Roper Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:ROP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Davis: Okay. I look forward to the Analyst Day. I’m going to pass it on. Thanks, guys. Congrats on another good year. See you on Analyst Day.

Operator: And our next question today comes from Julian Mitchell at Barclays.

Julian Mitchell: Hi, good morning. Thank you, Rob. And I look forward to working with you, Jason. So maybe my first question, just to try and home in a little bit more on the sort of macro framework in the guide. Maybe specifically, I think about 25% of your Software revenue is reoccurring and non-recurring, so maybe more cyclical kind of talk. Maybe just remind us sort of what the organic growth of those two in aggregate was last year and what you’re dialing in for 2023 or any flavor of that? And then within Network Software specifically, transport and freight, it’s almost 1.25 of the revenue. And you mentioned you’re dialing in, I think, normalization was your phrase. Maybe just any finer point on what that means exactly of growth this year versus last?

Neil Hunn: Yes. So let me take — let’s take those, Jason, I take those in sequence. So I’ll set up what the difference between recurring and reoccurring revenue is in our base. I’ll let Jason talk about the relative growth rate, then we’ll tackle the DAT freight question you’re raising. So just to level set what everybody is, if we have a recurring revenue is subscription, contractual recurring revenue, reoccurring revenue is principally located at our MHA business. We take a percentage of the drug and food spend that goes to the network and so it’s not technically recurring, it’s highly reoccurring. So it’s not — and that’s probably the most — one of the most stable parts of our portfolio, long-term care, health care, residents and buildings, consuming food and pharmaceuticals, right?

So it’s highly secure for lack of a better word. It’s not transactional relative to a macroeconomic sort of situation. So I’ll stop just in terms of framing recurring versus reoccurring. I’ll let Jason take the relative growth rate question.

Jason Conley: Yes, sure, glad to. So MHA, as Neil mentioned, it’s really about drug purchases from the pharmacies, and they have very strong retention in those businesses from a customer standpoint. We always sort of think about the business being at the — maybe at the bottom end of the mid-single digits, maybe a little bit low singles. And that’s sort of what we experienced this year, and that’s kind of what we’re baking in for next year.

Neil Hunn: Great. Okay. Now let’s take to your freight and logistics around DAT specifically. So to remind you, there’s this tension between the cyclical freight dynamic and a secular push or a secular benefit that DAT and DAT’s customers are experiencing relative to the spot market becoming a more efficient place to place freight. So there’s tension between those two. From a cyclical point of view, we expected and have seen the carrier side of the network reduce a little bit. And it’s — and we expect it to reduce over the course or shrink or get a little bit smaller over the course of this year. DAT grew through the 2019 freight recession. I think DAT has grown every year since 2010. So the business is talking about the rate of growth at DAT, not does it expand and contract.

It tends to be much more stickier than that. As an early read, January is actually a little bit better. I mean the number of carriers in the network is sort of flattish through January and not declining. And the people in the industry that sort of call like the freight timing and if there’s going to be a freight recession, I actually think there’s a queuing for a large spring shipping season, mostly around — this triggered by produce. And we might start to be seeing a little bit of that bleed in, but we’ll have to see how the next couple of quarters play out.