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spk02: Over the last three quarters, we have identified three strategic pillars to anchor our growth that we believe will position StarTech on a sustained path of growth, profitability, and delivering superior customer experience. Our strategic pillars are strengthening our sales ecosystem, improving our technology platform through digital partnerships, and delivering world-class service through close collaboration with our clients. We delivered strong segment performance during the quarter with revenue growth in the Middle East, India, and Australia. Growth in India was driven by continuing ramp-ups in operations with some of our largest digital clients in the region. We have replaced competitors within many client accounts and increased our wallet share on the back of our consistent track record of superior performance. Revenue from the Americas regions declined during the quarter due to the termination of operations with a client in the media vertical. We continued to perform well across each of our industry verticals in quarter three, with continuing ramp-ups within our existing telecom clients across the U.S., and South Africa and an improvement in volume within accounts in the travel and hospitality sector. Within our financial and business services and travel and hospitality verticals, we entered into several expanded contracts with existing clients to grow our services. Our brand awareness campaigns over the past several quarters have been very well received with an increasing interest in our customer experience and digital solutions supporting the growth of our pipeline. We are delighted to be recognized as a leader in the global and US ISG provider lens quadrant reports on Contact Center Customer Experience Services 2022 for our transformative digital solution suite. We were also recognized as one of only 14 truly global CX solution providers by the Everest Group. I feel very positive about these developments and recognize the efforts of our teams across areas to provide best-in-class customer service solutions. to our clients so that they can in turn deliver engaging experiences for their customers. In our second pillar, we successfully fostered new digital partnerships to enhance our technology portfolio and value added capabilities. Our digital capabilities and cutting edge technology platform enable us to provide impactful insights to our clients These insights ensure that we become trusted partners, creating measurable value that in turn results in additional business opportunities. What's more, our digital solutions amplify the capabilities of our agents to deliver a superior service, ensuring effective brand stewardship for our clients, and enabling us to optimize our delivery costs. Throughout the quarter, we secured several new partnerships and initiated pilot programs designed to continue to elevate the quality of our services. Our recently announced partnership with Avaya allows StarTech to leverage the OneCloud platform to deliver a combined technology and CX service solution to our clients globally. Through our partnership with Avaya, we aim to support small and medium-sized businesses as well as emerging enterprises with market-leading CX delivered through a bundle of people, technology, and data solutions. We are evaluating a subscription-based model that allows us a faster rollout time and reduces the total cost of ownership driving a better return on investment for our clients. By combining the StarTech Agent AI solution with our industry leading CX technology platform partnerships, we have created a best-in-class modular and scalable platform for both our clients and associates. We will continue to invest in both our IP creation and tap into innovation ecosystem to continuously bring innovative next-gen solutions to market. Lastly, as we grow globally, it is essential that we continue to collaborate closely with our clients to identify potential areas of optimization and provide actionable insights. Towards this goal, we partnered with the leading telecom providers to leverage an AI-based tool to reduce the speed to proficiency and significantly enhance agent experience. With a large e-tailer in India, we piloted and designed the pilot to increase agent efficiency by providing agents with tools to manage their performance, celebrate achievement of goals, and create a space for healthy competition. One of our primary objectives is to deliver tailor-made solutions, and we remain committed to this responsibility going forward. As we look forward, our three carefully selected pillars of success will remain at the core of our strategic roadmap. As I mentioned earlier, We were able to improve our margins through our continued efforts to provide cost-efficient services and transition clients from onshore to nearshore and offshore delivery. Furthermore, prudent financial disciplines strengthened our balance sheet during the quarter. We consolidated some of our brick-and-mortar sites as more of our agents transitioned to work from home. Recent upgrades to our platform enable our agents to perform equally regardless of whether they work from a brick and mortar site or as part of our at-home operation. Optimizing our physical footprint has allowed us to increase our capacity by training and hiring additional agents while saving on rental and associated costs. We intend to divert the savings from our fixed costs to our continued investments in our sales, marketing, and digital activities. We expect our newly enlarged client portfolio combined with our increased capacity to provide a meaningful uplift to our top-line performance in 2023. As we continue to generate new logos and transition to a higher mix of clients, with solutions provided through offshore delivery, we will remain laser focused on delivering world-class solutions to our clients. Although we incurred a minor setback to our top line, we are well positioned to capitalize on momentum from our sales pipeline and realize incremental margin expansion in the near future. In summary, We continue to add new logos in this quarter on the back of a robust sales pipeline and fostered innovative digital partnerships to strengthen our technology stack. Whilst a strengthening dollar did have a marginal impact, we expanded our footprint across all business segments and verticals with a focus on improving margins. Regarding the preliminary non-binding proposal by Capital Square Partners to acquire the minority shares in StarTech that Capital Square Partners did not own, as most of you have seen from public announcements, Capital Square Partners has formally withdrawn its proposal after discussions with the Special Committee of the Board of Directors. The Special Committee has since been dissolved. I would now like to turn the call over to Nishit Shah to provide further details on our third quarter financial results. After Nishit concludes his review of our financial performance, he will turn the call over to the StarTAC Head of Transformation, Ron Gillett, to provide more insight into our strategic initiatives for the remainder of the year and beyond. Thank you all for joining us. I'll be available to answer any questions you may have during the Q&A session at the end of this call. Nishit, I'll now pass the call over to you. Thank you.
spk01: Thanks, Bharat. Starting on the top line, net revenue in Q3 was $163.1 million compared to $172.8 million in the year-ago quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar, the termination of our media client in our America segment, and continued normalization of revenue from one of COVID-19 vaccination support programs that we delivered in the previous period. On a constant currency basis, net revenue decreased by 2.6% compared to the year-ago quarter. The decline in revenue was partially offset by continued strength in our core verticals. Gross profit increased 7.4% to 23.1 million compared to 21.5 million in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin increased 170 basis point to 14.2% compared to 12.5% in the year-ago quarter. The increase was primarily due to change in business mix with increased delivery in the nearshore and offshore geographies. Impact of price increases as contracts are renegotiated, as well as lower rent costs following the consolidation of several of our brick and mortar sites. Selling, general, and administration. SG&A expenses for the third quarter were $16.5 million compared to $13.1 million in the year-ago quarter. As a percentage of revenue, SG&A was 10.1%, compared to 7.6% in the year-ago quarter. The increase was primarily due to our ongoing investments in sales and marketing initiatives as well as costs related to take-private transactions. The expenses related to take-private transactions are our non-operating expenses and one-time in nature are added back into adjusted every time. Our adjusted net income attributable to StarTech shoulder for Q3 increased by 48.3% to 4.3 million or 11 cents per diluted share compared to 2.9 million or 7 cents per diluted share in a year ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter increased to 16 million compared to 15.9 million in the year ago quarter. As a percentage of revenue, adjusted EBITDA increased 60 basis points to 9.8% compared to 9.2% in the year-ago quarter. From a balance sheet perspective, as of September 30, 2022, our cash and restricted cash balances increased to $61.3 million compared to $55.8 million on June 30, 2022. Total debt on September 30, 2022 was $169.6 million compared to 170.7 million on June 30th, 2022. Net debt excluding restricted cash on September 30th, 2022 was 117.9 million compared to 123.5 million at June 30th, 2022. This concludes my prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to Ron.
spk05: Thanks, Nisha, and thank you all for joining us today. Let's discuss our strategic focus going forward. Looking towards the end of the year and into the next, we are focused on taking advantage of the momentum from our sales pipeline to drive new logos and strengthen client portfolio. Identifying value accretive digital partnerships to strengthen our platform and transitioning a greater mix of our customer portfolio with near shore and offshore delivery to drive higher margins through a more cost efficient labor approach. As part of our sales team directive, we will continue to dedicate a number of resources to expand our footprint in the United States. We see this as a breeding ground for opportunity where the cost efficient solutions we provide are a must have. Our lean and efficient approach continues to drive our shift towards hybrid and remote work structures. decreasing our physical infrastructure across the U.S. and other geographies. In the market today, we have identified an increasing number of companies willing to offshore their in-house customer experience solutions to cut costs. These are key opportunities our sales team will be focused on capitalizing and converting upon. Given the traction we are seeing, We are proactively expanding our capacity in near shore and offshore locations to provide state-of-the-art facilities to our customers. We will continue to leverage our digital partnerships to expand our solution set and carefully utilize marketing dollars to increase our brand awareness across all industries and core segments. In order to transform into a truly digital-first CX organization, we'll continue to develop strategic partnerships, giving us access to the latest digital tool set. Ultimately, our innovations and digital partnerships aim to allow our agents to deliver world-class services to our clients. With the Avaya partnership, we now have the capability to offer CX in a box to our clients at scale. We're making a concerted effort to improve our offshore, nearshore mix. Our near-term strategy is to move current clients from onshore to nearshore services, then ultimately transitioning them to the offshore. As we gain digital partnerships and additional tools to our platform, we will leverage our improved capabilities and technologies to enhance our agents and the quality of customer service they deliver. Our nearshore and offshore services are improving every quarter, and we believe we have built a strong platform for our customers to feel comfortable transitioning into nearshore and offshore services. Overall, we expect the strategic investments we've made in our sales pipeline and marketing initiatives to pave the way for top-line growth and meaningful margin expansion in 2023. We are beginning to see the return on our investments and are optimistic in our ability to convert new and future logos into revenue in the coming quarters. By leveraging our expanded capacity to provide world-class service to our new and future clients, we will be able to service a broad and global customer base and capture incremental increases across our top and bottom line beginning next year. As always, our priority is sustainably growing our company to return value back to our shareholders. And we look forward to executing on our strategic growth roadmap for many years to come. With that, we'll now open the call for questions. Operator, over to you.
spk03: Thank you. And at this time, we will now conduct the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Once again, that is star then 1 to ask a question, and we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And our first question today will come from Zach Cummins with B Reilly Securities. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. First one for me, Bharat, is just really around the momentum that you've seen with new logos. Nice to see that continue here in Q3. How should we think about just revenue contribution from these new logos? Is it starting to ramp here in Q4, or is that more of a 2023 objective?
spk02: Hi, Zach, and thanks for the question. I think we will see some part of it in Q4, but most of it, essentially the ramp, we would see materializing in 2023. Typically, what happens is by the time we ink contracts, get all the related equipment circuits, by the time all that is completed, it takes almost a quarter or so which is why we feel that if you want to actually see the ramp and the full benefits of these new logos, you'll actually see them coming through from 2023. Some of the revenues that we have of the logos won in the first half of the year have actually started translating into revenues in this quarter as well. But to answer your question in terms of most of the impact, you would see that starting from 23.
spk00: Understood. That's helpful. And also encouraging to see the improvements in gross margin here in a quarter, just shifting more of your delivery to the lower cost near shore and offshore delivery centers. I mean, can you talk about the opportunity that's still available to you to continue that positive mix shift? It sounds like an increasing number of customers are now open to idea to at least nearshoring or potentially offshoring some of their operations.
spk02: I think, yes. See, most of our customers, I mean, we've got and we're very happy to be able to support customers that are very large customers. But equally, there are a number of customers of ours in the mid-market space who are clearly feeling the pinch of inflationary trends, challenges with being able to attract and retain people. All those are putting a lot of pressure on their being able to provide consistent delivery and support. and also may do that at a sensible margin. So what we see is, especially in the mid-market space, and Ron alluded to that in his comments, we see a lot of mid-market players who hadn't really thought about outsourcing, now becoming open to outsourcing, people whose preference was to stay onshore, now being quite open to nearshore and offshore opportunities. So we've seen a lot more, and I think that trend is clearly here to stay. Because that would mean without compromising with all the technology we have today, frankly doing that near shore and offshore at a fraction of your cost of delivery onshore clearly is a very compelling proposition. So that, you know, businesses can continue to focus their and focus their priorities on really customer acquisition, getting into product development, you know, areas that are really core to their existence.
spk00: Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's very helpful. And final question for me is just right around, um, some of the rent savings that you've recognized. I know you consolidated many of your delivery centers. I mean, is there additional savings that can be extracted from this? Or how are you thinking about your overall necessary physical footprint versus your kind of hybrid delivery model going forward?
spk02: We'll continue to explore that as we I mean, equally what we're doing is there are a couple of, there are a few initiatives we're looking into. One is, of course, consolidating our overall brick and mortar facilities to ensure proper utilization. I think utilization of space is not just important from a cost perspective, but equally proper utilization also enables us to provide those centers which are, you know, where we are having, where we have a good capacity utilization with the kind of support from a non agent, uh, staffing perspective, because as people want the flexibility to be able to work from home, you equally have people who can come in and typically in a hub and spoke model, people who can come in or in programs start and they need support. they would like to have the option of being able to come and get the support, get trained, and be able to go back. So I think we will continue our efforts on looking at consolidating not just centers, but also floors, typically within centers. As long as, of course, subject to ensuring that we maintain our – the requirements and our contractual obligations from a spacing perspective. But equally what we are doing is we are also critically looking at our facilities and ensuring that we have the state of art infrastructure. So whilst we consolidate space on the one hand, we will continue to invest and invest into building our centers, refurbishing them, ensuring that we have very good and provide really good agent experience, especially in centers where you've got good occupancy. And because people are working, you know, in many of our geographies, people have come back to work from site. So I think that that combination of right sizing and equally ensuring that we invest in centers where people have started coming back to work from site will continue.
spk00: Understood. Well, I think that's all the questions I have for now, but thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck with the rest of the year.
spk02: Thank you, Zach.
spk03: And once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1. And at this time, this will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Rao. Please proceed.
spk02: Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon and for your continued support of StarTIC. I look forward to speaking with you next when we report our fourth quarter and 2022 full year results.
spk03: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference, and at this time, you may now disconnect.
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