Paycor HCM - Q3 2023
May 10, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Paycor's third quarter fiscal year 2023 earnings 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. Please note this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Rachel White, Vice President of Investor Relations.
Rachel White (VP of Investor Relations)
Good afternoon, welcome to Paycor's earnings call for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, which ended on March 31st. 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, a replay will be available on our website following the conclusion of the call. Statements made in this call include forward-looking statements related to our financial results, products, customer demand, operations, 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. (President, Director and CEO)
Thank you, Rachel. Thank you all for joining us to discuss Paycor's fiscal third quarter results. As employee engagement nationwide dropped to the lowest level in nearly a decade, we are seeing robust demand for our modern and differentiated HCM suite that enables leaders to more effectively coach, optimize, and retain their people. With these essential talent tools, our customers are improving the core strength of their critical frontline leaders and increasing their employee retention by 10%. Revenue grew 32% this quarter as we continued to make great progress expanding our sales coverage and increasing PEPM. This also marks the fourth consecutive quarter of margin expansion, delivering over 400 basis points of improvement YoY, while investing in capabilities that further differentiate Paycor in the market. Paycor's strong results are evidence of consistent execution across the enterprise. We continue to expand our go-to-market capabilities.
Seller headcount growth remains on track for 20%. Win rates remain high. Average deal size continue to expand, and we are pleased to report another record third quarter for bookings. These efforts are underpinned by investments in brand awareness, lead generation, and broker relationships that drive sales opportunities. We are thrilled with the acquisition of Verb, a people development platform incorporating behavioral science and proprietary microlearning content to create best-in-class workplace training. The acquisition will enhance Paycor's mission of empowering leaders by providing them with learning tools to develop their associates with personalized development pathways. Like our other recent acquisitions, we plan to fully integrate Verb's innovative technology into our HCM suite and increase PEPM, leveraging our broad distribution channel. We expect the integrated offering to be available as part of our talent management bundle in the first half of fiscal year 2024.
Within our talent management bundle, we recently completed the integration of our new AI-driven recruiting technology, Paycor Smart Sourcing. We continue to see strong demand for this solution with more than 600 customers scheduled for activation. Building on Paycor's initial artificial intelligence innovation, Paycor Smart Sourcing and Predictive Resignation, we introduced our existing natural language processing and sentiment analysis engines into performance reviews to provide frontline leaders real-time feedback on the language they're using in evaluations to foster more humanized, engaging work culture. We will continue to leverage AI in our platform to efficiently empower leaders, like using generative AI to aid the recruiting process by generating job descriptions along with several other exciting innovations on our product roadmap. We continue to lead the industry with the most extensive network of partners, deep two-way integrations, and API connectivity points to meet our clients' unique business needs.
In the last year, we added over 100 partners to our ecosystem to expand our reach and provide new capabilities and value for our customers. Lastly, we are proud that Paycor was recognized for its modern and differentiated platform with six Titan Business Intelligence awards for our best-in-class talent management solution, Paycor Smart Sourcing, and insightful analytics that help frontline leaders optimize business decisions. I would like to thank the entire Paycor team for these amazing results. With that, I'll turn the call over to Adam to discuss our financial results and guidance.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Thanks, Raul. I'll discuss our third quarter results and outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year. As a reminder, my comments related to financial measures are on a non-GAAP basis. We delivered another strong quarter with total revenues of $161 million, a 32% increase YoY, and recurring revenue growth of 23% over the prior year, marking the sixth straight quarter of achieving our 20%+ target and a testament to the consistent execution from our team. Our revenue growth continues to be driven by new business wins and cross sales, growing the number of employees on our platform to nearly 2.4 million, up 7% over the prior year, with more than 30,000 customers. As we shift our portfolio upmarket and focus our resources on clients with greater than 100 employees, our average customer size continues to increase.
Now it's 79 employees per customer, up from 75 last year. Aligned with this intentional strategic shift, we continue to see moderation in employee growth in the micro segment, while the number of employees in the mid-market and enterprise segments increased 9% YoY. This past quarter, our client's employment level was essentially flat over the prior quarter, in line with our expectations and prior guidance. As a reminder, organic employment levels among our existing customer base have typically only impacted revenue growth by a point or two outside of an anomaly like COVID. Net retention continues to trend favorably with benefits from cross sales and pricing increases, marginally offset by relative softness in our customers' organic hiring. Effective PEPM increased 15% YoY to just over $21 for the quarter.
PEPM growth is comprised of three primary drivers, including cross sales, pricing initiatives, and higher bundle adoption at the point of sale. This quarter, PEPM growth also benefited from strong form filing revenue, some of which we believe was pulled forward from the 4th quarter. We're also pleased with the progress we've made expanding our partner program, made possible by the investments in our interoperability engine. New incremental partner revenue streams such as income and employment verification services and other software partnerships are expanding services to our clients, and will increasingly contribute to our revenue growth into next year. In addition to the consistent revenue growth, we have also demonstrated steady margin expansion. Adjusted gross profit margin, excluding depreciation and amortization, improved to 80.7%, nearly 300 basis points higher than last year as we continue to scale.
Sales and marketing expense was $46 million or 29% of revenue, in line with our long-term targets, and we continue to invest as we expand our sales team nationally. On a gross basis, we invested $22 million in R&D or 14% of revenue, a similar level to last year and in line with our long-term targets. Our team continues to efficiently add new functionality through organic development, partnerships, and best-in-class product tuck-ins that create value for our clients and expand our PEPM opportunity. G&A expense was $19 million or 11.9% of revenue, down nearly 300 basis points from 14.6% in the third quarter of 2022. We have made significant progress scaling and driving down G&A as a percentage of revenue.
Year-to-date, G&A expense as a percentage of recurring revenue is more than 150 basis points lower than last year. Adjusted operating income increased nearly 60% to $39 million with margins of 24% up more than 400 basis points from 20% last year, while continuing to expand investments in sales and marketing and R&D. Shifting to the balance sheet and cash flow, we generated $24 million of adjusted free cash flow and net spend of $9 million year-to-date. We remain on track to deliver our plan to be free cash flow positive for the full fiscal year. At the close of the quarter, our cash balance increased to $83 million with no debt.
This quarter, we generated interest income of just under $11 million on average client funds of approximately $1.2 billion, yielding an effective rate of just over 370 basis points. The majority of our client funds remain in overnight accounts, which are capturing Fed funds rates faster and more completely. Our outlook on the HCM demand environment remains positive. The labor market remains tight as non-farm payrolls continue to increase, though growth has moderated. Job openings are at elevated levels and workforce participation remains low. Similar to last quarter, our guidance assumes no material change in the broader demand environment or labor market, which has been fairly consistent, and flat organic employee growth among existing customers for the balance of the year.
Please keep in mind that we had a really strong fourth quarter last year compared to our two year recurring revenue CAGR of 21% through the second quarter. We are not anticipating the same outsized form filing benefit that we had this third quarter. Separately, while we are enthusiastic about the acquisition of Verb, it will be immaterial to our operations today. With these factors in mind, we are once again raising our guidance for fiscal 2023. For the fourth quarter, we expect total revenues of between $135 million - $137 million or 24% growth at the high end of the range. Adjusted operating income of between $13 million - $14 million.
For the full year, we expect revenues of $548 million-$550 million or 20% growth at the top end of the range. We anticipate adjusted operating income of $80 million-$81 million. With respect to interest income, we expect our effective rate to increase marginally in the fourth quarter. At today's rates, we anticipate interest income will be in the range of $30 million-$32 million for the full year on average client funds balances of just over $1 billion. We remain on track to reinvest about a third of our interest income in temporary programs to accelerate our product roadmap, expand marketing programs, and invest in scaling the business. In summary, our modern HCM platform that empowers frontline leaders to improve employee engagement and retention is resonating with customers. Our team continues to execute.
We've demonstrated margin expansion as we scale the business and believe there is significant runway for further growth. As a mission-critical application still early in its transition to the cloud, we believe in the durability of the category and our opportunity to continue capturing share within the expanding $32 billion HCM market. We will open the call for questions. Operator?
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will conduct our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that 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. Once again, to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a moment while we pull for questions. Our first question comes from Mark Murphy with JP Morgan. Please state your question.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. Congrats on the very nice results. Raul, when you look at the trends across your core verticals, healthcare, manufacturing, food and bev, professional services, are the demand patterns there aligning with kind of what we see in the broader economy? For instance, what I mean is the services PMIs are showing expansion, the manufacturing PMIs are a bit softer. I'm just wondering if that if that kind of spread shows up at all in your bookings patterns or employment trends. I have a quick follow-up.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
No, we haven't seen any material changes in our performance across the four verticals. Obviously, we're still seeing a strong resurgence in food, beverage, and accommodations across the platform. Healthcare and manufacturing are really, you know, big components of, you know, our total addressable market and our overall percentage. We haven't seen any changes in our base or in our bookings.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. Yeah, understood. Okay. You know, when we look around at product ratings and reviews, they do remain ultra strong for Paycor. I'm wondering in which areas are you most excited about kind of what you see in the R&D roadmap? If you could just touch a bit on talent, that module seems to have a pretty high ceiling on the attach rate, and I'm just wondering if you, if you're looking at that and feeling like that could become an ever larger mix of the revenue stream?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. you know, obviously, the thing we're most excited about is, you know, as we continue to expand in the marketplace, we're finding that, you know, our platform is not only the easiest to use, but the most powerful, in our competitive set. We feel really good about that. From a what we're most excited about, it's clearly talent. Talent continues to grow. It is already a bigger part of our mix in workforce management. We believe talent has the capability to be as big as, you know, payroll and HR. There's so many components and, in that.
Over time, we're gonna continue to build out on that platform, and you can see that with our acquisition of Verb, that we're focused on, you know, continuing to add niche components into the ecosystem there, because there's strong demand to both source employees but also to retain employees. We believe it's going to be the next component of, you know, a core HCM module. You know, when I started in this category, we sold payroll. HR became part of payroll, you know, over the next few decades. We believe payroll, HR, and talent will be the future definition of what a core HCM platform is, with workforce management and benefits still being, you know, based on the needs of the industry that you're serving.
Mark Murphy (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you very much.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Gabriela Borges with Goldman Sachs.
Kevin Johnson (Board of Directors)
Hi, this is Kevin on for Gabriela. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to double-click on guidance. I think it implies a higher sequential decline in recurring revenue in 4Q than prior years. Just curious maybe the moving pieces in terms of how much revenue was pulled forward and how you're thinking about normalized recurring revenue growth going forward.
Adam Ante (CFO)
I mean, we've tried to be consistent with the revenue guidance that we've, you know, put out over the last couple years. A couple of the key things that sort of list off in the prepared remarks, the guidance assumes no, you know, material change in the broader demand environment in the labor market, you know, which has been fairly consistent.
The flat organic employee growth, though, is what we've been seeing more recently that's trended down over the last two quarters. We're assuming that that persists into the next quarter. Like I'd mentioned, we, you know, we did have a strong Q4 last year with some form filing revenue that we believe in this quarter isn't gonna persist into Q4. There's a little bit pulled forward from Q4. Not material, but on the margin, you're just seeing part of that as the guide into the Q4 or the fourth quarter.
Kevin Johnson (Board of Directors)
Got it. That's helpful. Looks like seller hiring is on track. Just curious how retention is holding up. You know, ramp and sales productivity, is that tracking in line with your expectations, particularly more ramp reps that have been around for a year or two? Thank you.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. On seller retention, we continue to have strong retention up significantly YoY. Productivity, you know, despite strong hiring, our overall productivity is higher. You know, what that is would reference is that the people that are anniversarying into tier two or second year or third year are doing better. Productivity continues to operate as designed.
Kevin Johnson (Board of Directors)
Thanks for taking my questions.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. Thank you, Kevin.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Samad Samana with Jefferies.
Samad Samana (Software Analyst)
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe Raul, the first one for you is, did you guys move up market and target the 100 employee+ companies? One, does it change maybe the type of seller that you're trying to hire? Two, as it relates to the micro part of the business, are you kinda like just letting that naturally maybe, you know, trend away, or is that something where you're just investing less behind and just trying to maybe think about through that dynamic?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. I'll start with the first question about sellers and seller demographics. You know, about two years ago, when, you know, or three years ago, when Chuck came on board, you know, we changed the profile over the first nine months, and we've kept that profile. That profile is really focused on someone with three to 10 years business experience, high velocity, and we wanna teach them HCM, and we wanna teach them software sales. It's been a successful model for us. We've been able to find applicants, we've been able to retain those applicants, and we've been able to drive productivity. We feel good about that, and we think that will, you know, those reps can scale, you know, through the entire segment that we're covering today.
As far as the micro segment goes, we're not intentionally declining the segment. What I would say is we're investing more resources into the 100+ segment. You know, obviously, like our peers that focus on the SMB, the low end of the SMB segment, like Paychex, etc., that low-end segment's gonna have natural churn at a higher rate than, you know, your up-market segment. We're just not replacing, you know, at the same rate that we used to replace because we're replacing a 5-employee company that leaves with a 150-employee company.
Samad Samana (Software Analyst)
Great. Then maybe just a follow-up for Adam on the margin side. I'm not an economist. I have no idea what rates will do, but it seems like the prevailing view is that at least short-term rates might have peaked. I'm curious how you're thinking about getting margin from core operating leverage versus what float's contributing and if your mindset is shifting as maybe we get a stabilization in rates overall, and how we should think about that.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, Samad. First, I would say that no, we're not gonna shift our strategy. Our strategy has intentionally been about investing some of the interest expense or interest income back into the business, but that we want to continue to drive expansion on recurring margins. You can actually see that in the adjusted gross margins on a recurring basis, expanded YoY. It, of course, expanded with interest, the interest income as well. G&A, specifically where you should see some additional leverage, we expanded that on a recurring basis. That's part of our strategy. We wanna continue to drive that going forward.
We were opportunistic about taking some of that interest income and investing it back into the marketing and expanding sales programs, and then also pulling forward the product roadmap. You see that showing up inside of our P&L today, where those on a recurring basis did not expand. Those programs were intentionally designed to be able to be turned off when we've decided that either rates have peaked or we wanna let that flow down to margin. We have that opportunity, and that's how we continue to run the business is on a recurring basis, for sure.
Samad Samana (Software Analyst)
Great. Thank you so much.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Bhavin Shah with Deutsche Bank. Please state your question.
Bhavin Shah (Director and Software Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks for taking my question, congrats on the strong results. It's nice to see the strong PEPPM growth of 15% during the quarter, and I know there's plenty of drivers behind that, but any way to kinda break down just where the sources of growth are coming from, and how should we think about kind of PEPPM growth going forward?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, I mean, we break it down into sort of three groups. We look at, you know, pricing increases that we might be putting in, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. Also as clients are buying more at the point of sale, when they come on, over the clients who are leaving on a net basis, they add additional PEPPM to the stack as well. I would say typically they represent about a third each, in terms of the total growth, each of those areas. This quarter, we saw a little bit outsize on the form filing. I think that that was a little bit it's not gonna persist in terms of the underlying PEPPM growth rate.
We've seen the PEPPM growth rate traditionally be in that sort of high single-digit, low teens. That breakdown of is typically across those thirds, again, pricing, cross-sell, up-sell, and then the new business coming in at a higher rate. We think all those can persist in the near term.
Bhavin Shah (Director and Software Equity Research Analyst)
That's super helpful. Just kind of one follow-up on some of the seller growth that you talked about earlier. You mentioned you continue to be on track for kind of 20% seller growth. How should we think about hiring plans going forward? Is 20% going forward still a good starting point? How much of that is maybe dependent on what you're seeing on the employment side or the macro perspective?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we're focused on driving top-line bookings and, you know, in order to continue to accelerate our revenue growth. We've been fairly confident that we can continue to add coverage. You know, that's what we're focused on. We're not seeing anything in the macro that would suggest that we wanna pull back on seller headcount.
Bhavin Shah (Director and Software Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Terry Tillman with Truist Securities.
Terry Tillman (Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah. Hi, Raul, Adam, and Rachel. Congrats from me as well on the quarterly performance. I guess maybe the first question, Raul, for you is if we kinda dissect, you know, these kind of higher growth tier one market opportunities that you're really putting some good new seller capacity into versus traditional strengths of like Midwest, Great Lakes and tier two, could you maybe comment? I know overall you had record bookings, but how did tier one do in terms of the strength versus your expectations and then those, you know, those markets that were your bread and butter a long time ago, tier two?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. I mean, we have fairly strong performance across the board. Clearly, tier one is over 50% of our results in new bookings. We've started to see that transition away from being dependent on just the Midwest to drive bookings growth. We're seeing more balanced participation, but 54% of our bookings is coming from tier one, we feel, you know, pretty good about that. We wanna continue to drive that forward.
Terry Tillman (Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. Thanks for quantifying that. That sounds pretty bullish. I guess maybe just to follow up, I don't know if this is for you, Raul or Adam, but, you know, I didn't have an expectation per se on Smart Sourcing and how the activation was gonna go. I think I heard in your prepared remarks, you've got about 600 customers on Smart Sourcing that you're kind of rolling out or activating. How is that versus your initial kind of thoughts on where you'd be at this point? I assume that's not for every employee, maybe that's just for the folks in kind of the recruiting side. What is that driving in terms of kind of an average customer, you know, kind of ARPU lift or ACV or contract value lift? Thank you.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, Terry. First I'd say that we're really excited about the traction that we're seeing with all of our AI products. Specifically on the Smart Sourcing, we've been able to, through the integration, get there a little faster than what we were planning for in the first place, and then the adoption and the excitement from a customer perspective has been really strong. At that 600 unit mark, we're earlier than what we had anticipated. I mean, getting there a little faster. In terms of how we're taking it to market, it's effectively $2 per employee and that's going into the bundle in terms of how we're selling it as part of our talent attraction suite now. We've seen that.
We've seen that sort of sell itself. Of course, I think at the time of the market is really great for AI. Folks are really interested, the product just hunts really well as well. I mean, it's like comes at the perfect time where folks are looking for access to talent, they're struggling with it. That sort of 2$ space is where we're taking it to market today.
Terry Tillman (Senior Research Analyst)
That's great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen. Please state your question.
Bryan Bergin (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you. Just one from us here. You know, just taking into account everything you're seeing right now in the demand environment, your kinda 4-Q view. As we think forward here for fiscal 2024, any thoughts and considerations we should be mindful for around growth and margin? Thanks.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. I mean, we haven't given anything specific to 2024 yet. I'd say that we wanna continue to see how the quarter wraps up. You know, everybody's been talking about the pressure in the second half of the year, so I think it's gonna be important for us to see what happens through June, July, August as we give guidance into 2024 for sure. I think, you know, we would say the demand environment and the opportunity for HCM broadly is still a massive opportunity, and we feel good about the long-term sort of recurring nature of the business. We're gonna continue to be bullish there and I think we're gonna wanna be consistent into next year.
We've consistently been trying to drive the 20%+ recurring revenue growth and continue to expand margins across the business. That's gonna be our strategy going into next year. We'll evaluate the demand environment, broader growth and may have to make decisions accordingly as we think about guidance into the summer months.
Bryan Bergin (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. actually, you know, I'm gonna squeeze one more in. Just on retention, can you give us a sense on kinda how free gross retention, revenue retention compared versus last year? Just any changes to be mindful of in, you know, sub-10, 10 - 1,000 or 1,000+ max?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Well, across the business, Brian, it's been really consistent. We continue to be in the high 90% range, really consistent over the last couple quarters. I'd say we have seen a little bit of that dip in that micro segment like we've talked about, right? The retention in that micro segment, where you've seen a little bit of the softening in the organic pays per control and their hiring. We are seeing that. Again, it's not affecting our overall net retention numbers. Overall, it has been, you know, consistent.
Bryan Bergin (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Thanks, Brian.
Operator (participant)
comes from Scott Berg with Needham. Please state your question.
Scott Berg (Senior Research Analyst and Managing Director)
Hey, Raul, Adam, and Rachel. Congrats on a nice quarter, thanks for taking my questions. I guess I got a couple. First, I wanted to start with your sales and marketing spend in the quarter. It had a bigger sequential jump from your second quarter number than you have for as far back as my model goes. Just wanna try to help understand what that jump in particular means, just 'cause it kind of stood out in the model.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. I mean, a bit of it is the continued press into new hiring and sales expansion, as well as some of the additional demand programs that we've been running, that we've been talking about incrementally, that we layered into in the middle of the year or beginning sort of in the first quarter. Some of those programs really were in full swing towards the end of last year in that November, December timeframe, and then really the full quarter here for the Q3 period.
Scott Berg (Senior Research Analyst and Managing Director)
Got it. Helpful. Then from a follow-up question that as we all are getting these over the last, you know, 30, 60, 90 days.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Help us understand what you think the impact would be from these newer generative AI solutions on the HCM space. I think there's a lot of opportunity. I've been sniffing around this for the last couple weeks, but I don't think the average investor really looks at HCM as maybe a space or sector that can benefit from these technologies. How do you all have a kind of viewpoint on those opportunities?
Yeah. Hey, Scott. I mean, I think that we're really excited. We've been investing in the space around AI for the last couple years. It's not a brand new idea for us, and you could see it show up in the solutions like Talenya and Smart Sourcing and how we're bringing it into applicant tracking. We're releasing some other things as well. Sentiment analysis just came out for us, helping folks write performance reviews and understanding how the, you know, the sentiment of how they're describing it to their employees and to the associates. Term prediction and the term predictor has been in the product for the last couple years as well, so that's been a place that we've been playing.
Something that's coming out real recent or real soon is job description generators. You'll see some more stuff from us around enabling our customers to be able to write job descriptions more quickly and more effectively and line it up across, you know, industry best practices. There's a couple other things that are on the come for us as well. We're thinking about it, of course, inside of the product, but then how we can use it internally, you know, for our infrastructure, for productivity, to drive, you know, better assist internally for our customer support reps. We're really excited about the opportunity and we're continuing to, you know, leverage the investments we've been making for the last couple years to continue to accelerate it.
Scott Berg (Senior Research Analyst and Managing Director)
Great. That's all I have. Thanks for taking my questions.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Thanks, Scott.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Brad Reback with Stifel. Please state your question.
Brad Reback (Managing Director and Technology Equity Analyst)
Great. Thanks very much. I know you guys haven't guided to next year yet, but as we think about the piece parts of the business with recurring being guided to in sort of the upper teens this quarter, and I know there's some difficult comps because of the pull forward, but is that a good starting place roughly for the recurring revenue for next year? Thanks.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Hey, Brad. Yeah, I mean, we'll clearly give the guidance, when we get into the first quarter and we'll shape it up. Overall, I would say our strategy to continue to drive to 20% recurring over the right period is still our strategy and continue to drive margin expansion. Any one quarter, you know, we're gonna have to, you know, We'll take a different level of diligence in terms of how we guide to it. But our strategy is not changing right now. In the face, of course, of a changing demand environment, we'll have to be considered about that.
You know, the longer that we have to take a look at that, see what's happening, in the broader macro environment, I think that's gonna be important for us as we think about it. The broader strategy and the composition and the structure of the business, that's not shifting in any material way in the near term to make us think differently about the opportunity.
Brad Reback (Managing Director and Technology Equity Analyst)
That's great. Thanks very much.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Thanks, Brad.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Brian Peterson (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks, guys. Also my congrats on the strong quarter. Just one for me. Raul, you mentioned the partners that are ramping up. You know, I'm just curious, you know, as you scale the kind of geographic presence in the product portfolio, does the ramp to revenue from those partners become quicker, or is it the kind of the same education? I'd love to maybe un-unpack that a little bit. Thanks, guys.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, I mean, there are some software partners where we're that are going to take a little bit different of timing as we layer them in, I think, than what you might see historically, in the market. You know, we have talked a little bit about some of the software partnerships that we're creating, and they're really exciting both, you know, for our customers and then the opportunity to continue to expand the services that we're providing to our customers. Those relationships take a little longer to stand up. It is part of a little bit about what we've been seeing, especially in the enterprise space. Some of those just broader partnerships take a little bit longer.
We'll bleed into 2024, like we had mentioned in the prepared remarks, you know, sort of really ramping up revenue, into 2024 and beyond.
Brian Peterson (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. Thanks, Adam.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Mark Marcon with Baird. Please state your question.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. Number one, with regards to talent, Raul, you mentioned, you know, eventually it could end up being as big as payroll or HR. How penetrated is talent right now within the existing client base? What's the plot for, you know, going back to existing clients, to ramp that up?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, it is. You know, we're in the early innings of cross-selling talent into the base. As we've continued to expand the suite, we have a great opportunity to cross-sell it back into our clients. We have a team of over, you know, of cross-sellers that focuses on, you know, bringing these new solutions into our client base. We continue to see, you know, good penetration there, which is driving. It's one of the three components that Adam talked about that lifts our PEPPM and we're continuing to see that growth.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
Great. Can you talk a little bit about in terms of the recurring revenue growth, what percentage was from, you know, new logos as opposed to cross-sells? Obviously, there's form filings in there, but in terms of just thinking about YoY over the course of this last quarter.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, yeah. What we see, Mark, is typically about a third of the growth that comes from the PEPPM growth is from cross-sell, upsell opportunities. That's how you might think about that 15%. It's a little less than a third because we sort of outsized in a couple of other areas this quarter. But that's typically what we see from the growth in the cross-sell, upsells.
Mark Marcon (Senior Research Analyst)
Great. Just the implied recurring revenue guide as, you know, if we're gonna be $30 million-$32 million, if we're assuming $32 million in terms of floating come for the year, how much was the form revenue in the year ago quarter relative to what you're expecting this year?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah, I mean, what we normally see, especially in the third quarter, is that, you know, we're generating high teens of our total recurring and other revenue is related to form filings, and then you get sort of low single digits in, you know, non Q3 quarters. We were definitely at the high side of that here for Q3, and then we'll be maybe a point or two lower in the Q4 period. Which, you know, typically as we look back, it just tends to be a little bit more moderated in the Q3 period.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse. Please state your question.
Kevin McVeigh (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
Great. Thanks. Thank you. Is there any way to think about the growth in the PEPPM relative to the average client size? I mean, it seems like the average client, I think, around 79 employees, up from 75. How much of that is driving the PEPPM growth as opposed to, you know, just the natural evolution of the client size as opposed to maybe, you know, other factors?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, actually, you know, smaller clients have a much larger PEPPM. What we see in the micro space is that those clients tend to pay, you know, 2 to 3 times as much on a PEPPM basis because the pricing strategy has, like, a larger base fee, right, in those smaller clients. But what's happening really is that as new clients are coming on, they're buying a more complete part of the solution. They, they tend to adopt more, products. They pick up the talent, solution, and we have a bundle strategy that not all of our clients historically have. As we continue to grow the average client size, those clients are coming on relative to their similarly sized peers, and they're buying more products. That's really the dynamic.
It's not necessarily that the PEPPM increases. You know, the larger clients tend to get a little bit of scale, as they have pricing power.
Kevin McVeigh (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
Got it. As you drive more ChatGPT, are you gonna be able to slow the rate of sales force hire and to still maintain the growth? I guess, is there gonna be more efficiency in the sales force as this AI kind of permeates itself? You know, if you keep the rate at sales force growth constant, it accelerates revenue overall? How should we think about that?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. The way we think about it is, you know, we are still expanding out our sales force, but we're, you know, making great progress. We're getting closer to the point where we can start to decelerate hiring over, it could be next year or the year after, and drive more productivity. That productivity will be through, you know, programs that can help make the sales team more productive, and continue to drive productivity, whether that's through selling more product, whether that's through having more tenure, continued acceleration of a very strong win rate. You know, there's a lot of different components that will drive individual productivity.
That's, you know, kind of how we map out the future is, you know, as we have every territory covered, that we can then flex to productivity, which would yield, you know, more margin back to the business.
Kevin McVeigh (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)
Makes sense. Thank you.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yep.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Daniel Jester with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Daniel Jester (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Hey. good evening. Thanks for taking my question. can you just spend a moment walking us through how you see the regulatory environment for AI with regards to hiring and some of the performance reviews and the like? It feels like there's, you know, a patchwork of state and local kind of rules that are being formed around this. I just wonder, you know, as you introduce this into the toolkit for your customers, you know, what's their concern level about the regulatory environment and, you know, how much of an impact should we think that has going forward?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. A great question. Obviously, it's on everyone's top of mind, you know, and we've been really thoughtful about how we do it. We're on the front end, you know, we're really taking feedback from the hiring managers on what they're looking for. It's just the source, it's not the select, which is, you know, an area that has far more scrutiny. Then secondly, as far as performance reviews, it's really about helping coach the frontline leader on how their performance review is coming across. Is the verbiage positive? Is it negative? Does it match the sentiment of the review that you're trying to write? We've been very, you know, careful on the technology that we use.
Obviously, you know, our legal team, you know, is continually evaluating, different laws and regulations to make sure that we, you know, comply with all those, you know, jurisdictions. Ultimately, we feel like we're in a good place, and the products that we're selecting, are kind of, focused on helping frontline leaders be more effective in their jobs, and not really about who to select.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, Dan, you know, as we think about things like candidate sourcing, and we do think that it's important that we understand the AI, that there's transparency, and that we're applying it ethically, and people understand what any sort of biases may or may not exist inside of those models. It's complicated, right? So I think we're working intentionally about it, we're interested in how regulators are gonna come out more explicitly, whether they're state, whether it's federal, and how we can help to provide that level of transparency to our customers so they feel good about it. I would say that we don't hear it as a primary concern of folks. When they see the product, they're really excited about it, that's not what drives us forward, is...
I mean, we want to, like I said, continue to build AI responsibly into the product and ethically and make sure people understand. It's especially important for us being an HCM, where we're focused, you know, almost entirely on people and leaders.
Daniel Jester (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. Appreciate the detailed answer there. Maybe just a second one. Can you remind me where we are on the journey from shifting customers from the per paycheck model to the PEPM model? Where are we there? Thank you.
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. You know, most of that shift has really been focused in the, what we would call the SMB market, under 50 in the micro segment. We have moved the majority of those clients over to, you know, our bundle strategies and subscription models. We're not gonna take that sort of direct approach in the mid-market and when we get up into our enterprise clients. That will take longer, just because we wanna be more intentional about, you know, those specific contracts and how their, you know, their current billing status is. We'll migrate those over time when it's right for the client, when they're interested in more products or when they're evaluating.
We're sort of over 50%, well over 60% in terms of the portfolio today of how much revenue's going through those bundles. That will continue to progress as we, you know, begin moving into the mid-market enterprise clients.
Daniel Jester (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Robert Simmons with D.A. Davidson. Please state your question.
Robert Simmons (Senior Research Analyst)
Hey, thanks for taking my question. Speaking of float revenue, I was wondering, you know, given how rates seem to be stabilizing, when do you think float revenue growth kind of normalizes and approximates recurring revenue growth?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. I think, you know, next year rates will. If rates were to be normal or flat, I should say, over where they sit today, there will still be some growth into next year. Of course, that's. There's a lot of variables around that in terms of where the rate environment goes ultimately. If they were to sit in at this rate, they would effectively be growing over the Q1, well, the first quarter primarily. With the 25 basis point increase, I mean, there's marginal growth here that we're gonna see just a couple more dollars into Q4. You're not gonna see much change there. Next year, they would sort of flatten out.
Of course, if you look at the yield curve, I think the market has a different perspective on what the Fed's gonna do. We're not gonna try to be aggressive there and chase rate. We're just gonna sort of deal with it so that we don't put ourselves in any sort of unhedged position.
Robert Simmons (Senior Research Analyst)
Got it. Great. Can you talk about what you're seeing competitively, changes from, what some of your competitors are doing in terms of price, in terms of offerings, everything like that?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah. There really hasn't been any shift in the competitive environment, you know, from last quarter. I would say it's fairly static.
Robert Simmons (Senior Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you very much.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Steve Enders with Citi. Please state your question.
Steve Enders (Equity Research Analyst)
All right, great. Thanks for taking the questions here. Appreciate the strength in the bookings or new bookings in the quarter. Just wondering, I guess, how did that kind of translate across the different customer sizes and, how should we think about, you know, the upper market execution in this past quarter to drive that to drive that strength?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, all three of our market segments had really strong quarters. Our cross-sell team, our SMB team and our, you know, mid-market team. Our enterprise segment continues to grow at a really strong rate. We had a really across the board strong quarter in all the segments. Our win rates, you know, remain strong. Our deal pipeline, you know, is as strong as it's ever been. We feel really good about where we are in the demand environment.
Steve Enders (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. I guess kind of digging into that, to that last comment around the pipeline and the deal environment is, I think if I remember it from last quarter, maybe the micro segment was a little bit weaker, and maybe it was just on the employee side that there was some softness there. I guess any kind of view into where the pipeline is across those various segments and if you're seeing maybe some of that continued weakness on the micro side of it?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah, I mean. To put it in perspective, Steve, like if you think about the overall composition of bookings, you know, on average, you know, you're gonna get about 5% of our overall bookings in the SMB segment under 50. You're gonna get about 15% in cross-sell, and the remaining 80% is gonna be in our mid-market sales, which goes from 50 employees up in the, to the low end of enterprise. That's not changing. It's been fairly consistent, the mix. You know, what. Like the micro segment, whether, you know, the softness we had was more in our installed base, where they're, they weren't seeing organic growth in their clients. By and large, you know, we're not seeing any changes in our bookings distribution.
Steve Enders (Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. Okay. Very helpful context there. Last question for me, and I'll, and I'll jump back in, is just, you know, as we think about the bundle, you know, appreciate the talent has been resonating a little bit more there. Any way to kinda think about across the new customers coming in, how much is that kind of new bundle or a broader bundle being adopted today versus maybe where it was a year ago?
Adam Ante (CFO)
Yeah. Hey, we continue to see the attach rate increase. Versus a year ago, I'd say that there's probably 5 - 10 point change positively. It's not a massive movement on the attach rate, but it continues to trend, you know, positively. It does contribute pretty well to the overall ADS and the PEPPM that we're picking up, part of what's driving the overall, you know, effective PEPPM rate increase.
Steve Enders (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, perfect. Thanks for taking the questions.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Jackson Ader with SVB MoffettNathanson. Please state your question.
Jackson Ader (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Great. Good evening, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. The first one, Adam, you made the comment about larger customers getting a bit more, you know, scale on their PEPM. I'm just curious how much pricing, like how much does like for like pricing between you guys and your competitors end up becoming a factor in customer decisions? Is there any difference either in the mid-market versus enterprise, how much pricing plays a factor?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Well, I think, it's Raul. I mean, clearly, larger customers have more pricing power, and, you know, just in sales in general in any category, right? So we see, you know, PEPPM decline with size. So that's kinda natural, and that's just. You know, nothing has changed. It's not accelerating. It's very similar as it's always been. What I would say is every deal, is competitive and individually negotiated. So, that's why you see a difference between, you know, maximum PEPPM, available PEPPM, and realized PEPPM. That's one component, right? One component is how many modules they buy. Do they buy the whole suite or a part of the suite? The second component would be the discounting component.
I think, by and large, that pricing has been consistent, and we've seen no behavioural changes in any of our competitors.
Jackson Ader (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. Well, I actually have a follow-up to that, though. Because we've been hearing from ADP that their, you know, their retention rates have been kinda ticking up, and I'm just curious, is there a possibility for you guys to use maybe pricing as more of a weapon in order to, you know, take more share from some legacy incumbents?
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
I mean, that hasn't been a strategy that we've gone after. We've really been focused on the value prop and what we deliver. I think, you know, how people calculate retention is different, right? I would suggest that, you know, that's a revenue retention number based on a lot of businesses that have nothing to do with what Paycor does at ADP.
Jackson Ader (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Gotcha. Okay, noted. Thank you.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Thanks, Jackson.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from Matt Pfau with William Blair. Please state your question.
Matt Pfau (Equity Research Analyst)
Hey, great. Just wanted to ask one on the Verb acquisition. Maybe what attracted to you with Verb versus other options, and why did you feel that this was an important hole to plug in your platform? Thanks.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Yeah, a couple things. One is, you know, from a overall demand perspective, there's an ongoing shift from LMS to microlearning. You know, most of, you know, my three children have the attention span of, like, three minutes long. We wanna make sure that, you know, we're meeting, you know, the market, right? You know, the days of 30-minute online LMS training courses, you know, is probably, you know, gonna be gone. We wanna be part of the next generation of technology and how do you provide bite-sized chunks to people and then allow them to reflect and learn on it. Secondly, all female leadership team, that's amazing. We were really excited about being able to add them to our team.
The combination of a really cool modern product that is meeting the needs of, you know, people in the workforce and that our leaders can use to coach their employees to better outcomes, and a great leadership team, is why we decided, it was the perfect fit for us.
Matt Pfau (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the floor to Raul Villar for closing remarks.
Raul Villar, Jr. (President, Director and CEO)
Thank you again for joining our conference call this evening. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our associates for contributing to these excellent results. We are encouraged by the underlying fundamentals of the business and remain focused on executing our strategy. We look forward to connecting with you at the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference in Boston and Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference in New York over the coming weeks. Have a great night, everyone, and happy birthday to my sister, Melissa.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. That concludes today's conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good night.