Paycor HCM - Q3 2022
May 4, 2022
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Paycor's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question on today's call, you can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to turn the call over to Rachel White, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Rachel White (VP of Investor Relations)
Good afternoon, and welcome to Paycor's earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2022, which ended on March 31. On the call with me today are Raul Villar Jr., Paycor's Chief Executive Officer, and Adam Ante, Paycor's Chief Financial Officer. Our financial results can be found in our press release issued today, which is available on the investor relations section of our website. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our website following the conclusion of the call. Statements made in this call may include forward-looking statements related to our financial results, products, customer demand, operations, and the impact of COVID-19 on our business and other matters. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and are based on management's current expectations as of today and may not be updated in the future.
Therefore, these statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We also will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures and key business metrics to provide additional information to investors. Definitions of non-GAAP measures and key business metrics, and a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is provided in our press release on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Raul.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Thank you, Rachel, and thank you all for joining us to discuss Paycor's fiscal third quarter results. We delivered robust revenue growth of 23% year-over-year, driven by continued client growth. It was our highest recurring revenue growth quarter in more than five years. Total revenue was a record $123 million, exceeding the top end of our guidance by 4%. We have now demonstrated accelerated revenue growth and increased profitability for three consecutive quarters. This sustained momentum gives us confidence to once again raise our full year revenue and profitability guidance, which Adam will describe in more detail. Labor market dynamics, such as the Great Resignation and increased regulatory complexity, continue to drive strong demand for modern cloud-based human capital management solutions.
The $29 billion HCM industry is still in the early stages of shifting to modern cloud solutions with significant runway for sustainable growth. Small and medium-sized businesses are seeking innovative cloud tools designed to simplify the human capital management process for their industry and their leaders. Paycor's open, extensible platform is purpose-built for leaders and configured by industry, and that differentiation continues to win in the market. Our modern SaaS HCM solution automates routine management tasks so frontline leaders can focus on the key elements that drive business performance and employee engagement, such as goal setting, coaching, and talent development. Furthermore, our vertical program resonates with clients as we align human capital management with their industry and provide industry-specific product differentiation, client experience, and community.
During the quarter, we continue to make progress against all four strategic growth initiatives that we believe will enable us to deliver long-term sustainable growth. First, our sales teams continue to successfully expand into Tier One market, which we define as the 15 largest cities in America. We have significantly expanded our Tier One sales coverage from the end of fiscal year 2021 with established sellers in all Tier One markets. We are on track to expand seller headcount by 20%+ this year, which we believe is impressive given the tight and competitive labor market. Tier One deal metrics remain strong with consistent win rates and higher deal sizes. Our Pac-12 partnership has already started delivering encouraging results that support our Tier One market expansion in the West.
The Pac-12 is a great strategic fit as there are over 78,000 CEOs and over 34,000 HR and finance executives associated with the Pac-12 on LinkedIn. We are generating millions of views from Pac-12 marketing campaigns and are building our brand awareness in these large markets. Second, the broker channel continues to deliver outsized results. When we revamped our sales strategy in 2020, we focused our playbook on brokers and established partnerships with five national firms that account for about a quarter of our broker revenue today, with significant expansion opportunity. Our broker strategy supports our Tier One expansion by providing immediate access to a sales channel in new and expanding markets.
We have supplemented our broker value proposition of benefits, administration, platform flexibility, and guided implementation with a portal that provides our partners with thought leadership and co-branded marketing designed to cultivate mutual business expansion. Third, our industry-specific approach is one of the top reasons clients choose Paycor. We configure solutions for four key industries, which represent about 50% of our TAM. Our unique value proposition is driving outsized win rate. By understanding the requirements of healthcare, manufacturing, food and beverage, and professional services, we have developed tailored solutions that help solve the most pressing human capital challenges for these industries. Our industry program empowers leaders to develop winning teams through product differentiation, client experience, and community. For example, in manufacturing, recruiting skilled labor is a big challenge. Through our product differentiation, we help manufacturing leaders modernize their career pages, increase visibility of job postings, and incentivize employee referrals.
We also partner and integrate with third-party technologies that manufacturers need, such as ERP systems. Our manufacturing customer experience starts with industry-skilled implementation experts and targeted training content, such as how to set up shift differentials, how blended overtime works, and adding a union code, which further enhance our industry client experience. We also help industry leaders stay on top of the latest trends and compliance issues and facilitate knowledge-sharing in our communities. Lastly, we continue to enhance our industry-leading functionality by expanding the breadth and depth of our HCM suite and have increased our PEPPM to $42. Our modern software has a seamless user experience and extensible platform that enables us to rapidly add capabilities and integrate additional partners. It provides a time-to-market advantage to stay ahead of the dynamic and evolving needs of our clients.
This quarter, we released an innovative developer portal to enhance our interoperability, making it even easier for clients and partners to seamlessly integrate and sync data between Paycor and critical third-party tools. The developer portal addresses over 50 points of integration and enables leaders to access real-time data and resources to support their teams. While the developer portal is beneficial to all clients, it is especially relevant for our four verticals since they tend to have greater integration needs. For example, in food and beverage, point-of-sale integrations are critical, whereas in healthcare, scheduling integration is essential. Since the launch in February, we have received outstanding feedback from both clients and partners. In addition, this quarter, we partnered with Equifax to provide automated employment and income verification services to clients at no cost, further reducing leaders' administrative burden so they can focus on what matters, developing their associates.
Companies often verify employment and income history for current or past employees who are applying for a loan or other financial services, and this partnership will simplify that process. We also worked with Fidelity to provide an extensive 360-degree integration between the company's 401(k) and HCM platforms to streamline administration for our mutual clients. Furthermore, we recently launched Expense Management, enabling leaders to easily reimburse employee expenses utilizing the same unified Paycor platform used to pay, hire, onboard, manage, grow, and recognize talent. By streamlining time-consuming and manual tasks like expense management, we empower leaders to invest more time and resources into developing their teams. As a testament to our ongoing product development, we are proud that Nucleus Research highlighted Paycor's ability to deliver rapid time to value for its clients.
Our platform stood out for its ease of deployment, cost efficiency, and strong customer support. This year, we improved significantly in usability, which reflects the investments we continue to make to enhance our platform. Calendar year-end is our busiest period, and I would like to thank all Paycor associates for their commitment to our client experience in delivering our strongest year-end on record. Over the last two years, we have made focused investments in technology and resources to enhance our client experience, and we are starting to see the impact. This is the first full quarter our chat tool has been live, and we handled about 10% of our support volume through this new channel. Customers prefer the quick response time of this communication method.
As a result of these enhancements, we had an 80% improvement year-over-year in client wait times during the second and third quarters. The best acknowledgement we get about these enhancements is directly from our clients, but we are also excited to share that our tax advanced support team was recognized for their outstanding customer service with a Bronze Stevie Award this quarter. Congratulations to our tax support team. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam to discuss our financial results and guidance.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Thanks, Raul. I'll review our third quarter results, then discuss our outlook for the fourth quarter and fiscal year. As a reminder, my comments related to financial measures are on a non-GAAP basis. Total revenue was $123 million, with 23% recurring revenue growth year-over-year, our fastest recurring revenue growth in more than five years. The year-over-year growth was largely driven by processing employee growth in the low teens and continued high single-digit percentage PEPPM expansion, resulting in us exceeding the top end of our revenue guidance by 4% and our adjusted operating income guidance by more than 20%. By quarter end, our customer base had increased 6% year-over-year to nearly 30,000 clients.
Consistent with our go-to-market strategy, our target segment of 10-1,000 employees is showing accelerating growth close to 10%, and we are demonstrating outsized growth in the 100+ segment. Our target market represents about 80% of our total revenue and just over 60% of our clients. In contrast, the micro segment of under 10 employees continues to contribute single-digit % of revenue while representing nearly 40% of our clients. Overall, the labor market is still below pre-COVID levels, and organic labor market growth remains in the low single digits%, consistent with historical averages. Our average customer size has increased to just under 75 employees per customer, an increase of about 10% year-over-year, as we continue to shift away from that micro segment and accelerate growth among clients with more than 100 employees.
Net retention also continued to trend favorably and is in line with pre-COVID levels. We attribute this to the rebound in our clients' employees levels combined with investments we've made in implementation and client service. Adjusted gross profit margin was 69%, down slightly from 70.7% a year ago and consistent with our expectation. This change is largely due to increased amortization related to capitalized software and contract acquisition costs, as well as continued investments in our service organization to ensure a great client experience. While we are seeing some labor cost pressure, it has not had a material impact on our profitability. Taking into consideration the significant amortization associated with our Apax acquisition and recapitalization, adjusted gross margin, excluding depreciation and amortization, was 78% for the quarter, an increase of 13 basis points year-over-year.
In both profitability metrics, we have delivered sequential margin improvements for the last three quarters as we continue to scale the business. Sales and marketing expense was $34 million or 28% of revenue, compared to $25 million or 25% of revenue a year ago. In line with our aggressive go-to-market strategy, we continue to expand our sales teams and marketing programs, especially in Tier One markets. Since this massive market is still in the early stages of transitioning to the cloud, and we are consistently generating strong returns on our investments, we will continue to invest to capture market share and drive meaningful value for shareholders. R&D expense was $8 million or 7% of revenue, compared to 9% of revenue a year ago.
Including capitalized development costs of $8 million, we invested $60 million in R&D or 13% of revenue, similar to the year ago period and in line with our expectations. Our team continues to build new capabilities that expand our product portfolio and PEPPM opportunity, delivering insights for leaders to develop their teams and improve their business. G&A expense was $18 million or 15% of revenue, consistent with the third quarter of 2021. However, our goal is to continue to drive G&A down as a percentage of revenue, and we have done so for three consecutive quarters. We also see a shift towards a higher mix of technology-related spend to drive future efficiencies as we continue to scale our operations. Overall, we are driving G&A leverage year-over-year as we anniversary public company expenses and manage strategic investments.
This quarter, as we fully embraced our virtual first model, we recognized a $9 million loss from exiting certain facilities leases. I'd like to emphasize that this has no impact on our expansion strategy and will be accretive to earnings beginning next quarter. Operating income was $25 million or a 20.1% profit margin compared to 21.6% last year. The modest change in profitability reflects investment in the growth drivers I described. We remain confident that our proven and scalable business model will deliver strong top-line growth and attractive levels of profitability over time. Shifting to the balance sheet, we increased our cash balance by over $20 million, ending the quarter with $134 million in cash and no debt.
This quarter, we generated interest income of approximately $410,000 on average client funds of just over $1 billion. Overnight interest rates remain the primary driver of our interest income, and we have yet to see an impact to the rates banks are willing to pay. Moving to guidance for the fourth quarter, we expect total revenue of $103 million-$104 million or about 18% growth year-over-year, and adjusted operating income of $3.5 million-$4.5 million. For the full year, we are raising our revenue guidance to between $421 million-$422 million, or about 20% growth year-over-year at the top end of our range.
We anticipate adjusted operating income of $41.8 million-$42.8 million. A few things to keep in mind regarding our outlook. Year-end processing volume drove a few points of growth in the third quarter. Following this seasonal peak, we expect our fourth quarter revenue to decline sequentially without the benefit of those year-end revenues. Employment growth has remained steady in that low single digits, and as such, we expect marginal benefit from continued labor market growth. While interest rates continue to rise, we expect little impact to our fiscal year 2022 guidance. A 25 basis point realized increase in the overnight rate on our estimated client funds would generate about half a million dollars of interest income in a quarter.
To wrap up, we're pleased with the execution of our go-to-market strategy, expansion of our HCM suite, and early success of our customer experience investments. We remain optimistic about the opportunity in front of us and are enthusiastic about momentum in the business. Our unique focus on leaders and industries continues to meaningfully resonate in our mid-market customers. We remain excited about our ability to capture market share while improving profitability longer term. With that, we'll open the call for questions. Operator?
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch tone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. We will pause here briefly to allow questions to generate in. The first question is from the line of Jeremy Sahler with Jefferies. You may proceed.
Jeremy Sahler (Software Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. I'm on for Samad Samana. My first question is actually on float income. So I know last quarter you mentioned that over 90% of client funds are in overnights, and based on your commentary, it sounds like that's still true. You mentioned last quarter that you were waiting for the, like, the rate environment to kind of flush out before you moved into longer duration securities. Has your outlook changed on that at all?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Hey, Samad. No, it hasn't really changed. We continue to, you know, make small movements where we think it's prudent. Again, the biggest impact of the overall interest income is gonna be the overnight rates. It's still gonna be the overnight rates. Those rates have just not moved materially just yet. We do have more than 80% still in overnight accounts. I think you'll begin to see a little bit of flow through there over the next couple quarters. Again, the biggest driver is gonna be the overnight rate for sure.
Jeremy Sahler (Software Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. That makes sense. One more quick one on pricing. I know you guys do annual price increases, but I guess with inflationary pressures, are you considering any additional increases or maybe a change to the size of the next price increase?
Adam Ante (CFO)
No. I mean, I think the way that we think about it still is really, you know, just being intentional about creating value and adding additional products and expanding, you know, our bundles. As we launch those new products and improve functionality, improving our support model, we drive to take a portion of that or capture a portion of that through annual increases. I wouldn't foresee that just because of inflationary environment that we're necessarily doing anything outsized, other than continuing to invest in those, you know, those critical things that customers need and trying to capture that value appropriately. We have not done increases to clients more than annually thus far.
Jeremy Sahler (Software Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. Okay. Thanks a ton, congrats on the quarter, guys.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Thank you.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Brad Reback with Stifel. You may proceed.
Brad Reback (Managing Director of Enterprise Software Equity Research)
Great. Thanks very much. High level question to start with. Raul, as you think about your M&A strategy, I know historically it's been focused on smaller deals. Any change in philosophy there?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah. There's you know we haven't had any significant change in philosophy. We have historically been focused on small tuck-in acquisitions that would enable us to leverage you know our vast distribution and sell a broader bundle. You know that's what we've been focused on. Adam anything you wanna add to that? Yeah no. I mean we focused the last couple of acquisitions really been you know advanced scheduling applicant tracking and just finding that world-class technology. Like Raul had mentioned just get it out through our distribution. We've had some success with more like small IP-only acquisitions as well. You know we'll continue to be opportunistic and we take a lot of looks but you know that's really where our focus is in that the product space for sure.
Brad Reback (Managing Director of Enterprise Software Equity Research)
That's great. Switching gears real quickly. On the developer portal, is there opportunity there to monetize that directly, or is it more indirectly, via greater usage and higher retention rates? Thanks.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah. With the portal, it's really indirect monetization. I mean, the premise behind the portal is we believe, you know, that the future of HCM is around interoperability and the ability for our customers to be able to link HCM with any tools that help them run their business more efficiently. There may be some partners that we can monetize, but for us it's been about client experience and winning more clients because we have the most open modern platform in HCM.
Brad Reback (Managing Director of Enterprise Software Equity Research)
That's great. Thanks very much, guys.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, thanks, Brad.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist Securities. You may proceed.
Terry Tillman (Managing Director)
Yeah. Thank you, Raul, Adam, and Rachel. Congrats on the quarter. I do want to just as an aside say I'm sorry to see that the Belle of Louisville lost to the Great Steamboat Race this week. Now moving on from the obscure reference of the year. First question I had is just maybe for you, Raul. Kinda macro question around recessionary pressures, inflationary pressures. You know, could you say anything about kind of anything you're observing either in different regions of the country or those top 15 cities or just anything that's relevant from a demand gen or seeing folks pause or anything on that, or maybe anything you could share about verticals? Because I think last quarter you said healthcare was kind of coming back, and I think you just launched pro services.
just a little bit more on macro and maybe double-clicking into verticals. Thank you.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, Terry. Without question. By the way, you know, I know that the Belle of Louisville won the race, but it did finish last. If you just look at the details there. From a macro perspective, we haven't seen a big impact, you know, on recession or inflation to date. You know, the overall market demand metrics have remained stable throughout the year. We haven't seen anything there. Obviously, any of the markets that we deal in that, you know, have had more COVID pressures, you know, we experience that when they close the market or open the market throughout the year. Outside of that, we haven't seen anything overall in the segment from, you know, a demand perspective or delaying decisions based on inflation or a recession.
Terry Tillman (Managing Director)
Okay. That's good to hear. Maybe just a follow-up question for Adam or maybe Raul. It's just, you know, this is one of the first products I think you all have launched kind of net new since you've gone public, expense management. It seems interesting. Seems like CFOs would be interested in that and just the leaders as you talk about serving. How would something like this and how actionable is this in terms of affecting the model positively, whether it's the PEPPM and then realizing that on the quarter or just larger deal sizes? How we should think about expectations of that filtering through the model? Thank you.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, thanks, Terry. You know, the way that we think about it is really continuing to drive that PEPPM expansion and that sort of high single digits and the overall ADS as we add new, you know, business and cross-sell back into our base. I think that's where I would expect it to show up is just continued growth in that PEPPM expansion, you know, in that sort of high single-digit range. It's not just additional products like this, but it's definitely part of the overall model as we continue to grow that.
Terry Tillman (Managing Director)
Very good. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, Mr. Tillman. The next question is from the line of Bhavin Shah with Deutsche Bank. You may proceed.
Bhavin Shah (Director of Software Equity Research)
Awesome. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on the strong performance as well. Can you just provide any insights on how your bookings have trended relative to plan, and any specific markets or customer sizes that are maybe trending better than others?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. We don't necessarily plan to share the bookings details on a quarterly basis. They're not necessarily, you know, helpful. In terms of demand, I mean, the way that we've seen demand work through the year is that the fundamentals of the business continue to remain strong. We see that demand gen continues to be strong for us, and we see that really across our markets, as we've continued to expand into those Tier One markets across industries and our brokers. You know, those key strategies that we're driving towards, we continue to see positive momentum. One of the key drivers that we think about is really the win rate. Where do we, you know, how do we see us winning in these new markets?
How do we see us winning against competitors as we are going, you know, heavier into these markets? Our win rates remain strong. We continue to see the products play well in all the markets that we're operating in and including the ones that we've been expanding into specifically in those Tier One. In terms of you know, the overall demand in those markets, we continue to also add our seller headcount, right? We've been driving towards this 20%-25% headcount growth for the full year. We you know, we're still on pace to hit that for the full year, so with the majority of those headcount going into the new markets.
Bhavin Shah (Director of Software Equity Research)
Got it. That's helpful there. That was my follow-up question, actually. Just in terms of just that, the Tier One hiring, can you just maybe give some update on what you've seen in terms of the productivity ramp of these hires trending well with the plan, ahead of plan? Any additional insight would be helpful.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. I mean, as we think about adding as many sellers in this year as we are, we're definitely expecting that the overall productivity, you know, on a per seller basis is gonna decline, you know, slightly relative to the overall portfolio. I'd say it's still early for the cohort as they've come in. You have a handful of sellers who are at sort of six months into the year, which is still relatively early. We continue to see the opportunity and the performance across these key measures, you know, including average deal size and the size of the deals that we're actually selling in and the size of those clients, the win rate. We continue to feel good about the progress that we're making with the new seller cohorts.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, one thing to interject is, you know, when you think about that seller cohort, you know, we really expect them to get to their full ramp by the end of their second year. So, you know, we'll have nominal impact from new sellers in year. It will help us build, you know, our bookings growth rate for next year. As Adam said, you know, we continue to execute against the core levers of growth that we've outlined, which is really, you know, adding new sellers in the Tier One markets. You know, we're on pace to achieve 20%+ growth in seller headcount, continuing to leverage the broker channel to win at an outsized rate, and leverage industry to be a big differentiator in the marketplace.
They're all executing very well, and so we feel good about our momentum in the market.
Bhavin Shah (Director of Software Equity Research)
Great to hear. Thanks for taking my question.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, Mr. Shah. The next question is from the line of Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse. You may proceed.
Kevin McVeigh (Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks so much, and congratulations on the results. Hey, I guess, Adam or Raul, when you think about the 4% upside relative to expectations, what drove that? Was that, you know, relative to kind of where you initially got in, what drove the upside?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. I mean, I think a big over or a big lift here that we saw during the quarter is the annual year-end fees and additional form filings. Just came in a little bit stronger than we had anticipated. We did pick up a little bit more, you know, upside in the quarter than what we had projected. I'd say those year-end fees aren't back quite to where they were pre-COVID levels, but they definitely improved, you know, beyond where we were anticipating them here for the quarter. That was the primary driver. We continued to see the upside in the client base in terms of the company growth coming in January as well as continued PEPPM expansion.
Just across the board, the performance was really just a little bit tighter, a little bit better. It reached to the top into that 3.9% or 4% lift.
Kevin McVeigh (Research Analyst)
That's great. You continue to do a nice job expanding the PEPPM. Like, the partnerships with Equifax that continues to pay you out this quarter, is that in that PEPPM, or would that be outside of it and additive as you think about additional solutions kind of beyond the traditional scope of what you've been providing?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple dynamics to it. I mean, the way that we share the PEPPM on, you know, the P&L or the surface here is really just the total recurring revenue over the number of employees on our platform, right? Equifax revenue, for example, would be included in that, or other partner revenue would be included in that, and it's a blended number. I think in terms of our actual pricing strategy, we wouldn't. There are some of those partnerships that we wouldn't necessarily price to the client. Equifax, for example, does not have a pricing strategy that goes back to the individual clients.
It's a little bit of a mix in terms of how we think about our go-to-market and the overall $42 PEPPM suite that we offer, as well as, you know, expanding the additional suite of services or from partners specifically like Equifax creates some additional opportunity.
Kevin McVeigh (Research Analyst)
Super. Thank you.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, Mr. McVeigh. The next question is from the line of Brian Bergen with Cowen. You may proceed.
Jared Levine (Director of Equity Research)
Hi, this is actually Jared Levine on for Brian today. Based on your confidence over the past few quarters, Tier One market traction, improving NRR and the overall demand environment, can you give us a sense of early goalpost on how you think about FY 2023 growth? Is there the potential to see 20%+ growth potentially sooner than your longer term aspirations? Why or why not?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, you know, we're excited about the growth, and we've been really driving towards this 20% sustainable growth. You could see in the guide that we're not quite ready to guide to, you know, to the 20%+ growth. We feel good about the trajectory and it is a long-term game around continuing to drive additional bookings, accelerate those bookings and layer them onto the platform. We'll intend to share guidance updated, you know, following the close of our FY 2022 year for full year 2023. Feel good about the progress, feel good about the execution right now. We'll continue to press in and, you know, we'll share that guidance in the Q4 close.
Jared Levine (Director of Equity Research)
In terms of the competitive environment, have you noticed any differences, whether that be based on employer size, segment, or market tier?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, we haven't seen any differences in the market, you know, either on who we're competing with, or where we're winning from. They've remained constant. You know, we compete with ADP, Paylocity, and Paycom on most transactions. You know, we take 80% of our wins from the legacy providers, which we define as in-house ADP, Paychex and regional service bureaus. That's been consistent over the past few years. We haven't seen any real differences in the go-to-market strategies of any of our competitors.
Jared Levine (Director of Equity Research)
Great. Thank you.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Welcome.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Scott Berg with Needham. You may proceed.
Michael Rackers (Equity Research Associate)
Hi, everyone. Congrats on the quarter. This is Michael Rackers on for Scott today. Just one quick question from me. I know you've talked a lot about the talent management opportunity in the past. Can you go a little deeper on, you know, adoption there and then maybe some other modules you're excited about longer term? Thank you.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah. You know, we're really excited about talent management. You know, we're seeing, you know, our highest attach rate of any new product. We're seeing, you know, in the mid-market space, you know, upwards of 35% attachment, you know, at point of sale with talent. We actually charge for it. I think that's pretty exciting. It really demonstrates the value, you know, of the product and what we're trying to accomplish, which is empower leaders to build winning teams. We enable leaders to coach and inspire and motivate and engage their employees so they can drive better outcomes for their end clients. We're excited about it, the market's excited about it, and we're gonna continue to press in on talent as a differentiator.
Michael Rackers (Equity Research Associate)
Great. Thank you.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
You're welcome.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. You may proceed.
Speaker 14
Hey, thanks for taking the question. This is Chase on for Brian. Raul, I think you had mentioned the strength from the five national partners that now account for about 25% of the partner revenue. Just curious, how do you see the opportunity to grow with those five national partners, but also the ability to kind of grow the broader partner program both regionally and kind of smaller partners?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, it's a huge opportunity. Obviously, the five national partners contribute, you know, a little over 25% of our overall contribution from the broker channel. We have over 1,500 partners across the U.S. that we work with, and there's, you know, 14,000+ opportunities. We have a long way to go in this really exciting channel that has a significant impact in the mid-market segment. We're gonna continue to press in on it. It's really helpful because as we add sellers in the Tier One markets, obviously brokers are located in dense markets which are akin to our Tier One markets. It's a great place for our new sellers to start and build relationships right out of the gate.
We're gonna continue to press in. We're excited about the progress we've made, and, you know, it's a great channel for Paycor.
Speaker 14
Got it. Very helpful. Then just to follow up on the sales hiring, you know, as you're kind of seeing some broader wage inflation in the marketplace, how are you guys kind of seeing that as you continue to look to heavily invest in the sales headcount? Thanks.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, I mean, we see wage inflation across the board. I mean, primarily in some of those key roles like, you know, development or engineering and implementation. I'd say, less so in sales across the country. I mean, there's a little bit of a natural hedge for them in just the commission side or the variable comp side. There has been a little bit. I'd say broadly, it has not, you know, impacted or materially impacted our overall business, and it hasn't impacted our guidance per se. There has been a little bit of it for sure. We're not immune to it, but in fact, it hasn't been material just yet.
Speaker 14
All right. Thanks, and congrats on the great quarter.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mark Marcon with Baird. You may proceed.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
Let me add my congratulations on a terrific quarter. Wondering, can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you ended up seeing with regards to client retention in the key, you know, January through November time period? How did that trend relative to your expectations? What sort of changes have you seen?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, you know, I think the way that I would say it, Mark, is, you know, retention is. There's a really long tail to it. We had, you know, certain expectations just coming off of the service year in 2020 and 2021. We made a lot of improvements and invested a ton in the service model implementation and product through 2021 that, you know, has shown, has demonstrated some really positive momentum for us. You could see it clearly reflected. That you know, the net retention improvement in the revenue, and you're seeing that play all the way through. Gross retention in terms of just the longer tail or longer nature of that just takes some more time for it to fully come through.
We're seeing continued positive trends around the customer experience. It shows up in the product. It shows up in the service time. January, of course, is a big period for us. We feel good about coming through the year-end, and you can see it reflected in the overall revenue growth for sure.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. You, Raul, you mentioned, you know, a number of initiatives, you know, Fidelity, Equifax, developer portal, expense management solution. Of all the initiatives that you mentioned, which ones are you the most excited about? Which ones can be, you know, the most impactful over the next year or two?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
I mean, without question, the developer portal, I mean, it's the gateway, you know, to the future of HCM, and it's about, you know, if you believe in the power of modern APIs, then you believe in the power of a developer portal like we've delivered. It's about us enabling, you know, our clients and our partners to integrate seamlessly with our platform and able to expand the reach, you know, of what we do. We believe, you know, that the most important thing that we can do for our customers is have an open, accessible platform that enables them to manage their business specifically the way they want to. Being open, with the power of the technology that's available today, without question, is a game changer.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. When would you anticipate that we actually see the real impact from that coming through?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Well, I think you know we see it in our win rates today. As we continue to you know press in, it supports you know seller expansion, accelerating bookings, which is driving our accelerated revenue growth. I think you're seeing it and it will continue to drive forward. Obviously, we're building out a partner ecosystem you know over the next 12-18 months that will continue to help supplement that. I think we're in the early innings, Mark, but I think you know the potential to continue to layer on top is exciting for us.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. You also, you know, talked about, you know, increased success with regards to larger clients and particularly the win rate with companies that are over 100 employees. Can you talk a little bit more about that in terms of what you're seeing? Are you taking away those 100+ employee clients from the same group that you were previously taking smaller clients away from? Or how should we think about that? What are the features and functions that are the most attractive to those clients that are driving that switching behavior?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, I think, you know, it remains consistent. I mean, 80% of our wins are coming from, you know, the legacy providers. I think what we're seeing is, you know, an expansion of our sales force, so we're getting more at-bats in that segment as we've, you know, expanded it significantly over the last few years. What we're winning with is, you know, a modern HCM platform that has, you know, a simple, easy-to-use, you know, experience for them. Then the talent component coupled with industry differentiation are the reasons why we're winning.
When we look at a win-loss report, you know, the first thing is we win because of industry, the second is we win because of talent, and the third is we win because our product's the easiest to use with the most functionality.
Operator (participant)
Thank you, Mr. Marcon. The next question is from the line of Mark Murphy with J.P. Morgan. You may proceed.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director of Software Research)
Yes, thank you very much. I joined completely late. Please forgive me if you've covered any of this. The first thing I wanted to ask is just whether you might be sensing any more urgency or any more demand from customers on the employee engagement side of the product suite or the talent management side, just as they try to grapple with this shortage of skilled labor out there and all the wage inflation that they might be seeing.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we have seen significant acceleration in both those categories. Talent management, which enables us to coach and develop and do one-on-ones and really connect and engage with an employee, you know. We're seeing attach rates, you know, between 35% and 40%. We're also seeing strong attach rates of engagement, you know, whether it be recognition and/or the ability to chat between each other, and that's within our core bundle. You know, that kinda is included with all of our clients. We're seeing strong demand for all of those. You know, as we think about, you know, why customers select Paycor, it's because we deliver all of these in this unified experience, that's really easy for someone to undertake.
For us, it's been a game changer, very powerful.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director of Software Research)
Okay. Great to hear. The second question that I had is are you seeing any flow of customers that might be forced for some reason to move off of UKG just in the wake of that unfortunate outage that they suffered I think back in December and January? Is there anything happening there or not a real important effect?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we had, you know, we got a few wins in the end of the calendar year where clients had to process payroll, and we were able to get them started, you know, in a week or two. I would say that the majority of that target market, you know, is slightly outside of where we compete. A lot of those clients may be, you know, 5,000 employees and above, which isn't really where we're hunting on a day-to-day basis. The clients that we were able to win, you know, we can easily go up to 2,500. We were able to win clients, you know, in that pay range and help them convert over.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director of Software Research)
I see. Okay. One last one. Can you just remind us in terms of your contract with customers, is there a standard clause in there for a cost of living increase, I know annually or upon renewal, just something that would allow your PEPPM pricing to kind of keep pace with what they're seeing in terms of inflation?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, you know, most of our contracts are greenfield, right? They don't necessarily come up on a term. We do reserve the right to change prices. You know, it has been our practice to do that annually. You know, I'm not sure that you're gonna see any significant change in our strategy. The way that we just talked about it is around you know, creating value for the clients and then capturing that value, you know, where appropriate. We're gonna continue that strategy. There's not really you know, a forcing mechanism like a cost of living increase like you mentioned.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director of Software Research)
Understood. Thank you. Congrats on the great results.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Thanks, Mark.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Thanks, Mark.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Robert Simmons with D.A. Davidson. You may proceed.
Robert Simmons (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I was wondering, what is the typical ramp time for your new sellers? Are we talking, like a quarter or 2, or talking more of a year, just for them to get, you know, reasonably productive?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah. The way to think about it is they ramp, you know, through the first six months, and full productivity comes after the second year. They stair-step up throughout, you know, month to month, through the first 24 months. They'll continue to accelerate through that 24-month period. At the end of 24 months, they hit full productivity in there. You know, think about it, three months, they start selling and producing, and then they increase their productivity throughout the next 21 months.
Robert Simmons (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)
Got it. That makes sense. How much of your bookings, in a quarter, are typically back to base selling?
Adam Ante (CFO)
I'm sorry, Tim, could you?
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Back to the base?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Oh, back to the base.
Robert Simmons (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, about 15% of the bookings are back into the base.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Simmons (SVP and Senior Research Analyst)
Got it. That makes sense. Thank you very much.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Yeah, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Raul Villar for closing comments.
Raul Villar Jr. (CEO)
Thank you again for joining us tonight. We appreciate your interest in Paycor. We are excited about the trajectory of the business heading into our fiscal year-end. We look forward to staying in touch and hope to connect with many of you in person at upcoming J.P. Morgan and Baird conferences this quarter. Have a good night and a great Cinco de Mayo.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for joining today's call, and enjoy the rest of your day.