Earnings Call Transcript - MANH Q1 2021

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Jeff, and I will be your conference facilitator for today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Manhattan Associates First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. Also as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this call is being recorded today, April 27. I would now like to introduce Mr. Eddie Capel, the CEO; Mr. Dennis Story, the CFO; and Mr. Michael Bauer, Head of Investor Relations of Manhattan Associates. Mr. Bauer, you may begin your conference.

Michael Bauer, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Jeff, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Manhattan Associates 2021 first quarter earnings call. I will review our cautionary language and then turn the call over to Eddie Capel, our CEO. During this call, including the question-and-answer session, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Manhattan Associates. You will caution that these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results may differ materially from the projections contained in our forward-looking statements. I refer you to the reports Manhattan Associates files with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our projections, particularly our annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2020 and the risk factor discussion in that report as well as any risk factor updates we provide in our subsequent Form 10-Qs. We note in particular that uncertainty regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our performance could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. We are under no obligation to update these statements. In addition, our comments include certain non-GAAP financial measures in an effort to provide additional information to investors. We have reconciled all non-GAAP measures to the related GAAP measures in accordance with SEC rules. You'll find reconciliation schedules in the Form 8-K we submitted to the SEC earlier today and on our website at manh.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Eddie.

Eddie Capel, CEO

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us as we review our first quarter results and discuss our updated full year 2021 outlook. Manhattan Associates is off to a strong start for the year, reporting record Q1 total revenue of $157 million and adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.43, both exceeding expectations. Our business pace continues to be solid with broad revenue outperformance across our solutions, driving top line revenue growth and earnings leverage in the quarter, while simultaneously driving our increasing investment in the business. Our team continues to execute well and that business momentum is accelerating, underscoring this strength and the growing demand for cloud solutions. We achieved record bookings in Q1 with our RPO increasing 108% over the prior year and 36% sequentially to $421 million. With our forward revenue visibility improving and the inherent leverage in our model, we’ll be increasing our 2021 guidance across the board. Equally important, our pipeline continues to grow nicely with about 90% of the pipe consisting of cloud opportunities and net new potential customers representing about 40% of that demand. Much of our success is bolstered by delivering the most innovative technological advancements in our industry. Solutions are mission-critical to our customers and our end markets. The need for modern, adaptable, scalable, and resilient supply chain, inventory, and omni-channel solutions is never more apparent. We're in the early stages of extending our mind and wallet share. Additionally, the secular tailwinds in digital transformation of businesses, brick-and-mortar stores shifting to an innovative multi-function facility concept, and the insatiable desire to get as close as possible to the end customer are just some significant drivers aligning customer demand with our product strategy. Our unified platform is industry-leading and provides our customers with scalable solutions that are versionless and extensible. This enables our clients to be adaptable and provide unmatched customer experiences. With Manhattan Active omni just entering its fourth year in the market and Manhattan Active Warehouse Management about to reach its first anniversary, our innovation is set to accelerate on the heels of nearly $19 million invested in R&D just this year alone. We are strategically positioned for long-term sustainable growth. Competitive win rates remain strong at about 70% as our commitment to innovation keeps Manhattan Associates at the top of the industry. In Q1, about 25% of our client in-licensed deals were from new customers. From a vertical perspective, retail, manufacturing, and wholesale drove more than 80% of our bookings in the quarter. Drilling in a little, the sub-verticals are diverse as well, including apparel, department stores, food and beverage, and industrial as well as durable and non-durable goods. Our services group executed extremely well in Q1, conducting over 100 go-lives. With demand for expertise remaining high, we anticipate our services revenue will return to growth in Q2. We continue to aggressively hire talent to meet the forecasted demand. Let me provide some quick updates on our product portfolio. Starting with our point-of-sale solution, Q1 was a positive quarter for POS, both with respect to go-lives and new customer signings. Pipeline opportunities are growing following a quiet 2020. On the go-live front, we've implemented a well-known specialty retailer that during the quarter went live with our point-of-sale application in a pilot store, and feedback has been extremely positive. We've received commentary on ease of use, speed, and responsiveness. The retailer has started rolling out the system across their store fleet and will complete in a few months. They'll then turn their attention to activating the rest of our Manhattan Active omni suite, including enterprise order management and store fulfillment. Regarding new point-of-sale customer signings, we are happy to announce three additional projects signed and kicked off last quarter, including a well-known global apparel brand that will pilot our point-of-sale application in the U.S. this summer, planning to roll out the solution worldwide. This customer is live on enterprise order management and has seen the true sales and service advantage from having a unified order management and point-of-sale application. The same advantage was attractive for a long-time Manhattan Active OMS customer in Canada, who will roll out our point-of-sales solution across their fleet of apparel retail stores by early fall. We also kicked off a project with a well-known sports apparel and footwear brand that will start using our point-of-sale to enable endless aisle capabilities, allowing store associates to capture orders for customers when a size or color isn't available at that location. This point-of-sale usage will extend existing Manhattan Active omni functionality already deployed with that customer. Despite the pandemic causing many store systems activities to be put on hold, third-party integrators and industry research firms indicate that planned investments in point-of-sale are showing signs of picking up. Because we were able to continue investing heavily in that point-of-sale application throughout the pandemic, we believe we're well positioned for the inevitable need for a replacement cycle in point-of-sale and store systems. Turning to the supply chain, Q1 was another good quarter for our transportation management application, receiving word from Gartner that for the third consecutive year, our application was one of the few included in the Leader’s quadrant in the recently published Gartner Magic Quadrant. We've maintained this important industry designation because of our continued investment in innovation within TMS and the high levels of customer satisfaction we garner. The TMS market continues to be active as customers either move older on-premise deployments of TMS to the cloud or adopt a new TMS for the first time. Generally speaking, cloud TMS allows smaller customers to benefit from the power of a leading TMS solution. Our Manhattan Active WM application launched nearly a year ago continues to see favorable responses, with more than two dozen projects underway across North and South America and Europe, preparing for summer go-lives. Additionally, our sales pipeline remains strong among existing Manhattan WMS on-premise customers transitioning to cloud-native systems and new customers. Q1 was a good quarter for our demand forecasting and inventory optimization solutions as we see both existing and new customers choosing cloud-based solutions to optimize inventory levels. Our product teams are busy preparing for our upcoming Momentum Connect 2021 conference in May. Like last year, it will be virtual, but we are planning significant product announcements. Our product strategy has focused on two key ideas: migrating our best-in-class functional capabilities to a truly cloud-native architecture while delivering unified applications within omni-channel, supply chain, and inventory. This year's conference will announce another significant step forward in realizing that vision for our customers. That concludes my business update. I'll pass it over to Dennis, who will provide you with an update on our financial performance and discuss our outlook for 2021.

Dennis Story, CFO

Thanks, Eddie. I would characterize our first quarter execution as strong across the board. We delivered impressive financial performance from top line to bottom line with solid growth, profitability, cash flow, and balance sheet results. Here's a key summary of financial highlights with growth rates on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. As Eddie mentioned, Q1 total revenue was $157 million, up 2%; adjusted earnings per share was $0.43, up 8%; GAAP EPS was $0.35. Overall performance was driven by cloud revenue in the quarter. Q1 operating income totaled $36 million, up 12% year-over-year; adjusted operating margin was 22.7%, up 200 basis points, and our GAAP operating margin was 16.2%. Q1 cloud revenue was $27 million, up 54%. License revenue was $7.8 million, down 19% as our end markets predominantly choose our cloud solutions. Q1 RPO was a record performance at $421 million, up 108% year-over-year and up 36% sequentially. Our full-year outlook is $450 million to $550 million, putting us on track to exceed our $500 million midpoint. Further cloud momentum is fueling our services pipeline and revenue growth opportunities. Q1 services revenue exceeded expectations totaling $80 million against a $87 million comparison in Q1 2020. More importantly, services revenue was up 13% sequentially over Q4 2020, with our growth outlook accelerating for the balance of 2021. Q2 services revenue forecast is $83 million to $85 million, up 17% year-over-year. For Q3 and Q4, our forecasts call for 20% year-over-year growth. Maintenance was up 1% on cash collections. Important point here, like license revenue, we expect second-half attrition on customer conversions to cloud, which will positively impact our RPO performance. Our hardware team delivered solid sales of $6 million, up 56% year-over-year. Let me turn to cash and cash flow, another strong performance. Q1 closed with cash on hand totaling $197 million with zero debt. Cash flow was $40 million, up 3.5 times year-over-year, and our Q1 free cash flow margin was 25%. Our current deferred revenue balance totaled $123 million, up 8% over Q4 2020 and 17% year-over-year on cloud billings. We invested $27 million in share buybacks in Q1, and our board raised our buyback authority to $50 million. That's the results summary; I'll cover some additional financial updates and guidance and then turn the call back to Eddie. Our cloud revenue outperformance was mostly driven by positive deal timing, overages, and renewals. For Q2, we expect cloud revenue to be roughly up 46% compared to Q2 2020. For the full year, we are raising our previous cloud revenue estimate from $108 million to a new range of $111 million to $113 million equating to 40% growth at the midpoint. As frequently mentioned, remaining performance obligation or RPO is the leading proxy for our cloud revenue. We've updated our RPO outlook to exceed the $500 million midpoint for 2021 going forward. Our intention remains to guide RPO on an annual basis as bookings can be lumpy based on sales cycle timing and the number and relative value of large deals and product mix from quarter-to-quarter. Furthermore, on flow-through from RPO to cloud revenue, some customers have longer implementation cycles associated with large projects requiring a multi-year annual subscription ramp built into the contract. These revenue ramps are common for larger cloud deals, and with larger opportunities becoming more prevalent in our pipeline, we expect RPO growth to accelerate first, followed by a gradual steepening ramp in cloud revenue growth, providing us with good visibility into future subscription revenue. We're confident in our ability to achieve the high end of our prior $450 million to $550 million RPO outlook for 2021. As discussed in our previous Q4 earnings call, we expect license and maintenance revenue attrition to accelerate in 2021, estimating license revenue to be in the range of $20 million to $25 million for the full year, which represents a 41% year-over-year decline. For Q2, we anticipate license revenue to be approximately $6 million, with Q3 and Q4 to be about $4 million each quarter. For maintenance revenue, we continue to target approximately $35 million per quarter throughout 2021; we expect the attrition impact to be manifest for the most part in the second half of 2021. Our consolidated subscription, maintenance and services margin for the quarter was 50.9% driven by revenue performance and cloud operating leverage. For Q2 consolidated subscription, maintenance and services margin to be about 52.6%, improving 40 basis points over prior expectations. Given strong demand, we anticipate costs to tick up slightly in the second half on hiring and performance-based compensations with second-half margin at about 51.1% compared to prior expectations of 51.5%. For operating income and margin, we are increasing our full-year 2021 guidance by 50 basis points, resulting in a midpoint of 21.5%. We remain confident in our ability to make strong progress. On a quarterly basis, we anticipate adjusted operating margin to be 22.5% for Q2, 21.2% in Q3, and 19.4% in Q4. Regarding taxes, our adjusted effective income tax rate was 21.5%. We expect our Q2 and full year 2021 adjusted tax rate to be 21.5%, down from our prior expectations of 23%. The lower tax rate will benefit pro forma adjusted EPS by roughly $0.03 for the full year. Our GAAP effective income tax rate was 9.9% for the quarter driven by excess tax benefits on restricted stock vesting. We expect our full-year 2021 GAAP tax rate to be about 20%. Regarding our capital structure in Q1 2021, we repurchased approximately 214,000 shares worth roughly $27 million. For the second quarter and full year, we estimate our diluted shares outstanding to be 64.8 million shares, assuming no buyback activity. Our CapEx estimates for 2021 are about $6 million to $8 million at this time. That completes the core financial update; turning to increased 2021 guidance. For total revenue, we are raising guidance from our previous range of $595 million to $625 million, which represented 4% growth at the midpoint to a new guidance range of $625 million to $640 million targeting 8% growth at the midpoint of $632 million. This includes $22.5 million of revenue compression equating to 4 percentage points of growth driven by license and maintenance attrition. For Q2, we expect total revenue of $154 million to $159 million, or 15% growth at the $157 million midpoint. As we account for continued license attrition, we expect Q3 and Q4 midpoint total revenue growth to be approximately 7% to 8%. For adjusted earnings per share, we're increasing our previous guidance range of $1.44 to $1.59 to $1.60 to $1.70 with a midpoint of $1.65, up from our previous midpoint of $1.52. For GAAP earnings per share, our guidance range is now $1.10 to $1.20 with a midpoint of $1.15 up from $1.04. Our adjusted EPS forecast for Q2 is $0.42 to $0.44. As previously discussed for operating margin, we are raising our target range to 21% to 22% and for Q2 we expect an operating margin range of 22.3% to 22.7%. In summary, our underlying growth fundamentals are strong, excluding license and maintenance, which are line items negatively impacted by our cloud transition. This puts us at the midpoint of our Q2 and full year guidance at 23% for Q2 and 17% for the full year. Thank you, that covers my financial update and I'll turn the call back to Eddie.

Eddie Capel, CEO

Terrific. Thanks, Dennis. We are very pleased with a strong start to 2021 and record results. While we continue to operate in a turbulent global macroenvironment, we're confident in our ability to help deliver success for our customers and drive long-term sustainable growth for Manhattan Associates. Many of our customers and prospects are in the early stages of their digital transformation and their move to the cloud. With our industry-leading innovation, technical and domain expertise and the world's most talented and seasoned supply chain commerce employees, we believe that we are best positioned to help the industry modernize, which creates exciting opportunities for Manhattan Associates. With that, Jeff, we'd be happy to take any questions.

Operator, Operator

Absolutely. Your first question comes from the line of Terry Tillman from Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Terry Tillman, Analyst

Hey, good afternoon, everyone, and congrats on the all-rounder here in Q1. Eddie, maybe my first question is for you, and then Dennis, I had a question for you. When hearing about point of sale, it seems like forever ago when we were hearing about the early kind of success and the pipeline building. My curiosity lies in the opportunities when you land one of those contracts, from a size and scale perspective, how does that compare to the OMS and WMS business? Is the pipeline activity continuing to build as we move into the second half of the year?

Eddie Capel, CEO

Yes, it does. It seems that interest is picking up in the market, and as I mentioned in my prepared comments, industry analysts and third-party integrators seem to be indicating that after the gap year of 2020, where we spent a large part of the time closed, as they reopened, they are emerging really as multi-function facilities with online curbside boutiques, galleries, and return centers for product support online. The systems that they have in place today don't support those capabilities. There's forward momentum. The position we're in with point of sale being an extension of our Omni or order management suite of solutions seems to be well-received in the market, and we've talked about the strategic advantage for customers. The market is large, having shifted from a hardware game to a software game where the critical mass is building. I can't give you a specific average selling price (ASP) of point of sale as it relates to order management and warehouse management, but there’s a huge opportunity, particularly when customers have large store networks. A point of sale opportunity can be in the same ballpark as material WMS or OMS programs.

Terry Tillman, Analyst

Okay. That's great to hear. Dennis, for you in terms of we were looking for $50 million of additional RPO in the quarter, but you did over $100 million additional RPO. What are you seeing in terms of commitments? Are these still long-term multi-year commitments? Did anything change in duration?

Dennis Story, CFO

In terms of duration, no change; we’re still hitting right at the five-year mark. Given the mission-critical nature of these solutions, bookings were diverse across customers; there wasn't any material concentration of one customer. We experienced good volume and velocity.

Terry Tillman, Analyst

That's great. Congrats.

Joe Vruwink, Analyst

Great. Hi everyone. Sticking with RPO bookings, I’m interested in thematic topics around the WMS category, such as new WMS pairing with robotics and automation, and new WMS to manage tight labor constraints. Are any of these factors driving pipeline growth for you? Or is it really a combination of new product embracing the cloud?

Eddie Capel, CEO

I think the immediate access to innovation has been the top driver. Digital transformation continues to accelerate. The challenges in finding IT talent put pressure on organizations, so having us manage solutions helps them. Access to innovation is number one.

Joe Vruwink, Analyst

That’s helpful. I imagine the expansions of existing accounts across the full suite of omni-channel capabilities will eventually lead to expansions across the supply chain. Can you provide any quantification or insight about how existing customers' spending with Manhattan is evolving?

Eddie Capel, CEO

There isn't any major change in our ability to cross-sell and upsell. We've had great customer retention over the years. A healthy number of new logos are joining. Interestingly, about 25% of our software was net new customers in the quarter, and 40% of our pipeline consists of net new customers.

Yun Kim, Analyst

Merci, and congrats on another strong quarter. Can you update us on the retail vertical seeing some recovery from COVID's depths and the competitive landscape? Certain vendors took a step back last year.

Eddie Capel, CEO

The journey of retail has been marked with some turbulence. During 2020, while there was activity on the WMS side with direct-to-consumer shipments increasing, the larger strategic Manhattan Active Omni projects went quiet. We’re starting to see point-of-sale and store systems projects picking back up. The competitive landscape remains largely the same; we have strong competitors that keep us sharp and innovative.

Yun Kim, Analyst

Thanks for that. Europe showed strong sequential growth. What trends are you seeing there and can we expect to continue this positive trend?

Eddie Capel, CEO

Our services business was particularly strong in Europe in Q1. Direct-to-consumer growth has been positive. I don't think there's anything particularly different in Europe compared to the U.S.; it's a positive trend across the board.

Mark Schappel, Analyst

Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the quarter. Eddie, could you address whether you're seeing a different competitor set with Active WM compared to your traditional on-premise products?

Eddie Capel, CEO

Competitors are largely the same. On the win rates, while I don't have the exact numbers, they are strong and possibly a tick above 70%.

Mark Schappel, Analyst

Awesome. You mentioned benefiting from secular tailwinds including creative inventory strategies. Can you clarify those?

Eddie Capel, CEO

With the acceleration of buy online, pickup in-store, and curbside pickup, predicting and forecasting impacts on inventory strategies becomes complex. This requires creative and sophisticated forecasting strategies and integration with an order management system for better inventory optimization.

Brian Peterson, Analyst

Congrats on the strong RPO this quarter. Has there been any commonality in what you're displacing or how you're thinking about sales cycles? This step-up seems notable.

Eddie Capel, CEO

There haven’t been notable changes. Particularly, Manhattan Active WM drove healthy bookings and RPO. It's taken a while to build momentum for the awareness of our solution.

Dennis Story, CFO

We're seeing an equally split market between conversions and net new customers for MAWM. We've already closed over two dozen deals.

David Robinson, Analyst

Have you experienced any shortening of the sales cycle due to the increasing demand across your product portfolio?

Eddie Capel, CEO

Overall, no, but we've seen smaller point projects accelerate. Some clients need to be live quickly due to changes driven by the pandemic. For example, some buy online, pickup in-store solutions went live within days. Thanks, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today. We are looking forward to our Q2 update in three months. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.