SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:SSNC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

William Stone: Well, I think the whole key to this kind of a business is how efficient can you be, right? Let’s not glamor here, right? You need to be in balance, right? You need to be in balance. Some of our customers do millions of trades a day, right? What they want us to do is make sure we process them, balance them, get you ready to trade the next day, right? And so, that’s a big part of what we do, and it’s a big part of how we’re using the new technologies to allow us to spot problems before it becomes a crisis and to be able to always be there for our clients. And like when COVID hit and things like that, we had all kinds of clients coming to us, right? Because we stood up. We kept processing all through that stuff. And people learned that, wow, they don’t really have fail-over.

They don’t really have the infrastructure that we have and what we’ve spent to have it. And so, I think some of those kinds of things are what these new technologies are allowing you to do somewhat easier, somewhat faster. But then you got to be careful. You have to still be in balance. You have to still be able to reconcile. You have to still be able to understand what that means, right? The humans have to be in charge. Otherwise, you start looking at this technology and decide it’s always right. And it’s not always right. So it’s important to have the right controls, the right processes, the right procedures as you add sophisticated technology that artificial intelligence stuff and stuff like that that can sometimes be a little bit too artificial.

So I think it’s important for us to stay awake and put in the proper processes and controls to make sure that our customers are served well.

Surinder Thind: That’s helpful. And then just kind of turning to the health care business here. Just as we kind of look over the next year in DomaniRx and the investments that you’ve made, just any kind of an update there in terms of progress, how we should be thinking about the cadence. And then obviously, just — in terms of just understanding near-term dynamics, it looks like the health care business has started to stabilize in its current format. So just any color there, please.

William Stone: Well, I think it is stabilizing. I think we’ve done a good job. We have really improved our relationships with our clients. We have some big opportunities even outside of DomaniRx, and we have huge opportunities with DomaniRx. We’re on schedule to put upwards tens of millions of lives under DomaniRx in the first quarter of 2024, and we’re poised to do that. So we’re optimistic, and we think health care is an excellent segment to be in with a lot of opportunity and similar aging technology where our innovation capabilities and technology capabilities will be very well received.

Surinder Thind: Got it. And then just in terms of as you think about the investments you made, like does health care operate relatively independently as everybody else within the organization? Or how should we think about that business in terms of, what I would call, the amount of investment that’s going on there and your ability to kind of leverage internal resources?

William Stone: Well, again, remember, most of these health care organizations also have insurance backgrounds in them. And so a big singularity client is Aetna, CVS and Cigna and we’re also pitching other big health care and insurance organizations like Anthem. And so, we think that the health and wealth process is also pretty important. And as you have an aging population, all of us that are working might have a relative or someone that gets ill or something and you need to be able to take care of them and really understanding the provider networks and being able to add value to all of our clients across all of our segments, I think it’s symbiotic. And that’s something that we’ve stayed with and we’ve made the investment. Yes, we took a couple of whacks on the chin, but hey, you don’t get anywhere unless you — as one of our great clients said to me once, you got to have perseverance to get through these large system developments.