Earnings Call Transcript
AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. (AXON)
Earnings Call Transcript - AXON Q3 2021
Rick Smith, CEO
Okay. Great job, Angel and Andrea and our whole IR team. You guys did a really nice job on that video. I hope our investors enjoyed it. So as you can see from our results, our teams are continuing to execute at the highest level. Perhaps the strongest growth indicator is record bookings of $0.5 billion in a single quarter. As bookings eventually flow through to revenue, Axon has become a substantially larger business in the coming years. And the momentum is really strong, with sales contracts booked up to 70% year-to-date compared to last year, and we expect another record bookings quarter in Q4. I'm proud of the results we're delivering in 2021 and even more energized by the opportunity in front of us. We've demonstrated our ability to scale the business and drive leverage in our model. Now, we're expanding our growth story as we continue to introduce new products, selling to new customer market segments, and adding sales channels across geographies. Today, we're addressing an even larger total addressable market (TAM). As you saw in the video, our current estimates point to a total addressable market of $52 billion. With our top-line projected to reach at least $1 billion next year, you can see that there's enormous white space ahead. By way of example, in early October, AXON had its largest presence ever at the Association of the United States Army's Annual Conference in Washington, DC. This provided us with an opportunity to showcase our AXON transformative solutions for law enforcement, positioning us to disrupt the U.S. defense market, giving us a seat at the table to begin influencing how the military responds to the future. As I watched the helicopters evacuate our embassy in Kabul, it struck me that the United States has effectively not achieved durable strategic success in our last three wars. And it's not for lack of sufficient lethality. Our military is the greatest fighting machine in the history of the world, with the most lethal and precise weapons. Yet, the more we killed in Vietnam, the more we lost the hearts and minds of the very people we needed to win over. And the same phenomenon played out in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can no longer kill our way to success in modern conflicts. And I believe the ability to capture bad actors will become ever more strategically valuable, and we intend to lead the way. As the world moves at a faster pace, Axon is remaining at the forefront of bringing transformative technologies to market. We're innovators at our core. You can see that when you look at our history. We signed the incorporation papers for TASER at my dining room table 28 years ago. Since that time, our mission has remained unchanged, but our organization has significantly evolved. Today, we have a broad ecosystem of public safety products. We have continually found new ways to serve our customers, from disruptive technologies and software, even when they met with initial resistance. We've always held extremely high standards for ourselves at Axon, but we found that great challenges make us rise to meet them. Earlier this month, we held our 6th Annual Axon Accelerate Conference right here in Phoenix. It felt great to be back in person with all our customers and colleagues. The theme of this year's conference, and the topic of my opening keynote, was that change is inevitable, and today, technology is moving at an exponential pace. From virtual reality training to our drone program, Axon Air, to automatic license plate reader technology and transcription, we're unlocking the power of technology to reach our North Star of obsoleting the bullet and outperforming the 9-millimeter pistol in stopping power by 2030. Amid Accelerate, we introduced our next moonshot. Together with our customers in public safety, within the next 10 years, we aim to cut officer-involved shootings by half. We believe we can accomplish this with new technologies, new training procedures, new policies, and even new regulations to guide the way. In fact, I used Accelerate as an opportunity to introduce a regulatory framework: the three laws of first response robotics to begin a critically important discussion of how we use robotics, not to kill each other, but specifically to avoid harming each other, with new methods to capture dangerous subjects. Any decision that impacts a human subject for a robot must be made by an authenticated human operator, accepting legal and moral responsibility. That’s our first proposed law. Second, there should be no lethal force. De-escalation should be the primary goal with minimal use of force to stop a threat. Finally, any use of force deployed by a robotic system should be recorded in full audio and video, with all user data reviewed by an independent oversight committee. I will be hosting a Reddit AMA in December to gather public input on these guidelines. We're proud of our history of increasing mechanisms of control and accountability to ensure that powerful new technologies are used for good, from the data logs and the TASER to the very existence of body cameras and our ethical product framework that we use to guide our ALPR development. Now we are leading the way to establish the regulatory framework years ahead of advanced non-lethal robotics technology. We're excited to continue to blaze new trails in our mission to end killing. We were fortunate to close out three days of robust, interactive dialogue at Accelerate with a keynote where I interviewed Former President George W. Bush. He delivered an incredibly inspiring talk, expressing gratitude to public safety officers and calling for civility from all citizens, which aligns squarely with our mission to protect life, capture truth, and accelerate justice. At the end of today's call, we're going to play for you a very powerful moment from Accelerate, so please stay tuned after the Q&A. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Luke Larson, our President.
Luke Larson, President
Thanks, Rick. Let me start by echoing your sentiment around Accelerate. We believe it all starts with creating a great experience for the customer, which means more than just listening. It's anticipating their needs by mapping technologies to insightful opportunities. A level of customer engagement we saw this year is a testament to the transformative power of the public safety platform we've built. We're obsessed with creating value in a unique way that no one else can by solving real problems with solutions people are willing to use. It was a phenomenal week learning from customers from all over the world, and I could not be more excited for the road ahead. Huge shout out to our marketing, sales, and product teams, and really all the employees at Axon who made such an impact on the experience. The business continues to grow at a fast pace, which means recruiting and fostering the best and most diverse talent is critical to our success. Our ability to retain top talent not only allows Axon to move increasingly closer to accomplishing our mission, but also allows us to set new goals along the way. To do this, we need to continue creating an organization that is future-proof, resilient to disruption, and at the forefront of innovation. We are currently hiring over 300 roles, and we have embraced remote work as an opportunity to expand our talent pool, pulling from best-in-class resources around the globe. How our employees spend their lives matters, which is why we are putting a great deal of consideration into the culture we are creating and the values we want to embody as we build the future. This means we're doubling down on our learning and development initiatives. The teams we have built are unparalleled, and it's incredible watching the collective hard work and dedication to our mission. We're laser-focused on how we attract, retain, and develop the best talent. You know someone great who wants to make a great impact? Send them our way. As we round out the year, we feel great about our product pipeline. We're finishing 2021 with exceptional bookings, which include $30 million of TASER 7 revenue that we expected to deliver in Q4, but it's now just shifting into the first half of 2022. This is the result of an industry-wide chip shortage that impacted our TASER 7 platform. The supply chain conversation is universal right now, and while we are not immune, our teams are definitely navigating the situation. We have incredibly strong relationships and a long history with our supply chain partners who are invested in Axon's mission and aligned in helping us meet our pipeline. Teamwork is harder than it seems on the surface, and as our company scales globally, it requires a consistent commitment to operate as one team. We're proud of our supply chain team who have done a tremendous job helping us manage through the global supply chain crisis. While we've experienced some delays and the potential for interruption remains, we have line of sight to clearance in the first half of 2022 and continue to be confident in our ability to meet the needs of our customers and deliver on our annual revenue guidance, despite these challenges. I want to reiterate, we have line of sight to clearing the backlog in the first half of the year. We feel great about our pipeline and hope to continue thriving in what is a dynamic environment. Now, I will turn the call over to Axon's Chief Financial Officer, Jawad.
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Thanks, Luke. I also want to start by echoing the excitement over our Accelerate conference. Meeting with our customers, partners, and employees from around the world was super energizing. It reinforced for me that Axon sits squarely at the intersection of social justice and advanced technology with a mission that galvanizes all of our stakeholders, including you, our investors. While we weren't able to offer an investor track at Accelerate this year, you've been top of mind for us. In light of feedback we received at our last proxy, we've been conducting a listening campaign to gather more specific feedback from our investors on our approach to governance and ESG. The input we've received has been invaluable, and we look forward to sharing the outcomes of these discussions in the coming months. Over the past several years, you've seen us invest aggressively in R&D and channel expansion. We've deployed capital to strategic partnerships, putting an early stake in the ground on emerging technologies and trends. These actions have enabled us to unlock transformative new products like VR and Respond, as well as new customer market segments like Federal and Justice, and new geographic regions worldwide. Today, we're excited to share that as a result of our strategic planning and continued investments, we're projecting substantial runway for growth with a new and updated Total Addressable Market or TAM. Our new TAM is almost double the last one that we shared with you. While our penetration in this new TAM is still relatively low, it's absolutely our intention to serve these markets with the investments we have in place, which will see us bring exciting new products to market over the next 18 to 24 months. There are two areas in particular I want to highlight. First, federal; we had Richard Coleman run our federal business in 2018, and he has since built a stellar team whose performance has exceeded our expectations. We now view the federal team for Axon as a $9 billion opportunity across TASER devices, body-worn cameras, demos, and other software. We count among our customers today several branches of the federal government, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and the Drug Enforcement Agency. We've also been driving adoption of our new multi-jurisdictional sharing feature, which is enabling state and local agencies to seamlessly share evidence with U.S. attorneys. To better serve federal customers who have sensitive law enforcement information, we've made an investment to ensure our software complies with the Civilian Fed Rate High and the Defense Impact Level 5 security standards. At these security levels, we anticipate being able to offer a DEM solution to all 90+ federal law enforcement organizations across civilian and defense agencies. After a strong third quarter in which we added $35 million in new deals, we are on track to have another record year for federal bookings. Next, I want to briefly touch on consumer. Axon has, since its inception, always had a consumer business, but it's historically not been one that we've devoted meaningful R&D to. With the ongoing development of our exciting new TASER device technology, we've committed to releasing a host of new personal safety devices over the next few years that will help advance our mission to truly obsolete the bullet. We also intend to start offering personal safety solutions to mobile applications over this time frame. In our shareholder letter, we highlighted that TASER device penetration is less than 25% in the U.S. and even lower globally, which represents the professional user. The penetration in the consumer market is virtually 0 in an $11 billion market, indicating that we have a tremendous runway ahead in just this segment alone. To be clear, we're still very early in announcing consumer plans, but we have the alignment, technology, strategy, and, most importantly, the mission to drive this growth. Before we open up the call to questions, I want to highlight three themes that we'd like you to take away this quarter: 1. We are significantly underpenetrated in our growing global TAM; 2. We're delivering against the rule of 40, investing for growth while achieving leverage; 3. Our year-to-date results and outlook for 2022 are a waypoint towards building a much larger company that is synonymous with public safety and protecting life. As we look ahead to 2022, we're carrying a lot of momentum into the new year. Our 2022 revenue projection has strengthened to at least $1 billion on top of what we expect will be at least 25% year-over-year growth in 2021. We added a record $28 million in ARR this past quarter to bring our total ARR to $288 million. We have an exciting runway ahead of us, and we look forward to sharing updates on our progress in the coming quarters. With that, let's move on to questions.
Operator, Operator
Okay. Thanks, Jawad and team. And as Rick noted, as we move into Q&A, I would encourage you all to stay tuned. If we have the time, we have a special surprise for you at the end of today's call. Moderators, can you bring everyone up into the gallery view? Okay. Great. All right. Our first question comes from Josh Reilly at Needham. Go ahead, Josh.
Joshua Reilly, Analyst
All right. Thanks, guys. Nice job on the quarter here. Maybe we'll just start with the $30 million shipped in Q4 teams or revenue. Would you expect all that to hit here in Q1 or will it be more evenly spread out through the first half? And then what are the puts and takes on the timing of that revenue hitting?
Rick Smith, CEO
Thanks a lot for the question, Josh. I think at this point, we do see it hitting in both Q1 and Q2. And certainly, it's a challenging supply chain environment across the world right now and the team's doing a great job navigating through that. Of course, we're hoping we can fulfill as much of that in Q1 as we can, but realistically it'll be across Q1 and Q2.
Joshua Reilly, Analyst
Okay, great. And then maybe just a follow-up on Fleet 3. As that's launching here, is there going to be any impact to that production ramp given the semiconductor supply chain challenges? And then, is there going to be any initial impact to gross margin as a result of this ramp due to the Fleet 3 mix coming in as well?
Rick Smith, CEO
I'll let Jawad answer the second part of that question. But on Fleet 3, the demand has been very, very high, higher than we've ever seen for our in-car video products before. So we are shipping record numbers of Fleet 3 as compared to Fleet 1 and Fleet 2, and we expect that to continue throughout next year. We are oversubscribed for the product right now, and I think that speaks more towards the demand than anything else, but we do expect to shift large quantities relative to previous versions in Q4 of this year and moving forward into Q1.
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Then Josh, to answer your question on gross margins, we’re not expecting at this point any impact from Fleet on gross margins.
Joshua Reilly, Analyst
Awesome. Thanks, guys. I'll move on here.
Operator, Operator
Okay. Next question comes from analyst Jonathan Ho of William Blair. Go ahead, Jonathan.
Jonathan Ho, Analyst
Hi. Good afternoon and congratulations on another quarter of strong results. As we look at your revised TAM estimates, can you talk about maybe why the decision now to update the TAM and maybe what underpins some of these assumptions since it seems like the markets appear to be a lot larger than you previously thought?
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Yes, I'll start with that one, John, and thanks for the question. So we've been investing for growth beyond the TASER devices and body cameras, and we've given you flavors of the markets that we're aiming towards with the new products and segments. We wanted to reflect accurately how the business is oriented today. Our TAM has been expanding in the past few years, but that's also because the lens we're looking at our business through has been widening as well, and things like VR, a bigger presence in federal, and more focus on consumer; these investments are in-flight now, as I mentioned they're still very, very early, but this TAM release speaks more to our ambition. We wanted to align how we're thinking about our TAM opportunity with how we're investing for growth today. We wanted to make sure that you guys are thinking about it the same way that we are.
Jonathan Ho, Analyst
Got it. And then when we look at this revised opportunity, what are the investments that you need to make to sort of unlock these additional markets? What are the most impactful ones, if you can just highlight that for us? Thank you.
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Yes, the great thing about it is it's not a lot of incremental investment. The beauty of Axon's business today is that the technology we have for TASER, for example, we've been investing in TASER for quite some time. We've talked a lot about the next-generation TASER technology, and we're very excited about it. That technology will be able to serve our domestic and international law enforcement markets, as well as our federal markets, correction, enterprise security; it will be able to translate to consumer as well. What we're really looking to do is gain leverage on the investments that we're already making. The same thing holds true with body cameras and DEM solutions. The body camera and DEM product is really an enterprise solution that happens to be oriented towards law enforcement today and is geared towards law enforcement. We think that there are other use cases for that technology, and there are new areas like VR training where we are making new incremental investments. In that context, the demand is extremely strong. In drones, we're looking to partner a little bit more and find the right partners to help us get into those markets. But what you should read into this is that we're not looking to expand or get too far ahead of our skis as far as investments into new technologies; rather, we're seeking to drive leverage from the ones that we have.
Jonathan Ho, Analyst
Fantastic. Thank you.
Operator, Operator
Okay. The next question comes from analyst Brian Gesuale at Raymond James. Brian, go ahead. We also have Astrid on the call, so Astrid, if you'd like to ask a question, feel free to do so. Let's take a moment for both of you, and then we'll go to Paul Chung from JPMorgan.
Paul Chung, Analyst
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. So just on your annual software contracts, what the customer is kind of what more of? How are you thinking about the dynamic between the new seats and increase in market share? And what are some of the upcoming features we should expect to kind of further drive that launch there?
Rick Smith, CEO
Paul, thanks for the question. I think the good news here is that the product team has done a fantastic job delivering several value-added feature sets over the last couple of years. We're now seeing the market really start to value those. One of those is performance, which measures how officers are complying with their agency policy. There are updated redaction tools, and there's a product called Standards, which is our first module of our records products. Ultimately, as we bundle the solutions together in our officer safety plan offerings, we're seeing more and more customers buy those offerings. In fact, we've observed about double the number of licenses purchased this year so far under that plan as compared to last year, and we only achieved that through the year. The 2 to 3 quarters, I'd say so. There's a lot of runway ahead for customers to continue to adopt a lot of these feature sets that have been released. Our focus is really through customer success as well as sales, making sure that we do a really good job showcasing the value of these new features. So that will be kind of our biggest focal point for our software sales team over the next few quarters: moving more and more customers into those offerings, and we're certainly confident in our ability to do so.
Paul Chung, Analyst
Great. Then on the international front, you saw very strong growth there, particularly in Europe, where you're seeing pockets of strength. Where are we seeing the most momentum? And then how has the traction been in Asia? You called out that contract there in India; any comments there? Thank you.
Rick Smith, CEO
Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the question. For those of you who have been with us a while, you'll recall that we've been quite disciplined about proving our international strategy and what we call our tier 1 markets, which include the UK, Canada, and Australia. We feel like we've earned the right to expand beyond those markets now, and we've hired really talented teams in several locations around the world. In EMEA specifically, we are seeing exciting growth in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany, and France. In addition to India, where we look at this first contract as a strong indicator that our strategy there is working, and we plan to continue building out a team across one of the largest leasing markets in the world. We've also seen significant success in Brazil, which was historically a market we were barred from selling into, but now they are again buying both tasers and our video devices. Our sales team has localized into some of these markets, and our product team is doing a fantastic job supporting our customers to achieve that last mile of product-market fit. It's really coming together nicely for our international business.
Operator, Operator
Okay, we are going to go back to Brian Gesuale from Raymond James. Go ahead, Brian.
Brian Gesuale, Analyst
Yes. Thanks very much. You've had several really large wins here over the course of the year and some big deployments coming up with body cameras, as well as a lot of investments to continue to support that TAM market opportunity out there. Can you maybe talk about how we might see the margins flowing over the next couple of quarters as you start to bring those customers live and continue to invest in the business?
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Yes, Brian, thanks for the question. I'll take that. Over the long term, I want to reiterate that we're driving the business towards 30% adjusted EBITDA margins and 70% gross margins. Over the next couple of quarters, the best way to think about it is that when we start off the year, we have a comprehensive list of investments that we want to make in product, channel, operational excellence, etc. We set our revenue targets and then determine which of these investments we are going to fund. As you might imagine, not everything gets the green light. As we over-deliver on revenue throughout the year, we unlock funding for those items that were below the line, because we believe in reinvesting back into the business. We've got a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on new products, segments, channels, and so forth. If we hadn’t had $30 million of revenue pushed into 2022, our adjusted EBITDA margins in Q4 would have stayed roughly flat to where they were at the end of Q3. However, because we’ve been unlocking funding throughout the year for these new initiatives, we're now expecting to finish the year at the EBITDA levels we've guided to, which translates to roughly 20% adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year. And then for next year, we're going to reset. I want to note two things here: first, the new initiatives that we're funding—like VR training, federal next-generation TASER, body cameras, records, and dispatch fleets—are areas where demand is very strong. Just like we saw in 2021, we expect any over-delivery to go right to the bottom line, and you’ll see margins tend to tick up. Second, we are currently in the budgeting process. We are treating 2022 just like we've treated prior years, meaning there will be items that are below the line. Thus, the Q4 margin rate, even though it will be slightly lower, is going to be viewed as an anomaly.
Brian Gesuale, Analyst
Great, I appreciate that. And then the ARR that you booked in the quarter is about as strong as I can remember. Any specific shout-outs to particular lines of software? I know the VR/AR stuff has had a lot of momentum over the last couple of quarters. How might we think about some of that strength and what it might look like as we carry that momentum into '22?
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Let me take that, Brian. We're seeing improvements in the attach rates on our premium services like Respond, which is the live streaming of body cameras. On our last call, we mentioned how Charlottesville used that capability during a significant event to ensure officer safety while managing a situation. There's also ALPR, of course, and Fleet. Respond, as part of our new OSP 7+ premium plan, includes VR and transcription. We're also seeing an improvement in the attach rates in our highest premium plan as well as those individual elements.
Rick Smith, CEO
Yes, that's right. Actually, Brian, just to formalize, this is a record for us. It's the largest single quarter increase we've ever seen in ARR.
Brian Gesuale, Analyst
I thought so. Congratulations. I'll jump back in the queue, guys.
Operator, Operator
Okay. Our next question comes from Keith Housum at Northcoast. Go ahead, Keith.
Keith Housum, Analyst
Good afternoon, guys. Congratulations on the quarter once again. Appreciate all the color on the TAM and the penetration. As we look at your TASER weapons, they had a phenomenal quarter. Can you provide a little color or context in terms of the percentage of weapons sold as replacement or refresh versus really into new users?
Rick Smith, CEO
Thank you for the question, Keith. It's great to see you again. There are a few markets that are adopting TASER. The response to your question depends on the specific market. In the U.S. state and local segment, we are primarily seeing upgrades from legacy TASERs to the new TASER 7. Since we bundle cameras with TASERs now, we're noticing an increase in first-time standard issue users in this market, which is encouraging, and we expect this trend to continue. In other areas like international, federal, and enterprise security, we're identifying a growing number of first-time TASER users. For instance, internationally, we implement a TASER First strategy to provide an excellent customer experience for new clients, which leads them to adopt our TASERs. After establishing a relationship, we can then offer them additional products from our portfolio one or two years later. This scenario applies similarly to the federal market and our private security channel. The demand varies by market, but we're definitely experiencing high demand across all sectors.
Keith Housum, Analyst
So if you had to aggregate all the numbers, would it be 70% is going to be refresh, 30% new? Or is it vice versa? Can you ballpark that for me?
Rick Smith, CEO
I don't have that data at the moment, but I want to avoid any estimates until I've got the data in front of me; we can come back to you with something like that in a future quarter.
Keith Housum, Analyst
Fair enough, I appreciate that. Just as a follow-up on the supply chain, any chance of supply chain issues extending beyond weapons this quarter into body-worn cameras?
Luke Larson, President
So I'll take that one, Keith. We feel really good about our pipeline. We've been working closely with all of our suppliers. We managed to secure contracts and committed deliverables into Q1 and Q2. At this time, in the first half of the year, we feel really confident we're going to clear the backlog on tasers and keep the momentum going across our full product portfolio. I would add the caveat that we are in the middle of a global supply chain crisis. Our team has done a phenomenal job navigating that, and I think our supply chain strategy has proven that out over the last two years. We feel really good about it.
Keith Housum, Analyst
I appreciate that. Thank you.
Operator, Operator
Thanks, Keith. Our next question comes from Jeremy Hamblin at Craig-Hallum. Go ahead, Jeremy.
Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst
Hi, Todd. I'll add my congratulations. Let me first start with a question for Rick and the product development team. With this ambitious target to make the bullet obsolete by 2030, and with it having been a few years since TASER 7, how many iterations of the TASER products do you expect to roll out between now and then in that eight-year period to achieve the capability where stopping power can match or exceed traditional handguns?
Rick Smith, CEO
I would say two or three product revisions between now and 2030 with that goal in mind. To be really specific, I think by 2030 our goal is to outperform the 9-millimeter, and I think that will require two or three product generations.
Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst
Okay. And in terms of the investment needed in your R&D team to achieve that goal, is that something you feel is going to accelerate from what it has been growing at over the last, let's say, four or five years?
Rick Smith, CEO
No, not necessarily. The TASER developments are continuing to move along, and that business, as it grows, is funding the R&D. I also talked at Accelerate about robotics, which is part of this initiative as well, as it aims to remove operators from harm's way in high-risk scenarios and incapacitate a target. In addition to the handheld TASER devices, we know our customers also value this solution for scenarios where they want to avoid close engagement. Implementing a long-range system through robotics is better than developing a long-range rifle. We can ultimately create better outcomes, and we will be leveraging multiple innovations to cut police shootings in half.
Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst
Thanks. That's actually a good segue, and my follow-up question is regarding personnel costs, which are typically the highest expense for most police departments. This has been a very dynamic two-year period in law enforcement. With the pandemic, vaccine mandates, and civil unrest that we've been experiencing, I wanted to get a sense of what insights you're hearing from police chiefs about staffing with new patrol officers, whether they are getting the personnel they need. Additionally, how is Axon evolving as a partner to potentially stretch the police force that's deployed in public domains more effectively to maintain their budgets? What are you hearing from police chiefs?
Rick Smith, CEO
Yeah, we see that recruiting is particularly challenging in this environment. However, I also believe we're seeing a shift in public sentiment. For example, in Minneapolis, the bill to replace the police department did not pass, indicating that public awareness is shifting towards recognizing law enforcement as a critical function. This requires thoughtful investment rather than defunding, and as it becomes more challenging for them to hire staff, productivity tools become even more crucial. Furthermore, we can help by freeing officers from spending excessive amounts of time on data entry tasks. Although this doesn't directly help with our goal to obsolete the bullet, it assists agencies in leveraging their staff more effectively. Essentially, we could double their productivity if officers didn’t have to spend half their day typing up records. We are doing a lot of work to connect all the sensors we have in the field to reporting systems within agencies, moving over to the justice system, where we’re identifying new efficiency needs for prosecutors and courts that can help manage the deluge of digital evidence being produced.
Jeremy Hamblin, Analyst
Are they getting adequate staffing, or are they having to rely on you even more as a partner? It sounds like staffing has been a challenge, with people feeling attacked publicly, and they might not be looking to sign up for the job anymore. Is there an opportunity for Axon to again stretch those resources?
Rick Smith, CEO
Yes, we're in agreement that recruiting is difficult right now. However, I do believe we're starting to see a trend where the public is realizing the importance of law enforcement. Thoughtful investment is necessary, not defunding, and as it becomes more challenging to hire, productivity tools become even more critical.
Operator, Operator
Okay, our next question comes from Eric Stampfel from Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, Eric.
Eric Stampfel, Analyst
Hi, team. Thanks. Maybe if we could go back to the adoption you're seeing with Records and Respond. Are customers generally upgrading to those solutions as they're moving to higher value bundles with body camera contracts? Do you see that some customers actually have room in the budget to do that ahead of their existing contracts? Just anything on the cadence of adoption; I understand it's still early for most customers.
Rick Smith, CEO
Yes, absolutely, Eric. Thanks for the question. We believe our products work best together. Digital evidence will be at the heart of every police record. We’re seeing that trend now and expect it to continue to grow in the next five to ten years. Most customers are currently buying Records in the same offering, the officer safety plan, and that strategy is serving us well. We're doing our best to balance the increasing number of customers signing up for Records with ensuring a quality experience for our early adopters. We're hearing more positive sentiment from our early customers in Records, and we firmly believe that successfully stacking one customer onto the next is what's going to lead to significant market adoption later.
Eric Stampfel, Analyst
Thank you. And as we think about consumer, as you're building out prospects for channels there, do you expect most of that to be in a direct model, or are there opportunities to expand into storefronts? How should we think about the differences in the sales model as the consumer opportunity starts to ramp?
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Thanks, Eric. I will take that and maybe turn it over to Rick for some additional color. So today, it's both. We sell through distributors as well as direct to consumers. We certainly plan on leveraging both of those models going forward. We think there’s an opportunity to increase direct-to-consumer sales with some of our upcoming products. These products will include next-generation TASER and mobile applications for personal safety, and we will take those direct to market.
Rick Smith, CEO
Very excited.
Operator, Operator
All right. Our next question comes from Will Power. Go ahead, Will.
Will Power, Analyst
Okay, great. Yeah, congratulations on strong results. I want to come back to your record; I know you made the comment on the record bookings being up 70%. I'd just love to get a little more color on the key drivers and components of that strength. Is it dominated by any particular products or geographies? It looks like something between sensors, TASER, international; it seems pretty broad-based, but any backdrop on the drivers would be great.
Rick Smith, CEO
Let me hand over to Josh; he's just a little closer to the customer order flow. I'm feeling broad support from our customers, and one thing we’re hearing is that everything works well together, which adds value for them. Historically, police tax systems tend to struggle with integration. Josh, how would you answer that question?
Josh Isner, Executive
Ultimately, our bookings are a combination of several factors. I think in our core segments, the increasing adoption of our officer safety plan drives bookings up, as those are our highest ASP offerings. Additionally, we're seeing international growth, which is very encouraging. We’re on track for a record year internationally with double-digit growth percentages. We're also experiencing growth in newer segments, such as the Justice segment and our Enterprise segment with private security sales. Moreover, new products are contributing, with products like Axon Air and VR achieving remarkable adoption. In fact, this quarter marks the first time all our sales teams exceeded their goals. Thus, we expect this momentum to carry forward into next quarter, contributing to total bookings.
Will Power, Analyst
That's great. And then maybe just a question for Jawad. I know you all provided revenue guidance or a target for next year. Maybe I missed this, but any framework for EBITDA margins for next year? I know you have a longer-term target of 30%. This year you've largely outperformed, so what are some of the puts and takes we should consider as we sketch out our models for next year?
Jawad Ahsan, CFO
Yes, I appreciate the question, Will. You certainly nailed the party line. We are driving towards 30% long-term margins, and we'll remain opportunistic about where to invest. We're presently setting our budget for 2022 and have not formally guided on EBITDA dollars or margin for next year. Essentially, we have several investments we'd like to make, but not all of them will receive funding right away. We're hoping as revenue increases throughout the year, we can unlock more funding. The reason we're doing this is because there are vast opportunities in front of us spanning multiple products, channels, and geographies, so we want to keep our top line growing by investing rather than focusing solely on EBITDA.
Will Power, Analyst
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
Okay. And I think that's everybody unless there are any follow-up questions. No? All right, Rick, over to you to close us out.
Rick Smith, CEO
Okay. Well, again, thanks everybody for joining us. We look forward to updating you as we bring the year to a close next quarter. I do want to close out by sharing a powerful moment that we shared with our customers at Accelerate, where we missed having our investors this year. We celebrated their sacrifice over the past few years through the pandemic and widespread social challenges, so with that, let's share the moment. Please stay on, folks, don't rush to your next call. Take a moment to share this with us. Your investments make this possible.