Altair Engineering Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Altair Engineering fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dave Simon, Altair's Senior Vice President for Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, welcome, and thank you for attending Altair's earnings conference call for the fourth quarter of 2023, ended December 31st, 2023. I'm Dave Simon, Altair's SVP for Investor Relations, and with me on the call are Jim Scappa, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, and Matt Brown, Chief Financial Officer. After market closed today, we issued a press release with details regarding our fourth quarter 2023 performance and guidance for the first quarter and full year 2024, which can be accessed on the investor relations section of our website at investor.altair.com. This call is being recorded and a replay will be available on the IR section of our website following the conclusion of this call. During today's call, we will make statements related to our business that may be considered forward-looking under federal securities laws. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be considered representative of our views as of any subsequent date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or outlook. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. These risks are summarized in the press release that we issued earlier today. For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to those contained in our quarterly annual reports filed with the SEC, as well as other documents that we have filed or may file from time to time. During the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in our press release. Finally, at times in our prepared comments or responses to your questions, we may offer metrics that are incremental to our usual presentation to provide greater insight into the dynamics of our business or our quarterly results. Please be advised that we may or may not continue to provide this additional detail in the future. With that, let me turn the call over to Jim for his prepared remarks.

Jim? Thank you, Dave, and welcome to everyone on the call. The fourth quarter of 2023 carried positive momentum for Altair with record high total quarterly and full year revenue of $171.5 million and $612.7 million, respectively. Software product revenue and total revenue both well within our guidance with adjusted EBITDA above the top end of the guided range. Altair's Q4 results continue our growth path of helping organizations succeed through computational intelligence. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2023 increased by 38.3% year-over-year to $53.6 million or 31.2% of total revenue. Adjusted EBITDA grew 19% for the full year 2023 to $129.1 million or 21.1% of total revenue versus $108.6 million or 19% of revenue in 2022, continuing our trend of increasing adjusted EBITDA margin by 200 to 300 basis points per year over the last four years. Software product revenue for the full year 2023 grew by 8.6% compared to 2022 and 9.8% on a constant currency basis. Software product revenue as a percentage of total revenue for the full year 2023 increased to 90% as compared to 89% in 2022. And the recurring software license rate for 2023 was 93%. an increase from 92% during 2022. Altair's growth continues to be broad-based across many geographies, technologies, and verticals. In the fall of 2023, we released what we believe was the most important update to our products in the last 10 years. Our upcoming release this spring is expected to take another leap forward as we continue to bring all of our solutions for simulation under a common user framework, graphics engine, and backend data model. In addition, we believe, and many customers agree, our investments in engineering AI are positioning us as the leader in this important and growing domain because of the enormous base of data science talent and technology we are leveraging across our enterprise. Despite some recent uncertainties around EV sales, the transition of the automotive sector toward alternative power sources, including purely electric, continues to present an exciting field of opportunities for Altair. In December, we announced funding awarded for the UK government's Faraday Battery Challenge to a consortium of three organizations, Altair, JLR, and battery manufacturer Danica. The project will leverage Altair's technology to develop vehicles with a new, lighter body that offers more room for the battery without adding additional weight. JLR will apply Altair's C123 process, a unique three-stage concept development process for body and wide structures, and will utilize Altair's technologies for structural optimization and electro thermal simulation. Also in the electric powertrain space, a heavy duty commercial vehicle manufacturer has substantially increased its commitment to Altair simulation tools for improving battery predictive analytics. In APAC, a leading manufacturer of electric vehicles has made an eight figure commitment to use a broad portfolio of Altair simulation and data analytics software in its multi-division product development processes. A U.S. headquartered electric vehicle manufacturer doubled its Altair technology purchases, bringing our annual revenue with them into seven figures. And finally, another U.S. headquartered EV manufacturer signed a three-year seven-figure agreement with Altair representing more than 100 percent growth over the previous three years. We had some good fourth-quarter wins in the BFSI vertical and for our data analytics solutions. One of the largest credit unions in the U.S. inked a renewal with 33 percent growth, recognizing its increased usage and high value from our data analytics and AI platform, RapidMiner. A major European banking group signed on to a major deployment of Altair SLC across many applications throughout its organization. And a North American consulting organization has agreed to use Altair SLC as a primary tool for its work with many clients and supply chain analytics. Altair's high performance computing solutions drove substantial activity in the technology vertical. one of the leading companies in the power semiconductor field placed in order for Altera's workload and workflow management software based on experiencing a 20 percent throughput increase. This not only enhances its operational efficiency, but also leads to substantial cost savings given the high cost of EDA application software. an EMEA semiconductor company renewed with a 127% annual increase. We also received a three-year agreement with seven figures of annual revenue from a U.S. semiconductor manufacturer based on its desire to leverage cloud computing for design and development while effectively managing cloud usage costs. Indirect sales continues to represent an important percentage of our overall revenue, and we look forward to further success in that regard, especially for our data analytics solutions. We welcomed three new channel partners to the Altair sales team in the fourth quarter. Do It Now is focused on high-performance computing applications in EMEA. Neand in Portugal and Matogen Applied Insights of South Africa are both focused on data analytics and artificial intelligence. Altair has expanded its relationship with the FIRST technology organization founded by Dean Kamen, where Altair technology is now available to all teams in the FIRST robotics competition kit of parts. More than 3,500 high school teams across 26 countries competing in this year's FIRST Robotics competition, will have free access to Altair software. Altair's collaboration with FIRST will bolster students' technical skills and support a diverse community of students by building citizenship, self-esteem, and leadership through hands-on experiences and project-based learning. Furthering our collaboration with FIRST is a perfect example of Altair's commitment to students and the role they have in technology, both today and in the future. Combining our academic focus with work on e-mobility, Altair India recently formalized a strategic partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras to establish an e-mobility simulation lab within the Department of Engineering Design. This collaborative initiative under Altair's corporate social responsibility program includes grant money from Altair along with simulation and design software and high performance computing infrastructure. Exclusively powered by Altair Technologies, the lab's goal is to support startups, researchers, and students in advancing the study and development of electric vehicles. We are pleased to be supporting IIT Madras, a clear global leader in educating the world's best and brightest young minds. 2023 for Altair was a year of hard work, significant investments in new software technologies, sales team alignment into market verticals, steady focus, and ultimately outstanding execution from our stellar global teams amidst a lot of economic and geopolitical uncertainty. I am proud of the individual and group accomplishments of our people and appreciative of the strong Altarian culture that keeps us moving forward in ways that benefit our customers, employees, partners, and shareholders. We believe the culmination of our organizational advancements combined with the power of our technology portfolio positions Altair well for the future. We are holding an Altair Investor Day the morning of March 20th in Santa Clara, California, where we will discuss our vision for the future and our plans to capitalize on our growing market opportunity. We will also introduce what we believe to be a very exciting and disruptive technology for the electronics market. I hope all of our investors and prospective investors, as well as the analysts who cover Altair and the markets we compete in, will attend. Now I will turn the call over to Matt to provide more details on our financial performance and our guidance for the first quarter and full year of 2024. Matt?

Thank you, Jim. Hello to everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us. We are pleased with our strong fourth quarter results which continue to demonstrate the importance of our products to our customers in leveraging computational intelligence to solve the important challenges they face. Despite the somewhat difficult macroeconomic environment that we discussed throughout 2023, we finished the year with record high revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.1%, well exceeding the 20% goal we had long established for 2023. As I dive into the details of our financial results, remember some of our revenues and expenses are transacted in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. And therefore, our reported results may be significantly impacted by changes in foreign exchange rates. To aid in the review of our results, throughout my remarks, I will reference growth rates in both reported and constant currency. Starting with Q4 numbers, Calculated total billings for the quarter were 196.1 million, a year-over-year increase of 4.4% in reported currency and 3.6% in constant currency. As a reminder, we exited a lower-margin hardware business in 2023 that had historically been weighted most heavily in the fourth quarter, therefore impacting the Q4 year-over-year growth rate. The increase in billings was led by software across all geographies, and we saw billings growth across our verticals with particular strength in automotive, aerospace, and technology. Software revenue in Q4 was 155.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 7.6% in reported currency and 6.7% in constant currency compared to Q4 2022. Software revenue growth was led by new customer growth and expansion in existing accounts, and supported by a robust renewal base that continues to have a very high rate of retention. Total revenue in Q4, which includes services and other revenue, was $171.5 million, a year-over-year increase of 6.9% in reported currency and 6.0% in constant currency compared to Q4 2022. Non-GAAP gross margin, which excludes stock-based compensation and restructuring expense, was 84.3% in the fourth quarter compared to 80.2% in the prior year quarter. an increase of 410 basis points. The year-over-year increase in non-GAAP gross margin in Q4 was partially due to our exit from the lower margin hardware business that was present in the year-ago period. Software mix also contributed slightly to the increase in blended non-GAAP gross margin, as our software revenue, which carries a higher gross margin, increased as a percentage of total revenue. Software revenue was 90.9% of total revenue in Q4, compared to 90.4% in the prior year. Over the long term, we continue to expect a general mid-shift towards software revenue, as growth there will outpace services and other revenue. Non-GAAP operating expenses, which exclude stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, were $94.0 million compared to $92.6 million in the year-ago period. Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was $53.6 million or 31.2% of total revenue compared to $38.7 million or 24.1% in the prior year, an increase of 38.3%. This increase compared to the prior year quarter, as well as relative to our expectations, was driven by the increase in gross profit in the quarter, combined with a disciplined approach to spending. Now looking at the full year results for 2023. Calculated billings for the year were $631.8 million, a year over year increase of 4.0% in reported currency, or 4.8% in constant currency. Remember that in Q1 of last year, we highlighted our largest ever data analytics and AI deal in the BFSI vertical, which was a five-year, eight-figure deal. So, this significant multi-year deal in 2022 is impacting the 2023 year-over-year billing's growth rate. Software revenue for the year was 550.0 million, a year-over-year increase of 8.6% in reported currency and 9.8% in constant currency. And total revenue for the year was 612.7 million, a year-over-year increase of 7.1% in reported currency and 8.2% in constant currency. Our recurring software license rate, which is the percentage of software billings that are recurring, continues to be strong at approximately 93% for the year. The strength in software revenue helps drive our non-GAAP gross margins for the year to 81.8% compared to 80.0% in 2022, a 180 basis point increase. In addition, non-GAAP operating expenses as a percentage of total revenue declined year over year due to reductions in general and administrative costs. This helped drive adjusted EBITDA for the year to 129.1 million or 21.1% of total revenue compared to 108.6 million or 19.0% in 2022. a year-over-year increase of 20.5 million, or 18.9%. We set out a vision three years ago of achieving 20% adjusted EBITDA margin exiting 2023, and I'm proud of our entire team for rallying around that goal and executing to exceed this important milestone. In 2023, we saw more than half of our year-over-year increase in total revenue make its way down to adjusted EBITDA. Turning to our balance sheet, we ended the year with $467.5 million in cash and cash equivalents, an increase of approximately $151.3 million from the prior year. Free cash flow was $117.1 million for the year, exceeding our expectations and driven by the increase in profitability. This represents a substantial increase year over year and demonstrates our ability to generate significant free cash flow. Let's turn to guidance for Q1 and full year 2024. We've provided detailed guidance tables in our earnings press release, including reconciliations to comparable GAAP amounts. To provide clarity on the FX impact to our expectations, we've provided growth rates in both reported currency and constant currency in our guidance tables. Over the past couple of years, we've seen a gradual shift in our revenue seasonality away from Q1 and into the remaining three quarters as we've continued to broaden our customer base. We're expecting that trend to continue in 2024 and have therefore guided Q1 revenue in a prudent manner. For Q1, we expect software revenue in the range of 152 to 155 million, a year-over-year increase of 1.6 to 3.6% in reported currency, and an increase of 0.8 to 2.8% in constant currency. For full year 2024, we expect software revenue in the range of $600 to $610 million, a year-over-year increase of 9.1 to 10.9% in reported currency, and 8.3 to 10.1% in constant currency. We expect services and other revenue to be flat year-over-year in 2024 compared to the declines we saw over the past couple of years. As a result, we expect total revenue for Q1 in the range of $167 to $170 million, a year-over-year increase of 0.6 to 2.4% in reported currency, and negative 0.1% to positive 1.7% in constant currency. For the full year 2024, we expect total revenue in the range of $663 to $673 million, a year-over-year increase of 8.2 to 9.8% in reported currency, and 7.5 to 9.1% in constant currency. For Q1, we expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of 37 to 40 million, or 22.2 to 23.5% of total revenue, compared to 43.1 million, or 25.9% of total revenue in Q1 2023. For full year 2024, we expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of 143 to 151 million or 21.6 to 22.4% of total revenue compared to 129.1 million or 21.1% of total revenue in 2023. And finally, for the full year 2024, We expect free cash flow in the range of 129 to 137 million. As a reminder, our cash flow expectations are sensitive to billings and collection patterns, which fluctuate seasonally. We are pleased with overachieving our profitability goals for 2023, and we're excited about the tremendous opportunity that lies ahead. as we continue to execute on our future financial targets. With that, we'd be happy to take your questions. Operator?

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1 1 on your touch-tone telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Ken Wong with Oppenheimer.

Hey, fantastic. Thanks for taking my question. Jim, I wanted to get your thoughts on kind of how this synopsis and this merger kind of might impact Altair's strategic initiatives. I couldn't help but kind of notice you talking about introducing an exciting technology for the electronics market and, you know, just wanted to kind of pick your brain on how you're thinking about the current competitive landscape.

I think I'm on here. Thanks, Ken. Appreciate it. I mean, the combination of synopsis and ANSYS, I think, is a fairly natural combination. I've been talking about the convergence not only of HPC and simulation and AI for five or six years, but actually of mechanical and electronics as well. And Altair's been investing in that direction, you know, ourselves, both quietly and noisily for probably the last, I don't know, 10 or 12 years now, and much more aggressively in the last couple of years. I mean, I think it's a good combination. Honestly, for us, because there's a great deal of uncertainty that comes during this period where employees and customers don't really know where things are going, I think it presents some opportunities for us, but that remains to be seen.

Got it. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that, Collar. And then, Matt, I just wanted to maybe dive in a little bit on the cadence of revenue through the year. I mean, 1Q looks a little below typical seasonality. You know, any thoughts to share there in terms of maybe how either kind of conservatism or any kind of seasonal trends might be playing into how you guys are thinking about it?

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Ken. Yeah, I noted in my prepared remarks as well, gave a little bit of color on this. What we've seen over the last couple of years is somewhat less revenue in Q1 coming in as a percentage of the total. And so what we're seeing in 2024 is that that trend is continuing a little bit. And it makes sense given how we're broadening our customer base. So, you know, we've... had a concentration historically very heavily in auto, and over time, and in particular over the last few years, we've broadened that so we're somewhat less concentrated there. And as a result, that's causing Q1 revenue, which had historically been our highest revenue quarter, to be more balanced throughout the year. So that's reflected in the guide.

Okay, perfect. Thanks so much, guys.

Our next question will come from the line of Dylan Becker with William Blair.

Hey, guys. Jim, maybe for you, you kind of touched on this in your prepared remarks, but 2023 was a pretty active year, pretty busy year for you guys. We had the platform upgrade. We had the Salesforce verticalization. We saw some healthy momentum and partnerships, and the industries remained pretty resilient overall. I guess, how do you think about the importance of all of those pieces or components setting up the business kind of for sustained momentum as we think about the 2024 outlook and obviously potentially beyond that as well. And maybe the trajectory of some of that layering in and maybe how that kind of plays to the revenue linearity as well.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. Last year, we made that change to how we go to market. We released a lot of great products. But for us, it was actually also a very prudent year from an investment standpoint, keeping sort of control over things with an eye towards our bottom line to some extent. We come into this year having sort of settled down a lot of those changes where we really think have a really great sense of about these vertical teams people know how to operate between the regions and the vertical teams really nicely now we've added a couple of new ones coming into this year as well and I think we're very very optimistic that they're they're going to produce extremely well similar we've done some really good work on the indirect side and So the go-to-market I feel very, very positive about, and I feel great about the products. So we're very optimistic about 2024, but we remain prudent in how we sort of look at things.

Got it. Okay, that makes a ton of sense. And then maybe to sticking kind of with the idea, as we think about kind of proliferation across teams and use cases, I guess as you think about kind of that expansion conversation with customers, Where are you seeing kind of the greatest drivers of incremental adoption today? Is it, again, that expansion within Teams? Is it kind of the computational intensity? Is it, again, platform adoption, product usage through the token model? I guess kind of trying to help us think about what are the kind of core drivers of expansion, because I think there's a lot of opportunity there as well. Thanks.

I think it's actually kind of across the board. We have this huge install base with very, very high recurring revenues. So a huge amount of our growth really comes from expansion within that base, probably 60, 65% each year. So getting more products into those accounts, bringing some really great new products. The engineering AI, I think, is finally starting to get traction. Digital Twin is getting huge traction as well. And so we're seeing a lot of opportunity within the install base. And the vertical teams in general are focusing on a subset, basically the strategic accounts within those verticals for the most part, which means a lot of expansion within those accounts. And that's extremely important for us. That focus is really key.

Great. Thank you, Tim. Sure. Thank you.

Our next question will come from the line of Joshua Tilden with Wolf Research.

Hey, guys. Thanks for sneaking me in. Can you hear me?

Yep. Hey, Josh.

Hey, guys. Two quick ones for me. I think just some of the – this is kind of the number one question I've been getting asked since results dropped, but I think people are just trying to understand, like, What is the level of conservatism that's kind of baked into the outlook for next year that you put out today? And maybe also just within that, like, you know, you talked to a more difficult macro environment this year. Like, what does that guidance embed or assume for how the macro plays out over the next 12 months? And then I just got a quick follow-up.

You want to take a shot there, Matt, or me? Why don't you start? Yeah, I'll start, and you can finish. Yeah, Josh, appreciate the question. I think we looked at the year and took a pretty pragmatic and prudent approach to guidance. You can see in the first quarter we're seeing some of that revenue more balanced throughout the year, but we expect it to pick up in the back half of the year and end up in a pretty good spot. So we're feeling very optimistic, actually, and have lots of reasons to be feeling very, very positive from a go-to-market perspective, from a product perspective. But we're taking a pretty prudent approach to our guide for 2024.

Jim, anything to add there? Yeah, maybe I'll just add, you know, last year we were investing a bit less. Last year we're coming into this year and we're starting to ramp up. a little bit more investment into this year, and we expect that's going to start to pay some dividends here, both on the product side and on the go-to-market side, actually. So you're going to start to see that coming along through the year, we think. But, you know, we are trying to be cautious, we'll say, with how we put guidance out.

Super helpful. And I think the follow up for me is, is there any way we can get a sense of either for this year or what's baked into next year? Like, how do we think about the different growth rates of the business in terms of, you know, what the data analytics business is growing versus what the rest of the more, I guess, what people think of as core simulation growth, either for this past year or going forward?

Matt, you want to answer that or me? Sure. Yeah, Josh, it's a great question. And not every year is the same. So this year in 2023, we saw just really strong growth in simulation. Simulation led the way. And you may remember in 2022, data analytics and AI led the way for us there in terms of that segment. And so every year is going to be a little bit different. We expect, though, that a lot of these technologies are converging, and so you're starting to see a real blend of data analytics and AI within simulation. It's becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between them, actually. And in terms of growth drivers, that actually helps them all. critical to the success is that our customers are leveraging our broad portfolio technology and that's helping drive growth. So I think you're going to see contributions to our growth rate from all three and even more so as they continue to converge.

Yeah, I quite agree, if I could just add to that. I think the engineering AI and the digital twin stuff is really ramping up fast. And probably, you know, it's hard to measure, you know, what simulation and what is, if you will, AI in these accounts, especially with our units model.

Super helpful. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Our next question will come from the line of Matt Hedberg with RBC Capital Markets.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. I wanted to follow up on the earlier question on synopsis and answers. I mean, I guess, you know, Jim, does anything change strategically with Altair in terms of, you know, maybe some additional partnerships or, you know, incremental focus on cadence? Just sort of wondering if anything changes on that front.

Hi, Matt.

I mean, I think we're sort of continuing on a path that we were on already where we see this convergence of electronics and mechanical. In terms of partnerships specifically, I'm not sure, to be honest with you, I'm not sure what happens in that direction. I guess there are possibilities there with a lot of different players in the electronics market and others. For us, we're continuing to invest. Unlike others, we do believe that there are a lot of opening opportunities in the electronics market that we can play in quite interestingly.

Got it. That's helpful, Jim. Thanks. And then maybe you just sort of touched on this in the prior question, but obviously you've been invested in high-performance compute seemingly for decades, it feels like. And obviously, we're all kind of like watching NVIDIA do its thing. You know, like you said, it may be hard to know where that line is between customer spend on simulation and AI, but given your model. But is there any way that you think going forward that you might start to see some tailwinds and maybe some accelerations that maybe you haven't seen previously given sort of, you know, years and years of investment on your part?

I hope you're right. I'm not sure, you know, that is the honest answer. But we are, you know, as I said earlier, we are seeing, you know, more and more activity around what we call engineering AI. And I think that is going to continue to ramp up and become an important tailwind for us. So the answer is yes, I think that is. And I think we've been absolutely in front you know, in front of that wave, actually, by several years, actually. And I think it's showing, you know, when we go in and benchmark, we're typically winning. And so we're very happy about that.

Got it. Thanks. Best of luck, guys.

Our next question will come from the line of Charles Shee with Needham & Company.

Hey, Jim, Matt, thanks for taking my question. My apologies, I do want to ask one more about synopsis plus answers. I think one of your peer companies, well, that's Dassault, they kind of have this school of thought, which I found very interesting, but I want to get your thoughts as well. They kind of said they think that combination could mean... answers which means it will become the legacy answers under the data synopsis roof to become less focused on the simulation and analysis market but more the combined company will be more focused on semis which they think opens up opportunity for them but do you agree with that school of thought and hypothetically speaking if that indeed is the case I don't know if that's the case or not because that's not the talking points from those two companies but If that turned out to be the case, what are the opportunities for fall payer? That's my first question. Thanks.

Okay. I don't know if that's the case either. I think it's quite natural when there's a combination that the leadership and the experiences of the leadership of the combined company is going to tend to drive the direction and the thinking and the strategy. So in this case, I think it could happen. defocus ANSYS a bit and the legacy ANSYS markets. But, you know, that remains to be seen. And then certainly, you know, if that happens, you know, certainly we continue to have opportunities. But we think there's opportunity, you know, in both the legacy ANSYS markets and in some of the new markets as well as we, you know, as we see electronics really shifting quite a bit and this is the reason i think for the combination into more uh more of a 3d uh you know type world and less of these you know huge large 2d types of ics remains to be seen got it um so maybe a second question maybe for matt

You talked about the broadening customer base, changing your seasonality pattern. We definitely see that from your Q1 guide. Can you be a little bit more specific? Because it sounds like you were saying automotive vertical, the revenue from that vertical has been a little bit Q1 heavy. But what are the other verticals that may be like Q2, Q3, or Q4 heavy? We just want to better understand how this broadening customer base is changing your revenue profile, which is kind of like a bathtub shift, right? High in Q1 and Q4, a little bit light in the middle. And kind of it's a little bit difficult for us to forecast. And I want to get your thoughts and for us to better understand this. Thanks.

Sure. Thanks, Charles. So namely, and I think most significantly, it's BFSI. So as that vertical has grown, the buying patterns are different than what we've seen in some of our older, more legacy verticals. BFSI, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist for us more than five years ago. And in particular, over the last couple of years, it's been growing steadily. And so as a result, as the entire revenue base grows, you start to see some changes in seasonality as that vertical grows. But it's also true for verticals such as technology, for example. So we've just seen a gradual shift somewhat away from auto and into these other verticals that tend to have buying patterns that are either a little bit more balanced throughout the year or even much more back-end loaded towards Q4.

Thanks, Matt. No problem.

If I could just add one thing to that, maybe it's not directly addressing the question, but we are seeing a tremendous amount of opportunity in aero and defense and electronics and technology, and I think that's very broad-based and going to happen across the verticals as well, not just BFSI.

Our next question will come from the line of Steven Tusa with JP Morgan.

Hey, good evening.

Hi there. Just a question on the EBITDA margins. You did 200 bps of improvement in 23. You got into some pretty solid revenue growth for 24, but I think about 100 basis points. What's the difference between the years? Are you investing a little bit more this year? Maybe just a color on the margin performance expected?

So hi, Steve, and thanks. It's 210 bps. Don't short me. That is 10. So yeah, I mean, so we're obviously very happy about the margin expansion from 22 to 23. And it's something that we've been able to demonstrate over the last few years of having really nice margin growth. 2024 is a year in which we see a lot of opportunity ahead of us. in back half of 2024 and beyond and so for that reason we're just making sure that we're investing in the right areas so we want to make sure that we're investing in areas for growth and in particular in sales capacity and in product development so that we can really capitalize on what we see as some pretty meaningful opportunities out there so not every year is going to be like the rest we are of course still committed to uh to growing margins uh meaningfully but not every year is going to be like the rest, and this is the year in which we think it makes a lot of sense to lean into the opportunities that we have.

So I guess I was thinking you guys would be, you know, kind of leveraging the fixed costs at this stage a little bit more, you know, normally, like, you know, perhaps what you were showing in 23, is that going to be kind of a year-to-year decision from here, is what you're saying?

I think when you look over a long period of time, you're going to see the average growth in adjusted EBITDA margin consistent with what we've communicated in the past. So, you know, I would probably urge you not to get too hung up on one short period of time or another. I think over time this will play out in the way that we've described. Okay, great.

And then just one other follow up, just getting back to this discussion of consolidation. I mean, I guess, are you, are you guys saying that, you know, you're not, are you concerned at all? Are you comfortable with, you know, competing with these larger companies and these more integrated resources that you guys can, you know, continue to deliver and, and, and grow as a standalone company that you're really not interested in, in, you know, perhaps partnering up in, in, in a, you know, in more of a way to, to compete because it just feels like this landscaping is changing a little bit here.

Let me take that one, Matt. I think we're open to all kinds of possibilities, you know, Stephen, but we do think that we're positioned pretty well to compete, quite frankly. So, you know, we're open, but we're also heads down and focused on competing.

Great answer. Thank you.

Our next question will come from the line of Mark Schappel with Loop Capital Markets.

Thank you for taking my question. Jim, starting with you, from an overall demand perspective, I was wondering if you could just comment on whether you've seen any changes in the demand environment over the past 90 days or so, mainly in terms of, say, buying behavior, sales cycles, and also maybe you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in Europe.

Yeah, so in general, I think we're seeing greater strength on the pipeline, you know, basically over the last 90 days. And, you know, we're obviously very pleased with that. And this is part of why we're investing. And we're investing, you know, on the product side as well because we think there's some very, very interesting opportunities there and to bring some differentiation into the market and with some of the changes we see happening in some of these markets. Europe, you're talking about what in Europe? Let me ask more specifically.

Just overall demand and like the industrial base you're seeing over in Europe.

I think it's very strong in general for us.

Okay, great. Thanks. And then along with that, maybe you could just talk a little bit about the strength of the aerospace industry you saw in the quarter. I know earlier in 2023, aerospace was particularly strong. And I was just curious if that strength is continuing into Q4.

Yeah, the aerospace market for us is that that's one where, you know, moving to the vertical organization really helps because we have much more focus on, you know, the applications and needs of those accounts and sharing information and all of that across our enterprise. So that's absolutely a strong vertical. We've also put renewed emphasis on defense as well. We brought in some new team members on the defense side, and we think they're going to make quite a difference here. And those are part of the investments that we're making. Great.

Thank you. That's all.

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Jim Scappa for closing remarks.

Thank you, Liz. So just in conclusion, I just want to make sure I invite everyone. We actually have two events coming up. We mentioned our Investor Relations Day, which is on March 20th in Santa Clara, California. And then the second one is coming up sooner than that, which is on March 6th and 7th. It's our annual Future.Industry event. It's a virtual event. And typically we have 10,000 to 15,000 attendees coming to that, hopefully even more this year. And so I think that's a nice opportunity to see what's new in our products and our platforms and also to hear from a number of our customers in how they're using the products. So I just want to thank everyone on my team for having another great year in 23 and really looking forward to 2024. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.