American Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMSWA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Anja Soderstrom: Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Some of them have been addressed already. But, I’m curious, you mentioned you expect improved gross margin in this year, but we didn’t really see that in the first quarter. What should give us confidence that we can see that improving in the coming quarters?

Vince Klinges: Hi, Anja, this is Vince. We anticipate that because of some of the restructuring cost reductions that we’ve taken in the first quarter. So that should start playing out in the next couple of quarters. And then also we do see an uplift in professional services that will actually help to improve those gross margins there, too.

Anja Soderstrom: Okay, great. Thank you. That was all for me.

Vince Klinges: All right. Thank you so much.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Matthew Galinko.

Matthew Galinko: Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I guess maybe first on the catch-up payment — catch-up subscription payments. I don’t think I heard any quantification of how much that contributed to the sequential growth. So can you give us any more color on how supportive that was for fourth — first quarter results and to the extent that, that recur moving forward, how much of a headwind is that as we move into the second quarter? Thanks.

Vince Klinges: Yeah. So the — so Matt, thanks for the question. The pickup was roughly around $200,000, $300,000, and it was kind of a one-off catch-up from customers who had delayed payments, and they finally came back online. So we kind of view it as kind of a more normalized rate of retention going forward after that one-time pickup.

Matthew Galinko: Got it. All right. Thanks. And then my follow-up question is on the potential for the HQ sale, I guess, does that — would that predict a more aggressive M&A disposition or capital allocation if you converted that asset to cash? Or can you sort of take it to the next step of what the plan would be on what you would do with the cash if you completed the transaction? Thanks.

Allan Dow: Yeah, Matt, this is Allan. Again, thank you for joining us. There are three options really relative to that. There could be a distribution of cash. There could be more additional share buyback, would free up resources for that. And then obviously, there’s still the opportunity for acquisitions. We talked about all three of those, but it’s really hard to put a definitive plan in place because of the timeline associated with this, the sale. Even if we get the right offer, we could put a purchase and sale agreement together and then it’d be anywhere from six to nine months or a year getting all the approvals because depending on what they wanted to do with the facility. So given the unpredictable nature of the timeline of that, we’ve made no definitive plans on how we would use the cash, but we’re confident that one of those three options would return shareholder value.

So we’ll reevaluate those options, look at what’s available to us at the time and then reassess if the cash is freed up — if the sale goes through and the cash gets freed up, we’ll have to reassess at that time. But that could be, as I said, nine months or longer from this time forward.

Matthew Galinko: Got it. Thanks, Allan.

Allan Dow: Sure.

Operator: We have no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to today’s speakers.

Allan Dow: So, thank you very much. Travis, thank you for hosting today, and thank you all for joining us for our first quarter results. Enjoy the rest of this week and the weekend and a long holiday period here in the United States, and we look forward to speaking with you again in the near term. Have a good afternoon.

Operator: This does conclude today’s program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.

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