Paycom Software Inc (PAYC) 2015 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Paycom third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). This is being recorded. I would like to turn over to Mr. Craig Boelte, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon. Before we get started, I would like to note that certain statements made during this conference call that are not historical facts, including those regarding our future plans, objectives and expected performance are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this conference call. While we believe any forward-looking statements we have made are reasonable, actual results could differ materially because the statement are based on our current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our annual report on form 10K that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 26, 2015, and as may be supplemented by subsequent form 10-Q filings.

You should refer to and consider these factors when relying on such forward-looking information. We do not undertake, and expressly disclaim, any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements whether as a result of new of new information, future events or otherwise except as required by applicable law. Also, during the course of today's call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation schedule showing GAAP versus non-GAAP results was included in the press release that we issued at the close of the market today which is available on our website at investors.paycom.com.

I will now turn the call over to Chad Richison, Paycom's President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Craig and thank you to everyone joining us on today's call. As with our prior quarters our provide some high level comments regarding our performance and perspective on the marketplace, and I'll also share some examples of customer wins we achieved during the third quarter of 2015. Craig will then provide a deeper look at our financials, and finally we'll open the line for questions. So, let's get started. As you may have read in our press release earlier today, Paycom enjoyed continued momentum in the third quarter of 2015. Our revenue for the third quarter of 2015 was $55.3, representing growth of 51% compared to the comparable prior year period. Annualized New Recurring Revenue, or ANRR, was $31.8 million, representing growth of 113% over the third quarter of 2014.

We believe this robust performance was due to the ongoing market embrace of our powerful, yet easy to use cloud based solution, as well as our top-notch sales organization that continues to mature and hit its stride. Let me spend a few minutes providing some insight into our view of the market for human capital management software. From our perspective, there remains substantial potential for improvement in how company's recruit, manage and serve their employees.

As we speak with perspective customers, we routinely encounter companies that have substandard solutions in place, and as a result are not fully leveraging being their valuable talent asset. Many are deploying multiple systems that have been pieced together over years. In these situations, we typically find multiple log on requirements for employees as well as a difficult user interface. This leads to low employee usage of the system, which, in turn contributes to already unreliable data for HR managers, and few if any actionable insights the C-suite. The other paradigm we often encounter is companies that have invested in what they believe to be a sophisticated high-tech system, only to find that due to its complexity only a very small number of employees are capable of using it. These companies often suffer from the exact same issues as companies deploying multiple systems, namely low employee usage and the resulting low quality data that precludes action and improvement. The Paycom solution is easy to but also very powerful.

Due to its single database architecture, this combination provides the benefit of very clean data that can produce actionable insights. Additionally, it gives us the ability to continually refine and improve our existing solution, as well as consistently launch new applications that continue to enhance our appeal in the marketplace. To this point, we have continued to evolve our solution, growing our R&D spending well over 100% in the third quarter. Examples of these enhancements include our pre-hire check-list which allows our clients to streamline the employee on-boarding process and get their new hires quickly up to speed instead of filling out I9s, W-4s and enrolling and benefits during their new employee orientation, new hires can hit the ground running and make an impact on day one.

Another example is our newly added customized personnel action form. This new piece of functionality empowers our clients to crease actionable forms that can be completely customized based on position or departmental needs. For instance, with our customizable personnel forms, managers can notify departments of specific changes that may need to be made, such as giving employee access to different systems or restricted work areas. We believe this new component is more efficient and easier to use than anything currently available. We also delivered two new features; Geo-fencing and Geo-tracking to our current clients who utilize our Time Entertainments module. Geo-fencing gives clients the ability to set geographical boundaries where their employees are authorized to be using Paycom's web time clock on smart phones, tablets or other electronic devices to clock in and out.

Our Geo-tracking technology means our clients can track employees geographical location when they've clocked in and out. The coordinates we collect can then be entered and viewed on Google's display map. Together these applications empower employers to help mitigate time theft, a problem many organizations face. These are examples of how our ongoing development improves our client's user experience. While simple in nature, the positive client feedback we receive regarding these enhancements continues to motivate us to have the best possible solution in the market.

As I mentioned earlier, we believe that the single database foundation of our solution allows makes it easier for us to develop and launch these other enhancements, which contribute to our continued growth and success. However, our solution is not the only area that we continue to improve. I'm pleased to report that our sales organization is performing extremely well. As I mentioned on past calls, we continue to see our sales team sell more at the upper end of our market. Additionally, our newer offices continues to mature and we are excited with their progress and development. All of which are reflected in our excellent results. With that, I would like provide some quick examples of notable client wins in the third quarter. We were pleased to bring aboard one of the largest golf management companies in the world despite an exiting competitive provider landscape.

This company operates more than 90 premier private resort and public golf courses throughout the US, and employs over 5,500 individuals. The client was previously using outdated desperate systems for each of its HR and payroll process. They appreciate the fact that Paycom allows them to streamline their work flows and eliminate the menial tasks they had to do with their previous providers. Another organization that shows our services in the third quarter was a large early childhood educator with over 120 private pre-schools and elementary schools across the country. With nearly 3,300 employees, this business chose Paycom due to our ability to significantly improve their HCM operations, allowing them to empower their employees to pursue their mission of serving their students.

One challenge this company faced with their previous provider involved a software upgrade during which the company lost access to all of their existing data and reports. In fact, with this incumbent provider, they experienced times when their system was completely offline, and they could not access the tools that they needed to operate. Our solution has enabled this client to automate and standardize its payroll and HCM processes with 24-7 access across all levels of the organization. To conclude, our momentum continued in the third quarter, and I'm very proud of our entire team as our combined efforts are essential to our current and future success. I'll now turn the call over to Craig for an update on our financials and our guidance.

Thanks, Chad. Before I review our third quarter results and also our outlook for fourth quarter and fiscal year 2015, I would like to remind everyone that my comments related to certain financial measures will be on a non-GAAP basis. Adjusted EBITDA, and non-GAAP net income are non-GAAP financial measures that exclude stock based compensation and other nonrecurring charges, including transaction expenses relating to our initial public offering and our follow on public offering. A reconciliation of our non-GAAP to non-GAAP results is included in our press release.

Our sales momentum continued in the third quarter with total revenues of $55.3 million, representing year-over-year growth of 51% from the comparable prior-year period. Within total revenues, recurring revenue was $54.2 million for the third quarter of 2015, representing 98% of total revenue for the quarter and growing 51% from the comparable prior-year period. ANRR was $31.8 million for the third quarter of 2015, compared to$14.9 million in the same period last year, and representing 113% growth. As a reminder, ANRR is an estimate based on the annualized amount for the first full month of already on boarded new recurring revenue.

Total adjusted gross profit for the third quarter was $46.5 million, representing an adjusted gross margin of 84.1%. This compares to 82.4% in the third quarter of 2014. Turning to operating expenses. As a reminder, we pay commissions to our sales reps based solely on new sales at the time of the clients first monthly billing cycle. This is a one-time commission that we recoup over the life of the client relationship. When we experienced strong sales performance in a quarter, with this quarter being a timely example, there's a potential for us to see increased expenses in that quarter depending on the timing of the client's on-board process. For the third quarter Total Adjusted Administrative expenses were $38.3 million.

This compares to $25.4 million in the third quarter of 2014. R&D expense increased 110% from the comparable prior-year period. As Chad detailed, we continue to invest in our solution to maintain our competitive advantage. Adjusted EBITDA was $10.8 million or 19.5% of total revenue in the third quarter of 2015, compared to $6.6 million or 18% of total revenue in third quarter of 2014. Adjusted EBITDA was impacted primarily from the over achievement in ANRR which resulted in increased commission expense. Due to this over achievement, at the end of the third quarter, we had approximately twice as many sales representatives qualify for the highest commission level compared to the same period last year. Non-GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2015 was $4.7 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, based on approximately $58 million shares, versus $2.7 million, or $0.05 per diluted share based on approximately 53 million shares a year ago.

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $48.5 million, and debt of $28.1 million. As a reminder, this debt represents the financing on our corporate headquarters. With that, let me turn to guidance for the fourth quarter, and for fiscal 2015. For the fourth quarter of 2015, we expect total revenue in the range of $59.5 million to $61.5 million. Representing a growth rate over the comparable prior year period of approximately 38% at the midpoint.

We expect the adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter in the range of $9 million to $11 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 17% at the midpoint. For fiscal 2015, we're raising our revenue guidance from $210 million to $212 million up to a range of $219 million to $221 million, or approximately 46% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2015 in the range of $46.5 million to $48.5 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 22% at the midpoint. In summary, we had an excellent third quarter and look forward to continued momentum through 2015.

With that, we'll open the line up for questions.

Operator?

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we'll begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Our first question today will come from, Raimo Lenschow, from Barclays. Please, go ahead with your question.

Thanks, and congratulation. This was an amazing quarter. Chad, can you talk a little bit about the strength in ANRR? That sort of growth we haven't seen for quite a while. Maybe just talk a little bit about, you mentioned already some of the driver sort of strength but have we hit a (inaudible) or were there some things in Q3 that were specific to this quarter that helped? Thank you. [audio difficulties]

Thanks, Raimo. With ANRR we had significant growth this quarter. To remind everybody, ANRR is the amount of processed or on-boarded revenue for the full month of any given quarter. So, that's actually on-boarded revenue, new business revenue annualized. So, we had several deals that came in at the top end of our range. I highlighted a few of them on the call. We do have, our offices are starting to mature and continue to drive growth in those areas.

And I mean, we have a substantial number of sales people that are really hitting record numbers these days. So, we've built out strategically, we built out our sales organization to be able to produce these types of results. As far as have we got an inflexion point, we made the comment earlier this year about ANRR, and now we have seen that jump. So ANRR is not something that we can necessarily forecast, as it's a metric itself that's established after on-boarded revenue.

And then one more question. On the reference custom (inaudible) you mentioned I noticed that they're all in terms of (inaudible) re-fi [audio difficulties] several thousand now. Can you talk a little bit to what you see in terms of customer base (inaudible) involving in terms of you moving slightly higher up the market and who the competitors are as you see these sort of deals coming forth? Thank you.

Yes. And so we continue to stay focused on the market we serve. We have been pulled up market on a couple of occasions, more so now than in the past. I did highlight a few of the larger accounts. It's important to note that in any given quarter, we have accounts equal to those sizes. It's just with having more sales people selling more at the upper end of our target, we're running into more of those clients. And I also do believe that larger companies may be over time, who have experienced maybe some complications in patching together multiple systems, are starting to embrace a single database architecture that has some ease of use. As far as the competitive landscape, it's substantially the same as what we have experienced in the past.

That's perfect. Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Our next question comes from Michael Nemeroff, from Credit Suisse. Please, go ahead with your question.

Thanks for taking my questions. I'll echo those congratulations. The results, the ANRR was kind of staggering. I had to do a double take on that number. Building on Raimo's questions about that growth and the strength of ANRR, is anything changing with the speed of implementations that's allowing you to get that first month of revenue in from the clients?

No, I would say that the speed of our implementation remains the same. We have put in processes to get better at implementation, so to the extent that there was a little bit of a speed up, it may have a little bit to do with that. But I can't point to any deal that started later or earlier due to that efficiency.

So another question that we're probably going to get asked, and I'm sure that you would too is, should we look at the ANRR growth this quarter as maybe a pull forward of some deals that you were expecting to close later, or you were expecting to implement a little bit later? Because it's more than double what it was year-over-year and last quarter.

No, we really tend to unload the musket every quarter on these deals, and so we continue to do that. We don't have a long, drawn out on boarding process as far as someone making a conversion from a competitor to us. That's something that we want to get them set up very quickly and efficiently. That's just what we do. I wouldn't say that we pulled forward anything that was due to start later in the year, or that anything necessarily pushed, anything out of the ordinary. You're always going to have some of those that push forward or back or whatever but there wasn't anything that I could point to that say this was the situation this quarter.

So we should see typical seasonality year-over-year and sequentially, or year-over-year, let's say, in Q4?

I'm trying to think through what you're asking there. Ask that again?

Should we continue to think that the Q4 bookings or billings number should look similar to what we have previously modeled, not this abhorrently large Q3 ANRR number?

Well, we're trying to sell as much as we can sell. And we don't intend on letting up the gas. It has been our goal, not only as a fast company in the payroll and HCM space, but also as a sales organization, to onboard the most new business revenue onto our platform over any other that are in our industry. And this quarter, you had some very ADP increased from Q2 to Q3, increased their revenue, I think it was $20 million or something like that.

Ultimate increased their revenue about $8 million and we have increased ours almost $6.5 million dollars. And that remains our goal. I don't know what's going to happen in the next quarter, but what is true is our reps are out there and they're doing the job, and we're going to be continuing to drive for those results.

Just one for Craig on the ANRR growth, given how strong it has been or is going to be, regardless of what you put up in Q4, the delta on the next year's revenue is pretty slight from the ANRR growth, the previous year and in fact this year it's accelerated. Given where the consensus is, which is relatively low, compared to what is possible for you do in 2016, can you give us any indication of where you'd like estimates to shake out for growth in 2016 without giving specific guidance?

As we're looking to 2016, what we have done in the past is give that 2016 guidance in the fourth quarter, as we're reporting fourth quarter results. As Chad mentioned, we're set up to be a growth organization and feel good about our sales organization, and kind of how they're set up to do that the rest of the year.

Okay, thanks, guys, well done.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Murphy, from JPMorgan. Please, go ahead with your question.

Hi. This is actually Albert Sheen on for Mark. Congratulations on the great quarter. Really impressive results. I want to dig a little bit deeper into the strength this past quarter. Were you seeing a big tail wind from ACA compliance, and if so, are you able to quantify that for us? And secondly, do you think that next quarter there will be an even greater scramble toward year end, or do you think that customers have mostly gotten their ducks in a row for this quarter? Thanks.

I think that customers are continuously interested in the ACA offering. I think it's going to continue to be a popular topic, definitely through first quarter of next year, as companies move from implementing into actually having to submit the forms. So, I see that happening. As far as ACA, I mean ACA isn't one of the many products that we sell here. It's not a metric that I want to give out on a continual basis, but what I will say, of the $159 million in revenue we have done so far this year, less than $790,000 was done in ACA. So again, of our total revenue, ACA at this point represents a smaller portion. And again, I don't see it being any more significant in the future than other products that we have brought to market underneath the same platform.

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks.

Our next question comes from John DiFucci, from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you. Hey, Chad and Craig, I sort of have a follow up to some of the questions on ANRR. Because, we're all looking at this, and some companies have done pretty well this quarter, and some not so great, and this is actually sort of the high end of that range. Way at the high-end. So, when we look at it, and I'm going to go back to Mike's question he was asking about on seasonality. Because this quarter, ANRR was off the highest growth quarter from last year. So most people look at it as we did as the most difficult comp you have, relative to last year, and you put up a number that is maybe shocking, or at least certainly very impressive.

I'm curious, is there something in the third quarter maybe that's changing in your business, where you're seeing more seasonality here? Or is it just everything seems to be clicking along? As we all know you have a very disciplined sales process, and a build out that appears to be working here. What it does sound like you're selling some larger deals on average, and maybe if there's anything you can quantify for us? I know you gave us some examples, or just even percentage growth in those ASP or average number of seats or anything like that to give us? It's obvious that the business is working here and working very well, but anything more that you can give us to help us quantify it as we move forward?

Well, I can tell you that the number of sales reps that we have that are going to reach over $1 million of new business sales has continued to increase. As I think back a couple of years ago, the largest person to sell, the largest amount that someone may have sold may have been $750,000 and now we have so many people that sell over $1 million. I think back to two or three years ago and the largest office sold $3 million, $3.5 million, and now we have offices that can do over $8 million in a year. Again, that's accelerated from $6 million the previous year.

So what's happening is, the sales reps that we hire, that we bring in here, go through our program, go through our training, and they come out and several of them are extremely successful, most of them are successful. And so that's really what's happening. We've strategically on purpose built the sales organization to be able to deliver results. We have a very good product for them to sell. And those two things, coupled together, has produced the results that we have this quarter. I cannot point to anything in third quarter that's significantly, well, anything at all really that has driven the new business that has been brought on.

I do think the fact that we have an ACA product, and we're talking about it, that we're on boarding companies as we're out closing new business, I do think that's a conversation starter, but most of the business, and I'll say this again, most of the businesses that we have brought on, July through September, those conversations were being had before July. And so it's something that we have had in our bag for a while.

Thanks. And if I might, would it be safe for us to be thinking a little bit differently perhaps, because I think we're used to thinking, okay, you sign on, you open these new offices, year one is sort of a wash. Not so much production. And year two, you get some production, and after year three, you start to think of them as mature offices, but you just went through some numbers, $8 million, $6 million, up from $6 million from some offices. That term, mature office, sounds like it's sort of a misnomer, we shouldn't really be thinking that way. That sort of implies relative stagnation at a high-level. But it sounds like you're just seeing more out of those people as they continue to improve, and as you expand your offering.

You're correct. You should not be setting a limit on what a mature office can sell in any given year.

Okay, okay, great. Thanks a lot. And, congratulations, guys.

Thank you.

And our next question comes from Brendan Barnicle, from Pacific Crest Securities. Please, go ahead with your question.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. This is Trevor Upton on for Brendan. To follow up on your comments on ACAs year to date impact on revenue, can you maybe give more color on the impact ACA on ANRR or wins in the quarter?

It's hard to say how much ACA would have impacted any given win. I'm sure we did get business because someone looked at our ACA offering or maybe someone else wasn't able to convert them over to theirs. But again, most of the business that we're having converted in July, many of those discussions were already taking place earlier in the year. I think we came out with our full service ACA offering earlier this summer, maybe. So, it's just really hard to point to that. Again, ACA is part of our overall system. There's definitely no one who came onto our software just to use ACA.

It's the total value that we deliver that does include ACA. And whether or not those same companies would have come on without using our time and attendance, or talent management, or HR software pieces would have also been at question. So it's really hard to qualify exactly why a customer chooses to use us, if you were to point to any one specific piece of software functionality. But I definitely think it's a door opener and a conversation starter. But again, most of our competitors have an offering. It would be very rare this late in the year to be talking into a competitive situation where we're competing against someone that also doesn't have some type of offering for ACA as we sit here in third and fourth quarter in 2015.

Okay, thank you.

You bet.

Our next question comes from Brad Reback, from Stifel. Please, go ahead with your question.

Great, thanks. So Chad, as you think about the strength of the business right now, does it change how you think about the rate of new office openings in 2016?

No. I think that we have a strategy for the offices we open, and we have a certain focus on how and when we open up an office. It really has to do with personnel development. It is true that the more offices we have, the more opportunities for re-low we have for current managers, as well as for more back fill strength we have as well. We're focused on both continuing to grow our footprint, as well as expanding our footprint in current geographies, and I don't see that changing in 2016.

Great. Thank you, very much.

Our next question comes from Corey Greendale, from First Analysis. Go ahead with your question.

Good afternoon, and congratulations on a very nice quarter. A couple of quick things following up on the ACA points. We've heard from some others that they expect there to be higher costs associated with getting clients ready for ACA. Do you expect any of that in Q4 going into the New Year?

There's definitely a push to move data into the system. I think to the extent there's a higher cost on our end, there's really the education after the sale and working with the client to make sure that that data is in, and it's being measured correctly. I don't know that we can point necessarily to say, it's going to impact our numbers significantly as far as cost is associated. Craig, I'll let you expand on that.

There's no third party software that we're buying outside of it. So really, the cost would be labor related to the people that we have right now. Maybe providing some additional service to clients that are doing this for the first time, and to some extent, clients are just finding their data and they're able to pull data from multiple systems. Maybe some they have tracked and some they haven't and should have. And converting that into the system. I would say that there will be some costs associated with that, but no more than costs associated with hooking up with someone's talent management system with a COBRA system or time and labor and management or talent acquisition.

There's a cost we incur to servicing clients. And we report that. But I don't see it as being an additional cost item, no more so than anything else. Any revenue that's achieved through that product once it really starts building, I think we'll make up for that.

That is helpful. I appreciate you sharing that $790,000 number. Based on the way you're pricing, is that a meaningful number to extrapolate from? Or could the number be meaningfully higher next year just based on the forms and other things being initiated?

I gave that number to show kind of where we're at in the process. I don't see ACA. And that's one thing that I don't want to get into. I think that we could be talking a lot about ACA and we have so many other products that also have a lot of traction and revenue opportunities associated with them as well. Yes, I would say as we move to next year, as we continue to onboard more clients, especially as there becomes a Q1 forms filing side to this, you're going to see ACA revenue increase. Now, is it going to increase at a rate larger than some of our other items? I don't know. But you'll definitely see it go up from 791. Again, 791 is a year-to-date number.

Yes. I understand. And then just one quick one on the Q4 guidance. If you look at the ANRR number was in Q3, and really impressive, I realize the math doesn't quite work this way but if you take one quarter of that and add it to where the revenue was in this quarter, it looks like the revenue guidance for Q4 is pretty conservative. I know the methodology isn't exactly sound, but directionally could you just comment on that?

Some of the ANRR would have already rolled into the Q3 numbers as well. And Chad mentioned, those are clients that are already billing and on the system. The Q4 guidance, we have thrown that out and feel good about that. The one thing to mention, the Q4 is a tough comp from last year. We got Q4 in the calendar as well.

Great. I'll turn it over, thank you.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from David Hynes, from Canaccord. Please, go ahead with your question.

Thanks. Chad, at the time of your IPO I think that we talked about the approximate bookings and that like 5% was coming from 2000 plus employee organizations. Is there any way to update that metric, give us a sense of how that has grown?

I don't have that information on me, and it's not something that I can comment right now without having those numbers. I do think that we're selling more at the top end of our range. If you're drawing the line at 2,000, how many did we sell at 1,900 to 1,700, and how many did we sell from 2,100 to 4,000? I know we've sold more but we've also sold more in both of those ranges, so it would be hard for me at this point to draw any percentage from that.

Okay. Help us think about the cadence of new office openings. In the past two years, they have been some five and in Q1 they've been pretty consolidated. Do you think 2016 follows a similar pattern or could they be sprinkled throughout the year? How do you think about growth on that front?

With that, we're very focused on development of the personnel that reloads. To remind everyone, the way we open up a new territory, which might be a new geography, we take a current manager that's established with us, and we relocate them to a new geography and then we back fill them with an up and coming sales manager, who is currently a sales rep and wants to lead. So again, the more offices that we have, the more managers that we have, the more people we have that we're able to relocate. And really, that is how we make our decision.

We make our decision based on where we are as a Company, who do we have that's ready to go? Who do we have that's ready to backfill? Because with the number of city's and the geography we're in right now, there's just a lot more opportunity out there than we have people ready to reload at this time. So we'll continue to update that, and we continue to announce those openings after they happened. I wouldn't draw any line in the sand on when we would have another office opening. Whether that's early, late, in the middle, or not consistently throughout next year. Those are decisions that we'll be making as we continue on in subsequent quarters.

Okay, understood, thanks for the color.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference call back over to Chad Richinson for any closing remarks.

Thanks again to anyone joining us for the call. And as a quick note, we'll be presenting at the Credit Suisse annual technology conference in Scottsdale on the December 1, and at the Barclays global T&T conference in San Francisco on December 8th. I look forward to meeting with some of you at these events and in the coming months. Thank you all.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for attending and you may now disconnect your telephone lines.