IBEX Limited

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the IBEX second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, to Brinley Johnson with the Blue Shirt Group. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to remind you that the matters discussed on today's call may include forward-looking statements related to our operating performance, financial goals, and business outlook, which are based on management's current beliefs and assumptions. Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions as of the date of this call. and we undertake no obligation to revise this information as a result of new developments which may occur. Our look and statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected and described today. For a more detailed description of our risk factors, please review our final perspectives filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 10, 2020, and our Form 20F filed on October 23, 2020. With that, I'll turn it over to Bob Deckett, CEO.

Thank you, Brindley. Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us today as we discuss the second quarter fiscal year 2021 financial results for IBEX. We are excited to speak to you today as Carl and I share our business overview and the financial results. In May 2015, when I joined IBEX as CEO, I established three clear goals for the company. First, we would aim to be a growth leader. Second, we would become a leading player in the nearshore markets. Lastly, we would drive EBITDA margins to 15% and beyond. I am proud to report that we are achieving each of these goals as demonstrated by our record second quarter results. Revenues increased 9% over the prior year, to an all-time high of $117.2 million as our organic growth continues to outpace the industry. Second, our success in the nearshore markets has been validated and recognized as we received the very prestigious Frost & Sullivan Central America and Caribbean CX Company of the Year Award as a follow-on to our Nearshore Company of the Year Award, which we received last year from Nearshore Americans. And third, we achieved 15% EBITDA margins for the quarter, an increase of 19% year over year. The second quarter for us is all about execution, as we need to deliver on critical seasonal ramps for our clients. our operational teams were exceptional, notwithstanding the growing cases of COVID-19 throughout the world. We continue to keep all of our centers safe and functioning, as well as leverage and scale our work-at-home agents. On top of that, we are launching new centers around the globe at a faster pace than any of our competitors. In the second quarter, We added our fifth center in Jamaica, which comes on the heels of our September opening in Ocho Rios. We also added significant capacity in the Philippines in both Metro Manila markets as well as in our provincial footprint on the island of Baha'u. Our reputation and differentiation as a leader in BPO 2.0 continues to fuel our growth and pipeline as deal flow becomes larger and has more velocity. Q2 was an excellent quarter as we won several key new logos, two of which span into our strategic healthcare and utilities verticals. We also had great traction on significantly expanding our sales pipeline which we believe will drive growth in the second half of FY 2021 and future quarters. Based on our strong performance, our success with winning new business, and our unparalleled ability to protect the fort of our embedded-based clients, we are raising full-year guidance once again. We have some notable key elements that distinguish us, and our record performance. Our wins are with clients that are transforming their customer experiences rapidly to a digital-first offering. These clients are new economy clients and blue-chip clients that are digitally transforming themselves. These iconic brands are looking for partners that can help enhance the customer experience at all points across the customer life cycle. by leveraging technology and analytics, amazing branding and culture, and on-demand scalability. And the pandemic has amplified these requirements, and as a result, the competitive landscape has further stratified from those who can and those who can't. This is at the core of BPO 2.0. and at the heart of why we are winning faster than our competition. Let me give you three specific examples of our leading solutions and how we integrate WaveX technologies to win or expand with some of the biggest customers in the world. First, one of our largest blue chip clients is undertaking a strategic transformation of their core business to digital and streaming. With the need to adjust to rapidly changing behaviors of consumers, we launched a platinum site in the U.S. with the objectives of, one, provide frictionless customer service for their early tenure video customers, and two, elevate to a platinum customer experience for their high value customers. Anchored by our WaveX technology, we developed a BPO 2.0 solution that included our proprietary AI agent analytics and performance tool set to deliver a 20% faster path to proficiency. Our enterprise grade BI suite to deliver end-to-end real-time customer interaction analysis that is driven at 12% reduction in repeat, and transferred calls. The transformational customer experience is being complemented by a highly branded site and award-winning agent engagement and is now enabling our client to win the J.D. Power Award for customer service. Not only have we exceeded our client's objectives, We are now developing and deploying similar solutions across the retail lines of business. As evidenced, our WaveX purpose-built technology stack is clearly playing a big role with both new economy and blue chip clients. These next two examples highlight our ability to consistently win on a big stage with clients in the e-commerce world as consumers are rapidly moving to digital-first transactions and brick-and-mortar retailers convert to a click-to-home model. For one of North America's largest specialty retail and e-commerce companies, IBEX displaced a struggling vendor. We were able to help the client prepare for the fast approaching 2020 holiday season that was compounded by COVID-19 and the volume shift to digital support. IBEX leveraged its highly scalable work at home operation and deployed 50% of the required staffing headcount from at home locations in the Philippines. with a total ramp to approximately 500 agents. We leveraged our WaveX virtual performance management tool set that allows for real-time KPI management, desktop audio and visual monitoring, KPI gamification dashboards, lifetime coaching, and data security tool set to ensure a seamless and secure virtual engagement. Using proprietary glide path modeling developed in our WaveX BI module, our workforce management operations and training divisions were able to forecast the client's Black Friday through Cyber Week needs with remarkable degree of precision. Impressively, we reached a forecasting accuracy for FTE production hours of 99% in November and 103% during December of 2020, ensuring success for this most important holiday season. Now, finally, we were able to assist one of the world's largest pure new economy e-commerce companies based outside the US that have hundreds of millions of users. The company was faced with the need for a secured on demand digital first solution as they built a promotion replicating the shopping phenomenon of 1111 Singles Day in China in new markets. IBEX was selected as the strategic partner of choice in the region based on our ability to rapidly scale a brick and mortar and work at home solution along with our ability to integrate our WaveX technologies into their core platforms to ensure a secure environment. IBEX displayed the agility and flexibility to hire over 200 agents within days. The partnership with IBEX resulted in our clients' best-ever returns on contact center answer efficiency rates. Bundled with our trademarked great customer experience scores. As a result, we are now positioned for a multi-year close relationship and partnership. In short, IBEX has become the partner of choice for a growing legion of iconic brands. Not only are we securing new clients across various segments, but our share of wallet in the install base continues to increase as we consistently win new lines of businesses, new services, and expand new geographies. Our employees remain our main priority. I am delighted to report that we continue to pass 100% of our health audits and as a result, have had each of our centers operational for the past three quarters. Additionally, we have mobilized close to 100% of our workforce back to pre-COVID levels. I also want to thank our leadership and frontline personnel who have demonstrated unbelievable perseverance and commitment in the face of adversity. Your resilience and agility are the foundation for our incredible results. Your performance is the gold standard. I would also like to recognize and thank our shareholders for their continued support. In summary, we continue to lead the BPO 2.0 revolution. Our disruptive and innovative customer experience solutions uniquely position us to deliver breakthrough results for our clients. Our ability to provide complex critical support for our clients in a highly digital economy Our recognition for exceptional performance and our strong financial results position IBEX for long-term success. I will now turn the call over to Carl Gable, our CFO, who will walk you through the key financial highlights to the quarter and provide you with our updated guidance. Carl?

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the call today. Our significant growth is a result of increasing client demand for our critical value proposition and delivering on the operational fundamentals that have made us successful. We continue to see strong demand from our new economy clients, increased share of business from our installed client base, overall improvements in client concentration, and we are optimistic about the outlook of the business. Revenue in the second quarter of $117.2 million increased by 8.7% compared to the year-ago quarter. New economy revenue grew 10.5%, nonvoice revenue increased slightly, and digital revenue decreased 3.4% compared to the prior year quarter. After adjusting for one client that was significantly adversely impacted by the pandemic, which we believe is more indicative of the business, New economy revenue grew 28.1%, non-voice increased by 16.2%, and digital growth was 4.1%. Revenues in the first half of the fiscal year were $226 million, up 11.2% from prior year. Net income in the second quarter of 2021 was $2.5 million, including $1.6 million of non-recurring COVID-19-related costs compared to net income of $4.8 million for the same period last year. On a non-GAAP basis, excluding non-recurring expenses, fair value adjustments, and share-based payments, adjusted net income was $6.2 million versus $5.6 million in the prior year quarter. Non-GAAP pro forma fully diluted adjusted EPS was $0.33 in the second quarter of 2021 versus $0.30 in the prior year quarter based on 18.7 million shares outstanding. Adjusted EBITDA increased 18.7% from the prior year quarter to 17.6 million or 15% of revenue compared to $14.8 million, or 13.8% of revenue, for the same period last year. We are delivering adjusted EBITDA margin expansion by increasing our new economy revenues, which drives growth in our offshore and nearshore geographies, as well as growth of our high-margin services, such as nonvoice and digital services. Our achievement of 15% adjusted EBITDA margin is a significant milestone for the company. Turning to client mix in the second quarter, our top three client concentration continues to decrease quarter over quarter. In Q2 fiscal year 21, our top three clients represented 36.4% of overall revenue, down from 45.1% for the same period last year. The revenue generated from clients outside of the top three increased by 25.9%, and are the main drivers of the overall revenue growth. By vertical market, telecommunications decreased to 29.5 percent of revenue from 36.2 in the prior year quarter, whereas retail and e-commerce increased to 22.6 percent of revenue from 16.2 percent for the same period last year. Second quarter operating cash flow decreased to 4.3 million from $5.9 million sequentially. We had an increase in cash flow from operations, excluding working capital changes, of $5.2 million, which was offset by a negative change in working capital of $6.8 million. The negative change in working capital was primarily attributable to a timing difference in trade and other payables offset by a reduction in the DSL. On a year-over-year basis, second quarter operating cash flow decreased to $4.3 million from $18.6 million. We had an increase in cash flow from operations, excluding working capital changes of $1.4 million, offset by a negative change in working capital of $15.7 million. The negative change in working capital was primarily attributable to a temporary DSO reduction mainly related to one key client in the prior year quarter and the timing of trade and other payables. DSOs, which are currently below the industry average, and for the second quarter was 48 days, down three days for the same period last year, down five days sequentially. We continue to focus on timely client invoice collections, but looking ahead, expect our DSOs to increase during the remainder of the fiscal year 2021 and as the temporary decrease related to one key client mentioned earlier is expected to reverse. The balance sheet remains strong with $74.6 million in cash compared to $21.9 million as of June 30, 2020, strengthened by the net proceeds of the IPO in August. Net debt increased to $50.7 million compared to $35.5 million as of September 30, 2020, primarily due to an increase in lease liability associated with bringing on new capacity, such as our new site in Fort Moore, Jamaica, growth capital expenditures, and a net working capital outflow, offset by strong operating results for the quarter. Capital expenditures were $7.2 million, or 6.1 percent of revenue, for the second quarter of 2021, versus $4.1 million, or 3.8% of revenue for the year-ago quarter. We added approximately 1,000 workstations this quarter through the expansion of our Philippine sites and adding the initial 400 seats in our new site in Portmore, Jamaica. This site in Jamaica has capacity for another 800 seats that are being built out over the next quarter. On a normalized basis, excluding the effect of the Warrant Fair Value Adjustment, which is in a non-taxable jurisdiction, our second quarter tax rate is 24%. For the current fiscal year, we expect our normalized effective income tax rate to be between 17 and 20% in line with 18% for fiscal year 20. Before I turn to guidance, I wanted to provide a quick update on Frontier. Based on recent publicly available news reports, Frontier appears to be on target to emerge from bankruptcy in early 2021. Frontier has received regulatory approvals from the FCC and 17 out of 18 states. We are encouraged by this positive news and are proud to be partnering with Frontier. Turning now to our full year 2021 guidance. Given our overperformance for the second quarter and the strength of our deal flow and pipeline, we are raising our guidance for both top line and adjusted EBITDA. We are increasing revenue guidance to 445 to 448 million from 440 to 443 million. The midpoint of the increase represents a 10% increase from prior year. Additionally, we are increasing guidance for adjusted EBITDA to 62 to 63.5 million from 60.5 to 62 million. The adjusted EBITDA midpoint represents a 16 percent increase and a 700 basis point improvement in margin from fiscal year 20. In closing, the revenue momentum we experienced last fiscal year continued through the first half of fiscal year 2021. We are focusing on strategic long-term growth, which fuels our leadership position in BPO 2.0. Our ability to transform the customer experience is evidenced by the pursuit and award of critical business from clients who are focused on growth and improvements in their customer experience, and as a result, we expect to continue to deliver impressive results. With that, Bob and I will now take questions. Operator, please open the line.

Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question, you would need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. I show our first question comes from the line of Toby Sommer from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Could you talk about what you've learned in terms of onboarding new internal talent and agents in the pandemic and what you see the challenges are in managing those because you're growing so quickly that your hiring must be, you know, very significant. I know it's something we touched on in other calls, but updated thoughts would be appreciated.

Sure, Toby. And, hey, thanks for joining the call and appreciate the question. And it's a great question. And I, you know, I think first, the hiring starts with the reputation that you have as an employer in the region. And in our real growth markets of the Philippines, of the Jamaicas, and of the Nicaraguas, the IBEX brand is second to none. And so when we need to ramp up for, and I'm telling you, for on-demand capacity is really where the industry is right now, we are able to attract a significant number of candidates that want to come in and work for ibex and especially in markets like jamaica or nicaragua or you know provincial plays in the philippines where tourism has historically been a big part of their you know of their uh of their economy uh we're able to attract some great people and great leadership and so we've been um we've been able to um fill 100% of our classes globally. We've been able to fill management very easily as we scale. Some of that comes from internal. Some of it comes from external. And then the challenge is how do you train them? And, you know, we, between our WaveX training modules that are in-center and also have been adapted now for work at home, we're able to get our agents trained, skilled, and ready to take phone calls and digital contacts real fast. And so, you know, we feel like we have excelled in that in this industry versus anybody in this industry.

Thanks. And as a follow-up question, could you talk about the gross impact that both positive and negative on your customer base related to COVID pandemic, you know, kind of work from home and lockdowns and how you see that, uh, you know, the impact changing as the vaccine rollout continues and hopefully life, uh, resume some normality. Sure.

And so, you know, as you know, there's been winners and losers in industry, you know, based on various market segments and business models. Um, those that have many of our clients that we have by nature of new economy and kind of digitally oriented client base have been on the winning side. And so our requirements for our existing clients have been as strong as ever. What has happened is with COVID, they view that the ability to find a provider that can provide on-demand capacity. And the way they think of that is a combination of in-center and work-at-home is what they're looking for. And so more than ever, they are looking for those that are aggressively going and expanding And that's why we've looked at the market and we've said we're going to continue to go down the path of building out centers. And we put two centers in Jamaica in roughly 60 days, one that we fired up in September and one that we fired up in our Q2. And having that capacity as clients are looking, we're able to grab that volume faster than anybody else and then complement it with work at home. So I think that behavior has really changed in the speed of, you know, of the on-demand capacity and how they're making decisions has really accelerated. The velocity of those decisions are extremely fast. And how I think that looks out down the road, you know, I think that those characteristics and those attributes are the type of partner that clients are going to look for. I think it plays more into continued outsourcing of, of their strategies and not looking at, you know, captive. So I think you'll see a, you know, an acceleration of a percentage of business that's in source to outsource. I think that, you know, clients are aggressively seeing this industry, you know, BPOs as a player, you know, for, for that growth. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I show our next question. It comes from the line of Dave Coleman from Bayer. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, guys. Great job again. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, and I guess I'm kind of wondering in the back half, you know, how we should think about the revenue trends, kind of when we think about the wins, the client wins coming on. You know, how should we think of that pacing out? And maybe those wins are actually more impactful, I would think, I guess, to 2022. And if that's the pipeline that probably keeps the same level of growth kind of going into next year, just sort of thinking about the pacing. I mean, should we think of both Q3 and Q4 being high single digits, pretty similar, and then into next year now pretty similar too?

Yeah, that's a good question, Dave. And there is a lot of what I'll say upside that's out there, that the teams are really – really looking at closing and then speed back to this on-demand capacity, you know, and scalability. So there's a lot that's out there that I feel really, really good about. Now, depending upon how fast those deals close and then how fast the actual client requirements are, you know, there are some upsets on, you know, beyond, you know, kind of this, you know, where we are tracking right now. But that's stuff that we still have to go out and hit. And I think you hit the nail on the head. Those definitely would have a big impact in 22 and, you know, to a lesser extent in the second half of the year. But we feel good about, you know, we feel very good about the second half, and that's why we, you know, why we moved up guidance to where, you know, Carl talked about.

Yeah, sounds great. And maybe just as a follow-up, you talked about the heavier investment this quarter, getting new centers ramped up, which you can leverage later. Is the rest of this year, though, should we expect free cash flow positive now the rest of the year, just given you did the heavy investment already?

Yeah, great question. So, Carl, why don't you jump in on that?

Yeah, so, David, good question. I think if you look at the first six months of the year, It's kind of a good way to look at the cash structure for the company. That takes out the timing difference with trading other payables. So if you look at it kind of like from that perspective, you know, the operating cash, you know, excluding the working capital, was about $21 million. And then the working capital was really driven by the growth in the revenue, right? So the way we look at it is, like we said, we manage our working capital and and our DSOs, et cetera, and our client collections. But we're in a position now with our CapEx that if there are good opportunities, then we can quickly go after new opportunities. So when you throw CapEx in, it was like $7 million, which is about 6% for this quarter. But like we said in our prepared comments, there's about another 800 seats, right, of the one site that's in Portmore that's being built out in our Q3. So I think from a working capital perspective, or from a cash flow perspective, rather, you can look at those first six months, and when you look at the free cash flow, if you layer in the CapEx, we still have some build-outs that are in process, but we also have the balance sheet now. If the demand's there, we can act pretty quickly and capture that demand and be very quick with the CapEx. So... I think hopefully that answers your question. I think if you look at the first six months, but I would just say from a CapEx perspective, you know, if there's opportunities, just like it was with Fortmore 2, the company does have the balance sheet to invest in that CapEx.

Yep. Gotcha. Thanks, guys. Great job. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arvino Ramnani from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on another really good quarter. I had a question more from an operational perspective. How are you thinking about staffing in a post-pandemic environment? Specifically, as employees started to take more travel and vacation, Over the next 12 to 18 months, are you looking to staff at higher levels? I would imagine there will be some level of productivity pressure, just given that people may want to travel a little bit more actively in a post-pandemic environment.

Hey, Arvind. Yeah, thanks for joining, and thanks for that question. And that's a really good call-out on, you know, where probably all business are going to go as, you know, not much traveling has occurred from anybody. And so, look, I think we will find that – that our folks will look to do that. But again, if you, if you think about the nature of the agent and all of that, not very often are these folks, um, you know, getting on planes and flying, you know, flying to, you know, whatever destinations and all their, their, their vacations, their traveler, you know, are local. And so I, I don't see that there will be a massive, um, you know, kind of productivity loss out of that workforce through that, you might have a little, you know, a little bit that we might have to, you know, might have to staff, you know, staff up a little bit for, but, uh, you know, we've done an amazing job in my operations and workforce planning team. You know, if, if, if, if we're losing people or let's say, you know, and here's a perfect analogy when we, uh, when COVID started heating up in the markets, uh, you'd have a random agent that would have that. And next thing you know, you might have 15 people that you have to quarantine from contact tracing and all. Our team has done an amazing job of driving productivity out of those of the workforce, leveraging overtime, things like that that yield the end result that we want. And I'm pretty sure we'll be able to you know, we'll be able to manage through that and not have it really impact our business negatively.

Yeah, that's really helpful. And I guess, you know, from a demand perspective, you know, there were certain clients that were probably impacted, and, you know, it's difficult to kind of predict the cadence of when they will come back. But is there some level of sort of planning, you know, in terms of making sure you're operationally ready to see a surge in demand from some clients who are underspent and there may be some pent-up demand over the next couple of years?

Yeah, so very, very good question. We've been very lucky that not many of our install-based clients have been you know, have been negatively impacted. And we've been very, you know, I think that's a result of the types of clients we have attracted. Now, we all know that the world of sharing ride sharing and things like that have been, you know, have been negatively impacted in a large way. And we do a lot of digital work, you know, in that market. And we've spent a lot of time working through models and leveraging our models on what we think the trajectory of the headcount. And as that comes back, how fast does it come back in the contact centers? And, you know, what I really would then call out is they're having those discussions with us and they're not with their other partners in that network because they trust us. They trust the intelligence of our workforce network. team and technology and just the partnership. And so, you know, we've built the models of where we're going with them and the type of market share gains that we can grab out of that. And, you know, so we feel very strong about that relationship and the upside that would be out there for IBEX, you know, and winning more than our fair share. And so, you know, it's really limited to one client as we think through that. And, you So many of the other clients are just in really, really aggressive growth, which is, you know, part of what we love about, you know, our business and, you know, our vectors of growth that we've built here.

Great. Thank you very much, and good luck for the rest of the year. Great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. I'll show our next question. It comes from the line of Dan Bellahesson from Columbia Thread Needle. Please go ahead. Dan, if you have your phone on mute, please unmute your line.

Hi, guys. I hope everyone is healthy and well. I was hoping you can share what differentiation you're able to offer today that you weren't able to previously. It's driving the customer service experience and also the customer value proposition, namely that your competitors aren't able to do right now, particularly around your new economy and platinum business that really seems to be doing quite well. I'd love if you guys can drill down to that more granularly to help us understand what of what really is being offered there that's new, incremental, and differentiated. Thank you.

Sure. And Dan, thanks for joining and great question. And this business is a world of intangibles. And so sometimes differentiation is very small degrees of differentiation. But In the world of BPO 2.0, which we've kind of been evangelizing, we believe that we now start moving beyond subtle degrees of differentiation and into actual tangible differentiation. And it starts with the WaveX technologies that we have in our BI technologies that are part of WaveX. And these technologies are all geared or many are geared around ensuring the effectiveness of the agents that we're hiring are profiled properly and better than, that are trained better than, and then when they're on a contact, that those technologies can make the agent more efficient or more effective on delivering an experience. Let me give you an example. AI technology. that can real-time help an agent solve an issue. So in the old world, you'd have an agent talking to a customer, and then they'd be necessarily perhaps going and having to get to an FAQ or a knowledge base. It's kind of hard to talk, be really effective, deliver an experience while I'm hunting and pecking for an article. That's challenging. That's a real challenging element of this job. Now having AI technology that enables an agent to have that information teed up, that the technology is listening and teed up, and so the agent kind of has it at their fingertips and provides an answer, those things are very easy now in the cell cycle to articulate and demonstrate. And so now you go from these real subtleties of, intangible differentiation to this is black and white. And what's really interesting is in the world of virtual selling and Zoom meetings and things like that, those things come across. Those things come across as Zoom call and they're easy to articulate. What other things are, are some intangibles. The IDEX culture and what we do in a center and around our engagements and our branding, those come across in tidal waves on Zoom calls, as they do when a client comes to our site. But what's interesting is we can get this done so much more efficiently and effectively right now. And so we're able to have these site tours with key clients in the final decision-making, and we're able to do those rapidly. and then win at a disproportionate rate. And so that kind of gives you hopefully an idea of some of those things. And so inside WaveX, there's a lot more under the covers, but the AI technologies for agent effectiveness, that's one that just really, really resonates well.

That's really helpful. And you spoke earlier in a similar way about becoming more of a partner to some of your clients. Is this an area where you could see yourself investing behind over the medium term, maybe even carving a different level of more qualified agents in your staff that you can go to market with and say, here, we have this premium-level offering end-to-end now, and you get X. You not only get the WaveX technology, but you get this higher-trained, higher-paid, better-qualified team of people that will really become more brand ambassador-like?

Daniel read the business plan of our platinum offer of the solution that we, that I talked about in the, in the remarks, that's exactly what it is. It was, let's look at, and again, think about the, you know, the U S market is, uh, historically the agent, the agent contact center job hasn't been the most desirable of jobs, which is very different than in places, you know, in our near shore and offshore markets. Um, This is now geared at really recreating a really good job. And so we're paying at a fairly good premium for these folks. So we attract a much better talent. The attrition, because you're paying that, is significantly lower. Additionally, one of the big drivers of agent attrition is just kind of getting worn out by dealing with customers time and time and time again that may be hostile, you know, may be angry, may be complaining. And the idea of, you know, now having a platinum experience where, you know, when that contact takes place, you've kind of already put a concierge approach to it, you know, the stress level's out. And so I think that drives into that. And so that really was the whole theory of, And that's where we've been out there kind of building and leveraging between the agent, the facility, and the branding that's inside the facility, and then the technology we layered in. And those results are making an impact. And our results are off the charts. And for this one client, it really helped them move up from middle of the pack to a J.D. Power award winner.

Got it. Very helpful. Thanks so much for answering the question. Sure.

Thank you. I show no further questions in the queue. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Sure. Thank you very much, and thanks all for attending the call and appreciate all the questions. Well, I think we just had a great first half of the year off of a fantastic prior year. and all key indicators of the business are really moving in the right direction from client concentration to new economy growth, near-shore, offshore growth, new logo growth. We feel really good about our business, and we look forward to continuing you know, getting together in a quarter from now and sharing our results. So thanks for the participation. I hope you all stay healthy, and if you're in the Midwest or such, I hope you all stay warm and safe. So thanks, everybody, and go IBEX.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.