Earnings Call Transcript
Definitive Healthcare Corp. (DH)
Earnings Call Transcript - DH Q3 2022
Operator, Operator
Good morning, afternoon, evening, and welcome to the Definitive Healthcare's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Samuels, Chief Legal Officer. Please go ahead.
David Samuels, Chief Legal Officer
Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today to review Definitive Healthcare's Third Quarter 2022 financial results. Joining me on the call today are Robert Musslewhite, CEO; Jason Krantz, Founder and Executive Chairman; and Rick Booth, CFO. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements related to our market and future performance and growth opportunities, the benefits of our healthcare commercial intelligence solutions, our competitive position, customer behaviors, our financial guidance, our planned investments and the anticipated impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and global macroeconomic conditions on our business results and clients and on the health care industry generally. Any looking forward statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section and elsewhere in our filings with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events that may arise after this conference call, except as required by law. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statements included in the earnings release that we have just posted to the Investor Relations portion of our website. Additionally, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures on this conference call. Please refer to the tables in our earnings release on the Investor Relations portion of our website for a reconciliation of these measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Robert.
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
Thanks, David. I would like to thank all of you for joining us this afternoon to discuss Definitive Healthcare's third quarter results. On today's call, I will review our third quarter results, offer some perspective on what we are seeing in the market and provide a few examples of Definitive Healthcare's differentiated value proposition, and then Jason will highlight some of our latest product innovations. Let me begin by providing a high-level overview of our financial performance. We once again delivered an attractive combination of strong top line growth and substantial profitability. Revenue exceeded the top end of our guidance range, and adjusted EBITDA was at the top end of our range, a clear demonstration of our highly efficient business model. Our total revenue was $57.4 million, which represents 33% year-over-year growth, and our adjusted EBITDA was $16.4 million, which translates into a 29% margin. We signed important wins with new and existing customers in each of our core markets: life sciences, providers, health care IT, and diversified. We launched several important new innovations, including our new MonoclExpertData product and our new Passport Express product. We made good progress on the continuing integration of Analytical Wizards into Definitive Healthcare, and we delivered all of these results in a market that has grown increasingly challenging. While the quarter's results were solid, the macro environment is having an impact on our commercial performance. Building on the trend we saw last quarter, deal cycles continued to elongate as customers implemented more stringent approval processes or pushed out final decisions to later periods. And while in Q2, we saw this behavior primarily among new customers, in Q3, this trend expanded to also include upsells to existing customers. Also, it became clear during the quarter that we saw this trend more often with our life science and provider customers, both being segments where companies are facing their own set of macro challenges. Based on what we've experienced in the recent quarter and what we are hearing from our customers and prospects, we think it is prudent to assume that this selling environment remains the same or even deteriorates further in the fourth quarter and into 2023. While we remain confident in our ability to achieve our 2022 targets of 33% revenue growth and 29% adjusted EBITDA margins, current economic trends will impact our revenue growth rate in 2023. Rick will provide more detail in his section later in this call. At the same time, we remain confident that growth rates will improve when the macro environment improves for several key reasons. First, we are a must-have solution for clients' growth and expansion, which is their most important endeavor coming out of a downturn. As market conditions improve, we expect that clients' first dollar spend will be on driving their own growth and expansion, just as they did coming out of the first wave of COVID. The past decade has seen more automation and an explosion of data-driven digital tools used by sales and marketing teams. There is more data available than ever before about buyers and more pressure for sales and marketing teams to optimize every dollar spent. All of this commercial intelligence helps sales and marketing teams become more efficient in determining what prospects to target, when to target them and the exact message that will be most effective. Definitive Healthcare's ability to bring this data together with a full contextual view of how best to align their sales, marketing, business development, regional expansion, and M&A makes our commercial health care intelligence a must-have for companies as they begin reinvesting in growth. Second, our sales pipeline continues to grow. Customer and prospect interest in the Definitive Healthcare platform has never been higher as our pipelines have grown to all-time high levels across all our customer segments. Our unique health care commercial intelligence enables customers to accelerate commercialization of their drug, medical device, technology, or any product that they want to sell into the health care market, and that drives continued interest in our platform. Sales and marketing teams from all segments continue to express interest in Definitive Healthcare as a growth tool, and we continue to see a strong volume of inbound leads. And third, our competitive differentiation continues to get stronger. Our Definitive idea remains the industry standard for mapping all the relationships across the health care ecosystem, the very knowledge that companies need to sell in an increasingly complex market. And we believe no one else can deliver the unique value and intelligence that we do by combining data from literally thousands of sources and then running proprietary analytics on top of it. As we continue to invest in data science and artificial intelligence, we're creating new and unique data elements and new algorithms that we put into new products and used to improve existing products, thus making us even more of a must-have product as companies look to grow their way out of the current challenging environment. When you combine all of these factors with an estimated $10 billion or more addressable market that Definitive Healthcare is helping define, it becomes clear why we are confident in our ability to deliver on our long-term growth objectives. To underscore why our platform remains highly appealing to our clients, I would like to walk through a couple of examples that explain the unique Definitive Healthcare value proposition. One of our key differentiators is the ability to integrate our proprietary reference and affiliation data with medical claims and pharmacy claims. We believe we are the only solution provider that offers these data and analytics in an on-demand SaaS environment where clients can get answers in minutes instead of waiting months for a customized consulting report. Our platform enables customers to cut and recut their analysis on demand, adding or subtracting providers, ICD-10 codes or facilities. As a result, customers can get immediate actionable intelligence about their target market that enables them to effectively build and activate sales strategies and adjust as the market changes. Let me give you an example. Let's assume that we have a client with a new drug targeting metastatic lung cancer, and they want to know how many patients in a specific integrated delivery network have this disease. I'm using real data from the Definitive Healthcare platform here, but I'll keep the name of the integrated delivery network confidential. If we look only at all relevant claims filed by health care providers in this IDN, we'd see 6,566 patients who were treated in 2021. However, this number grossly exaggerates the actual number of unique patients. Cancer is a complicated disease to treat, and most patients see multiple doctors in several locations. Using our proprietary reference affiliation and location data, we see that the true number of patients with metastatic lung cancer in 2021 at this IDN is 744. If this client had used only claims data, then they would have overestimated the number of patients by nearly 10 times. This type of intelligence is critical for sales and marketing teams to accurately identify the IDNs with the most acute need for their drug, device, or product. And it is just one of many examples of how we uniquely deliver highly accurate and targeted and differentiated insight to our clients. Here's another example of the power of our reference affiliation and location data. Let's look at a client that runs sales operations for a medical supply company and needs to map out the best territory coverage plan to optimize their limited sales force. They want to know not only which physicians are affiliated with which health care organizations but also where these doctors physically practice each day, so that they can send their reps to the correct location. In this scenario, the client targets a large physician group from Texas. Again, we're using real data from the Definitive Healthcare platform, but we'll keep the name of the group confidential. This group has a total of 820 physicians practicing across 250 locations. Of these 250 locations in the physician group, only 64 of them have a national provider ID associated with them, which means without Definitive Healthcare's proprietary affiliation and mapping data, you'd never even know that 186 of these locations are part of the group. On top of that, only 17 of these 64 locations actually file claims. So if the client were to do a pure claims-based analysis for territory planning, then they would miss 233 out of 250 of these physical locations that they needed to target. In addition, due to centralized billing, 72% of the claims go through one location, even though the doctors filing those claims are practicing at another physical location. So if the client sent a sales rep to the location with the most claim volume, odds are that they will be sending them to a billing office and not a location where the doctors are actually treating patients. We believe that only Definitive Healthcare has the unique ability to connect claims data with relationship data to paint an accurate picture of which doctors are seeing which patients at which physical location. And this is due to the 10 years of effort we put to build the aggregation methodologies, linking and cleansing technology, and data science to build this view of the health care ecosystem that only we have. These are just two examples of how our health care commercial intelligence works. But what is most important to us is how our proprietary data and analytics translates into our customers' commercial success. Here are a few real-life case studies. Healthcare Stars, a locum tenens staffing company improved client acquisition by 32%. Contec Professional, a manufacturing company for cleaning supplies, grew its health care business by 130% in one year. A non-profit pediatric health care system identified the 650 sites of care that had the most leakage in their system by better tracking the patient journey. Spear, a cloud-based vertically integrated software and payments technology company, increased its enterprise deal flow by 15%. And a leading pharmaceutical company saved $10 million by accelerating clinical trial enrollment and achieved FDA approval 12 months earlier than anticipated. In addition, we continue to receive outstanding feedback from our customers that explain how our health care commercial intelligence is part of their daily business and is an important tool to help them drive growth. And we have nearly 40 client case studies that highlight this direct feedback on our website. Finally, before I hand it over to Jason to talk about our innovations in the third quarter, I wanted to quickly highlight several exciting deals that closed in Q3. We had a multiyear seven-figure Monocl win at an existing Definitive Healthcare medical device customer. This long-time customer needed intelligence around key opinion leaders to better inform their product development process. Multiple Monocl products will be implemented, including ExpertInsight, Engage, and the new ExpertGO mobile app. One of the largest global specialty generic pharmaceutical companies signed a multiyear enterprise deal for our Passport Analytics Suite to improve their market segmentation and analyze their marketing spend to ensure it is spent most efficiently across their different generic brands and channels. One of the world's largest manufacturers of breastfeeding pumps and supplies signed a significant upsell deal to add medical claims and data integrations services to their existing View data products. This company uses Definitive Healthcare to better understand the total addressable market, improve segmentation, and gain visibility into physicians and DME data. And finally, the leading international manufacturer of commercial ice machines chose Definitive Healthcare to identify hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers that could use their machines. Now I'd like to hand the call over to Jason to talk about product innovation in the third quarter.
Jason Krantz, Founder and Executive Chairman
Thanks, Robert. Our innovation flywheel continues to spin in the third quarter. Of particular note, we shipped Passport Express in August, just six months after we closed the acquisition of Analytical Wizards. Passport Express integrates the comprehensive analytics built by Analytical Wizards with the proprietary data from Definitive Healthcare. Passport Express delivers fast and easy access to off-the-shelf health care commercial intelligence, enabling biopharma companies to better understand treatment pathways, brand behavior, and market share. For any given therapy area within Passport Express, we've extracted mission-critical proprietary data from our commercial intelligence platform, including medical and prescription drug claims, physician affiliation information, and health care provider reference data. These data are then populated into the Analytical Wizards' environment where customers can instantly query flexible dashboards and powerful visualization tools to quickly get answers to their questions. The integrated data and analytics in Passport Express practically eliminate the research requirements and timelines traditionally required for commercial teams to search real-world data, normalize and link it, and then build analytical models on top, saving months of time and getting them to insight more quickly than they've been able to in the past. This is the first of what we expect to be many innovations to come that will combine the power of the highly proprietary Definitive Healthcare data with the best-in-class commercial analytics platform that Analytical Wizards has developed. The market interest in Passport Express has been very high. Also in the third quarter, we shipped a new ExpertData module. This improves the productivity of medical science liaisons and internal medical affairs teams by providing a seamless way to integrate our proprietary ExpertData with our clients' internal systems. Available in two editions, it can be added to the client's ExpertInsight subscription to create a single enriched and updated view of experts with whom the company works. ExpertData can improve a client's master data management reporting and enables custom analytics around KOL utilization. Finally, we continue to invest in our core Definitive Healthcare platform. We delivered several new features throughout the quarter. I'll highlight a few of those, which are part of our continued efforts to help our clients across the entire health care ecosystem deal with the significant labor shortages that are attached to the entire system. First, a new locum tenens analytics to determine which physicians are working temporarily at a given facility. Based on a proprietary algorithm, this new metric analyzes a physician's recent billing activity and network affiliation to predict locum tenens status. With these metrics, clients can better segment and target the 75,000 locum tenens physicians working in a temporary capacity at a hospital. This is a critical piece of information given the current staffing challenges in the U.S. health care system. As you might imagine, staffing is a very fast business. When a health care organization has a need for short-term staffing, it is immediate, and it must be filled very quickly to maintain operational continuity. With this expanded data set, our clients can segment and target locum tenens physicians with a click of a button, placing candidates faster and improving patient care. Second, new skilled nursing facility profiles that provide insight into the staffing turnover totals for each facility, including nursing staff, registered nurses, and administrators. With data on more than 15,000 skilled nursing facilities, users can now identify which facilities have the most turnover, compare it to state and national averages, and then assess the quality of care at a given facility. Our platform now offers more than 25 different quality metrics for skilled nursing facilities. Understanding the staffing turnover at facilities helps our clients determine who to target and how to uniquely position their solution or service. For example, staffing companies would be interested in this data to identify facilities with high turnover or who are below state averages, so that they can fill open positions with qualified candidates. In addition, they can use these turnover totals in conjunction with other data like quality metrics to try to identify the root cause of the turnover. These are just two examples of the new data science-based insights that we're continuing to add to our platform and should give you a sense of how we are constantly innovating and adding to our health care commercial intelligence to meet the evolving needs of the industry. Despite the broader macroeconomic headwinds, we continue to invest across our entire platform because we know that Definitive Healthcare offers a growth engine for sales and marketing teams across all industries. As Robert mentioned, when the economy begins to turn, we believe customers have demonstrated that they will seek out our solutions to accelerate their commercial growth. I'd now like to turn to Rick to walk through Definitive Healthcare's financial performance in more detail.
Rick Booth, CFO
Thanks, Jason. I'll start with a detailed review of our quarterly results before finishing with our outlook for Q4 and full year 2022, along with some remarks on our 2023 outlook. In all my remarks, I'll be discussing our results on a non-GAAP basis, unless otherwise noted. Our strong business model allowed us to deliver good results in Q3, highlighted by strong revenue growth and profitability despite deteriorating economic conditions. Highlights include 33% revenue growth compared to Q3 2021, a 29% adjusted EBITDA margin, and a 32% unlevered free cash flow margin over the last 12 months. Revenue growth plus trailing 12-month unlevered free cash flow margin was 66%, putting us well above the Rule of 40. We believe Definitive Healthcare's combination of high growth, high visibility, and attractive profitability positions us well in a large and expanding market. Turning to our results in more detail. Revenue for the third quarter was $57.4 million, up 33% from the prior year and 2% above the midpoint of our guidance. This performance is driven by strong organic innovation and execution as pro forma organic revenue growth was 27%. We ended the quarter with 504 enterprise customers, which we define as customers with at least $100,000 in ARR. This was an increase of 127 enterprise customers, or 34% year-over-year, and an increase of 18 enterprise customers from the previous quarter. As a reminder, these customers represent the majority of our ARR and are a key focus of our go-to-market programs. Our total customer count, which includes smaller customers, was 3,022 at the end of Q3, up from 2,769 in Q3 2021. Overall, economic conditions were more challenging in Q3 than they had been in Q2. From a sales and new bookings perspective, deal cycles continued to extend, especially in life sciences and providers. Upsell deal cycles are extending as well. But despite these headwinds, we believe the expansion opportunities remain strong, even if realization is slightly delayed in this environment. Gross profit was $50.8 million, up 35% from Q3 2021. Gross margin of 88.5% increased 93 basis points from Q3 2021 as our prior year investments in prescription claims data scaled. We invested in additional data sources earlier this year, and we expect to see approximately 200 basis points of temporary gross margin compression in 2023, as those sources come online early in Q1 2023. Sales and marketing expense was $18.9 million, up 38% from Q3 2021. As a percentage of revenue, sales and marketing expense was 33% of revenue, up 100 basis points from Q3 2021. The year-over-year increase is a result of investment in our go-to-market organization, such as expanding our digital marketing capabilities and building out our sales and customer success teams as well as the addition of Analytical Wizards. Product development expense was $7 million, up 58% from Q3 2021. As a percentage of revenue, product development expenses were 12% of revenue, up from 10% in Q3 2021. Investing in our platform and using our existing data sets to launch our enhanced multiple products is a highly effective and efficient way for us to increase the value we deliver to customers. Robert and Jason touched on some examples of these earlier, and we will continue to invest in the multiple opportunities we have identified on our long-term product road map. G&A expense was $8.8 million, up 61% from Q3 2021. As a percentage of revenue, G&A expenses were 15% of revenue, up from 13% in Q3 2021, when we had only two weeks of public company expenses in our results. On a sequential basis, G&A was up $1.8 million, including an increased reserve for bad debt expense. We expect to see continued leverage from G&A, both because these costs are relatively fixed as well as due to ongoing efforts to lower administrative costs. Operating income was $15.7 million, up 14% from Q3 2021. As a percentage of revenue, operating income was 27% of revenue compared to 32% in Q3 2021. The year-over-year change in margin is related to three key investments. First, approximately 100 basis points of continued investment in sales and marketing. Second, approximately 200 basis points of innovation investment in product development. Third, approximately 300 basis points of public company and other G&A costs. Adjusted EBITDA was $16.4 million, a 14% increase from Q3 2021. As a percentage of revenue, adjusted EBITDA was 29% of revenue compared to 33% in Q3 2021 due to the investments in public company costs outlined earlier. Net income in Q3 was $8.9 million, or $0.06 per diluted share based on 155.5 million weighted average shares outstanding. Turning to cash flow. Definitive's high margins, upfront billing, and low CapEx requirements provide substantial free cash flow generation. We focus on trailing 12-month cash flows due to seasonality. Operating cash flows were $44 million on a trailing 12-month basis, up 48% from $29.7 million in the comparable period a year ago. Unlevered free cash flow was $67.4 million on a trailing 12-month basis, up 14% from the comparable period a year ago. Unlevered free cash flow was 32% of revenue on a trailing 12-month basis, effectively converting more than 100% of our trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA of $59.8 million into cash. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $350 million in cash and short-term investments. With only $268 million of debt and with our strong profitability and cash flow, we are well positioned to fund both organic and inorganic growth initiatives. Current revenue performance obligations of $159.7 million were up 24% year-over-year and total revenue performance obligations were up 19% year-over-year. Deferred revenue of $84.3 million was up 20% year-over-year. You'll note that current revenue performance obligations and deferred revenue grew more slowly than revenue. Had current revenue performance obligations grown at the same rate as revenue, it would be $11.6 million higher as of the end of Q3. This difference is composed of both normal seasonality and the longer booking cycle that we've been discussing. Moving now to guidance for Q4. While demand remains strong, we believe it is prudent to assume that Q3 conditions extend through the fourth quarter as well. Assuming this is the case, in Q4, we would expect total revenue of $58 million to $59 million for a median growth rate of 26%, non-GAAP income from operations of $15 million to $16 million, adjusted EBITDA of $16 million to $17 million or a 28% median EBITDA margin, and non-GAAP net income of $6 million to $7 million or $0.03 to $0.04 per diluted share on 156.5 million weighted average shares outstanding. For the full year 2022, this translates into full year 2022 revenue guidance of $220 million to $221 million for a median growth rate of 33%, of which approximately 26% will be organic. We're tightening our ranges for adjusted operating profit, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted net income. Adjusted operating profit is now expected to be between $59 million and $60 million. Adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be between $63 million and $64 million for a full year median margin of 29%, which is consistent with our previous guidance. And adjusted net income is now expected to be between $30 million and $31 million, and earnings per diluted share are expected to be between $0.19 and $0.20 on 155.3 million weighted average shares outstanding. Turning to the outlook for 2023. We don't formally guide for 2023 until our fourth quarter earnings call in February, but I do want to make some high-level remarks now to help investors begin to think through the future impacts of current pipeline friction, given our business model. We will come back with more precision in February once we've seen our year-end bookings. Our subscription revenue model means that the trends that we have already experienced in year-to-date bookings will have an impact on 2023 revenue growth. It is too early to fully quantify projected 2023 results because they are also heavily informed by Q4 bookings, but if the conditions we saw in Q3 continued through the end of the year and through 2023, 2023 revenue growth would be in the mid-teens or approaching 20% with some improvements in conditions. Nonetheless, we are a company that has always valued a balance of growth and profitability. Accordingly, even in a difficult market, we were able to selectively invest in the very highest priority innovations that will position us for long-term growth as the market returns to a more normalized state. Given this, you should expect full year 2023 adjusted EBITDA margins to be similar to our Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin of 28%, temporarily delaying our planned adjusted EBITDA margin expansion by approximately a year. More specifically, this outlook encompasses four major cost drivers. First, the annualization of existing year-to-date hiring. Second, the gross margin impact of the new data sources coming online early in Q1. Third, the impact of cost of living increases on employee wages. And fourth, selective investment in the very highest growth priorities. These costs will be partially offset by continued efficiencies and costs not directly associated with revenue growth. So to summarize, Q3 was a solid quarter for Definitive Healthcare despite current economic headwinds and uncertainty. We are well positioned for the long term because we have developed a clear leadership position in a large and attractive market that we believe will support high levels of predictable revenue growth, profitability, and capital efficiency. I look forward to updating you with more specifics in February. And with that, I'll hand it back to Robert for a few closing thoughts before we take questions.
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
Thanks, Rick. Before I open up the call for questions, I want to take a moment to welcome Jon Maack to the Definitive Healthcare leadership team. As you likely saw from the press release this afternoon, Jon has joined Definitive Healthcare as our new President, with responsibility for product management, engineering, corporate strategy, and M&A. I've worked with Jon at both the Advisory Board and at Optum, and I'm thrilled that he's decided to join me here at Definitive Healthcare. Jon has a keen strategic mind and decades of health care industry expertise, and I'm sure he's going to make a significant contribution to Definitive Healthcare and help us execute on our robust growth strategy. Speaking of our team, our fantastic group of employees continues to do a tremendous job carrying out our mission while creating a great culture, for which we continue to still receive strong external recognition and awards. Just in Q3, we were named the top charitable company in Massachusetts by the Boston Business Journal, and we received a National Stevie Award for Employer of the Year in the Health Products and Services category. We were also recently named a Tech Top 50 winner in the categories of business accomplishment and social responsibility by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. I'm extremely proud of our whole Definitive Healthcare team for their hard work every day on behalf of our customers and their deep commitment to improving our communities. I'll finish by reiterating our confidence in our ability to generate strong growth at scale over time. While our near-term commercial performance is being impacted by the challenging economy, customer interest remains robust, and our business remains highly profitable with strong cash flow and tremendous scalability. We have clearly established health care commercial intelligence as a large, growing, and strategically important market in which we believe we are tremendously well positioned for years to come. Our solutions help customers drive profitable growth across all stages of the health care market in a way that we believe nobody else can. With that, we will now open the line for your questions.
Operator, Operator
Our first question comes from Craig Hettenbach with Morgan Stanley.
Craig Hettenbach, Analyst
And thanks for the color on 2023, at least early thoughts. And I know Q4 will also shape kind of net dollar retention as you think about 2023. But any early thoughts there as well in terms of how net dollar retention is shaping up and what that means in terms of how you're thinking about next year?
Rick Booth, CFO
Yes. Net dollar retention, as you know, is heavily impacted by upsells. We're starting to see some impact there. So we'll best know at the end of Q4. But right now, I would expect it to come in at an overall level, somewhere around 2019 levels and perhaps have a slightly greater impact on enterprise customers because those are heavily concentrated in biotechnology and providers. Well actually, let me restate: biotechnology and providers have a higher concentration of enterprise customers because we have enterprise customers across all our verticals.
Craig Hettenbach, Analyst
Got it. And then just as a follow-up, I know this year there's been a lot of investment in sales and marketing and just how you're thinking about that now in a more difficult backdrop and then how you plan to kind of modulate that going into next year?
Rick Booth, CFO
Yes. We will, of course, look at that carefully and be sure that our investments are tailored against the highest leverage growth opportunities. We do that every year. But obviously, this year, we want to be careful as we go to next year and put our investments where the most important growth opportunities are. I do want to stress that we're not stopping investment. We really are continuing to invest in the areas where we see growth, and we're continuing to grow very rapidly across all of our client segments. So I'm not anticipating this being a time where we're really pulling back on sales; just a question of being very targeted and where we put additional dollars against our commercial activity.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from Joe Vruwink with Baird.
Joe Vruwink, Analyst
Just maybe a question on the broader spend environment. And I suppose this question is specifically aimed at Life Sciences. But earlier today, we heard from Aviva at their Investor Day just talking about how kind of the broader environment as they have seen it hasn't really changed in the last 90 days. So do you think this is maybe a function of just a little bit different exposure for you? Could it be the case that maybe spend is temporarily happening elsewhere? And has there been any change in kind of the overall pipeline as you see it?
Rick Booth, CFO
It's a great question. I can't really speak for Aviva. I do know that we try to be direct and candid in all of our street communication. So it may be that they had a luckier quarter.
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
So what's behind your question a little bit? The facts we look at out there, win rates have remained consistent. We continue to see very strong demand from our customers across all segments, including in the segments that feel a little more challenged right now, and that includes biotechnology. And we've seen pipelines at their highest level ever. So it's really a question; we're not feeling like there's anything different going on competitively. We're just feeling like deals continue to take longer to close and have more process steps put in that are keeping us from closing the typical amount of deals that we have in a particular quarter. So our sense is we feel tons of demand for what we're doing, and clients really want to do it. They're just being held back in a lot of cases by additional processes and additional approval steps.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from Saket Kalia with Barclays.
Saket Kalia, Analyst
Robert, maybe just to start with you. Maybe back to that last question. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the competitive landscape a little bit. I mean, Definitive has got a lot of proprietary data. We heard a lot of the examples. But I'm curious if you've seen customers consider other options, whether that's third-party providers like an IQVIA or Aviva or maybe even doing something in-house. I know you spend a lot of time with customers. What do you sort of hear on the competitive landscape?
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
Yes. I tend to think about competitors in two broad buckets. Before I even start talking about competitors, I want to remind you, as you know, we're very differentiated; like no one else can do what we do because we have this proprietary map of the health care ecosystem and the references and affiliations data. When we add new data sources like claims, which a lot of other people have, and we add it to our proprietary data, it enables use cases that no one else can fulfill. And so when we think about competitors, and see others out there, in general, people will bring us in whether or not they have other sources of information. So the one example I give is on our diversified segment, a lot of people use list vendors, things like ZoomInfo where they might do something like that across industry, but they'll still bring Definitive in to help with their health care focused sales and marketing efforts because we're so much deeper in health care than anyone else out there. We enable use cases for them and help them grow their business more effectively in health care than anyone else out there. On the Life Science side, particularly in biopharma, we do see some of the companies you mentioned. In general, if I look at, like, say, Aviva, Aviva is still primarily a CRM. And so clients will oftentimes work with us for our data. Again, it's very unique data, and then load that data into their CRM to make their CRM more effective. So we tend to have a much more symbiotic relationship in those situations. Most clients in the space have worked with or work with IQVIA in some way, shape, or form, but that still doesn't prevent us from coming in and developing very strong relationships; again, because our data is unique, and our data tends to satisfy use cases that really require understanding the mapping of the ecosystem and the references and affiliations inherent therein. So yes, we always fight for every deal, and every once in a while, someone might compare us and stack it up against someone else, but we generally win on our independent value proposition because we're unique relative to those others.
Saket Kalia, Analyst
Got it. Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Rick, maybe for you. I'm just curious, I understand that this quarter, we start to see a little bit of impact on to the upsell sales cycles as well. But I was wondering if you could just talk about kind of broad brushes. What percent of the business kind of comes from new logo business? And I mean, upsell, if you can disclose, but I guess the net retention from existing customers so far has been pretty solid. The new business, of course, is the one that has the potential to be most impacted by the macro. How big is that either on a bookings or a billings basis? And do you feel comfortable that we've sort of reached a low enough point where you feel that part of the forecast has sort of been derisked?
Rick Booth, CFO
Well, we have prudently assumed that new business will be a smaller percentage of our growth in 2023. We won't formally guide 2023 until our February call after which we will have seen the Q4 renewals. But we've tried to be prudent there. We've assumed in our base case scenario that Q4 and all of 2023 look like Q3.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from David Grossman with Stifel.
David Grossman, Analyst
So if I could just kind of follow up a little bit on your prepared remarks in the context of the high-level thinking about next year. And thank you very much for that, by the way. That was actually very helpful. Did I hear you right that you said that if things stay the same that we grow mid-teens and if things get modestly better, it would be closer to 20%? So can you help us maybe understand where do you see the leverage points from a revenue perspective? Is it more just growth in existing versus new logos? Is it certain segments like kind of biotech? Just trying to understand what may be some of the indicators we should be looking at that may have the most kind of dynamic impact, if you will, in next year?
Rick Booth, CFO
Yes. I think the Q4 quarter is a super important quarter as we finalize our outlook on 2023. As you recall, we have a large number of renewals that occur in that quarter. I would also keep an eye on industry conditions vis-a-vis providers and biotechs. I would hope that this disruption is transitory. We've tried to be conservative and assume that it lasts for the whole period. But those are some of the leading indicators that I look at.
David Grossman, Analyst
As you consider the margin profile for next year, I understand the desire to reinvest, especially since you are already highly profitable. Do you believe that better revenue growth could change this situation? Or should we assume that margins will remain stable or see only modest improvement next year, given where we currently stand and any late impacts that could positively influence revenue growth?
Rick Booth, CFO
I think we've definitely got opportunities there. Let me just go one level deeper on thinking through the 2023 margin outlook. What we're assuming right now is that we have two existing data sources coming online in January. Those are both related to claims information. They are significant additions to our core capabilities. They will help us drive both innovation and additional business. That takes about 200 basis points off of gross margin. That's partially offset by efficiencies within OpEx. We're cutting G&A expense, and we're investing in a very targeted way in both sales and marketing and product development.
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
I'd just add that the dynamics of our model. Generally, growth is very profitable. So as we inflect growth upwards, and we will do that as we emerge from this economic environment, we have plenty of demand pent up. We feel like these are the first dollars that people want to spend when they can, because it's spending on growth. So as those conditions improve and revenue increases, we do have a lot of scalability inherent in the model.
David Grossman, Analyst
Got it. And just one last question, if I can. Just in terms of the biotech and provider segments as a percentage of revenue. Can you just update us and give us some kind of guidepost in terms of how big they are as a percentage of revenue?
Rick Booth, CFO
The two combined are between a third and a quarter of the revenue. So meaningful but not the majority.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from George Hill with Deutsche Bank.
Maxi Ma, Analyst
It's Maxi on for George. So we've been talking about the sales cycles getting longer as clients have more hoops to jump through to approve the deal. But are you seeing any pressure on pricing? And if the condition deteriorates going into next year, is lowering prices an option to drive growth?
Rick Booth, CFO
We're not changing our approach to pricing. We are seeing some competitors that are doing that, but we're focused on the long term.
Maxi Ma, Analyst
Okay. Got it. I have a quick follow-up. We have been hearing about hiring freezes or layoffs in a lot of tech companies. Are talents easier to get now? And do you expect it to help relieve the wage pressure you're seeing right now?
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
It's an interesting question about the labor market. On the one hand, we have seen those trends out there in the market as well. On the other hand, there are still some areas where we felt like hiring has still been tight and can take a while. So our sense is that we will continue to do everything we can to remain a destination employer for talent while being prudent in where we continue to make investments for the future.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from Jonathan Yong with Credit Suisse.
Jonathan Yong, Analyst
Given the current situation, which seems to be on the verge of a recession, how are your clients positioned? Are they anticipating a deterioration, or are they maintaining a wait-and-see approach? I'm interested in understanding if they would actually scale back their activities if conditions worsen or if their timelines for projects would be extended. Any insights on what you're hearing from your clients would be appreciated.
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
Yes, we've consistently heard from our clients that they really want to work with us. However, they feel constrained by internal processes and budget limitations that have been implemented in the latter part of this year. Most of the discussions we are having relate to this timeframe, with many inquiries about whether they can maintain their momentum during this period or if they are being held back, particularly concerning their budget for this quarter. Our clients are not indicating that they plan to postpone projects for another year; rather, it seems to be a matter of weeks or months of delay. Furthermore, when we consider how clients prioritize their spending, we see that they focus on growth. Even in challenging conditions, they want to allocate funds toward initiatives that foster growth because these investments are vital for their expansion. That’s where our value lies, as our solutions are designed to drive increased sales and growth for our clients. Therefore, once there is clarity and stability about future directions, we are optimistic about our prospects for continuing to secure deals and returning to our typical close rates.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from Ryan MacDonald with Needham.
Matt Shea, Analyst
This is Matt Shea speaking for Ryan. I recognize that the fourth quarter is a significant renewal period, but I’m interested to hear about the renewals you've completed throughout the year. Could you provide some insight into how those renewals have been progressing and the upsell activity associated with them? If the upsell activity has not met your expectations, does that limit your ability to make additional sales until the next renewal phase? Or do you believe clients can still add new modules outside of the renewal process, allowing for growth in the number of modules over time despite the current lengthening of the sales cycle?
Rick Booth, CFO
GDR was virtually unchanged in Q3 '22 compared to Q3 '21. As Robert mentioned, customers recognize the real value in our solutions. There is increased pressure on the upsell segment. However, the positive aspect is that not achieving an upsell at the time of renewal keeps the possibility open for continued collaboration. We believe it simply takes more time for end users, who highly value our solution, to communicate that upwards to executives. This is an area we plan to focus on as we progress through the year.
Matt Shea, Analyst
Got it. Appreciate that. And then in a similar vein with that elongation in the sales cycle, we've heard similar things from other customers, but also heard some success from other companies. We've also heard some success though with them using pilots to get into their customer account, have them use the product and then bring that up to their exec team, and it's helping to smooth out the sales process. I know that's not something you guys are particularly fond of pilots, but are pilots or any other kind of go-to-market changes on the table as you kind of manage through this elongation?
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
We are responding to the elongation as best as we can. This includes training our sales team to identify a broader range of potential clients and integrating them earlier in the process. We are managing processes closely on a deal-by-deal basis, ensuring that our materials clearly reflect return on investment. We have excellent client ROI stories available on our website. We need to ensure that our commercial teams effectively highlight the potential ROI to clients. While we don't conduct pilots, we can demonstrate significant value through our website. We can meet with clients and explain how we can provide them with the necessary data for their Salesforce. It's clear where they gain value. We strive to excel in acquiring clients and franchises, as well as positioning our products for effective cross-selling. For instance, in biopharma, we offer several complementary solutions that add value, and we aim to better showcase these offerings so we are in a strong position when budgets become available. I believe we are being responsive to the current environment and taking steps that will benefit the business. As approval processes open up, we want to be ready to seize those opportunities.
Operator, Operator
Our next question comes from Brian Peterson with Raymond James.
Johnathan McCary, Analyst
This is Johnathan McCary on for Brian. Just be the one from us. So you focused on M&A in the past, and I've talked about the success with Analytical Wizards, but now kind of balancing valuation compressions with an increased focus on profitability, given the macro, how are you thinking about investing for growth from here?
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
We continue to view mergers and acquisitions as a significant opportunity for us. As you mentioned, Analytical Wizards and Monocl have been excellent additions to our capabilities and have proven to be solid financial acquisitions. We are excited about having both teams integrated into our offerings. We will keep searching for companies that provide additional capabilities and also demonstrate a strong financial profile, including being fast-growing with the potential to reach our margins over time. It is crucial that these companies align well with us in terms of synergies, allowing us to market their products effectively and enhance our platform with their data capabilities. There are many companies that fit this description. As valuations decrease, we have noticed that the private market typically takes a bit longer to adjust compared to the public market. Therefore, we will remain cautious in assessing what we should pay for certain assets, but we intend to remain active, aiming for one to two deals each year. Regarding other investments, we are focused on ensuring that our spending is aligned with the most valuable growth opportunities. In this kind of environment, it is essential to ensure that every dollar invested yields a significant return. We recognize the vast total addressable market and abundant opportunities among our clients, so we are committed to long-term product development, platform enhancement, and the addition of new data sources. However, we will approach these efforts thoughtfully, ensuring they are directed at the highest-value and best opportunities.
Rick Booth, CFO
Speaking of adjustments, I just want to remind people, we have a very high LTV to CAC, which supports our efficient sales model. And we also, from a development perspective, the foundational data that we add to our unified data is foundational. It helps us to spin off additional innovations as well as increasing demand for the product. So it's an inherently efficient model in which we can be very targeted with our investment.
Operator, Operator
This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Robert Musslewhite, CEO, for any closing remarks.
Robert Musslewhite, CEO
Thank you all for your attention. I know tonight it was a big night with lots of calls. We appreciate the questions, and we'll look forward to talking with many of you and seeing many of you in the coming weeks.
Rick Booth, CFO
Thank you very much.
Operator, Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.