Paylocity Holding Corporation (PCTY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Brian Peterson. I'm one of the application software analysts here at Raymond James. Very happy to have Paylocity back with us this year. Toby Williams with us. We're going to have a fireside chat that's interactive. If you have questions, raise your hand. But maybe to kick things off, maybe a couple of overview on Paylocity.

Yes, sure. Thanks, everybody, for the time and the interest in Paylocity. We are a payroll and HR software business, and we're focused on businesses that have between 10 and 5,000 employees. We have just over 36,000 clients. And I think when you think about our differentiation in the market, we've really focused our efforts on driving a product strategy that's centered around employee experience, that's centered around giving HR admins, giving HR professionals, giving leaders within our clients the ability to engage in a different way with their employees. So you can think about our suite going from everything from payroll to HR and benefits, administration, software capabilities, but then reaching beyond that into giving our clients the ability to drive a different employee experience through things like video and engagement platform within our solution called Community, which is largely a communications part of the platform. And I think overall, just being focused on as the labor market has continued to tighten over the last few years, giving people -- giving our clients a way to engage with their employees, drive engagement, drive attraction of employees and drive ultimately, retention has been really our focus from a product strategy perspective, which has differentiated us against the other players in what is certainly a competitive market.

So thinking about the TAM runway, I think it's come up a lot with investors. But like talk about where you are today in terms of monetization? And how are you framing the TAM opportunity and what's in front of you?

Yes. I think there's 2 components from a TAM perspective. One is just the ability to acquire new logos into our business. When you think about our growth algorithm, we have driven client acquisition from a new client perspective, new logo perspective. We've also expanded significantly the per employee per year chargeability of our suite, which has largely come from the development and delivery of new modules across our platform. And so if you think about the last year as an example, yes, I think we've added over $100 in PEPY to our solution set over the course of that period of time.

So it's interesting. The first thing you talked about product differentiation in the PEPY. So like talk about what is the north star for you in terms product development? And like what are the resources you kind of put behind new products and like what should we be thinking about in terms of like functionality that you're going to be adding to the platform?

Yes. I mean I think we've driven a mix. So if you think about our functionality within the platform, we've continued to invest from an R&D perspective in making sure that all of our capabilities across the platform are market leading. But we have also been focused on new product development and new product delivery. That's what really gets you -- that's what generates the ability to add rules and therefore, add PEPY in terms of chargeability across the suite. And a lot of that focus has really been on driving, as I was saying a minute ago, a better and a differentiated employee experience. So all of the employees that we're engaged with, in fact, a lot of the decision-makers and users from an admin perspective have been focused on a consumer-grade technology experience on their iPad or on their iPhone, and that's what we've really been focused on delivering. And in terms of the functionality or in terms of the modules, again, really been focused on the ability to engage with and drive culture with client employees.

What do you think the -- like the legacy competitors are doing there in terms of -- like how big of a deal do you think that is in terms of product differentiation, in terms of like driving incremental share gains and new logos to Paylocity?

Yes. I mean I think there's a dual benefit to those investments for us and ultimately, in terms of our customers having a better experience with their HCM solutions. I mean I think it is critical from a differentiation perspective in terms of new logo acquisition. That's the first piece. And then I think the second piece is we also get the benefit of the realized PEPY. So if you look at what our clients have bought from us year to year to year, we have continued to realize, call it, 50% or 50% to 60% of our overall PEPY year-to-year-to-year. So ultimately, you see us developing and delivering the solutions. You see people buying them and using them and finding value from them. And then, as I said, you also get the differentiation piece. So I think it comes together in terms of our ability to differentiate the market, drive new logo acquisition and then also drive -- essentially drive up the PEPY that we see from people.

It comes up a lot in terms of like the sources of new logos and how has that evolved. Any change to that? And where are the share donors in the space that you typically see?

Yes. I think it's certainly been a competitive space. Source of business for us has been largely competitive for the last 5 to 10 years, if not longer. So the biggest share donors to us are the 2 large incumbents in the space: ADP and Paychex. They represent, call it, roughly 40% or so of competitive wins. We get beyond that, about 20% of our wins are coming from local or regional payroll providers, of which there are thousands across the country that typically focus on a city state or geo. And there continues to be about 15% of our wins coming from what we would have in-house channel or companies that are not using a traditional third-party provider. They typically have some version of a CPA that does their taxes, a homegrown Excel-based method. So those 3 large categories typically are representing 70% to 75% of our competitive takeaways.

Can you talk about the broker channel? How important is that as a partnership and kind of a go-to-market leadership area for you guys? And like to what extent can you still kind of build that out and work with more broker partners over time?

Yes. I think that has certainly been a competitive differentiator for us for sure over the years. We get, really, 25% plus of our wins are coming from that channel partner, which is made up of benefit brokers, 401(k) advisers, workers, comp brokers as well as some industry-related players as well. So that is certainly something that we have invested in year in and year out. It is truly managed on a rep-by-rep basis in field, developing relationships with benefit brokers and other channel partners in their territory such that you're not seeing a large concentration of 1 or 2 providers providing a material portion of those leads.

But as you think about that, like over time, I've talked to you guys about this. But like to what extent can that continue to grow and scale? Like how penetrated like if it's one-on-one, like how big could that be over time?

Yes. I think that has scaled annually for us for sure. I think we are comfortable with probably the percent we get from benefit and other partners today. But on a dollar basis, as our business has grown, we have maintained a sort of 20% or 25% plus referral rate there. So we certainly feel like there's continued opportunity, and that is certainly an area that we invest from a product, from an integration and from an overall go-to-market approach relative to that portion of the market.

And there's thousands of them out. I mean when you think about the number of brokers in the market in the U.S. that would be potential referral sources for us, there are literally thousands of them across the country that are either in the benefit broker space or financial advisers. And I think that's our focus on that is part of the reason, as we've been able to grow, we've been able to continue to maintain that pretty consistent referral percentage of our business, of new business coming in. It's a big market. It's been reasonably fragmented, into Ryan's comment, we drive that at the field execution level.

And maybe talk about like your investments in go to market. Like where are you guys focused? And what are kind of the hiring plans from a sales capacity perspective over the next couple of years?

Yes. I think if you go back over time, I mean, we have traditionally grown the salesforce year in and year out. I think over the last probably 3 or 4 years, we've talked about making incremental investments, broadening out your question in terms of go-to-market. We've made incremental investments from a product perspective. Part of that is to drive the differentiation and make us a more compelling solution in the market that I was talking about a few minutes ago. We've also invested incrementally from a marketing standpoint, being able to giving us the capability to drive more leads from a digital standpoint. And I think the point of making those investments was both to be able to drive continued growth in the business, to access the large market opportunity that we see in front of us, but also to be able to, over time, drive efficiency and drive productivity in the go-to-market motion. Channels that you're asking about a second ago is another sort of another component to that, continuing to drive investment into our channels to be able to drive those referrals as we grow and scale. Ultimately, not just to be able to drive growth, but to be able to drive the productivity and efficiency in the business. And so when you get into a year like this one, I think -- and we talked about this on the last call, you very much become focused on, hey, what are the things that we can do to drive productivity as we think about going into '25.

Maybe on packaged digital investments a little bit, where are you investing? And I'd love to understand maybe like how that kind of supplement some of the headcount [indiscernible]?

Yes. And I think if you go back, call it, just sort of setting the foundation. If you go back by maybe 3 years or so, we were starting to build capability. I mean we had done very basic things, like redoing the website to be able to give us the ability to sort of track and further invest in our digital channels to be able to understand where we're getting leads from, to be able to manage that more effectively, route those effectively from an internal perspective regionally to our teams in the field. So I think those are the types of investments that we have been making over the last, call it, 2, 3 years. And I think as you continue to drive both the growth of the salesforce, the growth of our channels and then thinking about some of the conversations that we've had more recently about our efforts upmarket, it's bringing -- it's building a foundation to support all of those continued growth avenues.

And I was going to ask you in upmarket. What have you seen there? And I know there's been some larger customers that have come out of the platform. But like what are you seeing in terms of the upmarket perspective now?

Yes. If you go back over a couple of years ago, we would have talked about our -- the success that we were seeing upmarket. So that for us is in the, call it, 500 to 5,000 -- businesses with 500 to 5,000 employees. We had taken up the upper end of that, I think, 18 months or so ago, up to 5,000. And a lot of that has been driven by the market. So as we've continued to build out the suite, as we've continued to invest more in the solution set, we have seen traction, both in terms of larger clients and those larger clients taking a broad swath of the product. And I think that's really where we started to invest incrementally in upmarket go-to-market efforts, call it, 3 years ago. We've talked over the last few years about that being a bigger component of our growth and our go-to-market motion. And I think that has been a -- it's been a significant contributor to our growth over the last, call it, 24 months.

How do you think about the balance of like the new logo opportunities there, but also like the product portfolio has grown so much, that balance of like kind of selling back to base. Like where are we in terms of like that team and the investments kind of in monetizing the back-to-base motion?

Yes. I mean the back-to-base motion has been another growth driver for us. So if you go back to the time of ACA, which was, call it, 2016, something like that, 2016, '17. In that timeframe, we would have started to build a back-to-base motion in our sales team. You're laughing because that was a while ago [indiscernible].

[indiscernible] myself when I see it, but you're right.

That was really the start of it. I mean that was the point where we really started to build out. And it had small beginnings. It was a small handful of people that were focused on selling our solutions back into the customer base. And since that time, every single year, that team has grown and probably grown -- it has grown at a faster pace than our outside field-based salesforce. And I think you've seen that relative to us having a larger customer base and also a larger solution set to sell back into that customer base. So at the time of the IPO, we would have had $200 in chargeable per employee per year across the suite. And today, that sits at $550 and has -- we've continued to grow that year in and year out. So I think 2 things. You have a larger client base, and you have a larger PEPY, larger products you have to sell into that client base.

Has the -- is it an accident that the PEPY expansion has kind of mirrored this focus on the enterprise? And I want to understand for your enterprise or like a market customers, like what are they taking in terms of the broader product suite versus like, I don't know, maybe it's hard to unpack that. But I'd love to understand the perspective there.

No, I think -- I mean as we've -- I don't think we set out to say, hey, we need to go upmarket and therefore, we need to build out these solutions. I think our belief was to better serve the core of our market, these are solutions that we think will be compelling, either because we've had clients ask us for them, which happens. We pay a great deal of attention to our clients and their needs and what they're asking for. I think we've also seen things like video, where we believe there is a significant differentiation and need there from a communications perspective. So as we build Community, as we brought video into the platform, those were things that we believe would serve the market. And I think almost all the investments that we've made from a product expansion perspective have been interesting to large market clients. But it really started with a focus on what do our clients really need, how do we create a better client experience, how do we create a better employee experience. I think those are all things that have resonated upmarket.

Do you feel like the -- what customers are asking for, has that kind of -- did COVID change that at all? And has that changed kind of like the philosophy in terms of like what you're doing in terms of building new products?

Yes. I think what clients expect today is different than what they would have expected pre-COVID. So I think as you see sort of 2 different dynamics. One is the younger generations coming into the workforce, I think, have a fundamentally different expectation of what consumer-grade technology, how they're engaging with it, what they're being offered and how it's -- how they experience it. . And then I think the other is, as you've seen workforces go more remote, there is -- people expect a different way to engage. So as in the course of COVID, and I think that remains today, if you have a larger swath of employees working remotely. If you're trying to communicate with an employee base and your only way of doing that is via e-mail, that's really challenging, particularly with, I think, the younger generations becoming a larger percentage of the workforce, it just doesn't resonate. So giving people tools like our community application, like video to personalize communications and drive through a different medium has really resonated with clients. It's really resonated with employees. And I don't think that, that was necessarily as much of an expectation out of the gate pre-COVID as it is today.

What is the adoption been like there for some of those? Like I'm surprised by that, too. But I'd love to understand maybe what the adoption is for some of the newer modules that -- in the engagement across the portfolio?

Yes. I mean I'll give you an example with video, which I think when we launched that was right at the beginning of COVID. I don't think the market fully understood what the use case would be. And during the course of the first, we would normally expect, call it, 10% take rate on a new solution in the first year, something like that. We would have seen that go from pretty quickly into that 25% to 30% to 35% sort of adoption rate over the course of the first year. And I think that just is -- it's a great example of the type of solution that clients weren't necessarily asking for. We could see a use case for and all of a sudden, almost overnight in the course of COVID and then that has continued since COVID, it's been an expectation of how people communicate.

I want to hit on AI. It's been kind of a key topic at the conference. And maybe just understand how do you look at that both internally, to think of how you can like automate some processes? And also to what extent could that be a monetization opportunity longer term?

Yes. I mean I think from a product perspective, we have started -- we've been investing in AI and machine learning over the course of the last 6 years. So we -- this is not a new initiative for us in the business. If you think about what we've been able to do with modern workforce index and insights that we provide, which is AI and machine learning-driven analytics that we've launched 3, 4 years ago, we have been continuously focused on the ability to drive additional insights to drive better use cases and utilization across our client base. And skip forward to today, we've been, I think, an early deliverer, a market leader in terms of the delivery of use cases that are really, I think, supported by AI. So think about the ability to generate communications within the platform using AI. Think about the ability to generate job descriptions. Just 2, I think, simple examples that are pretty practical and resonate well with users of the platform, whether that's hiring managers or HR admins, the ability to take time, give them back time through the use of those types of tools has been meaningful.

Do you think that accelerates the pace of adoption kind of off some legacy players? So like if you're thinking about doing that in-house and now the benefits are much more significant, so how does that change kind of the overall pace of adoption?

We've been focused on it because I think it certainly increases the value prop that we're able to offer. So I think as those use cases become more and more meaningful, I think those that are providing those capabilities become more and more attractive in the market and those that don't will have even more headwind.

I'm pivoting here a bit, but just on interest rates. Like obviously, there's some belief that maybe they will change a little bit. Like how do you guys kind of forecast that and thinking about that as the -- on the numbers?

Yes. I think for context, we hold, on average, probably about $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion of client funds this fiscal year, which is made up of combination of payroll funds as well as tax funds, and we earn interest on those funds. I think what that will mean for this fiscal year is somewhere north of $100 million of interest income. And I think the -- probably the way to think about a 25 basis point change is probably worth in the sort of $5.5 million to $6.5 million of revenue on an annualized basis. Obviously, the timing of when that changes within the fiscal year will impact us. And the way that we've stepped through that, I think, over the last handful of years is most of that upside that we've seen because that certainly very highly profitable revenue is most of that has fallen to the bottom line, right? And you've seen significant increases in free cash flow margin and adjusted EBITDA margin over the last few years. We have invested a portion of that as well. So some of that upside, we've invested back into R&D. You saw that certainly last year, and we've talked about some of the benefits from a PEPY and overall product adoption standpoint. We've been able to invest a little bit and go to market as well. But we'll obviously -- we watch that closely. And to the extent you see rates come in, I think our view is we would expect to continue to drive profitability year in and year out really regardless of the rate environment.

And how do you think about that balance? Like obviously, PEPY expansion has come up a lot, right? You were thinking about the opportunity there. But the balance is kind of like reinvesting back in the product and the go-to-market versus leveraging. How do you think about growth versus margins?

I think it's certainly been a balance for us. I think our view is we've tried to be thoughtful over time. We did not attempt to drive a significant portion of that back into R&D and then in future years, have to kind of reassess that spend. So our view was most of that should fall to profitability. But to the extent we had areas of investment that we had a high degree of confidence in that we certainly viewed as incremental, whether that is from a PEPY or a revenue growth perspective, those are the types of things that we invested in. And most of the time, that was really pull forward of spend from a future quarter or a future year.

Yes, I think if you look at the profitability profile over the course of the last 2 years, you've seen us drive a fairly consistent level of profitability increase, both in terms of adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. And I think as you sit here today, and we absolutely think about that from an operating standpoint, sort of ex flow being able to drive year-to-year leverage in both of those lines. And I think as you sit here in our fiscal '24 and look at the back half and then you start to think about our planning for fiscal '25, you certainly focus on productivity and I think efficiency and the continued ability to drive margin leverage.

I'll open it up to the audience. Any questions?

Is there anything that [indiscernible]. So I'm thinking about some organic [indiscernible] that provide products and services. So if I imagine wanting [indiscernible] quite portfolio so you can [indiscernible]. Can you tell me [indiscernible]?

So the question is -- paraphrasing, is there some risk in terms of what we provide and someone's ability to come into the market and either provide another point of competition or to degrade pricing and undercut revenue opportunity. Yes. I think in our industry, and I'm speaking more broadly of payroll and HR, payroll is a fairly significant moat. And I think there have been many companies over time who have built HR point solutions for, say, recruiting is a large area of investment historically from a funding standpoint. So what you've seen over time in our industry is a fairly large number of smaller companies that have been focused on HR point solutions. You've seen a much smaller number of competitors emerge from a payroll standpoint. And it's because payroll solutions are pretty complicated because you're dealing with all of the regulatory landscape state to state, at least within the U.S., is a nontrivial build from a software development standpoint. And you don't -- you have -- it takes a long time and is a fairly expensive proposition. And so you've seen a much smaller number of competitors emerge from a payroll perspective, and I think that's the real sort of moat at the core of the business in our industry. And that's not to say that someone couldn't come in and try and disrupt that. You use the example of somebody like Intuit. They have been in and out of the payroll business for more than a decade. And I think it's -- that's more a comment of -- I think that's historically accurate. It's not to say that they couldn't develop some different thesis or different point of view and try and go at it differently. But I think we haven't seen a significant shift in sort of the core of the competitive landscape over the last handful of years. You have -- it's very competitive. But I don't think we've seen a massive shift in the competitive landscape over that period of time. Again, not to say that someone couldn't take a run at it. But I think the part of it that's a nontrivial lift is really the payroll piece of it all.

You guys mentioned that the market itself productivity [indiscernible] the softness. And the final reason to be significant outside of the [indiscernible]. So if you could expand on how -- what kind of [indiscernible].

Sure. So paraphrasing, just a question about the dynamics in the upper end of our market and what we've seen there over the course of the last few quarters. So I think if I step back, I mean I think the -- going back to some of the prior comments over the last few minutes. We have definitely seen growth in the upper end of our market. We've been -- it's been a growth driver for us over the, call it, the last 3 years. We've put incremental investment there from a go-to-market perspective, from a product perspective. And I think coming -- if you go back to probably Q4 of our last fiscal year, we would have started to see sales cycles. And I don't think this is unique to us in terms of our business or even our industry because I think you've heard similar sort of commentary across enterprise software. But we would have started to see sales cycles slow down. And then I think what we mean when we say that is we would have started to be more levels of deal review. We would have seen more demos occur in a sales cycle. You would have seen those sorts of that evidence of elongated sales cycles. Now I think the thing that we would say that's the positive side is you've continued to see pipeline grow. So you haven't seen a lot of deals fall out necessarily. So you've seen pipeline grow. You've seen continued interest from a buyer perspective. But you've seen the sales cycles elongate for the 2 reasons that I described. I think there's part of that, that is macro. And I think when you look at enterprise software sort of buying cycles, that's definitely a factor from an overhang perspective, I think from a controllable standpoint, I think we have come up the maturity curve over the course of the last couple of years in terms of how do you drive the productivity that you want to see from a larger market sales team. And if you think back to where those folks would have come from in our business, we would have grown that organically. And as that gets bigger and bigger, you start to hire people from outside of the business. And I think that has happened also at a time when you've started to see macro impact, you've started to see sales cycles elongate. And I think that's where you get our comments of we haven't seen the same level of productivity that we think we have seen, that we think we could see. And you try and support those teams through drive training, you drive support across the entire enterprise from an implementation, from a service, from a product perspective. Those are all the investments that you make as you come up that maturity curve.

I think we're out of time. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate the time.

Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate the interest.