I head investor relations for Life360. This call is being conducted as a Zoom audio webinar. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the Q&A. When we come to the Q&A, please raise your hand by pressing the Raise Hand icon at the bottom center of your screen, and your line will be unmuted in turn. Participants who have joined by telephone will be in a listen-only mode throughout. The agenda for this morning's call will include a business and strategy update by Co-Founder and CEO, Chris Hulls, and CFO, Russell Burke. After which, Russell will provide detail on the financials. Chris will then provide some outlook comments, which will be followed by a Q&A session. I would now like to turn the call over to Chris.
Good morning, everyone, thanks for joining our call today. I spoke with many of you earlier this week in relation to our exposure to Silicon Valley Bank. As we subsequently updated the market, we have regained access to our funds and SVB accounts, and we are transacting normally. 2022 has been a tremendous year of progress for Life360. Before I get into our financial performance, I wanna talk about the impact we are having on our users. The testimonial here is one of many we receive each week where actual lives were saved, and this is happening at huge scale. During the year, we sent out more than 2 million help alerts and protected over 200 billion miles of driving. This is significantly larger than Uber and one of the largest driving datasets in the world.
These user milestones have cemented our position as the market-leading family safety membership service. We delivered strong core subscription momentum with our largest ever annual growth in global MAU to around 49 million. Paying circles increased 23% year-on-year to 1.5 million while raising U.S. pricing significantly. As previously foreshadowed, Q4 paying circles were in line with Q3 while achieving an almost 50% price increase for existing monthly iOS subscribers late in the year. The churn impact from the November iOS price increase performed better than expected, showcasing our strong value proposition as well as the loyalty and engagement of our user base. We are back to subscriber growth in the U.S. in January and February, and international subscriber trends remain very strong. CY 2022 U.S. ARPPC increased 22% year-on-year.
This accelerated to 42% year-on-year growth in January 2023, reflecting the full month impact of price increases. We see further upside with the rollout of U.S. price increases for our existing monthly Android subscribers, expected to take effect during the second quarter of CY 2023. We executed a Tile integration strategy, combining our three teams into a single company. We delivered major product enhancements, significantly increasing the size of the Tile finding network by adding more than 30 million Life360 phones and adding Tiles to the Life360 map. We established the platform for the bundled Tile hardware membership, which is launched and is scaling up over the course of March as we optimize the user experience.
The early signs are positive, we are excited about the opportunity to improve paid user conversion and retention and deploy upsell strategies over the longer term following encouraging results from our gift with membership trials in CY 2022. Finally, we established a pathway to profitability, finishing the year with a 61% year-on-year uplift in December AMR. This has accelerated to 64% in January with the full month benefit of price increases. Our unified platform is in place to support improved subscriber conversion, retention metrics, and pricing power. Our integrated leaner cost base, together with reducing commissions, are in place to drive efficiencies into CY 2023. All of this sets up the business to deliver positive adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow from Q2 CY 2023 onwards. This slide provides a high-level view of the financial performance for the past year.
Revenue of $228 million, adjusted EBITDA loss of $40 million, and cash and cash equivalents of $90 million were in line with our guidance. Subscription revenue performed strongly, up 77%, supported by a 54% uplift in Life360 core like-for-like revenue and the inclusion of Tile and Jiobit subscriptions. Hardware revenue was constrained by broad consumer electronic softness. Other revenue increased 8%. Annualized monthly revenue of $224 million increased 61%, ahead of guidance, and has reached almost $230 million in January, reflecting the full monthly benefit of subscriber price increases. The adjusted EBITDA loss of $40 million for the year included a profit of $1.6 million in Q4 as a result of strong subscription revenue growth, lower operating costs, and the seasonal holiday uplift in Tile hardware sales.
The strong Q4 momentum in subscription revenue is clearly illustrated in this slide with a step-up in quarterly recurring revenue versus Q3. The Q4 increase in AMR is even more impressive as it reflects the uplift in the month of December from price increases across our existing U.S. iOS monthly subscriber base. As mentioned earlier, AMR reached almost $230 million in January. Turning now to our key metrics. Monthly active users increased 37% year-over-year to 49 million, I'm excited to share that we passed the 50 million mark just this week. The 13 million net additions are our largest ever absolute annual growth. U.S. MAU increased 31% year-over-year, with Q4 delivering solid gains versus Q3. International MAU growth are very strong, increasing 49% year-over-year.
The stable Q4 versus Q3 performance reflected normalization of the significant surges we experienced in some developing countries in Q3. The strength of our returning monthly active users by cohort reflects what we believe to be absolute top-tier retention that is better than 99.99% of other mobile apps. We have users who have signed up nearly a decade ago, just as engaged with the product as they were when they initially registered. Russell will now run through the details of our three revenue lines.
Thanks, Chris. Consolidated subscription revenue increased 77% year-on-year, including the contribution of Tile and Jiobit subscriptions. Core Life360 subscription revenue growth of 54% was in line with our guidance. Subscription revenue now makes up 2/3 of group revenue. Key drivers of subscription revenue were the 23% uplift in paying circles and 19% increase in ARPPC. International revenue is currently a small contributor to our sub-subscription revenue. It did increase 85% year-on-year, reflecting a 48% uplift in international paying circles, together with the inclusion of the Tile and Jiobit subscriptions. Chris will outline the momentum of paying circle growth in key countries later in the presentation. During CY 2022, global paying circles increased 23% year-on-year, with U.S. paying circles growth of 17% achieved even while implementing significant price increases during Q4.
We guided to in November, Q4 subscribers were stable at Q3 levels, reflecting the one-time impact on churn as we implemented the price increases across the existing iOS user base. U.S. subscriber growth has resumed in January and February, international trends remain very strong. Price increases were implemented across all of our U.S. iOS monthly membership tiers, including our legacy product lines. Price increases are already in place for new monthly Android subscribers and will extend to existing monthly Android subscribers during Q2. The impact of the size and timing of these price increases is reflected in the U.S. ARPPC chart, with 23% year-on-year growth to $120 in Q4, a 40% uplift if you take it through to January at $138.
Hardware revenue delivered a seasonal uplift in Q4, continued to be impacted by headwinds in the U.S. consumer electronics market. Retailers adopted a very cautious approach, resulting in much lower inventory in retail channels. We also saw aggressive competition from Apple, which is nonetheless driving the category forward. While hardware sales were below our previous expectations, we've taken a prudent approach to managing hardware inventory, limiting the impact on our adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow. For CY 2023, we expect hardware revenue growth in the range of 0%-5%. This is based on the difficulty of forecasting hardware sales in the current challenging environment, as well as a more constrained approach to marketing, investment, and promotional activities. While we're excited about the potential for long-term category growth, Tile's primary strategic value remains the opportunity to drive subscription revenue.
Other revenue increased 8% year-over-year. In January 2022, we transitioned to a new partnership with Placer.ai, with a revenue agreement that was set at a level close to the CY 2021 ending run rate. The agreement was part of an intentional decision to trade off the growth opportunity for predictability and reduced regulatory risk. Lead generation remains an area of significant long-term growth potential. It is a limited strategic focus in the short term. Looking forward to CY 2023, we expect revenue of around $26 million based on the current agreements. With that, I'll hand back to Chris, who will provide an update on our strategy.
Our key strategic initiatives are being implemented to deliver on our mission to simplify safety for families. Safety and security are a multi-billion-dollar category, and our mobile and family-first approach are key differentiators which allow us to disrupt this market. There are four pillars to our CY 2023 strategy, each of which build on the progress we achieved in CY 2022. I'll cover each of these initiatives over the following slides. We continue to believe we have significant opportunities to improve our core user experience and further differentiate ourselves from our competitors who have much more limited functionality. New developments include bringing the Life360 map to life with new features and a more dynamic interface, ongoing improvements in our communication capability, and significantly expanded and improved driver safety functionality. We have delivered impressive subscription revenue growth in CY 2022 with core Life360 growth of 54%.
For CY 2023, we see the opportunity to further leverage our proven pricing power and ongoing membership enhancements to deliver another year of strong momentum with guidance of 50% year-over-year growth. Bundling Tile with membership has launched and is scaling up over the course of March as we optimize the user experience. The early signs are positive. We are excited about the opportunities to improve paid user conversion and retention over the longer term. As mentioned earlier, we expect to roll out price increases to existing monthly U.S. Android subscribers during Q2. For Tile, we see opportunities to leverage category creation with product use case orientation and differentiation. Tile's recently launched anti-theft mode is designed to protect valuables from theft by increasing the chances of recovery.
Our solution empowers users with choice to make their Tile devices invisible to scan and secure so that thieves will not be able to misuse our stalking prevention features to locate and disable Tile devices after stealing valuables. This provides a key point of differentiation with AirTags. We are also excited about our international opportunity based on our recent impressive performance in major non-U.S. regions. CY 2022 core Life360 international subscription revenue increased 47%, and paying Circles in key markets of Australia, Canada, and the U.K. have increased 143% since the beginning of 2020. We've established a dedicated international management team based in the U.K. Our international strategy has two key elements. First, we will improve the international user experience with global core features.
Second, we will focus on tier one markets, where we will undertake paid spend, research and launch features, and other enhancements ahead of triple-tier membership launch. Our first launch will take place in the U.K. in the second half of the year, followed by major European markets. The European region represents a major growth opportunity with a market size comparable to the U.S. and significant potential in 2024 and beyond. I've spoken previously about our triple-tier membership launch in Canada, which established the successful playbook we will be rolling out to other international territories. As you can see in this slide, the launch has resulted in some very positive metrics across the business. I'll make particular mention of the 72% year-over-year revenue growth, which significantly outperformed the 47% uplift delivered by the core Life360 international business.
Although Canada did not move our overall metrics much due to its small population size, these results bode very well for our initiatives in larger regions. The fourth pillar of our strategy is to maintain financial discipline. We are approaching CY 2023 with an appropriate balance of fiscal responsibility and prudent investment to position the business for long-term success and make the most of the many exciting growth options available to us. Our business is at a pivot point to leverage scale in the cost base, with operating costs as a percentage of revenue declining from 92% in CY 2021 to 85% in CY 2022. We see the opportunity for further improvements in the year ahead. As we announced in January, we have streamlined our workforce to drive a sharpened focus on our key strategic product initiatives with annualized savings of at least $15 million.
We also see opportunities for additional operating cost savings, including for platform commissions to continue reducing over time and greater marketing efficiency. In CY 2022, we implemented a multi-year strategy to reduce our cloud infrastructure costs with significant efficiency improvements achieved during the year. We anticipate further efficiencies in CY 2023 through operational optimization and a long-term agreement with Amazon AWS, which significantly lowers our rates. As a result of all these factors, our cost base is at a pivot point to leverage scale and deliver our first full year of positive adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow in CY 2023. Finally, I'll make a mention of the ESG initiatives that we have underway to progress our sustainability journey. The focus on family safety and security that is at the core of Life360 is undoubtedly the greatest value we can provide to the community.
We have initiatives underway across all ESG pillars. I'll make special mention of the progress we made with our people policies as we brought together the Life360 Tile and Jiobit teams during CY 2022. We undertook a refresh of our corporate values and established a new approach to create a culture of belonging. We launched a formal learning and development strategy aligned with our value proposition and extended the employee benefits to our people. With that, I'll turn the call over to Russell, who will run through the financials.
Thanks again, Chris. Please note that all of the numbers that I will be discussing are denominated in US dollars, are in accordance with U.S. GAAP accounting standards, and are unaudited. The filing of the 10-K, along with the audited financial statements, is expected to be finalized next week, and we do not expect any changes to the financial statements. The 10-K is due to be filed with the SEC by the 31st of March, and the ASX has granted us a waiver, which was released on the market earlier today, to lodge the Form 10-K within 90 days after the end of the accounting period or at the same time as it's lodged with the SEC. I'll begin with an update of our longer-term pathway to profitability, which we initially outlined in our half-year results call in August.
We expect CY 2023 to benefit from a full year of price increases, the bundled Tile membership offering, and the cost efficiencies that we implemented with the full integration of the Life360 Tile and Jiobit teams. In January, we announced a workforce restructure, which accelerated our plan for positive operating cash flow and adjusted EBITDA from Q3 to Q2. This means that Q2, Q3, and Q4 will be cash flow positive on the operating side, with the weighting towards the seasonal impact in Q4. Beyond CY 2023, we see a continued expansion in revenue along with stabilization in expense growth as we benefit from the opportunity to leverage the scale in the operating model. We expect this to underpin the expansion of our adjusted EBITDA margin from CY 2023 onwards, and ultimately, our EBITDA margins as we continue that trajectory.
This would, in turn, enable us to move into positive EBITDA in 2025, with our longer-term target for EBITDA margins in the range of 25%-30%. Slide 26 illustrates the retention rates of our U.S. organic users and membership subscribers. Our user retention rates remain at market-leading levels, even as we continue to see a significantly higher number of new registrations. Month one user retention increased in 2020 and 2021 due to investment undertaken in the user experience, and remained at historically high levels in 2022. The high rate of month one retention has flowed through to longer-term retention, supporting higher levels of user growth, with U.S. MAU up more than 30% year-on-year. The U.S. membership subscription retention chart at the bottom of the slide shows our subscriber retention since the launch of our membership model in mid-2020.
The slightly lower retention of the March 2022 cohort over the past three months reflects the impact of our price increase. However, this has been significantly offset by the ARPPC uplift, which increased by more than 40% year-on-year. As Chris mentioned earlier, churn has performed better than we expected, and we are back to subscriber growth in January and February. This slide shows the first full month of revenue by quarterly cohort over time, beginning in Q1 of 2018. Due to the significant seasonality of our business, we focus on cohorts by quarter. During Q1 of 2022, we saw a significant uplift in revenue due to higher registrations and conversion rates exiting 2021. Q2 and Q3 of 2022 saw month-one revenues increase approximately 10% from 2021.
At this point, there is insufficient data to show the Q4 2022 series, which we expect to experience an accelerated uplift due to the benefits of higher pricing. This slide shows the payback of our performance marketing, beginning with the 2018 cohort. In 2022, we accelerated our marketing investment to include more channels outside of the traditional performance marketing. We have expanded our highly efficient streaming TV as well as our broader brand campaigns to include linear TV and out-of-home channels. We're continuing to achieve break even well within our target of 24 months. This slide illustrates the significant uplift in our U.S. ARPPC over the past quarter as we implemented the price increases right across our monthly iOS membership base. A summary of the new price points for new, existing, and legacy subscribers is included on the slide.
Our legacy subscribers remained as a distinct category due to the limitations of the price increases that we were able to implement. All of our cohorts have seen a meaningful uplift in ARPPC as these increases have taken effect. The strength of our freemium model is demonstrated on this slide, which shows revenue retention by half-year period for those who signed up at the end of the previous period. With the exception of the early stages of COVID, revenue retention has remained at or above 100%. This reflects our success in upselling free users to paid and higher price points for paid subscribers. These impressive revenue retention metrics have remained strong even as our gross subscriber additions have continued to accelerate. We expect to see this improve further in the first half of 2023 as the impact of the price increases flow through.
This page summarizes key metrics for CY 2022. greater detail on our cash flow and balance sheet are contained in the appendices to the presentation, along with the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP operating expenses. I outlined the key revenue drivers earlier on the call, I'll begin my remarks with the non-GAAP gross profit, which increased 71% year-on-year to $154.8 million. The lower gross margin of 68% reflects the impact of hardware cost of sales from Tile and Jiobit. Subscription-only margins increased to 81%, reflecting benefits from our price increases.
Non-GAAP operating expenses increased 88% to $194.9 million, reflecting the Tile and Jiobit acquisitions and the increased investment to integrate these businesses with Life360. Research and development expenses of $82.5 million increased from $43.5 million due to the acquisitions and higher headcount to support product development. User acquisition costs and TV costs of $26.5 million increased from $12.5 million, largely due to the acquisitions. Other sales and marketing expenses of $26 million increased due to the acquisitions as well as investment in brand advertising. Commissions increased to $31.4 million, reflecting higher subscription revenue.
For CY 2022, commissions were 21% of subscription revenue, down from 26% in CY 2021, largely driven by a commission rate change from one of our channel providers and the impact of a portion of Tile and Jiobit subscription revenue not subject to commission. General and administrative expenses of $28.6 million increased from $14.1 million, reflecting the scaling of headcount to support growth in the business and the impact of the acquisitions. In addition, there were higher insurance and facilities costs and increased public company-related expenses due to the introduction of SEC reporting requirements. Adjusted EBITDA loss of $40.1 million increased from $13.1 million, reflecting the Tile and Jiobit acquisitions and accelerated investment to integrate the businesses.
Stock-based compensation of $34.7 million increased from $11.9 million due to the higher headcount, retention initiatives for Tile and Jiobit employees and the competitive environment for talent. The EBITDA loss was $85.2 million, and the net loss was $91.6 million. Other non-GAAP adjustments reflect costs associated with the acquisitions and Form 10 filings and gains on revaluation of contingent consideration. Turning to the key measures of cash flow. Operating cash flow increased to $57.1 million, reflecting higher adjusted EBITDA losses and the investment to grow the business. Investing cash outflows of $111.6 million related to the Tile acquisition. Financing cash flows reflect the net proceeds from the November 2022 capital raise, offset by repayment of convertible notes and the exercise of options and stock awards, net of repurchase.
We finished the 2022 year with cash equivalents, and restricted cash of $90.4 million. As indicated in the ASX release in relation to SVB earlier in the week, we anticipate our cash position at the end of Q1 to be in the range of $70 million-$75 million, including the restricted funds. We expect to be operating cash flow positive from Q2 onwards. There will be two final payments in relation to the acquisitions, with the Tile escrow payment of $13.3 million due in Q2 and Jiobit convertible note payment of $3.9 million in Q3.
After taking these items into account, we expect the low point of our cash balance to be in the range of $55 million-$60 million, which is the same range as we previously advised after adjusting for the November capital raise, but with a steeper move up in the second half of the year. The GAAP income statement is on this slide, as mentioned, the reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP items can be found in the appendix. Thanks for your attention, I'll now turn the call back to Chris, who will discuss the outlook.
For CY 2023, Life360 expects to deliver core Life360 subscription revenue, excluding Tile and Jiobit, growth in excess of 50% year-over-year. Hardware revenue growth of 0%-5%, reflecting the continuing current challenges in the category. Other revenue of approximately $26 million. Consolidated revenue of $300 million-$310 million. Positive adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow of $5 million-$10 million, with positive adjusted EBITDA and operating cash flow anticipated from Q2 2023 and for the full year CY 2023. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn the call over to Melissa, who will manage the Q&A portion of our call today.
Thanks, Chris. As a reminder, to participate in the Q&A, please raise your hand by pressing the Raise Hand icon at the bottom of your screen within the Zoom app. You'll need to unmute yourself to ask your question. Once unmuted, please tell us your full name and what company you're calling from. First up, we have Chris Gawler. Which company are you calling from?
Yeah, Chris Gawler from Goldman Sachs. Can you guys hear me okay?
Yes.
Can.
Okay, Chris.
Perfect. Good day, Chris. Good day, Russell. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, I wanted to ask about the Tile bundling benefits that you mentioned are showing positive early signs. Are you able to let us know how much of that benefit is factored into your subscription revenue growth guidance for FY 2023, and are you expecting that to improve throughout the year?
It is factored into our projections. What we are seeing is much higher uptake of people redeeming Tiles and activating Tiles. We are mid-rollout, so it is quite early. The year forecast, obviously, we had our price increase, which gives us a big jump up. It does slow down growth in the short term because churn is up. The idea as we dial in Tile bundling and lean on other growth initiatives, we will see that accelerating towards the back half of the year. Some of that's due to our seasonality, but some of it is just due to what's coincidentally been, for the last few years, a very H-two loaded, new initiative period. It's gonna be very similar cyclical pattern.
Yep, great. Previously, you've put out numbers such as that you know, you expect the Tile bundling to potentially drive conversion uplift of around 30%. Is that still your thinking, or has that changed as you've actually, you know, gone ahead to pushing that through to the customer base?
That 30% represents our gift with membership uptake, which is when we use Tile as a promo, as it relates to marketing upsells. We expect that we have similar growth opportunities, possibly even more. As we're putting Tile as part of the overall package, it's gonna be hard to say what exactly was Tile versus what were our new, more aggressive onboarding flows. If you go back and look at our vision, the general theme of membership is to have a holistic experience, of which Tile will be a very significant part, but not the sole part. We do expect we have significant room to increase conversion. As I think most people on this call know, our U.S. paying penetration is about 15% of circles being covered.
You see why high water marks like Spotify at 55.0%. We think over time, we could see ourselves getting closer to 25%, 30%, 35%, which would result in very significant increases, in conversion. That is, of course, in light of what was a pretty, significant price increase, which will slow down that increase for a while, but over time we think is still very achievable.
Just on the comments that you made around subscriber growth returning to the U.S. in January and February. Are you able to perhaps quantify that, maybe comparing to the PCP? You know, is conversion back to normal on that $50 million MAU number, or is it still a bit below where it was?
Yeah.
Before the price increases?
It is below, but that's expected. When we look at the model, we look at LTV. Conversion has gone down, churn has gone up, but it by no means offsets the increase. That's all very expected. It does factor into the year where we do have these headwinds of higher churn and lower registration, which is why we are gonna take a couple of quarters to get back dialed in with new flows that push that up to new levels. I do hope over time and expect that over time, we will actually get all those numbers back to record highs, but give us a few quarters to do that.
Given the financial impact of it, Chris, you know, we've increased prices by, you know, more than 40%. The financial benefit of doing that, even with a slightly lower net adds is considerable.
Sure. Just one last question, guys. Just on the EBITDA margin comments that you made before. Can I just clarify, Russell, did you say that you'll be at positive statutory EBITDA from FY 2025 and then the longer term stat EBITDA margin target is 25%-30%? Did I hear that correctly?
That's the lines of sight that we have based on our current trajectory. Yes.
Sure. Thanks, guys. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thanks, Chris. Next up, we have Lafitani. Lafitani, please repeat your full name and which company you're calling from.
Hi, everyone. Lafitani Sotiriou from MST . Can I start off on the platform commissioning costs? Can you elaborate on where the savings will be coming through over the next few years? Specifically, if we think about when you talked about bundling, you mentioned because hardware was gonna be included, there was an avenue for you guys to drop away the commission rates that you're paying to Apple and Google. It sounds like in this update, you're talking more about transactions being made off-platform. Can you just give us a little bit more color on the overall outlook on commission savings, looking at both off-platform transactions, but also the possibility of Apple and Android commission rates falling away altogether?
Russell, do you wanna take that one?
Sure. So the situation, Laf, is that we're, you know, in the process of discussing with Apple the move to essentially take billing off the app for hardware bundled product. That's unclear how long that will take, but that's in process as we speak. I think as we've previously discussed, we already have the approval from Google. That said, once that happens, it will flow through to new subscribers, and we will also wanna be sort of fairly careful as with the implementation of that to not ensure that we're not really detracting from conversion overall. Given all that, we've been relatively safe in our projections for 2023. We're assuming a couple points reduction. The biggest impact will flow through in subsequent years.
Got it. That adds a lot more color. Thanks for that. Can I move on to the international expansion? It looks like this has moved up the priority. You've called out mainland Europe in 2024. Can you be a bit more specific on, is it going to be a bunch of countries at the same time? Will it be one country at a time? And will it be in next calendar year?
As you mentioned, we are starting with the U.K. Our COO, David Rice, is, he's actually one of the guys who has moved to London to set this up, so we are taking it very seriously. We're not putting a junior team on this. It's, one of my right-hand lieutenants who's been here at the company for 6+ years, so it's, we are all in on it this year. We are very explicit about starting with the U.K. We don't have as firm a timeline on Europe. A lot of it will be based on the rollout and what we are trying to do, though, is look for vendors and integrate with vendors who will be able to support our expansion into Europe.
It's a more complex topic than it might sound. I won't go into detail on the call. Suffice it to say, we are trying to paint that long picture, journey and do as much infrastructure work now that will make it easier to launch additional regions over time. Given what we saw in Canada, which was almost a double in performance there versus other regions from a revenue perspective, I am very bullish that we'll see that similar result in the U.K., and we'll push hard into EU shortly thereafter.
That push doesn't come at a cost of the operating leverage that you've called out.
No, it does not. Obviously, we can go faster if we spend more, but everything that we have shared strategically, will be within the bounds of our current cash burn profile.
All right. Just two more quick questions. Just with the hardware guidance for financial 2023 of 0%-5% growth. You know, if you look at that in the context of there being, you know, significant inventory reduction from retailers in last calendar year, it almost implies that you're going backwards again this year. Can you just unpack that a little bit for us, or is it just the case that you're being inherently conservative with this number, given that that's where you've missed a lot in the last year?
I think if you look at the overall rationale for the purchases, it was driving membership. A lot of what standalone hardware companies do is they're doing upside down sales or zero margin sales because that's their way of getting the brand out there. We don't need to do that. We have now 50 million users to market to. When the market did turn south, just the macro environment and when we were looking at how to get operating leverage more quickly, we really did focus on channels that drive margins. We are trying to maintain the focus on bundling first and foremost, then we're looking at direct channels with higher margins and things that were more optics on top line we're not as focused on.
We also think with Apple getting much more aggressive now marketing AirTags, short term, that's a bad thing, but long term, that's a good thing. As you might recall, part of the thesis of being comfortable buying Tile with Apple getting the space is that this is the pattern. They come in, they suck the initial oxygen out of the room, but they make the category so much bigger. Unlike nine months ago when we were taking this stalking controversy and the category wasn't growing, it's growing very quickly now, and we are in this transition moment. I'm very confident by the end of the year, we are gonna continue to prove how effective Tile was for bundling.
I'm also hopeful that the market will have normalized by the end of the year, and the sales we do have will be high quality ones with good channels that set us up for growth in 2024 and beyond.
All right. Okay, cool. Just one last question. Can you just remind us of the subscription mix between Android and iOS, or more specifically, we're just trying to get an idea of the magnitude of the repricing of the Android book to occur next quarter.
It's in the order of 75, 25 left.
All right, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Laf. Up next, we have Julian. Julian, please repeat your full name and which company you're calling from.
Julian Mulcahy from Evans and Partners. Just, Chris, just interested in understanding some of the assumptions in the guidance. 'Cause it does seem a little bit conservative given that, you know, you've said growth has resumed in January and February, churn, after that initial spike is kind of back to normal levels. Then you've got a, you know, 50% price increase that's gonna close through for a full year, and you've got the repricing of the Android book. Have you just been ultra-conservative?
No, I don't think it is conservative. I mean, yes, we are always trying to give guidance that we can meet, but remember, when you do a price increase, there is a negative impact we have to work through. That, to the prior question, that I answered, we have to work through what is going to be higher initial churn, and lower conversion. You do get this big one-time spike, which we got. Now we do need to find new ways of accelerating that conversion. There are going to be these couple quarters where we got the benefit, but we have to work through the downside, is very much expected. If you build a model and flow through that so the algebra works out.
As we get bigger as well, one thing I will note is our gross adds versus net adds. Gross adds are doing extremely well now, and a lot of what we are gonna be trying to do is improve retention, which, as the paid book gets bigger, retention improvements will have an outsized impact in terms of driving numbers, and we have a lot in the works.
Churn rates are not really back to where they were start of last year. They're still a little bit elevated.
Yeah, exactly. But they're lower than we expected, but they're not back to where they were. Just in sort of a common sense standpoint, you raise prices 50%, even if it's absorbed well, it's gonna have some impact. That is there is probably gonna be some long-term elevated churn until we add more value, and part of the adding value is using Tile and other things that will get us back to historical churn levels and even maybe improve them. Again, that takes time.
Right. Has there been much change in the mix between monthly and yearly subscriptions because of the price differential? Not that much. Oh, go ahead, Russell.
Yeah, no, there really hasn't been as yet, Julian. The annual proportion is sort of ticked up a little bit, but we also haven't been focusing on that in the flow. We really want to get this bedded in and get the bundling side bedded in, and then we can look at optimizing the flows.
Right. With the international rollout, is there much of a cost that you're assuming for this first year?
It's relatively small. It's a relatively small investment. It's a small team as Chris said, David Rice is moving to the U.K. to head that up. That will really give it some impetus. The investment beyond a small team and a small amount of marketing, it's not much more than that in this period. That's the advantage of our model. We can really sort of leverage the overall infrastructure for that purpose.
Okay. Just finally, with share-based payments and given all the job losses in Silicon Valley, et cetera, is there a chance to actually, you know, cut back on what you have to pay to keep people now?
I don't think we'll see a cutback. We did see a recent report where we actually still saw increases at certain levels. That could obviously change if this downturn gets worse, but what it has seemed to be more of it's a flattening and higher accessibility of talent, but we have not seen a pullback. I think there's been a very modest pullback in comp for C-level staff, but not at other levels. Most companies like us are, we're more excited that it's, we're able to get much higher quality talent with similar amounts of effort.
Yeah. Cool. Thanks, guys.
You're welcome.
Thanks, Julian. Next up we have Chris Savage. Chris, please let us know which company you're calling from.
Sure. Chris Savage, Bell Potter. Most of my questions have already been asked, so maybe just some clarification. Just on the bundling, you originally said it would be launched early Q1. It sounds like it's been more so late Q1, like this month. Is that accurate? If so, what was the reason for the delay?
That was accurate. It was a modest delay. There were some infrastructure issues that were a little bit slower to work through than we thought. We had a couple other shorter term things that the team leaned in on to accelerate other parts of the roadmap. It was not anything deeply substantive, and it was a modest delay in the big picture.
I think, Chris, you said earlier it's not fully rolled out yet. When do you expect that to be the case?
It's. We do a phased rollout of all our features, especially things at a big infrastructure level. Most features, they go 0 to 100 over a period of 3 to 6 weeks, depending on what the feature is. We're in the middle of that right now.
Fully rolled out by the end of the quarter or early next?
Yeah. No, no, definitely by... We're in March now, so it'll be... In the next few weeks, we'll be complete. One thing just to clarify, although phase one will be fully rolled out, as we've shared, the strategy here is this is more the first rollout, it's like the infrastructure, having tiles in the bundles, better fulfillment, all seamless. The real conversion improvements will come in the out years as we push people harder to the bundle and have different contextual ways of upselling. For example, one thing that's not gonna be out for a couple of months, but I think it's gonna be huge, is that we call it the ghost tile on the map. A tile is gonna appear on your Life360 map that's gonna act as an onboarding flow into that bundling solution.
That is when we think we're gonna start seeing these much bigger conversion uplifts, was when we have things much more front and center in the user flow.
Okay. Thanks. Just on the churn being slightly higher than it was originally. Do you put that down to the price rises, Chris?
Yeah. 100%.
Do you put it down to some weakness in the consumer or with the rising interest rates?
No, just the price rises.
Any of that?
Just the price rises.
Okay.
We've seen holdout groups, and it's very expected and actually lower than expected from the price increase. To restate the obvious for everyone on the call, it was a 50% price increase. This was not a 5% price increase. It was quite substantial. The fact that the churn is so modest, I think bodes very well. It is a new lower baseline. Higher baseline, sorry.
Just last question, perhaps for Russell. You said the low point in cash would be around that $55-$60 mark. Does that assume the full payment of the $13 million escrow on Tile?
It does. Yeah. It does include that.
You suggested, Russell, earlier in the week that, you know, that's the potential up for discussion or negotiation. When will you have sort of some final insight on that?
No, I think to clarify that, there was some confusion, perhaps between the earnout for Tile, which was almost a year ago, was not achieved, and that is not being paid out. At this point in time, there's no reason. This is essentially the last piece of the Tile acquisition. There's no reason that that wouldn't be paid out.
All right. It's almost certainly gonna be paid out next quarter.
That's what we're planning on. Absolutely.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Chris. Next up we have James. James, please repeat your full name and which company you're calling from.
Yeah. Hi, this is James Bales from Morgan Stanley. I, firstly, would like to touch on the margin profiles that you outlined in slide 22. Can you maybe help us understand your expectations in terms of gross margin, which wasn't on that slide, and the impact that you expect to see from the price rises?
I think we're looking to a sort of several point increase in the sort of raw gross margin for subscription. We're looking to stabilize the hardware margins. The other factor is as we move forward, is that subscription will become a larger part of the overall pie, so that will increase the overall margins as well.
Okay, that's helpful. Then in terms of the operating costs which are on that slide, where should we expect leverage in FY 2023 on those cost buckets?
The biggest piece will be R&D, just because that's the biggest part of the pie, and that's also therefore with the reduction that we did in the early part of the year, that's probably the largest impact. So that will flow through. That would be the largest piece. We'd probably user acquisition and TV will probably be relatively stable for 2023. Commissions, as I said earlier, may drop a couple points.
Okay, got it. One element that isn't on that slide is the non-cash stock-based comp. I don't know how you wanna talk to this, but can you give us a sense of what you expect that number to be on a P&L basis or in terms of new shares issued for the next 12 months?
Let me start with the latter part of that. We are aiming to get back to our sort of historical level of dilution of 5% or under. In flowing through the way the share-based commission is calculated under Black-Scholes, that will flow through a bigger number in 2023. We would expect it to be then sort of stabilizing thereafter. There's a few pieces that continue to flow through from Tile retention payments and some transition payments related to the restructure that will flow through this year.
When you think about that sort of percentage for FY 2023, what sort of range makes sense to you?
In terms of a percentage increase, James?
Yeah, yeah, in the share count.
Yeah. In the share count, it's definitely going to be, you know, within that sort of 5% dilution number.
Okay, got it. Then on the bundling, I'd just like to understand the percentage of non-paying MAU that have been served the Tile promotions to date. Maybe you could talk to the changes in behavior in terms of conversion rates that you're seeing there.
If you take our gift with membership promo, that has gone to all our users, but those are specifically promotions. It was the specific promotions that had the 30% uplift. Don't quote me on the exact number, but I think we've had over 200,000 people convert through some sort of bundled offer already. Most of our conversions from the overall platform are not through promotions, and that is what gives us a lot of confidence about the leg room this has. Very soon, over the next couple weeks, anytime someone goes to our premium page to see what they get, they're gonna permanently get Tiles. The checkout flow will be much better. Previously, you had to go to a different page, put in a code. It was very clunky system.
Soon it will be 100% of those bundles, and then we will be upgrading different upsell hooks to be pushing Tile more aggressively. It's much more complex than, like, is bundling on, is it off? We have seen again that everyone's already got the promos, and now we're going to the next phase of that.
Okay, got it. Then maybe, one last one on hardware. You've sort of given guidance of 0%-5%. You've just traded through the peak selling season in fourth quarter and have seen the results for January and February. Can you give us some idea of the trends that you're seeing in sell-through from the retailers in those last sort of four or five months?
I think the biggest factor there, James, is that, you know, we talked about the conservative attitude of retailers, going into year-end, in terms of inventory for, you know, days of sales on hand. That has not changed. There I guess there was some expectation that, you know, going into the new year, they may start to move back to normal practices. That conservatism in the current environment is not changing. In fact, it may be becoming a little tighter even in some respects. While the general market is basically as we expected, we're not necessarily seeing any benefit to sell in at this point versus sell through.
Okay. Got it. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.
Welcome.
Thanks, James. As there are no more questions, I will hand it back over to Chris for some closing remarks.
Thank you all. I'm gonna be meeting with many of you over the coming days and weeks. Looking forward to more conversations in a big CY 2023. Thank you all.