Paylocity Holding Corporation (PCTY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everybody. Welcome back after lunch. I'm Steve Enders part of the software research team here at Citi. Today with us for this session, we have Toby Williams from Paylocity. So Toby, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having us.

I guess maybe just to start off, I'm sure everyone at this point knows Paylocity, but maybe just kind of run us through the most recent quarter and some of the highlights from it.

Yes, sure. So just a little bit of the background. We have just over 36,000 clients focused on sort of small and mid-market businesses, advertised clients around 140 employees. And we're focused on providing payroll and HCM software to companies that have between 10,000 and 5,000 employees, again, average size around 140. And I think the heart of the growth algorithm for us has been able to acquire new logo. So it's having 36,000 clients in a market that -- of companies between 10,000 and 5,000 employees, it's about [ 1 million, 2 million, 3 million ] out there in the market. So we have a relatively small share of a relatively large market. So most of our go-to-market motion is centered around bringing new logos onto the platform. We've also, though, grown our product set significantly over the course of time. So our product is as typical in the HCM industry looked at from a per employee per year chargeability for the suite standpoint. And chargeability for us at the time of our IPO 10 years ago was $200 per employee per year. And today, it sits at $500 per employee per year charge. And we've just raised our last call, raised our target for PEPY to $600. So I think going back to your question on sort of the quarter and last year as our fiscal year ends at the end of June. So we just came off of our Q4 call, the story, I think, of our business and our growth has really been around the ability to expand our product set, add new logos and I'm really happy with the performance in last fiscal year. I think we hit rule of 70, driving not just growth, but profitability as well. I think we guided this year to around $1.4 billion and sort of 33% from an adjusted EBITDA margin perspective. So I think that all of the dynamics in the business for last quarter and last fiscal year, pretty strong. And I think the outlook for this fiscal year guiding to around 20% growth in total revenue, also fairly strong at our size and scale.

Okay. Great to hear a great intro there. Maybe if you can just dig in into the macro landscape a little bit right now because really saw growth for the past couple of years. I think now guiding to kind of let's call it, 20% growth for this year. I guess what are the factors that are going on in the marketplace today that may be leading to that outlook? And how should investors be thinking about where the macro sits today in the deal environment for ATM software?

Yes. I mean I think the demand environment overall, I think, is still pretty strong. And I think a big part of that is, I think, a couple of different factors. One, more broadly is the expectations of employees has fundamentally changed over the last 5 to 10 years in terms of their engagement with technology, what that technology looks like and the types of tools that they have to engage with. I think the broader expectation of the workforce, which becomes more so the case with every day that goes by, the younger and younger the workforce gets in total. I think there's an expectation that they're engaging with technology that looks and feels like -- in the workplace that looks and feels like what they're engaging with in other parts of their lives, whether that's consumer technology or social technology, and I think that's a big part of the differentiation that we've driven in our platform. It's a very employee-focused platform and technology experience. And we've embedded things like community and video, which is the communication hub of our platform. And I think that's helped us really differentiate. So I think that's -- I think the demand environment is in part driven by that change in expectations that employees have, which is broader, and I think we'll have a long tail to it. And then, I think from a competitive positioning standpoint, we have a differentiated strategy that's really centered around that engagement with employees, which goes to any company's ability to attract and retain workers in a very tight labor market. So when you talk to CEOs or CFOs or CHROs, the thing that they are all the most focused on is the ability to attract and retain employees. The ability to drive engagement in a different way with their employees ultimately results in their ability to retain those employees and grow their businesses, which I think is at the heart of what they're all most concerned with. So I think in terms of the environment overall, there's still strong demand. I think we have a differentiated position in the market. I think we've executed reasonably well. But from a macro perspective, I think part of where we would experience growth historically would be -- and this is sort of low single-digit 2 to 3-point type growth would be from the growth in employees on the platform, which is what you would typically see in a typical sort of macroeconomic or GDP environment where GDP is growing 2% to 3%. And employees on the platform has been -- and this is, I think, largely true across the industry, not just for us, but that's been flat for the last year-over-year, a little over a year. And so as we looked at coming into what's our fiscal '24 and the guide for fiscal '24, I think our guidance philosophy has been consistent for a very long time. It was no difference this year. I think one difference though, is we assumed flat employees on the platform growth because that's the environment that we've been experiencing, and you typically would have seen 2 to 3 points from that. So guiding to total revenue, 20% growth for the year is still happening despite not having 2 to 3 points from employee on platform growth, which you would typically see.

Sure. That makes sense. Maybe just talk about the past couple of years, a lot of changes in the marketplace, COVID, great resignation. I'm sure that's driven a ton of peppy growth for you and your customers adopting new modules. I guess, maybe you can kind of walk us through how that has kind of progressed for the past couple of years? And maybe where do they stand today from where customers are thinking about investing and how they think about new modules that are coming on?

Yes. So if you go back to the very -- maybe in the 12 months preceding the pandemic, we would have started to launch our community product, which is the communications sort of heart of our platform. And I think that was starting to get traction, but I don't think the value of that was perfectly clear in the market. I think it became -- and video was the same. We launched our video -- asynchronous video capabilities at the very start of the pandemic, same thing. I don't think the value prop was perfectly clear in the market. But what -- the one thing that happened during COVID was workforces became remote. They became much more distributed overnight. And the immediate challenge that companies had was how do you communicate effectively with a group of distributed employees, distributed workforces that are not coming into the office, and how do you keep them engaged and communicate sort of important things to them over a really tough stretch of time. And the use cases that we always saw for things like video or things like community in terms of being important communication vehicles became very, very clear. The value prop associated with those things became immediately clear to the market. And I think that was a very important differentiator for us at that period of time. And that -- the result of that, there was other products, too, like surveys, ability to do -- get feedback from employees, understand what they're concerned with, understand what you're doing well, understand what needs to be improved from their point of view, became even more important. LMS, our learning management system is another example of being able to deliver training remotely became immediately important to a much broader swath of companies that may have been the case before. And so you saw these products that were launched in and around the start of the pandemic become immediately critical to a broad swath of our customers and really important in our sales motion. And so you saw things that were launched in that period of time see much, I think, faster and larger adoption rates than you might have seen historically. And those are also some things that I think stretch the bounds of what people would have considered traditional HCM solutions. So the idea of embedding a communication sort of capability in the platform, being able to deliver video capabilities within the platform. Nobody else has done that in traditional HCM land. And so a lot of our investment and a lot of our product is really in pushing the boundaries of what HCM really has contained historically. I think that's been a significant driver of growth. It's certainly been a focus for us as we've taken, again, the PEPY up from 200 at the time of the IPO to 500 where it sits today.

Sure. And so maybe as we think about the landscape today and the drivers of further kind of PEPY growth, how do you view like which of the modules that maybe doesn't have broad adoption within the customer base today will help kind of support that? I guess what are the factors in there that we should be thinking about that will help kind of support that growth off of 500?

Yes. I mean I think -- so if you go back through the things that we've launched over the last couple of years, there's things like video, like LMS, like surveys that I think are still as much traction as they've gotten. They're still in the earlier stages from an overall penetration standpoint. We just launched a few new products over the -- around the time of the last call. So we launched Market Pay, an advanced LMS product. And then we launched advanced scheduling as well. So you've got -- and that's what -- those are the products that basically took us from 440 to 500 in terms of available PEPY. And those are, I think, products that will continue to support the overall growth. Certainly, it takes a little bit from when you launch a product to when you start seeing the revenue impact from that. So I would probably expect that to be impactful in '25, probably not see much of that in '24, just based on time and cycles. But I think those are the types of things that we continue to invest in and launch that will be supportive of future growth.

Okay. I do want to keep this interactive, so if there are questions in the room, I want to make sure that we're able to get to them. So yes, just raise your hand when that happens. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the longer-term targets that you just set out at the last earnings call. I think for a while, maybe just start at the top, 20% growth, you've been able to sustain that for a while. I guess any changes in how we should be thinking about the mix of where that growth will be coming from going forward? How much is that PEPY, how much of that is the larger expansion into customers? Just how do you think about that equation?

Yes. I mean I think the overall -- just taking a step back, I think the overall growth algorithm in the business, you have obviously, what we consider to be a very large market opportunity with more than 1.2 million businesses in the market that we're focused on. And we have just over 36,000 clients. So there's an opportunity to continue to grow by way of acquiring new logos. And we think we have 2% to 3% market share. So we think that's a significant opportunity over time. That market also, I think, expands by way of us continuing to develop and deliver incremental PEPY opportunity. So I think that's another part of the growth algorithm that's existed over time. So it's growing the number of units. It's growing the PEPY opportunity, which we've done. Traditionally, you would have gotten obviously put rates to the side, which are uncontrollable and can help or hurt depending on the cycle that you're in, but -- the other part would typically be you get a couple of points of growth from pricing opportunity on an annual basis and you get a couple of points from expansion of employees on the platform in normal course, not seeing that right now. But I think historically, you would see that dynamic in the market. So I mean those are the -- I think those are the biggest sort of puts and takes from an overall growth perspective. And when we look out over the longer term, I think you get those over the longer term, things that are less controllable, but you have to be able to continue to develop and deliver new products, and you have to be able to continue to execute from a go-to-market motion perspective. And obviously, you have to provide great service to be able to retain the business that you have. So I mean I think that's the heart of the execution over -- that has been the case over the last 10 years, and I think that's what sits in front of us too.

Sure. Makes sense. Maybe going down to the next line. You did mention float income in there, gross margin, so looking really strong from here. But how should we be thinking about the impact of float income and how that will kind of bounce around some of the gross margin line going forward? And I guess, similarly, like what is being assumed on the float side to also sustain the revenue?

Yes. I mean, I think -- let me parse those out a little bit. We try and provide enough disclosure around what our assumptions are for client health funds and what the yield looks like on those funds that we're assuming over a forward period of time.

Which we all appreciate.

Well, I think we, generally speaking, our view of the world is to try and be as transparent as possible and provide you with the different elements that should be important to you as either analysts or investors to take it all apart. So we provide the disclosure on the client health funds, the yield that we expect to get and that's largely informed by what we can see right in front of us. I mean, some of that [ stuff ] is not controllable. Client health funds has tended to grow close to client count growth over time. So that's probably the best way to think about how that grows on more of a controllable basis. But in terms of the interest rate environment, obviously, we sit towards a historical high watermark, people can make their own assumptions about what happens over the course of our fiscal '24. And then you're really into what can you execute from a recurring revenue standpoint and what can you really drive in terms of everything that we've been talking about over the last few minutes in terms of new units and retention. Our retention rates have historically been north of 92%. That's the disclosure we provide, 92%-plus revenue retention rates is how we would describe that part. And then you're really into -- can you develop and deliver a new product? And can you go execute from a go-to-market standpoint in new logo acquisition.

No, makes sense. Maybe we can move to R&D. I mean AI, I think, very top of mind for everyone in the room here. So I guess a couple of questions for one. How are you thinking about AI and embedding that into the product set? What's available today? How do you think about the future road map and then we'll go from there.

Yes. I mean I think no doubt, there's more opportunity that will exist over time. We -- I think in HCM land anyways, we were the first to come out with any in the last, call it, handful of months, new AI addition to the product set, although I would start by saying, we've been investing in AI and machine learning capabilities for at least 5 years, built a team, a significant data science team because we have believed in the opportunity to leverage AI and machine learning and the value of data and analytics and the insights that you can gain from them for 5-plus years. So for us, this is sort of the next leg of the journey versus the start of the ability to leverage tools like tools and technology like that. So we would have handful of years ago, developed and delivered our workforce insights and modern workforce index is part of our analytics platform, leverages AI and machine learning. I think even more recently, though, you would have heard us talk about embedding AI into the platform to give, as an example, the ability to generate using generative AI communications from an HR person through community. You'll also see us deliver similar capabilities with respect to job description. So instead of starting with a blank sheet of paper, leveraging generative AI to start a job description for XYZ position. I mean those are, I think, examples of things that take HR professionals time or take hiring managers time that will give us the opportunity to save time through using or leveraging AI. No doubt there will be other use cases over time. I think those are the sort of the first ones that we brought to market, and we were again, I think, the first to bring any of it to market in HCM land.

And some of the use cases you're talking about, but how does the HR professionals job and the general employees experience change with AI moving forward? And how does Paylocity kind of build on to that vision and help enable that?

Well, I think that overall, and this is true generally speaking, in terms of how you try and leverage technology, you're trying to automate as many things as you can. You're trying to create more time in the day and the life of all employees, but in particular HR professionals. And the more that you can -- the more that you can automate their tasks, the more that you can give them a higher degree of starting points. If you can get the 50% of the way there by leveraging automation or leveraging AI, that's a better place that saves time, that creates efficiency and gives them time to focus on more strategic sort of problems or challenges or opportunities that they might have. And so I think those are the types of things that -- that has been our approach, and that will certainly be our approach as we continue to deliver AI-enhanced tech through the platform.

Okay. Last question on AI and then we'll move on to other areas. Just monetization, I think, has probably been a big area of question that we continue to get on how AI will actually impact companies at this point. So how do you think about that today? Is it about supporting price of the underlying solution, is about another module and it helps with longer-term PEPY -- what's your kind of view today for what that will ultimately kind of look like?

It's hard to say. I mean I think everybody -- the interesting conversation is everybody wants you to peg to, hey, we're going to be able to get $100 more in PEPY because of some AI solution that nobody has even thought of yet. Well, that's -- I don't think that's super credible. And the other component that people ask about is, why are you going to be able to get 100 basis points of margin leverage because you're going to make AI into your service delivery and directionally, should you be able to leverage AI to create efficiency, both from a product perspective and from service delivery perspective. Yes, I think directionally, you should be able to. I think we are in the very early days on both counts. And I think the thing I would point to is you have to be able to create a positive employee experience and you have to be able to create -- you have to be able to maintain a very high level positive service experience. Those are the 2 things that I think matter the most. And no doubt, we will be able to leverage AI to have an impact in both of those areas. But I think we're in the very early innings.

Okay. I guess maybe one more question on AI. So [indiscernible]. Yes. Just internally, you're running a company and you think about leveraging AI, what are the areas where it makes sense for Paylocity to be using that internally and how should we be thinking about the efficiencies and potential margin longer term with layering in those kind of capabilities?

Yes. I mean I think it helps over time and I think it's really early days. So I mean, I think you have the ability to, again, over time, think about things like, hey -- and some of this, we're already doing and already have been doing. It's about surfacing answers to clients to questions that you know they're going to ask, for example, at a certain time of year. So in December, people asked questions about W-2s every single year. You know they're going to. So if you can anticipate questions and you can surface answers in the application at a point in time when it's super valuable to them, there's value to that. There's value to that to them because they don't have to reach out and call you or e-mail you or chat you, and there's benefit to our own employees because that gives them capacity to provide service to other clients around other questions. And so there are things like that, that we are doing and have been doing that overall, I think, enhance the service experience that our clients have. I think that also enhances our -- the efficiency of our internal teams.

Okay. Just one more question on PEPY then I want to move on to kind of go-to-market and some of the investments you're making there. I think longer-term target of 600 on the PEPY side. I guess how should we be thinking about what are the kind of additional opportunities to help drive that? And how you think about the road map for what's kind of incremental to build out the Paylocity platform?

Yes. I mean so we've just launched Market Pay, which gives customers the ability to understand what going rate for a given role or position would be and gives them the internal capability to make sure that there's pay equity across different or similar roles across their business. That was one that we just launched. Another one was enhanced scheduling capabilities, things like shift swapping, being able to track any particular skill requirement for a given role in a given shift and make sure that, that is aligned with those that are filling it, things like that. And Yes. I think that LMS was another one, some enhanced training capabilities that we launched. All of those things took us from those 3 products, in total took us from 440 in PEPY to 500 PEPY. 500 had been the target, so we re-upped the target to 600. And I think overall, if you step back, our focus in terms of product development delivery over the last, call it, 3 or so years, has really been focused on going beyond just having world-class payroll and world-class HCM solutions. It's been really focused on creating a better client experience, creating a better client employee experience, driving the ability for clients and their leaders to engage with employees in a different way. And all of that, I think, really goes beyond what's been in traditional HCM suites. And I think that has been our strategy. And I think as you see us do more and more, it will be pushing -- continuing to push the boundaries of what traditional HCM has been, very much focused on enhancing the employee experience.

Okay. That's great. Maybe shifting gears a little bit to go-to-market. Yes, I think there's been a lot of focus about Paylocity moving upmarket and building out teams to do that. I guess how do you think about the evolution of the go-to-market and kind of where incremental spend in bets are being placed to target the opportunity you see out there?

Yes. I mean, I think if you step back and look at where we've been focused from an overall market perspective over time, it's -- and we've taken this down a little bit. We've taken it up a little bit in terms of the target market. So if you go back, I think before 2018, we would have said sort of 50 to 1,000. We've taken that down to 10 employees in the low end and over time, taking that up to 5,000 employees on the higher end. But throughout that, the average employee size has been between sort of 100 and 150. Like we said in the last filings around 140 employees. That's the ZIP code where we have been focused over time. And so I think if you go back to -- I think it was fiscal '18, we were -- we called out seeing more traction in the sub-50 space. We put some incremental investment there from a go-to-market standpoint. And for a period of time, you saw the number of units we were doing tick up and sort of level off. And then over the last, call it, 18 months or so, we've talked about seeing incremental traction upmarket and put some incremental investment there. And I think the result of that is you saw like slightly lower number of units and contribution from ARPU. But I think the heart of where we've been focused hasn't dramatically changed. I think you see some ebb and flow in every single year in terms of the contribution that a number of units might have versus ARPU. But it's been a fairly, I think, steady focus around that heart of the market. And you've seen us, when we've seen opportunity, we've leaned into it. I think the one potential difference from maybe 5 years ago would be as we have expanded both not -- the number of clients on the platform, but also expanded the product set that's given us some opportunity to cross-sell or sell back into the client base, which we've -- which is still a small part of the overall revenue contribution, and it's a small -- relatively small part of the overall growth contribution, but that's been an area that we've probably invested a little heavier in over the last handful of years.

Okay. That makes sense. Maybe if we think about the mid-market specifically because I think you have been hiring kind of more reps in that area to kind of build out that sales force. Are the types of reps or the experience of the reps changing from maybe where you were trying to hire before or is it still like a pretty similar kind of experienced individual that you're bringing on?

Yes, I think we've had a lot of consistency in terms of the profile of the reps that we hire. So we would typically hire reps that have had experience selling and typically would have experience selling in our industry, whether or not that's coming directly from a competitor or maybe they've done something in between. But it would be typically a more experienced sales rep who does have some HCM industry experience that we would be looking to bring on. And that's been a fairly consistent approach over time. I mean, I think the other notable sort of element of our go-to-market motion is that we get more than 25% of our new business is referred to us from broker or financial adviser channels. And it's still our reps that are closing those deals, and we're not paying for those referrals. But we build partnerships. Our sales team builds those partnerships on a local level. Those are typically warm leads that are coming in. They close at a higher rate, and that's been part of our, I think, a successful part of our growth algorithm, especially to be able to maintain that north of 25% contribution from those channels at our size and scale. So that's, I think, another differentiated part of our go-to-market motion.

Okay. We have about 10 minutes left here. And so if there's questions in the room, I want to make sure that we get to them.

[indiscernible].

Well, I think -- so I guess I would hear that in 2 different ways. One is, do you have recruiting functionality to be able to give people tools to attract the talent that they need from a hiring standpoint. And we absolutely do. And then the other part of that is, and I think that's probably the easier part, the more complicated part is how do you help clients manage that skill inventory, particularly when there's verticals that have certification requirements or something like that. And we give people the ability to do that in the system of record, so in the HRIS, but also building that through to things like tracking that from a learning management system standpoint, giving the ability to identify who needs what training and deliver that training in a timely fashion through our learning management system. And then the other part of it is -- and this is what I was talking about a few minutes ago in our advanced scheduling capabilities, some -- for some roles, take healthcare as an example, you may need not just a -- you may need a specific qualification for a time slot or a shift that you need someone to fill, and so being able to track that and give the visibility into your ability to fill that shift as an employee, you're only eligible for that shift if you have that certification. And if you're a manager, you're only getting people available that have that certification. So there's a pull-through in that that's not just the attraction of talent, but it's how do you manage that talent in an efficient way all throughout your business, whatever your business is.

A second question, if I can. So you talked about employee experience being very important. I don't know if Gallup talk about employee experience, the positive employee experience being extremely low. I mean about 21% globally. So it's obviously a really big problem. And I fear that the AI threat causes more anxiety over that, upskilling, et cetera. What works best in terms of for your organization helping deliver a better employee experience?

Well, so I'll give you some very basic examples. I mean if you -- for our clients, you -- it's finding ways to actually reach people with authentic communication in a fashion that they actually care about because it resonates with how they communicate outside of work. So yes, you can send your 100 people an e-mail, and they will not read it and you have no ability to see whether or not they read it. And if they did read it, you have no ability to gauge the sentiment that is associated with their reaction to your communication. If you record a video and you push that out to people, you're able to actually track whether or not that reach people, did they see it? You're giving people the ability to react to it as would be the case in other social platforms that they might be using outside of work, you can gauge that sentiment, you can actually measure how engaged -- how well you're communicating with employees because I think communication is the foundation to being able to build engagement. And we would be able to give people not just the best practices for reaching and communicating and building culture, but also the ability to measure that against a peer set from an industry vertical perspective and be able to measure the difference in the result produced from doing so. So for example, you'd be able to see, if you're a manufacturing company and you're using community and you're using video with a certain level of regularity, how many employees are you actually reaching and you'd be able to measure the associated retention rate. And so we can actually prove out that if you are using these tools with regularity, in best practice, you will be able to drive a higher retention rate. So I mean I think there's a pull-through on all those things. You have to be able to actually communicate with people in a way that resonates with them. Video is a great example of that versus an e-mail. And you have to be able to see is it actually working? Is it actually making a difference?

Good questions there. I'm going to talk about international payroll -- made an acquisition with Blue Marble. I guess, why was acquiring the right approach for expanding those capabilities versus building or partnering? And maybe secondarily, how are you viewing the opportunity for international today? And how does it help augment the U.S. strategy?

Yes. I mean I think if you start with our strategy overall has been to be able to better serve U.S.-based businesses who happen to have employees outside of the U.S. And typically, that number of employees that one of our clients would have outside of the U.S. would be measured in a handful or handfuls. And the highest concentration of those employees is typically in either Canada or the U.K. though we have the ability to serve over 100 countries through the Blue Marble capabilities. Blue Marble was a partner of ours, and then we acquired the business a couple of years ago. I think if you're a U.S.-based company and you have employees outside of the U.S., you're trying to solve 2 main things. One is actually getting those employees paid in the country. And then the other is being able to see the data from those employees and their pay in your system and the experience of our clients that would be in the Paylocity platform. And so that was really the capability that Blue Marble delivered that we were partnered with prior and then that we acquired through the acquisition of the business a couple of years back was the network of in-country providers who are third parties in those, call it, 130 countries where we can deliver and the ability to provide the data back into our system in a seamless fashion. So that's really the core of the capability that we got through the acquisition and that fits to our strategy of being able to better serve U.S.-based businesses who happen to have employees outside of the U.S. I think you see other folks in the market going after the opportunity in different ways. But I think our view was for the set of our clients who have -- which are typically larger clients who have employees outside the U.S. that's what they're really looking for. And so that's a very viable way of going after that opportunity.

Okay. You mentioned competitors thinking about that a little bit differently. But if we just think about the competitive set today and where opportunities are coming from, I guess, how is the maybe mix of that change versus a few years ago? And how are you viewing about the kind of penetration rate for Cloud HCM into the markets that you're serving today?

Yes. I mean I think if you look at where we've gotten business from source of business or systems that new clients to Paylocity are coming off of, the biggest bucket of that has traditionally been ADP and Paychex, and that's not any different today. I think you've seen the -- probably the mix of that shift a little bit and broaden out as we've gotten broader and broader across the U.S. and opened up all the markets that we're in. But you have that as the single biggest bucket and then probably the next biggest bucket is local and regional payroll providers. That's probably, I don't know, let's say, on the round, you get 40% of new business from ADP and Paychex or something like that. You might get another 20% from local regional providers, which -- of which there are thousands across the U.S. It's very fragmented. They tend to be smaller providers who have less. They have more focus on the traditional core payroll application, less R&D budget to build out full HCM suite. And so I think there's a long tail of opportunity there that we have taken share from and will continue to. And then there's probably another, call it, 20% on the round of what we would refer to as in-house solutions, which is some cobble together capability, which could be from an on-prem software plus an accountant or a tax adviser who's doing some portion of the payroll or the filing and then the remainder would just come from all the other competitors that are out there.

Sure. And maybe when a customer is coming up or deciding that they want to switch their vendors, I guess, what is it about Paylocity that really stands out and is the differentiator versus your competitors in those kind of RFPs or bake-offs?

Yes. I mean I think it's everything I've talked about from a product and product strategy perspective that's really focused on the ability to address the primary issues that CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, are battling today in terms of employee engagement, employee retention and employee attraction. And those are the things that are most in focus for all of those leadership roles. And I think that's where we really differentiate. I mean, we really -- we deliver the ability to drive engagement, drive culture and prove that it matters in terms of generating higher retention rates and better attraction of talent and what is and I think will continue to be a very, very tight labor market.

I think we're running up against time here. But last question for -- we let everyone go here. Think about 5 years, we're at Citi 2028 Technology Conference. How is Paylocity different? And how is the HCM market different in that time?

Well, I mean, I think if you look back over the last handful of years, I think it gives you a directional indicator of how I think about our position in the market from a leadership and innovation standpoint. So if you go back by 5 years, I mean, I think the market itself was very focused on traditional HCM solutions. And I think you've seen us not just build out world-class payroll, not just build out a world-class HCM platform, but go beyond that to really listen to the feedback of customers to deliver a set of solutions that go beyond what traditional HCM has been thought of. And I think that is the path that we are on over the course of the next 5 years. And I think our focus on R&D, our focus on innovation is the heart of it all. And so I think as we fast forward to Citi 2028, that's the type of conversation that I hope we have.

All right. Great to hear. So we look forward to that happening. Toby, I want to thank you so much for being here today.