Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Salesforce.com Inc (CRM) Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcript

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Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE:CRM)Q4 2017 Earnings Conference CallMay 29, 2017, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Erica, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Salesforce Q1 Fiscal 2019 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press * then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the # key. Thank you.

Mr. John Cummings, you may begin your conference.

John Cummings -- Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you, Erica. Thanks so much. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us for our fiscal first quarter 2019 results conference call. Our results press release and SEC filings, including our form 8-K, which contains recaps and financial information under new accounting standards ASC 606 and ADC 340-40, and a replay of today's call can be found on our IR website at www.salesforce.com/investor. With me on the call today is Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO; Keith Block, Vice Chairman, President, and COO; Mark Hawkins, President and CFO; and Bret Taylor, President and Chief Product Officer.

As a reminder, our commentary today will primarily be in non-GAAP terms. Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results and guidance can be found in our earnings press release. Additionally, our commentary and our guidance today are under accounting standards, ASC 606, ASC 340-40, and ASU 20-16-01, all of which we adopted in first quarter.

Some of our comments today may contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Should any of these materialize or should our assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual company results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements. A description of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions and other factors that could affect our financial results are included in our SEC filings, including our most recent report on Form 10-Q.

With that, let me turn the call over to you, Marc.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

All right. Well, hey, thank you so much, John, and thank you to everyone on today's call for being here with us. As you'll recall, fiscal 2018 was a record year for Salesforce, and Q4 was our best quarter ever. In fact, the most recent Fortune 500 ranking, Salesforce has moved up nearly 200 positions over the last few years. And based on last year's revenue, we're now the 285th largest company in the United States. And we're thrilled that our phenomenal momentum continues right now in the first quarter of fiscal year '19.

Revenue for the quarter rose to more than $3 billion, up 25%, putting us on a $12 billion revenue run rate. That was just amazing. And we now have $20.4 billion of future revenues under contract, which is the remaining transaction price. That's up 36% from a year ago. Based on these strong results, we're raising our full-year top line revenue guidance to $13.125 billion at the high end of our range, 25% growth for this year.

Well, and just as we'll be the fastest enterprise software company to reach $13 billion, we're well on our way to surpassing the $20 billion revenue goal faster than any other enterprise software company in history. With another quarter of amazing growth, we've strengthened our position as the world's leading CRM company. Earlier this month, IDC named Salesforce the number one CRM provider for the fifth consecutive year. In fact, according to IDC, we increased our CRM market share in 2017 by more percentage points than the rest of the top 20 CRM vendors combined. We're the number one in sales, number one in service, number one in marketing, and we have the number one CRM platform. We continue to be the fastest growing of all the top five enterprise software companies, and these incredible results are because of our relentless focus on customer success.

In fact, I've just returned from a series of meeting with customers around the world. I was in Tokyo, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York. I was in Washington, DC. And I'll tell you, everywhere I go, every CEO wants to talk about digital transformation, which begins and ends with the customer. Only Salesforce can deliver highly personalized and engaged B2B and B2C customer experiences powered by the world's number one CRM customer success platform. Across sales, across service, across market and commerce, communities, analytics, and even application development through our platform, only Salesforce is giving customers an intelligent 360-degree view of their customer. And this month, we closed our acquisition of MuleSoft, giving us the industry's leading integration platform as well.

Well, integration has never been more strategic. So many of the CEOs I spoke with told me that data remains locked in their legacy systems and is holding them back. With MuleSoft, we're now enabling our customers to connect all of their data across any public or private cloud and on-premise to radically enhance innovation and create incredible customer experiences. So, we couldn't be more excited to welcome MuleSoft to Salesforce.

And just this morning, Forbes named Salesforce again one of the world's most innovative companies for the eighth year in a row. Since Forbes started the list in 2011, Salesforce has placed in the top three every single year. In fact, our innovation in artificial intelligence is delivering incredible value to our customers. Salesforce Einstein now delivers nearly two billion predictions every day, and that's a doubling of our daily predictions just last quarter. This is the most strategic technology for our customers.

How are we growing so consistently quarter after quarter? As I described before, it's about staying true to our values, including customer success and innovation. But our number one value at Salesforce is trust -- earning and keeping the trust of our stakeholders, or employees, our customers, our partners, our shareholders, and all of our communities. That's why I've called for a national privacy law to protect the personal data of American consumers and help restore trust in the tech industry, similar to what's happening in Europe with GDPR.

In closing, as I've pointed out before, CRM is the fastest growing enterprise software category. It's a massive $120 billion market opportunity, and we are determined -- we are determined to continue leading the way for our customers and for their success. And we're keeping our eyes focused on the future. After record world tours in New York, Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, Toronto, London, and Paris, we're looking forward to welcoming 10,000 attendees to Connections in Chicago in two weeks. I hope you will attend. It will be the digital marketing, commerce, and customer success event of the year. And as I said before, we're well on our way to surpassing $20 billion in revenue, and doing it faster than any other enterprise software company in history. You can see that in the numbers from this quarter. The trajectory is clear. Anybody who sees the numbers in these financial results can see it's gonna happen, and we could not be more excited.

So, we're incredibly proud of another quarter of remarkable growth. Of course, none of this would be possible without the partnership and dedication of all of our stakeholders, especially our 30,000 Salesforce employees, the world's largest team dedicated to CRM. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of our Ohana. We're number one in CRM because our employees, our customers are number one. And to all of them, and to all of our Ohana, again I say thank you.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Keith.

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Thanks, Mark. Good afternoon, everybody. As Mark said, we're off to a fast start to the year, and we're taking share through our relentless focus on the customer. We continue to grow internationally and expand across industries and leverage our partners on this drive toward $20 billion and beyond. Our momentum from Q4 carried over into Q1, and we signed several significant deals in the quarter, including the largest transaction in the company's history. And we delivered outstanding performance across all of our clouds.

Sales Cloud grew at 16%, 33% faster than the market, a clear indicator of our strength of our core business. And we are taking share. Service Cloud grew 29% in the quarter, as creating connected customer experiences has become a priority for every company all over the world. Field Service Lightning is a key part of that growth. In fact, one of the world's largest food and beverage companies selected Field Service Lightning for retail execution to boost employee productivity and improve customer experiences. Retail execution is the lifeblood of consumer package goods companies.

Marketing and commerce grew 41%. In Q1, we strengthened our relationship with Citi, who is rolling out marketing cloud across their business in Asia. And we also continued to see incredible momentum with Commerce Cloud, as more and more customers select our platform as part of their broader engagement with Salesforce. We had notable expansions with another meeting athletic apparel maker, who is enhancing and expanding their direct-to-consumer business. We also deepened our relationship with one of the largest luxury groups in the world, who is transforming the retail experience with Commerce Cloud.

And finally, our Lightning platform grew 36% as customers continue to build intelligent, connected apps fast with Lightning App Builder and Heroku, and leverage the power of Einstein. In fact, one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world is using Einstein Analytics to get deeper business insights and build more personalized customer experiences.

Now, we not only delivered strong growth across our clouds but across all of our key regions. EMEA grew 31% in constant currency, fueled by expanding relationships with brands like Philips and Santander UK, as our international investments continue to pay off. In May, we opened our first European innovation center at Salesforce Tower in London, and now plan to expand our data center capacity in the UK to support our growing customers in the region. APAC grew 30% in constant currency, driven by remarkable growth in Japan, where we strengthened our relationships with SoftBank and luxury e-commerce site LUXA.

In Asia, we also expanded with Cathay Pacific Airways and Lazada, the leading e-commerce player in Southeast Asia. Our ability to speak the language of customers is deepening our relationships with the most important companies in the world, and you can see that in our results. In Financial Services, we expanded with Manulife in Canada and formed a new relationship with Investors Bank. And we continue to see incredible momentum with Financial Services Clouds. In Q1, we had a significant expansion with a Fortune 50 financial services firm that is clearly betting their digital transformation on us and is now one of our largest customers.

The public sector continues to be a huge opportunity for us as well. We had our most significant public sector win ever with U.S. Department of Agriculture, and are using service clouds to transform how they engage with constituents across the country. We also deepened our relationship with one of the largest federal agencies in United States, and they're deploying Service Cloud and Einstein Analytics to improve the services they provide to millions of Americans every single day.

Our strong ecosystem is helping us gain lion's share and drive success for our customers as well. In Q1, partners helped generate 59% of new business and were involved in 75% of our largest deals. And Salesforce continues to be the growth lever for our partners. In fact, the top five global FIs increased their Salesforce practices by more than 70% year-over-year. In Q1 alone, Bluewolf and IBM Company increased the number of certified consultants by more than 200%, a huge indication of demand. We're also seeing tremendous momentum in our thriving ISV community, which grew 52% year-over-year.

Now, let me give you a quick update on our most recent acquisitions. First, every company wants to deliver the same buying experience to businesses that they provide to consumers. And to capture this opportunity, we acquired long time partner CloudCraze, a leading B2B e-commerce platform, similar to our acquisition of SteelBrick, and CloudCraze is both natively on the Salesforce platform. So we're off to a good start on that integration.

Second, as Marc said, unlocking data is critical to accelerating our customers' digital transformations. Just last week, I was with a CEO of a major corporation that has data trapped in disparate legacy systems. It is a huge barrier to innovation. But through our acquisition of MuleSoft, Salesforce now provides one of the world's leading platforms for building application networks that connects enterprise apps, data, and devices across any cloud on-premise, whether they connect with Salesforce or not.

And that integration is going extremely well. We have received an overwhelmingly positive response from our customers and those who've incorporated MuleSoft into global strategic events, including the World Tours and Dreamforce. This has been highly successful thus far. And we'll continue to invest further in MuleSoft's distribution capacity and R&D to build innovative products that enable our customers' success. So ,to close, I want to thank our customers, our partners, our employees, for their continued trust in us and for a very, very special start to the year.

Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mark Hawkins, who will discuss our financial execution and updates to our accounting standards. Mark?

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Great. Thanks, Keith. Before discussing the results, I want to remind everyone that the results that were released today are under the new accounting standards ASC 606, ASC 340-40, and ASC 2016-01. Additionally, with our release today, we provided recasted financial results under the full retrospective method for the full year of fiscal 2017, fiscal 2018, and each quarter of fiscal 2018 under ASC 606 and ASC 340-40. With that, let me turn to the first quarter results.

First quarter revenue grew 25% in dollars and 22% in constant currency, reflecting continued strength in the demand environment, strong organic growth, and keeping us on pace to achieve the FY22 target of $21 billion to $23 billion, including MuleSoft. Now, the dollar attrition exited the first quarter below 10. It was down a bit from Q1 of last year. First quarter GAAP EPS was $0.46 compared with the breakeven last year, and non-GAAP EPS was $0.74, up 155% over the last year.

Mark-to-market accounting for our strategic investment portfolio, as required by ASC 2016-01, benefited GAAP EPS by approximately $0.25, and non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.22 in the first quarter. We had a record quarter of operating cash flow, delivering $1.47 billion in the first quarter, up 19% over year-over-year. And I'm very pleased with this result, especially coming up on our strong collections and cash flow quarter in Q4 of last year. Free cash flow, defined as operating cash flow less capex, was $1.34 billion in the first quarter, up 25% over last year.

Turning to the balance sheet. As a result of the new accounting standards, we now report unearned revenue in place of deferred revenue. And as you know, the new revenue standard has us recognizing certain revenues sooner than under prior standards, and therefore, reduces unearned revenue at a faster rate than historical deferred revenue. This causes our unearned balance to be lower than our historically reported differed revenue.

Unearned revenue ended the quarter at $6.2 billion, up 25% in dollars and 23% in constant currency. As we've always said, deferred revenue was an imperfect growth predictor, as it was impacted by a number of factors, including invoicing timing and billing terms. To provide more transparency and a better indication of our future revenues, we are providing a new disclosure called remaining transaction price, which represents all future revenues that are under the contract -- essentially, our prior billed and unbilled deferred revenue. This balance is broken down into the amounts we expect to recognize as revenue in the next 12 months or current, our remaining transaction price, and the amount we expect to recognize as revenue beyond 12 months, which we're calling non-current remaining transaction price.

At the end of the first quarter, our total remaining transaction price was $20.4 billion, up 36% over last year. And the current remaining transaction price was $9.6 billion, up 26% year-over-year. Now, keep in mind, this balance is not impacted by invoicing terms, unlike deferred revenue was. We believe that this metric will be a better indicator of our future revenue than unearned or deferred revenue.

Before turning to guidance, let me take a minute to discuss MuleSoft's accounting practices going forward. During the transaction close process, we made the decision to conform MuleSoft's revenue recognition policy to Salesforce's policy under the new accounting standard ASC 606. Through this process, it was determined that a portion of the revenue related to on-premise implementations will be recognized as license revenue going forward. As we will be providing MuleSoft results separately for the remainder of the year, this license revenue will be included in our subscription and support line for FY19, and will be recognized upfront upon delivery.

Moving onto guidance. With our strong first quarter results giving us a fast start to the full year, we're raising our full year 2019 revenue guidance to $13.075 billion to $13.125 billion for 24% to 25% year-over-year growth. The guidance includes approximately $315 million from our acquisition of MuleSoft, which closed on May 2nd.

Turning to operating margin. With the close of the MuleSoft acquisition, we now expect our year-over-year non-GAAP operating margin improvement to be flat to plus 25 basis points. This guidance includes approximately a 125 basis point headwind from MuleSoft. We are updating our FY19 GAAP diluted EPS guidance to $0.49 to $0.51, and our non-GAAP diluted EPS guidance to $2.29 to $2.31. Keep in mind that that guidance does not take into account the possible future impact from mark to market adjustments related to ASC 2016-01, which may cause EPS volatility based on the market conditions.

We now expect full year 2019 operating cash flow of 14% to 15% year-over-year for an operating cash flow yield of approximately 24%. This guidance includes a headwind of approximately $150 million, related to the MuleSoft acquisition. For Q2, we're expecting revenues of $3.22 billion to $3.23 billion, GAAP loss per share of minus $0.09 to minus $0.08, and a non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.46 to $0.47.

As I mentioned previously, we believe the current remaining transaction price provides you a better-looking metric than unearned revenue. However, given the limited historical remaining transaction price data, we are going to provide incremental transparency by temporarily providing guidance for unearned revenue for the remainder of this year. In context, we expect year-over-year unearned revenue growth of 22% to 23% in Q2, excluding MuleSoft. Once we have our full year comparables numbers, we will expect to stop providing unearned revenue guidance.

To close, we delivered a strong first quarter that positioned us well for another year of durable growth. I'd like to thank our customers, our partners, our employees, and our shareholders for your continued support.

And with that, we'll open up the call for questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press * followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. And we'll pause for just a moment to compile to Q&A roster.

And your first question comes from Phil Winslow with Wells Fargo.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Thanks, guys, and congrats on a great start to the year. And a particular shout out to Hawkins, Benioff, and Cummings for the awesome 606 data historically. Super helpful. A question for Marc B. on MuleSoft, I mean obviously, nobody knows CRM data better than salesforce.com. But wondering if you could talk about Einstein and MuleSoft, and that in the AI context, because obviously you're delivering already two billion predictions. How do you think MuleSoft, or how do you see MuleSoft augmenting that? And what kind of uptick do you think you'll see there inside customers?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, as we go deeper into our vision with so many of our customers, the key thing that we are focused on is their single view of their customer. We just talked about so many of our key wins in the quarter. I mean, it could be Caren with their replatorming, or incredible brands like Gucci, or Bottega, or Yves Saint Laurent; the USDA and their relationship with their farmers and ranchers; it could be the work that we're doing with the line, giving their farm -- giving their orthodontists the ability to connect with their consumers in a whole new way; or it could be the incredible work that you're seeing with Adidas. In each and every case, they are working to understand and have a 360-degree view of their customer.

And the power of that is really augmented by our suite of CRM applications that do that for them. Things like our sales, commerce, service, communities, analytics, our core platform, collaboration, marketing, and exactly what you said -- by adding integration in that, it helps us bring in data from multiple public clouds, because many of our customers are now using multiple public clouds, and/or they might be, let's say, for example, the healthcare company seeking data from the healthcare system itself like an insurance system, or maybe some other type of key databanks associated with the healthcare industry. Integration is mission-critical for our customers to gain that 360-degree view of their customer.

Now, we've always known that at Salesforce. That's why we built an open system. That's why we we've had an application program interface. That's why we've had an AppExchange. That's why we focused on ISVs and had relationships with companies like MuleSoft. But it has become more important for our customers to be able to have and rely on an integration cloud. This idea that's deeply embedded inside our products, they can rely on this technology to be able to integrate all the key data so they can build that single view of the customer.

And we have Bret Taylor here, who is our President and Chief Product Officer. And Bret, do you want to just touch on that and your -- I know you've been traveling the country and talking to hundreds of our customers about their vision for integration. Can you tap that for us?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Yeah, sure. When we talk to our customers, they talk about three main priorities as it relates to integration. They want to create customer experiences that transcend individual customer touch points. They want to integrate sales, service, and marketing into a single seamless customer experience. They want to make sure that they have multiple acquisitions and multiple regulatory climates, because they exist across international borders, that they can accomplish that with our platform. And they want to unlock the data from other legacy systems and bring into these customer systems so they can do these transformations around their customers.

And about the point you're asking about, Einstein is very insightful. They know that their AI is only as powerful as data it has access to. And so, when you think of MuleSoft, think unlocking data. The data is trapped in all these isolated systems -- on-premises, private cloud, public cloud. And in MuleSoft ,they can unlock this data and make it available to Einstein, and make a smarter customer-facing system. And that's what we're hoping to achieve with MuleSoft. And I think the thing you heard from Marc that I've heard over and over again from our customers is that integration is a strategic priority for our customers, because without it, they can't move fast enough on their customer-facing systems. So we like to say it unlocks the clock speed of innovation, and that's what we're really seeing from our customers. And I hope we'll accelerate our ambitions with Einstein.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

And Bret, I just want to ask before we go on. When we look at this next generation of intelligence, obviously Salesforce has done it a little bit differently than other companies, because we've taken a consistent artificial intelligence platform, Einstein, and we've now allowed all of our applications to flow through that. So, whether it's our Commerce Cloud, or our Sales Cloud, or our Service Cloud, they're all augmented now through Einstein. And I guess one of the major results that I'm so proud of, of your team and our engineering teams is two billion predictions a day. Where do you see that going?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Well, I think the reason why Einstein has gotten so much adoption and so much traction is because it's simple to use. The power of the Salesforce platform is you just turn it on. And with things like our Commerce Cloud, you can do very simple things with Einstein to sort the products different in your product listings, and you'll drive more GMV, and drive more transactions because it's a better customer experience, right, and better products to the right people at the right time. Every single one of our cloud benefits from Einstein in this way. And by making it easy to adopt and easy to use, our customers are actually seeing the value of AI without hiring a legion of data scientists, and that's really the promise of Einstein and really our philosophy behind building the AI for CRM, is our ability to make it easy for our customers to use and adopt and benefit from this revolution we're seeing in AI.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

So, what you're saying is just by turning on Einstein or Commerce Cloud, customers, for example, have seen some incredible increase -- what is it, 15% or 20% in revenue, just by turning on artificial intelligence, the ability for that AI to start working with consumers who are using those Commerce Cloud Services?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

That's definitely right. I mean, we see one of the biggest barriers for our customers in adopting AI is just how challenging it is to understand and use. And we do know the value of Einstein and the value of integrating it deeply into our platform is that ease of turning it on and actually seeing the impact on your business immediately. And that's what we aspire to achieve with Einstein.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

It's not a programmatic interface. I mean, it is programmatic, it can be, but it's really declarative. It's easy to just get going.

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

That's accurate.

Phil Winslow -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Operator

And your next question comes from Heather Bellini with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Hi, thanks. You've gotten Mark Grant here on for Heather. Just a quick one for me. You saw some acceleration in Service Cloud growth in the quarter. Can you give us a sense of how those conversations are going with customers, specifically around that cloud, and maybe an update on the appetite you're seeing in the market for some of those larger transformative multi-cloud deals?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. So, hi, this is Keith. Let me try to address this. So, generally speaking, if you think about how companies differentiate themselves, they do it on service, and they do it specifically around the consumer experience. And so, that's why we're seeing quite an uptick in our Service Cloud business. Now, also another piece of that is Field Service Lightning. So, we see just an incredible amount of demand for Field Service Lightning, again, because customers are taking advantage of these amazing technologies to drive and gather insights around what their customers are doing.

Service Cloud reached about a $3.4 billion run-rate in Q1. That's more than double the market, which is pretty amazing. And as Marc has indicated in his early comments, we're number one in the market, and we continue to take share in a very, very strategic market for us and our customers. So, that differentiation by service is very, very strategic for these customers. Many times, service is at the core of our all their digital transformations, which obviously piques the interest of the CEOs that we're having these conversations with. And it's not just service. It's all of our other core products that rotate around service that allows us to drive these transformations, and that's where you see these very, very large multi-cloud deals that I talked about earlier.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Keith, I want to ask you a question about -- in the quarter, you closed one of our largest transactions ever, and also just an incredible transaction with a very large insurance company. And one of the things about working with that company is you're really building a complete family of applications around the customer, like I mentioned. That is, they're not using just one cloud, right? They're really looking to us to bring together the entire customer experience. And we see that -- I mean, insurance is a great example of an industry where we've seen incredible transformation across all different types of insurance, and globally too, not just here in the United States, but in Japan and Europe, etc. Now, how does that idea that we're able to come in with a complete customer experience differentiate you in the marketplace?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Yeah. I mean, first of all, they're blown away when they see the capabilities that we have. I was with -- just a couple weeks ago, I was with the CEO of one of the largest insurance companies in the world. And we were having a conversation about changing their business model and transformation around how their agents can be more productive, how they can retire all these legacy systems so that they have a single unified view of the customer, how they can leverage Einstein for artificial intelligence and insights, how they can have issues around locking or unlocking the legacy data from their legacy systems. And all of these things together, we're the only company in the industry that can provide solutions as it relates to that 360-degree holy grail of the customer. And that's why -- I mean, insurance is obviously a sweet spot for us, but all financial services is a sweet spot for us. And that's why we're having so much momentum in that industry.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

So, you're able to put together many different types of solutions to offer to that customer than that 360-customer view?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

That's exactly right.

Mark Grant -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

That's great. Thanks so much.

Operator

And your next question comes from Brad Zelnick with Credit Suisse.

Brad Zelnick -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst

Thanks very much, and congrats on a great start to the year. I have a question for Marc B. on the Marketing Cloud, which obviously had a great quarter in Q1. But one of your competitors in the space is now adding commerce functionality by way of an acquisition, which I think, as many investors comparing the different strategies in the market, and if we look out in the future when Salesforce is, say, $20 billion-plus in size and then reflect back on how you got there, how much of the battle will have been won in B2C versus B2B, and do you think you need to be deeper in content management to get there?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thanks so much for that question. You know, I think that as we've expanded our vision of what the customer experience is and where the market is going, of course, we've inspired other competitors to think about the future as well. And you know, that's our job, too, is to create followers. And we've seen a lot of other companies, smaller companies like the one you're talking, really try to look at where are they going in the future? And I think that that's great, because of course we want a competitive environment. So, our approach is really different, because we really see every B2B company and every B2C company becoming a B2B2C company, and I see that over and over and over again.

I mean, I gave a great example of Adidas. So, I think you know, when you look at a huge commerce story like Adidas, of course, when there's a new shoe like the Yeezy 350 that's launching, we have to be able to provide that tremendous customer experience that's highly differentiated for Adidas on our Commerce Cloud. But of course, that's not the only cloud that Adidas is using with us, because they need to be able to provide many different types of services to their customers. And that's really where we're gonna be able to jump in and offer them great success.

But of course, with an example of a company like that, you're gonna find that maybe only 20% of their revenue is in that B2C commerce experience. Many of those companies, 80% of their revenues is then complemented in that B2B commerce experience. This is why one of the most exciting acquisitions that we did in the quarter was a relatively small company that had been built natively on our platform called CloudCraze, because it really all of a sudden extended us into not just B2C commerce, but B2B commerce as well. And I don't think anybody can really touch the tremendous success we've had since acquiring Demandware, where it's been an awesome journey in just a couple years. But it's really because we've provided that complete experience around the customer.

Now, when you think about that, there's three major components to that. There's the system of record, of course, which is kind of where Salesforce started. You know, I would say that we probably have the strongest system of record experience in the industry. Then there's the system of engagement itself, whether it's internal users or externally. Again, we have such tremendous capability, whether it's a Heroku or communities, or even our Commerce Cloud. And three is the system of intelligence. Bret touched on it with Einstein, with AI. But even looking at our advanced analytics capabilities that we now bring to bear, no one else can provide that experience.

Now, we're not a closed solution. We're gonna work with every company. Of course, we have to, because our customers have many different types of solutions in their companies, and so, we're gonna do that. But when you look at some of these core areas, like the customer experience; the ability to provide enablement, like you've seen with our Trailhead capabilities; the ability to have that deep engagement, like I just mentioned; the level of intelligence; and now, integration -- having the number one integration cloud in the world. It really helps when we walk into a customer and say, look, we're the number one sales cloud in the world; the number one service cloud in the world; you know, we're the number one marketing cloud in the world according to IDC; and we've done all that in the flash of an eye. And I think that that's why you can see a very fast line. I mean, you guys are all tremendous financial analysts. You can put the numbers together and figure out when we're gonna get to $20 billion.

I mean, we think that we're gonna get there faster than we could have imagined. And that's why we're so excited about our business. And then we're going on, by the way. This is not -- this is, I think, the most exciting ever in our industry. I've never seen customers more excited about investing, especially in their digital transformation and their customer transformation. And we're well positioned as the number one CRM provider in the world. I hope that answers your question.

Operator

And your next question comes from Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley.

Keith Weiss -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Excellent. Thank you guys for taking the question, and very nice quarter. A question that's for Bret, and maybe one for Mr. Hawkins as well. I was wondering if we could get an update on the product strategy around MuleSoft now that it's closed. I guess maybe some timeframes on when we should see the integration cloud, the Salesforce.com integration cloud, rolling out, the product plans for the course of the existing MuleSoft platform that they have. And then maybe one for Mr. Hawkins. Any plans on sort of expense reductions, or any expense synergies you plan to get out of the MuleSoft platform as you do the integration with Salesforce.com?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Okay, thanks for the question. To start, to talk about our integration cloud and MuleSoft, our focus right now is bringing MuleSoft into the company and making sure that we're consulting with every single one of our customers and every single one of our engagements about their integration strategy. Just helping them -- knowing that every digital transformation starts and ends with the customer, how can we help them set up an application network and unlock this data to transform their customer experience, is not starting now. MuleSoft has just incredible customer success, and so, we're looking to accelerate that with our amazing distribution team and all the deep customer relationships we've had. And really attaching to the strategy that Keith's team has around speaking the language of our customers and talking through the lens of healthcare, the lens of finance, and really helping people realize to transform the customer experience, you need to unlock the data from every system at your company. We'll be adding to that over the course of Connections and Dreamforce with sort of out-of-the-box solutions for across our cloud built on MuleSoft and built on the integration cloud over the course of the year.

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, great. So, thanks, Keith, on that point. A couple of things here. One is that, as called out, we know that as per normal protocol, we'll have the headwind in the current year in FY19 due to things such as deal costs, integration costs, purchase accounting, and the entire DR writedown. We're taking all that onboard within the guide. And then of course, we're gonna invest to accelerate the success of this to really help drive the reality of helping our customer do all the things the customer wants and their success. So, we'll make the appropriate investment.

The key point to your question is, yes, we will be driving appropriate progress and synergy over time after we get through the -- bring them onboard, get them integrated and plugged in, much like we did with ExactTarget and Demandware. And when you look back and see what the effect was, and you see -- you fast-forward a little bit, these both penciled out very, very nicely. We pick up gains across where we need to, and this will be part of the picture where we continue to expand profit while we grow as well. So, you should expect that over the longer term, yes.

Operator

And your next question comes from Walter Pritchard with Citi.

Walter Pritchard -- Citi -- Analyst

Hi. Question for Keith Block, just on large deals. It sounds like this Q1, maybe it was stronger from a large deal perspective, and it's not usually a quarter with that as a driver. Could you help us understand, are you seeing an uptick in large deals generally that you expect to sustain this year, and what's driving that?

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Hi, Walter. Thanks for the question. So, obviously, we had this terrific fiscal year last year. We had this amazing Q4. That momentum has absolutely carried into Q1. I would say that is a little bit different than the typical Q1. And we're very, very pleased with all these transactions and these relationships that we've extended and created in the quarter. Again, I just think it's an indication of our position in the marketplace, what our customers are looking for, and our ability to answer the bell for those customers and paint a vision around the 360-degree view of their customers. And that has just become more and more important with these amazing technologies.

This notion of the 360-degree view of the customer is the holy grail, and we've been talking about it for a very long time. And as I said earlier, we're really the only CRM platform that can deliver on that promise to our customers. So, the new wave of digital transformation is all about the customer. Everything starts and begins and ends at the customer. So, we're just in a tremendous position, and we have very, very strong execution, and that's why you're seeing these results.

Walter Pritchard -- Citi -- Analyst

And then for Mark Hawkins, just curious on the MuleSoft contribution to Q2, or the year, any possibility giving us that just so we can calibrate our modeling?

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure, absolutely, Walter. I think a couple of things you should think about for the revenue. Top line revenue of $315 million, additive Q2 through Q4. That's on top of a powerful core growth where you can see we did an organic raise separate from that. So, $315 million at the top. And again, as per expectoration, we'll have the 125 basis point impact on what our operating margin would otherwise be. We're fully taking that onboard with all the deal costs, purchase accounting, a lot of those types of things that you would expect, and positioning it for the years ahead. We're pleased with this, especially post-close. I think we like what we see. So, that would be the effect there.

On the cash flow side, Walter, we would expect about a $150 million impact on the headwind, on the cash flow. Again, putting it together, if you think about our core cash flow, absolutely on track with a very attractive cash flow margin. Even with this temporary impact of some of the more transitional issues you would expect with an M&A integration and deal cost and such, we still have an operating margin yield of roughly 24%. So, those will be the attributes that will impact us this year, and we look forward to having this also continue to progress much like ExactTarget and Demandware.

Operator

And your next question comes from Adam Holt with MoffettNathanson.

Adam Holt -- MoffettNathanson -- Analyst

Hi, thanks so much. Just a follow-up on Walter's question first for Mark. Could you maybe narrow that commentary around Mule for the second quarter specifically? That was very helpful for the year, but just for the second quarter? And then secondly, for maybe Marc Benioff or Keith, you had another really good quarter on the platform side stand-alone. 35% growth, now you're layering in Mule, and you're doing much more big deals. Could you talk -- why don't you sort of talk us through the synergies and symbiotic relationships between the larger customer relationships where it might be more integration, more middleware, more what have you, and the business, because it seem like you're doing so well, both at the stand-alone and now that you layer in Mule. Thank you.

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Adam, I guess a couple of things here. One is that we're pretty much sort of giving you the attributes for the full year. We haven't broken it down to guide every single quarter on that side of it. So, just to let you know, kind of think about the full picture of the year is the view that we're taking. That would be what I would say there. And I'll just kind of leave it at that.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And I'll just fill in for you on -- you know, I think that when we walk in -- I was in New York last week, and I was with the CEO of a very large life insurance company. And they're a very large service cloud customer. And he actually had the service cloud running at his desk, and we were going through that. And it turned out he's also a very large MuleSoft customer as well. And it expands our relationship with that customer, and it makes us much more strategic with them. And then at that point, my ability to consult with that customer is really around, OK, now let's look at each one of your policyholders and your ability to have a 360-degree vision with them. And that goes for everything from their internal systems and their policy management systems, to even their capabilities that they have in other public clouds that they're using.

We're gonna wrap all of those things with all of our customer capability, because what he's mostly focused on is what are his customer relationships, and how is he driving those customer relationships forward? And that ability to have that conversation, well, it just gets extended each and every year. I mean, I was even able to start to talk to that CEO about enablement, that we have this tremendous platform called Trailhead, where we're giving this opportunity to enable, you know, so many of our customers. And now, giving that platform to them as well, the ability for them to enable their employees and their customers, it becomes a very critical part of our story, and gives our customers the ability to realize that we are a strategic part of their future, and we're gonna help them become more successful than ever through that fully integrated complete CRM platform.

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Yeah. One thing I might add on too, just one tack-on here thing that might help you, Adam, is that one attribute that might help you in Q2 is just to know that when we guided the UR, we guided it off of our core, which excluded the MuleSoft. And the one thing you should think about is that we think about URs adding for MuleSoft, $75 million to $100 million. So, that might be useful to you as one other attribute that might be helpful.

Operator

And your next question comes from Kash Rangan with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Kash Rangan -- Bank of America Merrill Lynch -- Analyst

Yeah, thank you very much. Congratulations on the quarter. When you look at these mega transactions that happened in Q1, can you talk about what the pipeline for these mega transactions looks like? Is it from existing customers that had the longest period of runtime with Salesforce.com? And this largest deal that you did today, if I heard it right, can you talk -- if you've not already spoken about this customer, can you give us a little bit more color on the deployment? What exactly are they looking to achieve, and how much of a driver of digital transformation? I want to wrap it up with Mark Hawkins. Previously, when you announced Q4 results, you gave guidance for deferred revenue growth rate of 23%. Can you -- if you were to recap the unearned reported in Q1 in the light of deferred revenue growth rate, what would that have looked like? Thanks so much.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Mark, why don't you take that last part?

Mark Hawkins -- President and Chief Financial Officer

Sure, let me take the last part. Thank you, Kash ,on all accounts here. First thing that I would say to you is when you look at our UR, you look at a growth rate of 25%. And again, as described in the UR, it's basically the DR less the cumulative effect of revenue pull forwards related to the ASC 606 revenue implementation. So, by definition, UR, in this particular case, is less than DR. And so, one of the things that you could see is when you look our growth rate on an apples-to-apples basis growing 25% adjusted for this accounting change, that's obviously a number that we're happy with. And so, in that respect, just look at the growth rate of UR that we're actually reporting compared to the DR apples-to-apples growth rate that we're guiding, and we're actually pleased with the outcome.

Keith Block -- Vice Chairman, President, and Chief Operating Officer

Kash, this is Keith. Just to answer the first part of your question, we're looking at this market that we've created and we're really driving. And if you go out to 2021, this is a $120 billion-plus marketplace. And if you look at every category in that market, whether it's sales, or service, or marketing, or commerce, or platform, or analytics, etc., we are vastly outstripping the market in terms of growth. Again, whether it's sales, or services, or marketing, in some cases, nearly three times the pace of the market. So, why is that? Well, number one, it starts with the fact that we're one of the world's most innovative companies. Number two is that with all this amazing technology, again, these CEOs are looking for transformation opportunities around the customer, which is the new frontier. And we're basically the market leader, and the only one that can provide the 360-degree view of the customer and the insights associated with that.

So, we have become and continue to become very, very strategic to these customers. And lastly, they trust us. They trust our brand. They trust our platform. They trust our partnership. And as they think about their future and the future relationship that they want to have with their customers, they're turning to us. And that's why you're seeing these very, very large deals.

Now, I would love to tell you that we wake up every day and we need a new customer, and we sign one of these large deals. But the reality is that we work very, very hard. The team's doing incredible job of establishing that trust, speaking the language of the customer, having a global scale, and painting a vision for the future. And that's why you see these large deals. They really represent the customer's endorsement and trust of us to bring them into the future.

Operator

And your next question comes from Mark Murphy with J.P. Morgan.

Mark Murphy -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Yeah, thank you, congratulations. Question for Marc Benioff. Where do you stand philosophically on positioning as 100% pure cloud architecture versus being open-minded, which you seem to be too, crossing over into the edge of the hybrid cloud once in a while, if it make sense? And I'm asking in the context of MuleSoft and your future plans for it, because MuleSoft seems to succeed by offering a mix of cloud and on-prem deployments. And I'm just wondering, is that going to be the exception to the rule, or do you think that your infrastructure layer would actually increasingly have more of a hybrid cloud feel to it?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

I think that's a great question, and yeah, MuleSoft, because of the nature of MuleSoft and the nature of integration itself, and the ability to do complex integration, which is what MuleSoft is really excellent at, and building this tremendous integration layer we call a bus across the enterprise, the ability to have an application interface to that bus, the ability to accelerate innovation, the ability to build the mobile apps or other kind of capabilities while unifying all these services to provide this 360-degree customer view, this is what MuleSoft excels at. I mean, we think it's absolutely the best in the category, and that's what our customers have said. Of course, we've been involved with the company almost from its very start, where we were very early investors in the company and carried it all the way through to IPO.

And it has an architecture where it runs partly on-premise. And that's one of the reasons it's able to do everything that it can do from an integration layer. From Salesforce's core platform, we're still 100% public cloud. I don't see that changing. There's going to be little instances here and there, especially when we acquire a company like MuleSoft or maybe other things in the future. I think that we've talked about, we begin and end our day at Salesforce with a beginner's mind and what the Japanese call shoshin, the idea that, look, we're not attached to any kind of religious dogma around the cloud. We're gonna do what's best for our customers and what's best for our company. And in the case of MuleSoft, I think it very much reflects that vision, that idea that we're gonna be able to deliver the best integration cloud. Bret, how do you see this?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

Yeah, I think MuleSoft is interesting because the power of integration is you can integrate every system, every device, and every user you want to reach, every customer. And that means you have to go wherever your systems are -- on-prem, on mobile devices, everywhere. So, we are extremely committed to the neutrality of the MuleSoft platform. When I say neutrality, it means it connects every system, whether or not the system is related to Salesforce, because that's the power of integration. And we want to unlock data from every system and bring all of that data to wherever your customers are, on every device. And so, I think MuleSoft is special in that respect, because that's the power of integration.

And as Marc said, though, from technology standpoint, we're committed to the cloud because it means we can deliver innovation to the customers faster three times a year, consistently since the company was founded. And we think that's the power of the cloud. But as you'll see with MuleSoft is, if our customers need us to have different architectures to unlock innovation, we'll go there. And I think you're seeing that with integration. And, you know, we'll continue to have that beginner's mind, which I think is vital for innovation. But we're committed to the cloud, and we're committed to that piece of innovation delivery, which is really the reason why we've seen so many customers recommit to us over the years. It's because they know they're not just getting the products we have today, but the products that we'll be delivering over the coming years.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

And I think you can see that also in how we deliver our product. Of course, we have many first party data centers where we have our own proprietary data center and capability. But in other cases, we've partnered with great companies like Amazon, like Google, and IBM, in many cases at the customer's request, to be able to deliver an alternative delivery experience. And so, if you're using Salesforce in Canada, for example, you're using that on the back of AWS, and there are so many other examples of what we're doing with different type of cloud deployments. And it's really driven by what our customers want for flexibility. And the ability to have great relationships and great alliances with companies like Amazon or with Google and with IBM, give us even more capability to deliver this kind of, what I would say, highly flexible execution environment for the customer.

Operator

And your last question comes from Alex Zukin with Piper Jaffray.

Alex Zukin -- Piper Jaffray -- Analyst

Hey guys, thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on another great quarter. Marc, maybe two quick ones for you. You mentioned GDPR, and you mentioned the push for a data privacy law domestically. I wanted to ask what impacts, if any, have you seen or anticipate on your marketing cloud business? And then maybe bigger picture, you know, as we think about the move from systems of record to systems of intelligence, how are you positioning the company as a system of automation for customers as well?

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think it's a great question. And as we head toward Dreamforce and as we head toward -- if you don't have it on your calendar, it's the week of September 24th here in San Francisco. It feels like we were just at Dreamforce. But Dreamforce is approaching very fast, and you should all plan on coming back to San Francisco for what will e our biggest and best Dreamforce ever. I think about how does that look for customers? And things are changing, and some of that has been induced by our industry, where for the first six months, I think, that in many aspects of our industry, we've been going through a crisis of trust, and where the headlines in many of the newspapers have been about vendors who are having trust issues with their customers. We saw that a little bit last year in San Francisco, and this year, we've seen it again.

I think from the European perspective, the way they look at data is data belongs to you. It's your data. Now for us at Salesforce, we understand that. We've had that position from the beginning. And our customers' data belongs to them. It's their data. I think in some cases, the companies that are start-ups and next generation technologies here in San Francisco, they think data is theirs. I think the Europeans with GDPR have really flipped the coin, especially in advertising, but in another areas, saying hey, this data belongs to the consumer or to the customer. You guys have to pivot back to the consumer; you have to pivot back to the customer. We need a national privacy law here in the United States that probably looks a lot like GDPR.

This is gonna help our industry. It's gonna set the guardrails around trust, around safety. It's gonna provide the ability for the customers to interact with great next generation technologies in a safe way. I think that this is going to accelerate with artificial intelligence. We saw that recently with an AI demonstration from our industry, where average customers could not tell, were they interacting with a computer or were they interacting with a human being? That starts to cross the line on what is trust. And that's where our industry really has to come forward and say, we're gonna make sure that these technologies are trust-based. And I think the Europeans definitely got that figured out. And I think the rest of the regulators in the world are looking strongly at that.

When it comes to the advertising industry and companies that serve the advertising industry exclusively, honestly, while I think that that advertising is a model that will continue to be successful, and digital advertising, well, I think that the idea that you need to build a one-on-one relationship with your customer, something that we've been saying now for almost 20 years, is probably more true than ever. Because ultimately, your ability to have success with your customer, whether to be able to sell, or service, or market to them, or conduct commerce with them in a one-on-one way based on the system of record that you have with that customer. Salesforce is a system of record oriented company. That's where we started. And then we evolved into the system of engagement. We evolved into the system of intelligence.

And in many ways, we're becoming a system of systems, which I think we'll show you at Dreamforce. But at the end of the day, where we see the world going is, we have -- we're providing to our customers the ability for them to have that unique customer experience. To say that you're gonna have this fully anonymized relationship with your customer, and if that's the future, I am really not buying into that. I know, Bret, you've straddled both worlds. Where do you think is going?

Bret Taylor -- President and Chief Product Officer

I think, you know, the thing that I've noticed from the industry is the confluence of the controversy that's driving a lot of technology companies and Silicon Valley recently with GDPRs, making trust really the number one topic for a lot of our customers with us. And you've heard us talk a lot about trust in the context of our customers' trust in our platform. We also want our platform to be a mechanism that our customers can use to engender trust with their consumer and with their customers. And if you're a multinational right now, you're dealing with different regulatory frameworks in different regions. And one of the strengths of our platform is to be able to not only have maybe a personalized marketing and commerce experience with your consumers, but do so in a trusted way. They can handle all the different regulatory permutations that you deal with on a daily basis as a multinational company.

I mean, when you think of the strength of having one platform for your system of record for your customers, I think it's really the rapidly changing regulatory landscape and the rapidly changing expectation of consumers, is really strengthening our position with our customers right now, because it's so challenging for any company to navigate. And I think that really comes with -- that really amplifies the value proposition of Salesforce, because you can build these systems of engagement and systems of record in a way that actually follows consumer trust and follows the evolving regulatory landscape. So, I think it's really turned into something that we are really trying to lean into and really lean into the value of trust as our number one value.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Amy, you've done so much work with GDPR and you're helping so many of our customers around the world implement GDPR. And of course, Salesforce has now become a system that is allowing our customers to implement GDPR. Where do you see this going from a legal and privacy point of view?

Amy Weaver -- General Counsel

Well, thanks, Mark. I think this is really a critical point for the U.S. with privacy law. We're seeing kind of a global conversion around the importance of privacy. And it's going to be important for the U.S. to be a leader now and not just a follower. I think there are three things now that we really have to focus on as a country. One is insisting that organizations are transparent about their data practices. That's what's collected, how it's used, who it's been shared with. The second is giving individuals more rights to control about their personal data. As Marc said, it starts with the individuals, their privacy and their rights. And then the third is holding organizations truly accountable for their privacy practices. And I think that this is going to be a key for our entire industry in establishing and maintaining trust.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Amy, you see a big movement here in California. There's a group of very well respected executives, not just from our industry, but also from the privacy and legal community, trying to build the California GDPR. We've called for a U.S. version of GDPR, a national privacy law. How do you see these things coming together? What is your dream for privacy in the United States?

Amy Weaver -- General Counsel

Well, I don't think that there's any doubt that federal privacy law is the best for the go. One of the nice things about GDPR is that it replaced the patchwork of laws throughout Europe. Now, it may be necessary to have some state-by-state implementation in the United States as a practical step forward, but the ideal is really to get us to one national privacy law that we can all agree to.

Marc Benioff -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

What can Salesforce do to help customers implement GDPR today, Amy?

Amy Weaver -- General Counsel

I think we can do a lot. We have spent the last year working very, very carefully with our customer data. We have some terrific res

Saturday, May 26, 2018

Aevi Genomic Medicine (GNMX) versus ADMA Biologics (ADMA) Head-To-Head Analysis

Aevi Genomic Medicine (NASDAQ: GNMX) and ADMA Biologics (NASDAQ:ADMA) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, profitability and dividends.

Risk & Volatility

Get Aevi Genomic Medicine alerts:

Aevi Genomic Medicine has a beta of 1.1, meaning that its stock price is 10% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ADMA Biologics has a beta of 2.08, meaning that its stock price is 108% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Aevi Genomic Medicine and ADMA Biologics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

Net Margins Return on Equity Return on Assets
Aevi Genomic Medicine N/A -160.09% -127.64%
ADMA Biologics -101.93% -88.31% -25.76%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

22.8% of Aevi Genomic Medicine shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 37.4% of ADMA Biologics shares are held by institutional investors. 11.7% of Aevi Genomic Medicine shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 16.9% of ADMA Biologics shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Aevi Genomic Medicine and ADMA Biologics’ top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

Gross Revenue Price/Sales Ratio Net Income Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Ratio
Aevi Genomic Medicine N/A N/A -$34.71 million ($0.83) -1.99
ADMA Biologics $22.76 million 10.53 -$43.75 million ($1.91) -2.77

Aevi Genomic Medicine has higher earnings, but lower revenue than ADMA Biologics. ADMA Biologics is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Aevi Genomic Medicine, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Aevi Genomic Medicine and ADMA Biologics, as provided by MarketBeat.

Sell Ratings Hold Ratings Buy Ratings Strong Buy Ratings Rating Score
Aevi Genomic Medicine 0 1 1 0 2.50
ADMA Biologics 0 0 2 0 3.00

Aevi Genomic Medicine currently has a consensus price target of $4.25, suggesting a potential upside of 157.58%. ADMA Biologics has a consensus price target of $7.50, suggesting a potential upside of 41.78%. Given Aevi Genomic Medicine’s higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Aevi Genomic Medicine is more favorable than ADMA Biologics.

Summary

ADMA Biologics beats Aevi Genomic Medicine on 8 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Aevi Genomic Medicine

Aevi Genomic Medicine, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, researches and develops novel therapies for pediatric onset and life-altering diseases in the United States. The company's lead product candidates include AEVI-001, a glutamatergic neuromodulator, which has completed Phase II/III SAGA trial for the treatment of a genetically-defined subset of adolescent attention deficit hyperactivity disorder patients who have genetic mutations that disrupt the mGluR network resulting in glutamate imbalance; and AEVI-002, an anti-LIGHT monoclonal antibody that is in Phase Ib clinical trial for use in severe pediatric onset Crohn's disease. The company also develops AEVI-005, which is in preclinical stage for the treatment of pediatric rare diseases. It has a strategic collaboration with Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd. for an early stage monoclonal antibody program in an ultra-orphan pediatric indication. The company was formerly known as Medgenics, Inc. and changed its name to Aevi Genomic Medicine, Inc. in December 2016. Aevi Genomic Medicine, Inc. was founded in 2000 and is based in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

About ADMA Biologics

ADMA Biologics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, and markets specialty plasma-derived biologics for the treatment of immune deficiencies and infectious diseases. Its lead product candidate is RI-002 derived from human plasma, which has completed Phase III clinical trials for the treatment of primary immune deficiency disease. The company also operates source plasma collection facilities in Norcross and Marietta, Georgia. In Addition, the company offers Nabi-HB for the treatment of acute exposure; and Bivigam for the treatment of primary humoral immunodeficiency. It distributes its products through independent distributors, sales agents, specialty pharmacies, and others. The ADMA Biologics, Inc. was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Ramsey, New Jersey.

Friday, May 25, 2018

Williams Sonoma (WSM) Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call Transcrip

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Williams Sonoma (NYSE:WSM) Q1 2018 Earnings Conference CallMay. 23, 2018 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Williams Sonoma first-quarter 2018 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] This call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Elise Wang, vice president of investor relations, to discuss non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking statements. Please go ahead.

Elise Wang -- Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you. Good afternoon. This call should be considered in conjunction with the press release that we issued earlier today. Our discussion today will relate to results and guidance based on certain non-GAAP measures.

A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and our explanation of why the non-GAAP financial measures may be useful are discussed in Exhibit 1 of our press release. We adopted the new revenue recognition standard, ASU 2014-09 effective, January 1, 2018, using the modified retrospective method. As a result, our 2018 results a forward-looking guidance are provided using the standards. For additional details, please see Exhibit 2 of our press release.

This call also contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which address the financial conditions, results of operations, business initiatives, trends, guidance, growth plans, and prospects of the company in 2018 and beyond and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Please refer to the company's current press release and SEC filings, including the most recent 10-K, for more information on these risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call. I will now turn the conference call over to Laura Alber, our president and chief executive officer.

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you and good afternoon everyone. On the call with me are Julie Whalen, our chief financial officer, Felix Carbullido, our chief marketing officer, and Yasir Anwar, our chief technology officer. Following a robust fourth quarter, we saw continued strength in the first quarter. We achieved strong results against our guidance range across all metrics with our e-commerce revenues outpacing to almost 54% of our total revenue.

These results speak to the power of our multichannel model, distinctive brand portfolio, and world-class customer service heritage, all of which are accompanying competitive strength. Based on the strong start to the year, we are raising our full-year revenue guidance by $20 million and our EPS by $0.03. Now, let me provide an overview of Q1 results and discuss some of our accomplishments this quarter against our strategic priorities. And the first one, revenue and comp growth exceeded the high end of our guidance range at 8.2% and 5.5% respectively, driven by strong performance across all of our brands.

The Pottery Barn brand delivered another strong quarter, with broad-based growth, particularly in customer demand and e-commerce. Our Williams Sonoma drove an outstanding comp of 5.6%, while our Pottery Barn children's business substantially improved to deliver a comp of 5.3%. In West Elm, comp was up 9% year over year, and revenues continue to grow double digits. And our emerging brands Rejuvenation and Mark and Graham achieved another quarter of double-digit comp growth.

Our EPS of $0.67 for the quarter also surpassed the high end of our guidance range. Now I'd like to talk about our strategic priorities. We've always put the customer at the center of everything we do, and hence, we continue to focus on execution in digital leadership, product innovation, retail transformation, and operational excellence.Starting with digital leadership. We are enhancing the e-commerce experience through two key differentiators, content and convenience.

Leveraging our strong heritage and product storytelling, we are updating our shop cap across all brands and more accurate and compelling content that inspires confidence in our customers to furnish their homes with us. To make online shopping more convenient, we've added PayPal and Venmo as mobile wallet options, which have driven measurable improvements in conversion and checkout of the inventory.We also introduced online self-service scheduling capability for in-home delivery to give customers more visibility and control over the delivery process. This new feature has already reduced care center calls and hold times at our distribution hubs.In Q2, we'll be launching SMS notification of order status to further improve customer visibility at all stages of the shopping experience.Cross brand, we launched the next phase of our loyalty program, The Key, which now enables customers enroll directly in-store, as well as view and manage their rewards on any of our brand website. Since the launch of this new phase, we've seen a three-fold increase in the pace of customer enrollment and more frequent engagement with our loyal customers.

Combined with our leading-edge customer data and analytics, we are able to personalize our marketing efforts more efficiently and reinvest in other brand awareness activities. Looking ahead to Q2, we'll be rolling our buy-online, pick-up-in-store in our Pottery Barn and West Elm brands, following strong customer response in the Williams Sonoma and Pottery Barn Kids brands. With regards to Outward, which is our recently acquired 3D imaging and augmented reality platform, we have developed a roadmap for integration over the next two years.We are currently deep in the process of loading all of our assets, with over 85% of our core assets already completed. This will allow us to introduce more design tools in the coming months to support our customers with their home decorating needs, including digital room-planning and new product visualization experiences.

In parallel, we are leveraging the same platforms to support our associates in providing best-in-class design services in retail. Combined, these initiatives will enable us to deliver our new standard of photo-realistic, content-rich online experiences.In digital advertising, we are continuing our transition from catalog mailing to higher-impact digital channels as we further refine our marketing mix to drive short-term ROI and long-term gains and customer growth. We're already seeing payback on our investments from last year. In Q1, our customer traffic and revenue growth in e-commerce reached their highest levels since 2014.

We continue to see more opportunity in top of funnel vehicles, and we plan to make incremental investments across the digital marketing ecosystem that focus on delivering inspiration and personalized content across various digital touch points.As far as testing new channels, West Elm launched the second round of adjustable PB in April, building on momentum and success of its House Proud campaign from late last year. We also began testing augmented reality in digital advertising on key advertising platforms. From search to banner advertising, initial customer engagement and feedback has been positive. Looking ahead to the rest of the year, we will continue to be aggressive in identifying high-impact tactics across brands and platforms to accelerate the momentum in customer growth across all of our brands.

Our history to performance-driven marketing is perfectly suited to today's digital advertising platforms, and we're confident that this advantage will drive continued growth in customer metrics and our e-commerce channels. I would now like to discuss our strategic priority of product innovation. Our customers come to us for great quality products shown in inspiring ways. Our exclusive in-house design team has allowed us to stay ahead of trends, while our vertically integrated supply chain has enabled us to produce superior quality products that are also sustainably sourced and ethically made.

In the first quarter, we continued to expand our core offerings with compelling units and aesthetic diversification, while growing brand concept to new and focused customer categories in collaborations and partnerships. We saw tremendous response to our Lilly Pulitzer collaboration, which is the first of our one-home coordinated releases across the Pottery Barn brands. This collaboration has been successful in reaching and converting younger customers, as well as driving a significant increase in e-commerce traffic. Our PB Apartment collection continue to perform strongly, growing double-digits and attracting new customers to the brand.

Our Williams Sonoma brands saw success in exclusive product launches with key vendor partners, such as GreenPan, Staub, Zwilling, Philips, and Smeg. We also partnered with celebrity chef Giada de Laurentiis and social media personality Gabby Dalkin on their book tours, which attracted new and loyal customers to our Williams Sonoma stores. In West Elm, we continue to lead and design and expand its new product and customer categories. In Q1, we built upon the success of our new modern aesthetics, with product introductions across multiple categories, including casual seating and decorative accessories.And one of the most creative things that I think we've done this year is the launch of our cross-brand collaboration between West Elm and Pottery Barn Kids.

This 50-plus piece collection marks West Elm's first foray into the baby and kids category and distinctively combines the brand's signature modern aesthetic with Pottery Barn Kids industry expertise and craftsmanship. We see significant opportunity in the children's home furnishings market for a collection modern, high-quality and sustainably made. We look forward to expanding this collaboration throughout the rest of this year. Looking ahead to Q2, we have an exciting pipeline of product introductions and innovative collaborations across our brands, and we look forward to sharing more with you next quarter.

Third, continue with our retail transformation, we believe the store experience is a critical differentiator in new customer acquisitions, establishing brand loyalty and driving sales across retail and e-commerce. In Q1, both our retail revenue and comp growth accelerated from last year, which speaks to all of our efforts to enhance the retail experience. We believe our secret sauce is the people in our stores and the service they offer, and they continue to inspire all of us. We're also gaining momentum in our cross-brand design service -- design crew, which is driving increasing sales in store and in our customer's home.

In terms of our fleet optimization, we are making progress in reducing unproductive store footprints while at the same time investing in high-impact store remodels and relocations, which are driving significant outperformance in those stores. For example, our most recent Pottery Barn store relocation from Fort Lauderdale to River Market is currently trending at double-digit growth compared to the prior store relocation. We also continued the expansion of Williams Sonoma Home in the first quarter. We added six more locations in Williams Sonoma stores, bringing the total to 67 locations, which contributed to another quarter of double-digit growth in the brand and increased traffic and sales in those Williams Sonoma stores.

Lastly, we are committed to operational excellence to further improve customer service and reduce costs. In Q1, as a result all of our inventory initiatives, our inventory growth fell to plus 1.5%, which was significantly lower than our sales growth. As you know, inventory management is a top priority across all of our brands, and a key driver of customer satisfaction and more efficient operations. To reduce inventory levels as well back orders, aged inventory, and out-of-market shipping cost, we are working with our overseas vendors for more in-time inventory and frequent flow.

We've also implemented a new inventory planning software, which should improve our inventory position in each of our regional DC. In other types of supply chain, we reduced production lead times in our manufacturing facilities by 11% and further improved our packaging and order consolidation in our distribution centers to provide a quicker and more efficient order processing and fulfillment experience for our customers. Our regionalization and hub excellence continue to drive improvements and returns and replacements as well as a 28% reduction in total damages companywide. Despite this progress, there is still significant opportunity for us to further improve the customer experience and further drive cost efficiency.

We will continue to take down our inventory level, while improving our in-stocks through all of our inventory initiatives, including the transition to one inventory, which will allow us to manage inventory across channels and improve productivity and throughput across our regionalized distribution networks. We will also focus on increasing order visibility and speed of deliveries to customers, while further reducing returns and damages and the number of escalation calls to our care center. We consider the move to one inventory to be one of the most strategic breakthroughs of the last several years.Now, let's turn to our global business, which is one of our key growth initiatives over the long term. We are pleased to deliver another quarter of improved profitability and double-digit revenue growth in our company-owned operations in Australia, U.K., and Canada, with our e-commerce business being particularly strong in the quarter.

We continued our retail expansion in the U.K. with the opening of our third company-owned West Elm location and a wholesale location in the John Lewis department store in the premier Westfield London shopping center. We are focused on driving brand awareness in that market as we prepare for the launch of Pottery Barn Kids in the second half of the year. Across Mexico, South Korea, and the Middle East, our existing franchise partners added another eight retail locations in the first quarter.

We remain committed to our long-term global strategy of multichannel expansion into larger-size markets, particularly Asia and Europe. Our success to date underscores the potential of our businesses in these large global markets. In summary, we're pleased with our start to fiscal 2018. In addition to driving top-line and EPS growth, our customer satisfaction continues to improve, our customer counts continue to increase, and our inventory growth is declining as we continue to drive efficiencies throughout our business.

Customers are at the center of everything we do, and we remain firmly focused on delivering both inspiration and superior service to transform their houses into homes. We are very optimistic about our growth prospects ahead, and we look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter. Before I turn the call over to Julie to discuss our financial results, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our associates. It is with their passion and commitment that we are able to continue delivering superior quality products and services that are truly unrivaled in the industry.

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Laura, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased to start the year with a strong quarter of operational and financial performance. We outperformed on both the top and bottom line with high single-digit revenue growth, strong comps across all brands, a return to double-digit e-commerce growth and operating margin above last year, and EPS above our expectations. These results demonstrate our ability to, once again, execute against our growth and operational initiatives, while at the same time, maintain strong financial discipline.

Before I review our performance in more detail, I would like to remind everyone that our first-quarter 2018 results include the financial impact from the implementation of a new accounting standard associated with revenue recognition. This standard primarily requires us to reclass other income from SG&A into net revenues to accelerate the timing of our revenue recognition for certain merchandise shipped to our customers, and to accelerate the timing of our gift card breakage income. As a result, our Q1 2018 results include an approximate year-over-year benefit of $13.6 million in net revenues and $1.6 million, or $0.01 in earnings, associated with this change in accounting. From a rate perspective, this amounts to a benefit of approximately 130 basis points of revenue growth, including 150 basis points in e-commerce and 120 basis points in retail; 30 basis points of comparable brand revenue growth; 70 basis points of gross margin improvement; 60 basis points of SG&A deleverage; and 10 basis points of operating margin improvement, including 40 basis points of leverage in e-commerce and 10 basis points of deleverage in retail and corporate unallocated.

Now I would like to review our first-quarter results in more detail. During the first quarter, net revenues were $1.202 billion for a year-over-year growth of 8.2%, and comparable brand revenue growth was 5.5%, an improvement of 540 basis points over last year. Growth was strong with significant year-over-year accelerations across all brands. Our Williams Sonoma brand delivered a 5.6 comp on top of the 3.2 comp last year, which was their best quarterly comp performance in four years.

The Pottery Barn brand delivered another quarter of strong performance with a revenue comp of 2.6 and demand comp accelerating sequentially to the strongest we've seen since Q2 of 2015. This demonstrates the effective execution of our strategic initiatives and the continued momentum in the brand. Both Pottery Barn Kids and PBteen saw substantial improvement in their businesses from last year, resulting in a 4.3% comp and an 8.2% comp, respectively. Combined, our Pottery Barn children's business drove an accelerated comp of 5.3%.In the West Elm brand, revenue comp was up 9% versus last year, and revenues continued to grow double digits, resulting in another quarter of strong performance.

And our newer businesses, Rejuvenation and Mark and Graham, as well as our international business, all delivered profitable double-digit comps. By channel, revenue growth continued to accelerate in both retail and e-commerce. E-commerce net revenues grew by 11.2% to a record-high of 53.7% of total company revenues, compared to 52.2% last year. This growth was a significant acceleration over last year, as well as sequentially, with all brands delivering net revenue growth.In our retail channel, net revenues increased 4.9%, which reflects our ongoing focus on our retail transformation and the continued success we are seeing across our various retail initiatives to elevate the customer experience, including our value-added in-home design service and our high-performing store remodels.

Moving down the income statement, gross margin for the first quarter was 36%, compared to 35.6% last year. The year-over-year gross margin improvement of 40 basis points was primarily driven by the benefit we saw from the reclass of other income into revenues from the implementation of the new revenue recognition standard, as well as overall occupancy leverage and supply chain efficiencies. Occupancy costs of $173 million, or 14.4% of net revenues, leveraged 70 basis points, which includes an approximate 20-basis-point benefit from the adoption of the new standard. This was partially offset by lower selling margins, resulting from our strategic decision to provide more value to our customers through more competitive product pricing, as well as higher year-over-year shipping costs.

Shipping costs were impacted by higher rates associated with our new UPS contract, which we discussed in previous quarters, and a higher demand for furniture during the quarter, which is more expensive to ship. We were pleased to see another quarter of strong occupancy leverage and supply chain efficiencies, which allowed us to more than offset these increased costs. SG&A for the first quarter was 29.7% this year versus 29.5% last year. This 20-basis-point deleverage was associated with the reclass of other income out of SG&A into net revenues due to the adoption of the new accounting standard.

This was partially offset by advertising and employment leverage due to the outperformance we saw on our top line and overall strong financial discipline. As a result, our operating margin for the first quarter was 6.3%, which was 20 basis points over last year. And we delivered operating income of over $75 million, an increase of 10.3% over the last year. As we said in our last call, we are committed to operating income dollar growth relatively in line with revenue growth.

And we are pleased that even excluding the benefit from the change in accounting, we were able to achieve operating income growth that exceeded revenue growth in the first quarter. By channel, the operating margin in the e-commerce channel was 23% versus 22.7% last year. This 30-basis-point improvement was primarily driven by the accelerated timing of revenue recognition for certain merchandise shipped to our customers from the adoption of the new accounting standard, as well as overall advertising and occupancy leverage, primarily due to the outperformance we saw on the top line and the continued optimization of our advertising spend. This was partially offset by lower selling margins.The operating margin in the retail channel was 4% versus 4.1% in 2017.

This 10-basis-point deleverage was primarily driven by lower selling margins, partially offset by employment and occupancy leverage from higher year-over-year revenue. And corporate and allocated expenses as a rate represented 7.9% of net revenues, versus 7.7% last year. The 20-basis-point increase was primarily driven by higher year-over-year employment and employment-related costs, as well as lower other income that was reclassed to net revenues within the e-commerce and retail channels from the adoption of new accounting standard. The effective income tax rate in the first quarter was 23.8%, compared to 34.5% last year.

The lower year-over-year tax rate primarily reflects a reduced federal tax rate associated with the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. First-quarter 2018 diluted earnings per share were $0.67, compared to $0.51 last year, growing $0.16, or 31.4%. Moving to the balance sheet. Cash at the end of the quarter was $290 million, versus $94 million last year.

In the first quarter, we invested $34 million in the business and returned $72 million to stockholders through share repurchases and dividend, comprising $38 million in share repurchases and $34 million in dividends. Merchandise inventories at the end of the first quarter were $1.53 billion, or 1.5% growth on last year, which was significantly lower than our revenue growth. As Laura mentioned, inventory optimization continues to be a key area of focus for us, and we are pleased to see that our initiatives to reduce our inventory levels and improve customer metrics are working. Now I would like to discuss our second-quarter and fiscal-year 2018 guidance.

We are confident in the strength of our business and are therefore raising our fiscal 2018 full-year guidance. Based on our strong execution so far and the momentum we have seen across our business, we now expect net revenues to grow to a range of $5.495 billion to $5.655 billion from our previous guidance range of $5.475 billion to $5.635 billion. And we now expect our diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $4.15 to $4.25, compared to a range of $4.12 to $4.22 previously provided. All other financial guidance within the press release remains unchanged from the previous guidance.

As a reminder, fiscal 2018 includes a 53rd week. For the second quarter of 2018, we expect to grow net revenues to a range of $1.250 billion to $1.275 billion, with comparable-brand revenue growth in the range of 3% to 5%. And we expect diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.65 to $0.70. As a reminder, our guidance reflects a reporting benefit of the adoption of the new revenue recognition accounting, which we estimate going forward will be approximately 50 to 100 basis points of revenue growth, 60 to 70 basis points of margin shift between gross margin and SG&A, and an material impact on earnings.We are also reiterating our commitment to maintaining a balanced capital allocation strategy in fiscal year 2018.

We plan to utilize our strong operating cash flow to first invest in the business and those areas that will fuel our growth and provide the highest returns. And we remain committed to returning excess cash to our shareholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends.In summary, we are excited about our strong start to 2018 and the momentum we are seeing in our business. These results, combined with our long-term growth opportunities and our competitive advantages, including a portfolio of well-known and loved brands, delivering superior customer experiences, our leading multichannel model with almost 54% of our business already transacted online, our commitment to operational excellence and our proven track record of strong financial discipline, give us confidence that we'll be able to deliver long-term sustainable growth for our shareholders. I would now like to open up the call for questions.�Thank you.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Kate McShane with Citi.

Kate McShane -- Citi -- Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. It's encouraging to see your guidance for the second quarter.

Just looking at it on a two-year stack, even at the low end of your comp revenue guidance, it does imply a noticeable acceleration. Just wondering if you could walk through some of the factors that are going to exist in Q2 that maybe didn't exist in Q1, which would drive that faster comp revenue growth on a sequential basis?

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Kate. It's Laura. We have seen great momentum in both customer numbers, but also in sales on�programs that are just getting started. And with that, we also have an exciting pipeline of new product introductions and innovative collaborations across all of our brands.

We also have a pretty robust e-commerce release plan for the second quarter and a real focus on content, which we're testing and seeing a lot of great response from, from our customers. We have some, as I said, technology roll-outs that are substantial from Bocuse. And then we continue to further optimize our inventory to not only take down the levels of overstocks but also to get better in-stocks, which we've been seeing simultaneous to taking down the total levels. Usually, you see us take down the levels,�and then back-orders�and all those things climb.

And actually, our backward rate including investment which we've seen in a long time. So there is a lot of good things happening and I also mentioned in my script, the next phase of loyalty with The Key. We're just getting started on that. So a combination of products and operational and technology improvements that I think should really benefit the second quarter and further, for that matter.

Kate McShane -- Citi -- Analyst

Thank you. That's helpful. And if I could just follow up with one question with regards to the remodels. I know you gave one dimension of change in reallocation in the comps that you saw.

Could you talk about the list that you're getting from the remodels? What is the commitment to how many stores you're remodeling this year?

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

We have different store model strategies in each of our brands, and we've really seen great response, particularly in the Pottery Barn brand. All the brands have been successful, but Pottery Barn, as our largest brand, is one where we see a lot of opportunity because the multi -- we've done enough of them now to see that it's sustaining. And so, we're being aggressive about doing it where we are pleased and where it makes sense in the markets that are strong. And I don't believe we've given those numbers --

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

[Inaudible] before, but I think as it continues to outperform that we might do more, I mean given the results that we've seen today.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question will come from Matt Fassler with Goldman Sachs.

Matt Fassler -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Thanks so much, and good afternoon, everyone. I've two questions, and the first relates to the Williams Sonoma business. This is in a sense your most mature business but it's putting up among your two big businesses, the better comp and a very good comp at this moment. Kind of high level.

If you think about the merchandising culture in the organization, any merchandising or marketing teams that are helping to lift the results here? What would you have us really focused on?

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I would say that we continue to offer really differentiated product strategies, and we continue to introduce exclusive products with key vendor partners. And we've expanded our offering substantially in the Williams Sonoma-branded professional party cookware, our Open Kitchen value line. And we continue to increase the collaboration with celebrity chefs [Inaudible]�icons to further grow our brand reach. In addition, Williams Sonoma Home continues to perform strongly and has a material -- it's material in terms of dollar per square foot in our stores and we added more to retail.

And in addition to that, we have a thriving�e-commerce business, which has been a key driver of brand growth. We've directed more�of our marketing spend to digital. We've strengthened our content and messaging and improved the level of personalization we deliver. And we're really excited about also Bocuse and�how it's attracting new customers and driving traffic, and additional spend in store.

So that there is great DNA of the brand that we've always had as�the premier multichannel retail channel of high-quality housewares. And we continue to see strength and our ability to grow despite a competitive backdrop.

Matt Fassler -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

And then my follow-up. We've spent a lot of the fourth-quarter call talking about real estate and the message that you are essentially sending, that there are a lot of renegotiations to be done and that you are willing to walk from quite a few sites as leases came up for renewal. Any update on what you're seeing from the landlord community as you go to market here?

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I mean, we have great partnerships with some landlords and we're making progress against that initiative. You saw us closing stores this quarter. We will continue to do that where the stores aren't strategically appropriate or where the landlords are not willing to be flexible and long-term focused. But our stores remain one of our key competitive advantages, and they're critical to driving new customer acquisition.

So at the same time that we're closing, you also see us investing in the experience for our customers.

Matt Fassler -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you [Operator instructions]. Our next question comes from Michael Lasser with UBS.

Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst

Good evening. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. There is a lot of moving pieces with the guidance, any update to the guidance, both from the revenue-classification perspective and then also in terms of the outperformance for the first quarter. Julie, can you just walk us through mechanically what changed from your previous guidance to where it stands today?

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Basically, there is a simple way to answer that as we took half of the beat from Q1 on the top and the bottom line and rolled it through. Obviously, it's early in the year. There's a lot of 2018 ahead of us.

And so we thought that was prudent at this time. And so, if you look at outperformance, you can do the back math and see that's how we came up with it.

Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst

And so, your margins in the first quarter ex to the reclassification came in basically where you saw they were going to be. And did you change any of your assumptions between the geography of your gross margin and your SG&A, excluding the reclassification, for the rest of the year?

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

No. Excluding the reclassification for accounting for the rest of the year, no. We still should be coming in about 50 to 70 basis points of the margin shift between gross margin and SG&A. We did not, obviously, based on our guidance for Q1, assume that we would come in, if you're talking about operating margin, above operating margin.

That's because we outperformed in the top line and it allowed us to leverage and flow through.

Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst

OK. Thank you very much, and good luck.

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

We will continue on to Peter Benedict with Baird.

Peter Benedict -- Robert W. Baird & Company -- Analyst

Hi, guys. First question, the move to ONE inventory. Can you just give us some benchmarks or milestones over the next 12 months, 24 months, that we should be looking for? And just remind us kind of the key benefits you are expected to get as you execute that.

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

As I said, it's one of the biggest breakthroughs. We've been working on this for a couple of years. And our Pottery Barn brand is moving first on this initiative. And we've been building the tools to look at this way, and getting the teams trained.

And it's going to be multiyear, but it's one that we're very excited about and we will report each quarter on how we're doing. And you'll see it both, not just in our total inventory levels but also how we do with our in-stock.

Peter Benedict -- Robert W. Baird & Company -- Analyst

OK. Thanks. And then just on the Outward business, can you talk a little bit more about the strategic value of that asset, how you're leveraging it within the business today? I mean, you alluded to some stuff in your prepared remarks, Laura, but just trying to think about that. And as we think about the hit to earnings, I know that's backed out of the adjusted earnings, but is that first-quarter run rate something we should just think persist as we look through the balance of the year? Thank you.

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I'm going to -- Yasir's here, and I'm going to pass the question over to him on Outward.

Yasir Anwar -- Chief Technology Officer

Yes. I think Outward is our strategic, in my mind, strength in the world of 3D visualization, and we strongly believe that we will be industry leaders in the space given our business of decorating homes, which is so difficult. And Outward is going to allow us and our customers to have a seamless experience to do that. Two, three things like which are tactical in my mind and then there are a lot more to come in the long term.

One is that, as Laura mentioned, that we are going to digitize our assets. If you look at the benefit of Outward comps is in the part of scaling that thing because having an augmented reality experience with 1,000 products, 2,000 products, 10,000 products, it's doable, and I think, everybody is doing it in the market. The key is can you have hundreds of thousands of your product digitized in a 3D way very quickly and fast and then can you make them available for a customer experience. And that's where, I think, we want to put Outward to work.

That's the first basic foundational thing, which Laura talked about. Then, how can we build great designing, room-planning, home-planning experiences with all kind of angles of that somebody can even visualize long term in terms of the lighting arrangements, the places there, they can pick themes of their homes and their rooms, that's what we are working on. And that's not too far out. If you will watch us in June and July, we will be launching products and experiences which will be much better than what's available in the market and what we even did ourselves where we would provide customer-facing as well as designer-facing experiences and be able to connect the two experiences together to make sure the customer experience is very frictionless there.

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

And from a financial perspective, we, obviously believe that all that Yasir just spoke to will help with conversion and improve return rates, so drive sales. We also believe there is synergies and cost reductions that they can drive through various areas such as product development, samples, photography and creative costs and a whole host of other opportunities. You mentioned the back-out from the non-GAAP perspective. You should expect that run rate going forward, but I think what's important to make crystal clear about that back-out is that the majority of it has to do with the amortization of the transaction costs and how we have to account for it.

The smallest piece of it has to do with their ongoing operations.

Operator

[Operator instructions] We'll take our next caller, Greg Melich with MoffettNathanson.

Greg Melich -- MoffettNathanson -- Analyst

Hi, Thanks. I think I'll stick on SG&A, particularly advertising marketing. I think, Laura, you mentioned -- or, Julie, you mentioned that that helped on the SG&A side getting more effectiveness out of advertising, but it also sounds like the move to digital and more targeted is giving more lift on the top line. So I'd love to hear what's really changing there.

Any sort of metrics in terms of how much of advertising now is digital versus traditional, where the catalog is, to help understand that dynamic because it seems -- maybe to spend less and leverage it and get more on the top line, it seems to be like a real shift. So if you can walk us through, that'll be great.

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Most of the spend, as we've been telling you guys for a while now, has been shifting more toward digital, so it's tipped over to be greater than 50% of our total spend for the company, and we're continuing to optimize our catalog spend. So you saw that continue into this quarter. We did heavily invest in digital as part of our, also, reinvestment of our tax savings and when -- we believe that will continue going forward.

The big difference this quarter was the outperformance on the top line. It was a great reminder. As we return to outperforming on the top line, it leverages all, including advertising, and allows us to outperform in the bottom. But I'll turn it over to Felix to walk through a little more detail as to what our investments are and how they're working.

Felix Carbullido -- Chief Marketing Officer

Sure, and thank you for the question. Our media mix spend is in the channels where customers engage with us most. And more and more, that's online. And it's not just about spend in digital.

It's also about finding efficiencies. So while our investments are aggressive in the digital space, we're also finding efficiencies to deliver strong ROIs. As of last year, we insourced over 90% of our marketing campaigns and media spend. We now have a team of Williams Sonoma, Inc.

employees with our own hands on our own keyboards ensuring our spend is most efficient. And I would say, secondly, with seven brands in our portfolio, we're able to develop a cross-company test-and-learn strategy, where we can test on one brand and quickly roll to the other brands in a very efficient manner if the tactic makes sense for each brand's key initiatives.

Greg Melich -- MoffettNathanson -- Analyst

That's great. Thanks.

Operator

We'll continue on to Chris Horvers with J.P.Morgan.

Chris Horvers -- J.P.Morgan -- Analyst

Hello, good evening. Can you talk about trends in operating income? Last year, EBIT dollars declined 3%, down 4% in 4Q. This quarter, you turned it up sharply, up 10% year over year ex NOI -- ex the accounting change. So what changed there? Looking at the guidance, it does look like you're expecting operating income to turn down in 2Q again.

So was there something unique to the first quarter that helped drive that higher? Or are there unique costs that hit in the second quarter?

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

So it's a little bit of both. The first quarter, truly, it's the outperformance and the leverage that creates throughout the P&L. So when you drive that kind of revenue on the top line, especially in the e-commerce channel, you leverage advertising, you leverage occupancy, you leverage just about everything, employment as well. So all of that roll-through helped us on the bottom line from an earnings perspective.

Going forward, the difference is, is that we have more investments from the tax savings we received in the second quarter. And so we mentioned last call that we have -- we're going to be investing in our associates and taking our hourly associates up to $12 per hour. That kicks in, in the second quarter, so it does put more pressure on the operating margin and operating income for the second quarter, different than the first.

Chris Horvers -- J.P.Morgan -- Analyst

Understood. And then a quick follow-up on the selling margins. Selling margin's down 90, it looks like, ex the accounting change in the first quarter. But this comparison gets a lot easier going into the back half of the year as you start to lap the price and shipping investments.

So can you sort of lay out the timing of those investments? And do you think the shipping margin sort of -- or selling margin degradation moderates and flattens out in the back half?

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

So I mean, first of all, I want to make sure we're clear on that, on how we performed on the gross margin this quarter. We did have the benefit from the accounting, but we also had 50 basis points, so 70 basis points of leverage, but 50 ex accounting, for occupancy. Plus, we had supply chain benefit, so we had incredible leverage that came through the P&L. We then did, yes, have some investments in merchandise margins and higher shipping costs.

From how that's going to play out moving forward, we absolutely expect to have occupancy to continue to leverage as it has. We expect supply chains to continue as they have. Obviously, I've mentioned that we'll have the accounting impact. Shipping costs, we said, we'll lap that in Q3 when we lap the higher UPS shipping cost, and we should get some pressure off of that.

And we lapped West Elm in this second quarter from the flat-rate shipping that we started last year. So we should get some pressure removal from some of those levers, but it obviously depends.

Operator

Our next question will come from Simeon Gutman with Morgan Stanley.

Simeon Gutman -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Thanks. Good afternoon. I wanted to follow up on that, I guess, the EBIT margins guidance as well, and Julie, you mentioned you flowed through about half the beat, which makes sense. I did also want to ask about the move to the flat rate shipping because I would expect that to improve, meaning accelerate, the benefit would accelerate as the year goes on.

And then occupancy improvements, that, too, was great this quarter but also would improve. And then bigger picture, you mentioned our goal was to grow EBIT dollars roughly in line with sales. I don't know. You don't have like long-term guidance out there.

But is that still the goal long term in that you keep reinvesting back into sales? Or do you try to get the margins up over time?

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, our definite goal is to have operating income dollars be in line -- relatively in line with revenues. Certainly, we believe, over time, our margins will stabilize, and I think this quarter is the perfect example. The second we start to outperform, it dropped straight down to the bottom, and look where we landed above last year. And so that is where we expect to be over time.

But certainly, in the short term, we believe that having operating income dollars in line with revenue growth is where the short-term target is.

Operator

Our next question will come from Chuck Grom with Gordon Haskett.

Chuck Grom -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst

Just wondering if you could just break out for us new customer acquisitions across the -- across your banners. And then also, if you look at Exhibit 2, in terms of the cadence of the gross margin and SG&A changes over the balance of the year, I think you called out 70 basis points of a swing to the gross as an -- about 60 to SG&A. When we think about our models for 2Q to 4Q, does that seem like a good proxy for the rest of the year?

Felix Carbullido -- Chief Marketing Officer

Well, what I can tell you -- and we don't disclose the customer numbers by brand, but what I can tell you is that they're positive across the board. And where we are most excited about is in our direct channel, where we saw a double-digit increase in all of our brands. And so that gives us, again, more confidence in our marketing strategy being more invested into the digital space.

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

And as far as your question, if I understood it correctly, on SG&A and gross margin, yes, I believe, throughout the rest of the year, due to the accounting, adoption of the new standard, that we will have a shift of 60 to 70 basis points between gross margin and SG&A. I didn't say specifically that it will be 70 for gross margin and 60 for SG&A, but it will be between those two numbers for either one.

Operator

We'll continue on to Brad Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Brad Thomas -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

Good afternoon, and congratulations on having a strong quarter. I want to follow up on the momentum that you have here in the direct business, the strongest quarter in a number of years. It was against a bit of an easier comparison. Could you maybe talk about how confident you are in maybe keeping up this elevated performance and the ability to drive more share gains within the direct channel?

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. We are quite pleased to raise our full-year guidance today. When we last spoke to you, we were excited about the momentum in our business and the strong finish to the year and with the momentum continuing to accelerate in all of our brands, and in both channels, by the way. We feel very confident in raising our full-year outlook to reflect the strong start.

And as I said before, we have a large number of exciting initiatives that we're executing against. We've made great progress, and we have strong trends in the customer metrics. And combined with all of the products and operational initiatives we have in the pipeline, we're very optimistic about our ability to maintain this momentum.

Operator

We'll continue on to Brian Nagel with Oppenheimer.

Brian Nagel -- Oppenheimer & Company -- Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Very nice quarter.

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Brian Nagel -- Oppenheimer & Company -- Analyst

So my question, I guess, is for Julie, a bit of a follow-up to a prior question, but with regard to shipping costs, we've called this out now as a headwind for a while, including today. Now you mentioned that later this year, you'll lap certain pricing dynamics, which would help that, I guess, alleviate that headwind. How -- bigger picture, are there other factors that could, over time, limit, sort of say, the impact of shipping costs on your overall business, simply -- beyond just simply lapping these pricing dynamics?

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I'll take that question because I'm passionate about the opportunities we have, and I know -- this is Laura, by the way. I know that we made improvements in our inventory, but I think it's going to be very interesting to see, as we continue forward in our operational improvements to our customer, how much we can further reduce our costs. There's still -- as good as we are doing with large cube, we want to be No. 1 in large cube delivery, and we have that as a goal.

And there's a lot of costs to continue to take out of the supply chain, frankly, and we're very excited about going after that. And that's a big chunk of money from returns, damages. And we're set up really well with this network of regional distribution centers so that we can be as close to the customer as possible. And that allows us to be faster and cheaper than our competition.

And we know that the more you haul furniture, the more damage you get. So we see a lot of other factors that will give us improvement over the long haul.

Operator

And our final question from today goes to Cristina Fernandez with Telsey Advisory Group.

Cristina Fernandez -- Telsey Advisory Group -- Analyst

Hi. Thank you. Good quarter. I wanted to follow up on the shipping topic.

It looked like, during the quarter, you used free shipping more as a promotional tool than in the past. How is the customer responding to that versus other types of promotion such as pricing? And based on the competitive landscape, where do you think your dollars are better spent?

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

I mean, the customer always loves free shipping. In fact, I don't think we've done more promotions this quarter year over year. But certainly, it's something that's effective. It's just another promotion tool that we use, and so we're going to continue to do that.

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

I'd just say that in terms of total promotional activity, we actually have seen positive trends in reducing and streamlining what we're doing and really focusing on where we have overstock. So as much as you might see a few more free-ship days, it's not material.

Operator

At this time, I'd like to go ahead and turn the conference back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I want to thank all of you. I appreciate -- we all appreciate your interest in Williams Sonoma and your support, and we look forward to talking to you again next quarter.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 51 minutes

Call Participants:

Elise Wang -- Vice President, Investor Relations

Laura Alber -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Julie P. Whalen -- Chief Financial Officer

Kate McShane -- Citi -- Analyst

Matt Fassler -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Michael Lasser -- UBS -- Analyst

Peter Benedict -- Robert W. Baird & Company -- Analyst

Yasir Anwar -- Chief Technology Officer

Greg Melich -- MoffettNathanson -- Analyst

Felix Carbullido -- Chief Marketing Officer

Chris Horvers -- J.P.Morgan -- Analyst

Simeon Gutman -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Chuck Grom -- Gordon Haskett -- Analyst

Brad Thomas -- KeyBanc Capital Markets -- Analyst

Brian Nagel -- Oppenheimer & Company -- Analyst

Cristina Fernandez -- Telsey Advisory Group -- Analyst

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