MeridianLink Inc (MLNK) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the MeridianLink Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Erik Schneider. Erik, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and welcome to MeridianLink's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after the market closed today. With me are MeridianLink's Chief Executive Officer, Nicolaas Vlok; Chief Financial Officer, Sean Blitchok; and President, Go-to-Market, Chris Maloof.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's conference call will include forward-looking statements based on the company's current expectations. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of factors that could affect our future financial results and business, please refer to the disclosure in today's earnings release and the other reports and filings we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All of our statements are made based on information available to us as of today. And except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update any such statements. During the call, we will also refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. You can find the reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP measures included in our press release, which is posted to the Investor Relations section of our website.

With that, let me turn the call over to Nicolaas.

Thank you, Erik. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us. I am pleased with our performance in light of challenging macroeconomic conditions. We believe our third quarter results demonstrate the resilience of our business model, and we remain confident in our long-term growth opportunities.

We delivered solid results while advancing our strategic initiatives during the quarter. MeridianLink completed Q3 with GAAP revenue of $71.8 million, up 7% year-over-year and 36% adjusted EBITDA margins. Our consumer lending business remained strong, growing at 21% year-over-year led by ongoing strength in personal and other non-vehicle loan types. We have experienced the fastest and largest relative increase in mortgage interest rates in history and currently see rates at a 2-decade high. A consequence of these higher rates is lower mortgage application and lending activity, which drove mortgage-related revenue down to 21% of total revenue in the quarter. Sean will walk through our Q3 financial performance in more detail, but first, I will focus on key highlights of our business and where we are investing for the future.

We see opportunities in current conditions. Given that deposit-taking financial institutions have higher net interest margins to date, we expect demand for our consumer lending business will remain strong as customers and prospects seek ways to more effectively engage with their customers across the entire array of loan types. We can see this momentum in our pipeline and successful bookings. Additionally, we continue to invest to capture a disproportionate share of our $10 billion TAM while maintaining best-in-class margins. In particular, we believe the opportunity exists now to create a differentiated alternative to the current mortgage lending software market leader by providing more advanced, more open and more customer-friendly capabilities. This is why we announced today the acquisition of OpenClose, a leader in mortgage lending technology with a particular focus on supporting depository institutions. We will discuss this more in detail in a little bit.

As we have outlined, we have 3 ongoing areas of specific focus to drive accelerated growth: first, engaging more deeply with our customers; second, expanding the capabilities of our platform; and third, empowering our customers to grow more quickly and better serve their communities. Our top priority is engaging with our customers and prospects to ensure we can best serve our markets. These conversations are an integral part of our go-to-market motion, and we proactively facilitate them on an ongoing basis. This is why we continue to invest in customer success as one of our priorities, and we are seeing the benefits as customers are increasingly turning to MeridianLink to provide a full consumer lending experience.

A few recent wins include a long-standing credit union customer of our ML consumer modules with over 33,000 members decided to modernize their mortgage processes. They extended their footprint by adding MeridianLink Mortgage to take advantage of our patented debt optimization technology while benefiting from the increased synergies of a deeper integration, adding better cross-selling functionality. In another example, one of the largest transactions in the quarter was with an existing DecisionLender customer. As you know, we gained this leading indirect lending functionality as part of the TCI acquisition. This customer sought a new solution for direct consumer lending and account opening. Our multichannel functionality and integration won the day. These are just a couple of the many wins in the quarter. We continue to see that meaningful engagement with our customers provides both immediate and long-term value to the market.

We have been investing heavily for the last few years to expand our platform's capabilities with innovative functionality. As a prime example, we have been moving our solutions from hosted environments to the public cloud while updating the user experience to reflect modern design and workflow. We unveiled MeridianLink One in 2021 as our cloud-based multiproduct platform, spanning the digital consumer lending journey from account opening through marketing, loan origination and decisioning.

MeridianLink One breaks down the silos that originally separated the parts of our business and reflected the divisions we often see in the market. We are proud to announce a quarter ahead of schedule the completed migration of the original MeridianLink One functionality entirely to the public cloud. We are excited to bring the cloud benefits of increased security, speed and scalability of deployment to our customers sooner than expected. By expanding our platform's capabilities, we attract new logos and drive cross-selling, which together drive more volume and revenue for MeridianLink.

Finally, MeridianLink empowers our customers to compete, grow and succeed in each market in which they participate. We have a track record of enabling our customers to win more clients and capture a greater share of their clients' wallet by providing best-in-class functionality, flexibility and automation. While some of our customers are early in their digital transformation, others are looking to optimize their clients' journey to enable a touchless learning experience. In Q3, we saw both accelerating software module delivery to customers and increased uptake of the services and functions to more deeply automate lending processes. In particular, services revenue hit a new high-water mark as software projects delivered in the quarter were 50% higher than in Q1 of this year. And we delivered an integration with MX Technologies to provide for a more highly automated account opening process as our customers continue to see strong new account growth.

Now I want to turn to our announced acquisition of OpenClose. I've had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with the leadership team, and I'm thrilled to be joining forces with such a knowledgeable and customer-focused group. With our complementary product strengths and customer bases, we expect current customers of both organizations to benefit from the combination in the short and long term. I know I have said this before, but I want to emphasize this point: The diversity of our business and strong unit economics enable sustained investment in critical growth and scale initiatives across the economic cycle. The OpenClose acquisition and integration will create a premier solution that will increase our win rate and drive cross-sell motion within the depository market.

To conclude, Q3 was another strong quarter for Meridian Link. We accomplished several milestones and remained focused on engaging with customers to help prioritize investments that expand our platform capabilities and revenue opportunity. MeridianLink is a customer-focused business, and our flywheel starts with a focus on empowering our customers to compete and better serve their clients and communities. We invest to serve our customers' needs, which generate more revenue for us as those investments drive better solutions for their clients.

Before turning the call over to Sean, I would like to recognize the MeridianLink team for achieving the Great Place to Work certification for the third year in a row. This award spotlights the culture and community at MeridianLink, positioning us well for future success. Now Sean will review our financial results and guidance, including near-term expectations for OpenClose.

Thanks, Nicolaas, and thank you again to everyone for joining us on the call today. I'd like to start by echoing the comments made by Nicolaas. MeridianLink has before a largely untapped market opportunity to drive to $1 billion and beyond. We continue to balance cost discipline and strategic investments. Near term, we are closely monitoring how macroeconomic conditions are affecting the market. We will continue to tightly control what we can while providing transparency and predictability for our business.

As for third quarter results, we generated total revenue of $71.8 million, up 7% year-over-year driven primarily by increased consumer lending transaction volumes and product go-lives. This is in line with the reported overall growth last quarter despite the continued decline of mortgage market lending. And the mortgage loan market continues to be a headwind. Down 22% from last year, it accounted for 21% of overall MeridianLink revenue in the quarter, roughly in line with our expectations. More specifically, mortgage-related revenue in the quarter accounted for 6% of our lending software solutions and 62% of our data verification solutions.

Lending software revenue accounted for nearly 73% of our total revenue and grew 17% year-over-year. Excluding the impact from the greater-than-anticipated slowdown in mortgage-related revenue, our lending software solutions grew 20% year-over-year, our highest rate in FY '22. Adjusted gross margin in Q3 was 69%, in line with expectations. Accounting for stock-based compensation, GAAP gross margin was 61%. Our non-GAAP operating income was $12.1 million, and our GAAP operating income was $4.5 million.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $25.9 million, representing an EBITDA margin of 36%. This reflects ongoing cost structure discipline, which allows us to focus spending growth on generating demand and delivering our product road map. We strategically invested 38% more in sales and marketing and 28% more in R&D compared to the third quarter of last year, adjusted for stock-based compensation. We expect a strong, long-term return on these investments, but continue to examine each expenditure on its individual merits.

Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statement. We ended the third quarter with $115.8 million in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, up $15.5 million from the end of the second quarter. Operating cash flow in the third quarter was $19.6 million, and free cash flow was $16.9 million or a 24% free cash flow margin. In the trailing 12-month period ending in the third quarter, operating cash flow was $88.1 million and free cash flow was $79.4 million or a 28% free cash flow margin. MeridianLink's current cash position and ongoing cash generation provide protection in this period of uncertainty while enabling targeted investments for us to build value for our customers and shareholders.

I'll now pivot to guidance for Q4 and an update for the full year of 2022. Despite strong momentum in our pipeline and consumer volumes, we saw a mix shift in our volumes that created a top line headwind for the business in the second half. For the fourth quarter, estimated total revenue, excluding the acquisition of OpenClose, is expected to be between $65 million and $67 million compared to $64 million for the same period in 2021. This represents an estimated increase of 2% to 5% year-over-year. For the full year 2022, we are expecting total revenue between $282.5 million and $284.5 million compared to $267.7 million for the same period in 2021. This represents an estimated increase of 6% year-over-year.

We are continuing to add new customers and increase module penetration among our existing customers at a new level that more than offsets the historic decline in mortgage market volumes. Calling short-term moves in the mortgage market precisely is difficult, yet we have reflected an incremental decline of the mortgage market in our guidance. We expect the mortgage market to contribute approximately 18% of revenue for the fourth quarter of 2022 as rates continue to rise across the third and into the fourth quarter.

I would be remiss if I didn't welcome our colleagues at OpenClose. This combination is extremely exciting and reflects our confidence in driving value in the mortgage lending market. Currently, OpenClose delivers approximately $1 million per month in revenue and has been growing at a high teens rate throughout this year. On a stand-alone basis, the company is slightly better than EBITDA neutral, and we intend to reinvest synergies into building a robust market solution for the future.

On a non-GAAP basis, our fourth quarter estimated adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $19 million and $21 million, representing EBITDA margins of approximately 30% at the midpoint. Our fourth quarter is typically a seasonal low in both platform volumes and new customer go-lives, both of which will affect our reported EBITDA in the quarter. For the full year 2022, our estimated adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $107 million and $109 million, representing EBITDA margins of approximately 38% at the midpoint.

With that, Nicolaas, Chris and I are happy to take any of your questions, and I'll turn it back over to the operator.

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Bob Napoli from William Blair.

I guess trying to just understand whether or not there's any market share in your guidance. Obviously, the mortgage market has slowed down. But how much different is the mortgage market? And your market share in mortgage and your other products, has that held?

Bob, this is Nicolaas. Thank you for the question. I'm not sure we fully understand the question. Is it comparing mortgage LOS to our consumer LOS?

No, I'm sorry. Just trying to understand whether your market share in the mortgage market, whether you feel like the -- obviously, the mortgage market is more difficult. But has the market share of MeridianLink changed? So is the reduction in revenue in your guidance just from the macro of the mortgage market? Or is there some market share loss in mortgage or in any other product?

No. Understand now. I appreciate the clarification. There's no change. We continue to do well. We actually -- part of the reason for the OpenClose acquisition is to continue to invest where we feel there's a down cycle, and it positions us to capture incremental market share in depository taking institutions. So from my perspective, this is a volume-driven impact. If you follow MBA and other industry data sources, you'll see that there's a recent call-down as late as October 23 where it's one of the bigger call-downs by MBA. So this is all driven by what we're seeing in the market from a volume standpoint. As well as if you follow the data that has been published by MBA, you'll see that the trough is now not in '22, but it's extending into '23. So that's the conservatism that you're seeing from our perspective.

And then on the -- your auto business. I mean the auto market has been pretty tough as well. What have the trends been in your auto business versus the market? And then just lastly, if you could give any -- the size of the OpenClose deal. I know you gave the revenue, but I was wondering if you can give any feel for the purchase price.

This is Chris. So first, speaking to your question on auto, auto has remained consistently strong this year, and we're seeing health improvements in the auto industry going forward. So more recently, we've seen that the inventory has increased on new by over 50%, and that portends well for our success to continue in the future. Now I'll pass it on to Sean to talk about the OpenClose financials.

Yes, this will be in our Q. The OpenClose purchase price was $65 million. So this deal is, one, we're investing in the dip. We saw a lot of value, and we can certainly see a lot of value going forward in the combined company. It gets us to an at-scale solution or approaching an at-scale solution for the mortgage products, and they really had complementary set of features for us. And so $65 million is the purchase price. But again, it was a lot of value in the acquisition.

Your next question comes from Alex Sklar from Raymond James.

This is Jessica on for Alex Sklar. Just wanted to also like touch upon the OpenClose acquisition again. Can you talk about like your decision to go deeper into the mortgage business? It seems to be an area you're talking about [diversifying] away from as the year progresses. So what more does the OpenClose acquisition bring to you [optionality] wise? Or was this more of an opportunistic [buy factored into] the macro?

This is Chris. So first and foremost, we've maintained healthy momentum from a unit sales perspective over the last few years in mortgage. And as we go out into the market and look for opportunities to grow the business, OpenClose came to bear, and it came to bear at great value given the market conditions. And that, combined with our current unit sales momentum, led to the ultimate decision. Now when we think about the go forward and what are -- how do we think about from a solution set to maximize our potential on the market, OpenClose and MeridianLink have highly complementary end markets. So OpenClose leans a little bit more heavily towards depositories, which is highly complementary to the MeridianLink One customer story. And MeridianLink Mortgage tends slightly over to the independent mortgage banker side.

So there's some nuances between those 2 that we'll bring together that will add more value to our customers. And being more specific, over the short term, we plan to leverage OpenClose's point of sale -- configurable point-of-sale for all of the customer base. As well as on the MeridianLink Mortgage side, we have a great position from a competitive perspective on our pricing and packaging engine to serve the broader market. So that will be our first foray into bring the best IP together for both customer sets going forward.

Yes. And this is Sean. I'll just add that competitively, this really puts us in a unique position, right? So I think this puts us in a position to compete with our top competitors going forward in the combined company.

Got it. Just a follow-up question as well. So with the MeridianLink wrapping up your migration, I was just curious, are there any other areas you're looking to like organically investing and how you grow the growth profitability around the MeridianLink One platform?

This is Chris. I'm very excited, one, on completing the cloud migration. And then second and equally exciting is bringing up the R&D capacity that was involved in moving to be a cloud-native infrastructure. So that capacity will be directed towards supporting our customer promise, which, again, as Nicolaas and Sean highlighted is around enabling our customers to outcompete for consumers, and we do that through speed. If you are fast in how you engage your consumers, you can help them -- you can help our customers win.

And we'll do that 3 ways from an R&D perspective. First is enabling tools around instant decisioning. The second is, supporting the first, is the back office automation and verification tools that enable that instant decisioning. And then finally, third, now that we're in a cloud infrastructure, and this is coming to reality today, is we're able to provide our customers benchmarking at how they're performing at every stage of the origination process. So they know where to invest and where to partner with us to help realize that result at speed. And one thing that really plays out well in this is our goal on speed and helping our customers grow directly ties into our pricing model. When our customers grow, MeridianLink grows.

Yes, I agree. I'll just add one other comment. In terms of organic growth, I said this in my prepared remarks as well, but sales and marketing grew 38% year-on-year. And that is a really key strategic investment for us. And so we -- with volumes down in mortgage, as an example, this is an excellent opportunity to, what I call, sell through it, right, and increase the installed base. And we continue to build out our sales leadership team. We are redefining our go-to-market motion, and there will be -- our bookings, our pipeline continues to look strong and will only get stronger over time because of this investment. So agree wholeheartedly on the R&D and the road map piece, and there's also the go-to-market piece, which I think is critically important as well.

Your next question comes from the line of Parker Lane from Stifel.

It's Max Osnowitz on for Parker. Staying on the OpenClose topic, how will these solutions -- thinking on the future, how the solutions price in with the solutions you currently offer? And then how should we consider kind of the EBITDA to hopefully be accretive once kind of brought into your business model?

So coming off from a price perspective, I find that both solutions are competitively priced in the market, and we're -- within the pricing we have, we're realizing economics that we find favorable as well as gaining our unit momentum. So I don't expect any change -- material changes there beyond our normal price increase rhythm as we invest in our products and create more value for our customers. Now I'll hand on to Sean on the EBITDA realization aspect.

Yes, I mean, clearly, we're not guiding to '23. Our earnings for Q4 are EBITDA-neutral. But we do have plans for the combined company, obviously, in terms of synergies. We also, I think, will see a lot of top line synergies from the combined company. Again, kind of from a product perspective, complementary products, a broader customer set. And so while, again, we're not going to talk about the go-forward FY '23 numbers, I think you can start to see where EBITDA will improve through both the top and bottom line.

Your next question comes from Nik Cremo from Credit Suisse.

I just wanted to dig into the strength in lending solutions and ex mortgage holding up nicely. I was wondering if you could break that out between kind of like a same-store sales from existing customers as well as contributions from new customers. And then related to that, I mean, a lot of positive commentary on the pipeline. I was curious as to what kind of revenue visibility you have going into 2023, excluding the mortgage market?

Nik, Sean. So can you repeat your first question? I just want to make sure I'm answering your question appropriately.

Yes, sure. So the strong growth in lending solutions ex mortgage in the quarter, how much of that ballpark was from new customers that you didn't have last year versus existing customers?

So a lot of it is same-store sales is what I would say. We do -- our bookings this year with new customers, we don't disclose bookings, but I would say we are seeing a healthy amount especially given the market. But most of it is coming from same-store sales. And that is in line with the volume that we're seeing. We're seeing healthy volumes with our existing customer base that's supporting the top line especially in consumer. And then -- sorry, I just lost your second question as well.

No worries. There was just a lot of positive commentary on the call just with regards to the pipeline and the success you guys had in growing it. I was curious as to what kind of revenue visibility that gives you going into 2023, kind of backing out the uncertainty with the mortgage market?

Yes, yes, sorry about that. So in Q3, we had a really good quarter. We have a strong pipeline for Q4. So we have good line of sight into FY '23 in terms of revenue. I think there's always a how fast can you turn it on component. So one thing we haven't talked about is our backlog and services, which actually had a really good quarter in Q3. Backlog came down. We're performing with velocity inside of the services organization. I do think with the bookings and the new pipe that we're seeing in Q4, it's yet to be seen where the backlog lands. But to answer your question specifically, good visibility into FY '23. Right now, what we're grappling with more is the predictability around the volumes.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Schmidt from Citi.

First, I want to start off just about just demand in terms of where you're seeing sort of the pipeline across consumer LOS. I remember, I think last quarter you mentioned strength in HELOC and things like that. But just curious if there's any sort of changes in terms of where you're seeing demand along the platform.

This is Chris. Demand has remained very consistent. And I think you'll see this as you look across the broader bank continuum is that they continue to invest from an IT budget perspective, particularly on digital transformation, and this is reflected in our pipeline. So that's looking from an ML consumer perspective as largely consistent. And when you look at the mortgage component, we see consistent demand or even increasing demand from a depository perspective as those organizations look to retool. And then on the independent mortgage bank side, we're targeting organizations that have the scale such that they can make that investment. So it's largely unchanged. And if I was to call any change at all as we have seen an uptick in our home equity demand as some lenders look to create a broader portfolio, one example is we just went live with loanDepot on their home equity product. That said, they're largely unchanged, and we're making investments accordingly.

Yes, and I'll just add, one of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised but it's good is that, that profile has remained unchanged especially given the mortgage market. So while there are things like volumes that we can't control, that are more macroeconomic, what we can control is what we sell in our installed base. And the projected pipeline going into '23 is very healthy around mortgage. And so consumer continues up and to the right. Mortgage has been healthy as well. And so I think it's -- again, it speaks volumes to the acquisition, our competitive position and the combined company going forward and what it's going to, a, be able to do, what the opportunity is when -- to a point where there's a leveling off and even an increase in the volume around mortgage.

And that's actually a great segue into my next question. One of the flip sides of the sort of decrease in loan volume and revenues associated with that is that you might have a little bit better visibility if that kind of starts to bottom out eventually at some point. So is there a framework we can start to think about in terms of long-term growth? Or any updates in terms of how you think about long-term growth as we see mortgage start to hopefully settle out in the foreseeable future? Just curious to get any updated thoughts there.

This is Chris. I assume this is a question around volumes. So I'll answer in 2 parts. One, reinforcing what Sean said, we're going to sell through this drop, and we're going to leverage it as an opportunity to grow this business and invest in it. And then the second element is I always think about the mortgage market as purchasers are relatively consistent over time. Although more recently, that has proven to be difficult as the system saw a shock due to the quick increase in interest rates. It's refinances that go up and down. So as I look into the future, when refis come back, as they always do, we'll be very well positioned to capture those economics and then, again, reinvest in the business for future growth.

Your next question comes from Matt VanVliet from BTIG.

I guess, first, are you seeing any kind of either calibration or kind of steadying out of your customers' willingness to get out there and more aggressively market different lending products and sort of how that's met with consumer demand now that rate -- the change of rates has slowed? And are they sort of a little more comfortable with putting as much capital to work here to get lended out? Or are you still seeing people kind of sitting back, waiting for rates to move even higher before they maybe more aggressively push to get more, especially on the consumer side, lending done?

Matt, this is Nicolaas, and great question. We're not seeing a change in the demand environment right now. The momentum is there, as Sean and Chris referenced a strong third quarter in bookings, and we continue to see pipeline [build]. Also, from an overall standpoint, remember, our customers are largely depository-taking institutions, and they do well with the larger spread. And what we're seeing today, this is not a slowdown in the digital transformation. In fact, there's an interest for customers to continue to engage and invest while this period of, call it, dislocation exists from an economic standpoint.

This is Chris as well. And from a consumer marketing perspective, going back to our customers, our customers target consumers on the higher end of the credit profile. And given the health of those consumers, there hasn't been a reason for them to back off from that approach. And I haven't heard consumers bring that up yet -- or customers bring that up yet.

Okay. Very helpful. And then obviously, another deal here, but just curious longer term how you're adjusting your M&A outlook. What are prices or valuations looking like especially in the private markets? Have they started to come down in more alignment with the public market valuations? Are you still seeing a disconnect? And how are you approaching that from the overall M&A strategy?

I think last time we talked, Matt, we were talking about the appetite for M&A. Clearly, we have an appetite for M&A. I think the private/public question is starting to become clearer. I think the expectations of the private market are starting to come closer in line with the public market, if not in line. But that doesn't change our appetite. We'll continue to look for growth opportunities that are adding value to our customers long term. We'll continue to look for value opportunities for MeridianLink, and OpenClose is a perfect example of that. And so we -- again, private or public doesn't really matter as much as how much value it's delivering to our customers and how much value it's delivering to our company.

(Operator Instructions) There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call over to Nicolaas for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. And as a reminder, MeridianLink enables the digital transformation of our customers and an area of spending they continue to prioritize, and we've discussed that today. We help our customers get the most value out of their digital spend so they can compete and succeed in the modern marketplace. And we as a company, we as MeridianLink (inaudible) employees are driven by helping our customers succeed, and that gets notice. In fact, MeridianLink was recently named as #54 on the 2022 Global IDC FinTech 100 ranking. The annual ranking represents the world's leading hardware, software and service providers to the financial services industry, and this was our first year of participating. I'm extremely proud of this achievement, and I'm confident in our ongoing success.

Thank you for joining us today. Back to you, operator.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you disconnect your lines.