Good afternoon and welcome to Asure’s Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today’s call are Asure’s CEO, Pat Goepel; CFO, John Pence; Vice President of HR, Cheryl Trbula and Jay Powers. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Cheryl for introductory remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us for Asure’s third quarter 2020 earnings call. After the market close, we released our financial results. The earnings materials are available on the SEC's website and our Investor Relations website at investor.asuresoftware.com, where you also find the investor presentation. This teleconference is also being broadcast over the internet and will be archived and available on our IR website. During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors and exclude the impact of certain items. A description and timing of these items along with a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to their most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release. Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements that refer to future events and as such involve some risks. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and it will be made available for replay via a link available in the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Pat Goepel, CEO. Pat?

Thank you, Cheryl. And thank you for all of you being on the call today, we'd like to welcome everybody to our third quarter earnings 2020 call. I appreciate your interest, whether you're an employee, a client, investor, analyst, or other interested third party. I will start today's call with an update on some key metrics and our response to COVID-19 before reviewing business highlights for the third quarter, and recent changes to our senior leadership team. Let’s review our financial results and then I'll take questions. In the third quarter, small business new bookings grew by over 100% year-over-year. Revenue was also better than expected, and we generated positive free cash flow. Our key metrics benefited from a backdrop of gradually improving economic conditions including higher employment levels and increased business activity. We also on-boarded many high quality caliber sales reps, our number of sales reps increased to 64 from 33 at the beginning of the year. We're delighted how quickly these new reps have become productive. While hiring these terrific reps sooner than expected led to higher sales expenses in the quarter, non-GAAP EBITDA was still at or above expectations. So we view the early ire of extraordinary sales reps as a very attractive trade off that we expect to benefit organic growth in 2020, second half 2021 and beyond. In May and August, we provided updates to our business as we were responding to the impacts of COVID-19. We also talked about the headwinds in our key metrics at that time. While the pandemic continues to impact our top line resulting in unfavorable year-over-year comparisons, we have experienced a steady increase in paid employees, as well as an increase in sales leads and sales productivity in the quarter. We usually do not provide detailed monthly metrics. But…

Hey Pat, thank you. I'd like to thank you and the Board for the opportunity to serve as Chief Financial Officer. But I think it ensures in my own best interest to resign so I can focus on my family health matters. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jay. And we appreciate the hard work and the diligence which you serve.

Despite the unfortunate personal situation that caused the opportunity to become available, I'm excited to join Asure's experienced leadership team. Asure is uniquely positioned as a leading SaaS HCM provider for 60,000 small businesses. And I'm eager to help the company build on a foundation built by Pat and his team and continue on its plans for double-digit organic and inorganic growth.

Thanks, Jay and thank you, John. With that, we'll open it up for questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Ryan Meyers with Lake Street Capital. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. First one for me, so when we look at the strong bookings number, how much of that would you attribute to overall economic recovery? And then how much would you attribute to the sales force expansion?

No, it's a good question. It's probably a little bit of both. I do think, we were able to really acquire and get about 20 sales reps early, and our experienced sales reps have been in the industry. So they definitely came with kind of well -- really strong contacts in the industry. And we were able to hit the ground running. I do think in the second quarter, there was some pent up demand in the sense that businesses were trying to figure out if they were in business, and then in the third quarter, they kind of settled down and said, okay, we don't like the pandemic, but we know how to operate. And certainly we did get some sales. Now, pivoting forward, what I'm really excited about is the fourth quarter and first quarter 2021, where we have improving conditions, we have the sales reps with 20 of them with a quarter now underneath their belt, and a pipeline is really strong. So, we're selling a lot for January 2021 right now. So feel really good about how we’re positioned.

Okay. That's kind of a good segue to my next question. Can you give us some insight on what you're seeing so far from customers here in the fourth quarter, and kind of how the bookings have been tracking?

Yeah. I think from a business perspective, the pandemic is, I think the election -- I think you have a couple things, right? You have the election you have -- is there going to be a third wave. But from a customer perspective, people are saying, hey, I got to deal with this one way or the other. I think we're getting a little bit more a return to normalcy. And certainly you do have different industries pushing. Now, if we get a stimulus, obviously, that'll help, but you can't count on that. But I would say our pipeline and growth has been strong. We feel good about where we're positioned. And I think people are starting to return the normalcy of buying habits. And they're getting used to deal with the ambiguity of the pandemic. That being said, is there going to be policy changes, I can't speak to that. But what we got to do is control what we can control, which is if we keep selling and starting more customers, then we lose in a month, we're going to be in good shape going forward.

Okay. That's good to hear. And then last one for me. So how are you thinking about sales hires for fourth quarter here and then into 2021?

Yeah, I think you'll see in 2021 we’ll position our sales headcount around 75. We have about 64 right now. We'll hire some in the fourth quarter in the first quarter to get ready for the for the 2021 season. But we see as this is a good opportunity to get share, to stay close to our customers and grow and we feel good about our competitive products and the rollout of our new products. And we think right now is the time to grow. And so I think you'll see us run at a number about 75 in 2021, from a sales rep perspective.

Awesome. Thanks for the help.

Thank you. And thanks for the call.

Your next question comes from the line of Derrick Wood with Cowen. Your line is open.

Great, thanks for taking my questions. Nice to -- Pat nice to speak with you and everyone else. I know you entered the year with you know, focusing on kind of the sale of space and reinvesting sales capacity and other things back on the HCM side, so, congrats on starting to see the dividends in that. I wanted to as you onboard all these new reps, is the focus going to be more on cross selling the base? Or is it more towards generating new customers would be my first question.

Derrick, the first question for us is we got a lot of momentum selling new customers in the sense of, we have benefit providers of CPAs and banks that, they're actively looking to engage us in books of business and growth opportunities. And we're really looking to take advantage of that strength in the marketplace. Some of our competitors are starting to compete, for example, with the benefit brokers, where they're looking to steal the broker record. We're taking the opportunity to work with the benefit providers, and we think that there's some really good opportunity that continue to grow with those type of partnerships. So, we'll take advantage of that. From a cross sell perspective, as we roll out our new products, we do feel, for example, the attach rates of our new sales increasingly are going up, and then going back into the base where we have a catalyst, we’ll continue to grow. But first, really real progress is in getting those new customers and new books of business. Because we feel that that from a starting point, is frankly, a great sales opportunity and a great path to growth. And then as companies go through kind of logical events, we'll cross sell those opportunities and continue to drive the attach rates in all our customers.

Yes, that makes sense. And Pat, there was you made a point in your remarks that 95% of new customers tend to buy a bundle. I mean, that's pretty, that's pretty encouraging. So, what's the most frequently adopted HCM module with payroll? And I guess, how should we be thinking about, at least out of the gate, kind of what the average deal size up lift is, when you do some of these bundling versus your standalone payroll?

Yes, the average bundle per unit, it's about 50% or so from a pricing perspective, and really what we're seeing is time and attendance, HR and HR consulting and bundles, and especially with the pandemic, people are looking at, all kinds of HR advice, whether they have to lay off, whether they hire, how they deal with the pandemic, overtime and different legislation around payroll taxes, etcetera. So, they're increasingly looking for our advice around that. And, that's what we're seeing, frankly, the bundles come about in those three or four areas.

Okay. Last question for me, just on the on the kind of back office middle office investments that you've made, just in terms of what you're expecting the yield from that, and I kind of think of three different things. One would be, easier ability to onboard M&A. One would be easier ability to cross sell, and one would be, maybe better sales and marketing efficiency. So from obviously, there's cost savings on the cost side, but from the revenue, synergy standpoint, is there anything you'd call out now that you've kind of made those investments and where you see some yield coming from?

Yes, I think that's a great question, Derrick. And we're going through the planning cycle right now and we're completing that this quarter. How I look at it is, first of all, I think we could double the size of our company and the GA spend will continue to drive down. We're really attacking the GA, the general and administrative spend. And we think we have the people process and technology in order to double in size without really adding a lot of costs. And that's a big focus of ours. From a product innovation perspective, what we believe that's going to continue to do is drive down cogs, as a percentage and drive up gross margin over the next couple years. And I think you'll see improvement. From a sales perspective, I'd like to spend probably 1% or so more a year as a percentage of revenue to keep our sales coverage growing, and our organic growth growing, even after acquisitions. And then finally, our development perspective picked up spending about a point a year or so where we continue to drive and innovate new products, et cetera. And all of that we believe them will be a highly leverageable model where we can grow organically and with acquisitions, and where we can double the growth there, and are overall almost triple the bottom line. And that's really what we're trying to drive. And those are kind of the expenditures and the benefits we hope to receive.

Makes a lot of sense. Okay, thanks.

Thank you, Derrick.

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan MacDonald, with Needham. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Pat I guess first one for you. You've talked about how about 90 -- I think 900 or so of the thousand shutdown customers have returned. What should we expect for, I guess, additional 100 to 150 clients that are still paused? Do we need to wait for stimulus to get those back online? Or do you think those are just customers that are putting insurance? Thanks.

Ryan, it’s a good thought. In our daily calls, we cover that and Goldstein covers that every day. And what I would say in general, I think at this point, they're probably gone or they might come back with some stimulus. But I've kind of said, hey, those 150 or so they're not coming back. And if they do great, and we'll keep in touch with them and have done that, but that's how I'm viewing it. Now, conversely, some of the data around the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would be that in the fourth quarter customer formations and new customers forming businesses is really snapping back in an all-time high. And we're really focusing on getting our share of those businesses, especially on board in the fourth quarter as we look at 2021. So we're helping customers deal with COVID, we're making sure they have the data where they can return to us on a moment's notice. But we're really playing a lot of offense, because we think the business conditions are such that you're going to see a lot of businesses come into these pause businesses. And, if you do get stimulus, you do get credit for new business formation again, we see that there's a lot of robots activity in that area. And that's our focus.

Super helpful. You mentioned also that you had the reseller conference during the quarter, just love to get a sense of sort of what you're hearing from your resellers in terms of sort of health of business or their viewpoint on the market. And then how should we think about the expansion of the reseller network as a growth driver for fiscal 2021?

Yes, no, I think Ryan, our focus internally has been a couple things. One, we first of all, we had a banner year, last year of selling more resellers and getting people to sign up. This year from a reseller network, and if you think about these resellers, their overall let's say, their one, two, their $5 million to $8 million businesses, they're looking at dealing with PPP. And what we're working with in many of the cases is helping them with their end clients to get those in clients back to processing. And their metrics are very similar to ours, where they lost about 10% 10.5% early in the year that due to pause, and now they're getting customers back depending on what area of the country they are, et cetera. And, then on an employment level as the U.S. returns to more full employment, they're hoping to get those employees paid back, so very similar trends. As far as we're work focused on in 2021 with the reseller network, we'd like to continue to grow at a positive rate with the amount of resellers. But then from an engagement around multiple products, we want to make some exponential impact around that area, and then help them really with profitable add on products that they can add to their current customers. So, our focus is really keep growing the network, look for opportunities to grow from a solution perspective and then help them position to get their end clients back and the employment levels up where they can drive their bottom line. So that's really our focus.

Great, thanks a lot.

Thanks, you.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Van Rheewith Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking my questions, I've got several. Pat, on the bookings number, I think last quarter you said, your bookings were up 21% year-over-year. And I just wanted to be clear the number that you're giving this 100%? I think you said new SMB, are those apples to apples and if not, there do you have a comparable to last quarters?

Yeah, definitely. We're down about 10% in overall bookings. We were up over 100 in SMB. We did have a difficult compare in our reseller area where we had several large resellers, and it was a competitive thing where one of our valued competitors get hit with the ransomware. So we did have a number of large resellers. Overall, our bookings are down 10% in a direct market, it was over 100% increase.

Okay, that's helpful. And then on the resellers, I think in the prior question you were talking about, eventually you'll get back to these resellers and really try to drive deeper penetration beyond the payroll into some of the incremental products time attendance, HR. What is it -- as you obviously have no existing relationships with those resellers, what is it that you have to display? So I would assume those wouldn't be Greenfield or maybe they are but what what's there now with respect to time and attendance in HR?

Well, first of all, swipe clock does a really nice job. And there are some other competitors out there in the marketplace that do a nice job. So in some cases, it's displacing there. But if you think about our product strategy in our web product deployment, we've rolled out simple payroll entry, which automatically gets you to the web. Once you're on the web, essential HR gives you a base level of HR that you normally don't have. Once you're on essential HR, and you want to go to Advanced HR, all you do is click on a drop down menu. From a consulting perspective, we've done a lot of our consulting and put it on to the web. So as you want to bundle that payroll offering, and then light HR offering with consulting regulations and how to give performance reviews, the employee handbook all the apps online into a nice bundle. And so those are some product innovation that we didn't have last year, and then we have this year. And those are the things that we're going to continue to bundle going forward. And we think we're going to get some pretty good traction. And then at the user conference, we roll those out. Essential HR already has over 100 clients and we think that there's an opportunity to grow that in the network.

Very helpful. Last from me, just to be clear, I think you had scrolled the payroll tax management acquisition. Just refreshing, was there any revenue contribution in the quarter from that, I don't recall if you ever shared that.

Yeah. We didn't give exact numbers there. And when I would say, if you think about the second quarter or the third quarter, we went from $14.1 million to $16 million. If you think a little bit less than half of that was PTM and a little bit more than half was organic growth that would be kind of the neighborhood you would look at.

Thanks Pat, very helpful.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Your next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Your line is open.

Yeah, Pat, I was hoping that you can give us an update on in terms of how far along you are in terms of the actions you've taken to improve gross margins.

I really think if you look in 2021Vince, I think we'll see a pickup of a couple percentage points. What we've worked on a product perspective and the rollout this past quarter of single payroll, simple payroll entry and Essential HR really sets the stage for more of a touch less experience. So, I think we have some good traction. AWS and the consolidation of AWS is well in place. And we're really working on optimizing that. So, the first was the lift and shift to AWS. Now the next stage is driving efficiency, and we have some good programs that will start to impact in 2021. And then just looking at kind of standardization and harmonization of some of the habits that we have, and how they run at peak efficiency, I'm really pleased with some of the leadership that we have in each location. And now that they're starting to benchmark each other, I think we're going to see some opportunities. So, how we look at it is, I'd like to be over 70% gross margin in this business. We're not there yet. But I think, certainly a 3% a year uptick can certainly be achievable as we get there.

Thanks for that color. One of the question for me, SG&A kicked up in the quarter, was that old ties of the new sales hires?

Yeah, I mean, we really made a fast forward on a sales perspective, because we had the opportunity to get some sales reps that were highly experienced, and we want to take advantage of it. So the vast majority is in the sales area.

Thank you, Pat.

Thank you, Vince.

[Operator instructions] As there are no further questions at this time, presenters, you may proceed.

Yeah, first of all, I'd like to thank everybody for joining the call. I'm really excited about the business. I bought Asure stock with my own money recently. I'm really excited about the business. We have an Investor Relations Deck at 13 to Page 19. We do believe that second quarter was a trough. We understand that with COVID, there's some uncertainty out there. But we're going to sell and start more customers and we're going to lose, and that's going to pay-off for us. I think the investment in the salespeople the right investment. We're going to grow, we feel very optimistic as we look in 2021. And we appreciate your involvement as a shareholder, employee or client or somebody listening to this call. And we'd like to thank you for time you invest today, and we'll see you in the first quarter of 2021. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day. You may all disconnect.