Good afternoon. My name is Hillary and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Paycom's third quarter 2026 financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star key followed by the number one. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to James Samford, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to Paycom's earnings conference call for the third quarter of 2026. Certain statements made on this call that are not historical facts, including those related to our future plans, objectives, and expected performance, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this conference call. While we believe any forward-looking statements made on this call are reasonable, actual results may differ materially because the statements are based on our current expectations and subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K. You should refer to and consider these factors when relying on such forward-looking information. Any forward-looking statement made speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and we do not undertake and expressly disclaim any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Also during today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net income, and free cash flow. We use these non-GAAP financial measures to review and assess our performance and for planning purposes. A reconciliation schedule showing GAAP versus non-GAAP results is included in the press release that we issued after the close of the market today and is available on our website at investors.paycom.com. I will now turn the call over to Chad Richison, Paycom's founder and CEO. Chad?

Thanks, James, and thank you to everyone joining our call today. I'll briefly comment on current trends and recent achievements. Then I'll pass the call over to our president, Shane Hadlock, before Bob reviews our third quarter results and full year guidance. We will then take questions. Let's get started. Third quarter results continue to demonstrate the strength of our platform coming in ahead of our expectations. Our focus on full solution automation, world-class service, and ROI achievement is resonating in the market. Thanks to our strong performance here today, we are once again raising our full-year outlook for both revenue and profitability. We are seeing greater adoption of automation across our client base as we continue to expand automated decisioning logic and AI capabilities. For any business, AI adoption starts with delivering real value at an affordable cost. Our early investments in data centers, AI technology, and GPUs are paying off for our clients and ourselves. Our clients are not paying for tokens on our system. That creates a powerful economic advantage as we continue to deliver more automation at a lower cost, creating greater value for our clients and stronger returns on Paycom's investments. On the product side, we continue to innovate and drive even more automation. Our clients appreciate the decisioning logic that is built into our platform as it allows them to incorporate their company policies such as PTO, payroll, scheduling, onboarding, and more directly into the system. This allows for accurate and consistent decisions that generate tremendous ROI across an organization. One of the most recent products we launched with built-in decision logic is asset management, and the response to this new tool has been excellent. Through our research, we found that companies are buying assets they already own. We've seen companies hiring 50 new employees and then buying 50 new laptops, phones, tools, badges, software licenses, and other equipment while perfectly good ones sit unused in storage and others remain unreturned by former employees. Our asset management platform helps clients track, recover, and deploy their assets, reducing unnecessary spending and giving them control over what they already own. Demand for automation is accelerating, and Paycom continues to lead the industry with the most intelligent platform for automating decisions across an organization. Our ability to develop, release, Host, Distribute, and Service, our technology gives us a powerful advantage. I'm very excited about our upcoming product pipeline, which will add even more value to businesses across our large and expanding TAM. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Shane Hadlock.

Thanks, Chad. We delivered excellent third quarter results thanks to our dedicated employees and their relentless focus on our client success. Throughout 2026, we released many powerful solutions and client response to these releases has been incredibly positive. Our award-winning AI solution, iWANT, continues to accelerate speed to value for our clients by giving employees, managers, and executives immediate access to critical data. iWANT has been able to cross our client base and has successfully responded to millions of queries. In fact, IWANT usage is up approximately 65% today versus the end of 2025. Our AI is creating meaningful value for our clients and without any incremental cost to them. In fact, Forrester found that organizations in the mid-market using IWANT can achieve greater than 400% ROI and save as many as 3,600 employee hours, 600 manager hours, and 60 executive hours annually. Another example of client ROI achievement is a business that used our product GON to eliminate $360,000 in unmanaged PTO. This company had hundreds of employees across 73 locations in 12 states. Prior to using GON, one-fifth of their PTO was approved manually after the day it had already been taken. and the majority of their employees had negative time off balances. Thanks to GON, the system makes the decisions, which helps eliminate time theft and ensures the workforce is operating at peak efficiency, driving more to the bottom line. That's the power of decisioning logic our clients are realizing. Expanding on Chad's comments, owning and operating our data center infrastructure is a significant competitive advantage. We are one of only a handful of companies in the U.S. to operate a Tier 4 data center. That infrastructure gives us greater control over our technology and the economics behind it, which increases the ROI our clients realize. This also drives operational efficiencies across R&D and service operations to drive even more internal value. Strong usage of our products and investments in customer service are resulting in increasing client satisfaction and are driving higher net promoter scores. This is related to the investments we have been making in automation, product innovation, and our team's ability to deliver world-class service. I am proud of what our teams have achieved this year focusing on strengthening client ROI and expanding the value of our platform. With that, Let me turn the call over to Bob.

Thank you, Shane. Third quarter results came in strong with total revenues of $544 million up 10% over the comparable prior year period and recurring and other revenues of $519 million up 11% year over year. Our continued focus on process automation and on leveraging our own technology is driving increased productivity across the organization, fundamentally strengthening our business. Our efforts over the last several quarters are driving durable revenue growth, sustainable margins and rapid earnings growth. Gap net income in the third quarter was $133 million or $2.99 per diluted share based on an average of 44.5 million shares outstanding. Non-GAAP net income increased 37% year over year in the third quarter to $150 million or $3.37 per diluted share. Diluted non-GAAP EPS increased 74% year over year reflecting strong earnings growth and the benefits of our capital allocation strategy. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter came in very strong at $268 million or 49.3% of revenues driven by expanding gross margin and reductions in operating costs. The investments we made in data centers, AI technology, and product development processes are paying off and driving our expanded adjusted EBITDA margin. Based on the strength of our year-to-date results, we are raising our outlook for full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Turning to capital allocation, we ended the third quarter with approximately 44 million shares outstanding, down nearly 20% from approximately 55 million shares at the end of the third quarter of 2025. During that same time period, we repurchased approximately 11.5 million shares. We bought back $3 million of stock in the third quarter and have $1.65 billion remaining on our buyback authorization as of the end of Q3. During the quarter, we paid down $150 million of our balance on a revolving credit facility. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $194 million and an outstanding balance of $750 million under our revolving credit facility. We generated free cash flow of $536 million in the first nine months of 2026 and continue to expect to deliver very strong full-year free cash flow. We expect even stronger free cash flow in 2027. In the third quarter, we paid approximately $17 million in cash dividends, and on November 2nd, the Board approved our next quarterly dividend of 37.5 cents per share, payable in early December. The average daily balance of funds held for clients was approximately $2.7 billion in the third quarter of 2026, up 7% over the prior year period. Now let me turn to guidance for 2026. Based on the strength of our year to date results, we are increasing our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges. We expect total revenues to be between $2.213 billion and $2.218 billion, or approximately 8% year over year growth. We now expect full year recurring and other revenue to be up nearly 9% year over year. Included in our total revenue outlook is interest on funds held for clients of approximately $107 million. Full year adjusted EBITDA is now expected to be between $1.069 billion and $1.079 billion, representing an industry-leading adjusted EBITDA margin of 48.5% at the midpoint of the range. a full 550 basis points higher than 2025 adjusted EBITDA margin. For modeling purposes, stock-based comp is expected to be approximately 3% of revenues in 2026, and CapEx is expected to be approximately 6% of revenues. We expect 2026 GAAP tax rate to be 29%, and 2026 non-GAAP tax rate to be approximately 27%. We are executing well against our 2026 plan, which is flowing through to the bottom line. Our clients are increasingly pleased with our expanding intelligent platform and the value they are achieving. We'd like to thank our employees for their contributions to today's results. With that, let's open the line for questions. Operator?

Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. In the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We'll pause just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Remo Lencho from Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Perfect. Thank you. Congrats. I have two questions. Chad, one for you. If you think about you guys doing more automation that's getting broader than like the core HR payroll platform, etc. How do you think about the monetization strategy for you? In terms of making sure, you know, you're obviously delivering value to clients because they like it and seem to adopting it, but also making sure that you guys are participating in the value created there. And then the follow up is on the margin side, obviously very, very strong margins this quarter. How do you think about the leverage from here going forward? Thank you.

Yeah, I'll let Bob take the second part of that. I'll take the first. We create solutions for clients, and sometimes we participate that through products that we release that are billable items, such as asset management being one of the latest products that we've actually brought to market. We've got 300 or so or more clients on it. We do continue to, and it just came out last quarter. We do continue to provide that value. We've been working a lot on products. AI has had a massive impact on our business, especially our ability to create solutions for our clients. We released IWANT to all of our clients last fall. In the last year, we've released more solutions than any previous 12-month period. We have enough product and testing right now that are already in use by select clients to have confidence that 2027 won't be any different.

and rhyme along the margins. You know, we believe that they are sustainable. We continue to find efficiencies in our business and the way that we process and use automation ourselves. We are our biggest user of our products, so we get the same ROI that our clients are getting. So we feel comfortable about that.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Markin from Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Let me add my congratulations. I mean, the quarterly performance was really strong, particularly in terms of recurring revenue growth and in terms of going out to various, you know, HR and IT conferences. It seems like you're getting a lot of traction. I'm wondering just a little bit about the guide as it relates to for the full year. It seems to imply a bit of a deceleration. and so I'm wondering if you can explain that given that it seems like the momentum is really quite strong. And then the second question is, Chad, you mentioned you're going to have a big release and you've got an upcoming product pipeline. I'm wondering when that will be and to what extent will we see even greater AI capabilities because I want great about summarizing the existing data, but like actually doing the kind of what if I'm wondering if that's going to be part of the plan. Thank you.

Mark, we're pleased with our guidance for the whole year. You know, we put our plan in place at the beginning of the year. We were fortunate enough to exceed that plan and raise our guide twice during the year. And as you know, the quarterly there can be all kinds of fluctuations and We're pleased with where we sit right now.

To kind of follow up on that, we're creating solutions with greater velocity and quality. We've expanded our decision logic throughout our system. Now we can decision your expenses, time cards, time off requests, assets, and a lot more. I see 2027 as being transformational for us as far as the technologies that we have in the hopper right now. and again once those are ready and you know I do believe that we have a strong trusted brand to be able to go out and provide a lot of these technologies and you know we've got several of them in testing and so you know we'll release them over the next year and I think 2027 will hold a different transformational time period for us.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Enders from Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking the questions here. Maybe just to start, it would be great to kind of get your view on how bookings or new bookings and sales executions this quarter and You know, maybe how you're kind of seeing the environment today and how that compares to some of the prior, some of the past few quarters.

Sure. So we have a lot of new salespeople. You know, we revamped the group as we shifted our entire organization toward automation. We want to make sure the clients are also utilizing the automation and the products that we have. And so, you know, we've had some new sales reps. I can tell you that the sales group that we have right now, the new people are doing better than any groups done in the past. They are doing very well and sales overall is hitting the mark that we needed them to hit for this year. You know, we're excited about all the opportunities next year and the discussions we're having as more and more prospects kind of get to the table on being willing to automate more and more of their decisions.

Okay, great. Great to hear. And then maybe just to follow up on some of the free cash flow commentary. I guess in the last quarter, you kind of gave a framework for how to think about where free cash flow could be for this year. I just want to see if there's any update on that. And I guess, you know, dovetailing off of that, when you're talking about expecting free cash flow to be kind of stronger next year, any way to maybe kind of, you know, directionally kind of put us in the right place for how to think about what that could look like from either a margin perspective or factors that could impact incremental dollars for next year.

Steve, we made that one-time comment. We feel comfortable with that comment on where we were. The comment about next year being stronger is the comment more about its sustainable and durable free cash flow that this business generates.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Cialino from KeyBank Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. I wanted to ask about CapEx. So I think the 6% of CapEx of revenue for the full year, kind of unchanged from last quarter. It looks like you're kind of running you know, 20-ish million capex for the last two quarters. So it would kind of imply like a little bit of a step up in Q4. Maybe can you just speak to what some of your priorities would be for Q4 kind of implied in that framework, Bob?

Yeah, so the 6%, again, we want to be flexible there so that we can do what's right for our clients when we think about how we're going to provide the ROI. So there's nothing really it's not important to point out there yet, but we did want to have that flexibility.

Okay. And then, Chad, you know, it's not lost on me that your R&D in Q3 is down, you know, obviously, sequentially and year over year, so you are seemingly getting a lot of efficiency from, you know, AI and AI coding. And I hear you on the product hopper, you know, for next year. and the paid SKUs that you've launched this year. But maybe can you elaborate a little bit more on what gives you the confidence that, you know, you're spending enough on R&D? I know it's a silly question given kind of the amount of leverage you're seeing, but it's in this forum, you know, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

Well, it's the result. It's the result that the R&D that we're spending is delivering right now. You know, I would say both within our, and many more. We have a lot of quality right now. That's what we focused on, not necessarily the spend. That's not to say that if we needed to spend more that we wouldn't. It's just that's where we're at right now, and we feel really good with the result that our R&D spend is delivering.

Your next question comes from the line of Jacob Smith from Guggenheim. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Chad, you've always emphasized the benefits of owning your own data centers from reliability to cost efficiency. But I think the security benefits of controlling your own technology stack are especially relevant right now. The growing concern about cyber risk as AI models become more capable. Are customers and prospects placing more value on that control? And is that becoming a bigger selling point against competitors that rely on third party infrastructure and integration?

I'll let Shane take that one. He's been instrumental in this process for a long time.

Yeah, absolutely. Security is top of mind for everyone, and them knowing exactly where their data resides is a big positive. They don't have to guess. They know exactly where it resides and feel confident in our ability to do that. It's something we've done since the inception of FACOM, and we're very confident in that.

and as a follow-up there, you mentioned last quarter that customers can increasingly buy additional products directly within the Paycom platform. How meaningful is that self-service motion becoming to bookings and do you expect that to increase going forward?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's becoming more and more meaningful as we continue to release products and things that someone can buy through apps. I will say that you know in the perfect world you have a person influencing the purchasing decision there and so many of our products it's really important that we continue to do that you know to obviously hit volume that we want to hit but as well as just to make sure that clients are utilizing the product the right way to get that ROI. Some things we sell are you know they don't require a large amount of influence they're somewhat necessary for a client, or an additional add-on to something that they already have and they just need more of. I don't want to go through all of our in-app type opportunities there, but I would say that that's an amount that continues to grow, but is still quite small compared to the opportunities that our CRRs have as they go out to our current clients.

The next question comes from the line of Patrick O'Neill from Wolf Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. As you all continue to roll out more functionality as a platform that helps customers drive more automation efficiencies in their business, are you seeing or maybe anticipating to see the opportunity to essentially capture some of the labor pool spending that customers might be saving as a result? And how do you think about that opportunity long term?

You know, again, I really think this, it really just depends on the ROI delivered. We are looking to expand into other ROI cases that drive significant value for our clients' bottom line. And, you know, we would hope to share in some of that. And and that's been our focus and I think we've done a really good job this year of doing that making sure that you know a client value achievements made you know that was one of our our core goals coming into this year we've been working on that now for a couple of years to make sure clients get the full value of what they purchased and you know there's a lot of things we've been able to to develop that makes it easier for a client to get that value you know one thing was was I want but We've developed a lot and automated a lot of workflows within our system that really help limit profit gaps that a business would otherwise have without. And so we continue to focus on that and we see more of that going forward. And yes, I absolutely do believe in the future, as we've seen currently with asset management and others, that there will be opportunities in the future.

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Jester from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. So I got to see the asset management tool firsthand recently, and that was nice to see. Maybe can you help us understand sort of the ramp of either attach rates since you've launched that or How would that compare to some of the other products you've launched recently? And are there any learnings you'd share with us about how to sell a product like that compared to the core HR?

Sure. Well, part of this product sale is, you know, kind of created within its development. You know, we really go to, we really try to create products that will drive immediate ROI for clients. For instance, our research told us that clients were buying assets that they had already owned. They just didn't know where they were. They didn't know what rooms they were in. They didn't know what employees they had handed them out to. And with our system and through automated decisioning, we're able to track all those. We're able to sign all assets that someone has. We're able to find where the other assets are. You're able to track assets, whether they've been handed to an employee or whether they're just sitting in a building in Toledo. you know we're able to track all of those assets and that's a that's a pretty important part of all business to be able to know where their assets are and so especially the ones that also get deployed to employees you want to make sure you get those back and so this has been a really good product for us it does fit in with the other things that that we're selling and and CRRs have had a hard push on that I would say for about the last month and in a concerted effort to make sure that all of our clients understand the value that can be delivered. with this product.

Okay, that's great. And then for my follow-up, so, I mean, clearly the profitability of the business has improved significantly. Maybe, Chad, you can, you know, in the past you've shared that, you know, you've got 5% of the TAM, so there's still a lot of the market to go after. So, what's your latest thinking about balancing productivity and growth and As we think about 2027, any change in sort of how you would expect to invest in sales and go to market to capture more of the TAM? Thank you.

Sales and marketing is a large focus for us. It's been a large focus for us this year. And as we look into next year, you know, I would say our focus is going to be significant there. We have, like I said, we have an ambitious pipeline of products. Some of these products will require a different type of sales group to do that. And so you will see both sales and marketing with a strong focus next year. And again, technology, service, hosting, and all the other things that we do.

Your next question comes from the line of Jared Levine from TD Cohen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. To start, I wanted to talk about your international efforts here. It does look like you are hiring some sales folks in Europe here. Can you give us an update in terms of where you are in terms of international expansion efforts and I guess what the plan is here over the near term?

Yeah, this is Shane and I'll take that one. You know, international is an integral part of what we have been doing and continue to do. Yes, we are expanding that. You know, we're seeing many new adoptions For instance, we just brought on a large enterprise client in Mexico, and that has been going very well, and it's a strategic direction for us going forward.

And then for my follow-up here, I think some were expecting a little bit more of a recurring acceleration 3Q here, just given the extra Wednesday dynamics. anything to call out in terms of deferral of revenue or other kind of one-time impacts that might have impacted the level of growth here in 3Q?

Yeah, Jared, nothing particular to call out other than the calendar kind of anomalies that y'all know so well. And last year was a good quarter, so it was a little bit more of a tougher comp going forward.

OK, thank you. Your next question. Pardon me. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Bhavin Shah from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Chad, you spoke a little bit about the service organizations you're seeing. Where are you kind of seeing that most play out? How sustainable are these kind of given some thoughts you've had in the past of making sure you have enough investments going to the service organizations?

Yeah, I don't know that you kind of broke up there at the end, but you were talking about our service organization and how we're gaining the efficiencies there and how we see this playing out in the future, I believe, is what you're saying. Just greater efficiency. I mean, you know, when we make a product more automated, that gets a client out of it more. You know, I think if you guys kind of listened to some of my calls in the past, I said in the perfect world, our product would just work for you and you'd never have to log in. and so when you automate a lot of these very important workflows you know you're able to actually achieve a lot of that and so that does you know when you make something easier to use and easier for someone to get the result you know you do supply less service when you set somebody up correct from the beginning with that automation you are going to be able to provide less service you know receiving a service call on how to do something that's really an old model and you know when you're using self-service technologies and especially in our case automated technologies with layers of AI you know you would expect to make that easier to service and that's been the case and actually what it allows our service individuals to do is shift toward a more value of that client we're able to do more analysis of how they're using the system and what areas of the system that You know, we could impact for them for even greater ROI. And so I guess to answer that, it turns into more outbound calls for us in proactive service based on analysis versus inbound calls of waiting for a client to call us, you know, to be able to ask a question about how to use something.

That's helpful. And just a quick follow-up for Craig, just based on the last question, as you kind of hire dedicated clients, a sales team in Europe. How do we think about the level of investment going into this initiative? And how do we think about CapEx, especially as it relates to data centers and data sovereignty?

Yeah, so this is Bob. I'll answer that question. You know, as anything, we look at the investment and what it's going to pay off over the long term. You know, we do play the long game and we're in it for that. So as you see, while we're expanding those offices, that we're having some success over there. The data center investment question, I think you asked about how do we see that. We see that as a critical value for our clients and for Paycom itself, and we'll continue to monitor those investments. Last year, as you all know, we made a big investment in that. We're not afraid to do that again if it makes sense for our clients.

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick McKilvey from William Blair. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just a two-parter here. So to continue on the comments you were just making on the data center investments. So last quarter, you highlighted some big numbers, you know, $100 million in R&D savings and take another 30 and avoided third-party fees from some of the infrastructure investments you made last year. Just wanted to ask how much of that leverage or opportunity do you feel like you've already realized versus what incremental efficiencies we might expect heading into 27?

I think there's a lot more internal efficiencies to be gained. I think we're just kind of scratched the surface. You know, we didn't set up these data centers for GPUs and AI. We've set up our data centers for security, uptime, speed, and all the things that we had been doing prior to, you know, having the chance to purchase the GPUs and going ahead and hosting that. But it's just something we've done for a long time and we're good at. you know to Bob's last comments that we're not afraid to continue to spend in data center we will continue to spend in data center but it will also be more incremental uh you know over time uh kind of how we go through that process and so uh we feel good about where we're at with our capex spend and and guide right now and then you know as we look into 2027 Bob's already given kind of a directional comment in regards to free cash flow and so that might let you know that where we sit, where we feel like we sit from capacity perspective in those areas.

Okay. That's great. Thank you. And switching gears, on Project Arc, just following the rollout of that, that functionality, that enhanced scalability, have you seen any meaningful change in your win rates thus far or sales cycles thus far? I know it's early, but just wanted to ask if you feel like that enhanced and so forth. I think that this platform has opened up any opportunities that you previously felt might have been difficult to pursue.

Yes, I think, well, both Project Arc as well as a lot of the products that came out around the same time, you know, during that time we also produced a greater data lake. We produced a lot of automation. I mean, I can't speak enough about we didn't really release it to the market from a conversational perspective, but we did to our clients. You know, now clients are, they have automated punch changes, time card approvals, expenses. If someone goes into expense to actually expense something, the system can decision it. And so we've been able to remove inconsistent decisioning in many of the areas that produce, you know, profit leaks, revenue, reduces revenue opportunities for our clients. will continue to focus on that as we move forward. And definitely Project Arc kind of built a foundation through which all that can be realized.

Yeah, I'd say in addition to that, you know, we talked about the speed and that really played out for more enterprise clients where we had one that saw kind of a 4X increase in performance. And so that was a big enhancement, you know, across the board.

This concludes the question and answer portion of today's call. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Chad Richison for closing remarks.

All right. I just want to thank everyone for joining the call today. We look forward to speaking with many of you at the UBS conference on December 1st in Phoenix and the Barclays conference in San Francisco on December 9th. Our people have done a great job transforming our products and processes toward automation. I want to thank our software teams, Our sales and conversion teams, our service organization, really everyone. 2026 has been a year of pride as we get back to our old selves and prepare for an exciting future. With that, operator, you may end the call.

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