Gen Digital Inc. (GEN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

May 11, 2021

NASDAQ US Information Technology Software investor_day 89 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Mary Lai

executive
#1

[Presentation] Good morning, everyone. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Mary Lai, Head of Investor Relations at NortonLifeLock. Welcome to NortonLifeLock's first Investor Day. For our Q&A discussion today, we have a great lineup for you, including Vincent Pilette, CEO; Natalie Derse, CFO; and other members of the leadership team. As a reminder, there will be a replay of this event posted on the IR website. And by now, you should have seen our press release and have access to all the video presentations. I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, comments and statements may contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our business, financial performance and operations. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statement in our press release and the risk factors in our filings with the SEC, and in particular, our annual report on Form 10-K and recently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. In addition, we may also make references to financial metrics that are non-GAAP. Please refer to our IR website for a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures. Before we start our Q&A session, let me pass the mic over to our CEO, to kick off the event. Vincent?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#2

Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. I hope you are all safe and well. As you may have read, we just delivered a record quarter, closing a very strong year. Since becoming NortonLifeLock, we achieved a lot delivering on every one of our commitments, the more important of which was returning the company to growth. In the last quarter, reported billings was up 17% and revenue up 11%; record numbers. And in the last year, we increased our direct customer count to almost 3 million to a total direct customer count of 23 million. But for this team, it is just the beginning. We have a broad vision of protecting and empowering everyone to live their digital lives safely. We set big goals of drastically improving customer experience and making cyber safety mainstream. Our strategy is simple and it's working. We're building the best integrated cyber safety platform, which we are expanding with adjacent trust-based products and services. Through our results, through the videos we posted yesterday, today and of course, ongoingly, I hope you can sense the passion and the drive that this new leadership team brings to the opportunity. We have the capabilities and the confidence to accelerate our growth to double digits and double our EPS in the next 3 to 5 years. You know Natalie, you know me, we have decided to bring a subset of our leadership team to this session. This is about teamwork. You can get a better appreciation of who we are, how we look at our opportunity and how we drive together with a common set of values in pursuit of our vision. So with no further ado, let's move to Q&A. Mary, back to you.

Mary Lai

executive
#3

Thank you, Vincent. All right. Let's get started. We will now open up for Q&A. Our first question comes from Saket at Barclays.

Saket Kalia

analyst
#4

Okay, great. Thanks, Mary. Can you hear me okay?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#5

Yes, Saket.

Saket Kalia

analyst
#6

Okay. Excellent. Maybe I'll start with you, Vincent, first. I appreciate the triple double goals. I think it all starts with the doubling customers. So I'd like to zero in on that just to start. Doubling customers from 50 million to 100 million, I think, over the next 3 to 5 years, I think it was said. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the drivers there, right, on kind of that path? And kind of how you think about broad brush, that potential to split between sort of direct customers, right, which you've been beating here for the last -- for several quarters, and indirect customers as well? Does that make sense?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#7

That makes perfect sense. And what you referred to about the triple double is what Natalie, in our presentation graph, and it's somewhat quantifying the objective: double number of customers, double-digit growth delivered in the next 3 to 5 years, and double our EPS. When we set our big goals, it actually had a fourth one, as you know, and it all starts with doubling the customer experience. Improving that, which means really doubling the Net Promoter Score. I think it's all about making cyber safety relatable, easy to use, easy to benefit from, giving the true peace of mind to customers. When we look at the market itself, markets or marketers are going to define the market as they know it today. But when we look at our opportunity, we know that 5 billion people connected to the Internet. And those have their digital lives growing exponentially. And you see it over the last 12 months, how many more activities have moved online, right? Students now moving online, socializing, many of the activities we used to do in the physical world are now overlapping with the digital world. And that has opened the door for cyber criminals to attack in many different ways and doing ransomware on student scorecards and asking a ransom, otherwise embarrassing them on social media. And everything is increasingly at risk, if you want, as what we value in the past has now moved online. And so we see the overall need for cyber safety to only increase. Today, less than 5% of people who have digital life pay for cyber safety plan. And if you compare that to the physical world, in the physical world, 90% of people who have a car have a car insurance; 30% of the homeowners have a home alarm system or home insurance. Yet when you talk about a digital life and what you value online, less than 5% of people are paying for cyber safety plan that fully protect them. That's how we look at the opportunity. And so the second big goal after experiencing improving customer experience is really about making cyber safety mainstream, right? And doubling the customer that we have is one way. Of course, as you also know, we acquired a freemium capability. We have today 80 million users. So 30 million of our users are not paying customers because they just use the basic simple cyber protection. We also want to increase that number tremendously, and you'll see us do that. When it comes to the driver of that growth, it's really around 3 axes. The first one is increasing our international penetration. Today, we're very focused, 70% of our business is in the U.S., and we can expand exponentially internationally. We acquired Avira to get more operations in Europe. We actually saw a strong double-digit growth in international in the last quarter with Europe. In addition to Avira growing double digit, we had our core business, Norton, growing double-digit as well. So very strong capability to expand internationally. The second one is to continue to push the boundaries of cyber safety, add new products add new services, addressing the new needs. And you've seen us launch the Privacy Monitoring (sic) [ Monitor ] Assistant, which has been really well received. It's not only about security, it's about your privacy, managing your persona on the Internet. And the third driver of growth for us is scaling up cyber safety through partnership. You've seen us last year, signing up with [ status ] to go into Canada to go with Aon to develop an overall cyber safety protection; to partner with Visa recently that we announced to be at the moment of truth, when you use your credit card or when you pay, to have your identity protected online. And I think that overall set of activities and international expansion of our product and services and partnership expansion will help us get to our big goals.

Mary Lai

executive
#8

Great. Thank you, Vincent.

Saket Kalia

analyst
#9

Got it. And Sorry, Natalie, can I ask 1 follow-up?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#10

Of course.

Saket Kalia

analyst
#11

Excellent. Natalie, maybe a follow-up for you. It was great to see the retention rates at 85% again this quarter. I think it was mentioned in one of the presentations that the first year retention rates are about 10 points lower than that. Can you just maybe talk through some of the things that you feel like NLOK can do to improve those first year retention rates in particular?

Natalie Derse

executive
#12

Yes. Thanks for the question. Look, yes, 85% retention rate is our average. It has been for a while. We've been on that clip for a while. Industry-leading retention, so we're very, very proud of that. But look, we look at that retention rate as only opportunity. And when you think about how we bring that opportunity to life, what I would say is, look, for me, it's product, brand, service, go-to-market. And I would say we're going to bring retention, increase opportunities to life in all 4 of those buckets across. You've heard from all the leaders on the screen here today during their analyst videos, what they're going to prioritize, how they're going to focus. But it gets back to, I think -- the great thing is we've got a lot of health at the top of the funnel to everything that you just heard from Vincent in terms of on our path to doubling customers. So we've got that growth at the top of the funnel. Now how we increase engagement, how we increase customer experience, how we increase product usage, how we leverage our brand, the brand strength, and how we really, really deliver on our value proposition and our commitment to our customers is, obviously, so incredibly critical and only increasingly so. When I go back to the white board and I think about all of those levers coming together, not only to drive top line growth, but again, from a customer perspective, those engagement metrics, the math becomes really, really simple. And what I mean by that is, let's just swing -- let's go fast forward or maybe get to extreme math day 1. Five points of retention on a base of customers 23 million growing, multiply that by our current ARPU over the next 5 years is just exponential growth that we are just really, really excited about. And so I think it's -- look, we talked about a flywheel, right? We've got the top of the funnel. You've got these leaders and across our teams, just a relentless focus on driving more and more value for our customers, being very customer-centric. And we really think we've got the levers to bring that to life, and you'll see that in some of our metrics like retention, like ARPU, like revenue growth, EPS

Vincent Pilette

executive
#13

If I can add on our retention, I want to pass the ball to Gagan. In the past, we had like 3 views, like when you onboard, then at the time of renewal and then at the time when you leave. And when Gagan joined us and Krista joined at the same time, we redefined what the consumer cyber safety journey would be and how we would interact with them in product on the side of the product at the right moment of truth. And now with Norton 360 platform, that has enabled us, if you want to engage even more. Gagan, do you want to talk a little bit about the product and what you're doing in that area?

Gagandeep Singh

executive
#14

Yes. I think both of you covered it quite well. But listen, it starts with simplifying the choice for the end consumer as they are making a decision about which cyber safety product or which aspect of cyber safety are they most concerned with. Then carrying them all the way into the product and building points of engagement that not only provides us an opportunity to perhaps educate that customer on the need they have in that specific moment, but also migrate them either to another product or move them up the value chain in our membership portfolio. And then it goes to each point of engagement or interaction that you have live with Patrick and his team coming on board, when you complete that full circle, starting with simplifying the choices, engaging with them in moments of truth and then delivering world-class customer service, I think that's where you really kick it up a notch in terms of driving higher retention.

Mary Lai

executive
#15

Thank you, Gagan. Thank you. Our next question comes from Fatima, UBS.

Fatima Boolani

analyst
#16

Nice to see you all in a Brady Bunch format. My first question, I'll start with you, Vincent. Just to put a finer point on the double-digit revenue growth expectation, and Natalie, please also chime in here. Maybe being greedy here, but double digit, as you know, anywhere from 10 to 99. But maybe narrowing that down a little bit, what are maybe the most sensitive inputs for you to get into the 10% to 15% growth zone? And what needs to go really right for you to move into the 15% to 20%, 20%-plus growth zone?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#17

And before we talk about the double-digit exactly, let me talk to you about what I'm excited. I believe in business, it's all about momentum. And as you know, when we started a year ago and we separated Symantec between an enterprise business that we sold to Broadcom and created NortonLifeLock, the first dedicated consumer cyber safety company at scale, nobody thought we could grow. As you remember, we said, "Hey, we're going to launch Norton 360, redefine what cyber safety means. And we know that the digital life will only increase, and with that, the need for protection will continue to increase." And of course, the last year has just created a step function. And we moved from low-digit growth rate to mid-single-digit growth rate. We guided the quarter at high single-digit growth rate. And then we delivered here a revenue up 11%, supported by a billing growth of 17%. And I think it's on that momentum that we want to build in. Of course, investor and analysts will want to say which quarter do I put what number. But I think the acceleration of our momentum is what we want to focus on. Then we jump into, hey, look, it doesn't matter what we grow at. We still have 5 billion of people having a digital life that are left at risk of being attacked by cyber criminals. And let's go and reach the maximum number of people. Now to come back to your question, we guided 10% to 12% for the next quarter. We put an annual guidance at 8% to 10% and put a little plus behind the 10% because we know there are a lot of activities we're driving that we cannot -- that investors who already put that into their model. But we know we're going to deliver our results on those, and we'll quantify them at the right time. And so we focus on what we control, which is, again, I'll repeat, which is improving the customer experience, continuously developing those new go-to-market routes that Robert is driving, developing the portfolio and redefining what cyber safety means. I predict that in 3 to 5 years, as we achieve all of our long-term goals, cyber safety defined at that time will be very different than today because we'll have pushed the boundaries of those. And so that's the overall framework. Obviously, every quarter, we'll try to go after the best result, looking at all of those people unprotected from cyber criminals versus just the short-term results.

Natalie Derse

executive
#18

Yes. And just to build on that, right, you asked about maybe a 10 to 15 or what kicks us into a different clip. Of course, the core business and the investment there and the continuous acceleration that we've got to plan around is critically, critically important. And that's really the fundamentals and the foundation of our guidance ranges. I would call out, as you heard in the videos and you hear -- you see in our capital allocation, M&A is going to be a huge focus for us. We're going to deploy capital in a growth-focused manner. And M&A, the way we look at it, is an accelerator to the growth plans that we've laid out for you. And so you'll see us be very, very active there, very aggressive. We're very interested in that. And as we progress, we'll leverage the healthy balance sheet we've got. We've got flexibility in our capital allocation to really be driving, again, focused on growth and delivering incremental EPS along the way, no matter what opportunity that we're taking advantage of.

Fatima Boolani

analyst
#19

Just to use that as my jumping off point to kind of drill into the cost and investment side of the equation that contributes to your long-term outlook. Clearly, several pathways that you've identified that Robert identified in his session with respect to the funnel, right, direct acquisitions, marketing partnerships, employee benefits. Natalie, I'm curious, how does this change the composition of the sales and marketing investment envelope? And does that $300 million that you've seared into our brains, does that change dramatically in the context of your longer-term guidance?

Natalie Derse

executive
#20

Yes. The way I would look at that is from our core business, we are going to continue to invest for growth. And when we get that growth, when we see that accelerating momentum, that leverage that comes from that top line at an 85% gross margin business, allows us massive investment capability and flexibility. We are very, very clear. We are going to prioritize continued rate of investment in product and technology to drive innovation, speed to bringing market -- excuse me, products to market faster as well as sales and marketing. From a go-to-market perspective, our dry powder and our investment in sales and marketing is going to get behind, again, growth. It's not going to be solely on acquisition. That's going to be a component of it. We've been investing behind acquisition in a diverse manner, and we believe that's working. We believe that, that top of the funnel health is there. And as the momentum continues to build, you'll see us diversify into all of the go-to-market channels that Robert talked about because we believe consumers, how they engage in their online digital lives is going to continue to evolve, and we need to evolve right there with them, right? I mean, even in the last year, how consumers engage online has dramatically changed. The pandemic has taught us that or brought more awareness to that. And we're going to iterate as we navigate through our 3- to 5-year plan. But for sure, without a doubt, you can count on Vincent and I, the rest of the leadership team, honestly, the operating team across the business, we are relentlessly going to go after driving more productivity, driving more efficiencies and immediately reinvesting those into product and technology as well as sales and marketing. We're very, very hungry for growth, and we're going to put all of our resources that we identify right behind that.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#21

And I think you bring a good point, Natalie, which is, every investor is asking us, "Hey, we raised our marketing envelope from $200 million to $300 million." The same as $300 million that Fatima mentioned. And we'll continue to grow that with [ indiscernible ], and say, how much more do you have to do the step function to sustain your growth? And the reality is we still have inefficiencies working in our cost structure. Every day, when we capture those, we then rebalance the investment. Investing into our new product is as critical as investing in our go-to-market model. In the last year, you've seen us launch 8 new products, which was like tripling or quadrupling the rate of new products we had launched in the prior years. And I think building up that product innovation momentum is extremely important. We've redirected some investors into Patrick's area, and we talk about the overall service level that consumers expect and how we build more services into our product to offer really a solution for customers. We invested into our brands and trying to simplify the brand framework and doubling down into our Norton overall. And then, of course, we have the marketing, but also the partner, the channel, the employee benefit channel that we invest into. So it's really an end-to-end investment overall.

Mary Lai

executive
#22

Thank you, Fatima. All right. Let's go to the next question. I have Morgan Stanley, Hamza?

Hamza Fodderwala

analyst
#23

Can you hear me okay?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#24

Yes.

Hamza Fodderwala

analyst
#25

All right. Great. Well, I really appreciate all the details that you provided on the long-term drivers in that white board slide. Maybe first question for Vincent and/or Natalie. Just when we think about the drivers, I think you mentioned, it seems like 8% to 10% organic revenue growth minus acquisitions over the next 3 to 5 years. About 5 points of that is coming from sort of sustainable momentum, which is roughly in line with sort of the organic growth you're doing today. So I'm just curious, what does the sustainable momentum part entail? How are the drivers behind that different relative to some of the things you called out like higher cross-sell and upsell or converting more users from the top of the funnel?

Natalie Derse

executive
#26

Yes. The sustainable growth momentum is critical, and we feel great about it in terms of, if we rewind the clock just a year ago, we've been building accelerating momentum throughout fiscal year '21, capping it off in Q4 with just such a great quarter. We believe that momentum is going to continue into fiscal year '22. We've got an incredible organic growth plan, already kicked off with the teams, focused on all of the things we talked about in the organic side, right? Again, product, brand, service go-to-market, all reaching and kicking up into a different notch across the board. In terms of sustainability momentum, keep in mind, just when you think about how we progress through '21, we haven't yet seen the full year impact to revenue, right? That's going to catch up as we navigate through the next couple of quarters. And then in parallel, we're building, building, building and driving, driving, driving. Those things are going to continue just to scale up and to the right. And then, of course, on top of that, I know you're touching on just more on the organic side. But again, really, in parallel, driving across the globe international expansion. We are driving the diversity in the go-to-market channels with Robert. We're, again, expanding the portfolio and the pillars that we are engaging and bringing value propositions to market. And then coming with our existing user base. And as we add those new cohorts in, just focused on increased customer engagement. It's product usage. It's making sure that they are aware of everything in our value proposition that they can take advantage of. Making sure that we are driving more and more happy customers and the engagement in our flywheel is massively important. And then on top of that, the M&A, right? Again, getting after M&A, really moving into adjacent markets, adjacent services, acquiring new cohorts of customers, all of that is going to help us drive towards the path to doubling the rate of growth. Doug and Robert, I don't know if you have anything to add? Robert, you're on mute.

Robert Clarkson

executive
#27

Saket brought up at the beginning, focusing on that first year retention also goes into that sustainable growth. And as we add more customers in the first year and we close that gap between our ongoing retention rate of 85% and our first year retention rates, that helped as well. And so as Natalie pointed out, that's about consumer engagement. We talked about awareness to consumers and that kind of brings them into the Norton family. But also that first year, continuously reinforcing the value proposition, the product benefits of what we're doing for them and their families, help encourage that 75% to grow to 85% and mirror the rest of our retention numbers, and that goes into that sustainable growth as well.

Hamza Fodderwala

analyst
#28

Got it. I think that segues nicely into a brief follow-up question on retention. You mentioned 85% ongoing retention on the direct subscribers. Do you think that there's any sort of upside to that over time as you drive more engagement, as you have more multiproduct customers, which I presume are stickier. Can you give us any color as whether you see that 85% going to 90% over time?

Natalie Derse

executive
#29

Oh, the clear simple answer is absolutely. Honestly, when we look at the 85% rate, we've been at that rate for -- when I look at the historical trends, we've been at that -- and that gives us great confidence, for sure, at least in the stability of that industry-leading retention. But without a doubt, our sites are on much higher retention. Robert can't wait to jump in and tell you what he's going to do. Patrick, the same. Gagan, the same. It's all -- all of those levers that we talked about, again, underpinned with that strong brand awareness, the brand strength that we've got, and just delivering on that value proposition, for sure, is a main priority for us. Sorry, Robert, go ahead.

Robert Clarkson

executive
#30

No, no. That's a great answer, Natalie. I would also add that one of the opportunities we have is to capitalize on changes in the family and our customer dynamics. So as they originally joined us as an individual user. Now, they have a family, and maybe they have gamers in the family, and maybe they have -- that they moved overseas or become travelers, we want to make sure that we treat that relevant. And that gives us the ability because some of the reasons that we have 85% versus 86% or 87% is the fact that we want to make sure that we're relevant as these people progress through their life and then their situation changes. So with Gagan's help, we've been introducing products that make us more relevant at different points in people's lives, which will help that retention number.

Natalie Derse

executive
#31

And Patrick, I'm sure you have things to add in terms of our path to happier and happier customers.

Patrick Schwind

executive
#32

No, completely agree. The whole experience we keep talking about to increase the customer experience plays a huge role in retention, and we actually have dove into it and looked at people that give us a high Net Promoter Score, retain at a higher rate as well. It's kind of the reason we made it a foundation for the entire company to focus and be the advocate and think customer-first across the entire end-to-end journey.

Mary Lai

executive
#33

Our next question comes from Gregg from Mizuho.

Gregg Moskowitz

analyst
#34

All right. So my first question is for Gagan actually. So yesterday, you hinted at potential expansion for NortonLifeLock into some other areas such as digital persona, online reputation, anti-bullying, access management. So the question is, do you have the engineering bandwidth to accomplish this today? And then also, how should we think about the cadence of significant product releases in these or other areas going forward?

Gagandeep Singh

executive
#35

Yes. Look, I would love to give you my roadmap for the year. I'm not sure Vincent is going to be too happy about that. But let me take a step back. Look, I think this came up earlier. There is a -- when you look at the opportunities for improving on that experience, I mean, you heard from Natalie saying, look, there were a lot of inefficiencies that existed, that we continue to clean through and produce capacity in making further investments. And I think I have full support from Natalie and Vincent in talking about, as we create those efficiencies, to go reinvest in product, reinvest in acquisitions and so forth. So I feel absolutely confident that we have the capacity. We're also getting more agile and more nimble in how we pursue opportunities, test them out at a smaller scale and then double down on it if we find early signs of success. And you saw the bid I talked about in Privacy Monitor Assistant. You talk -- I talked about VPN a bit. So it's not so much about bringing 100 people into the next -- into investing into the next capability. It's much more about bringing 10, proving that capability out, and then doubling down on it as we see success. And one of the advantages of having a 80 million user base is that we can deploy different capabilities on different cohorts of customers in a different region, in a different cohort, and test it out -- and test out the validity of that offering and then quickly release it across the board. So yes, I feel very confident that we have the support, we have the wherewithal, to continue to invest in that innovation as we go into the year and beyond.

Gregg Moskowitz

analyst
#36

Okay. That's helpful. And then just a follow-up for Natalie. So I think the path to $3 in EPS over the next 3 to 5 years, I think that includes the potential for $0.30 to $0.35 of accretion from M&A. Can you just walk through what gives you the confidence that you can drive that level of accretion without presumably having identified specific M&A targets at this time? Is it just a function of a massive installed base and the power of the NortonLifeLock brand, et cetera? Or is there anything else that you would sort of add to that?

Natalie Derse

executive
#37

Yes. I would go back to our vision in driving cyber safety, cyber protection to more and more of the growing market, but massively underpenetrated market. We have a lot of opportunity. The way I would look at it from an EPS whiteboarding exercise, we showed both M&A and share buyback. We've talked to you guys about we will deploy our capital in a growth-focused manner. There's multiple packs. There's multiple ways to get to that $3 EPS. I feel confident in our capital allocation strategy, right? 1/3 of it dividend and then the other 2/3 of it's going -- set aside for both M&A as well as share buyback. Look, we can find ourselves in different situations. We may find ourselves in a situation where all of that goes to M&A. We may find ourselves in -- where we don't find ourselves in an acquisitive fashion. And we'll go more share buyback or a combination of the 2. Honestly, it's about that flexibility. It's about making sure that we're deploying capital in a growth-focused manner and relentless focus on delivering 100% free cash flow back to our shareholders, excluding M&A. And so those are our priorities. Those are our tenets. And after -- but we have multiple ways to get there. We have so much opportunity I'm going to ask Vincent to jump in on your M&A portion of your question.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#38

Yes. So quickly, and to close on the capital allocation. Last year was the most balanced year. As you know, we generated about $900 million plus of free cash flow, and the 1/3 was used for the dividend, 1/3 for the acquisition of Avira and 1/3 for buyback. And as Natalie mentioned, dividend is secure. And then between buyback and M&A, we'll have flexibility. Now I don't want to overfocus on M&A as the word because, frankly, when you look at Avira, we acquired customer, 1.6 million customers, that are now part of the Norton family. If I had to spend the same amount in marketing to acquire 1.6 million, you would have said, yes, for sure, invest in marketing. We did increase margin by $100 million. I would just have increased by $200 million, I would acquired those customers. I think that's one of the elements that you need to understand. And the second one is once a customer has a minimum of cyber safety, we continue to build new products, new functions. You mentioned and asked Gagan if we had the capabilities. We definitely have the capabilities and the skill set to do that in-house, and we continue to increase more into our R&D engine. And then that enables us to then drive the ARPU up, right? And so we acquired a customer with -- inorganic or organic, it doesn't matter to me. It's you pay to acquire a customer that is not being protected, and you can move up the ARPU as it comes. Avira came with an ARPU of roughly under $5. You know that the average customer on Norton family is at around $9 a month. And the highest is actually at $18 to $20 a month. And so we have the opportunity to expose the customer to a higher-value portfolio and membership, and that's what we do. And then the last element is Patrick and his customer experience that he's driving on our collective behalf for the customer, it's about the engagement and the retention. And there, too, we have an aggregate retention rate of 85%. Avira came at about 80%, and we have more opportunity to engage more as we move up through the value. And then with that, we have some in our portfolio and retention rates, some cohort and the retention rate in the 90-plus percent. And so moving them up to the high level is that. And so it's a whole customer journey, if you want, that you take from awareness on behalf of the customers, to acquisition, to enrollment, to engagement, and to all the way to being fully protected. That's how we look at deploying our capital, whether that is OpEx or CapEx, frankly.

Mary Lai

executive
#39

Thank you, Gregg. Let's go to our next question from Raymond James. Robert, you're on.

Robert Majek

analyst
#40

Great. My question is on Avira. You noted the first integrated product is expected to launch in June. Can you just talk about your acquisition integration strategy and the thought process behind each future acquisition? What makes sense to integrate versus what brand does it make sense to manage separately?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#41

Yes. No, very good question. So there are about 3 type of initiatives that we drive. One is to bring more customers to our platform whether it's in spending in marketing or acquiring an asset that's already on 1 platform. The second one is to add product to the current cyber safety platform as it's defined today. And the third one is to push the boundaries of cyber safety, to redefine what it really means. And we're uniquely positioned to drive on all 3 criteria. Avira actually met a few of those. Acquired 1.6 million customers; added a few functionalities inside our current portfolio, and that's what you talk about product integration; and then we being together, build up additional products and services. When it comes to operational excellence, there's no better team than the team you see here right now. We've integrated the back end of the Avira business in 86 days. All on our ERPs, all on our common system, and synergies have been realized, not fully flowing through the P&L, but realized within the quarter in that 86-day time frame. So I give A plus to this team, plus frankly, the collaboration and contribution of the Avira team that really understood our vision of fully integrated company. When it comes to product integration to ensure we can offer every customer the utmost value of our Norton 360 Ultimate platform, if you want, over time, and that's where the product integration start to matter. And I'll pass it to Gagan who can talk a little bit about it without revealing everything that we're going to do, of course. And then some acquisitions, before I pass it to Gagan, maybe fully integrated in the back end, but kept separate because it redefines the value and you first want to capitalize on that value. So that's how we've define our strategic framework. And it's no different -- frankly, again, I think there's a lot of talk about M&A here. It's no different than an organic investment. Some investment, we say, okay, let's go and acquire a new customer. Some investment w say, okay, let's push new functionality. We had our privacy monitoring. We added Privacy Monitor Assistant working between Patrick and Gagan's team. And then we have to say, okay, how do we define new services all organically? And so that's how we drive the business fully. Gagan, do you want to talk a little bit about where you are in bringing all the organizations together?

Gagandeep Singh

executive
#42

Yes. I mean, look, the organizations are integrated, fully integrated. I think when it comes to product, and you've already delivered the synergies that the business case was built on, you really look at what capabilities do we want to bring in-house? What capabilities are redundant that we think we should have shared across the board? And also, you trade off against time to market. You look at what is the richness of experience that you can create and where the opportunities are for the highest gain. And you look at that entire experience holistically, and then you just continue marching on. And I think, as you alluded to, our first integrated capability coming out in June, but that also creates -- tying it to the earlier question, creates an opportunity for further investment. When you're not looking to -- you're not so much distracted with integrating back-end systems and so forth, you've gotten that out of the way. You can look at where can you deploy that capability to bring on new products, new experiences into different geographies for that matter as well.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#43

If I can add, we spend a lot of time inside with our leadership team thinking about our big bets. What that -- we have the next [ 200 ], where do you put it? How do you get there? What is -- in line to the strategy of doubling the customer count, making cyber safety mainstream, redefining the boundaries, where do we go? How do we go? And today, in our quarterly board meeting, we spent 75% of our time talking about strategy, organic investment, how do we push the boundaries of our value proposition.

Mary Lai

executive
#44

Robert, did you have a follow-up?

Robert Majek

analyst
#45

Maybe 1 more if I can? Yes. Does everyone hear me?

Mary Lai

executive
#46

Yes.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#47

Yes.

Robert Majek

analyst
#48

Yes. So I'll just add -- I'll add my appreciation for the whiteboard slide as it lays out the necessary steps nicely to get to $3 in EPS. But perhaps approaching the question in a different way, could we break down those components into more near-term versus long-term buckets? When do you expect to see each of these drivers really kick in, such as the NPS improvement, improved cross-sell motion and so on.

Natalie Derse

executive
#49

Yes, we're not waiting. That's for sure. And we started the efforts in '21. We started to accelerate momentum. We started -- just as we stood up NortonLifeLock, just a reinvigorated relentless focus on the customer on operational efficiency to be experts in our craft and to execute every single day. And I think as I look back and reflect on '21, I believe the team has built up a high level of credibility, a very high say/do ratio in terms of, do you do what you say you're going to do, and do we hit or exceed commitments? And we've done all that in '21? That momentum will not only continue, it will continue and build as we enter into '22. Fiscal year '22 is the first year in the journey that we are articulating on that whiteboard. And so make no mistake, we're getting after it quick. We've got our priorities. We've got our plan. We are funded and resourced, and the teams are already off to the races in driving all of those levers. Now how do we get there? How do we achieve that 8% to 10% plus growth? How do we achieve that incremental EPS, that EPS accretion? Of course, they're going to -- we're going to have multiple ways to get there. We got a lot of levers on that whiteboard. And you could probably double and triple click into each and every single one of those. But we've got just an enormous amount of opportunity ahead of us. You've got an incredibly hungry leadership team, not only the folks that you see on the screen here, but across the business. And look, we will continue to be an efficient machine. We will continue to be high execution. We will -- like I said on my video, we will continue to inspect what we expect and be very, very data-driven all through a growth-focused mindset.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#50

If I can add a couple of things because your question also come from our past, right? So the company was -- or the division, NortonLifeLock, was really focused on the installed base and then the bottom line. And when we separated the asset and became NortonLifeLock, we're going to then return to growth. At that point in time, we launched Norton 360, and we put $100 million of marketing at work. And then, of course, we build the leadership team and the capability. But those 2 were really clearly highlighted and easy to understand, and we delivered and overdelivered in many of our metrics. Now is the first year of a full fiscal year for NortonLifeLock, we've taken approach much more balanced. We've squeezed as much as we could in the short term, the inefficiencies in our cost structure, and redirect the investment across all. There is none one here, partners of mine, that does not have a budget that includes incremental investment to drive on the big objectives. We guided this year at 8% to 10% plus. We gave you the 3- to 5-year target of double-digit growth and $3 EPS. And I think what I want everyone to walk away from this meeting is the understanding that we have a lot of levers at our disposal. Maybe back to Fatima's question. If every one of those plans get into a blue-sky scenario, we'll beat the number by a mile. And so keeping the flexibility and the intellectual agility to take risk, learn from the mistake, turning the mistake into an asset, learning for the customers and constantly adjusting on all of those levers is really what we're building here in our culture.

Mary Lai

executive
#51

Let's go to our next question. From RBC, Matt, you're on.

Matthew Swanson

analyst
#52

This has been great. The presentation last night was super helpful. I guess, when I reflected all the opportunities for growth, I look at international as a massive opportunity. So I guess for Robert or Krista, you've had success internationally, Canada, obviously, but it's only 30% of your business today. I guess the question is how realizable is the international opportunity? And how do you effectively target that versus maybe what works here in the U.S.?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#53

And maybe we'll start with Krista, since you have not heard from Krista yet, and then she'll pass it to Robert. Krista, the floor of yours.

Krista Todd

executive
#54

I think that you're right there. We talked about the balance of our business right now domestically and internationally, which just simply means we have a huge opportunity in front of us. And so we can take learnings from what we do in any market and apply it really well to other markets to scale to drive efficiency very quickly. From a brand perspective, we see a lot of promise with our Norton brand internationally. We are #1 or #2 in all of our key markets today. The 1 exception is Germany, where we're #3, but Avira is now #1 in Germany. So when we think about the strength of brand, and we're in a category where brand matters. Building a trusted brand in cyber safety is critically important. We also heard from consumers around the world, we have brand momentum, which means they believe that we are moving forward, not standing still and going backwards. So we will use the power of brand, the differentiation of our brand, to understand consumers, deliver platform needs for them, really understanding consumers in other markets and going to market with them taking us deeply to bring them into our solutions.

Robert Clarkson

executive
#55

We have a number of levers, right? So we talked about the direct to consumer being one of the levers, the partner lever being another one, and obviously, Avira being the third and also an important lever. Just to dial in a little bit on the partner side, each one of these partners brings a local perspective, right? In some cases, they are more local partners. They could be retailers or e-tailers in those partners. They could be affinity group, they could be affiliates. So they have a local expertise that we can partner with so that our marketing goes much further, right, because it's much more informed. But we -- while we think global, we act local, and that's through a partnership with various retailers around the world. In addition to the fact that Avira widens that net considerably, right? Because now we bring in a new type of consumer who are looking for the product but at a different price point that they were looking at, so we can pull them in from international markets as well and then put them into the fabric of Norton to move them up as their life changes or as their situation changes. So it's all part of casting the widest net, but also being relevant at the geographic level, not just at the socioeconomic level or at the age level, right?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#56

And in fact, if I can add a few things. So it's all about the operational plans. And so you've seen that our penetration in the next 10 countries after the U.S. is half of what it is in the U.S. And we believe also it's because we've taken too big of a global approach in the past, and we want to make it much more local. Every week now, every Friday, we meet with the country. What is the country strategy? Who are the competitors? What are the customer? What are the customer characteristics? What feedback do we get? And then we bring Patrick in, who's kind of the voice of the customer and the last touch. Patrick, maybe you can share a little bit what you do in terms of making your support and services more localized?

Patrick Schwind

executive
#57

Yes. One of the really exciting things [ to look forward ] is did an entire year project to unify all of the customer experience to be able to control the end-to-end journey. So what we've been able to do is create a superior close to world-class customer support team because we could actually know exactly why customers come in, what is the issues they're having, and kind of what Vincent talked about earlier, what's the moments of truth that allows us to put high-touch, high-value people or local resources to make sure that they end up having their issue disposition quickly and correctly. It's one of the things that allows very quickly, too. So we can move to new markets from a service standpoint very quickly now, which we couldn't have done a couple of years ago.

Matthew Swanson

analyst
#58

Super helpful. And then, Vincent or Natalie...

Natalie Derse

executive
#59

And just to cap it off -- sorry, go ahead.

Matthew Swanson

analyst
#60

No, no, please, please.

Natalie Derse

executive
#61

No, I was just going to cap it off with some numbers. Look, we saw -- we're coming off a solid year, a very, very strong Q4. We've got momentum to build on as well. That momentum is across products. It's across regions. We grew double digit, both domestically as internationally across Europe, across APAC, with, without Avira. And so we are just really trying to capitalize, again on to Vincent's point, right? The momentum is so critically important. We've got it, and now we're really trying to take that forward. My apologies, go ahead with your follow-up.

Matthew Swanson

analyst
#62

No, that's great. That was a good question. We touched to everybody on the product side on that one. And I guess for Vincent or Natalie. Obviously, it really does seem like you've got an opportunity to drive higher renewal rates. I mean, Natalie, you talked about sort of the potential and what that could mean for your growth. Maybe this question is hard to answer because I'm sure it's an evolving thing. But when you study the cohort -- the cohort of COVID subs, do you foresee them acting any differently when they come up for renewal that may be -- is it bit different than other cohorts? Just sort of wondering on what drove -- what you think drove them to the franchise here and how you think that might behave in the future?

Natalie Derse

executive
#63

Yes. I appreciate the question. We spent a lot of time looking at this, thinking about it, et cetera. First, I would say, look, we have industry-leading retention at 85%. In the new cohorts, of course, they're lower. We've been open and sharing about that. But that's nothing new, right? We've seen the -- both of these trends for a while. As it pertains to the growth related to COVID, I'll just throw out there. For me, I look at specifically just being in the data and the analytics, as a causation correlation. Of course, the pandemic increased the awareness of the need for more and more cyber safety across a broader population. The pandemic really drove just change in all of us, all of our daily lives. For me, though, I step back and I look at it for growth. Yes, that growth timing kind of correlated with the pandemic, but we were doing a lot of different things. And I believe that growth result was driven by a lot of different things. For sure, the awareness, beyond the shadow of a doubt, accelerated. Secondly, we were investing in marketing significantly, I think greater than a 50% increase year-over-year clip. In addition, we launched our Norton 360 integrated platform, where this was a new integrated platform that offered the multi-tier membership profile and solution. And so all of that coming together during that same time frame, and then now I have the luxury of looking back and reflecting on '21, yes, Q1, our fiscal Q1 that laddered up or lined up with the pandemic, the early pandemic timing. But 3 out of the 4 quarters, we added around 300,000 to 400,000 customers net new, locking in a sixth consecutive quarter of adds. And this year, just being the first year we've added net customer growth since 2014. So a step back, the sentiment is the same. How are we going to get after increased retention overall? How are we going to bring that first year renewal rate up? And that gets back to the levers that we've been talking about: Product, service, brand, go-to-market. And we're just trying to get out of the gate strong on all of those. Again, just high-quality products, faster innovation, pace to market, great customer service, making sure that our customers understand the current usage of their products that they already pay for, increasing that up into the right. And then obviously really getting after just diverse go-to-market channels to make sure that as the customers engage, as they operate online, that's going to continuously evolve over the next few years. Again, the pandemic taught us that as well. And so we're just -- we're right there where the customers are, where they're making these critically important decisions on how to protect themselves and their family. And so we'll evolve along with them. But in the meantime, absolutely focused on happy customers, happy customers, happy customers.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#64

And if I can add, so clearly, Natalie highlighted for you how we think we have a structural growth opportunity in front of us with underpenetrated cyber safety. And all the levers we have at our disposal to drive towards that growth. Last year, the increase in our digital lines has created a step function at a minimum in term of awareness. But frankly, it's not like because the pandemic is stopping definitely cyber criminals will go home and stop attacking, right? So I think that awareness is here to stay. That step function is here to stay. And if I make it numbers, we finished very strong in March. So we had a very strong month of March. And maybe March could be the first month of growth under the aspect of a pandemic, as you know. We've seen a solid April. And so we do not see, at this point in time, a change in behavior of new customers compared to a year ago, if you want. But that being said, we have many levers to continue to increase our retention. As we said, Norton 360, higher engagement, higher retention, first year cohort, international cohorts, lower retention. Those are the normal dynamic we are seeing as opportunities.

Matthew Swanson

analyst
#65

Super help. Great answers and best of luck team.

Mary Lai

executive
#66

All right. Let's go to our next question from Monness Crespi, Ryan?

Ryan Flanagan

analyst
#67

Great. And I really appreciate the format. I can see everyone. I wanted to ask about Avira and the freemium model. Is freemium something we can expect to see rolled out more broadly through the portfolio? I'm thinking maybe testing new products or specific geos. And then related to that, on the conversion to paying, I'm just curious how predictable that transition is and what sort of visibility you have there?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#68

Yes. So clearly, for us, freemium is a capability. And it's not as simple as saying, I'll make my product for free. It's about making a product that's relevant, a minimum set of functionality, so the customer can experience cyber safety, and then building up the interaction, identifying the moment of truth or the moment of risk, if you're a consumer, during which you can then move into the higher value side of the portfolio, engaging, identifying that engagement and driving that upside is a capability we have acquired. We've acquired a team that has experience in that, and we make it in many aspects of our portfolio. You don't have to come at the core on just a simple AV on a device. You could come into cyber safety from either some functioning of the security pillar or some functionalities of the privacy pillar or some functionalities of the identity pillars. And it's all about getting into cyber safety and then engaging into that high-level protection. You'll see us use that more and roll more around basic. Our goal again would be that 1 day, everyone, the 5 billion Internet users, have a minimum of cyber safety that they've consciously chosen to go and drive because that increases their awareness and make the cyber world safer. Gagan, do you want to add anything on freemium?

Gagandeep Singh

executive
#69

No. I think you said it right. Look, it's a -- framing back to what Vincent started off the conversation with, there's 5 billion connected users and less than 5% penetration. Freemium is only one of the many ways for us to go grab those customers. And then allow -- and tying it into what Patrick does and what product team does, in building that long-term relationship with that user, turn them into a customer, and then their really no different than a customer that you perhaps acquired in any other way or any other format or product, et cetera. So I think it's really as simple as that. And the fact that Avira has a concentration in Europe just further ties into our bigger term goals around international expansion and so forth.

Ryan Flanagan

analyst
#70

Great. And then just a quick follow-up, if I can sneak it in. You guys have done a lot of work over the last several quarters here to shed the image of a sort of this legacy desktop antivirus vendor. What are the primary marketing efforts to kind of further this awareness of NortonLifeLock being a holistic platform for consumer identity and then security?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#71

I'll pass it to Natalie or Krista. But first, I want to say that it has been many years, not just last year that the NortonLifeLock team was thinking about moving from being device-centric and a protection of a weak operating system to really protecting a digitalized and becoming a lot more user-centric. And so we're the first at introducing an identity protection, then building up the first cyber safety integration, a full platform where we can add new functionalities with a common architecture. And that's because we are all user-centric. And the effort of the last year has been really to refocus on growth. But the overall momentum we've had is thanks to the team, my predecessor in the role and the entire NortonLifeLock team to really drive that conscious change in the market and where the customer will be in 5 years from now. They did that 5 years ago. We do it today. We spend a lot of time today and say, what would a digital world look like in 5 years from now, and what can our cyber safety plan look like when we do that. So with that, Natalie, maybe you want to pick it up on...

Natalie Derse

executive
#72

Oh, no, that's a perfect question for Krista.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#73

Okay. Good.

Krista Todd

executive
#74

Absolutely. I think the opportunity we have is really to make Norton the bright side to a pretty dark problem out there. We know that cyber criminality has only increased, and we need to be there to protect and empower consumers to live their digital life safely. So all that we do, we focus on that effort, and that includes making sure that they feel safe when they're jumping on as well.

Natalie Derse

executive
#75

And look, we've got the investment behind it. I think if I can just go down the path of marketing investment for a second, we've been on, not only a path to increase it, right? Fatima is back on the phone with the 300 million reference. We'll continue to get behind it, but it's about diversification. And I think, again, it's not just from 1 lens or 1 path. We will put the marketing investment behind the priorities, whether that is acquisition, whether that is diversification, either internationally or in some of our partner channels, as well as driving the customer engagement, making sure that our consumers, either existing or potential, know that the innovative products that we are bringing to market the new pillars that we're expanding into, the new services that we are trying to build out from. And at the end of it, I think this relentless focus on customer, we believe -- even in our retention metric, we focus on a user retention metric, not a dollar retention metric. There's multiple ways to look at every metric, but when you're solely focused and relentlessly focused on driving on behalf of the customer, I think it just -- it provides you a lot of clarity as to what you need to focus on, how you prioritize and what you put powder behind to drive those priorities.

Mary Lai

executive
#76

Thank you, Ryan. We have some additional follow-ups here. Yes. Next question goes to Fatima, UBS.

Fatima Boolani

analyst
#77

Back for seconds. This is a jump ball just around ARPU, if I can drill into that a little bit more explicitly. We've addressed the concept of ARPU in a number of different ways as it relates to retention and the efforts you have there. But maybe more specifically, what is the priority sequence -- well, actually maybe to take a step back, what type of ARPUs are you anticipating or contemplating in certainly the near term and over the course of the next 3 to 5 years, bridging to your guide? And if you can help us think about it in the context of the bookends you shared, with Avira being sort of a little south of $5 and/or organic ARPU a little south of $9. So if you can help contextualize how you're thinking about ARPU. And really between your ability to nudge and shepherd customers into -- with the higher-priced bundles and selling all card offerings, how should we think about the overall ARPU completion from the baseline levels that you're expecting short term and long term?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#78

Great, simple question on ARPU that could almost summarize our entire strategy because it really comes first with our vision, which is everyone would be cyber safe when they live their digital lives, and at a minimum, have access to a freemium that gives them a first level of protection. That would be an ARPU of 0, as you know, and we want to really make that cyber safety mainstream. And that is about building the capabilities to really identify those moment of truth, moment of risk for the customer. When can the cyber criminals attack you, put you -- your assets, your values, everything you have online, all the way to your digital reputation, at risk? And identifying those, providing a value for the customer, i.e., they would pay for it, that they get something out of it, so they fully are protected. And then we move them up from protecting your device and your data to protecting your overall information and going into a privacy angle, then protecting your identity and going to the identity angle, all the way to our ultimate offering, which is Norton 360, with all of the functionalities where we would -- we would feel confident you're fully digitally protected and where the tools cannot because it's not 100% always, cyber criminals are going to evolve. Then we have follow-up restoration services, all the way to an insurance services, if you experience a lot. So the full end-to-end protection. And then the customer journey would move. Some would choose directly because they are either more aware or more exposed or have a higher intensity in the digital life to join directly on Norton 360, which is the majority of our new customer coming in. Then they'll say, "Hey, I joined on Norton 360 Level 3, and I need more identity protection and here it is. I'm doing a lot of processing and all my credit card have been breached or other things. And then you move into the higher level all the way to the ultimate, as I mentioned. There, you have an ARPU of $20 a month. Now it would be a mistake, I think, to only solely focus on an aggregated ARPU for our business. It's really by cohort, by moment of truth, making sure people get more and more cyber safe. Ultimately, when 5 billion Internet users will be fully protected on Norton 360, you can imply what the ARPU is. And I think it's a right balance between, hey, bringing new customers, moving internationally, adding more values, retaining higher, improving the expense. And so between retention rate, ARPU, which is -- which drives that new customer versus old one, partner customer versus direct customers, but also the ARPU change, as you know. In a partner relationship, we share the ARPU with our partners. And then as we move them up through the cycle of the cyber safety journey, we can have an opportunity to upsell and cross-sell our offering. And so it's -- again, it's a little bit back to Natalie's capital allocation. It's a balanced set of levers to achieve our ultimate vision, which is everyone would be cyber safe.

Mary Lai

executive
#79

Did that answer your question, Fatima?

Fatima Boolani

analyst
#80

Yes, very clear.

Natalie Derse

executive
#81

Come back for thirds.

Mary Lai

executive
#82

Well, it's been a great discussion. We actually have time for a couple more. Let's go to Saket at Barclays.

Saket Kalia

analyst
#83

Yes. Great. Mary, can you hear me still okay?

Mary Lai

executive
#84

Yes. Great.

Saket Kalia

analyst
#85

Okay. Excellent. Maybe for a quick follow-up for Krista. I've enjoyed some of the marketing videos, by the way, around reinforcing the brand. But maybe just thinking about a little bit more broader, how do you think about marketing the message of paid security versus something free? And in particular, by free, I kind of mean Microsoft Defender. Does that make sense?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#86

Krista, before you answer, and you think about your answer, I want to share a little anecdote with everyone. So when I interviewed Krista, I was looking for someone who really understand how to talk to our consumers. And Krista has had the long experience really designing and helping designing a brand and products for consumers. And when I interviewed her, she said, "Well, Vincent, the problem you have is cyber criminals are scary. But when you talk to customers and new consumers, you make everything look so scary." And so we really need to work on if we are and delivering a peace of mind, we need to make cyber safety relatable, where consumer can really understand, yes, cyber criminals are scary, but it shouldn't be scary for you because we are offering you that protection, that peace of mind. And so immediately, when she came in, she started to write. And she told me, "Vincent, if I join, there's only one thing you need to do, is make sure you listen to me." And boy, I'm glad I did. So we like Krista. I'll pass it to you.

Krista Todd

executive
#87

No, it's fantastic. And it's such a good question. I'm glad you -- the videos resonate with you. I'm glad the messaging at that brand level really resonates with you because it's truly what we're all doing today. I mean when we've talked about it a lot in our videos in today, but we are all spending so much more time online. We're inherently opening ourselves up to more risks because we're doing so many activities. And so taking one step up and just a step back there, we have to make cyber safety. We have to build the education for it, and then we have to make it mainstream or popularize it, and make it relatable; easy to understand, easy to buy, easier to use. And then to your question, when we think about the differentiation of marketing messages from a free to paid service, I still believe we have to inject some feelings with our consumers. People need to feel empowered to take control of their digital life. They have to be inspired to do whatever they want to do online and feel safe and have this peace of mind. But we also need them to recognize us as the leader, the undisputed category leader; that we're going to protect them, and we're going to constantly bring innovation. So once we get to that level, the differentiation of marketing features by feature or product platform by product platform, that actually becomes easier because there's differentiation, and then we can actually grow together. So what might be free for a moment and they get on board with a freemium solution, if we do our job right with protection, innovation, quality, making it simple, then we'll continue to grow them in our journey and their journey.

Vincent Pilette

executive
#88

If I can add one more thing, Saket, that your question made me think about, which is I still have a few misunderstanding in this overall area. One of them, which is a question I get very often from investors, well, if you're really an antivirus, now you have maybe Microsoft that has a better OS system and maybe they have Defender. It's been a long time since we've changed our strategy and really decided to focus on the user, the user's digital lives. Everything sitting in the cloud that you value, some you may control to a device, some you may not. And how do you offer that full protection for your digital lives, starting, of course, with the antivirus, but moving into information, moving into privacy, moving into identity, moving into a full management of your digital persona, if I can call it that way, or multiple identities. And that's what we are about. That's our focus. That's where we're going. And I can tell you, of course, products and services have to constantly being developed and customer experience has to improve. And we have a lot of room for innovation. But as we define it, as we see it, this is a massively underpenetrated market, and that's how we look at that opportunity.

Mary Lai

executive
#89

Thank you, Vincent. We actually have time for 1 more question. Saket, would you like to ask the final question?

Saket Kalia

analyst
#90

Oh, boy, that's a lot of pressure. Well, I think if I can keep it tactical actually, maybe just to go back to the ARPU question. Vincent, a really, really interesting part in your presentation. You talked about some ARPU opportunities with Norton 360 specifically. And I think you said, right, 55% of the paid customer base, the majority of new customer adds. But actually, 80% of those Norton 360 customers are on lower-priced tiers. And so maybe the question is, what are some of the things that you can do to help drive that higher value over time, if you will, in that kind of growing part of your cohort?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#91

100%. So you mentioned we launched Norton 360 18 months ago. First cyber safety fully integrated platform, and we really see it as a platform common architecture in which we can interact with the customers, increase the functionalities, add the new services, if you want, and then build on top of that platform, additional adjacent digital solutions, which we're working and Gagan and everybody is working on those. So definitely, a lot of benefit in seeing security at the core Norton 360 as a platform. We were really glad to see the adoption rates. In 18 months, we moved from 0 to now 55% of our customer base on Norton 360, giving us common platform. And when you upgrade from today, we have 6 levels, from a level 1 to level 2 to level 3, which is the first set of values, it's seamless for you. You don't have to download a new app. We upgrade your functionalities, and you move up into the membership plan. Then you touch what still has to be more awareness. Cyber safety is not just security. It's security, it's privacy, it's identity. Those are the current pillars of our portfolio that we offer. And we're thinking about new pillars and then we're thinking about products and functioning on top of that. And then the awareness has to continue to increase. So we've seen about 20% of those [ 13 million ] Norton 360 members moving for fully higher level. We have more that are still on the single product LifeLock right? So we have about 5 million there. But they still need to adopt the whole platform. And we really are consumer-led, if you want. We make them more aware, we create -- but it's really consumer deciding to adopt the right way. I see this as a tremendous opportunity to continue to drive higher engagement, higher protection, higher retention and higher ARPU for those who are already into that platform.

Mary Lai

executive
#92

Well, thank you for that last question. I will now turn it back to Vincent for closing remarks. Vincent?

Vincent Pilette

executive
#93

Thank you, Mary. I'll try to do as well as the last question that Saket asked. So thank you, everyone. I hope you learned something today, that you discovered who the key leaders of our company are. And I hope that you are as excited as we are about our plan for growth. We've embarked on a mission to build the most comprehensive cyber safety platform and then expand it with trust-based digital products and services, as I discussed, we'll continue to build on this strong foundation and focus on transforming in pursuit of that broad vision of protecting everyone from cyber criminals. So I believe, we believe, this team believes that our future is very bright. The 3,000 employees at NortonLifeLock are really truly just getting started. It's, as someone said, day 1 every day for us. So thanks for being with us. Thank you for your support. We look forward to catching up with many of you very soon. Thank you.

Mary Lai

executive
#94

Thank you, Vincent. This concludes today's event. Thank you.

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