Automatic Data Processing : Third Quarter 2024 Transcript

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EDITED TRANSCRIPT

ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

EVENT DATE/TIME: MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM GMT

OVERVIEW:

Company Summary

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

C O R P O R A T E P A R T I C I P A N T S

Danyal Hussain Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - VP of IR

Don Edward McGuire Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

Maria Black Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

C O N F E R E N C E C A L L P A R T I C I P A N T S

Caroline Noelle Latta BofA Securities, Research Division - Research Analyst

Dan Dolev Mizuho Securities USA LLC, Research Division - MD & Senior Equity Research Analyst

David Paige Papadogonas RBC Capital Markets, Research Division - Senior Associate

Kartik Mehta Northcoast Research Partners, LLC - Executive MD, Director of Research, Principal & Equity Research Analyst Mark Steven Marcon Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division - Senior Research Analyst

Michael Nicholas Infante Morgan Stanley, Research Division - Research Associate

Owen Robert Callahan Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division - Research Analyst

Peter Corwin Christiansen Citigroup Inc., Research Division - VP and Analyst

Scott Darren Wurtzel Wolfe Research, LLC - Research Analyst

Tien-TsinHuang JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Senior Analyst

Zachary Ryan Ajzenman TD Cowen, Research Division - VP

P R E S E N T A T I O N

Operator

Good morning. My name is Michelle, and I'll be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to ADP's Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. I would like to inform you that this conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions) I will now turn the call over to Mr. Danyal Hussain, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Danyal Hussain - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - VP of IR

Thank you, Michelle, and welcome everyone to ADP's Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Call. Participating today are Maria Black, our President and CEO; and Don McGuire, our CFO. Earlier this morning, we released our results for the quarter. Our earnings materials are available on the SEC's website and our Investor Relations website at investors.adp.com, where you will also find the investor presentation that accompanies today's call.

During our call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors and that exclude the impact of certain items. A description of these items along with the reconciliation of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release.

Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements that refer to future events and involve some risk. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC for additional information on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. I'll now turn it over to Maria.

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Thank you, Danny, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. This morning, we reported strong 7% revenue growth and 14% adjusted diluted EPS growth for the third quarter as we continued to make progress delivering against our strategic priorities and as the labor market and the overall HCM business environment remains stable.

I'll begin with a review of the quarter's results and provide a brief update on our strategy before turning it to Don to update you on our outlook and share some early considerations for next year. In Q3, we delivered solid Employer Services new business bookings growth reaching record bookings for a Q3 period and keeping us on track for our full year outlook. We maintained momentum in our small business portfolio with particularly strong growth in our Retirement Services offering. And in Q3, we also delivered strong bookings results in our mid-market, enterprise and international businesses. With a steady demand backdrop and a healthy new business pipeline, we are focused on continuing to execute for the remainder of the year.

Employer Services retention was very strong in the third quarter and once again exceeded our expectations, also reaching a new record level for a Q3 period, led by our mid-market business. Our overall retention continues to benefit from ongoing investments in our key platforms and from our commitment to delivering an exceptional client experience, which together helped our client satisfaction scores reached a new all-time high for our Q3.

Our Employer Services pays per control growth was steady at 2%, reflecting the resilient overall U.S. labor market and the fact that our clients continue to add to their workforces at a moderate pace. And our PEO revenue growth of 5% for the third quarter was in line with our expectations despite continued short-term pressure from below-normal hiring activity we've been experiencing among those clients.

Moving on to a broader update. We continue to push forward on our 3 strategic priorities: leading with the best HCM technology, unmatched service and expertise and the broader scale to ultimately deliver the best possible experience, not just to the buyers of our products but everyone that engages with ADP. We are investing with purpose to deeply understand and deliver value to a vast set of personas from small business owners that count on us to HR professionals and executives of the largest global enterprises to millions of employees and gig workers around the world who engage with our solutions to CPAs, banks, brokers and other key partners to our thousands of dedicated service and implementation associates and to our sellers who represent ADP in the market every day.

It's with these personas in mind that we continue pushing forward on our strategic priorities, and in Q3, we made steady progress. Our first priority is to lead with best-in-class HCM technology. We've been rolling out ADP Assist these past couple of quarters which, as a reminder, will be embedded in our key platforms and utilizes Gen AI to surface insights, aid decision-making and streamline day-to-day tasks for our clients and their employees.

In Q3, we were very excited to begin piloting a new feature that enables our small business clients to not only leverage Gen AI to answer questions and better understand how to initiate an HR action, which we outlined in recent quarters, but to actually allow them to issue commands to complete that HR action. For example, users can now type, I need to rehire Alex or I would like to give Alex a leave of absence and are expedited through that workflow.

Our second priority is to provide unmatched expertise and outsourcing. We continue to extend Gen AI capabilities to a broader portion of our service associates. And in Q3, we started rolling out a new tool for some of our implementation teams. Now they can use Gen AI to take in unstructured client employee data, reducing manual data entry and minimizing errors during the implementation process. While it's still early, we are excited about its potential benefits.

Our third priority is to benefit our clients with our global scale. The ADP Marketplace remains a differentiator for us and is a perfect example of a benefit our clients receive from partnering with a leader in HCM. As a growing number of our hundreds of partners offer AI-enabled solutions, in Q3, we established ADP Marketplace AI principles that require our partners to commit to the same type of responsible AI principles that govern our own products, including human oversight, monitoring, explainability and mitigating bias.

Our clients put a huge amount of trust in us, and this is another example of how ADP strives to ensure the responsible use of AI throughout the ADP ecosystem. We also continue to extend our market-leading global scale. And in Q3, we reached 1 million paid employees on our IHCM platform,

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

which continues to scale in several countries in Europe, and we made further progress in growing our presence in the APAC region, where we have recently been expanding our in-country payroll and workforce management presence in a number of markets.

In 2024, we are celebrating our 75th anniversary, and we pride ourselves on having built ourselves into a brand that truly matters to employers, their employees and the broader world of work. Our focus on our strategic priorities positions us to deliver more value than ever for our over 1 million current clients and to the tens of thousands of new clients, we welcome to the ADP family every quarter.

I'd like to highlight just a few of these new client wins from Q3 to give you an appreciation for the variety of ways in which we deliver value for them. In U.S. small business, we had a new boutique donut shop referred to us from one of our CPA partners. The client chose ADP for the strength of our RUN platform, our reputation for great service, our strong relationship with our CPA and our ability to provide retirement services.

Since this was a first-time small business owner, our sales team even took the time to help the business owner set up their business the right way from guiding the client on obtaining a state tax ID to making sure the client obtained the appropriate workers' compensation insurance. In U.S. mid-market, we won a multistate operator of rehabilitation centers. This client wasn't happy with their prior HCM provider and Workforce Now proved a much better fit.

What makes me the most proud in this example is how one of our ADP Marketplace partners played a key role in the decision to switch to ADP by independently highlighting the advantages we offered in terms of ease of integrations, a capability we have invested in over the years.

In U.S. enterprise, we welcomed a large luxury resort that operates multiple hotels, restaurants and retail stores on site and was dissatisfied with the prior provider's level of client service. The client was so happy following their seamless ADP implementation, which included on-site training for their HR team that they accelerated their plans to add-on features like benefits, recruiting, onboarding, wage garnishment and tax credits.

In our international business, one recent win was a leading airline that utilized ADP in certain countries and asked us to help better define their global payroll strategy. Ultimately, they expanded the scope of our services to include an additional 18 countries and started that rollout in the third quarter, with plans to add other countries over the next year to enable true consolidated global reporting and analytics.

And as a final example, our HRO team started a New York-based design firm after its leadership team recognized the company lacked the HR infrastructure required to adequately attract and retain the right talent. They turned to our PEO offering for truly comprehensive support, attracted by the breadth of our offering, including features like the MyLife Advisors program, which supports employees as they make benefits and other important life decisions.

We also advised this client in the development of a comprehensive benefits strategy to support their multigenerational workforce and help them attract the talent that they need to grow. As you can tell from these examples, it's often a combination of our technology, expertise and overall breadth that resonated with these businesses. And the result is incredible diversity in our client base and a resilient overall business model.

We look forward to leaning in and delivering even greater differentiation in the market going forward. Overall, we were pleased with the strong financial and strategic outcomes in the third quarter. I'd like to thank our associates who continue to deliver exceptional products and service to our clients in whose efforts drive these client wins and retention. Thank you again for all you do for ADP and for our clients. And now I'll turn it over to Don.

Don Edward McGuire - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

Thank you, Maria, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide more color on our results for the quarter and our updated fiscal 2024 outlook. Overall, we reported a strong third quarter with our consolidated revenue growth and our adjusted EBIT margin coming in a bit above our expectations. The interest rate backdrop has improved since we last provided our full year outlook. So we're updating our outlook for that as well as making a few other changes, which I'll detail.

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

I'll start with Employer Services. ES segment revenue grew 8% on a reported basis and 7% on an organic constant currency basis. As Maria shared, we had a good quarter in ES new business bookings with broad-based growth across our client segments. We have a tough compare in Q4 following the last year's strong finish, but with a steady HCM demand environment and healthy pipelines, we feel on track to deliver our 4% to 7% new business bookings growth outlook for the year.

Also, as Maria mentioned earlier, our ES retention exceeded our expectations and increased slightly from last year. Given our continued strong retention performance, we are increasing our full year retention outlook slightly. We now anticipate a 20 to 30 basis point decline in full year retention, which is better than our prior forecast. ES pays per control growth held steady at 2% in Q3 and we now expect growth to around 2% for the year, the high-end of our prior 1% to 2% growth outlook. And client funds interest revenue exceeded our expectations in Q3 due to higher average client funds balances and a slightly better average yield.

We are revising our full year client funds interest outlook to reflect our Q3 results and the increase in prevailing interest rates since our last update. We now expect fiscal '24 average client funds balance growth of about 3%, and we are raising our expectation for client funds interest revenue and net impact from our client funds extended investment strategy.

In total, there is no change to our fiscal '24 ES revenue growth forecast of 7% to 8%, although we are now likely to come in towards the higher end of that range. Our ES margin increased 230 basis points in Q3, driven both by operating leverage and the contribution from client funds interest revenue growth. With our strong Q3 results and the slightly more favorable client funds interest rate backdrop, we are raising our fiscal '24 ES margin outlook and now anticipate growth of 180 to 190 basis points.

Moving on to the PEO. We had 5% revenue growth driven by 3% growth in average worksite employees in the third quarter, representing a slight acceleration from the first half of the year. These results were largely in line with our expectations, and we were encouraged by the gradual stabilization in our PEO's pays per control growth, which decelerated but only slightly from the prior quarter.

We continue to anticipate soft pace per control growth through the end of the year and expect worksite employee growth to hold steady at about 3%, keeping us on track for our full year outlook for worksite employee growth of 2% to 3% and revenue growth of 3% to 4%. PEO margin decreased 220 basis points in Q3. As we shared last quarter, we expect this year's workers' compensation reserve release benefit to be significantly lower than what we experienced these last few years, and in particular, last year's $73 million benefit.

We are updating our fiscal '24 outlook to now assume a minimal release benefit, and as a result, we are further revising our overall PEO margin expectation to be down 120 to 140 basis points in fiscal '24 versus our prior expectation for a decline of 80 to 100 basis points.

Putting it all together, there is no change to our fiscal '24 consolidated revenue growth of 6% to 7%. With the 2 changes to segment margins largely offsetting one another, we continue to expect our adjusted EBIT margin to increase by 60 to 70 basis points. We still anticipate an effective tax rate of around 23%, and we continue to expect fiscal '24 adjusted EPS growth of 10% to 12% with the middle of that range still the most likely outcome.

As we look ahead to fiscal '25, I wanted to share a couple of early thoughts at this point. First, given the fullness of the labor market, we are planning for pays per control growth to once again be below normal levels next year and to decelerate modestly from this year's growth level in both ES and our PEO segments with the resulting revenue pressure more apparent in the PEO segment given its more direct revenue sensitivity to worksite employees. We'll, of course, share those exact assumptions with you when we give our formal guidance in a few months.

On the expense side, we are also planning to continue growing our Gen AI-related spend next year. As you've heard from us all year long, there are many ways we can put Gen AI in the hands of all of the different stakeholders that work with or on behalf of ADP, including our client practitioners, their employees, our service and implementation teams, our sellers and our developers. These are critical investments, and they are the right investments for ADP. But we expect the associated benefits in productivity and growth to phase in gradually over time, likely representing overall margin pressure for the year.

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

At the same time, we appear positioned for continued tailwind from interest rates, though the extent of this benefit will, of course, depend on how the yield curve continues to develop. As usual, we're focused primarily on maintaining good momentum in our new business bookings and maintaining our strong client satisfaction and retention, and we remain upbeat about our strategy for the years ahead. And now over to Q&A.

Q U E S T I O N S A N D A N S W E R S

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Ramsey El-Assal with Barclays.

Owen Robert Callahan - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division - Research Analyst

This is Owen on for Ramsey. So you're currently entering your open enrollment season for client benefit elections within the PEO. I was wondering if you could talk about trends you're seeing there thus far. You called out some stability in regard to insurance price inflation driving more attach rates. Are you seeing any of this kind of follow through? Any thoughts there might be helpful.

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Good morning. Go ahead, Don. I was going to say, good morning, Owen. How about I start and I'll let Don chime in. I think the comment would be just to start, we are smack in the middle of our open enrollment season exactly as you suggested. And so it's probably too early to make a call in terms of what that's going to look like from a full year perspective on the retention side. But overall, we have seen a bit, a tiny bit of PEO retention improvement this year, and the compares are getting a bit easier, and we do expect some improvement for the full year. So with that, I'll let Don chime in.

Don Edward McGuire - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

No, sorry, I jumped again there. So Maria, thank you. Perfect answer. Thank you.

Owen Robert Callahan - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division - Research Analyst

Great. Super helpful. And then if I may, just on client retention continues to sort of surprise to the upside. I was wondering drivers there. You previously thought potentially fewer bankers fees in the downmarket, but any expectations more longer term might be helpful there?

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Yes, absolutely. We are very pleased with overall retention results. I think you see that in our revised outlook. You see that in the revision we made last quarter as well. And so just to kind of remind everybody just how well retention is going, fiscal '23 was a record. That record was really driven by the mid-market and international and the downmarket actually did decline a bit in fiscal '23. And we expect pretty much the same outlook, if you will, for full year '24, which is why we still have a down year-on-year retention result. But we're incredibly pleased with overall what we're seeing with the with client retention.

That's really being led by a combination of things, one of which is the investments we made into product, the record results we have in terms of client satisfaction. That in and of itself was a record in the third quarter along with retention. So we're very, very pleased with that. As mentioned, there's still downmarket variability and there's downmarket out of business. We haven't seen it thus far this year, but we still expect it to normalize a bit further. And then there's always normal variability in retention. So we believe the retention guide is the appropriate one. But certainly, we're very, very pleased with the record quarter and where we sit with retention thus far this year.

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

Operator

Our next question comes from Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen.

Zachary Ryan Ajzenman - TD Cowen, Research Division - VP

This is Zack Ajzenman on for Bryan. First question, I just wanted to dig in on the ES revenue growth affirmation despite the higher retention of PPC views. Heard that you might come in towards the higher end of the range, but perhaps you can elaborate on some of the underlying assumptions and any offset?

Don Edward McGuire - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

Yes. So a couple of things, Zach. We already mentioned that retention is in very good shape for us. So certainly, that's been helping and contributing to the revenue growth. And of course, what's changed since last time around, which is making us even more comfortable with saying we're going to be towards the higher end of the range is that client funds interest impact is very good. So I think those are the 2 primary drivers to why we're more confident that we're going to see revenue come in towards the higher end of the 7% to 8% than we perhaps were 90 days ago.

Zachary Ryan Ajzenman - TD Cowen, Research Division - VP

Got it. And a follow-up on demand. ES new business bookings affirmed at 4% to 7% growth. What are the strongest segments of the market? And any notable changes to call out versus the second quarter?

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Sure. So first and foremost, we feel good about the overall demand environment. Companies are still hiring as we saw today, and they're still investing as such in people and HCM. The callouts, I made a few of them during the prepared remarks, but it's really -- the downmarket continues to impress us this quarter, specifically in Retirement Services. So I'd make a callout there. It's quite fantastic to see that story and Retirement Services come together. We talked quite a bit about secular tailwinds in that space based on legislation. That coupled with the investments we've been making and an incredible distribution execution. Really great to see the Retirement Services leading the way.

I think other areas that I would call out that have been remarkably strong is our mid-market as well as international. And so again, similar story to Retirement Services in that it's really a great story coming together between investments and execution and enterprise also was strong for us for the quarter. And then in terms of anything changing broad-based, we haven't really seen anything change in the demand environment. Quite candidly, we feel really, really strong, as suggested by the overall hiring landscape and the labor demand.

Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Marcon with Baird.

Mark Steven Marcon - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division - Senior Research Analyst

Client retention, obviously, really strong. Obviously, your scores continue to go up. Are there any areas that you would call out that are standing out in terms of driving the higher NPS scores and the higher client retention? Anything that you would particularly note?

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

I would say to you, mid-market on both of those. So mid-market is driving strong NPS scores to record highs. The mid-market is driving incredible retention. So that's the one callout. You can probably hear the optimism in my voice there because it's a fantastic story kind of coming together. But I think overall retention is incredibly strong. The midmarket, international in fiscal '23 were very strong. They continue to be strong, but that's really the one callout I would make is the mid-market.

Mark Steven Marcon - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division - Senior Research Analyst

Great. And then there's -- Maria, there's one area that investors have been asking more about and you have -- you and ADP have the broadest outlook with regards to the space, so I'm asking this on the call. But some people wonder a little bit about saturation. Your new bookings continue to grow, but investors are asking a little bit more about like how much room do we have for new solutions or how many clients have already upgraded cities of that nature. Your results and the results of some of your peers continue to belie the concerns, but I'm wondering if you could address those.

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Yes, absolutely, Mark. I'll give it a shot and certainly happy to have Don chime in. Maybe he can talk a little bit about our growth opportunity in international. But I think broadly speaking, when you think about the total addressable market of the HCM space and where we all play and we all compete and it's highly competitive, and there's been a lot of investments coming into the space over the past few years. What I would suggest is there's still a tremendous amount of growth and growth upside for all of us. And as you mentioned, we continue to deliver that and the results that we see on the new business bookings side. And so I think overall, there is still runway. There's still plenty of space.

I think the part for us outside of our incredible distribution organization, which has always been a competitive advantage in how we go to market. That distribution is also anchored to our ability to upsell to the base. So you mentioned this ability to upgrade and how much is upgraded and are we all the way there. What I would suggest to you is we're still at about 50% as it relates to new business bookings coming from, call it, new business, net new business versus upgrades, which suggests to me that we still have a tremendous amount of opportunity even within our base. And that's a lot of the focus that we have as an organization, whether it's in the PEO getting smarter about which clients within Employer Services that we target to offer to the PEO or it's the work that we're doing on generative AI to try to get upsell and offering the right product to the right client at the right time.

And in my mind, bending the curve and continuing to focus on attach rates, whether that's on the point of sale or on the attach at a later time, it's definitely an opportunity for us to continue to deliver bookings in a very broad market that still has a tremendous amount of opportunity for all of us but moreover, where we continue to execute and deliver on that. So I don't know, Don, if you want to comment a little bit on international in terms of the opportunity there.

Don Edward McGuire - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

Yes, perhaps to add a little bit more color. I think we're very -- still very optimistic about growth opportunities beyond the U.S. or the North American market. So Mark, I think we talked before, we're on the ground in 40-plus countries outside of the U.S. We're present in multiple segments in those markets as well. We've got some great things happening in Southeast Asia, where we're rolling out a single platform across beginning in India, but many countries surrounding India in the Southeast Asian market. We're excited. We often talk about the fact that we pay over 1 million people in India every payday, price points are still a bit low, but we expect those things to work for us and work in our favor in the future. So I think still lots and lots of opportunity for ADP from a growth perspective. And certainly, we don't worry about saturation being a limiter to our future.

Operator

Our next question comes from Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research.

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

Scott Darren Wurtzel - Wolfe Research, LLC - Research Analyst

I just wanted to go back to some of the early thoughts, Don, that you provided on fiscal '25 and talking about the Gen AI investments, and I think you had mentioned that there could be some margin pressure associated with that. And I just wanted to kind of clarify, were you talking about that potentially leading margins to be down year-over-year? Or are there other offsets with general operating leverage and interest income that can potentially offset the margin pressure from those investments?

Operator

Yes, Scott, thanks for the question. I think it's still early. I think the intent here was to give some very early guidance on what '25 could look like. So we still expect to see some improvements in margins. It's just -- do we expect to see as much of an improvement given some of the Gen AI pressures

• expense pressures that we may see. Of course, CFI, at this point in time, depending what the yield curve does. Once again, things have changed a fair bit in the last 90 days. And if I was to -- not that I have a crystal ball, but I don't think many folks right now are expecting anything to change from a rates perspective in the U.S. before September. So I think we're going to get some tailwinds from that. So we're not really trying to signal here -- not signaling a decline in our margins. What we're signaling perhaps is perhaps a slower growth in the margins as we look into '25.

Scott Darren Wurtzel - Wolfe Research, LLC - Research Analyst

Got it. Got it. That's super helpful. And then I just wanted to go on to the PEO segment, sort of going back to some of the verticals that we've talked about over the last year and technology and professional services. Just wondering if you can kind of update us on some of the trends you've seen there with pays per control growth. I mean even looking at the employment report that you guys released this morning, it looks like Professional Services is stabilizing and increasing, but technology information kind of seems a little bit choppy. So just wondering if you can kind of talk about trends in the PEO with respect to those verticals.

Don Edward McGuire - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

Sure. So if I -- Maria talked a little bit about bookings. I think so we've been -- we were happy with our bookings. They softened a little bit in Q3, but we had a very, very strong Q2 on PEO bookings. If you move on kind of to the PPC growth, back in Q1, it decelerated a little bit more than we anticipated and a significant amount of that deceleration was attributed to the technology and professional services sector. And in Q2, that stabilized. So that was good for us. While there's still some headwinds in PPC, including from technology and service sectors, there were no surprises in Q3. So it's important to note that worksite employee growth accelerated about 1% over Q2 despite the modest incremental pressure we had from PPC pressure. And so -- and that, of course, is a function of the year-to-date booking success that we've had. So nothing really to call out. More stability, if you will, in PPC pressure than we talked about previously.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan.

Tien-TsinHuang - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Senior Analyst

Anything on the pricing side worth sharing, Maria? Just thinking about some of the peer commentary out there. Any callouts or interesting observations?

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

In terms of -- from a standpoint of our price or pricing in the market from a...

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MAY 01, 2024 / 12:30PM, ADP.OQ - Q3 2024 Automatic Data Processing Inc Earnings Call

Tien-TsinHuang - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Senior Analyst

Yes, your pricing or as you're thinking about resetting prices as you go into the usual seasonal time changes -- price changes, any thoughts there, both for renewals as well as new deal bids?

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Yes, absolutely. So I think my general sentiment and then Don can give the kind of a little more directional. But my general sentiments around price remain that we're very thoughtful and very measured as it relates to how we think about price, whether that's on the new business side or it's on the renewal side, as you mentioned. And so for us, it's about understanding kind of by segment. So you heard my commentary in the prepared remarks just how broad and deep and diverse ADP is with respect to our client base. As you can imagine, we think about a downmarket price increase differently than perhaps in enterprise. Some of those are also long-term contracts that have indexes attached. And so all of that lends itself to a very surgical approach, right, to ensure that the price value equation remains the right one for the market and for our clients.

And obviously, at the same time, what we're doing is also monitoring what's happening in the HCM space with respect to the peer group and pricing overall. And I would say from a competitive lens, we haven't seen anything unusual as it relates to price from us or the others, even though it continues to be a highly competitive environment, and so as such, our approach this year to price, which I'll let Don comment on, has been very thoughtful, and I would expect us to take that same measured approach as we head into '25.

Don Edward McGuire - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - CFO

Yes. So pricing -- the price increase this year was relatively well received. We're in the 100, 150 basis point range. We're closer to the 150. So happy with where we're at. But back to Maria's comments, we're in the middle of our planning cycle right now, and we'll look very carefully at that whole value equation, making sure that we keep our retention up. Our NPS is supporting that. And we'll make sure that we're mindful and thoughtful about what we do with pricing going forward.

Tien-TsinHuang - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Senior Analyst

Yes. I'm sure you'd be thoughtful about it. Just on the Gen AI front, I respect the investments there. I'm curious if you were to classify it as either driving expense efficiency versus driving better sales efficiency. What are you really aiming for with some of these investments here for fiscal '25?

Maria Black - Automatic Data Processing, Inc. - President, CEO & DIrector

Both. The answer is both. So I think it's really about solving for, again, all of the users that interact with ADP, right? So if you think about all the personas, our clients, our clients' employees, and our service agents, our sellers, it's really about putting Gen AI in each -- in every part of our ecosystem. So in terms of what are we solving for? The answer is both. We're trying to drive greater service efficiency. I think we've proven out that through digital transformation and taking friction out of our products and making those investments, we have the ability to drive up our NPS results and record client satisfaction tends to lead to similar record retention. So definitely working on ensuring that we're driving up retention.

Obviously, the more happy clients we have, the easier it is for our sellers. We're also investing in degenerative AI for our sellers to become more productive. So it is about service productivity, it's about seller productivity. It's about client experience. Client experience lends itself to retention. So I guess it's just one happy virtuous cycle, but I think our answer or my answer is both and all of it is what we hope to gain.

Now again, kind of back to the investments we're making and what Don alluded to in terms of any pressure we would have with respect to margin on those investments. Some of these investments, we know they're the right thing for ADP, but they will take time to ultimately garner all of the results in all of these categories that I just mentioned. And so as it stands today, we have some really exciting things that we're seeing. If you think about something like call summarization that I've spoken about in the past and we're shaving off roughly a minute per call, that doesn't probably

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