AvidXchange Holdings, Inc.

Avid Exchange's Chief Financial Officer, and Subhash Kumar, Avid Exchange's Head of Investor Relations. Before we begin today's call, management has asked me to relay the four looking statements disclaimer that is included at the end of today's press release. This disclaimer emphasizes the major uncertainties and risks inherent in the four looking statements the company will make this afternoon. Please keep these uncertainties and risks in mind. as the company discusses future strategic initiatives, potential market opportunities, operational outlook, and financial guidance during today's call. Today's call will also include a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, as that term is defined in Regulation G. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation form or as a substitute for financial information presented in compliance with GAAP. Accordingly, at the end of today's press release, the company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mike Prager.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Joe Willard and I are excited to share Avid Exchange's fourth quarter 2021 results. and the continued momentum we are experiencing across our business, driven by our middle market focus and the four growth gears of our Avid Exchange business flywheel. Overall, we delivered another solid quarter of both operational and financial performance. Furthermore, we outperformed nearly every key metric we used to measure the progress of our business, both in Q4 as well as for the full year relative to our previous guidance. These positive results reflect our middle market's steady demand for Avid Exchange's industry-leading and differentiated business-to-business accounts payable automation software and payment solutions. As we advance our key growth initiatives, we are optimistic and excited about Avid Exchange's future as we enter 2022 with a strong business outlook. With that, I'll begin my formal remarks and key highlights from the fourth quarter and full year of 2021 results. Our total net revenue for the quarter was over $69 million, an increase of 31% over Q4 of 2020. And we processed over 16 million transactions for the quarter, an increase of roughly 15% compared to Q4 of 2020. Total payment volume was up in excess of 37% to over $15 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone over the same comparable period. And our total transaction yield for the fourth quarter of 2021 increased more than 14%, to $4.21 versus $3.68 per transaction in the comparable period last year. Turning to the full year of 2021, our total net revenue for the full year was over $248 million, an increase of approximately 34% from a year ago. And we processed over 62 million transactions during the year, an increase of over 18% from a year ago. Total payment volume increased approximately 38% to exceed $52 billion in 2021 versus roughly $38 billion in 2020. In addition, we processed over $180 billion of spend under management during the year, which was an increase of over 24% over 2020. And finally, in 2021, we saw a solid 13% increase in our total transaction yield of $3.98 over versus 3,052 cents per transaction in the comparable period. As a B2B accounts payable automation software and payment solutions leader targeting the large middle market segment of over 435,000 companies just in the U.S. market alone, our competitive advantage is fueled by a strategic framework encompassing our Avid Exchange business flywheel. As a reminder, the first growth gear of our flywheel outlines our delivery of great AP automation software solutions to our buyer customers. Proof of our year-one success can be seen in Avid Exchange's continued dedication to enhancing our industry-leading vertical and horizontal accounting software integrations, as well as our referral partnerships. In 2021, we increased the number of customer referral partnerships by 50% to have over 180 partners today versus 120 partners a year ago. Over the same period, we broadened our accounting software integrations to 220 up from 210 a year ago. The second gear of the business flywheel maximizes the transactions managed in our platform. In 2021, we reached $180 billion of spend under management, an increase of 24% from 2020. This was primarily due to increasing the number of ad exchange buyer customers, which rose to over 8,000 in 2021, which is up from 7,000 in 2020, as well as our enrolled supplier customers, which increased to 825,000, off from $700,000 a year ago. The buyer-customer growth was driven by the strength across all eight of our industry verticals, highlighted by a strong performance in our real estate and financial services verticals, along with our bank channel partnerships, while we saw the green shoots of recovery in our homeowner association, or HOA management market, as we call it. The third year of our Avid Exchange business flywheel is focused on further maximizing our industry-leading e-payment monetization and converting suppliers to begin acceptance of one of our various forms of electronic payment on the Avid Pay network. In 2021, suppliers using e-payments on the Avid Pay network grew by 18%, which mirrors the growth of the addition of total suppliers on our network. This data highlights the rapid adoption of e-payments by suppliers and deepens our overall value proposition of the Avid Pay network for our suppliers. The fourth year of the Avid Exchange business firewall enables us to leverage data to drive increased value proposition of our existing products to both our buyer and supplier customers, as well as develop new data-driven offerings altogether. Examples include existing products such as Avid Utility, which further enhances our clients' ESG initiatives through advanced energy consumption analysis, along with the utilization of data analytics to deliver invoice accelerator and cash flow manager offerings for our supplier customers. In addition, we're really excited about the launch of our new Avapay network cross-border payment capabilities that we'll be releasing over the course of this year. Now let me take a step back and give you an idea of how uniquely purpose-built value proposition solutions address a significant pain point for our middle market customers. I'd like to highlight a few customer case studies from three of our newest vertical markets, which include healthcare facilities, education, and our media vertical markets, about how our solutions have positively impacted our customers' accounts payable and payment processes through driving increased efficiencies, visibility, and cost savings. In the healthcare facilities vertical, Reese's Dental Embraces is a perfect illustration of the power of Avid Exchange's AP automation software coupled with our Avid Pay network. Reese's Dental Embraces provides general dentistry and orthodontics for patients at more than 23 locations throughout Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas. The controller at Resa historically executed a very manual accounts payable process by printing paper checks or creating PDF pay stubs in the company's accounting software before manually reentering each of these invoice and ACH payments into their banking portal. This cumbersome manual process took the controller and accounts payable specialist several days to complete. After implementing Avid Exchange to automate and streamline their AP and payment processes, Resa was able to cut the time needed to manage its AP process by over 75%. In the education vertical, we support Mountainland Applied Technology College, with an enrollment of over 3,000 students located in Orem, Utah. Mountainland uses Avid Exchange for their supplier invoice processes and payment execution. The biggest driver for their automation was eliminating their use of paper, which dramatically reduced their paper handling, filing, and storage costs. In addition, AVID Exchange addressed one of the biggest challenges in the post-secondary educational space, which is compliance. As a state-regulated entity, the college was able to follow their purchasing and payment processing policies electronically through AVID Exchange, thereby ensuring high compliance and audit standards. And finally, AL Media. is a politically focused media agency. As the consumption of media by voters continues to evolve, the challenge for AL Media was determining which media advertisements actually ran on air, with reconciling payments after the election was over, which historically was a very tedious, manual, and time-consuming process. The solution AL Media turned to was FastPay, an Avid Exchange offering designed specifically for the media vertical to help pave the way for the 2022 political season. FastPay Political Plus was built specifically for political media agencies to better manage the reconciliation and refund process, providing an enhanced ACH or ACH Plus payment solution and driving significant operational efficiencies by addressing the manual and time-consuming payment processes, which can significantly slow down the operations of running a political campaign and making timely payments. I would now like to discuss our long-term growth, margin expansion, and future profitability of our business before I turn it over to Joel. Based on the size, growth, market leadership, and long-term profit opportunities we see in the middle market segment, we believe we can compound our top-line growth organically at a rate of 20% plus over the next several years. With less than 1% share of the total addressable market of around $40 billion served by Avid Exchange today, we are still in the early innings of tapping the overall market opportunity. Further accelerating our market penetration will require we continue to build out our horizontal software solutions and continue release of new integrations as well as we develop new industry verticals and international expansion. In addition, we plan to complement this organic growth sales strategy with the selective use of strategic acquisitions as we've been successful in doing in the past. Moving in lockstep with our investments, We are highly confident in our gross margin expansion levers, along with our path to profitability. We believe that we will achieve profitability by continuing to advance our invoice payment automation initiatives, as well as continue to convert thousands of paper check suppliers to e-payment accepting suppliers on the Avapay network. This will further be complemented by revenue scale and operating expense leverage, resulting in steadily improving of our EBITDA as we move towards our long-term EBITDA margin of over 25 percent. Starting with gross margin, we expect our non-GAAP gross margin to steadily improve from the low 60 percent range today to over 75 percent by continued reduction in unit cost through automation and expansion of our revenue yield. Given the current pace of progress, we expect it to be approaching over 70 percent milestone by the end of 2024. Key levers in our unit cost reduction include the use of AI, machine learning, and straight-through processing to reduce manual efforts in invoice processing and payment execution. For example, in 2021, we automated 75% of the delivery of e-payments, which was up from 60% in 2020, and have high confidence in our continued automation initiatives. Moving on to our operating expenses, Increased economies of scale will drive EBITDA margin expansion towards our targeted level of 25%. After 2022, our first full years of public company, we also expect meaningful leverage on the G&A expense line. Our significant investments in R&D for future growth and product initiatives development will also taper off as a percentage of revenue as we enter in 2024. In wrapping up my prepared comments, 2021 was an extraordinary year for Avid Exchange. Apart from solid financial and operating results, we completed our transition to be a public company, along with raising a significant amount of strategic capital to fuel our future growth. We also completed a strategic acquisition that expanded our market coverage to include the media vertical, while winning several different industry awards for our AP and payment solutions. 2021 also continued our path of progress with strategic partnerships. We forged a new strategic commercial virtual card processing relationship with WEX to provide us with what we believe is best-in-class pricing and execution for virtual card processing. This relationship will enable our two teams to collaborate together in driving overall e-payment adoption and deployment of dynamic payment offerings to increase supplier acceptance of e-payments. Also noteworthy, we renewed our existing relationship with FleetCorp, whose subsidiary Comdata has been a processing partner for us since 2013. Additionally, we formed several new partnerships which provide significant benefit to Avid Exchange, including our strategic customer distribution relationship with Bank of America, which is now marketing a branded Avid Exchange AP automation and payment solution to their middle market customers. Lastly, our Avid Exchange culture continues to be a key competitive advantage for us in attracting and retaining the talent we need across the business to execute our growth and innovation priorities. This includes executive team leaders such as Joe Fox, our new chief product officer who we recruited in Q4 to lead our overall product strategy. In addition, we added 20 other senior leaders during our business in 2021 as we prepared to become a successful public growth company. We believe this combination of talent, market opportunity, and our balance sheet capital will further deepen our leadership position in delivering innovative accounts payable and payment automation solutions the middle market companies, not only in 2022, but for many years to come. As always, I look forward to updating you on our progress during future earnings calls. I will now turn the call over to Joel to provide more detail on our financial performance, key metrics, and our full year 2022 guidance. Joel?

Thanks, Mike, and good evening, everyone. I'm excited to talk to you today about our strong Q4 financial results, which reflect continued execution of our growth strategies and to provide guidance for the full year 2022. Before I discuss Q4 versus last year, let me go over Q4 21 actuals versus our guidance. The midpoint of our implied revenue guidance for fourth quarter 2021 was $65.9 million. We came in at $69.3 million, beating our guidance midpoint by $3.4 million, or about 5%. We also exceeded the top end of the implied revenue guidance range. Higher total payment volumes and higher transactions contributed to revenue outperformance relative to our implied guidance. The higher than expected revenue growth largely fell through, contributing to a lower than anticipated EBITDA loss in the fourth quarter of 21 versus our implied guidance. Now turning to Q4 2021 versus Q4 2020 financial results. Total revenue increased by 31% to $69.3 million in Q4 of 2021 over the fourth quarter of 2020. Organic revenue growth, which excludes the contribution of our core associates and fast pay acquisitions, which closed in December 2020 and August 2021 respectively, was 20.5%. Organic growth was primarily driven by the addition of new buyer invoice and payment transactions, which increased e-payments to suppliers. Our strong revenue growth also resulted in total transaction yield expanding to $4.21 in the quarter, up 14.4% from $3.68 in Q4 2020. Roughly half of the increase was associated with improvements in each of software and payments yields, and to a lesser extent, a mixed shift towards pay, with the remaining half being inorganic. Software revenues of $23.5 million, which accounted for 33.9% of our total revenue in the quarter, increased 31.3% in Q4 of 2021 over Q4 of 2020. Core Associates contributed $2.5 million of revenue to the quarter, or close to half the software revenue growth rate. The increase in software revenues was driven primarily by the growth in total transactions of roughly 15% in Q4 of 2021. Payment revenue of $45.1 million, which accounted for 65.2% of our total revenue a quarter, increased 33.4% in Q4 of 21 over Q4 of 2020, of which FastPay represented 9.2 points of growth, or $3.1 million. The increase in payment revenues was driven by the growth in total payment volume of 37%, or 33% excluding FastPay. On a GAAP basis, gross profit of $35.2 million increased by 32.8% in Q4 of 2021 over the same period last year, resulting in a 60 basis points improvement in gross margin for the quarter to 50.8%. Non-GAAP gross margin increased 400 basis points to 62.2% in Q4 of 2021 over the same period last year, with two-thirds of the increase driven by increased total transaction yield in the quarter and continued operational efficiencies. The remaining third was margin contribution from the previously discussed acquisitions. Moving on to our operating expenses. On a gap basis, total operating expenses increased by 76.6%, in Q4 of 21 over Q4 of last year, primarily driven by the impact of recognition of non-cash stock-based compensation costs resulting from completing our IPO in Q4 2021. On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses increased 35.5% or $13.4 million to $51.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 from the comparable period. I will now talk about each component of the change in operating expenses on a non-GAAP basis. Non-GAAP sales and marketing costs increased by $3.8 million to $16.2 million in Q4 of 2021 over Q4 of last year, with the increase driven by the continued investment in our direct and channel strategies to acquire new buyers and suppliers, as well as the consolidation of core associates and fast pay results. Non-GAAP research and development costs increased by $5.5 million to $17.7 million in Q4 of 2021 over Q4 of the prior year. The increase was due to continued investment in our products and platform along with the inclusion of Core and FastPay. Non-GAAP general administrative costs increased by $4.1 million to $17.3 million in Q4 of 2021 over Q4 of of the prior year, driven largely by expenses in preparation and transition to become a public company, along with the inclusion of core and fast pay. Our gap net loss was $72.1 million for the quarter versus a gap net loss of $32.6 million in the prior year period and was driven by a combination of the recognition of non-cash stock-based compensation and deal costs associated with completing our IPO in Q4 2021, together with a mark-to-market adjustment for convertible common stock liability prior to conversion upon the IPO, and the previously discussed investments and inclusion of core and fast pay. On a non-GAAP basis, our net loss in the fourth quarter of 2021 was $17.7 million, up only $1.5 million compared to the year-ago quarter on solid organic revenue growth. On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $8.2 million in Q4 of 21 compared to a loss of $7 million in Q4 2020. While we expanded our transaction yield and the non-GAAP gross margins, our investment in our growth and platform initiatives continued. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $562.8 million. I'll now move on to guidance. As we mentioned in our press release, we are providing the following guidance for the full year 2022. Total revenue for the year is expected to be in the range of $296.5 million to $301.5 million. At the midpoint, this would represent a growth of over 20% on a year-over-year basis. non-GAAP-adjusted EBITDA loss in the range of $42 million to $48 million. We expect roughly 47% of 2022 revenues in the first half with the remaining 53% in the second half. We expect almost 55% of EBITDA losses to occur in the first half versus second half of the year skewed by the factors Mike stated. In summary, we delivered strong fourth quarter 2021 financial and operating results, and our momentum heading into 2022 is very encouraging. I'd now like to turn the call back over to the operator to open up the line for Q&A. Operator?

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Again, that's star 1 on your telephone to ask a question. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Ramzi Elisal of Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi. Thanks so much for taking my question tonight. I wanted to ask about profitability. You know, profitability came in better in the quarter. The EBITDA guidance also exceeded our expectations. Give us your updated thoughts on the path to profitability. Do you think, given how things are stacking up, you could get there sooner than you anticipated?

Maybe I'll start off, and Mike, feel free to jump in. Ramsey, hopefully you can hear me okay. Just do a quick audio check.

Yeah, I can hear you just fine.

Perfect. Yeah, great question. And we were happy with the quarter from a profitability standpoint. I think, you know, in Mike's comments, you know, we sharpened up kind of the outlook so that it's understood that as we kind of exit 2024, we're flipping that EBIT outbreak even point. And I think that the key factors driving that includes our, you know, sort of steady, consistent expansion of gross margins. And the scale that we expect to see in G&A after the 22-year and then R&D on a go-forward basis as well. So altogether, we feel good about that path. And this past quarter was a good indication of our ability to deliver that.

Got it. Okay. And a follow-up from me is, is there any contribution or can you characterize the contribution from newly launched products that you have baked into your fiscal 22 guidance? I'm trying to get a form a better opinion about whether that would represent sort of upside those products kind of ramping, you know, faster than anticipated or how much is in there?

Yeah, like I'll start. Really, the 22 year for us is based on, you know, products we have in the bag today. And so, you know, and you know how our revenue model works, you know, what we've sort of sold as we finish the year of 21 really constitutes that revenue growth in 22, so we feel like we've got good line of sight, you know, highly recurring revenue model. And in terms of new products, you know, we're at work investing around the flywheel. But in terms of revenue dependency in 22, that would be sort of de minimis.

Got it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Will Nance of Goldman Sachs. Your question, please.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. I wanted to ask a question on payment volume. You know, you've continued to kind of exceed our expectations. I think last quarter you talked about inflationary impacts driving up payment volume beyond your expectations. I'm just wondering if you could talk about the drivers you've seen more recently and, you know, have you continued to see higher average order values? And, you know, as it relates to the 2022 guidance, you know, how much of an upside bias could that put on your numbers if you were to kind of continue to see a continuation of these trends?

Yeah, so let me kick it off. And Mike, feel free to sort of come behind me. But overall, so you're right, Will. TPV for us was a good grower in the fourth quarter, 37%. You know, last quarter we also had really strong TPV growth. You know, there's a number of variability sort of drivers in that. We pointed to a little bit of a creep up in average payment size in Q3. And what I would say is, as we've kind of looked at the data, there's a wide sort of range of mixed drivers across verticals, you know, sort of the mix of payments as a percentage of that total, you know, sort of payment or the actual payment mode within there. And finally, you know, there's a mixed shift as payments grow as a percentage of total. So the I wouldn't rule out the possibility of inflation in certain pockets here and there, but we're sort of only a few months into this, wouldn't really call it a trend and wouldn't really call that we've meaningfully changed our estimates around average payment size as it goes forward into 22. So I really wouldn't point to a sandbag per se or purposeful conservatism, we really have you know, a pretty predictable model based on the trends that we see in the business. And we've used those trends to project 22. So not sure, Mike, if you wanted to add anything to that.

Yeah, maybe, you know, to add a little bit more color, Will, you know, to get through Joe's thing about the mix, you know, we saw, you know, different mix shifts across the different verticals. And one of those being the media vertical, which is, you know, as you know, is a new vertical for us. and some of the, you know, increase in payment size related to some of the political spending that we've been seeing. So that'd be an example of, you know, a little bit of a, you know, change in mixed shift across the different verticals. And so, you know, it's hard to tell exactly how much of that is, you know, inflationary base versus just gym mix across the different industry verticals that we have, but certainly watching it closely.

Got it. Super helpful. And then just as a follow-up on the new questions, I think those asked previous, sorry, the new products question that was asked previously, as it relates to invoice accelerator, I think you guys were in the market with roughly 10% of the suppliers. How do you see that pilot progressing and, you know, what sort of contribution do you think that could drive to the results over time?

Yeah, maybe I'll start in there. I know Joel probably probably had some context to it. Is so, you know, it's it's one of our fastest growing parts of our business, but still, you know, a small piece of the business as it relates to, you know, kind of growing the number of suppliers. There's a couple of things that we're working on. One is, you know, overall, you know, just what I'll say is, you know, the. working across the different years of our flywheel to look at kind of the scalability as well as how we're using the data across all the different ways that we generate invoices to really get good at the data science and the analytics related to how we determine the eligibility of invoices. And so that continues to be kind of a working process that we're you know, we're testing on different pockets of suppliers. So we will anticipate, you know, increasing that pool, you know, across the, you know, over the course of the year. The other element that we're just really excited about is the impact of the fast pay acquisition from a talent perspective of bringing us more talent related to, you know, that has DNA related to, you know, factoring lending based on the historical fast pay business. And we're really excited to have that, you know, talent, love, and those teammates deployed in our business and think they're going to be value-added to thinking about, you know, how we grow Invoice Accelerator over time.

I'd appreciate you taking my question.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brad Sills of Bank of America Securities. Your line is open.

Oh, great. Thanks, guys, for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the upsell motion. I know that Banktel and Core Associates were software-only businesses with an opportunity to upsell digital payments. How's that effort going over the course of the year, and just how would you classify that and kind of go-forward basis? Is that still an opportunity?

Yeah. Maybe I'll Just comment briefly and then pass it to Mike. You know, we remember that there is an opportunity for us, not just from the sort of the software-only customers that come to us via acquisition, but also those legacy software customers that were acquired in the years before pay was introduced in 2012, 2013. So good opportunity for us and steady progression. So we're kind of pleased with the ability to continue to sell back to that base. So, Mike, anything you want to add to that?

Yeah, and I think, you know, just in the last quarter, we saw really good, you know, growth related to some of those upsell opportunities across both continue to see in real estate as well as within the financial services vertical. And I think one of the, you know, the green shoes as we refer to it. starting to see the acceleration of the HOA vertical, which really has been one of our eight verticals, probably the number one vertical impact during COVID, and now seeing more momentum across that vertical, and we expect that to continue throughout 2022.

Great to hear. Thanks, Mike and Joel. One more, if I may, please. We're calculating a take rate here on payments around 30 basis points, which is right around where you've been tracking With the introduction of cross-border coming, should that change that or could that change that? Could we see the take rate go up? Just any call you can provide on what cross-border could do to that take rate over time. Thanks again.

Yeah, I think that's a great question, Brad. So one of the things, just to remind everybody, is today across the equity change business and RE verticals, we don't have large pockets of cross-border demand within our existing, you know, customer base. And so this is really positioning us for, you know, future international, you know, expansion, as well as, you know, other verticals and attracting customers that do have, you know, that cross-border need going forward. So it's not like we're sitting on a, you know, a large, you know, stack of transactions that we're not monetizing today. You know, we expect that there will be some of that, but not a meaningful number. So it's really about, you know, our future, you know, vertical expansion strategies where we'll see the benefit of having our cross-border product offering. And so what I would say is that we expect to see, you know, continue to be, you know, kind of a, you know, a slow build-up driver to our overall growth, you know, over time. But I would not expect, you know, kind of a, you know, a significant kind of one-time, you know, kind of monetization once we release the product. We're not expecting that.

Understood. Super helpful. Thanks again, Mike.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Darren Peller of Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks, guys. Congrats on finishing up your first year as a public company. Mike, I want to touch on the customer ads going from 7,000 to the 8,000 number. And just maybe you could help us, first of all, be clear on what was organic versus any inorganic contribution of that. And then really the driving force between last year and this year and what we can expect going forward in customer ads. What's embedded in your guidance, and what are the biggest drivers in your mind, you know, and the value proposition that you're seeing the most traction with in terms of customers?

Hey, Darren, it's Joel. Maybe I can answer some of those numbers questions and then kick it to Mike. So, yeah, we did publish our update, which we plan to do on an annual basis. Our, you know, total count of buyer customers increased from 7,000 last year to 8,000 at the end of this year. And again, when we look back over the year, we saw strength in real estate, financial services, also our bank channel, and beginning to see kind of green shoots in the HOA vertical, you know, as we kind of get on the other side of some of the caution exercised across the middle market given the pandemic. Your question about inorganic contribution, the core buyer count was included in the starting point, and the Fast pay, just given the nature of the size of the customers added, think of like less than 10% of that increase attributable to fast pay. Mike, anything else you want to add to that?

Yeah. So, you know, I think in terms of, you know, kind of drivers, you know, one of the things that we're just, you know, really excited about is historically, you know, about 60% of our, you know, you know, pre-COVID. And, you know, these being industry trade conferences, user conferences, things like that. And then, you know, obviously, you know, during COVID it moved to, you know, 100% digital. But we, you know, do know that across the middle market that, you know, CFOs have been, you know, probably more slow than, you know, the small business market to adopt new transformative, you know, technologies for their back office. And we, you know, are excited about seeing the return to, you know, in-person events. You know, again, this year, pretty much, you know, every one of the accounting systems that we're deeply embedded with, you know, is planning to have an in-person event this year. And so those are really positive for us in terms of, you know, kind of that demand gen focus. And so, you know, although we had, you know, a great year in terms of customer ads, we think that dynamic of demand gen of getting back to more of a normal cycle of, you know, a balance between kind of in-person and digital, you know, demand gen is going to pay dividends for us as we come out of the COVID cycle.

All right. That's helpful, Mike. Guys, I just want to follow up with the algorithm that's embedded in your outlook. When we think about the forecast for, you know, your 20% revenue growth rate, the building blocks, including, Again, going back to customer ads and maybe what you're thinking about from that perspective versus where you are now on payment monetization versus where that can be by the end of the year or any other major drivers you think worth calling out.

Yeah. Darren, I'll start off, and Mike, feel free to mop up. But, I mean, so... The question about the growth algorithm. So we've talked about fairly consistently, we feel like this is a good solid 20 plus percent grower over time. We have a number of levers available to us. This past quarter we expanded our revenue yield in addition to adding meaningful volume year over year. Keep in mind, I think we laid the groundwork when we gave guidance that Q4 was a little bit more of a tough compare in the year-ago period because of kind of the COVID recovery. So if you're comparing kind of what underlying growth rates we're using for 22 versus what we saw in the fourth quarter. But I would just step back and say we've got great revenue visibility when we enter the year. Most of that business is already sold. We understand those volume characteristics and feel really good about the guidance we've put out.

Yeah, and I think when we think of, you know, kind of the metrics that we're driving in the business, you know, it starts with, you know, continue to increase that, you know, transactional yield number that Joel referenced, and then combined with, you know, just focus on total, you know, spend on the management. So that's a combination of both, you know, new buyer customers we're adding as well as the new supplier customers that we're adding that kind of make up that number. And then probably the last one is then just kind of that net retention number ended up being 107%. And how do we continue to increase that number as we move forward? So those are the three kind of, I'd say, big metric drivers that we're focused on internally in terms of driving that growth up.

And it's a mix among them, I guess, right? And it's pretty balanced. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Bosch of SMBC. Nico, your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to check in on some of the underlying health of the verticals that you operate in or the verticals that you serve. You know, obviously, there's clearly some supply chain dynamics that they're probably facing. So anything you're hearing from your customers on the ground as far as as economic trends as we enter a pretty uncertain period for inflation and the like.

Yeah, maybe I'll, so let me just make sure I got the question. So just, you know, what's going on in our verticals? What conditions do we find here and how might that impact our business as we move into 2022? You know, I think if anything, one thing that comes to mind is sort of the, you know, to the extent that inflation is playing a role in these verticals and the need to kind of find ROI and efficiency in the back office, that, you know, we think that, you know, could be a catalyst. But, you know, apart from that, Mike, anything vertical specific that you'd comment on?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, You know, each vertical has its own little, you know, kind of cycles that they operate in. But, you know, kind of going back, you know, our four, you know, most mature verticals being real estate, the HOA, construction, financial services. You know, we expect to be, you know, really solid contributors. And then, you know, really excited about media. And, you know, it's a new vertical for us to fast pay acquisition. And, you know, one of the, you know, unknowns, you know, for us this year is, you know, the impact of, you know, kind of the political cycle and, you know, the impact that may have within that median vertical, which is going to be one that we're going to watch closely. And then, you know, our other three emerging verticals that are new in the last, you know, call it 12 to 18 months being healthcare facilities, social services, and education. I think, you know, we're we're certainly seeing some, you know, good growth opportunities, but they're, you know, they're emerging verticals and they're new. So, I think we have a healthy balance of, you know, going deeper within our mature verticals along with, you know, the opportunities that we see in the emerging verticals and probably the most interesting one is going to be, you know, watching what happens in our media vertical and any impact that the political cycle has, you know, on the media spending, you know, they're going to see

Great. Thank you. And then one more question. Operating in the middle market obviously requires a different level of sophistication than the SMB or customization for larger customers. Could you speak to how you guys differentiate within those verticals and are able to help deliver a more robust and complete solution to clients that may need additional type of features?

Yeah, so, you know, I kind of think of it as that we're purpose-built for the middle market. And what does purpose-built for the middle market mean? I kind of think of it as kind of five, you know, buckets. The first is our feature set. And I think, you know, the feature set is different for middle market than for small business or enterprise related to dynamic kind of approval workflows, support for, you know, more sophisticated cost center allocations, GL coding, Most of our customers operate with multiple accounting systems as an example. So the feature set related to the product itself is different, and in many cases, it's somewhat nuanced for the different verticals of the middle market. The second big one is the integrations, right? And you guys probably heard me say this before, but I like to kid around at different industry conferences with both Bill.com and the Coupa team because they really have it easy to from the standpoint of small business really has to integrate to QuickBooks and enterprise has to integrate to Oracle, SAP, maybe some JD Edwards and Workday. And meanwhile, in the middle market, we're supporting over 220 different accounting system integrations today and growing, focused on the different verticals. The third one being the payment network. And so the payment network is, again, very focused in the middle market of supporting, you know, really, you know, when I say supporting the buyer customers of the middle market and the suppliers that they use. So again, it's kind of custom, you know, purpose-built for the middle market. And then you have kind of the, what I say, the go-to-market strategies. And, you know, within the middle market, you know, CFOs want to understand how it's, you know, works for their particular business process within their industry vertical. and historically have attended user conferences and industry trade conferences to kind of interact with partners such as ourselves. And so that's a very different dynamic than, say, a small business where it's virtually 100% digital process. Now, our demand gen comes digitally, and most of our sales process is virtually digital. through an inside model, but you typically have more of a demo solution consulting type of sales process. And then the last one is just around the setup and configuration of the different dynamic workflow processes, testing all the integration interfaces, things of that nature that are very different. So I think one of the best kind of stats or metrics that It's just the average revenue per customer. And so within the middle market, we see, you know, an average of over 50,000 average revenue per customer. And I think, you know, Bill would say that number for them is about 1,500. And certainly for the enterprise side, you know, the Koopas of the world, it's probably, you know, north of 500,000. So I think that gets at some of those differences between, you know, the middle market segment versus small business and enterprise.

Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the color.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tianxin Huang of JP Morgan. Your question, please.

Hey, thanks so much. Good afternoon. Just listening to your answers, everything's been really helpful. I was just curious, thinking about the outlook, client growth, that kind of thing. With inflation here, how does that or how might that change the buying decision for some of your prospects? I'm just thinking about sales cycles and the sense of urgency for for these mid-market companies to automate with Avid. Does it change the storyline at all in your mind, Mike? Just curious.

I think that's a great question and one that we talk about a little bit internally. I think it actually helps our process from the standpoint of it, you know, it puts more pressure on companies, you know, thinking about, you know, where they're, you know, adding people. And if they can, you know, eliminate, you know, future ads through automation, that's a positive driver. And so, you know, we believe that, you know, the increase of expense controls, things of that nature that typically, you know, comes with, you know, more inflationary environment, we think is going to be helpful in terms of evangelizing our story of, you know, doing more with less. And, you know, one of the biggest characteristics that we have across our entire you know, client base of, you know, now, you know, 8,000 plus customers is that they're able to grow without adding back office staff. And so that message is one that, you know, we're certainly evangelizing the marketplace.

Yeah. No, that makes great sense. I appreciate that. Just my quick follow-up and just thinking about your own expenses and your thinking around, you know, investing here. I noticed that the EBITDA loss that you're projecting is a little bit wider than revenue. Are you contemplating some discretionary investing here? What puts you on the high or low end of that based on what you can control? Thanks.

Yeah, Tingen, maybe I'll just add a little bit of color to what you're seeing in our guidance. And again, we were, you know, kind of pleased to deliver, you know, better than expected EBITDA results in the fourth quarter. we do have a little bit of a widening loss, though better than what we had previously anticipated. And really what we have in our first full year as a public company is a couple dynamics. One, sort of that full first load of sort of public company readiness costs, whether it's the SEC reporting side, compliance side, a number of other things that were sort of kind of put in place late in midway through 21, where there's really meaningful scale as you sort of leave 22. And the other thing that I would say is we really have a number of important investments that have been building from an R&D perspective back to, you know, investing all around the flywheel for the buyer and the supplier, our platform readiness for invoice accelerator and things that drive down operating costs or unit costs in support of that expanding margin. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of sense of kind of the investments we have on tap for 22.

It does. Thank you both for the thoughts.

You bet.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Keene of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Just want to ask on transaction yield, Joel, when we look at it for the first three quarters of the year, it accelerated really actually at least the last four quarters, just looking at the slide. And then this quarter, the growth sequentially didn't grow as much. It just moderated slightly. And I'm thinking about next year. as we build our models, you know, how much can we expect? What's a more normalized kind of growth rate for transaction yield and any puts and takes when we look at it sequentially that move the numbers around, especially when we went from Q3 to Q4?

Sure, Brian, let me kind of take a crack at that question from a couple of different angles. So, you know, we were pleased for Q4. To your point, sequentially, we saw a nice uptick in that yield as about 15 or 16 pennies in the sequential period. Most of that was based on just continued steady improved organic sort of yield on the software and the payment side. So call it 10 or 11 of those pennies. And then a smaller contribution through the combination of overall mix and then an inorganic contribution as well. So that's kind of the sequential On a year-over-year basis, we did have about 53 points of expansion, about half of that being mix and pay yield. Some of that is a little bit of recovery from the COVID year, keep in mind, as you're thinking about the outlook for 22. The other half of that would be inorganic contributions. Again, what we would guide is steady transaction yield expansion over time. Just keep in mind a portion of our expansion this year, a little bit of COVID benefit in the full year, year over year, and then some inorganic, but good, steady organic expansion, both on the software and on the payment side. Hopefully that helps.

No, that's great. And just as a follow-up, I noticed that the suppliers jumped paid via the network. I think it's 825,000. I think the last time we saw that number was 700,000 plus. So Just thinking about, you know, how much of that is organic and then growing that going forward, is that still something that can scale at the kind of rate we've just seen, you know, up to 825,000?

Yeah, so, Brian, good question. I'm glad you asked that question because I didn't have a chance to comment on that earlier. It's all 100% organic. So, one is the spire growth is all organic, and I think it's a real testament to, you know, our strategies that we're using to, you know, how do we continue to penetrate, you know, the pool of, you know, paper check acceptance suppliers and to, you know, accelerate that conversion to have them begin accepting electronic payment methods. And so, you know, one of the things that we're really working to do this year with, you know, WAX, KeyBank, Poundata, as it relates to giving us more flexibility to create new, you know, payment types, as well as, you know, configurations of different forms of, say, virtual card, as well as our Avid PayTrack. to create unique value propositions that may be particular to, you know, a subset of suppliers that we can continue to, you know, dynamically manage. And so we're very, you know, focused on, you know, what's the right value proposition, along with the right price point, you know, to allow, you know, suppliers to make that move from paper check to electronics. And I think we're certainly seeing the impact of that in the growth of our supplier base. So, you know, we expect that, you know, we're going to have, you know, more tools in our arsenal, you know, going forward, you know, as part of some of these new partnerships.

No, that's great. Congrats on the execution.

Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Josh Beck of KeyBank. Your question, please.

Thank you so much for taking the question. I wanted to ask a little bit about sales cycles and what you're seeing there. Mike, earlier you mentioned that as you go back to in-person, that's been a really important lead gen in prior years pre-COVID. I'm just curious if that could help the sales cycle, if it could bring in more leads, just what could be some of the tailwinds from seeing more in-person?

Maybe I'll answer in two buckets. One is You know, when, you know, somebody raises their hand and says, hey, we want to be part of your sales process to have an exchange, that has remained remarkably consistent, you know, across, you know, really all our verticals. It's typically a 60 to 90-day sales process that we've seen be executed, and that's been fairly consistent. Where the big opportunity is that we see going forward is, you know, getting back to where the, you know, the lead originally comes from and having it, you know, move more towards a balance of, you know, in-person events compared to being 100% digital. I think, you know, we delivered the results that we did last year in a 100% digital, you know, environment for the most part. And, you know, for example, pre-COVID, we attended about 100 in-person events on an annual basis. And during COVID, And, you know, this year the team anticipates, you know, covering about 80 of those type of events. So that, you know, returns you, you know, kind of more of a, you know, in-person balance we think is going to pay dividends in terms of accelerating, you know, the top of the funnel and increasing our demand gen efforts by having a nice balance between, you know, digital and these in-person events.

Really good to hear about the calendar for this year. You know, I wanted maybe a follow-up question for Joel. Just thinking about the 24 breakeven, it doesn't sound like this year has a lot of newer product contribution, if you will, when we think about invoice accelerator and cross-border. I think, you know, once we start to look out further, perhaps that's a bigger factor. So should we be thinking about those types of product is additive to the contribution margin, given that it's probably already an existing customer, or any color you can offer us on those points?

So, here's the way I would sort of take a crack at answering that, Josh. You know, we pointed to kind of exiting 24 on an even outbreak, even basis. We also talked about you know, 22, largely, you know, good visibility and not, you know, meaningfully dependent on new products. But as we move from here through the next few years, we expect to see continued, you know, revenue yield and unit cost improvement as we move from kind of lower 60s to upper 60s, approaching that 70% gross profit. And some of that is driven by, you know, investments we're making around the flywheel. So, for example, you know, we do expect to continue to add value to both buyers and suppliers. We expect that e-payment mix to continue, you know, sort of step up. I think over the sort of multi-year view, we think of, you know, sort of a steady growth in that TPV yield is reasonable. Things like IA, to your point, small today, but we expect growing in the next few years. So those things add, you know, continue to support revenue growth, but also add kind of gross margin expansion as well. And And those new products that you referenced play a more meaningful role as you get into 23 and 24.

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brent Braceland of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking the question. Good afternoon, evening. I guess, Joel, we'll start with you here. Relative to the 20% growth outlook for the coming year, How should we think about the growth trajectory across payments versus software? I ask because I think software grew faster than payments in 2020. Payments grew faster than software in 2021. And so what are you kind of baking into the guide? It looks like slightly tougher comps on payments in the coming year ahead, but would love any color you can give us as you think about what grows faster in 2022, just given the two different trends we saw in 20 and 21.

You bet. Yeah, no, that's a fair call out. And it's safe to say that we do expect to see, you know, payments growth to slightly outpace that software growth. Again, a number of opportunities to drive that, including some of the, you know, the important partnerships that drove that shift, whether sort of real page concur and otherwise. And so, You know, we sort of see that continued sort of payment growth being slightly ahead on the software side.

Super helpful there. Then, Mike, as a follow-up, you talked a little bit about one of the levers being this conversion from paper-based checks to digital e-payments. What are the levers that you're thinking about that could accelerate the conversion? I know in the past you talked about the mid-market customer actually using the paper check as part of the workflow, part of the business process, and those are hard things to change. But I was just curious, are you thinking about, you know, levers there to potentially help customers accelerate that conversion from paper to digital? Any thoughts there would be helpful? Thanks.

Yeah, no, that's a great question, Brent. And so, first of all, you know, within, you know, kind of our product investment area, we have kind of our, new, you know, we call it cash flow manager tools that are being released this year. And with that, it provides a focus on, you know, increasing the value proposition for those supplier customers. And so that incorporates, you know, tools to provide better visibility to their both, you know, invoice and payment status, as well as, you know, access to invoice accelerator. So that'll be a continued, you know, kind of focus for us. But probably the biggest component is going to be us continuing to create new different types of payment modalities, both in virtual cards as well as our ABPA Direct, where we have different types of delivery of remit data in formats that suppliers are looking for at different price points. And I think that combination of increased number of payment modalities is focused on finding that right mix of value propositions. So, you know, kind of a combination of those factors is what we, you know, are excited about, what we're seeing kind of the impact on growing the number of suppliers that we have on the network.

Sounds good. Great to hear. Thanks for answering the questions.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Timothy Chiodo of Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Great. Thank you, everyone. I wanted to touch on something you've mentioned a few other times that might relate to some of the strong supplier growth that you've seen. You talked about with MasterCard, your relationship with them, and the ability to create more custom or more flexible interchange structures. I was hoping you could just talk around the mechanics of that. How does that come up? Is it a certain vertical of suppliers that maybe have really high ticket sizes? What does the discussion sound like? And then, of course, I'm assuming the result is more electronic payments volumes for you, more willingness to accept the interchange rate from the supplier, and it's sort of a win-win all around.

Yeah, I think, you know, you got the punchline right. You know, kind of the tactics are, you know, looking at, you know, what would be, you know, the characteristics in which, you know, a supplier would move from kind of paper check acceptance to an electronic payment that they would pay for and have it be offset with a value proposition. And, you know, and one example is that we just recently worked with a large freight company who historically, you know, the 250, you know, 260 basis point, you know, standard interchange didn't work for their cost structure. But we were able to agree at 140 basis points to, create a straight-through process that it was 100%, you know, kind of auto-reconciled. And through a straight-through process, it didn't require any, you know, human intervention on their end to accept the payment. And for that efficiency, they agreed to pay 140 basis points for it. And so that is a perfect example on, you know, how we're, you know, working to configure different interchange levels, you know, along with the you know, value proposition in terms of how suppliers need to, you know, receive their electronic remittance data to create an efficient process on their side. And, you know, we're seeing, you know, great examples of that across different segments of suppliers. And I believe it's going to be, you know, one of those levers that we use to continue to drive, you know, today, you know, we're roughly at 40% of all the transactions that go through the out-of-pay network. We're able to monetize and how do we continue to drive that upwards over time?

Okay, excellent. Thanks, Mike. And if I could squeeze in this one last one. I know this topic came up numerous times around inflation. Did you guys put a finer point on just around your inflation assumptions for the fiscal 2022 guide, or should we just assume that it's not much, and if you continue to see inflation, then perhaps there's a degree of conservatism baked in?

I would – Tim, I would say the latter, maybe to the exclusion of that final phrase. Again, we do see some variability in the average payment sizes, and we have seen some very recently. There's a number of drivers. Mike mentioned the inclusion of fast pay, given the media segment with higher payments, and some shift around payment modes, et cetera. So to some degree, it may be at play, and to that degree, it would be factored in our regressions that give us the projections for volumes for next year. So it's – but I just wouldn't point out that it is meaningfully significant at this point.

Okay. Very helpful. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. And at this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mike Prager for any closing remarks. Sir?

Thank you. I just want to say thanks to, you know, kind of our analyst community. You know, great questions, and, you know, we're excited to – You know, complete not only our second earnings call as a public company, but also our first full year. And looking forward to, you know, 2022 as we move out of the, you know, the COVID overhang and starting back to more of a normalized business environment for our middle market customers. And excited to spend time with you on a quarterly basis going forward. So with that, operator, I think we're ready to close the call.

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