The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (IPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everybody. I'm Ben Swinburne, Morgan Stanley's media analyst. Hello, overseas, and hello for those in the States. A quick disclosure statement. Please note that important disclosures, including my personal holdings disclosures and Morgan Stanley disclosures all appear on the Morgan Stanley website. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley salesperson. And we are excited to welcome back to the virtual Barcelona conference, TMT Conference, Philippe Krakowsky. Philippe is the Chief Executive Officer of the Interpublic Group, which is one of the world's premier advertising and marketing services companies with agency brands covering the spectrum of marketing disciplines and specialties. And Philippe assumed the role of CEO, Philippe, now I want to make sure I get this right, is it the start of 2021?

No, 2020. No -- I think it was the start of '20. Yes, pandemic time kind of gets us all little confused, doesn't it?

Feels like longer than that. I'm sure you'd probably agree. Anyway, Philippe, it's great to see you, and thank you for being here.

Well, look, thank you. I mean it's good to be with you again. And as we were saying just a minute ago, hopefully, next time in person and definitely there are worst places to be in Barcelona, so knock wood.

Yes, absolutely. So let's get into the conversation. As you think about your company at Interpublic Group beyond the pandemic, which is overall kind of trying to get there, and rooting for it. What do you think have been the major changes to the business over the past 18 months, marketing services in general? And specifically, the strategic priorities you have for the company, how have they evolved and changed over the course of this past couple of years?

Well, I mean, I'd say that from the outset of the pandemic, the goal that we set, and it was very specific to the crisis because I think that within the context of your broader question, we've been really clear for some time about ways in which we thought that technology, the advent of data was transforming our business and what we were doing about it. And I'm sure we'll talk about that at length. But specific to the pandemic, what we said is we want to come out on the other side of the crisis as a stronger company. And so I would say that, that's a strategic value of the offerings that keep your own organizational values intact because as a professional services business, I think that the talent is such an important part of what we bring to the table and then kind of our culture and how we show up as an organization is really important. And then I think the third piece of that would be the financial health of the business, right? So margin profile, balance sheet. And so wherever we are on the -- are we on the other side of this yet, I think we've accomplished that objective. And then at a very macro level, strategically, I'd say things that have been a part of this story for a long time, stay the same or, as I said, talent and continuing to attract the caliber of talent that's required to help clients and to help clients solve an increasingly higher order set of business questions. So that's a differentiator. And now I think what changes is that we want to -- obviously, as we are broadening the palette of what we do with data and tech expertise, what that means is the range of the talent we source kind of is evolving, right? So I think that's one big piece of where we're going. I think another one is the kind of client centricity of what we do. So that's always going to be the lens through which we see decisions we make inside of our business. And then I think the last piece that's consistent is this sense that we want to be the systems integrator, the kind of marketing systems integrator for clients. And so that's a long-standing, well-established priority of ours, and we do that through this thing that we call open architecture, which are custom-built teams that draw from the talent from across our portfolio. So those are probably the stay the same, very consistent over time. And then although it's not a difference in the trajectory we've been on, maybe the fact that the pandemic has accelerated so much, digital behavior, we knew was coming in many ways, the need to connect with people in a very, very immediate way. And so the D2C trend that we're clearly seeing. So I think that -- It's not a different direction of travel, but maybe quickening the pace along that path. So we prioritized the data and technology layer inside the company. We've been building that for some time. Everything that we do kind of needs to be more precise and more accountable, right? Then I'd say that another area that is important, we're going to go faster and where we've got some strengths, is this idea of focusing on data ethics and consumer privacy, right? So I think that as marketers are navigating this very complex environment and they want to connect with consumers in ways that drive results, they have to do it in a way that is both going to comply with a regulatory landscape that's changing really fast, but also with, I think, expectations on the part of individual consumers that are also maturing. And then I think the last thing -- this is such a great question because it's a very broad question, but it's a very substantive question, is that it's combining the craft skills and marketing services with the sort of precision of data and technology, right? So you've got this super fragmented media marketplace and there's huge demand for content that we're seeing. So creativity matters. It matters a lot, and you want to have very strong capabilities across channels. But it needs to be tied into, delivered as part of something that's holistic, right? So you need to understand where culture is going and then you need to kind of bring it to life in sort of the more and more sophisticated kind of tech and data side of the business, right? And I think the last thing is marketers do appreciate that if you do that, you can attack and you can solve for a broader range of business issues. And so from where we sit, that's net new opportunity. There's a lot of new ways of engaging consultative kinds of engagements, but also compensation that's really performance-based and bringing our IP kind of into the fore and engaging with clients in these new ways. It's a really interesting time.

Yes. So that's a good setup. And I guess the good news is we don't have to talk about your financial stability as we all look to return to capital picking up into next year and all the other great things you guys have done on the...

But that's fair. I mean, look, I think that's a consistent -- that's a bedrock, too, for us, right? It's been the case that we've always been super focused on the fundamentals of the business, and that's continued to be something where we didn't deviate from that in any way during the pandemic time.

Let's talk more about fragmentation, technology and sort of the acceleration you mentioned, Philippe. Now one of the big topics, and I know you've been talking a lot with investors about these things, is what's happening with privacy and just tracking that fragmented audience around the web, which is a really interesting phenomenon. We've seen it through earnings, not in Interpublic Group but elsewhere, impact people's businesses. What's the role of the agency in figuring out how to navigate what is a massive massively complicated situation for your clients? What are they asking you to help them with? And does this give you an opportunity to grow your business faster, which at the end of the day, people are obviously focused on that?

Sure. No. No. I mean I think that's very much the right question. So I mean I would say that, to your point, you want to have this 360 view of consumers, and you want to bring that to bear across this increasingly addressable media universe, which is something that you've been kind of writing and commenting on for some time. So marketers are going to be looking for partners who can help them realize the benefits of that. and as I said, kind of in an appropriate way, right? So from where we sit, we foresaw a number of these things. And so whether that is -- [ pivot ] to a more consultative approach to our media services going back a number of years, an agnostic media model and a transparent media model, again, because you want the recommendations that you give to clients to be ones where they don't have to ask themselves if you're somehow -- a principal is somewhere in that. I mean the digital media landscape is really complex and really opaque. And so a lot -- there isn't necessarily clarity around whether there's a tech tax somewhere or where and how the money is flowing. And if you're the marketer who's making that investment, you want to ally yourself with somebody who's going to just look at that without any sort of vested interest. So I think that we did -- we built that. And then as you know, after having incubated a lot of this internally, we made a very sizable, transformational acquisition with Acxiom. And that was, I think, for us, the moment where we felt that we needed to lean in that hard and be that proactive on this data management expertise piece, right? So I think that if you break it down, I think there's a philosophical thing that I guess I'll just sort of put out there about us and then we'll get into the [ claim ] what are the conversations with clients, right? So if you handle consumer data, no matter where you are in the value chain, you're accountable to kind of a very high level of responsibility of -- because if it passes through you or if you "own it" -- so I think the whole own/rent thing was an odd moment in time because ultimately, you need to do both. And you need -- and even if you just theoretically quote "rent" you're on the hook for everything that comes with that if a client is going to trust you to kind of help them on this journey, right? And then the demise of cookies, again, you could have foreseen it because they are proxies, they're only good -- they were like -- they're the best we had for the longest time. And they eroded pretty quickly in terms of the value as inputs for decision-making. So we would have wanted to move beyond them even in an environment where like it wasn't that they were ultimately allowed to deprecate, right? And so I think that conversations with clients now in the role of the agency is they're saying, "How am I positioned, how do I get more data that is mine, how do I get more value from the data that I have." And based on -- some industries are much more data-rich than others. Some industries engage with sort of consumers in ways that lend themselves to this kind of activity and others are still trying to figure out how to get there. But there's opportunity from where we sit at Interpublic, and I think there's opportunity for companies -- if you can engage with a client and help them figure out how they organize their data, how they manage and activate in the ad tech ecosystem or increasingly across martech, right, because they want understandably to work in a lot of their owned channels, right? And that makes you an increasingly valuable partner. And then I think the next order questions are, can you help them build out kind of a proprietary identity graph, right? They want to gain control of their destiny in this data-driven world. And so if you have skill sets that can help in that regard, that's what I think, again, to our mind, has been a meaningful factor in our strong growth over a couple of years now and what we think is requisite to keep kind of leading the way in that regard, right?

So without the risk of putting words in your mouth, it sounds like complexity around digital is helping IPG's business from a growth point of view. Is that...

Yes. I -- That's fair.

Yes. Okay. And I asked that partly because I think even one of the questions we always get is why is IPG outperforming everybody else, and this has been happening now. It's not a couple of quarters, we've had this for a number of years. And during those years, the whole media market has become more digital, more tech-driven.

Look. An example is we just last quarter, launched something out of Kinesso, which is the place where we kind of build the tech to then pull the data up and make it actionable, and then it connects up into our media agencies. But we launched something we call the Kinesso Intelligence Identity Solution, right? And what that does is it allows us to kind of stitch together data sets, large data sets, that can be a client's first-party CRM data, a lot of what we have proprietary unique access into whether it's because Acxiom has a very, very powerful data set or because we interact with such a broad cross-section of the media universe. And what that's allowing us to do is either drive significant increases in the efficacy with which you can kind of launch a campaign, you can get to the outcomes you're looking for having spent less. You can get a lot more clarity on what you're spending is driving -- or the match rates across those data sets are high and then you can lower your third-party sort of onboarding costs. So all of that, again, is ways -- there are ways in which you're helping clients solve for the kinds of challenges that a very complex modern marketing ecosystem brings with it. I mean, that's a very specific example of what you just said. So instead of just talking about it in a macro sense, right?

Now I think those examples are super helpful. And it was going to be my next question, which is -- I was hoping you could kind of connect Acxiom and this conversation on privacy and data to media, which is obviously the biggest part of your business. You guys are growing revenues faster than your competitors. And I think it seems like that is -- I don't know -- I wouldn't say Acxiom has led to Kinesso or Matterkind, but you've got a number of products that you guys have brought to market that seem to be resonating with clients. You guys are mentioned a lot with -- by the trade desks of the world, which is always at least...

And they're actually going to be, along with Mediabrands, the first partner. And I think credit to them, they're clearly doing some interesting things to maybe provide a universal standard, which we can begin to use to sort of try to get to the next phase of post-cookie, post the mobile ID kind of issues that we'll be facing. But I guess I'd say that the 2 do work hand in hand, right? So within Mediabrands, we had a data, a very strong data and tech capability that we have been building. We were building what was going to be the data stack for the holding company and then the opportunity with Acxiom came along, right? So obviously, I mentioned key because it just happened, and that's the kind of first-party CRM data, map it to these identifiers, higher match rates. But other things that have come from, as you say, this data in tech and media confluence. Matterkind is a really good example of a product offering that has been developed because we've got that combined media and data tech expertise. And so I think I'd boil that one down, again, to bring it to life, as you say, because it's really helpful to say that what had been the programmatic digital media sort of buying month, right? So how do you evolve that? So that was restricted to display. And I think that was also something that was really kind of living in its own silo, right? And so now what we're able to do because we've got the very rich data and the connectivity with that tech layer is create a platform of service that optimizes all addressable channels. And then it can shorten the cycle between when you get the signal and when you take the action. So it's sort of always on. So real time is, I think, always going to be as kind of like Zeno's paradox. Real-time is never going to quite be here, but we're getting tighter and tighter in terms of when we get the input and the sort of latency and when we can do something about it, right? And so that's the place where I think that you get a much more holistic view of what you're doing if you're a marketer because you can pretty much optimize against anything that's addressable and then you can cross ref against that universe. And so again, that's a step up in terms of the way that the business used to be done. So that's kind of holistic and unified. And then -- another one, just one more example before we kind of move on, is we have sort of a product that we refer to as high-value audiences, right? And so what we do is by having these rich data sets and then being able to match them into the publisher ecosystem, what we can do is for specific use cases. So for a specific client or a specific moment in the client's -- in a consumer's journey through a client sort of cycle, you can say, here are ways to basically have much more kind of dynamic segmentation, ensure higher ROI when you're making those investments. And then sometimes we can also sort of identify net new audiences. I mean we think a lot about this as being audience-led. So audiences that you might not have realized are rich in opportunity or audiences, which if you can capture them, have kind of higher lifetime customer value. And so we're clearly -- we're doing some really interesting innovative stuff by putting this to use. And that's why I say, I think, to our mind, it's like a business solution that's not just a -- marketing is a big part of it. It's what drives a lot of it, but then you can start going in interesting places with clients.

And maybe just to put a bow on this sleeve and it's going to connect this for investors, is this driving revenue by driving account wins, share of wallet within your existing clients, all of the above? How does this turn into more revenue?

All of the above. So I mean, I think media, as you said, has been and continues to be a really strong performer for us, right? So I think that's -- so you're seeing net new. But you're also seeing strong growth with existing clients in '21. And then obviously, as clients want to understandably start pulling what they're doing in media, where they're wanting to connect that to their increased -- their e-commerce activity. So there's -- so I think we're turning on new services with existing clients. And then I think the last bit is that we are putting this approach with a deeper understanding of the audience and with the ability to have data-driven decision-making to work across more and more of the portfolio, right? So we're doing it with the e-comm offerings now and with the digital agencies. We're going to be doing more of it with the health care agencies, it's an area, the specialty health care agencies, which is an area of particular strength for us. So I think it's resulting in what you said, which is clients doing more of what we're already doing with them in media, net new wins and then some of these new revenue streams or new kind of ways of engaging commercially.

Yes. Makes sense. Let me ask you -- one of the things as we think about all this exuberant media spending, but also the challenges with technology and some of the things that you guys have put together at IPG is we seem to be in a part of the cycle when ad tech is actually quite substantial and just visibility to clients, visibility to investors, you guys work with tons of partners. And I'm just wondering, you mentioned tech tax earlier, which is sort of the bare case of the ad tech infusion under the business. And I'm old enough to remember not that long ago, a couple of cycles of where we're programmatic and tech taxes and there's was lot of noise in the market from clients being concerned, I guess, is the way to put it, that their money wasn't being spent effectively. Implied, I wouldn't be spending the money with you if it wasn't working. But what do you -- what's your perspective on this in terms of acting as the agent for your clients, making sure their money is being well spent and ensuring that you aren't sort of -- there's not a lot of leakage in client spending through all these different tech platforms that are attaching themselves to what's going on in media right now?

Really, I mean, I think that's a great question because I think in a sense, efficiency was the name of the game for the longest time in media. And I think what's been happening is that the definition of value has been kind of evolving to where it's both about efficiency, but about effectiveness. And then if you lived in a world where we didn't have some of the challenges you just called out, then it would -- ultimately, it should really be all about effectiveness, right? Now that's a ways to go, but -- so I mean, right now, I guess, what I see is that, as you said, there's a lot of -- change and a lot of innovation. And then I think there's also a lot of money that is sort of looking for places to go. And so the fact that, that space has gotten kind of super active and maybe frothy again, it kind of stands to reason. And it might even be a positive sign that we're going to see kind of new innovations and new options, with the metaverse, other ways in which people can share information or have experiences, and I think that will be net -- an opportunity for us. Specific to what you asked now, I think the challenge is kind of -- boils down to what we said, which is like transparency, value, right? So for our clients, what do we do? We help them kind of understand where is tech going to. Of all of the choices that you have, what is truly differentiated and what can help you accomplish your business objectives? Because clearly, it's like a digital economy so you have to be playing in that space. What can not give you reason to be afraid that there's going to be something meaningfully not okay that happens to you, e.g. there's going to be reputational risk if -- whether it's from a brand safety point of view or from a data leakage point of view or -- so clearly, you need to kind of have the technical expertise in-house to vet these platforms. And then also to then kind of leverage an asset -- the assets we've got and the partnerships we've got in terms of saying to -- advising clients what should you have in the way of expertise at the center? Where and how do you build kind of an ecosystem of allies? Which of these platforms are interesting and do we pursue and not? But it always still comes back to like are they robust? Are they transparent? And can they prove value? I think everybody is looking for more options in the space, right? I think people are keen to have both more choice and -- and I also think a lot of our clients are getting much more sophisticated, as I said earlier, about wanting to have their own first-party data, their own proprietary ID graph, so that then when they're showing up, they're leveraging their assets, and then they're able to kind of have the signal ping back into their world and see if stuff is working. But it's not any different than I think it was the first iteration of this. But yes, I mean, there's just a lot, again, complexity and I think, opportunity.

Yes. So do you find yourself both partnering and maybe at times also competing in terms of fees with various platforms, some of which may go direct to the client?

Well, I mean the really large platforms obviously built their businesses by serving an immense universe of clients. And then I think that -- again, I think that smart marketers are looking for ways to kind of spread their bets around, right? And so yes, you're right. We partner where it's appropriate. We've built capabilities of our own. And then the engagement models are really, really sort of different in any -- at any given moment in time. But Trade Desk is a really good partner to us. Some of the martech platforms, we partner well with. But definitely evolving.

Okay. Let's leave media then. And I'll just maybe do a sort of bound the rest of the portfolio quickly to talk about where you think business is exciting and going to grow rapidly and where there maybe are more challenges. Creative comes up a lot. I realize it's kind of attached to media. But I think investors probably view creative as an area where there's been some pressure over the years at the industry level, at least, not that it's not important. And even areas like PR and some of the specialty agencies. Maybe just talk about your expectations for those disciplines at IPG.

That's fair. I mean I mean it's a lot to cover, so I sort of try to just -- I'd say that -- because, as I said, you've got this sort of hyper fragmented world, and because people expect -- think about how much is changing in the content development world, how many new entrants there are turning out long-form entertainment content, right? But I mean -- so content is at a premium, right? And the thing about it, though, to my mind, is that it either needs to be really, really sort of top notch in whatever space you're in. I mean, we happen to have really strong capabilities across our traditional "advertising agencies". So we have a range of choices where clients can come to us and they know that they're getting really outstanding advertising creativity. But the other thing that -- I think the other 2 things you really need are you need a lot of expertise in generating content across all of these channels. And there, for us, that sort of gets filled either by, say, some of our really, really deep digital marketing and RGA, for example, a huge -- so I think content is important, and I think it continues to be important. I think it does need to be connected, right? So what makes it important is that you know who it's reaching and that it is something that for them is either going to inform them or it's going to inspire them or it's going to kind of fill a need because they've got so much choice from a content point of view. So we've been pretty successful in that regard. I mean we've got that -- the digital specialty agencies, we've got strong traditional creative agencies. And because we connect them through, as I said, kind of at the beginning of these custom teams, this open architecture approach, that then gives them, I think, more strategic value and retains the economic value that's there. I think if you just had that, it would lose the relevance, and therefore, kind of be at risk. So I'd say that's what -- the content is going to still be a big part of this and creativity is going to be a big part of it in a focused way and as part of a whole. And then the other sort of skill sets or capabilities, I guess I'd break them down into a couple of areas. I think I touched on kind of digital expert agencies or specialist agencies. We talked a bit about health care. But there, there's also the need for something that is very holistic against clients who are quite sophisticated and want to engage with kind of their audiences kind of across the board, including specialist professional audiences or now some of health care is going to D2C. So that's an area where we're strong. Experiential in event, I think, is an area we're going to look to evolve. So clearly impacted by the pandemic, not yet back at the levels that it was before. But I see it as an area where if you think about hybrid, I were talking before we came on about kind of what's flex work going to be, how are we going to be in office and not all the time. But -- so if you took all the ways that marketers use events and experiences and created line extensions or extensions that make them virtual and hybrid and then also had those experiences be a way in which marketers can bring data on board in a smart, compliant way, that's an area where I think there's kind of the opportunity to evolve the model. And then PR kind of got out ahead of the social media or social networks. So Weber, big, big -- what I guess, 1 of the 2 largest PR firms in the world, which is part of the portfolio. And so the question is now, what's the next turn on that? How do we take that and in a world where influencers are important and where a lot of maybe PR [ clean ] needs to be more kind of connected into our commerce offerings and our digital agencies. So I mean, we see a lot of opportunity, but it has to sort of answer to the -- is it accountable? And is it connected to other parts of the portfolio so that it can help us as clients are looking for these more complex, more robust solutions? Yes. You threw a lot out there on that one. So...

I know, I know. And we could take all of those in different directions, but we'll get we'll run out of time. So I want to maybe bring the conversation down to the nuts and bolts of costs a little bit, maybe a little less and exciting, but still important from your...

Yes, very much so.

So you guys have had a very strong year this year on the top line, but the margins have been much better than we were expecting. I think some of that, as you highlighted, Philippe, on the earnings call a while back is just bringing costs back because revenues will come back faster than expenses, I guess, to make it simple. How do you think about your pace of hiring and return to work from here as we think about the catch-up in costs through into next year?

Look, I mean, I think the single, I think, biggest gating item to the trend or what you just called out, has been the cost -- I mean the revenue growth has been really, really strong. And so keeping up with that has been what we're not. By the same token, we're obviously running a little kind of hotter in freelance to make sure that as we're finding those folks and onboarding them, the work is getting done and clients are getting kind of the service and the deliverables they need. So the cost piece is interesting, right, in that there's so many ins and outs, and '20 and '21 have made it so complicated, right? In that -- And then everything shut down in '20. I think people kind of decided in Q4 of '20 that they were going to start spending again. '21 has been really robust. We took a restructuring and we've been super clear about those are permanent costs. A lot of it was streamlining operational structures and probably also moving away from ways of working that are more rearview mirror and then some of that was real estate. And then as we head into next year, I think that the delta between hiring and the growth will close relatively early in the year. And then T&E will come back into the business, maybe more in a first-quarter, first-half way because there'll be some catch-up. I need to go to Barcelona. But I think that's largely a good thing because I think that it's not just a cost. So being with clients is important, being with clients and hearing what their needs are is important, having our teams together so we can further innovate these new products and new services is important. So say that, that eventually settles back at 70% of where we were in '19. And then when there is growth -- we consistently have demonstrated and are still committed to where there is growth, we can grow the margin on this business. So I think that next year, we'll have some ins and outs, but in the longer term, we still see meaningful upside to margin.

And you and Ellen think you can keep T&E costs under control as sort of the animal spirits come back into this business and hopefully society in general?

We're very focused. We're very disciplined. She and her teams do a great job. And from a systems point of view, we're in a really good place to address that. And we also have, between the 2 of us, a lot of history with most of those operators, whether it's that we've run pieces of the business ourselves, that we are asking for them to be more integrated in some ways. So we're feeling pretty confident. Again, like I said, that notwithstanding the ins and outs of a '21 to '22, we're also -- this year, as you said, performance is really strong. So the accrual for incentives mirrors that. And next year, that will actually be kind of a tailwind for us. But yes, we see where you can run this in the direction that we're going with continued discipline on the cost.

Right. So next year is sort of a cost catch-up year. And then from there, the normal operating leverage of the business should kick in.

And yet next year also benefits from operating leverage because we think there will be growth. Next year benefits from some of these higher-value services coming into play. Look, it's too early for us to lay that out because we're actually literally about to start the forward planning process. But the point in which we pull all of that together, we're going to be really clear with all of you about what does the year look like and how did we get there and what are the ins and outs? And then you'll track that with us as we go into next year.

Maybe just to wrap up, Philippe, as we run out of time, Acxiom, I think was it 3 years ago, I believe, was that deal?

A little over, yes.

Over 3 years, which also feels much longer than that. You guys have been on a deleveraging mission since then. That mission is more or less complete or completing?

It's complete, yes.

Yes. So the world opens up again for you guys in '22 from a capital point of view. You mentioned before, maybe evolving some of your disciplines. How do you think about M&A, either -- even if it's just bolt-ons versus dividend growth and further deleveraging or share repurchases, which I know you gave a nod to on the earnings call.

Yes. I mean, look, I think it's consistent with what -- I mean that's something that definitely doesn't change from the past. So we've always been, I think, really thoughtful and considered when it comes to kind of a balanced approach to this, right? So to our mind, M&A does -- I think, for the longest time, as I said, we incubated it ourselves. We did very focused, sort of thoughtful strategic M&A. When we got to the point in which we felt that something was moving where our ability to possibly -- we were either going to miss a turn or we were going to be catching up and trying to build it ourselves. We did a very sizable and transformational deal. But I think we're back to thoughtful, measured M&A likely in the kind of e-commerce business transformation space or possibly in something like what I mentioned to you where we could take some existing assets that are distinctive to us and really make them part of our sort of data activation story. Dividend, absolutely key, has continued to grow. We kept that going through the pandemic. And then definitely a return to share buyback. And as you said, we've kind of cleared the hurdle that one would logically sort of assume was the one that would then make us look at that really hard. And again, come February, we'll lay all of that out for you. But I think we'll be active in a way that's consistent with what you've seen from us. So like philosophically, that's where we're at. Nothing changes.

Well, we covered a lot of ground. Even mentioned open architecture and metaverse in the early part of the conversation. So we've checked all the boxes that we needed. But Philippe, it was great to see you, and thank you for your time. Appreciate it. And hopefully, we'll be in Barcelona next year.

Well, and -- yes, live sooner than that, but definitely.

Yes. All right, everybody. Well, thank you for your time. And if you have any questions for me or Philippe, you know where to reach out. So thank you very much for joining us.

Appreciate it.