Workiva Inc. (WK) Q3 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Workiva Inc.  (NYSE: WK) Q3 2020 earnings call dated Nov. 04

Corporate Participants:

Adam Terese — Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Terry Tillman — Truist — Analyst

Chris Merwin — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Stan Zlotsky — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Tom Roderick — Stifel — Analyst

Brian Peterson — Raymond James — Analyst

Rob Oliver — Baird — Analyst

Michael — Northland Securities — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Angela, and I will be your host operator on this call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today’s call, Adam Terese, Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations of Workiva. Please go ahead.

Adam Terese — Director of Corporate Development and Investor Relations

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for Workiva’s Third Quarter 2020 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 Stuart Miller. We will then open the call up for a live Q&A session. Jill Klindt, our Chief Accounting Officer, is also on the call. A replay of this webcast will be available until November 11. 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’ll be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and financial performance, including guidance for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2020.

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. 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’ll begin by turning the call over to our CEO Marty Vanderploeg.

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining today’s call. We made great progress in our third quarter. The global trends of online collaboration and remote work continue to benefit Workiva. Customers use our cloud platform to simplify their complex work by connecting data and teams and by automating and streamlining processes. Financially, we exceeded guidance for revenue and operating income. We delivered more than 20% growth in subscription revenue and generated record bookings. In particular, we saw strong bookings in global statutory reporting, management reporting and capital markets. As a result, we are raising guidance for the fourth quarter, Stuart will provide details later in the call. In Q3, we continued to upgrade customers to our next-generation platform. Customers accounting for over 90% of our annual contract value are now utilizing our new platform.

The next-generation Workiva platform is a key enabler for our growth strategy. Our new platform is more open, intuitive and scalable. We can now more quickly build and deliver new fit-for-purpose solutions that solve specific business problems. We believe delivering new platform extending solutions will continue to drive our success. Our virtual marketing events continue to produce positive results in terms of record attendance and global reach and targeted sales leads. In September, 6,000 customers, prospects and partners from over 60 countries participated in Amplify, our annual user conference. Our virtual sessions focused on solving universal challenges around data, workflow and complex reporting. And last month, 76 key technology and advisory partners joined us for our annual partner summit.

Our summit addressed how partners can better leverage our platform with their deep domain expertise to develop high-value solutions. We expect our partners to drive an increasingly higher percentage of our future revenue growth. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our employees for supporting our customers and upholding our values-based culture. Even in the face of a challenging 2020, they delivered our next-gen platform, upgraded our customers and generated strong sales growth. In closing, we remain confident in our ability to capitalize on our new platform as enterprises continue to move to the cloud.

With that, I will turn the call over to Stuart Miller.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Marty. As mentioned on our last call, we began to see a more predictable cadence to closing deals at the end of the second quarter, suggesting that our customers and prospects were settling into a new normal. That pace accelerated in the third quarter across a broad range of our solutions, particularly global statutory reporting, management reporting and capital markets. Both transaction volume and average deal size came in above our expectations in the third quarter, doing so with almost no help from price optimization. As a result, we are raising guidance for Q4, which I will discuss later. Before covering our Q3 financials, I want to provide an update on a regulatory matter. On October 21, the European Union granted its member states the option to delay compliance with the ESEF mandate for one year to help companies free up resources for more urgent pandemic-related matters. We expect all EU member states to exercise the option. The one-year delay has had no material impact on our outlook for EMEA.

Turning now to our financials. As always, 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. I’ll address our performance against Q3 guidance first. We beat Q3 2020 revenue guidance at the midpoint by $3.5 million. Higher subscription revenue accounted for most of the beat. We succeeded in collecting a high percentage of the receivables that we had held in reserve at the end of Q2. The pandemic had less of an impact on selections than we had anticipated in June. In addition, we closed more deals early in the quarter, and we sold and delivered some capital markets deals within the quarter. We beat guidance on Q3 operating income by more than $9 million. The revenue beat, I just mentioned, accounted for just over 1/3 of the swing. The remainder of the beat relative to guidance included lower travel and entertainment costs, reduced expenses from shifting marketing and internal events to a virtual format, recovery of bad debt expense, higher PTO usage and decreased occupancy costs.

Now turning to a comparison of Q3 2020 to Q3 last year. We generated total revenue in the third quarter of $8.1 million, an increase of 18.8% from Q3 2019. Breaking out revenue by reporting line item. Subscription and support revenue were $75.9 million, up 20.4% from Q3 2019. New logos and new solutions helped drive strong revenue growth in Q3 2020. 51% of the increase in S&S revenue in Q3 came from new customers added in the last 12 months. The balance of the increase came from companies who’ve been our customers for more than a year. Professional services revenue was $12.2 million in Q3 2020, an increase of 9.8% from the same quarter last year. Setup and consulting accounted for the growth. Turning to our supplemental metrics. We finished Q3 with 3,583 customers, a net increase of 129 customers from Q3 2019 and a net increase of 71 customers from Q2 2020.

New customers subscribing to an ESEF solution accounted for 20% of the gross number of new logos in the quarter. Our revenue retention rates remain strong. Our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 94.9% for the third quarter of 2020 compared to 94.5% for the same period last year. Consistent with our experience over the long term, almost half of the attrition in the quarter came from M&A, delistings and bankruptcies. With add-ons, our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 110% for the third quarter of 2020 compared to 112.8% in Q3 2019 and 107.9% in Q2 2020. The number of larger subscription contracts continues to increase. In the third quarter of 2020, we counted 785 contracts valued at over $100,000 per year, up 28% from Q3 of the prior year. The number of contracts valued at over $150,000 totaled 383 customers in the third quarter, up 47% from Q3 2019 results. Moving down the P&L. Gross profit totaled $66.9 million in Q3, up 25.6% in the same quarter a year ago. Consolidated gross margin was 75.9% in the latest quarter versus 71.8% in Q3 2019, a net expansion of 410 basis points.

Breaking out gross profit. Subscription and support gross profit totaled $64.3 million, equating to a gross margin of 84.7% on S&S revenue, an expansion of 140 basis points compared to Q3 2019. Professional services gross profit in the third quarter was $2.6 million, equating to a 21.6% gross margin compared to 7% in Q3 2019. Research and development expense in Q3 totaled $21.8 million, up 5.6% from Q3 2019. R&D expense as a percentage of revenue improved to 24.7% in Q3 2020 from 27.8% in Q3 2019. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter increased 6.5% from Q3 2019 to $32.8 million. Savings on G&E and our shift to virtual marketing events partially offset higher expenses from headcount growth in our sales team. General and administrative expenses totaled $8.7 million in Q3, up $600,000 compared to Q3 2019. G&A expenses as a percentage of revenue improved 110 basis points to 9.8%. We posted an operating profit of $3.6 million in Q3 2020 compared to an operating loss of $6.3 million in Q3 2019.

Turning to our balance sheet and cash flow statement. At September 30, 2020, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $524 million, an increase of $15.3 million compared to the balance at June 30, 2020. Net cash provided from operating activities in Q3 2020 totaled $7.8 million compared with cash provided of $4.7 million in the same quarter a year ago. At September 30, 2020, we classified $5.2 million of receivables to a credit reserve account, up from $4 million of receivables at September 30, 2019. This reserve account reduced the deferred revenue by an equal amount, and therefore, it reduced billings at the end of the quarter. Remaining performance obligations on subscription contracts continue to vary from deferred revenue as we implement multiyear contracts with annual billing terms for some customers. 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 2020, we expect total revenue to range from $90.2 million to $90.7 million.

We expect subscription revenue to grow at a faster rate than services revenue in Q4. And as a reminder, in Q4 2019, we posted a onetime increase of $2.5 million in professional services revenue due to a regulatory change. We expect non-GAAP operating income to range from $500,000 to $1 million in Q4. For the full year 2020, we expect total revenue to range from $348 million to $348.5 million. We expect non-GAAP operating income to range from $3 million to $3.5 million. Turning to 2021. On a preliminary basis, we expect total revenue to exceed $401 million in 2021. We expect the growth rate of subscription and support revenue to continue to outpace the growth rate of professional services revenue. We expect non-GAAP operating loss as a percentage of revenue to be a low single-digit in 2021. We plan to offer detailed guidance on our outlook for 2021 on our next call.

We will now take your questions. Operator, we are ready to begin the Q&A session.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question is from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist. Please go ahead.

Terry Tillman — Truist — Analyst

Hey, good afternoon gentlemen. Can you hear me, okay?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, we can.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Terry, we can.

Terry Tillman — Truist — Analyst

Well, congrats on the improving trends. It’s really good to see some of these KPIs in the billings and RPO. My first question, though, just relates, maybe it’s just a little bit of an education for me or just an update, but you called out global statutory reporting and management reporting and capital markets activity. Could you maybe kind of stack rank those in terms of — are there notable differences typically in the deal sizes for those use cases? And do those — are those prominently kind of positioned in your guide for next year? Or is there anything else that kind of comes online that’s notable next year beyond these three items that you called out? And then I have a follow-up.

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Go ahead, Stuart.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

So, Terry, I’d say global stat is — most of those deals are six figures, some middle six or high six figures, for sure. Management reporting has got a pretty wide range depending on the use case, the size of the customer and so forth. And then capital markets is sort of typically low six figures. There, we got good contribution from integrated risk and a number of other use cases. And we expect that to continue into next year. We just called those out, in particular, because they were performing above expectation for the quarter.

Terry Tillman — Truist — Analyst

Okay. I guess a follow-up question, and I don’t know if this is for you or Marty. But seeing the big federal sector deal this past quarter, I’d like to hear more in terms of how that kind of came about? What’s factored into kind of the decision to go with you guys there? And how the federal sector and public sector is looking in general?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I would say that the thing that has really changed for us, and we alluded to that is, we spent four years rearchitecting our platform. We have a true platform now. And so when we go into something like the Department of Justice, we talked about all the different uses of the platform, that being financial reporting, internal controls, all sorts of different things that they have to do. And so they really view it as buying a platform for a lot of different functions. And they really don’t — now almost all the government agencies we run into are still using Word and Excel. So it’s a pretty natural sell. The outlook is — right now, of course, everything is locked up, but the outlook is, it looks good, but it’s very lumpy. It’s a lumpy business. It also has at end of September spike every year. So it’s — but we’re very optimistic about it.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Chris Merwin with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Chris Merwin — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Okay, thank you so much for taking my question. Wanted to ask about — I guess that you mentioned on the call, there was a delay with ESEF compliance for about a year. But at the same time, we saw, I think, 20% of new logos come from customers adopting an ESEF solution. So as we think about the impact of this, how would you say it impacts pipeline build, perhaps even in a positive way or deal close rates in that region in the coming quarters? Just trying to get a sense if this actually helps you in some way by being able to initiate more conversations? Or how best would you describe the impact?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

The — Stuart — this is Marty, by the way. Stuart did say it didn’t affect our outlook for EMEA next year. What we’re seeing is companies are — they realize they still have to do this. ESEF has been delayed one year because of COVID, that’s sort of a story. And they know they have to do it. They’re partly down the path of due diligence and learning what they have to do. And we really — we’ve been continuing to close ESEF deals even after the announcement. So we really don’t see that as changing our trajectory. I think, if anything, the type of competitors we have there are very small companies that were more or less starting for this business. And if it’s going to hurt anyone, it’s going to hurt them more than us. And I think it is true, we will be able to have more conversations. It will be less rushed. And so I think in general, it certainly is neutral, and it could potentially be positive.

Chris Merwin — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Okay. Great. And maybe just a quick follow-up on the billings number. Obviously, super impressive in the quarter. There was a big buildup in deferred that we saw on the balance sheet. So was there anything abnormal there in terms of pull forwards or anything like that? Or is it just really healthy execution in terms of closing the business?

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

It was, as Marty indicated in his talk, it was a record quarter for bookings. And it was strong throughout the quarter. And so there was really nothing unusual going on other than just really good execution.

Chris Merwin — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Great, thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Stan Zlotsky with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Perfect. Thank you so much guys Congratulations on a very strong quarter. So maybe just following up on Chris’ question. The strength of the quarter, I mean, I think it really surprised a lot of people to the upside is mainly manifesting and billings. And you mentioned that you had a lot of deals closing in the beginning of the quarter. Was there some essentially maybe pent-up demand from the Q1 and Q2 delays that ended up closing early in Q3 and driving some of the deferred revenue build?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Stuart, go ahead.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Yes. So definitely, Stan, there was some — we think there was some pent-up demand. We were heartened, though, that the pipeline — we’ve been carrying a big pipeline all year, and we were seeing the pipeline continuing to build, and we’re bringing a big pipeline into the fourth quarter. So that’s why we’re optimistic.

Stan Zlotsky — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Okay. Perfect. And maybe a quick follow-up. Obviously, we all saw the very strong capital markets activity with so many IPOs coming public through the summer and into the early fall. Can you help us characterize how much of that, if at all, material helped Q3 and maybe your outlook for the rest of this year? And how are you thinking about that activity going into 2021?

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So I think that it’s fair to say that companies going public are increasingly seeing the value of our platform. And part of that is the fact that they’re working remotely and trying to do deals remotely. And certainly, some of the more progressive law firms are embracing it, which is a good thing. We had a very strong IPO market in Q3, and we’ll see what kind of impact, if any, this election has on Q4. It’s not — percentage wise, it was up big, but in terms of dollar contribution for deals that were sold and delivered within the quarter, not a big number. It’s less than $1 million.

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

I would just add, too, that all of our solutions saw increased strength. I mean we — this was across the board execution, I would say. So, it wasn’t any one anomaly.

Stan Zlotsky — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Right, that makes a lot of sense time. Thank you so much.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Tom Roderick with Stifel. Please go ahead

Tom Roderick — Stifel — Analyst

Hi, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions is Great to hear from you. I’d love to go back to Chris’ question earlier just around Europe. And appreciating that 20%, sure, you had said of the new logos are coming from sort of ESEF related. Can we just take a step back in Europe, and I don’t know if this is a better question for you or for Marty. But I’d love to just hear a little bit more of holistic discussion of what’s going on in Europe relative to market awareness of the Wdesk solution. How many customers are coming to you simply because of ESEF readiness versus just broader awareness of the overall solution base? And I guess the third part of that is just where are you at with regards to hiring the sales team over there go-to-market? How fast do you need to build that? I know that’s a lot in there, but maybe the broader question is, just talk to us a little bit about Europe, what’s happening aside from just ESEF.

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. This is Marty. I would — just to touch on a few. First off, we built up the EMEA sales team in the last two quarters of 2019 and the first quarter of this year. And we’re able to fill the positions we needed to fill. They are now maturing and getting into more productivity. So we’re very pleased with that growth aspect. So we’ve gotten the sales team we need there for the near term. In terms of awareness in Europe, it’s really important to understand, Stuart has been very consistent saying ESEF is upside in terms of how we think about things. We sell annual reporting. We sell management reporting. We sell integrated risk there. We sell some other regulatory things for banks, very large banking customers in Europe. And so we’re definitely getting to the point where people know who we are.

There’s still a tremendous amount of opportunity there because it’s still a small revenue number. And as you know, the EU is close to the same GDP as the U.S. So it really is a big opportunity for us. And the ESEF — the nice thing about ESEF was it did drive platform conversations, but we’re still seeing that happen. I mean when people understand that we’re sort of the premium end of that in that, we have not only the ability to produce the ESEF regulatory document you have to submit, but we have the entire platform to pull the data out of your systems of record, collate it, create the report and then output it. That’s really what’s driving our success there, not the fact that we can file a document. I would say this, though, that has enhanced our conversations. But the top end of that market, the top more than half, this is something they know they’re going to have to do. They’re looking for a solution that has legs and it’s going to be around for a while. It helps them with the entire problem. So ESEF is not really that big an issue for us there in terms of the delay.

Tom Roderick — Stifel — Analyst

Yes. That’s good color. And Marty, if I could just stay on sort of go-to-market and sales execution. I suppose it would be a little bit tempting to look at the last couple of quarters where you’ve had great bookings, great commentary on the broader market and say, okay, good, the market has recovered and the environment has recovered. But on the other hand, it seems like perhaps your sales execution has improved and knowing that you handed the reins over to Julie on that front a couple of quarters ago, would love to just hear a little bit more about any changes that Julie made with respect to go-to-market? What you’re seeing on a sales execution perspective? And what that means to the future?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think you’re spot on. I think that obviously, our customers have adapted to the new normal, as Stuart said, but also we have gotten much more focused. Julie’s brought us a lot of discipline in terms of using metrics, not just in sales but across the whole organization, to really understand how we’re optimizing all of our teams. And then we did change our sales management. We promoted an insider to take over North American sales, and he’s been doing a fantastic job. So there’s a little bit of everything there, but — in terms of optimizing everything in the company.

But certainly, Stuart’s point about we have a strong pipeline that’s continuing to grow is why we have the optimism we do. This isn’t a onetime catch-up thing. We really do see strength in our pipeline and strength in terms of larger deals, which is a reflection of the fact we actually have a modern platform now that we can do a lot of different things with and customers understand it and partners understand it. So all of those things fuel the fact that we’re seeing bigger deal sizes and a stronger pipe.

Tom Roderick — Stifel — Analyst

Wonderful, really helpful commentary. Appreciate it. Congratulations thanks.

Operator

And your next question is from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Brian Peterson — Raymond James — Analyst

Good evening, gentlemen. and congrats on the strong results. So, I wanted to dig into the bookings strength a little bit. I know you’ve had a lot of buildup and expanding relationships with new partner channel. Any commentary on how the partner channel ramped this year or contributions in the quarter? Any color on that?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. I’ll give you some color. Certainly, partner contribution is becoming meaningful. I mean it’s actually becoming a meaningful part of our go-to-market and our new sales. Remember, we’ve talked about the fact that we’re behind the normal life cycle of a partner involvement for a company our size, mainly because we just rebuilt our platform. And now there are platforms we built; they have many more opportunities to make money. Our partners can see all the different ways and all different solutions, and they’re starting to bring solutions to us. Our partners are saying, we could use it for this solution. They help us build it out and then they take it to their client base. So, we’re seeing good progress.

Obviously, we want to see partners involved as much as possible, not only to accelerate and grow the size of deals but also to deliver them. And we’re definitely looking to have partners be the primary means of delivery for our solutions. And of course, if they’re going to take us into other markets, markets they’re more familiar with, that’s a very cost-effective way for us to move into certain markets. So, there will be certain markets where we don’t go unless we have a partner. So, we’re making good progress. We have a long way to go. I think there’s a lot of upside in terms of our partner development for the company, but we’re making good progress.

Brian Peterson — Raymond James — Analyst

Good to hear. And Marty, maybe a follow-up. I just — I mean you referenced that the platform. Just as you’re thinking about future R&D investments, how are you thinking about adding to that maybe from an organic or inorganic investment?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I would say that now that our platform has been delivered, and we have — I want — it’s really important for me, 90% of our recurring revenue or the annual contract value has moved to our new platform. That was a huge feat. I mean we — you talk to companies who move customers from one platform to another. And actually, our retention rate was higher than a year ago. So that’s really a substantial accomplishment. And on top of that, it’s enabling us just to do bigger deals, to build the pipe and to really involve our partners. I forgot the second part of your question, give me — what was that?

Brian Peterson — Raymond James — Analyst

I was just saying great to hear. But no, go ahead.

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

No. I forgot the second part of your question. You had a two-part question here.

Brian Peterson — Raymond James — Analyst

No. I guess I was just trying to think about M&A and earnings targets.

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

I apologize. The R&D investments. Because we delivered the platform, we’re now in a really great place to develop fit-for-use solutions. I alluded to that. And every time we bring a new fit, a specific solution to a market gives our sales team a whole new vein of potential new bookings. And so we’re going to use a significant amount of our R&D dollars to develop those new applications. Now most of that money when we develop new applications also builds on our platform. So it really helps not only the — having a fit-for-use solutions that our salespeople can sell, but it also continues to expand and create more value in our core platform. So that’s how we’re going to optimize the use of that R&D going forward.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Let me jump in, Brian, because you had asked specifically about inorganic or M&A as it related to R&D. And it’s certainly an important screen for us when we’re looking at acquisition opportunities about how well the technology could integrate with our platform, and that naturally leads us to a buy versus build analysis. But as Marty indicated, the new platform is in great shape and is much improved in terms of its ability to integrate with new software. So it’s given us broader latitude. But on the same token, it’s also easier for us to build on. So it’s a higher bar to chin when it comes to build versus buy.

Brian Peterson — Raymond James — Analyst

Good luck. Thank you.

Operator

And your next question is from the line of Rob Oliver with Baird. Please go ahead.

Rob Oliver — Baird — Analyst

Hi, good evening, gentlemen. thanks for taking my question. Marty, one for you and then Stuart, I had a follow-up for you. Just on the platform, there’s been a lot of discussion of it. And it really sounds as if some customers are really waking up to what they can do with the platform, and that’s resulting in nice spike in the outlook that we saw this quarter. And our checks have certainly been positive on it. So I’d love to hear, in particular, on the extensibility comment that you made. I know you guys have talked a bit about the FERC and some other markets. Just was wondering if we can get an update, and you talked a little bit about some of the R&D dollars going that way, but perhaps an update on the FERC opportunity. And any other opportunities that you guys might be eyeballing right now?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. The FERC opportunity is really a good opportunity for us for two reasons. One is that we had to do almost no modifications to the platform rather than put a different taxonomy and for the XBRL. So it was a really natural market to go to. Second off, it gives us entry into a whole bunch of new companies that are private, and we haven’t had as much exposure to. So we view it as it’s obviously a substantial amount of potential revenue for us. But more importantly, it’s a good example of how the platform can be used with almost no R&D investment. And then it also gets us into a whole another set of companies, mainly private energy companies that we didn’t have access to before in terms of some opening offerings. So yes, FERC has been a really good example. The best example that we feel comfortable talking about now is global statutory reporting.

That has been just a wonderful experience. We put it through a very structured incubation program. We learned how to sell it before we invested. We figured out who the competitors were, did the whole incubation process. And now we’re — and obviously, the result was very positive. When we went to market, we knew how to message, we knew how to sell it, we knew what the price points should be, what the willingness to pay was, and it was very successful. Now we have several other solutions in that same incubation process. I really don’t like to talk about them until, number one, we verify we’re going after them; number two, I don’t want to alert competitors. But the fact that we’ve built a more structured incubation program and the success we’ve seen with global statutory reporting really bodes well for us in the future.

Rob Oliver — Baird — Analyst

Great. That’s very helpful color. I appreciate that. And Stuart, you made a comment about some higher sales headcount in the quarter. And I think that wasn’t Europe? Or was that the tail end of Europe hiring? Or were you guys already done? And if not, anything about that that we could flush out versus North America? And will there — I know the general sales force will — it sounds like they’ll be the ones going after these more specialized opportunities that come from the extensibility of the network. But would you add on vertical salespeople in some instances as well, if needed?

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. So as Marty indicated, we started the hiring of quota heads in EMEA at the beginning of the third quarter last year and then carried it through the second quarter of this year. So it took us about a year. And so the — comparing third quarter this year to third quarter of last year, we have higher headcount as a result of that because we just didn’t have those heads on our books in the third quarter last year. There have been some hiring in the U.S. as well. So that — I think that answers that particular question. In terms of selling the extensibility, I think that’s a responsibility of all of our sales teams. We have some that are specialized on particular solutions, but our account owners are trained to sell the broader platform.

Rob Oliver — Baird — Analyst

Thank you again.

Operator

And your final question is from the line of Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities. Please go ahead, sir.

Michael — Northland Securities — Analyst

Thanks. This is Michael on for Mike. Maybe just on APAC, is there anything new to call out there the last couple of quarters? I know it’s still early, but any color there?

Marty Vanderploeg — President and Chief Executive Officer

It’s early. We’re getting some wins there. And we’re slowly building on a team, much like we did in EMEA several years ago. We want to get some reference customers, our use cases polished up what we want to do there, developed the partner relationships, but that’s going really well. And like you said, it’s very early days, but we’re accomplishing what we wanted to do there. So it’s — the new platform has localization for some of the more local languages. So that’s enabled us to really get serious about it. But up till now, we’re pretty much on track.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

I would add one thing, which is the focus on distribution in APAC has really been around partner enablement. That’s really where we’ve been focusing our sales efforts. There’s certainly partner enablement in EMEA, too, but there’s also a big direct sales team in EMEA.

Michael — Northland Securities — Analyst

Got you. That’s helpful. And then just in the Q under kind of the industry breakdown. So anything to call out there where some of the harder hit industries, whether that’s commercial real estate or hotel, travel type stuff? Or is it pretty broad-based where you were not see much of an impact?

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

So we’re obviously not selling a lot to airlines these days or to the hotel companies. But we do tend to skew on larger among our customers. Some of the retail REITs have also been hit, but it has really not translated into any meaningful impact on our financials.

Michael — Northland Securities — Analyst

Got it, thanks.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to management for closing remarks.

Stuart Miller — Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Just like to thank everybody for joining, and remind the group that we have a Investor Day scheduled for November 19, and hope to see you there. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]