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spk09: Greetings and welcome to the InvestNet fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Brian Shipman, head of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir.
spk06: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to point out that our earnings press release, supplemental presentation, and associated form 10K can be found under the investor relations section of our website at investnet.com. This call is being webcast live, and a replay will be available for one month on our website. During the call, we will be discussing certain forward-looking information. This information is based on our current expectations and is not a guarantee of future performance. I encourage you to review the cautionary statement on slide two and three for potential risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed by the forward-looking statements. Further information can be found in our regular SEC filings. During this call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our appendix in our presentation for reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The presentation is also posted to the InvestNet investor relations website. Joining me on today's call are Bill Krager, InvestNet's chief executive officer, and Pete Dorigo, the company's chief financial officer. Bill and Pete will provide a company update as well as an overview of the company's fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. During the Q&A, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up. You may get back into the queue if you have additional questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.
spk03: Thank you, Brian. I want to thank everybody for joining us today. I'm excited to report our fourth quarter and 2021 full year results. Last year at this time, we introduced a strategy to deliver on a vision that InvestNet is uniquely positioned to achieve. We have a formidable market position and are tightly connecting our industry-leading capabilities, which is a distinct competitive advantage that InvestNet will leverage for sustained growth and profitability over the years ahead. We're executing on the plan we introduced last year, and the results we posted speak to the significant progress that we are making. I'd like to call out a few tangible achievements for 2021. First, we doubled our net asset flow in AUM&A to $54 billion excluding conversions as we began to focus on opportunities in our current account base. We also advanced digital connectivity to our clients, delivering 11 million insights a day that enable our advisors to take actionable steps based on their clients' unique needs. We also signed with 291 new firms, RIAs, banks, fintech companies, enterprises, and embedded environments, connecting them to the power of the InvestNet ecosystem. We made impressive progress last year, and as we look ahead, we are on track to deliver accelerated revenue growth and hit the $2 billion in revenue we forecasted by 2025. We're also on track to generate 1 billion insights a day for our network by 2026. And we're lastly on track to deliver a modernized, connected digital environment that uses data to scale a full range of financial wellness capabilities. Our guidance as we look ahead reflects the relevance of our strategy and the rigor and focus on execution that we've applied. The pieces are in place, we have strong momentum, and we're delivering. Pete will provide thoughts on 2022 in a moment. But as you know, we've been speaking about a growth strategy for the last several quarters, and I want to share with you how we're doing. First, we're capturing more of the addressable markets. With over 108,000 financial advisors that manage $5.7 trillion in assets on our platform, we've been focused on going deeper. Our process is powerful. We are able to pinpoint opportunities for advisors to introduce value-added services to their clients, and they are having success engaging with them. Here's what I mean by this. I mentioned earlier that we had doubled our net flows year over year. And within these net flows, the mix coming from assets under management was much higher last year, at 70% up from 49% the year prior. This was an intentional concerted effort for us. AUM flows typically generate higher fee rates for the higher value services that we provide and have a positive revenue growth benefit. Within AUM flows, Our personalized investing capabilities continue to grow at an accelerated clip, reaching $61 billion in total assets under management. This is happening across the board with these services. For instance, assets utilizing our overlay services grew by 57% last year. The number of advisors using direct indexing solutions expanded by more than 50%. and flows in our sustainable investing strategies doubled year over year. These early results are encouraging, but what's more important is that the structure and approach we have put in place is highly leverageable, and we believe will drive accelerated success in the quarters that lie ahead. Next, we've been focused on modernizing the digital engagement marketplace, providing our clients with a full set of market leading technology. 2022 is a year of execution for us. You see, we are moving from build mode to delivery mode on several key initiatives. We've already gotten started. Our next generation proposal tool is rolling out to our clients and today more than 1200 firms have access to it. This tool creates greater productivity for the advisor, while connecting them to the broader set of InvestNet solutions. We have developed a new best-in-class client portal, and the feedback from early users has been nothing short of extraordinary. We're beginning phased rollouts of this client portal this coming April. Also, InvestNet is driving scaled connectivity for our clients. Yodlee US Open Banking APIs went live mid-year last year, And in a very short time, we've enabled many of our largest clients to connect better with their clients. We're projecting by year end 2022, we will manage 80% of Yodlee data requests through these APIs. This modernizes the data offering, enables us to add value in new ways to these clients. And finally, the last pillar of our growth strategy. We're opening our platform to the ecosystem. The InvestNet marketplace is extremely valuable digital real estate, and by connecting more and more solution providers, we centralize and we concentrate industry experience and drive more benefits for our clients. Here's some examples. The Yodlee Developer Portal makes it easier for our fintech clients to onboard and integrate their solutions. Over the last two years, we have seen usage in this portal up over 80-fold. We launched last year API developer environments for both all of InvestNet and for MoneyGuide. Our clients are using these environments to customize their InvestNet experience, and importantly, third parties can directly connect their offerings to the ecosystem, resulting in more options for our clients. What's coming ahead is even more exciting. This year, we will combine all of our developer portals into a unified experience, creating a single entry point to the entirety of the InvestNet ecosystem. This breaks new ground for our industry and is a one of a kind for our marketplace. And then finally, we're growing the number of solutions on our platform. We continue to expand the choices that clients have. We've announced partnerships with UBS and iCapital for a full suite of alternative investments. We've partnered with Yieldex for greater fixed-income solutions, and we've partnered with Simon for commission-based annuity products as well as structured notes. Each of these builds upon the market-leading platform of solutions that InvestNet offers our clients. We're executing on our strategy, and by pulling the pieces of InvestNet together, we are aligning and enabling the future for our clients. One recently noting to me, you aren't just hitting the bullseye, you are in the exact center of the bullseye for us. This is great news and tremendous progress, but we are not taking our foot off the gas. I'm very excited about the year ahead for InvestNet. Let me highlight some of the capabilities that you will hear more and more about over the quarters ahead. Our data and analytics business is helping our clients more deeply engage the 30 million small business owners in the U.S. by building a powerful aggregated environment for SMBs to connect the disconnected parts of their business. This is a huge opportunity for our data business that we're very excited about. Our cloud-based data management solution aggregates, reconciles, enriches, and publishes data for our clients. It provides data insights and recommendations. It powers next-gen business intelligence and it fuels all of our network's technology capabilities. You will hear us talking more and more about this offering over the rest of this year. At the Advisor Summit, which we will be hosting in person this coming May, you will see how all of these parts come together into an exciting multidimensional experience for our marketplace, connecting from end consumer to the advisor, to the advisor's business, to the home office and enterprises, to the network of solution providers that our ecosystem offers, networking all of InvestNet and our partners into a fluid, leverageable engine that powers the future. And the future is the intelligent financial life. We're using our market position and our full range of capabilities to grow our footprint and serve our clients more deeply as we drive faster growth and ultimately drive more profitability for our business. Now let me hand it over to Pete, who will take you through our financial results and our outlook for 2022.
spk02: Thank you, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. Our fourth quarter results continue to demonstrate the strengths in our business model. We expect the momentum from the last few months of 2021 to carry through into 2022. Adjusted revenues for the fourth quarter of 2021 grew 21% to $320 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was $56 million, slightly ahead of our guidance range, and this reflects the expected progression of investments we announced last February. Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was 50 cents. Our complete guidance is laid out in the earnings release and in the earnings supplemental presentation, but I want to highlight a couple of items. In 2022, we expect adjusted revenues to be between $1,360,000,000 and $1,385,000,000, up approximately 15 to 17% compared to 2021. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between 270 and $280,000,000. Consistent with our past practice, our guidance is based on asset levels as of year end 2021. Most sell-side analysts' current published estimates include contribution to revenue and EBITDA as a result of market appreciation. For clarity, on a like-for-like basis, our guidance is in line with consensus. Adding some detail about our revenue outlook for 2022, first, our wealth business performed well in 2021. As Bill mentioned, record net flows during the year are a substantial driver of organic growth. and the revenue from these assets will contribute a full-year benefit in 2022. Second, our subscription business continues to grow steadily in both segments, with accelerating recurring revenue growth in the data and analytics segment from around 2% in 2021 into the high single digits in 2022. For expenses, pandemic-related circumstances again suppressed our 2021 adjusted operating expenses, which we believe is unsustainable longer term. Around $15 to $20 million of operating expense favorability compared to pre-pandemic levels can be attributed solely to an operating environment that limited travel, in-person advisor and client support, and other activities. This is important context as we consider our outlook for 2022. We are actively managing our expenses as we are moving into the second year of our accelerated investment initiatives. Among the areas on which we are focused, are first, what I would call normal expense growth to support the needs of the business today, including supporting additional customer activity as the business grows. Second, a partial restoration of normal spending levels that we experienced prior to the pandemic for certain items. In this category, we've assumed a broad resumption of business activity over the course of 2022, but still at levels below where they were in 2019, including, for example, the return of an in-person advisor summit. Finally, we continue to anticipate the accelerated investments announced last year to have a full-year impact of $45 to $50 million, as we have discussed on the past several earnings calls, which will affect adjusted operating expenses by $15 to $20 million year over year. These expenses are primarily what is driving the progress Bill mentioned and laying the foundation for extended revenue growth and profitability. In the first quarter, we expect to have the full amount incorporated into our expense structure, and this will be the low point for our EBITDA margin. We expect sequential quarterly EBITDA growth and margin as we turn the corner in 2022, accelerating into 2023. As we move through 2022, these components will become less separable, becoming the core of our expense base. We are focused on maintaining reasonable expense growth relative to our revenue growth going forward. Briefly, on the balance sheet, we ended December with approximately $430 million in cash and debt of $850 million, making our net leverage ratio at the end of December about 1.6 times EBITDA. Thank you again for your support of InvestNet, and Bill has some closing remarks.
spk03: Thank you, Pete. We have clearly made a lot of progress, and we are enthusiastic about where it is leading. We're enthusiastic about what our work means for our clients and for our business. The work we have done is important and exceptional and will have a meaningful impact in the quarters ahead. But today is a day where I think all of us are struck by the uncertainty of our world. Today is another reminder that life shifts in disruptive ways. Stasis cannot be the assumed state. Conditions change. On some days, for unimaginable reasons, the risks flash brighter and glare may compromise how you see opportunity. I would think many of you are feeling some sense of this today. And so are millions and millions of others who now suddenly have a deeper sense of insecurity. In a meaningful way, this connects to the work we do and the purpose that drives us. Insecurity is felt When things happen outside people's control, one of those things should not be the money that people have. Our work is breaking down the walls of a person's financial life, creating greater clarity, much greater control, and in the end, yielding far greater value from the money that they have. This drives a stronger sense of personal security and enables people to better weather the uncertainty that the world will inevitably cause. It doesn't solve the things outside of people's control, but the work that we do helps our clients put more within a person's grasp. That is valuable and it is essential. We are focused on delivering this to more and more people. The InvestNet team, this is the purpose that drives us. It is important value for our clients. It drives important value and security for their clients, and it creates increasing value for our shareholders. Our thoughts and prayers today are with the people of Ukraine. I will now turn the call back to Hector, who will moderate your questions. Hector?
spk09: Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would 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. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Hey, great. Good afternoon, Bill and Pete. How are you?
spk03: Good, Devin. How are you doing? Looking forward to seeing you.
spk00: I'm doing. Yeah, you as well. I'm doing great. I guess since I'm first in the queue here, and I'm sure this will come up, I'm not sure if you guys can shed any light or perspective on some of the recent press articles just around private equity interests in the firm and a potential, I guess, process that's underway and And, you know, even if you can't get into any details, how, you know, a situation like that might affect strategy or, you know, kind of the next year or two for the firm.
spk03: Thanks, Devin. And, you know, just our policy and my been very consistent about not commenting on what's in the media or any rumors or speculations that are out there. And, you know, I know there's been a spate of articles, but, you know, at the end of the day, I'm not going to comment on any speculation. You know, we are, hopefully it's clear in what, you know, our prepared remarks stated about how focused we are. We are really been working hard to align the organization behind a strategy that gives our company a sustained competitive advantage. And, man, we are making progress. And we have our head down on that, very focused on making that progress. The key now is really to connect our strategy to our clients so that they're receiving the benefit of all of InvestNet. networking more and more to more of the industry partners that we have and making sure the industry understands as a whole the important work that we're doing and how it meaningfully shifts the stage for the value of advice going forward. We're making investments and making sure that those investments are yielding progress, and they are, but I'm dead focused on that. And at the end of the day, all of that is going to lead to something that we let off the call last February with was we want to drive sustained, faster revenue growth that has a lot of leverage and can drive more profitability for the business. That is what I'm focused on, period.
spk00: Yep, got it. Well, thanks for that. Indulging me there. And then I guess a follow-up, and I guess the last point you just made, Bill. So seeing some even nice flow momentum in the fourth quarter, and I know the expectation is that over time that's going to accelerate based on the investments. Just to unpack that a little bit, you gave a little bit of detail in the prepared remarks around some of the drivers of the strong flows. But maybe just to kind of dig a little bit deeper, is there any seasonal benefits in there or kind of anything else that It may not necessarily recur. And then just remind us on impact of market volatility. Clearly this year has started on a much more volatile note than we saw throughout all of last year. So just any early indications from that as well.
spk03: Yeah. And Ryan, I'm sure you followed the market today. Today is an indication, right? No, there's no seasonality in that. What that reflects is a concerted, focused effort of ours. And, you know, as we talked about this last February, we understood very well that there was a significant opportunity for our business in the $5.7 trillion that we serve and the millions of accounts that we serve. And what we needed to do was get that focus, apply our data analytic tool to our account base so that we could pinpoint exact opportunities for advisors to add value to their clients. And so we organized around that. You know, there are resources that are super focused to make sure that we're connecting those insights to advisors who are connecting that to their client. And you're seeing the results, early results of that effort around a few use cases. And I spotlighted some of the growth rates in our our overlay business, our direct index business, as well as in our impact and sustainable assets. We'll expand those use cases, utilizing our recommendations and the apparatus that we've put in place to drive more and more penetration of the current addressable market. That's leg one, Devin. What I'm getting excited about now is that as we're introducing some of the modernized technology into the market, you know, we've got Our proposal tool that's reached the desktops of 1,200 firms. Those 1,200 firms have thousands of advisors. So we're touching a big group of the industry now with an essential piece of technology. But you've got the client portal. You have the trading tools. You have other capabilities that are making their way to market. What we will begin to see, what we'll have anecdotal evidence of at the end of the year, and then into 23 we'll begin to see the early results of, is our subs rate, our subs growth rate, and really driving our technology into the market and driving growth in the subs. And I call it the old one-two punch. You know, one is the AUM&A. is going to be the subscription revenue that we'll be able to generate. And so I think we're setting ourselves up for a pretty sustained environment in which we're able to drive accelerated growth.
spk02: And, Devin, I'll hit the sensitivity on the market because I know that's going to be a question, especially given today. When we think about this, illustratively, the impact on our assets relative to the broader equity markets is about 60%. And so it might be a little higher, it might be a little lower, but if you just use that as a proxy for the exposure to the equity markets and assume that on March 31st, markets are 5% lower than they were on December 31st, So again, our guidance assumes December 31st asset levels with no market impact over the course of the year. If you assume they drop, the markets drop 5%, the impact on our assets would be about 3%, and the impact on our 2022 revenue would be right around $17 million. And the EBITDA impact, again, using the ratio of asset-based cost of revenue to asset-based revenue, Q4 was about 57%. That would translate to about $7 or $8 million of EBITDA impact. So the cost of revenue is variable along with the revenue, and that would be the difference between the two.
spk00: Okay, terrific. Well, appreciate the color, Pete, and Bill, thanks for the update as well. Good to see the momentum.
spk03: Yeah, thanks, Devin, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
spk09: Our next question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: Hi, Surinder. Hi, guys. Congratulations on what looks like pretty good 4Q numbers. My question is about the guidance itself. Can you break the guidance down into its organic growth components in terms of what you're thinking for the wealth solutions business on the fee-based side, what you're thinking for wealth solutions on maybe the subscription licensing, and then the data and analytics? And then any color on the 1Q number for subscription licensing, it seems to be down pretty meaningfully quarter over quarter.
spk02: Well, let's... Let's answer the first one first. So if you break the two segments down, the wealth business is growing a little faster than our overall, but not a lot. I would say that's going to be maybe, if we said 15 to 17 for the whole business, maybe 16 to 18 for the wealth business, and then kind of high single digits on the overall revenue growth in the data and analytics segment. So call it six to eight in that range. And then the second question was about subs.
spk03: I didn't follow your second question. I'm sorry.
spk04: Unless I'm misreading the guidance, and I apologize. I was going through the numbers really quickly. The guidance for 1Q subscription licensing... seems to be down quarter over quarter versus 4Q by like $4 million or so, $3 to $4 million. Any color on that?
spk02: We'll take this one offline.
spk03: We'll follow up with you. We'll follow up with you. That doesn't jive in my mind. But we'll follow up with you.
spk04: My apologies. And then in terms of just strategically – Obviously, the emphasis has been on the fee-based business. I've noticed over the last two years, the reclass activity has kind of, between subscription, going from the fee-based business to the subscription licensing business is lower than it's been in prior years. Any color on that? Is that a strategic shift that you guys have made in terms of dissuading clients from making the switch, especially given how large the market moves have been if we were to compare market levels from two years ago?
spk03: No, Surinder, I mean, you know, we have utilized, what we went through a process of was taking a pretty large sum of assets that over time The marketplace had transitioned from an asset-based product like Rep is PM and or some of our performance reporting capabilities into more of a subs-based offering. And we're converting those clients or transitioning those clients to more of a sub-base for those solutions. where the opportunity fits. We'll move clients more to a sub-base for those types of offerings, preserving asset-based pricing for the more value-added services, building on from the UMA up to things like our overlays and direct index product, as well as our sustainable platform. But there's a mix there. I think it's episodic in that You know, sometimes it's client discussion, maybe a contract's up for renegotiation, but really we're pushing our clients to a place where when there's a technology tool that's driving the majority of the function, we want it to be in a subs category, and then when we are using our fiduciary infrastructure to help them make decisions, we're charging a fee basis.
spk04: Got it. Okay, and then I apologize. So I've double-checked the numbers here. Just for one cue, it says on your guide in your press release, subscription-based revenues are going to be in the range of $114 to $115 million on a non-GAAP basis. And then when I look at the reported number this quarter, it's $118 million. So it's going to be down $3 to $4 million quarter-over-quarter for subscription-based revenues.
spk02: Yeah, Surinder, we'll take that offline with you.
spk10: Okay. Okay.
spk09: Our next question comes from Michael Young with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk08: Hey, Michael. Hey, how's it going? Good. How are you? I'm doing just fine. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to start with kind of the shift in the growth in, I guess, Yodlee or the data analytics business. Can you talk about kind of what the drivers are that are moving that up from, you know, back to the, you know, more decent kind of growth trajectory at, you know, high single digits. And then as a follow-up, just if we could think about sort of the EBITDA margin profile of those incremental, you know, kind of revenues, is that accretive or significantly accretive to the overall margins?
spk03: Yeah, Michael, so as you know, the Yodlee business has been something that we're working hard to really vitalize and to restore growth in that business. It's been several quarters that we've been working hard to do it. Kudos to our Yodlee team as we believe that we've got, you know, building momentum in that business, and I'm very encouraged by it. a couple of dynamics to take note of. Continued to be very competitive in the data ag space, whether that's on the FinTech side or it's on the financial institution side. of the business, we have been very purposefully bringing down our professional services revenue and pretty much have worked through that decline in revenue, doing that to create more agility, more usage out of our developer kit. so that we're not charging PS and it's much easier to deploy the Yodlee product to big and small clients. So that's been a purposeful revenue decline. There was a bit of a hiatus in foreign or international revenue, mostly created by the open banking rules in Australia and in the UK. They've restored and are growing pretty well today. And then finally, in the analytics business, you know, that on the hedge fund side, on the asset manager side, we're seeing kind of restored growth, interest in that marketplace. We're supplying some tremendous firms who are using that data and bringing that data to the market. So as our reseller, our partners there, as well as contracts that we're winning in that space. So, Michael, long and short of it is we've been hard at work to kind of get all of those kind of leverage points for the business. working in the right direction. We've turned a corner, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about what lies ahead for that business. From a cost standpoint, we're investing here, and we believe that there's tremendous opportunity in certain areas, underserved areas of the business that a pure data platform like Yodlee can serve much more can serve very effectively. I noted the SMB offering, a small business offering. It's a very exciting product that will make its way to market in the second half of 2022. Some investment to get that into market and make sure that we're properly distributed. That is going to be a really useful tool for commercial lenders, large banks, as well as our advisors who serve a lot of small business owners, helping them pull their business lives together. And also on the analytics side, we're seeing expansion from the asset manager space to policy areas, as well as ad tech, and making some investments to enhance, continue to invest in the data set, adding data to the existing Yodlee data to make that data set even more competitive in the marketplace. So while it'll still be a very large EBITDA contributor, there are investments that we're making there.
spk08: Okay, thanks for that.
spk02: Sorry, Michael. Yeah, it's a good question on margins. It is higher margin, as Bill's talking about. I mean, it's not without cost. We do have costs that support the platform as more activity goes through, but it is closer to software or tech-type margins as opposed to some of the asset base, which carries higher levels of variable cost of revenue.
spk08: Thanks, Pete. Appreciate the cleanup there on that one. And then, you know, I guess my other question, though, would just be, you know, you've been more open in talking about, you know, potential monetization or partial monetization of that business. Just sort of curious philosophically, if something like that were to come about, what would you do with that extra cash and capital? Are there specific projects or things that you would put that towards on the wealth side? Or would that be more of a return to shareholders? Just any thoughts you have there would be helpful.
spk03: Yeah, thank you, Michael. And, you know, we've been really heads down and very, very focused on getting that business to restore its beginning. It would restore its growth. And we're going to let that run a little bit because I believe that creates tremendous value in the meantime. We've been threading more and more our data set in throughout our wealth environment, and it's powering some amazing things. I mean, you know, we made 11 million insights and recommendations that we shared with our advisor set a day as we ended last year, and we're on our way to a billion. That is a unique competitive offering that is going to get smarter and more powerful. and drive more productivity across the board for us. Some of that IP or some of the brain share in our ability to do that comes from the Yodlee business. We've just kind of cross-bred it now across the organization. We're using the data to power some next-gen business intelligence, and then the data is also powering some incredible FinApps, whether it's our money guide blocks or cash flow apps, or financial planning, or a whole host of other capabilities. So we spent the time not only to restore the growth rate in the Yodlee business, we've been using that data set to power more and more of the wealth environment. All that said, we've maintained and we continue to manage that business in a separatable way, if strategically it made sense for our business to contemplate that. So that's kind of where we're at, and I think it's really such a hypothesis at the moment as to what we would do with the capital that I really wouldn't comment much further than what I've said.
spk08: Okay. I appreciate all the color. Thanks.
spk09: Our next question comes from Ryan Bailey with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Hey, Bill, we're about a year in since you announced the investments needed for the intelligent financial life. I think beyond the benefit to investment revenues, I think you have a vision that it could impact the entire wealth management industry. So I guess given how important this is, do you feel as anything that's held you back over the past year from executing on the strategy faster, bigger or better than you've done?
spk03: No, Ryan, I mean, you know, we kind of had a running start at it as we got going last year, and I'm really pleased with the progress we're making. And I would encourage, you know, investors, analysts to join us in Charlotte in May because what we'll be able to – what we'll be introducing to the marketplace then is – really the vision and how it's coming to life. I think in my prepared remarks, I called it a multidimensional environment, and it truly is. And it is creating more and more intelligence and insight to help people make more sense of their money. I've been working on another edition of the white paper, and I refer to money as a technology, and inefficient technologies are disrupted. That's what our industry is going to do. It is going to disrupt the way money has been kind of managed and experienced by people and connected in powerful ways. We are at the tip of the spear there. And we are leaned into making it happen. I'm really pleased with the progress we're making. More to do. But, you know, again, I encourage people to join us in Charlotte in May if you can as we get back together in person for our annual advisor summit. Because I think you'll get a very good understanding of how these pieces are driving that vision that we stated last year. It's coming to life.
spk05: Got it. That's really helpful. And this may have been a better question for Stuart, but I'm sure you'll have an opinion too. For the data and analytics business, if you had more flexibility to invest more aggressively in that business, just given kind of what some of the industry competitors have been able to do that haven't had to focus as much on margins, what do you think you would have tackled there? Or what would you be tackling there if you could invest more aggressively?
spk03: On the data analytics business particularly, Ryan?
spk01: Yes, yes, please.
spk03: Yeah. You know, I think we've really come a tremendous way in the quality of data that we're able to share with our clients and how they're using their clients to drive value for their investors. And then we're powering some of the prominent firms, that are driving analytics to the same marketplace. And the power of those analytics are improving all the time. Where we're headed and what we see an opportunity in is a couple of other areas around analytics. One is in the policy area. Every municipality, every state, every government agency wants to think about people and what people are doing with their money and how people are earning and how they're earning their money. And, you know, you get a really great macro view of how the economy is growing and how the economy is evolving. And it's incredibly valuable analytics. So we're working on developing a product there, have partners that will take that product into the markets. ad tech with cookies and other kind of hurdles that have been in regulation that has been put in place around web usage and the sharing of data. There is a ad tech is struggling to kind of put the pieces together as well as they used to. We can add a perspective for some of these consumer companies on how their messaging is, how effective their messaging is hitting the market that they're trying to reach. And so that's an opportunity for us. The last one is around RegTech and just helping from an analytics standpoint, our clients understand some of the details on a continual basis around the regulations that they need to adhere to.
spk10: Got it. Thank you for the call, Bill. Yep.
spk09: Our next question comes from Chris Donat with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Hi, Christopher.
spk07: Hey, guys. Good afternoon. I wanted to go to the 2022 guidance with Pete and just making sure I'm understanding what's going on with the growth in asset-based revenue that's implied. If I look at the first quarter revenue number and then the out – the full year number basically back into what the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter could be. As I think about the growth in asset-based revenue that's implied for the remainder of 2022, is that more balances or fees or a combination? I'm just trying to get my arms around it.
spk02: Yeah, it's more of the same that we saw in 2021. So higher asset levels based on flows, And those flows weighted more heavily toward AUM business, which carries higher fees. So I think over the course of the year, we would expect to see higher flows and, you know, not dramatically different, but a slight increase in the fee rate quarter to quarter.
spk07: Okay. That makes sense to me. And then just also then backing into the implied expenses from your revenue and EBITDA, looks like that should be somewhat steady state for future quarters. Am I, am I doing the math right there that it looks like sort of the implied? Yeah.
spk02: So tried to kind of talk about that a little bit in the prepared remarks, but the, the, the first quarter should be the low point in terms of EBITDA margin when you think about it that way. And so we should start to see the revenue growth X market outpace expense growth. And so we'll see that ramp kind of more like we saw before COVID. Go back to maybe 2019 and look at the progression we had over the course of those years. We always had Q1 a little bit lower and Q4 a little bit higher. And I think we're kind of back on expecting to be more on that trend.
spk07: Okay, got it. And you had mentioned your like sort of the partial recovery expense elements too. So there still might, as we think about 2023, there's probably still some embedded expenses that, or expenses that will likely go higher, just assuming the world gets more normal, if you will.
spk02: Yeah, you know, I'll stay out of 2023, but yeah, I think we're going to see margins accelerate through 22 into 23, yeah. Yeah, that's our intention, Chris.
spk07: Yep. Yes, and leave at 2022 at a higher rate than you began 2022.
spk10: Correct. Got you. Okay. Thanks very much.
spk09: Our next question comes from Alex Krom with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Yeah. Hey, everyone. My question may have the same subtext as some of the questions before, but I'm going to ask it anyways. I think, Bill, like a year ago when you rolled out this investment plan, I think I basically told you on this call that you're acting like a private company and not a public company, given that you're crushing your EBITDA margins for a few years. So I guess, again, asking something that was asked somewhat before, but if we imagined you were a private company, I mean... do you see opportunities where you say like, Hey, if I had an open checkbook for two, three years, I could really go after things. I haven't, I can't go up after right now because I am a public company. So, you know, would you be more excited and free to do things in your opinion that, that just as a public company, you just don't feel you can right now.
spk03: Thanks, Alex. Hope you're doing well. And I just, not going to speculate on the rumors that are out there, but hey, no, I am, you know, we are very leaned in and we've made, I think, very good use of our capital in an interim period of time to create tremendous value. And, you know, I think it was an important step for the company because what it really does is it solidifies incredibly sustainable competitive distinction for our company and you know Alex you've known us for a long time but but here the areas that competitively investnet delivers to our clients that no other firm can we have this tremendously deep data heritage and data set that we're creating and more and more intelligent insights for our network to take advantage of these actionable opportunities that we're presenting to them, and they're taking advantage of it. We're seeing them begin to access it. We have the number one leading market share in financial planning. We have the number one leading market share as a turnkey asset management platform. We have built out and extended the types of products that we put in our solutions platform. So, you know, those are like, you know, very significant ramparts to try to compete with InvestNet. What the capital did for us is accelerate our ability to bring them together, Alex. And that has been kind of something, we're down the path, and what we made the decision is that we believe that by going faster, we can lock in this competitive distinction in the market and create sustained growth. It's early days still, but I am super pleased with the progress that we've made, but where it's pointing us to. And, you know, we've got a lot of work to do here, and we've been really hard at work. Hopefully that's pretty evident to everybody. But, you know, the answer to me is there's never an open checkbook, one. Number two, we've been really judicious about this incremental spend. And there's one more dynamic, if I could just highlight it, that I think is important in this spend. We're a center for R&D for our industry. And the people that we've been recruiting have been very technology deep and very data deep. And those are competitive resources today in this market. And those resources are thrilled to be at InvestNet. Guess why? Because we're investing to grow behind a purposeful mission that can change a marketplace and create sustained growth for a business. We're doing exciting things here. And so Those same talent aren't going to be the ones that are going to be able to put their hands up and say they're going to work at the local RIA or a midsize broker dealer. No, they're coming to InvestNet because we are recreating a future for a marketplace, and we've become kind of a concentrated or a centralized hub. Again, the capital judiciously that we've invested has created that force for us. And so, again, I am head down on executing and thinking we're making very good progress. There's more to come. And, you know, just, again, believe that we're making a lot of progress here.
spk01: Fair enough. Thanks for the color. Maybe just a quick one for Pete, and maybe this was asked as well, but... you mentioned the T and E kind of like coming back this year. Can you actually give us a number in terms of how much relative to 2021 is going to be incremental spending on, on, on travel, et cetera. And then maybe how much, uh, you would still be below, let's say like nine, uh, 2019 normalized level or where you think the company could go eventually go back to. Um,
spk02: So I'm going to give you directional numbers. I don't want to be too specific about it. But, you know, in 2019, we probably spent between travel and I lumped in the advisor summit in there, high teens to maybe not quite $20 million. This year, we're, you know, again, 20 and 21, we spent, you know, virtually none of that. And on travel and entertainment and the summit, which was canceled both years, this year in total will be a little over half of that, maybe 50%, 60% in that range.
spk01: Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Fantastic. Thank you.
spk02: Thanks, Alex.
spk03: Have a good evening.
spk09: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. One moment while we poll for more questions. Our next question is a follow-up from Michael Young with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Hey, Michael.
spk08: Hey, thanks for the follow-up. Just wanted to ask, you know, and I understand you're not going to comment on rumors and stuff in the marketplace, but if we just think generally about, you know, kind of what the playbook would be for a private equity buyer and you know, it would be something like coming in, cutting costs and maybe even raising prices. So just, and obviously adding leverage to the balance sheet, I assume the latter is not going to happen, but of those former two, are there any opportunities that you see within the business that you all could execute on in terms of particularly price increases near term and then, you know, maybe medium term, you know, anything with like the real estate footprint or other, you know, just cost saving opportunities?
spk03: Yeah, you know, Michael, again, I'm not referring in any way to any of the stuff that's out there. But I think we, you know, we have been hard at work understanding a couple of things here. Number one is where our investment dollars are going and what we're going to get from it. And we're pleased with the progress that we're making. We've also had, you know, nearly two year period of Covid we're coming up on two years in which you have the ability to assess Workplaces and Kind of where you want to put your capital and what sort of environment you want to create for your employees. So so absolutely considering our real estate footprint we also you know, have been super focused on our go-to-market and how we're engaging and engaging in the marketplace and changing the way that we market out there. And I think those, you know, are areas of investments that were leaned into. And other traditional ways that we may be leaning back on would be things like, you know, workplaces and things like those. So, you know, I don't know if one is more important in a private environment or a public environment. But, you know, as we've leaned in to create this environment for faster growth for the company, there's been a good, you know, an exceptional amount of work done to how do we create the leverage and profitability that we think long-term that this business can generate. And that, as we've said, you know, last year, and Pete just kind of hit on it a little bit, is as we get to the end of 22 and into 23, our intention is to start to drive a bottom-line growth and return for investors.
spk10: Okay, fair enough. Thanks for taking the follow-up.
spk03: Yeah, absolutely.
spk09: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I would like to turn a call back to Mr. Bill Crager for closing remarks.
spk03: Thank you, Hector. I want to thank my InvestNet colleagues for the extraordinary work that you do. I thank you to all of you for joining tonight and for your support of InvestNet. I look forward to speaking to everybody again next quarter. Thank you and have a good evening.
spk09: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you all for your participation.
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