Broadridge Financial Solutions - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and welcome to the Broadridge Financial Solutions Q4 and FY 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call to W. Edings Thibault, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Edings Thibault (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Andrea, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to Broadridge's Q4 and fiscal year 2024 earnings call. Our earnings release and the slides that accompany this call may be found on the investor relations section of broadridge.com. Joining me on the call this morning are Tim Gokey, our CEO, and our interim Chief Financial Officer, Ashima Ghei. Before I turn the call over to Tim, a few standard reminders. One, we will be making forward-looking statements on today's call regarding Broadridge that involve risks. A summary of these risks can be found on the second page of the slides in a more complete description on our annual report on Form 10-K. Two, we'll also be referring to several non-GAAP measures, which we believe provide investors with a more complete understanding of Broadridge's underlying operating results.

An explanation of these non-GAAP measures and reconciliations to the comparable GAAP measures can be found in the earnings release and presentation. Let me now turn the call over to Tim Gokey. Tim?

Tim Gokey (CEO)

Thank you, Edings, and good morning. It's great to be here to discuss our strong fiscal 2024 financial and operating results. I'm also pleased to be joined by our interim CFO, Ashima Ghei. Ashima took over on 1 July from Edmund Reese, whom we continue to wish good luck in his next endeavor. Importantly, I've had the opportunity to work closely with Ashima over the past two and a half years as she played a leading role in driving the strong results of our ICS business. Previously, she was at American Express for 18 years, and she has brought a strong combination of deep insight and experience to her role as CFO of ICS here at Broadridge. Ashima, welcome.

Ashima Ghei (CFO)

Thank you, Tim. Great to be here.

Tim Gokey (CEO)

I'll start my review this morning with a quick comment on what we're seeing in the market. Over the past six months, the market has been stable to improving. Our clients have been moving proactively to digitize communications, simplify and modernize their technology infrastructure, and enhance investor engagement. These trends play to Broadridge's strengths, and they drove record closed sales for the quarter and for the year. This past week has seen much higher volatility, with questions about the pace of rate easing and the sustainability of growth. It's too early to know if this represents a market turn, but if it does, these kinds of environments are where Broadridge's resilient, recurring revenue business model really stands out.

I'm confident that Broadridge is going into fiscal 2025, poised to deliver another year of sustainable growth, backed by a record backlog of sales already closed, a strong pipeline, and resilient volume trends. We're executing on our growth strategy and investing in our products and capabilities. So in any scenario, I feel very good about how we're positioned. With that as context, let's review our strong results and strategic progress. I'm happy to report that Broadridge is executing on our strategy to modernize and digitize governance, to simplify and innovate in capital markets, and to modernize wealth management. Our clients look to us as trusted and transformative partner to help them adapt to regulatory change, reduce cost and complexity, and drive innovation. That trusted and transformative position, along with strong execution, is driving record closed sales.

For the year, Broadridge reported 39% growth in closed sales to $342 million. That's both record sales and record sales growth. It's also enabling Broadridge to continue to deliver strong and sustainable growth. For the full year, adjusted EPS rose 10% on 6% organic growth in recurring revenues. As we've seen all year, that growth was accompanied by strong free cash flow conversion, ending the year at 102%. Higher cash flow and our strong balance sheet enabled us to fund tuck-in M&A investors and repurchase $450 million in Broadridge shares. I'm also pleased to announce a 10% increase in our annual dividend, the 12th double-digit increase in the last 13 years. Finally, the combination of strong execution and sales growth has Broadridge positioned to deliver another year of strong and sustainable growth in fiscal 2025.

Our guidance includes 5%-7% organic recurring revenue growth and 8%-12% adjusted EPS growth, with $290 million-$330 million of closed sales. Now, let's dive into how we generated these strong results, starting on slide 4 with our governance business. We continue to make strides in executing our strategy to drive the democratization and digitization of governance. FY 2024, our ICS business reported 5% recurring revenue growth, driven by data-driven fund solutions, issuer, and digital communications. Of driving democratization is enabling the continued growth in equity and fund investments by Main Street investors. Full-year equity position growth was 6%, including 7% in the Q4, in line with the mid- to high single-digit trends of the past decade or more.

That growth was driven by managed accounts, which continued to be a key area of focus for wealth advisors, while self-directed position growth was flat. Mutual fund and ETF growth was 3% for the full year, driven by demand for passive funds. While growth picked up to 6% in the Q4, demand trends remained mixed. Money market fund positions, which account for less than 5% of the total, grew by 17% in the quarter, suggesting that many investments remained content to be in cash. Recall that investors tend to have only one money market fund versus multiple equity or bond funds, so growth in money markets tends to lower overall position growth. Beyond position growth, Broadridge is driving democratization by helping our fund clients implement voting choice to their shareholders.

We are now enabling more than 100 separate funds to offer their investors a greater say in governance, up from only eight a year ago. We're also seeing strong interest in Europe, where funds see voting choice as a competitive differentiator. Our virtual shareholder meeting capabilities are also making shareholder meetings more accessible. We recently hosted more than 6,500 investors and guests on our VSM platform for the meeting of a mega-cap tech company, and we're playing a role in enabling investors to weigh in on the governance at some of the largest and most widely held companies in our market, including Disney earlier this year and Tesla in the Q4. I'm especially pleased with the success of our Tailored Shareholder Report solution.

As most of you know, beginning last month, Tailored Shareholder Reports replaced the 100+-page annual and semi-annual reports that fund shareholders previously received, with a condensed and more digestible 2-3-page report. While it's a big step forward in enabling funds to communicate more effectively with their shareholders, it doesn't come without added cost or complexity. Funds now need to manage a much greater number of individualized reports that first need to be digitally composed and then distributed to shareholders. To meet that demand, we created solutions to lower the print and distribution costs of these new communications and streamline the higher-value digital composition and digital tagging work. Our ability to deliver compelling solutions in the face of a looming regulatory deadline was critical for our clients, and the sales of our TSR solution contributed strongly to our overall sales growth this past year.

It's a great example of how Broadridge is bringing innovation and value-added services to do more for asset management clients. Finally, our print-to-digital strategy is driving digitization in our customer communications business. After crossing over the $100 million digital revenue threshold in fiscal 2023, we delivered another year of double-digit growth in 2024, driven by the continued onboarding of new clients to our wealth and focused digital solution. In the Q4, we reached agreement with a major financial services firm to bring its digital communications infrastructure onto our platform. This was an existing Broadridge print client, who sees Broadridge's digital capabilities as an opportunity to accelerate client engagement and drive additional savings. New sales like this give our BRCC business a clear runway for growth in 2025. Now, let's move to our capital markets franchise.

We continue to make strong progress against our goal of simplifying and innovating across the trade life cycle. Capital markets revenues crossed the $1 billion revenue milestone, rising 8% for the year, driven by strong growth in BTCS and by the onboarding of new global post-trade clients. In the front office, our bank clients face the pressure to drive ever-increasing trade volumes at lower spreads and with faster settlement across multiple asset classes and geography. We're meeting that need by delivering a state-of-the-art global SaaS platform that gives trading firms best-in-class order management, execution, scale, and reliability. We're now extending those capabilities to the derivatives market by developing new futures and options solutions. We also continue to help our clients reduce the cost and complexity of their back-office operations with our global post-trade capabilities.

In fiscal 2024, we brought a leading global bank, the international operations of a major European bank, and a leading Nordic bank onto our global post-trade platform. By combining multiple existing platforms in dozens of markets, Broadridge is enabling these clients to simplify their operations, reduce complexity, and optimize capital. Only Broadridge can deliver that kind of global simplification at scale, and our success is driving a strong pipeline of additional post-trade engagements. Driving simplification also means helping our clients adapt to regulatory change, and the transition to T+1 at the end of May was a notable example. The move to a shortened settlement cycle across North American equities and corporate and municipal bonds was the culmination of initiative that began in 2020. The goal was to reduce systemic risk while lowering clearing house collateral requirements and enhancing operational efficiency.

For Broadridge, it was another opportunity to showcase the benefits of mutualization. For more than a year leading after the change, our teams focused on delivering rigorous testing, meticulous planning, and robust client communication. A year ago, we set up a T+1 test environment that enabled clients to thoroughly test their own preparedness, and we led and participated in industry-wide initiatives, along with the DTCC and CDS. The results have been a seamless transition for our clients, marked by significant improvement in industry trade date affirmation rates, a 30% reduction in certain collateral requirements, and increased liquidity. Finally, we're driving innovation across trading through the adoption of AI and distributed ledger technology. We're seeing growing interest in our AI solutions, including our now patented BondGPT capability and our OpsGPT console.

Our Distributed Ledger Repo platform is delivering reduced external transaction fees, lower fails, and increased liquidity. We added two new clients onto our DLR platform in fiscal 2024, increasing our monthly average trading volume to $1.5 trillion. Now, let's turn to wealth and investment management on slide 6. In wealth, we are helping our clients modernize and transform on their own terms with our modular suite of capabilities. Wealth and investment management revenues rose 7% in fiscal 2024, driven in part by the go-live of our UBS contract at the beginning of the year. Partially offsetting this growth was the deconversion of Morgan Stanley E*TRADE. After a three-year journey, we helped Morgan Stanley complete the transition of the E*TRADE platform last fall.

More broadly, the sales of our wealth and investment management solutions rose more than 40% in fiscal 2024, including a strong contribution from our wealth platform solutions. Our pipeline continues to grow, and we're seeing continued demand for tools that help increase advisor effectiveness, enhance client engagement, and drive operational efficiency. Last quarter, we announced the acquisition of Kyndryl's SIS business in Canada. The SIS platform provides front, middle, and back-office technology for Canadian financial services firms. The addition of the SIS clients to our existing business in Canada will accelerate our ability to bring new capabilities, including our wealth solutions, to the Canadian market. That deal is now moving through the Canadian regulatory review process, and we expect it to close in the H1 of fiscal 2025. I'll close my review of our fiscal 2024 execution with closed sales.

Broadridge reported record closed sales of $342 million, including Q4 sales, up more than 70% to $157 million. We benefited from strong demand for our tailored shareholder reports and digital capabilities in ICS, and from strong growth in both capital markets and wealth in GTO. It's a direct reflection of the steps we've taken to help our clients adapt to change and grow their business. It's gratifying to see our investments translate into growth. Our strong sales performance is a clear sign that as clients begin to reinvest themselves, they see Broadridge as a trusted, transformative partner to help them operate, innovate, and grow. And with a strong pipeline going into next year, we expect another year of strong sales in fiscal 2025. I'll wrap up my review with some closing call-outs on slide 7.

First, Broadridge is executing on our growth strategy. We're driving democratization of investing by ensuring that a growing number of mainstream investors get the critical information they need to understand their investments and make their voice heard. We're powering important corporate elections and extending voting choice. With upcoming change in regulatory fund reporting, we stepped up to develop innovative, tailored shareholder report solutions. In digital, we started a journey years ago to combine world-class digital solutions with our low-cost print network. In GTO, we have acquired, built, and invested in our front and back-office solutions to help our clients trade faster, engage with their clients, enhance advisor productivity, and reduce operational complexity. We're delivering new capital markets capabilities in derivatives and extending our global reach.

We enabled faster settlement times for dozens of clients and trillions of dollars of assets, and are driving innovation with AI-enabled solutions and distributed ledger technology. We're live with our wealth platform. We're driving the sales of our modular solutions, and we're leveraging the technology more broadly, including as we extend and grow our business in Canada. Our execution on these strategies drove record closed sales, 6% recurring revenue growth, and double-digit Adjusted EPS growth in fiscal 2024. Looking ahead, we expect another year of strong and sustainable growth in fiscal 2025, and we're on track to deliver on our three-year financial objectives. Most importantly, we continue to see a long runway for future growth. Technology trends are enabling more investors to participate in the market and giving them access to increasingly sophisticated investments. Digitalization is transforming the way businesses engage with their clients.

Trading continues to accelerate, and banks look to reduce the cost and complexity of their operations. Regulators around the world are constantly updating rules to modulate behavior and improve disclosure for all investors, and every one of those trends is shaped by the power of data and AI.... We've positioned Broadridge to help our clients meet the opportunities and challenges these trends create. We're executing on our growth strategy to do even more as we attack our $60 billion and growing targeted market opportunity. The power of mutualizing change to increase speed and reduce costs is true in almost all economic environments, and our resilient business model is particularly strong in periods of higher volatility. I've never been more optimistic about Broadridge's future. Before I hand over to Ashima, I want to thank our associates.

As I've talked about today, Broadridge is executing on multiple fronts, and none of that would be possible without the hard work and client focus of everyone at our company. So thank you for your work in serving our clients today and for helping to transform our industry for tomorrow. Ashima?

Ashima Ghei (CFO)

Thank you, Tim. It's great to join all of you to discuss the strong results and to review our guidance for fiscal 2025. Broadridge has a long track record of delivering strong and sustainable top and bottom-line growth with strong shareholder returns, and this year was no different. Fiscal 2024 recurring revenue grew 6% constant currency, and adjusted EPS grew 10%. Before I go through the results, I want to call out the key items that give me confidence that we are on track to deliver on our fiscal 2025 guidance and our 3-year growth objectives. First, sales and backlog. Record close sales of $342 million drove a 13% increase in revenue backlog, giving us strong visibility into our revenue growth in fiscal 2025 and 2026. Second, position growth. Equity position growth was 6% in 2024, and fund position growth was 3%.

Our current testing shows a modest improvement in those trends, with continued mid-to high single-digit growth in equities and mid-single-digit growth in funds. Third, expenses, investments, and margins. We have a long history of driving operating leverage. This quarter, we completed a restructuring initiative that will position us to continue to fund long-term growth investments, grow core margin, and deliver earnings growth. Fourth and last, capital allocation. In fiscal 2024, we repurchased 2.3 million shares for $450 million and have recently announced 3 tuck-in M&A investments. That capital will contribute directly to our top and bottom line growth. These four areas position us well to deliver our three-year financial objectives and our fiscal 2025 guidance, which calls for 5%-7% recurring revenue, constant currency growth, almost all organic, and 8%-12% adjusted EPS growth.

With that, let's go through the numbers on slide 8. Fiscal 2024 recurring revenues grew to $4.2 billion, up 6% on an organic, constant currency basis. Adjusted operating income grew 9%. Adjusted EPS grew 10% to $7.73, and we reported record close sales of $342 million, which drove our recurring revenue backlog to $450 million. Turning now to the Q4 headline numbers. Recurring revenue grew 5% on a constant currency basis to $1.3 billion. Adjusted operating income grew 5% and AOI margin was 28.8%. Adjusted EPS rose 9% to $3.50, and closed sales rose 74% to a Q4 record, $157 million. Moving to slide 9.

Q4 recurring revenue rose 5% to $1.3 billion, driven by a combination of converting revenue from sales and mid-single digit position growth. For the full year, recurring revenue growth was 6%, essentially all organic, and in line with our three-year organic growth objective of 5%-8%. Let's turn to the next slides to review the growth across our ICS and GTO segments. In Q4, ICS recurring revenue grew 6%, powered by growth across all four product lines. We also saw the benefit of the timing delays we'd called out in our Q3 results, which added 1% to Q4 growth. For the full year, ICS recurring revenues were up 5% to $2.6 billion. Regulatory revenue grew 7% in Q4 and 5% for the full year, in line with position growth.

Looking ahead, we expect continued mid-single-digit revenue growth in fiscal 2025, in line with our position testing. Data-driven fund solutions revenue increased by 7% in the Q4 and for the full year, driven by growth in retirement and workplace solutions and our data and analytics products. The acquisition of AdvisorTarget, which closed on 1 June, made a very modest contribution to growth. Issuer revenue grew 5% in Q4 and 7% for the full year, led by growth in our registered shareholder solutions and disclosure products. Customer communications recurring revenue rose 3% in the Q4 and 2% for the full year as we continue to execute our print-to-digital strategy. Digital revenues grew double digits for both the quarter and the year. We expect customer communications growth to accelerate in fiscal 2025, driven by a combination of digital growth and new client wins.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2025, we expect stronger ICS recurring revenue growth, driven by revenue from strong fiscal 2024 sales, continued mid-single-digit position growth and strong growth in digital, which will more than offset the loss of 30e-3 revenues and lower float income. Turning to GTO on slide 11, Q4 recurring revenue growth was 4%. For the full year, GTO revenues grew 8% to $1.6 billion, at the high end of our three-year 5%-8% organic growth objective, driven by strong growth across both our capital markets and wealth businesses. Capital markets revenue grew 6% in the Q4. Strong growth in revenue from sales and higher trading volumes more than offset lower license revenue. Full-year revenues increased 8%, powered by strong growth in BTCS and revenue from sales from new global post-trade clients.

Wealth and investment management revenue increased 7% for the full year. Q4 growth was flat as revenue from new sales was offset by the E*TRADE deconversion and lower licensed revenue. We expect the impact of E*TRADE will continue to weigh on the wealth and investment management growth through the H1 of fiscal 2025, especially in the Q1. Looking ahead to fiscal 2025, we expect GTO revenue growth to be at the low end of our 5%-7% recurring revenue guidance range, with stronger growth in capital markets and lower growth in wealth and investment management. Excluding the impact of E*TRADE, wealth and investment management growth would be at the higher end of the 5%-7% recurring revenue guidance. Now let's turn to slide 12 to review volume trends.

Position growth returned to mid-to high-single digits for both equities and funds in the Q4. Equity position growth rose to 7% in the Q4, in line with our testing. Full-year growth was 6%, driven almost entirely by double-digit growth in managed accounts. Our fiscal 2025 H1 testing continues to show healthy mid-to high-single digit growth. Fund position growth metric rebounded to 6% in the quarter. Full-year fund position growth was 3%, driven by growth in passive funds and double-digit growth in money market funds. Fund flows have strengthened in recent months, and our current testing of underlying fund positions is indicating a modest pickup to between 4%-5%. Turning to trade volumes. Trade volumes grew 15% on a blended basis in Q4, driven by both higher fixed income and equity volumes.

For the full year, trading volumes were up 13%. Let's now move to slide 13 for the drivers of recurring revenue growth. For the quarter, recurring revenue growth was 5%, virtually all organic and balanced between net new business and internal growth. Revenue from closed sales provided 5 points of growth. Our recurring revenue retention rate was 97% for the quarter and for the full year. Adjusting for the E*TRADE deconversion, retention rates remained at 98%. Internal growth, primarily positions and trading volumes, contributed 3 points. Lastly, we closed 2 small acquisitions in our ICS segment. AdvisorTarget contributed less than 5 basis points to Q4 revenue growth, and CompSci Resources closed at the beginning of July. We expect these 2 acquisitions will contribute approximately 20 basis points to fiscal 2025 recurring revenue growth. I'll finish the guidance on revenue on slide 14.

Total revenue grew 6% in Q4 to $1.9 billion, and recurring revenue was the largest contributor, with 4 points of growth. Event-driven revenue was $76 million and contributed 1 point to Q4 growth. Event-driven revenue benefited from higher levels of mutual fund proxy and equity contest activity versus the Q4 of last year. Low to no margin distribution revenue increased 4% and contributed 1 point to total revenue growth, driven by higher postal rates. Remember, these have a dilutive impact on our adjusted operating income margin.... Let's turn to margins on slide 15. Adjusted operating income margin for Q4 was 28.8%, as the positive impact from operating leverage was offset by the timing of annual expenses. On a full year basis, adjusted operating income margin was 20%, up 20 basis points from fiscal 2023.

The combination of operating leverage and the benefits from our fiscal 2023 restructuring enabled us to absorb the deconversion of E*TRADE and higher amortization from our wealth platform, while increasing our investments in long-term growth and meeting our earnings objectives. The net impact of higher float revenue and distribution, which have little impact on earnings, increased margins by 30 basis points. During the Q4, we completed the restructuring program we began last year to realign some of our businesses and streamline our management structure. We incurred $56 million in Q4 charges, which were not included in our calculation of adjusted operating income and adjusted EPS. We estimate that these actions will generate over $100 million in annualized cost savings, which will position us to fund investments, further scale our business and deliver earnings growth.

Rounding out the Q4 non-GAAP items, I would also note that we incurred $10 million in charges to settle various legal matters. Let's move ahead to close sales on slide 16. Broadridge had a very strong sales year. Fiscal 2024 sales rose 39% to a record $342 million, driven by a very strong Q4, where close sales grew 74% to $157 million. As you heard from Tim, we benefited from strong sales of our tailored shareholder report solutions and digital, as well as strong growth across both our capital markets and wealth and investment management solutions. These strong sales lifted our revenue backlog to $450 million, equal to 11% of our Fiscal 2024 recurring revenue. I'll now turn to cash flow on slide 17.

Broadridge generated free cash flow of $943 million in fiscal 2024, up 26% from fiscal 2023. Free cash flow conversion increased to 102% from 90% in fiscal 2023 and 42% in 2022, returning to a more historic levels after a period of higher investment. We expect free cash flow conversion of approximately 95%-105% in fiscal 2025. Let's move next to capital allocation on slide 18. We continue to take a balanced approach to capital allocation. In fiscal 2024, we made platform investments of $41 million and deployed $113 million on capital expenditures and software spend. Fiscal 2024 also marked a return to tuck-in M&A.

In total, we enhanced our data and analytics solutions with the $35 million acquisition of AdvisorTarget and closed the smaller acquisition of CompSci on July first to augment our issuer capabilities. In May, we announced the proposed acquisition of SIS from Kyndryl for approximately $200 million. SIS is a leading Canadian wealth and capital markets technology platform with annual revenues of $80 million-$85 million. The acquisition is expected to close during the H1 of our fiscal year and will not have a significant impact on our margins or adjusted EPS during the first year of operation. Given the inherent timing, uncertainty of regulatory review, we have not included it in our guidance. We will add SIS to our fiscal 2025 guidance after it closes. After internal and external investments, we return excess capital to shareholders.

We returned $781 million to shareholders in fiscal 2024 through a combination of dividends and share repurchases. During the Q4, we repurchased $300 million of shares, bringing our total gross repurchases in fiscal 2024 to $450 million. Finally, we repaid $60 million of debt, ending the year with a 2.2x leverage ratio below our long-term target of 2.5. Last night, our board approved a 10% dividend increase to $0.352 per share. As Tim noted, this is our 12th double-digit increase in the last 13 years, which emphasizes both our sustained earnings growth and our long-term commitment to balanced capital allocation. I'll close my prepared remarks this morning with some detail on our guidance on slide 19.

We expect another year of sustainable recurring revenue growth, core margin expansion, strong adjusted EPS growth, and very healthy close sales in fiscal 2025. Let me walk through each of those points, starting first with revenue... recurring revenue growth, constant currency of 5%-7%, almost all organic, driven by new sales as we onboard our $450 million revenue backlog. We expect ICS recurring revenues to be at the higher end of that range, with GTO lower. We expect event-driven revenues to be at the high end of our historic range, driven by a proxy campaign at a major mutual fund complex in our Q2. Distribution revenues are forecast to grow at low double-digit rate, powered by higher postage rates and stronger BRCC print volumes. We expect these low to no margin revenues to have a dilutive impact on our reported margins.

Second, let's move to margin. We expect adjusted operating income margin will be approximately 20%. We anticipate the combination of higher operating leverage and disciplined expense management will enable us to deliver over 50 basis points of underlying core margin expansion, in line with our 3-year financial objective. We expect this to be partially offset by the impact of higher distribution revenues and lower float income. Third, EPS. We expect adjusted EPS growth of 8%-12%. Embedded in this outlook is an expected tax rate of 21%. Fourth, we expect another year of strong closed sales. Our guidance range of $290 million-$330 million reflects continued growth from our fiscal 2024 results, excluding sales of Tailored Shareholder Reports solutions. Lastly, I will remind you that our guidance does not include the impact of SIS.

Taken together, our fiscal 2025 guidance highlights the strength of the Broadridge business model. Now, before I conclude, let me offer some insight on our Q1. We expect our Q1 earnings will account for 10%-11% of our fully adjusted EPS, at the low end of our historical range, driven in part by lower event-driven revenue versus Q1 of 2024 and the E*TRADE impact. So let's wrap up with a quick summary of the key takeaways from our strong fiscal 2024 results. First, Broadridge delivered another year of strong and sustainable recurring revenue and adjusted EPS growth. Second, our record close sales highlight the strong demand for our solutions and give us increased visibility into future growth. Third, we are putting our strong free cash flow to work for shareholders with another double-digit dividend increase, strategic and value accretive acquisitions, and share repurchases.

Finally, Broadridge is poised to deliver another strong year in fiscal 2025, keeping us well on track to achieve our three-year growth objectives for the fourth consecutive cycle. With that, let's move to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then two. Once again, that was Star, then one to ask a question, and at this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Our first question will come from Daniel Perlin of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Daniel Perlin (Managing Director)

Thanks. Good morning. So I just wanted to ask you, and you touched on this a little bit in the prepared remarks, but, you know, we are seeing a pretty material uplift in volatility here, and I appreciate the recurring revenue model. The question is really in times where we've seen this kind of volatility in the past, what, what have kind of the client behaviors been and, and how has the business kind of performed? And are there things structurally different about the business today that you think, you know, if we look at the other historical periods where we had this heightened volatility, you know, we might have a more stable hand, so to speak, this go around? Thank you.

Tim Gokey (CEO)

Yeah, Daniel, thank you. Thank you very much for that. And obviously, we have no special knowledge about whether what we're seeing is just a moment or is something more significant. But I do think, and I highlighted this in my prepared remarks, that one of the most attractive features of our business model is its resiliency. And, you know, when you look at our fee revenues, they are 94% recurring, and the highest driver there is revenue from sales, and we have a $450 million backlog of things that are already contracted. And you know, when you look at position growth, it's been pretty resilient through a variety of economic cycles. It has sometimes gone down. Global financial crisis, it went down. It didn't go below zero, though, it stayed positive.

We're hedged on interest rates and volatility benefits us on trading. So I think if you compare where we are now to where we've been in past periods of volatility, it's really not a lot different. The fundamental components around-

... resilient business model, high recurring revenue, revenue from sales, all of those, really remain intact. High trading, that volatility debt is a little bit of a plus in the near term. Sometimes when it's volatile, that causes position growth to slow a little bit, but that's all very speculative at this point, and, and those things really don't move our broad numbers. So that's why we're pretty confident today around our guidance on 5%-7% recurring revenue growth, 8%-12% earnings.

Daniel Perlin (Managing Director)

That's great. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Darrin Peller of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Darrin Peller (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Guys, thanks. And Ashima, congrats and welcome to the call. I just want to touch base on the strength in bookings trends. You know, I think you hit $340 million closed sales for fiscal 2024, which was above the range. I think the midpoint you had said was $300 million for the year. So just maybe just revisit what- if you take a step back and revisit the key drivers of the strength, and then really where you're seeing in demand right now going forward, you know, in terms of strength drivers and, and areas of, of real demand for, for the new bookings and new closed sales.

Tim Gokey (CEO)

Yeah, Darrin, thank you. Thank you very much. Look, we are really proud of the 2024 sales results with the $342 million, really driven in 2024 by 4 drivers: Tailored Shareholder Reports, digital solutions, strong growth in both capital markets and wealth and investment management. You know, Tailored Shareholder Reports were an important part of that story, but we like the other stories, too. If you pull out the one-time impact of Tailored Shareholder Reports, sales were at record levels, and we expect that to grow off of those sales, excluding TSR. You know, what we really like is that the sales that we're seeing are aligned with the investments that we have been making.

Investments in regulatory, investments in digital, investments in capital markets, especially on the front office side, and in wealth. And each of those areas saw strong growth this year. Each of those areas has a nice pipeline for next year. So as we think about, as we think about, you know, where we're seeing that demand that you mentioned, you know, we've talked about the bigger themes of helping our clients grow their revenue or helping our clients reduce cost, and the sub-solutions in each of those areas really hit on those. So looking ahead, we're expecting these trends to, to continue to be very positive, excluding the impact of tailored shareholder reports, we expect to continue to grow our sales in FY 2025, and we feel good about the 290-330 based on our strong pipeline.

Darrin Peller (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

All right. Very good. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from James Faucette of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

James Faucette (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask on wealth. It seems like on the wealth front, you alluded to strong pipeline growth for some of the new wealth management solutions. Are you still on track to deliver the $20 million-$30 million of incremental module sales? And how should we be thinking about incremental opportunities down the road there?

Tim Gokey (CEO)

Yeah, James, thank you very much. We were really happy with how our wealth business continued to perform, obviously 7% up for the past year as we benefited from the onboarding of UBS, partially offset by E*TRADE. And we do see continued momentum in 2025 with really being at the high end of that 5%-7% if we pulled out the E*TRADE impact. Remember, E*TRADE happened sort of a little bit after the end of the Q1 last year, so the Q1 this year will be, will be impacted. Look, it is strong sales, and it is with clients who want to, we always call it transform on their own terms, which is, which is to be able to use a modular approach as a way to long-term transformation.

And obviously, the sales up 40% year-on-year. That was, that was right near that sort of $20 million goal, and so not, not at the $30 million, but, but nearer the $20 million. We really like, though, the pipeline of opportunities, and our pipeline right now is 30% higher than it was 12 months ago. And if you remember, that pipeline was up, you know, quite a bit over the pipeline the year before. So I think we're, we're continuing to see that, that nice build. And then really, as we get into SIS in Canada, that's going to really add to the long-term opportunity. And we're looking forward to being able to bring our investment on the wealth platform with SIS to accelerate and bring that to the Canadian market as well.

James Faucette (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

That's great. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Puneet Jain of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Puneet Jain (Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. It seems like, like that the AdvisorTarget and CompSci deals are different from your prior or typical deals. Like, as you noted, they are both small tuck-in in nature, as well as both of them are in digital areas. Should we expect more deals like this, as your M&A priority over the near term?

Tim Gokey (CEO)

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Puneet, and it's a great question. Just stepping back, you know, just to... I like talking about M&A, but let's just remember, we're an organic growth company. Our, you know, our growth is primarily organic. There's a long runway, given the $60 billion TAM. But that said, as you pointed out, M&A has been an attractive way for us to meet new needs for clients. And remember, for context, we're calling for sort of 1-2 points from M&A over the long term. When you look at AdvisorTarget and CompSci, they are perfect examples of buy versus build philosophy.

When we look at an area where there's a client need that we think we're the right person to meet, then we look, you know, do we have a platform that's really one that we can build on? Or is there, you know, a really good set of entrepreneurs in the market who've taken something and gotten it to a place where then combining it with us would help them accelerate and help us fill out our product line? And, you know, it's faster to buy it than it is to build it. So that's been very successful for us in the past.

You know, when you think about sort of the mix of M&A going forward, you know, it's interesting this year because you had AdvisorTarget and CompSci, but you also had SIS, which is, you know, a real company with real revenue, nice margins, and it's that sort of portfolio mix, and you've seen that over time. So you know, we were really proud of our track record over time with M&A. We've done 40-some transactions, but it's always been disciplined in terms of the financial returns. It's always been very strategic in terms of the areas and how why we're the best owner, and those are the things that won't change.

Puneet Jain (Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you. Then quickly, if I can ask, like, is the duration of backlog, $450 million, any different from what it generally has been in the past?

Ashima Ghei (CFO)

Yeah. So Puneet, I'll take that. Our backlog includes a backlog in our ICS business and our GTO business. As you know, typically, ICS sales convert a lot faster than on the GTO side. And as we've looked at our revenue guidance for fiscal 2025, we've taken some of that into account, and we're counting on conversion from that sales backlog.

Tim Gokey (CEO)

And Puneet, I'd just add that when you look at the revenue, and this is part of the prepared remarks, but the backlog as a share of recurring revenue, it's 11% this year. If you look back last year, it was 10%. So it's, you know, not dramatically different, but incrementally better.

Puneet Jain (Executive Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Question on margins. Just kind of curious about the lack of margin expansion embedded within the fiscal 2025 guide, given that the $1 million of savings and restructuring, I think, would boost margins by 1.5%, all else well. So maybe can you talk about, you know, or quantify the margin headwinds from distribution revenues and float income in fiscal 2025? And then maybe bigger picture, how confident are you still in your kind of three-year, 50 basis points per year margin outlook?

Ashima Ghei (CFO)

Thanks, Patrick. I'll take that one. So you know this, Broadridge has a long history of being able to fund long-term investments while delivering on our earnings objectives, and margin expansion is a super important part of that story. We've delivered on average 80 basis points of annual margin expansion over the last 10 years. Having said that, we do see margin expansion as a means to an end. What we are really focused on is on delivering sustainable double-digit earnings growth while investing in our long-term growth opportunities, both of which we effectively achieved in fiscal 2024 and is what we're guiding towards for fiscal 2025. So as we think about fiscal 2025, you're right in pointing out, we're guiding to 20%. We do expect to see the impact of float income coming in lower.

We've factored in a couple of rate cuts into our estimate. We expect the impact of distribution, but we do expect the benefits from the restructuring program that we just did and core margin expansion to allow us to fund our long-term growth investments, still getting us right on track with the 8%-12% sustainable earnings growth.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Perfect, thank-

Tim Gokey (CEO)

I'll just add in that, and actually, that was great. I think, as you pointed out, we have overcome a number of... When you think about the three-year number of one-off impacts with [WeMap], with E*TRADE, with rates coming down now. So there are a number of things, and at the same time, you know, we feel really good about the core margin expansion next year, and no reason to see why that wouldn't, you know, continue to be the case in the future. And I just step back to say, you know, we're an organic growth company. We think of every client as a 10, 20-year client, and part of that promise is always to be investing in what's next.

You know, that's a great formula for our clients, associates, and shareholders. So, you know, we are making investments in governance, in digital, voting choice, in the front office, and we have the ability to flex those up and down, and, and that's one of the, you know, ways we've been able to be really resilient over time.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you. And then just a quick clarifying question: So the 5%-7% recurring revenue growth outlook for the year, that embeds 0.2% contribution from the 2 smaller tuck-ins and nothing from the SIS deal. Do I have that correct?

Ashima Ghei (CFO)

That's correct.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call over to management for any closing remarks.

Tim Gokey (CEO)

Yeah, thank you, operator. And as you can tell, we believe that the Broadridge business model is resilient, that resulted in strong fiscal 2024 results, with outlook for another strong year in fiscal 2025 and for a 3-year period. We believe we're executing on our growth strategy, that we have long-term trends behind us, that we're very well positioned in a $60 billion and growing market. Thank you very much for your interest in our company. We look forward to reporting our next sets of results to you later this fall.

Operator (participant)

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect.