PROS Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:PRO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Andres Reiner: Yes, Scott. Great question. And obviously, look, we don’t comment on rumors or market speculation, but what we can tell you is that we are laser-focused on executing our goal of being a Rule of 40 company by 2026. We believe we’re in a very strong market position, a leader in our space, $38 billion TAM, and we’ve proven that we’re executing really well on our land realize and expand strategy. So we feel we have a great opportunity to drive pretty significant shareholder returns. So I think we feel we’re in a great place and we’re just focused on executing.

Scott Berg: Great. Thank you. And then, from a follow-up perspective, Stefan, you beat all profitability metrics pretty handily in the quarter. Looks like your sales and marketing expense was down quarter-over-quarter more than kind of the historical seasonal nature. I guess anything driving that in particular and my guess is, we should probably be thinking of sales and marketing being at a higher rate here starting in Q4 going forward.

Stefan Schulz: Yes. Scott, I think your assumption about it going up again is a good one. The reason for the sequential decline from Q2 to Q3 had really to do with our outperform event. So a lot of resources go towards that event, not only just the third-party fees and the direct fees associated with it, but there’s a lot of indirect fees that go to support that event. And so you saw that plus a couple of other events that occurred in the second quarter, and we didn’t have as much in the third quarter. So that’s the real big reason behind seeing that type of a movement. So again, to your point, I think going forward; you’ll see that number start to rebound a bit.

Scott Berg: Great. That’s all I have. Thanks for taking my questions.

Andres Reiner: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Parker Lane with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Parker Lane: Yes. Hi, guys, appreciate taking the questions here. First one’s for you, Andres. You’re exposed to a lot of different industries out there. I’d be really curious to hear with the prioritization of AI and being the subject that everyone’s really concerned about. Are there any particular verticals where you’re seeing the greatest prioritization of AI or the budgets actually being a little bit more substantial than average?

Andres Reiner: Yes, Parker, great question. What I would tell you is while we’re seeing industries that are being impacted, that maybe their performance not well, we’re not seeing the de-prioritization of our initiatives. So broadly, we’re seeing very strong industry interests across. And I think the importance of AI and digitization of sales and driving the right price guidance in this high volatility environment is continuing to resonate. And I think I said it all along at the beginning, I think it was very important for us to be able to land small, be able to measure the uplift in ROI, get to value quickly and us executing to that has clearly demonstrated. I think the visibility of AI and the importance of AI has only increased.

And I would say we’re seeing that more and more interest of adopting or Gen IV dynamic pricing algorithms or next-generation of dynamic pricing for revenue management and travel solutions, digitization of the customer experience and travel in those areas. So overall, I would tell you we feel pretty good about the market environment right now.

Parker Lane: Understood. Yes, I appreciate that. And then, Stefan, for you, I know you’ve oriented investors and us on the sell side here around ARR as the core metric, but wanted you to touch on RPO if you could a little bit. And when should we expect sort of a normalization in that metric? I saw it’s declined here a couple of quarters.