DocuSign, Inc.
Q4 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 11 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining DocuSign’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal '21 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and will be available for replay from the Investor Relations section of the website following the call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. I will now pass the call over to Annie Leschin, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Annie Leschin:]

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to DocuSign's fourth quarter and full year fiscal year '21 earnings conference call.

[Dan Springer:]

Thanks, Annie. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter earnings call for fiscal 2021.

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Thanks, Dan, and good afternoon, everyone. In a monumental year, DocuSign helped many customers overcome challenges and transform their businesses to adapt to the new and changing environment. The strong demand for digital workflow accelerated our continued growth at scale and heightened our focus on execution and operations to meet our customers' needs. We capped off an exceptional year for DocuSign with strong results for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year, driven by robust new customer growth and expansions, primarily for our core eSignature offerings. For the fourth quarter, total revenue increased 57% year-over-year to $431 million, and subscription revenue grew 59% year-over-year to $410 million. For the full year, total revenue reached $1.45 billion, an increase of 49% over last year, and subscription revenue hit $1.38 billion, an increase of 50%. Our international revenue increased an impressive 83% year-over-year to $89 million in the fourth quarter, ticking up 21% of total revenue. For the full year, international revenue grew over 67% to $287 million, reflecting accelerated expansion across geographies. For the first time, we reached over $0.5 billion in quarterly billings as Q4 rose 46% year-over-year to $535 million. This resulted in a 56% trailing four-quarter average, consistent with last quarter's average. For the full year, billings increased $1.7 billion. Q4 customer additions continued at a robust pace as we added over 70,000 new customers. This brings our total installed base to nearly 892,000 customers worldwide, an increase of 51% over last year and more than double the number of new additions compared with fiscal '20.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Sterling Auty with JP Morgan.

[Sterling Auty:]

Yes. Thanks. Hi, guys. Just curious terms of what you're seeing on the new customers that are coming on board to this platform, what ones are taking some of the advanced features for the SpringCM capabilities versus just plain eSignature?

[Dan Springer:]

Is that specifically you're thinking about vertical, geography? What dimensions would be most useful for you?

[Sterling Auty:]

No, across the board. So, what kind of penetration? So, what's the take rate for kind of the additional contract management and just kind of contract cloud in the new customers coming on?

[Dan Springer:]

So, it's still a relatively small piece. If you think about what's happened really throughout the year, as we talked about all year, with COVID, we saw a dramatic move with a lot of acceleration in digital transformation to those sort of entry type applications and signature is just a fantastic way for people not to get -- not only an incredibly high ROI but to quickly get that transformation they need in their business and be able to be effectively in the anywhere economy. So, I think that has not changed. And if you look at things like CLM, where there is a longer purchase sort of cycle where people require a statement of work or professional services to implement, those definitely were slowed through this year, relative to where they were in the prior year. Our view, though, coming out of fiscal year 21, particularly coming out of Q4 here, is we're seeing that the build, the pipeline build again. And so, we're quite optimistic that we're going to see sort of that reacceleration that we saw a little over a year ago with CLM in particular. And then -- and the sense we're seeing that is, it's going to be not so much in our smallest or largest customers, but it's going to go more quickly in those mid-market or commercial businesses where it tends to be a little bit more fast-moving than the largest enterprises, but having a little bit more scale and need for a full CLM-like solution than our SMB . So, that's where we see that developing.

[Sterling Auty:]

Great. And then, one just quick follow-up. You mentioned and talked about the remote notary. What's the timing on when we might see that in the market, and where are some of the first use cases that you think you'll see the adoption?

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. So, what we see right now is that we've gone through the beta, which we've been really pleased with, and we're moving this month to get a sort of a limited release. We're going to be focused on financial services companies, the use case. And remember, the first piece we're coming out was this first-party notary. So, that's -- which we think is the significantly larger part of the total market. First party is when companies have their own effective notary. So, they're actually notarizing documents with their and usually consumers with an in-house or internal notary. And then, third party, where people are using sort of a notary is coming to bring two people together that doesn't work for either of them, which is a smaller part, we'll have that by the end of the year out into release.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Stan Zlotsky with Morgan Stanley.

[Stan Zlotsky:]

Perfect. Thank you so much, guys. And congratulations on a very strong end to the year. Maybe the first one from my end. Cynthia, you mentioned the guidance for fiscal '22. When you talk about the methodology that you approach to setting guidance for the year, is there anything different on how you approached it versus perhaps how you guys initially looked at fiscal '21? And what are some of the puts and takes that you considered in setting your guidance, mainly for billings because that's the metric that investors will care most about? And then, I have a quick follow-up.

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Sure. Yes. I mean, our guidance philosophy has been super consistent since the time we went public. We guide to what we can see. And it's largely data-driven. So, we use everything from pipeline and demand trends to close rates to looking at kind of the net new that we added during the year, and looking at kind of the upsell trends and expansion trends within there. So, it's quite data-driven, and we guide to what we can see. And it's been very consistent from that perspective.

[Stan Zlotsky:]

Got it. So, as far as just considering how the business could trend into fiscal '22, as we're lapping the pandemic, sounds like you applied the same type of lens as any other year as far as the conservatism that's baked into those estimates or anything along those lines?

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Sure. Yes. I think -- I mean, we think the guide is reasonable. And just given how quickly the Company has grown at scale, right, our business today is 50% bigger than it was a year ago. Earlier in our fiscal year, we had crossed the $1 billion in revenue mark, and now, we're quickly coming up on $1.5 billion going to $2 billion. And so, when you think about growth at scale, we are looking at that closely because we're just growing solidly off a much bigger base. And so, we're watching that closely and the different metrics that we're seeing. I think, the pandemic certainly adds an additional layer of complexity, just given the number of customers we've had, the demand and acceleration of demand we've been seeing. And that's all reflected in the guide for the year.

[Stan Zlotsky:]

Perfect. And then, a very quick follow-up for Dan. The international growth numbers, I mean, they continue to really show an outstanding momentum. And if I recall correctly, I think it's actually accelerating slightly off the Q3 pace. What's really driving the international adoption? What's out there? What are you seeing out there that may be a little bit different than what you're seeing in the U.S.? That's it from me. Thank you.

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. I mean, I think, the answer is, it's very broad-based. One of the things that was really interesting for us finishing up the year, and you don't get to say this very often, but same thing happened in Q3, happened in Q4, every single geography that we're in outside of the U.S. and for that matter, the U.S., exceeded its plan. And it's just in my experience, that's something that's pretty special and pretty rare to happen. And so, we don't think there's a particular type of geography, either the common law or civil law or sort of EMEA versus Asia Pac. We're just seeing it across the board. And Stan, my view is what's happening here, it's actually quite interesting. If you think about a year ago, we shared this result where we sort of laid the growth of DocuSign in the U.S. over its size when it was same size where international business was and looked at that growth, and they're actually quite close. And so, I think what's happening here is that the U.S. business, when it was much smaller, grew at a higher rate. And so, now, we're seeing this happen in our international business. So, it's not really surprising to us, and it's nothing that's sort of changing in the marketplace. I think we're just realizing it's a very large TAM opportunity outside of the U.S., and we're starting to really hit that growth curve in the way we'd like to be hitting it, and we're optimistic we're going to continue to see that through the year ahead.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Pat Walravens with JMP Securities.

[Pat Walravens:]

Great. Thank you. I have two, if I can. One for each of you. Dan, I mean, I think, in the county that I live in, across the bay from you, I think we're up to 26% or 27% of the people haven't gotten their first shot. So, I'm just wondering if you -- as February and March have started here, is there any change in the demand environment, based on more of a return to normalcy.

[Dan Springer:]

We haven't seen anything. I don't know whether we would be a leading or a lagging indicator, Pat. But, we haven't seen anything in our business that suggests that that will change. Now, if you recall, we said this about starting about three quarters ago that our forecast on this is that the people that have come with new customers or new use cases to DocuSign that are COVID-19 centric, they're not going back. People aren't going back to paper, not going back to manual process. So, the real question, I think, is interesting in your question is, will that rate of new people coming to us change with -- as we start to move into some sort of return to “normalcy”. We haven't seen any change yet, and maybe that the change isn't enough, and there's not enough new activity to have driven the change in the demand environment. But, at this point, yes, we haven't seen a change yet.

[Pat Walravens:]

All right. Perfect. And then, I'm not sure which of you wants to address this. But, I think it's super interesting as I'm looking back at my model and in April of 2019, so Q1 of fiscal '20, net dollar retention was 112%, and it's gone up seven quarters in a row. What is driving that? I mean, that's not all the pandemic, right? Why has it gone up seven quarters in a row?

[Dan Springer:]

We're looking at each other. I'll start and let Cynthia finish with the good stuff. But, I think, the real answer is we made a significant investment in customer success is really the short off the bat. We've always been a customer success company. And starting about a year before that, so about three years ago, I think we realized we could do more. And it's not just our customer success organization and the CSMs that I think are so powerful, although they are fantastic and they're a huge part of it. But I think culturally, we really have just sort of forced all of our employees to say we need to be a customer success company, and it's great because it's wonderful for the SaaS economics, as you articulated. But two, it's great because it makes employees proud to work here. It makes them proud to be at a company that says, of course, we're going to make money. We're a business, but we want to be part of something bigger than that, and we want to be proud about that. And so, I really think that investment is now yielding those results.

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Yes. I would just add, if you have to remember that our customers start out small and then they grow over time. And so, when you think about the number of customers that we've added over the past couple of years and this year, in particular, they start out small, they expand as they use the product. And as Dan said, we've invested a lot in customer success to help them become successful on the platform. And so, that's certainly driving that number as the denominator gets bigger, the numerator is also getting bigger as customers use the products more.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Karl Keirstead with UBS.

[Karl Keirstead:]

Thank you. Dan and Cynthia, just on the 4Q billings performance, it came pretty close to the pin relative to the prior quarters where DocuSign had put up pretty strong double-digit beats against the high end. I'm just wondering if anything felt a little different in the fourth quarter, maybe there was some timing or other factors? Thank you.

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Yes. So, we talked about this a little bit on the Q3 call. So, Q3 was exceptionally strong, based on timing of deals and some early renewals that came in, in Q3. And so, Q4 was a strong growth as well at 46%, albeit it wasn't as strong as the Q3 growth. So, there was nothing unusual in the quarter. I would just remind you that on billings, they can fluctuate more, just given the nature of that metric and the timing of deals. And so, we continue to encourage folks to look at that four-quarter average that smooths out the changes quarter-to-quarter. And if you take that lens and apply it to Q4, it was really right in line with the last couple of quarters in that trailing average.

[Karl Keirstead:]

Got it. Okay. That's helpful, Cynthia. And then, maybe a follow-up for you. I know, typically, when you start the fiscal year, you give your operating margin guidance, but maybe not the cash flow guidance. But, as you pointed out, the adjusted free cash flow margins in fiscal '21 were 20% relative to your operating margins of 12%. Should, as we model free cash in fiscal '22, use something similar to that correlation, or might there be something unusual in fiscal 22, such that it will look a little bit different?

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Yes. So, we don't guide to cash flow. But, I think, when you look at kind of the Q4 and for the year, the cash flow, and we gave all those numbers in the release, right, the convertible notes that we took down in Q4. On an adjusted basis, the cash flow was actually quite compelling. Even without the adjustment, we're showing just a lot of leverage in the model, similar to the operating margin, right? Now, we'll continue to invest in growth. So, I wouldn't anticipate anything in fiscal '22 out of the ordinary. My sense is, we'll continue to demonstrate that leverage. But, if we can invest for growth, we will. And that's one of the reasons we did the financing in January was really to give us that operating flexibility.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from the line of Bhavan Suri with William Blair.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Hey everyone. This is actually Jake on for Bhavan. Congrats on a great quarter. So, just touching again on the capital allocation strategy in this year. How can we be thinking about that in terms of similar tuck-in acquisitions to what we've seen in the past? And then, just as a follow-up, would love to hear about how you're thinking about the competitive landscape, given the recent acquisitions from Box and Dropbox in the space?

[Dan Springer:]

Yes, absolutely. I don't think we see any dramatic change to our thinking on M&A strategy. I think, we love to build stuff ourselves. We have a fantastic product development team here. And the vast, vast majority of all the product that we have, the stuff that we've built internally. But from time to time, and Seal would be a good example of this from last year. We look out and we see, wow, some folks are really ahead of where we are, not just on some product development, in this case, in artificial intelligence and advanced analytics, but also, they just have some domain expertise. It would take us a long time to build that. So, we've seen some really nice tuck-in acquisitions that are relatively small compared to our revenue or compared to our market valuation. But, we think meaningful in accelerating that Agreement Cloud strategy that we have. I think, we're probably thinking about things the same way. It's possible we could go a year not do any deals, but we didn't see anything that we needed, and we could also do, as we did last year, a couple of deals or more. It's fantastic to have Cynthia in the seat of CFO now with all of her banking experience prior to becoming a CFO that I suppose gives us more perspective on different things we might look at in that way. But just at the highest level, I think it's sort of the same that we did last year is probably what you should expect going forward, because we're not doing anything fundamentally differently. I would say that we are looking at doing a few more investments. And again, Seal is a wonderful example of a company we invested in and got closer to them. So, we felt we were really setting ourselves up for a highly successful integration and acquisition there. And I think, you may see us do more of that in the future, increase the number of small investments we're making in companies we see in the broadly defined Agreement Cloud space, and then potentially have those as acquisition opportunities. The second part of your question around the competitive landscape, we don't think there's been any change. We always say very aggressively, when we think about competition, we fundamentally think about paper. When we think about paper and manual processes, we are so early into this game in terms of where the TAM is. The vast, vast majority of all of our growth is coming from new field expansion. From time to time, people want to upgrade, particularly in signature, we'll see that or someone will want to move from a less advanced sort of smaller feature set provider. But again, the bulk of us is building this new market. So, I don't think that's changing. We always, of course, take careful looks when someone buys, someone that's in one of our spaces. Box is a partner of ours, and we continue to want to partner with them. We have a very open model. And this won't change our approach to that relationship at all.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI.

[Kirk Materne:]

Dan, you obviously have a huge cohort of new customers coming up for renewal over the next couple of quarters. What's the conversation like the year after you signed someone up? Meaning, is that really a of leverage where conversation might go from a departmental conversation to enterprise-wide conversation, or is that the time that you start being able to sort of introduce some newer functionality of products? I'm just kind of curious about how you and the sales organization talk about sort of the next step with a lot of these customers that came on this year, because it would seem to be an opportunity to sort of go beyond maybe the pandemic-related sort of decisions they had to make, meaning these could be really nice expansion deals for you all over the next two to three quarters.

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. I think, that's exactly how we look at it. I'd tell you, the answer to your question is a high level, of course, it depends, right? There's quite a range. We absolutely have some customers before they make it to a year realize they're exceeding the capacity that they purchase from us. And we do early renewals even before the year. That's a small percentage of them. One year mark is a great opportunity to take stock with our customers and say, what's your sort of utilization of the capacity you have to date with signature. And again, the vast, vast majority of people start with us, with signature. And then, is there opportunities, as you said, to go to additional departments, sometimes it's phenomenon. It's just more use cases in the same department. They brought in some back office use cases in the HR department, but they have more that they could use, separate from going to finance or going to the front office. And then, of course, the thing that we're kind of really excited about with the Agreement Cloud is starting to have those successful customers start the conversation about the broader product portfolio. And so, I think, we'll have all of the above. I do believe we're going to see two phenomenon at a high level this year. One, a lot of people that kind of came to us last year and have been successful in adopting, they're also going to need to take a little bit of a breather because they've been going so fast in this remote setting, now they're coming back on board, and they've sort of put off a lot of other projects. So, we have heard CIOs say that they've got a backlog now of things they need to get done because the pandemic made it very difficult for them to get certain projects done. And at the same time, I think we're going to see a lot of people who are saying, wow, I'm really glad I got started with this digital transformation, and I want more of it. And so, they're going to want to accelerate even the expectations they may have had for that pace to change. So, when you put all that mix together, it's fairly complex. But, it leaves us feeling we're going to have a considerable cross and upsell opportunity this year. And those incremental customers, significant customer, new adds that Cynthia talked about earlier from last year, over the course of this year, particularly the second half of this year, when a lot of those renewals come up, should be a great cross-sell opportunity.

[Kirk Materne:]

And if I could sneak just a really quick second one in. What's sort of your thought process on your partner relationships with some of the bigger GSIs, now that we're hopefully getting back to a more sort of normalized world? Is this a year where you think you can make sort of a bigger step forward in having those partners build bigger practices on you, especially around sort of the broader Agreement Cloud, or is that maybe even a counter ‘22 event? Thanks.

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. So, I'll be as candid as I can. So, we're enthusiastic, but we're also very cognizant of the fact that those are relationships to work at scale to take time to develop. Historically, as we've shared, the really large GSIs sort of looked at us and said, we aspire to someday be able to do more with DocuSign because we love the brand, we love the products, but there wasn't as much of an economic opportunity, particularly with signature only. And quite frankly, they came back and said, your software is too easy to use. It doesn't create enough economic opportunity for us. And we totally got it. And now, they're starting to look, as you said, the broader Agreement Cloud, and there's a lot of enthusiasm building there. But, if you said this year and we think about our sort of SI strategy, this year, fiscal year ‘22, I believe the bulk of the success we will get will be with the regional SIs this year but really starting to make traction with the GSIs. And probably next year is the year where I would be disappointed if we weren't really hitting the ground running with the GSIs, because they all want to be DocuSign partners. We just got to get that model right, so it can be significant enough for them for their business model.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Rob Owens with Piper Sandler.

[Rob Owens:]

I guess, I want to drill down a little bit more on the international front. And since I can't really ask a question to Mike Sheridan, ask a question about. Just in terms of -- any changes relative to go-to-market sales process? And as you look at a lot of the major geographies out there, where are they in terms of the maturity or relative to the U.S. and what you're seeing? Are there different competitors that you run into regional? Just regard where the overall opportunity is

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. Well, Rob, let me -- I'll try to channel Mike for you best I can because I guess I should use a much deeper voice if I'm going to channel Mike. But the construct, I would say, is the work that we talked about the last couple of quarters was really the success that we needed in Europe was around coordination. We've grown very quickly. And we realized we wanted to put additional leadership to support the international growth because we weren't coordinated as well as we could across our own organization, so that our marketing team working with our sales teams, our sales teams working with our success and professional services teams, and we had real opportunity. And we've been pleased with that result. And we want to continue to have that focus and investment. There wasn't anything I'd say fundamentally broken with the business, but we did have some opportunity for better coordination. And I think that has helped us. But, I think in the end, as you heard us talk about earlier, at the beginning of the call, what's happened in international is it's coming into its own, and it's sitting at scale, just like we had the scale growth in our domestic business several years before. From a standpoint of the types of investments, I do think we will continually look at additional markets where we could have a bigger presence in those markets. Because of our web and mobile business, we sell well over 100 countries. But, we have these eight focus countries that we've put most of our effort against. And we continue to think that's the right strategy because there's just a lot more growth in those markets. But, over the course of this year, I would not be surprised to see us come forward and say another country or even two that we're going to sort of add to that list of the focus eight and start to go deeper. And then the last piece, I'd say, we are really investing aggressively in our digital strategy, which, of course, is global in nature. And I think it can be a significant part of growing our international business because that reach can get up to close to 200 countries. And we want to be leveraging that investment aggressively as part of international.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Rishi Jaluria with D.A. Davidson.

[Rishi Jaluria:]

Hey, Dan and Cynthia. Thanks so much for taking my questions. It's nice to see the business momentum continuing. I got two questions. First, just following up on the conversation on international. You really ramped up international hiring. Where are you ramping up your headcount the most? Is it on sales coverage? Is it on leadership product side or other areas? And maybe alongside that, Dan, you talked about your kind of eight focused countries. As I look at the slide you laid out in your slide deck, on international traction, it seems like there's a huge opportunity in Asia, and really, Japan is the only country that you had a good amount of success there. But, it seems like there's a really big opportunity. What needs to happen to get real success in that Asia, ex-Japan region? And any lessons that you could take from the, I think, surprising, at least to me, success you've had in Brazil, into those territories? And then, I got a follow-up.

[Dan Springer:]

Sure. Yes. In terms of the investment by category, it's sales and customer success. I mean, the core field is what we have built. And we're not -- we have product people in Europe and Paris, but the bulk of what we're building is the core field and then the support organizations, like marketing, like finance, like legal that are going to really support those teams in their growth. But, the core of it is sales and customer success. And then in terms of your question specifically about Asia and Asia Pacific, so I think we -- two things. One, we have -- historically thinking of the Asia Pacific market as all other and then Japan. We're actually starting to look at it now as a JPAC mindset. And we're increasingly looking at bringing leadership in to cover across those two businesses. A lot of software companies have very distinct Japanese businesses, and there's a lot of good reasons for that, the nature of how that economy works. But we think we have opportunity to be more successful broadly in Southeast Asia, if we leverage the strength we have in Japan and the strength we have had traditionally in the ANZ market. So, that's probably the best answer for what we're trying to do to address that. We do have a small presence in Singapore, which we think can be an important launching pad for other markets, in Southeast Asia. But at this point, we don't have plans to open additional offices in Asia. We really want to try to leverage what we've got in Sydney and Melbourne, Tokyo and Singapore.

[Rishi Jaluria:]

All right. Got it. That's helpful. And then, just as a follow-up, I wanted to ask on the CLM side as you continue to gain traction there, and get more and more customer land. Do you find yourselves getting into more competitive situations against some of the pure-play CLMs, like Icertis or even SAP, Ariba, or how would you characterize what you're seeing as you get more traction there? Thanks.

[Dan Springer:]

Well, I think for us, the competitive situation is -- a question earlier about competition is quite different in eSignature than it is in anything else, right? We have such a dramatic market share lead and, quite frankly, product capability lead in eSignature that it's -- there's just the competition I said is paper. It's not that there aren't other strong companies that are in the market, but just by the sheer size advantage that we have. And you heard us talk about this before. We spend more money on R&D than we think those folks have in revenue. So, from that standpoint, it's a very different dynamic, and we are one of the leaders in CLM, but there are other credible companies in the space. So, we do see a different competitive dynamic. You mentioned SAP and Ariba. Interestingly, SAP is much more of a partner really than a competitor. And increasingly, we're actually investing significantly in our integrations into Ariba to ensure that our CLM products will be industry-leading on the buy side as well as they are on the sell side today. But in general, I think your point is spot on. And it is a different competitive dynamic. And we're one of the leaders, but not the dramatic leader that we are in signature.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo Securities.

[Michael Turrin:]

Going back to the retention number, reference that continues to pick up, how should we think about the progression from here? Are those 120-plus-percent level something you feel could sustain given the seed links you've laid with eSignature this year and just expansion opportunities with the Agreement Cloud you've laid out, and it sounds like are starting to gain some momentum, or is there some counter balance we should also be mindful of in penciling those numbers out going forward?

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Yes. So, on that, I think, the new codes are really seeding our opportunity in upsells and expansion when we think just kind of about the market opportunity and where that number could go. However, given the scale that we're at and the rate that we've been growing, we're watching that number quite closely. So, our historic range for dollar net retention has been kind of in the 112% to 119% range, in the last the last bunch of quarters, we've been above that range. And so, I think the way to think about that is we likely would continue at the high end of the historical range or at least at the high end of the historical range. And we'll continue to monitor that metric quite closely. But, we're feeling good, one, about the 123% that we posted for Q4, but then also just the amount of net new customers that we've added, and how they've been expanding over the course of the last year.

[Michael Turrin:]

That's helpful. Just maybe a quick follow-on Cynthia on hiring. You had a big step-up in headcount midyear. At least from a sequential perspective, it looks like the pace of adds is starting to moderate. Can you just expand on how you're thinking about capacity from here? I think, there's continued commentary around staying in growth investment mode. But, have you laid some of the initial seeds with margin expansion already in the guide? It looks like maybe that's the case, but anything you can add is helpful.

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Yes, for sure. And that's exactly how we're thinking about it. We are investing for growth. And if you think about the last four quarters, in the first half of last year, our customer demand outstripped the capacity in the field, right? And so, as we moved through the year, we then accelerated hiring to really meet that customer demand and to set us up to continue to grow off a higher base coming into the year. And so, we'll continue to make investments across the go-to-market in sales and success, as Dan had mentioned, but then also in R&D and continuing to innovate around the product portfolio, particularly across the Agreement Cloud. And so, we'll continue to make those investments. You will see us continue to move towards our operating margin targets. But, just given how nascent the opportunity is, how big the opportunity is and our market position, we'll continue to invest aggressively for growth.

[Dan Springer:]

And one other piece, I wouldn't look at it as a reduction in the capacity building in the second half. If you factor in the acquisitions that we did in the middle of the year, so if you look at the number of employees that we brought on with the Seal and the Liveoak Technologies, that sort of inflated a little bit in the middle of the year. So, if you smooth that out, I think you hear what Cynthia is saying is very consistent that we are continuing to invest in growth first. The performance of the business is such that we threw more to the bottom line than we expected. It's not a problem, but it's no way an indication that we're moving back from our focus on growth first.

[Michael Turrin:]

Yes, it's a good problem to have. Thanks. Congrats on the impressive year you just closed.

[Dan Springer:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Tyler Radke with Citigroup.

[Tyler Radke:]

I wanted to ask you just how you're thinking about maybe some of the newer verticals particularly around federal or some other verticals that maybe you didn't see as much success in, in FY21. How are you thinking about those in terms of being a driver here this year?

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. So, we think about our business in verticals, for sure. And then, we have our geo business, right, which is quite substantial. But, in the verticals, the overall government vertical was incredibly strong for us in fiscal year '21, but it was very strong at state and local. And it wasn't as strong in federal. And I don't know that I have -- I mean, we could sort of hypothesize on what a pandemic does for certain types of governments or others. But, I think that there were so many kind of like health and human services aspects in the state and local, where they deliver those types of services to their populations that that really needed to happen in a quick way. And I think that federal agencies just had less of that and less of that urgency. So, from that standpoint, as we look forward to this year and we think about federal, I think we think it’s a lot of opportunity, and there's a lot of almost pent-up sort of demand. Now, we run by the federal government. It's fantastic, but their pace of change there is sometimes not rapid. So, we wouldn't be surprised if some of those things take longer than we think, but we do see a pipe building of significant opportunities to add that to the good success we had in state and local this last year.

[Tyler Radke:]

Okay. Well said. Thank you. And just a follow-up. Maybe just if you could kind of share with us what you're thinking about in terms of return to, obviously, not back to full normal pre-COVID spending levels, but just kind of what you're modeling in, in terms of high-level assumptions there.

[Dan Springer:]

Are you talking about our spending, or are you talking about customer spending?

[Tyler Radke:]

Yes, just spending on either travel, entertainment, office spending, just kind of curious how you're thinking about that through the back half of the year.

[Dan Springer:]

Yes. Well, so, we've sort of told our employees to give you some indication of that that they would not be required to return to DocuSign offices until October 4th. Now, we previously said June and had pushed out, it could push out again, obviously. But, that's our perspective that we wouldn't be back in any significant way before then. And Cynthia, do you want to talk a little bit how we've modeled the expenses from that standpoint and how that might change to try to give some perspective? I look at the bottom line and say, we've talked about continued increase in our profitability and our operating income, but not at the torrid rate that it improved in fiscal year '21 because we do want to focus on growth investing.

[Cynthia Gaylor:]

Yes, of course, of course. And so, I think towards the second half of the year, we're starting to bake in kind of more a return to office in our own expense line. But, I would say it's moderated, right, because it will kind of ramp in there slowly. I would say last year, that probably wasn't the biggest impact on our margin. It was really the outperformance and the customer demand. And so, we invested in other places when kind of some of the travel went away, including in employees and some employee benefit types of program. So, in a nutshell, we're baking it in towards the second half of the year, but it's kind of a slow ramp-up, but it's included in the guide.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize, but we are out of time for questions. And I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Dan Springer for closing remarks.

[Dan Springer:]

Thank you so much, and thank you all for joining us. And as I said at the beginning of the call, we really hope you'll all be able to join us for our inaugural Analyst Day, and we'll look forward to seeing you there. Thank you.

[Operator:]

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.