Navan’s SaaS Metrics from its S-1 IPO Filing
Navan’s IPO was yesterday. The NASDAQ-listed company offers a travel, payments, and expense management platform for businesses, which is a $185 billion market opportunity (TAM). It was founded in 2015 by Ariel Cohen, the company’s CEO and Chairperson, and Illan Twig, Navan’s CTO, with its original name of TripActions. Over the past twelve months, the company generated over $600 million in revenue from more than 10,000 customers, achieving a 32% year-over-year growth rate.
In this article, we will analyze the SaaS metrics that Navan lists in its S-1 filing and compare its approach to the way others calculate:
Background on Navan
Navan is a leader in the corporate travel management software market, enabling employees to quickly and easily book travel and finance teams to enforce policies. Navan offers an extensive inventory of flights, hotels, trains, rental cars, and black cars for travelers to choose from. Using the Navan app, employees can change travel dates, add luggage, switch seats, or cancel trips. Unlike traditional travel agencies, employees can earn miles and loyalty points when booking on Navan.
Navan also offers expense reporting software that enables employees to make purchases with virtual credit cards, submit reimbursement requests, and scan supporting documentation or receipts. Expense reimbursements are deposited in the employee’s bank account via a payroll run or a separate ACH transaction.
Prior to its IPO filing, Navan raised a total of $2.2 billion in funding across 16 different rounds, involving 25 different investors. More than half of the capital came in the form of debt, raised over five rounds from Greenoaks, Silicon Valley Bank, Coatue, and Goldman Sachs. Navan’s most recent equity round was a $300 million Series G in October 2022, which was a mix of equity and structured capital led by Coatue. Early stage investors included Zeev and Lightspeed Venture Partners, who funded the Seed through Series C rounds.
How Navan Generates Revenue
Navan’s SaaS metrics are closely aligned with the company’s revenue model. Navan monetizes each customer’s travel experience with four different revenue streams:
- Travel Bookings – Navan’s corporate customers pay a per-trip or per-transaction fee each time an employee books an airline flight, hotel stay, rental car, or train ticket.
- Supplier Commissions – In addition to the travel booking fee, Navan also earns fees from suppliers for each trip – airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies. It has a revenue-sharing arrangement that includes commissions based on the dollar value of bookings.
- Expense Management – Navan’s expense management software has a traditional subscription pricing model in which customers pay a per-user per-month fee for access to the application.
- Payment Fees – Navan also has an arrangement with its payment partners (issuing banks and processors) in which it earns fees based on the dollar volume of spend transacted on its platform.
Unlike many SaaS companies, Navan does not report on annual recurring revenue (ARR). This makes sense when you consider that three out of four of the company’s offerings utilize variable pricing. Travel bookings have a per-transaction usage-based pricing model. Supplier commissions and payments are revenue-sharing models based on the percentage of dollar value processed on the platform. Only the expense management application has a traditional SaaS pricing model with fixed monthly fees.
How Navan Counts Active Customers
Navan reported over 10,000 customers in its S-1 filing. The company offered the following definition of an active customer:
“We define an active customer as a customer that has transacted on the Navan platform six or more times in the 12 months preceding the measurement date and that has generated any form of usage-based revenue from a user’s booking on our platform during this period. A single company or organization with multiple divisions, segments, or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single customer, even though we may enter into agreements with multiple parties within that company or organization.”
Customer count is the most widely reported metric by publicly traded SaaS companies. However, many adjust the definition to exclude certain market segments (e.g., small businesses) and contract categories (e.g., monthly plans). Navan reports on “active customers,” which must meet two criteria over the prior twelve months to be included in the count:
1) Generated usage-based revenue from bookings on the platform
2) Performed six or more transactions
Navan offers a freemium plan, which enables companies to experience its application without locking into long-term contracts. The “Navan Business” plan is free for companies up to 300 employees; however, the expense reporting capabilities are limited to just five free users.
These types of product-led growth strategies help to accelerate new customer acquisition. However, freemium plans also result in customers who register but are not regular users of the platform. The “active customers” metric allows Navan to exclude small business accounts with infrequent bookings from its reporting.
Also noteworthy is that Navan’s active customer count consolidates the accounts of companies with multiple business units, product lines, or geographic regions that may have separate billing or contractual relationships. Many SaaS companies do not consider this type of parent-child relationship in their customer count, but instead report on the raw number of contracted or billable customers.
How Navan Calculates Gross Booking Volume
Navan reported $7.6 billion in gross booking volume over the last 12 months, which represents a 34% year-over-year growth rate. It is important to note that Navan’s Gross Booking Volume metric is not the same as the topline revenue reported on the company’s income statement. Gross bookings represent the dollar value of travel services purchased on the platform by end-customers for airline flights, hotel accommodations, rental car fees, and train tickets. Customers purchased gross bookings of $7.6 billion on Navan’s platform for travel services, from which Navan generated $613 million in revenues. In other words, Navan’s revenues were about 8% of gross bookings.
“We define GBV as the total amount paid for valid bookings on our platform, measured on a booked basis and inclusive of total price, taxes, and fees, and adjusted for cancellations and refunds.
We generate GBV through hotel, flight, car, and rail bookings, along with usage of our Meetings and Events, VIP, and Bleisure offerings by our customers.
We expand GBV by growing our customer base, managing more business travel spend on our platform, increasing our payment volume, and introducing new offerings to address different types of business travel.”
There are a few things to note about Navan’s GBV metric. First, gross bookings do include the taxes and fees associated with the airline tickets, hotel stays, and car rentals, which increases the total dollar value reported. Many public companies do not include taxes or fees in these types of gross bookings metrics. Second, Navan does adjust for cancellations and refunds. If a trip is booked and then later cancelled or refunded, it is removed from the gross bookings volume, resulting in a more accurate number. Many SaaS companies do not back out refunds and credits from these types of metrics, which can be misleading to investors.
How Navan Calculates Payment Volume
Navan reported $3.8 billion in payment volume over the last 12 months, which represents an 18% year-over-year growth. It is important to note that Navan’s Payment Volume metric is not the same as the revenue reported on the company’s income statement. Payment volume represents the dollar value of travel purchased on Navan-issued corporate cards.
“We define payment volume as the aggregate dollar amount of spend through Navan issued cards, settled for a given period and net of any chargebacks, cancellations, or refunds. Our payment volume grows as we increase adoption and usage of our Corporate Payments offering, where we support and issue our own cards.”
Navan does not specify whether it includes taxes, fees, or duties in its payment volume metric. However, it does state that any chargebacks, cancellations, and refunds issued for purchases made on the company’s branded cards are removed from the payment amount reported to investors.
See examples of how other SaaS and fintech companies report on payment volume metrics such as Gross Merchandise Value.
Learn More about SaaS Metrics
