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spk03: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Infusion's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Following the speaker's remarks, we will open the lines for your questions. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Ignatius Njoku, Head of Investor Relations, to begin.
spk11: Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, including those set forth in our filings with the SEC and are available in the investor relations section on our website. Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements we make today. These forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and the company does not assume any obligation or intent to update them following today's call, except as required by law. In addition, today's call may include non-GAAP measures. These measures should be considered as a supplement to and not as a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure can be found in today's earnings press release, which is available on the company's website. Hosting today's call are Oleg Moshin, Infusion's Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Dorton, Infusion's Chief Financial Officer. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Oleg to begin.
spk06: Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss our third quarter 2022 results. I'm delighted to be here speaking with you, and my role as the company's interim CEO, and I'm honored to have received the confidence of the board to lead Infusion. First, let me introduce myself. I'm a founding investor in Infusion and have been on Infusion's board for over 10 years. I've also worked with the company in multiple capacities for more than 13 years. Since my appointment as interim CEO, I've been focused on engaging with our clients and employees through downfalls, virtual, and in-person meetings. The more time I spend on the day-to-day operations of the business, the more I appreciate the talent and experience of our team. It's the strength and depth of Infusion's talent pool that gives me the utmost confidence we will continue to deliver innovation in the rapidly changing investment management industry. Stepping back for a moment, since the first time I was introduced to Infusion over a decade ago, the company's vision and determination to achieve this vision have been unwavering. The vision has always been to transform the investment management industry with our cloud-native technology and product-driven service. The ultimate outcome of this transformation for our clients would be reduction of operational inefficiencies, cost-effectiveness, and ability to focus on enhancing the investment process and generating alpha. Currently, we're focused on building our top-notch client experience across onboarding, implementation, support, and managed services. Excellent customer service is foundational to the way our clients experience Infusion technology and serves as a critical component of our overall strategy to expand our footprint in the institutional asset management segment. Our focus on quality services and support continues to differentiate Infusion from our competitors. As you know, I'm currently serving as Infusion CEO on an interim basis. The board's top priority is to recruit the next permanent CEO. The board has retained an executive search firm and is currently reviewing a number of high-caliber candidates with terrific backgrounds and strong leadership capabilities. As the search continues, the board is looking for a CEO with strong leadership skills and deep experience in scaling high-growth SaaS businesses with focus on product excellence as a foundation of delivering superior client services. We're convinced that the strength of our brand, execution records, and the tremendous growth opportunity in front of us will attract high caliber executive talent that will lead the company towards its next stage of evolution. I'm extremely excited by what the future holds. We're executing against our strategy of moving up market, unlocking new adjacencies, and expanding our global footprint. We have the momentum to continue generating strong top line growth while maintaining healthy profitability. As you have seen, our results this quarter demonstrate that investment managers continue to embrace the cloud-based digital transformation. As a result, we continue to extend our leadership position as the industry replaces outdated and disjointed legacy systems with our superior software and the service offering. Now let's turn to third quarter results. We're pleased to report another strong quarter as our execution efforts maintain momentum. Revenue grew 35%, to $39.2 million, reflecting continued demand for our products and services. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.4 million, including CEO transition costs of $670,000, which represents a margin of 13.9%. During the third quarter, we generated AAR of $158.7 million, which represents 33% growth year-over-year. This growth was driven by strong sales execution and client adoption across all our product capabilities and managed services. The ongoing durability of our business is reflected in healthy net dollar retention of 116.6%. Including involuntary churn, the NDR was 112.7%. Our healthy net dollar retention and strong AR growth underscore the durable and resilient structure of Infusion's financial profile. In addition, we signed 43 new clients this quarter, ending the quarter with a total of 810 clients. We made material progress with larger investment managers as we signed another seven-figure deal in the quarter. We further penetrated the large institutional fund manager market by signing eight new institutional asset managers, half of which were conversions. Despite the market volatility, and perhaps because of it, we see ongoing strength in conversions, which accounted for 60% of new client wins in the quarter. Now let me discuss several new latest client wins demonstrate our continued sales momentum and the america's revenue again grew 33 percent year over year driven by broad adoption across all our products i'm excited to announce that we signed another seven figure deal with a well-known multi-billion dollar new york-based family office the family office invests in the wide variety of strategies in asset classes including public and private equity fixed income credit currencies and commodities The fund manager was seeking to replace its front, middle, and back office capabilities that consistent of a combination of complex and health systems in disparate legacy vendor solutions which resulted in manual and cumbersome processes. Attesting yet again to our core value proposition, by selecting Infusion, the client significantly streamlined workflows, reduced operational risks, and increased efficiencies. As a result, the family office is better able to meaningfully reduce overhead costs, as well as lessen the burden on their internal resources. We're extremely pleased with this partnership. Not only does it demonstrate our ability to win larger and more complex clients, but also validates the strength of our product offering. In EMEA, revenue grew 41% year-over-year this quarter. We had a record bookings level in the quarter and for the region, with strong double-digit growth. I'm pleased to announce that Infusion won a London-based multi-billion dollar family office. This client employs multiple strategies, including private equity, credit, and public equities. In this competitive takeaway, our fully integrated end-to-end solution, including portfolio management system, order and execution management system, and data analytics are replacing the client's front, middle, and back office technology, which was pieced together from disparate vendor solutions in an obsolete homegrown system. They selected Infusion because of our cloud-based technology and its ability to streamline workflows. As a result, the investment manager drastically reduced the total cost of ownership while creating an opportunity to reallocate resources towards the investment process. Now turning to APAC. We grew revenue by 35% year-over-year as we continue to see healthy demand in the region. I'm excited to announce that we entered into an agreement with a Hong Kong-based alternative investment manager. The investment manager was seeking to replace its 10-year-old provider with a robust cloud-based technology platform that supports compliance requirements in new features like mobile delivery. By partnering with Infusion, the manager adds more functionality, materially reduces the technology footprint, and significantly improves productivity at a considerably lower cost. Finally, I'm thrilled that Apex Group selected Infusion to deliver middle office services to its global fund administration client base. This win represents another example of Infusion's continued global expansion beyond our core market segments and exemplifies our revenue diversification strategy. Apex's group will utilize Infusion for cash and position reconciliation, corporate actions processing, trade affirmation, shadowing and recalculations, and reporting. We're excited to align with Apex to serve their global clients and look forward to our shared growth. Turn into product and technology. We rolled out more than 480 features and enhancements for our portfolio management system and OEMS. Our ongoing focus on expanding our API-driven technology stack and opening data and analytics architecture allows us to drive efficiencies and scale. This framework gives our clients the flexibility to leverage Infusion platform and develop their own proprietary customization and integration capabilities. Notable enhancements this quarter include the improvements of our API technology to support corporate actions reporting, enhancements to OMS compliance, and support for listed and OTC securities transactions. We also launched a new column feature for OMS, which helps in debugging order tickets. Innovation remains a key pillar of our success and sets us apart from our competition. The breadth and depth of our platform, as well as fast pace of product development and system upgrades, allows us to maintain our competitive edge and expand our mold. We'll continue to win in competitive situations where differentiated technology capabilities matter to our prospects. Infusion will remain focused on sustaining such competitive edge going forward. Now, let me briefly comment on the market dynamics. The simultaneous and precipitous decline in both equity and fixed income markets, rising inflation in macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty are causing the industry yet again to re-examine its investment processes and business models. Although we see a decrease in hedge fund launches, the number of hedge fund closures remains moderate by historical standards. While we expect this uncertain environment to persist, we believe our business is resilient as we continue to see strength in conversions as a result of industry focus on digital transformation and shift away from outdated legacy systems to cloud-native integrated solutions. In fact, We have seen this environment play out several times during Infusion's history. As AMs come down and performance delivery becomes more challenging, investment managers tend to question the cost-effectiveness of their status quo technology infrastructure. Such setups historically presented a broad opportunity set for Infusion as a go-to partner, displacing expensive and unstable technology stacks. Additionally, in such uncertain market environments, asset allocators tend to emphasize alternative investment strategies over passive exposures, which falls squarely within our core and adjacent addressable market segments. Our healthy conversion pipeline supports growth opportunities similar to what we saw in the past. As we improve our value proposition and win larger and more complex clients, we expect our revenue mix to continue to shift towards conversions. Finally, I'm happy Infusion is increasingly recognized as the leading software provider within the financial technology industry. As one testament to our industry standing, Infusion was once again included in IDC's financial insight top 100 FinTech list. In conclusion, we delivered solid third quarter results driven by ongoing sales momentum, strong bottom line, and broad adoption across all products and managed services. Our ability to deliver high revenue growth with an attractive profitability profile speaks to the strength and durability of our business and consistency of strategy execution. To that end, I'd like to thank all of our employees for their hard work, dedication, and passion for our brand. Our team demonstrated once again that Infusion is laser-focused on executing and delivering outcomes for our clients at the highest level. By the same token, I'd like to thank our clients for their trust with our most sensitive and mission-critical operational capabilities. I will now turn the call over to Steve to discuss our financials.
spk05: Thanks, Oleg, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We are happy with our performance in the third quarter. We continue to see broad adoption across product lines and across customer segments. This reinforces the revenue growth opportunity we continue to see in our business. In the third quarter, we generated total revenue of $39.2 million, an increase of 35% year-over-year. We made good progress across all product lines and delivered a solid financial performance. Recurring revenue was up 33% year-over-year to $38.5 million. Third quarter ARR, or annual recurring revenue, was up 33% year-over-year from the year-ago period to $158.7 million. Net dollar retention excluding involuntary churn was 116.6 percent compared to 125.9 percent in the year-ago period. Net dollar retention including involuntary churn was 112.7 percent compared to 122 percent in the year-ago period. The sequential decline in net dollar retention was driven by challenging prior year comparables. We signed 43 new logos in the third quarter, ending the quarter with 810 total clients. Third quarter gross profit increased by 30% year over year to $27.2 million, which includes $406,000 in stock-based compensation compared to gross profit of $21 million in the year-ago period. Third quarter gross margin was 69.4 percent, including stock-based compensation, compared to 72.1 percent in the year-ago period. Income from operations was $2.9 million for the third quarter, compared to $4.9 million in the year-ago period. Third quarter income from operations includes stock-based compensation of $833,000 and $670,000 in CEO transition costs in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.4 million in the third quarter, compared to $6.3 million in the year-ago period. This represents adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.9%. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was above our expectations, driven by expense management and cost efficiencies. We remain committed to prudent management of our cost structure as we continue to grow our business. Gap net income for the third quarter was $2.6 million, which includes $833,000 of stock-based compensation, as compared to $3.3 million in the year-ago quarter. We ended the quarter with $63.5 million in cash and cash equivalents. As discussed in previous filings, in October, We issued approximately 1.4 million shares to former holders of award units and a non-executive employee. Including these shares, a total of approximately 18.6 million shares will be distributed prior to October 20, 2023, in one or more additional tranches. Finally, let's turn to Outlook for the fourth quarter. Let me briefly comment on our updated Q4 guidance. Given that we are operating in an environment of greater market volatility, driven by macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, we are seeing some reductions in hedge fund launches and a more measured approach in client purchasing behavior. As such, we are taking a more prudent approach to our fourth quarter expectations. Based on current business trends, we are narrowing the range of our full year 2022 revenue and adjusted EBITDA outlook. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue to be in the range of $39.5 to $40.5 million, which represents 26% growth at the midpoint. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $5.5 million to $6 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.4% at the midpoint. For the full year 2022, we expect revenue to be in the range of $149.3 to $150.3 million, which represents 34% growth at the midpoint. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $18.1 to $18.6 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.2% at the midpoint. For modeling purposes, We expect CEO transition expense of $300,000 for the fourth quarter. We also expect stock-based compensation of $4.7 million for the fourth quarter. Despite the challenging environment, the increased market volatility encourages investment managers to re-examine cost effectiveness of their legacy technology infrastructure. This creates a broad opportunity for infusion conversions, similar to what we have seen in the past. We continue to carefully monitor the current and long-term economic conditions to understand possible impact of our business model and future projections. To summarize, we are very pleased with our business performance in the third quarter. The fundamentals of our business remain strong, and our business model is durable despite market volatility. We have built a leading cloud-based end-to-end investment manager platform, and we have the momentum to continue generating high growth and profitability. With that, we'd like to open up the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.
spk03: Of course, thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you would like to submit for a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, that's star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question.
spk02: We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. Our first question comes from Kevin McVey with Credit Suisse.
spk03: Kevin, your line is now open.
spk08: Great. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the results. I want to start. You gave some really, really good context around seeing different cycles, things like that. I wanted to try to get a sense of the environment we're in. Is there any way to think about what the most parallel kind of time period would be in the past? I just kind of wanted to start on that, if we could.
spk06: Sure. I would probably compare it to a couple of periods that infusion sort of existed, right? So post-GFC, global financial crisis, so 2008, 2009, 2010, then 2011 through 2014, and then I'd say the situation around COVID, which basically came to a screeching halt, which, by the way, when COVID broke out, we essentially froze our entire hiring process for like a month or a quarter to quickly realize that it was a mistake and we kind of restarted all again. And so what typically happens is, of course, people start tapping the brakes. Hedge fund launches either stall because investors that committed capital, they kind of don't follow through on their commitment. It was especially acute. as you probably remember in 2008, 2009. Of course, similar stuff happens in private equity world where LPs simply withdraw the commitments as well. And what typically happens in the past with us, and I have no reason to expect anything different going forward, is despite slower launches, the larger, more complex clients, both hedge funds, sort of enterprise clients that run, you know, billion plus type AUM. They typically look to, you know, not just stay alive, but in general optimize their costs. So they immediately, the first thing they do is to look around and see where they can cut costs and kind of streamline the operations. And this is where we come in. So in the way our business has been relatively convex to the downside when things like this occurred, We were able to demonstrate our total value proposition, replace all the disjointed systems, streamline the workflows, and really allow people to reposition their workforce as well. To the extent that the fund, until recently even, could not pass through the expenses to the investor. For the investment management company, that was a big burden. We're seeing the same thing again, except I guess what's different for us now is that the overall proportion of our revenue is much more heavily tilted toward conversions, right? To a larger, more complex client, they typically take a bit longer to assess, to lend, to align with, to identify functional gaps. And once this is done, we're kind of all good to go. So that shift away from in a way, finding startups, which what hedge fund launches are, to partnering with more mature organizations, we think will provide additional downside protection for this business, if you will.
spk08: It's super, super helpful. And then just one quick follow-up, if I could. It looks like the OEM bookings were 32% in total in the quarter versus 44% in Q2. I guess you're trying to understand what drove that delta.
spk05: So that is typically from quarter to quarter as we have the bookings. It's more in line with the clients and the types of clients that are actually signing in that quarter. And so overall, all of our clients, approximately two-thirds of our clients are utilizing our OEMS platform attributes. And so that we don't really look at on a quarter-over-quarter basis. It just occurs as those new clients are joining.
spk06: Yeah, I would echo that, Kevin. The ultimate proof is in the pudding. Our ability to both sign and implement OMS in a time-efficient manner is our focus. And we do see sort of prevalent utilization of OEMS and EMS capabilities by institutional investors that's kind of a must in a way and we consider it as such and so it'll maybe be up down but the overall trend is definitely up in terms of OEMS subscriptions we do you know as you know we don't typically position the platform in a piecemeal fashion so we don't just sell OEMS or we don't just sell portfolio management system although Sometimes clients are in the market for that kind of functionality, which is okay. And once we sort of land and we sell or we partner on one side of our value chain, like portfolio management system, and clients at the time use some other third-party OMS solutions, which we integrate with almost all of them, over time it's almost inevitable when they have to ask themselves the question, why do we need all of that? And then they kind of revert back to our OMS. So, yes, it's important for us to look at the dynamics of OMS bookings and conversions, more importantly than bookings in my mind, but that's just how the business sort of operates nowadays, if that makes sense.
spk08: Totally. Thank you so much. Very helpful.
spk06: Sure.
spk03: Thank you. Our next question comes from Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs. Gabriela, your line is now open.
spk00: Hi, this is Callie Valencian for Gabriela. Congrats on the quarter and thanks for taking my question. So far, we've been pretty impressed with the durability of the hedge fund market. You talked about the lower hedge fund launches, but are there any other noticeable pockets of weakness or strength, either by size of fund or type of fund?
spk06: I would say yes. What we've seen in the last three to six months is that investors tend to allocate capital to much more stable, what people tend to call multi-manager platform. Some of them are our top clients, very favorite clients of ours, which plays to our strength when the investment management platform has multiple what I would call risk-taking units, portfolio managers or portfolio management teams on the platform. And then they need to have a holistic view on the entire risk and entire P&L, as well as the risk and P&L of each unit. And so that's what I see the business and the model evolving towards. I think large capital, You know all these players that typically have become successful over time, you know, millennium and all the way down. And this is where we find most of our opportunities where the system fits really well because it's sort of like Lego business, if you will. We can service each unit on a standalone basis, but we can then service the entire enterprise and scale as both up and down. If some teams leave and then other teams leave, know expand an entire business expand we typically have capability to grow with the client that way and i would say from launches perspective that's another interesting source um source of launches where you know larger platforms like you know you you know the list elliot and some others a portfolio manager becomes becomes you know um successful for one reason or another. He decides to go on their own, and that's another source of capital that is at the ready and another source of launch.
spk00: Great. Thank you. That was super helpful. Just as one more follow-up, How has the initial traction been with the Infusion Express product? And then how does sales efficiency at this lower end of the market compare to the rest of the business? And then just kind of in that same vein, how is the momentum of the product relative to your initial expectations?
spk06: Great. Thank you for the question. So, you know, we're still evaluating Express. I feel it's too early to draw any kind of conclusions. You know, I think that one reaction when I – did a deep dive into the product is that you know the ability the desire and ability to respond to that sort of quote-unquote lower market that is looking for stripped down functionality uh what we shouldn't be doing i think is we shouldn't be selling our system short and providing just you know so little functionality that it doesn't really capture the full benefits of what the system can do for the for the customer right so the balance then becomes how do we work with our distribution partners on one hand and what kind of commitments related to support both the distribution partners and infusion can make so that becomes economically feasible for the target market that makes sense for us commercially as well and so um you know i cannot you know sit here and straight face and tell you this is all figured out still work in progress and we'll update you hopefully next quarter once we dial things in and make it all airtight.
spk00: Great. Thank you for the detail and congrats again.
spk06: Sure.
spk03: Thank you. Our next question comes from James Facetti with Morgan Stanley. James, your line is now open.
spk01: Thank you very much. Just a few questions on bookings and directional trajectory right now. I guess maybe first, well, let me ask the question this way. Can you give any color on sequential deceleration we saw in conversion as a percentage of bookings in the quarters? This is just kind of the pause that you're alluding to, and how should we think about conversions as a percentage of bookings kind of going forward? What do you think that sales cycle is going to look like?
spk05: We continue to see a majority of our new bookings or conversions, and that really has started in 21 and in 22, and we continue to see that going forward. And so one is we've moved to a resilient client. We are still working and continuing to add on launches and new clients, but we are seeing opportunity with conversions, and we're seeing as conversions come on, the attributes that they're taking on more and more of the platform itself. And so it continues to be a vast majority of our new clients that we're adding on quarter over quarter.
spk01: Got it. And then separately, it looks like, at least on our calculations, that ARPU growth helped offset kind of a slower rate of new logo additions. How should we think about the forward mix of logo growth versus ARPU growth and kind of what in particular is driving that ARPU change?
spk06: You know, I think it's probably, I would say it's probably focused. We try to make sure right now, like in terms of bookings themselves, right? From tactical perspective, not necessarily from strategic perspective, right? I would prefer... everything else being equal, I would prefer a lower number of bookings if that lower number of bookings are actually high-quality bookings. And I can spend hours to define what that means, but in general, it means much better product-client fit from Infusion's perspective, functionality fit, and our ability to deliver value to the clients while sort of keeping the layer of the value added to ourselves and generate return on equity. And in fact, the paradigm that I'm trying to establish at the company really has to do with upfront understanding of how each potential client, given their needs, how we can respond to their needs, both in terms of product capabilities and in terms of services they provide, which by the way, This is what we're increasingly seeing. The larger and more complex clients, especially institutional clients that have both loan-only passive traditional investment management capabilities and what people typically call liquid alts or multi-strategy, flexible, absolute return time type businesses, they increasingly want not just software, but they want, call it white glove, continuous dedicated support teams that really know them you know soup to nuts they know the client really well they're experts in our product and they can provide that ongoing support 24 7 in a timely thoughtful and uh and uh you know pertinent level right and so this this is the ultimately what what conversions are all about. And that's why we sort of take time to make sure we perfect that combination and we perfect the combination of client services with the product that is targeted to those conversions. And so in a way, that's kind of a term that we're trying to use at Infusion, which is we're being sort of labeled as a SaaS company, which is software as a service. But what we really are selling and how those large institutional clients are experiencing us is software and a service, right? And so that understanding, that paradigm is what's helping us to actually win those conversions.
spk01: Appreciate that, Oleg. Thanks. Of course.
spk03: Thank you. Our next question comes from Parker Lane with Stiefel. Parker, your line is now open.
spk09: Hi, this is Matthew Kickert for Parker. Thanks a lot for taking my questions and welcome Oleg to the team. First, what are some of the changes that your team has made since you joined as CEO? Do you think any of those might lead to an increase in the efficiency of go-to-market motion over time?
spk06: Yeah, I would hope so. The biggest change I made, which was my top priority after I had the chance to you know, start being a, you know, what I would call goalie during a warm-up in a hockey rink, kind of really had a chance to breathe and understand what's going on, you know, I kind of quickly realized that the top priority tactically, not strategically, but tactically is to really step up and improve our client services experience. So to that extent, what we've done is we really redesigned the entire workflow. And we did it, by the way, not just in isolation. We had a very deep dive globally. We had a town hall with input from all our key stakeholders, from EMEA, from APAC, and from US. We aggregated that input, we synthesized it, and it resulted in what we believe state-of-the-art client services architecture that really addresses deficiencies that Infusion, we believe, that I strongly believe Infusion had previously, which really revolving around, you know, traditional process when, you know, sales and solution engineers, you know, design a solution, you know, they close a sale and they just hand it over to onboarding and implementation and product. And then from there, new people show up. that don't necessarily have a nuanced and deep understanding of what client's requirements are. And then from there, once implementation is over, the client is then handed over to technical account management. And so during this process, a lot of client-specific knowledge is lost. And so what we've done is we created a structure where onboarding and product are involved very early in the solution engineering process and in the sales process in a way where there's really no handover process. The client upfront knows exactly the team that is going to implement them, it's going to onboard them. And technical account management team is involved precisely at the same time. So by the time the client is live, The same technical account team that played a key role in onboarding is going to continue to support that client going forward. So essentially, we eliminated these gaps that exist in handoffs from one stage like client's journey to the very last stage when client is live. And of course, things happen in real time. We have a very talented technical account management team that is now getting their feet under them and really responded in a timely and effective manner. Like I said, thoughtful and timely manner to, you know, back to the clients. And so that's, in my mind, was that priority tactically. From strategic perspective, you know, it's all about the product. Okay. Infusion since inception was product centric, product driven. We have best in class technology platform. And as we grow, the top priority is for us to make sure that the technology is viewed internally and externally as a centerpiece, as the heart and the brain of Confusion's organization. And to that end, whatever investments we are going to make over the next 12 months, we will accentuate the product as much as we possibly can, and then we'll accentuate client services because this is, from my perspective, it's the highest return on equity we can possibly generate for the shareholders. From a technology perspective, I'm not just talking about filling functional gaps that we currently see with our current clients. It's also innovating and anticipating certain things that we know today that institutional investment managers need. For example, some nuanced compliance logic during the process of order management and execution management order allocation. There's a slew of examples there. And at the end of the day, those are kind of tactical and strategic product capabilities, but also we need to prepare the system to become more scalable and more robust, more resilient, so that we can start processing meal entry of the day so that we can start supporting clients that have hundreds of thousands of accounts and manage hundreds of funds with model portfolios, with flexible allocation schemes, with very sophisticated compliance rules. And those are the things that will really cement our position and with upmarket.
spk09: Got it. That's very good. And then secondly, I'm curious if you've seen any uptick in clients wanting to adopt managed services. Maybe they're potentially trying to run leaner in wake of tighter macroeconomic missions. What does the traction look like for managed services? And where does that fit into your strategy going forward? Thank you.
spk06: We did. And unfortunately, I don't have the number in front of me right now. Maybe Steve can help. But I think we have about 15% now. of overall revenue, it was like single digits just like two, three quarters ago. Steve can confirm the numbers, but it's about 15%. I'm obviously being cognizant of the profit margin, which is again, I'm going back to this whole concept of us being very thoughtful of clients that we're onboarding. not just in terms of the revenue we're bringing in the door, which is the numerator, but what is the denominator? How much it will cost us to support the client? What is the return on capital? What is the return on our time? And is it adequate to actually give the client the best possible value that they're asking for? And so managed services is a big part of it. Now, after this restructuring that I described, managed services is squarely sitting within overall client services, but in some very direct way, it's more or less like a standalone, self-sufficient business unit. You can look at it this way. And in fact, we have an interesting potential client in the pipeline who came to us specifically. It's not an upsell or anything like this. This client, the multi-billion dollar player, they just came to us specifically for managed services. That was their explicit ask. We're going through proof of concept. It's going very well. And I'm excited to see if we can perfect that model and then scale it and scale it, you know, not just with this client, but scale it through and then really deploy the same model globally.
spk05: And if I could, a clarification. So in September of 2021, we had 14% of our clients were actually using managed services. Today it's at 15%, but we are seeing significant growth in our revenue overall, and we're seeing more and more those conversations are happening while they're in the pipeline and while we're looking at closing those clients and continuing to happen as more of our existing clients are adopting that as we go forward. And so today creates a great opportunity for some of our conversions to really kind of lower their total cost of ownership by using our managed services. Right.
spk06: And in my mind, that's a logical extension to what we do. By the way, APEX partnership is a similar, you can think of it as the same way. We're sort of providing the engine for them to perform their managed services. And our services are no different. We just don't have this kind of intermediate layer. We just kind of tap into their client base indirectly, if you will. But in general, our managed services should be thought as product-centric. Without our product, the way we service our clients in that kind of format, we just wouldn't be able to do that. So again, just going back to the philosophy and positioning, product first, everything else revolving around it. Every single person on the client services team is super technical, product expert. We're doing... a lot of work internally to make sure not only we hire the right talent, but we are putting a lot of effort in making sure this talent is being properly educated, trained, onboarded, spend a lot of time and effort over the last three months creating the knowledge base educational program for our employees globally from India to London to Dublin to Hong Kong and Singapore. to make sure everybody speaks the same language. There is a knowledge base online that really covers basic fundamentals of capital markets infrastructure, capital markets in general, financial instruments, as well as overall infusions capabilities at the very deep level. An ultimate idea is to actually have this knowledge base and potentially open it up to our client base so that we actually become partners with our clients and actually teach them how to fish and make sure that whatever tasks are possible to do by them themselves, they can do. And of course, we'll be there to catch whatever is falling through the cracks.
spk09: Terrific. Thank you very much.
spk03: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Koji Akita with Bank of America. Koji, your line is now open.
spk12: Hi, this is Natalie Howell for Koji. Congrats on the quarter. You mentioned that EMEA had record growth, which is great to hear. How do you characterize the demand environment within your different geographies, and do you anticipate that strength in EMEA to be sustained?
spk06: Yeah, you know, EMEA for quite some time has been sort of a, for the lack of a better analogy, a better child. you know, the APEC has been growing at incredible pace. And I think that growth will slow down, but it still will, you know, will be one of the leading growth engines for us. Control for whatever geopolitical issues we may see in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which we, by the way, monitor very carefully. Our team and corporate development team is actually tasked to make sure we have air on the ground there. And we're working on sort of contingency planning to make sure if something happens, God forbid, we have redundancies and we can move the team to a safe location, to Singapore, to make sure that, of course, first and foremost, team members are safe. And second, our services to our clients are uninterrupted. So it's one of the reasons I think marginally, that area will probably slow down. However, to somewhat compensate for it, we do see some opportunities in places like Japan and Australia, which, by the way, challenges our system capabilities. Like in Australia, there is a lot of institutional clients that have interest in our system, but we frankly lack in some of the nuances that are typical to that market. By the way, we're very, very good at that. We're very good at sort of zooming in, figuring out what are the specific regional specific or region specific technology and functional requirements. We've done it in Brazil, we've done it in Hong Kong, and we are going to do it in Australia as well. So we're going to execute on that and that becomes, however small that nuance is, it typically becomes the tipping point for clients to actually engage with us. And so APAC has been growing, but I think we need to sort of diversify away from sort of Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore-type region and go a little outside and see what's possible in Japan and Australia.
spk05: And the EMEA really continues to grow at a really nice pace, both year-to-date as well as this quarter as well. EMEA is continuing to grow at a very fast pace as we move forward.
spk06: Yeah, we are very hopeful that EMEA will reach its full potential and will operate at par with APEC and the U.S., and we see really positive performance from the team. I'm going to India in a couple of days, but London and Dublin is my next stop, just to make sure that we're all aligned and we capture the opportunity set as much as possible.
spk12: Great. That's all from us. Thank you.
spk02: Thank you.
spk03: Our next question comes from the line of Dylan Becker with William Blair. Dylan, your line is now open.
spk07: Yeah. Hey, Alex. Hey, Steve. Maybe to kind of double-click on some of the commentary on maybe a prior question as well, too, how much does the compliance side of things play into their decisioning, right? I'm sure there's an evolving landscape that's kind of handicapped, especially within those larger institutional managers by those legacy tools. But how much of that pipeline momentum you guys are seeing is kind of driven by the complexity on the compliance to kind of standardize some of those operations?
spk06: I'm not sure, you know, that the pipeline momentum is driven by compliance, but I will say that it's definitely important for institutional client managers. Remember just, you know, I guess 10 minutes ago, I alluded to some of the EMS capabilities that are like really specific to the way institutional managers handle their orders. As you know, they have typically model portfolios and then they have relatively sophisticated allocation schemes out of this model portfolio across different portfolios that are client-specific and have specific constraints that are specific to the particular client that actually owns those portfolios. And so sometimes, just one example, there is a slew of them, but oftentimes they tend to want to modify allocation scheme after the order is placed, which is not something we've been seeing in hedge funds. So this is just one example where this change in order allocation, what it actually does, it trips the subsequent compliance check and compliance rules engine. And so that sort of breaks the workflow that exists at Infusion today. And we have a live client that we're working on with to address this precise problem, which seems to be sort of universal across that layer of clients. And the list goes on, so to speak. But compliance is absolutely important, and we're maniacally focused on it.
spk07: Got it. That's super helpful. And then maybe as you think about kind of some of the partnerships, I think you've announced a handful here in the last couple quarters. How should we expect this channel to continue evolving over time, giving you maybe some incremental shots on goals and customer overlap? But what can this unlock from a customer perspective relative to what you guys can kind of currently offer
spk06: around uh around that mission of unifying the the front uh front middle and back office systems thanks okay great question so you know just starting from the end i think the like apex partnership is a sort of exemplary situation where we have you know potential to just leverage our core this is something we do day in and day out not much needs to be changed uh they're benefiting because They can rely on our system day in and day out to solve their clients' problems. They just support it. It's robust. It works. For us, the benefit is indirectly our technology is just sitting in front of their pretty extensive client base. Then it potentially results in them buying our software and actually using it, not just for middle and back office, but actually operate their entire run their entire operating cycle. Some other partnership will include, you will see hopefully in the next quarter, things that actually relate to what our institutional clients, as we see now, asking for, which is relatively new to Infusion, new as in our typical user is you know, either execution trader that sort of pilots OMS, AMS. Our typical user is middle or a back office operating professional that reconciles the trades, you know, runs, you know, different back office processes, runs shadow and EV calculations, operates in the world between prime brokers and custodians and the actual fund. And what we're seeing increasingly, institutional clients want to put this system in front of the decision makers, PMs, traders, investment managers. So what does that mean? So then you need enhanced analytics. If it's relatively simple long-short equity or just simple long-short fixed income portfolio that is managed against a benchmark, all of a sudden you need something like standards, you know, you name it, you know, Barra, Axioma, you know, Equity Data Science, Northfield, you know, typical comprehensive multi-factor risk model framework where you can always slice and dice your risk, calculate value at risk, do performance attribution using factors, do risk attribution, and this is what PMs typically want to see on that front, and this is where we will try to partner with, you know, some of those businesses that actually have a great reputation, they have great systems. I myself used almost all of them in my previous career as a risk manager and I think it behooves us to focus on our product development because if we really, that's kind of a last missing piece, if you will, as far as our target persona that we sell our system to because then PM puts a lot of pressure on all the processes that happen behind just to make sure that the picture he is looking at or she is looking at is airtight and consistent and actionable. And then the idea then after that tool is in front of them, they can then close the loop and from that screen and from that report start making and executing business decisions which should take them right back into order management and execution management. And so the workflow becomes completely closed. Does it make sense?
spk07: Makes perfect sense. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.
spk03: Thank you. There are currently no further questions in queue, so again, to submit for a question, that's star 1 on your telephone keypad. There are currently no further questions in queue, so I will pass the conference back over to Ignatius for any additional or closing remarks.
spk10: Thank you for taking the time to join us today. We appreciate your support and continued interest. We look forward to continuing the dialogue and have a wonderful evening. Thank you.
spk06: Thank you all. Thank you all for your questions.
spk02: This concludes today's Unfusion third quarter 2022 earnings call.
spk03: Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.
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