Manhattan Associates Inc

NASDAQ:MANH

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Good afternoon. My name is May, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q4 2020 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this call is being recorded today, February 2, 2021.

I would now like to introduce Eddie Capel, CEO; Dennis Story, CFO; and Michael Bauer, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Mr. Bauer, you may begin your conference.

[Michael Bauer, Senior Director IR]

Thank you, May, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Manhattan Associates 2020 fourth quarter earnings call. I will review our cautionary language and then turn the call over to Eddie Capel, our CEO.

During this call, including the question-and-answer session, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Manhattan Associates. You are cautioned that these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results may differ materially from projections contained in our forward-looking statements. I refer you to the reports Manhattan Associates files with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our projections, particularly on our annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2019 and the risk factor discussion in that report as well as any risk factor updates we provide in our subsequent Form 10-Qs.

We note in particular that uncertainty regarding the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on our performance could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. We are under no obligation to update these statements.

In addition, our comments include certain non-GAAP financial measures in an effort to provide additional information to investors. We have reconciled all non-GAAP measures to the related GAAP measures in accordance with SEC rules. You'll find reconciliation schedules in the Form 8-K we submitted to the SEC earlier today and on our website at manh.com.

Now, I'll turn the call over to Eddie.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Great. Thanks, Mike. And good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us as we review our fourth quarter 2020 results and discuss our outlook and guidance for 2021. Also, given our journey toward being a cloud-first company, the long-term nature of our newer SaaS contracts and the visibility and momentum that we're seeing, we thought it might be helpful to provide you with our initial thinking around a 3-year trajectory of our business in terms of RPO, cloud revenue and adjusted operating margins through 2023. So we'll cover that a bit later.

But for the quarter, Manhattan reported Q4 revenue of $147 million and adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.45, both of which exceeded our expectations. Broad revenue outperformance across our business lines, combined with a continued focus on expense management, once again drove earnings leverage for the quarter. Fortunately for Manhattan, our business is entering 2021 with accelerating velocity and growing opportunities.

Now 2020 was a very successful year for Manhattan Associates, arguably the best year ever in the midst of an ongoing global pandemic. Beyond the numbers, 2020 was a benchmark year of resolve, performance and growth for our employees and our customers. We strengthened our company significantly in 2020 and have substantially improved our market leadership position.

In May, we launched our cloud-native Manhattan Active Warehouse Management solution, which we believe is the most significant advancement in WMS technology in over a decade. And the market reaction to this new product has been equally impressive, with already a double-digit number of deals closed to date, and our pipeline is growing. In fact, we signed the largest Manhattan Active Warehouse Management deal to date and the enthusiasm from both new and existing customers for Manhattan Active WM is certainly surpassing our original expectations.

At no time in our company's history is our product strategy being in complete synergistic alignment with customer and market demand. Across our full suite of cloud solutions, we're seeing solid and growing demand. Pipeline bookings are at record levels, with about 90% of the pipe consisting of cloud opportunities and net new potential customers representing almost 40% of the demand. We entered 2021 with increasing momentum and greater visibility because it's a growing market need for modern, adaptable supply chain, inventory and omnichannel products, and that collection of cloud-native solutions positions us well.

Our unified platform is industry-leading and provides our customers with the ability to efficiently adapt to changes in consumer behavior, while simultaneously helping elevate the entire consumer experience. Simply put, our commitment to investing in market-leading innovation and focus on customer success strategically positions us for long-term sustainable growth.

Demand for our supply chain and omnichannel products and services has been pretty solid. And while the near-term timing of and continued pace of economic recovery remains somewhat unclear, recent signs have been encouraging. And as such, we're raising the 2021 full year total revenue and adjusted EPS guidance that we provided on our Q3 call. And furthermore, our dedication to innovation remains. We expect to invest nearly $90 million in research and development this year, even with a potentially choppy macro backdrop.

And as I mentioned earlier, with our business visibility strengthening, later in the call, Dennis will provide details of how we see our 3-year trajectory. He'll provide you with guidance for 2021 and guideposts with much broader ranges for '22 and 2023. Dennis will provide insights into how we see RPO, cloud revenue and adjusted operating margins shaping up for the next 3 years. And with RPO as the leading indicator of cloud revenue performance, our objective is to exit 2023 with roughly $1 billion in remaining performance obligation, representing a 3-year CAGR of about 45%.

Now on the sales front, competitive win rates remained strong at about 70% as our innovation is being recognized as the best in the industry. In Q4, about 20% of our licensing cloud deals closed were from new customers. From a vertical perspective, retail, consumer goods, food and beverage and grocery drove more than 50% of our cloud and license revenue in the quarter.

Now regarding services, we conducted over 100 go-lives in the quarter and anticipate a return to services revenue growth in 2021. While the rate of this services growth will be influenced by the broader economic recovery, demand for our expertise remains high, and we're aggressively hiring talent to meet the forecasted demand. And more broadly, we expect to hire 200 to 300 new associates company-wide in 2021, including R&D, cloud ops, sales and marketing.

If I can, let me provide you just a few specifics on some of our product innovation. First, I'd like to start by providing a quick update on one of the biggest product launches in Manhattan's history, Manhattan Active Warehouse Management. As you recall, we announced Manhattan Active WM in Q2 at our Virtual Annual User Conference. And since then, we've seen strong market interest and adoption, frankly, surpassing even our own ambitious goals. While the customer mix has undoubtedly been affected by the global pandemic, I'm happy to report that we're seeing broad demand across many industries and all parts of the globe. In fact, we now have customers spanning 10 different industries and 8 different countries. They're all currently implementing Manhattan Active WM. And with a very busy and aggressive go-live schedule lined up for 2021, our selling and implementation teams are at full strength across the geographies that drive the majority of our revenue. And we're seeing a nice pipeline for Manhattan Active WM too as we head into 2021.

And in addition to a healthy balance we're seeing across geographies and industries, our Manhattan Active WM implementations strike a nice balance between existing customers and entirely new net new. Of our Manhattan Active WM projects in-flight right now, we're seeing about a 50-50 split between those 2 categories.

And as you recall, one of the key benefits of Manhattan Active WM is it that it's completely versionless. It's updated in the background for our customers with zero downtime. And we provide them with new feature functions every single quarter. In fact, since we announced this new solution in May, we've already added a host of new innovative capabilities in the past couple of quarterly releases.

Now turning to Transportation Management. We closed out 2020 with some great wins and further progress on our goal of evolving TMS at Manhattan Associates from being a great domestic business for us being a truly global business. And to that end, we now have a live customer in Europe successfully using TMS and have additional projects in-flight in that region. When we continue to see the pipeline build in a number of countries across EMEA, we're building capacity to support those projects in expectations of their closing in 2021. And our cloud TMS solution continues to compete very effectively, both home and abroad.

Now I'll close my product update this afternoon with our Manhattan Active Omni Solution Suite. We've just completed taking our customers through their third retail peak season of Manhattan Active Omni. And as you would guess, we processed an all-time record high number of orders, shipments and payments. The ongoing channel shift from bricks-and-mortar to digital commerce continues to benefit our omnichannel business and as we help more customers successfully capture and deliver on their direct-to-consumer orders.

Our particular note this year was the surge in store-related digital activity. Almost all of our Manhattan Active Omni customers use that technology to power a pretty vibrant ship-from-store program. But now, we're seeing an increasing number of those customers actually prefer to ship from their stores, actually up 300% over 2009 retail peak. And this is in order to speed up customer delivery and manage the parcel network constraints much more effectively. And as you might imagine, in-store pickup programs continue to accelerate at a rapid rate, with activity both in curbside and traditional store pickup. Both the in-store pickup and curbside delivery programs clearly are here to stay, and we continue to leverage our advanced version of technology to provide these kinds of innovative solutions to our customers at a very rapid rate.

On a related note, by the way, one of the byproducts that are booming digital business is, unfortunately, very often, booming volumes and returns. And all of our customers grapple with this so-called reverse logistics problem. But fortunately, Manhattan offers technology to optimize that full life cycle with best-in-class capabilities in the contact center, digital self-service for the end consumer. And purpose-design capabilities for the distribution center for processing the physical goods. And while the volume of returns in many ways is inevitable, a greater customer experience isn't always the same. So delivering that great experience to returns and exchanges at high-volume really does take a fully integrated order management system and WMS to effectively process those returns.

So that concludes my business update. Dennis is going to provide you with an update on our financial performance and discuss our outlook, and then I'll close our prepared remarks with a brief summary before moving into Q&A. Dennis?

[Dennis Story, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer]

Okay. Thanks, Eddie. Everyone strap on your suspenders. I have a lot of information to cover here.

So as Eddie mentioned, fourth quarter total revenue was $147 million, down 4% over the prior year, exceeding our guidance. Full year 2020 total revenue of $586 million was down 5% compared to 2019, as you know, solely due to COVID.

Q4 adjusted earnings per share was $0.45. GAAP earnings per share was $0.32 with stock-based compensation accounting for the difference between adjusted and GAAP EPS. Cloud revenue for the quarter was $23 million, up 9% sequentially and 46% over prior year. For full year 2020, cloud revenue increased 70% to $80 million.

For the first quarter 2021, we estimate cloud revenue to be approximately $24 million, up 39% over 2020. For full year 2021, we estimate cloud revenue to be in the range of $108 million to $110 million, growing at about 36.5% at the midpoint and accounting for approximately 85% of total software revenue, up from less than 50% in 2019.

Starting with Q2, we expect cloud revenue to grow roughly at $2 million sequentially per quarter for the balance of 2021.

Remaining performance obligation, or RPO, for the quarter totaled $309 million, up 20% sequentially and 80% over prior year. Recall, RPO is the leading proxy for our cloud revenue performance and represents the value of contractual obligations required to be performed, otherwise referred to as unearned revenue or bookings. For Manhattan, this disclosed value represents our cloud bookings value of unearned revenue under non-cancelable contracts greater than 1 year. Contracts with a non-cancelable term of 1 year or less are excluded from the reported amount.

As Eddie previously highlighted, demand and pipeline growth for our cloud solutions continue to be strong from both new and existing customers. Reflective of this strength, we anticipate 2021 RPO to be in the range of $450 million to $550 million, up from our prior estimate of $385 million to $390 million, representing growth of approximately 60% at the $500 million midpoint.

One important point on flow-through from RPO to cloud revenue. As previously stated, as you know, our performance continues to depend on the number and relative value of large deals we close in any quarter. Furthermore, some customers have longer implementation cycles, associated with large projects requiring a multiyear annual subscription ramp built into the contract term. For example, the record Manhattan Active Warehouse Management deal closed in the quarter will have much higher levels of contracted and recognized revenue in the out years of the contract compared to year 1. These revenue ramps are common for larger cloud deals and with larger opportunities becoming more prevalent in our pipeline, we expect RPO growth to accelerate first, followed by a gradual steepening ramp in cloud revenue growth, providing us with very good visibility into future subscription revenue.

Regarding license revenue, Q4 was roughly $10 million. Overall, for 2020, license totaled $38 million and was down 22% over prior year as our full suite of cloud solutions have come online. We expect license attrition to accelerate in 2021, with license revenue declining about 50% or $18 million, over 2020. For full year 2021, we estimate license revenue to be in the range of $18 million to $22 million, averaging about $5 million per quarter. As a yard marker for cloud demand, license will be about 3% of total revenue exiting 2021.

Shifting to maintenance. Revenue for the quarter totaled $39 million, up 2% versus the prior year on strong cash collections. For the full year, maintenance revenue declined 1% to $148 million. The decline primarily reflects demand from our WMS installed base, converting to cloud subscription and lower license revenue, which we expect this trend to continue in 2021 and beyond. Our full year 2021 maintenance revenue forecast is $138 million to $142 million, representing an $8 million or 5.5% decline. For Q1 and all subsequent quarters, we estimate maintenance revenue to be approximately $35 million per quarter.

Turning to services. In line with our expectations, Professional Services revenue for the quarter totaled $71 million, down 18% year-over-year. Excluding build travel, services were down approximately 14%. As discussed on our Q3 call, we expect our Services segment to return to growth in 2021 and build from our Q1 results. As a reminder, Q1 2020 was a record comp quarter with subsequent quarter run rates dramatically impacted by the pandemic. So for the first quarter, we are targeting services revenue in the $74 million to $76 million range, down 14% over prior year, but up 4% to 7% sequentially over Q4 2020.

On a year-over-year basis, we estimate Q2 revenue growth of about 14%, Q3 about 17% to 18% and 15% to 16% in Q4. For 2021, we are targeting a services revenue range of $315 million to $336 million, representing 7% midpoint growth dictated by the pace and cadence of economic recovery.

Our consolidated subscription, maintenance and services margin for the quarter was 52.7%. The better-than-expected result was driven by revenue performance and cloud operating leverage. We expect Q1 2021 subscription, maintenance and services margin to be approximately 50.2% and full year 2021 to be 51.3%. With historical seasonality, we expect first half to be approximately 51.2% and second half margin slightly higher at 51.5%, with Q4 at 50.2% accounting for retail peak seasonality.

Now turning to operating income and margin. Q4 adjusted operating income totaled $38 million, equating to an adjusted operating margin of 25.6%. The better-than-expected result was driven by broad revenue outperformance combined with continued expense management. For Q1 2021, we are estimating adjusted operating income of $26 million to $28 million and an operating margin range of 18.8% to 19.2%, with a 19% midpoint. That's precision booming right there. For full year 2021, we are estimating an operating income range of $122 million to $134 million, that's full year, with a midpoint of $128 million and an operating margin range of 20.5% to 21.5%, with a 21% midpoint.

Four primary drivers for our investment in our operating margin. Number one, hiring to meet growth demand; number two, cloud-driven decline in license and maintenance revenue; number three, the reversal of prior cost actions taken in 2020 due to COVID; and number four, continued strategic investments in innovation and cloud transition. As we continue to grow and scale the business, we are confident in our ability to make strong progress on achieving the rule of 40 over time.

Moving on to income taxes. Our Q4 adjusted effective income tax rate was 22%, with our full year rate at 23.1%. We expect our Q1 and full year 2021 adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 23%. We expect our GAAP tax rate to be approximately 21.5% for the full year and 7% in Q1 due to tax benefits on stock vesting.

Regarding our capital structure. In January, our Board of Directors lifted the suspension of our share repurchase program and authorized the repurchase of up to $50 million. For 2021, we are estimating 65.0 million diluted shares outstanding with 64.5 million diluted shares for Q1, which does not assume any share repos.

Turning to cash. We closed the quarter with cash and investments of $205 million and zero debt. Our current deferred revenue balance totaled $114 million. Q4 cash flow from operations totaled $38 million, up 10% over 2020. And full year operating cash flow totaled $141 million, down just 4% over 2020. Finally, full year capital expenditures totaled $3 million. And for 2021, we estimate CapEx investment to be in the range of about $6 million to $10 million.

That covers 2020. Now I'll provide full year 2021 guidance and 2022, 2023 guidepost. Then we'll turn it back to Eddie for his closing remarks.

Let's go big picture. Manhattan's cloud transition is now entering its fourth year. We continue to accelerate investments in innovation with customer demand validating our strategy. Our cloud solutions are impacting all of our major revenue lines. That's cloud, license, maintenance and services now driving 50-plus percent of our overall total revenue and growing. The underlying fundamentals of our total revenue model is shifting dramatically. 2021 will be another record year for cloud revenue and RPO, driving approximately 85% of total software revenue while fueling services pipeline and revenue growth. In 2021, we will absorb a $27 million drag on total revenue masking our growth by 5 percentage points as license attrits in favor of cloud and maintenance revenue declines as installed base customers convert to our cloud solutions.

Our total revenue yard markers for success are cloud revenue, RPO bookings and services revenue. Our guidance calls for 4% total revenue growth. To best gauge overall underlying revenue growth of our company, we compare total revenue, ex license and maintenance, which we expect to be 10% to 15% growth in 2021 with a midpoint of 12.5%. By comparison, 2020 was down 5% over 2019.

Now for guidance. For total revenue, we expect a range of $595 million to $625 million. First half, second half total revenue splits are 48% first half, 52% second half. For Q1 2021, we estimate our total revenue range to be $141 million to $146 million, with a midpoint of $143 million. For operating profit and margin, as previously highlighted, we are estimating an operating income range of $122 million to $134 million, with a midpoint of $128 million, and an operating margin range of 20.5% to 21.5% with a 21% midpoint. For earnings per share, our adjusted EPS target is $1.44 to $1.59 per share, with a 47%, 53% first half-second half split. Our GAAP EPS range is estimated to be $0.96 to $1.11. For Q1, our adjusted EPS estimate is $0.31 to $0.33 and GAAP EPS range is $0.25 to $0.27. That covers our 2021 guidance.

So lastly, I'll summarize our 2022 and 2023 guideposts that should better assist investors' assessment of our future cloud growth and earnings trajectory. So entering 2021, visibility into the business is strengthening and benefiting from over 3 years of data in our cloud transition, coupled with the revenue ramp deals becoming more common. As such, we are providing 2022 and 2023 directional guidepost for RPO, cloud revenue and adjusted operating margin. With revenue ramp deals becoming more prevalent, we expect RPO to accelerate, followed by a gradual steepening ramp in cloud revenue. As such, you will see 2022 RPO growth exceed cloud revenue growth. In 2023, we expect cloud revenue growth to outpace RPO as we benefit from our subscription revenue ramp. Regarding adjusted operating margin, we are forecasting adding 100 basis points annually from 2021 forward to '23, with the objective of driving long-term sustainable double-digit top line growth in top quartile operating margins.

So here are the metrics. For 2022, we are targeting RPO of $625 million to $775 million with a $700 million midpoint, equaling 40% growth over 2021; cloud revenue of $135 million to $150 million with $143 million midpoint, equaling 31% growth; an adjusted operating margin of about 22% at the midpoint.

For 2023, we are targeting RPO of $850 million to $1.1 billion with a $950 million midpoint, equaling 36% growth over 2022; cloud revenue of $190 million to $215 million with a $203 million midpoint, equaling 42% growth; an adjusted operating margin of about 23% at the midpoint. We will update 2022 and 2023 annually. And as Eddie mentioned, we are targeting RPO to approach $1 billion by the end of 2023, equating to a 3-year RPO CAGR of 40% to 50%. Our 3-year cloud revenue CAGR estimate is 34% to 39%, reflecting the impact of ramp deals in our RPO. So that covers the financial update. Thank you very much, and back to Eddie for some closing comments.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Terrific. Thanks, Dennis. Well, look, we're pleased with our 2020 performance, and we're committed to driving operational and financial results as we progress toward our 3-year financial targets. And as we do so, we're continuing to innovate in advance of market demand, leveraging our technical and demand expertise in order to provide our customers solutions that position them for success in a dynamic and rapidly changing world. With the convergence of our cloud strategy and the customer demand tightening, we see no shortage of opportunities to expand our addressable market while further strengthening our competitive position.

And to wrap up, I want to thank all of our employees globally. Your relentless dedication and commitment to our customers' ongoing success is inspirational. And it's a key differentiator in driving long-term sustainable growth for our company and for our shareholders. And your resourcefulness and perseverance in the face of a worldwide pandemic has resulted in what I believe to be our best year ever. So thank you, and May, we're now ready to take any questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Terry Tillman of Truist Securities.

[Terry Tillman, Truist Securities]

Okay. I got a preamble here. So nice to hear you, Eddie and Dennis, and welcome aboard, Mike. We do get the suspenders on, and thanks for the precision guidance there, Dennis. Two questions. The first one is a 2-part question for you, Eddie. The idea of Active Omni and kind of the multiyear cycle of bringing all the innovation together, I'm curious how the conversations are going with these Tier 1 companies. Can you talk about like a platform now? Are the conversations more elevated? Is it C-level discussions? And just kind of how this plays out now being able to kind of tie all this together, your WMS, your TMS, et cetera, are the conversations changing? And then I have a second part to that question.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. I would say the answer to that is definitely yes, Terry. At the end of the day, I do feel like that the -- a lot of the elevated conversations come from the fact that a sizable portion of our suite these days is driving revenue for our customers. The WMS and the TMS, obviously, great facilitators and imperative parts of the supply chain network and the business operations. At the end of the day, they are cost-savers, right? They are cost-savers. And -- but when you cross the bridge and start talking about omnichannel solutions, point-of-sale solutions, store solutions to really drive revenue growth, that's really when the conversations begin to elevate even higher into the CEO office.

[Terry Tillman, Truist Securities]

Yes. The second part of the question is, we heard some aspirational goals of a pretty dramatic growth in the RPO over time over $1 billion. I mean, how do you feel, though, right now, Eddie, about just the sales capacity and where you are now with your capacity and what you need to get to, to be able to make good on a $1 billion-plus RPO? And then I have a follow-up for Dennis.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. We feel great. Really terrific about the sales capacity. We think we're very well aligned to be able to meet those growth rates. We are continuing to selectively hire the best of the best in the supply chain market and so forth. But that is -- as sales capacity will certainly not be an inhibitor to the growth trajectory that we laid out, I'm very confident about that.

[Terry Tillman, Truist Securities]

Okay. And Dennis, so if I have this right, you took your guidance for the RPO ending balance at the end of '21 385 million to 390 million up to 450 million to 550 million. If that's right, what I'm curious about is, well, first, that's a large range, and I guess that's -- you want to have some cushion there, kind of upside, downside case and base case. But how do we think about the progression of RPO through the year? I don't want to mismodel this kind of each quarter because it is such an important metric now we're focused on. So how do I think about it progressing through the year?

[Dennis Story, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer]

Yes. The yard marker is going to be the full year target, Terry, at $450 million to the $550 million. Each quarter, we're going to give an RPO update. So you'll be able to see that progression. But sufficed to say, we're targeting a pretty strong growth rate at about 60% at the midpoint.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink of Baird.

[Joe Vruwink, Baird]

I wanted to start on just the thinking of RPO over the next couple of years and Eddie and Dennis, you both drew out a couple of things. Just having more time in this transition, so a better understanding, some familiarity with ramp structures and how that's going to play out. And then just seeing, I think, Eddie, you said, better-than-expected interest and demand for the new Active Warehouse Management product. Are any of those individual areas driving this RPO number out in 2023 to a higher level than you would have thrown out if we were kind of having this discussion, I don't know, it's 3 or 6 months ago? I'm just trying to gauge how much is maybe new to reflect the new kind of imperative around supply chain as a category versus your new product versus you just have a little more experience under your belt?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

I think it's all of those 3 things. And certainly, the visibility that we have now selling the full suite of solutions, the enthusiasm that we've seen for Manhattan Active WM. And no question, I think over the last 3 quarters at least, there has been some reticence on our part to do too much predicting of the future. I think, along with everybody else on the planet, we optimistically see some light on the horizon in terms of the situation that we have with the pandemic and the economic recovery. So feel a little more comfortable talking about our future trajectory.

[Joe Vruwink, Baird]

And then just on employing these ramp structures, obviously, we understand kind of the ramification for 2021 revenue growth, but looking at RPO as the better indicator, I'm just wondering are the ramps, I guess, a mechanism where you're starting to see, whether it's new accounts or existing accounts, engage with Manhattan across a bigger total contract value opportunities? So you mentioned the fact that you have this unified platform now, are ramps some mechanism where you're truly getting the full buy-in across on the inventory warehouse management and so there's maybe a near-term revenue ramification, but otherwise, these are much bigger scopes and engagements that Manhattan traditionally would have secured?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

No. No, not really, Joe. There's still a huge amount of opportunity for upsell and cross-sell across the suite of solutions. The ramp, we've seen the -- say, ramp accelerate, I'm not sure if that's the right term, but it seems to ramp phenomenal increase as we've introduced where Manhattan Active WM, right, because it by nature is sort of distributed. We service Tier 1, as you know. Many, many of our customers have 5, 10, even 20 distribution centers across the planet. And it takes time to roll out all of those, again, 10, 20 or 50 distribution centers. And so that's why in this particular WM space, you see a little bit more of an acute, if that's the right word, acute ramp philosophy.

[Joe Vruwink, Baird]

And maybe just as a follow-up, so more a question then on the multiproduct bookings activity, are you see leaving the ramp structure aside? Are you starting to see more customer interest and truly unifying their full supply chain execution suite? And then I'll turn it back over.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

I think we see interest. But Joe, in all reality, we've been in the market for 6 months with Manhattan Active WM so it would be wrong of me to say that we're starting to see that really be a very popular phenomenon. Obviously, it's our strategy, but we're about 6 months in. There is certainly is interest as customers acquire either Manhattan Active WM Manhattan and Active Omni. Certainly, they've got the future in mind, but we're not yet seeing those larger multiproduct deals that you speak of.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Yun Kim of Loop Capital Markets.

[Yun Kim, Loop Capital Markets]

RPO growth came in very strong again, Eddie, Dennis and Mike. How much of that was driven by Active Omni versus Active WM? And if you can remind us what the RPO mix is between the 2 products? And where do you expect that mix to be in 2023, since we're talking about 2023 this call? And Dennis, you don't have to be precise with the estimate, the ballpark number should be good.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yun, it's a great question, interesting one. But at this particular juncture, we're not breaking out RPO by product line. So I really can't give you any guidance there.

[Yun Kim, Loop Capital Markets]

Can you just give us qualitatively what's really driving the RPO growth this past quarter? I am assuming the sequential growth is coming from the WMS, right? Active WM?

[Dennis Story, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer]

Yes. I would say Active WM is -- it's a mix. So it probably was a subtle comment, but now we have the full suite of solutions in the market. So Omni was a little more challenged, as you can imagine in 2020, but we're seeing nice pickup there in the pipeline. And AWM, strong as well. We're seeing solid pipeline with TMS. So it's -- the pipeline has got good diversity to it.

[Yun Kim, Loop Capital Markets]

Okay. Great. And then Eddie, can you just revisit your acquisition strategy? Obviously, you guys have the Active WM adoption gaining momentum. You have a lot of visibility driven by the ramp deals, and your -- you just laid out a 3-year plan. How should we think about your acquisition strategy going forward since, obviously, it's much easier to cross-sell additional modules and products on the cloud?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. Same acquisition strategy that we've had, Yun, that frankly has not born fruit for us. The number 1 use of our capital is to drive intrinsic innovation. And for us, that is represented by research and development. We certainly are very interested in acquisitions, but we've got a reasonably high bar, right? They've got to be gap fillers for us and really be able to give us the ability to be able to expand our reach. And our current strategy really drives us into what is essentially white space, okay? The solutions that we're developing don't really exist out there. So it's very hard for us to invoke an acquisition strategy of that type. Again, we are very interested in the right opportunities. But in the absence of acquisition opportunities, as the Board has authorized here in January, we will reinstitute a share buyback program.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Zgutowicz of Rosenblatt Securities.

[Mark Zgutowicz, Rosenblatt Securities]

Thank you. Two quick ones for both of you. Curious if you've had or seen any prospect conversations within the omnichannel POS segment perhaps accelerate now that we've sort of exited the holiday season, and we've seen likely the lights of the strains on those channels. And perhaps, if curbside is sort of being viewed as less of a pandemic service and more as a staple going forward? But just curious, maybe post-holiday conversations you've had, some have accelerated. And then just a macro question. As it relates to your guidance, 3-year guidance and the range is sort of what the contemplations are there in terms of macro relative to pipeline conversion those types of things would be helpful?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes, sure. Well, in terms of the first question, yes, stores have become open again, foot traffic has begun to pick up a little bit. What we've seen is this, again, this synergistic alignment of our strategy and market demands. Simply put, for the last number of years, frankly, we've been banging the table talking about the benefits of omnichannel strategies, buy anywhere, ship from anywhere, sell from anywhere and all of those capabilities. And clearly, some of our customers have taken up those opportunities and said -- and essentially said, yes, those are interesting capabilities, and we think we'd like to offer them to our consumers. What's happened, and those include buy online, pickup in store, curbside pickup, buy online return from store, all of those capabilities. What we've seen happen in the last 6 months or so, interestingly, is consumers are now essentially demanding those capabilities. It's no longer the retailers saying, we've got this if you want it. Consumers are essentially saying look, if I can't buy online, come and pick up the store or pick up at the curbside, I'm not going to shop with you. So we're seeing a pull versus a push, right, of those capabilities. And we do believe that BOPUS curbside, ROPUS, return at store, all of those capabilities are announced here to stay and going to be very prevalent going forward. So we're excited about that.

With regard to the specific question you asked about point of sale, there is certainly a growing interest, right? We really do feel like the point-of-sale -- our point of sale, go-to-market initiatives in 2020 is kind of a gap year, right, for obvious reasons. There are a lot of stores closed. But as they reopen and stores are continuing to become more multifunction, more multifunction, more multifunction that old traditional glorified calculator in the corner of the store doesn't get the job done when you've got all of these different capabilities if you got to handle inside the retail stores. So certainly, we're seeing interest and conversation pick up in that space.

[Mark Zgutowicz, Rosenblatt Securities]

Thanks, Eddie. Maybe on the just the guidance question, the range, sort of what might be contemplated, I'm thinking about the ranges of your 3-year guidance. Is it some of that macro versus conversion or what are some of those contemplations?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

You mean why are the ranges so broad?

[Mark Zgutowicz, Rosenblatt Securities]

Right.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. Well, it's 3 years out. We're providing, as Dennis said, pretty precision guidance, we think, for 2021. And but we've obviously started just expanding the ranges for 2022 and 2023. And I think that's pretty commonplace, frankly. We've got a lot of opportunity in front of us. And we'll keep updating that 3-year guidance on an annual basis. Our intra-year guidance, of course, will update on a quarterly basis.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Peterson of Raymond James.

[Brian Peterson, Raymond James]

And welcome, Mike. So two questions for me. So first off, maybe a higher level, Eddie. So there's been a lot of investments over the last few years. I think the product innovation is evident to everyone. As we look forward into kind of that 2- to 5-year road map, do the investments shift at all, right? We heard about innovation today, but does it pivot more towards go-to-market now that you have some of these product investments in the rearview mirror? Or should we still see kind of that cadence on R&D through the next 2 to 3 years?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. You should expect to see R&D continuing and frankly, continuing to grow. We've got a very long list of innovative capabilities that we still have planned for the market. Always, you've got a balance to make sure you're not too far ahead of the market. Otherwise, you'll be the Apple Newton, right? There was a little ahead of its time there. So we've got to pace that out, but we've got a long list of capabilities that we think will bring real value to the market. So no plans for any slowdown in R&D investment, Brian.

[Brian Peterson, Raymond James]

Okay. Got it. And maybe just I wanted to maybe look at the ramp deal dynamic from a different perspective. I'm curious, does that cadence change, if you're looking at Active WM versus Active Omni? And just at a higher level, what are the ramifications on gross margins of having these ramp deals kind of step up over a couple of year period?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. Yes, definitely a different profile, Manhattan Active Omni and Manhattan Active WM. Manhattan Active Omni, sort of that singular corporate application where all orders are flowing through. And as we've talked about, distribution centers tend to be, by definition, distributed around the world, and it takes time to get those systems rolled out. So that's why you see that kind of that ramp profile change. Not a big impact on margin. We've got this WM rollout strategy, then to a pretty good science. We ramp infrastructure accordingly. We ramp support accordingly. So really not much of an impact on GM.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Pfau of William Blair.

[Matt Pfau, William Blair]

I wanted to ask on the existing customers that are upgrading to Active WM, maybe you could just give us some idea about what is driving them to move from the on-premise to cloud deployment model? And are these older deployments? Or are some of these customers that have deployed in the past several years?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes, pretty good range there, actually. Actually, Matt, none of which are -- have got too many barnacles growing on them. Maybe nothing really old. But the primary driver is really 2, I would say. One, the clear head and shoulders is more immediate access to innovation, right? So we've -- obviously, we've been serial investors in innovation. But just like every other enterprise application company on the planet, we released annually. And it's just sort of the way of the world, right? Our customers would buy a solution, implement a version and come to our customer conference for the next year and hear about all the new capabilities that we have invested in and released knowing that they just implemented and frankly, probably 2, 3, 4, maybe even 5 years away from getting their hands on those new capabilities. And in the fast-moving space that we're operating in a supply chain, that can be quite detrimental to business process, velocity, customer service and an overall efficiency of the business.

So number one, head and shoulders is access to innovation. But secondly, remember, we -- when we take on running in the cloud, we take over the maintenance of the system, of course, and the overall operations. So that frees up their very valuable IT resources to be able to focus on differentiating their company, right, versus maintaining systems and so forth. And so that combination of access to innovation and freeing up their valuable resources is really, I think are the 2 primary drivers for the interest.

[Matt Pfau, William Blair]

Okay. And last one, if I can fit it in here. Just on the increase in the RPO guidance, which seemed quite large. Just sort of wondering, any more details on what's behind that? Is it just you have a better confidence that cloud is the preferred deployment model now that you have 90% of your pipeline or deals in that form? Is there improvement in macro expectations or perhaps something else in there?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Well, so the near-term raise in RPO, I mean, honest -- I mean, I think you and everybody know this, Matt. It's the near-term raise in RPO is essentially analogous with strong but would have been strong license sales, right? Because we've accumulated new deals, which has driven near-term RPO level. In terms of the long-term RPO expectations that a trajectory that we put out there, we see a strong market demand. We're very confident in the innovation that we're delivering to the marketplace. Our win rates are strong and the enthusiasm is very good. And as Dennis always points out, we have got great opportunity for cross-sell and upsell across what then will be our existing customer base, given that solutions are on a common, very modern platform.

[Dennis Story, Executive VP, CFO & Treasurer]

Hey, Matt, let me piggyback on that. It's in large part, going into our fourth year, we have great visibility, forward visibility into our pipeline. Number two, your question about whether or not there's demand for cloud, 90% of our pipeline bookings is for cloud. And as you can imagine, licenses, as I commented in the script, is attriting pretty rapidly. We'll exit 2021 and our estimate is this license will be 3% of total revenue in a 4-year transition.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Schappel of Benchmark.

[Mark Schappel, Benchmark]

Nice job on the quarter and for the year for that matter. Eddie, question for you. Could you provide some additional details around the large Active WM deal that were signed in the quarter? Was this a new customer? Was it a competitive deal?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

It was an existing customer, but I can't go into too much detail name of the customers and so forth. But it was an existing customer, and there was a competitive nature to it as well. They had, frankly, in an acquisition that they had done some other competitive solutions. So it was a little bit of both, but what we would certainly call an existing Tier 1 customer, but definitely had a competitive nature to it.

[Mark Schappel, Benchmark]

Okay. Great. And then just shifting gears to your Transportation solutions. Again, if you could just provide some additional color on the relatively large TMS customer that was signed in Europe. And also too, I read it, if you could just talk about some of your ongoing initiatives to kind of reposition the solution overseas or just call attention to the solution?

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Yes. Really, the lack of penetration overseas was right or wrong through our choice. We focused on the U.S. market. We have really not released the product to be sold overseas. I think that we tend to be, some would say, a little conservative. If we're not comfortable that we can very satisfactorily execute on a first-class implementation and provide first-class post-implementation support, we won't sell a solution in a particular market. But we chose to release a TMS solution for sale in Europe because we're ready, trained -- hired and trained a workforce. There is no question that offering it in the cloud added, provided a little bit of simplicity into the program. So we didn't need all of the technical resources in market and so forth. But of course, we had to do some product enhancements to be able to support those international markets as well. So all of those things come together, and we're seeing a nice growing demand. As I said, we've got one nice customer live over there. We signed a couple of more there in-flight of implementation and interest is certainly gaining. We might look back in the rearview mirror and say, maybe we should have released those solutions into Europe a little bit earlier, but we didn't. So now we're -- but now we're pedal to the metal as it were marketing, selling and successfully implemented in Europe.

[Operator]

We don't have any questions on the line, Mr. Eddie Capel, please continue for the final remarks.

[Eddie Capel, President, CEO & Director]

Okay. Very good. Thank you, May. Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us. As you can tell, we're quite pleased with our performance in 2020. We're very excited about 2021 and in the next few years. We think it's going to be a very exciting time for Manhattan Associates. So we'll look forward to reporting out on Q1 in about 90 days. And in the meantime, everybody stays safe. And thank you for your time.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.