RE:Conference CallThis is pretty much all you need to hear/read. Enjoy.
FYI - Laura Needham dropped her price target from $4.5 to $3.5 if that means anything (it doesn't).
Laura Martin
So I have a couple, I'll just ask two, I have 10 but I'll ask two, because that’s the rule. So the first one is, we saw total revenue for the year about 16, it went to 5% growth year-over-year in revenue in the fourth quarter, you're going to go negative revenue according to Elliot just comments. So my question becomes what gives you confidence you can hit your full year number given the decel we've actually seen in the P&L near-term? Let's start there.
Tal Hayek
Yes, there's a few things. So let's talk about Q1. So in Q1 2020, we had one very large seasonal client that did not renew due to agency -- switching agencies and so forth. That was a very large client. We actually isolate that number, we're actually would have seen growth. But putting that aside, we're fairly happy with what's happened Q1, just because what I just mentioned. But on top of that when we talk about the $11 million of investment that we made, and remember 70% of it went into marketing and sales, we haven't made investments in that type of growth. For many, many years, we were really focusing on the EBITDA part. And now that we, number one, we proven that the illumin story resonates with the market. So we're very comfortable making those types of investments in the future. So all that money pouring into marketing and sales is going to accelerate our growth. And because there's a lag time every time you make those types of investments, we see that happening in the second part of the year. So that's now. We’re already seen great results. Number one, from our hiring, we hire great people. And looking at our pipelines and looking at our closed sales, our annual closed sales are -- all the indicators are that we will have that 20% to 25% top line growth this year.
Laura Martin
And then, Elliot, on your comments, I just -- maybe a couple for you. Actually, I'm going to try to cram them onto my second question. I thought what I heard you say, Elliot, is that illumin lowers your year-over-year margin, and I would have guessed that illumin would have increased your margins. Did I misunderstand that about when you said the transition to illumin lowered your net revenue margin?
Elliot Muchnik
I don't believe it actually did, even if that's what I have it came across. But I don't believe you said that, maybe that was a misunderstanding. But illumin has not. We still see this very similar margins across the board. Very confident the underpinnings of our ability to buy media well, and so that hasn't happened yet. We do expect that as we move more into what's outside of a self service that we’ll see a decline in op margins. So you'll see that as a proportion of self serve illumin growth for sure.