Q3 2024 Sprout Social Inc Earnings Call

Alex Kurtz; Vice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Development; Sprout Social Inc

Brian Schwartz; Analyst; Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2024 Q3 Earnings Sprout Social Incorporated conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. I will now hand today’s call over to Alex Kurtz, VP of IR and Corporate Development. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and welcome to Sprout Social’s third quarter, 2024 earnings call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after the market closed today and have also released an updated investor presentation which can be found on our website.
With me are Sprout Social CEO, Ryan Barretto, and CFO, Joe Del Preto.
Today’s call will contain forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking. These include among others statements concerning our expected future financial performance, including our Q4 and 2024 outlook, and business plans and objectives, and can be identified by words such as expect, anticipate, intend plan, believe, seek opportunity or will.
These statements reflect our views as of today only and should not be relied upon as representing our views at any subsequent date. And we do not undertake any duty to update these statements. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.
For a discussion of the risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our quarterly report on form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2024, to be filed with the SEC as well as our most recently filed annual report on form 10-K.
During the call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures which are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures along with reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included in our third quarter earnings release which will be furnished to the SEC and is available on our website at investors.sproutsocial.com.
With that, let me turn the call over to Ryan. Ryan?

Ryan Barretto

Thank you, Alex, and welcome everyone to our third quarter earnings call for fiscal 2024. We reported third quarter results with revenue of $102.6 million representing year-over-year growth of 20%. This was also the first quarter exceeding $100 million in revenue, a meaningful and exciting milestone for Sprout. Our current remaining performance obligations which reached $220.7 million represented 31% year over year growth.
I want to thank the Sprout team for their solid execution in what remains a challenging macro environment. Their hard work has allowed us to deliver these results while also building a stronger foundation for future growth. As evidenced by steady improvements in gross retention, favorable competitive win rates, continued ACV expansion, ongoing momentum in our enterprise and $50,000-plus segments, and an expansive pipeline despite the market conditions.
Our pipeline shows strength and size, health and trajectory. The headwinds we’ve seen in fiscal year 2024 is driven by longer enterprise sales cycles and increased budget scrutiny. We are encouraged by the progress we’re seeing as we build a healthier foundation for growth at Sprout.
On that note, today, I’d like to spend more time sharing the initiatives we’re focused on to drive growth and execute against the market opportunity ahead of us. With new leaders in place like Erika Trautman leading products and Mike Wolf leading sales, we have a more defined approach to these growth plans with incredible leaders here to drive the execution.
We are focused on four key areas to drive growth. First is to win the enterprise, which means driving increased pipeline creation and strategic customer wins and accounts over $50,000-plus in ARR. We plan to accomplish this through a product road map that is increasingly aligned with the requirements of enterprise customers; and second, within GTM, driving more awareness with senior executives and making it clear that we are the experts and leaders in the social space.
Over the next year, expect more feature releases that will allow us to better meet the requirements of the largest enterprises and drive larger ACV transactions. This includes more scale in our customer care product, deepening our listening analytics features, and support for larger scale deployments. We have already made solid progress in delivering key enterprise capabilities which is evident in the September G2 fall report, which recognized Sprout with 94 number-one badges, including number one in the Enterprise Grid for Social Media Management and number one in Social Media Suites.
Some of our product highlights from this year have included. In listening, we built pretrading industry teams that leverage AI to automatically generate relevant insights for industries like health care and education. Additionally, we introduced real time trend detection to help customers identify emerging conversations as they happen, improve sentiment analysis for better context and nuance, and expanded multilanguage support. These innovations enable our customers to quickly be alerted to the most important trends that impact their business with speed and usability that we believe differentiates us.
In admin controls, we delivered functionality that allows for custom role creation and updating user permissions in bulk. Additionally, advanced audit logs were introduced to provide detailed tracking of user activity, improving security and compliance oversight. These capabilities speed up onboarding and increase control and security for our largest customers who are bringing on larger teams across many departments and use cases.
We know that speed to value is an advantage for us, and we’re making it even easier and faster for large teams to move away from our competitors because of these additions. In care, we built a which enhances efficiency and response times by routing conversations to case queues automatically.
We’ve also introduced [round robin] case assignment, AI generated message intent, conversation summaries, proactive notifications for high priority messages, and integrated sentiment analysis to help teams prioritize and respond to cases with greater speed, accuracy, and intelligence. Consumer expectations are increasingly high for social care, and we believe these features enable us to deliver for even the most sophisticated care teams.
On the sales front, our new CRO, Mike Wolf is driving increased accountability in the field and better defining our resource allocation model across our different customer and geo segments. Mike is also strengthening the operational cadence of the go-to-market teams and driving better alignment with key partners inside the organization.
I would also note that while we’re continuing to strengthen our approach in the enterprise segment, we also have a well-established commercial business that we believe will drive strong customer value and sales velocity in this part of the market. Second, we’re increasing our focus on customer health and driving improved onboarding and adoption behaviors. We want our customers to discover and deploy all of the deep value within our platform, so they can leverage our most sophisticated capabilities, can integrate sprout into their core tech stack, can leverage sprout data to better understand their social ROI.
You will see us delivering more strategic expert services, building and supporting more integration, and helping our customers to better measure and understand the impact of their work. We’re already seeing positive trends in gross retention, which we believe demonstrate the value of our products and we know we can do more to deliver for our customers.
Third, we will continue to invest in our partnerships with the likes of AWS and Salesforce. Relationships with strong global partners brings Sprout into strategic accounts and expand our reach into some of the largest digital marketing budgets. We were thrilled to be highlighted as a launch partner for Agent Force during Dreamforce, and to be on stage several times during the conference. In addition, our go-to-market alignment with agencies remains a central component of our push into the enterprise market. We continue to see this channel as a key contributor to ACV expansion.
And fourth, we’re driving a deeper penetration into our customer base for both new and existing customers with use case expansion and premium modules. Seat expansion, both inside of departments and across use cases, AI capabilities, professional services and premium modules such as Tiger, listening, premium analytics and advocacy, all serve as key growth levers for Sprout. We know social is incredibly horizontal and has wide utility and applicability across the business, and we can help our customers capitalize on opportunities they haven’t tackled yet.
Finally, I’m excited about the new executive team members we have brought to spread over the last year. Erica is leading product, Mike is running revenue, Crystal Boysen, who leads our people team, and Scott Morris, who leads the marketing team. These new leaders join a strong and tenured executive leadership team who know our team and customers incredibly well. As we plan for fiscal 2025, we believe we have the full team in place that has seen the movie with the experience, knowledge, and know how to help us execute on our vision.
Before passing the call to Joe, I’d like to take you through a couple of important customer stories from the third quarter that outline the impact spread is having in the market. During the third quarter, we closed a $1.8 million multi-year [TCV] transaction with a global electronics brand. This was a competitive win. As their customers experiencing major challenges with their previous vendor which had created siloed workflows, in turn hampering collaboration across the platform, creating reporting challenges, and ultimately leading to overall low user adoption.
With Sprout and our Salesforce service cloud integration, this company’s marketing and care teams are now able to seamlessly work together in one platform. Our intuitive listening and reporting capabilities have made it easier for users to generate the insights they need and make more data driven decisions. The customer noted that Sprout allows them to do everything at a faster pace across their teams in a more approachable platform. Looking ahead, we also see opportunities where we can add more value to this customer by expanding our footprint within other modules.
The second story I want to highlight is how the United States Coast Guard deployed Sprout across its communications department and to all of its regional operational commands that manage worldwide coastguard operations. They are using Sprout to inform their digital strategy, leveraging the data provided by Sprout to consolidate and optimize hundreds of social media accounts across various networks.
During the recent Helene and Milton hurricanes, the Coast guard was able to quickly identify posts from a local US CG account about a successful rescue attempt and amplify these posts across its regional and headquarters accounts, becoming one of their most viral posts to date with nearly 1 million engagements and 400 million impressions.
The coast guard was able to leverage Sprout’s smart inbox feature during hurricane Milton to monitor social media for distress calls. The coast guard is now looking at social powered by the Sprout Social platform as a new channel to manage their distress calls.
Alongside these stories, we’re also thrilled to celebrate new and expanded relationships with well known brands like Zoom, Valvoline, Scrub Daddy, Campbell’s, Church and Dwight, and Honda. Our work with these customers underscores the importance that Sprout plays in the market across a wide set of use cases and industries.
Our entire team from our individual contributors to our leaders to our executive team are aligned on our vision and the work we will do to realize it. We look forward to sharing more progress along our journey. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Joe to run through the financials. Joe?

Joe Del Preto

Thanks Ryan. I’ll now run through our financial results and guidance.
We were pleased with Q3 results given the ongoing macro challenges that have continued from the first half of 2024, as we crossed the quarterly milestone of exceeding $100 million in revenue. While sales cycles remain under pressure, we are encouraged by gross retention trends. Our win rates in the enterprise segment remain elevated and our RPO growth rates remain steady. We also generated $9.3 million in non-debt free cash flow during the quarter and $23.1 million year-to-date.
On to a quick summary of the quarter. Revenue for the third quarter was $102.6 million, representing 20% year over year growth. Subscription revenue was $101.8 million, up 20% year over year. Services revenue was $0.8 million up [13%] year over year. The number of customers contributing more than $10,000 in ARR grew 12% from a year ago. The number of customers contributing more than $50,000 in ARR grew 29% from a year ago.
Q3 ACV was $13,959, Up 26% year over year. As Ryan discussed earlier, our strategy to drive ACV growth remains focused on shifting to a higher enterprise mix and strengthen premium module tax rates such as influencer marketing and customer care.
RPO totaled $311.5 million, up from $295.1 million as in Q2, up 36% year over year. We expect to recognize 71% or $220.7 million of total RPO as revenue over the next 12 months, implying a cRPO growth rate of 31% year over year. We continue to believe that all of our leading indicators are converging to cRPO over time.
Non-GAAP operating income totaled $7.5 million up from negative $0.6 million a year ago for a non-GAAP operating margin of 7.3%, demonstrating continued growth in our margin profile.
Turning to guidance. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, we expect revenue in a range of $106.3 million to $107.1 million. We put non-GAAP operating income in the range of $8.7 million to $9.5 million. We expect a non-GAAP net income per share of between $0.15 and $0.16. This assumes approximately 57.6 million weighted average basic shares of common stock outstanding.
The full year 2024, we expect revenue in a range of $405.1 million to $405.9 million. The full year 2024, we expect nongaap operating income in the range of $27.5 million to $28.3 million. We expect non-GAAP net income per share between $0.46 and $0.47, assuming approximately 57.0 million weighted average basic shares of common stock outstanding.
During Q4, we implemented a restructuring to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the R&D org which includes the elimination of approximately 50 roles. We expect the majority of this head count will be reallocated to different areas of the reorganized R&D org over the next several quarters. We expect to record [7%] of approximately $3 million, it will be excluded from our 4Q non-GAAP results. We’re not viewing this as an incremental driver to leverage next year.
As Ryan mentioned, we’re implementing a series of initiatives at the company that we believe will lead to greater customer adoption, more success across our key business units, better visibility and category leadership in an increasingly important market.
With that Ryan, Alex, and I are happy to take any of your questions. Operator?

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Parker Lane, Stifel.

Parker Lane

Yeah, hi guys. Thanks for taking the questions here this afternoon. Ryan up at the top, you talked about the challenging macro environment you continue to see out there. If we take these numbers in context, I’d love to get your characterization of just what things look like out there relative to 90 days ago, maybe even the start of this year? What’s going particularly well for the business right now and what are some areas that you expect to see some improvement in a potentially falling macro?

Ryan Barretto

Thanks, Parker. Appreciate it. Yeah, I would characterize the macro is pretty similar to what we’ve seen all year. And you know, if we think about that in the way it manifests itself in our day to day business, it’s elongated sales cycles. It’s procurement processes that continue to evolve on the customer side. So it’s a lot of the same things that we’ve been seeing all year.
In terms of the opportunities for us and the things that we’re excited about, despite all of this, we’ve seen some really great progress in terms of the teams getting in front of incredible customers in the enterprise, building really healthy pipeline. Our win rates against our competitive set has continued to be in the right direction and elevated. And you know, as we’re working through this, we’re seeing some some good signs in terms of the opportunity in front of us.

Parker Lane

Got it. Earlier this year, you talked about some realignment and rear against different sales and go to market resources you have. You just brought Mike on, you’re not talking about alignment around enterprise. Can you just walk us through sort of the mechanics of how you anticipate the go to market motion changes? Whether there’ll be any further sort of disruptive elements in the near term as a result of some of this realignment?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks Parker. We are — first off, we’re thrilled to have Mike here. Mike has a long tenure in history of successfully running revenue organizations. And we can already see in his just over 60 days, he’s done a great job bringing increased rigor and accountability and process to our go to market teams and he’s doing it while building a winning culture. So I just want to call that out that that’s been great to see.
I think the thing that I call it that’s really important here is we’re just really well aligned on executing against the strategy that I outlined in the prepared remarks. And when we think about the setup and the structure of the team today, we feel really good about where we are or as we’re going into Q4. So no major changes just to call out.

Alex Kurtz

Thanks, Parker. Next question, please.

Operator

David Hynes, Canaccord Genuity.

David Hynes

Hey, guys. Ryan, you alluded to this in the prepared remarks. But what are enterprise customers asking for on the social customer care side that you’re not delivering today? Like what does that — help us think about kind of the future road map there?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks DJ, I appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, so much of what the enterprise customers are looking for are things that we’re doing today. So I’d highlight, for us, if you think about these organizations, they’re high volume and there’s a lot of people that are in here. They need to get up and running really quickly on these platforms to be able to deliver for customers. Increasingly so, because of the volume, they’re also looking for deep workflow and security and these are all things that we’ve added in. And then the AI pieces that we’ve been bringing in alongside of this has really helped our customers from a productivity and speed perspective.

David Hynes

Yeah, got it. And then can I ask just about the Salesforce opportunity as we start to near end of life for social studio, does it feel like there’s still a chunk of customers that have yet to do anything? Like how are you thinking about that in Q4?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah. No, I appreciate it. Yeah, we feel really good about it. I mean the customers that we have seen, we’ve won the vast majority of those including in Q3. It’s factored into the visibility we have in the pipeline in Q4. And we’re really excited about it. As we go into Q4 and go into next year, it is just the ongoing partnership we’ve had with Salesforce and the Service Cloud. And I think you might have seen it as well, but just even the work that we’ve been doing with them most recently that was announced at Dreamforce as being one of the launch partners for Agent Force.

David Hynes

Yeah, perfect. Thank you guys.

Ryan Barretto

Thank you.

Alex Kurtz

Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator

Raimo Lenschow, Barclays.

Raimo Lenschowx

Okay, perfect, thank you. Can I stay on that Agent Force subject a little bit? And how do you fit in there in the future? How do you see yourselves playing in that kind of more genetic AI world? Like, know how deep is integration materials for us? How crucial are you going to be there? And I had one follow up with you.

Ryan Barretto

Thanks, Raimo. I appreciate the question. We’re really excited. We are the only channel here that is providing the access to the social data going in. And this builds on top of the work that we’d already been doing with them within the service cloud as, as you all know. We’re natively built in there, that console which has really helped us.
And now with the addition of Agent Force which is coming, it means that that data is enriching those CRM records and going to be really empowering the Agent Force, which is going to help all of those customers that are leveraging that to ensure that they’re always answering no matter what channel with the most relevant information to help customers.

Raimo Lenschowx

Yeah. Okay, perfect. And then you mentioned RPO and cRPO is becoming more important. Is there anything like — if I think about like for example, what we will do obviously is calculate the bookings number of the cRPO that take down a little bit tougher comp. Is that kind of the right way you want us to look at the business going forward or any puts and takes, you should think about the numbers that we saw this quarter in the past? Thank you.

Joe Del Preto

Yeah, Raimo. I think the key here is just to continue to focus on the overall cRPO number and how that that number continues to grow. And so if you think about the 31% on the cRPO side that we delivered in the quarter, I think that’s the right number to focus on. And as we talked about as we move forward, that will continue to be a good leading indicator of future growth over the next 18 to 24 months.

Alex Kurtz

Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator

Arjun Bhatia, William Blair and company.

Arjun Bhatia

Perfect. Thank you for taking the questions. Ryan, maybe to start off with you, it sounds like this is not new obviously, but expanding Sprout into multiple departments across your customer base seems like a big part of the growth strategy here. Can you just talk a little bit about how the product side fits into this meaning?
If you’re trying to get into care, but also you know, it means the product organization into other departments. How much does the product need to evolve and change to cater to use cases that those departments might need inside your customers? And where are you in that kind of journey today?

Ryan Barretto

Thanks, sergeant. Yeah, I mean, we’re already there today. I think so many of the logos that we’ve talked about today and in previous quarters are these multi-use case across many departments from marketing to care to support across the organization. And so for us, we’re there today. From a product perspective, we’re continuing to go deeper. You know, in the prepared remarks, I gave a bunch of highlights on the elements of the products that we’re going deeper in within all of these departments. But we’re seeing great success here today, especially in the enterprises going across departments.

Arjun Bhatia

Okay, got it. And then Joe, I want to come back to — you made some comments just on the restructuring in the R&D org, and what that might mean for leverage and margin expansion next year. Can you just clarify, are you planning to reallocate those roles into other areas and reinvest those dollars? Or is there something kind of structurally changing in the R&D org? Just help us understand that a little bit more, please.

Joe Del Preto

Yeah. Arjun, the way we’re thinking about it is we are going to reinvest those resources in other parts of the R&D org. And so it’s just kind of a realignment reallocation of the team. And so don’t expect a lot of leverage in 2025 based on that.

Ryan Barretto

And Arjun — sorry, just maybe build on top of that. I think one piece to just highlight, you know, these decisions as you might imagine are incredibly hard, especially when they impact really great people on your team that have made major contributions to the organization. So I just wanted to acknowledge that piece. I think to Joe’s point, part of what’s really important here is as R&D organizations scale and go through different evolutions, you at times have to make adjustments to resource allocations and org structure. And we saw a huge opportunity to do this in the spirit of being able to capture the opportunity in front of us. So we feel really good about the future that we’re moving towards here.

Arjun Bhatia

All right.

Alex Kurtz

Thanks, Arjun. Next question, please.

Operator

Adam Hotchkiss, Goldman Sachs.

Adam Hotchkiss

Great. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I guess to start, Ryan, any update on how premium attached rates are progressing? Just any more color on Tagger or individual products, how they’re performing as discretionary budgets feel like they’re still under pressure?

Ryan Barretto

Yes. Thanks for the question. We continue to be really excited about the things that we’ve been seeing with Tagger. I can tell you as I’m spending time with customers, it’s one of the major topics that especially marketing executives want to dig into. There’s a massive opportunity here in terms of thinking about the way that they leverage influencer. We’re still so early within this category.
So there’s this opportunity for us both to drive awareness and UC and then we have this incredible product behind it. And as I think about just the success we’ve seen and look at the customer wins in Q3, what jumps off the page is our wins across so many industries. We have customers and airlines, and sports teams, financial services, not for profit, cybersecurity. So just seeing really good progress with Tagger and a bunch of our modules.

Adam Hotchkiss

Got it, that’s helpful. And then just to touch back on the R&D reorg question. Any more color, you can give us on the types of roles or areas within R&D that were eliminated and maybe what those reallocation priorities specifically are in relation to?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, I think probably the best way to frame it is that, for us, the resources are going to go into a lot of the themes that I highlighted in the prepared remarks in terms of the product areas.

Alex Kurtz

Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator

Elizabeth Porter, Morgan Stanley.

Elizabeth Porter

Great. Thank you so much. I wanted to follow up on Tagger and the opportunity to expand kind of in your customer base. So just an update on kind of where are we today as it looks like for your customer base adopted Tagger? And where could that be over the next year or so, as you ramp the go to market process? Could Tagger be attached to any of your customers or is there some bifurcation to consider on who the target customer would be?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks Elizabeth. You know, we’re still early days. I think it’s only been just a year since they’ve been a part of the organization. We’re still early also just when I think about where we are in the journey of this market opportunity. We see a lot of opportunity across our customer base. It’s certainly not going to be everybody. But I think just even thinking about some of the verticals I just shared we’ve had success in, we see a lot of the serviceable addressable market in the customer base that we have today.

Elizabeth Porter

Got it. And then I wanted to follow up on Raimo question. Just looking at the new business side, the RPO based bookings kind of being 11% and billings 12%, just help us unpack a little bit more of what drives the view that metrics should be converging up towards that mid 30s? Is that we just are going to have an unlock of new deals coming in Q4 or do we have to wait until comps start to get a little bit better next year? Just if you could help me understand kind of the dynamics there, that’d be helpful.

Joe Del Preto

Yeah, Elizabeth, I think the way to think about it, we’ve talked about this if you look at the cRPO number and how that’s going to converge on the revenue growth rate that we’ve talked about, really that has to do with the mix of our customers that we still have. A series of month-to-month customers, we have annual customers that have multiyear customers. So I think as we move more upmarket, more of our customer base becomes annual and multiyear that’ll drive that convergence between cRPO and revenue growth. And so it’s more about the mix of the length of the contracts within our customer base.

Alex Kurtz

All right. Thank you, Elizabeth. Next question please.

Operator

Brett Knoblauch, Cantor Fitzgerald.

Hi, this is Thomas on for Brett. Thank you for taking my question. I guess something that stuck out to me during the election was the immense use of influencers and influence marketing as a way to win overyounger crowds and voters. I guess as you’re going through the RFP process with customers, how much has taggers influencer marketing had an effect on win rates? And then as we think of the premium module attach rates, how much of that is coming from Tagger versus Listening or your other premium products?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks for the question, Thomas. Yeah, I’d say we’re pretty early days again on the influencer side as it relates to RFPs. Occasionally, you’ll see them in there. I see it as one of those things where our team has just done a really nice job introducing influencer and highlighting this as an important part of any social strategy. So we do see it as something that helps us with the win rates, but I don’t know that I’d call it out as a major theme in RFPs today.

Awesome. Thanks. Then just one more if I may. It appears that the smaller customer segment, the 10-K ARR has seen more deceleration relative to the larger customer segment that continues to show some strong growth I guess? Could you provide some insight whether this trend is driven by a realignment of the sales force or if you’re observing higher churn rates? Just anything to provide color there would be helpful.

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, I think the biggest thing. Thanks for the question. The biggest thing that I’d highlight here is just our focus on the sophisticated customers. We’re seeing a lot of progress here which you can see in the $50,000. If you think about our platform today and our premium modules and the use cases that we solve for, I think there’s just been a lot of opportunity in those larger customers where we’ve seen some really healthy penetration.

Alex Kurtz

All right. Thank you. Next question.

Operator

Brian Schwartz, Oppenheimer.

Brian Schwartz

Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions this afternoon. Ryan, wanted to ask you a question about the pipeline compensation. You did get some qualitative commentary in your introductory comments. But are you seeing any changes in the duration of the deals that are filling up in the pipeline?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks for the question. I sort of alluded to this in the prepared remarks, but certainly from a sales cycle perspective, it is elongating in this market today. We we felt really good about the types of companies that we’re getting in front of, the quality of those customers, the ACV opportunities behind them and then just the engagement with them. But it is taking longer to close those deals in this market today.

Brian Schwartz

Okay. And then the follow up I have for Joe is just a question on the composition of the bookings mix in the quarter. I’m just wondering if that was similar with historical trends. You are kind of two thirds coming from new logos and the third is coming from expansion. Thanks.

Joe Del Preto

Yeah, good question, but not a major change in our historical mix as it relates to the new business coming in. So no major change to call out there.

Brian Schwartz

Thank you.

Alex Kurtz

All right. Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator

Jackson Ader, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jackson Ader

Thanks for taking our questions. Joe, on cRPO that, if we take that as the right way to think about growth kind of going forward, then what should we expect for that metrics growth as we kind of look ahead? Are the the magnitudes of the slowdown from in the last few quarters, the right way to think about the magnitude of the slow down going forward or should there be some major departure?

Joe Del Preto

Yeah, so Jackson, we don’t — right now, we’re not guiding the cRPO. I think, as we move forward and as we kind of get more of the annual multiyear deals and as it starts to converge on revenue, I think we’ll be in a better place to provide forward-looking on cRPO. But right now, we’re actually not providing any guidance on cRPO.

Jackson Ader

Okay, got it. Then on expenses in the fourth quarter. So outside the reorg in R&D, which I think I understand. What — we’ve got a bunch of new, you know, wonderful leaders in place. And so I would assume that, you know, means that people are looking to make some investments. And so we’ve talked about R&D. But what about maybe some sales investments that are being contemplated now with with Mike on board? Understood that it’s only been 60 days, but still there are plans being made, I’m sure.

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks. I’ll go ahead here. I wouldn’t highlight any changes here. I think we feel really good about the structure that we have today and the investment strategy that we have as we move forward. So nothing to call out.

Jackson Ader

Okay. Thank you.

Alex Kurtz

All. Thank you for the question. Next question, please.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Rob Morelli, Needham and Company.

Rob Morelli

Yeah. Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. Congrats on the quarter. You continue to sound optimistic surrounding service cloud opportunity. As focus shifts away from social studio as it approaches sunset. do you anticipate go to market changes necessary to sort of really capture this opportunity? Or is the playbook for the partnership really similar to what’s in place in social studio? Thanks.

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, thanks, Rob. Yeah, it’s the exact same. And the reason it’s the exact same is we’ve been really focused in on the service cloud opportunity. Really, since we built the integration out about a year and a half ago. You saw more investment from us as we were one of the launch partners there for Agent Force. But when I think about the go to market motion on it and our partnership motion, it’s the same as we end out the year and go into next year. So feeling really good about the progress and the alignment with them.

Rob Morelli

Got it, helpful. And then sorry, running a little late here. But apologies, this was already asked, but compared to what you guys saw in the first half of ’24, did you notice any shift in sale cycles in 3Q versus the prior two quarters, any shortening or changing customer budgets?

Ryan Barretto

Yeah, no. We highlighted that the macro feels very similar and in terms of sales cycles, we’re seeing the same things. So win rates continue to be elevated. We’ve been creating a lot of healthy pipeline sales cycles are just elongated.

Rob Morelli

Got it, thanks for the color.

Operator

At this time, there are no further audio questions. I will now hand today’s call back over to the presenters for any close of remarks.

Ryan Barretto

Great, thanks very much. And I just want to say thank you all for joining us today and for the thoughtful questions. I want to end by just thanking our incredible team here at Sprout for their dedication and hard work, which really drives everything that we’re achieving. We’re incredibly excited about the road ahead and confident in the strategy that we outlined today to really deliver meaningful value to our customers and shareholders, and we really appreciate your support. So thanks for joining us, take care, and we’ll talk soon.

Operator

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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