Asana, Inc. (NYSE:ASAN) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And with that, I’ll turn it back to the operator for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Josh Baer of Morgan Stanley.

Josh Baer: Great. Thank you very much for the question. I wanted to talk about the shift of upmarket and focus on the enterprise. And just wondering, like, where you think you are, what inning as far as the investments in product go-to-market, just thinking through the packaging strategy, leadership changes, Tim, that you just referenced, and anything else as far as initiatives and focus there?

Anne Raimondi: Hi, Josh. This is Anne. Thanks for your question. Yeah, I think we’re feeling good about the investments that we’ve been making to go upmarket. You called out a couple of different things, so I’ll address those. We’re really excited that all of our key leadership roles across go-to-market are now filled, and these leaders have been adding great talent to the team where we’ve needed additional enterprise expertise. We have more ramp reps and reps with greater tenure than this time last year, so we’re feeling good about that as well. And we’ll continue to invest appropriately to support growth in priority markets so we can reach and serve customers well. On packaging, we’re seeing really early positive feedback and interest from customers.

In particular, customers really appreciate our approach to providing AI in every paid plan. That’s clearly tied to value and supported by our guiding principles for AI. We’ve only been fully rolled out now for a few weeks, but with two enterprise plans now available, we’re already seeing dozens of customer migrations up to those packages that include additional investment in Asana. So, we’re excited about that, excited about the quality of the sales conversations with executives and greater velocity in helping these customers choose the right strategic plans for both value and growth. So, more to do, but excited that the investments that we’ve been making both in go-to-market, the team and product and our plans are starting to have good traction.

Josh Baer: Great, thank you. And a quick one for Tim, just on the target for positive free cash flow. Just wanted to confirm, is that, without regard to the macro, meaning if it gets better or stays the same, no matter what the growth trajectory is, we’re still looking for positive free cash flow by the end of 2024?

Tim Wan: Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of said our outlook hasn’t really changed. Things haven’t gotten noticeably better nor noticeably worse. So, we’re still committed to delivering free cash flow by the end of calendar ’24.

Josh Baer: Great, thank you.

Tim Wan: Thanks, Josh.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Zukin of Wolfe Research.

Alex Zukin: Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. So, maybe just two for me. One on the — thus far in the renewals that you’re seeing in some of your largest customers, it seems like you’re pretty confident about that NRR crossing at 100% plus or minus. So, what has kind of been some of that dynamic or activity, or maybe just give us a sense for the visibility that you have there, what you’ve seen play out today? You mentioned some of the larger deals, but what’s happening on renewal with a competitive environment? And then, just a quick follow up for Tim.

Tim Wan: Hey, Alex, it’s Tim. So, I think what we’re seeing is obviously we have pretty good line of sight in terms of the utilization of many of our large accounts. What I would say is similar to what we shared at the — on the Investor Day, most of the net retention rate is impacted by seat adjustment or seat reductions, primarily from companies that either had a layoff at this time last year and their renewal is up and they’re just readjusting their own footprint. So, I feel like we have — we know which companies are likely going to renew, we know their utilization, so we have a pretty good handle in terms of what the outlook will look like. Obviously, there can always be surprises, but I think we feel pretty confident about the current line of sight.

Alex Zukin: Perfect. And then just maybe on the cRPO balance, it was down sequentially. Was that, again, a result of that heightened down-selling pressure? And any way to think about cRPO for Q4, and kind of how to tie that with where we are at a high level for growth next year?

Tim Wan: Yeah. I mean, I think we — I think from an RPO or cRPO perspective, it did grow, I want to say, 21% on a year-over-year basis. And there’s some — certainly some lumpiness in terms of some of the shape of the deals. I would say the RPO number is also impacted kind of by the renewals, and that’s kind of what we’ve been seeing pressure on in terms of the business.

Alex Zukin: Okay, great. Thanks, guys.

Operator: Thank you. Standby for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Taylor McGinnis of UBS. Please go ahead, Taylor.

Taylor McGinnis: Yeah, hi. Thanks so much for taking my question. So, maybe first, could you give us a sense of the growth or NRR expansion activity outside of the impacted verticals like tech and where you’re seeing the most rationalization or optimization activity? Just perhaps it could help give some visibility to the growth we could see coming on the other side of the [tech] (ph) renewal activity?

Tim Wan: Yeah. I don’t know if we shared this on the call, on this call or the call earlier, but I think we did make a comment in the past that what we’ve seen is that, like, if you segment our business across tech versus non-tech, that the non-tech sector is actually growing faster than our tech business. And most of the pressure that we’ve seen on both the renewals and expansion is coming from the tech. Many of the customer logos and stories that Anne highlighted, such as healthcare and media, those are non-tech businesses and I think we’re really encouraged by the footprint. Now, the other thing that’s also — the other positive that I would want to point out is that where we’ve had new leaders for about a year in regions in about — for about a year, we’ve seen better performance out of those reps and out of those geographies.