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Citi’s 2023 Global Technology Conference

Sep 7, 2023

Sean Horgan
VP, Equity Research, Citi

Today, we're gonna be speaking with Sukaran Mehta, Docebo's CFO, and a recent father.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Thank you.

Sean Horgan
VP, Equity Research, Citi

Congratulations. And, before we jump in, let me appropriately introduce Docebo. So Docebo provides cloud-based learning management systems that are redefining the way enterprises leverage technology to create and manage content, deliver training, and understand the business impact of their learning experiences. Equipped with their multi-product learning suite, customers around the world are equipped to tackle any learning challenge and create a true learning culture within their organization. So with that as intro and backdrop, maybe we can jump into the Q&A. So as those that have been following Docebo, you recently announced a very strong quarterly performance in the June quarter. And maybe as we get into the discussion here, if you could just discuss some of the highlights from the quarter for the audience and the folks listening around.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Thanks, Sean. Morning, everyone. Yeah, I'll kind of give you a summary of the quarter and some of the interesting things that came out of the quarter. So, we beat across the board in revenue and EBITDA. Subscription growth of 28%, gross margin 81%. We're a profitable business. This is important. We are just at EBITDA at this point at 7%, and free cash flow of 16% this quarter. As well as one of the important things about us or differentiating factors about us, is our share-based comp is the lowest out there. It's 3% of our total revenue, which is, you know, free cash flow per share is important to us, as a company, and operating principle.

The other thing we also did talk about is we raised our guidance compared to consensus. And that was, you know, that was something we're gonna talk about. But generally, in the quarter, what you would have seen is that we've... You know, the wins we've had across the board, you know, as being a learning management software business, we are supporting our customers in not only, you know, multiple use cases, but also verticals. And I'll speak about use cases, which is whether it's supporting your customer education, your partner education, whether it's your employee training, compliance, sales enablement. We can penetrate more than six to eight departments in a company, give or take, and at the same time, we are as horizontal as it gets.

If you look at the wins this quarter that we announced, it's all the way from that large big tech customer, which has followed from our, you know, earlier win three years ago or so, with AWS being one of our largest customers. And then this quarter, you would have seen us all the way from Rolls-Royce in the industrial space to Unity Health Toronto, the hospital networks in north of the border in Canada, to HEI Hotels, which runs 100 hotels in the US, on Marriotts and Westins, etc. And so what you're seeing... And specifically, the other big call-out we had was a number of wins in the federal and SLED space with the State of Georgia and a large pension provider in Canada.

What I'm trying to get a story here is that this is a business which not only applies to multiple departments within an organization. It also is as horizontal as it gets from a vertical perspective. Even in this difficult macro, we are pleased with the performance, with 28% growth year-over-year, and we're starting to see some signs of enterprise, you know, spend focused on driving real, tangible ROI. Learning is not an aspect of just tick the box. You know, just an example here is AWS uses us for almost 6 million users a year to train all their customers, and they not only charge for that, but it drives their top line because it drives adoption of their business and their platform.

If you can demonstrate ROI to your customers, you can certainly do well in this market.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm. And you mentioned the multiple verticals that you address with the product, strength in tech-

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yep.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Strength on the government side. Any verticals that are seeing any sense of softness?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

What we would say is... I would say that the soft, not on the vertical, but specifically where we've also moved away over time, is on the smaller end of the market, the SMB side.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

is where this quarter and the last quarter, we've seen that especially in our world. I'll speak to learning: you know, you've got to have a learning strategy in place. You've got to have a customer education strategy in place. So it requires an effort, and it requires investment and thought. And what you find is that the smaller end of the market, the SMB, is where budgets are tight. First-time adopters, they're trying to figure out what, where the priorities are. But what we have seen is, and that's where Docebo, since we've been public, 2019, we've been very clear that we are an upmarket player. You know, our average deal size is mid, you know, companies that are 2,000-5,000 employees, but where 50% of our business in a given quarter is large Fortune 500, S&P 500 companies.

And so what you're seeing is that's where the investments are being made, because they are clearly driving ROI for those businesses and are tied to revenue-generating operations. I mean, we can speak about some of this, but even simple things that, you know, you guys must be talking about, onshoring, has become an important element because there's a lot of training needed, whether it's supply chain networks, whether it's. You know, we've talked about Rolls-Royce. There's a real reason why they're doing it, because it helps them from an operational perspective. We had a large deal with a large shipping company globally that has had some significant changes to their business, which requires a lot of training to their merchants across the globe, and that is also giving us an opportunity to help those businesses.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Great. Greater than 20% revenue growth. You're in rare air as a public company in the software space. You talked about some of the big wins that you've had recently. You've talked about moving upmarket, where gross retention improves. As you think about the balance of the 20%+ revenue growth you've been seeing historically, where does the balance come between net revenue retention and new customer adds, and is one sort of tilting more position strength versus the other today?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah, that's a good question, Viv. So we are, you know, the company from a growth perspective, I would say almost 70% of what we do is net new business.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Give or take, at this point, still. Our net retention is still strong. We reported last year 109-110% in net retention. The other interesting part is as you move up market and you support multiple departments in an organization. So let's take an example. Bridgestone, great customer. We support them for four departments: customer education, partner education, HR, and compliance. Four different VPs use one software but don't talk to each other. That is a very sticky platform, and what I'm trying to articulate here is, from a gross retention perspective, we are one of the strongest gross retention players in the learning management space because we penetrate multiple departments, and we support a stack that is not reliant on just an HR buyer.

The more we do that, we ran some numbers I can share, almost 50% of our customers use us for two or more use cases. In those scenarios, we see a net retention, three or more use cases, I should have said, 50% of our customers use us for. In those scenarios, we see net retention in excess of 120%, and gross retention is as good as ServiceNow and Salesforce.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm. So sort of top decile, top quartile metrics when you benchmark versus peers. Helpful. So as part of the net adds, and bringing in new customers, you did mention an unnamed Big Five U.S.-based global technology leader, so we can sort of narrow that down on one hand, and then just piecing together some of the clues here, you also announced an AI partnership with Google at around the same time. So can we put two and two together, and shall we assume Google's that top five tech company that was addressed as a new customer that you brought in?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

It's sometimes hard to get publicity rights when you sign a customer immediately in the quarter, and I think that is a fair connection that you've made there. It's a... It- we're proud to be partners with Google. In general, from a generative AI perspective, we're going to be running a hackathon with Google on AI with our team in Milan. And just perspective on the business, Viv, one is that this is almost around, you know, we're supporting one of their larger divisions for global sales mastery around 2.5 million users. A lot of them external, not just employees of this of this large big tech.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

So, you know, this is what we think about it. This is an opportunity to, again, similar to AWS, we went in, we won the initial business, and it grows as they grow into multiple departments.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

But the reason we grow bigger is because we're serving an audience outside of their internal employees. This is supporting their wider ecosystem on enterprise sales and sales mastery, and we expect that business to grow as we grow as they build this use case with us. So yeah, I think the connection is pretty obvious. And you know, what we will say is, this is also demonstrating one other thing, is if you think about the learning management space, we, of course, won, you know, some large names like AWS in 2019, 2020. 2020, sorry. It takes not only a lot of work and effort to get there, but to be an enterprise-grade company and to serve at scale multiple departments is a very different.

You know, we're in a very different category, and we've matured over the past five years to do that. It, it's not easy to win a business of a big tech player who can, would generally think about this as a build themselves first, and if we are able to convince them that Docebo is the solution, they don't need to build themselves, that is a validation of our tech stack. And it's, and it. And then I'm not even emphasizing the areas such as pen testing, scalability of the platform, you know, when AWS, Andy Jassy announced, you know, AWS Skill Builder, we had 6 million people live on the platform in 15 minutes. You better be ready to serve that platform.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

And if you fail, you will-

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Right.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

have consequences. So that's, that's kind of the level of effort that's going on in the last five years to to be where we are, and that helps us win enterprise large businesses.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

You've got 2 of the 5 big tech, great validation of product, 3 more to go. We'll check in again next year.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Okay, so from an AI perspective, you all have been early adopters. Claudio's been very vocal and active in the AI space for many, many years. You've continued to build out your capabilities with some recent M&A transactions, as you go in June, and the announcement of the generative AI partnership with Google Cloud that you just mentioned. How are you gonna leverage those capabilities and products, into the product, to further your competitive differentiation?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah. Yeah, this is an important topic, and I will say that, you know, there's a lot of hype and all the buzz and all that, but we... Firstly, I wanna state that Docebo's been in the business, and AI has been part of our ecosystem for the last... Since we started, but we have products in the market. For example, Docebo Shape, it's a content automation product. It has had the record attach rates for the last 2-3 quarters. And we've been doing that, and that product was launched 2 years ago, and it took time, traction, like every product does, but now it has a record attach rate. So we're not gonna... I'm not talking about the future promises.

We're talking about what we've already done today and how we're gonna enhance our AI strategy from here on in. Firstly, the acquisitions and the partnership with Google, and I'll come to some of the things that we're working on from an AI perspective. Edugo is specifically a very targeted. We always think about ourselves from a you know, build versus buy, you know, product roadmap mindset, and we found incredible talent. It's more of an acqui-hire, and some technology of really smart engineers. Our head of AI, Giuseppe, led that company, is now our head of AI. We've worked a very you know, let's call it targeted, accelerated product roadmap that is part of this acquisition.

The way we do our acquisitions is tied to a product roadmap, and your earn-out is specifically tied to delivering those product roadmaps.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Products. Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

And so what you should expect with that and our partnership with Google, on AI, including using some of their technology, we think that, Google is probably, from our perspective, the leader, when you think about large language models and how we can apply that at scale to our businesses. And one other area which I'll start with in terms of where we're focused on, people are talking all about AI, but here's the practical reality. Even with banks such as Citi and others, security, data privacy is the forefront from an AI point of view. So the first starting point for our product roadmap is what we call the AI Control Panel. Our customers will have and have already direct capability to switch on and off what features of AI they wanna use or not for their usage.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

An example here is AWS, who is a customer of mine, does not want that algorithm to support a Walmart, which is also a customer of mine. So you wanna have give those customers capability that they're, you know, even in synthetic data format, 'cause there's a lot of synthetic data that's being used in AI, that their algorithms are unique and being applicable to their use case and their platform. That is gonna be very important as we move forward. Even GDPR will make it complicated. So that's number one in terms of how we will start. Our mindset is to make sure we're thinking it from perspective of the customer. Now we'll talk about... I'll give you some ideas of where, you know, Claudio will speak a lot more at Docebo Inspire in a couple of weeks from now.

Docebo Shape is number one on our priority list in terms of what we do there. It's a content automation module. Effectively, what it does is just a simple example is, if I'm an organization, I wanna build and share content. I'll give you my example of my team. I have a 400-page revenue recognition document, which is crazy. I wanna give that to my team, load it up on Docebo Shape. Within seconds, it creates content through AI with all the pictures and the bells and whistles. Within seconds, you've done 90% of the work, and now you can give that training to your team with a. It's not a presentation, but it's a what we call a micro-learning Pill. And that effectively creates social learning at scale, and it's shareable.

What you have done by this example is cut significant costs of a company on creating content. And as we can do that more at scale for these companies, they don't have to have one center of excellence who only produces content. They can socially enable their customer, their end users to use content. So when you think about Docebo Shape, you should expect significant enhancements to that platform from where we are today to the future. I will leave some of the excitement for what we'll announce in Inspire, but content automation is one area. The other area we will talk about is extreme hyper-personalized experience for the end user.

John, at Citi, we have a very different experience than Peter Fox at Citi because you're even though you're on the same learning path, because how you're learning is unique to how you are as a person.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

So your learning path will be adjusted, and the content that we created, even the quizzes that you get, are gonna be unique to your learning path, and that's all AI-driven. The other area that you should expect, which is gonna be on steroids, as we call it, is the world of semantic search. So, you know, we're an LMS. We are in a fortunate position that we have the intellectual property of our customers sitting in their platform. And when you think about searching within that ecosystem, it's an intranet, as I call it, old world too. The way you wanna access that content and how you can access that search, and semantic search will be part of that enhancement, and that we will certainly do. And finally...

I mean, there's more areas, but I talked about quizzes and content on the fly. But finally, one of the areas you should think about is that the world of AI is not limited to text. We think that, you know, you can expect that video learning is or other forms are going to be interesting. I'm just keeping it relatively quiet in the sense that we have some product builds that are happening. But an example would be, there's nothing stopping John or me to... You know, if I'm... Let's just take an example. If I am a seller and an account executive at a company, I can relatively practice with a video technology, with an avatar on how to sell.

That use case effectively means is that I'm actually be able to learn and coach my employee on how to sell. So this, this platform can give you what are the - how should you start? How should you have started the sales call? How should you finish the sales call? What are the words you should have used in the middle of the sales call? And a whole report card just by practicing with an avatar, perhaps.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

It's powerful. As we know, with sales, there's tangible ROI.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

It applies to accounts receivable, it applies to customer support, it applies to various number of, you know, areas where you're directly interacting with customers and so on and so forth.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Good. Good. So let's shift to some of your OEM relationships. So those have obviously been an important part of your expansion into enterprise and into new countries, an efficient mechanism to do so. It's been a little while now since you announced any sort of new partnership. In this past quarter, you announced two, so a little bit of shift in acceleration. Can you discuss how they strengthen your position in market, how they enable you to scale more quickly?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah. Yeah, and I will speak to one OEM. So when we think about the world of OEM and partnerships, we'll speak to OEM and SI separately. But historically, just some background for folks. So you know, Docebo, as I talked about, is a learning management solution. We sell into multiple departments, and if you ask about our competitive landscape, the one area we do compete with someone like a Workday or Cornerstone is where they're an employee experience platform. So effectively, the HR is buying a solution, and LMS has been a solution as part of the whole HRIS suite.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

How do I participate in that game? Because HR is one of my buyer personas. I have multiple buyer personas, but when HR is the sole buyer persona, we will partner with our friends at Ceridian or MHR or Darwinbox. And how that works is just some. Ceridian being our, you know, largest and oldest partner, in 2018, when David Ossip called us, and we worked together, they decided that they wanted the best-in-breed LMS solution, which was Docebo. And, effectively, Salesforce Learning is Docebo. And what we do in that regards is, as part of Salesforce's offering to those buyers, we are able to now penetrate a market where I would have had to compete as just an LMS in a big HRS suite, where I'm not even able to compete.

And that business, you know, we've said this, has, is give or take, north of, you know, 10% of our total revenue, and has grown close to 40%-50% even in the past year. From there on, if you think about Ceridian, Ceridian, of course, is a strong player in North America, but MHR, I'm sure not a lot of people have heard about them, but they are the largest payroll provider in the U.K. They dominate the market by 40%, and we are their sole LMS provider there. Darwinbox, we just signed, has two strategic aspects to it. One, they are India-focused. It's a large, large market, and also a market where you cannot go without a partner who has local knowledge.

They pretty much serve almost half of the Bombay Stock Exchange companies on the enterprise large end of the market. So we think that this is the right way, not only to partner in regions where we do not have the expertise, but they also have the scale to be able to partner with us and sell into that market.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

So when we think about certain regions where it is difficult to establish your own sales practice or it's just much better. It's much quicker and scalable, we will partner in the OEM world with the Darwinboxes of the world, specifically in Asia Pac and Europe. Then finally, I wanna speak to one other area, which is important, that I forgot to mention. The wins that we've had in the large tech customer or some of the government customers, one of the biggest strategies for us has been system integrators in large SIs. The big four firms, slash, you know, Accenture is the one other, I would call them the five combined.

You know, if you think about the large tech customer, this was led by an SI that we partner with, and they effectively are an important source attribution for us in terms of winning business, both in the large enterprise segment, the Fortune 500s, as well as government.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Are they recommending Docebo? Are they making sure you get a look at an RFP? What, what role do they provide in, in helping you land some of those new customers?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

What is happening in the world of SIs is that they are looking at platforms, specifically Docebo, because let's go back in history. The legacy players, maybe the one that we always talk about, Cornerstone and others, they have platforms, but they're not platforms that are federated. You want to have a federated platform, which means that you can be-- you can create, use an LMS, create multiple departments, multiple content, and serve it. Maybe an example I'll give you is that there's some work we're doing right now with school boards. This is happening in five to six states in the U.S. right now, where security of schools and educating the school teachers, as well as the police and law enforcement agencies.

There's a huge requirement in California and Florida and some other states where you need to have that training happen. What I'm saying here is that the SI in the front-end designs, creates the content, runs the managed service, and we are the learning management solution that powers that.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

And so what you're doing here is doing a federated concept where you're building a solution which effectively can scale to multiple states. And all I will say is that, we certainly think of our large SI, who specifically works in the federal and SLED space, as more of a unique sole relationship.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

And so, yes, leading technologies are where they're focused on, where they can scale their businesses, as a consulting practice, too.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Good. So that's a good segue into the government sector, where you've been seeing strength recently, and there's been a growth vector the past couple quarters. Now that you've gotten the FedRAMP certification, do you see that as an accelerant into the government sector and continued growth within that vertical?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah. So, firstly, I wanna just say that, correct, that the... So we have announced that we are investing, and that's, you know, we talked about in the earnings call. We are now, you know, within the next quarter, three quarters, on track to be FedRAMP certified.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

It is an important element of us winning business both in federal and SLED and maybe financial services space, because, firstly, federal, FedRAMP allows you, and exempts you, for the most part, to selling into states which require StateRAMP. And third, you know, certain financial services institutions would rather be on a FedRAMP-certified ecosystem because it provides higher security and so on.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

... and so forth, as an environment. I will say that we historically, just from a business perspective, close to 4%-5% of our business, organically, mostly through inbound, has been Fed and SLED. We have now formed... This is the only vertical where we formed, and we've hired someone in D.C. that leads that practice. That is part of that ecosystem and from a sales perspective, and we started seeing really good traction since last year. We won the province of Quebec... a large contract there last year. We won a large contract in a pension provider in Ontario. We won a large contract with the State of Georgia this quarter. So what we're seeing is significant traction.

Just some context in numbers, close to $260 million was spent last year by federal government in the LMS space.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Wow!

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

That's a large number. And what's interesting there is it's all legacy, old tech that is still there. And what we are focused on is not only winning, you know, state businesses, but now we see a significant opportunity as we move forward in the federal space. You know, there are large opportunities, whether it's the VA, Department of Defense, Homeland Security, that are looking. You know, if you look at Homeland Security, they recently have put out a note that they are going out there with a full-on installation and revamping, getting rid of their historical platform and-

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

-and building a brand-new platform. So there are some large opportunities that are coming at the federal level. Ultimately, what's happening is that upskilling and helping their federal employees from a productivity perspective is an important element of what the federal government is doing, and we're seeing even larger spend in the next 2-3-year cycle on how the budgets are being allocated. Old tech and legacy platforms are being challenged quite a bit, and we see a big opportunity there.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

What about on the government side, not within the U.S., but international, Canada, places in Europe, elsewhere?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah. I would say U.S. will be our biggest focus-

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

If I'm frank. There is just a significant amount of opportunity at state and federal level. And sometimes you have to keep that focus because even from a CAC perspective, want to be mindful of where we spend our investment, time and investments. The other natural market for us is Canada. We've won quite a bit in Canada between the provinces of Quebec, Alberta, and Ontario. And we will... With the same system integrator that we work with, both north and south of the border, we have some relationships that are-

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Helping us do that. I think in general, Europe is the next market. We will probably just focus on G7, but in the immediate term, you should expect us to mostly be focused in North America for the next two to three years. We're just seeing a lot more traction.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

We have a lot more opportunity in our pipeline, and we'd rather stay focused on where, you know, we build the infrastructure.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Good. So we've talked a lot about growth drivers. Let's spend a minute on margin. So you've announced two tuck-in acquisitions made in the June quarter, continuing to invest in R&D, sales, and marketing. And even with that as a backdrop, you've guided to low double-digit EBITDA for Q4 this year. What's the math or the data points that help explain how you get there?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

It's always easy because, you know, I said this to my, my buddy there, Brandon. I was like, "You know, when you're an 81% gross margin business, being profitable should be possible," I find in life. But here's how we think about it. We're, we're an 81% gross margin business. As you think about our profile below that, we're fortunate from an R&D perspective that, you know, we have 18% of revenue in R&D, 38% in sales and marketing, and G&A is 18%. The math is simple: We will exit this year 10+% EBITDA free cash flow without compromising any investments in sales and marketing and R&D. Primarily, that leverage is coming from G&A.

If you look at my friends north of the border, Kinaxis, I look at them as a Canadian company, for example, that is at a 300 million ARR mark. Their G&A is at 10% or so. You've got another 8% in leverage coming from G&A.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

I've held my G&A flat for the last 4-5 quarters, so that gives you confidence that we have the cost discipline, and G&A should be one that's easy to solve for. And we think as we look at... One of the things that's been interesting, I'm sure other companies are seeing this, too. 2020, 2021 was an interesting time because you had competition on all ends from an employee perspective. Sales and marketing was one area where if you lost a seller, you would, it would take you 9 months to fully ramp them. Now, that attrition rate that we saw in 2020, 2021 because of our success, now we're seeing that go away because of what the markets are today, and the private markets, and all the competitors are slightly going away.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

We are seeing... At this point, we're seeing the lowest attrition rate in our sales and marketing team. As you know, our R&D team is based in Milan, which has always been the lowest attrition in the company. So as you move forward, I do not need to spend, especially in sales and marketing, I do not need to spend that incremental spend that would have happened to fully ramp people and as you lose people, we're—we are pretty much from a quota capacity perspective, you know, in a good position as we look forward to the next 18-24 months. So you should see some leverage coming in through sales and marketing. G&A, I talked about.

That kind of tells you that this business, you know, if I exit this year 10%, you should expect that, you know, on a long-term basis, this business has a way to go and be a, a reasonably good Rule of 40 business, where almost, you know, give or take, half of that is coming from EBITDA free cash flow.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm. Great. So maybe we'll end on the balance sheet and capital allocation. No debt today, $200 million in cash, steadily improving margins and cash flow generation of the business. What is the capital allocation strategy today going forward, as you continue to get more profitable and cash generative?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Yeah. Firstly, I think the $200 million, it's important to note that we will generate, give or take, you know, on an annual basis at this point, let's call it 10% free cash flow. And as we move forward, as EBITDA and free cash flow is relatively similar for me, and follows each other. So we are generating reasonable cash already, but we should expect to generate more cash as we move forward next year. Which also gives me the capability to use that free cash flow for tuck-in acquisitions, and we will be strategic in this market to use that cash to our benefit, to the extent it's accretive.

The other thing that Jerome Powell helps us with is that the $200 million that's sitting on the balance sheet. It makes a decent 5%+ interest.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

So that is reasonable for us, at least for now. So with that perspective, I will say that our primary focus on our cash on the balance sheet is continue to look at build versus buy, M&A, where our thought process is threefold. Number one, we're not in the business of acquiring legacy platforms and competitors, especially legacy competitors. We look at our product roadmap by use case, where, by vertical sometimes, and we think about build versus buy in terms of accelerating the product roadmap. So Edugo, our PeerBoard , just an example. So Edugo was an AI acquisition, which accelerates our AI roadmap by 3-4 quarters. And PeerBoard was a social community forum. This, you know, Mihail is ex-Facebook.

He built, at the time, Facebook Messenger, and we wanted that community forum within our platform, and that significantly accelerates our product roadmap by acquiring PeerBoard. Both of the acquisitions that we did are tied to clear product roadmaps, and earnouts are almost half of the acquisition prices tied to earnouts on milestones. So we will continue to use our cash on our balance sheet in that regards, and think about where specifically in customer education, sales, coaching, and upskilling are the three areas we've talked about, where we will be focused in terms of looking at technologies that can advance our product. We tend to stay away from companies that will slow down our organic engine.

So we look at adjacencies because our organic engine is growing reasonably well at 28% subscription growth, so we wanna make sure we do not disrupt the organic engine. And, that primary focus from a use of proceeds perspective, and the second area that you would have seen, you know, free cash flow per share is important, metric for our company and, and on the C-suite, and how our board looks at ourselves.

And, as we've been generating this incremental cash with our free cash flow, as well as the interest that we're earning on the $200 million, we have been, you know, responsible stewards, and we think returning some of that incremental cash through a programmatic share buyback, you know, NCIB, we call it in Canada, has been received well with our investors. So really, M&A first and being mindful and returning some of that shareholder incremental cash that we generate from the interest, et cetera, is how we think about my proceeds right now.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Good. And as you continue to generate more profit and EBITDA in the future, and the business scales, today, primarily equity-funded business, would you ever consider any other type of capital, whether it's debt or convert in the future?

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

If there was ever a large... I mean, listen, this will be always in the context of a large opportunity from an M&A perspective. It would have to be highly accretive from where we sit today. If there was ever an opportunity like that, you'd never say no, but I think that, at least as we sit today, there is, you know, we've been very mindful of, doing acquisitions that do not disrupt our organic engine. But yes, I mean, it just depends on the size of the acquisition we do.

Steven Enders
Equity Research Analyst, Citi

Mm-hmm.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

I mean, we do certainly have the... You know, if you think about the business, we will probably be close to, you know, I won't say, but in, you know, reasonably good double digits free cash flow next year. And we probably frame close to $25-$40 million, you know, give or take 40 million, in next year free cash flow. We should be able to generate some incremental cash that will help some M&A, but if it's a large opportunity, then you have to look at other sources of capital, whether it's a primary or a debt.

Sean Horgan
VP, Equity Research, Citi

Good. Well, I think, we're just about out of time here. So thank you for, for joining us today, and, look forward to connecting again next year.

Sukaran Mehta
CFO, Docebo

Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it. Bye-bye.

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