Rimini Street, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Remini Street third quarter 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 101 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 101 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dean Pohl, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Rimini Street's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On the call with me today is Seth Raven, our CEO and President, and Michael Parica, our CFO. Today we issued our earnings press release for the third quarter ended September 30th, 2023. copy of which can be found on our website under investor relations a reconciliation of gap to non-gap financial measures has been provided in the tables following the financial statements in the press release an explanation of these measures and why we believe they are meaningful is also included in the press release under the heading about non-gap financial measures and certain key metrics which is available on our website as a reminder Today's discussion will include forward-looking statements that reflect our current outlook. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from statements made today. We encourage you to review our most recent SEC filings, including our Form 10-Q filed today, for discussion of risks that may affect our future results or stock price. Now, before taking questions, we'll begin with prepared remarks. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Seth.

Thank you, Dean, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. While most IT service providers specialize in software implementation, Ramini Street instead focuses on the very specialized area of IT strategic and operational needs to run, manage, support, protect, connect, monitor, customize, configure, and optimize IT. mission-critical, enterprise application, database, and technology software. We have global operations with over 2,000 employees spread across 21 countries, delivering senior engineering support capabilities to clients with an average response time of less than two minutes, 24 by 7 by 365, and earn an average client satisfaction score on our support deliveries and onboarding services of 4.9 out of 5, where 5 is excellent. Today, we are the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software, and to date have served over 5,300 Fortune 500, Fortune Global 100, mid-market, public sector, and other organizations across a broad range of industries. We are also Salesforce and AWS partners in SaaS and cloud markets, respectively. We enable clients to achieve better business outcomes, such as lower operating costs, increased profits, increased investment and innovation, improved competitive advantage, and accelerated growth. We believe we have delivered over $8 billion of savings and reinvestment opportunity to our clients. Operating Results For the third quarter of 2023, we continued focusing on improving sales execution across our expanded portfolio of solutions and being able to deliver the full portfolio of solutions globally. As our current and prospective clients learn more about the unique offerings and value of our expanded solutions portfolio, they are responding positively and buying across the full portfolio. For the third quarter of 2023, we saw our end-to-end ERP outsourcing solution, ReminiOne, and our solutions for SAP products continue to gain traction globally, driven in part by the current macroeconomic environment where we believe our expanded full-service portfolio is increasingly valued by prospects and clients, and in part by the further maturing of our go-to-market executions. To enhance and accelerate lead opportunity and pipeline development and help close more large and strategic transactions, our senior executives, including myself, continue our extensive in-person Ramini Street client and prospect meetings and attendance at third-party events and executive sales meetings in the United States and globally with hundreds of current and prospective clients. To deliver our full solutions portfolio globally, we continue to grow our workforce and capabilities backed by innovation and technology that provides additional leverage for increased profitability with growth. Demand, environment, and competitive advantage. We continue to see strong demand for a proven, reliable partner for mission critical transaction system services, that can allow organizations to consolidate their preferred IT service providers for streamlined vendor management, increased aggregated purchasing power, and better outcomes. Organizations today need to figure out how to deliver both revenue growth and increased profitability. And now, as an end-to-end provider of mission-critical IT support, products, and services, Ramini Street has the broader portfolio of solutions needed to be recognized as a key IT service partner that can help clients achieve their goals from developing IT strategy and building roadmaps to plan execution. We believe that we are well positioned to meet the current and evolving needs of organizations that face heightened global competition in just about every industry and to help them navigate the complex macroeconomic over the coming years. Oracle Litigation Update. Ramini Street and Oracle have been in litigation for more than 13 years. While the U.S. courts have confirmed long ago that third-party software support is legal, we presently have two active proceedings with Oracle, the injunction compliance dispute and Ramini 2 proceedings, both of which primarily relate to the manner in which Ramini Street provides support services for certain Oracle product lines. With respect to the injunction compliance dispute, Rimini Street has been ordered by the District Court to reimburse Oracle's reasonable attorney's fees and costs related to the contempt matter and related appeal. The parties are in briefing schedule now, and the District Court has not yet determined what the amount of such reasonable attorney's fees and costs should be. Rimini Street reserves all rights to appeal any District Court orders. With respect to Rimini 2, the company filed a lawsuit, Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle International Corp. in October 2014 in U.S. District Court. As of the date of this report, an administrative stay of the Rimini 2 injunction is in place and the Court of Appeals has not yet issued a decision on our motion to stay the injunction through the appeal process. Additionally, the District Court has not yet decided on another motion that must be decided by the Court before the Appeals Court will consider the Rimini 2 injunction stay motion. Rimini Street will also be filing an appeal of the District Court's findings and injunction in Rimini 2. For additional information and disclosures regarding the Company's litigation with Oracle, please see our disclosures in the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q, filed on November 1, 2023, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Please also note that at this time, we are still unable to provide material additional information beyond the disclosures and statements in our press releases nor provide guidance with respect to future financial results, SEC filings and court filings, nor are we able to provide additional commentary related to the pending Oracle litigation impacts and potential impacts because we are engaged in current continued analysis and court briefing and motion activity. Summary. We remain confident that we are continuing to take the right actions and making the right investments to accelerate growth, increase profitability, enhance shareholder value, and bring our litigation with Oracle to a successful conclusion. However, if Ramini Street does not ultimately prevail on various litigation matters described in our SEC filings, it could have a material impact on the business. Now, over to you, Michael.

Thank you, Seth, and thank you for joining us, everyone. Revenue, Billings, and Gross Margin. Revenue for the third quarter was $107.5 million, a year-over-year increase of 5.4%. Our revenue in the quarter was again negatively impacted by currency movements having a 0.1% unfavorable impact to revenue growth in the quarter. On a year-to-date basis, negative currency impacts were 1.2%. For the quarter, clients within the United States represented 51.9% of total revenue, while international clients contributed 48.1% of total revenue. Annualized recurring revenue was $416.3 million for the third quarter, a year-over-year increase of 4.1%. Revenue retention rate for service subscriptions which makes up 96.9% of our revenue, was 94% for the trailing 12 months, with more than 77% of subscription revenue non-cancellable for at least 12 months. Billings for the third quarter were 60.5 million, compared to 49.7 million for the prior year third quarter, an increase of 21.7%. Gross margin was 62.7% of revenue for the third quarter, compared to 61.5% for the prior year third quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation expense and the other items detailed in our earnings press release, gross margin was 63.1% of revenue for the third quarter compared to 62% for the prior year third quarter. Continued investment in the global engineering team in advance of revenue recognition as required by many of our new offerings may negatively pressure the gross margin going forward. Operating expenses. While inflationary pressures and high costs are still persistent for skilled labor across all theaters, we continue to attract and retain key talent. Moreover, our margin performance underscores the advantage of our global footprint with centers of excellence in geographies for both the talent and value remain attractive compared to higher-priced talent markets. Sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue were 33.1% of revenue for the third quarter compared to 35.3% for the prior year third quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation expense and the other items detailed in our earnings press release, sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue was 32.4% for the third quarter compared to 34.5% for the prior year third quarter. General and administrative expenses as a percentage of revenue, excluding outside litigation costs, were 17.1% of revenue for the third quarter compared to 18.1% of revenue for the prior year third quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes stock-based compensation expense and the other items detailed in our earnings press release, G&A was 15.4% of revenue for the third quarter compared to 17% for the prior year third quarter. We are seeing a good year-over-year improvement in G&A spend due to the restructuring previously noted in past earnings calls and the required initial substantial investments that were required to develop and launch our expanded portfolio of solutions are largely behind us. However, G&A expenses as a percentage of revenue continue to be elevated compared to our peers due in large part to the ongoing costs for in-house legal and compliance teams and other costs made necessary by our ongoing Oracle litigation and compliance activities. Net outside litigation expense was $2.1 million for the third quarter compared to $6.2 million for the prior year's third quarter. the reduction in year-over-year spend is due to decreased activity during the third quarter of 2023 compared to the prior year third quarter. Litigation expenses will vary quarter to quarter and year to year depending on current litigation activity. Our non-GAAP operating margin, which excludes outside litigation spend and stock-based compensation, improved to 15.4% of revenue for the third quarter versus 10.5% for the prior year third quarter. For the third quarter, net income attributable to shareholders was $6.8 million or $0.08 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $405,000 or $0.00 per diluted share for the prior year third quarter. On a non-GAAP basis, net income for the third quarter was $12.1 million or $0.13 per diluted share compared to a net income of $8.3 million or $0.09 per diluted share for the prior year third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $18.2 million for the third quarter or 17% of revenue compared to $10 million or 9.8% of revenue for the prior year third quarter. Balance sheet. We ended the third quarter with a cash and equivalents balance of $108.2 million plus short-term investments of $19.9 million, consisting of short-term U.S. Treasuries and agency securities, bringing cash and short-term investments to $128.1 million, compared to $129.7 million on September 30, 2022. The credit facility principal outstanding totals $74.3 million as of September 30, 2023. On a cash flow basis, third quarter operating cash flow declined 8.1 million compared to a decline of 24 million for the prior year third quarter. Deferred revenue as of September 30th, 2023 was approximately 238 million compared to 248 million from the prior year third quarter. Backlog, which includes the sum of bill deferred revenue and non-cancellable future revenue, increased to $550 million as of September 30, 2023, compared to $532 million for the prior year third quarter. Business outlook. The company is continuing to suspend guidance as to future financial results until there is more clarity around impacts from current litigation activity before the U.S. federal courts in the company's ongoing litigation with Oracle. For additional information and disclosures regarding the company's litigation with Oracle, please see our disclosures in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed on November 1, 2023 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we'll now take questions.

Thank you. And as a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone. and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please send by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. And our first question comes from the line of Derek Wood from Callen. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks. This is Colin for Derek. Looking at the net new clients, Looks like this was the best quarter-over-quarter ad in the last four quarters. I was just wondering what drove that.

Sure. This is Seth. So we saw, I think, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, you know that the third quarter is a big quarter for us in the SAP world due to their cycles of renewals for the maintenance side of the business. We saw a very substantial increase in business this year over year, roughly over 60% billings increase on SAP. As you know, two years ago, you remember we sort of fell off a cliff on SAP in the third quarter where SAP cleaned our clock in the marketplace. We came back with better messaging, better marketing, better positioning on the services we're offering last year, which was an improvement over the prior year. And then we came into this particular year with a very, very strong set of messaging and services for those clients. So that was certainly one driver. Second driver was we actually had a substantial increase in the Salesforce business for us on the AMS. We also increased our security business, and we saw increases across professional services. So a combination of all of those drove a lot of new logo business. And I think also you saw over the recent quarters that we were increasing our cross-sell to existing clients. But in this quarter, we were also able to rebalance a little bit, and we were able to get the sales team equally focused on bringing in new logo business. And that's just part of the evolution. When you open up a whole bag of additional products, the team goes out and starts selling those to the existing clients, and it's natural that you're going to have a little bit of fall off a new logo acquisition. We saw this quarter we were able to bring that balance back, and you saw the new logo growth and demand very strong.

Super helpful. Just one more from me. The U.S. go-to-market changes that you guys have made seem to be paying off a bit. Looks like U.S. was up 4% year-over-year and accelerated from last quarter. You know, how far did that go to market reorganization? Do you have any more changes? Just, you know, working through the end of the exchanges and seeing some dividends pay out.

I think you're seeing North America, you're seeing, again, we say North America, we're really talking about U.S. When we're really talking about the U.S., we're seeing improvement in the U.S. We're not where we want to be. We're not at the consistent execution level that we need to. Three regions are still not executing on a consistently very strong, reliable basis. That's the U.S. market, the EMEA market, and the ANZ market. And we've taken steps in all three where we have really good quarters. We have some weaker quarters. It's the consistency of execution that we're focused on right now. We're bringing in some excellent clients, new logos. We're getting a lot of great renewals done. We're selling the full portfolio. So we're making progress literally on a global basis in all those areas. But these three particular regions just have yet to be able to deliver consistently our plan numbers. And so that's why you see a little bit of the up and down. But in general, we are moving in the right direction. We're just not moving there as fast as we would like and as consistently as we'd like in those executions.

Helpful. Thanks, guys. One moment for our next question.

Our next question will come from Jeff Van Rye from Craig Halem.

Your line is open. Great. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Just got a couple here. One, as it relates to the guidance, what would be the triggers to start giving guidance again? I mean, the legal process that's going on, as you said, for a decade, suspect it goes on quite a bit longer. What specific issues need to be resolved with respect to the legal side to start giving guidance again?

Sure, Jeff. A good question there. You know, certainly we've been in litigation for 13 years and we've continued to provide guidance regularly. The difference right now is we are in the middle of several key things. One, it's a focus on the Ramini 2. The Ramini 2, we have a finding by the court. We are in the appeals process, not only of the decisions by the court, but also of the, as you well know, a stay on the injunction that was put in place with Romini II. The injunction has a lot of troubling challenges in it. As we've said to the courts, that if we had to implement it as the court put in there, there could be irreparable damage to the company and to third parties. There are things in there that would cause us a significant potential expense as the business. They could have business impacts as well as financial impacts. And so the fact that that stayed right now, but we're still arguing in the courts over the stay and then eventually appeal of that particular injunction is very much in play at the moment. On the other side, the contempt matter, we have legal fees that will be coming in that the court has ordered us to pay. We haven't agreed on any amount. The court hasn't ordered an amount. And also in Rimini too, there could be legal fees. There could be an application. There's none ordered today, but there could be legal fees on that side. So we have financial amounts that we don't feel we can possibly even figure out and ascertain what they might be. And on the other side, we have potential impacts to business that are dependent on these court decisions. So that's really what's going on is you've got a management team who says, I can't come out to you and give you the kind of reputable guidance that we would want to provide because I have too many open variables until these matters are resolved by the court. Now, if you look at the timeline, and again, I recommend everybody read the 10Q, the litigation disclosure is more detailed than what I went through in my prepared remarks. It's got more components to it. These legal fee discussions, for example, and decisions will take place over the coming months. And they have a scheduled date of a briefing schedule all the way through February. And so when you look at that, I think, Jeff, you really can get a sense that we probably won't have an understanding of where the courts are going to come out in their decisions. Then the decisions we will take and the actions we have to take from those probably until as late as the second quarter of next year, just given the briefing schedules and what's likely to take place with the court. And that doesn't even include the answers to any appeals, which could be a year after that. But I do think, you know, when you look at it, we normally would provide 2024 guidance when we give the K, which, as you know, is 60 to 75 days into 2024. And I would say we're going to evaluate where we are, what decisions have been made by the court, what we know, what we still don't know, and how we believe that affects the business, and then make a decision as to whether we feel that we're in a position to resume guidance in our normal fashion for 2024 when we come out with the K results in the fourth quarter financials.

Okay, got it. Yeah, a lot of moving parts there. Understood and helpful. As it relates to billings in the corridor, obviously, you're starting to get a little more time under your belt from the most recent court ruling. What impacts did it have on billings in the corridor? I think you said SAP was actually a good improvement, but specifically, what are you seeing in billings as an impact of the court ruling? And somewhat similar question, just where is the pipeline now versus a year ago?

Well, let's start first with pipeline. Pipeline continues to grow. As you know, we as a company strive for a 4X pipeline, even though most market companies would strive for a 3X pipeline according to what they want to close for their plan. We always have a little bit higher because we have more complexity in our deals around licenses and all sorts of terms and challenges that are a little unique to our business, which means your fall-off rate is higher. We generally close around 30% of our pipe. That's been pretty consistent in that sort of 25%, 30% range. And so pipelines growing means that we have a bigger opportunity to close more business. So that part has continued to move forward. As far as impacts of all the, again, the latest litigation, let's talk about the results of the Romini 2 trial. Let's talk about the results of the contempt hearings and then findings and then the recent appeal where we had some of that pulled back by the court. I think the answer is we don't really know. I mentioned how SAP was up over 60% in billings for the quarter year over year. Oracle products and services were down about 9%. Now, it's easy to try and read some things in. You could say, for example, we were so busy selling SAP that we didn't sell as much Oracle. That's a conclusion you could reach. We were very busy with SAP, and it's the same seller group. So if you're selling so much of one, you may not have focused on the other. We may have seen impacts from the litigation. There could have been customers who decided not to join us because they're concerned about what they saw or not understanding it, just as everyone's trying to wait and see how all these court hearings and decisions come down and get clarified. But it's unclear to us if we have any sense as what that combo mix is that would have driven that 9% less Oracle number. But I think those are all kind of reasonable conclusions that could have happened.

Okay. Fair enough. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question, Brian Kenslinger from Alliance AGP.

Your line is open. Thanks for taking my questions. It's good to see the earnings power, I think, of the company, and I'm thinking about where the stock is in creating shareholder value. Not sure if your plan for sales investments that you discussed last quarter, which were right when the rulings happened with Oracle, but sales execution was stronger outside of Oracle that you discussed, and you're clearly unsure of what's going to happen with the Oracle ruling and how to react. So are there any thoughts about going to market with what you have today, flexing the earning power of the company, kind of like you did this quarter, better than we all thought, and holding off on investing in more sales and marketing?

Well, Brian, I think the answer is, as I mentioned, we feel very bullish on the market opportunity. We think that As you know, we're not a contrarian business. We are a business that grew all through the biggest economic expansion in history. But when it comes to rougher economic times, as we saw even during the pandemic, Romini Street has a set of portfolio services that are very much needed during times of tight economics, tight monetary policy, type liquidity, we do have services and capabilities that help companies increase profits and reduce costs all at the same time. And so I think when you see the amount of demand out there, minus the challenges we have with the court and working through these open issues, taking that and setting that aside, the market demand is very strong for the services that we're bringing to market. And I think that for us to not take advantage of that would not be appropriate from a management perspective. We said we were going to move up to 90 sellers, that we felt confident that we were executing our go-to-market strategy well enough now that we could begin to accelerate the sales hires again. And we are. We have not changed that position. We said we were going to aim for 90 sellers by the end of the year. We are still aiming for 90 sellers. We have set aside the cash. That's part of our plan. It's all set, and it's part of a reacceleration of the business on the revenue side, and we're committed to driving increased profitability. I think, as you well know, we continually talk about Rule of 40 as a goal for us, and we want to get to that mark, and in order to do that, we've got to hire more sellers to take more business off the table.

Okay. My second question is, it's great to see after two years of, I think, strong effort to make changes, the strong SAP rebound in bookings, at least from what it sounds like on the growth. Are you still seeing decisions get delayed and customers saying, well, wait one year, maybe kick the can down the road? Are you seeing a lot more decisions Maybe go through what customers are saying right now in today's current environment.

I think that we're seeing people make decisions. I think that the waiting period that we saw during the pandemic where people were sort of reassessing budgets, reassessing, I think now people understand interest rates are likely to stay up and stay up longer. I think that's starting to work its way through everybody's budgets and understandings. That means for a lot of companies, as you well know, they have upcoming loans, they have credit lines coming due, they have renegotiations. Those are going to be very problematic for a lot of companies where the cost of capital will be significantly higher. You see us moving very, very heavily into additional retail, for example, where margins are very, very tight. We've seen several go into bankruptcy. So those are anywhere where you've got a tight margin profile, Contract manufacturers, 7%. These are areas that obviously we can help in in reducing costs very quickly and also enabling them to make the other investments that they need in technology to move those businesses forward. So I think, yes, the SAP business rebound was strong. I also think that there was a good mix in the deals. When you look at what closed in the quarter, Remember we used to always talk about the really healthy deals for us or that sweet spot, sort of the $250,000 to $500,000 a year type deal as a bread and butter deal. You want to build your business on that. And then your icing on the cake is your million-dollar-plus deals. And then, you know, you take a look and you've got, we call them the pots and pans, which is anything under $100,000. They fill in the gaps. And so a good, healthy pipeline and a good, healthy set of closes means includes a wide range of those deals centered around that 250 to 500 this quarter and we've seen this increasing in the last few quarters we were missing those you may remember we talked about that several times on calls where we were sort of missing a lot of that mid 250 to 500 we had some big deals we had some smaller deals but we didn't really we were missing a lot in that midsection we are now seeing that midsection fill out nicely And I think you're seeing that drive the business. And we saw growth on the top end. We did over, I think we did 19 deals with TCV, over a million dollars. So again, very strong in that part of the execution as well. And I think it's reflecting a market that is realizing that the services and direction and strategies that Rumini Street's bringing to the table are do have significant merit over some of the vendor programs and other choices that they have in terms of roadmap and direction. And I think that's the kind of adoption we were hoping to get. Our biggest challenge in the market today is we still do not have enough contact points with CFOs and CIOs around the world to know who we are, the full service set of portfolio that we offer, the business problems we solve. and have the best solutions for them to take a look at. So for us, it's still a matter of getting marketing in front of them so they can know who we are and they can pick up the phone and call us when we have these types of business issues we can resolve. That's the real focus for us is that recognition and getting in front of the right people.

Okay. My last question, if you can touch on the sales and marketing expenses, Michael, in the Third quarter, we saw a significant drop, I think, from the second quarter sequentially. I'm wondering, is there something seasonal? Were there any cuts? And how should we think about sales and marketing spend in dollar terms, knowing that you still plan to get to 90 sellers?

So, Brian, thanks for the question. I wouldn't call it seasonal. I would say timing of internal and external events. at a healthy, greater pace in Q2 versus what we saw in Q3. Again, going forward, we're not providing guidance, as Seth outlined, for the factors discussed. However, putting together, as Seth noted, that we're still on our ramp to execute on the opportunities ahead of us in getting to the sales for folks, as we outlined, that stands to reason that you can see this creep up.

Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you. But, Brian, just to add to that, though, I think that you're not seeing or should expect that we're going to be out of our ranges that we have put forth. And as you know, our long-term model, which we say is scale at a billion dollars of annual revenue, we talk about a 33% sales and marketing target in that model. to drive the kind of bottom line we want. So clearly we might have some ups and downs along that lines. We've been sort of in that 33% to 35% range. So while we're not providing guidance on it, I just think that if you look at where we are with the model and you look at where we want to be at a billion, I think you can see that there's sort of a range bound in there that we would expect to operate under, maybe a little up, a little down, while we grow into a sales force. So that could happen as well. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. And with that, that will end our Q&A session. I want to extend the conference back to Seth Raven for closing remarks.

Thank you so much. And I want to thank everyone again for joining us in the third quarter, 23 earnings call. I want to thank all our Romini Street colleagues again for the efforts in the third quarter, which were substantial. We look forward to providing additional information regarding the Oracle litigation and impacts as soon as possible. And we look forward to having you join our next earnings call where we'll discuss the fourth quarter 2023 results and potential select first quarter 2024 performance to date commentary. Until then, we wish you all a continued good health and again our thoughts as always and continued charitable support for those in need, suffering in harm's ways and that many conflicts we're seeing around the world. So they're always in our thoughts, and I want to make sure that we keep them there. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good day.

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.