Procore Technologies, Inc. Q1 FY2022 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, and welcome to Procore's 2022 First Quarter Earnings Call. I'm Matthew Puljiz, VP of FP&A and Investor Relations. With me today are Tooey Courtemanche, Founder, President and CEO; and Paul Lyandres, CFO. A complete disclosure of our results can be found in our press release issued today, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available following the conclusion of the call. Comments made on this call may include forward-looking statements regarding our financial results, products, customer demand, operations, the impact of COVID-19 on our business and other matters. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and are based on management's current expectations as of today, May 4, 2022. Procore undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information or unanticipated events, except as required by law. If this call is replayed or viewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. Therefore, these statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We'll also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures to provide additional information to investors. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is provided in our press release. Additionally, we may refer to certain results as organic, which we generally define as business performance or results that exclude the acquisition of Levelset. However, with respect to our customer count metrics, we define organic to mean customers under Procore contracts. With that, let me turn the call over to Tooey.

Thanks, Matt, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. First and foremost, I want to start by acknowledging the events occurring in Ukraine and throughout the region. Although our business has very limited exposure in the region, this situation is devastating, and our thoughts and support are with the people of Ukraine. Procore is continuing to find ways to assist and be helpful where possible. Now turning to the business. We had an excellent Q1 as we exceeded our expectations for the quarter. I continue to be so proud of the team, our momentum and what we've achieved. The strong performance we delivered didn't just come from one place. We saw a notable strength across the spectrum of stakeholders, customer sizes and geographies, from owners to GCs, from the enterprise to small businesses and from the U.S. to APAC. Additionally, we had a record quarter for pipeline generation, setting us up for great momentum through the rest of the year. It's important to look at our performance in the context of the broader environment we're operating in. Many of the investors we speak with have an initial perception that the macro environment is challenging to our business. But the reality is that despite the challenging environment, construction activity is robust, and customers tell us that they've never seen stronger and healthier project backlogs. That said, the overall environment remains dynamic, and we will continue to inform you of what we see. Our strong performance is demonstrated by our Q1 results, and the positive indicators that we're seeing from the industry today lead us to remain highly optimistic and confident that we'll continue to execute against our plan as we support the industry and our customers in meeting their growing project backlogs. One of those positive indicators is how our customer base continues to expand and grow, so I'd like to share some notable customer stories. First, we continue to develop relationships with specialty contractors. RIPA & Associates is a civil and utility contractor with almost 1,000 employees. They needed a single unified platform to drive efficiency and collaboration across their organization. Procore enables RIPA to consolidate their software and data sources, replacing and integrating several legacy point solutions. Ultimately, Procore helps them improve internal reporting, leverage data more efficiently and reduce overhead costs to maximize employee productivity, and this is so important, given the persistent labor shortage in the industry. You may all recall that last quarter, I described how we view the large market opportunity within enterprise GCs in the U.S., and I am happy to share that we obtained a 7-figure expansion win with one of the largest general contractors in the U.S. They decided to standardize on Procore across all of their projects due to a groundswell of support from their field teams after multiple successful pilots. In addition to support from their employees, we were able to demonstrate our superior user experience, our mobile capabilities and our robust financial suite. This ultimately gave them the conviction that Procore was a substantial improvement from their existing solution. This is yet another great example of the huge growth opportunity we still have in what is considered to be the most digitized part of the market. We also brought on board a number of notable owners, including another 7-figure relationship with one of the largest multinational telecom companies on the planet. This customer has been using our platform for the past decade through a third party but ultimately became a direct Procore customer in order to own and better manage their data in-house. In becoming a customer, they also adopted our financials product in order to integrate it with their financial systems. This will allow them to benefit from streamlined budget processes, centralized reporting and increased efficiency. In previous quarters, we shared wins with large government agencies. And this quarter, we landed one of the nation's largest state public power organizations, representing our largest public sector deal to date. After being a collaborator on the platform for many significant projects, they decided to become a Procore customer due to our product strength, our ability to integrate with their existing systems and our singular focus on construction. And finally, we continue to gain traction internationally. Ryman Healthcare is a retirement living and care options provider in New Zealand that's growing rapidly, with several sites in their development pipeline. Their priority is to design and build the best retirement villages in Australia and New Zealand on time and within budget. After evaluating competitive and incumbent solutions, they identified Procore as the preferred platform to support their continued growth and ultimately, they purchased all of our product lines. Procore will enable them to transform how they manage construction projects by providing more accurate forecasting, improved collaborations between job sites and their offices, and a reliable source of truth for project documentation. Our customers are also staying with Procore because of the value we deliver. I am particularly proud of our partnership with Lee Lewis Construction, a large U.S. general contractor with a 7-figure total contract relationship with Procore. After coming under new management and doing a competitive search to explore cheaper alternatives to Procore, Lee Lewis Construction ultimately decided to stay with Procore. They later shared with me, 'We looked into other options for price, but we stayed with Procore for the value.' We look forward to continuing to serve Lee Lewis and building upon our partnership for many years to come. These customers joining, expanding and staying with us underscore the value our customers are getting from the Procore platform and the true partnership we provide. The strength of our customer relationships is also illustrated by our recently updated and published 2022 ROI Report. We surveyed thousands of customers globally to gain insights into how they leverage Procore to grow their businesses. And I'd like to share a few highlights from the report. First, customers responded that Procore enables their project teams to manage an average of 48% more construction volume per person. The importance of this cannot be understated, given the persistent labor shortage the industry is facing. When the industry can't hire more people to get more work done, the only answer is improving efficiencies so each person can accomplish more. Procore is helping make this possible. Second, 75% of customers surveyed agreed Procore has helped reduce the amount of rework on their projects. And of those who agree, they report an average reduction in rework of 16%. And so let me remind you, on average, contractors run single-digit gross margin businesses, and our customers have little room for error. And yet, as we've shared before, on average, the industry spends over $500 billion a year on rework. Reducing unnecessary rework by 16% can have a massive impact on these businesses. That reduction will only increase as our customers adopt more products, leverage more integrations and roll Procore out across all of their projects. The best way we can help them grow their businesses is enabling them to run more efficiently. And finally, 74% of customers surveyed who are using Procore app integrations agree that these integrations have made their businesses more scalable. This is so important for extending the value of the Procore platform so that we can provide our customers with an ecosystem of solutions that's both comprehensive and customizable. I want to say that I am incredibly proud of the positive impact we're having on our customers and the industry. And it's especially rewarding to see how Procore is helping our customers build more scalable and efficient businesses so they can tackle the industry's biggest challenges and focus on what they do best, which is building the world around us. We're able to help our customers tackle these challenges not only through the deep partner integrations we have but also with the highly strategic acquisitions we have made to build out the platform. One of the biggest challenges the industry faces is managing risk, including financial risk and the ability to get paid on time. And on this front, I'd like to share an update on one of our most recent acquisitions. Last November, we closed Levelset, and the business continues to perform well. As I previously shared, one of the reasons we acquired Levelset is because of their strength in lean management, a critical component of enabling Procore to manage complex compliance workflows. And I am thrilled to share that I was recently able to see an early demo of how the Lien Waiver experience is being integrated with our invoice management product. It is so exciting to see such progress. I cannot wait to release it into production so our customers can benefit from this integration. This is an important step towards our goal of creating the best invoicing compliance experience for the industry, and it also gets us one step closer to the payments opportunity. I am incredibly excited for what's to come, and I look forward to updating you all as we progress. I also want to emphasize that our broader M&A philosophy remains unchanged. By nature of the broad and evolving industry we serve, we will occasionally make acquisitions to ensure that we have the most comprehensive platform that can solve construction's unique challenges. A majority of the time, these acquisitions will be smaller tuck-ins of companies that we know very well, and in many cases, they integrate with us through our App Marketplace. But both the volume and cadence of M&A in 2021 were unique, and folks should not expect that volume or cadence to be the norm. In fact, we are entirely focused on integrating what we acquired last year and ensuring our collective teams and products come together in an elegant solution that advances our mission to connect everyone in construction on a global platform. As CEO, I focus a lot of my energy on finding our next great leaders. As Procore scales, we are continually investing in our people and building out the best leadership team to drive long-term durable growth. You've also heard me talk about how passionate I am about the impact data will have on the construction industry, and my intention is to make Procore a data-first company. So I'd like to share an exciting update on both of these fronts. Just last week, we welcomed Joy Durling as our first-ever Chief Data Officer. She'll be acting in an elevated and expanded CIO role, leading Procore's data strategy as well as our information technology and product and information security functions. Prior to joining us, Joy held various leadership roles at Vivint and Adobe Systems, where she focused on elevating customer and employee experience with data-driven innovation and building out cross-functional businesses. Joy will be a huge asset to the team as we continue our journey towards becoming a data-first company. In summary, I am incredibly proud of the results we achieved this quarter, our strong execution and our exceptional team we have in place. Looking ahead, Procore is well positioned to deliver on another year of growth and exciting opportunities. We believe the investments we're making this year will position us to drive durable long-term growth and enable us to return to steady margin expansion and cash flow in the future.

Thanks, Tooey, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. As Tooey mentioned, we delivered excellent Q1 results that exceeded our expectations. I'll quickly recap our financial results, share some color on the quarter's highlights and conclude with our outlook. Revenue in the quarter was $160 million, up 40% year-over-year and up 34% organically when excluding Levelset's $7 million contribution. On an organic basis, we ended the quarter with 12,809 customers, representing 20% growth year-over-year. Our non-GAAP operating loss was $20 million, representing a consolidated operating margin of negative 12%. Taking a step back, there are a few things I'd like to highlight regarding our Q1 results. First, as Tooey alluded, it's difficult to attribute the quarter's success to any one particular area that outperformed. We saw strength across multiple areas of the business. Multiple stakeholders, geographies and customer sizes performed very well. We believe this reflects the industry's accelerating recovery, our platform's leadership and brand as well as our strong execution. Second, we've continued to sustain healthy overall customer growth, with 616 net new customer adds organically in the quarter. What gives us additional optimism is that this quarter, we started to see small business perform well despite the ongoing macro dynamics. This customer demographic has historically been disproportionately impacted by supply chain delays and inflation, so seeing this performance in Q1 is very promising. Third, we saw record pipeline generation, creating momentum for the year ahead. The improvement in our pipeline reinforces the commentary Tooey shared earlier. Our customers are experiencing higher end demand and they continue to choose Procore because of the value our platform delivers. Lastly, our operating margin came in better than expected this quarter, primarily due to our revenue beat and the timing of expenses within the quarter. But more broadly, it is reflective of our ability to deliver more on the top line with greater margin efficiency compared to what was originally factored into our guidance. With that, here is our guidance for Q2 and full year 2022. For the second quarter of 2022, we expect revenue between $161 million and $163 million, representing year-over-year growth between 31% and 33%. Q2 non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be between negative 14% and negative 15%. For the full fiscal year 2022, we expect revenue between $676 million and $680 million, including a contribution of $28 million from Levelset, representing total year-over-year growth between 31% and 32%. Non-GAAP operating margin for the year is expected to be between negative 13.5% and negative 14.5%. This represents 150 basis points of improvement as compared to our previously issued guidance. To put our guidance into context, there are 2 additional points I want to mention. First, I want to refer back to the initial guidance we gave last quarter on Levelset's contribution to operating margin for the year. As our teams come together and the acquisition becomes more integrated, the delineation of inorganic contribution to margins becomes more blurry. As such, beginning this quarter, we are no longer breaking out Levelset's contribution to our operating margin. And second, although we do not guide free cash flow, last quarter, we did provide color on free cash flow margin for the year. Specifically, our updated operating margin guide implies a year-over-year decline of approximately 8 percentage points, and we would reiterate that this trend line can be applied to free cash flow margin for the year. However, it is important to note that due to the timing of collections and various outflows, the distribution of free cash flow by quarter is not linear. In summary, we are thrilled with the results this quarter. I'd like to close by thanking our customers, the construction industry, our partners, employees, shareholders as well as the communities we serve for continuing to support us as we work toward our vision to improve the lives of everyone in construction.

Congrats on a great quarter here. Maybe first, again, I think you kind of touched on it around the data opportunity here, right? You've got the users, right? You've got the bidding, the preconstruction insights, and that obviously gave you some confidence in the pipeline for the remainder of the year. But how are you thinking about the leverageability here, providing visibility to add and to manage some of the input costs, some of the challenges that those end customers are seeing, the potential marketplace dynamics maybe it ties into, I think, as well with that future payments opportunity or cash flow management dynamics? But how are you thinking about leveraging that data asset, obviously, an important hire here, but as you scale those users and service that industry system of record over time?

Yes, I appreciate the question, Dylan. I think when we think about the data that the Procore platform generates, there's a tremendous amount of opportunities to help make our customers more efficient across a broader spectrum, everything from cost to safety to schedule. One of the things that we're just really proud of is in the process of digitizing a number of these businesses, we are able to show them back information about their own projects, about benchmarks more broadly, as well as visibility into many things that do cost them money or slow down their projects. And so for us, this is going to be a long journey, but we absolutely believe that the data we have is only going to help make these contractors more efficient across a broad spectrum, including the challenges across supply chain and input costs.

Yes. One way to look at this is that for years, we have been assisting our customers in managing risk with data. This has been valuable in preventing them from going out of business. However, the greatest compliment we have received recently is that the insights we provide from this data enable our customers to operate more effectively, take on more work, and even grow their businesses. We have shifted from a defensive stance to an offensive one, and data has played a significant role in this transformation.

Okay, great. Tooey, maybe just to start with you. Just obviously, a lot of the questions that we get are around macro, and it feels like your commentary here is palpably more positive. So I just want to stress test it a little bit. Can you just talk about the impact that inflation is having on your customer base? And sort of what gives you that confidence? Because I know you spend time with customers every day. What gives you that confidence that the building backlog that you're seeing is ultimately going to get built on schedule and then have that sort of follow-on benefit to Procore?

I appreciate the question, Saket. I get asked this all the time. First, I want to say that I talk to customers daily, and they tell me their backlogs have never been bigger or stronger, which is a significant indicator. We have other signs as well. Our ability to increase our pipeline, as I mentioned earlier, gives us a lot of confidence that the business will perform well this year. We also observe general optimism when we engage with the industry. Additionally, there are external indicators like the Architectural Billing Index and the Dodge Momentum Index. One interesting point is that employment in construction has returned to pre-COVID levels. Construction companies wouldn’t be hiring more workers if they didn’t have confidence in their backlogs. That is a clear fact to consider. Another important aspect we've discussed is the supply and demand imbalance in construction. There is high demand, as shown by these backlogs, but customers are struggling with staffing. This creates a significant gap between the demand for construction and what the industry can supply. We believe that any impact on overall demand from macroeconomic factors would need to be quite substantial to affect Procore. Furthermore, the catalysts we’re seeing are actually accelerating digital transformation. Companies like Lee Lewis, for example, are not looking for inexpensive software; they seek solutions to enhance efficiencies in their operations. Overall, we believe we are well positioned.

Yes. Look, I think one of the things that also continues to give us optimism on the business is just how we are watching these metrics across the board from retention, growth and . We continue to see really positive trends in those dynamics, and it's a function of customers buying more products, customers buying and expanding in their volume, but it is an area that is a bright spot for our business.

Maybe for Tooey, so it's great to hear about the recovery in the end markets that you've been talking about, even in the SMB part. But let me even just ask a broader question. So it's been about 6 months since the infrastructure bill was passed, and you talked already about the strong backlog. But I was curious here, what kind of impact that, that's having yet, if anything, on the AGC industry? And remind us of how that could trickle out to impacting you guys in the future.

Yes, that's a great question, Adam. We haven't seen a direct impact yet. We work closely with the AGC, and their head economist mentioned that the effects will be more apparent later in the year as these projects begin to come online. It typically takes a significant amount of time to prepare these projects. However, we believe there will be a positive impact on the industry. We often use the analogy of an oil tanker, which illustrates that our industry is quite vast, meaning changes take time to take effect. When they do, especially with the size of the stimulus and infrastructure bills, we believe it will positively influence the overall construction industry and, consequently, Procore.

Yes. The only thing I'd add to that, Adam, is one of the things that gives us that conviction and excitement is that when we think about who will ultimately be building these projects, it is these municipalities, it is the GCs that are our customers. So this is less about whether we will see it and more about the timing of when that funding is actually going to come through.

Yes. Returning to the original investment thesis, Lien Rights Management is essential for addressing these intricate workflows. Additionally, we highly value Levelset for their innovative thinking, particularly in areas like material finance. This is a space we are exploring, and while it's too early to provide further details, we find it intriguing. We will keep you informed as significant developments occur.

Congratulations on the quarter. Tooey, I'm curious to get your take on the construction industry, the value proposition of Procore vis-à-vis rising rates and what could be higher cost of capital. And also secondly, with respect to the fintech solutions, you've launched them. I think you talked about it in the last quarterly earnings conference call. What is the feedback you're hearing from customers with respect to the propensity uptake? And how does it make you feel about the revenue uptake you might get from this category of solutions next year?

Sure, Kash. It's great to hear from you. I'll address the first question and then hand the second one over to Paul. The question revolves around the impact of interest rates on our customers. This raises an interesting point: not every construction project is financed through loans. In fact, government projects at the city, state, municipal, and federal levels are typically funded through bonds. Additionally, many corporate campus expansions are financed using balance sheet funding. Therefore, not all areas of construction are sensitive to interest rates. Furthermore, given the size of the industry and the existing supply and demand imbalance, we believe that interest rates would need to rise significantly before we start seeing an impact on Procore. The industry is vast and diversified across various sectors, which provides us ample opportunity for growth.

And then maybe touching on the second question. As we think about the conversations we've had around fintech, both with the investor and the analyst community as well as the broader industry, I'd bring you back to what we've talked about around the time of the Levelset acquisition, that as we've been in this industry now for 20 years, that the appreciation of the problem set that this customer base faces is quite wide. But we have come to particularly appreciate the challenges around managing working capital and risk. And that is where we continue to innovate and explore because what we know with confidence is that the problem statement, the need from the industry is there. We've been talking to these customers for decades about it. It is more about the best way to solve it and where and how Procore helps to drive that value to the industry, and that's where we're continuing to learn, continue to experiment, and we will share more as we get more conviction on a particular approach.

Tooey, just to follow up on Kash's question. When you think about just critical infrastructure that isn't interest rate-sensitive, can you just talk through are you seeing that as a percent of your business rise versus kind of the other nice-to-have areas or areas that could be deflected? Can you talk to how that mix is building? And then I had a quick follow-up for Paul.

The best way for me to quantify that is to share what our customers express. They manage diversified business portfolios, engaging in various sectors such as infrastructure, commercial, warehousing, and data centers. Overall, their excitement is somewhat restrained but still present; they believe it will have a long-term impact, yet these developments take time to materialize. I wouldn't say they are fully committed to it, but we are confident that, due to our scale and diversified portfolio, we will see benefits overall.

Yes. I think you've heard us discuss the financial suite frequently, and there's a reason we keep bringing it up. We've made significant investments in this area over many years, and it is a highly differentiated product that we're seeing increasing demand for from the end industry. Additionally, I want to emphasize that our approach to cross-selling is less about promoting a specific product and more about integrating different workflows across our products to create value. We have mentioned how Estimating and Takeoff will play a role in Project Management, and how labor management connects to financials. These are all areas where we continue to invest, driving cross-sell opportunities for stakeholders who benefit from these connections. We are confident that as we invest further in the platform, this momentum will only grow.

Congratulations on a strong quarter. How are you thinking about increasing the number of quota-carrying reps this year? And I guess, how are you finding the recruiting environment?

We continue to see that our ability to find top talent and fill our roles is something that, while challenging in this environment, as we have appreciated that it was going to be challenging, we've invested in the resources and the focus. And so we feel really good about the hiring cadence, our ability to fill quota. At this point, we think we have everything we need in order to deliver what we've told the Street we would based on a quota capacity framework.

And Matthew, I'd be remiss not to say that a big shout-out to our talent acquisition team for all the hard work that they do to bring in the top talent that we have. We could not do it without all of their efforts.

Nice to see the record pipeline generation comment. Top of funnel seems really healthy. Maybe taking a step further, are you also seeing any improvements in some of the execution-related things like sales cycles, close rates or win rates?

Candidly, nothing material enough to talk about. We just continue to see that the demand side, the top of funnel is getting better and better, and that's probably the only thing we're calling out at this point. Yes. Look, I think when we think about margin, when we think about the way we want to invest, we are constantly being thoughtful to how we look at the longer-term ROI, the lifetime value associated with these investments and what we believe is best for the long-term shareholder. So as we think about margin improvement, we believe that we will continue to demonstrate operating leverage year-over-year, but that when we think about how we want to deploy capital, we're really thoughtful to the appreciation that we're in the early days of a really big market, and that we want to find the right balance, knowing that we think there is just a tremendous opportunity still ahead.

Great. Just filling in for Brent here. So was just curious if you saw any significant effect on customer demand from the Omicron variant as it sort of ramped up in January and persisted through February. Or did you find that construction activity overall was more insulated from that wave during those months? And then I'll have one follow-up.

So yes, Mauro, we have not seen any correlation. There's nothing that indicates that at all, so I don't really have much more to add.

Got it, got it. And then you had some commentary around broad-based success resonating with stakeholders, different geographies and customer sizes. Is that the same thing you're seeing as it relates to Levelset? Or is there a certain segment of the market where Levelset is kind of resonating more?

Levelset is, in general, more focused or historically has been more focused on the subcontractor and the vendor. And so what I would tell you is the stakeholders that they service, they're continuing to see success, and we continue to be really bullish on the opportunity of what we can do by bringing the businesses together, serving newer stakeholders as well as continuing to get deeper into their existing stakeholders.

Thanks, everyone. Take care.

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you. You may now disconnect your lines.