issuance of Zendesk stock in connection with the transaction at the shareholder meeting on February 25th. We will not be commenting further or taking any Q&A related to the unsolicited proposal, and instead, we're gonna focus on our strong quarterly and full-year results, which we're very excited about. 2021 was a great year for our business. We finished with a strong fourth quarter with revenue of $375 million. We growing that 32% year-over-year. For the full year 2021, revenue grew 30% to $1.34 billion, exceeding the outlook that we gave at the start of the year. Shelagh is going to share much more details on our performance with you shortly.
As a company, we were rewarded with strong growth throughout the year after being focused on putting customers first during 2020 during the onset of the pandemic. The ongoing shift to a digital-first economy amplified this growth. Brands around the world are choosing Zendesk to evolve how they engage with their customers. This is evident by the fantastic adoption we've seen with the Zendesk Suite and our continued success moving upmarket. In just 11 months since we launched the Zendesk Suite, it has grown to 35% of our annual recurring revenue. That's a $500 million annual business from customers that stay longer and expand at higher rates. New and renewing customers are using Suite because it has powerful functionality that is easy to implement.
90% of our bookings are from new customers are on the Suite product, and Suite accounted for nearly 60% of our total bookings during the fourth quarter. In 2021, we also scaled our success with enterprise customers, driven by the adoption of the Suite combined with our maturing go-to-market motions. Customer accounts that generate over $250,000 in annual recurring revenue now account for 38% of our total annual recurring revenue. Throughout the year, and especially in Q4, financial services became another great example of an industry where disruptors and established brands turn to Zendesk for our time to value. Our ease of adoption helps them acquire new customers faster and cross-sell earlier in their relationships.
Our financial services broker business grew more than 50% in 2021, and annual recurring revenue from financial services is now more than $100 million. Overall, our ability to retain and expand our existing customers has never been stronger. That, alongside the compelling adoption of Suite and our momentum in the enterprise, means we have an extremely strong foundation for continued long-term growth. As a business, we are excited for what comes next and well-positioned for continued execution. 2021, we saw record talent acquisition across all levels in a very competitive market, and our employee base grew by 41%. Across the board, 2021 was a strong year, and we are keeping the momentum going into 2022. I wanna close out by saying that we look forward to the upcoming shareholder vote on our proposed acquisition of Momentive.
In addition to the information that we provided at our Investor Day, we also published two presentations to provide further insight on the rationale and the merits of the transaction which we encourage investors to review. We are committed to the acquisition, and are excited about the outlook for the combined company. We've had a lot of conversations with our investor community over the last few weeks. They've been really good to have, even if they weren't always super comfortable. We appreciate everyone's willingness to dig in and to engage. Open discourse is how we really get clear about perspectives and expectations. It's how we correct any misconceptions out there. Most importantly, it's how we make sure everyone knows exactly why we are so committed to the vision and the plan we have outlined for Zendesk and Momentive.
That vision is to build a leader in customer intelligence. Zendesk powers billions of customer interactions every day. With Momentive, we can turn that into something much more powerful for our customers, real customer intelligence that will help redefine how to strategically run a business, and that is a future that we are ridiculously excited about. We feel strongly about this opportunity and the plan that we have in place to make it a reality, and we hope our investors do as well. We're going to build a business with a $5 billion run rate by 2025, with improved margins and a stronger growth rate. We believe that is in everybody's best interest. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Shelagh to discuss our financial results for the quarter and for the year in more detail. Take it away, Shelagh.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Great. Mikkel, thank you, and thank you everyone for your time today. We generated $375 million in revenue this quarter. 32% year-over-year growth, which was ahead of our expectation. For the full year, revenue grew 30% to $1.34 billion, significantly better than the outlook we provided at the start of the year. As Mikkel pointed out, our strength in the fourth quarter as well as for all of 2021 was driven by the success we've seen in growing our enterprise customer base and the introduction of the Zendesk Suite. As more of our ARR comes from Enterprise customers and customers on Suite, we've seen meaningful improvements in the fundamentals of our business.
In the fourth quarter, our average deal size, as well as our average length of contracts with our customers, both increased compared to last year, and our ability to retain and expand these customers are at all-time highs. New customers this quarter continue to generate 10x the ARR as compared to the ones that are turned off on our discontinued plans. All of this leads to a more predictable business that is well-positioned for continuing strong growth over the long term. We introduced Suite in early 2021, and it now accounts for over $500 million in ARR and 35% of our total ARR. While we are only a year into Suite, we are encouraged by the initial data that we are seeing from Suite customers. They have higher gross expansion rates, longer contract terms, and use more of our products.
Our net expansion rate this quarter was 122%, similar to last quarter and above our long-term target range of 110%-120%. The majority of our NRR continues to come from Suite expansion. Over time, we believe NRR will converge back to the target range, though it may remain above 120% in the near term. Our NRR continues to benefit from more of our customers signing on with longer engagements, and churn and contraction remaining at near all-time lows. Customer counts with over 250K ARR now generate 38% of our ARR, up from 37% last quarter and 32% a year ago. Turning to our margins, our fourth quarter non-GAAP gross margin was 81.6%, up 220 basis points year-over-year.
Gross margin has continued to improve over time, largely driven by revenue scale, increased optimization of our product support personnel, and efficiencies in our hosting infrastructure. During this quarter, we had $27 million operating profit on a non-GAAP basis. Our non-GAAP operating income grew 47% year over year, while our non-GAAP operating margin improved 70 basis points year over year. We generated $28 million in free cash flow in the quarter. For the full year 2021, we generated $140 million free cash flow, up 430% year over year. Our fourth quarter free cash flow was impacted by a systems update issue that temporarily impacted our collections in the quarter. That has now been fully resolved. As well, we had expenses related to our proposed Momentive acquisition. Finally, let me cover our guidance.
We are confirming our full year 2022 revenue and operating income guidance that we shared at our November Investor Meeting. We expect revenue in the range of $1.675 billion-$1.705 billion, or approximately 26% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect our operating margin for full year 2022 to be 7.5% on a non-GAAP basis, in line with our operating margin in 2021, and aligned to our November guidance as we continue to invest in our growth. Non-GAAP operating income is expected to be in the range of $117 million-$137 million for the year. We expect free cash flow for the full year to be in the range of $165 million-$195 million.
For the first quarter of 2022, we expect to generate $381 million-$387 million in revenue for approximately 29% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect non-GAAP operating income of $20 million-$26 million. I wanna share a bit more detail on Q1 operating margin and free cash flow. For Q1, our GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins are seasonally lower due to the normal reset of payroll taxes and benefit costs. It is compounded this year due to increased investment and compensation for all employees as we focus on growing, attracting, and retaining Zendesk talent. On free cash flow, consistent with our practice in previous periods, we continue to only provide free cash flow guidance for the year, as we believe it's best to assess cash flow performance over the longer term.
However, I want to provide additional color since we expect our free cash flow in the quarter to be slightly negative. This is primarily due to the $14 million-$17 million in pre-close expenses related to the proposed acquisition of Momentive that we expect to incur. We expect free cash flow to rebound to normalized levels in the second quarter. Additionally, our full year guidance for free cash flow is to grow 28% at the midpoint. Based on the above factors, we expect our operating income and free cash flow to improve substantially over the course of the year, particularly in the second half, as investments that we are making today translate to both top and bottom-line growth. In closing, as Mikkel said, Q4 and 2021 were outstanding results driven by our team's continued strong execution.
Zendesk is well positioned with strong leadership foundation in the market, and our 2021 strong performance builds our confidence in our 2022 growth. With that, I will turn it over to Jason for Q&A. Jason?
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Shelagh. As we've done in past quarters, everybody was put through a randomizer, and the first question is coming from Stan Zlotsky at Morgan Stanley. Stan, please turn on your camera and unmute your line.
Stan Zlotsky (Executive Director of Software Equity Research)
Perfect. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks, guys. A couple of questions from my end. Maybe just for Shelagh, as we think about the very strong results that you guys put up in Q4, why not bump up the guidance for 2022 for revenue?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Stan, nice to see you. Thanks for the question. I think as we've done in the past, what we really wanna do is build our confidence through the year, 'cause obviously, there's a lot more year left. What we wanna do is, you know, we get together with you every 90 days, so each 90 days build our confidence as we, as we move through the year. We're, you know, obviously giving you very strong guidance for Q1. We feel really good about that. Throughout the course of the year, just as we did in prior years, just build confidence each quarter.
Stan Zlotsky (Executive Director of Software Equity Research)
Understood. Just as a follow-up on net revenue retention, once again, you have very strong 122% NRR in Q4. With you know, with so much of the selling happening from Suites, right, and you know, those are coming at much bigger chunks, let's think through how much did Suite adoption help net revenue retention this year? With so many customers already on Suites, what can happen to net revenue retention as we move into 2022 and beyond?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Yeah, it's a good question. We obviously haven't yet fully anniversaried Suite. We'll do that in the Q1 timeframe, Q1 2022 timeframe. As you point out, because we're really getting a lot of stickiness with Suite, and a lot of the Suite customers then still do have seat expansion, it may change those dynamics over time. I just don't think we've fully played through because we've not yet anniversaried many customers on Suite. I think to your point, we're seeing a lot of stickiness with Suite.
Stan Zlotsky (Executive Director of Software Equity Research)
Got it. Thank you so much.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Stan. The next question is coming from Arjun Bhatia at William Blair. Arjun, please turn on your camera and unmute your line. Thank you.
Arjun Bhatia (Co-Group Head of Technology, Media, and Communications)
Hello. Hey, Mikkel. Hi, Shelagh. Congrats on the quarter. One thing that stuck out is the enterprise adoption. I'm curious, you know, if you can just maybe just elaborate on the success that you're having up market. Are those larger customers that are driving that-
That strength. Are we seeing existing customers just buy more, upsell, like move to higher pricing tiers? Would just love to hear a little bit more detail on that up-market traction.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Well, I can talk to a few points that may give you a little bit additional color. Like, we mentioned this example of the financial services. It's also in our shareholder letter. I think there's like, we see a bunch of industries where, like, you see, the established enterprises are trying to keep up with the change of the disruptors, that is very visible here in a digital first economy, and that definitely boosts interest in Zendesk. We also see, because like in many industries, we're kind of considered the disruptor's choice.
I think what we're also seeing is that, like, there is a trend which we spent most of 2020 and beginning of 2021 on. It's just, like, simplifying the usage of our suite so that it's not only, you know, not only have everything together, but it's also elegantly integrated so you can roll it out elegantly without a lot of overhead and very, very quickly. We believe that's a major IT trend that we see in the Enterprise today. These are two points I would emphasize here. Make sense?
Arjun Bhatia (Co-Group Head of Technology, Media, and Communications)
Yes. Very helpful. A quick follow-up for Shelagh. I know we're seeing FX headwinds play into guidance for a lot of companies. Can you just remind us of your FX exposure and billing practices and what impact, if any, that's having on the guidance?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Certainly, we have FX exposure, that's a part of how we're thinking about things. We have only, you know, kind of EU-type currency, so Europe and then we are introducing the real. That's early days, we don't have a lot of business on that. It's not a material part of our revenue, I would say. Certainly, we're watching that and, you know, putting hedging in and making sure that we're well protected. It's something we think about in our forecast, but it's not a major headwind for us.
Arjun Bhatia (Co-Group Head of Technology, Media, and Communications)
Okay. Understood. Thank you very much.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thanks, Arjun.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Arjun. The next question comes from Samad Samana over at Jefferies. Please. There we go.
Samad Samana (Managing Director)
Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe first one for Mikkel. You know, it's hiring is in focus for a lot of the companies that we cover right now. It's obviously a tight labor market. I'm just curious if you could give us any kind of color on where Zendesk is in terms of recruiting and retaining you know, sales headcount, and whether you ended it at plan, ahead of plan in the fourth quarter. Just trying to triangulate as we think about 2022.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Yeah. There's no doubt the employee market is very, very fluid right now. We see that. I think all our peers are seeing that. Despite that, we had a very strong recruiting year. We grew the team with 41% year-over-year, so our recruiting machine is really humming. It is a very fluid market and we appreciate that and are doing everything we can to engage with our employees that kind of set them up for success. Like, how we get back to reality and start meeting each other and getting together again and building that company culture that, where this is such a big element is of course something that we spend a lot of time on.
Samad Samana (Managing Director)
Great. Maybe just a quick follow-up for Shelagh. When I look at the RPO, both short-term and total, the seasonal uplift from 3Q to 4Q was just around 10%. That's a little bit more muted than the last several years from 3Q to 4Q. Just anything that we need to be aware of that would've impacted kind of the normal seasonality for RPO from 3Q to 4Q?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Well, I guess it's a little bit, you know, 2020 was such a strange year. It probably is always a hard compare. No, there wasn't anything that we saw. We actually feel really good about both our short-term and long-term RPO. We feel like, again, we're signing customers with, you know, longer and longer contracts, and we feel really good about that. There isn't anything specific to note there.
Samad Samana (Managing Director)
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Samad.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thank you, Samad.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
The next question comes from Hannah Rudoff over at Piper Sandler.
Hannah Rudoff (Research Analyst)
Hi, all. Thanks for taking my questions today. Just first one, kind of to follow up on the last question, I guess, Shelagh, did you guys see any impacts from Omicron in the fourth quarter?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Certainly, I think everybody was, you know, towards the end of the year, everybody was starting to either be impacted by it or somebody in their family member. I know that happened on my team. That probably happened on everybody's team. We saw, you know, a bit of that. I think, you know, we've got a pretty rapid motion for customer wins, so it really didn't impact the results for us. Certainly we saw, you know, some team members be impacted by it and then also some things on the customer. I wouldn't say it was any significant impact for our business.
Hannah Rudoff (Research Analyst)
Okay. That's helpful. It's nice to see that you guys are gaining strong traction with Zendesk Suite. I guess, what kind of expectations are you guys having for Suite this year? What does the path kind of look like to get Suite to more of 40% or 50% of ARR look like?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
You go right. I'll take that one. We expect continued strong growth on Suite. We are anticipating that, you know, we're gonna anniversary, so we're gonna learn a lot about those customers, so we're excited about that. As I mentioned, you know, early indications of those customers are that they, you know, have more expansion and they stay with us. We're interested to see that. We expect, you know, strong growth throughout the year, continued growth on Suite, and we expect that continues into 2023.
Hannah Rudoff (Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thanks, Hannah.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks. The next question comes from Maxwell Osnowitz from Stifel.
Maxwell Osnowitz (Research Associate)
Hi. Thanks, Jason. Just staying on Suite for a second. If 90% of new customer bookings is obviously great, and 60% of total bookings, what is it? Is there, like, a common trend that you're seeing for the customers that aren't adopting Suite right now that are maybe, you know, hesitant, and is there a path to get them on the Suite eventually?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
I would say it's all natural behavior. You know, we have customers that know and are very specific about what they want, and don't have Suite in their plans right now. We also, of course, working with a lot of the customers, sorry about that, about the proper timing of moving to the Suite because there's a little bit of slight bit of change management of their organization. But there's no other kind of big issues that are preventing customers from moving to Suite.
Maxwell Osnowitz (Research Associate)
Got it. Just thinking about kind of the impact of COVID, I know some investors are thinking that there's been a demand pull forward across different industries. Have you noticed anything like that in the customer service and support industry, and can you maybe talk about how customer conversations have shifted over the last four to six months?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
I wouldn't describe us as a company that saw a big, like, pull-in during the pandemic. As we kind of was very transparent about, we had a lot of customers in the sharing economy, in the transportation industry, in the entertainment industry, and travel and so on, that was highly impacted by COVID. What we did during that transition was to focus on our customers and kind of helping them as much we can for the long-term relationship. We also, of course, saw a lot of customers that saw a tremendous amount of demand, suddenly from one day to the other, suddenly serving all of the U.S. with their solutions.
Like, some of our customers within, like, a couple of quarters suddenly had, you know, 50 million more customers to serve. It's like we saw some. We definitely saw a lot with our customers. I do believe we think much more about kind of the long-term implications to demand of the market, and that goes both for kind of, like, digital engagement going forward, but especially around kind of how the enterprise are buying IT going forward, which is much more focused on agility, fast time to results, and keeping up with customer expectations. We believe these are not, like, short-term COVID blips. These are two long-term mega trends.
Maxwell Osnowitz (Research Associate)
Got it. Thanks. That's it for me.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Max. The next question comes from Strecker Backe from Wolfe. Go ahead, please.
Strecker Backe (Senior Associate of Software Equity Research)
Hi. Shelagh, you noted in your prepared remarks that your net expansion rate's been primarily driven by seats. Can you give us any color on, or insights or figures around, you know, how much room you still have left and what kind of opportunity that represents? Beyond just seats, you know, what levers are you leaning on right now that will help drive this metric higher in 2022? Thanks.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
I would quote Norm. Norm would say we're not sold out in any customer. I think as we continue to do kind of our land and expand motion with customers, I don't think we're tapped out at any specific customer that we have. Certainly, as they add agents, you know, they're gonna wanna get those agents onboarded to the tool. As Mikkel said, you know, there were some impacted kind of organizations that are kinda coming back with you know, a bit of the waning COVID, that's an opportunity for us as they bring agents back in. Then certainly you know, moving customers to Suite is always an opportunity.
Not all customers are on Suite, so that movement to Suite, we've talked about it in prior quarters and we saw that this time, this quarter too, that that's on average about 20% increase as people move to the Suite product. You know, can kind of get some pricing improvement with that, and then there's obviously different tiers of Suite. We still do think long-term that the range is 110%-120%, but we're not in any way capping that opportunity.
Strecker Backe (Senior Associate of Software Equity Research)
Thank you.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thanks, Strecker.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks. The next question comes from Kirk Materne over at Evercore. Kirk?
Kirk Materne (Senior Managing Director)
Okay. There we go. Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. You know, Shelagh, can you talk just a little bit about the investments for next year? I know you went over this a little bit at the Analyst Day, but you know, given the high net retention rate right now, you know, it seems like you get a little bit more operating leverage just off the growth you're seeing. And could you just talk maybe a little bit more specifically, like, where you're making investments and sort of how you're thinking about the payback on some of those?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Certainly. I think one of the biggest things we're investing is that Enterprise motion that Norm talked a lot about at the Investor Day. We think, you know, the opportunity there is tremendous. If you look at the kind of progress we've already made, we think we can accelerate that progress. We're making the investments. As Norm talked about in Investor Day, it's not just the feet on the street, it's all the supporting cast to make sure that there's. You know, you win an enterprise deal every day, so you need to make sure that you're fully supporting that customer once they onboard our capability. We're making, you know, investments in that. That's a big investment area. Again, we think the time is ripe for us making the investment.
That acceleration we're already seeing, we really wanna capitalize on that. We're obviously investing, you know, in continuing to improve our products for the Enterprise because they have a lot of specifics that they need. We're putting investments in place that will adhere to sort of the standards that enterprises wanna have. We're making large investments in our reliability. That's across the board for every customer, but obviously even more important for enterprises as, you know, we're helping serve a consequential workflow for them. We're obviously doing investment. I mentioned even, you know, putting some investment into compensation because, as some of the earlier questions, it's a competitive labor market. We wanna make sure that we're properly investing in our talent.
Kirk Materne (Senior Managing Director)
That's helpful. Mikkel, just one quick one for you. Obviously, a lot of discussion on your end about shareholder value and things like that. You know, regardless of what happens in, you know, in a few weeks on the vote, have you and the Board talked about buybacks and leveraging your balance sheet and things like that in a little bit different way? I realize you have a lot of balls in the air right now, so maybe that's at the bottom of the list of discussion points. You know, it is, you know, you are generating cash.
You know, there's other, you know, things you could potentially do on that, on that front, so just curious if that's come up or if you wanna punt that question. I'll give you that option too.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Totally wanna punt that. We are very, very focused on the upcoming transaction here and getting the vote. That's definitely how we believe we can create the most shareholder value, building a $5 billion run rate company by 2025, improved margins, higher growth rate. We think that's gonna be great for everyone.
Kirk Materne (Senior Managing Director)
Fair enough. Thanks.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thanks, Kirk.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Kirk. The next question comes from Ken Wong over at Guggenheim.
Ken Wong (Managing Director)
Great. Thanks for taking my question. Shelagh, you mentioned bringing agents back as a source of growth, and it does seem like a lot of these customers are still aiming to ramp back up. How much of that rebound is possibly being held back by either their own business dynamics or is it more labor bottlenecks, shortages? How should we think about kinda what gets what helps move service reps kinda back into your customers?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Well, I think both those things are at play. I don't know that I know the, you know, balancing act between them. Certainly, we know that everybody who was impacted in COVID hasn't been able to fully come back. We, you know, we see that in our daily lives that, you know, some things are still not all the way back. Certainly, that ability to come back and bring people back is part of it. To your point, you know, the labor market is pretty tight, so there's, you know, lots of competition for talent. I would say it's probably a combination of that. I don't know which side of the balance any one particular company is on.
Ken Wong (Managing Director)
Got it. Maybe just touching on customer logos. I know you guys have already messaged that that should kinda continue to go down. Can you remind us when we should see that dynamic stabilize and then possibly improve?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
I think I mentioned also in my prepared remarks that the new customers we're adding are 10x more ARR than some of those low-end kind of discontinued marketed plans. We expect that's gonna continue through this year. Our expectation was that we may get through that in 2022. You know, obviously, that's something we'll monitor every quarter. As we've said before, this is really a strategy to make sure that we were focusing on those high-impact, high-return customers.
Ken Wong (Managing Director)
Got it. Great. Thank you very much.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Ken. Next question comes from Ryan MacWilliams over at Barclays. Ryan, please turn on your camera. Thanks.
Ryan MacWilliams (Software Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Mikkel, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned conversations with investors, you know, over the last few months on the pending Momentive deal. What's feedback been like so far? What's some pain points or some positives that people focused on?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
I just wanna repeat what I said in my prepared remarks here, that we like a lot of these, like it's we really appreciate our investors digging in and engaging in these conversations. That's gonna continue over the next couple of weeks. We realize that we surprised some of our investors with this acquisition, so giving them time to dig in and understand it better and really engaging with us in these conversations has been very rewarding, and we believe it's very productive. We believe that's gonna continue over the next couple of weeks.
Ryan MacWilliams (Software Equity Research Analyst)
Oh, perfect. I liked hearing about Zendesk's opportunity and the customer intelligence strategy over the last few presentations. You know, just one more on the deal. I know you're fully committed to getting this acquisition passed over the next two weeks, you know, in the event it doesn't go through. Have you thought about potential next steps and, you know, what comes next for Zendesk? Thanks.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
We have a strong operating plan for 2022, and we're gonna continue to execute on that. That's for certain. If for one reason or the other the deal doesn't go through, we're gonna continue to execute on our vision about building customer intelligence, but the path is gonna be different. You know, we'll have to kind of revisit some of our strategies there. Like, we're very committed to our vision. We believe we can build strong shareholder value with that, and we believe that Momentive acquisition fits very neatly into that.
Ryan MacWilliams (Software Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Ryan. The next question comes from Michael Funk over at Bank of America. Please turn on your camera. Michael?
Michael Funk (SVP)
Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me now?
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Yeah.
Michael Funk (SVP)
Yeah. Apologies. My camera's not functioning, so I apologize for that. Just on your earlier comments about the unsolicited offer, I understand you're not gonna comment on the offer specifically, but you did say that, you know, you view your ability to generate excess value, you know, in addition to where the offer came in. Maybe you can just go back and quantify for us, you know, the benefits of the Momentive transaction and some of the metrics that may actually benefit from that deal.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
I wanna keep it high level here. We have produced a lot of material that kind of that lays out our path over the next couple of years towards building a company with almost $5 billion run rate by 2025, with a higher growth rate than we as an independent company, and with better margins too. We believe that there's a tremendous amount of shareholder value, shareholder creation, shareholder value creation from building that, and we believe it's gonna be responded to very, very well by our customers, and can become a new category and position us as a category leader there. We believe that we have laid out that in our various presentations that are available for us, and we're very focused on that.
Michael Funk (SVP)
Sure. No, I appreciate it. Are there near-term metrics we can look to in, say, 12 months after the close? For example, the cross-sell opportunity which you've highlighted in your presentations, in your prior remarks. You know, obviously the combination of the products.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Yeah.
Michael Funk (SVP)
The metrics we can look to post-close that should improve and prove that point you made earlier about excess value creation.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Yep. Like we have committed to our shareholders in our conversations that we will be very, very transparent about the synergies that we're creating, and help them understand quarter-by-quarter our improvements on those metrics. We're very appreciative for our shareholders' interest in monitoring that and working with us on that journey.
Michael Funk (SVP)
Great. Thank you so much for the time. I apologize again for the camera.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
No worries. Thank you so much.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks. The next question comes from Derrick Wood over at Cowen. Derrick, please turn on your camera.
Derrick Wood (Managing Director)
Oh, great. Thanks, guys. First question on the, you know, we've talked a lot about the enterprise business. Wanted to ask about the Velocity business, and just kind of how that growth curve has been tracking. You know, small business certainly got hit harder during COVID, then had a nice bounce back, and now we've kind of moved more into a normalized environment. How would you characterize the trend line on Velocity and maybe how that growth compares to the enterprise?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Do you wanna start out here, Shelagh?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Yeah. We saw exactly what you just said, Derrick. That sort of journey that you laid out. Obviously, as we're, you know, coming into more normal times, we still see good growth there, and we think it's back to somewhat more normal growth trends than maybe that, more, you know, kind of other side of that COVID decline. We see kind of a normal growth plan happening there.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
We are very excited about our continued relevance and, like, winning strategy in both the SMB, mid-market, and enterprise markets. We're very excited that we can continue to execute on all three markets at the same time. It gives a lot of stability and strength to our business, and that is the strategy that we've been pursuing over the last six, seven, eight years, that we can move up into the enterprise without sacrificing our growth in the other segments.
Derrick Wood (Managing Director)
Got it. Maybe on just kind of double-clicking on the enterprise go-to-market side, and it sounds like you'll continue to focus on the Suite sales. Any other changes to be aware of that you're thinking about going into 2022? Maybe, you know, thinking about how to bring Sunshine more into the fold or anything, any other new playbooks to highlight?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
I would reemphasize here that the biggest trend we are seeing is enterprises being attracted more to easier yet powerful solutions that they can roll out really quickly, that they can scale with really quickly, that are very agile, that doesn't take years to change, that is very responsive to their needs and to their customer needs, that provides this transparency and empowerment of everybody involved. It's almost at a point where they don't have to think about it as an IT solution, but truly live up to kind of the promise of SaaS. We're very excited about it. I think this is one of the mega trends coming out of the pandemic, and that's a major driver of our business right now.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Yeah, if I might add.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
I'd agree.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Sorry, I got a frog in my throat. Just when I was talking. Pardon me. The only other thing I would mention is one other thing that we're putting further investment in in 2022 is our partner, building out our partner relationships. That's been a, you know, growth area for us, and we think there's more opportunity. In addition to everything Mikkel said, I'd just add, you know, kind of, further building out that partner relationship.
Derrick Wood (Managing Director)
All right. Thanks, guys.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Derrick. Next question comes from Jeff Van Rhee over at Craig-Hallum.
Jeff Van Rhee (Senior Research Analyst)
There we go. Hey, guys. A couple questions from me. I'd like to maybe zoom way out. I remember late 2018, early 2019, you had given a target model that discussed, hey, look, if we're 30% growth or sub, we'll give you 500 basis points to margin per year. And I think since then the actual give's been about a quarter of that. To your point, Shelagh, I think we're guiding roughly flattish minimal operating margin. Here, the question is, since that view back then as to what it would take to drive a 30% growth business versus now what it takes to drive 30%, you know, can you put your finger on exactly what's changed? You've touched on the move to enterprise. Maybe that's a little more expensive.
Just labor's certainly gotten a little more expensive, particularly recently. Maybe just zoom out and anything, any perspective you can give there?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Yeah. I think as we move forward, I kind of laid out our standalone Zendesk model at Investor Day, and then our long-term ambition is to get to the 20% operating margin. Investing in enterprise really requires a lot of upfront capability because obviously we need to build out our products such that enterprise is, you know, feel confident in adopting it. We need to build out the sales motion and then all the supporting cast. It's always been the company's philosophy to balance growth and profit, you know, making sure that we have an eye on both and making sure that we're putting the right investment in so that we're growing the top so that we then have the scale to grow the bottom line.
We've kind of laid out, you know, the long-term ambition is the 20%. You know, as we drove into this year, what we were really struck by was the progress we made in 2021 in enterprise, which was, I think quite remarkable, and we felt like the opportunity is really there. As Mikkel pointed out, for the customers that we've won, what they really appreciate about us is the time to value, rapid ability for them to, you know, bring their agents on, and TCO, and we think that's a big opportunity, so we wanna make sure to take full advantage of that opportunity.
Jeff Van Rhee (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. On the Suite, one question on Suite. If you look at, you know, obviously great adoption, what have you learned about the adoption of incremental? Obviously, you're getting more seats, you're getting all kinds of things, but, what have you seen? Can you quantify the adoption of incremental features and the pace at which people do that on Suite versus previously?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. All the signs that we're looking at and all the things that you're asking about here, the things that we've also said, like, it all looks positive. We do wanna have, like, a full year and, like, preferably a little bit more before we say these things with the highest degree of confidence. Both, like, the adoption of capabilities, the expansion within an organization and the adoption of more agents on the solution, like, all these things points to positive as we can see the data right now.
Jeff Van Rhee (Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. Last one, and I'll let somebody else jump here or get to the order. Shelagh, on the seasonality, I remember the messaging last quarter around RPOs was that because of the move to enterprise, you're seeing particularly backend loaded Q4 centric business. If I look at the sequential growth of RPOs Q3 to Q4, it's kind of in line, maybe a little less than what you'd seen historically. I guess there's two questions embedded in there. Was the seasonality what you expected, or asked differently, were the bookings what you expected in the quarter? Did you hit your bookings number in the quarter?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Yeah. We were largely in line with our expectations. It is a big quarter, as you mentioned. It's a big renewal quarter for us. Yeah, we didn't see any significant change from what our expectation was.
Jeff Van Rhee (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. Thanks for taking my questions, guys.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thanks, Jeff.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Jeff. Our next question comes from Pat Walravens from JMP. Go ahead, Pat.
Pat Walravens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Oh, great. Thank you, and congratulations on the quarter. Mikkel, you know, there's with sort of multiple balls in the air here for you, Momentive, these third parties who are approaching you, the core business. I'm just curious, and I think shareholders might find it helpful too, what are your, you know, as CEO, what are your top one or two priorities right now? What do you think are the most important things for you to be focusing on and getting done?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
We had two puppies yesterday.
Pat Walravens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Oh, yeah.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Yeah, a bunch of kids losing their minds, so that's a big priority in the house.
Pat Walravens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Oh, yeah. That's huge.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
No, I think like, you know, our investors wanna see us execute, and like, I'm very happy about having built a team that can just ensure that we can continue to execute that strong operational discipline, strong execution discipline. You know, that is the foundation of whatever we wanna do. That's, I think that's one thing. Of course, we need to get to the vote and get the acquisition done with, and I think that's the key top things for everybody to think about right now.
Pat Walravens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. Great. Then if I could add just a follow-up that's only somewhat related. You know, you're closing these really big deals in big companies that supposedly are standardized on, like, Salesforce's software. I'm just curious, how does that work? How do you get in and do such big deals in companies that are supposedly standardized on another customer engagement solution?
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Pat, I think this standardized on a specific vendor is like, that's a term from the 1990s. Like, I don't-
Pat Walravens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Nobody does that anymore. Like, nobody wants to put on those handcuffs voluntarily. No, I think that. That's the promise of SaaS software, and I see, actually, the early promises of SaaS software, we see that some of that realization right now, and we're good at playing with others. We've always been very good at playing with others. Like, I think businesses today are much more focused on what they can get out of the solutions that all are kind of that, you know, like usually kind of focused on the technical integration and the whatever back end choice they had. Because as the public cloud and so on has taken care of a lot of those things, so they're not really top of mind for businesses anymore.
Pat Walravens (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
All right. Great. Thank you.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Great. Our last question comes from Taylor McGinnis over at UBS. Taylor?
Taylor McGinnis (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah. Hi. Thanks so much for taking my question. I just wanted to focus in on Suite. The sequential growth and uptake that you guys have experienced has been really solid. But I guess with Suite ARR now at over $500 million, that means the non-Suite part of the business, of course, has been declining year-over-year.
Can you maybe just provide color on where we stand in terms of migrating the existing install base to Suite and the runway left there, just in the context of when we start to lap that, how we should think about that next year? Then maybe as like a second part to that question, you know, you've talked a lot about the new logo adoption and that being strong with Suite, so maybe you can talk about the opportunity still there.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Sure. We still feel like we're early days in Suite. We've got a lot of runway, and we expect, you know, continued growth on Suite in 2022. I know we've said that we think, you know, there's a certain set of our customers who might not adopt Suite. I think as Mikkel said, we're not even one year anniversary on Suite. I don't know if we feel as declarative about that. We think a lot of customers are finding Suite fits their needs, right, and solves a lot of problems for them. We're very open for every customer adopting Suite over time. But you know, 2022 is still another really strong year of growth in Suite, and we think 2023 is.
To your point, over time as Suite grows, obviously, it becomes our largest line of business, if you will, which I think we're very happy to have happen, because we think that gives customers solutions that bring them great value, and we always wanna be providing a lot of value to our customers.
Taylor McGinnis (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. My second question is just when looking at the guide for 2022 for the full year at 27%, so it's only, you know, a modest decel. When thinking about, you know, Suite and some of these other variables that contribute to that growth, any color that you can provide on some of the assumptions embedded there? I know you talked about earlier, hey, you have to lap Suite, right, in order to see some of like the impact or what that could look like. Is there any risk to the guide from that perspective?
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
I mean, you know, we feel really comfortable with the guide that we're providing, and obviously execution is very important to us always. We feel like we've got good, strong line of sight for the guide. To your question on Suite, continued Suite adoption is certainly one of the key assumptions in the guide, and then also this continued move in enterprise, along with our traditional strengths in SMB and the mid-market. There isn't any one business that doesn't have, you know, opportunity to continue to grow in the guide that we have. Yeah, we feel good, strong line of sight.
Like I said, I think it was the first question that I got asked, you know, our expectation is we get to be with you every 90 days, and then we use, you know, the performance of the last 90 days to help build the confidence going forward, similar to what we did in 2021.
Taylor McGinnis (Equity Research Analyst)
Awesome. Congrats on the quarter. Thanks.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thank you, Taylor.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Great. Thank you, everybody. I'll turn the call back over to Mikkel.
Mikkel Svane (Founder, CEO, and Chair of the Board)
Yeah. I don't have so much more to say. Again, like, we appreciate everybody leaning in and engaging with us on both, like, our quarter here, but also the strong metrics going forward, and of course the upcoming transaction here, the acquisition of Momentive that we look very much forward to complete. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today. Very proud about our quarter. Congratulations, team Zendesk. This was a fantastic Q4, and you know, a tough Q4 in many parts of the world where we were all affected by Omicron and had families and friends and you know, children sick and you know. Thanks so much, team. You did a great job. Thank you.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Thanks, everybody.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Thank you.
Shelagh Glaser (CFO)
Bye.
Jason Tsai (Head of Investor Relations)
Bye.