SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. (SSNC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Hello, everyone. My name is Alexei Gogolev. And today, I'm delighted to welcome at our Boston TMC Conference, SS&C CFO, Brian Schell; and Company IR, Chand Madaka. Wonderful to see you both at our conference. And I hope that you, Brian and Chand, are getting along well since that Broncos-Chiefs game back in January.

And speaking of competition, Brian, maybe you could start by elaborating a bit more on the competitive environment for each of the segments of the wealth investment technology. And specifically, I'm asking this in light of the recent acquisitions that were conducted by one of the competitors.

Sure. So first off, thank you, and thank you for the team. It's been a terrific conference and a lot of great conversations today. With respect to competition, and particularly within the WIT business, the Wealth and Investment Technology, I kind of break that down probably in 4 broad categories as far as kind of that almost defined by the, I'll call it, the asset type of an industry that they're in. And first would be the insurance market and catering to that. And there's a product there with our primary cloud-based product there: Singularity. And we continue to try to -- sort of the high end of that market or the more complex, the larger firms that have the most complex needs, and that business continues to be pretty steady from that standpoint. And I'll come back to the broader point of what we see competitively and the movement. Within the asset management space, our primary offering there is Genesis. And we continue to see, again, also cloud-based, that's probably the most competitive environment that we're seeing as far as everyone there and the new offerings. We think some of the competitive advantages there, our ability to integrate with Eze and having a pretty seamless offering. Quickly transition then to the alt space as the third category, which is probably the largest, what we're probably more traditionally known for, servicing that community with private markets, hedge fund, other alternatives, and primarily service with Geneva as I'll call it kind of the industry gold standard and then a cloud-based version with Eze also integrates with Eclipse. And then finally the wealth platform with primarily -- with Black Diamond. And all of that competitive environment, we see it there. It's not necessarily increased per se. Like I mentioned, the asset management is probably the most competitive. But as we wrap that all together and what does that look like, right? So particularly with M&A activity going on, is what we see and where we compete most effectively has been the largest and most complex of those managers who are looking at either multi-strategy, mostly asset class. We actually, essentially, we don't replicate what the custodial records are; we actually have a true accounting of the records, which at that more sophisticated, more complex level, we think, is necessary, and they actually require. So those focused solutions across those different types of asset managers are really more of what we're looking at and being able to support with our scale. And again, there will continue to be competition, but reinvestment in R&D and innovation will continue to be something that we're focused on.

And within the Wealth and Investment Technology segment, the products that you've mentioned, can you talk about how they integrate and overlap with one another? And what sort of customers do you typically target with those solutions?

Yes. So that's -- there's been a little bit of, as you know, we've, I'll call it, simplified a little bit of our go-to-market offering, and we've consolidated a couple of product offerings. So where that shows up is a, like I said, a much simpler go-to-market offering to the client that we're talking to, from the solution set that they're seeing. And it's also a simplification of our sales force in that go-to-market effort. We're seeing a much more efficient R&D spend as we continue to, I'll call it, simplify our product lineup. Those enhancements that we may have been making to 5 to 8 different products are now a much smaller set because it can deliver more focused kind of enhancements and innovation that we're trying to do because of that set. So that overlap, particularly with Eze into Genesis and into Eclipse, the -- moving it towards a cloud-based offering, which then also allows us to offer the enhanced services as far as so they don't have to be on-prem, we can actually service them with a big part of our business as well. So those type of integrated support items we think are very important overall.

And there's obviously a significant benefit of owning multiple SS&C products simultaneously. But how does that enable you to better compete in some of those more saturated verticals?

So I would say that the most obvious, and while maybe not the biggest quite yet, but probably one of the -- probably the highest-growing areas would be retail alts, for example, right, with owning the software and also providing the services, like you think about Geneva and you think about that combination of our transfer agency capabilities within the GIDS world, with our fund administration business within that alt space, and really having a dominant position of being able to serve that retail alt space here as well as maybe the ALPS Advisors as well. And so we're seeing a lot of really wins when it comes to people doing that, because it's a -- still a bit more of a manual process. It's still complex. But we have a couple of market share-leading kind of solutions brought together -- and with Retilotis is the first one that I can think of when we do that, right? You see the combination of our ability to deliver Geneva with our fund administration business. You see the, I mentioned briefly, the Eze integration being seamless with Eclipse. So there's multiple layers there that we want to make sure it feels very native as it's just at a simple -- not even an extension, but very much part of that software solution.

And we obviously talked about one of the segments, but this is a very large business. So zooming out, could you talk about broader trends that you're seeing for those key divisions and key verticals? And where is the most potential for growth acceleration longer term?

Yes. I'll start with where we kind of ended with the WIT business. I would say some of the milestones that we see around there has been, those that aren't already converted to a cloud-based solution, those conversions to a cloud-based solution, I think, is going to be important. And we've had a lot of success along the way. And a lot of what we see on that is that's not a simple revenue replacement of a one for one. A lot of times, we see clients taking on enhanced services when they upgrade to a cloud-based set. And so sometimes we see a conversion that results in anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5x the original revenue, contract size because it also enables not just on-prem to cloud, but also the ability to outsource a portion of those services. So we see those add-on services that they want us or have the flexibility then for us to be able to take on. Some of the others that we've seen is this -- especially with the large ones because a lot of our client set -- while we do serve all ranges of clients, from the start-ups to the most complex organizations across the globe, obviously, there's more concentration in the larger organizations, but we see them increasingly successful and increasingly looking for more, I'll call it, answers to complex either asset classes, geographies or solutions that they're looking for. And so I think we're well tailored to see that from that standpoint. We see the same thing in health care as it gets more complex. So looking for a modern technology solution in the health care industry is another item we see very broad brush. So that complexity continues to be a theme that we see across kind of all of our verticals.

And if we talk about your growth algorithm, can you remind us what is the level of price increases that you're assuming this year? And how does it compare to previous years?

Yes, the last couple of years, and this year will be no -- not much different than the prior year, looking at, I'll call it, 1.5%-ish. And that's been pretty consistent, call it, basis points above and below that the last couple of years. It hasn't been a primary focus. We have a lot of contracts that we've been building in, CPI changes linked overall that will kick in based on, call it, renewal of a year. Even if it's not a brand-new contract, it's just, I'll call it, the year anniversary based on the CPI change, whatever month that may have been signed up for and it's agreed-upon index. So it hasn't been a huge part. There are some areas where they're a little bit more price sensitive. But others, we've been pretty moderate in our pricing approach. But I think down the road, it is an opportunity for us as we continue to look at it and be more surgical about where does it make sense, where do we have new offerings, where do we maybe -- have we maybe potentially underpriced our offering, and take a harder look at that going forward.

I've always had the perception that SS&C is more of a premium pricing solution. But has the pricing gap with competitors narrowed?

My sense is, given that we haven't been as -- it hasn't been as big a part of our growth strategy, that's likely the case. I think our premium position is more about our, I would say, our broader solution set and the premium offering because you can do so much more with it that it comes with a higher price tag versus we charge 20% more for the exact same product. So I think it's a more capable product than that has a higher price tag.

And one of your largest segments, the alternatives business, has been performing pretty well despite the volatility. How much of your revenues are correlated to the stock market?

It's hard to prove what that correlation is to the stock market per se. And I'll just give you a real quick kind of here's why it's not. It's helpful, I think, for a lot of reasons, and whether it's sentiment, influencing flows or whatnot. But about 60% of that particular business in the alt space is tied to hedge fund business and the revenues. And that was up, call it, mid-single digit. And that's a group of large multi-strategy funds, so I can't say, "Oh, they're just long only." They're long short. They may have all types of blended strategies that are involved in their strategy. So you don't see as much of a positive correlation to AUA to say the S&P was up 10% type of approach. The other thing that also, I'll call it, mutes the impact or kind of really dampens the correlation is the increasing portion of that business that is now comprised of private markets right? So you have private credit, which is growing very, very strong. You have private equity. And essentially, when you have the private credit, you need a sophisticated software to be able to manage that type of asset. And as that has grown, we've seen our share grow to be able to administer that. And so that's now probably in excess of 25% of the GlobeOp business, and that grew in the teens. You have -- then the third component of that is the retail alts, a little over 10% of that business, and that grew north of 20% on a year-over-year basis. So again, those -- the last 2 don't have as strong of a correlation for obvious reasons. You don't have the day-to-day mark. You don't have that volatility, that fluctuation. And you have an increasing, okay, asset class that's growing in dollars flowing into those assets that really mutes the impact of the overall kind of revenues tied to, say, for example, the S&P 500 index.

And then with regards to the AUA that you disclosed, while it did grow in Q1, growth decelerated. Is this something that is more company-specific or industry-specific?

I would say it's -- they're probably somewhat correlated. I think it's more company. But what we've seen is because we've had success in the growth of that AUA, it's showing a more positive growth pattern than, say, the entire industry from best we can tell from the assets and all of our research. So it's better than the rest of the industry that we've seen. The underlying trends that what we believe is happening is, because we do serve some of the largest and most complex funds, we've seen them be the most successful like within the industry. So their success has translated to a higher market share and our success. So you've seen the AUA grow, we think is a higher rate, say, than the, I'll call it, the net inflow/outflow of the broader industry.

Perfect. And then moving to the retirement segment. Obviously, another very big area for your business. Can you elaborate on the impact of the recent acquisition of Insignia on GIDS division and your long-term outlook, especially as you expand into international markets?

Yes. So this was a terrific partnership that we're very excited about, both Insignia as a partner as well as establishing even greater presence in Australia as well as the broader superannuation kind of industry and that retirement, as you mentioned. And we mentioned on the last call that kind of the range of the $35 million to $70 million for the back half of this year on the lower end of that. And then for the full year, doubling that with an expectation that goes live in the beginning of the third quarter. So it's a second half impact for SS&C as kind of a baseline expectation. So we're working very hard towards that. We think it gives us an even stronger, like I said, footprint there in Australia, establishes much more of a baseline scale for us. And we've seen a lot of terrific brand recognition that we think is continuing to lead to more business, not just among the superannuation funds and additional services, because we followed up with another press release a couple of weeks after that, after our earnings call. But we're seeing that filter into the international community and within Europe, talking to clients. And recognizing that providing such a critical service to superannuation fund continues to, let's say, win market share and share of wallet from even some of the existing clients because of proven leadership with other large institutions.

Do you think that business, the GIDS business, could return to single-digit organic growth over time?

I do. The expectation I think of that -- I was originally at low to -- 0 to low single digit. Now it looks more consistently at that low to mid-single-digit growth rate as that business continues to grow, expand, capture more share of wallet with existing clients as well as have real success growing internationally. So it's been a really good growth story for us.

Perfect. And then switching to Blue Prism, can you quantify the impact of so-called digital workers on your business internally?

So we've got, I would say, right now over probably 3,000 digital workers. And it's a little hard to specify the dollar impact. We can put a dollar number to every digital worker that we may or may not have -- if it were to be -- "replace a person." But not all digital worker tasks are the equivalent of an FTE. But we do believe that it's, I'll call it, I think last number we did put out there was roughly $100 million of dollars. We didn't have to reinvest in people that we created capacity, that we can reinvest in something else, in technology and R&D, that, because we didn't have to put it into the reconciliation work, some of the support work that you can program to do, that really wasn't as value added that you could have said, you could simply do it with a digital worker. So it's been a wonderful way for us to be more productive and more efficient and being able to, I don't want to say support the client growth in a much more efficient means. What we've also seen is that using it internally for us for other things, it has allowed us to innovate and it start to turn into sales as well. For example, within our procurement team, we were putting in place digital workers to help analyze contracts that were coming in and you can utilize the digital worker to look at nonstandard terms, call them out, quickly flag them, compare them to what they should be. And you don't have an analyst having to pour over that contract or that agreement and you can quickly get through and process so many more. And actually, we wire-frame that capability and that can be part of the slate of a sale to a client and say, "Have you tested this? Is this more than proof of concept?" "Yes. We're using it ourselves. Here's how it works." Here's -- and you can "purchase this" and with those changes. So I'd say the benefit has continued to allow us to reinvest in client-facing activities, and then the technology itself.

And speaking about the automation and analytics division more broadly, you've announced this collaboration of different stacks, technology stacks, back at the Investor Day last year under the leadership of Rob Stone. Can you describe what has been done so far? And what is the ultimate strategy that you're pursuing here?

Yes. So I think that what we've been able to do here is -- and we talked a little bit about on the call as we think about where that's going with intelligent automation, with the digital worker, the RPA and how does that bleed into agentic AI, and what does that continuum look like? And I think what we're learning and what we're seeing in working with our clients, broadly, we've seen softness in RPA across the board, not just, obviously, Blue Prism, but more broadly. And we think it's important as we look in all the workflow tools, with and including our risk management tools, that we think there's an opportunity to continue to extend that. And with agentic AI, we think that's probably going to become more a standard part of the RPA suite so that it can then start doing more and more complex tasks. I think there has been a bit of a slowdown as people evaluate. Is that an RPA? Is that AI? Is that somewhere in between? Do I need an LLM to be able to leverage that? And so that's what we're working through right now. We're doing it internally. Like I said, the best client sales tool is having -- reliant on our self, develop it yourself and using yourself and then showing them that this is how it works and this is what we do. So I expect to continue to see more of that innovation as he brings those more and more closer together and be efficient with those investment dollars.

Pivoting to Intralinks. Can you discuss how the division has weathered the somewhat weaker deal flow? And how are they expanding into deal adjacent services?

Yes. So it's definitely a weaker flow, and not just the printed, but I'd say the underlying activity as well. But we continue to, I'll say, win mandates even if we haven't seen the mandates to move forward, right, to populate the data room and start consuming information, which is really more where the revenue generation occurs. So there hasn't been as much conviction from the participants in the M&A market to have as much activity as there was in 2024 as far as the underlying diligence activity. So we'll see how that continues to progress, but it has obviously slowed down significantly. As far as some of the other things that we're doing, the non-transaction side, is they're doing a little bit more in the capital market side, not just the M&A side. So there's been a little bit more constant activity on capital markets. That becomes a little bit increasing share. And the other is the non-transaction, the more portal services that we're using. We're seeing more sales and leverage with firms using Intralinks, including this -- one of the things I didn't mention earlier, but we're using Intralinks quite a bit in our LP communication, embedded in some of our tools within Geneva and some of our other items, that allows people to access their information. And Intralinks is doing more and more of that type of work.

Switching to health care. Can you elaborate on some of the results of your JV with the big health care majors, the DomaniRx platform? And what phases of pharmacy claims does this cloud-based technology handle?

Yes. So this is -- at the end of the day, this is modern technology in the health care space, with a goal of reducing tech costs that are associated with -- again, it sounds silly, but old technology, right? So you have -- if you have the newer technology, you have less maintenance, easier to change, you have lower latency, probably, in all likelihood, this case, obviously, tighter cyber protection. And like I said, better ability to make those changes more quickly and access the data and understand it in a more real-time basis. And working with our partners embedding those type of tools and outcomes was very important to them. So we wanted them as part of that planning process and to have some skin in the game in the process such that they would essentially, at the end of the day, add their lives or their clients to that tool, again, to achieve all those efficiencies, and built on that backbone of that technology, and yet still remain independent and -- but control the direction of where that goes. So serving those regulated markets, I think, has -- is important. We can do it today. Now with Domani, we do it like I said, in a more modern tech way with lower costs. We were -- right now, we're processing more of the primary programs, our discount card programs. And I'd say the next phase with these regulated environment is going to be -- regulated markets, will be Medicare, Medicaid and commercial kind of following as the larger firms, as they roll on lives, will be -- can be state by state because of the regulation or different programs over time. So it will be a ramp-up process, the way this works as far as the volumes go. And it's a -- it's not as much of a '25 revenue effort. And then more likely the most significant impact with any contract sales that are going to be happening is going to be more of a '27 impact because a lot of times, certainly on the commercial side, it's a 1/1 start date. So all the planning and process were probably almost beyond 1/1/26. It doesn't mean there won't be incremental revenues because there's a lot of preparation, there's a lot of professional services. But the big, big kind of needle-moving changes with the large contracts that I know that you -- we've talked to Bill about before, take a little bit longer lead time.

So 2027, more likely.

For a large -- to see a large -- the impact of a very large contract. It doesn't mean it can't be signed before that, but the revenue impact in all likelihood is more of a 2027 impact. That doesn't mean 2026 is not going to grow. We still have growth expectations around '26. We have growth expectations for '25. It's just the large, large escalation of the revenue that we see that could come with a very large contract is in more likelihood 2027.

Very helpful. And looking at the overall business, can you provide a bit more color on the duality of the raise of the overall revenue guide and then a more of a conservative outlook for the organic growth guide?

Yes. So we still feel good about 2025. We still feel as good today as we did before. I think what the guidance reflects is we wanted the results of Q1 to flow through for the full year, like that was an overperformance. We did see, obviously, an increase in the FX rates. We didn't want to necessarily rely on those to raise the guidance in total revenues. And we decided that we're going to kind of more stand pat and we decided that, if we derisk a little bit, we're going to take a little bit off of the organic revenue growth at least in this period of where we're looking at right now. We've been through a lot of cycles. We haven't seen any specific signs of contract delays or longer sales cycles or, no, I'm not going to do this. But we just took a little bit more conservative approach and held the top line revenue growth where it was in addition to the Q1 beat. And so the output says, all right, we're going to come out with a slightly lower organic revenue growth rate.

It looks like that it's somewhat H2 weighted. So are there any large deals that are potentially coming that could be impacting the second half?

Yes. I would say that's -- there are probably 3 things I would say about why it looks, with the weighting of the second half. One is we expect Insignia to kick in the second half of the year. That's the guidance is built on Insignia coming on board in the second half. The second one is the Battea acquisition, which was about a year ago, those -- any revenue growth in Q4 will be organic at that point in time. And Battea transaction, while its revenue recognition has been lumpy in the past, it looks like it's following a pattern of more revenues likely concentrated in the fourth quarter as the courts tend to basically motion for payment that come through, which is the kind of the strongest rev rec milestone that occurs. And that's lining up similar, we think, '25, to what maybe '23 looked like. And then just a pipeline more broadly of where do we see the renewals and new opportunities, from what we see based on everything that we're doing, are more lining up in Q3 and Q4 than, say, Q2.

You mentioned Battea and some of the other deals that you've done. You're becoming acquisitive again. What sort of leverage do you feel would be feasible for SS&C? And could you consider using share sale versus debt?

I would say that we would likely, just again, with historical practices, we would -- our preference would be debt. We have a lot of conversations with the debt capital markets folks, our investors there, the rating agencies. And I personally believe our metrics are probably good enough to be investment grade, the first tier. But our financial policy, and we're very -- we want to maintain the flexibility. And we will lever up beyond what they would consider good investment-grade metrics. I know SS&C has levered up to 5x -- a little over 5x twice in its history. And yet the capital markets absorbed it, quickly supported the debt, and they then turned around and paid it down and reduces leverage ratio with increasing earnings of the entities that were acquired. So there is a strong history and belief and credibility of being able to lever up. Whether that's still roughly 5x, I don't know. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be given the credibility in the history. That's not to say that there's a opportunity that 5x lever up in the market right now. But that's just kind of an initial benchmark that I have in my head as to where that would be, and that would be obviously a very large transaction at this point in time to do. So that's where I would see it. And the agencies understand that, that that's where we would want to maintain that leverage or at least where we're sitting right now for that financial flexibility, such that if the debt capital markets can help create shareholder value, that's what we're going to try and do.

And there has been some consolidation in the market, especially international markets. International is about 1/3 of your total business. Any opportunity that you see to expand further?

Yes. So we talked about Insignia with the Australia; we see some of the continuation there. We have a solid pipeline into Europe as well. And to lesser extent, APAC, but we're seeing that grow. So we see it -- we see positive signs there. I mean, obviously, the bulk of the assets and what we do are North America, Canada and primarily U.S. And they continue to grow very successfully. So just by organic growth, we'll have to almost have an outsized revenue performance of new logos internationally.

Perfect. Are there any questions in the room? Great. Well, thank you very much, Brian. Great to see you. Oh, sorry.

I was just curious if you have any thoughts on how you're aligning incentives using equity compensation. Has that come up at all in terms of your philosophy? Is there any change or are you keeping it the same? We just see some conversation on retaining and attracting talent using equity. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Yes. I would say what's -- our CEO, founder, Bill Stone, many of you probably have met, he's a very strong proponent of equity incentives. And if he would -- if we could, we could put a track record of how much wealth he's been able to create for a lot of employees, and down to a very detailed level, from more junior level than what has traditionally been. I would say the change that's been more recent is -- which has been a little bit softer on the P&L line, is moving away from options and more into traditional RSUs. And the options are reserved for -- because they tend to be more expensive from the company side, but obviously, for the receiver of them, you get more leverage and exposure, is you've seen a little bit more of that transition. So you're seeing -- you'll see a little bit different expense profile as we move forward as more of those folks get RSUs versus, say, a standard option.

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I think so. I mean, yes, I mean -- yes. So from our research and from our proxy work that we do with our compensation committee and as their advisers lay out what their peers are doing and everything else, I think we're in line with practices.

And has Bill's view on capital allocation changed recently, dividends versus buybacks?

Not that I'm aware of. He's obviously the largest shareholder, so he has a big vote as to that allocation as far as the dividends. And also investor feedback, there seems to be a much stronger preference for, absent the M&A opportunity that's not there, focusing on share repurchases as a stronger weighting.

Great. Thank you very much, Brian. Great to see you.

Thank you for hosting.

Thank you.