All right, it's 10:00 A.M. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. For those who don't know me, my name is Charles Nabhan. I cover the payments and transaction services space at Stephens. Joining me today from Repay is CEO and co-founder John Morris and CFO Tim Murphy. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us again.
Thank you for having us.
Great. Appreciate everybody's time today. Maybe as a starting point, John, for those that are unfamiliar with the story, if you could just give us a brief overview of the company, the two segments, and its value proposition to clients.
Sounds great. Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me fine? Great. So first of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for the opportunity to see you, speak with you in person. It's also always great. So Repay, who are we? Some of you may know that, some of you may not. From an overall overview perspective, our business is we process payments on behalf of our end clients. Specifically, they may be in the consumer space or they may be in the business payment space. We create the financial technology that embeds into these core software platforms to help the money movement either on behalf of a consumer or on the behalf of a business. So 80% of our business will deal with some type of direct consumer bill payment. Generally, those will be some type of financial instrument that they're helping repay.
And then the other side of our business, the 20%, will be associated with business invoices for either the payment of those invoices or the repayment of those invoices. On a holistic basis, that's our core business. We create the payment modalities and solutions that help move the money to either pay or get paid on behalf of that. And we own our own ecosystem that helps move those funds inside of the US and Canadian economy.
Got it. Let's start with the consumer payment segment, which is the largest. Could you give us a sense for the different verticals you operate in within those industries and why you chose those specific verticals?
Yeah, sure. So in the universe of payments, in the universe of how money moves, we've chosen. Initially we started out as our original origin back in 2006, where we found a lot of friction on behalf of consumers wanting to pay things more real-time. We actually see that even more so today as well. And we provide the instruments to be able to do that. We go to market by vertical. So on the consumer side, it would be auto loans. We would serve an auto lending servicer or auto lenders on our personal lending and the ARM space, accounts receivable management, or the credit union space. Those are kind of our main go-to-market verticals. We like to be industry experts inside those verticals as well as integrate with the core software platforms that actually help them function in those particular verticals. But we also are payment experts.
I like to say in our world, we may not be the number one thing that our clients do, but we're likely the second most important thing they do because they have to pay or get paid. And that's the overall accountability ledger part of the system. And that has to be always on and always accurate. And so that's part of our value proposition inside of that.
And in consumer, we have about 175 or so software relationships. So our distribution model is we have direct sales going directly to the consumer clients, whether it be an auto lender or a mortgage servicer or a credit union. And then we also have distribution via the 175 or so, what we would call ISVs, software partners, where they have hundreds or thousands of users using their software to manage the workflows and the portfolios of those clients. And when we integrate to them and partner with them, we get access to their user base in a referral relationship. So they would refer us accounts. They're using their software to use our payment technology, which is embedded into their software. So it effectively enhances the value proposition the software provider gives to the client because it's a high-quality payment experience, which enhances their software.
So if we do it right, it's a value proposition not only to the direct client, but also to the software provider. The referral relationship dynamic is very important because oftentimes in payments, you'll see this is more of a reseller relationship. And the reseller relationship, in that instance, the reseller takes a greater share of the economics. But when it's a referral, we take a greater share of the economics and therefore do more of the work around contracting, underwriting, risk management. But that flows through our gross profit margin profile. We have, in a given quarter, between 75%-80% gross profit margins because we're not giving away a lot of the margin to the reseller. We're keeping it ourselves, which we think is a very effective model from a unit economics standpoint.
To give you a direct connection, so think of it as you as a consumer. You might have a mortgage. You might have a car payment. You might have a credit card. How do you pay each one of those instruments? Do you go directly through your biller of that? We see that's the number one trend. And so we help those billers execute on behalf of you the payment and repayment of those items.
Got it. So we get quite a few questions on the growth algorithm. And John, you've talked about the opportunity for penetration within your existing client base. Could you maybe give us a sense for the components of growth? How much is coming from further penetration versus new bookings, et cetera?
Yeah. So we like to look at it as three different levers. And specifically, so if you think we specifically have said we're investing more in our sales, our sales resourcing, enterprise sales. So that in itself, on a net new win basis, is one of our growth levers. Our second growth lever is just the actual end verticals themselves growing. Some are growing faster than others. If you look at the verticals we just described on the consumer side, so just the net new vertical itself is growing. And then the third piece of that is that digital transformation, that ability for us to use new modalities and how the consumers want to act and react on how they want to pay and make payments. That in itself is a positive thing for us, is that generally that we lean into that.
Our financial technology really supports what is the consumer wallet and our ability to execute on the omni part of that, both the omni channel and the omni modality piece of that. How they want to come in and pay. They may want to come in and pay with a text or a mobile or even, obviously, most will do through web. But we are able to execute on all those. All those three levers will drive our overall organic growth for many years.
Got it. So you reported third quarter earnings last week. You talked a little about consumer softness as a headwind to performance, but also said you're seeing some improvement in used vehicle affordability, which could help the business over the next year or so. Could you maybe talk about the macro, not just in auto, but just generally in consumer, how it impacts your business and how investors should think about that going forward?
Yeah. So we did mention some softness in certain parts and pockets of our business. Generally speaking, the consumer is healthy. But in certain pockets of that, we've talked about historically in kind of the used auto space, coming out of COVID has kind of been relatively soft. We do see opportunity as that returning back to a net new normal. Our ARM space, which we call accounts receivable management, it went from historic low levels of opportunity for it to now historic all-time highs of this ability to drive the overall business on a receivable repayment. So we think those things have been soft for us. And the overall macro consumer part of that is there's probably been some demand piece of that where on behalf of the, say, the lending world, where they've been cautious.
We think what some of the things we're seeing out in the future as that returns to its normal, which we hear and see signs of that. We ourselves are not lenders and don't take credit exposure. We do see that as a potential tailwind for us, but we don't get to control the timing of that part.
Got it. Tim, you touched on some of the partnerships and integrations that you've generated over the years, but I wanted to ask you about the competitive landscape and specifically how it's changed, who you compete against, and how those partnerships and integrations are key to your go-to-market.
So within consumer specifically, we chose these markets because they're not as competitive. And so from a payment perspective, we know that retail payments and restaurant payments, e-commerce payments are really, really competitive spaces with a lot of players. And oftentimes you're just differentiating on price. But in these end markets within consumer like auto loans or mortgages, it's less competitive. It's less served than the more traditional markets. There is, in the enterprise part of the market, which is where we're focused, there's us and maybe one or two others across the verticals. And then in the kind of smaller to mid-market part of the space, there's a handful of private companies we compete with. One of them we acquired called Payix. That was our last acquisition about three years ago.
From an M&A perspective, there's an opportunity there to consolidate in kind of like the mid-sized part of the market, and then enterprise is just a few players. I don't think the competitive dynamics have changed much in the last couple of years, but what is key is the software relationships you have, and so one way you can differentiate is by having a deeper integration with the existing software. A great example is Black Knight in the mortgage servicing market, where Black Knight covers 70% or so of the mortgage servicing space. They're the software that manages mortgage servicers, workflows, and portfolios, and we integrate to Black Knight. There's a few others that are also integrated to Black Knight, but we think we're one of the only, if not the only, that is integrated to allow debit card acceptance of mortgage payments.
And so that's very differentiated in that market, which is a very large market that's underserved and underpenetrated from a card perspective. So by having the Black Knight relationship and then having a debit card solution, that is differentiated. And so we see examples of that in other end markets. We have some examples in auto and credit unions. For example, we would integrate with Jack Henry and their Symitar product that allows us to hunt within that environment. And we have similar integrations with other providers in the credit union space. So the software relationships are very important. You're typically not exclusive in the relationship, but you can become the preferred partner by offering better technology, something like debit within Black Knight that's differentiated.
We spend a lot of time and, frankly, software dollars and CapEx thinking about how to further strengthen those software relationships to be able to have a more effective universe to hunt.
Got it. I want to switch gears to business payments. On B2B, I think we're all aware of the huge TAM in the industry, but could you give us a sense for where you sit and how your solution is differentiated?
Yes. So I watched this space for 10 years before we started acquiring some companies to get into this vertical, almost complementing what Tim was saying. You needed the right integrations. You needed the right platforms to do some things. Our overall offering is our TotalPay solution. So if you look at a market where, again, if you're in business, you're moving, you're paying and getting paid somehow today, but very fragmented. A lot of friction there. You may be using a treasury management solution that you may be going to your bank's website to do this. You may be doing something else over here, and you may just be paying people with checks. So a gigantic opportunity out there, probably the best opportunity I've seen in 25-30 years in payments, really great value proposition.
What we've said and what we say from time to time is the first frontier of payables, which is where we see the biggest opportunity. The payable side of the world is the business back office, office of the CFO, as you might say, is really catching up, and we as consumers, we've been educated as a fantastic e-commerce experience. We go back to work and say, "Why are we printing invoices and why are we writing paper checks?" In a really good way, we see that being embraced in the overall economic system on behalf of our clients. Driving automation and driving efficiency out of and friction out of the business back office, we see there's lots of opportunity over the next five years to do that. Our differentiation is our TotalPay solution. We give you the ability. We take your entire payables file.
We actually execute on behalf of each one of those invoices and track and trace that payment modality through its entire lifecycle and back, fully embedded into your accounting ERP system and fully reconcilable. Today, that's very fragmented in many different ways to do that. As I was mentioning, the first frontier I would consider of payables would be payroll. So many of you may remember payroll used to be done in-house. Now it's like very common and very normal. Multiple public companies who do that, right? We think this is the biggest and really the next frontier of payables is even bigger than payroll. And that automation, if you believe many believe payroll would never happen, it did. That's the most sensitive part if you think about it. This piece is absolutely going to happen, and it's going to happen rapidly.
How money moves and the flavors of that, maybe virtual card, ACH, Paid ACH, check. Again, there's going to be a business payment wallet as well. And the mixture of that is real. And you can't just do one flavor of that. You got to do all of those things. Our total solution does that. And we think that's a real differentiator. There's just a giant net new that's there, and then the white space is real. But then we also go to market there as well by vertical because we build our vendor network by that. We have over 330,000 of those vendors today. We think that network effect over time is going to be super valuable. And as you continue to build out that network effect, the endpoint and interacting with that is going to be really valuable.
You didn't ask me this, but the other flywheel effect that really excites me about that vertical is that for every person you're paying, they need the ability to receive. So every potential, the real flywheel effect is every vendor that we pay is a potential client as well, both to receive because we can do AR and AP, but also they have payables as well.
Got it. And could you talk about the verticals where you play and if there's any alignment or synergies between what you do in business payments and consumer, given your knowledge of some of the consumer verticals?
Ultimately, it's around payments, right? It's around embedded solutions, and our financial technology platform supports that. The security of that, the trust of actually being able to do that. And we all take this probably for granted, but when you move a dollar, it has to be a dollar. It can't be 99 cents, right? Our ability to truly execute on that and enter into the financial system is the most common factor of that. And we're experts at that. And we own our ecosystem and kind of the overall plumbing behind the scenes that move that. Most people outsource some form of that. We have the ability to do that.
I'll add the verticals where we have strength and we focus within payables would be hospitals. We've just announced some really nice wins in the hospital space. We won the University of Florida Health System. Grady Hospital is a very large hospital system in Atlanta. And so we have some nice wins there. We're very strong in auto dealerships, the back office of auto dealerships paying their suppliers. Property management is another area. So we're in a number of these sub-verticals within AP, and the key is to have the software relationships in those sub-verticals, but probably more importantly to have the suppliers that are being utilized in those verticals. So we now have a nice number of hospitals in our network, and they often use the same suppliers.
And so when we've enabled a supplier to accept digital payments and we go to sell the next hospital and we get their total spend file, we can bounce that up against our database and likely have a higher hit rate because we now serve so many hospitals that use the same suppliers and can tell that potential client what the success will be of the program based on our experience within hospitals. So the more hospitals we sign, the more vendors we enroll, the better success we have with future client relationships. Very similar dynamic within auto dealerships, property managers, hospitality. And that's the go-to-market motion is direct to the client via the software provider, and then obviously we're paying the supplier network.
So we have 330,000 suppliers today, and we want that to continue to grow significantly, which could be organically done via new client wins or inorganically via M&A.
Got it. So this past quarter, you highlighted slower corporate spend. Can you talk about how that impacted results and how you're working through working on monetization and growth opportunities to help work through some of those near-term challenges?
Yeah, so I mean, it's not unique to us that corporate spending, with inflation being up, corporate spending has been slightly down. CapEx budgets have been reduced, and that flowed through to impact our volumes in certain pockets this quarter. I think with inflation coming down and generally people feeling good about the economy, CapEx budgets will be back up and corporate spending will increase more in the next couple of years, and we primarily serve mid-market to enterprise, so we're not SMB, and mid-market to enterprise is where you would see more of a focus on corporate spending and CapEx, so that's how that impacted us, but one real opportunity we see is with our TotalPay solution, like John said, we can do not only virtual card payments to suppliers, but we can also do what we call Paid ACH or enhanced ACH in addition to regular ACH.
And then if we have to, we'll default to check payments because we want to do all payables, not just virtual card. But we want to monetize more of the spend for our clients. So if we have, call it, 10% of their spend today, their total spend today on virtual card, we're working on initiatives to get more of that spend on virtual card, but also more onto Paid ACH. And Paid ACH would be less expensive to the supplier to accept with some enriched data, but not as much as the card. But our costs for Paid ACH are much lower, so our margins are similar to card. So we have an initiative to promote Paid ACH within our user base and monetize more of the total payment volume versus simply focusing on virtual card.
And we think that's a real opportunity over the next couple of years to monetize more of the TPV. We don't report TPV, but TPV has been growing faster than our reported volume, and that would flow through eventually to revenue and GP as you monetize more of that total payment volume or total spend. And that's the opportunity we see and why we think that this business can still be a 15%-20% type of growth business because of the recovery of corporate spending, the monetization of payments. And then we haven't talked about this, but we have an initiative to address enterprise software from a payables perspective.
So we've announced that Blackbaud is a very large partner where we've embedded our payables solution into Blackbaud, where Blackbaud can now promote that solution to their massive user base and capture more of the volume that's flowing through where historically they haven't monetized the payables volume. We'll provide them a rev share to monetize the payables volume flowing through the Blackbaud platform. There's a number of, as you guys probably know, there's lots of enterprise software platforms out there that historically have focused on accepting payments but haven't focused at all on payables. And so we're looking to address payables within enterprise software as another growth driver. So recovery of corporate spending, monetization of total spend, and enterprise software embedded payables. Those are three big initiatives.
Got it. So political spend was a strong contributor to growth within the business. How big of a contribution was it this quarter, and how should we think about that business?
Yeah, so we have a business that does what we call political media, where each election cycle, so every other year, we process payments on behalf of our clients who are agencies to buy to purchase ads, and they're purchasing ads with virtual cards and Paid ACH, and they're doing that because the supplier of the ad doesn't want to accept checks, and it's slow, and they want to get paid more quickly, so they want the funds to come to them either via virtual card or Paid ACH, and that's a market that with each cycle continues to grow, so a presidential cycle will typically be larger than a non-presidential cycle just from overall dollars spent on advertising. Digital transformation is happening in that space too, which generally leads to higher growth in subsequent election periods.
This particular election obviously had a unique dynamic with the flip to Harris. She spent a lot of money very quickly. We've processed a lot of that in terms of buying ads. We also, in addition to that, had a large client win that was using all paper and doing all manual payments that started using our technology. We had a competitive takeaway from another. There's really only a couple of us that do political media payments, payables. We had a competitive takeaway. That business contributed about, call it, $4.5 million of incremental GP in Q3. About that growth over the 2022 cycle, about two-thirds of that came from just the dynamics around being presidential and Harris. The balance came from the new client wins I just mentioned.
So it's a very strong part of our business, super high margin, generates a lot of cash flow that we can reinvest in growth, but it does happen every other year during election cycles.
Just as a quick education piece of that, so we are moving funds on behalf of 50-60 agencies that are the major media buyers on behalf of various different campaigns in that space. We're a trusted intermediary. So once we have the funds, they're guaranteed they're going to get the funds. To just put that in perspective, way back when, literally those, just to tell you how time moves, money movement, those funds used to be couriered to the media outlets as physical checks several years ago. So you can imagine in the political world, the loser can't raise any money. So every time you see an ad on TV, it's paid for. That's kind of an unusual piece about that industry piece of that. We see great opportunity there from a long-term additional extension. And this is a multi-year scenario, not next year.
But as you can imagine, we're a trusted facilitator of payments on behalf of these media outlets. And so the outlets, they're getting lots of funds from us. So when I was telling you every client is a potential client, so our ability to engage on that additional extension is there. As you can imagine, media outlets are a large, many are very large consolidated institutions. And our ability to continue to go deeper into that and penetrate that additional part of that in-market, we think there's a long-term opportunity for us.
Got it. I want to switch gears to financials and spend some time on capital because a couple of reasons. Number one, I think capital flexibility is one of the more interesting things about this story, and then secondly, it's been a busy year with your convertible note offering as well as some notable improvement in free cash flow conversion as well, so that said, as a starting point, could you just give us a sense for your liquidity position, where you are on leverage, as well as your capital allocation priorities?
Yeah, absolutely. And it's been a good year for us from a free cash flow perspective, and we've done a lot of work on the balance sheet. We have access to $420 million liquidity today via our cash balance and a $250 million undrawn revolver. So $420 million of capacity. Free cash flow conversion has been higher this year. Our target is 65% for the year on a reported basis. That's versus, call it, 40% or so last year. So a meaningful step up in free cash flow, which, as you can see, is flowing through the liquidity profile. And that puts us at about two and a half times net leverage. So we feel very good about the balance sheet. We have not done an acquisition in almost three years.
We've been disciplined on trying to integrate the assets we've acquired and also trying to stay disciplined on valuation, not overpay for something. And assets have been, we think, overvalued for a few years, and we start to see that, we're starting to see that come down. So from a capital allocation standpoint, the priorities will be organic growth, which our plan always embeds some level of organic growth investment via OpEx and CapEx, although CapEx has been coming down, and that has been one of the drivers of free cash flow conversion going higher. And CapEx for us is effectively software development. And then in addition to organic growth, we see an opportunity for tuck-in M&A. We haven't done an acquisition in three years. We have an internal team that sources deals, executes deals, and helps with post-merger integration.
We have that capability in-house, which we think is a good thing and allows us for a lot more access and visibility to what assets are out there to acquire. Tuck-in M&A. The way we think about tuck-in M&A is we probably wouldn't want leverage to go above, call it, four times net, with the visibility to bring that back down below three times within 12-18 months. We do have about $36 million remaining on a share repurchase authorization, so we could buy back stock opportunistically, depending on where the stock trades. Lastly, as you said, we refinanced our convertible note earlier this year, this past summer. We had a $440 million maturity in February of 2026. We broke down that maturity tower into two pieces. We have $220 million remaining that's due in February of 2026.
So we want to give ourselves plenty of capacity to address that $220 million. Then we now have $287.5 million due in July of 2029. And the $220 million is at 0% coupon. The $287.5 million is at 2.875% coupon. So we're trying to be thoughtful about taking advantage of the fact that the $220 million is at 0%, but also just give ourselves enough capacity to address that. So again, really strong balance sheet, two and a half times net leverage, capital allocation priorities focused on organic growth, tuck-in M&A, potential opportunistic share repurchases, and giving ourselves flexibility to address the $220 million.
Yeah. Round numbers, end of the year, we'll have $195-200 million in cash on the balance sheet.
Right, so plenty of capacity to do really a combination of all of those things.
As we think about the outlook for free cash flow conversion, you got it to 65% for 2024. Is there room for further upside? And if so, could you talk about the drivers, whether it's network and capital improvement or further efficiency in CapEx?
Yeah. So we did talk this quarter, free cash flow jumped significantly due to a working capital benefit that we expect to mostly reverse next quarter. But that led to us increasing reported free cash flow conversion from 60%-65%. But absent the working capital dynamic, we'd be at 60%. And so I do think there's opportunity to improve over the next several years. This was a political year. It generates a lot of free cash flow, so we have to keep that in mind. But the ways we would increase conversion would be having adjusted EBITDA growing faster than top line, which we've demonstrated that adjusted EBITDA has been growing 10%-12%, managing working capital more efficiently, and bringing down CapEx. And so we have a longer-term target of getting CapEx down to, call it, 10%-12% of revenue.
So with a combination of adjusted EBITDA growth, working capital management, and CapEx reductions as a percentage of revenue, you could see free cash flow conversion increase.
Yeah. So a new metric we announced this year back in March. And obviously, we get the world of wait and see, which you can now see we can execute on that. We went from the mid-40s to the 60s. So we understand how to pull the levers if needed, but we have to balance that with organic growth. We still think that's the highest and best use of a dollar. And we still see lots of opportunity for that. And we're investing there. We have healthy pipelines in our business, but we have the ability to do that. You couple all those things together. Tim talked about our strong balance sheet. We have a lot of the great ingredients. Obviously, you heard me on the call talk about, I think we're undervalued. I think we're a strong company. I think we look at all the levers we have.
I think, and I'm going to continue to look at all those necessary levers that we have to pull that makes us an even better company. We're doing those things every day. We don't just wait around. But we think we're building a great company and have a lot of great ingredients. Not a perfect company, but we think there's a great opportunity. If you look at where we are in the marketplace relative to our peers, we think there's a lot to know more about our story.
Got it. And we've got a few more minutes. I wanted to double-click on your investments and just get a better sense for what your product roadmap looks like. Starting with organic, what are some areas where you're specifically allocating CapEx and investing your resources?
I'll start. So we invest heavily from a CapEx perspective in software integrations. So not only a new integration requires development work to integrate to a software provider, but also enhancing and refreshing existing integrations. So if we have an existing integration that's a software provider that has maybe 1,000 users, maybe we have 100 of them. So we're 10% penetrated in existing. A way we could further penetration is by embedding more of our payment types or modalities and more of our payment channels. So with that particular software, we may only be doing card. We may only be doing it over the phone and the web. So we could embed the ability to accept ACH payments and then do it not only over the phone and the web, but also embed an IVR solution, a tech solution, or a mobile payment solution.
So we're constantly kind of evaluating and refreshing existing and also integrating to new. And then another area of focus are enterprise clients. Enterprise clients do require development dollars to bring live. And then over time, our product roadmap looks at what they're asking for in terms of enhancing the payment types or the payment channels or the way they are able to interact with their end client. So it's around integrations, client needs. And then in B2B, it would be just doing, and this fits with integrations, is spending dollars to have further developed software integrations with the enterprise software for payables. Obviously, there were investments required to get live with Blackbaud, but we want to continue to enhance that and bring on new customers within Blackbaud. And there will be other enterprise software platforms where we embed our payables, which will require software dollars.
Those are the types of areas we focus on for CapEx.
Yeah. Let me add a couple more. As you know, we RCS, we own our own payment ecosystem. So we will continue to invest in that, enhancing that as how we clear and settle new modalities, how we drive overall reconciliations as part of that. So that's an investment we've made over the last few years. We actually think it's going to give us a really positive experience as we were able to, we think we have one of the more modern back-end systems in the marketplace today. So we think that's an opportunity for us.
Great. I want to talk about enterprise a little bit as well. I guess, first of all, the fact that you've announced these enterprise wins is reflective of the value proposition of the business. But with that said, I'd like to understand how it impacts your financials from a margin standpoint relative to how these new deals look relative to the existing P&L.
So enterprise deals, like for example, we're live with the second auto captive and consumer payments. That will likely be a lower take rate, so lower revenue take rate. You have to competitively price these deals to win them. But we have our own back-end. We have our own sponsor banks. Oftentimes, the enterprise has their own proprietary software, so we don't pay a referral fee to a third party. So we can drive through similar gross profit margins on enterprise deals, even if the revenue take rate is slightly lower. And then they do take a while to ramp. I mean, the second auto captive, we announced a while back, and they just went live. But the good news is that once they're converted and live, they'll ramp over a number of years.
That dynamic around take rate and GP will flow through via more volume coming to us over the number of years. A great example of that is we have Mercedes-Benz Financial Services as a client. We went live with them in the spring of 2020, and they're still moving new volume to us over four years later. That's an example of it may take time to get them live. It may slowly ramp, but it's also a multi-year growth opportunity.
What does that booking to bill timeline look like? I know it's a gradual ramp once you're up and running, but could you give us a sense for what the sales cycle looks like in enterprise?
It can be, I mean, we had a personal lender that benefited our growth a lot in 2023. That, from the time we signed them to the time they went live, was less than six months. And unfortunately, with this auto captive, it was closer to 18-plus months. So what we're trying to do is take learnings from the ones that went more quickly and use those for the ones that seem to have taken longer and try to understand why. And what can we be doing to facilitate a faster integration with our resources versus maybe relying on the client to push? Because oftentimes, in most cases, the client's not a payments expert. They don't exactly know what that roadmap to go live looks like. So we have the ability to influence to some extent. We can't disrupt their business.
But we can take those learnings to try to get that time, to shrink that time down, to get them live faster. And the more enterprise accounts we win, the more we'll learn and the more we can employ those learnings into the next one. So it can vary, but we would like to get some more predictability in that as we bring on more.
I will say in the business payments part of our, so we're constantly working on that, right? These aren't net new things. Ultimately, it's our challenge, even if it's client-side, which is predominantly the number one, by far the number one reason. So we're trying to drive automation around that and just scoping, better scoping, better commitments around that, minimum viable versus everything in the toolbox. Although some really want everything, so it's just kind of part of that, especially at the enterprise level. Our integrated solutions that are embedded in these 176 to actually 276 solutions, those are easier to implement because they're already there, reside. It's easier to ingest, easier to take on. The enterprise ones are the ones that take a little bit longer because they have their own platforms.
Got it.
Okay. I just want to put a fine point on our discussion. Obviously, a lot of moving pieces that we've dove into a little bit today. But as we think about the business on a go-forward basis, could you remind us of any comments you've made or anything you could share on what normalized gross profit growth or normalized margin profile for the business would look like?
Yeah. I mean, we've said that we think this can be a, call it a high single-digit type grower on a top line basis. Normalized, you have to normalize for the political media. But then that adjusted EBITDA can grow faster, so low double digits and then free cash flow faster than that. So from a GP perspective, I'd say high single digits is achievable and faster bottom line and free cash flow growth, again, leading to the stronger balance sheet and optionality on the balance sheet, which we think is a strong financial profile and something where we have visibility.
Great. Well, John, Tim, really appreciate your time today. And I want to thank everybody in the audience for joining us as well. And please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.