Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ:QLYS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Sumedh Thakar: Yes. We take that could more or less in line with Q3, so what we tend to look at is, I mean, current billings, we understand is a proxy for bookings performance and there — it tends to be monthly. So where you’re looking at it as of Q2 LTM current billings growth was 11%, Q3 trended up a little bit higher than what we had expected and landing at 12%, and we expect it to be approximately that range ending the year in Q4 for the current billings growth for the full year to be around that 12% range.

Joshua Tilton: Sorry, just to confirm, you expect the — you expect Q4 to land in a way that the LTM current billings growth is in the 12% range?

Sumedh Thakar: Right. So what that basically means is that Q4 around the same like maybe 13% to 14% current billings growth for Q4.

Joshua Tilton: Okay. Super helpful. And then my second question is kind of a follow-up to this, but based off of what you just said, I feel like it’s sort of vertigo the answer. It’s been kind of a weird year. Deals have been delayed. Sales cycles are elongated scrutiny, whatever you want to call it. How do we think about — like how do we think about the quarter’s benefit for maybe some deals that slipped into — from Q1 and Q2 driving some of the strong performance we saw. Would you really characterize that 14% growth as true 3Q performance? Does that make sense?

Sumedh Thakar: Yes. So I think the current billings, what’s really true from our business performance perspective because billings is also impacted by the timing of enforcing. I would point to the LTM growth rate and that fairly reflects it. So as of Q2, it was 11% and Q3 was slightly better at 12%. And we think that, that barely reflects what we’re seeing in the market today, and we don’t see any material improvement for Q4. It will be a large quarter for us. But based on what we see today, we expect continued challenging environment, and we’ll wait to see how that plays out to better understand what we think that we’ll be able to achieve in 2024.

Joshua Tilton: Super helpful. Thank you so much, guys.

Operator: Thank you. And again we have Yun Kim of Loop Capital Markets. Your line is open. Yun Kim, your line is open. [Operator Instructions] The next question will come from the line of Brian Essex of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hey, this is Doug on for Brian. Thank you so much for taking the question. Maybe just one from me. Any details that you can give on net new logo growth in the quarter?

Joo Mi Kim: Net new growth, it did come in better than what we had expected, but it still remains to be challenging. So, our customer count still is kind of flat. And so what we’re trying to do — so instead of for the next year is to make sure that we leverage our channel partnerships, we focus on the new business growth.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question will come from Matt Saltzman of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Matt Saltzman: Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Sumedh, a quick one for you. It’s a bit of a philosophical one. But when you think about the cloud security and CNAP opportunity, there’s a fair amount of debate among security practitioners around what’s the best way to tackle the cloud security issue, whether it’s agent base, whether it’s agentless. I’m just curious if you can talk a little bit about the benefits you see from the agent-based approach that Qualys leads? Thanks.