Automatic Data Processing, Inc. ($ADP)

All right. Terrific. Let's get going. Thanks, everybody, for joining. My name is Tien-Tsin Huang. I follow the payments processors and IT services names at JPMorgan. And I was just telling Maria here that covering ADP all this time, I feel like it's an obligatory name to talk about tech and for me, at least for ADP. So thanks for being here with us, Maria.

Thank you for having me.

No, of course, it does mean a lot to me seriously. So Maria Black, President and CEO of ADP. We have a lot to talk about. A lot of the questions are going to be familiar to you, but I did want to hit all the big topics that are out there, if that's okay.

Sure.

But let's just kick it off the usual question around the macro state of the macro you see so much in terms of working with small business, enterprise, of course, powering all these employees. What are you seeing? Any changes? Any -- where are you encouraged where might you be a little bit more careful?

Yes. Fair enough. As many of you know, we do have a front row seat to the macro environment in terms of what's happening with respect to labor, wages, things of that nature. But that said, we actually are not in the predictive modeling. We're simply reporting on really what it is that we see inside of our business, but also the research that we do with the National Employment Report in conjunction with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, et cetera. So a couple of things that we see. I think we see a generally stable environment. We've been talking quite a bit about that this year. Specifically as it relates to our results, we're guiding to a 1%, roughly 1% pays per control growth. So for those of you that aren't familiar with pays per control, it's the measure of how many pays are per company at ADP. So think of it almost as a same-store growth type of measure. So we see that relatively stable and somewhat flat. We were pleased to see an uptick in the second quarter and third quarter, which allowed us to ultimately raise that guide back up to that roughly 1%. But in the context of prior years, I think it's somewhat muted still in terms of the overall stability of the environment. We do also do the national employment report this morning, we also reported the weekly numbers. So the weekly number is 42,250. So as of last fall, we started the National Employment Report Pulse or what we lovingly refer to as the NERP and the NERP actually showed this week a little bit of a strength, if you will. So there's some pockets of strength. The April report was 109,000. So I think the general semantics there are relatively stable, still somewhat a low higher, low fire type of environment. I think one of the questions I get all the time, as you look at the monthly data, in addition to what we do weekly every month as we report the monthly number, we double-click by industry, by segment, et cetera. So one of the questions I get all the time is what's happening with respect to IT sector. So the IT sector is still actually adding jobs. If you were to look at the last quarter, it was 11,000 in February. From a March perspective, it was 16,000 and then 4,000 I think, in April, something along those lines. But ultimately, it's still adding. So I think there are some sectors that are growing, some sectors that aren't and have a little bit more pressure from a growth perspective. We see some of that in the trade, hospitality, things of that nature. But all that to say, I think our lens is that it's a relatively muted environment. It's relatively stable. There's certainly a lot happening in the world of work that is the conversation of the day and we have that front row seat. We were pleased to see the results on the bookings side that kind of speak to how we think about the demand as it relates to kind of what's happening in the world of employment. I'm sure we'll get to that.

Good. No, thanks for sharing the tippet on IT. There hope after all. It's really, really important. So yes, we'll dig in on a lot of that, Maria. But I wanted to just kick it off, right? I wrote this down. You framed this as a defining moment for HCM. You called that on the call, so that caught my attention. Can you elaborate on what you mean by this and how you're positioning ADP to win that moment?

Yes, absolutely. It is a defining moment for human capital management. I just mentioned it, the topic of the day is work and what is happening to work, what's happening to labor, what's happening to jobs, tasks within jobs. Getting this moment right for our industry is an imperative. And we are built for this as it relates to kind of ADP, not just what we do, the lens that we have, the work that we do, the data and all the structural advantages that allow us to really position ourselves in this defining moment for HCM. So why is it a defining moment? While AI is absolutely getting infused into the world and certainly into the world of work. And as jobs continue to shift, perhaps converge as tasks are starting to change within the scope of a given job, everything is becoming more complex, not less complex. And the need, by the way, to still manage human labor is greater than it's ever been. And the complexity of that is greater than it's ever been. And again, that's kind of what ADP is built for. We are that workforce infrastructure. So that's a big piece of it. So said differently, as AI gets infused into work, we don't see the need to manage people and payroll and the very functions of HCM to go away, we actually see them becoming even more important. And we feel that every day. You can feel it, by the way, even in the regulations. So if you think about the complexity of processing payroll, you do have to get it right, not just good enough, not 90%, but actually 100% accurate 100% of the time. And that involves not just the efficiency of a calculation, although that is arguably pretty complex, too, because it has all sorts of regulations and an ecosystem, too, as it oftentimes are even in conflict with one another. But as AI is emerging, all of that complexity and new regulations and new interest by whether it's data privacy, data lodgment or it's the regulators that sometimes sit at odds with each other at the federal and state level, just even in the EU this summer, the EU Pay Transparency Act, is coming into play. So all of this is the complication really within payroll and getting it right is an imperative. It's not a nice to have, and there's no really room for creative outflow. I think that brings me kind of to the last piece, which is what I often refer to as the final mile of getting payroll done, which is the connection to all of these regulators, carriers, brokers, banking institutions, whether in terms of who ADP is and ultimately how we show up in that moment, all of those connections across literally tens of thousands of entities that we communicate with to get that payroll 100% accurate, not just anyone can actually plug into a bank or move money. This is all the stuff that we know in payments land, and that's who we are. And so for -- in terms of HCM and getting it right, I would say ADP is well positioned within that, but this is a moment that is more complex, not less complex, the need to manage people doesn't go away. And candidly, where there's complexity, ADP thrives and we're really built for this moment.

Yes. And there's no tolerance for errors to the client and has to be fully compliant, right?

It has to be fully compliant.

You do. And I think thinking about the quarter, Maria, and I was thinking about rereading it, preparing for this discussion and thinking about the KPIs that came through, I mean, so much of it really refuted some of the AI concerns because pricing was net positive, right? Retention was net positive. You talked about CSAT scores being up as well, which is sort of counter to all the fear that might be out there. That's natural. But what do you think is structurally different now for retention and pricing to be better?

Yes. So again, if you kind of zoom out for a minute and again, think about everything we just discussed with respect to HCM and this defining moment, and everything becoming more complex, there's a tremendous amount of value and opportunity that's created. We believe in value-based pricing, we always have. And we believe in all the investments that we're making are going to create things like productivity, things like efficiency, and that is creating inherent value for our clients. And that is the commitment that we have. By the way, that is our business model. We see that show up in bookings. We see that show up in client satisfaction scores. We see that show up in retention, and we see that show up in kind of the structural return, if you will, in the execution that we're on. And we were really pleased in the second quarter -- or sorry, third quarter to have an opportunity to share some of the things that we're seeing in terms of the KPIs, whether that's the results and the momentum that we feel in the bookings where it's the results and retention or even the guidance on the margin side as we continue to push efficiency into our business, and we're sharing that with the clients. And our clients are feeling that value equation. And so it does feel structural. What I will also say is leading up until this moment, we also made tremendous investments into our products, into our services. And now we're doing all of that again with AI, and it's going to yield those same returns. And so it's early days as it relates to really being able to discern the AI efficiencies that we're gaining, but we were pleased to share in some of that in the last call with respect to the digital transformation in our down market. But I think it's just the beginning of that conversation and the results that will prove themselves to be structural for us.

Sure, sure. Because I've always thought, Maria, that from a pricing standpoint that that's always been a hallmark for ADP as long as I followed it. Because of the complexity and the investments, we're able to pass through some of that cost back to the user. But the natural question from some investors now is that will that change with AI? Will that lower the barriers of entry to competitors to offer some of these ancillary services that you do price for? Maybe more will be done in-house. What's your response to that?

Yes. It's a great question. And the question around price is one that we think deeply about. I think the way we've always approached it is really along the lines of our design principles, which is about putting the client at the center. And so staying close to what the clients at that center would have as an expectation for price. Again, we believe in transparent value-based pricing. We always have. I spent a lot of time in the field with our clients just this past quarter, we had our large enterprise meeting just in March, February before that, we had our big international meeting. We just completed our mid-market meeting. And what I hear from the clients is continue to bring value. And if you need to take price for that value, sign us up all day long. And so sharing in that efficiency with our clients, that's exactly what we are on that journey. We were pleased and we're guiding to 130 basis points of price this year, kind of up a bit from 100. That's what you're referring to with the KPIs. And it's because we're bringing value. And so from our lens, changing our pricing model for something that hasn't happened or doesn't exist yet doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to confuse the market, confuse our clients. But in the end, to us, it's really about continuing to drive the value and the commitment of what it is that we do into our clients and ultimately sharing in that journey with them. That's kind of where we fit in. That's how we think about it. That doesn't mean we haven't studied all of these things, but we find them more confusing to the market today than necessarily helpful. In terms of this comment of others being able to do the things that we do, we are doing all of those things. We're infusing AI into very fabric of our products, our services, how we think about our business, how we deliver these values to ultimately take price. And so where there's efficiency from AI, we're already embarked upon that journey, and we will feel that as well. And to me, it's really not about the speed and how fast and the efficient and the productivity. In terms of what sets us apart is really, again, that final mile that you can't really do with AI and the domain expertise to ultimately create all of these efficiency tools, you can't do without our data set and the structural advantages that we have.

Yes. I mean, the proof is in the fact that the pricing is net up and retention is up, right?

That's right.

That's the best combo for ADP. Just staying with one last point here on pricing and thinking about AI and some of the tools that you're starting to externalize. Do you -- should we expect that ADP will monetize those distinctly? Or is that going to be part of your normal pricing cadence?

The answer is both. I think the first part I would say is everything I just said around transparent value-based pricing. We will continue to monetize it through our natural recurring revenue model. So that's about more bookings, clients staying longer, happier clients leads to referrals. It's a very happy ecosystem, if you will. That is absolutely a piece of it. That said, there are opportunities. We talk a lot about AI. A lot of the questions tend to be about disruption and risk and all these other things. AI is a tremendous opportunity for us from a growth perspective. And so as things do become more efficient and automated, there are opportunities for things that we do potentially specifically inside of one business today that we can extend the reach across multiple businesses. So I think there's unlock that can happen from a monetization. How we price for that, I think long term will be somewhat determined. But I think there are new revenue lines that could come in. And by the way, we've seen some of this. We've seen some of this work that we've done with our big data set as we've taken that data set and created tools for our clients around benchmarking and analytics. I think, again, that journey will continue to evolve and drive growth. We also monetize the data set with taking friction out of, call it, mundane processes such as employment verification. And so I think we're just scratching the surface on how to ultimately monetize data, which data is really the backbone of the AI. And so I think there's as much growth opportunity as there is efficiency and productivity opportunity.

Okay. Good. No, I appreciate that answer. So let's talk about another important metric I know that you care a lot about, which is new sales. I think most recent quarter, you framed it as solid and stuck with the full year guide, which still has a pretty wide range. So I get this question a lot, so I'll ask you. Just what would drive you to land on the lower end versus the higher end of that? How much is macro versus some of the specific forces that you're pushing to get to that?

Sure. So it is that season. We are in the final few weeks here, final stretch of the fourth quarter. We were pleased with the bookings from a year-to-date perspective. We had good momentum, solid. I think using your word in Q1, Q2, we built on that momentum in Q3, and we were pleased we were pleased because it was broad-based. I think we had a couple of shout-outs in the third quarter to some places that I think are back to structural advantages that I really point to just how broad the results of ADP are, but also the advantaged pieces of our business. One was international. It was great to see. It's a lumpy type of market for us. It was really great to see the progress in the third quarter in international, although it always kind of remains a watch area for us for all the obvious reasons. In addition to that, Compliance Solutions was a callout for us. Compliance Solutions is that business that performs that final mile. So again, a business that's performing very well in the context of what's happening right now. We also talked about retirement services and insurance services. These are the beyond payroll offers in our down market, and those are having really fantastic results. But it was broad-based. The employer services, HR outsourcing did well in the third quarter. So what we're looking at is stepping into this fourth quarter with good momentum, solid pipeline. So pipelines are really about the mid-market and upmarket, down market, we're measuring activity volumes, all lead volumes, things of that nature. And all of that feels good. I think we feel good about our sellers and their ecosystem. We've made tremendous investments into our sales force, both in headcount, tools and technology. Just a year ago, we talked a lot at the Investor Day about what we call the Zone, which is a proprietary platform that we built inside of ADP to ingest AI into the sales motion into that go-to-market motion, the easiest way to think about that is serving up the right lead to the right seller at the right time with the right offer to drive a better outcome from a sales productivity, a lot of knowledge, learning, made investments into technology, made investments into the ecosystem of partners that help distribute our offers, that's bank channels, broker channels, SIs, CPAs, things of that nature. So again, when I think about everything that we've lined up to step into this fourth quarter, why the wide range, I think the first thing I would say is I'm not sure how wide it is. 1 percentage point is actually roughly $21 million. So if you imagine 8,500 sellers with the backdrop I just described at the ready to go get it done this fourth quarter, that's exactly what they're doing. That's how we feel about it. The difference literally could come down to less than a handful of deals, right, in terms of the difference between 4, 5, 6 or 7. So we kept the range wide. It felt prudent to do that given everything that is happening in the world and just kind of the sensitivity of that 1%. But rest assured, everybody is at the ready and out there, myself included.

No, good. No, I'm sure that's the case. So fingers crossed, so no surprises. But I had to ask, and I think I asked it on the main earnings call, too, Maria, I'll ask it here again. Just the competitive intensity that's out there and the balance of trade sort of phrasing we've used in the past, how does that feel? And I'm asking because you have some private players that are out there talking about big growth rates and some success they've had in growing ARR. And of course, we track all of your peers as well, some of which aren't in the public limelight anymore. Have you observed any change? What are you paying more attention to? What should we be paying more attention to competitively?

Yes, it's a great question. I think I answered it similarly on the call that day, which is we like competition. Competition is fuel for innovation. It keeps us nimble. It keeps us on our toes. It keeps us learning from each other. It is an incredibly competitive space. The one thing that's very unique to ADP is that we are the one competitor that spans all of the segments, the full spectrum from the very small company on Main Street to the very largest employer with 1 million employees on a worldwide scale. So we do have a lens across all of the competitive set. And it is highly competitive. Is it more or less pressure today than it was a year ago? I think it's -- perhaps there are certain competitors that are operating slightly different from how they were operating a year ago. Some of that is because some have gone private, some have gone public, some have merged, rebranded, whatever these things are, but it is a highly competitive. I don't know that I see anything really unusual there. This time of year, many operate kind of on our sequence from closing out the fiscal year or coming close to it here in this quarter. So there's always a lot of promos and incentives. From a balance of trade, we do well. We continue -- just like you, we're looking at every single one of them. There's always an opportunity to get better. And there are several competitors that we are deeply studying how they go to market, how they think about certain things, how we solve for it. Sometimes we solve something through a marketplace partnership and eventually realize, gosh, we should have that as core functionality. So I think we all learn from each other. It keeps us all innovative, and it keeps the sport fun. I think it is how I said it on the earnings call. It's a highly competitive space, and we like to win.

Lyric, it is something that's new that I would put in the category of TAM expanding for you, but going after some newer spaces that you previously were in. So what's the progress report on Lyric?

The progress report on Lyric is fantastic. I'm so glad you mentioned it. It's one of my favorite topics. We're really pleased with what we're seeing with respect to the results in terms of the new sales to date and moreover, the pipelines and also the conversation in the market. The one thing that's unique about Lyric outside of the fact that it's the most modern platform for enterprise clients that exist today, and it's most modern because it's the newest, but it's also how it's architected. And this concept of being able to have a product for a CHRO or really for a company that's architected at the employee level that allows for the worker to actually move between teams, what we call dynamic teams -- so I said workers able to have multiple reporting managers, multiple reporting managers actually contribute to their performance management, things of that nature. That's becoming even more common and more imperative with the advent of AI. So as jobs -- and we study the world of work very deeply in conjunction with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. And our belief is that jobs are not being disrupted at the end-to-end level. They're actually being disrupted at the task level. So if the world of work in the future is a collection of tasks as opposed to a collection of jobs, a product like Lyric is meeting that moment in the most modern way because it allows a task to be assigned to the workers that has that skill and utility. And that is what the new world looks like, and that's what leaders are turning to. You hear this directly from our clients. I mentioned all the events that I've been to. That's not to show up all the places I've traveled, but rather the conversations we're having with our clients. They're leaning on ADP to be that trusted source to help them navigate this defining moment for HCM. But specifically, as it relates to the enterprise clients and the MNC clients, we're the only offer out there. So you take Lyric, which is that TAM expander into the upmarket enterprise HR space for ADP, you marry it to global payroll, which we're uniquely positioned to do across 140 countries. You add in global time and the product and acquisition that we did almost 2 years ago called Workforce Software and then global service. We're the only ones who have that. It for sure has changed the conversation with our clients. They're leaning on us to navigate this time with the most modern platform in that space, which is Lyric at the foundation.

Good. Good. No, you speak with a lot of excitement around it. So I'm glad I asked. Look, I think the more progress you show on that, I do think there's a lot of focus on that and interest in it. So thanks for going through that. Maybe let's pivot a little bit on the -- to the product side and think about the road map there and what you're excited about. I know we get questions on ADP Assist. So where does that fit on the road map? What else would you highlight above and below that?

Sure. So I'll start by just reiterating what I said, which is we spent the last decade or 2 investing tremendously into having modern platforms across each one of our segments. Really proud of the work we've done. The results that we're seeing are a byproduct of those investments, whether it's the client satisfaction, the retention, the bookings, things of that nature. And so enter ADP Assist, which is the overarching framework for our ADP AI offers inside of our platforms. What I would suggest to you is that we're just getting started, but we're pretty excited about what we see. And so we have ADP Assist deployed across our platforms in each one of the HCM domain phylums, if you will. So if you think about the domain expertise that we have in HCM across payroll, time, benefits, HR, tax, again, I could go on and on, but each one of these really garners this ability for us to infuse AI, take our data, our structured advantage data of doing this for 77 years and infuse AI into the very fabric of our products and our services. And what we were pleased to share in the third quarter were some specific stats around how we're actually changing the flow of work as it relates to how payroll gets processed. So if you take, as an example, ADP Assist for payroll, this ability to reconfigure how work actually happens or how the function of payroll flows and shaving off for those that are using it 30 minutes per payroll cycle. These are -- I know this is a financial conference, but if this was a payroll conference, like the crowd would go wild right now with excitement because these are meaningful impactful ways that we are changing the workflows, and we're making it easier to do work. And similarly, we have an ADP Assist search capability that's meaningfully changing how you can actually get to the information, the level of speed that you're able to actually process payroll, get the information you need to do changes in that workflow. So I could go on and on. What I would tell you is we are really excited about what we see. Some of the things that I see across ADP Assist, I've been in this business. We're coming up on 30 years. And I have to tell you that these were business plans and dreams that I had many years ago, but it is changing the flow of work for our clients. It's making things more efficient, and we're just getting started.

So what are some of the proof points that you would think that, hey, we'll show you this over the next 2 to 3 quarters to really show that it's being adopted. Is there anything that we can track or that you're.

Yes. I mean I think some of the things we cited in the third quarter, we're going to continue to try to bring these proof points. One of the ones that stood out to us was this efficiency, specifically in the down market as it relates to the digital transformation that we've been running in the implementation. I think I actually have probably talked about that on stage the last few years that I've been here. And I have to tell you, there was a time that I thought that it was 30% that we could do digital onboarding using the likes of OCR and machine learning and other types of digital transformation tools. That kind of with the early phases of generative AI, you felt that kind of moved to 60% to 70%. I will tell you today, we have line of sight of being able to almost entirely automate that. We cited some of those results in the third quarter in terms of the efficiency gain in that business. And those are the type of proof points I would look toward in terms of whether it's raising up our margin profile or specific callouts by business or time, right? So it's always about kind of the chunks of this stuff leading to big results, and that's what happens when you have well over 1 million clients.

Okay. Yes. there's obviously a lot of data and touch points there. So now we're going to keep asking about it. So let's -- we've got 7 minutes left. There's some other subjects we should definitely hit. PEO is one, of course, you know it very, very well, Maria. So we've been saying it's still great solid growth, but not industry-leading. You are the biggest player out there. So everyone is paying attention to what you're seeing there. And Brandon does a great job now covering the PEO group in our space. But is there something you're doing to stimulate growth, assuming there is some secular demand there given the higher cost of health care? And it feels like it should resonate really well in this environment. Would you agree with that?

It does resonate very, very well in this environment. There is secular growth. The demand is there. Value proposition is stronger than it's ever been. If you dial back to the entire conversation that we've had today about it only getting more complex as AI is being infused into the very nature of work and how work gets done. If you're a small to medium-sized company, this is the best way possible to help you navigate all of that complexity and inclusive of all of the regulatory requirements in this PEO model where you share in that responsibility in that co-employment piece. That's a big piece. And certainly, with the rising health care costs, the demand for alternate ways to satisfy that need to compete for talent such as through a PEO. So the secular demand is there. We were pleased with our results as it relates to bookings within the PEO. In terms of the overall growth rates versus others, I think the reminder I always give is we're not all structured the same. We're very specific in terms of who we target for a PEO offer within ADP. So as you know, about 50% of our new clients in the PEO come from the existing ADP base. Going back to kind of the tools that we have for our sellers of that PEO offer to the right client at the right time is to say that not every single client that sits inside of ADP, although a lot more than we have addressed today, there's tremendous TAM even inside our own house or TAM expansion inside our own house but not everyone is a fit for the PEO. It kind of takes that perfect profile. We tend to skew somewhat white collar kind of into the somewhat blue collar, but we don't necessarily address all the same spaces that some of the other PEOs. We could if we wanted to. The answer is we don't. We believe that the model that we have with a fully insured program on the health side and how we think about workers' compensation risk is what's allowed us to maintain the durability of the PEO that we run over all these decades that we've run it. I think for us, it's continued focus on the bookings, which is exactly what we have. We have all the incentives aligned, the demand is there. And at some level, the PEO has just have that pressure of an even more muted pace per control growth in those industries that we address. And so some of it is patience as we wait for that. We're squarely focused on continuing to accelerate bookings and of course, keeping as many of the clients as possible through what is arguably a very strange time and pressurized time as it relates to health care.

Yes. Okay. That's good. So obviously a focus, but there's so much going on in small business. Maybe staying with small business. Last year, we talked about the RUN Clover partnership, and we demoed it in your offices and then there's been a lot of -- there's been some management change, of course, at Fiserv since. Has your enthusiasm around RUN Clover changed at all? What's the latest with the partnership?

My -- the only thing that's changed is my enthusiasm only continues to grow. We're really pleased with the partnership. We've accomplished a lot since we initially came together and started talking about the partnership, inclusive of the demos. But the demos are real now. And so back in October, we put Clover into the RUN platform. In December, we put CashFlow Central -- did I say that the right way? We put RUN into the Clover platform, and we put CashFlow Central into the ADP platform in December. So we're broadly now deployed against each other is what they call the back book. We have the sales motion aligned. The teams are executing incredibly well together, but it's still early days as it relates to a meaningful impact across the volume that either Fiserv has or we have. But do we believe that this ecosystem approach to solving for that entrepreneur, for that small business as they're navigating if we have the ability to serve up more things for them to do, whether they're inside of ADP Payroll or the converse inside of the Clover platform, that can only benefit us. The embedded strategy in general is part and parcel of a broader strategy across ADP. So we believe in embedded inside ecosystems, not just the one that is about Fiserv, but certainly other systems, whether be it banks or other places that we have the ability to serve up to make it easier for that small business. So excited for sure and excited because the opportunity is still in front of us.

Okay. Good. I will ask Mike about it this afternoon. Glad to hear it. On the -- maybe a couple of minutes left. Let's do capital allocation, I suppose. So thinking -- last quarter, you did step up your buyback a little bit, Maria. So we did notice that. Should we consider that a signal of more interest in buying back shares as opposed to doing M&A?

Yes. I think we stepped it up, and we were excited to leverage that piece of our shareholder return, and we stepped it up through the end of '26 is kind of what we referenced as well as kind of nodding to how we think about it heading into '27. Our broader capital allocation strategy is sharing with our shareholders. That's one way to do it is in share buybacks. The other is the dividend. We're very, very proud of being dividend king back in November. We announced the 51st year of dividend. And so again, that's another big piece in terms of the commitment we have to shareholder return. We're always thinking about acquisitions where always thinking about what makes sense for us within the strategic direction of HCM and adjacencies around it. We do acquisitions in terms of tuck-ins. I think the most recent one we did was in Mexico. We acquired a company called PEI. So we're always looking at whether it's tuck-ins or it's the big acquisition of Workforce Software structurally, that was the largest acquisition we ever did almost 2 years ago at this point of $1.2 billion. And again, I already mentioned just how well that fit into our strategy and how that's changing the conversation in that enterprise and MNC space. So we're always looking. We're always opportunistic as well as thinking about how it fits in our strategy. And in conjunction with that, we're also very committed to our shareholders and making sure that we're delivering on those commitments through things like share buybacks as well as dividend.

Yes. No, it is a staple for ADP. So 30 seconds left, thinking about -- and we talked about a lot of things, Maria. So thank you again for the for his time. And I know the company has been through a lot of different tech cycles, macro cycles. There's always a question of certainty versus uncertainty. Given all of that, where are you more confident in terms of sort of the bets that you're making as we go into the next 12 months?

We are very confident. I think the one thing we haven't talked about today, although I think it's implicit and inherent in some of the commentary I've made is this concept of trust. So we've been doing this for 77 years. We have the data set. The data set is what's infusing our product and innovation cycle, but clients are leaning on ADP to help chauffeur them through this strange time as undoubtedly, the world of work is continuing. I call it a defining moment. Human capital management is having a defining moment, and they trust ADP just like they've trusted ADP through every innovation cycle and technology cycle. And by the way, economic cycle to be the ones to help them navigate.

Yes. Perfect. Can't cheat trust. So that's the most important thing. Maria, thank you for the time.

Thank you.

I appreciate you being here.

Thank you.