TTEC Holdings, Inc.

Welcome to T-TECH's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I would like to remind all parties that you will be in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session. This call is being recorded at the request of T-TECH. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Miller, T-TECH Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. T-TECH is hosting this call to discuss its third quarter earnings result for the period ended September 30th, 2021. Participating in today's call are Ken Tuckman, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Regina Paolillo, our Global Chief Operating Officer. Yesterday, T-TECH issued a press release announcing its financial results. While this call will reflect items discussed within that document for complete information about our financial performance We also encourage you to read our third quarter 2021 quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Before we begin, I want to remind you that matters discussed on today's call may include forward-looking statements related to our operating performance, financial goals, and business outlook, which are based on management's current beliefs and assumptions. Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to revise this information as a result of new developments which may occur. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected and described today. For a more detailed description of our risk factors, please review our recently filed Form 10-Q and our 2020 annual report on Form 10-K. A replay of this conference call will be available on our website under the Investor Relations section. I will now turn the call over to Ken Tucker.

Thanks, Paul, and good morning to everyone. Our performance this quarter was solid once again as demand for end-to-end CX technology and service platform continues to grow. Revenue over the prior year quarter increased 15% to $566 million, and bookings for the quarter were $171 million, including 19 new clients. Our current pipeline is comprised of a healthy mix of our CX technology and service offerings with both new and existing clients. Our booking volumes, backlog, and existing pipeline are setting us up for a continued long-term growth. Our client base is well diversified across verticals and geographies with accelerated demand in the digital hypergrowth segment. We now serve 100 clients in this category with an annualized revenue run rate of $400 million and a 38% growth rate in the third quarter versus the same period last year. These wildly successful hypergrowth companies span connected in-home fitness, food delivery, e-commerce, e-gaming, online travel, health tech, fintech, streaming media, and more. These digital natives are thriving based on their commitment to deliver amazing, personalized, and effortless customer experiences. As they scale and evolve, they are depending on our CX technology and operational leadership to ensure that their experiences continue to set them apart. Whether they are born digital unicorns or blue-tip industry giants, Companies are recognizing that in the experience economy, customer obsession is the key to their success. They acknowledge that to acquire, retain, and grow customers in this competitive marketplace, they must rapidly modernize their CX capabilities. However, when they move to implementation, a massive challenge awaits. Helping clients solve these complex CX problems is our singular focus. The roadblocks are numerous, complicated, and costly to navigate. Many brands lack a clear CX transformation roadmap. They suffer from an antiquated legacy mindset and operate rigid processes that detract from the customer experience. They have disconnected data because they are unable to harness the full value of their CRM platforms. In addition, their disjointed mix of point solution technology vendors makes it impossible to deliver a fully seamless and connected customer journey. As a trusted end-to-end CX technology partner, we solve for these transformational outcomes at scale. Our comprehensive end-to-end CX technology services platform was built to solve these tough challenges for our clients across the globe. Every day, clients are utilizing our proprietary technology to help them orchestrate disparate systems, simplify complex processes, and enable seamless journeys that are fluid, effortless, and engaging for their customers. Now let me share some examples of how we're helping clients achieve meaningful outcomes as they improve their customer experience. I'll start with T-TECH Digital. We've been deliberate We've been deliberate and aggressive in building a holistic digital platform with depth, breadth, and scale and flexibility. Working alongside our valued clients, we've developed our own IP to deliver breakthrough results and earn stellar credentials through our extensive delivery of value-driven outcomes for our clients. Others may say they have digital CX technology capabilities. but none can match our track record with successful CX transformations. Managing hundreds of thousands of SaaS licenses right now, we're one of the largest cloud contact center providers in the world. We bring unique domain expertise and deep operating knowledge to every phase of digital transformation, from design through deployment and ongoing operations. Our multidisciplinary digital team is comprised of CX designers, full-stack engineers, technologists, and data scientists who design, build, and manage CX technology to deepen customer loyalty while increasing revenue, profitability, and wallet share for our clients. We take a vertical-focused, customer-centric approach to transforming our client CX environments by combining thoughtful planning, best-fit technology, and our proprietary IT to deliver modern technology solutions from the ground up. For example, in our automotive vertical, we're helping several of the largest global automotive brands reinvent their automotive customer lifecycle. Advances in connected cars, self-aware vehicles, always-on sensors, and new business models are moving so quickly that our clients are leaning on us for our CX and automotive domain expertise to future-proof their customer experience. Our CX architects and engineers are building transformation plans that include the technology, processes, and people requirements to enable insight-driven interactions that will dramatically improve the customer experience and increase frontline employee productivity. These agile solutions are built around a vision of a seamless customer journey that touches every aspect of the dealer experience and the supply chain. In the healthcare space, we're driving initiatives to deliver a better patient experience for providers and improving operating efficiencies for payers. For a national healthcare provider, we developed a mobile behavioral health assessment that reduced bed admittance by over 40%. In another healthcare example, for a large payer, we recently architected a data and AI capability to ingest internal and external data feeds to gain insight into population health management. This information will enable our clients to improve chronic disease treatment and create targeted proactive prevention campaigns. Our impact in this vertical continues to grow as patient experience becomes increasingly digital. With our aspirations of growing our digital business to $1 billion, we continue to make significant investments in our differentiated platforms. This quarter, We brought on several strategic leadership hires to further advance our go-to-market. We're expanding our product portfolio with new capabilities, and we continue to invest in strengthening our relationships with our CX technology partners. Our focus on bringing T-TECH IP to market is another example of how we're differentiating our offerings and increasing our market share. Based on our deep expertise working with industry-leading CX technology partners, we've developed turnkey cloud solutions that enable systems to seamlessly work together without the pain of lengthy and costly integrations. Available through direct and indirect technology marketplace channels, these apps enable rapid deployment and integration of workforce management, agent productivity, and analytic solutions. This month, we added a new suite of CX applications to our IP portfolio with the launch of our proprietary Smart Apps Cloud, designed initially for our financial service clients. Focused on eliminating CX pain points for customers and employees, our solution streamlines customer identification processes with safe and secure protocols while reducing the administrative burden of frontline subject matter experts. These proprietary apps are filling a vital need in the marketplace and are providing us with exciting new platform for growth. Now let me turn to our digitally enabled engaged segment, where we continue to drive vertical differentiation to help our clients go to market faster, stay ahead of industry trends, and outperform their competition. Like our approach in our digital business unit, we're building and delivering industry-specific solutions with a combination of our own purpose-built technology and specially trained subject matter experts. For example, for a global online vacation marketplace, we're building and operating an AI-enabled trust and safety governance center of excellence, where our fraud investigators are using our own advanced data modeling to detect and eliminate online fraud. For a fast-growing fintech unicorn, we created our own AI-based training platform to accelerate speed to proficiency for our financial service advisors. For a next-gen digital health insurer, we created a membership growth engine by arming our healthcare advocates with proprietary sentiment analysis models and intent mapping to inform next best actions and accelerate sales. And for a cryptocurrency trading platform, we're using natural language processing and our own predictive analytics to help our fintech advisors proactively manage highly complex interactions. We continue to expand and optimize our global delivery footprint by providing clients a mix of onshore, nearshore, and offshore, and work-from-home options. Our expansion strategy includes a diverse set of delivery models, locations, and languages. I'm pleased to announce that we're now open for business in Colombia, and we'll continue to expand our global delivery footprint in the months ahead. Now I'd like to take a moment to provide a brief update on the September 2021 cyber incident. Unfortunately, it's no surprise that companies and governments across the globe are operating in a heightened threat environment with cyber incidents occurring daily. Since we began our business nearly four decades ago, security has been at the forefront of everything we do. Our operations have been rock solid and we've been diligent in securing and protecting our environment for our clients, their customers, and our people. The cyber incident occurred on September 12th, and we moved quickly and decisively to identify, contain, and resolve the event. Our ability to respond rapidly is a testament to the resiliency of our organization and the enduring trust we've earned with our loyal client base. We view this as an isolated incident that had a temporary impact on a portion of our operations. In a short period, we were fully operational and do not expect any future impact on the business or our financial performance. Regina will provide additional details. And now, to wrap up. Across the globe, we're helping our clients radically reimagine how to build authentic, lasting, and profitable customer relationships. In a digital landscape that is constantly changing, We're building automation, AI, and omnichannel capabilities into everything we do. These technologies are either natively built in our engaged business or they're being leveraged from the offerings engineered in our digital business. To our clients, it doesn't matter where they come from. They simply want one trusted partner to manage and optimize all elements so that they can move quickly, reliably, and with confidence. Our ability to offer clients a full spectrum of digital capabilities combined with decades of operational frontline CX experience distinctively positions us in a category all of our own. As we embark on the next decade of growth, our longer-term strategic initiatives have not changed. We are relentless in our pursuit to increase our market share by adding differentiated CX offerings, building new channel partnerships, expanding our delivery footprint, growing our client base, and executing strategic and accretive acquisitions. Our strategy gives us several attractive avenues to leverage profitable growth to increase shareholder value, including strong cash flow, a well-capitalized balance sheet, and ongoing dividends. Our continued progress would not be possible without the 60,000-plus incredible employees across the globe. Through our ESG initiatives, We continue to make progress on commitments to build a future that is diverse, inclusive, equitable, and sustainable. As a CX company, these efforts are hardwired into the core and are a meaningful part of our culture of caring. We strive to be the employer, partner, and investment of choice by consciously making decisions that benefit our people, clients, shareholders, and communities where we operate. It's a true honor that earlier this year, Forbes magazine named T-Tech one of the best large employers of 2021. And just last week, Forbes named us one of the top 25 female-friendly companies in the world. Finally, I have some exciting news that I want to share. Yesterday, we announced that Regina Paolillo as T-Tech's Global Chief Operating Officer, a newly created role, and Dustin Seemax to succeed Regina as T-TECH's Chief Financial Officer. With T-TECH Digital and T-TECH Engage, we've created a winning CX technology and services platform that is prepared to take us to a dynamic new level of performance. To unlock its full potential, we've been deliberate in developing an experienced and tenured executive bench. With Regina and Dustin in their new roles, we're fortifying our leadership team to enable me to fully focus on the key drivers of client and shareholder value creation. These include strategy development, growth, technology innovation, and execution of strategic and accretive M&A. Regina's diverse and tenured experience as our T financial and administrative officer for the past decade at T-TECH, combined with the strategic, financial, and operational roles she held at TriZetto, General Atlantic Partners, Genpak, and Gartner position her well to execute this newly created Global Chief Operating Officer role. Dustin was recruited to T-TECH in 2020 with the intent to become our CFO. Over the past 12 months, he's demonstrated strength in building and executing our finance functions to drive revenue growth, expand margins, and increase cash flow. Alongside his T-TECH experience, Dustin has had a relevant and noteworthy career in the technology services and business process outsourcing industries, including Rackspace Technologies, DXC, CSC, and IBM. Before I close, I want to thank our global T-TECH team for their continued and loyal commitment to serving our clients and thank our shareholders for your continued support. I'll now hand it off to Regina.