DocuSign, Inc. (NASDAQ:DOCU) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Tyler Radke: Okay. Great. And Blake maybe a question for you on free cash flow. So very, very strong here in the quarter relative to consensus expectations. How should we be thinking about just free cash flow for the full year, was there any onetime items in that number? And as you think about next year, what seems to be kind of an increased operational discipline, should we be thinking about free cash flow margins expanding kind of consistently with operating margin expansion. Just anyway to think about that medium-term framework. Thank you.

Blake Grayson: Sure. So, yes, really happy with the $240 million cash flow that was generated this quarter. It’s a combination of just ongoing strong operating results. But we also did have some working capital improvements that impacted that number. When you look at the cash flow statement, you’re going to see there the changes in operating assets and liabilities, and we’ve really had a strong improvement on the collection side on an AR. And so that’s great. And so that it drives it. And then I said this in the prepared remarks, comparing to prior year can be a little tricky because of the ERP transition that happened prior year. So we had a more muted free cash flow generation number. But regardless of that, really excited about the free cash flow we got.

Now to your question on the yield, it was really strong. It was 34%. And while I’m a big fan of the working capital tailwind and I’m really proud of the team for the discipline and the improvements there, that can be something that’s challenging, right, to pile onto every year going forward. There’s always some good working capital improvements you can make. But I think that if you think about this business in the long-term, it’s probably fair to assume that your free cash flow yield trends a lot closer to your operating margin yield. So as long as you make operating margin improvements, you should be able to capture most of that right down to the free cash flow line. But then also in this business, the beauty of this business from a free cash flow perspective is that if you can drive operating margin improvement and you can drive reaccelerated billings growth because of the way our working capital works, your free cash flow generation can really accelerate.

And so like this is a much longer-term period that I’m talking about, but it is the power of this model, which is super exciting. And so I do think, though, like, I mean I think in the span of time, you would think free cash flow yield should trend closer to your operating margin deal that we’ve been. We’ve done better than that and free cash flow pretty significantly better than that in free cash flow this quarter, but it’s mostly on the back of those working capital improvements or not mostly, but a large chunk of it. And so you have to be cautious about assuming that you’re going to expand on those every quarter.

Tyler Radke: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Karl Keirstead from UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Karl Keirstead: Okay. Great. I’d love to go back to the comment when you were describing the puts and takes on the vertical side when you mentioned that FINS felt a little bit more pressured or impacted. Just curious, was that a comment about the more rate sensitive mortgage-related transactions or was that a broader comment on FINS. And I’m wondering if your fourth quarter guidance reflects any anticipation of the FINS vertical stabilizing? Thank you.

Allan Thygesen: Yes. I’ll just start, and Blake, you can add. Look, I think in terms of the mix impact of financial services, I think, that’s mostly behind us, but we have experienced that over the last several years, both on the mortgage side and financial services industry. And we saw some in the smaller banks, for example, that IT spend froze with all the turmoil in the spring, some of the very largest banks have also had particularly aggressive cost management efforts. I’d say, overall, we’ve seen some modest recovery. It’s still growing a little slower than the business overall, but trending better. And we’ll see what happens with interest rates. Our current forecast assumes that macro conditions continue as they are. I recognize there’s optimism they may get better. We’d love that, but we don’t want to move that in our guidance.

Blake Grayson: Yes. Just to follow up. My general philosophy is I don’t make macro forecast as a team because just like I think we joked about it earlier on the call, it’s a hard business to get into. And so we forecast what we see. And so if things were to change one way or the other, we would then have to — we’d speak to that variance.

Karl Keirstead: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Patrick Walravens with JMP Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Patrick Walravens: Great and thank you. Congratulations on the business turning here. It’s great to see. So Allan how is DocuSign’s relationship these days with Salesforce? Historically, I know it’s been really strong. The reason I ask is during Dreamforce. This year, they had a session on Salesforce contracts, and they sort of laid out the road map for Salesforce contracts where they have AI functionality coming in the spring and then obligation management in the summer and then red lining the year after that. So I’m just wondering how are things with Salesforce?