Envestnet - Q4 2021

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings, and welcome to the Envestnet Q4 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Brian Shipman, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Shipman (Head of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's Q4 and full year 2021 earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to point out that our earnings press release, supplemental presentation, and associated Form 10-K can be found under the Investor Relations section of our website at envestnet.com. This call is being webcast live, and a replay will be available for one month on our website. During the call, we will be discussing certain forward-looking information. This information is based on our current expectations and is not a guarantee of future performance. I encourage you to review the cautionary statement on slides two and three for potential risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed by the forward-looking statements. Further information can be found in our regular SEC filings.

During this call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our appendix in our presentation for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The presentation is also posted to the Envestnet Investor Relations website. Joining me on today's call are Bill Crager, Envestnet's Chief Executive Officer, and Pete D'Arrigo, the company's Chief Financial Officer. Bill and Pete will provide a company update as well as an overview of the company's Q4 and full year 2021 results. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. During the Q&A, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up. You may get back into the queue if you have additional questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bill.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Thank you, Brian. I wanna thank everybody for joining us today. I'm excited to report our Q4 and 2021 full year results. Last year at this time, we introduced a strategy to deliver on a vision that Envestnet is uniquely positioned to achieve. We have a formidable market position and are tightly connecting our industry-leading capabilities, which is a distinct competitive advantage that Envestnet will leverage for sustained growth and profitability over the years ahead. We're executing on the plan we introduced last year, and the results we posted speak to the significant progress that we are making. I'd like to call out a few tangible achievements for 2021. First, we doubled our net asset flow in AUM&A to $54 billion excluding conversions as we began to focus on opportunities in our current account base.

We also advanced digital connectivity to our clients, delivering 11 million insights a day that enable our advisors to take actionable steps based on their clients' unique needs. We also signed with 291 new firms, RIAs, banks, fintech companies, enterprises, and embedded environments, connecting them to the power of the Envestnet ecosystem. We made impressive progress last year, and as we look ahead, we are on track to deliver accelerated revenue growth and hit the $2 billion in revenue we forecasted by 2025. We're also on track to generate 1 billion insights a day for our network by 2026. We're lastly on track to deliver a modernized, connected digital environment that uses data to scale a fuller range of financial wellness capabilities.

Our guidance, as we look ahead, reflects the relevance of our strategy and the rigor and focus on execution that we've applied. The pieces are in place. We have strong momentum, and we're delivering. Pete will provide thoughts on 2022 in a moment. As you know, we've been speaking about a growth strategy for the last several quarters, and I wanna share with you how we're doing.

First, we're capturing more of the addressable market. With over 108,000 financial advisors that manage $5.7 trillion in assets on our platform, we've been focused on going deeper. Our process is powerful. We are able to pinpoint opportunities for advisors to introduce value-added services to their clients, and they are having success engaging with them. Here's what I mean by this. I mentioned earlier that we had doubled our net flows year-over-year.

Within these net flows, the mix coming from assets under management was much higher last year at 70%, up from 49% the year prior. This was an intentional, concerted effort for us. AUM flows typically generate higher fee rates for the higher value services that we provide and have a positive revenue growth benefit. Within AUM flows, our personalized investing capabilities continue to grow at an accelerated clip, reaching $61 billion in total assets under management. This is happening across the board with these services. For instance, assets utilizing our overlay services grew by 57% last year. The number of advisors using direct indexing solutions expanded by more than 50%. Inflows in our sustainable investing strategies doubled year over year.

These early results are encouraging, but what's more important is that the structure and approach we have put in place is highly leverageable, and we believe will drive accelerated success in the quarters that lie ahead. Next, we've been focused on modernizing the digital engagement marketplace, providing our clients with a full set of market-leading technology. 2022 is a year of execution for us. You see, we are moving from build mode to delivery mode on several key initiatives. We've already gotten started. Our next-generation proposal tool is rolling out to our clients, and today, more than 1200 firms have access to it. This tool creates greater productivity for the advisor while connecting them to the broader set of Envestnet solutions. We have developed a new best-in-class client portal, and the feedback from early users has been nothing short of extraordinary.

We're beginning phased rollouts of this client portal this coming April. Also, Envestnet is driving scaled connectivity for our clients. Yodlee U.S. open banking APIs went live midyear last year, and in a very short time, we've enabled many of our largest clients to connect better with their clients. We're projecting by year-end 2022, we will manage 80% of Yodlee data requests through these APIs. This modernizes the data offering, enables us to add value in new ways to these clients. Finally, the last pillar of our growth strategy, we're opening our platform to the ecosystem. The Envestnet Marketplace is extremely valuable digital real estate, and by connecting more and more solution providers, we centralize and we concentrate industry experience and drive more benefits for our clients. Here's some examples. The Yodlee developer portal makes it easier for our fintech clients to onboard and integrate their solutions.

Over the last two years, we have seen usage in this portal up over 80-fold. We launched last year API developer environments for both Envestnet and MoneyGuide. Our clients are using these environments to customize their Envestnet experience, and importantly, third parties can directly connect their offerings to the ecosystem, resulting in more options for our clients. What's coming ahead is even more exciting. This year, we will combine all of our developer portals into a unified experience, creating a single entry point to the entirety of the Envestnet ecosystem. This breaks new ground for our industry and is one of a kind for our marketplace. Finally, we're growing the number of solutions on our platform. We continue to expand the choices that clients have. We've announced partnerships with UBS and iCapital for a full suite of alternative investments.

We've partnered with YieldX for greater fixed income solutions, and we've partnered with SIMON for commission-based annuity products as well as structured notes. Each of these builds upon the market-leading platform of solutions that Envestnet offers our clients. We're executing on our strategy, and by pulling the pieces of Envestnet together, we are aligning and enabling the future for our clients. One recently noting to me, "You aren't just hitting the bull's eye. You are in the exact center of the bull's eye for us." This is great news and tremendous progress, but we are not taking our foot off the gas. I'm very excited about the year ahead for Envestnet. Let me highlight some of the capabilities that you will hear more and more about over the quarters ahead.

Our data and analytics business is helping our clients more deeply engage the 30 million small business owners in the U.S. by building a powerful, aggregated environment for SMBs to connect the disconnected parts of their business. This is a huge opportunity for our data business that we're very excited about. Our cloud-based data management solution aggregates, reconciles, enriches, and publishes data for our clients. It provides data insights and recommendation, it powers next-gen business intelligence, and it fuels all of our network's technology capabilities. You'll hear us talking more and more about this offering over the rest of this year.

At the Advisor Summit, which we will be hosting in person this coming May, you'll see how all these parts come together into an exciting multi-dimensional experience for our marketplace, connecting from end consumer to the advisor, to the advisor's business, to the home office and enterprises, to the network of solution providers that our ecosystem offers, networking all of Envestnet and our partners into a fluid, leverageable engine that powers the future, and the future is the Intelligent Financial Life. We're using our market position and our full range of capabilities to grow our footprint and serve our clients more deeply as we drive faster growth and ultimately drive more profitability for our business. Now let me hand it over to Pete, who will take you through our financial results and our outlook for 2022.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

Thank you, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. Our Q4 results continue to demonstrate the strengths in our business model. We expect the momentum from the last few months of 2021 to carry through into 2022. Adjusted revenues for the Q4 of 2021 grew 21% to $320 million compared to the Q4 of 2020. Adjusted EBITDA was $56 million, slightly ahead of our guidance range, and this reflects the expected progression of investments we announced last February. Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.50. Our complete guidance is laid out in the earnings release and in the earnings supplemental presentation, but I want to highlight a couple of items.

In 2022, we expect adjusted revenues to be between $1.36 billion and $1.385 billion, up approximately 15%-17% compared to 2021. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $270 million and $280 million. Consistent with our past practice, our guidance is based on asset levels as of year-end 2021. Most sell-side analysts' current published estimates include contribution to revenue and EBITDA as a result of market appreciation. For clarity, on a like-for-like basis, our guidance is in line with consensus. Adding some detail about our revenue outlook for 2022. First, our wealth business performed well in 2021. As Bill mentioned, record net flows during the year are a substantial driver of organic growth, and the revenue from these assets will contribute a full year benefit in 2022.

Second, our subscription business continues to grow steadily in both segments, with accelerating recurring revenue growth in the data and analytics segment from around 2% in 2021 into the high single digits in 2022. For expenses, pandemic-related circumstances again suppressed our 2021 adjusted operating expenses, which we believe is unsustainable longer term. Around $15 million-$20 million of operating expense favorability compared to pre-pandemic levels can be attributed solely to an operating environment that limited travel, in-person advisor and client support, and other activities. This is important context as we consider our outlook for 2022. We are actively managing our expenses as we are moving into the second year of our accelerated investment initiatives.

Among the areas on which we are focused are, first, what I would call normal expense growth to support the needs of the business today, including supporting additional customer activity as the business grows. Second, a partial restoration of normal spending levels that we experienced prior to the pandemic for certain items. In this category, we've assumed a broad resumption of business activity over the course of 2022, but still at levels below where they were in 2019, including, for example, the return of an in-person Advisor Summit. Finally, we continue to anticipate the accelerated investments announced last year to have a full year impact of $45 million-$50 million, as we have discussed on the past several earnings calls, which will affect adjusted operating expenses by $15 million-$20 million year-over-year.

These expenses are primarily what is driving the progress Bill mentioned and laying the foundation for extended revenue growth and profitability. In the Q1, we expect to have the full amount incorporated into our expense structure, and this will be the low point for our EBITDA margin. We expect sequential quarterly EBITDA growth and margin as we turn the corner in 2022, accelerating into 2023. As we move through 2022, these components will become less separable, becoming the core of our expense base. We are focused on maintaining reasonable expense growth relative to our revenue growth going forward. Briefly, on the balance sheet, we ended December with approximately $430 million in cash and debt of $850 million, making our net leverage ratio at the end of December about 1.6 times EBITDA.

Thank you again for your support of Envestnet, and Bill has some closing remarks.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Thank you, Pete. We have clearly made a lot of progress, and we are enthusiastic about where it is leading. We're enthusiastic about what our work means for our clients and for our business. The work we have done is important and exceptional and will have a meaningful impact in the quarters ahead. Today is a day where I think all of us are struck by the uncertainty of our world. Today is another reminder that life shifts in disruptive ways. Stasis cannot be the assumed state. Conditions change. On some days, for unimaginable reasons, the risks flash brighter and glare may compromise how you see opportunity. I would think many of you are feeling some sense of this today, and so are millions and millions of others who now suddenly have a deeper sense of insecurity.

In a meaningful way, this connects to the work we do and the purpose that drives us. Insecurity is felt when things happen outside people's control. One of those things should not be the money that people have. Our work is breaking down the walls of a person's financial life, creating greater clarity, much greater control, and in the end, yielding far greater value from the money that they have. This drives a stronger sense of personal security and enables people to better weather the uncertainty that the world will inevitably cause. It doesn't solve the things outside of people's control, but the work that we do helps our clients put more within a person's grasp. That is valuable, and it is essential.

We are focused on delivering this to more and more people. The Envestnet team, this is the purpose that drives us. It is important value for our clients.It drives important value and security for their clients, and it creates increasing value for our shareholders. Our thoughts and prayers today are with the people of Ukraine. I will now turn the call back to Hector, who will moderate your questions. Hector.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.

Our first question comes from Devin Ryan with JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Devin Ryan (Head of Investor Relations)

Hey, great. Good afternoon, Bill and Pete. How are you?

Bill Crager (CEO)

Good, Devin. How are you doing? Looking forward to seeing you.

Devin Ryan (Head of Investor Relations)

I'm doing great. I guess since I'm first in the queue here, and I'm sure this will come up, I'm not sure if you guys can shed any light or perspective on some of the recent press articles just around private equity interest in the firm and a potential, I guess, process that's underway. You know, even if you can't get into any details, how you know a situation like that might affect strategy or you know kind of the next year or two for the firm.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Thanks, Devin. You know, just our policy might been very consistent about not commenting on what's in the media or any rumors or speculations that are out there. You know, I know there's been a spate of articles, but, you know, at the end of the day, I'm not going to comment on any speculation. You know, we're we are. Hopefully, it's clear in what, you know, our prepared remarks stated about how focused we are. We are really been working hard to align the organization behind a strategy that gives our company a sustained competitive advantage. Man, we are making progress. We have our head down on that, very focused on making that progress.

The key now is really to connect our strategy to our clients so that they're receiving the benefit of all of Envestnet. Networking more and more to more of the industry partners that we have, and making sure the industry understands as a whole the important work that we're doing and how it meaningfully sets the stage for the value of advice going forward. We're making investments and making sure that those investments are yielding progress, and they are. I'm dead focused on that.

At the end of the day, all of that is gonna lead to something that we led off the call last February with, which was we wanna drive sustained faster revenue growth that has a lot of leverage and can drive more profitability for the business. That is what I'm focused on, period.

Devin Ryan (Head of Investor Relations)

Yep, got it. Well, thanks for indulging me there. Then, I guess a follow-up and, you know, I guess to the last point you just made, Bill. I mean, so seeing some even nice flow momentum in the Q4, and I know the expectation is that over time, that's going to accelerate based on the investments.

Just to unpack that a little bit, you gave a little bit of detail in the prepared remarks around some of the drivers of the strong flows. You know, maybe just to kind of dig a little bit deeper, you know, is there any seasonal benefits in there or kinda anything else that may not necessarily recure? Then just remind us on impact of market volatility. You know, clearly this year has started on a much more volatile note than we saw throughout all of last year. Just any early indications from that as well.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Ryan, I'm sure you followed the market today. Today is an indication, right? No, there's no seasonality in that. What that reflects is a concerted, focused effort of ours. You know, as we talked about this last February, we understood very well that there was a significant opportunity for our business in the $5.7 trillion that we serve in the millions of accounts that we serve. What we needed to do was get that focus, apply our data analytic tool to our account base so that we could pinpoint exact opportunities for our advisors to add value to their clients.

We organized around that. there are resources that are super focused to make sure that we're connecting those insights to advisors who are connecting that to their client. You're seeing the results, early results of that effort around a few use cases. I spotlighted some of the growth rates in our overlay business, our direct indexing business, as well as in our impact and sustainable assets. We'll expand those use cases utilizing our recommendations and the apparatus that we've put in place to drive more and more penetration of the current addressable market. That's leg one, Devin. What I'm getting excited about now is that as we're introducing some of the modernized technology into the market.

You know, we've got a proposal tool that's reached the desktops of 1,200 firms, who those 1,200 firms have thousands of advisors. So we're touching a big group of the industry now with an essential piece of technology. But you've got the client portal, you have the trading tools, you have other capabilities that are making their way to market. What we will begin to see, what we'll have anecdotal evidence of at the end of the year, and then into 2023, we'll begin to see the early results of is our subs rate, our subs growth rate.

Really driving our technology into the market and driving growth in the subs. I call it the old one-two punch. One is the AUM&A, number two is going to be the subscription revenue that we'll be able to generate. I think we're setting ourselves up for a pretty sustained environment in which we're able to drive accelerated growth..

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

Devin, I'll hit the sensitivity on the market, because I know that's gonna be a question, especially given today. When we think about this, illustratively, the impact on our assets relative to the broader equity markets is about 60%. It might be a little higher, it might be a little lower. If you just use that as a proxy for the exposure to the equity markets, and assume that on March thirty-first, markets are 5% lower than they were on December thirty-first. Again, our guidance assumes December thirty-first asset levels with no market impact over the course of the year. If you assume they drop, the markets drop 5%, the impact on our assets would be about 3%.

Our impact, the impact on our 2022 revenue would be right around $17 million. The EBITDA impact, again, using the ratio of asset-based cost of revenue to asset-based revenue, Q4 was about 57%. That would translate to about $7 million or $8 million of EBITDA impact. The cost of revenue is variable along with the revenue, and that would be the difference between the two.

Devin Ryan (Head of Investor Relations)

Okay, terrific. Well, I appreciate the , Pete. Bill, thanks for the update as well. Good to see the momentum.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Devin, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Surinder Thind (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, guys. Congratulations on what looks like pretty good Q4 numbers. My question is about the guidance itself. Can you break the guidance down into its organic growth components in terms of what you're thinking for the Wealth Solutions business on the fee-based side, what you're thinking for Wealth Solutions on maybe the subscription licensing, and then the data and analytics. Any call on the Q1 number for subscription licensing. It seems to be down pretty meaningfully quarter-over-quarter.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

Well, let's answer the first one first. So if you break the two segments down, the wealth business is growing a little faster than our overall, but not a lot. I would say that's gonna be maybe if we said 15%-17% for the whole business, maybe 16%-18% for the wealth business, and then kinda high single digits on the overall revenue growth in the data and analytics segment. So call it 6%-8% in that range. And then the second question was about subs?

Bill Crager (CEO)

Surinder, just I didn't follow your second question. I'm sorry, around the-

Surinder Thind (Equity Research Analyst)

Unless I'm misreading the guidance, and I apologize, I was going through the numbers really quickly. The guidance for Q1 subscription licensing seems to be down quarter-over-quarter versus Q4 and by like $4 million or so, $3 million-$4 million. Any call on that?

Bill Crager (CEO)

We'll take this one offline. We'll follow up.

Surinder Thind (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Surinder, we'll follow up with you. That doesn't jive in my mind.

Surinder Thind (Equity Research Analyst)

My apologies. In terms of just strategically, obviously the emphasis has been on the fee-based business. I've noticed over the last two years, the reclass activity has kind of going from the fee-based business to the subscription licensing business is lower than it's been in prior years. Any call on that? Is that a strategic shift that you guys have made in terms of dissuading clients from making the switch, especially given how large the market moves have been if we were to compare market levels from two years ago?

Bill Crager (CEO)

No, Surinder, we went through a process of was taking a pretty large sum of assets that over time the marketplace had transitioned from an asset-based product like Rep as PM or some of our performance reporting capabilities into more of a subscription-based offering. You know, we're converting those clients or transitioning those clients to more of a subscription-based for those solutions.

I think, you know, where the opportunity fits, we'll move clients more into a sub-base for those types of offerings, preserving assets, asset-based pricing for the more value-added services, building on from the UMA up to things like our overlays and direct index product as well as our sustainable platform. There's a mix there. I think it's episodic in that, you know, sometimes it's client discussion, maybe a contract's up for renegotiation. Really we're pushing our clients to a place where, when there's a technology tool that's driving the majority of the function, we want it to be in a subs category. When we are using our fiduciary infrastructure to help them make decisions, we're charging a fee basis.

Surinder Thind (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Okay. I apologize. I double-checked the numbers here. Just for Q1, it says on your guide in your press release, subscription-based revenues are gonna be in the range of $114 million-$115 million on a non-GAAP basis. When I look at the reported number this quarter, it's $118 million. It's gonna be down $3 million-$4 million quarter-over-quarter for subscription-based revenues.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Yeah. Surinder, we'll take that offline with you.

Surinder Thind (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Okay.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Michael Young with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Hey, Michael.

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

Hey, how's it going?

Bill Crager (CEO)

Good. How are you?

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

I'm doing just fine. Thanks for taking the question. Wanted to start with kind of the shift in the growth in, I guess, Yodlee or the data analytics business. Can you talk about kind of what the drivers are that are moving that up from, you know, kind of that 2% growth to back to a, you know, more decent kinda growth trajectory at, you know, high single digits? And then, as a follow-up, just if we could think about sort of the EBITDA margin profile of those incremental, you know, kind of revenues. Is that accretive or significantly accretive to the overall margin?

Bill Crager (CEO)

Yeah. Michael, so as you know, the Yodlee business has been something that we've been working hard to revitalize and to restore growth in that business. It's been several quarters that we've been working hard to do it, Kudos to our Yodlee team as we believe that we've got you know building momentum in that business, and I'm very encouraged by it. A couple of dynamics to take note of. Continued to be very competitive in the data ag space, whether that's on the financial institution side of the business.

We have been very purposefully bringing down our professional services revenue, and pretty much have worked through that decline in revenue, doing that to create more agility, more usage out of our developer kit so that we're not charging PS and it's much easier to deploy the Yodlee product to big and small clients. That's been a purposeful revenue decline. There was a bit of a hiatus in foreign or international revenue, mostly created by the open banking rules in Australia and in the U.K. They've restored and are growing pretty well today.

Finally, in the analytics business, you know, that on the hedge fund side, on the asset manager side, we're seeing kind of restored growth, interest in that marketplace. We're supplying some tremendous firms who are using that data and bringing that data to the market. As our reseller, our partners there, and as well as contracts that we're winning in that space. Michael, long and short of it is we've been hard at work to kinda get all of those kind of leverage points for the business working in the right direction. We've turned a corner, and I'm pretty enthusiastic about what lies ahead for that business. From a cost standpoint, we're investing here.

We believe that there's tremendous opportunity in certain areas, underserved areas, of the business that a pure data platform like Yodlee can serve very effectively. I noted the SMB offering, the small business offering. It's a very exciting product that will make its way to market in the second half of 2022. Some investment to get that into market and make sure that we're properly distributed. That is going to be a really useful tool for commercial lenders, large banks, as well as our advisors who serve a lot of small business owners, helping them pull their business lives together.

Also on the analytics side, we're seeing expansion from the asset manager space to policy areas as well as ad tech and making some investments to enhance, continue to invest in the dataset, adding data to the existing Yodlee data to make that data set even more competitive in the marketplace. While it'll still be a very large EBITDA contributor, there are investments that we're making there.

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

Okay. Thanks for that.(CROSSTALKING)

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

It's a good question on margins. It is higher margin, as Bill's talking about. I mean, it's not without cost. We do have costs that support the platform as more activity goes through, but it is closer to software tech type margins as opposed to some of the asset base which carries higher levels of variable cost of revenue.

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

Thanks, Pete. Appreciate the cleanup there on that one. You know, I guess my other question, Bill, would just be, you know, you've been more open in talking about, you know, a potential monetization or partial monetization of that business. Just sort of curious philosophically if something like that were to come about, what would you do with that extra cash and capital? Are there specific projects or things that you would put that towards, on the wealth side, or would that be more of a return to shareholders? Just any thoughts you have there would be helpful.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Yeah. Thank you, Michael. You know, we've been really heads down and very focused on getting that business to begin to restore its growth, and we're gonna let that run a little bit because I believe that creates tremendous value. In the meantime, we've been threading more and more our data set in throughout our wealth environment, and it's powering some amazing things. I mean, you know, we made 11 million insights from recommendations that we shared with our advisor set a day as we ended last year, and we're on our way to a billion. That is a unique competitive offering that is going to get smarter and more powerful and drive more productivity across the board for us.

You know, some of that IP or some of the brain share and our ability to do that comes from the Yodlee business. We've just kind of cross-thread it now across the organization. We're using the data to power some next gen business intelligence. The data is also powering some incredible FinApps, whether it's our MoneyGuide Blocks or cash flow apps or financial planning or a whole host of other capabilities. We spent the time not only to restore the growth rate in the Yodlee business. We've been using that data set to power more and more of the wealth environment.

That all that said, we've maintained and we continue to manage that business in a separable way if strategically it made sense for our business to contemplate that. That's kind of where we're at, and I think it's really just a hypothesis at the moment as to what we would do with the capital that I don't. I really wouldn't comment much further than what I've said.

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

Okay. I appreciate all the call. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Ryan Bailey with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Bailey (VP)

Hi

Good afternoon, everyone. Hi.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Hey, Ryan.

Ryan Bailey (VP)

Bill, we're about a year in since you announced the investments needed for the Intelligent Financial Life. I think beyond the benefit to investments revenues, I think you have a vision that it could impact the entire wealth management industry. I guess, given how important this is, do you feel there's anything that's held you back over the past year from executing on the strategy faster, bigger, or better than you've done?

Bill Crager (CEO)

No, Ryan. I mean, you know, we kinda had a running start at it as we got going last year, and I'm really pleased with the progress we're making. I would encourage, you know, investors, analysts to join us in Charlotte in May because what we'll be introducing to the marketplace then is really the vision and how it's coming to life in really. I think my prepared remarks, I called it a multidimensional environment, and it truly is. It is creating more and more intelligence and insight to help people make more sense of their money.

I've been working on another edition of the white paper, and I refer to, you know, money as a technology and inefficient technologies are disrupted. That's what our industry is going to do. It is gonna disrupt the way money has been kind of managed and experienced by people and connect it in powerful ways. We're at the tip of the spear there, and we are leaned into making it happen. I'm really pleased with the progress we're making. More to do, but, you know, again, I encourage people to join us in Charlotte in May if you can, as we get back together in person for our annual Advisor Summit.

Because I think you'll get a very good understanding of how these pieces are driving that vision that we stated last year. It's coming to life.

Ryan Bailey (VP)

Got it. That's really helpful. This may have been a better question for Stuart, but I'm sure you'll have an opinion too. For the data and analytics business, if you had more flexibility to invest more aggressively in that business, just given kind of what some of the industry competitors have been able to do that haven't had to focus as much on margins, what do you think you would have tackled there, or what would you be tackling there if you could invest more aggressively?

Bill Crager (CEO)

On the data analytics business, particularly, Ryan?

Ryan Bailey (VP)

Yes. Yes, please.

Bill Crager (CEO)

I think we've really come a tremendous way in the quality of data that we're able to share with our clients and how they're using their clients to drive value for their investors. We're powering some of the prominent firms that are driving analytics to the same marketplace. The power of those analytics are improving all the time. Where we're headed and what we see an opportunity in is a couple of other areas around analytics. One is in the policy area. You know, every municipality, every state, every government agency wants to think about people and what people are doing with their money and how people are earning and how they're earning their money.

You know, you get a really great macro view of how the economy is growing and how the economy is evolving. It's incredibly valuable analytics. We're working on developing a product there. We have partners that'll take that product into the market. Ad tech with cookies and other kind of hurdles that have been and regulation that is put in place around web usage and the sharing of data. There is. Ad tech is struggling to kind of put the pieces together as well as they used to. We can add a perspective for some of these consumer companies on how their messaging is, how effective their messaging is hitting the market that they're trying to reach.

That's an opportunity for us. The last one is around RegTech and just helping, from an analytics standpoint, our clients understand some of the details on a continual basis around the regulations that they need to adhere to.

Ryan Bailey (VP)

Got it. Thank you for the call, Bill.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Chris Donat with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Hi, Chris.

Chris Donat (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Wanted to go to the 2022 guidance with Pete, and just making sure I'm understanding what's going on with the growth in asset-based revenue that's implied if I look at the Q1 revenue number and then the full year number basically back into what the Q2, Q3, Q4 could be. As I think about the growth in asset-based revenue that's implied for the remainder of 2022, is that more balances or fees or a combination? I'm just trying to get my arms around it.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

Yeah. It's more of the same that we saw in 2021. Higher asset levels based on flows. Those flows weighted more heavily toward AUM business, which carries higher fees. I think over the course of the year. We would expect to see higher flows and, you know, not dramatically different, but a slight increase in the fee rate quarter to quarter.

Chris Donat (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. That makes sense to me. Then just also then backing into the implied expenses from your revenue and EBITDA, it looks like that should be somewhat steady state for future quarters. Am I doing the math right there? That it looks like sort of the implied-

(Crosstalk)Expense level each quarter should be similar.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

Yeah. Tried to kinda talk about that a little bit in the prepared remarks, but the Q1 should be the low point in terms of EBITDA margin when you think about it that way. We should start to see the revenue growth next market, outpace expense growth. We'll see that ramp-

Kinda more like we saw before COVID. If you go back to maybe 2019 and look at the progression we had over the course of those years, we always had Q1 a little bit lower and Q4 a little bit higher. I think we're kind of back on expecting to be more on that trend.

Chris Donat (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Got it. You had mentioned your, like, sort of the partial recovery, expense elements too. There still might. As we think about 2023, there's probably still some embedded expenses or expenses that will likely go higher, just assuming the world gets more normal.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

(Crosstalk)

Chris Donat (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks very much.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

push that to 2023, but yeah, I think we're gonna see margins accelerate through 2022 into 2023. Yeah.

Chris Donat (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yes. Yeah, leave it 2022 at a higher rate than you began 2022.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

Correct.

Chris Donat (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Gotcha. Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Alex Kramm with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Kramm (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, everyone. My question may have the same subtext as some of the questions before, but I'm gonna answer or ask it anyways. I think Bill, like a year ago when you rolled out this investment plan, I think I basically told you on this call that you're acting like a private company and not a public company but given that you're crushing your EBITDA margins for a few years.

I guess again asking something that was asked somewhat before, but you know, if we imagined you were a private company, I mean, do you see opportunities where you say like, "Hey, if I had an open checkbook for two, three years, I could really go after things I can't go after right now because I am a public company." You know, would you be more excited and free to do things in your opinion that just as a public company, you just don't feel you can right now?

Bill Crager (CEO)

Thanks, Alex. Hope you're doing well. Just not gonna speculate on the rumors that are out there, but hey, no, I am, you know, we are very leaned in, and we've made, I think, very good use of our capital in an interim period of time to create tremendous value. You know, I think it was an important step for the company because what it really does is it solidifies an incredibly sustainable competitive distinction for our company. You know, Alex, you've known us for a long time, but here are the areas that competitively Envestnet delivers to our clients that no other firm can.

We have this tremendously deep data heritage and data set that we're creating more and more intelligent insights for our network to take advantage of these actionable opportunities that we're presenting to them, and they're taking advantage of it. We're seeing them beginning to access it. We have the number one leading market share in financial planning. We have the number one leading market share as a turnkey asset management platform. We have built out and extended the types of products that we put in our solutions platform. You know, those are like, you know, very significant ramparts to try to compete with Envestnet. What the capital did for us is accelerate our ability to bring them together, Alex.

That has been kind of something we're down the path, and what we made the decision is that we believe that by going faster, we can, you know, lock in this competitive distinction in the market and create sustained growth. It's early days still, but I am super pleased with the progress that we've made, but where it's pointing us to. You know, we've got a lot of work to do here, and we've been really hard at work. Hopefully that's pretty evident to everybody. You know, the answer to me is, there's never an open checkbook, one. Number two, we've been really judicious about this incremental spend. And there's one more dynamic, if I could just highlight it, that I think is important in the spend.

We're a center for R&D for our industry, and the people that we've been recruiting have been, you know, very technology deep and very data deep. Those are competitive resources today in this market. Those resources are thrilled to be at Envestnet. Guess why? Because we're investing to grow behind a purposeful mission that can change a marketplace and create sustained growth for a business. We're doing exciting things here. Those same talent aren't going to be the ones that are gonna be able to put their hands up and say they're gonna work at the local RIA or a mid-size broker-dealer. No, they're coming to Envestnet because we are recreating a future for a marketplace, and we've become a kind of a concentrated or a centralized hub.

Again, the capital judiciously that we've invested has created that force for us. I am head down on executing and thinking we're making very good progress. There's more to come. You know, just again, I believe that we're making a lot of progress here.

Alex Kramm (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Fair enough. Thanks for the call. Maybe just quick one for Pete then, and maybe this was asked as well, but you mentioned the T&E kinda like coming back this year. Can you actually give us a number in terms of how much relative to 2021 is gonna be incremental spending on travel, et cetera? And then maybe how much you would still be below, let's say, like 2019 normalized level, or where you think the company could go, eventually go back to.

Pete D'Arrigo (CFO)

I'm gonna give you directional numbers. I don't wanna be too specific about it, but it you know, in 2019 we probably spent between travel and I lumped in the Advisor Summit in there high teens to maybe not quite $20 million. This year we're you know, again, 2020 and 2021, we spent you know, virtually none of that and on travel and entertainment and the summit, which was canceled both years. This year, in total will be a little over half of that, maybe 50%-60%, in that range.

Alex Kramm (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Fantastic. Thank you.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Thanks, Alex. Have a good evening.

Operator (participant)

Our next question is a follow-up from Michael Young with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Hey, Michael.

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

Hey, thanks for the follow-up. Just wanted to ask, you know, and I understand you're not gonna comment on rumors and stuff in the marketplace, but if we just think generally about, you know, kind of what the playbook would be for a private equity buyer, you know, it would be something like coming in, cutting costs and maybe even raising prices and obviously adding leverage to the balance sheet, assuming the latter is not gonna happen. Of those former two, are there any opportunities that you see within the business that you all could execute on in terms of particularly price increases near term and then, you know, maybe medium term, you know, anything with like the real estate footprint or other cost saving opportunities?

Bill Crager (CEO)

Yeah, you know, Michael, I again, I'm not referring in any way to any of the stuff that's out there. I think we have been hard at work understanding a couple of things here. Number one is where our investment dollars are going and what we're going to get from it. We're pleased with the progress that we're making. We've also had a nearly two-year period of COVID. We're coming up on two years in which you have the ability to assess workplaces and kind of where you wanna put your capital and what sort of environment you wanna create for your employees. Absolutely, considering our real estate footprint.

We also have been super focused on our go-to-market and how we're engaging and engaging in the marketplace and changing the way that we market out there. I think those are areas of investments that we're leaned into and other traditional ways that we may be leaning back on would be things like, workplaces and things like those.

I don't know if one is more important in a private environment or a public environment, but as we've leaned in to create this environment for faster growth for the company, there's been an exceptional amount of work done to how do we create the leverage and profitability that we think long term that this business can generate. That, as we've said you know last year, and Pete just kinda hit on it a little bit, is as we get to the end of 2022 and into 2023, our intention is start to drive a bottom-line growth and return for investors.

Michael Young (Director, Equity Research)

Okay, fair enough. Thanks for taking the follow-up.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Bill Crager for closing remarks.

Bill Crager (CEO)

Thank you, Hector. I wanna thank my Envestnet colleagues for the extraordinary work that you do. A thank you to all of you for joining tonight and for your support of Envestnet. I look forward to speaking to everybody again, next quarter. Thank you and have a good evening.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you all for your participation.