Manhattan Associates, Inc. (MANH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Christine, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Manhattan Associates webinar. [Operator Instructions] Today, we will have a fireside chat and question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this call is being recorded today, February 12, 2025. I would now like to introduce your host, Mr. Michael Bauer, Head of Investor Relations of Manhattan Associates. Mr. Bauer, you may begin the conference.

Great. Thank you, Christine, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Joining me today on today's webinar are Eddie Capel, our Executive Vice Chairman; Eric Clark, our President and CEO; Dennis Story, our CFO; and Terry Tillman, Managing Director, Equity Research at Truist Securities. Before we get started, I would like to review our cautionary language. During this webinar, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Manhattan Associates. You are cautioned that these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results may differ materially from the projections contained in our forward-looking statements. I refer you to the reports Manhattan Associates files with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements, particularly our annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2024 and the risk factor discussion in that report as well as any risk factor updates we provide in our subsequent Form 10-Qs. We note the turbulent global macro environment could impact our performance and cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. We're under no obligation to update these statements. Now I'll turn the call over to Eddie for some brief remarks before we begin the fireside chat with Terry and then open up for additional Q&A.

Good. Thanks, Mike. Well, welcome, everybody. I appreciate you taking the time to join us this afternoon. Obviously, we've got a transition going on here with Eric Clark, our new CEO coming on board, who's sat beside me here this afternoon. And there were a lot of questions that were coming from investors in the market about the transition and so forth and wanted to get to know Eric just a little bit as well as some of the other recent movement in the stock. So again, thanks for joining us. By the way, Dennis Story, longtime CFO, is here with us in the room as well. So with that, hey, Terry, since you ensure acting as at least the initial moderator and interviewer, why don't we get started with a few questions.

That's great. Thanks, Eddie. And also Eric, Dennis and Mike for taking the time to chat with us and investors today. So I'm going to get right into it. So maybe we can start with the CEO transition itself, Eddie, why now? And can you explain the transition process itself?

Yes, sure thing. Well, I won't go too far back in time, but I'll take you back 8 or 10 years or something when the Board was asking me and we were talking about succession planning, a decade ago. I have probably not been in the seat that long. And as we had that conversation, one of the things that I always said to the Board, back then 8, 10, 12 years ago was that under any circumstances, when it started getting to the point where I felt like there was going to be time for me to be moving into a different role, I would give the Board at least a 1-year notice period. And I sort of made it clear, frankly, even then 1 year, but there will be no cliff at the end of that or anything like that. And about, probably 2.5 years ago, frankly. I said to the Board, you know what, I think it's starting to be time for us to think about bringing in a new CEO. And they said, okay, fine. So we secured an executive search firm and started a process. And to be perfectly candid with you, for the first year, we really didn't have much activity. I'm not sure that we lent into it that hard either. We were having success obviously with the company, we want to keep that momentum going. So at the end of that year, the Board said, "Well, how about another year"? And I said, "sure, why not"? I told you there wouldn't be a clip on the end of this anyway. So let's keep -- we'll keep going, and I'll be happy to do happy to do another year. Well, that turned into a little bit more time again. But then fast forward to here we are, so about 2.5 years after the initial conversation, we after a very, very extensive search process across all countries around the world, industries lots and lots and lots of potential candidates that we talked to, we were able to find a wonderful succession candidate in Eric Clark. Now I will just say just because there has been a question or 2 about it. To the best of my knowledge, I have zero health issues. So this is not any kind of forced situation. Again, it goes back at least 2.5 years that this conversation has been going on. The process has been happening and so forth. Obviously, I've been here at the company for 25 years, CEO for whatever that's been 13 years or so now, and I expect to continue on serving the company. As the title implies, I will be -- or have -- excuse me, as of today, taken the role of Executive Vice Chairman and the plan, given that our annual shareholder meeting comes up in mid-May. And our current Chairman, John Hunt, who has been serving on the Board for 26 years plus is finally rolling off. Frankly, our bylaws insist that anybody that will be 75 within their next term has to roll off the board. So John will be rolling off and assuming all things continue to go to plan come mid-May, I will drop the vice part and the Executive Chairman. And of course, I'm going to be working with Eric on a completely seamless transition here, making sure we go through weekly cycles, monthly cycles, quarterly cycles and frankly, even annual cycles, making sure that again, that I provide all of the support that Eric needs through an extended transition period as long as he needs. To be clear, though, whilst I will certainly be available to Eric, any time, any place, anywhere. Eric is, as of today, our CEO. He has full responsibility and full authority for company operations. Over the longer-term, the thinking here is that I will continue to remain engaged and again, help in any way I possibly can, but principally focused on executive level sales engagements and so forth. I'll -- as required, so to frankly keep a watchful eye on our product strategy and make sure we continue on with all the great work that we've been doing for the last 15, 20 years, and, of course, acting as just a general ambassador of the company out in the marketplace. So that's really had the process from a timing perspective unfolded and sort of the thinking that we went through as we put this process together, Terry.

It's a helpful background. I guess I'm going to ask a few more questions on transition, and then we could maybe get into a discussion on recent results and then the subsequent volatility in the stock. The one thing I wanted to talk about here is with Eric starting 2 days after the announcement, it does seem abrupt. Why not potentially announce this on the fourth quarter a few weeks ago in terms of this transition?

Yes. Yes. I mean that's a good question. Or you could -- I guess you could argue why not talk -- if the process has been going on for a couple of 2.5 years, why don't announce it a year ago or 2 years ago or 2.5 years ago that, that was the -- that was the plan. Well, the thinking was this. I mean, it comes down to the fact that the thinking and the philosophy was that we wanted to have a candidate in place before we made an announcement. And again, sort of the rationale around that, I mean it sort of reminds me a little bit of some of the things that one always has to manage and, frankly, things that I've managed during my 13 years as a CEO. Frankly, when I took over, I think, if I remember correctly, our market cap was a little less than $1 billion when I took over 13 years ago. And every day, every week and every month, of course, I've had to manage through certain circumstances. But I mean if I think about 2 or 3 of the bigger changes that I've managed through here over the last 13 years. One would be the so-called retail apocalypse of 2016. And a, we got through that; and b, it spurred us into, frankly, developing our products so we could create more vertical diversification. Look, starting in 2017, 2018, maybe the biggest thing that we had to manage through is the transition from an on-premise software company to a Software-as-a-Service company. Everything from rebuilding our products from the grand floor up, a massive technology transformation, product capability transformation and of course, the economic and business model transformation are going to Software-as-a-Service. And then the third thing during my 13-year tenure is, of course, COVID having to manage through all the uncertainty of the COVID period. The reason I bring this up is that through each of those changes and transitions, I was always focused on the 3 constituents that I have to -- I believe, always think about it. And those constituents are our shareholders, our employees and our customers and making sure that we provide a seamless transition during those transitions. And making sure that we don't have distractions that we're efficient in the process, and it's completely seamless. And that same thinking went into this transaction process. Frankly, early announcement. The thinking was, my thinking was an early announcement would have created a distraction for our employees, okay? When is this person going to step down, who's going to replace, et cetera, I thought it would be a distraction for our employees, particularly since I and the Board hadn't put a hard timeline on this, right? I haven't put a hard timeline on this because if we'd have announced it and said, well, this is still an ongoing process, an ongoing process, an ongoing process. We felt like that, that would create a distraction. We also wanted to make sure that we kept the utmost confidence in the customer base as I was engaged in sales cycles and so forth. So it was important that we kept that confidence there. Obviously, very mindful of shareholders as well. Specific to your question around why not Q4 and so forth, Eric, of course, was still very gainfully employed and had his exit transition process that had to happen as well. And all those things were still being finalized. And there's no question. Over the years, years and years and years, transparency has always been very important to us. That's why we give very detailed guidance. Look, I'll be the first to admit, right. Maybe we missed the mark on this transition. I've explained what the process was. I've explained, I hope here giving you some color into why we manage the transition to minimize distractions, make sure confidence was there and so on and so forth. Maybe we missed the mark on this one, but at least that was our thinking. That was our thinking. We had no hard timeline for recruiting a successor and creating a transition. So we thought it would be more distracting than not to make some kind of early announcement.

Okay. All right. I guess -- so the process itself that like you had said a few minutes ago, took to find a new CEO in the successor take 24 months or so. But can you speak to the concern this announcement potentially just adds risk to the story of the business?

Yes, yes, sure. Look, I certainly understand any change adds a little bit of risk. Certainly, bringing a new CEO into any business as risk, certainly understand that. I would say that first of all, we have selected, and we'll talk more about this in a little bit, probably, we have selected an excellent executive leader here in Eric Clark. So frankly, whilst one always have to consider risk, I don't believe there's any risk at all here. But if one wanted a risk mitigation strategy, I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm not going anywhere at all. I've said this tiny bit tongue and cheek, but I mean it sincerely. My goal here is to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Hunt. And age off of this Board and be around for as long as I possibly can because my enthusiasm and optimism and passion for this company is no lesser today than it was 1 month ago, 1 year ago or 10 years ago. We're in a terrific spot, and I'm enthused as we can be. So yes, it's a good question. What about risk Frankly, I don't see any risk in this transaction because we've got a fabulous leader, and I'll be here to support him in every possible way.

Okay. Yes. So I'm going to move on now in terms of -- I got a lot of feedback from folks on this topic. And so just kind of longer-term thinking here. Why is Eric the right person for this job? Because one of the things that I picked up from folks is they'll go to LinkedIn, they'll look at somebody's pedigree. And it doesn't look like Eric -- and not to put Eric on the spot here, but the apparent lack of supply chain or commerce software experience. So maybe you could address that?

Yes. Yes, sure. I mean look, that's a fair question, too. Look, at a high level, the criteria for us, high intellect -- have to have a high intellect individual in this role. They have to have worked for Tier 1 companies who, in turn, have Tier 1 customers because we're a Tier 1 company, and we have Tier 1 customers, and that experience is very important. And frankly, as the expression goes, we wanted and insisted on a great athlete. And I think if you look at Eric's career progression, it's been nothing but phenomenal finishing up in his last role at NTT with responsible for a 50,000 person global organization. His pedigree and track record is just fantastic. Maybe even more -- I don't know even more, but as important as all of those attributes, something that's very, very important to us is chemistry. And we went through a very extensive process here, and we are convinced that Eric will fit into this organization like a glove and really be able to gel with customers, shareholders and our employees. And again, that chemistry factor is really, really important to us. Now -- so from a pedigree perspective and a trade perspective, those are the things that were -- that drew us to Eric. Now to your point, Eric certainly has some experience in supply chain and in software development, maybe not his DNA. But guess what? That's why I'm still here, okay? I have a lot of experience in those areas, and I'm not going anywhere. So I think the combination here is very powerful. Let me be clear though, this is not a co-CEO situation. I'll reiterate. Eric is the CEO of Manhattan Associates, has full authority and full responsibility for day-to-day operations. I do not anymore. But I will provide them with my fullest support in any possible way that I can. The final thing I'll say about this is one of the things, of course, we are very proud of is our market-leading products and our market-leading technology. And I think that -- and the focus we put on research and development, quality products and innovation is to some extent influenced by having an engineer in the corner office, okay? It's really been a focus of mine, and I think it's served us very, very well. I really feel like it is time. Even though we're pretty well known out there, my opinion is we still have underappreciated assets, underappreciated assets. And I am not expert in any shape or form in kind of go-to-market in elevating our presence in the market and that is something that Eric brings to the table, right? He's a fabulous executive leader, but his sort of bent as it were, is toward those go-to-market activities. So I think this combination of me providing Eric, all of the support he might need on the supply chain domain side, on the technology side, on the product development side and so forth, combined with his overall leadership and expertise to go-to-market is, frankly, a pretty powerful combination. And as I mentioned, when I started here -- or excuse me, when I took over as CEO, the market cap was $1 billion. We've made some pretty good progress from there. And I have no doubt under Eric's leadership. We're going to make Manhattan an even more important mission-critical company.

That's interesting on the go-to-market side there, Eddie, but maybe I can if Eric is there, maybe I could ask Eric, a few questions here. And really, the first one is, like, why did you decide to become Manhattan CEO? And then I had a follow-up for you, Eric.

Sure. Thank you, Terry, and thanks, Eddie, for the introduction. I'm honored to be here in this role and quite frankly, I couldn't be more excited about the opportunity. Manhattan is well known and respected in the market. And I think that's really due to the market-leading products, the best-in-class functionality and the people. Strong win rates. And I think all of that reflects the quality of the people and the products that we have here at Manhattan. Also, when you think about the opportunity to join here, the markets that we serve are healthy and growing. So our total addressable market continues to grow. And the culture is something that's been talked about throughout my entire recruitment process. And I think in every conversation that I had with Eddie and the Board. It's very clear that this team really wants to protect the culture here. It's a culture that has worked very well, and it's a culture that we want to continue. So when I think about some of the key things that Eddie and I have really aligned on over the past several months, it's about culture. It's about continuing to innovate in the market and it's about growth. And I think there's no better time to be a part of Manhattan, and I'm excited to be here.

And this is kind of a logistics question, but this is a change for you. I think you're based in Texas. So are you going to be commuting to Atlanta?

Well, I have been based in Texas for the past 9 years, but I've lived all over. I've relocated the family to Singapore. We lived there for 4 years, while I was running Asia Pacific and Japan region for a couple of different companies and then move back to the U.S. and relocated the family to London while I was running Europe, Middle East and Africa for a different technology company. So I'm no stranger to relocation and moving to Atlanta is much easier than those others. So yes, definitely. Atlanta is the headquarters and will continue to be, and I look forward to being here.

Okay, Eric. And maybe what I'm going to do now, if everybody is okay with this. So I want to move away from kind of the transition, and I want to transition to the recent results. So maybe, Eddie, back to you, if that's okay. So like in 4Q, it was notable in terms of the record cloud bookings or the change in RPO. I think it was $127 million plus with adjusting for currency. But putting services weakness aside for a minute, I definitely think folks want to learn more about what you all see directionally that points to resilient drivers for ongoing kind of strength in cloud RPO? And just generally, kind of related to that, what's your confidence level on this new business strength being maintained?

Yes. Yes. Obviously, that's a very, very important question to your point. In terms of momentum, Q4 was a record software selling quarter for us, record in the history of Manhattan. So we're very, very excited about that. We're not quite halfway through the quarter, but we're off to a very good start in Q1 as well. So these are all great indicators. Strategically, though, we have market-leading products right, unmatched levels of R&D investment in our industry. And the market needs innovation right? The market -- the supply chain market needs the type of innovation that we're delivering. The need for unification of the supply chain is there, the continued growth of direct-to-consumer, the dislocation and transformation of store systems is really starting to take off. So we feel very good about our market-leading position. Eric mentioned the win rates that we managed to maintain, demonstrating the strength of our product portfolio and so forth. And our opportunity is large, right? It's a large total addressable market that we have, especially when you look at new products that we continue to release quarter-over-quarter, supply chain planning in October opens up another large total addressable market for us. And we expect -- this will bounce around a little bit quarter by quarter, but about 1/3 of our bookings generally come from net new customers that have never done business with Manhattan Associates before. About 1/3 comes from cross-sell and upsell to existing customers. Most customers only have 1 or 2 products from us. And then 1/3 from our conversions, our on-premise customers who will be over time, converting to the cloud. So a huge market opportunity out there for us and great win rates and great market-leading products.

Yes. I guess that since I got you here right now. Maybe any comments on the recent guidance you all did provide and/or any thoughts or changes to that guidance.

Well, look, I guess given the change, I'm not definitely not the right person to talk about guidance. But we've got a 20-year veteran CFO here in the room, Dennis, maybe that would be the right question for Dennis because he gives you the guidance anyway.

Terry, no change to our 2025 guidance. We want to continue to under promise and over deliver. That's our mantra.

Okay. That's simple enough. I guess maybe, Eddie, I want to come back to services dynamic. This is a question I definitely been getting over the last couple of weeks. But just some wonder about the services dynamic potentially being a leading indicator or potential softness or volatility and future sub-revenue, so what would you say to that? And then I had kind of a second part of this question.

Yes. So the quick answer to that would be it's the other way around. It's the other way around. The leading indicator of our business is software sales and therefore, RPO, right? Services -- the services business that we do lags the software sales. We're not going to get any services business whatsoever without software sales. So it is the other way -- it's definitely the other way around. RPO Is definitely the leading indicator. It's the forward indicator of the health of the business. What I might do here is just take a minute to say it's the sort of the way to think about this and why are we so confident? Why is it so important? You can almost think about Manhattan Associates being a holding company for 2 other individual businesses that are very different from one another. One is the software business and one is the services business. Because our services business is a time and materials services business, and we bill our customers every 2 weeks for the work that we've done. And they can stop that work at any moment. It can go to 0 at any moment. We charge by the hour, we bill every 2 weeks. That's the way that works. On the software side of the house, though, our customers sign an irrevocable subscription, right? Average contract duration for us is about 5.5 years. They sign up for a total contract value, and that is irrevocable, irrevocable, right? So there are very 2 -- 2 very different businesses here. Now just as a reminder, we've said this before. But the way that the dynamics work here in Q4 of 2026, all the stars aligned, our software revenue will be greater than not services revenue. Software revenue will be greater than services revenue in Q4 of 2026, which, of course, then means in fiscal year '27, '28, '29 and '30, that gap only widens because our aspirations and expectations are that our software revenue will grow at around 20% per year. Our services revenue, albeit under a little pressure right now. But our services revenue and the best of times is high single-digit growth. So therefore, as the years go on, the gap between the ratio of software revenue to services revenue grows and grows and grows '27, '28, '29. So therefore, indicating and sort of reiterating why the software sales on RPO are so important to us. Number one, it's going to be the largest revenue producer in the company. And #2, it creates the attach rate of services going forward.

Yes. Yes. Just to be clear here, what you just said, though, is 4Q '26 is actually the inflection point of that crossover.

That's correct.

Got it. Yes. So this is another question, and it's kind of glass half empty and that's just human nature. But like you talked about 10 or so percent of your customers seeing some weakness in various things that were impacting services revenue in a big way. I mean, the common question is, well, it's the 10% of customers, but why couldn't this spread to other customers and other implementation?

Yes. Look, so we have advancers and decliners every day. right, every day and every week, we've got projects that accelerate. We've got projects that decelerate. We handle it all the time. So what has happened to us, though, as we went through the full budgeting process and so forth, some of our bigger customers that had expectations of large services spend in 2025 had a little bit of pullback. And we've -- obviously, we've talked about that. We had -- again, you can reflect back on 10 years ago, our services business was about $250 million a year. I might say that there were folks that weren't sure that services was the right thing for us. But anyway, regardless, here we are today with a $500 million services business that's going to grow a couple of 3%. So maybe arguably flattish year-over-year because of some of these large projects pulling back. I've reiterated this before, though. No project canceled or if any projects canceled or anything. It's just customers that maybe we were thinking and they were thinking we're going to spend $8 million or $9 million in services in 2025, maybe are only going to spend $5 million or $6 million with us. Still a substantial spend, just not quite at the levels that we expected.

Yes. Okay. And on the fourth quarter call, and you just talked about this a minute ago, but highlighting or emphasizing the 20% subscription or cloud growth for the next couple of years. I guess just double clicking on it, like what gives confidence in actually that with continuity on a year-over-year -- on a consistent basis?

Yes. Well, I mean, obviously, we've got fabulous visibility, right? RPO creates great revenue -- forward revenue visibility. And our pipeline is strong, right? Pipeline is at record levels, has to be granted, but it is at record levels. We're a market leader. We're a market leader. We continue to invest at record levels in research and development and our TAM is growing because of the investments that we're making in research and development, point-of-sale big market, supply chain planning a big market. So we're continuing to increase the TAM at the same time. So that is what gives us confidence in the software growth number that we put out there.

Okay. Fair enough on that. I guess on services. I mean, this is definitely a big picture question, and we've kind of talked about the weaknesses that unfolded here in services. But again, big picture here. Why are services important or strategically important for you all to keep on your book, so to speak? And why will it remain important to Manhattan going forward? That would be helpful. And then I have one last.

Yes. No, that's a great question, Eric, because obviously, part of my previous answer was software is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And proportionately, services is going to get smaller. So great question. Why is services still important? And so yes, absolutely. Services is very, very important to us. Of course, it's still top line revenue for us and so on, but it's strategically important, right? Because it's -- we feel like it's very, very important that we'll be involved in the final part of the software implementation to ensure our customers get full value from our software products, #1. And then sort of somewhat selfishly for us, it means that we're shoulder to shoulder with our customers each and every day. So as we think about our next innovation cycles, we are connected as a hip with our customers. We know exactly what to build. We know where the market is going. So services continues to be strategically important to us. Even though in the out years, it would become proportionately a little smaller to top line revenue.

Okay. Well, so we've had a bunch of questions here talking about the transition. I appreciate the perspective on that. I've been talking about some of the recent results dynamic. This is kind of open ended it's my last question before I hand it back over to Mike. But for you, Eddie or Eric, just any final thoughts here for investors before I'm done with my Q&A part here. Just anything that you think still is worth sharing.

Well, I suppose I would try to give -- make a -- have a shot sort of summarizing all the things that you and I and Eric and Dennis have talked about over the last -- whatever that's been 30, 40 minutes. Look, we're having to see a CEO transition here. Eric is an exceptional hire. An exceptionally talented executive that's coming on board here, #1 one. Number two, I'm not going anywhere. So the fact that we can partner up here and bring the best of all of our worlds together for the benefit of Manhattan shareholders, Manhattan customers and Manhattan employees, I think, makes it a very exciting time. And Eric gave the reason why he's joining Manhattan at this particular time and that's sort of a reiteration of that. On top of that, market-leading products, right, best-in-class functionality, deep wide competitive moat going to be hard for any of our competitors to even come close to catching Manhattan Associates. Our win rates remain very strong, which reflects the quality of our products and our people. And the company's end markets are very healthy and growing, right? If you look across the market forecast for growth, they're in the middle teens, 14% to 17% growth dependent upon which of our products you're talking about. And then finally, we have the best people -- the best people. So you put all those things together, yes, we've seen obviously some downward pressure here. Yes, we've seen a little bit of pullback on some of our services business for 2025. But the fundamentals are solid, and we're very excited about the future.

Eddie, thanks for the time and Eric, thanks for the time as well. So I've taken a lot of time here. But I appreciate you all sharing the perspective. And I'm going to turn it back over to Mike now. Mike, I'm going to hand it off to you now. Thank you.

Christine, can you open it up for additional questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James.

Eddie, Eric, thanks for doing this. I appreciate the time and sorry about the background as I'm in an airport. But Eddie, maybe starting with you, I wanted to understand, as you step into this new role, where are you going to be spending a little bit more time? And Eric, I know you're just kind of stepping into this role, but Eddie had kind of mentioned maybe some go-to-market improvements. Any color on maybe where you think you could focus to really drive some improvements there for Manhattan?

Well, I'll go first, Brian. Obviously, in the sort of near to medium term, I'm going to be helping Eric with sort of day-to-day transition. So that's where we spend a lot of my time. But over the longer -- over the longer-term on executive sales campaigns helping -- obviously, I've got a lot of -- lot of experience and so forth in the industry and with Manhattan Associates and our products and so forth. So helping with executive selling campaigns. I will spend some time with our -- with Eric's permission. And of course, we spend a lot of time talking about this, making sure that I'm canceled and can be canceled to our product strategy folks, making sure all that kind of stays on track. And then thirdly, being an advocate, being an ambassador for our company out there and continue to stay in touch with our customers, of course, those of which that I've worked with for 25 years or so and certainly won't be leaving those behind. Eric, maybe from your window?

Yes. Thanks, Eddie. So I think, first of all, clearly, Manhattan has great customer relationships, but also specifically, Eddie has great customer relationships. So I'm very fortunate he's able to continue those relationships and help continue to drive and build and grow in those areas. But as I come in, and Eddie mentioned this a bit earlier, maybe a little bit different lens and a little bit different focus on go-to-market and sales. And I think this team clearly has done a really good job of growing the software, growing the footprint, expanding the capabilities through R&D. But I think I can come in with a little bit different point of view and a little bit different experiences to really talk about how we continue to maximize and take advantage of all of the market opportunities around the globe.

Great. And I appreciate all the color. And maybe just a follow-up. I know you guys mentioned some of the challenges with certain customers in services. Any perspective on what end markets those would be Eddie as you've seen kind of some of these cycles that you mentioned in prior remarks, this is truly timing, when would we expect these customers to maybe restart with some of those implementations? And that's all for me.

Yes, good. Yes. Thanks, Brian. Well, look, just to be clear, there's no stop. So there's no restart, right? It's just a question of things sort of slowing down, being tamped down just a little bit. Customers that may be -- customers that maybe were planning to roll out 10 distribution centers in 2025 or maybe going to be 7. Companies that are going to maybe roll out OMS to 10 brands are only going to roll out to 7 brands and those kinds of things. And it will be -- so that business that is being deferred will be slowly drip fed back into the business. So there's not something where we're going to see things immediately take back off because it's kind of sort of a slow decline. So it will be a slow return to bringing that business back into the firm.

Our next question comes from the line of Dylan Becker with William Blair.

Maybe, Eddie, just sticking with that last point, can you help us reconcile kind of the RPO strength, right? Because clearly, customers and the product is resonating in market with some of that kind of incremental caution on deployments, kind of the dynamics between the 2, if that makes sense.

Yes. I mean, look, I don't know that I have a single answer to that. We know that we have market-leading products. We know we have great win rates. We know there's great need in the market for our solutions. I don't -- it's a bit crystal bullish to give you a full answer to that because the reasons are spread across the board. And again, nobody's stalling projects or canceling projects -- canceling projects at all, but there's a lot going on around the world isn't there. Sometimes we've had the question about, hey, of potential tariffs coming up in conversations and the reasons that people are tapping brakes. I have not heard of one of our customers specifically mentioning tariffs as the reason for tapping the brakes just a little bit. But tariffs, obviously, interest rates, geopolitical situations around the world. There's just a little bit of uncertainty, I feel. And that's how the tone comes across from our customers.

Okay. That's probably fair. Maybe one other one, too, because you mentioned if we step aside from kind of the conversion opportunity as well, too, you did call out the active planning customer last quarter, and it sounds like that was maybe almost a full suite implementation, right, adopting multiple products versus the average customer having 1 or 2 today. How that kind of helps validate, to your point, kind of the growing market, the growing platform, the ability to continue to cross-sell and that unified commerce approach really starting to resonate towards that subscription durability.

Yes. Yes. No. I mean we're excited as we can be about that. We talked about the supply chain planning win in Q4. That particular customer already runs warehouse management, transportation management and order management for us. So they certainly have seen and bought into the vision of full unification across the product suite. And we expect that about 1/3 of our new software sales every quarter will come from cross-sell, upsell into our customer base and just a validation of that and couldn't be more excited to get that supply chain planning application up and running. We're going to move quickly. We -- it's a midyear type go-live situation. We would love, frankly, to have them live by our customer conference in May. I'm not sure if we can quite get that done. But by golly, we're going to give the old college try.

Sounds great. Congrats again, Eddie and looking forward to working with Eric.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Schappel with Loop Capital.

Eddie, congratulations on your retirement. It's been a good ride.

Well, okay, I'm not exactly going anywhere, Mark, but thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. We've known each other for a long time. So certainly appreciate those comments.

Yes. I appreciate your passion for the company. He'll be missed. Anyways, regarding the CEO transition, did the Board consider bringing a Chief Operating Officer on board, maybe like a year or so before your retirement that's a common practice or a practice that many software companies adopt. Just like to get your thoughts on that.

Yes, we did. I tried to convince Eric to come on as President and COO, and he said with the greatest dignity, no thank you. He was already the CEO of a company with 50,000 employees and he said, I'm -- he didn't say this. These are my words. I'm Tom Brady moving from the Patriots to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I don't need to sit on the bench. And the fact of the matter is, if you want the best talent, you have to give them the CEO role. Could we have found somebody that was willing to come in and play that role, we probably could. But what we wanted was the best talent, and that's what we got. But the beauty of this situation, whilst obviously, everybody understands the way that you can transition President, COO into the CEO seat. Frankly, my predecessor did that was in the role for 2 quarters and then assume the CEO role. But the way we're handling this is sort of the same. Now it is a little different. I grant you, Eric's coming in directly as CEO. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to make sure that this is a completely seamless and flawless transition and I've committed to providing Eric with every single bit of support that he might possibly need. And I think Eric would probably say that was an important part of the decision-making process for him, frankly.

Yes, absolutely. The alignment, the mentorship and the guidance is very clear, and I think that makes it a very easy transition for both Eddie and myself.

Yes. No.

Great. I appreciate that. And then as a follow-up, Switching gears a little bit here. Any thoughts on taking advantage of the share price decline and maybe getting a little bit more aggressive with the buyback here?

Yes. Well, Dennis should probably answer this, but since it's a simple answer, I'll answer it for you. So for the longest time, our buyback authority was -- by the Board was $75 million in the quarter. In the last Board meeting, the Board raised what is now Dennis and Eric's buyback authority to $100 million a quarter. And I assume they can answer this momentarily, but I assume they will use that to the fullest advantage.

Mark, yes, sure. We definitely like the price on the stock. We don't really disclose when we're in the market, but we certainly like the price on the stock right now. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Quinton Gabrielli with Piper Sandler.

I'll echo my congrats. Eddie, maybe the first one for you. The Street was surprised with this announcement, and I'd assume some of your larger partners and customers were kind of taken by surprise as well. Have you been able to get on the phone with some of these largest stakeholders and talk through the changes, maybe give them a little bit more clarity on where you're sitting in this role? Or are those conversations coming in the coming weeks. And what gives you confidence that this doesn't maybe stall some of those projects that are in that record pipeline we're talking about?

Yes. That's a great question, Quinn. So look, I talked about the sort of the 3 constituents frankly, that I always think about as we go through any type of transition, shareholders, customers and employees. And I would tell you that from an employee perspective, from a customer perspective, this has been very well received. When I talk to the employees, which I do all the time I'm here, and our customers are making it clear to them, I use the expression. I am not right enough into the sunset here. okay? I'm not right off in the sunset. I have reached out to many, many, many of our largest and most strategic customers, those of which I've known for years and years and sometimes decades and decades. And they, like many have offered their congratulations at my sort of pseudo retirement here, but also pleased that I'll still be available to them and to Eric and so forth to make sure that we're meeting, frankly, all of our commitments to success to them and so forth. We have also talked to a number of our great supporters and significant shareholders. I will tell you this is where I feel like we've maybe missed the mark just a little bit. Again, I've explained the process why we did what we did and so on and so forth. They have voiced some of their a little bit of frustration about the timing and so forth. Again, I walked them through the process, the rationale and so forth. I've also reiterated to everybody concerned. Our focus right now is delivering on a really solid Q1 and on into the future.

Got it. That's helpful. And then actually maybe 1 for Eric, if I could. Eric, you bring a combination of partner background in your most recent role and then you've also kind of run internal services team. So you've kind of balanced this before in the past. I know it's still early, but you're kind of as acting CEO now, help us understand your priorities for the services side, are there opportunities you talk about go-to-market to accelerate maybe more of a partner go-to-market motion, utilizing more of that on services? Or is your goal here leveraging partners or go-to-market changes separately from the kind of core services strategy Manhattan has?

Yes. It's a really good question. And I think clearly, coming in, no change to the strategy. As Eddie mentioned earlier, the importance of our services team and making sure that our customers are getting what they expect and having successful deployments remains a top, top priority. But in my experience in the past at other places, as we grow, making sure that we leverage partners in the right places, whether they're technology partners or services partners will continue to be important as well.

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink with Baird.

Great. Eddie, Eric, congrats to you both. I wanted to ask about this 10% of customers. We've been discussing simply our bigger customers, is there any history to say that these types of decisions to moderate spending end up being a good indication of the thinking and health of customers in the same industry as these customers. So if you support a big cosmetics company and they're telling you they want to reduce their spend. Does that end up meaning something more broadly? And I guess the reason that question is important. Eddie, you did a good job in just explaining from a practical sense why services will lag a software booking. I guess the question is whether spending scrutiny and services that ultimately is just scrutiny any way you look at it, and that could impact cloud bookings later on.

Yes. I mean, I suppose it could, but it does -- it certainly doesn't seem like it, right? When we look at pipeline, when we look at win rates, when we look at market momentum in Q4 and the start of Q1 and so forth, that has not been the indicators and the markers that we've seen for sure. Again, back to we're market-leading. Our win rates are great. Obviously, we've got to continue to keep innovating to match the market needs. But -- so it does not seem like that at all. In terms of -- is there any sort of concentration maybe sort of trickle-down effect a cosmetics manufacturer implement impacting a cosmetics retailer maybe or something like that doesn't seem to be. It doesn't seem to be -- there is -- the only sort of concentration, if you want to call it, that we have on these services projects is all U.S. -- all U.S. We've got the EMEA business and the APAC business doesn't seem to be impacted. And the reasons again, are across the board and across verticals.

Our next question comes from the line of Lachlan Brown with Redburn Atlantic.

The first question is for Eric. You've come in under tough circumstances where the stock has sold off about 40% over the last couple of weeks. What are going to be the first priorities over the next few months?

Yes, I think the first priority for me is to spend some time with our team and with our customers and listen and learn. And I think we've got a great culture. I think we've got a great strategy, and we're going to stick to that and get things from a market perspective back where we expect them to be.

That's very clear. And I just wanted to ask, given the external appointment of Eric, did the Board also open up the process internally, given there was a lot of long tenures from the executive team? .

Absolutely. Of course, we did. Of course we did. No stone unturned from an evaluation process, internal, international, domestic, up and comers, sitting CEOs, a 2.5-year evaluation process certainly meant that it was very, very exhaustive.

We have no further questions at this time. Eddie, I would like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Well, I'll tell you, it seems like we engineered this call couldn't have nailed it better, right, wrapping up with about a minute to go. But really appreciate everybody's time. Thank you. I hope that we've been able to shed a little bit of light and additional transparency on the succession that we're going through here. We're thrilled to have Eric, on board. Obviously, he'll be talking with many of you in the coming days -- coming days and coming weeks and catching up, you'll get to know him a lot better, but we're very excited about having Eric, on board, we couldn't be more excited about the opportunity that's ahead of us. And whilst there is a as the expression goes a little bit of chop in the water, the fundamentals of Manhattan Associates couldn't be stronger. So thanks again for your time, and we look forward to talking to you all, if not before, on our Q1 earnings call. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's webcast. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.