Alithya Group Inc. ($ALYA)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Alithya's Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal 2026 Results Conference Call. Thank you for joining us this morning. The press release, along with the MD&A containing condensed financial statements and related notes was published this morning and is now accessible on our website. The presentation can also be found on our website in the Investors section. Please be advised that this call will contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These statements include our estimates, plans, expectations and statements regarding future growth, operational results, performance and business prospects that do not solely relate to historical facts. These statements may also refer to future events, including expectations around client demand, business opportunities, leveraging our services, IP, AI and expertise to meet client needs, excelling in a competitive market, achieving our 3-year strategic plan and deploying our smart shore capabilities. For more information, please refer to the cautionary note included in our presentation and the forward-looking statements and Risk and Uncertainties sections of our MD&A, which are accessible on our website. All figures discussed on today's call are in Canadian dollars, unless stated otherwise, and we may refer to certain indicators that are non-IFRS measures. Please refer to the cautionary notes included in our presentation and to the non-IFRS and other financial measures section in our MD&A for more detail. The conference call will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Only questions from the financial community will be addressed. [Operator Instructions] Presenting this morning are Paul Raymond, Alithya's President and Chief Executive Officer; Bernard Dockrill, Chief Operating Officer; and Pierre Blanchette, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Paul Raymond. Paul?

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Dominic. Thank you for joining us today. Before reviewing our results, I want to begin by thanking our teams for their continued discipline and commitment to our clients' success. Their expertise and dedication remains central to our ability to deliver mission-critical projects and to advance our long-term strategy. In the fourth quarter, we remained and maintain a strong focus on execution while continuing to shift our business towards higher-value services and improving our gross margin profile. For the full fiscal year, we made progress in strengthening our business fundamentals. Revenues and gross margin increased year-over-year and adjusted net earnings remained stable. These results reflect the discipline of our teams, the continued evolution of our portfolio, the steady increase of AI activities and the integration of the recent eVerge and XRM Vision acquisitions. We remain focused on advancing our industry-first approach and supporting our clients in their AI and digital transformation initiatives. Demand for integrated capabilities across data, enterprise application and cloud continues to evolve, and we are well positioned to meet these needs as a trusted advisor. In parallel, we've continued to strengthen our internal capabilities with AI and upskilling for everyone to enhance how we deliver for clients and drive efficiency across our operations. And with that, I will now turn it over to Pierre for the financial highlights of the quarter, followed by Bernard with an update on operations. Pierre?

Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. Before looking at our fourth quarter, I want to provide an update on the divestiture of Datum. On March 31, we sold all the shares of Datum in exchange for a minority equity interest in the capital of Medivra Holdings. Prior to the transaction, we recorded an impairment of intangibles of $3.1 million. In fiscal 2026, Datum represented close to $15 million in revenue and $1.2 million in EBITDA. This transaction is aligned with our long-term strategy as we are focused on the growth of our core activities. I would also like to highlight an important update on our internal controls. As disclosed in fiscal 2025, we had identified a material weakness related to control activities in our revenue processes for fixed fee and time and material arrangements applying the input method. This weakness did not result in any material errors. During fiscal 2026, we enhanced the design and implementation of controls. Management completed testing of the operating effectiveness of these enhanced controls during the fourth quarter, and we have concluded that the material weakness has been remediated. Now turning to financial highlights for our fourth quarter's results. In the quarter, we delivered $113.8 million of revenue, down 9.2% year-over-year. It is important to note that the fourth quarter for fiscal 2025 was unusually strong as a higher number of project go-lives drove elevated revenue in that period, creating a tougher year-over-year comparison. Gross margin as a percentage of revenue reached 37.8% in the quarter, up from 36.8% last year. Both periods were positively impacted by the recognition of tax credits. There was a more significant contribution in Q4 2026 as $5.8 million of nonrefundable tax credits were recognized as they are available for carryforward. While this supported a year-over-year increase of our gross margin as a percentage of revenue, our margin remains solid at 32.7% when excluding the recognition of the tax credit in Q4. Looking at our performance by segment. Revenues in the United States reached $55.6 million, up 2.6% compared to the same quarter last year. In constant currency, the revenue would have been $58.2 million in Q4 2026, up 7.5%. The increase was due primarily to revenue from eVerge since its acquisition and organic growth in Enterprise Transformation Services. This was achieved despite a lower contribution by Datum, which was disposed of on March 31, 2026, reflecting momentum in our U.S. segment. In the U.S., gross margin as a percentage of revenue decreased compared to the same quarter last year, primarily due to a lower contribution by Datum, partially offset by the increased use of our smart shore capabilities. In Canada, revenues were $49.7 million, down 24% on a year-over-year basis. This change is mainly due to reduced revenue from government contracts and client projects reaching maturity as we have chosen not to renew lower margin work awarded primarily on price. Gross margin increased as a percentage of revenue compared to the same quarter last year, mainly due to the recognition of nonrefundable tax credits and a proportionately larger decrease in the use of subcontractors compared to permanent employees. In our International segment, we delivered $8.5 million in revenue, up 49.1% compared to the same period last year. In constant currency, the revenue would have been $8 million in Q4, up 39.2%. Gross margin as a percentage of revenues increased compared to the same quarter last year, mainly due to additional enterprise transformation services delivered in this segment. Now looking at SG&A. In the fourth quarter, SG&A totaled $31.8 million, an increase of $2.1 million or 7.1% year-over-year, primarily driven by SG&A related to the eVerge acquisition as well as higher share-based compensation, professional fees and employee compensation costs. This resulted in SG&A as a percentage of revenue of 28% compared to 23.7% in the same period last year. Turning to adjusted EBITDA. We reported $12.7 million or 11.1% of revenue in Q4 compared to $18 million or 14.4% of revenue last year. The decrease reflects lower revenue and gross margin as well as higher SG&A expense, as explained earlier. The recognition of nonrefundable tax credits in the amount of $5.8 million, net of the triggered variable compensation of $4.5 million had a positive net impact of $1.3 million in the adjusted EBITDA for the three [ years ] ended March 31, 2026. Net loss for the quarter was $8.7 million compared to net earnings of $8 million in the same period last year. The increased loss was mainly driven by the decreased gross margin caused by lower revenue and decreased utilization rates, partially offset by the recognition of nonrefundable tax credits related to prior years available for carryforward, increased selling, general and admin expenses, increased business acquisition, integration and reorg costs and increased income tax expense, partially offset by the decreased depreciation and amortization of intangibles and increased foreign exchange gain. To conclude on our results, adjusted net earnings came in at $7.7 million or $0.08 per share compared to $12.2 million or $0.12 per share in the prior year. Turning to cash flow and financial position. Net cash from operating activities was $3.5 million in the quarter compared to $17.1 million for the same quarter last year. The variance is explained mainly by lower cash conversion in Q4 due to unfavorable working capital variation and a lower profitability. In the fourth quarter, we pursued our normal course issuer bid, which allows us to purchase shares under certain conditions set by the TSX. As at March 31, 2026, approximately 3.2 million shares were purchased for cancellation. This number includes approximately 2.5 million shares purchased for cancellation as part of the Datum transaction. As of March 31, 2026, our net debt amounted to $1.8 million, and our leverage ratio came out at 2.4x net debt over the trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA, all within Alithya's targeted level -- leverage levels. We believe this provides sufficient flexibility to support our operation and strategic priorities going forward. I will now turn things to Bernard for operational highlights.

[indiscernible] Pierre, and good morning to everyone with us today. I want to begin by thanking the Alithya team for their commitment and execution throughout fiscal 2026. In the fourth quarter, we continued to execute with discipline while investing in our industry-led offerings, partnerships and IP that strengthened our ability to deliver higher value transformation work and better long-term margin potential. To support this strategy, we strengthened our leadership team in two areas that are central to our execution with the addition of [ Benoit Godmaire ] and Sasidhar Nayudu. Benoit is aligning our business and IT consulting teams across Canada, the United States and France to strengthen industry-led offerings, improve go-to-market consistency and support the Canadian segment's return to healthier growth. Sasidhar is working across all Alithya divisions to strengthen our industry go-to-market strategy, improve account planning and accelerate cross-selling into larger multi-practice opportunities. Together, they bring deep IT services growth experience and strengthen the commercial capabilities we need to improve sales execution, increase cross-sell and build a higher quality revenue mix. I'll now turn to bookings. Fourth quarter bookings were $94.3 million, and full year bookings were $434.2 million, representing a book-to-bill of 0.83 in the quarter and 0.91 on a trailing 12-month basis. Excluding revenue associated with the 2 long-term contracts acquired in the first quarter of fiscal 2022, fourth quarter book-to-bill was 0.90 and trailing 12-month book-to-bill was 1.0, which better reflects the current period commercial activity. Fourth quarter bookings were $33.9 million in Canada, $56.7 million in the United States and $3.7 million internationally. Our pipeline of qualified opportunities was stable sequentially, within that pipeline, client conversations continue to shift toward modernization, cloud transformation and AI adoption as organizations recognize that AI value depends on addressing legacy applications, data, workflow and business rules. As a result, modernization is becoming a strategic business priority rather than discretionary technology spend. We are seeing demand concentrate around application modernization and cloud transformation with AI increasingly serving as a catalyst for broader, higher-value transformation programs. I will now turn to our U.S. and Canadian operating segments, where the performance dynamics remain distinct. As Pierre noted, the U.S. segment continued to grow, supported by demand across both our Oracle and Microsoft practices in our core industries, health care, financial services and manufacturing and by the broader enterprise transformation needs of our clients. One year after completing the eVerge acquisition, integration has progressed well, and the combined capabilities are expanding our access to larger enterprise opportunities that neither organization could have pursued as effectively on its own. We continue to see an emerging opportunity in construction and engineering, where investment in data centers, energy infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and other large-scale projects is increasing demand for end-to-end project visibility and control. These clients need integrated platforms that improve capital allocation, cost control, resource planning and governance while reducing execution risk. Alithya's capabilities in ERP, EPM, scheduling and operational analytics align well with these complex higher-value transformation needs. In our Microsoft practice, we achieved the Microsoft Copilot specialization, which strengthens our credibility in enterprise AI deployments. Together with close Microsoft alignment, this is helping us expand Copilot and AI-related work, including assisting 9 Fortune 500 companies as well as health care and public sector organizations. Clients are increasingly looking to deploy AI inside core enterprise platforms, not as isolated pilots, but as part of broader efforts to improve productivity, automate workflows and modernize business processes. For a leading global development bank, our Copilot literacy and adoption program drove strong results with 90% of users actively using Copilot in their daily work. The clients saw productivity improvements through a reduced manual effort, faster access to information and quicker execution of core tasks. For our manufacturing client, we developed an AI agent that gives sales leaders real-time mobile access to customer and pipeline data, helping align production more quickly with demand. This is a good example of how AI can extend the value of existing enterprise data and workflows. We also continue to invest in AI-enabled delivery assets. In the fourth quarter, we introduced Alithya Fabric Express, a proprietary accelerator that shortens the time required to prepare data for analytics and AI. For clients, it enables faster access to reliable data. For Alithya, it supports more repeatable delivery, reduces execution risk and can improve delivery economics over time as we scale across our client base. In Canada, our repositioning toward higher-margin services continues to progress. We have deliberately exited low-value commoditized work, particularly in the Quebec public sector, where we are no longer competing on price alone. That decision continues to weigh on revenue in the near term as higher quality replacement work has taken longer to ramp in the current Quebec market; however, the mix is improving, and we believe this repositioning is necessary to support a healthier margin profile over time. Our AWS partnership in Canada supports this repositioning by improving our access to modernization and cloud-led engagements with stronger economics and deeper client relationships. During the quarter, we achieved the AWS migration and modernization competency, which strengthens our credibility in large-scale cloud modernization pursuits. Cross-selling is also expanding the opportunity set in Canada. The addition of Salesforce capabilities through eVerge is creating momentum in Quebec and across the broader Canadian market, contributing to a pipeline of larger multi-practice opportunities with stronger margin potential. Outside Quebec, performance remained steady in nuclear and financial services, supported by renewals with key accounts. For one of Canada's 6 largest banks, we renewed a long-term Azure cloud support contract covering application deployment, automated CI/CD pipelines and ongoing support. To close, we continue to strengthen our delivery model. Expanding smart shore and increasing the use of AI delivery are improving efficiency, scalability and execution consistency. Our smart shore centers now represent approximately 13% of our workforce, giving us a stronger platform to support profitable growth and more scalable delivery. In parallel, we completed our mandatory AI training across our workforce, equipping our teams to apply AI more consistently in client delivery and internal operations. Overall, we are encouraged by the consistency of our execution. While some parts of the business remain in transition, particularly in Canada, we are making deliberate choices to improve revenue quality, strengthen delivery scalability and build a higher-value business with better margin potential over time. I will now turn it back to Paul for closing comments. Paul?

Thank you, Bernard. So to conclude, this quarter reflects the discipline of our teams as we continue to execute on our strategic plan. Across the organization, we're strengthening our foundations and continuing to evolve our business towards higher-value engagements. Our industry-first approach, combined with our investments in AI, data and proprietary capabilities is enhancing our position as a trusted advisor for complex transformation initiatives. While the environment continues to evolve, we remain focused on what we can control: execution, delivery excellence and the continued advancement of our model. We believe the actions we are taking today support the long-term strategy of the business. And with that, I will now open the line for questions. Dominic?

[Operator Instructions] First question would be from Kevin Krishnaratne at Scotiabank.

A quick question. Did you mention that you grew organically in the U.S., and I think that's despite some of the tough comps. So number one, is that what you said? And if so, can you just talk about the main drivers in that? Was there anything onetime in nature? Because I also think you mentioned that you still saw a lower number of go-lives year-over-year.

Yes. Thank you for the question, Kevin. Yes, there was some organic growth in the U.S. That growth and that we provided the numbers in constant currency because it's impacted by currency in Q4. Part of the growth came from the eVerge acquisition and part of it was organic across the board in both Oracle and Microsoft business. The comment on the go-lives is just that last year in the same quarter, we had a record number of go-lives, and that's why the year-over-year comparison we said is tough to beat, as I mentioned in previous calls.

And Kevin, it's Pierre. We also -- in the prepared remarks, we identified that our Datum subsidiary was a detractor in Q4 in terms of growth. So we have to take the 7% year-over-year on constant currency. You have to take into account that it includes a declining Datum subsidiary.

If you remove Datum, the organic growth is actually a lot more significant.

Yes. No, that's good to hear. And so even though you're running a lower number of go-lives, you also talk about the combined entity now is able to compete on larger opportunities. So are you seeing like the average deal sizes ticking up?

Well, I can give you an example specific to eVerge. So when we acquired eVerge, as we mentioned, they had two businesses. One was Oracle, specifically in the construction engineering sector and a Salesforce practice. Today, we're going after Salesforce projects that are almost the size of eVerge's total revenue at the time we acquired them. So the combined entity gives us access to much larger projects that Alithya could not have chased alone and eVerge could not have chased alone either. So again, we're trying to demonstrate the power of the platform when we do the right acquisitions.

Got you. Okay. Good to hear. The second maybe related question and maybe we can talk about where you think you're going to go going forward. You did mention that your pipeline was stable sequentially. I don't know if that was for the U.S. or the company overall. But do we start to see that pipeline grow in the next quarter? And then remind us if you're still seeing the dynamic where customers may be phasing their projects and maybe you're getting recognition, small recognition upfront, if you're still seeing that dynamic? And again, just comment on what you're seeing in the pipeline.

So two questions in there. The first one, and maybe I'll go back to Bernard's comments earlier in the statements that I wrote. If you look at our bookings, in the U.S. versus Canada, and you do the quick math, our book-to-bill in the U.S. is above 1 and our book-to-bill in Canada is below 1. Again, there are two things in that. One is it reflects the mix of business. So in the U.S., we're 100% focused on the higher-margin mission-critical enterprise software projects, which are growing because as Bernard was mentioning, people who want to roll out AI at scale need a system of reference that has clean and coherent data across the enterprise. In Canada, we're still in a transition, especially in Quebec. So the bookings and the funnel has changed. But if you look at our overall sales funnel, it's very consistent in terms of size, but the type of deals in there have changed. So in Canada, again, they're evolving to higher-margin type projects. In the U.S., it's growing the same.

Next question will be from Jerome Dubreuil at Desjardins Capital Markets.

Yes. First question for me is a broader question on AI. And it's really industry-wide, so not specific to Alithya necessarily, but one would think we could see urgency from the companies to organize their data to eventually benefit from AI, but we're not quite seeing it in the industry's results so far. So it seems maybe like AI solutions aren't mature yet or not mature enough to convince the corporate side. What do you think is giving the buyers pause at this time industry-wide?

Great question, Jerome. And as you've heard on this call before, and if you've read any of the writings that I've published, I've been saying since the beginning that there's a lot of hype in the speed of adoption. I am a strong believer AI is going to change everything; however, the speed of adoption, I think, has been overhyped in certain areas. So let me give you a few very easy examples. Bernard mentioned the Copilot adoption. So we're one of the select few at Microsoft that are certified to roll out Copilot in large organizations, and we do that in very large organizations in the U.S., Fortune 1000 type companies. And the size of those projects are not significant. I mean they're not in the millions of dollars. So even though we have several dozen opportunities in the funnel and completions of those types of projects under our belt, I mean they don't move the dial on a larger scale. They will eventually as people start using it and then see the potential, but they don't move the scale in the short term, the needle in the short term. The issue is in the world that we're in, there are two speeds of adoption of AI. And again, I've been saying this, in regulated industries, changing how you do work and what you automate is very much driven by regulation. And in regulated environments, it is very difficult to make sure that you follow all the regulations, you get all the authorities to approve what you do and so on and so forth. So -- is it going to get there? Absolutely. Are there areas, so if you're in a software development world today, huge change, right, because you can automate coding. We're not software developers. We're integrators. So it's impacting everything that we do. We can do things faster. If you look at the company headcount today versus what it was 5 years ago, we're significantly lower, but we're doing higher value type work. So you're going to keep seeing that. Where we see the opportunity, the biggest opportunity in our industry as system integrators in regulated industries, and I've mentioned this before, is going to be the modernization of legacy systems. The tools from companies like AWS and Google and Microsoft today enable us to modernize legacy in a cost-effective way that was not possible 4 years ago. So however, before a bank or a large insurance company or somebody decides to modernize all of their legacy platforms, as you can imagine, there's a lot of regulatory hurdles that you have to go through to make sure you don't break anything along the way. So I think that's going to be the biggest opportunity for companies like us, and it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to be gradual. That's why we've invested in that. That's why we're working with hyperscalers like AWS, the new certification that Bernard just mentioned, why we're actually helping Microsoft, AWS, Oracle develop their own AI tools and AI agents and interfaces to integrate their tools better. So that's where we're -- we really are positioning ourselves for the long term by getting embedded with the hyperscalers around these things. So yes, it's going to get there and not at the speed that a lot of people are hyping. That's my view of what's happening out there, if that helps.

Yes, that's a great answer, Paul. I have two more. Can you dive a bit into the agentic model? I think Bernard mentioned that you've built agents for some of the clients. What is the model exactly for monetization? Are these kind of still time and materials type of work? Or is there some sort of recurring revenue that can be earned from the agents you've built?

I can -- I'll let Bernard answer the client, but I'll give you a simple example for a very, very large grocery chain in the U.S., we basically replace their customer call center completely. So it's all AI-driven. It's on the Microsoft platform. Somebody calls that organization. It's -- you're not talking to a human. You wouldn't know it, but you're not talking to a human. The resolution rate has gone up dramatically. The client satisfaction rate has gone up dramatically. So I think there's some areas like that, that are very easy to do. I'll let Bernard comment on the contractual model.

Yes. So on the commercial model, Jerome, it's a number of things there. I know your question is specific to are we looking at recurring revenue from agents. Right now, again, on the adoption stuff, it's more on the services side, which could be on an outcome-based fixed price or time materials model. And the other areas we are is extending our partners' IP as well. And in my prepared remarks, I also spoke about [ Fabric Express, ] which is an AI-enabled product that we build internally, which, again, it helps us in our delivery. So again, we go to outcome-based pricing there allows us to change the economic models as we continue to reuse this product across our client base. But right now, I don't see in our portfolio, a large volume of recurring revenue from the deployment of agents. I do think the market will get there over time.

Okay. Great. And then last one for me. Last quarter, you made sure to highlight that 4Q was a tough comp. Any comments you want to be making on the first quarter, which ends in 19 days?

Yes. Good try, as you know, we don't provide guidance. I mean we never have, I know it's something that people would like. I just -- at the size of the business that we're at, we don't see it as something that would add value.

Next question will be from Gavin Fairweather.

Maybe just on Canada, could you just put some more meat on the bone in terms of the plans under new leadership, maybe touching on kind of your workforce skills and how well aligned they are with where you're trying to take the business? Maybe talk about the go-to-market evolution and what verticals you're targeting for growth? And any comments around time lines on the plan?

Sure. I'll let Bernard comment on that, and I'll add a little thing at the end.

Great. So with the new leadership, it really -- one of the things that's core to our plan here is to cross-sell more of our higher-value enterprise transformation services into the Quebec and Canadian market. So with the addition of Benoit, looking to bring that and really accelerate our cross-selling. And Sasidhar's position is directly related to that too, as far as pushing some of these enterprise transformation services into those markets. We will continue to focus on the markets where we have strong presence in the Canadian market. So financial services and insurance and energy, nuclear will definitely be core focuses for us as we continue to grow. As you know, we also have a large agreement in the telecom space as well. So those will be our core focuses. And the other area where our enterprise transformation is really strong is in the manufacturing space. So where we can bring those higher-value services into the Canadian market, that is a strong focus for us.

And at the end of the day, Gavin, maybe just to add to that, what really matters to us is the mix. And the mix is improving. And Bernard, we brought in new leadership in Canada. So the team is focused on rebuilding the Quebec business, but we're rebuilding it on a healthier margin, right, and better revenue quality rather than chasing volume.

Yes. Understood. And then maybe for Pierre, can you just help me understand the tax credits and how that work? Is this just a seasonal factor that comes up every Q4? Is it something which can play out in the other quarters of the year? Should we expect it next year? Maybe just help us understand that because it does seem to create some volatility here in the fourth quarter in particular.

Yes, Gavin, I can explain. There's 2 parts to the credits. There's a refundable and a nonrefundable. The refundable, we accrue based on the work that we do. It's a subsidy on salary basically. But at the end of the year, there's a -- when you total it up, there's a nonrefundable portion. And this quarter, we recognized nonrefundable that we will be able to apply on future years. And we will repeat that every year, keeping the pool of nonrefundable on our balance sheet until it's depleted. So it's going to be recurring. The size won't be the same, it's based on our forecast profile and tax profile for the future years. But it's going to be recurring, and there's 2 components. So one is every quarter. The other one we assess at year-end.

Very helpful. And I'm not sure what to take this maybe, Paul or maybe Bernard. But if you look at your revenue breakdown, you are largely still a time and materials business, but we've been talking about the shift to value and outcome-based pricing model. Maybe you can just discuss how those conversations are going with clients, how open they are to it and how you expect your mix to shift over time?

Yes, great question. Another thing that made a lot of noise in the past few months, we're not seeing a lot of it, Gavin. We -- about 40% of our business today is fixed price or managed like a fixed price. But I think we're still far from outcomes-based personally. We do offer it to some clients. Where it gets complicated is when the procurement department gets involved, and they have no way to deal with that yet. So I'm looking forward to the day where outcomes-based is driving everything that we're doing, but it's still significantly time and material based.

Next question will be from Robert Goff at Acumen Capital.

A question -- and this isn't a forward-looking question so much, but it helped that we were aware that Q4 a year ago was an exceptional quarter for new bookings. How would you characterize Q1 of '26 when we are looking -- well, just how would you characterize Q1 of '26 in terms of bookings levels or new launch levels?

Good try, Rob. You've been talking about your role too much. We don't -- we're not going to provide guidance on our visibility on Q1, sorry.

Okay. No, it wasn't so much this year, but rather just for last year, but I will jump ahead. Can I ask you on the M&A side? How...

Sorry, Rob, last year is public, if you go in the press release, I don't remember by heart the last year, but it's available...

In terms of acquisitions, how is the pipeline? How are valuations? What is your thinking?

Well, if our valuation is any indication, the market is very interesting right now. You can see our counterparts in the whole industry, the way things are looking. We have a healthy funnel. So we're always pursuing. It's in our strategy. We've mentioned it before. However, all 3 key conditions have to be met. One is we have to agree on the price. Two, they have to be for sale. And three, we need to find a tuck-in where management wants to stick around and grow. And we've had examples in the past, and you've been witnessed to them that have worked very well and others that haven't worked so well. And usually, it's because one of those conditions didn't pan out. So we're very, very disciplined on spending our money wisely, given we're doing them mostly in cash right now. So yes, I think there's nice opportunities out there.

Very good. And how would you characterize the early-stage RFP pipeline? Does it seem to be strengthening, shifting in any way?

I'll let Bernard take that one on, Rob.

Yes. As I mentioned, our pipeline is stable from last quarter. So I think that remains kind of where we were on a consistent basis.

Maybe Bernard can comment on the way the deals are being broken up by some clients.

Yes. Yes, I think it was a question that Jerome had asked earlier as well on the breakup of deals. And we are seeing that. So deals enter our pipeline much larger than how the original deal closes, and it closes over multiple phases. It's a trend we've talked about on this call several times previously. And it continues to happen as we get there, there's a cautious step forward. But we do eventually sign the full size of the deals. We prove out the first phase, second phase and typically by the third phase, the full contract is signed. So we do see that in the larger enterprise transformation deals.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we have no other questions, which concludes our conference call for today. We'd like to thank you for attending and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a good day.