ServiceNow, Inc. (NYSE:NOW) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

ServiceNow, Inc. (NYSE:NOW) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript January 24, 2024

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Terrell and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 2023 ServiceNow Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Darren Yip, Vice President of Investor Relations. Darren, the floor is yours.

Darren Yip: Good afternoon and thank you for joining ServiceNow’s fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me are Bill McDermott, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Gina Mastantuono, our Chief Financial Officer; and CJ Desai, our President and Chief Operating Officer. During today’s call, we will review our fourth quarter 2023 results and discuss our guidance for the first quarter and full year 2024. Before we get started, we want to emphasize that the information discussed on this call, including our guidance, is based on information as of today and contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. We undertake no duty or obligation to update such statements as a result of new information or future events.

Please refer to today’s earnings press release and our SEC filings, including our most recent 10-Q and 2022 10-K for factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. We’d also like to point out that we present non-GAAP measures in addition to and not as a substitute for financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, all financial measures and related growth rates we discuss today are non-GAAP except for revenues, remaining performance obligations, or RPO, current RPO, and cash and investments. To see the reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP measures, please refer to today’s earnings press release and investor presentation, which are both posted on our website at investors.servicenow.com.

A replay of today’s call will also be posted on our website. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Bill.

Bill McDermott: Thank you, Darren and thank you very much everyone for joining today’s call. ServiceNow closed an outstanding 2023 with a beyond expectations Q4. Here’s the state of our business. Artificial intelligence is injecting new fuel into our already high-performing growth engine. The company’s Q4 results tell that story. Subscription revenue grew by 25.5% at constant currency, that’s 200 basis points above the high end of our guidance. cRPO growth is 23% at constant currency, also 200 basis points above our guidance. Operating margin was over 29%, that’s approximately 200 basis points above our guidance. We had 168 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV, up from 126 a year ago, a 33% increase. ServiceNow’s Q4 performance is packed with milestones spanning the full breadth of our portfolio.

With technology, customer, and creator, we now have three workflow businesses over $1 billion in ACV. We have 11 individual product lines with north of $250 million in ACV. ITSM, ITOM, and ITAM, each had double-digit deals over $1 million in Q4. Security and risk combined for 12 of the top 20 with nine deals over $1 million. Customer, Employee, and Creator workflows, each had double-digit deals over $1 million. Our large new logo count continued to accelerate in Q4. We had a record 10 new customers signing deals over $1 million in NNACV, including a $10 million win with a very large global financial services firm, which is our largest new customer logo in history. Global iconic brands such as Chipotle, Air France, TIAA, NTT, Data Group Corporation, and Busch are digitally transforming with ServiceNow.

We are proud that TIAA, one of our first 10 customers, is still expanding their business with us through new out-of-the-box functionality so they can accelerate time-to-market. Following a record Q3, public sector continued its strong growth in Q4 with key wins including in the United States Army, US Postal Service, and Australian Department of Defense Digital Delivery Group. We are extremely proud to have finished 2023 operating at the rule of 55 plus. As you’ll hear from Gina, our 2024 guidance reflects our ongoing belief and ServiceNow’s strategic relevance. Our core business is rock solid and growing. Our perimeter is growing. Our platform adoption is growing. We are, in fact, in a new era of business transformation powered by AI. This is unlocking massive opportunity in the enterprise software industry.

And ServiceNow is extremely well-positioned, not only to lead this movement, but to define it. 2023 was the latest successful milestone on this journey and we intend to make 2024 an even greater success. To say we’re fired up would be an understatement. Let’s spend some time framing the dimensions of this new AI world. Gartner estimates $5 trillion in tech spending in 2024, growing to $6.5 trillion by 2027. That means that spending will grow another $1 trillion in only two years, accelerating from the decade plus it took for us to get to $5 trillion. For the first time in a decade, IT services will become bigger than communication services in 2024. Gartner estimates that by 2027, nearly all of the growth in worldwide IT spending will come from software and IT services.

And when you drill deeper into the Gartner forecast between 2023 and 2027, $3 trillion will be spent on AI. What we have here is a strong, durable market being supercharged by a once-in-a-generation secular trend. ServiceNow has been investing, innovating and preparing for this wave for years, which is why we’re catching it so early. We have a long track record of commercializing breakthrough technologies. When our Pro SKUs were introduced, we saw very exciting traction and customer adoption. Our Pro Plus offerings, which we launched just four months ago with our Vancouver release, are outperforming the pace of the Pro upgrade cycle. Exciting. The results in our first full quarter since launch validate this trajectory. Siemens AG is using Now Assist for HR service delivery to resolve HR cases faster for its entire global workforce.

This is one example of many and as always, ServiceNow’s strength and our capacity to deploy net new innovation, especially our ambitious Gen AI road map. In Q4, we released significant new capabilities, Virtual Agent Update drives faster issue resolution through advanced conversational AI chat. Employees get the immediate answers they need. Businesses get higher self-solve rates, and it only takes 15 minutes to set it up. Our text to workflow capability dramatically increases developer productivity. ServiceNow’s developers have been using text to code for several months. They are generating high-quality code using text to describe the type of code they want. This has increased our developer innovation speed by 52%. Now Assist for field service management reduces cost, while increasing revenue by helping technicians get the job done in the first visit; identifying the necessary equipment, providing repair recommendations, and automating follow-up at speed.

Beyond the platform itself, we see AI as a 360-degree strategic imperative. It’s why ServiceNow joined the AI Alliance to advance open, safe, and responsible AI. It’s also why we are continuing to grow our strategic partnerships to ensure every enterprise can use AI as the cornerstone of business transformation. Today, we expanded our strategic alliance with EY to co-create solutions for generative AI governance for our customers. And of course, EY will also be using ServiceNow’s generative AI capabilities to enhance experiences for all of their employees. We also unveiled another major expansion to our partner program, the latest addition in a series of investments as partners are building new business models on the ServiceNow platform. These are two examples of many.

I’ve told ServiceNow’s team worldwide that the company is now moving into Phase 5. The culmination of our long-term goal of surpassing $10 billion in ACV, which incidentally only a handful of software companies have ever achieved. We have so much runway ahead for the long-term growth of this company. There are two key elements of our strategy, execution and scale. Execution, we know is an art form. Scale is all about capitalizing on new opportunities as a truly global platform company. One of those in our market making alliance was Visa. Today, ServiceNow and Visa announced a five-year strategic alliance to transform payment service experiences. In the initial phase of the alliance, the companies will launch ServiceNow Disputes Management built with Visa, a single connected solution for dispute resolution.

This Gen AI-powered solution will offer end-to-end dispute resolution for customers globally, everything from the first indication of a questionable charge through early investigation to final resolution. Another example is our growing partnership with AWS. Beginning this month, ServiceNow will be available as a SaaS offering in the AWS marketplace. From an automation perspective, we have long believed that identifying legacy process challenges is an active stimulant for new workflows. That’s the beauty of our platform. The architecture gives us limitless ways to accelerate speed to value for our customers. And the more workflows we drive, the more value we create. That’s why we tucked in UltimateSuite, a task mining company to enhance intelligent automation across the Now platform.

If we can help customers find it, ServiceNow can fix it. And we fix it in complete harmony with any existing software landscape, delivered in a consumer-grade user experience. CEOs don’t want to wait another decade for technology to finally deliver on its promise. One told me, I’m tired of excuses coming into my boardroom. We need new innovation and new experiences, and we need it now. That’s obviously music to our ears and nicely on brand for ServiceNow. There’s plenty more to discuss about the company we are building and the progress we’re making. We have more accolades than time to listen to them. Top analyst firms ranked ServiceNow as a leader in 14 separate reports in 2023 for our automation and AI capabilities. Glassdoor’s recent US Best Places to Work lists ServiceNow as Number Three overall and Number One in software.

One of our proudest achievements is the American Opportunity Index. This index is databased. They study what really happens to employees at America’s largest companies over time. ServiceNow scored Fifth, and that’s out of 400 companies overall and ServiceNow was the Number One technology company on the index. That means that people who have fought hard to build a great company are being rewarded with a great life. This all means so much to us because culture is the glue that binds a winning team together. We have world-class professionals at ServiceNow who care deeply about our customers and our partners. Since Fred Luddy invented the company, we’ve all made our contributions to help ServiceNow emerge as the hungry and humble winner it is. We believe in our platform.

We stick together and we try to have some fun along the way too. That’s why the results show up the way they do. It’s also why over 1 million people applied to work here last year. To all of our shareholders who continue to invest your trust and ServiceNow, we thank you, and we’ve got you back. We’re building a masterpiece here, and we’re only getting started. 2024 will show that we’re putting AI to work for the world because now, as ever, the world works with ServiceNow. I look forward to the questions and the discussion we’ll have shortly. In the meantime, I’d like to turn the call over to our outstanding Chief Financial Officer, Gina.

Gina Mastantuono: Thank you, Bill. Happy New Year to all of you who are listening in. Q4 was another exceptional quarter to conclude what has been a phenomenal year. Once again, we exceeded our topline growth and operating margin guidance metrics, showcasing our team’s relentless focus on execution. ServiceNow’s agility in responding to enterprise needs has solidified our position as the trusted intelligent platform for driving digital transformation. In Q4, subscription revenues were $2.365 billion, growing 25.5% year-over-year in constant currency, exceeding the high end of our guidance range by 200 basis points. We closed out 2023 with $8.68 billion in subscription revenues, also representing 25.5% constant currency growth.

All organic at a scale that hasn’t been accomplished by any other enterprise software company. RPO ended the quarter at approximately $18 billion representing an acceleration to 27.5% year-over-year constant currency growth. cRPO was $8.6 billion, representing 23% year-over-year constant currency growth, a 200 basis point beat versus our guidance. From an industry perspective, energy and utilities, business and consumer services, and education were particularly robust in the quarter. Government control continued to show impressive growth and Telecom, Media, and Technology also saw strength. As Bill noted, I’m pleased to announce that customer workflows crossed $1 billion in ACV in Q4 fast following our Creator Workflows, which hit that momentous milestone in just Q3.

We now have three workflow categories generating over $1 billion in ACV, highlighting the breadth of our portfolio. Our renewal rate was a best-in-class 99% in Q4, continuing to demonstrate the strategic relevance of the Now platform as it remains a mission-critical part of our customers’ operations. We ended the year with over 8,100 customers with our focus on landing the right new customers continuing to bear fruit as large new logo growth accelerated for the fourth consecutive quarter. We ended Q4 with 1,897 customers paying us over $1 million in ACV. We closed 168 deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV in the quarter, a 33% increase year-over-year, that includes five deals over $10 million. And for the full year 2023, we saw an approximate 30% increase in deals greater than $1 million in net new ACV.

In Q4, our Gen AI products drove the largest net new ACV contribution for our first full quarter of any of our new product family releases ever, including our original Pro SKU. Turning to profitability, non-GAAP operating margin exceeded 29%, approximately 200 basis points above our guidance, driven by the topline outperformance and disciplined spend management. Our free cash flow margin was 55%, up 250 basis points year-over-year. For the full year 2023 operating margin was 28% and free cash flow margin was 30%. Total free cash flow for 2023 was a robust $2.7 billion. We ended the year with a healthy balance sheet, including $8.1 billion in cash and investments. In Q4, we repurchased 400,000 shares as part of our share repurchase program with the primary objective of managing the impact of dilution.

As of the end of the quarter, we have $962 million remaining of the original $1.5 billion authorization. Together, these results continue to demonstrate our ability to drive a strong balance of world-class growth, profitability, and shareholder value. Moving to our guidance. We are raising our 2024 outlook to reflect the strong momentum with which we exited 2023. This partially reflects the early success we’ve seen with our Gen AI products as those investments are accelerating the build of our already robust pipeline with customers lining up to be first movers in this next wave of business transformation. As always, we continue to be prudent around our assumptions for incremental customer budgets and the macro cost in our guidance. With that in mind, let’s turn to 2024 guidance.

We are raising our subscription revenue outlook by $165 million at the midpoint to a range of $10.555 billion to $10.575 billion, representing 21.5% to 22% year-over-year growth or 21.5% on a constant currency basis. We expect subscription gross margin of 84.5%, reflecting investments in our data centers and emerging growth opportunities, offset by 100 basis point benefit from a change in useful life of our data center equipment from four to five years resulting from an assessment completed earlier this month. We’re also raising our full year operating margin target from 28% to 29%, driven by continued OpEx efficiencies. We expect free cash flow margin of 31%, up 50 basis points year-over-year, overcoming an incremental point of cash tax headwinds.

Finally, we expect GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares of 208 million. For Q1, we expect subscription revenues between $2.510 billion and $2.515 billion, representing 24% to 24.5% year-over-year growth or 23.5% to 24% on a constant currency basis. We expect cRPO growth of 20% on both a reported and constant currency basis. This reflects the tremendous strength of our federal business, which has resulted in a higher mix of 12-month contracts that will create a negative 150 basis point impact to Q1 cRPO growth. We expect that these contracts will renew in Q3 as ServiceNow’s federal contract renewal rates are 99%. We expect an operating margin of 29%. Finally, we expect 208 million GAAP diluted weighted average outstanding shares for the quarter.

In summary, ServiceNow’s Q4 outperformance is another example of the strength of our platform and our people. This team’s amazing accomplishments in 2023 set the stage for continued success in 2024. ServiceNow is positioned as the intelligent platform for end-to-end digital transformation, has gained momentum throughout the year, leaders are shifting their investments into proven strategic platforms that leverage the power of AI to deliver growth across the top and bottom lines, with customers prioritizing quick time to value the Now Platform delivers. The accelerating pace of investment in workflow automation and interest in Gen AI positions us well on our journey to becoming the defining enterprise software company of the 21st century. Bill, CJ, and I would like to extend our gratitude to all our employees worldwide for their outstanding contributions to ServiceNow’s success this past year.

2023 was a remarkable year, and we look forward to an even more exciting 2024. With that, I’ll open it up for Q&A.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Brad, your line is open.

Brad Zelnick: Great. Thanks very much and congrats on an amazing finish to 2023. Bill, it’s clear that Now platform is a destination of choice for enterprise AI and modern digital workflows. But I’d love to hear your view of the environment versus what you see is Now specific. It would be great if maybe you can share a bit about close rates, sales rep participation rates or even the net new ACV performance as you did last year, just to help us contextualize how it’s going out there. Thanks.

Bill McDermott: Yes, Brad, thank you very much for the question. Things are going very well out there, and the momentum is terrific. What’s really happening and I can say this after 186 CEO meetings in the last six months, the CEOs are now getting very involved with the Gen AI revolution. They realize there has to be architectural adjustments to their environment and the manner in which they manage their data and the platforms they’re beholden to actually take advantage of Gen AI. And if you think about the half a century mess that exists out there with legacy systems, in many cases, multiples of the same system, we have one unifying force in these conversations, which is the Now platform because we cooperate with the complexity of this landscape without putting people in a position to rip and replace.

So, they’re looking for platforms that matter. We’re one of those and I think as Gina said, we are the intelligent platform for end-to-end digital transformation. When you have that C-level executive meeting, they really get it now and with regard to Gen AI, the momentum is outstanding. As I said, that SKU has outsold any other new introduction we put into the marketplace. So, there’s a real appetite to invest in Gen AI, and there’s no price sensitivity around it because the business cases are so unbelievable. I mean if you’re improving productivity, 40%, 50%, it just sells itself. So, I think we’re in a really, really good place. The Gen AI investments are coming. We’re actually getting orders because we have great product, thanks to CJ and his unbelievable engineering team.

So, I would tell you at this time last year, compared to this time this year, you should be more bullish now.

Brad Zelnick: Yes. And it’s great to see it reflected in the guidance. Thanks so much for taking the question.

Bill McDermott: Thank you, Brad.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mark Murphy with JPMorgan. Mark, the floor is yours.

Mark Murphy: Thank you very much. So, Bill, I don’t think I’ve heard any other software companies say that its Gen AI products produced the strongest net new ACV of any product family. We had a contact saying it’s really the only platform with real-life uses of AI right now. So, I’m wondering if you think that is accurate, and that’s what’s driving it or should we relate it more to the work you’ve done getting ahead on pricing and packaging? Should we think back to the efforts of that element AI team, which is so fantastic or maybe it’s some other factor in your mind that’s really allowing you to see faster adoption of AI?

Bill McDermott: Yes, I mean, I’ll obviously let CJ comment on this also. But you look at the Visa strategic partnership using Gen AI solution to manage end-to-end dispute resolutions with customers. I mean this is one of the great brands in the world, one of the substantial companies. And just think about the impact Gen AI has in a radically simplifying their conversation with their customer and deflecting all the human capital it takes to resolve these cases when technology can do it. If you look at EY and the idea of instilling Gen AI governance on a single pane of glass to manage risk and compliance for some of the biggest corporations in the world. If you look at the opportunity, every single industry has a great opportunity.

I was in Germany recently, and I was talking to a home appliance industry participant. Post-COVID, they went from 25% online sales to much more than 50%, and it’s growing. So, when CJ and his team brought Field Service Management with Gen AI to the marketplace, just think about one call where the agent instead of — the rep instead of using a clipboard and a pencil, he’s got it on the mobile, knows exactly what part to bring, resolves the case on the spot. That’s one part of it, but here is another part of it. The consumer will pay a lot more if they can get a same-day repairs agreement along with the appliance. And the margins on same-day repair are far greater than the box itself, plus you create a nice annuity stream. So, what we’re talking about here is fundamentally rethinking the way business is transformed using our platform and Gen AI.

And CJ, I know, and I do want to congratulate you and thank you for the job that you continue to do, bringing this innovation to the marketplace. Please give us your thoughts.

CJ Desai: Thank you, Bill. And Mark, here is how I would say some of the questions that you asked are absolutely spot on. Element AI team was absolutely a game changer from talent perspective. And our investments in AI, that you’re very familiar with since 2017, continue for us, not only on the speed of innovation, but what we learned from our customers. Let me give you a couple of quick insights. We were the first ones — one of the first ones to release the product with use case specific generative AI starting in September. So we definitely had first mover’s advantage from that perspective. However, from a customer sentiment perspective, I will tell you there were two Wall Street banks telling me specifically that they wanted to be the first ones on the Street, Wall Street in New York, to go with our Gen AI solution and one of them signed with us.

And you work for one, but in the sense that this is a highly regulated environment, regulators want to know how AI is done, and we were able to sign with the first Wall Street Bank in New York in Q4. In addition, we also signed with a large manufacturing company that wants to fundamentally transform their employee productivity. And then we also signed with a very large restaurant food retailer who wanted to transform employee experience and overall shared services productivity so that their margins can go up. This is definitely a game changer. We are learning a lot from our customers. We are seeing very significant momentum and I was here when we launched 2018 September, ITSM Pro, and as Bill and Gina shared that this has exceeded all of our expectations on how well we did on the monetization of our Pro Plus SKUS.