Sapiens International Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 11, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Q3 2024 revenue reached $137 million, up 4.8% year-over-year, with non-GAAP operating margin at 18.3% and annualized recurring revenue of $173 million.
  • Secured multiple cloud-based insurance platform wins in North America, including contracts with Continental General, a leading Canadian life & health carrier, Rockford Mutual and Society Insurance.
  • Achieved key go-lives and upgrades such as Pan American Life’s Illustration Pro SaaS implementation, major worker-compensation system updates, and launched a new CoreSuite for P&C with integrated AI features.
  • Lowered full-year 2024 revenue guidance to $541M–$546M due to extended sales cycles from the strategic shift to the SaaS model and headwinds in North American P&C, while maintaining non-GAAP margin guidance at ~18.2%.
  • 2025 outlook anticipates low single digit growth as SaaS transition and macro uncertainty continue, supported by ongoing investments in platform innovation, AI capabilities and strengthened go-to-market strategies.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Sapiens International Q3 2024
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Welcome to Sapiens International Corporation's 2024 third quarter financial results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Yaffa, you may now begin.

Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Investor Relations at Sapiens International Corporation

Thank you, Operator. I want to welcome you to Sapiens conference call to review our third quarter results for 2024. With me on the call today are Mr. Roni Al-Dor, President and CEO, Mr. Roni Giladi, CFO, and Mr. Alex Zukerman, Chief Strategy Officer. Following the summary of the results, we will be available to answer any questions. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain projections or other forward-looking statements. The safe harbor provision in the press release issued today also applies to the content of the call. Sapiens expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether because of future events, new information, a change in its views or expectations, or otherwise. On today's call, we will refer to the Non-GAAP financial measures.

Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Investor Relations at Sapiens International Corporation

A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results has been provided in our press release, which was issued before the market opened this morning. A replay of this call will be available after the call on our investor relations section of the company's website or via the website link which is available in the earnings release we published today. I will now turn the call over to Roni Al-Dor, President and CEO of Sapiens. Roni.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Sapiens' third quarter 2024 earnings call. Our revenue in the third quarter was $137 million, a 4.8% increase compared to last year. This quarter continues to showcase solid execution across all of our key regions. Let's start with North America, where we secured new business wins during the quarter. I want to highlight a few. Continental General chose the cloud-based Sapiens Insurance Platform for Life & Annuities to improve its capabilities and modernize its platform to future insurance products. These improvements will enhance its ability to scale in new markets and streamline implementation of its long-term care insurer specialty while expanding third-party administrator (TPA) services through its affiliates.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Another win in the life space was the leading Canadian life and health insurance carrier, which selected the cloud-based Sapiens Insurance Platform to enhance its operational performance, boost efficiency, elevate the client and advisor experience, and drive its digital transformation and growth in the life and health market. Rockford Mutual Insurance Company selected a cloud-based Sapiens ReinsurancePro to automate its reinsurance management process, improve efficiencies and profitabilities, and mitigate costly claims leakage. Sapiens' automated solution eliminates complexities within treaties by balancing the appropriate coverage with the rising coverage cost, enabling Rockford Mutual to track, bill, recover reinsurance, and capture valuable data. And lastly, Society Insurance chose Sapiens to automate and transform its reinsurance processes. Our cloud-based reinsurance system met Society's need for an automated, out-of-the-box solution. Society can now manage its entire reinsurance program to centralize data in a consolidated repository that quickly runs queries and accesses reports.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Sapiens stood out for its broad range of capabilities in reinsurance, accounting, and cash management compliance with auditing and statutory requirements. Let me highlight a few successful North America go-lives and upgrades with existing customers in quarter three. In July, Pan American Life Insurance Group, PALIG, successfully went live with Sapiens IllustrationPro, SaaS solution on the Microsoft Azure cloud. A longtime Sapiens customer, PALIG wanted to transform its current system to Sapiens' digital web-based solution to integrate across multiple platforms. IllustrationPro will enable PALIG to consolidate illustrations on a single platform, ensuring fast time-to-market, robust new comparisons, client management, and self-sufficient features will allow them to manage multiple product launches more efficiently while improving the agent experience with scalable, flexible solutions. workers' compensation is a market where Sapiens is building a momentum in North America and remains a substantial growth opportunity for Sapiens in the year ahead.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

In the third quarter, we completed the workers' compensation customer upgrade with our latest functionally rich CoreSuite for Workers' Compensation version. Also, our North America team continues progressing on three major workers' compensation projects which we expected to go live in 2025. The win this quarter reinforced the value and the trust that insurers place in Sapiens to innovate and drive business transformation, and we are always working to ensure we can deliver the most value to the market. In CoreSuite Property and Casualty, several North American projects went live this quarter, and we are working on several customer upgrades. We also launched our latest version of Sapiens' CoreSuite for Property and Casualty for the North America insurance market. The new release delivers insurers many functionality and performance improvements and enhanced security features.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

The release introduced an integrated AI-based open platform to strengthen the Sapiens Insurance Platform digital layer and expand its core business capabilities, ensuring it remains future-proof. We have improved the consistency of our data to help the insurers overcome the challenges of data migration and ensure their data is consistent and AI-ready. Moving to system integrators, Sapiens is making progress in collaboration with system integrators, which has resulted in promising opportunities in our pipeline that would have been otherwise unattainable. These partnerships have unlocked new avenues for growth and development, demonstrating the strategic value and the potential of our SIs in expanding our market reach. We are excited about the opportunity and beneficial outcome this relationship could deliver. Before we move to the rest of the world, I want to share some highlights from our annual North America Customer Summit. In September, we held our Customer Summit in Austin, Texas.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Austin is the world's live music capital, which was the perfect backdrop for an event focused on innovation, collaboration, and transformative solutions in the insurance industry. The themes of our summit comprised "Your Future," expressing Sapiens' mission to lead the future of insurance technology. This year, we hosted 545 participants from 135 insurance companies and partner organizations. Industry leaders like Microsoft, Deloitte, Celent, and Datos contributed valuable perspectives. We also had 22 partner companies present. The summit provided tremendous value, with the opportunity to develop deeper customer relationships, meet prospects, and generate leads. With our partner companies and our customers, we identify emerging market trends and gain valuable insight into our customer needs and concerns. From this event, we create a foundation for growth and success and reinforce our commitment to driving transformative journeys for Sapiens' clients.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Moving to the rest of the world, we are progressing with customer upgrades and go-live with our IDITSuite, Tia Solution, ReinsuranceMaster, and CoreSuite Life solutions, and we have had several successful go-live this quarter. I want to highlight the Hollard Group's go-live in this quarter. Hollard went live with Sapiens' data and analytics solution, complementing its core suite for life and pension. DataSuite will accelerate the complex migration of Hollard businesses and align its processes as the company transformation from its core and legacy system to Sapiens' CoreSuite for Life and Pension. This will reduce operational costs and deliver an automated, seamless user experience for customers and all our staff. Integrated DataSuite significantly reduce the complexity of Hollard's migration process, which requires the complicated development of tailored reports and merging them across the legacy and core suite systems.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Among its many benefits, data suite empowers Hollard to manage its data and reporting needs while seamlessly operating its business during the migration. Demand for Sapiens' products remains solid in EMEA and APAC, particularly for our Life platform and P&C platform solutions, IDIT and Tia. There is continued demand for SaaS platforms across all solution lines and tiers. We are also experiencing growing demand for AI-driven solutions, as clients increasingly want to leverage AI to enhance operational efficiency and elevate customer experience. With regulatory agencies starting to issue guidance on AI, Sapiens, with its local presence in key markets and deep regulatory knowledge, is positioned to enable our clients to stay ahead of industry trends and meet regulatory requirements. Our digital transformation capabilities tailored for medium to smaller carriers enable crucial digital strategies over legacy strategies.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

These tiers of insurers can innovate quickly with our digital front-end solutions while gradually replacing legacy systems. In the European market, demand for Sapiens' solutions remains robust despite the delay in signing new deals. These delays are primarily due to the regulatory approval process for SaaS-based models, extended contract timelines due to compliance and security reviews, and protected business case approval factors outside of our control. As a result, the average contracting period year to date has extended. We are confident we will close these deals in the coming quarters. Our strategic partners with Microsoft have been instrumental in driving innovation, leveraging their cutting-edge technology and collaborative support to enhance our market, present, and deliver exceptional value to our customers. Before I wrap up, I would like to share our 2024 annual guidance and outlook for 2025.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Roni Giladi will provide the full details, but in brief, we are reducing our full-year 2024 revenue guidance. This revision reflects trends that impact our results this quarter and which we expect to persist in the fourth quarter and into 2025. Despite the revenue guidance adjustment, our strong emphasis on expense management enables us to leave our non-GAAP operating margin guidance unchanged for 2024. Let me provide some context on the external and internal factors influencing revenue. One of the key contributors is our strategic shift to a SaaS-based model, positioning us to future sustainable high-margin growth. While we anticipate some impact on 2024 revenue from this transition, the actual impact has been greater. This shift to SaaS has also led to an extended sales cycle, particularly in Europe, where many insurance carriers are new to SaaS and carefully evaluate the benefits before committing.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

As a result, we are experiencing a slightly longer time to close deals in certain regions as they evaluate the SaaS model advantage. Additionally, our North America CoreSuite P&C business is facing headwinds with sector-specific challenges and increased competition. Let me emphasize that our workers' compensation and reinsurance business is progressing as planned. Lastly, the broader macroeconomic environment is leading insurance carriers to take more time in making investment decisions and finalizing deals. We expect this factor to continue to influence growth as we enter 2025. With that in mind, we anticipate next year's growth will be low single-digit. I want to reiterate that our commitment to building a robust pipeline and expanding our client base across all key markets remains unwavering. As the business landscape continues to evolve, Sapiens stands determined to execute our strategy to empower insurance carriers with a modern, competitive platform.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

To further enhance our competitive position in the P&C North America market, we are directing investments in a few areas: platform innovation and advanced AI capabilities. We continue to invest in Sapiens' Intelligent Insurance Platform for P&C, which integrates a data suite, digital portals, and core processing to provide a cohesive end-to-end advanced business experience and streamlined operations. Building on the success of the approach used with our life and annuity platform a few years back, which has accelerated Sapiens' growth in this market, we are confident in applying a similar strategy to our core P&C solutions. We are also refining our go-to-market strategy and strengthening our sales and marketing teams to pursue new opportunities while addressing challenges in the market. We are confident that Sapiens' focus on innovation and client success will drive sustainable growth globally and strengthen our position as a trusted partner in the insurance industry.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

To drive returns to higher growth, we will focus on accelerating the expansion of our growth product. With a strong established customer base, we also see significant cross-sale opportunities for our data digital and decision solutions, including our AI-driven offering. We are also continuing to transition our existing customers to our cloud offering. Additionally, we will deepen our penetration in the North America market with our Life platform, where we hold a leading position and we are gaining momentum, while continuing to reinforce our presence in these key markets. In summary, Quarter Three 2024 marked another quarter of growth and operational progress. We are executing our 2024 priorities, including accelerating the shift to a SaaS model, which is better positioning us for the long term and delivering solid performance across all of our key regions.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Now, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO to provide more detail on our financial performance.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Thank you, Roni. I will begin my commentary by reviewing the third quarter of 2024 non-GAAP results, followed by comments on the balance sheet and cash flow. I will wrap up with our guidance for 2024. Revenue in the third quarter of 2024 was $137 million, an increase of 4.8% compared to $131 million in the third quarter of 2023. Currency impact on revenue was minimal this quarter. As Roni mentioned in his remarks, we are experiencing delays in closing new deals, which resulted in low revenue compared to our internal expectations. For Q3 of 2024, our annualized recurring revenue, ARR, reached $173 million, reflecting a 10% increase from Q3 of 2023, higher than the reported revenue growth during the same period of 4.8%.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Looking at the revenue mix, revenue from recurring software products and recurring post-production services increased year over year by 15.3% to $101 million compared to $87 million in Q3 of 2023. We are pleased with the double-digit growth. Revenue from pre-production implementation services totaled $36 million compared to $43 million last year. The decline in pre-production implementation revenue was mainly due to delays in signing new deals and the shift to SaaS, as I mentioned in the previous quarter. Switching now to geographic breakdown, revenue in North America was $56 million compared to $55 million in the year-ago quarter, an increase of 1.7%. Revenue in Europe was $69 million, a year-over-year increase of 7.1%. Revenue in the rest of the world, which includes South Africa and APAC, was $12 million, an increase of 6.6% compared to the prior year quarter.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Moving to profitability, gross profit this quarter was $63 million compared to $59 million in Q3 of 2023. Gross margin this quarter was 45.8% compared to 45.3%, an increase of 50 basis points compared to Q3 of 2023. This increase is mainly due to a higher ratio of recurring and recurring revenue versus one-time revenue for implementation. Operating profit and margin in the third quarter of 2024 was $25 million and 18.3% of total revenue, compared to $24 million and 18.4% in the third quarter of 2023. Operating profit in Q3 grew by 4.3%, or by $1 million. We maintained an operating margin within our target range of 18.3%, despite the increased investment in sales and marketing in the third quarter. Net Income attributed to Sapiens shareholders was $21 million, or a 10% increase from $19 million of Q3 of 2023.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Earnings per diluted share was $0.37, up 8.8% from $0.34 in Q3 of 2023. Turning to our balance sheet, as of September 30, 2024, we had cash and cash equivalents and short-term deposits totaling $186 million and debt of $40 million. During the quarter, we distributed dividends in the amount of $16.2 million, or $0.29 per share, to our shareholders. The dividend represents 39% of Net Income for the first half of 2024. Turning to our adjusted free cash flow, in the third quarter of 2024, we generated $10 million in free cash flow compared to $2 million in Q3 of 2023. For the first nine months of 2024, we generated adjusted free cash flow of $33 million, similar to the first nine months of 2023.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

In the third quarter, S&P Maalot, a part of the global rating firm Standard & Poor's Financial Services, confirmed the long-term issuer rating for Sapiens as AA-, with a stable outlook, while also confirming the rating for Sapiens Series B debenture as AA-. Let me switch gears to discuss our guidance for the remainder of 2024 and our preliminary look at 2025. Today, we are revising our 2024 annual non-GAAP revenue guidance to $541 million-$546 million, from a previous range of $550 million-$555 million, a reduction of about 1.6%. While it's too early to discuss our 2025 expectation in detail, we expect revenue growth to be in the low single digits. The reason for the 2024 reduced guidance and the low growth rate for 2025 compared to the previous year are similar and are as follow.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

One, at the beginning of the year, we took a strategic decision to transition to SaaS all our products across all territories. Initially, we estimated this transition would have a revenue recognition impact of approximately 1% headwind on our revenue. However, the actual has been greater, totaling between 2% to 3%. We anticipate this trend we see in 2024 will carry over into 2025. Additionally, another factor of this transition to SaaS is the extended decision-making process among insurance carriers, mainly in Europe. This delay has affected new deal signing and therefore our revenue. Two, our North American CoreSuite Property and Casualty business is facing headwinds, with sector-specific challenges and heightened competition. As a result, revenue from new deals has decreased. In addition, following the go-live of certain projects, we are experiencing an overall decline in revenue.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Three, we are witnessing the same macroeconomic uncertainty that impacted many global enterprise software companies. In our market, this is materializing as a longer decision cycle or, in some cases, a delayed decision by our insurance carrier. As a result, fewer new deals were signed in 2024, which negatively impacted our 2024 revenues. This effect is expected to be more pronounced in 2025, when this new deal that we anticipated to be signed in 2024 will support to generate higher revenue in 2025, particularly due to a full year of implementation and recurring revenue. On a positive note, we expect an annual 2025 non-GAAP operating margin of 18.2%, which is within our range. While these challenges will impact the next several quarters, the market opportunity ahead of us continues to remain strong, as we are still in the mindset of a multi-decade replacement cycle across the P&C and life markets.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Looking at the past 10 years, Sapiens' organic growth has high single digits, growing globally both in P&C and life. And together with M&A, we reported double-digit growth. Also, in the past two years, revenue from recurring software products and recurring post-production services represented between 65% to 73% of total revenue, highlighting the stability, visibility, and stickiness of revenue from existing customers. Sapiens has a solid foundation of 600 customers and a comprehensive suite of products, including core, business application, data, and digital solutions, both for P&C and life, with a broad geographic reach across North America, Europe, and APAC. We believe in our ability to retain a similar growth level as we continue executing our long-term growth strategy, keeping investing in our solution, and offering a competitive platform to insurance carriers. I will now turn the call back to Roni Al-Dor. Roni.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

Thank you, Roni. We delivered a solid third quarter, reflecting continued progress across our key markets. Our continued investment in our insurance platform remains a critical delivery for growth. Most importantly, we are committed to delivering long-term growth across all of our key territories and reinforcing our position as a trusted provider for the intelligent insurance solution. I want to thank our global team for their commitment to excellence and growth, and our investors for their ongoing support of Sapiens. I will now ask the operator to please open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are using speaker equipment, kindly lift the handset before pressing the numbers. Please ask your questions in a loud and clear voice.

Operator

Your questions will be polled in the order they are received. Please stand by while we poll for your questions. The first question is from Sam Salvas of Needham & Company. Please go ahead.

Sam Salvas
Sam Salvas
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Great. Thanks. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions today. I'm just hopping on from Mayank. First off, I wanted to touch more on the competitive pressures you guys called out. Could you talk more about what exactly you're seeing, which market products these are in, and maybe the steps you guys are taking to mitigate some of these impacts?

Sam Salvas
Sam Salvas
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Yes, sure. This is Alex speaking. So when we look at the competitive landscape, I think we feel that the highest pressure on the competitive side is on the P&C, our P&C operation in North America. This is where we feel the strongest pressure. This is not new in terms of the crowdedness of the market.

Sam Salvas
Sam Salvas
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

It's a very competitive landscape for a few years now on the P&C side. But the combination of that, together with a bit of the point market conditions we see in the North America market on the P&C side, which is a combination of the geographical catastrophe that happened in 2024, the reinsurance rates that are spiking high, the inflation. So the combination of those, specifically for this year's economic situation, plus the high competition over the deals, the combination of them creates a very competitive landscape for us. Now, our plan to mitigate that and our offering to the market is based on our platform proposition. We talked about it in our previous calls. We launched it in the middle of the year in 2024, our platform proposition. We see great feedback from the market, and this is both for P&C and life.

Sam Salvas
Sam Salvas
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

But where we started to focus our efforts on the platform and launched it substantially, it's more on the life side and on the European side. Our plan to launch the platform for North America CoreSuite P&C is planned for 2025, and this will provide us very strong capabilities and differentiation to cope with competition. And that's our plan for the market.

Roni Al-Dor
Roni Al-Dor
President and CEO at Sapiens International Corporation

This is Roni. Just I would like to emphasize, when Alex talked about P&C North America, he said only to the core system, not including reinsurance or workers' compensation. There we feel strong.

Sam Salvas
Sam Salvas
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Makes sense. And then just a quick follow-up, just on the preliminary 2025 guide you guys gave, could you guys talk about some of the macro assumptions you had as you got to that revenue target?

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Hi, Sam. This is Roni.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Basically, the assumption or the reason for this is coming from as of 2024 and continuing with us into 2025. I will not repeat what Alex mentioned about the macroeconomic that we feel right now and continue to 2025. By the way, we see the demand, but the market is cautious. So this is important to say. We do not see this as for long-term, but a specific period. The second item is transition to SaaS. Early in the year, we took a strategic decision to move all Sapiens products globally, North America and Europe APAC, to the cloud. We did it before, a year before, only North America specific product. What we see is the transition has impact on two levels. The first one is the delay of decision-making from the insurance carrier, mainly in the European side.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

The reason for that, the deal became longer and embedded into an additional factor that wasn't in the past. Therefore, the decision process and the approval taken us more time and obviously delay on the revenue. So this is one factor. The second factor is implications on the revenue recognition. Earlier in the year, we mentioned or estimated this to be a 1% impact on the revenue growth, and now, as we revisit this, we see this as two items on top or different. One is misestimate in the first year, and the second one is the transition of existing customer post-production to the cloud also takes some hit on the revenue recognition because it further spreads the revenue for a longer period. So all of the items here, implication have revenue impact of between 2%-3% versus the 1% that we mentioned earlier.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

And the P&C core suite North America Alex mentioned, I will just emphasize only on the reinsurance and not in the reinsurance and workers' compensation, have also impact into 2025. One factor to take in, when we see the new deals in 2024 slowing down, there is impact into 2025 because the revenue recognized in 2024 is only partial of the year, and 2025 is full year. So we are basically filling the less revenue in 2024 into 2025. All of this leads us to a conclusion that based on what we see today, the estimate of the revenue will come at low single-digit growth.

Sam Salvas
Sam Salvas
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Yep. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. I'll jump back in the queue.

Operator

The next question is from Dylan Becker of William Blair. Please go ahead.

Dylan Becker
Dylan Becker
Analyst in the technology, media and communication sector at William Blair

Hey, guys. Appreciate the question. Maybe Roni G., with you sticking on that last point.

Dylan Becker
Dylan Becker
Analyst in the technology, media and communication sector at William Blair

You could argue that accelerated headwind from the SaaS transition is a net positive and maybe some partner components within that. But as you talk about elongation, I guess, can you give us a general sense in your confidence around that it's more kind of timing in nature versus anything falling out of the pipeline? I'd assume a lot of these customers already have a Sapiens relationship, and it's just kind of a matter of contract timing and getting the resources allocated. But a general sense and kind of the confidence here and what you're seeing from a pipeline perspective.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

I didn't. Thank you. So first of all, this is on top and the right spot. We took the decision in the beginning of the year, this strategic decision, because we see the long-term value of it and not one-time hit.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

So for sure, we see the impact in the long term. Well, we see more repeatable business coming and much more visibility, ARR revenue going forward. The European market, as I mentioned, they are a little bit behind North America. Therefore, we see the delay in the revenue. We do not see any avoiding doing deal, just prolongation of time. And the macroeconomic, as we mentioned, Alex, earlier, this is a one-time period that will disappear in, let's say, a year from now, something like that. But this is not something which will stay because we see the demand. So moving to the SaaS, for sure, will give us an upside year number two, three, and going forward from the recurring revenue after the implementation.

Dylan Becker
Dylan Becker
Analyst in the technology, media and communication sector at William Blair

Okay. Great. And then maybe kind of a segue with that to the initial 2025 outlook of low single digits.

Dylan Becker
Dylan Becker
Analyst in the technology, media and communication sector at William Blair

Maybe give us a sense, kind of breaking down, if we look at, obviously, the post-production piece and some of the ARR components still growing nicely kind of in that double-digit clip, assuming that moving to the cloud has some services impact as well too. So maybe if we could kind of dissect within those components, given the fact that, again, you called out some incremental visibility on the subscription front once those customers are implemented in life.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Thanks. I will try to answer this from a different but very similar angle. If we look at the revenue reported between two sectors, the first one is revenue, which is recurring and recurring, versus the one-time, we see the ratio of the recurring and recurring growing. Today, it's more than 70% of the revenue of the company. We see the gross margin, which is significantly higher than the implementation.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

All of this is a good trend. We saw the growth rate, which is much higher than the revenue growth of the company. This quarter was 15% versus 5%. So I'm not sure that will be the exact number. For sure, this type of nature will continue with us going forward into 2025.

Dylan Becker
Dylan Becker
Analyst in the technology, media and communication sector at William Blair

Okay. Thanks, Roni.

Operator

The next question is from Surinder Thind of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Surinder Thind
Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies

Thank you. Just another follow-up on the transition of clients to this SaaS model here. Is the idea that most of these headwinds should be done through 2025, or are we talking about an extended timeframe to get everybody into the cloud at this point?

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Not sure I got the question clearly. The impact of transition to SaaS is not only for 2024 and 2025. Remember that we are doing two steps.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

First of all, any new deal is on the SaaS, and usually, the implementation of the new deals is between two to three years, the period of the implementation. And there is another factor, which is transferring existing customers that we sold several years ago also to the SaaS. And this time period is around five years because it takes time to convert existing customers that we sold several years ago to the cloud. So it's between two to five years. This is the timeframe of the impact. Again, with different percentage of impact, but this is the timeframe.

Surinder Thind
Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies

So understood on the timeframe. So I guess my question to clarify that is, is the actual revenue headwind impact, is that going to be continuing for the next two to five years? That was the question.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Yes, but not at the same ratio, meaning we see more impact in 2025 and potentially 2026, but lower in going forward.

Surinder Thind
Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst at Jefferies

Understood. And then in terms of just it sounds like the margins are going to be relatively intact at this point. In light of the lighter revenues, has there been an adjustment in terms of your spend, your willingness to spend, and maybe some of the projects that you are working on, or how should we think about that?

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Can you please repeat the question? In terms of internal investments. Okay. So until now, Sapiens has been able to grow revenue and profit year-over-year. And if we look at our competitor, their profitability level is lower than us. We took a strategic decision to stop the increase of the percentage, but to grow on the profit level.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

And with the additional profit, we'd like to increase investment in sales and marketing and also in R&D, for example, what Alex mentioned about the platform. And you can see from the report, the investment in sales and marketing grew very significantly over the last year, I think $2 million quarter compared to quarter. And we maintain the profit margin, what we mentioned in the beginning of the year, between 18.1% and 18.5%. We see right now 18.3% in Q3 of 2024. So we'd like to remain with the same percentage but grow the profit level. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Alexei Gogolov of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Operator

Hi. This is Ronee DeHart on for Alexei Gogolov. Maybe this is in the press release, but what is the constant currency growth, or did you break that out this quarter?

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

The impact of the currency exchange was very minimal, and we do not see additional impact in terms of positive or downside from this revenue reported.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Okay. Great. And then for a follow-up, you've talked about some of the initiatives you're undertaking to better compete in P&C in North America. What's the timeline on those investments, and could growth potentially accelerate here come 2026, or when do you think that reacceleration could take effect?

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

So this is Alex here. We invest in the platform concept globally at Sapiens. So it's an approach and a technology framework that allows us to promote multiple products and bring value to multiple offerings. As I said, we chose to focus first of all. The spearhead of this investment in realization is on our life solution that grows very rapidly and on our P&C in EMEA and APAC, which also we see the growth there.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

The second stage of taking this investment and implementing it into the offering is for our core suite P&C in North America. And we intend to do it through the first half of the year in 2025. And we do foresee that this will bring us additional competitive power and differentiation in the market. We already launched this proposition. We got very strong market feedback, positive market feedback from customers and prospects on the notion. And the plan is to implement it in North America in the first half of 2025.

Roni Giladi
Roni Giladi
CFO at Sapiens International Corporation

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question is from Tavy Rosner of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Tavy Rosner
Tavy Rosner
Analyst at Barclays

Hi. Good afternoon. Most of my questions have been asked already. I just wanted to follow up on one of your comments, Roni, in the prepared remarks. You talked about investment decisions being delayed due to regulatory impacts.

Tavy Rosner
Tavy Rosner
Analyst at Barclays

I just wanted to dig a little further. Is that at the company level or at the regulatory level? Any type of geography specifically? Any customer size? Any color would be helpful here.

Tavy Rosner
Tavy Rosner
Analyst at Barclays

Yes. This is again Alex here. I think the main caution that we see and maybe the extended effort that our customers are doing on the due diligence and checking all the details before signature is mainly around, first of all, the cloud in Europe. The main thing is that we provide a SaaS offering, which is very common in the U.S. It's also common in Europe, but not in the same pace. And there is a lot of cautiousness around embracing a full SaaS proposition in Europe because, actually, the companies transfer their full management of the business as usual into a vendor, into us.

Tavy Rosner
Tavy Rosner
Analyst at Barclays

So for many of them, it's the first time ever that they do it, and this takes them higher level of checks. They need to get the confidence. This is one major thing that we see around the SaaS, and this is mainly a European thing. What we see is these companies who already experienced that before. It's much easier. But a lot of them is the first time that they move to SaaS. And the second part that we see on delays in decision is because we provide now the platform proposition, which entails not only core but also digital front-end, digital processes, data warehouse, reporting, AI, sold as a bundle. The scope of the deals is larger, and the complexity is larger.

Tavy Rosner
Tavy Rosner
Analyst at Barclays

So it takes a bit more time for the customers to analyze all their due diligence, ROI, contracts, etc., of course, because this is a substantially different size of a deal. So those would be the two main aspects that we see in delays.

Tavy Rosner
Tavy Rosner
Analyst at Barclays

Thank you. I appreciate the color. That's all for me.

Operator

If there are any additional questions, please press star one. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. Please stand by while we poll for your questions. There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Ms. Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah to go ahead with her closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call is scheduled to begin in two hours. In the US, please call 1-888-269-0005. In Israel, please call 03-9255938. And internationally, please call 972-392-55938. Ms. Cohen-Ifrah, please make your concluding statement.

Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Investor Relations at Sapiens International Corporation

Thank you for joining our call today. We look forward to discussing our Q4 results on our next earnings call. As always, we welcome you to contact us if you have any further questions. Thank you again.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the Sapiens International Corporation Third Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.

Executives
    • Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
      Yaffa Cohen-Ifrah
      Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Investor Relations
    • Roni Al-Dor
      Roni Al-Dor
      President and CEO
    • Roni Giladi
      Roni Giladi
      CFO
    • Company Representative
Analysts
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