SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.

SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.

74.48
EUR
-4.16
(-5.29%)
3.05EPS
17.27P/E
12.68BMarket Cap
Feb 11Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 5, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Colby, and I will be your conference operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome you to the SS&C Technologies Q4 and full year 2025 earnings. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session.

If you'd like to ask a question at that time, please press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you'd like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again.

We please ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you.

I will now turn the call over to Justine Stone, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Justine Stone

Hi everyone, welcome and thank you for joining us for our Q4 and full year 2025 earnings call. I'm Justine Stone, Investor Relations for SS&C.

With me today is Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rahul Kanwar, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Brian Schell, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, we need to review the safe harbor statement.

Please note the various remarks we make today about future expectations, plans, and prospects, including the financial outlook we provide, constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factor section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC and can be accessed on our website.

These forward-looking statements represent our expectations only as of today, February 5th, 2026. While the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements, it specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.

During today's call, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings release, which is located in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.ssctech.com.

I will now turn the call over to Bill.

Bill Stone

Thanks, Justine, and welcome everyone. We are all well aware of the sell-off in software company shares following the recent release of the AI-driven automation tools across legal, sales and marketing, and accounting functions.

We take all competitors seriously, but we strongly believe we have a wide and deep moat not easily navigated. Over four decades, we've built deep expertise across sophisticated assets and strategies, and that capability remains a trademark and a key driver of our long-term success.

We are functional experts, and our software is mission critical. We believe the AI boom will be a tailwind and are deploying rapidly and with conviction.

As we accelerate adoption of these solutions, we see a clear advantage. We are uniquely positioned and structurally protected through the ownership of our software and code, enabling us to leverage AI in ways that only we can for our customers.

Fourth quarter results demonstrate SS&C's strength with record adjusted revenue of $1.655 billion, up 8%, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.69, an 18% increase. We delivered record adjusted consolidated EBITDA of $651 million, up 9%, and an adjusted consolidated EBITDA margin of 39.3%.

Fourth quarter adjusted organic revenue growth was 5.3%, with performance driven by continued strength in GIDS with 13.2% revenue growth and GlobeOp with 9.6% revenue growth. We continue to focus on international growth opportunities and on execution for our clients.

GlobeOp is seeing new opportunities in Australia, leveraging our recent superannuation mandates. Prospects include local Australian firms and global firms.

Intralinks displayed signs of improvement with modest growth in Q4, and we are seeing momentum in 2026. For the 12 months ended December 31st, 2025, cash from operating activities was 1.745 million—or 1.745 billion, up 26% year-over-year.

On a weighted average diluted per share basis, it was $6.89, up $1.42 from 2024. In Q4, we returned $384 million to shareholders, which included 3.7 million shares repurchased for $319 million at an average price of $85.81 and $66 million in common stock dividends.

We allocated over $1 billion in share repurchases in 2025, purchasing 12.3 million shares at an average price of $84.12. Our strong cash flow characteristics allow us to return capital to our shareholders in multiple ways.

At current levels, our conviction around share repurchase has strengthened, and we will prioritize repurchases absent high-quality, accretive acquisitions. We are pleased with the early progress of the Calastone acquisition.

Since closing, we've partnered with key leadership and operational talent and deepened client relationships. We are seeing strong engagement and collaboration opportunities with our clients and are able to go live with projects strategically meaningful to them.

We expect momentum to continue as we move through the year. I'll now turn the call over to Rahul to discuss the quarter in more detail.

Rahul Kanwar

Thanks, Bill. We delivered a strong quarter with solid organic growth and continued margin expansion.

We are optimistic about the future as we look at the durability of what's driving that growth. Across the business, we're seeing a consistent trend of clients making long-term decisions to outsource, simplify, and scale their accounting models on our platform.

These are multi-year partnerships that create recurring revenue, expand over time, and provide clear visibility into future growth. Lift-outs are a good example of this dynamic.

Mandates such as Insignia and Humana reflect a repeatable process where clients entrust us with complex, mission-critical operations at scale. These engagements ramp in a disciplined way and often lead to broader adoption of additional services across our platform.

The fact that we continue to see similar opportunities emerge across regions and business lines, whether in GlobeOp, GIDS, or Health, reinforces our confidence that this is a sustainable growth engine. We see the continued advancement of AI as a positive for our business.

We're well-positioned given our large datasets, deep processing technology, long-standing client relationships, and our ability to deploy solutions at scale in regulated environments. The work we do is highly expertise-driven, requires a deep understanding of complex instruments, global regulation, and how information is used by tax authorities, institutional investors, and other sophisticated counterparties.

AI, working alongside with the teams we've built, enhances efficiency, accuracy, and scalability over time, strengthening our competitive position and supporting sustainable organic growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Brian to walk through the financials.

Brian Schell

Thanks, Rahul, and good day, everyone. Unless noted otherwise, the quarterly comparisons are Q4 2024.

As disclosed in our press release, our Q4 2025 GAAP results reflect revenues of $1.654 billion, net income of $193 million, and diluted earnings per share of 77 cents. Our adjusted non-GAAP results include revenues of $1.655 billion, an increase of 8%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.69, an 18% increase.

The adjusted revenue increase of $124 million was primarily driven by incremental revenue contributions from GIDS of $49 million, GlobeOp of $40 million, and acquisitions of $27 million, offset by a favorable impact from foreign exchange of $16 million. As a result, adjusted organic revenue growth on a constant currency basis was 5.3%, and our core expenses increased 4.6% or $44 million, which also excludes acquisitions and is on a constant currency basis.

Adjusted consolidated EBITDA was a record $651 million, reflecting an increase of $52 million or 8.7%, and a margin of 39.3%, a 20 basis point expansion. Net interest expense for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $111 million, a decrease of $2 million, primarily reflecting lower short-term rates.

Adjusted net income was a record $425 million, up 16.8%, and adjusted diluted EPS was $1.69, an increase of 18.2%. Our effective non-GAAP tax rate was 19.2% for the fourth quarter of '25.

Our resulting 2025 full-year effective non-GAAP tax rate is 22%. Note, for comparison purposes, we have recast the 2024 adjusted net income to reflect the full-year effective tax rate of 23.1%.

The diluted share count is down to 251.5 million from 254.5 million year-over-year, primarily as a result of share repurchases. Cash flow from operating activities grew 26%, and our operating cash flow per share was $6.89, driven by growth in earnings, improved working capital utilization, and lower cash taxes paid.

Our full-year cash flow conversion has been above 100% for the past 3 years. SS&C ended the fourth quarter with $462 million in cash and cash equivalents and $7.5 billion in gross debt.

Our net debt was $7 billion, and our last 12 months consolidated EBITDA was $2.5 billion, resulting net leverage ratio is 2.8 times. As we look forward to the first quarter and full year of 2026, with respect to guidance, we will continue to focus on client service and assume that retention rates will be in the range of our most recent results.

We will continue to manage our business to support our long-term growth and manage our expenses by controlling and aligning variable expenses, increasing productivity, and leveraging technology to improve our operating margins, and effectively investing in the business through marketing, sales, and R&D. Specifically, we have assumed short-term interest rates to remain at current levels, an effective tax rate of approximately 22.5% on an adjusted basis, capital expenditures to be 4.4% to 4.8% of revenues, and share buybacks and debt reduction levels remain similar to 2025, but subject to changes based on market conditions, as Bill noted in his earlier comments.

The first quarter of '26, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.608 to $1.648 billion and 5% organic growth at the midpoint. Adjusted net income in the range of $404 to $420 million, interest expense excluding amortization of deferred financing costs and original issue discount in the range of $102 to $104 million, diluted shares in the range of 249.2 to 250.2 million, and adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $1.62 to $1.68.

For the full year 2026, we expect revenue to be in the range of $6.654 to $6.754 billion and 5.1% organic revenue growth at the midpoint, targeted annual EBITDA expansion of 50 basis points, the goal of 40% margin in Q4, adjusted net income in the range of $1.662 to $1.762 billion, adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $6.70 to $7.02, reflecting approximately 12% growth at the midpoint, and cash from operating activities to be in the range of $1.713 to $1.813 billion, again, translating to over 100% cash conversion. Now, back to Bill.

Bill Stone

Brian, I'd like to summarize our key takeaways from today's call. Record fourth quarter revenues, earnings, cash flows, and over $1 billion worth of share repurchases in 2025.

We're excited about the early execution with the Calastone acquisition and other lift-out wins and the opportunities they present for growth and geographic expansions. Our investments in artificial intelligence and automation are paying off, and we're confident in our ability to drive margin expansion.

As we look to 2026, we believe we are set up for success and will drive long-term growth and profitability for our shareholders. With that, I would now open it up to questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session.

Again, we please ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Thank you.

If you'd like to ask a question, please press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you'd like to withdraw your question at any time, simply press star 1 again.

We'll pause just for a moment to compile the roster. Your first question comes from Jeff Schmitt with William Blair.

Your line is open.

Jeff Schmitt

Hi, good afternoon. Question on the healthcare business, that had a tough quarter from an organic perspective in what is its seasonally strongest quarter.

Could you maybe talk about what drove that weakness and why do you think that business hasn't seen maybe better momentum yet just given how much effort you've put into it?

Bill Stone

I think that healthcare is a long-term play, and trying to go quarter-to-quarter or even a year-to-year is a tough comp. I think last fourth quarter, we had large license sales.

We had some large license sales in the fourth quarter this year, but a notable multi-million dollar license closed in the first 10 days of January of 2026. It's lumpy.

They're highly regulated, even when you've been in highly regulated businesses like financial services, and so although there are headwinds in healthcare, it's still an enormous market. We have new technology.

We're bringing out Amisys, which has been rewritten to a very large degree, and we're going to have a One Health with Amisys and Domani, and we're excited about offering that for both medical as well as pharmacy. We have some optimism, but certainly, we would prefer to have more growth than what we're having, but we're still running at pretty healthy EBITDA margins, and we're managing the business in a way where it's adding to our cash flow, it's not really detracting from our earnings, and, obviously, it's not accelerating our growth rate.

At the same time, it's a $260, $70 million business, and we like its opportunities for the long haul.

Jeff Schmitt

Okay. Then could you provide an update on the Elevance relationship?

Where does that stand? Is there still a chance they could onboard some of their business onto DomaniRx?

Bill Stone

DomaniRx is certainly ready and waiting. At the same time, Elevance is a very large healthcare organization, and their relationships with other very large healthcare organizations are long-standing, and they're difficult to break.

The original sponsor at Elevance has moved on several years ago, and so often when you lose the sponsor, it's hard to find another one. It's not unexpected, but we think we have a lot of things that entice Elevance, and they've made a big investment.

We think there's still rays of sunshine at the end of the tunnel.

Jeff Schmitt

Got it. That makes sense.

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Your line is open.

Your next question comes from the line of Peter Heckmann with D.A. Davidson.

Your line is open.

Peter Heckmann

Good afternoon, everyone. Great to see the encouraging 2026 guidance.

I wanted to ask a question within alternative fund administration, it looked like the fourth quarter had exceptional growth in assets under administration. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Does that maybe indicate that alternative fund administration business can grow maybe faster in 2026 than it did in 2025?

Rahul Kanwar

Peter, there's a couple of things going on there. One, it did have a very good organic growth both quarter and year, and similarly we've got high expectations for 2026.

Included in the fourth quarter change in particular is our acquisition of Curve Fund Services. I think the breakdown is about $92 billion of that change is organic, and the rest is the acquisition.

Peter Heckmann

That's helpful. Okay.

That makes sense. Then just in terms of the intelligent automation business, which includes the Blue Prism business, just remind us that business seemed to be struggling a little bit from just delays in decision-making.

I guess how are you feeling about that business going into 2026? Do you think that can approximate the overall corporate organic growth rate?

Rahul Kanwar

We do. We actually feel really good about that business going into 2026.

Similar to kind of the comment we just made about healthcare, that business in particular had a really large license in Q4 the year before. Part of when you kind of look at this quarter-over-quarter, those are some of the changes that kind of have an impact.

In general, many of our comments around AI are centered at least in part on that business. That's where we're doing the bulk of our innovation relating to whether that's AI agents, use of large language models, use of our orchestration platforms, governance around AI.

Really, a lot of the things that we're rolling out across the business come out of there. We perfect them in different others of our businesses and then sell them out.

We're really pretty optimistic about the growth prospects for that in '26.

Peter Heckmann

All right. That's good to hear.

I'll get back in the queue.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Alexei Gogolev with J.P. Morgan.

Your line is open.

Alexei Gogolev

Good evening. This is Ella Smith on for Alexei.

Thanks so much for taking our questions. First, I was hoping to ask about the organic growth guide.

Your 1Q and full-year '26 guide is basically the same. Do you have anything to call out regarding the cadence of organic growth throughout the rest of the year?

Rahul Kanwar

Look, I think what it really reflects is that our business is getting stronger, right? As our business gets stronger, we have more predictability, and the recurring revenue is stronger, right?

We're able to, in effect, forecast and maintain, whereas traditionally you might have some more in the back half of the year, we're basically all year going to be pretty strong, and hopefully by the time we get to Q3 and Q4, we've got an opportunity to get even better than this.

Alexei Gogolev

Got it. Very clear.

Thank you. As a follow-up, given the breadth of your business, I'm sure you've seen AI fintechs emerging in the landscape.

How are you maintaining your competitive advantage?

Bill Stone

I think that we see fintechs, it's not very difficult to start a fintech, right? Have an idea, get a programmer, build a little app.

Now toss in a little AI, and you've gone on trade with some spice in it. To build an organization that has 29,000 people, 23,000 products or 23,000 customers, several hundred products and services, I think is a little more daunting.

What we see with AI, and people sometimes forget, that our clients are SEC-regulated organizations, are CMS-regulated organizations. Large language models sometimes have hallucinations.

Those regulators, they don't really quite understand us telling them, well, that's a problem, that's hallucination. It's like a bad dream.

We'll get over it. I don't think that flies.

We're very control conscious. Our clients are conservative by nature, right?

They're managing other people's money or the health of other people, we think that we're well positioned, and how we conduct ourselves is the right way to do it. I think that we have the financial wherewithal to invest very, very wisely.

We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on our development that we've done, and we're still maintaining in excess of 39% margins, and we think we'll close out 2026 at 40% margin. We're optimistic, and we think we have good reasons for being.

Alexei Gogolev

Great. Thanks very much.

Operator

Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then the number 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. Your next question comes from Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets.

Your line is open.

Dan Perlin

Good afternoon. It's Matt Roswell on for Dan.

I guess, two questions if I could. First, the wealth and investment management, it seems like organic growth ticked up a little bit this quarter.

As we think about kind of that business over the next, say, medium term, where do you think the organic growth could be and should be?

Bill Stone

Again, I think we're very optimistic about our wealth management business. Our Black Diamond platform is we think the best in the industry.

We have other platforms like our trust accounting that we have integrated with Black Diamond. Black Diamond has approaching $3.5 trillion that it's administrating for its various RIAs.

I think we have something close to 4,000 RIAs that are using that platform. We have integrated a bunch of the Morningstar we bought their wealth management platform, and we've already moved over 500, 600 Morningstar clients onto Black Diamond.

We're very optimistic about that business, and I think that we have a lot of expertise and a lot of capability, and I think that is and will continue to be one of our crown jewels.

Dan Perlin

Thanks. Can you talk a little bit about the M&A environment?

You all have done some smaller pieces this year. I guess what are you seeing out there in terms of asking prices, availability, etc.?

Bill Stone

When you've been doing this for four decades, and they start calling a billion-dollar acquisition like Calastone saying small pieces, that's [laughter] a little bigger. We're constantly looking.

We think we have the leverage down to a point where we could do a large acquisition, and if we could find the right one, we would, and we might find some of our competitors under different pressures than we're under. We run our own data centers, right?

We have our own private cloud. We have our clients really secured.

Plus we have a large-scale services business that we get to really test out our software before we send it into our client base. We think that we're well positioned.

We think as far as all the fintechs out there that we're very well positioned, and that our earnings, our cash flow really give us a lot of flexibility.

Dan Perlin

Excellent. Congratulations on the nice numbers.

Operator

Thank you. With no further questions in queue, I'd like to turn the conference back over to Bill for closing remarks.

Bill Stone

There's always a lot of things that happen in the market. When I first started in this business, we were selling to broker-dealers.

That was in 1986 and early '87. Then October of '87 happened, and the market went down 25% in one day, and that was the end of that.

You learn to be a little bit nimble, right? That's what SS&C has been for 40 years, and I think we have the talent and capability to continue, and that's what we're going to do.

We appreciate you listening in, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.