Veeva Systems Inc. (VEEV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right, everyone. We're going to get started. My name is Brian Peterson. I'm the application software analyst here at Raymond James. Very happy to have Veeva back at the conferences here, Paul Shawah, EVP of Commercial Strategy, is with us today. We can make this interactive. If you guys have questions, raise your hand. Happy to hop in.

But Paul, maybe to kick things off, just -- you had an Analyst Day a couple of months ago, just had your fiscal third quarter. Anything you highlight in terms of kind of near-term developments that you think are important for investors?

Yes. Sure. First, good to be back. Good to have another conversation with you, Brian. So yes, we just had our third quarter results. We had really strong results in the quarter. We exceeded all of our guidance numbers. So we did well and I guess some of the highlights were we talked about broad, really strong execution across all parts of our business. We gave some very specific highlights, some I'll call out in particular. Clinical, we continue to do well and perform well in the clinical space. More broadly, we have more than 10 applications in clinical. We're making progress in each of these areas. We called out a couple of top 20 wins in places like study start-up and in training, which I think are just indicators of the fact that it's a very broad portfolio of applications, and we're performing well across all those areas. We called out safety is another place where we're just kind of ramping up in that part of the market. We had another top 20 win. We had another top 20 go live in that space. So clinical safety in the commercial side, CRM is going well. We talked about how that market is stabilizing out, at least in the top 20 side where we'll end up with roughly 14 of top 20. So really good execution there. We have 115 customers live in that market, and we're innovating. And then I would say the last kind of highlight I'll call out is Veeva AI. So we just announced the availability of Veeva AI in our commercial products, so commercial content and in CRM and early customers. We had our first early customer live on the commercial content side. That part of the business is going well. So I'm excited about the innovation that we're delivering. We've promised it. We're now delivering on it. We're getting customers live. So there's a lot to be -- we celebrate a lot of the focus on product excellence and innovation, and we're just executing really well across all the different parts of the business.

So I'm going to double-click on a lot of those, but maybe higher level too out of the Analyst Day, you guys gave a 2030 target or I guess you gave it the year before, but maybe as you think about that growth opportunity, what are some of the key markets and areas where you really think that you can go get more revenue?

Yes, that's right. And I'll point back to clinical. So clinical is an area that we're super excited about. It's obviously the lifeblood of the life sciences company. It's where they make significant investments, is where their future comes from is the drug development and launches of new products. So it's critical to the industry, but it's also traditionally highly inefficient. There's a lot of opportunity to create productivity gains in the clinical space. As I mentioned, we have 10 applications. And our unique value proposition is all of these applications are built on the core -- on the Vault Platform. So natively, they're connected to each other. So multiple connected products across clinical operations, clinical data management, which means we can help the sponsors, the pharma companies, operate more efficiently, but we also help connect them to the clinical research sites and to the patients. And that will drive -- the whole clinical segment will drive an outsized portion of our growth as we look to 2030, not the only growth driver. We'll have growth drivers in quality, regulatory, safety. And then, of course, commercial will continue to be a growth driver for the company. But -- so there's a lot of different areas, a lot of moving pieces.

All right. So we'll focus on commercial. Just on the kind of the CRM market share dynamics, like as you kind of zoom out, you think about some of the top 20s that you're retaining versus the top 20s maybe that didn't stay with you to the Vault transition. Any commonalities in terms of those that did and those that didn't, love to unpack that a bit.

Yes. The ones that have -- and we said roughly -- we think it will be roughly 14 of top 20. Remember, just kind of maybe set the expectation. We had 18 of top 20 globally. We had 2 additional ones in very specific regions. So roughly 18 to roughly 14 is where we think it will end up. Those decisions are not all final at this point. Why are companies choosing to do something different? I think, one, there is a segment that wants to do some custom building and that's essentially what they get with Salesforce is kind of an immature product and a custom project that they can run on top of that. That's not everybody. There's also other companies that are -- they are just -- there's a lot of overselling and there's a lot of hype out there and shifting through that and -- some of these decisions are made by just individuals, and they can go either way. So that's on that side. On the Veeva side, what we generally see is companies want to -- they want to innovate fast. We talked about as being the fastest path to AI. So with Vault CRM, we're going to -- we're making that move to Vault CRM very easy. We now have 2 top 20s live in really in all regions, Japan, Europe, U.S. Now why do I say that? Because it's actually they're like different CRM systems, it's actually a very hard thing to do to get them live in all those regions. So we're executing well on the basics, but now we're also -- they have AI available. And I expect some of those companies will be starting to turn on AI in 2026. That will be years ahead of when you can do that any other way in the core CRM system. So they want stability, they want innovation. They want AI, and that's what they're going to get with Veeva.

And maybe just kind of looking at kind of outside of that top 20 lens. I know there's some customization aspects. But what are you seeing in terms of like the longer tail of customers in terms of Vault CRM?

Yes. So we talked about top 20, and you can kind of do the math on what that win rate is. And outside of top 20, I expect that win rate to be even higher. For kind of the opposite of what we just talked about, right? So those companies, they don't want custom projects. They don't want speculation. What they do want is something that they can rely on and trust. They can't afford for something to fail or to take some big gamble, they want something that's proven and a trusted partner, and they also want AI. And the promise of what we're making around AI is that it's going to be real. It's going to solve really very specific problems and that's what we're doing is we're building AI fundamentally into the platform and then into the applications that they're using, and they want to be able to get that soon, not over.

We talk about AI as a differentiator. Maybe some of the early use cases that you're talking about in commercial, you're clearly excited about that. So like maybe expand on where you see that value proposition for customers.

Yes. So in commercial, so I'll talk through kind of what are the -- what does a field rep do, right? They can use AI across their entire workflow. So for example, talking to the CRM, just using natural language to talk to the CRM and asking it questions or getting it to help you prepare for the conversation you're about to have with the customer. So talking to the system, creating a very specific call plan for that customer, all of the context of what's happening with that customer in their patient population and their prescribing history and making very specific suggestions about what they should be talking about with them. What are some things that -- some messaging that they may want to share based upon all that context and some very specific actions. And then recording the result of that, listening to you as you talk about what actually happened during that conversation and recording that in the system and doing it in a compliant way. So everything I just talked about can be enabled by agents, a voice agent that can translate your voice and power the system, a precall agent, which will provide that summary in that context in very specific actions, a compliance agent, which looks at everything that you've recorded and make sure that it's compliant with what the pharma industry needs. So there's a lot to unpack inside of that. Those agents are just natively part of the workflow. They're just going to work, the rep is going to do their job in a very different way, but much more efficiently.

So how do you think about kind of that balance of value versus monetization? Like clearly, they're going to be able to drive much more efficiencies, but as you think about the evolution of AI pricing on top of what's historically been like a seat-based model, how does that evolve?

Yes. So we're thinking about it as usage-based and what that will allow customers to do, 1 is to get started in a very easy way. They'll just be able to turn on the agents and basically match the cost with the value that they create and that's the power -- the industry is accustomed to being able to license technology, server-based technology, in particular, on a usage basis. So they know that model. They understand that model and -- and the -- we're doing it in a way where, hopefully, they can create an outsized value with a predictable and a cost that they can justify.

And do you like -- I think you talked to a ton of customers, like there's been some debate longer term about the size of rep headcounts and how they're thinking about that versus the opportunity to automate. Like how are customers thinking about their size of their sales force in an agentic AI era?

Yes. So that's an interesting one. We know over the past handful of years, we've seen the industry kind of adjust -- roughly a 10% reduction in the overall number of reps that's happened, a little bit less than that. We've talked about that. We predicted it. We were part of driving that move as we made the industry more digital. So that reset has happened once already. You fundamentally need a core number of field people talking to -- if the number of HCPs hasn't changed in the U.S. market which -- or even globally, which it really fundamentally hasn't, you still need human beings to build those relationships and manage those relationships. So yes, I think there's an opportunity to make them more productive, but I think they're also going to be very thoughtful as to do we go through another reset of the market. I don't think there will be a significant reduction or change over the next couple of years. I think it's going to be relatively stable over the next handful of years. And then I think we'll just see how -- I think there's a lot to be learned what the potential is for AI, but I think it will be stable for some period.

I am going to have more AI questions on the R&D side of things. But as we're thinking about Vault CRM, I think 1 of the things that investors have debated is like the cost to implement that versus some potentially competitive solutions. How do you think about that in terms of like maybe a top 20 or maybe some of the smaller customers? Maybe help us understand that dynamic a little bit.

Yes. So what we have done, what we've promised the industry is we're going to make the migration to Vault CRM as easy as possible. it's not -- it's never 0 cost. For a small -- a very small customer, it gets close to that. It approaches that. But it's never 0. It's always a project. We built tooling to be able to migrate a customer. So fundamentally, what they're doing is they're taking everything they've done in Veeva CRM, and they're moving it over to -- we are moving it over to Vault CRM for them with some migration tooling. And then there's some work to do around that. Integrations that have to happen, for example, customizations that have to happen as an example. So those things we don't actually move. They need to be redone. So for a Veeva customer, the vast majority moves and then there's some work to do around it. And for some top 20 customers, we've made some select services investments there because they have a lot of customizations, most companies that are small or midsize, they don't need that because they haven't done a whole lot of those customizations. Contrast that to what you may have to do with an alternative, let's say, with Salesforce, for example, you're basically starting more closely to a platform. It's like a -- you start with a platform with an immature product and what you have to do is build everything out and that's why a lot of the systems integrators are excited about the Salesforce model is because they start with something very basic, and they get to build these custom CRM systems for Japan and for Europe and for the U.S. market, which ends up being very, very expensive. So we think it's going to be an order of magnitude difference in terms of risk but also in terms of costs. We think we'll be highly, much more efficient. And actually, ours is now well established and well-known because we've done it multiple times. We know exactly that path to get there. We're getting even more efficient at it. And I think with others, it's just -- it will be a whole lot riskier.

So I remember asking you a couple of years ago when the Vault CRM process started that the opportunity to unlock innovation in other commercial areas outside of that. So maybe update us on how that's gone and as you're thinking about marketing and some other areas, like what's the opportunity to expand that relationship with customers?

Yes. And that's playing out already. And when we announced Vault CRM, that was the promise. We can -- we have -- we control our destiny, we can build and innovate in new areas that we weren't able to before. Marketing, call center, patient and I would even include AI, Veeva AI in that category. So really 4 big areas that didn't previously exist that now we can help our customers innovate in and those areas are really just getting started and they're some of our early products and we have some early adopters in each of those areas. And as customers move to Vault CRM, that's really when they can start to take advantage of them. So a lot of excitement, a lot of potential, but still early days there.

My last commercial question, I promise. But I have to hit on Crossix, has been really strong this year. Can you talk about what's driven that? And what's the right way to think about the growth rate for that business?

Yes. Crossix has been a great growth driver for Veeva and will continue to be over the next several years. So Crossix is 2 businesses. It's the measurement and optimization, which is the larger part of the business. And we continue to gain share there. So what has happened over the past couple of years is we've clearly established ourselves as the market leader and the very best product in the M&O side, and then there's the audience side of the business, which is the smaller part of the business, but the faster-growing part. And we've invested a lot over the last handful of years. It feels like it's sudden to you that, like, hey, this Crossix thing is actually really a contributor. To us, we've been investing in that audience's side. And those investments are paying off in terms of market share gains, in terms of new product opportunities, we're expanding the size of that pie, and we're gaining a greater share of it. So that I expect will continue to be an exciting growth driver.

That's great. So maybe just pivoting to the R&D side, but AI and clinical, you mentioned some opportunities for efficiencies going forward. Like what do you see as maybe the low-hanging fruit and how will customers invest in Veeva to kind of drive those efficiencies?

Yes. So a lot of potential on the clinical side. When I think about kind of 2 big things that we can help you and really across the operational side and the data management side. But I would kind of put it into 2 big categories. One is automation. So there's a lot of manual labor that needs to happen in the clinical trials process. So in taking documents, classifying what a document looks like, verifying that the accuracy of a document is what it should be. Getting information from the source of a patient in a clinical trial that needs to be entered into a system and validating that it's -- is the blood pressure range, is it an accurate range that or is it something that's not even humanly possible, right? So that is done today by humans. And it's very manual, and there's a possibility to dramatically improve the productivity there, 10%, 20%, 30% on the automation side. And then I think there's a generation side, which is what AI is natively good at is generating test data, generating protocols, as an example, helping to do that process much more efficiently. So I think there are many ways to really across the whole clinical life cycle from how you run and operate trials to how you automate some of the core capabilities to make it much more efficient. We're just at the beginning part of that. It's 1 of the exciting areas we'll have AI in clinical, starting in '26.

And how do you think about the AI evolution because it's not just in clinical for you on the R&D side, there's quality, there's regulatory, there's a lot of different areas. So is it starting in clinical and broadening or -- and I guess I'd love to understand, too, maybe as these customers kind of lean into AI, like where are they focused first? Is it clinical because there's a lot of opportunity for efficiency. So how does that all evolve?

Yes. And there -- I would think of them as all separate business areas, so we start -- Veeva started in commercial, and now it's generally available today in our commercial applications. As we go through next year, it will be available -- AI will be available on all of our applications across all the areas that you mentioned, clinical, quality, regulatory, safety. That's all coming in 2026. Now the way our customers will think about it is they won't necessarily make a trade-off of 1 area versus another because they're run by different people, so they may do AI and safety at the same time that they may do -- start AI and clinical as an example, or in commercial. So there's less of a single threaded here and a lot of it depends on the individual company, their priorities and the business units. So I think there's a lot of potential there for them to get started across many areas. Of course, we're getting started in 2026 in all of those areas, and we'll kind of see how that plays out. I think it will be a big year for kind of learning and establishing the value.

And I think AI or not, the quality and safety have been 2 pretty strong areas for you guys. So maybe talk about what's driven the strength there over the last few quarters, anything that you would call out?

Yes. Quality and safety, really strong areas for us. Quality is a really significant market for us. We've innovated by building many, many application areas all on the same Vault Platform that's unique. Nobody else is doing that. So quality documentation, quality management, so CAPAs and change controls and then a portfolio of other applications, laboratory information management, LIMS, and validation management and batch release and training, all on a common platform, all natively integrated. So what that replaces are lots of different fragmented players, lots of different vendors that they were stuck stitching together. So that's a very strong value proposition for quality, and it's driving -- we have a starting point with many, many customers established market and quality documentation, quality management, and now we're expanding that. And then in safety, similar story, but I would say in safety, a very conservative market that's resistant to change. You kind of get the safety system working and you don't touch it. But now we're -- we have emerged as now with 5 top 20, and we have 3 top 20s live, we're -- we've emerged as the modern alternative there that can keep them current, but also connect a lot of these pieces just like we're doing in quality and clinical.

And maybe just on EDC a little bit, I know we're pivoting back to clinical here, but like can you talk about your share gains there, how that's continued to build and the value proposition versus some of the incumbents in those markets?

EDC is an exciting space for us. One, it's a really large market. It's a market that we continue to gain share in. We have 9 of top 20 in EDC. I expect that we're going to continue to be the -- the reason we're winning in that market is we have the very best product, right? We didn't on day 1, 5 or 6 and 7 and 8 years ago. We have matured the product to where it is -- it's faster at doing things like getting a study built and running the study and handling changes that happen along the study because we've taken a different approach. It's all modern cloud-based software. And we understood when we built this, we understood the challenges the industry was facing. So we're able to build the software to solve a lot of their roadblocks or their barriers or the challenges. So we're the -- we're the very best product with a broad and bold vision. So not only is it the best EDC, but it's also connected in to everything else that they're doing in clinical, the operational side, even connectivity into the research sites and into the patients, which is a very unique -- there's nobody else doing that, and we're well positioned.

Yes, I was going to say like, as you kind of build out this broader portfolio and you're innovating, I don't remember, there were a couple of modules, right? Now it's suites [indiscernible]. How does that change your right to win? And like when you sit down and talk to a customer, does it change kind of the nature of those relationships that they have so much more that they can buy from you today?

Very much so. So the customers make decisions kind of based on 2 things, right? One is they have to have the very best application for that specific area. It's got to be the best EDC. It's got to be the best clinical trial management system, that's super important. You -- that's table stakes. And what Veeva offers well above and beyond that is the fact that, that is interconnected with so many other areas. And Veeva is really the only company that can make that claim. And what is the structural advantage there is the Vault Platform is the fact that we have a platform that supports all of those different areas. Now 10 -- over 10 applications across all of clinical that we do that connectivity. They all need to be connected. We take that burden on, so customers don't have to do that. So their decision-making now shifts to I can be transformational in clinical. This is not like, hey, some better features and functions. This is how do I streamline my end-to-end clinical process and make clinical trials 10% or 20% or 30% more productive and efficient. That's what they're aiming for and that's what they can -- that's the potential with Veeva.

Maybe just hit on the IQVIA partnership that you guys announced this year. What does that mean in terms of your customers? Highlight that a little bit.

Yes, that has been super exciting. And it's been exciting because it really spans, it's 1 of those partnerships that spans commercial and clinical. So I'll start on the clinical side. IQVIA is 1 of the CROs that has not had -- 1 of the top CROs that has not had access to our software and our training and all of that capability. And I think what this does is it takes 1 of the leaders in the CRO space with the leading technology and allows them to work interoperably together. So this is hugely exciting. We're just at the beginning stages of what potential that has. I think it just takes a lot of friction out of the process for customers, a lot of uncertainty out of the game for customers and allows them to choose the top companies and provides great choice for them and flexibility. So great potential there in clinical. And then in commercial, not dissimilar. It gives customers choice to be able to use data and software from any company interoperably together. We're now building a connector between some of the IQVIA data and some of the Veeva software like Veeva Network and Veeva Nitro, which is super exciting. So we'll -- again, customers have choice. It even helps in areas in some of our data products for example, right? So customers oftentimes don't go all in on 1 company for their data, they want to buy data from multiple different places. So this provides them with that ability to be more interoperable. They could buy data from Veeva, and they can buy data from IQVIA and they can both work together. That's a huge advantage.

So how does that change like your optimism about your data strategy. I know there's multiple products there. But maybe talk about where you stand in that evolution and how you feel about that opportunity going forward?

Yes. You're right on the -- it's a broad portfolio. We call it the broad portfolio of data cloud. And in that, there are multiple different pieces. There's open data, there's length. There's compass, so lots of different data products. So to some extent, it allows companies to start to mix and match some of those pieces together. It just takes friction uncertainty out of the game there. And I think that just whenever any time you remove friction, you just -- you make it easier for somebody to make a longer-term decision and a commitment to our product. So I think that's a super exciting thing. And some companies, they now can go to Veeva and IQVIA and get everything that they need, which makes it a lot easier for them, where they may have had to have stitched that together with 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 different vendors, they can say, "Oh, Veeva and IQVIA, they are my standards, and I'm going to get to use multiple products, software and data products from both companies."

So I want to hit on the horizontal opportunity that you guys outlined, you mentioned that's going to be in CRM. Maybe give us kind of an update on where you are in those efforts and how you're thinking about building the products for that maybe a little bit more longer term?

Yes. So again, we're still very early. We're super excited by it. We have a focused team that's building a platform. We're taking -- we're calling it a platform-first approach. So they're -- they're building the platform. Yes, they will focus on CRM and actually a more specific area in CRM. We're working on getting some early customers and working with them and building the platform with real customers in mind. We're excited because this is kind of the next generation of a cloud-based platform. We're building it in the era of AI. We're building it having understood and actually having built multiple platforms before as a company and as the leadership of some of our company has built multiple platforms. So we know some of the shortcomings of existing platforms and we're kind of taking that account and rethinking and reimagining what an enterprise platform should be. So it's an exciting area. We're early days, a very, very focused effort. But I think we're on the early days of something that could be really big and exciting.

That's great. I think we'll wrap it there. Paul, thanks for your time.

Awesome. Thank you, Brian.