NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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David Vogt: Got it. And maybe just a quick follow-up for you, Mike. Just maybe on the currency headwinds, that incremental point or two. I know your business is primarily denominated in dollars. But can you kind of help us understand that transition from negative three to negative four to negative five, the US dollar has weakened a bit as of late. Just kind of want to get a better understanding kind of what’s under the surface there and what’s kind of driving that incremental headwind from an FX perspective? Thanks.

Mike Berry: Yes. Sure, David, happy to. So, the significant foreign currencies we have like most international companies, it’s euro, GBP, yen and Aussie dollar. And what we saw, again, across most of those is August and September was when the dollar was the strongest. So, that’s when the most significant impact hit. That stayed largely through October. Now, what we saw after our quarter ended, is, hey, it got a little bit better in November, the dollar weakened a little bit. Yes, we’ll see if that holds. Everything we’ve put in front of you, we have used FX rates as of the end of October. So, it says a little bit better, that will be good. But making our living betting on FX rates, we’re not going to try that. So we use October rates for the rest of the year.

David Vogt: Yes, that’s helpful. End of the mouth is great. Perfect. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, George.

Mike Berry: Thank you, David.

Operator: Our next question will come from Samik Chatterjee with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Angela Jin: Hi. This is Angela Jin on for Samik Chatterjee. And my first question. So, I think in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that, customer weakness was concentrated in Americas hi-tech and service provider sectors. Can we just dive more into the dynamics of each of your customer vertical/segments. Were there certain ones that held up better, enterprise versus SMB, for example? And what types of specific behaviors or patterns that you see in each vertical?

George Kurian: We don’t have any specific vertical that is a material contribution to our revenue. Let me start there. I think the — what we saw through the quarter was, public sector did well, both in the Americas and internationally. I thought that our European team performed exceptionally well to deliver a strong result in the face of increasing headwinds. And in our outlook for the international markets, we are appropriately cautious about Germany, where our team did phenomenally well in Q2, but there’s just growing pressure economically. I think with regard to the North American market, the midsized enterprise segment team did a good job. We saw good results there. We’re cautious about the potential in that segment, given their historic vulnerability to recession and macro exposure, but our team did well in Q2.

I think the larger enterprise in those specific verticals were the ones where we saw the most substantive change in spending, and we expect them to be cautious go forward. Last year, from a year-on-year compare, last year public — the high tech and service provider and the large enterprise segment did well for us. So this is a year-on-year compare, as well that we are working through.

Angela Jin: Got it. And then for my follow-up, with the cloud ARR target lowered to $700 million, looking ahead to the out year, I’m not asking for you to predict how deep or long a potential downturn could be. But how are you thinking about risk to that $2 billion cloud ARR target by fiscal year ’26. And what gives you confidence that you can accelerate ARR in those out years?

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