SS&C Technologies (SSNC) 2026 年第三季法說會：獲利率擴大，上調財測指引

重點摘要

• SS&C Technologies 公布 2026 年第三季調整後營收為 16.91 億美元，年增 7.8%。按固定匯率計算的調整後有機營收成長率為 5.2%。
• 調整後合併 EBITDA 創下 6.748 億美元的新高，成長 9%，同時調整後 EBITDA 利潤率擴張 40 個基點至 39.9%。
• 調整後稀釋每股盈餘 (EPS) 成長 14.8% 至 1.78 美元。GAAP 淨利為 1.99 億美元，或稀釋每股 0.83 美元。
• 管理層上調了 2026 全年多項目標，包括調整後稀釋每股盈餘（$7.11–$7.17）以及有機營收成長率中位數約 5.5%。
• 前九個月的營業現金流成長 10.4% 至 12.16 億美元。SS&C 在第三季透過股票買回與股利回饋股東 2.25 億美元。
• SS&C 正將 AI Gateway 與 WorkHQ 導入受監管的工作流程中。在 WorkHQ 開發環境中，已建置超過 900 個代理工作流程、200 個 AI 代理以及 60 名數位員工。

核心財務業績

SS&C 本季斥資 1.548 億美元買回 190 萬股，並發放 7,050 萬美元的股利。8 月時，普通股年度股利上調 11.1% 至每股 1.20 美元。

業務與營運績效

成長主要受到新舊客戶銷售額、專案導入里程碑以及市場利多因素的支撐。管理層表示銷售管道持續擴大，並強調邁向 2027 年時有多項潛在大型合約。

科技業務的多年期續約保持穩定。管理層表示，委外服務（outsourcing）、共同委外服務（co-sourcing）與團隊轉移能力（lift-out）持續支持客戶擴展，並使 SS&C 在大型複雜專案中脫穎而出。

該公司正將 AI 整合至內部營運與客戶產品中。AI Gateway 提供治理，而 WorkHQ 則負責編排代理工作流程。SS&C 表示，這些工具旨在用於複雜且受高度監管的流程，包括交易、對帳、淨值 (NAV) 計算、投資人交易與法規申報。

SS&C 也正在擴充其國際業務版圖，包括在盧森堡與泰國的營運，並在中東、澳洲及歐洲開展更廣泛的業務活動。

在財富與投資科技部門中，管理層將季增放緩主要歸因於第二季依據收入確認規則記錄的一筆大型續約案。管理層指出，常態化成長接近中個位數百分比，而 Black Diamond 則繼續保持雙位數成長。

智慧自動化與分析業務記錄了 4.5% 的有機營收下滑。管理層將部分疲軟歸因於產品開發與商業化之間的滯後，同時指出該部門為 SS&C 其他業務提供 AI 相關產品與效率提升支援。

為加強 SS&C 代幣化能力與基金網絡而收購的 Calastone，據管理層表示仍持續保持雙位數成長。

管理層財務展望

針對 2026 年第四季，管理層預計：

針對 2026 全年，SS&C 上調了多項預期：

該展望假設短期利率維持在目前水準、調整後有效稅率約為 22.5%，且資本支出占營收的 4.4%–4.8%。管理層預期資本配置仍將偏向股票買回而非償還債務。

風險與關注焦點

• 大型合約可能對有機成長產生重大影響，但合約談判、簽署與導入時間點仍具不確定性。管理層表示單一合約金額可達 2,500 萬美元、5,000 萬美元或更高。
• 第四季有機成長面臨較高的比較基期，因為去年同期是 SS&C 成長最強勁的季度之一。
• 金融科技與服務的收購估值仍居高不下。SS&C 表示，儘管潛在私募股權退出的管道不斷增加，但在價格上仍將保持紀律。
• SS&C 正進行 2027 年到期的 20 億美元債券再融資。公司表示完成後將提供最新動態。
• 在受監管的金融工作流程中採用 AI 需要客戶教育、治理與營運可靠性。管理層指出，錯誤可能會迅速延緩導入進度。

分析師問答環節亮點

管理層表示，第四季有機成長展望主要反映合約時程與較高的基期影響，而非絕對營收減弱。視合約簽署與執行的時間而定，大型交易可能使有機成長變動 100 至 200 個基點。

關於併購方面，SS&C 表示若策略契合度與價格合適，會考慮大型交易。討論的領域包括基金行政管理、自動化與代幣化，但管理層強調近期金融科技交易倍數偏高。

在資本配置方面，管理層表示，基於減少股數帶來的回報相較於稅後債務成本，目前買回庫藏股顯得比加速償還債務更有吸引力。儘管如此，SS&C 仍打算在買回庫藏股、股利、償還債務與收購之間保持平衡。

管理層將擁有完整的基金行政管理科技架構視為贏得業務與快速部署 AI 功能的優勢。管理層亦提到客戶資產成長（特別是大型全球宏觀基金）是促進受託管理資產成長的原因之一。

關於原生 AI 競爭者以及客戶可能將業務轉回內部處理的威脅，管理層主張規模、監管複雜性與處理需求構成了防範顛覆的壁壘。SS&C 將 AI Gateway 與 WorkHQ 定位為具備治理功能的平台，將現有的機器人流程自動化與代理工具相結合。

完整法說會逐字稿

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

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.

分析師問答

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.