Roper Technologies - Q1 2024
April 26, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning! The Roper Technologies conference call will now begin. Today's call is being recorded. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, p lease press star zero to signal a conference specialist. I would now like to turn the call over to Zack Moxcey, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Zack Moxcey (VP of Investor Relations)
Good morning, and thank you all for joining us as we discuss the first quarter of 2024 financial results for Roper Technologies. Joining me on the call this morning are Neil Hunn, President and Chief Executive Officer; Jason Conley, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Brandon Cross, Vice President and Principal Accounting Officer; and Shannon O'Callaghan, Vice President of Finance. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our financial results. The press release also includes replay information for today's call. We have prepared slides to accompany today's call, which are available through the webcast and are also available on our website. Now, if you please turn to page two. We begin with our safe harbor statement.
During the course of today's call, we will make forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties as described on this page, in our press release, and in our SEC filings. You should listen to today's call in the context of that information. Now, please turn to page three. Today, we will discuss our results primarily on an adjusted non-GAAP and continuing operations basis. For the first quarter, the difference between our GAAP results and adjusted results consist of the following items: amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, financial impacts associated with minority investments, and lastly, transaction-related expenses associated with the completed acquisitions. Reconciliations can be found in our press release and in the appendix of this presentation on our website. Now, if you please turn to page four, I'll hand the call over to Neil. After our prepared remarks, we will take questions from our telephone participants.Neil?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Thank you, Zack, and thanks to everyone for joining our call. We're looking forward to sharing our first quarter results and our increased outlook for the year. As we turn to page four, you can see the topics we'll cover today. I'll start by highlighting our strong performance in Q1. Jason will then go through our financial results in more detail, review our balance sheet, including our M&A capacity, and finally, our notable cash flow performance. Then, I'll walk through our segment highlights and discuss our increased guidance for the full year and initiate our Q2 guidance. After our closing remarks, we'll open the floor for your questions. So let's go ahead and get started. Next slide, please. As we turn to page five, three key takeaways for today's call. First, we delivered another strong quarter results. Second, we're increasing our full-year outlook.
And third, we continue to be very well-positioned relative to capital deployment. The double click of it. We grew total revenue by 14%, organic revenue by 8%, and EBITDA by 16%, with EBITDA margin expanding by 60 basis points to 40.2%. We grew DEPS by 13% to 441, beating our guidance range. We grew free cash flow 15% year-over-year, with free cash flow margins of 31%. We also completed the acquisition of Procare Solutions, a leading provider of software and integrated payments for the early childhood education market, for $1.75 billion. Procare is a great addition to Roper. We remain very excited about the business and are especially pleased with the initial results and progress we made during the onboarding process.
We're also increasing our full year 2024 guidance for total revenue, organic revenue, and DEPS, reflecting our strong momentum and continued confidence in our outlook. We continue to be very active in the M&A market, an environment that continues to improve, and one where we have a very large pipeline of high quality and attractive opportunities. Net-net, we're quite bullish about our ability to be active on the M&A front this year. As you can see, we had a great start to 2024, and we're well-positioned to deliver yet another strong year of performance and growth. Now, let me turn the call over to Jason. Jason?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Thanks, Neil. Let's dive right in on slide six. Q1 was an excellent first installment to 2024. Revenue was 14% over prior year to $1.68 billion. Organic growth of 8% was led by double-digit growth at our TEP segment and solid mid-single-digit growth across our application software and network software segments. Of note, organic recurring revenue grew 7%, despite known headwinds at our Freight match and Foundry businesses. Acquisitions contributed six points of growth, led by Syntellis, which is a large bolt-on for our Strata platform that closed in Q3 of last year, and Procare, which closed at the end of February. Regarding Procare, integration is going really well, and we're excited to work with JoAnn Kintzel and her team to drive continued growth and innovation in the attractive early childhood education market.
EBITDA was $676 million, which was 16% over prior year. EBITDA incremental margin of 44% translated into EBITDA margin of 40.2% and represented 60 basis points of expansion. This was fueled by gross margin expansion of 100 basis points to 70.3%. Our market-leading businesses compete on customer NFC and deliver demonstrable value to their customers, which we consistently realize in our high gross margin profile. DEPS of $4.41 was above our guidance of $4.30-$4.34. Importantly, free cash flow was strong at $513 million, up 15% over prior year, and our trailing twelve-month free cash flow surpassed $2 billion for the first time in Roper's history. Looking over a fouryear horizon, revenue and EBITDA CAGRs are 13% on a quarterly basis.
For free cash flow, we take a broader lens and a review on a trailing twelve-month basis, which generated an 11% CAGR over this period. Adjusting for cash tax payments related to Section 174, which went into effect and impacted the periods, the current period's free cash flow by $80 million, the normalized CAGR is 13% over this period. For 2024, we still expect free cash flow margins of 30% or more. With that, we can turn to slide seven to talk about our balance sheet. Following our Procare acquisition, our net debt to EBITDA ratio came in at 2.9x at quarter end. Our revolver, which provides us with $3.5 billion of immediate liquidity, was utilized to fund the Procare acquisition, bringing the drawn balance to $1.75 billion.
With strong, consistent cash generation and a well-positioned balance sheet, we have the capacity to deploy $4 billion or more towards high-quality acquisitions. I'll reiterate our commitment to remain a solid investment-grade issuer, as access to investment-grade capital markets is fundamental to Roper strategy. In terms of what we're seeing in deal markets, our pipeline of acquisition opportunities is growing and quite attractive. As always, we will remain patient and disciplined in allocating capital to opportunities with highest risk-adjusted returns for our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it back over to Neil to talk through our segment detail and updated guidance.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Thanks, Jason. As we turn to page nine, let's review our application software segment results. Revenues here grew by 18% in total, and organic revenue grew by 6%. EBITDA margins were 43.3%. We experienced strong performance across this portfolio of businesses. We'll start with Deltek, our enterprise software business serving the government contracting, architecture, engineering, and construction contractor markets. Deltek continued to grow its SaaS solutions, especially within their private sector markets. Importantly, in the quarter, Deltek launched a new Gen AI-powered digital assistant, Dela, which will be integrated across Deltek's core software applications. We also welcome Bob Hughes as the new CEO of Deltek. Bob brings a wealth of software and leadership experience to the role, having most recently served as the Chief Customer and Strategy Officer at UKG. Bob, we're thrilled to be working with you.
We also welcome Mike Corkery into his new role as a full-time group executive within Roper. For those who do not know, Mike was Deltek's CEO for nearly 12 years, more than spanning our entire ownership period. Mike, thank you for building a tremendous market-leading company. Not only has Deltek grown multifold during your leadership tenure, the underlying quality has massively improved, and the culture has never been better. Thank you for everything you've accomplished, and we're very much looking forward to working with you in your new leadership capacity at Roper. Aderant continues to perform incredibly well in the market and had another great quarter with continued SaaS momentum and Gen AI-focused innovation. Vertafore also performed well with solid growth in their ARR base. Turning to PowerPlan, our financial planning and tax software business, serving the heavy fixed asset industries.
PowerPlan was impressive in the quarter and grew its ARR with strong customer retention and adoption of its new SaaS solution. Great job here. Our healthcare IT businesses, led by Strata and Data Innovations, were also strong in the quarter. We're especially pleased to see the solid go-to-market execution at both businesses. Finally, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, we completed the acquisition of Procare Solutions, which is off to a good start and complements this segment with a higher organic growth profile. For the remaining three quarters of the year, we expect to see mid-single-digit organic revenue growth for this segment. Please turn with us to page 10.
Revenues in our network software segment grew 5% in total and 4% on an organic basis, despite the fact we continue to experience pressure with our freight matching businesses and the impact on The Foundry related to the recent actor strike and writer strike. EBITDA margins continued to be strong at 55.9% and grew about 10% year-over-year. As we dig into the details a bit, we'll start with our freight matching businesses, DAT and Loadlink, which declined slightly as expected, due to the challenging freight market conditions that affected each of these businesses. As is typical for Roper, we invest for long-term, sustainable, and improving levels of organic growth. In DAT's case, we're leading the industry with Gen AI-enabled fraud detection and prevention tools. As many know, fraud across the transport ecosystem remains a cause of great concern and economic loss.
Turning to Foundry, which continues to innovate at an impressive clip, both in terms of major product enhancements and customer productivity-based AI ML innovations. That said, Foundry declined a bit in the quarter as expected, given the recent industry strikes. Notwithstanding the headwinds at DAT, Loadlink, and Foundry, we grew 4% organically in this segment based on the strength across the balance of this portfolio. Specifically, iPipeline, our life insurance and annuities network software business, had strong renewals, customer expansions, and market activity, especially in the annuities market. ConstructConnect continued its solid march of improved financial results and enhanced its network value with Gen AI-powered solutions. And MHA had a strong quarter, benefiting from increased operational focus and rigor, revenue timing related to one of MHA's data partnerships, and improvement in senior care occupancy rates.
For the balance of the year, although we did a touch better than expected in the first quarter, we continue to expect to see low single-digit organic revenue growth for this segment based on the continued difficult freight market conditions and our view that Foundry's recovery will be extended through this year. Now please turn to page 11, and let's review our TEP segment's results. Revenues here grew 17% on an organic basis, and EBITDA margins remained strong at 34.3%. Neptune continued to see notable customer demand, in particular for their ultrasonic meters and meter data management software. In short, Neptune delivered another great quarter of growth. Verathon had very strong growth across all three of its product families and executed at an exceptional level in the quarter. Of note, Verathon had a record number of large account wins, further demonstrating their market momentum.
Great job by Team Verathon. We also had strong execution and growth led by healthcare end markets from CIVCO, Inovonics, IPA, and rf IDEAS. As we turn to the outlook for the balance of the year, let us remind you that we expected to have a stronger first quarter, which we delivered. That said, for the balance of the year, we expect to see organic revenue for this segment to be in the high single digits area. Now please turn with us to page 13. Now let's review our increased full year 2024 guidance and discuss our Q2 outlook. Based on our strong Q1 results, enterprise momentum, and our confidence in our outlook, we are raising our guidance for 2024. For the full year, we now expect total revenue to grow in the 12% area, up from our initial guide of 11%-12%.
Organic revenue to grow about 6%, up from 5%-6% originally, and Adjusted DEPS be in the range of $18.05-$18.25, up from $17.85-$18.15 previously. Our guidance continues to assume a full year effective tax rate in the 21%-22% range. For Q2, we expect Adjusted DEPS to be in the range of $4.42-$4.46. Now please turn with us to page 14, and we'll open it up for your questions. As per custom, we'll conclude with the same key takeaways with which we started. First, we delivered another strong quarter results. Second, we're increasing our outlook for the full year. And third, we're very well positioned relative to capital deployment. For the quarter, we delivered double-digit growth in revenue, EBITDA, Adjusted DEPS, and free cash flow with margin expansion and very strong cash flow conversion.
Also in the quarter, we completed the acquisition of Procare Solutions, which is a great addition to our enterprise and our application software segment. We're increasing our full-year 2024 guidance for total revenue, organic revenue, and DEPS, reflecting our confidence in our outlook and continued momentum. Finally, we continue to maintain a strong financial position with $4 billion+ of capacity for capital deployment. The M&A markets are very active. We have a very robust pipeline of attractive acquisition opportunities that we're excited to pursue with our unbiased and disciplined approach. We're quite bullish about our ability to execute this part of our strategy over the course of 2024. Now, as we turn to your questions, and if you could flip to the final slide, our strategic flywheel, we'd like to remind everyone that what we do at Roper is simple.
We compound cash flow over a long arc of time by operating a portfolio of market-leading, application-specific, and vertically oriented businesses. Once a company is part of Roper, we operate a decentralized environment so our businesses can compete and win based on customer intimacy. We coach our businesses on how to structurally improve their organic growth rates and underlying business quality. Finally, we run a centralized, process-driven capital deployment strategy that focuses on finding the next great business to add to our cash flow compounding flywheel. Taken together, we compound our cash flow over a long arc of time in the mid-teens area. With that, we'd like to thank you for your continued interest and support and open the floor to your questions.
Operator (participant)
We will now go to our question-and-answer portion of the call. We request that our callers limit their questions to one main question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing the star key, followed by the digit one on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then the digit two. Again, we request that callers limit their questions to one main question and one follow-up. Your first question comes from Julian Mitchell from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, good morning.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Good morning.
Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Good morning. Maybe just the first question on the network software division. So the freight markets, you know, I think there was a fairly sort of downbeat outlook from some of the U.S. trucking companies in the past couple of weeks. Sounds like-
that business for you on freight matching is playing out as expected. Are we expecting sort of down low single digit for the balance of the year, in the freight match business? Is that what you're kind of dialing in? And any comments on where we are on the sort of carrier consolidation?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Why don't you take Jason first one, I'll take the second one.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. So Julian, it's like you said, it's about playing out as we expected, down low singles for the year. Not much change from our perspective, last quarter. So yeah, that's kind of the current guiding assumptions.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
For us, on the carrier side, it's actually been pretty stable for the last several months. It hasn't improved, it's just been stable. When you really take that stability and you put it against the prior year comp, that's what drives to the outlook for the year.
Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
That's helpful. Thank you. Then just dialing in on the second quarter EPS guide. I think normally you'd have, you know, maybe a sort of a 3%-4% type sequential increase in earnings in the second quarter. Looks like it's basically flat at the guide midpoint for this Q2. Is there anything going on, sort of sequentially with any of the segment sales or margins that's abnormal or something below the line that's weighing on that?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
No, not really. I mean, we feel good about, you know, our guidance being raised for the full year. And, you know, if you look, we look back a quarter ago, our, you know, our Q2 guide is consistent with what we thought, you know, 90 days ago. So I think if you go back to, like, 2021 and 2022, we were actually flat Q1 to Q2 on a, like, a segment EBITDA basis, and that's usually the normal motion for us. Then last year, we did move up sequentially, but that was driven by some, a surge at TEP. You know, there were some strong deliveries that led by Verathon, and then this year, you know, Verathon's coming out strong out of the gate, so we don't have that dynamic this year.
And then usually, AS steps down a little bit in earnings due to some Vertafore timing, but we didn't have that dynamic last year. So, you know, I think we feel good about sort of the progression from Q1 to Q2, you know, on an operating basis. And, you know, in terms of the second half, we'll, you know, we'll start to see the accretion of Procare, with this... You know, it's got sequential growth throughout the year, and then we'll have, of course, reduced interest expense as we pay down the revolver. So, you know, feel pretty good about the progression going throughout 2024.
Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thank you.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Thank you.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Deane Dray (Managing Director)
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Happy Friday. Good morning.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Good morning.
Deane Dray (Managing Director)
Great. Hey, since it's the newest addition to the team, on Procare, just some data points. So what was the contribution in the quarter? And remind us about any kind of seasonality on the cash flow, because it is tied to education, so we know that it tends to be seasonal. And any sort of, like, first 100-day plans for the business.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. So, I can hit that, Deane. So it was about where we expected. We had a couple more days in, but it was, you know, a little over $20 million in revenue. Came in, you know, sort of about as we expected in terms of EBITDA margin in the mid 30 or so. And then, you know, I think what we from a cash flow perspective, you know, it's more of a monthly sort of payment stream, so we don't get. You know, it's not like Frontline, where they've got big renewals and schools are paying them. This is, you know, childhood education centers that are just sort of paying on a monthly basis. Of course, there's a payment stream there, too, that we get that comes on a monthly basis.
It's more consistent throughout the year. I think, you know, we're just off to a really good start in terms of the integration work. Of course, the teams are quickly up and running from a financial standpoint. You know, we're working through all the normal integration points around insurance and cyber and things like that. You know, and then beyond that, we've been engaged in weekly conversations on progress against, you know, some defined value creation levers that we had around growth, and those are going really well. You know, the super collaborative teams digging in, and, you know, we're really on track for the milestones we agreed upon right after close. Just feeling really good about the momentum there.
Deane Dray (Managing Director)
The normal cadence for the monthly is revenue cadence is approximately what?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
It's consistent, right? So it's just if you think about software is obviously, you know, consistent month to month. And then the payments, they might get a little bit more at the beginning of the year, but it's modest. It's pretty consistent throughout the year. Of course, they're growing, right? So it's gonna. You know, it'll go ramp up sequentially throughout the year. But just overall, in terms of a business model, it's pretty consistent throughout the year. Not a lot of seasonality.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Deane, if you're comparing this to Frontline, where most of the cash flow comes in Q3, this is not that. This is much more linear throughout the course of the year.
Deane Dray (Managing Director)
That's great. Then, just a follow-up on the fastest growth platform right now is surprisingly on the tech-enabled products, you know, the Neptune. It's just how... what's expectations for this growth rate? How much of this. 'Cause we see it similar numbers at, like, Badger Meter, so it looks in line, but how much of this is market growth versus any sort of share gains that you might be realizing?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Yeah, so for a long, Deane, as you know, Neptune, over a long arc of time, is a slow and steady share gainer for sure. That's, I think that proves out in all the market data we see and continue to research and get. Relative short-term performance, we think it's a combination of a couple things. First is there has been there's been a they're working through unprecedented amounts of backlog, so that has certainly happened. But then, when COVID happened, and in Northeast in particular, where a lot of the meter sets are inside people's homes versus outside, there was basically a stall in that activity. Yet the customers, our customers, still have obligations to stay on their maintenance schedule.
So if there was a year, a year and a half years of slower maintenance schedule, sort of execution, that's, that's being deployed now. We think that's happening over a three or four year period. So if you will, maybe five or five years demand squeezed into four. So that's the market dynamic that's driving some of the growth, that we're very much in the midst of. Expect that to continue well into next year. Final thing I'd say is, there's just nice momentum on the new technologies that Neptune has in the field, both in terms of solid-state, ultrasonic meters, both on the resi side and large commercial side, as well as just the cellular and the meter data management software that we have that really helps our customers have better network connectivity.
Deane Dray (Managing Director)
Thank you.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Joe Vruwink with Baird. Your line is now open.
Joe Vruwink (Senior Research Analyst)
Hi. Great. Hi, everyone. When you consider the businesses that serve clients in the public sector, how are they planning for the balance of the year, just particularly around the election and then the end of stimulus in certain cases? I ask about stimulus not because a business like Frontline has benefited from that, but does just the shifting of revenue sources for a school district perhaps cause a pause in their decision-making?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Yeah. So, it depends on which, you know, part of the market you're talking about. Education, you know, our Frontline business was not and has not been a meaningful beneficiary of ESSER funding, and so as that is coming to an end, we've not been a direct beneficiary of that. There might be some secondhand or thirdhand benefit by that, just having the school districts having a lot of money over the last years and feeling good about life. But we don't believe anything that we sell has been directly funded by ESSER funding. So, the pipeline coverage for Frontline. First of all, Frontline had a very solid first quarter of bookings. Their pipeline coverage for second quarter is very good, and so we're cautiously optimistic there.
The other part of the market that we've talked about is on government, the U.S. federal government contractors at the enterprise class, the largest customers, the largest government contractors. Just with the uncertainty of government spending, that has been a more tepid macro environment and slower on the bookings front on the largest of the customers. The SMB portion of that market actually has been quite strong for Deltek. So if you want to talk about other parts of the report, probably happy to do it, but Jason, anything you want to add to that? Joe, are you still there?
Joe Vruwink (Senior Research Analyst)
Yeah, yeah. No, those are the two that I had in mind. And then if I can ask, I guess this is a pretty targeted segment-level question, but the recurring revenue sources for application software really look like they jumped this period, maybe about two points more in growth contribution than typically you see there. Just, what drives that particular part of the business?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, Joe, that's the ProCare business coming online, right? So we talked about 75% or so of their revenue is payments, and so that's showing up in the recurring line.
Joe Vruwink (Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. That makes sense. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Scott Davis with Melius Research. Please, your line is now open.
Scott Davis (Chairman and CEO)
Hey, good morning, guys.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Morning, Scott.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Morning.
Scott Davis (Chairman and CEO)
I think this was more positive in tone on the M&A side, commentary-wise, than I think we usually get from you guys. It's- you're never really that bearish. But talk to us about a couple things, a little bit more color there. Is it the number of deals? Is it the valuations have gotten more interesting? Is it, you know, the competition on the buy side has gotten a little bit better? I mean, just drill down a little bit into that, it'd be helpful. And kind of a natural secondary is, you know, you say $4 billion-$5 billion price. Is that enough? And would you consider tapping equity markets if the deal flow was gonna be even more robust?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Got a lot in there. Jason and I will do our best to cover all the points. If we don't cover one, you know, hold us accountable, I'll bring it back, bring us back to it. Yeah, we're very optimistic at the moment. I think it's for really all the reasons you talk about. There are a very large number of deals in the market and coming to the market. We have very good relationships with both the sponsors and all the investment banker intermediaries. The bankers' pipelines are full. And so there is just a lot of stuff coming. Why is that? There was essentially not a lot of stuff for 18 or so months prior. In the private equity world, it's all about DPI and getting money back to the LPs.
The LP pressure has mounted to the point where they want the capital returned, and so we're just gonna compress, you know, two and a half years' worth of deals in a year, a year and a half, and so there's gonna be a lot of activity. Relative to the competition point, because of this, it's this is, you know, our belief, my belief for a window of time here, that the asset class of private equity that we compete with is gonna be a net seller of assets versus a net buyer here for a period of time. So, if Procare is an indication for what's to come, then the competition is less. It's not without competition, but it is less than we've seen in prior periods, which leads to valuation.
I mean, you look at the Procare valuation. I mean, that was a very high growth, very high-quality business at a very reasonable price. I think it's really a combination of the volume of deals and maybe our view on competition. Also, I mean, any of this, the number of deals is almost for sure gonna happen. This concept of competition could change any moment, but that's our, that's what's fueling sort of our optimism. You know, to your point about, is $4 billion enough? We're just always about the cash flow compounding of the enterprise, being investment grade, using the leverage, and being unbiased and disciplined in our approach. And so we're gonna stay true to that and look at every deal on a deal-by-deal basis.
Scott Davis (Chairman and CEO)
Very encouraging. Good answer. Thank you. I'm gonna pass it on. Appreciate it, guys. Best of luck this year.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Brent Thill with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Speaker 14
Hey, thanks so much. This is David on for Brent. I wanted to ask around, you know, there, there was increased commentary, I think, versus prior quarters around some of the companies and what they're doing around AI. Just if you could just give us an update on the broader AI strategy and, you know, if you guys are, are charging for any of these AI products, any color there would be helpful, and how AI could possibly help with the organic growth of some of your assets in the long term, that'd be helpful. Thanks.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Yep. Well, certainly give you an update on that. So, we continue to grind away at this. We have done a lot of work, engaging with all 28 of our businesses, both on the internal productivity-based applications around R&D, customer for life, customer support, go-to-market, admin, HR, finance, regulatory, et cetera. Have a call at lunch with a large group of our leaders today on just that topic. We're starting to see some early wins on productivity, like most are in code assistance, marketing content generation, things like that, so cautiously optimistic about productivity enhancements.
As it relates more directly to your question around products and the market and monetization, it's gonna be a slow and steady race about how do you use these tools to create incremental value for our customers. Again, we know we compete on intimacy. That intimacy leads us to know very specific problems and very specific questions that need to be addressed. We have a new technology set to be able to do that. Companies that have products in the market today using Generative AI are Aderant, Deltek, DAT, ConstructConnect, and Foundry. By our count, there may be a few others. Two quarters ago, I think that the count was zero, and so we like the momentum in that regard. In terms of monetization, it's still early days.
Our belief, at least for the moment at least, we're monetizing the Generative AI and AI investments by adding that toolset and capability to our existing products in unique ways. And then that is creating more value in the products, which is driving, in almost all cases, a bookings acceleration with those products, and in some cases, higher price points because of the value that's achieved through the tools. So, that's where I'd leave it. Happy to answer any follow-ups. Anything you wanna add, Jason?
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Terry Tillman with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.
Terry Tillman (Managing Director)
Yeah. Hey, Neil, Jason, and Zack. Thanks for taking my question and then follow up as well. Maybe just the first question, because it is the most recent addition to the portfolio, and I think you all touted the opportunity here maybe to, you know, continue buying high-quality assets, but maybe even some better growth profiles at good valuations. I'm curious, just an update on where you see, kind of on a go-forward basis, the Procare Solutions revenue, compounding growth rate, where you see that? And then, as you've had a little bit of time here, where do you see one of the most untapped growth engines for that? And then I had a quick follow-up for Jason. Thank you.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Yeah. So on Procare, when we announced the deal, we talked about how we believe this is gonna be a mid-teens organic growth business. The market's growing, 10% or a little north of that. Procare is about 1.5x relevant market share. And so, with that leadership position and market growth, I believe Procare has the right to win that, to, gain share and grow above market. In terms of, if your question, Terry, is, you know, bolt-on activity inside of Procare, there's a couple areas that, Janet and her team, with, the leadership team at Procare, are exploring, where you tuck in a couple, bolt-on type products to sell into the network. But, I think at Procare, the bolt-ons are gonna be modest, on a go-forward basis.
Terry Tillman (Managing Director)
Got it. Okay. And then just a quick follow-up. I think it was 5%-6% organic growth, and now you've just firmly said 6%, so that's good to see. Jason, if you had to think about, like, what is the biggest driver, or maybe it's just a bunch of little things, what is the biggest swing factor in just tightening that and effectively raising the organic?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, I mean, obviously, we had a really strong Q1, so part of that's just carrying that through, and a lot of that was at TEP. And then we had, you know, some various, you know, small beats across software. So I think it's mainly what we saw in Q1, and then just the confidence that, you know, we're gonna be able to sort of maintain our prior guidance for the out quarters.
Terry Tillman (Managing Director)
Okay, thank you.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Joe Giordano with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director)
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Morning.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Hey, good morning.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director)
Just curious, on the jobs in the country, like, you look at the jobs data, and they're pretty good, but it's generally been like an erosion of white-collar type jobs replaced by, like, part-time blue-collar jobs. And I'm just curious, like, on a longer term, how what are the implications on some of your, you know, software businesses that are more headcount driven? Is that trend. I know you won't see it, like, immediately, but is that are you starting to see the implications of that on a, like, an outlook basis?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
So, I would say no, but perhaps the reason is there's some, but very little of our revenue is seat-based pricing. There's some, like I said, and where that exists, we're transitioning to a different metric. So as you get more disruption with gen AI or the knowledge workers sort of get more productive, more productive, we certainly wanna benefit by that, not be, not be penalized by that. But it has not been something that, that's been brought up by any of our companies in any of our operating or strategy reviews.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director)
Interesting. Okay, and then just to follow up on the AI discussion in terms of, like, deployments in the, in the products you're launching here, has that been like table stakes now, or is your competition doing the same, or do you feel like deploying these tools has been a differentiation for your businesses?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
So far it's been very differential. I think the expectation is the competitors will have, will have their response for sure. I would just, I'll just double-click on that a bit, though, which is, you know, we are all across all 20 of our businesses, we operate these very small markets, and we are the largest player in the small market. So we have that advantage around scale in these small markets to be able to do more product development, do more research and development, invest more in go-to-market to get these tools there. And so that is a long-term advantage that we have and why we select the businesses we do to be part of the portfolio.
The other thing is, when you co-compete on intimacy and with generative AI, you know, with all these verticals that we have, we obviously have the knowledge and the content and the data, and that's only half the question, the other half of the problem. The other half of the problem, though, is we compete on intimacy, so we actually know what questions to answer. So we have the content, the data, and the question, and now with Generative AI, it's just another tool in the toolkit about how to solve those problems. So we like our long-term competitive positions.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director)
Just on that, if I, if I could just sneak in a follow-up on that, like, is this an area. I know generally once you acquire a business, it kind of runs on its own, but is this an area where, like, the corporate can flex a little bit? Because these solutions tend to be expensive to deploy. So is this an area where, like, Roper corporate could be like, "All right, we are making a decision to kind of allocate capital to the businesses that need this specifically outside of, you know, the natural free cash flow dynamics of that specific firm?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
So the, so these tools are not free, but they are substantially less expensive than these large language models that have to be developed, right? And so there's the research and development part of the application of the LLMs and what we're doing, and then there's the operational cost. You know, Jason did a teach-in a couple of months ago about the ROI case studies and all of this stuff. So far, we've not seen an ROI case study that's been challenged in any meaningful way on this front. I'm sure that'll happen as you start to work down the curve of opportunities, but but we're not at the moment, we're not gonna try to do a one-size-fits-all Roper Generative AI solution because it would, it would just not work because of the 28 different applications.Jason, anything you want to add?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, no, that's right. I mean, though, you know, we do have benefits of scale with some of the agreements with our large cloud service providers, so that's, that's been beneficial for companies to do some experimentation at a very low cost. So. And then we're just allocating a lot of mind share towards that, so we can collectively get better. But in terms of like, you know, allocating capital, that just hasn't been front and center. Now, if the company has a really compelling value proposition, we're always gonna entertain that, but that's not what we're seeing today.
Joe Giordano (Managing Director)
Great. Thank you, guys.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Joe Ritchie (Managing Director)
Hey, guys. Good morning.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Morning.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Morning.
Joe Ritchie (Managing Director)
Hey. So, in your prepared comments, Neil, you referenced how some of your new SaaS-based offerings were helping certain businesses. I'm just curious, as you kind of take a look at the portfolio as a whole, like, how far along are you in terms of rolling out, you know, additional new platforms? And, how much room is there to go from here? And if there are any examples that you wanna highlight, that would be great across the portfolio.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Joe, I just wanna make sure we understand and are answering the question you're asking. Is it essentially how far along are we on our SaaS journey, and, what's that look like?
Joe Ritchie (Managing Director)
Yeah, that's exactly right. And if there are examples across the portfolio where you think you're—you have, like, additional opportunity, I'd love to just hear about some of those examples.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
So Jason, why don't you take the
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yep.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
The, the- On the first part, I'll take the second part.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, at the macro level, we're a little over $900 million of maintenance today, maintenance revenue. And, you know, if you go back maybe in the last five years, we've converted the base of maintenance, probably, like, in the mid- to high-single-digit area. So we still have a lot, a lot of room left, and we convert that maintenance revenue at, you know, two to 2.5x, when we go to SaaS. And so that's kind of where we're at today. And, you know, there's a. You know, Neil can talk about the specific businesses. There's a handful of businesses that are transitioning. I'd say, Aderant is one that's been. Probably had the biggest migration over the last three or four years, which happened right at COVID.
You know, that was an industry that was reluctant to move to the cloud, and then all of a sudden, once a few firms went, they all went. So, so they're right in the thick of things in terms of that cloud migration. But, Neil, you wanna talk about some other?
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Sure, let me do it. So, as Jason said, I mean, it is this $900 million of on-premise maintenance is concentrated in a handful of businesses. The examples we give would start with Deltek. It's both on their Costpoint, which is their government contracting core product, and Vantagepoint, which is their private sector, their engineering, architecture product. You might have seen, for instance, on Costpoint this quarter, Deltek achieved FedRAMP moderate ready status. So there is a requirement the government puts on for security. It's a meaningful checkpoint for Costpoint in the cloud. Almost all net new for the private sector part of Deltek's book is sold on Vantagepoint, which is in the cloud, it's SaaS-enabled. Jason talked about Aderant. 80%+ of all of Aderant's bookings today are in the cloud.
Talked about PowerPlan. PowerPlan has one of... They have a handful of core applications. I would say their number two application is cloud-enabled and being deployed today. So we're definitively rolling through that book and that product set and building it into this long-term SaaS business.
Joe Ritchie (Managing Director)
Got it. That's, that's super helpful. I'll, I'll just leave it there. Thank you.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Yep, thank you.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Brad Hewitt with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.
Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Morning, Brad.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Morning.
Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)
So you talked about the strength at iPipeline in the quarter. I saw you announce a new CFO for that business with a focus on kind of driving the long-term growth strategy. Just wondering if you could update us on kind of the normalized growth profile of that business and what you see as kind of the biggest opportunities to perhaps accelerate growth in that business going forward.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Yeah, I'll take the first part, and I'll let Jason talk about the growth outlook. So, hey, it's not—I mean, we have a new president there, Pat O'Donnell. He just hired his new CFO, as you referenced. Really like the leadership mindset, the competitive orientation, the learning orientation, the building capability, and being able to think long term and act short term, that the new leader brings to iPipeline. His predecessor, Deane Price, who's been a long-term Roper leader, did a great job for a couple of years setting that business up. Retention is super strong. Love sort of the market, whereas this company is really poised for market share gains. It's good market focus. The competitive environment, one, is tilting in our direction for sure.
The business has network effects, so really like the momentum, and what we're poised to do in that business. And then, Jason, I'll let you take the growth question.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's playing out as we thought it would when we acquired it back in 2018, 2019 era. It's in the high single digit plus range, and, you know, maybe it'll tilt a little higher down the road, but, you know, that's where it's tracking. And I. You know, just, Adam Boone was added to the team a month ago, and we're excited about him joining along with Pat. So, yeah, we're excited about the prospects for iPipeline.
Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)
Okay, great. And then it looks like growth in network in Q1 was maybe a few points better than expected. Your guidance for the rest of the year kind of implies revenue flattish sequentially on an absolute basis. I would assume most of the businesses in that segment would see kind of modest sequential growth throughout the year. So just kind of trying to understand, you know, if there are any potential offsets that, you know, if maybe if that's DAT. Just any thoughts on, you know, kind of sequentials relative to Q1 levels in network?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, sure. So, you know, we talked a little bit about MHA had a really strong quarter, and we think they're still they're gonna, you know, continue to grow this year. But Q1 was especially strong as they had a contract renegotiation, so we got a little bit of a bump in organic growth in the first quarter. And then, you know, DAT and Loadlink, they'll continue to be down, you know, this year. And so, you know, maybe overall, you know, touch lower than Q1. So that's what's driving the sort of low single digits throughout the rest of the year.
Brad Hewitt (VP of Equity Research)
Great. Thanks, guys.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Patrick Baumann with J.P. Morgan. Your line is now-
Patrick Baumann (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Oh, hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Excuse me. A lot of ground being covered. Just a couple cleanups here. Sticking with the network software segment, it's seen really good margin expansion for a couple of quarters now. Just, could you remind us what's driving that? And, and if this 56%-57% is sustainable and, and could potentially move up further in coming quarters?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. So, you know, we touched on this last year, just, you know, DAT getting ahead of where they saw the market was going and taking, you know, some, some of the fixed costs out of the business. And so we're just realizing that, you know, through the first three quarters of this year. We think you know, the margins and the- I don't think it's gonna get-- it's gonna expand further. You know, we're sort of in the 55%-56% range. We expect that to continue throughout the year.
Patrick Baumann (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, got it. Thanks. And then, lastly, just the second quarter. Any color you could give us on organic growth expectations? I know you gave it for 2Q to 4Q. Any difference between second quarter and that 2Q to 4Q guide, and then also on free cash flow, typically lumpy, you know, from quarter to quarter, so wondering if you could give any kind of color on that relative to the first quarter.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, I mean, I think the organic growth expectations are the same in the second quarter as they are for the year. So, no real big swings there. And then, you know, cash flow on the second quarter, it's always the quarter that we make two federal tax payments, so it's always the lowest of the year. So that's really the only dynamic I would point out there. If you look over prior years, that's always our low point, but still expect to grow, of course.
Patrick Baumann (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, great. Thanks. Best of luck.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Your next question comes from Alexander Blanton with Clear Harbor Asset Management. Your line is now-
Alexander Blanton (Senior Analyst)
Hi, good morning.
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Good morning.
Alexander Blanton (Senior Analyst)
I noticed that you're forecasting or guiding to organic growth of 6% for the year, correct?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
Yes.
Alexander Blanton (Senior Analyst)
But you had 8% in the first quarter. So, are you factoring in some economic weakness in the U.S. in that forecast?
Jason Conley (EVP and CFO)
No, I mean, I think it all plays out, Alex, in our products, you know, segment, in our TEK segment. Over the first quarter, we just had a better compare and just the ramp that we had in Neptune last year, it's sort of the comp, sort of normalize out in the balance of the year. So it's really just that. It's no more complicated than that. And so that's why Q1 was. And that's, you know, when we came into the year, that's what we had indicated, that Q1 was gonna be the kind of the high mark in terms of organic, unless things change in the, you know, in our assumptions.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
I would just add, Alex, to what Jason said, we assume that there is, you know, the freight conditions and whatnot, that is muted, and we, but we've assumed that all the way through. It's not a new assumption, but there is definitely back half macroeconomic weak impact in that part of our business. That did not change, but it's embedded from our original guide.
Alexander Blanton (Senior Analyst)
In which part of the business? I missed that.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
The transportation part, the DAT and Loadlink inside of network, the freight matching business.
Alexander Blanton (Senior Analyst)
Okay, fine. Thank you.
Neil Hunn (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
This concludes our question and answer session. We will now return back to Zack Moxcey for any closing remarks.
Zack Moxcey (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you everyone for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you during our next earnings call.
Operator (participant)
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.