Procore Technologies, Inc. (PCOR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Isn't the third day the best day? I've been saying this all day.

Yes.

Third day the best day.

This is my first day. So yes, yes.

It's your first day. You chose the best day. You chose the best day. And you're in such great company. The lineup has been amazing. Thanks for adding to the strong lineup already on the last day. The only people peter out on the last day. They say, yes, we're going to take the 4:00 flight and leave at 1:00. No, none of that. We got content all the way down to the last.

Great. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for coming.

This is something more of a strategy question. Let's pretend you're Tooey. What does the company want to be 5 years from now? What would be your audacious goals for the company?

Yes, it's always going to be tough to be Tooey, but I'll give it a shot.

Yes.

Look, Procore has made a tremendous amount of investments across a number of dimensions over the last several years, be it in different geographies, the product expansion to serve all our different stakeholders, serving our different stakeholders across a number of different segments. If I think about what success looks like over the next 5 years, it's really making tangible progress across the mission and vision for Procore. And that is to improve the lives of everyone in construction and to connect everyone in construction on a global platform. If I step to the side, as the person standing next to Tooey, in terms of where I think the success of the company looks like over the next 5 years from a financial standpoint, it's that we continue to make progress across the mission -- vision and mission, but also to do so in a way where we are continuously and optimally balancing what our growth profile looks like in terms of our revenue and our margin profile looks like, all the while still improving basically our North Star metric around what is free cash flow per share. And if you have those -- both of those components trending in that right direction at the same time over the next 5 years, I think that would be a tremendous success for Procore.

Got it. While digitizing the construction?

While digitizing the construction industry...

[ And updating ] hundreds of billions of dollars of [ wait ], and this $14 trillion world, part of...

Change orders, reducing change orders, getting projects done faster, cheaper, safer. Absolutely.

Yes. We will get to payments, which is what everybody loves to talk about, including me. By the way, I did not even make the introduction. I was just running late. So on that note, you were at many other software companies before you joined Procore. So this is the introduction -- reintroduction question. So tell us about your background. Prior to joining Procore, where were you? And what were the major influences in your CFO career?

Yes. Well, first of all, I'm Howard Fu, I'm the CFO of Procore. We didn't get that part out. So I like to think about Procore as kind of a culmination or a consolidation of a lot of the experiences that I've had in my past. And all the way going back to what actually I was trained and I had a degree in civil engineering.

Mechanical engineering.

Oh, perfect. There you go. Engineers on the stage here. And so from there, I kind of went across a number of industries and functions from the payments industry at Visa for a number of years, working in their incentives and pricing organization, to Salesforce in M&A integration, and to LinkedIn, and then most recently to DocuSign where I was leading their FP&A team. And so I think a lot of those components put together is a culmination of what I'm seeing at Procore, and it's very applicable at Procore. And there's something very exciting for me here at Procore, thinking back to the days of why I wanted to get a civil engineering degree in the first place. There is an excitement about helping companies that build what's around it, something that's very tangible. And it's almost the kid in me coming out again and really enjoying what we're doing to help the companies that build the world. And that's why I'm here.

That's great. That's great. Your favorite CFO role model?

Favorite CFO role -- should I say -- should I say -- I haven't met her. Should I say Amy Hood?

Okay. That's good.

I mean I can.

She was here.

You could have met her.

Yes, yes. So I think it's hard to pick just one. There's a number of influences, obviously, throughout my career, whether at the CFO level or in a different -- completely different function that I've learned a ton about in terms of how I should approach the role and executives should approach roles within the company. And one of the things specifically about CFOs that I admire are those that don't just think about CFOs, the F in the CFO. It's really about a business partnership and taking a business approach first to ensure that there's complete alignment and 0 daylight between what the business is trying to accomplish in this stage, and in this case, digitizing the industry, connecting everyone on a global platform in construction, improving the lives of everyone in construction and having no daylight between that and what is the formal responsibilities of a CFO. Those are the folks that I've admired most when they can put those pieces together to really move the company forward. And that's kind of how I model the way I engage.

And so what are you going to do differently, given that mental construct, how do you add value to Procore in order to achieve its mission differently than what a typical CFO?

So look, my predecessor, Paul, everybody loves Paul. He definitely took that approach, right? He held a number of positions throughout Procore that allowed him to take that approach. And throughout my first couple of years at Procore, I spent a lot of time with him just learning about the industry, I spent a lot of time with Tooey just learning about the industry and making sure that as the transition occurred, it wasn't one something that was a toggle switch, but that it was something that was measured and that could continue in terms of me taking on the mantle in this role. And I think the team and the executives and the Board have done a tremendous job to get me prepared for this role. Is there anything different that I'm going to do? I wouldn't call it different. I would call it maybe an evolution that would be consistent with what the company needs as we go into this next phase of growth. And I think that's the different part that I would think. But the philosophical approach in terms of making sure the operational side connects with the strategy side, connects with the finance side, I don't think that changes.

Got it. The company has done really well the last 18 months, when everybody went through -- not everybody, but most people went through decelerating growth rates, a higher cost of capital, freezes in IT budgets. Why do think Procore did so well? Don't jinx it.

No, no, no. Well, the first thing before I kind of talk about how -- why Procore has continued to execute in this environment is I just want to be clear, we are not immune to everything that's going on around us, right? The macroeconomic environment, whether it's specific to construction or not, it's not something that we can sit here and say that will not affect us. Even in our last earnings call, we talked about kind of the dichotomy of what's happening in the industry and what we're seeing in terms of our installed base with a portion that's -- has -- that has high expansion, another portion that's showing some cautiousness, the net of which still nets out to something that is positive for us, which is why you're seeing the results that we have. And we're doing that because we're trying to be as transparent as possible with everyone in the room and everybody else because you wouldn't have seen that in our financial results. In terms of why we've been able to execute, there's a number of factors from the broader context of more specifically our position and our role in the industry. The broader factors in terms of why we continue to execute, one is there's a natural diversification in the industry, multiple layers of diversification. When you look at the construction industry, there are -- in general, there are resi and nonresi categories. But in the nonresidential categories, there are something like 70 subcategories. And at any particular point, there's some kind of construction going on, some that are strength, some that are not as strong. And so there's diversification there. And then when you think about our customer base, their exposure to that diversification allows them to diversify. And then when you look at the customers that we have, we also have a diverse set of customers. And then so we've got customers across segments. We got customers across stakeholders, owners, general contractors and subcontractors. And frankly, there's multiple layers of that. Look, again, I'm not going to sit here and say we are immune to the macroeconomic conditions. We are absolutely not. But that's the main reason why we've been able to execute. If I go even a little bit broader, there are a few catalysts that have allowed the industry to digitize, okay? One of which happened probably starting 10 years ago around the prevalence of cellular and Wi-Fi and mobility entering the job site, which actually allows Procore to add way more value to the construction life cycle. Other components are increasing regulatory complexities and regulatory volume that makes the need for a software and a solution like Procore even more valuable to make sure that the right data is used, that the right data is used at the right time, for the right people. And then in general, another catalyst is we've had labor shortages and labor constraints for many, many years now and specifically in the construction industry. And in that environment, solutions like Procore allow construction companies to do work faster, to do work more efficiently in light of that labor shortage. And so there's a number of catalysts that have allowed us to really continue to execute in this environment.

I would tell you that when I had a chat with Paul, he went through the -- this is before the IPO. He said in the presentation, all these mistakes happen, construction industry, blah, blah, blah. They were listening, okay. And then at the same time, we're doing a renovation project. We saw firsthand a subcontractor ordered 12 glass panes. We got 8. These are big panes, right? I mean so the project is stalled. So we had workers show up and 8 panes and not 12, right? And then we get the 12. That takes several weeks of delay. And then -- so next thing they bring the door. The door is the wrong door. It's 6 feet tall, not 8 feet tall. The whole thing is a disaster. I mean, who gets to pay for all these delays? So I can see firsthand the value in a coordinated project management solution. I think it's -- once you go through the pain point, you really understand what the value is.

Yes, yes. Well, that's a great example. I just want to make sure though. Procore, you're not our end customer.

Correct, correct, correct. I wish my [indiscernible] are using it.

So I mentioned earlier, in terms of that diversification, we are -- we do not play in the residential side. Unless you have large custom homes? I don't know, Kash, maybe. And we will play a little bit in multifamily, but most of it is on the nonresidential.

Contract that does multiple...

Yes, yes, exactly.

He should be using a [indiscernible]. The size of the opportunity, one way to look at it is the world is currently being spent. What are the legacy solutions, except spreadsheets? Oracle has got some technology there. Frame for us what is the realistically addressable market opportunity? Because when you hear of a $1 trillion industry, $1trillion TAM as a software unless you're like, okay, I sort of want to believe it, but at the same time, not all entirely addressable. So would you frame the realistically addressable opportunities?

Yes, yes. So there's a couple of things. One is, even if not all of that is serviceable and addressable today, the level of digitization in the industry is so low right now that there is -- this is still very early innings in terms of the opportunity that's ahead of us. So that's the first thing. It's $1 trillion, it's actually a bigger market in the non-U.S. than it is in the U.S. in terms of what that opportunity is. So that's the first thing in terms of just the size and where that size is located. The second piece is going to be around what the current penetration of Procore, which kind of mimics the general digitization of the industry. And that is so low. I think globally, Procore has penetrated in about 1% of the logos and 2% of the construction volume or something like -- I think we disclosed that in the Investor Day content from last year. And so there's just a tremendous amount of...

2% of volume? Wow, wow.

Globally, globally. So even if the addressable piece is half that, there's still a tremendous amount of opportunity to grow. The other piece is when you think about construction, the construction industry, it works in the context of, the unit of measure is annual construction volume. And the second unit of measure is how does that look for a specific project? And so when you think about a specific project, the vast majority of projects are going to have an owner, a general contractor, maybe multiple, and a subcontractor, probably multiple subcontractors. And when you think about where Procore comes in, we have an opportunity to add value to all 3 of those stakeholders on the same project. And you'll hear us kind of refer to this concept as triple TAM, where the dollar amount for that project because of the 3 stakeholders that are largely engaged in that project in that same dollar amount, we have an opportunity to monetize all 3 stakeholders. It's not going to be totally triple TAM because, for example, you could have an owner that has an in-house GC. You could have a general contractor that self-perform and does their own subcontracting work. But in general, there's multiple opportunities across that same dollar amount. And so those are a couple of ways to think about the magnitude of the TAM that's out there in the [indiscernible].

So Howard, it's clear that the TAM is quite large and digitization is very low. So then how should investors think about sort of the pace of digitization within the construction market? Like what are the catalysts there? And then maybe a secondary question here. How much of an education process is still required to land new accounts relative to maybe more horizontal applications?

Yes, yes. So the -- there is a tremendous amount of inertia in terms of the construction industry to actually hit that catalyst point. You got to remember that a big part of what we're transforming, 50% is what we'll call analog. And analog could be a pen and paper. Analog could also be Excel. There's -- I jokingly tell people that there's still a portion of the construction industry that thinks Excel is digitization, right? And so that's about 50% of what we're talking about and what we're transforming. And -- and the -- to break into that, so there's a tremendous amount of inertia. There's literally large GCs that still have folks printing out e-mails and putting them on their desk. And you walk into a construction trailer and you can see a whiteboard with black tape crisscrossing with folks writing on it. And so that's a tremendous amount of inertia to break. The other piece is, once it's broken within a specific company, the transition of that construction volume on to Procore also takes time. And that transition takes time because when somebody buys Procore, they have projects in flight that they can't actually just rip out and say, hey, I'm going to put it into Procore. And so there's a natural progression. For large companies, it might be 2, 3, 4, 5 years to transition all of their volume over to Procore. And so there's that transition that needs to happen as well. We've already talked about the catalysts that would prompt companies who want to digitize. But I think those are the major components that I think about in terms of that transition. Now you've heard us talk about this being a being an oil tanker, not a speed boat. And so steering that oil tanker is going to take a little bit of time.

And then maybe just touching on the pricing structure. I think it's rather unique, right? So you've got this upfront volume commitment component and then also the number and mix of products that you have price on. So maybe you can just walk us through kind of a typical GC land deal, what that looks like.

Yes. So -- and with the GC, it's going to be the same as an owner or an SC in terms of what that dynamic looks like. So we price on annual construction volume. It's a quantity that is known and highly scrutinized in the industry. That's how the industry thinks about the volume of their business is the construction volume. And so the way that we price is really along 2 dimensions. It's volume commitment. The more volume you commit upfront, the lower basis points that we will charge you. The lower volume that you commit upfront, the higher basis points we will charge you. So that's the first dimension. The second dimension like as you mentioned is the number of products that folks will sign up for. That will obviously increase the number of basis points and the take rate on that specific deal. We make it -- we incentivize our customers to try and commit as much volume upfront as possible, right? And so if you don't, then what happens is if the customer goes over that volume, then there is a premium that they have to pay in terms of the basis points for that additional volume. This is -- we are not a usage model. This is a use it or lose it. And whatever volume is committed to and that basis point is committed to over 1, 2 or 3 years, the revenue is recognized ratably over that time frame. Regardless of whether it's for a product or just different products or the same product, it's ratable over that time frame. So that's kind of how the dynamic works. But does that answer your question?

Yes, yes, yes. That's really helpful. Maybe can you just speak to the different opportunities you have across the key stakeholders? Like any difference in kind of the go-to-market for SCs versus owners versus GCs? Which products do these stakeholders tend to land with?

Yes. It's going to be a little bit different across each one of the stakeholders. I would say that project management in some way, shape or form is going to be applicable to all 3 stakeholders. As you think about where those stakeholders go from there, it's going to be dependent on their specific situation. Now let me come back to that in a second. Internally, for Procore, what we're focused on doing is making progress along our product road map such that we systematically fix or pick off the key pain points for each one of those stakeholders. So for an owner going past project management, it might be something associated with financials. On the flip side of that, on the SC side, on the specialty contract side, it might be something like workforce management because from a subcontractor perspective, that is the lifeblood of how they operate. And so it could be a number of those things. We've actually listed out in last year's Investor Day content, the key pain points. Now those are the key pain points. If you're looking at how customers across each one of those stakeholders, what that buying pattern looks like in terms of that path, it's actually quite unique. There's not one specific path that we can say, this is exactly what an SC path will take or this is what an owner path will take. It's highly dependent on their specific subsegment in the industry that they support, the breadth and range of projects that they're currently working on. And so it really depends on what those factors are that determine which path that they take. But internally, again, the key is that we're focusing on fixing the pain points that customers have told us across each one of those stakeholders.

And so that's sort of what informs your product road map, right, because you guys have 13 modules. So could you just expand a little bit on kind of the strategy there in terms of kind of maybe capturing the full life cycle of construction management.

Yes, if you think about the full life cycle of construction management and -- and it's bookended by 2 part, 2 places that we don't play. On the front end of that is the design portion, which we don't play in. On the back end of that is going to be maintenance and so forth that we don't play in. And in between all of those are places that we want to continue to make progress on, both in the project execution piece, but also components that we're continuing to -- that are a little bit more [ nascent ]. So in the beginning, post the design phase, for example, making progress on preconstruction in terms of what that entry door looks like into the heart of the construction process, definitely making -- continue to make progress there. If you -- then that moves into project execution, which is kind of our core bread and butter, then post that might be financials, post that might be workforce management. And where our road map is informed by where we are and where the monetization opportunities are across that entire construction life cycle. And not only that, but me, as somebody sitting in my seat, this is back to kind of thing back to the business and the strategy of the business is making sure that there's a sequencing of what we deliver in terms of those product lines that allows us a sequencing also to be able to monetize and then putting those 2 pieces to make sure that we still continue to make progress in terms of our financial profile. So it's really putting all those pieces together.

So I have a question for you then. With regards to the pricing model, how do you monitor overages and also -- not just overages, but increase to the scope of the project material overrun labor overrun? And is there a way to go back to the customer and say, look, you owe us more money.

Yes, there is a way. So the first thing I'll clarify is, if it's a material overrun or a labor overrun, those are all part of the construction volume. And so it doesn't matter from a dollar perspective what has gone over. Similarly, we are agnostic to the subsegment in which that construction volume takes place. And so typically, most of the transactions and most of the adjustments are made at the time of renewal. And we have actually an internal team that is focused on, hey, if we see signals that folks are starting to run over or [ there ] need more volume. We -- it's a small team, but we'll very strategically take that team and make sure that they work with the CSMs and the sales organization to work with the customer to give them -- to give them insights in terms of how they are performing and how they're progressing versus their consumption. We don't like -- we don't do midterm downgrades, but we will do, for example, midterm upgrades in those instances that we find those situations. It could happen. It could play out in a number of ways. It could play out that we do a mid-term upgrade. It could play out in a way where we completely do a canceled rewrite. And if it's close enough to renewal, we may just add that to new renewal at the time of renewal.

And how do you get -- how do you know what the increase in volume is?

Yes, good question. So some of it -- it's going to come -- the data is going to come from a multiple places. So for folks that are that are implemented on some of our financials projects, for example, like invoicing, those are running through our system. It's still not perfect, but we have some signals that we can look at to go through that. Secondly is the customers -- remember, in the construction industry, ACV is the unit of measure. So that is actually quite clear, and it's actually quite understood in terms of what that metric is. And so when a customer signs up for that volume, there is a fairly good understanding that, that is the metric that we need to track and look at. And we will also certainly have customers that come to us and say we are running high on volume, and then we'll need to do some kind of an upgrade.

So generally, the quicker I finish the project, better for the customer, but it's not good for you because you go by volume. That volume spread out over, let's say, 1.5 years, is 50% more money than a year-long project, right? Or is that...

The quicker you finish the project, it's better for the -- not necessarily. Let me take a shot at this and see if this answers your question. That would be the case if the backlogs weren't there, right? That would be the case if we weren't continuing to make continual progress on our product road map because at the renewal point, it's also another opportunity to actually add more value and cross-sell to that customer. And so as long as the backlogs are there, there's still volume to be sold. The other piece that I think works itself here is the constraint right now is not the demand for construction, the constraint right now is still the supply of construction. When I say the supply of construction largely has to do with labor. As long as...

progressing the labor market?

There's still a labor shortage. There is still a labor shortage. The imbalance is still there. And that is one of those catalysts that I had mentioned, which actually still continues to allow us to execute. As long as that imbalance is there where the demand is higher than the supply, there's still an appetite for solutions like Procore. And we like to think we offer the best one. And so that still exists.

Competitive environment, any changes over the last few months?

There's been no changes in the competitive environment. We still see the same players in the half that is not analog. And in that half, that's not analog, just for the folks in the room, there's a number of kinds of competitors. One will be point solutions, right? One end of the spectrum. And the other end of the spectrum will be software aggregators. So the Autodesk, the Trimbles, the Oracles. And in terms of that competitive environment, nothing has really changed in terms of win rates or anything like that. We believe that Procore is a better solution because we are, one, 100% focused on construction; we are focused on the entire breadth of the construction life cycle. So when you have these point solutions that are only solving one part of that life cycle, we solve the entire portion of it. On the end of that end of the spectrum, when you have software aggregators, a lot of those aggregations are from acquisitions. And Procore has built -- was built from the beginning on one single platform, a cloud-based platform, and there's value in having all that under one roof.

So one of those 3 companies you mentioned, which may have a letter from my name towards its end, has determined that this is it. This is the opportunity they're going to chase. And the value proposition there is, look, we've got the design and the construction management coming from the same company. It's all seamless. What's your response to that value proposition?

So again, we don't hide from the fact that we don't play in the design space. And I would say that the way that, that competitor has gone about trying to, I'll call it, forward integrate into the construction life cycle, a lot of times has been through acquisition, and that's why they're a software aggregator. That transition, I think, is a little -- maybe a little bit more difficult than folks might believe or perceive. While we are still fully focused on that full construction life cycle, we believe that, that's an advantage for us.

So the idea is that you can move faster or those folks have to integrate -- sell an integrated upgrade, that sort of thing?

Yes. And then think about the end user or the end customer, okay? You've got -- you've got an engineer, you've got an architect, and you've got folks that actually have dirty bids. And you think about who uses what in the context of that flow from design into preconstruction, into project execution. They can be very different. And you can think about that you've probably experienced this in your own project. And when you start to think about what that looks like in terms of what they care about at each one of those stages and integrating that, it's -- it can be a difficult proposition.

Got it. I have a question on payments and then we'll see if any other clients have a question.

Yes.

We've been patiently waiting for payment, the monetization. It's a huge industry, a lot of spending happening. What are your learnings after you've experimented with a few possible ways in which you could extract some value that is latent in that world?

The short answer for you is you all should come to Groundbreak.

Okay.

You should come to investor day.

Okay.

Because this is one of the things that we will go a little bit deeper into in terms of some of the mechanics and a deeper teach-in on how we're thinking about payments. The -- just to answer your question directly in terms of what we're seeing, it's very early on. The initial signals are good. But again, it's so small and so early. We'll release that later this year, and you'll hear more about what that looks like at that Groundbreak. Yes.

Okay. Anybody has any questions for Procore? If you have a question, please raise your hand. There's one question here.

Could you talk a little bit about some of the sources of leverage on your sales and marketing line? I believe you had planned for a self-serve motion, downmarket potentially so -- or maybe domestic international, if that's the big lever there. Is that -- yes. Any comment there?

Yes, there's multiple dimensions. I think if you look at the content that we did in the last Investor Day, there's a geographical difference in terms of what that efficiency looks like in terms of LTV to CAC. And so as we continue to make progress, for example, on our international side, there's definitely going to be leverage there, which is actually not in our clients or in our models or anything like that. There's definitely that component. Another example is continuing to refine the way we go about go-to-market that is more consistent with the way that the industry connections work. So as an example, today, we'll go after owners, we'll go after GCs, and we'll say, hey, we're great, right? And we'll go after SCs and say we're great. However, when you think about how the industry works in the U.S., as an example, you see that the large GCs are a very critical node in terms of that network of owners and more so the SCs that they work with. So another potential leverage point could be, if we target those GCs and we think about the funnel and how we execute against that funnel, to use that as a note to then get into what it looks like for the GC that's connected to -- the SC that's connected to the GC is another example of that. So those are 2 examples. But in general, sitting in my seat, you will never hear a day where I raise my hand, and I -- you all have heard me say like, you will never hear me have a day where I raise my hand and I'm like, yes, I'm good with our efficiency, right? It's something that we constantly look at. It's constantly -- that we constantly fine tune and we continue to make progress on it.

We got a minute left. Anybody with any last question?

Howard, I have one. So it seems to us that Procore should be uniquely positioned to leverage generative AI given that the construction platform is capturing a lot of real-time data on the industry. So how do you envision Procore leveraging gen AI to kind of improve the productivity of the construction industry?

Yes, it's -- we're excited. We think it's going to be real. I'd be lying if I sat here and told you I knew the specifics of exactly how that's going to play out. We do think that there's tremendous opportunity both from a customer standpoint as well as internally. And it is something that we have talent on board to continue to make progress on, both through acquisitions and through hiring that we've done in the past. But we don't know the specifics of that yet, right? We do think that given our unique vertical nature -- vertical software nature of our business, we do think that the vertical nature of the data that we have is highly, highly valuable, and we are exploring what that looks like. We have to think about both what it looks like from a productization standpoint as well as a monetization standpoint. And it's just so early on that we are not there yet, but we are extremely excited about it.

That's promising.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Howard.

That's good.

And thanks for coming to the conference.

All right. Thank you.

We wish you all the best.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.