Asure Software Inc

Good afternoon and welcome to Assure's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us today for today's call are Chairman and CEO Pat Gepel, Chief Financial Officer John Pence, and Vice President of Investor Relations Patrick McKillop. Following their prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session for the analysts and investors. I would now like to turn the call over to Patrick McKillop for introductory remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Assure's first quarter 2024 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 .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 those 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 words such as expects, believes, and 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 our current expectations. I will hand the call over to Pat in a moment, but I just want to take a moment to remind folks of our upcoming Investor Relations activities. On May 15th, we will attend the 19th Annual Needham Tech Media Consumer Conference in New York. On May 16th, we will attend the Jefferies HCM Summit in New York. On May 29th, we will attend the 21st Annual Craig Hallam Conference in Minneapolis. On May 30th, we will attend the 52nd Annual TD Cowan Tech Media Telecom Conference in New York. On June 4th, we will attend the Stifle Cross-Sector Insight Conference in Boston. Finally, we will participate in the Northland Capital Markets Virtual Growth Conference on June 25th. Investor outreach is very important to assure, and I would like to thank all 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 like to turn the call over to Pat Geppel, Chairman and CEO.

Thank you, Patrick, and welcome everyone to Assure Software's first quarter 2024 earnings result call. I am joined on this call by our CFO, John Pitts, and we'll provide a business update for our first quarter 2024 results, as well as our outlook for 2024. Following our remarks, we will be available to answer your questions. Our first quarter revenues were strong, coming in at $31.7 million. Our revenues were driven by our contributions from our core business, strategic initiatives, and acquisitions, including our Assure Marketplace offering, Payroll Tax Management, and interests earned from Funds Helped Her Clients, which we refer to as FLOW. We believe in 2024, our momentum will grow throughout the year and we're off to a great start. Advancing our business through artificial intelligence, new technology enhancements, leading partnerships, and strategic sales initiatives, such as bundling of our 401K products with payroll to drive new client additions continues to be part of our strategy. Small businesses in the U.S. have traditionally not been or not had the resources to offer 401K retirement solutions. The Secures Act 2.0 from the U.S. government is legislation that aims to increase employee participation in retirement plans by offering tax credits to support the setup of employer-based retirement plans. Currently, there are around 20 or more states in the United States that have mandated these plans. Also, many more have introduced legislation mandating 401K plans for our small businesses. Assure has the solutions they need to set up the plans. Our announcements with Workday and the certification and joining the SAP Partner Edge Open Ecosystem are really strong validations of advancing our technology and these partnerships will help us with more enterprise-level clients. In today's press release, we highlighted that after receiving the Workday certification, we went live with our first client, which is a major league baseball team. This client is an example of the complexity of multi-state payroll as the staff and team members incur payroll tax liabilities in multiple states each week. We're excited to win this business and look forward to achieving more opportunities with Workday. We also remain excited about our partnership with SAP, which allows us to enhance our payroll tax engine by integrating with the SAP system and streamlining payroll tax processes for our existing SAP clients. We have also recently formed a partnership with a tax credit firm, HR Logix, which will provide our small business clients with access to capital. The partnership will help small business owners with identifying employer tax credits that many are unaware of, such as work opportunity tax credits, research and development, and overall tax credit programs. Our sales bookings help drive growth and repetitive revenue for the quarter. Our pipeline is strong as we grow our product portfolio and enhance our technology. We are supporting our sales efforts with digital marketing, and we believe we'll drive higher level of sales leads and productivity in 2024. Based on our current business trends, we're reiterating our 2024 revenue guide of 125 to 129 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 20 and 21%. As a reminder, this 2024 guidance excludes any potential contributions from ERTC filings, but does include our plans to continue to make acquisitions and grow organically. Our guidance for 2024 implies a 25% growth rate if we exclude ERTC from 2023 revenues for comparison. Now, I would like to hand it off to John to discuss our financial results in more detail, as well as our Q2 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. You will find a description of these GAAP and non-GAAP reconciliations in the earnings release that was made available earlier today. Reconciliations themselves are also included in our most recent investor presentation, posted in the investor relations section of our website at .assuresoftware.com. Now, on to the first quarter results. First quarter revenues were $31.7 million, decreasing by 4% relative to prior year. However, excluding ERTC, total revenues were up 10% from prior year. Recurring revenues in the first quarter grew 8% versus prior year to $30.3 million, and excluding ERTC, recurring revenues were up 9% from the prior year. First quarter recurring revenues grew on the strength of our HR compliance solutions, our tax solutions, our share marketplace, and increased interest revenues with the average client balances of approximately $240 million throughout the quarter. Net loss for the first quarter was $300,000 versus net income of $300,000 during the prior year. Gross margins for the first quarter decreased to 71% from 74% in prior year. Non-GAAP gross margins for the first quarter decreased to 75% from 78% in the prior year. The decrease in gross margins for the first quarter is primarily attributable to decrease in non-recurring ERTC revenue. We continue to believe there is substantial margin upside over the longer term as the business scales. EBITDA for the first quarter was $4.4 million, down from $6.8 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter decreased to $6.8 million from $8.2 million in the prior year, and our adjusted EBITDA margin was 22% in the quarter compared with 25% in the prior year. We ended the first quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $23.2 million, and we have debt of $5.3 million. Now in terms of guidance for the second quarter of 2024, we are guiding second quarter revenues to be in the range of $28 million to $29 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter is anticipated to be between $4 million and $5 million. We are reiterating our 2024 revenue guidance to be in the range of $125 million to $129 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins of between 20% to 21%. As Pat mentioned in his comments earlier, these guidance figures exclude any contribution for BRTC revenues, but assume a combination of organic and inorganic growth. Our pipeline of potential acquisitions remains strong, and we feel confident about reaching our objectives. We also remain excited about the outlook for our core product, such as our payroll tax offering, which brings additional client fund balances and the resulting flow of revenues, as well as potential for numerous new initiatives we have recently launched, such as the 401k solution. In conclusion, we are excited about the remainder of 2024 and look forward to 2024 as being a great year for sure in driving profitable growth and leveraging the initiatives we've implemented across the business to drive sustainable growth and create shareholder value. With that, I will turn the call back to Pat for closing remarks.

Thanks, John. We're pleased to have delivered strong, solid results in the first quarter of 2024. We remain committed to creating products and technologies that make a difference for our clients. The continuous improvement of our solutions over the last few years is being reflected by the growth of our business, and we're happy to see positive impressions from our client base. The improvement of our solutions is ongoing, and a few recent examples include launching a -in-class employee self-service and role-based identity access software, embedding a new AI agent into our enterprise payroll tax management platform, which will assist in complex multi-state tax compliance inquiries. This is another example of our efforts. Our business has multiple growth drivers in our core payroll business, a sure marketplace, payroll tax management, and our 401K offering in addition to tuck-in acquisitions. Small business owners in the U.S. are tasked with an enormous challenge trying to navigate all the regulations that have been put in place over the years, and we're offering multiple solutions to these business owners to ease the demands of their time and resources.

We 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 business -to-day. We've added benefit and insurance capabilities in the assure marketplace that we expect to grow going forward. Our payroll tax management solution has also great potential, as evidenced by the recent news of our first workday client, a major league baseball team, going live, and we remain excited about what lies ahead for this business. Our sales initiative in bundling 401K with payroll has gotten positive reception, and the Secure 2.0 Act will allow us to implement many more 401K plans, which the states are mandating now, and we expect more to pass mandates in the future. Our guidance for 2024 reflects our expectations for continued growth, and we expect to be delivered with a combination of organic and inorganic growth. When we view the business excluding ERTC, core revenues continue to grow at a very strong rate, and our guidance for 2024 implies 25% plus potential growth. We hope that our discussion today helps illustrate our plans as we move on from ERTC. We now feel the business is right-side for future success as we enter the remainder of 2024. In summary, we're pleased to have delivered another solid performance in Q1 against the backdrop of some unfavorable -over-year comparisons, which we will be up against for the next few quarters. The unfavorable -over-year comparisons will start to lift away in Q4 especially, and assuming we achieve our goals, the growth rates will be much healthier as we exit Q4 and enter into 2025. We'll continue to provide innovative human capital management solutions that help small businesses thrive, human capital management providers to grow their base, and large enterprise streamlined tax compliance. Thank you for listening to our prepared remarks. So with that, I'll send a call back to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator?

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, 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 the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Joshua Riley with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your question.

All right. Thanks for taking my questions and a nice job on the quarter here. Can we get an update on how many acquisitions you've made now year to date, how valuations are trending, and where are you relative to the inorganic revenue assumptions that you laid out in the guide initially for the year?

Yeah, Josh, thank you. And just by the way, we're fortunate enough to have, you know, Goldstein, our president, chief revenue officer with us as well to help answer questions. But as far as acquisitions, we made really good progress in the first quarter and anticipate to make a very similar process in the second quarter. We have probably done about a handful of acquisitions here. I don't know if we want to get too much into the noise of what's closed and what's not. What I would suffice to say is, you know, I think we are absolutely on track, if not maybe slightly ahead of on track, around acquiring. Now, some of them have to, you know, implement and some implement very, very quickly and some it takes a month or so. But we're right on track in doing that. What I would say on the purchase price, you know, we're probably just slightly under two times. We're thrilled with that kind of purchase price amount so far. And it's been a combination, you know, of either equity where we've done some small equity deals as well as cash and loans. So suffice to say, we're really bullish about our plan, not only for the year, but the first half of the year. And the integration of those have gone very, very well.

Got it. That's helpful. And then could we get some more details? You know, what was interest income in the quarter and maybe compared to last year in the same quarter? And is the yield on the float balance is up year over year or is it consistent with what it was last year? Just some more details there would be helpful. Thank you.

Hey, Josh, this is John. So last year rough numbers about three and a half percent is what we earned on the client funds balances. This year roughly four and a half. The balances have ticked up a little bit, but that gives you rough order of magnitude as to kind of how that's progressed.

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just last follow up on that. Do you expect it to be four and a half for the rest of the year or is there more upside potential for the yield to increase? Thank you, guys.

Yeah. So what we factored into our numbers, Josh, was a half point decrease mid-year. Obviously, we don't know if that's going to happen or not. But when we kind of came up with our forecast for the year, we were assuming a half point. So there might be a little upside into our model, depending on what happens on the balance.

Thank you,

guys.

Thanks,

Josh.

Our next question comes from Brian Bergen with Katie Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you. So obviously, a big emphasis on your tax solutions in the prepared comments and good to hear about that first Workday client going live. Can you give us a sense on how you're thinking about the growth potential of the tax business and the potential scale as a mix of the overall company over the medium term?

I think from our perspective, first of all, these are enterprise deals, both SAP as well as Workday. And then just we have opportunities in the reseller mix as well. But as enterprise deals, if I thought about it, John and I were talking the other day, and when we acquired PTM, our kind of payroll business was roughly 40% or so of our float. So our standalone business, if you will, is 60%. And float and tax, it's all part of our value proposition. Now, since then, we've spent some calories and time and tears and smiles really growing tax. We're thrilled as we have some of these enterprise partners in addition to a PEO partner in PRISM. And certainly, we're going to grow that business. What I would say implicit in our guide around repetitive revenue, last year we were about with ERTC about 84% or so of repetitive revenue. This year, we'll finish in the high 90s. Tax is a big part of that. It's profitable. It's sticky. And the book to bill in some of these enterprise clients are a little bit longer than our small business. But suffice to say over a multiyear plan, we think we can grow tax quite a bit. It'll be a mixture of fees and float, and that's all part of the value proposition. But as I was reflecting even on our guidance, we started out repetitive revenue this quarter growing 10%. If you think about our guidance, we're going to finish the year much stronger than that just based on the numbers. Tax filing is going to lead and be part of that value proposition. So we think there's huge opportunity. And this will be multiyear, but it'll also be growth this year as well. And I'll just

put a little bit finer point on what Pat said just to make sure it was clear. And when we think about those client fund balances, probably about 60% are specific to this tax business. So it's a key part of the strategy. So it's part of how we price it. It's part of the recurring revenue because of that. So that's a really important thing that I think is a little bit nuanced relative to some other payroll companies that don't have that as part of their product and go to market strategy.

Right. That makes sense. Good detail. My follow up here. So I guess first is three months ago. How would you characterize the overall ACM demand environment as well as kind of the competitive and pricing environment dynamics in the market?

Yeah, and I'll let Ail if you want to jump in. But just in general, what I would say is, you know, we specifically pivoted from ERTC. We've leaned into some of the value proposition around, you know, access to capital, around getting good people to work as well as to be compliant. And I think that value proposition, we pivoted a bit away from ERTC, but that was always part of our value proposition anyway. And, you know, we've leaned into some new products and services. You know, what we're really thrilled is this first quarter payroll sales were up 68% over last year. And it's evidence that if you get the right value proposition, the right bundles, you can grow. Now, I made it sound easy for Ail to execute. There's a whole lot of sweat that goes into that. But Ail, maybe just your comments on the market.

Yeah, thanks, Pat. So, Brian, so specifically, we're not seeing any pricing pressures or any issues around pricing for new deals and for upsells within our customer base. We are seeing great growth. Listen, we're a lot of our competitors, and they've said it, they've decided to continue to go more and more up market. So we continue to see an underserved market under that 200 employee range. And that's helpful for us just in terms of deal cycle time and the ability to win more deals. But we're not we're not seeing any pressure specifically on pricing there.

Okay, good. Thank you. Thanks, Brian.

Our next question is from Richard Baldry with Roth MKM. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Maybe looking deeper at that 68% increase in payroll sales year over year. You talk about how comfortable you are with your sales capacity now, hiring plans or goals throughout the year. How is the sales tenure trending? Maybe do you feel like that was geographically or vertically pretty broad or is there any concentration inside of that? Thanks.

Yeah, I think just from my level, I'm very pleased with the sales execution. I think the pivot is probably took us about a quarter or so. And then I think in some areas we reference standalone tax or the new 401k. The book to bill is probably elongated about a quarter. What I would say is the ability to hire, the ability to grow, the ability to sell. I think ALE's team has done very well. But ALE maybe as you see throughout the year, I think from a hiring, we anticipate around 130. We're probably, we're very judicious about who we hire and how many people. We're under that a little bit today. But maybe ALE, if you want to talk about that.

Yeah, and Rich, the goal would be to get to about 130 quota carriers by the end of the year. I'm really happy with the pivot, with some of the numbers Pat mentioned, with 68% growth in those payroll sales. And just from a new payroll unit, it's almost 100% growth in that area. So those are great, healthy ARR bookings that come with tax. They come with marketplace add-ons. They come with some of the additional 401k, the 401k offering that we have. And then the ability to cross sell more to these customers once they go live. So a much healthier mix and our ability to pivot that quickly and to grow that core business year over year is great. And it's only going to accelerate. So the reps that we have doing really, really well high productivity with leading with ERTC are basically on par this year from a productivity perspective. But doing it without ERTC with really good core payroll HCM ARR sales. And that's fantastic. That's just going to grow for us as we get more people comfortable with 401k, get more people comfortable with some of the tax credit solutions that we announced earlier this week where we could just continue to capitalize on it.

Maybe switch back to the tax side on the Workday SAP area. Maybe look at now with early wins, obviously would build some referenceability. How big can that space be with just those two sort of end market players? I don't know if there's a way to think about the ARPU from your side to think about what a deal size would look like and what your go to market ability to move the dial on those types of deals is or is it really sort of once they build some referenceable basis, then their sellers will push the growth in that. Thanks.

Yeah, I think sometimes ALE has a phrase, two comma deals. In small business where your average sale is somewhere a little over $3,000, you don't hear two comma deals. We're in some two comma pursuits, which really is exciting for us. Over time, this could be a $100 million business. That doesn't mean you should spreadsheet that in 25. But I will tell you, we have an opportunity here both in treasury management as well as tax filing. It's not just the two enterprise partners that are world class companies. There's the PEO group. There's the software group. We have interest levels really, really high. And then some of the development that we're doing, we really feel good about our bundling of treasury management, of tax filing, et cetera. So this $100 million business in and by itself over time. And we're just getting started. ALE, I don't know if you'd want to highlight anything.

The pipeline, which is multiple times year over year. Our sales team is, you know, we're fully staffed on that side from an individual contributor perspective. And we've got folks that I am very confident in that have sold this type of sale specifically before. We understand the competitive landscape extremely well. We're very, very excited about the modernization of the platform and what our CTO has done with the solution. And frankly, we're getting pulled into a lot of opportunities rather than pushing our ways in. And that's always, you know, refreshing to see. And then on the deal size, like Pat mentioned, on the higher end, two companies, you have six figure deals. And then on the lower end, probably, you know, four or five times what a normal payroll direct deal is today.

And then lastly, you know, we've brought in an operational leader and staff. I worked with Bill Volkow in the past. He's run a $100 million plus business in tax. And, you know, we really beefed up personnel, the operational staff. So we have the right technology people, the right operations, the right salespeople. And then the right market at the right time. So this is going to be, you know, a foundational growth item. It'll take a while because of Book to Bill and because there are enterprise sales and growth. But, you know, we're really bullish on this opportunity.

Because we don't know the internal sort of base numbers. I'm sort of curious without, you know, a lot of commitment to this. But if the payroll sales were kept up at a clip like the 68% year over year, you know, would that imply a longer term sustainability to keep up the 25% organic growth rate? Or is that number sort of faces tough comparisons and by definition has to come down a little bit over time?

I'll give you my perspective, Rich. I don't think we've ever claimed that this is going to be a 25% organic business. We know that, you know, it's going to be a combination of that roll up strategy and the organic is what's going to get us to scale. So I would say, you know, we've been pretty consistent, at least since I've been here, that we think we're going to be a double-digit organic grower. I'm not sure we'll be at the 25% level. But I think when you combine with the inorganic side of the house, I do think that's achievable.

Yeah, and then the only thing I'd say implicit in the guide is acquisitions and organic growth, but it's clearly going to accelerate through the year. And then we'll be in a really nice position where we're high 90s repetitive growth that as we launch into 25, we're coming in with a lot of momentum. So, you know, that's what we're playing for and that's how we're sitting up to company. Great. Thanks.

Our next question comes from Jeff Van Rhee with Craig Hallam Capital Corp. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Several. Just want to clarify on the 68% payroll sales increase, are you, is that a comparable number to what you would typically quote as your total bookings year over year for the quarter?

Yeah, no, you know, Jeff, we had some noise in with the ERTC and some of that, you know, rather than kind of parse everything out. You know, we just said this year where especially the first three quarters, we have all these compares with the ERTC. We have some bundles, whatever. This was just, you know, obviously we're a payroll business and it's a good majority of our revenue. We wanted to highlight that because, you know, that's something that I think people can feel really good about. And, you know, and it's clearly an emphasis with our bundles, whether it's 401k or some of the new products that we have.

Okay. And then on the prior acquired revenue target was 10 to 15. That was unclear. It sounded like you said you're running a little bit ahead of where you thought you'd be. Are you still expecting to be in that 10 to 15 million of annual acquired revenue?

Absolutely. You know, I would say we've had a very strong first quarter, first half. You know, those just the starts, if we didn't acquire, you know, anybody after that, we'd be, you know, very close to the low end of the range. So we'll continue to acquire into this. But yeah, we're on pace. Yeah, I'll just I'll

make a quick comment on this and Pat and Neil can add to it. I think we've talked about it on some of these calls previously. There's a unique situation kind of going on in the industry, right? It's kind of opportunistic for us. But with the changing regulatory landscape, a lot of the states are now saying that payroll processing businesses need to be regulated like a bank. And so we were, you know, I think pretty early on, I think we resisted it because we thought it was pretty aggressive to move on to half the states. But I would say that three years ago, we decided to embrace it. And so we've gone down a path to get a license. It's going to be hard for a lot of the smaller players, some of our resellers, to afford that compliance. That's why we launched the Treasury Management Solution. But again, I think a lot of people are trying to decide is it something they want to continue on with and that we're the natural science. I think I think we're going to have a lot of opportunities over the coming months to kind of take people into our arms. So that's just another kind of backdrop as regards to acquisitions.

Yeah, definitely helpful, John. I was going to go down that path. I know obviously the 401k Securities Act has been an area of focus in Treasury also. Just on those two avenues, any other quantification you can give to give us a sense of the ramp and deal counts, bookings, pipeline, just any any quantification in those two areas?

I'll speak to Treasury and then I'll let Pat speak to 401k. We've launched this with the partnership with JP Morgan. We have people that want to buy from us right now. We're just kind of holding them off as we get it up and running. We want to make sure it's bomber solid before we put them on. So I think we're holding that up a little bit just with our getting it launched. But so I think there's good demand, almost unsolicited demand for that product. And then I'll let Pat kind of talk on 401k.

Yeah, just on 401k, I think, you know, first of all, we pivoted and launched on a, you know, almost a week or two, right? We had this plan, but we moved into sales motion and marketing motion very, very quickly. I would say right now we're probably a couple months behind where I'd like to be on the marketing sales perspective. But we're cleaning. You know, we're really starting to pick up the pace on the book, the bill. I would say just based on it's a new business for us. We're probably about three, four months behind. Well, over time, what we want to be able to do is sell and start a 401k. Probably I'd like to bring that number in about 60 days. You know, it's somewhere around 120 right now. So, you know, we'll go through that just as we grow and learn and, you know, get the muscle memory. But that's where exactly where we are in the process. That's helpful. I appreciate it.

Thanks, Chad.

Our next question comes from Vincent Coluccio with Barrington Research. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, Pat, curious. Can you characterize your employee base? Are they hiring currently? What does that look like?

Our employee base or the employee base? Obviously our clients. I would say we're looking at that number. We're probably flattish. In some areas, you know, they're hiring. In some areas, you know, basically they're holding. I would say access to capital in the small business is still the biggest issue. You know, some of the regional banks aren't lending and interest rates are a little bit high. So, but on the same token, getting quality people is still a concern. So, you know, from my perspective, it's been flattish. I'd love to say it's, you know, I do think as we connect more people to small businesses, it's got a shot to go up one or two percent because there still is hiring demand. I would say they've been unable to execute or unable to get the capital they need to grow. But that's exactly where we are today.

And how did your bookings break down between new and existing clients? You know, we're, Dale, I'll let you answer

that. But I believe we were, well, go ahead.

We're still right around 70 percent is new business and 30 percent of the bookings is cross-sell. So, again, huge opportunity for us on the cross-sell side. But the majority is still new business. And

where I'd like to go with that is, and we did want to highlight in our release around some of our technology initiatives. This common user interface with identity access management is going to be really good for us as far as the adoption around the marketplace, adoption around the cross-sell. It allows us to get into event-driven marketing in a big way. So, we anticipate a lot of growth from that over time. Now we're rolling this out. And there'll be some, you know, learnings here over this quarter and next. But as we get really solid with that, what I'd like to do is take that 70, 30 or so new sales more to, you know, ultimately maybe reverse it. Now, that's not going to happen overnight, but I think that's the opportunity we have. And this technology foundation that we introduced this quarter and some of the subsequent events, that's exactly where we're going. So, feel good about where we are. And then the new logo has been very strong while we get to that point. Thanks, Pat. Nice quarter.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Eric Martinosi with Lake Street. Please proceed with your question.

I'm curious on the decline in the cash balance from Q4 quarter end to Q1 quarter end. We're down $7.1 million. Can you help me bridge that?

Yeah, I think a couple things happen. As you know, the first quarter is always seasonally impacted by W-2 revenues. We collect those funds at, you know, usually in December, we defer that revenue and we recognize that revenue in the first quarter. And also we pay, you know, we have a lot of annual events that happen in the first quarter, whether it be bonuses or we have a sales kickoff. So there's some abnormal spending that always happens in the first quarter. And then the fourth quarter is a little bit inflated usually because of that W-2 cash coming in. And then obviously we spent some money on some acquisitions as well.

How much did you spend on the acquisitions in Q1?

I don't have that right in front of me. I think it was a couple million bucks going from my memory.

And also, Eric,

no, it was more than that all in. But because, you know, we had the people strategy deal, you know, there was an equity component in that. So that was that piece of it. And then the other thing is the vendors spend, you know, we do have some annual renewals that, you know, come due in the first quarter. And in this quarter specifically, we had two events where normally we have one. So, you know, that, you know, we're pleased with the cash this quarter, but we do drain a little bit of cash first quarter. And then typically, you know, we're better as we go through the year.

Last year, your cash was up 4 million between Q4 and Q1. And this year being down 7 million, I'm just not. Yeah, I'm

happy to take it

offline, Eric. I think there was a receivable yet. I think as I said, our receivable might have come in from the government last year, if I'm going from memory. So I think that might have been the dynamic. It was an unusual quarter last year for the first quarter.

And, John, if I remember correctly, that was close to 7 million. Right. Yeah. So, Eric, that's a lot of it right there.

And have we closed any acquisitions in Q2?

Yeah, I think there's one disclosed in such one of that so that we got closed yesterday.

Thanks for taking my questions. Yeah,

thank you,

Eric.

We've reached the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Pat Gable for closing comments.

Yeah, I appreciate everybody's time today. A lot going on at Assure. It's a great time to be here. We appreciate all of you. Patrick mentioned we have a lot of investor outreach here over the next quarter, and we hope to see you soon. So thank you.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.