Trimble Inc. (TRMB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you, everyone, for joining us in this session where we host Trimble. And more specifically, I'm really, really glad I can introduce you the team that comes mainly from the construction side of Trimble's business. More specifically, construction software sites. We have Chris Keating and Mark Sawyer who will take us -- or help us understand better that part of the business. Why that's important, obviously, is because of the fact that Buildings and Infrastructure are becoming the biggest part -- have become the biggest part of Trimble's business. And more specifically, software as well is now a majority of Trimble's business. So for any investors that obviously are following Trimble or doing work in Trimble, it's a must-have, must-understand area. So yes, I hope everyone finds the session, very informative. We also have Michael Leyba here who is heading the Investor Relations team at Trimble. So thank you.

Yes, thanks for having us.

Thank you. Awesome. So let me just start, and obviously, Mark, Chris, the way you want to approach it, please do jump in with any of the comments you have, or Michael, even yourself, if you feel. But one thing that I wanted to first touch on is just as part of introduction and thinking about how Trimble has evolved as a business in the past, specifically on the construction software side has been really trying to focus to acquire some of the best-of-breed technologies. And then more recently, the focus has been in connecting all those technologies together. When you think about the needs in the market that you guys have, and when you identify a need in the market, how do you decide whether you assess that, allocate R&D dollars versus doing a significant piece of M&A. What goes into those decisions? And what usually tips the balance, I guess.

Into our make versus buy decisions? Yes.

Yes.

Yes. I would say, first and foremost, it all comes back to strategy for us, and we're trying to we're trying to cover all the major aspects, anyway, of the construction -- the design and construction value chain, if you will. And I think a good example of that is the SketchUp acquisition, which Mark and I are close to on the phone. In other words, Trimble was trying to develop an AEC portfolio, and they had no A at the time in 2012, so the SketchUp acquisition was to fill that gap for architecture and conceptual modeling. So I would say it's still really about that. It's still about filling any gaps that we have to deliver upon our strategy. So one of the core outcomes we're trying to help achieve with the industry -- we're not the only ones, but a lot of us are trying to do this, but we're trying to get the industry to collaborate earlier and more often. So that's one of the missions we're on to try and transform the industry. So when we look at make-buy partner, it's usually centered around that. So our make-buy decisions are fundamentally grounded on strategy, supporting our mission. And then, of course, there's always an analysis of our core competencies. What are we are already capable of doing ourselves versus where we could use a little help. Additionally, and especially in this industry, if you have to consider the personas that are on the field side of it, the construction side of it, they might be more technology-resistant, technophobes in some cases. So there's no incumbent software there or high switching costs, and there could be a start-up or a new technology tomorrow that kind of just captures that whole space. So that's another lens that we have when we're looking into -- on the acquisition front, for example. And yes, you're asking about buying versus building or making versus buying, but there's a third vector I want to point out and that's licensing or partnering, and we've done a couple of those deals lately to help fill in our portfolio gaps in order to execute on our strategy. One that I can mention today is a partnership with [ GreyBear ] to kind of fill the 2D construction documentation gap that we had in our portfolio. But as you alluded to, Gal, I think we all know that Trimble has made a lot of acquisitions over the years, and we have plenty under the hood right now that we can just focus on more elegantly connecting as we go forward. I mean, we're always looking in the acquisition space, but I would say more of the focus has shifted just connecting what we already have these days.

That's very helpful.

I don't know Mark -- if Mike or Michael, if you have anything to add?

No, I'm good.

Yes. And we have one company we had earlier today, Nemetschek based in Europe. And I know you've had a partnership with them for a number of years now as well. So it's a good way to kind of highlight the fact that I guess it's very, very hard to go in everything we need and the kind of best-of-breed versus best-of-suite, a lot of times placed into that decision. And on that, yes. On that note, I know software businesses have been considered as best-of-breed in the past always. We talked about Tekla, we talked about SketchUp and the rest. But then at the same time, you also have market-leading precision equipment that helps on the construction side from a hardware perspective, right? When I talk to your customers, it usually comes up as a big competitive advantage. The fact that you can connect real-life field operations with -- and you said, sometimes, you have a lot of pushback of using technology in that side. But then there's a lot of value in shedding some of the light, that gray box that or sometimes black box that no one knows, which is construction process. And then feeding that back into the office, into the operations in order to make better decisions. Either around allocating some of their equipment or just being able to track the cost and the time and all that stuff, right? How important is that interaction from hardware to software for someone if you -- both of you kind of come from the software perspective. So my question is, how important do you see the hardware side as to the construction, specific in buildings and infrastructure segment [ lead ].

That's great. Well, so first of all, we think it's really important to have hardware and software working in harmony in this space. And it's one thing that makes Trimble unique in this space. I love how you asked the question. You're asking how the hardware makes the software better. It's much easier to answer that question the other way. So I think the obvious answer, and then I'll dig into some less intuitive, less obvious ones. But the obvious answer is when our field technology can report back to a model that everybody is collaborating on or the digital side of a digital twin, which we all -- I think we'll talk about a little bit later. But reporting back progress from the field back to that kind of collaboration software is one of the obvious answers. Super important or another way to put it is the as-built status as the project is happening in the field. Again, that's the obvious answer. But I would say design software, in general, even if it's a client application on a desktop, is always more valuable when you're working in the context of reality or what's really happening in the field, right? So that's another thing I would point out is how -- kind of how that Trimble hardware can support our software. And then yes. In terms of the process of designing or engineering with software, maybe this doesn't answer the software question exactly, but we can save time in the process of designer software, if you can do less there because a piece of hardware in the field or a fabrication machine in the shop is going to fill in the blanks for you, right? In other words, a good analogy is the design-build model, right? If you have a design-build firm and contract, the designers can do less because they're hitched up with the builders, so to speak, right? So they can take it to less of an nth level of detail, knowing that while they're building, they can just keep checking with the designers or engineers as they're going. So you save time in the design phase. And I think we could say that same thing with machine-readable output from design software that's either going to feed a machine in a fab shop or factory or a machine on a site in the field.

That's helpful. So basically, and I appreciate you highlighting the fact that it actually goes both ways. It doesn't just go one way, right?

Yes. It's really a full duplex story. And I can give lots of examples. Yes.

Yes, that makes sense. Listen, so if I zoom in a little bit more on the software side, specifically, and I say within the B&I, you've had some proper brands that have a lot of following in the area -- in the respective area, right? You mentioned SketchUp as part of the A of the AEC, so really conceptual design and even interior designers would use it. So it's a very, very, very popular product for anyone in the early stages of design. On the other side, almost I'd say, on the other end of the spectrum, we have something very specialized like Tekla, right, which is an absolute best-of-breed still design from [ vacation ], kind of a product that has been a leader for a number of years and continues to be so. Then more recently, we've got obviously a Vico plays into the 4G and 5G band space. You have the e-Builder from the owner-operator side and Viewpoint, which kind of brings it all together for the ERP solution for construction side, right? So if I look at a high level, well, it's a pretty complete portfolio. And it's a portfolio that has, like I said, some very much of a flagship product in there. If you had to kind of help us understand the importance of some of those products that I've just mentioned, and maybe I've missed some of those out of the list that I shouldn't have, what is making the difference today at Trimble? Maybe from a -- not just from a revenue contribution, but more from a penetration perspective or something that you're excited for the future when you look at the market the where it exists today and what it will be like in a couple of years or so.

Yes. Okay. So I'll cover four, 5 of our flagship products, talk about the personas they serve and what we see as the some potential for them. Does that sound okay?

That's on how it's fair.

You know us very well, Gal. I can tell.

Thank you.

Okay. Yes. So we'll start with SketchUp. And I quipped earlier that Mark Sawyer and I know SketchUp pretty well because Mark was the CEO of the SketchUp -- the start-up SketchUp business that -- when it was sold to Google and then I led the team from Google to Trimble in 2012. So SketchUp, the personas served there, probably obvious, but definitely architects, also urban planners, interior designers, landscape architects. And then, as you know, a huge long tail of usage after that. But those are probably the main personas. One potential for SketchUp for us that we're excited about these days -- it might be more almost pandemic-induced or shift -- industry shift-induced. But as there's more and more of a shift or dispersion from commercial construction to residential construction, SketchUp is a product that Trimble has in the portfolio that could take advantage of that shift to residential construction with architects and interior designers, for example, as primary personas. You mentioned Tekla. Yes, Tekla is primarily targeted at structural engineers and fabricators, and there's pretty significant opportunities for a product like -- a portfolio like that, not just with steel, but also with concrete. And then if you think about the complexity of buildings in the world, the classic Tekla project is a complicated geometry building like the Bird's Nest in Beijing or the new Museum of the Future in Dubai. But think of a future with Tekla, where it comes down to maybe prefabricated steel buildings and warehouses, which we all know like the likes of Amazon can't seem to be building not enough of these days. Curtain walls, things like that. One kind of deep thought for you and for everybody is kind of imagine an opportunity that we might have if SketchUp became more constructible and Tekla became more conceptual, right? I'll just leave that one there for a while. e-Builder is primarily focused on serial capital project builders or owners. That's probably their primary -- that is their primary persona. Their opportunities exist in expanding in vertical markets outside the 4 or 5 that they're focused on now, I would say. The Viewpoint business and acquisition, which is just in the last couple of years, that's ERP and some project management tools that are focused on general contractors, specialty contractors, estimators and project managers. And I think their future is probably in a -- their potential is probably going to shift from classic accounting and cost management more into asset and project management from there. And then did you mention Vico? Or...

I did. I did.

So I'll turn Vico over to Mark because he was the Vico acquisition.

Yes. Vico was what I did after SketchUp.

Yes, we can't make this stuff up.

You can't. You can't make that up. Actually, so if you want -- Vico was acquired in 2012. I came with that acquisition as the CEO of Vico and then stayed. And the -- Vico is a slightly different twist. Actually, as we talked about one ingredient of this, last year, we shipped some product associated with Trimble Connect. That was a direct result of kind of re-envisioning what should be done with some of the Vico expertise. So at -- the secret sauce underneath Vico Office, the flagship product there, was really a 5D data model that associated quantities and cost and task duration, A.K.A. schedule, with a building element or an infrastructure element. So think of a concrete slab. There was -- if that concrete slab is pictured in a model, there's a way to associate it with the quantity of concrete, rebar, formwork, material labor, et cetera, with the cost of each one of those and with the task of doing those. How long is it going to take to put down -- to pour the slab? How long is it going to take to strip formwork and go do the next one? And so you could, by changing the geometry now, you could automatically update cost and schedule. Show me what our project is going to look like on May 17, 2021, and show me what is the cost of work put in place on that date. That's revolutionary in terms of change management and being able to contemplate designs and the impact of changes. And it's no longer a 3-week exercise to work up a new estimate and a new schedule. So we still have an opportunity to take that data -- or that service and plug it into Trimble Connect and make it available for non-Vico users as well to be able to submit a model and get that data out to then link to their other systems in the company, whether that's procurement how many tons of rebar should I buy for these 2 projects?

And when, probably because you don't want to end up [indiscernible]

And exactly when. How do I stage it the logistics requirements, right? And so the technology, that secret sauce data model underlying Vico is now -- still in Vico Office, but it also opened up to a wider audience of all connect users being able to access those services. And that's the future penetration opportunity there, taking it to the cloud.

Absolutely, I agree. And I think we've talked about the fourth and fifth dimension of BIM for a while. Even though I would say that when we look at the market today, we're still talking about low penetration of 3D BIM, which is kind of design BIM, right? Is it a little bit -- I mean Vico definitely was before its time.

It was, yes.

[ In the end you have it ] it's still not very penetrated, right? So when I think about the biggest enabler of that 5G technology in whatever form is, if it's a Vico, through Trimble Connect, it comes through. It probably prerequires adoption of metadata for 3D BIM and being able to utilize that technology -- well, that piece of data to make it an actionable piece of insight.

Yes. And what you learned, Gal, is on a lot of these, and Vico is one example is -- those customers were large general contractors, by and large. And when they adopt a new technology, it's equivalent to you and I changing the tires while the car is rolling, right? They really they don't want to change process so much that they can't get back to the former baseline in case you didn't work out for them. So they have to be able to get back to the baseline. They want to be able to kind of control the pace at which they change process. And by taking -- in this example, taking the data model of Vico and exposing that via Connect, they can do it in any bite-sized chunk they want, right? They can do one little bit with that and stop, right, and test it out. And that's a lot easier than -- that's changing 1 tire, not all 4, right? So...

Yes, I like how you pointed out, the Vico might be bid before its time, but we're happy to have that knowledge and that team within Trimble because we're plowing that knowledge forward into products like Trimble Connect and Quadri.

And also, is there looking about your -- not anymore new strategy, which is connect and scale, obviously, and connecting the dots together. A lot of these offerings have some sort of a play. I'd like to give you opportunity to give me an example where some of your software technologies interact or might interact in the future as well. I think that will be a very interesting perspective. But I'm just thinking to start with the discussion, just thinking a little bit about potentially connecting Vico with something like e-Builder because I would imagine e-Builder, as an owner-operator, would be very much interested in progression as how the construction process is going through throughout that process, right? And having the up-to-date as designed versus as planned or as costed -- as realized cost, especially if they're not on fixed-price contract or something like that, if they're on a contract that is more based like on a time and material basis, that would be their risk, right?

Yes. Just to finish that thought. By putting it in the cloud the way we've kind of disassembled it and put it in the cloud as a collection of the web services. And that means internal use as well as external use. So if there's an element of that, that Viewpoint wants to extract for procurement or an element of that, that e-builder enterprise wants to extract for an owner's benefit of more scientific capital planning, material requirements, labor requirements, et cetera. They'll do -- we will do that internally from Connect, from Trimble Connect. So it plays both internally and externally.

Yes. So to my second part of the question, can you give us some more examples of where connecting the dots make sense, especially in the software itself? We kind of touched on software to hardware integration as well. But...

Yes. Let me start like generally, and then you can zoom me into more specifics that this doesn't answer your question. But again, there's -- what I see are 2 major plights in the industry right now. One of them is if you think of an effort curve or the MacLeamy Curve, as it's otherwise known as. And I think I've seen this in one of your reports, but the effort and collaboration, if you think about the continuing from architects to engineers, to contractors, owners, the effort and collaboration happens way too late in general in the process. So our mission, along with others, is to shift that curve to the left, your right, my left, and encourage people to collaborate earlier and more often. When it's easier to make changes, right, and possible to make changes and cheaper to make changes. I think you get that concept really well, actually. And then another one is the handover process. When we go, that same continuing view from architects to engineers, engineers to contractors. It's not always that serial, but those discrete handovers often cause a lot of rework, right? And that's another mission that we're on to try and kind of eliminate handovers -- or sorry, handoffs and eliminate all that rework at each step of the way there. So for those reasons, we want to connect our broad portfolio so that people will collaborate using whatever tools they use earlier, more often. And then maybe we can envision a world where everything is built virtually and then just carried forward. Now we get into the digital twin story again, I know. But maybe handovers disappear completely and it's just 1 continuous operation and then the whole team is involved from the beginning to the end, so to speak. Does that make sense from a -- the connect part of our connect and scale strategy that you mentioned?

Yes. Yes. And to your point, if you're trying to make a digital twin, you can't require people to input manually the data 5 times from 5 different angles at the same time, I [indiscernible]

Yes, definitely. And it's even worse than that in some cases, there's -- they completely rip up the previous work and start over in certain instances. Yes.

Yes. Would you ever consider -- so brands are still fairly distinct in their go-to-market efforts, and some of them are in a different business model as well. How do you assess to go to market, especially, is there an opportunity to ever go subsequently to -- or recreate the go-to-market effort to join some of those together and maybe create more of an end-to-end solution that makes sense and attack? Or maybe even from a cross-sell perspective, introduce one set of offering within the e-Builder, let's say, let's go Vico into e-Builder community or something like that. Have you tried that? Have you played around with that? Or is there a lot of that happening already today?

Absolutely, there's opportunity there in the past and in the future. So we're already doing that with staffed, account-based management or account-based sales and marketing teams who are going after the top of the customer pyramid. I'm not sure if you or anyone else listening knows what I mean when I say customer pyramid. But think of sole proprietors and individuals at the bottom of it: small, medium businesses. And then the largest of the largest at the top. And there's definitely opportunity for us to connect our portfolio even while we're working on connecting our portfolio more elegantly on the product development side, we have that same opportunity, which is happening now on the go-to-market side. So we are bundling a wider swath of the Trimble portfolio, the Trimble construction software portfolio for, let's say, enterprises, who have those personas in their firms, right? In kind of elegant ways. So yes, we've already had quite a bit of success there as of late. And then we're also paying attention to the changing nature of firms and the changing nature of contracts, firms going from design and build firms to design-build firms, for example, or some firms are AEC and [ OE ] firms in the case of like AECOM. But also the way we're also going from design [ net ] build to design-build contracts to integrated project delivery contracts. So everything is kind of morphing around on us, which we're paying attention to. And that informs us that informs our bundles, too, when we think about going to market. The other thing I'll point out is we're -- like everyone else, we're in the middle of our own digital transformation. So as a company, but definitely as construction, but even as a company, we're all rallying around certain core services like identity and entitlement. That is really the table stakes are everything we need to support, cross sell, upsell, retention and expansion, like you mentioned. So that will fuel that type of -- that trend as well.

That's helpful. And it does make a lot of sense. I think step-by-step of those connecting the dots. And then again, you're rolling out the [ tray ] to go-to-market as well is important. And on the way you procure, e-Builder has always been a kind of SaaS cloud-native subscription model. So less heavy weightlifting there. Viewpoint, you bought Viewpoint when it was, correct me if I'm wrong, but about halfway done through the business model transition issues.

Yes.

And that probably is pretty much done by now, I don't know. And then you have SketchUp, which you've started a couple of years ago, I think, introducing the subscriptions on to. Tekla is a little bit more traditional in terms of procurement as the way I understand it. If we focus on those, which ones -- did I get it right? And what is the time line of when do you think the business models will converge? And do they all converge towards subscription offerings? Or does it make sense to lift some off because of the fact that you're not going to force customers to move if they don't want to?

No, they're all going to converge around that subscription model. There's a couple of things I'd point out there. It's the subscription business model that we're talking about, which is a great business model. I totally agree as a business leader. It yields ARR and all those great things. The stack-up for our decision-making, though, preceding the business model was we're betting on cloud over client software products over time. Once you make that bet, the only business model that supports cloud products going forward and SaaS delivery models is the subscription business model. And then once you're a subscription business model-based business. You're almost more -- you're more of a service business than a product business, for instance. And I know you get all that. And I think you had it right. Let me just recap, but yes, e-Builder when we acquired that -- they've been subscription since the beginning of -- not just since we acquired them, but since they started the company. In fact, we like to joke with the e-Builder gang that they've been doing subscriptions since 1995, right around the advent of the Internet. And then Vico, yes, Vico was well on their way in their private equity day. So we acquired them from, and they continue on that transition.

Viewpoint, Chris.

Sorry, Viewpoint. Did I say Vico?

Yes.

Yes.

Viewpoint.

The other V.

SketchUp, yes, over the last SketchUp was kicked off a couple of years ago and are largely through the subscription flip. So in fact, they just pulled selling the old perpetual way, at least from public visibility, I think you can still buy it that way. But primarily delivering bundled subscription offerings and a good, better, best way just within that portfolio. And now they're focused on customer success and retention in that whole part of the subscription transition. And then you'll be happy to hear that Tekla is coming along, too, in the very near future. I don't want to quote an exact date because you know how software development goes. But very, very soon, the Tekla team are going to flip. They're going to take a broader portfolio of between 50 and 100 SKUs down to 3 or 4 more elegantly bundled subscription offerings [ per year ]

One thing that has kind of consistently come back when I talk to your customers, especially in the construction is the opportunity that you've had with the brands like Prolog in the past and how dominant the asset kind of has been. And potential opportunity to kind of re-platform that offering for the -- and we've seen a lot of investment in that space. Obviously, with Autodesk focusing kind of with the BIM 360 a little bit. You have Procore as well, potentially coming public soon. What is your play in that kind of project management field, the actual execution, let's call it, construction execution. Is that the market you're still interested in? And what's your just general strategy on that side?

Mark, do you want to take that one?

You're no mute. That's my favorite statement of 2020, 2021. [indiscernible]

[indiscernible] [ We should all do research on how to unmute ]

Sorry. e-Builder's direct readout on our strategy there, right? I mean that was about -- it was about access to a very important segment of users in the owner category. It was about, I think, a pretty good technology play in the development team we acquired there, but it was also very much about -- project management had gone to the cloud and we basically needed to use our balance sheet to compete with the level of investment that other balance sheets were deploying in that space. And e-Builder was a great win for us because we got that kind of user expansion into an owner representation and we call that program management, slightly different, multiple projects at the same time. And also a great team in terms of executing on the project management side. So there's also the synergy of -- when you look at key stakeholders in that project management continuum, of course, it's there to help facilitate coordination between the contractors and their engineering and design teams. But the prime beneficiary of that work is some readout, report back, A.K.A. transparency and whatever form or lack of opacity with the owner. And so we saw an opportunity to not only put our next-generation of project management for contractors into the e-Builder management team, which was under development. And when we acquired them, we moved that development to them. That's a product now called ProjectSight. But to also have that be intimately integrated, if the team so chooses between the owner and the general contractor, with e-Builder enterprise at the owner. And I -- look, if you're a large DOT or a state government running an education system. So any serial capital project owner, it's -- it rings very true to have a real robust connection with the contractors you're putting work out to. So that you can see work reported back your way and with no loss of fidelity in the process. So that's been a key play for us. I don't know if Rob and David have talked to individual statistics like most. We don't report brand-by-brand in terms of the growth, but it's performing very well. And there's a lot of penetration for us, a lot of opportunity for us, both with the Prolog installed base and abroad. And so that's -- I think that's true and will play out there, the direct result of -- that was the e-Builder acquisition.

Yes. And that's, I think, what's kind of been maybe slightly missed by -- especially the investor community because we don't understand it as well, is just the understanding that e-Builder, it is primarily used for the owner-operator, but it can be obviously collaborated with the general contractor, and that connection is very much relevant.

It's very relevant. That's why that management team owns both of those product lines.

Okay. That's very helpful. So yes. I just want to go back for a second on the go-to-market strategy. And when you think about what makes Trimble unique in hardware and loads of pretty much every area of hardware. One of the unique value propositions always is your rich ecosystem that's usually built around distributors and people that effectively not just sell hardware, were upgraded but also trained around it. Is there ever an opportunity to look at that hardware ecosystem and say -- because when -- I had a few discussions that basically said, but we're trying to become more services-oriented and not just hardware services oriented. I've had the same story in agriculture. Is construction at the same area when you could take your reseller or a distributor of a hardware equipment that would be interested in introducing some field software and potentially providing that services as well. Could that be an avenue of your go-to-market in that?

Yes. Chris, can I -- I'll comment on that one, too?

Yes.

The -- so our -- let's take the civil and infrastructure example where we have a branded channel called the SITECH channel. Constituted, in large part, not exclusively, but in very large part by resellers who have another main business, which is selling heavy equipment in their region, selling and servicing heavy equipment in a region. So the software that goes on-machine or the software that goes on-instrument for us is a given that those guys are going to take on that software, learn it, sell it and support it. That may be the software module on a total station that's talking back to Trimble Connect to get a drawing in the field, and that may be the software that sits between this engineering design firm and the bulldozer doing a final grade and takes the data and preps it to put it on the machine, right? So they sell that software as a given. So that's a software expansion opportunity for them, and it's a great delivery mechanism for us owing to their expertise, number one. And don't forget, their location. These guys are used to going out to where construction happens. They're not sitting in the office with 1-800 I have a question. They're out where construction is happening, right? And then like in Chris' business, we have a very vibrant, what you would classically think of as a software channel. They don't sell hardware, they sell our software. And we've got something in the ballpark of probably 40 global distributors there and hundreds of resellers underneath them. So you do manage both because that -- our partners' business model is a little bit different in those both and we have to tune ourselves up for them and stay focused on how they deliver. But at the end of the day, both of them wind up in a software business. It may not be that, that SITECH is selling Tekla. In some cases, it actually does happen that way. It's rare. Mostly, it's the software that naturally goes with field systems or Trimble Connect that naturally connects to those field systems. And let's call it, office software, right? So we're kind of exploiting both already and there's great synergy there. You wind up with very well capitalized resellers as a result, right? And I think we cite a lot of examples in software industries where their channel, they just wish their channel was better capitalized. Ours is in spades, so it works out quite well.

Awesome.

Yes. The only thing I'll add is -- yes, Mark is right, dozens of -- on the software side, dozens of master distributors and hundreds of resellers under them. The reason for those numbers is to cover the globe with something like SketchUp and SketchUp's price points, for example. And they definitely have a role to play even in the new subscription business model around customer success, and they have played roles in training and service and even being part of our third-party developer community.

Got you. We've got a few questions from the audience as well, which obviously has been very excited hearing this story. And I think one that I definitely want to make sure we touch on this. Interestingly, you both joined for a similar part you joined for acquisitions of the businesses. And what we see in software often, more often than not is that people tend to join but then kind of churn away from, as subsequently as they get acquired by some of those businesses. You both have stayed and are very much involved in the leadership of arguably the most important segment for Trimble. What made you stay? And if I may -- and that the -- I think the question is definitely relevant. And maybe you can provide your own personal experience, is it a good personal fit or relationship? What is it?

Yes. I'll start with that one. The easy answer for me is the people. I mean, Trimble is filled with really intelligent, really reasonable people without a whole lot of politics or BS or anything like that, right? So it's easy to come to work every day in that kind of environment. From a business standpoint, you have to picture -- and again, Mark didn't go to Google after selling the SketchUp team to Google, but I was there pretty much the whole 6 years or whatever is. They hired me a few months after Google acquired SketchUp. The mission at Google was around user growth than it was -- it wasn't around a P&L or growing a business or anything like that. And in fact, we got -- I don't know who's listening. I hope I don't get in trouble for saying some of this stuff. When in fact, we got sidetracked off the main mission. It was purposely built for the architecture community when it was a start-up. And then at Google, we kind of went away of geo modeling for Google Earth to turn Google Earth into a 3D browser and kind of got away from the core customer that it was designed for. So for me, coming to Trimble, I just -- or we just -- it was me and 32 others, 33 of us came and it was a really small business at the time and probably barely breakeven. But we just leveraged everything Trimble had. I think we leveraged the channel. We leveraged all kinds of go-to-market expertise, direct sales folks, offices around the world to land support people, marketing people, localization people, those types of things. So the word leverage pops out because I leveraged everything I possibly could in my new company, new parent company, and we've seen tremendous, like business growth in our, I guess, 9 -- 8, 9 years now at Trimble, with just that business alone. So that was fun for me as a business leader with an MBA that might have been not used all that much. And the Google days are awesome and necessary, and you can't even write this story, right? You build a huge user base and then you go turn it into -- each business. But that was the fun transition for me.

I can answer very briefly. It is the degree with which business leaders have autonomy to go do the right thing.

Yes, that's true, too. Yes.

So that's -- I did not anticipate staying, Gal. But the autonomy meant I could stay. I had autonomy, and I could stay on mission. And so plus then you throw in the people and the leverage Chris just talked about. So...

Yes. Yes. We just felt very, very well supported like speaking in the SketchUp terms, yes. And everybody's the shiny new objects. When you first get there, I feel like we're still that, 9 years later.

Well, with that, that's a great end to our chat because we are out of time. And again, I would like to thank you for your time. I'm sure we've had quite a bit of interest. And yes, thank you for attending our conference. And we look forward to welcoming you again sometime in the future.

Thanks.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.