MeridianLink, Inc. (NYSE:MLNK) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

MeridianLink, Inc. (NYSE:MLNK) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 9, 2024

MeridianLink, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MeridianLink First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Gianna Rotellini. Gianna, please go ahead.

Gianna Rotellini: Good afternoon, and welcome to MeridianLink’s first quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after the market closed today. With me today are MeridianLink’s Chief Executive Officer, Nicolaas Vlok; Chief Financial Officer, Larry Katz; and President Go-to-Market, Chris Maloof. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that today’s conference call will include forward looking statements based on the company’s current expectations. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of the risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect our future financial results and business, please refer to the disclosure in today’s earnings release and the periodic reports and filings we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All of our statements are made based on information available to us as of today, and except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update any such statements. During the call, we will also refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures included in our press release, which is posted to the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Nicholas.

Nicolaas Vlok: Thank you, Gianna. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you all joining us today. We delivered a solid first quarter against a challenging macro backdrop, achieving GAAP revenue of $77.8 million or 1% growth year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA of $31.8 million at a 41% margin, exceeding the top-end of our guidance. I want to acknowledge that we have continued to grow in the face of significant volume headwinds, including a generational lower mortgage, a multiyear slowdown in auto lending and macro-related churn. Specifically, our performance reflects the continued strength of MeridianLink One’s end-to-end lending platform and its power to enable our customers to win in the market. Once again, this quarter, we signed a robust roster of new logo and cross-sell ones that demonstrate the success of our go-to-market strategy.

We also continue to expand the capabilities of our platform through innovation. With that, let’s move to our Q1 update that demonstrates how the MeridianLink One platform empowers our customers growth. First, I’d like to highlight a cross-sell one that shows our ability to increase module penetration within our existing customer base. Our successful land-and-expand strategy improves customer retention, ultimately increasing customer lifetime value. For example, we won a large financial institution who added MeridianLink mortgage access, mortgage lending, and our debt optimization tool to their existing portfolio of MeridianLink Consumer and Opening. By connecting mortgage and consumer solutions, our customers can better meet the needs of consumers along their financial journey, capturing a greater share of their debt wallet.

This is an example of our embracing the MeridianLink One ecosystem can deepen client relationships, and ultimately revolutionize how customers do business. In Q1, we also successfully landed new customers who are strategically retooling now to prepare for market recovery. For example, we welcomed a smaller financial institution on MeridianLink Consumer, Opening, and Mortgage. They chose MeridianLink One to automate decision capabilities and cross-sell loans and deposits without adding brick-and-mortar branches. Through the sales cycle, the customer gained a strong appreciation for the benefits of a single comprehensive partnership rather than piecing together point solutions from disparate vendors. This illustrates how we are empowering customers to embrace a digital lending strategy and drive growth.

Next, I want to spotlight the extraordinary success achieved by Space Coast Credit Union, a top 30 credit union in the U.S. after going live with our advanced decisioning capabilities in the quarter. For nearly a decade, we’ve been steadfast partners in supporting SCCU’s digital maturity initiatives as they expanded to nine modules failure to meet the changing lending needs of their members. Since implementation of advanced decisioning, SCCU has instantly decisioned 13% more loans overall, and an astounding 53% of applicants for credit tiers over 660. With increased automation and efficiency, the customer has optimized staffing and a strategically positioned to sustain long-term growth and remain agile in the competitive landscape. Turning to our latest product updates, we continue to innovate MeridianLink One to drive our customers’ digital lending strategy.

In the first quarter, we launched MeridianLink Insight Lite, our new interactive data analytics and reporting tools designed to enhance the reporting functionality for MeridianLink Consumer and Opening customers. Insight Lite enables users to adjust strategies mitigate risks and optimize performance with ease. As customers embrace data-driven decision-making through Insight Lite, there is a clear upgrade path to our more comprehensive business intelligence solution MeridianLink Insight. This showcases how we are paving the way for customers to accelerate their digital progression, which in turn drives growth for MeridianLink. Ending on a highlight of customer engagement, we enjoyed spending time together in Nashville last week with 1,400 attendees, a record at MeridianLink LIVE, our annual conference.

Our customers were excited about our digital progression model outlining a framework to accelerate growth and deepen consumer connections. We are proud of hosting our most successfully event to-date, leading directly to significant pipeline creation for new logo, cross-sell, and partner integrations. Before I hand over to Larry, I want to emphasize that Meridian Link continues to outperform even in the face of challenging market conditions. All thanks to the exceptional ability of our team to drive results. We expect that macro headwinds will persist throughout this year, and we will continue executing on what’s in our control. With the solid foundation we have invested in, bolstered by healthy balance sheet and sound capital allocation strategy, we are well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities that lie ahead and deliver value back to shareholders.

Finally, I’d like to close by highlighting a strategic addition to the leadership team to support our growth acceleration, namely our new CFO, Larry Katz. Larry brings a strong global track record of financial leadership with demonstrated success leading transformation at scale in financial services, SaaS, and private equity. His experience spans more than 25 years at companies including Genesis and JPMorgan Chase. He served in executive leadership positions at JPMorgan Chase for approximately 15 years, including in mortgage and consumer lending businesses, and as CFO of various divisions. While CFO of Genesis, a $2 billion annual revenue business, he led a highly successful transformation from on-prem to the cloud and completed numerous successful acquisitions.

What excites me is that Larry is also a seasoned M&A veteran, and I value his experience and industry knowledge as we continue to build MeridianLink. Larry and I share the same vision that Meridian Link has significant untapped potential for expansion and growth. And I’m excited to partner together to propel the company forward to that next level of success. With that, I’m pleased to turn the call over to Larry to talk about his experience and then review our financial results and guidance.

Larry Katz: Thanks, Nicolaas. I’m thrilled to be here and to help lead the next leg of MeridianLink’s growth and innovation. As Nicolaas mentioned, I’ve got years of relevant experience in consumer lending, Fintech and SaaS businesses. I’ve been around the block and in every stop have helped companies deliver durable growth at scale while building exceptional customer experiences. Personally, I enjoy helping build companies the right way. Innovative companies like MeridianLink that deliver unique and valuable solutions for customers that are financially disciplined and allocate capital prudently and that have five performing teams who like to win. There is a lot to like about the MeridianLink story today, and I chose to join because of my knowledge and experience in this market.

First, MeridianLink has a unique value proposition as the lending platform of choice for credit unions and community banks. I know the power, value and stickiness of these enterprise platforms from my experience at JPMorgan and Genesis. I’ve implemented point-of-sale origination and servicing platforms in mortgage and consumer lending, and I know that financial institutions design their businesses around these platforms. Our platforms don’t just power the business they are the business. We are the leading platform in a growing resilient market segment where MeridianLink’s digital capabilities enable our customers to compete and grow. Second, the fundamentals of this business are strong, with healthy retention rates, strong margins and robust cash generation.

This is a durable business with recurring revenue insulated by contractual minimums and benefiting from macro tailwinds of digitalization. It is led by a smart and talented management team that is executed with discipline through market cycles. They’ve built a great business, and I’m excited to partner with them for this next chapter. Third, it’s clear to me that we are well-positioned to accelerate growth. With the power of MeridianLink One, we have a significant expansion play with our current customers and partner relationships as well as new logo acquisition opportunities. We’re just beginning to see the return on our investment in our go-to-market services and customer success teams, which will generate increased demand and accelerate time to revenue with our healthy pipeline, bookings and activations we are becoming a coiled spring that will release as volumes recover, driving accelerated revenue growth.

As I enter as CFO at MeridianLink, I planned to focus on three key areas, one, I will focus on delivering against our operating priorities, bringing rigor, discipline, data and analytics to measure progress and inform decisions. I’ll focus on systems, processes, controls and talent to support our scale and growth. And I’ll own our short- and medium-term investment priorities to articulate a long-term growth plan, including milestones over a 3-plus year period; two, I will outline a disciplined capital allocation framework. Our priorities will be, first, investing in organic growth in areas such as go-to-market, R&D and services especially when those investments have high ROIs; second, inorganic growth via targeted strategic accretive M&A; and third, repurchasing our own shares when trading at an intrinsic value.

We expect that we will be able to do all 3 with our recurring revenue, free cash flow generation and balance sheet capacity. My third priority will be to help our investors better understand performance of our business and the levers of our growth, which include our revenue growth algorithm. I’m a big believer in transparency, and I’m committed to helping our investors understand what their financial expectations would be for our business. Turning now to our results, MeridianLink performed well in the face of a shifting macroeconomic environment. In the quarter, we delivered on our top line by executing our platform strategy and beat on our EBITDA guidance. In Q1, we generated total revenue of $77.8 million, up 1% year-over-year, meeting the high end of our revenue guidance.

Adjusted EBITDA was $31.8 million, a 41% margin up 27% year-on-year and exceeded our EBITDA guidance. Revenue growth was driven by higher services and other revenue, offset by lower subscription revenue. Subscription revenue declined year-over-year due to lower volumes offset by ACV release from both existing and new customers. In the face of macro headwinds, a generational low in mortgage industry originations and softer auto lending volumes. We beat our adjusted EBITDA guidance by managing our cost base and executing with discipline. We saw healthy demand in the quarter, resulting in pipeline growth and strong bookings. In this launching macro, we are controlling what we can control and proactively investing for when volumes recover. Breaking down revenue and starting with Software Solutions.

Our total lending software revenue grew 5% year-over-year and accounted for nearly 78% of revenue. Non-mortgage lending revenue grew 6% year-over-year and accounted for 89% of lending software revenue. This growth was attributable to solid ACV release from existing and new customers, offset by lower volumes. Auto volumes, our largest consumer loan category are improving sequentially and but remained down year-over-year. Pre-owned volumes remained challenged due to the softness in used car inventory and aggressive dealer financing alternatives. Mortgage-related revenue within Lending Software Solutions declined 1% year-over-year and accounted for the remaining 11% of lending software revenue. This quarter, mortgage volumes were up year-over-year, but it will take time for volumes to push our customers above their committed minimums.

Through a smaller part of our business, mortgage industry volumes are at generational lows with refinancing volumes at the lowest level since 2000. Turning to data verification Software Solutions, revenue declined 12% year-over-year and accounted for 22% of total revenue. This decline was attributable to a 17% decrease in mortgage-related revenue, which represented 58% of total data verification software revenue in Q1. This decline in mortgage-related data verification revenue was driven by lower volumes, which were impacted by down-sell of a single large customer. In total, mortgage-related revenue was 21% of total MeridianLink revenue in the first quarter, down 3 points from the year ago quarter. Focusing on profitability, GAAP gross margin was 66% in Q1.

On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted gross margin was 74%, nearly 300 basis points of improvement in operating leverage year-over-year driven by increased productivity of our services team. For operating expenses, sales and marketing expense was $10.5 million, a 28% increase year-over-year on a GAAP basis. On a non-GAAP basis, sales and marketing was $9.2 million, up 16%. This increase is due to higher variable compensation costs and our investment in our go-to-market team. R&D expense was $9.5 million and declined 31% year-over-year on a GAAP basis. On a non-GAAP basis, R&D was $7.9 million and declined 34% year-over-year, reflecting continued cost discipline and the roll-off of spend for completed technology projects such as the migration to the public cloud.

G&A expense was $25.2 million, up 12% year-over-year on a GAAP basis. On a non-GAAP basis, G&A declined 7% to $9.5 million, excluding nonrecurring items such as the secondary offering costs in Q1. Moving to overall operating performance, GAAP operating income was $3.4 million and non-GAAP operating income was $16.3 million. On a GAAP basis, net loss was negative $5.3 million or negative 7% margin. And on a non-GAAP basis, adjusted EBITDA was $31.8 million, a 41% margin. This represented an 850 basis point improvement in operating leverage year-over-year and reflects our continued cost discipline while strategically investing in growth. Now, pivoting to the balance sheet and cash flow statement, we ended the first quarter with $62.3 million in cash and cash equivalents, a decrease of $18.2 million from year-end.

This decline was driven by $44 million of stock repurchases in the quarter. Cash flow from operations was $29 million or 37% of revenue, and free cash flow was $27.1 million or 35% of revenue. I’ll now pivot to guidance for Q2 and updated guidance for the full-year 2024. While the consumer seems to be holding up, we remain cautious about the uncertain macro environment with a higher for longer rate outlook. We continue to grow our nonmortgage-related lending revenue, primarily through ACV release. And while volumes are improving sequentially, we expect that revenue growth attributable to volumes will be lighter than previously anticipated. Within this macro, we are focused on the things within our control, including disciplined cost management with a focus on profitability in preparation for when volumes return.

We continue to prioritize winning new logos and cross-sell mandates. Accelerating ACV release and innovating MeridianLink One to meet evolving consumer lending needs. With that, I’ll share our updated guidance. For the second quarter, estimated total revenue is expected to be between $70 million and $79 million compared to $75.4 million for the same period in 2023. This represents an estimated year-over-year change of 1% to 5%. Adjusting Q2 ’23 for a onetime reduction in revenue due to the previously disclosed commercial dispute. This represents an estimated year-over-year change of negative 2% to positive 2%. For the full-year 2024, we expect total revenue to be between $311 million and $319 million compared to $303.6 million for the full-year 2023.

This represents an estimated increase of 2% to 5% year-over-year. We expect the mortgage market to contribute approximately 20% of revenue for the second quarter and full-year 2024. To provide more color around the drivers of our total revenue, our mortgage-related revenue guidance includes declining year-over-year revenue despite improving volumes as it will take time for the recovery and volumes to push our customers above their committed minimums. For our non-mortgage-related data verification software solutions, we expect to return to modest year-over-year growth as the employment screening market reacts to job openings and labor turnover. Non-mortgage lending revenue is anticipated to gradually improve year-over-year across loan types.

This is driven primarily by ACV release and some uplift from improving volumes in line with the gradual recovery that industry sources are forecasting. Now focusing on our adjusted EBITDA guide, on a non-GAAP basis, tech quarter estimated adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $29 million and $32 million, representing adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 39% at the midpoint. For the full-year 2024, we continue to expect our adjusted EBITDA range to be between $123 million and $130 million, representing adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 40% at the midpoint. This adjusted EBITDA guide on lower revenue effectively raises our expected adjusted EBITDA margin and signals our confidence and focus on execution and profitability. To wrap up, I’d like to reiterate how excited I am to team and business to chart the next leg o MeridianLink’s growth.

With that, Nicolaas, Chris, and I are happy to take any of your questions, and I’ll turn it over to the operator.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Koji Ikeda from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Koji Ikeda: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Hi, Larry, nice to meet you on the call, looking forward to working with you. I had a question around the minimum contract values. And just thinking about all the contracts in aggregate, is there a way to think about how far down or below the minimum contract values in aggregate the customers are? And where I’m going with this is how much do overall volumes need to be made up before minimum contract thresholds are achieved?

Larry Katz: Koji, it’s Larry, nice to meet you as well, and look forward to working with you. So, breaking down consumer versus mortgage, on the mortgage side, as we’ve talked about in the past, many of our contracts are well below their contractual minimums. And that’s why we’re seeing, even though mortgage volumes are starting to recover, it’s not printing to revenue in the quarter. So, it’s going to take some time. I don’t know, crystal ball when that will happen, but it’s going to take some time from my data and mortgages, I’m sure you know that when the mortgage market comes back, it tends to it tends to move quickly, so we can move through those floors pretty quickly, but it’s going to take some time until that mortgage market comes back.

On the consumer lending side, substantial part of our contract base is above the minimums today, and a good chunk is relatively close to those minimums. And so, we see more as volumes are returning, for example, in auto, those volumes are passing through into revenue and expect that to continue as volumes recover.

Koji Ikeda: Got it. Thank you, Larry. And just a follow-up here, thinking about the new logos signing up, call within the last six months, how do those contract commitments for those new logos compared to say, contracts signed a year ago? Are they roughly the same, roughly smaller? I mean, any way to think about the commitments that are embedded with the new logos signed recently?

Chris Maloof: This is Chris. Over the last year, they’re roughly the same. And they can really vary institution-to-institution based on how aggressive they want to be in terms of their commitment versus their app price. So, we see a decent amount of variability, which has remained consistent.

Koji Ikeda: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Nik Cremo from UBS. Please go ahead.

Nik Cremo: Hey, guys, congrats on the strong results, and thanks for taking my question. My first one is for Nicolaas. I was hoping you could provide additional color on the conversations you’re having with customers, your most recent customer conference just in terms of their bank IT spending plans and more specifically on lending and also just how your sales pipeline is looking now relative to what it was last year on the back of your customer conference? Thanks.

Nicolaas Vlok: Yes. Hello, there, and thank you for the question. First of all, from a customer conversation standpoint, I don’t feel like we’re having different conversations with customers at a user event or annual event and kind of separate executive briefings and meetings. And those conversations are pretty positive. Folks are leaning into retooling, folks are very interested in MeridianLink’s road map. We did spend some time at the user forum speaking about a digital progression model, which I’m going to ask Chris Maloof that’s on the call here to take that on here in a little bit when I pass it to him. But it’s something that our customers are really excited about. We feel it will help them on the curve of achieving more digital maturity on our platform, but also in the industry as a general and a lot of conversation took place around that.

Another theme that we had quite a bit of interaction with at the user forum was AI. And we’ve also had some keynote folks and showed product functionality that was pretty exciting to the customer base. But generally speaking, I would say folks are starting to kind of look past ’24, one of the themes we heard back from some of our clients would be still a fairly constrained environment from a liquidity and deposit perspective. But hopefully, folks are seeing ’25 being a more positive year, specifically on the credit union side, I would highlight. So, Chris, maybe you can speak to the digital progression model, which was quite a highlight for us at the user forum.

Chris Maloof: Thanks, Nicolaas. A core part of our off-sell success and how we position ourselves against competitors is how as a whole as differentiated than its point solutions alone. So as the central approach we took to our latest user form is we moved away from talking about various specific cases around credit cards and work, et cetera. It’s about where are you in your specific digital transformation process? And then how can our solutions help you move along that line? So, an example could be — we’ll talk to many different institutions that are significant 10% of their deposits online. They want to streamline that. But that’s one engagement we can do. And that we may in another institution like the one Nicolaas highlighted earlier where they’re looking to enhance their auto decision rate, right?

So that would be on the more advanced side of the curve. And what’s great about this is the business long term is many of these customers or this industry still has five to 10 years left of digital and transformation lack. There is a lot of processes out there that are still built for the in-person and they’re reflected digitally as opposed to being separate, but equal. And as we move them to being separate, but equal we’re will require significant investment in digital technologies, investment in their people as well as investment in their technology.