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Asure Software, Inc. (ASUR)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 14, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Welcome to Asure Software's Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today's call is Asure's CEO, Pat Goepel; CFO, Brad Wolfe; and Director of Human Resources, Cheryl Trbula. My name is Amanda and I will be your coordinator for today. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Cheryl Trbula to provide the necessary cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during today's call. Cheryl?

Cheryl Trbula

Analyst

Thank you, Amanda. Good morning everyone. Before we start, I'd like to mention that some of the statements made by management during this call might include projections, estimates and other forward-looking information. This will include any discussion of the company's business outlook or guidance. These particular forward-looking statements and all of the statements that may be made on this call that are not historical are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could affect their outcomes. You're urged to consider the risk factors relating to the company's business contained in our latest periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These risk factors are important and they could cause actual results to differ materially. This call is also being recorded on behalf of Asure Software and is copyrighted material. It cannot be recorded or rebroadcast without the company's expressed permission and your participation implies consent to the call's recording. It will be made available for replay via links available in the Investor Relation sections of the company's website at www.asuresoftware.com. After we've completed our review of the quarter, we'll open up the call for questions from the financial analyst community. I would now like to turn the call over to Pat Goepel, CEO of Asure Software. Pat?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thank you, Cheryl and I'd like to welcome everyone; our clients, employees, investors, analysts and other interested third-parties to our third quarter 2016 earnings call. Our high level on the third quarter we had a real strong and productive and encouraging quarter for us, it not only represented our first full quarter of realizing some of the costs savings that we announced last quarter from the Mangrove acquisition but it also represents the second quarter of a new normal for Asure back with our market focus now expanded and our solutions are unified under one common user interface with Version 8. We built the right foundation to scale our business either -- even further in the future and are really, really excited about that. Some of our particular successes during quarter three, pro forma revenue, gross margin, adjusted EBITDA were up over the prior year which let us to being profitable for the second quarter in a row and we feel real good about that. Some of the percentage increases that we were up in revenue gross margin without the acquisition were good to see in the 42% range on revenue. Bookings were up 19% for the quarter, our cloud bookings were little down due to a large win we had in Q3 but despite that, being up 19% in total bookings and up 39% year-to-date in total bookings give us comfort for the future. We had a strong conversion of backlog to revenue and for our enterprise clients and clients that were in the background of -- in the backlog from even the big ones from last year. And then backlog as a whole increased over Q2 due to a new three-year deal where we secured one of our largest clients, PSSI. We're definitely seeing backlog turn to revenue…

Brad Wolfe

Analyst

Thank you Pat, and good morning, everyone. Turning to our financial results for quarter ended September 30, 2016, cloud bookings in the quarter as Pat alluded to decreased by 7% due to a large client win in Q3 of 2015 while our year-to-date bookings were up 39% year-over-year. Revenue for the third quarter was up 42% to $9.4 million from $6.7 million in the same quarter last year. Improvement on revenues was driven by increases in cloud, on-premises software and professional services revenue. Our recurring revenue as a percentage of total revenue was 74% compared to 72% in the prior quarter and 75% in the third quarter of 2015. On a pro forma basis, including results of Mangrove, as if acquisition was completed January 1, 2015, our total revenue increased 6% to $9.4 million from $8.9 million in the same year ago quarter. Looking at our revenue by stores, revenue in the third quarter for our workspace management solutions Asure space totaled $4.2 million which was up 4% from the $4.1 million recorded in same quarter last year. Our cloud revenue increased $200,000 or 11% and our professional services revenue increased $319,000 or 46% over the same quarter last year. Hardware revenues decreased $225,000 or 48% while maintenance of product decreased $194,000 or 21%. The decrease for both sources of revenue was primarily caused by the movement of clients from our on-premises to on-demand cloud-based solutions. Revenue for Asure force -- our workforce management solutions increased $2.6 million or 103% to $5.2 million from $2.6 million in the same quarter last year. This increase was primarily due to the acquisition of Mangrove which added $2.1 million of revenue in the period. Cloud, hardware, on-premises software license and professional services revenue; all increased during the quarter driven by a 128% or…

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Brad, thank you and we're very pleased again with the quarter. It's clear from the results we have a strong quarter, we can look at any of the key matrix and wait, you can see that we made great progress from where we were last year in some cases where we were just a quarter ago. Even without Mangrove our revenues and gross margin on a pro forma grew nicely over the same year end while our adjusted EBITDA was considerably as Brad mentioned. With another quarter profitability generated positive cash flow from operations and even some of the one-times we had during the quarter and will continue to disappear overtime. Going forward we'll see stronger cash flow generation. On an operational overview, in additional looking at some of our growth matrix backlog increased nicely with some enterprise sales but we also heartened that we worked off some backlog and especially the large ones with PSSI was an important win for us and a three year commitment going forward. Our backlog process is improving, especially in the area space; if you recall, last year we had number bookings that were very positive and key wins in Morgan Stanley and Five Service [ph] and Rogers Telecommunication; all those customers are now moving through the implementation process that are now live. Clients that are signing up now, we believe won't be implementation as long as they were when we came out with the product last year. So very encouraging and I'd like to thank the employees and sales people for their effort in making the sales become a reality. Total bookings were up considerably year-over-year which is about 39%, even though our cloud bookings were down slightly with the one sale in the third quarter of last year. I mentioned this had…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

Thanks and congratulations on Q3. I wanted to dive into the guidance for Q4, midpoint based on backing out the first nine months, I've got the midpoint at $10.25 million that be a substantial step-up here, Q3 to Q4, how much of that is explained by recovery in the hardware and how much of it is coming from the other buckets?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Eric, I think clearly -- probably hardware will be probably half of it, maybe from a step up and then the rest would be -- I don't want to get too precise on it but I would say consistent with our first year-end of Mangrove and what have you -- but I think half of it is hardware.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

Okay. And then the pipeline being up, I guess maybe I could use a definition here; when you say the pipeline is up 212%, what does that actually mean? In other words, if you -- are you comparing it to year-over-year like a year ago was $3 million and now this year it is $9 million, is that what we are talking about?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

We're actually comparing quarter-over-quarter because we had growth from buying Mangrove and then doing really a cross-sell opportunities and seeing the pipeline grow. So really that bodes to getting Mangrove, starting to get it integrated, let's starting to get the cross-sale opportunities, starting to get all the sales opportunities. And as you know Eric, the fourth quarter typically, especially in HCM is pretty brisk as far as sales because people want to start in January. So that's how we define that metric.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

Okay. Now that's very encouraging to see that that kind of sequential expansion in the pipeline.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Yes, no it's very encouraging -- Eric, the only thing I'd point out is this is our first year-end with the acquisition. So I'll be over the moon next year at this time but we are growing off a small base but we're really excited.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

Okay. And then last question for me, the gross margin -- it kicked up there, it seems like it might have been driven by being hardware light and licensing heavy. What's the gross margin expectation for Q4?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

I think something around -- it's going to remain consistent at 77%, 78% range I think. If you look at it, your right, the mix has some impact but if you look historically we've been in sort of 75% to 78% -- 74% to 78% range and I expect it to be between 77% and 78% in Q4.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

Got it. Thanks for taking my questions.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thanks, Eric.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Mike [ph] from Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great, thanks. Good morning and great quarter. Just diving into the cross-sell opportunities a little bit, so what you're seeing are -- do the cross-sell opportunities look to be replacing other technologies or do you see a lot greenfield opportunity there -- some of these cross-sell opportunities?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

I think most of it is replacing a solution in place but it's a point solution, and what they are excited about is the integration of an enterprise solution to replace a point solution.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great, okay. And in terms of the pipeline, can you just give a little color on what you're seeing in terms of the cloud opportunity reflected in the pipeline?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Yes, I think the cloud opportunity is strong, specifically for January. We believe -- we're leading with the cloud on every opportunity. If we have a client that's maintenance and support and they are looking at new location, and it's a grandfather client, we'll upgrade them but really all that is cloud driven and at this point, our clients are all wanting to go to the cloud.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Got it. And then you've talked a little bit, couple of times about just converting backlog to revenue, you seemed pleased with that. I guess is that just sort of internal processing is working more efficiently or is that the main factor there?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Yes, I think if you think about last year Mike, and we were big on the whole telling story and we were very fortunate to get a number of enterprise customers booked last year. What I would say is because business hoteling was so new, it took almost in some cases a year to go live. What we're excited about is we got those clients live, now we're also excited that the next wave of these business hoteling clients -- we don't think will take a year, we think now that we have the process fees down -- and kind of more importantly, they have the process fees down in the sense there has been some success in the marketplace. There is a road map and change management that employees and employers can use to be successful quickly which takes that backlog to revenue. So we're counting on that and believe in that and we think we have some good proof points in the second and third quarter of this year from sales that we made last year that reflect that into the revenue and then more importantly, going forward, we think the backlog time won't be nearly as long.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And just last question, congratulations on Apple; what are you selling to Apple?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

We have our research scheduler system and we schedule kind of desk and rooms for them, and so we're excited about that. And we think we have some more opportunities down the line.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, thanks a lot. Good luck.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

Hi Pat, nice quarter. I thought you said last quarter you were targeting now in terms of the cross-sell opportunities, $400 per employee. If I'm right on that, what change that you're now back up to $500?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

No, I think Vincent the $500 is maybe a hair aspirational, I think $500 is always our target overtime. I would say early on its probably -- $400 is probably more realistic in a sense that -- but as we're rolling out products and services, and as clients are looking to go more and more international in some cases or up-market there is opportunity to get more professional services in hardware that will take us close to the $500. So $400 as we go -- I think you'll see $500 be probably the longer term number, $400 is shorter term number, and that's just what the stage we are with integrating and acquisition and rolling out some products.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

On the space side, I've come across one or two private companies that I wasn't previously aware of. I'm wondering if the landscape changed at all and in terms of -- if your win rates have been steady, what that looks like?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

I mean, I think there is some nice private companies that are out in the marketplace on both sides of the pond and it's a competitor marketplace, I don't think we've seen any change in the winds and I think we feel really good about our positioning in the marketplace.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

And last question for me, I know you've mentioned service bureau as a potential area of interest to you, but would other areas if you had the -- if you did some acquisitions what will be a particular interest in the HCM side?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

I think -- I don't want to go into too much detail there but what I would say is we feel we have the right kind of enterprise suite of products. We might have a tuck-in technology acquisition that could make some sense there, in addition to people that are already using our technology. And so suffice to say if we use some acquisitions, there will be an accretive, we'll be looking at them from a customer base to pile more customers down our base. And we think that there is some opportunity in that area. I don't think you'll see us go to a new market like we do with Mangrove, we think we have plenty of market now, we're looking to get bigger and drive our revenue as well as our drive scale.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

Okay, thanks for answering my questions. And again, it's nice to see the progress, good job.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thanks Vincent, thanks for your support online.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Ryan MacDonald from Wunderlich Securities. Your line is open.

Ryan MacDonald

Analyst

Hi guys, congrats on the nice quarter, in particular as you look at sort of the large customers that you closed during the quarter that you mentioned, the Apple, the Merck's, Procter & Gamble; can you talk about what the -- sort of the competitive landscape was or the dynamics there on those deals?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Most of them, let's see -- Merck and Apple had at least two competitors; they're both private companies, we slugged it out in the case of Merck almost a year. They wanted to understand what we could vis-à-vis our competition, they came back at the end of that process and chose us, and we're very pleased. So that was the win, and as far as Apple, same thing; they probably had a broader scope looking at some different kind of private companies and at the end chose us; and again, we're very pleased. Typically, competitors were two to three, and I'm not privy to all the conversations they have but those are two to three that I know off.

Ryan MacDonald

Analyst

Got it. And then you mentioned sort of in your closing remarks Pat about sort of striving to grow double digits again next year. Would that target -- is that inclusive of any potential M&A or do you think you can just do that from an organic prospective as well?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

No, I think our -- we believe that we have some momentum here that we think we can grow double digits organically, and then also have the opportunity to have some tuck-in acquisitions. So our goal is -- ultimately, we want to get to 2020 -- kind of 20% growth and 20% EBITDA plus, and we think that these businesses have a nice balance to them if we can grow somewhere in there. We're not quite there and we don't get there overnight but each quarter and we are heartened by the backlog going up and heartened by the sales, and we believe we're going to get there. So that's what we're trying to drive towards.

Ryan MacDonald

Analyst

Okay, and then just last question from me; can you talk about how you track during the quarter to sort of your plans for investing in additional sales heads in the quarter and how you continue to see that evolving in fourth quarter and then early in 2017?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Typically, we have a January kick-off if you will with sales in some of our key implementation folks, and so we like to hire by that kind of timeframe and have them ready for the kick-off. We're going through the plan with the board right now to finalize on some of the numbers and so we'll articulate that over the next call but suffice to say we'll be growing some sales headcount, so implementation headcount, some product headcount to make sure that we keep ahead of the curve on growth. We are very pleased with our EBITDA but we've said all along that we also want to hire some growth headcount here to accelerate our growth in this space.

Ryan MacDonald

Analyst

Got it, thanks again.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of George [ph] from NKH Management. And your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great results guys, congratulations.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thank you, George. How are you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Very good, thank you. I just have a quick question on the cross-sell Pat, trying to understand what is the most foreign ground for cross-selling; is it selling time into payroll or some other combination of cross-sell?

Pat Goepel

Analyst

I think right now George for the employees -- because remember, it's new for all of us, right. I mean some of us have HCM backgrounds in the company but I think right now there is two main tracks that are getting traction and I think the easiest to absorb for our clients as well as our employees and that's payroll and benefits. So you know the area of [indiscernible] FSA, HSA to payroll customers; and then time and payroll, so selling our time to our payroll customers and vice versa. Those points of discrete points are the ones that we're mostly focused on right now.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, great, that's it. Thank you very much.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

Thank you, George.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And at this time I'm showing no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Pat Goepel, CEO, for closing remarks.

Pat Goepel

Analyst

No, I'd like to thank everybody for joining the call today and third quarter was an important quarter for Asure in 2016 and beyond, again, we're excited about the progress but we know we have a lot of work to do. We thank you for your support and listening to the call. And we want to make 2017 another strong year for us, we think 2016 -- when the history books are written will be a transformative year and a great year for Asure and we hope to deliver on that promise. And in 2017 we want it to be another strong year and a launching pad for growth in all areas of the business. So thanks again for your support and we'll see you next time.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. Thank you and have a great day.