American Software Inc

NASDAQ:AMSWA

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q2

[Operator]

Thank you for standing by. My name is Varella, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Logility Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Vince Klinges, CFO of Logility. You may begin.

[Vincent Klinges, executive]

Thank you, Varella. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Logility's Second Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Call. On the call with me is Allan Dow, President and CEO of Logility. Allan will provide some opening remarks, and then I will review the numbers. But first, our safe harbor statement.

This conference call may contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding, among other things, our business strategy and growth strategy. Any such forward-looking statements speak only as of this date. These forward-looking statements are based largely on our expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified and are beyond our control. Future developments and actual results could differ materially from those set forth and contemplated by or underlying these forward-looking statements.

There are a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by statements made on this call. Such factors include, but are not limited to, changes and uncertainty in general economic conditions, the growth rate of the market for our products and services, the timely availability and market acceptance of these products and services, the effect of competitive products and pricing and other competitive pressures, and the irregular and unpredictable pattern of revenues.

In light of these risks and uncertainties, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking information will prove to be accurate.

At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Allan for opening remarks.

[Allan Dow, executive]

Thank you, Vince. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today.

As many of you know, we transformed our company over the past year, divesting several noncore businesses and enhancing our corporate governance through the elimination of our dual-class structure. This all culminated in October with the rebranding of our company to align our corporate name with our globally recognized brand, Logility. As a result, we are excited to be reporting to you today as Logility for the first time.

We delivered strong adjusted EBITDA and earnings from continuing operations in the second quarter, driven by our continued growth of subscription revenue. Our primary objective is to continue to drive year-over-year growth in subscriptions which, in turn, fuels the recurring revenue model and opens up new expansion opportunities with those clients. So the 9% growth rate we achieved in the second quarter is in line with expectations.

Overall, our revenue performance was affected by several headwinds. In particular, we had a couple of clients push out start dates on previously closed projects, delaying our ability to recognize the associated revenue and some unexpected churn that impacted short-term results.

Additionally, the elongated sales cycles we have discussed during prior calls, felt more pronounced this quarter, which we attribute to the emotional impact of global events like elections in the U.S., up and down inflation reports, and bloated retail inventory. We saw that the associated uncertainty caused several large transactions with new logos and existing clients to be deferred into future periods.

However, in spite of the delays, we've been selected in most of these instances and are well into the final contracting phase. Our ongoing dialogue with our clients and prospects remains constructive, and we expect to still secure these opportunities in our fiscal 2025.

Although our bookings were impacted by uncertainty this quarter, we're pleased to see continued momentum of our new solutions like network optimization, Decision Command Center and Lea, our generative AI platform, demonstrating that clients see great value in these new capabilities, which bodes well for further uptake and our ability to leverage these solutions for new wins.

We also closed a meaningful expansion deal with our existing client in Canada that had been in the works for some time. This is to a second division to deploy our platform coming on the heels of a very successful initial divisional deployment with additional expansion opportunities ahead, both within these business units and to other business units.

Overall, our bookings in the second quarter were heavily skewed towards existing clients, but we expect that to normalize in the coming quarters as spending restarts in the new calendar year, and we closed the late-stage deals in our pipeline.

As we head into the latter half of our fiscal year, our pipeline remains robust, continues to grow and includes several larger transactions already in the contracting phase. Although we expect to close these deals in the coming quarters, the delay in project starts, coupled with some uncertainty in the timing of deal closures, will impact the amount of revenue from professional services that we can ultimately recognize in fiscal 2025.

As a result, we are maintaining our original expectations for the most important areas of recurring revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We are revising our prior fiscal 2025 guidance for total revenue to a slightly lower level. Our guidance now calls for recurring revenue to remain between $87 million and $89 million, our adjusted EBITDA to land between $15 million and $16.4 million, as previously stated, and our revised total revenue range of $101 million to $105 million.

At this time, I'll turn the call over to Vince who will provide the details of our financial results.

[Vincent Klinges, executive]

Thank you, Allan. Before I discuss our results in more detail, I want to remind everyone that due to the divestiture of our IT staffing business unit, the proven method in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, our financial statements for the comparable period last year have been recast to show the proven method as discontinuing operations.

Results of the sale of the transportation rating solutions were not considered material enough to recast the discontinuing operations and are still reflected in our prior year comparisons for continuing operations. Our discussion of the current and comparable periods will focus only on the continuing operations from this point on.

So for the second quarter of fiscal '25, total revenues were $25.3 million, and they decreased 2% from $25.7 million in the same period last year, and that's primarily due to the lower revenues from license fees, professional services and maintenance, partially offset by growth in our subscriptions, which increased 9% year-over-year to $14.5 million from $13.4 million in the same period last year.

We also note that our subscription revenue declined slightly on a sequential basis as we had a couple of hundred thousand of dollars of catch-up revenue last quarter. And also due to delays Allan mentioned earlier, we were unable to make up for the loss of that onetime increase in revenues from the prior quarter.

Our license fee revenue came in at $0.1 million compared to $0.2 million in the prior year period. Our professional services and other revenues decreased 10% to $3.5 million from $4 million a year ago due to delays in a couple of project starts.

Our maintenance revenues declined 13% year-over-year to $7.1 million, reflecting the normal falloff rate this quarter as well as the divestiture of our transportation group, which reduced our maintenance revenue by approximately $250,000.

Total recurring revenues comprised of subscription and maintenance increased 1% and represented 85% of our total revenues in the second quarter. Our gross margin was 65% for the current period. That compares to 64% in the prior year period. Our subscription fee margin was 68% for the current period compared to 66% in the prior year period.

Excluding the noncash amortization of intangibles of $659,000, our subscription gross margin was 72% in the current period, and that compares to 71% in the prior year period. The amortization of intangible expense was $767,000 in the same period last year.

Our license fee margin was 97% compared to 59% in the same period last year. Our services margin was 25% versus 29% in the same period last year. Our maintenance margin was 80% in the current year quarter, and that is up from 79% in the same period last year.

Looking at our operating expenses. Our gross R&D expenses were 17% of total revenues for both the current and prior year periods. Sales and marketing expenses were 20% of revenues compared to 21% in the same period last year. G&A expenses were 23% of total revenues in the current quarter, and that compares to 21% in the same period last year.

On a GAAP basis, our operating income was $1 million this quarter compared to $1.2 million in the same period last year. Net income was $1.7 million or earnings per diluted share of $0.05 compared to net income of $0.6 million or $0.02 per earnings diluted share last year.

We completed the reclassification of our common stock to eliminate the B -- the Class B shares during the second quarter and issued approximately 2.2 million of shares of Class A shares to the B shareholder. Pursuant to that agreement, and in accordance with ASC 260, our net income attributable to common stockholders was reduced by $3.8 million or $0.11 per share, representing the excess amount of fair value of the common shares issued over the carrying amount of the Class B shares surrendered.

On an adjusted basis, which excludes noncash amortization of intangible expense related to acquisitions and stock-based compensation expense, adjusted operating income was $3.5 million compared to $3.6 million in the same period last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was $3.8 million compared to $4.1 million second quarter of last year, and adjusted net income was $3.8 million or adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.11 in the second quarter compared to adjusted net income of $2.9 million or adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.08 for the same period last year.

International revenues this quarter were approximately 22% of revenues, and that compares to 21% last year. Our remaining performance obligation, which we refer to as backlog, was $120 million this quarter, and that's a 6% increase over the same period last year.

Taking a look at our balance sheet. Our financial position remains strong with total cash and investments of approximately $84.2 million at the end of the quarter. And during the quarter, we paid $3.7 million of dividends.

Our days sales outstanding as of the end of October 31, 2024, decreased to 61 days from the current period compared to 72 days in the same period last year due to improved collections.

Turning to guidance. Our fiscal year 2025 outlook. As Allan mentioned, we are lowering our revenue guidance for fiscal '25 while maintaining our prior outlook for both our recurring revenue and adjusted EBITDA. So we now anticipate revenues in the range of $101 million to $105 million, including recurring revenues of $87 million to $89 million. And for adjusted EBITDA, we anticipate the range of being $15 million to $16.4 million.

At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Zach Cummins with B. Riley.

[Zach Cummins, analyst]

Allan, I want to start off with just some of these projects that were pushed out a little further than anticipated. I mean, any additional detail you can give on that in terms of reasons for the further push out and kind of how conversations with those customers have evolved?

[Allan Dow, executive]

Yes. Kind of 2 categories, we had some -- first of all, Zach, thank you for joining, and thanks for the question. We had 2 categories there. We had projects that are already on the books that already signed and they delayed the start of the implementation. Those were primarily just staffing challenges and saying they needed to take a pause, well, the holidays, and I guess, we've got a shorter-than-expected period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and they felt a little jammed up.

So they pushed the kick off to post-holiday period, January. Also helps to defer some spending out of this calendar year. Although they're committed to the subscription, they didn't start writing the invoices for implementation work. So a little pause there.

But the bigger picture is the new contracts we're trying to get locked in for subscriptions. And interestingly enough, there's really pretty much a lockdown on a lot of that spending. The larger projects, in particular, got pushed to at least to post calendar year turnover, so January-February time period.

Of course, February pushes them to our fiscal Q4 from our fiscal Q3. But the good news is we have -- some of those projects are year-end funding, and we're very active. That's what I referred to earlier, very active in the contracts, scrambling to use the available time between now and January 1 to get them in place so they can secure the current budget year and get them going.

So there's going to be a little mixed blessing in there. There's so work to be done here in this calendar year and then more urgency to pick up after the new year and get some other contracts done that are in negotiation. So it seems to be a financial play, a little bit of conservatism around hold the cash, but in a couple of other cases, which we typically see at the end of the year, let's go get this done when we got the budget available to us.

[Zach Cummins, analyst]

And just one follow-up question on my side is with new administration in place, have you noticed really any sort of change in the tone of conversations with customers? Is there any certainty now that we're past the election a little more confidence in putting some of these budgets to work? Or is it still going to be a matter of flipping to a new calendar year before we start to see some of that flow through?

[Allan Dow, executive]

I think -- I don't have an opinion on who won the election and whether that influenced it or not. My conversations I'm having, Zach, are very interesting is that just the fact that it's behind us, and there's some clarity on the completion of the election made a big difference here in North America. These projects were trying to get done just -- I think there was a pause around it to see -- I don't know. Are we going to have an election completion? I don't know exactly what they were anticipating. It was kind of a crazy world out there.

But it's got them going. They're moving now. There are a number of them that are probably less related to the election, more related to financial challenges that pushed outside the calendar year. Those are the ones that were really probably not election-related, but more financial-related saying, we're trying to conserve cash. We're trying to conserve our P&L. We want to get the books closed this calendar year and lock that down without any new spending. So we saw a good bit of that.

But there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel. We see far more commitment to future spending whereas 2 months ago, 3 months ago, there was a lot more skepticism or at least anxiety about whether the spending was going to be funded and they're going to be able to go forward with projects or not. And now there's much more positive conversation about, we're ready to go next year.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

[Anja Soderstrom, analyst]

Some of the have been addressed already. But I'm just curious, what we're seeing in the general economy, it seems like some consumer or retailers are struggling with target reporting and also seems like there are lots of super discounts. Do you see that among your customers is a headwind or could that potentially be a tailwind for you?

[Allan Dow, executive]

Anja, thank you for joining us and fantastic question. There is a definite segmentation in the consumer goods space is the closer you are or if you're in the midst of -- if your product lines are in the area of discretionary spending, those folks are seeing some really hard times, really struggling right now.

But we're starting to see a bright spot. One of the things of being in this industry for 25 years is we're on our -- Vince and I are on our sixth inflection point where we've gone through the economic cycles. And we've always seen that spending picks up before the broader market and the media picks up on the fact that about the time they start reporting that we're in a recession, our clients start spending again because they're actually already passed it. They've got such long lead times.

When you get to staple goods and particularly, staple goods that are non-branded or maybe not the luxury side of it, the flow of those goods are very strong. The economy clearly has pivoted and moved in that direction. The consumers are spending. Everyone still needs to eat, everyone still needs consumables in the household. Maybe not paying for the top shelf product, but they're paying for products anyway because you still have those. Those are the markets that are doing extraordinarily well, and those are the markets that are driving the projects with us.

So you got to look below the headline to see the reality of what's going on out there. And that's where we put our emphasis over the last 6 to 9 months as well. And those are the clients in our community that are cracking the checkbook open and getting going on projects.

[Anja Soderstrom, analyst]

Okay. That was helpful. And also with the -- with guidance, you're lowering the revenue guidance a bit, but you're maintaining the EBITDA range. What's going to help the EBITDA on the margin side there?

[Allan Dow, executive]

As we've made that pivot, the reason for the reduction in the guidance around revenue was in our professional services business. That business itself is not as profitable as some of the other segments, so we're able to maintain that.

We've also continued to rightsize our business in the professional services area in accordance with the backlog of projects we have heading in front of us. So we've been able to retain our margin profile very effectively.

So we're operating on a higher-margin element of the business, and we continue to make sure we've managed appropriately the expenses so it's aligned to the business volume. So we're able to stay on track on adjusted EBITDA. And the bookings to date on subscriptions and the clarity we have of contracts that were late stage on, give us all the confidence in the world that we'll continue to grow the subscription revenue, which will keep us right in the line with our recurring revenue.

Our maintenance rates as well have been -- retention rates have been very good. We've got a strong retention rate in the maintenance side. So the combination of continued bookings in the cloud and the maintenance retention give us confidence of being able to hit the recurring revenue range as well.

So we feel good about those elements. It's just the slowdown on the professional services, and then we continue to rightsize to stay aligned.

[Operator]

And your next question comes from the line of Matthew Galinko with Maxim Group.

[Matthew Galinko, analyst]

Maybe can you -- I think you mentioned last quarter that you were starting to signal to Premise customers that you're starting to sunset Premise. So can you maybe talk about how those conversations are going? Has it affected the pipeline for conversions at all? And just give us a little bit of color on what that looks like today.

[Allan Dow, executive]

Matthew, thank you for joining us, and great question. Good memory, by the way. We did, in fact, talk about that on the last call. We announced in March of this past year to our client base, that the last available delivery to the on-prem community was then available in the marketplace. No more to follow.

We've done a tremendous amount of work in preparation for that announcement over the years, helping our clients get prepared for that, surfacing the idea of moving to the cloud, putting package services capabilities together, translation software to migrate their data and their configurations, willingness to provide them some financial incentives to go there.

So all in all, we've got a great package. We've got a team that's prepared to go out there and support the clients. They clearly need to go through a budgeting phase on that. So the reason for our timing of announcing that back in March was to be able to give us adequate time to work with them on their current budget process we've got -- many of our clients that are in that position who are receptive to the message are actually budgeting and securing financing right now for the next calendar year to move forward.

So that is being reflected in our pipeline. It's supporting the continued growth of our pipeline and then opens up a tremendous opportunity for those clients to take advantage of new functionality, all the new functionality is only available in the cloud. So that really opens up that window for them.

So not only do we get the uplift from the conversion going from maintenance to cloud, but we open up the upsell opportunity where now more products are available to them, the new products coming out are available to them. Those are very appealing and have great value for them as well.

So it's a double advantage for us and for them in securing more opportunities. So very strong support for it. We've gotten very little pushback, a little emotional pushback at first in the conversation. But when they realize all that we have to offer and the time frames we're allowing them to go through the migration, we're getting very -- we've got no defections and very little pushback, the reality of the inevitable path to take to get to the cloud and the new functionality.

[Matthew Galinko, analyst]

Got it. And I guess, as a follow-up, can you maybe remind us what the competitive environment is like and maybe where some of the new logos are coming over from?

[Allan Dow, executive]

Yes. I think the -- in the sweet spot of our market, the large consumer goods companies, over the years, they've all built -- they all have applications that support their planning environment, so they have those out there. But through a variety of circumstances, in the case of M&A, they may have overlapping functionality or capabilities from multiple best-of-breed providers or from their ERP system.

Over the years, they've had a perspective that they bought solutions specific for the various departments that span across the supply chain planning. So maybe a demand solution from one best-of-breed provider and inventory from another one and production scheduling from 1/3 and so on and so forth. So they've got very siloed capabilities inside of their planning environment.

What the pandemic did for us was brought reality to the fact that breaking down those silos within their organization, which had built up over time, not a lot of collaboration across those functions. And the supporting technology really didn't make it easy for those folks to collaborate that they need to break those down. If they're going to be nimble, if they're going to be just in time, if they're going to be effective in really being a great planning, a leader in the supply chain planning, they needed to break those silos down. So platform capabilities became more and more important.

And so those are kind of the drivers that are behind some of the projects as well as there's a push from a number of the ERP providers to move to latest platform capabilities from them. They're opening up RFP opportunities for us as well, where we can go in and compete for that business and win that away from the -- what may be used for the ERP system not fully meeting all the functional requirements that they need for today's supply chain. And that's opening up a window for us to penetrate there as well.

[Operator]

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Vince Klinges for closing remarks.

[Vincent Klinges, executive]

Actually, I'll let Allan close.

[Allan Dow, executive]

Thank you all for joining us. We appreciate the time this afternoon and look forward to speaking to you again at the end of next quarter and we're announcing the second round for Logility.

[Operator]

Thank you. And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.