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Last edited 2 years ago
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##Revenue_ARR_Receipts
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Added 3 years ago

Hey HugoWally, you're probably sick of me by now but I don't think anyone else has replied yet.  Nice graph again.  In my mind revenue lagging receipts makes sense and is what I would expect for a growing subscription model business.  I'm not sure of their trading terms but typically a customer pays a 12 month subscription upfront.  That is a cash receipt straight up but generally they wouldn't be entitled to show that all as revenue at the same time.  Usually this sort of business would park the subscription on the balance sheet and then amortise the release of it to the P&L over 12 months.  If you look at LiveTiles half year accounts you'll see they showed Other Liabilities on the balance sheet of $15m (current and non-current combined).  Of that $13.5m is disclosed as Unearned Revenue, which are receipts that are yet to be released to the P&L.  There's more analysis you could do here such as analyse the growth of Unearned Revenue over time and sense checking unearned revenue against ARR.  There's no guarantee that all the Unearned Revenue in relation to subscriptions but they might tell you if you ask nicely!

I wouldn't say that it's a conservative treatment.  It's true that sometimes companies will try to argue that once they have invoiced the subscription the work has effectively been done and they can recognise it as revenue upfront.  But I would argue that's a particularly aggressive interpretation and most auditors would be highly sceptical.