Temenos AG

SIX:TEMN

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Temenos Q4 2020 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Moira, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference has been recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication of broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Max Chuard, CEO. Please go ahead.

[Max Chuard, CEO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's call. I hope you've been able to access our results presentation on our website. As usual, I will start with some comments on our Q4 and full year performance, and then I will hand over to Takis for an overview on the financial performance before giving some concluding remarks. Starting on Slide 7. 2020 was clearly unprecedented year. Banks suffered big disruptions and saw the delayed deals, particularly in the first half of the year. However, as soon as we had rolled out the business continuity plans, banks return to the strategic transformation projects. Temenos was able to adapt very rapidly to the changing environment. We supported our customers with minimal disruption through remote implementations. We adapted our sales process to the new normal and recorded strong sequential improvement as early as Q3 when digital transformation project resumed. Turning to Slide 8. Temenos has consistently delivered over the last decade, and we will continue to do so. Over our 27 years of history, we dealt with several global crisis like the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. And Temenos was impacted for 1 or 2 quarters, but always we were able to rebound very quickly and emerge even stronger. And that's because our industry is a structural -- going through a structural change. And digitization is an imperative for banks. And the urgency to change, in fact, has never been greater for them. The majority of banks, remember, are still using systems that date back more than 50 years. Banks have no choice but to transform, and this will drive sustainable long-term growth for Temenos. Moving to Slide 9. We delivered a strong sales performance in the fourth quarter with a continued sequential improvement on Q3 2020. Our sales closure rate improved materially as the predictability of our business return to near the 2019 level. SaaS ACV reached $11.5 million, up 26% in Q4. And this took our full year SaaS ACV bookings to $34 million, up 61% on 2019. Total software licensing declined 17% in the quarter, though this was a material improvement on Q3, and our sales pipelines continue to develop strongly, which give us strong confidence for 2021. Thanks to the strong profitability of our recurring revenues and the flexibility of our cost base, we were able to grow our earnings with EBIT up 11% in the quarter and operating cash flow up 12% for the full year. We are also announcing a new share buyback program of up to $200 million, which will start on the 19th of February. And finally, we will propose a CHF 0.90 dividend, which will be subject to the AGM approval, obviously. On Slide 10, this highlights the evolution of our performance throughout 2020. And as I said, we were clearly impacted in the early part of 2020 as banks focused on business continuity, but we rebounded strongly in the second half as strategic project returned. While still below the '19 levels, I'm pleased with the material improvements recorded in Q4 2020 across all our financial KPIs. Turning to Slide 11. The demand for SaaS continues to accelerate with SaaS ACV up 26% in the quarter. This takes the full year ACV growth to 61% on SaaS revenue, up 44% in the full year. Banks understand the operational and cost benefit to be gained from using SaaS and cloud, and there is increasing regulatory acceptance globally. Our clients recognize that running our software in the cloud allows for faster updates, lower infrastructure costs, elastic scaling and active resilience. And the economics offered by SaaS solutions are opening the banking market to new entrants. And this includes specifically challenger banks and fintechs. And therefore, that provides us with a largely incremental opportunity for Temenos. On Slide 12, I'd like to spend time -- a bit of time on the SaaS pipeline, which is growing exponentially. The ACV booking growth recorded in the second half of 2020 is a testament to the strong pipeline that we've been developing over the last 2 years. Our SaaS ACV pipeline grew by 200% in the last 12 months, and that's a significant acceleration over the last year. This ACV pipeline will drive material growth in our SaaS revenue in 2021 and over the medium term. Turning to Slide 13. I'll give you an overview of our sales performance in the quarter. Overall, sales in Q4 continued to improve sequentially. We achieved stronger closure rates as banks started to resume strategic transformation projects, and this was reflected by the greater contribution also that we saw from Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks in the quarter. As already highlighted, we had very strong momentum in SaaS, notably in the U.S., and we've had good growth in new pipeline activity for license as well. This continued momentum from the last 2 quarters give us greater confidence for 2021. Our installed base continued to be resilient and accounted for 70% of our license sales in the quarter. Lastly, we had a total of 22 -- 26 new name wins in the quarter across all products. And this took the full year to 64 new logos in 2020. On Slide 14. I'm very pleased and very excited to announce that we've concluded 2 new strategic partnerships in the last few months. First, with Salesforce, where we will be combining the Salesforce CRM capabilities with a broad set of transaction capabilities provided by Temenos Infinity on the onboarding, the origination and the services. This offering will enable banks to engage with the clients and employees in a whole new way. And the partnership of a great opportunity for Temenos, I would say, in a very largely fragmented front office market, so this is really a great opportunity for us. In addition, as you've seen probably this morning, we've also announced and signed a strategic agreement with DXC to accelerate the digital transformation program of DXC's banking clients. And this offer large banks a viable progressive digital transformation path, leveraging, obviously, our very modern technology, and this is also very, very exciting as a new development. Moving to Slide 15. I'm pleased with our performance in the U.S., which recorded strong growth, especially with our SaaS offering. The U.S. market has been the strongest contributor of our SaaS deal. And our modern technology and our deep banking expertise resonates very well with U.S. challenger banks and fintechs. In addition, our reference ability in the U.S. continues to grow. And in fact, I'm very pleased that last weekend, a Tier 1 bank went live on Temenos Transact. And finally, our recent strategic partnership that I just mentioned with DXC and Salesforce provide a very strong platform for growth, as clearly those partnership will focus a lot on the U.S., not only the U.S., but the U.S. and Europe, so grow -- strong platform for growth in 2021 and beyond. Moving to Slide 16. Temenos has once again been recognized on multiple occasions as a clear leader in the software banking market, notably in the core and digital banking space, with a number of different accolades that we received by both IBS Intelligence and Forrester. And in addition to that, we are very proud that our corporate and social responsibility program gained further recognition, in particular, by entering the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for both the world and the European level. And as you know, as a company, we are very focused on operating sustainably. And this is a key pillar of our culture and the foundation in which we conduct our business on a daily basis. Turning to Slide 17. We had 21 implementation go-lives in Q4 and a total of 99 in the full year 2020. And we recorded 307 go-live events, so including of upgrades in 2020, so that's nearly one go-live every day. Our clients continue to adapt our remote implementation methodology as a new standard. And this keeps the implementation progressing throughout any lockdowns. In fact, nearly all our ongoing plantation are now operating 100% remotely. The use of cloud continues to increase, and it is a key factor in remote implementation. And with our robust implementation methodology and cloud capabilities, we are very well placed to continue to bring clients live remotely. As a direct impact, our services margin continued to improve, reaching 16% this quarter and 13% in the full year. And that's been achieved through operation, efficiency and lower cost to remote implementation. So on Slide 18. As the COVID crisis hit, as I said, at the start of 2020, bank initially focused the efforts on business continuity and remote activities, and this meant postponing some larger CapEx decisions. However, strategic IT investment across the front and back office resumed in late summer driven by [ structure ] and imperative of the market and new digital transformation project emerged in the last part of 2020. We expect a continued strong increase in demand for SaaS from challenger and fintechs. And large banks are set to access investment, again, strategic on-premise software renovation. With strong growth in ACV and license, I expect to reach 2019 level on a combined license basis on an equivalent basis -- on an equivalent ACV booking basis by the end of 2021. On Slide 19, I wanted just to remind you and a lot of that will be obviously discussed tomorrow during the Capital Market Day that we operate in a huge market, it's a $63 billion market. And however, only 27% of the spend is done on third-party software. And that compares to around 70% to 80% for other industries that have reached maturity. So it represents an amazing growth opportunity for Temenos. And this will continue sustainably for the next 10 to 15 years. Banks are a need to invest in the IT renovation that do not have a choice. Third-party spend is expected to grow at 8% for the next 5 years. With the on-premise market growing at 6%, Temenos has a track record of growing twice faster than the market, and we will continue to do this because of our unique focus on that market because of our unique references, because of our unique architecture and functionality. We also see a dramatic acceleration in SaaS, which is expected to grow at 25% on a CAGR basis over the same period of time. And as I mentioned, the majority of this will be incremental. Looking forward, on Slide 20, banks across tiers and geographies have resumed the strategic IT transformation projects. The COVID-19 crisis has ultimately accelerated demand for digital transformation, and we continue to benefit from structural drivers of growth. Digitization now is an imperative for banks with significant regulatory cost and competitive pressure. We recorded strong new pipeline growth, and we expect the demand to accelerate in 2021. And this is obviously true for SaaS solution, which remains, as I said, incremental with limited cannibalization. But it is also the case for on premise as large banks accelerate and meet banks as well the investment in strategic software renovation. With that, I will now hand over to Takis to talk through the numbers for the quarter.

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Thank you, Max. Starting on Slide 22, we look at our performance versus our revised guidance. The operational resilience of our business model helped us to achieve our revised guidance metrics for 2020. Recurring revenues, EBIT, DSOs and leverage ratio were delivered as guided while our strong cash generation lifted cash conversion to 112%. On Slide 23, I'd like to give you an overview of the financial performance in Q4. As a reminder, we had closed the acquisition of Kony at the end of Q3 '19. So the Q4 figures are all with Kony in the base, i.e., organic. As Max has outlined, we had strong ACV growth of 26% in Q4. Total software licensing was down 17%, a very substantial improvement on Q3 in particular, and also taking into account that Q4 '19 has been a very strong quarter. We had no cannibalization of license revenue this quarter. We acknowledge that Q3 '20 was an outlier in this respect where 2 larger deals with fintechs move from license to SaaS, which clearly skewed the picture on a quarterly basis. However, we also know that we have a very limited number of fintech deals on our license model. Overall, total revenue was down 12% driven by lower license revenues. We accelerated our EBIT growth this quarter with EBIT up 11% driven by tight cost control. We reached a full year EBIT margin of 35.6%, up 320 basis points and the Q4 EPS of $144, up 13% year-on-year. We continued our strong cash performance in Q4 and delivered operating cash flow of $406 million, up 12% year-on-year and an operating cash conversion of 112%. We ended the year with DSOs at 111 days, down 9 days year-on-year and with leverage at 2.1x, both in line with guidance. Based on our strong balance sheet and the resilience and visibility of our cash generation, we are launching a share buyback program of up to $200 million to commence on the 19th of February. We are also proposing a dividend of CHF 0.90, up 6% year-on-year demonstrating our confidence in the attractive outlook for the business. The proposal is subject to shareholder approval at the 2021 AGM. Now moving to Slide 24, I will run you through some key figures for the quarter and the last 12 months. The strong growth in recurring revenues demonstrates the resilience of our business model in the face of disruption from COVID-19 in H1 '20 and is key to our strong cash and profit performance in this quarter and the year. Our SaaS growth of 44% benefited mainly from a significant number of Transact signings, but also from the contribution of Infinity. Maintenance grew 1% this quarter and 7% for the full year as we saw the delayed impact of weaker licenses from H1 '20. However, Q4 '20 clearly marked the trough regarding maintenance growth. We already expect maintenance growth to accelerate to around 2% to 3% in Q1 '21 and converge towards 4% to 5% growth for the full year. Beyond 2021, the strong license growth forecast for this year will again lead to maintenance growth acceleration in 2022 and beyond. Services revenue declined 9% this year due to the delayed impact from weaker licenses. And as we continue to work closely with partners. Services will also return to solid growth in 2021. Looking at the cost base, our operating cost declined 26% this quarter and 13% in the full year driven by a combination of lower variable costs and the full impact of the cost initiatives, which we had commenced in Q2 and concluded in Q3. We were also able to improve our service margin to 16% in the quarter, benefiting from the cost initiatives but also the efficient allocation of resources in remote implementations. Now on Slide 25, we show like-for-like revenues and costs, adjusting for the impact of M&A and FX. As a reminder, we closed the acquisition of Kony at the end of Q3 '19. So Q4 figures reflect the Kony business in the base and are, therefore, all organic. In terms of FX, the stronger Euro and Swiss had a positive impact on revenue, but also a negative impact on costs. Taking into account all currency movements and hedging, FX had a small positive impact on EBIT in the quarter. Total software licensing declined 17% like-for-like this quarter, and services also declined 21% as some implementation processes continue to be delayed and we started to see the impact of lower license signings in H1 on service revenue. Maintenance grew 1% like-for-like in Q4 '20. And as I mentioned before, clearly marked the trough regarding maintenance growth. We already expect maintenance growth to accelerate to 2% to 3% in Q1 '21 and converge towards 4% to 5% growth for the full year. The overall like-for-like decline in revenues was 12% and our like-for-like cost base was down 26% driven by lower variable costs as well as cost savings program. Turning to Slide 26. Net profit and EPS both grew 13% in the quarter. And in the last 12 months, net profit declined 2% with EPS at minus 1%. Our tax rate was 13.9% for the full year, and we see the fiscal '21 tax rate at 16% to 18%. Our medium-term tax rate of 18% to 20% is a normalized run rate for the business. On Slide 27, our DSOs ended the year at 111 days. This is down 9 days versus 2019, which included the impact of the Kony balance sheet. Throughout 2020, we have seen no issues with our clients' ability to pay nor did we have requests for revised payment terms. We plan to continue our good performance in DSO reduction and aim to end below 105 days by the end of 2021. We will update our medium-term target for DSOs at the Capital Markets Day, but we clearly see DSOs declining further to reach levels comparable with software peers driven by strong cash collection on licenses and increased contribution from SaaS and the continued reduction in DSOs linked to services as more implementations are carried out by partners and remotely. On Slide 28, our Q4 last 12-month cash conversion was 112%, well above our target of converting at least 100% of IFRS EBITDA into operating cash. We expect our cash conversion to be at least at 100% for 2021 driven by strong growth in recurring revenue. On Slide 29, we show the key changes to the group liquidity over the year. We generated $406 million of operating cash flow in the year and had net reduction in borrowings of [ $371 million ]. Our cash on balance sheet at the end of the year stood at $110 million, with our net leverage reaching 2.1x. The weakening U.S. dollar versus the Swiss had a negative impact of 0.2x on leverage in the full year. We expect our net leverage to remain at comparable levels at year-end 2021, accounting for the share buyback and the free cash flow generation. Now turning to Slide 30. We present the key elements of our 2021 outlook. As you have heard from Max, COVID-19 has accelerated the pressure on banks to innovate and invest, which we see a strong demand driver for the year and continuing the improvement witnessed in Q4. There are compelling drivers for banks to change. Banks do not have a choice. This is why on-premise market for banking software, both core and digital, will continue to grow at a very healthy rate. On top, we see largely incremental demand for our SaaS offering coming from fintechs and challenger banks. On this slide, we have outlined the various drivers providing revenue visibility for 2021, and therefore, backing up our confident outlook. We see a very solid pipeline of license deals and accelerating demand for SaaS ACV. We have good visibility with Tier 1 and Tier 2 banks, resuming their continuous renovations, and we will drive higher sales to our increasing installed base. As in the past year, we expect to see again the strongest demand for our Transact and Infinity offerings across both licenses and SaaS. Now moving to Slide 31. We show our future reporting KPIs with the majority already in place today. We are introducing 2 new KPIs to help you monitor the progress we are making. We are giving a target for total bookings, which includes the fair value of license, committed maintenance and SaaS. This will give you an indication of how the total new business generated is growing and should make the acceleration of our business through SaaS visible. We will also guide and report on annual recurring revenues, ARR, which we consider best practice to demonstrate the growth trajectory of our recurring revenue streams. ARR is defined as all committed revenue across SaaS and maintenance and will include new customers, cross- and up-sell and any attrition. Now turning to Slide 32. Let me spend a bit more time to present our guidance for 2021. The guidance is on a non-IFRS basis and in constant currencies. You can find the FX rate assumptions in the appendix. The 2021 guidance is based on the outlook statements presented on the previous slide. We clearly have seen a steady improvement in Q3 and continuing in Q4 in our end markets as banks have adapted to the pandemic. Banks have proven very resilient and have returned to conducting strategic transformation project, which will drive demand in 2021 and beyond. The structural demand drivers for banking software remain firmly in place. We are guiding for sustained strong ACV growth of 40% to 50%, which we see, to a large extent, incremental. For ARR, we guide for 10% to 15% growth driven by our locked in strong SaaS growth and the reacceleration of our maintenance growth from Q4 trough levels while we maintain limited attrition on both revenue streams. Total software licensing, a key P&L metric, should grow at 14% to 18%, reflecting both the strong recovery in license growth and SaaS performance. Total revenue growth is forecast at 8% to 10% as we digest the temporary somewhat slower growth of maintenance and services, which are set to accelerate in 2022 and beyond. From 2021, we will be excluding the cost of share-based payments and related social charges from our non-IFRS presented financials, i.e., IFRS 2 costs. The change of methodology is supported by the fact that this expense is a noncash item. Our current non-IFRS adjustments already exclude all other noncash-related expenses. This approach is common practice in a large number of listed companies. As such, more than 60% of companies in our peer group adjust their earnings for the cost of share-based payments. We have provided the IFRS 2 costs for both 2020 and 2021 for reconciliation purposes. We guide for an EBIT growth of 12% to 14% to USD 364 million to USD 371 million, implying an EBIT margin expansion of 120 basis points from 36.0% to 37.2%. As we have repeatedly said, we see no need for a catch-up in investment, and we are very confident that we are now back on the EBIT margin expansion path from 2021 onwards, even with a higher share of SaaS revenues in the mix. Please note that we have provided additional disclosure of the impact of the HCL transaction for the Kony nonbanking customers signed in June 2020. In 2021, we now have the full year negative impact of the run rate of H2 '20, and therefore, a considerable impact on growth metrics. You can see that our underlying growth rates for total software licensing, total revenue and EBIT will be markedly higher. We have maintained our operating cash conversion target of converting over 100% EBITDA into operating cash, and we expect DSOs to be below 105 days by year-end 2021. We expect that 2021 tax rate of 16% to 18% and our net leverage to be at comparable levels. On Slide 33, we demonstrate for the midpoint of our 2021 guidance, our strong visibility on EBIT margin expansion driven by recurring revenue and supported by the license growth on the back of a very solid pipeline. This leaves us enough room to accommodate the increase in variable compensation and investment in the business, but still leaves enough flexibility to ensure we deliver on our profitability guidance with EBIT growth of 12% to 14%, implying the EBIT margin rising by 120 basis points from 36.0% to 37.2%. As previously mentioned, as of today, we are excluding IFRS 2 costs from our EBIT margin targets. Moving to Slide 34, to be fully transparent in our disclosure, we provide the same EBIT bridge under our previous EBIT definition, including the IFRS 2 charges. You can observe that our EBIT margin would expand by 40 basis points to 35.2%. Finally, on Slide 35, let me briefly talk about the share buyback program. Based on our strong balance sheet and the resilience and visibility of our cash generation, we are launching a share buyback program of up to $200 million to commence on the 19th of February and to end on 30 December 2021 at the latest. With that, I will hand back to Max.

[Max Chuard, CEO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Thank you, Takis. On Slide 37, just to remind you that we are hosting our virtual Capital Market Day tomorrow, starting at 2 p.m. CET. I hope that most of you will be able to join us to discover and discuss the very exciting opportunity that Temenos have in front of us. And finally, on Slide 38. We recorded, as we discussed, a strong sequential improvement in Q4 with our sales closure rates improving significantly, in particular in Europe. And the predictability of our business has returned to near pre-COVID levels driven by structural imperative, banks have returned to strategic transformation projects both on SaaS and on-premise solutions. Our business unit demonstrated great resilience, protecting profit and cash flows through strategic recurring revenues and great cost flexibility. We continued our investment in R&D and key sales position, and we are well positioned for strong growth in 2021 and with an immediate strong start in Q1. With that, operator, I'd like to open the call for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from James Goodman from Barclays.

[James Arthur Goodman, Research Analyst]

Encouraging to see the additional KPIs. You've been very clear that there's no significant substitution still from core to SaaS. I think it's fair to say there's been a broad expectation that you would consider a sort of a faster transition at the CMD. And clearly, we did see the 2 large deals Takis mentioned in Q3 switching. So the first question is, why you think it is that you don't see a sort of broader acceleration in your core customer base? And why you wouldn't sort of encourage that from your side? I'm sure we'll talk more about it tomorrow, but some introductory remarks there would be helpful. And then secondly, and it's a bit linked to that. But just coming back on the maintenance, I take the point in terms of the year-on-year growth, but just wanted to look at it sequentially, where it was down in the fourth quarter. And really ask you why that was, and if we aren't seeing any sort of substitution there out of maintenance to SaaS? Those are the questions. And just one more clarification maybe from you, if I can just triple check on the HCL point. The growth rates you've got in the outlook, when I look at those calculated, it looks like those are the growth rates you're guiding to, and then you're just calling out that HCL is a headwind that would have driven higher growth rates than you're showing. We don't need to make any further adjustments for HCL, if you could just confirm that.

[Max Chuard, CEO & Member of the Executive Committee]

James, maybe let me take the first one. And it's true that you say we'll discuss this in quite more details tomorrow. So first, on the -- on our existing customer base. We feel pretty confident that the -- our existing core customers will not move or will move very slowly and gradually, if you want, towards a potential SaaS offering. And the reason is really that, today our customers that are using our modern platform on-premise, they still get a very large benefit from a cost point of view by rolling on our modern technology. And since we've not seen the need for them to go the next mile as -- and to us run the solution for them. So if you want, what we will discuss in quite some length tomorrow is, in fact, the product that we run as SaaS or that our customer run on premise is the same product. And I think this is the main difference that you've got with Temenos is, the investment has been made, the product is there. We've got 60 customers, more than 60 on our SaaS challenger banks. It's the same product that is run on premise by banks. So to get those benefit of the modern platform and if you want, the fact that we run it for them as a SaaS, yes, they do get some more benefit, but it's not significant as such. And you will see that tomorrow. We'll discuss that some of our customers that move to SaaS are able to run on reduced costs up to 90% in some cases. However, 70% of that improvement, they can already get it on premise with our modern solution. So I think that -- I would say, the element of why we don't see, if you want, our customers moving fast towards -- to SaaS and very gradually over many years. Now that's for the existing customer base. Now from the new customers and also that we will discuss at length, and we will discuss between the different tiers of customers. Today, what we see is really challenger banks and fintechs. So that's really the type of segmentation of customers that decide to move to SaaS. And this is great. And this is, as I said, this is incremental, and it's not something that we have been doing in the past that would not have been able to create a new bank with -- with the infrastructure on premise. So that's very clear SaaS market. The largest bank, it is -- the vast majority of them is on premise. Now some of them use cloud, if you want, but they will run it themselves. They will not ask us to run the cloud operations. And that we don't see for issuance, for the medium-term, Tier 1 bank asking us to run the solution. They will certainly be using cloud more and more in the future, but they will be running it themselves or have a partner to run it for them. And then you've got the mid-tier banks were also, by and large, it's still on premise. I think this is probably the market, if we look at it for the next 5 years, that you will see some of them moving in the future potentially towards our SaaS solution. So that's, if you want to answer, why it's, by far, is the opportunity -- is by far, incremental. And I think Takis very nicely clarified. It's true that in Q3, we had those 2 [indiscernible] fintech that started the relationship through a license and then moved through SaaS, but we don't see that really. I think all those fintechs going forward will go directly SaaS and not on the license side. So -- but listen, join the event tomorrow, and we'll discuss this in more detail. Takis, I'll leave you to take the 2 next questions that James had.

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Yes, James. So on the first one, maintenance. Yes, I appreciate there was this Q4 number dropping. However, there were a couple of, if you want, special items. Number one, as I mentioned, the nonbanking Kony clients moving to HCL. This is something which is also linked to specific timing. So it was a very good quarter, i.e., for HCL, i.e., moving. So we had quite attrition on that side. Number two, there is also the attrition of our, if you want, core Temenos business, while still lower at the usual 2%, 3%, you can still see some timing there. And the third one, there was -- as you remember, we have still a very strong European customer base, and Europe was quite weak over the first 2, 3 quarters. So that was basically also the delayed impact from the weaker license growth in the first 3 quarters. But again, this were temporary, and this is why we're going to see in Q1 already a sequential increase in absolute terms. On HCL, you're correct, we're just flagging the headwind on gross numbers, no adjustment needed to the numbers. As a reminder, the usual bulk payment we received from HCL is always in Q2. So that is both in the base of 2020 and in 2021. So that does not affect the growth variance.

[Operator]

The next question is from Sriraman, Chandramouli from Stifel.

[Chandramouli Sriraman, Managing Director]

Just a couple. Firstly, Takis, if I just back calculate based on your comments on SaaS growth, would you say a double-digit license revenue growth is still on the cards? Just wanted to double check my calculations. The second bit is, we also saw a strong bounce in terms of Europe and Tier 1, Tier 2 deals in Q4. Is this just a Q4 seasonality? Or did you just see something more in terms of willingness to spend from these regions and banks?

[Max Chuard, CEO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Takis, maybe I'll take the second one. Chandra, yes, it was great to see Europe coming back in Q4. And clearly, Europe, while the region's most challenged for the first 3 quarters, I think Europe is going clearly to improve in 2021. There is no question about that. And so I think I feel much more comfortable about what we can achieve in Europe in 2021. And we see pipeline building. And I think more broadly, we saw the predictability of our business clearly improving. And I think that's very reassuring. And we -- it started in Q3. And then in Q4, the predictability, the sales process was clearly -- was almost the same as what we saw in pre-COVID. Clearly, Q4, you do have strong compelling events. The customers, they do want to close the deals at the end of the year. So there is a strong company event that you've got less in the other quarters. But definitely, I expect, if you want, Europe to perform much better. Now the fact that the environment is improving is clearly also bringing now the Tier 1, the Tier 2 that delayed spending both existing customers and new customers and there as well we see, I would say, the pipeline developing very nicely with larger banks. So as well, I think you will see in 2021, Tier 1, Tier 2 coming back towards more normality as we saw in Q4. So ultimately, we see in 2021, a continued improvement of the environment as I mentioned, and I wanted to spend a bit of time on this on the slide. As ultimately, this is structural for banks. They've got to renovate and I'm engaged more and more. It's now a few quarters that CEOs of banks are, again, engaging to see how they will address the structural challenges that they are facing. And to know that with COVID-19, the one that have old technology clearly struggled to cope with the crisis compared to the one that are using modern technology.

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Chandra, let me take the second one. If you do the math from our total software licensing guidance from 14% to 18%, if you take the midpoint at 16% and account for the 30% SaaS growth, we have said, then you arrive at 11% license growth at the midpoint. So this is clearly double digit. The last consensus we had compiled was at 7% or so. But again, keep in mind, we have about 4% to 5% headwind on license as well from HCL. So the underlying license growth will be more like 15% to 16%, if not taken by HCL.

[Operator]

The next question is from Michael Foeth from Vontobel.

[Michael Foeth, Head of Swiss Industrial Research]

Two questions from my side. The first one is regarding your license revenues again. What -- sort of what is the percentage of your license revenues in 2021 that you have already very good visibility on based on progressive renovation project? That will be the first question. And the second question is, in your guidance, do you already include any contributions from the DXC deal announced today? Or would that be incremental business?

[Max Chuard, CEO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Takis, I think those are for you today.

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Yes. Let me take that one. So in terms of visibility, as we have provided the various drivers of visibility, if you put that all together, we would say we are not very -- at not very different levels than in prior years where we said around 80%, 85% we have visibility on. So given that there is still some effect from the pandemic we saw in 2020. But clearly, also a strong improvement also that helps improve visibility. And as Max mentioned, the predictability has increased. The closure rates have increased, so I think we feel comfortable with that level. On your second question, no, our guidance does not include any potential business upside from DXC.

[Operator]

The next question is from Charles Brennan from Crédit Suisse.

[Charles Brennan;Crédit Suisse;Analyst]

Great. I've got 2 actually. The first is just back on your license comments about there being something like 10% growth implied at the midpoint and 15% excluding HCL. That's obviously a reasonable run rate, but it does come off a minus 30% comp in the prior year. I'm just wondering to what extent could that end up being far too conservative given how weak the comp is? And are there any metrics you can provide us around a pipeline cover and closure rates that you're assuming that can give us some visibility into how conservative you might being? And then secondly, on an unrelated matter, can you just talk about the share buyback program? Does the share buyback program actually reduce the share count? Or does this nearly offset the issuance from share options? I must admit I haven't been through the granularity of vesting schedules.

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Okay. So let me take those 2. On the first one, I think, Charles, it's early in the year. We have mid-February and providing them already a hyper bullish outlook is probably not the right timing. What Max has said and in terms to give you a bit of granularity, we -- while we see a lot of improvement in the closure rates, and our pipeline to sales ratio is providing with sufficient ammunition and sufficient coverage. We still -- our guidance does not incorporate that we go basically right now back to pre-COVID levels in terms of conversion ratios. I think this is something we envision for towards the end of the year or 2022. And this is what we have based our guidance on. So should those conversion ratios improve faster, clearly, there will be a potential upside. But right now, we feel clearly comfortable with this one. And also, what Max mentioned, we feel quite comfortable to bouncing back towards 2019 levels in terms of bookings. So you see, in terms of business volume, we're actually going back to 2019 levels. It's a bit of a different mix, a bit less license revenues and more SaaS. So this is providing with some picture that we see actually a very good environment out there. On the share buyback, when you apply for a share buyback with the regulator, you have to state what your intentions are. So for us, as in the past, we're going to use the shares predominantly as -- if available eventually for an acquisition currency, and if required, if we run out of conditional capital also for share compensation plans, which we haven't done now for a while. So clearly, it's something we look at as an investment. And clearly, if you look at M&A, prices are very high, so investing in terminal shares is providing probably the best ROE for the money.

[Charles Brennan;Crédit Suisse;Analyst]

And just to help me out from a technical point of view, do I have to think about a lower share count in the calculation of EPS? Or are you suggesting that we should be modeling a broadly unchanged share count?

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Yes. So this is -- the amount of shares we're going to buy back will be excluded from EPS calculations. However, I'll let you decide on the timing and the pace. What we're going to do is clearly start on Thursday. So depending on how fast we execute on this program, yes, there could be up to maybe 1% of accretion if we execute early, but this is really subject to market conditions.

[Operator]

The last question for today is from Pillai, Gautam from Goldman Sachs.

[Gautam Pillai, Equity Analyst]

I had a couple of them. First, just coming back on licenses. You comment on the visibility of licenses to relicensing as a factor. Can you please comment if 2021 is a big relicensing year? If you could give the mix of relicensing in the pipeline would be great. And the second question on the EBIT guidance. So you're guiding to margin expansion on a like-for-like basis versus 2020. However, there has been, as you mentioned in your prepared remarks, obviously, less travel and some less discretionary spending as well. How should we think of cost evolution as presumably some of these costs are coming back in '21? Are you kind of exercising cost control in some other aspects?

[Panagiotis Spiliopoulos, CFO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Okay. So on the first one, relicensing, no, we don't see any particular deviation from past comments. Yes, we would love to have more than the usual average of 10% to 15%. So no, it's not something we see different than in prior years. Then on the cost, yes, we provided the cost bridge. And clearly, some of the voluntary or some of the variable cost reductions are baked into our forecast. So as you remember, we had announced a voluntary pay cut reduction. So that has been reversed in terms of travel costs. Yes, we have an increase in our forecast. Currently, it doesn't look like that, but we expect travel to resume eventually this year. But keep also in mind that we had taken out quite some cost from a fixed cost base, which help us retain the kind of margin trajectory. And the last bucket is clearly commissions and all the variable costs will go up with a kind of license performance. But if you look at the bridge, we still have sufficient leeway. We're also going to pay a bonus to employees. Again, we still have sufficient leeway in case of a, call it, worst-case scenario, if the license growth is not delivered, leeway on the investments, which we call discretionary to still deliver our rapid growth.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to turn the conference back over to Max Chuard for any closing remarks. Please go ahead, sir.

[Max Chuard, CEO & Member of the Executive Committee]

Thank you, everyone, for joining us this evening, and I hope to see you all virtually anyway tomorrow during our Capital Market Day. Thank you for your time. See you tomorrow. Bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.