Blackbaud Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 30, 2025
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Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Blackbaud's First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tom Bart, Head of Investor Relations.

Operator

Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Tom Barth
Tom Barth
Head of Investor Realtions at Blackbaud

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on Blackbaud's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. Joining me on the call today will be Mike Gianoni, Blackbaud's CEO, President and Vice Chairman Tony Bohr, Blackbaud's Executive Vice President and CFO and Chad Anderson, Blackbaud's Chief Accounting Officer. Mike, Tony and Chad will make prepared comments and then we will open up the line for your questions. Please note that our comments today contain forward looking statements subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected.

Tom Barth
Tom Barth
Head of Investor Realtions at Blackbaud

Please refer to our most recent Form 10 ks and other SEC filings for more information on those risks. The discussion today will focus on non GAAP results. Please refer to our press release and the investor materials posted on our website for the full details on our financial performance, including GAAP results as well as full year guidance. We believe that a combination of both GAAP and non GAAP measures are more representative of how we internally measure our business. Unless otherwise specified, we will refer to non GAAP financial measures on this call.

Tom Barth
Tom Barth
Head of Investor Realtions at Blackbaud

Please note that non GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute GAAP measures. And with that, I'll turn the call over to you, Mike.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Last quarter, I spent some time discussing the strong financial progress Blackbaud has made over the past five years across both our top and bottom lines. We continue to extend our position as the market leader and provide the most comprehensive suite of purpose built and mission critical software and services to the social impact sector. Our solutions allow customers to spend more time focusing on what matters to them, their vital social impact work at hospitals, private schools, universities, nonprofits, companies and through individual acts of generosity. We remain the premier software partner across the social impact space.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Our solid first quarter and Rule of 40 attainment give me confidence that Blackbaud is well positioned on our journey to the Rule of 45 by 02/1930. In the first quarter, Blackbaud generated revenue of $271,000,000 which is 5.8% organic growth, a non GAAP adjusted EBITDA margin of 34.3, non GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.96 and a Rule of 40 score of 40.1%. These results are a testament to the resilience of our business in challenging times. The social impact market has been a consistent grower for many decades through recessions, business upturns and downturns, and even through the COVID-nineteen global pandemic. I know there are concerns about federal grant funding and how it impacts our customers, but much like in COVID, this uncertainty only makes our software more critical to our customers' operations, enabling them to improve fundraising outcomes and to undertake or sharpen their own cost management initiatives.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

To be clear, our solutions are not in the funds flow from federal agencies, but are used for fundraising from individual donors, which is even more critical now. We are proud to play a vital role in supporting our customers' operations as they navigate change. BlackRock has also undertaken a number of operational initiatives that set us up to perform well even in a challenging market. In 2023, we began transitioning our contractual revenue contracts from primarily one year to primarily three year renewal terms. This modernized approach to contract terms provides increased visibility and consistency for nearly two thirds of our revenue base and provides better predictability for our customers.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Over the past several years, we have transitioned the majority of our products and customers to the third party cloud, while shutting down many of our private data colos, with only two of our own data centers remaining. We continue to innovate through the use of AI to not only empower our customers, but also improve our own internal productivity. And lastly, we have rightsized our operations by further rationalizing office leases and renegotiating significant vendor contracts. And despite a strong focus on reducing expenses, we continue to invest aggressively in innovation in our extensive developer network to help our customers raise more money while enhancing and streamlining their operations. Our innovation and end to end workflows continue to be a competitive differentiator and drive sales.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

We are supporting this innovation through enhancements in sales and marketing programs, and we continue to identify, experiment and scale a range of successful solutions across marketing, customer success and engineering to be an active innovator through applied AI. We saw the positive market reaction to our focus here earlier this month at our Corporate Social Impact Summit in Dallas. The summit brought together hundreds of executives from leading companies across The U. S. To share insights and drive meaningful change.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Attendees received an exclusive preview of product innovations, including how we are integrating our YourCause portfolio with our payments and fundraising solutions, expanding the use of AI to transform the grant making process, helping companies unleash generosity globally and revolutionizing corporate social impact reporting through our partnership with True Impact. YourCause has made significant strides in innovation, particularly with our announcement of expedited giving. Expedited giving will transform the way employee donations and eligible match funding are processed, ensuring that nonprofits receive corporate donations directly and faster than ever before, which is especially critical during disaster response efforts. This initiative will soon begin testing with a select group of pilot corporations and nonprofits, expediting employee donations to charities that are Blackbaud Integrated Payments customers. The key value proposition here for customers is to reduce the time lag of an employee donation to a nonprofit to just a day or two.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

In addition to investing in our innovation, we plan to use our cash flow to repurchase Blackbaud shares. As you recall, in 2024, the company bought back 10% of the common stock outstanding. And when you include the net share settlement on employee stock comp, the figure rises to 11%. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we repurchased approximately 4%, well within our plans of buying between 3% to 5% of our outstanding shares in 2025. Before I close, I also want to take this opportunity to say a special thank you to Tony Bohr.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Tony is transitioning his CFO duties to Chad Anderson later today. Tony has been a great CFO, and I'm very grateful to him for his many contributions to Blackbaud's growth and success. Over the last fourteen years, Tony has developed an outstanding finance organization, and he's instilled a strong operational and financial discipline across the company. I look forward to continuing to work with Tony in his new role as EVP of Corporate Development and Strategy to help ensure a smooth transition and continue to drive our success and operational excellence. One of his key focus areas will be to help lead our charge to be a rule of 45 company.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

I'm delighted about Chad's promotion as CFO. Chad is a highly accomplished global finance executive and twelve year veteran of Blackbaud with a deep knowledge of our business, our customers and the industry. Chad has successfully led many key and impactful projects to mature, modernize and improve the efficiency and accuracy of the company's financial systems, processes and organization. Having worked closely with Chad for over a decade, I'm looking forward to benefiting from his experience and knowledge in the role of CFO as we work to deliver profitable growth for our shareholders in 2025 and beyond. There will be a formal press release and eight ks at the end of the day today.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Let me conclude with why Blackbaud continues to be a sound investment choice that we believe should create substantial shareholder value, and our performance in Q1 reinforces that belief. Regarding organic revenue, you can expect mid single digit plus organic revenue growth driven by visible and full reoccurring revenue streams targeting both new logos and expansion of our installed base empowered by innovation. You can continue to expect a strong focus on cost and employee productivity to improve EBITDA. Additionally, our strong free cash flow will drive a purposeful capital allocation strategy in 2025 and beyond with a plan to buy back of up to 5% of common stock outstanding in 2025. We look forward to our continued journey in offering our shareholders increasing value in the coming years as we make progress against our Rule of 45 ambition by 02/1930.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

With that, let me turn the call over to Tony.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Thanks for the kind words, Mike, and good morning, everyone. I believe Blackbaud is positioned for long term success, delivering consistent growth and industry leading profitability. I'm very pleased to be turning the reins over to Chad Anderson, whom I've worked with for more than twenty years, most recently as my Chief Accounting Officer. And I look forward to helping Chad, Mike and the team in the near term focused on the corporate development strategy role. I'm confident that this transition will be seamless.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

With that, let me dive into the details of our Q1 financial results. As Mike outlined, Blackbaud performed well in the first quarter, kicking off a good start to the year. We remain committed to providing investors an attractive financial model balance between growth in revenues, earnings and cash flows along with a prudent and purposeful capital allocation strategy. Mike walked through the high level Q1 results, which tell a strong story of improving top line growth and dramatically improved profitability. But to reiterate, Q1 organic revenues were up 5.8% to $271,000,000 Non GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $93,000,000 was up approximately $4,000,000 with a two fifty basis point improvement to margin.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

As you know, we previously only reported standalone revenue for EverFi, because it was not a separate reportable segment for us. But we estimate that EverFi's contribution to our 2024 EBITDA was approximately $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 The mid single digit organic revenue growth and improved EBITDA margin speaks to the power of our Five Point operating plan, which positively impacted earnings per share. Non GAAP EPS increased to $0.96 compared to $0.93 last year. Adjusted free cash flow was negative $11,000,000 in the quarter. As a reminder, Q1 tends to be our lowest quarter for free cash flow generation and the first quarter of twenty twenty five included the one time $28,000,000 cash release payment associated with the Washington DC office lease that we discussed on last quarter's call, increased interest expense related to our share repurchase program and fluctuations in the timing of vendor payments also negatively impacted free cash flow in the quarter.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

However, our expected free cash flow of the year gives us confidence to continue investment in a number of critical areas like product innovation and stock repurchases. In Q1, we bought back approximately 4% of our outstanding shares and continue to demonstrate a strong commitment to our belief in the value of Blackbaud. It was a strong first quarter and start to the year. Before I move on to guidance for the remainder of 2025, there are several housekeeping items I want to highlight that may influence our numbers and help you to set your models for both the year and quarters appropriately. Thinking about revenue seasonality, recall that the fourth quarter is typically our highest revenue quarter while the first quarter is our lowest due to timing of charitable giving and events throughout the year.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Q1 tends to be our lowest quarter from a profitability standpoint due to timing of expenses related to employee benefits and employee stock or investing. Our annual merit increases for employee compensation go into effect on July 1 every year, so Q3 tends to have higher compensation related costs compared to Q2. Moving now to guidance for the remainder of 2025. Our guidance for the year remains unchanged and assumes no material changes good or bad in the current landscape related to the markets we serve. So for the year, we are projecting revenue in the range of $1,500,000,000 to $1,125,000,000 representing organic growth of 4.2% to 5.1% or 4.5% to 5.4% on a constant currency basis.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Shifting to profitability, we will continue to focus on margin expansion opportunities, while at the same time making investments in the business and areas of innovation, artificial intelligence, product roadmaps and cybersecurity. Therefore, we anticipate EBITDA margins of approximately 34.9% to 35.9%. This does take into account what I mentioned earlier that EverFi's contribution to our 2024 EBITDA was approximately 10,000,000 to $15,000,000 And with the overall revenue and spend configuration I just outlined, we expect 2025 non GAAP EPS in the range of $4.16 to $4.35 per share or up two to 7% year over year. The combination of consistent organic revenue growth and improved margin is expected to result in a rule of 40 at constant currency of 40.4% at the midpoint of guidance for the full year, more than 150 basis point improvement year over year. We continue to have a sharp focus on driving adjusted free cash flow and returning capital to our shareholders.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

For the year, we're guiding to adjusted free cash flow of $185,000,000 to 195,000,000 This guidance range is inclusive of several one time investments that will provide long term benefits to the company and shareholders, including the buyout of the Washington DC office lease, which was a $28,000,000 cash expenditure in Q1 that would have been $42,000,000 if we kept the lease for full term and will provide a benefit to adjusted EBITDA moving forward. Also a new office location in India that will provide access to high quality tech talent. Additionally, we expect to incur approximately $11,000,000 of incremental interest expense year over year comprised of roughly $30,000,000 in interest for our 2024 and planned 2025 stock repurchases, offset by the pay down of debt using discretionary cash. And finally, we expect approximately $15,000,000 decline year over year to other factors including timing of certain working capital items and divestiture related costs. You can find more details on Slide 24 of our investor deck.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Looking to the future, we believe adjusted free cash flow will continue to grow and anticipate at a minimum repurchasing shares to offset dilution from share based compensation. Beyond that, the company has tremendous optionality to dynamically allocate capital to its highest use based upon market conditions, including additional stock repurchases, synergistic M and A or repayment of debt. The performance of our stock, the interest rate environment and the availability of acquisitions will help inform our capital allocation decisions going forward. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot more to look forward to through 2025 and beyond, with the goal of becoming a rule of 45 company by 02/1930. As such, we remain focused on providing enhanced value to our customers and to our shareholders.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Before we jump to Q and A, let me introduce Chad and again congratulate him on a well deserved promotion. Chad?

Chad Anderson
Chad Anderson
CAO at Blackbaud

Thanks, Tony, and you, Mike, the kind words. It's been a pleasure working closely with you both over the past decade, and I look forward to following your example of professionalism and business leadership in the years ahead. Operator, let's open up the line for questions.

Operator

Thank Our first question comes from Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Peterson
Brian Peterson
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Hey, everyone. Thanks for taking my question and congrats to Chad and Tony, it's truly been a pleasure. I hope you won't be a stranger in the new role. Mike, just wanted to follow-up on some of your prepared remarks on the Doge impact. You very much understand how you can help customers through that in the mission criticality of your software.

Brian Peterson
Brian Peterson
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

But also curious if you see any changes on the gross retention side or the bookings environment in light of this, understanding that a lot of this is outside of your control.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Yes. Hey, Brian. Good question. First of all, our solutions are not in the fund flow of federal grants. I think that's important.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Some of our customers are getting impacted by this. It frankly makes our donation platforms more important. Our platforms are pointed toward individual donors and alumni and things. So we become more important from a revenue source standpoint for customers. We've seen no impact on sales bookings, no impact on building sales pipeline, no impact on existing customers or retention.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

The biggest, test of the health of our end markets was COVID because we had customers that closed their doors, performing arts centers and K-twelve schools and others. We lost no customers and we didn't have any go out of business even then. And that was the biggest test of the health of the end market. So it might cause some difficulty for some of our larger customers, but we don't see an impact on our business anywhere.

Brian Peterson
Brian Peterson
Managing Director at Raymond James Financial

Got it. And Tony, maybe one follow-up for you. Just as we're thinking about the transactional business, how did that perform relative to your expectations in the first quarter? And as we're thinking about that mid single digit organic growth outlook, how do we think about transactional impacting that?

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Yes, the transactions was the biggest driver of over performance in the quarter. We did well across the board. So as Mike said, retention held up fine, Bookings were actually pretty darn good for the quarter as well and have been through April. And as you know, we had a good Q4. So from recurring revenue, we're well on track for the year at this point.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Transactions, our guide included a little bit of incremental transaction revenue related to LA wildfires, but that was in the original guide. And then as we've stated, when we're providing our longer term outlook of that mid single digit plus, plus typically is going to relate to the transactional. I think we came in at just about 9% or a little over 9% growth in Q1. Transactional is about $2,000,000 in incremental revenue for the quarter, which pushed us up to that kind of 5.8% or 5.9% on constant currency. Really hard, as you noted, to predict the volatility in some of the transactional revenue.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

We've not built in those viral giving events this year into the guidance. So if we do see more of those like we have with the wildfires, we'd have some incremental upside on the year.

Tom Barth
Tom Barth
Head of Investor Realtions at Blackbaud

Thanks, Tony.

Operator

Our next question comes from Rob Oliver with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Rob Oliver
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Great. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Appreciate it. Tony, I'll echo what Brian said.

Rob Oliver
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Wish you the best of luck, and it's been a pleasure working with you. My question is for you. Just, I guess, another way to attack the macro. Clearly, you guys don't have direct exposure to federal. And I know you said you haven't seen any change in the behavior of your customers, but it does seem like there is a painful residual effect happening with some of the customers in your market who are exposed to grants or money flows that are coming from federal agencies.

Rob Oliver
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

So in light of that, you guys maintained guide obviously off of a good Q1 driven by transactions. But just wanted to get a sense for you as you thought about the guidance for this year as what sort of macro was contemplated in that guidance? And then secondly, just around the mid single digit plus comment, it does seem like a little bit of an uptick from the optionality comment you guys had previously made about the option kind of for upside for mid single digits. So I wanted to understand, if I'm reading that right, and what that increased confidence might be and what the timeframe is for that?

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Hey, Rob, it's Mike. I'll start here and then Tony can kick in. Most of our customers don't get federal grants. So many of our larger nonprofits do, but you think about the vertical markets we're in. K-twelve is a big space for us.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Performing Arts Centers is a big space for us. YourCause is in the corporations marketplace. We have a lot of faith based customers, churches and synagogues. We have the JustGiving platform in The UK. You walk across the company's vertical markets we serve and you walk across the basically 17 platforms that create all of our revenue.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

There's very, very little impact on the end customers in the main globally that get federal grants. So the noise is a lot in the world, but related to Blackbaud, it's not a big part of the customer's funding per se. We have a lot of customers that are regional food banks and other types of customers. So we're pretty spread out in all the vertical markets that 501c3s or education institutions are in. And it's just not a lot of impact.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

We haven't seen it, like I said, in bookings, retention or the build of our sales pipeline for this quarter and the rest of the year. So we don't see it on us as a big impact. For some of our customers that are not getting funding, we're working with them to integrate our AI capabilities and predictive analytics that drive more revenue from individual donors. And it's becoming more of a stickier and important product for them to drive their revenue. So it's not a big impact and we don't see it.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

When we set the original guidance for the year, we use wordings around no material changes in the macro. I think when we said that back a couple of months ago and we're sticking with that because we don't really see it. Related to growth, yeah, we gave guidance at mid single digits plus. We just saw some plus in Q1. We're not changing the guide for the year right now.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

We're two months away from closing out Q2. So we'll have a view of that obviously when we report on Q2 in the summertime. But we've had a really great start to the year. We don't see the macro having a negative impact on us. So we're feeling very optimistic the go forward for the rest of this year.

Rob Oliver
Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Great. Very helpful. Thank you guys.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

You're welcome. Thanks, Rob.

Operator

Our next question comes from Parker Lane with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Matthew Kikkert
Matthew Kikkert
Equity Research Associate at Stifel Financial

Hi. This is Matthew Kicker on for Parker. Thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations to both Tony and Chad, both on the long tenure and the promotion. The last quarter, we talked a lot about the net new emphasis for 2025. Just curious how what you saw from that sub segment in 1Q and what the net new pipeline looks like for the rest of the year?

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Yes. We talked about a big focus on new logos and we've made that pivot successfully and that pivot is behind us. It was just a small part of our bookings were conversions from legacy product to cloud product. That's largely behind us now. And the focus on new bookings has materialized really quite well.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

New bookings are up substantially in the first quarter this year. The pipeline looks good. So we're excited about new bookings across the vertical markets that we serve.

Matthew Kikkert
Matthew Kikkert
Equity Research Associate at Stifel Financial

Okay. That's great to hear. And then my second question was on the global market. Of the business JustGiving is over in The UK and you have some exposure to international markets. I guess what are you seeing in international markets versus the opportunity here domestically?

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Yeah, we're doing pretty well in our Asia Pac area. Good sales bookings, good customer retention and across Europe as well. JustGiving is doing really well. That continues to perform well. There's great brand recognition in The UK and in many other parts of Europe on JustGiving.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

It's used in a lot of major events like London Marathon and other large events and it's doing really well. It's all donor driven, personal campaign type stuff for fundraising for nonprofits and it continues to perform really well for us. We also see a lot of upside in the future in our YourCause platform for corporations. I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we just had a small customer event in Dallas. We had over 100 customers, a lot of them from Fortune 500 companies and there's a big interest in YourCause and employee engagement.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

And YourCause is a leading platform in the world in that space. And so we have some high hopes around the future for that and continuing to drive that platform as well. So new product sales, new logos going really well.

Matthew Kikkert
Matthew Kikkert
Equity Research Associate at Stifel Financial

Terrific. Thank you.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kauji Ikeda with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

Yeah. Good morning. Hey, guys. Thanks so much for taking the questions. And I echo the statements on congrats to Chad and thank you, Tony.

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

It's been a pleasure. Maybe taking a big step back here and asking a big picture question on your end market. I'm hearing a lot of confidence in the prepared remarks and in the answers to the Q and A about your confidence in the end market demand environment. Maybe that's the question here. What is it about your end markets that is giving you the competency in their resiliency for this year?

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Yeah, sure. So the end markets are pretty healthy, like I said already in the call. And the amount of innovation that we've come out with is really resonating with customers and new prospects. Back in the fall at our annual conference called BBcon in Seattle, we announced what we call six ways of innovation and we've been delivering on that. There's a lot of AI capabilities in our products now.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

There's much better integration across the products. So our ability to cross sell and the innovation is driving some really good results in new logos and cross selling as well. So we've got a healthy market in all the verticals that we serve to my earlier comments. Our engineering and product teams are doing a great job in driving innovation with some new solutions and just some more advanced solutions, better UI, user experience, better integration, embedded predictive analytics, embedded AI is resonating with customers.

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

Got it. Thank you. And maybe a follow-up here, kind of digging in a little bit more specifically on the contract renewals for this year. I know you guys got about 25% of the mix coming up for renewal. And so how are those conversations going specifically?

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

And maybe remind us, is there any sort of seasonality in the contract renewal cycle this year that we should be aware of? Is it more front end weighted or is it more back half weighted this year? Thank you.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Yeah, sure. It's going well. Our customer retention remains really high. That hasn't changed even since we started this program. The customer retention numbers are high.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

It's going well. Customers this is just a normal course of business now. It's not new anymore because it's been a couple of years. We notify customers five, six months ahead of time. So there's plenty of time for any discussions.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

If needed, many of our smaller and mid tier customers are on auto renewals. We've standardized on three year contracts. Some larger customers prefer longer term, four or five year contracts. We're not the only software supplier. Our customers buy software from other vendors, including us at the same time.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

And so this is normal for them to see this across multiple vendors, not just Blackbaud. So this tradition is really just normal course of business, happens every day, going well, retentions still on the 92%, ninety three percentile. It's just normal course of business. It's not new anymore. And I really think that given all the innovation, we've kind of really proven to be a long term partner for our customers and they see what's coming down the road and we're informing them more on what's coming in the future from an innovation standpoint.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

We have these customer updates, these webinars where thousands and thousands of customers participate and we talk to them about the roadmaps and what's been delivered and what's coming. And across our portfolio, we have new innovation and new features that just show up every day, every week, every month. So it's continuous innovation. We don't do large one or two drops a year. It's continuous across the portfolio and customers appreciate that.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

And Koji, the seasonality, that's still going to be higher at the end of Q2. First part of Q3 is when we have the bigger surge in the renewals. That really probably shouldn't change much, even with all the new contracting that we're going through.

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

Got it. Thank you so much. And maybe if I could squeeze in one more here. I think you guys already repurchased 3% of your common stock target mix of the 5% already for 2025. If you guys hit that target early, the 5%, would there be any thought process of potentially increasing the share buyback program?

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

Thank you guys so much.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Absolutely, Kaji. Thanks for that question. We hit about 4.2% is where we are through the end of Q1. We had net share settles for all the normal vesting that we'd have in the first quarter and then we bought back $100,000,000 worth of stock, puts us at about 15%. We've now purchased back just in the last year.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

So we've done a great job, I think on that from a capital allocation perspective. Debt is up a little bit as you saw and interest expense is up a bit. We will as we do every quarter and every year, we'll continue to look at that capital allocation strategy. We'll evaluate what's going on in the market with share price. We'll look at our debt levels.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

We'll look at the interest rate, etcetera. So we'll continue to reevaluate that, but we're well on our way at about a little over 4% towards our 3% to 5% for the full year. But we'll continue to evaluate that and let you guys know if we decide to change our position on that front.

Koji Ikeda
Koji Ikeda
Director - Enterprise Software Equity Research at Bank of America

Thank you so much.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

You're welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Kirk Materne
Senior Managing Director - Equity Research at Evercore ISI

Yes, thanks very much and good morning and congrats to Tony and Chad on the new roles. Mike, I was wondering, could you just remind us a little bit about the thought process on the monetization of some of your AI technologies? Just how are you thinking about that rolling through either contracts with your existing or how you're thinking about monetizing with some of your net new clients?

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

Kurt, thanks for the question. Like I said, we've done a lot in the last eighteen months with embedded AI and predictive analytics in our solutions including generative AI, which is available. We're launching a technical preview of Blackbaud Co Pilot, which is going to come out some of our products in the next several months. That's going to be a really interesting add to our solutions. Our customers will be able to interact with products and their data, asking natural language questions, which is really impactful.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

And uniquely, we have all this data in our systems given we've been at this a long time. That's a differentiated position for us. AI requires to have a lot of data and we happen to. So that Blackbaud Copilot will be rolling out in the next couple of months and we're doing some tech previews. Also on the further agenda, but not too long is AgenTeq AI and AgenTeq AI solutions embedded.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

So far, all of these capabilities, we have not separately charged for any of these separate capabilities. We felt we had to drive a lot of innovation including some of this AI given the three year contract renewals we started with some price increases to make sure our customers are getting a lot of value from us and they are. AgenTeq AI is a little different. We are looking at monetization models for AgenTeq AI in the future. We're looking at what other firms are doing and what we think is appropriate.

Mike Gianoni
Mike Gianoni
President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Blackbaud

So that'll be coming down the road. But to date, again, all of the embedded predictive analytics and AI are just included with the contractual pricing.

Kirk Materne
Senior Managing Director - Equity Research at Evercore ISI

Okay, that's super helpful. And then Tony, I know you guys think about the world correctly in constant currency terms, but obviously the dollars pull back a lot here. We're just thinking about sort of our models on a reported basis. I'm guessing if the dollar stays where it is today, that would be a bit of a tailwind for you all if we look out over the remainder of the year. Just any, I don't know, rough thoughts on that.

Kirk Materne
Senior Managing Director - Equity Research at Evercore ISI

I know it's a bit of a guessing game.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Yes, Kurt, you're right on the money. The currency has been moving a ton. It's a bit more favorable right now when I look at that forward curve versus where we were when we put guide together. So it'd be a bit of a tailwind for us at this point if it holds with expectations.

Tom Barth
Tom Barth
Head of Investor Realtions at Blackbaud

Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate it guys.

Anthony Boor
Anthony Boor
EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO at Blackbaud

Thanks, Kirk.

Tom Barth
Tom Barth
Head of Investor Realtions at Blackbaud

Yes. Thank you, Kirk, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We will be attending a number of investor events in May and June to include several conferences, which are listed on our Events page on our Investor Relations site. We hope to see you then and also to speaking with you very soon. Thank you and have a nice day.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Executives
    • Tom Barth
      Tom Barth
      Head of Investor Realtions
    • Mike Gianoni
      Mike Gianoni
      President, CEO & Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors
    • Anthony Boor
      Anthony Boor
      EVP of Finance & Administration and CFO
    • Chad Anderson
      Chad Anderson
      CAO
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • Blackbaud reported Q1 revenue of $271 million (5.8% organic growth), a non-GAAP EBITDA margin of 34.3%, non-GAAP EPS of $0.96 and a Rule of 40 score of 40.1%.
  • Full-year 2025 guidance remains unchanged, targeting mid-single-digit plus organic growth, EBITDA margins of 34.9–35.9%, EPS of $4.16–4.35, free cash flow of $185–195 million and a Rule of 40 of ~40.4%.
  • Key operational initiatives include shifting to primarily three-year contracts, migrating products to public cloud, embedding AI to boost customer productivity and rightsizing costs via lease and vendor renegotiations.
  • Blackbaud repurchased ~4% of shares in Q1 and plans to buy back 3–5% of outstanding stock in 2025, with further flexibility for M&A or debt repayment based on market conditions.
  • The finance leadership team transitions today as long-time CFO Tony Bohr moves to EVP of Corporate Development & Strategy and Chad Anderson is promoted to CFO to ensure continuity in driving the Rule of 45 ambition.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Blackbaud Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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