American Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMSWA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Matthew Galinko: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I’m curious about, I guess, the mechanics of keeping the EBITDA guidance despite the revenue tweak. Is that just an underlying mix shift strength in higher margin and dip in lower margin yield is kind of consistent or are there any changes in hiring plans or pace of headcount additions given some of the delays you’re seeing in the macro environment?

Allan Dow: Yes, I think, Matt, you nailed it. There is a mix factor as we have a higher dependence of our revenue or higher mix of our revenue coming from subscriptions is a higher margin business. So that allows us to deliver to the bottom line a little bit better. We’ve also been conservative in our hiring. We’re still up in headcount. We’re still making progress on our headcount, but we’re not running at the pace we thought we were going to. There is always a lead time in bringing headcount on and being revenue producing. So when you’re in a hiring period, there is a bit of a hit in that initial phase before those folks become revenue producing. You think about even in the services side or the sales side, it takes a little time for them to ramp up, get familiar with our processes and start delivering on expectations.

So just the slowdown in the hiring period has helped €“ in the hiring process has helped us a bit on the EBITDA margin also. So those two factors have weighed in and we feel really good about where we’re going to land on the margin.

Matthew Galinko: Got it. And then, I guess, just a follow-up on subscription margins and outlook. Any update on how you’re thinking about the evolution of that as that revenue line and business scaled up?

Vince Klinges: Yes, Matt. I think we’ve talked about this before. But we’re running at kind of the low 70s. If you take the amortization of cap software out and we kind of anticipate next year, we will start getting into the mid-70s and maybe towards the end of the year start trending to 75 €“ the high end of the 70s. But it’s going to be predicated on how the bookings perform for next year. But once we know that, then we should have some good certainty on getting the gross margins above 75%.

Matthew Galinko: Great. Thank you.

Operator: We will move next to Anja Soderstrom. Your line is open.

Anja Soderstrom: Yes. Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple of follow-ups. So first on the hiring, how do you see that environment now? We hear a lot about layoffs. But it doesn’t seem like people are leaving for unemployment, they are moving somewhere else. And have you noticed that it’s easing up and has it become maybe even better for you to find talent and at a better expense?

Allan Dow: I wish the last part of that was true. Better expense would be wonderful. We haven’t really seen a pullback. But we’ve seen the slowdown in the inflation rate, labor inflation rate, certainly. We are finding more candidates today than we were in the midst of the pandemic, 6 to 9, 12 months ago. So the recruiting pace is much better. Typically we were finding one or two candidates for an open position and trying to make a decision there. Now we’re in the range of four to five that we can select from. We still are in the hiring process. We’ve got a number of positions we’d love to fill. And as we find the right folks for that, we’re going to pull them in. We are not laying off. Although our peers in the organization and the technology space as we all know in general is doing some cutbacks. So it’s enriched our environment for recruiting. So we feel pretty good about that.