Commvault Systems Inc Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Desiree and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Commvault third quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press the star, one. I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Melnyk, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning and welcome to our earnings conference call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that statements made on today’s call will include forward-looking statements about Commvault’s future expectations, plans and prospects. All such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Please refer to the cautionary language in today’s earnings release and Commvault’s most recent periodic reports filed with the SEC for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause the company’s actual results to be materially different from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. Commvault does not assume obligation to update these statements. During this call, Commvault’s financial results are presented on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation between the non-GAAP and GAAP measures can be found on our website. Thank you again for joining us, and now I’ll turn it over to our CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani for his opening remarks. Sanjay?

Thanks, Mike. Good morning and thank you for joining today’s call. Q3 was another record-breaking quarter for Commvault. Total revenue increased 21% to $263 million. Subscription revenue grew 39% to $158 million. Total ARR improved 21% in constant currency. SaaS ARR jumped 75% in constant currency, and we did this profitably, recording non-GAAP EBIT margins of 20.8%. At a time when cyber resilience and data security could not be more top of mind for CSOs and IT leaders, we saw a strong uptick in transaction volume, impressive growth in our land-and-expand business, and an acceleration in our organic growth rate. As we look to the future, we believe that Commvault is strategically positioned to succeed and win. This is bolstered by three fundamental growth drivers. First, the cyber resilience market has never been more dynamic or full of promise. We are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this. Today, customers face unrelenting cyber attacks, a shifting regulatory landscape, and the exponential growth of data from top native and AI-generated applications. To deal with this, enterprises need a unified resilience platform that spans their hybrid, multi-cloud environment. This is where Commvault thrives. Our Commvault cloud platform is enterprise-grade and enables customers to easily protect and secure vast amounts of data, including AI and ML data sets across clouds, and given most customers are utilizing multiple clouds, we are innovating across all major providers. During the quarter, we announced the Commvault cloud platform will be available to AWS customers. We also introduced advanced cloud backup and cyber recovery capabilities for Google Workspace. This builds on what we already do today with Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. With respect to cloud, we are also innovating in unique ways to address critical recovery challenges. For example, one of the most complex and time-consuming steps to recover a business after a cyber attack is rebuilding and validating mission critical cloud-native applications. Previously, this could take weeks or months; today with Cloud Rewind, which includes technologies from our Appranix acquisition, customers can do this in a fraction of the time. ARR associated with this offering has more than doubled since we acquired Appranix a few months ago. Cloud Rewind has become a highly differentiated capability within our platform, which brings us to the second fundamental growth driver, the need for our game-changing cyber resilience offering. They’re unlike anything in the market and they make our industry-leading platform even stronger. Today, customers demand predictability, fast recoveries, and solutions to address the latest threats. That’s what our next-generation offerings do - security is built in, not bolted on. We’re out-innovating the competition on every level. Let me give you an example. To be truly resilient, you need a predictable recovery plan that can be automated and used at a moment’s notice, and you must be able to practice that recovery in good times so that you can be ready for the bad times. This is what we uniquely provide with Threat Scan and Clean Room Recovery. Both are core offerings on our Commvault cloud platform. With Clean Room, customers love the sense of security it provides. Emerson Electric commented, quote, 'Clean Room recovery not only enables organizations to test their recovery plans often but know that if they’re hit, they can be resilient,' end quote. In terms of addressing the latest threats, we’ve just announced that we will be offering customers the full and automated recovery of Microsoft Active Directory. This is absolutely critical. Active Directory controls authentication and access to critical business systems for hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Because it is so essential, it’s also become a primary target for cyber attacks; in fact, research shows it is the target in nine out of ten cyber attacks. If hit, your business will come to a halt. Starting this spring, we plan to address this threat in transformative ways, making it super simple for organizations to recover their entire Active Directory systems, and even better, customers will be able to do this with Commvault Cloud, the same platform that today protects more workloads than any other vendor. Nobody else offers this capability on one platform. Customers are thrilled. A spokesperson for the Nevada Department of Transportation said, quote, 'Commvault’s innovation with Active Directory will provide us with the confidence and peace of mind that not only can we recover our Active Directory data but will be able to do so quickly and accurately,' end quote. In just one year since launching our initial Active Directory capabilities, we’ve seen a meaningful uptick in adoption. With our expanded offering, we’re even more excited about this potential. Another innovation that has customers talking is Clumio Backtrack, which provides a revolutionary way to expedite the recovery of massive Amazon S3 data sets. Many companies are storing AI and ML data sets in S3, so having the ability to recover that data is paramount. We unveiled new automation that can rapidly revert billions of objects to a specific version at a specific point in time. Nobody else has got this. We just announced Backtrack at AWS re:Invent and look forward to sharing more in the coming quarters. These cyber resilience offerings bring even more depth and breadth to our platform. They appeal to CSOs and IT leaders alike, and they lead to the adoption of net new workloads while fueling momentum around land-and-expand opportunities. This brings us to our third growth driver, our strong go-to-market motion combined with an incredible partner ecosystem to scale our business globally. The strategy that we put in place to segment and refine our go-to-market motion over the last several quarters is paying dividends. Our cyber resilience marketing message is resonating with customers and we’re seeing record inflows and pipeline growth. In Q3, we saw increased transaction volumes, strong close rates, accelerating customer numbers, and robust expansion activity. These contributions were balanced across geographies, verticals, and market segments from seven-figure software transactions to a record number of velocity-based SaaS wins. The result was another double-digit increase in sales force productivity in Q3. These advances are further augmented by our enhanced and growing partner ecosystem, which enables us to extend our reach globally. In Q3, we saw solid contributions from alliance partners like Hitachi, HPE, and Dell. This included a large enterprise win with a healthcare provider that combines Commvault’s HyperScale X on Dell’s hardware with our Air Gap Protect offering for immutable protection of the customer’s most critical data. We also saw improved momentum with the hyperscalers as the number of marketplace transactions more than doubled. With compliance in mind, we offered a new partnership with Pure and we’re actively working to strengthen integrations with leading AI providers like Databricks. With respect to AI, we’ve prioritized investments in critical AI capabilities that can proactively identify anomalies, detect threats, and identify ideal recovery points to bounce back after an attack. These capabilities are pivotal to recovery and resilience. Let me take a moment to summarize the growth drivers that position us for ongoing financial success. First, cyber resilience has shaped the addressable market opportunity and the emergence of new use cases has increased the size and accelerated the growth potential of the market. Second, in this more complex and dynamic hybrid cloud world, point products don’t cut it. Our combined cloud platform offers customers depth of coverage and breadth of offerings with exceptional choice and flexible consumption. Third, maintaining our relentless focus on execution is critical to our success. This flows through all layers within our organization and extends across our growing partner ecosystem. Our year-to-date financial performance proves that now more than ever, we need to continue these investments to further accelerate our growth profile. In closing, it’s no longer enough to just recover your data. Today, it’s all about enabling continuous business for our customers, from how they prepare for the inevitable disruption to how quickly they get their business up and running following an attack. This is what matters most for our modern hybrid and multi-cloud enterprise and it is what we enable today. Now I’ll turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jen DiRico, to discuss our results. Jen?

Thanks Sanjay. As Sanjay noted, Q3 was another excellent quarter driven by strong execution and record close rates. Our investments in growth-oriented initiatives and new product innovations are yielding positive results, as demonstrated by the acceleration in our customer additions and our organic growth rate. I want to thank all of the Vaulters that contributed to the fantastic results this quarter and year-to-date. Now I’ll discuss our Q3 results and operating metrics, followed by an update on our improved guidance for Q4 and FY25. Please note that all growth rates are compared on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise specified. Total revenue increased 21% to $263 million, driven by a robust 39% increase in subscription revenue. The growth in subscription revenue resulted from continued SaaS momentum and significant improvement in the volume of both term software and SaaS transactions compared to the prior year. Revenue from term software transactions over $100,000 increased by 18%, benefiting from a 30% rise in volume. This included more than a dozen wins over $1 million. In addition, we saw robust growth in landing new large enterprise customers this quarter, including Equinix, AXA, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and DenizBank Financial Services. Given the breadth and depth of offerings across our platform, we are the vendor of choice to serve large complex enterprises that have mission-critical data sitting in on-premise, hybrid, and cloud environments. I also want to note that our investments around our velocity motion continue to bear fruit. We added a record number of SaaS customers this quarter. We’re pleased with this increase in volume with the small and medium-sized enterprises as we welcome the opportunity to grow with customers on their hybrid cloud journeys. Now turning to ARR, Q3 total ARR grew 18% to $890 million. On a constant currency basis, total ARR accelerated 21% to $911 million, reflecting an acceleration in our organic growth rate as well as incremental contributions from Clumio, which contributed $24 million. Please refer to the appendix of our quarterly earnings presentation to review the constant currency bridge. Subscription ARR, which includes term-based licenses and SaaS contracts, increased by 29%, reaching $734 million, accounting for 83% of total ARR. This includes $259 million in SaaS ARR, which grew 71%, continuing its hyper-growth trajectory. On a constant currency basis, subscription ARR increased 32% and SaaS ARR grew 75%. Including Clumio customers, we added over 1,000 new subscription customers, surpassing 11,000 customers worldwide, including over 7,000 SaaS customers. We continue to benefit from increased multi-product adoption among both new and existing customers. For example, we closed a seven-figure transaction with a leading global technology infrastructure company that added risk analysis, threat scan and compliance to bolster their overall cyber resilience posture. A multinational HR and workforce management group chose our Air Gap Protect, Cloud Rewind, and Active Directory to securely accelerate their hybrid cloud journey, and we closed a seven-figure deal with a national partnership of independent insurance brokers that chose Air Gap Protect, VMs, and Kubernetes to secure their cloud-first infrastructure. These are just a few examples of customers that are bypassing point solutions and top grading vendors to utilize the extensive capabilities of our Commvault cloud platform for enhanced cyber resilience in a hybrid cloud world. Existing customer expansion remains healthy with a Q3 SaaS net dollar retention rate steady at 127%, driven by both up-sell and cross-sell. SaaS ARR saw notable growth from new products such as Active Directory, Cloud Rewind, Threatwise, and other mission-critical offerings. These trends continue to support our confidence in further expansion opportunities with the newest products we announced at SHIFT. Now I’ll discuss our consistent profitability and free cash flow, which demonstrates our commitment to a responsible growth philosophy. Q3 gross margins were 82%, reflecting our accelerating mix shift towards SaaS, which represented 29% of total ARR versus just 20% one year ago. Gross margins also reflect modest dilution from the Clumio acquisition consistent with our prior guidance. Operating expenses of $160 million represented 61% of total revenue, consistent with prior quarter and prior year. Q3 operating expenses included costs associated with SHIFT in London, the onboarded Clumio employees, and our continued investments to accelerate revenue momentum which include higher commission and bonuses on a record sales result. Non-GAAP EBIT grew 17% to $55 million, and non-GAAP EBIT margins of 20.8% came in at the high end of our guidance range. Now moving to some key balance sheet and cash flow metrics, we ended the quarter with no debt and $244 million in cash, which reflects the previously disclosed purchase of Clumio. We are excited about the progress made towards integrating Clumio. It furthers our ability to go deeper in the cloud and position us to capitalize on potential AI-related opportunities. As we continue to invest in our future, we remain opportunistic around technologies that further the depth and breadth of our platform. Q3 free cash flow of $30 million was impacted by material foreign exchange headwinds and tax payments made in the quarter tied to higher than projected full-year pre-tax income. In Q3, we repurchased $32 million of stock representing 107% of free cash flow for the quarter. Fiscal year-to-date through December 31, 2024, we repurchased $135 million of stock, representing 106% of free cash flow. We still plan to repurchase at least 75% of our free cash flow for the full fiscal year. Given our strong results year-to-date combined with accelerating customer demand and a healthy pipeline, we are pleased to share our outlook for fiscal Q4 and once again raise our guidance for fiscal year ’25. For fiscal Q4, we expect subscription revenue, which includes both a software portion of term-based licenses and SaaS, to be in the range of $160 million to $164 million. This represents 35% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect total revenue to be in the range of $250 million to $264 million, with growth of 18% at the midpoint. At these revenue levels, we expect Q4 consolidated gross margins to be in the range of 81% to 82%. We expect Q4 non-GAAP EBIT margins to remain in the range of 20% to 21%. Our projected diluted share count for fiscal Q4 is approximately 45 million shares. We are once again raising our outlook for the full fiscal year ’25. We now expect fiscal year ’25 total ARR growth of 19% to 20% year-over-year. We expect subscription ARR to increase in the range of 28% to 30% year-over-year. From a full year fiscal ’25 revenue perspective, we now expect subscription revenue to be in the range of $575 million to $580 million, growing 35% at the midpoint with strong contributions from both term software licenses and SaaS. We now expect total revenue growth to accelerate and be in the range of $980 million to $985 million, an increase of approximately 17% at the midpoint. Moving to our updated full year fiscal ’25 margin, EBIT and cash flow outlook, we continue to expect gross margins to be 81% to 82%. We also continue to expect non-GAAP EBIT margins to be in the range of 20% to 21%. From a free cash flow perspective, we expect full year free cash flow of $170 million to $200 million. Our revised outlook reflects foreign currency headwinds that were more pronounced in Q3 and expected to continue in Q4. As I reflect on FY25, our strong year-to-date financial performance demonstrates that our strategy is working. Our cyber resilience message is resonating, our team is executing, and our investments are paying off. Looking forward to FY26, we are currently trending ahead of the financial targets that we originally shared, and we now expect to achieve those targets earlier than our initial plan. As Sanjay noted, we couldn’t be more excited about the markets and the opportunity in front of us. The revenue-driving investments we are making have positioned us to be the cyber resilience provider of choice for enterprise businesses and have contributed to our outstanding financial performance year to date. We remain committed to investing in these growth-driving initiatives to further accelerate our momentum in FY26. Now I will turn it back to the Operator to open the line for questions.

Yes, thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on another solid quarter out of you guys. I guess Jen, I’d like to double-click a little bit on the momentum you’re seeing in your SaaS customer base. A thousand new customers seems like a fairly sharp acceleration from the plus-600 a quarter over these prior two quarters. Maybe you can unpack that a little bit - you know, how much did Clumio add to that contribution, and then also can you talk a little bit about how many of your customers have more than one SaaS offering today and how you think about that progression as we look into fiscal ’26?

Thank you for your question, Aaron. We're very proud of our performance, especially the SaaS acceleration in our organic growth rate. We added about 1,000 subscription customers, compared to around 600 in previous quarters. I estimate around 200 of those came from Clumio, while the rest are all organic, which is something we take pride in. Regarding your second question about the number of products, we are pleased with our 127% SaaS Net Revenue Retention. Currently, about two-thirds of that comes from upselling and one-third from cross-selling. I've mentioned before that roughly 30% of our customers use two or more SaaS products. It's important to note that we still see significant opportunities, particularly with some of our emerging and new products like Active Directory and Cloud Rewind. Notably, Cloud Rewind has doubled in growth since we acquired it, and although it's still early for us, we are very excited about its potential and believe there is ample opportunity to cross-sell within our existing customer base.

Yes. The final question, you mentioned tracking ahead of your fiscal ’26 targets. Can you just remind us what your targets, what you’ve previously outlined were, and any context of the progression as we look into fiscal ’26?

Great question, so our previous guidance has been a billion ARR and $330 million SaaS ARR by the end of FY26. I shared that we were tracking ahead of that. I think the best way to think about our growth is last quarter, I shared that we were on average adding about $30 million in net new ARR a quarter. This past quarter, we added $38 million net new ARR on an organic basis, so I think that’s the best way to think about how we’re tracking on the future.

Hey, thanks for taking the question, and glad to be on the call with you guys today. Sanjay, maybe just a big picture question, would love to get some of your perspective on this acceleration in the business. Just curious how much of the acceleration do you think is from external factors that might be happening in the marketplace, whether it’s mergers or regulation versus better internal execution.

I think the way we look at it is we do one thing for our customers day in and day out, which is make them more resilient, give them the ability to recover in the face of an attack or any kind of catastrophic situation. Ransomware attacks, cyber attacks are not going down - they’re actually increasing, and what we’re doing is continuing to build out our platform, Commvault Cloud, that enables customers in a hybrid multi-cloud world to be able to protect any workload anywhere and recover it in a very predictable way. Our innovation in the platform is definitely a tailwind, a driver of the growth we’re seeing. We’re solving a really hard problem for our customers. Combine that with over the past three to four quarters, we’ve been quite open and transparent about how we’re aligning our go-to-market resources and driving efficiency and productivity across it, getting closer to our customers with our customer success team. I think all of that is beginning to take great shape and come together well for us, so it’s a combination of solving a hard problem with a good platform and executing to the best of our ability.

Thanks for that. Jen, a question for you to follow up on some of the net new ARR comments. Hopefully this doesn’t get too much in the weeds, but curious if there’s anything to call out as it relates to 3Q and 4Q seasonality, because when I look at the 3Q net new ARR on a constant currency organic basis, it was similar to the prior two quarters, and the 4Q guidance seems like it implies a similar net new ARR on a constant currency basis as 3Q, so just curious if there’s any reason why that seasonality should be the case when I usually think of the second half being a bit stronger with a bigger renewal base. Kind of a lot to maybe unpack there, but just any color or anything you could call out as it relates to seasonality.

Yes, absolutely. I would say overall, the second half of the year, like we shared, is usually historically and seasonally stronger than the first. Q3 had an additional little bit of a higher renewal population; however, on average as we think about Q4, our guidance focuses on the fact that we have strong pipeline and field execution. We’re continuing to see continued momentum in both our land-and-expand, and our security offerings are continuing to gain a lot of traction. Then the last thing I would call out is there’s really just an organic, it’s mostly organic growth, only let’s say a point or two from Clumio. I think the best way to look at the overall seasonal nature is to take a look at how our ARR continues to grow, because it really helps neutralize any seasonality.

Yes, thanks guys. Really impressive revenue growth. I guess my question is when do you expect to see more operating leverage, and maybe just some of the puts and takes as you think about the outlook for operating margin.

Thanks for the question. Firstly, we have communicated in the past that fiscal year 2025 was a significant year of investment aimed at accelerating our revenue growth, and this is evident in our results with five consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. In this quarter, I will explain where the investments were directed that contributed to the increased revenue. To start, we are seeing a higher proportion of software-as-a-service in our revenue profile, which has a lower margin compared to traditional software licenses. Additionally, we included Clumio in this mix, and we mentioned last quarter that it would have a dilutive effect for two to three quarters. Furthermore, our revenue results have exceeded expectations, which leads to higher commissions and bonuses in the sales and marketing expenses. Lastly, we are continuing our investments, and if we look at the year-to-date results, we are at a rule of 39, with this quarter being a rule of 42, so overall we are very pleased with how we are performing.

Okay, thank you. Then one quick follow-up, did you say what the revenue contribution was from acquisitions? I didn’t catch that.

We shared that Clumio was $24 million of ARR, and so if you think about that, it’s approximately $6 million from a revenue perspective in the quarter.

Yes, thanks for the follow-up. I wanted to go just on the partner ecosystem. You mentioned obviously this last quarter, announcing engagement with AWS with Commvault cloud platform, you also referenced Microsoft Active Directory. I’m curious - as you think about these opportunities, Sanjay, does it take a while to see these start to come to fruition as far as revenue, incremental revenue opportunities, or do you think that that we should be considering that as an incremental driver already starting in this current, and maybe into the June quarter? I’m just curious of how you think about the ramp of those opportunities.

It requires time because you have to build it and ensure that the customer understands it and that it aligns with their purchasing cycle. Some processes move faster than others. We’ve seen positive results with Active Directory, which has yielded quick wins. Customers recognize its value and can implement it rapidly at the right price point, making it easier to incorporate into their workflows. We believe it took time for us to fully develop Google Workspace, which was created based on customer demand. All these initiatives have a ramp-up period; progress doesn’t happen overnight. Additionally, we are focusing on enhancing accessibility and ease of use in deploying marketplaces, including those on the Microsoft and AWS platforms. Supporting these marketplaces helps us deliver products to customers more quickly, as it's a natural means for them to acquire what they need.

Yes. As a quick follow-up, just characterization of the competitive landscape. Who do you see the most, and who do see as the opportunity set that you’re able to displace?

We have been very clear that our focus is on resilience, which means helping customers recover their businesses and maintain their capabilities and connections. We achieve this in a scalable manner within a hybrid multi-cloud environment. While many companies attempt parts of this, they do not operate at the same scale as we do, which is why we have been in the public market since 2006. We excel in our field and hold numerous patents that reflect our commitment to innovation and our market approach. Technologies like Clean Room and Backtrack are unique to us and not offered by our competitors. Additionally, we are the only ones with FedRAMP High certification. These factors differentiate us and add substantial value for our customers, and we intend to continue on this path, driven by our commitment to innovation and our optimism about the future.

Thank you everyone for joining this morning. As a reminder, you can look at our earnings presentation available on the Investor Relations website to get a constant currency bridge, and we’ll be available for questions, so feel free to reach out. Thank you again.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.