Earnings Labs

ACI Worldwide, Inc. (ACIW)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 8, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Christy, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ACI Worldwide Reports Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now look to turn the call over to Mr. John Kraft, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

John Kraft

Analyst

Thank you, Christy, and good morning, everybody. Today's call, like all of our events, are subject to both Safe Harbor and forward-looking statements. You can find the full text of both statements on the first and final pages of our presentation deck today, a copy of which is available on our website, as well as with the SEC. Starting this morning's call is Phil Heasley, our CEO; followed by Scott Behrens, our CFO. We will then open the call for questions. Phil?

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Good morning. Thank you, John. While our quarterly results are within guideline range we provided, they were adversely impacted by certain implementations requiring more resources and time than expected. Not only does the slowdown in these implementations delay revenue-triggering events, but resources consumed by these projects have not been available for other revenue-generating projects. We completed a deep and detailed review of these projects, and we are providing investors with incremental and updated guidance that account for these delays, as well as the timing of our expected bookings. It is important to remember that these implementation issues are only delays, with the majority of the impact confined to 2013 and no significant impact in 2014 and beyond. The affected large customers recognize the amount of work we are undertaking to honor our assumed commitments, and we believe that we are gaining credibility and engendering customer loyalty by giving the highest priority to solving these implementation issues quickly. Regarding Online Resources, the acquisition is performing at or slightly above expectations. The integration is proceeding as planned, and we are well into our second phase. Most importantly, our organic sales booking pipeline, excluding ORCC, is looking stronger than originally anticipated, and we now expect total net new bookings growth as a percent for the full year to be in the mid-teens. This is due in part to the prospects from our recently delivered Universal Payments Platform, UPP 3.0, that powers the industry's only end-to-end highly differentiated payment solution. We expect to be discussing at least 1 large UPP contract later this year. What's more, our payments business has never been healthier, and attrition has never been lower. Our Universal Online Banker platform is also a major reason for the net new bookings growth as we now have the industry's most robust online…

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Thanks, Phil, and good morning, everyone. I first plan to go through highlights of the second quarter and then provide an update on our outlook for 2013. I'll be starting my comments on Slide 6, with key takeaways from the quarter. As Phil mentioned, the integration of Online Resources is proceeding at or above our expectations. We have completed Phase 1 and are now starting Phase 2, which will result in an incremental $7 million in annualized cost savings, starting in the full year 2015, and that coming from facilities and data center consolidations. As part of Phase 2, we're also planning to rationalize a small number of low-margin contracts, resulting in a slight reduction in revenue but virtually no impact to operating income. And with these cost synergies added to the previous nearly $20 million in Phase 1, generates roughly $27 million in total cost synergies from the Online Resources acquisition. New sales bookings, net of term extensions, were $129 million in the quarter. That's up 15% on a consolidated basis. Excluding the contribution for ORCC, organic sales[ph] was flat and below our internal expectations for the quarter. That said, however, as Phil has already touched on, looking at the rest of year, we now expect organic new sales bookings growth to be in the mid-teens, up from our prior expectation of high-single, low-double-digit forecast. And we can definitively say that several large financial institutions are seriously evaluating our newer Universal Payments Platform. And the interest in our Universal Banker product is also high, and we are seeing dividends from the investments we continue to make in that product line. All this is contributing to a pipeline that is even stronger than what we saw last quarter. Turning next to backlog. Our 12-month backlog increased $6 million after adjusting…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Gil Luria from Wedbush Securities.

Gil B. Luria - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Analyst

On that sales metric -- the overall sales metric, including capacity and term extensions, what do you expect the overall bookings to be up this year?

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Yes. We haven't provided a total sales bookings number. We're just guiding to the net new sales bookings, which, really, as you know, is the incremental -- is really what drives incremental backlog and incremental revenue. Whether that converts this year or in the future, it is the incremental revenue to our existing book of business.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Gil, if I could say a little thing to dice it a little bit. Capacity, by definition, is net new. That does add to backlog, so capacity is in that mid-teens number. As I stated, our attrition is at a historic low, especially in our payments business. It's not in our best interest to rush renewals, especially with UPP coming onboard and it being a cross-sell to that renewal. We now -- we've been through the puff [ph] period. We have very good margins in our payment business, and it's in our best interest to be patient as it relates to that. So we said we had the 2.6-year -- for us to be patient there, is the right thing. Where we're going to put more attention is where we have perpetual licenses. We don't renew perpetual for -- but there is -- by definition, there is no renewal. So the next phase in our relationship with our perpetual customers is to move them to our model, which, on one hand, takes the revenue out much -- we'll end up with -- if we book at January 1, we'd have 20% of the revenue that year at the perpetual -- from the perpetual side. And if we book it in December, we have 0, right? So their -- so perpetual to subscription is the -- is what we're working on right now. We're not rushing to renew our profitable contracts.

Gil B. Luria - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Got it. And then in terms of the potential for the big deal, a really big deal for you in the past was a processor where you could do a $40 million over 5-year deal. Is this something, in an order of magnitude, bigger than that? Or is that kind of in the same range?

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Well, let me put it this way. The new deals where Universal Online Banker sells an entire suite and ability to go across, that could be the same -- that could be somewhat -- depending on size of the bank, that could be somewhat smaller to a little bit larger than that historic kind. A payments use of UPP that incorporates a series of legacy assets could be significantly larger.

Gil B. Luria - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Got it. And then last one, took down revenue guidance by $30 million, but EBITDA guidance only by $10 million. We said we got $7 million additional from synergy on Online Resources. Where is the other $23 million coming from?

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Well, the $7 million is not in this year. The $7 million comes in '15.

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Yes. Gil, the $7 million is coming in 2015 on an annualized basis. But the cost -- really, what we're looking at is our exit rate coming out of the second quarter. We had certain costs that were heavier in the first half of the year. And obviously, we're going to start seeing the synergies -- the Phase 1 synergies of ORCC kicking in here for the first -- their first full quarter will be Q3. But overall, it's based on our exit rate coming out of June. And I think it's pretty consistent -- if you look organically, pretty consistent expense with what we saw in the comparable periods in 2012.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

The only risk we have to that is that if we blow through the mid-teens number and we'll end up being even higher, we will end up with compensation and other -- we will end up with costs that will put additional pressures. But that would come from blowing through that mid-teens number.

Gil B. Luria - Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division

Analyst

So I guess, to ask it differently, if you're taking the revenue guidance down by $30 million and the EBITDA only by $10 million, the rest is the cost savings on the ACI side or are you just at a lower run rate of expenses going forward then?

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Well, I think it's really both. I mean, it's both on the ACI side and it's a -- I mean, it's a lower level -- lower run rate overall. I mean, one of the things that we're seeing is, obviously, when we came into the year, we were expecting new sales bookings to be better phased. We didn't expect a flat Q2. So obviously, as we see the new sales bookings timing coming in, in more the second half of the year, that's allowed us to look at our resource planning, and that's the major cost that we have. And so as we've seen attrition, we haven't necessarily replaced it that quickly. In real time, that replacement is with the timing of the new sales bookings, so that's a contributing factor. But again, I think what you're going to see is a cost base that was pretty consistent with where we were this time in 2012.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of George Sutton from Craig-Hallum.

Jason Kreyer - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, Research Division

Analyst

It's Jason on for George. You indicated a pretty big ramp in bookings for the back half of the year relative to what we've seen in the first half. And I'm just wondering if you can walk through the thought process on that a little bit.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Well, first of all, we're actually disappointed with being flat. But we're not disappointed because we lost any deals. We're disappointed because we lost the opportunity to get them closed by the middle of the year. So it's totally pipeline driven in terms of what we're giving you. And unfortunately, we're trying our best, and I personally consider it a success not achieved that we'd like to get more of our business closed earlier in the year. And of course, it's being viewed by a lot of our customers as a cause for better pricing. And we will not -- we'll do the budget dance with them versus discount ourselves to early book our business. So -- and clearly, it's the success of Universal Online Banker, and it's the success of -- it's the huge interest in UPP. Quite honestly, with the -- with very, very low attrition in our payments business and a -- it's not coming as much from that side. Our strength there is coming from continuity of that -- of those forecasts and a lower attrition rate.

Jason Kreyer - Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And then on the UPP side of the bookings, just wondering if you actually have signed agreements there or if you had any -- I guess if any UPP consideration was given into your guidance range.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

The latter, not the former.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Brett Huff from Stephens Inc.

Brett Huff - Stephens Inc., Research Division

Analyst

One question for you. And Scott, I think -- Phil or Scott, you guys called this out in your press release last quarter that you had some delays. I think it was $15 million of delays, some pipelines, some implementations or maybe it was go-live events. Do we have a status of those -- that $15 million-or-so as it stands either in 2Q or maybe now?

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Well, it was -- really, what we were talking about on the $15 million was compared to the prior year, the timing of $15 million of -- about half of that, call it, was timing of capacity, which has started to come through here in the second quarter and will continue. Again, that was -- that's a timing issue. And then the other was the non-recurring revenue license and services that come from project go-lives. So those -- that was an issue relative to Q1 of 2012. That was not necessarily saying that there was this -- other than these elephant project delays, these online banking projects that we have, there is -- all the other projects are on track.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Yes. But I don't -- by coincidence, I don't want to be hiding behind a very -- a very close number is the delay that we're expecting to go into '14 versus '13, Brett. And I don't want to hide behind -- I made 2 fundamental mistakes in converting the S1 profit model into the ACI profit model, was, one, I underestimated the impact of implementing perpetual licenses that were sold at the very end of the negotiation period and whatnot, in terms of implementing them. And the jobs ended up being much larger than we expected, and I take the fail on that. But that has -- we worked our way through a lot of that. We've had some great success with some that have gone live, and I think we've engendered a lot of positives from our customers in terms of doing it. I think we're long-term thinkers. We're not going to screw the customer short term and lose the long-term franchise. So I clearly made a mistake on that. The other mistake that I made was that when you can -- in our model, we rely on making the money from the product. We tend to breakeven on the implementation. And we really didn't add back in as much of that implementation effort that was still -- that, on our model, was required. So when we go and rework the deals with the guys, we don't rework it for another perpetual, we rework it for a subscription. So you'll end up with the expense obligation, the effort and the time and the expertise obligation, and then you're going to take the revenue ratably over time. So I screwed up in both of those categories, and so I'm not hiding and pretending that this didn't happen. I made a mistake in both of those assumptions.

Brett Huff - Stephens Inc., Research Division

Analyst

That's helpful. And my follow-up is, and Scott, I think I may have -- I was trying to see if you answered this before. But I just want to clear. The margins were lower than we expected, particularly on the gross margin line. Did you go through the thoughts on that -- or at least it was versus our model. Did you go through what the impacts might have been there already? Was it some of these delayed implementations, et cetera?

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Well, obviously, with the delayed implementations, we're getting -- as we do with many of our projects, we're taking all the -- substantially all the costs today, and the revenue is either incurred over time or we're getting the benefit of it go-live. But no, ultimately, ...

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

That's the answer. I mean, that's -- we expensed in excess of 95% of the implementation at the time of cost. And if we're delayed, we don't get the onetime revenue pop that comes from having deferred or being -- in some of these projects, we're going to be at 75% to 95% complete for a long -- for a fairly long time before we kick into their next revenue stream. And that's what we said is the 2013 impact versus '14.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Tom McCrohan from Janney.

Thomas C. McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Just a clarification on organic revenue growth guidance in the low- to mid-single digits. Does organic revenue only exclude Online Resources and include S1?

Scott W. Behrens

Analyst

Organic excludes ORCC and include S1.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

And includes S1 as though S1 was there 100% last year. So it's apples-to-apples full year last year S1 to apples-to-apples full year S1 this year. It excludes ORCC because, as you can see, ORCC over-delivered. They weren't flat for the quarter. They were up significantly year-to-year.

Thomas C. McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And in terms of what's baked into that guidance in terms of pricing, in the past, you folks have been able to push through some pricing increases. What's in your assumptions this year for organic revenue growth as far as pricing-related impacts?

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

I think the best way to say that is that we have been very diligent over the last 5 years of implementing a consistent ACI pricing policy, and we're extending that pricing policy to S1 and ORCC. For competitive reasons, I'm not going to say anything more than that.

Thomas C. McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst

Okay, that's fair. And in terms of, again, what's assumed in your guidance, contribution from S1 last year, I think, if I remember correctly, S1 contributed about $162 million of revenues, which was pretty materially below what -- the revenue run rate when you acquired the company. I know it's only 10.5 months. But normalized for, like, a full year, it was still kind of below. So is your guidance assuming that S1 revenue contribution this year is trending kind of flat, above or below kind of what the run rate was last year?

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Let me answer it this way. The go-forward S1 products, right, which are most -- we've restructured which products we offer to what markets and to what parts of the world and whatnot. The sales of the S1 products are doing well this year, as well as the historic ACI products are doing this year. Now one thing that I don't think we're ever going to be able to explain to people, if you sell a perpetual license and then someone buys that company and starts selling subscription licenses, we can only give you the apples to apples on the net side. We can't give it to you on the sales-to-revenue conversion side because on a perpetual license, I can book something December 31 and take the perpetual fee that year. In our model, if I book something in the fourth quarter of the year, I'm going to see little to 0 revenue as a result of that. So if we were to go back, which I -- and normalize S1 against our revenue, it would not change the value of S1. But it would absolutely change the year-to-year revenue numbers, the way they book them versus we book them. So that's a little bit of "Do you still beat your kids?" kind of thing. We're just not operating the business in the same way. We have a different revenue model.

Thomas C. McCrohan - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst

That's helpful. So some of -- okay, understood. I didn't appreciate that part of it before. And can you just give us an update still on 2 things? One, you've been -- in the past, you talked about BASE24-eps and getting people onto that platform. Any kind of update on trends there? And secondly, the relationship with IBM, which I know is more of a significant factor that we -- that you talked about a lot a couple of years ago. And I'm just wondering what progress is being made there, if there's any update on that relationship.

Philip G. Heasley

Analyst

Two things. Thank you for asking on eps because one of the things that's gotten lost in all our activities has been the great success of eps, right? And eps is doing very, very well, and eps is going to have a release in the beginning of 2014. That is going to be -- we're going to be bragging about that and its capabilities the way, this year, we're talking about UPP and -- that we're bragging about UPP and Universal Online Banker. Basically, the BASE24 switch, the eps switch, is going to have the ability to move checks the same way -- OFAC transactions the same way it can move card transactions and whatnot. And where that's great and it's already creating a lot of interest, it's not necessarily -- that's causing people to look back and look at a larger -- they're looking at larger sales, but they're more complicated. And that's pushed our business in the end of the year. So thanks for asking on that. But that's a very profitable product for ACI at this point, and that was a decade in coming. So we feel very good about that. And our relationship with IBM, we view IBM as a strategic key partner. I'd say we're doing deals with them on 4 continents right now. We're working elbow to elbow with them, and we're very happy with our relationship with IBM.

Operator

Operator

And there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to our presenters.

John Kraft

Analyst

Well, thank you, all, for joining the call. We look forward to talking to you individually in the coming days.