Investor Relations

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Maintained by:

Brian Robins

@brobins

On this page

• Earnings Release Calendar (workback schedule)
  • 5 Weeks Prior - Kick Off & Debrief
  • 4 Weeks Prior
  • 3 Weeks Prior
  • 2 Weeks Prior
  • 1 Week Prior
  • 3 Days Prior
  • 1 Day Prior
  • Day of Earnings
  • Day after Earnings
    • Continuous updates: abridged version of financials and key operating metrics, consensus, and Q&A tracker
• Trading Window
• Quarterly investor update email
• Performance Indicators (assuming publicly traded)
  • Enterprise Value to Sales

Earnings Release Calendar (workback schedule)

Task/Item - Key Contributors

5 Weeks Prior - Kick Off & Debrief

• Flash report to Audit Committee - PAO
• First check-in: debrief and develop key themes for stockholder letter - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO

4 Weeks Prior

• Press release: date of earnings release, access instructions - IR
• Overview of prelim financials and key metrics, CFO topics - IR/CFO/PAO/VP FP&A
• Audit process begins, preliminary financials available - PAO
• Business update & overview of department initiatives (1:1s) - IR/CMO/CRO/CProdO

3 Weeks Prior

• Stockholder letter, v1 - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO
• Opening remarks, v1 - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO
• Q&A document, v1 - IR/PAO/VP FP&A

2 Weeks Prior

• Stockholder letter, v2 - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO
• Opening remarks, v2 - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO
• Q&A document, v2 - IR/CFO/PAO
• Earnings press release, v1 - IR/CFO/CLO
• Update investor presentation - IR/Accounting/FP&A
• Submit documents for external legal review - CLO

1 Week Prior

• Stockholder letter, vF - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO/VP FP&A
• Opening remarks, vF - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO
• Q&A document, vF and simulated Q&A first session - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO
• Audit Committee approval: earnings release, 10-Q/K - PAO/Audit Committee
• Disclosure Committee review all docs and address open comments/issues - Disclosure Committee

3 Days Prior

• Lock documents: stockholder letter, opening remarks, and earnings release
• Share stockholder letter with Audit Committee and CMO
• Read-through opening remarks, simulated Q&A second session - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO/VP FP&A

1 Day Prior

• Final rehearsal of talking points, simulated Q&A third session - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO/VP FP&A

Day of Earnings

• Final Q&A Prep - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO/VP FP&A
• Earning release proof - Finance/Accounting
• Shareholder Letter (tables/talking points) - IR/CEO/CLO/Finance
• NYSE / Nasdaq notification - IR
• Release hits wire - IR
• 8-k filed with SEC - CLO
• Host earnings call - IR/CEO/CFO
• Sell-side analyst callbacks - IR/CEO/CFO/CLO/VP FP&A

Day after Earnings

• Team member company update - GitLab/Internal comms
• File 10-Q
• Buy-side callbacks - IR/CEO/CFO

Continuous updates: abridged version of financials and key operating metrics, consensus, and Q&A tracker

Trading Window

We anticipate that our quarterly trading window will open the third trading day after the announcement of our quarterly results and that it will close again immediately prior to the last four weeks of the fiscal quarter, as indicated by an announcement made by the CLO. However, it is important to note that any quarterly trading window may be cut short if the CLO determines that material nonpublic information exists in such a fashion that it would make trades by directors, employees, and consultants inappropriate.

Quarterly investor update email

We distribute a quarterly investor email, which consists of the following five parts:

1. CEO foreword: This narrative will provide a high level overview of company operations from the most recently ended quarter as well as key initiatives and expectations for upcoming quarters. A curated set of financial highlights and supplemental metrics will also be included in this section.
2. Expectations: We discuss what we are looking forward to, conferences we are attending, and what we are planning in the next month.
3. Financial statements: Income, balance sheet, and cash flow.

We distribute the quarterly investor update approximately five weeks after the close of a fiscal quarter.

The draft email is created in a google doc that is shared in #investor-update on slack. The google doc should not have any html as the document is pasted into an email for distribution by the CEO. All urls should be free of any parentheses or extra characters like a comma.

Performance Indicators (assuming publicly traded)

On a rolling 12-month basis, be among the top quartile of least volatile stocks compared to GitLab's public company peer set consisting of DevOps and software growth firms.

Greater than two-thirds of active, covering sell-side analysts describe the Company the same way we do: conclusions will vary.

Greater than 80% of questions during an earnings call have been anticipated.

Enterprise Value to Sales

Enterprise Value to Sales compares the enterprise value (EV) of a company to its annual sales

Enterprise Value to Sales = Enterprise Value/Annual Sales

Enterprise Value = Market Capitalization + Debt - Cash and Cash Equivalents