Asure Software Inc

Good afternoon and welcome to Azure's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's call are Chairman and CEO Pat Geppel, Chief Financial Officer John Pence, and VP 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 fourth quarter and full year 2025 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 words such as expects, believes, and may to indicate forward-looking statements. And 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 wanted to take a moment to remind people of our upcoming investor relations activities. In March, we will attend the Roth Conference in Dana Point, California on March 23rd and 24th. We are also planning for some non-deal road shows during March and April. On May 13th, we are attending the 21st Annual Needham TMT Conference in New York. And on May 14th, the Hooligan and Loeke One Conference, also in New York. On May 28th, we will attend the Craig Hallam Conference in Minneapolis. Investor outreach is very important to Assure, and I would 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. 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. Pat?

Thank you, Patrick, and welcome, everyone, to Assure Software's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings results call. I am joined on this call by our CFO, John Pence. and we will provide a business update for our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results, as well as our outlook for the remainder of 2026. Following our remarks, we'll be available to answer your questions. We're excited to report that our full year revenues were very strong, coming in at $140.5 million, an increase of 17% versus the prior year. Contributors to our success in 2025 were broad-based, with many product lines showing growth, such as payroll, benefits, recruiting, time and attendance, as well as our payroll tax management businesses. Organic growth in the fourth quarter was 10%, which improved sequentially from the third quarter of 4%, and for the full year of 2025, it was 5%. We believe that we are at an inflection point in the business following the launch of Assure Central last October with more than two-thirds of our clients upgrading to the new portal. Assure Central offers clients a new experience with a brand-new look and feel, improves their workflow, as well as enabling us to amplify items such as event-driven marketing efforts, our cross-selling or attach rates, with more than 100,000 clients have improved throughout last year. The number of clients buying multiple products from us in our payroll business has grown by 10% in the fourth quarter over the prior year. We believe that the Assure Central portal will continue to help drive further improvements in attach rates and continued acceleration of organic growth. Now, let me take a moment to address one of the most important topics shaping today's business landscape, AI. First off, we have new slides in our investor presentation which highlight our approach to AI, and I encourage you to review them. Also, we're hosting an AI Fireside Chat with myself and our Chief Technology Officer, Yasmeen Rodriguez, on March 11th at 3.30 Central Time, 4.30 Eastern Time. And we look forward to your participation in this exciting event where we'll discuss Assure's current perspective on artificial intelligence. Much of the public conversation focuses on fears of large-scale labor disruption, but our exposure to that risk is far lower than many might assume. It is worthwhile to mention that our revenue model is not a typical SAS seat-based model and is instead a function of total employee count in payroll runs, benefit, and retirement plan uptake and reoccurring services. Furthermore, our clients are primarily blue, gray, and white-collar main street businesses, organizations rooted in essential work that is far more resilient to automation. At the same time, while AI is being deployed across many areas of the economy, We believe that highly sensitive functions like payroll, tax filing remain uniquely protected. These processes involve complex regulations, confidential data, and real-time compliance obligations, areas where the margin for error is effectively zero. Payroll is already one of the most mission-critical and heavily regulated responsibilities inside any business. When you're navigating local tax rules, shifting labor laws, and ongoing compliance requirements, accuracy and accountability aren't optional, especially when you're moving approximately $20 billion annually like Assure does. That's why we see AI not as replacement for oversight, but as a powerful tool to enhance precision, efficiency, and decision-making. We have adopted AI assertively, but thoughtfully in ways that strengthen our platform while humans remain in the lead to ensure trust and compliance. During 2024, we built a secure model, agnostic AI layer directly into our payroll and tax system of record. In early 2025, we launched Luna, the industry's first true AI agent for payroll and HR. Unlike traditional generative chatbots, Luna understands, assures full product sweep, and can act, not just provide suggestions. Luna detects issues, resolves them, logs outcomes, and supports both employees through self-service and business owners and administrators across their workflows. Today, Our Luna AI can perform over 50 actions, which are live, audible, and permission control. In the first 90 days of Assure Central's general availability, conversations with Luna resulted in 80,000-plus messages and avoided thousands of support center interactions, which offset the workload of about three client service reps and clearly showed how AI is driving our operational efficiency. Internally, we have been using AI to help increase product development, drive revenue productivity, and further operational efficiency. In terms of product, we can build faster with AI-assisted engineering and quality assurance, resulting in faster release cycles. Within revenue productivity, our SDR agent collects and enriches buyer insights in three minutes versus typical one-hour discovery, and our list-building agent crawls job boards for new HR postings, creating 1,000-plus leads. Operationally, our agent helps with sentiment analysis during phone calls with clients and analyzes support tickets to prioritize product and process improvement. We're continuing to invest in tomorrow's AI capabilities for both our client product experience and our internal processes to enable our entire organization to work more efficiently. Now, moving from AI, recently at our sales kickoff in Austin, we introduced a new offering called AssureWorks, which we are launching internally in a limited scope. AssureWorks is our administrative services outsourcing or ASO model. Rather than simply providing payroll and HR software, we take responsibility for running key administrative processes on behalf of the client supported by our Luna AI and our Assure Central platform. We're seeing a clear shift in the market. Small and mid-sized businesses face increasingly regulatory complexity, and leaner staffing models and may no longer have the bandwidth to manage payroll and HR compliance internally. With AssureWorks, clients can rely on Assure's expertise and systems to execute that work, helping reduce compliance risk and allowing them to focus on their core business. Strategically, this expands our share of wallet and deepens client relationships. Clients who adopt managed payroll and compliance services typically represent two to three times the revenue of a payroll-only client, with further upside as additional models are managed. This is not a PEO model, and we're not taking on co-employment risk. For businesses that feel constrained by the cost or the rigidity of a traditional PEO, AssureWorks offers a flexible alternative with operational support and greater control. We will scale AssureWorks thoughtfully as we build sales, implementation, and support capacity based on our early results. Our sales efforts for 2025 resulted in a 35% increase in new bookings Additionally, we continue to have a very healthy contracted backlog of approximately $100 million, which continues to grow and was up 18% since our third quarter of 2025. We expect to convert approximately 41% of this backlog in the next 12 months, and this combined with our historic retention rates gives us a lot of confidence in our 2026 guides. Now, I would like to hand it off to John to discuss our financial results in more detail, as well as our 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 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 on to the fourth quarter and 25 results. Fourth quarter total revenues were $39.3 million, increasing by 28% compared to the prior year period, while recurring revenue grew by 18%, to 33.7 million. For the full year 2025, total revenue grew by 17% to 140.5 million and recurring revenue grew by 11% to 127.3 million for the full year. Our professional services and hardware revenue was 5.6 million for the fourth quarter compared to 2.3 million in the fourth quarter of last year. For the full year, of 2025, our professional services and hardware revenue was $13.3 million compared to $5.3 million in the prior year. Our organic growth rate for the fourth quarter improved sequentially to 10% compared to 4% in the third quarter. Organic growth for the full year of 2025 was 5%. Flood revenue was down slightly versus prior year due to previous rate reductions made to the federal funds rate, partially offset by an increase in client funds. Our outlook for interest rates, we have modeled two more rate cuts during 2026. We believe that as our client fund balances increase, this will help offset some of these rate cuts. Gross profit for the fourth quarter was $27.2 million versus $21 million in the fourth quarter of the prior year. Gross margins for the full year were 68%, compared to 69% in the prior year. Non-GAAP gross margins for the fourth quarter were 75% compared to 73% in the prior year. Non-GAAP gross margins for the full year were 73% versus 74% in the prior year. Our overall gross margins for the year were down slightly due to the revenue mix as we experienced an increase in lower margin non-recurring sales, primarily driven by the recent Latham acquisitions. However, we are forecasting improvement in gross margins over time as we integrate the Latham acquisition and transition the Latham hardware sales into a hardware as a service model over the coming years. We believe further scale in our business will also help the margins in the future. Net income for the fourth quarter was 0.8 million versus a net loss of 3.2 million during the prior year. Net loss for the full year was 13.1 million versus a net loss of $11.8 million in the prior year. EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $8.7 million, up from $3.4 million in the prior year. EBITDA for the full year was $18.2 million versus $11.4 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter increased 82% to $11.4 million from 6.2 million in the prior year. And our adjusted EBITDA margin was 29%, an increase of 900 basis points compared to the 20% we realized in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year increased 42% to 32 million versus 22.5 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 23%, up 400 basis points from 19% a year ago. Turning now to the balance sheet, we ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $25.2 million, and we have debt of $67.6 million as of December 31st, 2025. Now on to guidance. We have consistently emphasized on prior earnings calls that we are continuing to invest in our technology and product offerings to support sustained revenue growth and improve profitability. At the same time, we expect our cost structure, including our capex and capitalized R&D, to remain relatively stable on a dollar basis throughout the remainder of 2026. Our first quarter 2026 and full year 2026 guidance is based on our expectation of continued positive momentum in our business. Now, in terms of guidance for the first quarter of 2026, we are expecting the first quarter revenues to be in the range of $41 million to $43 million, and adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter is expected to be between $10 million and $11 million. Today, we are also updating our 2026 revenue, which we believe will be between $159 million and $162 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins of between 23% and 25%. In conclusion, We are excited about 2026 and look forward to 2026 being a major inflection point for a surest business where we expect to deliver double digit growth and gap profitability. With that, I will turn the call back to Pat for closing remarks.

Thanks, John. We are pleased to have delivered strong results for the full year 2025. The integration of the point solutions we've acquired Plus, the investments we've made in AI and improving our technology are having an impact on our growth trajectory, and we expect that we will continue to deliver improved growth and profitability going forward. Our plan for 2026 includes increased investment in our sales and marketing efforts to continue to drive the improving growth we're experiencing. We have a target of reaching 150 sales reps, in 2026 and believe that with our new technology, such as Assure Central, we can experience improved productivity from the sales force. We believe our margins can continue to expand through natural scaling benefits and the growth of higher margin automated revenue streams, such as benefits, 401k, These factors, combined with the potential for AI to reduce the cost of support and onboarding, plus our forecast of lower legacy technology spend, with all support higher margins in the future. We are well on our way to our medium-term plan of $180 to $200 million in revenues, where we believe we can sustain and achieve adjusted EBITDA margins of 30% plus. which we showed in an early preview of fourth quarter 2025. In summary, 2025 was a great year for Assure with lots of accomplishments. We'll continue to grow the business, roll out new technology, and seek out value-creating opportunities, all while expecting to deliver GAAP profitability on a more consistent basis in the future. We remain excited for the remainder of 2026, and we continue to work diligently on creating increased value for our shareholders and our stakeholders. We'll continue to provide innovative human capital management solutions that help businesses thrive, human capital management providers grow their base, and large enterprises streamline tax compliance. Thank you. for listening to our prepared remarks. So with that, I will send a call back to the operator for the question and answer session. Operator?

Thank you. And with that, we will now be conducting a question and answer session. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing star keys. One moment while we poll for questions. And our first question comes from the line of Eric Martinuzzi with Lake Street Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, congrats on the terrific results for Q4 and on the 2026 outlook. I think I've got this right. You bumped up the low end of revenue in the 2026 guidance, is that correct?

Yeah, we took it up one million.

Okay. And just curious to know, Anything in particular that caused that, because the Q1 guide is relatively kind of where we and the rest of the street were, but just wondering where the confidence, incremental confidence came from.

We closed an acquisition a couple weeks ago, so we wanted to give a little bit more upside as a result of that.

Gotcha. Okay. And then for the attach rates, obviously this is a key to the growth story, and And that 10% organic number was really kind of eye-opening. You talked about an increase of about 10% in the number of customers that are buying multiple products. And I was just curious to know, do you have a target, what you're shooting for in 2026 for that, I guess, however you could comment on the multi-product, the growth rate for the year?

Yeah, Eric. Eric, thanks for the question. It's a big focus for us. We don't have a specific target. We just know that, you know, for example, the Assure Central was rolled out in October. You know, we have about 16,000 direct clients. You know, as you know, we acquired Latham in July. They go under the Assure umbrella here in the early second quarter or April timeframe. And for us, we have some internal goals of going from, let's say, two products to four products with every sale. Now, how fast we get there and how long, we'll continue to measure ourselves and report. We think there's an opportunity to go up and to the right. But as far as, you know, kind of measuring each quarter, we have a lot of moving parts quite yet that we're not going to give specific numbers. But I assure you internally and externally, these are key metrics that we'll report on. And as we get in a rhythm right now where we have a number of different kind of moving parts, we'll start to then declare changes. you know, more in advance specific targets. But we're probably not quite there yet. We do want to measure it and show you the progress along the way.

Yeah, and I would say, Eric, if you get a chance, I know we just put it out there about 30 minutes or so ago, but we've added a couple of slides to the investor deck too. So take a look at those if you get a chance. But talk about it.

Okay. Thanks for taking my questions.

Sure.

Thanks, Eric.

And our next question comes from the line of Richard Baldry with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. So post the Latham acquisition, the non-recurring revenue stepped up pretty meaningfully. So when we look out to next year, can you walk us through how to think about the cadence on that line, whether there's seasonality types of embedded growth we can do there? Or, you know, as it moves to more of an as-a-service model, you know, will we see that line come down maybe with the recurring side sort of accelerating in its place? Thanks.

Yeah, I think, Rich, I would expect next year or 2026 to be kind of in that low 90s of recurring revenue range. I think it's pretty even throughout the year. The other thing that's also rolling up into that line is some professional services and implementation work with some of the large tax deals, which is a little bit more sporadic and not as predictable. But I would say a good way to model it or think about it is low 90s next year in terms of recurring. And then I think we're hoping to have that kind of half model in by the back half of the year and You know, maybe as we get into 27, we get to kind of in the 95% recurring revenue again, but it's probably a little too early to call that one. But that's ultimately what we're trying to do is move that hardware into a recurring model. But you're right, spot on. I'm just not sure we're going to get there in 26.

Great. Your internal adjusted EBITDA stepped up to meaningful new record highs now at the same time as valuations have come down pretty meaningfully for the sector. I'm sort of curious what your perception is of the private market for acquisitions, whether those valuation expectations have also come down to make that sort of more of a push in 2026, or do you feel like, you know, It should be sort of business as usual and that that's not a major catalyst.

Yeah, I think, Rich, you know, we'll be opportunistic around some of those opportunities. You know, the private company sometimes trails the public company in kind of a reset, et cetera. And then, you know, we think and believe and we put a lot of – you know, more meat in the investor deck around AI and valuations, especially in this business, because, you know, we believe, you know, we're a system of record business. You know, we work with the IRS, the banks. You know, we interface with time clocks and hardware. So there's a number of different areas that make this sticky. And unlike some of the large enterprise companies, you know, we're on a consumption-based model really anyway, and it's underserved in a marketplace, so in small business. So, you know, we believe that valuations here in the public company, as people really analyze this space, we think they'll go up. We're going to tell that story and be loud about it because we see, quite frankly, a lot of opportunity. And then on the private side, we'll be opportunistic if those private valuations come down. I will say I've gotten a couple calls here over the last couple weeks, and a lot of people are trying to figure out, you know, kind of where they see. And we feel like we're a little bit of the one-eyed guy in the blind man's world right now where we think we have a really good path. And, you know, we telegraphed early on that $180 to $200 million would be 30%. You'll see our longer-term model has more aspiration than that 30%, and we believe we're in the market segments that really can drive it. So we think AI is an accelerator, not a deterrent. We'll be very focused on valuations continuing. We're getting at a fun part of the business where scale really matters, and we think we can make improvement here in bunches, and we're going to execute on that plan. Thanks.

I'll ask a third, unfortunately, but we agree that for system of record class companies, this should be an accelerator at the top line. We also think that it can increase the long-term profitability because there's so many places it internally can cut costs for software centric tech center companies can you maybe talk a little bit about how much internally you talk somewhat about the customer service side helping to take the equivalent of three reps worth of work off which is great how far how deep do you think that can roll through the internal you know cost saving side i think we're in the early days from my perspective rick i mean we think there's a lot of opportunity um to make you know better experience

for the customer and obviously make it, you know, and take some costs out on the cost to serve side. But I think early, early days is my perspective. But Pat.

Yeah, you know, one of the things, Rich, I agree with you. You know, we added kind of a longer term outlook slide of where we think this can go. And, you know, we mentioned the 180 to 200 at 30%. We ultimately think we can achieve about 50% margins. We gave the example of, not only the kind of Luna with the 80,000 transactions and the three customer service reps, but also the retention opportunity with event-driven marketing. As we bring Assure Central together, when a small business goes, let's say, from 20 employees They now have COBRA eligibility of services. We can be proactive and lean in on that number. So that's a revenue generator. At 50 employees, it's worksite reporting. At certain kind of, you know, savings account in 401K, we can highlight opportunities for that at different monetary amounts. So, you know, we're just beginning, but we see opportunities on the revenue side, on the cost side. We see opportunity long-term where AI can bring more traffic to us. Our marketing people are beyond excited where they see opportunity to continue to drive people to our platform. And then also ease of use. We're seeing people use AI on voice and then ultimately using that voice to make it easier to get in payroll hours. We also see the opportunity with AssureWorks where we'll provide the software for a company to do it all, but if they want us to do it because we have the expertise, we can use AI internally to be more efficient. So I think this thing really opens up the model, and that's why we're going to have a separate call. March 11th, Yasmeen Rodriguez and I, our CTO, because we're just getting started. So I'm really excited about the opportunities this is going to unleash. And, you know, we want to kind of educate, understand, and really make sure people understand the opportunities here because, you know, we're at an opportunity potentially that we've been playing for for a long time internally, but then externally this is a catalyst that's really going to help us.

Great. Congrats on a great quarter.

Thank you, Rich.

And our next question comes from the line of Jeff Van Ree with Craig Hallam Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. It's nice to see that organic growth picking up there, guys. So congrats on that. A few quick housekeeping. You mentioned the target reps. Just where are we now in terms of rep count? And is there anything going on in terms of sales, sales incentives? that's changing the focus more or less towards the existing base versus new customers?

You know, we have had – we've been fortunate where we've had almost 65% to 70% new logos as part of our sales. Clearly, there is opportunity with Assure Central to attach more products and services. That'll help on a volume perspective. But we also internally took away some sales friction. So we have opportunity for our salespeople to drive more attach rate and more products right at the point of sale. In some cases, we didn't want to penalize them for bringing in let's say, in 401K, a licensed person. So, you know, we are focusing on getting those four or more products in their bag, which will drive up commissions. That's important. What that also will do is over time, where I'd like to be is somewhere around 35% new logos, 65% the base. I think we have that kind of opportunity. And then with AssureWorks, I want to have the opportunity to really include all our products from a software perspective. But then if the client wants us to actually do the work and have the expertise because compliance, whether it's the IRS, the local agencies, HR, all that is pretty complex. We can provide that expertise with them. We see a huge opportunity to drive cross-sell in that area. And then as far as where we are today, I think we're somewhere around 118 reps or so in that area. We have a plan to get to 150, and that 150 throughout the year, we're investing in enablement, we're investing in training, And really, you know, we brought a leader under Ale Goldstein that's really sharp. I've had history with him. He recently came from DL, Steve Cohen. I think he's going to do a great job with us in really getting the basics. He's seen this movie before of what we're trying to accomplish. And, you know, I think he's going to make a big difference here.

Very helpful. And, John, on the guide, what's the implicit – free cash flow expectation for the 2026 guide and one other, if I could, on Latham being acquired last year. Just refresh me what the expectation was there in terms of revenues and then ultimately what it delivered.

Yeah, it's also in the K disclosed. I think we did on Latham, I'll answer that last question first. I think in the quarter, about four and a half million of revenue contribution from the acquisition of which about two and a half was recurring and the other two million was hardware. So it's actually performing exactly the way we'd hoped it to perform. So we're really happy with that acquisition. We're actually getting a higher cash contribution than we'd actually modeled. We expected that to come in later. So it's been pleasant in terms of that acquisition. In terms of free cash flow, so again, the way I think about it, Jeff, is I take the adjusted EBITDA number. So at the midpoint, I think we're at 24 times 160, right? So what's that math? I'm going to do it real quick. That puts you at roughly 38. And then the way I think about it is I deduct software cap is a major one. We're going to be roughly software cap, again, next year is going to be in the $15 to $16 million range is what we've modeled. So that if you take that deduction, that brings you to, if I'm right, you're at... 20, almost 28 minus 16. 22? Yeah, 22. Yeah, then I take away the interest, right? So about $6 million in interest. So we're going to be in that range, kind of mid-teens, when I think of unlevered free cash flow.

Okay. Got it. Very helpful. And then, Pat, just back to you just very briefly. Just talk for a second on Assure Central. You blew past it, but what do you – I mean, from a user experience, you got some pretty rapid adoption there. Like, what does this look like? I haven't seen it side by side. What's the difference in the impression to a user? And how much easier is it to adopt and start taking additional services?

Yeah, I think, you know, and one of the things, we'll have a demo on this March 11th as part of our AI conversation and where we're taking the product and service. But First of all, with Luna, it's a single pane of glass where, you know, we have a common user interface across all our products. So, you know, all the data is in one place. And, you know, for us, from a usability perspective, you know, now you have, you know, whether it's payroll benefits, your check stub, you know, you want to change at the employee level your direct deposits. et cetera, you have that ability to do it, and Luna will show you how to do it. So we think it's degrees of difficulty easier. It's a more modern look. And then with AI and Luna, it can help do the work for you or tell you how to do it and instruct you how to do it. So the feedback's been very positive. If you think about where we've been over the last five, six years, We bought Point Solutions. We started with Assure Identity, where it knows it's Jeff Van Rie that's logging into the system based on your identification and multi-factor authentication. Now what we're doing is putting all the products in a single pane of glass. And then more and more, you'll see a common look and feel throughout the whole product. And from that perspective, What's interesting about that is now the whole solution combined together is really it sure works where you have all the products and services available. And now if you have an event, that Luna will suggest, hey, here's an event that you want to be compliant on. Would you want us to help you get compliant? So, you know, we think we're just getting started in this area. The fourth quarter was a big milestone. But, you know, we will see improvements every quarter throughout the year. So really excited about that opportunity.

Yep, makes complete sense. And thanks on the upcoming fireside. I think it's desperately, I mean, every time a plug-in pops, the whole sector gets destroyed. I think people need help separating winners from losers. So appreciate that event. Look forward to it.

Thank you, Jeff. Thanks, Jeff.

And our next question comes from the line of Greg Gibbous with Northland Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Great. Good afternoon, guys. Congrats on the results. Nice to see that attach rate improve pretty meaningfully there. You know, I wanted to ask just about your guidance and maybe what level of organic growth is implied there and maybe just your expected pace of acquisitions in 26.

I think, and I'll let Pat go, I think we expect to be kind of the double-digit organic for the full year. I'm not sure we'll be 100% every quarter that way, but I do think we'll have kind of a At least that's what we're hoping for in terms of double-digit organic. Pace of acquisitions, as Pat mentioned, I think in an earlier comment, we don't have anything right now that's imminent. We're always going to be opportunistic, but we've got a lot in our wheelhouse right this second. But that's my perspective, Pat.

Yeah, and Greg, thanks. You know, we didn't model acquisitions in. Clearly, we're going to do some with the resellers, et cetera. We don't have anything imminent. But, you know, also, you know, the world changed a little bit here over the last three weeks, et cetera. I will tell you, you know, I've gotten calls and been pretty active. You know, we'll kind of inform you each quarter, you know, how we're doing and what we think about it. Clearly, there will be some opportunities just based on our pipeline and based on the resellers, but we'll let that shake out and we'll report to each quarter. Clearly, we'll be opportunistic in this area. The other thing with the attach rates going up the way we're starting to show, and I think we're really in the early innings, some of these type of acquisitions look pretty good to us because we have the ability to cross-sell and not only drive the cost line, but we can drive the revenue line.

Makes sense. Thanks for pointing that out. And I wanted to ask just about, you know, you had really nice adoption of Assure Central. Can you remind us maybe what your plans are for, you know, the timing of continued adoption there, like when maybe you expect to get to whatever full adoption levels look like? And, you know, it seems like it could be a continued accelerator of that attach rate.

Yeah, I think, first of all, we have a big cohort with the Latham acquisition, which is about 14,000. And that'll be available here in early April. And really, if I think about it, the second quarter, we want to continue to have most of our direct clients adopted into Assure Central. So I think the first huge wave is you know, is already starting to happen. But, you know, by the first half of the year, the second wave really will be there. And then, you know, from our perspective, there'll be some other stragglers or adoption into the second half of the year. But for the most part, the first half of the year, you know, will be fully adopted. Got it. Thanks very much. Thank you, Greg.

And our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colacchio with Barrington Research. Please proceed with your question.

Pat, can you discuss the sales cycles and pipeline levels for your key offerings?

Yeah, pipeline prospects are really good. We are increasing our marketing spend this year. We think that there's huge opportunity, AI-assisted. uh as well as um you know we've used some tools here uh that you know we think make a difference in the pipeline creation um we will continue to build pipe you know obviously uh fourth quarter you know you you kind of sell for january and then you're building pipe a bit um you know we're We're right where we want to be. I would tell you, though, April, May, I think you're going to see pipeline increase quite a bit. The pipeline over the last, let's say, 25 days or so has been really, really good. From a sales cycle perspective, we haven't seen any big changes yet. You know, I do think, you know, some of the noise on the financial community around, you know, AI and software, we see it as an accelerant. Short term, somebody reads the headlines and they kind of say, okay, what's with that? But, you know, we're not typically in the space where, you know, our customer is Main Street America, frontline workers, whether it's plumbers, You know, it's people that, hotel workers, et cetera, they interface with either time or POS solutions. They interface with bankers. They interface, you know, with the IRS, et cetera. They want help. And so from our perspective, when they see that need and they know that we can help them both from a software perspective, but also a compliance perspective, and then ultimately from a people perspective to provide the people to run the software, they view that as an opportunity. So I think pipeline will grow quite a bit. Right now, I'm okay with pipeline. It's about 120% where it was last year. But, you know, clearly, I want to keep focusing on doing that. And then I want to hire people. And then our marketing spend, you know, will drive pipeline quite a bit and i could see already by the programs in place by second quarter we'll have a pretty decent uh pipeline of where i want to be which is about 150 percent where we were last year thanks pat and uh question on the competitive landscape anything to call out in terms of changes since last quarter no not really i think uh you know people are um You know, from my perspective, you know, I think it's been, you know, what I would say, and it ties a little bit to our industry, is, you know, I think early on people were saying, well, you know, you can embed the calculation and, you know, and that is good enough. For, you know, Main Street America, that's not good enough because, you you know, the penalties are tough, the gravity of the data, you know, where you have seven years of history and, you know, you have compliance issues, whether it's HR payroll, you have different government agencies, different banking agencies, those, that complexity doesn't go away in an embedded solution. So from our perspective, you know, what we're seeing is kind of, hey, you know, how do you provide the expertise and how do you provide the people, the workflow, the enablement, and the technology through AI and the system of record to really accelerate your value proposition. And I think we're in a position that we have that. And so we're going to, you know, pound our chest on that and keep getting really clear on our value proposition. I do think that's resonating with clients. And, you know, we think we're in a really good position here to have an excellent 2026. Thanks, Pat.

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. That is star 1.

Well, it looks like there's no more questions. And hey, first of all, thank you for coming to the conference call March 11th. Love to see you. We're going to talk about AI and a demo of our product and how we're using Luna as being helpful to customers and employees as well as our solutioning. When I think back, I've been in this industry a long time, and when I see technology shifts, whether it's DOS to Windows, Windows to client server, client server to internet, internet to mobile, Right now, the technology shift that we're going is really exciting. And when you think about opportunities here, we think we have a great moat available. We also think we can use AI in a way that really will accelerate growth. And it's in these technology shifts. that, you know, people really can thrive. We think we're at a really good opportunity here, and we hope you agree with us and come on March 11th because we think, you know, we have a story that's unique to us in a world that's ever-changing and really excited about the opportunity. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation and you may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.