Earnings call transcript: Clearwater Analytics Q4 2024 beats estimates, stock surges

Clearwater Analytics Holdings Inc. (CWAN) reported its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings, surpassing Wall Street expectations with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.13 against a forecast of $0.11. The company's revenue reached $126.5 million, beating the anticipated $120.39 million. Following the announcement, Clearwater's stock rose 17.62% in after-hours trading, reflecting investor optimism about the company's financial health and future prospects. According to InvestingPro , the company maintains a "GOOD" overall financial health score of 2.77, with particularly strong performance in cash flow management. Based on InvestingPro's Fair Value analysis, the stock appears slightly overvalued at current levels.

Key Takeaways

• Clearwater Analytics exceeded both EPS and revenue forecasts for Q4 2024.
• The company's stock surged by 17.62% in after-hours trading.
• Clearwater's full-year revenue grew by 22.7%, driven by strong demand and product innovation.
• The company is focusing on generative AI and expanding its market with the upcoming Infusion acquisition.

Company Performance

Clearwater Analytics demonstrated robust performance in Q4 2024, with revenue growing by 28% year-over-year to $126.5 million. This growth was supported by an increase in Annualized Recurring Revenue (ARR) to $474.9 million, marking a 25.3% rise. The company's strategy of integrating generative AI to enhance operational efficiency and expanding its product offerings has been pivotal in maintaining its competitive edge.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $126.5 million, a 28% increase year-over-year.
• Full Year Revenue: $451.8 million, up 22.7% from the previous year.
• EPS: $0.13, exceeding the $0.11 forecast.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $41.7 million, representing 33% of revenue and a 39% increase year-over-year.
• Gross Margin: 78.8% in Q4, with a long-term target of over 80%.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Clearwater's EPS of $0.13 surpassed the forecasted $0.11, marking an 18.2% positive surprise. Revenue also exceeded expectations by 5.1%, suggesting strong demand for Clearwater's services and successful execution of its growth strategies.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Clearwater's stock experienced a significant increase of 17.62% in after-hours trading, reaching a price of $31.80. This surge reflects positive investor sentiment, particularly given the stock's previous close at $27.64. The stock remains well within its 52-week range, having reached a high of $35.71 and a low of $15.62.

Outlook & Guidance

For 2025, Clearwater projects revenue between $535.5 million and $542 million, indicating a growth rate of 19-20%. The company also anticipates an EBITDA margin of 34%. The acquisition of Infusion, expected to close in Q2 2025, is set to enhance Clearwater's platform capabilities, particularly in regulatory reporting and compliance.

Executive Commentary

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CEO Sandeep Sahai emphasized the company's transformative role, stating, "We are in the business of transformation, simplifying complex legacy systems." He also highlighted the ongoing benefits of regulatory reporting, noting, "Regulatory reporting has always been a bit of a tailwind for us."

Risks and Challenges

• Regulatory Changes: Potential impacts from evolving regulations could affect operations.
• Market Competition: Increasing competition in the analytics space poses a challenge.
• Integration Risks: The upcoming Infusion acquisition presents integration challenges.
• Economic Conditions: Broader economic pressures could influence client demand.
• Currency Fluctuations: Although minimal FX impact is expected, currency volatility remains a risk.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the integration of Infusion and its impact on pricing models. The management highlighted positive customer feedback and minimal foreign exchange impacts due to natural hedging strategies. The company also addressed the importance of regulatory changes driving platform adoption.

Full transcript - Clearwater Analytics Holdings Inc (CWAN) Q4 2024:

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Clearwater Analytics Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. And now, I'd like to welcome Jun Park, Head of Investor Relations to begin the conference.

Jun Park, Head of Investor Relations, Clearwater Analytics: Water Analytics' fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four financial results conference call. Joining me on the call today are Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer and Jim Cox, Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we will open the call to a question and answer session. I would like to remind all participants that during this conference call, any forward looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Expressions of future goals, intentions and expectations, including in relation to business outlook future financial and product performance expectations for the timing of the infusion acquisition and its expected benefits and similar items, including without limitation, expressions using the terminology may, will, can, expect and believe and expressions which reflect something other than historical facts are intended to identify forward looking statements.

Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our filings with the SEC. Actual results may differ materially from any forward looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward looking statements in order to reflect events that may arise after this conference call, except as required by law. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statement included in our earnings press release. Lastly, all metrics discussed in this call are presented on a non GAAP or adjusted basis unless otherwise noted.

A reconciliation to GAAP results can be found in the earnings press release that we have posted to our Investor Relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Sandeep Sahai.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Thank you, June. I'm pleased to report that Q4 twenty twenty four was an outstanding quarter for our company. Revenue for the quarter was $126,500,000 a 28% year on year growth, which I'm sure you will agree is spectacular. ARR grew to $474,900,000 a 25% year on year growth, one of the highest increases since our IPO. Coupled with our strong gross revenue retention, this allows us to look ahead to 2025 and beyond with very high confidence.

And finally, adjusted EBITDA was $41,700,000 30 3 percent of revenue and up 39% year on year. We continue to deliver very strong organic growth with increasingly higher unit economics and higher levels of profitability, all while investing heavily in strategic initiatives and innovation. It was indeed an outstanding quarter. This growth was made possible by success across various dimensions of our business. Number one, NRR grew to 116%.

As we have laid out on several occasions in the past, one of the foundations of our growth strategy has been NRL growth. It involves a strong focus on client satisfaction and delight, investment in innovation product development, a robust commercial model and dedicated teams focused on driving NRR growth. We are excited to deliver an NRR growth of 116% for the quarter and believe that it provides a very strong foundation for sustained growth. Number two, widespread expansion across our increasingly diverse market segments and geographies. We have a single instance multi tenant platform and the ease with which it adapts to adjacent market segments and geographies allows us to chart a multi year growth strategy with excellent visibility.

Growth without a focus on unit economics is never sustainable in the longer term, and that's why you continue to see us incredibly focused on it. I'm pleased to report that our gross margin has grown exceptionally well. For the quarter, our gross margin grew 190 bps year on year and 170 bps for the full year. These are significantly higher than the 50 bps per year improvement target we had set on Investor Day two years back. But at that time, we did not foresee the impact generative AI would have on our business.

We believe that we can expand unit economics this year by an additional 50 bps and we now believe that the long term target for gross margin is north of 80%. The combination of strong execution, our development of Gen AI use cases and the benefits of our network effect provide us with ample opportunities to drive this expansion in margin. Generative AI has the dual benefit of driving operational efficiency and providing customers with faster responses to the queries via self serve agents. We have continued to invest heavily in this technology and believe that we are at the very leading edge of innovation in our industry, enabled by the fact that our platform uses a single security master across all our clients. It is gratifying to see the fruits of our labor come to light on overall profitability.

Again, we see very strong performance driven by expanding unit economics and scalability benefits across various functions within our company. EBITDA grew by three fifty bps for the year, exceeding the already ambitious 200 bps goal we outlined during Investor Day in 2023. The overperformance in unit economics flew through to the bottom line almost entirely. Finally, we expect to deliver another 200 bps in EBITDA growth in 2025. We are delivering a disruptive platform to the investment management industry, one that is constantly getting better because of a sustained investment in innovation.

Our approach and plan for organic growth remains largely unchanged. We believe that having many irons in the fire for driving growth is the appropriate approach for delivering durable growth in our business. We are comfortable with the pace of improvements that we have previously outlined in both unit economics and profitability expansion, while we continue to make sustained investments to drive durable growth. The levels of growth are: number one, driving new logos in North America, where we have the largest TAM and the highest right to win, leveraging a high NPS and CSAT ratings. All of these results in sustained strong win rates.

Number two, continued international expansion to become the platform of choice for the investment management industry in Europe and Asia. Number three, focusing on back to base investments to drive one to four bps expansion in our core markets. We actively manage our investments in new products and are rigorous about unfunding investments that show limited traction. Conversely, we increase support for investments that resonate with our clients. Number four, expanding our reach to asset owners beyond traditional insurance companies and corporates to now include state and local governments, foundations, REITs, pensions, sovereign funds and endowments.

Number five, building an effective channel of growth through partnership with other software providers, system integrators and advisors. This has been an under invested area for us and many companies generate substantial revenue from this channel. We hope to see results later this year and in the years to come. Number six, continued selective M and A initiatives, ensuring that any potential acquisition aligns with our long term strategic goals. And number seven, we believe our core TAM stands at approximately $5,900,000,000 a figure derived from the segments where we have achieved a long term 80% win rate.

With $474,900,000 in ARR at the end of twenty twenty four, we have a long runway of growth ahead of us. Let's discuss some of our initiatives in greater detail. Our new product initiatives, which focuses on expanding into adjacent markets, are developed in partnership with our clients. These initiatives have played a significant role in driving engagement and growth in 2024. Our initiative is focused on platform modules that enhance customer efficiency, LPs, mortgages, regulatory reporting, funds, risk and performance have all helped grow our business.

Clearwater expanded its footprint with existing clients, but also added marquee clients such as Imperial Fund Capital Partners (WA:CPAP), Invictus Capital Management, National Association of Realtors, NewCo Corporation, OpenAI, School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, State of Louisiana, United Nations Federal Credit Union, WCF Insurance and several others. In the insurance sector, our expansion among mega and large insurers continues. I would like to highlight a global commercial property insurance provider where our ability to deliver automated scalable investment accounting processes set us apart, exposing the limitations of their legacy systems. We also welcomed a national property and casualty workers' compensation insurer serving businesses across The U. S.

According to our client, a modern platform was the only solution that meets their needs for asset class diversification, streamlined operations and long term scalable growth. In the asset management industry, a leading OCIO has chosen to replace the legacy system, selecting us as the cornerstone of the long term expansion with the goal of growing their assets to $50,000,000,000 in AUM. Clearwater will replace six other platforms, dramatically simplifying the technology infrastructure. Asset owners beyond the traditional insurance and corporate segments continue to expand in scope and scale. Leading organizations like Alameda County Employees Retirement Association will rely on Clearwater for data validation, shadow book of record accounting and total plan reporting across the entire investment portfolio, including alternative assets.

In the public sector, we welcome the State of Nevada and the State of Louisiana to Clearwater. When faced with significant key person risk and an internally built outdated local government investment pool system, the State of Nevada selected Clearwater to manage the entire LGIP and general fund portfolio. This state treasury team and the pool participants will be able to seamlessly navigate LGIP's complete with participant portal logins and statement preparation, all for one central secure platform. Additionally, the State Employees Retirement System of Ohio selected Clearwater for a powerful investment accounting solution that can do anything and everything with accounting across all asset classes. These wins build on our reputation as a trusted partner for investment and pension management solutions supported by teams dedicated to this market.

Our expansion in Europe, Asia and Africa has brought new clients. One notable success in Asia Pacific involves a leading asset management company that adopted Clearwater to unify the insurance assets under a single comprehensive platform. We couldn't be more excited to support this asset manager's ambitious expansion plans across multiple Asian countries. Our platform is designed to scale effortlessly and we are proud of the growth that it enables. To highlight one of our cross sell successes, I'm pleased to welcome a U.

S. Investment management firm specializing in real estate and alternative investments that has selected Clearwater to empower its mortgage loan team. Our solution provides deep visibility into their expanded agency and non agency mortgage backed securities, repurchase agreements and derivatives instruments. With Clearwater, the investment professionals gain a comprehensive platform to drive growth and make well informed decisions throughout the entire loan lifecycle, from origination and deal management to analytics, accounting and reporting. This win exemplifies the single pane of glass experience our platform is designed to deliver.

These examples are just a glimpse of our expanding portfolio of new client wins, showcasing Clearwater's unmatched ability to meet diverse client needs. We are in the business of transformation, simplifying complex legacy systems and empowering clients to achieve bold, ambitious growth targets. Our platform is precision engineered to deliver purpose built solutions that replace outdated, inflexible legacy systems, keeping our clients ahead in a fast moving investment management landscape. We continue to build and support these initiatives and our investment in R and D will continue to grow in dollar terms, even if they fall as a percent of revenue, fully consistent with the plans we have discussed on earlier calls. Now let me turn to the acquisition of infusion.

Before I go any further, I believe that our first order of business is to ensure that the core Clearwater platform continues to perform and deliver the durable and efficient growth it has delivered over the past few years. That is a key message I've emphasized to our teams. We have had the opportunity to engage with the infusion leadership and subsequently with the entire team in a town hall setting. We've also had the opportunity to meet with several teams in person. I'm excited to report that all of us share the enthusiasm and commitment to jointly build a market leading front to back platform that can transform our industry.

Both Clearwater and Infusion share a strong multi year growth track record powered by next generation single instance multi tenant platforms designed for an increasingly complex investment landscape. Both companies offer an end to end platform tailored to the needs of the market segments each of us focuses on and have been very successful in doing that. However, when viewed across market segments, sizes and industries, including all kinds of asset managers and asset owners, our core strengths are entirely complementary. Enfusion provides a best in class front office solution, while Clearwater's platform excels in middle and back office capabilities. This strategic alignment will enable us to deliver integrated solutions that meet the diverse needs of the investment management industry.

We held a multi day meeting of leaders from both organizations to align on the details of our shared strategy. Working together, we defined our priorities and they include: Number one, accelerate our goal of building a front to back platform for the entire investment lifecycle and thereby obviate the need for having multiple systems that need to be constantly upgraded. That by itself is a game changer. This should also dramatically reduce the need for reconciling data between the front, middle and back office, which has been a long standing problem for our industry, another game changer. Using that same data for risk, compliance and regulatory reporting will alter the efficiency of these enabling functions very meaningfully.

Number two, meaningfully improve a joint right to win in the asset management industry across strategies, sizes and geographies. By combining the IP, engineering and product teams of HayWater, Enfusion and Chubb (NYSE:CB) technology, all under a unified leadership, we expect to build a transformative and comprehensive platform for the largest dam we have. Number three, effectively offer Infusions' investment book of record or an IBOR, portfolio management system and order and execution management system to clear order clients, furthering our one to four bit journey. Number four, refocus and dedicate product, engineering, operations and GTM resources on the hedge fund market to enhance and grow infusion's leadership position is another key priority. Dedicated focus and teams make a big difference, and we believe that this realignment will result in faster growth.

Number five, use infusion's greater presence in Europe and Asia to drive faster adoption of our platform. The international market represents approximately 50% of our TAM and having additional resources across these geographies will help position us better. Number six, improving our gross margin and achieving cost synergies that will create a financially compelling business model. Ultimately though, this acquisition is about growth and industry leadership. We also expect to realize strong synergies and sustained improvement in unit economics.

We are enthusiastic about the opportunity to collaboratively build a best in class platform for the entire investment lifecycle, one that we believe simply does not exist in our industry. Coming out of the leadership meeting, we have initial plans for each of these priorities and expect to hit the ground running when we close in quarter two. So what lies ahead? A comprehensive front to back platform that serves industries of all sizes. That is our promise.

We are scaling with a clear vision, excited about the journey we are on and remain committed to delivering exceptional value to our clients, employees and shareholders. With that, I'll hand the call to Jim to dive deeper into our financial results.

Jim Cox, Chief Financial Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Thanks, Sandeep. I'm proud to report an an outstanding Q4 results, which continued the impressive momentum from the prior three quarters of twenty twenty four. Among our many stellar results, it was most satisfying to report NRR of 116 this quarter, a full year earlier than the goal we stated in our Investor Day back in September 2023. Overall, our key metrics were exceptional across the board in Q4 with multiple record highs. I'd also like to take a quick moment to thank our clients and employees who made this consistent track record of excellence possible.

While investors have come to expect this performance as a routine occurrence, in reality, it's quite an accomplishment and it takes the hard work and relentless dedication of individuals and the alignment of teams to our goals throughout the organization to achieve these stellar results. Again, we achieved full year revenue of $451,800,000 with year over year growth of 22.7%. For additional perspective, revenue also comfortably beat the midpoint of the original guidance we announced back on 02/28/2024, for full year 2024 by $17,800,000 In addition, the year over year growth of 22.7% marked yet another year in which Clearwater grew revenue by more than 20%. In Q4 twenty twenty four, we delivered $126,500,000 in revenue. This translates to an impressive 27.7% year over year revenue growth and beat guidance by $6,300,000 The NAIC made the most significant set of accounting and designation changes in over a decade and those are effective in early twenty twenty five.

Several of our insurance clients were somewhat unprepared and sought our help in ensuring compliance with these new rules. We had planned to do the work in both Q4 twenty twenty four and in Q1 of twenty twenty five, but we were able to utilize some third party resources to assist us to deliver those services more quickly than we had planned. Customers were delighted to get the work completed before the end of the year. There was about $3,000,000 in incremental revenue in the quarter relative to our expectations when we provided our Q4 guidance. The third party expenses associated with that additional work was also booked in Q4.

Because these services are not expected to reoccur, they were not included in the amounts reported for ARR or NRR. Annualized recurring revenue or ARR at the December 2024 was a record $474,900,000 representing a robust year over year increase of 25.3% from the $379,100,000 in the prior year. In addition, as of 12/31/2024, the Clearwater platform processes and reports on $8,800,000,000,000 in assets daily, which represents an increase of $1,500,000,000,000 over the prior year. Additionally, we grew the number of clients with over $1,000,000 in ARR to 100 from the prior year's 86, achieving an impressive triple digits in Clearwater clients with over $1,000,000 in ARR. We expect to further increase these record breaking numbers in the future as we continue to both win new logo clients and also win cross sell initiatives and layer on additional assets with existing clients, as well as cross sell additional products to obtain more of our clients' wallet share, the program we call one-four bps.

Now let's turn to profitability. We've continued our strong margin expansion path by delivering 145,700,000 in EBITDA in the full year 2024 with an impressive year over year growth rate of 37.6% and an EBITDA margin for the full year of 32.2%, comfortably beating our guidance for the full year 2024. In Q4 twenty twenty four, we achieved an EBITDA of $41,700,000 with a record high EBITDA margin of 33%. That beat our guidance for the quarter by $3,200,000 Our strong margin expansion path was also reflected in our gross margin with a record high 78.2% gross margin for the full year 2024 and Q4 twenty twenty four a gross margin of 78.8%. This consistent achievement in margin expansion underscores the continued profitable unit economics, efficacy of our growth initiatives and the strong value add that we provide to our client.

While free cash flow in the quarter was a negative $29,800,000 In December 2024, our unaffiliated shareholders approved the one time payment to terminate the company's tax receivable agreement, which was $72,500,000 plus approximately $6,500,000 in third party expenses. Absent that change, our working capital continues to noticeably improve with our AR Day sales outstanding decreasing to seventy seven days in Q4 from eighty six in Q4 of last year. As a result, we ended Q4 with $285,800,000 in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Current total debt is $45,900,000 and that results in net cash holdings of approximately $240,000,000 As I previously mentioned, we increased our net revenue retention rate to 116% from the prior year's 107%. This really represents a significant achievement, especially ratifying given it occurred twelve months ahead of our original scheduled target date of the end of twenty twenty five.

Achievement of these results starts with our world class and consistent gross revenue retention, which was 98% again in Q4. Upsell of the core platform across clients was very strong at nearly 7%, while new product cross sell was 3% of the growth. This year, we yielded nearly five percent price increases across the portfolio, while AUM expansion provided the remainder of the growth from 98% at gross retention to 116% of net revenue retention. At Clearwater, it is incredibly important to set out and achieve ambitious goals, and so we are very proud to have achieved this goal for the first time. However, the goal was not to achieve NRR115 once, but to achieve it reliably and consistently with the durability our investors expect in all aspects of our business.

And we know there is more work to do to deliver these results consistently. In addition to the terrific revenue and non GAAP results, we achieved GAAP net income and a pretty impressive one at that. We reported $420,300,000 for GAAP net income in Q4. That compares to a GAAP net loss of 3,400,000 in Q4 of twenty twenty three. As much as we appreciate the very large GAAP net income, it was created by the release of the deferred tax valuation allowance in Q4.

We now have an approximately $600,000,000 deferred tax asset on our balance sheet. And as a result, our cash tax payments will be very limited over the next few years. Now let's turn to guidance. For the full year 2025, we expect revenue to be between $535,500,000 to $542,000,000 on a stand alone basis, representing an initial year over year growth rate of approximately 19% to 20%. We currently expect the infusion acquisition to close in the second quarter of twenty twenty five and will update all our full year guidance to reflect the combined company at that time.

For the full year 2025, we expect EBITDA to be $182,000,000 to $185,000,000 representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 34% for the year. For the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect revenue to be $125,000,000 representing a year over year growth rate of approximately 22%, which is a strong start to the year for year over year growth. Please note that approximately $3,000,000 of revenues and associated expense related to the NAIC project expected to be recognized in Q1 of twenty twenty five was recognized in Q4 of twenty twenty four. In terms of adjusted EBITDA guidance, for the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we expect EBITDA to be $41,500,000 representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 33.2% or approximately 200 basis points higher than the prior year Q1. For the year, we currently expect equity based compensation and related payroll taxes to be $106,000,000 basically flat for the third year in a row.

With our continued revenue growth, we expect equity based compensation will now represent less than 20% of revenues for 2025. Depreciation and amortization before considering the impact of the infusion acquisition will be $13,000,000 in 2025. Although we will pay only a limited amount in cash taxes, we will continue to utilize a non GAAP tax rate of 25% for 2025. Lastly, we expect our share count for the year, again, absent the impact of acquisitions to be $263,000,000 shares on a fully diluted basis. With that, I'll turn it over to Sandeep to provide some closing thoughts before questions.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Thank you, Jim. This quarter's stellar performance and record revenue growth bolstered by a 116% NRR reflects a remarkable execution of our strategic initiatives and the trust that our clients place in us. We are not only responding to market needs, but also actively shaping the future of investing with a powerful, scalable platform. I am proud of our team's dedication and our shared commitment to operational excellence, which positions us for sustained revenue growth and value creation for our clients, employees and shareholders alike. With the acquisition of Infusion, we are bringing together two very strong companies and we plan to build a truly transformative platform for the investment management industry.

We look forward to building on this momentum and delivering on our plans in the quarters and years to come. Thank you.

Conference Operator: We will now begin the Q and A session. The first question is from the line of Rishi Jaluria with RBC. Your line is now open.

Rishi Jaluria, Analyst, RBC: Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Nice to see a continued solid execution. I've got two. First, I wanted to start with just kind of the upcoming infusion deal.

I understand obviously you're limited in what you can do. But Sandeep and Jim, as you've been talking to your existing customers and including these impressive new logos that you've been landing, what has been early feedback from those customers around the potential to have the two of you together, the potential to bring some of the front office solutions and retool them and integrate them? Any color you could share there would be helpful. And then I've got a quick follow-up.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. Thank you, Rishi. So the first thing is that people are generally very excited about what we have done. So what are they excited about? We have talked about one to four bips for a long time and our ability to bring a market leader such as infusion into the play is I think very exciting for clients.

So we feel that it does accelerate a one to four bip journey. It's not super easy though. We obviously have integration work to do, but the point here is that from a customer point of view to get both pre trade and post trade from the same vendor is just very, very interesting and exciting.

Rishi Jaluria, Analyst, RBC: Got it. Thanks. That's really helpful. And then maybe I just wanted to think about margins here. You're showing continued nice margin expansion.

I know you've talked in the past about leveraging AI to drive greater efficiency and margin expansion. Maybe two pieces to this. Number one, as we think about the glide path towards a long term margins and we can leave infusion out of the discussion for right now, but if you just think about that, how do you think about maybe the potential headwinds that you may get from Gen AI over time as you incorporate more of the technology and productize it in the set of solutions, especially just given how resource intensive the technology is? And maybe related to that, Sandeep, you made a comment on your prepared remarks about how sometimes you find projects that you deemphasize because they're not demonstrating ROI. Can you give an example of maybe what has been one of those projects historically and how you come to make that decision?

Thank you.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. Thank you. Look, our Q4 margin was 78.8%, right. So that is obviously very close to 79. Our long term target was 80%.

And so we feel we don't find it very challenging to tell you that it's going to be north of 80%. Now is it going to be much higher? I think that is something time will tell. But I do think that the comment about GenAI, we feel it pays back very, very quickly, often within the year. So when it comes to margin expansion, we don't think there's any headwind at all in terms of GenAI sort of lowering the margin profile of the company.

So that's how we think about it. Now, where did we get improvement because of these initiatives and these R and D investments? Everything that was adjacent to Rishi worked well and everything which was sort of two steps removed did not do well. And so at a broad level, that's how we sort of allocated resources in 2025. I want to make one final point is the R and D investments we make in dollar terms continues to grow, but last year we had approximately 60% of those investments focused on roadmap and new product for current clients or clients with just one.

So I do feel we have lots of room to invest in innovation. As long as that is driving growth, we are happy, more than happy to continue to make them. So I do feel our investments are well timed, but this comment about unfunding things that don't work, we're also very, very stringent about that. If some program runs for six to nine months and doesn't get customer traction, that's it. We're going to cut it.

And so we feel that we have a good path right now and a good balance, if you will, between investments and returns from a shareholder point of view, but also from a client point of view.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Brian Schwartz with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Brian Schwartz, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions this afternoon. Congratulations on a real strong finish to the year. Sandeep, I wanted to ask you about the NAIC regs, kind of the effectiveness in that core insurance market.

I'm just wondering if that mandate is still going to be a tailwind for replacement activity or other aspects of the business in 2025 or did that demand boost mostly play out in 2024?

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. Thank you, Brian. Regulatory reporting has always been a bit of a tailwind for us, as has compliance, as has additional assets been brought in because of acquisitions. So we do think of regulatory reporting as a big tailwind and we continue to make investments in that space. I think what Jim was referring to was usually this is pretty broad based.

Every country is doing something, every region is doing something. NAIC made a massive change this year. And so that was that felt a little bit one time ish. And that's why I think Jim called out that there was $3,000,000 of revenue, which we thought would come in Q1, actually came in Q4. And so we felt it was different enough that we wanted to call it out.

But do we expect to continue to see regulatory changes all through 2025 and 2026? Heck, yeah. Absolutely. It doesn't mean there'll be more regulations in every country, but changes are literally done all the time. How do Jim, I think you'd

Speaker, Clearwater Analytics: The only thing I'd add, Brian, is that this tailwind, I think it persists. Right? And here's why it persists. When you were faced if you were a Clearwater client and you were faced with this significant NAIC change, we solved it for you. If you weren't a Clearwater client, you probably had to do a bunch of, you know, I'm not exactly sure what you had to do, but I'm reasonably certain it was gymnastics, and they may still be doing it.

And so I think when you think about being on a modern platform, a single instance multi tenant solution where you can make these changes across, you know, the entire ecosystem of your clients, the benefits of that are are meaningful. Of course, people may switch in order to solve that problem. But I think, as Sandeep mentioned, there's always the next problem. And so understanding the pain of that and then realizing that you don't have to feel that pain as a Clearwater client, we think will continue to be a tailwind into the foreseeable future.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. And Brian, I would just add that if you talked with Clearwater clients and you also talked with other mid sized insurers, I think the Clearwater client would tell you the NAIC change was a non event. It just got done. While the other who are not Clearwater clients would definitely tell you that, oh my lord, there is so much work to be done and I would tell you today, many, many of them have still not completed the NAIC work at all. So I do feel that weighs over time to say, if you were a Clearwater client and you continue to see regulatory changes around the world, it just is a better platform for handling those things.

Brian Schwartz, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Switching gears for my follow-up question, just one on infusion, Sandeep. How fast do you think you can get going on working to achieve the synergies of the deal rationale? The reason I ask is, is there something about the similarities of your two businesses or maybe the familiarity as competitors that could speed up the synergies achievement when the deal closes? Thanks for taking my questions.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes, Brian, I don't know whether I should say this, but starting off, acquisitions always look really good in Excel spreadsheets. It's nice and easy. But I do want to say that we have had really detailed meetings with the infusion leadership. And I'll tell you, the knowledge, the quality of the platform is very, very impressive. I do think that the integration is hopefully easier because we are both cloud native single instance multi tenant platforms.

The technologies we use is very, very similar. So we feel very confident that we can get things done done relatively quickly. I do think we have provided guidance around our growth expectations and around margin expansion and everything we have seen till now just allows us to say that we absolutely believe that those are completely doable. Arunjibaba, you would add anything else?

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Your line is now open.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst, UBS: Thanks so much. And I'll add my congratulations. Jim, I think you talked about kind of the NAIC was about $3,000,000 I think you exceeded Police the Street by $7,000,000 Is there that incremental $4,000,000 anything to call out there that drove incremental $4,000,000 revenue?

Speaker, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. I think we had a nice bookings quarter in the fourth quarter. And I think we've been very pleased with how our bookings are converting into revenue. And we've we've focused on that for a long period of time, to try and get that faster and faster. We started to see that grow.

We also obviously, the NRR 116 is obviously helpful and better than if you recall just last quarter, it's a couple of points better than that. And so going into the quarter, we wouldn't necessarily expect that to improve, but we were hopeful and pleasantly surprised by that as well. I think it was a very solid beat under any circumstance.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. Kevin, I would add that obviously, Jim and I went to the Board and reported results for Q4. And if you think about it, we obviously, but thinking about 114, we got 116 that gives you 2% and that's very real money. And the conversion from booking was very strong. I think the onboarding was very strong.

So literally every element of the business outperformed what our expectation was. So, quite thrilled with what we were able to deliver in Q4.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst, UBS: That's a fantastic outcome. And then Sandeep, I know you talked about the 116 a year early. If you think about what drove that relative to your expectations in terms of the upside? And any thoughts?

Speaker, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. I think the main driver that was obviously, we have teams that are prosecuting against this, but was a very pleasant piece was and I mentioned it in the results is the upsell of the Clearwater platform across the other divisions and the and helping our clients grow was 7%. That would be, you know, helpful and frankly, higher than what we would probably put in our base algorithm for that. We see and and, you know, some of that, like, obviously, that's really hard work, but you're also a little, reliant upon your clients to win that business, to grow, to do those acquisitions and those activities that they do. The other piece that I'm proud of, right, is is the 3% of cross sell.

Right? So that's kind of we talked about the Go initiatives and all of these different initiatives, and we're seeing that back into into our base. I think but the the thing to remember about these new products is we're also selling them, within our new logos as well. And so so don't underestimate the power of these additional products flowing through. I don't have the number in front of me, but I think it was, you know, 28% or something like that of bookings for the year was in these additional products, which is, you know, meaningful when you think about growing 20%, that's a meaningful growth driver for that.

So those those were the pieces that worked well. I'd also say that, you know, I'm very proud of the team that executes price increases. We have normalized price increases across the entire portfolio. We haven't asked for more from clients, but we're asking for it from all of our clients consistently. And we're doing it in an automated and regular way.

And so that is, it feels very sustainable to me.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Michael Infante with Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Your line is now open.

Michael Infante, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question on my results. I just wanted to ask on, Jim, you obviously gave some color on cross sell and price, but at a high level, how early are you just in terms of tapping cross sell and levering price across the base? It seems like the third quarter was really the first quarter where it started to have a noticeable impact on the P and L and we clearly had some nice flow through in the fourth quarter. So just any high level thoughts there would be helpful.

And then I have a quick follow-up.

Speaker, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. I think that when I think of the sustainability of NRR 115, I think we'd like to see that cross sell be higher than 3%. We'd love for upsell to be 7% and cross sell to be 7%. Then everything's easy at that point. But I do think it, the teams have become energized around it.

They understand the value of it and, and obviously seeing the benefits of it. So I think, we're pretty, pretty optimistic about our ability to execute against against those plans going forward.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: As Jim laid out, look, NRR is what does it depend on? It depends on good retention, start from there. And then Jim laid out additional assets, new products, price and some AUM growth, right. And our job I think is to make sure all of them can operate at full potential. Now we don't expect all of them to work every quarter and if all of them work that would be great, we get to a really high number.

But the point here is we want to try and deliver 115 on a consistent and durable way and we're most happy to see additional assets at 7%, eight % and new products at a similar number. That's what we hope to get. I did want to just sort of add one more point. We really thought new products would mostly go towards NRR. And what we have found is a lot of it was used to drive new logos and that's just not what we had expected.

We had thought new products would first go to current clients and then new clients would sort of incorporate them in what they were buying. But we have really seen a pretty strong uptick from their business on from new clients.

Michael Infante, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Very helpful, Sandeep. Just another quick follow-up on infusion. It would be good to get your preliminary thoughts on how you're thinking about the pricing model there and how it may evolve post close. If I think about the hedge fund industry broadly, they have in general priced on seats and we've seen little incremental expansion in hedge fund in the industry over the last couple of years. But I'm curious if you sort of think about some of the early work that you've done and the ACV differential of infusion versus some of the incumbents in the space, whether or not that affords you the opportunity to begin to explore pricing on assets for seats without any meaningful uptick in churn?

Thanks, Dennis.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. Thank you. That's a really good question. I think I'll just start by saying that Infusion delivers an absolutely industry leading platform for the hedge fund industry. It absolutely does that.

Number two is the client servicing and the operations team have really improved I think over the next over the last seven, eight quarters and is very close to being world class. So I think those two things are just happened to be true. I do think the commercial model could use a lot of help. I do think that if you look at Clearwater, we executed on that very swiftly and very, I think, in a very responsible way in 2022. And so in all of our discussions with the infusion leadership, we have discussed how we might think about the commercial model, but I do think it needs to evolve.

Obviously, we want to evolve it in a responsible way, in a thoughtful way such that clients see the value of it. But I do think that the current model just has room to drive NRR. And driving NRR within the infusion client base is sort of a really important objective we have. And so today, I couldn't tell you what exactly we might do at the commercial model, but it will be done obviously in partnership with the infusion leadership, but we do have lots of ideas we have worked on and frankly our NRR of 116 is testament that it works and it works in a sustainable way. So we expect to discuss it and execute on it in the coming quarters.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Alexei Gogolov with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Alexei Gogolov, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hello, everyone. My congratulations with great results. And Jim, I was wondering if you have any thoughts for us in terms of FX headwinds that you are incorporating into your 2025 guidance, what would your growth outlook be in constant currency basis, both on revenue and EBITDA?

Speaker, Clearwater Analytics: Thanks, Alexei. So although 18%, nineteen % of our revenues are international, the vast majority of those revenues are in U. S. Dollar currency. There are some in euros and some in pounds.

How we think about it, Alexei, is looking at the currencies as well as the costs that we align to those. And and so, we create kind of a natural hedge between the revenues of clients in that currency and the expenses within those currencies. So it's de minimis on, as it relates to EBITDA. Okay? How then in addition, I think it's we are not impacted so much by FX on the revenue basis as we think about it because we build monthly.

And so therefore, I think our views on that will change. But obviously, it is a slight headwind as we sit here today, but we would hope that rates would revert more to a mean throughout the year. And so that would ameliorate over the year.

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Anurag, just wanted to add that we now have significant number of employees in India and as you might know even Infusion has a significant workforce presence in India. And if the currency does strengthen as it has, I think that will obviously help the cost base, because we don't have revenue in India in the matching format and what Jim just spoke about and that matching format works for Europe and other locations. But given the significant presence in India, I do expect it to be a mild tailwind.

Alexei Gogolov, Analyst, JPMorgan: Okay. Thank you, Sandeep. Thank you, Jim. And Sandeep, a follow-up for you. You listed the number of new clients in the quarter.

Maybe you can give us a few more use cases on what you do for those clients. I was specifically interested in OpenAI that you included. Can you elaborate what exactly you do for them?

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes. So, the thing about Alexei is we don't do anything different for any of these clients. We do the same data ingestion for them. We do the same data reconciliation. We do the accounting.

We do the reporting. So I wish I could give you some nuggets about what is different for OpenAI or any of these corporate clients. We do exactly the same thing for them. Now how they use it and what they use it for differs. So for example, when you look at asset managers, they use it very heavily for third party client reporting.

Right? People in the insurance industry may use it very much for reporting and regulatory reporting and compliance. Corporates may do it for, corporates like OpenAI may use it for, you know, just consolidating reporting from multiple managers. But the work, Clearwater does and the platform, what it does for them is really not different at all. And so again, there are no nuggets here.

Now over time, Alexei, we do build visualization for other clients. So for example, if we go to the government sector, they see things a little bit differently. So we may build visualization for them about how they like to do reports, how they like to think about returns and how they want to want reports on that. So you may change that. But even there, nothing has changed in how we ingest data, reconcile it, account for it.

We go to other industries in Europe and they may want to see some things that are different. In The U. S, they may want to see NAIC differently, but the platform is already doing all of those calculations. The question is what do clients normally like to see. So yes, nothing different from any of the other listed corporate clients we're doing for OpenAI.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question is from Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Your line is now open.

Brian Schwartz, Analyst, Oppenheimer: Hey, great. Thanks very much. Appreciate you taking the questions. Sandeep, I want to ask the infusion question from a higher level and maybe just listen to you articulate how you ensure you can continue to execute and keep momentum on the core business that we're seeing moving in a good direction while also working to integrate a larger acquisition than you've historically done at the same time? What are the things that you're kind of making sure in place so you can continue to walk and chew gum throughout this?

Sandeep Sahai, Chief Executive Officer, Clearwater Analytics: Yes, this is look, I just wanted to say that this is obviously meaningfully bigger than

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