Welcome to Unity's fourth quarter, 2022 earnings call. After the closing of the market today, we issued our earnings press release and shareholders letter. The materials are now available on our investor website at investors.unity.com. Today I'm joined by John Riccatello, our CEO, President and Chairman, and by Luis Fisoso, our CFPAL.
欢迎参加Unity 2022年第四季度的财报电话会议。今天市场收盘之后,我们发布了财报新闻稿和股东信函。这些材料现在可以在我们的投资者网站investors.unity.com上获取。今天我将与我们的首席执行官、总裁和董事长John Riccatello以及我们的CFPAL Luis Fisoso一同出席。
Before we begin, I want to note that today's discussion contains forward-looking statements, including statements about goals, business outlook, industry trends, market opportunities, expectations for future financial performance, and similar items, all of which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. We can find more information about these risks and uncertainties in the risk factor section of our filings at SEC.gov. Action results may differ, and we take no obligation to provide or update any forward-looking statements.
As in prior quarters, we are providing both GAP and non-GAP financial measures. And unless otherwise noted, we will be speaking to the non-GAP financial measures when describing our results. The shareholder letter and press release are available on the Unity Investor Relations tab, as well as the SEC.gov, and includes full GAP to non-GAP reconciliations.
Great. Thank you very much. As you all have seen, we've published our shareholders' letter this afternoon. And before we go into Q&A, let's start with two. We're going to open up to open Q&A.
But before we get to that, we've got in a handful of questions that we're getting from investors. And the first one is for you, John. John, we've received a lot of questions about the macro environment, specifically in the mobile game market and industries and digital twins side of our business. So again, before we go into broader Q&A, maybe you could explain how you kind of see the macro environment playing out for Unity. And then I'll have one quick question for Luis, as well.
So broadly, the macro environment remains surprisingly resilient. If you look at the gaming industry, we're seeing, you know, our developers are as productive as they've been before. They're producing a huge number of games. Their investment against game development is holding up well. We're seeing strong VA users and our network suggestive of overall gameplay that remains strong. And then within the industry side where we reported over 100% growth last year in digital twins, there's very, continues to be very robust demand. And so maybe some elongated sales cycles where people take a little bit longer to decide, but we've got demand for our access of our ability to supply. We're in a pretty good spot and we're not feeling a pinch. So all in, the market seems stronger. And I'd offer that you might expect, especially when we're indexing against such unusual years, you know, the work from home or learn from home era. But a couple very specific points. The ads market is stabilized as of the middle of 2022 and continues to be stable now. What's actually happening is strong user engagement offset by weaker ECPMs and we historically see, but again, it's been stable. At some point that flips and we're not expecting at the fifth, we're using that in our model is looking forward. We want to be conservative. But all in, the markets are solid. There's not a lot of concern here.
Great. Thanks very much. In the weeks, you know, the question that we get oftentimes for you would be, you know, how are you thinking about balancing growth and profitability and kind of how does that fit into the guidance that we issued today?
Yeah, thank you, Richard. So what I would say is on the revenue side, just like John just mentioned, we're taking a prudent assumption on the market and that is reflected in our revenue guide. It is clearly better to plan this way in this environment. Now on the coast side, we're taking very clear actions to improve profitability. And this includes things like the elimination of close to 300 rows that we announced before being very selective in any future new hires that we add to the company, being more focused in our investments and reducing the number of bets that we make in the in at unity, raising the bar on cost and we've been turning every stone once or twice and finding new opportunities in a few places. And that frankly includes reducing the number of shares that we grant as part of compensation.
So we're taking a very holistic view on cost and making sure that costs are adding value. And as a result, you should expect to see cost relatively flat during the year as revenue grows all over quarter. Now what happens then is that we expect to significantly improve profitability in 2023. If you look at we had a loss of $90 million non-gap in 2022 and we expect just a DB that to be about somewhere in the range of $230 to $300 million in 2023. So very significant swing from one year to another.
Now what's interesting is in 2022, we were only profitable in Q4. In 2023, we expect obviously to be profitable every single quarter. And one more point I would like to make is that the profitability improvement that you see year over year comes about 50-50 from create and grow. So we're making progress across the board. We're taking, as once in, more conservative assumptions on the market and being very proactive on cost with decisive actions to improve profitability in this environment.
Great. Thank you very much. Well now we can open it up to questions from the analysts on the call. And so as before, what you need to do is raise your virtual hand and we'll answer questions until we run out and we appreciate your interest.
There we go. So we have a question from Matt Cost at Morgan Stanley. Sandra Medikinear me. Yep. Yep. Great. Great. Thanks for taking the questions. So maybe just one thing in the letter, you mentioned the drivers of create revenue growth being pricing, China, and digital twins. Should we assume that that seat growth is kind of going to be under pressure or stable this year? You know, because of some of the issues going on in just the, you know, in your customer base in the mobile gaming market.
That's the first question. The second question is just when we look at the ramp in the EBITDA, I think the guidance to the first quarter is seven to 12 million, the full year numbers, 230 to 300. So that's a pretty significant step up into dollars of EBITDA as we move through the year. What should we think about as the drivers of that? Thank you. Louie, you want to start with this one?
Yeah. On the second part of your question, Matt, as I just said, we expect cost to be relatively flat during the year. As you know, we have a very healthy growth margin. And as you get the revenue growth quarter or quarter, you get into those profitability levels. So that's it. That is basically the assumption and we're working against very importantly, Matt, some of the actions that we've taken on cost don't fully impact you one. They only impact you one partially. And they obviously have a full quarter impacting Q2, Q3 and Q4.
In terms of seats, we don't normally and haven't been guiding the seats, so we don't call it out in particular. But you know, what we're are intent going forward, obviously has increased the number of users. Game industry and continue to be strong in our shares across every platform continued to be very strong. We called out in particular pricing China because those are important drivers of our sequential growth, Matt. One of the areas I expect to see strong growth in over time around seats is professional artistry is and you can we can talk a little bit more about that, but you know how tools like what I'm even the things that we've acquired are coming to market in the coming year and with that, you know, new customers, new seats, etc.
So we don't feel like there's any issue around the seats side. Really, we're calling out particular growth drivers. And Jason, Basinette from city. I just had a simple question. Just maybe this is for Louise sequentially. New create grew about nine million dollars and I think old create grew about 13, which implies either strategic partnerships or UGS, maybe contracted a bit. Is there anything that is not worthy there or anything that you'd call on?
Jason, good point. You may remember in Q3, we had a very strong should the partnerships business. We actually commented on that this call and that is a business that will have ups and downs just based on when deals are signed. So that's why I think it's super important to look at the create numbers on a standard on basis where you actually see as you just mentioned an acceleration from Q3 to Q4 in terms of number of dollars at a Q3 Q. Okay. So that's the way I would think about it Jason. Just take the that's the view, the clean view, apples to apples.
Okay. Do you mind if I ask one follow up? It just seems like the tensions with China, whether it's them sort of advising not to use the big four accounting firms or some of the changes that we made related to. The key of chip exports are sort of increasing and I know China isn't the biggest business geographically for you, but is that a concern investors should have or do you think it's sort of ring fence to chip manufacturing and big four accounting firms?
Let me take the top of that one Louise. So China is the biggest gaming market in the world. I'd like to start with that. The second thing we're the market leader in China and the businesses we operate there. So it is important to us. The policy is getting over cold guys, but third observation and make me we have made a change on our structure in China that we think better. If you will set us up for long term growth in China versus the structure we had previously, Louise can get it in a minute. And I forth China after nearly a year and a half not issuing new licenses started the issue licenses again. And then lastly, we're saying a lot of interest in demand on digital twins. So to us China is important and we've set ourselves up for long term growth there.
Great. I think the next calls should be from Goldman Sachs. Are you guys on? I'm sorry. Let's check us to if it's cash ranger. We don't have it, but all right. Well, let's go to let's go to Brent. The moment. On the paper, please.
Great. Can you hear me? Okay. Perfect. I guess John, maybe we'll start with you. I mean, mitigation was one of those missing pieces of the unity gaming services offering. I think that you're dressed with iron source. What have you learned so far and kind of Q four as you think about some of the functionality bring to the services and kind of maybe give us a sneak peek into. And then we can see that the contribution can help with as you think about the ad market in 2023 here.
So thank you for asking that question because it allows me to address something I wanted to say on the call. What we're seeing is that there's strong interest in the combined offering that we have with the collect the collection tools like level play and the two ad networks. We are seeing market share growth. We're picking up customers onto our mediation platform. And then we're seeing that there's a lot of customers increase share wallet. Now, these things are not instantaneous you you come to an agreement to do these things. It takes some engineering time and effort to bring them onto our platform.
And then it's typically phased. And so there's not a significant impact in our Q one. You know, from the market share gaze we're seeing, but we are expecting to gain market share and Q one and throughout the year, which is why we were confident in predicting growth for the business for the year. So actually what we're trying to say is we're seeing starting the middle of last year, a stable market for the advertising market advertising business. We do expect that to pick up at some at some point. Luis and I made a hard call a while back to say no matter what anybody tells us we're not going to predict a recovery in 2023.
Even though there's a fair amount of folks that would argue there should be by this by the end of this year. And it goes in not to do that because it put a enables to put a stronger focus on cost and get the EBITL average it comes from that. So within that stable market, we're predicting market share growth and we're seeing it already in the marketplace. And we expect to see that throughout the year.
So all in all, the integration, our interest unit is going well. And so we have a lot of work that is going to be done in the market. Is an example we haven't lost a single executive that is typically not the case in these things. And so you know, there's a lot of work that come or on the grow side and mark on the create side or working to drive synergies between the platforms. And over the next several quarters as we talk about how we're generating better outcomes for our customers and better outcomes for us as a combination of a singular end and platform. We talked about that in the shareholder letter.
It's going to be a theme song for us because we got exactly what we were looking for. If you will, a hand in glove combination of tools and services that make the entire platform much stronger than just the additive combination of the two businesses. So market share growth through the year, heavy emphasis on synergy going forward. And with that, the event library, libraries that Luis talks about.
Apple color then just one quick follow up for Luis here. If I look at the net retention number X iron source it down ticked a little bit this quarter versus last quarter. What what do you view baked into the 2023 out on a. Combined basis or you know an X iron source basis just trying to think through what's contemplated from a net retention perspective in the guide.
Yeah. Now you want me to guide on their expansion rates. I think overall I just repeat what John just said, which is we are expecting to expand market share both in Q1 and Q2. Now what that would imply to me brand is we should be seeing net expansion rate above 100% clearly for the year. I want to give you a precise number and less you know with and without our own source but but yeah that's what it implies now we expect to grow to grow market share both in Q1 for the year. And therefore we should be seeing a positive number in that expansion rate. Help for color.
Thank you so much. Thanks, Brent. We should have there we go. So I'm really for cash. I see you there. So I think we should have a little bit of time. Okay, well, do we have Thomas? Do we have other people on the. There we go. Bill and backer at William Blair, please.
Awesome. Hey, hopefully you guys can hear me. Maybe maybe John starting off. I think there was an announcement not too long ago. I think that's a good thing. For the industry, but how important is is that partnership you guys announced with Google and expanding the opportunity for UGS and maybe the ability to improve monetization for developers looking to capitalize there.
太棒了。嘿,希望你们听得到我。也许约翰先开始发言。我认为不久之前有一个公告,我认为这是个好事情。对于这个行业来说,但你们宣布与 Google 的合作伙伴关系有多重要?这扩大了 UGS 的机会,也让开发者有了更好的赚钱能力。
Well, look, I'd say that Google is one of our best partners. So we we partner with them on a number front that you know as we do with you know a number of the major mega caps. We partner there and it's super important to us. The second thing is we have massive faith and the long term growth prospect for UGS and it is, you know, in the fullness of time, it is, it is going to be a very major business for us and it's already a substantial business for us. So it's an area where we're focused on for growth. We've got a really strong general management team that's Jeff under under mark. And they're driving it for growth right now. We're working on bringing more customers on the platform and we feel good about the offering. It is a very competitive offering in terms of high performance and a good cost equation for customers.
Maybe if we can talk on it, we haven't spent a ton of time on the or a piece of the business as well. Maybe some near term device headwinds there, but what how do you guys think about the opportunity for global connectivity going forward and potential monetization opportunity and touch points being afforded by by being embedded across a lot of a significant number of those devices as well. Thanks.
Or is a, is this for those of you don't know it's a very strategic business for us. It came along with the R&S force acquisition. It's a device management business. They operate at the carrier level, but around the app store. And you know, in it's a business where we drive a great deal of data, but we also derived meaningful revenue from it. Our offering we believe is well differentiated from the principal competitor in the space digital turbine. And it's another area where we can't get too specific because when we talk about winning market share, it's like winning a major national carrier. So these deals are not like you pick up a half a point a day. These are, or a half a half a point in quarter. These are material traits. And we are confident that we're gaining here. We have been fired a unity zone of ship. And we expect to going forward. I would love to share you what our pipeline looks like it would make you happy. I think to hear what our pipeline looks like.
But it's something I can't get into further detail on, but we feel really good about that business. It's a, if you think about, you know, if you were if you're unity. We love if you take, for example, a mobile ecosystem, we love that we're the leading platform for creation on both the app stores. We love that we're one of the leading monetization user acquisition platform across the entire industry. We love that we've got a meaningful device management is those same devices. We love that these things come together to create an end to end platform that makes what our customers do more successful when they use our platform. It's that end end highly synergistic platform that differentiates unity from anyone. And we feel really good about our ability to bring all that together synergistically. And again, as I said, Louise and I are going to be singing about synergies now for years to come. It is a, it's our theme song.
Super helpful. Thanks, Sean. And we won't ask you to do a do it here, but maybe later. So, Gilly, it's a Goldman Sachs. I think we got you on there now. And then we'll go on to the scale on pickups.
Thanks. Thanks so much for circling back and congrats on the strong for Q. Can we just quickly touch on any customer behavior you are seeing now they have unity and iron source under the same hood. And a decision to ultimately keep supersonic in your growth category kind of what was the rationale behind that. I'm sure quite get the customers that were getting because of word together. And these synergies are seeing between create create and growth at this point if the iron source deal kind of helped you. And getting customer synergies just to you know utilize that word as well.
Okay, so let me let me give you the center sort of a time phase way. In the present moment, we're winning customers and mediation. And we're going to see the market share and not added. Sure wallet yields a more profitable unity. Now, it's happening precisely right after the acquisition because what we're carrying the market is a message. And the message is the power of the combined data platform, the power that drives a better performance for our customers. Now, these are things that are that are, if you will, they come about as a result of a presentation.
Now, the second thing we're doing now is we're we're engineering in, for example supersonic indoor editor to make it an easy platform for our customers to take their products directly to market without ever leaving the environment. There's a lot of places where the tool set, whether it's Luna or supersonic or it's parts of level play and the integration where it shows up into the mix. Where our customers are going to take advantage of a more performant platform for them to create to publish user user require or monetize directly. And there's some things we can do there, which is more about engineering in and that's what we're working on right now that combination of we're a better story.
They want to be part of something that's bigger and better is the starting point. The second point is to engineer in the advantages that our customers need in work. And it's more than just supersonic and level play it's it's the two networks, iron source, etc. Also, all of the create tools, for example, you know, whether it's artistry as we bring AI to the equation as we bring simulation to the equation things that they need for better content creation more cost efficient content creation. And so it's UGS, which is part of the platform, which is what's enabled us to find success in that space.
So really what it's about and I hate to, you know, wax on about synergy synergy is partly about the story, but it's more about engineering a simpler single source of truth single source of opportunity single platform for our customers to leverage to find a more successful business for themselves. As I said, we'll be talking about those each and every quarter for probably years to come.
Great. Okay, well, I'll miss pronounced your name or Sinji from wall, but please ask your question. Thank you so much. Hi, could you guys hear me? Yes. Hi, this is our sunny on for God. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask whether you could parse out roughly what the growth of non gaming create was excluding what a new G S in for Q. Then I had a quick follow up.
We're not providing it by quarter. We put in the node, you see very strong growth, no, 18% is the exact number for the year or non gaming that includes the what a growth, which we we isolated before we told you at the beginning of the year that would be about 70 million dollars. And the other thing that that you saw is an increase is a percentage of our business, you know, on a comparable basis, we went from 40% that we announced six months ago to about 41%. So that would be on a comparable basis based on the old structure that we've been reporting before. So we're clearly seeing an acceleration in that business. And we expect that to continue into 2023.
Thank you. That's helpful. And then just quickly on one of the metrics in terms of customers over 100K in the contribution from iron source. I believe that the last published number of iron source for customers contributing over 100K was 446. And that number is now 284 backing that out.
Is that just due to the revenue recognition for iron source due to the timing of the acquisition or was there some kind of turn that happened in iron source relative to what they last published into Q 22. Thank you. No, it's not it's not that what happens is obviously some of the larger customers were also large customers for us. So you cannot just add the numbers. So some customers just became even larger for us, but they were already counted in our customers above 100,000. You see that.
Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Make sense. That's a good combination right because basically what it does is we acquire new customers, which is terrific. But we also penetrated some customers even more, which is also very helpful. So we had a healthy combination of both.
Great. We have any other questions from folks in the audience. From Barclays. Hey guys, thanks for taking a question. I just have one on the seasonality of the joint business now. In terms of, you know, what we saw on the fourth quarter, you guys said it was 518 on the combined financials versus the guy and so 1Q475. So just curious. So the financials step down mostly from the create side of the business or is it on the growth segment. Thanks.
Yeah, Marry. Do I do want to take that job? Yeah. So Mario, I, it's very difficult to talk about seasonality over the last few years, given all the factors that John explained, right? I mean, COVID, economy, I mean, just name it. But to answer your question, yes, we are taking a prudent view on the market and it's for both businesses, not particularly for the for the grow business. That's where we are being even more conservative on the business. I don't want to give you a forecast for each of them for Q1. But yeah, we are being prudent there on the assumptions in the market. We see normally in Q4 kind of a strong professional services business. So that will be one thing to always watching Q4 and then seasonality driven by the other factors that we mentioned. So that's the way to think about about it, Mario.
The reality right now, just in terms of speaking to it is I've continued to say today that we've seen stabilization in the ads business starting the middle of last year. The beginning of last year was exceptionally strong. We had the second wave of COVID, you know, people returned home or went home from school. And we had very elevated Q1s in the industry. So it's very hard to read seasonality in a normal year. You'd say across the growth side of the business Q4 is the strongest quarter Q1s the second strongest quarter essentially staying a little bit elevated after the Christmas holidays. And then a little bit of growth as you got a Q2 to Q3. And then within the game side of the business, you'd say it's a business that is similar with Q4s the strongest, although in mobile it tends to be more even, but there is increased consumption in the in the fourth quarter. And then it's been true for many, many years. And then through this fairly subtle world of seasonality, where the fourth quarter can be 10 and 15% higher than the third quarter, you know, that type of outcome.
Which you what we did is we drove a truck through it like three different ways. You know, COVID work from home issues around a recession. And so it's been very hard to read the underlying signal. And again, which is why we're emphasizing right now what we're seeing is really strong consumer engagement in games. We really strong pipeline outside of games and create stabilization in the ads business based on strong consumer engagement and slightly weaker ECBMs, which is typical of a recessionary period around which you some you recover at some point. And we're trying to keep you as much of that understanding as we can. We see a lot of data. We model the heck out of it.
And we understand it. We think pretty darn well. But it is definitely a challenging time to sort of be an econometrics type person in this space. And maybe just a quick follow up in terms of the commentary, you know, of the game as market being approximately down 10% this year, year and year. You know, that's, you know, some other companies are saying it's stabilizing to improving. But is your is your point just the first half is just a very tough calm. And you've got precisely you've got that right. So we've added more color than others. Yes, it's stabilized the middle of last year. The beginning of last year was exceptionally strong. And so the market in the first quarter of last year was up in the mid 20s in terms of growth in terms of sort of served advertising business in the first quarter across the industry.
So when we're looking at stabilization from the middle of last year, what it is in the first half of the 2023 was we're laughing a stronger period. Even though it's stable, we're laughing a stronger period. And the second half of this year, we're not forecasting recovery went out going to be comparing to the second half of 2022, which was flatter. It wasn't as strong. And so we're going to get if you want to think about it, the first half of the year, call it down and the second half of the year call it fly. So that's what we get the minus 10 in aggregate. If you're modeling the whole year, we're saying exactly the same thing. The market is stabilized. We're adding the added color that the year over year indexes for total served ads will be down on the first and second quarter. Yeah. Thank you. We're going to be doing a year versus a quarter of a quarter of you, Maria.
Yeah, it's very helpful. Thank you, guys. Right. Hey, Parker Lane. Thank you, guys. Louis circling back to net expansion rates for a moment. I was wondering if you can give us a qualitative sense of how grow is compared to create recently. And then if I look at the non gaming segment in particular, what impact and future impact the expect from the introduction of new pricing initiatives and perhaps consumption models on the non gaming side, how much of a tailwind can that be to expansion going forward?
Yeah. So if I look at the create side, the net expansion rate has been fairly stable and very healthy. Right. So the reductions that you've seen over the last two quarters have gone mainly from the gross side. No, and we talked that before in the last quarter and what we're seeing in this quarter is fairly consistent with that.
The pricing that we've taken to your second question, the pricing that we're taking is mostly on the game side, right. The non gaming side of the business has really different business models, different monetization models. We keep on improving how we monetize each of our customers, but it's the pricing, the pricing plans that we've talked in the last calls have mainly focused on the gaming side on the number of seeds. So you're going to see another effort on the non gaming, where we're really trying to monetize our customers much better. And that includes subscription businesses that includes consumption business models and really better getting getting more of the value that we're creating for our customers.
So one of this added a little color to that. So it may seem counter intuitive that we increase price last year in the game sector, but we expect that the drive sequential quarter to quarter growth through 2020, 2023. So we're existing contracts at the price that the existing contracts were signed. So as existing contracts, you know, reach their termination date and we renew our customers, they renew with a higher price. So it's pricing is one of the things that's driving growth for us this year, despite the fact that pricing was taken last year, because when our customers come on to it.
And one thing, and I think it was in the third quarter call, I framed up our digital twin platform, which at that point is just gone into general availability. What that is is that say it's a ratable you space platform for digital twins. We've got lots of customers coming on to that. Incremental, ratable revenue that we expect is going to be a major business for us and in the quarter of the years to come. So there's additive in that way too. So that's, I hope that gets to a little what you're asking a little more, a little more insight.
Yeah, thanks for the color guys. Appreciate it. Steven Jew over credit Swiss. All right, thank you.
嗯,谢谢大家给我的建议。我很感激。我是Steven Jew,来自瑞士信贷银行。好的,谢谢大家。
So it's one way of you can give us the latest in terms of expectations on the timeline for the productization of wetta. And I guess, you know, a video game and I guess media sectors will probably be the first adopters, but you know, what traditional sectors. And you see that you can onboard here, who you might not have seen before. And you know, also directionally, I think this is a product that's had a client base of one. So, you know, from a pricing perspective, go to market sales motion, if you can just add a little bit there, maybe it's a little bit too early to talk about that now, which is sort of initial sort of commentary that you might be able to offer as you think about going to market with what will be a productize wetta thanks.
I can think part of that. Louie, she might want to add, but when we're talking about productizing for professional artistry, we mean more than just wetta, although wetta is obviously the substantial portion of it, but also the tools like Ziva and speed tree add to our portfolio and professional artistry. And then, you know, there's a lot of videos. There's a number of the products that we've been talking about, Mark talked about a couple calls ago, within the wetta portfolio that we are commercializing this year. And we're already in customer conversations, the most interest right now is a combination of the film industry and the game industry, big surprise, it's where you'd expect it to be.
What we're going to do through on this call is in conversations that are in flight to close around those products this year to tell you who we're talking to, but it's the likely subsets of suspects that you would expect, but we don't pre-announce deals that we're now in the process of negotiating. But we see at least according to our own internal plan, we're tracking well, the products are coming to commercial opportunity and the timeframe we'd anticipated if not a tad bit earlier. And we're finding good interests in the primary markets that we had anticipated.
So in a word, I'd say, or an absurd sentence, it's going as we anticipated when we made the announcement around what are we announced to acquire them, and it feels good to us right now. Louis, we do want to add anything? No, I would just say, John, that it's 100% consistent with what we said before, it would take us two years, it's a lot of work to bring the tools to the cloud and making my available to many customers from one and we're making the promise that we expected. So you should hear news about this business soon. Thank you.
We have another four or five minutes, but Tim Nolan. Thanks. You guys hear me? Yep. Come on. Thanks.
I got a two or three quick ones on the iron source deal. I wonder maybe first off, could you give us a bit more color on the integration effort.
And I said that it's all going well in the synergies all the good. I just wonder, you know, things like, will you keep a couple of DSPs separately or will you combine them in terms of any technology integration issues that may come up.
Anything you can give us in terms of color because I can imagine that's not necessarily easy to always do these sorts of things. Relatedly, you did, I think mentioned the data and just an issues from last year at one point are those completely gone now.
Do we need to know anything more about that did iron source help in any way with that or was that after the fact.
And then lastly, maybe one more on, on aura, I guess is maybe where this comes in, you know, you and iron source both are very heavily into the gaming sector.
You have a lot of non gaming businesses on the create side. I guess iron sources mainly gaming, but are there opportunities now to expand your, your ad tech services given that the broader client base that you can, can offer as well as what aura could bring in given the other sectors that it touches.
First off, you get credit for 12 part question, so report well, we'll do our best to remember at all as we as we respond. The first one to get out of the way is that data issue was was out of the way before we completed our merger, effectively before we announced it. So that that was in the very mirror.
And second thing on integration, we've already, you know, largely integrated teams and so, Homer by way of example is, you know, essentially the chief revenue officer for grow. And so we consolidated the two sales organizations under him, he's providing able leadership.
And we're consolidated products and engineering under anger at any all a matching. So we brought teams together to achieve, you know, singular focus on delivering the right outcomes for our customers.
These are the engineering teams are working together, the product teams are working together, the sales teams are working together.
But in terms of engineering and data, we've already accomplished essentially the primary data merge. So that can yield better outcomes for our customers there because essentially more data, you know, around the same questions around user acquisition yields a better outcome for our customer. So we've achieved that that's part of what we've already done and we're now starting to see situations where we're applying a tool that might have been in the unity ad network to the iron source network or a practice or an approach technically that was in the iron source network to the unity network.
So I won't get into the specifics of that because first off, it would take me five minutes to define most of what these tools do and that seems like an unnecessary way lay into this conversation. But it's just this morning I was going through one tool in particular that we expect to have a favorable, you know, very well come for our combined network based on bring a tool from one side of the equation to the other side of the equation.
So on that create to grow they're doing the exact thing at a higher level. So that's happening or you talk about or a relative to non gaming for those of you that don't know part of what or it does is it drives installs of game and non game applications on Android devices around the world on based on carrier relationships that essentially puts us in the ads business.
And I believe you're absolutely right to point out that driving installs outside of gaming represents a significant opportunity for unity and some of those are going to be our create customers. But that's that is something that we don't have a specific plan for today, although we've certainly talked about it.
We've been focusing on the very obvious and most important synergies for that end and platform. And there's a few things that are sort of next quarters conversation and that particular one is more of next quarters conversation internally unity.
Excellent. Thanks for that. We're going to try to slip in two more and finish up. So first we'll start with Jonathan and then we'll conclude with Franco.
Great. Can you hear me? Great. Thanks for letting me get in here and ask my questions. Actually, most of them have already been answered. Just wanted to ask then the rationale behind combining strategic partnerships and to create. I mean, it makes sense that you have, you know, create.
Add some of the stuff from operate and operate to become grow, but why would you and not leave strategic partnerships separate like you have before.
Thanks.
The majority of the revenue is very create. And so, this is very simple. These are often deals where revenue is derived from a platform holder to enable create to work better for their platform. And so it was more pattern matching here. It was like this is very much like a create business. We'd held it out separately because it had a different sales cadence and a very different type of deal structure. But when we tried to figure out where to put all the different pieces post merger. And so, the obvious place for Louis, you might want to add to that. Yeah, I totally agree, John. And we managed the teams together and that's because of the synergies because one drives the other. So we thought that would be the most natural thing to do. John, I think that will be transparent as I was at the beginning of this call on when we see volatility, tree and by 3D partnerships that we need to call out. Okay. Great. Thank you.
大部分收益都是由创作内容产生的,这很简单。这些通常是指由平台所有者向创作者提供营收,以帮助他们更好地在该平台上工作。因此,这更像是一种创作业务的模式匹配。我们将其分开管理是因为它有不同的销售节奏和截然不同的交易结构。但是,当我们试图弄清楚如何在合并后安排所有不同的部分时,显然该放在路易斯那里。路易斯,你可能想要补充一下。是的,我完全同意,约翰。我们一起管理团队,因为有协同效应,一个推动另一个。因此,我们认为这是最自然的做法。约翰,我认为当我们看到波动时,我们需要通报的是 3D 合作伙伴关系。好的,谢谢您。
Right. Not the least not the but if the last. Franco, why don't you tee it up for finishes up. Hey, thanks for it. Sure. Yeah. John. So on level play, you talked about the story of cancer. Have and you know, you rifling noted the variability in the lead times. Can you speak to whether this is from the developers that are new brand news, the market. And you know, the industry leveraging, you know, the relationships on the iron source side and getting someone that is perhaps a bigger scale. More mature players. And I guess what is your strategy to game business from some of the large publishers that are currently not the platforms. For some reason that broke up a lot for me on my end of hearing that. There's like half the words, Richard, you kept the question and can summarize it back. I think I wanted to summarize again, because I lost the same thing. So. Okay.
Well, I need to get a new headset. The question was really around level play. Are the customers brand new to the market or are they more mature, bigger in scale. And what is your strategy to gain big publishers from other platforms. So what is a strategy for other platforms relative to love of blood. So again, I'm not fully rocking your questions. So I apologize if I don't answer it correctly. But I'd mention a couple of things. One is that. Prior to the merger, you could argue that level play was more richly successful with smaller, more independent players and unity had relative strengths with the larger players. And what we're now doing is closing more of the larger players. That feels like somewhat of a synergy with level blood. If you're thinking about the synergy of create to level play. Integrating level play into unity as a winning strategy, because remember 70 odd percent of mobile games are built in unity. That's a very obvious thing to do. And it was very evident at one of their launch events last year in September. I was there speaking to, you know, many hundreds of levels like customers. You know, one of the things they've never done is that how many of you are unity customers. And. And it turned out when I asked for a show of hands, 100% of them in the room were unity customers. And so there's big synergy in that direction as well, because.
I mean, it not they all weren't yet level play customers. They were there shopping at level play, but they were all already. Unity customers. So does that get to what you were asking me about though, because. I mean, we might have a network issue here. I got a bit of a garbled version of your question.
Yeah, now I could take it offline. I think Franco, if your question is why do we expect level play to grow market share is frankly weeks. We believe that it's the better. Mediation out there in the market and and we are. That's what you saw before or everything changed in the market and we continue to believe it's the best performing. And that will attract our customers back. So Luis and I just did a portfolio review with the team yesterday. And by name by customer, we're seeing customers coming to the platform. So we're not believing it. We think it's better for our market show girl, although we think that's why. We're looking at the exact customers coming over and our migrations and our engineering teams are implementing. That for us is proof that they're coming to our platform for those. And that's why we can talk about market share games, both in Q1 and for the year. All right, we cash. Thing then from the top of double black diamond slump. So we you can cash. Thank you so much.
Paragraph 1:
Wouldn't visit you don't talk or anything. Thanks so much. I can grasp the water like for a gillies comments.
第一段:
不会来拜访你,也不想交谈。非常感谢。我可以像吉利斯的评论一样掌握水的信息。
Paragraph 2:
John, as you take a step back now your index to. The opportunities and better. A little bit over index to the pick up and the advertising market to the acquisition of iron source. And you're also indexed to what's going on on the create side with digital twins.
Paragraph 3:
How do you think about how you as CEO are prioritizing your investments. So you get the best bank for the buck in each of these markets depending upon the relative importance. And what that could mean for what really drives unity in the future. Thank you.
Paragraph 4:
Look, First off, if you want to know what drives me as the CEO to which prioritization. And it's it this company it's a very rich conversation between Lewis and me. And the principle sea level officers looking at the opportunity in front of us.
Paragraph 5:
Now, one of the things that have been frustrating is we've shifted from a go go market to a tough recessionary environment and the market correction that's taking place. Is there were programs that we liked in a different economic environment that are no longer funded.
Paragraph 6:
An example of that is you know what we're doing with with sports and live entertainment. It's a beautiful technology that customers want. But we deprioritized that in a different economic environment and there were several other things that we did that were like that.
Paragraph 7:
Now we didn't deprioritize what up. Because there's already a meaningful revenue stream there. And there's a meaningful and a very great opportunity for that around professional artistry to grow a bigger and better business.
Paragraph 8:
And remember most creators in the world are not coders. They're artists. So that was artists tools. So that made the cut for us. But in general, I would tell you that if you look at our two businesses, great creating growth.
Paragraph 9:
Grow is a business where the engineering cycles for product development are typically inside a couple of quarters and certainly inside of a year. Many times on the create side, the creation cycle for meaningful new technology can be multiple years, certainly multiple quarters.
Paragraph 10:
So for example, when we created the digital twin plant one that will allow us to generate radical revenue cloud based revenue or digital twins. That was 18 months in process. So that we have to look at them through a different lens in terms of ROI time frame.
Paragraph 11:
Now the reason we invested in the cloud platform for digital twins and the very similar thing around UGS for games is because we believe in the fullness of time. The best way to drive revenue or unity on create is through the additional radical revenue streams based on usage.
Paragraph 12:
We're already paid by the seat for people creating things. We were looking for a second revenue stream and then solving a major problem for our customers. And so when we look at our businesses today, you know, things like level play and our ad networks are profitable or core games businesses.
Paragraph 13:
A lot of things are very profitable for some remain net investment. And we prioritize them based on what we believe to be strong ROI ROI thresholds. Now personally, I'm from the gaming industry.
Paragraph 14:
I've spent decades in the gaming industry. I am intellectually in love with digital twins. I'm emotionally connected to games. But our resource allocation isn't based on emotion. It's based on math.
Paragraph 15:
And we're going to have a card at it in this environment to make sure we're making the right investments for the right ROI. Which is how and why we're reporting even with modest revenue growth really strong profit growth here of a year. We think that's important. We prioritize that and we're going to deliver that.
Paragraph 16:
Great. Thank you so much. We got done a little bit late, but that was pretty quick and efficient. So thank you all. We'll hope to see you on the road or at various conferences. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.