Alight, Inc.

Good morning, and thank you for holding. My name is Ryan, and I will be your conference operator today. Welcome to Alight's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all parties are in listen-only mode. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded, and a replay of the call will be available in the investor relations section of the company's website. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Jeremy Cohen, Vice President of Investor Relations at Alight. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Earlier today, the company issued a press release with fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. A copy of the release can be found in the investor relations section of the company's website at investor.alight.com. Before we get started, please note that some of the company's discussion today will include forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors. These factors are discussed in more detail in the company's filings with the SEC, including the company's most recent Form 10-K, as such factors may be updated from time to time in the company's periodic filings. The company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. Also, during this conference call, the company will be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the company's historical non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures appear in today's earnings press release. On the call from management today are Stefan Schull, CEO, Katie Rooney, Global CFO and COO, and Jeremy Heaton, Operating CFO. After their prepared remarks, we will open the call up for questions. I will now hand the call over to Stefan.

Thanks Jeremy and good morning. Today marks the end of our initial three year plan. Our aggressive technology and product transformation is delivering a first of its kind integrated HR platform capability that supports employees staying healthy and financially secure. We have upgraded all of our clients from over 6,000 custom solutions to a common SaaS-based platform and taken over 200 million interactions a year out of a private data center and into the cloud. Because of this, we were able to deliver a better experience for 10 million people by tripling the mobile usage through annual enrollment. This capability did not exist 18 months ago. Within the platform, we have built over 1,000 AI content modules, which have taken our engagement rates from 10% to over 50%. This means employees are engaging with us on average 22 times per year. And because of this, our AI decision support is driving $500 in savings on average per participant. This is the foundation for the future that has allowed us to add millions of people while reducing calls per participant by 20% and still achieving record customer satisfaction, all attributable to our product enhancements and better AI capabilities. It is these investments that have allowed us to enter 2024 with a record backlog of revenue under contract of $3 billion, which is up $900 million from three years ago. This is being driven by our high-growth BPAS solutions that have delivered over $2.2 billion of cumulative bookings and included wins such as Nielsen IQ, MasterBrand, and Siemens Healthineers, to name a few this year, and has also generated a 30% BPAS revenue CAGR over our three-year plan. Our strategy has enabled a light to move from a low single digit grower to mid single digits and we've added hundreds of millions of dollars in profit while increasing our operating cash flow conversion from 19% in 2021 to 52% in 2023. It is this track record that gives us the confidence to reaffirm our midterm financial outlook. In fact, we believe there are opportunities to advance our platform and well-being strategy. We have hired financial advisors who have been conducting a strategic portfolio review to accelerate our midterm financial and strategic objectives of becoming a higher margin and more recurring revenue business. In doing this review, we believe we can move even faster to deliver value for our clients, colleagues, and shareholders. As you can see, while we're excited about the long term, we also have to deliver in the short term. In late December, we experienced an isolated impact from a significant retiree health client, which resulted in revenue growth of 9% for the year, short of our expectations. Mitigation efforts in this business and renewal activity of Medicare plans did not offset this impact and represented the majority of our revenue shortfall for the quarter and for the year. This is a specific non-recurring event. Absent the retiree business, Alight's annual growth was nearly 11%. For the quarter, Both adjusted gross margin and adjusted EBITDA margins expanded over 200 basis points with double digit adjusted EBITDA growth. We also grew BPAS revenues nearly 30%. Sales momentum continued with BPAS bookings of $261 million and combined with 3Q, the second half of 2023 finished ahead of the comparable period in 2022, even without the benefit of an extraordinary new win like GE. Turning to our 2024 financial outlook, we expect BPAS revenue growth of over 15% and adjusted EBITDA growth between 8% and 10%. Revenue growth of 4% to 6% reflects the impact from the timing of our 2023 bookings, the exit of the hosted business, and the year-over-year compared to federal thrift. As Katie and Jeremy will discuss, with our record backlog and strong pipeline, we are on track to achieve our midterm revenue growth guidance of 6% to 8%. All told, I'm incredibly proud of the way our team has executed on our transformation, not just in 2023, but over the past few years. To become the leader in this space, it took us 40 years to build the infrastructure to support the most complex organizations globally. And in less than four years, we have extended our leadership position by building a cloud-based platform with the most comprehensive collection of content to transform the HR function. For clients, the output is a one-stop shop that helps them bend the cost curve and deliver a better employee experience with enhanced productivity. Let me give an example of a client where we're helping solve for costs, experience, and productivity. Siemens has been a light client since 1996 and is focused on the health and well-being of its employees. Siemens chose a light to provide high-touch, tech-enabled health navigation services to its employees. Helping employees manage and navigate the complexity of the healthcare ecosystem is an opportunity to not only improve health outcomes, but to improve employee satisfaction. Upon rollout, employees and eligible dependents may choose with confidence to talk to doctors and facilities, or to receive expert medical opinions, surgery decision support, and even medical bill review, all while optimizing the value of Siemens' benefits program. I've spoken at length about driving outcomes for companies and their people and believe that the only way to get the results that clients seek is through engaging employees at an enterprise platform level. As the central hub, the Alight Work Life platform is leveraging AI-based technology to drive better engagement and decisions. To that end, I'm excited to introduce our recently launched next-generation AI engine, Alight Lumen AI. Lumen AI will merge novel and existing AI capabilities into a new, unified ecosystem to deliver product innovation and facilitate an interconnected experience for clients across all our solutions. We believe the tools currently being piloted will be a catalyst that drives value for clients by better engaging their employees across their benefits, such as personalized HR campaigns, health guidance, virtual assistant interactions, and intelligent document processing. This will complement the amazing proof points we see today, including helping a large client realize nearly 50 million in verified healthcare savings through our insights and automation engines by directing better healthcare choices. Helping another organization realize 5.4 times lower new hire turnover through our personalization engine and use of financial counselors by creating a personalized digital onboarding experience for all their new hires. And lastly, helping a large retailer reduce overpayment spend and payroll by nearly 200 million dollars. Examples like these are growing every day and represent real measurable outcomes attributable to our platform strategy. And while great for clients, the outcomes are also great for Alight. These outcomes only happen if employees trust our platform to guide them, and that's why we've been focused on the importance of a mobile-based platform. To give some perspective, this quarter we had nearly half a million monthly average mobile users, an 80% increase from the prior year, and 32% sequentially. Total mobile interactions for the entire year nearly doubled to over 19 million. This matters because first, it means more product penetration, and second, it means users are seeing real value when they do engage. That's the foundation to drive these client outcomes I just laid out and is driving value for our company. Developing Lumen AI and executing on our product roadmap would not be possible without our cloud migration, which is on track for completion mid-year. We'll start seeing the benefits of this program financially in the second half. Overall, I'm more excited than ever that the work we've done will continue to support our clients in solving the most complex decisions impacting their employees' health and financial security. With that, I'll turn it over to Katie and Jeremy to discuss the financial performance and our outlook. Katie, over to you.

Thank you, Stefan, and good morning, everyone. We finished the third year of our plan with robust bookings and a record backlog of revenue under contract of $3 billion. As Stefan noted, we're starting 2024 with a great foundation, with a high-quality and predictable revenue base, meaningful margin expansion potential, and improved cash flow that has strengthened our balance sheet flexibility. This has positioned us to reaffirm our midterm outlook. And as discussed, we believe there is great potential to accelerate the achievement of these objectives and the strategic roadmap of the company. Turning to our Q4 consolidated results. Our high growth category of BPAS solutions advanced almost 30%, and we achieved record revenue from our professional services business. As Stefan mentioned, Employer Solutions' recurring revenue growth was impacted this quarter by a retiree health client. For context, the Alight Retiree Health Exchange is a solution that supports employers and their retirees in securing Medicare coverage. As we've said, the majority of this revenue occurs in December, and this year a significant client defaulted retirees from the exchange into a group plan, which has a different revenue profile. While retirees can opt out of the group plan, we also undertook a number of mitigation efforts to drive higher Medicare coverage renewal activity, though they fell short of expectations. This is a unique circumstance isolated to 2023, and they remain a significant client. This resulted in total revenue growth for the company of roughly 2%. In parallel, we continued our productivity efforts to drive margin expansion and offset much of the revenue impact from a profitability perspective. Adjusted gross profit was up nearly 9%, with significant margin expansion of 260 basis points to 41.9%. Adjusted EBITDA increased nearly 12% to 270 million, with a margin of 28.1%. This represents a 240 basis point increase from the prior year. Our increasing level of profitability, coupled with working capital improvements, are generating stronger cash flow, even as we simultaneously execute on our restructuring program. We generated operating cash flow of $386 million in 2023, 35% or $100 million more than the prior year. This represents a conversion rate of 52% compared with 43% last year. Spending on our restructuring program resumes in the first quarter of 2024, following the planned slowdown during annual enrollment last year. We continue to target mid-year for completing the cloud migration and expect to start seeing financial benefits in late 2024 with full annual run rate of $100 million of savings in 2025. Turning to our bookings performance, we delivered strong results with BPAS bookings of $261 million. Together with the third quarter, our second half bookings were $523 million, nearly 2% better than the 2022 results that included an outsized client win. We are experiencing broad-based secular demand for our solutions and have a proven ability to win both large and mid-market clients. We are also continuing to invest in building out a world-class commercial team, which combined with our pipeline drives increased confidence in our growth plan. With that, let me now turn to our segments, starting with employer solutions. Fourth quarter revenue was up roughly 1%, with recurring revenue nearly flat as a result of the retiree health impact. Project worth strengthened and grew 9.9%. Our profitability benefited from our productivity initiatives, with quarterly adjusted gross profit up nearly 3%, and adjusted gross margin 90 basis points higher at 42.2%. Turning to our professional services segment, quarterly revenue growth accelerated sequentially once again and was up 24.2% to a record $118 million. This was driven by a 31% increase in project revenue due in part to the implementation of large new deals and a nearly 12% increase in recurring revenue. On a profitability basis, adjusted gross profit was up 88% from the prior year, with margins growing 13.5 percentage points. Turning to our balance sheet, our quarter end cash and cash equivalents balance was $358 million, and total debt was $2.8 billion. We continue to actively manage our debt, which is 84% fixed through 2024 and 60% through 2025. Our interest expense came in near the bottom of our range as a result of our prior hedging activity, our opportunistic repricing of the 2028 term loan, and higher interest income. Our net leverage ratio improved to 3.3 times, down from 3.6 times at the end of the third quarter. We expect to achieve our net leverage ratio target of less than three times ahead of our midterm outlook. We bought back 40 million of shares in 2023 with no repurchase activity in the fourth quarter, given the strategic portfolio review we discussed earlier. I'll now turn it over to Jeremy to provide a view of Alight's financial outlook.

Thank you, Katie. Good morning. After delivering on our transformation over the past three years, we begin our next three years from a position of strength. We have our highest backlog of revenue under contract at $3 billion with strong commercial momentum, and at the same time, we have expanded both margins and cash flow conversion. This is being driven by our technology-led solutions and infrastructure upgrades that Stephan discussed earlier. And today, we are reaffirming our midterm outlook across all metrics, and looking at ways we can accelerate even further through our strategic portfolio review. Now let me share the key factors driving our 2024 outlook. First off, we expect BPAS will continue to be our high revenue growth category at over 15% and the driver of our overall trajectory as it continues to become a larger proportion of a light. While total annual revenue growth is expected to be 6% to 8% through the midterm, we expect 2024 to be slightly lower at 4% to 6% that ramps throughout the year driven by the timing of our 2023 bookings, our exit from the hosted business, and our first half compare with the federal thrift. Our initial three-year plan is now successfully complete, providing an opportune time to re-look at our disclosures on revenue growth moving forward. We believe our revenue under contract captures a more complete view of all aspects to our growth model over the midterm versus a BPAS TCV bookings metric. which created volatility that did not reflect the stability of the overall business, and as such, we will no longer disclose. In addition to our record 2024 revenue under contract, we will now share a longer-term three-year view and update it quarterly to provide a greater level of transparency to our book of revenue. We will also continue to disclose BPAS revenue to demonstrate progress on our transformation. As we begin 2024, the business has $3 billion of revenue under contract, For 2025, we have $2.1 billion, and for 2026, we have $1.5 billion. Next, we had a successful first year executing on our restructuring program and are well on our way to a more efficient infrastructure that drives over $100 million of annual run rate savings. We expect to complete the program later this year with some margin benefit in the second half. As this program winds down, there is also a cash flow benefit that is factored into our increased operating cash flow conversion guidance. We expect the seasonality profile in 2024 to be second-half weighted as new deals go live and we see the efficiency benefits from the restructuring program. Our 2024 outlook includes BPAS revenue of at least $870 million or growth of over 15%, total revenue of $3.55 to $3.61 billion or growth of 4% to 6%, adjusted EBITDA of $800 to $815 million, or 8% to 10% growth with an adjusted EBITDA margin expansion of 50 to 100 basis points, adjusted EPS of 72 to 77 cents, operating cash flow conversion of 55 to 65%, and finally, as Katie mentioned, we expect to achieve our net leverage ratio target of lower than three times well ahead of the midterm outlook. After three years, we are confident that our transformation journey has created a strong foundation that will enable us to sustainably deliver value for all of our stakeholders. This concludes our prepared remarks and we will now move into the question and answer session. Operator, would you please instruct participants on how to ask questions?

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while we poll for questions. Our first question is from the line of Scott Schoenhaus with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, team. Thanks for the question. Just curious, are we still expecting sort of a 12-month timeframe for when BPAS book converts to revenue? Follow-up, what are you seeing from your enterprise clients? Is it taking longer? I know last quarter we mentioned it's a long sales process. What are we seeing with large enterprise customer behavior now on closing deals? Thanks.

Thanks, Scott. Morning. I'll take the first one, and then maybe Stefan will take the second portion. So I think 12 months is the right timing. As you know, depending on the solution and the size and the complexity of the client, it can be anywhere from six to 18 months. You think of the larger deals we talked about last year that, you know, in the fourth quarter that don't go fully live until 2025. So there is about a one-year timing that's the right way to model it. And that is part of, you know, as you think about the forward guide for us and the timing and the good momentum we had in the second half of this past year around bookings and how that impacts revenue coming through the business.

Yeah, Scott, good to see you again or hear from you again. You know, the – The momentum in the marketplace is clear around what we've talked about for the last couple of quarters, which is clients are trying to find ways to take cost out. And this whole platform approach around employee engagement and one front door is really helping drive the consolidation discussion. And we're leading that charge. And as you saw in the bookings just in the last half year, I mean, you take out GE, one deal last year really helped drive a big book of business for us. This last year, this last six months, It was really broad-based across a very broad spectrum of clients all along the same theme. And they're all asking us to help them really drive a better employee experience platform, but also take out costs.

Yeah, and Scott, maybe it's Katie. The only thing I'd add to Jeremy's point, your question on the conversion, I mean, that's really why we're giving you greater insight into revenue under contract given the variability of booking. So I think being able to see that quarter over quarter will also – give you confidence in the traction we're making in the market.

Yep, exactly. Thank you so much for all that clarity. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks, Scott.

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Peter Heckman with DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Busy morning. And so I just wanted to circle back to the fourth quarter issue with retiree health. I missed a portion of your explanation there, and then how you were able to offset some of that revenue shortfall with lower costs.

Yeah, thanks to you, Katie. So, in terms of the fourth quarter, I think what we articulated was there was a single client in the retiree business that defaulted the retirees back to a group plan. where those retirees would then need to opt out to continue with their Medicare coverage. So it results in a different revenue model for us. As you know, that business is really December loaded, and so that impacted us in December. What we then were working on obviously was kind of offsetting the potential risk around that client, which fell short of our expectations. So as part of that, from a revenue perspective, we were also very conscious on ensuring we had a profitability plan to continue to stay on track. So, you know, one, all the efficiencies we've been driving across the business, some coming out of the restructuring program, as we've talked about. And I think, too, making sure we retained accountability for our leadership teams for the MIS. You know, that variability and compensation obviously plays a role here. But I think, you know, the important piece is when you think about that revenue component, it is, you know, one time in nature. So it provides a baseline kind of now for how to think about growth going forward.

We don't see it as a recurring event. Does that help?

It does. It does. Thank you. And then I'm sure it's very difficult for you to comment in any real detail on the strategic review, but just try to figure out, like, is this an open-ended review that is including potential acquisitions, potential divestitures, potential financing, potential sale of the company? Is it very broad, or should we infer it's maybe more focused on kind of divestitures, profitable pruning of some businesses?

I think, Pete, thanks for that. It's doubling down on what's been working for us on our platform strategy. As you've seen, the last midterm of the last three years, we've gotten 30% growth out of our platform approach, and we know it's working. And if you look at the next midterm guidance, this is a book of business that's going to be about a billion dollars in business for us, and we want to double down on the front door employee engagement experience. And we want to really move towards a recurring revenue base with that higher margin contribution capability. So if you take those ingredients, we're taking a review in that context. You know, we don't have to own all the systems of record potentially. You know, we can look at different areas where we can partner with people around content. But the battleground really for us is really doubling down on the platform piece. And listen, it's no secret, I've said it before, we're not getting credit in the market for the work that we're doing today, right? So when you think about where we sit on our transformation agenda, it's, you know, how do we continue to unlock that value?

Yeah, and Pete, the only thing I'd add is in the context of that too, right, there's an opportunity to enhance value for our clients. So as you think about that review, right, it's how do we double down in certain areas? How do we drive additional investment in certain areas? That will all play into this to ensure we're continuing to, you know, again, maintain a leadership position in how we support our clients.

That is helpful. Any timeframe there that we should think about?

Not at this point. We're well underway with it. But as soon as kind of we have the outcome of that, obviously we'll come back to the market with the results.

All right.

Appreciate it.

Thanks, Pete. Thank you, Pete. Thank you.

Our next question is from Kevin McVey with UBS. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Hey, I just wanted to circle back on the 24 guidance and try to frame the 4 to 6 relative to 6 to 8. You know, the hosting business, did that impact feel like exiting that? I don't know if that was in the guidance or not, but that feels like 100 basis points. And then If you don't have $63 million of revenue that you expected in Q4, how does that not impact 24? And it seems like a really big number, like $63 million in Q4, that I'm just wondering why you didn't have a better sense of that and how it could have been so back-capped loaded in December.

Good morning, Kevin. It's Jeremy. I'll start with the first part of your question. Just in terms of the guide, yes, the hosted business is about a point of impact on revenue for the year. It is included in the 4% to 6%. And so that is a big piece of it. The second big piece is really just the timing of the bookings in the second half last year and the timing of those go-lives and then contribution to revenue for the year. So those are the two biggest drivers. We obviously also have a bigger grow-over just in terms of the size of what the thrift was in comparison to kind of growth rates coming out to begin the year versus where we were last year. So that's really the larger components in terms of the revenue guide. Again, which is why we're, as Katie mentioned, giving the three years of a guide around revenue under contract because that's, for us, what gives us a view into more of the, you know, out through the midterm in our comfort level in terms of the 6% to 8%.

Yeah, and I think, Kevin, good question on the retiree business. You know, we've said that business is really all driven in December. And what happened with this client is unique in the industry. And so it's very hard to predict, right, in December how many will opt out or not. So the contingency planning we were doing in the fourth quarter was around, right, accelerating renewals of other areas. ensuring kind of we were working to, you know, minimize the potential risk of that. But I think when it came through in December in terms of the number of people that chose to default into the group plan, that drove the majority of that miss.

And it's thousands of interactions that happened during that month of December. And it's not like it's a bookings to revenue delivery issue or anything like that, Kevin. It's a different book of business. that in terms of how it gets executed, you really don't have a lot of visibility into some of those dynamics. And it really was one-off. We haven't seen that before in our book of business. And as Katie said earlier, the new baseline is set. So, you know, we don't see it happening again.

And just so I have it for Katie, I think you said 2% of annual revenue. So that's my math right. That was a $63 million impact in the fourth quarter.

I just want to be clear.

Our point was the miss of the $63 million, the majority of that miss was tied to that client in the retiree business, which drove the total 2% down in revenue versus our 11% guide.

For the full year, right? Correct. Correct. Exactly right. And again, it would have been five to seven, if not, as opposed to four to six, if not for the hosted business, right?

Exactly right.

Yeah, on 24 growth, we'd be at five to seven X, the runoff of that hosted business. Okay. Yes, thank you. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Kevin. Thank you.

Our next question is from Kyle Peterson with Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, guys, and good morning. I wanted to start on how some of your client conversations with both existing and prospective clients are going, realizing we're only six, seven weeks into the year, but just wanted to get a sense as to how some of those conversations are going.

um you know how deals are progressing and kind of what the pipeline looks like as we head into 24. yeah thanks kyle maybe i'll start um i think one the pipeline is very strong right when you think about how the momentum we generated in the back half of last year as you saw right from a bookings perspective um how that's translating into revenue under contract we're continuing to see um kind of good velocity in the first half of this year i think You know, there's been some learnings along the way too, right? You saw growth in the professional services segment, right, tied to some of our bigger deals, right, tied to the partnerships with Workday and others. So I think, one, we've also learned, right, continuing to build those partnerships is an asset for us. While also bringing our total book of business to our clients, we can solve cost, productivity, and experience challenges that, honestly, all of them are facing today. That is resonating in the market. And I think with the investments we've made in the commercial teams and really kind of bringing those use cases to our clients, I think that's helping drive the pipeline we see today.

And we're seeing a continued, as I said a few minutes ago, Kyle, a continued push to what we've seen in every other industry, best of breed to enterprise in terms of consolidation, simplification. all centered around doing better by the employee, around driving better employee engagement. There's no secret. I've said it for the last four years. Employees need a lot more help. It hasn't changed in terms of the help they need around staying healthy and financially secure. If anything, the pressure now around economics, you know, it was easy two, three years ago during COVID to spend more money on employee engagement. Every CEO approved everything HR executives have said. around spend rate on employees. That has changed. I've seen a dramatic shift with a lot of CHROs under a tremendous amount of pressure in not being able to spend what they want to spend. And so what do you have to do? You have to look at where the current spend is, what's the value of that spend. Engagement rates are still very, very low in terms of usage of a lot of these powerful systems the reason is because you have to go to multiple places to get access to these things and they're complicated so we've been on this you know now into our year four of our transformation journey to platform consolidation of a lot of these data sources you know providing a mobile experience as you've seen some of the data it's amazing to see how many interactions are happening on a mobile phone all in the name of providing a better easier you know consumer grade experience like we experience everything else in our life right and I think Clients are looking for us to be the supporter in driving that kind of consolidation and simplification. And by the way, here's the other good news. Look at the ecosystem at large, whether it's Microsoft or ServiceNow, great companies out there all trying to drive towards integration platform. kind of an approach. And so we're right along for the ride and actually leading the charge in a specific category around HR. So I think it's an exciting time for us.

And we named, Kyle, you saw Siemens, Opel, all of those are the proof points of what Stefan just said. One in global payroll, Right, one across the benefit landscape, bringing that integrated ecosystem and experience together for clients is helping us win.

And the ROIs are big. Those are big dollars I talked about in the calls, you know, and there's other ones that I wish I could talk more about, but it's very sensitive data, unfortunately. But there's some big, big impacts that we're having for a lot of big clients around the world.

That's really helpful. Just as a follow-up, I wanted to touch on your priorities for capital allocation. While this portfolio review is ongoing, you guys mentioned that you didn't repurchase any stock in the fourth quarter in conjunction with this. But I guess, how should we think about your priorities for what you're going to effectively do with some of the cash you guys generate outside of organic initiatives you know, while this review process is ongoing.

Sure. Let me take that one, Kyle. Good morning, Jeremy. So, you know, I think unchanged for us in terms of our capital allocation priorities. I mean, certainly proceeds would give us the benefit and accelerate some of those activities, but it's always going to be strength of the balance sheet and, you know, where the balance sheet is, leverage levels, as Katie talked about and I talked about as well. And then looking at both organic and inorganic opportunities for us. A lot of that will be tied into what we're doing with the strategic portfolio review. And then finally, it's capital return to shareholders in looking at the buyback. And yes, as Katie mentioned, tied to the strategic review, we did not have a share repurchase in the fourth quarter, but we'd certainly look to do that.

Thank you. Kyle, are you there? Thanks, Hal. Thank you.

Our next question is from the line of Tian Xin Huang with J.B. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Just wanted to clarify on the isolated impact on the retiree health. Was there any offsetting revenue that came in on the professional services side? Because that was quite strong, especially on gross profit. So just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything unusual there.

No, actually, I mean, the professional services business has really, I think, hit its stride in the second half, particularly in North America. We did still see some softness in Europe. That has kind of continued through the year. But, you know, again, kudos to the team. I think, one, in terms of, you know, the first co-sell partnership was also with Workday. Two, obviously tied to some of our bigger wins like GE, they saw a benefit. And three, I think just continuing to build on the momentum in the market has helped them.

Thanks for that, Katie. And just my follow-up on the – just bridging the 9% growth in EBITDA at the midpoint against the 5% growth at the midpoint for revenue. Can you maybe talk to gross profit versus OPEX outlook for the year in 24? I know that you have the cloud conversion piece, and that's more savings than fiscal 25. I just want to make sure we get the cadence of all that right.

Sure. I'll take that morning tensions, Jeremy. Uh, so yes, so 50 to a hundred basis points on the EBITDA line, it'll be greater than a hundred basis points on the gross margin line. Um, we, you know, as you saw a strong performance in the second half for us, the continuation around many of the productivity initiatives that are underway and then in that, you know, really kind of late into the third and the fourth quarter, start to see the benefits of completion of our restructuring program. And again, that helps in the acceleration in terms of what we laid out at Investor Day last year, and we're kind of continuing on that path.

And the only thing I'd add attention on OPEX is, right, as you saw, right, some of the key investments we've made this year in commercial and product, right, from an OPEX standpoint, wrap around into next year. So, You know, you have kind of that run rate first. I think some of the efficiencies were driving hitting gross profit first.

And just quickly to clarify, it's helpful from both of you. So OPEX in the second half versus the first half, anything to underline there?

I mean, I think kind of how Jeremy phrased it is you're going to see a ramp in margin, both gross margin and in EBITDA through the course of the year because you will see more of the benefit in terms of the savings coming in Q3 and Q4.

Okay, so just assume a ramp is the preliminary view. Okay, thank you.

That's right.

Thanks for clarifying.

Thank you. Our next question is from Pete Christensen with Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. Stephane, Katie, I'm just curious on the timing of the strategic review. I mean, just considering you're reiterating your medium-term outlook, last quarter seemed upbeat on a number of aspects. Granted, there's been some top holder rotation in recent weeks. I'm just trying to understand how we got to this point. And then just as a follow-up, hopefully the last question on this retiree client change, is there any aspect of the revenue profile for that contract? Is that now more deferred? Is the timing of revenues any different, or is it just the bulk of the miss is really just realized here at this point? Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Pete. I'll start with your last question, which is exactly how you ended it, right? It's kind of a one-time reduction in revenue as those participants have moved to a group plan. So we won't see that, you know, revenue return next year, but we also won't see an additional decline. That's the new baseline, as I said. From the strategic review portfolio, you know, I think what I said, Stefan kind of said it earlier, which is we do believe in our strategy, and I think we have made progress for our clients, for our colleagues, for our shareholders, but, you know, aren't necessarily seeing the return in the market. and I think should always be evaluating are there ways to accelerate our strategy, right, in terms of, you know, as we look at the next three years. So we've executed on what we said for the past three, and now, you know, it's time to take a look and make sure we're, you know, we're evaluating all options to continue to accelerate our strategy in the best way possible.

You know, when you look at where we started with this journey just three years ago, you know, 300 million now going to a billion over this last midterm and this one, That by itself, you know, between 30% CAGR in the first midterm going to 15% CAGR in this midterm, that's pretty – we think it's exciting. And we see the impact of that book of business being a recurring book of business, better profitable book of business. And as we've said now a few times, the impact of that to our clients. I mean, at the end of the day, the North Star of what a light is all about is if we have 40 million people looking to a light to be the front door for keeping them healthy and financially secure – The TAM of that opportunity puts us into one of the most important opportunities in the marketplace, period. And I've been doing this for long enough across different segments, and I have never seen an opportunity at this large scale. But it's all wrapped up in this larger company with high growth and low growth and different segments of the business that I've talked about for the last few years. So, how do we recast the recipe? And as Katie just said, and I said it earlier, we're just, and we're not getting value as a total company or as a, as an entity within the rest of the light for what we're doing, as you can see. Right. And so we're trying to figure out how to unlock that, how to double down on that, how to get a better capital structure to support the continued investments. in driving towards a platform company, because whoever arrives at that station will become one of the most important companies in this industry, because that's that's the sheer size of the opportunity in front of us. And the other good news is, as crowded as the tech world is, there's nobody doing this today effectively at our size and scale, like nobody, you know, and I think that's the opportunity. So we have to move quickly at pace to take advantage of that. And that's the other piece of this, which is how do we actually accelerate the success we've had in that category?

Thank you both. I think there's some fair comments in that. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Heather Balsky with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. On the strategic review, you talked about moving to a more recurring book of business or your focus on a recurring book of business. And I know we spend a lot of time talking about the BPAS platform and its growth, but I think our understanding of sort of the legacy business and the broader portfolio, I think there's a lot kind of maybe we as health analysts or investors don't fully appreciate. And can you just kind of walk us through the portfolio at a high level? How much of your revenues are recurring revenue? outside of project revenues, what else is there that's more transactional in your business? Just kind of like a high level of what the portfolio looks like today.

Yeah, thanks, Heather. And I think, I mean, you see a little bit of it, obviously, in our financials. So we're 83% recurring today, 82% to 83%. 84, sorry. 84% recurring today, as Jeremy corrects me. Right, which is great. But I think, you know, there's still, when you think about how we enter the year in terms of revenue under contract, there's still, you know, an opportunity to continue to enhance that. And so within, I mean, within the portfolio, again, We love all our assets. We're not saying there's an asset that doesn't necessarily make sense. It's how do we optimize how we're utilizing those assets to best serve our clients? And are there other ways to continue to do that in the form of partnerships, right, where there can be additional investment into that? you know, different different parts of the business to accelerate that trajectory. So again, from a portfolio perspective, we've talked about at length, you've got employer solutions, you have professional services, within that there's obviously a number of assets that, you know, comprise both. But the recurring revenue nature today is about 84%, if that helps.

And don't forget, that's only one set of perspectives, Heather, right? The other piece is not every dollar is created equally, even within the recurring landscape. Some of them have higher profits as you move up the food chain on value around AI and platform. Those are driving higher gross margin contributions. So we're also focused on not just the recurring equation, but the margin contribution equation and the value of what that drives in terms of just giving us capital-like capability outcomes. to go after other investments. So it's not just recurring, it's also the margin contribution profile of it.

Does that help? Yeah, it does. Thank you. And as a follow-up, another big picture question, but as you look to 2025, and I realize we're a long way from there, but as you think about the bookings you have to date, especially with the GE contracts coming in, it sounds like later in the year. I guess, what do you need to accomplish this year to be back at that 68% range as you exit the year? How much visibility do you have to the acceleration, especially when you think of your guidance range, low and high end? Just kind of help us think that through.

Hi, Heather. It's Jeremy. I'll take that one. I think that's exactly why we're now showing this three-year view, right? I mean, you can look and see $2.1 billion already under contract in 2025. That does include some of those larger deals, right? And if you talk in a shorter-term period, you don't quite get the visibility into what that looks like. So that's a starting point for us today. If you look at continued commercial momentum that we had in the second half for our teams to deliver on, Those are the bigger pieces of what we need to deliver on. So we're on the way already with the momentum that we had in the last two quarters and continuing to build that revenue under contract. Those are the biggest pieces that we look at today in terms of just the overall execution plan.

I mean, in three years, Heather, in 21, we had $2.1 billion of revenue under contract, and in 24, we have $3 billion. That $900 million delta is a collection of just the sales momentum, the quality of the book of business. And I think that's pretty powerful in terms of giving visibility into what the future revenue architecture looks like. That's a big swing from 2.1 to 3. And then as Jeremy said, in our midterm in 2026, we already have a billion and a half in place three years out. That's pretty powerful for us to consider as a baseline three years out to have that much already under contract.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Joseph Raffi with Canaccord Genovese. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just maybe on some of that momentum in the go-to-market and the potential for share gains, new logo wins. I think a lot of large enterprises today clearly have best breed capability in all the services you provide, but they're all siloed a little bit more with different vendors. And So, you know, I'm just kind of thinking about almost even from my own personal experience, you know, the cost to deliver for you first, you know, in a single holistic, you know, approach for employees of large enterprises versus the kind of best of breed siloed approach. just trying to get a little bit more understanding on one, you know, overall cost to provide for you versus those others, and then a quick follow-up.

Yeah, listen, it's the, you know, I've talked about that just on this call a couple of times, right, around, you know, and I'm lucky to have been part of probably the biggest technology transformation wave in With Best of Breach Enterprise across ERP and supply chains. We've all lived it, right? When Best, there were hundreds and hundreds of vendors across GLAPPO and financials and that world, you know, largely collapsed with Oracle and SAP and, you know, a few handful of vendors at Infor where I was as well. you know, owning that move from best of breed to enterprise. That never happened over the last 20 years in HCM, right? And in the space that we're in. So four years ago when I came here, I saw exactly the point you just said, which is there's got to be a better way. Employees engage today with between 20 and 50 different systems. The engagement rates, I mean, are between 1 and 5%. The fact that companies get away with that for their employees is staggering. You would never have those kinds of statistics in the world of ERP or supply chain or revenue type systems. You would never survive that. So I always have to ask myself, why do companies survive that today? And it's just lack of focus, lack of The fact that there is somebody out there who's built this end-to-end platform. So that's what we started four years ago because the ROI, the cost takeout, you talk to a CIO in Fortune 500 and their world, how they've changed their world in the last couple of years, they were 90% focused all around driving ERP, revenue systems, client, you know, consolidation work. They've all flipped over now to the HR side and saying, wow, what a mess and what an opportunity at the same time. And that's the void we've been trying to fill. And we've given some great use cases. You know, Katie, why don't you talk about the Siemens one as an example?

Yeah, Joe, I mean, even we discussed Siemens on the call today, right? I mean, part of the reason, because we, you know, own the underlying administration, right, then you can add some of the guidance, those capabilities, as Stefan said. You increase engagement, you can guarantee an improved outcome for companies. not only the client, but their people. And so I think that's really powerful. So when, you know, your question on underlying cost, I'd almost turn it around a little bit. It's almost more like underlying outcomes that reduce costs, right, and improve the experience. That's the power of what we do.

And the reason why I'm here, just to be super blunt about it, is not because I want to drive consolidation on ERP and revenue systems. There's a higher calling opportunity I've talked about for four years. It makes me so frustrated how many people make the wrong decisions on back surgery, knee surgery, clinical decisions. How many people can't save enough for retirement because they just make the wrong decisions? Half the employees make wrong decisions around benefits. I mean, it's staggering to see the mistakes that happen across our employee population. And these are the biggest, most important companies in the world. So I sit here and say, we can do better. And how do we help our clients do better by their employees? You got to use systems of record, powerful data sets like we have access to, trillions of data sets, not billions. We have trillions of data sets that that we have access to across people's money and people's health decisions. And if we use that the right way through a consolidated mobile experience and work life, I know, and we have shown it, we can make a big impact in how employees make better decisions in the most important area of life. I mean, there's nothing more important than being healthy first and then having enough money to retire when you want.

Sure. That's great. That's great commentary. It was a busy morning, so I apologize if this was asked. But on the strategic review, should we be looking for kind of, you know, different different different data points or different pieces of news coming out of the strategic review? Or do you think it would be kind of a all at once outcome there? Thanks a lot.

Yeah, I think what I'd say, Joe, is, you know, we're well underway, as I've said, with the review.

So our intent is, you know, as we have kind of outcomes to share, we will obviously bring it to the market. So tough to say, given where we are in the process. But I think the key in that piece is, you know, the idea is to accelerate our strategy from where we are today. And, you know, we'll be back with, you know, as soon as we have an update on next steps.

Great. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Joe.

Appreciate it.

Thank you. As there are no further questions, I would now hand the conference over to Stefan Schalk for closing comments.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I really appreciate the time you took with us today. We look forward to seeing many of you with upcoming conferences in the next few weeks and months. Thanks for the time.

Thank you. The conference of Alight has now concluded. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.