Sapiens International Corp NV

Welcome to Sapiens International Corporation's 2024 Third Quarter Financial Results Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Yaffa Cohen-Efrach, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Yaffa, you may now begin.

Thank you, Operator. I want to welcome you to Sapiens Conference Call. to review our third quarter results for 2024. With me on the call today are Mr. Rony Aldor, President and CEO, Mr. Rony Giladi, CFO, and Mr. Alec Zuckerman, Chief Strategy Officer. Following the summary of the results, we will be available to answer any questions. Before we start, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call may contain projections or other forward-looking statements. The safe harbor provision in the press release issued today also apply to the content of the call. Tapings expressly disclaim any obligation to update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether because of future events, new information, a change in its views or expectations, or otherwise. On today's call, we will refer to the non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of gap to non-gap result has been provided in our press release, which was issued before the market opened this morning. A replay of this call will be available after the call on our investor relations section of the company's website or via the website link, which is available in the earning release we published today. I will now turn the call over to Rony Ardol, President and CEO of Sapiens. Rony?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for SAPIEN's third quarter 2024 earning call. Our revenue in third quarter was $137 million, a 4.8% increase compared to last year. This quarter continues to showcase solid execution across all of our key regions. Let's start with North America, where we secure new business wins during the quarter. I want to highlight a few. Continental General chose the cloud-based Sapiens insurance platform for lifetime annuity to improve its capabilities and modernize its platform to future insurance products. These improvements will enhance its ability to scale in new markets and streamline implementation of its long-term care insurers specialty while expanding third-party administrator, TPA, services through its affiliate. Another win in the life space was the leading Canadian life and health insurance carrier, which selected the cloud-based Sapiens insurance platform to enhance its operational performance boost efficiency, elevate the client and advisor experience, and drive its digital transformation and growth in the life and health market. Rockford Mutual Insurance Company selected a cloud-based Sapiens Reinsurance Pro to automate its reinsurance management process, improve efficiencies and profitability, and mitigate costly claims leakage. Sapiens automated solution eliminates complexities within treaties by balancing the appropriate coverage with the rising coverage costs, enabling Rockford Mutual to track, build, recover reinsurance and capture valuable data. And lastly, Society Insurance chose Sapiens to automate and transform its reinsurance processes. our cloud-based reinsurance system met society's need for an automated, out-of-the-box solution. Society can now manage its entire reinsurance program to centralize data in a consolidated repository that quickly runs queries and access reports. Sapiens stood out for its broad range of capabilities in reinsurance, accounting, and cash management compliance with auditing and statority requirements. Let me highlight few successful North America goal lives and upgrades with existing customer in quarter three. In July, Pan American Life Insurance Group, PELIG, successfully went live with Sapiens Illustration Pro SaaS solution on the Microsoft Azure Cloud. A long time Sapiens customer, Pellig wanted to transform its current system to second digital web-based solution to integrate across multiple platforms. Illustration Pro will enable Pellig to consolidate illustrations on a single platform, ensuring fast time to market, robust new comparisons, client management, and self-sufficient feature will allow them to manage multiple products launches more efficiency while improving the agent experience with scalable, flexible solution. Worker compensation is a market where Sapiens is building a momentum in North America and remains a substantial growth opportunity for Sapiens in the year ahead. In the third quarter, we completed the worker compensation customer upgrade with our latest functionally reach CoSuite for Worker Compensation version. Also, our North America team continues progressing on three major worker compensation projects, which we expected to go live in 2025. The win this quarter reinforced the value and the trust that insurance plays in Sapiens to innovate and drive business transformation. and we are always working to ensure we can deliver the most value to the market. In CoreSuite property and casualty, several North American projects went live this quarter, and we are working on several customer upgrades. We also launched our latest version of Sapiens CoreSuite for property and casualty for North America insurance market. The new release delivers insurers many functionality and performance improvement and enhanced security features. The release introduced an integrated AI-based open platform to strengthen the second insurance platform digital layer and expanding its core business capabilities. Ensure it remains future-proof. We have improved the consistency of our data to help the insurance overcome the challenges of data migration and ensure their data is consistent and AI ready. Moving to system integrator, Sapiens is making progress in collaboration with system integrators, which has resulted in promising opportunity in our pipeline that would have been otherwise unattainable. These partnerships have unlocked new avenues for growth and development demonstrating the strategic value and the potential of our SIs in expanding our market reach. We are excited about the opportunity and beneficial outcome this relationship could deliver. Before we move to the rest of the world, I want to share some highlights from our annual North America Customer Summit. In September, we held our Customer Summit in Austin, Texas. Austin is the world live music capital, was the perfect backdrop for an event focused in innovation, collaboration, and transformative solution in the insurance industry. The teams of our summit, Compose Your Future, expressed Sapiens' mission to lead the future of insurance technology. This year, we hosted 545 participants from 135 insurance companies and partners organization. Interest leaders like Microsoft, Deloitte, Celent, and Datos contribute value perspective. We also had 22 partners companies present. The summit provide tremendous value with the opportunity to develop deeper customer relationships, meet prospects, and generate leads. With our partners, companies, and our customers, we identify emerging market trends and gain valuable insight into our customer needs and concern. From this event, we create foundation for growth and success and reinforce our commitment to driving transformative journeys for Sapiens clients. Moving to the rest of the world. We are progressing with customer upgrades and go-live with our EDIT Suite, TIA Suite, Rensurance Master, and Core Suite Live solutions. And we have had several successful go-live this quarter. I want to highlight the Hallard Group RIS go-live in this quarter. Hallard went live with SAPIEN's data and analytics solution, complementing its Core Suite for life and pension. DataSuite will accelerate the complex migration of whole businesses and align its process as the company transformation from its core and legacy system to SAPIEN's core suite for life and pension. This will reduce operational costs and deliver automated, seamless user experience for customers and all our staff. Integrated data suites significantly reduce the complexity of HOLLARD migration process, which require the complicated development of tailored reports and merging them across the legacy and core suite systems. Among its many benefits, data suite empowers HOLLARD to manage its data and reporting need while seamlessly operating its business during the migration. Demand for SAPIEN's product remains solid in EMEA and APAC, particularly for our live platform and PNC platform solution, EDIT and TIER. There is continued demand for SaaS platform across all solution lines and tiers. We are also experiencing growing demand for AI-driven solution. As clients increasingly want to leverage AI to enhance operational efficiency and elevate customer experience. With regulatory agencies starting to issue guidance on AI, Sapiens, with its local presence in key market and deep regulatory knowledge, is positioned to enable our clients to stay ahead of industry trends and meet regulatory requirements. Our digital transformation capabilities tailor for medium to smaller carriers enable crucial digital strategy over legacy strategies. These tiers of insurers can innovate quickly with our digital front-end solution while gradually replacing legacy systems. In the European market, demand for second solution remains robust despite the delay in signing new deals. These delays are primary due to regulatory approval process for SAS-based model, extend contract timeline due to compliance and security reviews, and protected business case approval, factor outside of our control. As a result, the average contracting period here to date has extended. We are confident we will close these deals in the coming quarters. Our strategic partner with Microsoft has been instrumental in driving innovation. Leveraging their cutting edge technology and collaborative in support to enhance our market present and deliver exceptional value to our customers. Before I wrap up, I would like to share our 2024 annual guidance and outlook for 2025. Ronny Gilady will provide the full details But in brief, we are reducing our full-year 2024 revenue guidance. This revision reflects trends that impact our results this quarter and which we expect to persist in the fourth quarter and into 2025. Despite the revenue guidance adjustment, our strong emphasis on expense management enabled us to leave our non-GAAP operating margin guidance unchanged for 2024. Let me provide some context on the external and internal factor influencing revenue. One of the key contributors is our strategic shift to SAS-based model, position us to future sustainable high-margin growth. While we anticipate some impact on 2024 revenue from this transition, the actual impact has been greater. This shift to SaaS has also led to an extended sales cycle, particularly in Europe, where many insurance carriers are new to SaaS and carefully evaluate the benefit before committing. As a result, we are experiencing a slightly longer time to close deals in certain regions as they evaluate the SaaS model advantage. Additionally, our North America course with P&C business is facing headwinds with the sector-specific challenges and increased competition. Let me emphasize that our worker compensation and reinsurance business is progressing as planned. And lastly, the broader microeconomic environment is leading insurance carriers to take more time in making investment decisions and finalizing deals. We expect this factor to continue to influence growth as we enter 2025. With that in mind, we anticipate next year's growth will be a low single digit. I want to reiterate that our commitment to building a robust pipeline and expanding our client base across all key markets remains unwavering. As the business landscape continues to evolve, Sapiens stands determined to execute our strategy to empower insurance carriers with model competitive platform. To further enhance our competitive position in PNC North America market, we are directing invest in few areas. Platform innovation and advanced AI capabilities. We continue to investing in Sapiens intelligent insurance platform for PNC which integrated data suite, digital portals, and core processing to provide cohesive end-to-end advanced business experience and streamlined operation. Building on the success of the approach used with our life and annuity platform a few years back, which has accelerated Sapiens' growth in this market. we are confident in applying a similar strategy to our core P&C solutions. We are also refining our go-to-market strategy and straightening our sales and marketing teams to pursue new opportunities while addressing challenges in the market. We are confident that APN's focus on innovation and client success will drive sustainability growth globally and strengthen our position as a trusted partner in the insurance industry. To drive return to higher growth, we'll focus on accelerating the expansion of our gross product. With a strong establishment customer base, we also see significant cross-sell opportunity for our data, digital, and decision solution, including our AI-driven offering. We will also continue to transition our existing customers to our cloud offerings. Additionally, we will deepen our penetration in the North America market with our live platform, where we hold a leading position and we are gaining momentum, while continuing to reinforce our presence in these key markets. In summary, Q3 2024 marked another quarter of growth and operational progress. We are executing our 2024 priorities, including accelerating the shift to SAS model, which is better positioned us for the long term and delivering solid performance across all of our key regions. Now I would like to turn the call over to our CFO to provide more detail on our financial performance.

Thank you, Rony. I will begin my commentary by reviewing the third quarter of 2024 non-GAAP results, followed by comments on the balance sheet and cash flow. I will wrap up with our guidance for 2024. Revenue in the third quarter of 2024 was $137 million, an increase of 4.8% compared to $131 million in the third quarter of 2023. Currency impact on revenue was minimal this quarter. As Roni mentioned in his remarks, we are experiencing delay in closing new deals, which resulted in low revenue compared to our internal expectations. For Q3 of 2024, our annualized recurring revenue, ARR, reached $173 million, reflecting 10% increase from Q3 of 2023. higher than the reported revenue growth during the same period of 4.8%. Looking at the revenue mix, revenue from recurring software products and reoccurring post-production services increased year-over-year by 15.3% to $101 million, compared to $87 million in Q3 of 2023. We are pleased with the double-digit growth, Revenue from pre-production implementation services totaled $36 million compared to $43 million last year. The decline in pre-production implementation revenue was mainly due to delay in signing new deals and the shift to SaaS, as I mentioned in previous quarter. Switching now to geographic breakdowns. Revenue in North America was $56 million compared to $55 million in the year-ago quarter, an increase of 1.7%. Revenue in Europe was $69 million, a year-over-year increase of 7.1%. Revenue in the rest of the world, which includes South Africa and APAC, was $12 million, an increase of 6.6% compared to prior year quarter. Moving to profitability, gross profit this quarter was $63 million compared to $59 million in Q3 of 2023. Gross margin this quarter was 45.8% compared to 45.3%, an increase of 50 basis points compared to Q3 of 2023. This increase is mainly due to higher ratio of recurring and reoccurring revenue versus one-time revenue for implementation. Operating profit and margin in the third quarter of 2024 was 25 million and 18.3% of total revenue compared to 24 million and 18.4% in the third quarter of 2023. Operating profit in Q3 grew by 4.3% or by $1 million. We maintained an operating margin within our target range of 18.3%, despite the increased investment in sales and marketing in the third quarter. Net income attributed to Sapien shareholder was $21 million, or 10% increase from $19 million of Q3 of 2023. Earning per diluted share was $0.37, up 8.8% from $0.34 in Q3 of 2023. Turning to our balance sheet. As of September 30, 2024, we had cash-in-cash equivalents and short-term deposits totaling $186 million and debt of $40 million. During the quarter, we distributed a dividend in the amount of $16.2 million, or $0.29 per share, to our shareholders. The dividend represents 39% of net income for the first half of 2024. Turning to our adjusted free cash flow. In the third quarter of 2024, we generated $10 million in free cash flow, compared to $2 million in Q3 of 2023. For the first nine months of 2024, we generated adjusted free cash flow of $33 million, similar to the first nine months of 2023. In the third quarter, Maalot S&P Global, a part of the global rating firm Standard & Poor's Financial Services, confirmed the long-term issue rating for Sapiens as AA-, with stable outlook, while also confirming the rating for Sapiens' RSB debenture as AA-. Let me switch gears to discuss our guidance for the remainder of 2024 and our preliminary look at 2025. Today, we are revising our 2024 annual non-GAAP revenue guidance to $541 million to $546 million, from a previous rank of $550 to $555 million, a reduction of about 1.6%. While it's too early to discuss our 2025 expectation in detail, we expect revenue growth to be in the low single digits. The reason for the 2024 reduced guidance and the low growth rate for 2025 compared to previous year are similar and are as follows. One, at the beginning of the year, we took a strategic decision to transition to SaaS all our product across all territories. Initially, we estimated this transition would have revenue cognition impact of approximately 1% headwind on our revenue. However, the actual has been greater, totaling between 2% to 3%. We anticipate this trend we see in 2024 will carry over into 2025. Additionally, another factor of this transition to SaaS is the extended decision-making process among insurance carriers, mainly in Europe. This delay has affected new deal signing and therefore our revenue. Two, our North American course with property and casualty business is facing headwind with the sector-specific challenges and heightened competition. As a result, revenue from new deals has decreased. In addition, Following the go-live of certain projects, we are experiencing overall decline in revenue. Three, we are witnessing the same macroeconomic uncertainty that impacted many global enterprise software companies. In our market, this is materializing as longer decision cycles, or in some cases, delayed decisions by our insurance carriers. As a result, fewer new deals were signed in 2024. which negatively impact our 2024 revenues. This effect is expected to be more pronounced in 2025 when this new deal that we anticipated to be signed in 2024 will support to generate high revenue in 2025, particularly due to full year of implementation and recurring revenue. On a positive note, we expect an annual 2025 non-GAAP operating margin of 18.2%, which is within our range. While these challenges will impact the next several quarters, the market opportunities ahead of us continue to remain strong as we are still in the mindset of multi-decade replacement cycles across the PNC and live markets. Looking at the past 10 years, Sapiens organic growth has high single digits, growing globally both in P&C and life. And together with M&A, we reported double-digit growth. Also, in the past two years, revenue from recurrence of the product and reoccurring post-production services represented between 65% to 73% of total revenue, highlighting the stability, visibility, and stickiness of revenue from existing customers. Sapiens has a solid foundation of 600 customers and a comprehensive suite of products, including core, business applications, data and digital solutions, both for P&C and life, with a broad geographic reach across North America, Europe and APAC. We believe in our ability to return to a similar growth level as we continue executing our long-term growth strategy keeping investing in our solution and offer competitive platform to insurance carrier. I will now turn the call back to Rony Eldor. Rony?

Thank you, Rony. We delivered a solid third quarter reflecting continued progress across our key markets. Our continued investment in our insurance platform remains a critical deliver for growth. Most importantly, we are committed to delivering long-term growth across all of our key territories and reinforce our position as a trusted provider for the intelligent insurance solution. I want to thank our global team for their commitment to excellence and growth and our investor for their ongoing support of Sapiens. I will now ask the operator to please open the call for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, At this time, we will begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star 1. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you are using speaker equipment, kindly lift the handset before pressing the numbers. Please ask your questions in a loud and clear voice. Your questions will be polled in the order they are received. Please stand by while we poll for your questions. The first question is from Sam Savos of... Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions today. I'm just hopping on for Mayank. First off, I wanted to touch more on the competitive pressures you guys call about. Could you talk more about what exactly you're seeing, which market products these are in, and maybe the steps you guys are taking to mitigate some of these impacts?

Yes, sure. This is Alex speaking. So when we look at the competitive landscape, I think we feel that the highest pressure on the competitive side is on the PNC, our PNC operation in North America. This is where we feel the strongest pressure. This is not new in terms of the crowdness of the market. You know, it's a very very competitive landscape for a few years now on the PNC side. But the combination of that together with a bit of the point market conditions we see in the North America market on the PNC side, which is a combination of the geographical catastrophe that happened in 24, the reinsurance rates that are spiking high, the inflation. So the combination of those specifically for this year's economical situation plus the high competition over the deals, the combination of them creates a very competitive landscape for us. Now, our plan to mitigate that and our offering to the market is that is based on our platform proposition. We talked about it in our previous boards. We launched it in the middle of this year, in 24, our platform proposition. We see a great feedback from the market, and this is both for P&C and LIFE. But where we started to focus our efforts of the platform and launched it substantially, it's more on the LIFE side and on the European side. Our plan to launch the platform for North America course with BNC is planned for 2025, and this will provide us very strong capabilities and differentiation to cope with competition. And that's our plan for the market.

This is Ronny G. I just would like to emphasize, when Alex talked about PNC North America, you said only to the core system, not including reinsurance or work compensation. There we feel strong.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Makes sense. And then just a quick follow-up. Just on the preliminary 25 guide you guys gave, could you guys talk about some of the macro assumptions you have as you got to that revenue target?

Hi, Sam. This is Roni G. Basically, the assumption or the reason for this is coming from early 2024 and continue with us into 2025. I will not repeat what Alex mentioned about the macroeconomics that we feel right now and continue to 2025. By the way, we see the demand, but the market is cautious. So this is important to say. We do not see this as for long term, but a specific period. The second item is transition to SaaS. Early in the year, we took a strategic decision to move all Sapiens products. globally, North America and Europe APAC to the cloud. We did it before, a year before, only North America specific product. What we see is the transition have impact on two levels. The first one is the delay of decision making from the insurance carrier, mainly in the European side. The reason for that, the deal became longer and embedded into it additional factor that wasn't in the past. Therefore, the decision process and the approval take enough more time and obviously delay on the revenue. So this is one factor. The second factor is implication on the revenue cognition. Earlier this year, we mentioned and estimated this to be a 1% impact on the revenue growth. And now as we revisit this, we see this as two items on top or different. One is mis-estimate in the first year. And the second one is the transition of existing customer post-production to the cloud also takes some hit on the revenue cognition because it's further spread the revenue for longer period. So all of the items here implication have revenue impact of between 2% to 3% versus the 1% that we mentioned earlier. And the PNC course with North America, Alex mentioned, I will just emphasize only on the reinsurance, and not in the reinsurance and local compensation, have also impact into 2025. One factor to take in, when we see the new deals in 2024, slowing down, there is impact into 2025, because the revenue recognized in 2024 is only partial of the year, and 2025 is full year. So we are basically feeling the last revenue in 2025 fall into 2025. All of this came us to conclusion that based on what we see today, the estimate of the revenue will come at low single-digit growth. Yep.

Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. I'll jump back in the queue.

The next question is from Dylan Becker of William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Appreciate the question. Maybe, Ronnie G, with you sticking on that last point, because you could argue that that accelerated headwind from the SaaS transition is a net positive and maybe some partner components within that, but As you talk about elongation, I guess, can you give us a general sense in your confidence around that it's more kind of timing in nature versus anything falling out of the pipeline? I'd assume a lot of these customers are already having a sapience relationship and it's just kind of a matter of contract timing and getting the resources allocated, but a general sense and kind of the confidence here and what you're seeing from a pipeline perspective.

I didn't, thank you. So first of all, this is on top, in the right spot. We took the decision in the beginning of this strategic decision because we see the long-term value of it and not one-time hit. So for sure, we see the impact in the long-term. Well, we see more repeatable business coming and much more visibility, ARR revenue. going forward. The European market, as I mentioned, came a little bit behind North America. Therefore, we see the delay in the revenue. We do not see any avoiding doing deal, just prolongation of time. In the macroeconomic, as we mentioned, Alex, earlier, this is one time period that will disappear in, let's say, a year from now, something like that. But this is not something which we will stay because we see the demand. So moving to the SAS for sure will give us an upside year number two, three, and going forward from the recurring revenue after the implementation.

Okay, great. And then maybe kind of a segue with that to the initial 25 outlook of low single digits. maybe give us a sense, kind of breaking down, if we look at, obviously, the post-production piece and some of the ARR components still growing nicely, kind of in that double-digit clip, assuming that moving to the cloud has some services impact as well, too. So maybe if we could kind of dissect within those components, given the fact that, again, you called out some incremental visibility on the subscription front once those customers are implemented and live. Thanks.

I will try to answer this from a different but very similar angle. If we look at the revenue reported between two sectors, the first one is the revenue which is recurring and reoccurring versus the one time. We see the ratio of the recurring and reoccurring growing. Today is more than 70% of the revenue of the company. We see the growth margin, which is significantly higher than the implementation. All of this is a good trend. We saw the growth rate, which is much higher than the revenue growth of the company. This quarter was 15% versus five. So I'm not sure that will be the exact number, but for sure this type of nature will continue with us going forward into 2025.

Okay. Thanks, Ryan.

The next question is from Surinder Thind of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Just another follow-up on the transition of clients to this SaaS model here. Is the idea that most of these headwinds should be done through 2025 or are we talking about an extended timeframe to get everybody into the cloud at this point?

Not sure I got the question clearly. The impact of transition to SaaS is not only for 2024 and 2025. Remember that we are doing two steps. First of all, any new deal is on the SaaS And usually the implication of the new deals is between two to three years, the period of the implementation. And there is another factor which is transferring existing customer that we sold several years ago, also the SaaS. And this time period is around five years because it takes time to convert existing customer that we sold several years ago to the cloud. So it's between two to five years. This is the timeframe of the impact. Again, with different percentage of impact, but this is a time frame.

So understood on the time frame. So I guess my question, to clarify that, is the actual revenue headwind impact, is that going to be continuing for the next two to five years? That was the question.

Yes, but not at the same ratio, meaning we see more impact in 2025 and potentially in 2026, but lower in going forward. Understood.

And then in terms of just, it sounds like the margins are going to be relatively intact at this point. In light of the lighter revenues, has there been an adjustment in terms of your spend, your willingness to spend, and maybe some of the projects that you're working on, or how should we think about that? Can you please repeat the question? In terms of internal investments. Okay.

The investment in the, okay, so until now, SAP has been able to grow revenue and profit year over year. And if we look at our competitor, their profitability level is lower than us. We took a strategic decision to stop the increase of the percentage, but to grow on the profit level. And with the additional profit, we'd like to increase investment in sales and marketing and also in R&D, for example, what Alex mentioned about the platform. And you can see from the report, the investment in sales and marketing grew very significantly over the last year, I think $2 million compared to quarter. And we maintain the profit margin, what we mentioned at the beginning of the year, between 18.1% to 18.5%. We see right now 18.3% in Q3 of 2020. So we'd like to remain with the same percentage, but grow the profit level. Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question is from Alexei Gogolov of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Elise Kanner on for Alexei Gogolov. Maybe this is in the press release, but What is the constant currency growth, or did you break that out this quarter?

The impact of the currency exchange was very minimal, and we do not see additional impact in terms of positive or downside from this revenue reported.

Okay, great. And then for a follow-up, you've talked about some of the initiatives you're undertaking to better compete in PNC in North America. What's the timeline on those investments, and could growth potentially accelerate here come 2026? Or when do you think that reacceleration could take effect?

So this is Alex here. We're investing in the platform concept globally at Sapiens. So it's an approach and a technology framework that allows us to promote multiple products and bring value to multiple offerings. As I said, we chose to focus first of all The spearhead of this investment in realization is in our life solution that grows very rapidly and on our PNC in EMEA and APAC, which also we see the growth there. The second stage of taking this investment and implementing it into the offering is for our core suite PNC in North America. And we intend to do it through the first half of the year in 2025. And we do foresee that this will bring us additional competitive power and differentiation in the market. We already launched this proposition recently. We got a very strong market feed, positive market feedback from customers and prospects on the notion, and the plan is to implement it in North America in the first half of 25. Got it.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from Tavi Rosner of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Most of my questions have been asked already. I just wanted to follow up on one of your comments, Rony, in the prepared remarks. You talked about investment decisions being delayed due to regulatory impacts, and I just wanted to dig a little further. Is that at the company level or at the regulatory level, any type of geography specifically, any customer size? Any caller would be helpful here.

Yes, this is again Alex here. I think the main cautious that we see and maybe the extended effort that our customers are doing on the due diligence and checking in all the details before signature is mainly around, first of all, the cloud in Europe. The main thing is that we provide a SaaS offering which is very common in the US. It's also common in Europe, but not in the same place. And there is a lot of cautiousness around embracing a full SaaS proposition in Europe because actually the companies transfer their full management of the business as usual into a vendor, into us. So for many of them, it's the first time ever that they do it. And this takes them higher level of checks They need to get the confidence. This is one major thing that we see around the SaaS, and this is mainly a European thing. What we see is these companies who already experienced that before, it's much easier. But a lot of them, it's the first time that they moved to SaaS. And the second part that we see on delays in decision is because we provide now the platform proposition, which entails not only code, but also digital front end, digital processes, data warehouse, reporting AI sold as a bundle. The scope of the deals is larger and the complexity is larger. So it takes a bit more time for the customers to analyze all their due diligence, ROI, contract, et cetera. Of course, because this is a substantially different size of a deal. So those would be the two main aspects that we've seen in delays.

Thank you. I appreciate the call. That's all for me.

If there are any additional questions, please press star 1. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. Please stand by while we poll for your questions. There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask, Ms. Yafa Cohen Ifrah, To go ahead with her closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call is scheduled to begin in two hours. In the U.S., please call 1-888-269-0005. In Israel, please call 039255938. And internationally, please call 9723-9255938. Ms. Cohen-Nifrach, please make your concluding statement.

Thank you for joining our call today. We look forward to discussing our Q4 results on our next earning calls. As always, we welcome you to contact us if you have any further questions. Thank you again.

Thank you. This concludes the Sapiens International Corporation third quarter 2024 results conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.