Cellebrite DI Ltd. (NASDAQ:CLBT) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript May 10, 2023

Cellebrite DI Ltd. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.04, expectations were $0.02.

Operator: Welcome to the Cellebrite’s First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. And the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your first speaker today Mr. Andrew Kramer. Mr. Kramer, the floor is yours.

Andrew Kramer: Thank you, Shelby. Good morning, everybody. Cellebrite’s first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. Joining me today are Yossi Carmil, Cellebrite’s CEO; and Dana Gerner Cellebrite’s CFO. There is a slide presentation that accompanies our prepared remarks and you can advance the slides in the webcast viewer to follow our commentary. We will be sure to call out the slide number we were referring to in our remarks. This call is being recorded and a replay of the recording will be made available on our website shortly after the call. Let’s start with slide number 2. A copy of today’s press release and financial statements including the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations the slide presentation all of that is available on the company’s Investor Relations website at investors.cellebrite.com.

Please note that the quarterly financial tables and supplemental data for the first quarter and each quarter for the past two years will be posted to our Investor Relations website after this call concludes. Also unless stated otherwise, our first quarter 2023 financial metrics as well as the financial metrics provided in our outlook that will be discussed on today’s conference call will be on a non-GAAP basis only all historical comparisons over the first quarter of 2022 unless otherwise noted. In addition, please note that the statements made during this call that are not statements of historical facts constitute forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause matters expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements not to occur.

They could also cause the actual results to differ materially from historical results and/or from forecasts. Some of these forward-looking statements are discussed under the heading Risk Factors and elsewhere in the company’s annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 27, 2023. The company does not take — undertake to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. Slide number 3 provides the agenda for today’s call. As you will hear, we are pleased with our Q1 financial performance and strategic progress and we are focused on delivering on our full year 2023 targets. And with that said I’ll now turn the call over to Yossi Carmil, Cellebrite’s CEO.

Yossi Carmil: Thank you, Andy and thank you all for joining us today. As reflected on slide 5 Cellebrite’s first quarter results and KPIs demonstrate a strong start to 2023. The first quarter of 2023 was also marked by Cellebrite continued progress with key strategic initiatives, aimed at advancing innovation and expanding our customers’ relationship. It is really rewarding to see customers increasingly turn to Cellebrite for powerful digital intelligence software solutions that will help them modernize their investigative workflow. This is translating into higher usage for our Collect and Review solutions and increasing traction for additional growth engines like our Investigative Analytics and our Case and Evidence Management offerings all of which is helping grow wallet share within our installed customer base and capture new logos.

As a result, we move forward with a solid momentum in a healthy marketplace. Before I share some observations about our market positioning, highlights from the quarter, the market environment and our outlook for the remainder of 2023, I will briefly review our first quarter results and other select metrics. The Q1 revenue of $71.2 million grew 14% over the prior year with subscription software revenue growing 27%. Our ARR grew 30% to $261 million. We delivered another quarter with dollar-based NRR greater than 120%. We closed 21 large deals each valued at greater than US$0.5 million. We reported Q1 adjusted EBITDA of $7.3 million for a margin of 10% and non-GAAP EPS of $0.03. And we generated more than $12 million in cash from operations and ended Q1 with cash and investments totaling just over $221 million and no outstanding debt.

Turning to slide 6. Cellebrite is recognized by public and private sector customers, industry experts and investors as a market leader in digital intelligence software solution. The cornerstone of our business continues to be our Collect and Review offerings that are trusted by customers around the globe to lawfully extract, decode and revenue and review digital evidence. Now these offerings which represent more than 80% of Q1 2023 revenue are augmented by our Investigative Analytics and Case and Evidence Management solutions which are still at the early stage of customer adoption. In addition to these offerings, we deliver high-value professional services including training, certification and advanced services that customers use to reduce their backlog of devices by outsourcing digital evidence collection to our experts.

During the first quarter, we executed well on our product road maps and go-to-market initiatives. In collect and review, the substantial investments we’ve made in recent years to expand our mobile research capabilities continue to pay off. Earlier this spring, we delivered an industry-first capability on our premium solution for the latest iPhone and iOS version. Our leadership in iPhone and iOS is complemented by our extensive coverage of Android-based smartphones, which command more than 70% of the global smartphone market. Looking ahead, we are also excited about our near-term plans to further elevate the value proposition of UFED, our basic collect and review offering used by tens of thousands of examiners around the globe. In terms of other notable development progress, we continue to enhance our Physical Analyzer and Pathfinder investigative analytics by leveraging our ongoing investment in artificial intelligence to further differentiate these offerings.

These solutions enable law enforcement professionals to quickly leverage powerful, timely insights into digital evidence, automate time-consuming of the manual tasks and advance investigation faster and more efficiently. We’ve also continued to advance Guardian, our SaaS-based platform for case management and evidence management. From a go-to-market perspective, we are gaining solid momentum. The actions we took last year to enhance our strategic accounts management in EMEA in the USA as well bring in new private sector sales leadership are making a tangible difference in closing new business and building a stronger high-quality pipeline of opportunities. This is reflected in several ways. Our first quarter NRR of 128% was the 17th consecutive quarter above 120%.

Revenue in the Americas grew 20% while revenue in EMEA increased 14% its best quarter of top line expansion in the past year. Our flagship collect and review suite of solutions UFED Premium and Physical Analyzer were at the foundation of the vast majority of our Q1 large deals as expected. The two-thirds of these large deals included more than our mobile data forensic solutions such as Computer, Cloud Data Collection, Pathfinder and Guardian, as well as training and advanced services. We’re also pleased to out that our revenue growth rate within the private sector has accelerated into the high teens. And we are moving forward focused on driving further enterprise expansion through our direct sales, our service provider channels and other high-value partnerships.

Our ARR growth of 30% primarily reflects our success in expanding wallet share with existing customers. Geographically, we continue to produce significant ARR expansion in the Americas led by continued strength in our US state and local government sales group. We achieved this ARR growth even as we have stopped our new sales activities in dozens of countries as part of our ongoing commitment to operate our business with the highest ethical and professional standards. Dana will share additional insights on this topic in a moment. Moving to slide 7. I will highlight several Q1 deals that best demonstrates our R&D and go-to-market progress and success. In Latin America, we are helping a large national agency evolve and upgrade their mode of operation in the face of more crime that involves digital evidence including financial crimes.

This customer is now benefiting from expanded premium licensing, as well as Guardian and Pathfinder. Just as, noteworthy, this is the first customer in this region to use our digital intelligence offering that integrates cryptocurrency data and insights. With this deal these customers’ ARR increased substantially by 13 times to $1.6 million. In our USA state local government accounts there were two notable Q1 wins that showcase our ongoing success in growing our wallet share with police department serving midsized cities. Now in both cities violent crime especially homicides have been on the rise. So to help law enforcement move faster both customers not only added Premium, but they also began deploying Pathfinder to accelerate the investigations in Guardian to securely share digital evidence among examiners, investigators and prosecutors.

ARR for one of these customers increased by four times to nearly $600,000 and the other customer is also a great example of our success in harvesting smaller long-tail prime accounts. Now with this deal in place, ARR for this customer increased by over 10 times to just under $300,000. We were also pleased to see that a specialist intelligence agency in Western Europe expanded its use of our Premium solution nationwide, while also renewing the licenses for our other collect and review to accelerate their cyber investigation and safeguard their citizens. As a result, these customers ARR increased by over 60% to $1.2 million. And last in the private sector, there were two notable deals in Q1 with our service provider partners, who typically generate approximately half of our quarterly enterprise revenue.

One service provider in a Central European country made its initial purchase of Mobile Elite, our on-prem enterprise solutions for collecting digital evidence from advanced smartphones. And other service providers West Coast office, made its first purchase of our Endpoint Inspector software for remote data collection. We believe that the breadth and depth of our product portfolio for the private sector, leaves us well-positioned to continue expanding our service provider relationship going forward. So turning to slide 8. We moved into the second quarter with solid momentum in a healthy marketplace that is benefiting from multiple tailwinds. With 90% of criminal cases involving a digital element law enforcement agencies are increasingly recognizing that they must modernize their investigative workflow and evolve their current mode of operation.

Our own industry research masked late last year as for the support to this. And here are some additional facts. Most law enforcement professionals and prosecutors believe that digital evidence is more important than physical evidence and DNA to successfully prosecute cases. Approximately two-thirds of all phones entering the lab are locked. Nearly 75% of agency managers agree that there is a growing technology skill gap in policing making it even tougher for police forces to collect, manage, analyze store and use the digital evidence required to win conviction. And last, as it relates to digital transformation almost half of the police chiefs and agency managers describe current strategies as poor to mediocre. Slide 9 addresses our outlook.

More specifically, based on our performance to-date and the opportunities we see going forward, we believe we are on a track to deliver on our 2023 financial targets. I would like to close by reiterating that Cellebrite made important strategic progress during the first quarter and executed well against the top priorities that we outlined on our last quarter’s call. Now these include bringing impactful innovation to the marketplace, extending our Collect & Review leadership and broadening our reach into new buying centers that can benefit from our high-value investigative analytics and powerful case management solution. Our team remains very enthusiastic about the company’s prospects in 2023 and beyond and we work together to deliver powerful digital intelligence solutions that will help our customers around the globe to protect and save lives accelerate justice and ensure data privacy.

And with that said, I will ask Dana to begin her financial review. Dana, please?

Dana Gerner: Thank you, Yossi. Let’s begin a review on slide 11. Total revenue of $71.2 million for the first quarter was up 14%. This was driven primarily by 27% growth in subscription revenue. As detailed on this slide, 86% of our total quarterly revenue came from software subscriptions, up from 77% one year ago. Slide 12 details our ARR growth, which is an important forward-looking KPI for Cellebrite sales momentum and the trajectory of future revenue. As Yossi noted, ARR grew 30% year-on-year, reaching $261 million at the end of Q1, primarily as a result of continued expansion with existing customers. Within this category, we produced strong ARR growth for our Collect & Review solutions mainly due to further penetration of Premium into our installed base.

This expansion is augmented by faster growth from our Pathfinder investigative analytics and Guardian case management solutions albeit on a much smaller basis. And I’d like to briefly elaborate on churn, which reflects the impact of license reductions and cancellations. Churn was 10% in the first quarter, up to approximately two percentage points of the churn is directly tied to erosion from customers in countries where we have discontinued new sales activities and are no longer pursuing license renewals. We anticipate that the impact from voluntary churn will likely remain at the current levels throughout 2023 and gradually lessen as we move into the latter part of 2024. Slide 13 details the historical trends for our non-GAAP gross margins and non-GAAP operating expenses, which exclude share-based compensation amortization of intangible assets and acquisition-related expenses.

Our first quarter 2023 gross margin was 83.1%, which was up slightly from 82.8% in the same period one year ago. Our gross margin performance in Q1 reflects the positive impact from the sustained growth we have delivered in higher margin future sales. In terms of operating expenses, first quarter operating expenses were $53.5 million, which reflects disciplined spending, lower headcount on our personnel costs and to a lesser extent favorable changes in foreign exchange rates. We ended March with 973 employees, down 3% from Q4 and up 6% from the same period last year. We expect headcount to return to year-end 2022 levels over the next quarter or two. Turning to slide 14. Our adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $7.3 million or 10.3% on a margin basis.

This was due to the combination of a strong revenue performance and disciplined spending. Those same factors contributed to non-GAAP operating income of $5.7 million. Non-GAAP net income in Q1 was $6.9 million and non-GAAP fully diluted EPS was $0.03. I am pleased with our cash generation to start the year. We generated cash from operations in the first quarter of $12.5 million, due primarily to our strong operating results and excellent collection efforts. We finished the first quarter with $221.2 million of cash, cash equivalents and investments up $15.4 million from the end of 2022, despite meaningful cash outflows associated with annual bonus payments, fourth quarter commissions and $6 million for the final payment associated with the company’s acquisition of BlackBag Technologies in early 2020.

Let’s move to slide 15. Based on our results thus far, and the opportunities ahead of us, we are on track to achieve our original financial outlook for 2023, and reiterate our full year 2023 guidance, which is displayed on this slide. In terms of ARR, we expect ongoing convergence between our subscription revenue and our ARR growth rate as we move through the rest of the year. On a related note, we expect that our total revenue growth rate will continue to lever subscription revenue growth rate, due to stronger growth in professional services and the expected decline for other nonrecurring revenue as our perpetual license revenue has now reached relatively insignificant levels. In closing the two week, Cellebrite is off to a strong start in 2023.

We have continued to deliver compelling innovation to the marketplace which has been critical for sustaining our commercial progress in expanding wallet share within existing accounts and winning new customers. We also demonstrated our commitment to convert solid revenue growth into improved profitability even as we made meaningful strategic investments to expand our business and deliver value to customers. While it is still early in the year, we move forward on track to achieve our 2023 financial targets. We are confident that executing on our plans over the coming quarters will drive value creation for shareholders, customers, partners and employees. That concludes our prepared remarks, and I’ll return the call back to our operator for Q&A.

Q&A Session

Operator: The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] We’ll take our first question from Jonathan Ho with William Blair.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Tal Liani with Bank of America.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Doug Bruehl with JPMorgan.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Jamie Shelton with Deutsche Bank.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll take our next question from Louie DiPalma with William Blair.

Operator: This concludes the Q&A portion of today’s call. I would now like to turn the floor over to Cellebrite CEO, Yossi Carmil for additional or closing remarks.

Yossi Carmil: Okay. So thank you again everyone for joining us. Thank you for the questions. And thank you, especially, for the Cellebrite employees for a great Q1 and good luck to us in the rest — for the rest of the year. Thank you. Have a great day.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s Cellebrite first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.