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

September 10, 2025

US Information Technology Software Company Conference Presentations 35 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#1

Great. Well, we can get started. Sorry, not to throw it right at you, but I saw the time to get going. My name is Adam Hotchkiss. I cover the emerging software space here at Goldman. Really excited to have Greg Orenstein, CFO of nCino, here with us today. Thanks so much for being here.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#2

It's a pleasure to be here.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#3

So you've been in nCino since 2015. You've seen the company through a lot of phases, a number of acquisitions, this newest AI wave that you've been making with banking adviser and other products. Maybe just talk a little bit about the history of the company and how we got to where we are today.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#4

You bet. Again, thanks for having us, and it's good to see everyone here today. nCino started back in late 2011, 2012. Actually, it was part of a bank based in Wilmington, North Carolina, where there was an opportunity to make the lending process more efficient. And ultimately, that software was spun out of the bank, and we took that really with the vision of building out a platform, a single or unique platform that goes across the bank to help banks become more efficient and frankly, to change the way that they were doing business and the way they've historically purchased software. And so over time, we've built out. And we really focus on doing 4 things since then. One is lending. The second one is account opening. Third one is onboarding customers and the fourth one is monitoring portfolios. And we do that across commercial part of the bank, small business, consumer, including mortgage, and we do that on a global basis. About 21% of our revenues, subscription revenues last quarter were outside of the United States. And we also do that with one product and one platform. And so the same platform that serves a community bank here in the States also serves Wells Fargo, Bank of America. We have 15 of the top 30 banks. And again, I think, ultimately, with -- under that, I should say, we have a lot of data, as you mentioned, AI, which obviously is top of mind for folks. I think we have a very unique data asset. And I think we are uniquely positioned to help our customers on that AI journey just as we help them on the journey to the cloud. When we started the company, they said that banks would never put their data in the cloud and here we are today.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#5

Yes. Maybe talk a little bit about -- if we go a little bit further back in time for those not as familiar, what was it about sort of back office within a bank or a credit union that wasn't working that you found the opportunity to go displace?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#6

Yes. We had seen a lot of money spent from financial services companies on payments, a lot of investment in payments and then a lot of investments on, we'll call it, digital banking now, I think Internet banking. But where we did not see there being innovation and investment was ultimately in the middle and back office of the financial institution. Kind of the bowels of the bank where, frankly, a lot of the work is done, right? And so we saw that as an opportunity to address and again, all around making the banks more efficient, right? We always said we don't want to automate your inefficiencies, but really go to the banks and help them rethink how they run their institutions. The cloud was a great catalyst for doing that, right, for thinking differently. And then again, I think AI at this inflection point with this technology is also another opportunity to help make our financial institutions more efficient, help them reduce their expenses, grow their top line, and that's what we do.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#7

Okay. Great. Maybe before we dig into the business, let's talk about the most recent quarter, beat and raise on revenue, raised the full year guide. You sort of gave tea leaves around bookings and you have the same ACV growth guidance for the year. I know there's a lot of complexity in that in the revenue versus the ACV in some of these metrics. So maybe distill that for people and give us the message that you were trying to give on the second quarter call.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#8

Yes. Proud of our second quarter results. And again, I congratulate and thank all of my colleagues and their hard work and efforts. But I think ultimately, the first half of the year, I talked about us on a net bookings basis, plus what we're seeing from a deal activity perspective in the pipeline, feeling confident in meeting or exceeding our ACV guide. It's been a difficult couple of years for us as we navigated interest rate environment, liquidity crisis. And as we sit here today, I think we emerged from that with a very broad, deep product portfolio. And I think our customers and prospects from a balance sheet perspective are in good financial shape. In the U.S., again, I think there's some optimism around deregulation. Certainly, when the new administration came in, that was a focal point. Obviously, a lot of discussion around tariffs. As that's kind of played out, I think back focusing on deregulation, we're seeing M&A in the market with banks, which for us historically has been a tailwind. It's been a good thing, primarily because we really are the platform, the only platform out there that's demonstrated an ability to scale up market. And so if you are a forward-thinking bank, if you're thinking about growing organically, but certainly, if you're thinking about growing from an M&A perspective, nCino is the platform to drive that growth and drive that integration and drive that consolidation. So that was it for the quarter. From an ACV perspective, we did give a new KPI this year, which is an annual ACV guide. And again, kind of highlighted our confidence in meeting or exceeding that. And that's what we're focused on doing. The deal activity also noted is better than I've seen in quite some time, certainly since I've been in this chair. And I'd say that on a global basis as well.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#9

Maybe talk a little bit about that deregulation point a little bit. How has that changed your conversations with financial institutions broadly? And how is that a tailwind for your business?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#10

It's a tailwind because, again, I think that they believe that over the next 3.5 years, right, there's going to be less red tape, whether that's freeing up of capital or ultimately just allowing them not to have to invest in certain things from a compliance perspective. So I think it allows them to lean in a little bit. I think it allows them to be a little bit more optimistic as they think about being strategic and not just operating very tactically, right? I think the last couple of years post liquidity crisis, concerns around the health of financial institutions making sure there wasn't systemic risk, right, post Silicon Valley Bank, very internally focused. And again, I think even if they had budgets to go execute on strategic initiatives, kind of the capacity and willingness to do it just weren't there. The farther we've gotten away from that, I think the more people realize they do need to do some strategic things, number one. And number two is, again, with this inflection point with AI, I think that becomes a catalyst for discussions and for helping people rethink maybe setting up their tech stack for the next 10, 20 years.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#11

Okay. That's really helpful. We've heard a lot about the death of software in recent weeks and months across a number of different applications because of what's happening in the large language model layer, in particular, and what you're seeing on the infrastructure side. Talk a little bit about nCino's moat and maybe take it from 2 different places, right, the company itself and the data that you actually have and maybe the financial services end market as a whole from your perspective.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#12

Yes. And I think those converge right? And so yes, people talk about the death of software. I can't speak for other markets. But I think from the markets that we serve, right, financial institutions globally, it is the most highly regulated, probably most conservative industry there is out there. And so what we see from our customers is them looking to us and from prospects as well is from them looking to us to help them on this AI journey. Again, for us, it reminds us when we started the company, as I referenced, folks looking for help on the cloud journey. If you think about, again, the high regulation, the conservative nature, I think it starts with trust and reputation. And ultimately, again, I think we have demonstrated and built that trust and reputation in the marketplace. And what we are showing our customers is innovation, right? We're showing them AI. We're showing them banking adviser skills. We talked about releasing agents starting next quarter. And so we can take them on that journey as quickly or as slowly as they want to go, right? And I think that is a unique position for us to be able to do that because, again, we've already been housing their data for almost 14 years now. And we have this data asset. And ultimately, through their consent to use that data on an anonymized basis, we're also able to help them understand and get insights into various decision-making, okay? And I think that's unique in terms of that data asset. The other thing I think that's unique about the data that we have is the process data, right? We spoke about the middle and back office, right, all of the processes. We have hundreds and hundreds of customers where we understand exactly how the institutions work. We know where to focus agents on. We know where to focus Gen AI opportunities on to go out and solve and make our customers more efficient. And so I think that data set that we have, again, on a global basis, makes us uniquely positioned to help lead this AI journey for our customers.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#13

Yes. And I think it's a really good point around the data moat in particular. Maybe just give us a couple of examples digging a little deeper into the data opportunity as to what specific guardrails there are or aren't in using financial institution data. You mentioned it's a heavily regulated industry. Are there any limiters on what you can do with the data even on an anonymized basis? And then maybe just at a high level, how specifically are you utilizing the data? Is that data being fed directly into some of these models that you're using with these financial institutions? Maybe just parse that out for us.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#14

You bet. So ultimately, nothing is more important than trust and security, right? So that overcomes and overtakes everything as we think through it. But we have housed this data. And again, ultimately, we can help banks understand where there's opportunities for them to become more efficient and also use that data to provide insights to them. We launched in May at our user conference a research institute, right, because of the data that we have, some of the visibility we have into different loan transactions, whether it's mortgages or commercial loans on a global basis and be able to help our customers understand what we see going on in the market, right, and ultimately, how it may be able to benefit them. And so I think from a unique data set perspective, again, I think that we are able to provide them with insights that other folks can't. And that goes on top of, again, that process data where, again, we can look at and know exactly where to focus efficiency opportunities with AI that without the laundry list of customers we're fortunate enough to have, people wouldn't appreciate that. I think the other thing getting back, as you mentioned, LLMs with trust and reputation, Again, I can't comment on other markets. But to me, I think it's a big hurdle, a pretty high hurdle or a big hill to climb for folks to think that financial institutions are going to just kind of outsource their decision-making, their lending decisions to LLMs, right, which, by the way, we have access to all those as well in addition to the unique data set that we possess.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#15

Yes. And I know about your close relationship with Salesforce. What role are they playing or not playing in terms of your innovation at this point? I know you had a really close relationship, and there are certain areas now where they're a little less involved with you guys specifically. Maybe just give us a high-level overview of where that relationship sits today.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#16

Yes. We've had a great relationship with Salesforce since we started the company, and that continues today. I think it goes back to December of '23, we announced another extension of our long-standing agreement with them for another 7 years. And so nothing to update there. They obviously have their AI strategy. We have our AI strategy. We explore and look for ways to work together. But ultimately, we're focused on executing and making sure we are providing whatever AI skills and technology and specifically agents, if you're talking about Agentforce, for example, for our customers, how they want to use them. And so as we think particularly upmarket, for example, we're open to optionality. We're going to have agents. We work with our customers to help them understand our road map, discussions about co-developing agents, for example, but want them to see where we're going, which will allow them maybe to build agents elsewhere, right? And so they can leverage our agents. They may want to leverage Agentforce agents or maybe there's another third party's agents that they want to leverage. And what we're focused on is making sure folks accessing our data, it's done in a secure way. And ultimately, we're able to monetize it on behalf of our shareholders.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#17

And maybe give investors a sense for how you work alongside integrate with Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. I know that's a big part of a lot of financial institutions. So how does -- where does nCino sit in the stack relative to that product?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#18

If you think about FSC, I mean, they're in the CRM business, right? And we are not, right? But ultimately, we do have a tight integration with them, and we have for years. And so again, it really becomes a seamless experience. Ultimately, we always see when there's a decision made, that's where nCino takes over to help facilitate them, where they would be more on the front end of facilitating the sales process and the marketing and then ultimately handing it off to nCino.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#19

Got it. Very helpful. So I want to go to banking adviser, right now since we're on this AI topic, you announced 16 new capabilities at Insight. I think you call them skills. And I think the way you've described initial uptake at your customers, although it's early, is quite strong, and I know you're doing a lot of training there. Maybe just give us the latest. I know we heard a lot on the latest earnings call, but give us the latest around banking adviser customer uptake and how you're seeing that flow through your customers as you bring them on to the new pricing model, which we can get to as well in a second.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#20

Sure. Very excited around Banking Adviser. You noted the 16 skills on top of the 2 that we previously had. On our earnings call, we announced that over 80 customers have signed up for this. And so if you think about kind of in different cohorts, we've got folks who were earlier adopters who are live. folks who are in implementation. And it's -- for us, it's a relatively short implementation, but one you need to go through and then folks who have just signed up. And so we feel good about that momentum and the excitement around it. And Sean mentioned on our earnings call, our focus right now is on adoption, right? And we do not have any overage from banking adviser in our financial results for our financial forecast for this year. So we really are focused on adoption, which really comes down to change management. You're again, changing the way that our customers use our software. And we are incentivizing teams internally, our customer success team, for example, we currently have a contest going on, who can drive the most adoption, get some excitement around that so that, again, we help our customers appreciate the power of AI and ultimately, again, work with them so that they think about using our software differently than maybe they were. Just as we did when we again started the company when using our cloud-based software was maybe different than using their old on-prem software.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#21

Has anything surprised to you? When you are talking to customers, you're bringing a banking adviser in and you're having those initial conversations around contests and how to use this training usage, et cetera, which longer term, presumably, that usage is an upside driver to your revenue. Any surprises in the way initially that's being received or how well skilled folks in banks are to use products like this? Just any high-level color for that cohort of power users and where they are versus where you might have expected them to be?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#22

Yes. I think the excitement is there, right? And then again, then you just kind of need to work through the change management process. But I think people appreciate and are gaining a better appreciation for the power of the technology and the fact that it can make their lives easier, takes some mundane skills and automate them, and so they don't have to do that, provides opportunities for our customers to -- the employees of our customers to maybe spend time on more value-added tasks. And so I think there's a receptivity and an excitement around it. But again, then you kind of need to go through the blocking and tackling of here's how you use it, right? You no longer need to drag and drop this file, right? It will do it for you, right? You no longer need to go through a mortgage application and validate the data, which maybe took 30 minutes before. because one of our banking adviser skills will do that for you, right? You no longer need to draft a credit memo as part of your commercial lending underwriting decision. One of our banking adviser skills will do that for you, and all you need to do is check it. And so you just need to work through that and kind of just build up the repetition just as you would if you started using any new software.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#23

Okay. Really helpful. And maybe take a step back and on the pricing model change itself, maybe for those in the audience not as familiar, why make the change that you did? How much of the base from an ACV perspective is on the new pricing model now? And what should we expect in terms of both the cadence of that pricing model being adopted going forward and impacts to your top line?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#24

We made the change, and it really starts probably 2 or so years ago. If you think about the efficiency gains that our software brings for our customers, we appreciated that the better we are, right, the worse it hurts our business model because it was a seat-based model historically. And we saw, particularly as we focused on expanding our consumer lending product and as that matured that ideally, there'd be no human intervention, right, subject to whatever comfort level the bank they have from a regulatory perspective. We talk about getting to this path of one where you just need one person in the loop to approve a loan. And so we quickly saw that seat-based model was not the right long-term model. And so we evolved that to a platform pricing model that's generally driven by assets at the financial institution. And so it's based on tiers, but based on the size of the financial institution, you're going to pay us a certain amount. And then each year, we go back and we calculate the assets that they have on our platform. And to the extent you trip a tier, then the next year, you would be billed and invoiced for the new pricing. And that differs on that annual opportunity to get price uplift, which asset growth has generally tracked GDP. So I think 2% to 3% a year. We're excited about that opportunity because historically, we were under our seat-based pricing model, the price was fixed during the term with an average contract length of 4 years, right? So for example, as inflation took off over the last few years, we did not address that as part of our lock contracts. This gives us an opportunity to do that. I think also helps in some of our renewal discussions where I think some of our customers appreciate that they weren't paying and maybe they would otherwise have been if it was a different contract. We do have about 21% of our ACV under the new platform pricing model. About 1/3 of that is for mortgage. I mentioned our average contract length 4 years. And so if you think about it, about -- it should take about 4 years to cycle through. We do see opportunities to accelerate that. And one of the main drivers of that, that we see is AI because in order to use our AI technology, you need to be on the new pricing model. And so Sean mentioned this on our earnings call a couple of weeks ago. It has been a catalyst for accelerating some of those renewal discussions, which is great. But I think we feel real good about the pricing model. And I think ultimately, it sets us up well in this AI world where, again, seat reduction, leveraging agents is out there. And again, we're focused on growth in assets, which, again, I think aligns the value that we provide with our customers quite well.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#25

I want to get into some of the other growth drivers. But before that, you mentioned the path of one, right, and having one human in the loop. Is that how banks think about how they ultimately want their back offices to look in the future? Is there any pushback either internally from software power users or the banks themselves around the idea that they will be such a lean headcount organization in that function? Or would you say there's a lot of receptivity to that?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#26

I think that there's a lot of openness to that discussion. Again, whatever their comfort level is for us is to provide them the optionality. So it's one thing to be able to do it. It's one thing if they decide to do it, right? And so again, to me, this is very much a crawl walk run. No one is going to wake up tomorrow and go from 8 to 10 folks as part of a commercial loan approval process down to 1. But again, I think as the technology evolves, as they get more comfortable using it, it provides them the opportunity to potentially do that. Two things that I saw over the last few weeks or even months on CNBC, one was they had a little banking and AI segment where they interviewed a large unnamed bank, okay? I assume it was a U.S. bank. And they said by 2030, they expected their headcount to be reduced solely because of AI by 35% to 50%. Another one I saw one of our customers was actually on CNBC not too long ago and referenced that same 50% potential opportunity. Now whether they pursue that or whether they do a lot more with the same, again, to us, it's providing the optionality to the financial institution to figure out what's best for them.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#27

Okay. Very useful. Let's get into another growth driver of yours, which is mortgage. That business has outperformed. I know you've sort of taken the guidance philosophy around that, that you don't want to call a macro environment. But maybe just agnostic of the macro, talk to us a little bit about the cross-sell opportunity there, how you think you've done in taking that mortgage product. I know it's been a number of years now, but cross-selling that into your base. And then maybe just talk about conceptually how we should think about the upside as I think most, if not all, of that base is now over to the new pricing model that focuses specifically on assets and volumes.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#28

Yes. For that, it's loan volumes to your last comment.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#29

Yes.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#30

And we've got now over 50% of that base turn on that new platform pricing loan model. But that's been a business that in a very difficult time, grew every year since we've owned it, even in the darkest days, including growing 22% year-over-year last quarter. And so I think that's a reflection of it's great technology. I think it's a great organization in terms of providing customer support, and I think we've got wonderful people. And I think during kind of the darker days of the mortgage environment, if you go back the last couple of years, the team did a fantastic job of going out and getting logos. Many of which were competitive takeaways. And we did that under this new pricing model, betting that when volumes came back, right, we would be able to benefit from that. And we did see a little bit of that in the second quarter. We called out a homebuilder as well as an IMB or 2, where we saw overages that drove about $1.7 million of overperformance for us in the quarter. And again, if it can do that still with this, I would say, still relatively consistent volume, right, from a mortgage volume perspective, we haven't seen mortgage volumes spike consistently, right? And again, I think that positions us well as we think into the coming quarters. Obviously, the administration seems very focused on getting interest rates down. And hopefully, mortgage rates would follow that, which I do think would drive additional mortgage volumes, which ultimately should benefit us. To your point, though, we're going to remain conservative and not predict mortgage volumes. and just stay out of that business and just make sure we're very transparent in terms of the impact it's having on our financials so our investors can get that information and then ultimately figure out what's best for them in terms of how they analyze it.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#31

Okay. Switching gears to the account onboarding, account opening space. We've heard not just in the commercial space, but also in the retail space, there seems to be a lot of focus from financial institutions on onboarding and account opening. Talk a little bit about why that is, and then we'll dig into some of your products.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#32

Yes. I think onboarding has been a challenge for companies or financial institutions on a global basis. I mean we've experienced it ourselves trying to open accounts, particularly outside of the U.S. There's a lot of regulation, KYC, KYB, AML in terms of being able to onboard that customer. A lot of it still is very manual. And again, from a time perspective and from a user experience perspective, it is an unpleasant experience, right? It takes a long time. It's a challenging customer experience and ultimately ends up being a very frustrating way to maybe start a relationship with a financial institution. And so we see a big opportunity there on a global basis. Two of our acquisitions that we did going back to last March with DocFox and last November with FullCircl were in that onboarding space. And we see that as an opportunity to provide our customers not just with a technology to automate the onboarding process, but also to do it in an integrated fashion because no one goes to a financial institution and says, onboard me. right? You go there because you want to get a loan or you go there because you want to open an account. And so having all of that as part of the same system and same workflow, I think, creates a great experience for our customers' employees, right, in onboarding those customers as well as for their customers. And so we're excited about that. We went through the integration of DocFox, which we launched the first integrated version at our user conference in May. And so busy in the sales cycle for that. But again, I think to your comment, I think every one of our commercial lending customers should want that. And again, I think it's a problem that we're able to solve on a global basis, particularly as those products continue to mature as part of our overall platform offering.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#33

Yes. Let's talk a little bit about new customers, right? And I know that this is part of that broader strategy. But as you think about, in particular, the core commercial business, both -- and I guess we can take this in 2 ways in the U.S. and internationally. What in your mind is the catalyst to get some of that net new activity picking back up? I know it's sort of -- you've seen it in the growth rates start to bottom out, and we may see that inflect soon. So it seems like that is turning around a little bit in your business today. But maybe just walk us through on the net new side, how you're viewing that opportunity, where we are today and what the opportunity looks like longer term?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#34

We see healthy activity on the commercial lending part of our business, both here in the U.S. as well as globally. I would say globally, it's more of new logos as we go into new territories, which is very exciting. We announced our first logo in Spain in the second quarter. And we've been pretty vocal about our focus on expanding on the continent with Spain being one of our target markets. And so it's great to see that. But in the U.S. as well, not only with new logo opportunities, but on our Q2 earnings call, we announced expansion with 2 large customers in commercial, right? So then buying more from us. And so we view those commercial logos as assets. Not only do we have opportunity to expand within the commercial part of the bank if we've got a logo in many cases, but also to expand outside of that, leveraging the reputation and relationships that we've built in that part of the bank. And so commercial, again, I think, will continue to be a good driver for us as we think about the opportunity for reacceleration of growth. And then the other thing is, again, whether it's onboarding, right, that's taking that, for example, we're able to take that to our commercial customers, right? Natural add-on for them. Banking adviser takes that to our commercial customer base, right? And so I think there's an opportunity to continue to add logos, right, expand in current logos and then go deeper in current logos. And so I think that bodes well as we look to reaccelerate growth next year and beyond.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#35

Great. And then on the commercial side, who are you competing with? Or I guess, said differently, if you don't really see any one competitor, what is the driver of a bank deciding to go ahead with nCino or run an RFP that includes you versus not, right? Is it really down to budget constraints and regulatory or capital requirement burdens? What is the driver, would you say, of an inflection in the number of companies coming to market and your win rates?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#36

So for commercial, if there was an RFP and we weren't included, I would be surprised in light of our market position and reputation as the worldwide leader, certainly in commercial lending, but when we say cloud banking, our biggest competitor on a global basis, I'd say, by far is do nothing. Kick the can down the road, maybe there's another priority that they have. It's good enough for now. And so our job is to help them appreciate what they're missing out and the efficiency opportunities that they could get with nCino. If you want to look at it from a third-party vendor standpoint, I would say most of our competition globally is actually concentrated here in the U.S. down market with a couple of private equity-backed providers. But it's very much a different value proposition. Again, we have the best commercial lending solution out there, but we're selling a platform, right, where commercial, again, is a great product that we have. But also we can land with consumer. We can land with small business, we can land with mortgage. And again, what we want the bank to appreciate, don't buy software how you used to, which was by business line. So you'd have a different tech stack for commercial versus consumer versus mortgage, et cetera, standardize on nCino. And you can have all these on one platform, right, with a 360-degree view of your customer, which is going to make your life easier, make your bank, your credit union more efficient, and it's going to provide a significantly better user experience for your end user. And so again, I think we feel really good about our market positioning with commercial. But again, I think there's still plenty of runway for us on that.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#37

Yes, that's really helpful. In the last couple of minutes here, I want to just touch on the margin equation. And I know you've talked about Rule of 40, right? And that obviously includes margin expansion. So how are you thinking about balancing growth reacceleration with margin expansion in this environment?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#38

We always want to err on the side of growth. Obviously, we had some headwinds in the market, which impacted, I think, our ability to grow. I think we've been transparent some things we could have done better that I think we've addressed. And again, I think we're excited about some of the changes that we've made in the organization. But we do want to err on the side of growth. We still think it's very early in this opportunity to transform the financial services landscape. And again, I think AI provides the next wave of growth for the company, and I think we're uniquely positioned to capitalize to become the worldwide leader in AI banking as we were in our in cloud banking. That said, we did make a commitment that around the fourth quarter of next year, we would hit Rule of 40. We did not specify an assumption around growth. We just said we would get there. And so clearly, we want growth to be the driver, right? That said, we do see opportunities for margin expansion starting on the gross margin line. I've talked about our PSO margin specifically, some initiatives that we have internally around becoming more efficient in our implementations, significantly reducing implementation time lines, leveraging AI is a big part of that. And as we continue to make progress on that, I know it will take a little bit of time to show up in the financial results as we finish up and wind down some legacy projects and in parallel, ramp up kind of the new way we're doing it. I think you see that as a nice lever. And then again, from an OpEx perspective, I think we have the opportunity to continue to tweak and become more efficient in areas. And I think AI also is a part of that. And we have been investing in our people to make sure that they've got the AI tools they need. And then also just from a headcount perspective, again, before we run out and hire people, right? We've got technology. Can we leverage that technology to become more efficient and do it on a more cost-effective way, right? And I think AI, we see already examples of that happening, and I think that's exciting to kind of doing more with the same headcount that you have versus, again, reflexively needing to just add more headcount, which I think was the mindset if you go back a few years ago.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#39

Okay. And then if you think a little bit further forward on capital allocation, obviously, you've made some acquisitions recently. Any natural adjacencies we should think about for you in terms of further M&A activity? Any way we should be thinking about just broader capital allocation priorities for you going forward?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#40

Right now, we're focused on executing on our stock buyback. We announced a $100 million stock buyback on April 1 on our Q4 call. Through the second quarter, we were just over 60% or over $60 million of the way through that. And then making sure from an integration perspective and from a go-to-market perspective, we are getting the return that we expect from those acquisitions. And so we continue to keep our eyes and ears open because it is a rapidly evolving market. Frequently, M&A opportunities come up when you don't want them to. But right now, our focus is on the assets that we have. I think we feel very good about our product portfolio, the number of products we have to bring to our customer base and just execution.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#41

Okay. Last one for you. I know we're coming up against time. What is the biggest priority for you over the next 6 to 12 months? And then if you look beyond the next 6 to 12 months, over the next 3 to 5 years, what are you most excited about as it pertains to the opportunity?

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#42

I think right now, our focus is on execution, and I think it actually is very energizing. I think the company is very aligned in terms of what our priorities are and very focused on executing against our targets and goals. And again, I think from a management team perspective, from Sean's perspective as our CEO, beating the table around execution and staying focused and not getting distracted. And so that actually is exciting to me and energizing. And again, you can see the company rolling in the same direction towards those goals. And so again, focus on execution, and you'll continue to hear that, I think, from this management team. As I think bigger picture, again, I think we are at an amazing time in technology. These things don't come around very often every 10, 15 years or so, you see these inflection points. And I think, again, we are very specially, and I said this earlier, uniquely positioned to be the worldwide leader in AI banking. I think we've got the trust, the reputation, the vantage point, the data, the technology to truly drive the market and the industry down this AI path. And I see it as an exciting wave for us to go ride just as, again, we were with that wave of cloud banking. So that's exciting to be part of, particularly with a wonderful bunch of people that we have in the company.

Adam Hotchkiss

Analysts
#43

Great way to end. Greg, thanks so much for being here.

Gregory D. Orenstein

Executives
#44

Appreciate it.

This call discussed

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