TRINET GROUP, INC. 2026 Q3 Earnings Call

Good morning. My name is Alex Bauer, TriNet's Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to TriNet's third quarter conference call and webcast. I am joined today by our President and CEO, Mike Simonds, and our CFO, Mala Murthy. Please note that today's discussion includes our 2026 full-year financial outlook and statements that are not historical or predictive or depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, such as our expectations, estimates, predictions, strategies, or beliefs. Forward-looking statements, which are based on management's current expectations and assumptions, are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances. We caution you not to place undue reliance on these statements. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied.

Except as may be required by law, we do not undertake to update any of these statements in light of new information, future events, or otherwise. Our discussion today will also include non-GAAP financial measures, including our forward-looking guidance for adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted net income per diluted share. We encourage you to review our most recent public filings with the SEC, including our 10-K and 10-Q filings, as well as our earnings release, each of which is available on our website or through the SEC website for both reconciliations of our non-GAAP financial measures to our GAAP financial results and a more detailed discussion of the risks, uncertainties, and changes in circumstances that may affect our future results or the market price of our stock. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike.

Mike? Thanks, Alex, and good morning, everyone.

I am pleased with our progress in the third quarter and encouraged by the momentum we are building across the business. At the beginning of the year, we laid out a straightforward path for returning TriNet to profitable growth. First, we needed to progress our health fee repricing and return to a sustainable insurance cost ratio. Next, we needed to improve retention, strengthening the value we deliver to our clients. Finally, we needed to increase new sales, supported by a larger, more productive sales force and strong broker channel. During the third quarter, we made progress across each of these priorities. After completing our repricing efforts, insurance performance has improved, and once again in Q3, it was better than forecast and within our target ICR range. Professional services revenue was in line with expectations, and we maintained discipline around both pricing and investment.

As a result, we are very confident in our full-year outlook, which Mala will discuss in greater detail. Importantly, our improved financial performance is occurring as we invest meaningfully in capabilities supporting our other two priorities, retention and new sales. Let me start with customer retention, where we are encouraged by our progress. Improving retention is one of the most important building blocks in returning our WSE base to growth. We started 2026 planning for full-year WSE retention that was in line with our long-term historical average. As a result of our health plan repricing, retention in Q1 was lower than we expected. With Q2 and Q3 renewals complete, and Q4 renewals largely behind us as well, our full-year forecast for retention has fully recovered from the difficult start, and we now believe we will finish with a modest improvement in retention for the full year.

TriNet's value proposition, a powerful combination of technology and proactive service, has now become the driver of customer retention. Our philosophy here is simple. We have built an exceptional foundation around HR expertise, benefits, payroll, compliance, and service. Increasingly, we can complement that foundation by bringing customers additional capabilities, either by building them ourselves, partnering with companies that we believe offer differentiated solutions, or through acquisition. You are beginning to see that strategy take shape. Over the past year, we have made meaningful progress improving our customer experience through AI, including our homegrown tool, TriNet Assistant. We started with a focus on WSEs, and at the end of the third quarter, nearly 60% of WSE-initiated chats are being resolved using AI, freeing our colleagues to solve more complex requests with greater speed.

Two areas where we have seen quick wins are our backlog of older cases, which declined by over 60%, and leave of absence turnaround times, which have dropped by 75%. During the third quarter, we expanded TriNet Assistant support to customer administrators. As we roll out additional use cases, we expect to further improve customer satisfaction and service productivity. Where we find companies with unique solutions that integrate with the people processes we administer, we are creating partnerships. One example is TriNet Global. Many of our customers are sourcing talent globally and often identify candidates outside the United States before having the infrastructure necessary to employ them. TriNet Global addresses that need, extending the value of the TriNet relationship. A second example is TriNet IT. Managing a distributed workforce means managing remote employee technology. TriNet IT expands the solutions available to customers and addresses this adjacent business need.

While early, we are seeing adoption of both offerings, which are now integrated into our broader sales efforts. Just two weeks ago, we expanded this strategy with the launch of TriNet Recruit and TriNet Spend, addressing new hire applicant tracking and expense management, respectively. We are excited about the potential these deep integration partnerships have for supporting our clients and strengthening our overall value proposition. Where owning a capability provides meaningful strategic value, we will invest directly. Cocoon is a great example. Leave of absence has historically been complex for employers. We acquired Cocoon because we believed its best-in-class solution can meaningfully strengthen our customer experience. The integration remains on track, with our first cohort already migrated, including our heaviest users of leave. Strategically, Cocoon strengthens an important HR workflow, differentiates our offering, and demonstrates how targeted acquisitions can deepen the value we deliver across the customer life cycle.

Together, TriNet Assistant, Cocoon, TriNet Global, IT, Recruit, and Spend illustrate the ecosystem we're building around our core. Each addresses a real problem our SMB customers face, and each provides TriNet with another opportunity to strengthen the customer relationship. To give a client example, Diana Sacchi, Chief Human Resources Officer at Grameen America, is expanding her relationship with TriNet through Cocoon and TriNet Recruit. She's adopting these capabilities with the goal of strengthening Grameen's HR processes and improving her team's efficiency. Over time, we believe this broader set of capabilities can support both sales and retention by making the TriNet relationship increasingly valuable to clients. The final major factor for us to return to volume growth is new sales, and we made encouraging progress during the third quarter. New sales ACV for Q3 grew mid-single digits year over year, representing further improvement in our sales trajectory.

In fact, that trajectory is continuing as we are currently forecasting high single-digit new sales ACV growth in the fourth quarter. This growth is an important step as we've spent much of the last two years building the foundation for sustainable, repeatable sales growth. Our experienced sales consultants remain an extraordinarily important part of our distribution model, and we continue to retain that group. At the same time, our Ascend program provides us with a repeatable process for developing the next generation of productive TriNet sales consultants. The objective isn't simply to increase headcount, but to build a sales organization with the right combination of capacity, tenure, productivity, and expertise. Our broker channel represents another increasingly important growth factor, and we are beginning to realize a return on this investment. In Q3, broker new sales ACV was a strong contributor to our third quarter sales growth.

Importantly, we believe there remains a significant opportunity ahead. We want TriNet to become an increasingly valuable long-term partner to the broker community. That requires us to consistently deliver for both the broker and their client. We're investing in better technology, processes, and local talent to support our aspirations in this channel. Importantly, we also have aligned incentives to encourage both new sales and strong retention. The growing level of RFP activity and new client wins tell us our value proposition is resonating with much more runway ahead for future expansion. That brings me back to where we started. At the beginning of 2026, we were very clear about what we had to improve, and through the third quarter, we've made tangible progress. Pricing is aligned with broader market trends. Retention is improving. Our investments in technology, service, and capabilities are strengthening the overall TriNet value proposition.

New sales return to growth. Our sales organization is now adding capacity, and broker activity continues to grow. As we enter the final quarter of 2026 and begin looking forward towards 2027, our focus is on translating these improvements into sustainable, predictable growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Mala.

Mala? Thank you, Mike. The third quarter saw a continuation of several first-half themes.