IBI Group Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the IBI Group third quarter 2021 results conference call. Please note that IBI's complete financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for the three and nine month periods ended September 30th, 2021 were filed on CDAR and have been posted on IBI's website at www. During the formal remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star followed by 1. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded today, November 5, 2021. Some of the statements on today's call might contain forward-looking information. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, since a number of factors could cause the actual future results to differ materially from the targets and expectations expressed. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless expressly required by applicable securities law. For further information on risk factors, please view the company's annual information form filed with the Canadian Securities Regulatory Authorities and available on the company's website, CDAR, or by contacting IBI directly. All amounts discussed today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. I would like to now turn the conference over to Mr. Scott Stewart, Chief Executive Officer for IBI Group. Please go ahead, Mr. Stewart.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Stephen Taylor, IBI's Chief Financial Officer, is also on the call. We appreciate the opportunity to share an update on the firm's performance throughout the third quarter, as well as provide some insights into our performance by business sectors. Please note that throughout the call, references to adjusted EBITDA referred to adjusted EBITDA net IFRS being impacts unless otherwise stated. Although Stephen will go into greater detail on our key highlights, IBI's financial performance in the third quarter continued to clearly demonstrate the strength of our differentiated technology approach. And I highlight the key points. Net revenue increased by 12%. Adjusted EBITDA grew by 15%, representing 17.1% of net revenue. Our intelligence sector had EBITDA that grew by 16%, and earnings per share increased by 24% on a fully documented basis. And our backlog increased by 11% to $596 million for 17 months. All of this was achieved while generating free cash flow, further reducing our debt, and investing in new products and services. With our clean balance sheet, strong liquidity profile, and free cash flow generating capabilities, IBI intends to continue actively pursuing strategic and accretive acquisitions, investments in new products and technologies that can improve our efficiency and ultimately to accelerate growth while increasing margins. Before providing a traditional update, I also wanted to share some EFC highlights of being focused on this quarter. From an environmental perspective, our work has always been focused on improving social impact and reducing the emissions and the carbon footprint of the communities we operate in. This has been part of the DNA of the firm since its founding, and it's been represented as early as some of the traffic management systems that we did where the benefits specifically considered the emissions. and impact in terms of nitrous oxide and carbon. It was part of the justification for those projects. We are continuing to invest in and consolidate our capabilities related to climate action and sustainability. As an example, last year we signed climate accords with the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. As part of this commitment, we developed a platform that we're calling GreenIQ, which allows us to better track and report on the carbon sequence of the buildings we design. The application is now being applied in the United States and will be rolled out globally, allowing us to provide more in-depth reporting in our 2022 ESG profile. At our annual general meeting last year, we shared the digital twin of our Smart City Sandbox and demonstrated how we're using it for virtual stakeholder engagement. We now have over 20 client projects In our digital engagement venue, I provide organizations with a more financial and environmentally sustainable most of the physical events. From an operations perspective, our in-space workplace management solution is allowing IBI and our many clients to prepare for a hybrid working environment while supporting reduction in our office footprints and associated reduction in emissions related to communities. We also engaged in a number of significant passive house projects, widely considered the gold standard for energy-efficient buildings. These projects are underway in Canada and the UK, including a major student residence for U of T. From a social perspective, our 2021 and 2020 engagement survey score was 75%, which is an increase of 10 percentage points from our previous survey. It's been considered a very, very positive number. And based on the annual survey of global employees, the scores comprise of five factors, which include being proud to work at IBI and recommending IBI as a great place to work. Our scores in these areas were in excess of 80%. In terms of diversity, inclusion, and belonging efforts, we continue to progress in three pillar strategies. Raise awareness, remove bias, promote inclusive leadership. Our pipeline of female leaders remains strong at 24.5% of leadership with overall female staff comprising 38% of our workforce. We also provided one-on-one diversity training for senior leadership. We are proud to note that 43% of the board of IBI is female. This exceeds our target of 25%, which we set out in our 2021 policy. From a governance perspective, we are making updates to improve our cybersecurity. We have implemented annual security awareness training for all staff, and have developed a mobile device management policy for the protection of our IT as well as project data. We are also forward working towards our ISO 27001 certification, which is centered on all aspects of data protection. As we begin to open offices using a hybrid working model, we are continuing to evaluate our office footprint. We are working to maximize efficiency while also finding the best solution for the needs of our workforce. at the lowest possible cost, finding a balance, make sure our employees have the facilities they need, creating the right kind of environment, but reducing our real estate costs for benefits and services to us now. Our new strategic plan, which will be focused on improving our efficiency and increasing our recurring revenue, will leverage the technology to create superior urban environments, We will be finalizing this in the first quarter of 2022 and officially launching it at our ATM in May. We've seen some notable successes in our traditional business sectors this quarter. Our intelligence sector, led by Kevin Bettman, continues to deliver across several key practice areas, including tolling and operations. In addition to our ongoing multi-year toll project in Michigan, we have recently been awarded strategically significant project from the Michigan Department of Transportation. Jointly funded by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, the project will define smart corridor and connected and autonomous vehicle operations to improve supply chain logistics across the Michigan-Ontario border. We kicked off this quarter a traffic operations center contract with the City of Toronto. This is a five-year contract for the city with improved road safety and efficient movement of goods and people. The project also leverages our smart city product offerings, including CurbIQ and TravelIQ, and adds to our recurring revenue profile. Our TravelIQ information solution went live in Georgia and Yukon this quarter, adding to our extensive portfolio of some 11 states in the U.S., as well as the provinces of Ontario and Alberta, where we are providing a comprehensive travel information service. In our building sector, led by Mansoor Qasaruni, we expanded our offerings and have entered new markets. Adding to our high volume of mixed-use high-rise projects, we are seeing a notable increase in development opportunities in the suburbs and even in rural locations for large mixed-use developments linked to commuter transit. These projects signify the growing linkages between green infrastructure and linear infrastructure, setting up follow-on In the GBHA, we have been successful in commencing major projects in Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Scarborough, Pickering, Mississauga, and Hamilton, and we are seeing similar trends across North America. Our healthcare practice remains strong with ongoing work across several significant projects in the UK, as well as a new assignment in Cairo, Egypt. Our education practice also had a busy quarter with several new U.S. commissions in Texas and California. Our industrial practice continues to be a key driver of our success in the U.S. Illustrative work includes the Ford Design Hub project that is now under construction, as well as the design of new electric vehicle assembly plants in the U.S. Work continues in our transit architecture practice, With major projects including the TTC Young and Scarborough lines, as mentioned earlier, we continue to see synergies between the new station locations and private sector development. The station areas become redevelopment opportunities. In our infrastructure sector led by Carl Clayton, IBI continues to innovate as a leader in the field of flood risk assessment and mitigation planning. Natural Resources Canada recently launched a suite of risk modeling tools developed by the IBI called CanFlood, and we are working with them to improve risk knowledge nationwide. CanFlood's solution was born out of our experience conducting large-scale complex risk assessment projects in the country, including a recently awarded flood risk project in the Okanagan watershed and seven community contracts for the Alberta government. To date, we've done some 28 communities in Alberta with 100% RFP win. We are seeing significant increase in demand for industrial infrastructure for supply chain management. This is renewed interest and there is renewed interest in urban facilities as well as large scale developments with proximity to transportation infrastructure. This activity is attributable to supply chain management issues and the desire to build capacity locally. While warehousing is the primary interest, there's also an interest in increasing manufacturing. We're engaged in a number of projects both in Canada as well as the United States. And our transportation infrastructure practice work continues on Toronto's Eglinton LRT, the Cure Ontario LRT, the Scarborough and Yume North subway extension, the Edmonton LRT, and the Tel Aviv Red Line, among others. We are actively getting two new projects in southern Ontario and one in Quebec. We regularly tap specialized technical expertise from our offices to build winning teams and to share resources on projects, meet deadlines, and optimize employee workloads. In terms of our technology pivot, our product portfolio are seeing steady growth, and we continue to review and evaluate new opportunities. We will be launching a firm-wide ideation in early 2022 to further support our pipeline and new and innovative solutions created internally. Our curbside management solution, CurbIQ, is supporting IBI's parking consulting projects in Ontario, British Columbia, and California. CurbIQ is collaborating to receive and analyze parking data to provide real-time analysis to further its predictive parking algorithms. We continue to add clients to our InSpace portfolio this quarter with new clients, including United Way Canada and BDO. We launched a web version of the Workplace Management app, as well as a visitor management system, allowing visitors to register and complete their self-assessments remotely prior to visiting the office. We are seeing continued interest from clients to leverage InSpace to understand occupancy data and employee demand for physical office space. This is a natural extension to and complement to our office interior design practice. As part of our Smart City Sandbox initiative, our switch pilot is now underway and we've seen the interest from a number of real estate developers. The pilot's goal is to demonstrate how EV charging management platforms with bi-directional capabilities can significantly reduce the cost of EV charging for property managers while enhancing the overall efficiency of the grid. Our investment in switch supports ODI's commitment to the environment and reducing carbon emissions It also supports our objective to foster the increased use of EV infrastructure across Canada and beyond, a priority area of interest for Avianne. We're also working on our next virtual sandbox, the Digital Twin Theme, which will be co-hosted with our newest sandbox member, Multiplex, a major developer in Canada. We also look forward to inviting them to this event, which is taking place December 2nd. I would now like to hand the call over to Stephen Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer, to take you through highlights of ByBeyond's financial results for Q3.

Stephen. Thanks for that great overview, Scott. As you heard through Scott's opening remarks, our Q3 results reflect continued positive momentum and strong financial performance. Our net revenue increased by 12% to $109.6 million in the quarter, which includes 6.5% organic growth. And in the first nine months of the year, net revenue increased 13% to $331.7 billion. Our backlog at quarter end remained very healthy at $596 million or 17 months, 11% higher than Q3 2020. IBI's Q3 adjusted EBITDA was 15% higher at $18.7 million or 17.1% of net revenue. reflecting the highest quarterly adjusted EBITDA since we implemented the IFRS 16 accounting change in 2019. Through the first nine months, adjusted EBITDA grew 12% to 53.1 million, or 16% of net revenue. Our net income also grew in Q3, totaling 8.2 million, or 21 cents per fully diluted share. Growth of 24% on a per share basis and 30% on an absolute basis. Vacation time taken by staff in Q3 has been unusually high. Segment revenue and therefore corresponding margin has been reduced from Q2 run rates by approximately 8 million because of this vacation time taken. Staff have been working very hard and this was a bit of a catch up period for them to take vacation. Our corporate segment reported lower costs than usual because we had an accrual for vacation, which we reversed 1.8 million in the quarter to offset all the extra vacation time taken. Intelligence generated Q3 net revenue of 19.6 million, or 1% higher than Q3 2020, and posted adjusted EBITDA of 4.3 million, 16% higher than last year. and representing a healthy 21.8% of net revenue. Recurring revenue related to software support and maintenance totaled $5.2 million in Q3 and $15.6 million to September 30th. Because of the strengthening Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar, these numbers would have been $5.4 million and $16.4 million, respectively, if we'd used constant dollar amounts. We view the recurring billing segments of intelligence as a strong growth driver for IBI, although sales cycles are expected to be longer given governments represent the bulk of our clients for these offerings. However, we continue to direct resources and activity towards expansion of our SAS products and related opportunities to enhance recurring revenue, particularly from data collection. In our building sector, net revenue grew 9% to $54.6 million in Q3, and 10% to $164.4 million in the first nine months of the year, while adjusted EBITDA contracted by 14% in the quarter to $9.3 million or 17% of net revenue for the nine-month period. It grew 11% or for the nine-month period, it grew 11% to $32.4 million or 19.7% of net revenue. Infrastructure net revenue increased 24% in Q3 to $35.2 million and by 29% for the nine-month period to $107.6 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the infrastructure totaled $5 million in Q3, or $14.3 million of net revenue, which was 9% higher than the comparable period. And during the first nine months of 2021, it grew by 45% to $17.5 million, representing $16.3 of net revenue. DSOs at quarter end continued the trend we've been following, reducing to 57 days or eight days lower than the same quarter in 2020. And we anticipate that this will remain relatively stable going forward. Our net debt at September 30th stood at 33.2 million, representing 0.6 times adjusted EBITDA on a trailing 12-month basis. That is using the bank covenant calculation. This is the lowest in many years. Our strong balance sheet has been further complemented by amendments to IBI's credit facility just before the quarter end, which extended the maturity date and added a new $40 million acquisition focus accordion feature, which will give us greater flexibility and drive power that we can use to aggressively pursue strategic and accretive acquisitions design to help accelerate growth and support ongoing expansion. IBI continues to actively identify new acquisition opportunities that leverage our growing intelligence capabilities and that can support our long-term sustainability. Through this process, we will continue targeting earlier stage entry points that feature more favorable valuation multiples rather than higher-priced, latter-stage opportunities, with our ultimate goal being accretive transactions. In addition to potential acquisition opportunities, we plan to allocate free cash flow to other value-creating initiatives, such as further strategic investments in technology and efficiency improvements, as well as continuing with our ongoing normal course issuer bid program. Thank you very much. Scott and I will now take questions.

Operator?

Thank you, sir.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star followed by the two. Please stand by for your first question. Your first question comes from Benoit Poirier of Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, Scott. Good morning, Steve. Good morning, Benoit. Yeah, just to come back on corporate costs, it typically stands at about $3 million on average per quarter, but it seems there was a reversal. You spoke about $1.8 million, but could you provide more color on if there's other elements to add to the 1.8 million and what we should expect going forward in terms of corporate costs.

Corporate costs, you should anticipate that the number will be between three and three and a half million per quarter. That's generally where we run. So there are just a few small other items that impacted that number some of which are things related to deferred share units, stock options, things like that that are attached to the share price and move up and down. But the one big item that I will mention this quarter is that adjustment to vacation to adjust for some of the expenses extra vacation time that was taken by employees over the three-month period.

Okay, okay, perfect. And now when we look at the building, could you talk about the softness of margin in the building segment? I'm just wondering if there's any one-time items, and if you could talk also about your ability to bring the EBITDA margin back in the 20% range.

Well, I mean, um, once again, the unusual factor in the quarter has been, um, uh, of that $8 million number that I mentioned, um, uh, fully half of that would be related to, uh, our buildings practice. So our revenues would have been down by 4 million from the previous quarter and two and a half million from the same quarter in 2020 as a result of the extra vacation time taken there's nothing else of extraordinary in building in the quarter other than you know normal sort of fluctuations which can occur depending on what stage of project particular projects were at okay and

final question looking at organic growth for each business segment it seems that you're on your way to post a double digit increase in 2021 any color for each segment on what we might be expecting for 2022 the um i don't uh let me just reflect a moment here uh certainly uh

In the intelligence area, there is a strong... In all areas, there's a strong pipeline of opportunity. We're not seeing any change in that, especially in Canada, as well as in certain other targeted markets. Intelligence has a... There are a number of pending awards that we're looking forward to that achieve some of our broader objectives. In the buildings area, especially as mentioned in the earlier commentary, we're seeing major planning projects across Canada, but in particular in the greater Toronto area. And it's everything from greenfield, exurban, suburban redevelopment for residential purposes industrial and commercial, as mentioned, there's the explosion in activities related to supply chain management have been noticeable and as well as supportive of our connection across border. And that planning work always leads to subsequent downstream design work. We see that as being very strong and indicative of a strong pipeline of subsequent work. And I've mentioned many times before the over 5,000 acres of land that we have under planning review at the moment, like Vaughan Metro Center and their office. A lot of that is driven by immigration into Canada. And then what we're also seeing, and that's really an interesting sort of phenomenon, that there is a movement to the smaller communities. So long as those smaller communities, and I'm talking about places like Barrie and Collingwood and Guelph, as long as those communities have the necessary infrastructure to support development. So we're seeing greenfield development now taking place that we haven't seen in a long time. So our building slash group, is very busy, and that, as I said, usually ends up with subsequent detailed design work. In the transportation field, we're also seeing work continuing on all the major projects. I've touched on those, and there are major bidding initiatives that were involved in Ontario. Work is going to continue at pace, and then we would be hopeful of some selective wins in the large infrastructure projects. And then we have some of the international work that we're doing where, again, we're seeing there's some, we trust, pending wins that will give us long-term recurring revenue. So, we're feeling very positive across the board. There are certain geographies that We're a little more sensitive too, but we're watching in closely and taking action. But we're feeling generally quite good about the sectors across the board.

Okay. That's great, caller. Thanks very much.

Your next question comes from Mark Stubing of TD.

Please go ahead.

Good morning. Good morning, Scott, Steve. It's Mark on the line here.

Hi, Mark.

Hi. So leverage continues to decline, and obviously you have some capacity and interest in M&A. I'm wondering if you can provide a bit of an update on your current M&A pipeline and just more generally what the landscape is like for M&A at the moment. Are you guys seeing increased competition and increasing in valuations, et cetera?

There's always a pipeline of opportunities. And certainly we sat on the sideline for a number of years. And we're now in a much different position. And again, there are some interesting dynamics at play. So the first is that we're seeing, especially with some of the smaller privately held companies that were the leadership but might be in the latter stages of their career. They've gone through the major recession of the year 2008 and 2009. Now they've gone through the pandemic and they're tired and they are looking to sell. So that creates an opportunity for us. But what we are seeing also is a very significant increase in the interest by traditional larger firms, but also by private equity. And so that is having an impact on the valuations that we're seeing. That being said, the valuation, so Ripple, up the ladder as well. So, they can still be, even though we would be paying more than we might have in the past, they're still quite accretive.

Thank you.

And I noticed you did some share repurchases in the quarter. I wonder if you can discuss the NCIB, how active you expect to be, and generally how the buyback program fits in with your overall capital allocation priorities.

Steve?

Yeah, I mean, the NCIB is there because we don't have a tremendous amount of liquidity in the stock. The NCIB is there for us to go into the marketplace when there is an overhang in the market, there's downward pressure on the stock, we go in and buy. So I wouldn't see that certainly in the next couple of quarters, our activity under the NCIB will be significantly different from what we've seen over the first few months.

Thank you. And last one for me here.

Very healthy net revenue growth on a year-to-date basis, nearly 13%. However, your 2021 net revenue guidance implies Q4 growth of about 5%.

Just wondering if you're expecting a slowdown next quarter or how you should think about that.

Go ahead, Stephen.

I think we're being prudent in that, just as I said, we had a slowdown of vacation because of vacations in the summer. We still have a workforce that's been working pretty hard, and we're anticipating that there will be vacation time taken in November in the U.S., the Thanksgiving period, and then over the Christmas period. We would anticipate that the 435 is a solid number and one that we think we can deliver.

Thank you. That's it for me. Congrats on the quarter. Thanks, Mark.

Your next question comes from Frederick Bassey of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Perfect. Hello. Good morning. Hi there. Guys, your backlog approximates 17 months of work, which far exceeds the range of 10 to 11 months that most firms in the space view as a sweet spot. I guess it's a good problem to have, but I'm just wondering how you're managing this demand. Is it simply a function of adding many multi-year projects in your backlog, or are you really actively looking to add resources, whether it be it organically or inorganically, or perhaps demand more from your staff on a go-forward basis, which could lead to eventually burning out your staff. So I'm just wondering how you're managing this backlog. When do you say no to clients and when do you say yes?

The backlog, yes, it is very much a sweet spot of the industry generally, which is more typically 12 months. And it's certainly well outside of the guidance that I recall many years ago, Frederick, that we used to provide of our business be more in the eight months of backlog. The reason it is what it is is certainly because we have some very major design projects that have long tails of them. The big infrastructure projects, for example. We also have longer-term O&M and technology-related contracts that extend out many years, not the least of which is one example being the Metro Toronto Traffic Operations Center. And that is certainly a key part of our direction going forward to have more of that long-tail business. That being said, though, we are seeing very strong demand that is more traditional, that would be more in the 12-month backlog period, and there is a tremendous demand on our staff for that. And we are looking to hire, and we've certainly hired a significant number of people to address that through this past year. And we're continuing to look to the market to... have the necessary capacity to execute on the work. The other thing we are doing, and we've been, thankfully, very successful at, is really bringing together the team, the company as a whole, to operate as teams around projects. We've never seen this degree of collaboration before, and the pandemic has really opened up some new avenues of an insight into how it works. One of the measurements that we have, Frederick, is a collaboration index. that we calculated, and it's around the amount of work that any office might secure and then how much of that revenue is then shared across the firm. We had originally had a target of something in the order of 20%. We're now in the plus 30%, so our projects are being executed across all of our offices in multiple disciplines in a way that we've never seen before, and that creates new opportunities for us to then acquire staff in different locations so we can target areas where there is more capacity available and where it may be more cost competitive. So there are a multitude of ways that we're addressing the solution. And yes, it is 17 months. It's well beyond the norm, but part of it is explained by the long-term projects that we have, but also In the shorter term, we're looking to hire the capacity to be able to execute. It's not part of our DNA to say no to projects and clients, especially longstanding clients that they themselves are experiencing an upturn in their business. So we really do look to service them. It does help us in negotiating effective contracts with those clients given the circumstances and the circumstances the opportunities that they're seeing and the needs that they have to take advantage of the market.

Thanks, Scott. That's very helpful. There aren't a lot of holes to poke in the quarter, so I will leave it there. Congrats on your continued success.

Thanks, Robert.

Your next question comes from Ian Gillies of Stifle GMP.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Hi, Ian. Hi, Ian. The commentary around the M&A strategy was quite a bit more aggressive this quarter, and diving into the building and infrastructure statement, would you be willing to articulate what sort of services you may be looking to add there that may help the business and may help with cross-selling as we think about that path going forward?

Look, Ian, what we're looking at, Ian, We're not singular minded about the things that we see as creating value. We do look and are looking at smaller technology opportunities or areas that are specialist areas that we can get greater leverage across our geography. But we're also looking at geographical expansion, especially into those market areas that are hotter, if you will. And that certainly is in the U.S., down in the southern states. And sectorally, look, they're the standard areas that have longstanding, that have had longstanding strong performance, transportation, water, wastewater, environment. are certainly key to the kind of acquisitions that we would be looking to acquire, businesses to acquire.

Okay, that's helpful. You kind of led me into my next question in that when I look at the revenue and EBITDA from, call it non-North America, it's just not as strong as what we would see here. And I'm just wondering, what the strategy is for that business moving ahead and whether it's truly core to, to what IBG wants to accomplish over the next few years.

You are right. There are, um, it is a relatively small part of the overall firm of 5% and that covers, uh, Greece, India, the Middle East, uh, and Mexico. Um, there, there, um, We have had some challenges in those markets. There are certain areas that we are seeing an uptick in at the moment. They have historically been strong markets for us. And in certain instances, they also represent sources of capacity for us. That being said, if it is capacity-based, it has to be productive and supportive of the rest of the business. If you're leading to looking to sell any of those operations, I would say no, but we are certainly focused on making sure that they are performing at the levels that we would expect them to perform and contributing to the rest of the firm.

Okay. That's very helpful.

Thanks very much. I appreciate it.

Your next question comes from Troy Sun.

of Laurentian Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, congratulations on the results. Can you please comment on the utilization level of your workforce and how that compares to pre-COVID levels? More importantly, how do you see the utilization progressing in 2022 given the amount of backlog you have?

Sorry, the sound quality was not very good. Can you just repeat the question, please?

Yeah, of course. Can you please comment on the utilization level of your workforce and how that compares to pre-COVID levels? More importantly, how do you foresee the utilization progressing in 2022, given the amount of backlog you have?

The utilization across the firm is very high. what we're seeing is utilization 80%. Relative to pre-COVID, it probably hasn't changed materially. And given the backlog that we have, I don't see it dropping. We are sensitive to any increase in utilization because we certainly have seen through the the period of COVID and the pandemic that staff have been working incredibly hard. And as Stephen had explained that we did see a significant increase in vacation time. However, because we don't measure vacation time in the denominator of utilization, it doesn't show up. But on a go-forward basis, I would expect our utilization, we would target the same degree of utilization across the firm. What we are doing though constantly and in the background is creating, as part of our pivot to technology, is to create the tools and platforms that improve the efficiency of SaaS, that take away the drudgery. And that investment that we made pre-COVID, not only in the core platforms, but in a number of platforms, developments and applications of RPAs and bots and then also in our design technology field have really improved our ability to be productive and consistent with great quality across the front. We are going to continue to make those kinds of investments. And quite frankly, that will continue to be a core part of the strategy of IBM going forward. So that we remove the drudgery for staff and that we really focus on where staff can create the greatest value.

Thank you. That's really helpful. And just secondly, can you maybe also talk about the progress of the real estate strategy you are implementing and whether the projected savings are on track? And also, if possible, can you please comment on the expected impact on EBITDA margin and EPS from the savings heading into 2020?

Sorry. Again, I didn't hear it very clearly. When you said real estate in the first question, can you repeat that question?

Yes. Can you maybe also talk about the progress of the real estate strategy you are implementing and whether the projected savings are on track?

Now, I presume by real estate, you mean by the leases that we have internally. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Look, it... A lot of that, the execution of the ESSA strategy is clearly to reduce our footprint because we are seeing with staff, and it came across in our engagement surveys, that staff are going to be very comfortable with a hybrid form of operations, that is, working from home as well as needing engagement in the office. And that offers us an opportunity, as we have stated before, to reduce our footprint. The ability to execute on that strategy, though, is largely driven by the renewal of leases. And I can share with you that where we have to date been going through where leases have come to and we have been making new provisions for real estate, at least leased up space, that we are on track, that we are seeing reductions that are anywhere from 30 to 50%. where we are making the adjustments. So we are following that original strategy, and I don't see that that will change. Was there a second part to your question that I also didn't get?

Yes, Scott. The question was whether we were giving guidance on what the impact would be on EBITDA for 2022. We don't give guidance on specific line items like that. So we're not commenting on that at this point in time.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks, Madhukala. And lastly, can you please talk about the bidding pipeline for future intelligence vertical work, especially on the sales revenue side? Particularly, what are the types of conversations you are having with clients now with respect to your sales products, and what is the journal reception from clients? That's it. Thanks.

Well, the SAS products are quite varied in terms of their targets. Some are more focused on government organizations like the TravelIQ platform. And by investing in the product in TravelIQ, we have had tremendous success with it in that because it is a SAS product, we're able to configure new clients on it very quickly. And also, as we configure new clients on it, it becomes ever more, the margins improve ever more. We have other products that, for example, on InSpace, which is a workplace management system, complement to our interiors office design work. We have, in the past year, understand that this is a product that we only launched a little over a year ago, that we have over 4,000 end users. Those are actual individuals who are benefiting from the system. We have a completely different marketing strategy for that relative to, say, our government work, which is tied around projects and government funding and programs, which you know well in advance, but they have long sales cycles. In that case, it is usually very much a digital strategy. We use Salesforce. We have developed a long funnel of clients. We're using all forms of digital media to identify clients and then pursue them in a very focused way. And that has been an interesting and beneficial experience for us. and we're getting results from it. So on a go-forward basis, we'll continue to use the right kinds of channels to market. And I should say in the case of N-Space, we're going directly as IBI. We're also going through our interiors people as a channel to market. But we are also working with furniture companies, office furniture companies. where in-space becomes a white-labeled add-on to their offerings to the client. So we're taking a much different approach with those kinds of SaaS products where it is more end-user-focused or private-sector-driven.

So no single solution. Thank you.

There are no further questions from the phone line, so I will turn the conference back over to Mr. Stewart. Please go ahead, sir.

I want to thank everybody for joining us today, and I wish everybody a great weekend. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today.

We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.