Csg Systems International Inc (CSGS) 2024 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for standing by. My name is Jessica, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to CSG's Q4 and full year 2024 earnings call. (Operator Instructions)

感謝您的支持。我叫潔西卡，今天我將擔任您的會議主持人。現在，我歡迎大家參加 CSG 2024 年第四季和全年財報電話會議。（操作員指令）

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to John Rea, Senior Vice President of Finance. John, you may begin.

現在，我想將電話轉給財務高級副總裁約翰·雷亞 (John Rea)。約翰，你可以開始啦。

Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us. Like last quarter, we will be working from a slide deck, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. Please take a moment to locate these slides.

謝謝接線員，也謝謝大家的加入我們。與上一季一樣，我們將使用投影片進行工作，您可以在我們網站的投資者關係部分找到該投影片。請花一點時間找到這些幻燈片。

Today's discussion will contain a number of forward-looking statements. These include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our projected financial results, our ability to meet our clients' needs through our products, services and performance and our ability to successfully integrate and manage acquired businesses in order to achieve their expected strategic, operating and financial goals. While these risks reflect our best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially.

今天的討論將包含許多前瞻性的陳述。這些包括但不限於有關我們預計的財務業績、我們透過我們的產品、服務和業績滿足客戶需求的能力以及我們成功整合和管理所收購業務以實現其預期策略、營運和財務目標的能力的聲明。雖然這些風險反映了我們目前的最佳判斷，但它們仍受風險和不確定性的影響，可能導致我們的實際結果有重大差異。

Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new or future events. In addition to factors noted during this call, a more comprehensive discussion of our risk factors can be found in today's press release as well as our most recently filed 10-K and 10-Q, which are all available in the Investor Relations section of our website.

請注意，這些前瞻性陳述僅反映我們在本次電話會議之日的觀點，我們不承擔根據新的或未來的事件修改或公開發布對這些前瞻性陳述的任何修訂的義務。除了本次電話會議中提到的因素外，有關我們的風險因素的更全面討論可以在今天的新聞稿以及我們最近提交的 10-K 和 10-Q 中找到，這些文件均可在我們網站的「投資者關係」部分找到。

Also, we will discuss certain financial information that is not prepared in accordance with GAAP. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures, when reviewed in conjunction with our GAAP financial measures, provide investors with greater transparency to the information used by our management team in our financial and operational decision-making. For more information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, we refer you to today's earnings release and non-GAAP reconciliation tables on our website, which will also be furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K.

此外，我們還將討論某些未依照 GAAP 編製的財務資訊。我們相信，這些非公認會計準則財務指標與我們的公認會計準則財務指標一起審查時，可以為投資者提供更大的透明度，使他們能夠了解我們的管理團隊在財務和營運決策中所使用的資訊。有關我們使用非公認會計準則 (non-GAAP) 財務指標的更多信息，請參閱我們網站上今天的收益報告和非公認會計準則 (non-GAAP) 對錶，這些內容也將以 8-K 表格的形式提供給美國證券交易委員會 (SEC)。

With me today on the phone are Brian Shepherd, Chief Executive Officer; and Hai Tran, Chief Financial Officer. With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Brian.

今天與我通電話的是執行長 Brian Shepherd；以及財務長 Hai Tran。說完這些，我現在想把電話轉給布萊恩。

Thanks John Hi everyone. Welcome to the call. As we begin on the revenue side, we grew Q4 year-over-year organic revenue 5% with 7% total revenue growth, setting a new CSG record for quarterly revenue of $317 million for the quarter. A giant thank you to CSG employees around the world for the strong sales and revenue results in Q4. On the profitability, adjusted free cash flow and EPS front, our non-GAAP adjusted Q4 results were even better as our operating efficiency and gross margin expansion contributed to fantastic results.

謝謝約翰，大家好。歡迎來電。從營收方面來看，我們第四季的有機營收年增了 5%，總營收成長了 7%，創下了 CSG 本季營收 3.17 億美元的新紀錄。衷心感謝全球 CSG 員工在第四季度取得的強勁銷售和營收表現。在獲利能力、調整後的自由現金流和每股盈餘方面，我們的非 GAAP 調整後第四季業績更加出色，因為我們的營運效率和毛利率擴大帶來了出色的業績。

CSG grew operating income 32% year-over-year in Q4 to 20.1% of revenue for the quarter. Q4 year-over-year adjusted EBITDA grew 21%, reaching close to a CSG high of 24.8% margin. And EPS topped all the metrics with 79% year-over-year Q4 growth, also setting a new CSG record of $1.65 EPS in the quarter.

CSG第四季營業收入年增32%，佔當季營收的20.1%。第四季調整後 EBITDA 年成長 21%，達到接近 CSG 24.8% 的利潤率高點。EPS 在所有指標中名列前茅，與去年同期相比第四季度增長 79%，同時創下了本季每股收益 1.65 美元的 CSG 新紀錄。

Our strong profit performance contributed nicely to free cash flow with $113 million or 9% year-over-year growth in 2024, setting the foundation for what we anticipate will be sustained strong double-digit adjusted free cash flow growth in 2025 and 2026. On the dividend front, CSG will be increasing our dividend by approximately 7% to $1.28 per year paid in quarterly increments. This marks our 12th consecutive annual increase and underpins our dedication to a friendly shareholder return policy.

我們強勁的利潤表現為自由現金流做出了巨大貢獻，2024 年的自由現金流同比增長 1.13 億美元，為 2025 年和 2026 年持續強勁的兩位數調整後自由現金流增長奠定了基礎。在股息方面，CSG 將把股息增加約 7% 至每年 1.28 美元，並按季度支付。這是我們連續第 12 年實現成長，也鞏固了我們致力於友善的股東回報政策的承諾。

On the sales, renewal and new logo wins front, CSG also had a very good 2024, which I will share more on briefly.

在銷售、續約和新標誌勝利方面，CSG 2024 年也取得了非常好的成績，我將簡短分享更多內容。

Slide 5 highlights the 3 key value creation commitments that the CSG leadership team and Board of Directors will hold ourselves accountable to deliver. First, CSG aspires to deliver 2% to 6% pure organic revenue growth and to diversify revenue from bigger, faster-growing new industry verticals to greater than 35% of total CSG revenue by 2026. It was great to close Q4 at the upper end of our range with 5% organic revenue growth in Q4.

投影片 5 重點介紹了 CSG 領導團隊和董事會將負責實現的 3 項關鍵價值創造承諾。首先，CSG 希望在 2026 年達到 2% 至 6% 的純有機收入成長，並將營收從更大、成長更快的新興垂直產業多元化，使營收佔 CSG 總收入的 35% 以上。第四季的有機收入成長率達到 5%，達到我們預期的上限，這真是太好了。

Second, we have committed to expanding non-GAAP operating margin to our new long-term range of 18% to 20%, which we plan to achieve without impeding our ability to deliver mid-single-digit annual organic revenue growth most quarters and years. We also have a goal to become more asset-light to help us deliver strong double-digit adjusted free cash flow growth in 2025 and 2026 with our 2025 guidance range of $110 million to $150 million in adjusted free cash flow.

其次，我們致力於將非公認會計準則下的營業利潤率擴大到 18% 至 20% 的新長期範圍，我們計劃在不妨礙我們在大多數季度和年份實現中等個位數年度有機收入增長的能力的情況下實現這一目標。我們也設定了進一步輕資產的目標，以幫助我們在 2025 年和 2026 年實現強勁的兩位數調整後自由現金流增長，2025 年調整後自由現金流的預期範圍為 1.1 億美元至 1.5 億美元。

Third, we will continue to return significant capital to shareholders as we've committed to over $100 million in share repurchases and dividends combined in 2025. As a reminder, we have returned nearly $540 million to shareholders in dividends and buybacks since 2020.

第三，我們將繼續向股東返還大量資本，因為我們承諾在 2025 年回購和發放股利總額超過 1 億美元。提醒一下，自 2020 年以來，我們已以股息和回購的形式向股東返還了近 5.4 億美元。

On Slide 6, you can see the success we've had increasing our organic revenue growth since 2021 and diversifying our industry vertical revenue since 2017. CSG targets industry verticals that have highly recurring customer relationships powered by complex subscription and consumption-based business models. Across these verticals, CSG helps brands simplify their complex customer engagements with our industry-leading technology.

在幻燈片 6 上，您可以看到我們自 2021 年以來的成功，即提高有機收入成長，以及自 2017 年以來實現行業垂直收入多元化。CSG 的目標產業是那些擁有高度重複的客戶關係的垂直產業，這些關係由複雜的訂閱和基於消費的商業模式所驅動。在這些垂直領域，CSG 利用我們領先業界的技術幫助品牌簡化其複雜的客戶互動。

Our platforms help customers reduce their cost to serve, while their customers and be more profitable, which is why the vast majority of our customers stay with CSG for decades. This is also why we've expanded so quickly beyond our traditional telecom and cable broadband customer base into exciting industry verticals like media, financial services, healthcare, pharmacy, retail, technology, government and more.

我們的平台幫助客戶降低服務成本，同時為客戶帶來更多利潤，這也是為什麼我們的絕大多數客戶幾十年來一直與 CSG 合作。這也是為什麼我們能夠如此迅速地從傳統電信和有線寬頻客戶群擴展到媒體、金融服務、醫療保健、藥房、零售、科技、政府等令人興奮的垂直產業。

Our sticky mission-critical technology helps great brands like Walgreens, JPMorgan Chase, NRC Health and Formula One solve similar customer engagement and monetization business challenges, just like we help Comcast, Charter, MTN and Telstra in these same areas. While the industries are different, the customer pain points and business needs are surprisingly similar.

我們的黏性關鍵任務技術幫助 Walgreens、摩根大通、NRC Health 和 Formula One 等知名品牌解決類似的客戶參與和貨幣化業務挑戰，就像我們在這些相同領域幫助康卡斯特、Charter、MTN 和 Telstra 一樣。雖然行業不同，但客戶痛點和業務需求卻驚人的相似。

Turning to Slide 7. We want to highlight some of the exciting new logo wins and deal expansions in Q4 and remind investors of the new sales wins in the year. Starting with big wins in Q4, we won a fantastic new logo with Gamma, a leading provider of technology-based communication services across Europe. Gamma selected CSG's configure, price, quote solution running in the cloud to help them adapt more quickly to market needs, offer personalized solutions and enable a more seamless self-service user experience. This win highlights the great momentum we are seeing with our industry-leading quote and order product.

翻到幻燈片 7。我們希望強調第四季度一些令人興奮的新標誌勝利和交易擴展，並提醒投資者今年的新銷售勝利。從第四季的巨大勝利開始，我們與歐洲領先的技術型通訊服務供應商 Gamma 合作贏得了精美的新標誌。Gamma 選擇了 CSG 在雲端運行的配置、價格、報價解決方案，以幫助他們更快地適應市場需求、提供個人化解決方案並實現更無縫的自助服務使用者體驗。這場勝利凸顯了我們業界領先的報價和訂單產品所展現出的強勁勢頭。

Team CSG also strengthened a 20-plus year relationship with MTN South Africa by securing an exciting multiyear managed services extension. MTN is one of South Africa's largest operators serving 39 million subscribers. CSG will optimize their billing and provisioning operations and enable MTN to further monetize their relationship with their consumer, SME and enterprise customers.

CSG 團隊還透過獲得令人興奮的多年託管服務延期，加強了與 MTN 南非公司 20 多年的合作關係。MTN 是南非最大的營運商之一，服務用戶數達 3,900 萬。CSG 將優化​​其計費和配置運營，並使 MTN 能夠進一步將其與消費者、中小企業和企業客戶的關係貨幣化。

We also had a fantastic multiyear managed services extension with Mobily, one of Saudi Arabia's largest telecom providers to continue supporting them on their journey to becoming a fully integrated operator. Team CSG became Mobily's digital transformation partner in 2021, and we are thrilled to continue to help Mobily create exceptional experiences for their customers.

我們也與沙烏地阿拉伯最大的電信供應商之一 Mobily 達成了出色的多年託管服務協議，繼續支持他們成為全面全面的營運商。CSG 團隊於 2021 年成為 Mobily 的數位轉型合作夥伴，我們很高興能夠繼續幫助 Mobily 為其客戶創造非凡的體驗。

CSG won a contract extension with M1, a market-leading communication service provider in Singapore. Since successfully launching CSG Ascendon and digital wholesale to support the monetization of M1's enterprise business in 2024, we're excited to expand our relationship with a great managed service contract to continue to support M1 in their digital transformation journey.

CSG與新加坡市場領先的通訊服務供應商M1簽訂了續約合約。自 2024 年成功推出 CSG Ascendon 和數位批發以支援 M1 企業業務的貨幣化以來，我們很高興能夠透過優秀的託管服務合約來擴大我們的關係，以繼續支持 M1 的數位轉型之旅。

Another big highlight was a fantastic 6-year contract renewal with Comcast to extend our 35-plus year partnership. CSG will continue to provide broad mission-critical support for Comcast triple-play broadband subscribers and other areas of Comcast business. This giant deal was in addition to a meaningful new stand-alone billing deal at Comcast in another part of their business that was also won in early Q3.

另一個亮點是與康卡斯特續簽了為期 6 年的合同，延長了我們 35 年以上的合作關係。CSG 將繼續為康卡斯特三重播放寬頻用戶和康卡斯特業務的其他領域提供廣泛的關鍵任務支援。這筆巨額交易是康卡斯特在第三季初贏得的另一項有意義的新的獨立計費交易的補充。

We were also excited to land fantastic renewals with 2 of the largest global technology companies in the world. For a decade, CSG has provided interactive voice response messaging on behalf of these companies to enable them to securely and effectively communicate with their end customers through their mobile device. CSG is powering a secure 2-factor authentication experience and providing tailored IVR for more personalized customer engagement.

我們也很高興與全球兩家最大的科技公司達成了完美的續約協議。十年來，CSG 一直為這些公司提供互動式語音應答訊息服務，使他們能夠透過行動裝置安全有效地與最終客戶進行溝通。CSG 正在提供安全的雙重認證體驗並提供客製化的 IVR，以實現更個人化的客戶參與。

Another Q4 win outside of telecom was with the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, one of the largest Turnpike authorities in the US OTA selected CSG to provide data-driven customer experience solutions to streamline transactional communication with drivers and optimize their revenue collection. This win further diversifies CSG's presence in exciting new verticals like tolling and transportation.

在電信領域之外，第四季度的另一個勝利是與俄克拉荷馬州收費公路管理局合作，該機構是美國最大的收費公路管理局之一。 OTA 選擇 CSG 提供數據驅動的客戶體驗解決方案，以簡化與司機的交易溝通並優化他們的收入收集。此次得標進一步豐富了CSG在收費和運輸等令人興奮的新垂直領域的業務。

In payments, we won a great new logo with dealer-owned warranty company, a fast-growing leader in the insurance and vehicle service contract industry. DOWC had been working with multiple payment providers, leading to complexity in how they manage their payment transactions. They selected CSG's cloud payment platform to consolidate ACH, cards and digital wallets into a single system to centralize payment processing and improve their end-to-end customer experience.

在支付方面，我們與經銷商旗下的保固公司合作贏得了新的標誌，該公司是保險和汽車服務合約行業中快速發展的領導者。DOWC 一直與多家支付提供者合作，這導致其管理支付交易的方式變得複雜。他們選擇了 CSG 的雲端支付平台，將 ACH、卡片和數位錢包整合到單一系統中，以集中支付處理並改善端到端客戶體驗。

Moving to exciting sales wins across 2024 in global telecom, we announced several fantastic new Ascendon wins, including Telenor Denmark, Lyse in Norway and Claro in Brazil. These wins highlight an important inflection point that we're seeing in the telecom market as more leading wireless operators are willing to run their core billing and monetization engines in the cloud, a trend that bodes very well for our revenue growth with our AWS cloud-native Ascendon platform.

在 2024 年全球電信領域取得令人興奮的銷售勝利方面，我們宣布了幾項出色的新 Ascendon 勝利，包括丹麥的 Telenor、挪威的 Lyse 和巴西的 Claro。這些勝利凸顯了我們在電信市場看到的一個重要轉折點，因為越來越多的領先無線營運商願意在雲端中運行其核心計費和貨幣化引擎，這一趨勢對我們透過 AWS 雲端原生 Ascendon 平台實現營收成長非常有利。

Other exciting new logo sales wins and extensions in the telecom space in 2024 included One New Zealand, formerly Vodafone New Zealand, Mascom Botswana, a leading telecom operator in Africa; Telstra, a 20-plus year customer of CSG's and Cellusys. In the media vertical, another 2024 Ascendon sales highlight was the excellent multiyear contract extension with the iconic brand Formula One, the world's most prestigious motor racing series. In the financial services market, we announced a fantastic deal extension and expansion with JPMorgan Chase, where we're deploying our CSG Xponent suite of solutions to create an enhanced fraud alert notification experience for Chase cardholders.

2024 年電信領域其他令人興奮的新標誌銷售成功和擴展包括 One New Zealand（前身為 Vodafone New Zealand）、非洲領先的電信運營商 Mascom Botswana； Telstra 是 CSG 和 Cellusys 20 多年的客戶。在媒體垂直領域，2024 年 Ascendon 的另一個銷售亮點是與世界最負盛名的賽車系列標誌性品牌一級方程式賽車 (Formula One) 簽訂的出色多年期合約續約。在金融服務市場，我們宣布與摩根大通達成一項出色的交易延長和擴展，我們將部署我們的 CSG Xponent 解決方案套件，為大通持卡人創造增強的詐欺警報通知體驗。

In the pharmacy retail vertical, Walgreens has been a CSG customer and partner for nearly 15 years through a third-party relationship. In 2024, we successfully executed a direct contract with Walgreens to provide CSG's smart communications platform with real-time customer notifications to Walgreens prescription customers.

在藥局零售垂直領域，沃爾格林透過第三方關係成為 CSG 的客戶和合作夥伴已有近 15 年。2024 年，我們成功與 Walgreens 簽訂了直接合同，為 Walgreens 處方客戶提供 CSG 的智慧通訊平台和即時客戶通知。

CSG is executing real-time prescription refill reminders and a prescription status messaging to drive higher drug adherence, a critical KPI for Walgreens success. In the healthcare vertical, CSG expanded our relationship with NRC Health, one of the nation's largest healthcare experience management firms supporting over half the healthcare systems in the US. We are partnering with NRC to execute a digital multichannel customer engagement strategy in a streamlined, cost-effective and scalable manner.

CSG 正在執行即時處方續藥提醒和處方狀態訊息傳遞，以提高藥物依從性，這是 Walgreens 成功的關鍵 KPI。在醫療保健垂直領域，CSG 擴大了與 NRC Health 的關係，NRC Health 是美國最大的醫療保健體驗管理公司之一，支援美國一半以上的醫療保健系統。我們正在與 NRC 合作，以精簡、經濟高效且可擴展的方式執行數位多通路客戶參與策略。

Moving to slide 8. We'd like to remind our investors of the very good progress that team CSG has made to consistently expand our profitability and adjusted free cash flow. A meaningful highlight of 2024 is the high confidence we have in CSG to continue to significantly expand our profitability and operating leverage in the quarters and years ahead.

移至幻燈片 8。我們想提醒我們的投資者，CSG 團隊在不斷擴大獲利能力和調整後自由現金流方面取得了非常好的進展。2024 年的一個有意義的亮點是我們對 CSG 充滿信心，相信它將在未來幾個季度和幾年繼續大幅擴大我們的盈利能力和營運槓桿。

We've shown continuous improvement in our non-GAAP adjusted operating margin from 16.6% in 2022 to 17.2% in 2023 to 18.1% in 2024. Looking ahead, we absolutely believe there is a clear pathway for CSG to consistently achieve 18% to 20% non-GAAP adjusted operating margin in 2025 and beyond. The midpoint of our 2025 non-GAAP operating margin guidance is 18.3% with an aspiration to operate in the 19% range by 2026.

我們的非 GAAP 調整後營業利潤率持續提高，從 2022 年的 16.6% 上升至 2023 年的 17.2%，再上升至 2024 年的 18.1%。展望未來，我們絕對相信，CSG 有一條清晰的道路可以在 2025 年及以後持續實現 18% 至 20% 的非 GAAP 調整後營業利潤率。我們對 2025 年非 GAAP 營業利潤率的預期中位數為 18.3%，並希望在 2026 年達到 19% 左右。

And we have every intention for this better profitability to convert nicely into strong double-digit non-GAAP adjusted free cash flow growth in both 2025 and 2026, as we strive to become a more asset-light company that generates significantly greater adjusted free cash flow from every dollar that we invest.

我們的目標是將這種更好的盈利能力轉化為 2025 年和 2026 年強勁的兩位數非 GAAP 調整後自由現金流增長，因為我們致力於成為一家資產更輕的公司，從我們投資的每一美元中產生更大的調整後自由現金流。

Turning to slide 9. CSG committed to returning over $100 million to shareholders via share buybacks and dividends in 2025. Disciplined capital allocation and a dedication to returning capital to our shareholders is a cornerstone of our shareholder return strategy. We believe that CSG's stock price represents an excellent buy for both investors and for CSG. So we will stay balanced, disciplined and focused on any strategic or financial move that the Board of Directors and management team believe will deliver the greatest value for our shareholders.

翻到第 9 張投影片。CSG承諾在2025年透過股票回購和股利向股東返還超過1億美元。嚴格的資本配置和致力於向股東回報資本是我們股東回報策略的基石。我們相信，CSG 的股價對於投資者和 CSG 來說都是極佳的買入價。因此，我們將保持平衡、自律，並專注於董事會和管理團隊認為將為股東帶來最大價值的任何策略或財務舉措。

With respect to M&A, we are very pleased with the two smaller, highly accretive acquisitions that we closed in 2024. We were able to acquire both companies at highly accretive multiples, both small tuck-in deals add highly profitable recurring revenue for CSG. And with respect to integration, both deals remain well on track to deliver the value we expected in our M&A business cases. We will continue to actively search for, vet and potentially close more value-creating M&A deals in 2025.

在併購方面，我們對 2024 年完成的兩筆規模較小、增值性較高的收購感到非常滿意。我們能夠以極高的增值倍數收購這兩家公司，這兩筆小型附加交易都為 CSG 增加了高利潤的經常性收入。就整合而言，兩筆交易均可望實現我們在併購業務案例中預期的價值。我們將在 2025 年繼續積極尋找、審查並可能完成更多創造價值的併購交易。

As I wrap up my opening remarks, I want to share an observation that I don't believe is visible yet to those outside of CSG. Something extremely positive is starting to change across this good company of ours. We see traditional CSG humility and high integrity getting amplified with a ferocious resolve to consistently deliver better and faster business results.

在結束我的開場白之前，我想分享一個我認為 CSG 以外的人尚未註意到的觀察。我們這家優秀的公司正在開始發生一些極為積極的變化。我們看到，CSG 傳統的謙遜和高度誠信透過堅定的決心得到了放大，以持續提供更好、更快的業務成果。

Leaders across every level of CSG are building an operating discipline and an agility that is just beginning to generate the big breakthroughs that we absolutely believe are possible and likely in the quarters and years ahead. To every CSGier listening, it is up to each of us to prove this with better and better operating results quarter in, quarter out. If we expect to be the best of the best, then we have to prove it with the quality of our results, not the boldness of our words. Thank you for making Q4 a fantastic explanation point on 2024 as we now focus on building momentum for an even better 2025.

CSG 各個層級的領導者都在建立營運紀律和敏捷性，這才剛開始帶來重大突破，我們絕對相信，這些突破在未來幾季和幾年內是可能實現的。對於每一位正在聽的 CSGier 來說，我們每個人都應該透過每季越來越好的營運表現來證明這一點。如果我們希望成為最好的，那麼我們必須用結果的品質來證明這一點，而不是用我們的話語的大膽。感謝您讓第四季度成為 2024 年的一個精彩解釋點，因為我們現在專注於為更好的 2025 年積蓄動力。

With that, I will turn it over to Hai.

說完這些，我將把它交給海。

Thanks, Brian. Let's walk through our Q4 and full year 2024 financial results, and then I'll wrap up with some key conclusions.

謝謝，布萊恩。讓我們來看看我們的 2024 年第四季和全年財務業績，然後我將得出一些關鍵結論。

Starting on slide 11, I'm pleased to share that we delivered strong financial results in the fourth quarter. We generated $317 million of revenue in Q4, which represents 7% year-over-year growth. The increase in revenue can be attributed to the growth of our SaaS and related solutions revenue in addition to the approximately $6 million of revenue generated from the acquired businesses.

從第 11 張投影片開始，我很高興地告訴大家，我們在第四季取得了強勁的財務表現。我們第四季的營收為 3.17 億美元，年增 7%。營收的成長除了歸因於收購業務產生的約 600 萬美元收入外，還可以歸因於我們的 SaaS 和相關解決方案收入的成長。

Also, as it relates to our top 2 customers, Comcast and Charter, we reported a 3% year-over-year increase in Q4 revenue. Our Q4 2024 non-GAAP operating income was $58 million or a non-GAAP adjusted operating margin of 20.1% as compared to $44 million or 16.1% in the prior year period. Similarly, our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was $72 million for the fourth quarter or 24.8% of revenue, excluding transaction fees as compared to $59 million or 21.7% in the prior year period.

此外，就我們的兩大客戶康卡斯特和 Charter 而言，我們報告第四季營收年增 3%。我們 2024 年第四季的非 GAAP 營業收入為 5,800 萬美元，非 GAAP 調整後營業利潤率為 20.1%，而去年同期為 4,400 萬美元或 16.1%。同樣，我們第四季的非 GAAP 調整後 EBITDA 為 7,200 萬美元，佔營收的 24.8%，不包括交易費用，而去年同期為 5,900 萬美元，佔 21.7%。

Our profitability results are among the strongest in the history of CSG and are a testament to our continued commitment to maintaining cost discipline. This discipline is a key driver of why we were able to grow Q4 non-GAAP adjusted operating income and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA at 32% and 21%, respectively, against the prior year period.

我們的獲利業績是南方電網史上最強勁的業績之一，證明了我們持續致力於維持成本紀律。這項紀律是我們能夠使第四季度非 GAAP 調整後營業收入和非 GAAP 調整後 EBITDA 分別較去年同期成長 32% 和 21% 的關鍵驅動因素。

Looking ahead, we expect our profitability metrics to further improve as we have taken significant cost efficiency actions to optimize our capacity and better align CSG's resources to areas of our business that will deliver faster growth and higher operating profit in the quarters and years ahead. I'll share more on 2025 guidance targets momentarily.

展望未來，我們預計我們的獲利指標將進一步改善，因為我們已經採取了重大的成本效率行動來優化我們的產能，並將南方電網的資源更好地與我們的業務領域相匹配，這將在未來幾個季度和幾年實現更快的成長和更高的營業利潤。我稍後會分享更多有關 2025 年指導目標的資訊。

Lastly, our Q4 2024 non-GAAP EPS grew 79% year-over-year to $1.65 as compared to $0.92 in the prior year period. The increases in non-GAAP EPS are mainly due to the higher non-GAAP operating income, a lower non-GAAP effective income tax rate and the benefit of our share repurchases over the last 12 months. With respect to the lower income tax rate, we had approximately $0.20 per share benefit in Q4 of 2024 that we do not expect to recur in 2025.

最後，我們的 2024 年第四季非 GAAP 每股盈餘年增 79% 至 1.65 美元，去年同期為 0.92 美元。非公認會計準則每股收益的成長主要歸因於非公認會計準則營業收入的增加、非公認會計準則有效所得稅率的降低以及過去 12 個月我們股票回購的好處。對於較低的所得稅率，我們在 2024 年第四季獲得了約 0.20 美元的每股盈餘，但我們預計 2025 年不會再次出現這種收益。

Turning to slide 12. I will go through the balance sheet, our cash flow performance and shareholder returns. We had non-GAAP adjusted free cash flow of $113 million in 2024 as compared to $104 million of non-GAAP adjusted free cash flow in the prior year. This represents a 9% year-over-year improvement and showcases our internal initiatives to ensure our enhanced profitability is accompanied by increasing free cash flow. We expect continued improvements in free cash flow in years to come, in line with our focus on driving improved profitability over a multiyear period.

翻到第 12 張投影片。我將審查資產負債表、我們的現金流量表現和股東回報。2024 年，我們的非 GAAP 調整後自由現金流為 1.13 億美元，而前一年的非 GAAP 調整後自由現金流為 1.04 億美元。這比去年同期增長了 9%，並展示了我們的內部舉措，以確保我們的盈利能力提高的同時，自由現金流也不斷增加。我們預計未來幾年自由現金流將繼續改善，這與我們多年來提高獲利能力的重點一致。

Moving on, we ended 2024 with $162 million of cash and cash equivalents. That, along with our outstanding debt at December 31, 2024, results in $389 million of net debt, and our net debt leverage ratio sits at 1.5 times adjusted EBITDA. Further, we have $612 million in liquidity as of the end of 2024.

到 2024 年底，我們的現金和現金等價物為 1.62 億美元。加上我們截至 2024 年 12 月 31 日的未償債務，導致淨債務為 3.89 億美元，我們的淨債務槓桿率為調整後 EBITDA 的 1.5 倍。此外，截至 2024 年底，我們的流動資金為 6.12 億美元。

Turning the page, I will lay out our 2025 guidance. Starting with the top line, we expect our organic revenue before the impact of any future acquisitions to range from $1.21 billion to $1.25 billion and transaction fees to range from $106 million to $111 million. We are currently forecasting our first half 2024 revenue to make up approximately 48% of our full year revenue, while we expect 52% of our revenue to be generated in the second half. We also expect our non-GAAP adjusted operating margin percentage to range between 18.1% to 18.5%. We believe this non-GAAP adjusted operating margin guidance range demonstrates CSG's commitment to consistently expanding on our operating leverage with improved profitability.

翻開新的一頁，我將闡述我們 2025 年的指導方針。從營收開始，我們預計，在未來收購的影響之前，我們的有機收入將在 12.1 億美元至 12.5 億美元之間，交易費用將在 1.06 億美元至 1.11 億美元之間。我們目前預測 2024 年上半年的收入將佔全年收入的約 48%，而我們預計 52% 的收入將來自下半年。我們也預期非 GAAP 調整後營業利潤率百分比將在 18.1% 至 18.5% 之間。我們相信，這項非公認會計準則調整後的營業利潤率指導範圍表明了 CSG 致力於不斷擴大我們的營業槓桿並提高獲利能力。

On the next metric, we anticipate our non-GAAP EPS to range between $4.55 to $4.80 based on a non-GAAP tax rate of approximately 28% and a share count of approximately 28 million shares for the year.

根據下一個指標，我們預計非 GAAP 每股盈餘將在 4.55 美元至 4.80 美元之間，基於約 28% 的非 GAAP 稅率和全年約 2,800 萬股的股票數量。

Moving on, non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA is expected to range between $256 million to $267 million. On cash flow, we expect our non-GAAP adjusted free cash flow to range between $110 million to $150 million with a guidance range midpoint of $130 million. Additionally, we expect capital expenditures to come in between $20 million to $30 million. And with respect to the quarterly trends in 2025 and consistent with prior years, we expect Q1 to be the lowest quarter of the year for most metrics, including revenue, profitability and cash flow with revenue growth and profitability continue to grow each of the remaining quarters of 2025.

進一步而言，非 GAAP 調整後 EBITDA 預計在 2.56 億美元至 2.67 億美元之間。在現金流方面，我們預計非 GAAP 調整後自由現金流在 1.1 億美元至 1.5 億美元之間，指導範圍中位數為 1.3 億美元。此外，我們預計資本支出將在 2,000 萬至 3,000 萬美元之間。就 2025 年的季度趨勢而言，與前幾年一致，我們預計第一季將是大多數指標全年最低的季度，包括收入、盈利能力和現金流，而收入增長和盈利能力在 2025 年剩餘的每個季度都將繼續增長。

Wrapping up, we love what we see in our business that are powered by our operating discipline, R&D innovation and ongoing sales wins. CSG will continue to relentlessly prioritize every investment we make and stay very disciplined in the allocation of resources and the use of capital. Innovation, including how we leverage the transformative power of AI across CSG and an adherence to a risk/reward framework with continuous learning are key cornerstones of how we have and will continue to grow top and bottom results even faster.

總而言之，我們對我們的業務感到滿意，這得益於我們的營運紀律、研發創新和持續的銷售成功。CSG 將繼續堅持不懈地優先考慮我們的每項投資，並在資源分配和資本使用方面保持嚴格紀律。創新，包括我們如何在 CSG 中利用人工智慧的變革力量，以及如何透過持續學習來堅持風險/回報框架，這些都是我們如何並將繼續以更快的速度實現頂部和底部結果成長的關鍵基石。

CSG is well positioned with a strong sales pipeline and a high-quality recurring revenue customer base. We remain committed to accelerating and diversifying our revenue growth, which may include closing and integrating disciplined value-adding acquisitions. We believe this approach, combined with our consistent capital distribution will serve our shareholders well.

CSG 擁有強大的銷售管道和高品質的經常性收入客戶群，市場定位明確。我們將繼續致力於加速和多樣化我們的收入成長，其中可能包括完成和整合有紀律的增值收購。我們相信，這種方法加上我們一致的資本分配將為我們的股東帶來良好的服務。

With that, I will turn it over to the operator to facilitate the question-and-answer session.

接下來，我將把電話交給接線員，以方便問答環節。

(Operator Instructions)

（操作員指令）

Dan Bergstrom, RBC Capital Markets.

丹‧伯格斯特羅姆 (Dan Bergstrom)，加拿大皇家銀行資本市場部。

Yeah, thanks for taking my question. Maybe I'll just start where you ended there. You mentioned a strong pipeline at the end of your remarks. Could you talk about the pipeline you see here to start calendar year '25? And then is there a way that you could maybe compare it to what you saw maybe a year ago at this time?

是的，感謝您回答我的問題。也許我應該從你結束的地方開始。您在發言最後提到了強大的管道。您能談談您看到的從 25 年開始的管道嗎？那麼，您是否可以將其與大約一年前此時看到的情況進行比較？

Yes. Dan, I appreciate you joining the call. I mean what we've talked about kind of quarter in, quarter out is the size of our pipeline has been as healthy as ever. We continue to convert. And what's really driving that is first, we see customers really being sharp on what's going to enable them to get a return that helps them on the revenue side or to operate more efficiently. So what we do is we see a lot of win potential, both in our payments and our customer experience business that's a data-driven platform. These are smaller proof points.

是的。丹，感謝您加入本次通話。我的意思是，我們每季討論過的是，我們的管道規模一直和以往一樣健康。我們繼續轉變。而真正推動這項進程的因素首先是，我們看到客戶非常清楚什麼能讓他們獲得回報，從而幫助他們增加收入或提高營運效率。因此，我們看到了巨大的成功潛力，無論是在我們的支付業務還是在我們的客戶體驗業務方面，這都是一個數據驅動的平台。這些都是較小的證明點。

We can get deployed quickly. We can ring the cash register for our customers, and there's a quick payback. What we've also seen in both our North American cable business, cable broadband and the global telco is we see operators needing to deploy and simplify their customer engagement. and make it easier for them to do business with. So we also see meaningful transformations on a larger scale of their full customer engagement stack, including their billing and monetization.

我們可以快速部署。我們可以為顧客敲響收銀機，並很快獲得回報。我們在北美有線電視業務、有線寬頻和全球電信業務中也看到，營運商需要部署和簡化他們的客戶參與方式。並使他們更容易開展業務。因此，我們也看到他們的整個客戶參與堆疊（包括計費和貨幣化）在更大規模上發生了有意義的轉變。

Those tend to kind of work through a slightly longer sales cycle, and we've announced as many wins, I think, in 2024 on the bigger transformation front, including with our Ascendon cloud that we ever have. And so it's still a tough market out there, but we've continued to be pleased with the performance on the sales side. Hai, do you want to talk about kind of how you've seen it where it is today entering 2025, maybe compare that to what you saw entering 2024.

這些往往會透過稍長的銷售週期來實現，我認為，我們在 2024 年更大的轉型方面宣布了盡可能多的勝利，包括我們曾經擁有的 Ascendon 雲端。因此，這仍然是一個艱難的市場，但我們對銷售方面的表現仍然感到滿意。海，您想談談您對現在進入 2025 年的情況的看法嗎，也許可以將其與您看到進入 2024 年的情況進行比較。

Yeah. I mean I think in terms of the size of the pipeline, I think it has grown, but I think more importantly, I think it's a healthier pipeline, right? We don't have big opportunities in the pipeline really skewing the pipeline. So I'd say it's more evenly distributed, that speaks to me to the job well done by our go-to-market team that we drive lots of opportunities across lots of different prospects.

是的。我的意思是，就管道規模而言，我認為它已經成長，但我認為更重要的是，我認為它是一條更健康的管道，對嗎？我們在頻道中並沒有太大的機會，這確實扭曲了頻道。所以我想說它分佈得更均勻，這說明我們的行銷團隊做得很好，我們在許多不同的前景中創造了很多機會。

That's great. And then maybe just on the dynamics of the quarter, anything to call out as far as linearity or any deals moving into the quarter or out of the quarter? Did you see anything around a year-end budget flush? Is that something you typically see? Just anything on the dynamics of the quarter?

那太棒了。然後也許只是關於本季的動態，就線性而言有什麼需要注意的嗎？或任何進入本季或出本季的交易？您是否看到過有關年終預算激增的情況？這是你通常會看到的東西嗎？關於本季的動態有什麼消息嗎？

Thanks Dan. I'd say nothing out of the ordinary, right? Because a lot of these opportunities can be large and sizable. They're complex in nature. The pursuits sometimes cross over the 12 to 18 months. And so there are always going to be opportunities that we hope or try to target within a quarter that might delay for a variety of reasons. But that's pretty normal as we look at our opportunities. I don't think there's anything out of the ordinary.

謝謝丹。我不會說什麼不尋常的事吧？因為很多這樣的機會都是很大、很可觀的。它們的本質很複雜。這些追求有時會跨越 12 至 18 個月。因此，我們總是希望或嘗試在一個季度內抓住一些機會，但這些機會可能會因各種原因而推遲。但當我們審視自己的機會時，這很正常。我不認為有任何不尋常的事情。

Yeah. The only thing I would add is with our high recurring revenue, we tend to enter with a very high backlog. If anything, going into 2025 and even with the guidance we gave, I would say our backlog is a little higher even than what it was starting 2024. That gives us confidence. But what we've talked about the last couple of quarters is right now, we still see notwithstanding great sales wins, we see it's a tough competition in the market.

是的。我唯一想補充的是，由於我們的經常性收入很高，因此我們往往會在進入時就積壓大量訂單。如果有什麼不同的話，那就是進入 2025 年，即使按照我們提供的指導，我也會說我們的積壓訂單量甚至會比 2024 年初的水平更高一些。這給了我們信心。但我們在過去幾季討論的情況是，儘管銷售業績巨大，但我們仍然看到市場競爭激烈。

Therefore, with our guidance, we're looking at more in the 2% to 4% organic growth as we look at 2025 full year, that's kind of reflected in that guidance in the midpoint. And we're focused on getting off to a strong start in Q1 and Q2 to see if we can perform at the upper end of that and get back to midpoint or higher. So that's kind of what we're seeing at this stage.

因此，根據我們的指引，我們預計 2025 年全年的有機成長率將達到 2% 至 4%，這在某種程度上反映在中期指引中。我們專注於在第一季和第二季取得良好開局，看看我們能否取得更好的表現，並回到中間點或更高的水平。這就是我們現階段看到的情況。

Maggie Nolan, William Blair Maggie.

瑪吉諾蘭，威廉布萊爾瑪吉。

Hi. Thank you. Your operating margin expansion that you expect in 2025, there's still expansion, but it's sort of modest in the context of what you said for 2026, which is maybe aiming for the 19% range. So can you help us bridge the gap to 2026? Are there additional investments or cost adjustments you need to make over the course of 2025 to set yourself up for that?

你好。謝謝。您預期 2025 年的營業利潤率會有所擴大，但相對於您所說的 2026 年（可能瞄準 19% 的範圍）而言，這個幅度算是比較溫和的。那你能幫助我們縮小到 2026 年的差距嗎？在 2025 年期間，您是否需要進行額外的投資或成本調整來為此做好準備？

Yeah. Maggie, it's a good question. I think the answer is a couple of things, right? As we mentioned, you'll see some of the expansion, for example, in our gross margin percentage. And that expansion, we expect to continue, right? And that's a result of a combination of mix of business as we talked about in the past, our SaaS-like businesses are just growing at a faster clip than the rest of our business and therefore, positively impacting our gross margin percentage, which should then flow all the way down through from an operating leverage down to our operating income and our EBITDA margins.

是的。瑪吉，這是個好問題。我認為答案有幾件事，對嗎？正如我們所提到的，您會看到一些擴張，例如我們的毛利率百分比。我們預計這種擴張還會繼續，對嗎？正如我們過去談到的，這是我們業務組合的結果，我們的 SaaS 類業務增長速度比我們其他業務更快，因此對我們的毛利率百分比產生了積極影響，這種影響隨後會從營業槓桿一直傳導至我們的營業收入和 EBITDA 利潤率。

And then the second is, as we've talked about, we continually evaluate opportunities to drive further efficiencies. We've taken some actions this past year. We're going to garner the full year impact of those actions as we enter into 2025. Plus we'll continuously evaluate opportunities to drive further operating leverage. And then one of the things that we do count on as we look to 2026, for example, is truly operating leverage, right? As we continue to scale, our operating expenses shouldn't scale at the same pace, right? So the marginal revenue dollar should have a much greater impact to our operating and EBITDA margins.

第二，正如我們所討論的，我們不斷評估進一步提高效率的機會。過去的一年我們採取了一些行動。進入 2025 年，我們將獲得這些行動帶來的全年影響。此外，我們也將持續評估進一步提高經營槓桿的機會。那麼，當我們展望 2026 年時，我們確實依賴的事情之一就是真正的經營槓桿，對嗎？隨著我們不斷擴大規模，我們的營運費用不應該以同樣的速度擴大，對嗎？因此，邊際收入應該對我們的營業利潤和 EBITDA 利潤產生更大的影響。

Yeah. Maybe, Maggie, the only thing I would add is on the investment question is we're going to continue this small quarter terms of rents, constantly drive operating efficiency in the business, as Hai has been talking about. But we are seeing an inflection point in the market with more SaaS, more cloud all around Ascendon, our Xponent suite around data-driven customer journey analytics solutions.

是的。也許，瑪吉，我唯一想補充的是，關於投資問題，我們將繼續這個小季度的租金，不斷提高業務的營運效率，正如海一直在談論的那樣。但我們看到市場出現了一個轉折點，Ascendon 周圍出現了更多的 SaaS、更多的雲，我們的 Xponent 套件則圍繞數據驅動的客戶旅程分析解決方案。

And we talk a lot about some of the wins in our quote and order solution. And so we are continuing to invest on the SaaS cloud data-driven side. That's not going to prevent us from driving good margin expansion. We expect to operate 2026 at 19% or above. And let's see how 2025 comes out. But we have good expectations in terms of our ability to both innovate and drive margin expansion.

我們多次談論了報價和訂單解決方案中的一些成功之處。因此我們將繼續在SaaS雲端數據驅動方面進行投資。這不會阻止我們實現良好的利潤率擴張。我們預計到 2026 年營運率將達到 19% 或以上。讓我們看看 2025 年的結果如何。但我們對創新和推動利潤擴大的能力抱持良好的期望。

And the 35% revenue diversification that you cited, the other vertical is becoming fairly substantial. Can you help us understand the composition of that vertical buckets and what the drivers are to get you up to that greater than 35% you're calling for and maybe the time frame there.

您所提到的35%的收入多樣化，另一個垂直領域也變得相當可觀。您能否幫助我們理解垂直桶的組成，以及使您達到所要求的 35％ 以上的驅動因素，以及時間框架。

Yeah. I mean the revenue diversification, first, I'll just make a statement. CSG is not a holding company. We're focused with our portfolio in terms of where we are around helping great brands in lots of verticals simplify their complex customer engagement with data-driven monetization solutions, and we're resonating more and more around that.

是的。我的意思是收入多樣化，首先，我只想發表一個聲明。CSG 不是控股公司。我們專注於我們的投資組合，幫助眾多垂直領域的優秀品牌透過數據驅動的貨幣化解決方案簡化其複雜的客戶互動，我們在這方面的共鳴越來越多。

And so we see the exciting part is it's not just 1 or 2 verticals. We've announced wins in financial services, in insurance, in healthcare, in pharmacy retail, in tech kind of across the board. And what we're seeing is kind of what we've talked about in our Journey Analytics CX business, we can go in at a price point of between $500,000, sometimes a little less up to a couple of million dollars, and we can solve a very targeted business problem around onboarding, customer education or notification, dealing with an engagement issue or a customer dissatisfier, and it can give a payback in terms of reduced cost to serve or revenue uplift because it could also be revenue stimulation.

因此我們看到令人興奮的部分是它不僅僅是 1 或 2 個垂直。我們在金融服務、保險、醫療保健、藥局零售和科技等各個領域都取得了成功。我們看到的就像我們在 Journey Analytics CX 業務中討論的那樣，我們可以以 50 萬美元到數百萬美元的價格進入，並且可以解決圍繞入職、客戶教育或通知、處理參與問題或客戶不滿等非常有針對性的業務問題，並且可以在降低服務成本或增加收入方面帶來回報，因為它也可以刺激收入。

So we get it at a low price point, and then we can upsell to lots of other use cases, and that's driving huge growth for us. We also see some of the Ascendon wins in cloud that is driving new transformations in telecom, but we also sold it to a large financial services provider in Australia, and we've sold it to large media companies like MediaOne and others. And another example in these other verticals is the tolling win. in that case, tolling that are dealt with by some of our customers, they deal with a license plate that's got to get attached to a customer ID that then has to figure out how to engage and collect the money.

因此，我們以低價獲得它，然後我們可以向許多其他用例追加銷售，這為我們帶來了巨大的成長。我們也看到 Ascendon 在雲端運算領域的一些勝利正在推動電信領域的新轉型，但我們也將其出售給了澳洲的一家大型金融服務提供商，並將其出售給了 MediaOne 等大型媒體公司。其他垂直行業中的另一個例子是收費勝利。在這種情況下，我們的一些客戶需要處理收費問題，他們需要處理與客戶 ID 關聯的車牌，然後客戶必須想辦法參與並收取費用。

And so we're helping them with customer engagement solutions. So it really is the kind of broad portfolio, including our payments, and we can get in with those price points and then upsell and cross-sell. And so they're just going to grow faster, even though we're still growing in our North American broadband and global telco, we just see those other verticals growing at a much faster clip, usually double-digit organic revenue growth.

因此，我們正在幫助他們提供客戶參與解決方案。所以它確實是一種廣泛的投資組合，包括我們的付款，我們可以以這些價格點進入，然後進行追加銷售和交叉銷售。因此，它們將成長得更快，儘管我們的北美寬頻和全球電信業務仍在成長，但我們看到其他垂直產業的成長速度要快得多，通常會實現兩位數的有機收入成長。

Matthew Harrigan, Benchmark Company.

馬修‧哈里根 (Matthew Harrigan)，Benchmark Company。

I think when you look at AI with respect to some of the forecasts with consultancies and academic institutions on economic growth, you can argue people are really starting to look more for where the pony is. I mean you can argue there's so much debt in the system, the economic growth numbers would be worse if it wasn't for AI.

我認為，當你將人工智慧與顧問公司和學術機構對經濟成長的一些預測聯繫起來看時，你會發現人們確實開始更專注於小馬在哪裡。我的意思是，你可以說系統中存在太多債務，如果沒有人工智慧，經濟成長數據會更糟。

You had a number of interesting white papers, particularly early last year, I know relating more to enterprise AI and orchestrate the customer journey and that. But what have you really seen just over the last two or so quarters that makes you more or less confident in terms of the benefits for CSG and more broadly for the economy?

您有許多有趣的白皮書，特別是去年年初，我知道更多與企業人工智慧和協調客戶旅程相關的內容。但是，在過去兩個季度中，您真正看到了什麼，讓您對南方電網以及更廣泛的經濟效益更有信心或更沒有信心呢？

Yeah. Matt, I'll take the first part and maybe talk about the revenue side of where we're selling and using AI embedded into our products. Maybe Hai can talk about it on the efficiency side. So first, CSG tends not to take the approach of some of our competitors that really go for the hype cycle. We really talk about how can we get very specific and agile with innovation, how can we build the capabilities, whether it's cloud or AI and data capabilities to really ring the cash register for our customers.

是的。馬特，我將談論第一部分，也許談論我們銷售和使用嵌入到我們的產品中的人工智慧的收入方面。也許海可以從效率方面來談談這個問題。首先，CSG 傾向於不採取我們的一些競爭對手真正追求炒作週期的方法。我們真正談論的是如何透過創新變得非常具體和靈活，如何建立能力，無論是雲端運算還是人工智慧和數據能力，才能真正為我們的客戶帶來收益。

And so what we've really focused on, on our side is not the hype, but things like Bill Explainer.ai. Two of the biggest use case problems in telecom and cable is promo roll-off where you come off a discounted price package and you're going to go to the higher package. Customers then get bill shock, they're surprised. They call the call center, it's expensive to our customers, and it might create a churn event.

因此，我們真正關注的不是炒作，而是像 Bill Explainer.ai 這樣的東西。電信和有線電視中兩個最大的用例問題是促銷滾動，即您放棄折扣價格套餐而轉向更高級的套餐。然後顧客們就會收到帳單，他們感到很驚訝。他們打電話給呼叫中心，這對我們的客戶來說成本很高，而且可能會造成客戶流失。

So we've actually built on what used to be kind of more machine learning now with the generative AI to actually come out with a very targeted use case to say, dip into the billing system, pull data, explain when there's likely to be a change that's going to cause a negative reaction of a customer and get out in front of that. And we've seen customer deployments have really good success.

因此，我們實際上已經在以前的機器學習的基礎上，利用生成式人工智慧提出了非常有針對性的用例，例如深入計費系統，提取數據，解釋何時可能發生可能導致客戶負面反應的變化，並提前預防。我們已經看到客戶部署取得了非常好的成功。

We've also seen a lot where you could use AI and the natural language processing capabilities to actually prevent needing a call or getting to the right agent in real time to try to avoid the length of call or a second call to get more of a first help success. We built in AI into some of these cross-sell, upsell that just become easier to engage and upsell a new promotional package and drive revenue.

我們也看到許多情況下可以使用人工智慧和自然語言處理功能來真正避免撥打電話或即時聯繫到合適的代理，從而盡量避免長時間通話或第二次通話，以獲得更多的首次幫助成功率。我們將人工智慧融入一些交叉銷售和追加銷售中，使得參與和追加銷售新的促銷套餐並增加收入變得更加容易。

And so what we've tried to do with it, we do think is significant, but we think it's also going to become table stakes to drive more real-time proactive engagement to deal with a dissatisfier or to uplift revenue. And we think it's kind of table stakes and you just build it in as opposed to the hype cycle side. Maybe Hai, you could talk either something around how we're seeing it on efficiency at a real level. I don't know either of us could drive what's driving economic GDP. I'll probably leave that one to other people.

因此，我們確實認為我們嘗試做的事情意義重大，但我們認為這也將成為推動更多即時主動參與以解決不滿意因素或增加收入的賭注。我們認為這就像是一種賭注，你只需將其建立起來，而不是炒作週期方面。也許海，你可以談談我們如何在實際層面上看到它的效率。我不知道我們中的任何一個人能否推動經濟 GDP 的成長。我可能會把這個留給其他人。

Yeah. I think CSG is no different than any other company. We're all trying to experiment with AI, right, to try to figure out where we can drive the biggest return I think for us, we're taking a very pragmatic approach, right? We're not looking to necessarily develop our own AI tools internally. We're leveraging a lot of our partners to help us do that. And to that extent, what that means for us is as AI becomes less expensive, that's only helpful to us.

是的。我認為 CSG 與其他公司沒有什麼不同。我們都在嘗試用人工智慧做實驗，對吧，試圖找出我們可以在哪裡獲得最大的回報，我認為對我們來說，我們採取了一種非常務實的方法，對吧？我們不一定希望內部開發自己的人工智慧工具。我們正在利用許多合作夥伴來幫助我們實現這一目標。從這個程度上來說，這對我們來說意味著隨著人工智慧變得越來越便宜，這對我們只有幫助。

So even the recent disruption in the market, to us, it just means that there's opportunities for our partners to continue to evolve their solutions and make them visible to us around things like Agentic AI, right? As Agentic AI becomes even more commoditized and more available for us, we can deploy kind of bite-sized solutions that are very targeted around how do we drive automation. And what that means is it will just accelerate our continued path towards improving our profit margins and cash flow over time.

因此，即使市場最近出現了混亂，對我們來說，這也意味著我們的合作夥伴有機會繼續改進他們的解決方案，並透過 Agentic AI 等方式讓我們看到它們，對嗎？隨著 Agentic AI 變得更加商品化和更加可用，我們可以部署一些專門針對如何推動自動化的小型解決方案。這意味著它將加速我們持續提高利潤率和現金流的速度。

And actually, secondly, quickly, do you have any concerns relating to DOGE as far as your governmental business and also the heightened FX volatility we're seeing given that you're not in frontier markets, but you're in some interesting international markets nonetheless?

其次，就政府業務而言，您是否對 DOGE 有任何擔憂？而且，鑑於您不在前沿市場，但您仍處於一些有趣的國際市場，我們看到外匯波動加劇？

Yeah. We don't have much exposure to kind of DOGE from a US government perspective. We don't really have any sort of exposure to kind of government-related contracts per se. So directly, no, what that means indirectly over time, it's tough to say, Matt, at this point.

是的。從美國政府的角度來看，我們對 DOGE 的接觸並不多。我們實際上並沒有接觸過任何與政府相關的合約。所以直接地，不，隨著時間的推移，這間接地意味著什麼，馬特，現在很難說。

I would just say we have no concerns about our revenue guidance for 2025 as it relates to any of that, Matt.

我只想說，我們對 2025 年的收入預測沒有任何擔憂，馬特。

George Notter, Jefferies.

傑富瑞的喬治諾特 (George Notter)。

This is Karen on for George. I just wanted to talk about or ask about traction in CXM payments. Are we still tracking on the Rule of 40? And how do we see outlook for those 2 segments going into '25 and '26?

這是凱倫 (Karen) 代替喬治 (George)。我只是想談論或詢問 CXM 支付的牽引力。我們還在遵循 40 法則嗎？我們如何看待這兩個領域在25年和26年的前景？

Yeah. I mean I think what we're seeing is that we're still seeing fairly robust growth on both of those businesses. I think combined, we're talking about kind of rule of 30-ish, right, not quite rule of 40, but still pretty healthy performance on both businesses.

是的。我的意思是，我認為我們看到的是，這兩項業務仍然保持著相當強勁的成長勢頭。我認為綜合起來，我們談論的是 30 法則，對吧，不完全是 40 法則，但兩個業務的表現仍然相當健康。

We expect over the near term and the medium to longer term, both those businesses have the ability to grow double-digit organic. Every now and then we might see a quarter where we saw in 2024, where payments might dip down into the mid- to high single digits for a quarter, some timing and get back, but we see good double-digit growth over some sustained period, and we like those prospects going forward as well.

我們預計，從短期和中長期來看，這兩項業務都有能力達到兩位數的有機成長。我們時不時可能會看到 2024 年出現的某個季度，其中支付額可能會在某個季度內下降到中高個位數，一段時間後會回升，但我們會看到在一段持續的時間內實現良好的兩位數增長，我們也喜歡未來的前景。

Great. And then just a quick follow-up. Tell me if I'm interpreting this wrong. I'm just wondering, I see that the Asia Pacific revenue ticked up in December. I know it was down last quarter, but is that a sign of any projects playing out there? Or anything you can tell on that?

偉大的。然後只是快速的跟進。如果我的理解錯誤請告訴我。我只是好奇，我發現亞太地區的收入在 12 月有所上升。我知道上個季度它的利潤有所下降，但這是否預示著有項目正在實施？或者您能就此說點什麼嗎？

No. I mean, one, it's a law of small numbers, right, because you've got the numbers in the APAC region, that's probably our smallest region. So kind of small wins and/or go-lives in some of our deployments will impact that number meaningfully. So I wouldn't read into that too much.

不。我的意思是，首先，這是一個小數定律，對吧，因為你得到的是亞太地區的數字，這可能是我們最小的地區。因此，我們在某些​​部署中取得的小勝利和/或上線將對這個數字產生重大影響。所以我不會對此進行過多的解讀。

Nehal Chokshi, Northland Capital Markets.

Nehal Chokshi，北國資本市場。

Congrats on those great results. Hai, can you give a little more color as far as how much is increasing SaaS mix driving the gross margin increase on the Q-over-Q and year-over-year basis?

恭喜您取得這些優異的成績。您好，您能否詳細說明一下，SaaS 產品組合的增加對環比和同比毛利率的成長有多大推動作用？

Yeah. We haven't really broken that out. Let's just say it's a meaningful number. It's really just 2 factors, like I said, it's the mix of revenue combined with efficiency around the rest of our businesses, right? So as we highlighted, in 2024, we took actions several times throughout the year to drive some meaningful efficiency. They were very difficult decisions in our part.

是的。我們還沒有真正弄清楚這一點。我們只能說這是一個有意義的數字。正如我所說，這實際上只有兩個因素，這是收入與我們其他業務的效率的結合，對嗎？因此，正如我們所強調的，在 2024 年，我們全年採取了多次行動，以提高有意義的效率。對我們來說這是一個非常艱難的決定。

They were the right decisions for us to really continue to drive improved profitability and cash flow, right? And you see that manifest in our improving gross profit numbers. And at the same time, you can probably assume that if we're continuing to grow our payments, our CX business, which are higher-margin businesses, right, at double-digit organic growth relative to the rest of our business, that's the mix contribution.

對我們來說，這些決定是正確的，可以真正繼續提高獲利能力和現金流，對嗎？您可以從我們不斷提高的毛利數字中看到這一點。同時，你可能認為，如果我們繼續發展我們的支付業務，我們的 CX 業務（利潤率較高的業務），相對於我們其他業務而言，實現兩位數的有機增長，這就是混合貢獻。

It sounds like mix is less than a 50% contributor to the increases in gross margin you've been seeing, though, on a year-over-year basis at least. Would that be fair?

聽起來，至少從同比來看，產品組合對毛利率成長的貢獻不到 50%。這樣公平嗎？

I think it depends on the quarter and the timing.

我認為這取決於季度和時間。

Okay. And then, Brian, you mentioned big wins, definitely big ones from my perspective of Claro Brazil, Telenor Denmark and Lyse. Could you give us some detail as far as who are the incumbents here? And a follow-on to that would be, are you seeing any difference in frequency of success against NetCracker and Amdocs over the past year?

好的。然後，布萊恩，您提到了重大勝利，從我的角度來看，Claro Brazil、Telenor Denmark 和 Lyse 絕對是重大勝利。您能否向我們詳細介紹這裡的現任官員是誰？接下來的問題是，在過去的一年裡，您是否發現 NetCracker 和 Amdocs 的成功頻率有任何差異？

Yeah. What we've tried not to o, Nehal, I hope you're doing well, is talk about our customers' business. I'll let Dan talk about who we're displacing in. But obviously, all 3 of those wins were meaningful. And you can assume we were competing against everybody and their brother and sister as part of those wins. The market continues.

是的。我們試著不去談論我們客戶的生意，Nehal，我希望你一切都好。我讓丹來談談我們要取代誰。但顯然，這3場勝利都意義重大。你可以假設我們在與每個人以及他們的兄弟姐妹競爭以取得勝利。市場仍在持續。

Any deal that we're selling, we're going up against the top competitors. And if it's a billing deal, yes, we'll always go up against an Amdocs, an Oracle, a NetCracker and some of the smaller players. That's just the nature of winning the kind of deals we are. So I've been in the space now since 2002. And so I don't see anything changing in terms of the competitive intensity.

對於任何交易，我們都在與頂級競爭對手競爭。如果這是一項計費交易，是的，我們將始終與 Amdocs、Oracle、NetCracker 和一些較小的公司競爭。這就是我們贏得這類交易的本質。我從 2002 年起就一直處於這個領域。因此，我認為競爭強度不會有任何變化。

There are always tough wins to get, and we're always proud when we do it. I think the one thing that I've commented on that I do think is different is I think there is an inflection point where the telecom market, and it's also true of what we're seeing in North American broadband needs to take out significant complexity not starting with their technology, but their business process. And so that's why we invested in an AWS cloud-native Ascendon.

我們總是需要克服困難才能取得勝利，而當我們贏得勝利時，我們總是會感到自豪。我認為我所評論的一件不同的事情是，我認為電信市場有一個轉折點，我們在北美寬頻中看到的情況也是如此，它需要消除顯著的複雜性，不是從他們的技術開始，而是從他們的業務流程開始。這就是我們投資 AWS 雲端原生 Ascendon 的原因。

That's why we developed and acquired part of the stack with this analytics-driven digital CX platform Xponent and why we also built out our quote and order to be able to integrate those 3 products and operate in the cloud and help them simplify their business process and with a goal of reducing their cost to serve by 40% or 50%. We do think that is a big competitive advantage that we have against some of our players that they don't have. They'll say they do, but they don't. And so we're trying to leverage that across the board, and there's still intense competitions with my friends over at Amdocs and at NetCracker.

這就是我們開發和收購這個分析驅動的數位 CX 平台 Xponent 的部分堆疊的原因，也是我們建立報價和訂單的原因，以便能夠整合這三種產品並在雲端中運行，幫助他們簡化業務流程，目標是將服務成本降低 40% 或 50%。我們確實認為這是我們相對於某些球員所不具備的一大競爭優勢。他們說他們會，但實際上他們不會。因此，我們試圖全面利用這一點，但我與 Amdocs 和 NetCracker 的朋友之間仍然存在激烈的競爭。

Shlomo Rosenbaum, Stifel.

羅森鮑姆（Shlomo Rosenbaum），Stifel。

Brian, can you just talk a little bit about market conditions and how they've been trending? Have they been getting better, staying the same, getting worse? I guess what I'm hearing is I'm hearing you more enthusiastic over the last few quarters. It doesn't sound like the market is getting better. It feels like you are, I'm not sure if there's like more manufactured wins just from you guys maybe grinding it out better, having hitting the right places better.

布萊恩，您能簡單談談市場狀況和發展趨勢嗎？情況是變得更好了，保持不變了，還是變得更糟了？我想我聽到的是，過去幾季你表現得更熱情。聽起來市場沒有好轉。感覺就像你一樣，我不確定是否有更多的人為勝利，只是因為你們可能磨練得更好，更好地擊中了正確的地方。

I'm just trying to put this all together. And then in the context of kind of the 2% to 4% revenue growth, given the enthusiasm that you have, does it seem likely that we could see that growth moving up over the course of the year?

我只是想把這一切整合在一起。那麼，在 2% 到 4% 的收入成長背景下，鑑於您的熱情，我們是否有可能看到這種成長在一年內上升？

Yeah. Shlomo, it's a great question. I mean, first, we're not pleased at all with 2024, right? Organic growth, that's sub-2%. We loved Q4. We saw it coming. We saw the sales wins and the onboarding, which got us to the 5% organic in Q4. We weren't pleased with 2024. We got to do better heading into 2025. And as we said, we're entering the year with better backlog with better visibility than we had 12 months ago.

是的。什洛莫，這個問題問得很好。我的意思是，首先，我們對 2024 年一點也不滿意，對吧？有機成長率低於2%。我們喜歡 Q4。我們預見了它的發生。我們看到了銷售的成功和入職培訓，這使我們在第四季度的有機成長率達到了 5%。我們對 2024 年並不滿意。邁向 2025 年，我們必須做得更好。正如我們所說，與 12 個月前相比，我們進入新的一年時，訂單積壓情況更好，可見度也更高。

We still see a tough market, which is why we tend to be call balls and strikes pretty straight down the middle. And that's why we're saying right now, it's still a tough market condition, notwithstanding the great sales wins. That's why we're guiding more to a 2% to 4% organic with the chance if we get a good start to the year that we could come in at the upper end of that, but let's see what happens.

我們仍然看到市場競爭激烈，這就是為什麼我們傾向於直接判定球和擊球。這就是為什麼我們現在說，儘管銷售業績巨大，但市場情況仍然嚴峻。這就是為什麼我們將有機銷售額預期提高到 2% 到 4% 之間，如果今年有一個好的開始，我們就有可能達到這個數字的上限，但讓我們看看會發生什麼。

So it's a combination. yes, we're entering this year with more optimism than we entered 2024, but it's still a tough market condition. We just got to keep executing quarter in, quarter out. Probably have a little more flavor and insights after we close Q1.

所以這是一個組合。是的，我們今年的前景比 2024 年更樂觀，但市場狀況仍然嚴峻。我們只需繼續按季度執行即可。在我們結束第一季後可能會有更多的見解和見解。

Okay. Great. And then this one is for Hai. The free cash flow was very good in the quarter, and we saw the receivables go down. And I'm just wondering, particularly in the unbilled, like were there milestones that were hit for payments? Has that been more of a focus for your team in general? Just checking into that, in particular, in the context of the company expecting a lot better free cash flow going forward for the next few years.

好的。偉大的。然後這個是給 Hai 的。本季的自由現金流非常好，我們看到應收帳款下降。我只是想知道，特別是在未開票的部分，是否有達到付款的里程碑？整體而言，這是否是您的團隊更關注的重點？只是調查一下，特別是在公司預計未來幾年自由現金流會好得多的情況下。

Yeah. Shlomo, I mean I think that each year will bring kind of different challenges to us in terms of continuing to drive up our free cash flow performance. I think this year, what we did do, and we talked about it in the past, which is we did implement a lot of intensity around improving our free cash flow. And so we put in place kind of a high-intensity process to really drive improvements on our net working capital.

是的。什洛莫，我的意思是，我認為在繼續提高我們的自由現金流表現方面，每年我們都會面臨不同的挑戰。我認為今年我們確實做了一些事情，而且我們過去也討論過這個問題，那就是我們確實加大了力度來改善我們的自由現金流。因此，我們實施了一種高強度的流程來真正推動淨營運資本的改善。

Now when you first put it in at the beginning of the year, it takes a little time for it to really have an impact, but we really started to see that impact, particularly in the second half of the year, and that's what you're really seeing here at the end of the day. There were some improvements in the unbilled, but I would say that wasn't really what was driving the bulk of the free cash flow improvement.

現在，當你在年初第一次把它投入使用時，它需要一點時間才能真正產生影響，但我們確實開始看到這種影響，特別是在今年下半年，這就是你在一天結束時真正看到的。未開票方面有一些改善，但我想說這並不是推動自由現金流改善的真正原因。

The bulk of the free cash flow improvement was, one, just a growth in our operating income as well as the improvement on net working capital. As we enter this year as we look into 2026, yes, we do have confidence that we're going to continue to drive those improved working capital numbers. We have confidence that we're going to continue to drive up our profitability. And we do believe we're going to start to make a bigger dent in our unbilled as well, right, as we hit those project milestones and then convert the unbilled to receivables.

自由現金流改善的大部分來自於我們的營業收入的成長以及淨營運資本的改善。當我們進入今年並展望 2026 年時，是的，我們確實有信心繼續推動營運資本數字的改善。我們有信心繼續提高我們的獲利能力。我們確實相信，當我們達到這些項目里程碑並將未開立發票款項轉換為應收帳款時，我們也將開始在未開立發票款項方面取得更大進展。

Timothy Horan with Oppenheimer & Co.

Oppenheimer & Co. 的 Timothy Horan

I know you don't disclose it exactly, but do you think your cloud SaaS revenues are in line with your industry peers or enterprise migration to the cloud? Would it be kind of above or below those trends? And can you give us a sense of where you think that ultimately ends up as a percentage of revenue? And I guess related to this, what's the gross margin for this business versus legacy?

我知道您沒有透露具體細節，但您認為您的雲端 SaaS 收入是否與業內同行或企業向雲端遷移保持一致？它會高於還是低於這些趨勢？您能否告訴我們，您認為這最終佔收入的百分比是多少？我想與此相關的是，這項業務與傳統業務相比的毛利率是多少？

Yeah. There's a couple of aspects to that. Let me maybe start to peel that onion and then Hai can add some more color, Tim. I appreciate you joining. First, from a SaaS standpoint, we have quite a few solutions that would be either AWS or a cloud-native solution. For those businesses, we expect like any cloud, we expect net retention well above 100%.

是的。這有幾個方面。也許讓我開始剝洋蔥，然後海可以添加一些顏色，Tim。感謝您的加入。首先，從 SaaS 的角度來看，我們有不少解決方案，要不是 AWS，就是雲端原生解決方案。對於那些業務，我們預計就像任何雲端一樣，淨保留率將遠高於 100%。

We expect gross margins to be above 70%. We expect to be able to drive those kind of economics where you could get to 75% or 80% on the gross margin. So on that side, that is our expectation. It doesn't mean every one of the businesses are there because some of them are smaller in the early stages, and we're really starting to get scale around that. But that is our expectation and kind of what we see around cloud.

我們預計毛利率將超過70%。我們希望能夠推動這種經濟，使毛利率達到 75% 或 80%。因此從這方面來說，這是我們的期望。這並不意味著每家企業都存在，因為其中一些企業在早期階段規模較小，而我們正真正開始實現規模化。但這是我們的期望，也是我們對雲端的看法。

I think in terms of when you look at the BSS side and kind of compare some of our competitors have more of a managed service offer. So they may be doing a lot that they would call cloud. But a lot of times, it might be moving a large telecom operator from an on-premise iron, their own data center to more of a services-based project to go to an Azure or one of the hyperscalers. They'll call that cloud, but that's very different than having a true cloud-native platform that can drive the kind of economics and revenue and mix shift that Hai is talking about. That's why we do think we're on to something with our Ascendon.

我認為，從 BSS 來看，與我們的一些競爭對手相比，它們提供更多的託管服務。因此他們可能正在做很多他們稱之為雲端的事情。但很多時候，它可能會將大型電信業者從內部部署設備、自己的資料中心轉移到更多基於服務的項目，轉向 Azure 或超大規模資料中心之一。他們稱之為雲，但這與真正的雲端原生平台非常不同，後者可以推動 Hai 所談論的經濟、收入和組合轉變。這就是為什麼我們確實認為我們的 Ascendon 取得了一些進展。

In the digital CX space, again, that is a cloud solution, just like our AWS cloud payments. In payments, you see probably more of our competitors do also have a true cloud native. Same would also be true in the CX. So I think that competition question differs by industry vertical. But Hai, anything else you'd talk about on the financial side of that?

在數位 CX 領域，這又是一個雲端解決方案，就像我們的 AWS 雲端支付一樣。在支付方面，您可能會發現我們的更多競爭對手也擁有真正的雲端原生。在 CX 中也是如此。所以我認為競爭問題因行業垂直而異。但是海，您還有什麼關於財務方面的事想談嗎？

No. I mean I think, Brian, you touched upon it, which is we're no different than any other business, right? So the relative difference you see in the industry around gross margins associated with the SaaS platform versus gross margin associated with services. Even within a "SaaS company" they'll have deployment revenue associated with services and they're much lower margin relative to the platform margin. We're no different than that, and it's a relative mix.

不。我的意思是，布萊恩，我認為你提到了這一點，那就是我們與其他任何企業沒有什麼不同，對嗎？因此，您會看到行業中與 SaaS 平台相關的毛利率與與服務相關的毛利率之間的相對差異。即使在「SaaS 公司」中，他們也會有與服務相關的部署收入，而且相對於平台利潤來說，他們的利潤要低得多。我們與此沒有什麼不同，這是一個相對的混合。

But Hai, can you give us a sense of the revenues? I mean, some metric, is it above or below 10% or above and below 20%? Not looking for exact numbers, but it's obviously a major driver of the business, and we're kind of flying blind here.

但是海，你能告訴我們收入狀況嗎？我的意思是，某個指標是高於或低於 10% 還是高於或低於 20%？我們並不尋求確切的數字，但這顯然是業務的主要驅動力，而我們在這裡有點盲目。

Yeah. No, look, it's something we've talked about, right, is that we're not at a point where we're prepared to kind of break that out, right? We don't have segment reporting. That's not what we do. But we're constantly evaluating Tim. And I appreciate the challenge. But at the end of the day, we're in the early stages. We think there's a long runway here for growth. At some point when it becomes meaningful enough, it is something we'll look to break out. But suffice it to say, like I said, we're currently looking at our payments in our CX businesses are a rule of somewhere between 30 and 40, right? That's the way we think.

是的。不，你看，這是我們討論過的事情，對吧，就是我們還沒準備好突破這一點，對吧？我們沒有分部報告。這不是我們所做的。但我們一直在評估蒂姆。我感謝這項挑戰。但最終我們仍處於早期階段。我們認為這裡有著廣闊的成長空間。當它變得足夠有意義時，我們就會尋求突破。但就像我說的，我們目前正在研究 CX 業務中的付款規則，該規則介於 30 到 40 之間，對嗎？這就是我們的想法。

Great. And Brian, how are you thinking about industry consolidation? Do you think you can create more value by buying smaller companies over time and accelerating your growth rate there? Or do you think it would make more sense for you to roll up into a larger company where they can do something similar in terms of synergies over time? How do you think about how the industry evolves?

偉大的。布萊恩，您如何看待產業整合？您是否認為隨著時間的推移收購小公司並加快其成長速度，您可以創造更多價值？或者您認為加入更大的公司更有意義，這樣他們就能在長期的綜效方面做類似的事情？您如何看待這個產業的發展？

Yeah. Maybe I'll answer it from two angles. On the M&A, it's pretty much the same, highly disciplined. We think price points have come down, but we constantly look at small, mid and larger. Obviously, if you get into the mid and larger, it means that the diligence goes up 3 times, the discipline goes up 3 times because you got to get those 100% right. And we think our track record speaks for itself on that. And we do expect to be able to announce and close deals in the coming quarter and in 2025. Stay tuned on which size spectrum those fall into.

是的。也許我會從兩個角度來回答。在併購方面，情況大致相同，紀律性很強。我們認為價格點已經下降，但我們仍不斷關注小型、中型和大型企業。顯然，如果你進入中型或大型企業，這意味著勤奮程度要提高 3 倍，紀律性要提高 3 倍，因為你必須 100% 正確做到這些。我們認為，我們的過往業績足以證明這一點。我們確實希望能夠在下個季度和 2025 年宣布並完成交易。請繼續關注它們屬於哪個尺寸範圍。

On broader market speculation, there was a report that went out. We don't comment on specifically, but we're pretty straight shooters. So I'll just share what I talked to our customers and our global employees about on maybe some of the bigger industry scale rumors that are out there. First, we just believe with the results we're putting out, you put out better and better results, people are going to take notice and you're going to get talked about more.

針對更廣泛的市場猜測，有一份報告出爐。我們不對此發表具體評論，但我們是非常直言不諱的人。因此，我只想分享我與我們的客戶和全球員工談論的一些有關行業規模較大的謠言。首先，我們相信憑藉我們所取得的成果，您會取得越來越好的成果，人們會注意到您，您會得到更多的對話。

So we think being more relevant is a good thing, not a bad thing. Second, what I remind our teams about around this bigger scale consolidation, our customers are in the news every day about who's going to buy who and what do they do at the exact level? They keep their head down. They know that's noise, and they know the best thing they can do is just kick out better and better results kind of every quarter. And that's what we just try to get our teams to focus on.

因此我們認為更具相關性是一件好事，而不是壞事。其次，我提醒我們的團隊，圍繞著這種更大規模的整合，我們的客戶每天都會出現在新聞中，關於誰將購買誰以及他們在具體層面上會做什麼？他們低著頭。他們知道那隻是噪音，他們知道他們能做的最好的事情就是每季都取得越來越好的成績。這正是我們試圖讓我們的團隊專注的重點。

From an industry logic, if you kind of step back as an analyst, the reality is somebody like an NEC, a large network equipment provider that's acquired both an OSS and a BSS that looks a lot like our company, probably a similar size. Is there industrial strategic logic of what could be unlocked by putting assets like that together? Of course, there's large strategic industrial logic. And kind of what we're focused on is just perform and deliver results like we put up in Q4, and it will take care of itself.

從行業邏輯來看，如果你以分析師的身份退一步思考，你會發現現實情況是，像 NEC 這樣的人，是一家大型網絡設備提供商，它收購了 OSS 和 BSS，看起來很像我們的公司，規模可能也差不多。將這樣的資產整合在一起，是否能釋放出產業戰略邏輯？當然，這裡面有大的戰略產業邏輯。我們所關注的只是表現並交付像我們在第四季所提出的結果，一切都會水到渠成。

And of course, our Board, I'd put our Board up against any Board out there. If something moved from rumor mill to actually a compelling offer that looked like it could be actionable, of course, our Board would do the right by shareholders with the right thorough process. So is industry consolidation in telecom, has it happened consistently over 2 decades? Yes. Is it likely to continue to happen? Yes. What do we do? Just perform quarter in, quarter out.

當然，我會讓我們的董事會與任何董事會競爭。如果某件事不再是謠言，而是真正具有吸引力、看起來可行的提議，那麼我們的董事會當然會透過正確、週詳的程序為股東做出正確的決定。那麼，電信業整合在過去 20 年裡是否一直在發生？是的。這種情況可能還會繼續發生嗎？是的。我們該怎麼做？只需執行四分之一，四分之一即可。

Sorry, last question, sorry to monopolize. Palantir had a quote on their call 2 days ago that they won a very large pharmaceutical contract, $67 million contract value. They're automatically load balancing prescription fulfillment and orchestrating patient outreach. Are you partnering with them or competing with Palantir on their AI? And obviously, they're talking about 80%, 90% kind of productivity improvements with using their AI. Do you see them at all, and I guess, are you partnering or competing?

抱歉，這是最後一個問題，抱歉壟斷了。Palantir 在兩天前的電話會議上表示，他們贏得了非常大的製藥合同，合約價值 6700 萬美元。它們會自動平衡處方履行負荷並協調患者服務。您是在與他們合作還是在人工智慧方面與 Palantir 競爭？顯然，他們談論的是使用人工智慧可以實現 80% 到 90% 的生產力提高。你看到他們了嗎？我猜，你們是合作夥伴還是競爭對手？

Yeah. No, it doesn't mean we won't. We've never competed directly because what our solution is, is not an AI in and of itself solution. It's really how do you actually ingest data from customers, put it in a format that then you can turn into real-time actionable insights on a targeted use case and then actually deliver that through different channels so that you can optimize it in a very low-cost fashion. We've never, to my knowledge, competed against Palantir as a pure stand-alone AI solution. It doesn't mean we might not, I guess, but that hasn't been one we've ever come across. And we know them fairly well.

是的。不，這並不意味著我們不會。我們從未直接競爭，因為我們的解決方案本身並不是人工智慧解決方案。這實際上是如何從客戶那裡獲取數據，將其轉換為一種格式，然後您可以將其轉化為針對目標用例的實時可操作的見解，然後通過不同的渠道實際交付它，以便您可以以非常低成本的方式對其進行優化。據我所知，我們從未作為純粹的獨立 AI 解決方案與 Palantir 競爭。我想這並不意味著我們可能不會遇到這種情況，只是我們從未遇到過這種情況。我們非常了解他們。

Brett Knoblauch, Cantor Fitzgerald.

布雷特·諾布勞赫，坎托·菲茨杰拉德。

This is Thomas Shinske on for Brett Knoblauch. Just one for me. I wanted to ask about the solid revenue growth outside of Comcast and Charter, which grew around 8.5% year-over-year. Referring to comments made on the call about inorganic and organic growth. Does it sound accurate that approximately $4.5 million of that growth came from inorganic contributions, leaving about 6% as organic growth in the business outside of Comcast and Charter? And then could you maybe also provide additional insights into what drove the remaining growth, excluding the inorganic contributions?

這是 Brett Knoblauch 的 Thomas Shinske。對我來說只有一個。我想問康卡斯特和 Charter 以外的穩健收入成長情況，年增約 8.5%。參考電話會議上關於無機和有機成長的評論。其中約 450 萬美元的成長來自無機貢獻，剩下約 6% 為康卡斯特和 Charter 以外業務的有機成長，聽起來準確嗎？那麼，您是否還可以提供額外的見解，說明除了無機貢獻之外，是什麼推動了剩餘的成長？

Yeah. I mean I'll let Brian talk about kind of the drivers of growth. But mathematically, you're directionally correct in the math that you're doing in terms of the difference between organic and inorganic, right? So like I said, it was a great quarter for us, a very strong quarter. and it really illustrated the power of the value that we're bringing to the table for many of our customers existing or through our recently acquired business.

是的。我的意思是我會讓布萊恩談論成長的驅動力。但是從數學上來說，您在有機和無機之間的差異方面的計算在方向上是正確的，對嗎？所以就像我說的，這對我們來說是一個偉大的季度，一個非常強勁的季度。它真正體現了我們為眾多現有客戶或透過我們新收購的業務帶來的價值的力量。

Yeah. And on the organic side, I think the main drivers in 2024 were our strong sales performance and revenue performance in our customer engagement analytics CX business. And we just had fantastic both expansions of existing customers and good wins in that space. Payments grew nicely in 2024, although we know we can do better in payments in 2025. And we had that really nice deal with Comcast, where we had an adjunct billing solution for another part of the business outside of their triple play that also contributed nicely. Those would probably be some of the bigger ones, notwithstanding good wins in telco, but I think you'll see some of that revenue coming online as those big programs get implemented.

是的。從有機方面來看，我認為 2024 年的主要驅動力是我們的客戶參與分析 CX 業務強勁的銷售業績和收入表現。我們在該領域既擴大了現有客戶，也取得了豐厚的成果。2024 年支付業務成長良好，但我們知道 2025 年支付業務可以做得更好。我們與康卡斯特達成了非常好的協議，我們為他們的三重播放之外的另一部分業務提供了附加計費解決方案，這也做出了很大貢獻。儘管電信公司取得了不錯的成績，但這些可能是一些較大的項目，但我認為，隨著這些大項目的實施，你會看到部分收入來自網路。

Michael Berg, Wells Fargo.

富國銀行的麥可‧伯格。

This is [ Bronin ] on for Michael. Just a quick question on the other vertical segment. You said that number, it's like hovering around 30%. Could you talk about like the dynamics of your diversification journey and when we should expect that number to start accelerating?

這是 [ 布羅寧 ] 為麥可主持的。我只想問一下關於另一個垂直段的一個簡單的問題。你說的那個數字好像在30%左右徘徊。您能否談談多元化歷程的動態以及我們何時應該預期這個數字開始加速？

Yeah. I mean, first, I think I'll let Hai close off on the back end of that on the numbers. But first, we're not in a diversification for diversification's sake. CSG is laser-focused on how do we help great brands simplify their complex customer engagement and monetization and deliver better results. And so all the wins come from a unified simple strategy that brings about integrated technology that just does that better than any of our competitors.

是的。我的意思是，首先，我想讓 Hai 在數字上結束這一步。但首先，我們不是為了多元化而多元化。CSG 專注於如何幫助優秀品牌簡化其複雜的客戶參與和貨幣化並提供更好的結果。因此，所有的勝利都源自於統一的簡單策略，而該策略帶來的整合技術比我們的任何競爭對手都做得更好。

So that's what we're seeing around that is just a better performance that's actually driving them better growth as a result of that in those other verticals. Tolling was a great win. We talked about stuff in media. We talked about financial services, big technology, some of the pharmacy retailers and small price points, quick ROI returns is what gets you a closed and won deal in this tough economic environment. We're doing it like clockwork. Hai, anything you want to add on the numbers?

所以，我們看到的是，它們在其他垂直領域表現得更好，這推動了它們更好的成長。收費是一次偉大的勝利。我們談論媒體上的事。我們討論了金融服務、大型科技、一些藥局零售商和小價格點，快速的投資報酬率是讓您在這種艱難的經濟環境下達成並贏得交易的關鍵。我們正準時完成任務。您好，您想在數字上添加什麼嗎？

Yeah. So first of all, if you think about the journey we've been on, in some regards, we've been very fortunate to have started with cable and telecommunications, right? In fact, they are some of the most complex businesses to work with, and we've helped simplify their business proposition to their end customers. And what we're finding out is that, that's not necessarily unique. We can take that expertise and the solutions we've built and add value to other industry verticals.

是的。首先，如果你想想我們走過的歷程，從某些方面來看，我們很幸運地從有線電視和電信開始，對嗎？事實上，他們是一些最複雜的企業，我們幫助他們簡化了面向最終客戶的業務主張。我們發現，這不一定是獨一無二的。我們可以利用這些專業知識和我們所建構的解決方案為其他垂直產業增加價值。

So that's the journey we are on. And with regards to the numbers themselves, it's hard to predict. I mean it's a great question, primarily because it's not as if our cable and telecommunications business are static, they're growing as well, right? And because of that growth, some quarters, they're going to continue to grow very quickly versus the other verticals. In other quarters, other verticals are going to grow more quickly. So it's going to be a little choppy. But directionally speaking, over a multiyear period, do we expect those other verticals to continue a steady march above 30%? Absolutely.

這就是我們正在進行的旅程。而就數字本身而言，很難預測。我認為這是一個很好的問題，主要是因為我們的有線電視和電信業務並不是一成不變的，它們也在成長，對嗎？而且由於這種增長，在某些季度，與其他垂直行業相比，它們將繼續快速成長。在其他地區，其他垂直行業將會成長得更快。所以它會有點不穩定。但從方向上講，在多年期內，我們是否預期其他垂直產業將繼續穩定地保持 30% 以上的成長？絕對地。

Great. That makes sense. And just a quick follow-up. Anything you're seeing in terms of like end customer dynamics, specifically within your large customers? And if there's any structural weakness there based on like their previous prints and what you're seeing into 2025?

偉大的。這很有道理。接下來是快速的跟進。您在最終客戶動態方面，特別是在大客戶方面有什麼發現嗎？根據他們先前的記錄以及您對 2025 年的預測，是否存在任何結構性弱點？

No. I mean I think they're facing the same thing we are, which is how do they constantly strengthen and simplify their strategy, how do they execute better and how do they make sure they invest in things that give them a payback. And so that's why in our sales cycles, what do we focus on? How do we help them actually improve their financial results, get a quicker payback, and that's leading to the good sales wins. But structurally, nothing else that I would comment on.

不。我的意思是，我認為他們面臨著與我們相同的問題，即如何不斷加強和簡化他們的策略，如何更好地執行，以及如何確保他們所投資的專案能夠為他們帶來回報。那麼這就是為什麼我們在銷售週期中要關注什麼呢？我們如何幫助他們真正改善財務表現、更快地獲得回報並取得良好的銷售成果。但從結構上來說，我沒有其他可評論的。

Thank you so much. This does conclude the Q&A portion of today's call. With that, I will hand the floor back over to Mr. Shepherd.

太感謝了。今天電話會議的問答部分到此結束。現在，我將發言權交還給謝潑德先生。

Thanks for joining us today on the call. Team CSG is laser-focused on having 2025 be a better year of results than we had in 2024, and we're locked in on making sure we start the year strong with Q1. Look forward to talking to you in 90 days.

感謝您今天參加我們的電話會議。CSG 團隊致力於讓 2025 年的業績比 2024 年更好，並且我們致力於確保以第一季的強勁開局。期待 90 天後與您交談。

Thank you again for joining us. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

再次感謝您的加入我們。今天的電話會議到此結束。您現在可以斷開連線。