Workiva Inc Q3 FY2021 Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Workiva Q3 2021 Conference Call. I will now hand it over to your host, Mr. Mike Rost. Please proceed, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Workiva's Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call. Today's call has been prerecorded and will include comments from our Chief Executive Officer, Marty Vanderploeg; followed by our Chief Financial Officer, Jill Klindt. We will then open the call up for a live Q&A session. Julie Iskow, our Chief Operating Officer, is also on the call. A replay of this webcast will be available until November 10, 2021. Information to access the replay is listed in today's press release, which is available on our website under the Investor Relations section. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during today's call, we will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance, including guidance for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2021 and preliminary guidance for the full fiscal year 2022. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Workiva cautions that these statements are not guarantees of future performance. All forward-looking statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and we undertake no obligation to update any statement to reflect the events that occur after this call. Please refer to the company's annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings for factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements. Also, during the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP to GAAP measures and certain additional information are also included in today's press release. With that, we will begin by turning the call over to our CEO, Marty Vanderploeg.

Hello, and thank you for joining today's call. The Workiva team delivered another strong quarter, beating third quarter guidance for revenue and operating results. We achieved 30% organic growth in subscription and support revenue and approximately 28% in total revenue. As a result, we are raising our full year guidance. Jill will provide further details about our financial results and future outlook. We continue to build on our market leadership and the increased demand for transparent reporting, including financial and ESG reporting solutions that drive digital transformations. We target being a low- to mid-20% growth company. In Q3, as in the past several quarters, we have benefited from the strong IPO market, the increase in the number of new public companies and enhanced compliance and reporting requirements. During the quarter, we saw strong bookings in capital markets, SEC, ESG and ESEF. Cap markets, ESG and ESEF are three markets, which we believe have high growth potential. We'll talk more about these fit-for-purpose solutions, our expanding TAM and our outlook for growth during our virtual Investor Day on November 18. Our differentiated technology and extraordinary talent are clearly making an impact on our customers. During the quarter, we grew our global customer base to 4,146, adding 197 net new customers. We retained our existing customers, increasing our S&S revenue retention rate to 96.5%, and our enhanced ability to cross-sell multiple solutions helped increase the number of customers with ACV over $100,000 and $150,000. We are pleased with the investment that our partners continue to make in growing their Workiva practices. During the quarter, we had a number of large partner-related wins. Some examples include: A big 4 advisory firm expanded a major healthcare company's use of our platform to include our ESG solution. The advisory firm had previously implemented insurance statutory reporting for this company. Our APAC team in partnership with a big 4 advisory firm signed its largest single opportunity with a global financial services group. The customer purchased our connected annual and interim financial reporting and tax reporting solutions. Another key partner-related win was with a large building society in Europe; the customer invested in the Workiva platform, purchasing our ESEF, financial reporting and banking solutions. Our partners also played an important role at our 2021 Workiva Amplify conference where they collectively hosted 33 of the 70 sessions. This year's virtual conference held in September was our largest yet. We welcomed 10,000 attendees from 3,700 companies across 108 countries. Next year's conference will be both virtual and in-person. Please mark your calendars to join from September 12 through 15, 2022 in Las Vegas. Workiva was recently named a leader among governance, risk and compliance platforms by Forrester Research. Our platform received the highest scores in 12 criteria, including audit management, data integration, vision and planned enhancements. We believe this placement validates our position as the global leader in the market to GRC's most significant challenges and deliver a greater return on investment for our customers. Looking ahead to 2022, we believe now is the right time to strategically invest in our business in order to deliver consistent 20-plus percent growth. Outside of SEC, we believe penetration of our TAM is still early in all solution areas. Therefore, we intend to invest to accelerate global growth, advance our product roadmap and increase demand generation. Jill will further discuss the details of our 2022 preliminary guidance. In closing, we delivered a strong third quarter, driven by the focused execution of our strategy. We continue to grow the business by attracting and retaining top talent, investing in the innovation of our platform and solutions and consistently delivering an outstanding customer experience. It continues to be an exciting time for Workiva. We believe we are well positioned and have the right strategy in place to capitalize on the increasing opportunities to power transparent reporting for a better world. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jill.

Thank you, Marty, and good afternoon, everyone. We continued to see broad-based demand for our solutions in Q3 with strong revenue performance across our solution portfolio. As Marty mentioned, we are raising guidance for full year 2021 revenue and operating results, which I will discuss later. I will talk about our results and guidance on a non-GAAP basis. Refer to our press release for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP and GAAP results and guidance. We beat Q3 2021 revenue guidance at the midpoint by $4.2 million. Higher subscription revenue accounted for the majority of the beat. We beat guidance on Q3 operating results at the midpoint by $10 million. The revenue beat mentioned above, coupled with lower T&E expense, makes up the majority of the beat on operating income. Turning to Q3 2021 results versus Q3 the year before. We generated total revenue in the third quarter of $112.7 million, showing growth of 27.9% from Q3 2020. Breaking out revenue by reporting line item, subscription and support revenue was $98.9 million, up 30.4% from Q3 2020. New logos and new solutions helped to drive strong revenue growth in Q3 2021. 69% of the increase in S&S revenue in Q3 came from new customers added in the last 12 months. Higher capital markets revenue was also a factor. Professional services revenue was $13.8 million in Q3 2021, up 12.5% from the same quarter last year. This was largely due to higher XBRL services revenue. Turning to our supplemental metrics. We finished Q3 with 4,146 customers, a net growth of 563 customers from Q3 2020 and a net growth of 197 customers from Q2 2021. Our revenue retention rates improved. Our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 96.5% for the third quarter of 2021, an increase compared to 94.9% for the same period last year. With that, our subscription and support revenue retention rate improved to 111.1% for the third quarter of 2021 compared to 110% in Q3 2020. The strength of this metric is having a positive impact on our revenue. The number of larger subscription contracts continues to show impressive growth. In the third quarter of 2021, we had 1,043 contracts valued at over $100,000 per year, up 33% from Q3 of the prior year. The number of contracts valued at over $150,000 per year totaled 541 customers in the third quarter, up 41% from Q3 2020. Moving down the P&L, gross profit totaled $87.4 million in Q3, up 30.7% from the same quarter a year ago. Consolidated gross margin was 77.6% in the latest quarter versus 75.9% in Q3 2020, a net expansion of 170 basis points. Breaking out gross profit, subscription and support gross profit totaled $84 million, equating to a gross margin of 85% on S&S revenue, an expansion of 30 basis points compared to Q3 2020, primarily driven by high S&S revenue. Professional services gross profit in the third quarter was $3.4 million, up 28% versus Q3 2020. Gross margin was 24.6%, a net expansion of 300 basis points. Research and development expense in Q3 totaled $27.2 million, up 24.9% from Q3 2020 due to headcount investments. R&D expense as a percentage of revenue improved to 24.2% in Q3 2021 from 24.7% in Q3 2020. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter increased 27.8% from Q3 2020 to $41.9 million as we make investments in support of our go-to-market strategy. General and administrative expenses totaled $13.3 million in Q3, up $4.7 million compared to Q3 2020. G&A expenses as a percentage of revenue increased to 11.8% from 9.8% in Q3 2020. We posted an operating profit of $5 million in Q3 2021 compared to an operating profit of $3.7 million in Q3 2020. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow statement. At September 30, 2021, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $522 million, a decrease of $29.3 million compared to the balance at June 30, 2021. This decrease was driven by the acquisition of OneCloud. Net cash provided from operating activities in Q3 2021 totaled $16.3 million compared with cash provided of $7.9 million in the same quarter a year ago. I'll now go over the impact from our OneCloud acquisition. Our reported results contain the full absorption of our OneCloud transaction, which was closed on July 30, 2021. As highlighted on our Q2 earnings call, this strategic acquisition added to our platform the capability to connect, harmonize and control data across multiple disparate source systems. We believe this is a long-term competitive differentiator for us. Please review our financial statements and related footnotes contained in the Q3 2021 10-Q for additional information related to the acquisition. Turning to our guidance. We are factoring in the expected impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and results of operations based on information available to us today. For the fourth quarter of 2021, we expect total revenue to range from $116.5 million to $117.5 million. We expect subscription revenue will continue to grow at a faster rate than services revenue in Q4. We expect non-GAAP operating loss to range from $2.8 million to $1.8 million. We are modeling higher travel costs and investments in growth opportunities and hiring through the remainder of 2021. For the full year 2021, we are raising guidance for revenue. We now expect total revenue to range from $439 million to $440 million. We expect non-GAAP operating income to range from $15 million to $16 million. And in 2021, we expect to post positive free cash flow for the fifth consecutive year. Turning to 2022, our current 2022 assumptions are dependent on a variety of factors that are subject to change, and that we believe are appropriately conservative for the current environment. We expect to provide formal 2022 guidance on our Q4 2021 call next year. On a preliminary basis, we expect total revenue to exceed $528 million in 2022. We expect the growth rate of subscription and support revenue will continue to outpace the growth rate of professional services revenue. We expect non-GAAP operating loss as a percentage of revenue to be in the low single digits for 2022. This conservative guidance for operating margin includes new investments in sales and marketing, geographic expansion and research and development as we intend to take advantage of growth in new markets and an expanding TAM. This guidance takes into account the return of expenses that were reduced by COVID, primarily travel costs. I am very proud of our team's continued performance and would like to thank all our employees for their hard work and incredible dedication. We will now take your questions.

Your first question comes from the line of Matt Stotler from William Baird.

It's great to see positive results in the initial guidance for 2022, which is very helpful. To start, we'd like to explore the business model further. There are many encouraging aspects related to demand drivers. Are there any key factors you're considering that contribute to your confidence and visibility regarding the $528-plus million projection for next year?

Matt, thank you for the question. Marty, go ahead.

Go ahead, Jill. Go ahead, Jill.

We are optimistic about our growth for next year and recognize that investment will be essential to achieve it. We are eager to see growth across our solution portfolio, as mentioned by Marty earlier in the call. We aim for $528 million in revenue as a conservative estimate for our growth. We will continue to invest in all areas to support this growth strategy. Marty?

Well, I would just add that we're seeing good growth on all our solutions. And like I always say, the portfolio approach gives us a lot of stability, and we have pretty good visibility at that number that you mentioned, the $528 million. Obviously, our goal is always to do better. That's our history and track record. We're always going to try to push the envelope and do everything we can. But we like to put numbers out there that we're very confident in. And that's the true mark of a management team, do what you say and say what you do. So that's really what's reflected there.

Got it. That's very helpful. I have a follow-up regarding international expansion. It seems like you mentioned not only ongoing investment and growth but also a strong current performance. Can you provide any insights into the ESEF opportunity and the progress being made there? You indicated that this might be a bit more back-end loaded in terms of linearity for this year. Are you still observing that trend? Additionally, in international markets outside of ESEF, is there any demand for additional solutions at this time?

I've always said that in the enterprise software business, you rarely see rapid growth. ESEF is progressing as we anticipated. From the start, we've noted that most ESEF solution providers will be affordable add-ons that integrate at the end of the process. Over time, we expect our platform to gain traction, as evidenced in the state. ESEF presents a strong opportunity for us; while it currently represents a small part of our overall portfolio, it has significant long-term growth potential. This business will continue to expand for years, similar to our SEC business, which is still experiencing growth. It is just one of several factors contributing to our overall growth platform. Additionally, we're beginning to notice some movement in ESG initiatives in Europe, and we're optimistic about our solutions in both the EMEA and APAC regions.

Next up, we have Terry Tillman from Truist.

Marty, Jill and Mike, congrats from me as well. I had a couple of questions. The first might be a little bit of a multi-parter, so bear with me. On the capital market side, you did call that out. Any more quantification you can provide in terms of its contribution to new bookings or billings? And then on those transactions, is that recurring? Or is that more of a one-time thing and then you hope to get them for SEC reporting and other things thereafter? And then I had a follow-up.

Yes. I would say that capital markets was one of our stronger solutions, but it didn't overshadow everything else. There is a fairly balanced revenue stream each quarter, and they are all in a similar range, not drastically different. We did see an increase, but we still have less than 10% market share, which presents an opportunity for growth. The recurring nature of it is more complicated. Often, we engage with companies while they are still private, which allows us to see some revenue streams early on. Other times, they contact us specifically for capital markets. Regardless, when we are contacted, we typically secure them for SEC reporting and a high percentage for stock-related services after we complete the capital markets work. Frequently, they also sign up for management reporting, and if they are in financial services, they often explore additional offerings. Thus, while capital markets can generate a temporary boost, other solutions reinforce that growth soon after. In many cases, we don’t even experience a decline in sales. It’s complex, but it's beneficial for promoting all our solutions. Therefore, we plan to continue growing our market share. We are beginning to see a significant shift where attorneys recognize our presence and reliability as a solid partner. When users return a few times, they tend to keep coming back, which makes us optimistic. Did I address both of your questions, Terry? I seem to have lost track there.

You did. You did a nice job on that, and that was great. It sounds like, yes, quite often you can at least be made whole, if not potentially expand with these other built-for-purpose solutions. So that's great, Marty. And then a follow-up question for whoever wants to take it is just on the ESG side. I'm curious in terms of, is it still a lot of kicking of the tires or are you now seeing broad-based conversion now to beyond kicking tires and ready to buy a solution? And then kind of related to that is, is there any parallel with the ESEF market where maybe there's a stop-gap or something or just throwing people at the reporting area? Or is there any parallels with that?

So we've been out with our ESG solution for about a quarter or so now, and we are absolutely seeing strong momentum. And yes, I think you're probably aware in the 2023 filing year. There is a regulatory requirement to have ESG and ESEF in the same annual report. So that lends to some of the momentum as well. So we are out in the market with the product. We are moving strongly and absolutely seeing trends of momentum.

Next up, we have Rob Oliver from Baird.

A question for you guys is on the partner side; some really nice deal momentum, Marty, that you alluded to that were partner-driven. It sounds like those initiatives are taking hold and you guys spent some time, I know profiling that and amplify as well. Just curious what you're seeing in those partner deals, any patterns that might be evolving? Do they tend to be larger? Do they tend to be more multiproduct on the land? Are they part of larger digital transformation initiatives? Just any color you could provide there would be great. And then I just had a quick follow-up as well.

Certainly, part of our strategy is to expand this partner ecosystem. And the goal, of course, is to sell higher, sell broader, and sell more. We want to be everywhere those strong advisory partners, our alliances, they are in financial and digital transformation. And certainly, our platform is absolutely fit for purpose for those financial and digital transformation. So yes, to everything you said that is absolutely part of the strategy that we have, and we are seeing trends in that direction.

Great. And my follow-up is going to be for you. So I appreciate that. Just on the ESG side, a follow-up to Terry's question. Obviously, we've got the mandate in Europe, but it does strike me that we are beginning to see some thought leaders in the U.S. start to pursue ESG strategies outside of a mandate. And just was curious, given how strong you guys are in North America, what you're seeing in terms of color? I know we don't expect that market to kind of inflect the way our build being mandate-driven, but just curious if you're seeing any activity levels there or ESG attach in the U.S. on top of the core Workiva platform.

The regulatory environment is still developing, and we are just beginning our journey in ESG. While we are present in the market, we are collaborating with partners and customers to refine our solution. We are enhancing our development capabilities to ensure our solution meets market needs. We are at the beginning stages, and the market is also just starting to evolve. However, our pipeline is strong and we are observing significant traction. Companies are focusing on ESG not solely due to regulatory requirements in North America, but because there is a growing demand for transparency and accountability from various stakeholders, including shareholders, communities, employees, and customers. As a result, companies are striving to differentiate themselves through their ESG strategies, aiming to provide stakeholders with the information they seek to demonstrate their efforts in the market. We are witnessing increasing momentum and an expanding pipeline. Nevertheless, this is a long-term endeavor, and we are still in the early phases in this market.

I would just add that Julie's point is really well taken. I mean, we're seeing as much activity in North America as we are in Europe. And it looks so much like the early days for SEC. We have a close rate that's pretty healthy. But then everyone we talk to is very interested, and it's not a matter of if, it's generally a matter of when. So really, even though it's very, very early days, North American activity is just as strong as EMEA.

Next up, we have Tom Roderick from Stifel.

Congratulations on the great results. The ongoing momentum here looks fantastic. So I'm hearing some great things coming out of international. And I know you don't quantify it typically until the end of the year. Maybe we can start with APAC. I mean, Marty, you highlighted a handful of logo wins in the APAC region. I think you have a very large global financial services win. Talk a little bit about what your go-to-market looks like over there and perhaps what you can say to what the scale of that looks like in APAC or just generally some of the success levels what's driving that there in that part of the world and then we get to Europe after that.

Well, APAC is, by far, the most, the newest or most immature market we have. We have a small team of people there, but they've closed some really nice deals over the last year. And we sort of roll with and get some really good anchor accounts, reference accounts in the territory before we invest heavily. And so we've accomplished that. We've seen a mixture of solutions there, and the go-to-market is very much partner-oriented. Even though the numbers are small, they have the highest percentage of partner attachment rate. We have direct sellers. We have all the same types of people there we have in any place in terms of solution engineers, consultants, SAs, all that stuff, but for the partners play an outsized role in that. And it's still early days. And as far as I'm concerned, that's good news because we got a lot of runway left there. So I'm very bullish about APAC, and I'm happy with everything that's going on there.

Wonderful. And then EMEA, I know even going back as far as last year, you were ramping up the headcount in that region pretty aggressively. I think even if we go back to this quarter last year, you talked about 25% of your new logo wins, if I remember, were from the EMEA region. Would love to hear just a little bit more of an update. I know ESEF, you mentioned, is a little bit more back-end loaded this year; that's understandable. But talk a little bit about what you're doing to build pipeline to add headcount. Are you still being as aggressive in adding new heads? And just generally, again, on the go-to-market and leadership in that region, how you feel about all those things?

I'm really pleased with the growth we've experienced by establishing our team and getting things underway. Whenever there's rapid growth, there is a learning curve, and that's well understood in this industry. Overall, we have successfully hired talented individuals, and we are witnessing ongoing growth in bookings. The figures are reaching a point where they are significantly contributing to the achievement of our goals, which is very encouraging. We plan to continue increasing our workforce. With the focus on ESG initiatives, the ESEF operation, and the abundance of financial services, including SEC reporting, there are numerous opportunities in that area. Our investment will persist, and we anticipate that 25% to 30% of our revenues will originate from this sector. Increasing that percentage has been challenging due to North America's slower progress, which has effectively raised the overall benchmark, which is a positive development. However, looking beyond percentages to absolute figures, I am satisfied with progress in the EMEA region, particularly in our ability to hire quality talent and get them productive. I remain very optimistic, even though it's still early. The GDP in that region aligns closely with that of the U.S., and given that they face even more regulations, the opportunities are significant. As I assess our growth prospects, it's still in the early stages, and we have several solutions that are just beginning to gain traction in two of the largest global regions. This provides us with ample room for growth.

Next, we have Alex Sklar from Raymond James.

Marty or Julie, I wanted to ask on the existing customer growth, the growth of 100,000 pay customers. It's been really strong, again, this year. I'm curious how much of it is being driven by new logos coming in above that level from day one versus expansion? And then as a follow-up, one of the things we've talked about in the past is; you've got 1,000 of those 100,000 customers and saying that another way, it still means there are 3,000 customers that are basically only taking one of your solutions. So can you just remind us about your strategy around the expansion motion more broadly?

Sure. I'll let Julie take the first shot at that one. Julie, I think you're on mute.

I will take the first question on the multi-solution. We do continue to increase our effort and our focus around account expansion. And while, of course, we started out as an individual or a single-solution company, we are now selling more and more multi-solution deals, and we're also selling additional solutions into existing accounts. And Marty talked earlier about the private to public journey where we can sell multiple solutions to a company going through that. It's our private financial reporting solution, controls management, and SEC. So we have bundles that we are focused on. So we are putting a lot of attention now to the multi-solution. But you're right, we did again start out as that single solution.

Yes. And I would add that to the very first question you had, it's roughly 50-50 new solutions. It could be 40-60. I didn't look at it, to be honest. But new solutions and existing solutions that go over that number because of adding solutions. So just like everything, we tend to be pretty balanced there. And it isn't just one solution either; it's all over the board or one market. So it's pretty broad-based, and we're really pleased to see that ACV just keeping to keep growing.

Okay. Got it. Very helpful color. And then just following up on the ESG questions from Rob and Terry. And I do get the aspect that we don't have formal rules from the SEC. But could you just help frame the range of kind of deal sizes that you're seeing today? Is it going to be looking something similar to stocks or perhaps kind of larger than that? What are you kind of seeing in the market now?

We're in the early stages, so it's difficult to accurately measure. On average, the deal sizes are slightly below our overall annual contract value. However, we're noticing large deals that reach six figures and smaller deals with smaller companies. There is a significant variation, but I think the overall outcome will align closely with our annual contract value for the entire portfolio, which makes us very optimistic. Additionally, the number of potential clients in that market remains strong. If consumers and capital markets are behaving positively, even private companies will need to step up their efforts. The beneficial aspect is that many organizations will seek to establish some form of ESG statement, not just for-profit entities but also government agencies and nonprofits.

Probably also worth noting that we are taking a partner approach and partner-first approach with ESG. And as we talked about earlier with the transformation, these are higher up and broader, larger deals.

The promising aspect is that we are starting from a relatively high point, and we will learn to improve it over time as we become better at defining our value and adding features to the software to enhance that value. Therefore, it is likely that our average Annual Contract Value will eventually be a bit higher, although we are currently starting slightly below that level.

Next up, we have Andrew DeGasperi from Berenberg.

In terms of the 2022 guidance, I'm unclear if I understood correctly, but do you factor in any capital markets activity or activity from EMEA in that number? Should we view that as anything that would be additional?

There's very little activity in the capital markets right now, so I don't think we are projecting much there. Do we, Jill?

We incorporate a small amount of capital market activity in our model. If the market performs exceptionally well, we could see some upside in that area, so there would be a little impact on the 2022 figures. Is that correct?

Yes. I was just going to say that we have not had any focus on doing cap markets business in APAC or EMEA. A couple of deals drifted in, but certainly, that's something that is not modeled anymore than it's traditionally been and something we're looking at for potentially investing.

Got it. And then just a follow-up on that. In terms of your flagship solution for SEC reporting, you have high market share numbers there. I was curious to know when we might see that business mature or if you think you can sustain the current level of growth for that product for a longer period of time.

Well, I would have had a different answer for you a year ago. It's become very fashionable to be public again. They've added, I think, 600 or 700 new public companies in the last year plus. And so that's given a lot of potential for us to attack those customers. Now typically, they go with the cap markets provider initially. And so we got some of those, but there's a large majority of those to chase. So we anticipate good growth in that market for a couple, three, four years depending on how long this the whole cap markets and going public stays involved.

Thank you. Next up, we have Stan Zlotsky.

You have Demian on from Morgan Stanley here for Stan. It would be really helpful for us to sort of understand how do you guys feel about the balance in terms of the value that you're delivering to your customers from your products versus how much you're able to monetize those products across your customer base? And then I also have a second question following up to that.

That's a very insightful question; it's always a key consideration. Looking back at our history, the average SEC deal we had when we first began was $25,000, and now it's over three times that amount. As a company, we’ve learned to identify where the value lies, communicate it effectively, and spread the word. As we assess the value, we implement price increase programs and monitor them closely. When we begin to notice feedback regarding these price increases or experience actual customer turnover, we realize we might be approaching a limit. We have gone through this process with a few of our solutions and feel confident in our approach. Specifically for ESEF, we have a solid understanding of its long-term value proposition and what we can achieve from those solutions, which will exceed our current revenue. We expect to follow a similar trend. For ESG, we are still in the early stages and are working on defining its value. There are many aspects to consider in that process, and we anticipate collaborating not just with delivery partners, but with technical partners as well, given the complexity involved. We will keep a close eye on this and aim to optimize our monetization strategy.

Understood. Maybe building upon that a little bit, how are you guys evolving the capital markets front?

You mean from a value point of view?

Yes.

When you're new in the market, you often try to leverage pricing, but our prices have been consistently increasing for that work. There was a recent press release from Wilson Sonsini, one of the top IPO law firms, with whom we're partnered; they're essentially utilizing our tool as a managed service. As more people recognize the value in this area, we're seeing our capacity to charge rise. This represents a different approach compared to financial printers, who charge a base price and then increase it through change orders. It's important to acclimate customers to the idea that our fees won't triple. Despite these dynamics, we're beginning to achieve higher deal values, with some deals two to three times our initial amounts. We're gaining a better understanding and acceptance in the market. This is why we plan to invest; we usually wait until we have enough market presence before expanding our marketing and sales efforts, which we intend to do this year.

Understood. Great. And just for my second question, in terms of net revenue retention, I know you guys don't guide to it, but as we think about sort of Q4 in 2022, how do you see sort of net revenue retention as we finish up the year and roll over like the development of it and how we should be thinking about it for our modeling purposes?

So we put a lot of focus on retaining existing customers. And as we move through our pricing change in 2019, moving to solution-based licensing. And as we put last year, we put our new platform into place across our customer base. We did see some dips there on both of our retention metrics. But you've seen this year that we've had some nice upticks, and we do think that the programs that we put in place around making sure that our customers are engaging with the platform and getting in there and using the functionality at the ability, as Julie talked about a little bit earlier, around adding on additional solutions and looking at ways to bundle different solutions, the more that we can get customers in and using our platform, we really do feel like it's going to be a positive message. We don't have specific guidance around that right now, but we do expect that it will remain strong with these things that we're putting in place.

Next, we have Mike Grondahl from Northland Capital.

It's Mike standing in for Mike. Most of my answer, or perhaps just briefly regarding the marketplace, is there anything noteworthy about the launch earlier this year and its traction?

Yes. We did launch our marketplace in July. So we've been out in the market now for just a few months, but we are seeing increased engagement and traffic month over month, and we continue to increase the assets and the content, and it's going well. We're pleased with the results at this point.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may all disconnect.