American Software (AMSWA) Q2 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

American Software (AMSWA 0.29%)
Q2 2022 Earnings Call
Nov 18, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's second quarter fiscal year 2022 financial results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] Please note this call may be recorded, and I will be standing by should you need any assistance.

It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to your chief financial officer for American Software, Vincent Klinges. Please go ahead.

Vince Klinges -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Chloe, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to American Software's second quarter of fiscal 2022 earnings call. On the call with me is Allan Dow, president and CEO of American Software. Allan will provide some opening remarks, and then I will review the numbers, but first, our safe harbor statement. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding, among other things, our business strategy and growth strategy.

Any such forward-looking statements speak only as of this date. These forward-looking statements are based largely on our expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified and are beyond our control. Future developments and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by or underlying the forward-looking statements. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by statements made on this call.

Such factors include, but are not limited to, changes and uncertainty in general economic conditions, the growth rate of the market for our products and services, the timely availability and market acceptance of these products and services and the effect of competitive products and pricing and other competitive pressures and the irregular and unpredictable pattern of revenues. In light of these risks and uncertainties, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking information will prove to be accurate. At this time, I will turn the call over to Allan for our opening remarks.

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Vince. With the first half of our fiscal year behind us, I'm pleased to report that we have achieved double-digit revenue growth in our supply chain management segment each of the past two quarters. And in the second quarter, our total revenue growth also returned to the double digits. Our strong top-line performance was accompanied by significant expansion in our adjusted EBITDA margin, which is now approaching the levels we last saw when we had more material contribution from license fees.

Although our services revenue may cause some variation in any given quarter, we believe our recent growth and margin profile will increasingly be the norm, as we continue to scale our cloud business. Looking back on this past quarter, we exited summer and with the pandemic starting to ease, the transition back to the in-person activities began to accelerate. However, with the fragmented work environments, business uncertainty and the frenzied activities our customers are engaged in to address their supply chain issues, especially with the holiday period upon us, we experienced delays in the completion of several contracts. We have since secured one of the more significant opportunities, and we remain actively engaged in several others, which should come to conclusion soon.

Overall, our pipeline continues to increase, driven by the transformational projects required to enable enterprises to holistically manage their supply chains in a sustainable and economically resilient way. Although the timing of closing these contracts is a little less predictable due to longer approval processes and the relative scarcity of customer resources required to initiate projects, we remain confident that between a larger opportunity set and improved execution, we are poised for a strong second half. In regard to our second quarter results, I'm pleased to announce that we extended our post pandemic year-over-year improvements on all measures. With increased RPO and lower churn than we were experiencing a year ago, we continued to build our ACV and services backlogs.

We continue to focus on serving existing customers, delivering on our implementation commitments, and bringing new companies into our customer community, and we are doing it all more efficiently than ever before. With the post summer rebound in consulting services, we were on plan or slightly ahead across all revenue and margin areas. We are seeing a continued increase in our services backlog and are relying more and more on our SI partners to assist in the delivery. The third quarter is always a challenge with extended downtime for the holidays.

However, we anticipate continued year-over-year growth and margin expansion in the supply chain consulting services business. We're also pleased to see the continued growth in our recurring revenue stream of cloud services and maintenance, which now represents approximately 63% of total revenues, compared to 62% in the same period last year. This was driven by the 43% increase in cloud services ACV we saw in the second quarter when compared to last year's second quarter. With the increase in new subscription contracts and a return to the more traditional stability of our cloud and on-prem customer community, we expect to see the recurring revenue as a percent of total revenue continue to rise.

During the second quarter, we welcomed five new customers and completed subscription or license fee transactions in six countries, reflecting our strong global presence. In summary, we're pleased with the second quarter results and expect to extend the performance improvements of our financial model through the second half of the fiscal year. We remain intently focused on executing against our growing pipeline and look forward to reporting our progress next quarter. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Vince, who will provide the details on our financial results.

Vince Klinges -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Allan. For the second quarter of fiscal '22, total revenues were $31.2 million, and that's an increase of 12% from 27.9% in the same period last year. The big driver of that is subscription fees, which increased 49% year over year to $10.4 million, while license revenue was $0.8 million, compared to $0.5 million the same period last year. Our cloud services annual contract value, or ACV, increased 44% to $42.5 million versus $29.6 million a year ago.

While we added $1.6 million in net new ACV during the quarter, we were short of our internal target as a couple of large deals were expected to close -- that were expected to close were delayed. As Allan mentioned, one of those has since closed, providing a nice start to Q3. Over 40% of our net new ACV in the second quarter was from new customers. We added five new customers in the second quarter and bringing us to a total of 10 year to date.

Looking at professional services, that increased 5% to $10.8 million from $10.2 million a year ago. Our year-over-year increase reflects a 4% increase in the proven method, our IT consulting business unit, and that was due to timing of project work and a 6% increase in our supply chain business unit. And our backlog of supply chain implementations increased significantly due to the increase in ACV bookings in recent quarters. So, we anticipate continued year-over-year growth in our services during the remaining quarters of fiscal '22.

Our maintenance revenues declined 9% year over year to $9.3 million, which includes a combination of cancellations and cloud conversions, reflecting a normal fall off rate this quarter. Our total recurring revenues comprised of subscription and maintenance fees represented 63% of our total revenues in the second quarter, and that's up from 62% in the same period last year. Our gross margin was 59% for the current period versus 53% in the same period last year. Our subscription fee margin increased to 67%, compared to 58% in the prior-year period, and that's primarily due to increase in subscription revenue and lower amortization of cap software expense.

Excluding the noncash amortization of cap software expense of $690,000 in the second quarter, our subscription gross margin would have been 74% versus 71% in the same period last year. And the amortization of cap software was $921,000 in the prior-year period. Our license fee margin was 75%, compared to a negative 23% in the same period last year, and that's due to lower costs, such as amortization expense of $258,000 and amortization of cap software expense of $174,000 and VAR agent commissions of $61,000. Services margin increased to 31% from 26% last year, and that's due to -- primarily due to a mix of revenue from higher-margin supply chain business unit and better utilization of the supply chain staff.

Maintenance margin was 81% for both the current period and prior-year period. Gross R&D expenses were 14% of total revenues for the current-year period, compared to 16% in the same period last year. We are in a transition period with our R&D in preparation for increasing the gross R&D spend in future periods to sustain spend as a percentage of supply chain revenue in this range. Sales and marketing expenses were 19% for both the current and prior-year period.

G&A expenses were 18% of total revenues, compared to 16% last year, primarily due to higher variable compensation expense given our strong revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance throughout the first half of the year. So, on a GAAP basis, our operating income increased 326% to $2.7 million for this quarter, compared to $0.6 million in the same period a year ago. Net income increased 379% to $3.3 million or earnings per diluted share of $0.10, compared to net income of $0.7 million or $0.02 earnings per diluted share last year. On an adjusted basis, which excludes noncash amortization of intangible expense related to acquisitions and stock-based compensation expense, adjusted operating income increased 137% to $3.8 million, compared to $1.6 million in the same period last year.

Adjusted EBITDA increased 70% to $4.8 million from $2.8 million in the same period last year, and adjusted net income increased 173% to $4.2 million or adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.12 for the second quarter, and that compares to adjusted net income of $1.5 million or adjusted earnings diluted share of $0.05 in the same period last year. International revenues this quarter were approximately 15% of total revenues for the current and prior-year periods. Taking a look at the numbers year to date, total revenues increased 10% year over year to $60.5 million, and that's primarily due to a 51% increase in subscription fees to $20.1 million, a 5% increase in license fees and a 1% increase in services, partially offset by a 9% decline in maintenance revenues. Adjusted operating income year to date was $6.4 million, representing an operating margin of 11%, compared to $3.3 million or 6% margin for the same period last year.

Adjusted EBITDA was $8.4 million versus $5.9 million in the year-ago period, and adjusted net income totaled $7.8 million or $0.23 per diluted share, up from 4.3% or 13% diluted share in the same period last year. Our remaining performance obligation, which we refer to as backlog was $123 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 58%. The strong growth in RPO reflects record bookings in recent quarters and an increase in the duration of the cloud agreements as customers continue to make long-term commitments to our platform. Looking at our balance sheet, our overall financial position remains strong with cash and investments of approximately $111.4 million at the end of the quarter.

This is an increase of approximately $16.7 million, compared to the same time last year. Our days sales outstanding as of October 31, 2021, was 65 days for the current period, and that compares to 69 days in the same period last year, and this decrease was primarily due to improved collections compared to last year. And also, during the quarter, we paid $3.7 million in dividends. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] And we'll take our first question from Matt Pfau. Please go ahead.

Matt Pfau -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. First one, to start off with the deals that got pushed in the quarter. It would be helpful if you could just provide a little bit more detail on what exactly went on there. And then, I know you closed one, but the ones that haven't signed yet, what's your confidence level in getting those deals across and either your third or fourth quarter?

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Matt, this is Allan. I'll take that one. Thank you for joining us this evening. It was a situation that I would describe as frustrating, but not necessarily disappointing.

Personally got involved in many of those contracts and the evaluation. The team really did a phenomenal job of getting things ready and contracts got negotiated, and they were sitting ready for final approvals on more than the couple that we mentioned prior, so a handful, actually. And we just couldn't get the final approvals done, one of those have come through already and another one probably yet this evening or in the next couple of days and a few more next week, hopefully before Thanksgiving even kicks in. So, we're hard at work at those.

Again, I would describe it as frustrating, not so much disappointing only because of the hard work that went into it and on both sides, the customer side and with our team as well. So, a high degree of confidence, we feel good about those. We still got them in the works, not a lot of work to do on many of them because we're really waiting on the customer side. And just a couple of things that seem to really play out for us were around the work conditions, where people are not in the office, so it's not as easy to walk down the hallway and wrangle the group together and get the approvals necessary.

And then in a couple of cases, they're just really struggling with the resource requirements, but we figured out ways to get that behind us as well. So, feel really good, really good about getting those contracts wrapped up.

Matt Pfau -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe it'd be helpful if you could give us a little bit in terms of the magnitude. You said they were large deals.

If you would close those, at least the ones that you had planned on closing, would you have been sort of closer to somewhere around a $3 million sequential ACV increase?

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Plus, a little bit higher.

Matt Pfau -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Got it. Good to hear. OK. And then on the press release, you commented, Allan, on sustainability becoming a bigger factor in terms of customer, what they're demanding out there or where they're investing, maybe just some more detail on that would be helpful, as well as what you're seeing in your traceability solution?

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, for sure. It's really become, from a dialogue standpoint, a frenzied one. There's a lot of challenges around capturing the appropriate data. We've got one of our team members, Mark Burstein, is well known in the circles around this area, really set the standards in working with the customs organization and others.

It's still hard at work on some of those standards, probably the biggest challenge is data validation and making sure that the information gathered, and the processes put in place are verifiable and that they'll be capable of still getting their products into both the U.S. and in the European Union. So, a lot of collaborative work going on there, which has really been amazing to me to see how well competitive companies have come together to really work on this issue. So, it is a hot topic.

It's the front of everyone's mind. For all the right reasons, people are working hard at it, and we see that that's going to be a strong topic in the months and quarters and years to come, as people really get their arms around it, get it tackled. And as that starts to play out, I think the regulations are going to get tighter and tighter and consumer expectations are going to get even more demanding. So, I believe, Matt, we're just at the beginning stages of that really playing out.

Matt Pfau -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Great. Thanks a lot, guys, for taking my questions. I'll pass the line.

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

For sure. Thanks for joining us again.

Operator

And we'll move next to Zach Cummins. Please go ahead.

Zach Cummins -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst

Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon, Vince and Allan. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong performance across the P&L in the quarter.

Just digging a little further, Allan, in terms of what's in the pipeline for you? How do you guys think about the opportunity for conversions with existing customers versus new customers coming into the fold in terms of an ACV perspective?

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Great question. Historically, for many, many years, and it still exists today, where if you look at a trend over time, roughly 50% of our contract business comes from both, from the new customers and from the existing customers. The newer projects tend to be, in general, tend to be a little larger, because you're starting from scratch, and you're adding a handful of components into the mix there.

Whereas, in general, the existing customer community, maybe adding a couple of things or one thing or expanding a division or something like that. But with that said, some of those larger transactions can be existing customers as well. In fact, the one that we've closed this quarter already is from an existing customer that was a holdover from last period. So, it's a mix.

But in general, you can say that the new customer projects are a little bigger. But overall revenue is -- or revenue that's driven by those contracts is about split on the long trend. Does that answer the question, Zach?

Zach Cummins -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst

Yeah, that's extremely helpful. And in regards to the press release you had out this morning in terms of consolidating resources across Logility, Demand Management and NGC. I mean, you can just talk about the decision and why you feel like now is the right time to do that and kind of what you're hoping to achieve by making this move?

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, a good friend of mine always says, Zach, that every once in a while, you want to be lucky. And sometimes, you got to be smart, and you got to be lucky. And when those two hit together, you really hit the mark. And I believe that we were smart and lucky on this one.

We started this transition three and a half, four years ago. We started by talking about what do we need to do with the collective capabilities we have in our software platform, and we began, in parallel with the transition to the cloud a number of years ago to say, when we do that, let's make this platform all one, because we had complementary capabilities across all of the business units we had -- four at that time with NGC, Demand Management, Logility and the Halo operation that we had acquired just prior to that. So, our team went hard to work at it. The pandemic over the last 18 months has really demonstrated why that was a brilliant decision.

It was in mind, so I'm not saying I'm brilliant. But as an organization, we've got some great people here that were thinking hard about the future supply chain and what we needed to do to help our customers be more successful. We didn't have any idea that the pandemic was coming. But the reality of the pandemic set in motion, the things that we knew were on the horizon, as the pace of supply chains continue to accelerate, the length of products in the marketplace, time in markets is getting shorter and shorter, thus the turnover and the number of new product introductions going faster and faster, the global enterprises.

And what it really meant was in order to be successful, our customers had to start breaking down the silos. So, we were structured around the silos of the past and the way our customers operate their supply chains, and we serve those markets very well. In today's marketplace, that's unacceptable. You got to break those barriers down.

We have our customers, who are rethinking the way they operate their supply chain. They're synchronizing their teams around product lines or customer experience or divisions. They no longer have forecasting teams and sourcing teams and procurement teams that operate in silos and independent of each other. So, our business today is aligned with the necessary needs of it.

And we were fortunate to not have to be tackling that today, where we already got it behind us. The last leg of that journey was to align our organization in such a way that we could really capitalize on that as well. And our demand management team is acutely focused on emerging markets and small to medium enterprises and our Logility team is acutely focused on the needs of large enterprises. And that's how we set our business structure up to align with our product capabilities.

So, probably a heck of a longer answer than you wanted, Zach, is when you asked that question, but that's the story. And hopefully, that was helpful.

Zach Cummins -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst

Extremely helpful. I always appreciate the additional insight on that front. And just final question for me, geared toward Vince. In terms of the subscription margin, it's remained pretty steady here in kind of the mid-70s.

I guess, how should we be thinking about that going forward, as the subscription piece of the business continues to scale?

Vince Klinges -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, Zach. We're thinking it will trend slightly up toward the end of this -- back half of the year. It's roughly around 74% -- bouncing around 74%, 75%. It should tick up a couple of basis points, maybe toward like 76% and 77% toward the end of the year, but we're really targeting next year to get it to 80%.

So, that's kind of the way we're modeling it right now.

Zach Cummins -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst

Understood. That's helpful. Well, thanks again for taking my questions, and best of luck going forward.

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you. Thanks for joining us, Zach.

Operator

[Operator instructions] We'll move next to Matthew Galinko. Please go ahead.

Matthew Galinko -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe firstly, on the transformational type deals. Can you take a stab at whether in the velocity, picking up on getting those across the finish line or given where we are in the pandemic and where we are in sort of the global macro environment, what are the kind of puts and takes there?

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Matt, first of all, thank you again for joining us. Good question. The nature of supply chain today is really driving these transformational projects.

It's much like we were chatting a few minutes ago when Zach asked the question about our realignment of our business. But those are the needs of the customers, they need to think differently. They need a platform for managing the supply chain, where they can do the scenario analysis and span across the whole end-to-end supply chain operations that they have. So, what that brings about is not only a software application and implementation, but it's a change management practice as well.

So, that's one of the headlines that we've been hitting into, and we've really worked hard at helping our customers figure out how to do that to the tune of several projects we have up and running today, where we have some of our consultants sitting on the customer side, really operating on their behalf, helping them operate the day-to-day operations, so that they can free up some of the key resources to help on the project. So, we're thinking outside the box, we're doing some nontraditional work. It's starting to break those projects loose. We're serving that idea up to more of the prospects, as we go forward.

So, that, combined with the results we're getting, I believe we're going to see that break loose. Now, the next couple of months are really tricky as we get into the holidays with Thanksgiving here in the United States and Christmas around the world. But that said, we're in a period that is traditionally strong for us, because we have three milestone moments. We have the end of the calendar year, where money needs to get spent, because that's the end of many of our customers' fiscal year, the start of a new year, people come out of the blocks with a fresh rest from Christmas and New Year's and a desire to get back to work and new fiscal budgets that can free up some cash.

And then, of course, 30 days later, we have the end of our quarter, and we've done a marvelous job over 40 years of training our customers at the end of the quarter is a good time to do work with us. So, we have those three milestone events that should be another breakthrough quarter for us, where we stand out in the third quarter.

Matthew Galinko -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

Got it. Thanks. That's very helpful. Maybe just one more on the competitive front, what you're seeing, given some of the consolidation that's played out in the space.

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, it's been an interesting time in this space. I think there's a couple of consolidations that have just taken some folks out of the play. Not all companies have been successfully gobbling up some of the things that they spend money on and really put into effective use. So, we've actually seen a few competitors to disappear from the horizon or solutions they would be, disappear from the horizon.

Overall, the more prominent players that we peer up against Blue Yonder, who just went through a change in ownership structure with Panasonic, taking them private under their umbrella. We've yet to see really that start to come about, although we've seen few more resumes hitting the street. So, we'll see what that means, as time plays out. We continue to see the ERP players.

They get some business, where they lock up the CFO and the CIO, and they want to have a single solution, but they're continuing to falter, and we're seeing more breakaway clients, who historically had been loyal to those brands, stepping away and reassessing what they need to manage their supply chain, and that's become more prominent than a brand loyalty. So, that's starting to break lose some projects for us. So, there's a handful of our -- the best-of-breed providers out there that stand side by side with us. We're all getting our fair share today and I think the collective of the top three or four were probably taking more business from some of the others, who are as strong and can't help the customers, as well as they have the desire and need to transform their business.

So, it's a healthy environment. We like the position we're in, and we can compete very effectively.

Matthew Galinko -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

Thanks, and congrats on the strong quarter.

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, sir. Appreciate you joining us this evening.

Operator

[Operator instructions] And it does appear there are no further questions at this time.

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

So, Chloe, thank you so much for helping us with the call this evening. I want to again thank everyone who joined us this evening for the call. We appreciate your attention and interest in American Software and look forward to giving you an update again in three months ahead on our progress in the third quarter. Thank you all.

Bye-bye.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 36 minutes

Call participants:

Vince Klinges -- Chief Financial Officer

Allan Dow -- President and Chief Executive Officer

Matt Pfau -- William Blair & Company -- Analyst

Zach Cummins -- B. Riley Financial -- Analyst

Matthew Galinko -- Maxim Group -- Analyst

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