Operator
Operator
Good afternoon. My name is Christine and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SS&C Technologies Third Quarter Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. Justine Stone, you may begin your conference. Justine Stone - SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.: Hi, everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining us for our Q3 2018 earnings call. I'm Justine Stone, Investor Relations for SS&C. With me today is Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Rahul Kanwar, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Patrick Pedonti, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, we need to review the Safe Harbor statement. Please note that various remarks we make today about future expectations, plans and prospects, including the financial outlook we provide, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC and can also be accessed on our website. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations only as of today, October 31, 2018. While the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements, it specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. During today's call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings release, which is located in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.ssctech.com. I'll now turn the call over to Bill. William C. Stone - SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.: Thanks, Justine, and thanks, everyone for being on the call. As many of you saw last week, we pre-released earnings with updated guidance. The substantial beat of our previous guidance drove this decision. We felt we should get the information out quickly and as many of you know, we've had quite volatile markets lately. Our results are up about $1.003 billion in adjusted revenue and we earned $0.79 in adjusted diluted earnings per share. Our earnings beat is primarily driven by our lower cost base and strong performance on the DST synergies. DST's integration and margin improvement is going well. Additional unplanned cost savings were achieved in Q3 primarily through the result of natural attrition. With this in mind, we have raised our synergy guidance for DST to $220 million to $240 million over the three years beginning April 16, 2018. The additional $45 million to $65 million in cost savings will come from transitioning contractors to employees, lower facilities costs and improved provisioning of data and other operating expenses. We are also excited about the opportunities ahead with both Eze Software and Intralinks. Eze Software closed earlier this month and we are already working to get our sales forces integrated and beginning to execute on the $30 million in cost synergies we've outlined. We announced our acquisition of Intralinks in early September and we have communicated with many of you the asset's high quality, financial growth rates and management team. Intralinks shares a lot of mutual target clients of banks and alternative asset firms as SS&C does and allows us to engage with the treasury departments of their Fortune 1000 corporate clients. We believe there's plenty of cross-sell opportunities here. Intralinks' strong technology is also leverageable across our organization and can be used to improve client interfaces at many DST customers. SS&C has been very well served by senior executives of our acquired company. People like Rahul Kanwar, Mike Megaw, Renee Mooney; Darren Berkowicz, all came from EisnerFast. Chris Madpak and Christine Egbert, Aparna Parmeswaran, from Northport. Eric Rocks and Walid Nassereddine from Financial Models. Ken Fullerton, Greg Hughes, Benny LoCascio, Raj Dhyani, Ian Holden, Eamonn Greaves and Larry Simons from GlobeOp. Rob Roley, Karen Geiger, Steve Leivent, and Marc Flamini from Advent. Mike Sleightholme Una Troy (04:46), Joe Patellaro, Virginia Volpe, Al Blanco (04:51) from Citi Fund Services; Chris Kundro and Mike Carpenter from Wells Fargo Fund Services; Tom McMackin from OIS; Richard Shalowitz from DBC; Sain Toshen (05:02) from Savid; Justin Nottage from DST Global; Fong Syn (05:05) and John Lankenau from Primatics and we're excited about Jeff Shoreman from Eze and Leif O'Leary from Intralinks joining our team. As you know, we also got many great players from DST that we've talked about on previous calls. SS&C's core business remains strong and opportunities robust. We grew 4.6% organically in Q3 compared to Q3 2017, which was also a good organic growth quarter. We had good performance from our fund administration business, particularly our real estate, our real assets business as well as our institutional and investment management business. There's a lot going on at SS&C right now and we thrive in this fast paced multi-dimensional environment. We are conscious of our leverage and the interest rate uncertainly and are dedicated to paying down our debt quickly. We paid back over $640 million in debt since the April 16 closing of DST. We have also grown our last 12 months consolidated EBITDA to almost $1.5 billion. This brings our leverage ratio to 4.02. I'll now turn it over to Rahul. Rahul Kanwar - SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.: Thanks, Bill. We had a strong quarter in terms of winning new mandates, providing upgrades for current customers and identifying new opportunities. DST's integration is progressing well. The management team led by Mike Sleightholme is focused on high levels of customer service and continues to meet with our client and present the solutions that the combined organization can offer. We are starting to win opportunities with a combination of SS&C and DST products and services, and are optimistic about future prospects. We remain focused on getting the maximum value and leverage for our expenditures in various areas and with the support of the talented executives at DST continue to perform very well relative to synergy expectations. We're also excited to have closed the Eze Software acquisition on October 1. Eze is a natural complement to our hedge fund and asset manager of middle office and administration services. And we're looking forward to the Eze team led by Jeff Shoreman working with our sales force to jointly drive greater opportunity in pipeline. Now, we'll mention some key deals for Q3. An $8 billion multi-strategy hedge fund chose SS&C because of our comprehensive service model for hybrid funds. A large French asset manager with over $100 billion in assets chose SS&C's fund services, regulatory services and tax services for their managed account platform. An existing DST client extended their relationship for call center and correspondence BPO services. A UK-based hedge fund with over $17 billion in assets chose a suite of SS&C Advent products because of our complete solution and integration with many of their partners. A $22 billion advisor selected our integrated performance and reporting solution. We'll now turn it over to Patrick to run through the financials. Patrick John Louis Pedonti - SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.: Thanks, Rahul. Results for the third quarter of 2018 were GAAP revenues of $992.4 million, GAAP net income of $57 million, and diluted EPS of $0.23. Adjusted revenue was $1.0029 billion, excluding the adjustments for implementing the new revenue recognition standard and the acquired deferred revenue for the Advent and DST acquisitions. We had a strong quarter. Adjusted revenue was up 139%. Adjusted operating income increased 102.6%. And adjusted EPS was $0.79, a 58% increase over 2017. Adjusted revenue in total increased $583.4 million over Q3 2017. The acquisitions of DST and a couple other three smaller acquisitions contributed $566.2 million in the quarter. Foreign exchange had an unfavorable impact of $2.1 million or 0.5% in the quarter, mostly due to the weakness of the Canadian and the Australian dollars. Organic growth on a constant currency basis for the quarter was 4.6%. Adjusted operating income in the quarter was $344.7 million, an increase of $174.6 million, approximately 102% over Q3 2017. Adjusted operating margins decreased to 34.4% from 40.5% in Q3 of 2017. Foreign exchange had a positive impact of about $2.5 million in expenses in the quarter. The margin decline was mostly driven by DST acquisitions, where operating margins were 31.7% in the quarter. DST's operating margins increased sequentially from 22.1% in Q2 2018. And DST's annual run rate synergies as of September 2018 are at approximately $200 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $365.9 million or 36.5% of adjusted revenue and increased approximately 105% over Q3 2017. Net interest expense for the quarter was $78.1 million and includes $3.5 million of non-cash amortized financing costs in OID. The average interest rate in the quarter for the term facility was 4.5%, compared to 4.1% in the third quarter of 2017. And we recorded a GAAP tax provision for the quarter of approximately $60.9 million or 51.7% of pre-tax income. Adjusted net income was $199.8 million, and adjusted EPS was $0.79. The adjusted net income excludes $114.5 million of amortization of intangible assets; $18.4 million of stock-based compensation; $13.7 million of purchase accounting adjustments; $7.2 million of revenue adjustments related to the adoption of ASC 606; $5.5 million of acquisition deal costs; $4.56 million of severance related to reductions; $3.4 million of non-cash debt issuance costs; a gain of $11.4 million of mark to market adjustments on investments; and another $3.7 million of other gains. Diluted shares increased 18.9% over Q3 2017, mostly due to the equity offering of 30 million shares of common stock associated with the acquisition of DST, as well as the increase in the average stock price. The effective tax rate we used for adjusted net income was 26%. Some highlights on our balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with $732.2 million of cash and cash equivalents and $6.759 billion of gross debt for a net debt position of $6.027 billion. Operating cash flow for the nine months ended September 2018 was $322.4 million, a $13.9 million or 4.5% increase compared to the same period of 2017. DST acquisition and financing costs and severance costs impacted cash flow this year for about $210 million. Couple other highlights. We paid down $641.2 million of debt since we acquired DST on April 16, 2018. This year we paid $171.7 million of interest compared to $82.2 million through the third quarter of 2017. On cash taxes, so far in the nine months, we've paid $95.1 million in cash taxes, compared to $48.4 million in the same period last year. Our accounts receivable DSO was 55.2 days at the end of September, compared to 53.7 [days] on June 2018. And we've used approximately $58 million of cash for capital expenditures and capitalized software, mostly for facilities expansion, IT and leasehold improvements. Then we've declared dividend for $50.7 million of common stock dividends as compared to $39.9 million through the third quarter of 2017. And we increased our annual dividend by 14.3% or $0.32 per share or $0.08 per quarter in August of 2018. Our LTM consolidated EBITDA that we use for our covenant was $1.499 billion as of September and includes approximately $471 million of acquired EBITDA and cost savings related to the acquisition. And based on our net debt position, our total leverage was 4.02 times as of September. On outlook for the fourth quarter, and right now we're assuming that Eze is included in the outlook as we closed that acquisition on October 1. But our outlook currently does not include our Intralinks acquisition. Our current expectation for the fourth quarter is adjusted revenue in the range of $1.075 billion to $1.085 billion; adjusted net income in the range of $210 million to $220 million; and diluted shares in the range of 256.2 million to 255.2 million. Our current expectation for the full year is cash from operating activities to be in the range of $550 million to $570 million; capital expenditures to be in a range of 2.3% to 2.7% of revenue. And we expect a tax rate in the fourth quarter of 26%, an adjusted tax rate of 26%. And I'll turn it over to Bill for our final comments. William C. Stone - SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.: Thanks, Patrick. We are really pleased with our results. And this is the first time in the last 60 quarters that I haven't been on this call with Norm Boulanger, who's now become our Vice Chairman. But I just thought that he did a great job for us on the 15 years he was on these calls, and I thought I'd just call him out. We are also hosting an Analyst Day in New York City on November 15, which hopefully many of you are going to attend in person. But for those who can't, we will have a webcast. You can reach out to Justine for the particulars. And now we would open it up to questions.