Varonis Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Guy Melamed : Chad. Yeah, like you’re saying, we definitely saw a lot of great traction with the SaaS introduction, which gave us the confidence to increase the SaaS mix from 5% to 15%. With that said, we’re very early in this transition. And that’s why when you look at kind of the ARR number, when you look at the overall number, it didn’t move much. We did increase it slightly, but it didn’t move much. This is because we’re at the beginning of the year. We wanted to start — we talked about kind of the six-month ramp-up time that we factored in. But we feel very good about the SaaS offering. And over the last 100 days, we gained a lot of great feedback for both our customers and our sales force.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nowinski with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Andrew Nowinski : Thank you. I just had a question on the SaaS mix also. So I think you generated — or excuse me, 10% of the new business from SaaS in Q4. And then you said 15% in Q1 and 15% for the year. So I’m wondering why wouldn’t the mix continue to increase throughout the year as more sales reps get ramped up and et cetera. So just wondering why it’s staying flat at 15% after Q1.

Guy Melamed : 100 days ago, it was a 5% mix and we get again, like I said before, we gained a lot of confidence. But again, we’re very early in this process, and we do expect some friction that will happen in the first six months of the transition, which is already baked in the guidance. We will obviously update everyone as we progress through this transition, and we’ll give more color as we see kind of the pipeline build. But because we’re so early in this transition, we moved it up from 5% to 15%, and we want to start with this. And then we’ll update and give — we’ll be as transparent as possible throughout the transition and give metrics that can allow everyone to see the progress and the progression within the transition.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Shrenik Kothari with Robert W. Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Shrenik Kothari : Hey, good evening. Great to hear about the SaaS progress. And thanks for taking my question. One for Yaki and a quick follow-up for Guy. So Yaki, you mentioned about the slowing macro continue to impact customers continued worsening of conditions across the board, both EMEA and crawling into North America. Just comparing with your commentary last quarter, you cited of course, EMEA revenues, but there was also some weakness in the U.S. Federal trends? Can you comment on the on the U.S. federal trends, is it trending above your expectations now or in line? I mean just a quick comment. And then very quickly on the operating margins. You mentioned about 1.5% headwind — just wanted to know the breakdown between hosting and support costs versus the sales incentive structure related headwinds? Thank you.

Yaki Faitelson : We are building a very healthy pipeline in the federal market. This sector in general has a lot of critical data that they need to protect and many did actives that want the data. If you want to protect this massive data stores in new solutions like ours, and we believe that we can do very well in the federal market. And when you have an economic slowdown, it’s usually impacting IT spend. But again, if you have critical data, someone wants it, it’s just essential for every business. So we believe that we tease can weather any economic slowdown very effectively.