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Earnings Call: Q4 2021

Feb 1, 2022

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Angie, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Manhattan Associates Q4 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this call is being recorded today, Tuesday, February 1st, 2022. I would now like to introduce Dennis Story, CFO of Manhattan Associates. Mr. Story, you may begin your conference.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

Thank you, Angie, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Manhattan Associates 2021 fourth quarter earnings call. I will review our cautionary language and then turn the call over to Eddie Capel, our CEO. During this call, including the question-and-answer session, we may make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Manhattan Associates. You are cautioned that these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, are not guarantees of future performance, and that actual results may differ materially from the projections contained in our forward-looking statements.

I refer you to the reports Manhattan Associates files with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in our projections, particularly on our annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2020 and the risk factor discussion in that report, as well as any risk factor updates we provide in our subsequent Form 10-Qs. We note in particular that uncertainty regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our performance could cause actual results to differ materially from our projections. We are under no obligation to update these statements. In addition, our comments include certain non-GAAP financial measures. In an effort to provide additional information to investors, we have reconciled all non-GAAP measures to the related GAAP measures in accordance with SEC rules.

You'll find reconciliation schedules in the Form 8-K we submitted to the SEC earlier today and on our website at manh.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Eddie.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Well, thanks, Dennis. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us as we review our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results, as well as our outlook for 2022. Well, 2021 was a very successful year for Manhattan Associates, setting all-time records in total revenue, RPO, cash flow, and earnings per share. In February of 2018, we announced our goal to become a cloud-first company within five years. Four years into this transition, we've exceeded our own expectations and are well ahead of our initial timing and economic projections, with cloud solutions representing 90% of our pipeline opportunities. Despite the pandemic, in the midst of this cloud transition, we delivered record revenue in two of the four years and are guiding to a third in 2022.

Proudly, our associates continue to execute extremely well, serving both customers and our end markets. Demand for our unified commerce and supply chain cloud solutions is very strong, creating great visibility for us as we enter 2022. To help drive growth and serve our customers, we plan to add about 500 net new employees globally, and we remain committed to significantly investing in innovation to meet the future needs of our customers, grow our market share, and extend our addressable market. While global ebbs and flows certainly persist, we remain very encouraged by our near-term and long-term growth opportunities. Pivoting to results. Q4 was a record quarter that again exceeded our expectations. Total revenue increased 17% to $171 million.

Adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.48 was up 7% as we invested significantly in employee compensation. Regarding RPO, the leading indicator of our growth, in Q4, we added a record $126 million of RPO bookings, setting new highs in Americas, in EMEA, and in APAC. Our global sales team continued to execute well on robust demand for our cloud offerings across products, industry verticals, and geographic locations. Demand also remains solid from both new and existing customers, with 20% of 2021 contracted bookings coming from net new customers. In the quarter, our win rates continued to be very strong at 75% as our innovation is recognized as differentiating and industry-leading. From a vertical perspective, retail, manufacturing, and wholesale drove more than 80% of our bookings in the quarter.

Drilling into the sub-verticals, they're pretty diverse, and they include apparel, department stores, grocery, consumer goods, industrial, transportation, as well as durable and non-durable goods. On the professional services front, our global team continues to set the bar for the industry. Our cloud portfolio implementations have gone very well in 2021, as our industry-leading team successfully conducted over 100 go lives just in Q4 alone. In line with our outlook and prior commentary, we remain focused on adding and retaining our exceptional talent in 2022. Speaking of 2022, our pipelines are strong, with net new potential customers representing about 35% of demand. As I mentioned earlier, we're increasing our investment in research and development to nearly $100 million this year. Now let me provide a few additional details on our product portfolio.

I'll start off by providing another positive update on the progress we are making with Manhattan Active Warehouse Management, the industry's first and only true cloud-native WMS serving the tier one market. In May of 2020, we announced Manhattan Active WM as the natural successor to our industry-leading on-premise warehouse management for open systems solution. We've been in market for about 20 months with Manhattan Active WM, and we continue to see strong market demand and great enthusiasm. Customer deployments have been very successful, and we now have nearly 60 customers who are committed to deploying Manhattan Active WM around the world. While Manhattan WMS has been known historically for the way it excels in large-scale, complex direct consumer and retail distribution centers, our initial Manhattan Active WM deployments have really been highly diverse.

Today, Manhattan Active WM subscribers are located in 12 different countries and represent 21 distinct industry subverticals. This diversity in our customer base really reinforces our belief that supply chains of all kinds are looking to embrace cloud native, always current, fully extensible technology for their distribution centers regardless of their industry. Recent events have certainly shown us the critical importance of technology that allows businesses to respond quickly and effectively to supply chain disruptions. Because of the cloud native nature of Manhattan Active WM, we empower our customers to deploy new sites, new capabilities, new users very, very swiftly. Our close relationship with Google Cloud allows us to deploy Manhattan Active WM nearly anywhere, anytime with high levels of reliability and extremely low levels of latency.

The robustness of the underlying Active platform, its best-in-class user experience and functional capability, and the strength of our team on the ground are combining to produce exceptional customer outcomes. Now I'll provide you with just a quick update on Manhattan Active Transportation Management. As you recall, our customers can deploy Manhattan Active Transportation alongside Manhattan Active Warehouse Management to form Manhattan Active Supply Chain, the industry's first and only cloud-native, fully unified supply chain execution platform. Since its launch in May 2021, Manhattan Active Transportation Management has enjoyed outstanding market interest and uptake with strong international traction as well. In fact, half of our initial Manhattan Active Transportation subscribers are outside of North America, and our EMEA and Latin America teams are doing very well with Manhattan Active TM thus far, actually with the product's very first go live that was in Brazil.

We've communicated in the past, building a global customer base for our TMS application has been one of our strategic goals, and the hard work of our international TMS teams is really starting to play off. We're encouraged that the results of Manhattan Active Transportation Management show that our supply chain unification message is really resonating in the market. Almost half of our Manhattan Active Transportation Management customers are also Manhattan Active WM customers. Our teams are reporting that customers are placing a really high value on our ability to offer a single user interface to manage all aspects of supply chain execution, to orchestrate end-to-end processes, both across WMS and TMS, and keep all of their supply chain applications fully integrated and current.

Finally, on the product front, maybe a quick update on our omnichannel commerce solution, Manhattan Active Omni, including our point-of-sale application. Our point-of-sale project teams, they remain busy with a number of new deployments and rollouts. Throughout the year, we're slated to light up a large number of additional stores running our point-of-sale application. Many of those customers also run Enterprise Order Management. Similar to the benefit I mentioned earlier, many of our Manhattan Active Omni customers certainly see the advantage of a unified solution across both their digital and brick-and-mortar channels. In this quarter, we'll kick off our first Manhattan Active Allocation project with one of our strategic customers in EMEA. Manhattan Active Allocation is a next-generation inventory optimization solution designed for fashion retailers.

It's built on our industry-leading Manhattan Active architecture, and we believe that it brings a fresh approach to a software category that's been mired in decades of old technology. Finally, just this past quarter, we released an exciting new capability within Manhattan Active Omni, our Interactive Inventory capability, and it's getting a powerful boost from an all-new machine learning capability that really further optimizes order promising. Many of our Manhattan Active Omni customers are shipping orders from hundreds of stores each in addition to their distribution centers. This new solution analyzes multiple static and dynamic market factors to make a much more accurate shipping and delivery prediction in real time as customers are shopping and checking out.

The initial results we're seeing indicate over a 50% reduction in late deliveries, thanks to this sophisticated machine learning algorithm. For our Manhattan Active Omni customers, it's really another great example of the advantage of an ever-evolving operational platform with new game-changing capabilities like this one being delivered to them on a very regular basis. We continue to be really very excited about our long-term growth potential. Secular tailwinds are numerous, and the benefits of resilient modern supply chains, I think are pretty clear. Now, why are we confident that Manhattan Associates is well-positioned to gain market share and outgrow the market in 2022 and beyond? Well, we're the industry leader, and our technology is world-class. The competitive environment is favorable, and our win rates are strengthening. The pipelines for our market-leading solutions continue to progress very well.

Our cross-sell opportunity is large and growing, and in fact, we've dedicated more resources to cross-selling in 2022 and see the opportunity to expand this over time as well. Then finally, we have a significant pipeline of existing on-premise customers who want to shift to our cloud-native applications that are scalable, versionless, and extensible. That concludes my business update. Dennis is going to provide you with an update on our financial performance and discuss our outlook for 2022 and beyond. Then I'll close our prepared remarks with a brief summary before moving to Q&A. Dennis, take it away.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

Thanks, Eddie. Our Manhattan global teams continue to execute at a high level, as Eddie highlighted. In 2021, we set all-time records in RPO, total revenue, cash flow, and earnings per share. Hats off to our global associates for the outstanding performance. I'll start with recapping our financial performance for the quarter and year. All growth rates are year-over-year, unless otherwise stated. Q4 total revenue was $171 million, up 17%. Full year revenue totaled $664 million, up 13%. Excluding license and maintenance revenue, which removes the revenue compression by our cloud transition, Q4 revenue growth was 24%, and full year was 20%. Q4 cloud revenue totaled $35 million, up 51%, with full year revenue totaling $122 million, up 53%.

We closed out 2021 with RPO of $699 million, growing 126% and up 22% sequentially as demand continues to be robust. Our global services team delivered Q4 revenue of $82 million, up 15%, and on the year, $335 million, up 10%. Importantly, cloud sales continues to fuel services growth globally. Our Q4 operating profit totaled $39 million, with adjusted operating margin of 22.8%, and our full year operating margin was 26.8%, up 160 basis points over 2020. Factoring in Q4 retail peak seasonality, we exceeded margin expectations. As discussed in our Q3 call, we also invested an additional $10 million in performance-based compensation and employee retention investments.

Our Q4 earnings per share of $0.48 exceeded our prior guidance, with full year totaling $2.23 on 27% growth. Q4 operating cash flow was $40 million, and our full year operating cash flow increased 31% to $185 million, generating a 27% free cash flow margin and a 28% EBITDA margin. Cash never lies. We ended the year with $264 million in cash and zero debt. For the year, we invested $100 million in share buybacks, including $20 million in Q4. Last week, our board approved replenishing our repurchase authority to $50 million. Moving to guidance. As consistently mentioned, our overarching financial objective is to deliver sustainable double-digit top-line growth and top quartile operating margins benchmarked against enterprise SaaS comps.

With increased visibility, we are conservatively raising the midpoint of the preliminary 2022 revenue, operating margin, and EPS guidance that we provided last quarter. We are also reiterating our 2022 RPO guidepost midpoint of $1 billion and all our guideposts for 2023 and 2024. Our cloud revenue and RPO guideposts from 2021 to 2024 can be found in today's earnings release supplemental schedules. For full year 2022, we expect total revenue of $700 million-$715 million with a $708 million midpoint, up from our previous midpoint estimate of $705 million. Excluding license and maintenance attrition, this represents 16% growth, and all in, our target is 7%.

First half, second half total revenue splits are 49% and 51% respectively. For Q1, we expect total revenue of $168 million-$170 million. Our full year adjusted EPS range is $1.98-$2.10. The $2.04 midpoint is up from our previous $2.00 estimate. For GAAP EPS, our guidance range is $1.31-$1.43. For Q1, we expect adjusted EPS of $0.44-$0.46 and GAAP EPS of $0.33-$0.35. For Q2 through Q4, we expect GAAP EPS to be about $0.19 lower than adjusted EPS quarterly, which accounts for our investment in equity-based compensation.

For full year 2022, we are increasing our cloud revenue range to $161 million-$167 million, representing 34% growth at the midpoint. 34% growth, I'm sorry. At the midpoint for Q1, we estimate cloud revenue will be roughly $36.5 million, and that it will increase to $39 million in Q2, $42 million in Q3, and $46 and a half million in Q4. For services revenue, we are increasing our revenue forecast to $365 million-$373 million, representing 10% growth at the midpoint.

On a quarterly basis, we expect Q1 services revenue of roughly $86 million at the midpoint and $94.5 million in Q2, $98 million in Q3, and accounting for retail peak seasonality, $90.5 million in Q4. For maintenance, we are refining our revenue range lower to $135 million-$138 million as more customers convert to cloud. For Q1, we anticipate maintenance revenue of about $35.5 million at the midpoint and $34 million in Q2. For Q3 and Q4, we expect approximately $33.5 million of maintenance revenue per quarter. With license revenue attriting in favor of cloud, we expect $13 million-$15 million for the full year, representing approximately 2% of total 2022 revenue. I think we're a cloud company.

For Q1, we expect roughly $5 million of license revenue and $3 million in Q2, Q3, and Q4, respectively. For hardware, we anticipate $6 million in revenue per quarter. For consolidated subscription maintenance and services margin, we are targeting about 53.7%. Q1 will be about 52.7%. Q2 and Q3 is expected to increase to between 54% and 54.5%. While accounting for seasonality, Q4 is expected to be about 53.5%. Our 2022 adjusted operating margin range will be 23%-24% with a midpoint of 23.5%, up from our prior midpoint of 23.25%. Our full year operating margin objectives incorporates three significant variables as we anticipate the following.

First, license and maintenance attrition of 300 basis points on customer demand for cloud. Second, 250 basis points of investment for talent hiring and retention, including wage increases. Third, 200 basis points of additional investment in our business, including the return of pandemic-impacted expenses. For Q1, we expect operating margin of approximately 21.7%, and for sequential improvement of about 175 basis points in both Q2 and Q3. Accounting for seasonality, we expect Q4 operating margin to be approximately 23.5%. Beginning in 2023, we continue to target 75-125 basis points of operating margin expansion going forward. Finally, we expect our tax rate to be 21.5% and diluted share count to be approximately 64.5 million shares, which assumes no buyback activity.

That covers a fantastic financial update. Thank you very much, and back to Eddie for some closing remarks.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Terrific. Thanks, Dennis. Well, as you can tell, we're very pleased with our strong fourth quarter and record-setting 2021 results. While there certainly is some turbulence in the global macro environment, we are entering 2022 very well positioned. Our business momentum is strong, and we continue to deliver market leading innovation that drives our customers' digital transformation. As a result, we anticipate long-term sustainable and profitable growth for Manhattan Associates. To wrap up, I want to thank all of our employees globally for a fantastic year in 2021. Your relentless dedication and commitment to our customers is one of Manhattan's key differentiators. Thank you. Thank all of you. Angie, we're now ready to take questions.

Operator

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star one to ask an audio question. Your first question comes from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist Securities. Please state your question.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

Yeah, thanks, and congrats on the record RPO in the fourth quarter. Hi, Eddie, Dennis, and [ Mike].

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Sure.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

I guess also, by the way, Dennis, thanks for all that extremely fine-grained guidance every quarter. It makes it pretty simple to model. First question is for you, Eddie, in terms of, you know, being able to have this kind of unified technology stack, how much are the conversations in the pipeline activity involving customers wanting to buy both the WMS and the TMS in that conversation? Does it create a potential kind of vendor consolidation play? Thank you.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Well, certainly vendor consolidation. No question about that, Terry, and that's our objective. You know, in terms of buying both together, certainly those conversations are happening. Certainly the conversations about the roadmap of, you know, frankly, which system to implement first and so forth are happening. Honestly, the answer to the question really comes down to the capacity of the customer's organization to be able to implement both solutions simultaneously, because that is quite a plateful. We work with them to figure out, you know, which one first, which one second, you know, which piece is first, which piece is second to deliver the best results for them. It's a pretty exciting time for us and for the market for sure.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

It's a nice cross-sell, upsell opportunity, Terry.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

Sure. Thanks. Eddie had a comment. I think it was great visibility. I want to put you on the spot, Dennis, in terms of Eddie's comment about great visibility in the prepared remarks. You know, as we think about RPO activity throughout the year, you know, as part of the visibility just coming from you've got 60+ customers, you've got more go lives, and you're starting to see this kind of waterfall effect of just the installed base now, you know, more comfortable. Hey, you've been in market for a while, and that's kind of the key crux on the strengthening visibility is the installed base saying, "Hey, we're ready." Then I had a follow-up on the seasonality of RPO.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah. Was there a question there, Terry? What I'd tell you is absolutely, visibility is fantastic, forward-looking. You know, yeah, we're doing quite well there. I think that's represented.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

Yeah.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

Really in the guidepost that we've put out and reaffirmed.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

Okay. This will definitely be a question. On seasonality.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

Hmm

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

How do we think about RPO? Because, you know, you have been at it for a while now, and so are you seeing any market changes in seasonality and how we should be thinking and forecasting our RPO across the quarters? Thank you.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

I think demand blew through seasonality in Q4, so, you know, we'll update you next Q4 as well.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah, there tends to be. You know, I don't think there'll be any real difference in buying patterns in the cloud world versus licensed world, Terry. You know, there's not a ton of seasonality, but we do tend to see a little more buying, you know, at the end of Q4 and in Q1, getting ready because, you know, customers want systems implemented prior to the busy season, you know, in the following year. You know, that's not huge, but if there is some seasonality, that tends to be what it looks like.

Dennis Story
EVP and CFO, Manhattan Associates

It tends to impact services more than it does the cloud sales.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

Just to finalize here on kind of the commentary. Eddie, like, the reality is maybe there's a little bit of a lumpiness in a positive way in 4Q, but also you could see some activity earlier in the year, just as they've got budget and they're ready to commit, and then obviously they need to get it going before the season, the holiday season.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

That's right. It again, it's not a huge swing, but we see a little bit of that. Then, of course, you tend to see a little bit of a slowdown in the summer, that's more, probably more in Europe than, you know, than here, and a little bit of a slowdown going into peak while, you know, IT organizations and so forth are focused on getting ready and a little distracted from the buying process. I'll reiterate, no major swings here, but those are the cycles.

Terry Tillman
Managing Director, Truist Securities

Nice job, guys. Thanks.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Thank you, Terry.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please state your question.

Brian Peterson
Managing Director of Application Software, Raymond James

Hello?

Operator

Brian, your line is open. Please state your question.

Brian Peterson
Managing Director of Application Software, Raymond James

Hey, sorry guys, the mute button got me. Congrats on the RPO numbers. Those are fantastic. Just kind of following up on Terry's question on the RPO. I'm curious, are your customers willing to commit to more products now that you have kind of a broader cloud portfolio? You know, we were talking about seasonality, but I'm curious, are people willing to buy more products at the same time now, just given that they're more integrated? I'd be curious for your thoughts on that, Eddie.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah. I mean, again, it's really the same answer, Brian. There is great opportunity for cross-sell and upsell, obviously, because of the integrated and unified nature. You know, about 15% of the 2021 bookings were kind of that cross-sell and upsell. Now, the specific simultaneous purchase really, again, comes down to, hey, how much can we knock down all at the same time versus kind of that roadmap conversation and the follow on sequential business that comes one behind the other.

Brian Peterson
Managing Director of Application Software, Raymond James

Makes sense. Eddie, just maybe a follow-up. You know, we've gotten a question a lot from investors on what the supply chain disruption kind of does for demand. Obviously, we're seeing Active WM coming in really strong.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah.

Brian Peterson
Managing Director of Application Software, Raymond James

I'm curious from your perspective, what does that do for the demand environment? Are there other parts of the portfolio where we could see improving demand in 2022 and 2023? Thanks, guys.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

I don't know that there's gonna be major shifts in 2022, Brian. I think that the general geo supply chain disruptions are gonna continue. I don't think you're gonna see a ton of nearshoring being able to be pulled off in 2022 because it just takes time to build that strategy out. You know, demand is certainly high for capacity on the digital transformation side as e-commerce continues to grow. There is obviously some slowness and some shortages of product coming into the country.

As a consequence of that, as soon as it hits shore here or hits land, there's a real immediacy and an urgency to get product distributed out to, you know, to end consumers. You know, the optimization of the deployment of inventory, you know, around around the country becomes, you know, becomes particularly important. That's just really what it. I know it's a little bit of a coy expression, but, you know, supply chain flexibility and agility is just super important, you know, across the across the globe.

Brian Peterson
Managing Director of Application Software, Raymond James

Good color. Thanks, Eddie.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Pleasure, Brian.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Vruwink with Baird. Please state your question.

Joe Vruwink
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Great. Hi, everyone. Maybe I'll start, Eddie. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned how you saw a growing addressable market opportunity. Can you maybe just expand on where some of the biggest new opportunities lie? Maybe related to that, you know, it definitely seems to be coming up more often, Manhattan Active WM moving outside of that most automated level four, level five warehouse environment. How much is the persona of your customer starting to change? There's consequentially just more, you know, potential users of a cloud product, and that contributes to the TAM expansion.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah. I mean, it's the modernization really of the supply chain versus, you know, going down market a ton, Joe, to be perfectly honest with you, that's driving a lot of the demand. As we've talked about, you know, a number of times, distribution centers today look quite different to the way they looked, you know, even five years ago, but certainly 10 and 15 years ago with the levels of automation, robotics and so forth. The need to have sophisticated software to be able to drive that inside the four walls transformation is important.

Obviously, you know, the digital transformation of the way consumers are ordering and consuming goods requires a whole different strategy for distribution, whether it be the number of distribution centers, the size of the distribution centers, the hours of operation of those distribution centers. All of those things contribute to the modernization of a sophisticated distribution, you know, distribution network. You know, in terms of growing our addressable markets, certainly we're continuing to expand our product portfolio, particularly out on, you know, the front end into the retail store portfolio. We feel like we're doing pretty well from a market share perspective. You know, we, you know, again, we've talked about this before with manufacturers and wholesalers, you know, becoming much more direct to consumer.

That drives greater demand for sophisticated fulfillment and, you know, and distribution. I was talking to a you know, one of our customers the other day and just, you know, sort of mentioning, "Hey, we really consider ourselves a cloud-first company now." This was a company that had been a traditional wholesaler for, you know, 30 years. They said, "Funny you should say that. We now consider ourselves a direct-to-consumer company." You know, and they had been traditionally a wholesaler for 30 years. A great marriage there and just a lot of great market expansion opportunities for us.

Joe Vruwink
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

That's great. Just in regards to being focused on cross sales and dedicating more resources that way, talk a lot about what that might mean for WMS paired with TMS. Does that also include, I guess, within kind of WMS functionality, thinking of things like execution control, yard management, labor management? I mean, when you wrap all those capabilities into what Manhattan can provide, are you ultimately seeing your ACVs get bigger just within the WMS category?

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Certainly we're seeing a lot of synergy, you know, across those products. By the way, you know, as you look at Manhattan Active Omni, point of sale, Manhattan Active Omni now be integrated with WMS being much more sophisticated with late stage cancellation, order consolidation, order aggregation, and those kinds of things. In terms of ACV growth, though, or NACV growth, it still comes down to whether this is a kind of a roadmap purchase or a multi-product buy upfront, which again comes down to how much can our customers bite off in terms of project initiatives all at once. You know, we haven't seen it manifest itself in a significant ACV growth, you know, at an initial contract. We're okay with that, right?

We're in this for a long term. We wanna make sure our customers are successful over the long term and make sure that they implement at a pace that is, aggressive but yet comfortable for them.

Joe Vruwink
Senior Research Analyst, Baird

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

My pleasure, Joe. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Zgutowicz with Rosenblatt Securities. Please state your question.

Mark Zgutowicz
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Hey, guys. I'll play my broken record here and again congratulate you on some great results.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Thanks, Mark.

Mark Zgutowicz
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Eddie, I wanted to see if you might pull the curtain back a little bit on the new CMO that you brought in, Ann, a few months ago, I think it's been. I'm just curious if there are any tangibles you might be able to share in terms of what your marketing or branding looks like this year relative to last and, you know, specifically across either product or geo or perhaps using different types of ad mediums? That would be helpful. Thanks.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah. Ann is doing a fantastic job. We're thrilled to have her on the team, and she not only does she do fantastic work, she's integrating to the team wonderfully, and really spreading her wings across product and across our geographies. I'm not gonna put her on the spot with, you know, very specific, you know, marketing initiatives in her first, you know, 90 days here or so or even in the near term. I would tell you that she's got us and our company very focused on digital marketing, number one. Number two, you know, we've said for a long time that, you know, we think we have some of the best-kept secrets on the planet.

Well, here comes Ann, you know, 90 days or so into the business, and she certainly concurs. Now she's, you know, got under the hood a little bit and is focused on making sure that we don't have a lot of secrets, that we are loud and proud, you know, with our marketing strategies going into 2022. You should certainly expect us to see us again be, you know, a little more verbose, frankly, in communicating some of the very innovative solutions that we have in our portfolio.

Mark Zgutowicz
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Got it. I suppose we're not expecting a Super Bowl ad this year, though.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Well, you never know. Don't get up to go to the restroom, Mark. You know, you might miss it.

Mark Zgutowicz
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Okay. All right. That's good. I like that a nticipation here. The last question, and I might have missed it, just the housekeeping on POS goals. I know you've chatted about them in the past, but just curious how that had trended.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah. Going pretty well. What I said was that we've got a number that are underway, and we expect, you know, by the end of the year to light up a bunch more stores, both here in the U.S. and some internationally as well. The pipeline continues to grow. There clearly is demand out there for a really integrated strategic suite of selling products across bricks and mortar and in digital. As we get more established in this world and in this market, you're gonna see us start to talk about some really nice brands that are starting to adopt the solution.

Mark Zgutowicz
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Rosenblatt Securities

Got it. All right. Thanks, guys.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

My pleasure, Mark. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Schappel with Loop Capital.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

Hi. Nice job on the quarter, and, thanks for taking my question.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Sure thing, Mark. Thank you.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

Hey, Eddie, just starting with you. A question on your point of sale business, just building off the former question here. You know, over the past year or so, the focus was basically just building up you know reference accounts with respect to that product. Now that you have you know many of those reference accounts in place, I'm wondering if you would expect point of sale to become a greater percentage of your business going forward.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

You know, look, it's a slow burn, Mark. People don't wake up one morning and say it's the heart and soul of the retail operation, right? They certainly do not replace their point of sale systems on a whim. But they're very strategic decisions. But I gotta tell you, we can feel the momentum building, you know, kind of throughout our organization. Everything from initial pipeline acceleration to deployments, you know, and go lives. You know, I guess you'll be the judge of whether it's a significant part of the business as we march through the next, you know, eight or 10 quarters. Certainly, momentum is building nicely.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

Nice. Thanks. Regarding just supply chain in general, you know, given the increasing attention that companies are placing on supply chain these days.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

How much are you seeing higher level executives involved in your sales processes than, say, three or four years ago?

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah. Much more so. You know, I think you know, we've always been mission-critical solutions to our customers since you know, day one of the company's existence. Never more than you know, in the last year or two, have we been participating in you know, board level and C-level, C-suite level conversations. I don't think there's barely a company on the planet that isn't very focused on supply chain you know, supply chain issues, whether manufacturer, wholesale or retailer. You know, we really are becoming you know, one of the most important IT systems in our customer's landscape for sure.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

That's helpful. Just finally here, I was wondering if you'd just comment a little bit on what you're seeing or whether you're seeing any changes with respect to your customers' budgeting cycles for the upcoming year.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

No. It's a pretty simple answer to that, Mark. No real change in budget cycles that, you know, that we've seen.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

We like simple answers.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah.

Mark Schappel
Managing Director, Loop Capital

Appreciate it. Thanks. That's all I have.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Sure thing, Mark. Sure thing. Thank you.

Operator

To ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Matt Pfau with William Blair. Please state your question.

Matt Pfau
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Hey, guys. Wanted to ask on the labor side of things, and obviously you ramped up some compensation to retain and presumably attract employees. On the services side, have you been able to hire to plan, and has labor been a bottleneck there at all? Within your customers, has their ability to engage with you been any limiter to getting deals implemented?

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah, I mean, it looks like we've hired to plan. That's been good. I think so far this year, we've got about somewhere in the 75-100 new associates with the company. That's exciting to see for sure. You know, in terms of the reticence of our customers to move forward because lack of resource on their side, haven't seen a ton of that. Now, we have seen them ask us to take on maybe a little more work. Of course, you know, we're seeing a very vibrant system integrator participation. Certainly we're being asked to introduce our system integration partners, you know, into the mix to augment our customer teams.

I wouldn't say, you know, we've seen any, you know, buying trepidation or buying slowness due to lack of resource on the customer side.

Matt Pfau
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Great. In terms of existing WM customers, moving from an on-prem deployment to the cloud.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah.

Matt Pfau
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Maybe, you know, just some update there and what the interest level is. I think if I recall when you released Active WM back in 2020, the original plan was to, you know, support the on-prem version for five years. Presumably we're a bit over three years out now from when that would end. You know, how are customer discussions with customers sort of progressing, you know, around moving over to the cloud from existing deployments?

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Yeah, a lot of enthusiasm. Look, we, you know, we just said we've got about 60 different customers under contract now. I may not be exactly correct percentage-wise, but it's about 50/50. You know, 50% of those 60 are brand new customers that we've never done business with before, and 50% are existing customers that are converting or transitioning from on-prem into the, you know, into the cloud. You know, so it's a pretty exciting time. You know, we're very pleased about where we are. Obviously, we weren't very pleased with our financial results, but at the end of the day, we've only transitioned 30 of our customers so far, existing customers that we've built up over the last, you know, 30 years so far.

We're encouraged by the enthusiasm there and, you know, their desire to move to, you know, scalable, extensible version of the software in the cloud.

Matt Pfau
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Okay, great. Appreciate it, guys.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Sure thing, Matt.

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions. I will now turn the floor back to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Eddie Capel
President and CEO, Manhattan Associates

Thank you, Angie. No real closing remarks. Just would like to thank everybody for all of their support during 2021. We're thrilled to be starting with 2022 and look forward to giving you our first 2022 update in about 90 days or so. In the meantime, have a great evening. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Operator

Thank you for participating in today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.

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