Beautiful. So why don't we get started here? So good morning, everyone. My name is, Erik Woodring. I lead Morgan Stanley's tech hardware, equity research coverage out of the, U.S. in New York. Let me just read a quick disclosure. For important disclosures, please see Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. I am pleased to welcome, Brian McGee of GoPro to our conference. Brian and I go back a handful of years. He's been at GoPro for almost a decade now. He's CFO, he's COO, he's jack of all trades. But, Brian, thank you for being here today.
Erik, thanks, for having us. Let me just read a quick forward-looking statement-
Please.
and we'll get onto it. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that GoPro's remarks today may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements and all other statements that are not historical facts are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, any forward-looking statements made today are based on assumptions as of today. This means that results could change at any time, and GoPro's commentary about business results and outlook is based on the information available as of today's date. GoPro does not undertake any obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.
Information concerning the company's risk factor is available on our most recent annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2022, which is on file with the SEC and as updated in future filings.
Beautiful.
Yeah, Erik, let's do it.
Let's do it. So I think the best place to start is maybe to talk about one of the bigger changes you guys made this year, which is kind of a bit of a strategy shift in trying to kind of optimize volumes. That has played out well, at least in 3Q. You outperformed expectations, both on the sell-in side and sell-through side. It has pressured ASPs and gross margins a bit, but if you could just kind of maybe walk us through this decision to go through this shift, how has it played out, and how we should think about kind of the relative unit upside versus pressure on ASP and gross margins, how you expect that?
Yeah, the shift you're talking about is our shift from retail to D2C and kind of back to retail-
Yep. Yeah.
as well as introducing entry-level product.
Exactly.
Let me maybe frame it in a different way. If I go back historically in the company, I've been here almost eight years now.
Yeah.
Actually, it's more than eight years. So the company's always historically had entry-level products, and it's usually been 25%-30% of the company's unit volume historically. We stopped when COVID hit, because of supply chain, we couldn't get enough product. When COVID hit, stores were shut, or most of them anyway, and, you know, our business was, at the time, 95% retail and 5% direct to consumer. We said, "Well, we have to pivot pretty fast." That was a pivot-
Mm-hmm.
- to go that to D2C, right?
Yep.
And we did. And over a couple-year period of time, we got to about close to 40% of our revenue, I think we peaked at 38, which was coming from D2C, and that included our subscription business. And through that period, we had to forgo, you know, what is close to 1 million units a year in just entry-level volume. Fast-forward post-pandemic, we found, and we talked about this in March, where I said we have to meet the consumer where they are. And what we meant by that is consumers were moving away from D2C, we could see it, going more offline. They wanted to shop, get out of the house, and they were doing that. In addition, I've got enough supply to, you know, cover that entry level.
Now, in this shift, this year, we incurred about $30+ million of price protection.
Mm-hmm.
Right? And so it turns out our loss is about $30 million for the year. Roughly, that's what we estimated.
Mm-hmm.
On top of that, our entry-level product, because we're selling products that weren't intended to be made for entry level, and they're not making any margin.
Mm-hmm.
If I look forward to 2024, we've said Q2, we have reengineered our product. Our entry-level product, we'll finish selling our HERO 10s and HERO 9s, they'll be gone, and we'll have a product that will have, not corporate average, a little bit below, but a more profitable product line. And that shifts our margin. And so to your point, our margins are 32% this year. They're down from about 38% the year before, and the year before that were about 41. So, you know, we think we'll get to 37 points of margin.
Yep.
We laid that out in our management commentary that's on our website, in IR website. Let me hit it here. Well, you know, if I look at it, the 25% at 0% margin, you get 20+ margin. There's 2.5 points of margin that comes back to us. I won't incur $33 million of price protection in 2024 that we incurred in 2023. That's 1.5 points. We've got pretty well locked-in cost reductions from suppliers. That, that's almost another point of margin. And we'll have growth in subscription and other things that will yield about another 0.75 of a point. That gets you to about 37 points. So, that one is mathematically there. If you said, "Okay, what's the downside?" Downside would be if we don't execute-
Mm-hmm.
and deliver product
Mm.
In Q2, well, okay, that, that's risk to kind of the margin model, but, you know, we've been pretty good about execution.
Yep.
So-
Yep.
That's the other side of my-
Yep, definitely.
Role, CFO and COO. So the COO side better get it done.
No, and to that point, you got into a fairly bullish 4Q sell-through outlook. I think it was 1 million units, that's up 12%. You know, we're two months into the quarter, so any comments, early comments that you can share on, you know, how sell-through is playing out versus your expectations, or anything that you could share with us today.
Yeah. In our conference... earnings conference call, we had said that October was meeting the expectations of demand. As we got through the all-important Black Friday, Cyber Monday, those results were just slightly ahead of our forecast and projections as well. So we're tracking to being at that roughly million units. Obviously, we have four weeks to go.
Yep.
So, you know, that has to finish out, and an important four weeks-
Yep.
Let's be sure.
Yeah, yeah.
But, you know, so far, so good. The commentary I can give maybe around that is the demand profile's been highest on HERO1 2, our latest flagship product, and then HERO11 , which has been great. That's been up double-digit growth relative to our forecast, and clearly up year-over-year. From a geographic perspective, every geo was up-
Mm-hmm.
Which is important to note. One thing interesting, Circana came out with data over Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Circana is formerly NPD. And they said general merchandise, consumer electronics market over Black Friday, Cyber Monday was actually down in units and revenue 4%, and we were up. So, that bodes well, you know, for us so far from a sell-through, you know, perspective. I think Europe had the strongest growth, in terms of absolute units on a percentage basis. Interesting, Latin America nearly doubled. Asia was up, and the U.S. was up.
Perfect. So you did just answer my next question, which is almost as if we've talked about these questions before, which is awesome. So let's pivot to another topic related to just the holidays and retailers, which is, you know, managing channel inventory. I think last year was a bit of a mixed bag overall for consumer electronics, with a bit of tighter inventory management. What are you hearing from retailers this holiday season? Do they wanna manage less? Do they wanna have less inventory on their books? Is there any kind of reversion where you're seeing more repurchasing or restocking during the holidays? Help us maybe understand what the retailers are telling you.
Yeah, I think in certain categories, retailers didn't do as well, and they cut POs.
Mm-hmm.
I know that. That goes around the industry. Ours haven't been cut-
Mm.
So that's good. Now, that said, our retailers, you know, they wanna hold as little inventory as possible, but they still have to sell.
Mm.
But we're seeing pretty good velocity on sell-through, so they're gonna have to hold, you know, some inventory. You know, they'll have to make those decisions in December on kind of repurchase.
Okay.
But we'd expect to have, you know, repurchase orders in December, so.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, the good news is the sell-through is there-
Yep.
At least so far. Four weeks to go. We're pretty happy right now with the results, and particularly with the mix.
Good. So, so let's talk about mix. You got it to 4Q ASPs, around $335. There's multiple dynamics going on here: mix, promotions, new products. You know, can you help us understand what the pricing environment is like today? Are consumers looking for discounts? Are you providing those discounts? You know, that's kind of the last leg of the stool here when it comes to the holidays.
Yeah, the $335 is about the right number-
Right, okay.
for the quarter. And I think this was a holiday period where consumers, particularly in North America, there was a lot of price sensitivity. And we saw that kinda earlier in the year, and it's part of why we made the change in terms of go-to-market as well as price points. We've recognized the consumer was in a battle: inflation, gas price, food price, housing prices going up, rent, mortgage, whatever, with interest rates. So that makes for a tough environment. We were seeing cost reduction, and we knew we could come out with new products that were actually cost us less to produce, that we could actually make margin off of. So we chose the near-term pain for the long-term gain.
Yep.
The long-term gain is, again, a more stable profile from a margin perspective. We continue to drive subscription, which, quite frankly, is the financial engine of the company. We'll do about $100 million of subscription revenue-
Mm-hmm.
-right? This year. That's nice growth. Well, right now we're at 2.5 million subscribers. That's $125 million of ARR, and we make better than 50 points of operating profit on that. So that's been the financial engine for the company, and I'll get the hardware margins kind of where they need to be.
Mm-hmm.
... software margins are where they're gonna be, and that also helps us blend out to that upper thirties-
Okay.
-margin profile.
Okay. Let's just quickly touch... Obviously, you mentioned the 2024 targets. We talked mostly about revenues, but obviously, you've given a handful of targets for 2024, obviously, guiding to margin expansion, but also revenue growth. Can you maybe help us all understand maybe what is embedded in that guide in terms of how you guys are thinking about the world, right? It's still a bit of a choppy environment. The world's still scary in a handful of ways, and so, what's underlying or embedded in that backdrop? You know, what gives you kind of confidence in that guide? And then maybe we'll dig into that as well.
Yeah. Well, let's go back to Q3 and Q4. Let's just start there. We're at, what? 7%-10% in Q3, right? And then sell-through, selling was about 16% up.
Mm-hmm.
Q4, we'll have sell-through double-digit is the expectation, and that carries into next year. Now, next year, we'll have new product, one which we talked about, I think, on some of our kind of press tours, is an updated MAX, so an updated 360 camera. That's a new use case, and, you know, that's important. It's a growing market. We've had leadership position there. We'll continue to do well. We'll introduce a new low-end camera that it's like half the cost of what we're selling today. It's completely reengineered. It'll probably be the lightest camera we've ever built. So we're really looking forward to that one. That's gonna be a very nice entry-level camera, and we'll continue, obviously, with flagship.
As I think about even going beyond that, there'll be cameras we'll introduce that probably more on the high end, but that have different use cases than just the current GoPro.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
So I can't talk about what those are, but we're envisioning that, and that's a growth profile over time. So the price points that we've introduced in 2023, that helps fuel growth.
Mm-hmm.
We've seen that happen.
Mm-hmm.
We did that in mid-May, and it really probably took effect more late June and kind of second- half. So again, a bit of a run rate boost just from that, right?
Yeah.
First half of 2024, and then we said we'd have three new products in 2024.
Okay.
So that all kind of ladders up to-
Yeah
... about 10% growth or so. We said anywhere from 3.3-3.5 million units. So if we do 3 million this year, that's just over 10% growth. And then as we looked at 2025, a little bit more growth, trying to get in the above 3.5-4-
Mm.
-range, because that becomes a scale thing-
Mm
For the company. You know, historically, you know, 2019, we were at 4.2 million, and each year before that, 4.3, you know, so. And, you know, out of that was almost 1 million units of entry level. So we're getting that back from a TAM perspective and then expanding the market.
Yep. Okay. Very, very clear. I would love to talk about the redesign that you're talking about with this, the new kind of low-end camera. Should we be, you know... Well, maybe, one, can you help us understand maybe what you are redesigning? And two, are we thinking, like, the Session, is that kind of the direction that you're going, or... I don't want to put words in your mouth, so.
No, I'm not gonna talk about that.
I had to ask.
Yeah. It's okay. No, it's completely redesigned. So we're looking forward to getting this in the market.
For the HERO12 Black, you know, you've talked about strong adoption. You just alluded to that for the holidays as well. What do you think consumers are finding most attractive about the product? Like, what's the value prop that you think this camera is delivering that either past cameras haven't or, you know, you've changed the intentions for this new device?
Yeah, you know, everyone says every year: "Oh, how do you, how do you do better?
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Yeah.
We always manage. In this case, this year, if we compare 12 - 11 or any other camera for that matter, I think battery life is, you know, runs two times as long, like, at almost every, you know, mode you'd put the camera in or at least two times. So that's pretty significant. We made a lot of improvements in, you know, battery life, and we added Bluetooth audio, so you can speak to the camera. If, like, it's externally mounted on your car, you can be inside the car-
Absolutely.
with, you know, Bluetooth audio and, and tag that in with the... So that, that's a really nice convenient thing. We simplified and improved the UX, meaning the flow of how you use the camera. Connectivity improvements with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth were pretty big. We added HDR video to the product, and from a pro perspective, we added timecode sync and some advanced color capabilities-
Beautiful
-in the camera. So it's way and above the best, you know, HERO Black we've ever done-
Yep
in the company.
Okay, good. Good. So let's also talk about the subscriber business. So you ended 3Q with 2.5 million subscribers. You've talked about how kind of some of the attach rates are changing as you again change a bit of the strategy from the COVID period to now your post-COVID period and try to expand the TAM. I think you mentioned, I think it's 2.7-2.8 million subscribers in 2024. Maybe just walk us through subscriber attach rates, how they're trending, and how we should think about the ramp of that subscriber base that, you know, a handful of years ago was nothing, and now is 2.5 million users.
Yeah.
Um-
You know, from where I started, going back to 2014... you go, what didn't we have then that we have now?
Mm-hmm.
I go, "Well, a subscription business that's $100 million-
Mm-hmm.
and making a lot of money, that's one. Two is we use merchant chips, now we develop our own chips. And that's enabled us to continue to lead in the market for what we deliver, from a capability perspective. But on subscription itself, yeah, 2.5 million, that's $125 million ARR. It's more than 50% operating profit business for us, so growing, that's important. If I look today at our combined—let's, so let's look at the metrics, and I'll answer the question about-
Sure.
Kind of 24. So today we're attaching just over 40% on average. Whether it's sold on GoPro.com or sold in retail, it's about a 40% attach. That's up significantly over the last few years. We were as low, low 20s, now we're up to that 40%, range. More importantly, the retention rates, year one, we've been pretty steady at 60%-65%, and year two, 70%-75%. We'll continue to work on that and, and drive it up, and we're seeing actually pretty solid improvements as we do improved messaging to the consumers, particularly from those who came, in the bundle with GoPro.com.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And there, we've actually improved retention rates quite a bit. We'll work on that on the App Store, as well, and how we communicate, you know, with customers, and we share with them, "Here's what the value was. You really wanna be out," and we're able to save and retain-
Mm-hmm.
You know, quite a bit. That's important. Now if you take those numbers of what I just gave you from attach rates to retention rates-
Mm-hmm.
and apply that to, you know, our current sub business and growth in 2024, you'd probably get into a range of 2.7-2.9-
Yep
... actually million subscribers, if you kind of do the math. And that's important, and that says if we continue this, continue to drive it, continue to drive growth in 2025, we would push through 3 million, right? So that's an important growth driver for the company. And, and, you know, there, that's an area where we continue to improve the offering as well.
Mm-hmm.
Right. For example, we said we would come out with a desktop application.
Mm-hmm.
We haven't launched it yet. It's... but it's in process. We'll get it out. And there, with the desktop application, that's gonna be a $100 price point. That includes storage, you know, for all your GoPro content and storage for non-GoPro content that you pay for. And so that's one way that we can use our app and our editing features to basically enable you to edit GoPro content and non-GoPro content.
Yep.
You can use both, your iPhone footage, your DSLR footage, or whatever it might be.
Mm-hmm.
And you can imagine, we've done a lot in consumer insights, a lot of work, and those features, that functionality, is very important to people who just generally subscribe.
Mm-hmm.
They wanna have desktop. And we know from consumer research that we should see a bump in retention rates.
Mm-hmm
... as a result of pushing that out, and we've said we'll give that as part of the offering for the, you know, standard GoPro. They won't get necessarily the external storage for non-GoPro content. If they wanna have that, they can upgrade.
Mm-hmm.
But at least from that perspective, they can use both GoPro content and phone content when they're doing, you know, their editing.
Yep.
Right?
Right.
And so we'll even give them edits that will have both.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
And so that improves the ecosystem for the consumer because now they're using their GoPro content, but they use phone content too, and now we can give them something that, you know, that's developed with AI-
Yep
... machine learning, computer vision, and we have it too.
Mm-hmm.
We continue to enhance it and develop it, right? Human face recognition, what they do, how they do it, is exceptionally creative. Mm-hmm.
Okay, good.
Always fun for me to go to Paris, where I'm headed next, to see that. But yeah, that's an enhanced value proposition we'll have for the consumer that makes it more sticky for you to be in your GoPro.
Mm-hmm.
You don't have to use your GoPro. You can use your phone, too, or anything else and still make pretty cool edits.
Yep.
That's how we enhance the ecosystem.
Yep.
You can imagine, you know, we also have just the Quik subscription, which is only meant for, like, phone content. Well, okay, subscribe to that. Now you can make edits with, you know, your phone content. Maybe I can give you an auto edit, so you get it, and you can edit it or just take it and go.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause we already offer the auto edits today, right?
Yep. Right.
So those are ways we can improve the value proposition to the consumer without them having to pay more money-
Right
... unless they want more storage-
Mm-hmm.
and enhance the capability. So that creates that stickier environment that keeps people in GoPro.
Can I ask you maybe, you know, within that answer, you did mention kind of onboarding or new offerings for non-GoPro customers. Maybe my question is, you know, why are you uniquely positioned to capture wallet share from a non-GoPro customer? And how you know, you just walked through the offerings you'll have, but how will you go and do that and get someone that doesn't own a GoPro, that might not know the brand, to ultimately-
Yep
... sign up and be a GoPro customer via software?
Yeah. Remember, we already do it today. We have the Quik app.
Yep.
There's almost 300,000 folks who pay us $10 a year, to have that capability. It's not like we're starting from scratch. We have 300,000. I'll remind you that back in the day, it wasn't too long ago, we only had 300,000 GoPros.
Yeah, yeah. Yep.
That's now 2.5 million. So I think it starts to get viral, right? And as more people use it, and if you're now a subscriber, and I'm giving you an auto highlight video, right? I'm doing the work for you.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Oh, that's cool.
Mm-hmm.
Well, that starts, you get that word of mouth, too.
Yeah.
There's clearly a value proposition, and we see it in our consumer research that that's pretty exciting as we look over the next few years.
Good.
To continue to grow all of our service offerings is really important.
Good. So, we've talked about cameras, we've talked about subscriptions, we've talked about software, we've talked about growth. Maybe just, you know, we have a little over three minutes left. I'd love to talk—touch on margins. So, over the past few years, adjusted EBITDA margins have fallen somewhere between 10% and 15%. You know, with some of these changes that you're making, including the structural improvements in gross margins-
Mm-hmm.
Next year, you know, how should we all be thinking about what that EBITDA margin trajectory should look like? If we're not talking about 2024, but 2025, 2026, what kind of improvements do you think you can push through?
I think from an EBITDA margin perspective, look, the way I kinda operate this is, if you look at hardware margins and then software margins.
Mm-hmm.
Hardware margins, I try and keep in mid-30s.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe a little bit better. Software margins, closer to 70%, and that blends out to upper 30s. If we're good about that from the hardware perspective, and we keep driving the value proposition, we can hold that. And then you start leveraging OpEx, and you drive probably from an EBITDA perspective, a 10-12 range, maybe 9-12. From an earnings perspective, I think it's 8-12.
Mm-hmm.
It's gonna range in there depending on your level of investment in technology.
Yep.
Right? You've seen OpEx go up more recently, and part of that's because we're doing a new chip.
Mm-hmm.
Right? So we've talked about that. That'll be the next gen that will, you know, fuel innovation, fuel growth, get us into applications that no one can get to today.
Mm-hmm.
That's important. And driving more software and service. So the number of software engineers, we've nearly doubled in the last year or so. Can never have enough, it seems. So we continue to drive that, but it has a big payoff from our subscription and service perspective-
Mm-hmm.
and it drives that ecosystem, so that's actually really important. And from there, it drives, you know, operating cash flow.
Mm-hmm.
We have a lot of cash, as you know, on the balance sheet.
Yep.
From there, we'll continue to do more share buybacks. So as I look ahead to 2025, 2026, and then compare to, you know, like 2022 and the kind of share buybacks we're doing, and covering that dilution, and we just spent actually $50 million this quarter to buy back notes.
Yep.
Debt, right? Took our debt down-
Yep
... from 140+ million down to about 90. There again, that reduces dilution.
Yep.
We don't have the-
Yep
... effect on EPS for that. So, you're gonna see a lot of... While I can drive a lot of earnings leverage from margin expansion and top-line growth, we'll get further EPS expansion by buying back shares.
Perfect. So 20 seconds, I'll just give you the dance floor. To give everyone and understanding of what you think is most underappreciated about the GoPro story today.
I think it's the brand. I think it's the agility of the company. We move quickly. We have a vision of where we're headed, how we're gonna grow, how we're gonna get margins up. We've, I think, articulated it pretty well. Execution's been spot on, right on track. We have a terrific subscription and service business that's just gonna keep growing and gaining momentum, and that's gonna drive further operating leverage to have us fit into that model we just described.
Perfect. We are out of time. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, everybody else. I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Awesome. That's awesome.
Thank you, man.
My name is Hamza Fodderwala. I'm a U.S. software analyst at Morgan Stanley. And with me, I have the pleasure of hosting Cameron Hyzer, Chief Financial Officer of ZoomInfo. And I should mention, I'm filling in for my colleague, Elizabeth Porter, who's currently on parental leave. So hopefully I can do her justice. We'll see. But Cameron, thank you so much for joining us. And before I begin, I should mention a brief programming note. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. With that, we'll kick it off. So Cameron, maybe for investors who may be newer to the ZoomInfo story, could you provide maybe just a brief overview of the company, for the products and the core value proposition?
Sure, and, thanks for having me. So at ZoomInfo, we provide a platform to sales and marketing teams. We think about that as the go-to-market teams for companies that really helps them operate more effectively and efficiently and digitize their go-to-market motions. We do that with a database of really high-quality information about the companies that B2B teams are selling to, the people that work at those companies, and signals that help those teams determine when's the best time to reach out to someone or how to frame their conversation. And then on top of that, we overlay a number of automation tools to help those teams effectively use those signals, automate their motions, and drive a better, you know, more effective and more efficient go-to-market motion.
Got it. Got it. You talked a little bit about the platform. So I think a big investor debate has been sort of the TAM of ZoomInfo. Is it, you know, a digital Rolodex or is it more than that? Can you talk a little bit about how you're expanding to really become that sales automation platform that you spoke about?
Yeah, totally. So, when you think about our largest customers, they really are using ZoomInfo to really power their whole go-to-market motion. That means bringing in signals, using our workflow tools to then, you know, automate different motions, whether that's reaching out to a customer, sending them, you know, advertising or email campaigns or, you know, other things. And, you know, really helping to drive making the salesperson's job, you know, easier every day, where they can be more effective and efficient, to drive more and more, you know, value for their company. And so, you know, that is the kind of end value. I think there's a spectrum of sophistication among our customers. There's some customers, particularly when they start out, they're using the system more to, you know, look up contact information or find out more about their, you know, target companies.
But then, as they continue to, you know, mature with us, using more and more of those capabilities to drive, you know, a much more sophisticated go-to-market motion is where we see, you know, many of our customers going. At this point, over 80% of our customers use some level of advanced functionality that we offer. We do have, you know, people moving along that journey as they continue to mature.
Yeah, and speaking of that platform value, the deal involved what the customer purchased and, you know, do you think that's repeatable across your customer base?
Yeah, it's entirely repeatable. I think that customer at this point is a top five, you know, customer, not necessarily one of our largest, but, o r one of our largest, but not the largest. And, you know, that's a software company that's continued to grow. It's obviously a pretty large company. They actually, you know, have reduced seats with us over the past year or so as they've reduced the size of their sales team. So, you know, coming into the quarter, that could have very well been, you know, a downsell with that customer. But they're also looking to invest more into their centralized data infrastructure and really help with the automation of different motions, help with that, you know, data foundation as they start to build more, more AI capabilities.
You know, the kind of upsell portion of that deal was really driven on them taking more data in a kind of API capability in order to, you know, really drive that, you know, back-end operations level and to continue to sophisticate their go-to-market motion.
Got it. So maybe digging a little bit more into the platform expansion. So you've invested heavily, you know, expanding outside of the core, you know, data provider capability into these advanced functionality workflows. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, these different types of use cases? What has been the penetration within your customer base, and maybe one or two use cases that you're seeing a lot of traction in particular?
Yeah. So the areas where we're seeing the most traction tend to be in our Operations OS, which is really the ability to manipulate and route data within the infrastructure of the company, as well as automation capabilities. And so, you know, part of that is the Marketing OS as well, which is a relatively new product, helps people automate their, you know, marketing motions at the end of the day. It's really an account-based marketing tool that allows people to target specific accounts and then drive marketing or social or, you know, other motions off of that. And so, you know, I think that's where we're really seeing the most traction is in those automation capabilities, whether it's Operations OS or Engage or Workflows or, you know, Marketing OS at the end of the day.
Got it. So, you know, you're obviously expanding the solution set. At the same time, there has been a bit of a slowdown in the business over the last 18 months, along with a lot of other software companies. Can you speak to that a little bit and why you see growth sort of stabilizing going forward?
Sure. So yeah, I think a fair amount of our business is with the early adopters of our platform, which were really more in, you know, software and technology companies. If you go back to the DiscoverOrg days, we actually focused almost exclusively on profiling the IT departments within large, and mid-sized companies, so it's natural that most of our customers were software. When we, when we acquired ZoomInfo, we actually really expanded the, addressable market that we could go after 'cause we brought in, you know, quantity technology to kind of merge that with the quality technology that we'd developed at DiscoverOrg. And, you know, really, we're able to go after all sorts of other industries, whether that's retail or transportation, logistics, telecommunication, financial services, et cetera.
So, you know, that doesn't kind of change the fact, though, that, like most of our business, we're tech – we're is historically technology businesses and, you know, coming into this year, around 40% of our customers by revenue, we're still in the, we're still in software. You know, software's been a really tough kind of place to be over the last, you know, year to 18 months. A number of companies have seen their growth trajectories change pretty significantly, and obviously, when we're selling into the, you know, sales teams at those companies, that change in trajectory, you know, impacts what they want to buy and how they want to grow. In addition to that, there's been significant pressure on how they think about their margins as a business.
So, you know, particularly in mid-market software, if you were losing 20%-50% of your revenue, your investors were pushing you to get to something closer to breakeven. You know, that's a, you know, big shift in terms of operating model for a lot of our customers. So we've been working with our customers to kind of work out some of the overbuying that, you know, occurred when, if you go back to 2021 and 2022, there was a lot of free money in the system. Working out that overbuying, you know, resetting to a level where we think that there's, you know, really good foundation to grow with those companies as they, you know, start to reaccelerate their growth is what we're really focused on.
And, you know, at this point, I kinda think of peak negativity as being in the February to March timeframe of 2023. So we have a number of subscriptions that we need to lap that peak negativity and get through this timeframe of, you know, potential down sells or, you know, tougher renewals so that we can then, you know, ideally have that opportunity to grow with those companies again.
Speaking of that, I think in Q3, you talked about how you're 90% through the renewals of some of these cohorts that are, have been subject to that down sell pressure, yeah, by the end of Q1. So as you sit here today, you know, what is your sort of comfortability around sort of growth stabilizing beyond Q1 next year?
Yeah. So, you know, certainly, again, that concept of lapping peak negativity and even with our long-term contracts, you know, being through 90% of our revenue, having transacted with us between September 2022 and March 2024, makes us feel really good that, you know, again, we wanna be able to kind of reset that foundation. Obviously, we're not all the way through that yet, but, as we get through that and we reset that foundation, it does give us that opportunity to, you know, remove some of the down sell pressure that we've seen over the last, you know, three or four quarters and, you know, start to rebuild with those customers as they start growing again.
And just to clarify, you know, the customers who may be cutting back, is it just a function of seats? Is it functionality? And what are you doing to sort of offset perhaps those seat expansion headwinds?
Yeah. So it is majority seats. Obviously, you know, when people are cutting back seats, they're also looking at other parts of their contract and oftentimes pulling in, you know, some of the additional functionality that they have. Realistically, our focus right now is to really partner with those customers, you know, make sure that they're getting all of the, you know, value out of the platform that they can, and, you know, resetting the relationship in a way where we're not just showing up to kind of sell the next thing-
Mm-hmm.
But really focused on making sure that those customers are driving value for their own organizations, so that as they, you know, start to look into the future and think about, you know, their growth prospects, that they can really lean on the system to leverage that going forward.
Yeah. Shifting gears a bit, you know, one of the things that really stands out, particularly someone who might be new to this story, is the really high operating margins. You have over 40% operating margins for ZoomInfo, which is a lot higher than companies at your scale and at your growth profile. What about ZoomInfo's sort of business model enables that?