Veeva Systems Inc. (NYSE:VEEV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Peter Gassner: Well, I think when overall, the media spend goes down then that has a negative effect on Veeva because, let’s say, a brand is going to be TV advertising and then it feels like why that I really want to measure that with Crossix versus if they decide to. I’m not going to do TV advertising, we’re going to conserve that budget, okay, then they might — they wouldn’t spend with Crossix to measure that. So that’s where it has impacts on these. When customers are buying more ala carte, which is the bulk of our business still in Crossix. They’re buying brand by brand, module by module when their spend goes down, they would conserve on their spend with Crossix. And also, when there’s more confusion about where their budgets are going to be, then they tend to be a little less bullish on spending.

Charles Rhyee: So then in that case, maybe not directly, but indirectly, it is still tied to the macro, maybe not so much the — like an R&D budget kind of, but it’s really just sort of a general economic macro environment is started.

Peter Gassner: Yes, I guess to the general economic environment or more specifically to the advertising environment inside of life sciences. Now that again impacts more of the ala carte type of things we do, which is the bulk of our business in the Crossix, the year-to-year ala carte. And our goal is to move people more to these multiyear agreements where it’s more of an enterprise agreement. It’s not exactly an all you can eat, but sort of like that, but smooth out the spend and simplify things for ourselves and for our customers.

Charles Rhyee: Appreciate that. And Brent, just a quick follow-up. I kind of missed it. I think someone asked earlier about the cadence for the impact of TFC, obviously, a bigger piece maybe in the first quarter, but as we model it through the rest of the year, how should we think about the rest of it falling through to more in the second quarter or even?

Brent Bowman: Yes. So yes, $52 million is what we called out on the $95 million as an impact in Q1. And then the balance of that will continue in a diminishing way through the balance of the year. So Q3 will be less than Q2, and Q4 is expected to be less than Q3.

Charles Rhyee: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: Up next is Ryan MacDonald, Needham & Company.

Ryan MacDonald: Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Peter, maybe first for you. It’s great to hear the continued success, albeit at the early stages for the likes of Compass and Link. But I’d be curious to get your thoughts on what you’re seeing in terms of sales cycles right now, sort of other competitors in the space talking about elongation and having issues there. Just curious if you’re seeing any of that or — and if you are, does this sort of benefit you in a way as it enables you to continue to mature the product offerings in the marketplace while maybe end market customers are digesting what they have. Thanks.

Peter Gassner: I don’t — I think our macro environment has stabilized. I don’t see any change in the deal scrutiny right now. Is it maybe a little bit more than it was a year-ago, maybe, but it’s not appreciably so. So if we look at last year on the macro environment, probably percentage-wise, the larger impact was in the SMB area. When the funding goes down, companies have to conserve cash, they might merge, they might get acquired, they might get a — go out of business. They have uncertainty so they wouldn’t make decisions there. I think that has also stabilized. The funding environment is a bit more stable now. It hasn’t gotten better, but it’s stabilized. So I really am not seeing this impact of elongated sales cycles at this time. Now having said that, I always think for the past 15 years, I thought our sales cycles are long, and that’s just got the nature of the business.

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