Thinkific Labs Inc

TSX:THNC

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is JP and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Thinkific's Third Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcast live on the Internet and recorded. [Operator Instructions] After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.I would now like to turn the conference call over to [ Ross Ramil ]. Please go ahead.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you, JP, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Thinkific's earnings call for the third quarter of 2023. Joining me today are Greg Smith, Co-Founder and CEO; and Corinne Hua, CFO. After their 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 of Thinkific.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, Ross. Hello, and welcome to our earnings call. Thank you for joining us. I am excited to announce a milestone quarter for Thinkific. We are seeing the benefits of the decisive actions we have taken over the last 18 months, which resulted in our achieving adjusted EBITDA profitability a full 2 quarters ahead of plan, along with positive cash flow from operations. We grew revenue 13% year-over-year to $15 million in the quarter, driven by the continued success of our customers on the Thinkific platform with notable strength from newer products and features that help propel commerce revenue growth by 86% year-over-year.I want to thank the whole team here at Thinkific for the tireless work and passion they have put into pursuing our goals and priorities. As our team continues to deliver valuable product features that drive customer success, I believe we can continue our momentum into Q4 and have set the stage for continued profitable growth in 2024. I want to start this call digging into our GMV growth. In a general sense, our GMV is a proxy for the success our customers are seeing with Thinkific. As the pandemic receded in 2021, we saw a period of flat year-on-year performance for this key measure. But now we're well into a new phase, and our customers are seeing a return to growth and this is evidenced by a steady year-long trend in GMV expansion.For the majority of our Self Service customers who are monetizing their knowledge through their digital products, including courses, memberships, communities and more, this is a trend we're very pleased with and makes us very optimistic for our combined future. Customer success through GMV is a key component of our flywheel. It not only helps us retain and expand our relationships with existing customers, but their success also generates more interest and awareness of the power of the Thinkific solution. This in turn helps us attract new customers in the future.Now, let's move into how we are doing against the clear priorities we have set out for 2023. As always, we are firmly focused on helping our customers succeed and we do this by making it easier for them to get started and make their first sale, helping more customers sell and earn more to grow their businesses and continuing to drive success with larger businesses on Thinkific Plus. Additionally, achieving positive EBITDA was a priority for us and we're happy to have come in ahead of schedule here.Returning to our first priority of making it easier for customers to get started and make their first sale, we're very pleased to be able to share more about the launch of The Leap. Thinkific first launched The Leap as a media property, starting on TikTok in 2022, as a way to reach more creators earlier in their journey. In the last 18 months, The Leap has grown to become the world's most popular media property focused on creator monetization with over 150,000 visits a month, 50,000 newsletter subscribers and millions of views on social media. The Leap is now launched as a product to build on this success.Fueled by AI, The Leap's first of its kind digital product authoring tool allows creators to input a content idea and in just a few clicks generate comprehensive drafts for digital products like mini courses, guides and tutorials, all designed to be consumed on mobile and feel intuitive to social audiences, learning on demand where you want it and when you want it in consumable nuggets. The Leap provides tools to help creators in building mini courses or guides, creating lead magnets, building sales pages, storefronts for their digital products, all with an intuitive, helpful AI-powered interface.Our launch was very successful and we were excited to see we landed as #2 on Product Hunt on the day of launch, which is a testimony to the amount of excitement in this space. We're also very pleased with the volume of creators adopting The Leap with over 6,500 active accounts launching an impressive 5,000 digital products in less than 30 days. As The Leap evolves, it represents both an on-ramp to our larger Thinkific Self Service platform and also as a distinct stand-alone product, which we are seeing serve distinct needs from our core product.In addition to making it easier for creators to get started, we also want to ensure they are able to sell more and spend less time on administrative functions. That's where Thinkific Commerce comes in. Thinkific Commerce is a growing suite of tools built alongside our hugely successful Thinkific Payments platform. It is designed to help customers on Thinkific sell more and easily manage and measure their business. This quarter, we delivered important features to help more of our customers sell more on our platform.From Buy Now, Pay Later to adding new payment methods to their checkout, our customers can earn more than ever before from their learning products. We also continue to simplify business processes for customers with our sales tax solution and advanced analytics options. More tools to let our customers spend more time doing what they love and less time on administration. The feedback from our customers on these products has been exceptional.Shifting to our mobile app efforts. In Q3, we expanded the availability of our custom-branded mobile offering to all customers as an add-on to Self Service plan. Initially launched with strong success to our Plus customers, we're now seeing the benefits of adoption across Self Serv. For the students of our customers, our mobile app seamlessly integrates into their daily lives, giving them convenient access to content and courses on their own terms. We are executing on the strategic priorities we laid out for ourselves last year and are encouraged by the progress to date. We are innovating rapidly and have had more product launches over the last 6 months than ever before. And this is in addition to driving operational efficiencies throughout the organization.As a result of our improved productivity, we were able to achieve our EBITDA profitability goal ahead of plan and do not intend to look back now that we have achieved that milestone. We are seeing encouraging signs that the investments we have made will help accelerate growth and engagement and we will continue to build on our platform and deliver valuable new features. We look forward to the sustained and consistent execution of our plan to deliver both growth and profit.Now, to speak about our current results in more detail, I'm going to turn the call over to Corinne.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Thanks, Greg, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased with our third quarter results. I feel I have to start with our progress towards breakeven and it's a proud moment for our whole team as we achieved EBITDA profitability for the first time as a public company, a full 2 quarters ahead of plan, with adjusted EBITDA at 5% of revenue or $740,000. This is a massive $6.4 million improvement over Q3 of 2022. We also generated $3.5 million in cash from operations. Our adjusted EBITDA profitability is a result of our ability to drive efficiency from our operations, coupled with strong revenue growth.Our Q3 revenue came in ahead of guidance, largely driven by the outperformance of GMV, strong growth in businesses leveraging to Thinkific Plus and the success of our back-to-school campaign. Total revenue came in ahead of guidance at $15 million for Q3, up 13% year-over-year. We know this is a milestone quarter and want to provide some additional transparency on what's driving the momentous growth of our business. Specifically, we have broken out our revenue by product lines as we believe investors will be able to better measure management's progress against our strategic goals and help our shareholders understand the reasons behind our optimism for Thinkific's future.Subscription revenue totaled $13.5 million in Q3, up 8% year-over-year, driven by a combination of customer count increases, along with customers migrating to higher paid plans and with customers wanting to get their Plus. Subscription revenue provides steady gains and a stable base that gives us visibility into future earnings. Commerce revenue is derived from a suite of tools and services that allow our customers to focus more on their digital products and less on the administration of their business.Generally speaking, commerce revenue is earned as a percentage of our customers' GMV and will grow alongside their success. This is a huge long-term opportunity for us. Commerce revenue primarily consists of the revenue we earn from the Thinkific Payments and also includes revenue we earn from agreements with payment processors, along with other transaction-related fees from features like our sales tax solution. Commerce revenue is in the early innings, but growing fast at 86% year-over-year and totaled $1.5 million in Q3.This quarter, we also want to discuss revenue by customer group. We serve 2 distinct customer groups from our platform, which enables us to have many levers available to optimize future profitable growth. Our Self Serve customers are primarily entrepreneurs and creators. Self Serve revenue grew 8% year-over-year to $11.8 million. Both subscription and commerce revenue is growing and benefit from consistent increases in total paying customers. Our Plus customer revenue is earned from customers benefiting from additional features available to meet the needs of larger businesses, including a high-touch customer support and tools to help manage larger volumes.Our primary focus in our Plus customer group is serving midsized and larger businesses who use Thinkific Plus to engage and retain their customers through education. This business market presents many opportunities and deliver stable and sticky revenue. This is a sales-led growth unit and the revenue growth is driven by a combination of new business sales and increasing expansion revenue. Revenue from this fast growing group was $3.2 million in Q3, up 38% year-over-year. Our relentless focus on our strategic priorities, including helping customers get started, helping more customers sell more and growing at market with Plus is yielding results.ARPU or average revenue per user grew to $145 per month in the third quarter, up 9% year-over-year, driven by Thinkific Payments and Thinkific Plus. We believe there's significant ARPU expansion potential as customers join our platform and adopt additional products, Thinkific Payments and branded mobile. As a key component of Thinkific Commerce, I want to dig into Thinkific Payments feature as it's an important growth lever for our business with both short- and long-term upside potential. In Q3, our gross payments volume or GPV, was $35 million, up 99% year-over-year. Quarter-over-quarter, GPV grew by $4 million.The penetration rate of Thinkific Payments was 32% as measured by GPV as a percentage of GMV, which was up from 30% last quarter. We believe we have significant runway here as more than 75% of revenue earned by customers making their first dollar is done on Thinkific Payments. As we continue to add more tools that reduce complexity for our customers and students alike the attractiveness of the platform growth.Recently, new features give our customers the commerce tools they need to build their businesses and remove any unnecessary administrative burden. Features like these will increase the take rate defined as commerce revenue as a percentage of GPV and improve our gross margin on commerce revenue. GMV overall was at $110 million, our highest ever for the third quarter. Customers experienced growth broadly across our base and this quarter's growth was due to the combination increase in the volume of transactions per customer and a higher average transaction size.Moving now to our P&L. As mentioned earlier, our revenue grew 13% to over $15 million, which exceeded the high end of our guidance range of $14.5 million to $14.7 million. Gross margin was at 77%, up slightly year-over-year. From our product view, our subscription gross margin was 82%, up from 79% in Q3 of '22. Commerce gross margin, which naturally carries a structurally lower gross margin was at 33%. As commerce revenue doesn't require any extra investment in customer acquisition costs, over the long term, our contribution rate to EBITDA will be similar or better to what we earn from subscription revenue.Our focus on cost efficiency and operational leverage continues, with operating expenses down 25% year-over-year to $12.7 million for the quarter. We feel we have the right cost structure today to support future growth. Sales and marketing expenses decreased year-over-year by $1.9 million or 28% and was $4.9 million in Q3 or 33% of revenue. We continue to expand our revenue and customer base, drive significant improvements to ARPU and launch a slew of new products and features, all while significantly decreasing our cost.Turning to R&D. Our reduction year-over-year of $2 million or 30% to $4.5 million was achieved as we continue to focus on high ROI features and align our R&D teams to projects that have the most impact for our customers. We achieved this reduction in expense while launching a high volume of high-quality innovative products like The Leap, which delivers a unique AI solution to aid in the creation and sale of digital products. General and administrative expenses came in at $3.3 million, down from over $3.8 million in 2022. Over the past several quarters, we have reduced our expense run rate, increased our revenue per employee and improved marketing efficiency. Today, we feel we have the right expense run rate to drive long-term growth and don't anticipate further expense reductions. Our focus now is on profitable top line growth.Turning to our balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents balance as of September 30 was $86.6 million, up from $84.7 million from the prior quarter, a result of positive cash flow from operations of $3.5 million. We have no debt. We believe the strength of our balance sheet is an asset that provides us the stability and the flexibility to execute on our long-term strategy. Moreover, having achieved positive adjusted EBITDA and cash flow from operations, we believe Thinkific is in a position to sustainably grow cash going forward. As a result, the Board has approved a normal course issuer bid to buy back shares, known as an NCIB, which will allow us to purchase up to 10% of our public float. We believe this provides a good use of capital as the share price does not reflect the underlying value of Thinkific. At current prices, the NCIB should be accretive to the value of Thinkific shares and will enhance shareholder value.Now, turning to guidance. For the fourth quarter of 2023, the company expects revenue of $15.2 million to $15.4 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA to remain positive and intend to invest in the near term to capitalize on the opportunities we saw in the quarter to accelerate top line growth. This is an exceptional quarter for us, both from a pure financial and also from the perspective of delivering true value to customers. We are turning an important page on our story and look forward to the next phase of continued profitable growth, both for ourselves and for our customers.And to wrap up the call, I'll now turn it back over to Greg.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thank you, Corinne. In closing, we're truly bringing everything together with the successful launch of mobile apps, The Leap, AI tools, both internally and for our customers, business tools like Thinkific Commerce and analytics and, of course, the continued growth of Thinkific Plus. All of this, combined with EBITDA profitability underscores our confidence that our path is the right one. This is an exciting time at Thinkific and we are just getting started.We'll now take your questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Robert Young from Canaccord Genuity.

[Robert Young, analyst]

Maybe the first question, you've said that EBITDA you're expecting to remain positive, but you're happy with the cost structure. Should we be thinking of this as similar to this quarter, 5% margins going forward? Or are you thinking more of a breakeven type of a model?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Rob, thanks for the question. It's truly important to us that we've been able to hit this breakeven run rate as that's been our focus. But going forward, we're looking more at staying around the absolute dollar value that we were at for Q3. And when we're thinking about as a percentage of revenue, it's probably closer to like low mid-single-digits as we plan to invest in some opportunities we've got in front of us for opportunities for our top line growth.

[Robert Young, analyst]

And thanks for all the additional disclosure on the segments. That's really helpful. The Thinkific Plus is up significantly. You highlighted some of the reasons already. I think you suggested that customer retention by some of your enterprise customers are being used as a sales tool. Is there any way that you could maybe break out the different use cases, maybe give us a sense of where the dominant use case is in the Thinkific Plus business, and then I'll pass along.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

I'll take that one, Rob. There were 2 primary growth opportunities. The first one that we're naturally seeing is customers that are upgrading from Self Serve, and they tend to be a focus -- a customer focus on revenue generation. So, they're looking at training or online education as a revenue growth tool for their business. Oftentimes, they are a training center or someone with primary focus is revenue generation. The other opportunity that's quite large and growing for us is on the customer education side and that would be businesses like a SaaS business that is looking to launch an academy or educate their customers on their product to both drive engagement, but very much focused on actually retaining that customer and has been a significant opportunity for us in the near term and seeing that going forward as people are focused much more on retaining the current customer than high cap cost to acquire a new customer?

[Robert Young, analyst]

Maybe just one last little one. The Shelf filing. Maybe just -- is that just a normal course move? Or is there maybe any context or color around the filing and then I'll pass it to the next question.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

That one is just a renewal and good governance, nothing else.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Todd Coupland from CIBC.

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

I wanted to ask about the main growth drivers to think about the business. It's been more payments driven recently certainly this last year, but you're calling out other factors now. Talk about what you think are the most important levers over the next year to your overall growth.

[Greg Smith, executive]

I think we have a number of levers and one of the reasons for providing some of the additional disclosure here today is just to really highlight some of the things we're excited about. And so we've got a really -- I think one thing to take away from the call today and the additional disclosures, we've got a very healthy growing profitable business. And that under the hood, there's some really exciting areas for growth at 38% year-over-year in Plus and 86% in Commerce. And these will continue to become an increasing portion of our revenue. We really see a clear opportunity to accelerate by leaning into those areas.The other thing is it kind of demonstrates our ability as a company to innovate to find new opportunities to grow, The Leap being an another potential future example like that. So, while growth areas for today and the near and midterm, definitely are Commerce and Plus and we'll be leaning into those areas. We also have other areas that could grow both Self Serve and with The Leap coming up as another potential growth lever for us in the future.Does that answer your question or is there more color I can give in there?

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

No, no, that's helpful. I guess, implied in your answer is our expectation should be modest new customer additions with these other factors driving up the overall growth rate. I don't know if that's the right takeaway, but that is how I heard that answer.

[Greg Smith, executive]

New customer acquisitions is something we do want to accelerate. We're not happy with the level where it's at today. I think the strength of the business is even in, say, post-2020 period where new customer acquisitions were not moving as quickly, we were able to develop and lean into other areas to grow revenue. But definitely, new customer acquisitions is something we want to accelerate.

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

Are there any changes in the market in terms of customer -- new customers into the funnel or sort of post-pandemic adjustments? I don't know if an acceleration in the market would be the right way to describe it, but yes, any color along those lines?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes, it's a good question. I think there's a few trends we're seeing. I think one of the exciting ones for us is highlighted in the GMV. And we've talked before how GMV isn't the end all be all of value that customers get from Thinkific they get GMV, but there also is lots of customers who use it and not be tracked within the GMV, possibly providing free programs or enrollments, even the customer education on the customer plus side that Corinne just mentioned. But seeing that GMV accelerate, seeing 4 quarters of growth there and the highest Q3 that we've seen yet is a good sign that I think we're seeing more of a return to pre-2020 interest in learning products, digital learning. I think it's showing consumer demand for the products that our customers produce, which is definitely an exciting trend for us.

[Thomas Ingham, analyst]

And then last question for me. So, if you're guiding to $1 million or so of EBITDA, how should we think about free cash flow in the business? Is that more or less it? And you just had some working capital changes that got you to plus 3.5% or will there be a regular and consistent contributor below the EBITDA line?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Todd, Corinne here. We do have to think of our adjusted EBITDA as a good property for free cash. And then like you mentioned, working capital can be where we see some movements because we have quite a healthy cash balance. Interest income is obviously one of those items that comes in below the EBITDA line, and we'll continue to positively contribute to cash flow. So, there's a couple of other things like that there, but primarily growing our EBITDA is our long-term vision.

[Operator]

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

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Given that you deal with a lot of small medium business, are you seeing any kind of macro impact? I guess it would seem not given the strength in GMV, but in recent weeks, [indiscernible] on the macro or any sense of cracks that you're starting to see?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Signs of cracks positive or negative in the macro on the small business side?

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Yes.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. I think the GMV is a good example of it, where we're seeing more customers monetizing and more customers monetizing at a better rate or in larger transaction sizes. So, across the different little levers within GMV, we're seeing all positive there in terms of things growing. That's usually a good sign for all of our customers for our market in general because it's sort of the final demand for the end products. The customers are -- our customers are producing these digital learning products and selling them into the market. So, the signs we're seeing there are good. I haven't seen anything beyond that and say the macro that would have a different impact on us so far.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Just qualitatively on churn, any trends in recent quarters? I mean as your payment penetration has gone up, does that lead to [ stickiness in ] your customers or any dynamics that you're seeing in the churn?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. Churn remains relatively steady in line with historic norms, slight improvement in this most recent quarter. Net revenue looking good to us. As we've said -- shared before, some of the things within Self Serve. Once we see a level of success or an enrollment where someone's got a program out, they've got someone student taking part in it, that indicates strong retention drivers going forward for us. And the primary reason is that we would lose people is failure to start. And so that's where some of the R&D investments we're making in areas like The Leap that makes it a lot easier for people to get started and make that first dollar is something that we're hopeful can continue to make improvements on the overall retention.And then, of course, as you mentioned, both Payments and Plus are levers that are not only driving revenue, but the intention there is that also drives what we do see that Plus in particular, we're signing longer-term contracts at higher average revenue per user, we're seeing higher and better retention there and the intent as well as with the adoption of commerce that it becomes a much stickier play for our customers and that they've integrated their whole payments platform into Thinkific and they get a lot of benefit out of that. And so that should continue to improve retention over the long run.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

And this may be an unfair question given that it's early days, but how should we think about maybe the incremental opportunity and the incremental TAM that you might be able to capture with The Leap? Or maybe a different way to ask it is when do you think that might start to make a meaningful difference to your overall revenue base? Is that something we might start to see through the latter part of next year? Or what are your thoughts on that?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. I'm glad you brought up a really good question there and I think that's exactly how we're looking at it as an opportunity to expand our serviceable market. So, the interesting thing is The Leap still serves a very similar customer group to what we've always served with Thinkific. It's just with the new functionality there and the new media brand, it allows us to tap into a whole new section of our overall TAM. So, expanding that serviceable market. And really into the segment of our TAM that we see as the one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of customers.And so first step there is build that brand that's attracting really millions of potential customers or at least their eyeballs. And then this AI product is really the first step in the land and expand opportunity into this market. So that first step for us is to make it really easy for someone to get a digital product up and running and start monetizing it. And then that does present an opportunity for us to have them both continue using The Leap, see Self Serve and even Plus customers using The Leap as a stand-alone product, but also have some of that customer base transfer up into Thinkific Self Serv and Thinkific Plus. So, it's very beneficial across the board. In terms of timing of when we see the benefit, it's probably still early to tell and hopeful that we will see some impact in 2024 from that.

[Operator]

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

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Are Plus customers good payment customers?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Our Plus customers do leverage our commerce tools and often find it useful to have all the analytics that come along with it there. This is more specifically on those revenue-generating customers that I spoke about when I talked about the 2 different customer use cases. But on both sides, they're selling their courses and benefiting from our platform, probably not at the same rate that our Self Serv customers monetize, but definitely an opportunity there and we see good traction from those customers on payments.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

And we're hearing about elevated transaction activity in the content creator ecosystem with many of them being opportunistic purchases of distressed assets. Are you seeing any change in behavior from your competitors?

[Greg Smith, executive]

In terms of opportunistic, well, I think there you may be alluding to maybe M&A opportunities. I mean certainly, we've had conversations and have been approached by companies who are maybe in distressed situations. I think there's an opportunity for us to be very opportunistic and really be careful and pick the right assets that would be accretive to revenue to customer base. And obviously, with our cash balance, that's something we're watching and having conversations on, but we want to be careful that we're not doing something that's going to negatively impact the bottom line at this point, but take advantage of something that can have a positive impact on the top line for us.In terms of the competition, not seeing a change in, say, market share or obvious activities there. We are seeing some interest in the -- growing interest in the space by larger platforms and larger players. I think this is good news for us. It indicates 2 things; validation of what we see as a massive total addressable market, but also they're presenting as potential partners for us to work with to expand our reach in the space because they're taking quite a different approach to us in terms of possibly getting involved in the overall learning and creator economy around digital product space. So in fact, a number of the larger platforms have reached out to us about potential partnerships. And so there definitely are opportunities for us there. From the direct competitive standpoint here, all our data points from a technological point of view is -- in some cases, we see competitors selling on innovation or doing a sometimes slower follow of things that we've released clearly in areas like payments, taxes, branded mobile apps, the advancements we made in The Leap. We see a lot of competitors trailing out in areas like this.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Last one for me. Do you expect the grassroots mass market creator segment to contribute to improvement in the number of paying customers in the near term?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Grassroots? Okay. So, talking about our -- basically, our customer count that we see creators improving our overall customer count?

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Yes.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. Yes, this is something, as I shared, that we definitely want to move on. I think it will be moderate growth in the near term, hence us leaning into those really exciting growth drivers around Commerce and Plus, but it's definitely something that we intend to accelerate.

[Martin Toner, analyst]

Congrats on a nice quarter.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Thanks. Yes. Just one thing to add to that. I think as we look at that area of the customer count, some of the things we are excited about is seeing the -- doing this and actually growing that customer count all while spending significantly less over the last 12 months, in particular, in sales and marketing as well.

[Operator]

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

[Richard Tse, analyst]

And thanks again for that additional disclosure. It's very helpful. On the GMV, do you have any sort of thoughts on the dollar value of GMV that's not sort of captured within your platform? And then maybe a sense of whether you can sort of bring that into your sphere to monetize that value.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. So, it was actually one of the recent additions, I know it just went out, but one of the recent additions in the IR slide deck actually talks about total customer sales and captures that exact number. And so we estimated this quarter at about $170 million, so -- which is larger, obviously, than the GMV within the quarter and seeing that grow at about 14% year-over-year. So that is an estimate because we don't have perfect data on that. And then even beyond that, like I shared before, I think we see value that customers get through offering free programs. And all of those do, yes, represent areas where we could potentially capture that into the next circle. So, whether that's bringing it from their total sales into our GMV or GMV into GPV and then, of course, growing the overall take rate or think of commerce revenue there.

[Richard Tse, analyst]

And then with respect to Self Service and Plus, as you look out maybe like 2, 3 years, what do you think is sort of the ideal mix in terms of the business between Self Service and Plus? And also, can you maybe remind us what sort of the differences in the go-to-market strategy would be for Plus?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes, hard to say where the ideal mix is because we do have a team on each definitely leaning into accelerating and growing. And so seeing that definitely in the near term, seeing the mix increase towards Plus is just given the natural growth rate there. But over the long term, a healthy mix between the 2. I think that we see it really as one -- if there's one thing to take away here despite providing additional disclosure around the different business areas and opportunities for growth, it is one comprehensive business. We definitely have a land-and-expand approach. Customers are able to move from The Leap into Self Serve and into Plus. And so we really do see this as one business and they're all able to use Commerce. And so that really presents that throughout the overall business. So, hard to say exactly where the mix will be at any particular point in time as opposed to where it's at today and where it will be in the near term, which will be a slight increase in Plus.And then in terms of the go-to-market strategy, as we move from Self Serve into Plus, it becomes more of a sales-led motion. So on the Plus side, it definitely is more of a sales-led motion, we are signing contracts, sometimes having a negotiation or discussing security, [ software tool ], requirements, things like that. And speaking with an individual and then obviously, having an account manager here at Thinkific is one of the value points that we have there, whereas on the Self Serve side and definitely on The Leap, it's much more organic inbound traffic, ad-driven as well, converting through product-led growth. Those factors definitely do influence Plus as well. And so that's where the synergistic even in the go-to-market play as many leads that come in through our other channels for Self Serve will end up as a Plus customer.

[Richard Tse, analyst]

And just one quick one. What's the run rate we should think about for stock-based comp going ahead?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

We actually saw a higher stock-based comp over the last quarter because of just some structural ways we'd issued RSUs recently, and we do see it coming down in future quarters, but not looking to give any guidance on the run rate long term, but more probably, if you look closer to where we were at last year in 2022, it's probably a better proxy for the future.

[Operator]

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

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Congrats on the progress. Maybe just to continue on the Plus discussion. Maybe for new logos. Can you discuss what kind of win rates you're seeing in the market? And then what additional kind of investments in sales and products are you looking out in order to keep the momentum going on that side of the business?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Gavin, [ let me] make sure I caught your first question. On Plus, can you repeat it again for me?

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Just for new logos, can you discuss kind of the win rates that you're seeing? And then secondly, what additional investments in other sales or product are you thinking about in order to keep the momentum?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Thanks for that. So, the win rates on Plus tend to be industry standard in terms of how we're looking at things, but probably the difference would be those that are upgrading from Self Serve. We have a shorter lead time in terms of how quickly they would close. Our customers tend to be at a higher average contract value and so take a little bit longer. And we're new in this part of the market and so we've got more education to do for people to see us as a competitor there. So, I think there's a lot of opportunity that we need to lean into and that can impact our close rates slightly, but we've got a very competitive product, probably with our most strong competitive advantage being how easy it is to get started as it's grown out of a Self Serve platform. And so I think we've got lots of opportunity, but still work to do very early innings.In terms of the -- you had a question about the sales-led motion?

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

Just yes -- no, whether you see additional areas to invest in salespeople or additional product functionality to keep the momentum going.

[Corinne Hua, executive]

Thank you for your help with this. So, most definitely, lots of opportunity in terms of adding salespeople to the team. We're quite cautious on how fast we grow this and want to make sure that leads justify the size of team that we go out with this and are really calculated on how do we make sure it's a profitable growth business and not just growth at any cost. And so moving slowly with this, but lots of opportunity as we go forward and watching closely the [indiscernible] conversion rates like you were asking about. So, I think that's the key for us to grow in a healthy manner from Plus perspective.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

And then secondly for me, mobile app is obviously a pretty big upsell. Maybe you can give us an update on kind of the reception and the demand in the base, not only in Plus, which is where you started, but then in Self Serve? And any kind of thoughts or targets around adoption targets or penetration targets would be helpful.

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. It's not a target to share at this point, but it is something that we see as an option for really for every customer, whether they're Self Serve or Plus. And so we do have 2 options, there is the unbranded or as in like it's Thinkific logo and all customers can use that one included in most of the plans. And then there is the branded mobile where they actually get to have their own branded mobile app in the market and that's one is the -- effectively the upsell into that opportunity. We do see customers excited about it. it's quite competitive in the market and that it offers community features. It's as well as course and digital product features in there as well as the branding component. And so we're seeing a good adoption on the Plus side and as well on the Self Serve side and the conversations that we're having. So that's -- again, it's still early to tell what the impact will be, but it is adding to revenue at this point.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

And then just lastly for me on payment penetration. It sounds like you're having quite good success with new logos. Would it be fair to say when you're thinking about penetration of the base, the near-term strategies around providing additional functionality or carrots to incent people to come on and sign on versus looking at some kind of surcharge which some of your competitors have looked at?

[Greg Smith, executive]

Yes. I think there's an opportunity for us to consider both. So, we're thinking very hard about how we optimize penetration. The nice thing is with the carrots combined with just making it the default for most new sign-ups that we're seeing really strong adoption from new people coming on-board as well as some people continuing to switch their existing customers using some other payment providers that they have before we launch Thinkific Commerce. But looking really hard at how we continue to do that and that will be probably be a mix of both of those options going forward. But in the near term, really just looking at how we continue to add value to it. The nice thing is, as we add value, it usually unlocks additional take rate for us and that we're providing new opportunities for them to sell or sell something or sell more, and that creates new take rate opportunities for us in there as well, not just in terms of adoption, but also in terms of take rate.Corinne, is there more for you to add to that?

[Corinne Hua, executive]

No, I think that was great. You answered it perfectly.

[Operator]

There are no further 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, for attending. I just wanted to share that we are proud of the past performance and achievements, mainly reaching adjusted EBITDA profitability well ahead of plan, while still investing in our future growth and beating our expectations on our top line as well this quarter, accelerating the success of our customers. Even with all of that, in our near rearview mirror, we are always looking to the future and so if there's one thing I'd have you take away is that the additional disclosure we've shared today really highlights that I think we've got a very healthy and growing and profitable business. And that underneath the hood, there are some very exciting areas growing at 38% and 86%. And as these continue to become an increasing portion of our revenue, we see a clear opportunity to accelerate our long-term future growth.

[Operator]

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