Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Temenos Q3 2025 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Matilda, the Chorus Call operator.
[Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.
At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Takis Spiliopoulos, Interim CEO and CFO. Please go ahead.
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
Thank you, Matilda. Good evening, good afternoon.
Thank you all for joining us for our Q3 '25 results call. I will talk you through our key performance and operational highlights for the quarter before updating you on our operational and financial performance.
So starting with Slide 6. We delivered a strong performance in Q3 '25, benefiting from a stable sales environment throughout the quarter.
There was no impact from the U.S. bank credit concerns in Q3, and we have not seen any impact so far in the current quarter.
Demand in Q3 was broad-based, and we signed a number of deals across new logos and the installed base. I would note that there were no large deals in the quarter, though we do have several we expect to sign in Q4.
We announced a number of AI-powered products this year, in particular, our AI agent for financial crime mitigation and Money Movement and Management, and we have seen good traction on both of these. From an investment perspective, we have continued executing our strategic road map, investing across the business.
Sales headcount, in particular, is on track to increase by around 50% by year-end. When we launched our new strategic plan in November last year, we indicated we expected around $20 million to $25 million of cost savings in 2025, and these efficiency gains are largely funding the investments we are making this year.
The operating leverage in our business model is evident. Our profitability has therefore benefited from the sales momentum and the cost efficiency programs, which are funding our investments.
We remain prudent in our outlook given there are a number of large deals expected in Q4. However, based on our Q3 performance and the stable sales environment, we are raising our guidance for 2025 for subscription and SaaS, EBIT and EPS and are reconfirming our 2028 targets.
Turning to Slide 7. We signed a number of deals with new and existing clients this quarter, and we have highlighted 4 of these on this slide.
A couple of the highlighted deals are in the Middle East with clients either expanding into new geographies or launching new digital banks on our platform. We also have a client in the ASEAN region upgrading and moving to the cloud and a client in LatAm moving on to Temenos core banking in the cloud.
The key things across all of these clients are the reliability and scalability of our platform, the uniqueness of our country model banks that clients can leverage to rapidly expand into new geographies and the flexibility to deploy in the cloud or on-premise, and we will continue to expand our offering in all of these areas through our R&D road map. Moving to customer success on Slide 8.
This quarter, we went live on a major U.S. SaaS expansion with FundBank a global bank offering banking and custodial solutions to the asset management industry.
FundBank selected Temenos to support their U.S. expansion due to our comprehensive SaaS banking capabilities tailored specifically to the U.S.
market. We deployed a full suite of services, including digital and core banking, payments and data analytics on Temenos SaaS allowing FundBank to launch new products faster, elevate the digital experience and scale efficiently.
Notably, FundBank can now offer a fully digitized corporate onboarding experience allowing clients to complete the process quickly and securely. This go-live continued the extension of our leadership in best of suite in the U.S., in line with our 2028 strategy around 3 core levers.
On Slide 9, we have our latest payments innovation that we launched at SIBOS in September. Money Movement and Management is a single pre-integrated AI-powered platform that enables our clients to replace fragmented, siloed legacy platforms or to rapidly launch new lines of business.
It is deployable on-prem, in the cloud or as SaaS depending on the clients' needs. We have already seen good traction on this and other AI-powered products such as FCM AI agent, and we will continue investing in specific AI use cases to meet the needs of our customers.
Moving to the next slide. I am proud of the industry recognition Temenos continues to receive.
It is a great achievement whether that is for the strength of our core banking platform, specific aspects of our offerings such as deposits or from our employees where we have been recognized as a Great Place to Work in 15 countries. This last recognition is particularly important to me and a testimony to our values and culture.
People are the key to our success. Finally, on Slide 11, I would like to give an update on the execution of our strategic road map.
We have been hiring talent across the R&D organization globally, in particular in India and the U.S. Our innovation hub in Orlando is having a visible impact on our U.S.
expansion strategy with the first prospective clients leveraging the hub to co-innovate with our teams in the quarter. And we are on track to increase sales headcount across the regions by 50% by end of December.
We have also been making investments in our sales training and governance process to maximize the quality of our pipeline. Lastly, we are looking to improve the efficiency of our operating model rolling out AI initiatives across the business, including in software, legal, marketing and finance, in addition to R&D, where the focus is on leveraging AI for development, testing and support.
Moving to Slide 13. We delivered 11% total revenue growth this quarter, driven by broad-based wins with both new and existing customers.
We had another strong quarter for subscription in SaaS, which grew 10% in Q3 as well as maintenance, which was largely driven by premium maintenance signings. Services revenue also grew for the second quarter in a row.
Moving to Slide 14. Our EBIT grew 36% in the quarter, driven by the strong revenue growth and operating leverage.
Our ongoing investments in product and tech and go-to market were largely offset by our cost savings program, in line with our self-funded investment strategy that we announced at last year's CMD with an expected $20 million to $25 million of cost savings in 2025, funding the majority of our investments. There is also some impact from cost phasing with some catch-up expected in Q4 '25.
EPS grew 41% in Q3, largely driven by EBIT growth and benefiting from the lower share count. Moving to ARR.
It has once again benefited from the growth in subscription in SaaS and maintenance. As a percentage of last 12 months revenue, ARR equaled 88%, up from 87% in Q3 '24.
This gives us excellent visibility on future recurring revenue as well as our future cash flows helping underpin our 2028 targets as well. On Slide 16, I would like to highlight a few items.
Maintenance grew nicely in Q3, up 14% and we now expect maintenance to grow around 11% constant currency for the full year. I would also flag that subscription and SaaS has grown 12% year-to-date, total revenue 10% and EBIT 24%, which supports the increase in full year guidance we announced today.
Given the continued strength in EBIT growth in Q3, we now expect our EBIT margin to be up at least 170 basis points for the full year. On Slide 17, net profit was up 35% in the quarter, in line with EBIT with higher tax charges, offset by lower financing costs.
The tax rate in Q3 was around 21%, and we maintained guidance of our 2025 reported tax rate of 15% to 17%, benefiting from a one-off tax benefit from prior years, which will materialize in Q4 '25. The normalized underlying tax rate, excluding this one-off benefit, remains at 19% to 21%.
EPS grew by 42%, ahead of net profit growth as it did last quarter, once again supported by the lower share count. Moving to free cash flow.
We delivered significant growth of 30% in Q3 '25. As expected, we are showing an acceleration in H2 '25 driven by the growth in deferred revenue and lower restructuring costs than in H1 '25.
We have now absorbed $30 million of restructuring headwind in the first 9 months of the year. Free cash flow has now grown 13% year-to-date.
So we are confident that we will deliver on our full year guidance of at least 12%. Next, on Slide 19, we show the changes to group liquidity in the quarter on a reported basis.
We generated $61 million of operating cash and bought back $148 million worth of shares, completing our CHF 250 million buyback program in August. We ended Q3 '25 with $184 million of cash on the balance sheet.
Our leverage stood at 1.4x at the end of the quarter, and we also expect to end 2025 within our target leverage range retaining flexibility for either further share buybacks or bolt-on M&A. Now moving to Slide 20, a couple of items to highlight on our balance sheet.
We completed our CHF 250 million share buyback program in August at an average price of CHF 63.25 per share, representing 5.5% of registered share capital. These shares will be proposed for cancellation at the 2026 AGM.
In July, we closed a $500 million revolving credit facility signed in Q2. As previously mentioned, we have no further refinancing requirements until 2028.
The bond maturing in November of this year has already been refinanced by the bond issued in March of this year. Our reported net debt stood at $702 million at quarter end.
Turning to Slide 21. I would first like to note that we remain prudent in our 2025 outlook, given there are several large deals in the Q4 pipeline.
However, given the good performance in the first 9 months of the year, we are increasing our subscription and SaaS guidance to at least 7% to reflect the sales momentum. As a result of our operating leverage, premium maintenance signings uplift to Q3 EBIT and the self-funding of our investments, we are raising our EBIT growth guidance from at least 9% to at least 14%.
Correspondingly, we are also upgrading our EPS growth guidance from 10% to 12% to 15% to 17%. We are keeping ARR guidance of at least 12%, given the delayed benefit to ARR from stronger subscription and SaaS growth, and we're also keeping free cash flow guidance of at least 12% growth unchanged.
As a reminder, our guidance is non-IFRS in constant currency, except for EPS and free cash flow, which are on a reported basis. Both the 2025 guidance and the 2024 pro forma numbers exclude any contribution from multifunds.
And free cash flow is, of course, under our standard definition, including IFRS 16 leases and interest costs. And lastly, we have reconfirmed our 2028 target.
Before we head to Q&A, I'm sure you will have seen the statement from our Chairman in the press release that the CEO search conducted by the Board is currently ongoing. As you can appreciate, this is not something I can comment on any further.
With that, operator, can we please open the call for questions.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays.
Sven Merkt
Maybe one on the pipeline. Can you just comment on the quality of the pipeline and the visibility you have into Q4?
You called out that there are a number of large deals in the pipeline. I guess this is the case usually in the fourth quarter.
So is there anything unusual here to point out? And what sort of pipeline conversion do you assume for these large deals compared to prior years?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
So on the pipeline, there is nothing that has changed from the previous 3 months. Clearly, we have the large deals in the pipeline as we commented back in July.
And we also do not assume any change in conversion rates. The way we look at this is always as a weighted average at the start of the year when we provide guidance, clearly, we take an assumption on conversion rate of large deals, which is lower than we use for, let's say, the average deal.
So nothing has changed in terms of the pipeline. What we have clearly seen is no impact from any macro uncertainty.
I think that's good to highlight, given we're 3 months more into the year. We have seen in Q3 good execution and good conversion rates across the regions.
So also nothing to highlight. But clearly, we want to remain prudent on how we assess the pipeline.
Clearly, the pipeline is growing quite nicely, as you would expect with a substantial increase in the number of salespeople working to build the pipeline. But again, let's remain prudent.
There is still some macro uncertainty out there, but we have seen no change in bank's behavior in terms of spending plans. Clearly, they still want to invest.
They prioritize digital transformation. So this is, I would say, what we call a stable sales environment, and we expect this to remain for the remainder of the year.
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Laurent Daure from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Laurent Daure
I have one and a follow-up. First is on the support revenue.
I mean you had another great quarter. Where do you stand in terms of the mix between the premium maintenance and classic maintenance, in order to help us to see what could be the growth rate in maintenance a bit normalized 1 or 2 years out?
And my follow-up is on the U.S., if you could give us an update on a penetration of some Tier 2, Tier 3 banks that were part of your long-term plan.
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
Laurent, let me address the maintenance question first. Clearly, 14% was a good number.
Discontinued the trend from what we have seen last year and also the first half, clearly benefiting from premium maintenance, but it's not just premium maintenance. Also, keep in mind, we get uplift from renewals, and we also have the CPI indexation, which over the years, obviously falls into the number.
We have seen clearly clients taking up our premium maintenance offering on the one hand, but on the other hand, we have also seen clients not churning on this. So they maintain those premium maintenance offerings for a much longer period than in the past, and clearly, that helps.
If you don't have churn, that helps a lot. And this is what we also see in terms of visibility going forward.
Now we said 11% for the full year. So that's about the number in Q4 as well.
For the next years, I think it's too early to provide specific guidance, and we're not disclosing the split other than we're growing on all the maintenance streams. For the next years, I think what we had implied in our original CMD plan was somewhere 5%, 6% as a base rate because clearly, we have seen some catch-up, so some normalization is probably what we would model in, in that case.
On the U.S., as you would expect, clearly, we're seeing a very nice buildup in our pipeline for the U.S. I think also in terms of the signed deals, we will see even more of the impact materializing in 2026, in line with our strategy.
The sales team is now fully in place. And I think this is clearly shown in the pipeline generation.
We see -- we get with more people and a better understanding of our offering. Clearly, we get into more RFPs and also our win rate is improving from the data we have.
And clearly, you need to keep in mind we are tackling a huge market with a real need and a long runway for banks to modernize. I think we have a much better value proposition in terms also of strategic road map versus where we were 1 year ago.
The investments we have done, both on the product side but also on the go-to-market side. And some of that road map, some of the products in the road map that are very specific to the U.S.
market. And we need to be -- as we said, we wanted to be closer to the customers, and clearly, they see our investment in go-to-market in the product as well.
So yes, the innovation hub clearly has helped a lot also for awareness building. As you know, pipeline is 12 to 18 months to develop.
This gives us a good level of confidence that the conversion of this pipeline in to signed deals will clearly will accelerate next year.
Operator
We now have a question from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America.
Frederic Boulan
If I may, a question around Q4. So if I look at your guidance, weighted guidance still implies much less growth in Q4 versus what you've done year-to-date and the same on EBIT, you're guiding for 170 bps margin expansion.
I think you've done 4 points in the first 9 months. So any specific moving parts you want to call out for Q4?
And then anything you can share on your free cash flow conversion? You've grown EBIT $22 million year-on-year in Q3; net profit, $16 million, but the cash flow growth is about $6 million.
So if you can talk about some of the drivers for free cash flow conversion? Anything specific you want to call out for the rest of the year, DSOs or else?
And any specific elements you want to call out into next year?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
Okay. A lot of questions, Fred, let me take them one by one.
I think on -- if we start with subscription and SaaS and keep in mind that we want to remain prudent as we started the year, there is still macroeconomic uncertainty. And what we did, given we have not changed the outlook for the sales environment, the -- if you want the upside, we were going for around 6% in Q3, delivered 10%.
So the upside of, let's say, $5 million, we let it flow through the -- into the guidance. So this is where the upside for subscription and SaaS is coming from.
We are not flagging any explicit risks other than we have large deals in there. No change to visibility.
Again, it's at least 7%, and we want to remain prudent for this time. Also keep in mind, we have -- and this shows maybe the underlying very robust growth that we still have the impact from this BNPL customer in every quarter.
So if you exclude the impact from that, we would show -- this really shows the underlying growth, which is very healthy. So nothing specific to flag here other than large deals, and we want to remain prudent.
On EBIT, yes, the guidance implies some deceleration. We have seen year-to-date EBIT growth of 24%, clearly has benefited from a strong growth in subscription and SaaS of 12%, strong maintenance growth.
And clearly, there also been the full impact of the cost savings initiatives, but clearly not yet the visibility on the investments, which are tracking somewhat slower. But if I look at the Q3 exit cost in September and October trend that clearly is the right number to target.
Also keep in mind, we have the majority of our variable costs, bonus accruals, commissions always in H2 versus H1, even more loaded towards Q4. So clearly, that is driving some of the cost increase.
And it's very similar to last year. If I look at the cost we added H2 versus H1 last year, H2 versus H1 this year, this is very similar, maybe even some higher costs there.
And ultimately, it's at least 14% is the guidance. So that's where we would go.
Finally, on free cash flow. Yes, 30% in Q3 was clearly materially ahead of our full year guidance.
But keep in mind, we had the bulk of restructuring costs of $30 million out of the $35 million in the year-to-date number and substantial outflows linked to that. And then it was really in line with our expectations, the 30%, which gives us 13% for year-to-date growth, so well on track.
And there's clearly nothing special to there. If you were to exclude -- if you take the EBIT to free cash conversion, if you were to exclude restructuring costs, we will be at a very high conversion.
But even with that, let's say, EBIT of 14% or at least 14% and free cash flow at least 12%, so there is not such a big delta. We have a bit of catch-up to do on investments in Q4, so we feel comfortable with the at least 12% free cash flow guidance.
Nothing special to flag on cash.
Operator
The next question comes from the line of Josh Levin from Autonomous Research.
Josh Levin
Two questions for me. Just to be clear on the new guidance, you've talked about large deals.
To what extent does the new guidance bake in the new deals? Are they fully baked in or partially baked in?
And then second question, I read how Morgan Stanley is using AI to rewrite old outdated code written in COBOL to more modern programming languages. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for Temenos?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
I think there has not much change in terms of how we assess large deals. Clearly, number one, we clearly want to remain prudent.
What we -- what I said before is at the start of the year, we have a view on large deals evolution and for any specific quarter and the full year we always take a risk-weighted approach to large deals, i.e., we assume -- for the same dollar value of large deals, we assume a lower conversion rate than for a standard deal size. So this is how it's reflected in Q4 and the full year guidance.
There is no excessive dependency on large deals. We had this in Q2, given Q2 was a much smaller quarter than Q4.
This is why we had flagged this in Q2. On AI, we are -- I mean, we are using AI ourselves quite a lot.
And clearly, AI is a big opportunity. I think on both sides, we are clearly investing on AI use cases on the client side.
We showed some of the AI-enabled products. But clearly, we have rolled out a substantial double-digit number of AI initiatives internally as well.
So we are product and tech organization, we are having some pilots with some clients. It doesn't -- it's not that straightforward to take COBOL code and just use AI and make it modern.
It sounds nice and there is a lot of challenge given there is no documentation and anything. What we can -- what AI can help with is in the documentation of old code and then trying to map this into new functionality.
A Tier 1 bank like Morgan Stanley, they will always have the capacity of internal development. So they have done it before.
So it's unlikely they would change that. But what we see is helping banks reduce implementation effort helps them move faster to a newer release, move faster in upgrades.
This is where we see the AI opportunity. And I think this is tracking well with the pilots we're doing.
Operator
We now have a question from the line of Charles Brennan from Jefferies.
Charles Brennan
It sounds like 2025 is in good shape. I was wondering if you can just lift horizons to 2026.
And specifically, you think about the subscription revenues. You started to shift to subscription in [ anger ] in 2022.
And if those deals run to the natural 5-year duration, I guess that's a 2027 renewal cycle. Do you think that's how it will play out?
Or do you think it's inevitable that those deals renew slightly earlier than the contract termination date? And we start to get a renewal cycle start in 2026.
And is that going to start to help the visibility and the predictability of the business?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
It's an interesting point you raise. And we had the start.
And if you go back and look at the numbers in 2022, clearly, we started with the subscription transition, but we still had quite considerable term license business there as well, so not all the license business in '22 was subscription. It's correct that those will come up for renewal in 2027.
It's also correct that you're going to see the 10-year renewals from 2017, which was a strong year for Temenos, renewing in 2027. Let's not get into the debate about when these contracts will renew.
In general, as you know, clients never wait until last minute to renew because that's not a good starting point from their side. So do we have the visibility on 2026 subscription?
I think we have good visibility stemming especially from the pipeline build we have seen over the last 12 and 18 months. The renewal cycle is something you take as it is planned.
It's not -- we don't have a specific renewal strategy. So let's see, we have good visibility on '26.
Let's not speculate on the renewals.
Operator
Next question comes from the line of Justin Forsythe from UBS.
Justin Forsythe
I've got my one question here and follow-up. So Takis, I guess, from the outside looking in, it would seem like the year has gone quite well to start under the guidance and shepherding of Jean-Pierre.
So maybe you could talk a little bit about your initial conversations with the Board, what they expect you to do? Are you continuing to execute on the strategy that he laid out?
I would imagine that, and I caught this from the commentary on the management call that there are some things that the Board would expect to change going forward. So are you then, therefore, beginning to implement some of those changes?
And maybe you could just outline a little bit on the strategy going forward. And then I just wanted to hone in a little bit on the big contract loss.
So maybe you could just remind us when you expect to lap the impact of that and the magnitude of it. And just circle back on what exactly happened there?
If the provider, I think it was PayPal, decided to go with just a different provider or if that was something that they decided to in-source?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
First, on strategy. Keep in mind, our strategy is not created by 1 person.
So the strategy which was presented last year at the CMD and validated before by the Board was created by the entire management team and actually the leadership team. So this is how we came up with a bottom-up strategy looking at what we need to do on the product, what we want to do on product and go to market and aligning this with the market perception.
So it was not Jean-Pierre creating a strategy, it was really the leadership which was then validated by the Board. So the strategy, as our Chairman mentioned early September, remains unchanged, and this is also why my primary focus is on executing the strategy.
We've done this in Q3, we'll continue to do this also in Q4 and beyond. We have the people in place, and it's actually great to see that everyone is delivering.
And the team is very motivated and standing behind the strategy. So it's really a focus we all have.
And if you look at the progress we have seen across the different elements, we said we're going to substantially expand our sales force across the regions, they have done that. We will increase the headcount 50% by year-end.
On the product side, Barb has brought in some great talent. And we're also hiring both in the U.S.
and in India complementing our road map. So it's really executing this and then on top of all the operating model changes.
On the BNPL, we -- I think there is no new information to give on BNPL on the reasons we can't comment on individual customers. And whether the name you mentioned is correct or not.
Clearly, there is a headwind this year, which we communicated already at the start of the year. It's equal numbers in every quarter and the guidance is fully reflecting this.
Justin Forsythe
Okay. Got it.
No, that's fair. Maybe I'll just ask then since you can't answer that one, a quick follow-up, which is on the sales force that you expect to increase quite drastically.
Could you just give us a little bit of a lean on what types of customers you expect them to serve. So is that Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 or down in the credit union space and what geographies you expect them to come in or if that's more balanced?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
So again, back to the strategy. We're growing in all regions.
So the sales force is expanding in all regions across -- really across the world. It was a scale-up, which we needed and wanted to do also to support our 2028 targets.
We emphasize the U.S. where we started first, but Will and his MDs have expanded the sales force across the world.
And it's -- nothing has changed in terms of the strategy. In the U.S., we go Tier 2, Tier 3, the three growth levers we have defined best of suite, the modular approach and adjacent solutions.
So the growth levers are valid and still applied globally. So no change to tiering or regional focus or anything.
It's just really adding capacity and capabilities to deliver the 2028 targets. As we said, it's an investment year.
The good thing is we do a lot of self-funding for those investments, but no change to that.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We now have a question from the line of Toby Ogg from JPMorgan.
Toby Ogg
Maybe just one quick one and then a follow-up. First one, just on the guidance.
EBIT and EPS upgraded, but no change to the free cash flow guidance. What are the factors driving that?
And then just on AI. You mentioned in the release a number of AI product launches gaining traction.
So FCM, AI agent and the money movement and management piece. Can you just give us a sense for how you're monetizing this?
Is this through higher pricing or is there incremental modules being cross sold? And then can you just give us a sense for the size of these AI product revenue streams today and then when you'd expect them to start becoming a more meaningful revenue driver for you?
Panagiotis Spiliopoulos
Toby, let me get back to the free cash flow question first. Clearly, as we said, if you look at the pure numbers, there is not that much change in terms of the EBIT growth and the free cash flow growth expected for this year, if you want to go back to the conversion question.
But ultimately, there is always a lag. It's similar to ARR.
We can't translate a positive subscription and SaaS impact to free cash flow immediately given there is a time difference. And as we said, there is still some catch-up in terms of investments to do.
And finally, there is -- we still have a large Q4 ahead of us. This is always the most important quarter for us in terms of free cash flow.
So yes, we're quite happy with our 12% free cash flow guidance. Now on the AI products.
So clearly, we had some product launches at the flagship event TCF, FCM AI agent and also the other product. Now clearly, we're not going to go into that level of detail, although that we have seen a number of deals signed for -- or especially the FCM agent already in the last few months.
Usually, this comes as an add-on to existing core installations, so clearly, there is a good market demand there. We have also seen a very large Tier 1 bank using this, so that's a testimony to the real use case we're providing here.
And it's a very interesting product, substantially reducing the number of false positives in screening, which is driving a lot of manual work at banks. So there is clearly a business need for that.
So the numbers are still small, especially in the context of our of overall business. But this is what we are seeing together with banks, developing use cases.
And referring to our development partner program, we're not just going out there and inventing something in the lab and then see whether this sticks. We're really codeveloping use cases, which we know banks are interested in and are willing to pay for this.
Yes, but no further financial details we can provide on AI products.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. The conference is now over.
Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines.
Goodbye.