ACI Worldwide Inc

NASDAQ:ACIW

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Operator]

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the ACI Worldwide, Second Quarter 2022 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions and comments following the presentation. [Operator Instructions].

At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, John Kraft, Head of Strategy and Finance. Sir, the floor is yours.

[John Kraft, Head of Strategy and Finance]

Thank you and good morning everyone. On today’s call we will discuss the company’s second quarter 2022 results and ACI’s financial outlook for the rest of the year. We will take your questions at the end.

The slides accompanying this call and webcast can be found at www.aciworldwide.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call. Today’s call is subject to Safe Harbor and forward-looking statements like all of our events. You can find the full text of both statements on the first and final pages of our presentation deck, a copy of which is available on our website and with the SEC.

On this morning’s call is Odilon Almeida, our President and CEO; and Scott Behrens, our CFO.

With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Odilon.

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, John. Hello everyone! And thank you for joining our second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. We are pleased to deliver another quarter of results in line with guidance and consensus. These results underscore the predictability, resilience and momentum of our growth. It proves that our three-pillar strategy: fit for growth, focus on growth and step change value creation is working, and that our continued focus and disciplined execution of this strategy is gaining traction.

Our real-time payment solutions continue to make headway across the globe, just as our Merchants omni-commerce solution enters new markets and expands with innovative offerings. Our Boots on the Ground approach continues to deliver significant wins across international markets.

Work is underway on our next-generation, real-time payments cloud platform, and we expect the release of the minimum viable product in the first quarter of 2023.We expect the divestiture of our corporate online banking solutions to close in the third quarter of 2022, and our continuous rigorous review of divestitures and acquisitions opportunities to maximize shareholder value remains unchanged.

We reported organic growth of 13% or 14% on a constant currency basis, and EBITDA growth of 10% or 11% on a constant currency basis. Our new ARR bookings growth was 3% compared to the second quarter of 2021 and ARR year-to-date is up 43%.

We continue to cement our annual mid-single digit organic revenue growth, while positioning the company to grow by 7% to 9% by 2024. I’m pleased with the consistency of our performance and our significant financial flexibility, which support short and long term profitable growth. We bought 2 million shares through June 30 and have $154 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization.

Now, let me turn to some latest trends and wins. Central government mandates continue to be the difference maker for faster adoption of real-time payments around the globe. Within this landscape, ACI remains at the forefront of real time payments across the globe by leading national payment schemes for central banks and connecting national banks to national systems.

The Middle East is taking strides towards real-time payments as national governments prioritize infrastructure modernization. Oman’s Central Bank will use ACI’s real-time central infrastructure software to drive immediate payments as the country modernized towards a cashless society.

Japan Card Network, Japan’s Central domestic payments network has selected ACI as its digital platform partner to modernize its payment infrastructure. South Korea’s Lotte Card Co., a leading credit card conglomerate with the largest distribution and service network nationwide, has appointed ACI to build the core foundation of its credit card business. India’s largest white label ATM service provider with more than 11,000 ATMs has signed ACI’s enterprise payments platform solution to support its expansion.

In our Merchant business, we continue to ramp up innovative solutions to allow merchants to offer more payment methods for customers. We see the results of these investments as we enter new markets and cross-sell to existing customers.

We recently launched ACI Smart Engage, a mobile engagement platform. It lets merchants offer goods and services directly to consumer smartphones using location, voice and image recognition technology. A large Japanese global IT service provider reuse the ACI Secure eCommerce solution for its Italian merchant business, servicing multiple sectors from fashion and food to utilities.

Deutsche Payment secure e-commerce, an established provider of innovative e-commerce payment solutions will use the ACI Secure eCommerce solution. Rabobank, Colombia’s largest POS network and the top processor has expanded to include ACI Proactive Risk Manager in a cross-sell deal. BlueSky Technology Service, a U.S. technology consulting firm offering payments worldwide will use ACI Secure eCommerce.

I am pleased with the significant wins in the second quarter, and now I will turn it over to Scott to discuss financials and forward guidance. Scott?

[Scott Behrens, Chief Financial Officer]

Thanks Odilon and good morning everyone. I first plan to review our financial results for Q2 and then provide our outlook for the rest of the year. We will then open the line for questions.

Revenue for the quarter was $340 million, up 13% or 14% on a constant currency basis from Q2 last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $66 million up 10% or 11% on a constant currency basis from Q2 last year, and net new ARR bookings in Q2 were $18 million, up 3% from Q2 last year and up 43% year-to-date. These results continue a string of quarters in line with our financial guidance.

Turning to our segment results, bank segment revenue grew 24% or 27% on a constant currency basis, and segment adjusted EBITDA increased 29% on both a reported and a constant currency basis versus Q2 last year. Merchant segment revenue decreased 2% on a reported basis, but increased 2% on a constant currency basis, while Merchant segment adjusted EBITDA was down 41% or down 32% on a constant currency basis versus Q2 last year.

And finally our Biller segment revenue grew 8% on a reported and constant currency basis, while adjusted EBITDA decreased 18% or 19% on a constant currency basis versus Q2 last year. We ended the quarter with $119 million in cash-on-hand, a debt balance of $1.1 billion and a net debt leverage ratio of 2.4x, which is just below our 2.5x target.

We repurchased a little more than 900,000 shares for $25 million during the quarter and have repurchased approximately 2 million shares for $63 million year-to-date, and we have $154 million remaining on our current repurchase authorization as of the end of June.

And finally, turning to our outlook for the rest of 2022. We are reiterating our full year guidance. We expect revenue growth to be in the mid-single digits on a constant currency basis or in the range of $1.415 billion to $1.435 billion, and we expect full year adjusted EBITDA of $400 million to $415 million. For Q3 we expect revenue to be in the range of $310 million to $325 million, and adjusted EBITDA to be in a range of $50 million to $65 million.

In terms of capital allocation, we continue to expect to use approximately 50% of our cash flow for share repurchases for the remainder of the year. And again, we will update our outlook for the impact of the sale of our corporate online banking business once it closes, which is expected to be before the end of the third quarter.

With that, I will pass it back to Odilon for some closing comments. Odilon?

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Thank you, Scott. In summary, we delivered another strong quarter in line with guidance and consensus. Our year-to-date results demonstrate the predictability, resilience and growth momentum of ACI Worldwide. The steady cadence of significant business wins validates our three pillar strategy. It also reinforces the mission critical role of our software and technology in leading the future of real-time payments worldwide.

We continue to cement our mid-single digit organic growth, while positioning the company to grow by 7% to 9% by 2024. Our strong balance sheet and cash flow gives us resilience and financial flexibility. I thank our ACI employees for their dedication and our partners and customers for their trust.

Thank you all for joining us today, and now we will open for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we do not have any questions at this time – oh! We do have questions coming in, okay. First question is from George Sutton of Craig Hallum. Please go ahead George.

[George Sutton, Craig Hallum]

Thank you, guys. Nice results. So I wondered if we could go into a little bit more segment detail. It looks like the bank business has been superb, and I guess we can thank Jerome Powell for some of that. But the merchant piece of the business has been slowing and the recurring revenue slowing, and I just wanted to make sure we understood sort of what is causing that to occur?

[Scott Behrens, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, maybe I’ll take that and Odilon can add. Yes, I mean the bank strength, and we kind of said this coming out of the fourth quarter last year with strong exit to 2021. Continued to see that strength here in the first half of the year. If you peel that back even further on the bank side, really that’s – a lot of that’s being powered by real-time payments, which you know through the first half of the year is up almost 50% over last year, so a lot of strength there.

If you look at bill pay up 8% over last year, and then on the Merchant segment our constant currency, yes it’s 2% for the quarter, but it’s up 6% year-to-date, and so the timing of some of the license fee can make a difference in that business. Albeit a small portion of the business, it can have a year-over-year impact, but that’s up 6% constant currency year-to-date.

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes, just to complement George. I think we look at the Merchant business and we had a very strong quarter in recurring revenue last year that was the recovery of the pandemic, and there is the anniversary of that, but I can tell you that we are still estimating a very strong year for merchants in the year to go.

[George Sutton, Craig Hallum]

Understand, okay. The next-gen RTP that you’re talking about, can you just give us a sense of what will be enhanced when that comes out?

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

You’re talking about the next generation RTP orchestration, right, the cloud?

[George Sutton, Craig Hallum]

Right.

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes, okay yes. No definitely, yes, yes. That basically is like a rewrite of all the code. So you can think about the next generation of our BASE24 or switch or issuing or acquiring our RTP. So it is like the last technology that will be available, which will give our clients much more speed to go to the market, much easier to make changes to adapt the product and so forth. The idea is to have the minimal viable product by Q1 next year, and then we’re going to start to roll it out around the globe in the coming two years.

[George Sutton, Craig Hallum]

Perfect! Lastly, you mentioned some compelling wins in Japan, Korea, India. Just for my benefit and those on the call, when do we start to get revenues in from those new opportunities?

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes, there are some of them that we talked about, which is license right, that we got the revenue right away. Some of them are AR for banks and intermediaries. That takes around six to 12 months to launch most of the time on a subscription basis, and then you have merchants, that takes around also three to six months to launch. So I would tell you that part of that revenue we can expect this year, but the bulk of the revenue will be next year.

[George Sutton, Craig Hallum]

Perfect! Thanks guys.

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Yes George, just to complement, I think it’s important to reinforce our very strong ARR growth. So when we talk about ARR, we are talking about the first year expected revenue after we launch that client and we have a growth of like more than 40% this year, and we are projecting very strong growth for this year. This is – the bulk of it is all about next year. So the point is we are not only projecting this year to be strong, solid and predictable, but also we are coming with a very strong not only pipeline, but fine to guarantee that we have also a bright year next year.

[George Sutton, Craig Hallum]

Great! Thank you!

[Operator]

Our next question is from Charles Nabhan of Stephens. Please go ahead.

[Charles Nabhan, Stephens]

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to drill into bill pay a little bit. This is clearly one of the stronger results post Speedpay acquisition and I wanted to get a little color in terms of what was driving that growth perhaps from a vertical standpoint or from a geographical standpoint?

[Scott Behrens, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, I’ll take the latter first. The geographical standpoint, our biller – direct bill pay business is entirely U.S. based, so that’s – there’s nothing outside of the U.S. in that business. From a vertical standpoint we saw really strong growth in government tax payments year-over-year, and so I would say, of all the segments we had, that had the strongest year-over-year growth.

[Charles Nabhan, Stephens]

Got it. And as a follow-up, I wanted to get some color on a high level on what you’re seeing in terms of bank spending and how much of a priority payments is given the current macro backdrop, and what you’re hearing from your conversations with your bank clients?

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

I can tell about that, because I’ve been like traveling around the globe and have heard a little about every geography. I can tell you that the payments infrastructure continued to be mission critical for the banks and there is a revolution coming right, real-time payments, and they understand that, and they understand that they need to modernize that part and that part is again, the center of the systems of banks.

So I would say top of mind for banks around the globe, if you’re asking me about you know recession, I mean what’s happening with the economy, I think my line on that is it depends on how deep it is, how last it will go. If you look at COVID, we were impacted in some way because they delayed the projects. We are not hearing that at this moment, so I’ve not heard anything from banks in Middle East or in Europe or even in Europe right or in Asia or Latin America or United States about delaying investments at this point.

[Charles Nabhan, Stephens]

Got it. I appreciate the color. Thank you.

[Odilon Almeida, President, Chief Executive Officer]

Sure.

[Operator]

There are no other questions at this time.

[John Kraft, Head of Strategy and Finance]

Well, thanks everybody for joining us. We look forward to catching up in the coming weeks. Have a great day!

[Operator]

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a great day!