Paycom Software, Inc. (PAYC)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2021

Aug 3, 2021

Operator

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Paycom Software second quarter 2021 quarterly results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. James Samford. Thank you. Please go ahead.

James Samford
Head of Investor Relations, Paycom Software

Thank you, and welcome to Paycom's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Certain statements made on this call that are not historical facts, including those related to our future plans, objectives, and expected performance, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this conference call.

While we believe any forward-looking statements made on this call are reasonable, actual results may differ materially because the statements are based on our current expectations and subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. You should refer to and consider these factors when relying on such forward-looking information.

Any forward-looking statement made speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and we do not undertake and expressly disclaim any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. During today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net income, adjusted gross profit, adjusted gross margin, and certain adjusted expenses.

We use these non-GAAP financial measures to review and assess our performance and for planning purposes. A reconciliation schedule showing GAAP versus non-GAAP results is included in the press release that we issued after the close of the market today and is available on our website at investors.paycom.com. I will now turn the call over to Chad Richison, Paycom's President and Chief Executive Officer. Chad?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thanks, James, and thank you to everyone joining our call today. I'll spend a few minutes on the highlights of our second quarter 2021 results and the opportunities we are pursuing as we look ahead. Following that, Craig will review our financials and our guidance, and then we will take questions.

We delivered very strong second quarter 2021 results with revenue of $242 million that grew 33.3%, our fastest quarterly growth rate compared to the prior year period since Q4 of 2016 and well above the top end of our guidance range. The upside from the quarter was primarily a result of broad-based demand strength from new client adds and consistent cross-selling to existing clients. Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $87 million, representing an increase of 42% over the prior year period.

With these strong results, we are once again raising our full year guidance, which Craig will discuss in more detail. The investments we make in our products generate tremendous value for our clients and drive our differentiated employee strategy. Our newest employee innovation is Beti, the industry's first self-service payroll technology, allowing employees to do their own payroll, which we officially rolled out to the market in early July.

Beti, which stands for Better Employee Transaction Interface, is an employee-driven payroll experience and represents one of the most important advances we've made to date. With Beti, employees do their own payroll, which allows our clients to benefit from increased payroll accuracy while employees gain full insight to their paycheck, including advanced knowledge of take-home pay and how it's calculated.

Employees have a direct connection to their paycheck to resolve errors well before payday, they don't have to wait on or contact anyone for assistance. The additional clarity on how their pay changes and is calculated, combined with automatic alerts when items require their action, gives employees and clients confidence in the accuracy of their payroll. I'm very pleased with the launch so far.

We are receiving tremendous feedback, including a VP of HR who said, "Beti's the most revolutionary payroll product I've ever seen." Another comment from a chief HR officer noted that, "Beti is giving ownership of payroll to employees and managers, which is great because they know better than anyone what their paycheck should be." As we said during our Q1 earnings call, we are planning to have 100 pilot clients on Beti in the second quarter, we easily achieved that goal.

On July 6th, we opened up Beti to all clients, and through the end of July, we've already sold Beti to over 1,000 new and existing clients. I continue to expect that all Paycom clients will eventually deploy Beti. It's the only way payroll should be done.

Our marketing plan continues to deliver strong demo leads, and we intend to spend aggressively in the coming quarters to fuel future revenue growth and further expand our market share in a large and expanding HCM TAM. Our messaging continues to resonate with prospects as we contrast the shortcomings of disparate HCM systems with the value proposition of Paycom's single database solution and self-service capabilities that are stronger than ever.

Employees expect their HR software to be efficient and easy to use. Once again, we had record high employee usage rates in Q2 as measured by our Direct Data Exchange or DDX. We continue to enjoy increasing traction with both smaller and larger companies. As a reminder, we added multiple inside sales teams as we have continued to have success below our target range.

Due to the technological advances we've made and the demand that's building around our employee self-service initiatives, we've continued to be pulled further upmarket as well. As a result, we are pleased to announce that we are expanding our proactive outside sales efforts from targeting firms with 50-5,000 employees to targeting firms with 50-10,000 employees. We've had success selling to organizations above our historic range, driven by larger company demand.

This change we are announcing today empowers our sales representatives to proactively target in this expanded segment, and we are excited by this incremental opportunity. We have clients in this segment already, so we're confident that our solution will compete and serve these clients effectively. On the Paycom branding front, we recently signed a 15-year naming rights partnership with the Oklahoma City Thunder that will transform their downtown home into the Paycom Center.

Oklahoma City is home to thousands of our employees, and I'm happy that the Paycom Center will be home of the Thunder. We have now lapped a tough pre-pandemic year-over-year comparison. In Q2, it is more reflective of our historical growth profile. Record new client additions over this past year driving our growth.

While we saw very small headcount improvement in our pre-pandemic client revenue base, our guidance in future growth initiatives are not reliant on any employment improvement. In summary, Q2 was a very strong quarter that reflects the strength of our execution throughout the pandemic and the investments we've made to further distance ourself from the competition. Innovation, customer service, and new client growth represent the foundation of our long-term revenue growth strategy.

With only approximately 5% market share of a growing TAM, we continue to have a long runway ahead of us. I wanna thank all of our hardworking and dedicated employees for their resilience and commitment to winning. With that, I'll turn the call over to Craig for review of our financials and guidance. Craig?

Craig Boelte
CFO, Paycom Software

Before I review our second quarter 2021 results and our outlook for the third quarter and full year 2021, I would like to remind everyone that my comments related to certain financial measures will be on a non-GAAP basis.

We are very pleased with our second quarter results, with total revenues of $242.1 million, representing growth of 33.3% over the comparable prior year period, driven primarily by broad-based strength with new client wins and consistent cross-selling to existing clients. Within total revenues, recurring revenue was $237.6 million for the second quarter of 2021, representing 98% of total revenues for the quarter and growing 33.5% from the comparable prior year period.

Total adjusted gross profit for the second quarter was $206.9 million, representing an adjusted gross margin of 85.4%. For 2021, we remain on target for adjusted gross margin to be in the range of 85%-86%. Adjusted total administrative expenses were $136 million for the second quarter as compared to $106 million in the second quarter of 2020.

Adjusted sales and marketing expense for the second quarter of 2021 was $64.3 million or 26.6% of revenues. Our marketing strategy continues to generate strong demo leads both within and outside our historical target market range of 50-5,000 employees.

We plan to continue to invest in marketing throughout the remainder of 2021, and as Chad mentioned, we have increased our target market range to 50- 10,000, thus empowering our outside sales representatives to proactively target larger companies. Adjusted R&D expense was $26.2 million in the second quarter of 2021, or 10.8% of total revenues.

Adjusted total R&D costs, including the capitalized portion, were $38 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to $27.7 million in the prior year period. We continue to be very pleased with the high-quality innovation we are seeing from our investments in R&D, and we'll continue to aggressively recruit talent in R&D to drive our future growth.

adjusted EBITDA was $87 million in the second quarter of 2021, or 35.9% of total revenues, compared to $61.2 million in the second quarter of 2020, or 33.7% of total revenues. Our GAAP net income for the second quarter was $52.3 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, versus $28.6 million or $0.49 per diluted share in the prior year period based on approximately 58 million shares in both periods.

Non-GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2021 was $56.5 million or $0.97 per diluted share versus $35.9 million or $0.62 per diluted share in the prior year period. We expect non-cash stock-based compensation for the third quarter of 2021 to be approximately $25 million-$26 million.

For the full year, we anticipate non-cash stock-based compensation will be approximately $95 million-$100 million. For 2021, we anticipate our full year effective income tax rate to be 24%-25% on a GAAP basis. On a non-GAAP basis, we anticipate our full year effective income tax rate to be 26%-27%. Turning to the balance sheet.

We ended the second quarter of 2021 with cash and cash equivalents of $202.4 million and total debt of $30 million related to construction at our corporate headquarters. Cash from operations was $57 million for the second quarter, reflecting our strong revenue performance and the profitability of our business model. The average daily balance of funds held on behalf of clients was approximately $1.6 billion in the second quarter of 2021.

During the second quarter of 2021, we repurchased approximately 94,000 shares for a total of roughly $32 million. Through June 30th, 2021, Paycom has repurchased over 4.2 million shares since 2016 for a total of approximately $455 million, and we currently have roughly $300 million remaining in our buyback program. Shifting to guidance, we are pleased to provide strong third quarter guidance that reflects the robust performance we achieved in the first half of 2021, and we are raising our full year 2021 outlook as a result.

Our Q3 and full year guidance are as follows: For the third quarter of 2021, we expect total revenues in the range of $249 million-$251 million, representing a growth rate over the comparable prior year period of approximately 27% at the midpoint of the range.

We expect adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter in the range of $87 million-$89 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 35.2% at the midpoint of the range. For fiscal 2021, we are raising our expected revenue range to $1.036 billion-$1.038 billion, up from $1.017 billion-$1.019 billion, or approximately 23.2% year-over-year growth at the midpoint of the range.

We expect full year adjusted EBITDA in the range of $410 million-$412 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 39.6% at the midpoint of the range. When combined, we now expect revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margin to easily exceed the Rule of Sixty this year.

To conclude, we are very pleased with the performance in the quarter, which gives us increasing confidence in our outlook for the remainder of the year. With the launch of Beti, an expanded target market, and a deep product development pipeline, we have a long runway ahead of us to continue to deliver rapid growth for years to come. With that, we will open the line for questions. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. At this time, if you'd like to ask a question please press star then number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from line of Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director, Barclays

Hey, first of all, congratulations. That was an amazing quarter and amazing return to high growth. Chad, quick question on the decision to go towards, like, the 50- 10,000 employee clients. Historically, you were always a little bit hesitant because sales cycles there seem to get more complex, slightly longer, et cetera. How do you manage that process, and can you still do it with the same sales force? Then I had one follow-up.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Sure, Raimo. If you remember, it was about three years ago, our range at that time was 50- 2,000 employees. We continued to be pulled up, at that point in time, we made it official, allowing our employees to target, proactively target, companies of that range because, again, we were being pulled more up market.

Same thing's happened here up to 10,000. We continue to be pulled further up market. I would say that the buying criteria for companies of that size has changed. You know, we're all working with the same type of employee. There's no such thing as a large market employee and a small market employee. You can work for a 300 employee one company and work for a 10,000 employee company the next.

You know, we're providing a very easy-to-use standard way for employees to interact with their data, and we're finding it easier to work with larger businesses as they look to displace multiple disparate systems with one.

Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director, Barclays

Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Makes sense. On Beti, like, if you think about you know, the 1,000 that created and 1,000 clients already signed up, like, what has been the feedback so far from those clients? What were some surprises maybe that you've seen there and that you can utilize for the rest of the client base? Thank you, and congrats again.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

You bet. You know, employees, like I've been saying, employees pretty much fly blind into every payroll. They do the work. They clock in, clock out, put in their expenses, manage benefits, manage time off and everything else, and then they get blindfolded before payday, and then they get to find out on payday what it meant.

I mean, it's similar to blinding the pilots right before they land. You know, and so what we've done is taken that blindfold off to where employees understand how their checks are calculated, and they can help the payroll department have perfect payrolls because there's not a payroll person out there that doesn't have anxiety going into each payroll day because they want it to be perfect.

You know, what Beti does is help everybody get to the right level of accuracy, and it also eliminates a lot of the after-fact manual checks, voids, and adjustments that oftentimes clients have to do after an employee's check is incorrect. We know how important it is for employees' checks to be perfect. They expect it. You know, we're having a lot of success with it, and I would expect us to continue that.

Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director, Barclays

Perfect. Thank you.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Samad Samana with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Samad Samana
Managing Director, Jefferies

Hi, good evening. And I'll echo the congrats on the 30%+ growth. It was great to see that come back. Chad, maybe first question for you. Just when I think about, it sounds like cross-selling was much more mentioned more often on this call. I think historically, you tend to say customers adapt, but they adapt upfront. Can you help us understand why cross-selling is becoming a bigger motion? Is that primarily Beti, or is it across the portfolio?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah, I couldn't say that our cross-selling today as a percentage is more of our revenue than what it's been in the past. I would say on a percentage basis, still cross-selling for the biggest percent of our revenue was during that year of ACA, where again, everybody had to take it.

I do believe that we're gonna be having a, you know, three or four quarters here of some pretty good cross-selling as we move everybody over to the Better Employee Transaction Interface, which is Beti. Also, as we're selling new onboarding new clients now, Beti is a part of that. Our sales reps, you know, Beti comes with the payroll package now.

It is an additional fee for that, but it is included on every quote moving forward for new businesses as we believe, this is the way businesses win and achieve their return on investment with our product, as it relates to the payroll side of what we do.

Samad Samana
Managing Director, Jefferies

Great. Really helpful. Maybe as a follow-up to that, you know, this was one of the biggest beats take I was posted kind of relative to expectations. I'm curious if you could maybe help us maybe unpack how much how you think about it in terms of better new bookings versus this uplifted Beti versus employment recovery in the install base as we think about maybe the strength in the quarter.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Sure. Well, in regards to Beti in Beti had very little to zero impact on second quarter. I talked about on our May call that we would be looking to put 100 clients on it that quarter. We achieved that, I think, within the first couple of weeks. We went through that. On July 6th, we actually released it to all other clients.

That was within this quarter. Beti would have played zero impact as it relates to last quarter. We do think it's gonna be a part of our differentiated strategy moving forward. New logo ads, as usual, is what contributes to our growth followed by upsells to current clients.

As far as macro, you know, we've been going through this now for a little bit. I've been talking a little bit about us having some improvement with the pre-pandemic client base as far as this quarter. I'd say we saw an improvement in hiring during this past quarter, and the impact that it had on our revenue for this quarter from our pre-pandemic client base was $1 million-$1.5 million for the quarter. That's about $100,000 worth of weekly improvement on that number that we had talked about prior.

Samad Samana
Managing Director, Jefferies

Great. Appreciate the questions, and congrats again on the strong results. Great to see.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from line of Brad Reback with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Brad Reback
Managing Director, Stifel

Great. Thanks very much. Chad, as your salespeople have the opportunity to move further up market, do you think that changes the sales cycle length? If it does lengthen, how do you manage that?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

No, I don't. I mean, a little bit. It's hard for me to say that, you know, a 5,000 employee company sales cycle is gonna be the same as a 150 employee company sales cycle. I will say the 5,000 employee sales cycle is the same as a 10,000 employee sales cycle.

I don't know that there's some major differences between the two of those as far as what their sales cycles would be. You know, we're still not looking to engage with a long sales cycle that requires us to link up with multiple disparate systems. You know, somebody has to be a fit for us to go into that.

Something else I would say is we continue to have strength down market. You know, we continue to aggressively achieve our lead volumes, and they continue to go up. Oftentimes, those leads are also small business. First of this year, we had four sales teams, and that was up from one the previous year.

Throughout this year, we've added another six inside sales teams, and so now we're at 10 inside sales teams, which sell the emerging business, so that would be the below 50 market. We continue to do extremely well below 50, and we continue to be a pulled-up market because, again, it's the same employee interface.

Whether you work for a 15-employee company or whether you work for a 10,000-employee company, those employees expect ease of use and easy access to their system. You know, we're seeing a lot of momentum being created based off of employee usage needs and, and how much it makes it easier for them.

Brad Reback
Managing Director, Stifel

That's great. One quick follow-up on Beti. Can you help us on the monetization? I'm sorry if I missed it. What type of uplift do you get from an existing customer that's adding Beti, and then on, you know, net new, what type of uplift?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah. You know, we've added products in the past where, you know, we got 100% usage very quickly, and I'm thinking of DDX and Manager on-the-Go. Those were products that we just included in our pricing. With Beti, it is an additional priced product, even though it's now included on every single payroll deal. You know, we believe our pricing's competitive, so I don't like to just put it out there. You may be able to find it out there. All I would say is it's reasonably priced like many of our other modules.

Brad Reback
Managing Director, Stifel

That's great. Thanks very much.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Marcon with Baird. Please go ahead.

Mark Marcon
Analyst, Baird

Hey, good afternoon, and let me add my congratulations. With regards to the, you know, to the rapid ramp in terms of the clients that are using Beti, would the 100 that first came on, can you talk a little bit about, like, what sort of experiences they were seeing? Just, you know, did it really ease the or increase the accuracy that they ended up experiencing?

Are you getting any feedback from clients about, "Hey, our payroll department doesn't need as many people"? How easy was it to lift You know, you opened it up on July 6th, and now you've got over 1,000 on Beti. How easy was it to convert them to Beti?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah. Well, with Beti, you're already on it. It's something that we turn on for you. What we have to work with you to convert are your processes. You've got a lot of these processes that happen after the fact. We need to have those happen at the beginning or during the payroll transaction. Once you do that, a lot of the processes you'd normally do after the fact are irrelevant. We're able to displace those. We eliminate a lot of processes, with some of the processes, we move them into earlier in the processing phase. In answer to your question, we hadn't had anybody turn it off.

You know, once you turn it on, and that's what your employees are doing, you have a very high satisfaction rate with employees, and you have a very strong ROI. You know, Beti itself 100% pays for itself, and it actually helps even pay for the payroll, the entire payroll module, 'cause there's an incredible amount of ROI when you're not having to do manual checks, voids, adjustments, and, you know, wire money into employees' accounts to cover NSF fees they may have because their payroll was wrong. It also gives employees a visibility into what their check's gonna be, you know.

A lot of people live check to check. I mean, over, 80%-85% of the U.S. employee lives check to check and, you know, they need to know exactly what the pay's gonna be. If it's $30 off, that's a big difference for them. Beti gives them visibility long before a check date and gives them the ability to interact with their check, to make sure it's accurate, which again increases ROI for the business.

It also lowers the business's exposure and certain risks associated with paying people. You know, there's some pretty specific laws on making sure you pay your employees correctly and that you pay them on time. With Beti, you know, that's easily achieved.

Mark Marcon
Analyst, Baird

That's great. Did all of those clients have time and attendance already set up, or did some of them have to add that?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

You know, that's a great question, Mark. I would expect that most of our first-

Mark.

Oh, sorry, Mark. Mark, I would expect that most of our clients already had time and attendance because, you know, we like to go through there and get the ones using quickly that are already ready. Now, I would say most of our clients at Paycom already have time and attendance, but you are right. There will be certain modules that as we go to move Beti would be required for a client to implement.

Mark Marcon
Analyst, Baird

Great. And then one last one just on the increasing the target range from upper limit of 5,000- 10,000. When you first expanded from 2,000- 5,000, how many of those 5,000 employee companies were kind of, like, inbound and kind of approaching you guys? Obviously, you've got a great marketing campaign that's been very successful. I imagine that's drawn a number of inquiries. Can you talk about, like, how much of that is being pulled in as opposed to being pushed?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah. I mean, you know, we do not have a marketing strategy for companies above 5,000. We do targeted prospecting, our targeted prospecting strategies had been, you know, three years ago, they were for companies below 2,000. Then we moved that to below 5,000, which we've experienced for the last three years, now we're moving it to 10,000. What that means is we'll start proactively targeting these.

We have continued to have people call us of employee sizes in that range. Again, the more that we've had, you know, we've continued to move up our market. What it allows us to do now is do targeted prospecting toward those. As salespeople make calls, you know, they're able to proactively make those calls.

Now, sales reps have always been able to make a proactive call. A sales rep can go out there right now and sell a 50,000-employee company. I don't care. But as far as what we're our targeted prospecting efforts are toward those companies now that have between 50 and 10,000 employees, and then in our more small business or emerging type companies, it would be for those that are also below 50.

Mark Marcon
Analyst, Baird

Great. Congratulations.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Jester with Citi. Please go ahead.

Daniel Jester
Analyst, Citi

Great. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. It seems like every day there's a new story about how tight the labor market is. I'm just wondering if you could talk about sort of how the tight labor market may or may not be impacting inbound demand that you're seeing.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Inbound interest that we're seeing?

Daniel Jester
Analyst, Citi

Yeah, that's right.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Okay. Okay, got it. Your last part there cut off. Well, I mean, definitely I think it plays a role. You know, we've done a lot of surveys that employees like easy-to-use technology at work. I've said employees shouldn't have to work to work, you know. You definitely have a frustrated employee base if you have multiple pieces of technology that are difficult to use.

Also, you know, it's a hunt for talent out there. You know, you wanna retain your good employees, that's a must. Good technology helps you do that. You also need to deploy pretty good technology on the talent acquisition side because, you know, everybody's in a dog fight for talent right now. It's a very tight labor market.

I do believe that there's some of that in there, but, you know, Everything shifted to this digital transformation and the right way to do something, and it only makes sense that employees would be the ones engaging with their data. You know, we're having success with that. You know, I think the labor market might be tight for a while here. We'll kind of see what happens after that. As far as our business, you know, because of our new business ads, what we've needed is stability, and we've had that since the summer of last year. We just needed some stability within the labor market.

I don't think, even if, you know, there's different situations with the pandemic, as we go through, the remainder of this year, I still believe, you know, we're dealing with somewhat of a tight labor market. I don't feel like the macro, on the go-forward's gonna impact us, like it had, you know, provided that we have some stability here, and it looks like we will from an employment perspective.

Daniel Jester
Analyst, Citi

That's great. Just as a, as a follow-up, you know, you've been selling virtually for, like, 18 months now. You talked about adding six inside sales teams. I'm just wondering if you can kind of reflect on once you actually do get back to a normal environment, does this change your philosophy about adding these sales offices?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

No. No, I mean, it's timing. You know, we're just now, our managers are getting back into the office and, you know, throughout the rest of this year, you know, people are gonna be filtering back into our offices as we, you know, go back to the office to do our selling. As far as what type of model and hybrid model we're gonna be using, you know, we've been paying attention to why prospects buy, and we've also been paying attention to how prospects buy.

you know, we're gonna be supporting the methods that best help both the prospect as well as us be able to, you know, in our case, display what our product does and in their case, you know, have a clear understanding of what the ROI is for them.

Daniel Jester
Analyst, Citi

Great. Thank you very much.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Schwartz with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Brian Schwartz
Managing Director and Analyst, Oppenheimer

Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my questions, and congratulations on a great quarter. Chad, maybe, if I could just start there, on the quarter. Can you shed any light on just how the bookings or the business activity trended in the quarter? Just how the linearity was? We'll start from there.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah. I mean, you know, we've had really strong bookings since April of last year. You know, things kinda took off, and we were doing well anyway, but I mean, you know, we've had very strong bookings. In fact, these last two weeks that we've just had here in July, you know, that's the largest number we've put up ever in bookings. Bookings have been strong, you know, as we've continued to push a differentiated strategy that's, you know, getting a lot of momentum here in the marketplace.

Brian Schwartz
Managing Director and Analyst, Oppenheimer

Thank you. Chad, one question I had just on the target expansion move here. I'm just wondering if there's any industry verticals that, you know, would have, I would think think about, fewer organizational complexities to them and therefore would just be ripe for Beti and more likely to switch to self-service when you target?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah. I mean, I really look at it as it's a product for everybody, you know, from the employee's perspective. I would even say that the more complex it is, the more you need to deploy Beti. You know, the more data points you have on a check, you know, the more important it is to deploy something like Beti.

I'm not gonna say that any specific vertical or, you know, either easy or complex type of company that Beti would be best for. I think it's best for everybody, and it's 100% best for the American worker to have a product like this to where they can engage themself with their data and something that's gonna significantly impact their, you know, ability to work their financial plan.

Brian Schwartz
Managing Director and Analyst, Oppenheimer

Last question for Craig, just on the marketing and advertising campaigns. Given the bookings momentum here in the business, the commentary, wondering if you have any plans to increase your advertising spend here in the second half of the year in support of the Beti product cycle and the current momentum in the business. Thanks.

Craig Boelte
CFO, Paycom Software

Yeah. you know, we're gonna continue to spend aggressively on sales and marketing. You know, you've seen that in the past, you know, the back half of the year where we've kind of ramped up sales and marketing. you know, I would expect, you know, to kind of see the same for us through the rest of the year. Obviously, any marketing plans we've currently baked into our, you know, third quarter and full year guidance.

Brian Schwartz
Managing Director and Analyst, Oppenheimer

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Ryan MacDonald with Needham. Please go ahead.

Michael Rackers
Analyst, Needham

Hi, this is Michael Rackers. I'm on for Ryan MacDonald. Thanks for taking my question. We've heard from multiple vendors that churn ticked up slightly in the quarter as some of the customers that may have wanted to make a change last year couldn't do so because of the other pandemic-driven priorities. Did you experience any similar uptick in churn within your customer base? Did you see any more opportunities to replace competitors during the quarter, given this dynamic?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah. What I would first say is it's a bad idea to use our competitors when in relation to churn as a proxy to us. We do not report, you know, either gains or no gains as it relates to retention until the end of each year. What I would say, though, is that we're having a lot of success deploying a differentiated product both to new customers as well as to current customers. Those clients that are buying product are staying. You know, we're having a lot of success. It's a differentiated strategy.

As we continue to have increased DDX usage, where more and more employees are the ones making the impressions on the database and not a intermediary through through another department within the company, you know, we would have an expectation that we would continue to have a strong retention rate with our clients.

Michael Rackers
Analyst, Needham

Great. Thank you.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Siti Panigrahi with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Matt Diamond
Analyst, Mizuho

Hey, guys. This is Matt Diamond on the line for Siti. I wanna add my congrats for the solid results. The one question that's come up, and I, we've alluded to it a little bit, is around Beti. It was mentioned that there were gonna be three to four quarters of continued, like, pretty above normal cross-selling. We also know that Beti necessitates all of the Paycom modules for a client to be eligible for Beti.

Can you help us handicap what's really what size of the existing client base has all of those modules? T&A, it sounds like, is pretty widespread, so that we can get an idea of what the magnitude of that cross-sell opportunity looks like over the next three to four quarters.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Sure. You know, I do wanna say one thing, Beti does not require you to have all of our modules. There's a lot of modules, you know, you don't need to utilize Beti. Now, it would make sense that someone would take the modules, but things like talent acquisition, as far as, you know, recruiting, COBRA, a lot of our modules you don't necessarily have to have to run Beti, but it's a good idea that you implement it within your business so that your employees can use one system.

There are modules that would be required to use Beti, like paid time off, time and attendance, expense management, benefits administration. There are some of them, definitely, that, you know, you're gonna wanna use them, because without them, you wouldn't be able to use Beti. A lot of those are, you know, fairly popular products to us, but, you know, we have several clients that don't have them.

I would like to think our sales reps are probably out there right now. Our CRRs are probably working with a lot of those clients that are already ready to go, where we just go and click a button, eliminate most of your processes, and shift a few to the beginning.

I'm sure that we will have our internal Sales Group, our Client Relations Group continuing to reach out to clients of all characters, characteristics, whether they have all of the products currently required or just partial. There is an opportunity there for us. As far as handicapping it, again, you know, we consider our pricing competitive in nature, but there are opportunities for us out there. I do wanna say this, though, our revenue gains are gonna be primarily driven by new business wins just because of And I'm saying new logo wins, just because of the size of a new logo compared to the potential upsell of that same logo.

Matt Diamond
Analyst, Mizuho

That's a perfect segue to my next question. Is there anything that's being done differently or that's being adjusted on the product side to address these 10,000 customers and above, these employees with 10,000 employees and above? Anything that could be commented on in regards to the R&D spend and what's being prioritized for that customer base would be helpful.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

No. We're not doing anything different for a 10,000 employee company that we're doing for a 2,300 employee company.

Matt Diamond
Analyst, Mizuho

Excellent. Thanks so much, guys.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of Bryan Bergin with Cowen. Please go ahead.

Bryan Bergin
Managing Director and Analyst, Cowen

Hey, good afternoon. Thank you. Question here on Beti. Can you comment on what level of client adoption you're anticipating by the end of 2021? A clarification on the new sales. I understand it's being included in each deal you bid. Are you seeing near 100% attach on it as well here the last several weeks?

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Well, again, yeah, we just, like you said, I mean, we started selling it July 6th. You know, as it relates to new clients, a lot of them would be in conversion. It would be rare that we'd sell a client on July 6th, and they would have started by now, unless they're a smaller business. On the smaller business side, then you definitely could have had some of that.

Yes, I mean, because it's the way we're training and setting them up. We're not training you on the old model now. I mean, when you're going through conversion and training, we're training you on how employees do their own payroll. We're not training you how on you input your employees' data into our system. So, yeah, it's part of the conversion.

It would be illogical for me to think that anybody would even try to do it the old way. It's included in the ROI. I mean, you know, now our ROI cases include Beti. You know, it's an important part of the ROI. I mean, you can use Beti, and actually it can help pay for the entire system, depending upon how many true issues you've been having in payroll. You know, payroll's a, it's a high risk, low reward activity. If you get it right, who cares? Employees expect it. If you get it wrong, you know, you upset employees, they have NSF fees, and then you get to pay tax penalties.

You know, having perfect payroll is extremely important, and it just wouldn't make any sense to me that any client would buy our product without Beti. It wouldn't make any sense since they bought it, that they wouldn't use it, because their employees want to use it.

Bryan Bergin
Managing Director and Analyst, Cowen

Okay. Just a follow-up here. A common question we're getting around Beti and the potential offsets of existing service revenue. Can you help kind of frame the magnitude of that work within your business to begin with as far as error correction and things like that? Then clarify your view on the revenue accretion of Beti versus those types of services it might automate away.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

You know, I mean, there's definitely gonna be Beti's gonna replace some, what I'm gonna call bad revenue for the client. You know, the client didn't have visibility, the employee didn't have visibility, so they have to void a check, and they have to do a manual, then they have to send a wire.

You know, to the extent there's a tax, a tax event created because it extends a different quarter or different tax period, you've got to deal with that. You know, there are definitely some fees associated with that. That can be labor work on both our side and the client side, which can carry, maybe a higher, or a lower, I should say, operating margin in regards to that.

Or higher expense to both us and the client. From a Beti perspective, you know, there's not anything we're doing to it on our end, and there's not anything the client's having to do. What I tell clients is, "Hey. Our competitors got themselves out of doing your payroll. We get you out of doing your payroll.

Bryan Bergin
Managing Director and Analyst, Cowen

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 14

Hey there. This is Alan on for Alex Zukin. I just wanted to drill in on the new business going forward. Obviously, you know, it sounds like you guys are seeing a lot of strength there. I was wondering if you could help kind of put to context what you're seeing at the lower end of your customer employee range and the top end, and kind of how you're thinking about that for the second half. Thanks.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

Yeah, I mean, I would say more the same. You know, we don't really get to dictate what size company's coming in from our lead volume. You know, as we use our advertising assets, you could have a three-employee company clicking on it that has a pet store, and you could have a 10,000-employee company clicking on it.

You know, we're gonna be going after those of all sizes and have been. I wouldn't see how we would expect it to be dramatically different than what we're seeing right now. Again, our move-up market, we're already there. I'm just announcing it. I mean, we're already there. We're already getting the leads. We're already selling the deals.

You know, we've got deals larger than 10,000 that are already using our company. You know, we're just making it more official and kind of flying the flag out there right now that we're open for business, and we're gonna be targeted prospecting those clients up to 10,000 as well.

Speaker 14

Thank you.

Operator

At this time, there are no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Chad Richison.

Chad Richison
President and CEO, Paycom Software

All right. Thank you. I wanna thank everyone for joining us today on the call. As we communicated internally, we're gradually making our way back to the offices and hope to be back as soon as conditions safety safely permit. I wanna thank all of the Paycom employees for their perseverance through the pandemic.

Over 70% of our staff are either fully vaccinated or in the process. I'd like to reiterate that I believe getting vaccinated saves lives. For every 100,000 fully vaccinated people, it's estimated that less than one will lose their life from a breakthrough COVID-19 case. Please get your vaccinations, and let's end this pandemic.

On the investor outreach side, this quarter we'll be presenting at the Oppenheimer Conference on August 10th, followed by the Wolfe Conference on September 8th and the Citi Conference on September 14th. Paycom will also be hosting one-on-one meetings in August and September at KeyBanc and Piper Sandler conferences. We look forward to speaking with many of you very soon and appreciate your continued support of Paycom. Thank you, operator. You may disconnect.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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