We do appreciate that it's a particularly crowded earnings day, particularly with the election being on Tuesday, so thank you so much for joining us today. Today we have available Axon CEO Rick Smith, President Luke Larson, CFO Jawad Ahsan, Chief Revenue Officer Josh Isner, Chief Product Officer Jeff Kunins, and we have a special guest today, our VP and GM of the Federal business, Richard Coleman. First, we're going to give prepared remarks, and then we'll bring our analysts up onto gallery view for questions. I hope you've all had a chance to read our shareholder letter. We posted it to investor.axon.com, and the remarks that we make today are meant to build upon the information in that robust letter. If for some reason we lose access to Zoom or internet connectivity, we'll make every effort to post our prepared remarks to investor.axon.com so you can read them.
During this call, we will 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. They are not guarantees of future performance. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks are discussed in our SEC filings. Okay, let's turn it over to Rick.
Thanks, Andrea. Hey, I know everybody's really busy with earnings season, and you may have a lot of calls to go to, so I thought about how I could best encapsulate the quarter. O ver 1,000 people are busting themselves, working so hard in the hardest environment I've ever seen. Man, that team, they deserve that we spike the ball. I couldn't be more proud of what our team turned in. With that, I also know some of you are working from home. We had the pleasure of meeting some of your kids. We want this to be the conference call that your kids want to come join. At the end, have them join you when you ask questions, and we'll send them some Axon swag for warming up our call. Speaking of which, come here, Patty. I've got my daughter, Kylie, who's learning about business.
Say hi to everybody.
Kylie's going to be attending as well and giving me pointers from the side as we go over our results. Thanks, Kylie. At the end, we're going to have a little bit of background bingo. You guys enjoyed it last time. Today, we're going to play a little game. We know you're busy. Let's get started. Just hang out for the end and have your kids join us. I could not be more proud of what has happened at this company, how we've transformed and scaled in recent years. An idea that really started from a tragedy 27 years ago has had us put together a platform and solutions that are at the center of today's national conversation around justice, equality, and social reform. Our mission has been clear from day one.
It's a privilege to be solving essential problems for our customers and for our communities. We see our customers out there working hard to keep communities safe, and we thank you. We thank them for their dedication. Communities are increasingly demanding not just body cameras, but also TASER devices that they see more and more often , and police need options to reduce incidents escalating to lethal force. On the heels of the extensive civil unrest we've seen over the past several months, Axon established a fourth company mission, a pillar that I talked about last quarter, centering on racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. Our teams are greatly inspired by this new mission and joined forces to develop a new company-wide initiative, Sprint for Justice, led by Jeff Kunins, our CPO.
Our entire engineering team came together, and in one enormously successful and productive two-week sprint, they created and shipped eight new capabilities in support of Axon's new goal. We have prominently highlighted these in a graphic within our Q3 shareholder letter, and you can link from the front page of our website. Another big call-out this quarter is significant traction in federal, where bookings were up 400% compared to last year. We're establishing a strong foothold in the early innings here with big wins across new customers and programs. We've been making strategic investments into the U.S. federal market, and we view this early success as a game-changer. With that, I'd like to introduce you to the game-changing person who's behind this, and that is Richard Coleman, our Vice President and General Manager of Federal Programs.
Richard came to us from General Dynamics, where he started out as a solutions architect for Department of Defense geosynchronous satellite programs. He progressed to capture management, where he won multiple $100 million and billion-dollar programs. We certainly hope he'll be doing that with us here. He finally finished his 18-year General Dynamics career as a vice president and GM for Law Enforcement Systems. Richard.
All right. Thanks, Rick. Really appreciate it. Now I am thrilled to join you all for today's call. This quarter will mark my second year here at Axon. I've never been more bullish on the opportunity we have in front of us in the federal market. Q3 2020 marks a historic moment for Axon Federal. We've achieved a record $38 million in bookings, up 400% year-over-year. Our success includes a number of new programs and contracts, many of which were first for Axon. I'll walk through five of these quickly to provide some color. These are also in the shareholder letter as well. First, we established our first two programs of record with the federal government, including a $13 million U.S. Customs and Border Protection order for body cameras and digital evidence management.
This is significant because U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the largest law enforcement agency within the U.S. If you're not familiar with the program of record, it's a key milestone that specifies an appropriations line in the U.S. discretionary budget. Second, we signed our first indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or IDIQ contract with a federal agency directly.
To be successful in the federal market, in federal space, it's essential to establish contacts and contracts to get your solutions funded. An IDIQ is a contract vehicle that does just that for us. Additionally, it gives the agency an established way to procure our solutions through an established vehicle. Third, we signed our first Officer Safety Plan with a federal agency. A lot of you are familiar with our OSP plans. It's a bundle that includes TASER 7, Axon Body 3, and all the software that goes along with it. We're excited to take this popular bundle and introduce it to the federal law enforcement market as well. Fourth, we sold body cameras and cloud-based digital evidence management to the first Department of Defense customer.
We think there's much, much more opportunity to unlock in the DoD, starting with the military police and security forces across the Department. Lastly, we signed our largest TASER contract in company history. It's valued at $15.5 million with the Department of Homeland Security. With all that said, all these achievements, there's one thing that really excites me most about Federal, and it's that Axon is already an established tech company known for its innovation. We can leverage our innovation and our tech pedigree, along with our top-notch products, to fill real Federal requirements and new ones to fill them today in the Federal market. We can do this while still innovating like the tech company we are. We can drive the industry as well as the Federal market forward. Again, I really want to thank you all for the time today on today's call.
I'm both humbled and honored to have the opportunity to lead Axon Federal into the federal market. In doing so, protecting lives, capturing truth, and accelerating justice for the federal defense and civilian agencies and all the communities they serve. With that, back to Rick.
Awesome. Thank you, Richard. It's been just a real pleasure having you on our team, and your impact has been remarkable as demonstrated this past quarter. I want to conclude my segment by thanking our employees. Look, we're all going a little stir crazy working from home in this wild, turbulent 2020. I just think about the mental toughness and commitment that people have summoned this year to work through it and deliver the kind of results this team is delivering. It's not lost on me that we are in a fortunate position. Despite the fact that we're in the midst of a global pandemic, we've been blessed that we have superior talent across the organization, we have mission-critical products, and we're finding new and increasing pathways to growth and a powerful financial model. With that, I want to turn over to our President, Luke Larson.
Thanks, Rick. There are so many great things to talk about, from Axon Accelerate, our user conference, to our massive early success in the U.S. federal market that Richard talked about, to the strength of the demand for our software services and our Officer Safety Plan subscription and the phenomenal adoption we're seeing. We detailed a lot of it in our shareholder letter, so to avoid being too repetitive, I just want to highlight just two of the many successes from this quarter. First, TASER. We're not just selling TASER devices anymore. The category is evolving from a book -and-ship hardware product to a subscription-based de-escalation platform that includes cloud software and training. We see this in the percentage of TASER devices sold on a subscription, which rose to a record 75% this quarter. This 75% reflects a surge in demand for TASER in the U.S.
Internationally, we are still getting started. While subscription levels are lower than in the U.S., we are confident we can also drive subscriptions abroad. Second, we launched Axon Respond, which is a giant leap in police communications technology. We are evolving real-time situational awareness beyond the radio. Going back two years, we spent more than 1,000 hours studying what was wrong with 911 operations so we could deliver a compelling solution to fix it. Rather than describe it, we're going to play the video that we showed at Axon Accelerate. Most of the technology you'll see in this video is in the market today with a few exceptions, including Fleet 3 with license plate reading, which we are aiming to bring to market mid-next year. Doug, can you play the video? Awesome.
One last shout-out from me to all of our employees that helped deliver these record results. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jawad.
Thanks, Luke. I'm also very proud of our employees for putting up another quarter of solid execution, which drove outperformance across most of our metrics. Earlier this year, we shared our plans to invest in our channel, product, and support infrastructure as we look to scale the business to $1 billion in revenue and beyond. These investments yielded results ahead of our expectations, as evidenced by our strengthened outlook for 2020. We intend to continue these types of investments in 2021. Two areas in particular highlight how we think about calibrating our investments for growth in a dual -track, near- and long-term strategy. With certain channel investments such as federal and international, we can start to unlock revenue relatively quickly in the near term.
Meanwhile, with other investments, particularly in our software product categories such as records and dispatch, we're bringing new products to market that will disrupt legacy incumbent providers over the long term. This combination of right-size investments ensures growth over the near and long term, and with growing diversification, the particular product or channel that drives this growth will look different from quarter to quarter. Now let's turn to our outlook. For 2020, we believe we can deliver full -year revenue of $630 million-$640 million. The outperformance versus our original 2020 revenue midpoint expectation of $620 million reflects strengths across the business, as well as growing customer diversification, particularly in federal and international. As you see in our shareholder letter, we're also tracking above plan on the bottom line, and that's driven by revenue outperformance, expense leverage, and travel and event cost savings of about $12 million.
In 2021, we expect to continue to build on our strong momentum. Given the rapid pace of growth we're seeing, we want to provide you with a framework around our view of the business. Since our August update, we've seen an uptick in our level of visibility. While there is some risk from the ongoing impacts of COVID, most municipal budgets for January have been set, and after taking into account some small pockets of budget slowdown, we feel confident in our positioning and outlook heading into next year. In addition, we're continuing to diversify in products and markets. Our initial view of the business for next year is for $720 million - $750 million in revenue, with $120 million - $130 million in adjusted EBITDA.
This reflects continued strength on the top line and consistent adjusted EBITDA margin performance, excluding the aforementioned $12 million of expense favorability in 2020 due to the pandemic. Finally, I want to touch on ESG, which we're hearing about from a growing number of our investors. Axon is a mission-driven company whose overarching goal is to protect life, and that social mission is what drew many of us to the company. We see fully 100% of our revenues as supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In our shareholder letter, we talk about Sprint for Justice, which Rick mentioned earlier. This product development initiative created features such as automatically flagging body camera video if a racial slur is detected, using VR training to help officers better respond to high-stakes situations, and promoting a growth mindset among officers by offering a coaching feature.
ESG is a growing area of focus for us, and you can expect to see more from us on this front over the coming year. We're in the final stretch of a high-performance year. I want to reiterate how proud I am of our employees for their crisp execution in a challenging environment and for their unwavering support of our customers. As we plan for 2021, we feel highly confident about how we're positioned across the board. With that, Andrea, let's move to questions.
Thank you, Jawad and team. Moderators, can you bring everybody up into gallery view? Let me know when that's happened, please.
We're all up in gallery view.
Great, thank you. All right. We're going to take our first question from Keith Housum at Northcoast. Go ahead, Keith, you're up. The phrase of 2020 is you are on mute, Keith.
All right. Can you hear me now? Sorry about that, guys. Jawad, can you go into a little more detail and remind us about the investments that have been made in the channel, the product, and the infrastructure? I guess particularly, I'm interested in some of the investments you're going to be making to grow the international business.
Yeah, absolutely. We made investments this year in new geographies that we had never been in before, and it was really on the heels of investments we'd made in previous years in new markets like India and Ukraine. We have seen great results early on. I'm going to let Josh talk a little bit more about that. When we put boots on the ground, there's no substitute for that. What we found is that by having folks there, by establishing offices, and having Axon employees in these new markets, it leads to not only increased pipeline but, in many cases, a return within the same year. We're doubling down on that strategy. The channel investments next year, we're going to expand to even more geographies. From a product standpoint, we're continuing to invest very heavily in software.
The Sprint for Justice initiative that Jeff led with his team this year is a great example of just the type of leverage that we could expect to see from the investments we've already made in our product. Just a little bit of extra effort goes a long way. From the support infrastructure standpoint, we are in the process of getting ready to be a billion-dollar-plus revenue company. Everything that comes along with it from an ERP implementation, which we're well underway in, an HRIS and other back office support systems that we're putting in place to help the company scale.
Great. If I can follow up on that, in terms of the international expansion, is our entire product portfolio going to be available internationally? I guess what I'm getting at, is the software been written or translatable into any language, or are you going to be limited in terms of what you can offer where based on languages?
Ultimately, I think we view any international customer as an opportunity to not only sell TASERs and body cams, but also move them to the cloud and Evidence.com. For some markets, right off the bat, customers are adopting Evidence.com. For other markets, they're adopting our on-premise solution named Commander first, then subsequently moving to Evidence.com over time. I think for us, the most important thing for any international customer is to get one of our products in their hands. It really doesn't necessarily matter to us which one they start with, because we can really feel confident betting on ourselves that we'll be able to deploy more and more of our products with those same customers over time.
Okay. Language will not be a barrier to a country . Can you go with your product portfolio?
No.
Great. Thanks, guys. Great quarter.
Thank you.
Thanks, Keith. All right. We're going to take our next question from Will Power at Baird. Go ahead, Will.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess I'll try to slip in two. Maybe the first for Richard, or perhaps Rick, or whoever wants to take it. Really encouraging to see the progress at federal. I guess I'd just love to get a little more color on what the sales cycles look like generally as you target federal. Particularly as you look at that Homeland Security contract, the largest TASER deal in the company's history. I guess I'd be curious how much more room there might be to go with somebody like Homeland Security. Is this just the starting point or are there things you could build off of from here?
Why don't you take that one, Richard?
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. The lead times for federal contracts can vary. Typically, there's a two-year budgeting cycle. That said, every single year, federal customers are evaluating what the gaps are, what their needs are, and the requirements. Every single year, a customer has the opportunity to leverage their funding for technology and/or capabilities that are relevant. We're seeing lead times as low as within a year, as well as extending out to the two years that the budgeting cycle typically affords itself. Specifically for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. CBP, they are the largest law enforcement agency across the U.S., so 40,000 law enforcement officers are within U.S. Customs and Border Protection. We see this as a franchise program where we see nowhere but north and additional growth.
Okay, great. Maybe a question for Jawad. It was great to see some initial thoughts on 2021. Maybe just help us out with the key insights from there and help inform your confidence in laying out that revenue guidance. What are kind of the key inputs that provide that visibility at this point, particularly given some of the ongoing questions with respect to municipal budgets and whatnot?
Yeah, of course. Look, one of our core values as a company is transparency. We've got great relationships with our investors and our analysts, and we've always prided ourselves on the level of information and detail that we share in helping them model our business. One of the things that we heard pretty consistently throughout 2020 was that after we pulled our guidance earlier this year, it was a little difficult to model our business. We've got a lot of moving parts and an increasing amount of complexity in the business. As you point out, there's still a lot of uncertainty in the world. The reality is that our business has been diversifying along two vectors. Who we sell to is rapidly expanding beyond law enforcement, and where we sell is rapidly expanding beyond the U.S.
The fact is that our business is more resilient today than it's ever been, and so we wanted to share our view on how 2021 is lining up for us, again, in an effort to help folks model our business.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Will. Next question from Erik Lapinski at Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, Erik.
Sorry, I think I was on mute. Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Thanks. Maybe just a quick one on kind of as you continue to ramp shipments of Body 3, can you give us any context into just the attach rate for maybe some of the more LTE connected features and kind of the usage there? Is it going up pretty in line with what you would have expected? Is it maybe improving, better or worse?
Yeah, absolutely. I think we're very excited about where we're at right now with interest in live streaming and other connected features with AB3. Without going too deep into the numbers, I would say we feel really good about the amount of adoption we've seen through 10 or 11 months here, and certainly going into next year, we have a very strong pipeline of connected services. Whenever you launch a new product, really at any point in the year, customers need some time to build in that ask into their budget.
While this year a lot of our new cameras that were first time purchases included a lot of the connected services, going into next year, I think a big point of focus for us in kind of year two of those budget cycles are now to be able to get all those upgraded cameras on those same connected plans. Our customers have been working with us and, of course, with their city councils and so forth, to identify funding to add those feature sets on. We're really excited about kind of the runway we have to get hopefully one day every single AB3 onto our Respond and Respond+ platforms.
Got it. Thank you.
Just one quick addition to that, as we talked about in the shareholder letter, both from a sales perspective, but also just usage and engagement. While it's still early days, over 200 agencies have used Aware actively in the last 30 days, with more than two dozen consistently using it every single week now. We've seen just tremendous growth in the adoption of live streaming as it begins to roll out. We've seen it grow over 6x over the past six months.
Got it. That's awesome. Thanks. Then maybe just one other one on kind of the percentage of TASERs sold on a subscription going up. Is that starting to become more, I guess, the highest rate you've seen? Was some of that a factor of maybe a large order or two being sold on subscription? Is that pacing to even the rate that you would expect kind of moving forward?
Ultimately, the majority of TASER 7s are on subscription plans, the vast majority. Essentially, the way I think about it is, over time, as the mix of T7s keeps going up relative to our other TASERs, the more that number will be driven up as well. I certainly would expect, although nothing's guaranteed, that we would look for that number to keep growing unless there's an outsized international order as a one-time purchase or an outsized order on X2 or X26P as a one-time purchase. We certainly would expect that number to keep trending up.
Got it. Thank you.
Just to be clear, to follow up there, it was also tied to the mix of domestic shipments in the quarter. 75% is a great number, and we're proud of it, but it will fluctuate depending on domestic versus international. Okay, our next question is going to be from Joe Osha at JMP Securities. Go ahead, Joe.
Okay. Am I unmuted? That's the first and most important question. Going back to some of the comments about next year, I'm wondering if we could maybe get some insight into how that might break down in terms of TASER sales versus cloud. Then also, I'm interested in whether computer-automated dispatch and records might be contributing meaningfully to that. Thanks.
Yeah, we definitely have goals across all products, including dispatch and records. Certainly, we've seen a lot of really promising indicators in terms of interest and commitments this year that'll translate into deployments and dollars next year in dispatch and records. Then on the TASER business, I think as we look at next year, we kind of try to set a goal for ourselves of how much we want the TASER business to grow year-over-year. Absolutely, we anticipate TASER growth in that number. Likewise, we expect all segments to grow, including software and sensors, cloud, and so forth.
Could I perhaps ask you, Jawad, are you willing to put some numbers around that in terms of mix?
Not at this time, Joe. We gave directional guidance for how we're thinking about 2021, and we feel good about that guidance today, but that's the extent of the detail we're going to get into.
Okay. Thank you.
You always have to try, right?
Got to.
You have to try. I'm just checking to see who's logged in recently because we've had some folks log in and out. Let's take our next question from Jonathan Ho at William Blair. Go ahead, Jonathan.
Hi, good afternoon, and congrats on the strong quarter. I just wanted to start off by circling back to the Fed opportunities. Does the IDIQ contract potentially give you a hunting license to go and maybe chase other agencies or sub-agencies down? Just wanted to get your thoughts around the GSA schedule as well.
Yeah, go ahead, Richard.
Absolutely. An IDIQ contract, it is kind of a hunting license. You can think of it as a contract vehicle that allows the federal customer to buy off of a pre-agreed pricing catalog from Axon. In particular, this IDIQ is at the department level, and there's multiple agencies within that department that can then follow on and purchase off of the IDIQ.
Great. We've definitely seen some interest here in terms of the de-escalation products. Can you maybe talk a little bit about whether that can potentially drive some additional bundling and just sort of the reception that you've seen from de-escalation, just given the current political environment? Thanks.
Yeah, sure. In Q2, obviously with the lockdowns and so forth, it was domestically probably the low point of the year in TASER sales. In Q3, we really roared back, and I'm so proud of our entire global team, especially, in this case, our state and local team. I think there is certainly a record interest in TASERs. We see that quarter-over-quarter here, and we expect that to continue to grow both in state and local, where we see it more incrementally, and then federal and international, where our hope is we see it more exponentially. Across the board, I think there is very strong demand for TASERs.
I think you'll continue to see that throughout the year here. We're very excited at the opportunity to continue to be able to package our de-escalation devices with our software and sensors packages on the bodycam and cloud side and on the records side and so forth.
Okay, thanks, guys. We'll take our next question from Jeremy Hamblin at Craig-Hallum. Go ahead, Jeremy. You're on mute.
You hear me now? Sorry about that. I wanted to just congratulate you on the fantastic results. I wanted to get into the records business a little bit and just get a sense of whether there's a little bit more embedded competition in that particular side of your business. I wanted to get a sense for, as you're getting in the initial ramp
The time frames to win meaningful share in that portion of your business. You have fantastic relationships now that have been built over a couple of decades that may make the sale easier, but I wanted to get a sense of how you're thinking about that business and whether or not the ramp that we saw that was kind of a long slog in cameras. Do you think that you can potentially gain share and adoption faster in records simply because of the extensive relationships you have today?
Absolutely, Jeremy. I think we've seen over the last 10 years, certainly body cameras were a little slower out of the gate to be adopted. Now we've put ourselves in a market leadership position there, and certainly part of our strategy, as we've talked about, is around OSP7+ and packaging our records solutions with our body camera solutions. I'd say this about the competition: we have a lot of respect for all the different companies in the market. They're all great companies and well run and so forth. At the same time, we've built our team and our channel and our product team and our company for moments like this, where we can enter new markets, and we can win in them.
This year, we've seen very promising results, and I certainly believe in our team, and I think we're going to end up in a spot where we are the market leaders, not only in records but also in dispatch, and every day we're waking up getting one step closer to that.
If I could, I wanted to ask one other question directed towards Jawad in thinking about 2021. In terms of, you've seen pretty exceptional growth and steady growth now in the weapons side of the business, and I wanted to get a sense, as we look forward into next year, where you've continued to have mid-teens growth in that weapons segment. I think a lot of people had expected that to temper. It seems as though you're as excited about that business today as you might have been a few years ago, and maybe even more so. Is that something where you feel like that weapons portion of your business can continue to do double-digit growth?
Yeah, that's a great way to say it, Jeremy. I am more excited about our TASER business now than I ever have been in my time at Axon. Actually, I've never felt better about the company overall, and obviously TASER is a big part of that. We talked a little bit about, in my prepared remarks, this near- and long-term strategy, where in the near term, we can still see growth from TASER, both domestically, there's still white space. We talked about all the reasons why over the last couple of years. Now with federal and with international, that's going to be an important growth vector for TASER. With these investments we're making in product with records and dispatch, we think those are SaaS businesses. Our ARR is now over $200 million.
We're not necessarily small anymore, but that's still ramping very quickly. As that revenue comes online over the next few years, that's going to help two, three, four years out, keeping our growth rate growing at an accelerated pace.
Yeah, I've got to jump in here and say as well, do not forget the TASER business. It is a really transformative and exciting business. Before this decade's out, we will have a weapon that is going to be neck and neck or even outperforming a nine millimeter in stopping power. I think we've got the opportunity to become the primary weapon of law enforcement officers around the world. That message has been really positively received by law enforcement. When I released my book last year, we were nervous as to how that message would resonate. I can tell you, especially in the environment we're in right now, no officer wants to use lethal force, and we've got a really good less -lethal weapon system today. We still have room to improve, and I'm really excited about the things that are coming down the road.
Just the opportunity, even with TASER 7, just got approved in the U.K. We're getting approved in new markets where our existing upgrades are going to be really opening a lot of revenue opportunity, and I don't see that coming out of steam, running out of steam anytime soon.
I actually wanted to jump back in as well. One thing you haven't heard us talk a lot about, I'm just as excited as Rick is about TASER. One area we haven't talked a lot about in the past, I think you're going to start hearing more from us, Jeremy, is the consumer business. I'm just so proud of our consumer team. We had a plan for the year, for the full year in revenue, they hit that plan in the first seven months of the year. They're having a banner year. We're expecting big things from that business. We've got a couple of product launches on the horizon in the next year or two. That's another area that we're expecting to see some growth.
Fantastic. I love the goals. Thanks, guys. Good luck.
Thank you. Next question from Joshua Reilly at Needham. Go ahead, Joshua.
Hey there. Thanks for taking my questions. You just had your Customer Conference in August. What did you see in terms of demand and pipeline generation out of that event from being fully virtual versus historical in-person events? How does that compare to the increased customer interest generated from the social unrest over the summer?
Let me start, and then I'll pass over to Josh Isner. I would say overall, being virtual, the level of attendance, I think we had something like 10,000 people sign up, which is something like 4x or 5x from last year. Not all of them showed up, and the level of engagement probably wasn't as high, so we didn't have their undivided attention. The feedback we got was people really enjoyed it. We sent out VR headsets loaded with some of the content for at least a subset of the attendees.
I think given the challenges, people really responded well. Now we do see the value of in-person in the future, but this year, I think actually in terms of quantity of touch, it was actually broader than it's been before, just maybe not as deep in terms of giving their time for three full days. Josh, d you want to add anything?
Just to the questions about social unrest. Look, I want to be really conscious of how we talk about this. It's not a victory when there's the type of social unrest that there is today. Certainly, our team, I think , thinks about our sales process the exact same way every day. We are going to cover the market well. We're going to talk about the value that our products provide across the board, and we really, really believe in that value. Sometimes it takes an external factor for a customer to maybe be more motivated to buy it or whatever the case may be.
We really believe, hey, we're just going to keep focusing on the things we can control, and we believe we're going to end up in a really positive place, not only as a business, but in terms of fulfilling our goals and missions in society. I think we're going to feel really good about that. I wanted to kick it over to Luke, maybe just to talk a little more about Accelerate as well. I think he had something to say as well. Thanks.
Yeah. Axon Accelerate was a huge success in terms of being able to connect with the customers digitally, which I think a year ago it would've been very tough to get the key decision-makers from major cities to invest in time via Zoom call or another format. That's been one of the silver linings of the pandemic: us being able to rapidly push people to these virtual-type engagements. We walked away being very pleased, to Rick's point, of being able to hit a larger number of customers and showcasing all of the tools around de-escalation and transparency. Just finally, to Josh's point on the social unrest, we really are trying to solve and be part of the solution to these really difficult, complex situations. Our customers aren't looking to us as somebody that's coming to them out of the blue.
We've invested in decades of relationships where they know the tools that we're creating are going to help them resolve these really difficult issues in the best possible outcome.
Okay, great. Just one follow-up question. Net revenue retention increased one point sequentially in the quarter. Does that imply that you're having ongoing success in upselling the OSP bundles? I know that's probably the case, just maybe some color on that. How should we think about the relative penetration for OSP at this point within the Bodycam customer base?
Yeah, I'll take the first part of that question on net retention. That's exactly right. Our strategy's been geared towards selling more higher value-added bundles like OSP 7 and 7 Plus. As more customers adopt that, we will expect to see our net retention increase. For the second part of your question, I'm going to kick it over to Josh.
Okay. On the net revenue retention, I also just want to give a big shout-out to our customer success org. This is an org we invested in substantially this year to build this out and make sure our customers continue to have a great experience. Lisa Krolikowski and her team have just done an awesome job ensuring that, and I think that's reflected in net revenue retention. Do you mind just reminding me of the second part of that question?
It was just about the relative penetration—
White space with OSP? Sorry, did I just cut out there?
The relative penetration for OSP plans within the Bodycam customer base?
Yeah. I think for us, with OSP right now, I think we're seeing a lot of mid-size and larger agencies start to show a lot of interest in it, and I think that's where we're having the most success. As we kind of took a holistic look at our pricing and packaging strategy going into next year, I think you'll start to see us test OSP-like offerings that are a little more tailored to specific segments. In corrections, I think we're very excited to offer an OSP package there that's more tailored to corrections. I think with inside sales that handle our smaller customers, we're going to be experimenting there as well with the same type of package that's a little more tailored for smaller agencies.
Our goal is to have every customer buy a camera, a software license, a records license, and a TASER at the same time, and I think we're on our way to that. Hopefully, with some of the adjustments and tailoring types of initiatives that we're undertaking right now, I think we'll continue to see more and more positive signs there.
Hey, one thing before we continue. Andrea, I'm going to go ahead and just take one moment, and I'm going to share my screen. I'm demonstrating with you guys a feedback tool I use with a lot of our customer interactions. It's called Slido. It is a way that I can take feedback from groups of customers while I'm doing these calls. I want to do the same thing with you. If you get out your smartphone and go to slido.com and enter the code Axon, or just point your smartphone camera at the QR code, that'll open up Slido for you. There we're going to get some of your feedback. Maybe you can ask some questions there that I can come to at the end. While we're doing that, Andrea, back to you to keep running questions.
Thanks, Rick. Thanks. All right, we're going to take our next question. If the moderators can, can you bring everyone onto gallery view again?
Yeah. Oh, I guess- Can you stop sharing your screen there? Thanks.
Oh, did I break it?
All right. Do I need to stop my screen share, Doug?
Yeah, if you could.
Okay.
Thank you, Rick. Appreciate that. Okay, next question from Charlie Anderson at Colliers. Charlie, you're up.
Yeah, thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on a really strong quarter. I wanted to go back to the consumer TASER commentary. That was really interesting. Sort of curious what's happening there. Is that more push? Is that more pull? It is fundamentally the same product, right? I'm sort of curious, too, if it's a sustainable trend, what that means to TASER gross margin, and then also the cartridge business for TASER. I've got a follow-up.
Yeah, great question, Charlie. It's a little bit of both. Earlier in the year, we saw increased sales as a side effect of folks staying home and wanting more self-defense options. As you know, gun sales were up, and TASER sales were up for similar reasons as folks looked for self-defense options for home. We hired a new general manager for the consumer business. He started earlier this year. He's got a fantastic marketing background, and he's been completely up-leveling our game. As you pointed out, it's the same products, but we're really stepping up our game from a marketing standpoint. We've been making a run at not only increasing sales with distributors but especially with direct-to-consumer. Those results have yielded some pretty great returns early on.
Next year, as I mentioned, we're looking at a couple of product launches that I think are going to get even more of a push. We're focusing not only on the TASER form factor, but there are some other form factors that we think are very appealing to folks that don't necessarily want to fire a weapon per se, but more of a TASER that's got a different form factor like we've had in the past that we've discontinued. Those types of things we think are going to be opening up new markets for us. From a margin standpoint, they're actually going to be very helpful. The consumer business—we haven't actually disclosed this publicly, but it's a very attractive margin. It's accretive to our law enforcement margins, that's true of the cartridges as well.
Okay, great. For my follow-up, we had a chance at some pretty significant police reform bills coming out of the federal government this year. It didn't happen. I'm just sort of curious where you see attitudes trending as far as that's concerned in terms of reform, both at the federal and at the state level in terms of potential tailwinds for the business. NIBRS was obviously helpful in opening up opportunities in records. Sort of curious if there's anything else like that out there in terms of regulation that could provide a tailwind for you guys over the next year or so. Thanks.
Let me take that one. A few weeks ago, I had gotten an email from a Republican U.S. congressman who had informed me that part of their platform on police reform was to promote body cameras for every officer in America. That's coming from the Republicans. I think you would also see on the Democratic side of the aisle that there's a lot of support for police reform, particularly around body cameras. I'll tell you, once we really get into the conversation, people also very quickly understand the value of TASER weapons. We saw the tragedy in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, the community there has risen up, including the family of the deceased, really pushing the agency. Why didn't every officer there have a TASER? Again, we obviously don't like to see those sorts of tragedies happening or try to leverage them.
We do have solutions that really matter, and we think it's bipartisan. I would tell you, just on a personal note, I've been pretty worn out by all the divisiveness in the country. The last 48 hours, I was expecting a lot more of it, and I'm feeling a lot less division right now. I think we may see a more productive coming together as we move into next year after the exhaustion of 2020. I think both sides of the aisle. We have a positive, solution-oriented technology program that can be part of a police reform bill that police want, that communities want, and I think legislators can see the value in. I'm optimistic.
Yeah, I would just add, I would echo Rick's comments. I think this is really where we're seeing now bipartisan support for reform that would include technologies for products like body cameras as well as increased training. In June, Joe Biden called for $300 million to reinvigorate community policing. Regardless of the outcome, I think this is an area where the pragmatic voice is going to win in terms of saying we actually need more training to reform police, more funds going in there than to actually cut funds from there.
Okay, guys, I think that's all of our questions, and I just want to give a quick second to make sure to see if we have any follow-ups. Does anybody have a follow-up? You want to raise your hand? No, are we feeling good? Okay.
Andrea, a couple has come in through the chat real quick. I don't know if we want to just touch on those about the sales of body cameras used by correctional guards and police officers.
Sure, Rick.
Maybe I'll—
Go ahead, Rick. Go ahead.
I think we're seeing some major correctional agencies and sheriff's offices are now starting to deploy these. In fact, Josh, you can talk about how you've stood up a team to go after these adjacent markets, and I think we're seeing real reception, right?
Absolutely, Rick. I think this is a place where historically there hasn't necessarily been a lot of focus on it in terms of individuals, that's really all they do day in and day out. Over the last two years, we've built that team, and I think it's already presenting pretty incredible returns. I think once these representatives go out and talk to customers, I think they're really parlaying the success to the similar use cases around the country within corrections. We expect that to continue. I think between corrections and some of our other adjacent markets and private security and eventually fire and EMS and so forth, we'll continue to see more and more momentum both on the TASER side and on the body cam side.
All right.
Thanks.
I think we already answered the other question that was in there.
Yeah. There was another question in the chat about police budgets, but I feel like we really covered that both in our shareholder letter, in our prepared remarks, and in the Q&A. The transcript will be posted online if you guys missed something. Okay, now we're going to turn it over to Rick to close us out. Just wanted to say, one of the things that's really been heartwarming is we've heard from some of you on the buy side that you're watching our earnings calls with your kids, and they're learning about what you do, managing assets for a living. In that spirit of camaraderie, Rick prepared a little something for the families out there tuning into earnings calls.
All right. You guys have already seen it. In fact, we've already had three people respond, which I appreciate. I'm going to leave this up. The call is basically over. If you get a chance, go into Slido and check it out. It's been an invaluable tool. I get a lot of feedback from customers this way. We're having some fun where if you can guess the majority of our backgrounds, whether they're real or not, and what office it's from, we're going to send you some swag. Give us your shirt size, your email, and thanks. Also give us your feedback. We want to know, are you enjoying the format? Sometimes we get a little more informal. I figure you're probably going stir crazy like we are. We're loosening it up, trying to make it kind of fun, knowing you've got a lot of work.
Many of you are going to be working late into the night. We hope you will look forward to our earnings calls, not just for the great results, but also because we're going to have a little fun together. Thanks. It's good to see the country, I feel, coming together. I have this optimism looking to the future. In general, it's been a rough year, and thanks for sticking with us. Again, to every Axon employee, I couldn't be more proud to be part of this team. I just love working with you all and look forward to reporting our next results in the new year. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you. Bye.