nCino, Inc. (NCNO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay everybody. Thanks for joining us for the afternoon session of the Morgan Stanley Fintech Conference. Really excited to have nCino here and representing them, Greg Orenstein, CFO of the company. Before I get started with Greg, I have some important disclosures to read. Please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales rep. So Greg, thanks a lot for being here. I appreciate you taking the time and filling us in on everything that's happening at nCino. It seems like there's always a lot happening around the company. So it's exciting.

But maybe for those of us that are -- or those other investors that may be joining us that are newer to the nCino story, can you give us a high-level overview of the business, perhaps with a focus on the 2 factors that you think are particularly differentiated, for instance the breadth of financial institutions that you serve and really the focus on what you plan to do and have done internationally.

Sure. Sure. Well, it's great to be here, and thanks, everyone, for your time. At nCino, we provide software to help financial institutions make loans, open accounts and onboard customers. We do that. And I think what's unique getting to your question is ultimately on a single platform, true multi-tenant SaaS. We span with 1 code base to the smallest community banks in the United States up to the Bank of America, Wells Fargos as well as internationally. We've got deployments in 16 different countries. And so we can address any size of financial institution. And then again, from an international standpoint, same product. We originally planned our first flag outside of the United States in the summer of 2017 in the U.K. We since expanded into Canada, into Japan, into Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, South Africa to the point where last quarter, 17% of our revenues were outside of the United States.

Got it. Got it. So I want to talk about -- and this is a common line of questioning we've had really for everybody today is that of sales cycles and kind of using that as a leading indicator for how your customers feel about their positions in the world generally. And I want to -- we'll come to RPOs and bookings growth later. But in the last few months, at least some of the events have raised questions of at least some customers, do they have liquidity concerns and we've heard tales or comments around sales cycle elongation, including for nCino. Pierre, the CEO, suggest that he expects this to be a short-term phenomenon that last maybe 1 to 2 quarters. Can you help us deconstruct what gives you your confidence in a back half bookings ramp and as opposed to a more gradual recovery that some people may be aware or concern could occur.

Yes, sure. So ultimately, I mean, as we look at our pipelines, we have talked about some slowdown, additional scrutiny on deal cycles, which is, I think, fairly common these days and other folks are seeing, but ultimately, we have not seen deals leave the pipeline. So that's 1 thing. The second thing is we really saw the start last year in the second quarter in Europe. Macro issues, obviously, the war and concerns about energy. And so in Q2 and Q3 last year, we saw some slowdown in the sales cycles and pauses. Fast forward in Q4 in Europe, we had a strong Q4, and we had a very strong Q1. And so we think that that's kind of a good footprint, if you will, our baseline to extrapolate from as we think about what we see here in the U.S. We knew that Q1 was going to be slow. It's seasonally our slowest quarter anyway. And then a month into it, the SVB and Signature and ultimately, First Republic, situations took place. And so we really lost a good chunk of that quarter selling. But again, as we look at the activity since then and as we look at what's in the pipe, it gives us confidence. And then the final point is -- we were fortunate that just a couple of weeks ago in May, we had our annual user conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had over 1,700 people joined folks came in from 15 different countries.

And that was up pretty significantly last year, right?

It was. That's right. We moved from Raleigh, North Carolina to Charlotte to accommodate the demand. And so we were able to talk with hundreds of our customers in real time about what they were experiencing and what they were seeing and trying to kind of make sure we appreciated that versus what we were seeing on the news and on CNBC every day is certain bank -- stock tickers got put on the screen all the time.

Got it. Got it. So I guess then back -- so that is a good indicator. You indicated that we hadn't seen anything leave the pipeline. What do you think are the circumstances or the events that will then cause that engagement or re-inflect on from a bookings perspective.

Yes. Ultimately, I think it's just their ability to refocus, right? Again, we had several, say, just let us catch our breath. But we don't have folks coming to us and saying, "Hey, we don't want to modernize our tech stack, right?" We don't want better technology for our end users. And so again, we see the demand there. From a sales and marketing perspective, you would have seen quite a bit of improvement in our R&D line, our G&A line. But sales and marketing, you'll still see is in line with last year. And that's because of some investments we made in our marketing software infrastructure, but also just in sales. We have more bag-carrying sales folks out in the street today than we did this time last year and that is because of the demand that we see. So we've got to go execute. And we do need to get some of those deals over the finish line. But I think as we sit here today, we're confident that they're there to do that.

And maybe it's tied to the same driver of wanting to modernize. But historically, you'll have suggested you can still grow at a healthy clip in an environment with 0 loan growth on the part of your customers. So I want to ask about the lending standards, particularly given that we've seen some further tightening in May with pending annual capital stress test and tougher capital rules, the stage seems to be set for at least further tightening on loan growth. How impactful is this dynamic to the prospect of engagement and sales cycle duration, if at all?

Yes. Look, I think additional regulatory scrutiny, if you will, or additional regulation has actually been helpful from a sales standpoint because we help our banks comply with regulations. That's one thing. I think the second thing is as we're in this macro and net interest margins are being squeezed, right? We make banks more efficient, right? So whether it's a commercial loan, which we have statistic to say that will be -- you'll get cash funded 50% quicker on nCino or ultimately, the efficiency of your bank will be 6% lower, right, which is better using nCino versus a non-nCino bank, we really think it reinforces the value proposition of our single platform offering.

Got it. And so let's talk about looking forward to 2025. And I know it's a long ways out, but you guys have really long visibility and good runway on your revenue potential. And you disclosed that around 3% of your '23 revenue is tied to banks that are recently closed or being acquired. So not a big number, but still it's meaningful, Nevertheless, and we understand nCino was providing some compelling functionality to these banks, which -- and obviously, they are idiosyncratic in their nature. But just wondering how we should think about the potential impact on '25 revenue from these banks that are either closed or acquired. How long do you expect to continue to generate revenue from them versus when would you expect that to be shut down, et cetera.

Yes. So M&A and banking has been taking place for a couple of decades right, particularly here in the states. And so -- we've actually, I think as we look back over time, been a beneficiary of M&A. We've got great examples with BB&T and SunTrust coming together. We were at SunTrust, we ended up being able to expand. First Horizon and IBERIABANK, the same thing. And so when there's an M&A transaction and I appreciate it wasn't just a straight line to get to ...

Right. Yes. At least not as straight as everybody would have liked.

That's right. But ultimately, we have our playbook, and we go and execute that playbook. And I think we have confidence in the value that we bring, not only to the institutions that we were serving and some of the uniqueness of things that we did for them, but ultimately seeing an opportunity in the expanded -- combined financial institutions. And so as we look here today, we're going to execute on that playbook. We've not given any indication that we have an expectation of any impact to this year's revenue. We haven't talked beyond this year, but ultimately, those customers have multiyear contracts. And again, we see these things as opportunities. And we'll focus on executing successfully that playbook to expand.

So when you talk about like ultimately where these banks end up and there their acquirers, if you will. When do you have an opportunity to engage with them and see if that could be a new source of customer and revenue expansion for you? Like when would that start to take place? And what would -- like what does that sales cycle look like versus just like -- from beginning or from scratch type sales cycle?

Yes. So again, I think it would be an accelerated one. But again, there's a difference are you just maintaining what you've got right, as part of a new institution or is there an opportunity to expand. First and foremost, we want to take care of our customer particularly some have been through some challenges -- some challenging times over the last couple of months. So that's first and foremost. But I think from there, again, making sure everything is done in a regulatory compliant manner when you can speak, et cetera. We look for opportunities. You can also assume that the banks -- the acquiring banks, we've been in or been having discussions with or certainly making sure we're knocking on their door a sufficient number of times so that we understand what some of their pain points may be or some of the opportunities may be there. So we're able to bring that together with the acquisition, and again, look for opportunities to not only maintain but to expand.

Got it. Got it. So let's talk about ACV uplift. And historically, nIQ module adoption tends to result in about a 20% uplift to ACV if you're an existing commercial customer and at least that's what you've talked about. Given the potential for differences in seed count and pricing between commercial and retail, I'd be curious to hear you talk about if you've seen similar math on ACV uplift and if an existing commercial customer adopts retail. Just help us understand what that dynamic and interplay may look like?

Yes. So again, we started as a commercial lending company. I think some people still view us that way. We've actually evolved quite a bit from that with nIQ, which I'll circle back on to this question, which is now about 5% of our revenues. SimpleNexus, which is about 15% and then internationally which I mentioned was 17%. Again, there's a meaningful piece of that, that is not commercial. I'll point you to in Q1. We had a great property lending win with institution in the United Kingdom. And so as we think about the uplift from nIQ, we have currently 3 products: portfolio analytics, which has historically been focused on credit unions. That came from the visible equity acquisition. We did it in the summer of 2019. We've got auto spreading and we've got commercial pricing and profitability, which is a newer one. And that really is the 20% uplift that you were referencing. As we expand into retail, I think one of the things that we're really excited about is retail. It took us a little while to get to this excitement level, we've been excited, but ultimately from a product standpoint, we feel like the product is mature where again, we can land with commercial, we can land with a small business, we can land with retail. We actually are over 80 retail lending logos, which was a nice statistic that we were able to communicate. And while we've been doing that, we've been building out the infrastructure for our nIQ offering, which is our data analytics and AI. We started that about 4 years ago. And what you'll see really is a long answer to your question is in furtherance of the retail product, right, additional nIQ products coming out, whether it be early warning, whether the probability of default, probability of paying early that we think will help drive the retail side of things, and again, not only help accelerate sales there, but being a nice uplift on top of our normal seed pricing.

Can you talk a little bit about those incremental functionality and modules and like how important are they going to be to winning additional customers? What's the revenue uplift potential? And what are the key inputs into those modules that you have to build out, whether it be data or your own analytic capabilities, et cetera, and what that time frame looks like?

Yes. It's one of the things we're really excited about. I mean we have spent a lot of time kind of accumulating data. And so if you think about our customer base, we have over 1,000 credit unions and data from them. From a commercial lending perspective, I think everyone appreciates the book of business that we have with SimpleNexus now from a mortgage perspective, right? We're touching a meaningful number of loan originations in this company, in this country. We talk about having 5 of the top 7 banks in Canada, 3 of the top 5 in New Zealand, 5 of the top 9 in UKI, et cetera. And so we've been working on infrastructure to put all of that together so that it can be leveraged and harvested. And what I think is unique again about nCino is we have the single platform, right? And we've got the ability to offer lending and account opening and onboarding services across the financial institution, but -- so we really own the real estate, right? The bank's employees go in there and they open their nCino screen every day. With all of this data that we have and the ability to leverage it, we're then able to inject intelligence right, across the workflow when it's needed to help facilitate greater decision-making in real time. And I think that's really unique. And so again, over the coming quarters and certainly years, I think that's going to be an exciting part of the nCino story as that data gets utilized. And I think in today's environment, there's obviously a ton of hype around AI. I don't see financial institutions running out tomorrow and being leaders, right in AI, just as they're concerned about PII and confidential information. But what I think this AI hype top does it really reinforces the messaging that we've been giving around how data and AI and ML can be used to help banks become more efficient and make better decisions. So that's what we're really excited. We're working on.

Got it. Got it. It does sound exciting. So let's turn to the mortgage business and SimpleNexus. IMB churn came in slightly faster than we had anticipated. But it was still constructive to hear that SimpleNexus you feel like is on track to generate positive operating and free cash flow by the end of the fiscal year. Can you help us understand what -- how the competitive backdrop has evolved with SimpleNexus since you acquired the asset and are you taking share from competitors? Or is it hard to determine just because of the state of the mortgage market? Just kind of give us a state of the union for SimpleNexus right now?

Yes. We've been extremely pleased with SimpleNexus Obviously, a tumultuous year in the mortgage market as interest rates went up much faster than people thought and much quicker than people thought. But despite that, SimpleNexus continued to grow throughout last year and in Q1, we noted that it was in line with nCino's overall growth to north of 20%, notwithstanding the churn. The churn has really been focused around the IMB market, some IMBs just folding up shop or downsizing. The churn that we referenced on the call was churn we expected, it just happened a little bit sooner than we expected. And so I think the good news from that is that, ultimately, that gets behind us, we said by the end of the second quarter, we'll be kind of halfway through -- or more than halfway through the churn that we expect out of that. And we do see things settling down somewhat. And so from that perspective, again, I think that positions us very, very well. As it relates to the business and the competitive landscape, notwithstanding the mortgage turmoil and notwithstanding the fact that we were integrating that business last year, we were able to do 16 cross-sales into the nCino customer base, which was something we were really excited about when we did the deal and the 19 competitive takeaways. And to your point about the competition, one of the things that we thought really was unique about SimpleNexus was their business model, very much seed-based recurring revenue consistent with nCino's. We saw a lot of the competitors out there that had transaction-based business models. And when transaction volumes fell off a cliff, it really undermine the business model. And so I think, ultimately, SimpleNexus strategically is positioned -- as pleased as we were when we did the acquisition, is positioned strategically better today than even then, because I think they are viewed as the right choice, the best choice, the safest choice. And as we expand more aggressively into banks and credit unions, I think that's going to resonate. To that point, we've seen 35% year-over-year increase in average deal size for them. And I think that's in large part, taking them into the nCino customer base.

So can I ask you just on the churn and the segment of customers. You mentioned that, that came in slightly faster than you anticipated. But what are the things that you're looking at to determine what the overall net or total level of churn is likely to be before we see stabilization and then ultimately, hopefully, improvement in that market.

Yes. Well, fortunately, we have incredible visibility into the volumes and activity. And so that is a big driver in terms of what we see. And then we also spend a lot of time with our customers, right? And so we can see who's using what, but more importantly, talking to them, understanding what's going on. We really try to put our arms around them particularly some who really want to work through this and come out the other side. And so we want to be there to support them. I think when the dust -- or as the dust is settling, I think you end up with a smaller number of larger better capitalized IMBs. And I think that's a nice pace to kind of build back from -- on the IMB side of the business, while again in parallel, we're aggressively going after the bank and credit union market.

Got it. So -- and you alluded to it there is, can you speak to the impact of SimpleNexus, the integration and its integration on sales cycle in the retail lending space more generally. I'd love to hear how you can get leverage there. Because if we look at the structure of mortgage operations, they often roll up into the broader retail franchise. So just curious if that integration has created higher velocity of conversations around retail lending or what needs to happen for that to really be a point of leverage.

Yes, it absolutely has. And again, as we were thinking strategically, we kind of have viewed M&A as puzzle pieces in -- what piece of the puzzle were we missing, particularly as we saw an opportunity in retail. And as our own retail lending product matured. And so it has accelerated discussions. Again, I think being a trusted vendor for our financial institutions has elevated those discussions, frankly, quicker than we thought that they would. And again, I think the competitive landscape and some of the challenges there has helped. The other thing that we are doing with SimpleNexus, and this was part of the acquisition thesis is we're taking their mobile-first best-in-class technology, and we're actually bringing that across nCino's consumer lending touch points. So we think that will be helpful in terms of a further reason or accelerating the reason why you'd want to buy our retail lending solutions because we're going to have this front-end technology that we think is pretty unique. And then again, leveraging the nCino middle and back office expertise that we've been able to demonstrate over the years.

Got it. So let's talk about international. As we look across the history of financial software. Generally, providers typically haven't been successful internationally as penetrating different regions. A lot of times create significant complexity with local regulations and deployments. Can you help to deconstruct what the business is done at nCino to enable it to win internationally.

Yes. First off, I think just the value proposition we have, I think, travels. I think the need for financial institutions to modernize, particularly their back -- their middle and back office where they've not spent much money. A lot of money has been spent in payments, for example, but not that middle and back office. I think that story exists on a global basis. And so I think that's part of it. Secondly, I think we're fortunate that we've got a team that has had a lot of international experience and appreciates the fact that each country is different, right? And just because you may have a reference in France doesn't mean it's going to help you in Germany. There's different regulations in both countries. And I think that's part of it. I think the other thing is our relationship with Salesforce and the Salesforce platform that we picked to build on. Again, they've got a nice presence particularly in certain countries, Japan being a great example, where Salesforce has been very nicely adopted, and it makes sense for us to follow in, right, as an accelerator to what we're doing. And so I think it's solving a problem that needs to be solved. I think having success, particularly with large financial institutions here in the States helps. I think it also just you start and view each country uniquely. That first customer is always the hard one. Usually, it takes more time than you want to sign it. When you do sign it, usually the other competitors wait and see kind of are you going to be successful. Once they see you getting traction and see the impact -- the positive impact that you can have, then we see them follow suit. And we've been able to demonstrate that again in Canada and Japan, New Zealand, the UKI, et cetera. And so we feel like we've got this playbook and we just executed on a country-by-country basis.

Got it. Speaking of international and the potential for the classic and highly desirable land and expand, it seems like a large majority of your international wins are initially for 1 line of business. Aside from the net new and international opportunity, what about that expansion within existing customers. Can you -- like what is different about lending, spending, if anything, with international customers versus what you normally would see in the U.S?

Yes, I think it really is more around bank size. And so the larger bank you go to, they generally are a little -- are still more siloed with their different business lines. And so again, there are being a lot of larger financial institutions outside of the U.S. You see that land -- where you land in a particular business segment and then want to expand from there. As you go down a little bit down-market, I think you'll see folks who are willing to take everything. We announced in Q4 Johnson Financial, where they bought the entire platform. And we're seeing a little bit larger lands, particularly as our retail solutions matured for folks saying I'm all in. I'm all in upfront and making this commitment [indiscernible] in the platform. But a larger institution you go, you still deal with a little bit more of a siloed approach, which is fine. We'll start in 1 place. We'll demonstrate our success, Wells Fargo is a perfect example. We started with commercial and then quickly within a year, we expanded into small business.

Got it. Got it. I've been dominating the conversation. If anybody has any follow-up questions, please feel free, raise your hand. I've got one here, Michael.

Maybe just on SimpleNexus specifically, I think the growth at close to corporate average is obviously really impressive just given all the chaos that we've seen in the mortgage space, more specifically, I think, as you sort of see stabilization and normalization there, what's your sense just given the share gains that you guys presumably are capturing in this environment about how much that asset can actually inflect in a more normal mortgage market.

Yes. Thanks for the question. Again, we see again more opportunity today than we would have seen a year, 1.5 years ago, and we were so excited about that opportunity. We did the deal, but particularly in the bank and credit union market. Again, I think they've got great presence in the IMB space. Again, I'd like to think that's settling down. But ultimately, where we see a tremendous amount of opportunity is with banks and credit unions expanding our single platform story being part of it. And again, just with the activity that we see, the opportunities we see in the pipeline, I think that also comes back to some of the optimism that we have as we look into the back half of the year. Those discussions don't happen overnight. As we know, they are generally 6- to 12-plus month sales cycles. And so as you come up from a timing standpoint, you can see as we get into the back half of the year where some of that may -- that timing may be coming together. But that's something that I think we see a lot of opportunity with.

So I want to turn now to -- so we've gotten to talk a lot about sales and strategy and product all of which you have some connection to, but it's not your direct responsibility. So let's talk about financials and that kind of thing. Look, recent industry dynamics are creating some of the sales cycle challenges we talked about and you kind of address why you think those will start to improve later this year. But nevertheless, the magnitude of profitability expansion this year has been really robust with adjusted EBIT margins expanding from basically negative 0.5% -- or call it breakeven close to it to about 10.5% within a single fiscal year. All that being said, you continue to stress that ideologically, you remain more focused on driving growth and profitability or at least driving growth is more important. To the extent that revenue growth rebounds in '25 and '26, how should investors think about the impact on margin expansion? Like what is the balance that you're trying to pursue on growth versus margins? And what's the right framework we should be using?

Yes. We do view ourselves as a growth company and always want to err on the side of growth while being realistic about the market right? But ultimately, we kind of really are focusing ourselves on a Rule Of framework. And so we put a stake in the ground and said this year would be 30. What you should expect to see is next year, it'd be greater than that. And the year after greater, et cetera, as we track towards a Rule of 40 and beyond. But again, when in doubt, we'll layer on the side of growth because we do see a massive market opportunity, we do think it's still very, very early, and we think we're uniquely positioned to capitalize on it.

So when you -- when we're looking at that rule of 30 and eventually rule of 40 and kind of that focus on growth where are kind of the key decision points that you need to make in terms of like investing for that growth? Because you mentioned your sales force is expanding, the sales force expanding the breadth of products. Is it maybe even just as simple as continuing to add additional products and features via R&D? So like where are you looking to pull levers?

Yes. Look, I think we've got a great -- we've made a lot of investments from a global expansion perspective. So I think we feel good about the footprint we have. I think from a product standpoint, we've also made a lot of investment in our product portfolio. We've seen a lot of our products mature. Again, I think there's quite a bit of upside as we think about nIQ and think about leveraging data. And again, going back to our customers, which is one of our biggest assets is our customer base, going back to them with more and more product I think also remains an exciting opportunity. And so I think it really comes down to just continuing to execute. And there'll be choppy orders from time to time, you need to write them. But strategically, we are always challenging ourselves saying, should we be doing something different, right? And I think strategically, we feel very comfortable about where we are. We feel comfortable about the investments that we've made. I think one thing internationally that we're focusing on a little bit more as we've entered this year is outside of our geographic footprint, working with our system integrated partners like Accenture, PwC, Deloitte on going after targeted counts in countries we're not in, right? So a country like Thailand, which we don't have a physical presence in. There's small number of very large banks that spend money on technology, right? So making sure we go directly towards them, we think, is another avenue for growth. And so yes, I think it just comes down to execution.

On that international component, where is international from a profitability standpoint today? And where could it be relative to the domestic business? Is international have the potential to be better than domestic margins? Or what would ultimately determine the profitability of the international push.

Yes. And so I think, overall, just from a SAM standpoint, international is a bigger sand for us than domestic just for perspective. And as we talk about our pipeline right now, currently, it leans a little bit more towards international. So again, massive opportunity. From a margin standpoint, we do expect better margins. I think one of the things that has impacted margins is in the community banking space, we have the ability to resell Salesforce's CRM solution. And when we do, we pay them a bigger slice of the pie, which ends up being, I think, a win-win for both sides. But ultimately, particularly since we started there, right? As we've expanded internationally, we don't have that same ability to resell. So I think that improves margins as well as some of the nIQ stuff, which just really taken up well outside of the U.S. And so I think that margin profile looks good. I think if you talk about the overall maturity of it, we really have, I'll call it, more mature infrastructure in the U.K. and in Canada and in Australia. And then we have some start-ups, if we think about the continent, South Africa, which we've recently expanded into. And so that's kind of how we view it. And we'll monitor those startups and make sure we feel like the investments make sense. We're very selective about where we go and do it with a lot of thought before we go ahead and try to sign up a customer.

So last question here to wrap up is that as you break into profitability and continue to expand that and at the same time have -- revenue growth. The expectation clearly is that your cash flow generation will improve, et cetera. How should we think about allocation of capital? Where is the right places? Is it continuing to look for acquisitions, increased investment? Just like how are you thinking about that?

Yes. So for any kind of initiative, we'll always go through a build partner by area. And based on that, we'll decide what makes sense. SimpleNexus is a great example where we said we're not going to build it. It's going to take too long. We actually started those discussions in partnership discussions, and we ended up acquiring the company. And so we'll continue to go through that, particularly in a market like this, we do think there'll be opportunities to leverage the capital that we have. And we've been vocal about continuing to look for ways to accelerate our nIQ initiative and we'll see if there's opportunities there as well. But ultimately, very focused, again, build, partner, buy and that's really how we think about different initiatives as we address them.

Well, Greg, thank you very much. Appreciate you coming to visit with us, talk about nCino. Clearly, a lot of opportunity. And as we said, throughout the conversation, it's interesting to see a business like yours exploiting and taking advantage of international because that's really unique, at least in the financial software space. So I appreciate you being here.

Thanks for your time. We very much enjoyed it. Appreciate it.

Great. Appreciate it.