Freshworks Inc. (NASDAQ:FRSH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brian Schwartz: Thank you for taking my question.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Pat Walravens with JMP Securities.

Patrick Walravens: Great. Thank you and congratulations on the results. So billings growth was 19% in constant currency in Q3 versus 21% in Q1 and Q2. So Dennis, is it fair for us to assess that sales attainment was good in Q3, but maybe not quite as good as in the first half?

Dennis Woodside: So overall, look, we are pleased with the quarter in terms of where we landed. Of course, we kind of — we set high goals for ourselves. And I think we said this at the at the Investor Day, we’re not satisfied with the growth rates that we’re seeing now. We think we can do much better. We’ve got a lot going on to get there. I think the addition of Mika Yamamoto as our new Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, that’s a big add for us because a lot of what we need to do also is in that marketing space. So yes, I mean our aspiration, our goals are to continue to grow the business at rates that are higher than what we’re seeing now, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.

Patrick Walravens: All right. Great. That’s helpful. And then at the Analyst Day, you guys — and I know you’re very specifically not breaking out by segment. But at the Analyst Day, IT was growing in the low 40s and customer service in the low to mid-teens and sales less than 10. Is that still like overall or roughly accurate assessment of the business? Or was there some change?

Dennis Woodside: Yes. So we shared that data at the Analyst Day, specifically to give investors some sense as to the size and scale of the different parts of our business. We don’t intend to update those numbers on a quarterly basis, potentially at a future Investor Day. But broadly speaking, the trends that we — and the data that we shared back in September, the trends that we shared are consistent with what we’ve seen this quarter in Q3 as well.

Patrick Walravens: All right. Great. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Adam Bergere with Bank of America.

Adam Bergere: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. So with the focus on cross-sell, what are some of the biggest initiatives or investments there? And just naturally, what products have you found to be more common pairings that you’re kind of pushing for? Thanks.

Dennis Woodside: Yes, I’ll take that. So I think one of the motions that we highlighted last quarter that started to really help is that IT and ESM. So we’re finding more and more customers are looking to provision a single workflow engine for all of their departments. And often we can turn an IT only discussion into an IT plus, finance plus legal department discussion or we can go back to our customers that are just on ITSM and broaden the discussion to include other departments because we’ve proven that we’ve conserved their IT department. So that’s a real clear motion for us that we’re just making part of how we go to market. You’re seeing on the customer support side, moving customers into bots who previously may not have tried to automate their interactions with their customers.

So we have a natural upsell for customers or that maybe they have fairly rudimentary bots that are just handling a small fraction of their inbound inquiry. There’s an opportunity there to educate them on how to automate more and more interactions with their customers, how to apply AI to those interactions to build bots and that’s actually an upsell opportunity for us because it creates this consumption revenue stream. That’s really where we’re going to be spending a lot of time this quarter and then next year because we have a lot of customers that have sizable consumer bases in particular — this is — in particular B2C, it does apply to B2B as well, but particularly B2C who have not automated as many workflows as they can or they’ve automated only the rudimentary workflows.

AI allows you to automate a lot more. And that, in turn, creates a revenue stream for us. So that’s a little bit of a flavor of the big motions that we’re focused on.

Adam Bergere: Yes. That’s awesome color. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment please. And our final question comes from the line of Taylor McGinnis with UBS.

Taylor McGinnis: Hi. Thank you so much for squeezing me in. Just a question on — you kept the medium — the median of the constant currency revenue guide for 4Q unchanged, but you lowered the high end of the range. So is that a reflection at all of any areas being a tad softer than expected? Perhaps maybe there was something at the end of the quarter. . And if you look at the upside of billings, it was a bit lighter than what we saw last quarter. So maybe that header? I know earlier you mentioned things being more back-end loaded, but maybe you can help us bridge those two metrics. Thanks.

Tyler Sloat: Taylor, this is Tyler. I wouldn’t read too much into it. I think in general, yes, I mean, there is still macro pressures on expansion, right? So we are cautious still. And we — every quarter, we’ve kind of been like that as we go in as we want to see things play out. In terms of the guidance, we are just trying to call it as we see it. On the billing side, we have had this shift to kind of slightly larger deals, but those tend to play annual in advance, which does help your billing cycle. But then again, we still do have a really decent expansion motion and a lot of that’s unpredictable as it comes through based on the proration of those contracts. So I wouldn’t read in too much on the midpoints and whatnot. But going into Q4, I mean, we’re still going to be cautious on the expansion side of it, but new businesses. It came in Q3, the numbers that net adds were good and we just need to execute this quarter.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today’s program. You may now disconnect.

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