Squarespace, Inc. (NYSE:SQSP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Anthony Casalena: And we have a number of new hires starting this year as we develop a more sophisticated pricing discipline, especially considering how many different product lines we have and how many different brands are we going to be supporting.

Chris Zhang: All right. Thank you, Anthony and Nathan, both of you for the great color. And my follow-up is for Nathan. Last quarter you mentioned there’s $8.7 million of tax refund that was not in the fourth quarter guide, but pushed to 2023. Could you confirm that was, well that’s realized in the fourth quarter or is that still in 2023 guide and whether that’s in the first quarter, if that’s the case?

Nathan Gooden: Yes, thanks, Chris. Yes, the tax flows, obviously there’s up and downs, puts and takes that we have built into the ’23 guidance. What I referenced in the November call, we do expect to receive in 2023, it was not received in Q4 of ’22.

Chris Zhang: Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Deepak Mathivanan from Wolfe Research. Deepak, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Deepak Mathivanan: Great, thanks for taking the questions. A couple of ones from us, so first on the marketing front, are you seeing improved returns from sort of the marketplace getting more efficient because a lot of the competitors are also pulling back marketing spend currently? Is the customer acquisition cost coming down or is it kind of your more optimizations that’s driving good leverage currently? And then, Anthony wanted to ask about long-term margins. You refer to kind of free cash flow margin reaching mid-to-high 20s, is that sort of the right way to think about long-term targets? Can you provide your updated thoughts on how to think about that, that would be great. Thanks so much.

Anthony Casalena: Sure. With respect to marketing efficiency, we’re certainly not trying to indicate that, on a quarter-to-quarter basis, it’s getting cheaper to acquire customers. But that being said, a lot of what you’re seeing a shift is two things. One, a movement of brand spend to pre-pandemic levels, but also the benefit of having done that brand spend. So, you’ve got more people typing in Squarespace than how to build a Web site. And so, the continued strength there, even though that was done in a past continues to benefit us. The other thing you’re going to see is more of a remix of that spend to international markets as opposed to just focusing it in the U.S. which externally will cause a, it dilutes the efficiency that we do have in the U.S. Yes, and also in the past quarter, we’ve affected some strategic changes and how we’ve gone about just certain methods that we were pursuing in the company that we just wanted to change course on.

And so, yes, lots of changes under the hood. But yes, I wouldn’t say it’s cheaper to acquire customers right now than before.

Nathan Gooden: But we do look at it by specific product line within the business. And we do have strong attribution models that help us drive the right spend across each of those channels and make sure that we are most efficient in getting the return that we want. And we do consistently shift dollars as we see the attribution model out.