Copperleaf Technologies Inc

TSX:CPLF

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good afternoon, and welcome to Copperleaf's Fourth Quarter and Year-end Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This is being recorded on Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

Your hosts today are Judi Hess, Chief Executive Officer of Copperleaf and Chris Allen, the Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, I am required to provide the following statement respecting forward-looking information. During the call today, the company will make forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions, and therefore, subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.

The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements, except as required by law. You can read about these risks and uncertainties in regulatory filings that were filed earlier today. Also, the commentary today will include adjusted financial measures, which are non-IFRS measures. These should be considered as a supplement to, and not a substitute for IFRS financial measures. Reconciliations between the 2 can be found in the company's regulatory documents, which are available on sedar.com, or on our website.

In addition, commentary today will include key performance indicators that help evaluate the business, measure performance, identify trends affecting the business, formulate business plan and make strategic decisions. Such key performance indicators may be included in a manner different than similar key performance indicators that are used by other company.

And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Judi Hess. Please go ahead.

[Judi Hess, executive]

Thank you, Sylvae, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining me, and Chris Allen, Copperleaf's CFO, on our first ever year-end conference call. Now before we begin our prepared remarks, we would like to express our concern and support for the people of Ukraine who have demonstrated extraordinary courage in the face of an attack on their homeland.

We are deeply heartbroken by the events that are transpiring. In response to the ongoing conflict, Copperleaf has focused its Random Acts of Delight, or RAD efforts, on fundraising for the Canadian Red Cross, which is providing immediate and ongoing relief for people impacted by the war in Ukraine. I am very proud of our team who stepped up in an extraordinary way to support Ukrainians with this initiative.

On today's call, I will make opening remarks before passing the call over to Chris to review the financial results in detail. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions.

I'm pleased to report that fiscal 2021 was a record year for Copperleaf. We reported $69.3 million in revenue, a 56% increase over the prior year. Annual recurring revenue increased 39% to $36.8 million at December 31, 2021. And we ended the year with a $101.9 million backlog, up 47% compared to the prior year. The phenomenal growth we achieved in 2021 was driven by our best-in-class enterprise decision analytics software, supported by our go-to-market strategy, which delivered 116% net revenue retention.

Copperleaf is a leader in a large and expanding new market for decision analytics, with significant potential to increase penetration of our total addressable market and attract new clients. Our growth outlook for 2022 is supported by a record backlog, sustained tailwind for Decision Analytics and a broader and deeper pipeline for our business than ever before.

As a result, we intend to continue to invest in brand awareness, thought leadership, our partner ecosystem, market development and our powerful marketing technology stack to drive our sales pipeline. Copperleaf is focused on delivering exceptional solutions that deliver a high return on investment, optimize execution and accuracy and enhanced risk management.

We believe our product-focused growth strategy enables us to enhance our offerings to remain at the forefront of Decision Analytics and meet the needs of our diverse client base. We continue to focus our research and development efforts on adding new features and solutions as well as enhancing the functionality and ease of use of our platform, and investing to expand into new industry sectors.

Throughout 2021, Copperleaf delivered over 80 new innovative features to our client base. We recently launched an updated version of our product suite, which included the powerful fiscal scenario parameters feature. This feature democratizes complex scenario analysis, and enables our clients to quickly and easily add new advanced financial metrics to reach deeper insights and reduce the need for further manual scenario analysis.

Today, most companies continue to rely on outdated methods for decision-making, often using Excel spreadsheets and a myriad of solutions, which lack the critical capabilities and scale necessary for effective decision-making and optimized investment plan management. At Copperleaf, our best-in-class decision analytics capabilities continue to unearth problems that our clients need solved, which also consistently provide us with the ability to deliver more value to our existing clients.

We intend to continue to invest in our product development capabilities to extend our suite of products to grow within existing accounts and to gain new clients worldwide. Throughout 2021, Copperleaf's Alliance Ecosystem continued to gain traction as partners built their Copperleaf practice areas, which they are continuing to invest in and expand. We saw a large increase in partner pursuits during fiscal 2021 and form 2 new strategic alliances in the year with Guide House and Black & Beach Management Consulting LLC.

Our global partner ecosystem enables us to accelerate our expansion to new geographies and industry sectors, while reducing client acquisition costs and sales cycles over the long term. Over 50% of our bookings were partner influenced in 2021, and we're excited as we continue to build pipeline with these partners and hone our working relationships and deal execution.

The majority of our clients have expanded the scope and use of their solution across their organization as they quickly realized the power of the Copperleaf's platform and the business value it delivers. We believe the success of this business model is centered on our ability to deliver significant value in a very short time frame.

In 2021, we delivered 116% NRR, demonstrating our ability to retain and expand revenue from our client base over time. We also believe that the success of our clients is critical to client retention and expansion, and their referenceability contributes to our new client acquisition efforts.

Towards this end, we ensure that each client has a client success manager, who acts as a trusted adviser and maintains a 3- to 5-year strategic Copperleaf decisions analytics road map for the client. The client success manager also ensures that each client is maturing toward industry best practices and is introduced to all new product services and other community resources available to them through Copperleaf.

We closely monitor the status and strategy of every client account through multiple activities, including surveys, monthly product support check-ins, community events, including our annual summit, Copperleaf Labs engagement, and Community Advisory Board meeting. At Copperleaf, one of our key differentiators is our unrivaled corporate culture that powers our company's success and results in people who care deeply, products that deliver exceptional value, and partnerships that stand the test of time.

Our core values have positioned Copperleaf as one of the best employers in the industry. In 2021, we were named one of British Columbia's top employers for the third consecutive year. Copperleaf was also named one of Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures by Waterstone Human Capital. Waterstone's most admired program recognizes best-in-class Canadian organizations that foster cultures that enhance performance and help sustain a competitive advantage.

And although being recognized for culture is rewarding, we see culture as a key competitive advantage. Maintaining a strong culture that reflects our global team's value has been the most fundamental part of driving employee engagement, client satisfaction, product innovation and company success. In addition, having a great co-created corporate culture helps us to attract and retain employees in a market where employers are competing for top talent relentlessly.

Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2021, and continuing into the first quarter of 2022, Copperleaf has invested in attracting top sales talent and conducting sales enablement activities to raise the effectiveness of our sales teams globally. During this period, the company has successfully attracted new sales executives worldwide and grown the sales and marketing team 41%, which will drive our growth in 2023 and beyond.

I would like to now briefly touch on several highlights that occurred during 2021. On October 14, 2021, Copperleaf closed its initial public offering of common shares. Throughout 2021, the increasing focus on ESG initiatives and the energy transition across our target market sectors helped generate increased interest in Copperleaf's solutions.

As a result, ESG influenced half our sales in 2021 and has contributed to the expansion of our global pipeline. In November 2021, Copperleaf undertook a comprehensive communication campaign in conjunction with COP26, which highlighted how we help our clients operationalize their ESG strategies.

Subsequent to year-end, we announced our fourth U.K. water client, Southeast Water, the company responsible for supplying drinking water to over 2.2 million customers in the South of England. They selected Copperleaf to help enhance their asset decision-making process. Copperleaf created a rapid start solution, specifically with the U.K. water companies in mind that uses a predefined best practice configuration that is aligned with both the ISO 55001 standard and U.K. regulator commitment and outcome delivery incentives, ODIs. This rapid implementation approach will allow Southeast Water to get started with the Copperleaf's solution in just 8 weeks.

Our successes in this area has led to water and wastewater officially becoming core sectors at Copperleaf in 2021, alongside energy. Copperleaf also expanded its footprint in the transportation sector, announcing that both the California Department of Transportation -- Caltrans and National Highways in the U.K. has selected the Copperleaf Decision Analytics solution.

We are confident that the adoption of the Copperleaf's solution by these industry-leading organization in both North America and Europe will help accelerate growth in this new emerging sector. So we believe decision analytics and the solutions we provide address problems faced by companies across multiple sectors in the global economy. One of our key priorities is to expand our vertical reach beyond our current core sectors in critical infrastructure.

We have a dedicated market development team within our workforce, with the expressed goal of selectively evaluating, prioritizing and penetrating new industries with marquee lead clients. We see sustained growth tailwinds in a large untapped market, and Copperleaf a broader and deeper pipeline than at any point in the company's history.

I will now turn the call over to Chris to review our fourth quarter financial results in more detail.

[Chris Allen, executive]

Thanks, Judi. Good afternoon, everyone. Very pleased to report that our fourth quarter and full year results delivered strong progress across our financial metrics. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $21.8 million, an increase of 33% from $16.4 million in the comparative year. For the year ended December 31, 2021, we generated record revenue of $69.3 million, a 56% increase from $44.5 million in the prior year, driven by an increase in new clients and the expansion of existing clients.

Subscription revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021, was $31.4 million, an increase of 58% from the prior year, and driven by strong bookings performance in Q4 2020 and the first half of 2021. Subscription revenue represented 45% of fiscal 2021 revenue.

Professional services and other revenue for the year ended December 31, 2021, with $25.2 million, an increase of 49% from the prior year, and this revenue represented 36% of fiscal 2021 revenue. Perpetual software licenses for the year ended December 31, 2021, with $12.7 million, an increase of 63% from the prior year as we closed a higher percent perpetual deals than forecasted.

We continue to see period-to-period variability due to our large client contracts and timing of individual deals in addition to mix as our client base continues to transition towards us.

Our annual recurring revenue at December 31, 2021, were $36.8 million, an increase of $10.4 million or 39% compared to December 31, 2020. The expansion within our client base and our strong renewal history is further illustrated by our net revenue retention rate of 116%. Our continued sales momentum has resulted in revenue backlog growth of 47% at year-end or $101.9 million compared to $69.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2020.

Gross profit for the fourth quarter was $17.3 million, a 29% increase from $13.4 million in the prior year, representing a gross margin of 79%. Gross profit for the year ended December 31, 2021, was $54.9 million, a 69% increase from $32.4 million in the prior year, representing a gross margin of 79% and as compared to a gross margin of 73% for the year ended December 31, 2020.

The year-over-year growth reflects an increase in revenue, successful remote delivery, resulting in less travel for the full year as well as an improvement in utilization. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.3 million for the quarter compared to $3.6 million for Q4 2020. And for the year ended December 31, 2021, adjusted EBITDA was $2.1 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $5.2 million in the prior year, again, driven by the increase in revenue, reduced travel and higher utilization across our client experience team.

Net income for the quarter was $0.2 million or $0.00 per diluted share compared to a net income of $2.2 million or $0.03 per diluted share in Q4 2020. Net loss for the year was $6.5 million or a loss of $0.24 per diluted -- basic and diluted share compared to a net loss of $9.1 million or a loss of $0.60 per basic and diluted share in the prior year.

We finished the year with $161.4 million in cash compared to $15.9 million in cash at the end of fiscal 2020, which places us in a strong financial position to build on our advantage and further penetrate the decision analytics market, which is still in the early stages of a long-term growth cycle. We believe we're at an inflection point in our $12 billion market based on multiple external forces.

With the capital raised from our IPO, we're in an excellent position to execute on our multifaceted growth strategy, which includes pursuing an aggressive client acquisition strategy focused on our traditional core markets, continuing to expand geographically and across our new infrastructure sectors, investing in R&D to maintain our technology leadership position and uncovering new product opportunities that leverage AI, ML, cloud, and next-generation technologies, continuing to develop our vibrant community and expand our thought leadership position to accelerate adoption of our solutions and investing to expand in our global Alliance Ecosystem and deliver more value to our clients through our partners.

These investments, along with strong industry tailwinds, will help us to expand our addressable market and continue our strong growth momentum.

That concludes a detailed review of our financial results. I'll now hand the call over to Sylvae and open it up to questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will be from Bhavan Suri at William Blair.

[Dylan Becker, analyst]

This is Dylan on for Bhavan. Congrats on the quarter and end to the year. A couple of high-level questions from me here. I guess maybe first, starting around kind of the market familiarity around decision analytics and willingness to adopt kind of SaaS solutions. I guess where do you guys see as you're going into market with these client conversations relative to kind of that evangelization period, right? So I mean how much of it is that core market awareness and familiarity with the existing models you have and getting that conversion from these legacy systems?

And then maybe again, as these mature and how much, I guess, more education is there in bringing that familiarity to -- this is a significantly more efficient operation through that decisioning process?

[Judi Hess, executive]

Well, thank you very much for the question. This is Judi. So I would say that we have a very good market awareness of Copperleaf, and what we can do in our core sectors globally in most regions. I think that we have built that through our thought leadership and the brand awareness that we've created. I think one thing I would always say is there's always a bit of a discovery in education process on the art of the possible with our Copperleaf Decision Analytics solution. And I think that we are able to penetrate the market maturity layers as we go.

So you initially get those early adopters and people that are really looking for these solutions. And then you continue your education as you go through the layers within those segments of maturity in that market. But there are many, many forces driving the maturity, not just Copperleaf. Of course, we have our Alliance Ecosystem driving that as well.

And I think the whole digital transformation and the available data is also driving that awareness. I would definitely say, as I mentioned, that each region is at different levels of maturity. And what we do is we basically tune our approach as we learn more about the markets that we're in, both regionally and in various sectors. So more mature clients obviously need much less education, and they're really pursuing these solutions aggressively and actively. And there are some who are not yet quite up that maturity curve.

And of course, that's our job then to advance their understanding and connect them to appropriate existing clients that we have to help them gain that knowledge that they need and be confident that they can actually start delivering much better performance with solutions such as Copperleaf.

So I would say the bottom line is that it varies between region and client maturity, but in our core sectors, we have, I would say, very good awareness from my perspective.

[Dylan Becker, analyst]

Got it. That's super helpful, Judi. And then maybe if I could follow up on that as well, too. You touched on, again, the familiarity in those core markets. How valuable is that domain expertise, right? So establishing these models that are applicable to effectively nearly every company that's addressing whether it's water, electric, wastewater, et cetera.

How valuable is that domain expertise, not only as you think about building out the incremental functionality as well, but driving that value proposition for a customer that's maybe on that kind of weighing the decisioning process and the ability to drive that referenceability over time on top of that, I guess?

[Judi Hess, executive]

Yes. So I think whenever we're entering a new market where we have clients already in our existing markets, the key thing is to find those clients that are really those market leaders in those segments. So obviously, in the core segments, we have that list of -- and those initial clients that have really had the vision and are willing to work with Copperleaf to realize that vision and how they want to create this robust, value-based decision-making approach in their organization and undertake this digital transformation.

This effectively then gives us the models and that domain experience that you're mentioning that are applicable to that segment. And that applicability covers other clients as well and actually, it's very high. As we add more and more clients, we continue always to refine our models and domain experience looking at new opportunities within those particular segments.

But these initial models and these models that we continue to refine, provide a great starting point to get clients up and running quickly and are very transferable. I gave an example in the water sector. So as we mentioned, once we get -- we have this rapid start where we've configured a solution with that domain experience in that particular sector in that particular geography. So we've done this configuration and then it's much easier for us to go with that configuration and get clients up and running in as little as 8 weeks as 1 example that I did provide earlier.

So this shows the power of establishing credibility in that domain, having those reference clients to be able to look at -- have new client connect you and get that input from and as well the transferability of the models from 1 client to the next.

And as we continue to grow in those core sectors and those new sectors and those emerging sectors, the more clients we have as reference clients, the faster it is to bring new clients on board because they really are our best foot in the door. Just talk to one of our existing clients in this sector and you'll understand the power of Copperleaf's solution.

[Dylan Becker, analyst]

Yes, that's super helpful. I mean definitely contributing to that flywheel dynamic that you mentioned. I guess, if I could squeeze in one more. I guess, going back to that data component as well, right? So that seems incredibly valuable, not as it just relates to that core upfront decisioning, but also maintaining and being able to adapt in real time and analyze a portfolio as it progresses throughout an asset's life cycle, right?

So I guess, is that an area that provides incremental value for customers or an organization? Does that come up in the decision process? It seems like an area that's massively valuable for these companies. But, yes, how much of the ongoing real-time analytical capabilities is going into maybe that purchasing decision outside of just: hey, here we can make your initial upfront decisioning that much better?

[Judi Hess, executive]

Thank you. So yes, that is really important. And this data that we collect, and our ability to use that data with other clients is really important to be able to analyze asset strategies, and to be able to look at how we'll be able to meet the goals over the medium and the longer term with this data. Having the ability to analyze alternative approaches, actually, there are many, many ways to determine how to invest to deliver the highest value, and optimize what you're doing in those asset strategies to meet the outcome a client would be looking to achieve. Again, I would say that in the case of this data, it is sector and regionally dependent and can vary by client.

So as you model these asset strategies, you have a certain amount -- you need to have a certain amount of good asset data. And when someone doesn't have that data, we can help them provide some of that data. But we can continue to collect that data. And as we get more data, we call it community asset modeling. And as we get more of that data, we can continue to digitalize their businesses.

And this will have -- and then we'll have the data needed to really support a robust asset strategy analysis going forward. And if clients don't have that data yet, or aren't ready for that yet, Copperleaf's portfolio is actually an excellent way to start the journey for those clients and prospects that don't have all the data they need to drive the asset life cycle strategy. But the more data we have, and the more clients we have, continues to help enrich that for everyone.

[Operator]

Your next question will be from Koji Ikeda at Bank of America.

[Koji Ikeda, analyst]

Just a couple for me here. Just the first one, I just want to be absolutely clear here, kind of in the Russia-Ukraine region, I just wanted to ask you the question, is there any sort of revenue exposure? I don't think there is, but I wanted to just make sure that's out there. And is there any sort of a pipeline -- was there any sort of pipeline activity out there in Russian exposure?

And then also maybe broadly, overall demand environment in EMEA, too, thinking about the gas and the oil and the electricity deals that you're thinking about over there?

[Judi Hess, executive]

Yes. Okay. So in terms of -- thanks for your question. In terms of Russia, we have no existing or pending business in Russia. We don't plan to have any. We have nothing in our pipeline for these Russian owned or operated companies or in Ukraine either at this time. So that's not a region that we had been focusing on. So we won't see an impact on the business in those areas as you suggested.

When you look at EMEA overall, I mean, that depends what happens with this war, obviously. If this continues to grow and expand, that could be a problem for us, that would be a problem for everyone, actually. So we don't foresee that right now. But of course, everyone will have to continue to monitor what happens in Europe in that area.

But if we look at oil and gas, particularly, you called out oil and gas and also electricity, we are seeing continued interest from oil and gas as well as, of course, energy companies and electricity companies in Europe. Actually, that's a very active market for us, and we've been doing relatively well in the regions that we're already in there.

We do expect energy security type issues to maybe adjust the priorities of some of these companies in the near term. We're also working -- Europe is very focused on ESG and the energy transition as well. And of course, these things have interplay. But the fantastic thing about Copperleaf is that our solution is very flexible. And it enables investments for energy security as well as ESG as well as business as usual.

And it really lets our clients be agile in the face of changing priorities and being able to quickly redeploy capital in the near, medium and longer term for the planning. So I think that this just gives you that insight that, for us, it actually improves our outlook because we can really make agile decisions and help our clients make agile decisions as external events happen and priorities change.

[Koji Ikeda, analyst]

Got it. And maybe just one follow-up for Chris. Kind of looking at the press release, and you mentioned in the commentary, net revenue retention of $116 million, a good number there, but slightly down from the third quarter. How do we think about that really kind of balance against that strong backlog growth there?

[Chris Allen, executive]

Excellent. Koji, thanks for the question. As we said before, obviously, we have tremendous room for expansion within our existing client base and have specific sales resources focused on doing just that, the client success managers that Judi mentioned earlier. As we've said in the past, generally targeting around 120% net revenue retention, but our expansions, as we said in the past, can also vary from period to period, again, just due to the size and timing of individual deals since our expansions can be quite large as well. So no churn in the business. It's all having to do with timing of expansions and the size of them.

[Operator]

Next question will be from Gavin Fairweather at Cormark.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

I wanted to just start on the transportation sector. It's been encouraging to see your early success there, both in road and rail. With a few kind of great reference clients, can you just kind of speak now to your business development efforts and pipeline and maybe overall expectations for this vertical in the years ahead?

[Judi Hess, executive]

Okay. Thank you so much. Yes. No, we're really quite excited about the transportation sector. We have these early successes, as you mentioned. In terms of clients, we have, as I'm sure you're aware, well, I assume you're aware on the rail side and network rail in the U.K. and that's rail infrastructure. And we're continuing to work on our pipeline in Europe for rail infrastructure, which is, of course, critical there. In addition, we are also looking at roads and highways across actually many geographies and also transit, which is another one that we're also looking at and is growing our pipeline.

We're also looking at partners that specifically sell into these particular verticals of transportation, and we do really see that as we go into the future, this -- our focus is to create transportation as a core segment for Copperleaf. We consider it an emergent sector right now. And what we need to do to get it into core is to add a number of other clients and make sure that we can build out everything we need to be able to globally drive sales in any jurisdiction.

Right now, when you're an emerging sector at Copperleaf, which transportation is, we have certain regions and certain resources that are focused in that area, but it's not sort of like a wide approach on a very wide approach yet. But we're seeing consistent great pipeline growth in this area and we do expect it to be a core segment into the future for Copperleaf. That's great. And just secondly for Copperleaf.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

That's great. I mean the number of deals in Q4 looks like a bit more perpetual than you're expecting. Can you touch on maybe the mix there between perpetual versus SaaS, and how that compares to your pipeline at the moment?

[Chris Allen, executive]

I can jump in on that one. So yes, as I mentioned in the commentary, we had a few perpetual deals, slightly higher ratio of perpetual deals than we anticipated. But again, I mean, that's really due to the typical period-to-period variability that we see across all of our metrics due to large client contracts, longer sales cycles and the timing of those individual deals, in addition to mix since we have clients that still require perpetual business models.

So I think it's just a natural -- the natural variability that we see period-to-period. Overall, we are moving aggressively in the direction of selling SaaS over perpetual deals continuously. I mean that's 100% how we've directed our sales team and are incentivizing our sales team and the pipeline reflects that. I mean, we're really going after SaaS.

Of course, there are regions and sectors that may take a little bit longer to transition to SaaS, but we're convinced that will happen over time.

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

That's great. And just lastly for me. If I look at your OpEx, up maybe modestly from Q3 by kind of exit some of the go public costs. Maybe you can just update us on your hiring efforts and headcount growth. and how you think about that in the quarters ahead here?

[Chris Allen, executive]

Sure. I can...

[Judi Hess, executive]

Okay. Go ahead, Chris. Sorry.

[Chris Allen, executive]

Yes, I can jump in on that one as well. So as we mentioned that actually during the IPO and the Q3 call, a good portion -- or the reason for the capital is growth. And that remains our strategy 100%, obviously. In fact, as Judi mentioned in her commentary, from the end of Q3 to date, basically, we've managed to grow the size of the sales and marketing team by 41%.

And that's absolutely our #1 focus as far as our organic growth that we forecast in the foreseeable future is the sales and marketing teams, the delivery teams, I guess, in each of the regions as we look out to growing the pipeline and really growing in those regions. That's followed by R&D. So again, we expect to see big growth in the R&D team as we continue to innovate and of course, the overall infrastructure of the organization. So -- in G&A as well, to a certain degree, just to support the scaling efforts of the organization going forward.

[Operator]

Any further questions, Gavin?

[Gavin Fairweather, analyst]

That's it for me.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your next question will be from Thanos Moschopoulos at BMO Capital Markets.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Judi, can you provide some more color on the partner channel. So you alluded to the fact that a growing proportion of your pipeline is partner-influenced, you've having more partners. But just over the last 3 months or 6 months, just quite more color in terms of what you're seeing as far as partner engagements, how those partner pipelines are evolving and the resources that partners are dedicating towards their corporate practices?

[Judi Hess, executive]

Thanks, Thanos. So yes, on partners. So actually, we're pretty excited about the momentum we're seeing with our partners. We have started to see them really scaling up their practices around Copperleaf based on the opportunity that they see for themselves, of course, our Copperleaf solution and driving that into their installed base, which is really exciting for us.

So if I look back into 2021, the majority of our deals are being influenced by a partner. And that's over 50% of our bookings in 2021. Of course, at this exact time, we're still building these relationships and a cadence for initiating and closing deals that will result in shorter sales cycles in the long term.

We're also seeing partners planning on increasing the size of their teams dedicated to Copperleaf, and that's very exciting for us as well. And some of those partners are planning teams that are in the, let's say, 10 to 50 people sizes into the future, which is very exciting for us. And we are working very closely and much better with building these relationships and being able to find that cadence.

And in the short term, I must say, we've kind of introduced an additional party to the contracting process, which can make things take a little bit longer as we work with these partners. But the great thing and the upside that we've seen is, in some cases, this has actually led to deal expansion for us and the partner being able to deliver more value to the client. And so that can actually be a great advantage, for the clients, for the partners and for Copperleaf.

We're really looking at this as a real win-win, and we're just seeing a wonderful uptick and an expansion of our pipeline due to these partner relationships that we're building.

[Thanos Moschopoulos, analyst]

Great. And as far as the implementation process, you expect to be in a position to hand over more of the services work to your partners over the next year or 2? Or might that take some more time beyond that just in terms of the trading required?

[Judi Hess, executive]

I think when you think of our partners, and I -- the whole idea is to make sure that they are taking over additional services and creating value for our clients, so I do see that happening -- well, we see that happening now, but we also see that happening into the future. And a number of our partners are working with us, they're getting -- one of our partners just requested to train 15 more people in their organization on Copperleaf so that they can be confident to be able to do a number of these things. And we will continue to offer partner training for these partners to make sure that they are skilled at doing this. We really want to deliver exceptional value to our clients and provide them with extraordinary experiences, and we want to make sure that our partners have the skills and training available to them so that they can also deliver that same level of service to our clients. And so yes, we've been training them, and we do expect them to take more and more of the services out into the future in the next -- in the years to come.

[Operator]

And at this time, Ms. Hess, we have no further questions. Please proceed.

[Judi Hess, executive]

Okay. Well, thank you so much for that. I want to thank everyone for joining us today. We are very excited about our ongoing business progress, tremendous opportunity that we have in front of us. and we look forward to providing future updates as the year progresses. Thank you so much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.