Thinkific Labs Inc

TSX:THNC

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Operator]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Michelle, and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Thinkific's Third Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcast live on the Internet and recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Janet Craig, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Janet Craig;Investor Relations, executive]

Thank you, Michelle, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Thinkific's earnings call for the third quarter of 2022. 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 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. 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 2 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 noted. I will now turn the call over to Greg Smith, CEO of Thinkific.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, Janet. Hello, and welcome to our third quarter earnings conference call. Thank you for joining us. In the third quarter, we continued to execute against our strategy and remain focused on helping creators succeed. We delivered revenue of $13.3 million, which was at the top of our guidance range, and adjusted EBITDA loss was better than we expected, coming in at $5.7 million. Underpinning these numbers was our year-over-year growth in ARPU, average revenue per user, paying customers and the continued success of Thinkific payments. At Thinkific, we are focused on the key drivers that will propel our growth and profitability, including continued innovation to help creators succeed, continuing to build a strong team and workplace culture, managing our cost structure and improving our go-to-market.

I want to stop for a minute on #4, improving our go-to market. Doing this should, in combination with other factors, translate into growing customer acquisition. While we grew year-over-year, our number of paying customers has been flat for the last few quarters. I'm going to spend some time on this shortly, but I didn't want to kick off the call without acknowledging that we know we have further room to improve in our go-to-market strategy to drive customer acquisition. I never get tired of hearing from our creators, what drives them, the impact they have on their students and, of course, the success they create for themselves.

Every quarter, I talk to dozens of creators about their accomplishments, their hopes, their dreams and their fears and challenges. It's amazing to hear the impact they create. And it reveals new opportunities for Thinkific to help them. We often speak to the impact we have on our creators and their businesses. In addition to that, we get to see the amazing results they deliver for their students. I recently spoke to a creator who shared a wonderful story about one of hers. After taking her class on investing, the student was able to afford new beds for her children because of what she learned. All our leaders regularly speak to creators. Miranda, our COO, recently spoke to a creator who shared that not only have Thinkific helped them pay their mortgage, put their children through college, but also their courses taught architects the principles of accessible building. Because of their courses, there are buildings all over North America that are more accessible to the elderly or disabled.

We've also seen new creators teaching topics that range from crime prevention to corporate ESG training. I'm constantly amazed at the myriad ways creators use Thinkific to deliver impact in the world, changing their own lives and those of their students. The core engine of this impact, that of our creators and our own is our continued focus on innovation. In Q3, we introduced Thinkific communities. While you've heard me speak about think of the Thinkific Communities before, what we launched on September 27 was a stand-alone digital learning product that is now on par with courses and can be created or offered independently or in combination with courses. Thinkific Communities allow creators to create their own branded community experience on their own website.

With communities, you can invite students to participate in discussions, share ideas and learnings, coach and support each other, all under your brand and on your site. This allows their students to engage with each other and with the creator. Creators can offer community access for free or sell access for a onetime or recurring subscription fees. We've already seen creators taking advantage of communities to create additional revenue streams. It also creates a new space for the creator to promote and sell other products like their courses.

Unlike courses, which can take some time to create and launch, a community is much faster to set up and launch if you don't need to create content before you start. It's as simple as a few clicks in Thinkific and then sending an invite out for others to join. Thinkific Communities are also more focused on creating learning experiences and sharing knowledge than other generic community products on the market. We are already seeing the creators who leverage communities as part of their digital learning experience are more successful than those who do not. Anyone can get started creating their own community on the Thinkific free plan. Higher price points unlock more features and volume.

The benefits to Thinkific include the potential to expand our customer base to creators who want to start with a community instead of a course. As creators generate more revenue and larger communities, they are more likely to stay with Thinkific as well as upgrade. Thinkific communities and their focus on learning and knowledge sharing create further differentiation for us. We expect Thinkific communities to help us attract new customers, drive upgrades and improve retention over the long run.

While Thinkific Communities was the largest product innovation of the quarter, we also improved a number of other offerings for our creators, including more ways to price and sell digital products, new landing pages, better ways to sell volume licenses to your digital products and improve transaction reporting. We also continue to improve our infrastructure, resulting in better reliability, speed, uptime and security on Thinkific. At Thinkific, we pride ourselves on being agile, curious and relentless in analyzing situations and solving problems. Whether that be for our creators and how we make it easier and more intuitive for them to use Thinkific, our thinkers, our team and how we create the best environment for them to flourish or even being proactive about our cost structure, just to name a few.

With our rapid growth over the past few years, we face new challenges and require new solutions. I recently took a step back to consider what Thinkific needs to take the next giant step forward and meet our goals and long-term vision. The conclusion I came to was that one of the most fundamental ways to do this is to bring in a really seasoned leader to help us do just that. Luckily, as I was coming to this realization and determining next steps, including how to bring someone like this on board, the rest of the team and I were experiencing firsthand the insights and energy of Steve Krenzer in his role as Board member. Steve's track record for building high-growth companies, his expertise in operations, sales and marketing as well as his understanding of Thinkific as a Board member, created a unique opportunity for us. Luckily, Steve was thinking the same thing and he graciously agreed to join the Thinkific team for a term of 18 months in the role of President, while maintaining his seat on the Board.

After several weeks of having Steve on the team, I can already see progress, including pattern matching from his prior experience, allowing us to move faster and make better decisions, identification of a number of problems in go-to-market that we can fix for better results, improvements in our goal-setting and performance management. And this brings me back to our business performance. We have a number of strengths across the business. Most importantly, creators continue to see value in our platform, and that's reflected in the results that they generate on Thinkific. Creators continue to move up through our pricing plans for value and results.

Our payments business continues to grow. Larger customers continue to select our higher price points, recognizing the strength of Thinkific to serve them at scale. These collectively are the drivers of our average revenue per user, or ARPU, which has grown 20% year-over-year. Our retention of customers remain steady with a long-term trend of continued improvement. We have a strong financial position, a consistently improving cost structure and a path to profitability.

Where we are challenged is getting the customer acquisition number moving again. And with the support of Steve and the rest of the team, we've been able to dig into this. We don't have all the answers yet, but we have identified a number of improvements to drive change. Our primary focus here and the one that we think that can drive the best results is in operational excellence across our go-to-market functions. There are a number of basic changes that add up to a significant opportunity for growth. And while there are macro factors at play here, we are focused on the factors within our control and see opportunity for us to improve this number.

Now to speak about our current results, I'm going to turn the call over to Corinne.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Thanks, Greg. I'm pleased to share that we had another solid quarter. Revenue growth is at the top of our expectations. We continue to drive revenue growth to an expansion of total paying customers and our growing average revenue per user or ARPU. We were also effective in continuing to bring down our cost structure while still investing for growth, resulting in an improved EBITDA loss compared to our initial expectations. In the third quarter, revenue came in at $13.3 million, a 34% increase compared to the prior year. This was driven by both an increase in customer count as well as increasing ARPU.

As noted previously, we have many initiatives that are focused on improving ARPU in 2022, and we are continuing to see the success of those initiatives in Q3 with 20% year-over-year growth. ARR grew 24% to $50.9 million. During the past year, we continued to attract new creators to our platform and saw continued upgrades to higher paid plans. We continue to enhance our pricing strategy, focusing on aligning the value we create with the prices we charge, and this contributed to growing ARR in the third quarter. Average revenue per user was up 20% year-over-year to $133 per month compared to $110 per month in Q3 of the prior year. Consistent growth in ARPU over the past several quarters has been driven by creators upgrading to higher paid plans as they experience success on the platform. Thinkific Plus and Thinkific Payments also continue to be strong drivers of ARPU growth.

We ended the second quarter with 33,300 paying customers, an increase of 9% compared to the last year, but flat quarter-over-quarter. This was in line with our expectations for the quarter, given some of the changes we've made, including the pricing strategy we've spoken about. In the near term, we don't expect substantive changes to our total paying customer count. As Greg just described, we are focused on continuous improvement to our go-to-market strategy that will drive paying customers over the longer term.

Moving next to the Thinkific Payments. Our Thinkific Payments features continue to be well received by creators where our selling tools continue to drive results. Gross payments volume, or GPV, which is the total value of gross merchandise value or GMV processed using Thinkific Payments, and it was $17.7 million this quarter. This represented a penetration rate of 18% of the $97.9 million in GMV processed in the third quarter.

Moving now to our P&L. As mentioned earlier, our revenue grew 34% year-over-year to $13.3 million. Gross margin at 76% was flat year-over-year. There are some puts and takes within this as we saw efficiencies in our customer support team, partially offset by lower margins on Thinkific Payments revenue. We continue to exercise cost discipline across the business. We are seeing the benefits of our focus on prudent cost management and focused investments in areas of high return when we look at the business on a sequential basis. Sales and marketing expense grew from $5.8 million to $6.8 million year-over-year, a 17% increase. This increase was primarily due to continued advertising and promotional costs that drive market awareness.

Similarly, R&D expenses were $6.4 million, a 16% increase compared to the third quarter of 2021. This increase was primarily due to continued investments in the development of our platform, including the recent Communities feature launch. On the G&A front, we actually saw a slight decrease year-over-year at $3.8 million as we continue to keep our cost in check post our restructuring. One item of note is the current Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar exchange. We recognize our revenue in U.S. dollars, while the majority of our employee-related expenses are in Canadian. The significant strengthening of the U.S. dollar in Q3 versus last year, positively impacted our EBITDA loss by approximately 5 percentage points or $0.5 million. As we continue to focus on growing our top line, while making progress towards our adjusted EBITDA breakeven, we made progress again this quarter. Our adjusted EBITDA loss in Q3 was $5.7 million, improving from a loss of $6.3 million in the prior year and a loss of $7 million in Q2.

Looking forward, we expect to see continued improvements in our adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue as we remain focused on disciplined investments. We do expect some variability quarter-to-quarter depending on the timing of specific events, but with an improving trend. You'll find a summary of the calculations of our adjusted EBITDA in our press release, MD&A and investor presentation on our website.

Turning to our balance sheet. Our cash and cash equivalent balance on September 30 was $95 million. This cash position is strong, and we continue to be prudent with our spend and diligent on our capital allocation. We are focused on investments where we expect a strong return, either through the value provided to our customers or helping us improve our operational efficiency as we focus on attaining profitability. Looking ahead, our expectations for the fourth quarter of 2022 are revenue of $13.5 million to $13.7 million, representing year-over-year growth of 25% to 27% and adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $5.1 million to $5.7 million. Thinkific expects continued growth in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022, driven largely the ARPU expansion. Customer upgrades to higher price plans, new customers on Thinkific Plus, higher penetration of Thinkific Payments all contribute to ARPU growth. Our adjusted EBITDA outlook is driven by continued drive for efficiency across the company and a continued focus on disciplined investment.

And to wrap up the call, I will now turn it back over to Greg.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, Corinne. Before we open up the call for questions, I want to close on a few key points. Our creators continue to see value and success on the platform. Larger customers continue to select our higher price points, recognizing the strength of Thinkific to serve them at scale. Our retention of customers remain steady with a long-term trend of continued improvements. We have a strong financial position, a consistently improving cost structure and a path to profitability, and we are focused on continuous improvement, including our go-to-market tactics.

I'll now turn the call back to Michelle, our operator, for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question will come from Richard Tse of National Bank.

[Mihir Raul, analyst]

This is Mihir calling for Richard. Yes. So great quarter. So I just wanted to ask about the GPV. So we're seeing a pretty strong uptake there. Any color that you could provide on what's driving that would be helpful.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

It's Corinne here. We did have a great quarter in terms of our GPV growth, and we're very pleased with what the team is able to accomplish. We had said previously we wanted to see 20% to 30% number, kind of tracking really related to that, being a little bit ahead of plan, which is great. And the team is doing a great job. The main driver of it is new customers who are coming on to the platform and using it from the very beginning. And we find that to be a really easy place for them to get started. It does take a little bit more time for someone who's already well ingrained in a new program to move over to Thinkific Payments. And while that continues to happen, it's not happening at quite the same pace as it is with new customers.

[Mihir Raul, analyst]

Okay. And then just one follow-up. So on the GMV growth, it was flat quarter-over-quarter. It's kind of an improvement from last quarter. So I know there were some negative trends in the prior quarter. Has that kind of stabilized now? And how should we think about that going forward?

[Greg Smith, executive]

This is Greg. Yes, GMV continue to see this as a less meaningful measure for us in that there is significant -- it doesn't really capture all of the sales of the creators on our platform. There are significant sales of courses and other products that creators sell on our platform that fall outside of the GMV. But when we zoom out and look broadly at the sales of creators, yes, although we see -- well, we do see GMV flat this quarter, so improvement from the previous one. But when we look at the broader measures of success, we continue to see a rising trend of success, plus we're actually seeing increases across the middle class or what we refer to the middle class of creators, so people earning sort of in the middle range, average ranges of earnings on the platform. So overall, when we look at the measures of success for our creators, it continues to be positive.

[Operator]

Your next question will come from Robert Young of Canaccord Genuity.

[Robert Young, analyst]

First question I guess I'll start us on ARR. The -- I'm trying to understand the cadence of the ARR over the last couple of quarters. This quarter, the incremental ARR dropped significantly. Last quarter, it was up a bit. And so would it be right to attribute that to the price changes? And is that fully absorbed last quarter? And why did the incremental ARR drop so much this quarter? Is that because of seasonality? Or maybe if you could give some other explanation for that. That would be great.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Richard, Corinne here. Looking at our growth in ARR. There is, as you know, 2 big drivers to it. One is our total paying customers and the other is ARPU. And what we're seeing this last quarter has every bit to do with what we've seen from a trend of our new customers coming on our platform. And some of the drivers to the ARR over time can be the timing of which new customers come on. And so individual growth rates can be impacted a little bit of when we're at in the period. But the main driver for like the slight decrease in ARR, I think we're 24% in Q3, but 32% to the prior quarter. And so that drops really fast because we're -- what we're doing with new paying customers.

[Robert Young, analyst]

Okay. And then if I look at the guidance for the coming quarter. I guess there's math, depending on what the payments contribution is in dollar value, I guess, ARR could actually go negative next quarter. Is that a scenario that you see within the guidance you've given?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

No, actually, we've continued to see really strong growth in our ARPU. And like you've kind of seen throughout the early part of '22, we expect it to continue going into Q4 and continuing even as we go into next year, actually, because there's quite a lot of opportunity for us from an ARPU perspective because there are so many different growth levers there. And from people going on to higher price plans, they're starting on Plus or Thinkific Payments. There's a lot of opportunity for us from that perspective. And so we're not looking at ARR declining, because we've got a number of levers that we can pull on that. And so quite excited to think of what's possible to move forward, especially as we look at continuous improvement to our go-to-market plan.

[Robert Young, analyst]

Okay. Sorry, I misspoke when I meant -- I was referring to incremental AAR. I thought maybe the incremental ARR could drop quarter-over-quarter. I think incremental this quarter would be $600,000. And then is there a situation where ARR incrementally or ARR could be negative next quarter?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

I saw where you're going with that. I did -- I heard ARPU…

[Robert Young, analyst]

I misstated, it's my fault.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Good. You know what, anything is possible. That's not our anticipation at this time. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves and we're looking at guidance for the next quarter. That's not anything that we're seeing at this moment.

[Robert Young, analyst]

And then I think last question I'll ask is around EBITDA. I think you'd said that Q1 was expected to be the low point. And so far, I think that -- you're holding to that. Would you expect that that's the case? I don't think you've given any guidance around the trajectory of return to profitability, but that's still the priority, I think, but would you still expect that -- I mean this is the lowest level of EBITDA loss you expect to see. Then I'll pass the line.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

We are in a healthy place in terms of adjusted EBITDA and expect to continue to improve as a percentage of revenue going forward. And we are seeing a lot of opportunities for us to both our top line as well as maintain and improve on our bottom line. And so quite focused on that breakeven perspective. We don't have a date for, like you just said, but moving closer to every quarter and quite so the results to date.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Thanos Moschopoulos of BMO Capital Markets.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Greg, would you be able to provide an early view in terms of some of Steve's initial findings on what needs to improve the sales and marketing strategy? Or might it be premature to do so?

[Greg Smith, executive]

I can give some color to it. It's probably premature to lay out, say, a 3-point plan or something like those. The reality is we have a lot of levers on the growth side from payments and new products to our price points plus plan upgrades and then, of course, customer success is driving that continuous steady improvement in retention. But on the growth side and what Steve's seeing there, I think there's a lot of areas for improvement in operational excellence and how we operate there. So it's not 2 or 3 big wins for an immediate result, but we are confident that we can improve it over time. But without a perfect time line to give you an exact short-term plan on it, but it's a combination of basic improvements that put together, we think, can drive significant change in aggregate.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Okay. We're obviously in the dynamic macro environment. In your data, are there any specific macro trends that you're seeing that are worth calling out? Or are those to isolate on maybe some of the company-specific things that are going on?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. I mean, obviously, it's a pretty unprecedented period of macro factors. I'm not going to try and unpack all the potential impacts. What we do see in our data, the biggest one is on the customer acquisition that I've highlighted there. And while there are macro factors affecting that, we're really just focused on working on the parts that are within our control. So that means we're very much focused on the go-to-market improvements, operational improvements and, of course, keeping an eye on cost and growth as well. On the strength side, on the macro side though, we do see that continued -- like our customers who start with us continue to be successful. We continue to see growing success amongst our customers. So on a macro factor, we don't see a significant change there.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Okay. And then finally, you provided the impact that FX had in helping EBITDA, which is helpful. Would you be able to quantify the impact that FX had on revenue or an ARR in the quarter?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

I can take that one. So because we charge all of our customers in U.S. dollars, there actually isn't a significant FX impact, and we're fortunate that it's a pretty simple process for us at this point. There are times in the future I expect will localize pricing and have an impact there. But at this point, everything is charged in U.S. dollars.

[Operator]

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

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Can you talk a little bit about the type of creators who you lost the function of the price increase? And was it different than you had expected? And was it a meaningful contributor to flat customers sequentially in the quarter?

[Greg Smith, executive]

So we didn't see a big uptick in so much lost customers from the pricing. It was more an impact in part on -- it does have some impact on the acquisition. And so it may be that what we're seeing, it's still fairly early to figure it all out, but it is that we -- it may be that we are seeing some of the people who are more price sensitive or coming in typically at a lower price point are not adopting the current pricing. So on the plus side, that should play out or on the beneficial side for us, that should play out for longer-term retention, higher levels of success and higher quality customers coming on board who are more likely to succeed because of a little bit of weeding out in the current pricing.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

I see. Okay. Thank you very much. And the flat creators sequentially mean you guys are losing ground to other platforms?

[Greg Smith, executive]

No, we haven't seen anything to indicate that. There really hasn't been a shift in the -- that we've seen it in the competitive landscape in terms of market share or acquisition. If anything, what we continue to see actually is that we have some of the largest customers out there graduate to Thinkific as they see the benefit of our -- what we offer people at scale and how it can support them as they scale, but really hasn't seen a shift in any of the data we have in terms of market share or customer acquisition by competitors.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

And they're graduating from other platforms or from other places?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Other tools, do-it-yourself solutions, custom solutions or other platforms, yes.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Got you. Awesome. One other question I had for you. When you talk about the health of the top of the funnel, there's -- you've never said how many customers you guys have on the premium, but that's, I think, a sign of health of the platform in general. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. So when you're looking at the top of funnel, we still continue to acquire lots of free customers. I think there's actually opportunities there for us to continue to improve both the volume coming on board there and how we can help them. It still takes some time and difficulty for people to build learning products, build digital learning products or build a course and get it up and running. So there's a lot more we can probably do to help some of those early customers coming on board. But that funnel continues to be healthy of new people coming in.

In the go-to-market approach, there are some good things we're doing overall on content marketing or SEO to continue to drive some early factors there, but we haven't seen a big shift overall in what the top of funnel looks like. And then in things like, say, conversion rates, we continue to see those at levels that are just slightly above prior years, but no significant uptick in that. So there's still, I'd say top of funnel is part of and one of the big levers that we can lean into in terms of where we can make improvements with our go-to-market approach, but we haven't seen any major positive or negative shifts over there recently.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Last one on new customers. Is December normally a bigger sequential uptick in the number of creators that joined the platform?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Sorry, September or December?

[Martin Toner, analyst]

The December quarter.

[Greg Smith, executive]

I missed that again, December, like…

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Yes, the coming quarter, and so -- yes, December. Sorry, Greg. Is that typically the best quarter for new paying customers?

[Greg Smith, executive]

December as a month is generally lower as we're heading into the holiday season. November is quite strong usually because of Black Friday. And so as a whole, the quarter is a little bit stronger than others, but you have a balancing factor between November and December of December being weak with the holiday, November being strong with Black Friday that evens it out to just a little bit better than some other quarters.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question will come from Daniel Chan of TD Securities.

[Daniel Chan, analyst]

Greg, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for ARR growth over the next year, just given the current macro backdrop, where I'm going at this is, just wondering if you're looking to continue targeting growth on both the total paying customers and subscription ARPU side of the equation? Or does it make sense to focus your sales and marketing dollars towards targeting the larger plus customers. You did mention earlier that pricing changes were weeding out some of that, but then you also talked about top of funnel being an opportunity. So just wondering how you're weighing those 2 different levers you have in the current backdrop.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Great question. Yes, and we're not going to be ignoring either. So I think it's a bit of both in that we have -- we're lucky in that we do have multiple levers to drive revenue as a whole. One of it, as you pointed out, is sort of the sales side and working with some of those larger customers. Another is overall ARPU and ensuring that as we continue to see our customers be more successful, that ARPU rises in line with the success of our customers. And then there's also overall that top-of-funnel and new customer acquisition. And while I think the ARPU overall, the drivers of average revenue per se are the ones that are more accessible to us in the near term, we are leaning into making a shift in that total customer acquisition number so that that can drive the long-term success and growth.

[Daniel Chan, analyst]

Okay. Appreciate that. And given the recent changes in your ad spend and top-of-funnel marketing, how has [ LTP to CAC ] trended following those changes?

[Greg Smith, executive]

I think that is, Corinne, you probably add a bit more color to this, but we continue to keep a close eye on cost and try and market as efficiently as possible. This one does have some of those macro factors and the total number of our customers coming in does affect it when you look at it on a gross basis. But when we dig down into the individual channels and as we're doing our marketing, we've got a very close eye on LTP to CAC and are continuing to make improvements across that and plan to continue to improve that through next year. The idea is not to amp up spend to grow. It's actually to continue to be more and more cost efficient while driving growth.

[Daniel Chan, analyst]

Okay. And then last quarter, you mentioned that you're hoping to see some returns on your go-to-market changes in autumn. Just wondering whether there are some metrics outside of the KPIs in the press release that suggests it's working.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. I think that the parts where we're seeing it is working is we're continuing to acquire good customers who are achieving success. We're continuing to drive up ARPU in -- with the various levers that we have that increase our revenue from that. But the area where I pointed out where we haven't seen the return yet is on that total customer count. So that's something we are very much focused on in driving for next year.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from Gavin Fairweather of Cormark.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

I was hoping you could discuss the reception in your base to communities that launch, how you're thinking about that opportunity longer term, and then also how you plan to monetize that offering.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Overall, very positive. People have been very receptive. I think they've been looking for a big improvement on that from us for quite a while. So it was quite received quite positively, immediate response from customers in terms of adopting using. And as I shared a little bit, we're seeing that as people use communities, they're more likely to be successful. I think it just makes it easier for them to get more students or customers into their programs. Some of the other benefits it gives them is it's faster to create than a product like a course because you don't have to go and shoot content.

You can create it quite quickly and easily and get it out to your audience. It does give them another product to sell because you can have free communities, but you can also have paid communities. And so people are using it in a myriad of ways of free communities to drive growth and paid communities to drive revenue. And then, of course, it allows them to move their audiences and communities off of places like Facebook groups and bring them into their own site and under their own brand. So overall, all of that is starting to be leveraged by our creators. And the hope is that as we go into next year, it actually starts to attract a similar but new type of creator who may start with communities as opposed to necessarily starting with a course, although they're definitely something that can be combined for greater effect if you do both.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Can you just help me understand maybe the kind of ARPU upside or delta if you sell it to something in your base?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. Sorry, you did ask about how we plan to monetize it, and I don't think I answered that on the first go-around. So let me get another shot on it. One way that it helps drive monetization for us is the attraction of new customers. So as we go to market with communities, there's an opportunity to acquire more paying customers because they're interested in a communities offering or even coming to us first for communities and not so much about courses, at least not right out of the gate. So that's one opportunity. Another is that as people get a lot of use out of communities, they unlock further features in it and some things we have yet to release that will help drive up ARPU as well.

So whether it's a volume usage or additional feature unlock, like a lot of the other areas in our pricing plans that will help drive up ARPU. And then of course it helps with monetization on the retention side in that communities create a stickier platform for the students of our creators. They invite their students into their brand and into their community. That makes it stickier for their creator's students, which helps their business succeed and gives them another place to retain and engage with their students, but it's also stickier for us because as our creators build their communities on our platform they're -- they see Thinkific as stickier, which of course helps drive monetization from a retention perspective.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Okay. And then just on pricing, I think you called it out as one lever which you may look at in terms of reducing your top line growth. Obviously, some puts and takes around taking pricing options on your plans. Are you thinking about other opportunities on that in the near term?

[Greg Smith, executive]

We don't have an immediate -- no, nothing immediate on the pricing front. We made a few changes recently. I think it's something that any healthy SaaS company continues to experiment, iterate and improve. But there isn't an immediate uptick in pricing or anything like that coming.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Okay. And then just lastly for me. I mean obviously, we're seeing the payments line growing nicely. How far are we from kind of target gross margins on payment?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Gavin, that's probably a good one for me. There is a continued opportunity for us to improve it because we are in a pricing structure that improves with volume. And so while we're continuing to find success, we're kind of sitting at that low 20% gross margin range. And that will only improve as we grow within our contract with them. And so we don't reach the next threshold for a bit, but that's really the opportunities for us to do that. The other opportunity, of course, with Payments is that once we are working with the payment structure, you got more opportunities to add other features on to that. And so that's probably the other side of it is what we're able to do once you're into that payment side of their business. We don't have any plans immediately on that, but that would be the other way that you would quite quickly change your gross margin, is adding high-margin products to it.

[Operator]

There are no other questions at this time. So I will turn the conference back to Greg Smith for any closing remarks.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, Michelle. Thanks, everyone, for your questions and for attending. Just a few closing thoughts to remind you that what we're focused on is innovation, first and foremost, for the success of our creators, and we have been excited to see that the success of our creators as they come on board the platform get started and those that stay and stick with us for the long term, continue to see growth in their success. Our focus as a company internally is very much on continuing to have a strong team and culture focused on our growth drivers while being very efficient and controlling our cost. Thank you very much, everyone.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for this afternoon. We would like to thank you all for participating, and you may now disconnect your lines.