Franklin Covey Co. (NYSE:FC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Young: One of the significant things in this quarter is that we’re just in a process like everybody else, really reviewing a lot of our expenses and controlling our hiring and just everything that we can control without negatively impacting revenue. So, we had – so our expenses came in quite a bit lower than we anticipated in Q3. And our revenue held up good. Our gross margin held up good, and we had less expenses. So, everything kind of added together, but the expenses were a big part of that.

Dave Storms: Very helpful. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on the quarter.

Paul Walker: Thanks, Dave.

Operator: One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Paris from Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Alex Paris: HI, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I want to also congratulate you on the strong performance in the third quarter and comment that what a difference three months mix, right? Yes, big difference this conference call than last conference call. And the deep snow that we were waiting through seems to have melted a bit here in the spring. So, just kind of trying to ask incremental questions here. You said that – in your prepared comments that the number of All Access Pass clients who renewed or expanded in Q3 was up or consistent with Q2, and you didn’t lose or not renew large clients like you did in Q2. Can you maybe just dive into that a little bit more sequentially? What’s the macro impact on the North American enterprise business?

Paul Walker : Yes. Great question. So, yes, as mentioned, Q2, we had – we had in Q2 with a few – a handful of clients who were some of our – a couple of our larger clients that because of circumstances on their side, weren’t able to renew and that disproportionately weighed on that. We had – we saw much less of that. No big clients like that in Q3, certainly. And so that improved – while client – the percentage of clients retained quarter-to-quarter was roughly the same. But the revenue retained from those clients who renewed was – that percentage was better in the third quarter because, again, we didn’t have a couple of those outlier clients like we did in Q2. And then we’re seeing that trend continue into Q4.

And the trend being the strengthening trend there getting revenue retention back up to levels that were more consistent with what we were seeing in Q1 and throughout last year. And we – the further outlook is that we expect that to continue into the first quarter and beyond.

Alex Paris: Got you. And then you still have hope or expectations that you’ll have the opportunity to win back some of those larger clients that didn’t – weren’t able to renew in Q2?

Paul Walker : 100%. In fact, the ones we’re talking about in Q2, the conversations were we are on their side, we are so disappointed. There are some things going on, and we’re not going to talk about who those clients are. But if you knew them, you would understand why they were in the position they were in, and they have every expectation, so do we that they’ll come back. In fact, we continue to meet with them and have quarterly business reviews. We’re still kind of treating them as if they’re clients. They don’t have access to our products and services, but from a relationship standpoint, we hope and expect that we will win them back. And that’s really the mentality, Alex, we take with all of our clients. We talk about clients for life.