AppLovin Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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November 8, 2023

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Welcome everyone to the AppLovin's earnings call for the Q3 ended September 30, 2023. I'm David Hsiao, Head of Investor Relations. Joining me today to discuss our results are Adam Farrugi, our Co Founder, CEO and Chairperson and Harold Chen, our President and CFO. Please note our SEC filings to date as well as our shareholder letter and press release discussing our Q3 performance are available at investors. Applevin.com.

Operator

During today's call, we will be making forward looking statements regarding our products and services, market expectations, our CFO transition, the future financial performance of the company and other future events. These statements are based on our current assumptions and beliefs, and we assume no obligation to update them, That is required by law. Our actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. We encourage you to review the risk factors in our most recently filed Form 10 Q for fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2023, and in our Form 10 Q for the Q3, which you expect to file later today. We will also be discussing non GAAP financial measures.

Operator

These non GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for or superior to our GAAP results. Please be sure to review the reconciliations of our GAAP and non GAAP financial measures in our shareholder letter available on our Investor Relations site. This conference call is being recorded and a replay will be available on our IR website. Now, I'll turn it over to Adam and Harold for some opening remarks, Then we'll have the moderator take us through Q and A.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. Our team has executed exceptionally well. This quarter's record breaking performance is a testament to the success of our new AI based advertising technology Axon II, Which has once again driven revenue and adjusted EBITDA above our expectations. I would like to take a moment to commend our outstanding team for their dedication and hard work.

Speaker 1

A year ago, we faced significant challenges, yet our team's resolve and enthusiasm never faltered. Our efforts this year Have not only solidified our short term growth trajectory, but have also set the stage for sustained long term expansion. The journey with Axon II is just beginning with numerous enhancements on the horizon. This quarter, we made strides by integrating Axon II into our CTV initiative during its testing phase, and we are planning to scale up these efforts in the subsequent quarters. We are excited about introducing our leading performance marketing technologies to television, where we see a substantial opportunity to fill a gap With a superior performance solution.

Speaker 1

Additionally, this quarter, we'll be extending Axon II to Array And expect it will materially accelerate the potential to scale that business. Considering the magnitude of our software platform business, We're investing in our CTV and Array businesses because we believe they have the potential to become meaningful contributors to our annual revenue. Our dedication to creating long term value for our shareholders is steadfast. We are confident in the capabilities of our team, The potential for the innovation of our technology, the quality of our products and the strength of our financial position. We are grateful for your trust and support as we embark on the next chapter of our journey, which promises growth and relentless innovation.

Speaker 1

Before concluding, I would like to express my gratitude to Harold for his many contributions during his tenure as CFO over the past 4 years. Harold's ambition to build a strong foundation in our support and operational functions has been realized, setting us on a course for operational excellence. As we transition to provide more opportunities for his team, Harold will continue to offer invaluable strategic guidance in his new advisory role to me. I will now turn it to Harold, who will share the financial highlights of the quarter. Thank you again for your continued support.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Adam, and thanks for the kind words. As Adam discussed, strong execution across the board led to fantastic financial performance this past quarter. In Q3, we achieved incredible year over year and quarter over quarter revenue growth with software platform up 65% year over year, reaching a $2,000,000,000 run rate. Apps posted the 1st quarter of quarter over quarter revenue growth since we started our portfolio optimization program. In total, Generated revenue of $864,000,000 up 21% year over year with adjusted EBITDA of $419,000,000 up 63% year over year, both exceeding high end of our guidance.

Speaker 2

Given higher margins and higher contribution from our software platform business, Total adjusted EBITDA reached the highest EBITDA margin in 5 years at 48.5 percent margin, an improvement quarter over quarter of over 400 basis points On top of a 600 basis points improvement from Q2 over Q1 2023. Of note, this past quarter did benefit from Approximately 100 basis points of improvement coming from one time non recurring cost benefits. Turning to our segment reporting, we're excited to Our software platform and AI driven technologies help our advertising partners expand their reach, achieve better returns on their investments and increase their spending with us. The software platform reached record revenue of $504,000,000 a 65% increase over the prior year And a 24% increase quarter over quarter, which is the 3rd consecutive quarter with double digit quarter over quarter revenue growth. Software platform adjusted EBITDA grew 91% year over year and 33% quarter over quarter to $364,000,000 with a record 72% adjusted EBITDA margin.

Speaker 2

Our software platform continues to demonstrate high flow through from revenue to adjusted EBITDA as we scale. Given its extraordinary growth and cash flow generation, software platform adjusted EBITDA now represents nearly 90% of our company's total adjusted EBITDA. As Adam mentioned, we're very proud of our software platform team's hard work and accomplishments to date, but we're even more excited about where this business can go in the future, Both within our core markets and within the new initiatives we have been pursuing with Whirl and Array. Moving on to the Apps segment, App's revenue grew 5% sequentially to $360,000,000 the first quarter of growth since we started our portfolio optimization project. App's adjusted EBITDA was $55,000,000 a margin of 15%.

Speaker 2

With the major parts of our portfolio review We're continuing to focus on balancing growth and cash flow to optimize the financial performance and enterprise value of our apps portfolio. With regard to free cash flow, we generated $194,000,000 in Q3. The flow through from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow in Q3 is Slightly lower than normal, primarily due to a temporary delay in certain cash collections, which we expect will reverse itself in Q4. As previously mentioned on our calls, adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow flow through is typically 50% to 60% on a normalized run rate basis, Noting that we typically have some deviations in any particular quarter driven by the timing of tax payments and working capital movements. This flow through percentage should increase over time as our high cash flow converting software platform business continues to grow faster than the apps.

Speaker 2

With regard to guidance for Q4 2023, we are targeting another quarter of growth with revenue between $910,000,000 $930,000,000 Adjusted EBITDA between $420,000,000 $440,000,000 and margin between 46% 47%. Margin outlook is slightly down from Q3's 48.5 percent given an approximately 100 basis point benefit from one time items in Q3 And the potential for further investments in the business in Q4. From a cash perspective, we ended Q3 with $332,000,000 of cash on the balance sheet. In the quarter, we used $582,000,000 of cash to buy back stock and $249,000,000 to pay down our term loan. This was offset by $185,000,000 drawn on the revolver.

Speaker 2

Regarding stock buybacks, year to date through the end of the We have repurchased $1,200,000,000 of our Class A common stock at a weighted average price of under $25 per share. This is consistent with our asset allocation plan and focus on driving long term shareholder value. On the debt side in Q3, we amended a portion of our term loans, Extending the maturity to 2,030, reducing principal amount by $249,000,000 and improving our credit spread. With regard to our Board, we're pleased to add Todd Morgenfeld in the quarter, a seasoned executive who most recently was a CFO at Pinterest and prior to that was VP Finance at Twitter. Concurrently, Asha Sharma, COO of Instacart, stepped down from the Board.

Speaker 2

Overall, our strong Q3 performance showcase The strength and powerful business model underlying our software platform business. Lastly, on a personal note, As Adam mentioned earlier, I've decided to transition from a full time role to an advisory one at the end of this year, so I can take some time off and investigate new opportunities. In my new role as advisor to the CEO, I very much look forward to working with Adam and the team on key strategic and financial matters. Further, I will be continuing my service on the AppLovin Board. It has been my privilege to serve as AppLovin's President and CFO for the past 4 years, In particular, getting to help build and work with this truly extraordinary management team.

Speaker 2

Come January, I'm excited to have Matt and Dimitry step into their new and well deserved leadership roles. Based on their track records and past contributions, I am confident in their success. Since joining the Board in 2018, under Adam's leadership, the company has Achieved tremendous growth, increasing revenues by over 6x and adjusted EBITDA has multiplied from a couple of $100,000,000 of run rate to over $1,600,000,000 run rate Today, while the path has not always been linear nor easy, the team has remained steadfast and executed with expertise to drive this outstanding performance. Thank you to all the Applovin stakeholders, including our team, customers, partners, shareholders, lenders and Board who have supported us along our journey thus far. I do say thus far because the opportunity ahead of Applovin is awesome and I very much look forward to being a part of it in my new role.

Speaker 2

Now the moderator will take us through Q and A.

Speaker 3

Thank you so much, Harold. And Like Harold said, we will now take your questions. And in an effort to allow everyone an opportunity And our first question is going to come from Ralph Schackart with William Blair. Ralph, please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks Adam and Harold for taking the question. First question just on the over performance in the quarter. Maybe you could kind of speak to What's going better with the sort of ramp of Axon 2 than you originally anticipated? And perhaps maybe you could kind of touch on, I think historically, you talked about It extends beyond gaming, maybe some perspective on how it's doing in some of the other verticals?

Speaker 4

And then I have a follow-up, please.

Speaker 1

Sure. Thanks, Ralph, for joining in the questions. So we talked about last quarter Axon 2 was rolled out partial way in the prior quarter. This is brand new technology And it's a self learning type of technology. These AI models, as they get scaled, continuously improve themselves And then our team also is able to continuously improve them.

Speaker 1

So we're talking about a new technology that we've seen Is one been game changing for our business and is 2 in the 1st inning and that's what gets us really excited. The output of the technology delivers better results for advertisers. And we've seen it to your question on gaming or non gaming, we've seen it agnostic of the category. Advertisers on our platform are spending more dollars in a material way at better returns, and that is a model that just Compounds on itself. And so that's what led to the vast majority of the over performance this past quarter.

Speaker 4

Great. And then sorry, I'll jump.

Speaker 2

I was going to say you want to know about the non gaming.

Speaker 1

Yes, it works much better for both non gaming and gaming.

Speaker 4

Great. And then during the prepared remarks, Adam, you talked about extending Axon II to the connected TV business and array And then, Seth will at some point contribute to results. Just kind of curious some perspective, in your opinion when it could start adding to the overall sort of enterprise results?

Speaker 1

Yes, I mean, we did the World deal, I think it was last April, right? So it's been about a year and a half. World Teams integrated, they've built out really good product offerings On Connected TV, part of that is an SSP. So there's a lot of inventory available on World's platform now for us to step into it and buy it With our performance marketing model and in the last earnings call, we talked about we're just going to start migrating Axon 2 over to the connected TV offering. We've gone to the testing phase on that.

Speaker 1

As we start scaling that, we're very excited about the potential of that platform. Obviously, it's television, And we all also know that performance marketing on TV hasn't really been a thing anywhere near as much as it has been on desktop Or on mobile devices. And so our technology is truly cutting edge and being able to extend it to that platform Presents a very big opportunity. And then our array is the same deal. Array gets us on Android devices today in a much more intimate way.

Speaker 1

It presents Multiple new ad offerings to the consumer and being able to use the Axon II solution there, we think is also going to be game changing for that business and the prospects of us.

Speaker 4

Great. Thanks, Adam, and best of luck in the transition, Harold.

Speaker 3

Thanks. Our next question will come from Clark Lampton with BTIG.

Speaker 5

Thanks for taking the question. Adam, I was hoping maybe we could unpack a little bit of the sort of sequential uplift that we saw In software revenue, you talked about it being a testament to Axon II at the top of your prepared remarks. Was that the key driver in the sort of You know, Lyft, we saw up to $500,000,000 or were there other businesses like Whirl or maybe Max also contributing?

Speaker 1

Yes, vast majority Axon II. That powers the app discovery platform or advertising business, and that's already the vast majority of the software Platform, but Axon II is the key catalyst.

Speaker 5

Got it. And as we look at, I guess, sort of the forward guidance, if you were to assume, I guess, just for discussion sake that The apps business is running flat. We're sort of seeing like a 9% to 13% uptick in Software revenue into the Q4, is that still expected to be mostly driven by App Discovery, Axon, sort of the compounding effect Dove, the improvements that you've talked about historically?

Speaker 2

Yes, we see both sides of the business growing. As we mentioned, we've had the first Quarter over quarter growth in the absence we started our portfolio optimization program. But clearly, the vast majority of growth will remain in the software As well as translation, if we were able to grow that business, translation to EBITDA. EBITDA, as we mentioned, there's some one time items in the 3rd quarter That will come out in the Q4. And then Q4, we are considering some additional investments on the growth side, both on the software and app side.

Speaker 5

And I'll step away really quick in just a second. But any uplift that you guys were seeing from sort of non gaming customers this quarter also? Or was this mostly Your sort of core game developers base that was driving most of the improvement we're seeing?

Speaker 1

No. What we're seeing is success across both gaming and non gaming. Obviously, gaming is a much bigger part of our business. Nongaming is growing faster because the number that is starting out is materially smaller. It will take a sales effort to substantially grow non gaming so that it can become a much more material part of the business, but the technology works Very effectively regardless of the type of app on the other side.

Speaker 5

Thanks very much.

Speaker 3

Arsenjay Matovic with Wolfe has the next question.

Speaker 6

Hi, how are you? Congrats on the results. Just very briefly a high level question. How far ahead is Axon II's advantage versus competitors? How long does this persist before competitors maybe catch up?

Speaker 6

And following up on that, how should we think about the pace of new releases? What that kind of comes for you guys and when should we expect like an Axon III? How much the new requirements and changes in privacy in the ad market Drive that new release desire versus, say, competitors improving their competitive positioning against you?

Speaker 1

So there's a bunch of questions in there. Look, these technologies are super complicated. We think ours is cutting edge and one of The leading AI solutions in the market across any of the AI implementations we've seen, we have very large deployment of software and hardware to power it, and we've got a material amount of data. These systems themselves, like I said, are self learning and we're continuing to evolve what we have on an ongoing basis So this isn't something where we look at competition catching up. We look at we've set a new standard and we're going to go build on that and that Hopefully, it will lead to many quarters of growth coming up.

Speaker 1

The privacy question that leading to Axon 3 year changes in the platform, Look, we've dealt with privacy changes probably since 2014. Every time there's a change on platform or with regulators, You've changed something in your stack, but we're a nimble company. We've rewritten our core technology multiple times over the years, and we are always able to adapt and And as far as Axon III goes, we signaled Axon II to you all a year ago. We've obviously You did really well on putting it together. We're not talking about Axon III.

Speaker 1

We're talking about a lot of excitement about multiple quarters of growth coming up from what we've put together here.

Speaker 3

And we will now hear from Franco Granta with D. Davidson.

Speaker 7

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions here. We wish you luck, Harold, on your next move. And obviously, it's good to know that you'll be in the picture still moving forward.

Speaker 7

I had a question around the investments on CTV and OEM. Obviously, last year, you put those investments in POS and on Essentials, And these were some areas that suffered. But now that you're planning on implementing Axon into those categories, can you comment on Perhaps the magnitude of these investments and how we should think about those moving forward?

Speaker 8

Yes, I

Speaker 1

mean, I don't think we've ever put them on pause. We've been talking about CTV Since we acquired Whirl and Array, we'd launched, I think, a couple of years ago, and we've signaled To you all that these are a couple of the growth factors that we're really excited about. Our software business obviously is really big. We're in a $2,000,000,000 a year run rate. So to have the type of numbers and scale from a new initiative To put a real big dent on those numbers takes a while, but we're very excited about CTV and Array.

Speaker 1

The foundation is there on both those businesses. And by taking this market leading technology, applying it to it, we think we're going to be able to really accelerate the path of both.

Speaker 7

Okay. Thanks for the clarification there. And then just very quickly here on the apps business growth based on the quarter. How much of that growth came from perhaps your integration with Axon and leveraging that technology for the UA capabilities there?

Speaker 2

Yes, we're obviously a big customer of our own systems. And we when we saw AxonTutant's performance, like a lot of our customers, We invested more in UA and we expect to continue to do that rolling into the Q4. So that was a big driver of growth.

Speaker 7

Thanks.

Speaker 3

And moving on to Martin Yang with OpCo.

Speaker 9

Hi, thank you for taking my question. Question on the share between non gaming and gaming for software platform. Can you first talk about a general trend, The revenue contribution from non gaming apps and then did Axon 2 help either direction of the non gaming share Of revenues to Software Platforms? Thanks.

Speaker 1

Yes. We don't break down the percentages, but we've talked about majority of our Business is gaming. And then I referenced that this technology is working really well for advertisers of any kind across every category of mobile application. So we're seeing quite a bit of growth across all, but non gaming starts from a smaller place. So we're actually seeing accelerated growth on non gaming advertisers.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Speaker 3

And moving on to Ross Compton with Macquarie.

Speaker 8

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I was looking at the gross margin last year and in 4Q 'twenty two, this was 47% and most recently in 3Q, you guys have purchased 69%. I was wondering if you could expand on the processes that have kind of led us here and how we should think about this in the 4th year and beyond. Is there a ceiling scale, of course, helps Not only improved billing technology with Axon, but any kind of understanding and operating leverage in the model would be great.

Speaker 2

Yes, some of the questions breaking up, but I think you're asking about the gross margin on software and just the improvement year over year. Is that correct?

Speaker 8

Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2

Yes. Our business model on the software side, first of all, as you know, we report on a net revenue basis. So we start at that level in the P and L. And then in terms of the cost structure itself that's directly related to software, a lot of it is the data center infrastructure That we had talked about it almost a year ago that we had a big new contract that we needed to get to initial amount, initial scale, So we had to grow into that. I'd say now we're very much on pace of not growing through some of that contract and so fully utilizing The capacity that we've had on board and that's why we've been able to really expand gross margin and all the way through to EBITDA given a relatively fixed cost structure on the R and D front.

Speaker 8

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Morgan Stanley's Matt Coss has the next question. Matt, if able to start your video, please go right ahead. Otherwise, ask your question, please.

Speaker 10

Great. Everyone, thanks for taking the questions. I guess the first one would just be there were Some media reports in September October of some advertisers boycotting one of your largest competitors or pulling back spend. Did you see any material impact on your business in the Q3 or do you expect any business any impact along those lines in the Q4?

Speaker 1

It was a little overblown in the media, pretty negligible impact. It was late September to maybe a week or 2 of noise in the market, But negligible to ours.

Speaker 3

Great.

Speaker 10

Thank you. And then just on the software platform margins, 72%, a very, very strong result. I guess, can you give us your latest thoughts on what the flow through at scale potential is for that business? We're higher than we've been certainly in a while.

Speaker 2

Yes, good question, Matt. And again, there's Every quarter there's going to be some vagaries as to if there's some fixed costs, incremental costs, step function costs, in particular on data center side. We expect, as I said, R and D to be relatively stable and that software margin can grow and expand as we continue to grow App Discovery in particular, because that is a net revenue business, over time, looking at more of the longer run as we scale worlds, we scale CTV, Sorry, I'll just rescale the OEM side on array. We'll likely need to make some fixed investments in those businesses and hire some teams, but those are also Strong margin businesses as they scale up as well, but unlikely to start as high as the contribution that we do get from AppDiscovery.

Speaker 11

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you so much. And our final question will come from Omar Dusseki with BofA. Omar, please go ahead and unmute.

Speaker 11

Hi. Can you guys hear me?

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 11

All right. Okay. So you guys talked about header bidding And how Google is going to shift to header bidding demand, shift demand 100% to header bidding. They put out I noticed on their website recently that they won't be shifting entirely after October 31, but will do so partially and I expect that transition to happen into the Q1 of next year. So I think you mentioned that Your mediation platform can tax the Google demand.

Speaker 11

And

Speaker 7

What I

Speaker 11

was wondering was actually given that Google has been waterfall bidder for so long and App Discovery has been a real time bidder for so long, Does Google shift to real time bidding actually post competition to your core business? Because we tended to focus The idea that you could tax demand from Google doing real time bidding, but what about the competitive sector of Google?

Speaker 1

Yes. So you're talking about cannibalization effect of a mediation network, one as big as Google, in particular, going to bidding. We've taken the most of the market to bidding at this point. We're already above, I think, 60%. Once Google gets to bidding, it's going to be very Close to the full market tipping that way.

Speaker 1

On every network that's mediated going to bidding, share moves around only slightly And possibly the bidder gets more efficient, so it can gain share, but the overall pie grows. And so that's the whole point of the MAX Our objective with that platform was building an efficient marketplace where you bring these networks and put them into the most efficient Way possible to price and serve an ad ahead of bidding state and then the publisher yields more. The publisher yields more so they can spend more on user acquisition. We're obviously one of their main user acquisition channels. Dollars go back in the ecosystem, the pie grows, And usually all parties end up benefiting and that's the trend we've seen now for 5, 6 years since we launched the MAX platform.

Speaker 11

Okay. So if I understood correctly, then it sounds like you're saying the benefit of Google moving to real time bidding is to make the entire industry bigger And that will outweigh any potential competition because you have a new technology in the market from someone other than yourself, which Could potentially experience increases in ad spend.

Speaker 1

Yes. Look, we never look at share. It's not a zero sum game. You need all the marketing companies to do well. That helps the ecosystem grow, user acquisition dollars come into the space more eyeballs as well, consumption goes up.

Speaker 1

That's always been our formula to growth. So we look at dollars and the dollars become bigger, it benefits all parties and that's what we see every time a network goes to bidding.

Speaker 11

Thank you very much.

Operator

All right.

Speaker 3

And with that, that does conclude today's earnings. We thank you all for attending and we look forward to seeing you next quarter. Take care until next time. You may now disconnect.

Speaker 11

Thank you. Thank you.

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