Information Services Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome everyone to the Information Services Group first quarter 2025 conference call. This call is being recorded and a replay will be available on ISG's website within 24 hours. Now I would like to turn the conference over to Barry Holt for his opening remarks and introduction. Please go ahead.

Thank you operator. Hello and good morning. My name is Barry Holt. I'm a Senior Communications Executive at ISG. I'd like to welcome everyone to ISG's first quarter conference I'm joined today by Michael Connors, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Michael Sharick, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin I'd like to read a forward-looking statement. It's important to note that this communication may contain forward-looking statements which represent the current expectations and beliefs of the management of ISG concerning future events and their potential effects.

These

statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For a more detailed listing of the risks and other factors that could affect future results please refer to the forward-looking statement contained in our form 8K that was published last night to the SEC and the risk practice section in ISG's form 10K covering full-year results. You should also read ISG's annual report on form 10K and any other relevant documents including any amendments or supplements to these documents prior with the SEC. You'll be able to obtain free copies of any of ISG's SEC files on either ISG's website at -1.com or the SEC's website at .scc.gov. ISG undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. During this call we will discuss certain non-gap financial measures which ISG believes improves the comparability of the true and provides the greater transparency of key measures used to evaluate the company's performance. The non-gap measures which we will touch on today include adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net earnings and the presentation of selected financial data on a constant currency basis. Non-gap measures are provided as additional information that should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial results prepared in accordance with the requirements. For reconciliation of non-gap measures presented through the most closely applicable gap measure, please refer to our current report on form 8K which was filed last night with the SEC. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Michael Kalkus who will be followed by Michael Sherriff.

Mike? Thank you very and good morning everyone. Today we will review our strong Q1 results including our accelerating margin, our view of the current market and our outlook for Q2. Our momentum continues. After finishing 2024 with a strong fourth quarter, ISG began this year with an even stronger first quarter. Our execution was superb and our underlying fundamentals are in great shape. We delivered Q1 revenues of $60 million up 5% excluding results from our divested automation units. Growth was led by our largest revenue region, the Americas, up 17%. This is the largest -over-year growth quarter in the Americas in the last two years. During our fourth quarter call, I indicated that we expected acceleration in 2025 beginning with the Americas during the first half of the year followed by Europe and the rest of the world later in the second half. Our results reflect that outlook. For Q1, our adjusted EBITDA was up 68% to $7.4 million with our adjusted EBITDA margin of more than 550 basis points to 12.4%. Our enhanced profitability is the result of our improved business mix and our disciplined operating approach including Q1 utilization of 745 basis points year over year. Recurring revenues continue to be an important pillar of our success. In Q1, they reached $26 million up slightly from Q4 and represented 44% of our overall revenue. AI continues to be at the heart of everything we do with AI increasingly embedded in all areas of technology and services. We have served more than 200 clients with AI-focused research and advisory services in the trailing 12 months, up from the 150 we noted last quarter. As AI evolves, so do our offerings. For example, last month, ISU Research published a strategic guide to synthetic AI for enterprise leaders. With our strong expertise and knowledge of the AI ecosystem, clients continue to look for our advice and support on adopting and scaling AI across their organizations. Our AI-powered platforms also continue to gain traction with clients. For example, more than $9 billion of contract value now flows through ISC Tango, our groundbreaking sourcing platform launched last year. That's up more than 30% from the four quarters. Looking at the broader market, we see a growing number of clients accelerating their cloud adoption, modernizing their infrastructure and leveraging AI ops to improve IT operating efficiency. This plays right to ISC's strengths in digital transformation and cost optimization powered by AI enforcement. Today's market landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for organizations to maintain competitive momentum. We are in a great position to turn market disruption into long-term advantage for our clients. By optimizing through AI, future-proofing partner ecosystems, and rigorously tracking ROI, we help our clients achieve cost efficiency while protecting strategic growth

initiatives. With that, let me turn to

our automation unit last October. The -over-year comparisons I cite here exclude automation revenues of about $8 million in last year's first quarter. Our Americas region delivered an excellent quarter with revenues of 17% to $41 million. Driven by double-digit growth in our technology advisory business and in our banking, energy, utilities, health sciences, and public sector industry vertical. C-client engagements during the first quarter included Lockheed Martin, Crafts Signs, and ExxonMobil. During the quarter, we won a million dollar plus engagement with a leading CPG company to support a major sourcing initiative covering application and infrastructure modernization, including leveraging AIOps to enhance security and efficiency. We also won a million dollar engagement with a leading global energy company to support a major infrastructure and application modernization program, extending our work for this long-term plan. In our push into the middle market, which we define as companies under 10 billion in revenue, we also won a two million dollar plus engagement with a multinational food processing company that specializes in private label products. We are supporting this first-time outsourcing, developing an operating model, and selecting providers for the client's shared services function, and ensuring a seamless transition with our change management services. Our ISP Tango platform, which allows us to provide a level of service attractive to mid-market clients, was instrumental in this win. We also find a large research subscription with a leading US provider of streaming services, the biggest win ever for our software research business. Turning to Europe, this market is showing early signs of a rebound, with growth in our technology advisory business and double-digit growth in our insurance industry vertical. We expect further improvement later in the year as demand continues to pick up. Key client engagements in Europe in the first quarter included Instar, Aeroleteed, Heineken, and Barmer. During the quarter, we won a new million dollar plus engagement with a healthcare client that we have been working with the last 10 years. Our latest work involved supporting the client's business transformation to SAT S4HANA. We also continued our work to support the IT arm of the Germany Ministry of Defense under a long-term framework contract. With our latest award, we are providing benchmarking services worth more than one million dollars annually to lower IT costs, streamline processes, and optimize the organization in support of the German armed forces. Now turning to Asia Pacific, our Q1 revenues of five million dollars were down $800,000 from last year, primarily due to fluggy Australian government spending ahead of the main election. With the elections now behind us, we expect government spending to pick up again later this year. For Q1, Asia Pacific delivered double-digit revenue growth in our banking, manufacturing, energy, and health sciences industry vertical. Key clients in the quarter included Idemo, Standard Chartered Asia, Bank of Queensland, and AGL Energy. During the quarter, we won a new engagement with a large multinational bank in the region to support a major cost optimization program. Now a few comments on the overall tech services industry. I think we have seen the first order effect of U.S. tariffs, lots of uncertainty followed by action planning. We will see the second order effect, the real economic impact, in the quarters to come. Businesses that experience a direct impact from the administration's current policy are pivoting to new supply chains and cost optimization. For others, volatility is acting as a catalyst for technology transformation. Either way, our clients are not standing still. Last week I spent time in Europe, and the environment is a bit different there, marked by a realization that Europe needs to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on the U.S. And that means investment in some industries, think defense and aerospace for example, and cost optimization in other areas

to either reduce costs or shift spending.

There is a sentiment, maybe it's a hope, that much of the tariff uncertainty for Europe will be resolved by the end of the summer. For IST, we have seen no material change in buyer behavior to date. Clients are turning to AI and tech modernization to gain strategic advantage. And this plays to our transformation work. For clients more directly impacted by the tariff, our cost optimization is the sweet spot. Of course, we will continue to monitor the tariff uncertainty, but for now we remain optimistic that we have the right portfolio mix to meet client needs in the months ahead. Now let me turn to guidance. As I mentioned earlier, we are seeing positive signs of strong demand for technology services in the U.S. And that's reflected in our Q1 results. We expect demand to continue in future driven by cloud, AI, data analytics, and infrastructure modernization. Clients are not standing still. They are looking to get ahead of her. We like our position to meet that demand, but given the macro uncertainty, we will remain conservative in our outlook. So with that said, for the second quarter, we are targeting revenues between 59.5 and 60.5 million dollars and adjusted to be between seven and eight million dollars. Now let me turn the call over to Michael Sherrick who will summarize our financial results.

Michael? Thank you, Mike, and good morning everyone. As Mike stated earlier, our revenue comparison with the first quarter of 2024 excludes our divested automation unit, which contributed about eight million dollars a year ago. This provides a more accurate view of our go-forward business. Revenue for the first quarter was 59.6 million dollars, up a solid five percent versus the prior year. For the quarter, currency had a $600,000 negative impact on revenue. America's revenue was $41 million dollars, up 17 percent. Europe revenue was $13.8 million dollars, down 13 percent. And Asia-Pacific revenue was $4.8 million, down 16 percent. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $7.4 million dollars, up sharply from $4.4 million in the year ago period and resulting in EBITDA margin of 12.4 percent, up 554 basis points year on year. Driving this solid improvement with consulting utilization of 77.7 percent, up from 70.2 percent in the year ago quarter. For the quarter, ISD delivered operating income of $3.4 million dollars compared with an operating loss of $2.4 million in the prior year. Our reported net income for the quarter was $1.5 million, or three cents, per fully diluted share, compared with a net loss of $3.4 million, or seven cents, per fully diluted share in the prior year. First quarter adjusted net income was $3.7 million dollars, or seven cents, per share on a fully diluted basis, compared with adjusted net income of $0.7 million, or one cent per fully diluted share in the prior year's first quarter. Our headcount as of March 31, 2025, was $1,320, which was basically flat with 4Q24. We ended the quarter with cash of $20.1 million, down from $23.1 million at the end of the fourth quarter. For the quarter, net cash provided by operations was $1 million. During the quarter, we paid dividends of $2.2 million and repurchased $3.3 million dollars of stock. Our next quarterly dividend will be paid June 27th to shareholders of record as of June 6th. Fully diluted shares outstanding for the quarter were $50.3 million, down $300,000 from the prior quarter. At the quarter's end, we had approximately $15 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization. Our quarter end growth debt to EVGA ratio was 2.1 times at the bottom of our two to two and a half times target range, and down from 2.4 times at the end of the quarter. For the quarter, our average borrowing rate was 6.5%, down from 7% last quarter. Overall, our balance sheet remains solid and continues to offer us the flexibility to support our business over the long term. Mike will now share concluding remarks before we go

to Q&A. Mike? Thank you, Michael. To summarize, ISG has momentum. After a strong Q4, we delivered an even stronger Q1. Led by double digit growth in the Americas, our revenues of $60 million dollars exceeded our expectations, and our adjusted EVGA was up a robot 68% as our margin expanded more than 550 basis points. Despite the uncertainty around tariffs, and maybe because of it, we see good market demand with a focus on leveraging technology for cost optimization and competitive damage, and that plays right into our sweet spot, and bodes well for the success of ISG. As always, we are focused on creating shareholder value for the long term, and we are steadfast in our mission to deliver operational excellence for our clients. So thank you very much for calling in this morning, and now let me turn the session over to the operator for your question.

Thank you. Today's question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star and 1 on your telephone keypad. If you find that your question has been answered and you would like to remove yourself from the queue, you may do so by pressing star 1 again. And again, if you would like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing the star and 1 on your touchtone keypad. And we'll pause a moment to allow any questions into the

queue. So we'll take our first question from

Dave Storms at Stonegate.

Good morning.

Good morning. Just wanted to start with maybe starting with the Americas. How would you characterize that pacing relative to your expectations? Would you expect a similar jumping growth going into queue two, or with a lot of your expectations for the strong ones have the Americas already received and things you want there?

So Dave, thanks for the question. First of all, just a little context for my response to that is right now in the U.S. we are seeing some very strong demand, and it's both on the transformation side and on the optimization side. It varies depending on which industry and which industry is a little more impacted by the tariff conversations. But we would expect queue two to be double digits

again in the Americas. Understood. That's very helpful. And then just looking at Europe,

I know you've mentioned a couple times now that you're expecting a rebound in the second half year. Are there any end markets that you're expecting to leave the charge? Any end markets that you're starting to see issues in already? Anything like that would be helpful.

Okay, so the issue in Europe, and I just came back from there, is still a lot of uncertainty, and their uncertainty is probably captured threefold. One, clearly tariffs and what does it mean? So not unlike the U.S. But there they also have a lot of geopolitical cloud still, thank the Ukraine war, etc. And so that is difficult. And third, they're just getting through a bit of an election cycle, and that also has uncertainty. And even if you think about what's happened in Germany, you know, we have a new leader there, but we also have a difficulty getting a coalition together. So you add all those factors together, I would say there's still a cloud of uncertainty around a lot of the buying behavior. Having said that, what we are seeing in the pipeline is an increase in the pipeline in Europe. We saw it with some of our advisory services, our consulting around cost optimization, around using AI for efficiency, increasing. So I think if the tariff situation begins to clear a bit, that is our expectation that some of this pipeline will be released, and that's what gives us our thought process for the back half of the year. Not in Q2, but we would expect to see Q3, Q4. Q2 will be better, but I don't see growth in Q2, but we do see a beginning for ramp starting in Q3 and Q4 then. That's how we see it at the moment.

That's very helpful. Thank you. I'll get back to you. Thank you.

We'll move on to our next question from Mark Riddick at Spagoti.

Hey, good morning.

Good morning, Mark.

So I wanted to touch a little bit on the strong spark of the year and the guidance of Q2 and how that plays into where you finish with utilization. It seems like the utilization was strong not only just numerically, but it seems from a seasonal perspective as well. Having a number that high in the first quarter, maybe you can talk a little bit about your comfort levels there and if there's any hiring needs that might come from that, how should we be thinking about that?

Hey, Mark. It's Michael. So I appreciate the question. I think that a couple things. Obviously, hats off to all of our resources. It was an extremely strong utilization and everybody really contributing. We're probably at the high end of the range of whether we really want to operate on a continual basis. So we would not expect any significant improvement or uptick from here. With regard to seasonally, I'm not sure I would say there was anything seasonal in it. I think the seasonal really impacts us more in really in Q3 and in Q4 as we start to get towards latter part of the summer and you have pressure in Europe from vacations and then Q4 gives traditional vacations. So I think utilization, we're comfortable with where it is. Wouldn't expect to see it go up and our hiring again, we're being prudent in discipline, given uncertainty. Our hiring is aligned to the demand and the pipeline that we see.

Okay, great. And then maybe you could shift over to use the the leverage now coming down to the lower end of your

comfort range.

It seems as though there was a pickup and share of a first activity in the first quarter. Maybe talk a little about that as well as maybe what you're doing potentially for acquisition pipeline availability and valuation.

Yeah, so I'll take the first part and then I'll pass the mic on on M&A. So you are right, we're at the low end of the range and so you know as you think about our tax allocation opportunities right in terms of buyback, dividend, M&A and then investment in the business, you know we have an active process of looking at all four of those and assessing all four of those to see where we can create the most value. So we'll continue to look at all four especially to your point now that we're at the low end of our range and you know we expect to continue to see even improvement on the M&A pipeline and what we're seeing. I'll turn it over to Mark.

Yeah, so we continue to be active in the market. We are looking for additional recurring revenue streams that we can put into kind of our distribution channels. We're also continuing to look at everything around digital and AI that might accelerate our growth in those areas. So we will continue to look. There's always a delta between the ask and what we would like to be able to purchase ask so there's always that. That's really no change despite the differences in the markets but we would expect you know that we would expect to utilize some of our cash at the M&A level but keep in mind the way we do most all of our deals is a little bit of cash, a little bit of stock and a little bit of earn out and that's worked out quite well for us over the years. So that's how we would do it.

Great and then last one for me I just wanted to touch a little bit. I know that you know your exposure to federal government is pretty much the minimum as if anything but

why don't you

talk a little bit about if you're seeing much in the way of response on the state and local level. Are you, is it too early to have those conversations? Are you beginning to have conversations with state or local government customers and where they may be looking to move?

Yeah so first of all in the U.S. on the public sector we actually had double digit growth in the first quarter in the U.S. and think about it you know in the I'll call them more the red states because there's more receptivity frankly in terms of willingness on cost efficiency. So think about it in terms of the you know kind of the doge for the state department if you will. Our pipeline is also quite solid in the public sector in the U.S. so state and local is strong for us and again to your point we do know federal so we have no exposure to the federal kind of doge work that's going on in the market. So we feel we feel

good about the public sector they're having to do. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot.

We'll move next to Vincent Colicchio answering his research.

Yeah Mike good morning. I'm curious how you're addressing the rapid interest in AI and your rapid need every growing needs. Are you hiring aggressively there? Are you able to hire aggressively there? Are you facing high turnover with employees that either develop or currently have AI skills?

Yeah so good good question. So you know from an AI standpoint we are almost in every instance now have an AI component in almost all of our work. So the first thing we did is we trained 90 percent of our clients facing around AI and we have an ongoing if you will fill up a program related to that because there's constant changing of course in AI. So that's one. Two is the hiring the surgical hiring that we are doing is around transformation is around AI and that is what we bring in. We're also screening if you will skill sets that maybe we don't need don't need as as much. When we think about AI if I think about it from the client standpoint and then kind of reflect it back to to us one is most clients are looking to have a secure funding for AI and they do that by looking at what else they have and what other spending and how can they shift it. So one is securing the funding. Two is how can I use AI to increase productivity. Third is how can I then get some scalable kind of cost effective use of AI in my particular in my particular business. And then really they're looking at I would call it a wave two scenario which is how do I accelerate whether you're using a genetic AI or other areas in addition to kind of you know gene AI use cases that are sitting out there. So as we think about how clients are kind of you know one step at a time looking at it we are right there with them. We've had 200 clients in the last 12 months 50 unique new clients in the first quarter we went from 150 to 200 as we mentioned. So this is this is a very hot area and why we kind of pivoted our firm to say and look at ourselves as more of an AI centered technology research and advisory firm. So that's how we think about it Joe Benz.

And next question America's strength you appear to be on quite solid footing right now with what you're delivering in America. So I'm curious your commentary on second half being shown for Europe does that assume a slowing in America's or based on your pipeline or will that continue to be strong throughout the year?

No I mean I think I think we see the U.S. is strong I mean I think it's going to be on a percentage growth basis certainly stronger in the first half than the second half because you can't you can't do 15 to 17 percent a quarter but we do see good strong double digit growth there. And one way that we look at it is we look at the disruption and we kind of put it into three buckets. So the low impact verticals industry verticals kind of the moderate and then the high impact and we kind of bucket them and as we think about what they are asking us to do when those are the kind of lower impact the ones that are not affected correctly or as much like public sector like defense like health care that is is very very strong in the in the U.S. When you look at kind of the moderate somewhat impacted you have things like VFSI you have energy you have utilities you have media technology and then you think about the high impact so these are the ones having a really direct hit and really are wanting to move fast on optimization because of the high impact they're having and we think about manufacturing automotive CPG retail in that category so we think about it as we go about our work and how we are focusing our work kind of in that low impact modern and high impact and in the U.S. because there's a bit of a mix between all of those that's why I think it's it's running on all cylinders. If you apply the same model into Europe the thing with Europe is that the low impacts in Europe are not that many kind of industry segments because they also have the geopolitical of the the whole kind of macro environment challenges in addition to the tariffs so you don't see as many quote low impacts over there so as this pair of situations clears and as I said I just came back from Europe and some think that this clears by the end of the summer if true and if that should happen then I think that's why we think this will open up Europe a bit more in terms of our offerings and what they would be willing to spend during the latter half of next uh latter half of this year.

Thanks

for all the color appreciate it.

We'll move next to Joe Goehm at Noble Capital.

Good morning. Morning Joe.

I wanted to continue on the AI discussion um you know you mentioned you gained 50 new clients this quarter I think the goal that you mentioned uh the fourth quarter call with the double that business um you know from the 150 to 300 this year wondering maybe if if the goal might be a little more ambitious than that now and the second part of the question on AI given the high demand for AI, offense AI are you finding any challenges in adding AI-based consultants and or if there's any type of wage pressure for that the consultants both inside AI?

Oh good good question Joe first of all we do not see wage pressure I think we we have a good model of a combination of of wage plus plus um plus stock that helps us both on on on attraction as well as importantly on on retention um if if you will but in terms of AI I mean we we said hey look let's double our client base there from 150 to 300 certainly we're sitting at 200 now at the end of Q1 we're not going to do another number but I would say that as we turn into 2026 I would expect a large majority of our clients all to have an AI component now some will start slower because just like cloud shockingly and just like outsourcing shockingly there are companies that have done done either one even at this date in 2025 so there's always the slower starters if you will so I can't say you know at what point all of them would be but we certainly would envision that by the time we get into the middle of 26 you know most all of our clients will have an AI component with it but it does seem as you go through and Europe we need Europe to kind of come around and begin sending and utilizing it in a way other than a you know point a proof of concept type type type way and to do it in a real let's begin to scale this way and that will really generate the kind of client increase on AI we do have good I'll call it firm pricing on all of our AI work so that helps and if we think about our margin acceleration from you know for eight and a half percent closing out last year you're seeing the mix when we talk about our mix AI is clearly one of them recurring revenues is clearly a second one you're seeing our margins you know gradually move up and you know we're looking again to be a teenager in our in our soon so all of these factors help with that including things like the platform with tango so that's how we would think about it so okay

and then on tango I mean he's done a great job you know in getting the value of the contracts under there again I think you make some seven billion now and how do we actually think about you know kind of the revenue contribution you know the offices the supplement you know we'll call it a standing start for seven billion and how do we think about you know how that's adding revenue to the company

I think we have over nine billion now by the way we went from seven in the fourth quarter to over nine now in the third quarter I think first of all the biggest thing it does is it helps us accelerate margins and the reason it helps accelerate margins is that we're able to complete the work much more efficiently and therefore that from our client standpoint they are able to achieve value for money faster and so if we're able to do something in less time for the same amount of money if you just look at it the same amount of money clearly our margin is going to be enhanced and we are seeing that every day the second part of it is tango's enabled us to open up the mid market for us our pricing in the mid market was more challenged in the past because they in terms of what they could afford to do with an outside advisor now with tango they can get value for money of much quicker they can see the return much faster and I think I gave you a couple of examples including a major food distributor that we are in without tango we would not have had that multi-million dollar client so it's a combination of the margin acceleration and the opening up of a new market and kind of the mid market for us that's what tango is that's how we look at terms of our success with tango and at some point you know I'm going to report on how much value is going to tango because we'll have almost all of our transactions and value going through tango sometimes by the time we get into 2026 so that's how we think about it and that will help us and you're seeing it with acceleration and margins with our sourcing business so that that's the beauty of tango for us

Thanks for that answer I'll get back in queue

Okay next we'll go to Gousi Hsui, Ertungular Research.

Good morning, can you hear me? Yeah okay good morning. Good morning, congratulations on your performance. My first question is given the gains in AI and IT services how are you guys thinking about calibrating your delivery model and fighting strategy to capture both more value and defend your margins as you were saying that you know

the margins have improved?

Well I think I think thanks thanks for the question yeah I think we have a combination of things around AI. Number one from a client standpoint clearly our AI advisory business is coming especially in the United States and we are using AI in our platforms like tango or like governX in terms of intelligent contracting. The second area is we're doing a lot of work around AI to inform clients using our our world-class research and software research capabilities to inform clients and that enables us to expand our recurring revenues in software and in research and then thirdly ourselves we are using AI to become more productive if you will with our operations and the combination of all three of those will be enhanced margins with our clients and enhanced productivity at which you are seeing with our workforce if you will and that combination will help us to accelerate our

overall margins. Gotcha and in terms with the shift to

increase tariffs what kind of increased activity are you seeing in work with global capability centers is that is that is early stages from core centers to innovation what what is the real opportunity here is that really at the early stages are a multinationals really putting some torque into it?

Yeah GCC's, I'll start and Michael will jump in here. GCC's are hot okay these are global capability centers and and hot in the sense that what our work is is around advising clients around GCC's whether it's 40 or 81 whether to shrink them or whether to sell them and and and and do something else differently and in fact in July I am I'm holding a CEO conference for a half a day with some of the major GCC's globally in Bangalore because of the how hot this whole area is we've had quite a span also there so we've kind of created that kind of invite invitation only event for a few hours in Bangalore to cover this particular particular topic but let me ask Michael Sherrick who's really right on point for us on GCC's here to comment further. Yeah I think I think it's a really good question and

a really good point on kind of the evolution of kind of the industry and this piece that AI is driving because it's moving so much beyond the technology components the business function and activity and that's really what's driving this move to GCC's and the desire for the enterprise to control it you know differently than they would have done with labor arbitrage so I think there's a lot more to come on this we're very active in this space from an advisory standpoint and helping our our customers our enterprises and as Mike said you know we've got a whole bunch of things coming up on the calendar directly aligned to this as we continue to be out in the marketplace. Okay and

just my last question in terms of giving your balance sheet in order to take advantage of all the new developing areas what kind of investments do you still need to capture the value proposition?

Yeah so I think it's more it's I wouldn't use the concept of need it's more staying on top of relevance so when you think about the tools and platforms that we have it's ensuring that we are making the proper investments so that we are embedding AI technology into them across the board whether it's Tendo whether it's how our enterprises and providers use our research it's maintaining relevancy of the things that we've already built so those are the areas that we are are focused on not necessarily anything new but more just the enhancement and

upgrading of existing. Great guys thank you.

And I'm sorry no further questions I'll turn it over to Mike Connors for his closing remarks.

Well let me close by saying thank you to all our professionals worldwide for our continuing progress and for their collaboration and unwavering dedication to our clients in driving our long-term success. Our people have a passion for delivering the best advice and support to our clients as they continue their AI power transformations and I could not be prouder of them and I want to thank to all of you on the call for your continued support and confidence in our firm. Have a great rest of the day.

This does conclude today's teleconference you may disconnect at any time.