Thinkific Labs Inc

TSX:THNC

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is Hugh, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Thinkific's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Joo Hun Kim, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Joo Hun Kim, executive]

Thank you, Hugh, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Thinkific's Q1 Fiscal 2024 Results Earnings Call. Joining me today are Greg Smith, Co-Founder and CEO; and Corinne Hua, CFO. After the prepared remarks, we will open up the call to questions.During the call today, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions and therefore, subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.These comments are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. We undertake no obligation to update these statements, except as required by law. You can read about these risks and uncertainties in our regulatory filings that were filed earlier today.Our commentary today will include adjusted financial measures, which are non-IFRS measures. They should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for IFRS measures. Reconciliations between the two can be found in our regulatory documents, which are available on our website.In addition, our commentary today will include key performance indicators that help us evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate business plans and make strategic decisions.Such key performance indicators may be calculated in a manner different to similar key performance indicators used by other companies. I should also note, we have a Slide deck that supports our remarks available to download on the webcast interface or on our website. And finally, all dollar amounts discussed today are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated.I will now turn the call over to Greg Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Thinkific.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Hello, and welcome to think Thinkific's Q1 2024 Earnings Call. Thank you for joining us. I'm happy to be reporting solid Q1 results that show we continue to execute against our strategy of profitable growth.Total revenue increased 13% year-over-year to $16 million, which was the top end of our guided range. Thinkific saw strong growth in both commerce at 80% revenue growth and plus a 28% revenue growth.We saw strong growth in GMV, representing the sales our customers are earning, and we're very pleased to see that customers who adopt Thinkific Commerce continue to sell more. We're proud to deliver this suite of features to help our customers grow their businesses.We recently signed a partnership with Spotify to test the program in the United Kingdom that offers courses alongside music, podcast and audio books in the Spotify app. Spotify's pursuit of this opportunity validates the size of the market we see ahead of us. This partnership with Spotify opens up a whole new distribution channel for our customers to sell their courses.In a moment, I'll offer more details on the Spotify partnership, provide an update on our recent product releases and enhancements and show how these are having an immediate impact on the success we have seen in Plus and with the lead.Finally, I'll share with you some compelling data we have collected on how our commerce solution is helping our customers succeed and an initiative we are undertaking to help accelerate adoption.In late March, we announced the partnership with Spotify, which will now offer courses alongside music, podcast audio books in the Spotify app. Just like think Thinkific, Spotify sees the huge potential in online education.Many of their users already engaged with podcast and audio books on a daily basis for their learning needs, and we believe this highly engaged community will be interested in accessing and purchasing quality educational content from course creators.We are really excited about the potential of this partnership to transform the businesses of our customers by allowing them to tap into a sales channel that could reach hundreds of millions of potential new customers. At the moment, the test is limited to Spotify users in the U.K.One Thinkific creator that is part of the test is Duane Roche. We started the female start-up club to help motivate and empower founders and entrepreneurs with inspiring stories, expert advice and valuable resources. Duane already has one of the top 10 entrepreneur Podcast on Spotify, and now she will have the ability to sell her courses directly from the Spotify app.On her inclusion in the Spotify test, she told us that the increased visibility and exposure as well as the potential to diversify her revenue streams is a game changer for her business.Also included are people like Kat Norton, better known as Miss Excel, who designs Creative Excel training videos, complete with Snoop Dogg or Vanilla Ice background music that often go viral. So too with Fiona Humberstone, aka, the brand stylist, who teaches entrepreneurs to build a distinctive brand.This partnership not only validates the massive market for us in online learning, it provides a channel to help our customers succeed and reach new audiences. It provides a new potential revenue stream for Thinkific and it's already attracting top creators to Thinkific to participate in the venture. It's still early stages but represents a very large future potential opportunity for us and our customers.Turning now to The Leap. I'm pleased to announce that The Leap has over 20,000 users leveraging the platform. This is up from 13,000 last quarter. The growth we're seeing in the Leap is remarkable, and we believe is another proof point of the enormous potential in this market.We are continuing to refine the user experience and now customers burden prospects have a new onboarding and homepage experience, which is modern and intuitive. We believe this is resulting in higher levels of participation both on the part of the creator to complete and operate their website and consumer to engage and ultimately purchase digital products.Turning to Thinkific Plus. The suite of features that we released in Q4 of last year, including learning path, continue to be a decisive factor for closing more deals. We saw a very strong quarter in terms of new bookings, many of which came in late in the quarter, leading to ARR growth that was even stronger than revenue growth.In Q1, we were able to sign a nonprofit that offers veteran support courses, which noted that Learning Path and our ability to greatly reduce administrative time were reasons they chose Thinkific.We are seeing an uptick in interest from small to mid-market organizations, which see the value in our Plus service for both customer education and as an additional revenue stream. Within our customer base, there is a rising focus on showcasing ROI to internal stakeholders, positioning Thinkific Plus as far more than a traditional LMS has had a positive impact in the market.One larger organization we saw joining as a Plus customer is a trusted medical education organization. They have over 2,000 employees in the Western United States. This customer conducted a thorough evaluation process that encompassed over 10 vendors. And in the end, they replaced their existing well-known education solution in favor of Thinkific.For Q2, we expect to have SCORM implementation available for our customers. SCORM is a set of technical standards that helps online learning content work together with online learning software. SCORM is often required for RFPs. We believe it will help us close more deals and close larger deals.In Q1, we also released a feature that allows our customers to sell their learning products in bulk, where a single purchaser such as an employer, can purchase access to a course or other learning product for multiple learners, all in a single transaction. This allows our customers to sell to companies that buy group licenses for their employees, yet another feature, helping our customers sell more.We have also enhanced our reporting and analytics functionalities, optimized our checkout and added integrations to third parties like QuickBooks and Xero. The strategic additions and enhancements we are consistently making to the commerce platform are having a significant and positive impact on the ability of our customers to sell more on Thinkific.Customers who use Thinkific Commerce see up to 22% higher average transaction sizes over those who use their own payment providers. Those who use commerce alternative payment features like Buy Now Pay Later, earn 7.5% more revenue on average and those using our gifting feature see up to 6.2% higher transaction sizes.Gifting allows someone to buy a course or other learning product as a gift for a friend or family member. A great example of how Thinkific Commerce is helping our customers succeed is Matthew Chapman, aka, Mittmaster Matt. Matt was a self-defense trainer who moved his business online 3 years ago.After struggling to effectively scale his online business, each earned on Order bumps 3 months ago and the results have been game-changing. Using Order Bumps, he was able to offer complementary products on his checkout page that increased exposure to his entire course library that had previously gone unnoticed.He saw his first order bump within hours of adding this feature and has been able to increase its revenue between 20% to 50% each month since adding it. The benefits to Thinkific Commerce solutions provide over the alternatives are powerful.I have personally called many of our largest customers to inform them of the benefits of switching and have met with extremely positive feedback. Moreover, the amount of work necessary to migrate is minimal and allows them to preserve and even enhance their historical payments data.Since the beginning of the year, we've been building up our efforts to accelerate adoption of our Commerce solutions. In July, any customers not using Thinkific Commerce will incur a small fee. The fee helps us fund the continued integration and support of these payment alternatives.It also serves as an incentive to switch to Thinkific Commerce. Customers were informed of this in mid-April. As a result of this, we expect adoption of Thinkific Commerce to accelerate in the second half of 2024.In conclusion, I want to thank all the employees of Thinkific for their tireless work in the quarter. Because of them, we are continuing to innovate at a rapid pace and more than ever, we are truly helping our customers succeed.Thinkific has and remains focused on providing our customers with the tools they need to succeed in growing their businesses. New features like Learning Path, digital downloads, which was released in Q2 and the soon-to-be-released SCORM implementation should continue to accelerate growth.On Plus, we are continuing to move upmarket and are being embraced by enterprises that are looking for a more easy-to-use, scalable and flexible solution that allows them to incorporate learning into new business models.Finally, with our recent actions, we believe we will accelerate adoption of our Commerce platform among our customers towards the end of 2024. This will help us achieve our goal of doubling our commerce business before the end of 2025.Now, to speak about our current results in more detail, I'll turn the call over to Corinne.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Thanks, Greg. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased with our first quarter results that were at the high end of our guidance range. Our commitment to a strategy of profitable growth resulted in our third consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA and cash flow from operations, while still maintaining double-digit revenue growth.We continue to see strong growth in Commerce and Plus, which is further evidence that we are executing well and in line with our plan and gives us increasing confidence in our ability to accelerate growth later in the year. We expect solid execution of our plan to continue.In Q1 2024, revenue came in at $16 million, up 13% year-over-year and at the high end of the guidance range that we provided last call. The solid performance was driven by a combination of strong Commerce revenue growth, which benefited from an increase in adoption of our Commerce solution and higher take rates.And our strength in the Plus business that helped improve our ARPU or average revenue per user, which grew to $152 per month, up 10% from the prior year. Subscription revenue of $13.8 million was up 7% year-over-year, and ARR grew to $56.6 million, up 8% from the prior year.Subscription and ARR benefited from the continued growth of our paying customer base, which rose to 35,100 up 3% year-over-year and strengthen our Plus business, which had a strong bookings quarter with the ARR growth rate exceeding Net portion revenue growth rate.Commerce revenue of $2.1 million was up 80% year-over-year. The growth we saw in commerce revenue resulted from a combination of higher take rates, which as a percentage of revenue earned directly from GPV and increased penetration, which we measure through the penetration rate of GPV to GMV.Take-rates improved to 4.5% from the prior quarter's 4.1%, driven by recent features like our sales tax solutions and usage of alternate payment methods such as Buy now Pay Later.At the end of 2023, we set a goal to double our commerce business by mid- to end of 2025, and we are well on our way towards this goal. And with the initiatives in place, now expect adoption to accelerate in the back half of 2024. GPV, or gross payments volume, the value of commercial transactions that take place in our payment's platform grew to $44.7 million, up 54% year-over-year and 15% quarter-over-quarter.On an absolute basis, GPV grew $5.9 million versus the $3.6 million last quarter or almost 65% sequentially despite not having the benefit of Black Friday or the Christmas holiday sales. The increase in GPV reflects an increase in our total value of transactions on our platform, as shown by our GMV, which was 8% to $122.1 million and a continued increase in our penetration rate at 37% versus the 26% in the prior year and 34% in the prior quarter.In the geographies where Thinkific Commerce is generally available, over 80% of new customers choose Thinkific Commerce Solutions. Now, on to revenue by customer group. Our self-serve segment, whose customers are primarily entrepreneurs and creators saw revenue growth of $12.4 million or 10% from the prior year, which is better than the 9% growth we saw in the prior quarter, partly due to the strength of commerce revenue in that segment.Thinkific Plus for customers require more robust enterprise class features and support saw revenue of $3.6 million, up 28%, which is down slightly from the 31% in the prior quarter.In Q1, Plus benefited from an uptick in demand from small and mid-market businesses and the rolling out of high-demand features that we released last December. As a result, it did one of the strongest bookings quarters and had ARR growth that was ahead of our revenue growth. And therefore, we're confident in our ability to maintain growth rates at these levels through 2024 and are looking to accelerate it further as we exit the year.Moving on to our P&L. Gross margin came in recently consistent with prior periods at 74%. As commerce becomes a larger percentage of [indiscernible] revenue, we expect some slight downward pressure on overall margins. Subscription gross margin remained steady and came in at 81%, up slightly from 79% in the prior year and prior quarter.Commerce gross margin was 33% versus 36% in the prior year and 37% in the prior quarter. Commerce gross margin declined slightly in Q1 due to onetime fees associated with our student tax feature. We expect Commerce Solutions gross margin will continue to expand in the long run as adoption of high-margin value-added features increases.Moving to our operating expenses. Total OpEx of $13.4 million was down 12% from the prior year and up almost 4.5% from the prior quarter. The decrease in OpEx year-over-year reflects the cost realignment the company completed, while slightly increased sequentially as the primary result of the Q1 cost of our company-wide annual kickoff.The sales and marketing expense of $5 million was down 10% from $5.5 million in the prior year and relatively flat on a sequential basis. Research and development costs were down 3% to $4.6 million and decreased from the prior quarter that included some onetime expenses related to travel.General and administrative costs decreased 15% year-over-year but increased almost $600,000 as a result of the aforementioned increase from our annual kickoff. Adjusted EBITDA was $240,000, up over $3.3 million from the prior year and down a little from the prior quarter.The decrease from the prior quarter as a result of the Q1 specific kickoff costs, and annual reset of payroll taxes, offset by higher revenue. Turning to the balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents balance as of March 31 was $87.3 million, relatively flat with the prior quarter. Cash flow from operations was $3.1 million and was offset by an outflow of $1.8 million of cash from our NCIB share buyback. Now, on to guidance.To the first quarter of 2024, the company expects revenue of $16.1 million to $16.4 million. This range incorporates continued growth in subscription revenue, consistent with our ARR growth and expected growth in commerce revenue as adoption of our commerce solution increases tempered by the seasonality of GMV, which tends to be quietest in the second quarter. We continue to invest in the business to accelerate top line growth. However, we are committed to maintaining positive adjusted EBITDA.Now, I'll turn the call back to Greg for closing comments.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, Corinne. We're off to a good start for 2024 and executing well against our strategy of profitable growth. I'd like to break our efforts out into growth drivers, and we have a number of them in the works right now.First, Thinkific Commerce represents both a near-term significant growth driver and a long-term expansion lever in addition to making businesses more successful for our customers.Second, Plus represent sustainable, predictable revenue growth for the future. Third, we're actively making our products easier to use, both from a simplified user experience as well as with the help of AI.We expect this to accelerate the growth of our paying customer count. The combination of these three growth drivers should come together for an acceleration in the back half of the year. In addition to those large and near-term drivers of growth, we are constantly layering on opportunities for the future.Opportunities such as our Spotify partnership and the Leap could be our big growth drivers for the future. It's the combination of all these growth drivers and our ability to layer more on top that gives me confidence in our ability to accelerate our future growth and, of course, to help even more customers be successful in their own businesses.Happy to take questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Thanos Moschopoulos from BMO Capital Markets.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

There was a nice uptick sequentially in the payments take rates. And I know that, that should accelerate going forward, given that you're going to start implementing the fee. But just maybe just to recap in terms of the sequential improvement we saw since that was a bigger uptick sequentially than some of the prior quarters in terms of what drove that?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Hi, Thanos, we did happily see a bit of an uptick and think it can accelerate from here. We spent a fair bit of the end of Q4, early Q1. We're really looking at what's the right way to work with our customers to help them not only sell more on the platform, but also have less administrative headache by using it. And I think key to our future success is going to be how we can help our careers continue to find success using our commerce features.And so, that's really what we're focused on is like building out additional ways for them to either to have more success selling or to be able to have less administrative burden running their businesses. And so, that's really key for us from a success perspective.The fee should hopefully not just trial bit of revenue, that's not really the goal. It's really about how do we help incentivize people to help drive behavior to move that way.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Greg, maybe you can expand a bit on the traction you're seeing with respect to customers purchasing your platform as an LMS for courses that aren't necessarily being monetized? So, for example, you mentioned that medical education customer and the [Indiscernible] baked-off. What were some of the key criteria that led to you being selected for example, with that particular opportunity?And then more broadly, I mean, what's the key theme in terms of why you're winning negate some of these pure plays who have a longer history tackling the pure L&S opportunity?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Thanos. I'll comment a bit extra on it, but I think, Corinne, you're probably more positioned to take some of that sort of differences as to why people are choosing us on the Plus front, in particular, on those accounts.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Sure, happy to. One of the benefits we have with our Plus business compared to a lot of the incumbents or people that are around our space is really the time to value that we can give to our customers.And so, the benefits of coming from a self-serve history is that we really are easy to get started and be able to find value very quickly on the platform. The launch team, that's part of our Plus business also is being able to drive that quite quickly.And I think our typical starters, we see people up and running within 30 days, which is really phenomenal and speaks to just the history of the business and how focused we are on helping customers find success. We do see a lot of opportunity for us to continue to compete well in the space and continue to move upmarket.And so, there is more and more opportunity for us to bring a really compelling feature set to businesses that want to be able to use courses to both grow their business from a revenue perspective or educate their customers.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

And then finally, the Spotify partnership, I realize that it's really gave. So, maybe there's not a lot you can say on that front. But I guess any lessons learned so far in the initial weeks? And would you be working on other similar partnerships? Or is the focus maybe initially making this unsuccessful before broadening the channels you distribute through?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. Good questions. Thank you. On the initial learnings, it is still pretty early. I think it is a new area for us. I think one of the exciting things that we're learning is it really is extending us into effectively a whole new TAM in that historically, we've been focused on the software that services the people who deliver the actual education products. But if we continue into this space, it opens the door for us to also participate in a potentially much larger TAM of the consumption of the actual education products themselves.And then on the opportunity, well, some other learnings there, I think, is just that customers are loving it, being able to participating and being able to be featured in the app. And so, it really does get them the potential for a really broad reach.So, I think it's an exciting opportunity for them to participate, and we're certainly seeing people coming to us purely for the reason that they see this and they want to participate in it or have the potential to do that. In terms of other partnerships, really excited with what we're going on with Spotify, obviously, open to others, but nothing else imminent there.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Gavin Fairweather from Cormark.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Maybe just continuing on the Spotify partnership. Can you just speak to kind of early user demand and engagement with the learning product that you're putting on that platform in the U.K.?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. So, I think on the user demand, early signs look good. There's not specifics I can share also because there's another large public company involved. But I can say that from what I can see, it does look good in terms of the interest from their audience. But I think we've got some work to do to figure it all out how it works going forward, and we are only really a few weeks into the whole launch of the program itself.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

And then in the prepared remarks, you referenced the third-party surcharge for payments. Can you share the amount? And just to be clear, just for new customers? Or is that something you're looking at for the base also?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Corinne, you can expand on sort of where we're coming out in terms of averages. It is a variable for you depending on the plan that they're on. There some other variances depending on the volume that they're doing.And so, it does vary depending on the individual. It is something that applies to all existing customers as well as new customers. And, of course, the big reason for us doing this is it helps us cover the cost to maintain those existing third-party integrations for existing customers as well.And it does serve as an incentive for them to move over to think of the commerce, which my personal preference would be that no one ever pays the fee that they all move to Thinkific Commerce because we're seeing that they are clearly more successful when they do move to Thinkific Commerce.So, if anything, really, what it's serving is the ability for us to start having those conversations with customers about anything that would prevent them from moving over or the opportunities of them moving over to Thinkific Commerce.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

And then lastly, before I pass on, just on self-service to see the year-over-year growth rate accelerate again. I know you're always kind of experimenting with pricing and bundling. So, curious if you have any planned changes to balance the '24 in the topline.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes, nothing imminent on that front. I think it's something that we're always thinking seriously about how to optimize overall pricing to benefit our customers as well and ensure it's not just around extracting more, but it's actually more around improving the ability for our customers to choose and select us.And so, there may be there's always the opportunity for us to make improvements in the future. But to some extent, the fee on the commerce is seen as a pricing change. And so, I think we've made our near-term change and any future stuff would be left for further down the road.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Young from Canaccord.

[Robert Young, analyst]

I was trying to parse the ARR contribution from Plus. And the best I can come to is about $0.8 million incremental ARR coming out of Plus. It seems like that's flat in the last couple of quarters. And so, am I in the right range? And am I correct in my calculation that Plus ARR isn't growing? And what may be the reason for that, if I'm right?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

You are. Plus ARR is reasonably consistent with the prior quarter. There's been a fair bit of additional bookings that came at the end of the quarter. As you know, booking deals closed in the quarter and may have a start date in the future. And so, we do see a really nice uptick coming as we think about what's coming forward for this, but not a significant increase quarter-over-quarter.The growth rate of 30% is what we're most excited about from the Plus perspective and maintaining that as we go forward. We do see lots of opportunities for additional growth, but looking at that more later in the year. So, quite excitable what's possible, but later in the year is the real focus there.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. And just to clarify that, there is an increase quarter-over-quarter. You're talking about the rate of change of the increase, right?

[Robert Young, analyst]

Yes.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Correct.

[Robert Young, analyst]

Second question for me would just be around the funnel. I think you'd said that there was a lot of activity to the funnel and good bookings this quarter for Plus. So, is there any [Indiscernible]? Is that a catalyst or that might have been something people are waiting for or SCORM or something people are waiting for? Is there anything that you would highlight as maybe a bottleneck for more growth in Plus?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Corinne can speak more to this, but I'd say certainly [indiscernible] has been out for a while, but it's certainly something that customers definitely value and then SCORM is something that will be coming out shortly and that should unlock more deals for us as well. Corinne, I don't know if there's more you could add on the Plus pipeline.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

No, I think you've covered it off. We're looking probably early Q3 for the SCORM to be released and so excited about that opportunity.

[Greg Smith, executive]

The nice thing, too, is we do now have more dedicated product resources to help move the Plus product forward. It is quite competitive from a future comparison set already, but there's certainly more we can do to unlock growth there. And with more dedicated R&D resources there, we should continue to see these advancements that will unlock more of the pipeline.

[Robert Young, analyst]

And then last question, just I guess the other side of that question is that, the contribution from the core is growing quarter-over-quarter, the contribution to ARR. And so, I guess that's partly driven by the paid ads although that declined quarter-over-quarter. And so, I'm trying to understand, is the incremental ARR in the core business? What's the driver of that? Is it all payments or commerce? Or what's the driver?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. We don't put payments or commerce into the ARR. So, one thing we did have is a nice quarter of upgrades. So, we saw people choosing of their own accord higher level price points and plans within self-serve purely on a subscription basis. And so that contributed there as well to the ARR growth, which we're excited to see too.

[Robert Young, analyst]

There's nothing seasonable seasonal about that, is there?

[Greg Smith, executive]

It's not so much seasonal, more campaign-driven. So, there were some campaigns that we had run recently that helped drive some of those upgrade opportunities. So, it is something we can repeat in the future. But to some extent, it was an event that happened because of some efforts we made on the marketing team.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Todd Coupland from CIBC.

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

I was wondering what your expectation for commerce adoption in the second half of the year is with the surcharge coming. Where is that likely to get to by the time we get to the end of the year?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes, it's a good question. I think we had seen the adoption rate moving up by, I think, 2% a quarter for the last few quarters. And then this quarter, that accelerated to 3% and also on an absolute value basis an acceleration, which was great to see. Part of that is just the work of the team continuing to bring awareness and really showcase that it is really beneficial to customers in terms of their overall revenue when they're moving over to Thinkific Commerce.On the fee front, that should have some added acceleration there plus a bunch of other marketing initiatives we're doing to continue to educate people on the opportunities here. So, we do expect this to accelerate and continue to grow on the adoption rates.We're looking more at, I think on last quarter, we talked about doubling the penetration rate from where we exited last year over the following 18 to 24 months. So, like to hold our gold deadline, so that's more like 15 to 21 months now. But really, as we go through next year, we want to do more than double the commerce business.So, where exactly we end up at the end of this year, not sure. We just know that especially in the back half of the year, the fee comes into effect on July 3, and so, we should see from that point forward, especially an acceleration in that adoption. Not sure exactly where we'll close the year, but we are looking to double the penetration rate from where we closed last year. I'm sorry, double it within 2025 though not by the end of this year.

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

And then you're seeing this steady move up in the take rate, what does that look like in the second half of the year? Is there other functionality that's going to bring that up? Just talk about the rhythm of the take rate as well.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes, I wouldn't expect a big shift on that, if you have more commentary, but I don't think we expect a big change in that just because we're much more focused on the penetration at this point. And so, once we have the penetration to a point that we're really happy with it in 2025, that's when we kind of come back to continue adding these optional abilities for people to opt into things that help them sell more and potentially have a take.

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

And then sort of last question for me. Lots of questions tonight around trying to figure out the rhythm of the Plus business and I get the puts and takes around the close of the quarter. When you look at the funnel, do you see growth at the 30% level? Or do you see potential well above that 30% level? Could you just give us a little color on how you're tracking to that goal.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Todd, I'll share more color on that one. So, we have been seeing a really good top of funnel metrics come in, in Q1 and continuing into Q2. Key for us is being able to move things quickly through the funnel and getting them to close.We do feel quite confident that 30% is a healthy growth rate, and we're really focused on achieving that throughout the rest of the year with opportunities for acceleration. Nothing quickly that we're going to see that's going to drive that in Q2. But I think as we get to the latter half of the year, there's more opportunities to exceed beyond that.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Richard Tse from National Bank.

[Richard Tse, analyst]

I was just going to jump on the Plus side as well. Has that required you to sort of change your go-to-market strategy in any way relative to the strategy that you had before?

[Greg Smith, executive]

I can talk a little bit about this, then Corinne I would love you to add a little bit more. If there's more I've miss on it, Corinne's quite close to the Plus business. So, we both can speak quite closely to it. On the go-to-market, originally, when we started Thinkific Plus, it really was through our existing self-serve channels. We were just seeing leads come in that were larger businesses with the same needs, and they were using our product on the self-serve plans and/or even the free plan.And so, there was an opportunity there to bring them something more and create something that was a better fit for their specific needs in terms of our account managers, CSMs and having them speak to a salesperson have a contract.So, it got started through our existing go-to-market channels. A lot of our growth actually still continues to come to Plus through existing self-serve marketing channels but where the differences come in now is we quickly marketing qualify or product qualify those leads as higher value to customers or Plus customers specifically and then bring them over to speak with our sales team, who does an amazing job through a very quick sales cycle actually typically sub-30 days of bringing them on to Plus.There's been a constant evolution in the go-to-market. So, part of it initially was just getting better at qualifying the leads through the product and through data enrichment, bringing them to salespeople. We're now doing a little bit more of outbound, a little bit more Plus specific marketing, and we expect that to increase as well. So, that presents a lot more future upside for us as well. Corinne to build in pretty detail there, but more you could add on that?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Maybe just the one thing that's worth noting is that the ICP is or the customer profile is quite different from our self-serve business. And so, while we're only focusing on businesses who are looking to expand their business through revenue or customer education, the way that we market that is quite different.And so, there's lots of things that we've been doing, especially more recently to go after that specific customer education component. So, those that have a product they want to educate customers on. And it's a big opportunity for us as we look forward and a bit of a different marketing approach that we've taken. And so, that's probably one thing that's different in while we continue to see a lot of these come in through sells there is more of a direct channel going for the Thinkific Plus today.

[Richard Tse, analyst]

And as you look ahead, let's say, over the next 12 months, how do you see the mix of growth changing from sort of new services versus new customers? Is that mix going to be pretty much what it is today? Or is it sort of shifting more towards new customer ads?

[Greg Smith, executive]

I mean, the beautiful thing, I think, is that we have a number of growth levers to pull on. And so, where I see that growth coming over the next 12 months is in a big way from commerce, so existing product and service that we have to existing and to new customers. It helps them succeed more, but it also drives revenue for us. So, that's one very consistent confident growth driver we have in the near term here. Plus holding steady as we talked around that 30% mark, we'll continue to pull up the average.Commerce growing in this sort of 80% range, continues to pull up the overall average. And then that third growth driver we're looking to move is continuing to improve the ease of use, especially using AI and improvements to our overall user experience to improve that total customer count and bringing on self-serve customers specifically.So, layering those three growth drivers is really where we put together the mix that gets us to accelerating our growth rate through the back half of this year and into next year as well. And then, of course, as I mentioned, there's a few other growth drivers that are potential for the future like the Leap, like Spotify that we're continuing to work on as a test for the future.

[Richard Tse, analyst]

And just the last one for me. In your outlook, you say committed to maintaining positive adjusted EBITDA. Can you help us sort of understand the degree of positive EBITDA, either sort of at a high level or from like an OpEx run rate side?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

I think first off, the most important thing to remember is that are really focused on driving growth into the business. And so while we don't want to do that in an unprofitable way, first, focus of business is driving growth.Today, we're seeing kind of like 2% of revenue coming to the adjusted EBITDA line. And so, we know what might not accelerate a little more. It's a little bit close to the line for us, but really focused on growth first. And so, we aren't looking to expand margins until we see the revenue lines at a greater scale. And then we'd like to see our margins expand. But first off, really focused on growth.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Martin Toner from ATB Capital Markets.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Can you give us some color on state [indiscernible] and could you also give us some color on success converting creators to end customers.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. So, in this quarter, we saw a high watermark, which was exciting on GMV. So, seeing an increase in gross merchandise value, GMV, $122 million, a new high for us. So, that was excellent and is a really good indication of what are not all indications of customer success, but a good indication of existing customers, especially continuing to sell more.Part of that driven, of course, by a lot of the features that we launched with Thinkific Commerce. The success of our customers is the North Star here. And so, we're continuing to invest the majority of our R&D efforts and a lot of other efforts into how do we drive them to be more successful, which just means making it as easy as possible to get started to get that first sale. And then once they're up and running, getting more sales on a recurring basis on going from that.So, commerce is part of that, but there's a lot more in the works there that will continue to unlock more growth for customers as well. And then you mentioned, I think, conversion through to paid. We did see a slight uptick this quarter on the conversion free accounts over to paid accounts. But that's definitely an area where I'd like to see more improvement.So, we have some active projects in the works there that I think we have some low-hanging fruit that could start to move that up further, partly just through improving the overall initial onboarding experience, ease of use and making it a little simpler to get started with Thinkific should help to drive that up even more.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Question number two is, when you look at sales and marketing investments, what are you seeing in terms of the returns on those investments? And like what's driving your decision to make those investments or just as you're uncertain or unhappy with what the return might be?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. So, we continue to see improvements in our LTV to CAC. So our, I guess, low bar of the LTV to CAC was a few years ago, and we've continued to make improvements throughout the last couple of years to an even better spot where we're at today, and this quarter was no exception with continued improvement there. So, we watch quite closely the efficiency of our go-to-market to ensure that we're maintaining healthy levels of lifetime value to cost of acquisition there.That's a big way we're looking at it. In addition, we're starting to make more investments on the more organic side. This is something that it takes a little bit longer to unlock, and we're continuing to do that, but it slowly does improve lifetime value to cost of acquisition. And so, with investments there, we're continuing to drive that.The LEAP is sort of another area where we're doing that where we've got significant eyeballs coming to us through the Leap's media property. And although they're kind of early in the journey, we're seeing some good activation there on the Leap that could present future opportunities for us in terms of revenue. And the reason I highlight that is it's a fairly cost-effective way of getting eyeballs and getting acquisition of customers there.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Chan from TD Cowen.

[Daniel Chan, analyst]

I know you just announced the fees for the third-party payments in April, but any change in churn since you made that announcement? And are you expecting any churn as you enforce those fees?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes, so we did just recently announce them, and we did see an improvement in revenue retention during the quarter. So, that's been quite positive. We are watching it extremely closely. Not so much that we think this actually should be a driver of churn. It's a relatively modest fee.There's a way for customers to completely avoid it by moving over to Thinkific Commerce. We do offer exemptions to it if customers are committing to move over. And so, having a lot of those conversations have actually personally had a number of them.Occasionally, there's ones where people are confused about the offering or they have a bunch of questions or they're concerned about some specific feature that they need to move over, but we're kind of addressing these in some cases, in mass and in some cases, one by one to ensure that we continue to live by one of our core values, which is fanatical about customer success and ensure that we're not leaving anyone behind in the process of making this move to get as many people as possible on to Thinkific Commerce.The nice thing is that it really is a very positive offering in that even some customers who've initially reacted negatively to a fee, which there always is, you would expect that once they dug in and understood what it was about and understood what they were getting, there was some really positive reception and especially when they move over and they see the results on their business growth, it's been quite positively received.So, not saying it's not possible to see some or we won't lose one or two over it or maybe three or four. We're actively working to avoid that. And I think there's no really legitimate reason why we should lose people over it.

[Daniel Chan, analyst]

And then on the Spotify deal, just wondering if you could provide some color around how that agreement works. Is it a revenue share agreement? Is it a onetime fee to get onto the platform? Just any color on how that works would be helpful.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. Happy to share. We've been transparent about it on our site with customers who are looking at doing this. So, there is a revenue share. And it's still early, so we're still figuring it out, and I don't know that the nature of it is completely locked down.But right now, we are at trying to create the largest portion for the creator. And so, in one possible scenario where, say, it's sitting on an Apple app and if Apple is processing the fees, obviously, they're going to take a percentage.So, on that in the creator getting 40% Apple getting 30%, Spotify getting 20% and not getting 10%. It can vary depending on where the payment is processed obviously. But we're really trying to make it so that the creator takes the bulk of it, and then we cover the cost of things like us and Spotify share the cost of paying out Apple and payment processing and other fees and transfers.

[Daniel Chan, analyst]

And then last question for me. You've been active on the share buyback. Just wondering how you're thinking about that going forward and priorities for your capital.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

We had a good quarter in terms of being able to be reasonably aggressive with our share buyback, bought back 700,000 shares. But this is really a good use of our money. We definitely don't feel the share price is reflective of the value today.And at this point, we plan to continue. We are excited to be able to buy back stores at this price, looking at importantly, how do we allocate capital broadly. And when we're looking at opportunities internally, lots of things that we're looking to be able to do and Spotify opportunity as well as the Leap are two good examples of where we're allocating some experimental capital, also looking at other places, but don't want to drive the business into a loss.And so, happy to sit on the value of cash that we have today while also taking advantage of the share buyback.

[Operator]

There are no more questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Greg Smith for closing remarks.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, and thank you, everyone. If there's a few things I could highlight, I think it's that we have some really exciting multiple growth drivers in front of us, including a few very early in the works and some very near-term certain large growth drivers to expand our revenue from Thinkific Commerce, Thinkific Plus and, of course, continuing to grow that self-serve business and improving the activation rate of our customers.Just a reminder to everyone, we will be presenting at the Needham Conference on May 4 and the CIBC Conference on May 22. So, it would be great to see some of you there. Thank you, everyone, and good night.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.