Item 2. | MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS |
You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with the condensed consolidated financial statements and the notes thereto included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, as well as our audited consolidated financial statements and related notes as disclosed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on February 29, 2024 (the “2023 Annual Report”). In addition to historical financial information, the following discussion contains forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, estimates, beliefs, and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include those discussed below and elsewhere in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, particularly in the section titled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” above, and in Part I, Item 1A of the 2023 Annual Report and as may be subsequently updated by our other SEC filings.
Overview
Vertex is a leading global provider of indirect tax software and solutions. Our mission is to deliver the most trusted tax technology enabling global businesses to transact, comply, and grow with confidence. Vertex provides cloud-based and on-premise solutions that can be tailored to specific industries for every major line of indirect tax, including sales and consumer use, value added, and payroll. Headquartered in North America, and with offices in South America and Europe, Vertex employs over 1,500 professionals and serves companies across the globe.
We derive the majority of our revenue from software subscriptions. These subscriptions include use of our software and ongoing monthly content updates. Our software is offered on a subscription basis to our customers, regardless of their deployment preferences. On-premise subscriptions are typically sold through one-year contracts, and cloud-based subscriptions are typically sold through one- to three-year contracts. We bill the majority of our customers annually in advance of the subscription period.
Our customers include a majority of the Fortune 500, as well as a majority of the top 10 companies by revenue in multiple industries such as retail, technology, and manufacturing, in addition to leading marketplaces. As our customers expand geographically and pursue omnichannel business models, their tax determination and compliance requirements increase and become more complex, providing sustainable organic growth opportunities for our business. Our flexible, tiered transaction-based pricing model also results in our customers growing their spend with us as they grow and continue to use our solutions. We principally price our solutions based on a customer’s revenue base, in addition to a number of other factors.
We employ a hybrid deployment model to align to our customers’ technology preferences for their core financial management software across on-premise, cloud deployments or any combination of these models. Over time, we expect both existing and newly acquired customers to continue to shift towards cloud deployment models. Cloud-based subscription sales to new customers have grown at a faster rate than on-premise software subscription sales, which is a trend that we expect to continue over time. We generated 49% and 43% of software subscription revenue from cloud-based subscriptions during the three months ended June 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively, and 48% and 43% for the six months ended June 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively. While our on-premise software subscription revenue comprised 51% and 57% of our software subscription revenue during the three months ended June 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively, and 52% and 57% for the six months ended June 30, 2024 and 2023, respectively, it continues to decrease as a percentage of total software subscriptions revenues as cloud-based subscriptions grow.
We license our solutions primarily through our direct sales force, which focuses on selling to qualified leads provided by our marketing efforts, and through our network of referral partners. We also utilize indirect sales to a lesser extent to efficiently grow and scale our enterprise and mid-market revenues.
Our partner ecosystem is a differentiating, competitive strength in both our software development and our sales and marketing activities. We integrate with key technology partners that span Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”), Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”), procurement, billing, Point of Sale (“POS”) and e-commerce. These partners include Adobe/Magento, Coupa, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, SAP Ariba, Shopify,