Jeff Cooper: Yes. Look, I mean, we are — we benefit from having a very strong balance sheet. Our customers appreciate these are long-term consequential decisions that our customers are making. So they certainly appreciate seeing a well-capitalized companies that they can partner with. When we talked about this in the past, we’ve talked about what do we really need as a minimum cash balance to support running the operations of the business, and we’ve talked about that kind of in that kind of $400 million to $500 million range. We have been doing some repurchase activity. And then we obviously think over the long-term, we are a logical acquirer in our space. So maintain some cash for strategic cash. That’s how we think about it.
And we’re in an environment now where — we feel very good about where we are in the cloud transition. And so it’s possible that you could see us be a bit more strategic and start thinking about M&A a bit more, although we will continue to be price disciplined and cautious with respect to M&A.
David Unger: Great, congrats. Thank you.
Mike Rosenbaum: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Funk with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Michael Funk: Yes, thank you for the question. And maybe a two-part, if I could. You mentioned earlier that fewer deals slipped into 1Q, and that contributed to the guidance for 1Q. Maybe also, in addition to answer the question, I think anything unique happened there. To talk about the pipeline, size of deals in the pipeline, how far along in the pipeline those deals are? And then how that contributes to the confidence in guidance for the year?
Mike Rosenbaum: Yes, sure. Like we said, it was a very strong close for us in Q4, just relative to the percentages that you would normally expect in terms of deals closing, which validates in a lot of ways, our vision and team and execution. So this is phenomenal. Sometimes, you end up with deals slipping into the first quarter software companies. And when you have a great Q4, you have fewer deals slip into Q1. So that factors slightly into the Q1 perspective, that’s like better news, right? You want to close the deals early, it’s not bad news. Speaking to the pipeline, we are — we have a lot of confidence in the visibility that we have for the fiscal year. The position that we’re in now is only strengthening, as I described in my prepared remarks.
We feel good about the product we’re good about the customer success. We feel good about the track record feel good about the competitive position, all of those things, our point in the right direction. We’ve worked real hard over the past couple of years to drive a more linear business throughout the year. So pulling as much of the deals earlier in the fiscal year as we possibly can. And that also gives us just building confidence, I’d say, in our ability to project how we’re going to do. But the other thing to keep in mind is like there’s a percentage of what we closed that flows into this year’s ARR but a significant amount we closed, like Jeff talked about, flows the ramps into fully ramped ARR over the next few years. I’m increasingly thinking about Guidewire as a multiyear business, and that is the way we transact with our customers.
This is the way we think about investing. This is the way we think about running the company. These are decades long relationships that we’re establishing and the durability of the relationships really speaks to that. And so that’s — it’s like almost like Yes, we’re talk about Q1, we’re also talking about the fiscal year. And then we’re also talking about fiscal year ’25. And that’s why — it’s just — we feel a lot of — we feel a very good sense of confidence in the business and how it’s — how we’re executing right now and why we think it’s appropriate or we think it’s reasonable for us to project that acceleration in ARR in fiscal ’25. So hopefully, that gives you enough of a sense of how confident we are in the business right now.
Michael Funk: It did. Thank you very much.
Mike Rosenbaum: Appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the floor back over to Mike Rosenbaum for any closing comments.
Mike Rosenbaum: I just wanted to say thanks, everybody, for participating in the call today. We — it was an exceptional Q4 for us an exceptional fiscal year. We’re really excited about the prospects of the business going forward. And I just wanted to say, hopefully, we’ll see all of you at our Connections event and Analyst Day that is coming up in November. We’ll see you in Nashville looking forward to hosting everybody and not seeing everybody in person if you can make it. So thanks very much.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
