i3 Verticals Inc. (IIIV) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

i3 Verticals Inc. (NASDAQ: IIIV) Q4 2020 earnings call dated Nov. 20, 2020

Corporate Participants:

Scott Meriwether — i3 Verticals, Inc.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Clay Whitson — Chief Financial Officer

Rick Stanford — President

Analysts:

John Davis — Raymond James — Analyst

George Mihalos — Cowen — Analyst

Unidentified Participant — — Analyst

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Peter Heckmann — D.A. Davidson — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day, everyone. And welcome to the i3 Verticals Year-End 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And a replay will be available starting today through November 27. The number for the replay is 719-457-0820, and the code is 4271451. The replay may also be accessed for 30 days at the company’s website.

At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to turn the call over to Scott Meriwether, Chief Operating Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Scott Meriwether — i3 Verticals, Inc.

Good morning. And welcome to the fourth quarter 2020 conference call for i3 Verticals. Joining me on this call are Greg Daily, our Chairman and CEO; Clay Whitson, our CFO; and Rick Stanford, our President.

To the extent, any non-GAAP financial measure is discussed in today’s call, you will also find a reconciliation of that measure to the most directly comparable financial measure calculated according to GAAP by reviewing yesterday’s earnings release. It is the company’s intent to provide non-GAAP financial information to enhance understanding of its consolidated financial information as prepared in accordance with GAAP. This non-GAAP information should be considered by each individual in addition to, but not in set up, the financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP.

This conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, among others, regarding the company’s expected financial and operating performance and the expected and potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these forward-looking statements may be affected by the important factors, among others, set forth in the company’s earnings release and in reports that are filed or furnish to the SEC, including risks and uncertainties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Finally, the information shared on this call is valid as of today’s date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update it, except as may be required under applicable law.

I’ll now turn the call over to the company’s Chairman and CEO, Greg Daily.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Scott. And good morning to all of you. We are pleased with our fourth quarter and our full 2020 fiscal year. We’re optimistic about how we are executing — exiting fiscal year ’20, as our core business continues to recover and we execute on our M&A strategy.

Payment volumes have continued to improve over the last two quarters, though there are lingering effects from continued government regulations or restrictions. For fiscal year 2020, our adjusted net revenue increased 10% and our adjusted EBITDA was relatively flat with the prior year, due to the effects of the pandemic. We expect there will be some continued volatility in our payment volume in the coming months. But the increase in our software revenue will reduce some of that impact, we are confident in our company’s market position moving forward.

We continue to execute our software driven payment strategy. After pausing our M&A activity at the onset of COVID, we begun to reengage on the M&A front and have completed seven acquisitions since July 1. All seven acquisitions are focused on software payments. Four of them are in the Public Sector, which continues to grow as our fastest vertical. We have announced six of these acquisitions previously, and I will discuss the seventh one momentarily.

We also now have our first software footholds and nonprofit and health care, which were big strategic steps for us forward, we will continue to pursue additional opportunities in these verticals. We continue to streamline our payment technology platforms and work toward developing existing software product offerings. We believe these acquisitions and a return to normal economic conditions in fiscal year ’21 will help us deliver strong results next year and going forward.

Our recent acquisition was ImageSoft. A public sector company positioned as a leader in paperless processes. e-Filings within courts is one of their key products and we are excited about ImageSoft’s product suites, enhancing our current offering in the public sector market. This will be our largest office from a headcount perspective and we welcome the ImageSoft employees to the i3 family.

We’ve seen major wins across the company during the last quarter. We haven’t had the greatest number of monthly approve payment accounts in the history of the company, which is a continued — the strong run that began in June.

Within our Public Sector teams, we’ve signed several significant new projects in Louisiana and Texas. And despite the continued shutdown of restaurant activity on the West Coast, we shipped out a record amount of POS systems in October. Wins like this gives me excitement about the upcoming year.

The Education vertical remains depressed as many students continue to participate in online or remote environments. The federal government extended free lunch program for students through the end of the current school year, over half of our payment revenue within K-12 education comes from lunch payments. We currently expect this program will end at the start of next school year. We will continue to monitor federal actions in this vertical and we’ll respond accordingly.

We’ve signed many new school districts this year, but the depressed lunch payment volume has outweighed our customer gains. We are still believers in this vertical and its long-term potential. Our integrated payment volume continues to growth. 57% of our payment volume was integrated during Q4, up from 54% in Q4 of ’19. As all of our recent acquisitions have been software based, we believe we will be able to drive this metric higher in the future.

Now, I will turn the call over to Clay and he will provide you some details on our fourth quarter financial performance and following Clay comments, Rick will provide an M&A update and then we’ll open up the call for questions.

Clay Whitson — Chief Financial Officer

Thanks. The following pertains to the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020, which is the three month period ended September 30, 2020. Please refer to the slide presentation titled Supplemental Performance on our website for reference with this discussion.

As we mentioned last quarter, our Q3 ended in June was our worst quarter of the pandemic. For the fourth quarter ended in September, net revenues improved sequentially 22% to $38.4 million. EBITDA increased at a much higher rate, 37% to $9.7 million reflecting the operating leverage embedded in the model. The EBITDA margin improved sequentially from 22% to 25%.

Pro forma adjusted diluted earnings per share increased sequentially from $0.13 in Q3 to $0.20 in Q4. Again, please refer to the press release for a full description and reconciliation.

Volumes have regained most of the altitude they lost in the spring. On a year-over-year basis, July and August were down 9%, while September was down 3%. On the face of it, volume in Q4 2020 was higher than Q4 last year, but this year included our nonprofit acquisition and $280 million of ACH volume we did not have last year. Principally from tuition payments for the University we announced last quarter.

Excluding ACH volume and the nonprofit acquisition, October was down 4% from the previous year. And so far November seems similar to October. The laggards for us has been education, retail and hospitality, which a number of companies have experienced. We have taken an aggressive approach during the pandemic, continuing to post-record sales months, while renewing acquisition activity that was postponed in the spring.

We have fulfilled our goals of owning software and two additional verticals, health care and nonprofit, which gives us runway beyond our growing presence in Public Sector. We feel well positioned in the economy emerging from the pandemic. Our integration percentage improved to 55% for 2020 from just 36% before the IPO.

As in Q4, software and related services represented 26% of total net revenues, up from 5% pre-IPO. This was a notable achievement in a quarter that saw general recovery in payments revenues. Software revenues continued to build during the quarter and exceeded pre-COVID levels. The bright spot for us continues to be Public Sector, which drove our proprietary software and related payment segment results.

In Public Sector, we had strong year-over-year growth in net revenues and EBITDA and improved the EBITDA margin in the vertical. Our nonprofit acquisition also had a strong quarter with impressive growth over the previous year. The health care acquisition is not included in our results until the December quarter.

On a year-over-year basis, net revenues declined 5% to $38.4 million for Q4, 2020, from $40.6 million in Q4, 2019, reflecting the challenging economic conditions in several markets, such as retail, hospitality and education.

Acquisitions contributed an increase of $3 million in the quarter. IPOS declined $2.5 million, reflecting not only the COVID impact in California, but also our ongoing transition to a SaaS offering. Our net revenue yield defined as net revenues divided by payment volume declined to 97 basis points for Q4 2020, from 105 basis points in Q4, ’19, mainly due to the aforementioned ACH volume from university tuition. For the full year, our revenue yield held steady at 105 basis points.

Adjusted EBITDA declined 17% to $19.7 million for Q4 2020 from a 11.7 million for Q4 ’19, primarily due to weakness in education and hospitality. Please see the press release for a reconciliation between net income and adjusted EBITDA.

Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of net revenues was 25.2% for Q4, 2020, down from 28.9% for Q4 ’19, reflecting fixed costs spread over lower net revenues due to the COVID-19 impact. In the normal course, we expect to improve our EBITDA margin for the same group of companies over time.

Effective April 1, we instituted previously disclosed cost savings, which included terminations and furloughs. These cost savings, together with lower T&E expenses saved almost $3 million in the June quarter. We have since recalled roughly half of the furloughed employees as business has rebounded, but have retained about $1 million in savings quarterly on an ongoing basis, which allowed our corporate expenses as a percentage of net revenues to remain steady at 7.2% for Q4 ’19 and ’20 despite lower net revenues.

Segment performance. In our Proprietary Software and Payments segment, net revenues increased 19% to $14.1 million for Q4, 2020, from $11.9 million for Q4 ’19, principally reflecting growth in our Public Sector vertical, but also the inclusion of our nonprofit acquisition for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA improved 2% to $4.9 million for Q4 2020, from $4.8 million for Q4 ’19, reflecting mainly Public Sector growth, but also the nonprofit acquisition. These gains were partially offset by the anticipated decline in our education vertical.

On our last conference call we devoted some time to the outlook for Education, and it is playing out now as expected. Most districts have re-opened, but many are remote and others are staggering student schedules on campus. As mentioned earlier, the USDA has extended its free lunch program for all students for the remainder of the school year, which means we will not see a meaningful increase in payments until the new school year in next August.

Regardless of how the school year unfolds, we remain committed to the vertical and believe it will perform very well over the medium and long-term. Our Public Sector vertical is coming on strong. In Q4, it represented roughly three quarters of net revenues in the segment, and even more on an EBITDA basis. As you’ve heard from Greg, we are excited about the company’s we have purchased since the IPO, including the most recent acquisitions and the future pipeline.

Net revenues for our Merchant Services segment declined 14% to $24.8 million for Q4 2020, from $28.7 million for Q4 2019. Our hospitality vertical was hardest hit with the exposure to California, and the transition to a SaaS model. Other non-integrated face to face business and markets such as retail, restaurant and T&E have been slower to recover. Adjusted EBITDA for our Merchant Services segment declined 23% to $7.5 million for Q4, 2020 from $9.8 million for Q4 ’19. The EBITDA margin was 30% for Q4 2020 versus 34% for Q4 ’19. Again, reflecting fixed cost spread over a smaller revenue base.

Balance sheet. Our balance sheet has allowed us to continue to execute our acquisition strategy. During the quarter, we completed a follow-on offering which netted the company’s $71.9 million in proceeds for debt repayment and strategic acquisition opportunities. Currently we have $44 million borrowed under our revolver, which is a $275 million facility. The face value of our convertible notes are $117 million.

Our press release was not very clear last night, so I want to summarize our acquisition activity since June 30. During Q4, we closed three deals for a total of $27.4 million. On October 5, we announced three deals totaling $19.6 million. And this week we added ImageSoft for $40 million. Our total since June 30 is seven deals for total cash consideration of $87 million.

Taking into account the acquisitions completed after September 30, our pro forma total leverage ratio, which includes the convertible notes is currently in the low threes, our current constraint is 5.5 times. The multiples paid on our recent deals conform to less than 10 times EBITDA. The interest rate for the convertible notes are 1%, while the interest rate for the revolver is currently less than 4%. Over time we expect to convert roughly two-thirds of EBITDA into free cash flow, which can either be used for more acquisitions or debt repayment.

Outlook. The company suspended guidance in the spring recognizing the uncertainty introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. At this time, the company is not providing a financial outlook for fiscal year ending September 30, 2021. A note on seasonality in relation to 2021. 2020 was an odd year from a quarterly mix perspective, we believe 2021 will unfold more like 2019, then 2020 with quarterly progression throughout the year.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, we have announced seven acquisitions which have altered our business mix. To give a better understanding of our current run rates, we have estimated the following representative net revenues by vertical. Public sector, 40%; health care, 10%; B2B, 10%; hospitality, 10%; retail, 10%; education, 5%; nonprofit, 5%; and other 10%.

We continue to like our diversification, hospitality and retail, which we consider the most challenging markets over the next few years, only represent 20% of our book. Our largest vertical is Public Sector and we feel increasingly well positioned that governments and schools do not go out of business. Health care is an essential service and B2B will grow over time.

The software platform we acquired in a nonprofit niche has during the pandemic. Digitization of payments away from cash and check will continue and we have differentiated payment solutions to offer our customers, integrated to our software and other leading software providers.

I will now turn the call over to Rick for an — for company updates and M&A activity.

Rick Stanford — President

Thank you, Clay. Good morning, everyone. I want to highlight recent progress on a few operational matters before I talk about our M&A status, including a few updates on things I’ve addressed on previous calls.

First, an update on our unified product offering in our Public Sector vertical, a topic that I’ve discussed before. Our goal is to make a comprehensive suite of products available to each county and city and we are making progress towards that goal. For example, all initially contracted customers last quarter under UPO have been installed and are live.

We are coupling our law enforcement product with traffic courts in both Texas and Georgia, we will kick off a series of roadshows for UPO to present the expanded product suite under UPO to existing and potential customers. We recently were able to secure a system sale in a new state for a court management system not currently in our footprint.

Lastly, we are migrating certain customers from a legacy government accounting package to a newer version we recently acquired. We’re motivated by these early UPO accomplishments and are gaining momentum in cross-pollination. Our pipeline for cross-pollination remains very large under UPO.

Second, on the ISV front, our total number of signed and integrated ISVs at the end of our fourth fiscal quarter was 68 with two more in process of integration. Our pipelines for ISVs continues to grow quarter-over-quarter and we are actively pursuing additional integrations.

Third, our in-house team of engineers have developed two additional flavors of our electronic bill payment and presentment product, or EBPP, that are alternatives to our full featured enterprise bill and pay products. These two new versions are Essentials and Pro. This development was done to accommodate the needs of small to mid-sized customers that did not require the deep enterprise version of the software.

Lastly, a few comments about our M&A efforts. On October 1 we announced the closing of the acquisitions. The first acquisition is within the Public Sector vertical. This business is based in the Southeast and provides software and services for public safety and law enforcement customers. Their products include public safety that connects a customer’s comp center to local public safety agencies, dispatch, records management, law enforcement mobile solutions and criminal solutions available with mental health checks and interfaces to courts. All these products have an integration to the NCIC, National Crime Information Center, the shared FBI database used by law enforcement nationwide.

The second October 1 acquisition is within the company’s healthcare vertical that offers the following products: medical billing and scheduling; practice management software; electronic health records and analytics reporting. This business is also headquartered in the Southeast, but serves customers across the country.

The final October 1 acquisition offers proprietary technology that will augment the company’s existing technology platform across several verticals. It is also based in the Southeast and serves customers on a nationwide basis. All three acquisitions enable us to offer new software to existing clients and to penetrate new geographies and markets. We are extremely pleased to now own software in both the health care and nonprofit verticals.

I’m excited today to announce that on November 17, Tuesday of this week, we closed another public sector acquisition, ImageSoft. ImageSoft was founded in 1996, the company is in Detroit, Michigan and operates across the country. They sell a combination of proprietary and third-party software. There software at a high level eliminates paper-based systems by creating integrated electronic workflows for courts and government agencies. Some of the products sold by ImageSoft are, TrueFiling, TrueSign, TrueCertify or electronic certification of court documents, K share [Phonetic], the indexing packaging and transferring of case files from trial to appellate court’s, a charge code management platform, a unified statewide database of charge codes that provides cross jurisdictional consistency, and lastly, digital evidence management.

All these deals I’ve listed today continue our push to provide software across multiple verticals with embedded payment capabilities. We continue to be disciplined in our approach, and all four of these acquisitions conform to a 10 times purchase multiple.

Finally, our future M&A pipeline is very healthy and has an emphasis on Public Sector, education and health care. And we look forward to sharing more on the acquisition front in the near term.

This concludes my comments. Keith, at this point, we’ll open the call for Q&A, please.

Questions and Answers:

 

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we will now take our first question. It comes from John Davis of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

John Davis — Raymond James — Analyst

Hey, good morning, guys. So, Greg, maybe just want to start off or Clay. I appreciate the commentary on the multiple paid for the four recent acquisitions. I’m just curious, from a margin perspective similar to the current corporate margins, slightly above, slightly below. Just trying to think about the total kind of revenue and EBITDA impact of the four recent acquisitions?

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Software companies can run as much as 50% margin. ImageSoft is a little bit lower at — more like 20%, the others would be between 40% and 50%, I would say.

John Davis — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then specifically on ImageSoft. It seems like a pretty exciting deal that you could leverage throughout all the different regions where you have courts. So just maybe talk a little bit more about kind of the plans, how easy is this to integrate with your existing court infrastructure across the different regions where you have court systems? And then, any idea of how fast it was growing, and maybe what you think you could grow, given that it feels like it’s pretty synergistic from a revenue perspective?

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, John. Thank you for your question. We had several of our Public Sector CEOs preview this deal during diligence. And to say they’re excited is an understatement, every time we do an acquisition in Public Sector, there is some small overlap with the product suite. But this one brings us a lot of products that fill gaps in our current unified product offering. We think one of the big gains we’re going to see with this company is cross selling their products into our existing states and courts. And everybody is excited about it.

We think it’s going to be easy to do. It will immediately be put under our unified product offering as an augmentation to our existing technology. So we’re excited about it. Very excited. I want to also mention that, extremely talented group of folks that we’re bringing on with ImageSoft.

John Davis — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. And then just maybe switching over to the Education vertical. Maybe just give us a sense in total, kind of what you see from a revenue and EBITDA perspective. I don’t know, any stats you can give us on percentage of schools opened? And then, I think, one of the things I want to clarify is, all the school is closed, I guess, for students and the actual school they are doing from home. What is the revenue picture look like, is that down $80 million, is it down $90 million, is it down $50 million. Just trying to think bigger picture how should we think about the Education vertical over the next couple of months, which are probably pretty challenging?

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, last quarter I think we framed it that we have about $10 million from payment revenues, gross profit and estimated we thought we would lose half of that this year. And looking at our most recent quarter, we still think this is causing a $5 million revenue and profit hold for 2021. Our software revenues have actually increased, but at the launch — pre-launch for everybody, that started in the summer, that’s a big hit. It’s very hard on administration budgets and so we do think next year it will come back. But for this — looking at this fiscal year, we think it’s a $5 million hit to us.

John Davis — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. Thanks. And the last one for me. Clay, I think you mentioned the pro forma leverage for all these deals is in the low threes, I think you have a 5% cap. But our math suggest, if you were to kind of take it up to 4 times you still have, call it, $50 million, $60 million of capacity for future M&A without having to raise additional capital. Is that somewhere in the ballpark and how you guys think about it?

Clay Whitson — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Our leverage ratio is — our covenant constraint is 5.0 times, but I think we have a stated intention of keeping that close to four as a maximum in the current environment.

John Davis — Raymond James — Analyst

Okay. All right, thanks guys.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, JD.

Operator

Our next question comes from George Mihalos of Cowen. Please go ahead.

George Mihalos — Cowen — Analyst

Hey, guys. Good morning. I wanted to kind of follow up on the M&A front. And just maybe specifically, Rick, when you look at the pipeline that’s out there. I mean, lately you’ve been more active in verticals outside of Public Sector. Just curious, when you look at the pipeline right now, how do some of these non-Public Sector vertical is kind of stack? Are there opportunities there? And are there any sort of complications or maybe sort of push outs now as may be COVID seems to come back into play more aggressively?

Rick Stanford — President

Yeah. Thank you for the question, George. We did — it’s no secret that we’ve been looking for several years to get into the nonprofit and health care. We’ve looked at a lot of deals, we just haven’t found the right fit. Those two verticals, it’s probably taken us four or five years to find the right partner in those fell into place coincidentally, at the same time in the same quarter. We still — the pipeline is still relatively full with Public Sector. I would say, greater than 50% of the deals that we’re looking at is Public Sector, but we are continuing to look at education and healthcare. We feel like we’ve got some things we want to buy to augment our existing proprietary software, and we’re going to go get those legs.

So, as far as the environment, our partners weighted on us when we asked them to way and stand down on closing the acquisition, we’re glad they hang in there. They have show that they are the right partner for us. I don’t see the acceleration, I still think we can do four to five deals next year. If we’re lucky, we may do seven again. But nothing slowing us down and I don’t see any indicator that we’re going to be — see any kind of headwinds towards completing our M&A strategy next year live we did this year.

George Mihalos — Cowen — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then a question for Greg and Clay. I know you’ve obviously had a win now on the higher education side. I’m just curious, what does that pipeline look like? Was that recent win more one-off? Are there other opportunities there? And then how do you think about that sub-segment of education, higher ed versus kind of [Phonetic] K-12 schools performing in a COVID environment? I would assume there’s less focus on the meal plans and the like, but just curious how you’re thinking about that business?

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, in the current environment, George, I’d be surprised if we made another acquisition before the COVID situation clears up. There is just a little bit too much uncertainty. In higher ed, that performed very well. We have one University, as you know, and it was very interesting watching their volume come in the last few months. It was heavily weighted towards tuition and mainly ACH, which is pretty thin margins. So it’s a great accounts, we’ll probably get another tuition spike in January and we’d like to add one or two of these every year will be a great complement to our existing software works. So it’s just a brand new market for us.

George Mihalos — Cowen — Analyst

Great. And just last question for me. As we think about 2021, and I know you’re not providing an outlook, but when we look at the hospitality business, the point of sale business and some of the momentum there. Clay, can you just remind us how much of a headwind the SaaS transition specifically was to fiscal 2020?

And then, again, without getting into specifics, when we think about the sales momentum you’ve had there, the SaaS shift, is there any reason why that business shouldn’t be in the black from a growth perspective next year?

Clay Whitson — Chief Financial Officer

Well, it was about a $10 million equipment and software bundle that we were selling. And the headwind was $7 million or $6.7 million, two-thirds of it if we want 100% SaaS October 1 of last year, which we knew would not happen, but we laid out the most conservative case. We probably only got half of that this year, we’re in — we’re full throttle now, we’re selling a lot of essentials, our customers like it, it has given us a new tool to compete with. Everybody likes it from our sales people to our customers asset management. But we’re only probably halfway through it, so we’ll get the other half of it this year. So I’d say, there is a $3 million headwind. And then, I think, will start growing in 2022.

George Mihalos — Cowen — Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jason Kupferberg of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Participant — — Analyst

Hi, guys. This is Cathy [Phonetic] on for Jason. I just wanted to touch a little bit on margins. I know you guys had pretty significant margin improvement quarter-over-quarter, almost 300 basis points. Is that level sustainable? And how should we think about the puts and takes for that going forward? Thank you.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

That level is sustainable depending on the general economic activity. We had a very harsh contraction in the June quarter. And then in the September quarter, we were up to maybe 80% of the revenue level we normally see. It kind of feels like we plateaued here at 80%, a vaccine could change that picture, new shutdowns could change that picture the other way. But November, so far, feels about like October then. But it gets down to our fixed costs and more revenues means a bigger margin and less revenues means a lower margin.

The only thing I would call out is that, education was a pretty big hit to our margins. If you take $5 million of profit out, this quarter alone we probably lost $1.5 million of profit from education. So that’s a big factor. If it comes back in 2022, that will be a big win for us.

And then, our acquisition activity has moved towards more Public Sector, nonprofit, health care, those carry higher margins. So assuming a stable economic environment, one like we’re seeing right now. I think our margins will improve over time.

Unidentified Participant — — Analyst

Got it. That’s really helpful. And switching gears toward revenues. Just wanted to ask, so it seems like the spread between your volume and revenue growth kind of widened pretty significantly and that’s kind of to be expected. But are you expecting a similar spread in the coming quarters? And piggybacking off of that, what are your kind of expectations for potential revenue growth turning positive, either like next quarter or maybe it’s more of a calendar 2021 thing? Thank you.

Clay Whitson — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Well, the biggest reason for that divergence this quarter was education, which we’ve just talked about. Not only losing the lunch program. which are very small-ticket items and high margin items, but also the ACH with tuition, that’s something which you’ll see in the September quarter and again in the March quarter, but in the other two quarters you will not see that big ACH activity, which depresses margin. So — but going forward, I think our ongoing mix shifts will help our margins on a quarter-over-quarter basis, meaning, comparing the December quarter to the December quarter, the March quarter to the March quarter and so on, going forward.

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Got it. It’s all super helpful. Thanks so much for taking my question.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Peter Heckmann of Davidson.

Peter Heckmann — D.A. Davidson — Analyst

Hey, good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking the questions. Just in terms of thinking about your adjusted organic revenue calculation. I think you said about $3 million in total acquired revenue in the quarter. So if we’re taking out the shift in subscription, would we be thinking something in — a decline of something in the mid to high-single digits for the fourth quarter? And just based on October and November so far, would you expect kind of about the same or perhaps a little bit of improvement.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So. we were about negative $5 million in the fourth and you’ve identified the acquisition, the $3 million IPOS and negative $2.5 million. Going forward, it depends on economic activity, if there were no COVID, we believe we would be high single-digit like we were heading into COVID.

Our acquisitions are blending us towards a higher growth profile over time. But really, it all depends on acquisition activity. Do we improve from here? Or do we go backwards from here with shutdowns? That’s the big variable for us.

Peter Heckmann — D.A. Davidson — Analyst

That’s fair. And then just in terms of the trailing acquisitions and the acquisitions — the seven deals done since the end of June. Can you give us kind of a range of expected acquired revenue for the fiscal first quarter?

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, if you take our — I think you know the start dates of the acquisitions. And if you take our aggregate purchase prices and divide by 10, we’ve been paying higher end — higher — towards the high end of our range recently, because they’ve all been software acquisitions. But anyway, if you just divide by 10 and then for revenues you could multiply times two, because most of the software companies have margins close to 50% with the exception of ImageSoft, which is 20%. So I think you can calculate your way there.

Peter Heckmann — D.A. Davidson — Analyst

All right. I’ll do that and run through the model. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our next question from Josh Beck of KeyBanc.

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Okay. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe this one for you, Greg. I just kind of curious, we have seen some stability as was just mentioned by Clay in this kind of 80%, call it, rebound. So strategically is the playbook pretty much where it was pre-COVID? Or just curious with that backdrop if you maybe re-oriented initiatives here and there. I just would be curious to hear your thoughts.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So the team has performed amazing the last eight months through this crazy environment. And it has given us an opportunity to invest some more in our marketing efforts, our sales efforts. We are doing some enhancements to our payments platforms that we have to — combining those to be more in aligned with each other. The ISVs have performed exceedingly well [Indecipherable] they were kind of in verticals that have been affected a little bit. It’s — the game plan really hadn’t changed. The public sector people have been amazing, the M&A has been on fire. Rick’s kind of our golden goose when it comes to that on a regular basis.

And then adding ImageSoft, which is a major deal for us that we’re overly excited about. Josh, if things get back to normal, it’s going to be insane, it’s going to be incredible. What we have added we’re just not seeing quite yet because either they want install or they delayed the install, but I think that from a vaccine we’re back bigger and better than ever.

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Okay. Good to hear. It sounds like the underlying momentum is really encouraging. I wanted to follow up on — maybe with Rick, on the unified platform. You’ve kind of said, you’re going to do this road show, so I’m just kind of curious, are you — is this mainly a road show about giving the awareness, getting new logos. Just kind of curious what some of the goals there are?

Rick Stanford — President

Yeah. So the road show start in the spring, there is seven dates currently. There’ll be people in attendance at those shows. The purpose is to show existing customers additional products we’ve acquired since they came on as a customer. And there will be a subset of people that will be new prospects, and we’ll be showing the entire suite of UPO to those Public Sector prospects. We’re very excited about it. We’ve talked to several groups and they’re excited as well. So we think attendance will be high. And we’ll have representation of all of our products under Public Sector in each of those roadshows.

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Okay. Good to hear. And then, Clay, I just wanted to go back to your comment on how we should think about seasonality. Obviously, like you said, this year is — hopefully a huge anomaly in our lives, but you said 2019 might be a better framework. I guess, my other question is, with 2019, which — from what I remember kind of built up sequentially as we went into September. Certainly, I think education is kind of a part of that. So are there any maybe adjustments that we should be thinking about? Or is that a pretty good — the best template, I guess, that we have to think about ’21 at this point?

Clay Whitson — Chief Financial Officer

As I look at it, it’s a pretty good 2019, it’s a pretty good framework. And really 2019 will look a lot — a lot of our years should look like 2019. 2020 is been a real anomaly having a very strong first half and then having COVID hit. So I just want to make sure you talked about 2020 when you’re looking at all this.

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Okay. That makes sense. And then just to clarify maybe your point on the vertical exposure. Is that a bit of a snapshot currently, meaning, if certainly some verticals come back next year because of the vaccines as well and people are more confident, they could look a bit different. Just want to understand that?

Rick Stanford — President

Yeah. That’s more of a forward run rate. As we look at ’21, that’s kind of the way we see the verticals contributing. Now if education comes back, it would pop up from — to a higher number. And if the general economy comes back, face-to-face comes back, retail, restaurant might get a little bigger again. But in the — if the current environment last for the remainder of the year, we think that’s what it would look like.

Josh Beck — KeyBanc — Analyst

Okay. That’s very helpful. Thanks, team.

Operator

It appears there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to Greg Daily for any closing comments.

Greg Daily — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you for your interest and attendance this morning. And especially, thanks to my team, what an incredible job they’ve done in the last couple of quarters through this environment. So anyway, if you need us, call us, we’re around. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]