Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for GoDaddy's second quarter 2022 earnings call. I'm Christie Masoner, Senior Director of Investor Relations, and with me today are Aman Bhutani, Chief Executive Officer, and Mark McCaffrey, Chief Financial Officer. Following prepared remarks, we will open up the call for your questions. If you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please use the Raise Hand feature in the webinar to be added to the queue. On today's webinar, we'll be referencing both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results and operating metrics such as total bookings, unlevered free cash flow, normalized EBITDA, annualized recurring revenue or ARR, gross merchandise volume or GMV, and net debt. Growth rates presented represent year-over-year comparisons unless otherwise noted.
A discussion of why we use non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to their GAAP equivalents may be found in the presentation posted to our investor relations site at investors dot GoDaddy dot net or in today's earnings release on our Form 8-K furnished to the SEC. The matters we'll be discussing today include forward-looking statements which include those related to our future financial results, our strategies or objectives with respect to future operations, including our approach to capital allocation, new product introductions and innovations, and our ability to integrate acquisitions and achieve desired synergies. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that are discussed in detail in our documents filed with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements.
Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, August 3rd ,2022 , and except to the extent required by law, we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. With that, here's Aman Bhutani.
Thank you, Christie, and thank you all for joining us today. At GoDaddy, our mission is to make opportunity more inclusive for all. The best moments of my week are when I'm engaging with GoDaddy customers. I am constantly inspired by their grit and determination and amazed by their resilience. Just a couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a small business summit. I met so many GoDaddy customers there, and some who will hopefully become GoDaddy customers in the future. While they worried about the current economic environment, I found them driven, ambitious, upbeat, and passionate about their businesses. One customer walked up to me and started with, "My life is on GoDaddy." I am inspired to do more for her and all our customers to be better every day.
Our relentless focus on innovation delivers seamless and intuitive technology complemented by human care, helping customers grow their businesses and achieve their dreams. Our strategy to attract high-value customers continued to show success, best illustrated by our customer retention rates, which have remained greater than 85%. The Q2 results demonstrate our steady operating discipline, 9% growth in revenue and 30% growth in normalized EBITDA, despite the challenging FX environment. GoDaddy's strong and diverse business enables us to navigate fluid global demand patterns and inflation concerns from a solid position, and we are committed to attention and action on what we control. As in the past, we aligned our marketing spend and other investments with demand signals, concentrating on success-based discipline and efficient spending. We actively identify and deploy marketing spend where we find opportunities to deliver long-term growth.
Through this plan, we create balance across all components of our business without sacrificing our investment in technology and development for future growth. Our strategic priorities have been consistent over the past six quarters. First, driving commerce through presence. Second, delivering for GoDaddy Pros. And third, innovating in domains. Beginning with commerce, we are pleased to share that we continue to achieve positive trajectory with our GoDaddy Payments offering and more specifically, the attach rates to our other products. For Websites + Marketing, more than 80% of our commerce customers choose our payment solution, and for Managed WordPress, 30% of our commerce customers choose our payment solution. Annualized GMV also continues to rise, with Q2 at $28 billion, growing 12% year-over-year. We continue to drive strong sales in payment hardware devices, enabling robust in-store capabilities for customers while also steadily approving payment applications.
While our payments offering is still relatively new, GoDaddy's differentiated omnicommerce solution is well positioned in this space. Regardless of the consumer's preferences, whether they are shopping online or in person, our solutions empowers our customers to benefit from our industry-low transaction rates in all locations. We also rolled out Apple Pay on GoDaddy Payments, improving the buying experience, and Apple selected GoDaddy as a Tap to Pay partner. We are excited to work with Apple to bring Tap to Pay on iPhone to GoDaddy customers later this year. As always, we will share more information about this partnership as it becomes more meaningful. We embedded more capabilities within Websites + Marketing plans to make it easier for entrepreneurs to market their products, sell online, manage their business, and grow.
New capabilities include product image enhancement, including background removal. Quick view and buy capabilities enabling single-click add to cart, integrated discounted shipping labels, online appointment features, making calendaring and appointments more intuitive. Enhancing our products helps our customers grow their business while building retention and creating greater lifetime value for GoDaddy. We also continue to test price increases for our highly competitive and feature-rich Websites + Marketing product. Our approach to pricing is nuanced, taking into consideration the right balance of increased price and market share, while also closely monitoring shifts in customer behavior due to macro factors. We have limited the use of heavy discounting programs that frequent this space while maintaining our competitive position by offering products that our customers value. Our customer retention rates remain strong with consistent 15-month cohort retention, which is trending higher than prior year cohorts.
Our overall customer retention metric has stayed above 85%, even as we observe some pressure for customers due to macro factors. This is something we are extremely proud of because it is a sign that we continue to deliver for an often left behind customer, the micro-businesses that are the backbone of their local communities. We are proud that Websites + Marketing delivers websites for customers that are highly performant. We have pushed the bar further on that and have implemented significant behind-the-scenes changes that result in improved website performance for millions of sites. These powerful improvements enable GoDaddy customers to achieve improved PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals scores. For example, our Core Web Vitals pass rate for our customers' sites increased by 75%, making us the leader in this category.
These improvements ensure GoDaddy's customers' websites rank higher in search results, and for small businesses, this is extremely important. Moving on to GoDaddy Pros. This quarter, we launched a beta WooSaaS solution to allow us to reach our larger customers, those with sales of $1 million to a few million dollars. These larger customers will be able to sell anywhere, including in person, on their online store, and in online marketplaces and social platforms, and benefit from omni-channel payment processing all managed in one place. This new online store offering provides growing merchants virtually infinite flexibility of WordPress plus WooCommerce, combined with highly performant, scalable, and secure cloud hosting technology and a seamless, intuitive, and comprehensive software user experience. The fully managed technology stack allows our customers to focus on running their business.
We brought together a team of experts in multiple technology domains to create this new premium offering, which includes exclusive functionality with free premium extensions and exclusive capabilities such as an expert-level dedicated support team. Our customers want a one-stop-shop offering from us, and the WooSaaS solution is the latest proof point of GoDaddy's ability to move slightly upmarket over time. The beta program started in Q2 with an invite-only group of WooCommerce merchants and partners, testing the integration and unification of multiple acquired technologies to offer a seamlessly managed all-in-one experience for WooCommerce stores. We are excited about the possibilities and looking forward to a full marketing launch. On our third priority, we are excited about the upcoming full launch of Payable Domains in Q3. A limited pilot program in Q2 focused on learnings, demonstrated that customers value the offering.
We also saw some green shoots in terms of meaningful GPV in the pilot being driven by customers without a website. In our Q3 launch, Payable Domains will be included for free and by default with every domain purchase, creating a frictionless out-of-the-box experience for new businesses. We believe this will simplify the online payments process for our customers by giving them a professional branded checkout experience and the freedom to accept online payments without needing any other subscription. In closing, I want to acknowledge that while we are all in uncertain times, GoDaddy's relentless focus on executing against our strategic priorities, delivering for our customers, building seamless and intuitive technology for our customers to succeed, backed by human care, our scale, and vast portfolio of offerings, steadily drives GoDaddy's consistent financial results. Our incredible customers inspire us to continue to innovate and do even more for them.
We will continue to be prudent stewards of capital, investing behind long-term growth drivers, and staying committed to delivering value to our customers, employees, and shareholders. With that, here's Mark.
Thanks, Aman, and thank you everyone for joining us today. GoDaddy's resiliency and durable top-line growth, profitability at scale, and robust cash flow are evident in our Q2 financial results and enable GoDaddy to continue to invest to deliver long-term value while returning excess capital to investors in the form of share buybacks. Revenue in Q2 was $1 billion, growing 9% on a reported basis and 10% on a constant currency basis. Excluding the currency impact, our reported revenue would have come in at the high end of our Q2 guidance. Within total revenue, international revenue grew 4% on a reported basis and 7% on a constant currency basis. Applications & Commerce revenue grew 15% within the target range of 14%-16%, driven by continued strength in our create-and-grow products and email attachments.
The ARR for applications and commerce grew 12% to more than $1.2 billion. Within that, the ARR from our create-and-grow products grew 10% to $420 million. Additionally, annualized GMV across the GoDaddy ecosystem was approximately $28 billion, growing 12%. Core platform revenue grew 7%, delivering at the high end of our 5%-7% Q2 guidance, primarily due to strength in domain registration, aftermarket, and security, offset by a slight decrease in our hosting business. ARR for our core platform grew 5% to $2.3 billion. Q2 bookings totaled $1.12 billion, growing 6% on a reported basis and 8% on a constant currency basis. Applications and commerce bookings grew 10%, and core platform bookings grew 4% on similar growth factors noted for revenue.
Normalized EBITDA grew 30% to $258 million. Our 25% margin represented over 4 points of margin expansion, primarily because of expanded gross margins on product mix and reduced marketing spend. The decreased marketing spend is the result of disciplined moderation of our investment as we zero in on success-based marketing and flex our spending to capture attractive returns. Our technology and development expenses increased as a percent of revenue this quarter as we advanced our commerce and innovation strategies. Lastly, we recognized a $10 million impairment charge related to IT licenses and facilities as we continue to simplify our infrastructure. Unlevered free cash flow for the quarter totaled $274 million, growing 16% driven by strong profitability.
Additionally, year-to-date, we completed $1 billion of share buybacks, repurchasing 12.8 million shares, and reducing our fully diluted share count by approximately 8% since year-end. Free cash flow per share rose to $5.67 on a trailing 12 month basis versus the prior year cash flow per share of $4.78, a 19% increase on strong cash flow and share repurchases. On the balance sheet, we finished Q2 with $770 million in cash and total liquidity of $1.4 billion. Net debt stands at $3.1 billion at the midpoint of our targeted range of 2x-4x . Moving on to our outlook.
We continue to be confident in our ability to execute in the second half of 2022 and are on target to meet our full year operational and strategic goals, including our targets around normalized EBITDA, unlevered free cash flow, and cash flow per share. With that said, we are not immune to the macro environment of the strengthening dollar and the impact that it has on our top-line performance. Assuming a continuation of today's rates over the rest of the year, we expect that the adverse FX impact for the full year to be approximately $35 million or approximately 1% compared to our full year revenue guidance issued in February. As a result, we revised our 2022 full year revenue outlook to $4.1 billion-$4.13 billion.
We remain focused on driving strong financial results and are committed to delivering $1.1 billion in unlevered free cash flow and $6+ free cash flow per share as laid out earlier this year. We are also increasing our margin expectations from normalized EBITDA to 24%-25% for the full year based on strong execution and disciplined investments. For Q3, we are targeting total revenue in the range of $1.03 billion-$1.045 billion, representing growth of 8% at the midpoint. The adverse FX impact to the range, assuming continuation of today's rates, would be approximately $10 million or 1%. Flowing through this impact, we expect applications and commerce revenue to grow between 13% and 15% and core platform revenue to grow between 4% and 6%.
For Q3 and full year bookings, we expect growth to be approximately 2 points below revenue, primarily driven by FX pressure. We will continue investing in technology and development to drive our robust product launch momentum while balancing our goal for margin expansion through efficiencies in customer care and marketing. Normalized EBITDA for Q3 is expected to be in the range of $250 million-$260 million, which would represent growth of 12% at the midpoint. Our capital allocation strategy remains the same. We fulfilled our $1 billion buyback target for 2022. We'll continue to evaluate use of cash options for the remainder of the year in line with our disciplined capital allocation framework.
Lastly, as we said last quarter, we will evaluate the impact of rising interest rates and explore refinancing our term loan and revolver with the intention of maintaining our leverage ratio of 2-4x . Before I close, I want to remind folks that during economic times like now, our strong balance sheet, consistent cash flow, and strength of execution enable us to improve upon our market-leading position through prudent investments and market share gains, growing the business long term, while also delivering on our profit and cash flow goals. Our 21 million customers create the foundation for our resiliency. We enjoy exceptional retention, and we continue to execute on our strategic priorities, build deeper relationships, and partner alongside entrepreneurs on their journey.
We are laser focused on operational execution, and we are dedicated to delivering 10%+ top-line CAGR, 15%+ normalized EBITDA CAGR, and 20% or better free cash flow per share CAGR through 2024. With $1 billion of buybacks complete halfway through the year, we remain committed to executing against the remaining $2 billion of shares under our current authorization through 2024. With that, we will have Christie Masoner from our investor relations team open up the call for questions.
Thanks, Mark. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand feature at the bottom of the webinar screen to be added to the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Trevor Young from Barclays. Trevor, please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. Two, if I may. First, what drove the sequential uptick in gross margin? How much of an impact was FX on GM, given that maybe a bit more of COGS there, such as like domain pass-through costs and infrastructure are incurred in U.S. dollars versus the revenue mix. Second, on the price testing, Aman, I think you alluded to it. It looks like what we saw on our end, both basic premium and Commerce plans saw increases mid-July, ranging from like $1-$3 a month, which translates to some pretty healthy increases on a percentage basis. Could you just clarify, are these increases just for new customers versus existing subs? Is it domestic versus worldwide? What do you expect the weighted average increase to be once this is fully rolled out?
Mark, you wanna take the gross margin?
Yeah. No problem. Hey, Trevor. How are you doing? So I would say most of the gross margin mix or change was based on product mix. The FX impact to that was pretty nominal.
On pricing, yes, what you saw, Trevor, was us testing some changes, and those were some of the price tests for Websites + Marketing. In terms of taking that international, as I've shared before, the price testing for us is quite nuanced. We base it on geography, on sort of customer expectation changing on market share. You'll see it appear in certain geographies but not in others.
That's really helpful. Just Mark, just to clarify on the gross margin, if FX rates stay where they're at today, should we expect some impact on gross margin in the balance of the year in currency?
Yeah. Most of the impact on the FX affects our bookings. Our costs are pretty much fixed and in line with, you know, the U.S. dollar. I would say look for, you know, most of the FX impact to flow through to bookings and then ultimately to revenue with minimal impact on the cost in our structure today.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Matt Pfau, excuse me, from William Blair. Matt, please go ahead and talk.
Great. Thanks, guys. Yeah, Aman, you called out your retention rates continue to remain strong. You did see some pressure from macro factors. Are there certain areas where you're seeing the macro impact your business more than others, maybe both on the product side as well as on the geography?
Yeah. Thanks, Matt. You know, perhaps one thing to call out geographically is that we see some greater pressure for European customers right now given inflation, the war, other macro factors. That's something we're keeping an eye on. Overall, you know, we have continued to sort of focus our efforts to bring in customers that have high LTV, have great intent to build businesses to stay with us. That's allowing us to stay with the higher retention rates, the 85%+. We're pretty happy with that overall.
Got it. Just a question on the, you know, marketing spend. You adjusted that for demand. Should we, you know, expect if macro improves and demand ramps back up, that then we could see that go back up as a percentage of revenue? Or how do you think about that, adjusting that dial going forward?
Yeah. My broad view on marketing spend is that we let it trail the demand and the signals we see, and we look at both sort of external signals in terms of the Google universe and such, giving us data, but also our customers' data and what we're seeing in terms of return on marketing investment. What you can expect is if the demand spikes again, our marketing spend will follow. You know, we're also constantly improving the success-based metric for our marketing. You'll see potentially some optimizations that continue to come. We, you know, as an example, in Investor Day, we shared some improvements in our SEM spend, which was all based on improvement rather than just demand.
Yeah.
You'll see a mix of both.
I'll add, we continue to expect to get leverage out of our marketing line, especially as our business and our solutions are broader, you know, as we get into more of commerce, as we get into more of aftermarket. You know, as once customers are in the Entrepreneur's Wheel, our efficiency in marketing gets better. Over time, we expect to get a leverage out of that marketing line and continue to be able to expand our normalized EBITDA margins based on that.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thill from Jefferies. Brent, please go ahead.
Thanks. Many of the companies in the peer group around SMB have been calling out, you know, higher churn impact from macro. I'm just curious if you can kind of drill in and ultimately give a sense of what is leaving you more immune to this and what's resonating some of the new product set. I had a quick follow-up.
Yeah, sure, Brent. Let's start with the customer, right? GoDaddy's average customer is the micro-business. You know, 1/3 of our micro-business customers are solopreneurs. We add to that the fact that the products we sell create tremendous value for our customers, and the price we charge leaves plenty of consumer surplus for our customers, right? Even if they have to adapt to a changing economic environment, the products we typically sell to them tend to be the last products they walk away from. That's why we see sort of the continued high retention rates for customers.
keep in mind, you know, the more we have focused in terms of attracting the customer to whom we can attach more and more products and reach higher LTV, you know, that sort of limits some of the, shall I say, discounting and, you know, other techniques that companies might use to attract a lot of customers that may not have sort of good retention rates. Obviously, our strategy is to attract the customers that have high LTV, have good retention rates.
I'll just throw in there the care relationship becomes extremely important in these times, and having that relationship and that person to go to help, you know, fix, come up with more economic solutions to provide value, seems to be and continue to be a winning formula. In these times, even more, you know, important to that customer base.
Real quick, I think the Street on unlevered free cash flow number is a little bit. Your number was a little bit below what the Street wanted. Was there anything to read into the number this quarter? I know you're reiterating the long term, but anything to comment there relative to the Street?
Nothing. We're really happy with our progress and we continue to work towards our annual goal.
Excellent. Thanks.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Porter from Morgan Stanley. Elizabeth, please go ahead.
Great. Thank you so much. Just as the entrepreneurs' wallets get a little bit stretched with inflation and higher interest rates, are you guys seeing any change in behavior or willingness to pay up for more expensive tiers or functionality across the portfolio? Thanks.
Thanks, Elizabeth. You know, you know, the higher premium tier offerings are, especially in the case of Websites + Marketing with the new Commerce Plus offering, is relatively new for us, right? We're just super excited in announcing the launch of our WooSaaS solution, which is also going to be a premium offering. All of these businesses are very new for us, right? We have a 21 base of 21 million customers. We have great relationships in care. We're sort of early in the process and not, you know, of course, we realize that customers feel the pinch of inflation, but these businesses are small for us in our core products. They just deliver tremendous amounts of value.
You know, one of the things we sometimes say here is, you know, people don't give up their dream because of an economic downturn, so they're not gonna give up their domain name.
Got it. As a follow-up, I was hoping to provide, you know, more color on what you're seeing in terms of those macro impacts on demand. I know Verisign reported a weaker outlook on domains, which raised some questions. It sounds like churn is holding in pretty well. Just any incremental you could provide, particularly on kind of the new customer demand, would be really helpful.
Yeah. We're definitely in a fluid demand environment, you know, and it's different by geography. I did make a small comment earlier about the European demand being weaker. Just to take a step back and look at the customer or the domains business overall, you know, if we look at GoDaddy's business, it's very broad. Obviously, you know, we sell 400 TLDs. We have a primary market. We have a secondary market, the aftermarket business. You know, in both cases, we are leaders in those businesses. We've invested in a corporate domains business. You know, you saw us take on a registry business over the last couple of years, and that's grown very well for us too.
You know, when we look at our domains business, we feel it's a much broader business with many levers that obviously we use to continue to grow it, compared to any one registry out there that, you know, may have one or a few TLDs that we think our business is quite different.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Aaron Kessler from Raymond James. Aaron, please go ahead.
Great. Let me unmute there. Maybe just if you can talk a little bit about the ad environment, just kind of hearing with ad pricing kind of coming down. Are you seeing kind of less competition and maybe getting some more efficiencies from a pricing coming down, whether it's Google Search or other areas? Maybe just talk a little bit about the M&A environment, just in terms of are you seeing valuations get more attractive with obviously public equities coming down as well? Thank you.
Yeah, you know, on the sort of ad environment, it's always a competitive marketplace. You know, I would never quite ever call that easy. As we shared with you at Investor Day, we've continued to sort of push more success-based, you know, improve our abilities with bidding, with machine learning to get better and better efficiency. You do see some of that in our marketing leverage improvements. Overall, I would just say, you know, the competitive dynamics are still the competitive dynamics. You know, obviously, in certain quarters, it's a bit easier than others. Overall, I wouldn't say there's some huge shift in it yet.
Mark on M&A?
Yeah, on M&A. Our approach hasn't changed. You know, we have our capital allocation strategy that we've talked about. We have our M&A strategy that we've talked about. Has to fit strategically, has to work financially, and has to be able to be integrated. We'll evaluate anything that comes along those lines. Obviously, we don't talk about anything active in any way, shape, or form. But you know, we try to balance our decisions for today based on keeping an eye on our long-term objectives, and then we remain laser focused on executing our objectives right now. We feel good about having a strong and solid year.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Mark Zgutowicz from Benchmark. Mark, please go ahead.
Thanks, Christie. Just a couple questions, quick ones on payments and then one on macro. On payments, you mentioned that 30% stat of WordPress customers using your payments. I'm curious how you sort of move that number up and you know sort of what you see as sort of the trajectory over the next couple of years. And then in terms of Apple Pay being added, was that simply a cart conversion decision, or is there some potential pull-in of new subscribers that potentially comes with that? And then on the macro, maybe just two sides of the coin. Both are centered around marketing, but how much of your marketing budget reduction is aligned to just lower absolute demand?
Then on the flip side of that, in terms of the success that you're seeing upselling products, what is the characteristic of that subscriber that is buying new product? Is it simply duration of the subscriber? Is there, you know, are there regional tier characteristics? Anything on that side of the coin would be interesting as well. Thanks.
Sure. Thanks, Mark. Let me take the payments and Apple Pay piece, and maybe you and I can tag team on the other two items. On payments, GoDaddy Payments for Managed WordPress, super excited to move that number from 25% to 30%. You know, you asked what are the types of things that we do. Customers actually have a choice of, I think it's 140 options that they can choose from in WordPress. We're continually improving the experience for customers, so it's easier and easier for them to make that choice, for them to be able to differentiate between those choices and pick the best choice. You know, in that with those simplifications and improvements, we've seen this improvement to 30%.
In terms of, you know, without commenting on sort of specific numbers that we'd be at in a couple of years, you know, what I would say is we're very, very focused on simplifying the customer experience. We're very, very focused on delivering the one-stop-shop to our customers, whether they're selling in store, on their online store or on social media or the major marketplaces. Giving that one subscription to our customers and letting them do everything they wanna do from one place, you know, clearly is our objective. In terms of Apple Pay, there are a couple of things there. There is the Apple Pay support and the Tap to Pay partnership. I think you're referencing the Tap to Pay partnership, and it's just super early. You know, this just got announced by Apple.
We'll happily share more with you as that sort of partnership develops.
I'll start on the macro and the marketing budget. You know, no doubt demand has been fluid in 2022, but overall it's been pretty solid. We look at marketing more as efficiency and optimization. You know, we do look at things like, Aman mentioned, you know, demand is down in Europe, and we adjust accordingly. Where we continue to look at the ROI and optimize it based on not only our expanded product offerings, but how successful we are on the Entrepreneur's Wheel and our ability to attach. It's, you know, like I said, demand is definitely fluid, but the marketing is being efficient and optimized to make sure we're capturing the demand that makes us. Then I think there was a...
I apologize, there's a few questions in there. I think we had. Yeah, sorry. The other question was the other side of that coin in terms of the upsell, the success you're having upselling products. Just curious, I guess, the subscriber characteristics that are, you know, they're, you know, absorbing those products. Is it regional? Is it just the duration, longer they're with you, the more likely, they're gonna, you know, buy products?
The core funnel for us continues to be folks coming in to buy domains and attaching email, attaching websites, attaching commerce, and we're laser focused on optimizing conversion through those funnel. We're also very, very focused on tracking the customer that has that intention, right? If our marketing is intent focused and the conversion funnel is good, that's what allows us to attach more and more products. Of course, you know, we shared at Investor Day a lot of good data in terms of penetration for emails, for example, with our 21 million customer base. You know, we're also creating new products and bringing them to the market. The best example of that is Payable Domains, where you don't have to attach payments to a domain.
You buy a domain, you get a checkout page that you can customize that's enabled for your domain automatically. You literally buy the domain, and you can start taking payments, right? That's a bit of a different movement in that we're not selling the product and then attaching more. We're bundling it in right with the first purchase and literally putting commerce on every surface we have because that is, in a sense, the omnicommerce ethos, right? Like, wherever you're transacting, whatever surface you're creating, your commerce or your micro business is enabled in there.
Thank you. Super helpful.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney from Evercore ISI. Mark, please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks, Christie. Two questions. One, international revenue growth I think has pretty consistently trailed that of your global growth. Is there anything there that you need to solve for to change that? Secondly, Mark, on share repurchases and, you know, you've repurchased what you said you were gonna do and, you know, on track or even a little bit faster. Just thinking about it going forward, you know, you're generating a lot of free cash flow. What would cause you to even up that range? Like, what would you have to see that would make buying back the stock even more attractive than it's already been? I don't wanna...
I'm not asking what more can you do for us, but you know, I guess I am asking that a little bit. You obviously purchased back a lot of stock. You had the ability to purchase more. What would cause you to amp that up faster? Thanks.
Mark, why don't you take the first part of that? I'll take the second.
Thanks, Mark. Yes, you know, we're very happy with the international business. You know, over 9 million of our 21 million customers are outside the U.S. and represent tremendous opportunity as we bring more and more products to that customer base outside the U.S. You know, super bullish, super happy with it. You know, some macro headwinds there. Of course, FX is there, and we see some demand challenges too. But structurally, no concern with the international business. Continue to be very happy with it, continue to allocate marketing dollars where we see the best return. Over the last two, three years, I will say you've seen us move those dollars back and forth a bit, and that has some impact. But no. Like, super happy with it overall. Mark, to you.
Mark, thanks for pointing out we have a lot of free cash flow. That obviously that's a good thing, especially in this day and age. Listen, we're really happy we've been able to execute on the $1 billion, six months in. You know, we are continuing to balance our decisions today, you know, based on what our objectives are in driving long-term value. I'd say the best way to answer that question is we have a very, you know, disciplined capital allocation strategy. We will continue to look at use of cash. It's an active discussion between us and the board. Right now, you know, hey, we're authorized at $3 billion.
Okay. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Aman.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on the call, please use the Raise Hand feature at the bottom of the webinar screen. Our next question comes from the line of Naved Khan from Truist. Naved, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Maybe just wanted, you know, just. Can you talk about the price increase that you're testing? You said you're kind of discounting less. Is that sort of the way of thinking about it, or are you also doing explicit price increases to your existing base of customers? How should we understand this from the outside looking in? I don't know if you touched on this already. I joined a little late, but maybe just talk about demand trends and, you know, in terms of just month-over-month, did you see any changes through the course of the quarter? How does July look like? Any color would be helpful.
Yeah. On the pricing, I think there was a specific example for Websites + Marketing pricing in the earlier question. Let me sort of pull it back, Naved, a little bit and talk about, remember, our pricing is nuanced, not just by geography, sort of customer shifts with macro, but also customer populations. I think in the past, you and I have talked about how for certain populations, for example, our domain investor customer, the pricing that we will have will be different from, let's say, a you know, microbusiness customer. You know, we take a look at all of that. That's the testing that happens, right? When we find sort of the best balance of ad versus share, depending on geography, depending on customer population, you see us roll those out.
I think Mark can comment on it, but those get built into our plan and into our forecast, basically. It's not sort of a single event type thing. You know, we have a large, sort of broad portfolio of products, so we're constantly evaluating and doing tests and seeing where we should take price. Typically, we're taking price after we have added more value for the customer, right? We want to continue to push the willingness to pay up and then take price so that the surplus for the consumer continues to be maintained and the customer stays super happy with us. Then I think you had a question about the second part was around the overall demand trends. You know, I did comment a little bit about Europe being a bit weaker.
Overall, you know, month to month, there are some small shifts depending on different businesses, but we're not seeing a tidal wave change in any way.
Yeah. Naved, I'll add on the pricing part of it, right? Anything we plan on doing on pricing has been included in our forecast, and we always keep in mind that, you know, 85% of our revenue comes from our existing 21 million customers. We're very, very particular about making sure that the pricing we do is matched up to value we're providing with them, you know, and we see it in our retention rates staying stronger at higher than 85%.
Got it. Thank you both.
That concludes our Q&A for this session. I'm gonna turn the call over to Aman for closing remarks.
Thank you, Christie. I'll just say thank you all for joining, and a big thank you to all GoDaddy employees around the world for another solid quarter.