Guidewire Software, Inc. (GWRE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

January 13, 2021

New York Stock Exchange US Information Technology Software conference_presentation 37 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#1

Great. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining me. My name is Mayank Tandon. I'm the fintech analyst at Needham. I'd like to welcome Jeff Cooper, the Chief Financial Officer from Guidewire. Jeff, thank you for joining us. We're going to do a fireside chat. And I'm going to open up a box as well where the audience can type in questions. So please send them over, and I'll be sure to bring them up with Jeff.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#2

But in the meantime, Jeff, let me kick things off with maybe a little high level, and obviously, this has been foremost on people's minds, is the impact of COVID on the insurance software space. So maybe if you could take us back to earlier in the pandemic. After the initial shock value, how has demand progressed, the pipeline, the pace of conversion? Do you believe the trends are sustainable as we look into the rest of '21 and then beyond that?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#3

Sure. Yes. And Mayank, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Excited to be here. And maybe before I jump into that, I might start with just a quick overview of Guidewire for those who are a bit less familiar. Guidewire is a vertically focused enterprise software company. And since our founding in 2001, we have served exclusively one industry, the property and casualty insurance industry, which is a roughly $2 trillion industry that sells a wide variety of products that are indispensable for indemnifying people and businesses against all sorts of risks. We sell a suite of core systems that manage an insurer's insurance policies, claims process, underwriting process and billings. And we then also sell systems of engagement and systems of intelligence that sit on top of those core systems. We've always monetized our software in a recurring term license model and are now in the process of migrating our customers in this industry to the cloud. Our core systems [indiscernible] approximately $500 billion in direct written premium, and we're active in over 30 countries. So at a high level, that's Guidewire. And I think it's relevant to your question because what we sell are very large strategic initiatives to modernize core systems for the P&C industry. So as we moved into COVID almost 1 year ago now, really, we did see an impact to these decisions. These are large strategic decisions, long implementation cycles, and so insurers tend to be quite measured and thoughtful as they approach these types of decisions. So we did see an impact. Although we were very pleased to see our customers, in addition to our internal teams and partners, quickly adapt to the situation, keep strategic projects going. There was a pretty quick shift in the mindset to keeping the trains running, keeping business initiatives going. So if you think back to our Q3, which is where the initial shutdown of last year occurred, we did see a slowdown in customers transacting, but then we had a really strong Q4 as people started to realize, "Hey, you can buy these systems. You can kick off these projects. You can implement these systems in a virtual modality." So with respect to the buying patterns and buying behavior today, it's always a little bit difficult to say how much COVID has an impact into those types of long-term strategic decisions. I think, largely, we've moved beyond it. The real decision framework that we're seeing insurers grapple with today is if you want to modernize, modernizing in a -- with a core system delivered via the cloud, we are just starting to scratch the surface of that opportunity. And as you know, insurers tend to be conservative and risk averse, and so we're being quite thoughtful as they think about that opportunity. And so that's kind of where we see a lot of the crux of the decision-making going on right now.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#4

Jeff, in that respect, what does it come down to when they are looking at that decision to go with the traditional term license model, where they host the product in their own data centers versus moving to that cloud-type business model? What are some of the dynamics at play when it comes to that decision, which, as you mentioned, is a very important long-term decision for that P&C company?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#5

Yes. There's been a shift over the last couple of years. And I think that there has been a general shift in terms of the eventuality of this progression. And whether it's through the success of cloud and other parts of the economy, or just seeing some leading insurers, such as large names like USAA or others, kick off campaigns to modernize their core systems in the cloud. But there's clearly been a shift. And the mindset is more, today, which is pretty interesting, that this is an eventuality that, at some point in time, we all will get there. Now we're just starting to scratch the surface of delivering cloud-based core systems for this industry, and it is a very consequential decision for an insurer. It's one thing to trust a vendor to provide you the software and then take that software into your domain and you manage it and own it. And then it's a whole another thing to trust a vendor to run your core system on your behalf. I mean keep in mind, if these systems aren't working properly, you can't underwrite policies, you can't administer claims, like there's -- it just creates a whole bunch of challenges. This is really the heart and soul of an insurer's operation. So these are very considered decisions. And we're seeing a lot of very interesting things. There are certain parts of the market where the complexity may be a little bit lower, and those might be earlier areas to jump to cloud solutions, and we're seeing that in parts of our landscape. We're seeing large insurers kick off new lines on cloud-based systems. But what we're most excited about is seeing those big books of business transition to the cloud, and that's a super exciting opportunity for us and what we're focused on and why I think it's a really exciting time to be at Guidewire.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#6

Sorry. When we think about the cloud, is it really about the new logos where you're starting to penetrate with your cloud solution? Or is there an opportunity to actually shift some of your so-called legacy clients to the cloud? So how should we think about that dynamic playing to your revenue growth over time?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#7

Yes. There are a variety of flavors that cloud demand can present itself in, right? So there is clearly systems that have yet to be modernized in any capacity. So these are systems that may have been in place for 30 or 40 years. We would refer to those as kind of legacy systems and part of a modernization campaign. There are customers that have previously modernized with the Guidewire system and have been running that system on-prem, and there's an opportunity to then migrate that system to our latest Guidewire Cloud platform and kind of get them on our cloud release train, and that's part of the opportunity. Then there's also opportunities, maybe it's smaller insurers who aren't running legacy systems, but are looking to simplify their IT stack, or larger insurers that want to bring new lines to market. So those are kind of flavors of cloud demand that we see. We are very focused on the migration opportunity, that opportunity to take our installed base that's currently running Guidewire on-premise and moving that to the cloud. Those are the customers that know us the best, that have entrusted us to do a very -- in some cases, very complicated core modernization project. Our sales team kind of is always in active dialogue with those folks, so that can often be the first call as we think about these types of opportunities. And we think that, that trust that's been built up over the years is important as they evaluate a critical decision, like entrusting a vendor to run your core system on your behalf. And what we like about that particular opportunity: one is we have a very unique asset at Guidewire, which is we have the biggest concentration of DWP running on our core platform in some capacity; and two, it allows us to have a very nice path to build out reference points for the industry as the industry grapples with these cloud platforms and how mature they are.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#8

Is there a resistance from your so-called legacy clients that are running these solutions? They're probably running them efficiently, still a much better solution than, say, solutions built by the SIs in the '80s and '90s. So if there are no pain points, what would be the catalyst for them to shift to the cloud solution if they're already seeing higher ROI than they did with their prior SI build-type platform?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#9

Yes. There are a variety of reasons why an existing customer may decide to go to the Guidewire Cloud in there, and it depends on where they are. I think if you see -- and we've talked a little bit about the opportunity in our customer base that are on our version 8. Our version 10 in the on-premise world is our latest release. And the Guidewire customer will -- in the on-premise world, one of the things that Guidewire delivered to the industry was the ability to upgrade core system software, which is actually a pretty exciting innovation that didn't really exist prior to Guidewire. These systems were so complex, you kind of thought you write them once and then you continue to patch them, but going through a real software upgrade cycle in this part of -- in this vertical was quite a compelling innovation that Guidewire delivered. And those -- a lot of our customers will go through that upgrade path. They often will skip a major upgrade, so every 4 to 6 years. And then there's complexity of doing that. These are very complex environments. And so there is a fair amount of complexity to go through a major upgrade. So we have a lot of customers today that are on our version 8 that are considering whether or not they want to do a major version upgrade to our version 10. It's also a natural point for them to say, "Is this the right time for me to think about Guidewire Cloud? Clearly, Guidewire has communicated to me that the thrust of their investment will be focused on their cloud release train. Longer term, I'm going to want to be on that path. And do I tackle it today when I'm thinking about a major upgrade? Or am I not quite there yet?" And we have customers at all different points of this maturity curve and how they're thinking about this opportunity. Thankfully, we have a lot of early adopters who are excited to blaze this trail with us. And then we recognized that there'll be a significant number of our customers that want to see a broad swath of DWP up and running on the platform before they feel comfortable. But we feel really good about kind of where we stand and just where we are in this early part of the demand curve for this exciting development for the industry.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#10

That's helpful, Jeff. So when you think about Guidewire Cloud, where are you winning -- is there a way to maybe think about it in terms of the core product line? Does Guidewire do better, say, in policy versus billing or claims? Or claims versus billing and policy? And I guess what I'm getting at is these customers, are they looking at best-of-breed? Or do they want to pick one vendor, say, Guidewire in this case, to run the entire core?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#11

We've seen a variety of approaches with respect to best-of-breed versus core. We have a very robust portfolio of core solutions. We started with ClaimCenter, so that was our first product that was very successful. PolicyCenter was our second product. The policy administration side has a little bit more complexity, so the price point of that particular product is a bit higher on an ASP basis than our ClaimCenter product. We've been very successful in winning new customers on the policy administration side, so much to the fact that it is -- actually, our largest percentage of ARR comes from the policy side versus the claims side today. And then BillingCenter is the other component. We'll see. There is a variety of different approaches. If we look at some of our early cloud wins, there has been a fairly significant amount of those early cloud wins that have gone with the -- probably too early to tell if that is a major trend that we'd expect to see in the cloud, although these systems are designed to work together, and there are real benefits about choosing a single vendor for the entirety of your core.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#12

Right. And I imagine, based on the tiers, in the upper tiers, you might have multiple vendors running different core solutions. But then when you get down, I don't know how active you've been in the, say, Tier 3, Tier 5 market category, but I imagine they would go with one vendor to run the entire core solution? Is that fair?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#13

Yes. That's pretty common. A lot of the larger insurers may have grown through acquisition. And so when you grow in an inorganic fashion, it's not uncommon to see a variety of different systems in the overall IT landscape. There's still a lot of legacy that exists out there. The smaller insurers tend to have typically one system, a bit more simplistic use cases in that regard, so maybe lends themselves to a cloud product a little bit more naturally, whereas we're really excited to see the large insurers start to think more aggressively about adopting cloud. We have a product called InsuranceNow, which is tailored for the smaller insurer, which is an all-in kind of full suite product. You can't just buy policy or claims. It's kind of the full package. And that's a product that we -- was -- came out of an acquisition of a company called ISCS that we've been investing in. And so we have good coverage across all the tiers of insurers. But clearly, when you think about Guidewire, you think about our ability to tackle the most complex and most challenging projects out there in the industry.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#14

Let's assume you have a traditional customer on your on-premise solution, and then you have a new customer using your cloud solution. Putting aside the different tiers of the market, is the cloud solution or the customer more likely to buy multiple products on top of the core? In other words, do you get better penetration within that cloud customer versus what you would with an on-premise client in terms of number of products that you can sell into that client over time for the lifetime value for that customer?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#15

Yes. There's a couple of things maybe to tease out with that question. One, I did mention -- and this has been true with some of the early cohorts. And if you look at our early cohorts of cloud customers, there have been some that have bought in a modular fashion. USAA is a great example. They started with ClaimCenter. But then 2 quarters later, they decided to buy PolicyCenter and BillingCenter. So now we have the full suite there that we're actively working on. But a lot of the early cloud customers have chosen to go with the full suite. Now we do have examples where they bought one core and bought in a more modular fashion. Hard to say if that's the real trend, but that's kind of an interesting early indicator and one that we would love to see develop, because people buy the full suite. That's something we appreciate, and we think it plays into our strengths. And then as we start to aggregate more and more of the industry on our common cloud architecture, which we call Guidewire Cloud platform, that is -- I think that is really compelling in a vertical market and our ability to sell some of these add-on components in the data domain and even in the digital domain that sit on top of our core, which is organized in a much more structured way and a more standardized way in the cloud, so that there should be some interesting ancillary opportunities to sell additional products. We very much think of the core system framework as a strategic high ground within an insurer. It's just occupying really valuable real estate within their IT framework.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#16

Jeff, segueing to the market size. So I had Duck Creek on yesterday. I think they've called the market out at about $15 billion in terms of their target opportunity today. I had another company, Sapiens, on today. They've talked about a $40 billion market. Maybe there's that international component. So maybe you're somewhere in the middle. But could you help size the market for Guidewire and where you are in terms of penetration of that market opportunity in terms of cloud adoption?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#17

Yes. So if you think about the core products, PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter, during Analyst Day, we talked about an approximately $12 billion global opportunity for core systems from a TAM perspective. On a fully ramped ARR basis, today, we're at around -- a little over $600 million of fully ramped ARR. And that's clearly the largest with any one vendor in the industry. But obviously, still very long ways to go to penetrating this market opportunity that's in front of us. We're clearly just scratching the surface in what will be a long replatforming for core systems in this industry. So it's a super exciting time to be at Guidewire. And cloud adoption is growing. And we expect the vast majority of our bookings going forward to come from our cloud products. But we also clearly service a conservative risk-averse industry. In general, we think that the nature of this industry plays to our strengths, given our track record of tackling some of the most difficult projects out there and our track record of getting customers up and running and successful, in addition to our track record of market leadership, which is important to this vertical. We've seen some customers go live recently in our cloud that are really exciting fact patterns, whether that's TD, a very well-respected insurer in Canada. That has been a great reference for us in the Canadian market. And also really excited by the progress we're seeing at USAA, who is working on the largest modernization campaign in financial services. So we're really excited to be a part of that one.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#18

Got it. I guess cut any way, the market is really big. So clearly, big market runway for everyone concerned. Let me ask you this, Jeff, what's the -- really trying to get to this model transition. You put out some medium-term targets at your Analyst Day, but I don't think you put a time frame on that. So how should we think about the model transition over the next few years? And when do you get to a level where you could have maybe a cleaner slate, both in terms of what the normalized growth rate is for the company and also maybe normalized margin structure for the business?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#19

Yes. During our executive meeting, every once in a while, Mike will like to put me on the spot and say, "Hey, Jeff, what's your confidence level that we'll get to $1 billion of ARR?" And I always say, "100%. I know we'll get there. It's blocking and tackling. We will get there as we execute on this opportunity in front of us." And then he likes to follow up. "Well, when will we get there?" And I'm like, "Well, that's a little bit more difficult to answer." We look at this industry, we see the growth drivers that are in front of us. And those are, I think, of 3 legs of the stool. One is this migration opportunity to take our installed base, bring them to our cloud and realize the ARR uplift associated with how we change the division of labor between us and our customers with respect to the core system framework. So that's a really exciting opportunity. At Analyst Day, we talked about our net renewal rate within our total ARR base being just under 110%. But as we layer on more and more of these migrations, there's a real meaningful expansion opportunity that we think we can grow that net renewal rate with our existing customers to a higher base. Then there is what is really the bread and butter of what Guidewire has done since the founding, which is tackling core system modernization campaigns. Legacy systems that have yet to be modernized that exist in the industry, and there's still a lot of this out there in terms of 20-, 30-, 40-year-old systems. And that part of the market, interestingly, we've seen a bit of a slowdown. And part of that slowdown is this industry grokking what it means for them to go to the cloud. I think if you're thinking about a modernization today, you have 2 decisions: You can either go on-premise and do that at a time when all the vendors are telling you that they're focusing their R&D efforts on building out their cloud platforms; or you can go to the cloud, but you're doing that at a time when a very small fraction of the global DWP is running on cloud-based core systems. And so as a result of that, we've seen a bit of a tempered decision-making with respect to kind of meaningful new core modernizations. Certainly, we've seen activity and people testing the market and bringing new lines to market. But in terms of getting kind of what I like to call the meat and potatoes of the industry, that is still -- we're just starting to scratch the surface of that. So we do -- we have seen a bit of a slowdown in that type of decision-making. And our expectation is as we execute on the migration opportunity, as we bring folks like USAA up and running and get them live, that we'll start to see that modernization engine, which has been the bread and butter of Guidewire's growth historically return to more normalized levels. And so when you layer that on top of kind of the net renewal rate that we have through the modernization -- or through the migration activities, then you get to more normalized just core modernization activities. And then you get to these other, whether it's quick start, new lines of business, greenfield lines of insurance and then also the data and digital opportunity, this is kind of the more ancillary opportunities, those are kind of the vectors of growth that we think about. And we think it's reasonable within the next couple of years to get back into the mid-teens and even into the upper teens. And then there are certainly scenarios where you could get back to 20%. But that's not what was contemplated when we put out our numbers for Analyst Day.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#20

Right. That's very helpful. And Jeff, what about the SI partnerships? How important is that to fuel this next leg of growth in the migration to the cloud? And then should we expect your services revenue to continue to come down? Or do you think it will hold the line here in this sort of transition mode that you're in right now?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#21

It's critically important. The SI partners have been a really strategic asset for Guidewire. We want to do -- we want to migrate our entire customer base in addition to winning new customers, and we know that if we had to do all of that professional services work, that would break Guidewire. So we're really happy to have our partners working with us hand in hand. We've done -- I think we've done an amazing job over the last 18 months, starting from 0 to where we are today in terms of certifying and enabling our partners to lead these implementations. When we initiated our cloud transition campaign, there was an expectation that we would have to take on a much bigger part of the burden on the services side, largely because we were going to own the postproduction environment. And so we had a very strong vested interest in ensuring that these projects were done in a scalable fashion. But we shifted that thinking through the enablement efforts we've done with our partners, and our partners are leading the majority of these projects today, which is exciting to see. With respect to services revenue, we're not -- we don't think -- we're not modeling a lot of growth in professional services revenue. Clearly, as we start to see our business and the ARR go to the cloud and the 2 to 3x uplift that will come along with that, our software revenue has the opportunity to grow meaningfully, and our services revenue should grow a lot slower than the software revenue, which would result in kind of lower overall mix coming from services revenue as we execute towards the long-term model.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#22

Right. Maybe shifting gears to the international market. Curious to hear what the game plan is. Is it more organic? Is it a combination of M&A and organic? And the reason I ask is, it would seem to me that every international market is unique in its own way, given insurance is highly regulated. There are different compliance mechanisms in place. So if you could address that, how you approach the international market opportunity, if that is an important area of focus for the company.

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#23

Yes. So international is an important focus area for us. You're right, it's a little bit more challenging. There tends to be different regulations in each country. You'll hear us talk about that internally using the terms country layer content or content that we have to build that sits on top of our core platform that can satisfy the needs of that particular regulatory environment. We will take a variety of approaches. In major geos, we are building out that content and productizing it and considering it just part of our product as we satisfy the needs of that particular country. So in large countries like Germany and Spain and France, that's the approach that we have taken. There may be other geos where oftentimes in country, there's an SI or a particular IT shop that has a lot of domain expertise in that country that we could partner with that can build content on top of our cloud platform that would be an integration point. So there are a variety of ways that we're attacking it. But clearly, international is a big opportunity for us. We're excited about the momentum we're seeing in Europe. And we also have a strong team out in the APAC region and are excited about the potential that exists out there. So international will continue to be an opportunity for us. And if you look at -- someone -- I was talking to an investor, I think, today who mentioned that if you go back and look at our percentages of revenue that have been coming out of EMEA, they've been pretty consistent. So we've been growing in other parts of the world in a relatively consistent fashion with how we've been growing in North America.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#24

I wanted to also ask you about the competitive environment only because, as you mentioned, the international is a focus. And just talking to Sapiens this morning, they're much stronger in Europe than they are in North America. Talking to Duck Creek yesterday, they obviously have a much stronger footprint in North America. So if you could just talk about competition that you're seeing across the various tiers of the market and also geographically, that would be helpful.

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#25

So we operate in a competitive market. I would say, you're right, the way you've couched it, we tend to see Duck Creek very commonly in North America. There are often a variety of competitors we will see in different countries globally. And it's a dynamic that hasn't really changed. It's been that way for a pretty significant period of time. So no major change there. And then on the tiering and where the competition resides with respect to different tiers, same comment. I mean there's -- there obviously has been a shift to the cloud, which has had an interesting -- that can create some interesting things to think about with respect to the competitive landscape. I think some of the smaller insurers with relatively simplified IT frameworks and IT stacks have lended themselves to going cloud earlier. Our customer base tends to skew to the more complicated parts of the market and some bigger challenges with respect to taking those customers to the cloud, which is why you may see some of our customers going a little bit later, but excited to see the tenor of those conversations that -- everybody is having these conversations, that we're moving to the cloud at this point in time. It's just more a matter of when rather than if.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#26

Right. Have the win rates shifted in any meaningful way for you as you've moved more aggressively to the cloud across these different market layers?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#27

No, not really. We measure win rates and report out on them on an annual basis. And we have pretty good visibility. I would say, if there's a major core modernization project going on globally, we tend to get a pretty good look at it. So -- and even those where we may not kind of be active in, we know that they're going on. So we inspect that data frequently and haven't seen any major shifts in the competitive landscape.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#28

So let me ask you bluntly, when you win, why do you win? Is it just coming back to the core product, the solution and maybe Guidewire's sort of brand name in the industry? Are there other factors at play, pricing, et cetera? And then when you do lose, what is the dynamic that is impacting the situation in that type of competitive bid?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#29

Yes. It's always hard. I mean these decisions are so -- there's so much that goes into these decisions. Pricing is a factor, but you're making a decision to partner with someone who's going to manage and run your core systems. If that comes down to a pricing decision, we're doing something wrong in the sales cycle. We win because of our track record and history of tackling the most complicated projects and our commitment to customer success. We have the most fully featured product portfolio in the market. We're now really excited to see the velocity in the R&D organization. And the shift to our, what we call our ski slope releases with Aspen and Banff, demonstrating to the industry how we're going to get them to this end state that we've been talking about for a while, cloud-delivered software, rapid upgrades delivered in a seamless way to some of the most complex core system frameworks in the industry, that's really exciting. And that's -- people are waiting to see those types of steps and waiting to understand with clarity where we're going to take them to. And the more we can just continue to execute on that, we feel really confident in our ability to transact on the opportunity in front of us.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#30

Jeff, what about the investment program that you have in place? I know you guys talked about that at length during the Analyst Day, but if you could maybe lay it out for investors. What are some of the higher priority items on the investment side?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#31

Yes. So early days in what we think is once in a generation replatforming of an industry. So huge opportunity. We're investing heavily to ensure that just as we were the winner kind of in the client server world, in the on-premise world, we will be the winner in the cloud world. So we are investing heavily. Right now, one of the big areas that you hear us talk about a lot is the cloud operations side. That is the team that will manage all of the postproduction environments on behalf of our customers. And big effort there in building out that team to be ready to meet the moment and meet the demand that we see in front of us. You could argue that we may be overinvesting a little bit there. We work in the insurance industry. We're buying ourselves a little bit of insurance. These first customers are critically important. And making sure that all of these early customers are successful and become referenceable accounts for us is just absolutely critical to our long-term goal of bringing the lion's share of this industry on to our cloud platform. So cloud operations is a key area of investment. We are continuing to make investments in R&D. This is a complicated transition we're going through. This is not for the faint of heart. At Guidewire, we like -- that part of our DNA is tackling difficult work and meeting it head-on. In the old days, they used to talk a lot about tunneling through granite, and I have a ton of respect for what Marcus was able to do to get some of the largest insurers in the world to entrust a small startup that had no brand back then. But -- so we don't shy away from the hard work. And transitioning our core system framework to a cloud-based delivered system is complex work, and so we're investing in R&D. And then on the sales and marketing side, we have really good coverage. It's a vertical market. There's only so many insurers out there. We know all the decision makers. We know all the systems that exist out there. So I think we have good coverage on the sales side. So no need to necessarily split territories and really expand the amount of direct sales headcount that we have. But we are making targeted investments on some of the presales functions, technical sales and then also on the customer success side as we move away from being just a software vendor to kind of running a service and having a bit more muscle behind our customer success function.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#32

And I know we're getting close to time. So I have to ask you about M&A. I imagine the M&A will be more capability-driven, maybe breaking into some of those markets, Jeff, you mentioned earlier. What does the M&A pipeline look like? How are the valuation expectations? I imagine they're pretty frothy in this market. But would love to get your take on just the overall M&A approach that you have in place.

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#33

Yes. We haven't done any M&A in a little over 3 years at this point. I think that's been purposeful. We have been cautious with respect to M&A, especially as we did not want to distract from the core mission, which is this shift to the cloud that we're going through. I also think it was really important to define the Guidewire Cloud platform, that common architecture layer, define kind of the ski slope releases. Because having that defined is really important to then think about how we layer M&A and different tuck-ins on top and around that. So that's been our posture. We've been conservative. Now I think as we feel much more confident about where we are with respect to that part of the execution of what we've been trying to tackle, that affords us the ability to be a bit more aggressive with respect to M&A. As you noted, valuations are still frothy. And we want to also build a framework where we can enable a whole community of partners to integrate into our platform, and that can also eventually feed an M&A pipeline. So we'll be measured, but there's certainly a lot of investment and innovation going on in the broader landscape, which is exciting, and we're staying close to it.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#34

And all is great. Big opportunity ahead for you. And of course, we're all watching the model transition take shape. Any parting thoughts, Jeff, before we sign off?

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#35

No. It's -- hopefully, you all can see how exciting the opportunity is in front of us. We know it's a big opportunity, and we're excited to tackle it. So yes, that's -- thanks for having me, Mayank.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#36

Yes. Great, Jeff. Thank you for sharing the insights. Appreciate it.

Jeffrey Cooper

executive
#37

All right. Thanks so much.

Mayank Tandon

analyst
#38

Okay. Bye-bye.

This call discussed

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to Guidewire Software, Inc. earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.