SS&C Technologies Hldgs Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

SS&C Technologies Hldgs (NASDAQ:SSNC) held its second-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.

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Summary

SS&C Technologies Hldgs reported record Q2 2026 results with adjusted revenue of $1.696 billion, up 10.3%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.76, an 18% increase.

The company returned $499 million to shareholders, primarily through share repurchases, and reduced diluted shares outstanding by 4% year over year.

Recent acquisitions, CURO and Calastone, are performing ahead of expectations, contributing to growth, particularly in EMEA and tokenized investment products.

The Medicare GLP-1 bridge program launched in July with nearly 3 million claims processed, demonstrating SS&C Technologies Hldgs' platform scalability and reliability.

AI integration across operations and products, including the launch of the WORKHQ platform, is driving growth and margin expansion.

The company expects Q3 2026 revenue between $1.657 and $1.697 billion and maintains a focus on AI-driven efficiency and strategic investments.

SS&C Technologies Hldgs is exploring refinancing opportunities for bonds maturing in 2027 to optimize its capital structure.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day and welcome to the SS&C Technologies Hldgs second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Justine Stone, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Justine Stone, Head of Investor Relations

Hi everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining us for our Q2 2026 earnings call. I'm Justine Stone, Investor Relations for SS&C Technologies Hldgs. 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'll need to review the Safe Harbor Statement. Please note that 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 Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC and can also be accessed on our website. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations only as of today, July 23, 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 will 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, CEO

Thanks, Justine, and welcome everyone. Q2 was record setting for SS&C Technologies Hldgs. Our strong quarter resulted in setting quarterly records for second quarter in revenue, adjusted EBITDA, earnings per share and shares repurchased. We continue to demonstrate success in an uncertain backdrop, underscoring the resilience of our diversified business model and the value clients place on our technology, expertise and innovation. Our second quarter results were adjusted revenue of $1,696.9, up 10.3%, and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.76, an 18% increase.

We delivered adjusted consolidated EBITDA of $670.7 million, up 12% or over $70 million, and an adjusted consolidated EBITDA margin of 39.5%. The dollar figures are all records. Adjusted organic revenue growth was 7.6%, with performance driven by our largest businesses, new business wins, strengthened multi-year renewals and market and transaction tailwinds. For the six months ended June 30, 2026, cash from operating activities was $716 million, up 11% year over year.

This quarter we returned $499 million to shareholders, which includes 6.4 million shares repurchased for $435.2 million, the highest quarterly buyback in our history. Primarily as a result of our repurchase program, diluted shares outstanding are down 4% over the last year. Share repurchases remain our top capital allocation priority as we are projected to earn $7.29 in operating cash per share for the year. We have lots of flexibility. The acquisitions we completed at the end of 2025 are both tracking ahead of expectation.

CURO has given us additional exposure in EMEA and revenues are growing nicely. Calastone continues to perform ahead of expectations as well. We expect 2026 growth to be in the mid-teens and we have added 431 clients to the network. Also, through Calastone we are investing in solutions to support the future of our clients including digital investment markets. As interest in tokenized investment products continues to grow, our clients and prospects are looking forward towards the infrastructure needed to support digital transactions.

Combining our servicing capabilities with Calastone technologies already supports the issuance and distribution of tokenized funds. Our innovation roadmap now extends to the next stage of the digital investment life cycle. The new capabilities will enable digital investment transactions to settle using regulated forms of digital cash, including stablecoins and tokenized commercial bank deposits. This will help reduce settlement risk, improve operational efficiency and simplify cross-border investment transactions.

We look forward to capturing more market share. The highly anticipated Medicare GLP-1 bridge program launched on July 1. Since launch, nearly 3 million claims have been processed using SS&C Technologies Hldgs' DomaniRx platform to support our client Humana. We believe this demonstrates our technology scale, reliability and flexibility and underscores the critical role DomaniRx plays in enabling innovative healthcare programs. We're proud to expand access to these important therapies for millions of Americans.

I'll now turn the call over to Rahul to discuss the quarter in more detail.

Rahul Kanwar, President and COO

Thanks, Bill. Our second quarter results came in ahead of expectations, with strong sales and renewal performance and continued margin expansion. We are on track to meet our margin objectives for the year. These results demonstrate the strength of SS&C Technologies Hldgs' customer relationships and the criticality of our products and services. Outsourcing, co-sourcing and lift-outs combined with industry-leading technology continue to enhance our revenue growth.

Rapid technological innovation is pushing customers towards SS&C Technologies Hldgs as they look for a partner to help them take advantage of the latest technologies. Our front, middle and back-office technology business, including Geneva, delivered a strong quarter. We are seeing momentum in multi-year technology license renewals across our client base, reflecting the confidence clients have in our platforms and long-term roadmap. Several of our largest pipeline opportunities are anchored by tech.

Our global footprint remains a competitive advantage with offerings spanning markets and asset classes worldwide, and we are seeing robust demand and healthy pipelines internationally as well as here in North America. We're deploying AI across our products and operations and it is one of the drivers of the growth and margin expansion you see in these results. Our approach is governance-first and proven internally before it reaches customers. In one example we announced this morning, a global leader in risk, reinsurance and capital chose our WORKHQ platform to scale agentic automation across its business.

This is one example of a trend we are seeing: established enterprises choosing SS&C Technologies Hldgs to move their automation efforts to AgentIQ AI. With that, I'll turn it over to Brian to walk through the financials.

Brian Schell, EVP, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Rahul, and good day everyone. Unless noted otherwise, the quarterly comparisons are to Q2 2025. As disclosed in our press release, our Q2 2026 GAAP results reflect revenues of $1.696 billion, net income of $235 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.97. As Bill noted at the beginning of our call, our adjusted non-GAAP results set several records for SS&C Technologies Hldgs, including revenues of $1.697 billion, an increase of 10.3%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.76, an 18.1% increase.

The adjusted revenue increase of $159 million was primarily driven by incremental revenue contributions from organic growth of $118 million, acquisitions of $36 million and a favorable impact from foreign exchange of approximately $5 million. As a result, adjusted organic revenue growth on a constant currency basis was 7.6%, and our core expenses increased 6.1%, or $58 million, which also excludes acquisitions and impact of FX. Adjusted consolidated EBITDA, also a record, was $671 million, reflecting an increase of $70 million, or 11.7%, and a margin of 39.5%, a 50 basis point expansion.

Net interest expense for the second quarter was $107 million, an increase of a million dollars year over year. Record adjusted net income was $426 million, up 13.3%, and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.76 was up 18.1%. Our effective non-GAAP tax rate was 22.5% this quarter. Note for comparison purposes, we have recast the 2025 adjusted net income to reflect the full-year effective tax rate of 22%. Also note the diluted share count is down to 242 million from 252.2 million year over year, primarily due to the size and continued impact of share repurchases and, to a lesser extent, lower diluted shares.

Cash flow from operating activities grew 11.1%, driven by growth in earnings. SS&C Technologies Hldgs ended the second quarter with $435 million in cash and cash equivalents and $7.6 billion in gross debt. SS&C Technologies Hldgs' net debt was $7.2 billion, and our last 12 months consolidated EBITDA was $2.6 billion. Resulting net leverage ratio is 2.75 times. In addition, we are actively exploring refinancing opportunities for our bonds maturing in 2027 to further optimize our capital structure.

As we look forward to the third quarter and the full year 2026, with respect to guidance, we will continue to focus on client service and expect that retention rates will be in the range of our most recent results. We will continue to manage our business, support our long-term growth and manage our expenses by controlling and aligning variable expenses, increasing productivity and leveraging technology and AI tools to improve our operating margins, and strategically investing in the business, especially with respect to R&D, sales and marketing.

Specifically, we have assumed short-term interest rates 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 a stronger weighting to share repurchases versus debt reductions. For 3Q26 we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.657 to $1.697 billion and 5% organic revenue growth at the midpoint, adjusted net income in the range of $413 to $429 million, interest expense excluding amortization of deferred financing costs and the original issue discount in the range of $103 to $105 million, and adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $1.73 to $1.79.

For the full year 2026, we increased our expectations to revenue to be in the range of $6.672 to $6.832 billion and 5.5% organic revenue growth at the midpoint, targeted EBITDA growth of 9.3%, EBITDA margin expansion of 50 basis points with a goal of a 40% margin in Q4, cash from operating activities in the range of $1.7 to $1.817 billion, adjusted net income in the range of $1.67 to $1.77 billion, and adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $6.93 to $7.25, reflecting approximately 15.5% growth at the midpoint.

And now back to Bill.

Bill Stone, CEO

Thanks, Brian. We believe our results speak to the strength of our business and consistency of our execution. Our clients continue to invest in SS&C Technologies Hldgs and expand their relationships with us. We remain disciplined in how we operate, invest and allocate capital in ways that create long-term shareholder value. In September, we look forward to welcoming our clients at our Deliver Conference in Orlando, Florida. We have a lot of great sessions, demos and speakers lined up, and in partnership with Nasdaq, we will be hosting a remote opening bell ringing during our time there.

With that, I will now open it up to questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star 11 again. Due to time restraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. You may then return to the queue. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question will come from the line of Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

UNKNOWN Analyst

Thanks. Good evening everyone and fantastic quarter. So the organic growth, it was a couple hundred basis points above guidance. I would just love to get a little bit more color in terms of the context around that. It sounds like there were some big license renewals in the quarter. I'm wondering, oftentimes though, you talk about you'll sell whatever you need, right? So it's a license quarter or it's a big recurring. You just want to make the sale.

So I'm wondering how these deals are kind of flowing right now because it feels like there's a pretty big tilt towards maybe some of these license renewals.

Brian Schell, EVP, Chief Financial Officer

Well, when we get those license renewals, when the contract runs out, right? So if we have a seven-year contract and it runs out, generally when they renew, they want to renew for another seven years. So then, you know, obviously with the accounting pronouncements of ASC 606, that creates somewhat of a rush on revenue. So it depends when these things hit. I think one hit in June this year. And so, you know, I just think that, you know, that's a little bit of the lumpiness of the business.

But, you know, as we get larger, we have more and more of these big clients with big renewals. And so in some ways it kind of smooths out. But we did have a couple of big renewals in Q2 and that's why organic revenue was up a couple hundred extra basis points.

UNKNOWN Analyst

Got it. And then just a quick follow up. Also, I guess in the context of organic growth, you mentioned kind of market and maybe some transactional activity, but I'm really thinking more market and maybe it probably falls heavy in the GlobeOp, I think. But can you just remind us, like, market volatility, directional moves in the market, strength or otherwise, and how much that can play into any one given quarter? Obviously you don't predict that into your guidance, but just trying to understand directionally how that might have impacted your organic growth as well.

Thank you.

Rahul Kanwar, President and COO

Yeah. So we produce our capital movements index and our performance index for our hedge fund business every month. And this past month the redemption index was at 135, which is about the lowest we've had in the history of having this thing. And we've done it since I think 2009. So I think that's indicative of how strong that hedge fund business is and the strength of that, you know, kind of asset manager type. You know, they have a lot of flexibility, they're very good risk managers and they have the full range of product capabilities.

You know, if you look at our assets under administration in our fund administration business over the last two years, it's up $581 billion. I think that's pretty indicative of the strength that we have in that space.

UNKNOWN Analyst

Excellent. Thank you.

OPERATOR

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Jeff Schmidt with William Blair. Your line is open.

Jeff Schmidt, Analyst at William Blair

Hi. Thank you. Another question on GlobeOp. Are you seeing demand for outsourcing just kind of pick up in general? Just as AI raises the need for companies to modernize? So, you know, they're turning to third party vendors just to do that more easily.

Bill Stone, CEO

I do think that that's a big part of what's happening. You know, at a baseline we've got strong demand just because, you know, we're tech forward and we're the biggest player in this business and we have a lot of referenceability. But then the other category kind of thing that's happening is customers are looking around and they want to take advantage of AI, they want to take advantage of some of the agentic capabilities we have. And rather than try to put that all internally and build it from scratch, the fact that we can deploy it in a very scalable way has been positive for us.

Jeff Schmidt, Analyst at William Blair

Okay, great. And then a question on GIDS. What's the underlying growth there when you exclude the recent lift outs like Insignia? And how does your pipeline for additional lift outs look? I mean, those seem to be pretty accretive transactions, I would think.

Bill Stone, CEO

Well, certainly ultimately they are very accretive. At the same time it's competitive. We have to win and we have to deliver a great service, which we have been doing. But hey, these are large, sophisticated organizations that require a lot of attention and we give it that attention. So I think we have a great pipeline in our Global Investor and Distribution Solutions business and I think that will continue. You know, once again, you know, I think one of our prospects is, well, you know, you guys have 65% market share.

I'm pretty certain you can probably handle less. And I think that again, that goes to the strength and size of our business in that we win mandates from Australia and we win mandates in Europe and we win mandates in North America. I just think we have a very powerful business model.

Jeff Schmidt, Analyst at William Blair

What's that underlying growth? I guess if you just back out Insignia,

Bill Stone, CEO

It's still in excess of five.

Jeff Schmidt, Analyst at William Blair

Okay, great, thank you.

OPERATOR

A moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Your line is open.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst at UBS

Congratulations again. Just really, really strong results and feels like a little bit of a choppy environment. Bill, I think you'd mentioned the claims launch. Any way to think about what that contributed in the quarter and how that scales over the course of '26?

Bill Stone, CEO

Yeah, we get in excess of double of the 20 cents. But, you know, I think this is a trial program of the government. But it so far has been very popular and we'll see. It's a six-month program, Kevin. So, you know, knock on wood, it's the government. So, you know, will they stick with a very successful program? That's probably 50/50. But we do believe that there's a lot of great collaboration between us and Humana and the CMS that manages Medicare and Medicaid.

So we're optimistic. And again, it's a reason why we're in health care. When it comes, it'll come in large waves. And, you know, if we can deliver a great service and the government likes what we do, seems to me they spend a lot of money. We just want our fair share,

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst at UBS

No doubt. And then you talked a little bit about AI governance in terms of starting to see it in the organization. Is that still through Blue Prism, or are you starting to see other avenues? And any way to think about, you know, from a margin perspective, philosophically, how much will go to reinvestment versus just margin growth overall, things like that?

Bill Stone, CEO

Well, again, Kevin, we made the upfront investment, right? We bought Blue Prism that had AI and had ML and had RPA and had natural language processing. So, I mean, we made the investment, spent a billion six. Same thing as you read about tokenization and about some other fintech companies that are getting into tokenization. Well, we spent a billion dollars and we bought Calastone, and we didn't buy Calastone so that we could be an also-ran. We bought Calastone so we can be a leader in technologies that our customers want.

And I think that's been our attitude the whole time, is that, look, we don't want to dabble. We don't want to have three licenses of Automation Anywhere or UiPath or whatever it is, you know. So it is something where, you know, we got 1,400 people when we got Blue Prism and we got another 250 and probably added another 25 with Calastone. So we're optimistic about where we're putting our investments, how we're using it, why we, you know, we focus on governance and protection for our customers because they're in highly regulated businesses and, you know, black eyes in highly regulated businesses are not good.

Kevin McVeigh, Analyst at UBS

Super helpful, thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Alexei Gogolev with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Bella Kamajan, Analyst at JPMorgan

Hi, this is Bella Kamajan for Alexei. Thanks for taking the question and congrats on the quarter. So given the organic growth performing so positively this quarter, especially the call out from those large license renewals, how should we think about 3Q organic growth implying a step down? Is that mainly renewal timing rolling off and potentially, are there any other similarly sized renewals in the second half that could be potentially offering some upside?

Bill Stone, CEO

Our pipeline is full of opportunities. There are some renewals coming up as well. So we have opportunities to outperform. You know, we're being, you know, our consistent self of, you know, great revenue growth, great earnings, and not getting ahead of our skis. So that's the same thing we're going to do for Q3 and Q4, but we're not going to, we're not going to, you know, pre-beat the drum. We'll let the drum beat itself.

Bella Kamajan, Analyst at JPMorgan

Got it. That makes sense. And just a quick follow up. So looking at your capitalized software spend, where would you say that investment is mostly concentrated today? Is that mainly a function of the recent WorkHQ launch, implementation, tooling or perhaps other platforms? And should we expect that level to persist into, you know, second half of this year, into 2027?

Bill Stone, CEO

You know, we brought out a number of new systems. We brought out Genesis in asset management. You know, we have a new release of Eclipse, we brought out, we're bringing out a new release of DVC, we're bringing out, you know, we brought out DomaniRx and we're bringing out a new release of our medical claims. We brought out, like you said, WorkHQ and our AI guardrails product that we have brought out as well. And I think there's a number of other initiatives that we're doing, building out our private cloud and making sure that our cybersecurity is very redundant.

So I think we're going to have similar capitalized software and investment in R&D. But at the same time, I think we're going to have some, you know, very, very material ways to improve our margins through, you know, adaptation of AI agents and other technologies that are available today.

Bella Kamajan, Analyst at JPMorgan

Got it. That's very helpful. Thank you again.

OPERATOR

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Pete Heckman with DA Davidson. Your line is open.

Pete Heckman, Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Hey, good afternoon. Most of my questions have been answered. I was just curious. On the Intralinks side, Virtual Data Room saw a nice sequential increase in organic growth, but it was on a relatively easy comparison, I guess. How much do you attribute that to an uptick in larger M&A or other success and getting new clients versus just benefiting from what appeared to be the easiest comparison of the year for that business.

Rahul Kanwar, President and COO

We're having some success in terms of, so the metrics we track, whether that's the opportunities that we have in our pipeline or those opportunities getting converted into bookings and then eventually those bookings getting converted into revenue. All of those things are positive. So, you know, the comps only work if you can improve on the comps, right? And so that's, I think that's what we are doing. We are seeing the business strengthening and we expect that to continue through the remainder of the year.

Pete Heckman, Analyst at D.A. Davidson

That's great. So would you attribute it, like, in terms of areas that you've been winning a bit? I think you mentioned private assets, private equity. Any other areas that have been seeing some adoption in the virtual data room area?

Rahul Kanwar, President and COO

Yeah, it's a little bit of, you know, so there's two components to that, two big components to that Intralinks business, right? It's the virtual data rooms and we've been having success and that's a little more linked to the M&A markets. But then there's the alternatives, LP communication part of that business. And that's been growing steadily throughout.

Pete Heckman, Analyst at D.A. Davidson

Okay, that's helpful. I appreciate it.

OPERATOR

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 11. Our next question will come from the line of James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Michael Infante, Analyst at Morgan Stanley (on for James Fawcett)

Hi guys, it's Michael Infante on for James. Thanks for taking our question. Just one from us. Just on the larger renewals that you guys are having and the sort of second half slate of renewals that are coming, like how is AI factoring into these conversations? Do you view the agentic monetization and the work HQ opportunity as really like a call option in the future from a monetization perspective? Are you seeing customers, you know, sort of use AI as a mechanism to push back on your own price realization? Doesn't sound like that's the case, but just wanted to ask there. Thanks guys.

Bill Stone, CEO

Well, as you know at Morgan Stanley and other organizations of your size and complexity, you know, you're constantly looking at upgrading your infrastructure. And you know, we are proud to have Morgan Stanley as a client. And you know, the AI is something that's on everyone's tip of their tongue, right. And your board. So all your executives are very attuned into what are we doing with AI. And I think our approach has been very effective in showing people that our technology is better.

The way we're rolling it out is better, the more protected you are, and the more that we are really a partner in making sure that your transition from traditional software products to then, you know, RPA products, where you have bots helping you do pretty simple, pretty simple processes, but things that take a lot of time, cost a lot of money. And now you can have a bot, whether it's statement review or other things like that. And now there's, now there's agentic agents that can do more complex tasks that can make some decisions.

You have to have the guardrails around what those decisions are. But if you can get real processes and build an orchestration layer like we have, then you can get very sophisticated workflows that are not people intensive. And that's our approach, and it's been pretty effective.

OPERATOR

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Stone for any closing remarks.

Bill Stone, CEO

Again, we appreciate everybody on this call, and we appreciate you owning our shares or following our shares at the same time. We work hard for our shareholders and we will continue to do so. And we look forward to seeing you at the end of next quarter or this quarter, I guess. Thanks.

OPERATOR

This concludes today's program. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.