Veeva Systems Inc (VEEV) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by my name is abby and i will be your conference operator today at this time i would like to welcome everyone to the viva systems fiscal 2026 first quarter results conference call all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise after the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session if you would like to ask a question during that time simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 a second time. Thank you. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Gunnar Hansen, Senior Director, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to Viva's Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call for the quarter ended April 30th, 2025. As a reminder, we posted prepared remarks on Viva's Investor Relations website just after 1 p.m. Pacific today. We hope you have had a chance to read them before the call. Today's call will be used primarily for Q&A. With me today for Q&A are Peter Gassner, our Chief Executive Officer, Al Shawa, EVP Strategy, and Brian Van Wagoner, our Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding the trends, our strategies, and the anticipated performance of the business, including guidance regarding future financial results. These forward-looking statements will be based on our current views and expectations and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Our actual results may differ materially. Please refer to the risks listed in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our most recent filing on Form 10 . Forward-looking statements made during the call are being made as of today, May 28, 2025, based on the facts available to us today. If this call is replayed or reviewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. VIVA disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. We may discuss our guidance on today's call, but we will not provide any further guidance or updates on our performance during the quarter unless we do so in a public forum. On the call, we may also discuss certain non-GAAP metrics that we believe aid in the understanding of our financial results. A reconciliation to comparable GAAP metrics can be found in today's earnings release and in the supplemental investor presentation, both of which are available on our website. With that, thank you for joining us. Now I'll turn the call over to Peter.

Thank you, Gunnar, and welcome everyone to the call. It was a strong start to the year with results above our guidance. Total revenue in the quarter was $759 million and non-GAAP operating margin of 46 percent thanks to the team and our customers we have now achieved our calendar 2025 revenue run rate goal of three billion dollars although the macro environment is more uncertain today compared to 90 days ago we have not seen a material change to our financial results or pipeline at this time setting our sights on our 2030 goals last year has really aligned at energized viva i consider this our best first quarter ever in how we're executing across the company viva ai is a major initiative and off to a good start i'm especially excited about the positive

impact viva ai can have on the life sciences industry we'll now open up the call to your questions thank you if you have dialed in and would like to ask a question please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue if you would like to withdraw your question simply press star one again if you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question to be able to take as many questions as possible we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up again it is star one if you would like to join the queue. And our first question comes from the line of Joe Verwink with Baird. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start with your perspective on the 200 customers moving to Vault or considering Vault CRM for next year. I imagine many of these are migrations. Have the reasons customers cited behind migration decisions changed at all. And the reason I ask is, it seems like Viva at this point has really delivered on a product roadmap. Once shared, customers can now see things like service center and campaign manager. And you also now have, I would say, more fidelity behind the AI strategy. Are these starting to factor in into why now, why the decisions? And maybe on the flip side, when customers aren't moving with you, what's coming up in those decisions?

Hey, Joe, this is Paul. Thanks for getting us kicked off here. So just to be clear on that, remember one year ago, we were at a handful of customers live. Today, we're at about, we're over 80 customers live. And I think the number you're referencing is about one year from now, where we're on track to be about 200 customers live on Vault CRM. So Vault CRM is going really well. It's working. Now, the why? Why is that? It's better than Viva CRM. Customers like Viva CRM, but it's better. And what makes up that 200 number are really two things. It's new customers and it's migrations. So in the quarter, as an example, we added 28 Vault CRM customers to that number, and we added 28 Vault CRM customers total, and about half of those were migrations, and the other half were net new customers to Viva. So that's how to think about what will make up that 200 new customers and migrations. And the reasons are everything that we've talked about. It's better. Our AI strategy will have agents in the product by the end of the year. It's bringing sales, marketing, and medical together. We're innovating in a lot of different ways. So new companies want to get started there and other customers want to migrate. In terms of why customers may not make a decision for Viva, and we've seen some of this, some companies want more of a custom type product. So I don't expect that to be the path. We expect to win and retain the vast majority.

Okay, that's great. Thank you, Paul. I guess on the go forward forecast, it's an interesting contrast when you get a more dynamic macro, but outright strength for Viva. When you may be honing in on some of the more discretionary aspects of your revenue model, and I'm thinking about like services or maybe the process audience building, would you expect to see those weaken at this point if there were maybe looming signs of pressure for the second half? And is the fact that maybe that pressure isn't being seen factoring into how you think about the rest of the year?

That's a pretty nuanced question. Peter, I'll take that one. So, as we mentioned in the prepare remarks, you know, the macro environment is uncertain, and there's some uncertainty largely caused by the, you know, dynamics in the U.S. administration. Now, we haven't seen that in our results, and we haven't seen that in our pipelines, not to say that we would or we wouldn't going forward, but we haven't seen it so far. Generally, what we could see is funding issues could come. If there's uncertainty, that could come in the small market, the smaller side of the biopharma, so that could delay projects and things like that and could cause some conservatism in large pharma. But certain things like CrossX, you know, that may not be affected by that because CrossX has a sort of a shorter business cycle and it's really humming along and it's a way to get quick ROI. So I actually don't think it would affect CrossX that much, but we'll just have to wait and see how things play out.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Ken Wong with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Fantastic. Peter, I wanted to perhaps address the comment you called out in the prepared remarks in terms of the horizontal market. It seems like you guys have made at least some progress there, and you're moving forward on horizontal CRM. Could you provide us just a little more color in terms of how you're thinking about the approach there, the potential differentiation, and to the extent there's any kind of timeline, that'd be much appreciated.

Yeah, we're pretty excited about that new market. So horizontal business applications, which we announced last year, and now what we've said in the prepared remarks that we're focusing in for our first area in the horizontal CRM. Now that, when we look at that, there's many areas that, you know, the exact product area, that's something we have to determine inside CRM. The exact customer segments, that's something we have to determine as well. So we'll go through those motions and figure that out. And I'm excited about getting customers. So I hope to have, you know, first customers by the end of the year. I hope to have that. And then you start making the customers successful. And that's really how we've grown our business. It's outside of life sciences, this new market. It's a different team. It's not going to be confused with life sciences. It's a different operating model. But the one thing that is common is we can live our values of customer success and employee success and speed and focus just on customer success and product excellence. So I'm pretty excited about it, actually, what we're going to do out there. It's a whole new Viva out there.

Appreciate the color. We're looking forward to it as well. Paul, I wanted to maybe dive into the commercial strengths, meaningful acceleration there. I guess fairly surprising considering most of us view that as maybe a more mature business. Where are you seeing this outsized growth? You called out CrossX. Are there other areas of the business, whether it's cross-selling something or new products, that's really driving that upside?

Yeah, so you're right. I mean, we're executing well across the entire commercial area, but I would specifically call out CrossX. We invested heavily in the product over the last couple of years, and that's paying off both in the marketing and optimization space, also in audiences. Remember, that can be a little lumpy. So there can be ups and downs quarter by quarter, but over the long term, that will be a really nice growth business for us. And so CrossX did well, and of course, we're executing well in all the other areas. CRM is relatively stable, but just nice momentum as we look across data cloud, including Link, Compass, early days in those areas, but we're executing well.

Fantastic. Thanks, Paul.

And our next question comes from the line of Brent Braceland with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Maybe for Brian, sticking with commercial strength here, this is the highest growth rate we've seen in kind of three years. And as we double-click, you flag CrossX. Any other drivers you would flag? I know data cloud's early, but is there a contribution there? Any color, just given the magnitude of acceleration and highest growth in three years, any other color would be appreciated.

Hey, Brent. Really happy with the execution across the business in Q1 and the revenue growth rate that we saw really reflects, I think, broad-based execution. We saw strong growth out of our R&D business as well with guidance for the year now at 19%. So that remains a really strong growth engine for the business. And then the outperformance in the quarter, as we called out in some of the prepared remarks and you mentioned, was really driven by CrossX, which outperformed our expectations. And within CrossX, predominantly driven by the usage-based area of that business. So that can be a little bit lumpy from quarter to quarter, and that's reflected in our guide for the full year. But we're seeing really strong growth out of that business over the long term. It's a business that's growing at more than 30% year over year. And so we think it can continue to contribute meaningfully to our growth over the long term.

Got it. Over 30% growth. Super helpful color there. And then, Peter, just to follow up on horizontal CRM, again, it's your first area. Sounds like you're very excited. Why the excitement? And I ask why, because you have Salesforce that's kind of a dominant player in the large enterprise space. And then you have HubSpot that's kind of emerged on the scene here in SMB. So what's unique about Horizontal CRM that gets you excited about what Viva's thinking about here? Thanks.

It's just unique in that there's so many things we can do. Now, I would say Viva is more expert at large markets as well, large enterprises, than we would be in the QuickBooks type or HubSpot area. So, yeah, I think you'll see a target there. But there's many, many entry points we can go after. And we just think it's in need of innovation when we look at the technology that we can bring to it. And our business model, our public benefit, corporation, orientation, we'll be a very differentiated offering. So we're excited about it. And, you know, it's this excitement of getting close to getting our first customers and our first product and knowing that we have a great team on it. And also, I think something what you're hearing is the excitement of some of the fundamental technology breakthroughs, which we're not going to go into on this call. But I think people got used to that there's nothing new that you can do. But actually, there is something new that you can do. So we're pretty excited about it.

Call me intrigued. It will be interesting to watch. Thank you so much. Thanks.

And our next question comes from the line of Socket Kalia with Barclays. Your line is open.

Okay, great. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. Nice start to the year. Peter, maybe for you, just to dig into the CrossX business, because it's been mentioned a few times, and it seems like it was one of the main drivers to some of the billing strength outside of FX. Can we just dig into that? I mean, it seems like you're gaining market share. There have been questions just around macro uncertainty and whether customers would be willing to invest as much in tools like that. But this seems to be bucking the trend. Can you go one level deeper into what you think is really driving that strength in CrossX?

At the highest level, I would say we're growing the product. When we started with clinical back in the day, we had one application and then we had two in the clinical operation, same ETMS and CTMS. Now we have about five major applications in there. The same thing with CrossFit. So CrossFit started historically with digital, consumer measurement and optimization. Now we're starting to get very strong in A2P, healthcare provider, measurement and optimization, and then audiences across both segments. So our offering is getting more broad and getting more valuable. So when we sell a pretty comprehensive cross-six deal, that value is maybe double in the size of what it was three years ago because of the value we can provide. Then we also are seeing companies really, and it's a trend that continues, lean into leveraging their digital spend. So in the United States, if a company could spend, let's say, $500 million in digital advertising, if they could double the value of that, that's very fast ROI. And that's not a 12-month implementation. That's a very quick implementation. So you've seen that. Also, you're seeing us take a more strategic approach, meaning the integration with our CRM products and optimizing more for long-term agreements rather than shorter-term agreements and just getting higher in the account. So it's a combination of factors. You know, I'll honestly say it's just a great team on CrossX2, great leadership all the way down to the analyst level and the leadership, and they're just executing. They're humming along, so they're kind of winning the race.

Got it. That was a super helpful answer. Brian, maybe for my follow-up for you, it's great to see the higher billings guide for the year. I don't think a lot of folks were expecting that, even excluding the FX tailwind. Can you just maybe dig into some of the drivers there? Maybe we hit on some of it here with CrossX, but also some of the other drivers there, maybe like billings duration or any other things that you want to flag as we thought about the slightly higher guide for billings for the year.

So you have two major factors, as you mentioned. And one is the FX guidance that's flowing through to billings, but then the other is largely the revenue outperformance that we saw in Q1 from the subscription side coming through to billings. There's always a little bit of timing and duration things at the margin, and there's some of that in there, but the main two factors are FX and then the revenue beat.

Super helpful. Thanks, guys.

And our next question comes from the line of Rishi Jaluria with RBC. Your line is open.

Oh, wonderful. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Maybe two strategically focused ones. Number one, you know, look, I wanted to think about the CRM business. You've talked about getting into marketing and service and you came out some initial applications there. Maybe can you talk about what you're seeing from early customer feedback and adoption of these? And, you know, at what point, whether it's, you know, in the next year, three years, five years, can we see those actually become share gainers in the space? And I've got a quick follow-up.

Yeah, hey, Rishi. So we're early in both of those areas. But to your point, since we made the move to Vault CRM, we've been able to innovate in totally different ways, new ways. And that includes bringing sales and marketing and service all together in a single customer database. That hasn't been done in life sciences. That's resonating. That's really good for customers. It'll help customers become more customer-centric. So this is a significant value proposition, but we're very early days. And the exciting news is we have some early customers in both of those areas. We're just getting started. Remember, the requirement is that they're on Vault CRM. So for someone to get started with, let's say, campaign manager or service center, the first step is moving, migrating to Vault CRM or getting started on Vault CRM. So it's a smaller pool to play in, at least today. And we're going to focus, which means we'll largely focus on some smaller and midsize customers. But then over time, I expect that we'll make even more progress in the midsize and even in the large companies. So it's a long journey, but we're innovating in a really different way. It's something to be excited about.

All right. Wonderful. That's really helpful. And then, Peter, on the AI front, look, I appreciate that you're taking a more gradual and slow approach to AI versus kind of over-promising and under-delivering, which I think is always in the fear with any new technological ways. Maybe can you walk us through, you know, number one, how you're kind of thinking on AI in life sciences and the willingness to adopt it has evolved. And number two, if we think about kind of what this can really unlock for customers over time, where do you kind of see it shaking out other than, you know, the typical efficiency gains? Because I'm sure that there's a major unlock that you can see over time using AI.

Yeah, I do. I'm very bullish about what Viva can bring with AI to the life sciences industry. I think if you look over the next three, four, five years up to 2030, I think Viva can help increase life sciences efficiency by 15% or so with Viva AI. That's a huge number when you look at that. So I really think it will be a step change. Why I'm so bullish on it? because Eva has the core applications and we're building the AI very deeply embedded in the core application. So when we build AI, we're not building a generic AI. We're building a medical, legal, regulatory approval agent, a CRM agent that does pre-call planning, a safety AI agent that can transcribe pre-text into a safety case, so deep AI applications. And you need the deep core applications and the AI working together, and that's where the magic will happen. It's just very, very, very clear to me, and that's what I'm excited about. I think the core technology has settled down a little bit in terms of the large language models, what's going on there, and then it's very clear that this AI is a new computing paradigm. It's something that can automate certain things that humans can do, which can, basic software, traditional software can do that. It doesn't work like a human. This is non-deterministic computing. It can automate some things that a human can do, but it doesn't obviate the need for a core application. So we let the core get settled down, have the large language models get settled down. We developed a partner program. We developed our direct data API. Now we got a specific and separate team working on D to AI. And I couldn't be more pleased with our positioning where we're at right now with AI.

Very helpful. Thank you so much.

And our next question comes from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Thanks, gentlemen. Congrats on a strong quarter. Paul, I know you talk with a lot of customers and how they're thinking about their go-to-market portion.

I'm curious, on the relative prioritization of IT spend, if we think about it in the lens of sales versus marketing versus customer service are any of those areas you've seen increased or decreased prioritization in kind of a gen ai world any thoughts on that yeah hey brian thanks for the question uh yeah so where where is ai uh likely to be and across sales marketing or service um yeah it's a good question overall way to think about the the pharma industry is uh the human relationships, the sales organizations, the spend on the sales force is very significant and very meaningful. And if you can provide productivity gains and effectiveness gains for the field team, you have a very significant impact. So I think we're seeing a lot of focus in the sales side, which is why one of our first agents will be in the core CRM space, the CRM bot. We think we can make customers significantly more productive from a field team perspective. So it's not to say that we're not seeing investment in other areas, certainly customer service. Case intake is an example. There's a lot of examples on the marketing side, but I would prioritize sales higher given the size, the importance, the relationships, and the potential impact for it to have.

Got it. I appreciate the caller. And Brian, I know that prepared remarks, Peter mentioned some an ease from some of the customers. I'm curious, as you think about the outlook for the remainder of the year, was there any incremental caution that you factored into the guidance? Thanks, guys.

Brian, so, you know, without a doubt, I'd say there's more uncertainty today than 90 days ago. And so, if that persists, it's not going to have a positive impact on the life sciences industry or on patients. You know, with that said, so much of our business is subscription-based. It's in mission-critical areas, and the industry that we serve is more long-term oriented so in the short term we're a bit more insulated from some of those pressures and as we said in the prepared remarks we're not really seeing any material impact to our financials or pipeline yet we've got deals progressing as expected contracts are renewing projects are proceeding on or ahead of schedule so given all that our guidance right now assumes that things continue roughly as they are now that means that there's more uncertainty in the world and the unease that comes with that but that customers continue to navigate it effectively Thanks, Ryan.

And our next question comes from Stan Berenstein with Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my questions. First, maybe going back to CrossX, you know, we heard recently that maybe there's been some pull forward in commercial activity by Bifama into the first half of the year. I'm just curious if you're seeing any signs of this within CrossX. Maybe you can square that with how CrossX has performed year-to-date versus same time last year.

Yeah, I'll take that one. This is Peter. I wouldn't say any particular pull forward we're seeing. I think we're seeing, in the case of CrossX, customers just wanting to build up their digital marketing capabilities, and part of that is being more effective on where they're putting their campaigns and their audiences. So I wouldn't say any particular pull forward.

Okay. And then a follow-up on the Compass products. I think it's been a little bit more than a year since you launched Prescriber National Compass Products. We're just hoping to get an update on the adoption and momentum trends under the segment.

Yeah, Compass is doing well. We added about 10 brands this quarter, mostly in the patient area, and that continues to grow. And, you know, I've often said Compass is a marathon. The industry is used to doing things in a certain way with data, and it's a hard business to get into, but we're making good progress there. In terms of prescriber and national, I would say we're still definitely in the early adopter area. So we've got a few early adopters. Pipeline's getting a bit bigger. We're focused on adding to our data network and also focusing on customer success. So in prescribing national, it's just not a mature business yet. It's not a business to scale yet, but we're encouraged by what we see from early adopters.

Thanks so much.

And our next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke with Citi. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking the questions. Peter, I wanted to start with you on the macro environment. And you talked about some of the tariff uncertainty not being great for business, which I think we can all appreciate. But one of the things that we have heard is some signs of potential reshoring in terms of the manufacturing within the pharma industry. To what extent do you how do you view this opportunity? Is this a potential tailwind? And I know it's potentially a ways away, but I would just love to hear the conversations you're having with customers and how Viva could potentially benefit from that.

Specifically about the tariffs and the potential reshoring, I wouldn't say that's a headwind or a tailwind for Viva, actually. There, we're really looking at enterprise types of capabilities in our large customers. And then for small customers, for small biotechs, they wouldn't generally have multiple manufacturing sites and they would use contract manufacturers. So I think it's not a headwind. There could be a tailwind if they have to do things. Sorry, there could be a headwind if they have to do things that take higher priority. Let's say they have some long term capabilities projects in the quality area that they want to get started on. but there's some emergency, you know, reshoring that they have to do that could take strategic focus and delay projects. Now, having said that, we've seen no evidence of that so far.

Okay, great. And a follow-up on the, I guess, on the updated guidance for the full year. An earlier question was sort of asked, but I guess if we think about the change versus 90 days ago on the revenue and billings guide, are you increasing discount rates or any type of deterioration in close rate assumptions? or are you assuming the, you know, a consistent macro environment versus 90 days ago? And I think what investors are trying to understand is, you know, this was a very solid quarter, but would the raise be even greater had you not seen kind of the macro and tariff uncertainty play out in the quarter?

I think we really have not seen any impact from the macro on the velocity of business on close rates or those kinds of things. And so what you're seeing in Q1 is, again, and that outperforms largely of the cross-ex segment and then the timing of services revenue. So that timing we expect to kind of normalize back out as we go through Q2 to Q4 on services. And so the beat on the Q1 cross-ex side really pulls through to the balance of the year and you see that reflected in the Billings Guide going up as well. So outside of those factors, I would say the business is largely as we expected it to be 90 days ago. We're seeing really good execution in all the areas of the business and feeling really good about the trajectory going forward for the year.

Okay.

Great. Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Craig Hittenbach with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you. Just following up on the macro, what do you think would prove to be most insulated? Like if things do get more difficult into the back half, are there parts of the business you'd expect to be kind of most inflated versus some areas that, you know, you'd expect to maybe see some impact if things were to deteriorate?

Well, I'll take that one. Hard to estimate too much because, you know, there's multiple ways that things could deteriorate. It could be interest rates. It could be, you know, it could be drug pricing. It could be specific to one country or another. It could be, you know, geopolitical conflict. So hard to really speculate there. The most durable part of the business is our long-term subscription contracts because they just don't really get affected by things. Then business consulting engagements, services engagements, those are quicker to get impacted. And if things get very tough, which we saw a number of years ago, it can impact our really small emerging biotechs because they can't get funding and so projects would stop. And then sometimes they may go out of business if the funding environment is dire enough. So the bulk of our businesses in these long-term subscription projects, and those just aren't susceptible to those short-term swings.

That's helpful. Thanks. And just as a follow-up, Peter, understanding it's Viva AI just recently kind of rolled out, any initial feedback from customers and how you think in the coming years how it might impact your overall business?

Yeah. The reception from customer is very positive because it just makes sense. It's not a lot of hype. They need the AI working with the core applications. They know Viva cares about the industry, will be responsible with the data, and they can see the tangible use cases. So there's a lot of excitement. How it can move our business forward, I think Viva AI is something that we will charge an appropriate license fee for. So I think it'll be a net positive for Viva. We don't have that packaging worked out yet, we do want to price it so that it can be very reasonable and broadly adopt it, help the industry move forward. And yes, certainly help our revenue all the time, but we don't have any specific projections at this time.

Understood. Thank you. Thanks.

And our next question comes from the line of Kirk Maturin with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

This is Bill on for Kirk, and thanks for taking my question.

Peter, can you highlight some of the key takeaways from you from the commercial summit last week?

Sure. Commercial summit, you know, I would say, first thing I would take away, it sounds very basic, but the customer's feeling is good. And I probably had more than 50 one-on-one conversations that were each, you know, five to 10 minutes or more each. So, that's a pretty representative sample size and non-scripted. So, customer's feeling is good. That means we're executing well. We are hiring good people that have the right customer relationships, that are competent, that are bringing value in our sales, services, business consulting, product management. So that's number one. And I think that is not to be underrated because that is the gift that will bring value over the next five to 10 years. The next one is a whole different vibe around Vultira. 80 customers live this time versus just a handful last year. Products mature, a couple big top 20 customers midway in flight. We had one of them zoom in to the, couldn't actually be there, the person had some things where they couldn't be there at the summit. So they zoomed in. This is the person, the SVP of digital from a top 20 pharma that's confirmed, yes, we'll be live here in a month or so and fully live and all of our multiple, close to 20,000 people around the world by the end of the year. So that was a whole different vibe there. And then Viva AI, making it real. When I showed the demo of Viva AI, one example of what Viva AI can do with CRM bot, you can just see the aha moment go with the customers because what they want is they want AI to help them with the engagement planning, right? Do all that work. And then all the data entry afterwards, do that work. so they can focus on the engagement in their field. And you just see the light bulbs going on. And that's what I'm excited about, about Viva AI. I want to be known as the company that, while they really did AI right, they did it in a durable way, it's adding a ton of value, where Viva is bringing in $1 and customers are getting $4 of value, and wow, that was done right. So there was that feeling for the first time of somewhat relief because we've been measuring carefully on AI and not jumping in, you know, and the hyping. So then you could see that relief from the customers. Yeah, this is the Viva. Here it goes, right? They have a plan. Now they're starting to execute and making plans around it. So that was the excitement. And the last thing I'll mention is that our data business, data cloud is becoming really real, and people are starting to understand, hey, we have commercial cloud and data cloud, And they work together. They're modular, but you can connect them. And that's what our commercial solutions are. So Viva, you know, not just the CRM company anymore. When I remember some years ago on an earnings call multiple years ago, I said, hey, you know, CRM over time will be not the major part of our commercial solutions. And man, could you see that at Summit. The CRM add-on products, marketing, service center, data cloud, cross-ex, business consulting. CRM is the start of our commercial core CRM. So that was, you asked a small question. I guess you got more of an answer than you were looking for. But that, you can tell the excitement about Commercial Summit. About 2,000 people there and so many ideas exchanged. It was wonderful. I think we should keep doing it. Paul, do you think we should keep doing our summits? Count me in. Paul, do you think we should count you in? Okay, we're going to keep doing them.

Great. Thanks for that answer.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Jailendra Singh with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on a strong quarter. I wanted to ask about the CRM conversion to Viva Vault CRM. i understand these top 20 pharma companies still have some time before they can decide and you have three top 20 going live in 2026 but compared to your internal expectations i mean in expectations you had like maybe 18 24 months back are you surprised by the pace at which these top 20 are coming through what are the most common decision making drivers you come across in terms of these top 20 power farmer companies?

Yeah, so first, I would say overall, we're making great progress in top 20. And we're on track with our expectations, as I think back a year or two years ago on track, maybe even a little bit ahead of what our expectations were. Now you think about what does that timing look like? And what makes up that decision making process? Customers are happy with Viva CRM. We're not pushing anybody to move. So there's not really that urgency. Now, eventually there will be, we've talked about the red zone, which starts to kick in in that 2027 timeframe, particularly if you're a large customer, top 20 company, you want to make a decision before that 2027 timeframe, which is why we've said most large companies will make decisions either in 2025 or in 2026. So they'll have plenty of time to migrate and move. So So customers are happy. They're going to make that decision when they're ready. We're not doing anything unnatural to force them into a specific timeline. Now, the ones that have made decisions already, and there's four that have publicly announced, or four top 20s, I should say, that have publicly announced their decision. They want to move fast. They want to get to all of the innovation that you heard us talking about. And they want to get this behind them and be able to take advantage of things like Viva AI, our sales and marketing and medical and bringing all those pieces together and all the innovation, all the excitement. So we're doing this in a customer-friendly way. We're excited with the progress. I think we're very much on track.

Okay. And then, Mike, a quick follow-up on the topic of takeaways from the Viva Commercial Summit. Thanks for all that color. Very helpful. But as you compare to the conversations you were having last year's summit, did you guys come across pharma executives having increased focus on ROI, budget priorities, or is it more or less the same as compared to last year?

In terms of the feeling from the customers, similar to last year, I think they have – last year there was still some uncertainty how the administration was going to fold. There was a U.S. presidential election, things like that. That uncertainty, in a way, is gone because they have a new environment that they're working in. But similar in that they're, you know, they're focused on execution. And I think leaning into the digital a bit more, that's one thing I noticed, leading into the digital marketing a bit more and the data and analytics. So getting more systematic, a bit more systematic and commercial.

Got it. Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, to be able to take all of our remaining questions in the time we have left, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question going forward. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Garo with Stephen.

Your line is open. yeah good afternoon thanks for taking the question follow up on that last one and also some earlier ones on the momentum for cross-ex was hoping you could discuss the the mix of customers commercial focus on digital versus in-person spend and and how viva is is particularly differentiated there to to enable both digital and in-person commercial activities and help your customers evaluate the effectiveness of both. Thanks.

Yeah. In terms of the mix, I didn't notice or sense any broad change in mix. Now, we're not always in those discussions, but I didn't notice in them anymore. But what I did notice is, hey, using technology, particularly CrossX, can I have the same amount of spend in digital and double the impact? That's really what CrossX is about. Now, in terms of the field or the CRM, I think there's a lot of excitement about AI to say, you know, it's not easy to ramp up or ramp down my field course. So what I can do is I'd like to keep that field course the same roughly and just get more productivity out of my team as I have more launches and more content. So, I think that's what I'm seeing there.

Question comes from the line of Andrew Degasperi with BNP Paribas. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my question. Maybe as a follow-up to the Horizontal CRM product, you mentioned it's a different team. I guess I'm wondering, number one, have those investments been made in terms of people and headcount? Is that already in place? And then secondly, is M&A on the horizon for this particular product, or is this something probably related to another opportunity?

Thanks. yeah the the core core team is in place of course we'll be adding to that team incrementally when you you have to keep the team small at first so it can you know execute with really fast uh speed and quality on the foundation and then you incrementally add to that team and i'm sure we'll be doing that over the next you know two three you know year two three four years so that's that's normal and we have a heartbeat for that and i'm sorry so that was about the team and And then you asked the second question, and I didn't catch it.

It was on M&A. I know you mentioned this would be an area that you would focus on. I'm just wondering if the M&A will be focused on the CRM product, or would it be for other areas?

For M&A, we're keeping a really wide aperture on that. If we can see something that would be synergistic with EVA, most likely that would be in the you know area that is horizontal applications could be crm could be other things you know we would look at that we've been very disciplined on our acquisitions and we've not had any failed acquisitions and that's that's unusual so we like acquisitions like crossings where we can where we can really uh create a lot of value and create a lot of innovation so that's the type of thing that we'd be looking for outside of life sciences it could be in crm it could be in a different areas. Thanks.

And our next question comes from the line of Gabriella Borges with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. I'd like to follow up on some of the positive commentary on ETMF with asking about an update for EDC. Peter, perhaps you could comment how are some of those conversations progressing on new customers for EDC and any updated color and how I should think about the ramp of revenue for the customer wins that you've already announced. Thank you.

Yeah. You touched on ETMF, and I'll just spend a little bit there. I'm really excited about that. The 19th top 20, and we feel like we have a pretty good path to have 20 of the top 20 on ETMF. That's just amazing, and we view that as just an honor. And what we want to do when we get that simplification and standardization for the industry is just double down and invest and help the industry get more efficient so um i want the whole viva team to know and yourself as investors and our customers to know is that's a signal to viva to really double down on investment that's the type of company viva is um we do that as a privilege so eqmf is there and i'm confident over time actually you know ec will get there um i I think, but it will take time. Today, we have nine out of the top 20 are using our EDC. Now, some of those are very early, and those are multi-year ramp deals. I think we have a path to additional top 20s in EDC. I don't see anything imminent right away, but I'm sure customer success will get there over time because we have a structural advantage. People want to integrate a clinical platform in the clinical operations, clinical data management, even reaching out to the research site. So if we keep executing, our teacher is very bright and clinical.

Thank you for the color. Congratulations on a strong 1Q.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from the line of Alan Verkofsky with Scotiabank. Your line is open.

Hey guys, congrats for me as well in the great quarter. I want to just double click on how you mentioned discussions with customers are starting to reflect the general unease. Can you shift more color on how that developed through the quarter? What types of customers are expressing this more? I would just in general appreciate more color around this. Thank you.

Yeah, now that color is, you know, things that we get in personal conversations, mainly one-on-one conversations, sometimes by Zoom, sometimes in person. So it's not anything that shows up in the financial results or the pipeline. So as you would expect, it's multifaceted. Some people are concerned about drug launches and they're concerned about what's called their fiduciary date, their approvals. And they see some open vacancies in the FDA and they wonder who's going to fill those and whether they're going to fill those in time. So they have a little adjective there. There's people concerned about what types of acquisitions they might do. And if they might do them, well, is there going to be an impact on drug pricing do the executive order, because that may deter or accelerate their plans for acquisitions. So, it's just broad-based across life sciences. And then for the smaller biotechs, what they would be wondering about is, how is this going to affect the funding environment, because it's pretty dynamic with which way will interest rates go and how will this affect funding and they're watching the price of bonds and things and they're wondering, well, when we need another round, are we going to get it? So should we need to be more conservative or not? So those are the type of discussions. It's varied, not dominated by one particular topic.

And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Baliquette with Mizuho Securities. Your line is open.

Good afternoon, Peter and Brian. Let me offer my And congrats on the strong results as well. Really, for me, just a financial question. You know, the 79% non-GAAP gross margin and 46% operating margin were obviously pretty strong in the fiscal first quarter. And the guidance for the fiscal second quarter for the full year imply that the margins will, you know, come back down a little bit relative to the F1Q trend. So I guess just without getting too specific, is there anything high level you can point out, you know, one or two factors that just, you know, mechanically might bring the margins back down in the remainder of the year versus, Fiscal 1Q. Thanks.

Yeah, hey, Steven. Q1 was a great quarter for the Collective Viva team, and you saw that reflected in the margins. The part that doesn't always show up in the margins is the impact that we'll see in years to come. When you look at the margins specifically in the quarter, about three-quarters of the outperformance was driven by revenue, and so that was mostly the usage-based elements of CrossX and the faster timing of services delivery. So things that we don't expect to be a recurring benefit to margins through the balance of the year. We also saw some benefit from expenses, which was really timing-related factors as well, things that occurred later than we'd otherwise expected. And so when you put all that together, we saw, you know, a high watermark for margins in Q1, and then we see it, you know, return back to 44% in Q2, which is about what we expect for the balance of the year. Okay. Thanks.

And our next question comes from the line of David Larson with BTIG. Your line is open.

Hi. With regards to CROSIX, you mentioned investments in the CROSIX, and you mentioned the word provider. Just with respect to the actual data itself, does it include, like, obviously the retail sort of data, but does it also include, like, the specialty script data for medications that could be supplied in a hospital? Does it include like Part B drugs, drugs administered in a clinic, and a skilled nursing facility? And then when you use the word provider, would that also include like facility data? So if a hospital wants to look at all of their volumes, inpatient, ambulatory, and so forth, is that also included in CROSIX, or are there plans to eventually include it there?

Yeah, the data sources, the data network, which supports CROSIX, and it also supports Compass. It does work for retail, specialty drugs, specialty pharmacy, administered in the hospital, all the types of drugs, and especially it's good at what we call complex therapies. And those are definitely ones that are, you know, you're not just going to retail pharmacy and picking them up. That's one of the very unique things about our data sourcing strategy. So, for example, in Compass, I know you asked about CrossX, but for example, in Compass, We can project data, sales data, for about 4,000 brands across retail and non-retail, and we can do that because of our data sourcing strategy. That data sourcing strategy makes us able to do great measurement and audiences also on CrossX. So in CrossX, what you're trying to do is, you know, figure out what segments you want to expose to media, and then was that effective? At which media points was that effective at driving visits to healthcare providers and then resulting in the uptake of the right medicine? So it's a pretty comprehensive data network. That's what we set out to build when we acquired CrossFit about five years ago, and it's been really, really great to see it coming to fruition now.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

And our next question comes from the line of Faith Bruner with William Blair. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I guess just diving into someone again, you said that customers are feeling good about Viva, but maybe from a broader industry perspective, what challenges were they bringing to you? What's top of mind for them? And has there been any shift when you compare the conversations you've had back in April to maybe more recent conversations you've had recently as we continue to try to navigate the changing effect?

Yeah, so I'll take that. Yeah, it's a good one. Challenges and has that shifted over time? So remember where the industry is. They've been in a place where in the commercial side, we've helped many companies be able to connect up a lot of their software systems. Now we're going through the migration process, so that's certainly a big topic of conversation. But the industry still has fragmented data. And getting the data to work together, getting the data into the software so you can make decisions and you can get insights fast about that, That is still a challenge for the industry. It's not a solved problem yet. So the topic of our, you know, Peter talked about this, connected software, connected data, that's resonating. And it's a challenge that it's very clearly an unsolved problem in the industry. And our approach to that, harmonizing the data sets, harmonizing it with the software, fundamentally solving it at a very foundational level, the data model, consistency of data. attributes and elements across all these different data sets creating this connected environment so that that's top of mind and that leads to things like helping them be more efficient helping them get insights to the right people faster to make decisions helping them do ai so that's an area and then second is we talked a lot about the excitement around ai but there's also a lot of unsolved problems in the AI space. And part of that is bringing together, or the industry hasn't yet been able to bring together very industry-specific processes with deep industry-specific AI. That's a problem that they've made investments. They haven't often seen the full return on their investment in some of the AI projects. And I think that's another area where they're excited about our ability to help them over time. So those are some specific examples.

That's helpful. Thank you.

And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Peter Gaffner for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. And thank you to our customers for your continued partnership and to the Viva team for your outstanding work in the quarter. Thank you.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.