Recording in progress
Global, geopolitical risk. Today, we have available Axon CEO Rick Smith, President Luke Larson, CFO Jawad Ahsan, Chief Revenue Officer Josh Isner, and Chief Product Officer Jeff Kunins. I hope you've all had a chance to read our shareholder letter, which was released after the market closed. You can find it at investor.axon.com. Our remarks today are meant to build upon the information in that robust letter. During this call, we discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements made today are pursuant to and within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today and are not guarantees of future performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that cause actual results to differ materially.
These risks are discussed in our SEC filings. Okay, before we go to Rick, we're going to play our quarterly update video. This video was pre-recorded before current global events escalated, but we're making the decision to share it today because there's important information about our quarterly update in the video. Okay, thank you.
Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Today, we're gonna look back at 2021, where we once again delighted our customers, solved real-world problems, and delivered strong growth. We intend to do the same in 2022. Now, it's my pleasure to once again introduce. Wait, guys, hold on a second. Where are Andrew and Angel?
I haven't seen them.
All right, let's pause for a second while we figure this out. Oh, this is them now. Hey, where are you guys? We're filming our video. You're what? You're where? Wait, where am I supposed to get a. Whoa.
I knew he'd eventually figure it out. Welcome to the metaverse. Now that we're all here, pause this video and check out our forward-looking statements disclaimer.
We are opening in virtual reality because VR is an exciting new category for us.
VR is the fastest-growing new product in Axon history. In its first year, VR grew from practically zero to over $20 million in bookings, and more than 1,100 public safety agencies have deployed.
In spring 2022, our TASER and VR teams will launch a new training that features a real TASER 7 in VR. This allows frontline officers to get more practice with the actual device, and that supports the entire mission. More de-escalation means more people saved in real life.
Axon makes officer training more effective, affordable, and fun, which is why in November at our user conference, we launched a TASER versus zombie game. It's a huge hit. Wouldn't you say so, Jawad?
Not today, zombies.
Okay, let's come back to him.
In all seriousness, we know that the investing landscape has changed since our November update, from falling tech stocks to new concerns about inflation. Axon's confidence has not changed, and our outlook has strengthened. Axon's growth is durable thanks to our growing global presence and expanding product suite. Get this. In 2021, about a quarter of our bookings came from new types of customers, including international customers, the federal government, corrections, fire and emergency medical services, and commercial enterprises. This was a record and highlights how we are successfully expanding beyond our core. Let's hear again from our CFO.
We're coming off a strong 2021.
Sorry. Wrong one. Cancel.
Sorry, guys. We're coming off a strong 2021, which showcased impressive growth and was highly profitable. 2022 is again off to a strong start, and we expect this momentum to continue. Like every company, we're monitoring inflation. Our software solutions are pretty insulated. We have long-term contracts for our cloud business. In the rest of the business, we have mitigation levers. For example, we continuously engineer costs out of our hardware materials and continue to automate our manufacturing. Not only that, as we grow, economies of scale help drive fixed cost leverage.
The durability of our growth includes every business line. Axon is less than 2% penetrated on our $52 billion total addressable market. We believe the professional TASER market can continue to grow for decades. What drives that growth? Global expansion, continuous innovation, and use cases beyond law enforcement.
TASER adoption continued to proliferate around the world in 2021. Recent examples of major TASER deployments include the Dutch National Police and three new police forces in Italy.
Meanwhile, the consumer market for TASER remains mostly untapped. It's still very early days. Angel, what have we been up to?
Starting in January, we began taking orders from distributors for a new consumer TASER device, the Bolt 2. By nature of being the CFO, Jawad was one of the first to get one.
Our newest consumer TASER device offers a different form factor for those wanting personal protection in a more accessible design. It's designed to establish up to 15 feet of safety and up to 30 seconds of full lockup on an attacker. Our investments in consumer TASER fall alongside our other growth investments, including software. All of these investments are subject to the same financial discipline that allows us to deliver meaningful profitability while also growing the top line at 20% or higher. We're really excited about what's in store for our consumer business, but you can expect us to maintain a responsible long-term focus as we invest for growth.
Sounds good. Okay, Angel, what else?
2021 was a banner year for software adoption, and you'll see that reflected in our reported results. Among recent highlights, British Columbia is connecting all of its justice sector partners and stakeholders with Axon Evidence, transforming the way digital evidence is managed throughout the province.
Remember that new justice category we talked about in our November update with the billion-dollar total addressable market? The product is here.
We've launched Attorney Premier, the first digital evidence management system designed specifically for attorneys. Here's an excerpt from our December product launch with Brian Glaister, Head of Justice Solutions.
As it is right now, there is nothing that is custom-built and specifically built to manage large, complex digital files. We're gonna fix all of those problems for you in one centralized, secure location with the first specifically built digital evidence management system to completely revolutionize criminal discovery.
Axon Justice team has a robust development roadmap for 2022 to improve functionality and add new features. We're excited about this new category. In June 2021, we began shipping Axon Fleet 3 with ALPR. Demand has been spectacular and has exceeded our expectations. Customers love the Fleet 3 dashcam system. It is easy to use, it has high video quality, and it is powered by artificial intelligence that allows the system to scan license plates. Backlog continues to grow, and we are delivering as fast as we can. Meanwhile, Axon Body cameras are also proliferating globally, recording hundreds of millions of hours of video annually. The 2022 product roadmap includes capabilities that will allow the Axon Body 3 camera to serve customers in new market verticals and new regions. We could go on, but we'd like to get back to the real world.
Please do check out our strong financial results and the details on our strengthening outlook in our shareholder letter at investor.axon.com. Jawad will close us out.
We recently concluded our first ever virtual ESG roadshow where we got feedback from our largest institutional shareholders. Coming out of that, we've proposed some shareholder-friendly governance changes. We're proud to be leaders in the area of corporate governance, shareholder outreach, and leading a mission-driven business. Our diverse shareholder base also includes individual retail investors who support our mission to protect life. This shareholder diversity is a big part of why we do these videos to foster transparency and make ourselves accessible to a wide audience. It's important for us to deliver shareholder value and also be the type of company that you are proud to own. Thanks for joining us on our mission and on our growth journey. See you next quarter.
How do we get out of here?
Unclear.
Hmm.
I think you're up, Brett. Go ahead.
All right. Thank you, Andrea. I was just waiting for the cue here. I love, you know, watching those videos. We've got the most creative finance team in the business. As you can see from that video, we've been looking forward to sharing results from the best year in Axon's history. We're heavy-hearted to do this on a day when democracy is under attack and a war is breaking out in Europe. We don't get to choose whether the times we live in will include geopolitical instability or global pandemics. What we can choose are our principles and how we respond. We stand for transparency, truth, and protecting life. Our products are designed to strengthen trust in the rule of law, and they support the United Nations sixteenth Sustainable Development Goal to foster peace, justice, and strong institutions.
Our thoughts are especially with the Ukrainian national police who are our customer, as well as our Axon teammates in Ukraine. As we kick off 2022, I'm confident Axon's best days are ahead of us. We are prioritizing our people and giving them a platform to further excel at what they do. Last month, Dr. Richard Carmona announced he will be retiring from Axon's board after 15 years of service. Dr. Carmona has been a tremendous contributor to Axon, helping us shape strategy and positioning Axon as we evolve from a single product company known as TASER to where we are today. He is simply a wonderful human being. We're incredibly grateful to him, not only for his 15 years of service, but also for the way forward he helped us to define.
As I reflect on what is driving our strength, it is a powerful combination of solving real challenges for our customers, creating a better user experience, and attracting passionate talent. It's really our emphasis on building software at the core that creates a great user experience. Historically, our competitors built software to fit RFPs, which check a lot of boxes, but ultimately does not function well in the hands of the user. We have been religious about understanding our customers' needs and building software and products that delight them when they use them. When customers test Axon solutions, we stand apart. As we consider the competitive landscape, one of the most important factors that sets us apart is that we truly have a highly integrated suite, a high-performance ecosystem that seamlessly connects hardware, software, and our community of users to achieve our mission of delivering a safer world.
When competitors talk about winning market share, it's mostly focused on lower-margin hardware buyers who don't yet value great software and usually aren't ready to advance to the cloud. We look forward to welcoming those customers down the road, just like the many agencies here in the U.S. that are upgrading from competing platforms to the Axon ecosystem. Perhaps even more important than the technology we've built is the mission mindset of our employees that sets us apart. I regularly hear from chiefs raving about their positive experience with our employees because they are so passionate about helping our customers succeed. I recently got a call from a state police colonel asking me to come to their headquarters for a surprise award ceremony where they recognized Axon rockstar project manager, Jenny Hsu , for seamlessly upgrading them from a competing platform onto Axon. Great work, Jenny.
Proud to have you on our team. Great tech and passionate people is just a magical combination, and it works. Our momentum with Fleet 3 has allowed us to continue to capture share with major cities, county sheriffs, and state patrols here in the domestic market. We've converted several major agencies in the last year from competing platforms onto our network, joining our community. The whole ecosystem ties together our body cameras, fleet cameras, TASER weapons, drones, and third-party sensors with a growing suite of software capabilities. I'm glad to see it's delighting our customers. We are laser-focused on pursuing our mission and driving growth, and it's clear that our people are our best asset. As you've heard from Luke over these years, we have been fortunate to attract people who are among the best in the world at what they do.
I'm incredibly grateful and thankful to have these people on our team contributing to our success. Now over to Luke to take you through some of our 2021 highlights in more detail.
Thanks, Rick. In 2021, Axon focused on our commitment to our mission, our customers, and our employees. We continue to be in a period of rapid scale. Last year, we hired more than 900 new Axon teammates, and we set new company records by filing more than 100 patent applications. We also supported our customers through a period of turbulence. One of our initiatives included the creation and launch of Family First, a free and confidential mental health resource and training package for the families of law enforcement. Another fantastic initiative we launched last year was the Axon Roadshow. We hosted 200 events over the course of six months, where we visited customer agencies and gave demos of our products.
We also grew our international markets, with São Paulo military police adopting a large body camera deployment and the Dutch National Police undergoing a large TASER deployment. On the product front last year, we launched Fleet 3 and ALPR, and demand has exceeded our expectations. As a result, Fleet bookings for 2021 far surpassed our projections, and customers have raved and served as incredible references. Our first launch of Attorney Premier in December opens up an entire new software category for us in the justice sector. While we're quick to highlight key wins in new market segments, our entire business has been able to achieve record results due to the stellar work that continues to be done by our state and local teams. Operationally, last quarter, we told you about industry-wide chip shortages that impacted our TASER 7 platform.
We told you we had line of sight to clearing the backlog in the first half of 2022, and that remains the case. We continue to manage through challenges, including delivery delays, and our supply chain team is navigating extremely well. We also called out in today's shareholder letter that approximately $15 million of the AB3 revenue is also shifting into 2022 as a result of an elongated supply chain. I wanna note that we have been intentional over our preparedness, investing in manufacturing capacity and flexibility, thereby improving our ability to meet customer demand. We feel great about our pipeline and bookings and in what continues to be a very dynamic environment. As Rick noted, you often hear me boast about our teams and the incomparable talent we have at Axon. Recruiting is a major focus for us as we grow.
We recently announced that we are opening an R&D hub in London, which will be our fifth after Scottsdale, Seattle, Tampere, Finland, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Finally, if you know someone fantastic who wants to make an impact, we want the best people in the world to come to Axon, so please refer them to us. Now with that, I'll turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jawad Ahsan.
Thanks, Luke. I'd like to start by recapping some of our financial highlights over the past few years. This is our third year in a row of 25%+ revenue growth. Our annual recurring revenue has tripled over those same past three years to $327 million. Looking back over five years, our revenue has grown at a CAGR of 26% from 2016 to 2021. Over the same period, our adjusted EBITDA has grown at a CAGR of 32%. We've delivered both exciting top-line growth and strong operating leverage, all while making investments that will not only continue these trends for years to come, but more importantly, help us achieve our mission to protect life. As we look ahead to 2022 and beyond, we intend to use this momentum to our advantage and stay on offense.
What is that going to look like? We're introducing today a third pillar of our financial strategy in addition to top-line growth and bottom-line leverage. That third pillar is cash generation. We're laser-focused on building an enterprise that will deliver 20%+ revenue growth for years to come, return increasing amounts of profitability to our shareholders as we grow, and build a free cash flow-generating machine that will make our businesses sustainable for the long term and keep us nimble and flexible. This flexibility will be built on the stable foundation of a subscription-based business model that generates highly recurring cash flows. We've recently talked about investing for growth in terms of R&D. We're still making those investments, but we also know that our continued growth at this pace will depend on more than just R&D.
We'll need new sites and new offices around the world as our global footprint expands. We'll need new facilities with new capabilities, both in terms of automation and streamlined manufacturing.
As well as showcase spaces for our technology where we can collaborate with and gather feedback from our increasingly diverse customer and partner base. Finally, we'll also need the ability to move quickly when the right inorganic opportunity presents itself. It's for these reasons that we gave you more color than usual in our shareholder letter about our cash flow and CapEx expectations, including formal guidance for 2022. Transparency is of paramount importance to us, and you can expect to hear more from us on this topic. We're incredibly proud of how we've positioned the business to be cash generative for years to come. To recap the three pillars in terms of what you can expect from us going forward, it's number one, continued strong performance on the top line. Number two, continued discipline in our operations, which will be evidenced by outperforming the rule of 40.
Number three, a strong ramp in operating cash flow that will, after the investments that we've laid out, lead to a strong ramp in free cash flow. Looking ahead, we're also very excited by the next wave of new products and technologies that are going to become an important part of our growth story in their own right. Before we move to questions, I wanna echo Rick's comments about the geopolitical crisis we're all facing as global citizens. Our thoughts are very much with the citizens of Ukraine today, and we at Axon have never been more proud of our mission to protect life. With that, Andrea, let's move to questions.
Thanks so much, guys. Mods, can you bring everyone up into gallery view? Let me know when we're all in gallery. Are we in gallery view? Okay, awesome. Okay, great. We'll take our first question from Jonathan Ho at William Blair. Go ahead, Jonathan.
Hi, good afternoon. I wanted to start out with sort of, you know, maybe what was different, you know, between your supply chain expectations around backlog and what ended up materializing around the quarter, and what's sort of giving you the confidence that you'll be able to sort of maintain, you know, clearing the backlog by second quarter?
Jonathan, thanks for that question. Yeah, we had just some, you know, material delays that impacted some of our original thinking. We still feel really strong about the, you know, total year outlook and, our supply chain team's just done a phenomenal job ensuring that we have, you know, line of sight to key revenue drivers. If I had to summarize it, I would say, you know, we may see some quarter to quarter miss based on some of those material delays, but we still feel very strong for the, year guidance that we published.
Got it. Then just as a follow-up, you know, you referenced 25% of bookings coming from new types of customers. I just wanted to get a sense for, you know, how much those customers can continue to contribute going forward, you know, as you look at sort of that increasing ratio. You know, what can that get to over time? Thank you.
Thanks, Jonathan. Nice to see you again. I'd say, you know, for international specifically, our goal is to have international outperform the United States in bookings long term. I think we're just scratching the surface right now in that segment. The federal government, you know, I wanna acknowledge our entire federal team. Just two years ago, it was a kind of a $15 million-$20 million bookings business every year. Last year, we're just short of $100 million in that segment. Again, we think we're closer to the beginning than the end of that growth. We have a lot of confidence, especially in those two segments.
you know, the justice segment, the correction segment, enterprise, we're starting to see some encouraging momentum as well. you know, One of the things that makes it challenging at times is our domestic segment still grows pretty substantially, but certainly we hope and expect those new segments to outpace domestic and become a bigger and bigger part of that mix over time.
Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Jonathan. Next question from Joshua Reilly at Needham. Go ahead, Josh.
Hey there. Thanks, for taking my questions and nice job on the quarter and year. I think, you know, given the news in Ukraine here over the last week, you know, curious how this maybe, you know, impacts your European opportunity, given the pipeline there in that region. I know it's early, but do you anticipate any potential business disruption as a result of what's going on?
You know, we've spent, you know, years and years building up a really strong team and pipeline in Europe. Last year, you know, the team really performed well against our goals. You know, in terms of normalized five-year bookings, we're up about 35%. In terms of ten-year bookings, we're up close to 60% international. These are deals that take a lot of time and energy to move through the sales cycle. The ones that we expect to close this year, largely we've been working on already for quite some time. I think we're in a place now where, you know, we feel like they're insulated from some of the uncertainty.
Having said that, you know, no one can predict, you know, the future in terms of how this will play out longer term. Of course, there's a little bit more risk there today than there was last week, but we still feel really confident in our international and EMEA business, you know, throughout 2022.
Got it. If you look at the increasing guidance
Adjust for the $15 million of AB3 revenue that's pushed to 2022. How much of that $40 million increase is related to increased assumptions around TASER versus other products?
You know, I think it's a healthy mix. I think we believe the TASER business is gonna grow this year, you know, across both domestic and our newer segments. Video shipments and some other products, both on the software and hardware side will contribute there. The team did a really nice job of not only closing out a strong Q4, but continuing to develop a pipeline for this year. In Q1, we expect really significant bookings growth over Q1 of last year. You know, we're pushing really hard to make that trend continue throughout the year. We think it'll be a mix of factors that drive that revenue and, you know, bookings result up.
Got it. Thanks, guys.
All right. Thank you. Will Power at Baird. Go ahead, Will.
All right. Great. Thanks. Rick, maybe starting with you. You all have rolled out a bunch of new exciting products, whether it's, you know, VR, Bolt 2, you know, Fleet 3, you know, on and on, digital evidence management for justice. You look over the next five years, which of these new product categories gets you most excited? What presents the biggest opportunity, I guess, for growth, for the company?
Sorry, I had myself muted there. It's my patented move. That's kinda like asking me again, like, which of my children I love the most. It's actually hard to pick. Like, over on the TASER side of the business, we have got some crazy, awesome new technology coming over the next 10 years. We are going to outperform a 9 millimeter pistol by 2030. I am highly confident. Over on the other side of the business, like, solving problems for attorneys in the criminal justice system, you know, that's high margin software. It's scaling rapidly, quickly. You know, we're passionate.
Our team over there talks about the opportunity to really impact fairness and efficiency in the justice system by having tools that enable, you know, public defenders who may only have literally minutes with their clients to have to work out plea deals to make them able to efficiently be able to process the video evidence and find what they need. Across our whole business, pretty much everything we do impacts people's lives in an important way because, you know, public safety is really important and foundational work to a modern society. I'm excited across the board. I mean, consumer, I started this business to focus on the consumer space after, you know, a private citizen killed two of my friends, ruining their lives and now spending his life in jail. We need to give people something better than a bullet. It's 2022.
Across the board, whether it's improving the efficiency of the justice system or saving lives or just putting medieval technology on the shelf, because we've given the world something better, we're just excited across the board. Forgive my enthusiasm, but I absolutely love my job. I just got back from a 2.5-day roadshow, saw 12 major agencies, and I always come back, you know, super pumped. Literally got home about 5 minutes before the call. You know, it's just such an awesome business to be in. I'll just tell you this. I also, I'm watching what's happening in Europe, and I can't help but think, like, the world is looking at this quite differently. Like, what is this capricious use of war? It doesn't feel like it fits the modern world.
You know, I think we all were hoping it was gone. You know, the global revulsion, you can feel it. I'm hoping that we're turning a corner here, and I think we're seeing even in military circles, the acceptance of killing people is not what it was a hundred years ago. Hopefully we can get rid of it being accepted at all in the next century.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That all makes sense. Maybe if I can just ask a second one, whether for you or Luke or whoever wants to take it. You know, it's been a challenging hiring environment, especially for R&D talent, technology. I know you're opening a new hub in London, which, you know, presumably helps. Maybe just talk about what you're seeing in terms of employee retention, difficulty hiring. How does that factor into, you know, plans and outlook here?
Yeah. I'm gonna take that first, and then Luke, I'll have you take the ball. Part of what we're doing in London as well is really important. We're beginning to continue to expand our global footprint. That, you know, we've got a lot of customers in the U.K. and Scotland and across Europe. We really feel it's incumbent on us to really have a global footprint, where we're sourcing talent around the world and putting that talent closer to our customers. This both helps with sourcing talent, but also we think from a customer intimacy perspective, it's gonna help there as well. With that, Luke, do you wanna take the rest on retention?
Yeah. Great question. As we look in the last two years, we've seen this acceleration of remote work, and that's given every employee in the world a lot of opportunities. I think a lot of companies are kinda scratching their heads going, "How are we possibly gonna retain people in this environment?" I'm super excited about it at Axon because I think we're gonna be the beneficiary of that because we've built an amazing company. When we go out and talk to candidates, we talk about the purpose and the mission that we have. We talk about the great team that we've built and the talent that we've attracted. I think one really exciting part of the business is the future growth that we see ahead of us.
That's not only for, you know, prospective employees, it's for existing employees as well. You know, I feel really confident about the team that we've built and it's definitely a challenging hiring environment, but we think it's gonna be one where we're gonna, you know, thrive because we've built such a great business.
Stay tuned at the end of the call. We've got one more video for you that the team put together, that really showcases a bit of who we are, and we're getting rave reviews from people seeing it online, who don't even know what we do, who wanna come work for us. You know, we aspire to have a place that not only works on big problems but really has a good time doing it and recognizes and celebrates, you know, the humanity of our people. You know, we're all in this together, working on problems we care about, and that is resonating with our current employees and with folks we're trying to recruit in.
Okay. Look forward to that.
Yeah, thanks. We're really excited to share that video with you at the end. Do stick around. Okay, Meta Marshall at Morgan Stanley, you're up next.
Great. Thanks. You know, you listed a number of kinda international agencies that you guys were having success with in the quarter. Just wanted to get a sense of, you know, whether where you're seeing the most traction, either TASERs or body camera, and just whether they're more likely to kinda bundle up front or if there's different needs with the software, for those customer sets, maybe digging in on the international side and what traction you're seeing there. Maybe second, it sounded like you guys were able to kinda work around and find alternatives for a lot of the products, but just getting a sense of if you think there's any price increases that'll need to be passed on to customers. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks very much for the question. On international, I think our focus is customer acquisition, regardless of product. I think some customers are better suited at the moment for TASERs or more interested in TASERs and you know, others are pursuing body cameras or in-car video or even interview room. For us, our strategy, you know, has always been to make sure we can delight our customers with one of those products and then over time expand the ecosystem within each agency. We really believe that's become a competitive differentiator for us in the United States over time, and it will internationally as well. I'd say it's a little less common to see bundling of TASERs and body cams in most markets.
The Commonwealth countries might be a little more common there, but it's still, you know, in a lot of these markets, you know, how can we get in there with any of our products and delight customers and build really strong, productive, trusting relationships? That's really the focus internationally. In terms of pricing, I think we feel really good about where we stand right now. We address pricing every year and meet as a team and decide kind of how best to go out to market and be fair in terms of the value that we're providing. We don't at this point anticipate passing any of the, you know, or passing any pricing increases along to our customers.
We announced our new pricing in January. We feel great about it. We have many of our supplier contracts locked in. Our ten-year deals do contain escalators starting in year six to account for inflation and new products and new capabilities and so forth. We continue to feel good about that.
Great.
I wanna add on here, Meta, one thing we are working on, and it's why we laid it out, for you in our cash estimates, is our investment in automation, streamlining manufacturing, labor reduction, right? That's a big investment we're making from a CapEx standpoint to help attack this from the cost side.
Perfect. Thanks for the context.
Good. Thanks, Meta. Keith Housum at Northcoast Research, you're up next.
Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. You guys, let's talk a little bit, perhaps, a crystal ball here. You can perhaps give us a little bit of a highlight in terms of what we can expect for this year in terms of new product roll-outs or updating existing ones. Now, 83 is a few years old. You know, TASER is being in process. Perhaps you guys can give us an update on where you guys are at with some of the new products, or in the improvements or, you know, changing or updating the old ones.
Well, I've got to contain my excitement here. You know that, Keith. You know, we have some products that are getting to the end of their expected life cycle, where we start to expect to see some new ones coming along. I can't give you any specifics, but you know, we do get on a cadence of approximately 2.5-3 years on body cameras and every 5 years on TASERs. You know, we just launched Fleet 3. There's a lot going on, but you know, unfortunately, I can't give you more than that other than to share my smile with you and let you know we got good stuff coming our way.
I'll say it. Axon Body 3 was late 2018, correct? You were all 2019 launch, so just by probably something this year then for that one. But as, you know, no comment for you guys is necessary, my assumption that's on that one. I guess the next question more for Jawad. You guys did note that you guys increased freight costs during the fourth quarter. I'm assuming you got other costs dealing with supply chain issues. Can you perhaps give us a little context about what the impact was in the fourth quarter and how we should think about that in 2022?
Yeah. You know, the impact was fairly muted on our margins. When you saw gross margin compression, it was largely actually due to when we talk about the supply chain shortages that we had, unable to fulfill demand. We had some fixed costs that were unable to be allocated over inventory, and that caused a little bit of margin compression. But overall, not a big disruption. This is again pointing back to the investments we're making in our manufacturing processes, you know, in automation to really get out ahead of that. We're seeing results. We've been making those investments for a couple of years. They've been on a bit of a smaller scale, and now we're ramping those up because we're seeing such great benefits from those.
That's something that we expect to continue to pay dividends in the short term, and over the next few years and as we again, try to drive towards that long-term margin target of 30%.
Okay. Let me put an example. You said you don't expect any significant compression in 2022 because of either of those issues.
That's correct.
You work with the offset. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Keith. Next up, it looks like Eric has dropped off, so we'll go to Paul Chung at J.P. Morgan. Go ahead, Paul.
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Just, I just wanna talk about the kind of pushout in 4Q revenues and kinda impact on the shape of kind of your TASER contribution in 2022. How's your visibility on the weapon side? Given that higher subscription bundles, can we expect a little less volatility between quarters? I have follow-up.
Yeah, I think it's a good question. You know, the teams worked really hard to get as much line of sight into the TASER supply chain as we can, and they deserve a lot of credit for that. I think we feel very much that the outlook on supply chain does support our new revenue guidance. You know, as you remember, in Q4, we did guide to around $204 million, I think, and surpass that. That just speaks to the fact that the team really did a good job pulling in every component that they could to be able to beat that guidance.
We think we've got a promising path forward in that regard. In terms of quarter to quarter, you know, flux last year, you know, it became fairly consistent between Q2 and Q4. There was less kind of swing in the revenue results overall. I do think that is because the team is getting better and better at building, you know, a more substantial pipeline across segments, and that allows us to have a little less execution risk quarter to quarter. Certainly every quarter we start with, you know, how can we maximize the percentage of the pipeline that we close? That's gonna continue to be a focus.
I really believe the team is primed for another really strong year in that regard.
Paul, on your visibility question, we've got visibility to a little over half. About half, over half is booked. It's one of the reasons we like to highlight our bookings number, because it's a really strong indicator of our future revenue growth.
Right. On cash flow, you know, very strong. Despite some of the component shortages here, talk about the working cap dynamics you expect over the year and then kind of benefits of a larger subscription base and then the shape of cash flows as we move through the year. That'd be helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. This is one we're really excited about. I'm personally extremely excited about it. We've built a business that is gonna be hugely cash generative for years to come. This is something that we've been building the foundation for many years, and it's really starting to manifest itself, you know, in our cash flow statements. Last year, we had a bit of a use of working capital, and we expect that that's gonna work itself out in the first half of the year. You know, we obviously laid out the investment in the new campus, the automation, you know, manufacturing initiatives. We have new sites and facilities we're opening around the world.
That's one of the reasons that we've given more visibility into our capital expenditure, and we've broken that out versus just sort of like recurring business, ongoing, excluding the one-time items. We are gonna give you visibility to those one-time items over the next couple of years. We expect that once we're through the next couple of years with those investments, that we're really gonna be throwing off pretty significant amounts of cash.
Thanks, Paul. It looks like we have Astrid Huang has joined us from Raymond James. Don't mean to put you on the spot because your video is off, but do you have a question, Astrid? Okay, I'm gonna assume not. I'll give you another second. Is there anybody else who has a follow-up? You can kind of come off mute. Don't all jump up at once. Oh, Will Power has his hand up. Go ahead.
I'll ask a follow-up. You know, I was intrigued with on the corrections market. Looked like a nice win in Ohio, you know, I believe. I'd love to get further color as to what the pipeline of opportunities looks like. It seems like that's been a you know, kind of a budding opportunity for a while. Are we finally at the cusp of, you know, more significant wins? How do we think about that opportunity moving forward?
Yeah, absolutely. The deploying a body camera at every correctional facility in Ohio was a huge win for the corrections team, and one that took multiple years to deliver. There's a big market here. You know, we often talk about internally, like, you know, for example, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is about the size of NYPD in officer count. So there's a big market out there to go get. You know, we've reworked some of the offerings, and packaging and bundling to better suit our corrections customers, and we've continued to build out that team over the last year and a half here. So, we're really excited about the progress there.
Still a lot of work to do, and it's a different sale for sure than a lot of our, you know, more conventional law enforcement customers. You know, we expect that to be not only a part of our state and local growth moving forward, but also a part of our federal growth moving forward.
Thanks, Will. Jonathan has a follow-up. Go ahead, Jonathan.
Hi there. Just given we started the call in VR, I thought it'd be appropriate to just ask, you know, just given the success that you're seeing there, are there any stimulus, you know, funding or programs, you know, that can maybe drive even faster adoption in that VR space? Can you maybe remind us of, you know, how much of a step up in ASPs, you know, you can see from, you know, sort of VR adoption? Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. Right now, you know, if you buy a VR, our VR offering with TASER 7, it's about a $17 a month uplift from the TASER 7. We have some a la carte packages as well. I'd say, like, all of our products, you know, early on were far more focused on adoption than ASP right now. We believe that this is a you know extremely emerging and disruptive technology that, you know, is gonna further our mission to obsolete the bullet. Of course, we can do that through building a better and better TASER, and we will. The other side of that is making sure that we're able to simulate the type of stress that officers experience in the field.
We really believe this is kind of our next big product category, and we're really focused on becoming the market leader in this space. Like we said, this product outperformed both our body cameras and X26 in year one of sales, which is a great indicator, and the team's really focused on driving this business segment up past $100 million in bookings as fast as we can here.
Thank you.
Rick, you're off mute, so you're going to close us out. Go ahead.
Now you made me wanna double-check and just make sure that I'm off mute here. We're obviously just thrilled with the performance the team's been able to pull together over these past two years despite the pandemic and social unrest and now these new geopolitical challenges. You know, I have the great fortune to work with just some really awesome people who get out of bed regardless of what's happening in the world and just get after our mission. We want to conclude by sharing with you a really special project. Our team shot some drone footage of our current headquarters this week, and we'd love to take you through our Scottsdale office, R&D, and manufacturing facility. It's pretty cool. Check it out.