Chegg, Inc. (NYSE:CHGG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Andrew Brown: Yes, yes. So first thing is we don’t guide to net the paying subscribers to be clear. But it’s what I call subscription maps. We’re in a period right now, the Q2 was a period where it was. And to some extent Q3, where it’s dominated by renewals, which is from prior periods where we had steeper declines in new subscribers. What Dan is talking about is the fact that we’re digging ourselves out of that pool, is improving relative to what we expected. And in fact, when you look at the quarter as a whole, both from a, like Dan said, from a retention standpoint and from a new subscriber standpoint, it was better than we expected. But once again, that’s — it was better.

Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Understood. And then just one more question for me. I think last quarter, you called out areas like Mexico with really high [indiscernible] interests, but low conversion. I’m just curious if there’s any additional initiatives that went in, in the quarter to kind of drive that convert up? Thank you.

Dan Rosensweig: Yes. These are really interesting questions here, which is as we have adjusted the entire company to leverage what AI is capable of doing, the prioritization of the countries hasn’t changed. So Mexico, the Philippines, Canada, Australia, the U.K., Turkey, places like that, remain the places where our initial efforts are focused on. What has changed to the better is what AI allows us to do is do these things better and faster, in some cases, simultaneously. So for example, AI in terms of being able to do instant translation is much better, for us to be able to add localized content faster and less expensive than we would have done before. So we’re really just going to take advantage of what the new capabilities allow us to do on behalf of the studio.

And we’ll continue to do all the price testing that we’ve been doing. But during a slow season, it doesn’t give off the right signal in terms of knowing really what’s going to happen, because particularly, U.S. at high summers, most other places don’t.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Dan Rosensweig for closing comments.

Dan Rosensweig: Yes. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for your questions. We’re really proud of the team and the results. As the information and the awareness of AI evolves and its capabilities evolves, we believe that history is a good guide here, which is the players that have really big brands, really unique and proprietary assets that are valuable, can leverage new technology and new capabilities to the advantage of their customers and therefore, the advantage of their business models. And I think you’re beginning to see that, whether it’s Adobe or Microsoft or Google or ServiceNow or any of these companies that have built really strong relationships and loyalty and expectations of quality with our audiences are going to be able to do things faster and we believe at a lower cost over time and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

So we are excited about the momentum that we are seeing right now. We are going to take things one quarter at a time until we get comfortable that this is sustainable. We expect to return to growth. And as we do, you’ll see the margins continue to improve. We have remained over 30% margins for the last several years, so we have the capital necessary, the business model to get it right and this proprietary data set that others wish to think you can access to that we are not getting it to them. We are going to use it and build our own elements to our advantage. And so the next six months are going to be super exciting for Chegg, and we’re just head down working. So thank you all for joining the call. Enjoy the rest of your summer. Thanks.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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