Upland Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:UPLD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Upland Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:UPLD) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript February 23, 2023

Operator: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Upland Software Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question and answer session. Instruction will be given at that time. The conference call will be recorded and simultaneously webcast at investor.uplandsoftware.com, and a replay will be available there for 12 months. By now, everyone should have access to the fourth quarter 2022 earnings release, which was distributed today at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. If you’ve not received the release, it’s available on Upland’s website. I’d now like to turn the call over to Jack McDonald, Chairman and CEO of Upland Software. Please go ahead, sir.

Jack McDonald: All right. Thank you and welcome to our Q4 2022 earnings call. I’m joined today by Mike Hill, our CFO. On today’s call, I will start with our Q4 review, and then we will be discussing our new comprehensive growth plan. Following that, Mike will provide some insights on the Q4 numbers and our guidance, and then we’ll open it up for questions. But before we get started, Mike, could you read the safe harbor statement.

Mike Hill: Yes. Thank you, Jack. So during today’s call, we will include statements that are considered forward-looking within the meanings of securities laws. These statements are subject to risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. A detailed discussion of these risks and uncertainties are contained in our annual report on Form 10-K as periodically updated in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. The forward-looking statements made today are based on our views and assumptions and on information currently available to Upland management as of today. We do not intend or undertake any duty to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements.

On this call, Upland will refer to non-GAAP financial measures that when used in combination with GAAP results provide Upland management with additional analytical tools to understand its operations. Upland has provided reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our press release announcing our fourth quarter and year-to-date results, which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Please note that we are unable to reconcile any forward-looking non-GAAP financial measures to their directly comparable GAAP financial measures because the information which is needed to complete a reconciliation is unavailable at this time without unreasonable effort. And with that, I’ll turn the call back over to Jack.

Jack McDonald: All right. Thanks, Mike. So here are the headlines: we beat our Q4 revenue guidance midpoint; EBITDA came in, in line; and our net dollar retention rate as of December 31, 2022, was 95%. Cash on hand as of December 31 was roughly $249 million, and that’s after generating $6 million of free cash flow in Q4. And we anticipate generating between $30 million and $40 million of free cash flow in 2023. In the fourth quarter, we expanded relationships with 310 existing customers, 38 of which were major expansions. We also welcomed 204 new customers to Upland in Q4, including 21 new major customers. New customer deals were distributed across our products and industry verticals. On the product front, in Q4, I’ll note that we had a new RightAnswers release, a browser extension that powers the connected knowledge experience, seemingly — seamlessly unlocking the possibility to deliver knowledge to every corner of the enterprise through AI-powered centralized search.

We are also announcing today our comprehensive growth plan, and I want to take a few minutes to walk through that plan and the process that we went through to put it together and our goals for the business over the next several years. As you’ll recall, in August of 2022, we received a $115 million investment from HGGC, a leading private equity firm. Over the past 6 months, we have done a thorough review of our business and have built a comprehensive plan to increase organic growth and enhance value creation for shareholders. In designing this plan, we looked at our business on a fundamental basis and made the decisions needed to build real long-term value. This plan is the next logical step in the evolution of our business. We founded Upland 12 years ago.

When you look at our history to date, it can be grouped into 3 chapters or phases, which I’ll review for a moment now. Phase 1 was M&A, acquisitions for critical mass. With a series of acquisitions, we scaled the business from a start-up in 2010 to $65 million in revenue in 2014 at the time of our IPO to $300-plus million today. We plan to continue to grow through M&A and opportunistically capitalize on accretive acquisitions of orphaned venture-backed companies over the next several years. We still see a great opportunity there. Phase 2 was about building a standardized operating platform, which we call UplandOne, that enabled us to expand our EBITDA margins from roughly 6% at IPO to mid-20s today and expanding from here to target EBITDA margins at scale of between 30% and 35%.

And phase 3 is about making smart go-to-market investments for faster growth, building an efficient, scalable go-to-market motion that will drive higher organic growth without sacrificing strong margins and will also permit Upland to capture revenue synergies from new acquisitions. And the goal with the new go-to-market plan we’re going to talk about today is to achieve a long-term target of 5% to 10% core organic growth. So again, phase 1 was about M&A for critical mass, phase 2 standardized operating platform, phase 3 is about go-to-market. Now we successfully executed Phase 1 and Phase 2, and we began the Phase 3 go-to-market investment in 2020. Now with our new partner at HGGC and with fresh capital, we are building on what we learned from that effort.

The plan that we’re announcing today is based on a thorough portfolio review of our current business, an analysis of what we do well and where we have significant opportunities to improve, and a focus on the key levers for profitable growth. HGGC and their team of operating advisers provided valuable assistance and feedback to the Upland management team as we put our plan together. There is a significant opportunity to drive our next phase of profitable growth. To achieve that growth, we’re going to make targeted incremental investments of $15 million per year, $15 million per year incremental investments in marketing, in sales and product. And as we do that, we’re going to lean into those parts of our portfolio that present the best opportunities for growth.

We are building this growth plan around: first, a highly efficient digital marketing capability; second, a scalable, cost-effective inside sales force; and three, our India Center of Excellence, which is a scalable and cost-effective offshore development platform. Because we’re building this plan around those highly efficient capabilities, we’re not only going to be able to drive more growth. And again, we’re targeting a 5% to 10% core organic growth rate long term. But we’re going to be able to do it without sacrificing profitability. And this should enable us to increase EBITDA margins from the mid-20s in 2023 to between 30 and 34 — 30% and 35% at scale. There are 4 core elements to the plan: first is focusing our product groupings around common points of leverage to enable our teams to go deeper and to be more effective in serving customers and driving growth in our competitively strongest products; second, revamping our marketing function to digitize marketing motions and drive more high-quality sales leads; third, adding an efficient and scalable inside sales force; and of course, this will complement our field sales force, which will still play an important role in our go-to-market; and then leveraging our efficient India COE, Center of Excellence, our R&D center in India, to increase product investment to stay competitive and to expand our market opportunity.

So again, to repeat, better focus for our key product groupings, a modern digital marketing capability, digitally enabled inside sales, and increased product investment through our India COE development platform. When we step back and look at the core elements of this plan, these moves are highly complementary and mutually reinforcing. After 31 acquisitions over 11 years, focusing our product lines around common points of leverage marks an important evolutionary step, and it enables the achievement of a higher level of ROI from the investments we’re making in go-to-market and in product. Moreover, focusing our investments around higher-growth areas is a reflection of our commitment to effective internal capital allocation given differentiated opportunities for growth within our portfolio.

It’s critical to understand that this plan is about making a meaningful investment today for a higher-growth, higher-value business in the next several years and enabling us to fully capture the organic and acquisition growth opportunities that are in front of us. While a lot of tech companies today are having to retrench, we are financially strong and we can invest in attractive growth opportunities. As I mentioned a moment ago, our organic free cash flow guidance for 2023 is $30 million to $40 million of free cash flow, and that’s after funding the investments I’m describing today. And of course, we have $249 million in cash on the balance sheet. So we will make the smart, meaningful investments to transform our business, and we’ll do it while still generating $30 million to $40 million of free cash flow.

As part of the thorough review of our business we did to build this comprehensive growth plan, we identified certain unprofitable customer contracts and products that don’t fit our business strategy going forward. We have made the decision to sunset those assets. This decision removes distraction and enables us to focus on organic growth and accretive inorganic acquisitive growth in our core markets. This is the kind of decision we would have made if we were a private company to clear the decks for future growth. And so we are making that decision here. The sunset assets represent an estimated 10% of our 2023 revenue and will represent a smaller percentage of our revenue each year thereafter. Upon execution of this plan, what we’re going to end up with is a company that can grow both organically and through acquisitions with that growth supporting margin expansion and increased shareholder value.

We’ve already begun to implement this plan, and we’re making management changes to drive the new plan. In January, Upland welcomed a new Chief Sales Officer, Oliver Yates, with over 20 years of SaaS sales experience. Oliver most recently transformed and led the digital sales team at Infor, a global leader in business cloud software products. Additionally, Upland welcomed Michael Frania as our new Head of Marketing and Demand Generation. Michael joins from TIBCO, where he led the company’s global demand generation and digital marketing efforts across a set of complex and diverse solutions and products. Finally, we promoted Karen Cummings to EVP and Senior GM based on her demonstrated exceptional leadership and product performance at Upland. We have also already made changes to product management and have begun increasing capacity at our efficient Center of Excellence development operation in Bangalore, India.

We realized that the economy may experience a recession in 2023, and we’re planning accordingly. But I would note that the investments we are making today are about building key muscles and motions that will make us a stronger and a higher-growth business as we emerge from any recession into 2024 and beyond. If anything, a near-term downturn in the economy will make it easier for us to make key hires, build out our teams and acquire accretive companies. So we’re incredibly excited about our business and the plan, and we intend to share appropriate updates with investors as we go. So with that, let me turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Hill: All right. Thank you, Jack. So I’ll cover the financial highlights of the fourth quarter and our outlook for the first quarter and full year 2023. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $78.8 million, representing an increase of 4% year-over-year. And without the FX impact, growth would have been 7%. Recurring revenue from subscription and support increased 3% year-over-year to $74.1 million. And without the FX impact, subscription and support revenue would have — growth would have been 5%. Perpetual license revenue increased to $1.6 million in the fourth quarter, up from $0.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. Professional services revenue was $3 million for the quarter, an 11% year-over-year increase. Overall gross margin was 66% during the fourth quarter.

And our product gross margin remained strong at 68% or 72% when adding back depreciation and amortization, which we refer to as cash gross margin. Operating expenses, excluding acquisition-related expenses, depreciation, amortization, stock compensation and impairment of goodwill, were $32.2 million for the quarter or 41% of total revenue, all generally as expected. But I should note that we did incur a $12.5 million noncash goodwill impairment charge triggered by the dip in our stock price at the end of the quarter. Had our stock price not dipped, we would not have had an impairment. Also, acquisition-related expenses were approximately $2.6 million in the fourth quarter, which were in line with plan. We expect acquisition-related expenses to further decline here in Q1 and should be insignificant after Q1 until our acquisition activity picks back up in the future.

Our fourth quarter 2022 adjusted EBITDA was $24.3 million or 31% of total revenue, down from $25.1 million or 33% of total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021. For the fourth quarter of 2022, GAAP operating cash flow was $5.8 million and free cash flow was $5.7 million, bringing our year-to-date free cash flow to $29.1 million. We did have temporary timing differences in working capital accounts of approximately $6.3 million, including several million dollars of negative FX impact, which temporarily lowered our free cash flow generation in Q4. But we do not expect these negative temporary timing differences or an FX impact to repeat in Q1, and therefore, we should see strong free cash flow generation in Q1. As Jack mentioned, we anticipate $30 million to $40 million of free cash flow generation for the full year 2023 after absorbing the remaining tail of acquisition-related expenses in Q1.

Our ongoing free cash flow generation is in addition to our existing liquidity of approximately $309 million comprised of the approximate $249 million of cash on our balance sheet as of December 31, 2022, plus our $60 million undrawn revolver. As of December 31, 2022, we had outstanding net debt of approximately $274 million after factoring in the cash on our balance sheet. I will note that the principal payments on our term debt are 1% per year or about $5.4 million with the remaining balance maturing in August of 2026. The interest rate on our outstanding term debt is locked at 5.4%, making our annual cash interest payments approximately $30 million at our current debt level. Additionally, I will point out that our term debt has no financial covenants on current borrowings.

With regard to income taxes, Upland currently has approximately $358 million of total tax NOL carryforwards and of these, we estimate that approximately $203 million will be available for utilization prior to exploration. I will note that we still expect around $5 million of cash taxes per year. Now for guidance and for Q1 and full year 2023. This guidance reflects the significant incremental sales, marketing and product investments that we are making as part of our new growth plan totaling $15-plus million per year. Okay. So for the fourth quarter — for the first quarter ending March 31, 2023, we expect reported total revenue to be between $72 million and $78 million, including subscription and support revenue between $67.5 million and $72.5 million or a decline in total revenue of 5% at the midpoint over the quarter ended March 31, 2022.

First quarter 2023 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $15.5 million and $18.5 million for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 23% at the midpoint. This adjusted EBITDA guide at the midpoint is a decrease of 27% from the quarter ended March 31, 2022. For the full year ended December 31, 2023, we expect reported total revenue to be between $288 million and $312 million, including subscription and support revenue between $269 million and $289 million or a decline in total revenue of 5% at the midpoint over the year ended December 31, 2022. Full year 2023 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $63 million and $75 million for an adjusted EBITDA margin of 23% at the midpoint. This adjusted EBITDA guide at the midpoint is a decrease of 29% over the year ended December 31, 2022.

And with that, I’ll pass the call back to Jack.

Jack McDonald: All right. Thanks, Mike. We are ready to open the call up for questions.

See also David Tepper’s Top 10 Dividend Stock Picks and 10 High Growth Low Dividend Stocks to Buy.

Q&A Session

Operator: And your first question comes from the line of Scott Berg from Needham. Your line is open.

Michael Rackers: This is Michael Rackers on for Scott. Appreciate all the color on the new growth plan. Kind of digging in on the new growth plan that you outlined, I guess, what’s the number one thing that gives you the confidence that the elevated level of spend will drive growth acceleration? And then why do you feel the timing is right?

Jack McDonald: Yes. We’re building the growth plan around 3 efficient motions: creating a modern digital marketing capability, building an inside sales motion and then leveraging our India development platform to make additional investment in product to remain competitive and also to increase our market opportunity. And we’re doing all that while also providing new focus to our product groupings and organizing them around common points of leverage and then indexing on those highest-potential growth products in terms of where we’re directing this $15 million a year incremental investment. I think this is the logical evolution of our business. Again, we had phase 1 around M&A for critical mass, phase 2 around that common operating platform.

We’ve known that this is phase 3, this building of a more effective go-to-market motion that will yield higher organic growth. We learned some things in the first phase of this process. Now we’re going at it with a growth plan. We have done it in a meaningful way. We are doing it in a targeted way, in a focused way. And we are bringing in talent to execute against this plan, including go-to-market executives that have had success in large, multiproduct, matrix enterprise software organizations. So we feel great about the plan, and we’re funded and we’re all about executing right now.

Michael Rackers: And then net dollar retention has trended nicely up year-over-year. Is there anything specific you can point to driving this improvement? And then is it more weighted towards stronger expansion or just general reduced churn?

Mike Hill: Well, Michael, so I would say that yes, in the last 2 years, prior 2 years, the end of 2020 and the end of 2021, we were at 94% net dollar retention rate. And this 95% here at the end of ’22 does illustrate an improvement. Now keep in mind, this excludes the sunset assets. But yes, in terms of bookings, we have continued to see decent expansion from our customers. The churn is still there. Of course, we think we can do a lot better. Our goal on net dollar retention is to get to 100% target goal ultimately, and that has been our goal for — since we’ve had the metric. And so yes, it’s a mix of both expansion and churn. But it’s again, one of those things that’s moved a little bit in our direction. But we’ve got a long way to go, and we think we can improve it significantly from here.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Terry Tillman from Truist.

Robert Dee : It’s actually Bobby Dee on for Terry. I’m curious, given the focus on digital and digitally enabled go-to-market with the new plan, I’m wondering if that reflects any major change in sales head count? And separately, how should we think about a rough time line of bridging the gap from a 20% EBITDA margin up to that 30% to 35% target?