Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (BR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

March 1, 2021

New York Stock Exchange US Industrials Professional Services conference_presentation 37 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#1

All right. Great. We will go ahead and get started. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Pat O'Shaughnessy, capital markets analyst here at Raymond James. Up next, we have Broadridge, and on their behalf, we have CEO, Tim Gokey. Format of this is going to be a fireside chat. If you, as viewers have questions, you can submit it through the online functionality. And I will do my best to work it into the conversation as appropriate. Before we do get in the fireside, though, I think Tim has some introductory remarks. So Tim, welcome, and fire away.

Timothy Gokey

executive
#2

Great. Good afternoon, Patrick. Thanks for having me today. And yes, before we jump into Q&A, let me just give a brief overview Broadridge and our plans for how we intend to scale our business and to build on our history of driving top quartile total shareholder returns. So -- and as you know, we're a $17 billion market cap global fintech leader. We provide solutions that are mission-critical but nondifferentiating within -- primarily for broker-dealers, asset managers. We continue to leverage next-generation technology and innovation to position ourselves as a key business transformation partner for our clients. And our goal is to make our clients stronger. And through them, to enable better financial lives for millions of investors around the world. We have, as you know, 2 strongly growing franchise businesses in governance and capital markets. We're building a third in wealth and investment management. And you can see the scale of our existing businesses in the $10 trillion of fixed income that we do every day, fixed income and equity. The voting that we do for 80% of U.S. shares, the $6 billion-plus critical communications that we send every year. We believe the long-term addressable market for what we do is very significant. Global banks currently spend over $190 billion in technology and operations, asset management, investment management is on top of that. And I -- just looking at the current solutions we have across governments, capital markets and wealth. Our addressable market is $46 billion and growing, especially as we enter new adjacencies. With our fee revenues today of about $3 billion, I always tell our associates that our opportunity relative to our current size is essentially infinite, and I tell investors it's a multi-decade opportunity. So in December, we laid out our growth strategy against that opportunity and really talking about how we can build our business in governments, capital markets, wealth and investment management. And let me just spend a second on that. So governance is a $19 billion addressable market. Our fee revenue today, recurring revenue is just under $2 billion. And here, we're building on that network that connects broker-dealers, corporate issuers, asset managers and tens of millions of retail and institutional investors. And the strategies there are continuing to expand next-generation regulatory communications, building on our data-driven solutions for fund companies, increasing our end-to-end solutions for corporate issuers, and creating an omni-channel communications hub. In capital markets, the addressable market is about $15 billion. Recurring revenues are about $650 million and there are really 3 things we're doing there. First is global simplification to really simplify post-trade operations across cash securities and other asset classes around the globe. Second is delivering new components. A -- several different enterprise components with a whole set of components. And third is really building new technologies such as AI, DLT, other technologies to build network enabled businesses, and you have heard us talk about our fixed income trading business there. And then the third growth area, wealth and investment management is about a $12 billion addressable market, recurring revenues of about $500 million. It's really all built on our -- the post-trade capabilities we have, serving the retail operations of leading broker-dealers. Here, we have a set of differentiated component solutions serving the front, middle, back office of wealth managers. And over the next year, we're going to be launching the broader wealth management platform in conjunction with UBS that will really enable them and others to enhance their productivity, create superior client experience and drive enterprise level efficiencies. Now we got, I think, a good start on that 3-year plan in this past second quarter. We came off a very strong quarter. We grew our recurring revenue 7%. We grew our earnings quite a bit, really driven by double-digit gains in our regulatory and wealth management business. And importantly, we also made really strong progress against our growth strategies in the quarter. Governance, continuing to make real progress in building a European regulatory communications hub for the Shareholder Rights Directive, delivering on the data driven solutions, and we're seeing really strong renewal rates for the virtual annual meetings that we had last year. In Capital Markets, we announced the largest independent futures firm R.J. O'Brien has selected us and we're making good progress on the LTX, our AI-driven fixed income trading platform. And then in wealth management, really, when you look at the huge surge in trading volumes and how seamlessly we've handled that, that really positions us well in the industry. And of course, we continue to want -- work toward the UBS launch. So we expect those healthy trends to continue to drive our growth in the second half of the year. As you know, the guidance is calling for us to be -- our guidance is calling us to be at the high-end of the guidance we've given of 3% to 6% for recurring revenue and 6% to 10% for adjusted earnings growth. And we're using that strong start and performance to really double down on our investments, we're seeing that the current situation is causing real acceleration of many of the trends that we think are tailwinds for our business. And so we're investing behind those across our technology platforms, our products and our people. So all this, we think, puts us in a great position to deliver on our value creation formula. Since 2014, we've almost doubled our recurring revenues from $1.6 billion to over $3 billion. We've consistently grown -- expanded our margins. And while we're investing for growth, building new platforms, driving innovation, growing our talent. And all of this has enabled us to generate consistent double-digit annual EPS growth. Top quartile shareholder returns. And so looking ahead, we think we are very well positioned to continue to deliver top quartile returns over any multiyear period for a long time to come. The 3-year targets we provided in December included 79% recurring revenue growth, incremental margin expansion of 50 basis points a year and 8% to 12% adjusted EPS growth, all of which you'll find fairly familiar because they're pretty close to what we've been delivering over the past 6 years. So that's just a quick catch up for those that haven't been following the story quite as closely, and I look forward to our discussion.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#3

All right. Great. Very comprehensive. I think you probably went through 5 or 6 slides off the top of your head, so well done. And I think we're going to dive into some of those topics in a little bit more detail here. So start with your regulatory communications business, several tailwinds right now for equity proxies and fund interim revenues. Your recent commentary was that we shouldn't necessarily expect the 13% year-over-year growth that you enjoyed in the fiscal second quarter regulatory fee revenues. We don't expect that to persist necessarily. But if you look at the macro, we see massive amounts of retail activity, the account opening data that we're seeing is really strong. Retail investors are incredibly engaged. So why wouldn't we expect that sort of growth to persist, at least in the near term?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#4

Yes. Well, it's a great question. And just first as background, these growth rates for long periods of time have been in the mid-single digits, sort of mid-single digits for equities and high single digits on the fund side. We've seen -- and that has been driven over time by the growth of managed accounts, the growth of model-based investing. And then what we've seen more recently is an additional acceleration, really driven by the advent of free trading and more retail investors coming in and sort of the democratization of investing. And then on top of that, there's the game stock frenzy, which I think is certified just a -- that's a high volatility. That's not a long-term phenomenon. I don't think we really know yet what's the long-term impact of the free trading and the democratization wave. It's relatively new. Certainly, what is embedded into the 3 year goals that I just talked about is a return to mid-single digits. And because that's what we can know from history. I think many of the people that are listening may have as much insight or more than I do into sort of the specific underlying investing trends that could cause it to be higher or lower than that. But we just want to be explicit about what is baked into our models right now.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#5

All right. Understood. That makes sense. Your equity proxy business, it's really unique in that. It's the broker-dealers who actually hire Broadridge, but it's the issuers who pay the bill. And yet corporate issuers don't seem to mind paying Broadridge. And in fact, you've had success building up an issuer franchise that generated over $150 million of non-proxy revenues in fiscal 2020. What are the areas where you're having the most traction with issuers right now?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#6

Yes. Thank you. And at this point, it's a really important point because sometimes people look at Broadridge and say, is the revenue concentrated? When you really look at where the revenue is coming from over 4,000 different corporate issuers, it really is a very unconcentrated revenue model. So that's something I always like to point out to people. And we've always looked at them and said, there should be a lot more that we should be able to do for issuers. We are connected to every corporate secretary. We're often connected to the Heads of IR and what are the other services that we can provide them. And the easiest is really to do a more complete set of activities in and around their annual meeting. We do -- obviously, they work with us on that today. But -- and we can expand those services very natural as it makes it much more of an easy one-stop shop for them. So certainly, the move to virtual meetings last year in which we went from something like 300 meetings a year before to nearly 2,000 meetings last year. We really provide a great entrée to expand our services to them. And that also, along with that for many, came some other services that facilitated that. We've also, in the past years, moved into helping people not just distribute their meetings to their annual materials, but also to compose those materials, help them create that. And I think that's, again, a great simplification for those corporate issuers because often they're having it created someplace else and then they're sending it to us and then we're sending it and they're trying to coordinate all of that activity on short deadlines, sometimes having us create it in the first place can be a real simplification. So I think we're seeing a nice opportunity to extend the suite of services, and we think that's one that we can continue to really grow over the next several years.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#7

Got it. In contrast to corporate issuers, some fund companies have publicly expressed some discontent with their fund interim fees that they have to pay. That said, you also have a nearly $400 million revenue business from data-driven fund solutions, providing services such as nonregulated fund communications, asset management, distribution analytics, retirement technology and analytics. Does any animosity regarding fund interim fees work its way through to the data-driven solutions business at all? Or is that a pretty kind of siloed concern and doesn't have any broad impact?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#8

Yes. I would say, first of all, we think serving the asset management industry is a big opportunity. Obviously, it's an industry that's undergoing lots of change. And there's a real need for -- we believe that the need for the kind of neutralized solutions that we provide can be one of the things that really help the industry as it goes through a lot of cost reduction over the next decade. So we have invested quite a bit behind that to build up our ability to serve the asset management industry, and it has been an area of investment for us. Most directly, I would say that the tension on the fee side, which we'll come back to in a second, really has not slowed our growth on the data-driven side. I think often it's a different buyer inside the fund company. I think often the solutions provided are very differentiated. And it's clear how it's going to provide real benefit and so people select based on that. I do think on the fee side, it is natural between any buyer and seller that you want to get it at the very best price. And that is just -- it's a natural tension. What I always tell people is, look, we can disagree about that and we can -- and we're -- if people want to review it, we're open for any sort of review that brings in all the right parties and looks at the facts, and we're happy to go through that. And -- but let's not have that stop us from working together on the things where we can make a difference. And we think that we get to do what we do when the whole ecosystem is continually getting better. That's why we've really pushed on continuing to grow e-delivery, continuing to grow better ways to create better shareholder engagement for fund companies at a lower total cost. And we can demonstrate how the total cost per communication has come down almost 40% over the last 10 years. And so the long story short is, we are -- we really want to be on the side of the fund and asset management industry. We think we are. Sometimes it doesn't come across that way. And -- but we continue to work to make sure that people really see us in the light that we want to be seen and that we can be a big part of the solution to the industry.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#9

Got it. That makes sense. A fourth business within your Investor Communications segment is customer communications. Momentum in that business, while not up to the level of other areas within ICS has definitely improved in the last few quarters. And you expect it to return to growth going forward. Was there any time after you acquired that North American communications business from DST where you wondered, hey, did we make a mistake with this?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#10

I think it's -- you always go into things with your plans and your backup plans and whatever goes a little slower, is a little tougher. What I'll tell you is we have a great management team in that business who have been incredibly committed. And when you have that level of commitment and you can see that you're succeeding, maybe not as quickly as you'd like, but you're getting done with things that you planned to get done, it gives you a lot of confidence. And just as a reminder to the audience, the things that we said we'd do with this business are first realized synergies in the merger, and we did more than 2x what was planned. And that synergy has meant that even though our top line hasn't been good, we've been growing the earnings very nicely in this business really since the acquisition. The second piece was to be a point of consolidation for print and the third piece is to build a digital business. And both those second and third pieces have been a little bit slower. I would say, though, that what has happened over the past 18 months, first of all, there's a very tough digital conversion that we had. DST had 120 fund complexes, each on the sort of a separate instance with a separate customization. We converted that all under 1 modern cloud-based platform. That took a lot of effort, but it's done now, and that really enables us to go to fund companies with really unique ways to do digital communications. And with -- really the change in environment and the pandemic, people are -- everyone is talking about digitization. Everyone is saying, "I want to get out of my physical assets and focus on digitization." And so that's providing a lot of opportunity for us to have conversations about we can take on the print, and then we can convert it to digital. And so I think we are. It's been a lot of work. We have always seen the earnings side, and now I think we'll begin to see some benefit on the revenue side as well.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#11

Got it. Circling back to the proxy business for a second here. I mentioned earlier how it's the broker-dealers who make the decision to hire Broadridge for proxies and fund interims, why do you think Broadridge remains dominant? Probably not a word you want me to use, but remains so successful competitively in that area. What are the barriers to entry that you see in that business?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#12

Yes. I think that we are -- it's a business that we continue to reinvest in, we continue to really work to take it to the next level. There are a lot of network benefits when you are the person connecting everyone and every -- the whole network sort of gets the benefit of that. And so I think that as long as the person that's in that position that's creating the network is continuing to reinvest and that all the stakeholders get to see continued improvement. You sort of get to continued acquisition. That's why we -- we're the first to do telephone voting, we're the first to do mobile apps, we're the first to do -- all the different ways to make the ecosystem better and continue to make it lower cost. And so we're now at -- it's 80% digital. So we've really been successful in driving paper out. We're working now with the different stakeholders and the regulators say, well, what does the next-generation of client experience look like? And how do we help lead the industry toward that. So I think there is all of that. And then the last piece I would just say is, is culture, which is we're a very client-focused company. You always hear us talk about the service profit chain. If we do the right thing for associates, they do the right thing for clients and then shareholders do well out of the back of that. And that balance, and you hear a lot of companies talking about it now, but there's always been the way we proceed. And so particularly when you're in one of these network positions, really being clear that you're putting the client first and having that be a part of your culture, it makes it -- really makes it work better.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#13

Got it. And now segueing to your GTO segment. You now have a nearly $700 million business, providing capital markets, back-office functions for broker-dealers, as you said in your intro. In your client conversations these days, what are their biggest pain points? What are your clients' biggest pain points? And how is Broadridge helping them solve for those issues?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#14

Yes. I think the 2 pain points, it's always cost and complexity. And if the -- because people's platforms have grown up sort of by asset class, by region, particularly for the global players, there is -- even though it might be good platforms and they might have been built really well, the duplication of that creates, I have different technology team around on each of those, I have a different operations team, I have supervision, I have compliance and it makes the whole ecosystem be pretty complex. And so there's the cost and complexity. And then the other piece is just people are looking to get on to next-generation technology. And as the bar is rising for everyone, and you see what sort of digitally native companies are able to provide in that experience, everyone's expectation is that it will have access to that experience. And so when you have such a breadth of applications that a large broker-dealer has, it's a lot to get all of that on to modern. And so as a CTO, you can take some parts of that and hide that off to someone who can do that on behalf of many companies at the same time so that you can focus your energies on the things that are most differentiating for you, that's a really unique value proposition. And so when it comes to the -- what are we doing to make sure that we deliver on that, it is -- you'll see us really talking about how we're doubling down on our investment to make sure that -- and we are -- do have an advantage over any 1 client because we can do 1 thing on behalf of many clients. And -- but it's getting that done, and that's why we're continuing to invest in our products and our technology.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#15

And as you think about your capital markets franchise going forward, how do you think about the opportunity to grow via providing additional services to your existing clients as opposed to bringing new clients into the fold?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#16

Well, it's clearly both. I would say internationally, it is more about -- it's still both, but it's more about new logos and leveraging third parties and leveraging industry solutions hasn't been as big internationally, it hasn't been in the U.S., partly because those markets are so disparate. But there has been regulatory change in the last 10 years that has created a lot more standardization, especially in the European Union, so a lot more ability to do this. And so there's a lot of opportunity in capital markets, a nice part of the growth is going to be international. But both internationally and then especially in the U.S., is also a big opportunity to expand and do the thing next to the thing. And a great example of that is what we're planning to do with LTX, and so we'll come back and talk about that, but our fixed income, AI trading platform is a great example of where we have a client, we have unique data, they trust us and we can bring more value. And so there are other instances like that with what we're doing with digital letter technology and repo. So there's always the opportunity to innovate and bring the next thing to a client with whom you already have trust.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#17

Got it. And so kind of bringing a couple of topics that we discussed together, you have the GameStop experience, and we have your services that you guys provide for broker-dealers in terms of post-trade processing. Current events question. So the DTCC has been exploring the idea of moving from T+2 settlement to T+1. They put out, I think, a white paper the other day, talking about that. I'd say that few entities are as familiar with market plumbing as Broadridge. Do you think that the equities market is going to end up moving to a T+1 solution? And what sort of role would Broadridge play in that process?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#18

Yes. For those that are -- follow this closely, it was just a few years ago that we moved from T+3 to T+2. There was a pretty extensive industry study done at that time, quantifying the benefits and the technology barriers. I think the conclusion at that time was that with largely existing infrastructure, T+1 is possible. Going to T+0 would be -- require entirely new infrastructure and would create a lot of challenges with Asia and things like that. So T+0 is pretty tough, but T+1 would be doable. I think it's way too early to know whether we'll do that. I do think that Robin has done an amazing job of sort of the best defense is a good offense and saying it's not meeting uncapitalized. It's the problem to read the market, that's the problem. But if we do go in that direction, we're certainly very involved in the move from T3 to T2. Then we do that on behalf of our clients. It's a -- I think it is a reminder of the benefit of being on an industry solution because we can do it once for all of our clients, and those clients that have proprietary platforms need to spend a lot of time and energy on something that is, in the end, just sort of keeps them even with everyone else.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#19

Makes sense. One area where you did successfully broaden an existing broker-dealer relationship is with your wealth management technology build out with UBS. What was the genesis of that effort with UBS? And how did Broadridge come to be selected to build out that platform?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#20

Yes. We -- first of all, we've had a long-term relationship with UBS. We've done their communications for a long, long time. We have done their capital markets technology for a long time. And in fact, when we're going through T+3 to T+2, the Head of Operations, at UBS stood up at SIFMA, that's the industry conference. As I said, I have 2 platforms. I have capital markets with Broadridge. I have wealth management as a proprietary platform. And as we're moving to T+2, I'm spending 2 hours a day on a conference call regarding my internal platform, and I'm spending 5 minutes a week on my Broadridge platform. So it was a real-time example, I think, of the power of an industry solution. And UBS' very -- Tom Naratil is very far thinking person, and really thought that the future there is to create an industry solution that -- in which the core sort of market connectivity and books and records can be mutualized. Obviously, different wealth management firms all have very different business models. Raymond James, very different business model than UBS. But to be able to make all that data accessible and open with modern connectivity through APIs and microservices and then have a series of apps that ride on top of that, some of which we would build, some of which UBS would build, some of which would be third parties', it's a great vision. And when you look at who has the most of that, already had big parts of that, who has a record of delivering for the industry and of being the kind of service provider that people can really depend on, I think, against those criteria, sort of naturally developed for us to partner together.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#21

Can you help us understand what exactly this wealth management solution that you're building out is? I think people listen to this might be familiar with -- there may be SEI investments in some of their wealth management technology. Not sure how familiar you are with those platforms. But how does -- what Broadridge is creating? How does that compare to other solutions that are currently out there?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#22

Yes. I think the -- if you think about sort of the dimensions of how broad is the platform? And then is it a pure technology player or is there sort of technology plus other stuff? And if you look at -- you can look at the clearing firms like a Charles Schwab or a TD or Pershing, they have a very broad offer, but it really comes with clearing. It's not something you can buy just from a technology standpoint. So we're sort of, I would say almost like them, but it's for -- we don't compete with them because that's really for RIAs or other people that don't want to be self-clearing, really focused on the top 20 self-clearing broker-dealers. And how they can have a full suite of very modern technology. I think the SEI platform is very focused on the trust side of the house, the investment's focused on REIs is it's not a brokerage platform and it comes sort of with investment management. So it's really -- it's a little bit about the breadth of the platform, who is focused on and is it a pure technology play? Or is it really part of an investment management play with an extension?

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#23

Got it. Okay. So we've teased this a few times, so we'll discuss it now. Another interesting initiative that you have underway is LTX, which is an electronic corporate bond trading platform. What do you think is the core value proposition of LTX for market participants? And how would you compare that to the income at electronic trading venues?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#24

Sure. Well, this is -- look, there's a topic I love talking about and for the audience, in fixed income there's been a real change over the past 10 years where dealers used to carry inventory and if you go to a large broker-dealer and transact as capital has become more of a challenge, that's gotten squeezed and the market is now really an agency market where you sort of go to someone and they'll say, "I'll go and try to find it for you." And in fixed income, really the future of fixed income is AI because there are many, many more CUSIPs in fixed income than there are in equities. So they're literally millions of CUSIPs. And so if you want to transact on something, it's a real needle in a haystack to find a counterparty. And so using AI for that is the perfect application. We're really well suited to that because we have -- 2/3 of the industry is on our platform. So we have the data to allow broker-dealers to make those connections. The other part of the platform is -- the other sort of mega trend is digitization. So much of the fixed income market is still done by voice. It's only 15% digitized. And the challenge with existing digital platforms is the sort of inside baseball about how it actually works, it's called a request for quote. And it's basically, you say, "I want to transact $20 million of x and people can give me a bid." The problem with that is if someone else does not want to do $20 million, but maybe they want to be $5 million. There's no bid there. What this platform does is it aggregates demand so that if you want to move $20 million of bonds, you can put out -- say you want to move $20 million, if 5 different people want to buy 4, that trade can take place. Also, you get to see the liquidity behind the person that won. So let's say, I want to move 20, maybe only put 5 out. And I see how much demand there is in the stack behind that to know how much more to put out. So there's a lot of very rich data coming off of it. Now in terms of how is it differentiated from the existing platform. First of all, it's focused on helping broker-dealers be successful, not dis-intermediating broker-dealers. It is -- it has the AI, as I just mentioned, driven pretty much by the unique data that we can bring. And then it has this really new protocol for conducting the auction that creates a lot more transparency and ability to aggregate across buyers and sellers. We're working with Jim Toffey, who founded Tradeweb. So he's been thinking for 20 years about how to make it better. And so it's something that we're super excited about. We're working with a number of leading broker-dealers, including Raymond James, on the sell side and with about 35 buyside firms. And it's in-market now doing sort of light trading to sort of shake the platform down. And as additional players join, which we're expecting to happen over the remainder of this calendar year, we're really looking forward to seeing the volume pick up.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#25

Right. Very interesting. We spoke earlier about Broadridge's fiscal 2017 acquisition of the DST Communications business. That was really the outlier for you guys in terms of deal size. Most of your deals tend to be smaller tuck-in acquisitions. Why has there historically been that preference?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#26

Yes. I would say, we are -- first of all, fintech is sort of evergreen for using M&A as a growth lever because there's always change. There are always teams creating a new solution, getting it to a certain degree, and then they want to sell to a large client who may not be able to buy from them, but they could buy from us. So we look at a lot of this as sort of build versus buy. There are other sort of financial service technology companies that have M&A as a strategy, but they're really -- they're not an organic growth company. They're more of a -- they have low organic growth and they're sort of buying sort of mature applications to add on to that and taking cost out and adding the next one on. It's a very different strategy that we have. We have good organic growth. We're building new solutions all the time. And we look at tuck-in M&A as a way to sort of cut the development time off of things that we might otherwise develop. So generally, we're not looking to take a bunch of costs out. We're looking actually to invest more in the solution, and we have a real demonstrated track record of increasing the growth of those solutions once we buy them. Now that's not to say that we wouldn't look at larger things as well. We do look at them all the time. And we looked hard at some. We've been the bridesmaid sometimes. So it's not to say that we wouldn't. But if you see us do something larger is because we have a lot of conviction around it. We're always looking for things where we believe we can be, if not the very best owners or a very, very good owner, we're competing with private equity firms, that can put lots of leverage on things, and we don't. So the business connectivity has to be really high. So if you see us do something larger, it will be because we have a lot of conviction. And -- but in the meantime, there continue to be a lot of smaller deals out there, and that will be an important part of our growth formula.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#27

Got you. Well, I think we have time left for 1 more question. So I think building off of that last response, you had a very busy fiscal 2020, 6 completed acquisitions in that year, but you haven't announced or completed anything yet in fiscal 2021. It seems like any asset that can be even remotely described as fintech is certainly selling at a pretty premium valuation. So the question is, how critical is it for Broadridge to complete some deals to hit your 3-year growth targets and how confident are you that you'll be able to find deals while remaining disciplined on valuation?

Timothy Gokey

executive
#28

Yes. I just want to say if anything, fintech is really trading at a really high level. I just want to except, present company excluded, of course, who is fairly valued. So I would say, Patrick, that we continue to look very hard. We've been the bridesmaid several times. And I guess the fact that we haven't transacted shows that we do have that discipline. And it comes back to what I've just said, which is we -- M&A is a nice part of our growth formula. It is not a necessary part of our growth formula. We are creating thing. We have organic growth in our core investment communicates business, just to position growth. We are creating new solutions. We're selling the existing solutions. Most of our revenue growth is from either position growth or revenue from sales. And so we have a path without M&A. If you think about our objectives over the next 3 years, there is a part of the revenue that is attributed to M&A. None of the earnings is attributed to the M&A. Because when you buy these smaller things and spend some time integrating them and then investing in the stuff like that. It doesn't make a lot of contribution to earnings in the early years. So we're going to continue to stay at it. We certainly have prospects right now. So I hope we'll have things that happen. But again, we have high-return goals. And we will -- we don't do things just for the sake of having activity.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

analyst
#29

All right. That makes sense. It's a very helpful way to frame things. So I appreciate that. And I think we're basically up against the clock here, so we'll wrap it up there. But Tim, thank you very much for joining us this year virtually, and we'll see you down in Orlando next year, hopefully.

Timothy Gokey

executive
#30

Great. Thanks, Patrick. Good to see you.

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.