Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Altus Group Business Update Conference Call and Webcast. 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 Bartosiewicz. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this call on relatively short notice to discuss Altus leadership transition plans as discussed in the press release that was issued about half an hour ago. I'm joined today by the Chair of Altus' board, Raymond Mikulich, as well as CEO Mike Gordon, CFO Angelo Bartolini, and our newly appointed CEO, Jim Hannon. We'll make a statement to bring more context to today's announcement, and then we'll have some time to take questions at the end. Today's prepared remarks will focus on the leadership transition plans, and we plan to discuss our Q4 and year-end results in more detail on our next earnings call, expected to take place on February 24th.
Before we get started, please be advised that some of our remarks today may contain forward-looking information and also make reference to non-GAAP, non-IFRS measures, which we use as indicators of financial and operational performance. Forward-looking information and an explanation of these measures are detailed in our related reports on SEDAR and in today's press release. All of the forward-looking information discussed today is qualified by the cautionary statements included in those reports. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ray.
Thank you, Camilla. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining us on what is some short notice, we know. There's little doubt that today's announcement came as a surprise to all of you, and we wanna provide more background and context to the upcoming transition of leadership from Mike Gordon to Jim Hannon that will be effective on April 1, 2022. While perhaps the timing was unexpected, I can assure you that Jim's appointment as CEO and the expanded role of Jorge Blanco represents a natural evolution of the company's succession plan and its leadership. The timing was driven by an extraordinary and unexpected opportunity that presented itself to Mike over the holidays, and you will hear from Mike directly about that.
While Mike's transition out of management is happening sooner than many would have anticipated, the board was ready with and quickly initiated its succession planning initiatives supported by an external search firm. The pre-existing plan enabled the board to quickly assess highly qualified internal and external candidates that were well suited to assume the leadership of Altus, to provide for a seamless transition, and to continue the accelerated pace of growth and innovation underpinning the strategic plan that we adopted well over a year ago. Jim stood out as an exceptional leader with an inspiring vision and one who has quickly earned the support and confidence of the board, the senior executive team, our employees, and most importantly, our clients. He is an exceptional data software and services executive, and we're very fortunate to have him serve as our next CEO.
Jim's leadership, together with the support of the senior executive team and the board, will build on our strong track record of growth, performance, and innovation. You may recall that Jim was one of Mike's first hires in 2020. Having worked closely with Mike and having been involved in many aspects of Altus' operations over the past 18 months, Jim has quickly gained a deep understanding of the business and has been instrumental in identifying and pursuing opportunities for growth, managing resource and capital allocation, and driving a high-performance culture. He brings with him an impressive track record and a strong professional background that aligns perfectly with our strategic plan to further establish Altus as a premier information as a service provider in commercial real estate.
Importantly, Jim is known to be a reliable partner of the highest integrity with a great passion for our company and its people. All that is to say that we're delighted to have a perfect candidate for the role, and we're confident he will ensure continuity, empower our strong executive team, and help sustain our accelerated pace of progress. Of course, it is with mixed emotions that we are also announcing Mike's transition from his executive role, but he is not leaving Altus. He will remain engaged to help in the transition through the end of the quarter, and he will continue to serve as a director. While we're saddened to lose his daily presence, we look forward to Mike's ongoing strategic input as a director, and I'm confident he will continue to drive shareholder value from that seat.
On behalf of the board, we thank Mike for his many notable contributions to Altus during his extremely effective tenure. In particular, for assembling a talented, professional, driven and highly functioning senior executive team that provides a solid foundation for the transition of leadership and for the further growth of the company. I think it is fair to say that 2021 was a year of remarkable achievement that positioned us well, both financially and strategically, to deliver on our vision of becoming one of the world's foremost experts and providers of commercial real estate intelligence and solutions. The pace of innovation, acquisition, sales growth and momentum, as well as expanding operational efficiencies, has been extraordinary. The team Mike assembled, the team that made all of this incredible progress will remain with us.
As Chair, I've had the pleasure to work closely with Jim, Jorge, Alex, Steve, and the other members of the senior executive team. Based on that experience, I can assure my fellow shareholders that the company is in great hands. Their commitment to each other and our collective strategy is uncompromising, and the Board will do its part to assure the stability and vitality of the team and the 2,600 employees of Altus in the competitive market for talent that is endemic today. As many of you heard at our recent Investor Day, we have an extraordinary opportunity ahead of us, and no one is better positioned than Altus. As will be discussed in a few moments, we enter this year on solid footing.
We finished 2021 with record sales and bookings in Altus Analytics, and with 42% of our clients having adopted the cloud. These are good precursors for the momentum continuing into this year. This was not an easy decision for Mike, I know that, but it is one he felt reassured making, knowing that the execution of our strategy will be quickly and competently taken up by the strong team that he has built here at Altus. Now before I turn it over to Mike, I want to acknowledge and thank each and every director for their invaluable contributions over the last month, not to mention the past year. They've been gracious with their time, and advice, and the company and management have greatly benefited by their wisdom and their insights. I thank you all.
With that, we wish Mike much success in his new endeavor and look forward to his continued contributions as a director. Mike?
Thank you, Ray. I really do appreciate the kind words. I remain immensely excited about Altus' potential and the trajectory that we're on. Literally departing from the CEO role at this point was personally an extremely difficult decision to make. I wanna begin first by thanking the board for just this incredible opportunity. It's been a notable highlight of my career. To thank our shareholders and analysts who over the course of our engagements have provided a lot of encouragement and support since I took on the CEO role about a year and a half ago. I also wanna express my thanks and gratitude to our customers for their trust and inspiring us to deliver and drive market innovation.
Above all, I want to thank our employees who have worked tirelessly to deliver on our ambitions and on our strategy and on our customer's promise. When I first joined Altus, the market opportunity was clear to me. To be honest, it's still very clear. I was especially excited about the build-out to ensure we had the right strategic team, right strategy, the new operating model, focused go-to-market plans, further scale, and a technology stack to compete globally in this rapidly evolving market, and frankly, deliver upon our potential in this changing marketplace. As a career operator, this is what really got me going, and we hit the ground running. You know, to be fair, we ran pretty fast and pretty far. In many respects, we accomplished a lot of that in 2021, and I'm incredibly proud of what we did.
As I see it, from here on out, it's about execution on that strategy that we put out there, and this team that we assembled can deliver on this, and this is their time. With that in context, while it's nice to feel wanted, I now know I'm really not that needed. This has been a very difficult decision for me and my family. The opportunity at ArisGlobal presented itself unexpectedly, and to be frank, in the end, it was something that we just could not turn down. I have a lot of history with ArisGlobal. It's a privately held life sciences software provider that I have chaired for over the past two years and have helped cultivate and grow from that chairman role.
As they embark on their next chapter and their growth, I believe that I can add value with their executive team, and I'm very excited about that mandate. With many members of the management team of ArisGlobal based in Boston, it's also a nice bonus for my family to be very close to home. To be clear, I see tremendous value and upside at Altus and will be cheering for my friends and supporting them as a fellow shareholder and as a director on the board. As I laid out for you at our Investor Day, this is their time, and this is our time as a company. as I look across at Jim and my executive team, this is the team, and now is their time. Jim has earned this promotion, and his focused and collaborative leadership style has gained him strong support amongst our employees and customers.
Many of you know I've known Jim for about a decade. It's probably 12 years to be exact, and I valued his experience and leadership throughout our time at FICO, Callcredit, and now here at Altus. He's been a steadfast partner for me at Altus and has played a pivotal role driving the strong results in 2021. I look forward to our continued partnership and, to be honest, friendship in overseeing Altus reach its full potential through our next phase of growth and beyond. I'm excited to continue to serve our shareholders through my continued capacity as a director on the board. With that, I'll turn it over to our next Chief Executive Officer, Jim Hannon.
Thanks, Mike. To Mike, this is a bittersweet moment for me, as you know. Mike's been my colleague, my boss, my friend for many years. We've had a tremendous amount of fun working together, and I'm excited for that to continue. It's an honor to follow you in this role, Mike. I think I speak on behalf of everyone at Altus in saying we respect and appreciate all your contributions, and you set us up on a great trajectory. I am humbled and excited to take on this new role. It's a privilege to be asked to lead such an important company during this exciting time and with this amazing team.
Mike, Jorge, Alex, the whole exec committee and I will be working closely together over the coming weeks to ensure a smooth transition, and given our collaborative approach, it should be relatively seamless. In the coming days, I'll start making my rounds across the organization to connect with our colleagues, and we'll quickly start running the majority of the day-to-day operations as Jorge steps into his new role, including leading the analytics sales kickoff meeting in two weeks. I have a lot of history with Jorge. We've known each other as colleagues and friends for just shy of 20 years now, and suffice to say, we get on the same page quickly. We're collaborative, as we are with the entire executive team. I've been so impressed with this team over the last year.
Transitions like this bring in fresh perspectives on operations and opportunities, and I'm looking forward to going deeper on the businesses I haven't yet had the opportunity to work with closely. Judging by the significant progress on our product strategy, I'm also confident that Jorge's focus on the analytics business and his broader involvement as Chief Commercial Officer will unlock many more opportunities for us. In many respects, as much as this may seem like a big change, many things are gonna remain the same. As I look ahead to the year, it's really about building on the recent successes and executing on our current plans. We remain passionately committed to the strategy and the financial and long-term priorities shareholders expect of us. We're well on our way and intent on accelerating the pace. I imagine now that my LinkedIn account is getting a lot of action tonight.
To share a little bit about myself, highlights of my career have been driving growth, transforming businesses with a focus on go-to-market strategies, investments, managerial finance, and strategy development. I've over three decades of global sales, finance, and operational experience, and as many of you know, I've previously worked with Mike, Jorge, and other members of our senior executive team. My most recent role was Chief Commercial Officer at Callcredit Information Group before we were acquired by TransUnion. Prior to that, I held a number of leadership roles with global mandates at FICO and Avaya, leading information services and technology companies listed on U.S. exchanges. Earlier in my career, I worked in CRE Tech, where I gained invaluable experience in the CRE industry while helping manage Onsite Access, the national provider of building-centric integrated communication services for the CRE space.
In many respects, the cloud and business transition that we're on at Altus Analytics parallels a lot of the roles that I've had in the past, particularly in the fintech space, and it's that successful experience that has enabled our team to move at an accelerated pace at Altus. As demonstrated by some of Mike's comments and some of Ray's comments, we had a very strong finish to 2021. At Altus Analytics, our exceptionally strong bookings growth is a good indicator of sustaining strong top-line performance in 2022. We also made great progress in our cloud transition journey, finishing the year with 42% of ARGUS Enterprise users contracted on the cloud, above our expectations of reaching between 35%-40% for this period.
Together with a robust backlog of property tax appeals and a growing pipeline of opportunities as our revamped go-to-market programs continue to take effect, we feel good about continued strength in CRE consulting in 2022. As I step into the new role, I look forward to working more closely with the investment community and hearing from you. I'm sure Camilla will keep me busy as we ramp up our IR meetings this year. In the meantime, we'll have more information to share on the progress of our transition and our financial results at some upcoming earnings calls later this month. At this point, we turn it over to Angelo, Camilla?
Yes, please.
Thank you, Jim, and congratulations on this well-deserved promotion. I look forward to working together. As announced today, the TSX has approved our notice of intention to enter a normal course issuer bid. Under the NCIB, we're authorized to repurchase for cancellation up to approximately 1.3 million shares over a 12-month period as opportunities arise from time to time. This would represent approximately 3% of our outstanding shares today. As we discussed at our recent Investor Day, the NCIB represents another means at our disposal by which we can return value to shareholders. This provides us with flexibility around our balanced capital allocation in investments, particularly during periods when our shares may trade in a price range that does not adequately reflect their underlying value based on the company's business and strong financial position.
Given the significant growth prospects ahead of us and how far along we've come, our shares may be undervalued from time to time, and we may encounter periods of increased trading volatility where the disconnect on the value of our share price is even more pronounced. These are periods where we can be opportunistic, during which the NCIB represents an attractive and tax-efficient use of free cash flow to enhance shareholder value and an appropriate use of available funds while continuing to balance other growth investments. Overall, it's a good program that gives us flexibility in terms of execution and flexibility around our balanced capital allocation investments. Our strong 2021 results support this announcement, and we are able to do this because our strong financial position and positive financial outlook.
It demonstrates our balanced capital allocation approach, and we are pleased that our strong cash generation and balance sheet enables us to return capital to investors while continuing to invest in our operations and deploy capital towards potential M&A opportunities. In closing, I'll reiterate that our capital allocation plans remain unchanged. Our top priority is investing in Altus' growth, given the long and global runway ahead of us. We plan to continue investing capital where we see attractive returns. That's organic growth initiatives as well as value-enhancing tech investments and strategic acquisitions as opportunities arise. As market opportunities present themselves, we'll consider buying back stock while balancing debt repayments within our target leverage. Thank you for your time today.
We look forward to connecting again soon during our Q4 results earnings call in a few weeks from now, when we can do a deeper dive on the numbers. Thank you, everyone, and I'm now pleased to open the lines for questions. 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 comes from Yuri Lynk from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, everyone. Jim, congratulations on the new gig. Mike, what type of opportunity is offered to you at ArisGlobal that you just can't get at Altus? Can you put a little more meat on the bone in terms of the opportunity that you're going to pursue?
Yeah, I think, Yuri, thanks for the question. I think from my end, it's you know, I did a couple of years as Chairman, helped build that team out with the CEO. The CEO is moving on for some personal reasons. You know, given the opportunity, we had a good discussion on how we could move forward, what we should be doing with that, and it just seemed like the right move at the right time for me. It's an opportunity for me to be Chairman and CEO, but at the same point, it's an opportunity to be a little bit closer to home and build out a global business in the life sciences space.
You might not know this, but I actually started off in the life sciences space many years ago, right out of college. It's something that just presented itself and made a lot of sense for me.
Okay. Your board involvement with Altus, I mean, are you thinking about the duration of this as a transition period or a long-term board member? I ask the question just 'cause it's not typical to see an ex-CEO stay on the board for an extended period of time.
Well, I'll be honest, Yuri, I hope not. You know, as I've gotten a chance to talk with Ray and talk with Jim, I mean, this is not about Altus, and I think that Altus has a really good step in front of it. You know, as long as the shareholders want me on the board, I'd like to stay on the board. As long as Jim and Ray want me, I'll be there as well, as long as they're there too. That I'm really excited about and continuing to be a part of it.
Last question, unless I missed it in the press release, but Jim, is Jim going on the board as well?
I'll take the answer.
But what-
Jim is gonna be. Ray, you wanna take that?
Go ahead, Mike.
No, go ahead.
Yeah, Jim. Yeah. Our Jim is gonna be put on the board as soon as we have the chance to elect him, and we have the next opening. He is gonna get on the board as soon as possible. Similar to, like, how it took me a while to get on the board when I joined, and I, you know, had to go through a process.
Understood. Okay. I'll turn it over. Thanks, everyone.
The next question comes from Paul Steep from Scotia Capital. Please go ahead.
Hey, evening. Congratulations, Jim. It's hard to get on earlier. Can you just quickly back up to how this process maybe overlapped or didn't overlap with, you know, the acquisition of Reonomy around that closing time? It sounds like it may have been going on a while, and just any detail on how broad the search was, it'd be helpful. One quick follow-up for Jim.
Hey, Mike, why don't you speak to Reonomy and the timing, and then I'll talk about the process.
Yeah, sure. Hey, Paul. I think on Reonomy, no. That had nothing to do with the timing on it. We were making the acquisition as it was going forward. You know, certainly there's a discussion. One of the things that I was tasked with just when I got on was building out a good team so that we could have internal candidates who could be considered for succession and make sure that there was a good executive team there.
Then from that standpoint, what the board and I had always talked about, well before I called Ray, was just to make sure that we were, you know, if I was ever, for lack of better terms, hit by a bus or won the lottery, that we had a game plan in place just to make sure we were there. I talked to Ray, you know, certainly, well after the Reonomy discussion. You know, Ray got the board together, and he can tell you the rest from there. It was fairly well planned based off of the timing of everything and what we already had in place, you know, really from the end of the summer.
Yeah, Paul. I mean, I think, you know, as I said in my scripted comments, the board had a succession plan in place, really from the day Mike started. We have had sort of emergency succession plans, kinda in the file cabinet. As Mike built out the team, we did keep an eye on building internal candidates for succession. Now, that said, when Mike essentially said, "I got a deal that I can't refuse and you can't compete with," we immediately dusted off the succession plan, hired a search firm, and did a quick look not only at the candidates that we had considered when we first hired Mike, but it expanded the horizon.
We also set some very important criteria that frankly recognized the momentum within the organization and the pace at which the company is running and innovating and just frankly how well it's running and how it's working. I will, you know, acknowledge that we had a bit of a bias to maintaining the stability of the organization, and no matter how good an external candidate is, it's gonna be a bit disruptive. That takes nothing away from Jim, who's absolutely very well qualified for this. Frankly, our external search consultants and advisors basically said he'd be among the top candidates. It wasn't that hard a decision, but we did take a look at external candidates as well.
Can I, if I added one other thing, Ray. Hey, Jim, how did you feel about the process? Complete.
It was thorough, guys. This was not. There's a lot of continuity here. I'm, as I said, really excited to be running this. Ray and the board took their time. They spent a lot of time with me, and I'm assuming with others, and were extremely thorough, as were the external consultants.
Great. Thanks. I appreciate the candor and the insights. Jim, just to put you on the spot on the first day here, or not even the first day, maybe give us a sense of, you know, not to ask you your objectives day one, 'cause I don't know if you're there yet, but how should we think about, you know, maybe this transition? Should we assume, you know, a little bit of lifting the foot off the gas as you engage the rest of the organization or full steam ahead and, you know, look for some updates on the objectives in 30, 90 days? How should we think about this from the outside? Thank you.
Sure, Paul, and thanks for the congratulations marks earlier. This is full steam ahead, guys. You know, Mike, like as I said earlier, Mike and Jorge and a bunch of us have been doing this for a while. The new exec, you know, it's a fairly overall new exec team. This team works really well together. We set the strategy together with Mike early on when we got here. We're executing that strategy. I don't see a change to our strategy. I need to come up to speed to get, you know, much deeper in with the tax and the cost groups, important parts of our business.
We have excellent leaders in those businesses as well. There's been a... I look at the transformation of Altus Analytics over the last year, and there's a tremendous amount of power in collaboration and pulling teams together and thinking about clients holistically, and I see that accelerating.
Great. Thanks very much, Mike. All the best. It's been good seeing you. Hopefully, we'll see each other again at an AGM in the future in person. Thanks, guys.
Absolutely, Paul.
Thanks, Paul.
Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mike Gordon for any closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. One more time, I would actually like to thank the board of directors, our analysts, our shareholders, our employees, and really put a nice shout-out there to Camilla, who's done a great job of pulling this together. I'd like to thank my executive team for all the hard work that they've done, congratulate Jim Hannon and Jorge Blanco on their new roles, and look forward to continued success and expanded success at Altus. Thank you all, and have a good night.
This concludes today's conference call. Should you have any further questions, please contact Camilla Bartosiewicz at Altus Group. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.