Paycor HCM, Inc. (NASDAQ:PYCR) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Raul Villar : Yes. I think we’ve seen demand in all three of our segments. The low end of SMB, the mid-market and the enterprise market, we’ve seen really strong top of the funnel demand. So that’s exciting. Nothing has changed there. I think when you break it down from an industry perspective, we’ve seen some unique trends in new bookings like we’re seeing real strength in food and beverage and professional services. We’ve seen, what I would say, year-over-year modest performance in manufacturing. So from that perspective, it kind of mirrors some of what you would read in the newspapers. But overall, demand has been strong across all three segments that we serve.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Bhavin Shah with Deutsche Bank.

Bhavin Shah: Starting with that I’m just looking at kind of guidance for the back half of the year. Can you maybe just dive into the assumptions that are embedded in terms of the numbers? It seems like there’s a little bit of a deceleration in 3Q that might be just a tougher comp with forms. But more broadly, as we think about embedded payroll kind of continue to take off, looking at how you performed in the quarter relative to the raise in the guide. It seems like there’s a little bit more conservative here. Can you just provide more insight?

Adam Ante: Yes, we try to keep a consistent level of conservatism and so not really changing any philosophy here. We do see that and expect that in Q3. The forms filing generally is going to drive a slightly lower growth rate, right, because form filings are going to grow more at the rate of employee growth, plus or minus sort of any pricing changes that may be happening and we’re seeing less related to ERC. Of course, so that dynamic is going to slow down slightly in Q3. And then we also just had a little bit of overperformance of form filings that came into Q2, which is part of the guide as you look at the total beat from Q2 into the full year, a portion of that is related to the form filings. And so we just — we aren’t going to see upside to the full year for that which we think makes sense just given some of the performance. So, just a slightly slower growth rate in Q3 with the form filings, which are outsized in Q3.

Bhavin Shah: Super helpful here. Just one quick follow-up. It’s great to hear the additional broker traction. Can you just dive into a little bit of your efforts here? And what’s driving the increased kind of adoption within the active brokers that are kind of referring clients to yourselves?

Raul Villar : Yes. I think, we’ve just really focused our direct sales team on the best targets. And so we have 4 national partnerships that we’re really focusing on to drive opportunities. As we expand our sales headcount, obviously, it gives us an opportunity to expand how many people are reaching into the broker network. And so I think the value proposition works. They love the platform, and it’s just about us continuing to focus on the benefit brokers that have the most clients in our target market.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Terrell Tillman with Truist Securities.

Terrell Tillman : Solid execution here in the quarter. I did have a question and a follow-up. I would say the first question almost might be a 2-parter, but hopefully, it counts as just one question. Raul, in terms of like do you need a little bit of an evolving or different go-to-market and kind of product requirements for 1,000-plus employee deals? And then the second part of that first question is, I mean, if we’re looking at 3Q and even early part of 4Q in terms of signing business. I mean, will you actually not maybe even see that much recurring revenue this year for those kinds of bigger transactions? And then I had a follow-up for Adam.

Raul Villar : Yes. On the enterprise side, the product — the clients are pulling us into the enterprise. So the platform hunts in the enterprise space, lots of feature functionality on the talent side, which is really attractive to those customers. And so that’s what’s taking us there. We also have reps, our most experienced reps are really focused on the enterprise accounts. So, we’ve slightly segmented the sales force from that perspective to make sure that we have the right skill level that are calling on those accounts.

Terrell Tillman : And I guess maybe just a follow-up, Adam. It kind of relates to the prior question, looking at the full year guide and then the over performance in 2Q. Has anything notably changed for the full year form filing assumptions or any kind of delta in terms of your internal recurring revenue assumption?

Adam Ante : No, nothing’s changed. I mean, we see it’s really there’s a bit of operational performance that goes into getting the W-2s prepped and shipped. And we just — we had some overperformance there towards the end of December, where we were able to be a little bit more effective at getting those out the door. And that helped the overperformance here in Q2. So nothing on the full year that we would expect to be any different. And in fact, that’s why we see the continued — feel good about the continued guide and raise for the full year on both the recurring and overall.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Scott Berg with Needham & Company.

Scott Berg : Really nice results this quarter. Congrats. A couple of questions for me. Let’s start on the broker channel. I think you said 50% of your bookings in the quarter were a contribution from the broker channel there. How should we think about those contributions going forward? Because 50 seems like a very high number. Do you expect that pace to continue? Or does it moderate from there?

Raul Villar : I think we’ve continued to think it would slightly moderate, Scott, but it’s remained really strong. I think as we think about our 3-year outlook, we think high 30s, mid-40s is probably where we’ll be as we continue to scale bookings. But that being said, we’re still in the early innings, where there’s tons of white space in the broker opportunity. So we’re kind of just getting started. And our execution has gotten significantly better this year. And so the team that we have driving these programs for us has done a phenomenal job, and we’re really proud of the results.