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spk29: Greetings and welcome to the NCR VOIX first quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Alan Katz, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.
spk06: Good morning and thank you for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This morning, we issued our earnings release reporting financials for the quarter ended March 31, 2024. A copy of the earnings release and the presentation that we will reference during this call are available on the Investor Relations section of our website, which can be found at .ncrvoix.com and have been filed with the SEC. With me on the call today are David Wilkinson, our Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Webb-Walsh, our Chief Financial Officer. This call is being recorded and the webcast is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we begin, please be advised that remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For additional information on these factors, please refer to our earnings release and our other reports filed with the SEC. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements. Forward-looking statements during this call speak only as of the date of this call and we undertake no obligation to update them. In addition, we will be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, which we believe are more reflective of our ongoing performance. For a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this call to the most comparable GAAP measure in accordance with SEC regulations, please see our press release furnished as an exhibit to our Form 8K filed this morning and our supplemental materials available on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I would like to now turn the call over to David.
spk15: Thank you, Alan, and welcome everyone to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. For the quarter, we delivered revenue and adjusted EBITDA in line with expectations. Normalized software and services revenue grew 5% as we continued to onboard new and existing customers to our commerce and digital banking platforms. We executed on our transformation initiatives and saw the impact of the continued growth within our higher margin revenue streams. We achieved solid sales results across our segments, including signing nearly 300 new customers and expanding with existing customers. I'll provide more detail on our sales activity and our segment updates. We also continued converting customers to our platform and now have a total of approximately 61,000 retail and restaurant platform sites, approximately 18% of our total customer sites. The ongoing execution of our platform strategy, coupled with our increased investments in our global sales and services network, drove total segment ARR growth of 5% and software ARR growth of 6%. Let's turn to our restaurant segment slide on slide 6. In the first quarter, we signed more than 230 new customers and increased our platform and payment sites by 6% and 26% respectively. Segment ARR grew 5% in the first quarter. In our enterprise business, we announced a new multi-year agreement with Prest, one of the leading fresh juice brands in the US with more than 100 locations and a growing e-commerce and wholesale business. Under our agreement, we will provide a full suite of solutions including point of sale, back office, e-commerce, loyalty, and payments, which simplifies their operations and reporting across their physical and digital channels. Further, our integrated consumer marketing solution will run the Prest loyalty and marketing program both in stores and online. Prest moved from a smaller provider to our platform, allowing to engage with their end users and improve the guest experience, while also driving efficiencies for their organization. In addition to signing new customers, we renewed and expanded with our existing restaurant customers this quarter, including a leading restaurant conglomerate in the US who has been an NCR of OIX customer for more than 20 years. This customer has increasingly utilized our commerce platform across their footprint of approximately 600 restaurants to improve their digital guest experience and increase customer satisfaction. In 2023, we began providing real-time data and menu cataloging for this customer. In Q1 of this year, we further expanded our agreement to enable this customer to better serve their patrons ordering outside of the restaurant and deliver an experience that matches their brand promise of exceeding guest expectations. We're seeing traction in our mid-market growth efforts, signing new logos and expanding with existing customers. We continue to execute against our payments-led strategy for new mid-market customers, demonstrated by our 90-plus percent attach rate this quarter. We are growing our sales team, simplifying the sales and onboarding process, and improving our pricing and packaging, which will accelerate growth for this business. Let's move on to our retail segment on slide 7. This quarter, we signed more than 50 new small and mid-market customers and four enterprise customers, leading to more than 800 additional sites. We also increased our platform sites by nearly 57 percent as we continued to convert on-premise customers and onboard newly signed customers to our commerce platform. Segment error R grew 5 percent and software error R grew 10 percent, attributed to the powerful impact of attaching to the platform. One example of this is a multi-year expansion and renewal we signed with Sainsbury's, one of the largest grocery chains in the UK with over 1,700 store locations. For more than two decades, we have provided Sainsbury's with our on-premise -of-sale software solution and -tech-out technology with related services. Last month, Sainsbury's implemented our data and analytics module as part of their expanded agreement. We're on track to connect their entire store footprint, which operates more than 22,000 lanes to our commerce platform. As part of the contract in 2025, we will upgrade their -of-sale and self-checkout software to our cloud-based and in-lane solutions. Sainsbury's commitment to our cloud-native platform solution will drive a payback on their investment in less than two years and drive incremental recurring revenue and adjusted EBITDA for our business over the life of the contract. We're excited to continue our strategic partnership to eliminate in-store complexity and deliver an enhanced guest experience. While platform conversions with enterprise customers often have longer sales cycles and take time to deploy, once implemented, they are creative to revenue and margin and create a return on investment for our customers. Sainsbury's is a great example of how a customer can realize a fast payback on its investment when converting to the platform. Our retail customers are increasingly focused on providing choice as part of the guest experience, which is accelerating interest for our next-generation self-checkout solution. For example, this quarter, we expanded our self-checkout contract with the leading global e-commerce retailer that I highlighted on our last call. We weren't even finished with the initial rollout when this customer doubled the number of self-checkout sites and contracted to implement our next-gen solution for the remaining installations. We also expanded our relationship with the Navy Exchange, an existing -of-sale customer, and will now be deploying self-checkout across 40 of their stores throughout the U.S. with the potential to expand to additional stores over time. We were able to expedite this expansion as a direct result of a recommendation from another government customer, the Army and Air Force Exchange, based on their experience as an NCR-Voyek self-checkout technology and services customer. Let's move on to slide 8. Our digital banking segment demonstrated strong financial and operational performance this quarter. Our registered users grew 5% to more than $28.5 million, and the number of active users grew 3% to more than $19.7 million, while segment ARR increased 7%. In 2024, we have taken steps to now align the organizational structure and operating model of our digital banking business with our growth strategy. We've built out our senior leadership team and have consolidated our four business lines into a single organization, streamlining our operations and simplifying our -to-market. Although our realignment is in its early stages, we have already been able to drive greater sales activity and are realizing cost efficiencies. Further, we have reduced our capital investment without sacrificing research and development capacity, product innovation, or speed to market in our platform products and solutions. In the first quarter, we expanded our relationships with over 200 existing customers, selling additional products and solutions. We continue to unlock ARPU and ARR growth in the largest customer base in the digital banking industry. One notable expansion was with a Tier 1 retail bank that will now use our platform to serve an additional portion of their customer base and further increase cost efficiencies for their business. Today, 13 of the 15 largest retail banks in the U.S. utilize our digital first platform. In addition to expanding our existing relationships, we also signed five new financial institutions this quarter, further expanding our industry-leading client roster. For example, we signed a contract with Apple Bank, the largest state-chartered savings bank in New York with over 80 branches and 17 billion of assets under management. Apple Bank selected us given the strong value proposition of our comprehensive digital first platform, our differentiated end-user experience, and the potential to drive efficiencies leveraging our technology. I would now like to provide an update on our platform offerings. As we continue to invest in and improve our products and services, we will aim to strengthen our customer relationships and capture additional market share. Beginning with NCRVoyix Loyalty, our proprietary integrated customer marketing solution that allows better personalization and drives incremental revenue by combining customer data, offer management, and direct marketing into a single application. Prest is a recent example of the increasing demand we are seeing for this solution. As mentioned earlier, our next-generation self-checkout solution delivers a more seamless checkout experience to both new and existing retail customers. Retailers continue to focus on improving the guest experience and adopting operational efficiencies in the face of a challenging labor market. To that end, we have launched our next-gen self-checkout with over 15 customers, including St. Sainsbury's, to provide retailers more agility and flexibility to improve guest experience. Based on this initial demand, we expect a broader set of customers to accelerate their implementation of this advanced technology over the next several quarters, driving additional growth for our retail segment moving forward. We also have agreements with several third parties that enhance our offering for our restaurant, retail, and digital banking customers. These third-party applications leverage the cloud-based architecture of our platform and generate either transaction-based or recurring revenue with healthy margins. For restaurants, we are leveraging technology from Sunday to expand our -at-table capabilities, enabling servers to manage more tables simultaneously. As you've seen in our recent press release, we have expanded our partnership with OLO to bring new capabilities and integrated offerings to our enterprise customers. In retail, we are partnering with Everseen to help mitigate shrink by offering AI-enabled evercheck technology for self-checkout. Within our digital banking business, we have partnered with MX Technologies to offer personal financial wellness tools and support. I would like to reiterate my confidence in our ability to execute on our growth strategy of signing new customers and converting existing customers to our platform, capitalizing on our unrivaled market position. We are prudently investing across our business to drive software and services revenue and enhance our products and services, further extending our runway for growth. With that, I will turn it over to Brian, who will take you through the Q1 financial results in more detail
spk20: and
spk15: our outlook for the remainder of 2024.
spk20: Thank you, David, and good morning. As a reminder, the spinoff of NCR Atlios created some level of complexity in our 2023 and Q1 financial results, especially when looking at -over-year comparisons. We are providing normalized results that exclude the impact of certain spin and investor-related items. My commentary today will focus on these normalized results. Please turn to slide 11. First quarter total normalized revenue was $858 million, declining approximately 3% as expected, driven by a decline in hardware revenue as a result of the timing of customer refresh cycles. Normalized software and services revenue increased 5% for the first quarter to $662 million. Q1 normalized adjusted EBITDA was $122 million, which declined 2%, driven by $22 million of spin-related synergies and lower hardware revenue. Excluding these synergies, our adjusted EBITDA would have grown by 15% -over-year. Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin was 14.2%, slightly higher than the prior year. Our Q1 adjusted EPS was $0.13, and our weighted diluted average share count was $162.7 million. Please turn to slide 12 to go through the details of our segment results. Across our segments, we saw growth in software and services revenue, which was offset by declines in hardware. Adjusted EBITDA improved across all three segments. This performance was consistent with our expectations. Within our restaurant segment, software and services grew 3%, offset by hardware, resulting in a revenue decline of 3%. Software and services revenue grew as we increased the number of platform and payment sites and realized price increases. Restaurants had solid profit performance with adjusted EBITDA, increasing 25%, and margin expanding 600 basis points, driven primarily by mix and our transformation initiatives. In retail, software and services revenue grew by 5%, offset by hardware, resulting in a total revenue decline of 7%. The software and services revenue growth reflects our continued success, transitioning customers to the platform and expanding with those customers. As David highlighted, while the platform conversion cycle can be longer for enterprise customers, shifting our enterprise base to the platform will accelerate revenue and earnings growth over time. Adjusted EBITDA grew 4% as a result of revenue mix and our transformation initiatives. Within digital banking, Q1 revenue increased 7% as we continued to demonstrate cross-sell momentum and onboard previously signed customers. Adjusted EBITDA in this segment grew 10% and margin expanded by 90 basis points, driven by operating leverage and our transformation initiatives. I will now address the impact of separation on our corporate and other line. First we have the synergies related to the separation. This amounted to 22 million in Q1. A portion of these synergies reflect both revenue and expenses net associated with a non-core spin related businesses, which we are in the process of winding down. We anticipate that this will extend beyond 2024. In the first quarter, corporate and other also included 8 million of revenue associated with our commercial agreements with Atleos, which has a lower margin contribution. For the full year, we now expect revenue related to commercial agreements to total approximately 11 million. Please turn to slide 13. We ended the quarter with 3.9 times net leverage, 2.7 billion of debt, and 246 million of cash. As of March 31, under our 500 million revolving credit facility, we had drawn 196 million. As expected, our leverage was higher at the end of Q1 given the use of cash based on normal seasonality. We anticipate net leverage at year end will be approximately 3.4 times. There were a few other expected items that adversely impacted our cash flow this quarter, including 32 million of spend associated with our transformation and restructuring initiatives and 5 million related to separation expenses. These items include severance, professional fees, and other exit costs related to right sizing our cost base. We anticipate seeing our transformation initiatives positive impact the margin ramp up over the coming quarters. Finally, I'd like to outline our 2024 guidance. As a reminder, our guidance does not reflect revenue or adjusted EBITDA associated with the delayed Atleos transfer countries. Given the first quarter performance and our current visibility for the year, we are reaffirming the 2024 guidance ranges that we communicated on our Q4 call. I'll now turn the call back to David for some additional remarks.
spk15: Thanks, Brian. Before we move to Q&A, I'd like to note that this morning we announced that Jim Kelly, the current chairman of NCRVoyax, has now stepped into the role of executive chairman. I've worked closely with Jim following the spin of the Atleos business, and he has been integral to the development of the go-forward strategy for NCRVoyax during his tenure at the company. I am excited about working more closely with Jim in his new role. He brings a wealth of experience and leadership expertise from public companies, particularly around strategic objectives, operational efficiency, and payments. Given the many important initiatives that we have underway, having him in this expanded role will be invaluable to the board and the management team. With that, I will turn it over to the operator to begin the question and answer session. Please open the line.
spk29: Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. We ask that you limit your questions to one and a follow-up so that others may have an opportunity to ask questions. You may re-enter the queue by pressing star 1. 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 Matt Somerville with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question.
spk28: Thanks. Good morning. Maybe if you guys can maybe start by just talking a little bit more broadly around what you're seeing in the hardware environment today. Obviously, that's an important top line contributor, less so on the bottom line. I totally get that, but it's still an important piece of your revenue. Specifically, include some comments on what you're seeing with respect to self-checkouts, some of the larger projects that you had thought maybe in late 23 would end up hitting in 24, maybe an updated view there, and then I have a follow-up. Thank you.
spk10: Good morning,
spk13: Matt. It's David. As
spk15: we described, that hardware business is largely project-driven for us and is pretty lumpy. We are seeing in the back half of the year those projects coming back that were pushed kind of post-COVID, the bubble that we saw. We're seeing again some of those projects resurface in the back half of the year. In terms of self-checkout, self-checkout for us is really a holistic solution. We're following the consumer trends of consumers looking for different ways to check out. A lot of that is, we'll call it unassisted check out, where that takes the form of a mobile device, a kiosk, or the standard self-checkout that you know and love in terms of the appliance that sits within a large grocery chain or a large big box store. We're going to continue to see demand. It'll show up in our business a lot in software and services because that makes up a big piece of that business as the hardware thins out a little in the lane, the average selling prices decline a bit. We see again continued demand. As we described in our prepared remarks, our next gen self-checkout is making
spk20: some traction, I would just add that based on the projects, we expect the hardware decline to moderate in the second half versus the first half.
spk28: So maybe it is a follow-up then Brian, along those lines, how should we be thinking about kind of the go-forward revenue and EBITDA cadence more broadly speaking as we think about Q2 in the back half of the year relative to the $122 million of EBITDA you delivered in Q1? Thank you.
spk20: Yeah, so consistent with what we said on our last call, because our cost transformation initiatives are ramping as we go through the year and because the hardware rate of decline is expected to moderate in the second half, we'll see revenue and adjusted EBITDAs quencially improve as we go
spk25: through the year.
spk18: Got
spk24: it,
spk25: thanks.
spk24: Our next question comes
spk29: from Mayak Tandon with NIDAM and Co. Please proceed with your question.
spk22: Thank you, good morning. Maybe just diving into ARR trends, Brian or David, could you talk about what we should expect there both on the software side and in total ARR just in terms of trend line that you progress through the year and maybe you could break it down by vertical as well?
spk13: Yeah, I would say overall we're pleased with
spk15: the growth we're seeing in software ARR and total ARR that includes services as well. That for us is what gives us confidence in the strategy of adding new customers, the new customers, and the new customers. And I think that's a good point, too, is that we're seeing our base of the largest install base in the industries that we serve. We'll continue to see, as Brian described, a similar trend in terms of sequential growth of ARR as we look out over the quarters. That'll be a trend in all three of the businesses, honestly.
spk20: And I would just add one point. We published for the first time a metrics file on our website, which has a lot of the financial data and KPI data. Just encourage everybody to take a look at that.
spk22: Got it. Well, now I'll just turn to a separate question. We get this a lot from investors, and I'm sure you do as well. The digital banking piece obviously is doing really well, and we look at the valuations for other pure plays out there in the market. They've creeped up actually pretty meaningfully in the recent quarters. So any updates on your plans to potentially monetize the asset just given the higher valuations in the market overall and maybe that way given up the synergies between digital banking and retail and restaurants doesn't seem to be at least obvious to investors. That could be a very rewarding opportunity for the shareholders over time. Any thoughts there?
spk13: The digital banking business, as you saw through
spk15: the results, is performing really well. We're proud of what that team has done. As I described, operationally, we've consolidated that into a singular team focused on execution, and we're seeing continued strong growth in that business. So right now, I agree that the value of that business is underappreciated, and that's the whole intent of what we're doing is exposing the value of that and the new NCR Voyage. That being said, we always
spk13: continue to explore opportunities to maximize shareholder value.
spk22: Got it. I'll get back into you. Thank you.
spk29: Our next question comes from CarticMeta with North Coast Research. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Good morning. Steve, if you could follow up on the self-checkout, there are a lot of headlines of stores wanting to reduce their footprint and self-checkout. There's even some legislation proposed in California that they'd like to do away with self-checkout. And I'm wondering, based on that backdrop, what you're seeing in terms of your conversations with retailers in terms of demand for the product and how you'd expect that to progress over the next couple of years? Yeah,
spk13: we see the same articles.
spk15: There was one in the UK that was Simon, the CEO of Sainsbury's, came out and said that their customers love self-checkout and they're continuing to deploy, as we described in our relationship with them. So I'll point back, Cartic, to the consumer trend. This is really a consumer-driven trend. You and I, as consumers and shoppers, are really driving the requirements for both retailers and restaurants to create unassisted ways to check out, order, or otherwise transact with these large retailers. I think that we're going to continue to see a strong trend in what that looks like. They're all battling to differentiate the experience for both customers and they're in a labor battle for staffing stores for peak times or shifting labor to different value-added tasks as they offer new capabilities and new services. We're believing that the trend will continue. As I described earlier, it will show up in our business in software and services as well as the hardware will take on different forms from mobile to kiosk to the full service that you've seen, accepting cash in some cases. So again, we're continuing to have a lot of conversations around how to create better guest experiences in both restaurants and retailers and that will take the form of unassisted and technology-driven solutions.
spk05: And then just as a follow-up on the hardware business, I know you talked about a little bit about what's going to happen in the first half and second half. And in the past, you've kind of talked about how 2024 is a little bit of an anomaly because what happened in the previous years. In 2025, you'd expect the decline to be a lot more moderated. And I'm wondering, based on kind of your outlook and what you're seeing in the pipeline, if those comments would still apply?
spk13: Yeah, we see a strong pipeline. Brian gave
spk15: you the expected cadence of the numbers earlier on the answer to the other question. We're pleased with the pipeline. The pipeline is healthy and growing and
spk14: it supports what we've described in terms of our reaffirmation of the full year guidance.
spk05: Okay, yeah, so I was just wondering, Dave, so with your commentary in the past about 2025 being a more moderate decline still be valid?
spk15: Yeah, I believe so. Everything we're seeing right now gives us indications, Brian said, that the projects are recovering the back half of the year at this point. I still believe that, yes.
spk04: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
spk29: Our next question comes from Eric Woodring with Morgan's Family. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Super. Thank you so much. Good morning, guys. You know, historically you haven't always quantified customers signed. So I was just wondering if you could put some of the metrics you disclosed this morning in a bit more context. Again, the nearly 300 customers signed across retail and restaurants. Can you just give us some context of maybe how that might compare to historical quarterly run rates? Was this kind of above normal, below normal? Why would that be? You know, what's driving that? Just a little more color on how to kind of put those numbers in context would be super helpful for us. Thank you so much.
spk13: Yeah, the number of customers we added this quarter, I would say, is
spk15: consistent with what we expected and
spk14: consistent with past performance. We have, as we've been describing, put an
spk15: increased focus on investing more on the sales side and adding new customers. So it's a metric that we want to continue to expose you and the rest of the market to digital banking, the expansion strong, normal seasonality in that digital banking business. We added four new customers, expanded relationships with 200 customers.
spk08: So in addition to
spk15: adding new customers, we're still seeing the strength and the expansion of the base. But we'll continue to focus there and performance was in line with expectations.
spk03: OK, that's helpful. And then, you know, I know your goal was or at least you just talked about getting to about 3.4 times net leverage by the end of the year. I think the longer term goal was to get to roughly three times net leverage. Can you just remind us, you know, is that the longer term target? How long will it take to get there? And second to that, you know, just trends in terms of free cash flow conversion. I know you're talking about this year, 25 to 28 percent. How does that look through the year? How do we think about maybe the linearity of that? And is that the long term run rate we should be thinking about? Does that creep higher? Just putting all of this in context to help us understand the moving pieces on the cash side would be very helpful, both for this year and then beyond this year, for any color that you'd have. And that's it for me. Thank you.
spk20: Yes, so starting with leverage, we, as I said in my prepared remarks, we still expect to get to about 3.4 turns of leverage by the end of the year. And then from there, we continue, we'll continue to focus on improving leverage to get under, you know, three or under. And that that's what we need to do and plan to do with our free cash flow generation. The cadence for free cash flow this year, we used cash in Q1 as expected. That's normal seasonality. There's certain payroll things that happen in Q1 typically, and that drives cash usage. And then, you know, we're still maintaining our range of free cash flow and conversion percentages for the year. And so we'd expect to see that play out balance of the year. As we get into the future years, we do think we can improve free cash flow from where we are today. We've described that before, and we still feel that way.
spk02: Great. Thank you so much.
spk29: Our next question comes from Matthew Ruswell with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
spk21: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I was wondering if you could expand a bit on the platform conversions and what you're seeing in terms of new clients coming onto the platform, and also how are existing clients coming over, whether they're waiting for renewals or sort of stepping up ahead of time? Thank you.
spk13: So all of our new customers, when we describe customer
spk15: ads, all of those new customers are coming onto the platform. So that's one thing I just want to ground everybody on.
spk14: We did see an
spk15: increase in platform sites up to 61,000, about 18% of
spk14: our base. So we're seeing conversion as
spk15: expected in that base. We're seeing also customers do that ahead of refresh cycles. So when you think about the demand that's out there for new capabilities, digital capabilities, or guest experience, loyalty, new payment forms, some of the partnerships that I mentioned in the products and partnerships section of the prepared remarks, all of those capabilities are being enabled through the platform. So it starts with a platform connection, and then we enable all new capabilities through that platform, so not building it back into that legacy core base. We don't require an upgrade of the legacy point of sale on-prem. We can connect our legacy products to our platform to deliver those new capabilities. So right now we're doing it based on customer need. As they're finding new capabilities that are required, we're connecting to the platform and delivering those needs for them, and a subscription for that new capability.
spk21: Okay, thank you.
spk29: Our next question comes from Ian with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.
spk31: Hey, good morning. This is Isaac and thanks for taking all the questions. Maybe just a follow-up on the last point. The restaurant's business, there's been a number of renewals and expansions that you've called out with customers. Are the expansions pacing the way you'd like and expected? Maybe you could touch on how conversations have gone with customers, maybe how long the sales process generally takes with expanding the platform, specifically within restaurant chains. Thanks. I'd
spk15: say we have been really pleased with the conversations that we're having with our existing customer base, both in the small and mid-market segments as well as the enterprise customer base. The sales cycle is different depending on which segment of that market we're in. The small to mid-size is a much shorter sales cycle. We'll call it three to six months on the larger side. That'll expand out six to nine, some extend out to 12 months. Really, the platform conversations are all about the API capabilities that we unlock with connection to the platform and
spk14: driving some
spk15: of the enterprise
spk14: functionality that we've been able to deliver to the enterprise customers and pushing that down back into the mid-market. Some of the things that the enterprise scale players have had access to for a long time, we're now making
spk15: available to our mid-market customers. We're seeing more traction. You'll see us with some more wins like we announced with Prest in that, we'll call it that -market-ish space where, or at the lower end of the enterprise, where we're seeing a lot of demand and a lot of traction. Positive trends, good discussions with new customers, and
spk13: a
spk15: lot of positive
spk13: feedback from our existing base.
spk31: Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Then just a follow-up on the transformation initiative that you mentioned during the quarter. Is that focused on any particular business and maybe if you just frame if we will see any incremental costs going forward?
spk20: Yes, so the transformation initiatives, we described a $100 million cost out program, avoid 70 million benefits this year and 30 million flows into next year. That program is underway and we're doing well. It's really three major buckets. One is hardware design and optimization on the hardware side. The second, which is the biggest piece, about 50% is within our services business. This is doing more remote sell. This is having a different skill set now that we're separated as two companies. We don't need the same skill set. Those are just two examples. And then the other category, about 25%, is corporate expenses and real estate expenses. And so that cost program is going well. The transformation and restructuring costs to achieve those cost savings that you saw in the quarter, that's severance, that's exit costs related to right sizing the real estate portfolio and the IT portfolio. And we expect, if I take the separation bucket plus the transformation bucket, about 80 to 90 million of spend this year in total, including what happened in the first quarter. And that's in line with the free cash flow guidance that we've given.
spk27: Okay, great. Thank you very much.
spk29: Our next question comes from Alex Newman with Stevens. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hi, this is Alex for Chuck Navahan. Just on the restaurant segment, we had 600 basis points of margin expansion. I think you attributed that to some transformational costs. Is that margin in the mid to high 20 something that we should expect for that segment going forward?
spk20: It is. We would expect that segment to be at 26 to 27% for the full year. So it is something that
spk18: we expect to continue.
spk07: Okay. And then on digital banking as well, that margin also put positive after a couple years of investment. So we see some similar margin expansion going forward. And then just how I think about revenue, could you maybe balance what the mix of ARPU versus user growth will be for that segment?
spk20: Yeah, so on margin, we expect margin to continue to improve for digital banking, roughly 39% for the full year, which will be up about a percent -over-year. So we do expect EVA to grow faster than revenue. And we expect the revenue growth to be a combination of both the user growth and our ARPU expansion as we go through the year. Like we saw, it was a pretty good split in Q1. We'd
spk25: expect that to continue. Thank you.
spk24: Our
spk29: next question comes from Matt with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question.
spk28: Thanks. Just a couple of quick follow-ups. Brian, to that 80 to 90 million of cash-related severance, et cetera, costs you expect to encounter this year, I realize it's early. What does that number roughly look like? Is your thinking about 25? I guess how much can that tail off and therefore accrete to the company's free cash flow profile and then have a follow-up?
spk20: Yeah, that definitely does come down over time. Separation, there's a component of that that's separation-related, which goes away completely. And then the part that's around right-sizing the cost base will always have incremental cost work to do as we go forward. But we would expect that number to come down. That would be a help to free cash flow. In addition, as we improve our leverage and reduce our debt, the interest reduction would be a help to free cash flow. Holding capex steady as a percent of revenue or with help as we go forward or actually holding capex steady and improving it as a percent of revenue would help free cash flow. Those are the drivers that give us confidence that we can improve free
spk18: cash flow as we go forward.
spk28: Got it. Then, May, you spent some time talking about customer ads in the businesses. I was wondering if you could maybe touch on what your attrition rates have been looking like in retail restaurants and digital banking and how that maybe compares to even just a year or two ago, again, with a focus on all three reportable segments, please. Thank you.
spk13: Yeah, I would tell you that we'll run through
spk15: all the segments. We're focused on adding net new customers and we feel like we're making traction there. We are pretty enterprise-heavy focused. So we see strong retention of our enterprise customers, specifically on the retail side. When I get to the restaurant business, again, enterprise side, we see strong retention of our customer base, adding net new customers, so taking share. And then on the smaller end of that, we see some of the normal churn happening at that small base. You know, we can see that up to 10% in that small side of the business as customers, as our restaurant customers go out of business. On digital banking, we continue to see very strong renewal rates, renewing 90 plus percent of our contracts. And then you look at the net retention rate on revenue and actually we're seeing some strengthening of price. And then we're expanding like we did with the 200 customer and expanding ARPU with our existing base by cross-selling and upselling across the capabilities as we move to operationalize as a singular portfolio, forming the market into that market segment. So overall, we're feeling good about it. It's
spk13: really normal
spk15: kind
spk13: of attrition trends that we've seen continuing.
spk28: And just lastly, that comment on price, is that sort of new on the digital banking side? I guess I was under the impression last quarter maybe with all the renewal activity, you were seeing a maybe slight amount of price compression. And then just broadly speaking on price, are you net positive price capture in each of the three segments? Thank you.
spk20: So with digital banking on renewal, we do typically see price compression, but that price compression has been improving over the last three or four quarters. And then outside of price compression and renewal in all three businesses, we go after capturing CPI
spk18: related price increases. And so we get benefits each of the three segments around that.
spk29: There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to David Wilkinson for closing comments.
spk13: Yeah, thank you. In closing, I'd like to thank all of our customers again for
spk15: the trust that they put in us every day to help them achieve their strategic objectives. I'd also like to thank again our NCR VOIX colleagues for their contributions to our successes up to now and our investors for their ongoing support. As I stated earlier, we remain committed to serving our existing customers and bringing them on the platform journey in addition to adding new customers. Our platform investments over the past years have provided real value to our customers and we're going to continue to connect them to the platform. We've built a solid foundation for growth within our base and growth of new customers specifically in mid-market. And while we're proud of where we are, we need to do better at turning this foundation into growth. And this focus will show up in our results. I believe in the plan that we've outlined today and I believe in this management team to execute. Thank you and look forward to updating you on our continued progress on our Q2 call.
spk29: This includes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Greetings and welcome to the NCR VOIX first quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Alan Katz, vice president of investor relation. Thank you, sir. You may begin.
spk06: Good morning and thank you for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This morning, we issued our earnings release reporting financials for the quarter ended March 31st, 2024. A copy of the earnings release and the presentation that we will reference during this call are available on the investor relation section of our website, which can be found at .ncrvoix.com and have been filed with the SEC. With me on the call today are David Wilkinson, our chief executive officer, and Brian Webb Walsh, our chief financial officer. This call is being recorded and the webcast is available on the investor relation section of our website. Before we begin, please be advised that remarks today will contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For additional information on these factors, please refer to our earnings release and our other reports filed with the SEC. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements. Forward-looking statements during this call speak only as of the date of this call and we undertake no obligation to update them. In addition, we will be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, which we believe are more reflective of our ongoing performance. For a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this call to the most comparable GAAP measure in accordance with SEC regulations, please see our press release furnished as an exhibit to our Form 8K filed this morning and our supplemental materials available on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I would like to now turn the call over to David.
spk15: Thank you, Alan, and welcome everyone to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. For the quarter, we delivered revenue and adjusted EBITDA in line with expectations. Normalized software and services revenue grew 5% as we continued to onboard new and existing customers to our commerce and digital banking platforms. We executed on our transformation initiatives and saw the impact of the continued growth within our higher margin revenue streams. We achieved solid sales results across our segments, including signing nearly 300 new customers and expanding with existing customers. I'll provide more detail on our sales activity and our segment updates. We also continued converting customers to our platform and now have a total of approximately 61,000 retail and restaurant platform sites, approximately 18% of our total customer sites. The ongoing execution of our platform strategy coupled with our increased investments in our global sales and services network drove total segment ARR growth of 5% and software ARR growth of 6%. Let's turn to our restaurant segment slide on slide 6. In the first quarter, we signed more than 230 new customers and increased our platform and payment sites by 6% and 26% respectively. Segment ARR grew 5% in the first quarter. In our enterprise business, we announced a new multi-year agreement with Prest, one of the leading fresh juice brands in the US with more than 100 locations and a growing e-commerce and wholesale business. Under our agreement, we will provide a full suite of solutions, including point of sale, back office, e-commerce, loyalty, and payments, which simplifies their operations and reporting across their physical and digital channels. Further, our integrated consumer marketing solution will run the Prest loyalty and marketing program both in stores and online. Prest moved from a smaller provider to our platform, allowing to engage with their end users and improve the guest experience while also driving efficiencies for their organization. In addition to signing new customers, we renewed and expanded with our existing restaurant customers this quarter, including a leading restaurant conglomerate in the US who has been an NCR of OEX customer for more than 20 years. This customer has increasingly utilized our commerce platform across their footprint of approximately 600 restaurants to improve their digital guest experience and increase customer satisfaction. In 2023, we began providing real-time data and menu cataloging for this customer. In Q1 of this year, we further expanded our agreement to enable this customer to better serve their patrons ordering outside of the restaurant and deliver an experience that matches their brand promise of exceeding guest expectations. We're seeing traction in our mid-market growth efforts, signing new logos and expanding with existing customers. We continue to execute against our payments led strategy for new mid-market customers demonstrated by our 90 plus percent attach rate this quarter. We are growing our sales team, simplifying the sales and onboarding process, and improving our pricing and packaging, which will accelerate growth for this business. Let's move on to our retail segment on slide seven. This quarter, we signed more than 50 new small and mid-market customers and four enterprise customers, leading to more than 800 additional sites. We also increased our platform sites by nearly 57 percent as we continued to convert on-premise customers and onboard newly signed customers to our commerce platform. Segment error grew 5 percent and software error grew 10 percent, attributed to the powerful impact of attaching to the platform. One example of this is a multi-year expansion and renewal we signed with Sainsbury's, one of the largest grocery chains in the UK with over 1700 store locations. For more than two decades, we have provided Sainsbury's with our on-premise point of sale software solution and self-tech out technology with related services. Last month, Sainsbury's implemented our data and analytics module as part of their expanded agreement. We're on track to connect their entire store footprint, which operates more than 22,000 lanes to our commerce platform. As part of the contract in 2025, we will upgrade their point of sale and self-checkout software to our cloud-based and in-lane solutions. Sainsbury's commitment to our cloud-native platform solution will drive a payback on their investment in less than two years and drive incremental recurring revenue and adjusted EBITDA for our business over the life of the contract. We're excited to continue our strategic partnership to eliminate in-store complexity and deliver an enhanced guest experience. While platform conversions with enterprise customers often have longer sales cycles and take time to deploy, once implemented, they are creative to revenue and margin and create a return on investment for our customers. Sainsbury's is a great example of how a customer can realize a fast payback on its investment when converting to the platform. Our retail customers are increasingly focused on providing choice as part of the guest experience, which is accelerating interest for our next generation self-checkout solution. For example, this quarter we expanded our self-checkout contract with the leading global e-commerce retailer that I highlighted on our last call. We weren't even finished with the initial rollout when this customer doubled the number of self-checkout sites and contracted to implement our next-gen solution for the remaining installations. We also expanded our relationship with the Navy Exchange, an existing -of-sale customer, and will now be deploying self-checkout across 40 of their stores throughout the U.S. with the potential to expand to additional stores over time. We were able to expedite this expansion as a direct result of a recommendation from another government customer, the Army and Air Force Exchange, based on their experience as an NCR-Voyek self-checkout technology and services customer. Let's move on to slide 8, our digital banking segment demonstrated strong financial and operational performance this quarter. Our registered users grew 5% to more than $28.5 million, and the number of active users grew 3% to more than $19.7 million, while segment error increased 7%. In 2024, we have taken steps to now align the organizational structure and operating model of our digital banking business with our growth strategy. We've built out our senior leadership team and have consolidated our four business lines into a single organization, streamlining our operations and simplifying our -to-market. Although our realignment is in its early stages, we have already been able to drive greater sales activity and are realizing cost efficiencies. Further, we have reduced our capital investment without sacrificing research and development capacity, product innovation, or speed to market in our platform products and solutions. In the first quarter, we expanded our relationships with over 200 existing customers selling additional products and solutions. We continue to unlock ARPU and ARR growth in the largest customer base in the digital banking industry. One notable expansion was with a Tier 1 retail bank that will now use our platform to serve an additional portion of their customer base and further increase cost efficiencies for their business. Today, 13 of the 15 largest retail banks in the U.S. utilize our digital first platform. In addition to expanding our existing relationships, we also signed five new financial institutions this quarter, further expanding our industry-leading client roster. For example, we signed a contract with Apple Bank, the largest branch, and 17 billion of assets under management. Apple Bank selected us given the strong value proposition of our comprehensive digital first platform, our differentiated end-user experience, and the potential to drive efficiencies leveraging our technology. I would now like to provide an update on our platform offerings. As we continue to invest in and improve our products and services, we will aim to strengthen our customer relationships and capture additional market share. Beginning with NCRVoyax loyalty, our proprietary integrated customer marketing solution that allows better personalization and drives incremental revenue by combining customer data, offer management, and direct marketing into a single application. Prest is a recent example of the increasing demand we are seeing for this solution. As mentioned earlier, our next generation self-checkout solution delivers a more seamless checkout experience to both new and existing retail customers. Retailers continue to focus on improving the guest experience and adopting operational efficiencies in the face of a challenging labor market. To that end, we have launched our next-gen self-checkout with over 15 customers, including Sainsbury's, to provide retailers more agility and flexibility to improve guest experience. Based on this initial demand, we expect a broader set of customers to accelerate their implementation of this advanced technology over the next several quarters, driving additional growth for our retail segment moving forward. We also have agreements with several third parties that enhance our offering for our restaurant, retail, and digital banking customers. These third-party applications leverage the cloud-based architecture of our platform and generate either transaction-based or recurring revenue with healthy margins. For restaurants, we are leveraging technology from Sunday to expand our -at-table capabilities enabling servers to manage more tables simultaneously. As you've seen in our recent press release, we have expanded our partnership with Olo to bring new capabilities and integrated offerings to our enterprise customers. In retail, we are partnering with Everseen to help mitigate shrink by offering AI-enabled ever-check technology for self-checkout. Within our digital banking business, we have partnered with MX Technologies to offer personal financial wellness tools and support. I would like to reiterate my confidence in our ability to execute on our growth strategy of signing new customers and converting existing customers to our platform, capitalizing on our unrivaled market position. We are prudently investing across our business to drive software and services revenue and enhance our products and services, further extending our runway for growth. With that, I will turn it over to Brian, who will take you through the Q1 financial results in more detail and our outlook for the remainder of 2024.
spk20: Thank you, David, and good morning. As a reminder, the spin-off of NCR Atlios created some level of complexity in our 2023 and Q1 reported results, especially when looking at -over-year comparisons. We are providing normalized results that exclude the impact of certain spin and investor-related items. My commentary today will focus on these normalized results. Please turn to slide 11. First quarter total normalized revenue was $858 million, declining approximately 3% as expected, driven by a decline in hardware revenue as a result of the timing of customer refresh cycles. Normalized software and services revenue increased 5% for the first quarter to $662 million. Q1 normalized adjusted EBITDA was $122 million, which declined 2% driven by $22 million of spin-related synergies and lower hardware revenue. Excluding these synergies, our adjusted EBITDA would have grown by 15% -over-year. Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin was 14.2%, slightly higher than the prior year. Our Q1 adjusted EPS was $0.13, and our weighted diluted average share count was $162.7 million. Please turn to slide 12 to go through the details of our segment results. Across our segments, we saw growth in software and services revenue, which was offset by declines in hardware. Adjusted EBITDA improved across all three segments. This performance was consistent with our expectations. Within our restaurant segment, software and services grew 3%, offset by hardware, resulting in a revenue decline of 3%. Software and services revenue grew as we increased the number of platform and payment sites and realized price increases. Restaurants had solid profit performance with adjusted EBITDA, increasing 25%, and margin expanding 600 basis points, driven primarily by mix and our transformation initiatives. In retail, software and services revenue grew by 5%, offset by hardware, resulting in a total revenue decline of 7%. The software and services revenue growth reflects our continued success, transitioning customers to the platform and expanding with those customers. As David highlighted, while the platform conversion cycle can be longer for enterprise customers, shifting our enterprise base to the platform will accelerate revenue and earnings growth over time. Adjusted EBITDA grew 4% as a result of revenue mix and our transformation initiatives. Within digital banking, Q1 revenue increased 7% as we continued to demonstrate cross-sell momentum and onboard previously signed customers. Adjusted EBITDA in this segment grew 10% and margin expanded by 90 basis points, driven by operating leverage and our transformation initiatives. I will now address the impact of separation on our corporate and other line. First, we have the synergies related to the separation. This amounted to $22 million in Q1. A portion of these synergies reflect both revenue and expenses net associated with the non-core spin-related businesses, which we are in the process of winding down. We anticipate that this will extend beyond 2024. In the first quarter, corporate and other also included $8 million of revenue associated with our commercial agreements with Atleos, which has a lower margin contribution. For the full year, we now expect revenue related to commercial agreements to total approximately $11 million. Please turn to slide 13. We ended the quarter with 3.9 times net leverage, $2.7 billion of debt, and $246 million of cash. As of March 31, under our $500 million revolving credit facility, we had drawn $196 million. As expected, our leverage was higher at the end of 2021 given the use of cash based on normal seasonality. We anticipate net leverage at year end will be approximately 3.4 times. There were a few other expected items that adversely impacted our cash flow this quarter, including $32 million of spend associated with our transformation and restructuring initiatives and $5 million related to separation expenses. These items include severance, professional fees, and other exit costs related to right sizing our cost base. We anticipate seeing our transformation initiatives, positive impact to margin ramp up over the coming quarters. Finally, I'd like to outline our 2024 guidance. As a reminder, our guidance does not reflect revenue or adjusted EBITDA associated with the delayed Atleos transfer countries. Given the first quarter performance and our current visibility for the year, we are reaffirming the 2024 guidance ranges that we communicated on our Q4 call. I'll now turn the back to David for some additional remarks.
spk15: Thanks, Brian. Before we move to Q&A, I'd like to note that this morning we announced that Jim Kelly, the current chairman of NCRVoyix, has now stepped into the role of executive chairman. I've worked closely with Jim following the spin of the Atleos business, and he has been integral to the development of the go-forward strategy for NCRVoyix during his tenure at the company. I am excited about working more closely with Jim in his new role. He brings a wealth of experience and leadership expertise from public companies, particularly around strategic objectives, operational efficiency, and payments. Given the many important initiatives that we have underway, having him in this expanded role will be invaluable to the board and the management team. With that, I will turn it over to the operator to begin the question and answer session. Please open the line.
spk29: Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. We ask that you limit your questions to one and a follow-up so that others may have an opportunity to ask questions. You may re-enter the queue by pressing star one. 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 Matt Somerville with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question.
spk28: Thanks. Good morning. Maybe if you guys can maybe start by just talking a little bit more broadly around what you're seeing in the hardware environment today. Obviously, that's an important top line contributor, less so on the bottom line. I totally get that, but it's still an important piece of your revenue. Specifically, include some comments on what you're seeing with respect to self-checkout, some of the larger projects that you would thought maybe in late 23 would end up hitting in 24, maybe an updated view there. And then I have a follow-up. Thank you.
spk10: Good morning,
spk13: Matt. It's David. So as
spk15: we described, that hardware business is largely project driven for us and is pretty lumpy. And we are seeing in the back half of the year, those projects coming back that were pushed kind of post-COVID, the bubble that we saw. So we're seeing, again, some of those projects resurface in the back half of the year. In terms of self-checkout, self-checkout for us is really a holistic solution. So we're following the consumer trends of consumers looking for different ways to check out. And a lot of that is, we'll call it unassisted check out, whether that takes the form of a mobile device, a kiosk, or the standard self-checkout that you know and love in terms of the appliance that sits within a large grocery chain or a large big box store. So we're going to continue to see demand. It'll show up in our business a lot in software and services because that makes up a big piece of that business as the hardware thins out a little in the lane, the average selling prices decline a bit. But we see, again, continued demand. As we described in our prepared remarks, our next gen self-checkout is making
spk20: some traction, too. And I would just add that based on the projects, we expect the hardware to decline to moderate in the second half versus the first half.
spk28: So maybe it is a follow-up then, Brian, along those lines. How should we be thinking about kind of the go-forward revenue and EBITDA cadence, more broadly speaking, as we think about Q2 in the back half of the year relative to, you know, the $122 million of EBITDA you delivered in Q1? Thank you.
spk20: Yes. Yeah. So consistent with what we said on our last call, because our cost transformation initiatives are ramping as we go through the year and because the hardware rate of decline is expected to moderate in the second half, we'll see revenue and adjusted EBITDAs quencially improve as we go
spk25: through the year. Got it.
spk24: Thanks.
spk29: Our next question comes from Mayak Tendon with NIDAM and Co. Please proceed with your question.
spk22: Thank you. Good morning. Maybe just diving into ARR trends, Brian or David, could you talk about what we should expect there both on the software side and in total ARR just in terms of trend line that you progress through the year and then maybe you could break it down by vertical as well?
spk13: Yeah, I would say overall we're pleased with
spk15: the growth we're seeing in software ARR and total ARR that includes services as well. That for us is what gives us confidence in the strategy of adding new customers, the customer growth we're seeing and monetizing our base of the largest install base in the industries that we serve.
spk12: We'll
spk15: continue to see, as Brian described, a similar trend in terms of sequential growth of ARR as we look out over the quarters. That'll be a trend in all three of the businesses, honestly.
spk20: I would just add one point. We published for the first time a metrics file on our website which has a lot of the financial data and KPI data. Just encourage everybody
spk18: to take a look at that.
spk22: Got it. Okay. Well, now let's turn to a separate question. We get this a lot from investors and I'm sure you do as well. The digital banking piece obviously is doing really well and we look at the valuations for other pure plays out there in the market. They've creeped up actually pretty meaningfully in the recent quarters. So any updates on your plans to potentially monetize the asset just given the higher valuations in the market overall and maybe that way, given up the synergies between digital banking and retail and restaurants, it doesn't seem to be at least obvious to investors. That could be obviously a very rewarding opportunity for the shareholders over time. Any thoughts there?
spk13: The digital banking business, as you saw through
spk15: the results, is performing really well. We're proud of what that team has done. As I described, operationally, we've consolidated that into a singular team focused on execution and we're seeing continued strong growth in that business. So right now, I agree that the value of that business is underappreciated and that's the whole intent of what we're doing is exposing the value of that and the new NCR boyacs. That being said, we always
spk13: continue to explore opportunities to maximize shareholder value.
spk22: Got it. I'll get back in queue. Thank you.
spk29: Our next question comes from Cartic Meta with North Coast Research. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Good morning. If you could follow up on the self-checkout, there are a lot of headlines of stores wanting to reduce their footprint and self-checkout. There's even some legislation proposed in California that they'd like to do away with self-checkout. And I'm wondering, based on that backdrop, what you're seeing in terms of your conversations with retailers in terms of demand for the product and how you'd expect that to progress over the next couple years? Yeah,
spk13: we see the same articles.
spk15: There was one in the UK that was Simon, CEO of Sainsbury's, came out and said that their customers love self-checkout and they're continuing to deploy, as we described in our relationship with them. So I'll point back, Cartic, to the consumer trend. This is really a consumer-driven trend. You and I, as consumers and shoppers, are really driving the requirements for both retailers and restaurants to create unassisted ways to check out, order, or otherwise transact
spk30: with
spk15: these large retailers. So I think we're going to continue to see a strong trend in what that looks like. They're all battling to differentiate the experience for both customers and they're in a labor battle for staffing stores for peak times or shifting labor to different value-added tasks as they offer new capabilities and new services. So we're believing that the trend will continue. As I described earlier, it will show up in our business in software and services as well as the hardware will take on different forms from mobile to kiosk to the full service that you've seen accepting cash in some cases. So again, we're continuing to have a lot of conversations around how to create better guest experiences in both restaurants and retailers and that will take the form of unassisted and technology-driven solutions.
spk05: And then just as a follow-up on the hardware business, I know you talked about a little bit about what's going to happen in the first half and second half. And in the past, you've kind of talked about how 2024 is a little bit of an anomaly because what's happened in the previous years and in 2025, you'd expect the decline to be a lot more moderated. And I'm wondering, based on kind of your outlook and what you're seeing in the pipeline, if those comments would still apply?
spk13: Yeah, we see a strong pipeline. I mean, Brian gave
spk15: you the expected cadence of the numbers earlier on the answer to the other question. And we're pleased with the pipeline. The pipeline is healthy and growing and
spk14: it supports what we've described in terms of our reaffirmation of the full year guidance.
spk05: Okay, yeah, so I was just wondering, Dave, so would your commentary in the past about 2025 being a more moderate decline still be valid?
spk15: Yeah, I believe so. Everything we're seeing right now gives us indications, Brian said, that the projects are recovering the back half of the year at this point. I would still believe
spk13: that, yes.
spk04: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
spk29: Our next question comes from Eric Woodring with Morgan's Family. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Super. Thank you so much. Good morning, guys. Historically, you have been always quantified customers signed. And so I was just wondering if you could put some of the metrics you disclosed this morning in a bit more context. Again, the nearly 300 customers signed across retail and restaurants. Can you just give us some context of maybe how that might compare to historical quarterly run rates? Was this kind of above normal, below normal? Why would that be? What's driving that? Just a little more color on how to kind of put those numbers in context would be super helpful for us. Thank you so much.
spk13: The number of customers we added this quarter, I would say is consistent
spk15: with
spk14: what we expected and consistent with past performance. We have, as we've been describing, put an increased focus on investing more
spk15: on the sales side and adding new customers. So it's a metric that we want to expose you and the rest of the market to. Digital banking, the expansion is strong, normal seasonality in that digital banking business. We added four new customers, expanded relationships with 200 customers.
spk08: So in addition to
spk15: adding new customers, we're still seeing the strength and the expansion of the base. But we'll continue to focus there. And performance was in line with expectations.
spk03: Okay, that's helpful. And then, you know, getting to about 3.4 times net leverage by the end of the year. I think the longer term goal was to get to roughly three times net leverage. Can you just remind us, you know, is that the longer term target? How long will it take to get there? And second to that, you know, just trends in terms of free cash flow conversion. I know you're talking about this year, 25 to 28%. How does that look through the year? How do we think about maybe the linearity of that? And is that the long run rate we should be thinking about? Does that creep higher? Just putting all of this in context to help us understand the moving pieces on the cash side would be very helpful, both for this year and then beyond this year for any color that you'd have. And that's it for me. Thank you.
spk20: Yeah, so starting with leverage, we, as I said in my prepared remarks, we still expect to get to about 3.4 turns of leverage by the end of the year. And then from there, we continue, we'll continue focus on improving leverage to get under, you know, three or under. And that's what we need to do and plan to do with our free cash flow generation. The cadence for free cash flow this year, we used cash in Q1 as expected. That's normal seasonality. There's certain payroll things that happen in Q1 typically, and that drives cash usage. And then, you know, we're still maintaining our range of free cash flow and conversion percentages for the year. And so we'd expect to see that balance of the year. As we get into the future years, we do think we can improve free cash flow from where we are today. We've described that before, and we still feel that way.
spk02: Great. Thank you so much.
spk29: Our next question comes from Matthew Ruswell with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
spk21: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I was wondering if you could expand a bit on the platform conversions and what you're seeing in terms of new clients coming onto the platform, and also how are existing clients coming over, whether they're waiting for renewals or sort of stepping up ahead of time? Thank you.
spk13: So all of our new customers, when we describe customer
spk15: ads, all those new customers are coming onto the platform. So that's one thing I just want to background everybody on.
spk14: We did see an
spk15: increase in platform sites up to 61,000, about 18%
spk14: of
spk15: our base. So we're
spk14: seeing conversion as
spk15: expected in that base. We're seeing also customers do that ahead of refresh cycles. So when you think about the demand that's out there for new capabilities, digital capabilities, or guest experience, loyalty, new payment forms, some of the partnerships that I mentioned, and the products and partnerships section of the prepared remarks, all of those capabilities are being enabled through the platform. So it starts with a platform connection, and then we enable all new capabilities through that platform, so not building it back into that legacy core base. We don't require an upgrade of the legacy point of sale on-prem. We can connect the Our Legacy products to our platform to deliver those new capabilities. So right now we're doing it based on customer need. As they're finding new capabilities that are required, we're connecting to the platform and delivering those needs for them, and a subscription for that new capability.
spk13: Okay, thank
spk22: you.
spk29: Our next question comes from Ian with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.
spk31: Hey, good morning. This is Isaac and thanks for taking all the questions. Maybe just a follow-up on the last point. In the restaurants business, there's been a number of renewals and expansions that you've called out with customers. Are the expansions pacing the way you'd like and expected? Maybe you could touch on how conversations have gone with customers, maybe how long the sales process generally takes with expanding the platform, specifically within restaurant chains. Thanks. Yeah, I'd say we have
spk14: been really pleased
spk15: with the conversations that we're having with our existing customer base, both in the small and mid-market segments as well as the enterprise customer base. The sales cycle is different depending on which segment of that market we're in. On the small to mid-size, it's a much shorter sales cycle. We'll call it three to six months. On the larger side, that'll expand out six to nine. Some extend out to 12 months. Really, the platform conversations are all about the API capabilities that we unlock with connection to the platform and driving some of the enterprise functionality that we've been able to deliver to the enterprise customers
spk14: and pushing that down back into the mid-market. Some of the things that the enterprise scale players have had access to for a long time, we're now making
spk15: available to our mid-market customers. We're seeing more traction. You'll see us with some more wins like we announced with Prest in that, we'll call it that -market-ish space where, or at the lower end of the enterprise, where we're seeing a lot of demand and a lot of traction. So, positive trends, good discussions with new customers, and
spk13: a
spk15: lot of positive
spk13: feedback from our existing base.
spk31: Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Then just to follow up on the transformation initiatives that you mentioned during the quarter, is that focused on any particular business? Maybe you could just frame if we will see any incremental costs going forward.
spk20: Yes, so the transformation initiatives, we described a $100 million cost out program, avoid 70 million benefits this year and 30 million flows into next year. That program is underway and we're doing well. It's really three major buckets. One is hardware design and optimization on the hardware side. The second, which is the biggest piece, about 50%, is within our services business and this is doing more remote sell. This is having a different skill set now that we're separated as two companies. We don't need the same skill set. Those are just two examples. Then the other category, about 25%, is corporate expenses and real estate expenses. So, that cost program is going well. The transformation and restructuring costs to achieve those cost savings you saw in the quarter, that's severance, that's exit costs related to right sizing the real estate portfolio and the IT portfolio. We expect, if I take the separation bucket plus the transformation bucket, about 80 to 90 million of spend this year in total, including what happened in the first quarter. That's in line with the free cash flow guidance that we've given.
spk27: Okay, great. Thank you very much.
spk29: Our next question comes from Alex Newman with Stevens. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: This is Alex on for Chuck Navhan. Just on the restaurant segment, we had 600 basis points of margin expansion. I think you attributed that to some transformational costs. Is that margin in the mid to high 20 something that we should expect for that segment going forward?
spk20: It is. We would expect that segment to be at 26 to 27% for the full year. So, it is something that
spk18: we expect to continue.
spk07: Okay. Then on digital banking as well, that margin also put positive after a couple years of investment. So, we see some similar margin expansion going forward. Then just how I think about revenue, could you maybe balance what the mix of ARPU versus user growth for that segment?
spk20: So, on margin, we expect margin to continue to improve for digital banking, roughly 39% for the full year, which will be up about a percent year over year. So, we do expect EBITDA to grow faster than revenue. We expect the revenue growth to be a combination of both the user growth and ARPU expansion as we go through the year. Like we saw, it was a pretty good split in Q1.
spk25: We would expect that to continue. Thank you.
spk24: Our next question comes from
spk29: Matt Sellerville with DA Davidson. Please proceed with your question.
spk28: Thanks. Just a couple of quick follow-ups. Brian, to that 80 to 90 million of cash-related severance, et cetera, costs you expect to encounter this year, I realize it's early. What does that number roughly look like? As you're thinking about 25, I guess, how much can that tail off and therefore accrete to the company's free cash flow profile and then have a follow-up?
spk20: Yeah, that definitely does come down over time. Separation, there's a component of that that's separation-related, which goes away completely. Then the part that's around right-sizing the cost base, we'll always have incremental cost work to do as we go forward, but we would expect that number to come down. That would be a help to free cash flow. In addition, as we improve our leverage and reduce our debt, the interest reduction would be a help to free cash flow. Holding capex steady as a percent of revenue would help as we go forward, or actually holding capex steady and improving it as a percent of revenue would help free cash flow. Those are the drivers that give us
spk18: confidence that we can improve free cash flow as we go forward.
spk28: Got it. Then, May, you spent some time talking about customer ads in the businesses. I was wondering if you could maybe touch on what your attrition rates have been looking like in retail restaurants and digital banking and how that maybe compares to even just a year or two ago, again, with a focus on all three reportable segments, please. Thank you.
spk15: Yeah,
spk13: I would tell you that we'll run through
spk15: all the segments. We're focused on adding net new customers and we feel like we're making traction there. We are pretty enterprise-heavy focused, so we see strong retention of our enterprise customers, specifically on the retail side. When I get to the restaurant business, again, enterprise side, we see strong retention of our customer base, adding net new customers, so taking share. Then, on the smaller end of that, we see some of the normal churn happening at that small base. We can see that up to 10 percent in that small side of the business as customers, as our restaurant customers go out of business. On digital banking, we continue to see very strong renewal rates, renewing 90 plus percent of our contracts. Then, you look at the net retention rate on revenue and actually we're seeing some strengthening of price. Then, we're expanding like we did with the 200 customer and expanding ARPU with our existing base by cross-selling and up-selling across the capabilities as we move to operationalize as a singular portfolio from the market into that market segment. Overall, we're feeling good about it.
spk13: It's really normal kind of attrition trends that we've seen continuing.
spk28: Then, just lastly, that comment on price. Is that new on the digital banking side? I guess I was under the impression last quarter maybe with all the renewal activity you were seeing a maybe slight amount of price compression. Then, just broadly speaking on price, are you net positive price capture in each of the three segments? Thank you.
spk20: With digital banking on renewal, we do typically see price compression, but that price compression has been improving over the last three or four quarters. Then, outside of price compression, renewal, and all three businesses, we go after capturing CPI
spk18: -related price increases. So, we get benefits each of the three segments around that.
spk29: There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to David Wilkinson for closing comments.
spk13: Thank you. In closing, I'd like to thank all of our customers again
spk15: for the trust that they put in us every day to help them achieve strategic objectives. I'd also like to thank again our NCR VOIX colleagues for their contributions to our successes up to now and our investors for their ongoing support. As I stated earlier, we remain committed to serving our existing customers and bringing them on the platform journey in addition to adding new customers. Our platform investments over the past years have provided real value to our customers, and we're going to continue to connect them to the platform. We've built a solid foundation for growth within our base and growth of new customers, specifically in mid-market. And while we're proud of where we are, we need to do better at turning this foundation into growth, and this focus will show up in our results. I believe in the plan that we've outlined today, and I believe in this management team to execute. Thank you, and look forward to updating you on our continued progress on our Q2 call.
spk29: This includes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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