networking analyst at Needham. Along with Matt, we follow the broad category. It's a pleasure to have AvePoint here today. We have Jim Caci, who's the CFO, and Mario Carvajal. Did I get that right?
Yeah.
All right. Who's the CSO, doing both marketing and the strategy. And then, of course, our crack James Arestia, IR here, who you guys probably know from his Varonis days. So last year, you guys had a great year, 23% growth in ARR. Your SaaS growth was, what, 37%? And you were able to transition away from a lot of that perpetual, which I think was down, what, 20%, and produce pretty good numbers. Your margins expanded for the year by, what, 980 basis points, going from a loss to 8.6% operating margins and from a loss on an EPS basis to a profit. Pretty damn good year for in a tough environment. But,
Uh-oh.
You had a better first quarter, right?
Yeah.
You actually accelerated in the first quarter. As I understand it, revenue accelerated to 25%, and your net new ARR was up, what, 29%?
That's right.
Pretty good in that environment. Then the SaaS growth went from 37% last year to 44% in the quarter. So congratulations on doing a bang-up job. Oh, forgot, your operating margins expanded to 8.9%, so you're continuing that trajectory. So with that as a backdrop, it looks like a pretty good story for people to be taking a hard look at, and we're certainly quite interested in it. We don't have coverage at this point, so I can't give you a rating or a target on it, but I'm really impressed with the performance.
Thank you.
So maybe we could start off with a little bit about your guys' background. I think you were at AvePoint in 2010 to 2013, if I remember correctly, and left-
Yes. Yes
...this wonderful platform to go do something else, and then figured out you made a mistake.
I was just gonna say, we all make mistakes. But like everything in life, most mistakes are correctable and recoverable, so.
So, can you give us a little bit about the background? How long have you been now, here now, since what, three years or so?
Yeah, it's just about three years now. Yeah, it's been, it's been great. To your, to your point, I think, we're focused on execution. I think the team's done a really good job. One of the, one of the beauties of AvePoint with in coming back is we do have a lot of people who are very tenured with the company.
Mm-hmm.
There's a lot of consistency, there's a lot of, you know, longevity. People are not making the same mistakes. When you have a lot of turnover, right, you seem to make the same mistakes over and over again. I think we have a lot of people on the team that have been here, have great experience, and then we've supplemented that with some people from the outside to add additional expertise and different perspectives, and so that's been a real positive. With me coming back, I felt like I never left in terms of Mario and I were tight when I was here 10 years ago, and it feels like we, you know, have never been separated.
And Mario's-
Yeah
... your background has been, obviously, from his comments, ten years plus at,
10 years plus, yeah
... at the company and good tenure, as you suggested. So, you were originally the, you were at one point the CTO-
Yes
... and now you're
Yep
... you're doing a much broader strategy. So for people who don't know, AvePoint-
Mm-hmm
... can you talk a little bit about what you guys do, and give the background and, you know, we'll get into the Confidence Platform in a moment.
Sure, sure. Well, so first, thanks, Alex and the Needham team for having us. We really enjoy the conference. Our story, so I've been with the founding team for... This is my seventeenth year, and from the beginning, we began considering the right application stack to manage enterprise content management systems. It was at a time where much of what we did was really in an on-prem world. Throughout the years, we continued to believe that if we can build a strong automation layer to helping companies manage and govern the data that goes through a content management system, we felt that that would have a long runway, and we've been very fortunate that we bet on that.
So today our story is really around data management and data governance, and we underpin the systems that organizations use for productivity. An example of a system could be M365, the catalog of services they have, or it could be also Google Workspace and Classroom. It could also be, you know, Salesforce, Slack, Tableau. So our applications are really designed to manage the life cycle, the entire information, through a set of controls that really help you improve the security layer and help the organization just run more, more effectively.
So one of the key questions I always focus on when I look at a company in the security space is, are you truly a modern architected company?
Modern, yeah.
Are you based on microservices?
Yeah.
Are you based on, you know, the key elements of Cloud Native and the like? So can you talk about your platform a little bit? You know, what is the Confidence Platform? How is it designed? Is it in fact a true platform?
Mm-hmm
... or is it a composite of siloed products?
Yeah
... as a negative alternative view?
Yeah. Yeah, that is a great question, and it speaks to the lineage and the DNA of our business. So we began building a platform that was monolithic. When I took over as CTO, I saw an opportunity to re-platform ourselves. We began working with the first version of Azure. At the time, Azure was really considered mostly for IaaS. We saw an opportunity to build a PaaS, a platform as a service. We started experimenting with microservice architecture. So from the start, we built our entire cloud, our Confidence Platform, to be leveraging cloud infrastructure services. Today, what you have is a application, a set of applications that really operate in this cloud services infrastructure. We can run on Azure, we could also run on AWS.
We have a number of clients that would say: "We love your instance, can we run it on AWS, or can we actually run it in our own private, sort of instance of Azure?" We can do that as well. So that, that flexibility has given us the best way to reach the market. And for a business that was growing so well at the time when we were building a monolithic, you know, set of architectures, we said, "The cloud's the best way for us to go global." You also probably noticed we have 25 offices, so we operate in all of the major markets, and in order to get there to the customer, we needed to build the infrastructure in a modern way.
Well, doesn't it go beyond that, though? I mean, to tie into modern applications, you need to be API driven.
Oh, for sure.
If you're not API driven, if you're monolithic, you're probably not API driven, but if you're not API driven, it's very difficult to do that handoff of traffic-
Exactly
... and data management. So, you know, congratulations on getting that.
Thank you
... that transition done. So let's talk about the Confidence Platform.
Mm-hmm.
I think there's, what, three major legs to it?
Yep.
That's the Modernization Suite, the Resilience Suite, and the Control Suite. Those... Can you talk about-
Yeah
... what those do and why they're important?
Yeah, sure. So they tell an integrated story. When we were working with organizations and they were considering the challenges of very quickly deploying a policy on how the workforce is accessing information, how do you do that? You do it from a centralized management console. You do it in a way in which you don't, you know, you're not intrusive to user experience. So our Control Suite begins to tell that story. We have a number of products there that are looking at things like user activity, access controls, and we actually integrate through the API with first-party capabilities. And in addition to that, we're also governing the workspace.
You know, we have a workflow engine that allows you to say, when Jim's team wants to create a workspace to do a process, let's say, an M&A transaction, we know that certain individuals should have access to that. And so let's provision that workspace with all of the controls, the permissions. Our system does all of that in one step, and we've also done it in a way in which we empower the business to do it, so it removes the burden from IT. When you talk more about, Well, what else can we do for data? We bring you over to the Resilience Suite, and we begin to talk about the life cycle of information. What should be a record? Especially nowadays, you have chats, you have documents that you're exchanging with your colleagues.
How do you apply a records policy across that? We do it through our system, and we also do it in a way in which we incorporate the value of backing up the service of your first party and giving you the interface to look for sensitive information, identify when a ransomware attack has happened, and where in the data set, whether it's the backup data set, the active data, you're at risk. So the two suites, Control and Resilience, allow us to tell a customer: When you buy into the Confidence Platform, we'll be able to go on this journey with you to really govern the data. And then lastly, we have Modernization, where we have products that are now helping you understand the impact all these applications have on the workforce.
We have two years ago, we did an acquisition of a product called tyGraph, and it was a way for us to introduce usage analytics. We just launched an additional component to that, specifically designed for Copilot, because a lot of organizations this year are doing a lot of experiments around Copilot. So what better way to measure the impact these productivity services have? And modernization also includes a connective framework that allows us to bring customers onto this journey by transforming their data sets from other systems. We do a lot of tenant-to-tenant migrations or moves, which are very typical when companies are acquiring or divesting pieces of the business.
The three stories, if I zoom back out, really are about building more confidence in the organization's ability to operate, and do it in a way in which, you know, it's moving along a security perspective.
Hence, the name.
That's right.
The last couple of years, there's been a very significant move to drive efficiency in the many of the cloud platforms and many of the applications that are running. You saw that evidenced in the sharp deceleration in the number of, in the growth of, AWS or Azure and the like.
Right.
How did that year of efficiency, which ended up being-
Mm-hmm
... a misnomer, it's multi years of efficiency-
Right
... impact your business?
Well, that's a good question. There's one place we found a sweet spot for us, and it was help companies reduce storage costs. We have the ability to optimize storage, and as you mentioned, consolidation of even service providers at the data center layer for IaaS. Through the application, we can empower the company to move workloads through a hierarchical storage that's also done through a retention perspective. That resonated quite well with security teams as well as, you know, business teams.
The second, the second opportunity we saw for cost consolidation or cost reduction was, we provide a platform that has a lot of different products, and there are a lot of point competitors, and so we would come in and say: "You know, instead of having two or three vendors, we can really reduce, you know, the cost of that." So we've leaned into it. I think it continues. There's still some of that, certainly in the macro. I think it's just a new way of thinking, how to be efficient and optimize your investments.
... If I were to think about the reads that I had at, coming out of RSA, one of the reads was that there's a lot of budget out there. But there's also a lot of confusion on what I wanna spend it on, because I know I need to implement artificial intelligence. I'm not sure exactly how to do it, and I know I'm gonna need to secure that.
Mm-hmm.
Again, I'm not exactly sure how to do that, but I know I need to.
Right. Right.
So the question then becomes: When does that uncertainty break? Talking to some of the, you know, the people on the floor, my sense is that there was a significant amount of build and backlog into the back half of the year. How does that play into your macro worldview?
So I'll say a few remarks-
Yeah
... and I think Jim will also talk about how we see it through the performance of the business. First, being practical is one way to help these organizations think about where they should, you know, leverage the budget. Certainly, security teams are thinking about that security layer, and when I say practical, I mean showing them that when you turn on, let's say, a Copilot-like product, which really goes around and looks at the user identity and says, "Let's mine the information for Jim, and let's surface it through a prompt-based interface." When that occurs, and you have concerns that maybe Jim will see something that he shouldn't see, or that data that perhaps is obsolete should not be part of his, of the reasoning that his prompt is doing, how do you do that adequately?
So we launched a go-to-market play that's really designed to help you enable Copilot in a practical way. We talk about prepare the data, secure the data, and then ultimately optimize the workspace, and through that, we have been able to, I think, lean into those budgets. I would say that we did see a shift mostly towards security teams and teams that are concerned with, data governance policy management, how they do that. When we position our products in that context, we are now a must-have alongside that journey they're gonna go on to start to turn on these Gen AI capabilities.
Well, against a backdrop,
Yeah
... I think last year it was, "Gee, I don't know whether I wanna spend because I'm not sure about the economy.
Right.
Now it's, "I know I wanna spend, but I don't know what to spend it on.
Sure.
What macro are you seeing? Are deal sizes, you know, improving? Sales cycle time stable or improving or eroding? What are you seeing in terms of, you know, the KPIs around the process?
Yeah, so it's a great question. I think maybe two ways to think about it. So deal sizes, we, we haven't seen dramatic shifts in deal sizes yet, and even length of deals, I'd say we're still pretty consistent with what we saw in 2023. The interesting thing that we're seeing now is lots of conversations around AI, lots of conversations around efficiency, and lots of experimentation. So we had at the end of 2023, or in, let's say, the second half of 2023, even Q4, lots of people talking about it. What we're seeing now is a lot of experimentation in the first, let's call it, five months of this year, whether it's the Copilot initiatives or a variety of experimentation. So we're seeing a lot of that.
We do think that that leads to a nice tailwind here, maybe some contribution in the second half of the year, but clearly in 2025, that we're gonna see some of that, "I'm not sure what to do." I think the experimentation is giving people some insights as to, "Okay, now we do know what we need to do, and now we're gonna spend more and be bigger." So I, I don't think we're seeing the inflection yet of the dollars because I think people are still in this experimental stage. I think we see that probably more so in 2025.
Strikes me that you guys are clearly dead center around data management for AI. Is that not a fair appraisal? Because, I mean, I look at the stock. Stock doesn't look like it's reacted that way.
Look, I mean-
Yeah
... I think we were having this conversation earlier in some of our one-on-ones. We are three, three, three-year anniversary being in the public markets this year.
Yeah.
We recognize that part of our story also was a little bit misunderstood. Where does AvePoint really fit? I think folks are now starting to realize and appreciate the opportunity. We are undervalued. Business has been performing. You mentioned some of the stats from last year. We are encouraged that all the work we've been doing for so many years, building these automation capabilities for data management, data governance, it's getting the spotlight because we all know that if your data estate is not ready, it's hard for you to move to the next frontier of innovation with Gen AI. So we think that the story, the performance, hopefully many, many out there will see the value, and, and the stock will, will hopefully reflect that.
But it's a, you know, 17 years in, TJ, who is attending another event today and couldn't be here, is, you know, still committed to what he, you know, set out to do at the start with our chairman, which was, you know, really build the types of technologies that can help companies make more use of their data. And what better place to be now when you're seeing the value that data has to businesses?
Alex, if I could add one thing to that-
Please
... 'cause I think you're spot on. I would say, I think we are executing. I do think we still need to get the word out about AvePoint in terms of, you know, not a ton of people know who we are yet. As Mario said, we're three years in. There was a lot of activity when we went public, so I think we were just one of many. You know, I look out across this room, when we were sitting here two years ago, there were only one or two people in the audience. Now, we have a few more than that. Hopefully, next year, this will be a full-packed room. And we've added, you know, analysts.
We're looking to increase coverage and continue to get the awareness of the company out there. So I think there's more we can do, but first and foremost, continue to execute and continue-
Yeah
... to tell the story.
Well, so I ran through the most skimpiest amount of data around the 1Q. Can you talk a little bit about what the 1Q takeaways were, and-
Yeah
A little bit about, you know, it's great to see you raise the full year.
Yeah.
But, you know, any issues around the second quarter, or what?
Sure.
How do we-
Yeah
... how do we take that apart?
First of all, I think you're being modest, 'cause you did a very good job of highlighting the activity in Q1. I think you did touch on all the key elements, which was great. We did have a strong quarter. So, as you pointed out, I think we executed well in 2023, and then Q1 was a nice, strong start to the year. As you mentioned, we performed, we exceeded guidance on our revenue targets, exceeded guidance on our operating income target, and then, as you mentioned, we increased the guidance for the full year. So, I think we started strong, and when we think about Q2, I think we think about some of the same drivers. We wanna continue to execute. In Q2, our revenue targets seem in line with our historical performance.
We do have some seasonality in the business. So we're kind of in line with our prior expectations and prior performance, so we feel good about that. Operating income, the same, in line with where we had budgeted. So we feel good about the performance in Q2. And again, we're looking forward to continued execution. Pipeline looks healthy. The momentum seems good. As you mentioned, the macro, at least in terms of all the conversations we're in as a company, we feel really good about those. I feel like we're at the party-
Ah!
And we're participating.
I think I'm gonna have to go buy the stock. So you raised your ARR expectation to 21% growth for the year.
That's right.
I think, given what you did in the first quarter, that implies, what, $55 million or so of new ARR?
Yep.
Is that right?
For the year. Yep.
So is there any seasonal pattern around that? Is it more back half weighted normally? What's the- how does that lay out-
Sure
... typically?
Yeah, it's great, great point, and very astute. So we had- we did about $10 million of incremental ARR in the first quarter of that $55. Historically, Q2 would be a little stronger than Q1, and then the second half of the year would be stronger than the first. And so everything I can see right now would, would lead me to believe that we're gonna see a similar pattern this year, that Q2 would be stronger than Q1, and again, the second half of the year would be stronger. So we're gonna be right in line in terms of that seasonality, where we've been in the past. And again, we feel good about the, the $55 that we put out there. We think it's achievable.
Can you talk about the spread of your customers a little bit? You've got a lot of customers. Don't have as much revenues for the amount of customers as typically, so a lot of them have to be somewhat smaller. Can you talk about the shift to get into larger enterprises and how you how you plan on implementing that?
Sure. Actually, maybe just some history. So, so AvePoint, 17 years ago-
... when Mario first joined, we were essentially focused enterprise only. So the company actually started with an enterprise focus and has actually, over time, then morphed the technology that was designed for the enterprise, which is, you know, usually a little unique. Most people start with an SMB solution and then try and go upstream. For us, the technology was always the most important, so we developed for an enterprise, and then, over time, we've actually then marketed that solution to mid-market, and then more recently, over the past few years, have marketed it to the SMB market, which is our fastest-growing segment, and why you see that the customer growth, we now have roughly 21,000 customers, and-
That's a lot of customers-
It's a lot.
... for $285 million and-
It is a lot of customers. A lot in that long tail of the SMB in terms of, you know, where they're taking advantage of the technology. But it's been, it's been good. I mean, we see nice, healthy growth across all three segments: enterprise, mid-market, and SMB. And we expect to see that to continue. I mean, the beauty of our, our solution is it's technology solid. You know, it's, it started with this enterprise-grade software, which has been helpful, and we also have this geographic dispersion, where we have really three markets we play in: North America, EMEA, and APAC, and all three are consuming all three segments.
So for people who don't know the mix, including me, what's the percentage US, what's percentage EMEA, what's percentage APAC, and is there any difference in conditions in those geographies?
You know, not really in terms of differences. We're about 45% in North America.
Oh, wow!
And then the 55 that's split between EMEA and APAC is roughly 30 and 25, 30% EMEA and 25%-
You did well in one Q, despite a lot of FX headwind, then?
Particularly in Japan, which is a strong market for us, obviously the yen continued to take a beating, and so yes, there was a strong headwind, you know, particularly in the Japanese market.
So going back to the question of: How do you expand the broader market here? How do you get to-
Mm-hmm
... be more known? Do you need to accelerate spending on sales and marketing? How do you do it?
... You want take the first one or take-
I can take, yeah. So yes, one of the things that we recognize is name awareness. As Jim just mentioned, the success we've had in the going through channel, we're focusing on elevating the awareness of what AvePoint can be to a channel player, of the type of business that takes over IT operations. How do they think of AvePoint? So that's one way where we feel once the awareness is there and people recognize, "Wait, I can go to AvePoint, I have good business economics, and I can, you know, power my business with their tech," we think that has a lot of headroom.
And then the other aspect of it is, as we continue to attend and communicate more with the investor community, I think getting out the value proposition, being more succinct and really where we fit so people can understand the story and believe in the sustainability of, given by, you know, past performance and current performance. So to us, we feel that, as Jim mentioned, you know, the toughest customer to gain and keep is an enterprise customer. And for many years, we developed the skills there, and we have some incredible relationships, seven-year customers, and we operate really with multinationals, which are pretty demanding.
We believe that tech, the scalability, the sustainability of that, we can bring it down now to the lower end of the market and quickly win there as well. So if you wanna...
Yeah, no, I think that's great. I would point out one thing, is we're continuing to invest in our marketing dollars. Our budget and marketing has expanded. We're focused on profitable growth, but that doesn't mean we're not investing, 'cause we are.
Mm-hmm.
And I think we think about getting the word out twofold. One is from a product point of view, from our customer point of view. I think we're doing a great job. Pipeline's healthy. We see a lot of momentum there. I think we can continue to improve. And then the second piece is, how do we get that awareness out to the investment community? And as you know, that's a whole separate conversation, and some of that we can control. Jamie's been a big help, obviously, since joining the company, in terms of structure and giving us really good recommendations in terms of how we do that. And then I think more importantly, our most important thing we can do is continue to execute and deliver results. And so we're focused on both of those.
So I think in the first quarter, you disclosed your gross retention, which obviously plays off of the subject at around-
Yeah
... 87%, which-
That's right
-given how many smaller companies you have, is not a bad number. But on the other side of the coin, love to see that come up a little bit.
Yeah
Can you talk about what your gross retention looks like with large enterprises, as a contrast to that?
Yeah.
And then feed that over into the net retention number, which I think was what? 110%?
One ten.
If I remember.
Yeah. So that's a great point. I think it shouldn't be surprising. As you would expect, our enterprise customers have the highest retention rate, our mid-market customers, slightly less than that, and then the SMB, as you implied, has the lowest retention rate of the three spectra. So not surprising. I think our long-term target is to get that 87% to 90%+. You know, you're spot on. Some of that is a little bit of headwinds that we've discussed. Part of it is SMB. We are looking at a bunch of things to improve that retention rate. And I think some of those we're seeing actual progress.
If you think about over the past two years, you know, we've had a lot of companies announce, you know, reductions in force, headcount reductions, and for us, most of our licensing is still headcount or seat-based. And so the fact that we've been able to maintain 87% over the past, really, year and a half, I take that as a win, actually, because-
Do you have a disproportionate exposure to tech companies?
Um-
Because, I mean, that's where the layoffs have centered.
Yeah. Yeah, not, I wouldn't say an over, you know, but, we do have some exposure, but I wouldn't say an, an over-
Okay
... weighting there.
So it's in line with the-
In line with, yeah.
Yeah.
So I wouldn't say an overweighting, but it is still a factor, and the fact that we were able to maintain, I think is a positive, and, and for me, demonstrates the underlying... We're actually seeing improvement in retention. And now, as we won't see as many of these reductions, we should start to see some improvement in that number. And I'd expect that, you know, over the next couple of years, we would get to that 90%+. We're expecting to see improvement this year. And, you know, that's our target and, and focus. Then, if we, if we shift to the NRR, you're right, GRR is a, a major component of the NRR. But we've seen very good, what we would call a cross-sell motion.
If you think of our, our NRR, it's really driven from customers buying additional products, not so much more of the same product, but more of additional products.
Okay, so can you talk about that? How many SKUs do you have? What is... How does the land look? Do you normally cover the entire enterprise up front, and then you sell them additional features, or do you go into a division and then-
Yeah
... expand to the larger company?
You want to take the first crack at that, or-
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
We often start with a division, and then we'll go across, especially when they, you know, there's business stakeholders that really want to understand, "How does this solution affect my user community?" The other is that the tools are... So it's a platform that really allows you to actually see the other capabilities. And so typically, what customers will say is, "Well, we want to try out that, and we want to see how that works," and they all interoperate.
Mm-hmm.
So that gives the selling team a good strategy to create more of that interest in the cross-sell, upsell. And then typically, we've disclosed the attach rates.
Yeah.
I don't know if you wanna mention the,
Yeah, I was gonna say even, too, like, we-- it depends on the customer in terms of what we land with. You mentioned in some areas, it might be a resilience, in some, it might be the control suite with governance. It all depends on the customer's needs. So we don't necessarily just see one product as the lead, but it is a way in, and then we have the opportunity, as Mario said, to kinda showcase other products that we have, and that's where the cross-sell motion really takes place.
All right, you guys, I'm gonna come out there for questions, and I wanna hear some questions from the field. But before I do, one last question on this subject: Do you have ability to flex between those features? Because, I would think you'd have a customer say, "I wanna try this, but I don't have a budget to do it.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe you can flex down a little bit on this one and flex up that one." Can you do that?
We do. We offer... So there's different ways to license. Our teams sometimes will, you know, bundle. There'll also be promotional offers where customers can get an analysis. We do discovery. There's a couple of areas in the product, in the platform, where you do discovery of the environment, and typically, that's a hook in, right? Once you understand, "Wait a second, I didn't realize I had this much risk. What can I do next to fix it?" So, we play around with that, and I think it's really good for customer service. I think customers appreciate that we're not, in essence, nickel-and-diming them everywhere, so to say.
All right, I promised you I'd come out to the, to the audience. You guys got a question out here? Come on, let's hear it. Somebody? Oh.
Oh, he got one. He got one.
Oh, yeah! All right. Thank you. Very interesting presentation, and I wasn't as aware of your company as I should be. We went from two years ago, no one had an AI product, to only Microsoft had an AI product in Copilot, to today, everybody has an AI product. But just from the hyperscaler point of view, Amazon ... Google, Microsoft, where are you guys positioned? How do you see things coming out?
That's a great question.
Yeah.
You're correct, I think this interest in what does generative AI do to change the way we work? Microsoft is doing a better job than AWS and Google, simply because I think they had the advantage of having the productivity tools already there. So when you turn on the Copilot for your email, and it helps you summarize your email, or it's helping you in your Teams chat, summarize a meeting transcript, it's low-hanging fruit, right? Most people could understand that and say, "I want more of that." So we feel there's a gravitational pull coming from that ecosystem. We're fortunate and well-positioned, as Alex mentioned, that a lot of our data governance approach and management and security for information has been always on the entire stack of services. But we also see now an equal interest in organizations that perhaps have used Slack, right?
They're like: "Hey, we're a Slack user, and we wanna, we wanna, we wanna do the same thing." And so, Google, I think, has done a very good job recently with the rebranding of Gemini and really saying: Wait a second, we could also turn on these prompt-based user experiences on these products. For us, what it does is it creates a sort of a wider landscape to say, "Let's look at the entire stack of applications you're using, and let's help you govern the data and operate it better." So I think it's. You're gonna see. You know, Salesforce is another one that, you know, with Einstein, right, is doing that. So we see that as really this entire transformation that's happening in the way companies, large and small, will start to think about technology in the workplace. So we're excited by that.
I think top of mind for everyone is definitely security. There's a fear. "Well, wait a second, once we turn this on, what if we find..." And there's all these stories, right? There was recently a story of someone that found—they did a search, and they found some old document that talked about layoffs in the company. And the prompt was basically, "Is the company gonna be doing layoffs?" And it said, "Yeah," and it's because it referenced an old file that went back years about some layoff that occurred, scared the employee, and then before you know it, it was the rumor mill. And so that's a real use case. And so the question is: Can I turn on Copilot or Einstein or Gemini, knowing that I have the security in place?
So we are there at that conversation, and we're providing the products to support that.
Are you agnostic as far as?
We are. So we're multi-cloud agnostic. You'll see that we typically are, you know, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce. We do offer capabilities also for Box and Dropbox because we're agnostic to your choice of content service provider. We are that, again, system that underpins those applications. Thank you for your question.
Yay!
That was a good question.
Yeah, it was a great question.
Very good.
See, you guys have great questions out there. I wanted to go back to the architectural question for a second. So when I'm a company, and I take your technology in-house, is it one user interface?
It is. It is. So once we connect to your tenant, you're basically logging into our application, and all the different products you see on our website are enabled through a license. It's an instance that also has partition your data, so that's secure. Yeah, so it is one interface.
So within that context, what do I need to do in terms of, you know, what data are you collecting? Do you have any agents or anything of that sort, or how do you capture the information?
Information, yeah, great. So each of these major systems has an API, as you mentioned before, Alex. Microsoft has a Graph API. Once you start, you have credentials to get into that API. I'm in the tenant, and I'm actually starting to cultivate that information. We have now a data orchestration engine that has basically a secret sauce in what we're gonna do to inventory and catalog the information. The same thing would apply if we're connecting to Salesforce, for instance. So this is the beauty of cloud infrastructure. I'll tell you one thing you do need to have is a lot of experience in doing the exchange with the API in a secure way. And I think we mentioned this, we work across industry, regulated industries. We have a FedRAMP-certified version of our entire platform.
Over the years, we've had to become very good at security. You know, fortunately, we've not been breached. Our data hasn't been breached. We've had no issues or any attacks, and that just speaks to the you know, work we've done to make sure it's secure. So typically, yeah, that exchange occurs. It's a single platform instance, it's partitioned, it's multi-tenant. We also work with conglomerates that have different businesses and wanna keep the use of our application independent. So we call that a multi-tenant governance infrastructure setup. That also is part of our architecture.
Well, we're about to run out of time here. I just wanted to summarize a couple of key points here, which is, it seems pretty clear that you are a company that is tied into the data side of AI. You're mission-critical relative to protecting and managing that, from a life cycle across the entire spectrum of that data-
Yeah
-over time. You've just produced a very good year in 2023 against a tough macro environment and beat and raised in the first quarter, even though you have over half your business internationally and had a bigger than normal headwind from, and probably larger than expected going into-
Yeah
-the quarter, from FX. You raised your guidance for the full year. You've gone from losing money to 8.8% or 8.9% operating margins, and you're selling at 5.5x EV or market cap to sales. I don't know what your debt position is, so I couldn't-
Zero.
The rest of the-
Zero.
So it's-
Zero debt.
You have net cash, though, right? So the-
Yep.
It's probably even lower than that. It's probably under five. That's-
That's right
Really cheap for a company with your parameters. So that's a good wrap, I think. That's a good wrap. Good summary.
It's a good wrap.
Alex, yes.
Thank you, Alex. Yeah.
Yeah, appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Alex. That was great.
Yeah, it was fun.
Thank you. Very fun. Yes.