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

All right, guys. Thank you again for joining us this afternoon on day 1 of the Wolfe FinTech Forum. Really happy to have Jack Henry here with us today. And as you could see, we have the CFO, Mimi with us. So first of all, thank you again for joining us. It's a story we've been now following for some time. And one of the most resilient stories we've seen in terms of the opportunity to really take advantage of the market you're in, which is ever evolving and ever changing. But clearly, a stock and a story that investors have really appreciated the consistency from.

Yes. Yes. It's certainly a durable, sustainable and predictable, which I think in -- especially in the current environment we're in, it's appreciated.

1% or 2%.

Look, on that note, just maybe kick in with what you're seeing in the environment for not necessarily the numbers first, but just -- what are your customers asking for? What kind of demand environment is there? What are they asking for in terms of type of -- is it cost management? Is it investment in certain areas? So let's just start there, and we'll go further.

So Darrin, if you don't mind, let me just give one sentence of like what we do for anyone in the audience who isn't familiar with Jack Henry. So Jack Henry is a well-rounded financial technology firm. We serve primarily U.S. banks and credit unions through a plethora of different solutions. We operate in 3 main operating segments. One is the core segment. So if you think about that mission-critical processing ERP type of system to run the daily infrastructure of a bank or credit union. We have payments, and we could talk a little bit more about payments, but we do payment processing, enterprise payment services and payments networking. So if you think about some of the payment rails, and then we have a complementary bucket, which kind of covers a lot of those add-on products, if you will, that help a bank or credit union run specific functionality. So if you think about lending solutions or fraud solutions or treasury management solutions. So we cover a range of financial institutions varying in size. Our largest today is about $50 million on the core side, up to over $200 billion on the complementary payment side of the house. So a plethora. So that gives us great visibility to your question, Darrin, on like understanding what banks and credit unions are focused on. And so we really have great insights into what are their strategic priorities, what are they focusing on? How are they reacting to different times of the economic cycle. So for the most part, over the last, we do an annual survey ourselves over what there are areas of focus are, our sales and relationship group managers are talking to clients of all sizes every day, so we really have a good pulse on what banks and credit unions are focused on. So I would say over the last 5 years, the prioritization may have changed, but the major topics are the same. It's around depositing -- gathering deposits. It's around lending, it's around efficiency, it's around fighting fraud. So all of those things are going to need to happen, no matter of the economic cycle. We've seen spending in IT, roughly 5% to 10% over the last number of years. We think that is pretty much going to stay on track, so while in any given year, the priority might shift, you saw in COVID, a dramatic shift to needing digital solutions as people weren't able to get into branches. So the prioritization might shift, but the reality is our customers in order to stay competitive, need to keep spending because no matter what the challenge they're facing, either technology is a solution or it's the majority of the way they're going to address the issue. And so we think that's quite resilient from a demand perspective, the nature of -- the mission-critical nature of the inherent kind of operational importance of the solutions we deliver aren't discretionary items. So we really see a resilience and a durability from an IT demand perspective.

In terms of digital demand, I mean, I know that's been a hot topic still. I mean have you seen any change? Or has that continued to be strong and it still is strong? Is any -- I just wonder if there's an increase at all recently?

Yes. For someone like yourself who's been covering the sector for as long as you have, it's -- we think everyone has a modern digital solution, but the reality is there's still some laggards out there that haven't made their first move. Let alone, we're seeing some people start to move to their second solution already. So we had an older product called NetTeller. We've seen a big migration from that solution to our Banno, which is our digital solution today. We only sell Banno inside the base today. So of our 1,700 core customers, we have over 1,000 using Banno. So we've seen great adoption there. And we're starting to see switchers that may have gone to a competitive solution at the onset, but now that we have feature parity with the largest players and the most name recognition players in the segment, we're starting to see even more market share gains and we're going to be pursuing an outside the base strategy as well.

When will be that timing-wise?

So it's a little slower than we had originally anticipated. We've talked publicly that our approach to outside the base -- it was interesting today when someone is a new core win. And when we say new core, it's a completely new core logo to Jack Henry. So they may own a complementary solution. They may have a payment solution, but they're new to core. Well, they don't take core in a vacuum, banks on average take 50 other products and credit unions take 30 other products. So it's important that the digital banking is usually one of those products that they take when they go with the Jack Henry core. So we didn't want to just sell them only the digital banking product. We wanted to sell them that whole suite of products. So we were really thoughtful on which cores outside of the Jack Henry base, we want to go and tackle.

Okay. I want to go further into things like digital and the other areas of growth. But before I do, just -- let's just revisit guidance for a minute, okay? So second quarter results, they were in line more or less with expectations across segments. You're still calling for second half embedded in your guide for -- I think it's about a 3%, 3.5% acceleration in growth, right? So maybe just start there. I mean the conviction you have in that revenue acceleration in the second half more broadly, what the key drivers are behind that?

Yes. So I really recommend that people look at Jack Henry on an annual basis. We really aren't a quarter-to-quarter company basis. If you think about the nature, particularly as you turn those 50 to 55 core wins a year into implementation and you start the revenue recognition, in any given quarter, the amount that come into the system that sign up to be installed, the profile on those accounts can vary -- so where that cohort and what the profile of them can really vary. So that 50, 55 in a given year, well, if I have many multibillion-dollar new core wins, that is certainly more attractive than smaller ones. So in any quarter, depending on what the profile of those last year were in the same quarter versus this year in a quarter could mean the growth. So it doesn't necessarily translate to like what an exit rate would be on an annualized basis. I think that would be kind of a misstep to think about it in that way. But the great news is because we know the slots of implementation, which are booked well in advance, we have great visibility to know who's coming on board, what those profiles are, what other sales are going to attribute to the revenue in the back half. I think just this year more than most has an acceleration as the year goes on.

But these are bottoms-up analysis, right? I mean, in other words, you see the actual contracts when they're implementing when they're live.

100%.

And the revenue flow-through is already kind of built out waterfall. So it's not -- to you, it's not anomalistic type of year. It just from the outside...

The slope of it is a little more pronounced than most years, but 100%, it's a buildup of a lot of different revenue streams that we have great visibility too. Now that being said, I think we're quite insulated from economic turbulence. We're not bulletproof, but we're quite insulated. About 25% of our business is tied to the general consumer sentiment and economic -- so things like our card processing business. Now we have about 1,000 customers that are debit versus about a couple of hundred that are credit. So we're more heavily weighted to the debit side of the house for sure. And we're not -- we don't participate in interchange. So it's more around transaction count volume than transaction dollar volume for us. But if the U.S. consumer were to hit pause in a meaningful way for an extended period of time, we're not completely insulated against that. But the great news for Jack Henry is the diversification of our revenue streams more than adjust for anything meaningful in one area.

So your conviction is just as high as it was at the beginning of the year.

100%, yes.

[indiscernible] acceleration in timing. Let's talk about the competitive landscape because I think even you guys had another conference talked about pricing and talked about some of the rational behavior at some of your competitors. And maybe just give us a sense of what you're seeing out there. If you could expand on that a little bit and if there are any competitive pressures or either at the high end or the low end of the market that you're seeing out there right now?

Yes. So there's always talk about the 3 largest players in the market, Jack Henry being one of those players. It's a highly competitive marketplace. You may be shocking to know, but there's over 30 core vendors out there. There's -- aren't just 3. And so we -- most renewals, we see a competitive dynamic. And certainly on every new win, it's a competitive dynamic where there's an RFP, there's a consultant in the mix. So we see the top competitors at every turn in every win. And we're still winning 50 to 55. So if you think about in a given year, we talk about there's 100 really in play that are committed to kind of being open to a decision of change. For us to win 50 to 55 is a large share of the win. So our market share has certainly been going up in recent years. And I think that's really a factor of the transparency of our road maps, being really clear on where our innovation is going the level of service is a far distinction in the market relative to the largest competitors in the space. So it's a blend of Jack Henry being the only company for culture, service, innovation in a really well-defined strategy. And I think that's really making the difference because at the end of the day, some people could do irrational things on price. But you have 2 decisions as a bank or credit union CEO. You're either going to want to grow and execute on your strategy or you're going to sell the institution and you can't stay on noncurrent technology and continue to think that you're going to attract the next depositor, the next lender and succeed against competitiveness, against the Tier 1 players. And as we know, you can bank anywhere in the country, like you're not just limited to your geographic proximity.

So what do you think it is that's driving the market share to be with? I mean, because, again, you're talking about examples where others might have priced a little more aggressively, and you're still winning the 100-plus cores. I mean what -- what is it that's driving that? Is it the service level? Is it the actual tech itself?

Well, the ABA just put out a really interesting article from their survey and the title alone, I loved, which is like not all cores are the same. And I think they -- so service is definitely a differentiator, and the ABA called that out, whereas a couple of years ago, some of the decision-making criteria was much more around the openness, maybe even pricing. And today, it really is around service and it's around technology innovation. Because as we talked about, that connectivity to the core system, you're not going to be able to get all of the benefits from the other products and execute on your strategy if you have outdated cores. Jack Henry has been very disciplined over the history of the firm, consolidating the number of cores. We have one credit union core and we have one flagship banking core and another 2 on the banking side that are real niche solutions, in particular to different sized institutions. So for us, it's really clear. We publish road maps for every one of our big product families on 6-month intervals and then we publish how we're doing against those milestones. So we totally believe in transparency. In the industry, that's not always the case. There are a lot of people on what I call, abandoned or stranded cores where they're not getting innovation, and they don't know what the future is going to be. So it's really hard to grow if you're on one of those products.

For sure. And I think core, again, has been something that's an anchor for you guys, and you continue to gain share there as well as you talked about. But -- what are the other products that you see as sort of the good attach that you can now cross-sell and given your position with core? I mean, what are you seeing the most demand for? We touched on Banno, maybe you can start there, but...

Yes, for sure. So we talked about like that 50 extra products on the banking side, 30 on the credit union side. And that attach rate grows over time as people have more time. So as you have mature relationships, let's say, they've been with Jack Henry for 10, 20 years, they could have up to 100 of our products installed. So it's continuing to meet whatever need they have at the time. But the biggest areas -- the biggest thing we see, really digital, payments, fraud, those are the biggest areas.

And you're seeing that demand as high as ever for those.

Yes, for sure.

Has it changed at all from last year? I mean we seemed like we were having an opportunity for banks to want to spend more money this year, especially in the backdrop of where rates were supposed to be adding. Now there seems like, obviously, macro shakiness just given the backdrop of policy. And so what are you seeing in the market today even if -- as real time as we can get.

I think anything that touches their end customer is certainly a paramount importance for them to stay competitive. So whether that be a digital solution. And when we say digital, we mean more than just the digital banking application. It means being able to do a loan, being able to have treasury management, being able to open an account, being able to do anything without physically walking into the financial institution. I think the other thing we've seen quite an uptick in adoption for is around the faster payments rails. So now that FedNow is out, we've seen a big lift in turning on. Now they're still mostly non-received, not a lot of volume is outside the Tier 1s on send, but we're starting to see those use cases come up more and more on both send and receive side as well as RTP. And the attach rate is -- once they get comfortable with one faster payment rail, they'll adopt both.

Right. And for you guys, that's what? That's implementation work. But is it really beyond that? Is it process work...

It's implementation but it's also the -- it's the transactional volume. So the great thing about Jack Henry is we have multiple different revenue models. So on the core, if you're on-premise, it may be based on your asset to your size, annual maintenance. For those who are hosted and over 75% of our solutions are now hosted, you're talking about number of accounts, number of members. And then on the transactional, whether that be payments or other services, it's on transactional volume or in the case of Banno and our digital applications, it's on active user count. So we're not tied to just kind of one element from a business model.

So when we think about the trends for you on revenue per customer, for example, it's really a balance, right, between scale as the customer grows versus the products you're offering really just being able to offer more and offset maybe scale price, right? Are you seeing that sort of stability hold?

For sure. And I think the thing I love about it is we're very much aligned with our customer success. So as they grow, as they continue to win, we're going to be able to grow with them.

Maybe we could talk a little more about just the private cloud. I mean it's a trend that we've been seeing obviously within -- really within core. I mean you talked about financial institutions moving to in-house private cloud. I mean how many more core clients are on private cloud now. How do you expect that trend to accelerate in the back half of the year? And just if we should consider any impact on your margin profile also. And I know I remember, for the last couple of years, we've talked about this. It seems like it's gotten more real even last year and certainly more this year than last. So where are we in this road map?

Yes. So we're several years into it from a generational kind of shift, if you will, from on-premise to our private cloud, we're at about 75% today, maybe 1 every 2 to 3 years, we're selling on on-premise, but pretty much everyone who's new today is buying a cloud-hosted solution. And then once you choose cloud, you're going to get all your other solutions, the same delivery mechanism. So I think that's kind of a one-way direction. What really makes the turning point for when people decide to shift out of running their own data center to our private cloud, tends to be around the renewal of their hardware because you're talking about a multi -- it's a $1 million purchase this kind of midrange middleware solutions from IBM, mostly from a server perspective. So you're talking about a big CapEx spend. It could be when their CIO retires and the ability to find another CIO to manage the infrastructure, just the cyber compliance, the risk from -- just a regular -- extra regulatory burden that they have in managing their own data center. So you have to have a scale in this day and age to really still manage your own center. So I think from a runway perspective, we typically see about 40 to 50 a year of migrations. We've been on that healthy clip for quite a number of years. I think that's going to continue. That kind of leads to a 7- to 9-year runway left. I think you get to the mid to high 90s. But there's a chance that people leapfrog private cloud and jump straight to public cloud, and that would be interesting, too. So there's about a 2x revenue uplift when you go from on-premise to private cloud because we're taking on more of the burden for them. It's pretty much the same dollars from the financial institution perspective, we're just taking on more of their work on their behalf. And so that's a healthy margin flow-through. And then going to the public cloud, it's not going to be 2x. We've talked about probably more like 25 basis points, but it's going to be another uplift. So it's been a very...

And again [indiscernible] point, it's accretive.

Yes.

Specially on the private cloud side...

Yes. For sure.

I mean are you seeing any shift from a regulatory standpoint that's affecting that at all in terms of this administration or anything else? And just more broadly, I guess, you can layer that into the questions of what you're seeing under the new administration.

So we're about 5 years on our tech modernization journey. So that's taking a core as it's known today, completely rewriting it to be digital, public cloud, API first, native, not a rewrite, not a lift and shift, but truly digital cloud native. We think we're getting to a place, so next year, calendar first half '26 will have a retail and commercial deposits only core in the public cloud, probably another 2 to 3 years after that, we'll have the lending side, the full core in the cloud, public cloud. And we think that's the pace at which the regulators will get there in comfort. Now there are probably less than a handful of banks today that are operating in the public cloud, but the regulatory burden is very intensive because they're just not there yet. And they're learning how to do the [ surveillance ].

They're very, very scary from a security standpoint, without knowing exactly what you're doing?

Well, and it's new to the regulators in the same way we had to bring them up to speed when Banno was released because that was the first public cloud digital data first, we had to teach them how to do the [ surveillance ] in a public cloud, and it's the same thing on the core side. So we think it will get there. Now if this administration accelerates their tolerance for that, we can certainly develop faster. We're not constraining ourselves from a capacity perspective. We just think we're on pace to meet the demand where we think it's going to be.

Where do you think you are competitively on this front? I mean you hear other companies say that their offerings on core and what they can do on cloud is something that's comparable. But I'm not sure it's quite the same, right? It's -- there are cloud-based cores out there, but it's not quite the same of moving somebody's entire infrastructure onto the cloud, right?

Yes. I think we are in a unique position. We're not doing -- as I said, we're not doing a lift and shift. We're not doing just a modification or a hosted -- and the difference of that is when you really write natively to API, digital, cloud and native first, you're going to take advantage of all of the benefits you get from a public cloud environment. If you only do a lift and shift, you're not going to get those economies of scale. You're not going to get the efficiencies from the velocity of engineering. You're not going to get the uptime and reliability and uptime. So you're not going to get some of the savings that you can and just the better solution that I think offers value that customers will pay for. So I think our approach, while it's a bigger effort, I think we'll have a lot of benefits in the end.

Maybe just switching over to your partnership with Moov for a minute. I mean, it seems like there's -- it's been progressing well, just especially with the recent Visa Direct announcement. Just maybe help us understand when you expect revenue from that partnership to start really meaningfully impacting your growth.

Yes. So we announced it in September of this year. This is with an amazing fintech Wade Arnold, who is the co-founder of Banno with our CTO, Ben Metz. He is already, I think, the sixth largest from a payments processing the first in a decade or so of being the newest payment processor on the rails network. So this is really aimed at small to medium-sized businesses. It is around helping what is a very underserved segment to the banks. And the reason why we're interested in it is we're interested in enabling our fintech, like our fintech partners, and more importantly, our financial institutions to serve these. So it's not a go around. And that's kind of the current acquisition -- merchant acquisition strategy for most of the competitors is to go around their customers direct to the end merchants. We'd rather support our banks and credit unions in serving those customers. So it is around rapid transfer, utilizing the debit and credit rails, it is around merchant acquiring a tap-to-pay through the Banno app taking advantage of the tech modernization components of our core system. So what that allows for is we already know that KYB, we already know the KYC. We're already seeing the detailed processing that will allow us to do the continuous reconciliation on the back end. The things that create a huge amount of friction to the small business is waiting 3 to 4 days on the front end to open your account, right, and to start being able to accept payments -- and then on the back end, once you're up and running, the hours it takes for accounting reconciliation because today, those are batch process. So if you're a small business, if you're a plumber or bakery or what have you, you're going to spend all weekend because what you're going to get from a transaction is that you did 1,000 sales for a total of $5,000. And then you're going to have to match and tick and tie all those invoices to each payment. But since we already have that information coming out of the core and coming out of the payments, we can already do that for them. And so we think between that and the 8 settlement windows of getting cash quicker from the merchant into their account will be a real differentiator in the space. But I think one of the most interesting things, Darrin is I think why now is because you don't need specialized hardware. The phone is the device for accepting payments. No longer do you need a dongle or a tablet or whatnot. And the other thing is I think people will be multi-acquirer. So they may have a machine when it's in their restaurant or in their storefront, but if they're selling at the farmers market or direct to a restaurant, they may just use their phone, and you don't need the switchers for that to happen.

Got it. So if we put it all together, I mean, you guys are obviously doing well on the core side. You have Banno, you have digital banking that's obviously high in demand. Payment seems to be going well in terms of integrating and cross-selling, right? Maybe what have we missed? What do you -- if you had to rank order the areas in terms of the contribution to the next year or 2 of growth to being as strong as it has been in sustaining. What do you want us to know about and make sure we're aware of and what are you most excited about.

Well, I think the first really is it's just heads down execution. Like we don't really need the star and the moon to align or to go to something that's far field adjacent or a whole different geography or different vertical to get the growth that we're looking for in our strategy. It's delivering -- continuing to deliver on the innovation that we're well on our way on -- it's continuing to put the clients first from keeping the level of service differentiation. And then some of these new exciting areas, right, that we're already well underway, whether it be move, whether it be the faster payments, rails, adding value those -- and just supporting the growth of RFIs.

Yes. All right. That's really helpful. I mean, I guess, just before I wrap it up, the financial the algorithm, right? I mean when we think about your top line has always been, it's very consistently been leading in the market, call it, mid- to high single-digit range, revenue growth through some time. But when we think about your ability to operate expenses and invest at the same time, just remind us what we should be expecting from an expense growth standpoint, from an operating leverage standpoint from -- really, and then we can touch on capital return and what you -- how you think about that strategically.

Sure. So I think about, Darrin, as 5 key metrics, and that's how I kind of manage and help monitor the business. So the first is non-GAAP revenue growth. And we say non-GAAP because we have deconversion revenue that happens when one of our customers is acquired or leaves, which mostly is in the event of acquiring because we have 99% retention ex M&A. That can have some volatility to it. So it's great from an EPS perspective. It's great from a cash flow perspective. But that's not additive ongoing. It actually creates a whole or a headwind, if you will, to revenue. So it's non-GAAP revenue growth. We target 7% to 8% annually and have for a number of years. The next is around non-GAAP operating margin expansion. So we think about a floor being 25 to 40 basis points with an ambition for more, but it's really about creating compounding margin expansion, not just one year, but adding more and more each year. The next is around being in GAAP EPS. We are very much -- very clean. I love as a CFO how cleanliness and high-quality GAAP earnings. And the next is free cash flow. This year, we're targeting 65% to 75% free cash flow. We think we're back on that journey to get back to 90% to 100% free cash flow. And then the last is return on invested capital. And there we're typically in the 20-plus percent range.

Just -- it reminds me to ask that question that I had earlier, but I skipped over it. But for -- let's go back to it. The free cash flow question has obviously been one we've gotten from investors. So just your conviction around returning to that higher level of a conversion ratio that we thought we'd all like to see, again, obviously. And so just help us understand the building blocks.

Yes. So it was mostly caused from some of the tax changes that happened a couple of years ago. So we're now back -- we're probably about 2 years in. So rebuilding that pool, if you will, on depreciable expenses from a tax perspective. So that's a R&D-related expenses that all of a sudden went away overnight because of the change in the IRS ruling. And then we're now kind of restocking that funnel, if you will. So I think we've had the worst pain of it already behind us, and we're already starting to regrow. So -- this year, we're at a trailing 12 already this year, roughly 72%. So we're well on our way of getting back to historical numbers. So feel good that even absent a legislative change would be nice. And there's hints that the administration is going to focus on this area, but we don't need it. We're well on our way.

Guys, I'll take a question from the audience, if anyone has. But while I'm 'just letting everyone think about it a year from today, what do you want to see to succeed in call the year a successful year for what you're looking for?

Yes. I think it's a continuation. The nice thing is the sales, and we're at 4 record quarters in a row of sales. The sales that we've already started locking in and several of those are much bigger wins, like you're talking multi-- we called out in Q2, we had a $7.5 billion win. We've won a couple of merger of equals that are very sizable thus far. So continuing to win in sales because that relates to future year growth, kind of the annuity of it. Continuing to execute it in delivery of innovation because that's really going to be our differentiator. So things like Financial Crimes Defender, we have our enterprise account origination coming out, the beta stages of our Moov initiative coming out. So it's an exciting continued year from an innovation perspective, which, to me, really lend to the evergreen nature of our differentiation. So to me, it's a year from now, now economic turbulence may be there, but the really nice thing about from a Jack Henry perspective, we do have some exposure, particularly on the payment side, but the resiliency of our business, and we've shown that over time and particularly now more than ever, even if we compare ourselves to the global financial crisis. Today, so much more of our model is SaaS delivered, so it's not a CapEx. It's an OpEx purchase. So you talked about long contracts, high retention rate. It's just continuing to execute on the things that we're known to execute on.

That's great. That's great. Great. All right, guys. Any questions from the audience?

Maybe just quickly, if you could walk through any implications given banking consolidation.

Sure. Happy to. Good question. So the industry has been consolidating for the last 40 years at an average 4% a year. The last 2 years being the lowest industry consolidation. Last year, you had roughly 270 acquisitions in the industry. The interesting call out on that, even though it was relatively a historic low, is you had 11 banks that were bought by credit unions, which is an interesting trend that we saw last year, and we expect to see kind of continuing going forward. This year, we're already at roughly 100 that are either announced or closed, not all are closed, obviously, given that we're only 3 months into the calendar year. But that's roughly 38% of last year's volume. So we're kind of on a nice healthy kick. If you were to graph the number of financial institutions in the U.S., I mean, it's come down from 20,000 institutions a handful of years ago to roughly 9,500 institutions today. But if you were to track on the other access, either Jack Henry revenue or assets, you would see the inverse, right? It's going up. And so as I talked about earlier, the beauty of Jack Henry's model is it's not tied to the number of FIs. Obviously, it's nice. We can't be some European countries that only have 10 banks. But as long as there is a reasonable number of banks and credit unions in the U.S. And the reason why you need a certain amount is because you need those new wins. You need those switchers because they're going to buy that whole portfolio of products. So to me, you can still continue to see consolidation, I think you will. The interesting thing will be to see if we get an uptick in de novo, so brand new institutions. That's been really low for the last handful years. I think you could see an uptick on this administration being more, I guess, open to new bank charters. The beauty is on a de novo. They need all your products. They have nothing like there's no legacy debt there. They have nothing. And so those are really attractive as well. So I think you're going to see more consolidation. The other point I would make is that I think the consolidation is going to happen more at the smaller end of the marketplace than the larger institutions. And as Jack Henry's average institution size has grown and our average institution now is roughly like $1.5 billion, both on the credit union and bank side. Our customers are more likely to be the acquirer than acquired. And so from a consolidation, I think over the long haul, it's more of a tailwind than a headwind for Jack Henry.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Darrin. Thank you.