nCino, Inc. (NASDAQ:NCNO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Pierre Naudé: You know I would say, remember we started the company in 2012, and so we’ve been on a quite a phenomenal economic run from €˜12 to €˜22 in an interest rate environment that was very low with a roaring economy. In a previous life I have experienced going through €˜08, €˜09, €˜10, €˜11, €˜12 selling to banks, etc. and what you’ll find is initially there will be a pause to get a full understanding of the market landscape, and then very quickly the ones who stop investing realize they are going to fall behind and then it comes back, okay. I’ve seen this in the financial crisis. I expect the same thing to happen right now, and people regret when they start putting these investments on hold, because they are competitors.

People talk a lot about competition to banking coming from the outside banks and I remind bankers all the time, they’ve got a massive benefit over any other industry coming in there, because of the cost of funding, which they have to achieve deposits, and so your biggest competition in banking is another bank. And if the other bank in your town or your city is innovating and driving innovation through technology, then you better keep up. So I believe this is a short term pause year or a slowdown or a caution, which is normal, but it always comes back.

Jackson Ader: Okay, all right great, thank you. And then just on the segment outlook for next year, what kind of you know mortgage banker or loan origination officer headcount growth is baked into that rule of 30? Do you expect things to get worse, better, stay the same?

Pierre Naudé: Yes, we’re €“ we’re at very early stages of planning. As you can imagine, we’re in beginning December, January. We’re going to see how that market evolves over the next few months and we cannot comment yet what’s going to happen to that mortgage market. You see how the market reacts just based on Colin €“ on Powell’s comments today. So we have to see how they develop before we finalize our plans.

Jackson Ader: Okay. All right, that’s fair. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Nick Altmann from Scotia Bank. Your question please.

Nicholas Altmann: Great! Thanks guys. I just wanted to ask a question about the margins next year. You know over the past couple of quarters you guys have made comments around how the core nCino business is profitable today and investments in the SimpleNexus were really the drag on margins. So I guess, with that 10% target for next year in mind, is there any way to sort of parse out the margin profile between core nCino versus SimpleNexus?

David Rudow: For next year the 10%, we’re going to look at the business as a whole and we’ll make decisions as a company as a whole, not by segments. SimpleNexus did €“ is going to lose money this year and nCino is a profitable legacy business. If you take it like the next layer, I think SimpleNexus would have to get breakeven. I think we were greatly positioned there. We have the number one product in the space. The mortgage market will return, so we don’t want to leave the market or any opportunity for the competition to catch up with us. So the idea is to maintain investments as we can and look as we start seeing the market return to normal, invest more money and just be better positioned coming out of this.

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