Bentley Systems, Incorporated (NASDAQ:BSY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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And I think his change in focus here has been sort of because he wants €“ he knows that our Chief Technology Officer role includes lots of other responsibilities, wants Julien to take all that up so he can focus on delivering on this promise to integrate the iTwin Platform so that our users are creating high models at the same time as their traditional deliverables. And this pipeline for that was the coming year, and I think it’s a wonderful ingenious plan he has for that. And by the time the year is out, our modeling and simulation software will also include iModel generation for all of our users as they adopt their 2023 edition of our applications.

Andrew DeGasperi: Thanks Greg. That’s helpful. And then maybe, Werner, on the margin expansion, I just wanted to maybe touch base on that. If you could break out a little bit more in terms of what are the components that are going to get you to the 100 basis points? I mean how much of it is core relative to the stock-based comp leverage? Because if also I look at Q4, Q4 based on the release, it looks like the core margin has slightly gone down a little bit. But just wondering is that reversed essentially in 2023? And yes, if you could elaborate a little more. Thanks.

Werner Andre: Maybe came to Q4. Q3 year-to-date was like a high level on margin base, and the goal was always to come in at the end of the year, approximately 33% adjusted EBITDA margin. So we knew that as we went into Q4 that we would more invest into the business and try to spend in areas that benefit the following year. And going into Q4, so we manage the margin on the power alignment model, where we consistently recalibrate the revenues with our head cost to our revenue run rate. And coming into Q4, we were pretty much like balanced with that measure and the incremental investments into next year. Going into 2023, we scale as the orders will be deplore revenue as indicated, and we reduce our costs a little bit relative to the revenue growth and manage it through the alignment model.

Greg Bentley: So of course, we don’t reduce our cost. We reduced our rate of increase of our cost in relation to revenue. Maybe I’ll just comment quickly that I’m always confident that we’ll meet our operating margin goal because our operating incentives €“ our operating management has that as a condition for their incentives. Their incentives depend on our ARR growth rate, but our condition on improving operating margins modestly every year. The percentage point is not difficult. Well, it’s difficult, there’s a lot of work that goes into it, but we’ve become confident in and being able to do that. But as you see, we don’t wish that to be based on adjusted EBITDA given its arbitrariness and excluding, for instance, operating depreciation and amortization, which is significant for us now and especially excluding stock-based compensation, which can jump around for arbitrary reasons like elections by executives and so forth.

So Nicholas is delivering these improvements, and I’ll give you the last word, Nicholas on the matter.

Nicholas Cumins: Yes. I will just confirm that we are committed to keep improving our margin.

Greg Bentley: Measured in the right way.

Nicholas Cumins: Exactly.

Andrew DeGasperi: Thank you.

Eric Boyer: Great. The next question is going to come from Matthew Broome from Mizuho.

Matthew Broome: Hi. Thanks for taking y question. I’ll just add my congratulations to Keith and David and best wishes to both for the future. So I guess, firstly, just how did demand trend during the quarter in terms of linearity? And I suppose, given that we’re now sort of two months into the first quarter, is there anything you can say about how usage has been tracking year-to-date?

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