( LogMeIn Inc NASDAQ:LOGM)
Q3 2019 Earnings Call
, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

    t
  • Prepared Remarks
  • t
  • Questions and Answers
  • t
  • Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the LogMeIn's Third Quarter 2019 Financial Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Rob Bradley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Rob Bradley -- Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, and welcome to our third quarter 2019 earnings conference call.

Today, I'm joined by our President and CEO, Bill Wagner; and our Chief Financial Officer, Ed Herdiech.

During today's call, we will discuss our business outlook and make other forward-looking statements. These statements are made as of today and are based on our current projections, estimates, forecasts and expectations. Actual events or results could differ due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those mentioned in our most recent filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements.

We will begin today's call with comments by Bill and Ed, followed by the question-and-answer session.

Before we begin, it is important to note that we will use non-GAAP financial measures as we believe they are more representative of how we internally measure the business. Non-GAAP financial measures exclude the impact of acquired deferred revenue and fair value adjustments, stock-based compensation expense, acquisition and litigation-related costs, amortization of acquired intangible assets and restructuring charges. All metrics on the call will be non-GAAP unless otherwise specified. These numbers are reconciled in the tables attached to our press release.

With that, I'm going to turn the call over to our CEO, Bill Wagner. Bill?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Rob. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today as we share LogMeIn's third quarter results.

I'm pleased to report that we delivered strong financial results in Q3 with revenue, adjusted EBITDA and earnings per share all exceeding the high end of our guidance. Third quarter revenue growth accelerated to $317.2 million, up 2.5% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $109.3 million or 34.5% of revenue. And we delivered earnings per share of $1.39 and $70 million of free cash flow.

As noted in February, we believe LogMeIn is positioned to become a defining leader in three much larger faster growing adjacent markets, specifically the Unified Communication and Collaboration, Identity as a Service, and Digital Engagement markets. At that time, we outlined an investment plan to better capture those opportunities, leveraging early success, we were seeing in those markets.

At a high level, these incremental investments were designed to bring additional momentum and scale to our growth products and improve the competitive position of our core meeting products. We're seeing encouraging progress on both fronts. And today, I'd like to provide an in-depth update on these efforts that we think are critical to our long-term strategy.

I'll start with a deeper look at our largest growth products, Jive and LastPass, and share data points that will provide a better sense of the success we're seeing with these products. I'll then provide some color on our recent changes to our GoToMeeting product that we're pretty excited about. Our UCAS products namely Jive and our GoToConnect products had another great quarter in Q3 with revenue growth of 37% year-over-year. And new and add-on sales growing 60% year-over-year.

To put this in perspective, in the year before we acquired the company, Jive was an $80 million business growing about 20%. Less than two years later, we expect the Jive business to surpass $140 million in revenue with over 500,000 users on our platform.

While Jive has users in 87 countries, the commercial success of this business has been coming almost exclusively from selling to companies based in the Americas. In Q3, we took steps to bring our full GoTo UCCs with to new audiences across the globe. Including bringing our UCAS offering GoToConnect as well as our new room solution GoToRoom to companies in key European markets. Among them were three of the biggest markets including the UK, Germany and Ireland. But we've made the regulatory infrastructure and channel investments needed to best serve this largely untapped customer base.

Each of these markets has long been a strong market for LogMeIn in general and for meeting specifically. In fact, when it comes online meeting market share, we hold the number one or number two position in all three of these countries, making each a natural market for expanding the value we can bring to customers.

That competitive advantage quickly turn into early deals in Q3 as the first GoToConnect deal in Europe came from a GoToMeeting customer. I was looking to move its telephone system from an on-premise solution to a cloud provider. Another existing customer combined GoToMeeting with our conferencing solution while deploying our new GoToRoom offering to more than 80 conference room.

It's early, but the response from our European customers and channel partners has been very positive, and we're now gearing up to launch GoToConnect and GoToRoom in Australia later this quarter. This international expansion of our UK suite along with the launch of GoToRoom earlier in the year, where all made possible by the investments outlined in February, and we are very pleased with the performance of this business.

Turning to the second largest growth business LastPass, we made strategic investments late in Q2 to accelerate our push into a broader identity opportunity. Investments that help fuel strong performance in Q3 are positioning us well for Q4 and beyond. In Q3, LastPass saw year-over-year revenue growth of more than 50% and Mike on UCAS growth products, it's doing this at scale.

With nearly 20 million registered users and now ranking as one of the most downloaded chrome extensions of all-time, LastPass will approach $85 million in revenue this year and has emerged as a clear category leader.

I can take a few companies in the cyber security market with a more attractive combination of scale and growth rate. We believe we've just starting to scratch the surface of its potential in a much broader cloud identity market. Announced in late Q2 and made generally available in early Q3, the new LastPass identity suite, shifts LastPass from a point solution into a full business line that covers a range of access management use cases.

As we noted on our Q2 call in July, the new suite creates up-sell and cross-sell opportunities with existing customers, and also opens the door for conversations with a new crop of prospects underserved by today's complex and top-heavy identity landscape. One such example came at a financial services company that was looking to replace an on-premise password manager with the cloud-based solution.

Multiple employees involved in the decision were personal users of LastPass, which helped to open the door. Once the conversation is started, the prospect became enamored with LastPass' Active Directory Federation, multifactor authentication and superior policy controls. While the original RFP was only for a password manager, the ability to get those passwords all things and multifactor authentication to a common vendor proved a winning combination putting LastPass ahead of the competition and resulting in the purchase of our full Identity solution.

It's still early on the Identity front, but the initial success of the new LastPass suite and the growing adoption of LastPass by both business and consumer users is bolstering our already optimistic outlook for fastest growing product line.

So in general, we are pleased with the returns we're seeing from our investments in our growth products. Products like Jive and LastPass are achieving real scale growing faster than we expected and continue to demonstrate strong unit economics, despite the increased levels of spending.

Overall Jive, LastPass and our other growth products collectively now account for 26% of total company revenue, up from 24% last quarter and 19% in 2018. And as these products gain increasing scale, it will continue to lift the overall growth rate of the company.

The other primary investment area in 2019 is focused on increasing the competitiveness of our core meeting business, especially GoToMeeting. Although we're taking longer than we expected to see improvement in the trajectory of this business, we've made meaningful progress in strengthening the competitiveness and market position of GoToMeeting progress we believe will pay off in future quarters.

We are especially excited about recent changes we've made to the products and the highly competitive pricing we've introduced. While it will take some time for us to fully assess the impact of these changes on the business, we believe they will increase our ability to win new customers and improve customer retention.

In September, we introduced the all-new GoToMeeting, a completely redesigned meeting experience. Existing customers began being on-boarded throughout months, and on October 1st, the new GoToMeeting became generally available to all new and existing customers, featuring an elegant video-first meeting experience.

The new GoToMeeting was designed from the ground up to address the needs of the modern workforce. Incorporating input from more than 10,000 users, we brought together the web, desktop, mobile and room experience making for seamless and consisting collaboration for today's flexible and mobile workers. We completely overhauled the voice and audio capabilities, bringing crystal clear and reliable audio that we believe is beyond anything on the market today. And we pulled forward our AI transcription capabilities making meeting smarter and dramatically reducing the work required to share insights and outcomes.

We received very positive initial feedback from customers, prospects and industry analysts. New launch also marked the introduction of new pricing for GoToMeeting. While there will likely be a trade-off of lower average order size, we believe this makes GoToMeeting far more competitive when going after new business and puts us in a better position to retain clients. Of course, the more customers we win and retain on the meeting side, the more opportunities to cross sell our UCAS and room solutions, making these customers potentially more valuable over time.

That said, we just launched, both the product and the new pricing. So while we are confident in our position, we're going to be cautious in our outlook until we gather more data.

In summary, our growth products like Jive and LastPass are gaining stature growing faster than expected and demonstrating strong unit economics at scale. We believe these businesses are incredibly valuable and are benefiting from the increased levels of investments we committed in 2019. Meanwhile, we continue to work hard to improve the growth in other parts of our business, most notably GoToMeeting. We're very excited about the new product and user experience that recently won GA as well as the pricing we've just rolled out and we will monitor the impact of these changes closely as we progress through Q4.

We will also use these and other inputs to step back and evaluate our overall investment strategy as we exit the year. As we finalize our plans for next year, we will continue to review the return on these investments and we will evaluate the best ways to realize the full value of our business as we head into 2020.

I'll now turn the call over to Ed to provide details on our financial results and outlook. But before I do I also wanted call out another announcement we made this afternoon. After an esteemed career in which he played a critical role in some great tech success stories, Ed Herdiech has announced his intention to retire in 2020. The executive search for new CFO is under way, and Ed will remain with LogMeIn helping both to search and driving our financial operations as CFO through the eventual transition in 2020.

I want to publicly thank and acknowledge, Ed, for all his accomplishments at LogMeIn and throughout his career. He has been a great partner, colleague, friend, and mentor to me and so many other.

And with that, I'll turn things over. Ed?

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Bill. I appreciate the kind words. And before I jump to the financials, I'd just like to say that it's been a real pleasure. I've had the privilege of working with great companies and great people over the course of my career, but I can confidently say LogMeIn was the place that gave me the opportunity to do my best work and arguably build the best finance team in SaaS. From taking the company public in 2009, to becoming CFO in 2015, to executing the transformative merger with Citrix's Division in 2016.

The defining moments in my career happen here with this team, and it's this success and this team, that gives me the confidence to take my next big step retiring. While ensuring that the legacy we've built is in the best of hands. I look forward to working with the team to select our next CFO and helping to ensure a smooth transition.

Turning to the financials, I want to remind everyone that I'll report our results on a non-GAAP basis unless otherwise specified. As always, a reconciliation of our non-GAAP to GAAP results can be found in our press release and on our Investor Relations website.

Q3 results came in above guidance and highlights include revenue of $317.2 million, which was up 2.5% year-over-year and was $1.2 million above the high end of our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA of $109.3 million or 34.5% of revenue and was $300,000 above the high end of our guidance. Earnings per share of $1.39, which is $0.02 above the high end of our guidance, and additionally, free cash flow was $70 million or 22% of revenue, and deferred revenue ended the quarter at $393 million, which represents 5% year-over-year growth.

Our Unified Communications & Collaboration or UCC revenue was $172 million, which is down 2% year-over-year consistent with last quarter. Within UCC, Jive continues to perform very well and exceeded our expectations as revenue grew 37% year-over-year to $37 million. We continue to see strong market adoption of our UCAS suite that brings together the best of voice, video and collaboration. Our core meeting business performed below our expectations in Q3. However, we're optimistic about the recent release of the new GoToMeeting, as well as the pricing changes that together make it more competitive than ever before.

Our Identity and Access Management business or IAM continue to perform well in the third quarter and we saw growth accelerate from Q2. Revenue in the quarter was $103 million and was up 14% year-over-year, driven primarily by LastPass which grew 64% year-over-year to $22 million. We're encouraged as we see early signs of market receptiveness of our new LastPass identity bundle that include single sign-on and our next generation multi-factor authentication capabilities.

Our Customer Engagement and Support business or CES generated $43 million of revenue and was down 3% year-over-year compared to being down 4% year-over-year in Q2. We continue to invest in Bold360ai as we see strong customer adoption of artificial intelligence-based digital engagement solutions.

In total, our growth products continue to perform very well, particularly Jive and LastPass. Overall in the third quarter, they grew 34% year-over-year and accounted for 26% of total company revenue, which was up from 24% in Q2. With regard to renewal rates, for the third quarter, our total company gross renewal rate across all products on an annualized dollar basis was approximately 80% consistent with last quarter.

Next I'd like to review our Q3 expenses. In the quarter, gross margins were 81.4%, which were in line with our expectations. Sales and marketing expenses were $106 million or 33% of revenue. This represents a $9 million decrease from the prior quarter associated with seasonality as we reduced our marketing spend in the summer months.

Research and development expenses were $33 million or 10% of revenue, which is 1 percentage point lower than the last quarter. G&A expenses were $26 million or 8% of revenue, which is consistent with the prior quarter.

Finally, in Q3, we returned $61 million for our stockholders through a combination of buybacks and dividends. We repurchased 628,000 shares of our stock for $45 million and paid $16 million in common stock dividends. In the fourth quarter, we will pay a $0.325 per share dividend on Friday, November 29, 2019, the stockholders of record as of Wednesday, November 13, 2019.

With that, I'll now provide our outlook for the fourth quarter and our full year 2019. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue to be in the range of $319 million to $321 million representing 3% year-over-year growth, up from 2.5% year-over-year growth in Q3. We're currently targeting adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $110 million to $111 million and adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 34.5% of revenue. Net income per share is expected to be in a range of $1.39 to $1.41, and our GAAP net income per share is expected to be in the range of $0.15 to $0.17. Net income assumes an effective tax rate of approximately 25% and GAAP net income assumes a tax provision of approximately $3 million. Both net income per share and GAAP net income per share are based on $49 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding.

For the full year, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1,258 million to $1,260 million. Our revised revenue guidance reflects approximately $3 million of FX headwinds versus our prior guidance. We expect full year adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $412 million to $413 million with full year adjusted EBITDA margins to be approximately 33% of revenue.

Our net income per diluted share is expected to be in the range of $5.12 to $5.14. GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of $0.06 to $0.04. Net income assumes an effective tax rate of 25% and GAAP net loss assumes a tax provision of approximately $4 million. Net income per share is based on $50 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding. GAAP net loss per share is based on $49.6 million weighted average shares outstanding.

Finally, we expect Q4 free cash flow to be approximately $85 million and full year free cash flow to be approximately $330 million. This updated free cash flow outlook takes into consideration a softer sales forecast, primarily attributable to our meeting business, a change in product mix and a slight reduction in forecasted net working capital.

In closing, I want to reiterate that we are very encouraged by performance of our growth products and believe that we're building valuable franchises. We've also believed that we've made significant improvements in our meeting business, which we believe will positively impact future results.

That concludes my remarks, and now I'll turn the call back to the operator to take your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question today from Alex Kurtz with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead, sir.

Alex Kurtz -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

How do you think that is going to play out competitively in the market? And how that could have some initial impact on your fiscal '20 outlook? If you want to provide any kind of framework on that, I think, that would be very helpful to investors.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Sure. There was a little bit of a problem with the audio, Alex. So, can you just be so kind to just to restate the question because we didn't hear the first half of it?

Alex Kurtz -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Yes, sorry. Can you hear me now?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Loud and clear.

Alex Kurtz -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Okay. So just on the price changes that you made to the GoTo platform and what this might mean for fiscal '20 meeting growth?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I mean we're not -- right now we're not going to provide an update on the outlook for 2020. We remain very focused on achieving our goal of 5% for next year. To achieve that we need to see continued strong performance in Jive and LastPass as well as improvement in the core GoToMeeting business. We did just launched significant product changes and price initiatives and those have only been in the market for a few weeks. So we need to fully evaluate the performance before we update on the outlook.

Alex Kurtz -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

And our next question today comes from Sterling Auty with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Sterling Auty -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Yes. Thanks. Hi, guys. So, Bill, in terms of the comments that you made about evaluating the investments. I know this is a tough topic and maybe not a lot you can say, but I know it's front and center on investors' minds. There was the deal reporter report talking about maybe you're having talks of looking to sell these parts of the company. How does that fit in, in terms of that strategy?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Thanks, Sterling. Obviously I can't comment on speculation. We do believe we are undervalued, but we're not going to comment on hypotheticals. We're really focused on building these great businesses and the investments we laid out this year. I think we're pretty pleased with the results and that's our primary focus as we work through the second half of the year, and then we will evaluate the return on those investments before we head into 2020.

Sterling Auty -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

All right. Fair enough. And then just one follow-up question, on LastPass, you quickly brought to market some of the advanced features to make it more of a full-blown single sign-on. Where do you think it ranks in terms of the feature functionality relative to what you believe that needs to be truly successful in the long term.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes. We're really pleased with the results -- the initial results of that product. We did bring it to market pretty quickly. And remember, the purpose of that product is we think there is a large unaddressed market in the Identity as a Service space. There is a lot of enterprise solutions. A lot of companies going after the large companies. LastPass is a really lightweight way and the identity suite kind of continues to be a lightweight way to address the identity issues of that big middle market that we think is really creating that solution. So far initial results have been very positive, but it's early. We've only been selling it for a quarter.

Sterling Auty -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Gregg Moskowitz with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Matt Broome -- Mizuho -- Analyst

Hi. This is Matt Broome on for Gregg. Thanks for taking my call. So you initially guided for your growth products 25% of revenues actually in Q4. Obviously, you're already there. So I was wondering if you could give an update on how you're thinking about the contribution of your growth assets in 2020?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Again, I think right now we're focused on Q4 of this year, and we're not going to get into 2020. Obviously, we're pleased with the over performance of those growth assets. We've made a lot of investments behind them. Those investments are doing well and paying off, and within we'll reevaluate as we exit the year.

Matt Broome -- Mizuho -- Analyst

Okay. And could I ask, what was the collaboration renewal rates this quarter excluding Jive?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Excluding Jive, the renewal rates were about 82%.

Matt Broome -- Mizuho -- Analyst

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

And our next question comes from Will Power with Baird. Please go ahead.

Will Power -- Baird -- Analyst

Great. Thank you. I guess just a couple of questions. First, just coming back to -- first, Ed, I guess just congratulations and then good luck in retirement. Thanks for all the help in the last several years.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank.

Will Power -- Baird -- Analyst

Yes. So, I think first question, just coming back to the UCC segment, obviously great to see the Jive flow . As you noted, the core meeting business, collaboration business continues to face challenges. I wonder if you could just update us as what you're seeing competitively. Is it much of the same. Any color on churn rates. I guess you kind of just adjust address sounds like maybe it's -- maybe more on the growth side than the churn side. Just kind of what you're seeing competitively, and what gets that turnaround? So whatever the product is, it's going to be the key piece.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Will. So during the quarter, we reduced our marketing spend little bit more than we originally planned because we thought it made sense to align that spend with the launch of the new product and the pricing changes. So we kind of reallocated some of those dollars other [Phonetic] products. This contributed to a decrease in some lead flow and some softness, primarily in the new and add-on business. But now we have a new product and pricing in the field. We've ramped marketing spend back up and we're seeing early positive signs, although it's only the first few weeks. So we're going to monitor that closely as we proceed.

And that also coincided with the pricing and we believe really that the lowering the price and introducing the packaging will really help on the new customer side and also see improved renewal rates. Our research suggests that while we may lose average order size, it's going to be offset by volume of new customers, add-on sales, better renewals and the early signs are pretty positive. But again we're going to be cautious because it's only a few weeks in and we'll see how we do through the rest of the quarter.

Will Power -- Baird -- Analyst

Okay. And then I guess if I could just squeeze one more in. Just coming back to the LastPass, obviously strong growth there too. I think you had mentioned 20 million registered users. Could you give an update on paid users? And I guess I'm just curious, as you look at that 60% plus growth there, can you break that down between what you're seeing a consumer side versus kind of the business and enterprise push?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

We did not disclose any data on number of paid versus free users. So, that's all included in that $20 million number. The majority of our revenue comes from enterprise customers, larger customers, mid-market customers generally sold through our direct sales force. So much more -- more than two-thirds of that revenue comes from that customer base.

Will Power -- Baird -- Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

And our next question comes from Rich Valera with Needham & Company. Please go ahead.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Thank you. When you provided your kind of multi-year plan around the strategic investment you had given some cash flow figures for next year that was slightly down from the one this year about $15 million down. Given the lower baseline this year, is there anything you'd be willing to say about expected cash flow next year at this point?

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Hi. Hey, this is Ed. So, kind of following up on Bill's comments about, we've been talking for a while that we need to kind of reevaluate investment levels and so forth as we kind of work through the end of the year as part of our planning. So at this point, we don't have -- we're not in a great position talk about 2020.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Fair enough. And I know there's a lot in play in the GoToMeeting sort of franchise as we go into the fourth quarter, but I think you've been hoping to maybe get collab back to growth or flat in the fourth quarter. Are we -- do we still have that target on the table? Or are we just going to kind of wait and see, and just kind wondered, what's baked into your fourth quarter revenue guide in terms of the UCC business for the UCC business.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes, I think we're really focused on watching through the Q4, watching how those results play out and how the new product launch plays out in pricing. Again, I think early results have been positive, but we're going to be pretty cautious in our outlook as we work through the quarter and then we'll see how we do.

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. Appreciate it.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our next question from Raimo Lenschow. Please go ahead.

Mike -- Barclays -- Analyst

Hey, this is Mike on for Raimo. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted -- I just had a quick question on the rollout across some of the places in Europe, UK, Germany, Ireland for the GoTo Connect business, is there any plans outside of the Australia rollout in Q4. At this point in time in terms of where, what markets you'll be targeting next and I do have another one follow-up as well?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Yes, Raimo, we're not talking about any other markets beyond the ones that we've already disclosed. And we have users, as I said in my comments, in actually 87 countries. So but when I talk about country rollout what we talk about our areas where we have infrastructure and sales people on the ground.

Great . Okay, that's helpful, thanks. And then so on the renewal rates at around 80%. You guys have been pretty consistent there over the last few quarters, but you talk about the GoToMeeting product actually having maybe potential for renewal rates coming up slightly with the new pricing model that you'd put in place. Do you -- where do you see that number maybe potentially getting to do you -- do you have any like kind of target numbers that you're looking for there on the more medium to long term.

Yes, I know, I think we're going to be cautious there and just watch how it plays out over the next couple of months and that has all the numbers that we look at probably the retention rate is what takes a little bit more time we can monitor direct purchases in close rates and volume almost down the daily basis but retention phase is going to take a little bit more time to play out. So we just have to wait and see, and right now we're not updating any -- providing any new goals for retention rates.

Mike -- Barclays -- Analyst

Fair enough. Thanks. Thanks guys,

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Right.

Operator

And we'll take a follow-up question from Sterling Auty with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Sterling Auty -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Yes, thanks. Hi guys. Wondering on gross margins with the pricing changes that you just rolled out, how should we think about the gross margin impact here in the fourth quarter. And whether that would be the bottom in maybe you can work higher that or whether too soon to tell.

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Hey, Sterling. This is Ed. Gross margins were 81.4% in the quarter pretty much where it was last quarter. As I said, 90 days ago. We're continuing to forecast 82% for the full year -- I'm not concerned about the pricing changes on gross margin. The only kind of source of pressure we have is just from cost success kind of the Jive product has been and that we recognize the hardware cost upfront and if it exceeds our expectations that just gives us a little more pressure there.

Sterling Auty -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah.

Operator

And our next question comes from Brett Knoblauch with Berenberg Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Brett Knoblauch, your line has been opened.

Brett Knoblauch -- Berenberg Capital Markets -- Analyst

Hi guys, thanks for taking my question. I think you talked about your restructuring plan, so increasing spend on QC hiring and I was wondering the progress and that maybe a year-to-date growth number of that QC there.

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Sales are higher.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Got it. Yeah. So that sales are powerings been going pretty well. We're off just since last quarter runs out 10% and some we still have some higher some [Indecipherable] in the second half of the year, but overall that's good progress.

Brett Knoblauch -- Berenberg Capital Markets -- Analyst

Okay. And then just one follow-up I guess with a more competitive pricing strategy, what do you think the odds are you'll see a response from some of the big competitors lowering their price I guess in the stock. So you're lowering your price?

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

I think for us, this is about making sure that we're in a really competitive -- our best competitive position that we've been in a long time and I think pricing was one of the last pieces and once we had our -- the new version of GoToMeeting, which we think is the best product in the space, we thought it was the right time to launch our more aggressive pricing. And yes, we'll see. We're right on where the rest of the market is. And I'm not going to comment on what competitors will or won't do. But right now we feel good about where the pricing is.

Brett Knoblauch -- Berenberg Capital Markets -- Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks, guys.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

And it appears there are no further questions in the queue at this time. Mr. Wagner, I'd like to turn things back to you for any closing or additional remarks.

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for your questions tonight. In closing, our growth products like Jive, LastPass are benefiting from an increased level of investment with both growing faster than expected and are now doing so at real scale, meanwhile, investments in our core meeting business have strengthened our competitive position entering Q4.

The introduction of the all new GoToMeeting along with highly competitive pricing has generated great early feedback from customers, prospects and industry watchers. We fully recognize, it will take some to see the full impact of this progress, but we're excited by the prospects. As we continue our 2020 planning, we will review a return on these investments and evaluate the best ways to realize the full value of our business as we head into next year. Until then, we thank you for your time this evening and we look forward to updating you when we report our Q4 results in February.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Duration: 39 minutes

Call participants:

Rob Bradley -- Vice President of Investor Relations

William Wagner -- President & Chief Executive Officer

Ed Herdiech -- Chief Financial Officer

Alex Kurtz -- KeyBanc -- Analyst

Sterling Auty -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Matt Broome -- Mizuho -- Analyst

Will Power -- Baird -- Analyst

Rich Valera -- Needham & Company -- Analyst

Mike -- Barclays -- Analyst

Brett Knoblauch -- Berenberg Capital Markets -- Analyst

More LOGM analysisAll earnings call transcripts

tag