Envestnet Inc (ENV) 2017 Q4 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Envestnet Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded.

  • At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Curtis, Division CFO and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

  • Christopher Curtis - Division CFO & Head of IR

  • Thank you, and good afternoon. With me on today's call are Jud Bergman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Pete D'Arrigo, Chief Financial Officer.

  • Our fourth quarter 2017 earnings press release and associated Form 8-K can be found at envestnet.com under the Investor Relations section.

  • During this conference call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP information, including adjusted revenues, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share. This information is not calculated in accordance with GAAP and may be calculated differently than similar non-GAAP information for other companies. Quantitative reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial information to the most directly comparable GAAP information appear in today's press release.

  • During the call, we will also be discussing certain forward-looking information. These discussions are not guarantees of future performance and, therefore, you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause them to differ materially from what we expect. Please refer to our most recent SEC filings as well as our earnings press release, which are available on our website, for more information on factors that could affect these matters.

  • This call is being webcast live and will be available for replay for 1 month on our website.

  • All remarks made during the call are current at the time of the call and will not be updated to reflect subsequent material developments.

  • We will take questions after our prepared remarks. And with that, I will turn the call over to Jud.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you, Chris. I add my own welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining us today.

  • The fourth quarter completed a year of solid organic growth in revenue, adjusted EBITDA and earnings for Envestnet. And it was driven by strong execution and a healthy market environment. As a result of our strong performance in the fourth quarter, we delivered 17% growth in adjusted revenue, 27% growth in adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted earnings per share increased by 25% over the prior year's quarter.

  • For the full year, adjusted revenue increased 18%, adjusted EBITDA grew 30%, and adjusted earnings per share increased 34% over the prior year as we expanded our margins through operating leverage and benefited from the cost synergies realized from previous consolidating acquisitions.

  • For the full year of 2017, advisers with assets under management or administration grew 11%. Accounts per adviser increased nearly 12%. This resulted in account growth of 24%.

  • By the end of 2017, our wealth platform supported nearly 60,000 advisers, an increase of more than 5,000 during the year; almost 7 million investor accounts and nearly $1.4 trillion in adviser-supported assets. These metrics drove record results in revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income per share.

  • Our results were strong across our business, with the Envestnet segment, which includes our enterprise and adviser wealth management offerings, growing revenue 18% over the prior year.

  • The Yodlee segment performed equally well, growing revenue 19%. Both segments expanded margins meaningfully.

  • A year ago, we introduced our goal of making Envestnet the preferred operating system for financial wellness and how Envestnet can help advisers and enterprises deliver better outcomes through this broader lens of opportunity.

  • Financial wellness is a logical extension of the value we have been providing to advisers since day 1. We began as a turnkey asset management platform, providing the software, services and access to investment solutions necessary for fee-based advisers to better serve their clients and for those same advisers to compete effectively against larger firms.

  • We later unbundled our investment management offerings from our platform technology and even later began unbundling certain components of our platform -- for example, performance reporting -- becoming, in the process, the leading unified, open-architecture wealth management platform serving the independent adviser as well as advisers at larger broker-dealers, banks, insurance companies and other financial services firms.

  • Today, thanks to years of effective innovation and deliberate strategic activity, we are offering far more than investment management technology to advisers. Our technology, our investment solutions, data capabilities, including analytics, financial planning and other applications, and the services we provide enable us to deliver on this very important financial wellness opportunity.

  • We believe that for the advice-driven individual, financial wellness has 5 main components: planning, budgeting, investing, managing credit and protecting.

  • To describe each briefly, planning starts with gaining a deep understanding of the client and their long-term and current situation. It includes developing financial plans that achieve short and long-term goals.

  • Budgeting is about evaluating spending patterns relative to income, including understanding sources and timing of cash inflows and outflows.

  • Investing is the central action stemming from a robust financial plan, aiming to have sufficient income in the long term to achieve a client's goals and allocating investment assets among various asset classes, seeking to maximize returns, net of costs, for a given level of risk.

  • Managing credit is essential to a client's financial health when appropriately and opportunistically deployed through loans, mortgages or other sources to help achieve goals in the areas of education, real estate or business.

  • And finally, adviser-assisted guaranteed income and protection products that ensure the security of assets and personal data can play a very key role in meeting long-term goals.

  • Now we are currently and already delivering on much of this financial wellness vision, including the planning, budgeting and investing portions of it. And much of this we've built from the ground-up. Some of these capabilities, we've acquired through transactions like Yodlee or Finance Logix.

  • One example of a customer embracing our broader set of opportunities to serve their clients is Edelman Financial Services. Edelman is one of the nation's largest independent financial planning firms, providing planning and investment management services to nearly 36,000 individuals and families, and managing more than $21.7 billion in assets.

  • Envestnet's platform will support the Edelman managed asset program by providing advanced technology integration that includes comprehensive financial planning tools, unified managed account technology and access to Envestnet's award-winning quantitative portfolios.

  • In addition to the broad capabilities we're already providing customers, like Edelman, another example is Envestnet InVision, our data management solution for enterprises that will be launched at our Adviser Summit this coming May. This offering combines investment data, aggregated consumer data, analytics and performance measurement, and enables large financial institutions to better serve their clients. Also, we are beginning to develop solutions that help enterprises and advisers execute on the managing credit and protection areas of financial wellness.

  • As we look to the future, we're specifically beginning to invest in these and other areas of financial wellness to position ourselves to realize the long-term growth opportunities we see. And this investment activity, we expect, will begin in the second half of the coming year.

  • Before I turn over to Pete, I do want to comment on some client loss activity. In the fourth quarter, we began to see the effects of some recent client losses, which appear in our redemption activity. Absent those losses, redemptions would have looked quite typical during the quarter at about 2% per month.

  • In our experience, in the rare cases where we do lose customers, it's usually due to 1 of 2 reasons. First is as the industry consolidates, it sometimes results in a customer being acquired by another firm that does not use our solutions.

  • Now these consolidating transactions can go either way. Quite often, we are the beneficiary as an existing customer is the acquirer. But in a couple of cases, recently, the other was the case, where an existing Envestnet client was acquired by an acquirer that does not use Envestnet technology. And a second type of customer loss are with customers obtained through consolidating acquisitions.

  • When we model consolidating acquisitions, we do not expect 100% client retention. The majority of the value created from consolidating acquisitions comes from the operating efficiencies and incremental cash flow and not the revenue growth, at least in the first few years post integration. This was the case with FundQuest, with WMS and with Placemark.

  • Net of client losses, we have delivered a return on invested capital that met or exceeded our identified targets for each of these acquisitions.

  • We had client loss activity that falls into both buckets during the fourth quarter, and we expect to see some carryover effects in early 2018. And our guidance fully incorporates the expected financial impact in the coming year.

  • At this point, I'll turn it over to Pete, and then I'll cover our priorities for 2018.

  • Peter H. D'Arrigo - CFO

  • Thank you, Jud. I'm going to review our fourth quarter results, and then spend some time on our full year and first quarter guidance for 2018.

  • Briefly summarizing Envestnet's results comparing the fourth quarter of 2017 to 2016. Adjusted revenue grew 17% to $183 million. Recurring revenue was 96% of the total during the quarter. And revenue from subscriptions and licensing was 36% of adjusted revenue, both of which are consistent with last year. This growth and composition of revenue is consistent with our expectations.

  • Adjusted EBITDA was $38.7 million, a 27% increase over last year, as we continue to manage the business to balance profitability with reinvestment and growth. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.40 in the fourth quarter, $0.08 or 25% higher than the fourth quarter of last year.

  • Before I summarize our outlook for the first quarter and full year of '18, I'd like to provide some context as there are a few items which affect comparability to our 2017 results.

  • As we build up the guidance, there are 4 steps. In particular, we start with the growth in the core business. To that, we add the impact of the FolioDynamix acquisition, then consider the overall effects of the new revenue recognition accounting standard, and finally, incorporate the impact of the new tax law and income taxes.

  • Starting with the core business. We expect growth to be consistent with our long-term targets, and we expect to maintain the 1.2x relationship between growth in revenue and adjusted EBITDA within our base of operations.

  • Our outlook for 2018 is consistent with our approach to guidance last year. Today's guidance remains market-neutral using December 31 asset values. Although we acknowledge an environment with increased volatility can have a negative impact both on redemption rates and on gross sales.

  • Our full year guidance is for 12% to 14% revenue growth and 15% to 17% adjusted EBITDA growth from the core business.

  • Second, for FolioDynamix. Given we closed the transaction on January 2, we'll include Folio's results for all of 2018. As we noted on our prior earnings call, we expect FolioDynamix to be marginally accretive to adjusted earnings per share in 2018. This is a function of adjusted EBITDA exceeding our interest cost to finance the transaction.

  • FolioDynamix adds 9% to 10% in revenue growth and 5 to 6 percentage points in adjusted EBITDA growth as we begin the integration process of this acquired business.

  • Third, the new revenue recognition accounting standard will impact our financial statements. While the rule will have no material effect on our operations, revenues and cost of revenues will be lower under the new rule. Beginning in the first quarter of 2018, due to the treatment of certain third-party fees, both revenue and cost of revenue will decrease equally, with no effect on profitability or operating leverage.

  • The net impact of the new revenue recognition rule is to reduce revenue by 2 to 3 percentage points in 2018, with no impact on EBITDA.

  • Also, we are incorporating the investment in financial wellness growth initiatives Jud mentioned, which reduces consolidated adjusted EBITDA between 2% and 3%.

  • Adding all of that up, for 2018, we expect revenue will grow 18% to 20% to a range of $808 million to $823 million compared to 2017. We expect adjusted EBITDA will grow 17% to 20% to a range $151 million to $155 million, and adjusted earnings per share to be up 36% to 40% to a range of $1.78 to $1.83.

  • This is all summarized in a table in the earnings release.

  • With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, there'll also be changes in the way we present income taxes. As we've noted for some time, Envestnet is currently not a significant federal cash taxpayer and we expect to fully utilize our net operating losses. This situation is unchanged with the new tax law.

  • For purposes of calculating and reporting adjusted net income and adjusted net income per share, we are reducing our estimated normalized effective tax rate from 40% to 27%, which reflects the new 21% federal rate under the new law and an incremental 6% for state taxes.

  • Turning to the first quarter. We expect total revenue to be between $192 million and $195 million, up 22% to 24% compared to the prior year. Asset-based revenue between $118 million and $120 million or 25% to 27% higher than 2017. The implied effective fee rate on our December 31 assets under management or administration is 10.5 to 10.7 basis points.

  • However, of the nearly $900 billion in assets with FolioDynamix, about $42 billion of that is [earned fees price and basis points]. So including those assets in the beginning balance, the effective fee rate would be between 9.6 and 9.8 basis points. And we expect that to be closer to our run rate for Q2 and beyond.

  • Similar to prior years, we expect operating expenses to increase sequentially from the fourth quarter due to the seasonal nature of certain items, particularly personnel expenses, namely payroll, taxes and other benefits, all of which are significantly higher in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter. And this impact will be -- will increase further due to the inclusion of FolioDynamix for the first quarter.

  • Adjusted EBITDA for first quarter should be between $30.5 million and $31.5 million, which is 18% to 22% higher than 2017. And using a normalized long-term effective tax rate of 27% and assuming approximately 47 million diluted shares outstanding, we expect adjusted earnings per share of $0.36 in the quarter.

  • Concluding with some comments on capital structure. We ended the fourth quarter with total debt of $240 million.

  • On January 2, we borrowed $195 million to finance the purchase of FolioDynamix. As a result, current debt levels are closer to $435 million, about 3.4x our adjusted EBITDA for 2017.

  • Priorities for our cash flow in 2018 continue to be investing in the growth of the business and supporting our long-term growth initiatives and paying down debt.

  • Thank you for your support of Envestnet. And at this point, I'll turn it back to Jud for some closing comments.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Thank you, Pete.

  • As we begin 2018, our priorities are: first, to execute on our organic growth potential; second, to successfully integrate FolioDynamix customers and employees; and third, to align our organization and development efforts to fully realize our potential to become the preferred operating system for financial wellness, a broadening of our mandate from wealth management to financial wellness.

  • As Pete mentioned, our core growth expectations for 2018 are consistent with our long-term targets.

  • As a reminder, we target mid-teens organic revenue growth, with adjusted EBITDA growing at least 1.2x revenue growth in our core businesses. We believe this is sustainable for the foreseeable future as we build our advice and data-centric intelligence systems for financial wellness.

  • Thank you, again, for your time this afternoon. Thank you for your support of Envestnet. And with the completion of our prepared remarks, we are happy to take your questions.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) We'll go first to Chris Shutler with William Blair.

  • Christopher Charles Shutler - Research Analyst

  • On the Q4 customer losses, Jud, I'm guessing some of those are pretty well-known names out there, some of the headlines over the course of the year. Can you just you confirm that? And could you give us some sense of how those customer losses impacted the 2018 guidance? Can you put a rough number on it?

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • So I think, Chris, there are names out there. It's not our policy, nor our intent to identify client losses by name, so you can make your own inferences from that. And any quantification that we have is included in the going-forward guidance for both the quarter and for the year.

  • Christopher Charles Shutler - Research Analyst

  • Okay. I guess, what I'm trying to get at, it just seemed like 15% to 17% EBITDA growth in the core business, when markets are extremely strong and conversions were very strong, just seems like a pretty low number. I know you're trying to be conservative, but just wondering if I'm missing something.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Well, they're -- it's less than a handful of client losses, and it has an effect on the EBITDA growth rates and the revenue growth rates.

  • Christopher Charles Shutler - Research Analyst

  • Okay, fair enough. On the accounting impact of 2% to 3% on revenue growth rate, is that -- Pete, is that pretty consistent across the quarters? And does that impact AUM/AUA licensing? How should we think about the impact?

  • Peter H. D'Arrigo - CFO

  • It is consistent across the quarters, and it will affect -- again, this is -- it's not going to affect the profitability as I described it. It's a question of a number of clients where -- again, as you're well aware, the cost of revenue recognizes manager payments.

  • And sometimes, those go in opposite directions. Sometimes, they're recognized net of those manager payments and sometimes, it's gross of manager payments. And there is more control over those accounts within our platform and within the services we're providing.

  • So it's not one single direction, but the net of it is that there is a reduction in revenue, which is equally offset by a reduction in the cost of revenue. So there's no impact on profitability.

  • Christopher Charles Shutler - Research Analyst

  • Okay. And then lastly, just on FolioDynamix. As you guys look at Folio's largest customers and their -- I guess, their fastest-growing customers, can you give us a sense over time -- how often on the commission side or a client is using Folio, and on the advisory side maybe they're using somebody other than Envestnet, how often is that the case? Just hoping you can frame kind of the upsell potential that you might realize over time from their client base.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • So the upsell is something that we see as sort of icing on the cake. It's something that we do expect over time. It's not something that we guided to or suggested in our return on investment analysis, which is driven by cost synergies.

  • However, the general case when an enterprise has adopted FolioDynamix' trading tools, is that it's a trading tool that spans their entire adviser activity, both fee-based and brokerage or commission-based. There are some opportunities out there for Envestnet to become the fee-based solution, where it is in -- primarily in for commission-based business.

  • There is a broader set of opportunities, where we could extend the FDx capabilities into Envestnet enterprises, where we have not provided that in the past, and leverage that going forward. Now that will take place not immediately but over time. First of all, we're completing the integration, and then we expect that we'll be able to offer a broader solution based on the FDx capabilities to existing Envestnet enterprise clients.

  • The other area of potential benefit is that we expect that we will be even more competitive than we currently are for new enterprise sign-ups, new enterprise conversions, new enterprise engagements because of the expanded capability.

  • Operator

  • We'll now take a question from Chris Donat with Sandler O'Neill.

  • Christopher Roy Donat - MD of Equity Research

  • Wanted to ask about your guidance on EBITDA margins. And Pete, it looks like with the accounting change, that's going to represent maybe like a 50 basis point change to the EBITDA margins just because you got a lower denominator from revenues.

  • But by my math here, guiding to about a 16% EBITDA margin for 20 -- sorry, for the first quarter of '18, down from nearly 19% for all of '17. I'm just trying to figure what the headwinds are. I mean, you got the accounting change in there, I know you've got the growth initiatives. Just anything else weighing on EBITDA margins there and in FolioDynamix, of course?

  • Peter H. D'Arrigo - CFO

  • Yes, Folio is in there, too. And then again, just the seasonal adjustment from Q4 to Q1.

  • Christopher Roy Donat - MD of Equity Research

  • Okay. And then as we think about the second quarter, some of the stuff like payroll rolls off, right? So -- because it looks you got a decent ramp in quarterly earnings from the $0.36 in the first quarter to the full year number.

  • Peter H. D'Arrigo - CFO

  • Right. That's consistent with the way '17 played out as well.

  • Christopher Roy Donat - MD of Equity Research

  • Okay, okay. And then just as we think about our modeling here. With FolioDynamix' revenue, can you remind us -- you talked in the presentation when you did the -- when you announced the acquisition about what the FolioDynamix split was in revenues, but just how it lines up with sort of the lines on the income statement. With roughly $10 million of quarterly revenue from FolioDynamix, is it -- -- the split between AUA/AUM, fee-based, et cetera?

  • Peter H. D'Arrigo - CFO

  • Yes. So I don't want to get into a lot of detail, a lot of granular level on this call. I'm happy to go through it with you. But generally speaking, overall, FolioDynamix, where there is fee-based revenue, will be recognized with gross and net. And the number we were talking about before was primarily a net number for the impact as we were still analyzing that impact.

  • And so overall, the revenue is going to come in -- about 70% of it is going to be in the fee-based side, which will have some cost, and then the other 30% will be more on the subscription and licensing side.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • I think if I can go the question behind your question. The $10 million per quarter you're referencing was the net revenue that we gave guidance on for 2018 earlier, Chris. And the gross revenue that we will be recognizing is part of the revenue recognition changes will be significantly higher than that. And you can calculate what that gross revenue is going to be based on the guidance of 9% to 10% growth year-over-year.

  • Christopher Roy Donat - MD of Equity Research

  • Okay. Okay. And I'll follow up if I need anything.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • I think that's what you were asking, right?

  • Christopher Roy Donat - MD of Equity Research

  • Yes. That's -- it's -- yes, you got a bunch of moving parts here. I'm just trying to understand all of them. And then just lastly, Jud, kind of philosophically on a couple client losses.

  • As you think about the history of Envestnet, it's not something I've seen very often. I mean, it seems like the exception that proves the rule that you don't lose clients very much. Nothing's -- do you feel like anything has changed? Or this is just -- it does happen periodically and you move on? Or is there something different going on?

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • So with respect to the competitiveness of the product set, I am certain that nothing new is going on. With respect to the increased level of merger and acquisition activity in financial services, in general, and in particular, within broker-dealers and the custodial area, I think that this is a new, new. And I think it may be with us for some period of time.

  • I think that those kinds of strategic activity is going to, if anything, stay higher than it's been in the past for the foreseeable future. I think the main thing to remember, though, is that while it's happened rarely in the past, we've been able to plow through those things by just growing organically, both organic growth through same-store sales, if you will, and organic growth through new enterprise acquisition and conversion. But it's not a product set that -- and I guess, that's the good news.

  • On the other hand, I think that in the consolidating space, we're going to -- being the market share leader, we will probably win more than we lose, but it will not always be predictable and always to the same side.

  • Operator

  • We'll take our next question from David Grossman with Stifel.

  • David Michael Grossman - MD

  • So I wonder if I could just go back to just some of the mechanics. First, in terms of the losses in the client base, I think you identified 2 buckets. Can you give us a sense of how much of that was related to just straight M&A that just went away from you versus -- and I'm not sure I understood the other bucket that well, but if I understood you right, isn't that where you're acquiring other companies and you have attrition within the base of the companies that you've acquired?

  • So maybe you could just help us understand the relative magnitudes between those 2, if I've got them right, and how that happens, if I got that second bucket right. Why that happens, when you acquire a customer, you end up losing?

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • I understand the question. The first bucket is where the majority of the impact falls coming from merger and acquisition activity in the industry. The second bucket is when we do a consolidating acquisition, the way we get the savings is through conversions.

  • When we do that conversion, it prompts a review of the acquired companies. What are we going to do about this conversion? It sometimes prompts a review to bring that service in-house, if they're going to go through a full conversion. It sometimes enables a client to look for a solution elsewhere. And so it's the conversion activity, which is necessary for us to realize the operating efficiency that prompts client changes from time to time.

  • And so all of the client loss activity falls into those 2 buckets, either client disruption from merger and acquisition activity, or client disruption that results from the impending conversion of making the consolidating transaction work across all client base.

  • David Michael Grossman - MD

  • Got it. And then in terms of the -- how to think about the assumptions underlying 2018. If I heard you right, I thought you said that you could see some elevated redemptions related to these dynamics into 2018. So maybe if you could just explain that as well as how that kind of factored into the 2018 guide in terms of the assumptions on redemptions?

  • Because I actually thought that volatility alone in the marketplace would actually create kind of a higher redemption assumption as well. So just trying to kind of understand those 2 dynamics and how they impacted your 2018 guidance.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Okay. So for much of 2017, redemptions were below our forecast. It's one of the main reasons that we outperformed as strongly as we did versus our initial guidance on the year.

  • So in trying to model and anticipate what is -- what we expect to occur over the year is we expect over the year a base level of redemption rate of 2% per month, which would be more of I would characterize it as a return to normal. Higher than what we experienced through 2017, except for the heightened activity in Q4, which was a result, not of market volatility, but a result of client losses.

  • So now we expect there to be some client loss activity that continues into the early part of 2018. So when Q1 comes around, Q2 comes around, no one should be surprised to see elevated levels of redemption. And no one should expect that, that is due primarily or exclusively to increased market volatility.

  • Now that's all to say we expect there to be higher redemption rates throughout 2018 than there were in 2017, but not abnormally high by historic standards. And in the first quarter or 2 of 2018, we expect to see some continued heightened redemption activity due to the client losses that we identified.

  • David Michael Grossman - MD

  • Got it. And then just the third question, really is around the incremental investments that you identified in terms of the growth initiatives. And maybe you could just outline what you're seeing in the marketplace that may have led you to the conclusion that you needed to kind of invest at a higher rate.

  • And maybe help us understand how much of the increment that you're identifying and really calling out this year is from that effort and the need to kind of invest at a higher rate or at an accelerated rate versus what may be happening in terms of the economics of the core business.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • So as we look at our core business, we see that the financial planning, the data aggregation and data analytics, the wealth management technology and the fiduciary solutions, the asset management solutions are a business that's going to have a core growth of an attractive profile. And we believe that we can grow cash flow and adjusted earnings per share faster than the revenue growth, owing to economies of scale.

  • As we have understood more clearly our capabilities in data and data analytics, we're finding applications to data and data analytics that go beyond that narrow scope -- that narrower scope of financial planning, data aggregation and investment technology. We're finding that the data is uncovering opportunities for advisers and for enterprises in broader areas.

  • And those broader areas are promising. And those broader areas are in the areas of protection, both data security protection as well as retirement income protection. And eventually, we expect that there will be enhanced opportunities, perhaps, with respect to credit, all around an adviser-centric delivery model. Advisers want the capabilities to go deeper with the opportunities that the data is uncovering, that the data aggregation and the data analytics is uncovering.

  • So what -- we are able to grow the core business at a nice rate with the investment that we've identified in the past, but we see that in the second half of the year, we would like to extend beyond planning, data and investment technology to this adjacency of protection.

  • And there's an investment that we intend to make in the second half of the year around that, that we believe will yield a very favorable ROIC profile over time. And we are guiding for that investment that we expect to make in the second half of the year with this overall guidance.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) We'll go next to Peter Heckmann with D.A. Davidson.

  • Alexis Huseby - Analyst

  • This is Alexis on for Peter. So I just want to make sure, firstly, that we're understanding the redemption rate correctly. So you mentioned that 2018 is going to see a return to normal values. Is that going to be the 2% per month that we saw for most of 2017? Or will it be a higher value?

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • No, we're expecting that the normal redemption activity will come in -- we're expecting 2% per month for the year of 2018, which is higher than what we experienced in 2017.

  • Alexis Huseby - Analyst

  • Great. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. And then where are you going to be -- where are you thinking FolioDynamix is going to end 2018 in terms of run rate EBITDA margins? Are we looking somewhere in the realm of 20%?

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Not nearly that high. We're expecting -- again, it's on gross revenue, but it's not nearly that high.

  • Peter H. D'Arrigo - CFO

  • Yes, it's going to be -- it's a consolidating-type transaction, so to split out that component of it in terms of margin gets to be really challenging as the integration goes on. So that's...

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • However, I understand where you got that number. That number based on net revenue is not a bad estimate, but because of revenue recognition, we're going to be recognizing revenue on gross. And so that same number on -- that same numerator on a much bigger denominator is going to be less.

  • Alexis Huseby - Analyst

  • Okay, great. That makes a lot of sense. And then finally, we're seeing that Yodlee maybe didn't see as much margin expansion in the back half of 2017 as we were expecting. Were there any discretionary investments there made by you?

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Well, it expanded nicely as far as we were concerned. You're saying not as much as you expected?

  • Alexis Huseby - Analyst

  • Yes, that's correct.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • Okay. We had some very nice margin expansion in the Yodlee segment during 2016 and the first half of 2017. As we're getting our arms around this broader opportunity, we see that it's important that we continue to invest in data analytics and data aggregation with respect to credit and insurance areas.

  • And that requires continuing investment in data capabilities, in particular, data science capabilities. And so we're managing the process of investing in a business that's growing nicely and also delivering the benefits of scale to our investors.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) And it appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Jud Bergman, I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

  • Judson Taft Bergman - Chairman & CEO

  • I want to thank you for the questions and feel that they were a helpful amplification to understanding the business dynamics.

  • We look forward to building on the success of a truly remarkable year in 2017 for us. And we're looking forward to new product introductions around the launch of Envestnet InVision and our Adviser Summit in May and would invite any analysts that are so interested to be a part of that if that can work into your schedules. You'll hear more about that with the first quarter earnings, which should be happening just before that summit.

  • Thank you for your time. And with that, we will close the call.

  • Operator

  • This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.