Jack Henry & Associates, Inc. (JKHY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Welcome, everyone, to day 1 of the UBS Global Technology Conference. My name is Nik Cremo, I help lead the payments and fintech team here at UBS, and I am excited to have Mimi Carsley, CFO and Treasurer of Jack Henry with us today. So thanks for coming on, Mimi.

This is great. Thanks, Nik.

So just to kick it off, we're heading into calendar 2024. So what's top of mind for you and your customers heading into the new year? And maybe how could you characterize the demand environment?

Sure. Happy to. So, one, luckily, Jack Henry is a June 30 filer, so we get the benefit of both the calendar year-end kind of rush from a client contract's perspective, but then we also do our own year-end in June. But what we're seeing for the most part is strength across the board, continuation of demand, IT spending. Now a lot of the data I have is anecdotal conversations we've had with CEOs and CIOs and CTOs, but robust demand. We had a record Q4 from a sales perspective, which always makes you a little leery walking into Q1, having drained the funnel. So we've been really pleased with the strong momentum of Q1, not only replenishing the funnel, but the amount of new core win takeaways, continued migrations of on-premise to hosted that we've seen in the year. So for us, that bodes really well for a healthy 2024.

Glad to hear. So we get a lot of questions on just the durability of bank IT spend. So what's your sense of the durability of your customers' ability to spend in light of any potential economic turmoil in the United States in 2024?

Yes. I think the trends we've seen over the last several years are continuation. The total dollars that they're spending, call it, in the 7% to 10% seems to be really resilient. Now that is where they're shifting what they're spending on. I would say they're spending less on discretionary and spending more on mission critical as an industry, and that serves Jack Henry very well. The products and solutions we are offering are going to help them with day-to-day operations, data gathering, risk management, deposit gathering, and the like. So really mission-critical systems for them that are allowing them to stay competitive. And they know in order to compete with the larger Tier 1 players, they're going to need to continue to invest in solutions that make them at that hub of the relationship of relevancy.

Understood. Just to follow up on that, would you expect any bifurcation in demand from banks versus credit unions in this environment? Or generally similar?

I don't think as a whole, you're going to see a lot of differentiation. I will say they tend to have different focal points just like there isn't one area for all banks that are continuing to focus on. The credit unions tend to be very member centric. They tend to be very member touch-base, member experience-driven. So a lot of digital presentation layer, a lot of customization, things like how they interact, virtual account opening. They don't have as much dependency on branches that banks do. So it's a lot more on how to engage new members, how to entice new members to know about their offering and services without having to walk through a physical portal. So I think they are at the forefront on that digital presentation layer, whereas a lot of banks are still in that catch-up mode on that. And we saw that acceleration through the pandemic when their branches were closed, and the realization that they needed to have a very robust digital presentation layer.

Understood. So shifting gears to the core segment. Jack Henry has executed well and gaining share in the core segment since I've been covering the stock for like the last 10 years. And last year was another strong year at that like 1 per week pace, and Q1 also was very strong. So can you just talk about the trends driving that? And then also maybe just put a finer point on one of the comments on the last earnings call just regarding some of the disruptions at some of your larger competitors that may be benefiting Jack Henry more so today versus prior years?

Of course. I would say that 50 core wins, and how we define a core win is truly new core logo to Jack Henry in a core system. So it's not a switcher or not shifting from on-premise to a hosted, it is a completely new core win. That 50 approximately a year has been consistent over the last several years. We're on track to hit those numbers, we think, this year based on the strong pace of Q1. But I would say we share that information more as an indicator of general health of the marketplace. It wouldn't have a direct correlation. One, there is about a 12- to 18-month lag in implementation before you see that turn in to revenue. That's mostly due to the time it takes from the credit union or the bank to get ready for that conversion. So it's not -- and then the count itself, that one count could be a smaller size institution, it could be a larger size. And most people don't buy core in a vacuum, they buy other complementary solutions with it. And so depending on how many and what product mix they're purchasing has a lot to do with the attractiveness or the amount of revenue you're going to get from that client. So we feel quite strong that we're off to a positive year here. I think the trends are continuing. You mentioned competitive landscape. We're continuing to win share. We're continuing to have great success versus our larger competitors in particular. And in particular, the areas where we're winning from them is in some of their core offerings that aren't getting the modernization. So there is a lot of core providers out there. You may think that there's only 3. There's something like 30 core providers. There's a lot of small core providers that just have a couple of clients and those clients sometimes outgrow that institution. And then on the larger institution side, those core providers often have multiple offerings. And so it's really hard from a technology perspective to innovate when you have 10, 20 core systems, you're not giving equal treatment, equal innovation, increased enhanced functionality to all of those cores. And so there's a lot of what I would call stranded core customers where they may not be getting the latest and greatest enhancements. They may not be getting a clear roadmap, a future innovation, and they may not be getting great service. So you have a segment of the market that are dissatisfied with their current situation. And that is what drives them to make the change. Making a core system change is not a task to take lightly. It's about a 12- to 18-month journey as a financial institution. It's a lot of risk for them, every process, there's a lot of retraining of their employees. It's something that they don't take lightly and most don't want to encounter over their career. But what they do get and what really moves the needle for them to make that decision over inertia is the new enhancements they get, particularly when you're joining an organization like Jack Henry on one of our cores and then you get the opportunity to get Banno, our digital offering, you get the other enhancements of other, not only great service excellence, but other products as well.

Understood. Can we just go back and just rehash some of the reasons why Jack Henry is gaining share so much? Is it largely just due to like products like Banno? Or is it customer service related?

Yes. There aren't very many financial institutions in the U.S. that Jack Henry doesn't serve in some way. So we have over 1,700 core customers, but we serve roughly 6,000 noncore customers with 1 of our solutions. And on average, we serve them with 3 of our solutions. So as they gain experience in what it's like to work with Jack Henry and partner with Jack Henry, our openness, our clarity, our transparency, our service excellence, they get to know what it's like. And so that makes it easier. The more products they tend to buy from Jack Henry as a noncore customer makes it easier to win them over when they are up for renewal.

Understood. So just moving on to the tech modernization strategy. I believe it's been about 2 years since Jack Henry first announced that. So first, can you just provide an overview of what that is for those that may not be familiar with the strategy and then just provide an update as to where Jack Henry is?

So the tech modernization, what we're calling JH platform, our tech platform, is talking about that core system. So if you think about a core system for a financial institution, it's about 30 pieces of key functionality. So our tech modernization is debundling or decoupling those into -- if you think about the platform and then you have Lego pieces, we're breaking that component down into instead of it being one box of 30 bits, it's going to be modules. That's really helpful for institutions on that large-scale implementation I talked about, if that can lower the risk and maybe you implement one of those modules or five of those modules at a time instead of doing a big bang conversion overnight. So it's public cloud native. It's not a lift and shift. It's a complete rewrite. We have a key strategic partnership with Google, digital cloud native, so it allows you to take advantage of all of the DevOps environment you get in a public cloud setting, so bursting, capacity, security, all of those enhancements you get from being a digital cloud-native environment. And so today -- that's a roadmap. So it's a strategy. It's not a go-to-market yet. We have our first 2 modules out this year, and it will probably be somewhere in the 3- to 5-year time frame before you have a full core, I would say, available. And mostly, for us, we're -- we've been talking about it for a number of years because we want to be transparent with our customers where we're going, where if you join Jack Henry on SilverLake, which is our flagship banking core system; or Symitar, our flagship credit union system, where we're going over time. And we're going to continue to innovate on those systems alone. So we're not just innovating on the Jack Henry platform, but we're continuing to add some of those enhancements to all of our other systems and platforms.

Got it. So what's the early feedback been on the 2 products that you have out there?

So people have been really excited about the narrative and talking about that debundling, talking about the benefits you get from operating in a public cloud environment, both our existing customers, and we've really been hearing strong success and interest from larger institutions and prospects. They really like that forward direction we're moving. Now today, most FIs are not ready to be in the public cloud with their PII. We have other modules and other products that are in the public cloud today. Banno is public cloud native. Our Financial Crimes Defender product is public cloud native. Payrailz, public cloud native. But the PII, the core system, regulators aren't yet comfortable with how to do testing, how to do supervision in a public cloud environment. So we think that 3- to 5-year time frame of developing all the components will match up with when the regulators will really have comfort in operating the PII in a public cloud environment.

Understood. So just shifting gears to the complementary segment where growth has been particularly robust. Is there any way to unpack like what's driving that growth between new products, new customers, new core wins and noncore customers?

So Jack Henry operates 3 segments, our core segment, which we talked about just a bit ago; our payments business; and then our complementary business. And our complementary business came out of the idea that we have about 1,700 core customers, but there's a lot of other banks and credit unions out there that aren't up for renewal yet, that you may take time to win them over from a core perspective, but they certainly need other software. So our complementary business is a blend of its core agnostic. We sell some of those products only within the Jack Henry core today and the bulk of them outside to any core providing product. So it's a portfolio mix. There's about 200 solutions in our complementary group. It grows about 8% to 9% a year. And in any 1 year, there's going to be new exciting winners like Financial Crimes Defender. Banno is in that segment and has certainly been a strong grower for us. LoanVantage, Treasury Management. So that's where you get a lot of the digital applications and a lot of the fraud-related solutions.

Understood. Just staying on complementary, the strategy for selling Banno outside the core was recently finalized, and I know you guys get a lot of questions on this. So figured I would check to see if there's any early reads into how that is playing out.

Yes. So we'll be sharing more information at our next earnings call on that strategy. From an engineering perspective, we've been designing it for being core agnostic from the start. So it's not a technical challenge. What we found surprisingly from a go-to-market perspective, is competitors were excited to be able to have Banno. Because as I said earlier, if you are on a system where you're not getting a lot of innovation, you probably aren't getting a great digital banking solution either. So they were really excited to be able to get Banno to be able to offer it to their end users and members. So we're being really thoughtful as to which cores we want to go out with from a go-to-market perspective in order to stay most competitive. As I mentioned earlier, most of our new core wins, if not all of our new core wins get Banno along with. So we don't want to change that great momentum we're seeing from a sales approach. The other comment I would make, Nik, is that part of our DNA is to be open. We're a very open ecosystem company that is not only from the design of the customer support that we offer our FIs in terms of how to work with us, even if they're putting third-party systems into their network and into their infrastructure, that's not always the same at other companies. And so for us to bring Banno outside the base, we know how it attaches to the functionality within our system. We think we have a good handle on how that functionality works in other cores, but it doesn't mean that the other core providers are going to be as helpful and friendly with how to extract data out, how to work with those APIs. And so we want to make sure that when and how we go outside the base is going to be a very compelling experience for our customers. And so we think it's important to start with our internal customers, make sure that they're thrilled with the experience and then go to segments of -- outside the base where we think it's most strategic for our win.

Great. Thanks for all the color on that. So pivoting to the payment segment, we haven't went there yet. So growth in the payment segment has been very robust throughout the pandemic. And in the most recent quarter, growth slowed a tiny bit to 6%, which is still a great number in bank tech land. But I mean, what are the trends that drove that and kind of any update that you can provide on the trends that you're seeing in the first 2 months of this quarter and kind of how you're thinking about that segment for the rest of the year?

I would look to our long-term growth algorithm that says our payments business grows at about 8% to 9% a year. We think that FY '24, our fiscal year FY '24, payments growth will be in that area as well. So even though the first quarter was a little lower, it's really hard on a quarter-to-quarter basis for Jack Henry. It really depends on what's coming out of the pipeline and coming on from an implementation perspective. You could have a challenging comp. You could have an easier comp. And so sometimes it just creates a little bit of noise in one period that, over the course of the year, really gets smoothed out. So our payments business continues to be quite strong. Within that business, we have our Enterprise Payment Solutions group, remittance, enterprise-related payments. We have our transactional business, the debit and credit business. We have our PayCenter business and our Payrailz, the new acquisition, is in that business as well. And some of the exciting areas in real-time payments, our RTP and our FedNow offerings are in that business. So a lot of exciting areas, I think, for the future of what's going to be some compelling growth.

Understood. So on to margin, you guys have...

And Nik, if I could just add one more point on payments because I want to make sure people are clear on it. So while we are primarily a debit card issuer and processor, we do credit as well, but our portfolio mix is more heavily weighted to debit than credit. We don't participate on interchange. And I bring that up because there's been a lot of talk recently about potentially the cap on interchange, et cetera. So we get paid regardless of whether you're buying this water bottle or your iPad, we get paid and participate along with our FIs on that. So it's a little more durable in a negative macro environment. We trail a little bit on an uprise when spending goes to larger luxury type purchases. But I just want to make sure we're clear that we don't participate in the interchange.

Yes, understood. Yes, debit transaction growth is definitely the most stable area of payments. Okay. So on to margins, you guys performed very well in Q1 and then raised your expectations for the year to 30 to 35 basis points. So what led you to raise the margin guide for '24? And kind of what are the main puts and takes to margins this year?

Yes. So the great part about the Jack Henry story is of those 3 segments, and I mentioned that the revenue will track very similar to last year's growth from a percentage basis and our growth algorithm that we have in our Investor Day presentation, is it's a very stable business. It's a well-diversified business from the number of different offerings we have. Also, no 1 FI accounts for more than 1% of revenue. And the trends, because we are a long-term SaaS contract, high reoccurring revenue, is you just get the durability of the business. And so there's not a lot that I would say like, oh, gosh, we're seeing huge growth in one versus another that led to that up in margins. It's just with the first quarter being successful, with the product mix we're seeing, with the outlook for the rest of the year, we felt pretty good as well as the strong expense control we have in place, we felt good about the level of high to medium risk versus low risk in the plan, and we feel pretty good about being able to raise that guide.

Understood. And looking at margins longer term, I mean, where do you see the most opportunity in the business for efficiency gains?

I think there's a number of places. I think where we're at right now is it's been a building block type of year. We're doing some key investments, things like Salesforce and others internally that will allow us to continue to scale and grow. We're coming out of COVID with people-related spend, inflationary pressures from benefits costs, cyber insurance and the like. I think you're going to see stabilization in those. I think you're going to see stabilization in wage inflation that will allow attractive margin growth. But then I think there's some nice long-term tailwinds that are -- some that are continuations like our on-premise to hosted. That business comes at very attractive margins. We think today, we're at 70% hosted. We think we maybe get to 90s, but it's possible that you leapfrog from private cloud to public cloud, but I think that's a nice tailwind for margins. But being an operator in the public cloud is also a great margin story. And some of those elements I talked about earlier of operating in the public cloud then ups the cost to compute, the amount of compute you need to have, the ability to scale up and down, the release schedules. Some of that in addition to how we're thinking from an engineering perspective of a write once, use often type of code base where we can have enhancements. I'll give an example. One of the Jack Henry platform modules that's coming out this year, the authorizations module, if you think about identity access, authorizations, empowerment, that same code will be used in multiple of our products. So being able to have the same code in multiple products means lower QA costs, lower support costs, just more efficiency from an engineering perspective that I think over time will be another nice tailwind for margins.

Understood. So good segue from that question into generative AI. I'm sure you've been getting a ton of questions on it as have we. So how is Jack Henry thinking about deploying that from a product perspective as well as from an expense perspective?

So AI is certainly the current buzz word. I was at a conference in San Francisco, and I think every single billboard between the airport and downtown was an AI-related billboard. But the reality is machine learning has been around for a number of years, and Jack Henry has been utilizing it internally for a number of years, whether that's thinking about our algorithms for fraud monitoring and detection, whether that's thinking about queuing up the next possible question in a customer support environment, there's certainly been elements we've been using machine learning to help from a product perspective. And I think that will certainly continue going forward. I think the area where corporations are being a little bit more conservative and leery is in internal use. Certainly, we're not allowing any Jack Henry PII to be in the public cloud domain. We're not allowing our customer data to be in a large language model environment. And so I think it's a question of how do you get the benefits from developer engineering efficiency, even if I think about my finance department, how do you get all those efficiency benefits, but still really do protect that IP, protect the customer data environment. And I think that's where people are just being very thoughtful about how to use it.

Understood. Wanted to touch on free cash flow conversion. It's been topical for Jack Henry lately. I know that you, like many other software vendors, were impacted by some legislation. You guys are targeting 60% free cash flow conversion for FY '24. And longer term, you're still targeting that 80% to 100%. So is there any color that you can share on how the tax headwind eases beyond FY '24, just kind of bridging from that 60% to 80% to 100%?

Sure. So for those who don't follow tax legislation in Congress, let me just like fill you in on some exciting parts here. So Section 174 was language that we thought would, last year, actually, it was set to expire. It was language that came out of the Jobs Act that was set to expire that paid for some of the legislative changes. And it essentially, for development -- internal development cost, it reduced, on a cash tax basis, your ability to deduct that expense. So nothing changes from your federal tax rate. It's just on a cash tax basis, you no longer have that deductibility of that development expense. And when you're a big internal developer like Jack Henry, and we're not just reliant on M&A, we do a ton of internal development, we spend about 14% to 15% of revenue each year on R&D. That's a significant portion of our business. So being a domestic company, being a very straightforward tax filer, not having that deductibility and having to rebuild that amortization over time, so it restarts the clock, if you will. So the biggest impact was last year. We paid about $80 million more in incremental cash taxes. It will be a little less this year from an impact. And then over the next 5 years, it will lessen every year as you're restocking that depreciation, amortization pile for the cash tax purpose of calculation. So it certainly had a meaningful impact. There were some other, I would say, noise from an AP/AR perspective for 1 year on some timing of some larger contracts. But over time, in the near term, we see certainly a meaningful way back to historical norms of a free cash flow conversion. And I think that it's just a temporary feature.

Got it. Good to hear. So it looks like we're almost out of time here. We get a lot of questions on the M&A environment amongst your customer base, just given the impacts to your financial model. So are you seeing any shifts in the market or seeing it loosen up again and returning to M&A?

Yes. So M&A impacts Jack Henry in a couple of ways. So when our FIs, our customers are acquired, typically the acquirer, their software is the go-forward system of record. So because we have long contracts with our clients, they essentially pay out the remainder of their contract if they have an early termination. So if our clients are acquired, we receive what's called deconversion revenue. I'll note that we just changed our -- the way we are projecting and giving guidance around that this year. So we are -- we chose a very low historical level and that equated to $16 million this year. And we said, okay, $4 million a quarter is going to be plugged into our models. And then 10 days prior to earnings, we'll release the actual number so people can update their [indiscernible] because there was a lot of noise, and we have very little visibility to that M&A activity, where going to be the last call a client gives us is, hey, we're leaving. Now on the other side, when our clients are acquirers and that happens more times than get acquired, it is helpful for us. So not only do they need our help installing our software at their new acquired property, but a lot of the ways that we bill is based on number of accounts or number of users. And so we actually get the benefit of their larger scale almost immediately. So I would say, over the term of kind of a multiyear period, we are far more the beneficiary of M&A activity than not. I sometimes get asked about the number of U.S. institutions consolidating, and that trend has been going on for over a decade. And the reality is while the number of U.S. financial institutions has been shrinking, the assets have been increasing. And so there's no concern from -- I don't see a huge number of banks going away in the U.S. nor does it negatively impact Jack Henry from that perspective.

Got it. Thanks for all the color on the M&A environment. It looks like we are unfortunately out of time here, but thank you so much for all the insights on Jack Henry today, Mimi. We really appreciate the time.

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