Asure Software - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 revenue was $30.8M (+17% YoY; +22% YoY excluding ERTC), recurring revenue was $28.5M (+14% YoY), GAAP diluted EPS was $(0.12), and adjusted EBITDA was $6.2M (20.2% margin).
• Management reiterated FY 2025 revenue guidance of $134–$138M and adjusted EBITDA margin of 23–24%, and introduced Q1 2025 guidance of $33–$35M revenue and $6–$7M adjusted EBITDA; contracted backlog is $79M with ~one-third expected to be recognized in 2025.
• Strategic highlights: multi-year reseller agreement with a leading audit/tax/consulting firm for payroll and payroll tax solutions, strong enterprise traction (e.g., Kroger, Nucor), launch of AsurePay and Luna AI agent; bookings rose 86% in 2024 and backlog expanded materially.
• Capital and execution: pursuing a $20–$60M credit facility (SOFR +4%–7%) to accelerate customer acquisitions; near-term focus on cross-sell/attach rates and margin scaling as enterprise implementations ramp.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Recurring revenue mix and profitability improved: recurring reached $28.5M in Q4 (+14% YoY), non-GAAP gross margin rose to 73.2% and adjusted EBITDA to $6.2M (20.2%).
• Enterprise tax momentum and backlog: new multi-year agreements and backlog growth (contracted backlog $79M, ~1/3 expected in 2025); CEO: “we signed a multiyear agreement with... the industry leader in audit, tax, consulting and advisory services to resell our payroll and payroll tax management solutions”.
• Product innovation: launch of Luna, “the industry’s first AI agent for payroll and HR,” and AsurePay (500 cards in use) to drive attach-rate expansion and future margin scale.

What Went Wrong

• GAAP losses and margin pressure: Q4 GAAP net loss $(3.2)M; gross margin was 68.0% (down from historical levels), reflecting ERTC sunset and investment ahead of enterprise implementations.
• Timing variability: revenue recognition and professional services tied to large enterprise tax deals slipped into later periods; Q4 bookings growth was +28% (below the Q2/Q3 pace).
• Financing and macro headwinds: credit facility not yet finalized (exclusive negotiations ongoing), and management modeled potential rate cuts that could pressure float income in 2025.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon and welcome to Asure's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's call are Chairman and CEO, Pat Goepel, Chief Financial Officer, John Pence, and Vice President of Investor Relations, Patrick McKillop. Following the prepared remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session for the analysts and investors. I'd now like to turn the floor over to Patrick McKillop for introductory remarks. Patrick, please go ahead, sir.

Patrick McKillop (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Asure's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings results call. Following the close of the markets, we released our financial results. The earnings release is available on the SEC's website and our investor relations website at investor.asuresoftware.com, where you can also find the investor presentation. During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors and exclude the impact of certain items. A description and timing of these items, along with the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, can be found in our earnings release. Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements that refer to future events and, as such, involve some risks. We use words such as expects, believes, and may to indicate forward-looking statements.

We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. I will hand the call over to Pat in a moment, but just wanted to take a moment to remind folks of some upcoming investor relations activities. On March 16th through the 18th, we will attend the 37th Annual Roth Conference in Dana Point, California. We also plan to do some non-deal roadshows later this spring as well. Investor outreach is very important to Asure, and I would like to thank all of those that assist us in efforts to connect with investors. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and it will be available for a replay via a link on the investor relations section of our website.

With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Pat Goepel, Chairman and CEO. Pat?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Patrick, and welcome everyone to Asure Software's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings results call. I am joined on this call by our CFO, John Pence, and we will provide a business update for our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results, as well as our outlook for 2025. Following our remarks, we'll be available to answer your questions. As you can see from our reported results, we executed quite well against the plan we laid out for 2024 and delivered strong results. Our total revenue increased modestly in 2024 to $119.8 million. Excluding ERTC revenues, total revenues were up 17%. Our recurring revenues for the full year 2024 grew 15% versus the prior year. I would like to highlight that our recurring revenues, which carry higher value than one-time revenues, as a percentage of total revenues, increased to 96% versus 84% in 2023.

During 2024, we focused on the continued growth of our business and replacing one-time ERTC revenues with higher value recurring revenues through accommodation of organic growth and acquisition. The drivers of our success in 2024 were broad-based, with a strong contribution by our payroll tax management product, as well as contributions from recent acquisitions. Over the past year, we added to our product portfolio with items such as employee recruiting technology, benefit brokerage capabilities, pre-tax and preventative healthcare solutions, and our 401(k) offering. Recently, we launched AsurePay. This is an innovative alternative to online banking, which we expect to help employers with retention, reduction in lost paper checks, and attract new employees. It provides employers with the ability to offer on-demand pay, also known as earned wage access. AsurePay is delivered via an easy-to-use mobile app and offers debit card capabilities, free ATM withdrawals, plus more.

We're in the early stages of the product rollout, with launches to strategic groups thus far. We made great strides with our acquisition strategy during 2024, primarily acquiring our payroll resellers. Under this approach, we're acquiring new clients, and such transactions are not so much acquisitions in the traditional definition. We anticipated an acquisition during the fourth quarter, which did not materialize. However, in the first quarter, we replaced the value of the deal with two additional acquisitions, and our pipeline for future deals remains robust. These client acquisitions can be efficiently integrated into our existing business, and we can cross-sell additional capabilities, which we believe will drive future profitability as we achieve scale. As we continue our efforts to enhance client experience, we've been working to integrate all Asure solutions in a common, modern user interface.

Additionally, we recently introduced Luna, the industry's first AI agent for payroll and HR. Unlike traditional generative AI chatbots, Luna is an advanced AI agent that understands Asure's suite of products and, more importantly, can act on behalf of both employees through self-service and business owners and administrators. Employees can simply ask Luna for help, and she can take care of items like updating personal details, changing benefits, elections, and more. Recently, we've experienced momentum with new payroll units increasing at a strong rate during the fourth quarter, and that sets us up nicely for 2025. Also, our 401(k) product had a strong business result in the fourth quarter, as we look forward to seeing that trend continue during 2025. As you know, our 401(k) offering leverages the U.S. Government SECURE 2.0 Act, which provides funding and encourages adoption of the 401(k) plans by businesses in the U.S.

Our sales efforts during the year 2024 resulted in an 86% increase in new bookings versus the prior year. Also, our contracted backlog is strong, has grown 17% since our third quarter earnings report. Based on our current business trends, we are reiterating our 2025 revenue guidance of $134-$138 million, with EBITDA margins of between 23%-24%. As a reminder, this 2025 guidance excludes any contributions from future potential acquisitions. As we look at the business plan for 2025, our guidance implies a mid-teens growth rate, which is very positive. Finally, we're excited to share that we signed a multi-year agreement with a firm that is an industry leader in audit, tax, consulting, and advisory services to resell our payroll and payroll tax management solutions. This agreement will enable the firm to deliver our comprehensive solutions to their firm's clients for the first time.

Now, I'd like to hand off to John to discuss our financial results in more detail, as well as our quarter one guidance. John?

John Pence (CFO)

Thanks, Pat. As Patrick mentioned at the beginning of this call, several of the financial figures discussed today are given on a non-GAAP or adjusted basis. You will find a description of these GAAP, the non-GAAP reconciliations, and the earnings release that was made available earlier today. The reconciliations themselves are also included in our most recent investor presentation posted in the investor relations section of our website at investor.asuresoftware.com. Now on to the fourth quarter and 2024 results. Fourth quarter total revenues of $30.8 million grew by 17% relative to prior year, while recurring revenue rose by 14%. Excluding non-recurring revenue from ERTC, total revenue rose by 22%. For the full year, total revenue grew slightly to $119.8 million, despite a $16.5 million decline in ERTC revenue. Recurring revenue for the full year rose by 15% relative to prior year to $114 million.

Fourth quarter recurring revenue growth was led by our payroll tax management business, where our enterprise solutions have gained great traction on the strength of our offering. We also drew revenue in payroll, time and attendance, and benefits groups. We are particularly excited about the future growth potential of our insurance offerings, which is a new business for us. We have had some challenges in our HR compliance group in 2024 related to ERTC upsell activity in 2023. We expect to pass this issue this year. Despite rate reductions, our float revenue may remain stable in the quarter relative to prior year. Gross profit for the fourth quarter was unchanged at 68% compared to the prior year period, despite the decline in ERTC revenue. Full year gross margins decreased to 69% from 72% in the prior year period.

Non-GAAP gross margin for the fourth quarter was 73% versus 72% in the prior year period. Non-GAAP gross margin for the full year period decreased to 74% from 76% in the prior year. We continue to believe there is room for margin improvement over the longer term as the business scales. Net loss for the fourth quarter was $3.2 million versus $3.6 million during the prior year. The net loss for the full year was $11.8 million versus a prior year loss of $9.2 million. EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $3.4 million, up from $1.1 million in the prior year period. EBITDA for the full year was $11.4 million versus $14.3 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter increased to $6.2 million from $2.8 million in the prior year period.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 20% in the fourth quarter compared with 11% in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year was $22.5 million versus $23.3 million in the prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year was 19% versus 20% in the prior year period. While discussing adjusted EBITDA, we often get questions regarding our free cash flow. The way we think about it is essentially adjusted EBITDA minus software capitalization and net capitalized sales commissions. We ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $21.4 million, and we had debt of $12.7 million. As we have previously discussed, we are thinking about entering into a credit facility.

The company has been in discussions with a number of lenders, and based on these discussions, we are contemplating a facility between $20 million-$60 million with a rate of SOFR plus 4-7%. The company has agreed to negotiate exclusively with one lender until April 13, 2025. The company is in the very early stages of negotiating a credit agreement with this lender, and no definitive agreements have been reached. Accordingly, there can be no assurance about the timing or terms of a definitive credit agreement. Now, in terms of guidance for the first quarter of 2025 and the full year 2025, our outlook is based on a strong momentum we have built in our sales organization with a contracted backlog of $79 million, up from approximately $20 million at year-end 2023. About a third of this backlog is anticipated to be recognized in 2025.

We expect to achieve continued synergies, both revenue and cost, relating to our customer acquisition activities. With our expanded product offerings, we also expect to accelerate our cross-selling activity success. This will be a strong focus in 2025. We anticipate revenue growth across the organization with continued challenges in our HR compliance group in the first half of the year. We are estimating the first quarter revenues to be in the range of $33-$35 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter is anticipated to be between $6-$7 million, roughly stable versus Q1 2024. We anticipate EBITDA growth will be more subdued, consistent with the revenue profile in the first half of the year, as we invest in infrastructure to support large enterprise deals, product, and technology.

We are leaving our 2025 revenue guidance unchanged, with revenue in the range of $134-$138 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins of between 23%-24% at these revenue levels. Also, as Pat mentioned in his comments earlier, this guidance figures exclude any contribution from future potential acquisitions. In summary, 2024 was a busy year as we grew past the headwinds of ERTC. We are excited about the momentum we have entering into 2025. With that, I will turn the call back to Pat for closing remarks.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, John. We are pleased to have executed well on our plan during 2024, which delivered strong results despite the challenges we faced in replacing one-time ERTC revenue. During the past year, we've invested in the business by expanding our product portfolio, which will help drive new client additions, as well as cross-selling within our existing client base. Our product additions in 2024 include a recruiting solution, benefit brokerage capabilities, 401(k), preventative and pre-tax healthcare offerings, plus AsurePay, which began its launch in November 2024. We feel really good about our product portfolio and remain focused on executing on the opportunities that we have in front of us for 2025. In addition, our payroll tax management product experienced very strong momentum in 2024, with several major multi-year agreements signed, such as Strada, the grocery store chain Kroger, and Nucor, just to name a few.

We believe that the growth of the tax business will continue to be a driver for us in 2025. During 2024, we have invested in the business, and while this partly impacted our margins, we believe that we have laid the foundation that over a medium-term time period, revenues approach around $200 million, we can achieve 30% plus adjusted EBITDA margins, which would be a significant improvement from current levels. We remain focused on achieving these goals, and the combination of the investments we made, plus the continued customer acquisitions, will help us achieve that goal. As we move into 2025, we're excited with the opportunities we have in front of us, with all the new products we added, and we're looking to cross-sell, and our attach rates is one of our measures of success.

An increase of overall attach rates will yield increasing margins, which will translate to the benefits of scale in the business. We believe this will help develop a clearer understanding of our business and be more beneficial for investors. In summary, we've delivered strong results with recurring revenues, the most valuable part of the business growing 15% during the year and becoming 96% of total revenues versus 84% in the prior year. Our bookings growth of 86% was very good. Our contracted backlog is very strong and grew approximately 300% from 2023 to 2024. Our guidance for 2025 of $134-$138 million in revenue implies a mid-teens growth rate, which is very attractive, and the headwinds from ERTC are now gone. We'll continue to provide innovative human capital management solutions that help businesses ohrive, human capital management providers grow their base, and large enterprises streamline their tax compliance.

Thank you for listening to our prepared remarks. With that, I will send the call back to the operator for a question-and-answer session. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Now, we can jump to your question-and-answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We ask you, please ask one question, one follow-up, then return to the question queue. Once again, that is star one to be placed into question queue, and please ask one question, one follow-up, then return to the queue. Our first question is coming from Joshua Riley from Needham and Company. Your line is now live.

Joshua Reilly (Senior Analyst)

All right. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just starting off, how should we think about the progress you're making on the pipeline for enterprise payroll tax opportunities in 2025? We know there's a lot of opportunities there. Maybe along with that, how are you thinking about getting the salespeople who are focused on ERTC? Are they fully productive now in terms of the enterprise payroll tax opportunity, or what level of progress have you made there? Maybe an update there would be helpful as well.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, Josh, thank you for the question. With me, primarily answering questions today, is myself, Patrick Goepel, the Chairman and CEO, John Pence, the CFO. With us, we have Eyal Goldstein, who's President and in charge of the sales organization. I will let him take some of those questions as well. Just on a whole, from an enterprise perspective and a tax perspective, we're making really good progress. We've sold a couple of deals where we have licensing deals to start out with, but we're starting, and through the year, you're going to see us have more and more volume and more and more customers on the platform. Those are going along really, really well. We're really happy with that. We have implementations now with an Oracle system, SAP system, a Workday system.

The interfaces are in place, the infrastructure is in place, and we're doing really well in that area. I think you will see kind of the fruits of the revenue be more consistent and the book-to-bill timing coming in. Where you may have a longer book-to-bill is if somebody is converting to an ERP solution or enterprise resource planning. We're not going to put that in an immediate backlog because that contracted account is going to take some time to get live with the enterprise resource planning software and then install our tax filing. That was a learning in 2023. As far as the salespeople moving past ERTC, I got to tell you, this year was a really good year. We did some acquisitions.

We look at sales both from an organic sales perspective or kind of one-by-one and partner-related system, but we also look at it with our client acquisition strategy of our resellers. What we do is really cross-sell and really look at how we drive the value of our attach rates, which start out at about 17%, and we will continue to drive that in 2025, 2026. I will let the conversation go to Eyal here for a second because Eyal's done a really nice job of top-grading the sales staff. As we moved on from ERTC to selling the whole solution, perhaps Eyal, you could expand on that.

Eyal Goldstein (President)

Yeah. Hey, Josh. Just to recap on the payroll tax management, that team is very well up to speed. We've got a really good marketing approach where we're driving demand for that group, both for enterprise pursuits as well as remarketers or other payroll platforms that are leveraging and will be leveraging our tax platform. That one is going to continue to see tremendous growth. Pipeline is growing. Like Pat mentioned, we're in some really big implementations right now that will only continue to drive more referrals from the big tier-one software players where we're integrating into those platforms. On the other sales team side outside of payroll tax management, we're probably a year in post-ERTC where that was our sales motion. The team's done a really good job. We've top-graded a lot of talent on the leadership side.

One of the things we've done now that we've rounded out the solution set with benefits, with retirement solutions, with AsurePay, with HR compliance, is we've specialized as well. We've got some dedicated specialized sales groups that that is their sales focus. That is what retires their quota. That is what they get compensated on. It was the right time for us to do that now that we've got some of these different solution sets that we didn't have in the past where it'll give us great ability to have that focus to drive cross-sell into the customer base.

Joshua Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Got it. That's super helpful detail. Maybe just one quick follow-up. How important is it to close the credit facility for you to do more M&A in 2025? Is the right way to think about it that you're kind of waiting to see how that financing works out before you were to do any more material-sized deals, whether it's a reseller or some other type of technology or functionality? Thanks, guys.

John Pence (CFO)

Yeah, definitely. That's the main impetus for doing the credit facility is to put the gas on the customer acquisition model that we've been doing for the last couple of years. I think I was looking at the stats. We did 14 customer acquisitions in the last 18 months, and we did two kind of technology extensions. A total of 16 deals, but the vast majority of them are customer acquisitions. Most of those sellers want a component of their proceeds upfront. Typically, we've structured the seller notes to give us some protection on the back end, but in general, most of that is an upfront cash payment. To fund those upfront cash payments and continue that customer acquisition model, that's the main purpose of the facility.

We talk about it all the time, but we really feel like we've spent a lot of time and energy building out the back office and the infrastructure to accommodate really adding those books very quickly and efficiently. Yeah, that's definitely one of the main thoughts behind considering that facility, assuming we can get it put together over the next couple of years.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. The only thing, John, John hit it on all the right points. The key point, though, that I wanted to make sure that we reinforce is we're fine doing client acquisitions out of the business and out of run rate, if you will. The real impetus, though, for the facility is we look at scale. In 2021, we were somewhere around $79 million or so of revenue and about 10% adjusted EBITDA. This past year, close to $120 million and close to 20% adjusted EBITDA. At $180 million-$200 million, we're at 30% adjusted EBITDA. We got the model right. We've really laid the foundation, and we want to continue to go stronger. We also think from an equity perspective that we're not interested in raising money.

A proper kind of business line for us to go faster, but cash flow-wise, we feel really good about the business and the moves that we've done. Laying the foundation, especially just recently signing this other big deal, when we look at this, the ability to grow faster is something we're interested in, and this line gives us that flexibility. Finally, we wanted to raise it on the call. We think we're going to close it fairly soon if everything works out. We did not want to have a call and not let investors know that this was in our thinking.

Joshua Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Got it. Actually, one last quick point. I just wanted to clarify. I think you said that you've done two customer acquisitions year-to-date. I assume those are factored into the full-year guidance. Was that a material amount, those two customer acquisitions in terms of revenue? Thanks.

John Pence (CFO)

Yeah. Rough order of magnitude, Josh, I think when we last spoke probably at the third-quarter call, we mentioned that we had one acquisition under LOI. Honestly, I think it's the first one that's fallen out where we didn't close after we got to a letter of intent. We were anticipating that deal closing in November, and that was going to be a contribution to the quarter of approximately, I'm going to say, about $500,000. Is that right, Pat?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yep.

John Pence (CFO)

What we did is we replaced that revenue with these two. I think it does not impact the current-year guide because we kind of already had that in our mind when we were here in the third quarter. Yeah, that is the story on that.

Joshua Reilly (Senior Analyst)

Understood. That makes sense. Thanks, guys.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Josh.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Brian Bergen from TD Cowen. He's now live.

Brian Bergen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you. Wanted to get a question in here on the demand environment, just given all the volatility that is out there. Can you just comment on what kind of you're seeing out there on Main Street, just amid everything being driven through D.C.? Has it changed any demand cadence in the SMB type? Also, can you comment on just how client hiring has progressed in this year thus far?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Brian, that's a great question. If I listen to CNBC, the world's changing in the last, whatever, six weeks. If you look at Main Street, people really are continuing to hire. I do think that there's a divide. Pick your number. If it's under $80,000 in salary versus over $80,000, I think you have more of your layoffs in a white-collar recession at this point in time than a blue-collar or gray-collar. There is just still, at this point, more jobs than people. COVID took two kind of cohorts out of the workplace, the people that were 55-64 that had enough dough that kind of said, "Hey, that's it." The second working spouse who had to homeschool the kids and/or take care of the parents. Those folks still haven't quite yet gone back to the workplace.

That and simple demographics. We watch the numbers pretty closely. We modeled a flat employment kind of plan. We see no reason why we should kind of go away from that plan. The last couple of weeks, we have daily calls every morning on employment. I would say in some industries that are tied to the government or tied to, let's say, home building where you have lumber, there are people that are maybe a little bit cautious. I do think there is a big divide of the stock market, let's say, or the news on TV versus Main Street. Right now, we are just not seeing that area of trepidation as much as you hear on TV. I would tell you, we are watching it daily, and we want to make sure. We modeled a pretty conservative flat growth.

We were not expecting big changes.

Brian Bergen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Okay .That's helpful. As you look at '25, can you put some finer points on how you're expecting the contribution of revenue across the payroll tax management business and the marketplace? Really just any sense of scale you can share collectively between businesses like that versus your traditional SMB business?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I think from the tax filing business, etc., we'll continue to grow. I mean, we announced a deal app or we announced a deal. We can't give the name yet, but even after the quarter, we have a number of different enterprise deals. Some of them are licensed deals that then are going to bring on the customers over the next couple of years. We have a feeder channel that's pretty strong. I think order of magnitude will probably give that in the first quarter, kind of more specifics. Clearly, we're growing at a very healthy rate in that tax area, money movement area. As far as the core business, we have some headwinds on the around interest rates potentially going down. I don't know if it'll go down. We modeled a 3.5 towards mid-year with a couple of three cuts.

I don't think that might be conservative, but that certainly on tax filing slope will be a little bit of a headwind that we modeled in that might be too conservative. On the home buying of, let's say, the Equifax relationship, it's less of a guarantee and more of a tie to mortgages. That might be a little bit of a headwind. John mentioned the ERTC, a little bit of a headwind with human resource compliance. That being said, payroll units are up, and we feel really good, and we think we'll grow in payroll in a meaningful way from the start of the year to the final of the year. That process has really been underway here the last six months or so. Obviously, the cross-sell component is huge for us.

We believe that the work we did to integrate the technology as well as launch some of the new products and buy the new products, we're going to really focus on attach rates. It is going to start out at a number, and we're going to give you the progress each quarter. I think you'll see that the contribution margin of that will increase each quarter of the year.

Brian Bergen (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Brian.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Eric Martucci from Lake Street. Your line is now live.

Eric Martinuzzi (Analyst)

Yeah. I was wondering if you could bifurcate or pick apart the outlook for Q1 just between the recurring revenue and the interest, sorry, the recurring revenue interest and the kind of seasonal parts of the business, the ACA and the W-2s.

John Pence (CFO)

Yeah. I would say I think it'll be pretty flat, we think, to last year. I think roughly $5 million of that annual W-2 ACA and probably about the same this year.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. One thing I would say, Eric, and one of the dynamics that we have both in our payroll business and our tax business is we're starting to price in kind of over an annual fee as opposed to have a one-time year-end fee. There's still a certain amount of clients that have that. A lot of the newer deals are coming in with a per-employee fee either quarterly or annually. The flattish or so W-2 revenue is really being masked by the pricing in of some of this new way of pricing where it's more a kind of a PEPM or kind of more repetitive pricing model. Some of our acquisitions are like that in addition to some of our go-forward business. We have not modeled a ton of business in the first quarter around professional services.

We did a lot of work, and we will do a lot of work in professional services in the second, third, and fourth quarter. The first quarter, we may, and some of it depends on milestone billing, etc. We just have taken a very conservative stance in that area around first quarter.

Eric Martinuzzi (Analyst)

Okay. Just to follow up, at the midpoint of the $34 million, we'd be talking about roughly $29 million on the recurring, and that would be up about $500,000 sequentially from Q4. Is that correct?

John Pence (CFO)

Yeah. I'm trying to think. What do we have in for fourth quarter and PS? Yeah. I think fourth quarter, what I'm seeing is about $28.5 is the recurring.

Eric Martinuzzi (Analyst)

Right. That's the reported number. I'm saying based on what you just answered my question.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. About 20, yeah, about 29. I would also tell you first quarter, a couple of things. Fourth quarter is sometimes a little bit stronger based on bonus and employment just because there's extra runs, etc. I mentioned kind of W-2 anomaly. I would say the first quarter, usually the checks are a little bit down in first quarter versus fourth quarter. That coupled with growth leads us to a conservative guide. I would tell you, I think there's probably more upside than downside.

Eric Martinuzzi (Analyst)

Got it. Thanks for taking my question.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Eric.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Jeff Van Reen from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now live.

Daniel Hibshman (Analyst)

Good evening, guys. This is Daniel on for Jeff.

Just on the AsurePay introduction, maybe you can just tell us a little bit more about the go-to-market there and what the drivers are in terms of the end users and businesses adopting, how that'll roll out, just how that'll look in ramp.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Just from AsurePay, right now we have approximately 500 end clients on AsurePay. What we're doing is really testing the value proposition. We're going through, make sure the pipes are as advertised, make sure everybody's got their system working. We already have taken quite a few sign-ups for people that want to start here early in the second quarter. We anticipate in a lot of areas that we'll replace card revenue that we already have and bring that in-house. We also believe that from a check revenue, this will be an excellent card for that. We have some clients, some industries. We have people on the system today. For us, it's kind of an all-in-one card where they can use it as earned wage access. They can use it as a banking account.

They can use it as a debit card. Then even a charge card that they can pay. In the future, it might even be a credit card. We think that this thing has a ton of legs and will be the way that people use this within the Assure Payroll family. We're still early days. Five hundred are using it thus far. We will kind of announce our progress each quarter. We feel pretty good about where we're going to be, but more to come here in the next quarter's earnings.

Daniel Hibshman (Analyst)

Okay. That helps. Then on the 401(k), in terms of the impression I think I got was that the initial momentum there wasn't maybe as expected when it launched, but it sounds like it's accelerating there. Just help us what sort of the learnings are there, where sort of the momentum's coming from, and what is it sort of that are the key drivers in terms of getting small businesses to want to adopt the new plans?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I'll let Eyal talk as well on this one. First of all, we pivoted from ERTC in fourth quarter of 2023 now and really launched 401(k) right around the January timeframe. It has been kind of a year with it. I would say interest level was super high. What I would say is our partner, Vestwell, is a really nice technology partner, and we've worked together well. What I would say, we've had leads. We've had to learn how to sell it. You have an admin component, and you have a fund lineup component. We had to kind of learn the ins and outs of that. From an implementation or a book-to-bill, we had to make sure that we really kind of locked in on a book-to-bill. I will tell you, we've had a lot of interest.

From a compliance perspective on the SECURE 2.0 kind of rules, some of that was changing in the first year where the ease of compliance and maybe the carrot and the stick were not quite well known. We had to evangelize that. We found our rhythm here a little bit. Coming from one of my past lives was at Fidelity where we had a lot of 401(k) customers. It is just really a learning curve. I will tell you, we are starting to get it, and we are starting to get the book-to-bill down. I think the admin piece, we have a pretty good job. Now, as we move funds from the other providers, that will start to pop revenue in the future. It is just a learning curve. We have expanding now our sales motion in that area as well as our operation expertise.

Eyal, maybe if you want to jump in on that.

Eyal Goldstein (President)

Yeah. I think anytime you roll out a financial product, I think it probably took us a little bit longer than I would like. But just to piggyback what Pat was saying, we've got a dedicated retirement sales group now that that is their sole focus. They've got the ability first of all, they've got experience selling retirement solutions. And so they're able to jump into the pursuits that we have referrals into the customer base and new deals and transact and drive those value propositions much more effectively than we were a year ago when we rolled it out. We're seeing the momentum in pipeline, both in leads and conversion of the leads. We'll have this month more unit sales of 401(k) than we've had in the past. It'll be a record for us. The momentum's just starting.

I think we now have the value proposition down. Again, the more we have some of these specialized sales teams, that is their sole focus. I think it's just going to continue to drive the demand in our execution to add it not only to new deals coming in, but more penetration, like Pat mentioned, in the customer base.

Daniel Hibshman (Analyst)

Thanks, Pat. Thanks, Eyal.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Richard Baldry from Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now live.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Rich?

Richard Baldry (Analyst)

Hi.

Operator (participant)

Pat, your phone is on mute.

Richard Baldry (Analyst)

Yep. When you look at the new bookings growth last year, was that more a function of unit growth or ARPU? The reason I'm asking is it feels like with your broadened offerings, that gives you an opportunity to go a little bit more upmarket, larger numbers of employees because the broadened suite that you've got is more complete now. Just sort of curious how you think about that and how you think about that growth driver for 2025 and forward between sort of new and cross-sell.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Rich, you could have been at our board meeting. The real, I would say, first of all, a lot of progress, a lot of credit goes to Eyal in 2024. 86% up is what is it about 86% you don't like? If there's anything we didn't like, we thought it was big deal, tax filing, enterprise. We thought that had disproportionate amount. On the small business, we felt really good about the unit growth, but now we have to expand our ARPU. When we looked at the capability, we consciously went after the benefit area, the recruiting area. We really want to round out the solution. Now, as we introduce kind of next year, we introduce product attachments and the overall attach rate. That is the focus.

We looked at an organization of reorganizing because at the high level, we were driving really big deals. What we want to do now is bring along those multi-product solutions to the company and really drive the value of the deals. Maybe, Eyal, you've done a really nice job of hiring the right people to do that, but let's talk about that for 2025.

Eyal Goldstein (President)

Yep. Yeah. And Rich, that was a big reason for part of the reorganization of the sales team to some specialized sales groups. Again, on the high end, we had two comma deals, big six-figure deals on tax. That's continuing right now in a big way. When I look at the pipeline, actually, our units are up quite a bit, 40-something % here from a pipeline perspective. We're getting the units. The big opportunity for us was, okay, now how do we attach all these other solutions that we have that we've rounded out as part of the offering to these payroll units? That's the big piece for us, right?

Once that linkage happens now, if we can continue the pace of payroll units and continue to grow that the way we have been and attach benefits, broker, 401(k), HR compliance, time and attendance, which we've done with some bundles, now you'll really start to see the penetrate and the ARPU go up into the right in a big way.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

The other aspect, Rich, that we're really working on, it's just not only a sales and marketing function, but with our technology introducing Luna, we're starting to introduce event-driven marketing and using our data. If somebody, for example, processes a termination, they have the ability to use our Cobra services right away, or they have a life event, we immediately can market to them. This is a strategy we've been working on for multiple years. We feel like sometimes luck is preparation meeting opportunity. We're prepared, and we're hoping for some real good luck here in the attach rates in 2025.

Richard Baldry (Analyst)

Okay. The 86% increase in bookings already is not luck, right? You've done it pretty strong. It seems to me you're guiding up on revenue seasonally just like you would in any other year, but you're holding the earnings out. You've proactively decided you're going to spend that to support what looks like an acceleration to your wins and stuff. Can you talk maybe a little bit more specifically about where you've decided to spend that money, what you think you get out of that increased sort of short-term investment?

John Pence (CFO)

Yeah. I think, Rich, from my perspective, we continue to invest in the technology, as Pat mentioned. I mean, we're really trying to unify the customer experience, so that's an ongoing spend. We were in the payroll tax management business for a while, but we weren't in the big enterprise business. I think we really tried to step up our game when you're dealing with Kroger and Nucor and Workday clients. Customers are that ill. You really need a different kind of staff. We've put some dollars to work. We think it's going to be money well spent. We haven't been able to give you the name of this other large enterprise that was closed this quarter. Again, you really need to have some good people to interface with them. I think that's where we're putting a lot of our money.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Rich, just to give a finer point of that, we know we have some of the license revenue, but we do not have all the clients there. Now the clients, as they feather in, we have stepped ahead of some of that. The other thing I would say with some of the technology spend, we were historically a kind of point solution company that now is a total solution company. There is the ability to really automate a lot of functions. With AI, we can now look at doing things quite a bit more efficiently, where instead of setting up three products, we can set it up once. Some of those kind of investments have been made, but they start getting rolled out. If you look at either AsurePay, that is something where the infrastructure is already there.

It just comes almost really high margin revenue in the second half of the year. That cost to get there really was born in the second half and the first quarter.

Richard Baldry (Analyst)

Thanks. Congrats on a great outlook.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Charles Nabhan from Stephens. Your line is now live.

Charles Nabhan (Managing Director)

Hi. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the outlook for margin expansion through the year. I think you had indicated that there were some investments coming in the first half, followed by some acceleration in revenue growth/operating leverage as some of your new bookings go live. Just wanted to get a sense for, as we model the year, should we think of margin expansion as being linear, or could we expect any variability through the quarters? Secondly, if you could talk about how much we could expect to come from OpEx versus gross margin just for modeling purposes.

John Pence (CFO)

Yeah. Thanks. I think what we're trying to do is, and it's in the 10-K, I think our headcount at year-end was roughly 635. I would say we're going to try to hold. That's a pretty good indicator for us in terms of our cost structure. I would say we're going to try to hold the line in that general vicinity for the year. There'll be some ebbs and flows to it, but I think that's what we're trying to do from that perspective. I think, from my perspective, the margins flow with the revenues. If you think about a relatively flat cost structure for the year, as the revenues increase, you're going to get that fall-through.

That being said, I think it's more back-end loaded in terms of it's not a linear progression because it will be down more likely than not in Q2 versus Q1 just because of that normal year-end transition for those year-end fees. I think it'll be kind of more of a third, fourth quarter margin, and that's where you're going to get most of your lift. Is that fair, Pat?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. No, I think so. The only other thing I would say is if you think about sales headcount, we really ramped up in the second half of the year and first quarter. A lot of that kind of we ran into it. The reason we did that, also from an implementation perspective, etc., we knew some of these deals were coming. That's the benefit of the enterprise deal. You get the license fees, but now you have a backlog that's 79 versus a year ago, I think it was somewhere around 16 or 19 or something.

John Pence (CFO)

20 at the end of the year.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

20 at the end of the year. We just have a lot more visibility into the revenue and what it's going to be. We've also, some of those partners have asked us to help them on some implementation pursuits and revenue, and you'll see that in the PS line. It's almost kind of pre-sold in some cases. That was the thought process around it.

Charles Nabhan (Managing Director)

Got it. Just a quick follow-up on M&A. Could you talk about what you're seeing from a valuation or maybe an inbound interest standpoint relative to where things have been over the past couple of years? Secondly, outside of the reseller acquisition strategy, could you maybe talk about what's on your roadmap or wish list from a product or a solution standpoint?

John Pence (CFO)

I'll hit a first couple of points, and then I'll let Pat talk about the pipeline. I'd say of those 16 deals, I mean, I was just looking at the metrics. I mean, we've always kind of said that we're kind of two to three times what we think in terms of revenue. I mean, it's literally 2.5 when you take all those acquisitions across that we did last year over the last 18 months. Very, very consistent on that front. I'll let Pat talk about kind of the kind of pipeline and what he sees.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I think from a pipeline perspective, first of all, we view, if you think if you step back from it, it's client acquisition both from a sales perspective as well as our reseller network. The value is scale. We want to get to $180 million-$200 million, and we want to drive 30% margin. That kind of drives the opportunity. How we get there is clients. The best clients that we can get is either sell them or get them from the reseller network because it's the same technology. As we've built around capability, we'll go on to cross-sell the heck out of it. If we cross-sell the heck out of it and provide value to clients we already have, it's a lot easier and more profitable to cross-sell clients we already have than go out and get the new.

We want to build on our kind of core competencies around money movement and tax filing, and we'll continue to drive that. Finally, from a cost perspective, we've invested in technology, and we want to make sure that we automate and drive efficiencies. We're well on our way to do that and have identified areas where we can automate, including Luna and introducing AI. Finally, from a capability perspective, I think you'll see us lean in, continue leaning in on the benefit area. There are some things that we want to do there. We look at things around build, partner, buy. We prefer to partner to understand and then over time to buy. I think right now we're going to go vertical for scale and then horizontal. I think we have enough to sell.

We just now want to rinse and repeat and get to the $180 million-$200 million scale. We will look and be opportunistic around growth possibilities in the business because we believe as a public company, the highest best use from an investor perspective is to get scale.

Charles Nabhan (Managing Director)

Got it. Thanks again, guys. Appreciate all the color.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Greg Gabas from Northland Securities. Your line is now live.

Hey, Great. Thanks for taking the questions, guys. You mentioned another large enterprise customer that you closed in Q1. I guess I wanted to get a sense of kind of how much sensitivity to maybe revenue performance in your guidance there is that kind of depends on the implementation of those deals, just considering in the past there's been a little bit of a challenge in terms of forecasting the timing of implementation.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I will say, Greg, we did close one in Q1. We have a couple hundred thousand in license fees to start out, let's say. We know we're going to be on pursuits. We don't have a ton bottled in. We have a little bottled in around fourth quarter, but really that's a 2026 initiative. If we get it early, that's great. We'll let you know that. We're relatively new into it. When we set the guide, we didn't put a lot of dollars in it. We're working with them over the last six months, so we had some visibility. We're not counting a ton on that one. We're really just trying to—we're really excited about it. We think that they have the ability to extend our reach, and we're really positive about it, but we don't have a ton bottled in.

Great. That's helpful. I assume so, Pat. Nice to hear that you're kind of conservative in terms of that from a forecasting perspective. Wanted to follow up on kind of your commentary on the reseller acquisitions. Obviously, they're not included in the guidance this year, but wanted to get a sense of maybe what you're expecting in terms of acquired revenues or how active you expect to be in terms of reseller acquisitions this year.

Eyal Goldstein (President)

I'll give you my perspective and then Pat. I think it just depends on, honestly, if we're going to fund it out of our cash flow, we'll be a lot more muted. If we get this credit facility done, we're going to go a lot quicker. I'm sorry to hedge, but it really depends on our capabilities. We can obviously do these acquisitions on our own, but we have to be a lot more deliberate at our pace. To Pat's point, we're trying to get there quicker. That's the reason for the facility. That's why I can't give you a definitive answer until we know that's a done deal.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I would tell you, I think after the first quarter earnings call, I think we can be a little more definitive on that. We are not lacking for things to do, and we would not pursue this strategy if we did not believe we had opportunity.

Got it. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Greg.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question is coming from Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. Your line is now live.

Vincent Colicchio (Analyst)

Yes, Pat. What was the bookings growth rate in Q4?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Q4 was—do we have that?

Eyal Goldstein (President)

Have it off the top of my head.

Vincent Colicchio (Analyst)

You will?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

I apologize. It was 28% in Q4. We had, as you know, some pretty big deals in Q2 and Q3. Q4, 28%, and that was primarily in our core business. Obviously, we closed a really nice deal here in the first quarter. 28% was good momentum in our core payroll business. We did not—we had a couple outliers in Q2 and Q3.

Vincent Colicchio (Analyst)

Is the partnership with the tax and audit firm exclusive? What are your thoughts on when that may ramp?

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

I think we're already in pursuits right now. It's just by the nature of what deals we're pursuing. I think we'll give you updates as we go, but feel really strong about some of the deals we have and the partnership that we're putting together. More to come. Like I said, it was probably more at 26, but we certainly, by the pursuits that we have, there could be some second half or fourth quarter revenue. Right now, we're early days in it.

Vincent Colicchio (Analyst)

Thanks, Pat. Nice guidance.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.

Pat Goepel (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Pat Goepel here. Long and meaningful call. I'm sorry it took so long, but really had a lot to share. Again, scale, getting more clients, whether it's the reseller network or sales, is important to us. Building on the capabilities that we've worked for so long in the making here and the work we did in 2024. We're going to measure that by attach rate and cross-sell. Money movement and tax filing are going to be important to us and AsurePay. We're pretty excited about launching that and already have 500 cards in use. Finally, cost. We're going to be important around automation and some of the work we've done. We think that allows us to scale. Finally, from a debt perspective, we think that's the right capital call.

We want a little bit more flexibility to go faster because scale is important to us. From an investor perspective, I see 10% plus margin expansion as we get to the next scale. I've been here quite a while. I'm pretty excited about the business, and I really feel good about the people that work here, the executive team as well as management. We've upgraded our talent over the course of the last couple of years, and we think that talent matches this opportunity. We hope you agree, and we appreciate your time today. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. Let me just disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.