Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the D2L Inc fiscal 2023 third quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question- and- answer session. Instructions will be provided for you at the time for questions. If anyone has any difficulty hearing the conference, you may press star zero for operator assistance at any time. Listeners are reminded that portions of today's discussion will include statements that contain forward-looking information. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking information. Further, certain material factors or assumptions were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection as reflected in the forward-looking information.
For identification and discussion of such risks, uncertainties, factors, and assumptions, as well as further information concerning forward-looking statements, please refer to the risks identified in the company's annual and interim management discussion and analysis or most recently filed annual information form, in each case as filed under the company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. In addition, during this call, reference will be made to various non-IFRS financial measures, including constant currency revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, and free cash flow. These non-IFRS financial measures do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other public companies.
Please refer to the company's MD&A for the three months ended October 31st, 2022 for more information about these and certain other non-IFRS financial measures, including, where applicable, a reconciliation of historical non-IFRS financial measures to the most directly comparable IFRS financial measures from our financial statements. This morning's call is being recorded on December 8th, 2022 at 8:30 A.M. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. John Baker, Chief Executive Officer of D2L. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Operator. Thank you everyone for joining us this morning for our Q3 earnings call. After markets closed yesterday, we released our Q3 fiscal 2023 results for the period ending October 31st, 2022. You can find this information on the investor section of our website at d2l.com. Please note that the results we're discussing today are in U.S. dollars. I'm joined this morning by Stephen Laster and Josh Huff. In October, Josh was named our Interim CFO, taking over for Melissa Howatson. We greatly appreciate Melissa's contributions to D2L. We wish her continued success in her new role. She's done a wonderful job supporting a seamless transition to Josh. Josh has a long history at D2L and deep knowledge of all areas of the business. He was instrumental in our IPO process. He led our business planning and external financial reporting.
Yesterday, we announced that Stephen will take on an expanded leadership role as President. Stephen joined us in Q4 of last year and has already had a tremendous positive impact on our organization. He's been leading the expansion and evolution of our learning platform, elevating our client experience and bringing additional rigor operationally to the business so that we can continue to scale efficiently. In this new role, he'll be helping us build an even stronger revenue engine. Stephen and I have had many opportunities to work together over the past 15 years, starting in the early days when he was the CIO at Harvard Business School.
We are fully aligned on the vision and opportunity for D2L. I'm excited for him to take on the broader role and to work closely with me to shape the direction of D2L and to expand our leadership position in EdTech. Turning to the financial results, it was a solid third quarter. While foreign exchange remains a headwind to our reported revenue growth, constant currency revenue grew 13% to $44.2 million, and constant currency annual recurring revenue increased 12% from close to $18 million year-over-year to $167.4 million. We continue to show steady gross margin improvement. Adjusted EBITDA performance also improved to a modest loss of $400,000 in the quarter as we continue on an accelerated path to profitability.
In addition, we ended the quarter with $118 million in cash and no debt as we continued to grow our cash balance year-to-date. Josh is going to provide more details on the financial metrics shortly, and you will see that the business fundamentals are strong and improving as we navigate the near-term economic challenges that we discussed in recent quarters. In addition to the financial highlights, we continued to strengthen our customer base and presence in multiple markets during the third quarter. Education is our largest market, and while we're seeing deal flow increase in higher education, new adoptions still remain below pre-pandemic levels. More importantly, we are winning a greater share of new implementations.
One of the leading market research firms recently published data showing how D2L is now the market leader for new learning platform adoptions in higher education this year across both North America and Europe. More than 55% of new adoptions this year have been D2L Brightspace. This is the continuation of a trend of increases in win rates over the last three years. We believe our win rate is a clear validation of our product decisions and platform investments. Our approach to make it easier to personalize learning, both in class and online, is resonating with so many learners and educators and clients. Momentum shifts are not easy in any market. We're working hard to build on this result. We had great new clients in the third quarter.
George Brown College, one of the top 10 research colleges in Canada, selected Brightspace for its 27,000 full-time students and more than 58,000 continuing education registrations annually. Dallas College, one of the largest community colleges in Texas, chose D2L Brightspace for its more than 44,000 students, faculty, and staff. Building on our strength in Tennessee, we also welcomed Chattanooga College to our learning platform. In K-12, we're seeing good adoption of the platform as students return to class and for online learning. I'm proud to share that we won a number of great new schools globally. In corporate, which represents a huge addressable opportunity for D2L, we're continuing to focus on key use cases such as onboarding, leadership development, competency-based learning, and upskilling, where we're well positioned to drive growth as corporate clients look for a better, more efficient, and more impactful learning experience.
While we've seen that sales cycles have been longer than normal in some cases, we continue to add great new organizations to the platform, including Hearst Technology, which chose D2L Brightspace to provide elite-level professional development to its top technical experts, including data scientists, coders, security professionals, and more. We continue to build on our strength in supporting the learning and training needs of associations, as highlighted by new agreements with the International Association for Public Participation Australasia and the Association of Alberta Forest Management Professionals and the Center for Fair Futures, just to name a few. At this point, I'm going to pass it over to Stephen for a few comments. Over to you, Stephen.
Thanks, John. Good morning. It's a pleasure to address many of you for the first time. Having been in the learning technology business for over 20 years and as a former client and partner of D2L, I've always admired John's vision and the mission-driven culture built over 20 years at the forefront of learning technology. From my vantage point, D2L is best positioned to lead the market and transform the way the world learns. I'm excited to take on this expanded role, working alongside John and with the executive team to build the future of work and learning. Picking up on John's comments, we have a clear opportunity to partner with K-12 and higher education through their digital transformation. As we think about the opportunity, nearly 40% of higher education institutions in the U.S. are on legacy LMS platforms.
We've seen a marked improvement in RFP activity recently. As we look out to next year, our growing market share, our competitive win rate, and momentum and roadmap positions us well for continued success. In corporate, our wins demonstrate a strong product market fit. We will continue to push into new sub-markets where we help organizations drive real ROI and productivity through improved learning and upskilling. We're also strategically focused on increasing our value to customers. In November, we launched Creator+ to all our customers. Like all of our products, Creator+ was built in close collaboration with education leaders and learning design experts. Creator+ helps enable anyone to create engaging digital courses using workflows integrated into Brightspace, saving course creators time and effort while ensuring effective and efficient learner outcomes.
I want to extend a big thank you to all early access customers for Creator+ and all D2Lers that help innovate and execute on this exciting offering. By staying close to our customers and solving their problems, my experience gives me great confidence that we can meaningfully scale our revenue while doing so in a highly efficient and profitable operating framework. I will turn the call over to Josh now, who will discuss the financial results in more detail.
Thanks, Stephen. Good morning. Our Q3 materials were filed last night, so I'll focus my comments on the key highlights for the third quarter and year- to- date. Please note I will reference non-IFRS measures and KPIs, such as constant currency revenue and constant currency ARR, that we believe provide a more accurate picture of our performance as they exclude the impact of foreign exchange between periods. To assist in year-over-year comparisons, where relevant, I will exclude the one-time and non-recurring stock-based compensation expense from the same period last year and highlight the adjusted numbers. Total revenue for Q3 increased by 9% to $42.7 million. As John mentioned, constant currency revenue increased 13% to $44.2 million.
For the fiscal year-to-date, revenue rose 14% to $125.7 million and 17% to $128.7 million on a constant currency basis. Looking at the revenue breakdown, Q3 recurring subscription and support revenue was $36.6 million, up by 5% over the same period last year. For the year-to-date, subscription and support revenue increased 10%, reflecting growth in new customers coupled with revenue, retention, and expansion from existing customers offset by foreign exchange headwinds. Constant currency subscription and support revenue was $37.9 million, up by 8% over the same period last year. It was a strong quarter for professional services and other revenue, which increased by 45% to $6.1 million.
For the year-to-date, professional services and other revenue was up 47% over the same period in the prior year. The improved results were driven by several significant delivered professional services engagements, including new customer implementations and content development work for new and existing customers. Several of these large engagements are nearing completion. In general, while there will continue to be some lumpiness, we anticipate the mix to be closer to 90/10 software services split go forward. We continue to be pleased with the upward trend in gross profit and gross profit margins. Gross profit performance year-over-year is skewed by the employee trust stock-based compensation expense of $8.1 million in last year's Q1, which did not have a corresponding impact in the current period. Therefore, adjusted gross profit provides a more accurate picture.
Adjusted gross profit was $27.6 million for the third quarter, an increase of 10% from $25.1 million last year. The increases were the result of higher subscription and support revenues combined with growth of professional services and other revenues, outpacing the increases in the related cost of revenue. Gross margin continues to trend upward. Q3 adjusted gross margin was 64.7%, up 50 basis points from last year. Gross profit margin for subscription and support increased by 1.1% year-over-year from 67.2% to 68.3%. For the year-to-date period, gross profit margin for subscription and support increased by 1.5% to 68.2%. The increases reflect several factors, most significantly, the continued optimization of cloud technology which has improved our cost of delivery.
Gross profit margin for professional services and other was 41.3% this period versus 27.0% last year, excluding the impact of the employee trust stock-based compensation expense. The improvement in services margins primarily reflects higher employee utilization compared to the prior periods, which was caused by significant onboarding of service delivery teams last year. This has improved the revenue generation capabilities for our professional services team. The operating expense comparisons year-over-year were also impacted by the one-time stock-based comp expense last year. I would refer you to the MD&A, where we provide a breakdown by major expense caption. For the current period, total operating expenses were $31.1 million or 73% of revenue versus $26.5 million or 62% of revenue in the same period last year when you exclude the impact of the employee trust stock-based compensation expense.
The increase is mainly due to higher employee headcount and related salary expenses for sales and marketing efforts in the current periods in support of our overall growth strategy to attract new customers and grow existing customers. With our Q2 results in September, we implemented a new medium-term target operating model to achieve the right balance of growth and profitability. As part of that, we have taken a disciplined approach to cost optimization, including reducing our workforce by approximately 5%. In terms of operating profitability, Q3 adjusted EBITDA loss was $0.4 million or - 0.8% margin, compared to a loss of $0.3 million or - 0.7% margin in the same period last year. For the year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA loss was $3.3 million, trending significantly better than our previous guidance for fiscal 2023.
I would highlight that adjusted EBITDA was impacted by favorable foreign exchange fluctuations of $0.9 million and $1.8 million for the three and nine-month periods ended October 31 st, 2022. As a result of continued cost optimization and a measured prioritization of investments, combined with favorable fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, we updated our guidance for fiscal 2023 to reflect improved adjusted EBITDA. We are now expecting adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $4 million-$6 million, rather than previous guidance of adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $6 million-$8 million. Our revenue guidance for fiscal 2023 remains unchanged. Moving on, cash flow from operating activities increased to $8.1 million this quarter versus $3.5 million in the same period in the prior year.
Year-to-date, cash flow from operating activities increased to $9.1 million this year versus $4.1 million in the same period in the prior year. Q3 free cash flow grew to $7.3 million or 17% margin, up from $3.2 million or 8% margin in the same period last year. Year-to-date, free cash flow increased to $7.2 million versus $3.4 million in the same period in the prior year. We are pleased with these results as we accelerate our path toward profitability. We finished the quarter in a very strong financial position with no debt and $118.0 million in cash, up from $114.7 million at the start of this fiscal year.
In an uncertain economic environment, our strong balance sheet and ability to generate free cash flow gives us additional stability and flexibility. I will now turn it back to John for closing comments.
Thanks, Josh.
I'm really proud of how the team has quickly pivoted to the new operating model of balanced growth and profitability. This model positions us to have the flexibility to make the right investments as we look to the future. I've spent a lot of time in the field lately. In the near term, macroeconomic conditions aside, my interactions with clients and prospects reinforce that the long-term opportunity is strong. The big transformations that we're expecting to happen in education are occurring, and the momentum in the market is picking up. In corporate, leaders I speak with understand the importance of upskilling and the need to prioritize investments in better learning platforms and experiences. This is critical to improve productivity, sharpen their competitive advantage, and is essential for the future of their company.
I'm energized by the long-term opportunity in front of us and confident we have the right products, the right roadmap, and the right team to execute on our strategy. We appreciate your interest and support, and with that, we'd be happy to take your questions. Over to you, Operator.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If you choose to withdraw a question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question today goes to Daniel Chan of TD Securities. Daniel, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, guys. You guys mentioned the report that said you're winning the 55% of the global deployments for higher ed. What do you think is driving that success? Anything specific on those platform improvements do you think is driving outsized demand there? Do you think, given this traction, do you think it accelerates further?
I think, first of all, we're seeing 55% of the new options in North America and Europe as a really good indicator. If you actually look at some of the other data coming out with EdTech is showing 70% of the new adoptions in the North American market are going to D2L. These are good indicators that we're making good progress on differentiating from the competition. The things that are standing out for me are a better cloud story with the ability to have no downtime for maintenance windows, responsive design on mobile. The animation track is still playing very well with giving a student a nudge at the right time to keep them on the right track for success.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, what a lot of our clients are looking for today are the ability to support multiple different use cases. Not just face-to-face in the classroom or on the campus, but also to support online learning, professional development for their staff to go through transformation and change management. Reaching out to learners that are looking to upskill in the workplace, so going beyond the traditional student, to supporting the workplace learning that's required. These are all big growth sectors for a lot of our clients as they, you know, pivot back to this new model post-pandemic, and we see tremendous opportunity for continued growth there. We are highly differentiated when clients are looking to support all those different use cases.
As we continue to invest in our technology, we're also pulling away from our competitor set with tools like quizzing and assessment, making it easy to use. These are all things that are very compelling for folks that are making a decision today. Thanks for the question.
Yeah, that's helpful, John. Thanks. You mentioned that you're winning 70% new adoptions in the North American market. How does that translate into your international opportunities? You know, just given that a lot of your competitors are saying that it's their fastest-growing segment. Just wondering how that what that implies for your international growth strategy.
Yeah. I think the key difference is, our growth is organic and mostly coming from new logo ads. As we're adding new clients to the platform, that's where we're seeing an increased win rate. We're seeing similar profile in terms of our ability to win in international markets. For example, we've become number one in the Netherlands. We've become number one in spots like Colombia, in Singapore and other markets globally. That ability for us to win the top two universities enabled us to spread into K-12 into different corporate implementations.
It's a great strategy for us to continue to pursue with the rest of the world, is a big opportunity, where most of our competitors are largely focused on M&A as a driver for growth, so being able to sell more things to existing clients. We do see similar win rates in many of the markets that we're competing in globally.
That's good to hear. Final question, you mentioned that sales cycles continue to be extended, but just wondering directionally whether that's improving at all. Thank you.
We're still seeing some impact there. That's a good question. I think the macroeconomic conditions have elongated some of the sales cycles, especially for some corporate and some education purchases. I still see the deals getting done. It's just taking a little longer to get them through the traditional process. They're taking more time to just validate and make sure they're making the right choices, making sure that the investment is still gonna have the return on investment that they're looking for. In all cases, you know, as we implement our technology, we're traditionally saving a client money. We're helping them retain more learners or more employees, helping them navigate some of the tough challenges they're going through. It is a compelling investment.
Just, like all investment choices being made right now, people are just putting them through a bit more scrutiny.
Thanks, John.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you.
The next question. Thank you. The next question goes to Doug Taylor of Canaccord. Doug, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. Couple questions on the guidance you've provided. You've kept the range the same, in terms of the, you know, the width of it for EBITDA, which suggests, you know, EBITDA should take a loss should take a step back or a higher loss in Q4 than was seen in Q3. Can you square that up with the timing of your headcount reductions and things like that, and what would lead to that, you know, that sort of dynamic?
Thanks for the question, Doug. You're right that.
Oh, go ahead Josh. Yeah.
Yeah. You're, you're right that the reduction in force starts to have an impact on our financials in Q4. In Q4, there are some year-end activities that drive the OpEx up a little bit higher. There's, there's some timing there. The other thing too is in Q3 there is some foreign exchange impact on our expenses. Most notably our Canadian workforce is quite large. When the USD strengthened, it has an impact on our USD converted expenses. We're not at this point forecasting that to occur necessarily in Q4, but certainly, foreign exchange could have an impact as well.
Okay. One more question on guidance, you know, perhaps for Josh. I'll reiterate a question that was asked to you of Melissa last quarter and give you a cut at it. That's, you know, as fiscal 2023 comes to a close here and you've reiterated your fiscal 2025 guidance, how should we think about fiscal 2024 as a stepping point between, you know, those two? Because, you know, you're clearly making progress on the bottom line, but it's still a, you know, it's a wide river to cross. Any help there would be great.
Yeah. You'll see, you can expect a step improvement. We talked in the past about profitability occurring in fiscal 2024. And you'll see a step improvement from where we are today to the fiscal 2025 target operating model. On the revenue side, you'll see it sort of in line with that range. We'll certainly be speaking to that in more depth in next quarter's earnings call.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question goes to Maxim Matushansky of RBC Capital Markets. Maxim, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, hi, good morning. I wanted to start with the RFP activity in particular. You said in the prepared remarks you saw market improvement of RFP activity. Has that pace come back to pre-pandemic levels? Do you see the changes in the macroeconomic environment on things like labor and inflation impacting that activity particularly in the higher ed and K-12 side, or is that mostly just on the corporate?
We're seeing RFP activity across all of our markets. It's still not up to pre-pandemic levels at this stage, but we are seeing a nice jump up. It's in some of these markets, as you can imagine, it's just taking time to digest the change coming out of the pandemic and figuring out what their new requirements are gonna be. I think it's fairly safe to say that across our client base, K-12, higher ed, and corporate, folks are moving up that adoption curve, going from just simply trying to cobble together some digital tools to survive the pandemic to now trying to figure out how do I optimize for better outcomes, better student retention, which is critical for a lot of our clients in education.
Better learning outcomes to get folks back on the right track. Better engagement with students to get them learning again. It's a big issue as I visited a lot of clients, dozens of clients this fall, citing that their number one concern is getting students re-engaged back on campus. Also looking at growth opportunities. A lot of our clients are, you know, serving markets beyond traditional campus-based learning. How do I actually build a great upskilling strategy with companies that are in the region, provide continuing education, provide online learning to folks that are looking for that next step in their career? Those are big growth opportunities for our clients.
That all, I think, bodes very well in terms of setting ourselves up for great opportunities ahead, but still not yet back up to pre-pandemic levels. If you talk to a lot of folks in education, they're just seeing a bit of a generational change in leadership. There's been churn in leaders. As those leadership ranks get rebuilt, I think you're gonna see this. I think you're gonna see the RFP activity and the market continue to tick up back towards pre-pandemic levels.
Got it. That's helpful. Just on your hiring plans, can you maybe update us on how the onboarding of the sales reps you've already hired is going, and how that fits into your growth plans in terms of having the capacity to execute on the growth you've laid out?
That's a great question again. We've done a great job of building out the team. We've got the capacity we need to deliver on the plan that we have. We'll continue to add a few reps as we look into the next year and continue to build the capacity for fiscal 2024 and beyond. Right now we've got a great team. The onboarding's going really well. We've got a great. As you can imagine, we're very good at onboarding with having a learning platform and winning one of the top three in North America for the last three, now almost four years in a row. Our team has done a good job making sure that folks get up to speed quickly.
I think that sets ourselves up for good success as we look into the future. Especially as people come back to market and especially as we capture the new opportunities that are emerging as folks move up that adoption curve, going into better online learning experiences, providing better employee onboarding, better employee upskilling, better employee development opportunities. These are really good macro environments for us to be hiring sales folks into.
Great. Finally, just on the geographic results. I think Canadian growth seemed to slow this quarter, and U.S., rest of the world was more resilient and that's probably, you know, partially explained by FX. Is there anything else to call out in terms of what's causing those geographical dynamics?
No, I think FX is probably the thing that's been the most impactful for markets outside of the U.S. If you look beyond that, you know, we did spend time earlier in the year to build out the sales and marketing capacity, but we remain very optimistic about what we're seeing in the rest of the world. I think need a quarter or two to really dig in to see the progress there as we've made those investments. I'm optimistic about the future for international. Trips to the Netherlands and to the U.K. in the last month have really underscored for me, that clients are really trying to invest now to capture the opportunities on the upskilling that we talked about earlier, but also to support better online experiences for their students.
They're also using our technologies in new ways, to deliver exams, to deliver online learning in new ways. That all to me speaks to great opportunity ahead for the team there. I think it's gonna take a little bit of time just to continue to translate the sales reps that we've onboarded to driving the execution in the sales pipeline to delivering the results that we're all looking for.
Great. Thanks. I'll pass the line.
Thank you. Our next question goes to Thanos Moschopoulos of BMO Capital Markets. Thanos, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning. John, have you been seeing any competitive response to your share gains in higher ed? Are competitors getting more aggressive with pricing or anything from tactics, or is it pretty status quo in that regard?
We haven't seen a major change in any of the response from the market. We've seen them change sources for data that they use for articulating their own market share statistics and to talk more about market share they have versus the market share they're gaining. That's more market texture, if you will, versus a product response. You know, I think from a product perspective, which is really what folks have got to look at, we're really pulling away at the extensive... I can talk, pass it over to Stephen and the investments that we're making into our product to make sure that we've got a world-class learning experience that are second to none. That's the reason why we're winning more.
Secondly, we've got a world-class services organization that's delivering outstanding support to our clients, making sure that they get implemented really well, making sure we're building out great online offerings, and making sure that when they call the support desk, they're getting great answers. There's a great community for them to engage and peer support, if you will, as well too. These are not easy to replicate. They're gonna take significant investment from our competitors. Some of the things that we're investing in terms of learning outcomes, and next generation learning models, that's gonna take them many, many years to catch up. As we continue to make these investments, I think gives us an opportunity to pull even further away.
We're looking to build on the momentum that we've articulated already.
Great.
Stephen, do you want to add anything to that?
Oh, sorry.
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Stephen, did you wanna add anything?
Yeah.
I think that's right. I think if you look at our strategy and the launch of Creator+ and our very deep focus on ensuring the learning moment through digital courseware creation, through delivery on Brightspace, through learner measurement and outcomes on Performance+, through findability and ways for that upskilling and reskilling learner, it just speaks to the focus of our execution, the focus of the value that we're bringing to our customers. To John's point, we think that really differentiates us competitively. More importantly, we're truly solving our customers' problems for learning in all markets, and we'll continue to do that.
Okay, great. In terms of the workforce reduction, was that focused on a couple of specific areas, or was that just a bit of trimming across the board?
Yeah, I mean, I might add to that. We.
Oh, go ahead, Stephen.
Yeah. Yeah. In that case, we really looked at it from the strategic lens of how do we really ensure the business is focused, operating efficiently for growth, and really positioned to deliver the products and services, you know, to address the needs of our markets. Workforce reductions are always difficult. D2Lers are a wonderful community of people, but we did the reduction thoughtfully and strategically, to ready the business for the future.
Okay, great. Then just finally, receivables came down a fair bit relative to the prior quarter. Is there a seasonal dynamic there or something to call out in terms of the reduction in DSO?
Yeah, nothing to really call out there, Thanos. It's just really some seasonality and timing of collections.
Okay. Great. I'll pass the line. Thanks.
Thank you. The next question goes to Christian Sgro of Eight Capital. Christian, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Could you comment on the pace of implementations, you know, as you roll out across larger wins like SUNY or BC, how those are progressing, at what pace, relative to your expectations at the outset?
The implementations across not only K-12 in cases like BC and higher ed in the case of SUNY and other big, large implementations in corporate that are going on our way right now are all going very well. I think the team's doing a great job. That's showing up in the services line growth. As we deliver projects, as we deliver implementations, we start to recognize that revenue. I'm very proud of what the team is doing. These are not easy implementations. In case SUNY, it's the largest, most comprehensive university system in all of North America. That project is going really well. BC, you know, they've got a lot of work to do in terms of delivering great online experiences and in-class experiences across the province of BC, also supporting professional development.
I think the team's doing a good job there, and we'll continue to see progress there build over the course of the next few quarters. SUNY is tracking really well. I think that was your specific question as well, too. Thank you.
That's helpful, John. I'll ask one more question on Creator+. I know it's still early on since the launch, but is there any feedback you've received, thus far on Creator+? Maybe just walk us through how you think of the upsell opportunity there.
That's a great one, and I'll let Stephen jump in here, too, in a second. I've actually watched our clients present Creator+ to other clients at a regional event that we did in South Carolina. I was blown away. These clients had taken this product even in the early access version at that time and have demonstrated how they could really build exceptionally high quality professional development in that particular demonstration. And how, what surprised me was it wasn't just replacing one or two other tools. They had line of sight for it replacing three or four tools to support better online course creation. And clients themselves were articulating the value prop, including, you know, the fact that it works on mobile, the fact that it's accessible.
These are things that just weren't possible with some of the other tools that they had been using. As you can imagine, you know, the clients in all levels, K-12, higher ed, and corporate, really wanna build engaging experiences for folks. I'd say it's the number one concern folks have today, is people checking out and not engaging. It's the, you know, the black screens that show up on Zoom, if you will. Building that high engagement environment, and putting that power of that creation into the hands of more and more people is gonna make a real difference so that they don't have to know how to code, to create these great experiences. We are seeing a pipeline build around Creator+ now that it's launched as post-quarter.
We are seeing clients close. That all, I think, shapes up well as we continue to put more investment into Creator+ to continue to drive detach rate across all of our base. It's early days, but I think there's a really good indicator that we've got a great product there for clients at K-12, higher ed, and corporate. Stephen, did you want to add anything to that or?
No, I think, you know, I think it's another example of us being very focused on our customers and what they need from us. To John's point, one of the critical needs in all markets is learner engagement and driving down the complexity of creating natively digital courses, whether it's to extend the classroom or for online or blended learning. We built that in close partnership with customers. It was an incredible launch, and we're very excited about what's to come.
That's all helpful, clear. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you. The next question goes to Brian Peterson of Raymond James. Brian, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. Stephen first, congratulations on your promotion.
Thank you.
I wanted to understand. Well, like, You're welcome. I wanna understand, you know, Stephen and John, you guys are both really passionate about this business. You know, Stephen, you're stepping up. It's something you're taking more responsibility. You know, I'd love to understand maybe how some of the roles or things may change, and where are you guys spending more of your time?
I mean, I'm happy to jump in. There's no better person than John Baker to lead D2L through its growth and to really help drive the future of EdTech. I think the combination of John and I give us the scale and opportunity to both have that market-leading impact and to also drive a very efficient and effective operation as we grow. It is truly a partnership, and I think it's a two for one in terms of how we're dividing up our responsibilities. John, do you wanna jump in?
I'll add to Stephen. We're in alignment. Stephen and I have the ability to go off and execute with a lot of autonomy.
Hey, John, you're a little muffled. I don't know if anyone else is having trouble hearing him.
Oh, can you hear me?
Yeah, I hear you now.
Can you hear me better there now?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, John, we got you. I missed your first little response there.
Okay. Yeah, no, I, I think the quick answer is that Stephen and I are really well aligned. There's no question that Stephen is gonna add a lot of value as we look at unifying our operational excellence across the organization, everything from our revenue engine to product to services. We're trying to act as one company. Having a leader that's of Stephen's caliber to help drive the operations across the organization, it's gonna be great. It's gonna allow me to have more time to spend with the clients, with folks like you, with other stakeholders across the organization, and continue to stay focused on the future and helping to bring some of these new products, whether it's Wave or Creator+ or other ideas to life.
I'm very excited about this. I think Stephen's a great partner, along with Josh and Anna and everybody else on the team. This is gonna be a great new era for us as a company.
That's great to hear. I wanna ask a follow-up on the RFP and the volume that you're seeing. You know, I'd be curious what that mix looks like. I think there's been some traditional shared donors in the space, but, you know, as kind of the cloud adoption migrates up, have we seen more, I'd say, cloud deals enter the kind of the RFP activity, or is it kind of the traditional on-premise deals that are still coming up for bid? Thanks, guys.
We are seeing more cloud opportunities coming up than on-prem. I haven't seen any on-prem recently, folks looking for their own solution to run on site. That's, that's really positive.
Maybe, John,
Very rare.
Yeah. Maybe.
Oh, you're saying like from competitors you mean?
Yeah. Right. Are you seeing any existing or any potential customers coming to market that already have a cloud solution in place versus an on-premise, the cloud migration as kind of a key catalyst for going to market?
Yes. The quick answer is yes. We're seeing not only transitions from legacy systems that are on-prem, but we're also now seeing transitions from cloud providers. All of our competitors are seeing transitions to D2L, today, some of which were cloud offerings in the past. Again, as clients move up that adoption curve, going from just using a cloud offering, to support the basics in the, you know, traditional model to now wanting to support online learning, supporting professional development, a wide range of use cases, and also looking for, you know, better outcomes, better assessment, better usability, that's an opportunity for them to make a shift to D2L.
You know, not only can we catch them on that shift from on-prem to cloud, but we can also catch them as they move up that adoption curve from digitizing, just cobbling things together, to now looking for better outcomes and ultimately trying to transform the experience. That's playing out. We're seeing now conversions from all of our competitors' cloud offerings to D2L.
Just to add to that, I think another key ingredient is the power of our services offering, whether it's long-term advisory services for optimizing pedagogy or technical integration, to episodic services to really design and create engaging and effective courseware. Clearly the platform is leading the way to everything John said, and the services are also helping our customers accelerate their digital transformation post-pandemic into what is now a blended world.
Great call. Thanks, John.
By the way, we're speaking a little bit. We're not just speaking to K-12 or higher ed here. This is. Again, this also reaches into corporate. Most of the CEOs that I've been speaking to have not been happy with what they've been doing from a learning and development perspective, you know, during the pandemic, and they are now looking for better ways to do onboarding, better ways to do upskilling, better ways to engage their employees in learning, in the way that they're working today. We see this across the board, education and corporate.
Thank you. As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. Our next question goes to John Shao of National Bank. John, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Well, thanks for taking my question. John, you mentioned the elongated sales cycle, is it hitting across your three major segments, you know, K through higher ed and corporate, or are you seeing more one segment hitting more than others?
It's really in pockets in each of the three segments. you know, if you look at some of the larger opportunities that we're working, they're taking more time to get through the process than they would've in the past. So that's, that is hitting across all three segments. That said, you know, we're still seeing some deals going through very fast. Not every client, but there are still pockets of clients where it's just taking a bit more time. I'm still confident that they'll complete their process. I'm still confident that we'll see positive outcomes there. It's just, you know, again, one of these things where folks are just being a little bit more measured with their spend and making sure that their investments are the right ones.
I still think that, we've got a really compelling ROI for our clients so that, they do, eventually make that call to make that implementation, if you will. Just taking a bit more time.
Okay, great. My other question is, I understand FX has been a headwind for growth in Q3. How should we think about FX on the current quarter in terms of the direction and magnitude of impact?
Yeah. We provide constant currency. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. We provide constant currency reporting, John, so you can see the magnitude of impact it's had on our results via the constant currency reporting. At this point, I'd just direct you to that.
Okay. Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. We have no further questions. I'll now hand back to John for any closing remarks.
I want to thank you for joining us on the call today. We're looking forward to updating you following our Q4 or year-end results. Just wish you a happy day. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you. This now concludes today's call. Thank you so much for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.