Duolingo, Inc. (NASDAQ:DUOL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Luis von Ahn: Okay. Well in terms of adding content to keep things like chess, things like games, you’re unlikely — for one, you’re unlikely us to do that. For one, in the next – again, in the short to medium term we’re not going to be adding more subjects other than math and music, because we want to make those really succeed. But in the long term, just me personally and I think that’s true for a lot of people that work at Duolingo, we’re just a lot more interested in pure education. And so that’s — there’s nothing wrong with teaching how to play chess or games or anything like that. I love that. I love chess, but it’s just — I think we’re a lot more interested in just kind of pure education. That’s probably, where you’re going to see. For the second question, I’ll let Matt take that one.

Matthew Skaruppa: Yes. So as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, Mark, the beauty of our growth has been broad-based. So when you look at kind of the with the biggest MAU or DAU around the world, can you try to see user growth has been DAU growth has been around 60% for the past several quarters, what’s the variation? Like is the US growing fast, it’s growing close to average. And then there’s other companies that are growing above average, but it’s broad-based. It’s around the world. So the user growth is really — it’s super geographically diverse, and we’re glad about that. In terms of subscribers, we look at where our subscriber growth is coming from and it hasn’t changed. I mean, every quarter the stack rank of countries kind of fluctuates every, so little bit. But it’s not really fundamentally changed over the past couple of quarters. So, that’s why we mentioned, we felt like the user growth has been broad-based and high quality. So, we feel good about it.

Mark Mahaney: And then maybe one question, just on the level of investments going forward. You’re obviously, ramping up margins very aggressively. That sounds — that is fundamentally a good thing. Just kind of addressed like the — is there any risk, that you just have a lack of investment opportunities? I don’t know that doesn’t sound right, but — how are you balancing — like you’re ramping up profitability? How are you balancing that with kind of the need for whatever to invest in Duolingo for the next three to five years?

Matthew Skaruppa: Yes. I think, it’s great question. I’m sure Luis, has some thoughts as well. But just from the raw mechanics of the math, we mentioned on the last call that I think it’s — if you look at other tech companies that certainly ones that we respect, and that you guys follow. In their first year of real profitability, they typically see a pretty big jump, in profit margin. And then they see steady progress towards their long-term margin. That’s kind of, what we expect. As we said on the last call, is what we expect on this call. And while we’ve been doing this path towards increased profitability this year, we’ve been hiring and we’ve been investing in the product and the business. So I think we feel good about our balancing long-term growth, with long-term profitability over time.

And so I think Luis mentioned on the last — one of the last questions, the gating factor so far has not been investment in our product cycle our product journey. I don’t Luis, if you have anything else to add to that?

Luis von Ahn: Matt, will not let us eat lobster every day anymore, and we’re upset about that. I’m kidding.

Matthew Skaruppa: We’ve always made the business, with the cost discipline it turns out.

Luis von Ahn: I’m kidding. No, I mean just generally, I don’t think that we’ve been really — there has never been a product initiative that we haven’t done, because we can’t hire the people. There’s been — we have not done it, because we don’t think it’s a good idea or because we don’t think we’re ready to do it, et cetera. So I think we keep investing really well, at least in R&D.

Mark Mahaney: Okay. Thank you, Luis. Thank you, Matt.

Deborah Belevan: Next question comes from Curtis Nagle at BofA.

Curtis Nagle: Awesome. Thanks very much for taking the question. So, Luis I thought you made kind of an interesting point in terms of the free-to-pay conversion in some of the regions. I think it was last call you talked about how it can be very difficult to drive that whether you’re lower prices or whatever you’re trying to do. So, obviously, something changed. So, it’d be great just to hear a little bit more about I guess how you cracked that egg and just what led to some success in this quarter?

Matthew Skaruppa: Yes. So, Curtis I think I’m the one who said that in my prepared remarks. And the answer is going to be one that you’re going to get used to us hearing which is — it’s actually not one thing. It’s a bunch of experiments that we’ve been running around the world to understand how that free-to-pay conversion can increase. In this particular quarter one of the things we did was we optimized how we’re showing what we call the hook to go from free-to-pay. So, the kind of internal Super Ad that says, would you like to try Duolingo? We optimize that in a bunch of markets around the world changed the language a little bit made it more local, more colloquial. And that was a big win. But again that’s one of many wins across the quarter. So, that’s really what drove it over the past kind of three, four months. Luis I don’t know if you have anything else.

Luis von Ahn: Yes, that’s a generally a lot of — we have teams exactly dedicated to getting more people to subscribe.

Curtis Nagle: Okay, makes sense. And then Matt just a quick follow-up. So, I heard correctly dilution I think 1 to 1.5. I think that was brought down by 2. So just I guess what’s the delta?

Matthew Skaruppa: Yes, it’s come down in part because we — when we made our plans for the full year and guided to that 2% range. We’ll probably hire end up hiring a couple of fewer people this year. But then the other thing is that’s on a treasury stock method, so if the share price goes, up, amount of shares we grant over the course of the year goes down. So, those are the two factors, nothing crazy.

Curtis Nagle: Okay. Thanks very much.

Deborah Belevan: Your next question comes from Chris Kuntarich at UBS.