Exela Technologies, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Excella Technologies second quarter 2023 financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. Please note this event is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Vince Condoviti, Vice President of Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Alan, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2023 conference call. As per usual practice, our earnings release and presentation are posted to the IR section of our website. Speakers on today's call are Par Chadha, Executive Chairman, and Srikanth Sotar, our Chief Financial Officer. Today's agenda will be similar to previous calls. PAR will provide an overview of our results, and Srikanth will walk you through our financial performance. We expect this call to last less than half an hour. Some of the matters we will discuss today's call are forward-looking and involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Thoughts for risks and uncertainties are set forth in our press release. So, without further ado, I'll turn over the call to PAR, our Executive Chairman.

Thanks, Vin. Our improving metrics in the second quarter are a result of many factors, but certain ones stand above all. Focus on cost management, debt reduction, and our value propositions for services solutions enhanced by evolving AI. Our results speak for themselves and I'll walk you through a few slides that highlight them. Let's turn to slide number three. For shareholders who are new to Accela, let's do a quick walkthrough of Accela at a glance. We are approximately a $1.1 billion business process automation leader with presence in over 20 countries We're in key markets and key industries, for example, banking, insurance, and commercial industries, serving some of the most recognized brands in the world, and with 15,500-plus employees strong. Let's turn to slide number four. We branded our European business as XBP Europe, as many of you already know. A proxy was recently filed, and that can be found by searching with the ticker symbol CFFE. And if you're interested to learning more about this, that proxy contains a lot of details about this business. XBPs should start trading independently under the symbol XBP on NASDAQ in the coming weeks. The key message from the slide I'd like to emphasize is that our customers trust us with processing essential and key services. With that, let's turn to slide number five. I have to admit, it's very satisfying to be recognized by industry leaders, industry research organizations, Of course, being named a leader is the best reward and I hope in the coming quarters, we convert some of the others to leaders. Let's turn to slide number six of select Q2 highlights. Our second quarter revenue was $272.9 million. It was higher by 2.3% year-over-year. Our gross margins saw another quarter of improvement to 22.4% and up 3.8% year-over-year. our adjusted EBDA margins were the highest in the last seven quarters and came in at 15.1%, but not the highest we have achieved in the past. So we have more work to do. Our headcount grew to 15,549 from 15,108 sequentially, A rising headcount is related to rebalancing of our operations across geographies. More importantly, we are also making additional investments in many functional areas by adding people to strengthen our foundation. Almost two years ago, when I stepped into this role, we had too much debt, a lot of debt. I emphasize in my new role, mission to reduce it. In July of this year, we were able to finally complete another key milestone and reduce our long-term third-party held debt by almost one half. Telus subsidiary, XBP Europe, as I mentioned, will be listed shortly in the coming weeks. And it will trade as a majority-owned subsidiary of Accela Technologies Inc., the parent, with its own management team and the board. Let's turn to slide number seven. It's not a secret that we have been through a rough patch. Our teams have navigated the rough waters and continue to win new business from existing logos and added some new logos. We did lose some business and did not win some that we were highly qualified for. Our focus now is to leverage our foundation and focus on growth as a key objective as well. I'm not satisfied with our sales, and we have potential to do more as we enter calmer waters. Before I hand off to Shrikant, our CFO, I would like to re-emphasize that we'll remain focused on cost management, debt reduction, and expanding our value proposition. Thank you, Par.