Yext, Inc. (YEXT)
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Earnings Call: Q4 2022

Mar 8, 2022

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Yext Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Houston, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jeff Houston
Head of Investor Relations, Yext

Thank you, Sarah, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Yext's fiscal fourth quarter 2022 conference call. With me today are Chairman Mike Walrath, CEO Howard Lerman, CFO Steve Cakebread, and Chief Accounting Officer Darryl Bond. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements, including statements about revenue, non-GAAP net loss, growth of our business, our management and governance plans, gross margins, operating margins, net dollar-based retention, capital expenditures and other non-historical statements as further described in our press release. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those related to Yext's growth, the evolution of our industry, our product development and success, our management performance, and general economic and business conditions, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call.

Descriptions of these and other risks that could cause actual results to have a material difference from these forward-looking statements are discussed in our reports filed with the SEC, including our most recent quarterly and annual reports and our press release that was issued this afternoon. During the call, we also refer to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the most comparable GAAP measures are also available in the press release, which is available at investors.yext.com. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Howard. Howard?

Howard Lerman
CEO, Yext

Thank you, Jeff. Since we founded this company in 2006, we've been focused on helping businesses and organizations around the world be the authoritative source of delivering their business information everywhere people search. Starting with the power of Listings, we created products that help companies build their companies. Most recently with Answers, we help our clients leverage the power of AI-based search technology to provide perfect answers everywhere. Yext has become a powerful AI-based search platform, working with many of the world's most notable brands. I am proud of how far we have come. Today, it's time for me and Yext to take the next step in our journey. Mike Walrath will succeed me as CEO. Mike has been part of Yext's evolution since 2009 when he joined the board.

Since 2011, Mike has helped guide the company as chairman of the board. Before he joined the board, Mike built an innovative technology company called Right Media that he sold to Yahoo, where he managed a team of more than 4,000 people globally. In addition to Right Media, Mike helped build other high-growth software companies, including Moat, which was acquired by Oracle. He has a track record of creating value, solid experience running complicated businesses at scale, and Mike believes in our vision. Mike can provide a fresh perspective on products, solutions, and successfully lead Yext into the future. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike to share some of his thoughts as he steps into the role.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

Thank you, Howard. When I joined the Yext board in 2009, the company was a nascent startup. None of today's products existed. I would like to acknowledge how far the company has come under Howard's leadership, and I'd like to thank him for all that he has done to create the opportunity that we have today. I believe Yext has enormous potential, and I look forward to playing an active role in the company's next phase of growth. I'm stepping into this role with a deep understanding of the business, but I'm sure there is much for me to learn as I shift my focus to day-to-day operations. Yext has built a unique platform of products unrivaled by any of our competitors.

The products are as relevant today as they have ever been, as companies are finding it increasingly complex and difficult to manage their brand's information with the proliferation of information sources available to their customers. Yext helps our customers solve real business problems through the entire online customer journey across a portfolio of products that enable our customers to control their brand's truth. I believe our long-term market opportunity is massive and growing, and we've only scratched the surface of our potential. Still, we were disappointed by our performance in fiscal year 2022. While it has been a very challenging operating environment and COVID surges in Q2 and Q4 had particular impact, we can now see that our go-to-market was far too inefficient.

We did not experience the sustained recovery in sales productivity that we expected last year, and it showed in our bookings results, which impact revenue in fiscal year 2023. There are several areas where we believe we can improve our performance. First, we've begun the work of streamlining our go-to-market with a unified customer and product approach. In recent years, we launched exciting new products like Answers. These new products and the expansion of our market are exciting and healthy developments, but we have seen fragmentation in our interactions with customers and our ability to deliver premium service and support. This impacts customer satisfaction and challenges our retention and upsell motions. In hindsight, it is clear we were too focused on building sales capacity and not focused enough on other functions that drive productivity, particularly sales enablement, training, client success and services.

We believe that the first step in delivering a better customer experience is unifying our customer facing functions like marketing, sales, support and services with our product and engineering efforts. Aligning these functions should increase our operational efficiency, decrease the number of teams working separately and reduce redundancies. This approach should help ensure our new products and features are tied directly to customer needs and that our go-to-market motion matches the evolution of our products. We expect that we'll also create accountability of the customer across the entire product and delivery lifecycle. Today, we are centralizing these functions and our customer focus. We also announced today the promotion of Marc Ferrentino to President and COO. Marc Ferrentino is now responsible for alignment and delivery of the full customer experience, including sales, marketing, client success, product strategy and engineering.

Previously, as Yext Chief Strategy Officer, Marc was responsible for product management, user experience, product marketing, customer insights, and platform developer program. Marc has been with Yext since 2015, and he has a deep understanding of what our customers need and how our teams can work together to increase their success. I look forward to working with Marc and his talented team on continuing to improve our products and go-to-market approach. The second immediate focus is on our approach to investing in the growth of our business. Historically, we have invested aggressively in anticipation of future growth. This works well when things go as planned, but can also create inefficiency and contribute to organizational sprawl. Going forward, we will continue to experiment, but major investments will follow clear evidence that we are gaining traction.

We are taking a more disciplined approach to all of our investments, paying close attention to productivity and customer base metrics to sooner understand what is working and where our dollars can be better deployed. For example, we have already reduced the number of quota-carrying reps from approximately 225 at the end of the year to approximately 190 in our sales channels. Going forward, our investment in growing our sales team will follow increases in productivity instead of lead them. We will also continue to look for opportunities to better utilize existing resources for maximum efficiency across the company. As we see productivity improving, we are fully prepared to add to our current team. To be clear, we will invest in what's working in a disciplined way.

Fortunately, as Chairman, I've had the opportunity to get more involved in operations over the last few months and we are already making progress on our priorities. However, this process will take time. I am grateful to have a talented, focused, and motivated team in place who are supportive and excited for change. I'm taking on this role in large part because of the exceptional team at Yext, and I'm excited to work with them as CEO. As for our finance organization, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Steve Cakebread for his efforts here at Yext. Steve has been a great partner and he's leaving the company in great hands with the promotion of Darryl from Chief Accounting Officer to CFO. Now I'll turn the call over to Steve.

Steve Cakebread
CFO, Yext

Howard and Mike, thank you. You know, when I came to Yext in 2014, we were a private company, a few hundred employees, three people in finance, a few products and a lot of enthusiasm. Today, we're a public company, global base of employees and thousands of world-class brands on our platform. The company's enthusiasm remains, and I'm thankful to have been part of this team. I'm also grateful to have had the opportunity to build a world-class finance organization ready to move the company forward. I'm handing the reins over to Darryl Bond, who will succeed me as CFO. Darryl was one of my first hires at Yext and someone I'd hoped would succeed me when I eventually left. He's worked alongside me and the management team at Yext for years, has a deep understanding of the company.

He's likely a familiar face to many of our analysts and investors, as he's been heavily involved in investor relations over the years. I know that I'm leaving the CFO role in capable hands. With that, I'm gonna turn the call over to Darryl and congratulate him on his promotion. Darryl?

Darryl Bond
Chief Accounting Officer, Yext

Thanks, Steve. I appreciate the opportunity and have enjoyed working so closely with you over the last seven years. I'm excited about my new role and the future of Yext. As Steve mentioned, I've met many of our investors and analysts in the past, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue with you. For now, let's begin with our Q4 and fiscal 2022 results. Our fourth quarter revenue grew 9% year-over-year to $101 million. Fiscal year 2022 revenue grew 10% to $391 million. Unearned revenue increased 16% year-over-year to $223 million. Annual recurring revenue, or ARR, was $390 million at the end of Q4, up 10% year-over-year. Our trailing twelve-month net dollar-based retention, which excludes our small business customers, was 98%.

Our trailing twelve-month net dollar-based retention for direct, which also excludes small business, as well as our third-party reseller customers, was 99%. We've seen improvements in gross retention the past couple quarters, and we believe our renewed focus on customer centricity will drive greater renewal rates and upsells, which should improve net dollar-based retention. Keeping in mind, this is a trailing twelve-month number. Separately, the total number of Yext direct customers, excluding SMB and third-party reseller customers, increased 15% year-over-year and is over 2,700. Our direct ex-SMB and reseller customers with ARR over 100,000 was 605 at the end of Q4, up 10% year-over-year. Turning to non-GAAP results, which are reconciled to GAAP in our press release.

Q4 gross margin was 77.1% this quarter compared to 78.4% in the year-ago quarter. We continue to be in the range of our long-term non-GAAP gross margin target of 75%-80%. FY 2022 gross margin was 76.6% compared to 77.3% a year ago. Sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue declined from 54% in the fourth quarter last year to 51% as of Q4 FY 2022. For the full year, it also declined from 55% in FY 2021 to 52% in FY 2022. On an annual basis, we expect that this metric will continue to improve. G&A as a percentage of revenue increased from 15% in the year-ago quarter to 17% in the fourth quarter.

Fiscal 2022 G&A as a percentage of revenue improved marginally over fiscal year 2021, and we expect to drive continued efficiencies in G&A going forward. Q4 operating expenses were $80.8 million or 80% of revenue compared to $73 million or 79% in the year-ago quarter. Fiscal year 2022 operating expenses were $315.9 million or 81% of revenue. That compared to $296 million or 83% of revenue a year ago. Our Q4 net loss was $4.1 million, compared to net income of $94,000 in the year-ago quarter, and our Q4 net loss per share of $0.03 compared to breakeven last year. Fiscal 2022 net loss was $20 million, compared to $22 million in fiscal 2021.

Cash and cash equivalents were $261 million at the end of fiscal 2022. This is compared to $230 million at the end of fiscal 2021. We intend to maintain a strong balance sheet and cash position going forward. Net cash flow from operations for Q4 was $29.1 million and compared to $24.9 million in the year ago quarter. For the fiscal year, net cash flow from operations was $21.8 million, compared to $1.2 million for fiscal year 2021. The increase in cash flow generation was primarily related to the previously mentioned operating expense improvements. We have generated positive operating cash flow in three of the last four fiscal years and expect to continue generating annual positive operating cash flow in fiscal 2023 and going forward.

CapEx was $1.1 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $11.2 million in the quarter ended January 2021. CapEx for fiscal 2022 was $13.4 million, compared to $65.1 million in fiscal 2021, as we have returned to a normalized annual CapEx run rate. Turning to our outlook. We expect Q1 revenue to be between $96.3 million and $97.3 million. We expect non-GAAP net loss per share between $0.07 and $0.08, assuming a weighted average basic share count of approximately 131.9 million shares. For the full year fiscal 2023, we expect revenue of $403.3 million to $407.3 million. Our non-GAAP loss per share is expected to be between $0.17 and $0.19.

This assumes a basic weighted average share count of approximately 134.3 million shares. Operator, we are ready to open it up for Q&A.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Arjun Bhatia with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 12

Hi. Yeah, this is Chris on for Arjun. I guess the first thing I wanted to touch on was the customer count. It looks like it was flat quarter over quarter from 3Q to 4Q. You know, with that in mind and kinda your revenue guidance for next year, are you seeing significant churn in any portion of the customer base? You know, how should we think about kind of how some of this dynamics play out?

Darryl Bond
Chief Accounting Officer, Yext

Hey, Chris, this is Darryl. Thanks for the question. You know, we've seen some, you know, really positive gross retention over the last couple quarters. I think, you know, last quarter we mentioned we've seen gross retention start to come up back to historical levels, and we saw that again. You know, we're really encouraged by the signs that we're seeing in gross retention. We've made a bunch of, you know, improvements in that area over the past few quarters. As Mike mentioned in his remarks, you know, we continue to focus on customer centricity, and it will certainly be an area of focus going forward.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

It's Mike. One of the things we've looked at closely over the last couple months is our historicals here. As Darryl mentioned, you know, historically, we were in the mid- to high 80s% and even low 90s% with gross retention. We saw that drop to a low in the low 80s% during fiscal 2021. We saw in the second half of fiscal 2022, our gross retention recover into the mid- to high 80s%. We're not at all satisfied with that number, but the trend is actually in the right direction. What it reinforces for me is that, you know, a focus on customer centricity is what's gonna get us back to where we were.

Speaker 12

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. There's obviously a pretty big shift in kind of the management team. You know, just broadly speaking, what are some of the biggest priorities going into 2022?

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

It's Mike, I'll take that one. There's a lot of change. Fortunately, everybody who's around the table has been here, and so I think there's a really great lens on the business. There's a lot of work to do as well. You know, some of the focuses that I outlined for you in my comments are already underway. This is the unification of the go-to-market and the focus on efficiency in the go-to-market with our products and engineering teams.

You know, when I talk about our approach to investments, it all comes back to really the cadence of that and being more disciplined about making sure that when we are making these types of investments, we have data that tells us that that we're ready to expand functions. You know, as I get deeper and deeper into the business, those are the types of things we're gonna be focusing.

Speaker 12

Great. Well, thank you for taking my questions.

Operator

Our next question comes from Naved Khan with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Naved Khan
Senior Equity Research Analyst and Director, Truist Securities

Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. A few questions. If I just look at the guidance, right, for the full year, revenue growth in the low single digits, sequential decline just for Q1. I'm wondering, what's causing the sequential decline. I think this is the first we've seen. Is it coming more from the Listings business, or have you lost any momentum in the Answers side? And then, what gives you the confidence that you can still deliver on the full year growth? The second question I had is the changes you are planning to make or maybe have already made on the sales headcount.

How surgical is this change in terms of reducing the headcount, and where are you more focused now with the people that you have? Just give us some sense.

Darryl Bond
Chief Accounting Officer, Yext

Thanks, Naved. This is Darryl. I'll handle the questions a little bit out of order, but you know, your first question was about the guide, and you know, I think we certainly had a tough FY 2022, as Mike had mentioned in the script. Obviously the bookings in Q4 significantly impact the revenue that we're gonna see in FY 2023. You know, you're seeing some of that dynamic there. To your question around the quarter-to-quarter sequential decline, keep in mind, we recognize revenue daily over time, and Q4, I believe, has 91 days, Q1 has 88 days. That few days you know equates to a few million dollars of revenue. That's why we're seeing that.

In terms of momentum, you know, Answers is continuing to grow incredibly well. You know, we're still seeing a triple-digit growth rate, you know, so we feel really encouraged by the product. You know, as Mike mentioned, our primary focus is gonna be on sales productivity and continuing to drive improvements there. In terms of confidence for the guide, you know, when we put together the guide, we wanted to be thoughtful and, you know, there's a lot of macro uncertainty out there. You know, we're basing the guide on the visibility that we have today into the business, and we feel it's a achievable target. I'll hand it off to Mike to add and take any other. Yeah. I'll be happy to.

With respect to the guide specifically and you know what Darryl referenced in Q4 and also in Q2, we saw a really significant disruption in our business. I think it's worth noting that, for example, in Q4, over 50% of our in-person events were canceled because of the Omicron surges. That's unfortunately an important part of our sales motion. Can we get better at designing our sales motion so that it's more efficient during disruptions like that? Absolutely, we can. It's also a fact that those things are disruptive to us. In terms of the sales headcount, you know, I would say it has been surgical what we've done so far.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

It has been built around a focus on productivity and where we think we can be productive. To me, productivity is one of the most important indicators of the health of our overall go-to-market. I'd like to see how we're doing with productivity before we get into capacity modeling and increasing our quota carrying and making sure that we have the right number to handle the amount of demand that's out there.

Naved Khan
Senior Equity Research Analyst and Director, Truist Securities

Maybe just a follow-up on that, if I may. So I guess, you know, we are in a sort of a reopening phase of the economy as it kind of relates to, you know, COVID. Shouldn't that then kind of allow you to kind of benefit from, and how much are you baking in from that? Second is just around the recent developments right in Europe around Ukraine, and if you're seeing any impact from that.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

Sure. On the reopening, I mean, you know, I think it's interesting to note that we sat here, you know, a year ago, and we, you know, as a company, really felt like the, you know, the reopening tailwinds were coming. You know, we're certainly being cautious in how we build our plan and ultimately that affects our guide. We'd certainly like to see those tailwinds as we go into this year. As far as the Ukraine impact goes, we have no direct exposure to Russia or Ukraine. So far, we haven't seen that have any impact on our business.

Naved Khan
Senior Equity Research Analyst and Director, Truist Securities

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ryan MacDonald with Needham. Please go ahead.

Ryan MacDonald
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Needham

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe the first one is for Mike. You know, as we start to think about this, I guess, slower growth period, going into calendar year 2022 here, how should we think about perhaps as you work through the year and some of these changes about sort of a more balanced approach to growth and profitability and obviously, you know, within what's built into the guide today, obviously a little bit lower in terms of EPS than perhaps The Street was expecting. You know, are there any, I guess, charges or sort of one-time costs that you have to incur early in the year that is maybe preventing you from being able to ramp margins more quickly? Thanks.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

Thanks, Ryan. I'll leave the accounting questions to Darryl, which will be a practice of, you know, that you'll get used to with me. I do think you hit on an important point, which is, you know, change management, you know, at a company of our size does take time, and it's not as easy as flipping switches. Although we have already begun to become more efficient, you know, those changes do take time to get through the system. You know, while we are committed to those changes, we also wanna make sure that, you know, that we're making the right changes and that they're surgical. That we're not doing things that impact the core of our business, which is incredibly healthy.

When it comes to efficiency, I mean, one of the things that you're hearing from us is that we expect to be sustained positive on an operating cash flow basis. To me, that's one of the most important metrics in our business is if we're producing operating cash flow, then that gives us a lot more flexibility than if we're burning cash, which we do not expect to.

Darryl Bond
Chief Accounting Officer, Yext

Yeah. Ryan, just to capture your question about the you know, one-time expenses. There'll be some, but you know, not incredibly meaningful in Q1. You know, one thing that we are gonna focus on is a lot of operational efficiencies and continuing to look at you know, where we're spending, how we're spending and reallocating as needed. You know, throughout the year, we're gonna probably look at R&D and may spend a little bit more there as we have an opportunity to improve the products to make them easier for customers to use. That's gonna be an area where we'll continue to focus. You know, as well, we mentioned in the past that we've made some investments in customer success and customer support.

We'll continue to look at that area as an opportunity to, you know, create better customer experiences to help continue to drive retention improvements. The one thing that we've been talking about for quite some time and have demonstrated with some pretty good success is continuing to drive efficiencies on the sales and marketing line, and we expect to continue to do that.

Ryan MacDonald
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Needham

Excellent. Helpful. Maybe just as a follow-up, as we think about the go-to-market strategy. You know, you talked about that the unification of that strategy is already, you know, underway, and then you're working towards that. As you think about the product set between, you know, Listings and Pages and Answers that and the answer suite that continues to evolve, do you still feel that there's a strong sort of synergy and cross-sell motion between the two? You know, if not, are you looking at is there any product rationalization we should expect as a part of the changes? Thanks.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

My point of view on that is, we you know across the product family, we're still seeing that kind of non-listing products are still all growing about 30%. You know, we do see strength in that business. Obviously, Listings is the biggest part of our product set. Upsell cross-sell motion is one of the most important parts of our go-to-market. I think it's one of the biggest opportunities for us when we talk about, you know, one of the ways that we'll know that we're doing a better job with our customers is we'll be seeing higher gross retention and higher upsell. It's certainly one of the things that impacted us in fiscal year 2022 on the new booking side.

I'm a firm believer. I've spent most of my career building solutions that start with the customer, and they start with solving the customer's problems. I don't see a single product in our portfolio that doesn't solve a very large customer problem. We have to do a better job of coordinating our motion when it comes to showing our customers the solutions to their problems and servicing them when we get those deals.

Ryan MacDonald
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, Needham

Excellent. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator

Our next question comes from Pinjalim Bora with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Pinjalim Bora
VP of Equity Research (Enterprise Software), Enterprise Software

Oh, great. Thank you for taking my questions. I just wanted to take a step back, and maybe if you can talk about what surprised you in the quarter in terms of Q4 bookings, because it seems like the ARR numbers came up at least below our what we were thinking. Talk about what surprised you. Why was it not that great? Maybe talk about the core business. I know core business was coming back up. I think last quarter it was growing about 5%, had come from like 1% growth in Q4 of last year. Did that take a step back in Q4, essentially, that kind of impacted bookings? The other thing associated to that is I think you see reps, you said 225.

I think the year before you ended 250. Was there a higher sales attrition that you saw ending the year? Was that a result that impacted kind of bookings? Help us understand what impacted bookings.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

Yeah. I'll go first. You know, when you talk about Q4, and we saw this to some extent in Q2 as well, you know, I think we told you in Q3 that there's gonna be a lot of focus on customer-facing events and getting back to our customers. As I mentioned before, between December and January, we lost more than half of those events simply because we couldn't do them. You know, the surprise for us in Q4 was how disruptive the motion in the world was by the Omicron surges.

Again, I'll say it again, we should get better at selling through those sorts of disruptions, but certainly when we exited Q3, we didn't expect to see that kind of disruption, and it absolutely affected bookings. Oh, sorry, your other question was about sales attrition, I think.

Pinjalim Bora
VP of Equity Research (Enterprise Software), Enterprise Software

Yeah.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

You know, when shifting from a capacity-driven model to a productivity-driven model, this is a little bit of a different focus for us. You will see natural attrition in an organization that where you have fewer sales reps who are achieving their quota. In this case, we wanted to make sure that we were addressing productivity proactively, and that big dip you see from 225 to 190 currently, that was more action on our side.

Pinjalim Bora
VP of Equity Research (Enterprise Software), Enterprise Software

It was more forced than voluntary, is what you're saying?

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

It was proactive. Yes.

Pinjalim Bora
VP of Equity Research (Enterprise Software), Enterprise Software

Right. Okay. Got it. Let me get back in the queue. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from Rohit Kulkarni with MKM Partners. Please go ahead.

Rohit Kulkarni
Managing Director of Internet, Capital Markets and Head of MKM Ventures, MKM Partners

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Good luck, Howard and Steve, and congrats, Mike and Darryl. Just double-clicking on this kind of fragmented product and sales comment, Mike, maybe you can kinda expand onto last year, we kinda heard a lot around Lead with Answers, and that's going to be the leading product, although Listings remains predominantly the largest driver of all the economics. Perhaps maybe take a step back, how are you thinking next 12 months with regards to go-to-market? Also, increasingly, we were hearing around kind of verticalized use cases gaining more traction, and that's the way some of the salespeople were being directed to go after specific vertical use cases, need support, e-commerce or whatnot.

As you think through over the next 12 months, what should we expect from kind of a more unified product and sales? Should we expect more of these vertical use cases, or is there going to be a step back with regards to Listings being the more lead-in product? Would love to hear your kind of big picture thoughts on that.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

I'll give you my big picture thoughts, and we'll be updating these quarterly as I, you know, get deeper into it. Again, because I have been Chairman and I've had an opportunity to be very engaged over the last few months, I'm not coming into this conversation cold. One of the things we still see is that our bigger deals are still Answers-led. I see nothing that says that the Answers opportunity isn't as big as we thought it was and that we won't be continuing to lead with Answers where it's the most important part of the customer solution.

You know, another way that I would frame this, and again, this is all sort of, you know, stuff I've dug in on, is all of our products are built around getting the right answer. So while we, you know, we distinguish between Listings and Pages and Answers, as an example, Listings was the original Answers product. It was where, how do you make sure that your local information is correct everywhere? Getting the right answers, the customer's right answers out there. So nothing about that has changed and nothing about my point of view on the opportunity has changed. What we have to do is execute better. That goes to, you know, verticalized selling is a very useful way to think about this.

Expertise matters. Understanding the customer matters more than ever in our new go-to-market motion. You know, when I talk about fragmentation, well, the types of things I'm talking about are the number of touch points that our customers feel. My wife will forgive me for sharing her customer experience, but she runs a small restaurant group, and when I asked her how her customer experience was going, she said, "It's great. We've had at least 15 customer touch points." Which was, you know, I think it is part of the challenge, that we have so many different groups touching the customer at times. You know, I think we lose track of having a single dialogue with the customer.

The organizational changes that we've already started to make are about centralizing those interfaces and making sure that client success, support, professional services, customer service, that they're all touching the customer in a way that's very consistent and more closely aligned with our go-to-market. Hopefully that makes sense, but that's really what we're driving towards, and that's how historically I've done this in the past with other SaaS-type solutions.

Rohit Kulkarni
Managing Director of Internet, Capital Markets and Head of MKM Ventures, MKM Partners

Just other question on like upsells and renewals. Any specific call out in how that has trended over the last 90-120 days with regards to kind of any particular call-outs with regard was upsells more stronger or weaker or renewals as in net dollar retention rate, how did that trend?

Darryl Bond
Chief Accounting Officer, Yext

Yeah. Rohit, we've seen some pretty solid improvement in gross retention over the last Q3 and Q4. You know, where we're really challenged and continue to be challenged is on the upsell. I think that sort of plays into, you know, a lot of what Mike been talking about sales productivity and continuing to refine the go-to-market approach.

Rohit Kulkarni
Managing Director of Internet, Capital Markets and Head of MKM Ventures, MKM Partners

Okay. Thanks a lot. Yeah.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

I was only gonna add that, you know, I think when you get the customer relationship right, and when your customers are happier, the entire upsell, I mean, this is simple, basic stuff, but the whole upsell motion gets a lot easier. When, you know, if we're seeing challenges on the customer satisfaction or success side of things, then it makes that conversation harder. While we have seen the renewals recover nearer to historic levels, we are very focused on getting them back to or above where they've been historically.

Rohit Kulkarni
Managing Director of Internet, Capital Markets and Head of MKM Ventures, MKM Partners

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Stan Zlotsky with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Hi, this is Elizabeth on the phone with Stan. Thank you so much for the question. I wanted to double-click on the go-to-market efficiency. Just given some of the comments last quarter about the 50% improvement in sales productivity of ramped reps, you know, was there anything specific that changed over the last three months outside of just the reduction of in-person events? Thanks.

Mike Walrath
CEO, Yext

Yeah. I think what we saw was, you know, the 50% increase in ramped rep productivity. We obviously took a step back in Q4 there, and it certainly had a lot to do with taking a look at what we're seeing on the productivity side of that. We have many reps who are highly successful, and there's a model for success here. We have to get better at replicating it. When I talk about unifying sales training and enablement and making sure that everyone's using the same motions, that's all part of that process. You know.

Operator

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