Altus Group Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 4, 2023

Key Takeaways

  • Altus reported Q1 constant-currency revenue growth of 11% and a 43% increase in adjusted EBITDA, driving a 330 basis-point margin expansion to 14% and adjusted EPS of $0.33.
  • Analytics segment revenue rose 12% with recurring revenue up 19% (now ~90% of total), and margins expanded 740 basis points thanks to focused go-to-market investments and cloud migrations.
  • Property Tax revenues grew 13% driven by double-digit gains in Canada and the U.K., supported by a robust backlog ahead of the new 2023 U.K. rating list effective April 1.
  • Free cash flow was negative $34.4 million, reflecting annual bonus payouts, restructuring payments, and temporary billing delays tied to the ERP cutover, though collections improved in April.
  • The balance sheet remains healthy with $42.9 million in cash, $350.1 million in debt, and net debt-to-EBITDA of 2.13×—well under covenant limits—supporting reinvestment, debt pay-down, and M&A flexibility.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Altus Group Q1 2023
00:00 / 00:00

There are 10 speakers on the call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Abby, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Altus Group First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Thank you. And Ms. Camilla Bartosiewicz, you may begin your conference.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Altus Group's Q1 conference call and webcast for the period ended March 31, 2023. The news release announcing our results was issued after market close this afternoon and is posted on our website and SEDAR profile, along with our MD and A and financial statements. A presentation to accompany our prepared remarks has also been posted to our website under the Investor Relations section. Joining us today are CEO, Jim Hannon and our CFO, Pavan Chhabra.

Speaker 1

We'll start with some prepared remarks and then we'll move right into the Q and A session. If we miss any questions, please contact me directly by e mail. Some of our remarks today may contain forward looking information. Forward looking information is based on assumptions and therefore subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties are detailed in our forward looking statements disclaimer in today's materials.

Speaker 1

Please be reminded that Altus Group uses certain non GAAP financial measures, non GAAP ratios, total segments measures, Capital Management Measures and supplementary and other financial measures as defined in National Instruments 50Q112. We believe that these measures may assist investors in assessing an investment in our shares as they provide additional insight into our performance. Readers are cautioned that they are not defined performance measures and do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS and may differ from similar computations as reported by other similar entities and accordingly may not be comparable to financial measures as reported by those entities. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with IFRS. An explanation of these measures are detailed in today's IR materials, including the news release, presentation, MD and A and other filings with the Canadian Securities Regulators.

Speaker 1

I would also like to point out that unless otherwise specified, Altus growth rates we'll be referencing on this call are on a constant currency basis over the same period in 2022. Okay. Over to you, Simon.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Camilla and good evening to everyone on the call. We had a positive start to the year continuing our multi quarter trend of top line growth and margin expansion. We are now on 8 consecutive quarters of double digit revenue growth and 3 consecutive quarters of delivering margin expansion at the consolidated level. Beginning with our consolidated Q1 results, although we had foreign exchange rates working in our favor, as Camilla pointed out, Unless specified, the growth rates I will be referencing are on a constant currency basis. Revenues were up 11%, supported by double digit growth at both Analytics and Property Tax.

Speaker 2

Adjusted EBITDA was up 43%, driving a nice 330 basis point improvement in margin, which stood at 14%. Profit was negative $2,400,000 which is $9,000,000 better than last year. As a reminder, Q1 of 2022 included an $8,400,000 restructuring charge. Q1 of 2023 reflects higher interest rates on our bank credit facilities. We also incurred higher year over year expenditures related to the implementation of the new ERP and CRM systems.

Speaker 2

We're proud to say that our ERP went live in Q1. I'd like to congratulate the team for their hard work in getting us there. For the planned phasing of the project, the CRM deployment continues through Q2. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.33 Free cash flow was negative $34,400,000 Free cash flow in the quarter reflects The impact of our annual bonus payouts, payments related to our 2022 global restructuring program and increased working capital balances due to anticipated delayed billings as we cut over to the new ERP system. As expected, we're seeing an improvement in April in collections and working capital operations.

Speaker 2

Turning to our business segment performance, starting with analytics. As you will see in our results, the momentum continues in analytics. Revenue was up 12% and notably recurring revenue was up 19%. All analytics revenue is now organic. To offer more color.

Speaker 2

Revenue growth continues to be driven by strong recurring revenue performance, which is where our go to market efforts and investments focused. This includes growth across key revenue streams in software, valuation management solutions and in data solutions. A high percentage of our recurring revenue growth continues to be driven by customer expansion and supported by the ongoing transition to cloud subscriptions and steady new customer additions. Adjusted EBITDA continues to grow with higher revenues and improved operating leverage. Overall, we're really pleased with the sustained momentum in recurring revenue growth.

Speaker 2

At $85,300,000 in the quarter, Recurring revenues represent approximately 90% of total revenues. This provides us with a resilient revenue base. The 7 40 basis point adjusted EBITDA margin expansion in the quarter reflects revenue growth and improvements in our operating model. Those include focused go to market activities, cross border salary leverage, streamlined processes and better resource management. We remain confident in our plans to expand margins in 2023.

Speaker 2

Turning to property tax, Revenue growth was solid, growing at 13%. This reflects double digit growth in Canada and the U. K. And steady performance in the U. S.

Speaker 2

In the U. K, our pipeline of cases to be settled in the upcoming quarters has grown and remains robust. We are now officially on the new 2023 rating list that commenced on April 1st and through the investments we've been making, We remain well positioned for the new cycle with a much better backlog. Adjusted EBITDA benefited from the revenue growth and our margins are holding steady for our expectations. And finally, appraisal and development advisory performed steadily in the quarter, driven by development advisory team in the APAC region.

Speaker 2

Turning to our balance sheet, We finished the quarter with a cash position of $42,900,000 and with $350,100,000 in bank debt. The funded debt to EBITDA leverage ratio as defined in our credit agreements was 2.21 times, well below our limit of 4.5 times. Applying our cash, the net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 2.13 times, representing a very healthy balance sheet. Regarding our capital allocation priorities. We'll continue to reinvest in

Speaker 1

the business to scale

Speaker 2

effectively, opportunistically pay down debt and maintain financial flexibility should attractive acquisition opportunities materialize. With that, I'll now turn it over to Jim.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Pavan. As we're sitting in Toronto tonight, I want to start with good luck to the Maple Leafs. As many of you know, I am hesitant to say I live in Florida And my colleagues around me said I was not allowed to buy a ticket to the game. It struck me as odd, but okay. They didn't know I was going to say that.

Speaker 3

All right, let's get to it. I'd like to start by thanking my colleagues for a productive start to the year. Their efforts and commitment to our mission are driving the growth of the company. Our ongoing transition from on premise software to ARGUS Cloud is tracking the plan. We ended the quarter with 67% of our ARGUS Enterprise users contracted on the cloud and expect to finish the year with a large majority on cloud.

Speaker 3

We're growing the number of users on our platform and now have over 10,000,000 valuation models in our environment, representing an estimated 960,000 unique properties modeled on Argus globally. As we expand our advanced analytics capabilities, the large volume of models in ARGUS Cloud will provide us with exceptional asset level intelligence that we can leverage to enhance the value we bring to our clients. Turning to new bookings And as noted in the name, this metric only captures new business. It does not include renewals or assets added to current portfolios, which we service. Although our pace of new bookings growth slowed in Q1, we continue to grow from a larger base of clients and with low churn.

Speaker 3

The majority of our quarterly bookings occur in the 3rd month of the quarter and the banking sector made headlines in early March. This macroeconomic news slowed down the decision making of some of our larger clients. On balance, New bookings benefited from continued addition of portfolios in our VMS business and strong ARGUS Enterprise bookings performance throughout the quarter. Our software pipeline continues to grow in line with our historical base. We remain optimistic.

Speaker 3

At the same time, We continue to keep an eye on macroeconomic conditions and will throttle our investments accordingly. Last week, We held our Altus Connect client conference, the first since the start of the pandemic. The Altus Connect conference had a terrific turnout. The attendance of many senior professionals validates the growing strategic importance of our offers across our organizations and the Altus trusted relationships in the market. The conference featured panels on a variety of topics and included a solutions cafe where we held product demos including the new Altus Market Insights offer, which is powered by the Altus Performance Platform.

Speaker 3

Overall, it was great to connect with our clients on important topics affecting commercial real estate and to foster dialogue about the topics most relevant to our industry. Actionable intelligence is a table stake requirement today. Intelligence and information are key to being nimble and responsive to changing market dynamics and investor and regulatory requirements. We deliver the combination of data, technology and expertise to our clients as offers. This is intelligence as a service.

Speaker 3

We left our Altus Connect conference with renewed conviction in our long term strategy. At the conference, clients and market experts from within and from outside Altus discussed at length the challenges and longer term opportunities created by the current macro environment. A consistent message from the experts is the significant need for transparency and actionable intelligence. Our mission to help our clients drive portfolio alpha and manage beta has never been more relevant. We continue to successfully navigate this dynamic business environment to position ourselves strategically for the longer term opportunities.

Speaker 3

We know that volatility in the market drives demand for our advanced analytics offers. Our business model is resilient and provides us with stability across various economic cycles. To reiterate, 1, we have a diversified revenue base of offers, by geography and across various customer segments. 2, we have strong recurring revenue base in analytics and highly reoccurring and repeatable client engagement at CRE Consulting. And finally, we have expense levers that provide us with flexibility to respond to macroeconomic conditions.

Speaker 3

Our restructuring activities in FY 2022 have provided us with the ability to invest for future growth, while continuing to expand margins. As we stated in our February business outlook, We're well positioned to grow our consolidated revenue and adjusted EBITDA for full year 2023. We have multiple paths to deliver on our plans and remain confident in our ability to reach our goals. Okay, let's open the line up for questions. Operator?

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

And we will take our first question from Yuri Lynk with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hey, good evening, everyone.

Speaker 5

Hey, Yuri.

Speaker 4

Jim, I'd love a bit more color on the macro and what you saw in the quarter. I'm wondering if the banking issues we saw in terms of the impact on purchasing decisions and bookings for you. I mean, do you feel that those issues served as a distraction Or was it more causing a more fundamental slowdown due to, say, tighter lending conditions in CRE and Stuff like that, just a bit more color.

Speaker 3

Sure. Great question, Gary. I want to start on that. I'm not an economist, but we listened closely to our clients last week, as I know you did as well. And we heard consistently across the board that the news in early March Kind of put everybody into a pause while they go, wait, what just happened?

Speaker 3

But the fundamentals of CRE, especially at the various segment levels. Not as you know, not all CRE segments are the same and the fundamentals are strong. The cash flows are strong, Which is why this is such an attractive asset class and will always remain an attractive asset class. So we're watching it carefully. We'll react.

Speaker 3

Right now, we're hearing mostly it's a pause. We're watching the rise of private debt funds. So the balance between the use of debt and equity And then the implication that we'll have on pricing may adjust, but our clients have a significant amount of dry powder on the sidelines and we'll they are engaging with us. As soon as they got announced, They engaged with us immediately to go deeper on valuations, which is good for us. And They immediately wanted the data on what's going on, which is in the market and what are we seeing across 100 of thousands of properties and it's great to be in that position with them.

Speaker 3

So we see it as a pause until the fundamentals change. Interest rates obviously tweak up, which is either which will be reflected in Different pricing of the assets, but we don't trade on the price of the assets and we are our revenue It's not a function of transaction volume.

Speaker 2

Yes. And just maybe to add to that, what is clear to me coming out of the Connect meeting was Our clients are looking for a trusted partner to help them navigate through the current and upcoming volatility, which I

Speaker 5

think will be a positive

Speaker 4

Yes. I mean, I was talking to a lot of the same people you were. And I mean, sometimes you walk away and you feel like they might be Because of all of this uncertainty, heavier users of your services, but That's not what we saw in the Q1, but that was obviously at the onset. So I guess just a follow-up to that. I mean, Given what you're seeing in with your bookings, do you have any expectations of throttling back investments at this point?

Speaker 3

Yes. So let me comment on what we saw in Q1. We saw a rise in the number of assets that we service in VMS and we saw A rise in the number of Argus users in total as well as Argus Cloud users. So we did see growth in Q1. It's the bookings number at the end of March where we're saying, Well, let's watch and see what impact that will really have on maybe 2024, if any.

Speaker 3

But when we talk about multiple paths, So about multiple paths to our internal cash flow targets and that's where we remain optimistic. And yes, it is absolutely provide it was a bookings pause. It could absolutely lead to higher volumes for us, not from a number of assets, but from reliance on our analytics and data. And we are certainly getting more and more engaged To being asked to engage on debt valuation. So, whether it's from deploying debt capital Or whether it's from looking at implications of already underwritten assets.

Speaker 3

So it actually We think this is going to open up several market segments for us. To your point on bookings And pulling back or throttling investments. 1, the Argus bookings remained strong throughout the quarter and with the same profile of many of the bookings come in later in the quarter. So It's just Argus is just a very privileged position for us to be in. As far as throttling the investments, as you know, we had 1100, 1200 bps margin expansion in Q4 year over year.

Speaker 3

We felt that gave us the capacity to add or that gave us the financial ability to add capacity in 2023 because as I've commented on throughout FY 2022, every metric we had told us to add go to market capacity, particularly LTV to CAC ratios, and we weren't doing it until the model proved out. We were also holding back in FY 2022 Because of the volatility in the market, the geopolitical and the inflation aspects of last year, So we held back then. We messaged that we would be increasing that significantly this year, which is why we talked about 300 bps expansion when we think about how we allocate across our portfolio.

Speaker 5

Obviously,

Speaker 3

The restructuring we did last year, the operating efficiency from last year, the pricing lift we get from the move to cloud Gives us a lot of flexibility in our EBITDA. So that's what we're talking about when we say we get throttle investments. So we won't go as fast in the sales capacity, But we will still add some because we're investing for 2024.

Speaker 4

Okay, great. I'll hop off. Thanks guys.

Operator

Thanks, Gary.

Speaker 3

And we

Operator

will take our next question from Stephen MacLeod with BMO. Your Line is open.

Speaker 6

Great. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Just wanted to follow-up a little bit on the new bookings. Can you just talk about how sort of that was trending up until March?

Speaker 6

Because it sounds as though, as per your press release and headlines, it sort of became more noisy In the beginning of March. And then I was just wondering if there's been any change that you can report on a quarter to date basis?

Speaker 3

So Steve, We did our Q4 earnings call February 24, somewhere around there. And on there, I commented that our Q1 pipeline and Our coverage ratios were stronger. They were. Month 1, month 2, we're tracking along at a nice clip. It's really just reacting to the March headlines.

Speaker 3

I think as the market takes a deep breath and goes what just happened. So We will pace ourselves accordingly with what we see in the market. Again, going back to last year, If we run relatively flat in new bookings, that gets us to our the plan that we're that we have in place for the business. Yes. And as far as quarter to date, I would just That's typically not something we jump into right now.

Speaker 3

What we do track is I had a comment in there about Our pipeline build. So what we track is at specifically at Nargis Enterprise level, The number of leads that go into our pipeline per week, we were expecting to see that trail down in March April And it is almost dead on our weekly trend for the last 2 years.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And Steven, just not nothing you don't know, but 2 thirds of our sales typically happen in month 3 of a quarter. And so given the timing of the news, it obviously had an overweight impact in regards To the finish. And so just adding a little bit of color

Speaker 3

and how that works.

Speaker 6

Okay. Yes. Thanks, Ramona. That is helpful. And then I guess, in terms of the new bookings, do you Is that coming from existing or new customers, the slowdown they saw?

Speaker 6

I guess, is it really or is it a mix of both?

Speaker 3

It's a mix of both. We still put I'm looking at the team here, a couple of 100 new logos. So Not as many new logos like we've been running into that $250,000,000 range, but we are we added just over 200 In the quarter, so it's more at the scale end of the market. It's what we really saw. That could be the large funds are the first ones to reach out and engage us.

Speaker 3

But when the banking news hit At the beginning of March, it was those large funds, those deep trusted relationships where they immediately called us in From an analytical perspective.

Speaker 6

Yes. I see. I see. And I just wanted to clarify one thing you said there, Jim. Did you say that If you run flat in new bookings, it will still get you on plan to where you want to be for this year?

Speaker 3

Right. We were saying that all through last year is that we didn't need like If the team ran basically the same, so we obviously, Steve, we need to make up the March Piece of it and that's where we we're not seeing opportunities fall out of the pipe for the year. We're seeing them push to The second half and part of that, if somebody could come together right in the Q2, I think our sales team is being conservative and say, Let's put it in the second half. And that's good for us because then we plan our investments accordingly.

Speaker 6

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. Okay, great. Thanks guys.

Speaker 3

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Christian Scroggs with 8 Capital. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hi, good evening and thanks for taking my questions. The first one I wanted to ask is a follow on of Steve's question and maybe it's been asked in other words. Do you get the sense in conversations with customers That in March, they were frozen up, maybe pushing out the decision, call it to June 3rd month of this next quarter? Or Do you think, maybe they're getting more thoughtful about which offers or solutions they're going to pick up? And if they You don't want to subscribe to the same sorts of solutions.

Speaker 5

Is it a push out would you say or more of like a halt at this point?

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks, Christian. Again, I'm going to go back to some of the stuff that you Heard from the stage last week from clients, not from me. But the our clients are in the business of deploying capital. So they don't love uncertainty.

Speaker 3

So They got a Fed decision yesterday. They can get visibility across the broader banking sector. I think they'll be keeping a close eye on bank balance sheets and the implications there. So do we think The transactions are gone forever? Absolutely not.

Speaker 3

It's just it feels more like a pause to us right now. But it's not an indefinite pause. I mean, Back to the Argus Enterprise bookings continue to be strong. So that some of that's going to be attributed to Argus is quite a powerful tool, not just for acquisitions or dispositions, But for also analyzing the performance of an asset. So as our clients are evaluating The current pricing that's out in the market, they're going to be using Argus to do that.

Speaker 3

They're going to be using The new tools that we have, like Insights Altus Market Insights to do that. And eventually they're going to deploy capital. Pricing as I said pricing, capital structure might change with interest rates, but there's still an economic formula That makes commercial real estate attractive.

Speaker 2

Yes, Christian, and just in my conversations with the sales team as well too, I mean, there was clearly prudently measured response from our clients in March after the headlines, The key opportunities that we were keeping an eye on are still in place. So it's really more of just a slowdown.

Speaker 5

Got it. And then on the cloud adoption rates that trended up in the quarter, I know that's a big part of the narrative And getting customers to move on to the cloud and adopt new cloud based products. So my question is, have those conversations changed at all? Would you say the So,

Speaker 3

I think, we know Our clients are watching our cloud growth. We know that our clients listen to these calls. So we're really proud to report that 10,000,000 models number. And that is unbelievably powerful, especially at this moment in time, 960,000 unique properties. That is quite the purview we have.

Speaker 3

Not that we can take we don't take clients' pin and put it out there, but it does give us a data derivative view that does For the clients that have given us those derivative rights, which is significant amount of them and we're seeing more opt in to giving us those rights because they want the analytics that comes from that type of massive data. And they also know that it's 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars over the last 2 years to be able to turn that data into insights.

Speaker 5

Got it. Got it. Thanks for all the color, Jim. I'll pass it on here. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you. And we

Operator

will take our next question from Richard Tse with National Bank Financial. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Hi, this is James Byrne sitting in for Richard. I was just wondering, do you expect to still be on track to driving the 300 basis point improvement in Analytics margins by year end despite the heightened investments.

Speaker 3

Yes. As you can see, we were 7 10 bps higher in Q1. So you're seeing the restructuring activities, the operating model changes, the pricing changes, The retirement of old platforms, the platform economics we've been talking about, you can see that in Q1, Right. And so that coming off of that base, it gives us a lot of room for investment Even in this macro environment to invest for growth and still get to the 300 bps, absolutely.

Speaker 7

And just to follow-up on that. So do you think that the should we expect the margins to really tick up in The back half of the year because, I think the yes, the margin is about 21.4% this quarter, so you would need a significant uptick for the remaining three quarters.

Speaker 3

Absolutely. You got to remember when thinking about the seasonality of the business, There's 1,000,000 of dollars of employment taxes that kick in Q1 that most of them hit their thresholds mid Q2, right? So if you look at the analytics numbers, the analytics revenue numbers, $5,000,000 is a significant amount of well, that's not all analytics, the majority of that's analytics and that's a significant number of bps

Speaker 2

In the quarters. Yes, I mean, we always plan for lower margins in Q1 just given what Jim said. So this was in line With our expectations,

Speaker 3

actually the margin was higher because we did throttle a bit.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. Thanks. I'll pass the line.

Speaker 3

Thank you, James. Thanks, James.

Speaker 1

And we will take

Operator

our next question from Gavin Bairwether with Cormark. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Hey there, good afternoon. You touched in your Prepared remarks on increased demand from lenders and credit funds given the environment. Maybe you can just provide a bit more color on that and also discuss the Finance Active product and kind of where we're at on bringing that to North America and igniting that cross sell.

Speaker 3

Sure. Thanks, Gavin. The increased demand was as you can imagine, Many of our clients are on both the equity and debt side. The majority of our revenues Come from the equity investors. So in this environment where you're sitting with It's across the large investors.

Speaker 3

It's also across the bank the smaller banks where 60% to 70% of commercial underwriting happens. Those are that's all greenfield for us. Those are not segments we typically Get involved with. Some of our larger clients are working with those smaller banks And this is they need valuation of what's happening with their portfolios, right? They need visibility now, So they need to make sure that they're maintaining their capital requirements and their balance sheet.

Speaker 3

So it's been a fascinating Few weeks to see the inbound engagement for us and watching our teams react. It's a different level of valuation. It's not the same level of precision that you're going to do for LP reporting in a private fund, let's say. Right now, they're more in a triage mode and we're in a position to help them.

Speaker 8

That's great. And then just for my follow-up, hoping you could touch on R and D kind of resource allocation. Obviously, a lot of work went into The new platform, you've also moved towards no longer supporting some of the on prem version. So I guess I'm curious how much how many of your people are now kind of focused on functional innovation versus kind of the performance platform and older versions and how has that changed over the past 6 to 12 months?

Speaker 3

Right. In September October, We that's where in some of our restructuring charges, there was restructuring of development skill sets that didn't apply to the cloud. So in rough terms, We look at our historical R and D spend. If you think of the on prem legacy platforms versus the cloud, We were probably we were roughly 80% of our R and D spend was going into maintenance or we call current engineering at about 15% to 20% who's going into innovation, right, into next gen. We've pretty much flipped that on its head With that restructuring.

Speaker 3

And then the other move we made was we had a build operate and transfer type contract with a firm in India and we exercised that option late last year to bring those folks in house. Most of them have been with us. They're associated with us for quite a while, very talented team and we wanted to give them career pathing opportunities with us and build out our presence there. So they came in house, gave us very current market skills and it also gave us Some cross border salary arbitrage.

Speaker 8

That's helpful. Thanks so much.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Gavin.

Operator

We will take our next question from Scott Fletcher with CIBC. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Hi, good evening and thanks for taking the question. I wanted to follow-up just on

Speaker 9

a comment Jim you made about the bookings sort of impact in 2024. Can you just remind us how what the typical time is for both the recurring and the non recurring bookings to end up starting for when they start to hit the revenue lines?

Speaker 3

Yes, Scott, sure. The typical time is 1 to 2 quarters When the bookings flow through, my 2024 comment was we do need to add sales capacity because We see this as a short term blip, the macro market conditions. And My yes, it is 30 years experience. I was trying to round that down, but I can't. Is that you're looking at 8 to 12 months to get a salesperson up to fully productive.

Speaker 3

So we do need to be thinking about our growth next year, Especially since we think this is a short cycle of the pause here. So we need to invest for that. And Again, to James' question earlier, we have plenty of capacity in the analytics P and L to support that through all sorts of market environments right now.

Speaker 5

Okay. That's helpful.

Speaker 3

We're going a bit slower that We wrote into our plan, but we are adding capacity there. And you think of it as It's more of a reallocation or the term is P and L geography. So we reallocated resources where we had efficiencies to put

Speaker 2

it towards

Speaker 3

capacity, but we're the 300 bps we're very comfortable with, Including adding that capacity for 2024.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks. I did want to

Speaker 9

ask just another question On the working capital changes in the quarter, it sounds like the ERP system led to some billing delays. Maybe if you could just help us understand what We should expect for the cadence of working capital for the rest of the year.

Speaker 2

Yes. No, I'll take That question, we anticipated some billing delays associated with our transfer over to the new system. So it was In line with our expectations, keep in mind we made a hard cut over. So as any transformation goes or changeover goes, There is a timing period where leads to delays and as we're looking at April relative to where we were in Q1, We're back on base in terms of our working capital operations. So it was just really more of a transition over that caused a temporary delay.

Speaker 5

So it sounds like a secret reversal

Speaker 9

like all things considered

Speaker 3

to be?

Speaker 2

Yes. We're not really viewing it as an event here.

Speaker 3

And Scott, as Pavan pointed out, we do pay bonuses in Q1 also. So we have that uptick in there as well.

Speaker 2

Yes. As I mentioned, we got we have the bonus payment. We also had the restructuring program as well too that we paid out in Q1. So that it wasn't Just necessarily are related to the anticipated delays,

Speaker 5

and so

Speaker 2

there's a host of things that happened in Q1.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks for the color.

Operator

And with no further questions at this time, I do apologize. We did just get a question from John Shuter with RBC. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Hi, it's John on for Paul Schreiber. Sorry about the last minute question here. I'm curious about the NCRE consulting and specifically on the U. K. Property tax business.

Speaker 6

Can you set expectations for what's a reasonable outlook for property tax revenue in Q2. Should we be expecting a flat with Q1 or a typical seasonal rise outside of the UK billing cycle that we should expect. Thanks.

Speaker 3

So The Q2 numbers, so our Q2 is normally a spike in the UK. Our U. K. Team, let me just start with, was absolutely crushed it in Q1, our U. K.

Speaker 3

Tax team. So they were focused on working down the last of the 2017 valuation list. So as we book those, we when you book in the U. K. And you win an appeal, you win it back to the start date.

Speaker 3

So we overemphasized our efforts there throughout Q1 Because that drives backlog that has 7 year revenue implications, right? So it's very, very nutrient rich backlog that we picked up. In Q2, you shift to the reset. So we'll have that natural decline of the annuity. So we're going in with a stronger backlog than we originally anticipated.

Operator

And with no further questions at this time, I will turn the call back to Mr. Jim Hannan for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Great. Thanks, everybody. Thanks again for joining the call this evening. I'm guessing everyone's going to be wrapping up and heading out to the game at this point. So again, the team here saying, Gold Leaf, go.

Speaker 3

As always, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us through Camilla or if you have any other follow-up questions. Thank you for your time.

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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