nCino Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 31, 2023

There are 14 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ncino First Quarter Fiscal Year 20 24 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Harrison Masters, Director of Investor Relations and Strategic Finance, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, and welcome to Ncino's Q1 fiscal 2024 earnings call. With me on today's call are Pierre Nade, Ncino's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Greg Orenstein, Chief Financial Officer and Josh Glover, President and Chief Revenue Officer. During the course of this conference call, we will make forward looking statements regarding trends, strategies and the anticipated performance of our business. These forward looking statements are based on management's current views and expectations, entail certain assumptions made as of today's date and are subject to various risks and uncertainties described in our SEC filings and other publicly available documents, the financial services industry and Global Economic Conditions. Ncino disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

Further, on today's call, we will also discuss certain non GAAP metrics that we believe aid in the understanding of our financial results. A reconciliation to comparable GAAP metrics can be found in today's earnings release, which is available on our website and as an exhibit to the Form 8 ks furnished with the SEC just before this call, as well as the earnings presentation on our Investor Relations website at investor. Incino.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Pierre.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Harrison. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today. We are pleased to share the details and accomplishments of our Q1, including our continued focus on profitable growth, resulting in a 10% non GAAP operating margin as well as $29,700,000 of free cash flow. Total revenues grew 21% in the quarter, exceeding the top end of our guidance. We also experienced record attendance at our sold out user conference, Insight, a few weeks ago, with attendees representing 15 countries, 320 Financial Institutions and 29 sponsoring partners.

Speaker 2

This year, we moved the conference to Charlotte, North Carolina to accommodate the over 1700 attendees from around the globe We came to network with IPFs, share best practices, discuss the future of banking and see the latest in Sino innovations. Even as we focus on achieving our commitments around profitability and cash flow, we still expect to invest over $100,000,000 in R and D This fiscal year, innovation is at the heart of Ncino's DNA and at Incyte, we highlighted our continued product investment and recent and upcoming innovations centered on 3 key themes: automation, experience and Intelligence. Automation is where Ncino started 11 years ago when we began to automate the complex commercial lending process for Community and Regional Banks in the U. S. With automation, financial institutions benefit from faster product delivery to their customers, increased efficiency in operations and improved accuracy in their systems.

Speaker 2

Automation continues to be a fundamental part of Ncino's product strategy across all product lines, asset classes and regions. In this era of driving efficiency and productivity, we continue to automate processes that allow our customers to get more and more out of their platform investment. Within experience, we were excited to demonstrate a new Consumer front end, which integrates the simple NEXUS mobile first UI to the front end of the Ncino bank operating system, further enhancing the consumer leading experience. The 3rd key theme was intelligence. As a reminder, we launched NIC, our suite of products utilizing data analytics, machine learning and AI 4 years ago.

Speaker 2

Our close relationships with our customers helped us recognize early on the critical role data plays in running successful financial institutions. We've been encouraged by the continued growth of our existing NIC products, automated spreading, commercial pricing and profitability and portfolio analytics. The ability to provide data and insights and drive intelligence to every user at every stage of production Farm Credit Association assets, around 38% of all Canadian bank assets and 25% of all U. S. Mortgage loans originated last year.

Speaker 2

Our product roadmap is unique in that it can leverage the large data set afforded by our broad and diverse Customer base to deliver an ever increasing level of intelligence such as automated reviews and renewals, Early warnings, automated credit decisions and pricing for even more loan products as we expand upon our unique offerings. Turning back to our Q1 results. As we said during our last call, Q1 was expected to be a slow sales quarter. However, Our pipeline remains healthy and we are seeing larger deals move through the pipeline. I want to share some feedback with you that we've received from our sales in the field and directly from attendees at Incyte, representing our different market segments and geographic regions.

Speaker 2

While all segments recognize the importance of modernization, buying propensity in Q1 differed between these segments. For example, community banks, which we define as those with assets below $10,000,000,000 appear to have been relatively unaffected by liquidity concerns. Regional banks with assets between $10,000,000,000 $100,000,000 have seen slightly more impact, Although those without exposure to unsecured deposit concentrations have continued to perform well. It's within the U. S.

Speaker 2

Enterprise segment, those above $100,000,000,000 assets where we have seen the most impact, which caused lengthening sales cycles, particularly with larger sales opportunities. However, The commentary we are hearing from our customers and prospects, paired with significant opportunities in the pipeline, reinforces our belief that this is a short term situation. Institutions of all sizes are committed to modernization and investing in automation and intelligence. For example, we saw solid growth in EMEA in the Q1 in both bookings and qualified pipeline both. We also saw strong traction in APAC.

Speaker 2

Our geographic diversification is an asset and is helping to offset the current weakness in the U. S. Enterprise market. Another segment of financial services we address is mortgage. While the U.

Speaker 2

S. Mortgage market remains under pressure, we continue to grow market share with 2 more competitive takeouts in the Q1. Additionally, the integration of the Simple Lexus team into core Ncino is benefiting all aspects of the organization, including driving some of the largest pipeline opportunities in SimpleNexus' history, particularly with larger banks and credit unions. The integration of the Simple Nexus and Ncino product teams is helping accelerate our future product development efforts as well, including the consumer front end I mentioned earlier and other enhancements and integrations across the platform. I couldn't be more proud of their progress.

Speaker 2

Over my career, I've experienced many volatile market periods and economic cycles. As CEO, my goal is always to focus on execution and controlling what we can control, Regardless of short term headwinds, we went into Q1 knowing that sales, specifically with enterprise customers, would be weak given the market conditions. Yet the opportunities in the pipeline, record attendance at Incyte and conversations with our customers around the globe reinforces that we are on the right path with the right strategy. From a financial standpoint, we remain firmly committed to executing this strategy with continued profitable growth and achieving the rule of 30 for fiscal 2024. Now let me turn the call over to Joss for additional details on our progress in the quarter.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Pierre. Insight is an opportunity for us to showcase recent customer success And nothing makes us prouder than to have satisfied clients join us on stage to talk about their nCino journey. Representatives from financial institutions across market segments and geographies spoke about how they have partnered with Ncino to reengineer processes to deliver a streamlined production and faster decision with less swivel chair between systems. For example, Lisa Fraser, Chief Operating Officer of top Australian Small and Medium Enterprise Lender, Judo Bank, shared how Ncino has been a critical part of their journey and growth trajectory. Judah Bank first started with Ncino for lending.

Speaker 3

And from December 2020 to December 2022, they grew their loan book from $2,600,000,000 to $7,500,000,000 Since going live on Ncino for retail deposits in November of 2022, Judo Bank has already experienced a 5% increase in application completion rate, a 9 point increase in the bank's Net Promoter Score and an 80% decrease in customer support calls. We demonstrated new product enhancements and features, including improved borrower experiences for consumer lending, new integrations and automation for small business lending, strategic partnerships for intelligent consumer credit decisions and automated underwriting and live demonstrations of SimpleNexus mobile technology being used to expand and augment usage of the Ncino Bank operating system. Our product portfolio addresses the challenges financial institutions face today, such as commercial real estate softening, Credit monitoring and interest rate fluctuations by enabling them with intelligence and automation throughout the lifecycle of a loan. During Insight, we showed how Ncino leverages intelligence to help customers identify the likelihood of default, offer data visualization for tenancy and vacancy within commercial real estate portfolios, provide automated credit decisions, price commercial loans based on the entire customer relationship and automate the review of commercial loans. We also view an evolving regulatory environment as an opportunity to assist our customers with data capture and recording around ESG, fair lending requirements and DOT 1071.

Speaker 3

The data strategy Pierre mentioned allows us to continue innovating, adding efficiencies and delivering more value to our customers throughout our single platform. The NIC product roadmap includes predictive analytics, even more automation, easier compliance and improved monitoring. Turning to the quarter, let's discuss some of the go live milestones we achieved for customers. We completed a small business go live for a top 4 U. S.

Speaker 3

Bank. We helped a top 50 U. S. Bank replace their internally developed commercial pricing tool with Ncino's commercial pricing and profitability solution. We completed successful trade compliant retail lending implementations with several platform customers and we achieved a commercial and consumer platform rollout for a $4,000,000,000 bank within just 7 months.

Speaker 3

On the sales front, we benefited from our diversified market presence as some of the non U. S. Markets were our strongest growth regions. Our team in EMEA had another strong quarter, building on the success they had in the 4th quarter, adding 1 of the UK's top mortgage lenders as a customer for property lending. This new customer sale was an important validation point for the UK property lending market, where we are well positioned to help the largest lenders.

Speaker 3

The EMEA team also renewed, extended and grew our relationship with the top 4 U. K. Bank and closed an upsell opportunity with a top 4 French bank to support ESG initiatives. To round out achievements across our target geographies, The team signed an agreement with an existing South African customer for automated spreading. NICS solutions continue to gain traction in the U.

Speaker 3

S. As well, where we signed an over $7,000,000,000 asset California based lender for commercial lending, portfolio analytics and automated spreading. In Q1, we also closed expansion deals with 2 top 25 U. S. Banks for customer portal and additional treasury on boarding users, respectively.

Speaker 3

Customers have shared that treasury services provide not only important fee revenue, but also create stickier deposit relationships as corporate operating accounts are less likely to flow on rate alone. In fact, we believe our single effectively across multiple channels. In the U. S. Mortgage industry, we continue to acquire new logos, Cross sell additional products and win customers from our competition as we yet again grow revenues in our mortgage business despite the difficult environment.

Speaker 3

We're also nearing completion on integration work to connect with more third party mortgage LOS providers. These integrations will enable us to even more aggressively sell SimpleNexus, the largest financial institutions in the U. S. Our conviction and the opportunity to continue modernizing the financial service industry has never been stronger, and the demand we see is reflected in the strength of our customer success stories and our pipeline. Greg, can you please take us through the financial results?

Speaker 4

Thank you, Josh, and thanks everyone for joining us this afternoon to review our Q1 fiscal 2024 financial results. Please note that all numbers referenced in my remarks are on a non GAAP basis unless otherwise stated. A reconciliation to comparable GAAP metrics can be found in today's earnings release, which is available on our website and as an exhibit the Form 8 ks furnished with the SEC just before this call. We are pleased with our Q1 results. Total revenues were $113,700,000 an increase of 21% year over year.

Speaker 4

Subscription revenues for the Q1 were 97 $3,000,000 an increase of 23% year over year, representing 86% of total revenues. Subscription revenues were in line with the top end of our guidance despite the turbulence in the U. S. Enterprise Bank and Mortgage Markets. Professional services revenues were $16,300,000 in the quarter, growing 9% year over year.

Speaker 4

We did see project delays and postponements from 3 enterprise banks in the U. S. Distracted by liquidity concerns that negatively impacted professional services revenues by approximately $150,000 in the quarter with a commensurate impact on services margin. We expect these specific project delays and postponements will negatively impact professional services revenues by approximately $1,250,000 for the full year. We redeployed the Encino personnel assigned to the impacted projects into the Community Market segment, which appears to have been largely unaffected by deposit flows and continue seeing success with our managed services practice, both of which we expect will help mitigate the impact of professional services gross margin for the year.

Speaker 4

Non U. S. Revenues were $19,200,000 or 17% of total revenues in the Q1, up 35% year over year or 43% in constant currency. The APAC region contributed strong sequential growth and more than doubled year over year with the increase primarily attributable to subscription revenues. We continue to expect revenues from outside the U.

Speaker 4

S. To remain accretive to growth, primarily on the subscription revenues line. Non GAAP gross profit for the Q1 of fiscal 2024 was $73,800,000 an increase of 22% year over year. Non GAAP gross margin was 65% compared to 64% in the Q1 of fiscal 2023. Our gross margin improvement in the quarter was largely due to a year over year improvement in customer support margins and from subscription revenues being a larger contributor to total revenues.

Speaker 4

Non GAAP operating income for the Q1 of fiscal 2024 was $10,900,000 compared with a loss of $3,700,000 in the Q1 of fiscal 2023. Our non GAAP operating margin for the Q1 was positive 10% compared with negative 4% in the Q1 of fiscal 2023. We continue to focus on profitable growth and operating efficiencies leading to a balanced outperformance against expense budgets and a record quarter on the bottom line. Additionally, although we are no longer breaking out Simple Nexus, we have received questions about their impact on our bottom line and wanted to note that we expect Simple Nexus, which you will increasingly hear us refer to as our U. S.

Speaker 4

Mortgage business, to generate non GAAP operating income and contribute positive free cash flow for fiscal 2024. Despite the ongoing challenges in the mortgage market, particularly with independent mortgage banks. The Simple Nexus business continues to perform well and take market share. Non GAAP net income attributable to Ncino for the Q1 of fiscal 2024 was $8,000,000 or $0.07 per diluted share compared to a loss of $6,100,000 or negative $0.06 per basic and diluted share in the Q1 of fiscal 2023. Our remaining performance obligation or RPO was $914,000,000 as of April 30, 2023, up 1% from $905,600,000 as of April 30, 2022, with $622,600,000 in the less than 24 months category, up 10% from $567,300,000 as of April 30, 2022.

Speaker 4

FX contributed an approximately 0.5% headwind to total RPO year over year. As I noted on last quarter's call, we expected delays in closing deals in the Q1 in light of the liquidity issues in the U. S. Bank market and as such The sequential decline in RPO was expected based on our internal models. Though as a reminder, we do not drive the business to RPO or current RPO targets.

Speaker 4

Contract durations for RPO additions in the quarter were healthy and existing customers, including renewals, accounted for just over 80% of the gross additions to RPO in the quarter. Churn in the quarter of annualized subscription revenues was 8 point $6,000,000 related to prior year M and A activity, independent mortgage banks downsizing or going out of business and the expiration of some PPP agreements as I referenced on last quarter's earnings call. This amount of churn was in line with overall But from a timing standpoint, some of the independent mortgage bank churn occurred sooner than anticipated, which will negatively impact our Q2 and full year subscription revenues. We expect our churn rate to remain elevated in the 2nd quarter, but still be in line with our 6% assumption for the full year. We continue to believe that churn rates will return to We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $103,500,000 including restricted cash and following the payment of $15,000,000 on our credit line, which now has $15,000,000 outstanding.

Speaker 4

Net cash provided by operating activities was $31,300,000 compared to $1,200,000 in the Q1 of fiscal 2023. Capital expenditures were $1,600,000 in the quarter, resulting in a record quarter of $29,700,000 in free cash flow for the Q1 of fiscal 2024. Moving on to guidance. For the Q2, we expect total revenues of $114,000,000 to $115,500,000 with subscription revenues of $97,500,000 to $98,500,000 The subscription revenues guidance includes an approximately 2% revenue headwind from the impact of the churn noted above. Non GAAP operating income is expected to $8,000,000 to $9,500,000 and non GAAP net income attributable to Ncino per share to be $0.06 to $0.08 for the 2nd quarter.

Speaker 4

This is based upon a weighted average of approximately 114,500,000 diluted shares outstanding. As you heard from Josh and Pierre, we hosted our user conference in May, so sales and marketing expenses will be seasonally higher in the second quarter, which will negatively impact our bottom line performance. For fiscal year 2024, we expect total revenues to be $474,000,000 to $478,500,000 with subscription revenues of $405,000,000 to $409,000,000 The full year total revenue guidance takes the $1,250,000 of project delays and postponements and the churn I previously mentioned into account and assumes the majority of churn in fiscal 2024 occurs in the first half of the year, primarily from independent mortgage banks. Given this assumption, we expect revenue growth rates to stabilize in the second half of the year. We expect non GAAP operating income for fiscal 2024 to be $48,000,000 to $52,500,000 Non GAAP net income attributable to Ncino per share is expected to be $0.37 to $0.40 based upon a weighted average of approximately 115,000,000 diluted shares outstanding.

Speaker 4

We expect to see operating leverage continue to improve in the second half of the year. We remain confident in the opportunities in front of us and focused on continuing to execute on our profitable growth strategy, which includes achieving our Rule of 30 target for fiscal year 2024. With that, I'll open the line up for questions.

Operator

And thank you. And our first question comes from Charles Nivaughn from Stephens. Your line is now open.

Speaker 5

Hi, good afternoon and thank you for taking my question. I wanted to get a little more detail around the delayed implementations And specifically around your expectations for those deals, whether you see them transpiring at some point during the year or next year and Maybe some comments around the root causes of those delays would be helpful as well.

Speaker 2

Yes. Let me first thanks for your question. Let me first give you this assurance. Those delays in projects did not impact activation schedules of seats in any way, shape or form as per our contracts and as we have explained for your modeling before.

Speaker 4

Maybe Josh or Greg can give more details on the project itself. Yes. And so, again, from time to time projects are delayed. That's not completely uncommon. As Pierre noted, Projects in general are not connected to activation dates.

Speaker 4

So that's not part of the equation here. And we work with our customers through those. These 3 enterprise banks you We're impacted by the liquidity issues that took place in Q1. And ultimately, as they had things to prioritize and focus on, they Delayed or postponed the projects that we were working on, we'll continue to work with those customers and hopefully reengage with them as the year progresses. And again, they're able to turn their attention back to what we were working on with them.

Speaker 5

Got it. And just as a

Speaker 6

quick follow-up, I was hoping

Speaker 5

to get Comments around the mortgage business. I think, some of the churn within among independent mortgage brokers has been widely publicized, but I was hoping you Comment on the health of your remaining customer base, specifically in terms of whether they've Sort of right size their headcount at this point and more align their cost structure with environment?

Speaker 2

It appears to us from commentary And the interaction with our clients that, that customer base is stabilized and that the companies who wanted to close down or Decided to cut back on resources have done so. That's what it appears like at this stage. We are feeling very You can realize our business has been growing year over year quarter over quarter in that business. And what we're doing now is focus heavily on banking It's well, which is a more stable mortgage base. And as you can imagine, with the current turmoil in the mortgage market and the competitors, We're seeing a fantastic opportunity and we're pursuing those deals as aggressive as we can.

Speaker 4

Yes, Charles, ultimately, I think we end up with a smaller number of larger, more well capitalized IMBs. And I think that'll be a good base to grow from as the dust settles. And again, in parallel, focus on expanding in the banking credit union market, which we've had success just in the year that we've had SimpleNex part of the Encino family.

Speaker 5

Got it. I appreciate the color guys. Thank you.

Operator

And thank you. And our next question comes from Nick Altman from Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Awesome. Thanks guys. Pierre, you talked about how some of these larger deals in the pipeline remain intact, but you also kind of called out the enterprise segment as being a little bit more challenged and maybe seeing

Speaker 7

a little

Speaker 3

bit incremental weakness in the quarter. So I guess my first question is just what are sort of these larger enterprise level financial Tution is telling you from a buying propensity perspective, are they telling you sort of wait to the second half? Is it initiatives are just shelved in the interim? Just sort of any incremental color you can Provide for us around what the customers are exactly telling you about getting some of these larger initiatives across the line?

Speaker 2

Yes, thanks. Realize that liquidity issues and the pace at which it happens, if you look at Silicon Valley Bank that in 10 hours, The deposits were drained. That was a shock to the system that is unknown to most management teams currently in their seats. So you clearly got this shock effect and then people started looking at their own balance sheets and want to make sure that they've got the right allocations and the right liquidity as needed. That shock effect, I would say, is largely over now.

Speaker 2

Banks feel confident that they can proceed with the right liquidity levels they need right now. So we see people moving away from paying attention to that back to more strategic elements. The early indications are that in Q2, we begin to see deals coming loose and it's moving down the pipelines again. The people are meeting with us. They're willing to see us on-site.

Speaker 2

And as you noticed from inside, they're willing to travel and come see us. So we feel that the worst is behind us, and we will see a slight improvement in second quarter and then a pickup in 3rd Q4. But that's the commentary we get. We also see that already in Europe. We believe Europe is ahead of the U.

Speaker 2

S. On more of a positive approach Buying approach, so I feel optimistic for the rest of the year.

Speaker 3

Great. And then just as a follow-up and going off that comment. Understand the bookings and revenue ramp dynamics that you guys have in the model. But Can you maybe and maybe not provide a growth framework for next year, but just understanding there's sort of this lag of when you book a deal to when the revenue is Sort of ramped and you guys recognize it. If some of these larger deals sort of come in, in 3Q and 4Q, Will that not necessarily be recognized in revenue next year?

Speaker 3

And if that's the case, what are you guys sort of doing in the interim? What are sort of the remedies to sort of protect revenue growth next year as you think about some of these larger deals that have Multi year ramps are a little bit more challenged. Is it upselling back in the installed base? Is it Nick? Just Sort of any incremental color you can give around, how you're thinking about revenue growth for next year given the bookings dynamics for this year?

Speaker 2

Yes, I'm going to let Greg comment on the specific mechanics and how the refrac works and how we see next year. We're not going to comment specifics on next year. But I just want to remind people on the call about the models and how they work for this year. When you have a slow Q1, Some of that revenue should have fallen this year and Q2. What happens after July has minimal effect of this year.

Speaker 2

There are some products that Quick turn on. But that's why what you're seeing us is making sure that we've got this year the credibility and The visibility to you exactly what we see is happening right now. As we look at the deals in the pipe that's going Come later in Q2 and then Q3 and Q4. That's what's actually going to impact next year. And the pipe looks healthy.

Speaker 2

We feel optimistic. We had great conversations on a global basis. And Greg, why don't you go into a little bit more into how that schedule works and what you could see?

Speaker 4

Yes. No, I think you hit it, Pierre, in terms of as it relates to things being a little bit more back end loaded This year, Nick, it really is an impact to fiscal 2024 versus fiscal 2025. And so, so as we talk about the pipe that we see, the opportunities that we see and how that plays out in the rest of the year. Again, we think that without getting into fiscal 2025, we think that's helpful for fiscal 2025. In the meantime, I think Pierre also noted, we do have a portion of our revenue base, which is much quicker from an activation standpoint.

Speaker 4

So when you think about our Simple Nexus offering and when you think about our NIC offerings, those turn ons are much quicker than the

Operator

And our next question comes from Terry Tillman from Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Speaker 8

Yes, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions as well. Maybe the first question for Pierre or Josh is just on the international side. It seems like that's Kind of definitely a class have full situation right now. There's relative strength.

Speaker 8

What's the confidence level of that activity continuing from Q2 through the rest of the year? And is it new logos or is it just the expanding portfolio of products and just activations with existing customers? Just trying to understand How much we can hang our hat on international holding in there the rest of the year? And then I had a follow-up.

Speaker 3

Yes. Good to speak with you, Terry, and thanks for the question. We are really proud of how our Europe team did in the Q1. We spoke about that. That was a bright spot for us.

Speaker 3

Signing that property lender obviously is an indication of the retail story there as well as the team's ability to execute. If you were at Insight, Jerry, you would have seen a total of 15 countries represented in this environment for folks to make that trip as a good validation. So We are absolutely seeing momentum with greenfield accounts as referenced there. You saw a South African account adopt auto spreading this quarter. So we're continuing to tell the story both the new accounts and existing accounts are seeing the benefit.

Speaker 3

Things like our ESG module, where we had an account in France adopt us for ESG. So we're proud of that. We'll keep telling the story that team has done a nice job. They had a tough start last year, if you remember our commentary, but we're seeing green shoots there and pleased with their progress.

Speaker 4

Yes. And just one more thing to add Josh is that the property lending opportunity was a net new customer for Casino. We're excited

Speaker 8

about that offering. Yes. We wish you all had one of these conferences every quarter, although I guess I would add to sales and marketing. We talked over 20 customers. It was a great event.

Speaker 8

Nick in particular stood out. So no, it was a great exposure for us. So thanks for the invitation there. The one follow-up question for you, Greg, just relates to just optically, second half of the year, there's even more operating leverage. So that's important and we get that and that's great.

Speaker 8

But with the RPO and the 24 month RPO, is that something that could erode a little bit more into 2Q and then it starts also to get better in the second half? Just kind of Help us with how we should think about that into 2Q. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Harry, to make sure I follow you, are you talking about RPO or are you talking about You're talking about expense leverage. I just lost you for a second.

Speaker 8

Yes, no, I had a preamble. The preamble was like operating leverage It gets even stronger in the second half of the year and that's great. What about the RPO and then the 24 month RPO in the near term? I mean it's kind of sluggish in the Q1. Are there optics or just comparables that will start to improve with that in 2Q or could that still be kind of challenged in the near term in relationship to what is clear cut second half strength in operating leverage?

Speaker 4

Yes, got you. Yes, I mean, Q1 RPO is seasonally slow. We've actually had RPO down I think 3 times sequentially since being public. So it's not unusual for us. And again, we tried to preview this when we were on our last call.

Speaker 4

And as I said in my prepared remarks, this is really in line with our kind of internal guides. And so we do expect that to improve as the year progresses. And again, as we look at the pipes, as we look at the conversations that we're having with our customers and As we look at the activity, I think we again expect that to improve, but nothing is out of line with what we said to you back in the end of March.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from James Faucette from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to follow-up on a couple of quick things. I guess the first is like when we look at some of the bank closures, it seems like There might be a potential and as much as 3% headwind on revenue there, but the timing and the way that they're being taken care of is a little bit uncertain. So how should we be thinking about when you should have a good idea of what that ultimate revenue headwind should be?

Speaker 2

We cannot comment on specific customer contracts or what we see there. We've got a history of success in laddering up in M and A deals. We know the companies who acquired these. Our teams are working them all. And all of that risk is built into our forecast and our guidance.

Speaker 2

So I feel pretty good about what we see from there. Josh, anything you want to add?

Speaker 3

No, those situations are different. Our focus is to continue supporting those accounts as best we can. We feel that's the right thing to do. It's also what positions us best for the future. That's where our focus is now.

Speaker 6

Got it. Got it. Okay. That's helpful, especially the commentary around how you incorporated that. And then I wanted to just touch on quickly cash flow, saw a real shift there.

Speaker 6

I want to make sure I understand what's Happening especially on the accounts receivable line and how should we think about that and The cash flow dynamics generally, is there something atypical that maybe happened near term? I just want to make sure we're calibrating ourselves correctly on a go forward basis.

Speaker 4

Yes. From a cash flow perspective, Q1 and Q2 are seasonally our highest cash flow quarters. It's been that way. But again, I think as you've seen us shift more towards profitability, we would expect that As we commented last quarter, from a year perspective, we'd expect you to see that throughout the year. And so we're proud of, the non GAAP operating income and the cash And I think from an operational perspective, there's additional opportunity to build that as the year progresses and we go into next year.

Operator

And our next question comes from Robert Napoli with William Blair. Your line is now open.

Speaker 9

Great. Thank you. I was hoping to get maybe some update on NIQ, which products are really resonating there and Kind of if you can give some color on the growth rate of NIQ and just what you feel the long term opportunity is for NIQ from a TAM or revenue perspective.

Speaker 3

Absolutely. We're proud of what we're doing there. We sit today with about 30% of bank operating system accounts leveraging Nick. We spoke earlier in our Q and A about a South African account that adopted us for auto spreading. We're really proud to have a top 50 bank in the U.

Speaker 3

S. Live on pricing and profitability and doing extremely well. Those are discerning accounts. Once we get to that size, it's a great validation point for us. But if you pull back to what we provide these customers by getting the full value chain of front, middle, back office on one platform, taking the inefficiencies out of the process, Streamlining from end to end how they take care of their customers, that gives us a great landing space to come back and inject intelligence as evidenced by What we've discussed with auto spreading, that's evidenced by the customers that we've discussed that are on pricing and profitability and there are myriad other opportunities to go back and further optimize that process.

Speaker 3

So we're pleased with that. If you're at Insight, you would have heard us really focused on the theme of intelligence And that's timely and is much speed at the industry and we'll continue going farther.

Speaker 9

Any additional metrics on growth rate or size of the business and Long term potential for the size of that OpenIQ?

Speaker 2

Yes. Currently, the TAM we've got out there is about a 20% lift On the current base, and we've made that public as we start building that out. Obviously, over time, we believe there's Opportunity to expand pricing on that as those products mature, number 1. And number 2, lots of opportunity to add products. Remember, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the amount of data that we have around the industry that banks is willing to share with us It's tremendous and they are working with us on use cases as well where we can build more new products.

Speaker 2

So I'm very optimistic about that.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Then follow-up on just the investment in I mean, you've done I appreciate the operating profitability. It's great to see that. Obviously, the challenges as you have flat investment in sales and marketing year over year, how do you keep the growth engine rolling? So how have you been able to obviously, it seems like you had some nice wins in the quarter, but how do you adjust to take from the very high growth in sales and marketing to having that flatten out, but still looking to have the growth momentum for next year and the next several years.

Speaker 3

Yes. And that compare, when you look at it, does include some periods where we made structural investments in new markets and it takes a while Given the complexity of what we do and the sales cycles that we navigate to mature those bets and continue to optimize that. So We're pleased with where we sit. As of now, we see a total of 16 cross sales of SimpleNexus that we've done into the nCino customer base. When I look at the growth of pipeline of large financial institutions with Simple Nexus.

Speaker 3

It shows that that market coverage is helping. Look, we continue to throttle it. But as we've Delivered on our commitment for our profitable growth framework, we are not sacrificing market coverage, because we believe in the long term and we'll continue to put the people on the field that we need to

Speaker 4

Yes. And to that point, if you look year over year, sales and marketing, again, relatively flat. We talked about some of the actions that we took, where that was the least impacted part of the organization versus, for example, G and A. And so, we want to make sure we have the right investments in place. We have that Sam covered, and that we are making sure from a growth standpoint, we are executing as well as we can.

Speaker 9

Thank you.

Operator

And thank you. One moment please. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Kenneth Cicholski from Autonomous Research, your line is now open.

Speaker 10

Hey, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking the question here. If I do the math right, it looks like you're forecasting subscription revenue growth of I think it's around 16% or so in fiscal 2Q and in the second half of the year. So I guess is this the new normal for the next handful of quarters just given where the RPO growth is at the moment? And I guess is the expectation to get back to that kind of 20% plus type of growth next year?

Speaker 4

Yes. Hey, Ken. Thanks for the question. Well, from a quarter standpoint, we'll focus on Q2. But ultimately the churn specifically that we noted in the headwind really impacts Q2.

Speaker 4

That was really the comment that we tried to make in terms of Revenue stabilizing from a growth standpoint in the second half of the year. And so we would really view Q2 as the low point and again driven Significantly by the churn that happened, which the good news is that we're getting it behind us, as the year progresses in the first half of the year. So I think that's how we respond to that question, as you think about the full year. Okay.

Speaker 10

All right, great. And then you mentioned the rule of 30 and it looks Like the non GAAP operating income guide and the margin guide is up slightly versus the old guide. And So you're implying kind of better margins versus prior. So where's the outperformance coming from on the margin side? And then maybe you could just give us an update on your Reinvest versus kind of letting the margins drift higher, just because we are seeing

Speaker 8

a little bit of a

Speaker 10

slowdown in this macro environment?

Speaker 4

Yes. Again, you'll see leverage across all of our operating expense lines.

Speaker 11

I

Speaker 4

think as we've consistently stated, we are going to continue to on the side of growth. And so that remains our focus. And so again, we've been operating the business. We see continued leverage, as I noted in my remarks, second half of the year from an expense standpoint, but we're going to continue to focus on growth. And so yes, we are willing to reinvest as we see opportunities to grow in this market.

Speaker 2

Yes, I just want to add something to that, which to me was extraordinary about the culture of the company and how people, The employees are pulling together on this path of profitable growth. In our engineering teams, we have moved from 2 releases annually to much more of a cadence of monthly releases that's available to customers. They have to take it every 6 months. And if you look at how they embrace that, the productivity improvements and the pace of development that we see now versus the past, tells you that when you shift your focus from pure growth to profitable growth and people begin to recognize the impact of Value to customer in a short term and how that could help the company, that was extraordinary. So everywhere we look In the company, we have examples like that, that is driven efficiency, which was not your main focus on your pure growth.

Speaker 2

So we feel very good about our prospects for continued leverage on the cost line. Without impacting growth? Yes.

Speaker 4

Okay. All right.

Speaker 10

Thanks so much guys. Appreciate it.

Operator

And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And we have Adam Bergere from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Speaker 12

Great. Thank you. A quick clarifying one. So the $1,250,000 lower cost services revenue for this year, can we kind of concretely Take that to mean that these 3 deals or implementations have been delayed into the next fiscal year?

Speaker 4

For purposes of guidance, that's what we are assuming. Obviously, we'll work with those customers On that in their timelines as they are able to focus back on projects versus other priority items, but that's what we're assuming from a guidance perspective.

Speaker 12

Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. And then, the commentary for the U. S. Mortgage business, I guess Simple Nexus sounds great.

Speaker 12

And I want to get your thoughts on what specifically about that product do you think is kind of helping to drive the market share gains even in such a tough environment? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Okay. Civil Nexus has built a fantastic product that has Been really well received by the customer base. I was excited and insight to see a customer who is one of our early adopters of the integration of the front end of Simplenex System Inc. Operating system. They got live in 60 days.

Speaker 3

They've been extremely successful, but we are proud of that. The first Reason that we believe they're continuing to gain market share in this environment is they have the most intuitive and well adopted mortgage solution in the market. We think that team and the culture and the way they focus on their customers also shines through. And Ascino's corporate stability and overall continued Good execution is another strong point for folks who are paying attention to that with their software vendors.

Speaker 2

Yes. Then if you look at us expanding the front end to include other retail and small business products. That was very, very well received at our conference, and we saw a lot of interest in people standardizing their customer onto a single platform. That also opens up our core platform with APIs because we use exactly the same APIs for that front end integration from Simple Nexus to the back end. And that's going to be exposed to our larger customers to access core Ncino through those APIs.

Speaker 2

So that whole development has been very positive and that's also driving demand for Simple Nexus because they can see they can do mortgage And then by the end of the year, they can start migrating some retail functions over as well.

Speaker 12

That's helpful color. Thank you very much.

Operator

And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Jackson Ader from SBB MoffettNathanson. Your line is now open.

Speaker 11

Great. Good evening, guys. So The first one is, do

Speaker 3

you expect that this

Speaker 11

the lengthening of kind of deal cycles will lead to a catch up maybe later in 2024? Or are you thinking, okay, this is just shifting things out?

Speaker 2

So there clearly is a point where it may accelerate bookings and concentrate that in a quarter or 2 as So what we are seeing right now is people are trying to get over a temporary slowdown, Make sure that their house is in order and then we begin to see an acceleration of deals. That's what we see in movement in the pipe and the commentary from salespeople as well as the banks. And so we are pursuing those deals as aggressive as we can.

Speaker 11

Okay. All right, great. And then are there just On the Simple Nexus side and the independent mortgage brokers, are there others that you see, like if we get I'm not saying it happens, but let's just say we have a pause in rate hikes and then a couple more come. And so we actually see maybe more independent brokers Scale back or go out of business if rates go up. Is any of that factored into that 3rd quarter, 4th quarter stabilization in the mortgage market?

Speaker 2

We've considered the possibility of a further rate hike and what impact that may have. And so our forecast today look at the full marketplace, International as well as local mortgage as well as our core Encino in the U. S, we considered all of those. Obviously, I cannot foresee an incident like what we had with liquidity issues in banks. If that happens, that's outside of what I can forecast, because that's truly a crisis.

Speaker 2

From all the commentary, both by our customers as Well, as general market commentary, I'm seeing is that the financial markets have stabilized and we feel good. We also feel that the in the mortgage business, The people who wanted to leave the business have gone, and that market is now concentrating on a few bigger players. We feel good about our positioning there. And then if you look at the vendors in our space, we feel very good about our financial stability, The quality of our product and the speed that we can implement in, so we actually see this whole situation as an opportunity.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you.

Operator

And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Mayank Tandon from Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Great. Hey, guys. This is actually Sam Salvis on for Mayank today. Thanks for taking the questions here. Just one quick one for me.

Speaker 7

You guys spoke a little bit about some of the success you had cross selling. But could you guys dive a little deeper into How cross selling was this past quarter and then maybe specifically talk about that in terms of Simple Nexus?

Speaker 3

So absolutely, as we discussed, we talked about an add on of that mix solution in South Africa, That CPP or pricing and profitability opportunity that we spoke about the top fifty account that was also an add on that went live. So the composition is going to be split between those NIC solutions for mature customers. Then we're also continuing to go where we can and take things like Simple Nexus or retail lending into those accounts. So pleased with the progress. I think part of Why we've been able to see deal size for Simple Nexus increase has been the stability of the bank mortgage market.

Speaker 3

We're proud to say that Simple Nexus' average deal size is up 35% year over year. That's a combination of good execution and market leadership. And also, we believe opening up a new market in the Bank and Credit Union side.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

And thank you. And our next question comes from Alex Blar from Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Speaker 13

Hi, this is Jessica on for Alex. I just have one quick question. Pierre, at Insight, you talked about how banks should try and leverage deep per whole customer relationships with customers, including treasury as a means of preventing deposit flights.

Speaker 2

We Exceedingly see banks understanding the value of the single platform and having a 360 view of the customer and actually drive a total Business value to them as opposed to be product focused, okay, or silo focused. And I can tell you as our products are maturing and We've got now over 80 retail lending customers using our product, okay? As that retail side is coming up And our treasury logos is up 28% year over year. This whole notion that you can have a platform that Client focused with multiple products and you can actually center your attention to that customer and customer profitability with our tools and NIC, etcetera. It's really resonating because otherwise your deposit flow goes to the 4 big banks and they have to find a way to embrace The consumer, the retail customer get those deposit in the banks because those are your $1300 to $2,000 deposit accounts And they don't flee for rates.

Speaker 2

And so that message was very well received and it was interesting how many bankers came to me and commented on the fact that they didn't make this deposit loan connection from the consumer and appreciated those insights. So we are feeling good about our strategic direction and the products we're building, and I think the banking sector is getting it. I think

Speaker 3

what we've really seen to add to that and then further to the cross sell question from the prior question is just a revisiting of the basics that to maintain those organic deposits make them sticky. These banks want to fulfill a broad set of really nice products. They want to fulfill them very well across multiple channels. So when you look at expansion deals we had this quarter, with Top 25 banks even in this environment, one of them adding our treasury solution, one of them adding portal, it aligns to that thesis.

Operator

And our next question comes from Josh Betts from KeyBanc. Your line is now open.

Speaker 7

Yes. Thank you so much for taking the question. Yes, I wanted to ask you a little bit about Some of the larger enterprise banks, I think you cited there were 3 of them with delays. Just when you kind of double click on Really some of the color that they gave, just if there were any consistencies and certainly Also how they're thinking about, right, the reengagement

Speaker 4

of certainly implementation, just anything

Speaker 7

that stood out there would be great. We

Speaker 3

see the market very focused on the expense line. And even if they are not totally Kicking out a project, they may want to look more closely at the resources they have on the project and try to run with the lighter team. So I think all those institutions have been watching the macro and are trying to be as efficient where they can spend and thoughtful with new investments. So I mean that's the high level theme. I've not had banks say we don't think it's important to modernize.

Speaker 3

I've not had banks say that they don't need to digitize. But they have the CFOs too, who look at expense lines and they try to be thoughtful throughout this macro reality.

Speaker 4

Yes. And Josh, I think specifically with those, I would note again from a timing standpoint, I think prioritization and addressing The liquidity matters that were going on played a large part in them focusing elsewhere for the near term.

Speaker 7

Makes sense. And then, yes, I'm also curious, I think one of the messages from certainly probably a lot of those Similar banks, really the enterprise category is this attitude towards tightening as we go into the second half of the year, it's the calendar year. So I'm just kind of curious like historically, are there any Correlations that you've observed on the tightening within banks and then a little bit related. Just in terms of some of your deposit products, is that something to really maybe this Creates opportunity as banks become a little bit more focused on garnering deposits. Just curious if there's anything there to highlight as well?

Speaker 2

Yes. Look, if you look at the cycles, the last time you had liquidity crisis like this or raising rates was in the early 80s. But unfortunately, none of these bank managers was actually in senior enough positions to understand what was going on at the time. So if you look overall, what I would say is when we started the company in 2012, We hit the market at the right time because people realized you cannot stop monetizing because you fall behind. Some of the big companies attend It has 1,000,000,000 of dollars in IT budgets and they keep on investing, okay.

Speaker 2

And so your mid to lower end markets struggle to catch up with technology investments. So I don't think this is going to be a long term slowdown of spend. As a matter of fact, there's a number of studies out that says banks says no, we're going to keep on spending. You happen to stumble across the 2, 3, 4 that clearly had to address liquidity issues and they just And to focus on saving the bank, that is very different than something that's systemic across the industry. So what my view is that spending will continue.

Speaker 2

It will actually accelerate towards the second half of the year and banks will continue to do this. Realize this, In these rate environments, the net interest margin squeeze is very tight on them. That lowers their income. The only lever left It's actually operational efficiency. So you could look at their efficiency ratios.

Speaker 2

And if you look at the commentary that we get back from Our surveys from our banks, Ncino drives them to a much higher efficiency ratio, also a higher close rate on loans, and that's what they need. So overall, I think we will just come back in the second half of the year and continue on as always. It just takes a while to get there.

Operator

Very helpful.

Speaker 8

Thank you,

Speaker 2

Pierre and team.

Operator

And thank you. And I am showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Pierre Nardet, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you all for joining us. Thanks to our shareholders for their support and our employees for the innovation. And I look forward to speak to you more at a later date. Thank you so much.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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Key Takeaways

  • Q1 Results: Total revenues grew 21% year-over-year to $113.7M, with a 10% non-GAAP operating margin and $29.7M of free cash flow, exceeding the top end of guidance.
  • Product Investment & Innovation: Committed over $100M in R&D this fiscal year, focusing on three pillars—automation, enhanced consumer experience, and intelligence via the NIC AI/analytics suite.
  • Geographic Diversification: International revenue rose 35% (43% in constant currency) in Q1, driven by strong bookings in EMEA and more than doubling APAC growth, offsetting U.S. enterprise headwinds.
  • Sales Pipeline & Enterprise Dynamics: U.S. enterprise banks extended sales cycles amid liquidity concerns, but a healthy pipeline and positive customer feedback point to short-term delays with improvement expected in 2Q and 2H.
  • Mortgage Momentum: SimpleNexus continued gaining market share in a challenging U.S. mortgage market, with average deal size up 35% y/y and deeper integration accelerating cross-sell opportunities.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
nCino Q1 2024
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