Wix.com (WIX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Wix.com (WIX -0.30%)
Q3 2023 Earnings Call
Nov 09, 2023, 8:30 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Wix Q3 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.

[Operator instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Emily Liu, with investor relations. Emily, please go ahead.

Emily Liu -- Investor Relations

Thanks, Stacey, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Wix's third quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me today to discuss our results are Avishai Abrahami, our CEO and co-founder; Nir Zohar, our president and COO; and Lior Shemesh, our CFO. During the call, we may make forward-looking statements, and these statements are based on current expectations and assumptions.

Please consider the risk factors included in our press release and most recent Form 20-F that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, we will comment on non-GAAP financial results and key operating metrics. You can find all reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results in the earnings materials and in our Interactive Analyst Center on the investor relations section of our website, investors.wix.com.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Avishai.

Avishai Abrahami -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Emily, and good morning, everyone. We delivered a tremendous third quarter that exceeded both growth and profitability expectations for another consecutive quarter. Revenue in Q3 grew to $394 million, which is $3 million above the high end of our guidance. We generated more than $62 million of free cash flow, or 16% of revenues, ahead of our expectations.

As a result of our outperformance year to date, we are again raising revenue and free cash flow guidance for the year, and we now expect to finish 2023 ahead of the margin targets set at our Analyst Day in August. As we begin to wrap up an outstanding year, I want to spend most of my time today talking about products that we expect will be our primary growth engine going into 2024 and the years to come: Wix Studio and AI. Like prior quarters, our partners business was a meaningful driver of our strong top-line performance in Q3, growing 38% year over year. We continue to find success with professionals through ongoing dialogue to better understand their need and best-in-class product innovation that resonate with the community.

As we spoke about at our Analyst Day in August, we took all that we have learned from partners over the years and created Wix Studio, a new cornerstone product for partners. The reception, feedback, and early KPIs have been incredible. The resounding consensus is that Studio provide agencies with everything they want and more for all of their web creation and project management needs. User -- users particularly love Studio's responsive AI technology that simplifies high-touch time -- and time-sensitive tasks such as ensuring consistent design across web pages on different screen sizes.

They are also enjoying the AI code assistant inside the new Wix IDE, which allow them to write cleaner code and detect errors easily. More importantly, Studio optimizes partners' workflow and productivity while elevating their own client offering, ultimately helping them scale their business. Features like workflow management dashboard enable agencies to easily manage all of their clients, projects, and teams in one place, and client kits allow partners to provide seamless handoff experience with built-in tutorials for their end clients, saving time and resources. We already have thousands of Studio sites live, and many actively generating GPV.

The total number of registered Studio accounts and conversion of existing sites to Studio have exceeded our own expectations. All of these early signs of success could not have been possible without the team that traveled across 12 cities over two months to bring Studio to life through countless educational workshops, Q&A forums, and onboarding sessions. This tool gave us the opportunity to hear directly from hundreds of partners around the globe, and it allowed partners to learn from each other. Wix Studio is now fully live to all partners.

We have a strong team that continue to execute well and a growing community of professionals excited about Wix. These factors are what gives me confidence in the long period of growth ahead in this business. We did not let off the gas in terms of product innovation as we continue to add our own industry-leading AI and gen AI product offering. As we spoke about at our Analyst Day, we have nearly a decade of working with AI and machine learning to reduce friction and enable better creation by leveraging AI for co-creation for our users.

Earlier this week, we released our latest AI products. The first was AI Meta Tags Creator, a groundbreaking SEO tool powered by AI and our first AI-powered feature within our collection of SEO tools. Both self-creators looking to generate SEO-friendly tags for each of their pages and professionals looking to enhance their efficiency and make real-time adjustments will benefit from this product. The second was our conventional AI chat experience for businesses.

This feature, which is now live, paves the way to accelerate onboarding using AI in order to get business -- businesses online more quickly and efficiently. These new tools continue to demonstrate our leadership in utilizing AI to help users of all types to succeed online. It has been a busy year at Wix, filled with many products and financial milestones, but we are not done yet. We expect to continue this strong momentum into the fourth quarter and accelerate profitable growth even further.

Finally, before I turn it over to Nir, I'd like to end with a quick thought. The terrorist attack in Israel a month ago was terrible beyond imagination. But we at Wix have navigated unprecedented challenges before and ultimately emerged stronger from them. This war is no different.

Even against the current backdrop, I am more confident than ever in the strength of our global team and the execution of our strategy and growth trajectory. With that, I will hand it over to Nir.

Nir Zohar -- President and Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Avishai, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Following the strong performance that we've seen so far this year, I want to revisit the key growth pillars we spoke about at our Analyst Day, which we expect will drive our business in the coming years. First, as Avishai mentioned, Q3 was another quarter of accelerating growth in partners revenue. We expect growth in the partners business to continue with a long runway of opportunity ahead, particularly as Wix Studio ramps.

The initial months of Wix Studio have been fantastic with more partners coming to Wix and an increase in projects per partner. We also continue to see partners adopting more business solutions products and driving meaningful growth in GPV. Combined, these behaviors give us confidence that the compounding growth in partners cohorts and revenue will continue. Compounding partners growth is complemented by reaccelerating growth in our stable and profitable self-creators business, which we saw once again this quarter.

We expect our market-leading product innovation, as well as our powerful AI products and technology, to drive higher conversion, monetization, and retention as we maintain our leadership position in the website-building space. Avishai spoke about the AI chat experience for business and its early weeks -- and in its early weeks, we have already seen its positive impact on conversion and revenue. We have more AI products in our pipeline that we believe will continue this trend, and I'm confident that our innovation, paired with macro recovery, will return our self-creators business to double-digit growth. The third pillar of our strategy is business solutions growth.

We saw outstanding transaction revenue growth in Q3, increasing 22% year over year, highlighting higher GPV, as well as increased adoption of Wix Payments. We expect continued increases in transaction revenue and GPV, as well as better adoption of business applications, will drive growth across both partners and self-creators. This quarter was a continuation of the momentum in growth we experienced in the first half of the year, and it increases our excitement about what's to come in the years ahead. Finally, I'd like to briefly address our operations amid the ongoing war in Israel.

With all of our employees accounted for and our business continuity plan in place, there has been no disruption to our business and we do not anticipate any significant impact on operations going forward, even as the war continues. As a reminder, all of our infrastructure and internal networks are cloud-based and located completely outside of Israel. Importantly, our users have not experienced any disruptions to performance or support throughout this period. As we have shared, less than 5% of our global workforce were called up to military duty, and we have already implemented contingencies to take on their responsibilities.

In the immediate weeks following October 7th, as we focused on the well-being of our employees and their families, we experienced slight delays to some product development timelines. In response, we shifted priorities and efforts to successfully mitigate impact on our product pipeline. We intend for these delays not to impact our overall product development plans. Over the last several weeks, we have successfully launched a number of products, including the full global rollout of Studio, as well as our newest AI capabilities.

We will continue to introduce new products and features in the coming quarters as planned. Our people in Israel are obviously adjusting to a new work environment. We are supporting them in any way we can, including with the implementation of a work routine that prioritizes the physical safety and mental well-being of our team and their families. In addition to supporting our Wix teammates, our global team has implemented multiple initiatives to support our users and the broader community during this time as well.

We are leveraging our robust platform, global footprint, and technological expertise to connect those in need with vital resources, assist small businesses impacted by the war, and ensure the reliability of our platform for those who are depending on it the most. The resiliency of this incredible team, along with the support of our community of users and partners, give me confidence in our growth strategy as we all look forward to better times. With that, I will hand it over to Lior to walk through our financials, outlook, and progress against our refreshed three-year plan. Lior?

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Nir. We carried forward our positive momentum into Q3 with another quarter of results that exceeded both growth and profitability expectations. Our exceptional performance year to date enable us to increase full year guidance again and provide increased confidence in our ability to achieve and even exceed the milestone in our three-year plan provided at our Analyst Day in August. We now expect to exit the year with free cash flow margin of 20% to 21%, which is within striking distance of the minimum of 25% free cash flow margin targeted for 2025.

Additionally, we also expect to generate more than $3.50 of free cash flow per share in 2023, above the $3 per share anticipated in August, as a result of robust free cash flow generation and careful dilution management throughout the year. Notably, following the second consecutive quarter of positive GAAP net income in Q3, we expect to achieve positive GAAP net income for full year 2023, with GAAP profitability expected to be achievable in 2024 as well. I'm incredibly proud of this achievement as it puts us ahead of the GAAP target in our three-year plan. Moving on to the details of the third quarter.

Total revenue of 394 million was up 14% year over year and exceeded the top end of our guidance range by $3 million as we continue to execute on our strategic initiatives. Total bookings were $389 million, up 10% year over year. Strong top-line growth was again driven by our partners business. Partners revenue grew 38% year over year in Q3, marking a third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth.

With partners now contributing to more than 40% of overall GPV, total GPV in Q3 grew 14% year over year. This growth in GPV, coupled with an increased take rate as merchants continue to adopt Wix Payments, resulted in transaction revenue growth accelerating to 22% year over year this quarter. Before I move on to profitability, I want to take a moment to highlight our B2B business. After three years since the signing of our first partnership, our B2B business has scaled tremendously and is now profitable on a stand-alone basis.

Today, we are able to integrate with any large business looking to bring the power of Wix to their customers without additional meaningful technological investments from our end. As a result of this achievement, as well as the uncertain macro environment, we are now able to offer partners pay-as-you-go terms and will no longer recognize unbilled contractual obligation in bookings beyond 12 months. One example of this evolution is our B2B model -- to our B2B model is the strategic partnership we signed with Intuit earlier this quarter. This partnership represents significant potential in the future but will be recognized based on usage on an ongoing basis.

We believe this shift opens our pipeline to more partnership opportunities going forward. Moving on now to the profitability improvements made this quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin of 68% was up approximately 380 basis points compared to the prior-year quarter. We continue to benefit from a more optimized cost structure, as well as better gross margin in our payments business.

We generated a fourth consecutive quarter of positive non-GAAP operating income, which was 15% of revenue. Q3 included nonrecurring increases to compensation, as well as increased marketing activities associated with Wix Studio, both according to our annual budget. These increases in operating spend were partially offset by continued execution of our streamlined marketing strategy, as well as lower headcount and overhead expenses compared to the prior-year quarter. As a result of our continued growth and leaner cost structure, we generated stronger free cash flow than expected this quarter.

Free cash flow grew 28% year over year to over $62 million, or 16% of revenue, and accelerates our path to achieving the target in our three-year plan. Note that this excludes capex related to the buildout of our headquarters. Now, I want to finish with our outlook for Q4 and 2023. We expect total revenue in Q4 to be 400 million to 405 million, representing 13% to 14% growth year over year.

Following our revenue outperformance year to date, we are increasing our full year outlook again. We now expect total revenue to be approximately 1.558 billion to 1.563 billion, representing approximately 12% to 13% year-over-year growth, an increase from our previous expectation of 11% to 12% year-over-year growth. We also expect accelerating profitability as we exit 2023. We are increasing our outlook for free cash flow for 2023 to 235 million to 240 million or approximately 15% of revenue.

This indicates an exit free cash flow margin of 20% to 21% this year, putting us much closer to our minimum 25% of free cash flow margin anticipated for 2025. This compares to our previous free cash flow outlook of 200 million to 210 million, or approximately 13% of revenue, and an exit rate of approximately 15%. This updated free cash flow outlook, along with careful dilution management throughout the year, also enables us to increase our free cash flow per share target for the year. Following the incredible performance so far this year, I'm more confident than ever in our ability to achieve our three-year plan as we accelerate along our expected path to the Rule of 40 with a free cash flow margin target at least -- of at least 25% in 2025.

Operator, we are now ready for questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Trevor Young with Barclays. Trevor, please go ahead with your question.

Trevor Young -- Barclays -- Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys. First, just any insights on the slight deceleration in bookings, particularly in light of the easier compare. It looks like a decel both on a reported basis and ex-FX.

And then second question, on a geo basis, what drove that market acceleration in Europe and Asia and what drove the slowdown in North America that partially offset that?

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

So, I would answer both of the questions. This is Lior. So, with regards to the bookings, it came in where we expect it. You know, I think that it's also worth mentioning the B2B partnership, and I spoke about it briefly before.

We see actually very positive changes to this business. As I mentioned before, we completed with the product and integration with previous customers, with previous partners. So, we don't have to do it again. It means that it's not necessary for us to demand, you know, any kind of commitment from our partners going forward.

Also, you know, when you look at the macro environment, people are -- our partners, obviously, are not willing to provide a long-term commitment as -- by the way, as I am not willing to do that with regard to my -- with my vendors. So, from now on, we are not going to recognize a multiyear commitment as part of bookings, at least that is more than one year. So, it's going to have a kind of a negative effect on bookings short term, but not long term. And -- but it's not going to have any impact on revenue.

It's important to mention. Second reason to your question, we had a slightly higher percentage of monthly plan, partly driven by new subs from B2B partnerships, as well as in other specific geographies. Again, there is no impact on revenue, just about the booking. Third reason, I believe, is from -- because of the fact that that was the first full quarter of lapping price increase from spring 2022.

However, we benefited from compounding growth, in part, in costs, driven by business solutions. So, it's even kind of more than compensated for that. And I believe that, you know, going forward, we need to remember that we have not yet benefited from strong growth engines that we have, for example, Studio that we just launched, but also all the AI tools that we already see the contribution in terms of increased conversion but also increase in revenue. With regard to the second question about the geo growth, so in the slide of last quarter, we had a mistake, meaning that Europe was not 2%, it was 9%, going up to 11%.

This quarter, actually, accelerating. So, that kind of explained part of the confusion that we have in the geo.

Trevor Young -- Barclays -- Analyst

Great. Thank you for that clarification.

Operator

Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Ygal Arounian with Citi. Ygal, go ahead with your question.

Ygal Arounian -- Citi -- Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys. Just first of all, just best wishes to you, guys, and families and everyone and hope you guys are doing OK and wishing for better times in Israel and the region. I have two questions.

First, just on the acceleration in partners and in Studio and the impact that's driving there. I think, typically, when you guys launch new products, it feels like it takes a little bit more time until you start seeing a more meaningful impact and it's coming through the numbers. Are you seeing it? Has that been a notable driver of the acceleration in the third quarter or is it really more still to come? You're seeing some good early signs, but it's not contributing a lot to the numbers yet. And then on the AI side, just to follow up on the comments around driving better conversion.

So, a lot of new AI products are coming through. Can you just expand on that comment on conversion, what you're seeing in the KPIs around conversion, monetization, and retention? Thanks.

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So, I would start with the first question about partners. So, you're absolutely right. We still don't see a significant impact of Studio because we just launch it.

I think that this is why we are so excited about it. Every -- the entire growth that we see right now are coming from our previous products and everything that we've done with partners, you know, and including Editor X, not necessarily Studio. And we need to remember that we still see the compounding effect of it, meaning that any agency that runs like, you know, few quarters ago, we see the benefit of it right now, you know, buying more and using more payments, for example, or Google Ads. So, we see a tremendous increase in business solutions.

A big part of it is because of partners. The reason why we are so excited because we believe that Studio is a great engine for us to continue and increase growth for partners in the future. We are going to see some of it next year.

Avishai Abrahami -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

I believe your second question was in regards to what kind of effect we're seeing from different AI products that we are launching and mostly in regards to improvement in conversion. And we do actually see an improvement in conversion, which is probably the most important KPI by which we measure our success in deploying new products. The reason for that is that with AI, we're able to ask the user better questions and to understand in a smarter way what it is that the user is trying to achieve. From that, we are able to generate a better starting point for their business on top of Wix.

And that is not just the skeleton, we are also able to fill in a lot of the information and a lot of the content that the user would normally have to fill in manually. The result is that the amount of effort and knowledge that you need to create a website for your business on Wix is dramatically reduced. And from that, we are able to see very good results in terms of improvement of conversion.

Ygal Arounian -- Citi -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Andrew Boone of JMP Securities. Andrew, please go ahead with your question.

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Good morning and thanks for taking my question. We, as well, are also thinking about you guys. I wanted to tie back the comment of self-creator growth returning to double digit with sales marketing going forward. Historically, you guys have had a very strong framework between those two items.

And so, can you just talk about how we should expect your marketing and performance marketing specifically to either ramp as we think about self-creators getting back to double-digit growth or anything else you want to unpack there?

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

Andrew, so this is Lior. So, I believe that -- you know, looking at the history of Wix, you know, almost the entire growth that we managed to deliver in the past was due to products. You know, obviously, you know, Avishai mentioned, for example, the AI tools that we just launched and we see a tremendous, you know, increase and potential upside for the future, you know, to be more specific about conversion, for example. We also see a much bigger usage of our business solution tools like payments, for example.

So, looking at everything and, you know, including and hopefully, you know, the market and the macro recovery in the future, we do believe that we will be able to gain a double-digit growth for self-creators.

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Great. Thank you. And then I just wanted to touch on, of course, profit margins. Can you just help us unpack the improvement there and how do we think about that going forward? Any change from Analyst Day? Thanks so much.

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

So, yeah, certainly. So, we saw this year a tremendous improvement in margins, you know, in gross margin, and it came mostly from two places. The first one is a lot of improvements and savings that we had with our infrastructure, mostly, you know, the hosting activities. So, we had a lot of savings over there.

But also about our care organization, for example, benefiting from, you know, all kinds of AI tools that enable us to be more efficient. So, I believe that that was, you know, most of the improvements that we've seen this year. I believe that next year, we are going to see some more improvement. I don't -- I'm not sure that it will be drastic as this year, but we're certainly going to see more improvement, especially around the -- being more efficient, but also from the fact that we see a much better gross margin coming from the business solutions, for example, payments.

As take rate is increasing, we are able to generate more margins out of transaction revenue. I believe that this is something that will continue also next year and will drive gross margin up again next year.

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Thank you.

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

The question was just about the gross margin or the overall profitability, for example, the operating expenses?

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

I was going to keep it to gross profit margin. I'll let somebody else go and ask that off. Thank you.

Operator

Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Chris Zhang with UBS. Chris, please go ahead with your question.

Chris Zhang -- UBS -- Analyst

Hey. Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. So, I have the first question regarding the marketing expense this year.

You lowered the guide for the marketing expense by about 200 basis points as a percentage of revenue. Can you maybe unpack the drivers of the reduction? How much from the more direct response channels, how much from the partner spend that you previously expect to go up? And also, can you talk about the return environment right now on the acquisition marketing as one of your competitors mentioned leaning more into the more direct channel versus the partner spend?

Nir Zohar -- President and Chief Operating Officer

Hey, Chris. It's Nir. I think I'll kick this off and Lior can go into maybe a little more of the financial aspects if needed. But, you know, generally, already last year, we communicated our change in marketing strategy that worked extremely well for us.

We leveraged the strength of our brand against buying traffic, understanding that we can get better ROI simply because the brand is compensating because it's been -- it strengthened so much throughout the last few years. Throughout this year, we communicated, you know, continuing this strategy, but also basically deploying a lot of marketing dollars toward the release and the launch of Wix Studio. Now, you know, we explained and we put most of that spend in the second half of the year. But if you remember, when we shared the kind of the cadence of the release of Wix Studio, Q3 was about -- mainly about an internal launch.

So, we were launching to our existing partners, and therefore, we didn't need to spend and to use most of the marketing budget. So, the plan was always to put more of it to use in Q4. Even Q3, by the way, within the plan of the internal -- the internal plan, we managed to create some savings, which was great. But the goal was to put more of it toward Q4.

That being said, looking at the first few weeks of the launch of Studio, the adoption is fantastic. It's higher than we even expected. So, we believe that the actual deployment of the marketing dollars will be done more gradually between Q4 and heading into 2024.

Chris Zhang -- UBS -- Analyst

All right. That's super helpful. And I guess if you can also comment on the return environment, and I think that's also kind of related to the self-creators' growth trajectory and how you're thinking about probably just putting some dollars in -- or incremental dollars in the acquisition marketing?

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

So, with regard to the self-creators, there's not much of a change from the last quarter as I think that we showed that the change that we've made is consistent and stable. We managed to generate, obviously, the same amount of collection with less investment in marketing. And, you know, I think that it's great to see that this strategy is actually working through the fact that the brand become much, much stronger. Right now, you know, the return is -- obviously has changed dramatically than, you know, compared to the beginning of last year.

We stand at less than one quarter. I believe that when we see the strength of our brand, we believe that this is something that can continue and sustain also over the next couple of years. So, we do not see any significant change over there for self-creators.

Chris Zhang -- UBS -- Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Bernie McTernan of Needham and Company. Bernie, please go ahead with your question.

Bernie McTernan -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the questions and just reiterating thoughts and prayers with you guys and the Wix team. Maybe just on self-creator, talking about getting back to double-digit growth, how much of that can you control versus waiting on the macro? You know, anything that you can call like technology or maybe even just marketing-wise to -- you know, that you control to get that growth back to double digits?

Nir Zohar -- President and Chief Operating Officer

Hey, Bernie. It's Nir. So, I think, you know, on the self-creators, obviously, macro environment is something we cannot control and we don't anticipate to control. But we do believe that a lot of our product innovation is toward generating that growth in any environment.

And obviously, you know, if there's a recovery, that can be even a plus to that growth. From what we've seen already, first and foremost, I think that the AI innovation that we are aiming for, and Avishai just explained how does the AI drives conversion, and we have -- you know, this is the first milestone or a first part of a much deeper and wide product around AI and the creation for self-creators that we plan. Obviously, that improvement in conversion is -- can be a big driver for growth. And marketing is something that follows product.

So, you know, if the conversion improves, then, obviously, we can consider what more do we want to do in terms of the marketing toward self-creators. But from that standpoint alone, we think there's a significant potential for growth. The other side of it is the business solutions. OK.

The business solutions, although they're growing much faster on the partners' side, they are also growing significantly on the self-creators' side. And we've seen that both on the side of GPV and growth in adoption of selling and e-commerce platforms, whether it's stores or scheduling or restaurants or hotels, and we have -- or events. And we have a very wide variety, which is part of -- a big part of our strength. So, the GPV growth is definitely a driver there, as well as the -- as other solutions that are more business solutions, you know, eco -- email marketing, Google advertising, etc.

So, our belief is yes, we can drive it if that's in our control and hopefully recovery will come on top of it.

Bernie McTernan -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Understood. And then just to follow up on Wix Studios, I know it's really early days, but adoption is higher than expected. Anything you can comment just in terms of like tangibly what you're seeing, whether it's the partners, you know, being more efficient or do you think you're taking share of their workload? Just we'd love just to get some more tangibles in terms of just like exactly what's happening as the adoption occurs of Wix Studios.

Avishai Abrahami -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think that there's a variety. There are many different kinds of partners that are using Wix Studio. And I think the -- when you look at more of the freelancers or the people that do it part-time, then it is just a more familiar user interface. It is very similar to a lot of design software.

So, traditional design software users know how to use that. It's very easy for you to adopt to Wix Studio. And then because of the power of the AI tools, you can create very strong, very professional websites because the AI will continue and finish for you the things that would normally require you to specialize in different variations of web designs. In the case of the more professional companies where they -- what we're seeing is that the way we built it is that it enables you to finish things very quickly in kind of a sketch mode and then take that sketch mode and make it into a real live websites while having the ability to go really below the hood into the CSS, into the code, and change it to the exact specification that you want.

What it means is that, overall, in terms of an operation, you save a tremendous amount of time, you can do things that before that would require you to hire very expensive people to do these specific things. And then -- so the overall thing is they increase efficiency while even going into making better projects. So, we're seeing different values to the different kind of partners, of course.

Operator

Stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from Ken Wong with Oppenheimer and Company.

Ken Wong -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Ken, go ahead with your question.

Ken Wong -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Thank you for taking my question. Obviously, I wanted to touch on the Intuit Mailchimp agreement. I think the earlier press releases seem to lean largely toward utilizing their CRM, their marketing tools. You know, you mentioned it's a bilateral agreement.

Can you help us understand kind of how much of a commitment there is to potentially using the Wix website builder? And then just following up on the shift to kind of shorter duration B2B deals, I mean, should we assume the same level of exclusivity with these partners going forward? Yeah, any comments on those two would be great.

Nir Zohar -- President and Chief Operating Officer

Hey, Ken. It's Nir. I'll tackle the first Intuit question and then hand it over to Lior. So, I think, you know, in terms of what we intend to do together on the Mailchimp side and maybe other -- also other functions on the Intuit portfolio, first, I think it's -- what's very interesting for us is from the conversations we've had with their fantastic team over the last few quarters, it's very clear that there's a lot of overlap in terms of the profile of the Wix users and the Intuit users but very little overlap in terms of the offering, meaning that we are complementing each other in many ways and in many different places.

The idea is -- for us is to map these places and start hooking up the user flow in a way that will be as seamless as possible for the end customer but will be able to deliver the core values of Wix and the core value of Intuit, of Mailchimp to the best possible way and the best possible experience for the end customer. It means, from our standpoint, that eventually we will have better products offering, you know, where they are spending a lot of efforts and we're not, and they'll have better -- or much better offering and, you know, the digital presence and the creation tools that where we're spending a lot and they're not. And the combined upside will be very -- you know, a very healthy experience for the end user who will be willing to pay for more services. So, you know, our hope is we're going to generate something here which is a win, win, win, you know, Intuit, Wix, and the -- obviously and most importantly, the customers and the users.

Lior, do you want to take the B2B?

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Sure. So, Ken, to your question, there is no change in the type of the arrangements, meaning that if we have exclusivity, it will remain exclusive. I believe that, you know, the only change is about the fact that we will not recognize as booking anything that is beyond one year.

I believe that it's, first of all, more conservative. Second, there's no need. I believe that, you know, we have the best product right now in the market to serve partners. They want to bring the power of Wix to their customers, and we are the best alternative, you know, in order to do that.

I think that it's also saving them R&D cash, R&D money and provide them with the best solution. So, this is something that we'll continue. The second reason, obviously, why it doesn't make sense to recognize as booking, you know, any commission that is longer than one year is because of the lumpiness of this business. You can have a huge agreement in one quarter.

The other -- in the following quarter, there's no other -- no huge agreement. So, it's kind of, you know, making this business kind of lumpy between the quarter, and it doesn't make sense. And in any case, it doesn't involve any impact on revenue. So, I believe that that would be, you know, the best decision.

And secondly, you know, it's opened more -- larger TAM for us because then you don't negotiate on the commitment, you negotiate on the essence, on what is more important in order to make this partnership successful.

Ken Wong -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Stand by for our final question. Our final question will come from Mark Zgutowicz with the Benchmark Company. Mark, please go ahead with your question.

Mark Zgutowicz -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

Thank you and good afternoon. Just a follow-up on the gross margin question. Just curious how much more runway you have over the next 12 months on customer care leverage there and how meaningful that's been in terms of driving gross margin leverage versus, you know, other lever points like hosting efficiencies. And then the second question, just curious how meaningful was the B2B partnership contribution to 3Q partners revenue and any expectations as you look at into '24 on that -- in that regard? Thanks.

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

So, I'll start with the first question. I'm not going to provide details about, you know, how more efficient we can be with care. It's always the case. By the way, we always look for more ways to be and more means to be more efficient.

I did mention that we are going to see some contribution and some more efficiency around gross margin next year, but it can be also from the fact that we are more efficient in payments. We are more profitable in payments as we scale up this business. And obviously, there will be more cases where we can drive efficiency. So, of course, we are going to do that.

But I'm not going to go into the details of it. With regard to the contribution of partners of the B2B partnership for this year, so, of course, it was more significant than last year. And, you know, it's a SaaS business, as any other SaaS business. So, it will be more significant in the following years.

This is like the nature of it. But I must say that most of the improvement that we see now, partners business is actually coming from the fact that we are getting more and more agencies. I did mention many times in the past that we see that as like the most -- the strongest growth driver that we have, it's mostly coming from more and more agencies joining Wix and the compounding effect of it.

Mark Zgutowicz -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

Thanks much. It's helpful.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 0 minutes

Call participants:

Emily Liu -- Investor Relations

Avishai Abrahami -- Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Nir Zohar -- President and Chief Operating Officer

Lior Shemesh -- Chief Financial Officer

Trevor Young -- Barclays -- Analyst

Ygal Arounian -- Citi -- Analyst

Andrew Boone -- JMP Securities -- Analyst

Chris Zhang -- UBS -- Analyst

Bernie McTernan -- Needham and Company -- Analyst

Ken Wong -- Oppenheimer and Company -- Analyst

Mark Zgutowicz -- The Benchmark Company -- Analyst

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