MeridianLink - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MeridianLink First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star 0 for the operator. This call is being recorded on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Gianna Rotellini. Gianna, please go ahead.

Gianna Rotellini (Head of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon and welcome to MeridianLink's First Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after the market closed today. With me today are MeridianLink's Chief Executive Officer, Nicolaas Vlok, Chief Financial Officer, Larry Katz,and President, Go-to-Market, Chris Maloof. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's conference call will include forward-looking statements based on the company's current expectations. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially. For discussion of the risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could affect our future financial results and business, please refer to the disclosure in today's earnings release and the periodic reports and filings we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All of our statements are made based on information available to us as of today, and except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update any such statements. During the call, we will also refer to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. You can find the reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures included in our press release, which is posted to the investor relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Nicolaas.

Nicolaas Vlok (CEO)

Thank you, Gianna. Good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you all joining us today. We delivered a solid first quarter against a challenging macro backdrop, achieving GAAP revenue of $77.8 million or 1% growth year-over-year and Adjusted EBITDA of $31.8 million at a 41% margin, exceeding the top end of our guidance. I want to acknowledge that we have continued to grow in the face of significant volume headwinds, including a generational low in mortgage, a multi-year slowdown in auto lending, and macro-related churn. Specifically, our performance reflects the continued strength of MeridianLink One's end-to-end lending platform and its power to enable our customers to win in the market. Once again this quarter, we signed a robust roster of new logo and cross-sell wins that demonstrate the success of our go-to-market strategy. We also continue to expand the capabilities of our platform through innovation.

With that, let's move to our Q1 updates that demonstrate how the MeridianLink One platform empowers our customers' growth. First, I'd like to highlight a cross-sell win that shows our ability to increase module penetration within our existing customer base. Our successful land and expand strategy improves customer retention, ultimately increasing customer lifetime value. For example, we won a large financial institution who added MeridianLink Mortgage Access, mortgage lending, and our debt optimization tool to their existing portfolio of MeridianLink Consumer and Opening. By connecting mortgage and consumer solutions, our customers can better meet the needs of consumers along their financial journey, capturing a greater share of their debt wallet. This is an example of how embracing the MeridianLink One ecosystem can deepen client relationships and ultimately revolutionize how customers do business.

In Q1, we also successfully landed new customers who are strategically retooling now to prepare for a market recovery. For example, we welcomed a smaller financial institution on MeridianLink Consumer, Opening, and Mortgage. They chose MeridianLink One to automate decision capabilities and cross-sell loans and deposits without adding brick-and-mortar branches. Through the sales cycle, the customer gained a strong appreciation for the benefits of a single, comprehensive partnership rather than piecing together point solutions from disparate vendors. This illustrates how we are empowering customers to embrace a digital lending strategy and drive growth. Next, I want to spotlight the extraordinary success achieved by Space Coast Credit Union, a top 30 credit union in the U.S., after going live with our advanced decisioning capabilities in the quarter.

For nearly a decade, we've been steadfast partners in supporting SCCU's digital maturity initiatives as they expanded to nine modules tailored to meet the changing lending needs of their members. Since implementation of advanced decisioning, SCCU has instantly decisioned 13% more loans overall and an astounding 53% of applicants for credit tiers over 660. With increased automation and efficiency, the customer has optimized staffing and is strategically positioned to sustain long-term growth and remain agile in the competitive landscape. Turning to our latest product updates, we continue to innovate MeridianLink One to drive our customers' digital lending strategy. In the first quarter, we launched MeridianLink Insight Lite, our new interactive data analytics and reporting tool designed to enhance the reporting functionality for MeridianLink Consumer and Opening customers. Insight Lite enables users to adjust strategies, mitigate risks, and optimize performance with ease.

As customers embrace data-driven decision-making through Insight Lite, there is a clear upgrade path to our more comprehensive business intelligence solution, MeridianLink Insight. This showcases how we are paving the way for customers to accelerate their digital progression, which in turn drives growth for MeridianLink. Ending on a highlight of customer engagement, we enjoyed spending time together in Nashville last week with 1,400 attendees, a record at MeridianLink Live, our annual conference. Our customers were excited about our digital progression model, outlining a framework to accelerate growth and deepen consumer connections. We are proud of hosting our most successful event to date, leading directly to significant pipeline creation for new logo, cross-sell, and partner integrations. Before I hand over to Larry, I want to emphasize that MeridianLink continues to outperform even in the face of challenging market conditions, all thanks to the exceptional ability of our team to drive results.

We expect that macro headwinds will persist throughout this year, and we will continue executing on what's in our control. With the solid foundation we have invested in, bolstered by a healthy balance sheet and sound capital allocation strategy, we are well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities that lie ahead and deliver value back to shareholders. Finally, I'd like to close by highlighting a strategic addition to the leadership team to support our growth acceleration, namely our new CFO, Larry Katz. Larry brings a strong global track record of financial leadership with demonstrated success leading transformation at scale in financial services, SaaS, and private equity. His experience spans more than 25 years at companies including Genesys and JPMorgan Chase. He served in executive leadership positions at JPMorgan Chase for approximately 15 years, including in mortgage and consumer lending businesses and as CFO of various divisions.

While CFO of Genesys, a $2 billion annual revenue business, he led a highly successful transformation from on-prem to the cloud and completed numerous successful acquisitions. What excites me is that Larry is also a seasoned M&A veteran, and I value his experience and industry knowledge as we continue to build MeridianLink. Larry and I share the same vision that MeridianLink has significant untapped potential for expansion and growth, and I'm excited to partner together to propel the company forward to that next level of success. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Larry to talk about his experience and then review our financial results and guidance.

Larry Katz (CFO)

Thanks, Nicolaas. I'm thrilled to be here and to help lead the next leg of MeridianLink's growth and innovation. As Nicolaas mentioned, I've got years of relevant experience in consumer lending, fintech, and SaaS businesses. I've been around the block and at every stop have helped companies deliver durable growth at scale while building exceptional customer experiences. Personally, I enjoy helping build companies the right way, innovative companies like MeridianLink that deliver unique and valuable solutions for customers that are financially disciplined, that allocate capital prudently, and that have high-performing teams who like to win. There is a lot to like about the MeridianLink story today, and I chose to join because of my knowledge and experience in this market. First, MeridianLink has a unique value proposition as the lending platform of choice for credit unions and community banks.

I know the power, value, and stickiness of these enterprise platforms from my experience at JPMorgan and Genesys. I've implemented point-of-sale, origination, and servicing platforms in mortgage and consumer lending, and I know that financial institutions design their businesses around these platforms. Our platforms don't just power the business. They are the business. We are the leading platform in a growing, resilient market segment where MeridianLink's digital capabilities enable our customers to compete and grow. Second, the fundamentals of this business are strong, with healthy retention rates, strong margins, and robust cash generation. This is a durable business with recurring revenue insulated by contractual minimums and benefiting from macro tailwinds of digitalization. It is led by a smart and talented management team that is executed with discipline through market cycles. They've built a great business, and I'm excited to partner with them for this next chapter.

Third, it's clear to me that we are well positioned to accelerate growth. With the power of MeridianLink One, we have a significant expansion play with our current customers and partner relationships, as well as new logo acquisition opportunities. We're just beginning to see the return on our investment in our go-to-market services and customer success teams, which will generate increased demand and accelerate time to revenue. With our healthy pipeline, bookings, and activations, we are becoming a coiled spring that will release as volumes recover, driving accelerated revenue growth. As I enter as CFO at MeridianLink, I plan to focus on three key areas. One, I will focus on delivering against our operating priorities, bringing rigor, discipline, data, and analytics to measure progress and inform decisions. I'll focus on systems, processes, controls, and talent to support our scale and growth.

I'll hone our short and medium term investment priorities to articulate a long-term growth plan, including milestones over a 3+ year period. 2, I will outline a disciplined capital allocation framework. Our priorities will be, first, investing in organic growth in areas such as go-to-market, R&D, and services, especially when those investments have high ROIs. Second, inorganic growth via targeted, strategic, accretive M&A. And third, repurchasing our own shares when trading at a discount to intrinsic value. We expect that we will be able to do all three with our recurring revenue, free cash flow generation, and balance sheet capacity. My third priority will be to help our investors better understand performance of our business and the levers of our growth, which include our revenue growth algorithm. I'm a big believer in transparency, and I'm committed to helping our investors understand what their financial expectations could be for our business.

Turning now to our results. MeridianLink performed well in the face of a shifting macroeconomic environment. In the quarter, we delivered on our top line by executing our platform strategy and beat on our EBITDA guidance. In Q1, we generated total revenue of $77.8 million, up 1% year-over-year, meeting the high end of our revenue guidance. Adjusted EBITDA was $31.8 million, a 41% margin, up 27% year-on-year, and exceeded our EBITDA guidance. Revenue growth was driven by higher services and other revenue, offset by lower subscription revenue. Subscription revenue declined year-over-year due to lower volumes offset by ACV release from both existing and new customers. In the face of macro headwinds, a generational low in mortgage industry originations, and softer auto lending volumes, we beat our Adjusted EBITDA guidance by managing our cost base and executing with discipline.

We saw healthy demand in the quarter, resulting in pipeline growth and strong bookings. In this challenging macro, we are controlling what we can control and proactively investing for when volumes recover. Breaking down revenue and starting with software solutions. Our total lending software revenue grew 5% year-over-year and accounted for nearly 78% of revenue. Non-mortgage lending revenue grew 6% year-over-year and accounted for 89% of lending software revenue. This growth was attributable to solid ACV release from existing and new customers, offset by lower volumes. Auto volumes, our largest consumer loan category, are improving sequentially but remain down year-over-year. Pre-owned volumes remain challenged due to the softness in used car inventory and aggressive dealer financing alternatives. Mortgage-related revenue within lending software solutions declined 1% year-over-year and accounted for the remaining 11% of lending software revenue.

This quarter, mortgage volumes were up year-over-year, but it will take time for volumes to push our customers above their committed minimums. Though a smaller part of our business, mortgage industry volumes are at generational lows, with refinancing volumes at the lowest level since 2000. Turning to data verification software solutions. Revenue declined 12% year-over-year and accounted for 22% of total revenue. This decline was attributable to a 17% decrease in mortgage-related revenue, which represented 58% of total data verification software revenue in Q1. This decline in mortgage-related data verification revenue was driven by lower volumes, which were impacted by downsell of a single large customer. In total, mortgage-related revenue was 21% of total MeridianLink revenue in the first quarter, down three points from the year-ago quarter. Focusing on profitability. GAAP gross margin was 66% in Q1.

On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted gross margin was 74%, nearly 300 basis points of improvement in operating leverage year-over-year, driven by increased productivity of our services team. For operating expenses, sales and marketing expense was $10.5 million, a 28% increase year-over-year on a GAAP basis. On a non-GAAP basis, sales and marketing was $9.2 million, up 16%. This increase is due to higher variable compensation costs and our investment in our go-to-market team. R&D expense was $9.5 million and declined 31% year-over-year on a GAAP basis. On a non-GAAP basis, R&D was $7.9 million and declined 34% year-over-year, reflecting continued cost discipline and the roll-off of spend for completed technology projects such as the migration to the public cloud. G&A expense was $25.2 million, up 12% year-over-year on a GAAP basis.

On a non-GAAP basis, G&A declined 7% to $9.5 million, excluding non-recurring items such as the secondary offering costs in Q1. Moving to overall operating performance. GAAP operating income was $3.4 million, and non-GAAP operating income was $16.3 million. On a GAAP basis, net loss was -$5.3 million for a -7% margin. On a non-GAAP basis, Adjusted EBITDA was $31.8 million, a 41% margin. This represented an 850 basis point improvement in operating leverage year-over-year and reflects our continued cost discipline while strategically investing in growth. Now pivoting to the balance sheet and cash flow statement. We entered the first quarter with $52.3 million in cash and cash equivalents, a decrease of $18.2 million from year-end. This decline was driven by $44 million of stock repurchases in the quarter.

Cash flow from operations was $29 million, or 37% of revenue, and free cash flow was $27.1 million, or 35% of revenue. I'll now pivot to guidance for Q2 and update guidance for the full year 2024. While the consumer seems to be holding up, we remain cautious about the uncertain macro environment with a higher-for-longer rate outlook. We continue to grow our non-mortgage-related lending revenue, primarily through ACV release. And while volumes are improving sequentially, we expect that revenue growth attributable to volumes will be lighter than previously anticipated. Within this macro, we are focused on the things within our control, including disciplined cost management with a focus on profitability in preparation for when volumes return. We continue to prioritize winning new logos and cross-sell mandates, accelerating ACV release, and innovating MeridianLink One to meet evolving consumer lending needs. With that, I'll share our updated guidance.

For the second quarter, estimated total revenue is expected to be between $76 million and $79 million compared to $75.4 million for the same period in 2023. This represents an estimated year-over-year change of 1%-5%, adjusting Q2 2023 for a one-time reduction in revenue due to the previously disclosed commercial dispute. This represents an estimated year-over-year change of -2% to +2%. For the full year 2024, we expect total revenue to be between $311 million and $319 million compared to $303.6 million for the full year 2023. This represents an estimated increase of 2%-5% year-over-year. We expect the mortgage market to contribute approximately 20% of revenue for the second quarter and full year 2024.

To provide more color around the drivers of our total revenue, our mortgage-related revenue guidance includes declining year-over-year revenue despite improving volumes, as it will take time for the recovery in volumes to push our customers above their committed minimums. For our non-mortgage-related data verification software solutions, we expect to return to modest year-over-year growth as the employment screening market reacts to job openings and labor turnover. Non-mortgage lending revenue is anticipated to gradually improve year-over-year across loan types. This is driven primarily by ACV release and some uplift from improving volumes in line with gradual recovery that industry sources are forecasting. Now focusing on our Adjusted EBITDA guide. On a non-GAAP basis, this quarter estimated Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $29 million-$32 million, representing Adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 39% at the midpoint.

For the full year 2024, we continue to expect our Adjusted EBITDA range to be between $123 million-$130 million, representing Adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 40% at the midpoint. This adjusted EBITDA guide on lower revenue effectively raises our expected Adjusted EBITDA margin and signals our confidence and focus on execution and profitability. To wrap up, I'd like to reiterate how excited I am to join this team and business to chart the next leg of MeridianLink's growth. With that, Nicolaas, Chris, and I are happy to take any of your questions, and I'll turn it over to the operator.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by 1 on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by 2. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Koji Ikeda from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Koji Ikeda (Managing Director)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Hi, Larry. Nice to meet you on the call. Looking forward to working with you. I had a question around the minimum contract values. Just thinking about all the contracts in aggregate, is there a way to think about how far down or below the minimum contract values in aggregate the customers are? Where I'm going with this is, how much do overall volumes need to be made up before minimum contract thresholds are achieved?

Larry Katz (CFO)

Hey, Koji. It's Larry. Nice to meet you as well. I look forward to working with you. So breaking down consumer versus mortgage. On the mortgage side, as we've talked about in the past, many of our contracts are well below their contractual minimums. And that's why we're seeing, even though mortgage volumes are starting to recover, it's not printing to revenue in the quarter. So it's going to take some time. I don't know, crystal ball, when that'll happen, but it's going to take some time. From my days in mortgages, I'm sure you know that when the mortgage market comes back, it tends to move quickly, so we can move through those floors pretty quickly. But it's going to take some time until that mortgage market comes back.

On the consumer lending side, a substantial part of our contract base is above the minimums today, and a good chunk is relatively close to those minimums. So we see more as volumes are returning, for example, in auto, those volumes are passing through into revenue. Expect that to continue as volumes recover.

Koji Ikeda (Managing Director)

Got it. No, thank you, Larry. And just a follow-up here. Thinking about the new logos, signing up, call it, within the last six months, how do those contract commitments for those new logos compare to, say, contracts signed a year ago? Are they roughly the same, roughly smaller? I mean, any way to think about the commitments that are embedded with the new logos signed recently? Thanks, guys.

Hey, this is Chris. Over the last year, they're roughly the same. And they can really vary institution to institution based on how aggressive they want to be in terms of their commitment versus their app price. So we see a decent amount of variability, which has remained consistent.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Nick Cremo from UBS. Please go ahead.

Nick Cremo (Lead Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Congrats on the strong results, and thanks for taking my question. My first one's for Nicolaas. I was hoping you could provide additional color on the conversations you're having with customers at your most recent customer conference just in terms of their bank IT spending plans and more specifically on lending and also just how your sales pipeline is looking now relative to what it was last year on the back of your customer conference. Thanks.

Nicolaas Vlok (CEO)

Yeah. Hello there, and thank you for the question. First of all, from a customer conversation standpoint, I don't feel like we're having different conversations with customers at a user event or annual event than kind of separate executive briefings and meetings. Those conversations are pretty positive. Folks are leaning into retooling. Folks are very interested in MeridianLink's roadmap. We did spend some time at the user forum speaking about a digital progression model, which I'm going to ask Chris Maloof, who's on the call here, to take that on here in a little bit when I pass it to him. But it's something that our customers are really excited about. We feel it will help them on the curve of achieving more digital maturity on our platform, but also in the industry in general. A lot of conversation took place around that.

Another theme that we had quite a bit of interaction with at the user forum was AI. And we've also had some keynote folks and showed product functionality that was pretty exciting to the customer base. But generally speaking, I would say folks are starting to kind of look past 2024. One of the themes we heard back from some of our clients would be still a fairly constrained environment from a liquidity and deposit perspective. But hopefully, folks are seeing 2025 being a more positive year, specifically on the credit union side, I would highlight. So, Chris, maybe you can speak to the digital progression model, which was quite a highlight for us at the user forum.

Chris Maloof (President of Go-to-Market)

Yeah. Thanks, Nicolaas. A core part of our cross-sell success and how we position ourselves against competitors is how ML1 as a whole is differentiated than its point solutions alone. So the central approach we took to our latest user forum is we moved away from talking about various specific use cases around credit cards and work, etc. It's about where are you in your specific digital transformation process, and then how can our solutions help you move you along that line? So an example could be we'll talk to many different institutions that are say they take 10% of their deposits online, and they want to streamline that. That's one engagement we can do. And then we might find another institution, like the one Nicolaas highlighted earlier, where they're looking to enhance their auto decision rate, right? So that would be on the more advanced side of the curve.

What's great about this, as I think about the business long-term, is many of these customers or this industry still has 5-10 years left to digital and transformation left. There is a lot of processes out there that are still built for the in-person, and they're reflected digitally as opposed to being separate but equal. As we move them to being separate but equal, we'll require significant investment in digital technologies, investment in their people, as well as investment in their technology.

Nick Cremo (Lead Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for all the additional color. It's very helpful. And then my follow-up for Larry, it would be helpful if you could just provide some additional detail on the guidance assumptions for the remainder of the year for the consumer lending business, excluding mortgage, just across the various loan types such as auto, personal loans, credit cards. What are you thinking from a volume perspective relative to Q1? Thanks.

Larry Katz (CFO)

Hey, Nick. Nice to meet you, and thanks for the question. So in general, we're cautiously optimistic in the second half. Given the rate environment, we have pulled back on some of our assumptions in the second half from our prior guidance. Just to give you a little bit of color on it, we're referencing industry sources and all the rest here, but looking at our own business and how our segments are performing. On the auto side, we are expecting some modest recovery in the back half in line with industry sources as the used market, which, as you know, represents the majority of our consumer lending business. As that begins to recover, we'll see some pickup in the back half.

And similarly, in other non-asset-backed loan types of account opening as well, account opening had a relatively soft first quarter, just given the comps to last year. And we're expecting some pickup in the back half. And other personal loans and credit cards have remained pretty healthy and will be stable to positive through the back half. But just generally, I'd say it's pretty modest recovery given our rate outlook.

Nick Cremo (Lead Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks a lot for all the color.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1. And your next question comes from the line of Adib Choudhury from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Adib Choudhury (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. If I could just ask on ACV release. I mean, you guys have talked a lot about accelerating implementation, and clearly, some of that ACV release is benefiting results now. But could you kind of just talk about where we are in that journey and how that's kind of been trending? Thanks.

Larry Katz (CFO)

Yeah. It's Larry again. Thanks for the question. So questions on ACV release. Look, we talked a lot in prior quarters around acceleration of our ACV release. And we are seeing that in the quarter, right? The story on the quarter is that ACV release, both new and cross-sell, that release is accelerating, and it's offset by volumes. And so you don't see it as much in the numbers, but that's kind of the underlying trend and is really part of the coiled spring story that we've talked about. On a period-on-period basis, ACV is up, and that's a benefit. I mean, there are a couple of things going on there. One is, as our bookings and our go-to-market has built a bigger pipeline that drives ACV release services investment that has increased our time to revenue as we've talked about in prior quarters.

But also, there's a mixed component here where new implementations can take longer to implement, and the cross-sell is a quicker implement. And as we've talked about, cross-sell is a big chunk of our business. And so there's a mixed element here as well that drives ACV release. So we are seeing it in the numbers. It doesn't show up as much, just given the macro headwinds that we're facing. But it is baked into the numbers.

Adib Choudhury (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Perfect. Thanks for that. If I could just ask on MeridianLink Access, could you kind of just talk about how that product has kind of trended relative to your initial expectations over the last couple of months and how the offering is differentiated versus some of your peer offerings? Thanks.

Chris Maloof (President of Go-to-Market)

Yeah. Thanks for the question. So we released this product in H2 of last year. And I think the number we talked about last quarter was 50. I think we sold 40-50 of them. So that's in line with expectations as we continue to mature the product. Now, as far as differentiation is concerned, when we think about ML1 from a data perspective, the more aspects of the platform you have, the better the data you're going to have on how effective each part of your organization is in driving originations. And that's the central part to the insights and data product that we've had continue success selling as well.

If you were to leverage one of our partners, which is great, and we enable our customers to extend our solution with third parties, as we highlight, you wouldn't have some of those extra features that allow you to optimize your business for the different channels you're operating in.

Adib Choudhury (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Great. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1. Your next question comes from the line of Alex Sklar from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Alex Sklar (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Great. Thank you. And nice to meet you, Larry, as well. Sorry, jumping between calls here. Larry, just the first one for you. I just kind of wanted to see, I know it's fairly new still, but the next couple of months, where are you most focused on specifically as it relates to kind of the accelerating growth comments you made, aside from some of the macro headwinds easing?

Larry Katz (CFO)

Hey, Alex. Nice to meet you. Look, I think we're focused on controlling what we can control, right, given the macro. And those are around ACV release, around time to revenue, around bookings and, obviously, pipeline release, focused on understanding churn and managing churn, and then on pricing as well, kind of all the key elements of value creation. And then, as I mentioned in the script, also on turning up the inorganic efforts as well. We think there's a real opportunity in the market right now, given valuations and liquidity that is, really, we're well-positioned there as well. And given our recurring revenue and free cash flow, I think we've got a meaningful opportunity there to add on when we see product-market fit and when we see and when it's creative and when it makes sense for us.

That's an area as well that I'm spending a lot of time in over the next and will be over the next quarter.

Alex Sklar (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Okay. Great color on that. Maybe one follow-up for you, Nicolaas. Just in terms of the customer Space Coast that took the automated decisioning and implemented is now live, can you just talk about just something unique from that customer's perspective in terms of being ready to adopt versus your average customer base? I'm just kind of curious if there's been any change in terms of the overall appetite for your customers and prospects to similarly adopt that automated decisioning that you've been talking about for a while now. Thanks.

Nicolaas Vlok (CEO)

Yeah. This is Chris. I'll take that one. When you think of it all goes back to the digital progression, where they are within that journey. I would say that more and more organizations are investing to move up that course. And what I mean by that is it's all about how are you outcompeting for consumers. And a core measure of outcompeting for consumers is your instant decisioning rate. And that's what our advanced decisioning tool allows our financial institutions to do. So more specifically, providing more data points and more data trees for them to profitably decision the highest percentage of their incoming consumers as possible. So we are seeing a higher take rate as people are seeing digital transformation being more critical to their long-term success.

Alex Sklar (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thanks, Chris. Great color there. All right. Thank you all.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand it back over to management for closing remarks.

Nicolaas Vlok (CEO)

Thank you, operator. As we wrap up, I know you'll join me in welcoming Larry as our CFO. His experience is an asset to our business, and I'm glad he made the decision to join the team. Speaking of the team, I want to thank everyone at MeridianLink for a solid Q1 performance. I'm consistently impressed by our employees' dedication, innovation, and drive to succeed. Ending on a real high note, we are pleased to share that we have won a Product Innovation Stevie Award. We share this award with a customer, FedChoice, for the innovative use of MeridianLink Insight to make measurable improvements across the lending lifecycle. We're honored by the trust we're honored to be their trusted partner and also of so many other leading FIs. We look forward to speaking with you again soon and enjoy the rest of your day.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.