Paylocity Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:PCTY) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Ryan Glenn: Yes. I think we hit the magnitude question earlier. And I think the way to think about that is relative to the revised guidance. Half of that impact is macro, roughly speaking, and half of it would be some of the sales headwinds I think the way that we assume that layered in over the balance of the year is we’ve seen a very small but consistent decline over the last five months, and we assume that similar level of decline in further moderation happens each month into Q3 and Q4. There wasn’t a particular month or quarter that we had concentration. It was assumed that continued moderation happens over the course of the back half of the year.

Jason Celino: All right. Thanks for that clarification there. And then maybe on the Trace acquisition, can you talk about how that fits in or complements to the broader portfolio? And then with the near-term environment where you’re seeing some pressure on workforce levels, how does headcount budgeting and forecasting kind of fit in, in terms of priority?

Steve Beauchamp: Yes. So I think it’s certainly been a little bit tighter economy and when we talk to our customers, and they’re certainly trying to be able to manage their cost as well as the growth that they might see in their business. And so one of the challenges that our customers tell us about is people are one of the largest costs that they have. And when somebody then leaves the organization, are you going to replace them? Are you going to replace them right away? Or are you going to replace it in a different position? How do you then approve requisitions for new positions? All those concepts in a tighter economy become even more important parts of the conversation. And we have all the data about the people in our platform already.

And so when you can layer in workflows and approvals for that activity to happen, you can layer forecasting capabilities, on rules and routing that becomes really attractive in terms of driving both cost efficiency for our customers as well as just purely efficiency in terms of getting those actions done where the data already exists today.

Jason Celino: Interesting. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Dan Jester with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Daniel Jester: Great. Thanks for taking my question. So I appreciate all the clarity on the slowdown in the upper end of your market. I think just to be explicit, if you look at your core customer that has 100 or 200 employees, which I think is close to the average size of the folks you have on the platform, have you seen a change in the velocity of new bookings there or sales cycles?

Steve Beauchamp: Yes. I think Toby called out the fact that we’ve had continued broker referrals that are really strong. That’s obviously ends up being a big driver in the core end of the market. That’s not something that we kind of called out. We feel good about the momentum that we have there. Still a big market, still relatively underpenetrated. I think the point we’re trying to make is we’ve grown relatively quickly in upmarket, a lot of new people in that category, some macro impact that we’re kind of feeling in there. You add that into what we saw from an overall macro perspective, and that’s really the bigger factor worth calling out on the sales side.

Daniel Jester: Okay. Great. Thank you. And then maybe just get a refresh take on how you’re viewing your capital allocation strategy. It looks like you’re going to end this fiscal year with kind of north of $400 billion on the balance sheet. Most of your acquisitions have been more tuck-in in nature. How are you thinking about organic versus inorganic? And is there opportunities to maybe deploy capital in other ways going forward? Thank you.

Toby Williams: Yes. I’d probably give you a fairly consistent answer on that, Dan. I think we ended the quarter with [$400 million] or so on balance sheet, and that will certainly grow as we go through the back half of the fiscal year. You’re right, I mean I think we’ve been pleased with the acquisitions that we’ve done and being able to use those as drivers for strategy and growing the portfolio. I think that continues to be of interest to us. And I think as we get through the back half of this fiscal year, we’ll continue to look at other ways to allocate capital as we go through the year. But I don’t – no massive change in our mentality around that.

Daniel Jester: Okay. And just a quick one then on Trace. Is that going to be a separate standalone SKU? Or is that going to be embedded into another product?

Steve Beauchamp: Yes. We haven’t really made any big announcements in terms of what the product strategy is. But what I would tell you based off of our prior acquisitions is we really try to take the time to build it into our platform such that from a user perspective, you would have no idea whether we built it ourselves or we acquired it and then use that team that we acquired to build it into our platform. So we’re doing that work right now, and we’re figuring that out. I definitely think there’s a fair amount of value in the product. So if you can save customers both time and drive more efficient process and ultimately save them people dollars, then that certainly becomes a monetizable option. So that would certainly be the lean sitting here right now.

Daniel Jester: Great. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Matthew VanVliet with BTIG. Your line is open.

Matthew VanVliet: Hey. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question. Curious on how the referral network performed. Any trends there that you’re seeing that maybe deviate from what some of the direct business looks like?