Negative Points

• Biller segment revenue growth was only 5% in Q2, impacted by difficult year-over-year comparisons and non-recurring margin benefits from the prior year.

• Biller adjusted EBITDA declined year-over-year due to prior year comparison items and a one-time charge related to a terminated partnership, which was not excluded from adjusted EBITDA.

• Real-time payments revenue declined in Q2 due to fewer renewal and expansion opportunities compared to the prior year, though retention remains strong.

• Net new ARR bookings were $18 million in Q2, down from a particularly strong prior year period that benefited from several large payment software contract signings.

• The company expects a 40/60 revenue split between Q3 and Q4, with Q3 revenue guidance of $417-$427 million and adjusted EBITDA of $90-$95 million, indicating a back-half-loaded year.

• Management declined to comment on recent speculation about potential divestitures or acquisitions, creating uncertainty for investors regarding strategic direction.

• The company's M&A strategy remains opportunistic, but valuations for potential acquisitions are noted as more attractive, suggesting possible capital deployment risks.

Q & A Highlights

Q: Can you provide more detail on the Q3 and Q4 guidance cadence, which is expected to be a 40%/60% split this year, and confirm whether this was anticipated? A: CFO Robert Leibrock confirmed the 40/60 split was previously flagged last quarter and is driven by the timing of high-margin payment software license renewals, which skew revenue and EBITDA toward Q4. He emphasized that ~95% of ACI's revenue is recurring on a 5-year contract basis, providing strong visibility. CEO Thomas Warsop added that the shift from the recent 50/50 split is entirely due to renewal dates, which are booked under US GAAP on the renewal date, and the company has excellent visibility into this timing.

Q: Can you tell us about the first US-based Kinetic customer signing, whether it was an existing or new customer, and the current state of the Kinetic pipeline? A: CEO Thomas Warsop revealed the Q2 signing was an existing customer that will convert from a legacy solution to Kinetic in the coming months. He noted the Kinetic pipeline is the fastest-growing solution set for the company, having been so for several quarters. CFO Robert Leibrock added that all Kinetic signings to date have been SaaS-based, validating the cloud-native platform, and highlighted progress with Solaris, which is expected to go live in the second half of the year.

Q: Given recent market speculation, can you discuss your approach to M&A and provide an update on the potential sale of the Biller segment? A: CEO Thomas Warsop stated the company constantly evaluates strategic actionsincluding acquisitions, divestitures, and partnershipsto drive shareholder value, but declined to comment on specific rumors. CFO Robert Leibrock highlighted the health of the Biller business, noting strong year-to-date ARR bookings, including two new logos in Q2 and 80% of bookings coming from healthy expansions where customers are doubling or tripling their relationships. He reiterated expectations for high single-digit growth in the segment for the year.

Q: How is the perception of ACI changing with the Kinetic platform, and can it attract non-customers to adopt other ACI solutions? A: CEO Thomas Warsop explained that Kinetic has fundamentally changed customer dialogues, shifting from selling a piece of software to helping customers modernize their entire payment infrastructure. He noted ACI is now more frequently viewed as a current innovator rather than a legacy software provider. CFO Robert Leibrock added that this momentum is contagious across the business, improving talent attraction and customer responsiveness, and cited a 15-point increase in net promoter score for Speedpay as evidence of the improved perception.

Q: Can you provide more detail on the strength in issuing and acquiring, which grew 33% in constant currency? A: CFO Robert Leibrock attributed the strength to durable mid-single-digit retention rates and significant lift from real-time payments demand on a multi-year basis. He emphasized ACI's agnostic strategy, which allows the company to orchestrate across various payment typescards, debit, real-time payments, or digital assetsprotecting revenue regardless of payment rail shifts. CEO Thomas Warsop added that the growth was broad-based, driven by volume growth, pricing power exercised on renewals, and new value-added product launches and cross-selling.

Q: What are the primary use cases for Kinetic in the US market? A: CEO Thomas Warsop stated that initial US use cases are largely concentrated around account-to-account payments, including real-time payments and high-value wire transfers. He noted broad-based interest across payment types, including cards, but the initial wins are focused on account-to-account capabilities.

Q: Can you confirm whether the one-time charge related to a terminated partnership in the Biller segment was included in the adjusted EBITDA add-back? A: CFO Robert Leibrock clarified that the charge flowed through as an operational item within adjusted EBITDA and was not excluded as a one-time add-back. He estimated the charge represented less than half of the contraction in Biller EBITDA, with the remainder driven by revenue seasonality and prior-year comparison items.

Q: How is AI impacting ACI's operations and product offerings? A: CEO Thomas Warsop provided several examples: AI mandate analyzers have reduced payment scheme interpretation time from 2-3 weeks to minutes or hours, creating incremental engineering capacity; AI-supported rearchitecture work has reduced effort by ~50%, saving over 6,000 engineering hours; and a retrofit agent team automates up to 85% of previously manual processes. He also highlighted AI-powered capabilities in Kinetic, including dynamic context-dependent intelligent routing and scoring for fraud detection, and in Speedpay1, which simplifies API deployment for customers.

Q: What drove the decision to raise full-year 2026 guidance, and what are the updated expectations? A: CFO Robert Leibrock announced revenue guidance was raised to $1.895 billion to $1.925 billion (from $1.89 billion to $1.92 billion) and adjusted EBITDA to $545 million to $560 million (from $540 million to $555 million). The increase reflects strong first-half performance and confidence in the pipeline. He also provided Q3 guidance of $417 million to $427 million in revenue and $90 million to $95 million in adjusted EBITDA, consistent with the 40/60 revenue weighting between Q3 and Q4.

Q: Can you elaborate on the bookings performance and the health of the Biller segment? A: CFO Robert Leibrock noted net new ARR bookings were $18 million in Q2, with new license and services bookings of $59 million, against a strong prior-year comparison. He highlighted that year-to-date Biller bookings are strong, with Q1 featuring 3 new logos and Q2 adding 2 more, while 80% of bookings were expansions. He reiterated confidence in upper single-digit Biller revenue growth for the full year, with acceleration expected in the second half.

For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript .