ACI Worldwide Inc. (NASDAQ:ACIW) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call November 7, 2024 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

John Kraft - Head of Strategy & Finance
Thomas Warsop - CEO, President & Director
Scott Behrens - Executive VP, CFO & Chief Accounting Officer

Conference Call Participants

Trevor Williams - Jefferies
Peter Heckmann - D.A. Davidson
Jeff Cantwell - Seaport Research
Logan Lillehaug - Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jose, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ACI Worldwide, Incorporated Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] Thank you.

I would now like to turn the call over to John Kraft. Please go ahead.

John Kraft

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. On today's call, we will discuss the company's third quarter 2024 results and financial outlook for the rest of the year. We will take your questions at the end. The slides accompanying this call and webcast can be found at aciworldwide.com under the Investor Relations tab and will remain available after the call.

Today's call is subject to both safe harbor and forward-looking statements like all of our events. You can find the full text of both statements in our presentation deck and earnings release, both of which are available on our website and with the SEC.

On this morning's call is Tom Warsop, our President and CEO; and Scott Behrens, our CFO.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas Warsop

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I appreciate you joining our third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'm going to start this morning with some comments on the quarter and then I’m going to hand it over to Scott to discuss detailed financial results and our increased expectations for the remainder of 2024. Then we will open the line for questions.

Q3 results were ahead of expectations and of the guidance we provided, with total revenue up 24% year-over-year. As we've discussed on recent calls, we are making a conscious effort to accelerate the signing of contracts, both renewal and new, and bring those in earlier in the year. As you know, revenue from a renewal contract cannot be recognized earlier than the renewal date. But getting those renewals out of the way allows us to focus on new customer wins.

And net new contracts are recognized as they're signed. I had very high expectations of the team with respect to this initiative, and they have significantly exceeded those expectations. And that continues to allow us to outperform our guidance. Further, signing these new contracts earlier in the year helps reduce the heavy seasonality we've historically seen, and it simply derisks attaining our full year financial guidance.