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The Descartes Systems Group Inc. (DSGX)

Q4 2023 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 2, 2023

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to The Descartes Systems Group quarterly results conference call. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Wednesday, March 1, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Pagan. Please go ahead.

J. Pagan

Analyst

Thanks, and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me remotely on the call today are Ed Ryan, CEO; and Allan Brett, CFO. And I trust that everyone has received a copy of our financial results press release that was issued earlier today. Portions of today's call, other than historical performance, include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws. These forward-looking statements include statements related to our assessment of the current and future impact of geopolitical and economic uncertainty on our business and financial condition; Descartes' operating performance, financial results and condition; Descartes' gross and operating margins and any variation in those margins; cash flow and use of cash; business outlook; baseline revenues, baseline operating expenses and baseline calibration; anticipated and potential revenue losses and gains; anticipated recognition and expensing of specific revenues and expenses; potential acquisitions and acquisition strategy; cost reduction and integration initiatives; and other matters that may constitute forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Descartes to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors are outlined in the press release and in the section entitled certain factors that may affect future results in documents filed and furnished with the SEC, the OSC and other securities commissions across Canada, including our management's discussion and analysis filed today. We provide forward-looking statements solely for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. You are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. We don't undertake or accept any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect any change in our expectations or any change in events, conditions, assumptions or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law. And with that, I will turn the call over to Ed.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Great. Thanks, Scott, and welcome, everyone, to the call. We had an excellent fourth quarter and year with record financial results. We've also made some significant investments in the business. We're excited to go over those with you and give you some perspective about the business environment we see right now. But first, let me give you a road map for this call. I'll start with highlighting some aspects of our financial results, how our business performed in the last quarter and some investments we've made. I'll then hand the call over to Allan, who will go over the Q4 and annual financial results in more detail. I'll then come back and provide an update on the current business environment and how our business is calibrated, and we'll then open it up to the operator to coordinate the Q&A portion of the call. So let's get started by looking at our year. Key metrics we monitor include revenues, profits, cash flow from operations and return on investment. For this past year, we had record performance in each of those areas. Total revenues were up 14% in the year, with services revenues up 15%. Net income and earnings per share were both up 18%, while adjusted EBITDA was up 16%. We generated almost $200 million in cash from operations, representing 89% of adjusted EBITDA, 92% if you exclude the acquisition earnout payments we made during the year that went through cash from operations, a good headwind to have considering how well the acquisitions performed and contributed to our businesses. And the year ended strongly for us as well. We had record Q4 quarterly revenues, with services revenues up 14%. We had record profits of almost $30 million in net income and $55 million of adjusted EBITDA. We generated more than $50…

Allan Brett

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, Ed. As indicated, I'm going to walk you through our financial highlights for our fourth quarter and year ended January 31. We are pleased to report record quarterly revenues of $125.1 million this quarter, an increase of 11% from revenues of $112.4 million in Q4 of last year. This revenue growth was achieved despite the continued headwind from FX, resulting from a strong U.S. dollar. On an FX-neutral basis, our revenue growth would have been over $3 million higher in Q4, meaning that our revenue growth year-over-year would have been over 14% for Q4. Our revenue mix in the quarter continued to be very strong, with services revenue increasing 14% to $113.4 million, up from $99.5 million in the fourth quarter last year, with services revenue increasing to 91% of total revenue this quarter, up from 89% of total revenue in Q4 last year. Removing the impact of both the recent acquisitions as well as the negative impacts from FX that we have mentioned, on a like-for-like basis, we would estimate that our growth in services revenue from new and existing customers would have been approximately 9.5% in the quarter when compared to the same quarter last year. Professional services and other revenue, including hardware revenue, came in at $10.0 million or 8% of revenue, down slightly from $11.7 million or 10% of revenue as a result of lower hardware revenue as well as a decrease in professional service as more of our solution sales require less implementation or configuration work, which is certainly consistent with our long-term plans. In addition, license revenue came in at $1.7 million compared to $1.2 million last year in the fourth quarter, consistent at just 1% of revenue. For the year, revenue was a record $486.0 million, up 14.4% from revenue of…

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Thanks, Allan. We're already a month into our new fiscal year and quarter. We've already been busy by completing the acquisition of GroundCloud. We're excited about the upcoming year and our business. However, we remain cautious about the broader economic circumstances that are out there. There's high interest rates, higher inflation, a pervasive conflict in the Ukraine that's into its second year and the various recessionary pressures and economic discussion. We've seen some companies taking actions to ready their business for what may come. So for us, we will be cautious in the face of uncertainty. Supply chain and logistics continues to be a critical business function for our customers regardless of the economic circumstances. I wanted to share some areas that our customers are monitoring and to shape the market that we're currently operating in. The first is U.S. ocean container imports are at pre-pandemic levels. Based on public data available through our data mine service, it's clear that there was a pullback in ocean imports over the past 6 months starting in August. Current volumes are 15% to 20% lower than the pandemic highs, but are consistent with the levels we saw in 2019 and 2020. There's less impact from COVID delays in China. Part of the reason for the pullback in ocean imports was China's approached to Zero COVID, with many businesses critical to the international logistics and supply chains either shuttered or severely understaffed. Recently, China has eased up on that policy, and so our customers anticipate goods may start to flow more freely. The next is port transit delays. Port transit delays have improved. As volumes came off a bit, the backlog that had been seen at many ports has begun to work through. We're no longer seeing ocean ports with long lines of ships…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Matt Pfau from William Blair.

Matthew Pfau

Analyst

Ed, just circling back to all the macro comments that you made. Maybe just help us understand what the impact you're seeing on your business from those comments is. Are you seeing any impact on either transactions or deal closures as a result of some of the items you called out?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Minor, but there's parts of our business that are really doing well right now to call a few of those during in the call. And while our ocean business was being impacted minor way by shipment buyings being down, we had other parts of the business booming. So I think that's why you see the results you saw today.

Matthew Pfau

Analyst

Okay. Great. Then in terms of acquisitions, I think larger acquisitions is an area that you called out where there was perhaps a bigger discrepancy between valuations you were willing to pay and where valuation expectations were. You made a larger acquisition with GroundCloud. Is that sort of signal that market's opening back up? Or maybe just some comments in terms of what you're seeing there?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Yes. Ever since, it's a healthy market for that. The prices can be all over the place depending on the company and who's selling them and what bank's representing and things like that. But we're certainly seeing lots of opportunity out there. And you can see we just pulled off 2 acquisitions in the past couple of months. So we certainly see a market that's open for business.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Paul Treiber from RBC Capital Markets.

Paul Treiber

Analyst

Just hoping that you could elaborate on some of the financial details for GroundCloud. Specifically, you mentioned the mix of professional services is higher than your business. How should we think about the mix there? And then any additional comments you could provide on the company's revenue or growth or the main to the profitability is different than Descartes.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Okay. Yes. Let me handle that at a high level, and I'll see if Allan has any other comments. But if you think about their business, they're providing training services to customers. A lot of it is based on driver feedback on telematics devices where they're seeing drivers do certain things during the day, and then they're recommending them for video-based training at night when they're maybe in their cab or before they go to work the next morning. At the same time, when they start those businesses off, when they start new customers off, they go through a comprehensive training program that involves on-site training. That's why you see a little higher professional services rates in those businesses than maybe Descartes' accustomed to. Normally, we say in our business today, we would like it if there was no professional services because that would mean the products were all easy to install and no one had to get anything complicated to get them in, but there's obviously products even in our business that are more sophisticated and take a little while to put in. GroundCloud is kind of the same. When they get a new customer, as part of the process, they provide a comprehensive training program for all the drivers and then specific behavior-based training as the driver's driving routes during each business day and they're seeing errors being made and they're recommending them based on those errors for videos that they might watch at night. I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Allan, but...

Allan Brett

Analyst

Yes. Not a lot. I think from a revenue perspective, it still fits the mold of what we want to buy, which is predominantly a recurring revenue business. In this case, yes, the professional service and other category will be higher than Descartes number. We were at 8%, 9%, it will probably be double that percentage, but it still fits the exact multiples we want, which is very predictable subscription-based business recurring.

Paul Treiber

Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. It's just sort of -- it puts it in the ballpark, so that's helpful. And then how do you see it integrating with the remainder or complementing the remainder of your existing mobile routing and telematics business?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Well, think about it, we're helping these same types of companies plan routes every day. So it's a very similar customer base. We do business with a lot of delivery companies that are doing daily route plans in our routing software to deliver to the home. And that's a great customer base to sell this into. But like a lot of the companies that we've bought, they have a certain type of customer they go after, and they have a couple of hundreds of them or a couple of thousands of them, whatever it is. And we have a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand more than that. And so we're able to go out and quickly bring our solutions to a much broader audience, and that's a big advantage for us when we buy a company like GroundCloud.

Paul Treiber

Analyst

Okay. And then just one last one. Just can you speak to the impact of an inflation on your business? To what degree or not have you updated pricing for inflation? And how do we think about it from a cost point of view?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

So we've had some impact from all of it. You probably heard us say in the past that we typically only raise prices in the areas where our costs are going up directly. So we have avoided in the past inflation-based price increases on our network and the transaction-type businesses. That changed when the inflation rates went up to 7%, 8% and maybe higher around the world over the last couple of years. And we started to make some adjustments to customer prices, minor compared to maybe what some other companies were doing. So I would say it was fairly well received for a price increase within our customer base and is probably seen as fair. And on the cost side, we've certainly seen some of it, and we certainly have some cost to proceed in some of our numbers, our costs are going up maybe a little faster than we might have otherwise. But we're more than making up for that with growth in our business.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Long from Stephens.

Justin Long

Analyst

Following up on the GroundCloud acquisition, is there anything you can share on what financial targets need to be achieved in order for that earnout to be paid? And out of the gate, anything you can help us -- or could you help us with the kind of year 1 revenue contribution we should be expecting from this business?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Let me start with that, at least. As -- we're not going to get into specifics because I don't want to provide competitive information out there to people that might not be on our side. But suffice it to say, like every acquisition we've done, when we have an earnout, we are more than happy to pay it. In other words, if they can get the growth that's set forth in the earnout, it's great for our business. So let's hope that, that happens in this one as well. Suffice it to say, if you could see it, it's a fairly significant number in the GroundCloud acquisition that some substantial growth for them to get there. So let's see what happens, but we would hope that, that does happen and be more than happy to pay the earnout if we got there. Allan, I don't know if you have any more detail you want to provide.

Allan Brett

Analyst

No, just generally, the way we build out those acquisitions, any time we have an earnout, we are thrilled to pay the entire earnout. It will meet our financial metrics if it grows to the levels that will require us to pay the earnout. So this is -- and that's just -- this business is entirely consistent with that. We'd be happy to pay that earnout.

Justin Long

Analyst

Okay. And when you say meet your financial objectives, are you saying that it would be within that target margin range if the revenue objectives are achieved?

Allan Brett

Analyst

I'm more speaking to getting our payback on our acquisitions. When we deploy that capital, we're looking to get our money back in 5 to 7 years, a 15% to 20% return. And we think we can achieve that if, at any level within that earnout with 0 or whether we hit that earnout. That's what...

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Maybe I can add to that, Justin. Our earnouts are almost always -- in fact, any time I can think of, they're based on revenue, getting to revenue targets. We take it on ourselves to manage the cost of the business and help make it more profitable over time. So the targets are usually not anything more than growth in revenue.

Justin Long

Analyst

Understood. And Allan, I think you mentioned earlier that excluding FX, organic growth was about 9.5%. Anything you can share on the impact from transactional volumes within that number? And then I guess on the 150 organic headcount adds this year, what are you assuming for organic growth going forward as you make that investment?

Allan Brett

Analyst

I'll take the first one, and then, Ed, if you want to talk to the headcount. But as far as the organic growth, that's our estimated growth within the services category. You know our services are split between transactional and subscription. Now for the most part, both are growing. Our subscriptions tend to be some of the higher growth areas of the business. But growth a little bit slanted towards subscription, but both growing, adding up to that 9.5%. Ed, on head count, did you want to make a comment?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Yes, sure. So I mean, it's a full year ahead of us, and we obviously reserve the right to adjust course depending on what happens in the business. You probably saw that last year. I don't think the plan on having that many last year, just the business started performing very well, and we needed more people and went out and got them. I think roughly, our plans are maybe increase to half that, but I wouldn't read too much into that. If things go well, we could see us increasing that. If the economy stalls more, we would probably reduce that just to be prudent operators of the business. You probably heard me say in the past couple of quarters, hey, there's a lot of economic uncertainty, and we were starting to remove our pedal from -- our foot from the gas pedal and kind of not press the brake like you may have seen a lot of other technology companies do, but certainly cover it just to make sure we don't get ourselves into any trouble. Starting to, it seem, come out of that right now with the headlines I'm reading in the newspapers. So we'll see what happens. But for the most part, we've planned for about half the growth that you saw in headcount organically last year in the coming year, and we'll adjust accordingly as we see how the business launched.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Chan from TD.

Daniel Chan

Analyst

Ed, you talked about GroundCloud having a higher mix of professional services driving a lower EBITDA margin. Just wondering whether for you to get their EBITDA margin more in line with your target, whether you have to change their business model to reduce that PS mix? And if so, how do you do that? And how long will it take for you to get those margins up to where you want it to be?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Certainly, we have some thoughts about how to do it. They were providing one-on-one training classes for individual companies. We could see ourselves doing more of that virtually. And with larger audiences, that may end up having us over time have a much more profitable professional services or training mixed. One of the big things in any software company is just selling more of the stuff. When you -- if you have 100 customers and you're providing software and writing software for those 100 customers, if you make it 200 customers, invariably, that company is going to be more profitable. You're writing the same piece of code for now double the amount of people. And if they're all paying a fair price, your profits go up, which has been a big part of our growth in EBITDA over the past 10 years as we get a bigger and bigger customer base and, therefore, have a bigger and bigger group of people that go sell our next acquisition into. And I think we might see the same from GroundCloud over time.

Daniel Chan

Analyst

That makes sense. And then shifting gears a bit, just wondering if there's any impact from the Windsor framework that just got passed.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

We're still analyzing it, but they've established a green lane and a red lane, much like a seat passenger traffic. We understand that both lanes are going to continue to have a filing. So at first blush, my gut is that there's not going to be a ton of impact to our business, negative or positive.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Young from Canaccord Genuity.

Robert Young

Analyst

The couple of the macro comments and questions around the transactions. I get the sense that maybe that was a minor headwind. And so if you could clarify that and then maybe just give a refresher on how minimum contracts protect that or if that's still in place, maybe just maybe a refresher there.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Yes. I mean, I called out the ocean business. And actually, if I look at the Datamyne stats, it's actually starting to recover in January and into early February. So I'm expecting that if you're going to kind of mentioned that the China effect kind of easing up in -- right after Christmas, I kind of suspect that's what we're seeing right now. Truck and air were still pretty strong, and I see air getting stronger in the last couple of weeks based on the Datamyne stats. So we'll see. But the impact in this past quarter was minor. I mean we had plenty of stuff that made up for it or more than made up for it and had us kind of beating our projections for the last quarter because a bunch of businesses we're firing on off full cylinders, and we had an ocean business that was only down slightly. So all in all, pretty good news for us.

Robert Young

Analyst

Okay. And then you touched on my second question around China. There's a lot of news about the reopening and the impact. Maybe it's more on air travel. Just is that not having a more positive impact?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Yes, I think it is. I was just kind of mentioning in the ocean space, so we're starting to see a pickup in the stats we get from governments over the past month or so. And I think that's exactly what's going on. I think their Zero COVID policy ended, I think, mid-December or something like that, and people started to get back to work and eventually factories get reopened and start producing more stuff and retailers get through Christmas. And as I mentioned, we thought a lot of retailers were selling stuff that they had ordered pretty early last Christmas. And as the stock -- as the shelves emptied out, they're now looking to replenish those things now that a bunch of factories are open in China. So my guess is maybe it's a little better than most, but still, I don't know exactly what's going to happen. But I think I'm starting to see the -- in the past couple of weeks, the impact of that and the increased trade volumes.

Robert Young

Analyst

Okay. And last question, just a little clarification in the press release, the 40% to 45% adjusted EBITDA range. I think the quote from you, Allan. Maybe the way I read it, it seemed to suggest it was inclusive of M&A forward. I just want to make sure I'm not reading that incorrectly. The 40%, 45% doesn't include any anticipated future M&A, that's just up to this point?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Well, yes, just remember that it's an EBITDA margin range. So barring us buying stuff in massive, and you can see here with GroundCloud, it has a bit of a negative impact on our overall margins because we bought a company that makes less money as a percentage of revenue than we do, but still only a point or 2. That was a fairly large acquisition for us. So yes, no, I think we are trying to say we'll be in that 40% to 45% margin range. If we did something gigantic, sure. If you go outside of that's way more profitable than us, it would move up. If it's less profitable than us, it moves down. But net-net, I'd be surprised if it changed outside of that range, 40% to 45% based on acquisitions.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Krishnaratne from Scotiabank.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Analyst

Question for you just on competition or potential competition. Understanding you cover several areas in the broader logistics ecosystem. Just curious, given the momentum that we're seeing in the space, is there any particular areas where you're seeing new competitors or outsized funding from private equity or anything in that regard, areas that are hot? I'm curious what you're seeing and how well you may be positioned in these areas. Are these areas you may be willing to direct more of your attention to from an M&A perspective?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Kevin. We're seeing -- over the last several years, we're seeing a lot more money coming into this space, which I think is good news. I mean you're talking about it in terms of being a competitor, but understand there are also potential acquisition candidates for us, which is as much how we think of it as competition. Competitors come up with new ideas, and we watch 10 of them get started, and we get to see who is the best 1 or 2 guys out there. And maybe one day, we'll end up buying one of those companies. And that tends to be more the way we think about it. But yes, it's absolutely. There's been a ton more investment in the space, and I think that's great news.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Analyst

Is there any -- is it just pretty widespread? I'm just curious if there's any particular areas that are popping up.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Well, you can see the supply chain visibility space is hot. We were the first mover in that space buying MacroPoint. MacroPoint has some competitors that have also attracted a ton of investment. And there's more people popping up in that space all the time. They're also potential customers of ours, right? They need access to the data that we have because we do business with most of the freight brokers in North America. We tend to have more data than any of our competitors in that space and are able to sell that to other people who are building their own supply chain visibility tools but don't have access to a network like ours. So that's been great for us. You can see all these IoT devices that you're starting to see come out, and I suspect we're just at the beginning of this, but people are making smaller and smaller things to put in packages, to put in pallets, to put in planes and trucks and containers and everything else. And I'll tell you what's happening to your product while it's moving, where it is, what temperature it's at, did it get a hard bounce, all kinds of stuff like that. So you can eventually build software around that to help the big manufacturers and retailers make better decisions about what's going on in their supply chain based on these IoT devices that are out there. So I think we're at the beginning of that right now, hundreds, if not thousands, of companies that start up based on that. And we're really excited about it because that's all information that we can use to help our customers get better results.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Analyst

Got it. I appreciate those comments. Maybe to continue on the M&A, I know it's definitely been picking up a bit, assets getting a little bit bigger. Can you -- it's been a while. I think the last several acquisitions you made have been all cash. I know in the past, MacroPoint did include some stock. I'm just curious about your philosophy on purchase price for acquisitions, your decision on mix of cash and equity? Any thoughts there?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

I mean we try to be cash buyers. When people get -- when you see stock getting pitched in a deal, it's usually because the people that own the business have asked for some component of it to be in Descartes stock. Oftentimes, they go, hey, we're buying some company for, say, $50 million. And they're going on, I'll take $40 million of it in cash and $10 million of it in stock. And if they request it from us, that's good news for us. We're not really up for -- we're not looking for reasons to dilute our shareholders. But if the owner of our business says, hey, I want you to buy the company. I want to pick you guys to be the buyer, and I want to take back some Descartes stock, we look at that as something that we should do, right? And now I have an owner in that business. It's probably going to still work here and probably going to be very vested in our success. So that's something we'll almost always say yes to.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Analyst

Got it. Maybe just the last one for me, just a question on the sort of your marketing spend and efforts. I think it was just over a year ago when you kind of talked about more meaningfully stepping up the efforts there, the customer success team, the new digital marketing initiatives. I'm just wondering how that's been progressing? Are you happy with the ROI? Is there anything you could share there in terms of net retention, share of wallet increases? Is there anything that you're seeing or that you're willing to share in terms of the return on that step-up that you've been through?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

We're very happy with it. I don't know that I want to release any more retention stats than we already do. We think it's been very helpful for us. We're -- we've had enough success with it in the last year that we're starting to roll it out now in Europe as well. And we think it's -- as our business gets bigger, we need to do things like that to stay as close to the customers as we were when we were a small company. And we think investments like this are the smart thing to do. And the good news is we went and did it over the last 2 years, and it really worked well, and we're doing more of it as a result.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Li from Raymond James.

Steven Li

Analyst

Maybe a question for Allan to start. Can I check with you, so the overall organic growth is around 7.5% at constant currency, Allan?

Allan Brett

Analyst

Yes. So in the prepared comments, we mentioned 9.5% growth in services revenue. We did see a slight drop in professional service and other revenue. It was partly hardware, a little bit on the P&L side. When you blend those together for the fourth quarter, we are somewhere in that 7.5%, 8% range. But most important for us is going to be that long-term growth in services, which is highly recurring revenue for us. So 9.5% on services coming down to sort of that 7.5%, 8% on the total revenue.

Steven Li

Analyst

Got it. And I was curious, given the higher PS mix with GroundCloud, does that not mean that the services organic growth going forward is going to miss those PS organic growth from GroundCloud? Is it better to look at the overall organic growth?

Allan Brett

Analyst

Sorry, I didn't catch your question.

Steven Li

Analyst

Because I believe your services organic growth, you exclude PS revenues from that, right? And I was asking, given your recent acquisition, GroundCloud, a lot of -- well, a higher mix of their revenues is PS. Looking at services organic growth, would we be missing the organic growth coming from those PS revenue streams from GroundCloud?

Allan Brett

Analyst

Yes. Listen, we're obviously going to try to grow that business, both on the subscription side for the software as well as the PS side. I mean realistically, for us, the subscription piece should grow faster if we execute to our plan. We will continue to focus on both elements, but -- and we'll just disclose to you as we go. I mean we're disclosing services revenue growth because that's the most relevant number for us and the long-term piece of the business, but both will be important, and we'll message accordingly.

Steven Li

Analyst

Got it. And then, Ed, just given your comments there, so shipment volumes on one side and then -- but other part is booming. With this organic growth like 7%, 8%, high single digit, would it be a good base for this year? Or we can do better than that?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Well, I mean, we think we're going to be in that range. I mean we always kind of plan to run our business in the 4% to 6% organic revenue growth range and trying to get 10% to 15% EBITDA growth out of that. You've seen us do much better than that in the past years. But if the economy kind of went into a boom period there for a year or 2 and it started to come back down, we're pretty happy being in that 9% range right now. And just think that came from quality of acquisitions growth that we put -- quality of acquisitions that we brought on in the past, a little bit of it from customers thinking that supply chains and logistics is a lot more important than they thought it was pre-pandemic. And yes, I'm hopeful that, that range stays up in that 8%, 9%, but we'll just have to see.

Steven Li

Analyst

Got it. And then, Ed, you also -- your comment, you said shipping volumes may increase for the year. So does that mean maybe we see a slower first half and maybe better second half in terms of organic growth as well?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Yes. I mean I don't want to make predictions a year out. But if our customers do well like that, yes, I would expect our business to continue to do better and better over time.

Steven Li

Analyst

Got it. And then a couple of questions on your recent acquisitions. So GroundCloud, what has been the growth profile in recent years? And was it all organic?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

It was. They're a fast-growing company, and it was all organic.

Steven Li

Analyst

So sorry, did you say double digit in terms of growth, Ed?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

I didn't call out specific digits. But it's a fast-growing company. It's one of the reasons we wanted to buy it. And we think we have an opportunity to expose it to a lot more customers. And as a result, maybe continue that growth into the future.

Steven Li

Analyst

Got it. And then maybe an update on the XPS, I remember the earnout there was sizable. How are they doing so far? And would you expect them to be hitting their earnout targets this year?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

I don't know if I could speak to the earnout targets. But yes, they're doing very well since they've gotten here. It's been a great business for us, and we're really happy we bought it. I'm not going to comment on the earnout until we -- they get there. But we're very happy with the acquisition so far, let's put it that way.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Group from Wolfe.

Scott Group

Analyst

So is there a lot of -- is there much seasonality to the revenue at GroundCloud? Or should we try and take -- should we take like the bump in the baseline for Q1 and annualize that? I'm just trying to figure out the right way to try and ballpark full year revenue?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

It's a fairly consistent performing business, yes. There's not a ton of seasonality.

Scott Group

Analyst

But is it a kind of business where you would expect the actual revenue to outperform the baseline like we see in the rest of the business?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

I don't know the exact numbers, but yes, with most of our business, we're expecting a baseline. And then quarter-to-quarter, there'll be some increase in the business as we get the actual results in. And I think GroundCloud would probably be no different.

Scott Group

Analyst

Okay. And then I know it's obviously the very beginning of the year. You always talk about 10% to 15% EBITDA. I think you've pretty much get there to the high end or exceed it every year. I know it's early, but what's the visibility to repeating that again this year?

Edward Ryan

Analyst

We don't take our bonuses when we don't get to 15%. So we're all planning on getting to 15%. I think we've beaten it 15 years in a row, Scott. And I obviously can't make a promise about it, but that's certainly our intention is to be at 15% or better. Let's say, 10% to 15%, and we do our darndest to get to 15%.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Raimo Lenschow from Barclays.

Jeremy Campbell

Analyst

This is Jeremy on for Raimo. I was just wondering if you could share a bit more detail on how the e-commerce business is trending. Would you say like it's reached more of a steady state post deceleration from the pandemic? Or really, any color you can share there would be helpful.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Sure. Thanks, Jeremy. So we had massive growth coming out of the pandemic in end of '20 and 2021, like a lot of e-commerce companies had. I think we ended up in a different circumstance soon thereafter. A lot of e-commerce companies that we saw went flat. That's not what happened to us. We kind of went back to our normal low double-digit growth coming out of that, and we continue to see that be the case right now. It's a very nice business for us. It continues to grow at a nice pace every quarter. And yes, we're still seeing -- I don't want to use the word flat because it's -- the growth rates are flat, but it's still growing nicely every quarter and every year coming out of that big blip in the beginning of the pandemic. When I read the newspapers about some other e-commerce results, I don't think we're subject to the same things that they are. I mean maybe because we're selling a lot more new customers so we continue to get growth even if e-commerce sales are flat for a quarter or so.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Ed Ryan, please proceed.

Edward Ryan

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate all your time today, and I hope to see you as we're out on the road in the coming weeks. And otherwise, I look forward to reporting back to you next quarter. Have a great night, and thanks for your time.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.