Open Text Corporation (OTEX) Bank of America Securities 2023 Leveraged Finance Conference (Transcript)

Key Points Company and Industry * Company: Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEX) * Industry: Information Management, Content Management, Cybersecurity, IT Operations, Application Development Core Views and Arguments * Mission: To power and protect information, ensuring data accessibility, security, and compliance across various systems and regulatory requirements. * Market Leadership: OpenText is the market leader in enterprise content management, with IBM's FileNet as the primary competitor. Box is considered a smaller competitor in the content management space. * Business Segments: The company operates across six distinct businesses, including content management, business network, cybersecurity, IT operations, and application development. * Digital Transformation: OpenText's solutions support digital transformation initiatives, ensuring data accessibility throughout the transformation process. Acquisition of Micro Focus * Acquisition: OpenText acquired Micro Focus in January 2023, a move aimed at expanding its market reach and addressing various buying groups within enterprises. * Benefits: The acquisition filled gaps in OpenText's offerings, providing solutions for CTOs, application developers, and cybersecurity officers. It also enabled the company to cloudify its products and address faster-growing deployment options. * Integration: OpenText expects Micro Focus to achieve organic growth in fiscal 2024, returning to organic growth in fiscal 2025. The company aims to reduce net leverage to less than 3 times by the end of fiscal 2025 or sooner. * Renewal Rates: OpenText has improved Micro Focus' renewal rates from the low 80s to the upper 80s, with a target of reaching the mid-90s by fiscal 2025. This improvement is expected to add over $200 million in incremental revenue to the top line. Financial Outlook * **Fiscal 2024**: OpenText expects to achieve a stronger second half of fiscal 2024 compared to the first half, driven by the integration of Micro Focus and the growth of cloud-based products. * **Free Cash Flow**: The company expects free cash flow to ramp up to over$1.5 billion by fiscal 2026, with an uplift of over $5 per share at that point in time. * **Macroeconomic Factors**: OpenText has historically been resilient to macroeconomic factors, with long sales cycles and cloudification benefits. The only notable headwind mentioned is the small and medium business component, which is less than 10$175 million. * Capital Allocation: The company's capital allocation priorities include paying down leverage, maintaining a 20% free cash flow dividend, and potentially reinstating share buybacks as leverage approaches the target level. * Organic Growth: OpenText has shifted its focus from M&A to organic growth, targeting a 2% to 4% increase in total organic growth and a 7% to 9% increase in cloud organic growth by fiscal 2026.