Earnings Call Transcript - EVCM Q3 2024

Operator, Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to EverCommerce's Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Stacey, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, Tuesday, November 12, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brad Korch, Senior VP and Head - Investor Relations at EverCommerce. Brad, go ahead.

Brad Korch, Senior VP and Head - Investor Relations

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining. Today's call will be led by Eric Remer, EverCommerce's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Ryan Siurek, EverCommerce's Chief Financial Officer. Joining them for the Q&A portion of the call is EverCommerce's President, Matt Feierstein; and EverCommerce's Chief Operating Officer, Evan Berlin. This call is being webcast with a presentation that reviews the key financial and operating results for the three months ended September 30, 2024. For a link to the live or replay webcast, please visit the Investor Relations section of the EverCommerce website. The slide presentation and earnings release are also directly available on the site. Please turn to Page 2 of our earnings call presentation while I review our Safe Harbor statement. Statements made on this call and contained in the earnings materials available on our website that are not historical in nature may constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on the current expectations and beliefs of management. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties that are described in more detail in our filings with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures in our comments today. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP historical measures is provided in both our earnings press release and our earnings call presentation. Before we discuss third quarter results, I would like to once again highlight the presentation of results and KPIs included in the earnings call slides and our prepared comments. As discussed last quarter, we announced the sale of our fitness products, which consisted of four software solutions in early March. The sale of the two North American solutions closed simultaneous with deal signing on March 13th and the two international solutions closed on July 1st. Our third quarter GAAP results do not include any contribution from the Fitness Solutions, but GAAP year-over-year comparisons are impacted due to the inclusion of Fitness Solution revenue in 2023. Pro forma growth as defined in our materials and filings is adjusted to exclude Fitness. Operational metrics such as customer count, TPV, and customers enabled for more than one solution that we will discuss today have been adjusted to exclude the Fitness solutions on a pro forma basis for comparability purposes. I will now turn our call over to our CEO, Eric Remer. Please continue.

Eric Remer, CEO

Thank you, Brad. On today's call, I will highlight third quarter 2024 results and trends as well as provide an update on our transformation optimization initiatives before turning the call over to Ryan to dive deeper into our financial performance. Our third quarter reported revenue exceeded the top end of our guidance range. GAAP revenue increased 0.9% year-over-year, and on a pro forma basis, which adjusts for the sale of fitness, revenue increased 4.3% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA of $44.5 million beat the top end of the guidance range, representing a 25.3% margin. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 140 basis points year-over-year. Payments revenue, excluding the fitness solutions, grew 6.7% year-over-year, driven by an 8.4% growth in TPV. Finally, we continue to make good progress against our transformation optimization goals, including the hiring of a key leader over EverPro vertical, whom I'll introduce in a moment. EverCommerce provides SaaS solutions to service SMB economy. We offer tremendous value to our customers by providing solutions tailored to the unique workflows and interactions that various services require. Our software solutions not only provide the systems necessary to run daily business processes but also the marketing solutions to attract new business, billing and payment solutions to collect effortlessly, and customer experience solutions to create predictable and convenient experiences. Our solutions are cost-effective, easy to implement, and purpose-built for service businesses. We provide end-to-end solutions that more than 690,000 customers need to compete and grow in a rapidly transforming marketplace. On a pro forma basis, we ended the quarter with $679.2 million in LTM revenue, representing a 5.1% year-over-year growth. Subscription and transaction revenue grew 8.6% year-over-year on an LTM pro forma basis. Also on an LTM basis, we generated a 24.5% adjusted EBITDA margin, which is approximately 240 basis points of margin expansion year-over-year. Finally, our annualized TPV expanded to over $12.4 billion, a key driver of payments growth and profitability. We continue to place our highest priority internally on transformation and optimization initiatives. Our transformation efforts are intended to optimize long-term growth and profitability, bring decision-making closer to customer needs, and invest in key go-to-market opportunities. We continue to make progress since we announced these efforts. First, on the transformation front, we are focused on improvements in our EverPro vertical through operational changes to organize infrastructure, including hiring an exceptional seasoned leader and decentralizing functions such as sales, marketing, and product development to be dedicated to each key vertical. To that end, we are announcing the recent hiring of a strong new leader for EverPro, Josh McCarter. Josh brings 25 years of technology experience to EverCommerce, spanning ecommerce, vertical SaaS, consumer marketplaces, and integrated fintech. Josh served as the CEO of Mindbody, a leading technology platform for the fitness, wellness, and beauty industries, where he navigated the company through the COVID-19 pandemic and acquired Wellness Unicorn ClassPass in 2021. Josh also currently serves on the Board of Compass. The experience Josh brings as a founder, CEO, and board member of startup, pre-IPO, and public SaaS companies will be instrumental in our transformation, capitalizing on the market opportunities and ultimately accelerating growth in our EverPro vertical. Our parallel initiative of transformation is optimization. With optimization, we identify and execute discrete cost-saving initiatives that we expect will provide a runway for long-term margin expansion and free cash flow generation. But in the near term, it will allow for funding of key growth initiatives. Over the last three months, we continued to create and execute operational plans to identify saving opportunities. These initiatives range from the consolidation of third-party vendors and contracts, rationalization of our real estate footprint, optimization of our hosting instances, and consolidation of our PPO partners. Accelerating payment adoption is a high priority at EverCommerce. We often talk about our strategy at landing with our core business management software that upsells and cross-sells our existing customers additional features, services, and products, leading with payments. As we progress along the transformation journey, particularly with the reorganization of EverPro, this cross-sell/upsell motion will transition over time to one where we sell business management software that includes embedded payments. We believe this will further enhance the value our customers receive from their relationship with EverCommerce while also driving additional revenue and margin expansion. At the end of the third quarter, approximately 212,000 customers were enabled for more than one solution, reflecting 25% year-over-year growth. As we discussed, we introduced this metric, enabling customers for more than one solution is the first step in the funnel that leads to increased revenue, retention, and ultimately profitability of these customers. Once customers are enabled, the next action for us is to facilitate usage. In the case of payments, this is getting our customers to actively process on our platform. We measure this step in the funnel as utilization. At the end of the third quarter, approximately 88,000 customers were actively utilizing more than one solution, reflecting 13% year-over-year growth. Customers that purchase and utilize more than one solution are naturally some of our more profitable, stickiest customers. As a result, the effect of more customers taking payments or other add-on features and services has higher net revenue retention. Looking back over the trailing 12 months, our annualized net revenue retention or NRR for our core software and payment solutions was 96%. Similar to last quarter, a driver of reduced NRR continues to be the anniversary of a price increase in two of our high velocity lower ARPU solutions and not a measurable change in our customer churn dynamics. Year-over-year, our payments revenue on a pro forma basis grew 6.7%, accounting for approximately 17% of overall revenue. We report our payments revenue on a net basis and as a result, payments revenue contributes approximately 95% gross margin and is a meaningful contributor to our overall adjusted EBITDA margin. Third-quarter estimated annualized total payment volume or TPV was approximately $12.4 billion, representing 8.4% year-over-year growth. We continue to invest and actively manage our onboarding programs to accelerate payments adoption, which we believe can accelerate payments revenue growth. Now, I'll pass it over to Ryan, who will review our financial results in more detail, as well as provide fourth quarter 2024 guidance.

Ryan Siurek, CFO

Thanks, Eric. Total reported revenue in the third quarter was $176.3 million, up 0.9% from the prior year period. Within total reported revenue, Subscription and Transaction revenue was $137.6 million, up 3.7% from the prior year period, and Marketing Technology solutions revenue was $34.4 million, down 6.7% from the prior year period. We manage the business for sustainable organic growth and selectively utilize strategic acquisitions or divestitures to augment the trajectory of this growth. As a result, we believe it is important for investors to also evaluate our growth on a pro forma basis, which is how we measure and manage the business internally. We calculate our pro forma revenue growth as though all acquisitions and divestitures that were completed as of the end of the latest period were closed as of the first day of the prior year period. We believe the pro forma growth rate provides the best insight into the underlying growth dynamics of our business. For Q3 2024, year-over-year pro forma revenue growth was 4.3%, while year-over-year pro forma Subscription and Transaction revenue growth was 8.3%. The primary difference between actual and pro forma revenue growth rate is attributable to the sale of our fitness solutions. The solid performance in Subscription and Transaction revenue was largely due to continued execution of our growth strategy to provide customers our core system of action software solutions and driving expansion by promoting cross-sell and upsell opportunities, leading with payments. Our Marketing Technology Solutions revenue was below our internal expectations. While we are likely to end the fiscal year with year-over-year declines in this revenue line, versus our expectation for approximately flat revenue at the beginning of the year, outperformance in other high-margin areas of the business have made up the difference. As Eric noted, we also exceeded the top end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance range. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $44.5 million, representing a 25.3% margin versus 23.9% in Q3 2023, which is 6.5% growth year-over-year. While revenue mix and, to a lesser extent, cost-savings initiatives had a positive impact on margins during the quarter, they were also aided by the timing of certain transformation investments that we now expect to occur in the fourth quarter. Adjusted gross profit was $117 million, representing an adjusted gross margin of 66.4% versus 64.8% in Q3 2023. Adjusted gross profit improved largely as a result of a positive mix shift in the business. As a percentage of revenue, payments and rebate revenue, both of which have 95% plus gross margin profiles grew compared to the decline in marketing technology, which carries a lower gross margin profile. Now, turning to adjusted operating expenses, which are reconciled in the appendix to this presentation. Overall, adjusted operating expenses modestly increased from 40.9% to 41.1% for the quarter on a year-over-year basis while improving on an LTM basis from 43.5% to 41.9%, representing our approach to balance the amount and timing of investments made in our solutions. We maintain our focus on improvement in customer satisfaction and acquisition while also highly focused on cost discipline in functional support areas. Now, turning to some key liquidity measures. We continue to generate significant free cash flow as we invest to grow our business. Cash flow from operations for the quarter was $27.5 million as compared to $27.4 million in Q3 2023. Levered free cash flow was $23 million in the quarter and for the trailing 12 month period, we generated more than $80 million in levered free cash flow. Adjusted unlevered free cash flow was $35.5 million in the quarter and $125.1 million for the last 12 months, representing 13.2% and 15.9% year-over-year growth, respectively. We ended the quarter with $102 million in cash and cash equivalents, and we maintain $190 million of undrawn capacity on our revolver. We have $533.5 million of debt outstanding as of the end of the quarter, which matures in July 2028. Our total net leverage as calculated for our credit facility at the end of the quarter was approximately 2.5 times, consistent with our financial policy. During the quarter, we executed another interest rate swap for a notional amount of $125 million at a fixed rate of 3.395% with an expiration date of October 31st, 2027 as we continue to proactively manage our interest rate exposure. Together with our previous two swaps, we now have $425 million of notional swaps at a weighted average rate of 3.91% for the floating-rate component of our interest cost. We continue to view strong free cash flow generation as a key priority for the company. With it, we are able to invest in our growing business while also allowing us to efficiently allocate capital across a spectrum of opportunities, including the outstanding buyback authorization and M&A prospects. In the third quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.4 million shares for $14.6 million at an average price of $10.77 per share. Based on the Board's increased authorization that was mentioned last quarter, as of September 30, 2024, we had approximately $39.4 million remaining in our repurchase authorization that runs through year end 2025. I would now like to finish by discussing our outlook for the fourth quarter. For the fourth quarter of 2024, we expect total revenue of $168 million to $172 million and we expect adjusted EBITDA of $43 million to $46 million. Our full year guidance remains unchanged at the midpoint with the given fourth quarter ranges. As a reminder, please note that the full year guidance given previously excluded the sold fitness assets.

Operator, Operator

Operator: Our first question comes from Matt Hedberg with RBC. Matt, go ahead with your question.

Matt Hedberg, Analyst

Great. Thank you very much, guys. Thanks for the time. Two questions from me. The first one, Eric, it really does seem like the cross-sell opportunity now is significant, especially when you're thinking about higher wallet share. Can you talk about some specific initiatives that the company is doing from a go-to-market or marketing perspective that could yield even better cross-sell optimization as we look forward?

Eric Remer, CEO

Yes, thanks, Matt. It's a great question. I'll give a high-level, and I'll let Matt and Evan kind of take some of the details. One of the things that we are really excited about and we touched upon this during our last call is something that we call Edge. Edge is a program that we utilized from one of the solutions we currently own that provides rewards and benefits to some of our customers, specifically in the contracting space. We launched this into one of our solutions, had really, really positive kind of penetration and now we've since launched it into a couple of other solutions and we're seeing significant uptake from that. I'll let Evan talk more detail about that.

Evan Berlin, COO

Yes, Matt, it's a great question. So one thing I'd say just on the execution front, we've really focused on integrated sales motion when we think about core systems of action with integrated payments, with reputation management and the Edge solution, as Eric said, where we have one team focused on selling all of those integrated solutions at the point-of-sale. We've rolled that out in multiple parts of our business, both in EverPro and in EverHealth and really started to see quarter-on-quarter in Q3, significant growth in new payments attached, new customers attached to payments for our new customers, and we'll continue to execute that in this quarter and into 2025. And Edge is a key component to that as are payments and our reputation management solutions.

Matt Hedberg, Analyst

That's a great response. It actually ties into the second question. It seems like cross-selling, particularly in payments, has always been a significant driver. This year is clearly a transition period from a business perspective. As we look ahead to 2025 on an organic pro forma basis, how would you prioritize the most critical catalysts for organic growth acceleration? Cross-selling certainly plays a major role, but can we frame some expectations for organic growth in 2025 and the possibilities for reacceleration?

Eric Remer, CEO

We are not providing guidance for 2025 at this time, but I can share that the investments and transformation optimization efforts we've implemented through 2024 position us for a reacceleration in the latter half of 2025 and into 2026. To address your question, we are targeting significant markets. With approximately 700,000 customers, we are only tapping into a small fraction of the markets we aim to reach. Our strategy begins by effectively executing at the top of the funnel, focusing on bringing in new customers across all our solutions. We've started to notice some encouraging trends in this area. Additionally, we have integrated our organizations and streamlined our sales process to enhance vertical engagement. By focusing on securing multiple solutions during the customer's initial engagement, we increase the likelihood of them adopting more than one offering. Furthermore, we view one of our key growth opportunities as expanding our presence in the payments sector. We observe a considerable volume of payments processed through our system via invoices, yet we currently capture only a small portion of that market share. We have dedicated significant resources to reorganizing our go-to-market strategy for payments, improving our sales approach, and restructuring our team. We are very enthusiastic about beginning to see positive results from these efforts.

Ryan Siurek, CFO

No, I think you nailed it. To Eric's point, Matt, it starts with our system of action software. They are really good softwares in really strong markets, and nailing our go-to-market all the way through new customer acquisition, further embedding additional solutions and again ensuring that our customers have everything they need to continue to grow with us. That is the driver that has been the driver and that will be the driver as we go forward in the future for organic growth.

Matt Hedberg, Analyst

Great guys. Comprehensive answer. Thanks. Best of luck.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Ryan MacWilliams with Barclays. Ryan, go ahead with your question.

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Hi guys, this is Eamon Coughlin on for Ryan MacWilliams. Thanks for taking the question. Just curious if there are any changes in the broader SMB purchasing environment that you can call out in 3Q? And how did linearity look throughout the quarter?

Eric Remer, CEO

Can you repeat the last question?

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Just a question on linearity throughout the quarter. Were there any changes you can call out?

Matt Feierstein, President

I'll take the first piece. Really no changes quarter-on-quarter. We've talked about continued ASP expansion, which we did a nice job of new customer acquisition in the quarter. And then from a sales cycle perspective, we continue to see flat to even compressed sales cycles in our core solutions. So really pleased with the progress there in Q3.

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Got it. And then maybe a question for Ryan. After acting as the new CFO for two months, are there any strategic changes that you might look to make over the next 12 months? Or are there any key metrics or changes to guidance philosophy you're thinking of?

Ryan Siurek, CFO

No key changes in terms of metrics or things of that nature. Those are things that we really think about as we go into the 2025 budget season and guidance that we would give. With regard to focus areas, it's going to continue to be the areas that we have put time and effort into, the transformation and optimization that Eric mentioned on the front end, and then the really embedded functionality. We've referred to previously cross-sell, upsell, but it's the embedded functionality that we look to in 2025 that is a key focus just because of the opportunity it presents from the margin profile perspective.

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Ryan Siurek, CFO

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from DJ Hynes with Canaccord. DJ, go ahead with your question.

DJ Hynes, Analyst

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So the metric that stood out to me, Eric and Matt, in the quarter was the nice growth in enablement of customers with more than one product. Can you just talk about what's driving that, new initiatives there, strategies to keep the momentum going? Any color there would be helpful.

Eric Remer, CEO

Yes, I believe Evan addressed this in his initial response, particularly regarding our integrated sales approach. We are now placing a stronger emphasis on our sales representatives discussing the system of action software. In conjunction with this sales strategy, we are also highlighting our embedded offerings such as payments, Edge, and various customer experience solutions. It’s important that during the initial engagement with new customers, they understand the full range of our products and services, including EverHealth, EverPro, and EverWell. This integrated sales approach is crucial, and we are starting to see positive outcomes from the way we present our offerings and incorporate solutions throughout the sales process.

DJ Hynes, Analyst

Yes. Okay. And then maybe a follow-up on the EverPro side of the business. First, congrats to you guys and Josh for getting him on-board with the team. It sounds like a great hire. The question is, have the consolidation of the trades that we're seeing in the space, obviously, it's largely been private equity-led. Is that reaching down into your segment of the market? And if so, is EverCommerce a net winner or loser from that trend?

Eric Remer, CEO

Yes. Thanks, DJ. It's a great question. I think in general, the answer is no. We're playing in the market. We have a lot of smaller contractors, call it we have a lot of solos up to a maximum of 10 trucks, but mostly in that 1 to 10 standpoint. And those are not really the ones that the PE firms are looking to consolidate, for the most part, those are not the ones that they're consolidating. So we are not losing our customers from that perspective. It's a very large market, and you can't consolidate every one of those because there are just a lot of one-offs. In the areas where we have a little bit bigger in some of our software like Service Fusion, that's an opportunity for us that we think we benefit. We think we have a really good solution. When PE firms do buy those, which has really been nominal to this point in terms of any type of attrition, we think we have a product that provides them value across their portfolios if it makes sense. So we haven't seen much of it from that perspective, but I think if that starts coming to our higher-end of our customers, I think we're well-positioned to take advantage of it.

DJ Hynes, Analyst

Sounds good. Okay. Thank you, guys.

Eric Remer, CEO

Thank you, DJ.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Sklar with Raymond James. Alex, go ahead with your question.

Alex Sklar, Analyst

Great. Thank you. Just want to follow-up either Matt or Evan probably. Just on your commentary on top-of-funnel growth for new customers through the third quarter. Any changes from the first half of the year on that? And then just given some of the organizational changes taking place, how should we think about the potential for you to be more tactical on a solution-by-solution basis either in terms of some of your digital marketing efforts or actual rep hiring? Thanks.

Matt Feierstein, President

Yes, we previously mentioned that we observed a lot of consistency in the third quarter regarding customer acquisition, similar to what we've noted in earlier calls. The demand environment remains stable. We have successfully continued to implement our go-to-market strategies as anticipated, and in some instances, we exceeded those expectations. Therefore, we were pleased with our go-to-market efforts and new customer acquisition activities in the third quarter.

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Yes, just the idea that you've got some more vertical alignment with some of the organizational changes and just being more tactical on funnel growth either on a solution-by-solution basis or on a micro-vertical basis, just more empowering of the localized leaders.

Eric Remer, CEO

Yes. I mean, we look at the work that we've done from a transformation as helping us get closer to the customer in those micro verticals, getting more of our functional groups sitting together versus a matrix approach where we had a centralized marketing team, but then the rest of the go-to-market team sitting in the verticals. Putting all of those teams together, we feel really strongly about, and we've actually seen that across EverHealth as we've driven operational consolidation, or we're super excited as we're driving operational consolidation in EverPro to reap the executional benefits of getting more of our resources sitting together closer to the customer and actually driving better conversion in our go-to-market processes.

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Okay, great. And then I'm not sure you want to take this next one, maybe you, Ryan, but just in terms of the spend optimization efforts, six or so months in, you talked about the $250 million of third-party costs. Where do you stand today in terms of the visibility on potential savings and any biggest near-term opportunities to call out? Thanks.

Ryan Siurek, CFO

Yes, we've looked at a lot of different areas. We've done a lot of work in the real estate portfolio consolidation. We're also working a lot with vendor consolidation from a procurement perspective. There are a number of key areas that we're looking to. We're not disclosing any particular numbers right now from a savings target perspective. As we get into the 2025 budget process, we may have more visibility to provide. But I would say that we have a very strong inventory of areas that we're working on currently and beginning to execute on those in relatively quick succession.

Eric Remer, CEO

Really, I think you can see some of that pull-through in some of the margin improvement throughout the year as well we've had this year.

Eamon Coughlin, Analyst

Great. Thank you all.

Operator, Operator

Standby for our next question. Our next question comes from Aaron Kimson with Citizens JMP.

Aaron Kimson, Analyst

Great. Thanks for the question. Going off of Alex's question a little bit, what inning would you say the company is in with the ongoing business optimization from a go-to-market perspective driving the top-line as well as from an efficiency perspective on the cost side? Is one piece further along than the other or do you think about them as one and the same?

Eric Remer, CEO

Yes, thanks, Aaron. That's a great question. We're actually addressing both aspects simultaneously. When considering the two components, we have organized our teams, as Matt mentioned, to ensure decision-makers are closely connected to the customers. We've brought in strong leadership to run EverPro as a standalone business unit, allowing for comprehensive decision-making within that vertical. At the same time, we're concentrating on the optimization categories that Ryan highlighted. Our goal is for these initiatives to progress concurrently, boosting our go-to-market efforts and driving our top-line while also managing costs. As mentioned earlier, as we approach 2025, many of the cost savings will enable us to reinvest in the business shortly to accelerate growth. We view these efforts as interconnected, with each one supporting the other.

Matt Feierstein, President

Yes. I would just add to that. I think Ryan said it well. We have a strong inventory of opportunity, and I think that exists both from a transformation and optimization side. So I think we've in certain places started to reap the benefits in both of those areas, but there still exists a strong inventory of opportunity for us to continue to optimize the business on both fronts.

Ryan Siurek, CFO

And I would think of them as multiple parallel paths. We're not waiting on one for another. Like we have the go-to-market activities that are going on from an EverPro and an EverHealth perspective contemporaneously with the work that we're doing both on transformation and optimization. So we have basically spun up multiple teams all working together, but not waiting on any one particular piece.

Aaron Kimson, Analyst

Thanks for that. And then maybe a follow-up for Ryan. Given it's your first call as CFO, what's the single most important metric you think investors should focus on when assessing EverCommerce over the medium-term to long-term?

Ryan Siurek, CFO

I don't know that there's actually one metric that I could point to specifically. The metrics that we outlined really overall in the presentation, I think are the ones that we find most important as we run the business from a management perspective. I think the pro forma metrics that we provide on the growth rate point of view are important. We rationalize those obviously for things that we think need to be adjusted on a growth basis. I also think that looking at the performance of the individual revenue line items is quite important. We're seeing very strong results from a Subscription and Transaction point of view, and I would focus on that really as the core activities from the core solutions from EverPro and EverHealth. Those are very important to us on a long-term basis.

Eric Remer, CEO

And I want to add just one more. The metric that we introduced a few quarters ago, which is talking about the number of customers that have been signed up to utilize more than one solution, that is kind of a precursor to our ability to get them utilizing more than one solution. Once that happens, we have a long history of understanding that these customers will spend more and they will be with us longer. So it's a really good prelude to what we believe is going to happen in the future.

Aaron Kimson, Analyst

Thank you, guys.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Clarke Jeffries of Piper Sandler. Clarke, go ahead with your question.

Clarke Jeffries, Analyst

Hello, thank you for taking the question. Eric, you made a couple of references to this. I wanted to ask around this new organizational structure to EverPro. It sounds like changing the structure to make the decision-making closer to the customer needs is really to overcome the biggest obstacle to additional upselling, which is customer awareness. But I was wondering if there's anything else that's top-of-mind within the new organizational structure? Do you think it lends to R&D working better or sales and marketing working better? Or is it really about finding signal from noise off of the more than 690,000 customers and making sure they're all aware of what you have available as a portfolio?

Eric Remer, CEO

Thank you for the question, Clarke. To address your query, it's a combination of factors. Firstly, having a focused leadership in a specific area improves our understanding of developments. However, we believe it's not solely about the overall indicators, but also about the specific elements you mentioned. Historically, we have maintained a centralized marketing team that supported all our verticals and solutions in going to market. Now, within EverPro, we have established a dedicated vertical marketing organization in the department. The same goes for R&D; while it used to operate at the solution level, the resources within EverPro will now be designated specifically for that organization. The aim for Josh is to allocate those resources to the best opportunities within the EverPro vertical, ensuring we maximize our R&D investments. This approach is more aligned with the former rather than the latter, and we are confident that this is the strategic direction we are pursuing throughout the organization.

Clarke Jeffries, Analyst

Sure. Could you provide an update on the relative challenges related to the pricing changes affecting our net revenue retention? Has it reached a low point and stabilized? Additionally, could you give some historical context so we can understand what to expect next year or in a potentially more favorable economic environment? What would you consider a typical range for normal business expansion rates in that metric? Thank you.

Matt Feierstein, President

Sure. I'll begin with that. Excluding Marketing Technology Solutions, which we frequently discuss in relation to net revenue retention, our focus has been on the recurring nature of our services. Previously, we experienced a net revenue retention rate of 99% to 100% in certain quarters. However, as we previously mentioned, we reached the anniversary of a significant pricing change that won't be repeated for two of our lower average revenue per user solutions, which contributed to our growth in 2022 and into 2023. We are monitoring the effects of this change as we approach the end of 2024. Our long-term measurement allows us to see the impact over an extended period. We're beginning to see that rate rise again, but this decline from 99% to 100% net revenue retention to the 96% to 97% reported over the last two quarters is due to that pricing change.

Clarke Jeffries, Analyst

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Bill McNamara, Analyst

Okay. Hi, this is Bill on for Kirk and thanks for taking my question. Given interest rate cuts in the political landscape, has your perspective on the M&A environment changed at all since last quarter?

Eric Remer, CEO

Well, thanks for the question. I mean, it really hasn't changed in several years. I mean, we are always going to be looking for opportunities to maximize the value of the organization, and that can mean from an M&A acquisition or divestiture standpoint. We take all those factors into account as we look at anything. And if we see something that's going to make sense for us organizationally, again, whether that's from an acquisition or divestiture standpoint, we will proceed accordingly.

Bill McNamara, Analyst

Great. And then with the decentralization of sales, marketing, and product development, do you see this as requiring an increase in headcount or retraining any personnel to hit full productivity?

Matt Feierstein, President

Yes, regarding the second part of your question, there isn't a significant issue related to retraining. From a personnel perspective, it seems that there won't be any major changes to headcount. While there might be situations where we need to add staff in certain areas that previously lacked personnel, there could also be opportunities for consolidation in some places. Overall, we don't anticipate a significant change in the number of employees required.

Operator, Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn it back to Eric Remer for closing remarks.

Eric Remer, CEO

Well, thank you all for participating in the call today. We are incredibly excited about the progress we're making in both our transformation optimization programs as well as the results we shared with you today. I want to once again thank the entire EverCommerce team for their hard work and thank you all for your support.

Operator, Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.