Participants

David Hanover; Investor Relations; Paymentus Holdings Inc

Dushyant Sharma; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer, Founder; Paymentus Holdings Inc

Sanjay Kalra; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Paymentus Holdings Inc

David Koning; Analyst; Robert W. Baird & Co Inc

Tien-Tsin Huang; Analyst; JPMorgan

John Davis; Analyst; Raymond James

Andrew Bauch; Analyst; Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Matthew O'Neill; Analyst; FT Partners

Presentation

Operator

(audio in progress)
(Operator Instructions)
At this time, I will now turn the call over to David Hanover, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

David Hanover

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon. Welcome, and thank you for joining the webcast to review our fourth-quarter 2024 results. Our earnings release documents are available on the Investor Relations section of the paymentus.com website. They include the earnings presentation that will make reference during this webcast. I hope everyone's had a chance to review those documents.
Our Founder and CEO, Dushyant Sharma, we'll make some opening comments before Sanjay Kalra, our CFO, discusses the details of the fourth-quarter and full-year and our guidance. Following our prepared remarks, we'll take questions.
Let me just remind you that we may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and we refer to non-GAAP financial measures during the website. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties.
Factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from expectations are detailed in our earnings material and our SEC filings that are available on both the SEC's and our websites Information about non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to US GAAP, can also be found in our earnings materials that are available on the website.
With that, I'd like to turn the webcast over to Dushyant Sharma. Dushyant.

Dushyant Sharma

Thanks, David. 2024 was an outstanding year for Paymentus. And based on the vast stem of nondiscretionary bills and our continued market momentum, we believe our best is yet to come, and we are just getting started. As I've shared in the past, we operate our business on a two-year horizon. And it is quite satisfying to see how well we have executed our -- over the last two years.
Mike was were just as excited about our next year horizon and beyond. And this view is based on five factors: first, our continued sales momentum; second, our strong bookings in 2024; third, our significant exit backlog net of large client launches in the third quarter; fourth, our continued onboarding success; and fifth, our phenomenal innovation framework that will continue to be disruptive in the broader fintech market.
Despite our 2024 outperformance, we remain committed to our CAGR model of 20% top line and 20% to 30% adjusted EBITDA growth for 2025. And based on our guidance philosophy that has served us very well over the last couple of years, I'm pleased to report that we believe we can deliver the top end of our 2025 guidance that Sanjay will cover shortly without signing any new clients provided, of course, we deliver implementations as planned.
With that context, let me now discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. We ended the year on a strong note with fourth quarter results that exceeded our expectations across all areas of our business. Fourth quarter 2024 revenue was a record $257.9 million, up 56.5% year over year.
Fourth quarter contribution profit was $86.2 million, up 30% year over year. Our adjusted EBITDA, which as many of you know, is a significant financial metric for us was $27.3 million for the quarter, up 36.9% year over year.
And on a Rule of 40 scale, we saw a sequential increase in the quarter to 62%. For the full year 2024, revenue increased 41.9% over last year to $871.7 million, far exceeding our long-term target of 20% top-line growth. Adjusted EBITDA increased 62.2% for the year to $94.2 million once again, well ahead of our long-term target of 20% to 30% growth.
Contribution profit for 2024 was $312.1 million, growing 29.5% annually. We also saw a great year for bookings in 2024. The multiyear commitments under our typical agreements from these bookings gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to achieve our CAGR model.
As a reminder, our CAGR model is for our primary metrics of revenue and adjusted EBITDA only and should not be confused with secondary metrics such as contribution profit and OpEx. As we have done very effectively so far, we will continue to use our strong operating leverage to calibrate contribution profit and OpEx as necessary to achieve these targets.
In addition to the numbers we reported today, as noted on our last earnings call, there is a specific business strategy in play here. While today, Interchange only serves as a cost center for us, over time, our strategy is to have the interchange economy and associated life cycle flow through our P&L as we capture more market share.
This will increase our scale, which also creates tremendous opportunities for modernization and cost reductions. So longer term, we will work to expand our margins by pursuing products and solutions that offer the ability to convert part of the interchange from a cost center to a revenue center.
Said differently, we think of interchange as a potential new expansion of the total addressable market for our business. Even though this is a long-term play, we wanted to make sure that investors are aware of this strategy behind our execution.
Now I'll review some of our key fourth quarter business highlights and accomplishments. As I mentioned earlier, we finished 2024 with a strong backlog and and solid top line growth as a result of our technology platform and our IPN ecosystem.
During the fourth quarter, we signed clients in various industry verticals, including insurance, government agencies, utilities, banking and credit unions, consumer finance organizations and educational institutions among others. We believe this extensive mix of new customers demonstrates the diversity of the businesses and the multiple industry verticals of our platform can support.
In addition, we signed several new channel partners in various industry verticals to deepen our partner ecosystem. These verticals include government services, utilities, insurance and health care. Our diverse and ever-expanding partner network is an excellent companion to our direct go-to-market strategy.
And in addition to this strategy, we continue to focus on onboarding our strong backlog. Our onboarding enhancements, targeted incremental investments as well as constantly improving face-to-face client engagement continue to be a tailwind for us.
As part of this effort, like we have mentioned on past calls, we have continued to ramp up hirings in order to support our continued growth. During the quarter, we onboarded clients across multiple verticals, namely insurance, property management government services, utilities, banking and credit unions and telecommunications.
Now let me turn it over to Sanjay to review our financial results in greater detail.

Sanjay Kalra

Thanks, Dushyant. And thank you all for joining us today. Before I discuss our quarterly results and outlook, I'd like to remind everyone that the financial results I'll be referring to include non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings press release and presentation includes reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP measures. Both are available on our website.
Turning to Slide 5. We ended 2024 with another quarter where we exceeded the top end of our guidance range across all our key financial metrics. Our fourth quarter results included record revenue of $257.9 million, up 56.5% year over year, contribution profit of $86.2 million, up 30% and adjusted EBITDA of $27.3 million, up 36.9%.
On the Rule of 40 basis, we came in at 62%, our highest level to date and our seventh consecutive quarter of exceeding the Rule of 40. During the quarter, we also continued to experience strong customer activity and demand, consistent with what we experienced throughout 2024. This drove robust bookings, and we exited the year with solid momentum and a significant backlog and a greater cash position to support our continued growth strategies in 2025.
Now let's review our fourth quarter financials in more detail. As mentioned earlier, fourth quarter revenue grew 56.5% year over year to $257.9 million.
This higher-than-anticipated growth was driven by two key factors: first, the successful launch of new billers, including the first full quarter benefit from large enterprise customers that launched during the third quarter; and second, increased same-store sales from existing billers. In the fourth quarter, we derive more revenue from these newly launched large enterprise customers with higher average payment amounts contributing to higher revenues.
And while our original fourth quarter guidance contains some upside, we took a prudent approach because at that time, the precise magnitude of this beneficial impact was uncertain.
And you can see it was quite substantial. Complementing this, in the fourth quarter, the number of transactions we processed grew to $166 million, up 33% year over year. Our average price per transaction increased during the fourth quarter to $1.55, up over 17% from $1.32 in the prior year period.
This was mainly due to the better mix or more specifically, the large enterprise billers that launched in the third quarter with higher average payment amounts. Fourth quarter 2024 contribution profit increased 30% year over year to $86.2 million.
This increase was also higher than expected and reflects increased transactions from existing billers. The launch of new billers and the change in biller mix I mentioned earlier. Contribution margin was 33.4% for the fourth quarter compared to 34.5% last quarter and 40.3% in the prior year period.
The 6.9% contribution margin reduction year over year reflects the continued addition of large high-volume enterprise billers to our growing customer base. This was substantially offset by benefits from the economies of scale and year-over-year reduction in operating expense margin, both of which resulted in an improved adjusted EBITDA margin and a record Rule of 40 at 62.
This is consistent with our continued focus on profitability, which I will elaborate on shortly. Contribution profit per transaction for the fourth quarter 2024 was $0.52, similar to $0.53 in the prior year period, demonstrating our ability to expand market share with comparable contribution profit per transaction.
As we've noted in the past, variables that are outside of our control, such as an increase in the average payment amount or changes in payment mix can affect contribution profit on a quarter-to-quarter basis. And therefore, we treat this as a secondary metric, while our gross revenue and adjusted EBITDA remain primary metrics for us. Fourth quarter adjusted gross profit grew 32.4% year over year to $71.8 million.
We experienced adjusted gross profit growth greater than our contribution profit growth. due to the economies of scale we can achieve by reducing other cost of goods sold. Fourth quarter non-GAAP operating expenses were up 28.8% year over year to $47.3 million.
Primarily reflecting higher sales and marketing expenses as well as research and development expenses. These increases were consistent with our expectations and were mainly driven by increased hiring and increased agency fees for businesses from resellers in order for us to convert our strong pipeline into bookings and also to enhance our technical strengths.
Regarding taxes, we have determined that a non-GAAP tax rate of 25% for the fourth quarter of 2024 is appropriate, based on our current expectation of our long-term projected tax rate. The rate is reflected in our 2025 guidance, which we will cover shortly.
For competitive purposes, we have recast our fiscal 2024 and 2023 non-GAAP net income to reflect this tax rate. Which is available in the tables included in our earnings release. Please note, this non-GAAP tax rate reflects currently available information and could be subject to change.
Fourth quarter non-GAAP net income was $16.3 million or $0.13 per share compared to non-GAAP net income of $11.8 million or $0.09 per share in the prior year period. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 36.9% to $27.3 million compared to $19.9 million in the prior year period.
Adjusted EBITDA also represented 31.6% of contribution profit for the quarter compared to 30% in the prior year period. The strong adjusted EBITDA performance was due to the same combination of positive factors I talked about earlier, all of which came together in the quarter. We believe the stronger adjusted EBITDA margin demonstrates the inherent operating leverage we have in the business.
Interest income from our bank deposits was $2 million in the fourth quarter, consistent with the prior year period. Related to our performance, as mentioned earlier, we once again exceeded the Rule of 40 for the quarter coming in at 62% compared to 61% last quarter and 53% in the prior year period.
Now turning to Slide 6. I will summarize our full year 2024 financial results, which also came in higher than we originally expected. Revenue for the full year increased 41.9% to $871.7 million, driven by a 30.3% increase in the transactions, primarily from new billers. As well as transaction growth from existing billers. Contribution profit increased 29.5% to $312.1 million, primarily due to increased transactions.
Lastly, adjusted gross profit increased 30.4% to $259.6 million. Non-GAAP operating expenses increased to $175.9 million. up 17.3% year over year, primarily due to higher sales and marketing expenses as we continue to focus resources on the execution of our go-to-market strategy. Non-GAAP net income was $56.2 million or $0.44 per share compared to non-GAAP net income of $32.2 million or $0.26 per share in the prior year.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 62.2% to $94.2 million, primarily due to increased adjusted gross profit, net of increased non-GAAP operating expenses. We exceeded the Rule of 40 for the full year coming in at 60% for 2024 compared to 2023 when we ended at 44%.
We are also proud to report that in fiscal year 2024, $36.1 million of our $71.2 million contribution profit increase flowed through to adjusted EBITDA, representing a 51% incremental adjusted EBITDA margin.
Now I'll discuss our balance sheet and liquidity position on Slide 7. We ended the fourth quarter 2024 with total cash of $209.4 million compared to $190.8 million at the end of last quarter and $183.2 million in the prior year period.
The $18.6 million sequential increase is primarily comprised of $27.9 million of cash generated from operations, offset by $9.1 million cash used in investing activities, primarily for capitalized software. The company does not have any debt. The free cash flow generated during the quarter was $19 million.
For the full year 2024, we invested $36 million in capitalized software and $26 million in working capital as we scale the business. We paid $14.4 million in income taxes as we are now profitable. and also generated $8.7 million from interest income.
In 2025, our cash deployment priorities are unchanged. Driving organic growth remains our primary focus. Our strong cash position enables us to maintain financial flexibility to keep room for working capital investments as we scale. Additionally, our strong balance sheet enables us to explore attractive M&A opportunities that may arise in order to further increase our growth prospects. Our days sales is outstanding.
At the end of fourth quarter was 43 days compared to 44 days last quarter. We had 128.7 million diluted shares outstanding during the fourth quarter compared to 127.6 million diluted shares outstanding during the third quarter.
Now I'll turn to our non-GAAP guidance for the first quarter and full year 2025 on Slide 8. Before discussing our 2025 guidance in detail. As mentioned on our last earnings call, we are continuing to follow the same prudent approach to first quarter and full year guidance that we followed when we provided our initial 2024 guidance around the same time last year, which I believe has served us quite well.
Turning now to details for the first quarter 2025. We expect revenues to be in the range of $241 million to $249 million, representing a 32.5% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and 34.7% at the high end. This growth rate range is an improvement from prior year's first quarter growth rate of 24.6%.
Contribution profit to range from $84 million to $86 million. Which represents 22.5% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and 23.9% at the high end compared to the prior year's first quarter growth rate of 29.6%. This year-over-year change reflects our expanding market share and a more diversified customer base, which includes a growing number of large enterprise customers.
Adjusted EBITDA of $24 million to $26 million, representing growth of 26.3% year over year at the midpoint and 31.3% at the high end. This represents a 29.4% margin at midpoint and 30.2% margin at the high end, an improvement to the prior year's first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin of 28.6%.
On the Rule of 40 basis for the first quarter of 2025, our guidance implies a range of 50% to 54%. Before moving to the details for our full year guidance, I want to provide further insight into our outlook for contribution profit growth rates and adjusted EBITDA margin. As our business continues to grow, we are receiving more inbound inquiries from large enterprise customers. As we've mentioned on prior calls, as expected, these customers often request volume discounts.
This is standard within our industry, and we are open to this where the deal economics support it. Our tremendous operating leverage allows us to do this as volume discounts for larger customers are typically more than offset by strong incremental adjusted EBITDA.
We saw this in the second half of 2024. This increases our efficiency as our onboarding time per biller is declining, while our average customer size is simultaneously increasing. Furthermore, our operating model enables us to recalibrate OpEx spending relative to contribution profit in order to reach a desired adjusted EBITDA.
For reference, our incremental adjusted EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter 2024 was 37%, relative to adjusted EBITDA margin of 31.6%.
Turning now to specific details for the full year 2025. We now expect revenue in the range of $1.04 billion to $1.06 billion. Which represents 20.4% growth from the prior year at the midpoint and 21.6% growth at the high end. This top line growth at the midpoint is higher than the initial top line growth guidance we provided for 2024 around the same time last year. Contribution profit in the range of $358 million to $366 million.
This guidance represents 16% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and 17.3% at the high end. It also reflects the same factors I mentioned earlier when discussing our first quarter 2025 guidance, such as the increasing number of large enterprise customers in our client base, favorable deal economics and our substantial operating leverage.
Our expected 2025 contribution profit growth at midpoint is consistent with what we initially guided for 2024 contribution profit growth around the same time last year. Adjusted EBITDA to range from $112 million to $116 million.
This guidance represents 21% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. And 23.2% at the high end, an increase versus the initial adjusted EBITDA growth guidance we provided for 2024 at midpoint around the same time last year. This guidance also represents a 31.5% margin on contribution profit at midpoint.
A non-GAAP tax rate of 25%. And on a Rule of 40 basis, for the full year 2025, our guidance implies a range of 46% to 49% higher than the implied Rule of 40 initial guide we provided for 2024 around the same time last year. We believe based on the strong exit backlog and solid sales momentum, we have considerable visibility and we are well positioned to deliver solid growth in 2025. Our business continues to run on all cylinders.
Lastly, I am pleased to report, we significantly improved our internal controls over financial reporting during 2024, resulting in the remediation of the material weaknesses we previously reported in our SEC filings. And I would like to thank the team members that made it possible to accomplish that important objective.
Thank you, everyone, and I will turn it back to Dushyant.

Dushyant Sharma

Thanks, Sanjay. In closing, we are very proud of our fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 results, which were ahead of our original expectations. We ended the year with a strong backlog which gives us confidence in our 2025 guidance. And of course, we intend to remain focused and disciplined in onboarding our strong backlog, which we expect to keep fueling our growth. What also gives us confidence is our track record of performance.
In the three years since our IPO, we have more than doubled our revenues and more than tripled our adjusted EBITDA. As you may know, our performance even prior to IPO is also very exciting. We believe this performance illustrates the strength of our operating model and the historical resilience of our business and our ability to respond to macroeconomic headwinds and recessionary pressures.
On that note, I also want to thank all of my team members for their continued efforts and dedication to Paymentus success.
That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now open the line for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Dave Koning, Baird.

David Koning

Yeah. Hey, guys. Tremendous results again. And I guess my first question, when I look -- I guess I look at Q1 guidance, you're guiding gross revenue down mid-single digits sequentially. Historically, I think the lowest sequential growth we can see in Q1 was up 6% and more quarters like up 12% over 10%, and I'm just wondering, was there anything nonrecurring in some of the large billers that joined that would create a sequential fall off? Or is it just guidance to try to make sure you hit numbers and continue to execute?

Dushyant Sharma

Dave, thanks for the question. I appreciate it. Q1, it's interesting. We are in a very similar situation where we were just a quarter ago when we were guiding Q4. Because these new large enterprise customers have just newly been onboarded.
It's been like just two quarters. They came in the middle of Q3 and Q4 was the first full quarter. So we still actually have to go through a full cycle, one-year cycle, I would say, to fully understand the trends, before we start baking in the full year or maybe the quarterly guidance. But given Q1 and -- two months are behind us, although the books don't get closed until after a few days, as you will know.
So we've got some visibility into Q1, how they will trend, but we are not being very aggressive in terms of what we saw in Q4, I would say, because that could be just a short period of time to analyze trends.
So we've taken a prudent view in coming up with the guidance for the full year for sure, especially for these large customers. But even for Q1, we've been -- prudent in terms of how the quarter may shape up. That's the only variability.
And other than that, I would say the business is doing great. Our sales momentum is is going really well. Our exit backlog is strong. The pipeline actually is also pretty strong. And more large customers are also there in the pipeline. So the trends could vary year over year and quarter over quarter as we ramp and as we scale.
But overall, I would say gross margin is one metric is not the only one. Whether you can count gross margin or contribution profit, they all have to be considered together with the operating leverage we have in the business. At the end of the day, our adjusted EBITDA should be better year over year.
And I'll not go more on this. I think it's a long-winded answer to your question, but we exited the year with 30.2%, for the full year adjusted EBITDA margin and our next year guidance itself is 31.5% at midpoint. So even in this prudent guidance, we've taken a step ahead on improving the adjusted EBITDA margin.

David Koning

Yeah. No, that's great. And I guess, secondly, just macro sensitivity. I mean, we're looking at a lot of potential, I guess, volatility in the macro. How resilient is your consumer base? I mean it seems like utility payments, all the monthly bills.
It seems very recurring. Could you -- if we go into macro like slowdown, could you even benefit if gas prices like basically utility prices came down at the same time as your payment streams were stable, it would actually be a net benefit potentially, but maybe walk through your macro sensitivity.

Dushyant Sharma

Yeah. Actually, thank you, David. That's one of the reasons why we actually wanted to call out our historical resilience of our business relative to macroeconomic headwinds as well as recessionary pressures. We have been operating the business for quite some time, and we have dealt with different headwinds.
And frankly, in each of those, even though each macroeconomic environment or event has its own personality, but we have been able to grow the business during each of those, primarily because of the nondiscretionary nature of the household bills.
Every industry we are operating in has nondiscretionary part of the household economy involved. In terms of your question, there are certain scenarios where your question related to the benefits -- there are certain scenarios we could see some benefit. Of course, if consumers start making payments which are smaller but more frequently, that changes the dynamic for us.
But we're not factoring any of that in. We are simply focused on trying to make sure our investors understand that you're investing and you have invested in a business that is dealing with nondiscretionary household bills.
People still need to have a roof on their -- over their heads. They still need to use electricity, water, gas to prepare food and so on or go to work in the car, et cetera. So all of that nondiscretionary side of the economy, it still needs to continue on regardless of what's happening in the macroeconomic environment.

David Koning

Yeah. Thank you, guys. Good job.

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you, David.

Operator

Tien-Tsin Huang, JPMorgan.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Thank you so much. Terrific results. I want to ask for both of you, just thinking about the comment of your confidence to grow without new sales. Is that comment more from the strong backlog that you have and confidence in converting the backlog? Or are you also seeing higher penetration of on-network e-payments. Is that part of the equation as well? Just trying to better understand what's evolving?

Dushyant Sharma

It's a combination of both. It's a combination of both the same-store sales as well as the backlog. And as we pointed out, actually, we are very proud of the year we have had in 2024, because of the foundation it sets not only for what we were able to achieve in 2024, but frankly, our next to your horizon. So we are very excited about that. And the strong backlog, which was net off the billers, which went live in the 3Q also gives us tremendous confidence.
So we just wanted to make sure that we follow the same prudent, same grounded guidance methodology, which has served us very well, that we want to be able to give the view to our investors that we can deliver the top end of our guidance without signing a new client. And obviously, provided we implement, we continue to onboard our backlog and so on. Sanjay you want to add?

Sanjay Kalra

If I may just add together with the backlog and the same-store sales, I would also say our pipeline, we see that very strong. and the pace at which we have seen the pipeline converting to backlog over the past 1 year has been moving at a very, very good pace. And assuming those trends continue, we will be in a good shape. I think we are confident because of all these factors.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Yeah. And just client decision-making on the biller side. Chip board in a timely way. I know the stock market is obviously generating a lot here. Is there any influence? Or does it help hurt? It doesn't sound like you're seeing any change in decision making, but just wanted to check up on the sensitivity there?

Dushyant Sharma

We are not seeing anything in that regard. Sometimes, it can be actually -- these type of uncertain times could be beneficial because people are looking for efficient workflows and modernization to be able to bring about more efficiencies and reduce their cost to serve their customers while also improving their customer experience.

Tien-Tsin Huang

Thank you, Dushyant. Thank you.

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you, Tien.

Operator

John Davis, Raymond James.

John Davis

Hey. Good afternoon, guys. Sanjay, and Dushyant, it looks like there's been a pretty big step function change and your success with large enterprise builders over the last couple of quarters. So just curious what you guys think have driven that? Is that an industry change? Is that something you guys are doing? And then maybe highlight what verticals you're having success on the enterprise side?

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you, John. I think the main thing I would say is that what -- what's transpiring right now is that the level of advancements that are taking place or the level of sophistication of the workflows that clients need to automate. What's happening is they're not able to do that in-house.
Previously, some part of the biller segment, especially on the larger end, was beyond reach for any third-party service provider. And we used to think about legacy providers as the primary go-get for us. And now we are looking at actually legacy infrastructure regardless -- legacy installed base regardless of who it is. It could be in-house. It could be a combination of in-house and other providers.
And what we are seeing is, as a result of that, combining our platform with our IPN ecosystem, it's not easy to create that type of a reach for any company, whether it is a player in a similar space to Paymentus or actually our own potential clients, prospective clients. And that's what we are seeing.
And other part, which is also very important is as the digital adoption is taking place and is becoming more and more a bigger part of a given client's payment ecosystem, there is a pressing need to look at the entire efficiency, the workflows and the efficiencies on -- throughout those workflows throughout those organizations. Throughout the organization, whether it's inbound, whether it's outbound flows of payments.
So all of that combined gives us a pretty strong leg up actually because we start on the revenue side of the house, and then we can also help all of the other workflows. So that is what is causing the shift in how clients feel that they now have a partner who can deliver cost efficiencies through innovation, but also improve the workflow through innovative framework as well.

John Davis

Okay, any color on verticals? Is it broad-based across the board? Or is it like one or two specific verticals where you're having success with enterprises?

Dushyant Sharma

Across the board. Actually, all of our verticals are doing very well. We have been -- one of the key decision point we made early on as an organization was that we wanted to design our platform which can scale to any vertical and any size of the biller. And you're seeing a combination of both right now in action, where large -- no biller is too large for us, no company is too small. And no vertical is too far from our ability to implement them.

John Davis

Okay. Great. And just as a quick follow-up. I think Sanjay mentioned M&A on the prepared remarks. The first time in a while I've heard you guys mentioned M&A, obviously, no debt, $200 plus million of cash on the balance sheet. So maybe just remind us what would make sense, what would you target from an M&A perspective?

Sanjay Kalra

Thank you, John. I think that's one of the things. The reason we called out M&A in the opening remarks was that there is just a lot of activity, a lot of books we get to see. And we're in a very fortunate situation that there is no functional gap. There is nothing really we need to go get -- there are no gaps per se.
And we are also operating with a pretty strong balance sheet and generating cash. So all of those combination actually gives us the ability to be very selective. And one of the things which we are taking a look at is other entities out there which could -- where we could be opportunistic and that are accretive, both on the top line or bottom line or at least one of them, if not immediately, but in a short order. So those are -- that's what we're looking at.

John Davis

Okay. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you, John.

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Andrew Bauch, Wells Fargo.

Andrew Bauch

Hey, guys. Nice set of results and thanks for taking the question. Sanjay, you guys tease this with the interchange potentially becoming a revenue center. I was hoping you can just expand upon that a little bit more? Is it -- would that come in the form of new products, new partnerships? Is it a restructuring of the existing model is organized today. Just want to better understand your bullishness around interchange?

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you, Andrew. This is Dushyant. I think the -- the primary reason we wanted to bring this out in the open was we want to make sure our investors have a clear view how we are -- what is the strategy behind our business and why we have chosen the top line and the bottom line as our two primary metrics while OpEx and CP are the secondary.
In addition to that, I think all of the things you highlighted, the production solutions, as we talked about in our opening remarks, we are looking at those -- even though this is an outer year, not immediate opportunity, but we are thinking through what production services and solutions we could be offering that can help monetize interchange.
Partnerships is the other angle you talked about, absolutely. And third is the the flows of payments, the outbound payments and even for inbound, are there other opportunities for partnership and frankly, products and solutions. So more to come on that, but that's where we see the opportunity in multiple dimensions.

Andrew Bauch

Great. And then my follow-up question is, I don't know if we've spoken about this before, but does Dose have any impact on your business? I know that you guys are more exposed on the local level than the federal level, but that again to budgets are being shifted around and moved pretty rapidly. So maybe is there any risk there or isn't there even maybe an opportunity as Elan and the team find government legacy systems that a lot of these agencies are being run on?

Dushyant Sharma

Yeah. First of all, there is no risk to us. We don't deal with -- we don't have any contracts with federal government yet. But obviously, there could be opportunities as they look for modern systems versus the legacy solutions they've been operating with. In terms of the local municipalities and so on, which is where our focus has been, we actually are in a pretty unique situation where we are the source of revenues.
For all of these agencies. So we feel very good about which part of the economy we are serving and which part of the workflow we are serving for them. So we feel good about you still have to pay your bills. So whether it is water build or property taxes and so on.

Andrew Bauch

Great. Thank you.

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you.

Operator

Matt O'Neill, FT Partners.

Matthew O'Neill

Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Just curious to confirm, I believe the methodology and philosophy around guidance is exactly the same as it's been in prior years, Dushyant, I know you mentioned at the beginning of this call. Before Sanjay, I went through the guide, just that you'd be confident in your ability to hit the top end of the range without any new signings. I believe that's how you guys have contextualized the guide in prior years. If you could just confirm that first?

Sanjay Kalra

Yeah, that's absolutely right, Matt. We are following the very similar guidance, same philosophy of coming with quarter and annual guide as we follow in the prior year. We want to be prudent in our approach. We want to remain grounded and execute well. And with the benefit of hindsight, this approach of guidance has served us well.
And when we say top end is achievable. Which means we don't need any new customer bookings to get there. But definitely, we have to continue doing the implementations as planned. So yeah, we remain committed to our CAGR management model, and that's the basis.

Matthew O'Neill

Understood. Appreciate that. And just two questions around the evolving mix of the business as it goes into a larger enterprise, and you mentioned in the prepared remarks, larger billers, seeking volume-based discounts. We still saw the observable revenue per transaction tick higher. So is it just that volume-based discounts are being more than offset by a mix of more card-funded payments by consumers at newer partners. I just want to unpack those dynamics.

Sanjay Kalra

Yeah, Matt. So what's happening is as we are adding these large enterprise customers, their revenue per transaction is higher than what we had before we started onboarding these large customers. So our average revenue per transaction for the entire company is now increasing, as you saw, it's like $1.55.
Our contribution profit per transaction is very similar, $0.52 per transaction as it came in Q4 versus $0.53 per transaction in the prior year same period. So overall, what we are seeing is we are getting the benefit of volume.
Our profitability is further helping sorry, profitability is growing because the contribution profit per transaction is very similar. And because we have very good operating leverage, we are able to increase our adjusted EBITDA and margins both. So the revenue is higher, maybe you'll say that network fees is also higher, but contribution profit per transaction is coming similar.
So this dynamic could change and shift as we'll onboard not only large-sized clients, but midsize and small size. Because we have a large TAM to capture, as Dushyant mentioned in his opening remarks. And on our journey to market capture, we could be getting clients of different sizes, different verticals and they could change our transaction dynamics. And although we think per transaction is more of an output whole model rather than an input, our goal still remains that can we deliver good growth and provide a decent profitability. Rule of 40, which came to a record 62 is indicative of our strategy that the contribution profit is not really meaningful in itself, unless and until it's combined with operating leverage.
And that's the message we want to bring home. In the past few quarters, we've tried to do that.
We want to make sure that's well understood by the entire investor base that our adjusted EBITDA growth and margin is a mix of contribution profit and operating leverage, which all starts from getting higher revenues. Hence, they are our primary metrics.

Matthew O'Neill

Understood. Thank you for the commentary. Appreciate it.

Dushyant Sharma

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. There seems to be no questions waiting at this time. So I'll now pass it back over to the management team for any closing remarks.

Dushyant Sharma

Thank you, everyone. Have a great day. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Operator

Thank you. That concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.