Greetings, and welcome to Vonage Second Quarter 2021 Earnings. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Hunter Blankenbaker, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Okay. Thank you, operator, and good morning, and welcome to our second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Speaking on the call this morning is Rory Read, Chief Executive Officer; and Steve Lasher, Chief Financial Officer; also joining us is Jay Bellissimo, our Chief Operating Officer. Rory will discuss our strategy and second quarter results, and Steve will provide a more detailed view on our second quarter results, third quarter guidance and updated full year 2021 guidance. Slides that accompany today's discussion are available on the IR website. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions. As referenced on Slide 2, I would like to remind everyone that statements made during this call may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management's expectations, depend on assumptions that may be incorrect or imprecise, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. More information about these risks and uncertainties is highlighted on the second page of the slides and contained in our SEC filings. We caution listeners not to rely unduly on these statements and disclaim any intent or obligation to update. During this call, we will be referring to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to GAAP is available in the second quarter earnings press release or the second quarter earnings slides posted on the IR website. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Rory.

Thanks, Hunter, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you and your families are safe and healthy. It's been just over a year since I became CEO of Vonage, and we are delivering significant progress against our strategic transformation plan and committed business results. Over the past year, we have implemented important changes to strengthen our Vonage Communications Platform business to drive faster growth and better capture the major market opportunities across our product portfolio. We started executing this transformation by optimizing our business for improved operational efficiency, and we are on track to reduce operating expenses by $50 million in 2021, net of our strategic investment. The strategic investments we have made are focused on driving growth through product innovation and a stronger go-to-market in areas where our products bring the greatest value to our customers and where we can win a disproportionate share of the market. Our world-class leadership team is now in place. And our new culture, the Vonage Way, has every Vonage team member focused on driving execution through accountability, collaboration, and a customer-first mentality. Today, I'll focus my comments on our strong second quarter Vonage Communications Platform results, reflecting improving momentum driven by good execution and on the progress we're making on our strategic investment. Steve Lasher will follow with a more detailed review of the quarter and updated guidance. Vonage Communications Platform services revenue was $260 million, driven by an accelerating growth rate of 23%, up from 18% a year ago. Second quarter VCP adjusted EBITDA improved by $19 million year-over-year. And we reached positive VCP adjusted EBITDA of $1 million earlier than planned. As a software technology company, our results are being measured through a progressive improvement of our Rule of 40. This quarter, our Rule of 40 result was 23%, up from 10% in the second quarter a year ago. This is ahead of the schedule we covered with you during our Investor Day in March. API revenues increased by 40% year-over-year to $144 million in the quarter. Our strong growth was driven by broad-based demand across geographies, verticals, and customer size. We saw particular strength in the messaging areas as economies and industries continue to reopen and accelerate demand. Whether it's receiving medical attention through telehealth, tracking a package or food delivery, booking a ride-sharing service, providing fraud protection, connecting with the right customer support agent or enabling video and voice communications across thousands of office locations, Vonage does that. Our global scale and diversity remain key differentiators. We delivered strong growth across each of our geographies, and we are continuing to invest in new markets and industries to further expand our addressable market. Additionally, our API product breadth and deep industry expertise provided a significant advantage in these high-growth API markets today and well into the future. One industry I'd like to highlight is the emerging social media platform space where Vonage provides services to 8 of the top 13 global social media platforms. Our growth from existing customers was also strong. Dollar-based net expansion was 125% in the quarter, driven by accelerating usage growth in e-commerce, social media, gaming, with travel and hospitality showing particular strength. A great land and expand example this quarter is AmeriSave Mortgage Company. AmeriSave selected our messaging product in early 2021 to enhance their customer engagement and support in order to simplify the loan process. After a smooth implementation and scaling to meet their business needs, AmeriSave has now also implemented our Verify API to help them protect against fraud. Additional expanded relationships across our API products include, among others, a major international audio streaming and digital media services provider, a leading online travel booking platform, and a major China-based data center and cloud computing provider. Our investments in go-to-market efforts also drove strong new customer growth, where Kry and Krafton are good examples. Kry, a European-based digital health care platform that provides services to more than 3 million patients across Europe, chose Vonage's video API to power its platform to enable patients to consult with clinicians digitally from anywhere at any time. This added functionality for Kry will remove barriers to patient care such as long wait times and busy phone lines to help those in need of essential health care. Krafton Incorporated, a South Korean video game holding company known for Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, often referred to as PUBG, wanted to prevent excessive game addiction among minors. They chose Vonage's Verify API authentication services to differentiate adults from minors to monitor minors' playing time. The importance of security and compliance is critical to our customers, and we will continue to invest in HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2 compliance to increase our market opportunity. In the second quarter, we enhanced compliance certifications for our messaging API with the addition of HIPAA compliance and added regional media zones to our video API. Our API products continued their strong momentum in the second quarter, and we expect this to continue for the balance of the year. Now moving to Unified Communications and Contact Center products. Service revenues grew 7%, ahead of expectations. Our go-to-market and product initiatives drove solid positive year-over-year bookings growth for the quarter, as we expected. Our revenue growth increased to mid-single digits in the second quarter. And based on our pipeline, bookings, and improved execution, we are well positioned to accelerate revenue growth to the high single digits in the fourth quarter and double digits growth in 2022. Ten of our top 15 wins this quarter included an integrated Unified Communications and Contact Center solution. We believe this will be an important driver moving forward. I'll highlight two examples. The London Borough of Hackney selected Vonage's UC and CC solution to move more than 3,500 UC seats and 170 contact center seats to the cloud from an on-prem solution to modernize employee collaboration and provide better experiences for the borough's more than 300,000 residents. Another key win was a Fortune 1000 global consumer goods company that needed to integrate its Salesforce CRM with its internal business communication solutions and contact center. Vonage's deep integration with Salesforce and our ability to provide an integrated UC and CC solution with advanced features, reporting, analytics, and AI capabilities were key differentiators in this win. Within the channel, the additional resources, support, and training we have implemented through Vonage Accelerate are driving early positive results. Channel bookings increased sequentially. And five of our top ten deals, including our two largest deals in the quarter, came from the channel. We will continue to invest in this critical route to market. In the Contact Center product space, we will continue to partner with Salesforce to drive growth, where I believe we are a leading early partner in Salesforce Service Cloud Voice Partner Telephony Program. This represents an important opportunity for us. Vonage Contact Center brings automation, intelligence, and global calling capability to service cloud voice, combining voice, digital channel, and CRM data into one central view for a unified agent and digital channel experience. Vonage Contact Center has a 4.9 out of 5 rating based on more than 800 reviews on the Salesforce App Exchange. Salesforce also recently named Vonage the 2021 Cross-Industry Independent Software Vendor Partner of the Year in EMEA for the second consecutive year. We will invest and execute to capture this unique opportunity for Vonage with our powerful partner, Salesforce. In summary, second quarter results were strong and continued to improve. This is demonstrating our operational execution and delivery against our strategic transformation plan over the past year. We are showing material progress on our go-to-market initiatives and we are innovating faster to provide differentiated experiences and solutions for our customers. We are clearly operating in a very large and growing market, which is expected to reach $80 billion in 2024, driven by secular tailwinds like cloud migration, digital transformation, and more recently, hybrid working models. We believe Vonage is in a unique position to offer comprehensive Unified Communications, Contact Center, and programmable APIs through our Vonage Communications Platform. Customers' needs are rapidly growing across their communication and engagement platforms. And we will continue to see an increased need for combined UC and CC solutions and the continued strong growth of embedded API programmable communications markets. We are encouraged by our momentum and are confident in our ability to grow and gain scale in this rapidly expanding cloud communications market. I would like to thank our talented team members around the world for their support over the past year and for their passion and commitment to our customers. We are building a culture of execution, and we will continue to deliver. This year marks Vonage's 20th year in business, and we believe the best is yet to come. With that, I'll turn it over to Steve.

Thank you, Rory, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a review of the second quarter results and then discuss the third quarter and updated full year 2021 guidance. Our team executed well in the second quarter, delivering strong results as companies continue to move to the cloud for their digital transformation initiatives. Each of our product areas, including API, UC, and CC, delivered on our commitments while we continue to improve on the Rule of 40. Consolidated revenues increased 13% to $351 million, driven by a 22% increase in Vonage Communications Platform revenues. VCP revenues now represent 79% of consolidated revenue, up from 73% in the second quarter of the prior year. Consolidated second quarter adjusted EBITDA of $49 million was up $7 million year-over-year due to higher revenue and improving operating structure within VCP. Moving to Vonage Communications Platform, VCP service revenues increased 23% to $260 million, ahead of expectations. VCP revenue churn was 1% in the second quarter, basically flat from a year ago. Monthly service revenues per customer increased 24% to $632 from $509 over the prior year. VCP gross margin in the second quarter was 46%, down year-over-year due to the higher growth of our API products. We expect VCP gross margins will be in the mid-40s range for the full year. VCP adjusted EBITDA was positive $1 million, representing VCP's first profitable quarter and an improvement of $19 million from the second quarter of 2020. API revenues were $144 million in the second quarter, up 40%, driven by continued growth across all product areas and geographies. Unified Communications and Contact Center service revenues were $116 million in the second quarter, up 7% year-over-year. VCP operating expenses totaled $167 million, which represents 60% of total VCP revenue, an improvement of 12 points year-over-year. VCP sales and marketing expenses, which are 30% of total VCP revenue, was $82 million, down $6 million year-over-year as a result of our business optimization efforts from last year. Sequentially, sales and marketing was up $4 million due to investments in sales headcount and targeted demand generation. VCP engineering and development expenses, which represents 8% of total VCP revenue, was $22 million. This is up $4 million year-over-year, reflecting an increased investment in the VCP platform, including voice and messaging features, market expansion, and BBC and BCC functionality. VCP E&D expenses plus capitalized software totaled $32 million, which represents 12% of VCP service revenue. VCP general and administrative expenses, which is 15% of total VCP revenue, was $41 million, up $2 million from the prior year. We ended the second quarter with $476 million of net debt, down $67 million from the prior year and down $28 million from the first quarter. As of June 30, net debt was 2.5x last 12 months adjusted EBITDA. We look to reduce our leverage ratio to approximately 2.25x by year-end as we continue to pay down debt in 2021 and generate higher adjusted EBITDA. Moving to guidance, for the third quarter, we expect Vonage Communications Platform revenues in the range of $276 million to $280 million. We expect Vonage Communications Platform service revenue growth in the low 20% range. Embedded in this guidance are the following trends: In API, we expect third quarter year-over-year growth to be in the 35% to 37% range. With regard to Unified Communications and Contact Center, we expect service revenue growth to be in the mid to high single digits. We expect third quarter VCP adjusted EBITDA to be positive in the range of $1 million to $3 million. Within Consumer, we expect revenues in the $69 million area and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $45 million. On a consolidated basis, we expect total revenues of $345 million to $349 million and adjusted EBITDA in the $46 million to $48 million range. For the full year 2021, we are raising our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance to reflect our second quarter performance and stronger second half outlook. We expect VCP revenues to be in the range of $1.095 billion to $1.106 billion. VCP service revenues are expected to be in the range of $1.038 billion to $1.049 billion, representing growth in the low 20s. We expect API revenue growth for the full year to be in the high 30s, and we expect full year UC/CC service revenue growth in the mid-single digits. We continue to expect fourth quarter UC/CC service revenue growth to exit in the high single digits. We expect VCP adjusted EBITDA to be in the $4 million to $9 million range. For the full year, we expect our VCP Rule of 40 results to be in the low 20s, up from our original guidance of 16% to 18%, driven by stronger-than-expected growth in our API and UC/CC products. For Consumer, we expect full year revenue in the $288 million area and adjusted EBITDA in the $185 million area. We expect total consolidated revenues to be in the range of $1.383 billion to $1.394 billion, and adjusted EBITDA in the $189 million to $194 million range. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator to start the Q&A.

Our first question comes from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum.

Nice results. Rory, I have to give you credit. Back at your Analyst Day, we pushed you to explain your extreme confidence in a turnaround. And frankly, at the time, it wasn't clear. Looking back at that, you were spot on. So now you're suggesting an acceleration of service growth from this mid-single-digit level to exit the year high single digits and double digits next year. Can you kind of walk through what you're seeing in the pipe to come to that conclusion?

Yes. Thanks, George. There's no question that business in the UC/CC space is a traditional waterfall business. That software portfolio, you can see the trajectory of it. There's no question we've seen a building pipeline over the past several quarters that began last year with the work that Rodolpho and his team did to really generate and focus the go-to-market in a tailored way, where does the product best fit. We targeted tactics by customer segment, and we saw that pipeline build. As the pipeline built, we saw the leads turn into qualified leads. And then we saw them turn into bookings. And now we see them into installs and revenue. As we talked about last time, last quarter, we thought that we'd go positive on bookings growth in this quarter. We did. We absolutely did. And we see that for the balance of the year. Based on that, we can see the flow of installs. We can see the flow of revenue. Through the end of the year, that will get us to high single digits and double digits in 2022. Just so you know, the cloud-based products are already in double-digit growth. And our strength really is in that small, mid-market, and multi-location enterprise. That's where we're really getting the lift. And as we build out next year, 2022 is what we call the year of the product. We're making investments. We've increased our investments over 20% overall in engineering and product, at the same time, improving our profitability. And in our high-growth areas, we've actually increased it more than 50%. That's going to enable us to deliver more functionality, more product next year. Even in the second half of this year, that will open up more TAM. We're going to see the same thing in UC/CC. And the way we're going to double down on the work that we're doing with Salesforce and Service Cloud Voice, I think we have a real chance to lead there. I mean lead. And if we can lead, that will create even more opportunity. So I'm pretty bullish on the trajectory. We can see it. Things change always, but there's no question. You can see it in terms of pipeline progression. You can see it in terms of leads, you can see it in terms of bookings and obviously, installs and revenue. So that's what we're seeing.

Super. One other thing you mentioned in your prepared comments, that you continue to invest in the channel and mentioned that bookings had increased sequentially. I just wondered if you can give us a little bit more detail on both those statements.

Yes, channel is an important strategy for us. There's no question that if you think of how we tailored the go-to-market for UC/CC, we basically looked at the groupings. In the history of Vonage, what had been done was all our direct sellers covered all customer segments. That's not efficient. That's why the cost structure was out of whack and there was a lot of competition. What we did is we created e-commerce, e-support solutions for micro and small. We leveraged and built out a better channel program with Vonage Accelerate that we continue to invest in over the next several quarters, better training, better portal, better solutions, better incentives. That will then allow us to win in that small, mid, and beginning of enterprise. And then we're going to put all our direct sellers on the top of mid and on top of enterprise. That's definitely translating into better results. We saw growth across all those segments, which is really important. And we made sure that we did the analytics on all our demand gen and marketing tactics. We've then been much more efficient on our CAC and in terms of our return on investment. Channel is a big deal for us. There's no question. It's been an untapped and kind of several false starts. Let's watch that over a 4-, 6-quarter trend. I think we can really make sure that, that's really powerful. We're seeing that progression in terms of pipeline. We're seeing that progression in terms of volume. And we saw some of our fastest growth in terms of the channel, no question about it. But we'll continue to invest to support it.

Our next question comes from the line of Samad Samana with Jefferies.

This is Mason Marion on for Samad. So I want to go to the API segment. Growth is obviously very impressive. But on a competitive environment, I wanted to ask what you're seeing here. How is pricing trending? And then if you could cover any specific geographies that are perhaps doing better than others?

Sure. So Mason, thanks for the question. I'll have Jay give a little bit of color in a second. We're in a secular change here. There's no question. This communication revolution is at the beginning. It's why I came to Vonage. We're going to see kind of an increasing penetration in this market space over the next 3, 5, 7 years, $80 billion by 2024. APIs and the way they're used by every industry, every app, every workflow, we're going to see it everywhere. And that's going to continue to drive growth. It's a huge market, lots of opportunity. One of our strengths is the diversity of our geographic footprint, our industry footprint. So we were strong and grew in every industry. We were strong and grew in every geography. And I think this is going to be an important kind of technology wave, as I mentioned, for the next 3, 5, even 7 years. This is a fundamental shift in the way people will interact with their team members, with their customers, and with their partners. I think we're really uniquely positioned in this space. It's a big market, so there's more than enough to go around. And I think we can grow at a disproportional rate here. I mean maybe, Jay, you want to add a little color about why we win in this API space and why you're seeing some of the progress we're seeing, particularly in messaging and across the API?

Sure. Mason, the way we look at it is we've got a set of programmable APIs. And as Rory alluded to, our growth was largely driven by the broad-based demand across the geographies and verticals. I don't think there's a vertical we don't touch. And the customer size, we play in all sizes, right? As you know, there's an incredible push. It started before COVID. But with COVID, it was a very different market, but now we're seeing this new hybrid working environment. But it doesn't matter. The diversification for us is going to continue to help us balance the business and ultimately always be in a position to meet our customers where they are now and where they need to be moving forward. In particular, as Rory said, messaging, we saw particular strength by this accelerating usage, specifically in e-commerce, social media, gaming. And we start to see travel and hospitality coming back a bit. And we're hopeful that, that will happen in the second half. As we all know, with the new variant, we don't know what's going to happen. But again, we've got that balance. And the last point I'd make is just on the growth across each of these geographies. Though it's been strong, I want to reiterate that we're continuing to invest in new markets and industries to further expand our addressable market and the value we can drive to our customers. So in particular, since January, we've established presence in Brazil, Malaysia, and Mexico, and we're going to continue to go deep in Indonesia and some of these other key geographies. So all said and done, it's the balance and diversification that will continue to propel our growth.

Understood. And then I just wanted to touch on your churn a bit. Your VCP churn, specifically, is healthy at 1%. Can you provide any context here around the divisions between your UC, your Contact Center customers, and your API customers? Is there any divergence between those?

So I didn't hear that perfectly clearly. Steve, did you hear that one perfectly clearly?

I think you're just asking how does our churn represent based off of what we've seen previously. And I think that when we take a look at our churn, we think it has improved as we've moved forward to the quarter. And I think that's representative of us having quality products that are resonating in the marketplace, and we think that's at a stable level for us going forward.

I will break it down. In our unified communications and collaboration segment, we've observed churn at the lowest levels seen in quite some time. This reflects the quality of the solutions we are providing to our customers, and we are consistently seeing this performance. Churn has been trending down as it continues to improve. With a DBNE at 125%, our target range is between 120% and 135%, which is ideal. It's crucial for us to maintain our focus on DBNE. The current 125% reflects the strong customer engagement and the value we are delivering to them.

Our next question comes from the line of Will Power with Robert W. Baird.

Congratulations on the impressive results and the positive trends. I wanted to inquire about the UC/CC area. It appears that you are gaining momentum on the overall Contact Center front. However, I would like to understand two aspects. First, what further investments are needed to make it fully enterprise-grade? Are there additional features or omnichannel capabilities required? Second, I know much of the success has been linked to your partnership with Salesforce and the corresponding market strategies. What insights do you have beyond that? Is there a plan to further invest in broader Contact Center capabilities in addition to the Salesforce integration?

Yes. Thanks, Will. There's no question that our contact center and the partnership that we've built with the powerhouse Salesforce has played out very well over the past years. And with Service Cloud Voice and us being, in my opinion, a real early leader in that space, I see the pipeline there. There's a big opportunity. I think we can do important leadership-type growth rate, leveraging that partnership. At the same time, there's definite opportunities across integrations with other productivity solutions, Teams, etc. This is really a space where with a targeted focus where we best play, there's no reason we can't grow at better-than-market rates. We're already in that space doing very well. And with these kind of focus and partnerships, we're going to see that continue. We see that through the first half. We have pretty good visibility through the early part of next year based on pipeline, installs, and trajectory. I like that. In terms of investment, Savinay Berry and his team are working across Rodolpho's team with the customers. And we're building out further capability to enhance billing, to enhance scaling, and to build out additional omnichannel capabilities. We are definitely going to move from just a one-trick pony in terms of productivity to continue to move up that scale. But that's going to occur over the next 3, 6, 8 quarters, and we're continuing to invest there. In the meantime, we'll leverage where the product fits well using that tailored go-to-market to capture more than our fair share. And we're seeing good trajectory there. We're going to build on it, Will.

Yes. That sounds great. Okay. And maybe just one follow-up, perhaps maybe for Steve. Just as we look at the Q3 guidance, any seasonal impacts to be aware of or think about? I mean it'd be incorporated in the guidance, but I guess particularly with respect to the API business as you move into Q3 from Q2?

Yes. Thanks, Will. As far as what's baked in the guidance, look, we had really strong performance for the first half of the year. We expect that to continue. But as the variants start to course through, where we feel that we have areas that are wrapping on a really strong market from last year, especially when we look at our video product. But when we also get into other opportunities opening, as Jay mentioned earlier, our travel and hospitality continues to start to see that come back, I believe it's baked in. So again, I think from a seasonality perspective, we have it baked in. API is a usage-based business, as you know. And really, for us, it's continuing to make sure we put a quality product out there. As Rory mentioned, our DBNE at 125%, it's showing that we're continuing to grow with our customers. As well as they build new use cases, we continue to expand on them, and we're seeing it in our results. So again, as we look at the guidance for next quarter, we did raise it from Q3, and we feel pretty confident that we're going to be able to hit that on the back end.

Yes. And when you think about it, when we talked about at the Analyst Day in terms of transforming the business, right now, we're ahead of that track. There's no question. But the real power of our portfolio is the diversity of it, both geography-based, industry-based, and product-based. We'll see variations from quarter to quarter in different products. For example, this quarter, we had a lot of messaging growth. Other quarters, we'll see video growth. Other quarters, we'll see voice growth. But it's the diversity of our portfolio that allows us to participate as the industries ebb and flow through this unprecedented time as economies and industries reopen, moderate, and then reopen again. I like the diversity of the portfolio, and that gives us some protection against seasonality or one particular tower.

Our next question comes from the line of Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley.

This is Erik on for Meta. Congrats on the quarter. Maybe touching specifically on the health care vertical. You noted another health care win, and video APIs clearly benefited from telehealth usage over the past year. I think we see that as a vertical where you do pretty well. But wondering what do you see as the opportunity to extend beyond video APIs? And how does HIPAA compliance and messaging and kind of that announcement have any impact on that?

Thanks, Erik, and thanks, Meta. No question that health care is an important segment. Again, it's the diversity of the product set that gives us that strength. When you look across that portfolio, as we were in the depth of the pandemic, we saw video usage kind of explode through that telehealth scenario. What we're going to see now is an opportunity for us to expand those APIs. And that's why we really are tracking that net dollar-based expansion rate because that's saying, hey, we have an opportunity with more than 50% of our customers to add more APIs to them, just on cross-sell. That's a great opportunity for us. We already have a relationship. I mentioned the one about AmeriSave. That's a big deal where we implemented the messaging to help with the loan process, and immediately then, because of a great implementation and scaling, they took on Verify. We have that opportunity in probably almost better than 50% of our customers where we can expand on the current base. That's a really important segment or opportunity that we can leverage. In the health care space, with improved innovations around HIPAA compliance and then in fintech around SOC 2, we can open up whole new swaths of TAM for us to attack. That's what we've been trying to systematically do, look at the market, look where we play well, tailor our go-to-market and then systematically look for those big TAM spots where we can innovate through Savinay's team and our engineers, which as mentioned earlier, we've significantly invested in that area so that '22 is the year of the product, that we can capture it. That's what we're doing in health care. We've started and we've already started seeing the beginning wins appear already in the third quarter, where because of HIPAA compliance, we can capture more messaging. It's just the idea. There's lots of communication modes and lots of opportunity for us to expand. Thanks, Erik's.

That's helpful. If I could touch on the dollar-based net expansion rate, when we consider the 125%, how much of that is due to increased usage of existing installations versus new expansion opportunities? Is it primarily scaling now, with expansion anticipated in the future, or are you already noticing some impact from cross-selling?

It's a combination, no question, and I'll have Jay give some overview in terms of what he's seeing with each of the customers and some ideas and examples about how that's driving. Of course, we're seeing usage in terms of our current customers expand, but also expanding into other APIs. I think that's a huge opportunity. When you already have a relationship with a customer, and over 50% of our customers, we have identified the opportunity to sell additional APIs, that's a really good target. We should yield at a much higher percentage with existing customers than just out in the wild customers. I think that's going to be a big driver for us over the next 4, 6 quarters. But anyway, Jay, do you want to give a little feel for what you're seeing in terms of our usage patterns, particularly around API?

I want to highlight two additional points. First, regarding DBNE, the messaging was particularly strong due to the increase in travel and hospitality, as we mentioned earlier. We have noticed some moderation in usage within healthcare and education. However, the main focus remains on our business's diversification. We are continually seeking growth and expansion. Earlier this year, we announced our go-to-market transformation, which significantly involves how we support our customers through the customer success management function. We will continue to serve our existing customer base while also recognizing the vast opportunities to cross-sell our APIs, which we are increasingly experiencing. For example, regarding AmeriSave Mortgage, we have seen more customers returning to us as they advance their digital transformation, with some accelerating their transition to the cloud. This positions us well within our expertise, allowing us to engage these clients and leverage our diverse range of programmable APIs. For instance, in terms of video use, which we previously discussed, we still regard it as a significant element in communications. Additionally, many of our customers are diving deeper into their customer journeys and using video in various innovative ways. As they navigate these journeys and consider end-to-end workflows, we are beginning to integrate Verify messaging into other essential areas that will enhance those efforts. Ultimately, we must continue delivering the value our customers expect from us, and we are well-positioned to achieve that.

Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Erik.

Our next question comes from the line of James Breen with William Blair.

Just as we've seen things open up a little bit here from a pandemic perspective, any changes you're seeing in terms of the size of companies coming into the sales channel? Are larger companies starting to move now, whereas 8 months ago, 12 months ago, they were sort of frozen?

Yes, James, we've observed a diverse range of customer sizes and locations, especially in the API sector. One of Vonage's significant advantages is our balanced presence across major geographies and strong industries. As Steve mentioned, we've seen growth in customer sizes across every segment, with plenty of energy in the market. There is a fundamental shift in how APIs and communication methods are being utilized in productivity and customer engagement applications. While some of our products are particularly suited for small, mid-sized, and multi-location enterprises in UC/CC, we're witnessing broad adoption across various sectors. This diversity is beneficial because it provides us with flexibility and insulation against fluctuations in any particular industry.

Great. Do you have any thoughts on the competition considering Zoom and Five9's position in the market?

Yes. I think that acquisition kind of validates what we're trying to do with the Vonage Communications Platform. We've been on this strategy for 5, 6 years. We put the right assets together for where the market is going. And I think that acquisition, in particular, kind of validates this idea that we're on. I think we have been a first mover in the space to put these together in a platform that allows our customers to get these broad bases of an API-first kind of engagement platform and then to build purpose-built applications in Contact Center and then Unified Communications on top of that API flow. Now competition, I've been in this industry for 38 years. There's always competition. I've heard about everybody. So and so is going to do this, and they've already won, and this whatever. I think where we are is this is an amazing market. We're seeing a fundamental technology shift around how communications are used to engage customers, partners, and team members on a broad basis. And the pandemic, as awful as it was, clearly accelerated that and proved it out. The next 3 to 5, 7 years, it's the culmination of Internet, cloud, and mobility all coming together to create this kind of perfect storm for communications embedded in all those activities. It's a huge market. I don't care what all the competition does. We're going to focus on our customers. This is a customer first-based culture, but we understand our customers and give them the best care nobody else can. So take care of those customers and they'll tell their friends, and that will open up more opportunities. That's our opportunity. Sure, there'll be competitors, and there'll be this one this quarter and the next one next year. It doesn't matter. This market is huge. It's a fundamental change in how the technology is used and being implemented. It's going to go on for several years. And for us, focus on our customer. You got 2 ears and 1 mouth, listen more than you talk, and listen to that customer and create them value. If you take care of them better than anyone, nobody can get in there, and you can expand that base. That's our future.

Our next question comes from the line of Sterling Auty with JP Morgan.

This is Drew on for Sterling. Could you provide some more color on gross margins in the quarter? And how do you anticipate those to trend as the API product mix continues to change?

Thanks, Drew. Great question. I'm really proud of the fact that we improved adjusted EBITDA in the VCP. VCP is basically Vonage at this point. And we saw adjusted EBITDA improve $19 million year-over-year and our first positive quarter ever. We're going to run that adjusted EBITDA in that low single-digit range. We don't want to stretch it out. We want to use that margin and that EBITDA to invest in growth. This market is going to grow rapidly for the next 3, 5, 7 years. We need to participate in that growth and use that acceleration in a virtuous cycle that allows us to acquire more selling power, more engineers, more product innovation. We are definitely going to make sure, and we've told this on every one of these calls, that if we have an opportunity for growth, we'll always attack for that growth. Well, we make sure we're profitable. This is a long way from where we were a year ago, when it had a $19 million improvement in 1 quarter in adjusted EBITDA. But we're going to leverage that capability going forward. And from quarter to quarter, you're going to see variations in mix. We're particularly strong in messaging this quarter. Next quarter, it could be particularly strong in another area. But it's that diversity of portfolio. Steve, do you want to add a little color around gross margin for Drew?

Yes, sure. Great. Thanks, Drew. As we look at it, as Rory mentioned, look, we've said all along, we're going to try and capture the opportunity. We know where we are in the market. The opportunity is large. We'll continue to go after it. And if you look at the results from an API perspective, 40% growth driven across all product areas, geographies, we're capturing that. And again, as messaging becomes a larger part, we're going to continue to satisfy the need of those customers. So as the mix of our business, the margin may fluctuate as we go forward. But the other thing that we look at is we're really managing the portfolio across the board. The goal was to improve on our Rule of 40, and we've done that. As Rory mentioned, 23% in the second quarter is a really solid number, especially when you think of where we came from a year ago at 10%. So the team is doing a nice job. We'll continue to look for opportunities to improve on the margin and optimize as we go forward. But right now, we feel that the opportunity in the marketplace for us to continue to capture and grow the business is where we are at. And achieving the first quarter of VCP profitability, look, we're operating up and down the P&L, and we'll continue to do so as we go forward.

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Latimore with Northland Capital Markets.

Just on the API business, it sounds like all regions did well, but were any of the regions particularly strong in the quarter for your API business?

I think we observed strong performance across all areas in API, without a doubt. Jay, perhaps you could provide some additional insights. But from my perspective, we were particularly strong in Asia. Europe performed well too. The Americas did well, but it seems Asia was a bit stronger. Jay, would you like to share more details?

Sure, Rory. You mentioned it correctly. If we examine the three regions, there’s a good balance. I would say Asia experienced notable growth, particularly in Indonesia and other areas. Industries such as e-commerce, social media, and gaming showed particular strength in that region as well. Overall, growth has been balanced across the three regions, but there is likely a bit more growth occurring in messaging. We are pleased with our current position, and looking into the second half, the geographical diversification suggests we will continue to see similar growth patterns. Next quarter, one of the other regions might lead, but we are actively engaged across all three regions with a balanced approach. Lastly, as Rory noted, we are enhancing our products, referencing standards like HIPAA, PCI, and SOC 2, which will be beneficial in all regions. Specifically, with HIPAA, we anticipate promising opportunities in the U.S. during the second half, as well as in regional media zones. We launched RMZ in Japan in the second quarter and will keep making strategic investments in our products to meet specific requirements. Security and compliance are critical issues for all regions, and we will continue to invest in products that will benefit all three regions.

Got it. And then on the Unified Communications suite, I guess how are you feeling about your video conferencing, video collaboration capabilities? And any color on adoption of that?

Yes. Obviously, our video capability is particularly strong. I think it's a leadership product in embedded video. We continue to invest heavily in that space to extend and maintain our lead. I think a great acquisition several years ago that really has paid off. Jay, any comments? I mean we've made that part of the centerpiece around UC. We've embedded video now in CC. We've made it more of an API. I think that was a bit of an area years ago where they just did it as an embedded function. Always build every functionality as an API first. But Jay, a little color for Mike?

Sure. Rory, I would just come back to our customer-first approach. And when you look at whether it be the UC or CC, more and more of our customers, as they navigate this digital transformation, obviously, over the last 18 months, it's been a very difficult period for all of us. But early on, we were helping our customers deal with those critical priority one issues. But over time now, everyone is adjusting and adapting to the new way of working. So video will continue to be a pillar across all of our solutions, whether it be the UC/CC or even on the API. We're starting to see more APIs be pulled into those solutions. And I would also come back to an earlier point around just the combination. A majority of our business, new business, is that UC/CC combination. And occasionally, with some of those APIs, we see that increasing over time. So I think as we move forward, we'll see more of that video as the centerpiece, but there's so much more value we can derive with our customers as they continue their digital transformation initiatives.

Our next question comes from the line of Catharine Trebnick with Colliers.

Good quarter. I have two. One, Steve, you're putting out a lot more metrics, and they are very good metrics. Have you made any people changes in your organization that we're seeing better input from you all? And then the follow-up question is, similar to the sales organization, have you added more or changed out some of your CAM relationships to improve the channel growth there?

Steve, you take the first one.

Yes, I'll address that. We are continuously integrating our analytics and leveraging data to make more informed business decisions. This effort is driven by our existing team, which is currently focused on enhancing our business insights and utilizing that information to guide our future investments and identify opportunities for growth. When we identify an opportunity, our goal is to convert it into revenue more quickly. This involves analyzing the data and making investments where we see potential for growth. The positive impact of these efforts is evident in our results across all regions and product lines. The team is well-established and performing admirably, and we are now concentrating on execution, refining our processes, and improving data flow, which is beginning to yield positive results.

Yes, Catharine, that's a great question. I'll hand it over to Jay shortly. In my 38 years of experience, I've found that the best talent is crucial. If you are passionate about customers and technology innovation, and you want to be part of the next wave in tech, then Vonage is the place for you. We've assembled a strong leadership team by combining existing talent with new hires who bring valuable skills at every level. These individuals are passionate about metrics and understanding our customers, excelling in their respective areas. We're promoting talent from within who are prepared to take on new roles. This improvement is evident across the organization, whether in sales under Jay, product and engineering with Savinay, marketing with Joy, or finance with Steve. We are developing a stronger team and witnessing significant momentum. Jay, perhaps you can provide more insights, particularly regarding the skills being added in the channel and key regions like America. Additionally, Sunny Rao taking on a significant responsibility exemplifies our approach of bringing in people who are passionate about our customers and innovation, which is key to transforming the game. Go ahead, Jay.

I fully agree, Rory, with your point about the talent. But Catharine, to close out on this topic or question, I'd say in the end, we've made considerable investments in the first half in our go-to-market in both businesses, the API and the UCC business, and we're going to continue to do that in the second half. For example, as part of our transformation, we added sales capacity and solutions engineer resources in our key geos and verticals, as well as in our demand gen and branding areas. So this has been critical. We started up back in January in terms of this new approach, and we're going to continue to put that sales capacity in those engineers in those regions across those products where it's going to make a difference, helping our customers create the value from our products. And additionally, we spoke about our investments in the channel and the portal as we accelerate that whole self-service and onboarding of partners. So end-to-end, it starts with the people, but we're excited about our process and the additional investments we've made, as Steve pointed out earlier, in sales and marketing. And we're going to continue to do that in the second half because we've already seen the return.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Enders with KeyBanc.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about the product portfolio. It sounds like there's quite a bit of innovation coming, but wondering kind of what the big focus areas are for you and what the big areas are on the product roadmap.

Thanks, Steve. That's a great question. We're about halfway through this transformation. We're executing better and noticing some strength and momentum, but this is a work in progress, and we're making solid strides. We need to capitalize on the next 12 to 18 months to further enhance this transformation. The product will play an increasingly crucial role, especially regarding innovation. With the addition of Savinay and the development of the team, you can expect a focus on creating a unique developer experience and a differentiated channel experience. We will continue to invest in all APIs and work towards building an integrated common capability, making it easier for our customers to use multiple APIs simultaneously while providing standard analytics and billing. We refer to this initiative as project Magneto. Regarding UC, the product fits well within the small, mid, and multi-location enterprise sector. We'll focus on building out that capability while also moving upmarket to offer more enterprise-level billing and advanced multi-enterprise reporting that customers will expect. In the Contact Center area, we are positioned to leverage opportunities with Salesforce, which we see as a key partnership for the next few years given their strong presence in the industry. We will also invest in the capability to connect various automation solutions. The vision of the Vonage Communications Platform is for customers to access all their communication assets in one place, and the recent acquisitions support our aim to build out this capability, an area where we have an edge. We are indeed halfway through this transformation with much work ahead, but the next 12 to 18 months will focus on product development. We have made significant strides in efficiency and tailored our go-to-market strategy. As a software technology company, product quality is the ultimate measure of the value we provide to customers. That's why in our high-growth sectors, we've increased our engineering spending by nearly 50% while also improving our growth rate and bottom line by managing resources efficiently overall. These are key focus areas that Savinay and his team are addressing. Does that help?

Yes, that's great to hear. I would like to discuss the gross margin aspect. Are there strategies you can implement in the API business to enhance margins, such as adjusting the product mix or introducing innovations, or is it primarily about achieving scale at this stage? How do you view the potential opportunities to improve margins?

Steve, it's both. There's no question. Scale is your friend in a technology industry, and we're going to go for scale. We definitely need it. But definitely, you're going to see work around more intelligent routing, more feature function in terms of how we do messaging and opening up with better compliance and security, other regions and like expansion in the U.S. There are certain countries where we have better margin profiles. How can we grow faster in those by targeting certain innovation? I think it's a combination. You always want to manage your cost effectively on the cost side. And we're kind of relentless on that and making sure that we're grinding that. Scale is your friend in a technology industry, particularly in one that's growing like this over a multiyear period, and we haven't reached the knee of the curve here yet. I mean this is going to be a fundamental kind of impact in the industry for, like I said, 3, 5 years, in my opinion. I think then a combination of target, and we do this, we have specific priority projects underway in API, even in UC and CC, to improve our cost structure and make us more efficient, but also open up more profitable TAM opportunities that build out our capability. That's why we're so focused over the next 18 months on product.

Our next question comes from the line of Timothy Horan with Oppenheimer.

This is Noah Herman on for Tim. Do you see Twilio as a major competitor? And how would you characterize your growth compared to them?

Sure. I often discuss competitors, and Jay can provide additional insights since he is always in the field. I dedicate a significant amount of time to engaging with customers and partners to gather feedback. There are always a few familiar competitors that emerge occasionally, and it’s crucial for us to understand their actions. However, the market is vast, and our primary focus should be on understanding our customers better than anyone else. As companies expand and diversify, they often struggle to maintain focus, which presents us with an opportunity to concentrate on the prospects before us. With a customer-first approach, we can identify growth opportunities where we can outperform the competition. We do not aim to serve every customer; instead, we intend to deliver unique value in areas that enhance our market share. This concept is vital as we consider our transformation. We are about halfway through this process and have made significant progress. The market is immense, and the winners are not predetermined. Although there are competitors across various sectors, and new ones will emerge over time, our priority is to understand how to build our business effectively. We have brought the business back into balance, allowing us to scale more efficiently with the right structure and capabilities, and we are heading in a positive direction. While it is still a work in progress, we are pleased with our advancements over the past year and look forward to what the next year will bring. We aim to foster a culture that stands by its commitments and takes responsibility for its actions. This is fundamental. Comparatively, competitors may be intriguing, but customers are far more critical. Jay, would you like to add anything?

Rory, just two quick points I'd add in terms of, Noah, what's the differentiator. It's all about the customer experience, right? We know many of these customers are on their digital transformation journeys. And in the end, there are two things. One is that industry and domain expertise. Knowing those industries, we talked earlier about health care, education, financial services. Having that industry insight is valuable. And to combine that also from a country and regional perspective, we know the countries. We have great diversity, as we've talked throughout the call, and we know what it takes to be successful in these countries, whether it be regional compliance, security, I mentioned RMZ in Japan earlier. And those are two differentiating qualities, and there's more, but those are two I would just highlight as to how we compete against our competitors and why we win.

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

I want to thank everyone for joining today. As I mentioned, we're on a journey here. We've made good progress over the first 12 months and on the strategic pivot. This is a work in progress. We're going to listen to our customers. We're going to focus on their success. And I just want to thank again our passionate Vonage team members around the world. You're making a huge difference for our customers, and I truly appreciate it. We have work to do, so we're going to end the call with that and get on to the work in front of us. So Hunter, any final comments?

That's it, Rory. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing many of you out on the road this summer.

Great. Thank you, everyone. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.