Good morning, and welcome to the Vertex third quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow management's prepared remarks, and we ask that you please hold all questions until that time. I will then provide instructions for the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to Joe Crivelli, Vice President of Investor Relations, for introductory remarks.
Hello, and thank you for joining us to discuss Vertex's third quarter financial results. As noted on slide two, during this call, we may make forward-looking statements about expected future results. Actual results may differ due to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Our remarks today will also include references to Non-GAAP metrics. A reconciliation of these metrics to GAAP is also provided in today's press release. This webcast is being recorded and will be available for replay on our investor relations website. You can queue up for the question-and-answer session at any time by raising your hand in the bottom right corner of the OpenExchange portal. I'll now turn the call over to Chris.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The third quarter was a very strong quarter for Vertex, and importantly, it demonstrates that we are delivering on the commitments we made earlier this year. We said our priorities were to stabilize the core business, improve our operating discipline and profitability, and create a stronger foundation for durable growth. Q3 provides tangible evidence of our progress against each of those priorities. Our revenue grew 11% and finished above the high end of our guidance. Adjusted EBITDA grew nearly 50%, exceeding the high end of our guidance by almost $8 million and driving Adjusted EBITDA margins above 30%. Customer retention has stabilized, our growth indicators are improving, and the Value Creation Plan is delivering benefits ahead of the timeline that we originally anticipated.
While individual quarterly results will reflect the timing of investments and other expenses, the actions we have taken to sharpen our focus and improve our cost structure have established a more efficient operating model. This, in turn, has materially increased the earnings and cash flow potential of the company. Turning to e-invoicing. We continue to see very strong momentum, with ARR up over 100% year-on-year. Growth in e-invoicing contributed meaningfully to the re-acceleration in cloud revenue we saw during the quarter as well. This reflects strong execution, the successful launch of the French mandate, and the contribution from Brinta. Both our ecosio and Brinta teams continue to perform ahead of the plans that we established when we acquired each of those businesses, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term opportunity.
As the business scales, we will not expect to sustain growth at this level every quarter, but we do continue to expect e-invoicing to grow significantly faster than Vertex overall. The opportunity ahead remains significant. During the quarter, we strengthened our strategic partner ecosystem, and we were honored to be selected by Avanade as its e-invoicing technology partner. This relationship reflects the growing demand for global e-invoicing solutions and further enhances our ability to support organizations navigating complex compliance requirements. Finally, several countries have mandates coming in 2027, including the next phase of Germany's e-invoicing mandate that takes effect on January 1, and there are additional mandates through 2028 and 2029. These collectively provide another important set of catalysts as businesses prepare for the new requirements. More broadly, multinational companies need a partner that can combine tax determination, e-invoicing, and compliance across global complex operations.
With the momentum we are seeing today and additional mandates still ahead, we believe e-invoicing can become an even stronger contributor to Vertex's overall growth. As I have shared for much of this past year, AI is becoming an increasingly important part of how we operate Vertex, and we are seeing measurable progress. Since the beginning of the year, engineering efficiency has improved more than 100%, and our teams are now delivering nearly twice the code contribution throughput. AI-assisted review now supports nearly nine in 10 code contributions, helping our engineers move faster and improve consistency while retaining human oversight and accountability. These gains are beginning to scale across engineering. We are also taking what works and applying it more broadly across teams, while extending AI beyond coding into other parts of the development lifecycle, including requirements scoping, testing, and validation. The opportunity here is bigger than producing more code.
It is about increasing our capacity to innovate while improving the efficiency of how we deliver. Over time, we believe that can become an important source of operating leverage. We are also adding AI expertise at our board level. We recently welcomed Debanjan Saha, CEO of DataRobot, a proven leader in scaling AI, data, and cloud businesses, to our board of directors. His perspective will be incredibly valuable as we continue building an AI-first Vertex. That is the internal operating proof. At Vertex Exchange last week, we showed how the same AI-first approach is beginning to shape the experience that we deliver to our customers. Last week at Vertex Exchange, we unveiled a new brand identity, which you see reflected in today's presentation. It is an outward expression of the transformation underway at Vertex.
We are building on nearly 50 years of tax expertise with new energy, greater focus, and a more connected approach to global indirect tax and compliance. That direction came together at Exchange through our Decision-to-Defense positioning, connecting the tax decision inside a transaction to the work and evidence that follow from determination and e-invoicing through compliance, reporting, and ultimately defense. Our ambition is to help our customers manage that life cycle as a connected whole rather than as a series of separate activities. We also introduced Vertex Sōl, our vision for a more connected, AI-powered tax and compliance experience. Sōl brings intelligence, workflows, decisions, and evidence together through a continuous governed record. The opportunity is to automate more of the manual work around a tax decision, improve visibility, and help our customers act with confidence while keeping tax professionals in control. We are already building towards that vision.
Our continuous compliance agents help tax teams identify potential exposures and prioritize follow-up before period close, while Vertex Intelligence connects users to specialized capabilities within their existing workflows. These are practical steps towards making tax and compliance more connected, proactive, and easier to manage. The customer perspectives shared at Exchange simply reinforce the importance of that foundation. Even as businesses adopt the latest technologies, the need for accurate, reliable, and defensible tax outcomes remains. Our approach combines AI with the tax content, technology, and domain expertise our customers rely on, helping connect and automate more of their work without compromising visibility or control. That same need is showing up in the business that we won this past quarter. Tax and compliance are playing a more strategic role in the broader transformation work that our customers are undertaking. They are not just buying a tax engine.
They are modernizing ERP environments, preparing for new compliance and e-invoicing requirements, expanding into new markets, and automating increasingly complex business processes. In that environment, we're seeing enterprises turn to Vertex because of the breadth of our platform, the depth of our content, and our ability to support complex global requirements, expanding into new markets, and automating increasingly complex business processes. In that environment, we're seeing enterprises turn to Vertex because of the breadth of our platform, the depth of our content, and our ability to support complex global operations. Let me provide a few examples. We continue to see significant opportunities to expand within our install base. A great example is a leading global technology hyperscaler, where we completed a new five-year agreement representing a low seven-figure expansion across multiple Vertex capabilities in its SAP and Ariba environment.
This highlights the opportunity to grow alongside our largest customers as their tax and compliance needs evolve. A leading global digital commerce platform completed a mid-six-figure expansion in its e-invoicing deployment across several additional markets, supporting approximately 2.7 million invoices annually. This customer operates on its own internally developed technology platform, demonstrating that our opportunity extends beyond the major ERP ecosystems as global complexity and e-invoicing requirements increase. Internationally, a global food packaging company completed a mid-six-figure expansion as part of a broader ERP and tax modernization program. The development spans 18 entities across five countries in an Oracle environment and creates additional expansion opportunities as the transformation progresses. Together, these examples demonstrate the strength of our land and expand opportunity and our ability to grow alongside customers as their tax, compliance, and e-invoicing needs evolve. Turning to new logos.
We added a leading global athletic footwear and apparel company through a low seven-figure competitive displacement. The customer selected Vertex to support its e-commerce and point-of-sale operations, as well as its SAP ECC ERP, demonstrating our ability to compete and win in complex, high-volume enterprise environments. We also added a global identity security software provider as it established an independent Workday and Salesforce environment following its divestiture from a larger software company. The customer selected a broad set of Vertex capabilities to support its global tax requirements across multiple geographies and technology ecosystems. In Europe, a pharmaceutical company selected Vertex to automate VAT, or V-A-T, compliance across 23 countries as part of its SAP S/4HANA environment. The win is an example of our ability to combine tax determination, compliance automation, and ERP integration to simplify global complex tax requirements.
Across these examples, what stands out is they are being driven by the same long-term trends that we continue to discuss with investors: ERP modernization, evolving compliance requirements, the growth of e-invoicing, and the need for greater automation in tax and finance functions. Whether customers are expanding their use of Vertex or selecting us for the first time, we continue to see demand for the content, the integrations, and scale required to support our customers' global operations. Combined with the operating changes we have made across Vertex, these opportunities give us greater confidence in our ability to drive growth while delivering significantly greater earnings and cash flow. Now, I'll turn the call over to John to discuss the financials in detail. John.
Thanks, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. As Chris said, the third quarter demonstrates that we are delivering against the commitments we established earlier this year. We have stabilized the core business while materially improving profitability, and this quarter highlights the significant earnings leverage delivered by the Value Creation Plan and our increased operating discipline. Turning to revenue on slide 13, our total revenue was $213.3 million, up 11% year-over-year and above the high end of our guidance range. Software subscription revenue increased 10.2%, while services revenue increased 15.8%. Importantly, we saw encouraging momentum in our recurring revenue metrics. Our annual recurring revenue increased 11.7% year-over-year to $724.3 million, while cloud revenue growth accelerated to more than 20%. We view the improvement in ARR growth as an encouraging indicator of the underlying trajectory of the business as we move forward to 2027.
Turning to customer metrics on slide 14, gross revenue retention was 95%, and net revenue retention increased by one point sequentially to 106%. Our average annual revenue per direct customer was $145,793 in the third quarter, up 9.2% year-over-year. Our scaled customer growth was 9% in the third quarter, while our overall customer count was up on both a year-over-year and sequential basis. Turning to profitability on slide 15, both overall gross margins and software subscription gross margins were the highest we've delivered as a public company. This reflects the hard work the team has done to reshape the Vertex financial profile over the past year. Overall, Non-GAAP gross margin was 77.6%, up 370 basis points year-over-year. Our software subscription gross margin was 84.6%, up 316 basis points, and our services gross margin was 37.7%, up 886 basis points.
Earlier this year, we told you that the actions we were taking would materially improve the profitability of Vertex. We're now seeing those commitments reflected in the results. Adjusted EBITDA was $64.8 million, up approximately 50% year-over-year and nearly $8 million above the high end of our guidance range. Adjusted EBITDA margin reached 30.4%, putting us well ahead of the timeline we had previously outlined to exit 2027 with margins in the high 20s. Looking forward, we expect to operate at approximately a 30% Adjusted EBITDA margin level during 2027. In addition, we believe we can expand margins beyond that over time. Additional benefits from the Value Creation Plan are expected to phase in as we grow revenue on a more efficient cost structure, and we expect a greater portion of that incremental growth to flow through to earnings.
That said, Adjusted EBITDA margins will not be linear from quarter to quarter. Our free cash flow was $25.2 million, while pro forma free cash flow was $33.8 million, or 52% of Adjusted EBITDA. Turning now to slide 16, we also said that improving earnings needed to translate into significantly stronger cash generation, and that's exactly what we're beginning to see. Adjusted EBITDA less capital expenditures, or cash EBITDA, increased to $36.7 million in the third quarter, up from $11.2 million a year ago. This reflects both the significant increase in Adjusted EBITDA and greater capital efficiency, with more modest capital expenditures, even as we continue to invest in the longer-term growth of the business. The magnitude and pace of improvement are important.
The Value Creation Plan has structurally improved our earnings profile, and we are converting our increased earnings power into cash generation at a faster pace. As an example, in just two quarters, our cash EBITDA has increased from approximately $14 million- $36.7 million. We believe that there is additional opportunity ahead as we continue to realize the benefits of the Value Creation Plan and maintain discipline around both operating expenses and our capital investments. Turning to guidance. Given the performance of the business in the third quarter and the ongoing impact of the cost actions, we expect fourth quarter revenue of $215 million-$217 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $58 million-$60 million, which includes marketing expenses associated with Vertex Exchange and targeted investments to support future growth.
For the full year guidance, we are raising the revenue range to $828.9 million- $830.9 million, an increase of $2.4 million at the midpoint. We are increasing the full year Adjusted EBITDA guidance to $217.9 million- $219.9 million, an increase of $10.9 million at the midpoint. We now expect cloud revenue growth to be 19% for the full year. While we don't guide to GRR and NRR, I do want to call out that we expect both metrics to decline by approximately one point in the fourth quarter, reflecting the loss of an OEM in our payroll tax business. The financial impact of this loss is fully reflected in our guidance. Importantly, retention trends in our core determination business have improved throughout 2026, and we do not view the specific loss in payroll tax as an indicator of broader customer health.
Despite the headwind, our Q4 guidance implies healthy revenue growth of 11% at the midpoint. Before I wrap up, I'll note that in the third quarter, we repurchased $27 million of shares at an average price of $13.26. Since the $150 million buyback program was first launched in November of 2025, we have bought back a total of $83.6 million worth of shares at an average price of $14.11 million, and have $66.4 million remaining under our authorization. With that, I'll turn the call back to Chris for some closing comments. Chris?
Thank you, John. Let me close where I started. Earlier this year, we laid out a clear set of priorities for Vertex: stabilize the core business, materially improve our profitability and cash generation, and position the company to return to stronger, more durable growth. We are delivering against those commitments. Customer retention is stabilized. We have materially changed the earnings and cash flow profile of Vertex. The acceleration we saw this quarter in ARR, cloud growth, and NRR provides encouraging evidence that the underlying growth trajectory of our business is improving in the core. We also know the work is not finished. Our focus now is to build on this progress, continue to strengthen the performance of the business, and capitalize on the opportunities we see across e-invoicing, AI, and the broader Vertex platform.
Q3 was a strong quarter, and importantly, it demonstrates our ability to execute against the commitments we make. We enter the fourth quarter from a position of greater operating and financial strength, and with increasing confidence in our ability to build on that progress. Finally, our new brand identity, which you have seen reflected in the presentation this morning, is also an outward expression of the transformation underway at Vertex. We are proud of our history, but we are bringing a new energy, greater focus, and a different way of working to every part of this company, because Vertex is not standing still. We are moving forward faster than we have ever moved before. You can see that in the third quarter results, and we are just getting started. With that, we will take your questions. Operator.
At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen inviting you to join as a panelist. Please accept and wait until you are promoted to panelist. Then unmute your audio, turn on your camera, and ask your question. Your first question comes from the line of Jared Levine with TD Cowen. Please unmute and ask your question.
Hi, this is Patrick Bryan from TD Cowen on for Jared Levine. I wanted to ask how the feedback was coming out of the recent Vertex Exchange event in Las Vegas, especially from your technology partners and customers.
Thanks for the question. We had a great week last week at Vertex Exchange, and we were happy to welcome many of our customers, partners. Several of our investors and analysts were there with us as well at the event. The feedback we have gotten universally has been extremely positive, from the experiences that they had in the breakout sessions to what we shared in the keynote with Vertex Sōl, where we are taking the product portfolio. The feedback has been positive across the board. Even as I think about what we saw on social around the event was incredibly different than the energy we have seen in the past, and it is a testament to all the great work the teams have done to build our portfolio, to work with our customers, partners, and build out the roadmap. We are very excited.
We got a lot of great feedback, and yesterday was a great week, and now we are on to delivering everything.
Thank you, Chris. If I could add a follow-up, I just wanted to ask how the new branding of Sōl changes your approach to pricing.
The branding and the pricing will be different. As we shared last week, Sōl is really an end-to-end set of capabilities that we have introduced. Some of those capabilities will be part of the core product portfolio as is. Others will be extra relative to what customers choose to purchase from Vertex. A good example would be some of our AI capabilities today, like Vertex Intelligence, are embedded in the product experience already. There is no additional charge for that for our customers. But we have other capabilities, like Smart Categorization, which are extra based on the value that they bring and the way those products operate. Vertex Sōl will have similarities to that, where there will be aspects of Vertex Sōl that are part of the overall purchase platform, what customers get, but there will be elements of Vertex Sōl which will have separate charges associated.
Appreciate it.
Your next question comes from the line of Brett Huff with Stephens Inc. Please unmute your audio and video and ask your question.
Good afternoon, guys. Nice to see you.
Likewise, Brett.
Two questions. One, the French launch, I think, is something we have all been looking forward to. While I know it is early days, can you give us anecdotes or conversations or early returns or anything just to give us a little insight into how that is going. I know it went off well and there was no big hitches, but any sort of feedback you are getting from the teams and the customers?
We were very pleased with the French mandate launch. It was a mandate that many people watched very closely because it was one of the more complex mandate requirements. I think even as I mentioned to some of you, that mandate, there were aspects of that they were changing even up to the week prior to going live at the beginning of September. We were able to execute very successfully with our customers, help them through the testing phase, bring them live, and that success was reflected in the growth numbers that we shared earlier in the presentation. We saw 100% ARR growth in our e-invoicing business. Again, that will ramp because we are bringing customers live, and September was only partway through the third quarter. So, we feel really good about how that went. Our customers are very pleased.
We are tracking that work very closely, the implementation work that led to ultimately going live with customers. We continue to see transactions ramp, and so we are very happy with our execution around that mandate.
Great. Second question from me is a little bit bigger picture. I know you and the team have spent a lot of time trying to compress the feedback loop between customers and the team to get the right products out. Can you talk a little bit about how that feedback fed into the Sōl launch and some of those sort of nuances that I think you have really hit the nail on the head with. I think the process is something that you guys are really getting down. I just want to hear how that went.
You know, as I have shared with many of you, one of the priorities I set for myself personally when I came into the company was to engage deeply with our customers and to really go out and talk to customers, you know, ones that are happy with Vertex, ones that might have been less happy with Vertex. It did not matter. I really wanted to talk to a variety of customers, and that focus has really translated into how our team has been engaging with customers. What you saw last week with Vertex Sōl is, you know, I would not call it a culmination. It is the first phase of our engagement, really, as we are changing how we engage, how we learn from customers, how we bring their feedback into what we are developing.
At Vertex Exchange, we had some specific breakout sessions with customers who are really providing us more detailed feedback, particularly with certain features of our products, like the AI capabilities that we are bringing. We are absolutely changing how we engage, how we think about our customers, and we are really just getting started there as well, Brett. That is a place where, you know, we believe we can use AI to scale our listening systems to really make sure that we are feeding all of that into our product capabilities, our product roadmap in ways that are going to help us go even faster than we are already starting to move.
Great. That is what I needed. Congrats on the results. Appreciate it.
Your next question will be audio only with Patrick Walravens with Citizens. Please unmute and ask your question.
Oh, great. Thank you so much. And congratulations, Chris. It is great to see it working. Can I drill down on two things that you guys brought up on the call? First of all, the athletic footwear displacement. You said that was SAP ECC. Chris, was that on-prem?
There are elements of it that are on-prem. That is correct. As well as other pieces of it, but there are elements that are on-prem.
Okay. So the point of that is that still a competitive advantage for you guys that you can do on-prem and a lot of others can not?
You know, our view all along, Pat, has been while we want our customers to be on our cloud platform, and we have talked about that a lot, you know, that is where they get the best capabilities, that is where they get our newest features first, that is obviously where, you know, most of our investment is placing. We are migrating customers to the cloud. We do support customers that run the product on-prem, and that, you know, we stay true to that commitment. But we are focused on driving cloud growth with our business and having our customers on that platform.
All right. Got it. Can we hear a little bit more about the loss of the payroll OEM? I did not quite understand what was going on there. What exactly happened there?
We lost an OEM in our payroll tax business. It is a discrete loss. We specifically know what it was about. We understand what it means. It is reflected in our guidance. It was meaningful enough that we wanted to call it out for everyone, disclose it, but we do not see it as any evidence of a broader deterioration in the business. As John pointed out, it will be reflected in GRR and NRR metrics, so we just wanted to get ahead of that, share that. We understand it. Again, we are at the midpoint of our Q4 guidance. We will grow 11%. We are going to deliver on the year and then some, so we feel good about the trajectory of the business. Again, that was meaningful enough to call out.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question will come from Andrew DeGasperi with BNP Paribas. Please unmute your audio and video and ask your question.
Yes. Hi. Sorry, I cannot go on video for some reason. Oh, here we go. My first question would be related to the Vertex Exchange conference you had, and I was really impressed with the customer list that you had on stage. I think I heard OpenAI, from Amazon and DoorDash, among others. One of the things that I was surprised is that how some of these customers were asking you to extend your service in new geographies that you were not part of before. I was just curious to know, how important is it to expand in these new markets as it relates to content, and should we be seeing some progress going forward on that front?
We have, Andrew, that has been an important focus for us over the course of not only this year, but the last several years. A lot of the country level expansion is related to e-invoicing, but not exclusively. We also have expanded content coverage. One of the big deliverables we have had over the course of this year is to expand our coverage for content in Brazil, which relates to our core tax determination business there in that country. We continue to expand where we are building and covering. I also mentioned, we have talked about this previously, we acquired a company called Brinta earlier this year. They brought to us nine additional countries in Latin America. They give us an end-to-end capability across our invoicing needs. We will continue to expand. There are other geographies that are going to come online with mandates.
In Europe alone, as I mentioned earlier on the call, we have mandates, Germany, for example, Norway, Slovakia, scheduled for January of 2027, but further mandates coming in 2027. Spain is on the docket. Beyond that, you have mandates in 2028 and even in 2029, where you start to see countries like the U.K. We expect further expansion, further mandates to come in other parts of the world, Middle East, Africa, parts of Asia. Our objective is to be able to expand around the world with our customers, be their end-to-end partner for this, irrespective of where they need to be the global mandate for tax and tax compliance.
Thank you. That is really helpful. As a follow-up, I wanted to maybe get an update on the current macro environment. I know last year, it was a bit of a tough period as it related to entitlements. Just curious to know, maybe John, if you could give us a sense of where we are on that front, and if we are finally turning a corner there.
Yeah, what I would say is, Andrew, thanks for the question first. What I would say is, we continue to see a normal environment there. Entitlements have made a bit of a comeback from where they were a year or so ago. I think we spent a lot of time talking about that. We are seeing an improvement in some of that activity, which is good. I think it's never exactly where we want it to be, but we are seeing some nice movement there. We aren't seeing the big kind of true-ups that we have talked about in the past. This quarter was a very, very small number that was there. So we're not seeing a lot of activity like we had in 2024 and a little bit in 2025, in the early part of 2025. I just wanted to call that out.
We're not seeing that. That's not really changing the game at all. However, again, it is nice to see a little bit of a resurgence in the entitlement area.
Great. Thank you so much.
Your next question will come from Chris Quintero with Morgan Stanley. Please unmute your video and your audio and ask your question.
Hey, Chris. Hey, John. Congrats on the nice set of results here. Maybe first on kind of what are you guys seeing in terms of cloud migrations? We heard from SAP recently talking about some really good migrations, especially as it relates to kind of AI helping drive some of those customers wanting to move over to the cloud. So curious if you're also kind of seeing that dynamic too.
Chris, we are continuing to see cloud migrations. That's been a, as you know, a big area of focus for us. I would say trends are continuing. We saw a healthy movement in Q3. Those trends are continuing. But where we see the biggest movement in cloud is in our e-invoicing business, right? That's all cloud, and that's where we're seeing one of the biggest drivers. But we do continue to see migrations. We do continue to participate in those. Some of the customers I highlighted are sort of in that consideration set. So we'll continue to work with customers on it. Obviously, one of the big sets of conversations or categories of conversations that we were having last week at Vertex Exchange was with customers moving to the cloud so they could take more advantage of the new capabilities we're delivering.
Like all the great new things we're going to deliver with Vertex Sōl, having access to the cloud and being on that path is going to be really part and parcel of their ability to get the most out of it. So, we're working with customers around it. As you know, large, complex multinationals have a variety of different priorities they're often balancing. And I think as I've shared on previous calls, cloud, on-prem, you might have a mixture of that depending upon the company itself. Inside the company, they have different deployments on different timelines. So we continue to drive that. And every customer I've talked to is on the path at some point. It just different timelines, different priorities there.
Yeah. No, that's great to hear. And then maybe as a follow-up, Chris, you've been in the seat for about a year now. You've talked to customers, you've talked to investors. I'm curious from your perspective, what do you think investors today are underappreciating about the Vertex story?
I think investors are starting to appreciate the business and really what we've got here. I think somebody mentioned earlier the blue chip customer base that we've got. I think what investors are also starting to appreciate is how we're delivering against our commitments. I've only been here a year. We need to prove to you that we can deliver against our commitments. So you saw that in our revenue growth, you saw that in our profitability growth. Those were all things that we said we would deliver, and we've been delivering that, and we'll continue to do that. The underlying growth picture is improving. You saw that in ARR growth, you've seen that in what we're doing in NRR and GRR. You could see the underlying movement, the e-invoicing growth in the business, and we've been talking about that, but we're showing that now.
And so those are some of the drivers that we see that I think investors are starting to see now, and we'll continue to prove it. We'll continue to show you all, but that's what I want you all to see that trajectory, and I think Q3 was a great demonstration of that.
Excellent. Yeah, it's been great execution. Thanks for the questions.
Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Jester with BMO Capital Markets. Please unmute and ask your question.
Hey, good afternoon. This is Tyler Brasriyan for Dan Jester taking our questions. It looks like services revenue came in strong during 3Q compared to our model. Could you provide a bit more color on what drove the strength in the quarter and how we should be thinking about services revenue for the rest of the year?
Services revenue did perform nicely. We saw 15.8% growth on a year-over-year basis, and I think a lot of it has to do with some of the implementation around the e-invoicing activity that has been going on. Chris talked about France and the mandate coming. There is activity that surrounds that. In addition, we had a nice quarter around our MSO business and the tax filing business that we have. Those pieces both drove the growth there. When I think about the services business, strategically, it is not our goal to increase service business at all costs, because we really spend a lot of time working with our partners, implementation partners, accounting firms, and others that offer that service, and we like to partner with them and make sure that they are sort of at the forefront of services activity.
While we are pleased with the opportunity that we saw there and the growth that we saw there in the third quarter, it is not an area that we are really leaning into dramatically because we want to make sure that there is enough to go around for our partner community.
Great. Just a quick follow-up with e-invoicing and ARR growing roughly 100%. I guess, how should we think about the growth trajectory in 2027, especially as Germany ramps up? Thank you.
I did not catch that.
Yes. Yeah, how about I start with it? I think the question was, with the e-invoicing growth about 100%, what do we think about the future and the growth opportunity that is there?
One of the drivers of the business that I see as even a bigger opportunity than I would have thought of a year ago is our e-invoicing business. Much of what we are seeing in the trends, the mandates, the need for customers to have a global partner that help them, we see a lot of opportunity. While I do not expect that every quarter we will have the exact same growth rate because of the high numbers, I do expect to significantly outperform the rest of Vertex from a growth rate perspective with this business. I also go back to, we have brought on some really interesting new partners like Avanade that we announced this quarter, again, who will be helping us take that capability to market, which expands our reach, expands our coverage, expands the growth opportunities.
As we talked about a little bit earlier, we will have other countries coming online. That all creates opportunity for us. This part of the business, we believe, has tremendous growth potential. We are continuing to invest in this business for growth, and we are pleased with our execution so far, but there is still a lot more work for us to be done.
Your next question comes from the line of Billy Fitzsimmons with Piper Sandler. Please unmute and ask your question. We will move on to our next question with Alex Sklar with Raymond James. Please unmute and ask your question. We will move on to the next question with George Kurosawa with Citi. Please unmute and ask your question.
Hi, can you hear me?
Now we can, George.
Okay, great. Thanks for taking the questions here.
All right.
I wanted to double-click on that payroll OEM situation, and the Q4 guide came down a tick on the revenue side relative to what was implied from last quarter. Are we right to think that excluding that isolated customer event, the Q4 revenue guide would have been maintained or possibly raised?
I think that is about right. That is how we thought about it. Again, the payroll piece was probably about $1 million or so for the quarter of an impact.
Okay. Perfect. The French mandate going live, I wanted to double-click on that. Maybe if you could compare the pipeline you are seeing for that for maybe new customers before the mandate went live to maybe now. I could imagine any customers that did not opt for a modern solution may now be feeling the pain of that. So just get a sense of how long-dated a catalyst some of these mandate go-lives are.
Yeah, the French mandate was definitely a bigger driver of pipeline in the first part of this year than it is today. A lot of companies were going live with us, with other providers. But we do think there is going to be follow-on opportunity because there is a percentage of the market that picks a local provider. We expect anyone who has picked a local provider will likely want to consolidate over time. That is something we have talked about that, because we service global multinational customers, ones that over the years have picked local providers for various countries, that may or may not have been what they have done in France, but there could have been other countries for which they picked a local provider. They are going to want to consolidate.
I would tell you the conversations we have been having, even as recently as last week at Vertex Exchange, that opportunity is absolutely on the table to consolidate, to make sure. Because the global multinationals definitely see the need to have one global provider, or at least one main global provider, where they have more of their e-invoicing business. It just simplifies their operations, simplifies their ability to scale, the management overhead, and even just the procurement process across, not having to have many, many different vendors they are dealing with in different countries. That is an opportunity that is there for us. It is something our customers have told us for a long time. Now they are seeing us prove our capability, and we are having those conversations.
Okay. Great color. Thanks for taking the questions.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Sklar with Raymond James. Please unmute and ask your question.
All right. Can you hear me?
We got you.
Oh, okay. Great. Says the host needs to turn on my video. Maybe first one for you, Chris, just the idea as you push further into selling a tax and compliance platform, how does that influence your sales hiring plans? Any change in the persona that you are looking for? Then just maybe any color on what you have seen from a sales productivity standpoint to date?
Look, we have got a really strong go-to-market organization. Vertex has built, as I have talked about a lot, you have built a really incredible customer roster, and a lot of that is testament to the whole company. But the sales organization, the men and women who represent us in front of our customers every day, have done a phenomenal job of building that book of the business. That being said, as we expand from being primarily a tax determination company to one that helps to drive more of an end-to-end compliance capability, the Decision-to-Defense end-to-end that we have talked about and what is represented in Vertex Sōl, it is going to require that we have got the ability to help our customers understand how to value that, how to think about that. There will be places where I think growing our sales capabilities, our skill sets, will be important.
The good news is we sell really well to global multinationals. I think we need to build on that. We need to go deeper with our customers. They're asking for it, and that's where we're leaning in.
Okay. Great color there. Then maybe just a follow-up on the e-invoicing. I don't know, Chris or John, if you want to take this. But I'm curious if the French mandate has helped drive customers to thinking about consolidating more of their e-invoicing requirements on Vertex, or most of the success in quarter was just from landing the French wins. Thanks.
I would say a lot of the 2026 motion has been about starting, getting to the mandate, meeting the mandate. But as we go forward, there's a lot more conversation with customers around consolidation. We saw some of that over the course of the year, where, as I've talked about even on previous earnings calls, we have several large customers who are doing multiple countries with us and have added and continue to add countries over time, and we expect that to continue. The French mandate, certainly because it's a large economy, is a catalyst for more of that, particularly where, like I talked about a moment ago, particularly where people have picked a local provider in a smaller geography, a smaller jurisdiction, we have the opportunity to consolidate some of that.
Our ability to execute on the French mandate, and the French mandate provides a lot more, I think gives customers confidence and momentum around that move.
Awesome. All right. Thanks for the color.
Thank you.
Thanks, Alex.
Your next question will be audio only from the line of Billy Fitzsimmons with Piper Sandler. Please unmute and ask your question.
Hey, you guys. Hope you're doing well. Good to see the results and the profitability upside. Apologies for not being on the line. A bunch of prints this night. My question, the first one is, we cover SAP as well, and if I go back kind of a year for Vertex, there's a lot of excitement around the potential tailwinds from the 2027 deadline kind of pulling through extra demand for Vertex. How has that kind of progressed relative to your expectations, both a few quarters ago and call it over the last 90 days relative to maybe what you would have expected?
Yeah, Billy, we continue to see a healthy set of migrations around SAP. Couple things I'll say about that. Number one, we aren't the front end of that process. We tend to be further downstream from that decision. But a lot of the customer wins that we see, a lot of our migration activity is tied to an SAP modernization program, migration program that they're running themselves. We've seen a healthy clip there. I think the expectation setting relative to a 2027 deadline, that I think has become elongated for many people. As I've talked to partners of ours who are well-embedded in the SAP ecosystem and do a lot of the SAP work themselves, even they will tell you, there's extended timelines for a lot of customers.
We're- They feel as though the work that's flowing through to Vertex is in line with what they're seeing actually happening in the market.
Your next question comes from the line of Jacob Roberge with William Blair. Please unmute and ask your question.
Hi, everyone. Congrats on the solid results. Just one question for me. I wanted to follow up on something you spoke about at Exchange. You mentioned that a goal for you is to kind of elevate the Vertex conversation into the C-suite. Can you talk a little bit about that and how those conversations are progressing?
Yeah, I think Vertex, as we talked about a lot and demonstrated, I think, at Vertex Exchange, we have so much more to offer customers than just pure tax determination, which is where kind of the company was founded. It's the end-to-end Decision-to-Defense where we're doing all of it, helping customers with their entire compliance life cycle. That gives us, I mean, that broader view and that broader set of capabilities, more global footprint for our customers. It changes the dialogue around Vertex. This company was founded a little bit, like almost 50 years ago, and primarily focused on tax determination for a long time, and the company's done incredibly well around that. Now with e-invoicing, with what we're doing around compliance, with what we're adding with Vertex Sōl, we have an end-to-end set of capabilities to bring to our customers.
We're more global today, and we're getting more global every day in our business, and that's going to make us more strategically relevant to our customers, and it increases the kinds of conversations we're having at different levels in the organization. So, it's a build from where we are, building on our source of strength, expanding what we can do, and that makes us something that's more relevant to different types of folks at different types of leaders in our customer organizations. That being said, we're still very focused on making sure we service the customers we've always dealt with super well. That's what builds the confidence and gives us the foundation to go help them do more.
Just to follow up, do you anticipate, kind of on the back of that, any significant changes to the go-to-market org or the structure over there, as it pertains to kind of driving that conversation further up?
Yeah, the good news for us is we've done a great job of building out our enterprise customer footprint, and we have some very skilled senior reps who are capable of selling end-to-end. The people who cover some of the folks that we saw on stage, which are very large global multinationals, have proven their ability to scale a relationship, solve different problems for our customers. I feel good about the sales team that we have. I think there's opportunity to expand as we become more international. We've brought in new leadership, for example, in our international business. Carlos Mercuriali, who leads our team there, joined us earlier this year. He's got a background in this world, spent over 10 years at SAP himself. We're really excited about the opportunity, and we want to continue to grow in all parts of the world.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Schulz with Baird. Please unmute and ask your question.
Hey, guys. Yeah, I appreciate your time this afternoon. Just maybe starting with some of the e-invoicing mandates, and appreciate all the color you've provided so far. Just maybe talk about how much more upfront investment is needed to fully enter these markets as the mandates come online in 2027, 2028, beyond. Maybe just touch on the competitive landscape a little bit there. How have your win rates been, and what are you seeing in terms of competitiveness in there? Is it getting a little bit stronger?
So, a couple things, Patrick. I think, number one, the way we think about entering new countries now has become. We are faster at that. We have got more process, and we will continue to just add that as part of it. I really think of that less as an upfront one-time investment, and it is more part of the run rate of business, as we grow. The other thing is countries are not necessarily static in their mandates. They add pieces. There are multiple phases. Germany is in a multiple phase, for example. France will have other phases. We expect that some countries, many countries, will add different reporting type requirements. So, e-invoicing may be the first, but then they may add SAF-T, they will add other types of reporting requirements.
We will continue to grow with our customers to help them meet the breadth and depth of the mandates and the evolution of what will happen in any given country. That is going to be just become part of the business, part of the cost of delivering. As it relates to the overall competitive landscape, we feel very good. Again, given where we were a year ago, we feel very good about our growth. Our win rates are improving in that business. Again, reflected in the 100% ARR growth year-on-year. We are progressing really, really well. We are really pleased with how the Brinta team has added to our team, the performance of the team that came from ecosio originally, how everybody has coalesced around one Vertex to bring that to market on behalf of our customers. There is more momentum to build.
There is more to be done, and we are going to continue to compete and win in these spaces. But we are still growing, and there is still a lot more share out there to gain on our behalf.
No, perfect. Appreciate that, Chris. John, just to follow up on the margin side, strong performance this quarter. Just want to get a little bit more color on the durability of the new margin profile. How much of the outperformance is being driven by cost actions taken earlier this year versus what is still to come down the road? Where are your top reinvestments for focus on for next year to help reaccelerate growth?
Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. We feel very good about the durability that you are seeing here. The numbers reflect real strong performance. The Value Creation Plan is taking effect. We have seen it in the numbers. We feel good about the flow-through that we saw during the quarter. I mean, I think it really demonstrates the fact that it is working. During the same quarter, we delivered very strong results from a go-to-market perspective, sales perspective. I think it is really paying off the way that we thought it would. We feel good about it. I mean, the structural changes that we are making, the different ways that we are working in all the different areas of the business, whether it is development, whether it is development, R&D, go-to-market, back office, all of those things are playing out, and there is still more to come.
I mean, the good news is, we did our action back in May. Costs have still continued to flow through the business as we have executed on that over time, and we feel good about the fact that as we turn the page into next year, there is opportunity in front of us, and we are going to go get after it. We feel very good about that. I am very pleased with it, and again, it is very durable. There were not any one-time items in there that were driving those costs down for any reason. The opportunity is really in front of us. We are going to go get it, and we are focused on that for 2027.
I will just add there, we are very focused on productivity improvement.
Yeah.
One of my goals is that we get into this, and we talked about this in the last earnings cycle. I am very focused on creating capacity in the organization, capacity to move faster, capacity to deliver more. The only way we do that is just having a relentless focus on being more productive, and that allows us to just take on more. Some of that we will see show up in the financials. Some of that we should see in the form of product delivery, which over the long run drives more growth, more better competitiveness for us. That allows us to invest, for example, as we continue to grow as fast as we are in the e-invoicing business, we are investing back in that business for further growth.
Delivering Vertex Sōl, we're investing in that part of the business because we believe that's part of our long-term growth trajectory, it's part of our long-term customer satisfaction, retention. We see a lot of opportunity, and those are just two examples of places where we're reinvesting in the business.
Your next question comes from the line of Samad Samana. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Joe Crivelli for closing remarks.
Well, thanks everybody for joining us. As always, if you have follow-up questions or would like to schedule more time with the team, please reach out to me at investors@vertexinc.com. Thanks, and have a great week.