Hello, and welcome to today's Tyler Technologies Third Quarter 2018 Conference Call. Your host for today's call is John Marr, Chairman of Tyler Technologies. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded as of today, November 1, 2018.
I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Maher. Mr. Marr, please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome to our Q3 2018 earnings call. With me on the call today are Lynn Moore, our President and Chief Executive Officer and Brian Miller, our Chief Financial Officer. First, I'd like for Brian to give the Safe Harbor statement. Next, Lynn will have some preliminary comments. Then Brian will review the details of our Q3 results and update our 2018 guidance.
Then I'll have some final comments, and we'll take your questions. Brian?
Thanks, John. During the course of this conference call, management may make statements that provide information other than historical information and may include projections concerning the company's future prospects, revenues, expenses and profits. Such statements are considered forward looking statements under the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from these projections. We would refer you to our Form 10 ks and other SEC filings for more information on those risks. Effective January 1, 2018, we adopted the requirements of ASU 20 fourteen-nine Topic 606, revenue from contracts with customers, utilizing the full retrospective method of transition.
Prior year amounts have been restated from previously reported amounts to reflect the impact of the full retrospective adoption of Topic 606. Please note that all growth comparisons we make on the call today will relate to the corresponding period of last year unless we specify otherwise. Lynn?
Thanks, Brian. Our 3rd quarter earnings were in line with our expectations and cash flow exceeded expectations, even though revenues were somewhat below plan. Total GAAP revenues grew 10% and non GAAP revenues grew 10.5% with 6 0.5% organic growth. We continue to experience exceptional growth in our cloud based business as GAAP subscription revenues grew 32% and non GAAP subscription revenues grew 35%. Total recurring revenues from and subscriptions grew 14% and comprised 66% of total revenue.
From a product perspective, growth for our enterprise products, which include ERP, appraisal and tax and Civic Services exceeded expectations. We continue to experience strong win rates and industry leading competitive positions for these products with significant scale and generally deep sales pipelines. Growth for our Justice products, which include courts and public safety, lagged expectations. We have a number of new courts and Justice initiatives that we are confident will provide long term growth, including new offerings like Modria, Research and Redaction as well as international expansion. However, revenues from those offerings are initially less predictable and have come online more slowly than planned.
We continue to have success in winning new public safety clients and the total value of new name public safety contracts signed year to date is up 34% over 2017. However, we are also pursuing some larger and more complex opportunities with our New World solutions. The sales process for a number of those deals has been prolonged, affecting the timing of not only license revenues, but also the associated professional services and maintenance revenues. It's also important to note that approximately half of the new public safety contract value for the year is expected to be signed in the Q4, which if executed will contribute to an expected acceleration of our growth rate in the Q4. Our long term view of the opportunity in the public safety space is more positive than ever our investments in the New World product suite are clearly resonating with clients and prospects and positively affecting win rates.
Our largest new license deal of the quarter was with Lubbock County, Texas, valued at $10,000,000 for a comprehensive suite of solutions, including Munis Enterprise Resource Planning, New World Public Safety Records Management and Computer Aided Dispatch, Brazos eCitation, Softcode Civil Process, Odyssey course case management, including Tyler Corrections and Odyssey Jury, Prosecutor and Pretrial. These Tyler Alliance solutions will manage Lubbock County's entire justice process from dispatch to disposition. With the addition of these products to the Tyler solutions they already use, Lubbock County will become one of the most comprehensive users of Tyler software in the nation. Also in the quarter, we signed a $7,000,000 deal with Loudoun County, Virginia for our InterGov Civic Services solution. The county will replace its 20 year old legacy land management information system with our Intergov Community Development Suite to streamline and automate its enterprise land management, permitting and development review process.
Loudoun County also uses our IISWorld property tax solution. Other significant on premises license deals signed during the quarter, each with a total contract value of $1,000,000 or more, included Knox County, Tennessee for our Munis ERP and IS World Appraisal Solutions Des Moines, Iowa for our EnerGov solution contracts with Hays County, Texas and the Bi County Police Information Network in Washington State for our New World Public Safety solution Norwood, Massachusetts for our Munis ERP solution and Casper, Wyoming for our Munis ERP, EnerGov and Executime solutions. The New World public safety contracts signed this quarter in Lubbock, Hays, Cameron and Gillespie Counties in Texas represent major new inroads into the Texas market where New World has previously not had a significant presence. Significant new SaaS contracts in the quarter included Columbus, Georgia, consolidated government for our Odyssey Court case management solution, contracts for our Munis ERP solutions with the cities of Roswell, New Mexico and New London, Connecticut and the Eastside Union High School District in San Jose, California and Blue Earth County, Minnesota for our IS World appraisal solution. We also signed a 3 year contract with the Texas Office of Courts Administration valued at $5,000,000 to provide redaction and value added attorney services as an addition to the existing e filing arrangement.
During the quarter, we also announced the availability of the New World's Shield Force mobile application. Shield Force makes real time and mission critical data for public safety agencies available instantly, ultimately improving their situational awareness and overall safety. The application provides a vital connection between patrol officers, dispatchers and command staff by extending computer aided dispatch functionality onto a smartphone, tablet or watch. ShieldForce is just one example of innovation we're bringing to market through our increased investments in R and D. Now I'd like for Brian to provide more detail on the results of the quarter and update our annual guidance for 2018.
Thanks, Lynn. Yesterday, Tyler Technologies reported its results for the Q3 ended September 30, 2018. I'm going to provide some additional data on the quarter's performance and update our annual guidance for 2018, and then John will have some additional comments. In our earnings release, we have included non GAAP measures that we believe facilitate understanding of our results and comparisons with peers in the software industry. These measures exclude write downs of acquisition related deferred revenue and acquired leases, share based compensation expense, the employer portion of payroll taxes on employee stock transactions and amortization of acquired intangibles.
A reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release. We've also posted on the Investor Relations section of our Web site under the Financial Reports tab schedules with supplemental information provided on this call, including information about quarterly bookings, backlog and recurring revenues. GAAP revenues for the quarter were $236,100,000 up 9.9%. GAAP organic revenue growth was 6.6%. On a non GAAP basis, revenues were $237,600,000 up 10.5 percent with a 6.5 percent organic growth.
Subscription revenues for the quarter increased 32.3%. We added 81 new subscription based arrangements and converted 31 existing on premises clients, representing approximately $29,200,000 in total contract value. In Q3 of last year, we added 94 new subscription based arrangements and had 15 on premises conversions, representing approximately $42,500,000 in total contract value. Subscription clients represented approximately 47% of the number of new software contracts in the quarter compared to 49% in the prior year quarter, while subscription contract value comprised 37% of the total new software contract value signed this quarter compared to 51% in Q3 of last year. The value weighted average term of new SaaS contracts this quarter was 3.6 years compared to 5.4 years in Q3 of last year.
Transaction based revenues from e filing and online payments, which are included in subscriptions, increased 16.4 percent to $17,900,000 from $15,400,000 last year. That amount includes e filing revenue of $13,300,000 up 12.2% over last year. Annualized total non GAAP recurring revenues for Q3 were approximately $625,000,000 up 14.6%. Our backlog at the end of the quarter was $1,200,000,000 up 7.3%. Backlog included $355,000,000 of maintenance compared to $340,000,000 a year ago.
Subscription backlog was $488,000,000 compared to $443,000,000 last year and includes approximately $128,000,000 related to fixed fee e filing contracts. Our bookings for this quarter, which are calculated from the change in backlog plus non GAAP revenues, were approximately $255,000,000 a decrease of 5.2% from Q3 of last year. For the trailing 12 months, bookings were approximately $1,000,000,000 up 17.9%. As we noted earlier, the weighted average term of new software subscription agreements this quarter was 3.6 years compared to 5.4 years last year as we have moved to standardized on shorter initial subscription terms for most of our software offerings to provide greater pricing flexibility. The combination of a lower mix of subscription contracts and a shorter term for new subscriptions negatively affected our bookings growth.
If the initial term for this quarter's subscription bookings had been the same as last year, bookings growth would have been 260 basis points higher. In addition, last year's Q3 bookings included a $12,000,000 contract for research in Illinois. Our software subscription bookings in the quarter added $5,600,000 in new annual recurring revenue, down 10.4 percent from $6,300,000 last year. For comparison, if all of our subscription contracts had been under license arrangements, we estimate that they would have represented additional license bookings of approximately $6,500,000 We signed 29 new contracts in the quarter that included software licenses greater than $100,000 and those contracts had an average license of $465,000 compared to 32 new contracts with an average license value of $381,000 in the Q3 of 2017. Cash flow from operations grew 20.8 percent to $112,100,000 and surpassed $100,000,000 in the quarter for the first time.
Free cash flow, which is calculated as cash from operations less capital expenditures, was $103,600,000 up nearly 22%. Our CapEx for the quarter was $8,500,000 including approximately $215,000 related to real estate compared to total CapEx of $7,600,000 in Q3 of last year, which included $3,600,000 related to real estate. We ended the quarter with $315,300,000 in cash and investments and no outstanding debt. Day sales outstanding in accounts receivable were 107 days at September 30, 2018 compared to 94 days at September 30, 2017. Excluding unbilled receivables, DSOs were 79 days at September 30, 2018 compared to 74 days at September 30, 2017.
Our guidance for the full year of 2018 is as follows. We expect 2018 GAAP revenues will be between 9 $34,000,000 $944,000,000 and non GAAP revenues will be between $940,000,000 $950,000,000 We expect 2018 GAAP diluted EPS will be between $3.63 $3.71 and may vary significantly due to the impact of stock option exercises on the GAAP effective tax rate. We expect 2018 non GAAP diluted EPS will be between $4.76 $4.84 For the year, estimated pre tax non cash share based compensation expense is expected to be approximately $55,000,000 We expect R and D expense for the year will be between $62,000,000 $64,000,000 Fully diluted shares for the year are expected to be between 40,200,000 and 40,500,000 shares. GAAP earnings per share assumes an estimated annual effective tax rate of 4% after discrete tax items and includes approximately $36,000,000 of discrete tax benefits primarily related to share based compensation, which may vary significantly based on the timing and volume of stock option exercises. Our estimated non GAAP annual effective tax rate for 2018 is 24%.
This rate was reduced from 35% for 2017 to reflect enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We expect our total capital expenditures will be between $23,000,000 $26,000,000 for the year. Total depreciation and amortization is expected to be approximately $62,000,000 including approximately $40,000,000 of amortization of acquired intangibles. Now I'd like to turn the call over to John for his comments.
Thanks, Brian. Kyla continued to execute at a high level in the 3rd quarter. We achieved double digit revenue growth for the 28th consecutive quarter. We're pleased that we were able to grow non GAAP operating income for the quarter, while increasing our R and D spend 44% and absorbing acquisitions that are mostly dilutive this year. Our non GAAP earnings guidance for the year is unchanged from the Q2 when we adjusted it upward from our initial outlook.
Although we have revised our revenue guidance to slightly lower the upper end of the range, we expect organic and total revenue growth to accelerate in the 4th quarter. At the midpoint of our non GAAP revenue guidance, total revenue growth for the 4th quarter would be approximately 14% organic revenue growth would be approximately 9%. As Lynn noted earlier, our enterprise products are performing exceptionally well. Revenues for the second half of the year from these products are exceeding expectations with solid double digit growth from what are some of our more mature products. For our Justice products, second half growth is below our plan, in part because we've reduced our outlook for revenues from new initiatives to drive long term growth.
Although these revenues have proven to be less predictable and slower to develop, the market has been very receptive to these offerings and recent activity is encouraging. For research, we have contracts with Texas, Illinois and New Mexico, and we signed contracts this quarter with 14 counties in Georgia. The lack of precedence is driving longer than expected time frames to turn on value added services for attorneys. For redaction, we signed a 3 year contract with Texas this quarter. And with pilot projects starting in both Texas and New Mexico, we expect to expand across our client base from there.
With Modrea, we have signed several contracts, including major clients like Clark for online dispute resolution is resulting in smaller pilot projects than originally expected, initial results have surpassed client expectations, and we expect that these early successes will lead to expanded use and a greater contribution to growth in 2019 as our sales pipeline is strong. We continue to make significant progress with integrating Socrata, now known as our Data and Insights division. The new Socrata Connected Government Cloud has resonated with the market since its release earlier this year, And we've signed 7 new contracts for SCGC in the quarter, adding new clients at the federal, state and local levels. We are also successfully cross selling Socrata through our other Tyler divisions and are building a strong pipeline through other Tyler channels. While investing in product development at a high level, we've also completed 2 additional acquisitions that add native cloud with important functionality, 1 in the Q3 and 1 in early October, for a total combined purchase price of approximately $14,000,000 in cash.
Caseload Pro, acquired August 31, strengthens the probation and supervision offerings in our Justice Suite. Mobilize acquired October 1 as valuable solutions for fire protection and inspections. We continue to pursue additional strategic acquisition opportunities to broaden our capabilities, expand our addressable markets and enhance growth. As we noted earlier, Q3 was a record quarter for cash flow. The strength of our balance sheet and consistency of our cash flow give us a great flexibility to deploy capital and create value.
While we did not repurchase our stock in the 3rd quarter, we have since resumed buyback activity and have repurchased approximately 155,000 shares of our common stock in October. We currently have remaining authorization to repurchase 1,800,000 shares. Finally, in October, we launched our newly redesigned website, which is easier to navigate and provides a vastly improved visitor experience compared to our previous site. We invite you to visit our website attylotech.com and explore the new content. Now we'll take your questions.
The first question today comes from Alexis Husby with D. A. Davidson. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. This is actually Pete Heckmann. Had a question, Brian. So just to be clear, on a constant term basis of about 5.4 years, bookings would have been down about 2.5% year over year. Is that how I interpret your comment?
That's correct.
Okay. And then just on the LTM bookings growth, are you comparing bookings under 60 6 to bookings under 605? I'm seeing a lower growth number on the LTM, the 18%.
Those should be both 606 numbers. Everything should be restated for 606. We have a schedule of bookings that's posted on the website, but those should all be restated 606 bookings. It does include adding Socrata into the backlog as well. So that's included in that number, the new number.
Okay, That's helpful. And then just as regards Socrata, would you did Socrata generate sequentially higher revenue in the Q3?
Sequentially higher than from Q2 to Q3?
Yes.
I believe that's the case. The kraddlers revenues did increase significantly from Q3 or from Q2 to Q3, although for us, really it was only in a month in Q2. So it's a little hard to compare the 2 months before Tyler to the month after. But generally, Socrata revenues are increasing and also looking at a fairly significant increase in Q4 over Q3.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Scott Berg with Needham and Company. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Lynn, I wanted to start off with the comments on the Public Safety business. Is that business I know is more weighted towards the back half of the year than your other products. So I guess it's not a surprise that Q4 is heavier there.
But as you look at the bookings opportunity there with your expectations on Q4, how does that compare for the entire year versus your beginning of the year expectations?
Well, I think our expectations are still strong in public safety. As I think we mentioned in the comments, the second half in Q4 in particular has a large number of new clients. I think about half of their new licenses are really scheduled to be signed in Q4. I think overall in 2018, licenses in public safety are looking to be up around 25%, 30%, New names are up 10% to 12% and really the deal size is growing as well. I think the average size deal year over year is up in the 55%, 60%.
So overall, I think what's going on in Public Safety is good. We just had they just had their largest user conference, the IACP. Our new products are showing well. The integrations that we're showing with Socrata, there's a lot of excitement around what we can do with the Socrata public safety analytics. So generally speaking, it's the trends there are still looking good.
Yes. We attended that conference and came away pretty positive on it. So that's why just seeking commentary there. It sounds like you're feeling pretty comfortable at least with that business over the near term. Yes, and then the last question I have is around the Socrata.
You've had the asset for 5 months. It sounds like you're starting to sell it well. But 5 months later, any differences in opinion in the opportunity there, whether positive or on the negative side? Or is it kind of right in line with initial expectations?
I'd say right now it's right in line with expectations. There is a lot of excitement I think internally in the market in Tyler and as well in the market. I think I mentioned in the call last quarter, one thing that we've been doing is we've been looking at opportunities within Tyler and we've been working on product roadmaps for each division and how Socrata is really going to integrate with each of the different divisions. And so we're still finalizing those and prioritizing those. I think we're looking to hopefully come out with some new products in the very near term and show some new stuff at the Connect user conference in next year.
Great. That's all I have.
Thanks for taking my questions.
Next question comes from Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Kirk, your line is open.
Sorry about that. Thanks. Thanks, gentlemen. Just maybe to start off with, I realize there's a lot of moving parts to the business model right now. And in terms of mix shift from on prem to subscription and obviously the duration changes are going to impact bookings.
But can you just maybe level set where you think you are at this point this year versus your initial expectations in January? I mean, it sounds like Justice is maybe a little bit slower than you hoped, maybe at the beginning of the year. Other things, it sounds like you guys are very upbeat about. I'm just trying to get a level set on kind of your expectations about how you're executing against sort of the full year plan? And then, just so we understand that because it's obviously harder to get a real view into that just by looking at bookings right now?
Thanks.
Yes, I think that's a good question. Obviously, there are some areas of softness in the second half of the year that have contributed a little lighter revenues and it's fair to kind of see how that breaks down. What I think is important to reinforce is our core businesses are performing really well. We indicated the enterprise side of the business is actually ahead of plan. And this is a little more mature side of the business, a lot of recurring revenues, a big presence in a large marketplace that flows nicely.
In other words, when things move out, other things tend to move in and the business is performing very well and consistently delivering double digit organic growth. The Justice side of the business, the core business is doing well. The competitive position, winning important deals, none of those things affected at all. And so performing very much in line with what our expectations are, e file revenues, maintenance revenues, no attrition, all those core fundamentals right on track. As we've said, our core growth rate would contract if we didn't add anything else over time.
We're adding a lot of things. We've talked about Madrid and research and redaction and international expansion and other things adding Socrata and Sage and the inorganic growth initiatives that we have. Those things are going to be more difficult to predict and they're going to show up at different times and contribute and that is what drives the above double digit growth organic growth rate. And they're just a little light in the second half of the year. So I think it's going to be difficult to project those even public safety that is new to Tyler and it takes several years literally to kind of Tylerize the whole business model, well on track, but harder to predict.
And so some of the softness from those growth initiatives in the second half of the year. It's important to say though that all of those are being received well in the marketplace. We don't have any question about the traction they're going to receive. And we've made progress in terms of these didn't have business models around them. They really didn't have a clear value proposition.
And those things have all been tested and with early adopters are being embraced. So we feel really good about the long term contribution that these growth initiatives will have and we feel really good that they will provide that incremental growth that consistently has the growth rates where we want them to be, even though the timing of that contribution has been a little short in the second half of this year.
That makes sense. Thanks, John. And then maybe and this sort of dovetails on one of your comments, but to your point about adding a lot of new products this year, you guys have obviously been more acquisitive than I think historically, listen to just the number of products you brought on. How should we be thinking about M and A for 2019? And maybe how we should think about sort of margins as it relates to that?
Can we is 2019 more of a year where you guys are hoping to see these products sort of gel, come into the go to market model and then obviously we hope to see some natural operating leverage from that? Thanks.
Yes, we just don't We'd always be excited to do great deals that make sense for the company. And we have tended to be a little more aggressive on strategic deals. We're always going to be a disciplined buyer, but obviously some of these especially smaller strategics, once they're embraced in our sales channel and in our customer I think because they maybe were a little more expensive than what we would have liked. So, you might see us be a little more aggressive on strategic deals that we think there'll be a lot of scale and leverage in, but we'll be opportunistic. We can't start 2019 and say we have a particular target for acquisitions.
If they're there, great, we'll do them, we'll have the capacity to do them. And if they're not, we'll be happy to be patient as well. So it's a fair question, but we never have a quota on acquisitions. We're certainly always actively engaged in the marketplace. We're going to be able to have done a number of deals, obviously, a large deal with Socrata, but a number of smaller tuck in strategic deals that we think have that kind of scale and leverage in future in 2018 and we'll just have to see what 2019 brings.
Thanks for that. That's it for me. Thanks.
Next question comes from Alex Ryvazian with Piper Jaffray. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks. So maybe just on those comments around Courts and Justice. If we look at kind of maybe just reminding us about what percentage of the total business is coming from Courts and Justice, kind of what the new assumptions for growth given some of the new initiatives you talked about a little bit slower in the second half, what's the assumption for growth there now versus where it was? And are these execution issues?
Are these kind of product quality, market demand issues? Help us categorize that. And then I've got just a quick follow-up.
Just from a percentage, Courts and Justice is right around 20% of our business with the whole
Len. So Len. When you look at new assumptions for growth, I think as John said, these they've got a lot of really good growth initiatives. These initiatives are they're being tested in the market. They're well received.
The fact that there was a little bit of some delay and proving out the model, You look, for example, at Research Illinois, this was a deal that we went in the year expecting that, that was going to fire up really towards the middle of the year. And that thing has been pushed back, but not due to any other issues, just in the fact that it's a new model out there and it just hasn't gone live yet. And so in terms of assumptions for growth going forward, we believe these initiatives are going to kick in and start contributing in the future in 2019, 2020. I would expect that C and J will continue to contribute at a pretty meaningful level and have growth kick back up into the 9%, 10%, 11%, 12% range over the next couple of years.
Great. And then maybe just a follow-up for Brian. Can you talk about how many points of growth Socrata contributed to that LTM bookings growth number of 18%? And then how does that kind of bookings growth rate impact the prospect for continued double digit top line growth?
Well, as you know, the bookings number can be very lumpy in our business. So, this quarter and actually last quarter were both quarters where bookings were comprised mostly of a lot of our a good volume of our sort of normal bread and butter kinds of deals. But we didn't have any of the mega deals, the deals with contract values of $20,000,000 or $30,000,000 that do occur from time to time. We had a couple of those last year. And we have large deals in the pipeline, but their timing is somewhat random and certainly lumpy.
So again, we as we have over a long period of time, we remind people to not focus too much on single quarter bookings and that would be the case this time, where bookings were below last year's level. Even when you factor out the impact of the change in the term of new subscription deals, bookings were still down a bit. There was a bit of a difficult comp in that there was a $12,000,000 deal in last year's Q2. But generally, they were down slightly. But again, on the trailing 12 month basis, up 17% of that, Socrata accounted for a couple percent of that trailing 12 months bookings.
So of that 17% growth, about 2 points of that was from Socrata. So still, the longer term trailing bookings support our growth objectives that we've talked about in the sort of north of 10% range. And as you also to point out that the larger bookings, the big contracts are typically recognized over several years. So the revenue recognition and the bookings are very different. So we put those into backlog and then recognize them over the extended periods of time.
So the lumpiness has less of an effect on the revenue growth than it does on the bookings growth.
Perfect. And then maybe just to sneak another one. I know there was some private equity kind of consolidation of assets in the market over the last quarter in your space, which was a little bit unusually large, I think versus historical periods. Any sense or early signs of what that combined entity now looks like from a competitive standpoint, what that does to the competitive environment for new products for you guys going
forward? Yes, Alex, I think we know what you're talking about. And I think we've seen it even beyond this deal, other deals, we've seen some PD firms coming into the space. I think sort of recognizing the value of the long term recurring revenue streams. We're obviously very familiar with those assets.
The Superion assets, I think, have been in the market now 3 different times in 12 years. The TriTech assets have now been in the market twice in 4 years. It's a little bit early. Typically, we know the private equity playbook. It's a little bit different than ours.
They generally look for more of an exit in the near term, while we're looking more long term. Obviously, this is a different type of deal because these two firms were merging. But typically, they leverage the assets pretty strong. They look for synergies, which is code for cost cutting, which can sometimes lead to a little bit of disruption in the market, both with their employees and some of the customers. We probably we've heard a little bit anecdotally about some of that disruption, but that's about it right now.
We haven't really seen any meaningful impact in the market. And other than that, we typically don't comment too much on what our competitors are doing.
Great. Thank you, guys.
Next question comes from Jonathan Ho with William Blair and Company. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I just wanted to get a better sense from you. In order for some of the newer initiatives to pick back up or accelerate, What really has to happen here? Is this a function of having more budget set aside or education of the marketplace? Just want to get some color in terms of maybe what the next milestones are that we should be looking for?
Well, Jonathan, I think it's we're talking about initiatives that are really changing the way some courts are doing business. There is a little bit of education. There's a little bit of decision making these ago. When you look at something like Modria, for example, we're taking a similar approach with Modria that we did with e filing, which is we need to get in there, we need to get some pilots going, then we need to then the courts adopt that, they go to more of a permissive approach and then ultimately to a mandatory approach. Same thing with research.
We've got some pilots out there. The reception is good. But some of these things just take some time. It's part of a function of the market we're in. The things move slowly in our market, but certainly the excitement and the energy is out there.
We've got active pilots out there. We got active interest. We've got projects going on. So it's just a little bit of a function of time.
Got it. And then just in terms of my follow-up, can you give us maybe a little bit of a sense of what's happening in the spending environment? And I think you've talked about a healthy pipeline, but how should we be thinking about that, just given some of the macro noise that's out there?
I don't think there's
anything there's nothing really different there, Jonathan. The market is generally steady. It's going to ebb and flow a little bit, but we're not noticing anything different in the demand side of the business. I think on the enterprise side, we think RFP and demand activity will be modestly higher this year than last year. Obviously, the Justice side of business is driven by larger deals.
So it's harder to compare year over year, but it's steady there as well. So we haven't seen any disruption in the demand side.
Great. Thank you.
Next question comes from Rob Oliver with Baird. Please go
ahead. Hi, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask on the R and D side of the equation.
You guys entered this year with substantially higher R and D investment. We've had a lot of conversation about acquisitions on this call and it seems like you guys have made some really good ones to set you up for future growth. But on that R and D side, I just wanted to get your sense of kind of at this point in the year, where you feel you are relative to the leverage you're getting on that R and D and the innovation that you're getting from it and how you might feel relative to whether that's sort of a new steady state and how we might think about R and D spend going forward? Thank you.
Yes, Rob. I think where we are with R and D right now is, as we've noted before, we've got a lot of projects going on. They're spanning the entire portfolio of our products. We're pleased with where that development is. As you know, it takes time.
Once we start that development, it takes time to get the products out, get them into RFPs, get them showing. So we're pleased with the progress of where they are today and what they think what we think they'll drive down the road. As we look out going farther, as you know, we have done some acquisitions. Typically, what we do with acquisitions is we bring them in and we actually invest in them. We've got a pretty good history of that.
We talked earlier about some deals in the comments about Executime. That's an acquisition we bought a couple of years ago. We took a very deliberate approach to investing in it. And here we are a couple of years later and it's starting to really contribute. We've made some significant acquisitions this year, obviously, Socrata.
We're not we're just now beginning the planning phase for 2019, but when we make an acquisition like Socrata and we think where there's leverage across our base, it's likely we'll be making some significant investments there. But the amount and the timing of those, we haven't worked out yet.
And I wouldn't expect that R and D expense, the gross expense goes backwards next year, But we do believe that if you look out over an extended period of time, over the next several years that we do see leverage over the long term in R and D as we're able to invest leverage investments across multiple products and ultimately be more efficient about that. So in the near term, we're opportunistic as we are with M and A on R and D, and those 2 play together as well depending on as we make various build versus buy decisions and how we allocate the capital between R and D and M and A.
Okay. Thank you, guys.
The next question comes from Patrick Walgreens with JMP. Please go ahead.
Hi. It's Pete Lowery in for Pat. Can you talk a bit about whether your go to market or sales motion is different as you sell suite solutions like Courts and Justice?
It's more of a coordination. We're kind of expertise, domain knowledge and relationships that exist in the different channels. So again, the skill set and the relationships that somebody on the Justice side of the business has is going to be very different than somebody selling an enterprise financial system or a tax and appraisal solution. So we will keep I think we've consolidated the channels to the extent we will. We look at it, hey, if you built this organically from scratch, what would you have?
And I don't think you'd have a single sales rep selling a court solution as well as a tax solution. You draw the lines pretty much to where we've evolved. So at this point, what's critical is to have sales executives that take the lead. So that while we have several different people with domain expertise in the different areas that are going to talk the language and understand the needs of the different areas of the solution that we certainly appear as a cohesive, comprehensive sales channel when we're representing multi suite solutions. And that's really where the evolution and the changes take place now.
So I don't see the channels changing much. I think that the coordination of those and establishing leads that are able to present the solution, negotiate a contract, deliver services, in a comprehensive way is where we're in the evolution at this point in time.
Great. Thanks. One quick follow-up. How should we think about Q4 cash flows? Did some of the outperformance in Q3 pull from Q4 or would that be normal sequential pattern?
I think the sequential pattern will be pretty normal. Q3 is always our biggest quarter. It was a little bit better than I think we would have expected. So I don't think our outlook for the so some of that may have been some timing Q3 versus Q4, but Q4 is also a relatively strong period for cash flow. So I don't think our view for the full year has really changed from what we were seeing prior to this quarter.
The
next question comes from Tim Klasell with Northland Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. I also
wanted to jump a little bit into the comments you made around more complex and potentially longer, harder to predict sales cycles. In particular, I did a little bit of dealing with the Lubbock, Texas and that seems to be a sort of a great example of what you can do with some cross selling. But can you walk us through the longer sales cycles, what that means on the calendar of what saw before and after? And I'm sure you're selling to more departments inside of the government. So it takes longer, but wondering if you can give us some maybe a little bit of color around how much longer it's taking.
So actually, I think what we need to do is clarify what we said. I don't think we're really seeing the longer sales cycle. So for our core traditional products, I don't think anything's really changed there in terms of the sales process or the cycle. What we're referring to is it's taking longer for the market to adopt these newer initiatives that we have, Modria Research, redaction, these sorts of things. So it's not the traditional sales cycles that we've seen lengthening.
It's just these new products that are being embraced by the marketplace confirm the value proposition, all those things encouraging, but it's taking a little longer for those adoption rates to go up and to see the revenues come online. So it's really more aligned with the growth initiatives rather than the traditional sales cycle.
Okay. Okay. And then just a quick follow on. A lot of your contracts, I believe, would have some sort of inflationary clause in there when the contracts renew or maybe on an annual basis. Can you walk us through what those are generally geared to?
Are they to the CPI, you have a fixed rate or if we do enter into a high inflationary environment, how are those contracts protected roughly speaking?
Some of them are CPI, some of them are just a flat percentage, and some of them, the initial engagement is flat for the term the initial engagement. So it's a competitive marketplace and we negotiate what we can. That's probably the driving reason for what Brian referred to, which is a conscious shortening of these initial cycles. So originally as some of the SaaS solutions were newer and even originally we used to kind of capitalize into the relationship, the service component and the markets kind of matured and settled into paying services for the initial deployment and just having the subscription fee before, say, hosting and product licensing and maintenance. So that's those things evolving.
The shorter cycle with hardly any attrition at all doesn't give anything up for us and it gets us to a point where we can just, let the market determine the increases and as you're indicating, not have the inflationary exposure. 3 years, we're down to what, 3.5, 3.4 years or something. That's a pretty short period of time. And after that, most of these, they just go to whatever the appropriate market rate is. So the exposure, I think, is becoming more and more limited.
And Tim, even in a deal where there's a 3 year agreement, for example, that has a flat fee for that initial term, the economics of the deal would still have the increases, the annual increases built into those, but the payment is just an average payment. So even though optically it may look like there's no growth from those revenues over 3 years, the economics still have built in increases in it. But we do want to, as John said, limit the long term exposure to fixed contracts and give us the flexibility with pricing as costs change.
You need to look at the whole customer base too. I think you said a recurring annualized recurring revenue rates of what somewhere in the mid-six hundred million dollars now. Certainly a high percentage of that, a lot of these thousands of clients have been acquired over many, many years. So the vast majority of that number are people that are on annual contracts. We certainly aren't looking to increase them at any unusual rate, but should there be inflation exposure, there aren't any limitations at all.
It's only those contracts from the last few years that are in there. And again, that's a relatively small percent.
And virtually all of our maintenance agreements are annual agreements. It's rare that we have multi year maintenance agreements.
The next question comes from Mark Schappel with Benchmark. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just one question, John, on the international expansion, it was touched on in your prepared remarks as part of the growth strategy. I was wondering if you could just remind us real quickly here where the company is at with respect to your expansion efforts overseas?
Yes, it's predominantly right now courts and justice. So those solutions and it's predominantly English speaking places. So some in Europe and obviously the first deployments have been in Australia. So that continues to kind of be the case. We have some things going on in South America, but for the most part, it's English speaking Courts and Justice solutions.
Great. Thank you.
At this time, there appears to be no more questions. Mr. Marr, I'll turn the call back over to you for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate you all joining us on the earnings call today. If there are any further questions, feel free to reach out to Brian, Lynn or myself. Again, thanks for joining us and have a great day.
This conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.