Dennis Story
Analyst · Truist. Sir, your line is open
Thanks, Eddie and hats off to our Manhattan strong global teams who continue to execute exceptionally well. We delivered strong financial results across the board, while significantly investing in the business. All 3 major geos were in the money, Americas, EMEA and APAC delivered double-digit top line growth and double-digit operating profit growth. Our growth, profitability and cash flow metrics continue to be solid. I will start with a quick recap of the quarter with growth rates on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise stated. Total revenue was a record $179 million, up 14%. This included 2 points of FX headwind excluding license and maintenance revenue, which removes the compression driven by our cloud transition, our total revenue was up 20%. Q1 cloud revenue totaled $37 million, up 40%. We ended the quarter with RPO of $810 million, growing 92% year-over-year and 16% sequentially. As an FYI, as of March 31, 2022, over 97% of our RPO is cloud-native subscriptions. As Eddie highlighted, demand continues to be broad and robust, well positioning us to achieve the $1 billion RPO milestone this year. Services set a new Q1 revenue record of $90 million, up 12%. How about them apples? As cloud sales continue to fuel services revenue growth globally. Cloud and services revenue combined represented 71% of our total revenue in the quarter. Our Q1 operating profit totaled $48 million, with adjusted operating margin of 26.9%, up 420 basis points year-over-year. Our performance was driven by strong cloud and services revenue growth, combined with operating leverage as our cloud business scales. This resulted in record Q1 earnings per share of $0.60, up 40% and GAAP EPS was $0.48, up 37%. Turning to cash, Q1 operating cash flow was a solid $32 million. We absorbed $25 million related to 2021 bonus compensation payout and 2022 merit compensation increases. Overall, this resulted in a 28% adjusted EBITDA margin and 17% free cash flow margin. Our balance sheet is rock solid with $216 million in cash and zero debt. Accordingly, we leveraged our strong cash position, investing our full $50 million share repurchase authority in the quarter. Given the strength of our balance sheet, solid cash collections and increasing visibility, our Board has increased our share repurchase authority to $75 million. So on to 2022 guidance. As consistently mentioned, our financial objective is to deliver sustainable double-digit top line growth and top quartile operating margins benchmarked against enterprise SaaS comps. With our strong start to the year and increasing visibility, we are raising our 2022 outlook. As a reminder, it is our intention to only update our multiyear guidepost on an annual basis. In today’s earnings release showcases the guidepost we originally published in conjunction with our Q4 call. For 2022 total revenue, we now expect a range of $720 million to $727 million, with a $723.5 million midpoint representing 9% year-over-year growth, up from our prior midpoint guidance of $708 million. For Q2, we expect total revenue of $178 million to $182 million. Excluding license and maintenance revenue, we estimate 19% growth for full year and Q2 representing sound underlying growth fundamentals. For operating margin, we are increasing our range to 24.2% to 24.8% up from our prior range of 23% to 24%, and we continue to target 75 to 125 basis points of operating margin expansion per year beginning in 2023. As highlighted on our Q4 call, 2022 operating margin guidance incorporates the following: an impact of 300 basis points from license and maintenance attrition on customer demand for our cloud solutions; 250 basis points of investment for talent hiring and retention; and 200 basis points of additional investment in our business, including the return of pandemic-impacted expenses. Yes, we are investing in the business. Regarding full year adjusted EPS, we are raising the range to $2.14 to $2.22, with a $2.18 midpoint, which is up from our prior $2.04 estimate. For GAAP EPS, our guidance range is moving up to $1.45 to $1.53. For Q2, we expect adjusted EPS of $0.52 to $0.54 and GAAP EPS of $0.33 to $0.35 with the difference between adjusted EPS and GAAP EPS solely representing investment in equity-based compensation. I’ll now provide some additional color for full year 2022. This is good stuff. We are increasing our cloud revenue range to $167 million to $170 million, representing 38% growth at the $168.5 million midpoint. We estimate cloud revenue will be approximately $40.5 million in Q2 and that it will increase to $43.5 million in Q3 and $47 million in Q4. That’s precision target volume there. For services revenue, we are increasing our forecast of $375 million to $379 million, representing 13% growth at the $377 million midpoint. We estimate Q2 services revenue of $96 million, $98.5 million in Q3 and to account for retail peak seasonality, $92 million in Q4. For maintenance revenue, we are slightly refining our revenue range lower to $134 million to $135 million as customers convert to cloud. For Q2, we estimate maintenance revenue of $34 million for Q3 $33 million and about $32 million in Q4. Overall, by end of year 2022, we expect license revenue to be about 2% of total revenue averaging about $3 million in license revenue per quarter for the remainder of the year. And for hardware, we expect about $6 million in revenue per quarter. Yes, I said $3 million in license per quarter versus $6 million from our hardware team. Clearly, demand has shifted to cloud. Moving to profitability. For consolidated subscription, maintenance and services, we expect margin to be about 54% for the remaining quarters of 2022. For operating margin, we are estimating about 24% for Q2 and Q3 and 23% in Q4, as timing of investments in hiring, marketing and pandemic-related expenses will push to the second half of the year. All said, though, we expect to achieve full year operating margin of 24.5%. Turning to operating cash flow. Starting January 1, 2022, as most of you are aware, the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act requires the capitalization of R&D for tax purposes. I refer you to item nine in our supplemental schedules. We anticipate the newly enacted tax legislation to increase this year’s cash income taxes paid by approximately $30 million to $35 million compared to 2021 of which about $15 million will be paid in Q2 with the remainder paid evenly over Q3 and Q4. While there is still a possibility that legislation will be enacted that defers or eliminates the requirement to capitalize these costs, our current outlook factors in higher cash taxes as we will be required to make these payments unless the existing law is amended. To be clear, this legislation does not impact earnings per share and it does not create any incremental expense obligation and, importantly, does not impact our ability to operationally grow cash flow. Finally, we expect our tax rate to be 21.7% and diluted share count to be approximately 64 million shares, which assumes no buyback activity. So that covers a super fantastic Q1 performance. Thanks to all Manhattan Associates, and thank you. And back to Eddie for some closing remarks.