Fiverr International Ltd.
Q2 2019 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 10 Aug 2019

[Operator:]

Good day and welcome to the Fiverr Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Jinjin Qian, Vice President of Strategic Finance at Fiverr. Please go ahead.

[Jinjin Qian:]

Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on Fiverr's earnings conference call for the second quarter ended June 30, 2019. Please note that this call is being webcast on Investor Relations section of the company's website. Full details of our results and additional management commentary are available in our shareholder letter, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.fiverr.com.Joining me today on the call are Micha Kaufman, CEO and Co-Founder and Ofer Katz, CFO.Before we start, I would like to remind you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements. These include, but are not limited to, Fiverr's market opportunities and future financial results, which involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here. Additional information that could cause actual results to differ from forward-looking statements can be found in Fiverr's periodic SEC filings, including those factors discussed under the Risks section of Fiverr's Form F-1. The forward-looking statements in this conference call are based on current expectations as of today and Fiverr assumes no obligation to update or revise them whether as a result of new developments or otherwise.And now I will turn the call over to Micha.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you, Jinjin. I am happy and honored to welcome you all to our first earnings call as a public company. We delivered a stellar second quarter with revenue growth of 41% year-over-year, along with significant operating leverage, which translated to 1,130 basis points improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin. The results show strong momentum in our business and our guidance reflects our continued excitement for the second half of 2019.For today's call, I'll start with a brief overview of Fiverr and then give you some highlights from Q2 and our priorities for the rest of 2019 and beyond. Ofer will then go through our results, financial trends and our guidance. Then we will be happy to take your questions.We started Fiverr in 2010 with two important observations

[Ofer Katz:]

Thank you, Micha. Full details of our results are available in our shareholder letter. I will not repeat many of the numbers contained there. On today's call, I would like to share three highlights from this quarter

[Operator:]

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question today will come from Doug Anmuth of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Hi guys. Thanks for taking our questions. This is Neeraj on for Doug. So I have a couple of questions. So number one could you maybe talk about your buyer acquisition strategy? And curious to know where you see the biggest opportunity. Is it geo expansion entering new categories or something else? And what gives you the confidence you can take share over time?And number two on Fiverr Studios, could you just share some of the early engagement metrics you have seen here? Thanks.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you for the question. We understand that this is a very busy day for earnings calls and that there are a large event in New York that has required attendance by some of our lead analysts.As to your question about the acquisition strategy, so the channel that works best for us is organic. The majority of our new business comes from organic channels. Among paid channels, paid search and affiliate programs are two most effective for us. On paid search, we continue to invest both in terms of number of keywords as well as the quality of ranking for top keywords.The affiliate program was created mainly to reward website owners, social media influencers, content creators, promoters, or anyone who has access to audience interested in using Fiverr for the first time.We refreshed and updated our affiliate website earlier this year and have since expanded the program and the team on this channel. It has been a tremendous growth channel for us this year.On influencer marketing, this is a new channel for us and still very small and we will continue to invest and test this new channel in the coming quarters.On brand marketing, we launched our new connection campaign in January running out-of-home in New York and Chicago and online in YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram which has contributed to organic traffic and first-time buyer conversion since then.And recently we expanded that particular campaign to Germany as well. I think you should expect us to have similar levels of marketing spend to Q2 and an improvement on the percentage of revenue over the long-term.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Got it.

[Micha Kaufman:]

And to your question about Fiverr Studios, so the reason why we created Fiverr Studios is that we've noticed that in more complex projects, there was a need for more than one type of skill. And we wanted to allow freelancers to team up and create digital studios where they can offer these more sophisticated products which are very complex without adding complexity on the customer side.It is important to note that we also have a lot of agencies on our platform and that they are enjoying our prime products. But actually with the introduction of Fiverr Studios, we allow the creation of virtual agency which allows sellers who are in different locations and who might not know each other before to meet and collaborate through Fiverr Studio platform. And in terms of statistics, it's super early stage as a product and there's no statistics to be shared at this point.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Got it. Thanks.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

And our next question today will come from Nat Schindler of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

This is Ben on for Nat, thanks for taking our call. As for the question when buyers are making repeat transactions, do they typically go back to the same seller if it's in the same category or gig?And when they do go back to that same seller, are there any changes to the negotiated price of that transaction? I would expect it to be decreasing if they continue to use the same speller?And also I was just wondering you spoke to the German language expansion. What other geographies or countries are you most excited about expanding into? Thanks.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you, Ben. So, your first question related to repeat transactions between sellers and -- between buyers and sellers. It is important to note that the majority of the revenues generated on Fiverr comes from repeat customers. It's actually 58% and it is growing year-over-year.In some of the cases, these are transactions that happened between the same buyer and the same seller, but in many cases, it's from different sellers and oftentimes from -- in different categories.We don't see any particular changes or trends in those transactions other than the fact that sometimes buyers and sellers start with a small project and over time the amount of work and the sophistication of that work grows and that we see contributing to our spend per buyer.As to Germany, your second question, I think we noted in the past that we launched Germany as a pilot program to write the playbook on how we should launch new territories and we are really focusing on that right now. We are seeing great first signals with it.Actually, Germany is growing faster than the overall business. It has a new homepage, tailored digital and out-of-home campaigns and we're growing the know-how on local preference. I think in the coming quarters, we will continue to invest in expanding location efforts, but we first want to perfect the playbook before we actually expand to other languages.I did note that we did introduce 11 new currencies in addition to the use of dollar and we are going to roll out additional payout capability to allow sellers to withdraw funds as well. And we expect that over time we will look like most larger Internet companies, with a relatively equal balance of revenue in the U.S. and the rest of the world globally.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. Thanks guys and congrats on a great quarter.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Appreciate it.

[Operator:]

And our next question today will come from Eric Sheridan of UBS. Please go ahead.

[Eric Sheridan:]

Thanks so much for taking the question. Maybe two if I can. One on the ClearVoice acquisition, wanted to know what kind of contribution you're seeing from that acquisition. How you're thinking about what it might do to the business over the medium to long-term, so an update there.And then second, post the IPO, how do you think about the M&A landscape? And looking across the globe at some inorganic opportunities, what are some of the pockets you might want to try to fill, either from a product or a geographic expansion standpoint that can be done inorganically? Thanks so much, guys.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you for the question. So the ClearVoice acquisition was triggered by the fact that content marketing was one of the fastest-growing categories within Fiverr. And we wanted to extend our footprint within that category. And so, ClearVoice that has multiple different business avenues from a marketplace to a enterprise solution was a clear choice for us.

[Ofer Katz:]

In terms of financial impact of the ClearVoice acquisition, at this point it's immaterial to the overall revenue or expenses, which is why we do not separate the data. I would say that the take rate of ClearVoice is higher than our core business and that the gross margin is slightly lower. Again, since it is immaterial at this point of time, it doesn't impact the overall picture. Once time come and numbers mature, we will consider to provide more input on ClearVoice.

[Operator:]

And our next question will come from Nick Jones of Citi. Please go ahead.

[Nick Jones:]

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. As you start to move up-market, are there opportunities to maybe expand – build your relationships with companies like Wix or Shopify or things like that, where maybe there's buyers who kind of have an immediate need or don't realize they have a need? And then, I guess, secondly, as kind of the market volatility picks up how should we think about what might happen to buyers and sellers in the event of a downturn? Thanks.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thanks for the questions, Nick. As to your first question about the opportunities to expand our relationship with other companies, we're definitely getting increases in. And since the introduction of the store capability within Fiverr, we definitely see opportunities to have specific stores that relate to other companies' businesses that have tangents with our business. So with that capability, I think that we have pretty much everything needed and we are getting some increase about that.In terms of market volatility, we feel that our business model is relatively insulated from macroeconomic downturns. One may even think that we can benefit from an economic downturn. We have a very diverse buyer base and low revenue concentration.Our largest buyer represents less than 1% of revenue and our largest category is less than 15% of revenue. 58% of our revenue comes from repeat buyers and consistent growth over the past few years. This along with the consistent core behavior provides a high level of visibility into our further future quarters.

[Nick Jones:]

Got it. Thank you for taking my questions.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

And the next question will come from Ron Josey of JMP Securities. Please go ahead.

[Ron Josey:]

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Micha, I wanted to ask about just how the buyer on Fiverr is evolving. And I ask that only with repeat buyers now accounting for 58% of revenue I think that's up from 57%. And then I think 50% of revenues continues to come from buyers spending $500 or more. You talk about going more up-market and we're seeing that with the growth in spend per buyer. So just curious how do you see the buyer evolving on Fiverr? I know you talked about focusing on SMBs – continue to focus on SMBs, but just curious there. And then, I also wanted to ask about the progress of newer products. It's very helpful to hear about studio and stores, but maybe talk a little bit about promoted listing, specifically and if you're beta testing that and thoughts there. Thank you.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you, Ron. So as to your first question about the way buyers are evolving, I think we mentioned that our focus has shifted from gaining quantity of buyer to the quality of the buyers. And I think to your point that is being demonstrated by the fact that our high-value buyers are evolving and growing over time and now are more than half of our revenues. So we are definitely continuing to focus our efforts in those higher value buyer's.In terms of the progress of new products, so as we think about a roadmap for the next couple of quarters we are working on a set of innovations around business tools, which enable buyers from the same company to share resources and we've seen that teams who take advantage of these tools are more meaningfully engaged. Things like payment, collaboration and communication features, unified payment options for teams, the ability to see peer-reviews and share seller lists, file transfer within a team and so forth.And on top of that, adding multi-language support and continue with category expansion in the creation of new stores. You've also asked about promoted listing specifically. I think we've noted about this before that we definitely see an opportunity to create, a product that allows sellers to promote their services. We have demand for that. And a part of the reason to add more assets to our website such as the store, or the industry stores, gives us more real estate in which we can actually put promoted listings. So it's definitely on our radar, and we are looking into it. Technology is our core, and we have a very robust roadmap ahead of us.

[Ron Josey:]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

And our next question today will come from -- pardon me, Helfstein of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

[Jason Helfstein:]

Thanks. I'll ask two questions. So, spend per buyer did slow in the quarter, I think from 16 – to 16 from 19 in the first quarter. Maybe just talk about the drivers of that how much of that was mix adding more buyers at a lower price point or anything worth calling out? And then secondly, you showed improving operating leverage in the quarter. What you are thinking about accelerating marketing spend particularly in 2020 to drive faster growth? And how correlated is marketing spend to revenue generated in period versus future periods? Thanks.

[Ofer Katz:]

Jason, this is Ofer. So I think on the first question, it's preliminarily due to tough comp. We experienced some hyper growth of spend per buyer in the past due to Fiverr Pro, an increase of – in minimum transaction fee from $1 to $2 as of May 2018 and because of these two factors, we see higher growth last year and also the beginning of the year. So those two – those two – that the Fiverr Pro and the service fee the benefit lap over the last few months, which is why we see kind of slower growth in terms of spend per buyer. Yet I would say that, we feel comfortable with the level of spend per buyer as we see now and the balance between the growth of spend per buyer and the number of active buyers.

[Micha Kaufman:]

So to your question about the outlook of marketing spend going forward. I will say that, we are very happy with the efficiency of our marketing efforts. As I've noted most of the traffic is organic, and I think that we have a very efficient marketing with quick TROI payback and high multiples on ROI. We focus on performance marketing, which is highly measurable and we are using brand marketing to boost awareness. This has been very effective, especially in core markets like Germany. We are not guiding specifically on marketing spend, but you shouldn't expect any dramatic changes from Q2. What you can expect is that we will continue to decrease as a percentage of revenue over time. That's a very important takeaway from this.

[Jason Helfstein:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question will come from Brad Erickson, Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

[Brad Erickson:]

Thanks. Just to follow-up on that. So, it looked like your cost to acquire buyers in the quarter was down again year-over-year, also was down in Q1. Can you unpack the effect of some of the brand spending you had going in the first part of the year versus sort of a normalized customer acquisition cost lately? And how have things been trending there?And then maybe secondarily just to follow-up on Jason's question on an annual basis. Can you remind us just how you approach the allocation of your marketing spending through the year in say a garden variety year? Thanks.

[Ofer Katz:]

On the first question on the cost to acquire a buyer, I think that -- as mentioned before, as we open more channels and as our brand is improving, cost of this position is becoming more and more efficient. Together with the improvement in conversion, we are able to demonstrate a very efficient unit economy that we believe will continue towards the end of the year.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Your second question was what's our approach on marketing spend throughout normal year. So, we typically invest more in Q1 to match the spending pattern of businesses and to drive growth throughout the year. There's a number of underlying reasons for that one being the fact that retail is going out of the advertising competition after the holiday seasons.In Q1, there is no holidays. And there's new budgets for businesses, and it's the beginning of the year, there's New Year's resolutions. This is why Q1 is a quarter where we invest slightly more. We do expect this trend to continue. However, as you can see, we have become much more disciplined this year compared to prior years as we optimize channel distribution and continue to improve efficiency.At that end, -- at the end of Q2, we already recovered 90% of performance marketing spend done in Q2. So again, I will reemphasis the fact that you should expect similar levels of marketing spend in Q2 and improvement as a percentage of revenue over the long-term.

[Brad Erickson:]

Got it. And then maybe just one more follow-up for Ofer on the guidance, does the guidance contemplate -- for the second half, particularly does the implied contemplate any delta between revenue growth and GMV growth for this year? I know you called out some puts and takes in terms of what was going on the first part of the year. But if that is implied, maybe if you could just call those out what would drive any delta there? That would be great. Thanks.

[Ofer Katz:]

So we do believe that we are in a good place in terms of take rate. Yet to be said, we believe that we have some room and opportunity to slightly increase it. But generally speaking, GMV and take rate are aligned and the guidance for the remainder of the year is that the GMV growth and the revenue would grow at a similar rate.

[Brad Erickson:]

Got it. That’s helpful. Thanks.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude our question-and-answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

[Micha Kaufman:]

Thank you all for joining us today. We are very excited about our 2Q results and our guidance for the rest of 2018. We intend to be very active with regard to investor relations and keeping you updated with our progress, starting with meetings on the East Coast after Labor Day. Have a good rest of your day, and goodbye.

[Operator:]

The conference has now concluded, and we thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.