Transcript for:
LiveRamp's Fiscal 4Q 2024 Earnings Call

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to live R's fiscal 2024 fourth quarter Earnest call all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise after the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session if you would like to ask a question during this time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad if you would like to withdraw your question press star one again as a reminder this conference call is being recorded I would now like to turn the call over to your host Drew borst vice president of investor relations thank you operator good afternoon and welcome thank you for joining our fiscal 2024 fourth quarter earnings call with me today are Scott how our CEO and Lauren Dillard our CFO today's press release and this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially for a detailed description of these risks please read the risk factors section of our public filings and the press release a copy of our press release and financial schedules including any reconciliations to non-gap financial measures is available at live ramp.com also during the call today we'll be referring to the slide deck posted on our website and with that I'll turn the call over to Scott thank you drew and thanks to everyone joining our call today as I've done in past year-ending earnings calls today I'll strike a balance between talking about the quarter in the year that just ended and perhaps more importantly provide a bit of color around what we intend to accomplish across the coming year we ended fiscal 2024 on a high note with key4 revenue and operating income exceeding our expectations and a positive inflection in several key performance indicators as we look ahead to FY 25 we like our strategic position our collaboration platform seems well positioned to capitalize on the growing need for secure first-party data collaboration and to sustain addressable digital advertising in a world of third-party signal loss operationally we also feel as if there are still a lot of ways we can run the business even more effectively and efficiently before turning to our fy2 priorities however let me spend some time on Q4 and fy4 Q4 Revenue growth exceeded our expectations across the board with total revenue up 16% subscription up 11% and Marketplace up 38% Revenue was ahead of our guidance by 12 million or 7% and non-gaap operating income was ahead by 3 million or 20% Revenue growth came a long way in FY 24 you might recall that our initial guide 12 months ago was for Revenue growth of 2 to 4% over the past year we actually grew our Top Line at 11% or 10% on a likeforlike basis excluding Habu the majority of the upside was driven by our Marketplace business but subscription also overperformed in the fiscal second half subscription Revenue growth after positively inflecting in Q3 accelerated again in Q4 by 1. to 9% on a like for like basis this growth acceleration demonstrates the progress we made throughout FY 24 improving our sales productivity and customer retention the best leading indic Ator of subscription revenue is ARR or annual recurring revenue and in Q4 growth accelerated for a second consecutive quarter on a likeforlike basis ARR grew by 7% a 1 Point acceleration sequentially and the fastest quarterly growth since Q3 FY 23 we contined to see positive momentum in new logo bookings in Q4 last quarter I highlighted that Q3 was our highest quarter for new logo dollar bookings in over two years well Q4 was the second highest and just 1% below Q3 we signed a new three-year contract with a seven figure annual value with a major Home Improvement retailer for a bundle of our Solutions across identity connectivity and data collaboration we signed another s fig annual contract with a multi-year term with the major Pharmacy retailer for identity and connectivity we also continue to successfully upsell our existing customers our subscription net retention was better than we expected at 103% this is still below the levels we aspired to achieve but I'm pleased with the progress we made in FY 24 improving retention by six percentage points we had a notable seven figure upsell with the multi-year term with a major pharmaceutical manufacturer for our identity on boarding Solutions we had a high sixf figure upsell with a 2-year term with a major cosmetics and Beauty retailer for our clean room and data collaboration Solutions these customer wins speak to the broader success where having with the largest most Innovative brand customers in Q4 our 1 million plus customer cohort count increased by 10 quarter on quarter to5 equaling our highest net ad quarter on record n FY 24 was our best fiscal year on record with 20 net million plus c customer ads while I am pleased with our progress in FY 24 there remains room for improvement the entire live ramp team is focused not just on sustaining our current momentum but hopefully improving upon it I am energized about the opportunity in front of us with our data collaboration platform and the industry Mega trends that should continue to be a wind at our back from the trans transition from thirdparty signals to authenticated addressability to accelerating growth in major CTV and commerce media providers to cloud computing and artificial intelligence all of these market trends are seemingly poised to drive incremental demand for our Solutions and it's our responsibility to seize this opportunity we have four overarching corporate priorities for FY 25 first enhance both our products and customer experience to help improve customer attention while positioning us for greater upsell success second extend our leadership position in data collaboration third scale our partner and connectivity ecosystem and fourth simplify live ramp for our customers and employees I will elaborate on each of these in a minute but the Common Thread is that if we successfully execute on these priorities then we will continue to make progress with our primary Financial objective of becoming a rule of 40 company starting with upgrading our products and customer experience to improve customer retention this is and will always be an hon on goinging effort as great customers always expect constant progress but let me share a few examples first we have better aligned our pre and post sales teams to more efficiently and effectively onboard new customers and reduce the amount of time between contract signing and go live second we continue to modernize our technology to facilitate greater scale and faster turnaround time third we've upgraded all customers from cookie based workflows to our ramp ID which readies them for pair and other non-cookie Integrations where the advertising performance typically is significantly better finally we deploy dedicated resources to help our activation customers expand the number of destinations where their first party data is being used our internal data tells us that both customer retention and profitability are positively correlated to the number of publisher destinations to which our customers activate their first-party data we made significant progress with customer retention in FY 24 but we think these initiatives and others will help us continue improving in fy2 our second priority is extending our leadership and data collabor ation data collaboration helps companies manage and optimize data that is siloed across a growing number of cloud computing environments data collaboration is also an antidote to third-party cookie deprecation and other signal losss in a recent e-marketer survey advertisers and Publishers were asked which Solutions held the greatest promise of replacing cookie dependent Solutions the number one response from approximately half of the advertiser and publisher respondents was first party data activation we believe this is particularly true for the largest most sophisticated companies after all first-party data is not equally distributed across the ecosystem some companies are rich in first-party data like retailers and major Publishers and others are first party data po our data collaboration platform provides a solution for this data inequality by enabling the secure sharing of first-party data with trusted business partners for Mutual benefit in a manner similar to the mutual benefits retailers and cpg companies get through data sharing in retail media networks Habu is an important component of our data collaboration strategy we're now 4 months into the Habu acquisition and I'm convinced the influx of both talented people and elegantly simple yet sophisticated technology make us a better company and position us for greater long-term success we have already integrated hu's clean room technology into our data collaboration platform the onboarding of our new colleagues was fairly easy given our share excitement about the future and The Talented Habu leadership team has been given expanded responsibilities and access to even more resources customers are responding positively to hu's product particularly its key differentiators of seamless cross-cloud interoperability customizable analytics in wal Gardens and a simple userfriendly ux as a result our sales pipeline continues to scale 1 month after the deal closed our incremental data collaboration pipeline was 30 million and now 4 months in it's over 40 million while Habu capabilities are a key component of our data collaboration strategy together they are only one part of a much broader holistic offering at ramp up in February we officially launched the next generation of the live ramp data collaboration platform modernizing and unifying our identity connectivity data access and data collaboration capabilities onto a single composable platform the modernized platform introduces new capabilities such as a simplified user interface new ingestion pipes that reduce processing time and accelerate speed to value composable technology for cross Cloud interoperability to unlock data collaboration Partnerships and an expanded partner marketplace where third-party developers can build custom applications by bringing all of our capabilities into a single seamless user interface with simplified orchestration customers are able to more easily connect audiences across partners and unlock greater value across all of their data collaboration needs in addition we will continue to invest this year in unifying our backend systems to modernize our platform architecture to drive improved speed stability and scalability this matters to our clients many of whom have scaled their usage of our platform in ways we never imagined even a few short years ago the combination of technology scalability and network density help extend our leadership position in data collaboration as well as help with our first corporate priority of improving customer retention our third priority is to continue scaling our partner and connectivity ecosystem this has long been a key competitive Advantage as the efficacy of our product is in part a function of where and how our technology can be used Network scale matters and we have the world's leading ecosystem across Publishers technology platforms and data providers all either powered by or being upgraded to post signal Solutions our authenticated traffic solution or ATS has been in the making for five plus years in in anticipation of third-party signal loss today ATS is a fully scaled solution that connects publisher and marketer data to better personalize and measure advertising across channels and across geographies ATS has been adopted by over 21,000 publisher domains including 75% of the comcore 100 Publishers and it connects to over 92% of us consumer time spent online irresp persective of Chrome's deprecation timeline the digital advertising Market has largely moved Beyond thirdparty cookies marketers look to reach their consumers not just on Chrome browsers but across the compelling channels of safari Mobile inapp retail media and CTV ATS is Omni Channel we partnered with Disney plus tub nbcu Paramount plus and many more pubs and these Partnerships are not limited by the cookie ATS is available wherever a consumer is today and will be in the future and we envision a future where today's connections with major platforms Publishers and CTV providers increasingly are complemented by AI applications and new consumer touch points additionally we have partnered with Google's DSP display and video 360 on its pair initiative pair which stands for publisher Advertiser identity reconciliation is DV 360's answer to thirdparty cookie deprecation and allows advertisers and Publishers to securely and privately reconcile their first-party data to enable personalized advertising our role is providing the clean room infrastructure that allows advertisers and Publishers to securely activate their first-party data on dv360 pair continues to scale adoption with large Publishers including CTV Publishers like NBC Universal the early results from Pair are highly encouraging our case study with Omni Hotels and Resorts showed pair campaigns delivered a 4X increase in conver version rate over traditional cookie based targeting in dv360 and we've seen similar results in as of yet unpublished case studies a recent analysis of Our Brands who use pair showed that they were able to increase their match rates by 27% this is Meaningful incremental reach that is available today because pear is not limited to Chrome but is available across Safari Firefox Edge and CTV inventory results like this convince us that the industry should just Embrace cookie Le Alternatives like pear and ATS and stop fretting about deprecation timelines but we'll make use of the extra time afforded to All by Google's recent announcement to delay full implementation until after the holiday shopping season in the coming months in partnership with Google and others we will continue to publish case studies and educate the ecosystems so they are ready for full cookie deprecation when it occurs in early calendar year 2025 as pair scales the benefit to live ramp should show up in the form of first incremental activation from our existing subscription customers and second new logo opportunities they're doing first-party data targeting exclusively off third-party cookies today of course third-party cookie deprecation is certainly a catalyst for the adoption of pair so Google's decision to delay Chrome third-party cookie deprecation until early 2025 will have an impact on our pair opportunities we think we've appropriately reflected this in the fy2 guidance Lauren will provide today however in the medium to longterm we remain well positioned and we think improved advertising performance customers can achieve with pair will ultimately win out finally our fourth priority for fy2 is simplifying live ramp for our customers and employees there's a plethora of coordinated activities that will ultimately simplify our technology and ease of use we're always working to improve our uis simplify and streamline our contract processes re-examine our pricing policies and modernize our technology one of the emerging initiatives is leveraging artificial intelligence both internally to improve our own productivity and make our products better and externally to help our customers organize and accumulate the data that is the fuel for their own AI models and initiatives internally we are using AI in a number of ways from helping our software developers write code more quickly to helping all live rampers find useful information more quickly through an AI powered assistant tool with Enterprise search more specifically approximately 15% of our developers are now regularly using AI tools to assist with coding and on average these tools have generated an estimated double digigit percentage Improvement in productivity we are also incorporating AI into our data collaboration platform and data Marketplace that will provide ease of use and accelerated time to Value benefits for example our Habu technology offers gen powered data queries that can produce reports without requiring SQL coding skills which makes the platform more usable for Less technical business users in our data Marketplace we are training a proprietary AI model to accelerate our review of the data labels and descriptions provided by data sellers which is critical to ensuring favorable buyer experience finally we are using AI with our IV graph to drive increased accuracy and stab ility through a more sophisticated understanding of data fragment relationships beyond our internal use of AI the live ramp data collaboration platform has a much larger and critical role to play in helping customers use data to propel their own AI initiatives our data collaboration and enrichment products and connected partner ecosystem help brand marketers improve the quality quantity and diversity of customer data used this customer data is the foundation for training generalized AI models and transforming them into the kind of proprietary models that produce brand specific predictive customer insights such as optimize segmentation interests propensities and affinities ultimately these AI powered insights help brand marketers deliver personalized marketing experience more effectively and efficiently in closing let me reiterate what I believe to be the key themes from the quarter first Q4 was a strong finish to fy4 with revenue and operating income exceeding our expectations and a positive inflection in several key performance indicators notably the growth in ARR which is the best leading indicator of our fixed subscription accelerated for a second consecutive quarter to double digits on a reported basis second we're not satisfied as we look ahead to fy2 we have an ambitious set of corporate goals and priorities that will if we successfully execute help us Advance toward our goal of being a rule of 40 company finally we believe we're well positioned against the trends that matter our data collaboration platform is well positioned to capitalize on the growing need for secure first-party data collaboration to sustain addressable digital advertising our platform provides the right capabilities and there are multiple industry meat Trends working in our favor including the shift to cloud computing the proliferation of AI tools and marketing growth in new walled Gardens and CTV and commerce media and of course the rise of authenticated addressability over thirdparty signals thank you again for joining us today and a special thanks to our exceptional exceptional customers partners and to all live rampers for their ongoing hard work and support we look forward to updating you on our progress in the coming quarters I will now turn the call over to Lauren thanks Scott and thank you all for joining us today I will cover two topics first a review of our Q4 Financial results and second provide our outlook for fy2 and q1 unless otherwise indicated my remarks pertain to non-gaap results and growth is relative to the year ago period starting with Q4 we had a strong finish py 24 with revenue and operating income exceeding our original expectations Revenue came in at 172 million 12 million above our guide and operating income was 16 million 3 million above our guide operating margin was 9% and we generated 28 million in operating cash flow in the quarter and 106 million in the fiscal year let me provide some additional details please turn to slide five first as a reminder we closed the acquisition of Habu on January 31st consistent with what we shared previously the transaction contributed $2 million of Revenue in the quarter or approximately two points of subscription growth and roughly 3 million of expense as you would expect it also positively impacted our other Revenue metrics total revenue was 172 million up 16% with subscription revenue and Marketplace another significantly ahead of expectations driven primarily by continued sales execution and a stronger than expected digital advertising Market subscription Revenue was1 134 million up 11% fix subscription Revenue was 9% and usage as a percentage of total subscription Revenue was 14% in line with the historical 10 to 15% range ARR was 467 million up 10% reflecting a $12 million impact from Habu and continued growth in customer upsell and new logo subscription net retention was 13% two points better sequentially and ahead of our expectation the outperformance was driven in part by Habu and by strong upsell of our clean room and connectivity products current RPO or our next 12-month contracted backlog was 414 million up 23% total RPO including contracted backlog beyond the next 12 months was up 20% to 566 million as a reminder RPO and crpo are very sensitive to the timing of renewals and to contract durations and given our focus on large Enterprise customers and shift to more multi-year deals both of these factors again benefited growth in the quarter overall we see some positives and challenges with the current selling environment our pipeline continues to build nicely and new logo activity remains strong in Q4 as Scott pointed out importantly our focus on large customers continues to yield results in Q4 we added 10 new million doll Plus subscription customers matching our all-time best quarter that said our average sales cycle ticked up slightly in the quarter from recent trends of 8 to 9 months in addition we continue to experience softness with smaller low ACV customers both Brands as well as technology platforms including adtech that is experiencing some structural change Marketplace and other revenue of 38 million increased 38% driven by data Marketplace which grew 32% and accounted for 78% of marketplace in other Revenue data Marketplace growth was aided by an easy Euro comp as well as a healthy digital ad Market with particular strength in CTV we also continue to see strong growth in Professional Services which accounted for approximately 30% of marketplace and other growth moving beyond Revenue gross margin was 75% flat year on-ear operating expenses were 113 million of 16% reflecting the acquisition of Habu and higher Performance Based compensation operating income was 16 million up from 14 million a year ago and our operating margin was 9% Gap operating loss was 14 million stock based compensation was 25 million down from 45 million a year ago which included The Accelerated vesting of certain non Neo rsus for tax planning purposes operating cash flow was 28 million down from 31 million a year ago due to higher cash taxes and working capital for the full year operating cash flow was 106 million up from 34 million last year we were purchased 15 million of stock in Q4 bringing the full year buyback to 61 million we have approximately 157 million remaining under the current authorization that expires in December of this year in summary Q4 was a strong finish to the fiscal year with revenue and operating income exceeding our expectations growth in subscription revenue and ARR positively inflected returning to double digits in subscription n retention was comfortably above 100% operating margin was stable on a reported basis and on a likeforlike basis expanded by one point in FY 24 we generated over 100 million in free cash flow for the first time in our history and return the majority to shareholders through our share repurchase program please now turn to slides 12 and 13 please keep in mind our non-gaap guidance excludes intangible amortization stock based compensation and restructuring and related charges starting with the full year we expect revenue of between 710 and 730 million up 8 to 11% year on-ear our Revenue guidance reflects the continuation of the Q4 momentum in the fiscal first half and slightly slower Revenue growth in the second half G given limited visibility into the macro as well as the potential for cookie deprecation to cause some short-term disruption among customers cookie deprecation is obviously a big change to the digital advertising market and will require the industry and our customers to adapt we don't have perfect visibility into how and when our customers adapt particularly in the near term we see both opportunities and risks associated with cookie deprecation and the wider than normal range on our Revenue guide reflects it we expect subscription Revenue growth to accelerate to the high single digits and fixed subscription revenue is expected to grow High single to low double digits subscription usage revenue is forecasted to be roughly flat year on year we also expect International Subscription Revenue to be down mid teens year on-ear given our recent apack restruct ruring our outlook for subscription Revenue assumes net retention remains within a range of 100 to 105% broadly consistent with the recent Trend as Scott discussed we have several initiatives underway to improve customer retention and we would hope net retention will improve as the year unfolds for now however this is not embedded in our guide we expect Marketplace and other Revenue growth to be between low double digits and mid- teens underpinning this estimate is an expectation that data Marketplace growth will be in line to above the growth in the overall digital ad Market we expect a gross margin of approximately 75% we expect non-gaap operating income of between 125 and 129 million at the midpoint this represents 21% growth and a margin of 18% up approximately two percentage points operating expenses are expected to increase mid to high single digits of which the Habu acquisition accounts for approximately three points the remaining growth reflects investments in our Salesforce Cloud strategy and scaling our partner Network partially offset by incremental savings from our offshoring initiative we expect stock based compensation to be 116 million up from 71 Million last year the year-on-year increase is primarily driven by two items first 23 million from the normalization of accelerated vesting in FY 23 and second 12 million associated with the hobu acquisition we expect Gap operating loss to be between 8 and 4 million lastly we expect to return a significant portion of our fy2 free cash flow to share owners through our share repurchase program we expect to spend approximately 15 million per quarter depending on market conditions we believe this is a great investment and will largely offset the impact of forecasted dilution now moving to q1 we expect total revenue of 172 million non-gaap operating income of 25 million and an operating margin of 15% of 100 basis points year on year a few other call outs for q1 we expect subscription Revenue to be up roughly 10% and Marketplace another Revenue to be up High Teens year-over-year we expect q1 gross margin to be approximately 74% and we expect stock-based compensation to be approximately 29 million before opening the call to questions I'll conclude with a few final thoughts first we had a very strong Q4 ahead of our expectations on both the top and bottom line demonstrating improved sales execution against the backdrop of healthy ad markets and our continued commitment to efficient growth Q4 Revenue growth returned to double digits including low double digigit subscription growth for the year we produced over 100 million in preash flow and returned the majority to shareholders through our buyback and finally FY 2 will be a year of improved subscription growth compared to last year and continued margin expansion our Revenue guidance reflects a continuation of the Q4 momentum in the fiscal first half and slightly slower Revenue in the second half mostly in the name of conservatism the swing factors within the revenue range will be first the health of digital ad markets as it relates to our variable revenue streams second sales execution particularly with the assumed Improvement in Booking driven by Habu in the second half and Third customer turn and down fell relative to the modest Improvement assumed in our guide with that on behalf of all live rampers thank you for joining us today and thank you to our amazing customers operator we will now open the call to questions thank you the floor is now open for questions if you have dialed in and would like to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue if you would like to withdraw your questions star one again your first question comes from the line of uh shiam ptil of cohana your line is open hey guys congrats on the nice results I I had a couple of uh questions on Habu uh first one can you elaborate on the integration and the customer response relative to your initial expectations and then second one can you remind us of your financial targets for Habu in fisal 25 thank you yeah Sean uh in terms of Habu integration progress we've done this a few times now we think we're pretty good at it um and it's complex so I'll I'll talk about a few different pieces uh first off and most importantly is always the people integration and there we've had 100% migration of Habu employees over to live ramp and I'm really pleased I mean this is an injection of worldclass talent and fresh ideas uh which is great for our company um because it brings new thinking but it also energizes our Legacy team it's also given us some bench strength uh a and if you look at the Habu leadership team many of them have already taken on expanded roles within live ramp and and others of them uh have taken on brand new challenges and an example I would I would give is Matt Kil Martin he's just a brilliant CEO talented entrepreneur and the acquisition is kind of freedom from the day-to-day management grind so we're using his entrepreneurial skills to tap in he's going to lead the charge on new use cases and verticals and as you know Sean this is something we've talked about for a couple of years now but we haven't ever made as much progress as we would like um outside of advertising and marketing and so we feel like we have a good product we got uh with some small configuration or maybe some slight design mods it's uh extendable to all kinds of other use cases we just need someone smart and entrepreneurial thinking about it all the time and and driving the charge and and so Matt's going to do that uh so very excited about the people integration the the second big piece that is very visible to our clients is the product integration um and there I'm really pleased I mean uh Habu has done a a great job of building simple yet elegant uh technology and because we were starting to think about the technology integration uh well before we announced the deal this was a pretty easy lift as importantly uh we brought in an influx of talented Engineers who can look at our architecture and product design for the first time with with fresh eyes um the um the CTO over at Habu a guy named rupac Gupta I mean he's he's just brilliant and the conversations that we've had together is I've said rupac challenge everything um because that fresh thinking is going to make us better um and the intersection of Habu technology with live Rams thinking um is going to lead to a better outcome for our clients um the the third piece which comes after the first two is Pipeline and here uh came pretty quickly because literally within a month of the deal uh we had created 30 million a pipeline we're now up to 40 million I would tell you um clients are intrigued and I've spoken to a handful of our very largest clients I've heard nothing but good things uh and then you know because we've done the first three right I think performance comes next uh and I would tell you that we're on track with the deal model Lauren can talk about that unpack that a little bit more detail uh but as importantly we have really strong line of sight to what we need to do uh and we're ensuring through pretty aggressive project management um that our teams are moving fast uh and we're removing the obstacles in front of them I don't know what I miss Lauren yeah um hi sham with with respect to the second part of your question on our financial targets um as we shared in the call we added about 12 million of ARR in Q4 which you can think about as the inorganic contribution to to growth in 25 we continue to Target 18 million of Revenue in 25 again this is a synergized number so inclusive of a few million of of synergies from Cross cell in the back half of the year um a point I would make and Scott just made it as well but you know Habu is is being fully integrated into our platform and given the strong opportunity for cross sell of live ramp products alongside Habu drawing the line between live ramp and Habu will become increasingly challenging as as we move through the year and then just a final point on the bottom line we continue to Target break even on an up income basis which equates to about a point of delution on on op margin in 25 great thank you guys your next question comes from line of Jason crer of Craig halum Capital group your line is opened to stick with Habu you know we've talked about that the last couple of months as kind of being a a plug- Inplay solution for smaller marketers just curious any updates on that any progress with smaller customers in the quarter or what we should anticipate for the evolution of that that being a better solution for that the lower end of the market yeah I mean that's certainly part of our pipeline uh and you know no particular updates in terms of new clients to share uh that I didn't talk about in my prepared remarks so I feel pretty good about that I I ultimately think one of the bigger catalysts is still out in front of us um I believe that uh when we get across the Finish Line on deprecation that's going to be the biggest Catalyst that we've seen for adoption of a data collaboration platform because you need one um in order to activate in dv360 and dv360 um is the market share leader along with you know Amazon's DSP um it drives the most tonage on most media plans uh so most advertisers are going to have to embrace uh what we do if they want to avoid disruption in their advertising efforts um so we're a little bit bummed uh about the the slowdown in in deprecation probably most so because uh having planned for this for five years I just want it behind us and to start talking about the Glorious future as opposed to what's to come but uh I I think uh all good things in store for the future of clean rooms thanks Scott and then uh like a month ago Google announced that they're you know moving pair to an OP Source platform in conjunction with the IAB just curious if there are any implications there um wondering if this kind of broadens the reach of Pair by expanding the developer Network and and making it available to more you know more developers but curious your thoughts on the opportunity Well we'd sure like to think so I I love the fact that Google uh open that and put the hands uh put it into the hands of the IAB the more standardization that there is around adoption of uh authenticated ways to buy um you know uh bifurcated consents at both the buyer and seller side um that's the future uh is to get consented users and and so the more that that can take Wing not just with Google um but with major CTV players with all the social media platforms uh it's just better for the entire industry um it fuels more standardization and we've seen the great returns that you get through pair it's pretty significant lift um not just for advertisers but also for Publishers in terms of their yield so everything that Google can do to spread adoption is something we're we're cheering for and and I should also just say I mean a big chunk of our summer here at live ramp is going to be spent uh out in the road evangelizing we'll take use of of the extra time Google afforded with their their pair deprecation timeline um to educate and evangelize the offering in the market in many cases with Google uh so you know we'll be doing some stuff with them at C at can in uh next month uh and uh just a lot of Road shows um seminars uh things like that to Ure the Market's ready your next question comes from line of Elizabeth Porter of Morgan Stanley your line is open great thank you so much I just wanted to follow up on your comment about kind of the bigger Catalyst being data collaboration and really needing it for db30 I understand that the timeline to recognize some of this opportunity has been pushed out a bit but any sort of framework you're providing in terms of how to think about sizing the opportunity tied with pair and how it could impact live ramp yeah well first off uh Elizabeth and and I'm sure that uh Lauren can dive into this a little bit more I would tell you if you look at uh uh our guidance I mean we're we're being what we think is appropriately conservative with respect to pair um and you know with the timeline now really sifting into the last quarter of our fiscal year so you know that January to March timeline um yeah we won't see a huge impact of it in our year this year but we've been very uh what we think appropriately conservative because there's just going to be gazin and Gaz outs uh remember that you have an entire industry that was built on cookies and has operated on them for the last 30 years uh and we got nine months uh to get them fully ready for the cut over uh and and my guess is we'll be pretty successful with the sophisticated advertisers but there's probably going to be a lot in the industry who uh won't be ready and so it'll be interesting come next calendar q1 to see how that plays out it wouldn't surprise me if there's you know a stall as folks figure out what they're doing operationally before there's an acceleration um that said uh as you know Elizabeth we're out in the market telling folks not to wait uh because the same techniques that can be utilized in Paar I it's just an extension of what folks are doing in cookies today but it gets you pretty significant incremental reach because it allows you to reach the consented users on Firefox and Edge and Safari and that drives a pretty significant an increase in performance um so you know we're going to try really hard to prepare the industry and get them converted well before uh next q1 uh but I I think it's a little bit unpredictable now the last thing I would say uh is you know initially we think that we'll see uh uh the first impact on on just usage because people will switch from cookies to to uh true authentication and everything that they do it'll make our existing clients even stickier it might drive some incremental usage that's particularly true as authenticated met uh methods extend to the major CTV providers um but then you know the next Catalyst will really be not seen in our subscription usage as much as just clean room at adoption uh we think that virtually everybody's going to need to have a clean room um to do the kind of advertising addressable advertising that they've grown used to um and that should be a catalyst for us um both in the US uh to win potential new clients but then also internationally where you know in many cases Google's market share internationally DV 360's market share internationally is much higher than it is here in the US great thank you so much and just as a quick followup it was great to see the new logos start to increase quarter over quarter after being flat to to down earlier in the year so could you just talk about kind of where are the incremental kind of customers coming from is this momentum with Cloud Partners kind of Habu um and how should we think about just the durability of net ads yeah hi Elizabeth Lauren here great question um and as we've mentioned in the past there there are a lot of moving pieces with respect to to customer ads and and Habu did benefit this metric in the quarter on an organic basis customer count was roughly stable in Q4 and the trends that we have been seeing in recent quarters played out again in in Q4 which is continued strength in high ACB brand customers um you know partially offset by continued pressure with lower ACV customers you particularly in the adtech cohort um as we look ahead to FY 25 we would expect overall customer count to to to be somewhat muted um again given given the Dynamics that I just mentioned um that said and we've discussed this in recent quarters we have shifted our sales Focus to larger higher LTV brand customers over the past year plus and and you really see that play out in metrics like our $1 million customer count which grew nicely in FY 24 and we would expect to continue to grow nicely in FY 25 great thank you so much your next question comes from line of Mark ztz of Benchmark your line is open thank you I Scott Lauren congrats on an exceptional quarter just a just a uh couple questions from me on the uh uh pipeline 30 million I guess it's uh 40 million now um since the habo acquisition I'm I'm curious if you think about what's driving that maybe this a split between uh demand for wall Garden self-service Cloud interoperability from your existing clients versus new verticals um accelerating subscription outside of uh retail and cpg if if you can maybe provide some color there would be helpful yeah it really is both um so if I think back you know a year two years ago um we obviously had a lot of success ESS um powering the retail media networks um but even in my prepared remarks you know the examples that I gave went beyond um retail um so I talked about uh uh a pharmaceutical for instance uh company uh and you know we're also doing some really interesting things in travel and not surprisingly some of the most interesting things that we're starting to talk about and you're starting to see uh are actually in the entertainment space uh you know it's the case that as you think about a world that increasingly uh first-party data is going to be really important well who has great sources of first-party data the major Publishers um and they're not all named uh Google uh and and Facebook um you think about all of the CTV providers that you authenticated every time you log in they have deep viewership information um and they know a lot of demographic information as well and so you know kind of the clean room capabilities that any Advertiser can spin up with those destinations is pretty powerful uh so I I think retail and package Goods gave every other industry a road map to follow here yeah Mark maybe just to put um some additional color against that if we if we look at the collaboration or clean room deals we won in Q4 um about half were with retail and cpg but but half were with the companies that Scott just mentioned so Publishers travel and entertainment companies Automotive companies Healthcare and if we look at the composition of of our Pipeline and then the pipeline created it kind of mirrors that that split got it that's C and maybe on the on the new verticals is it too early to start talking about you know a potential sizable Tam expansion here you know outside of the cpg and Retail meaning do you have adequate sales capacity to sort of address you know these newer verticals is that expanding and will that sort of Tam expand as you add more capacity there or what U is that just a learning curve more with those industries that just takes time I I feel really fortunate uh I think we were a little bit ahead of this one because if you recall a couple years ago during the Great resignation uh we really saw a uh big Exodus for a short period of time um to our Salesforce and we used that opportunity um when we uh backfilled to remake our Salesforce uh we actually created uh vertical industry groups um so now we have a Retail Group we have a Financial Services Group we have experts in travel um and and that's so important uh you know when live ramp was formed uh we used to be able to go in and wow people just talking about the technology uh but now increasingly particularly given the fact that we have higher level audiences within the clients we're calling on often times it's the CMO or the CEO we have to go in and talk in their language we have to understand how does the airline industry work for example how do Airlines make money in future uh how are they going to monetize their screens on their seatbacks and personal entertainment devices uh that you use in Flight uh and so by hiring that way for the last couple years I think it's actually improved our sales productivity and actually driven some of the success we're seeing in these new verticals sound great thanks very much appreciate it thanks Mark your next question comes from line of Kirk matney of evercore isi your line is open yeah hi Scott hi Lawrence this is actually Peter Berkeley on for Kirk I'll echo my congrats on on a really nice quarter thanks Peter you know so a lot to like here couple metrics that really stood out to us you know the the large customer growth million dollar customers and then the nrr acceleration so Scott maybe I'm hoping I could start with you just on the large customer growth does this feel like a broader you know opening up of wallets dynamic or or is this reflective of you know the strong momentum in the the data collaberation platform which are generally you know larger deal sizes um and then Lauren maybe just as the second one on the nrr metric you know understanding the color on on hu's contribution and assuming the large customers you know are acting as a Tailwind here but I'm curious that the sort of pressure on the nrr has been you know contraction at the at the lower segment of the market of your customer base and sounds like that's sort of continuing on but I'm just curious given the acceleration and you know kind of the go forward color does it feel like that's sort of stabilizing or or perhaps even inflecting just in terms of that lower customer contraction and and uh you know just a little bit more trouble at the lowend thanks yeah so Peter I'll start with the first um if you looked at our cohort of largest clients these million dooll uh plus a year Spenders I think you would recognize almost every single one of them as being kind of uh major advertisers uh brands that you trust uh really strong consumer Brands um and we did a detailed analysis of uh we did a Big C customer segmentation about a year ago and what we found is that those sophisticated large Spenders share some characteristics in common um you know they're obviously more profitable to us um uh the churn rate for those is significantly less uh but the most interesting Insight was the number of activations that they had and for the largest clients uh I can't remember exactly the number but it was an excess of 18 uh uh activations that they had and when you have 18 activations you're lighting up uh different uh destinations maybe point of sale uh certainly a lot of different properties uh you're you're a lot more sophisticated about what to do with your data you probably probably are much more likely um to want to have a clean room and set up data collaboration with Partners uh you're certainly much more likely uh to want measurement back and so they just start becoming power users uh and and so I don't think it's as function of you know the macro or budgets uh becoming uh easier to get or anything like that I think it's just a function of uh those are more sophisticated companies they've learned how to use their data effectively and they're trying to do even more with their data our our challenge internally is how do we get some of our smaller companies to look more like those big companies uh so we're kind of laser focused on uh making sure that everybody activates more destinations on their media plan um which is going to lead them to adopt more usage with us and Peter uh with respect to your question question on on nrr um I I will just again point out that Habu contributed a couple points to nrr in the quarter um outside of that we are seeing some stabilization with with our lower ACV customer cohort but the bigger driver uh continues just to be stronger contribution from upsell with uh our largest customers as they adopt clean room and collaboration use cases very helpful thank you both operator we have time for one more question your last question comes from the line of Brian Fitzgerald of Wells Fargo your line is open uh thanks Scott I want to follow up on on your Paris commentary obviously there are thousands of DB customers out there and it seems like db360 customers need to use pair to Target ads off of first party data and measure performance after deprecation has has Google built free tools to access pair um via data hubs or or or otherwise um it it seems like you are far and away you know the most important partner for Google's messaging about pairs um the announcement with mbcu and so on and customers more or less need to adopt um is that a correct way to view the opportunity um they expansively or are there other considerations free tools more clean room Partners likely be named over time any any other to to look at it more conservatively oh I I'm sure that there will be more uh Partners over time we were fortunate to be one of what are now two launch Partners Habu live ramp and then there was a third um so we actually comprise 2third I guess of the original launch uh partners for this and and you know the deal is they're not building the technology rather they're mandating that someone who does pairing uh has a clean room partner um Google wants to be agnostic in this um and they want to ensure that someone can ensure that on both sides uh the consents have been obtained and handle the security the anonymization that occurs um now all that said I would tell you anecdotally that it felt like for a long time we were having a lot of conversation with the Google product team um and we were really involved uh going back and forth with suggestions around their design and uh doing a lot of process mapping uh since January it's the this the switch has really flipped on with the Google commercial teams uh as for example uh they invited me to um come speak to their uh sales leadership in New York uh about a month ago and likewise uh their uh ad plat sales leader came and spoke um to live ramps entire sales organization uh when we had our sales kickoff a few few weeks ago uh we're going to be out in Market with them uh educating and evangelizing I mentioned uh uh we'll do some stuff with them at can which is coming up here in a couple weeks uh and then uh we have a lot more things planned to educate and Evangel I think the biggest barrier here isn't the technology at all it is just kind of the inertia of 30 years of people using cookies uh and just educating them that there's a better way uh and although it's requires a process switch and uh that may be painful uh as soon as you do it you unlock better results uh so that that will be the key messages you'll hear both from from Google and from us in the coming months got it appreciate it I'll now turn the call back over to Lauren Dillard for closing remarks thanks so much um so in closing we ended FY 24 on a high note with both revenue and operating profit outperforming our original expectations as we look ahead fy2 will be a year of improving subscription growth and continued margin expansion our Revenue guidance reflects a continuation of the Q4 momentum in the fiscal first half and slightly slower Revenue growth in the second half mostly in the name of conservatism with that thanks again for joining us today we look forward to updating you on our continued progress in the in the quarters ahead this concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect