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spk07: Thank you for standing by. The conference will begin momentarily. Until such time, you will hear music. Thank you and please continue to stand by. Thank you. Thank you for standing by. The conference will begin momentarily. Until such time, you will hear music. Thank you and please continue to stand by. © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you for standing by. The conference will begin momentarily. Until such time, you will hear music. Thank you and please continue to stand by. Thank you. Welcome everyone to T-TECH's first quarter 2024 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's Senior Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations Officer. Thank you, sir, and you may begin.
spk03: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. T-TECH is hosting this call to discuss its first quarter results for the period end of March 31, 2024. Participating on today's call are Ken Tuchman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of T-TECH, Shelley Swanback, President of T-TECH and Chief Executive Officer of T-TECH, and Kenny Wagers, CFO of T-TECH. 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 first quarter 2024 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 opinion as of the date of this call and we undertake no obligation to revise this information as a result of new developments that may occur. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expected and described today. For a more detailed description of our risk factors, please review our 2023 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.
spk04: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We started the year focused on the strategic priorities that we outlined last quarter. Our first quarter 2024 revenue was $577 million. On a non-GAAP basis, our adjusted EBITDA was $55 million and adjusted EPS was 27 cents. We met our first quarter objectives while navigating a fluid demand environment and continue to make progress on our diversification strategy that has three focus areas, including, one, attracting new clients. We established new relationships with over two dozen accounts, several of which are large enterprises that present strong, long-term growth opportunities. Two, we expanded our geographic footprint and increased offshore mix. We continued to scale with new and existing client programs across our growing geographic footprint. And three, collaborative partnerships and innovative solutions. We strengthen our partnerships with the hyperscalers and CX technology players, and we launch several new AI-enabled solutions in T-TECH Digital and T-TECH Engage. Looking at our two business segments, T-TECH Digital is gaining momentum with consecutive quarters of strong bookings and pipeline. In T-TECH Engage, we have two dynamics currently impacting our results. While we're encouraged by the number and quality of the new enterprise clients we're winning, they do take time to yield. Second, while we're pleased with the new clients, some of our embedded base volumes are down. We're making progress managing through these challenges in T-TECH Engage, and management believes, as previously communicated, that T-TECH Engage and the company overall will be back to positive growth in 2025, delivering double-digit EBITDA margins. I'd like to now transition to my perspective on the current state of the industry. It's no secret that the customer experience space is in the midst of dramatic change. As a pioneer and leader in this industry, we've experienced and thrived through every evolution. Since we started this business 40 years ago, I was told that every innovation was going to eliminate or have an impact on the industry. First it was voicemail, then email, then interactive voice response. Next, it was the dawn of the Internet, the proliferation of smartphones and apps, and then the migration to the cloud. Each evolution has created more opportunity. Today, it's no different. With the advent of generative AI and all of its hype, some analysts and pundits are predicting a negative impact on the industry. Instead, new pockets of opportunity are emerging and diversifying the space. New work types like content moderation, data annotation, fraud mitigation are creating new growth opportunities for businesses like ours. These didn't exist in any material way 10 years ago. I want to remind you that the total addressable market for just contact center services is well over $400 billion. Lately, however, it feels like Wall Street believes the industry is on its last legs and has written it off. If you speak with any one of my competitive peers, our clients, or any CX industry analyst, they will tell you the same thing. This space is not going away. It is consolidating, bifurcating, and evolving and creating new opportunities for the industry. This future is already in motion, and we see three interaction categories emerging. Simple repetitive tasks like making a basic reservation, checking on delivery status, and setting up appointments are already being automated. Activities that require in-the-moment human interaction, like bank tellers, fast food drive-through cashiers, building receptionists, are now happening via virtual kiosks. These on-screen contacts are being staffed with friendly and cost-effective resources based thousands of miles away in many cases. And when it comes to high-value, high-risk decisions about health, family, money, life events, or large capital purchases, the need for skilled guidance from an empathetic, compassionate human remains non-negotiable. What is open for discussion, however, is where these trained nurses, financial advisors, health advocates, and others are based. As technology continues to improve, these interactions are being delivered virtually from anywhere on the globe. The need for human interactions is not going away. And similar to what occurred in previous technology cycles, the industry is transforming, changing shape, and creating opportunities for forward-thinking, technology-enabled players like T-TECH. We've consistently invested in building sophisticated technology and consulting expertise. We've forged collaborative partnerships with the hyperscalers and the leading technology players with the most advanced AI. And we've built an enviable bench of global CX talent that includes every skill a company needs to design, build, operate, optimize, and deliver seamless customer experience at scale. Now I'll share how this is playing out with our business segments. In Key Tech Digital, our focus is on helping clients modernize their CX technology platforms to take full advantage of the new AI-enabled capabilities. Clients are choosing us because we're CX specialists, who operate at the intersection of contact center technology, CRM, analytics, and AI. We're a pure play CX technology and services firm with solutions that are wrapped in consulting and analytics and underpinned with software engineering. We have the know-how and the talent to seamlessly integrate the full suite of CX technology required to meet our clients' unique and evolving operating needs. We are technology agnostic, Certified AI experts, our bench of full-stack engineers and data scientists continues to grow, enabling our clients to benefit from our CX best practices regardless of platform. By the end of Q3, 100% of our T-TECH digital team will be certified on partner platforms and our own AI accreditation programs. And most importantly, we're delivering the outcomes that clients value. The business segment has produced consecutive quarters of strong bookings and continues to have a growing pipeline. Management believes the team is on track to achieve our goal of double digit top line and bottom line growth over the next few years. Now on to T-TECH Engage, where our focus is on integrating technology and AI into everything we do to improve associate productivity and customer satisfaction. We're using AI on the front line as a companion for our associates with real-time language translation, intuitive generative knowledge support, and post-call summarization. Our team leaders are using AI as a coach to help them provide individualized training and curriculum enhancements. Our data scientists are providing clients with actionable insights with conversational intelligence gleaning from the next generation quality technology. Across both business segments, We have hundreds of AI-enabled projects underway, with many more in development. While still early days, the opportunities continue to unfold as clients embrace our services that drive higher quality outcomes at the lowest total overall cost to serve. In closing, as I mentioned earlier, T-TECH and the entire industry are going through a dynamic period of evolution, which creates some volatility that is unavoidable. I speak for the board and our entire management team that we're taking the necessary actions during this transition year to return to long-term growth and increase profitability. I recently returned from a trip to the Philippines and continue to be energized by our highly motivated teams in that region and across the globe. I look forward to sharing our progress on the topics we just discussed in the quarters to come. And I'll now turn the call over to Shelley.
spk06: Thank you, Ken, and good morning. This quarter, we continue to make progress on the company's strategic growth initiatives by acquiring new clients, expanding with our embedded base, delivering quality services, and creating innovative solutions that deliver the outcomes our clients need. Let me start with T-TECH Digital, where we're off to a solid start, delivering our second consecutive quarter of strong bookings. We continue to win exciting new business across partners, geographies, and industries with companies that are in the early stages of their CX cloud migrations, as well as brands that are well on their way to optimizing their CX platforms with AI. Our pipeline and backlog continue to grow with our existing clients, as more and more of them are choosing to expand our relationships from individual projects to longer and larger multi-phase professional and managed service contracts. Approximately 75% of our bookings are coming from existing clients who are seeking to achieve better customer experiences at the intersection of CCaaS, CRM, AI, and analytics. Now, let me share an example with a client who's a global online delivery service that T-TECH Engage supports with care and workforce management services. Our T-TECH digital team was chosen to help this client leverage features in the technology they already own. We activated several AI functions in their CCAP platform, built a self-help solution, and advanced routing approach that is providing impressive productivity gains. In the pilot phase, the solution improved CSAP by 15%. reduced call transfers by 40%, and also reduced call duration by 25%. The pilot was so successful that the client chose to expand our scope of work from three lines of business to six. This is just one of the many examples of how we're expanding our client relationships by helping them get more value out of their technology and AI. As the technology environment grows more complex, we continue to innovate our project-based professional services and also our ongoing managed services. In professional services, our AICX readiness assessment and rapid prototyping approach that we call Sandcastle CX is helping clients identify and visualize areas of greatest return. These engagements provide us with a quick and easy way to get started and highlight our differentiation and ability to deliver shareholder value with more velocity than the generalist technology firms can. In managed services, our trademark surround CX approach moves beyond break-fix to help our clients take advantage of our technology and consulting capabilities so that they can continually absorb, implement, and also optimize the new innovations in their CX technology platforms. We continue to invest in our T-TECH digital growth agenda to fully capitalize on the addressable market for CX technology solutions. The team remains confident in our plans for the remainder of the year. Now, let's move on to T-TECH Engage, where we have forward momentum but continue to work through the three factors we described last quarter. First, I'm pleased to say that our relationship remains strong with the client who is exiting the market for one of their lines of business that we support. We're pleased that we recently expanded our wallet share with them in another part of their operations. The new work is only a partial replacement for the work that was discontinued. Second, we continue to work closely with our clients who have fluctuating volume forecasts. Right now, we're facing the most variability and downward pressure in the telco vertical. And third, as we mentioned previously, our investments in our new geographies are attracting new business. However, because of the lag effect caused by the delayed signings in 2023 and the time it takes to ramp new client programs, our fixed cost structure is temporarily higher as a percentage of revenue. Speaking of new business, This quarter, we added nine new clients in financial services, retail, media, and technology, with almost two-thirds of the work to be delivered offshore. One of our financial services wins is with a global bank that chose us for our domain expertise and regulated industry experience. In addition, we were also recently selected by an enterprise healthcare company for our unique healthcare center of excellence in South Africa that offers a hub of specialized capabilities and the benefits of offshore economics. We also continue to close deals with our embedded base. Examples include expanded care services with one of our largest financial services clients, increased ad sales support for a large tech client out of Central Europe, and additional trust and safety services for a longstanding strategic travel and hospitality climate. Several of our new client and embedded base wins include our non-associate based services. These strategic services include workforce management, learning and knowledge services, and conversation and business intelligence. While these deals are typically not large, their high value delivers significant impact and cement our relevance and differentiation with our clients. Our pipeline includes several new strategic growth accounts at enterprise companies with the ability to expand. In addition to our technology-enabled services, many of these large brands are choosing us for our vertical expertise and global scale. Now on the topic of innovation, I'm especially proud of the team working on our own generative knowledge management solution called Let Me Know that is built on Google's Vertex AI technology. Our Let Me Know solution was recently featured at the Google Next conference and was recognized with a Gold Stevie Award for innovation. This associate productivity solution is embedded in our T-TECH Engage delivery platform and provides clients seamless access to our knowledge management services. The solution was recently deployed in a help desk environment and improved average handle time by 12%. Based on those results, we're in the process of adapting Let Me Know to vertical specific use cases, including travel and hospitality and financial services. Let Me Know is just one example of our human-centered philosophy around AI or CX. Overall and engaged, we have solid momentum with new business while we work through the revenue and timing issues due to the lag effect. As our CFO, Kenny Wagers, will cover shortly, we have a specific public sector client ramp impacting Q1 and Q2. We're very enthusiastic about this large outcome-based contract, but due to client circumstances, we're incurring delays in revenue realization and heightened startup costs in these quarters. In conclusion, during this transitional year, our investments to accelerate our growth in T-TECH Digital along with improved execution and scale in our new geographies in T-TECH Engage, will set us up for profitable growth in 2025 and beyond. With our teams across the globe dedicated to delivering exceptional quality experiences for our clients and their customers every day, I look forward to sharing our progress in the quarters to come. And now, I'm happy to welcome our CFO, Kenny Wagers, to our call. As you may remember, Kenny joined T-TECH at the beginning of March and has been moving quickly as he gets to know our team, our clients, and our operations. And now I'll turn the call over to Kenny.
spk10: Thank you, Shelly, and good morning. I'm excited to join T-TECH as a recently appointed CFO and look forward to working with you. I will start with a review of our first quarter financial results before providing context into our reiterated full year 2024 financial outlook. In my discussion on the first quarter financial results, reference to revenue is on a gap basis while EBITDA, operating income, and earnings per share are on a non-GAAP adjusted basis. A full reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP results is included in the tables attached to our earnings press release. Turning to our first quarter consolidated results, revenue exceeded our guidance range, which was attributable to the strong demand in both segments. The adjusted EBITDA contribution was in line with the midpoint of our guidance range. The lower margin percentage was primarily due to the delayed launch of the public sector engaged program that impacted the timing for certain costs. On a consolidated basis for the first quarter of 2024 compared to the prior year period, revenue was $577 million compared to $633 million, a decrease of 8.9%. Adjusted EBITDA was $55 million or 9.5% of revenue compared to $83 million or 13.1%. Operating income was $38 million, or 6.6 percent of revenue, compared to $61 million, or 9.6 percent. And EPS was 27 cents compared to 78. Foreign exchange had a $1.8 million positive impact on revenue in the first quarter over the prior year period, while negatively impacting operating income by half a million, primarily in our engaged segment. If not for FX, EBITDA would have exceeded the midpoint of our first quarter guidance by $1 million. Turning to our first quarter 2024 segment results. Our digital segments revenue was $112 million, a decrease of 4.2% over prior year period, higher than expectations as the in-quarter bookings had a greater impact on revenue in the period. Managed services continued to deliver sequential growth quarter over quarter and increased by approximately 5% over the prior year, in large part attributable to our genesis practice. Our Cisco practice was relatively flat with the same period last year and is expected to stabilize for the remainder of the year. Operating income was 9 million or 8.3% of revenue in line with the midpoint of our guidance. This compares to 9% of revenue in the prior year, primarily due to the different revenue mix in the quarter. On the back of record bookings in the fourth quarter of last year, digital had another strong first quarter of bookings to start the year. Our clients continue to invest in their CX ecosystem and our unique capabilities remain in demand. This acceleration in digital backlog demonstrates T-TECH Digital's consulting and engineering expertise across an expanded suite of best-in-class CX technology and service solutions. Digital's backlog increased to 399 million or 80% of our 2024 revenue guidance at the midpoint, a favorable comparison to 75% in the prior year. Our engaged segment revenue decreased 10 percent to $465 million in the first quarter of 2024 over the prior year period. Revenue exceeded our guidance range due to higher than anticipated seasonal volumes. Operating income was $29 million or 6.2 percent of revenue compared to $50 million or 9.7 percent of revenue in the prior year. While our engaged segment suggested EBITDA margin improved sequentially by 180 bps, it came in at the lower end of our first quarter guidance range. This was primarily a function of the timing impact from one new large program delay that Shelley discussed. The margin improvement in the second half of the year anticipates the normalization of operations from the line of business exited by one of our large clients, impact from the cost optimization effort discussed last quarter, and the benefits from economies of scale as new programs move into production and leverage our new geographies. The quality of the opportunities in the Engage pipeline continues to improve. Our Engage backlog for the next 12 months is 1.76 billion or 96.5% of our 2024 revenue guidance at the midpoint of the range compared to 97% in the prior year. Engage's last 12-month revenue retention rate was 92% compared to 97% in the prior year. The decline is mostly explained by the prior year revenue reduction in our hypergrowth portfolio and the first quarter impact from one large client exiting their line of business supported by TTAC. I will now share other first quarter 2024 metrics before discussing our outlook. Free cash flow was a negative 29 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to a positive 35 million in the prior year. The year-over-year variance is the result of lower profitability, a one-time tax payment related to international cash repatriation, and lower working capital conversion that will normalize in the next quarters. Capital expenditures were 13 million or 2.3 percent of revenue for the first quarter 2024 compared to 14 million or 2.2 percent in the prior year. Our normalized tax rate was 32.7 percent in the first quarter 2024 compared to 26 percent in the prior year. The increase is primarily a function of lower pre-tax income and jurisdiction mix. It is expected to normalize over the year to be at the midpoint of our guidance. As of March 31, 2024, cash was $92 million, with $957 million of debt, of which $953 million represents borrowings under our $1.3 billion credit facility. Net debt increased year-over-year by $83 million to $865 million, primarily associated with final acquisition-related payments, geographic expansion investments, and higher interest expense. partially offset by positive cash flow from operations. We ended the quarter with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 3.6 in compliance under our credit facility. As discussed last quarter, beyond returning the company to sustainable long-term organic growth, we are also taking prudent actions to improve our cash flow and balance sheet strength, including profit margin expansion initiatives, capital allocation reprioritization, and cash and working capital optimization inclusive of cash repatriation strategies of foreign earnings to the U.S. Turning to our 2024 outlook, our digital segment ended the first quarter at the higher end of the guidance range on both top and bottom lines, with another quarter of strong bookings. It adds to an already solid foundation for the remainder of the year, despite the continuous, elongated sales cycle noted across the industry. The engaged segment has recently been successful with winning enterprise deals. but these larger deals take more time to launch and meet production and profitability levels. Therefore, this creates less predictability in our quarterly revenue and impacts near-term margin percentages due to underlying fixed costs. The demand environment also remains fluid as client conservatism still impacts budgeting and volume awards. While our business has a long sales cycle, we are encouraged by the number of active opportunities with new prospects who have the potential to expand into strategic growth accounts, fueling our client diversification strategy. That said, we are resolute in our commitment to build back our engaged profit margin profile in the second half of this year and beyond. As we continue to rebalance our fixed and variable cost structure, we are moving forward with a set of actions to strengthen our margin optimization efforts and are confident in achieving our full year outlook and delivering double digit EBITDA margins in 2025. I want to convey a change that during the balance of this transitional period, I'm moving to provide guidance only on an annual basis with directional commentary provided each quarter as viewed appropriate. As a result, please reference our commentary in the business outlook section of our first quarter 2024 earnings press release to obtain our expectations for our reiterated 2024 full year guidance at the consolidated and segment level. In closing, the start of the year was in line with our expectations as we navigate the current landscape, balance our focus on continuous CX innovation and long-term growth initiatives while advancing our operational and financial rigor. We maintain our conviction that the delivery of quality customer experience is a business imperative, a brand differentiator, and a strategic driver of profitable growth. I want to convey our confidence in the fundamental attractiveness of the CX market opportunity and our differentiated technology and service capabilities across digital and engaged, and our commitment to execute and deliver long-term value to our clients, employees, and shareholders. We look forward to providing an update on our full-year outlook when we announce our second quarter earnings results in early August. I will now turn the call back to Paul.
spk03: Thanks, Kenny. As we open the call, we ask that you limit your questions to two at a time. Operator, you may open the line.
spk07: Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then the number one. Please admit your phone and record your name as well as your company name clearly when prompted. Your name and company name are required to introduce your question. To cancel your request, please press star and then the number two. Our first question comes from the line of George Sutton of Craig Alam. Sir, your line is now open.
spk12: Thank you. I'm curious. how you thought about guidance relative to the stock's been quite weak, the market effectively giving you permission to lower guidance if necessary. So really wanted to test your conviction and thought process relative to the maintenance of the guide, which feels somewhat heroic.
spk11: Yeah, thanks for the question.
spk10: You know, first of all, I would tell you it's my preference in managing through this environment, through this transitional year that we're having in 2024 for T-TECH. And from what we see and from the improvements that we're making with our cost optimization efforts and what we're working on to rebalance our fixed and variable costs going forward, we just reaffirm where we're going to land for the full year And so that's where we see the business moving as of today.
spk12: Okay, great. And a question for Ken. You mentioned that AI is creating new pockets of opportunity and specifically mentioned content moderation and data annotation, not areas that you've necessarily, to my knowledge, been focused on. Can you talk about are those areas you're planning to build out to take advantage of these market changes?
spk04: We've always done certain aspects of content moderation and data annotation. The difference is that we've never been focused on what I would call the moderation of violent video and the type of stuff that we think causes emotional trauma for our employees. And so with AI, what it brings is because of the training of AI, because of the tagging of AI, et cetera, it creates new opportunities. And my whole point is, in my comments just on these new areas was just simply to say that as one door potentially narrows, many new doors open, which is what AI, we believe, is doing for us. It's allowing us to take advantage of areas that we never, frankly, previously were not even available to us. And it's also opening our clients' minds to new things that we could be doing for them that historically they never even were considering outsourcing. So what I would say to you is that, again, the whole point in my commentary was to just simply say that as Wall Street is known to do, they tend to over-rotate both directions, whether it be to the positive or whether it be to the negative. And I was simply just simply trying to say that... the hype that's behind the AI and the pundits that are declaring that this is going to have this massively negative impact, what I would just simply say is that for those of us who are highly technology enabled and who have all the right partnerships with all the AI players and have been working on this not as of six months ago but for years, we feel like we've got a head start to be able to help our clients take advantage of these technologies as well as create new service offerings that take advantage of the technologies, the AI-type technologies. So overall, we believe that we're a bit misunderstood. We believe the whole industry is a bit misunderstood. And you know what? Unfortunately, we've been here before. We'll get through this and we'll be bigger and better and stronger in the long run. Perfect. Thanks, guys. Thanks, George.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Maggie Nolan of William Blair. Your line is now open.
spk02: Hi, good morning. This is Jesse Wilson on for Maggie Nolan. Thanks for taking our question. And it's nice to hear from you, Kenny. So I guess to start, similar to the first question on the call, the press release mentioned anticipated headwinds you expected to see in the first half here. Can you just comment on if those have been better, worse, or the same as expected from last quarter?
spk11: Hey, Jesse, good morning.
spk10: The headwinds that we talk about is what was in Shelly's script and what I described as As we moved out of the end of 2023 with the lag effect of that customer base that we're working from and as the timing impact of the program delay that we articulated about our public sector client, the headwinds are where we expected them to be. And that is where we are pivoting from as we moved into the second half of this year that also supports the reiteration of our full year guidance. Shelley, I don't know if you want to support anything else on that.
spk06: No, I mean, the PubSec client that I had mentioned where we've got some delays in terms of full revenue ramp and some extra startup costs here, it's a large multi-year program. We're very excited about it. It's an outcome-oriented contract. Unfortunately, a complex situation and some, you know, client circumstances that are causing some delays here. But we're working through that. We expect to have that sorted out here in Q2 and ramping through, you know, at full ramp into Q3 and Q4. I think if more broadly speaking, Jesse, we talked last quarter just about our client volume forecast and our embedded base. And I mentioned earlier that we see some volumes down with some of those clients. But we're also seeing some of the clients, particularly in financial services, that took a cautious outlook at the beginning of the year, beginning to change their forecast for the better. So based on the visibility that we have right now, we're expecting a strong healthcare season in the back half of the year. That's why we've reiterated our guidance.
spk02: Got it. That makes sense. And then for my follow-up, I just wanted to clarify Do you expect to return to providing quarterly guidance maybe when the dust has settled or the clouds are gone here over a multi-year period?
spk10: Yeah, Jesse, as I've stepped in here in the last two months, and again, as I reiterated, as we look at this transitional year, we're not going to revisit that during 2024. But we'll take a look at it at the end of this year moving into 2025 to see if we return back to quarterly in the upcoming years. But for the balance of this year, we're going to stick to the full year.
spk11: Got it. Thanks again. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. Once again, to all participants, to ask a question, please press star and then the number one. And record your name and company name clearly when prompted. To cancel your request, please press star and then the number 2. We'll take our next question from Cassie Chen of Bank of America. Your line is now open.
spk05: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. First, I know you said you kind of provide some maybe directional commentary on the quarters. Can you just give us a little bit more detail around that for both the revenue, margin side, and EPS?
spk11: Hey, Cassie. Good morning.
spk10: What I would say from a commentary standpoint is just right now as we see Q2 and as we see the second half of this year, I'm just going to continue to reiterate where we are guiding for the full year. We're reiterating where we're going to land on the full year towards the midpoint, and that's That's the extent of where we're at today from a commentary standpoint.
spk05: Okay, got it. And then I guess, you know, in terms of onshore, offshore demand, any change in terms of some of the client conversations or the posture of client conversations that you're having, you know, maybe any commentary on pricing as well. Thank you.
spk06: Hi, Cassie. Well, I would just say, let me take the second part of your question first. Certainly a competitive environment. You're probably hearing that from everybody. You might have heard me say in my prepared remarks that two-thirds of the new business that we're winning from new clients is to be delivered offshore. A lot of that, by the way, in our new geography. So we continue to be pleased with the demand that we're seeing. Particularly, I would probably point out South Africa. I mentioned one of our new healthcare companies is taking advantage of our capabilities there in South Africa. So I'd say, you know, continue to see strong demand from new clients for our offshore capabilities. And then with our embedded-based clients, we're beginning, you know, really, I would say, across industry verticals, with the exception of public sector, beginning to have conversations and add new lines of business with our existing clients, leveraging our offshore footprints. I'd say in financial services, it tends to be more nearshore. So some of the locations that we've added in Latin America, where many others, you know, we still see some demand in Philippines, but also, as I said, South Africa, getting a lot of attention, a lot of demand, and a lot of interest in terms of some of the opportunities in our pipeline.
spk11: Got it. Thank you. Hopefully that helps.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Vincent Colicchio of Barrington Research. Your line is now open.
spk08: Yeah, Ken or Shelly, are you, in terms of the new clients you're attracting, are a good number new to outsourcing, which may be signaling an expansion in the market penetration potential, which is, I think, a part of a positive thesis?
spk06: Yeah, and I'm... So I would say it's a mix, actually. So we definitely have a couple of wins that we had. Actually, in Q4 and Q1 together, we had a couple of companies that are new to outsourcing, absolutely, just like we talked about last quarter. Interesting, some of these clients are going straight to places like South Africa, right? Many are also taking advantage of our nearshore footprint. So a mix for sure. We also, some of the enterprise logos that we've won recently, one of the things I'm excited about is actually they might have been doing outsourcing already, but they are choosing an approach where maybe they're consolidating their vendor footprint, looking for something a bit different in terms of vertical expertise, technology-enabled solutions, and the like, and adding us as a partner to their network. And so part of what we've been talking about here in terms of the lag effect is some of these new enterprises are We're starting small in terms of, you know, the original scope of work, but we see ample room for growth and scale in the work that they're hiring us for here at the beginning, but also expanding into different lines of business. In fact, you know, there's a couple financial services clients that we've just recently won, and we're literally in the midst of launching our first set of services with them and already talking to them about new lines of business. So I see that as, you know, very pleased with the quality of logos that we're adding to our client portfolio.
spk08: And curious, in the AI situations where you're improving agent productivity, are there currently discussions about sharing in the economic improvement with your clients?
spk06: Lots of discussions. Lots of discussions. You know, I mean... In some cases, you know, in some cases we're bringing the technology just as part of our services so we can provide good quality services and, you know, be able to reduce attrition and some of the things that help us and help the client. You know, in other cases we have clients that are deploying technology and we're adopting the technologies that they have in their environment. So I would say certainly a mix. Thank you. We're very pleased with this let me know solution that I mentioned earlier and it's still early days.
spk11: Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. Once again, a reminder to all participants to ask a question, please press star and then the number one. Record your name and company name clearly when prompted. To cancel your request, please press star and then the number two. Our next question is coming from the line with Jonathan Lee of Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.
spk09: Great, thanks. Kenny, good to be working with you. It's encouraging to hear about your offshore progress. As you scale your offshore footprint, what gives you confidence that an offshore shift won't cannibalize onshore volumes outside of your regulated industries, particularly in an environment of belt tightening?
spk06: I'm sorry, particularly in an environment of what?
spk09: Belt tightening and budget tightening.
spk06: Oh, belt tightening and budget tightening. Okay. Well, so far, Jonathan, you know, as we've talked about, with very few exceptions, the offshore work that we're adding is actually, it's not a movement of onshore work to offshore. So it's actually net new volume, net new business from existing clients or the new logos that we're adding. And don't forget, you know, large percentage of our work, actually almost 40% of our work comes from regulated industries and PubSec where the work is required to be onshore. And so I think, and we've talked about that obviously in the past, and so far what I would say is the offshore work that we're adding is just that we're adding work. It's not about taking work from onshore to offshore. In financial services in particular I'd say It tends to be more nearshore work. We're starting to see some interest in South Africa in healthcare, lots of interest in South Africa as an example. So far what we're seeing is it's additive. It's not cannibalizing our onshore work. Keep in mind, a lot of that onshore work, as I said, it's regulated. It's licensed work. So the clients either can't take it offshore or are choosing not to.
spk09: Got it. That's helpful. And just as a follow-up, how much of your 24 revenue outlook is already contracted? Can you talk about any change in visibility you may have seen in the quarter?
spk06: Well, so the backlog numbers that Kenny shared, on the digital side, we have 80% of revenue in backlog today, which is actually slightly higher than where we stood this time last year. Keep in mind on the digital side, right, sort of the foundation of that revenue base is our managed services. So those are longer-term contracts where we have a very high renewal rate. And then, you know, confidence in terms of our digital plan based on the bookings momentum in professional services. On the engaged side, as Kenny shared, our backlog is 96.5% to the midpoint And last year, we were right around 97, so very similar to where we were this time last year.
spk11: Got it. Thanks for clarifying.
spk07: Thank you for your questions. That is all the time we have today. This concludes DTECH's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. You may disconnect at this time.
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