Toast, Inc. (TOST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
September 11, 2024
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
William Nance
analystAll right. So we'll get started here. Next up, we have Toast. We've got both Aman and Elena here to talk through the business. I'm really excited for the discussion today. And thanks again for -- I think this is the third time coming to the conference...
Elena Gomez
executiveYes, thanks for having us.
Aman Narang
executiveGreat. Thanks for having us.
William Nance
analystOkay. So you hosted an Investor Day earlier this year. Maybe we can kick off with an overview about how you're framing the strategy from here to extend the lead and being a purpose-built platform for restaurants?
Aman Narang
executiveYes. Thanks, Will. Thank you all for being here. So Toast is a platform for restaurants. We're purpose-built for the restaurant industry across our software, our hardware and our payments. And really from day 1, we chose to focus on solving the needs of restaurants better than anybody else in the world. As we think about the strategy from here, number one, is continuing to gain market share and expand locations; number two is to expand the surface area of the products we offer to expand the existing customers. We're expanding our TAM across things like international and enterprise restaurants as well as hotel restaurants, continue to expand the TAM in terms of availability of what our sales team can go after and then continue to grow revenue faster than expenses to expand margins as we do all of this. Our core differentiation really is that the intersection of our go-to-market team. We've got boots on the ground across all 50 states as well as our R&D platform, which is why if you look at one of the stats we shared often is density of customers for us is a tailwind. As we get more customers in the city, that drives faster growth. That drives more location adds. And then on the expansion side, the R&D platform we're building, we're focused on continuing to build all of the needs that restauranteurs have. At the Analyst Day that we had earlier this year, we talked about the thousand little things that restauranteurs need to run a great business. And since it's in our DNA, we continue to build the platform, the differentiation of the platform to continue to stay ahead. And that's really what's going to drive our growth. And so at 13% share in the U.S., we have a lot of confidence that we can continue to grow at scale.
William Nance
analystGreat. So the business has evolved rapidly over the last few years. You quickly scaled locations. You just called out 13% market share. You've expanded into international and adjacent verticals. You had a CEO transition. Before getting into some of those, how have you positioned the organization to continue to adapt and scale? And how are you feeling about how the team is executing?
Aman Narang
executiveYes. Look, I'll start by saying I'm really proud of the way the team has executed in the first half. We have seen really strong growth. I think the numbers speak for themselves. We've expanded margins as we've accelerated growth. And we expanded margins while making sure that we don't shortchange our most important long-term growth levers. And so whether it's things like our new growth opportunities, whether it's the core efficiency needs that we have in the business to set up the business to scale. So we've had to, in many ways, reset the focus of the team, and it's really helped us have a great first half. I look at my job at the highest level, really the senior team, starting with us making sure that we've got the right team at the top rowing in the same direction. One of the things I talk a lot about is just making sure that at the senior team level there's no daylight between us because that creates all sorts of issues downstream. Making sure that our strategy and our vision is well documented. In fact, one thing I'm working on is just making sure it's crisper. So everybody in the company understands what are the most important priorities, and we've gone fairly deep in terms of explaining where we're going and why. Next is just making sure our resource allocation of the company is aligned with our most important priorities. That requires us to go assess how are we investing our capital. Is it prioritized against the most important priorities? And then lastly, just making sure that myself and the senior team are setting the right tone on culture, right? And this is -- if you think about -- one thing we did earlier this year was we set our values, and that was really about bringing the senior team, the leadership team closer to the work. It was about helping everyone understand the importance of talent density as we want to grow and scale the business, making sure that everyone has perspective, the context in the business and what we're doing and why we're doing it and just more business acumen. And so it's never done, like we're not -- the work is never done, we're going to always working to get better. But overall, when I sit back and look at where we are versus where we were at the start of the year, really proud of the progress the team has made.
William Nance
analystNow the market has been highly focused on the health of the consumer with some of the choppy macro recently. Your guidance is calling for stable GPV per location, which is where most of the macro would show up in the business. Based on what you've seen kind of quarter-to-date are there any meaningful changes in consumer behavior that you've witnessed?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes. No real change in consumer behavior, and I'll just start by -- in Q2, growing GPV 26%, just a testament to the health of the business. But as we look at the quarter into Q3, we're seeing effectively the same stable kind of in the same zone in terms of GPV per location. So in Q2, we were down 3%. Most of that's driven by same-store sales being down to a lesser extent, mix. But just zooming out, we think when you look at restaurants over cycles -- over various economic cycles, there's a resilience in this customer base. And so we believe that, that will continue. But the market dynamics we're always watching, like we always do, and that we'll continue to do that.
William Nance
analystSo the other piece of kind of macro touching the business would be around kind of churn and new business formation. We've seen new business formation slow a bit this year. And I think in the past quarter, you called out a modest uptick in churn. Can you just help dimensionalize that further, unpack any of the trends that you've seen within the customer base?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes, sure. Like Aman said, we started the year really strong at 8,000 record adds for us. And when we look at the complexion of those adds, it's really fairly balanced between new restaurant openings and existing customers or switchers is what we call them. And when you look at the win rates across both of those cohorts, very consistent as well. So overall, the top-of-funnel dynamics aren't materially changing. Looking at churn, we're at roughly slightly above 10% on an annualized basis. And when we look at the trends oversee the last several quarters, it's very much in the same zone. And when I think about the churn itself, if you look at the collection of that churn, most of it is customers going out of business. And so when you think about it that way, the reason that's important is because those customers aren't really processing a lot with us. So the impact to ARR is just not as material. So overall, just the health of the business itself I feel pretty good about it and it's very balanced.
William Nance
analystGot it. Makes sense. So this past quarter, you called out a little bit higher investment spending in the near term to position the company for growth into next year. Could you unpack your expectations around some of that investment spending and then how you've reinvested some of the savings from the headcount reduction earlier this year?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes, sure. It's a great question. So at the start of the year, we had a restructure and as we thought about that restructuring, one of the key principles behind that restructure was let's get lean to go faster, but also more importantly, let's point our investment to the most strategic initiatives and Aman laid out some of those earlier today. And so that's exactly what we intended. That was reflected in our initial guide at the beginning of the year. It has not changed. So we still feel very confident about that. As we zoom out and think about our investment philosophy, even our capital allocation philosophy, it's always really balanced against shorter and longer term initiatives. And so some of this investment is to continue to grow and invest in our core, some of the things that Aman laid out at the beginning. But also we put a long-term lens on those and say, how do we sustain this growth that we're really proud of in an enduring way? How do we think about that growth over the long term? And that's why you see us talk about things like international and retail, which are really longer-term bets, but we realize that they will take some time to really have meaningful impact on our business. So that investment is really a balance across both.
William Nance
analystGot it. And then maybe switching gears to the monetization side. I think this quarter, we expect to begin to see some of the impacts of some of the pricing strategies play out. Can you help investors understand what this initial action could mean in terms of take rate in the business? And then longer term, you talked about this being a more regular annual pricing muscle. Could you help us understand how the approach to pricing has changed longer term?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes, sure. So a couple of things. One, as we think about pricing, really, as we think about the growth in the business, we think about a few vectors of growth, right? The TAM expansion and the growth in our locations, we think about increasing attach really driving ARPU. And then pricing is another lever. And so it's one of many levers to grow the business. It's one of the principles that we talk a lot about internally as we think about pricing is, one, let's take a holistic view of the customer. We can monetize against both SaaS and Fintech, number one. Number two, and really, really important is making sure we're always driving value through our innovation that customers can see and feel every day. And if we believe we are doing that, then it positions us in a way where we can really monetize across both of these vectors. What we started and implemented this year is our first cohort of customers on the Fintech side. So you'll see a small impact to our take rate in the back half of the year. And again, it's a small cohort of customers. But over time, to the point you're making, you'll see us build this muscle because the reality is for our existing set of customers, this is the first time we've actually taken price. And so we're building that muscle over time so that it just becomes part of the normal course of business as opposed to something that's very episodic and sort of blunt, if you will.
William Nance
analystYes. Makes sense. Then just switching over to the software side, sort of in the same vein, you've done a lot to move towards a more kind of bundled-centric approach on pricing on software. What's your latest thinking on software pricing? And how do you think about pricing as an accelerant to the current mid-single-digits ARPU expansion that we've seen in the business?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes. I mean I think just building on what I just commented on, really, we think about this as a long-term muscle for us. The near-term mid-single digits is a good zone for us in the near term. But to the point on whether it's extending TAM, driving more attach, pricing is a supplement to that. And so I think about the surface area and innovation that will continue along with pricing, which over the long term, will have an impact on ARPU.
Aman Narang
executiveAnd this pricing change this year was on Fintechs, it's not going to impact SaaS ARPU the one we did -- one we just did this year.
William Nance
analystNo, that's clear. I think the investments on the upsell team has been a big initiative over the past couple of years. It's been a big kind of additional layer of sales that you've added. What drove the decision originally? And then as we get kind of deeper into that strategy, have you seen the intended effect of that strategy play out?
Aman Narang
executiveSure. Thanks, Will. When we started the business 10 years ago, initially, it was about selling this point of sale and payments platform. And so the complexity and the surface area of what we offered was different than it is today. And so the team that we build up and go-to-market was focused on expanding locations. And these are the boots on the ground throughout the country and all 50 states. And over the past 5 years, as we've expanded the platform, today, we've got 10 different -- 10 plus products across these 5 product areas in e-commerce, in Fintech, and gas of employee and supplier. And so what we realized was, in some cases, our reps are incented to maximize ARR, so they're maximizing attach and locations. But in some cases, it doesn't make sense to sell everything upfront. So for example, if you're a brand new restaurant, you might want to use everything from Toast upfront. If you've got an existing customer with many locations, the decision-maker that's deciding on the core tech in the restaurant, the point of sale, might be someone, IT consultant or the restaurant owner, whereas for the expansion products like payroll might be the accountant. And so that's where the beginnings of the upsell team came from. The team is about 2 years old. And we continue to improve the partnership between the new business team and the upsell team, just in terms of how they work together. We're working on the tools and the data they need to be more effective. And then, of course, we're working on the maturity of our products. If you look at our point-of-sale in our payments platform, it's 11-years old. The newer products are not as mature. And so all those things together continue to play a part. But make no mistake, like that team, the upsell team is very much have been a huge positive for the company. They're contributing a big chunk of the ARPU growth that we just talked about. And so we're continuing to be measured about how we scale that up as our -- the tools for that team improve and products continue to mature.
William Nance
analystAnd that upsell team, that's a big focus of some of the investments that you talked about earlier in the back half of the year?
Aman Narang
executiveIt's one of many. I'd say, like, if you think about all -- in fact we just came out of [ a large site ] this week when we're talking about all the growth vectors in the business. And when you think about our core business, of course, and it's scaling locations at 13% share, that's really important. The work we're doing internationally, the work we're doing in retail, the work we're doing with expansion, upsells, all of those things are really, really important, enterprise. And so it's about allocating our resources the best we can across all.
William Nance
analystYes, so I'd love to talk about the SMB retail announcement earlier this year. I thought this is one of the cooler announcements at the Investor Day. So not only are you expanding into a new TAM, you already invested the R&D resources and you built a pipeline there before you announced it. So really nice to see kind of the progress and the unveiling at the Investor Day. Can you talk about just the rationale for getting into that? And what was the opportunity that you saw? And then maybe on the technical side, what kind of build-out did that require?
Aman Narang
executiveYes. They came -- the work in retail really came from our existing customers. If you look at a lot of restaurants, especially through COVID, you saw them expanding into this light retail, so you might have like a light convenience store or wine shop or even selling to this basic merchandise. And we got feedback from our go-to-market team that, that was a gap. They're going after restaurants because they couldn't sell those locations as effectively or sometimes those groups as effectively. If you've got 5 locations, one of them is wine shop, they want to use single platform from a data perspective, right, to centralize everything. And so our restaurant team started to build out the capabilities to expand into that TAM just like we've been with hotel capabilities or enterprise capabilities. And so that was the beginnings of the retail capability where we got customers that were restaurants using light retail. And then early last year, we got some -- we started to get some customers that said, wait a minute, we can use this in our grocery store, think of independent grocery especially, they -- and so we've put -- we've spun up a team to go look at the POS workflows. And what we found was for convenience stores and grocery and bottle shops and liquor stores, there's actually a lot of overlap in the infrastructure we had, and it was really about customizing the POS workflows. And so this team is -- think of it like a horizon 3 new ventures team, a small team focused on that. And they've made -- I mean, look, you've got -- I think we shared 1,000 locations, but they made a tremendous progress. And part of the reason is, if you look at like the platform we have, we've got the core point of sale. That's where they've customized for retail. But things like payments, or scheduling or payroll or capital and vending, there's a lot of products in our platform that are very much horizontal at its core. And so they are looking at it's valuable to expand the attach and to expand the TAM. And so that's what's allowed us to get into this business. Of course, we've invested but not a significant investment because of all that overlap in the platform. And the team has been able to, as a result, focus on the things that matter to retailers, just like in restaurants, we started with this vertically deep approach. We're building capabilities, especially in the inventory side, where that's a big pain point we found, managing inventory really well and really effectively. And we've been able to build that in a way that if you could talk to some of the customers we have, they'll tell you that's been a huge improvement, the speed at which they can get inventory live and using ChatGPT and AI to manage just descriptions on those inventory images. That's been really powerful.
William Nance
analystYes. I mean I think the extensibility of the products was really -- was really a channel and when you announced that, that there wasn't that much that needs to be built out. What was the most kind of specialized build-out of that product?
Aman Narang
executiveInventory. Inventory in restaurants is very different than retail. And so building out the ability to search your catalogs to understand what the part levels are, the ability to move inventory across different departments and groups. There was a lot there, a lot of depth there. Even adding inventory, there was a lot there. Like one of the best things that we've done is built a mobile app, where you can scan a bar code, look at universal database, figure out what that item is, load it up and get it up very quickly. And then on the ordering side, too, there's differences like e-commerce experience and e-commerce stack a little different than restaurants. That's the other area because that's a big part of our value prop, just like in restaurants and retail is the fact that integrated e-commerce is just built in. And so that was also an area where I think the team has had to invest quite a bit.
Elena Gomez
executiveYes. I think there's, too, a lot of legacy in retail as well. So that presents an opportunity for us to bring our modern platform to this problem. Talk about the visit you made in London to the supermarket.
Aman Narang
executiveYes. We -- so back to spending time on the front lines and visiting customers, I was in Dublin in the U.K., what, about 2, 3 weeks back. And we spent some time meeting customers. And in London, we're meeting this group that had 5 locations. Thanks Elena, by the way. And one of them who walked in with the space called the Supermarket of Dreams, that's what it was called and they were on Toast. And I was like, wow, there's a retail location in London that's using Toast and the [ printing ] is multiple. And a lot of that pulled from -- even though we're not selling it explicitly there, it's coming from customers, seeing the values, right, where they see again having a single platform that can support all the different concepts and got really good signal, really good feedback on what they love about the platform.
William Nance
analystYes. It just seems like another example of kind of the intersection of both software and payments kind of coming together?
Aman Narang
executiveYes. Absolutely. I mean like a lot of that core workflow of taking an order, taking the payment whether it's in-store or online like those are -- really in so many brick-and-mortar businesses.
William Nance
analystAnd then pipeline, I think you had a pretty decent pipeline of 1,000 locations at the time of the Investor Day. Any color on how that has evolved over the last couple of months?
Aman Narang
executiveYes, really good -- continues to be really good progress. We are testing a few different sales models. So we've got a team that's dedicated to test selling retail. That's a small team. We've also got with our existing restaurant team and some markets we're testing, giving them some quota against retail to see what we learn in terms of achievement and win rates and conversion. And it's really informing our strategy going into next year in terms of how we think about the longer-term strategy for the retail go-to-market, both for new locations and for expansion. But really proud of the progress the team is making and the unit economics we're seeing in that business are tremendous.
William Nance
analystNow you mentioned the ARPU was higher those locations...
Aman Narang
executiveThat's right. It is. It is. I don't know sure about the explicit number, but it is really higher.
Elena Gomez
executiveIt is higher, it will settle when it comes through the tubes. We have early customers, but so far, pretty good. Sure.
William Nance
analystOkay. Another area where the company has been accelerating traction has been in international. I think at the Investor Day, you announced that you doubled the international locations in the company in the first 5 months of the year. So what is sort of the latest thinking around the trajectory of international and where you are in that investment cycle?
Aman Narang
executiveYes. We've -- international is a little bit further along in retail. We've been doing it a little bit longer. And seeing -- again, really good signal. In fact, one data point that's really material is if you look at the productivity of our reps in these international markets where we don't have as much of a brand as the U.S., it's better than what we had in the U.S. at that level of scale in terms of number of units. And so that's what -- that's one thing that gives us a lot of confidence in our ability. And this is -- we're testing into the right territory sizes such that we could scale up sales capacity over time. We also talked in the last earnings call about how we're expanding the products because if you can imagine right serving these different countries, there's some nuance in terms of the partners in terms of the capabilities across these modules. And so we added online ordering. We added kiosks. We added gift cards. And the early signal we've seen is that the attach rates are really strong. Again, those products are still maturing but that helps us with our unit economics and our payback period as we add more of the platform and our win rates. And so really good signal. We're going to continue to invest. And really, the core question as we go into next year is how do we think about resource allocation across our core business and where we see -- we continue to see lots of growth in these viral markets, our retail, our international, our enterprise and of course, our expansion opportunities while expanding margins.
William Nance
analystWhat about sales force? I mean the fact that the sales force productivity is higher. I mean the brand has a pass-forward I guess. But like what does that tell you about just the ability to scale and get the same sales force productivity gains that you have seen in your more mature markets in the U.S.?
Aman Narang
executiveIs the question about U.S. or international?
William Nance
analystWell, it's about, do you think you'll see the same productivity gains since we're starting at a higher point already?
Aman Narang
executiveYes. To be clear, just on that point, it's back in time versus where U.S. SMB was in 2014 to '15. So I think the main point there is the halo effect of the brand is really as it is and I think the maturity of our ability to sell probably is also real. I think there's no reason to believe -- I mean, in fact, if anything, if you look at the international markets, the density across these big Tier 1 cities, right? You look at like in London, Vancouver, Toronto and others, it is no different than what you see in the U.S. And so there's no reason to believe that we wouldn't see the same trajectory over time where density of customers drive the flywheel. I think at Investor Day in the U.S., we talked about Austin as an example, where 70% of the new expansion, new openings go to Toast, right, because of the social proof we built up. And over time, we expect a similar pattern to play out internationally as well. But give my [ vision ] time. It's still very early in terms of where we are internationally.
William Nance
analystYes. I guess on that note, the main focus is still in English-speaking countries, the kind of markets that you've already talked about. And I guess the expansion beyond that would be contingent on more success in those current markets?
Aman Narang
executiveYes, we're learning. And Elena, you can jump in here, too, but we're learning. I think -- if you look at Canada, for example, we're already in Canada. Quebec has needs for French. And so that's part of the strategy just to support Canada. And so that -- even in the U.S., actually, we don't talk enough about it. We've got lots of restaurants that use Toast where English in not a primary language. And so the ability to translate the product, the ability to support different languages, has been important for Toast for a long time. And so we're starting to build that out in Canada. And over time, that will play a part in terms of how we think about expansion beyond these core countries and the core English-speaking countries.
William Nance
analystMore on the financial side. On the capital front, you've added another partner this year to Toast Capital. It kind of tweaks the way that the economics show up in the P&L, but obviously just additive to the number of kind of arrows in the quiver. How are you thinking about sort of the trajectory of that product and the kind of flexibility that the new channel affords you?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes. No, Toast Capital has been a really positive program for our customers. And still, the demand continues to be really healthy. It's one of our highest NPS products, actually, and a lot of our customers come back for loans. So we have a few different loan sizes 90-day tenure of loans -- 90-day, 270-day, 360-day. So we have a program that meets the needs of the breadth of our customers. But so far, we've seen really healthy demand. And as we thought about this program over time, really, we understood we needed a dual funding source to meet the demand that we're going to have over time. And so what we always think about is managing risk-adjusted returns over time. And so this new program allows us to do that. It does have different P&L dynamics, but they're really positive and accretive to the P&L. So overall, yes, we can grow the program over time. What you'll see in the near term is that it's going to still continue to be measured and prudent. But you're right, it gives us more room, more capacity to grow the program, especially as demand continues.
William Nance
analystAnd is there any way to think about as you get more comfortable with sort of the risk parameters with the multiple channels, just how much more of this product can grow over time?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes. I think, look, I think so far, the demand has been healthy. There's really no reason -- and the default rates have been exactly what we've expected in the zone that we want. And the program, like I said, overall, really healthy. So I think this new program allows us to grow over time, but we're always going to be managing the risk and balancing that. And so I feel confident we can grow it over time. And actually, if the GM were here, he'd say, I have much more embedded finance I could think about for this cohort of customers. So there's just a long-term roadmap that they're thinking about. But for now, I think we're meeting the demand that we see.
Aman Narang
executiveThe only thing I'll add, Elena, is part of the growth just comes from locations, more locations to the platform, there's more access to the capital product. I think where we have to be -- as we add more products in terms of portfolio of products, obviously, that's where it's really important to learn and test to make sure you're managing risk in a really thoughtful way.
William Nance
analystMakes sense. On the profitability front, you've made significant strides this year towards your overall 40 targets. How are you tracking against the plans that you laid out? And then how are you weighing the balance between growth and profitability?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes, this is one of the things we talk about a lot. Look, we're managing the business to GAAP rule of 40, and that's a guiding principle that we've talked about a lot with our management team. And we see a path to that over the next 2 to 3 years on a GAAP basis and always balancing the growth. We have all these great opportunities we're talking about international and retail. We still have a ton of growth left in the core business that we're really excited about. And so it's really balancing both and the opportunity ahead and making sure we capitalize on this opportunity and continue to be in a leadership position. When you think about the growth equation, we've talked about 20% recurring gross profit, we think of that as a floor for the next few years, while at the same time driving 30% to 35% adjusted EBITDA margins. And so we have ambition over the long term to drive that adjusted EBITDA to 40%. That's over the long term. Really that is in our control in terms of the timing of the long term because we have such an opportunity here to go capture the market. But I think what you should hear from us is we're focused on growth, but we will always deliver margin back to the business, probably not at the same rate that you're seeing today because we have so much opportunity in international and retail and enterprise. That said, it's always part of our growth algorithm. Like as we grow, we're going to drive margin expansion and capital allocation is something we talk a lot about.
William Nance
analystYes. I guess, Aman, on this point, I mean, you've been with the company since the beginning. And I think Toast, like a lot of companies had to make this pivot towards grow at all costs during the pandemic towards trying to find that balance, and that's a cultural thing that you have to manage. So what has that been like? And how have you kind of been managing that internally?
Aman Narang
executiveI think the more you can share context with everybody helps because if you grew up in the world, where interest rates are low and capital is cheap and a lot of energy and growth that is naturally what's going to happen, not just at Toast but in tech in general. And so as you start to have conversations to say, we've got to be a lot more judicious about our capital allocation and we've got to focus on what's most important, those conversations need context because if you've seen something for many, many, many years, and suddenly you see something different, you're like, well, we've always grown headcount as we've grown revenue. And so what's the issue? And so having the conversation of like what how -- what might you deprioritize typical focus on some areas, this is a new muscle. I think what I've found is, Elena has been a great thought partner for me on this, it's just giving people that context, helping them understand how to think about those trade-offs is really important. And one thing I'd try to use and this is that like a customer posed is a rule of X that basically just says if you think about a company, you can think of growth and margins in the equation. And of course, longer term, growth is very, very important because the end outcomes for all sorts of reasons and growth are more valuable. But I think the margins is like, almost like blood pressure, it's like health of a business like a foundational thing that tells you, right, is the business fundamentally a good business. And so that's like the more education you can do on that with the broader team I think it's better.
Elena Gomez
executiveIt also starts with some principles at the outset when we plan at the beginning of the year. We sort of tell the team, here's the -- we talk a lot about what are the priorities? What do we want to go to. And then starting point is, well, what can we do with the investment we already have. And that wasn't the way it was before. It was always, we're going to do this, let's go add cost. And now it's to Aman's point, what can we do with what we have. And then after that, we say, okay, now after we've sort of made these trade-offs, then let's lean into investment in certain areas. And just that subtle change has really, I would say, changed the dynamic of how our leaders think in terms of growth.
William Nance
analystI guess one output of that strategy has been, you have scaled profitability quite a bit this past year. Margins of free cash flow have expanded meaningfully, generating very consistent profitability and bottom line results. How has that impacted your thoughts on capital allocation?
Elena Gomez
executiveYes. Look, we -- so something -- like I said, something we talk about a lot about our capital allocation. It hasn't really changed. At the highest level, we're trying to drive long-term shareholder value and do it in a very disciplined way, both driving for enduring growth and at the same time, driving operating leverage in the business. And you have to be really maniacal about how you do that and look at every dollar really at the end of the day. But the primary focus always will be our core business because we have just so much opportunity in that core business about 15% of market share. We believe we can continue to grow that. As that business is growing and its profitability, it's really -- basically enabling us to invest in these longer-term initiatives like international and retail and doing so at the total company level, while still driving margins. So it's a very balanced equation. And then, of course, opportunistically, the hurdle is high, but M&A is something that we look at, just like any management team as a matter of good hygiene. But we keep the hurdle on that really high because we have so much opportunity in our organic investment. And then of course, we've done some repurchases driving capital back to shareholders. We've done over $100 million this year. And so what you can see is we have the freedom as we're driving this growing profitability and cash flow to really be more focused on these longer-term bets, opportunistic if we need to, but really focus back on the core business and growing that. So really encouraged with where we are as a whole on the business. And hopefully, you hear that today.
Aman Narang
executiveYes. I think what team's done -- just to add to that, one thing Elena and the team has done a nice job of is just sharing with the leadership team even more deeper in the organization some of the characteristics of these different products and businesses that we have, so that there's context on newer businesses and their growth trajectory and their margins relative to the more mature businesses so you can start to break it all apart and look at it also internally.
William Nance
analystWell, we've covered a lot of ground today. Any final thoughts that you'd leave us with?
Elena Gomez
executiveI would say we're just excited. We're excited to continue to go execute. I think we're -- like I said, we're seeing this momentum in the business, which we love to see, which we'll continue to focus on execution. That's what it boils down to.
Aman Narang
executiveYes, excited about the growth potential of the business. I mean we're very focused as a team on -- in some sense is going back to our roots, making sure we as a team are focused on what's most important -- prioritizing what's most important, building a culture where leaders are getting closer to their work. All of us, 2 of us included, spend a lot of time diving deep, we see something that doesn't look right and just focus on inputs that are going to help us build a great long-term business.
William Nance
analystAwesome. Well, guys, we're about out of time. Thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate the conversation.
Aman Narang
executiveAll right. Thank you Will. Thank you, everybody.
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