SS&C Technologies (SSNC) 2026财年第三季度业绩电话会：利润率扩大，上调业绩指引lg...

核心要点

• SS&C Technologies公布2026财年第三季度调整后营收为16.91亿美元，同比增长7.8%。按固定汇率计算的调整后有机营收增长率为5.2%。
• 调整后合并EBITDA达到创纪录的6.748亿美元，增长9%；调整后EBITDA利润率扩大40个基点至39.9%。
• 调整后摊薄每股收益增长14.8%至1.78美元。GAAP净利润为1.99亿美元，即摊薄每股收益0.83美元。
• 管理层上调了多项2026全财年目标，其中包括调整后摊薄每股收益调至7.11美元至7.17美元，有机营收增长率中值约为5.5%。
• 前九个月的经营现金流增长10.4%至12.16亿美元。SS&C在第三季度通过回购和派息向股东回报了2.25亿美元。
• SS&C正针对受监管的工作流程部署AI Gateway和WorkHQ。在WorkHQ开发环境中，已构建了900多个智能体工作流、200个AI Agent（智能体）和60个数字员工。

核心财务业绩

SS&C在本季度以1.548亿美元回购了190万股股票，并支付了7050万美元的股息。8月份，普通股年度股息提高了11.1%至每股1.20美元。

业务与运营表现

营收增长得益于新老客户的销售拓展、项目实施里程碑的达成以及市场层面的利好因素。管理层表示，销售管线持续扩大，并特别强调了迈向2027年时所具备的数个大型潜在委托项目。

在各技术业务领域，多年期续约保持稳定。管理层表示，外包、共同外包和业务整包移交能力继续支持客户业务扩展，并在大型复杂业务合作中凸显出SS&C的竞争优势。

公司正在将人工智能（AI）融入内部运营和客户产品中。AI Gateway提供治理支持，而WorkHQ负责协调智能体工作流。SS&C表示，这些工具旨在服务于复杂且受到高度监管的流程，包括交易、对账、净资产价值（NAV）计算、投资者交易以及监管申报。

SS&C还在扩大其国际业务版图，包括在卢森堡和泰国的运营，以及在中东、澳大利亚和欧洲更为广泛的业务活动。

在财富与投资技术部门内部，管理层将环比增长放缓主要归因于第二季度根据收入确认规则记录的一笔大型续约项目。管理层指出，常态化增长率接近中单位数，而Black Diamond继续保持两位数增长。

智能自动化与分析业务记录了4.5%的有机营收下滑。管理层将部分疲软归因于产品开发与商业化之间的滞后，同时指出该部门为SS&C其他业务的AI相关产品和效率提升提供了支持。

被SS&C收购以强化其代币化能力及基金网络的Calastone，被管理层描述为继续保持两位数的增长率。

管理层业绩指引

对于2026财年第四季度，管理层预计：

对于2026全财年，SS&C上调了多项预期：

该展望假定短期利率维持在当前水平，调整后有效税率约为22.5%，资本支出占营收的4.4%–4.8%。管理层预计，在资本配置方面，相比于削减债务，将继续更侧重于股票回购。

风险与关注要点

• 大型项目委托会对有机增长产生实质性影响，但合同谈判、签署及实施时间仍存在不确定性。管理层表示，单个合同金额可达2500万美元、5000万美元甚至更高。
• 第四季度有机增长面临较高的基数压力，因为上年同期是SS&C增长最强劲的季度之一。
• 金融科技和服务类资产的收购估值维持在较高水平。SS&C表示，尽管私募股权退出的潜在项目管线有所增加，但在价格上仍将保持纪律。
• SS&C正在为其将于2027年到期的20亿美元票据进行再融资。公司表示将在完成后提供最新情况。
• 在受监管的金融工作流程中应用AI需要客户教育、治理和运营可靠性。管理层指出，出现错误可能会迅速减缓部署进程。

分析师问答环节亮点

管理层表示，第四季度有机增长展望主要反映了合同签署时间安排和高对比基数的影响，而非绝对营收走弱。根据合同签署和实施的时间点不同，大型交易可能会拉动或拖累有机增长100至200个基点。

在收购方面，SS&C表示，如果战略契合度和价格合适，会考虑大型交易。讨论的领域包括基金行政管理、自动化和代币化，不过管理层强调近期金融科技交易估值倍数偏高。

在资本配置方面，管理层表示，基于减少总股本带来的收益与税后债务成本的比率，目前股票回购似乎比加速还债更有吸引力。尽管如此，SS&C仍打算继续平衡股票回购、分红、偿还债务和进行收购。

管理层将拥有完整的基金行政管理技术栈描述为赢得业务和快速部署AI功能的一大优势。管理层还提及，客户资产的增长（尤其是大型全球宏观基金的资产增长）推动了管理资产规模的提升。

关于原生AI竞争以及客户可能将业务转为自研/自营的问题，管理层认为，规模、监管复杂性和处理需求构成了行业壁垒，使其不易被颠覆。SS&C将AI Gateway和WorkHQ定位为受监管治理的平台，将现有的机器人流程自动化与智能体工具相结合。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

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完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SS&C Technologies Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

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

Justine Stone

Hi, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining us for our Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. I'm Justine Stone, Head of IR for SS&C. 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 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, October 22, 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 on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.ssctech.com.

I will now turn the call over to Bill.

Bill Stone

Thanks, Justine, and welcome, everyone. I'm happy to report another strong quarter for SS&C with growth in revenues, earnings and margin expansion. We have momentum to finish the year strong.

Our third quarter results were adjusted revenues of $1.691 billion, up 7.8% and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.78, a 14.8% increase. We delivered record adjusted consolidated EBITDA of $674.8 million, up 9% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 39.9%, 40 basis points improvement. Adjusted organic revenue growth was 5.2% with continued performance by our largest businesses. Throughout the quarter, we had strong sales to both new and existing customers, achieved implementation milestones and benefited from market tailwinds. Our pipelines continue to grow, and we are bullish on several large mandates as we look into 2027.

For the 9 months ended September 30, 2026, cash from operating activities were $1.216 billion, up 10.4% year-over-year. This quarter, we returned $225 million to shareholders, which included 1.9 million shares repurchased for $154.8 million and $70.5 million in dividends. In August, we increased our common stock dividend 11.1% to $1.20 per share annually, which reflects the strength and consistency of our cash flow. Our business keeps generating strong recurring free cash flow, and that gives us real flexibility in how we put capital to work. We can raise our dividend, keep buying back shares, pay down debt and pursue high-quality acquisitions, all at once. We don't have to choose.

On M&A, the opportunity set is growing as private equity firms look to exit some of their holdings. We continue to pursue the right deals aggressively, but we'll stay disciplined on price. Financial services technology and services M&A continue to command high valuations, making our own stock one of the most attractive investments we can make.

Last month, more than 1,000 leaders from financial services and health care clients joined us in Orlando for SS&C Deliver, our annual client conference. The message from that room was clear. Our clients are no longer asking whether to transform. They're asking how, how fast and with whom. At Deliver, we unveiled a portfolio of next-generation solutions built on 2 SS&C platforms, AI Gateway, our AI governance platform; and WorkHQ, our award-winning Agentic orchestration platform. Together, they let our clients put AI agents to work on their most complex, highly regulated workflows. These agents work securely with governance built in from day 1. Agentic AI is moving quickly from experimentation into production. We see it inside SS&C, where our customer zero program is driving innovation and efficiency across all operations. To date, over 900 Agentic workflows, 200 AI agents and over 60 digital workers have been built in the WorkHQ development environment as our business units explore dozens of use cases.

We're bringing the same approach to tokenization as traditional and digital assets come together. Our clients need infrastructure that handles both and SS&C already sits at the center of that infrastructure.

Across all of this, our clients are rethinking their operating models end-to-end. That's a transformation, not a single technology purchase. It takes a partner with deep domain expertise, global scale and a proven track record of execution. Few companies can bring all 3. SS&C can, and we're doing it today.

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

Rahul Kanwar

Thanks, Bill. As you noted, we delivered strong third quarter results with 5.2% organic revenue growth and 39.9% EBITDA margins. These results are driven by deep customer relationships and the critical role our products and services play. Our clients keep growing with us and the multiple ways we deliver broad and deep solutions, including outsourcing, co-sourcing and lift-outs are a competitive advantage.

In our technology businesses, we see a steady rate of multiyear renewals, reflecting our customers' confidence in the enduring benefit they will receive from our applications. We also see sustained interest in our new products and services, reinforcing that as a technology provider and outsourcer with scale, we are uniquely positioned to deliver the next generation of AI-enhanced applications. We handle huge volumes of trades, reconciliations, NAV calculations, investor transactions, regulatory filings and hundreds of other functions that require expertise. Our Intelligent Automation and Analytics business built around the Blue Prism acquisition in 2022 is at the center of how we capture the opportunities new technologies bring.

As Bill mentioned, we have hundreds of AI-enhanced processes and agents in production, many more in development. These make us faster and more accurate and expand our capacity to take on new business as our clients grow. Externally, our new products are gaining traction. We're also bringing AI directly to clients through collaborations with frontier model companies, integrations with the leading AI platforms and new features built into our applications. Our global footprint is growing and remains a competitive advantage. We are expanding our presence in the Middle East, Australia and Europe and have recently expanded our operations in Luxembourg and Thailand.

With that, I'll turn it over to Brian to walk through the financials.

Brian Schell

Thanks, Rahul, and good day, everyone. Unless noted otherwise, the quarterly comparisons are to Q3 2025. As disclosed in our press release, our Q3 2026 GAAP results reflect revenues of $1.69 billion, net income of $199 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.83. Our adjusted non-GAAP results include revenues of $1.691 billion, an increase of 7.8% and adjusted diluted EPS of $1.78, a 14.8% increase. The adjusted revenue increase of $122 million included acquisitions of $39 million and a small favorable impact from foreign exchange of approximately $1.7 million.

As a result, adjusted organic revenue growth on a constant currency basis was 5.2%, and our core expenses increased 4.3% or $42 million, which also excludes acquisitions and impact of FX. Adjusted consolidated EBITDA was $675 million, reflecting an increase of $56 million or 9%, a margin of 39.9%, the 40 basis point expansion. Net interest expense for the third quarter was $107 million, an increase of $3 million compared to last year. Adjusted net income was $429 million, up 9.6%, resulting in the adjusted diluted EPS of $1.78. 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 effect of tax rate of 22%. The diluted share count is down nearly 5% to 20.46 million from 252.6 million shares year-over-year, primarily due to the continued impact of treasury share purchases.

Cash flow from operating activities grew 10%, largely driven by growth in earnings. SS&C ended the third quarter with $525 million in cash and cash equivalents and $7.5 billion in gross debt. SS&C's net debt was $7 billion, and our last 12 months consolidated EBITDA was $2.7 billion. The resulting net leverage ratio is 2.63. We are currently in the process of refinancing our $2 billion of notes due next year, and we'll provide an update when that has been completed.

As we look forward to the fourth quarter and 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 to 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 and sales and marketing.

Specifically, we have assumed short-term interest rates to 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 reduction.

For the fourth quarter of '26, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.7 billion to $1.74 billion and 4% organic revenue growth at the midpoint. Adjusted net income in the range of $454 million to $470 million; interest expense, excluding amortization of deferred financing costs and original issue discount in the range of $103 million to $105 million and adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $1.88 to $1.94.

For the full year 2026, we increased several revenue and earnings expectations as follows: revenue to be in the range of $6.736 billion to $6.776 billion and 5.5% organic revenue growth at the midpoint; adjusted net income in the range of $1.726 billion to $1.742 billion, adjusted diluted EPS in a range of $7.11 to $7.17, reflecting approximately 16.3% growth at the midpoint. We are now targeting EBITDA growth of 10%, EBITDA margin expansion of 90 basis points for the year and exiting the year with 41% EBITDA margins.

And now back to Bill.

Bill Stone

Thanks, Brian. We're pleased with our third quarter and the momentum we're carrying into the rest of the year. We exceeded expectations on revenue and margins, and we are raising our outlook for the full year. Our clients continue to invest in SS&C and expand their relationships with us, and our pipelines are healthy across our businesses and region.

As we look ahead to 2027, we're excited about the opportunities in front of us. Demand for our outsourcing solutions remains strong. Our technology keeps getting better and the capabilities we're building are changing how we serve clients. As always, we'll stay disciplined on how we operate, invest and allocate capital to create long-term shareholder value.

And with that, we'll start taking questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets.

分析师问答

Daniel Perlin

I had a question on the kind of midpoint of the organic growth assumptions for 4Q. Obviously, you had big renewals in the second quarter. This quarter at 5.2% seem like more normalized. And so I'm just trying to make sure I understand kind of what's the gating factor to get this to decelerate? I know that there's the anniversarying of partially of Insignia that probably plays into that. But everything else seems to be going fairly well. So any details around what would be the key drivers to that would be helpful.

Bill Stone

Well, Dan, I think in general, right, it's again that we have a lot of pretty big mandates in our pipelines. And while we're getting buy signals all over the place, we prefer ink on contracts. And so that's the thing that changes organic revenue growth, 100, 150 basis points, 200 basis points. That's just the nature of large-scale contracts. And so our contracts now could be $25 million, $50 million and up. And so there's a lot of lawyers out there. They haven't gone away. And so it's getting that down and negotiated and signed and then getting them live.

Daniel Perlin

Got it. No, that makes total sense.

Rahul Kanwar

Very quickly, if I could just add to the back of that. The other thing is, as you will note, absolute revenue was actually up in Q4 relative to Q3, right? And very much in line with kind of, I'd say, ahead of where we thought we were going to be for the year. So most of this is really just quarter-over-quarter timing. So if you look back at Q3 and Q4 last year, that's probably part of the explanation.

Brian Schell

That was one of the largest growth quarters we had last year, fourth quarter of last year, as you recall, too.

Daniel Perlin

Yes. That's a very good point. Just a quick follow-up, Bill, on the M&A commentary looking more interesting, I guess, as PE firms are kind of looking to exit their portfolios. I'm just wondering what are the areas that you're most interested in looking to expand as you think about these opportunities that are facing the company in '27 and ultimately '28?

Bill Stone

Well, as you see, right, I mean, there's been a lot of fintech M&A in the last 90 days even, and the multiples are pretty eye-popping. So we think we have very valuable businesses. A number of our businesses are bigger in those areas than some of the M&A that's going on and more profitable. So we have big successful businesses, and we'll probably expand. And if we can find stuff in fund administration, we would. But we've probably bought 20 fund administration companies over the last 20 years and we were kind of the pioneer in that, and now they drive prices to points where you wonder if that's where we should go. And we've also done really a great job of transforming our global investor and distribution services that we acquired with DST, and that's now got great momentum with Insignia. That's still a very large client with a lot of work for us to do.

But on what we've done for them so far, the outsourcing their business as usual to us has been a very big success. And I believe that's what's going to happen with a number of other large institutions that become somewhat constricted in what they can do and how fast they can do it. And we move a little faster. We're a little more decisive in what we do. And as I've said many times, we don't dabble. As Rahul said earlier, we bought Blue Prism in 2022 for about $1.6 billion. Last year, we bought Calastone, which gives us a real leg up in tokenization, and they also run about a 7,000 funds network. So we don't dabble. We get in, we get the expertise, and we distribute it on a global scale.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin McVeigh with UBS.

Kevin McVeigh

Congratulations on the results. I mean just really continue to execute at a super high level. I guess the margins continue to really, really [ impressive ] absorbing these ever larger engagements. Maybe talk to that a little bit and where you are on the AI journey? And I guess related to all of that, does that change the acquisition strategy in terms of willing to even size up something more just given how strong you are operationally at this point?

Bill Stone

Kevin, you've been around us for a while, and you kind of understand the process we go through to kind of validate what acquisitions we want and what areas we want to get larger in. We would do a big acquisition, and there's a lot of companies out there that ever since the mass scare on SaaS businesses, some of them haven't recovered nearly like we have. I don't believe they have as strong a business as we do, but that's somewhat in the eye of the beholder. But we continue -- like earnings were up 14.8% and we generate $1.216 billion in cash flow in 9 months.

And as we said in our prepared remarks, we don't have to choose on what we want to do. We can do all of them. We can fund them ourselves. We can execute. The capital markets are very friendly to us. They know we borrow money and we pay it back, right? And we work hard for our shareholders. And that's a constant theme with anyone you talk to at SS&C. So we're pretty focused. We're pretty ambitious, and we're also pretty judicious. So I think that's kind of what we're looking at, at M&A. I'm pretty certain there's some really big places that are for sale, and we just have to make sure that if we were to buy one, we got it at the right price.

Kevin McVeigh

Super helpful. And then just real quick, the AUA just continues to move ahead despite the volatility and concern about private equity. So anything to call out in terms of just the sequential build because it's just the pacing of it is just really, really impressive. Is that just spinouts that you're winning or just normal pace? Anything to call out on the AUA?

Bill Stone

Well, Kevin, again, we have almost all of the large-scale global macro funds. So -- and they tend to be the one hoovering up the most assets that are out there. So we get a very large chunk of those. And we invest heavily to make sure that we can satisfy their needs and then also branch into where they want to go, whether that's Abu Dhabi or that's private markets. So it's something that we invest a lot of money, and it has proven, as you've seen on how big those assets grow every quarter to have been a pretty successful strategy. And I think Rahul is really close to that business.

Rahul Kanwar

Yes. So in addition to our big clients having a lot of success in getting bigger, the other thing that's happening is with all the focus on technology, folks are starting to realize that ownership of the entire technology stack that runs the fund administration business is a huge advantage, right, and gives us the opportunity to deploy AI and new functionality at a very, very quick pace. And so that's helped us -- it's helped us in the win rate.

Bill Stone

Yes. And it gives us -- we talk about across the entire fund administration tech stack. We have very powerful trading systems. We have a very powerful network that's in 60, 70 countries. So we have a big fixed network, right? So there's not many things that we don't do. We have models that will value fixed income. We have tons of different strategies across all the different fund type companies. And so we're pretty optimistic about where we sit, and we remain very competitive.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeff Schmitt with William Blair.

Jeffrey Schmitt

So debt leverage is low compared with historical levels with interest rates rising and then you have debt refinancing coming up next year. How are you thinking about capital allocation in '27, especially if the Fed keeps hiking?

Bill Stone

Well, again, like right now, if you look at our stock trading in the mid-80s that we're going to generate $7.25 in cash or something like that. And we pay $1.20 dividend. So that gets you up to, say, $8.50 maybe. So $8.50 on an $85 stock is 10%. So we think buying back our stock where we save that $8.50 on every share is a little more attractive than paying down 6.5%, 7% debt, whose interest is tax deductible. So that's kind of the math we do. But we still pay down some debt all the time, and we buy back shares all the time, and we look at acquisitions all the time, and we raise our dividend most of the time.

So I think that's kind of how we look at the capital allocation. And people say, so why do you talk to your debt holders because we might want to do a big acquisition, and we're going to have to borrow money, right? So it's making sure that we have constant communications with the banks. We have constant communications with our clients as well as with obviously our workforce. And that's something that I think we really pride ourselves on.

Jeffrey Schmitt

Okay. Great. And then for the Intelligent Automation and Analytics, organic growth declined 4.5% in the quarter. Just curious how much of that reflects kind of continued pressure in Blue Prism and could newer offerings like WorkHQ return that business to growth?

Rahul Kanwar

I think it's 2 things. One, the second part of what you said there is what we think. There's a fair amount of product development, new product bringing to market in that process, right? And so I think there's probably a natural lag that is somewhat reflected in the numbers.

But I think the other thing that I would highlight is that business is at the center of all the AI-related commentary that you've heard us make in our prepared remarks and really the new products, the new services, the strength in our fund administration business, the strength in our technology businesses. A lot of that is driven out of that. So sometimes the growth and the success we have is reflected in different places as opposed to just in that business.

Bill Stone

As you well know, we also -- it's kind of a crossover. What we think some of our smarter clients recognize that RPA works very well for them in some large sections of what they do. And ripping out your infrastructure is long, painful, breaking rocks in the desert, right? So -- but if you can keep your RPA bots working for you and then add Agentic agents, you get the best of both worlds because you get to transition at your speed and you still are automating and automating and automating. And that's something that we think is very attractive, and we're attracting some very big clients to our platform.

Operator

Our next question comes from Pete Heckmann with D.A. Davidson.

Peter Heckmann

I had a similar question on that. Let me get back in the queue and look at my list. Sorry.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] our next question comes from Alexei Gogolev with JPMorgan.

Isabella Camaj

This is Bella Camaj on for Alexei. So for the first one, looking at the WIT segment's organic growth deceleration after much stronger nearly 10% growth last quarter. Could you help us dig a little more into what drove that change and whether investors should view that as mainly timing related or possibly indicative of a more normalized demand environment?

Bill Stone

Well, we had a very large renewal in the last quarter in WIT and those things with 606, you're going to get spikes in revenue. And so there's no way around that. And I would say that what they're doing is extending their contracts for multiple years, 5 to 10 years. And that's a great, great big flush to earnings to revenue, which also goes to earnings pretty much. So I would say it's not -- our demand and [ WIT ] is high, remains high. It remains widespread global. And so I don't think that the reduction in organic revenue in Q3 compared to Q2 is anything other than that really big renewal.

Isabella Camaj

Got it. That makes sense. And as a quick follow-up, you mentioned being bullish on several large mandates as you look into 2027. Maybe broadly speaking, can you help us understand what areas of the business those opportunities are concentrated in and maybe whether they reflect traditional outsourcing demand or some newer AI and transformation-related initiatives, especially with WorkHQ on the horizon?

Bill Stone

Yes. Well, I think we really believe that the large-scale financial institutions around the world need to have a partner that can understand their business and then platform them away from where they are now so that they get a chance to improve their business, right? So when you think about a large-scale system going into a large-scale institution, sometimes the institution doesn't stay up with the releases, and they can get multiple releases behind. And then it becomes almost impossible to catch up. And that means they sacrifice all the improvements in those applications when companies like us come out with new releases. So that's what's driving that.

I don't think it's going to change. I think more and more institutions are going to recognize that SS&C is a specialist firm, right? We have thousands and thousands of CPAs and chartered accountants and MBAs and CFAs and mathematicians. And so it's specialized. We're not investment bankers, and we're not investment professionals from the standpoint of which sector or which area of the world that you should be investing in. But wherever you're investing, we're expert in how to process them, how to make sure the regulators are satisfied, how to get information back to you very quickly and have it in a format that you want.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from James Faucette with Morgan Stanley.

James Faucette

A couple of, I guess, strategic and development questions here. Just wondering how -- and you've talked about AI and how that's starting to provide some benefits. Wondering how and if that's impacting customer pricing dynamics. I mean, as you've had more conversations with customers around AI and Agentic Automation, how is that influencing the commercial part of the negotiations on those? Are customers demonstrating a willingness to pay more for the enhanced automation? Or are they increasingly viewing AI-driven productivity as a reason to push back on pricing? And just wondering how we should think about the net impact on your long-term organic growth opportunity?

Bill Stone

Well, of course, really smart organizations are pushing back on price all the time. This is just one more kind of arrow in their quiver about where to come at technology companies such as us and what we have to do is make sure that our offering is differentiated. You really can't walk into the Mercedes dealership and think you're going to pay for a Volkswagen. You're not going to be able to do that, and that's what we do. We spend more money on R&D. We spend more money training our people. We spend more money making sure we have a global footprint so that companies such as yours and others can feel comfortable that we have the expertise, the broad-based knowledge of different markets and different time zones and that we're going to be there.

And that peace of mind for senior executives is pretty important. And that's what we strive to do is to give whether it's Ted Pick or Jamie Dimon, the feeling that, hey, we're there. We're not going anywhere and we can process volume and we can process it globally.

James Faucette

Got it. Got it. I appreciate that perspective. I think it's a good one. And then I wanted to ask about tokenization and just what you're seeing there. We've seen a lot of headlines and ourselves have done quite a bit of research on how we're seeing some assets come on chain, but that could end up being wide script. How should we think about the impact of the Calastone business and what the opportunities/challenges may be there?

Bill Stone

Well, we talked about it a little bit before, and Rahul has done a lot of work in this area, too. I just learned how to spell organization. But we really believe that the concept that the token is like a poker chip. So it becomes very portable. And it also isn't something that you have to go do a 10-Q and a 10-K and everything in order to get some liquidity. So we think it's going to continue to be attractive in all kinds of different markets and Calastone continues to grow handsomely in the double digits, I would say.

Rahul Kanwar

And I think the -- maybe the one thing that I would add is what we've always tried to do across all of our services and capabilities is be ready for what our customers might need us for. This is a perfect example of that, right? So we've got customers at every end of the spectrum, some that are embracing it wholeheartedly, some that are experimenting, some that want to learn more. And the fact that we have this capability is yet another differentiator.

Operator

Our next question comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy with Raymond James.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Is there anywhere in your business where you're seeing signs of competitive disruption from AI native start-ups or clients looking to take activities in-house by leveraging AI capabilities themselves?

Bill Stone

Patrick, I think there's a lot of noise. And I think there's a lot of companies that are trying things. And you get some of the people that are on the front office side of asset managers and different funds that basically say, look, I can get my kid with AI in 2 weeks, we could rewrite Geneva. Yes, good luck. I would suggest you get well provisioned for those 2 weeks because at the end of the 2 weeks, you'll go, wow, where should we get started?

So the complexity, the scale, all of that comes into being able to deploy. And as you know, you're highly regulated. And as soon as things -- something comes out and Agentic didn't do it right and something got duped or something like that, the brakes come on so fast that you can't get it released again. So I think that's what we've tried to be is a trusted partner that can show you come into our offices, we process trades to the millions every day, all kinds of transactions all over the world in every currency, come see how we do it. Come see how we do WorkHQ, come see how our governance and AI Gateway protects us and just how we can deliver to you. So it protects you. So that's what we're doing. And we think it's a very, very sound strategy. We've won some very nice accounts, and I know we've mentioned Marsh before, but there's others that we've been adding. But it's new technology, and you have to get people to adopt it, and they have to get comfortable. And then you have to go, go, go, go.

When I started in this business, people said, I would never put my assets on a PC. Well, you're not putting your assets on a PC, kind of whatever. So your assets are at DTC, right? And this is just an accounting system. So it is something where we need to continue to teach and educate and have people be comfortable with what they're doing and how they can use AI and all the different models, which you know are coming out every week or every day and try to make it so that you succeed with the technology. You don't ground in it. And I think we've been doing this for a long time, whether it's when they first came out with Excel or dBase and then Novell networks and then everything is client server. We always try to be true client server. I never quite knew what that meant. We weren't never false client server that I knew of. And so that's how technology goes. You were around when the Internet and the bubble and then the bubble pops and that hurt.

So I think that's what we're trying to do is take a measured approach. We have very, I think, very slick technology that works, and we have a lot of confidence that it's going to drive a lot of revenue.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Understood. And then getting back to the Wealth and Investment Technologies business, is there an opportunity for that business to consistently kind of get to mid-single digit or better revenue growth? Or is it just kind of structurally more mature competitive end market?

Rahul Kanwar

I think if you normalize the growth rate, it probably is at mid-single digits now, right? You just got to -- it's what Bill said earlier is you really do have to strip out the -- and normalize the 606-related spikes and things like that. But if you -- we had a really big Q2 as one example.

In general, when we think about that business and we look at it, in terms of annual recurring revenue and correct for some of those kinds of things, we're seeing a business pretty close to mid-single digits.

Bill Stone

With certain of their assets growing at quite a bit higher than that. So like Black Diamond, which is our primary wealth platform, is growing at double digits and continues to show strength against all the other wealth platforms that are out there. And we think that will continue.

Operator

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Bill Stone for any closing remarks.

Bill Stone

Once again, we really appreciate everybody being on our third quarter conference call, and we're working hard in the fourth quarter, and we hope to talk to you in February and discuss another strong quarter, which will be Q4 of '26. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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