All right, let's kick things off here. I'm Parker Lane, Software Analyst here at Stifel, and with me to start the day is, Tony Boor, EVP and CFO of Blackbaud. Tony, thanks for joining us.
Absolutely. Appreciate being here.
Yeah, it's great. Been coming for a long time.
Yes, we have.
We appreciate you. You know, Blackbaud's been around a long time, so we don't have to go through who you actually are, but I think it'd be really good to get an update, you know, coming out of 1Q, and what the key initiatives really are as we push towards the end of 2024 to, you know, drive shareholder value.
Yeah, we've actually updated our strategy as, as you know, Parker, about two and a half years ago and put in place a new operating plan, and that's been driving tremendous results in the business. You've seen, we went from somewhere in the mid- to high-20s from a Rule of 40 and planned to get to a Rule of 40 as a company. I think when we originally put those goals in place sometime in 2026, 2027 timeframe, and we were able to pull that forward by accelerating some of those plans, and we pulled that forward, and we actually got to Rule of 40 by Q3 of last year, which was well ahead of schedule, and then we did it again for Q4.
The guide we gave for the year is to be a Rule of 40 company for the full year this year, for the first time ever, in our 40-plus years in existence, and that operating plan's been working really well. As we'll talk about some of the pieces and parts, some new pricing initiatives, moving to longer-term contracts with our customers. You know, we've got a keen focus. One of the places that's been a little tough for us 'cause of the economy, and we're seeing this in a lot of the software stocks, we were talking about this last night, is just the corporate space and buying right now with the economy, I think. So we've had a little bit of a drag.
We bought a company called EVERFI in the EdTech, kind of social impact space a little over two years ago now. That and the YourCause business are what we call our Corporate Impact group. And that one's been a little tough just with the economy. The EVERFI business is a little more discretionary, and then also some of their big customers, as you know, is the Fintech and the banks, and obviously, the banks have had some tough times here the last couple of years. So that's the one piece in the business, I think that's, that we're still focused on. And when we think about driving shareholder value, we'll continue with this operating plan, continue to drive more margin expansion, hopefully higher growth rates. We've done a great job.
We're kinda low single digits, and we're up into the high single digits now for organic growth, which is tremendous, I think. And so we're really focused on how do we keep that growth rate up there and get some margin expansion over the next couple of years.
Well, let's break down the growth algorithm-
Mm-hmm.
A little bit. So if we split things into pricing and then ex pricing.
Yeah.
Let me start with pricing. You have made this change from 1-year contracts to 3-year contracts. A decent chunk of your base has already come up, and executed on that.
Mm.
How do you feel like that whole process has gone so far, and, you know, where are we in that transition?
Yeah, the process has gone really well. To your point, I think about 35% of that recurring revenue base was up for renewal last year, so that was the first year we started on the new contracting initiatives. So we'll have about another 30% of the base this year, 25 next, and then the final little bit in 2026. So far, renewal rates have held up very well, which was one of the big key things. We didn't want people churning. So we're trying to move people largely from where we had a big piece of our base from the old license days and maintenance days, where we're there on 1-year agreements, moving them largely to 3-year, some are a little longer. There's a couple of components in the pricing.
Pricing's about half of our growth rate right now, but you need to break that down. About a half of that half or a quarter of the increase in the growth rate is related to kinda inflationary pricing. The other half is just normal pricing, moving to these three-year contracts. The three-year contracts now have annual escalators built into them, where our old legacy, initial contracts didn't have an annual escalator at year two and year three. And then they renew on a three-year term as well, where our old three-year contract renewed on a one-year term.
Mm.
And so you've got some interesting dynamics. You've got a higher annual price increase nowadays, which is, I think, common across the software space. So we've got a good piece of that that'll be recurring, that's not kind of this inflationary. And then when you think about that inflationary, which we didn't have any big price increases during COVID, which is why we had this, and then inflation hitting. A good portion of that is still your annual increase, so part of that is recurring as well. So there's probably somewhere between 15%-25% that's kinda tied to the more one time in nature.
Mm.
And then we still have to decide, you know, four years down the road, do we have some other price increases? What's inflation doing? Those other pieces. But that's gone really well. Renewal rates have held up. We're now into year two, so some of those folks that renewed last year on one-year agreements, they paid a much higher price 'cause we're using a bit of a stick versus carrot to force them to the multi-year. We're just starting to see those, so hopefully with the Q2 earnings call, I can give you some update on what we're seeing. But thus far, our overall gross dollar retention rate on the social side of the business is doing really well and increasing, as is the net dollar retention.
So all in all, I would say it's, it's holding up more, favorably than I originally expected when we put the plans together. Our average discount on those terms, are coming in a little lower than we originally planned as well. So sitting in my chair, I'm very happy about, about where it's gone so far.
Yeah, it's great to hear. On the renewal rate side of things, can you talk about why there isn't more price sensitivity? Like, why have things gone so well there for a, you know, customer base that's pretty sensitive to-
Yeah, you know, it's interesting-
-price?
'cause I was, I was just at one of our big customers last week, where I'm the exec sponsor, and I met with the new CIO, who'd just come on board not too long ago, and he and I were chatting, and they happened to be up for renewal on one of the big BBCRM enterprise-level agreements. And he wasn't... Tom and I were talking about last week. He's not worried about the dollar amount. The percentage sounds high, but on their contracts, it's not like it's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our average customer that's somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 per product. Most of our customers are on 2-3 products.
So even if you're hitting them with a 15%-20% increase, it's still thousands of dollars, typically a year, and they're raising millions on that core platform. So in the scheme of things, the percentage seems high, but the dollar amount is not, and if you thought about switching costs or the cost for them to go to another provider, and typically, we have the best solution in the market in most of the verticals, and so, you know, I think it's stickier than we would have originally thought. I don't know that we realized that we had the kind of, you know, pricing power that we have.
Mm-hmm.
Now, we don't want to take advantage of it. We don't want to start, you know, pissing off customers and losing them, and so it's a fine balance there, but thus far, I think we've struck a very good chord on this one.
Yeah. Well, let's leave pricing to the side and talk about other drivers-
Yep
... of growth here. Maybe you could break it down by transactional and contractual.
Mm-hmm.
What the two or three things that are driving growth in 2024 and beyond are, what you're most excited about?
Yeah, the things outside of pricing, you know, on the transactional side, it's just, you know, we want to make sure more people are adopting our, our payments, right? Or tuition management, or using Luminate and TeamRaiser for their events and runs and walks, and then we've got some YourCause . So we've got several pieces to the transaction, JustGiving being another one that's done really well for us, as you know. You know, one of the things on transaction can be a little volatile, so it depends what kind of, you know, events there are in the world.
Mm-hmm.
It's unfortunate, but things like wars, and hurricanes, and pandemics cause shifts in giving or, you know, and you can have bumps in giving around big events like that in the world, and last year was a year we had several of those kind of viral events, as we would call them. Between Gaza, and Maui fires, and all the different things, and so last year was actually a really good year, as you know, I think we had a little more than 10% growth in the, in the BBMS and the transaction credit card kind of business. Last year, that typically runs 7%-8% growth. So it'll be a little tougher compare this year. The JustGiving business has done really well.
We have a new model there that we put in place several years ago, largely in Europe, and we're bringing that to U.S. now, which is the Complete Cover. It's kind of the tip model, where instead of charging, you know, a 3% platform fee or a processing fee and some other fees, excuse me, you let the donor choose. And so you, as a donor, might give a $100 donation to one of your favorite orgs, and you might give a 10% tip or $10 tip.
Well, in that model, we're getting that $10 instead of $3 that we would normally charge, or $5, depending on the platform fees, etc., and the charity gets 100 cents on the dollar because that fee is separate, and so then in the past, they might have gotten $97 on that. So it's a win-win. We're just bringing that to the U.S. We had to build some new modern donation forms, and those had to be built by product, and so it's taken longer in the U.S. for that reason 'cause we've got to get those forms built out and then all the connectors built for each of the major products that would have the BBMS platform attached for donations. And then secondarily, unlike JustGiving, where it's peer-to-peer, so we turn it on, we control the platform.
In the U.S., we have to go to our customers and get them to make sure they connect it to their websites. So it's gonna take several years to get that rolled out in the U.S. But not only is it higher revenue going to drive growth for us, and it's a win-win for us and our customers, but it's also great from a margin perspective 'cause our costs don't change. So if we're able to get that higher take rate with people doing this tipping or this Complete Cover-
Mm-hmm
...there's really no incremental cost of goods, and so that'll be a nice margin accretive item for us as well. And then, you know, public schools have had their own difficulties. As you know, everybody's got kids in schools, and so there's more and more folks sending their kids to private schools, so we've seen nice growth on that side of the business. We have a big solution set, into the private schools, but the tuition management's another transaction side that's done well just 'cause enrollment's up.
Mm-hmm.
That continues to fare very well. On the contractual side, you know, it's really a focus on innovation and bookings. I think we're gonna hit on a question probably on AI, but we've started to roll out a lot of AI capabilities in the products. A lot of them are pretty simple, but very impactful on our customers, and so in the products, the customers will get, you know, if you're somebody that's managing donors, it will surface recommendations to you on who you need to talk to, who you might need to go court, who you might... You know, it'll give you recommendations on your ask. So you might have been thinking, "I'm gonna ask for $5,000, you know, from Parker for this donation," and they'll do some wealth screening and say, "Well, Parker makes a bunch of money.
You ought to ask him for $25,000." And so we're starting to use AI to do that. We've got AI built into the JustGiving platform now. So you as an individual, getting to do a peer-to-peer fundraising, part of a, maybe a marathon you're running on, raise money for Cancer Society or something, it will actually help you populate your form to create a more positive story. And we're seeing much higher take rates and much higher dollars raised as a result. So we started rolling out some of those kind of things across the portfolio and the different products, and that's, that's been working really well, but it's early days. And then we've got just a lot of other innovation of finishing up Raiser's Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT, and then, you know, just, you know, it's a big portfolio.
There's a lot of work going on constantly.
Yeah
... but it's, it's pretty exciting times for us.
Yeah.
All of those things then hopefully will drive bookings and more rates, which is the key on the contractual side.
If we go back to the transactional side, you talked about some of the events that happened last year and what that meant for donations. How do you internally model that business, and how much predictability is there when it's kind of, you know, about what's going on in the world?
Yeah, it's tough, and I always push on my team. You know, it's a balance of how much of that do you put into your budget and your guide versus not, and because they're so difficult to predict, we will typically put in a small amount. So if I look over the years, you know, you at least have some component that will be in there. We'll put in a small amount. Timing the year, that it's anybody's guess. Hurricane seasons, a pretty good ones, it gives you some sense in the back versus the front of the year, those kind of things. But it's one we wrestle with a lot.
Typically, what will happen is when you look at guide, you know, if you have a bunch of viral events in the year, we'll end up overperforming, so we'll be at the top end of the guide. If we don't have viral events, we're probably at the lower end of the guide.
Yeah
is how I'd kinda predict that.
You did touch on AI. It sounds like you're embedding a lot of it across the portfolio.
Mm-hmm.
Naturally, people want to know, are you going to monetize that, or is this just part of the game now for you guys? Is that a growth driver necessarily, or is it more just about customer success?
I think more customer success, retention, and new bookings. So it will drive growth from that perspective. Now, on the transaction side, you know, the more efficient and effective forms and JustGiving, they'll raise more money, we'll make more money. The more effective fundraising, that's part of why we're not charging extra, and we've also had these recent price increases. If you think of, like, Raiser's Edge or Blackbaud CRM or something, where you're asking for donations, if they're asking you for $25,000 and get it instead of $5,000, and then you're doing that via credit card online, then we're getting more revenue. And so we believe that a lot of them, not all, some we will charge for, but a lot of them are built in because we think they actually will drive more transaction volume, more stickiness.
One of the other big ones I didn't mention is during COVID, we did see a much higher percentage of donations move to online, and we talked about that.
Mm.
Same thing we saw with Amazon and other people were stuck at home, and so they had to go to online, a lot of the churches and other things that had been resistant. So we've seen an increase from kinda sub 10% of donations in the US per year being online transactions, went up to about 13, and it's, and it's held up there, which is also good because then a bigger percentage runs through our platform, and we get a, a piece of that.
Yeah. I wanted to shift gears over to the corporate side of the business.
Mm-hmm.
You talked about it a bit earlier, but you guys bought EVERFI, I think it was $700 million-
Mm-hmm
- A few years ago, expected it to grow close to 20%. It's been a bit disappointing.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's going wrong direction this year.
Yes.
Can that be a growth driver going forward? Is that still a priority, that corporate market, or is there something structural there?
Yeah, and I just make sure everybody's aware of what's in there. So corporate's got three pieces, as we call Corporate Impact. You'd have what was the EVERFI business.
Mm-hmm.
Our YourCause business we bought several years ago, which is CSR. Some of you guys are. We use that to manage our all our employee giving, matching gifts, all of those kind of things. Everything goes in your annual report. And then we have kinda grants management because big corporations are giving grants, right? Versus receiving them. So we have kinda those three components. YourCause is actually doing really well despite the tough economic, you know, conditions we're in. I think that's because CSR is still pretty high on the list for most corporations. We were talking about that at dinner last night. I think folks are saying ESG is making a little bit of a swing back the other direction as well.
Mm.
So that fits in there. Where we're really having the difficulty right now has been on that EVERFI side of things. That's more the EdTech. Biggest piece of that business was, you know, like, financial literacy courses into the public K-12 school system, those kind of things. And that's, that's been tough, right? The corporations have tightened their belts, interest rates, financial institutions, like we talked about, they've got the Community Reinvestment Act, and the banks are all struggling a little bit. Hopefully, things will turn here. As the economy turns, as we look at this and try and build the strategy, how do we get this back on track? One of the things we wrestle with is what will happen when the economy turns, 'cause it was just really unfortunate timing.
Mm.
We bought them, and right after that, we had, you know, all the inflationary stuff and interest, Fed start raising rates and Silicon Valley Bank and all the related stuff, so that's been tough. And so we don't wanna, we don't wanna make a knee-jerk reaction and do something silly that we'll regret down the road, but we also can't afford to have an anchor on the business, especially now that the social side is doing so well. And we grew right at 10% on the contractual recurring side last quarter, which is, it's been a long time since we've been there, right? And so to have a couple point drag because of this EVERFI business is, it's not something we like, and we're doing a lot of strategic work and planning on that to figure out how we get this thing righted, that ship righted.
We disposed of a little U.K. services business that wasn't core. I would say it can include all the way to divestiture if we can't figure out how to get this thing turned around, because we will figure out to do what's right for shareholder value.
Yeah. Staying on the subject of M&A, it has been a part of the growth algorithm in the past.
Mm-hmm.
I noticed you didn't bring it up as one of the drivers for this business.
Yep.
How are you guys thinking about capital allocation in general? You're generating a lot more free cash flow than you ever have.
Mm-hmm.
So, is M&A off the table as part of the strategy or?
No, it's still very much on the table. And you're right, the free cash flow is a tremendous story. I'm surprised we haven't talked about it more on the call, so it hadn't come up the last couple, but we're up to, I think, on our adjusted free cash flow, to just over 22% for the midpoint guide this year, which is phenomenal from where we were in the kinda probably low double digits just two years ago. EBITDA and free cash flow have improved tremendously. One of the other things on free cash flow, just to keep in mind, is, knock on wood, we're coming very close to having all the security incident-related stuff behind us.
Mm-hmm.
That's significant because we have been spending, as you know, $25 million-$35 million just in legal fees a year, dealing with all those issues. It's been a big burden on the business, but we are close to done. I think we'll talk about those a little more here in a second. So that'll be a nice impact on free cash flow, and we won't have to have those adjustments. But with that significant growth in free cash flow and the EBITDA, we've got a new bank facility, right, that we increased that by $400 million. We've got a lot of capacity. We announced late last year, early this year, that we were going to start combating dilution.
So I think the first piece is, going forward, I would expect that we'll be more aggressive on that front of trying to buy, buy back at least enough stock to combat dilution, from our, our equity comp. So that'll be kind of, I think, a go forward, you know, similar to what a dividend be doing buybacks. Then because of where we believe the company is and the valuation is so low, I think right now by far the best use of our capital is buying back our stock. So we announced ASR last quarter, a $200 million ASR. That should complete somewhere around Q3 of this year. We got 70% of the estimated shares when we did that, when we put it in place.
Then depending on the stock price, as they execute that, we'll get some other, we'll settle up for some more shares. I think right now we're estimating that to be 550,000-650,000 more shares. That'll put it pretty close to our target. We mentioned we're gonna do, we're gonna target to get 7%-10% of the stock bought back this year. That should get us really close to that 7%, and then we'll need to talk about what we do. Do we come back in over the top and go into the open market and do another buyback plan, you know, later this year sometime to get us somewhere between that 7% and 10%?
Right now, I'd say we're in great shape from a leverage perspective, especially with some of the legal stuff coming to an end, coming to a head. We've got a really favorable ruling on the class action stuff, so we don't, we're not worried about a big settlement on that front, so that frees up some capital. So I'd say we'll continue to be pretty aggressive. From the M&A front, we're gonna be doing M&A. We just did a small investment. We did a tuck-in recently, but I think they'll be smaller tuck-ins versus a big EVERFI-sized type of deal for the, at least the foreseeable future, till we can get the valuation up in the company. We think the better use right now would be buybacks.
Yeah. You've mentioned this security incident a couple of times here. I think it's a 200 basis point headwind, some of the expenses you have related to that this year, catching up on some new systems-
Got it.
Hiring different personnel, etc. Can you talk about those individual components and why they're only temporary and not something you have to spend on?
Yeah, not all will be temporary. Some will be permanent, but we'll have some other costs that'll go away in the base. So the $20 million is not nearly what we're spending on cyber. So our cyber spend is significantly higher than that, and it's ramped over many years. The $20 million was an incremental spend for this year, and that was because we entered into agreement, a settlement agreement with 49 state attorney generals and the FTC. We're very close to having that final state, which is California, who went on their own, done. We should have that here, hopefully in the next couple of weeks, signed and finished. And then we got a very favorable ruling on the class action. But the $20 million was to accelerate some things that were already in place to make sure we met the compliance date.
So when we signed those settlement agreements, they had very specific dates that you'll be at this maturity level from like a NIST framework, etc., a COSO framework, on all these cyber areas by X date. And then we have a third-party assessor that will come in every other year, do an assessment or report that'll go back to the regulatory authorities. And so we had to accelerate some things to make sure we're ready for those deadlines this year.
Mm-hmm.
So you'll have some consultants. We had to implement some new software, some new automation. We had to hire some people. I would say something 50%-70% would be non-recurring or will go away because it was folks you brought in to help accelerate. You'll put in new systems, those new systems, you'll have that cost continue on, but you would have had other older systems in place that will go away. We also had some redundant personnel and some other things, so it'll be a mix, but, a good portion of it will not repeat. So that'll be favorable for this year. Now, we will also have some of the stuff that stays. You'll have a full year impact, so you will have, as we call, bow wave, right?
Mm-hmm.
Of some of those people I hired and some of those systems where I'll have a full year impact. So it'll kinda be a mixed bag. We'll talk about that more when we get to guidance. But regardless of that, we should be able to drive more leverage in the business with the pricing, with the higher growth rates, with our real, you know, keen focus, as you know, on the cost and the headcount side of the business. We should see some margin expansion regardless of what we have to do on that cyber front.
You got it.
Okay.
I want to see if anyone in the crowd here has any questions they'd like to ask. Got one over here.
Yeah, I guess with these security costs causing the 200 basis point headwind to EBITDA margin this year, going forward, would you expect to get those costs back plus more? Would the trend line continue to expand further with EBITDA margin?
So the question was around EBITDA margins in the future and what we'd expect that trend line to be and will we get back, you know, the margin we lost with this investment. I would say we won't get back all of that margin, and some of it is permanent. There is some headcount and some software and some solutions that we had to implement. So those will be ongoing costs, while others will go away. I think on the cyber front, the key is we're as we get to the maturity level, which we will be at this year to make sure we're ready for these assessments, and we'll continue to have to spend and invest. We talked about this at dinner last night, I think, before we even started, you know.
There's nowhere we're heading as corporations, I think, except with higher spend on security solutions, right, going forward.
Mm-hmm.
Because the threat actors are not discontinuing their investments, and AI makes the threat actors more dangerous as well because they're using AI. And so I think just from living through this, I don't think any corporation is gonna be safe, and I think we're, we'll just see a continued ramp in cyber spend for all companies. Until somebody finds a better solution, a better mousetrap, I just don't see those costs going down. So we have a much bigger base, and so cyber will be, I would expect that to be an increasing spend for us here on out, for the foreseeable future, as it will be for all corporations. That being said, we won't have a lot of those kinda one time, so those will go away, so that'll be beneficial.
But regardless of that, I think just the positive impact of the pricing, most of that pricing falls through, right? Because there's no incremental costs. So that'll be positive as we have a snowball effect from the pricing. And then just our, as we've said, we're gonna continue to run this business with about 3,000 heads from a headcount perspective, and that'll give us some leverage in the business. We still have some data centers to close and some redundant costs there. We still have some subleases that we're trying to get on some of our unused facilities. So there's still quite a few other, you know, pretty large pieces of the business to go get some leverage. We're really not talking about guidance beyond this year yet, but we'll certainly expect that we can see some further margin expansion in the business.
We'll talk about that more when we give the guide for next year.
Yeah. Any other questions? Okay.
It's a good question.
Yeah. A lot of people that knew you pre-COVID would remember the push into higher ed-
Mm-hmm
- into faith-based, et cetera. We don't talk a lot about those anymore.
Mm-hmm.
Are new verticals or new sub verticals, rather, still part of the story, or are you really just focused in on, you know, where you have a foothold today?
Yeah, I think on the faith-based, we still do a lot in the faith-based area, as you know, because a lot of the private K-12 schools are faith-based.
Right.
When you think about that, so we've been in the faith-based space for a long time. We made a push to get into the kinda church management, right?
Mm-hmm.
Solutions to help manage the church. I think what we found there as we got into it and why we pivoted is that the economies in so many of those churches and those parishes and stuff were just... They're tough. It's a tough market from a price point, and it just, the price point was so low that it, we just determined it was not gonna be in the best interest of shareholders to keep pushing on that front.
Mm-hmm.
I do think the donation side is a key area, but there's a lot more competition in the church space from the, you know, the online giving than there used to be. And so that one's a little tougher from a competitive standpoint. So we kinda have shifted away from where we were going down that church management path and tithing so much. But certainly, certainly still a big piece of our business because of all the private schools. And then we are still selling, you know, more enterprise-level stuff to the, you know, headquarters and some of the larger parishes and so forth, like Archdiocese of New York and some of those kinds of things. So church is still an interest, but not as big of a focus as it was, I think because of the economies in some of the smaller churches.
Higher ed is still a big area for us. We do great. That's, you know, we've got all the largest universities and colleges.
Mm-hmm.
The piece I think you were referring to, Parker, was kinda coming upmarket-
Yeah
- with a K-12 solution into the smaller colleges. That's still continuing to happen and evolving.
Mm-hmm.
So we continue to build out what was that private K-12 solution to be able to handle the complexities of colleges and universities and tracking, you know, all the hours and the other things that you have to do in a college versus, you know, middle school or high school. And so we continue to build out and innovate, adding more capabilities and continuing to bring that upmarket in those small colleges and universities. That's actually still going very well.
Yeah, got it.
We just don't talk about it a lot. It's all part of that. We've had things like COVID, I think, and-
Yeah,
corporate and other stuff to talk about, security incident.
Exactly, exactly. You know, looking at the company pre-COVID to where it is now, one of the things I noticed is the direct sales heads-
Mm-hmm
has actually come in considerably. At the same time, you're expanding the top line, accelerating that. So can you comment on sales productivity and just how, you know, much of a step forward you've made on that front?
That one's been a long time in coming, man. But I mean, many of you have been with us for quite a while and following the story, but, you know, we started that go-to-market effort, goodness gracious, that's... I'm dating myself, six or seven years ago, well before COVID. Remember, we started, we moved to the hunter farmer model, changed all the comp plans, we changed the vertical and go-to-market approach, and leadership team, and David Benjamin on board, and it's been quite the ride. We were largely done with all those changes. We, you know, the headcount, we had twice as many salespeople as we have now, roughly. And so we did all that work to kinda reinvent our go-to-market, and then COVID hit.
If you remember, we were guiding, I think, 6% or so, 7% growth the year COVID hit, and we were well on track Q1, and then COVID hit and kinda things all fell by the wayside. I think what we're seeing now is not a lot of change since then. It's just we've gotten through COVID, the economy's turning, and so we're seeing just much better productivity. Our CAC payback on the sales and go-to-market side is significantly better. I would tell you it's still not where I'd like to see it, still not like top-quartile performance, but I don't know that we'll ever get there in the space we play in.
Yeah.
You know, a little slower to move, et cetera. So I don't know that we'll ever be top quartile on a CAC payback, those kind of things, but our lifetime value CAC and those things look great because our customers stay with us a long time, and that's improving with these longer-term contracts. I think we'll see retention rates go up from here. So overall, it's. I'm very happy to see that improvement in productivity. I continue to push on David and Tom that run the two different go-to-market teams, and we try and continue to balance that. What's the right number of salespeople? What's the right amount of marketing dollars, lead gen efforts, et cetera? We're just in a much better place than we were, obviously, several years ago, and it seems to be working well.
Now, I think it's more tweaks around the edges to continue to improve that, but I think we've still got quite a bit of opportunity to improve our productivity on the bookings front, with the headcount we have. And then I think one of the other big areas is just channel sales. We, you know, still don't have a good bit of bookings coming in through channel partners. And one of those issues was getting NXT, Raiser's Edge, and Financial Edge done, those core products. Because it's hard to go to channel, to a channel partner, have them sell that when it's an incomplete product-
Yeah
... still in the old database view, et cetera.
Yep.
So then now that we're getting done with those, we think we'll have a good opportunity to start building channel sales, which will be very helpful from a bookings perspective.
Okay, I think we're out of time, so we'll wrap it up there. Please join me in thanking Tony and the Blackbaud team for being here.
Thanks, Parker.