Cognyte Software Ltd. (CGNT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cognyte First Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dean Ridlon, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. I'm Dean Ridlon, Cognyte's Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today. I'm here with Elad Sharon, Cognyte's CEO; and David Abadi, Cognyte's CFO. Before getting started, I would like to mention that accompanying our call today is a presentation, if you would like to view these slides in real-time during the call, please visit the Investors section of our website at cognyte.com, click on the Investors tab, click on the webcast link and select today's conference call. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that certain matters discussed on this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other provisions of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call, and except as required by law, Cognyte assumes no obligation to update or revise them. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of how these and other risks and uncertainties could cause Cognyte actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these forward-looking statements. Please see our annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2023, and other filings we make with the SEC. The financial measures discussed today include non-GAAP measures. We believe investors focus on non-GAAP financial measures in comparing results between periods and among our peer companies to publish similar non-GAAP measures. Please see today's presentation slides, our earnings release, and the Investors section of our website at cognyte.com for a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures. Non-GAAP financial information should not be considered in isolation from, as a substitute for, or superior to GAAP financial information, but is included because management believes it provides meaningful information about the financial performance of our business and is useful to investors for informational and comparative purposes. The non-GAAP financial measures the company uses have limitations and may differ from those used by other companies. Now I would like to turn the call over to Elad.

Thank you, Dean. Welcome, everyone, to our first quarter conference call. I'm pleased to report a good start for the year with solid Q1 results across several key metrics. Revenue grew sequentially and came in ahead of our expectation at $73 million. I'm very pleased with our gross margins increasing by 800 basis points compared to Q1 last year and gross profit increasing 7% year-over-year on an SIS adjusted non-GAAP basis. Free cash flow was very strong, coming in at $70 million, also ahead of our expectations. Today, I'll start with a review of our first quarter significant wins and market dynamics. Next, I will discuss our differentiated technology and how we believe we're well positioned to leverage latest AI innovations to increase customer value. And lastly, I'll discuss our updated outlook for the year. I would now like to review some of our significant wins in the quarter that highlight our differentiated technology and deep customer relationships. Our investigative analytics solutions have national security, law enforcement, national intelligence and other security organizations to accelerate investigations. The first deal is for approximately $8 million with an existing national intelligence customer for its mission to combat drug trafficking and other high-impact crimes around the borders. We believe we were selected because of our cutting-edge technology that consistently outperformed solutions from other vendors during a variety of operational activities performed by this customer. The second deal is with an existing national security customer for approximately $9 million. It represents an expansion of our customers' capabilities and functionality for its mission to address an increase of the and criminal activities in the country. We believe we were selected due to our ability to accelerate security investigations and the long-term relationship we have with this customer. The third deal is for approximately $5 million from an existing national security customer. The deal is to expand capacity and widen the operational capabilities of their solution to more effectively combat our activities. We believe we are selected based on our long track record of success in value creation. The common thread we see through these wins is our innovative and differentiated investigating analytics solutions and our ability to help customers successfully create operational value. Looking at the current market dynamics, we see a noticeable change versus what we saw last year. A year ago, many customers suffered from budget uncertainties, which impacted the visibility and ability to plan ahead. This year, more customers are expressing confidence in the budgets and plans. Our customers increased confidence, supports our expectations for the year and is translating into more discussions about future needs. For example, at recent industry conference, we saw a higher level of attendance and interest from customers. Overall, we clearly see more customers returning to normal behavior this year compared to what was happening a year ago. Next, I would like to discuss our innovation and differentiation. Our customers face unique challenges when it comes to investigating analytics and decision-making. They have to use and analyze data at scale from a large variety of different sources, including sensitive data. The objective is to uncover insights quickly to accelerate investigations. Cognyte is focused on investigating analytics in order to uncover hidden connections inside large diverse data sources. We have been doing this for many years by continuously improving advance analytics and incorporating artificial intelligence models in our solutions. The recent developments in AI provides us with new opportunities. We are currently focused on leveraging the latest day innovations to enable our customers to derive even greater value from their data. We believe there are new market segments that face investigative analytics challenges that present us with good expansion opportunities over time. We believe that our long-term market leadership in investigative analytics combined with our technological strength and our strong relationships with our large customer base across the globe position us well to leverage AI innovation and drive long-term growth. Looking at our outlook for this fiscal year, given the improved visibility, we are raising our revenue guidance for the year to $303 million, plus or minus 2%, representing 7% year-over-year growth at the midpoint on an SIS adjusted non-GAAP basis. With revenue expected to grow by 7%, we now expect gross profit to grow faster at more than 10% year-over-year. As for cash flow, we are now expecting positive cash flow from operations for the full year. Looking beyond this year, given recent innovations in AI, we have identified potential opportunities to expand our business with both existing and new customers. We believe that the combination of positive industry trends, our innovative technology and large global customer base position us well for long-term growth. To summarize, our customers continue to face significant investigative challenges across many use cases. Our mission is to help them accelerate investigations and mitigate the wide range of threats before they unfold. And our customers view us as domain experts and trusted partner. We are pleased with our first quarter results and positive momentum and are raising guidance for the current year. Long term, we target continued growth and margin expansion. Now let me turn the call over to David to provide more details about our results and outlook. David?

Thank you, Elad, and hello, everyone. Our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures. The conciliation between our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is available, as Dean mentioned in our earnings release and in the Investors section of our website. Our website also includes a financial dashboard with a tab that details our historical results, excluding the divested Situation Intelligence Solutions. We are pleased with our Q1 financial results, as we had solid performance across revenue, gross margin, cash flow and bookings. The ongoing demand for our cutting-edge investigative analytics solutions continued to be strong during the quarter, and we continue to win deals from a variety of customers. Q1 revenue came in at $73 million, up $2 million from Q4. Software revenue came in at $25 million, representing 6% sequential growth and 11% year-over-year growth. Gross profit was up 9% sequentially and 7% year-over-year, and our software gross profit grew faster than software revenue and was up 90% sequentially and 80% year-over-year. Q1 gross margin was 68.4%, up 250 basis points from Q4 and up 800 basis points from Q1 last year, primarily due to an increase in software revenue. Our gross margin reflects our competitive differentiation and ability to create value for our customers. All of the revenue, gross profit and gross margin, growth rates I just discussed are on SIS adjusted non-GAAP basis. Our Q1 non-GAAP operating expenses were $55.7 million, slightly higher than the Q4 level. Over the last few quarters, we improved our distribution, better focus the organization and improve our cost structure, resulting in sequential revenue growth, higher gross margin and the significant reduced operating costs. Our Q1 non-GAAP operating loss was $5.5 million, and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss was $2.3 million. Turning to cash, we generated significant positive cash flow from operation of $90 million during Q1. The positive cash flow was driven by our improved financial results and strong cash collection. In terms of the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash of about $73 million and no debt. Our long and short-term RPO continued to be strong. Total RPO at the end of Q1 was $581 million, and short-term RPO was $283 million, approximately the same level as of Q4. This healthy backlog and continued demand allow us to increase again our outlook for the current year. Turning to fiscal '24. For the full year, we are raising our revenue outlook to $303 million plus or minus 2%, reflecting approximately 7% year-over-year growth on an SIS adjusted non-GAAP basis at the midpoint of the range. Our revenue outlook is driven by our current view of the backlog deployment schedule for this year and assumes similar macro environment conditions. Let me share with you more color on how we see the remainder of the year evolving. For revenue, that's for current short and backlog deployment schedule, we expect Q2 revenue similar to Q1 and the second half to be higher than the first half. As a result of the strength of -- and quality of our backlog and recent bookings, we are increasing our full year non-GAAP gross margin expectation to 66.5%, an improvement of 150 basis points versus our previous outlook and year-over-year improvement of 375 basis points on a SIS adjusted non-GAAP basis. Gross margin will fluctuate between quarters based on the revenue mix. For our non-GAAP operating expenses, we continue to expect total expenses of about $220 million for the full year and to be relatively flat throughout the year. Our improved cost structure combined with revenue growth and higher gross margins will allow us to improve operating margins over time. We remain on track to achieve our goal to drive positive non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA during Q4 of this fiscal year. As a result, we are now expecting a smaller annual EPS loss. The midpoint of the revenue range, we are now expecting a $0.53 annual non-GAAP EPS loss, an improvement of $0.07 versus our previous outlook. Our non-GAAP EPS will fluctuate quarter-to-quarter, partially due to our non-GAAP tax expenses. We expect our Q2 non-GAAP EPS loss to be larger in Q1, primarily as a result of our non-GAAP tax methodology. Turning to cash flow. Given the strong cash flow from operations we generated in Q1 and improved financial outlook, we are now expecting positive cash flow from operations for the full year. We continue to expect about $10 million of payments for CapEx, partially offset by additional receipts from the SIS divestiture related to the holdback and price adjustment which we expect to receive during the second half of the year. To summarize, we are a market leader in investigative analytics and have a strong and lengthy track records with customers around the world. We continue to add capabilities and improve the performance of our solution by leveraging the latest technologies, including emerging innovation in artificial intelligence. We believe these technological innovations increased the operational value our customers be generated for our solution and help drive demand. We are pleased with our first quarter results. We now expect about $303 million of revenue, plus or minus 2% and improved gross margin and profitability for FY '24. We're expecting positive cash flow from operations for the year. Looking beyond FY '24, we believe that the combination of our cutting-edge technology, large and loyal customer base and the opportunity to order the needs of new customers position us well for long-term growth. With that, I would like to hand the call over to the operator to open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Mike Cikos of Needham.

Mike Cikos here. I wanted to start out with the quarter itself and then going over some of the upside and outperformance that you guys were able to deliver. First, obviously, revenue was above what we had anticipated. I know you guys were talking about flat sequentially versus this up, right? So can you help us think about how the revenue came together in the quarter that was able to help you guys deliver that outperformance? That's the first question I'd like to delve into. And then I have a couple of follow-ups.

Yes. So Mike, yes, indeed, we see a healthy demand positive month in the market over the last 2 quarters already, and we continue to win significant deals. The reasons for the -- being ahead of expectations for Q1 is mainly related to backlog conversion scheduling. And that's the reason we were able to deliver more within the quarter.

And just to call it out because like your backlog bookings, right, if I think about the disclosures you guys provided today with RPO and current RPO climbing from 4Q to 1Q by a couple of million dollars, right? So when you're calling out that backlog conversion, should I interpret that as like backlog came in earlier than you guys had anticipated, and you were still able to backfill that based on the fact that those RPO and current RPO balances climbed sequentially? Like can you tease that out?

Yes. So maybe before talking about the RPO, I want to share with you a little bit about the market dynamics today because I think it's important. We discussed the healthy demand, we discussed the positive momentum. We have strong backlog long and short term, but we also see more and more customers that are more confident in the budgets and plans. And the -- actually, the Q1 results are derived by accelerated customer readiness and for us being able to convert more backlog into revenue within quarter. And that's what we see. Actually, we see more and more customers in better position. And this is the reason we were able to deliver more in Q1 and also raise the outlook for the year for [ Q2 or Q3 ].

Got it. I appreciate it. And I know that you guys had also, again, coming back to the RPO for a second. But RPO and current RPO, you guys said that's flat sequentially. If I go back to my notes, it's actually up by a couple of million dollars. So call it flat on a percentage basis, but you did grow it from 4Q to 1Q. One of the things that I'd like to hear what has the typical cadence been? Like if I go from 4Q to 1Q last year, the year before, the year before that, traditionally, is RPO and current RPO climbing sequentially from Q4 to Q1 or no?

So RPO is reflected by multiple elements, including a multiple year support contract and other elements that can impact on the total. There is no specific pattern like we could see like that RPO in general can grow from quarter-on-quarter. But overall, our RPO is very strong and our ability to convert more backlog in and giving the Q1 overall results gave us the ability to improve our outlook for the year. I believe that the RPO that we have, the short term and the long term support our future growth, and it's very solid.

I do appreciate the fact that you guys are talking about the 1Q outperformance with this backlog conversion and customer readiness. But at the same time, both RPO and current RPO balances remain strong. So thank you for calling that out. I think the last item that I really wanted to talk to appreciate the color on Q2 and the fact that you're able to maintain that flat OpEx for the remainder of the year, which I know we had spoken about last quarter, but if I look at the gross margins, that's the last item I really wanted to hit on with you guys before I turn it over to my colleagues. With gross margins, obviously, you guys were well ahead of expectations. So can we do a similar, I guess, line of questioning versus what we just did with revenue. First, for gross margin, what helped drive that outperformance in Q1. And then second, what provides you the confidence to now take up gross margin 150 bps for the year versus what we had anticipated previously.

Yes. So Mike, maybe I'll start and then David will continue. We do see higher quality of the bookings. So the mix is better. Mix better means more software revenue in the mix. And this drives higher gross margin overall. We do see also that we do expect that when revenue goes up, the gross margin will also improve over time. About the specifics, David, do you want to add?

Yes. I will elaborate on that. So obviously, we are very pleased with our gross margin in Q1 and also the ability to improve our outlook for the year. In total, we believe that year-over-year will be almost 400 basis points, 275 basis point improvement. The main reason behind it is the quality of the booking more software revenue. We see also in the mix in Q1 that our total software revenue were in a higher mix. It was almost 90% of our revenue. This trend that we are able to continue to deliver our -- as we said, our premium solution with high margin drives the gross margin over time. And now we are looking for the year with the 6.5%. And the main reason is the Q1 performance continue with last year and overall backlog give us the confidence that we'll be able to drive it.

That's great. And I know we're talking about the mix. So just to put a finer point on it. So the assumption is that, I guess, the mix will normalize a little bit for the rest of the year, and that's why we should expect Q2 through Q4 to come down from the 60% level in Q1, but at the same time, the bookings quality is what's benefiting that overall gross margin. Is that a fair characterization?

Yes, that's fair.

And our next question will come from Peter Levine of Evercore.

Your commentary earlier on the call, you said better budget discussions seems like customers are returning to normal behavior versus last year. Can you kind of just maybe dive into that a little bit deeper, expenses kind of what you're seeing on the top of the funnel, conversion rates and then your expectations, I think, throughout the rest of the year in terms of the macro impacting your ability to further reaccelerate?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Peter. So we see a healthy demand and positive momentum, and it's over the last 2 quarters already. We continue to enlarge deals. The backlog is strong, as we discussed before. And also our customers are saying more -- and more of our customers saying that actually they are more confident about the budget and the plans. And we also expect the demand for our solutions to continue and increase. And there are actually a few drivers for that. First of all, we discussed it earlier in the call that customers' challenges are becoming more complex and growing. So in order for them to be able to do the job, they need more analytics, more capabilities related to dealing with big data, and it's really important for them to get this technology. Also, our customers' objective is being able to accelerate in time. The investigation. This is one. Second, to improve the accuracy of the investigation and third, to make it successful, make it successful means to reach conclusive outcome. So it's about time, strength of the insights that they generate from the solution and being able to conclude investigations. And more analytics and more AI capabilities are extremely important for them and actually present even greater value over time. So for that reason, we see the demand of customers improving along the way. And we believe that the recent AI developments will also generate more demand. I can give you an anecdote, just to give you more color, we participated an industry trade show a couple of weeks ago in Europe, big one. And actually, we saw that is [ Royal ] attendant, more participants than we used to see before. Many requests for meetings and demos, a lot of interest in modernizing the technology with more analytics, more AI. Customers are now unlike last year that they were talking about pressing current needs. They were talking to us about future needs and what else needs to be done in their side in order for them to be able to accelerate their performance. So all of those are very encouraging signs. So I feel good about where we are today. And I feel good about being able to continue growing in the long term. I hope this give you some color about the dynamics of the market.

And maybe just the last one is good to see free cash flow tick higher. Maybe just talk about the levers that you're pulling internally on like marketing side, R&D side, where -- what's the trade-off if you're going to deliver a little bit more leverage. Maybe talk about what the trade-off is or maybe just again, just emphasize on kind of where you're cutting costs while still being efficient in terms of growth.

So actually, just to make sure that we understood the question, the question is about our margin expansion and the ability, the trade-off between increased investment on the OpEx versus growth. Is that correct?

Correct.

So last year, we had like to make a lot of decisions about our cost structure and versus the opportunity. And when we look at, we believe that the opportunity is here. We are playing in this market for a long time, we are market leader. We know our customer base for a long time. Our solutions are very innovative and customer love what we provide them. When we are to think about like cost structure and what is the right thing to do, you need to balance between your short term and long term. I think that we built a very well organization that allow us to be there when the growth will come and capture it. I think that you can see that in Q1, the results, we are growing. We are improving our margin, and I believe that it will continue over time.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Shaul Eyal of TD Cowen.

Of the 3 contracts that you've mentioned during your presentation, are these all existing clients? Or are these also new clients, any displacement opportunities that you're seeing out there?

Yes. So the examples I used this quarter, our existing clients, it's upgrades of capacity and functionality. And we did have also new logos in the quarter. And we did give a few examples of large deals coming from new customers in previous quarters. So timing is changing from time to time whether it comes from existing or new customers, but those examples are with existing customers, and the reason they upgrade is that they have the solution, they have the value that they need. And the drivers for expansions and upgrades are either functionality adding more analytics, more AI in order for them to be able to accelerate what they need to do or they're dealing with more data. So those are the drivers, and we see it more and more with large customers that are expanding even further as the value is greater now with analytics.

Got it. And maybe I want to maybe double-click on duties prior reply to Peter was alluding to the fact when growth returns. What internal steps have you taken to be ready for what might be the next cycle, not that you're seeing that stability and maybe even reacceleration? What steps have you taken internally?

So given the situation in the macro environment last year, we took several steps. The first one was to focus on the -- where the highest opportunities are in terms of market conditions, going to countries and to organizations that have more pressing needs but also have the budget. This is one. Second. We restructured organization and adjusted the operating expenses to where it should be. And David mentioned that actually, we balanced it in a way that on one hand, we are able to overcome these macro environment conditions temporary disruption. But on the other hand, continue and innovate in order for us to be able to capture the growth when the market is recovering, and that's what we are trying to do now. We flattened the organization. We actually slowed down road map that was more to modernize infrastructure and focusing more on value to customers and more analytics and actually focuses and realigned the sales force to countries where we see more opportunities. So we, on one hand, focused on the market. If I have to summarize, we focus on markets and countries where we see the potential that is higher and they have budgets, one hand. On the other hand, adjusting the OpEx and prioritizing the activities to increase customer value versus modernizing platforms. Those were the highlights for last year. And I see now that I think we took the right decision. I see now that this is actually working for us.

And I would now like to turn the call back to Dean Ridlon for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on today's call. Should you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to me, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.