Paylocity Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:PCTY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And I think while it may take — it’s early days for the things that we’ve just announced, you probably start to see more actual impact from that when you get to the back part of the fiscal year. But I think from a momentum perspective, I feel pretty good about what we’re seeing from a sales perspective. We feel pretty good about the momentum we have in new product release and adoption and feel — I think, overall, I feel very good about being able to guide to 20% for the fiscal.

Bryan Bergin: Okay. That makes sense. And then a follow-up on the long-term target. So it’s nice to see the grades on EBITDA and the free cash flow margin. Within gross margin and G&A specifically, can you talk about some of the bigger sources of expansion? Just obviously, understanding natural leverage on broader scale, but are there other key levers you have here to discuss that gives you that confidence?

Steven Beauchamp: Yes. Sure. I think gross margin, we’ve consistently expanded since IPO in 2014. And I think the reason for us being able to do that is you hit one of them scale. But I think the second one is a lot of the new products that we’ve added don’t always require the same lift either from an implementation or ongoing service perspective. You think about the 3 additions that we had now, those are all incremental from a gross margin perspective. So as we see our revenue mix shift, some of the newer products we’ve added, we get a natural lift in gross margin, and that’s probably the biggest driver.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist Securities.

Terrell Tillman: I guess maybe the first question, just I think in the prepared remarks when you all were quoting some of the stats, mid-teens employee growth, I think you talked about larger customers. Was there anything notable in 4Q about the mix of bookings coming from larger customers and kind of any quantification on is the size of the larger customer increasing? And the second part of this question is based on the 18% sales capacity growth, do you foresee maybe a mix shift from where the business is coming from large, midsize or smaller customers in FY ’24?

Steven Beauchamp: Sure. I think the last part of your question is we did have a mix shift if you go back several years ago. First, we kind of expanded below our original target market. And then we expanded up in our target market. We started to see success upmarket in particular at an accelerated rate, and we put more resources against that. I think that was the case over the last couple of years, but that is probably steady now. We really feel good about the mix that we have in each segment, and we think about the growth rate of the 18% headcount growth being fairly similar across each of the segments.

Terrell Tillman: Okay. Great. And just the follow-up is on I think there was a comment about workforce level being flat for 1Q. Did you say anything about like the assumption or what you’re thinking about for the full year on workforce levels, same thing or any different dynamic?

Ryan Glenn: Yes. Terry, this is Ryan. I think the same approach, and I think we’ve been consistent with this methodology going back toward the beginning of the pandemic. So we guided to what we can see. And as we said in the prepared remarks, workforce levels have effectively been flat really going back 12 to 13 months at this point. So we assumed flat levels, certainly for Q1, but for the balance of ’24, and we’ll certainly watch those and update you all as we get deeper into the fiscal.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James.

Brian Peterson: So Steve, I wanted to hit on AI, but maybe through a different lens. I think one of the things that people are talking about is the ability to really accelerate product and software development cycles. So I’d be curious to hear how you guys are thinking about using it internally. And do you think that can have a meaningful difference in terms of either the margins or how quickly you can develop new products?

Steven Beauchamp: Yes. I think just stepping back, I think AI will impact every part of the business, whether that’s how we service customers and onboard customers, whether that’s how we’re building software products and using generative code, building tools and then where there’s capabilities that we can actually deliver to the customer that drives efficiency for them. So we’re looking at all aspects of it. We’ve certainly been actively using that behind the scenes. I think we’ve found a lot of success generating test use cases from a code perspective. That’s probably where we, kind of, are on that journey. But we are pretty passionate that this is a really interesting opportunity across all aspects of our business.

Brian Peterson: Great. And maybe just a quick follow-up. I know you mentioned the 18% growth in the sales headcount. Any comments on how the tenure of that group looks and thoughts on expectations for fiscal year ’24?