Chegg, Inc. (NYSE:CHGG) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And that is one that we intend to use, that increased messaging in other environments. The environment that I am not – I don’t think will surprise you will be environments like TikTok. So, it might surprise you to know that Chegg produces a lot of videos with TikTok now. The ones that don’t do very well get to 100,000 people, the ones that do very well get to over 1 million people. So, our ability to show the product in video and message it through influencers on college campuses, we think we will expand who is aware of us and what they are aware of us for and that will be the big increase that you see in terms of Chegg’s effort to get the message out once the product is rolled out more fully, which will be next year.

Alex Fuhrman: Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you very much.

Dan Rosensweig: Yes. By the way, we have seen a really positive response from TikTok already. And we have seen really responsible – we have seen the beginning of positive response on conversion for the customers that are getting the new version of Chegg. So, these things are things that we hope to work and expect to work, and we are seeing good first signs of them working.

Operator: Next question, Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Eric Sheridan: Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe two, if I can. One big picture, Dan, how should we be thinking about pricing power longer term with respect to AI? I know there is sort of this debate out there among investors about whether AI is something that is inflationary, deflationary, sort of offense versus defense. So, I would love to think about how you think about AI capabilities feeding back broader to sort of pricing in the platform over the medium to long-term. And then second, more shorter term question, just as we exit this year and go into next year, any updates on your strategy with respect to language and more language capabilities on the platform. Thanks.

Dan Rosensweig: Yes. A lot of really good questions there, let me try to unpack them. So, the first thing is – let me just get to the language one. On the language one, we have said that we acquired Busuu, and the initial execution and integration of Busuu did not go as planned. And we are now seeing that turn around and get into positive territory again. And so that is a really good scenario. There are three places for the language areas to grow. Obviously, we are in Europe where it’s much more prominent direct-to-the-consumer. Believe it or not, B2B on its own and through the partnership with Guild are also growth areas for us as more corporations want English language. And because we have the partnership with Guild, that’s one that we think will continue to expand.

And then the ultimate one is the Premium model in the U.S. All of those things are in flight now. And internally, we expect to see the results of those efforts over the course of this semester and then increasing next year. So, those are also growth opportunities, just like Skills. In fact, we consider language a skill. So, we think that whole category is a growth category for Chegg, even starting now. So, on the ARPU area and pricing power, we have shown that we have pricing power when we rolled out the bundle. We also – last year, when we took the dollar increase, we said that the dollar increase was designed to increase the number of people that took the bundle. So, that actually did so by 5 points or 6 points, which is what our estimate was.

Going forward, I don’t really see charging extra for AI as a good decision for businesses. I think it’s an opportunity for the company to do it better to pick up market share and retain their pricing. And I sit on the Board of Adobe, so we have a lot of these conversations there as well. For Chegg, as I mentioned earlier, I think ultimately we get to one SKU that has all of this, has the academic support, has the Skills pathways and then has the support for the other areas of your life. And I think depending on which of those capabilities you want access to the price point will go up. But there is always got to be, particularly for college students, a smart price point to get them started out. And so I think we see being able to improve ARPU by adding and improving the amount of things that we can provide and the number of people that are willing to pay for the higher SKU once they become Chegg customers.

So, yes, we know we have pricing power. We have taken that power. We could take more of that power now. But the goal is to return to new account growth, which we are getting closer and closer to every day. And so that is more of our primary focus right now than pricing.

Eric Sheridan: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: There are no further questions. I would like to turn the floor over to Dan Rosensweig for closing remarks.

Dan Rosensweig: Yes. Listen, let me start again by thanking Andy. Without his friendship and partnership and leadership, Chegg would not be nearly as successful as it’s been. We love who we serve. We love the ability to serve them and working with Andy has been one of the professional honors of my career. As we go forward, what we realize is the opportunity to do more for students and do it for more students is now opened up again because of AI. And so as we come out of the COVID-accelerated growth rate that was not sustainable, we are hitting that trough, as one of you mentioned earlier, and getting to the point where retention is growing and length of time that people are growing and ARPU is growing, and it really is about adding new accounts.