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spk06: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the SS&C Technologies Q2 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one. I will now hand today's call over to Justine Stone, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk05: Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us for our Q2 2024 earnings call. I'm Justine Stone, Investor Relations for SS&C Technologies. With me today is Bill Stone, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Rahul Kanwar, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Brian Schell, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, we need to review the Safe Harbor Statement. Please note the various remarks we make today about future expectations, plans, and prospects, including the financial outlook we provide constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbor provisions under the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the risk factor section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, which is on file with the SEC and can also be accessed on our website. These forward-looking statements represent our expectations only as of today, July 25th, 2024. While the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements, it specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. During today's call, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures is included in today's earnings release, which is located in the investor relations section of our website at www.ssdtech.com. I will now turn the call over to Bill.
spk01: Thanks, Justine, and welcome, everyone. Our second quarter results are record adjusted revenue of $1.452.4 billion, up 6.5% and $20 million ahead of our forecast. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share were $1.27, up 17.6%. adjusted consolidated EBITDA was $558,900,000 for the quarter, and our EBITDA margin was up 170 basis points to 38.5%. Our second quarter adjusted organic revenue growth was 6.4%. The revenue acceleration was driven by strength in our alternatives, GIDS, wealth and investment technology, and interlinked businesses. The surprise upside came large in our GIDS business, the outperformance driven by seasonality and some accelerated license revenue. Our recurring revenue growth for financial services was 7.7%, which includes all software-enabled services and maintenance revenue. Second quarter cash from operating, from operations were $385 million, up 16.8% from Q2 23, Our cash flow conversion percentage for the quarter was over 120%. We paid down 25.2 million in debt in Q2 24, bringing our net leverage ratio to 2.84 times consolidated EBITDA. In Q2 24, we bought back 3.7 million shares for 227 million at an average price of $62.7, $62.17 per share. This is the highest share back share buyback in one quarter in SS&C's history. Last week, the Board of Directors renewed a one-year, $1 billion common stock repurchase program. We continue to believe stock repurchases are a good use of our capital. On the M&A front, valuations are still elevated, but we are seeing an increase in relevant targets coming to market. We will continue to look but our returns need to be as attractive or greater than buying back our own stock. I'll now turn it over to Rahul to assess the quarter in more detail.
spk07: Thanks, Bill. Our business had a good quarter with the strongest organic revenue growth since 2021. Our alternative fund administration business had strong growth across the board in private markets, hedge funds, and retail alternatives, where we provide both fund administration and transfer agency services. and support registered alternative and interval funds. SSMC is uniquely positioned to serve this growing area with the combination of our transfer agency and fund administration services. We have seen early success in the wealth and investment technology business unit, collaborating on client relationship management and sales opportunities. Trust suite momentum continues. The sales pipeline is robust, and we're being invited to participate in the largest RFPs in the market. Domani RX's second release was put in production on July 1st, and the platform can now process claims for all lines of business. We have processed over 100 million claims since going live in January and have migrated our first new client onto the platform. Domani's key strengths include enhanced functionality running on the SSNC private cloud with self-service capabilities and customized reporting. I will now turn the call over to Brian to discuss the financials.
spk00: Thanks, Roland. Good day, everyone. Our Q2 24 GAAP results reflect revenues of $1.452 billion, net income of $190 million, and diluted earnings per share of 75 cents. Our adjusted revenues were also $1.452 billion, an increase of 6.5% over Q2 23. The increase of $89 million over prior year was primarily driven by incremental revenue contribution from the alternatives with GIDS and Interlinks businesses. Acquisitions contributed $4 million, and foreign exchange had an unfavorable impact of $2 million. As a result, adjusted organic revenue growth on a constant currency basis was 6.4%. Our core expenses increased 3.3%, or $29.2 million, excluding acquisitions and on a constant currency basis. Adjusted consolidated EBITDA attributable to SS&C was $559 million, or 38.5% of adjusted revenue, an increase of $57 million, or 11.2% from Q2 23. The 38.5% EBITDA margin reflects a year-over-year improvement of 170 basis points, driven by the positive impact of both revenue growth and disciplined expense management. Net interest expense this quarter was $113 million, a decrease of $5 million from Q2 23. Adjusted net income was $320 million, up 15.7%, and adjusted diluted EPS, the $1.27, an increase of 17.6%. The effective tax rate used for adjusted net income was 26%. Increased share repurchases drove the diluted share count down to $252.3 million from $253.3 million in Q1 24. SS&C ended the second quarter with $462.7 million in cash and cash equivalents and $6.7 billion in gross debt. SS&C's net debt, as defined in our credit agreement, which excludes cash and cash equivalents of $88.5 million, held at Damani Rx, was $6.3 billion. Our last 12 months consolidated EBITDA used for covenant compliance was $2.2 billion. Based on net debt of approximately $6.3 billion, our total leverage ratio was 2.84 times, and our secured leverage ratio was 1.6 times. In May, we refinanced our Term B loans, consisting of five tranches with a new single $3.9 billion Term B loan tranche, as well as a $750 million senior note. The refinancing resulted in a $28 million non-cash loss on distinguishment of debt, and the capitalization of $35 million of new deferred financing fees. The refinancing activity resulted in extending our debt maturity by approximately 3.7 years and diversifying our funding sources, but still positioned to benefit from any reduction in short-term rates. As we look forward to the third quarter and the remainder of the year with respect to Note that we will maintain our focus on client service and assume that retention rates will continue to be in the range of our most recent results. We will manage our expenses with a cost-discipline approach by controlling and aligning variable expenses to ensure efficiency, increasing productivity to improve our operating margins to leverage our scale, and effectively investing in the business through marketing, sales, and R&D to take advantage of future growth opportunities. Specifically, we have assumed foreign currency exchange rates will be at current levels short-term interest rates to remain at current levels, a tax rate of approximately 26% on an adjusted basis, capital expenditures to be 4.1 to 4.5% of revenues, which is a slight reduction from prior guidance, and a stronger weighting to share repurchase versus debt reduction, subject to changes to market conditions. For the third quarter of 2024, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.42 to $1.46 billion, and 5.3% organic revenue growth at the midpoint. Adjusted net income in the range of $304.6 to $320.6 million. Interest expense excluding amortization to deferred financing costs and original issue discount in the range of $107 to $109 million. Diluted shares in the range of $251.6 to $252.6 million shares. And adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $1.21 to $1.27. For the full year of 2024, we are raising revenue guidance by $12 million and expect revenue to be in the range of $5.706 to $5.866 billion and 4.9% organic revenue growth at the midpoint. Adjusted net income in the range of $1.246 to $1.326 billion. Looted shares in the range of 250.9 to 253.9 million shares. adjusted diluted EPS in the range of $4.98 to $5.22, and cash from operating activities to be in the range of $1.305 to $1.385 billion. Our updated 2024 guidance reflects our strong results in the first half of the year with a continued positive outlook for the remainder of the year. And now, back to Bill.
spk01: Thanks, Brian. We obviously had a strong quarter on both the top and bottom line. We continue to be bullish about our business and our updated guidance has us at 4.9% organic growth at the midpoint and $5.10 in adjusted diluted earnings per share. I'd also like to announce that on September 18th of 2024, we'll hold an analyst day at NASDAQ market site in New York City. Formal invites will go out in the coming weeks and please reach out to Justine if you have any questions. We'll also be hosting our SS&C Deliver Client Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 6th to 8th. This premier event is designed for executives and decision makers across the SS&C solution set and features hands-on learning, industry insights, and many networking opportunities. I'm pleased to announce this year's keynote speaker is my friend David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, which SS&C was a portfolio company from 2005 until 2014. We look forward to hosting hundreds of our clients and prospects in October. I'd now like to turn it over to questions.
spk06: At this time, if you'd like to ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Please limit yourself to one question and a follow-up. If you have further questions, you may come back into the queue. Please pause for your first question. Your first question is from the line of Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets.
spk02: Thanks. Good evening. Great to see the organic trends just continuing to improve here. I just had a quick question on the guidance. It looks like at the midpoint, It seems to suggest if we use kind of the midpoint for third quarter and then take the full year number that the fourth quarter's organic growth kind of steps down a little bit, maybe more meaningfully. I'm just trying to understand, like, is this just tougher comps as we kind of look at the numbers? Is there something structural that we need to be mindful of? Or is this just kind of overall conservatism since we're not, you know, we're a little bit away from maybe putting up the numbers on the fourth quarter? Thanks.
spk01: Yeah, Dan, I would just say that the Q4 is really a comp issue. Q4 of 23 was particularly strong. And again, you know, as you well know, we're in the process of meeting and beating our numbers. So we're still focused hard on making sure we have a strong number, but a number that we expect to hit.
spk02: Yep. Okay. No, that's great. And then just quick follow-up. you know, your leverage is at 2.8 turns now. Obviously you just re-upped a billion dollar buyback and you just did the biggest buyback in the company's history for the quarter. And you kind of mentioned a little bit, Bill, about the M&A kind of environment and the pipeline. I'm just wondering, you know, what do you see out there? How's it stacking up in terms of overall capital allocation? I understand you got a hurdle rate for your buyback versus M&A, but it does sound like M&A is picking back up. And even in kind of your, I guess, was your interlinks report that you recently put out. It sounded like within North America, the deal flow was looking pretty good. So I'd just love to get your thoughts on where you sit today, given your balance sheet's pretty healthy.
spk01: Yeah, as you well know, we've really built a company around organic revenue growth and acquisitions. We see a lot of stuff out there. We see things that, you know, are on the low end of ridiculously priced. So we... We are willing to look hard. We would like to deploy capital in acquisitions. We would like to, you know, further build out our portfolio of products and services. And each of our business units are, you know, kind of beating the bushes for opportunity. So I wouldn't be surprised if we were able to, you know, close a couple of tuck-ins and maybe something a little more substantial. I don't see any $5 or $10 billion acquisitions on the near-term horizon, although SS&C will be in the running if any of those things come on the market.
spk08: Excellent. Thank you, Bill.
spk06: Your next question is from the line of Andrew Schmidt with Citi.
spk10: Hey, Bill, Raul, Brian. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe it's just a higher level question for me. Obviously, you know, last three quarters we've seen you maintain at least mid-single-digit organic growth. Maybe talk about the sustainability and visibility of consistently delivering that. And, you know, if anything, what's changed? I realize that, you know, we're at a more stable level in terms of the kids' performance, healthcare is stable versus one or two years ago, but If there's anything else deeper in the business that drives that stabilization, that'd be helpful. And I realize I might be jumping on the analyst day, but anything there will be helpful. Thanks a lot, guys.
spk01: You know, Andrew, I would just say in general that, you know, we have a strong focus on organic revenue growth. You know, we have looked at a bunch of acquisitions, but, you know, the ones that we really like are pricing at 10 times revenue. So we don't like them that much at that price. So when you start focusing on organic revenue, you start looking on how you're pricing. We've done a pretty good job of getting a little more discipline there. And you also make sure that the pitches that we go out in order to cross-sell and up-sell, as well as new names, are crisp and impactful. So I think we've done a good job there. And I think Rahul probably has a couple of and adults or additions that would also give you some clarity?
spk07: Yeah, I think the thing that I would add to that is product development. You know, we've spent a lot of energy over the last really several quarters making sure that what we're selling into a particular type of customer will bring in all of SS&C to bear. And so that's starting to show up in larger deals and, you know, better win rates, and we expect that to continue.
spk10: Got it. Thank you, Bill and Roel. Yeah, it's certainly shining through in the product updates that you're putting through the market. So we see that. Appreciate those comments. And then maybe just a question on the outlook, you know, just the raise and the EPS outlook relative to the second quarter result and, you know, that in conjunction with higher level Shuri purchase. I'm wondering if there was some reinvestment that was baked in or if there's some that, you know, you kind of, saving for some potential outperformance in the backup. It just looks like the raise was a little bit lighter than the outperform. So anything there would be helpful. Thank you.
spk01: Well, again, as we said, our business was particularly strong, and we don't expect a repeat of the strength of that business in Q3 or Q4. We have some opportunities, but often they're multi-quarter sales cycles. We have a good pipeline, but that certainly could be a little bit of a headwind to us. And then we also are very excited about our trust suite that we're bringing out into the marketplace. It's getting a lot of positive reaction. And I think we are executing and hopefully it will surprise you positively.
spk10: Got it. Thank you, Bill. Sorry, just one more housekeeping since you mentioned it. The GIDS business, was the accelerated license revenue, did you shed some light on that? Was that timing? Any details on that? And then I'll jump back into you, but thanks a lot for your responses.
spk07: It is mostly timing. There were some deals that we had forecast as coming in in Q3 and Q4, and we were able to pull them into Q2.
spk10: Perfect. Thank you, Raul.
spk06: Your next question is from the line of Peter Heckman with D.A. Davidson.
spk11: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I guess how would you characterize the overall spending environment? We hear you in terms of where certain areas are producing a little bit better organic growth, but I guess what do you view in terms of the next couple years catalyst that could potentially cause people to look at switching vendors, upgrading, and what do you think of the demand drivers there? Is it regulatory, is it technology, or is it price?
spk01: Well, I think it's all of those. I think price is probably the least important of the three. I also think, as you see of these cyber attacks and the outages for large-scale businesses, they start looking hard at who their vendors are and and how much money are their vendors putting into their security walls and their expertise and the number of layers they have in order to, you know, kind of stop the bad guys. You know, and similar to things like Madoff and others that caused a real key change and how people did their books, whether they did them in-house or they did them with an outside administrator, I think technology is gonna be one of those things that, yeah, you saved a few hundred thousand and maybe even a few million over a three or four year deal, and then you got burned for about 15 or 20, and they're gonna start deciding that, you know, playing technology on the cheap is a risky business. So I think that's gonna be a real driver. I also think how you deploy the newest technologies, whether that's deep learning, machine learning, RPA, AI, ML, all those things, right? I think the key there is it has to work. And it has to work better than what you had before. You can't go show them something that's really pretty and it's slow or it doesn't, isn't as accurate. So there's a lot of things that go into deploying new technologies. You know, it's not just, well, we use large language models and, you know, we're really steeped in AI. Yeah, maybe. But I think those kinds of things are real opportunities for us. And I think as long as we focus and deliver applications that show that, hey, we're here for the long term, we're going to give you improvements every quarter, every six months, every year, and you're going to see that your business improves because you chose the right partner.
spk11: That's helpful. And then just any comments just on wealth specifically? You mentioned it as one driver of organic growth, but I guess how would you characterize there? Is that more on the advisor tech side or more on the long-only side?
spk01: I think it's on both. You know, you're going to have obviously the the wealth and investment technology is a very strong area. Just as you've seen on investment getting sold or at least in the process of being sold, and all the number of mergers and private equity buying into different wealth technology companies, I don't see that stopping. There's however many trillions being transferred from generation to generation, And the younger people getting this money are not going to wait for a monthly statement or a quarterly statement or something along those lines. They're going to want instantaneous access to their money. And I think things like you see on the T plus 1 and other things where, you know, the regulators are understanding when you have, you know, things like Venmo and other instantaneous money movers, people don't want to wait 24 hours trade to settle or the money to be available or anything else. So you're going to have to be nimble enough to handle the people that are the recipients of the current generation's really large scale wealth accumulation.
spk11: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.
spk06: Your next question is from the line of Alexey Gogolev. with JP Morgan.
spk08: Hi, Bill. Comrade Gogolev here. Great to hear from you. Last time we met, you flagged growing confidence that the SSMC will be able to achieve high single-digit organic revenue growth in the midterm. So, sort of following up on some of the questions that my colleagues have asked, are you seeing some sort of signs or pockets of opportunity that could drive the growth acceleration?
spk01: I think we see them. I think the question is that you have to not just see them, you have to act on them and you have to get ink on paper. And I think the large scale things that we think are happening are people to outsource you know, and even for us to take various lift-outs where we can give them tremendous expense savings, better technology, and a happier client base, and we can earn a lot of money in processing that business. So we think there's a number of those that are in the marketplace. We think we're well-positioned. So I think those types of things, and then, you know, things like what we're rolling out as new products and new services as they kick in, I think you'll see increasing organic revenue growth. I think the reduction in year-over-year revenue in healthcare went from 8.5 to 4.5 or 8.5 to 4.8. I think Q3 will be better than that, maybe break even or even a little better on a growth basis. And then I think we'll start accelerating in Q4 and throughout 25 and 26. So, you know, I think there's a number of different catalysts that can drive to the high single digits. But, you know, it's execution and we got great strategies.
spk08: Understood, Bill. And just to build up on the answer that you just provided, you've always positioned having your own data centers and infrastructure as a strong competitive advantage. Could you discuss how your customers reacted to outages last week and if you've seen any incremental demand on the back of that?
spk01: Well, I think, you know, we've had many follow-up calls with customers of ours that in their tech stack, they had some of the companies that had some real difficulties. You know, in our own tech stack, we have very little of the companies that have had problems. So, you know, knock on probably big marble here, we believe that we're well served by our technology team that's very disciplined and also has many layers of security around our data processing centers. You know, we run our own private cloud. It doesn't mean we don't get attacked. Of course we get attacked by everybody else. But, you know, we're not Amazon. We're not Azure. We're not Atari. The number of people coming after us is a mere fraction. of what would go after, you know, large-scale disruptions of the U.S. economy. So we're confident in what we're doing. We spent tons of money, and we believe that we're getting value.
spk08: Understood. Thank you very much, Bill.
spk06: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question is from the line of Surrender Thin with Jefferies.
spk03: Thank you. Bill, can you maybe talk about the pipeline at DemonteRx, given that you've now had a few successful clients on the platform, what you're seeing, maybe what the conversations are like, and just timeframe for any new announcements?
spk01: Well, we have a good pipeline, and we have a pipeline with very large health care insurance claims payers. And I think we have a better bread box. So we have a great opportunity if we can execute in a way that those large scale organizations say you can handle it. Not only can you handle it, Damani has very little latency. It's processed up second. A number of our competitors are processing in multi-second. And when you're doing millions of claims, that's very unpopular. So we think we have some competitive advantage there. As Rahul said before, we have self-service capabilities. We have very strengthened reporting capabilities and a lot of good things for finance so that they can really understand where they're spending money and on which drugs and in which markets. So we think we have great opportunities. You know, there's vagaries in every market. There's vagaries here, too. So we have to execute, but, you know, put a million and a half hours into Dolmani. And as I tell our prospects and clients, it works. And that's a pretty big statement.
spk03: That's helpful. And just as a quick question, is it larger deals, longer sales cycle than the rest of your business? Or how should we think about that?
spk01: I wouldn't necessarily say longer sales cycles, but most healthcare plans start on 1-1. You get big opportunities on January 1, 24. Oh, damn. It's July 24. So now we get big opportunities on January 1, 25. And for the biggest ones, you know, you're really going to have to be planning starting now and hopefully taking them lined on 1, 1, 26. You know, but they're enormous type companies that can pay upwards to $100 million a year. on some of these claims processing things that they do. And, you know, we just need to be ready. The system has to continue to get better, and we have to continue to delight our customers.
spk03: Thank you. And then on Blue Prism, just any update there, what you're seeing externally? And then just as a follow-up on the earlier comments about obviously doing a lot continuing to work in AI, ML, and it takes a lot of time to prove those technologies. But just update on the internal efficiency initiatives there, and if there's any change that you see coming, not necessarily this year, but as you look out over the next one, two, three years, that maybe you can squeeze a bit more from an efficiency perspective.
spk07: Yeah, you know, we're continuing to roll out Blue Prism within SSNC. In some ways, we're building momentum because as more people get trained up, we have more capacity to have additional processes be, you know, subject to that robotic process automation and AI-type enhancements. We're also, we just released the next generation of Blue Prism, which actually, as part of its workflow, has GenAI capabilities, so you can use GenAI natural language-type capabilities an interface to design your workflows, which makes it easier for us to roll out internally, but also improves our product differentiation from others in the marketplace. So we feel really good about Blue Prism and how it's helping us, and we certainly expect it to accelerate from here.
spk01: And I would just add to that, that what we find when people start to embrace it, their jobs get better. And some people, we We have a lot of green eye shades and a lot of warm bands around this S&C. So, you know, often you have to bring the horses to water multiple times, and it's best if it's really sunny out so they're thirsty. So I think those opportunities is where we have things where, wow, I wish I would have done this a year ago because it makes their job better. It makes the drudgery parts of their job sort of not drudgery anymore because they're not doing it. You know, they have some digital worker doing it. So I think, you know, we're sticking to the knitting. We constantly monitor how many digital workers by business unit. And I know they're very happy about all the calls that Rahul and I make to them.
spk04: Thank you, Bill. That's helpful.
spk06: Your next question is from Aline. of James Fusetti with Morgan Stanley.
spk04: Thanks a lot. I had a couple of product questions. I want to follow up on the Blue Prism question, and I appreciate your comments there. Just wondering what you see as the competitive landscape right now. And, you know, love to hear how you're thinking about that opportunity having evolved of late. specifically whether or not you think you maybe can be the beneficiary of some of the hiccups we've seen from some of the public RPA vendors.
spk01: Yeah, we think if we keep our hiccups at a very minimum, we will be a big recipient, you know, because our business is profitable. So that means it's sustainable. It means we can invest. You know, I know that a lot of these companies that you follow and a bunch of, your colleagues follow, it's how much money, private equity money, can we burn before we have to be profitable? And I think a little bit that fuse has kind of played its way out. So now you have to build sustainable businesses. And I think that's what we've done. We also have to accelerate our revenue growth. You know, and I think, you know, we've added a new chief revenue officer. We have some high expectations there. But, you know, it's all proof in the pudding. You know, you can get up to bat, but somebody's got to hit the ball. You know, and I think that's the thing we're driving at. And I think we are, you know, more than cautiously optimistic. But I wouldn't tell you that we're drunkenly optimistic either. So, you know, we're going to execute. And I think, you know, we should begin to see double-digit revenue growth in Blue Prism for the foreseeable future.
spk04: Got it, yeah. Sober forecasting is always appreciated. As far as the Genesys platform, I'd love to hear the early feedback from your customers on the product and specifically what you're trying to do with the capability set across Advent, Ez, and Globop. I guess I'm trying to get a sense for what portion of your customer base do you think this will be most applicable for and how do you think that Genesys will impact that segment?
spk07: So, you know, when we combined Advent and then subsequently institutional investment management, that combined business is now, you know, maybe a little over a billion and a half in annual revenue and has a lot of the different products that are geared towards wealth, asset managers, you know, financial institutions, particularly on the software side. And it's only been a few months, but we find what we're able to do is start to take a look at product roadmaps for products like Genesis and Aloha and Singularity and others, and make sure that the things that we think are worthwhile to build, we're putting the right amount of muscle behind them, and we're making sure that we've got a good launch plan and a good customer validation process. And that's starting to show up in some of the results. So early days, but it feels like we're on the right track. Appreciate that.
spk06: Your next question is from the line of Kevin McVie with UBS.
spk09: Great. Thanks so much, and congratulations on really just terrific results. Maybe this is for Bill. Bill, given the kind of technology efficiencies that Blue Prism are bringing to bear, Is it changing the go-to-market strategy with your clients? I mean, I know you've spoken a lot about bigger kind of lift and shift opportunities. Has it accelerated that process? And does the efficiencies that Blue Prism bring to bear afford you kind of a wider lens in terms of go-to-market strategy, just given some of the potential returns as a result of the efficiencies? I wanted to start there because it feels like there's a step function change in the business from a revenue growth perspective that just is beyond some of the segmentation. And I just wanted to maybe try to frame that a little bit.
spk01: Well, I think, Kevin, that was the intent when we bought Blue Prism was to buy something that was horizontal that would act as almost like the floor for all of our different applications and services to kind of hang off on or to improve with and be able to, you know, present a technological differentiator that we can train everybody on across the enterprise. Now, the enterprise is pretty broad and we've done 75 acquisitions, so there's a lot of teaching and training and implementing of Blue Prism, both internally at SSE and then as we take people out to pitch externally, you know, they get a lot of confidence because we're using it, right? We're eating our own dog food. We're processing on Blue Prism across almost every one of our disciplines inside SSE. And so that's the whole, the whole holy grail of this thing. And I think that it is, you know, that we think the train is left station, you know, but I think there was a hill. to get the train up first, right? You've got to get into those places and you've got to really start to educate the IT departments of our clients. You know, when traditionally we've been functional experts, you know, talk to us about retrospective or prospective accounting rules or how to value a multi-step bond or whatever it is, right? But now you've got to go in and talk about large language models how you're going to deploy machine learning or RPA, and that's an education. And I think we're doing it, and we're doing it pretty well, and we have a very talented tech team.
spk09: That makes a lot of sense. And then just, does that afford bigger opportunities, Bill? Because obviously you're talking to a wider audience, so it almost sounds like it's more transformational opportunities. Should those clients scale in size, I guess, given the complexity of what you're taking?
spk01: It does, but it also brings in every tech-focused consulting firm and horizontal consulting firm and tech firm. Now you run into all the what we used to call manpower shops out of India, whether that's Cognizant or Tata or instances or any of the other ones, plus you start bumping into Accenture and the ones here in the States. So, you know, it's a different kind of a competitive landscape. You know, we really like that we bring expertise in what our clients are trying to do so we can kind of help their IT people and try to explain to them that's not how this really works. This is how it works. This is what really, you know, momentum trading means, this is what, you know, how traders and portfolio managers are looking at risk in their portfolios and, you know, what is the value of real-time versus near real-time and being able to go across what they're doing in technology and show them that you're going to spend $5 million doing it that way. If you spent $500,000, you'd get the same result, But you'd be a hero because you saved the organization $4.5 million. And some of these places have enormous budgets, a couple hundred million dollars for firms that are a couple hundred people or 300 people, 400 people. So there's a lot of opportunity in there, but there's a lot of competition.
spk03: Super helpful. Thank you.
spk06: At this time, there are no further questions. I will now hand today's call over to Bill Stone for any closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you, Tamika. And thanks, everybody, for being on the call. We really appreciate it. We're working hard for you, as we always have. We like to work hard for you and give you great results. So until next time, we'll be out there working on great results. Thanks again.
spk06: This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.
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