TTEC Holdings Inc (TTEC) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to TTEC's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions). This call is being recorded at the request of TTEC. I would now like to turn the call over to Bob Belknapp, TTEC's Group Vice President, Corporate Finance. Thank you, sir, and you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today TTEC is hosting this call to discuss its fourth quarter and full year 2025, results for the period ended December 31, 2025. Participating on today's call are Ken Tuchman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TTEC; and Kenny Wagers, Chief Financial Officer of TTEC.

Yesterday, TTEC issued a press release announcing its financial results. While this call will reflect items discussed in that document, for complete information about our financial performance, we also encourage you to read our annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended on December 31, 2025.

Before we begin, I want to remind you that matters discussed on today's call may include forward-looking statements related to our operating performance, financial goals and business outlook, which are based on management's current beliefs and assumptions.

Please note that these forward-looking statements reflect our opinions as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update this information as a result of new developments that may occur.

Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expected and described today.

For a more detailed description of our risk factors, please review our 2025, annual report on Form 10-K. A replay of this conference call will be available on our website under the Investor Relations section. I will now turn the call over to Ken.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today 2025, was a pivotal year for TTEC, one in which we met our financial commitments, improved our balance sheet and fortified our position as the leader in AI-enabled CX for the full year 2025, revenue was $2,136 million, exceeding the high end of our guidance.

Adjusted EBITDA was $214 million, reflecting year-over-year growth of 5.6%. We generated $83 million in cash flow and reduced our credit facility borrowings by $70 million this reflects our continued focus on strengthening our balance sheet.

Before moving on to our business overview, I'd like to point out that our operating improvements and disciplined budget management were offset by a onetime goodwill noncash impairment on a portion of our TTEC Digital segment in the fourth quarter.

This was due to the decline in our market capitalization and the annual fair value assessment. While impactful from an accounting GAAP perspective, the impairment was a noncash expense and has no impact on our broader ability to execute our strategy or the value of our CX Technology solutions.

Now on to some highlights from the year. We deepened our relationships with our largest clients, capturing an increased share of wallet as they expanded their use of our end-to-end consulting, technology and managed services portfolio. Sales of new lines of business launched in 2025, to our base were strong in both our Engage and Digital segments, increasing year-over-year.

Across the business, we attracted a substantial number of new clients with our AI forward and vertical solutions approach. Several of these clients are new to having a CX partner, a shift driven by data and AI landscape that has become too complex for clients to navigate alone.

We grew our strategic technology partnerships as we collaborated on new client sales opportunities and innovative solution development. Our professional services with these technology partners grew 16% outside of our legacy CCaaS practices. We continue to increase the penetration of our AI-enabled solutions with our embedded base and are integrating this innovation functionality in every new TTEC engage and TTEC Digital opportunity.

We expect that we will achieve near 100% AI adoption with our current clients by the end of this year. And importantly, we continue to invest in our global team of CX engineers, consultants, data analysts and associates, earning great place to Work certification in 15 countries several more countries than last year.

Before we move into the discussion of our segment performance, I'd like to share some thoughts on the current macro environment. Clearly, there is an AI overhang casting a shadow over valuations for CX, IT and SaaS-based business services companies. We are fully cognizant that over time, there will be an impact on lower value interactions, which are part of the current $400 billion TAM.

However, the opportunity is sufficiently large to support the company serving the market today, let alone the new solutions that are emerging. Based on our experience, AI isn't eliminating the need for CX.

It's making it more effective by automating routine transactions, it's enabling humans in the loop to focus on the high stakes interactions that define a brand. But even as we navigate the fastest tech adoption curve in history, we must remain mindful that the promise of AI is only as good as its execution.

Success lies in balancing this rapid innovation with the operational realities required to deliver a seamless, human-centric experience.

Our point of view is shaped by several market realities one, transformation requires a long runway. It took almost 30 years from the Internet's debut to achieve total global integration. It demanded decades to build the infrastructure, technology, tools and adoption to achieve worldwide ubiquity. Two, systems sprawl is massive.

Today, the average fortune 1000 company operates hundreds of software applications and technology systems, both in the cloud and on-premises. Although not all of them are required for CX, less than one fourth of them are integrated. Three, internal cultural adoption creates a bottleneck.

According to a recent Bain and Company study, 88% of business transformations fail to achieve their goals because of lack of organizational readiness and employee alignment. Success requires businesses to rethink how they organize and power, train and measure the effectiveness of their people and AI counterparts.

And finally, technology is only as valuable as the end consumers' willingness to use and trust it just as the EV mark shifted towards hybrid cars when consumers demanded the security of traditional engines alongside new tech, CX is entering a hybrid air where consumers appreciate the potential convenience and personalization of agentic AI, but demand the trust and authenticity of a human in the loop for high-value complex interactions.

In this environment, enterprises are seeking guidance and expertise like never before. They're looking to architect modern data states, integrate disparate systems and redefine workflows. In some cases, rather than struggling to do it themselves in-house. They choose to work with an end-to-end partner like TTEC.

This convergence of complexity and urgency is exactly where we excel. We don't just provide the technology of the people. We provide the strategic CX bridge that turns AI potential into operational reality. With 42% of general AI initiatives failing due to lack of depth, companies are shifting budgets to CX specialists like us, who don't just know AI, but have the precious final mile CX experience to move fast, remove risk and deliver brand differentiation.

To achieve the full potential of our unique platform, we continue to build on our strong leadership foundation with new talent. I am pleased to announce several key appointments that will further accelerate our strategic road map.

Alfredo Rizo, a long-standing leader with our TTEC Digital organization has moved into the newly created role of Chief Technology Officer of TTEC, reporting directly to me. His deep institutional knowledge, client-centric experience and AI-first approach will be vital as he fast tracks our efforts to deliver next-generation AI solutions at scale.

Joining him is Rocky Desereju, our new Chief Operating Officer at TTEC Digital. His deep domain expertise gained at IBM, among others, will help us further bridge the gap between operational excellence and technology-enabled transformation, ensuring our digital initiatives continue to deliver measurable impact for our clients.

Now I will turn to a discussion of our business segments. Let's start with the Digital CX segment, Engage. As planned, we delivered solid progress this quarter as we continue to advance our transformation agenda with a disciplined focus on profitable and sustainable growth.

We're seeing encouraging traction across the business as clients increasingly turn to us for modern, digital-first CX solutions and operational excellence. We are expanding our role by introducing new vertical-specific solutions, increasing cross-sell of digital capabilities and consistently delivering on the priorities that matter most to our clients.

At the same time, our new client pipeline reflects healthy momentum, attracting world-class brands that are seeking AI forward CX solutions that deliver the highest quality interactions. We remain disciplined in our pursuit of operating leverage and margin expansion.

Our digital-first strategy is yielding significant efficiencies and our strengthened leadership team has energized our frontline performance as well as continue to optimize our global delivery mix.

We are focused on winning new business that meets our profitability expectations. In parallel, we're working to optimize a few underperforming contracts. While this creates a temporary revenue headwind in 2026, it secures a healthier client portfolio, superior margins and a more resilient growth profile. Ultimately, these deliberate actions ensure we are not just growing, but growing profitably and sustainably.

Turning to TTEC Digital. We continue to evolve our professional and managed services to meet the changing needs and priorities of the market. Clients are looking to us as experts to help them navigate their digital evolution.

Because we specialize in building value through the strategic application of data, AI and automation, we're helping ensure that every innovation translates directly into disciplined, measurable business outcomes.

While these engagements may begin smaller than traditional CCaaS migrations, they are highly strategic and sticky. They leverage our expertise in the application of AI, data analytics, consulting, journey orchestration and systems integration.

Because of our fluency with all the major CX Technologies, these engagements often benefit from the network effect where they expand into multiphase professional and managed services relationships.

The shift is broadening our addressable market, increasing both our share of wallet and existing clients and attracting new ones. Our technology-agnostic approach combined with our ability to rapidly pilot use cases across all major hyperscale's is positioning us as a trusted partner for complex multi-platform CX transformations.

As a result, we're seeing growing demand for adjacent services and strong momentum in professional services pipelines and bookings.

Our partnership with a global travel and hospitality brand is one example of how our ability to combine consulting, technology and analytic insight is driving sustainable growth. Our relationship began when this enterprise was facing a critical end-of-life cliff with their on-premise contact center technology. They brought us in to initially to mitigate risk and assess their path forward.

Fast forward four years, that tactical engagement has evolved into a complete digital transformation that will persist well into the future. We've modernized their foundation by successfully migrating them to an integrated CCaaS and CRM platform.

We've architected a modern data estate with a clean unified data environment required for advanced CX and activated AI by deploying generative AI functionality to personalize guest interactions at scale.

We've fundamentally moved this client from a high-risk, high-cost legacy environment to a high-reward AI-ready CX engine. Their CX operations are no longer a cost center. Today, they are primarily a driver of revenue growth and long-term customer loyalty.

This is the blueprint that we're now scaling across multiple clients. Digital first automation handles low complexity task, reserving human expertise empowered with AI for authentic, empathetic white glove moments.

It demonstrates what can happen when we change the conversation from managing cost to mastering outcomes as a global consulting, technology and managed services company, delivering solutions at the intersection of data, AI and customer experience, we are evolving our business to capitalize on the massive opportunity before us, which brings me to our financial resilience.

We expect to continue delivering EBITDA growth, while revenue in each business segment is anticipated to be slightly down this year. As we codify the next generation of the CX playbook, we're proactively remixing our solutions, delivery models and commercial constructs.

Regarding our stock price. It is our view that the current valuation does not reflect the differentiation and value in our business. Obviously, entire sectors have been put under similar pressure and are being treated as though they have no terminal value. Our strategy remains focused on the factors that we control and on building an enduring business for the long term.

While we're collaborating with financial advisers and banking partners on our credit facility, the business performance continues to improve with stronger balance sheet and cash flow. These efforts will enhance our long-term flexibility supporting both our operations and innovation agenda.

As we pivot to the year ahead, we remain focused on returning the company to its historic growth and margin profile. We are prioritizing high-yield complex client engagements with ample opportunity for growth, expanding our role as a strategic end-to-end transformation partner, driving differentiation through vertical solutions and proprietary IP, deepening our technology partnerships, continuing to improve efficiency through AI and automation and investing in specialized talent with deep vertical CX operational and technical expertise.

These priorities are the critical path for continued success by leveraging our unique end-to-end solutions and investing in our people, platform and strategic partnerships, we will continue to capture the demand for AI-enabled CX solutions well into the future.

I continue to appreciate and value the dedication and support of our Board and talented teams across the globe. I'll now hand it over to Kenny.

Thank you, Ken, and good morning. I will start with a review of our fourth quarter and full year 2025, financial results before providing context into our 2026, full year financial outlook. In my discussion of the fourth quarter and full year financial results, reference to revenue is on a GAAP basis, while EBITDA, operating income and earnings per share are on a non-GAAP adjusted basis.

A full reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP results is included in the tables attached to our earnings press release on a consolidated basis for fourth quarter 2025, compared to the prior year period, revenue was $570 million, a slight increase over the prior year period of $567 million.

Adjusted EBITDA was $62 million or 10.9% of revenue compared to $51 million or 9%. Operating income was $48 million or 8.4% of revenue compared to $35 million or 6.2%. And earnings per share was $0.47 compared to $0.19. Foreign exchange had a $4 million positive impact on revenue and a $1 million negative impact on operating income in the quarter compared to prior year period, primarily in our Engage segment.

Now turning to our consolidated full year 2025, financial results. Revenue was $2.14 billion compared to the prior year of $2.21 billion, a decrease of 3.2%. Adjusted EBITDA was $214 million or 10% of revenue, an increase of 5.6% or 80 basis points over the prior year of $202 million or 9.2%.

Operating income was $155 million or 7.3% of revenue compared to $136 million or 6.2% in the prior year. And earnings per share was $1.10 compared to $0.71 in the prior year period.

Foreign exchange had a $3 million positive impact on revenue and a $4 million positive impact on operating income over the prior year primarily in our engage segment.

At the company and segment level, our full year financial performance was in line with the guidance expectations previously communicated with revenue exceeding the high end of full year guidance range, while profitability came in near the low end of guidance.

Turning to our fourth quarter and full year 2025, segment results. In our engage segment, fourth quarter revenue decreased 1.8% over the prior year period to $444 million. Operating income was $36 million or 8.1% of revenue, an increase of 62% or 320 basis points compared to $22 million or 4.9% of revenue in the prior year.

Engage fourth quarter revenue and operating income were in line with our expectations as health care seasonal volumes delivered $22 million of additional revenue compared to the prior year. As mentioned in our previous earnings, a significant portion of the investments related to the seasonal ramps and certain other growth clients were made in the third quarter, resulting in fourth quarter year-over-year profitability growth and margin expansion.

The health care growth was offset by a decline in the public sector portfolio due to the loss of a large client we had previously communicated, which was at lower margins and thus had a nominal impact on operating income.

We are pleased with our engage segment's fourth quarter financial results and the profitability improvement that not only drove significant growth in the quarter but more than offset the third quarter decline and resulted in overall second half margin improvement compared to the prior year.

On a full year basis, the engage 2025, revenue was $1.67 billion, a decrease of 4.6% compared to $1.75 billion in the prior year. Operating income was $101 million or 6.1% of revenue compared to $85 million or 4.9% in the prior year period, representing an increase of 18.8% and margin expansion of 120 basis points. The Engage revenue exceeded the high end of our full year guidance.

Our focus on increased profitability was reflected in the year-over-year operating income growth and margin expansion delivered despite the decline in revenue. The profitability improvement was a result of our deliberate actions taken over the last 18 months, where we realigned our cost structure, improved operating efficiencies and effectiveness and continue to increase our offshore revenue mix.

We also added new leadership, which helped drive these accomplishments.

The Engage backlog for the next 12 months is $1.48 billion or 92% of our 2026, revenue guidance at the midpoint of the range, down from 96% in 2025, the engage last 12-month revenue retention rate is 95% compared to 82% in the prior year.

Now moving to our digital segment fourth quarter revenue was $125 million, a 9.2% increase over the prior year of $115 million. Operating income was $12 million or 9.4% of revenue compared to $13 million or 11% in the prior year.

The digital fourth quarter revenue increase was driven by product resale, which drove $15 million of additional revenue over the prior year. The overall revenue mix, however, drove a lower operating income and margin as recurring revenue declined 5.6%, and professional services were slightly down 1.6% in the quarter compared to the prior year.

On a full year basis, digital's 2025, revenue was $469 million compared to $459 million in the prior year period, an increase of 2.2%. Operating income was $54 million or 11.5% of revenue compared to $51 million or 11.2% in the prior year.

The full year digital revenue growth was largely attributable to product resale, which nearly doubled compared to the prior year, increasing $24 million. This increase was due to multiple deals with clients that have yet to migrate to cloud-based CX delivery solutions.

We believe, over time, these product resale opportunities will diminish in the market. This revenue also included the sale of the IP software closed in the second quarter of 2025, for $4 million excluding the product resale, digital revenue declined $14 million or 3.2%.

This reflects the ongoing market shift, which is moving away from the traditional CCaaS point solutions to partners that provide end-to-end transformative CX solutions, optimizing clients' existing platforms as a result of this shift, Digital full year 2025 recurring revenue declined 4% compared to the prior year.

Professional services were slightly down year-over-year by 1.5%. However, professional services related to our expanded partnership network grew 15.8% outside of the traditional CCaaS offerings. Although the revenue mix came in less favorable than forecasted, we are pleased with the full year digital operating income growth and margin expansion over the prior year as cost and utilization management were high priorities.

Our digital backlog for the next 12 months is at $287 million or 67% of our 2026, revenue guidance at the midpoint of the range, up slightly from 66% in the prior year.

Before I discuss other financial metrics, I will address the noncash goodwill impairment charge and the related tax adjustment recorded in the fourth quarter.

In ordinary course, we performed goodwill impairment analysis in accordance with GAAP on an annual basis during the fourth quarter, unless a triggering event requires a more frequent analysis.

During the annual goodwill impairment analysis, the company elected to perform a quantitative evaluation of all of its reporting units based on this analysis, which reflects upon financial projections and market-based metrics, the fair value of our digital recurring reporting unit decreased below it carrying value and resulted in a $193 million noncash impairment charge.

This was primarily due to industry dynamics that are shifting our legacy recurring managed service offerings from point solutions related to contact center technology, to optimizing existing environments through AI-led consulting, journey orchestration and data and analytics services.

This type of impairment is a reality in the technology services sector where previously acquired technology-related companies are impacted by changing market conditions.

Our engage and digital professional services reporting unit's fair value remains in excess of their respective book values and are not impacted by the impairment. The tax impact of the digital impairment created a net incremental noncash charge of $12 million, further reducing the carrying value of the reporting unit and bringing the total impairment charge to $205 million. Please refer to our Form 10-K for more details on the impairment and related tax impact.

As Ken mentioned, while impactful from a GAAP reporting perspective, the impairment and the tax valuation allowance were a noncash expense and do not impact our broader strategies and capabilities nor the value of our CX technology solutions. These charges are normalized in our non-GAAP reconciliation calculations.

I will now share other 2025, metrics before discussing our 2026, outlook. Free cash flow was a positive $83 million in 2025, compared to a negative $104 million in the prior year which as previously discussed, was impacted by the discontinuation of the accounts receivable factoring facility.

Normalizing for the prior year, the year-over-year improvement was $86 million. This was due to a $79 million increase in cash flow from operations and reduced capital expenditures of $7 million. The significant increase in cash generation reflects our keen focus on improving profitability and working capital management.

Capital expenditures were $38 million or 1.8% of revenue for the full year 2025, of which 60% was growth related. This compares to capital expenditures of $45 million or 2% of revenue in the prior year. The 2025, growth-oriented spend was primarily driven by product development and technology and real estate investments in support of client growth and expansion.

As of December 31, 2025, cash was $83 million, with $908 million of debt, primarily representing borrowings under our recently amended $1.05 billion revolving credit facility. The net debt position of $825 million represents a year-over-year decrease of $68 million.

We ended 2025, with a net leverage ratio as defined under the credit facility of 3.58 times compared to 3.99 times at the end of the prior year.

As demonstrated by our improved cash flow generation and reduction in net borrowings, deleveraging and strengthening our balance sheet remain top priorities. We are confident that our 2026, outlook provides the cash flow needed to further reduce our debt and invest in the business to meet our strategic objectives.

Our full year normalized tax rate was 37.1% in 2025, compared to 40.9% in the prior year. The decrease is primarily due to the jurisdictional mix of income and the impact of valuation allowances globally.

Now transitioning to our 2026, outlook. I will now provide some context supporting our full year financial guidance related to our engage segment, we expect a decline in revenue of approximately 4%, primarily due to the rationalization of certain clients and lines of businesses that are underperforming to our target profitability and the ongoing initiative of moving and growing our revenue to offshore locations.

We expect the year-over-year revenue declines to be concentrated in the first half of the year while flattening out in the second half of 2026.

Engage profitability is forecasted to continue its growth trajectory, benefiting from the profit initiatives implemented over the last 18 months margin expansion will be further driven by the rationalization of certain client programs and lines of business where we have or will wind down on profitable revenue.

We also continue to prioritize our shift of existing and new business to offshore geographies. Although these actions negatively impact our top line growth in the near term, they are essential to further improve profitability and continue our drive towards historical margins.

In our digital segment, we are forecasting a revenue decline of 8.4% and primarily driven by the decrease in product resale as fewer opportunities remain given the number of clients that we are transitioning to cloud-based CX delivery solutions although the revenue decline is significant, these lower-margin deals have less of an impact on profitability.

Recurring revenue is expected to decline due to the managed services related to our traditional CCaaS partners. However, this is more than offset by growth in our digital professional service offerings. We continue to drive scale across our expanded partnership network, delivering on the new market demands where clients want more holistic end-to-end transformative CX solutions.

This growth represents higher margin work and is more impactful to profitability. However, the revenue growth is less pronounced as a higher volume of this work is being delivered offshore.

Turning to the midpoint of our 2026, guidance, as outlined in greater detail in our fourth quarter and full year 2025, earnings press release GAAP revenue of $2.03 billion, a decrease over the prior year of 5%; adjusted EBITDA of $230 million, an increase of 7.6% over the prior year and 11.3% of revenue compared to 10% in the prior year.

Non-GAAP operating income of $169 million, an increase of 9% over the prior year and 8.3% of revenue compared to 7.3% in the prior year non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.19, an increase of 9% over the prior year other relevant guidance metrics include capital expenditures between 1.8% and 2% of revenue, of which approximately 60% is growth oriented a full year effective tax rate between 38% and 42%.

We expect the phasing of our profitability to be more weighted in the second half of 2026, with approximately 52% of our revenue coming in the second half of the year based on our historical seasonal trends.

Please reference our commentary in the business outlook section of the fourth quarter and full year 2025, earnings press release to obtain our expectations for the full year 2026, performance at the consolidated and segment level.

In closing, we are pleased with our full year 2025, financial performance, increasing our profitability and expanding our margins across both segments despite an overall modest decline in revenue. We also significantly increased our free cash flow and reduced our borrowings.

This was accomplished against the backdrop of an evolving market in both our engage and digital segments. We are committed to continuing this performance in 2026, by further increasing our EBITDA and operating income, expanding our margins and reducing our debt.

We remain focused on higher-value transformational engagements across both segments and have the discipline and confidence to deliver on our 2026, full year outlook. I will now turn the call back to Bob.

Thanks, Kenny. As we open the call, we ask that you limit your questions to one at a time. Operator, you may open the line.

(Operator Instructions).

George Sutton, Craig Hallum.

Thank you. Ken, you said something interesting that you thought, nearly 100% AI adoption by your, the enterprises you're working with by year end 2026, and I'm just curious if we could look at sitting here at the beginning of '26, versus the beginning of '27, and what kind of ongoing work do we have with those customers relative to helping them deploy the AI.

Good morning, George, well, first of all, I understand that when we use when we make that statement, what we're referring to in general is AI that we are utilizing to enable our associates to do their job, AI that we're utilizing in our talent acquisition and recruiting AI that we're using in quality assurance, AI that we're using overall to empower all of our platforms, AI that we're utilizing internally to make ourselves more efficient, et cetera.

So ultimately, our goal is that every single client of ours is taking advantage of everything from accent neutralization technology to our language translation technology where we can translate in real time from any language to any language, et cetera, where I think you're probably going just because the term AI is so ambiguous is AI as we utilize it not just only to assist the associates to be better, faster and more proficient, but also the ability to provide certain aspects of interactions that are self-service.

And so we are very diligently working with clients that are open to and interested on helping them with their what we call their low-value transactions versus interactions that add no real value in cross-selling, upselling, building trust, building loyalty, maintaining retention, increasing wallet share, et cetera, and automating those with what we call an agent or a human in the loop that can come in at any point in time to assist should there be a need to assist or if it moves to something that's more complex or more higher value, et cetera and so we're very focused in this area.

We've been working with these technologies, as you know, for frankly, before AI was there was even a hype cycle on AI and now it's really just a matter of which clients are actually ready and willing to start to adopt some of the capabilities where we can provide this on the front end from a self-service standpoint, which leads us more to futuristically our goal of outcome-based pricing.

So we will achieve 100% by the year-end, which means that at minimum, our clients are taking advantage of all of the internal tools that we utilize to make our people better and to make them to drive higher quality, more accuracy, et cetera.

Understand, thank you for the perspective.

Maggie Nolan, William Blair.

Thank you. Maybe to ask that a little bit differently. How do you expect the mix of revenue to shift between project-based and recurring revenue over the next couple of years?

That's a really good question, Maggie. I'm not sure that I actually can give you a number with any level of precision. I guess if are you asking me, is that another way of saying what percentage of the business will be that we currently classify as digital versus engage? Or are you asking me as it relates to the Engage business, what percentage of that business will have a more AI focused. So maybe if you could just give me a little bit more direction on your question.

Yeah, the original thought was sort of there's probably a likely a mix shift between Digital and Engage, but the second question is extremely interesting as well. So any thought all of the above.

Look, our focus on Digital is for the business to drive, on average, a 50% recurring revenue, and we're currently achieving that, even a bit more than that and so if that partially answers your question, that is certainly the focus. As far as I'm not, I just want to make sure that I'm still tracking your question.

As it relates to engage and how we see the future of where that business goes, we absolutely see the future over time where more and more technologies infused in engage, and where we are pricing our services as much more of a turnkey offering that is tied to solutions and definitive outcomes.

The reality, Maggie, and I don't as you know, I'm guilty of maybe over pontificating. So I apologize. But the reality is, is that what we find because of the size of the clients that we deal with, which tend to be in kind of that fortune 500 category, is that when you get past all the AI height that it's going to eventually brush your teeth and do everything else, what we what our clients are realizing is that with the amount of systems that they have and the overall amount of silos that they have and the amount of systems that are not that don't actually even talk to each other, that there is only certain things that they can take advantage of with AI in order for it to be impactful.

And so what we're doing is we're focusing on what we can provide them with technology that takes advantage of AI right now with their current situation while we're also trying to demonstrate to them how we can help them build a modern data state so that they can ultimately take advantage of far more AI.

And again, I'm not here to give a lecture or whatever, but what the street is absolutely positively missing is that the time that it's going to take for these large companies to synergize, so to speak, or create synchronicity of their data. It's not going to be measured in months.

It's going to be measured in years and that's not according to Ken Tuchman, that's according to the CIOs of virtually every major client that we have. So that's my way of saying that we're going to attack the parts of their systems that we can and that they will allow us to have access to.

But the reality is that the hope that the HAL 9000 is going to take the human out of the loop is, I think, more distant than many people might be estimating. So I'm sorry if I drag that out too much, but hopefully, I'm answering your question.

Thanks, Ken.

Jonathan Lee, Guggenheim Partners.

Great, thanks for taking my questions. First question from me, you highlighted revenue headwinds from offshore makeshift. Can you help us decide how much more of your current onshore revenue might still be at risk from that mix shift dynamic?

Well, first of all, we don't view it necessarily as a negative. We view it as a positive, and it's actually a focus of ours and an imperative to work with our clients and work with our especially our new clients in shifting the offshore.

So currently, 80% of our entire sales pipeline is all targeted net new offshore. As it relates to the embedded base that we currently have that is onshore, I would say that it's actually a fairly limited number and it's not because we wouldn't like it to be a higher number.

But remember, we do a fair amount of public sector and federal work, health care work and financial service work and a lot of that work requires highly skilled licensed employees, and it is not legal for them to operate outside of the United States.

So what I would say is that it's really giving us other lines of business that we can focus on to move offshore and there certainly are some clients that we currently have that are considering certain aspects of the business to potentially go offshore but it's somewhat limited just due to the nature of the segments that are onshore and the regulatory aspect.

And thanks for that color, but I think we were trying to size the current onshore revenue that might still be at risk.

Well, I, I'm sorry, I thought I answered that. What I'm saying, you mean at risk to go offshore or at risk to.

Go offshore, not necessarily the net new portion of the work that you had highlighted earlier.

Yeah, and what I'm saying is that the majority of the revenue that we have onshore, legally, we don't have the ability, or the client doesn't have the ability to move offshore under the current regulations, which have existed for many, many years.

So I thought I'm sorry, I thought I answered that so the answer is I can't give you an exact number, but what I can tell you is that the health care clients, which were that's a significant portion of our business and the federal and public sector business, the part that we do that's regulated cannot and will not be moved offshore, unless the laws were to change. And my guess is that's not happening.

Got it. Thanks, Ken. Just as a follow-up, I understand that you're obviously investing in AI. Can you help us understand how you're defending against enterprise clients that may be pushing you to pass on the AI efficiency savings to them?

Were thus far, that's actually not even that's not so far, we're not actually encountering that's not to say that over time, as AI more or less commoditizes, that we won't feel that but right now, clients are in such need of advisory work on how to take advantage of AI and how and just our unique ability to integrate to their systems because for over 25 years, we've done deep systems integration into all of our client CCaaS systems, et cetera, that's just not been focus.

But I think more importantly, maybe another way of putting it is we absolutely plan as we start to demonstrate to clients how we can take low-value transactions that typically we don't even handle today. It's not part of our focus of our business and how we can help them automate them and how we can get rid of their IVR and install agentic capabilities on the front end to determine the purpose of the call, to gather information, et cetera.

Our goal is absolutely to share some of the upside or the benefit of the cost and it's, frankly, I would expect the whole industry to be doing that because it's a way for us to garner net new business by us showing the industry or the client base that we can have an impact on their cost to serve.

And that is a huge focus of ours is how can we demonstrate to them that we can deliver the highest possible quality at a lower cost to serve and so if you're asking me, are they pressuring us for that? No.

If you're asking me, are we volunteering that as it relates to when we're showing them aspects of areas that are currently not being handled in an AI way and that we believe can and will not diminish the loyalty or the relationship of the customer? 100%.

And what I want to stress, and I know I sound like a broken record on this, but it's really important for people to understand this. This industry is still $400 billion.

Every single analyst report that's come out whether technically, I'm not supposed to use the analyst names, but you know who they are, the gartners and the forresters and so on and so forth. Every single one of them has said that net human contact center agents over the next 36 months will increase, not decrease.

Now do we think over time, they will decrease? We absolutely do and frankly, we're okay with that. And the reason why we're okay with that is we're a little $2 billion company and when there's a $400 billion TAM.

The AI could have a significant impact on the human aspect of it and we, as a company, could still be multiples of the size that we are at the end of the day, there's really only five to eight players in the marketplace that are consistently being considered for the large deals that are out there.

And those five to eight players make up well under $50 billion. So when you do the overall math that there's a $400 billion TAM, the reality is we have a long way to go because right now, where the new business is coming from for the most part, is captives that are letting air out of the tires and they're starting to release business from their captives.

And captives right now is a $300 billion total addressable market. That has and none of that includes the size of the AI and data analytics market that we're focused on, which we estimate is somewhere in the $500 billion to $600 billion range.

So there's so much greenfield opportunity out there that we're embracing AI as absolutely something that's very positive for our business on a go-forward basis.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Vincent Colicchio, Barrington Research.

Yeah, Ken, to what extent are you benefiting from consolidation? Or do you expect the benefit from consolidation given your expanded footprint and the increasing complexity of technology?

So do you mean consolidation of clients consolidating the number of partners that they have because if that that is currently taking place and it's been going on for the last 18 months or 24 months, and we think that, that's going to we think that's going to, over time, accelerate as clients realize that the concept of having 10 vendors makes very little sense, especially when of the 10 providers out there, most of them do not have deep technological capabilities, and we believe that the majority of all new business out there is going to require somebody that has the ability to provide various different aspects of technology to help them become more modernized.

So if that's you're if the question is, do I think there's going to be more consolidation? I do and I think that the marketplace is already really bifurcated to what I would call third-tier type, second-tier type companies out there that can only compete on price, and lack capability and the scale players that have the right geographies that clients are looking for, but also have, more importantly, the right technology to apply.

You did answer the correct question. And I'm assuming that some of the companies that lack scale can't keep pace in terms of their technology capabilities, and I think you answered that.

Is there anything else I can add to that, or.

No, you answered the question.

All right, well, thank.

Thank you for your questions. That is all the time we have today. This concludes TTEC's fourth quarter and full year 2025, earnings conference call. You may disconnect at this time.