i3 Verticals, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the i3 Vertical's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available starting today through November 27th. The number for the replay is 877-344-7529, and the code is 727-2540. The replay may also be accessed for 30 days at the company's website. At this time, for opening remarks, I'd like to turn the floor over to Jeff Smith, SVP of Finance. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to the fourth quarter 2023 conference call for I3 Verticals. Joining me on this call are Greg Daly, our Chairman and CEO, Clay Whitson, our CFO, Rick Stanford, our President, and Paul Christians, our COO. To the extent any non-GAAP financial measure is discussed in today's call, you will also find a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure by reviewing yesterday's earnings release. It is the company's intent to provide non-GAAP financial information to enhance understanding of its consolidated GAAP financial information. This non-GAAP financial information shall be considered by each individual in addition to, but not instead of, the GAAP financial statements. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, among others, regarding the company's expected financial and operating performance. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these forward-looking statements may be affected by the important factors, among others, set forth in the company's earnings release and in reports that are filed or furnished to the SEC. Consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Finally, the information shared on this call is valid as of today's date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update it, except as it may be required under applicable law. I now turn the call over to the company's chairman and CEO, Greg Daley.

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning to everyone on the call. I'm pleased to report a strong finish to fiscal year 23, and we're excited about what's coming in fiscal year 24. We've been on a great run, setting record revenue and adjusted EBITDA every quarter for the last three years. Revenue was up 13% in Q4, and adjusted EBITDA was up 23% over the same quarter last year. This resulted in our best adjusted EBITDA margin in the last four years. We're on a mission to use software to solve problems for our customers in our targeted vertical markets. Our software and related services revenue was up 19% over the same quarter last year. We are at our best bringing customers scalable cloud-based platforms with continuing updated features and security improvements. A subset of software revenue, SaaS, revenue grew at 23% over the same quarter last year. Overall, software and related services revenue made up over 50% of total revenue for fiscal year 23. Clay will address the balance sheet later, but we're pleased to have delevered to below 3.8 times. Our cash flow provides us ample room to execute on opportunities, but our standards remain high and we're very selective with our M&A targets. In a year of less M&A, I want to re-emphasize my remarks of Q3. This year, we've made tremendous strides in integrating and improving our businesses. I am proud of the efforts of all of our employees, led by Rick Stanford and Paul Christians, who have helped us collaborate and build such a strong foundation. We've realigned our business in public sector, health care, merchant services, and organized best of class in shared enterprise solutions. and marketing functions. The guiding principles in all of this is our whole is greater than the sum of our parts, and we have a great internal culture. Our employees have bought in. Our focus next year will be growth. We're excited about all the opportunities in front of us, and I am confident in our team's execution. I'll now turn the call over to Clay, and he'll provide you more details on our fourth quarter financial performance Following Clay's comments, Rick will provide more detailed update on the business and address M&A, and then we'll open up the call for questions.