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Operator
Welcome to the NICE Systems conference call discussing third quarter 2011 results. And thank you all for holding. All participants are at present in a listen-only mode. Follow management's formal presentation instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded November 3, 2011. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Zeevi Bregman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Thank you, operator. Before we begin I want to welcome our new VP of Investor Relations, Marty Cohen, who joined us a few weeks ago from SAP. Marty joins the NICE management team and is based in New York. Marty?
Marty Cohen - VP of IR
Thank you, Zeevi. With me on the call today are Zeevi Bregman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dafna Gruber, Chief Financial Officer.
Before we start I would like to point out that some of the statements made on this call will constitute forward-looking statements. In accordance with the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, please be advised that the Company's actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
Additional information regarding the factors that could cause actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially is contained in the section entitled Risk Factors in Item 3 of the Company's 2010 annual report on Form 20-F as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 3, 2011.
During today's call we will present a more detailed discussion of third-quarter 2011 results and the Company's updated guidance for the fourth quarter and full-year 2011. Following our comments there will be an opportunity for questions.
Let me remind you that, unless otherwise noted on this call, we will be commenting on our adjusted results of operations which differ in certain respects from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as reflected mainly an accounting for acquisition-related revenues and expenses, amortization of intangible assets, and accounting for stock-based compensation. The difference between the non-GAAP adjusted results and the equivalent GAAP figures are detailed in today's press release. With that I will turn the call over to Zeevi.
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Thank you, everyone, for joining our third-quarter 2011 earnings call. We are pleased to announce that in Q3 we crossed the $200 million mark for the first time, achieving record revenues of $200.4 million. Revenues increased 14% compared to the third quarter of 2010. We again achieved record revenues for both our enterprise and security businesses with an especially strong result in security. We are very pleased with our growth in the Americas, the especially strong growth in APAC, and we are pleased to see the improving performance in EMEA.
We continue to demonstrate good operating leverage and showed an increase in operating margin. Non-GAAP EPS increased 20% from last year to a record $0.54. We continue to expand profitability and are raising our guidance for the year.
The book-to-bill ratio in Q3 was below 1, mainly due to some delays in customer buying decisions. We have already seen some of those deals close in Q4. Furthermore, we expect Q4 bookings to be strong resulting in a book-to-bill ratio much greater than 1 for the fourth quarter and greater than 1 for the full year.
Our backlog is very strong at more than two quarters of revenue and our pipeline is very healthy. That gives us confidence about the business as we head into the fourth quarter and into 2012.
NICE leads the market in enterprise intent-based solutions. We are helping our customers to address the issue of Big Data. Our solutions enable our customers to understand and respond to vast amounts of structured and unstructured data. This data is created by their interactions with the outside world, as it is produced, in real-time. Our customers use our analytic solutions to obtain insight into their business and deliver impact in real-time. This impact results in an improvement in customer experience, revenue growth, enhanced safety and security and increased operational efficiency. As the market leader in delivering compliance solutions customers also turn to NICE to help them to monitor compliance. Our compliance solutions track customer interactions and financial transactions and help organizations ensure safety.
Compliance, along with increasing operational efficiency, safeguarding people and assets and improving the customer experience, remains a top priority for our customers throughout the economic cycle.
Moving on to our Enterprise business, which is comprised of our Customer Interactions business and the Financial Crime and Compliance business. Let's start with our Customer Interactions business.
We are the clear leader in this market and we continue to enhance our real-time cross-channel analytics offering through both organic growth and acquisitions.
Last week we closed the Fizzback acquisition which we announced in September. We are very excited about this addition to our analytics-based Customer Experienced Management offering. Fizzback provides a real-time SaaS-based feedback solution which yields game-changing customer response rates of up to 50%. This is much higher than the industry standard of below 10%.
To put it simply, Fizzback's solution initiates an automatic dialogue with a consumer immediately following a specific interaction or transaction. It then analyzes this feedback to provide the Voice of the Customer and triggers immediate action by the organization. The combination of real-time, context-based, flexible dialogue and high response rate allows for the use of consumer feedback solutions in ways not possible before and weave feedback into our customers' daily operations.
Providing organizations with the insight that enables them to act in real-time and drive personalized responses to these insights is at the core of our strategy. We now offer our customers a new way to interact with their customers, as well as to evaluate customer service and agent performance.
In the short period since the announcement of this acquisition we are already seeing a high level of interest from our customers for this solution. We expect to rapidly integrate this business as we have done with previous acquisitions.
The acquisition of Fizzback augments our SaaS initiative as Fizzback products are cloud solutions sold on a subscription basis. Furthermore, we are seeing demand for our Customer Interaction management and Financial Crime and Compliance cloud solutions.
We have recently formed several partnerships to sell our cloud solutions to customers who choose to manage their contact center in the cloud. These partnerships have already generated several subscription-based deals.
For example, during the quarter we won a relatively large interaction management deal with a video game developer through one of our partnerships. They are releasing a new game and are preparing for a significant increase in customer interactions via phone, chat and e-mail. They will use our solutions to manage resources, and use our interaction analytics to measure customer experience to help improve the game's performance.
Overall, we see increasing demand for our cloud solutions in both large, and small- and medium-sized enterprises.
We continue to witness strong demand for our real-time impact offering. About a month ago we also made a small technology acquisition of a company called Composia. Composia strengthens our technology in the area of real-time impact, enabling much easier integration of new data sources for real-time analytics. The integration of this technology is in process and moving forward according to plan.
During the third quarter we continued to win big deals and replace competitor solutions in the customer interaction business. One example was a seven digit deal with a large US consumer goods company that was driven by the strength of our PCI-DSS compliance solution. This security standard for the payment card industry requires the contact center to secure cardholder information and protect it against fraud. Our solutions help organizations meet this mandate by leveraging our real-time analytics. These capabilities were a powerful differentiator that led to this win.
Turning to our Financial Crime and Compliance business -
About a month ago we held our annual customer event with more than 300 participants. In this event we brought together fraud, AML and compliance executives from more than 65 institutions across the globe. Many institutions shared case studies and industry experts shared their expertise and insights with our customers.
The strong turnout and interest in fraud and crime prevention from our customers attending the event further demonstrates the increasing opportunities for NICE in this segment.
Among the case studies, which was also covered in an article by bankinfosecurity.com, was a presentation by the head of AML operations at Capital One Bank. He discussed the integration of fraud and AML investigation activity into a single platform using NICE Actimize solutions. Among other operational benefits, our solution enabled the Bank to cut its AML and fraud staff by 20%.
The insights from the event also reaffirmed that the migration towards enterprise-wide operational risk implementations continues. We are continuing to see more and more banks structure their organization in a way to make enterprise-wide consolidation possible.
Banks continue to face persistent pressures to continuously drive down losses from fraud, reduce risk and lower cost, while at the same time they are dealing with an increasing amount of compliance and regulatory issues. This drives interest across our compliance, AML and fraud business segments. For example, the rogue trader case at UBS demonstrates the critical need for identifying fraudulent activity which is addressed by one of our products that run on top of our platform.
On the regulation front, in July the IRS announced plans to phase in the requirements of Foreign Accounting Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, and published an implementation time line with due diligence requirements becoming effective in 2013. This act will require foreign financial institutions to report directly to the IRS certain information about financial accounts held by US taxpayers. We are developing an extension to our AML solution that addresses this requirement. We are already seeing interest from customers.
Finally, we were pleased to see that once again Chartis Research has recognized NICE Actimize as the industry leader in financial crime risk management technology. The research firm considers NICE Actimize as a provider of best in class in depth and breadth of functionality and support services. It ranked us highest in both "market share potential" and "completeness of offering" and rewards our focus, commitment and innovation.
Moving on to our Security business which had a strong quarter with good execution.
We closed some large deals, a good number of which were driven by our situation management solution. Moreover, we continued to see growing demand in all regions as well as an increasing pipeline for this market-leading solution.
We see growing interest from both customers and vendors in PSIM, or physical security information management, to address the need for increased security, safety and compliance and to improve operational efficiency. Most offerings, however, focus solely on video management or on an integration layer. NICE is differentiated by its ability to provide customers a comprehensive situation management solution. This includes situation analytics, business process automation and investigation capabilities. We have a proven track record in the verticals of safe city, transportation, critical facilities, utilities and financial institutions.
During the quarter we closed a noteworthy seven digit deal in EMEA in a critical facilities vertical, in which we are seeing good momentum. The key driver for our win was our demonstrated understanding of all the operational needs as well as our proven ability to adapt the procedure specifically to the relevant vertical. This deep understanding will allow for the integration of 12 different security systems.
In this deal we were successful in combining both our video surveillance and situation management solution, highlighting the value of a fully integrated holistic solution that enhances security in an efficient and cost effective way.
Before I conclude, during the last few months we took advantage of market opportunities and expedited our share repurchases. We announced today a new $100 million buyback plan as part of our commitment to increasing shareholder value. We remain committed to organic growth and growth through acquisition.
Coming off a solid third quarter we look forward to a strong fourth quarter resulting in another year of profitable growth and record results. We have a strong backlog and a healthy pipeline. We see good demand for our solutions resulting from increasing compliance and regulatory requirements, rising security threats and the need for our customers to improve business performance. Our customers need to analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data to give them better insight to their businesses. And we believe that NICE is best positioned to capture these market opportunities.
I would like to thank the NICE team for their performance in the quarter and with that we'll turn the call over to Dafna Gruber, our CFO.
Dafna Gruber - CFO
Thank you, Zeevi. I'm pleased to provide you with an analysis of our financial results and business performance for the third quarter of 2011 and our outlook for the fourth quarter and full year.
Revenues for the third quarter reached a record of $200.4 million, which was in line with expectations, and were up 14% from $176.2 million in Q3 last year. We achieved growth from last year in both our enterprise and security businesses as well as in all regions.
Our revenues by business sales were as follows. Enterprise revenues reached a record of $151.7 million in the third quarter, up 12% from last year. Security revenues reached a record of $48.7 million, up 20% from last year.
By geography we continue to see growth in the Americas region with revenues increasing 12% compared to Q3 last year to a record $127 million. Our revenues in Europe, Middle East and Africa increased 9% from last year reaching $49 million. APAC continued to demonstrate strong growth; revenues were up 42% from last year reaching $24 million in Q3. In summary, the Americas region accounted for 63% of total revenues, EMEA 25% and APAC 12%.
Product revenues accounted for approximately 45% of Q3 revenues, maintenance above 35% and professional services close to 20%.
Q3 gross margin was 64.6% compared to 65.8% last year. The slight decrease in the gross margin was a result of product mix mainly coming from strong results in security. This was partially offset by the improvement in service gross margin. We continue to target gross margin of at least 65%.
We continue to show leverage in our business model over time with a record operating margin of 19.4% for the quarter, up from 18.1% in the same period last year. Operating income in the third quarter increased 22% to a record of $39 million.
Net income was up 20% from $28.7 million last year to $34.5 million in Q3 this year.
The tax rate in Q3 was 15.9%. While we continue to see some fluctuations in tax rate resulting from our international tax structure, we continue to target 17% to 18% as our average tax rate.
We also achieved our highest ever quarterly fully diluted earnings per share, $0.54, which were up $0.09, or 20% from Q3 2010.
Cash flow from operations was $18 million in the third quarter. In the first nine months of 2011 we generated over $100 million cash from operations. Our cash and financial investments were approximately $600 million at the end of September with no debt.
During the quarter we took advantage of market opportunities and expedited execution of our share buyback plan announced at the beginning of the year. We used $59 million to repurchase approximately 1,930,000 shares. As of September 30 we have purchased approximately 2.8 million shares for a total of $90 million.
While we continue to view acquisitions as the prime use of cash, we announced today a new share buyback plan to purchase up to $100 million. This new plan reflects our strong cash position and our confidence in our continued strong cash generation.
This plan will be executed mainly in 2012. Purchases will be down from time to time in the open market or in privately negotiated transactions from our available cash balance. We will determine the timing and amount of any repurchases based on our evaluation of market conditions and other factors including alternative investment opportunities in our future growth.
At the end of October we closed the Fizzback acquisition. As previously disclosed, we expect Fizzback to be $0.02 to $0.03 dilutive to the fourth-quarter fully diluted non-GAAP EPS. Furthermore, we expect Fizzback to add approximately $2 million to the fourth-quarter total revenue.
Turning to guidance, we are introducing today our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2011 and updating the yearly guidance also to include the impact of the Fizzback acquisition. We expect total revenues in the fourth quarter to be in the range of $208 million to $218 million and earnings per fully diluted share are expected to be in the range of $0.55 to $0.59.
We expect total revenues for the year to be in the range of $792 million to $802 million. And despite a slight dilution from the Fizzback acquisition, we are increasing our expectations for earnings per fully diluted share to be in the range of $2.05 to $2.09.
That concludes my comments. I will now turn the call over to questions. Operator?
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Shaul Eyal, Oppenheimer.
Shaul Eyal - Analyst
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everybody. Marty, welcome on board and also I kind of want to commend Daphna for her prior outstanding work at NICE.
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
We're sure she is listening and appreciates it.
Shaul Eyal - Analyst
A couple of quick questions on my end. Zeevi, the slight book-to-bill softness that you had, and I understand kind of it's already for the most part back booked and probably heading into the backlog. Was it enterprise driven or was it security driven?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
It was not in a particular product line and not in a particular geography.
Shaul Eyal - Analyst
Got it. Any initial thinking about what fiscal 2012 guidance might look like or is it too early at this stage?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
It is too early at this stage. We are seeing a very strong pipeline for Q4 and we will -- we are planning to provide guidance in the first quarter -- at the call, the annual call on the first quarter.
Shaul Eyal - Analyst
Got it. Zeevi, I know you mentioned in your prepared remarks the whole saga at UBS and the $2.3 billion trading loss. In your view had UBS used a specific product which is standard to try and flag those potential compliance issues, do you think NICE would have been capable of flagging in advance everything that has happened internally at UBS?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
We obviously do not know all the details, but we have a product that is addressing specifically these kinds of schemes and we saw raising interest in this product after the event.
Shaul Eyal - Analyst
Got it. Okay, thank you very much. Good luck.
Operator
Daniel Meron, RBC.
Daniel Meron - Analyst
Thank you. Congrats on the consistent execution here, Zeevi and Dafna, and I'm joining Shaul here for congratulating Marty on board and saying I guess hello again to Daphna and thanking her for her job.
So to my question -- Zeevi, is there a way to kind of like see how much the economic impact or news has had on the sales process in general and how quickly can things accelerate once your clients kind of decide that this is the time to move ahead?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
For us we have some mixed signals here. On one hand we had some orders that have slipped from the quarter. Not all of them, by the way -- not all of this is related to any economic uncertainty. On the other hand, we are entering Q4 with a very strong pipeline. So really it's difficult for us to tell.
Daniel Meron - Analyst
Okay. And how much of your revenue would you estimate right now is kind of recurring in your view?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
We have -- about one-third of our revenues are maintenance revenues which are recurring. And on top of it we have, some term business and some things that are several percent more of business that is either products recurring or professional services is basically recurring.
Daniel Meron - Analyst
Okay. And last one for me before I yield the floor. I may have missed it earlier on. Can you provide us with a little bit more color on the dynamics that you see per geography right now?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Yes, we can provide. We have seen -- we are very -- last quarter and this quarter we are very pleased with the growth that we are seeing in APAC. In America we have consistent performance and growth. In EMEA we started the year a bit slow, but since then we are recovering and when we are -- we are pleased with the improvement in the business in the past two quarters.
Daniel Meron - Analyst
Okay, very good. Thank you. Good luck.
Operator
Daniel Ives, FBR Capital Markets.
Daniel Ives - Analyst
Yes, hey guys. A few questions. First, on op margins, I mean obviously a real nice improvement there. I mean can you just kind of speak to was it just curbing expenses? Is this sort of something we should think about over the next year in terms of expansion? I mean did anything unusual happen in terms of expense reduction this quarter?
Dafna Gruber - CFO
I think there was nothing unusual this quarter. I think the improvement in operating margin is part of the overall plan. And as we've seen in the past, usually in the first half of the year operating margins are slower than the second half. That's the nature in our business. And what we want to see going forward is continuous improvement in operating margin and what we've seen this quarter is in line with the plan.
Daniel Ives - Analyst
Okay and Zeevi, when you talk about -- I mean book-to-bill is less than 1, but obviously you expect it to be, you said much greater than 1 in Q4. Just kind of speak to what gives you that confidence or what you're seeing anecdotally in the field that would characterize you.
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
We are reviewing very carefully our pipeline across regions, across product lines in many ways. We have -- this is coming from the sales. Usually, by the way, we have even positive surprise in the fourth quarter to what we've seen in the pipeline. But even without these surprises we are in very good shape right now.
Daniel Ives - Analyst
Okay, thanks. And Marty, it's good to have you on board. Thanks.
Marty Cohen - VP of IR
Thanks, Dan.
Operator
Paul Coster, JPMorgan.
Paul Coster - Analyst
Thank you. Good morning. Obviously there's a little bit of volatility in the bookings at the moment and the closing of the pipeline. I wonder if you could perhaps provide some color what you think might have caused the dip and then the recovery and activity there.
And I'm also -- this may be a bit difficult for you, Zeevi, but if you go back to late '08 and early '09, the book-to-bill was tumbling along at above 1 to 1 until the first quarter of 2009. And I'm just wondering if there's anything in this quarter that echoes the kind of look and feel of the market back in that sort of post Lehman era?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
First, you know, when we look at the Q3 last year we also had a book-to-bill which was below 1, I think a year ago. So I don't think that we should derive any conclusion. And again, when we are looking at the fourth quarter we are seeing a very good pipeline. And we believe that we have growth opportunities and we believe that the -- at this point we believe that 2012 is going to be the year of continued growth and increased profitability.
And when we are looking at the model that we have, we are moving more and more to enterprise software model. And like many other enterprise software companies, we are more -- in the Q4, our fourth quarter has a larger share of our overall booking. And this is also because of the increase in our maintenance booking and also because of the way that this business is being conducted.
So we believe that this is some -- this is a pattern. It actually was the pattern in previous years and we believe it should be the pattern also during this year.
Paul Coster - Analyst
What do you think accounts for the improvement and your momentum in EMEA in particular?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
We had a very good quarter with good execution on the quarter on two elements - both on the side CyberTech acquisition and the other is on the security front.
Paul Coster - Analyst
Dafna, are you in a position to share the number of seven digit deals this quarter or give us some sense of the kind of makeup of your deal flow at the moment?
Dafna Gruber - CFO
We are not tracking the exact number of seven digit deals, but I think that the picture this quarter looked quite similar to what we had in previous quarters, so there's no abnormal situation right now.
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Maybe a bit of increase in security (multiple speakers).
Dafna Gruber - CFO
Maybe, yes.
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
We had more -- some more business in security.
Paul Coster - Analyst
Okay, MY last question, there's been some M&A in the sort of unstructured data space, information space. HP and Oracle have obviously been a bit active here. Has this changed the competitive landscape at all? Are you seeing new entrants or exits from your space?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
First of all it probably would be early to tell at this point. But when we look at the -- we look at some of these acquisitions maybe the closer is HP with Autonomy. And frankly after the, we saw after the acquisition of etalk by Autonomy we saw less of etalk at the market.
Overall we believe that, you know, we are -- we believe that we are in an attractive market and we are not surprised to see that more people are looking in areas that are adjacent to our market.
Operator
Jonathan Ho, William Blair.
Jonathan Ho - Analyst
Good morning, guys. Just a quick question on the product growth rates versus the services growth rates. Can you talk a little bit about how we should be -- thinking about the growth in those two rates and when they start to maybe converge a little bit more?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Yes, overall again we are -- we anticipate that product will be between 45% to 55% of revenue and then overall this quarter that was 45% and services was 55%. As the maintenance is becoming a larger component of our business, this is something that we might expect. And overall we expected to grow in all different types of revenues -- on maintenance, on the license as well as any professional services.
Jonathan Ho - Analyst
Okay. And can you also give us a little bit more color around the APAC region growth? What was driving the strength there? Was this distribution build out or was this strength in a particular product segment?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
I think it's mainly execution on our behalf. We also -- there are some areas that we increased coverage in APAC -- sales coverage.
Jonathan Ho - Analyst
Got it. And just lastly, you talked about little bit about your new SaaS offering. Are you seeing an increase in interest in doing business via SaaS and do you think that potentially the market starts to shift in this direction longer-term?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Still SaaS is a small part of our business. There is a growing demand for SaaS solutions and over time we believe that this portion will be a larger part of our business, this will happen gradually.
Jonathan Ho - Analyst
Great, thank you.
Operator
Shyam Patel, Raymond James & Associates.
Shyam Patil - Analyst
Yes hi, good morning. Zeevi, could you talk a little bit about the close rate assumption that you're making in the fourth quarter and how that compares to this quarter? And also when you look out to fiscal '12 do you still feel comfortable with the annual kind of expectations you set of low- to mid-teens growth with modest operating leverage?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
In terms of growth rate -- the closure rates on Q4, we are looking at the pipeline in Q4 and we are fairly confident that we are going to see a strong booking in the quarter. And there is a different -- Q4 is different because the commission plans of our sales people are ending at the end of the quarter. So closure rates are typically higher than average. We are not factoring it in.
So this on the booking side and we are -- we can never be sure, but we are very confident about the booking level on Q4. When it comes to -- when it goes to 2012 we are currently in the budget process and we are compiling the numbers. And our long-term model didn't change, and specifically for 2012 we are -- again, we believe that this is going to be another year of growth and expansion and profitability. And to what extent we will all -- we will probably share the data on our call during the first quarter.
Shyam Patil - Analyst
Great. And you emphasized cloud and SaaS solutions more in your prepared remarks than you have in the past. In addition to Fizzback, what are the other key elements of your SaaS solutions that you're seeing traction for? And is it within the mid-market or is it also within large enterprises?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
So first we do have -- when we're looking at the recurring product revenues in hosting and SaaS, we have Fizzback, we have some, as I mentioned, some partnerships on the customer interaction business that are starting to provide results. And also within our financial crime and compliance business we have by partners and direct business which is providing term license and hosting and subscription-based licensing mechanisms.
Shyam Patil - Analyst
Great. And then just lastly, you briefly touched on etalk and seeing them less in the market after they were acquired by Autonomy. They do seem to have a pretty good installed base in their recording -- call center recording space and they are keeping traction with speech analytics. Given the issues with Autonomy currently, do you expect that to be an incremental opportunity for NICE?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
I prefer not to refer to any specific competitor. I can just say that every time that there is an acquisition there is disruption in the company that is being acquired. And this an opportunity and we are marching our troops to take advantage of this opportunity.
Marty Cohen - VP of IR
Does that answer your question, sir? Let's go ahead with the next question, please.
Operator
Craig Nankervis, First Analysis.
Craig Nankervis - Analyst
Yes, thank you very much. I wonder, Zeevi, if you could just maybe provide a little more color on the security side of the business. I know it's lumpy and all that sort of stuff and you're working off big projects from years ago. How much of a sustainable return to better performance do you think that you have now with one pretty solid quarter under your belt, or is it hard to read?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
First, if you recall also the previous quarter was a solid security quarter, so we are out two quarters in a row, it's not a single event. And overall this was indeed a very good quarter for security. We see a lot of traction. As I said in the previous call, we moved less to dependency on large deals -- on very large deals -- to have more large deals.
So we believe that over time the lumpiness in this business will decrease and we are starting to -- we are seeing the fruit of our strategy to look at the -- around situation management and differentiating our offering with our award-winning product here. And we are starting to benefit from the fruit of executing on this strategy.
Craig Nankervis - Analyst
So what areas of security worked particularly well? Is it the government or --?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
I'm not -- I think that this was -- I cannot -- there was no specific segment, but our traditional segments are government and they are safe city and we have several critical facilities, as we mentioned in the call, and transportation.
Craig Nankervis - Analyst
Okay, thank you very much.
Operator
Tavy Rosner, Barclays Capital.
Tavy Rosner - Analyst
Hi, good afternoon everyone. Just a very quick question about increasing receivables. Do you think it was a back-ended quarter or are customers requesting more credit and maybe better terms?
Dafna Gruber - CFO
Nothing, you know, very unusual. We saw some increase in AR, there were some delays in payments that we received in October, but nothing unusual on that front. And this quarter was no different in the business distribution from previous quarters.
Tavy Rosner - Analyst
Okay. Fine. Thank you very much.
Operator
Brian Ruttenbur, Morgan, Keegan.
Brian Ruttenbur - Analyst
Thank you. Can we talk about timing of the share buyback? Do you plan to do the full $100 million in 2012? Just talk a little bit about that and then I have a follow-on.
Dafna Gruber - CFO
Well, we announced the plan, we would start executing on it towards the end of the year after we finish the current plan. And it is mainly for 2012 and I believe the vast majority will be purchased in 2012 -- over time. And we will continue to take opportunities like we had in Q3 and may expedite it if we feel we should do that.
Brian Ruttenbur - Analyst
Okay. And then are you just purchasing those shares on open market, is that how you're --.
Dafna Gruber - CFO
We're purchasing in the open market, but we placed a 10b5 plan for the execution.
Brian Ruttenbur - Analyst
And then if you'd talk a little bit about selling and marketing expense, you had a big drop. Was there anything going on there in the quarter? Did you lay people off or was it just controlling expenses, seasonal? Just talk about that a little bit.
Dafna Gruber - CFO
I think it more had to do with seasonal impact and usually the second quarter is high because we have lots of events and the third quarter is usually lower and there are also some sales-related costs that may have gone down a little bit this quarter, but nothing unusual.
Brian Ruttenbur - Analyst
Okay, thank you very much.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Bregman to go ahead with his closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call is scheduled to begin in two hours. In the US please call 1-888-782-4291. In the UK please call 0-800-917-4256. In Israel please call 03-9255-900. And internationally please call 972-3-9255-900. Mr. Bregman, would you like to make your concluding statement?
Zeevi Bregman - President & CEO
Thank you, everybody, for joining us today and have a NICE day.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes NICE Systems' third-quarter 2011 results conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.