Asure Software Inc

Good afternoon and welcome to Assure's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's call are Chairman and CEO Pat Keppel, Chief Financial Officer John Pence, and VP of Investor Relations Patrick McKillop. Following the prepared remarks will be a question and answer session for their analysts and investors. I'll now turn the call over to Patrick McKillop for introductory remarks. Please go ahead, Patrick.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Assure's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings results call. Following the close of the markets, we released our financial results. The earnings release is available on the SEC's website and our investor relations website at investor.assuresoftware.com, where you can also find the investor presentation. During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures which we believe to be useful to investors and exclude the impact of certain items. A description and timing of these items along with a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to their most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release. Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements that refer to future events and as such involve some risks. We use the words such as expects, believes, in May to indicate forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. I will hand the call over to Pat in a moment, but I just wanted to take a moment to remind folks of our upcoming investor relations activities. On March 17th through the 19th, we will attend the 36th Annual Roth Conference in Dana Point, California. We also plan to do a few non-deal roadshows later this spring as well. Investor outreach is very important to Assure, and I'd like to thank all of those that assist us in our efforts to connect with investors. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded, and it will be made available for replay via a link available on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I would now turn over the call to Pat Geppel, Chairman and CEO. Pat?

Thank you, Patrick, and welcome, everyone, to Assure Software's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings results call. I am joined on this call by our CFO, John Pence, and we'll provide a business update for our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results, as well as our outlook for 2024. Following our remarks, we'll be available to answer your questions. As you can see from our reported results, our strong momentum continued during 2023 with strength coming from solid execution across the business. Our total revenue growth in 2023 was 24% up versus the prior year. Excluding ERTC, our revenues were up 19%. Our reoccurring revenues grew 16%. versus the prior year, excluding ERTC, our reoccurring revenues were up 19%. Our net loss was 9.2 million, a $5.3 million improvement versus the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA was up 97% versus the prior year period. Lastly, our cash from operations for 2023 was 18.9 million, versus 13.7 million in 2022. We have multiple growth drivers in our business with HR compliance, Assure Marketplace, and our payroll tax management solutions showing very strong growth in 2023. We believe that over time, these business lines can become much larger contributors to our overall revenues as our payroll tax management offering continues to grow it can contribute to our float balances growing as well we continue to build on our momentum by advancing our technology through leading partnerships and launching strategic sales initiatives such as the bundling of our 401k products with payroll to drive new client additions this particular initiative was launched a short time ago and the reception we have received thus far has been very positive many small businesses traditionally have not had the resources to offer 401k retirement solutions but around 20 or more states in the u.s have mandated these plans and many more have introduced legislation mandating 401k plans for small businesses the u.s government The Cures Act 2.0 aims to increase employee participation in retirement plans by providing tax credits to support the setup of employer-based retirement plans. And Assure has the solutions they need to set up those plans. We continue to advance our technology with partnerships. as evidenced by the recent invitation to join the SAP Partner Edge open ecosystem. The partnership with SAP will allow Assure to enhance its payroll tax engine by integrating with the SAP systems and streamline payroll tax processes for its existing SAP clients. Also, in today's press release, we mentioned we received Workday Global Payroll Certification for integration into Workday HCM and Assure Payroll Tax Management. This solution helps large enterprises streamline processes, enhance compliance accuracy, and stay ahead of regulatory changes. The certification accelerates Assure's payroll tax business into the Workday human capital management ecosystem. Our sales efforts during 2023 resulted in a 56% increase in new bookings versus the prior year and we're pleased with the productivity per rep we're experiencing. We've expanded our sales force during the year to approximately 110 reps with plans to go about 130 and have been very pleased with the quality of new hires that we've made. We're supporting our sales efforts with digital marketing, which will drive higher levels of sales leads and productivity in 2024. Based on our current business trends, we're reiterating our full year 2024 revenue guidance of $125 to $129 million, with EBITDA margins of between 20% and 21%. As a reminder, this 2024 guidance excludes any potential contributions from ERTC filing, but does include our plan to resume acquisitions in earnest. We have signed agreements to purchase approximately $7 million of annual reoccurring revenue, and the pipeline is very strong. As we look at the business excluding ERTC from 2023, Our guidance for 2024 implies a 25% plus growth rate, which is very positive. Additionally, reviewing our growth, excluding ERTC for the past few years, we're witnessing solid double digit growth in the implied 25% growth rate in our guidance of 2024 would be an acceleration of the rates we saw in previous years. Now, I would like to hand it off to John Pence to discuss our financial results in more detail, as well as our quarter one guidance. John?

Thanks, Pat. As Patrick mentioned at the beginning of this call, several of the financial figures discussed today are given on a non-GAAP or adjusted basis. We'll find a description of these GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations in the earnings release. that was made available earlier today. The reconciliations themselves are also included in our most recent investor presentation posted in the investor relations section of our website at investor.assuresoftware.com. Now onto the fourth quarter and 2023 results. Fourth quarter total revenues were 26.3 million, decreasing by 10% relative to prior year. Excluding ERTC, total revenues were up 15% from the prior year. Full year 2023, total revenues grew by 24% to $119.1 million. Excluding ERTC, total revenues were up 19% from the prior year. Recurring revenues for the fourth quarter grew 4% versus the prior year to $25 million. excluding ERTC revenues, were up 15% from the prior year. Full-year recurring revenues grew by 16% to $99.7 million year-over-year, and excluding ERTC revenues were up 19% from the prior year. Full-year and fourth-quarter recurring revenues grew on the strength of HR compliance solutions, a sure marketplace, and increased interest revenues, with average client balances exceeding $200 million during the year. Net loss for the fourth quarter was 3.6 million versus 1.1 million during the prior year. Net loss for the full year of 2023 was 9.2 million, an improvement of 5.3 million versus the prior year loss of 14.5 million. Gross margins for the fourth quarter decreased to 68% from 72% in the prior year. Full-year gross margins increased to 72% from 65% in the prior year. Non-GAAP gross margins for the fourth quarter decreased to 72% from 76% in the prior year. Non-GAAP gross margins for the full year increased to 76% from 70% in the prior year. The decline in margins during the fourth quarter were driven by lower revenues versus the prior year as a result of lower ERTC revenue. Margin expansion for the full year was driven by growing high margin revenue streams, continued progress with our efficiency initiatives, and scaled benefits from our growth. We continue to believe there is substantial margin upside over the longer term as the business scales. EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $1.1 million, down from $5 million in the prior year. EBITDA of $14.3 million for the full year was up 63% versus the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter decreased to $2.8 million from $6 million in the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 11% in the quarter compared with 21% in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA of $23.3 million for the full year was up 97% versus the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year was 20% versus 12% in the prior year. Cash from operations for 2023. was $18.9 million versus $13.7 million in 2022. We ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $30.3 million, and we had debt of $4.3 million. Now, in terms of guidance for the first quarter of 2024, we are guiding the first quarter revenues to be in the range of $30 to $32 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter is anticipated to be between $6 and $7 million. We are reiterating our 2024 revenue guidance to be in the range of $125 to $129 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins of between 20% to 21% at these revenue levels. As Pat mentioned in his comments earlier, these guidance figures exclude any contribution from ERTC revenues, but assume a resumption of acquisitions. We are excluding ERTC given the uncertainty about the future of the program. The growth from our HR compliance Assure Marketplace are expected to continue to be strong contributors going forward. Also during 2023, we saw very good growth from our standalone payroll tax management product offering as well. Our payroll tax management product has multiple shots on goal with the platform being offered as a service to large enterprises, as well as HCM vendors. While the above mentioned are strong contributors to our growth, we also expect to drive growth through inorganic methods. We have signed agreements to purchase approximately $7 million of annual recurring revenue so far, and the pipeline is strong. In conclusion, we are pleased with our performance in 2023 and the momentum we have built on the strength of product development, technology, and sales. This gives us confidence in our forward-looking guidance. As we look at the business excluding ERTC revenues in 2023, we are generating approximately $100 million in revenues. And the guidance we have given to 2024 implies 25% plus growth for this year, which is a very healthy rate. We look back, the core business grew 16% in 2021 to 2022, and 19% from 2022 to 2023. And then we look to guidance for this year, and you can see the growth rate accelerating, assuming we achieve our goals. We are excited about 2024. and look forward to it being a breakout year for sure in driving profitable growth and leveraging the initiatives we have implemented across the business to generate sustainable growth and create shareholder value. With that, I will turn the call back to Pat for closing remarks.

Thank you, John. We are pleased to deliver continued growth in 2023, achieving 24% total revenue growth. We remain committed to creating products and technologies that make a difference for our customers. The continued improvement of our solutions over the last few years is being reflected by our continued growth, and we're elated to see positive impressions from our client base as we are creating valuable solutions which will enable them to focus on their core business operations. Our business has multiple growth drivers in HR compliance, a sure marketplace, payroll tax management, and our new 401k offering. Small business owners face an increasingly complex world to operate in, and we're offering multiple solutions to these business owners to ease the demands on their time so that they can focus on the things that are most important. Our recent sales initiative and bundling 401k with payroll has gotten a positive reception thus far. The Secure 2.0 Act gives small businesses the funding they need to implement 401k plans, which many states are mandating now, and we expect more to pass mandates in the future. We also anticipate demand for our HR compliance solutions. will continue to be healthy as businesses increasingly seek to supplement their internal capabilities with external experts who can help them navigate the increasing complexity of doing their business day to day. Assure Marketplace has been a strong contributor as well via our partnerships with Equifax, H&R Block, and Zazune. Our payroll tax management solution has had great potential with this solution being offered to large enterprise clients and human capital management vendors. Our recent partnership announcement with Workday and SAP are great accomplishments for our payroll tax management business. And as John mentioned, we saw good growth for that product offering during 2023. We remain excited about what lies ahead for this business. Our guidance for 2024 reflects our expectations for continued growth, which will be delivered with a combination of organic and inorganic growth. We signed agreements to purchase approximately $7 million of annual reoccurring revenue so far, and the pipeline is strong. Our margins and cash flow have continued to improve as the business is scaled, and we have focused on improving efficiency across the business, which helps improve the cost structure. As John mentioned earlier, when we viewed a business excluding ERTC, the core revenues continue to grow at a healthy double-digit rate, and our guidance for 2024 implies a 25% plus potential growth rate. While we're pleased to have been able to generate revenues from the ERTC program, we want to remind you that our core business continues to perform very well. and we hope that our discussion today helps illustrate our plans for the future as we move on from ERTC. During 2023, we have expanded the sales force as well as invested in marketing initiatives, and we now feel the business is right side for future success as we enter the remainder of 2024. We will continue to provide innovative human capital management solutions that helps small businesses thrive, human capital management providers grow their base, and large enterprises streamline tax compliance. Thank you for listening to our prepared remarks. And so with that, I'll send the call back to the operator for the question and answer session. Operator?

Thank you, and I'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star 1. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Joshua Riley from Needaman Company. Your line is now live.

Alright, thanks for taking my questions here and nice job on wrapping up the year team. Maybe just starting off on ERTC. I know we're moving on from that, but just to wrap up a couple items, there's some proposed legislation to make the end date retroactive to January 31st. I've been getting some questions. Have you guys still been submitting applications for ERPC even while the program is technically paused? And has there been any costs associated with submitting these applications before you've actually generated any revenue there? Just maybe an update on a couple of those more technical items.

Yeah, Josh, thanks for the question. From ERTC, we're a processor on behalf of our clients. So, you know, the IRS has paused. There has been some legislation, whether they'll let the product or let the program run out in 2020 in April. like scheduled, and then in 2021, April 15th of the following year is scheduled, or will they retro it to January 31st? That remains a question for Congress and the IRS. What we've done is, you know, we'll make sure that if somebody wants to file an ERTC claim, we'll process on their behalf. And there are some, you know, what I'll call minor costs that are involved in that process. But really, we've, you know, kept out the revenue in our guidance going forward. And, you know, when the bill or potentially the legislation environment changes, you know, we'll inform our customers as well as our investors alike. But, you know, we have taken it out of the guidance. And they'll be small run rate dollars. But, you know, we at this point in time, the volume of activity with ERTC has gone down quite a bit. We want to make sure that if somebody does deserve a refund, we'll process on their behalf. But that's kind of where we are in the program.

Got it. And then just two follow-up items on the March quarter guidance. First item being, what are you assuming for W-2 and forms revenue on a year-over-year basis? Are you assuming it's going to be flat or maybe even slightly down year-over-year? And how much is job switching impacting that revenue. That's the first item. And then just one other quick item on the March guidance.

Yeah, Josh, same sort of sales is roughly flat year over year. Sometimes it has effects of turnover, et cetera. The W-2 and year-end revenue. And when we have W-2 revenue, we have W-2s, we also have ACA, and then we have kind of tax filing forms versus payroll forms. But You know, the revenue is, you know, I think slightly up year over year. But, you know, if you kind of ballpark that in the high fours, that's kind of where we are from a revenue perspective.

Got it. And then what are you assuming also in the March quarter guidance for the H&R block revenue? And can you just remind us if there was any H&R block revenue last year in the March quarter and then any seasonality? around how that might abruptly end on April 15th or when the tax filing date ends.

Thank you. Yeah, the W-2 revenue, whether it's Intuit or it's H&R Block, the seasonality is more in the first quarter as opposed to all year round. And that's just because personal tax returns heavy emphasis on first quarter and with a little bit sliding into the second quarter the use of the w-2 you know follows that kind of process you know we're probably talking about minor six figures, so a little over $100,000 of revenue in that kind of area, and that's up from last year. But all in all, that's not a huge contributor of our marketplace revenue. We've announced some recent programs in the marketplace, and H&R Block as well as Intuit will be a nice kind of program for convenience of our employees and getting their taxes done. But it's not a huge revenue stream for us.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Brian Begwin from TD Cal. Your line is now live.

Yeah, this is actually Jared Levine on for Brian tonight. In terms of 4Q and into 1Q so far, have you noticed any change in the demand environment or even the competitive environment relative to prior quarters?

You know, on the first quarter, based on fourth quarter, I haven't seen great change in demand. I would tell you I think we're pretty robust demand. We're launching a number of new programs that we talked about, whether it's 401K, the Marketplace. We have... you know, kind of new capability in the area of benefits around receiving commissions as well. So, a number of different drivers for us, but demand environment's been pretty strong. I did come from, you know, our sales kickoff here in the last month or three weeks, I should say, and I think people are pretty fired up and, you know, pretty confident that they can make their plan. So, You know, I think we had a bit of a pivot in September 14th when the ERTC paused. But we have no shortage of opportunities with new product introduction, new technology, as well as our bundling. And people are, quite frankly, pretty fired up. So, you know, for us, it's been pretty positive.

Okay. And then that competitive environment as well?

I'm sorry, John, you cut out for a second if you could ask that question again.

Yeah, so the second part of the question was in terms of any change in the competitive environment as well?

No, you know, we see on the small end, you know, we might see Augusta, which is a private company. We see ADP and Paychex. You know, those are the vendors we see. I would say, you know, Similar to regional banking, compliance and money transmission licenses, the government's leaning in more and more, whether it's state or federal or ACH, on a compliance environment. And we are seeing that there's a trend where the smaller providers that did payroll either as a service for their CPA clients or they were doing payroll, you know, now that they have to be licensed, there is a kind of a flight to, you know, companies such as ourselves because we're licensed and, you know, have expertise in money movement and tax filing. So I think that's been a positive for us. But no super huge change in the marketplace. We see the same people that we saw last year.

Okay, great. And then for my follow-up, what was the float revenue in FY23? And then what are you assuming in that FY24 guide in terms of float revenue?

Yeah, we were a little under $9 million this year when it was all said and done. And that compares roughly to about two and a half or so the year before. We've got a growth kind of combination of two or three things that we're thinking about in terms of the forecast. Overall, we've modeled a half-point decline mid-year in our core business, but we see some growth and float as a result of a couple different factors, right? So we talked about acquisitions. When we acquire these businesses, we're going to take on their client fund balances. And we've talked about it in the past, but one of our key growth areas is on the tax service providing area. That also comes with it, a lot of client fund dollars. And it's actually one of the things that we do when it comes to pricing. We might forego some fee revenue just to get the client balances. So it's definitely part of our model in terms of that side of the business. So I would say in general, I think it's pretty consistent with the overall growth trend. So if you think about we've guided a 25% growth directionally from the core business, I would say that we expect kind of between the acquisitions, between those initiatives, we think that we're probably in that kind of same growth rate for float dollars next year.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks for the question. Thank you. Next question is coming from Eric Martinucci from Lake Street Capital. Your line is now live.

Yeah, I wanted to focus on the acquisitions. Just for Q4, how much revenue was from acquisitions? Yeah, roughly a half million. All right. And then you talked about the $7 million of ARR under contract. When are you expecting those deals to close and how much are you paying?

Go ahead. Roughly, of that seven, I get 75% of it this year. Some of it's going to hit beginning of March. Some of it will kind of hit beginning of April. So I think of that seven, maybe five, five and a half will come in this year. In terms of I think where you're going next is what we're paying for it. I think we've been prejudicious. I'll let Pat kind of give a blended rate for that $7 million purchase.

Yeah. And, you know, I would say roughly in that area of two times revenue, we did have in our subsequent note in the 10K, you know, we had a little over a $5 million acquisition from a revenue perspective that we closed on a couple days ago. And then what I would say is the pipeline is very active, you know, a number of March, April kind of starts as well as, you know, we remind you we have about $200 million or so of acquisition targets within the reseller community. Probably a pipeline right now of about $20 million or $25 million are actionable. So, you know, we're kind of the pipeline is strong. We're executing on the plan and real confident that we'll get the revenue associated with that.

Again, I think we've been pretty transparent on this. This is definitely part of the model. We were happy to do the equity raise in the third quarter to pay down debt and also give us this dry powder to start really prosecuting that part of the model. I mean, it's really important to us. As you see, the adjusted EBITDA margins, it's really important to get the scale. So if we have to replace, let's say, $18 million of ERTC in 2024, That's an important part of that strategy. And I think that, again, if we can get it executed, we'll be able to deliver the same margins.

Yeah, John, the only thing, and Eric, the one thing I would add to John's half a million dollars is when we do acquire, especially the resellers, as well as, you know, other payroll assets, you know, we layer on the marketplace, we layer on tax filing dollars, the money movement, you know, that's not in that half million. And clearly, you know, we've, you know, instituted that as well. So that's part of our model. And traditionally, we've talked about acquisition economics from a cost reduction perspective. What we're pleased to be seeing is that we also get those benefits from a revenue perspective.

Right. But I'm just trying to get at a true organic. And if you're telling me, You acquired somebody, you know, two days ago for that's going to be 5 million of revs in 2024. then, you know, over $400,000 of your revenue in Q1 is from acquisitions. I just want to make sure I'm right with the math there. Is that correct?

Yeah. You know, people ask for different reasons, but if you're triangling from an organic perspective, you know, we didn't have a lot of acquisitions prior to the fourth quarter, so that number is pretty pure. And then, you know, you got our answers from that.

Got it. Thanks for taking my question. Thanks, Eric.

Thank you. As a reminder, that's star one to be placed in the question queue. Our next question is coming from Richard Baldry from Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now live.

Thanks. Your OPEX from 3Q to 4Q is pretty flattish, and to get to sort of the profitability we see or that you're guiding for next year, it looks like it'll be, you know, call it well-controlled on the OPEC side. Are you at all concerned that, you know, given the organic growth you're seeing underlying the business, that maybe you should be accelerating your hiring or spending on internal a little more than what seems to be implied in the results? Thanks.

I'll give you my perspective, and I'll let Pat gunna go. I think, you know, as we've talked about, Fourth quarter, even as we were given the guidance, we, you know, it was a pretty sharp pivot. As we were planning ahead for the end of the year, we were trying to invest heavily in terms of our sales and ops to get ready for the next year. I would say that ERC going away put pressure on the fourth quarter, but we don't see a lot of incremental growth. cost going into 2024 from the fourth quarter. It's kind of my perspective. I think we have to deliver the revenue, but I think that the cost structure is pretty stable.

Yeah, and Rich, I think it's a good point and one we talk about quite a bit at the management level as well as the board level. In our investor deck, we did pop out more and more of the model. And I think what you're seeing in 2021 is You know, we had roughly 10% adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue. This past year in 2023, we were fortunate to go to 20% at that, you know, kind of call it 119 level. You know, a model for illustrative purposes at $200 million, we think it's at 30%. So it's very much a scale business, and that's what we're focused on. What ERTC allowed us to do is invest in kind of technology and payroll, and we're running at increased kind of levels for that. Now, with ERTC, it was one-time revenue, and, you know, you were kind of one and done. Here, it's allowing us to invest in a in a repetitive business model so while this year roughly 18 million dollars or so was ertc one-time revenue next year as we uh you know model with guidance most of that revenue is repetitive revenue so you're going to see us really build a platform of growth that's repetitive revenue and it's only accelerated in the last couple years from a cost perspective What we've done is we've been able to really right-size the scalability model. Primarily, we invested in our infrastructure with common service tools, Salesforce, NetSuite, AWS. We're starting to invest in AI, and we think we have some pretty good winners in that area. And then just the simplification of the business around bank accounts, money movement, and the marketplace allows us to move where we can invest in our important asset around people, but also invest in efficiency and the scale outcome. So we think we're well on our way and really pleased with the outlook here. So I appreciate the question, but that's how we're looking at it today.

And in terms of revenue seasonality, from Q1 to Q2, there's usually a dip because of the W2 type upswing in Q1. Do you think that's at all different in terms of magnitude this year, given sort of the mix changing in the business?

Yeah, I don't think it'll be as dramatic. Also, just because of some of the acquisitions too, right? So you're going to have some of that muted by the fact that some of these acquisitions and the revenue is going to start coming on. So I'd say probably not as dramatic is a simple answer.

And last for me would be more about the M&A pipeline. So, you know, against the macro backdrop, and it sounds like the ones you've done recently fit your targets really well, do you feel like, you know, the targets you're going after in terms of valuation, cash flow capabilities, et cetera, are those, you know, sort of well within grasp of the pipeline you're looking at? Has that changed at all recently? Just how are you feeling about that? Thanks.

I get my perspective on it. I think there are, you know, Goldilocks, I think everything's going kind of according to the model. And as Pat mentioned, it's a unique time for these small providers. I mean, the cost of doing business is, with the regulations that the various states are putting in place, the banking system. It's really having an effect on some of these smaller providers, whether they want to need to stay in business and take the risk, or do they think this is a better time to exit. So I think it's a unique time in the space. We've embraced it in terms of trying to get our house in order in terms of being very compliant. We take it very seriously. It's hard if you're a small provider to afford some of that cost structure.

Great. Thanks.

Thanks, Rich. Thank you. Next question today is coming from Jeff Van Reen from Craig Hallam. Your line is now live.

Great. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. A few for me. On sales, what do you see in terms of the timeline for the reps to ramp to productivity? How has that changed in the last, call it, six months, 12 months?

You know, Jeff, I think if anything, it's probably gone up a bit. Productivity and the quality of hire has gone up for us, so we've been really pleased with that. I think some of it is the pace of change is quick. So, in other words, you know, if you think about kind of where we're at now, You know, we've had a lot of really good success in the marketplace and in tax filing as well as, you know, ERTC. We now are, you know, kind of introducing 401K. We have a medical benefits kind of product. And so now you have new reps and new products. And in those times, the sale of a concept and then delivering that to a newer person sometimes takes a while to get to that area. The other thing I would say is, and again, we're really, really happy with the quality of sales reps, But the area of tax filing, when you start to go up market with SAP and Workday, now you're talking about a sale or a process or even a book-to-bill around implementation that takes a little bit longer. And the only reason for that is those customers have higher dollar revenue numbers, and they take a little bit longer to implement. But, you know, bookings, we had another really, really strong year. XCRTC, our bookings were up 40%. It gives us confidence to go to 130 reps. So we think we have really good onboarding training. We have a lot of... the right mix to get productivity up. I would just say we're throwing more at the reps from a product perspective. Part of our charm is that we give a lot of the products in the bag that some of the other companies don't, where they isolate or go to a one-product kind of sale. We give our business people and our salespeople the opportunity to sell all the products in the bag. Sometimes that does take a little bit longer longer than if you were only selling one product, but we think it makes them more consultative and more value-added in the future. And I'll tell you what, I couldn't be more pleased with our sales folks.

Good, good to hear. So on payroll tax management, you just referenced it a minute ago about these deals being larger and potentially taking longer. When do those deals start to show up and move the needle further? from a revenue standpoint? Should we start to think of kind of low to mid seven figure run rates by the end of the year or just, I don't know, help us size when do those deals start to move the needle?

Yeah, I mean, I'll give you one example. I have a company with 22,000 employees, and they'll start between March 1st and April 1st. And that process has been going on about six months or so. We went live with 100,000 employee company last year, and that process took took us almost a year from start to finish but went live over six months we have some pipelines of some what ALO call is kind of two-comma deals. And we think that they'll start layering in towards the second half of the year, but we're in sales processes right now. So yeah, no, I think you'll just see a consolidated ramp. And then we've introduced what we call banking in a box. And and our treasury management solution that in some cases will partner with some of these deals as well that will increase the total addressable market as well as the deal size. So we think we're positioned really nicely, and you'll see that throughout the year.

Yeah, it's great to hear on the marketplace product as well. I think you referenced, obviously, Equifax off to a strong start, a little bit of contribution from HRB and And Zeyzun, how do you think about a goal for marketplace by the end of the year? And outside of Equifax, which had maybe some different contracting structure, how are the timelines of the other deals, you know, ramping relative to expectations? So timeline of ramp relative to expectations, and then just goals for the year for that segment.

Yeah, I think, you know, just from our perspective, you know, we kind of look at the business three ways. We have our core kind of business and growth that, you know, we're going to get momentum coming off that business. We have some enhanced initiatives. That's a second vehicle. And, you know, whether that's the treasury management, the 401K, some of those newer products, that we're working. And then we have acquisitions, which we layer some of our product offerings to. From a goal perspective, the 125 to 129 million imply 25% growth. In that kind of initiative, probably 10-ish or so is momentum that we've had over the past year. The growth rate of acquisitions we've kind of published somewhere in that 10% to 12%. And then some of these enhanced initiatives, whether you look at 401K, We pulled 401K out of the marketplace and made it its own separate product. So you won't see, you know, to some extent we probably took a little bit away from the marketplace, but certainly we'll grow the marketplace well into the double digits. From our perspective, it's probably a little bit too early to call a target number just because we have a number of initiatives, whether it was the healthcare initiative. Recently, we did an acquisition which expanded our capability in receiving commissions. So we're kind of in the middle of the movie, Jeff. I think I'll give you a little bit more color here at the end of the first quarter. And, you know, we did one acquisition, you know, two days ago. So I don't want to put targets that would limit us right now. I would say at the end of the first quarter, we'll come out with a clearer number.

Got it. Fair enough. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Vincent Colicchio. From Barrington Research, your line is now live.

Yeah, Pat, do you have a booking growth number for Q4 if we exclude ERTC?

If we exclude – well, for the year, if excluding ERTC is 40%. Right. And the fourth quarter specifically, if we exclude ERTC – You know, we're closer to 50%, 56%, I think it was, in the fourth quarter. So that, you know, good, strong bookings, a lot going on in the business, and I think you'll see, you know, more bundling, and the bundling initiatives are starting to pay off.

And as far as client companies go, Do they grow their employee base in the quarter, and what are your expectations for that in 24?

You know, on client, we modeled roughly flat. We didn't get into it because, you know, if you think about the backdrop, you had the macro environment with, you know, either interest rates and, you know, people were modeling, you know, some people, depending on what your belief was, was either going to be a recession or growth, et cetera. We just modeled a flat area and then a six – a half basis point cut in the second half on float. So we don't get too worked up on the quarters or what I'll call same-store sales growth. And if we do get some of those hiring initiatives growing, that's kind of a benefit to the model.

And then do you have your bookings break down in the quarter between new and existing clients?

You know, one of the things that we're working hard and we just had our sales kick off is, you know, we do about 65 to 70 percent new logos. What we want to do is even that out over time. You know, we believe that we have an opportunity to continue to drive our base business. And, you know, we're having a lot of success there. with bundling. We want to make sure that we have that same bundling success. And one of the things that we're doing is making it easier to do business across the bundles with us. Some of the things that we're doing from a technology rollout strategy, we'll augment that and then we'll get into more product-driven sales and kind of check-the-box sales. We're excited about those initiatives, but we're still early days. So When I look at Bookings and Ale, who's our chief revenue officer and president, he's done a fantastic job. One of the initiatives that we're trying to do is we think that there's base sales growth that while we've achieved a lot of success in the model, we think we can even do better. And that's where we're going to work those percentages. We also have hired a couple groups. of people to really work on those bundling and those product-driven sales to continue to grow. Thanks, Pat.

Thanks, Vince. Thank you. Our next question is coming from Greg Gibbous from Northern Capital. Your line is now live.

Thanks, Pat and John. Thanks for taking the questions. You know, just to clarify, you know, I think you were saying growth from acquisitions would end at 12% organically, inorganically. Is that right?

Yeah, I think what we said even with the When we were talking about the guidance for the full year last quarter, we were implying roughly 25% growth or higher with kind of a split evenly between both organic and non-organic. So I don't think that's changed. And again, it's never going to be perfectly linear, especially with acquisitions. They're going to kind of come in as they get closed. But we still think that's the right way to think about the overall view of the year as kind of that relative contributor.

Great. Yeah, just wanted to see if anything changed there. I appreciate it. And then, you know, regarding the headcount or C-count trends, you know, wondering if you're seeing anything there. You know, I think you said that you modeled 2024 guidance just off of, you know, roughly flat. Has anything changed in terms of customer headcount or C-count growth or decline?

You know, no, we've not seen, from my perspective, you know, significant change one way or the other in the last year or so in terms of the per- employee or account of employees.

Got it. And I guess lastly, just as I think about, you know, quarterly trends or seasonal, you know, without ERTC, you know, I know that was kind of big on Q2, you know, how would you advise us in terms of what, you know, 2024 would look like cadence-wise versus 2023? All right. So, again,

I think, again, our guidance is, you know, 125 to 129 for the full year. That has no ERTC component in it. And that, if you think about 23, 119 we just delivered has approximately $18 million of ERTC in it, right? So you're growing a base of 101 to approximately 125 to 129. So that's kind of the way we're looking at ERTC vis-a-vis 24.

And the only thing I'd say of that 101 last year or 2023 with 18 million of ERTC, ERTC was mainly one-time revenue, right? Because you had the 941X and you had that process and it was one-time revenue. When you think about the bookings and sales of a repetitive revenue business, they build on each other. So, you know, the 125, the 129, what we're pretty excited is to grow that base. And then when you think about fourth quarter, you start to grow that base. And, you know, we think we could exit that. you know, in close to 30% growth. And when you have that kind of growth from a repetitive revenue perspective, now that leads into a multi-year growth strategy. And then, you know, I just remind you, we're in a scale business. And, you know, in 2021, we had 10% adjusted EBITDA margins, 2023. We finished a year here where we had 20%, you know, picked a number at close to 200, you'll see 30%. So we think we're really set up well for long-term and employees and clients alike. And so, you know, feel really good about the momentum that we currently have.

Yeah. And I would just, again, I think we've made this point a couple of times, but just to reemphasize, the 22 to 23 growth XERTC was 19%, right? So it's just something to keep focused on. I mean, the ERTC creates a lot of noise in terms of the numbers and the compares, but the core business, when you start to exclude it, really is performing just fine. And, again, it's going to perform great this year, we think. Thank you, Greg.

Thank you. Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

No, I'll tell you, I'm really excited about 2024. Came off some really good events around our sales kickoff, and, you know, we had a group of high performers together. They see the momentum. They see the future of the business. We're very pleased with our position for 2024. And, you know, stay with us. Patrick mentioned we're at the Roth Conference here in March. We're going to do some non-deal roadshows. So we're going to get out to the community. We have a bunch coming up in May. So we hope to see you soon. And I really appreciate your interest as an investor. Have a great day. And thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.