Altus Group Limited (TSX:AIF)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 11, 2022

Operator

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator, and welcome to the Altus Group second quarter 2022 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Camilla. Please go ahead.

Camilla Bartosiewicz
Chief Communications Officer, Altus Group

Thanks, Joe. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Altus Group's second quarter results conference call and webcast for the period ended June 30th, 2022. The news release announcing our results was issued after market close this afternoon and is posted on our website and SEDAR profile, along with our interim MD&A and financial statements. Joining us today are Chief Executive Officer Jim Hannon and Chief Financial Officer Angelo Bartolini. We'll start with some prepared remarks and then we'll move right into the Q&A session. If we miss any questions, please contact me directly by email. Angelo will begin by covering off our financial performance, and then Jim will provide an operational update. Before we get started, please be advised that some of our remarks on this call may contain forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on assumptions and therefore are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. You can read about these assumptions, risks, and uncertainties in today's press release and our most recently filed MD&A and annual information form, as well as in our other filings with the Canadian securities regulators. We undertake no obligation to update forward-looking information except as required by law. Also, please be reminded that Altus Group uses certain Non-GAAP and other measures as indicators of financial and operational performance. An explanation of these measures are detailed in today's news release, MD&A, and in our other filings with the Canadian securities regulators. Okay, over to you, Angelo.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Thanks, Camilla. I'll start by covering off our financial performance and balance sheet and then turn it over to Jim for an operational update. We're very pleased with another strong quarter marked by solid financial results and steady progress against our strategic initiatives. In fact, this was a record quarter for the highest quarterly revenue and Adjusted EBITDA. Like all global companies, we had some more pronounced foreign exchange impact this quarter. Please note that unless otherwise specified, all figures referred to today are as reported, and all growth rates are on a constant currency basis. On a consolidated basis, revenues were CAD 206.4 million, up 20%, of which 16% of the growth was organic, and Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 49.7 million, also up 20%.

This reflects the strength of the property tax annuity revenue stream, which essentially flows directly to the bottom line, but also signifies improvement at our Analytics as we capture synergies from last year's acquisitions and continue to adjust our cost structure in line with our new operating model. The momentum at Analytics continues with the business steadily performing with double-digit top and bottom line growth. It was another quarter of solid sales execution, driving bookings and revenue growth, as well as margin expansion. The growth reflects healthy demand for our products and services in combination with the operational enhancements we've been making, as well as our disciplined approach to expense management. Analytics revenues came in at CAD 82.1 million, up 37%. Organic performance is an important KPI for our sales execution, and I'm very pleased with the 26% organic revenue growth in Q2.

This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of organic constant currency revenue growth in the 20% range, with Q2 being the highest. Our focused investments towards a recurring revenue model are paying off. Overall revenue was CAD 70.9 million, up 41% and up 28% on an organic basis. Sequentially, overall revenue was up 4.5%. This also reflects the strength of recurring bookings from past quarters. As a reminder, bookings typically take a quarter or two to flow into revenues. Year to date, overall revenues now represent 86% of our total Analytics revenues, a solid position to be in during periods of economic uncertainty. To provide you with some additional color, we had double-digit growth across all our key solutions. Revenues from software, data analytics, and appraisal management were all up nicely.

A high percentage of our revenue growth continues to come from our existing customer base. Once we win a customer, we grow with them. This validates the high value we provide to our clients and the significant runway for wallet share expansion. We continue to steadily add more customers to our roster, both in North America and internationally. In Q2, we added 214 new logos for ARGUS. This is in addition to new logos for our other solutions. Our ongoing international expansion efforts are progressing well too. While the majority of our growth continues to come from North America, we also posted notable growth internationally, both in EMEA and APAC. On the earnings front, Adjusted EBITDA showed positive improvement in the quarter at CAD 13.8 million, up 49%.

This is significant when you recall we purchased Reonomy late in 2021, an early-stage business with an Adjusted EBITDA annualized run rate loss of about CAD 20 million. Although we have begun to achieve synergies, we still have more to go. Also bear in mind that as part of the purchase price adjustment for Reonomy, we incurred a discount on deferred revenues of approximately CAD half a million in Q2, which also impacted Adjusted EBITDA. This adjustment had a 0.5% impact to margins in Q2. While gradually improving, Reonomy's Adjusted EBITDA performance continues to negatively impact margin in the near term. This is in line with our plan. As we have noted in the past, we expect the Reonomy business to operate at a breakeven level by the end of Q4. Overall, Adjusted EBITDA growth benefited from higher revenues, improving operating efficiencies, and ongoing cost optimization efforts.

We expect gradual quarterly improvements in margin, consistent with our expectations to improve full-year margins over last year. Our bookings at CAD 23.5 million were solid. They are predominantly recurring. As you know, this is where we have targeted our investments and our go-to-market focus. With respect to the bookings growth, if we break that down by bookings type, recurring bookings were up significantly, growing in the high double digits. In fact, it was a particularly strong ARGUS software bookings quarter. However, the bookings that relate to one-time engagements were significantly lower given the magnitude of sizable one-time projects that closed in the second quarter of 2021 that did not reoccur. You might also recall that in the prior year, we were also benefiting from a rebound in some software consulting projects that had been paused at the peak of COVID in 2020.

Turning to the CRE consulting segment. At Property Tax, Q2 revenues were CAD 93.5 million, up 11%, and adjusted EBITDA was CAD 42.1 million, up 10%. A high majority of the growth was organic. We had solid growth in the U.S., where there is some seasonality in Q2 driving increased case settlements. We also benefited from higher valuations that provided us with increased opportunities for bigger wins. In Canada, revenue performance was largely consistent with last year. Declines in Western Canada were offset by stable performance in Ontario and modest growth in Eastern Canada. All of this reflecting timing of certain market cycles. In the U.K., revenue growth was modest, impacted by FX headwinds that overshadowed the double-digit constant currency growth.

The U.K. continues to be impacted by the ongoing slowdown in settlement activity volumes, where the Valuation Office resources are tied up preparing valuations for the new cycle that starts next year. The pace of settlements isn't ramping up at the levels we expected. Effectively, when the backlog starts to clear, this is going to spill into future quarters. We've seen this play out before. All to say, our pipeline of cases to be settled in upcoming quarters and spilling to 2023 remains robust. Of course, the cyclical and seasonal annuity billings in the U.K. were a significant contributor in the quarter, representing CAD 33.2 million in revenues compared to CAD 25.7 million in the second quarter of 2021.

We're really pleased with how this revenue stream has grown, with the increase reflecting a higher cumulative number of the 2017 cycle cases settled. A reminder, this annuity revenue stream resets next year with the start of the new cycle before it starts to ramp up again in 2024. Unlike the U.S. or Canada, where we bill a client once for the savings over the whole tax cycle, in the U.K., we bill clients annually as a percentage of the savings achieved during the appeals process. Hence, we refer to that billing as the annuity. As we start a new cycle next year, the volume of appeals that drive revenue will need to be rebuilt, although we still have a healthy backlog of appeals to clear from this current cycle.

Overall, we're very well positioned for the year as we have a healthy backlog of tax appeal cases to be settled, a healthy pipeline, and our people are the best in the industry at maximizing success rates for our clients, which works well with our contingency model. Additionally, our valuation and cost advisory businesses had a good quarter, with revenues up 13% to CAD 30.9 million and Adjusted EBITDA up 67% to CAD 4.5 million. This reflects continued healthy market demand as well as good sales execution, as both businesses are now closely aligned with our analytics operating model. We also benefited from a lower compare in the same quarter last year, which as you might recall, had some impact from the cybersecurity incident.

As you may recall, in Q1, we initiated a global restructuring program as we drive toward greater efficiencies in our operating model. We expect this program to continue throughout the year, and would point out this was always part of the 2022 plan. In Q2, the one-time restructuring costs were CAD 5.5 million. This primarily related to employee severance costs, reflecting the synergies we're obtaining from recent acquisitions, efficiencies gained from investments in technology, and the ongoing evolution of our target operating models in support of our strategic initiatives. Turning to our financial position, our balance sheet remains very healthy, and we continue to have significant financial flexibility. The net cash from operating activities continue to be strong, and we are reinvesting in our core infrastructure to drive efficiencies and margin expansion.

At the end of the quarter, we amended our credit facility to increase borrowings from CAD 400 million to CAD 550 million, with certain provisions to go to CAD 650 million. We also welcomed three new syndicate members and extended the maturity to 2027, an additional two-year extension option. Pricing remains the same on pre-existing levels. However, we added security on certain assets in North America and the U.K. The other notable item, we increased our maximum leverage threshold from 4x to 4.5x , with the added flexibility to go up to 5x following certain business acquisitions. The goal here was to maximize our financial flexibility to be best positioned to go after strategic acquisitions as opportunities arise.

As you've heard us say before, our optimal target is to stay around the 2.5x leverage ratio range. We would only go higher above 3x for highly strategic acquisitions, but we have a solid deleveraging profile to target the range within 12 months-18 months. We finished the quarter with a cash position of CAD 67.1 million and with CAD 345 million bank debt. Funded debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio, as defined in our credit agreement, was 2.63x , well below our new maximum limit of 4.5x . Applying our cash, the net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio was 2.37x , representing a very healthy balance sheet.

Given our growing adjusted EBITDA levels and our ability to generate strong cash flows, we are able to deleverage quickly and reapply our available capital towards growth initiatives. Finally, before I turn it over to Jim, as you saw in today's press release, I wanted to share with you my plans to step down as Chief Financial Officer by the end of the year. This gives us plenty of time to conduct a comprehensive search for my successor and for me to support the transition. After nearly 15 years at Altus Group, the time has come for me to turn the page onto my next personal chapter. Very few public company C-suite executives have enjoyed tenures as long and rewarding as I have.

I've had the runway and time to make lasting contributions, working alongside the most talented people in the CRE industry and capital markets to build something truly transformational. The last 15 years have been some of my best, and I'm incredibly proud of all that we accomplished in positioning Altus to be the trusted global leader that we are today. I'm looking forward to taking some time to spend with family, to explore life interests outside of corporate finance realm before I jump into something new. Our platform for growth and operational excellence has never been stronger. I would like to reaffirm the strong confidence I have in Jim and the executive team who are delivering on Altus' untapped potential. Our growth engine is roaring, and the results are showing in our financial performance as we are on track to deliver another record year.

I firmly believe Altus' best days are still ahead, and I wish everybody continued success. I'd also like to thank my team. They are one of the strongest finance teams I've had the pleasure to work with, and I'm so proud of all your accomplishments. I will definitely miss you. Finally, it's been a great privilege to work closely with the Street over the years. Our shareholders, analysts, and bankers have been great partners. Thank you for your strong support over the years, and I look forward to keeping in touch. With that, I'll now turn it over to Jim to take us through some of the operational progress.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Thanks, Angelo. Good afternoon, everyone. Angelo's sitting right next to me right now. Angelo, I know you're not leaving anytime soon, but I speak on behalf of many stakeholders in thanking you for your outstanding 15 years of service at Altus. Angelo's steered the company through a remarkable period of growth and transformation. From his first year as Chief Financial Officer, when the company had a market cap just around CAD 250 million, to reaching well over CAD 2 billion today, Angelo's been central to our growth and strengthened strategic position over the last decade. Our shareholders have enjoyed significant value creation under his leadership. Congrats on a really successful career here at Altus, Angelo. As you just heard, we had another excellent quarter with all of our business segments growing with strong operational execution against our plans.

This is a direct reflection of the bench strength of the team at Altus. Congrats to all my colleagues for a very productive first half of the year. Even in this period of higher interest rates and inflation, the team has put up 20% revenue growth and 16% Adjusted EBITDA constant currency growth in the first half, and we're well-positioned to continue strong performance into the second half, even considering the market headwinds. Historically, some of our solutions thrive during periods of economic volatility as our customers keep a closer eye on risk and expenses while looking to uncover investment opportunities or portfolio reallocation. Additionally, reports indicate there's over 370 billion of capital that has been raised for the purpose of commercial real estate investments that's yet to be deployed. Altus is highly regarded as a trusted partner by many of our clients.

Our offers help clients maximize their returns, protect their bottom line, and better manage risk. Increasing alpha, reducing beta, that's our mission. As proven throughout the pandemic and in the 2008 and 2009 downturn, our business is stable across various economic cycles, benefiting from a diversified revenue mix geographically and by offer. At Altus Analytics, approximately 86% of our revenues are recurring, and our key offers are mission-critical to our clients. We're ideally positioned to help clients maximize profits and manage risk as they navigate turbulent markets. Even in a challenging market, we expect our over time revenue base to be stable and our retention rates steady. Our sales pipeline remains healthy, and at this moment, we're not seeing any impact to our sales cycles. At valuation and cost advisory, we're experiencing both top and bottom line growth with particular strength in the cost business.

At Property Tax, tax liabilities don't go away. With property taxes representing one of the largest operating costs for asset managers, customers become more focused on this line item. Generally speaking, market dislocations cause changes to values. This is a net positive for our tax business, providing us with enhanced opportunities for appeals on behalf of our clients. We're carefully watching economic conditions and the potential impacts to our customers. Our strategic advisors are here to assist clients in navigating dynamic market conditions with assessments and recommendations deeply rooted in data analytics and technology. That is Intelligence as a Service. I remain confident that we will successfully achieve our financial goals as we have in past economic downturns. As Angelo said, we had solid operational progress in the quarter, delivering on the commitments we laid out with our 2022 strategic priorities.

We have a lot of terrific changes happening across the organization. I'm very impressed by how our people have embraced it. The progress is encouraging. You've heard us discuss simplicity, focus, and execution. Simplifying our offers and processes allows our teams to focus on the highest value activities. Investing in our core architecture allows us to deliver advanced analytics while also making our service delivery teams more efficient. Updating our infrastructure gives us the analytics to improve our own operations. There's a lot going on, but it's really just one interrelated project. That is simplification of one cohesive set of offers that span the CRE life cycle, run on one architecture that connects the business, operate with one business model, and run on one back office infrastructure.

We laid the groundwork for these changes last year, and much of the heavy lifting and the design is behind us. The second half of the year is about continued execution against our plans. Now we'll discuss some operational milestones from the quarter. On the new offer structure, we're rolling out offers that make it easier for our clients to consume multiple solutions and services from us that historically would have required multiple contracts and disparate pricing structures. The focus in the first half of the year has been on marketing and sales enablement, and we've had some early signs of success with new clients. To reference a couple of notable client examples from Q2, in Germany, we closed a deal with a sizable investment and asset development company. This highlights successful value selling to the client in a core growth geography.

This deal combines cloud-enabled ARGUS Enterprise, ARGUS Taliance, implementation services, and ongoing managed services to support this client as they launch a new real estate vehicle. In another example of success in the quarter, we continued our expansion into the debt adjacency with a multi-year mortgage loan valuation and data park benchmarking deal with Greystone. Greystone is a private commercial real estate finance investment company with leading expertise in debt, equity, investment sales, and loan servicing solutions. Despite rigorous competition for this mandate, we stood out as the service provider of choice. On the architecture side, the development team is making solid progress to have the first phase of the Altus P erformance Platform ready in Q4. To be clear, this is not a new product. Rather, it is our internal platform that will integrate our tech stack and unify our enterprise-wide data.

This is how we will consolidate our enterprise-wide data on assets to drive our intelligence as a service model. As you've heard us discuss in the past, this is how we get R&D efficiencies and improved platform economics. With respect to the evolution of our operating model, based on the changes we made at Analytics at the start of the year, we have very encouraging KPIs. As you heard from Angelo, this includes our accelerated organic growth. Now we're in the process of a similar redesign of Property Tax. We rolled it out to our tax group in July. We're in the process of organizing the teams to the target model. On our One Altus initiatives, steady progress on the back office infrastructure with a focus on change management.

These investments include a consolidation of our CRM, finance, and HR systems, while concurrently pursuing programs that elevate culture, employee experience, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. A couple of recent highlights on that front include a new performance management system, a revamped DEI strategy, and next week we'll be launching our employee share purchase program. We're steadfast in our efforts to make it rewarding, exciting, and easier to work here. I have high confidence in the executive committee to continue to successfully implement these outlined changes, as many of us have significant experience leading teams through these types of business transformations. Noting another significant milestone achieved in Q2, we surpassed the 50% threshold in our ARGUS Cloud adoption.

We ended the quarter with 52% of our AE users on cloud, right on plan, with a target to get to the low- to mid-60s by the end of the year, and to have the large majority of our users on cloud by the end of 2023. We had a high volume of existing clients converting their on-prem licenses, driven in part by the end of support in ARGUS Enterprise versions 12 and older. The end of support took effect at the end of June. Additionally, we announced pulling back of special early migration pricing incentives, which created an impending event for our migrations. We also had a handful of larger clients, those with more than 100 users, contracted to move to cloud in Q2. As many of you are aware, ARGUS is the de facto standard for valuations.

It's the source of truth that's been relied on by the world's largest CRE firms for over 30 years. It's taught in over 200 colleges and universities worldwide and utilized in over 105 countries. Argus sits at the intersection of the industry's valuations and transactions, populated with hundreds of high-value real-time data points at the asset level. With more than half of our Argus Enterprise user base now on the cloud, we've hit critical mass as we strategically pivot to enhance our data analytics capabilities. Today, there are over 4 million models in Argus Cloud, compared to just 55,000 two years ago. That's 4 million valuation models and an estimated 500,000 unique models globally. This enables our product innovation plans. In closing, we remain very well-positioned for the future. Altus Analytics is firing on all cylinders.

Cloud adoption is at critical mass, and we're putting up strong revenue growth rates, particularly in the overtime category. On the CRE consulting side, our valuation and cost advisory businesses are stable and growing. The property tax business has an excellent growth runway over the next several years following the U.K. valuation reset in 2023. The cash flows of business are funding the CapEx investments we are making to improve our corporate function efficiency, business unit performance, as well as tech development. In particular, investments in the analytics business as we continue on our path to the CAD 400 million revenue target established several years ago. These investments allow us to drive EBITDA growth even as tax jurisdiction cycles reset. Finally, I'm very excited about the product innovation on the horizon.

With the release of the Altus Performance Platform in Q4, we're advancing on our plans to deliver predictive analytics capabilities. Okay, let's open the line up now for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question is from Yuri Lynk with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Hey, good evening, everyone.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Hi, Yuri.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Hey, Yuri.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Hey. Angelo, congratulations. It's been, I don't know, 10years or 12 years we've been on these calls. You've been a steady hand, and it's always been a pleasure.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Thank you very much, Yuri. Same here.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Now I'm gonna hammer you with a couple questions. Can you guys-

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Don't get him mad.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Just the way some of the acquisitions are starting to get included in your organic growth calculation, it looks like in the quarter, StratoDem and Reonomy contributed about $6 million bucks of revenue. Can you just talk about the growth of particularly Reonomy since you purchased it, if it had kept up with the pace of growth at the time of acquisition?

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Yeah. I mean, the Reonomy acquisition's on target. We're integrating the business, particularly, you know, folding it into our data strategy. There's lots of benefits, both from an IP standpoint that we've achieved, and it does provide us with a database that we're able to leverage on the analytics side of our strategy. In terms of the growth, you know, we are achieving our plans in the sense that at the enterprise level, we're succeeding in terms of, you know, hitting the targets. Where we're seeing still a little bit of churn is on the lower end of the market, which, you know, we've also talked about before and which we're addressing.

The whole strategy with the Reonomy and the ability to cross-sell sort of the existing solution is really at the enterprise level, and then to leverage our data and analytics strategy.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Right. Yuri, Angelo said, critical to our IP, the parts of the Altus Performance Platform that are coming out in Q4 we were able to accelerate them to Q4 because of the underlying technology that we acquired in Reonomy. It's not just the data business and the face of the data P&L, it's that core underlying technology that we're leveraging to accelerate all of our analytics capabilities.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Okay. I guess the $18 million of revenue that you bought, you're doing, you know, about that much today. Is it about the same?

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

On a run rate basis at the moment, it's there, but don't forget, we're just still early stages with that acquisition. It is being folded into our core data and analytics strategy. We will see that number ramp up. The other thing to keep in mind still, I mean, at this stage, we do have a discount on the deferred revenue, so that was about half a million dollars for this quarter. That's slowly gonna disappear throughout the second half of the year. Really we will start seeing the benefit of that acquisition, and it'll be integrated as part of our overall data and analytics revenue base. We're on target. We're basically on target with our forecast going forward.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Okay. Maybe just switch gears to the tax group. New disclosure in the outlook, I think it's new anyway, that 2023 EBITDA will be below 2022. I don't think that's a huge surprise given the annuity billings, but I thought previously you thought you might be able to kinda hold the line on EBITDA through some of your other strategic initiatives. Just maybe correct me if I'm wrong and I guess why you decided to put that new outlook out at this point.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Well, we are going to. You know, like, we did CAD 33 million, just over CAD 33 million, this quarter. There was an additional year that was extended, so we actually benefited with the additional year. Unfortunately, in some ways, that creates a larger number for us to try to close the gap on. We are increasing market share. There is a number out on the street right now. You know, we don't give guidance, but we're also, you know, we're looking at hitting the targets that the street is expecting. We are going to grow organic revenues in our current jurisdictions, and so we won't be closing that entire gap, but we also won't be losing the entire amount that's, you know, that was equivalent to the annuity of this year.

I don't know if that helps. I mean, we don't give guidance, so it's hard to actually, you know, give you anything more specific than that.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Yep. No.

Camilla Bartosiewicz
Chief Communications Officer, Altus Group

Yeah. Yuri, I would also just add, maybe compared to past conversations, as you know, Ontario's cycle was also extended. We're looking at both, the U.K. and Ontario ramping up next year, which is just maybe something that hadn't been factored in historically.

Yuri Lynk
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst, Canaccord Genuity

Okay. I better turn it over there, guys. Thanks.

Camilla Bartosiewicz
Chief Communications Officer, Altus Group

Okay. Thanks, Yuri.

Operator

The next question is from Daniel Chan with TD Securities. Please go ahead.

Daniel Chan
Vice President and Director of Equity Research - Technology, TD Securities

Hi, guys. Jim, thanks for the color you provided on the stability of the business, given the macro uncertainty. Just wondering if you can give us some more color on the customer conversations you're having about their appetite for some of the strategic initiatives you guys are working on, such as the cloud migration and the cross-sell.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

You know, as our clients are dealing with higher interest rates and inflation in their own workforces, they're turning to technology for productivity improvements. That's where, you know, as we said, we sit at the intersection of valuations and transactions, but we also can bring a tremendous amount of knowledge about the performance of assets today. Those are the conversations we're having. We're also our early clients on what we'll roll out as our strategy and our intelligence offers.

They're leveraging the platform, again, the early adopters right now, to find those assets that do outperform identifying macro trends that may not have been obvious, or not obvious to human data scientists that we can uncover with machine learning, to find that extra edge as they think about how does this changing interest rate environment change their portfolio allocation. It's right in the strike zone of everything that we've been laying out for the last 18 months or so.

Daniel Chan
Vice President and Director of Equity Research - Technology, TD Securities

That's helpful. Thank you. We also saw a step-up in the cloud adoption in the quarter. Just wondering if you're getting to a point where you're starting to see some network effects start to encourage other people to migrate and hence you're removing that early adopter incentive?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Right along the lines, Daniel, what we've been seeing the entire time, which was we've been calling these numbers. In Q1, the number did not move a lot, and we said in the call we were fine with that. It was right along our expectations of we know when clients' contracts are coming up. Yes, I think we're at critical mass now. We called it an inflection point before. Over 50, we're going, and clients are also seeing that we're retiring the older products. We're not doing away with their functionality. We're just retiring the on-prem platforms over time.

Daniel Chan
Vice President and Director of Equity Research - Technology, TD Securities

Yeah, that makes sense. Angelo, last one's for you. Should we read into the timing of the expansion of the credit facility considering the increasing interest rate environment, plus all the extra provisions for acquisitions on the more lenient covenants?

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

I'm sorry, Dan, if you could just speak up a little louder. The speaker was a little far from me.

Daniel Chan
Vice President and Director of Equity Research - Technology, TD Securities

Sure.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

In terms of the new credit facility? Yeah.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

How much of it was due to the interest rates going up?

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

No, we-

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Acquisition preparation?

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Well, definitely it's all about acquisition preparation, just giving us the additional financial flexibility. You know, we've talked about, you know, where our target ratio is, leverage ratio at 2.5x and, you know, being prepared to go higher for the right acquisitions, whereby we also have great visibility to be able to de-leverage within a very short timeframe. Part of that is just, you know, the whole renegotiation of the facility was really to give us that flexibility, and I think we achieved it. The pricing remains the same at the levels that we were at. And there was some other additional benefits in the negotiation. Really it's all about the flexibility that we've achieved.

Daniel Chan
Vice President and Director of Equity Research - Technology, TD Securities

Thanks, Angelo. Congratulations and best of luck in your future endeavors.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Maggie MacDougall with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

Thank you. I wanted to see if you guys could get into your recurring bookings growth a bit. I know you did comment on it at the beginning with the prepared remarks. Could you just perhaps flesh out that again to give us a quantum, an idea of run rate that we can be thinking about as we go forward in the next couple months?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Understood. It was in Angelo's comments where he said very high organic or recurring bookings growth rate. Maggie, that was the question, right? The recurring?

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

Yeah. Can you give us an idea?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Yeah.

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

of how big it was?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

We don't disclose that number. I think I said this on the last call as well. I would love to tell you the exact number 'cause I'm very proud of it. It's high double digits is what we can say at this point. I couldn't have higher expectations for the delivery of the team this quarter on recurring bookings, both organic recurring bookings as well as total organic bookings. Organic recurring bookings as a percentage of our bookings mix is also up significantly. Within the bookings number, the total bookings number, as Angelo pointed out, we have a mix shift, but it's a very favorable mix shift for us. It's from point-in-time lower margin projects to consulting projects to high margin recurring bookings.

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

Okay. Thanks, Jim. The next question I have is on the Rethink acquisition from May. I'm wondering how the integration's going there now that you own it, if there's any learnings that you've taken away as you start to think about bringing more big data and tech to your tax division.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

It's going really well. It's not only from just integrating the business unit, but Mordechai Katzman is the founder of Rethink, and Mordechai is right in the middle of all of our strategic planning on tax. How we think about margin expansion across all of the geographies, how we leverage Rethink not only into an expanded customer base of those clients who don't want the heavy advisory touch, they're more self-serve, but also just the margin expansion opportunities of our own teams leveraging what Rethink can bring to the table. It's actually informed and changed the way we were thinking about the new tax organization that we just announced internally to our team in July. A lot of that was based around what we can do with Rethink.

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

Okay. Interesting. One final question from me, just following on the conversation around being prepared for M&A. I mean, you know, you've done quite a bit in terms of software M&A in the last 18 months. I'm sure there's things you're interested in there, but you've also over time been quite active in consolidation and growth in the property tax market. Can you give us an idea of how you think about capital allocations between opportunities in both of those segments and where you may see more of your pipeline in, call it, the next 12 months-18 months?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Sure. As Angelo said, this is just pure good financial cash flow management, just having the flexibility. We're not telescoping anything. Like, there's no announcement coming out tomorrow, anything like that. This is just pure financial flexibility. As far as the way we think about capital allocation, we did major acquisitions because they were core to the technical capabilities that we needed to drive the analytics strategy. On the tax side, when we think about acquisitions, it's either going to be tax tech that's going to drive you know, not only bigger addressable market, but it's got to drive margin expansion within our own business, as I talked about on Rethink. Or it has to be a sizable enough tax business that there's cost synergy opportunities.

We are not in the growth at all costs mode at all on the business. We're looking at acquisition opportunities the same way we're looking at our organic investment opportunities with a line on IRR. We have a payback period model that we're looking at, and we're keeping a close eye on EPS and adjusted EPS as well as we're thinking through future acquisitions.

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

Okay, thanks. One final one for me. The shakeout in valuations we've seen in the tech space, it's not clear that they've necessarily trickled through the private world yet, although I imagine they have with a lot of delayed IPOs. I'm wondering if that's potentially an opportunity for you as you look at some good tech that might be available for sale that maybe would have gone public or had access to funding in other ways, shapes, or forms that you can partner or acquire.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

I'll just say generally that good assets are still carrying premiums, as they should. There's a flight to quality. Some of the valuations are sticking right up there, and private companies are gonna ride it out. Maggie, as you know, it's opportunistic. We've seen. We're going off the same information the rest of the world's going off of some deals that have been publicly announced, that, you know, good assets are still commanding nice premiums.

Maggie MacDougall
Equity Research, Stifel

Okay, thanks very much. I'll pass the line over.

Camilla Bartosiewicz
Chief Communications Officer, Altus Group

Thanks, Maggie.

Operator

The next question comes from Richard Tse with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Richard Tse
Managing Director and Technology Analyst, National Bank Financial

Hey, thank you. Angelo, congrats. All the best to you in the next chapter here. Thank you. Jim, you've made a lot of changes here to the business, especially on the analytics side from an operating perspective. I just wanna be clear here. Are all these sort of the operating changes in that business behind you, and it's all about sort of executing on those changes? I'm just trying to make sure that, you know, we're kind of level setting here in terms of where you are there.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Yep, great question. Yes. The short answer is yes. It's a lot of changes. There's not a lot of rocket science here. There's just a lot of good operating hygiene here. You can see it in the results in the margin expansion that we put up in Q2 on the analytics business. As I said, that machine's humming along nicely now, right to my expectations of when I started designing that new analytics model. I guess a year and a half, almost two years ago now. The tax model looks very similar, and that's not coincidental.

There's synergies to be had at a one office level that the company's talked about for a long time, and we're seeing it now. Org model-wise, operating model-wise, it's in place. The core infrastructure work, the design is done. The teams are assigned. Everyone knows we've got the milestones. We have external advisors working with us, and we feel good about it. We know, back to Maggie's capital allocation question, the CapEx we're putting into the infrastructure investments are going to give us nice returns on top of significantly enhanced management information for running the business. Richard, it's. There's nothing new coming. The changes have been announced, and the teams are clear on their missions.

Now it's just a matter of, like, some of this stuff just takes time to implement the systems and workflows.

Richard Tse
Managing Director and Technology Analyst, National Bank Financial

Okay. I guess sort of related, you know, based on everything you're saying is that it's sort of, kind of operating as planned, you know, based on what you sort of laid out. It's really a question of just making progress on that.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Right. Like, since the analytics piece is done and announced and went into effect January fourth, I've said to you guys before how I think about margin expansion. It's not a guidance comment. This is just kind of a managerial philosophy. I think I know we can grow the top line significantly and expand margins at the same time. It's not an either/or based on the constructs of our business. We're showing that now, and I expect the same out of the tax business.

Richard Tse
Managing Director and Technology Analyst, National Bank Financial

Okay. I guess,

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

The corporate overhead and efficiencies, that's where the dated infrastructure. When I talk about making it easier for our folks to work here, the dated infrastructure impedes them. This new infrastructure allows us to grow without having to add the same level of expense at that same kind of expense-to-revenue ratio. We'll have much better leverage for growth going forward off the new infrastructure.

Richard Tse
Managing Director and Technology Analyst, National Bank Financial

Okay. That sort of dovetails into my other question. I know you don't provide guidance, but you know, kind of at a fairly high level, at scale, because you've worked on service integrations in the past, you know, when this business is at scale, and I don't know, it's like two years, three years or five years from now, but you know, ideally, you know, what do you think the margin profile would be on the analytics side here? Is that kind of like a mid-30s%?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

On the analytics side, I think when the company did the investor day long before I got here, they said analytics in the low 30s. I see that over a couple of years. If you think in terms of 300 basis points, last year, we did 18% adjusted EBITDA for that business. You can kind of roll that forward for a couple of years. We've added in some acquisitions that, at you know, with Reonomy, we said we would get to those break-even numbers in Q4. Angelo said we're running on plan. That is a little bit of a drag on the 300 basis points, but not much. That acquisition also allows us to accelerate beyond 300 basis points in the next couple of years.

That low 30s% is a very comfortable, steady state for me. I would expect to be driving margin. It's not gonna be a steady state. I'm sorry. Let me say that again. The low 30s% is very achievable, and it's not a steady state. We will have margin expansion just on volume leverage alone.

Richard Tse
Managing Director and Technology Analyst, National Bank Financial

Okay, great. Thanks. Appreciate it.

Operator

The next question comes from Stephen MacLeod with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Congrats to Angelo.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Hi, Steven.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Good evening. It's long earnings season. Congrats to Angelo. It's been great working with you, and hopefully this gets you some more time out on the golf course.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Yeah. Thank you. Just a couple of follow-ups. You had lots of great color here in the call, so thank you. Just coming around to Reonomy, I'm just curious, do you expect Reonomy to be just sort of margin neutral in the back half of the year? Or will it actually be an EBITDA contributor in the back half of the year?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

It'll be a contributor in the back half of the year 'cause we know that. We're working up the public numbers, so it was a negative operating margin when we got it. It's taken us a couple of quarters to improve that significantly. Getting back to our break-even comments that we gave at the time of the announcement of the deal, we're tracking the plan, so that puts this second half as contributing.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Right. Okay, that's helpful.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Stephen, I'm gonna reiterate this point.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Yeah.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

We didn't make the acquisition for the face of the P&L. We made that acquisition to drive our analytics capabilities, and that we're delivering as well. We're hitting the financial profile we announced at the time of the deal, and we've accelerated our development of our analytics capabilities.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Right. Okay. The strategic benefits are clearly coming through.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Yes.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

That's great. Just turning to the tax business, thanks for the incremental color around the annuity resets. Just so I'm understanding that correctly, it sounds as though you still expect the back half of this year to be relatively positive growth-wise on the tax business just because you have this large backlog that you're going through. When does the cycle actually reset? Like, is it December thirty-first, and then January first it resets, or is it not exactly that explicit of a line in the sand?

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Well, it resets for the calendar year of 2023. In the U.K., it really starts on April first, technically. For us, the implication is that that's when we do the annuity billings. It's in the month of April of every year. That will not repeat itself next year, given it's that first year of the reval cycle.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Right. Okay.

Angelo Bartolini
CFO, Altus Group

Having said that, there's this backlog that goes well into next year and, you know, depending on settlement rates, we could even see spill over into 2024. They just, you know, they're high-value settlements that we'll continue to achieve based on this current cycle.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Okay.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Stephen, as we look back at the last U.K. cycle resets, we've gone back three. There's a long tail of appeal. Even though you're in a new jurisdictional cycle, there's still a long tail from prior cycles, and we'll be carrying a backlog of that long tail, as Angelo said, all the way to 2024. From the current cycle.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

I see. I see. I guess that's why you were saying in previous questions that you will, and you have said in the past, you know, you will offset some of the annuity billings that you'll be losing because of this long tail. I guess that's the way to think about it.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Yeah.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Yeah. Okay. That's great. That's it for me. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

I'm sorry. Expected growth in the U.S. market will offset it, and growth from the Rethink acquisition will offset some of it.

Stephen MacLeod
Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Right. Okay. Great. Thanks for the color.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

All right.

Camilla Bartosiewicz
Chief Communications Officer, Altus Group

Thanks, Dave.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Paul Treiber
Equity Research Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Oh, thanks very much, good afternoon. Just wanted to focus on Altus' performance. You mentioned it's rolling out Q4, and you're really excited about it. Can you just elaborate on it in terms of, you know, how impactful you see it, you know, across the industry or from a customer perspective? Also, how should we think about it from a financial point of view?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Right. Great question. The Altus Performance Platform, as I said, is not a product. Our offers will come out around it. Our intelligence offers will come out around it, which our offer structure now combines various solutions that would have been standalone. We do expect a lift, but not significant in this year. It drives our growth rates. It drives that path to 400 next year is predicated off of these advanced analytics capabilities that we'll be bringing. The same technology that allows us to deliver those analytics also takes a lot of the manual effort out of doing valuations for our folks today. Not only does it allow us to bring enhanced capabilities to our clients, it also drives margin expansion on our service delivery.

Our infrastructure investments drive corporate function efficiency. The Altus Performance platform drives new analytics capabilities as well as service delivery efficiencies for us. Margin expansion.

Paul Treiber
Equity Research Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Okay, I see. That's helpful. Just, you know, following up on a couple of comments you had on acquisitions, you know, and your interest in acquisitions, you know, how should we think about either key categories on the analytics side or gaps that you want to address through acquisitions at some point in the future?

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Sure. We called our strategy last year. We have not pivoted at all from our strategy. Our focus is on increasing data and technologies that drive the advanced capabilities. We don't feel like we have any holes in our analytics engine at this point. StratoDem gave us the analytics engine. Reonomy gave us the underlying linking technology of asset attributes to assets that can then feed into the StratoDem engine. Reonomy also gave us data to help train that analytics engine. More data that can help us feed the analytics engine or train models with is always interesting to us. That could be on the tax side. It's our own tax data. It's other tax data. It could be ESG data, other demographic data.

There's lots of areas of interest for us to expand the attributes of our models.

Paul Treiber
Equity Research Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Thank you. That's helpful. I'll pass the line and best of luck to you, Angelo.

Jim Hannon
CEO, Altus Group

Thank you, Paul.

Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your phone. As there are no more questions, I will turn the conference back over to Mr. Hannon for any closing remarks. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.

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