Good afternoon, and welcome to Copperleaf's third quarter 2023 results conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the call, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, November 8, 2023. Your hosts today are Paul Sakrzewski, Chief Executive Officer of Copperleaf, and Chris Allen, the company's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I am required to provide the following statement respecting forward-looking information. During the call, the company will make forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions and therefore subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The company undertakes no obligation to update these statements, except as required by law. You can read about these risks and uncertainties in regulatory filings that were filed earlier today. Also, the commentary today will include adjusted financial measures, which are non-IFRS measures. These should be considered as a supplement to and not a substitute for IFRS financial measures. Reconciliations between the two can be found in the company's regulatory documents, which are available on SEDARplus.ca or on our website. In addition, commentary today will include key performance indicators that can help evaluate the business, measure performance, identify trends affecting the business, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions. Such key performance indicators may calculate in a manner different than similar key performance indicators used by other companies. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Paul Sakrzewski. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for joining us to discuss Copperleaf's third quarter performance. I'm excited to provide an update of our progress during Q3 and, of course, to share some of our plans for the future. As is our usual format, I'll make opening remarks before passing it over to Chris to provide a detailed review of the financial results. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call, as usual, to questions. First, let's dive into a summary of our third quarter financial results. Copperleaf's third quarter performance demonstrated continued momentum across all of our key financial metrics. We delivered a 26% year-on-year increase in annually recurring revenue, drove a 30% year-on-year increase in subscription revenue, and ended the quarter with a record CAD 114.2 million backlog. I believe these results underscore the effectiveness of our industry-leading decision analytics software, the strength of our refreshed operating model, and the improved execution of our team in the context of our ongoing transition to SaaS. We also continued to make progress with the addition of new clients, adding one of the largest gas distribution companies in the United States as a client in Q3, as well as one of Brazil's largest integrated power utilities. The establishment of this new beachhead in Brazil, in particular, is another point of validation of our ongoing investment in expanding Copperleaf's reach into selected new geographies. Overall, I'm very proud of the progress we've made as a team in the first nine months of the year, generating good growth despite continuing uncertain macroeconomic conditions in most of our markets. On this topic, we do continue to see temporary headwinds like enhanced client sign-off requirements, limited client resources, and RFP delays, which we expect to continue through the end of the year. However, we remain focused on continuing to improve our execution while charting a clear path back to profitability. We emerged from Q3 with a renewed conviction that we have the industry-leading solutions, the right operating model, the right leadership, and the right strategy to drive long-term growth. As part of that growth story, we continue to evolve our sales and marketing approach, and in July, we hosted our first Asset Investment Planning and Management Forum in Paris. In August, we hosted a similar AIPM Symposium in Malaysia, where we bring the asset investment planning community together to network, share, and learn. These events are extremely well attended, and it's a good indication that we're making progress in establishing asset investment planning software as an essential component of our client digitized environment. Clients and prospective clients come together to discuss the importance of multi-criteria decision analysis that considers both financial and non-financial measures, including normally difficult-to-quantify sources of value, such as environmental impact, customer satisfaction, social justice investing, and reputational benefits. These events serve as an important platform for us to emphasize the significance of value-based decision-making as a central part of an organization's overall strategic toolkit, and further establish Copperleaf as a thought-leading organization and trusted advisor in this rapidly emerging, emerging space. One of the highlights at the symposium in Kuala Lumpur, particularly, was a keynote from an executive at Tenaga Nasional Berhad, a Malaysian multinational integrated electricity company.... The presenter, an executive who has worked on TNB's Copperleaf implementation since the beginning, guided the audience through the company's transformative journey from risk-based decision-making to value-based decision-making. TNB Grid has now integrated the Copperleaf decision analytics solution into its digital landscape, resulting in a systematic and consistent approach to investment decision-making, greater transparency to the Malaysian energy regulator, and a heightened focus on realizing value for every dollar they spend on their assets, all while proactively managing risk. These symposiums provide an incredible forum for us to engage with some of the world's leading organizations while they share information and learn from each other's progress. At Copperleaf, we always believed that we're the clear leaders in the decision analytics software sector. During the third quarter, however, we received strong third-party validation of that position from Verdantix, a research and advisory firm that acts as an essential thought leader and advisor on innovation to many of our clients and our prospective clients. Verdantix published its inaugural Green Quadrant report on asset investment planning, with Copperleaf positioned as the clear leader in the segment. Their report echoed our view that when successfully deployed, firms achieve improved decision-making, reduced risk, stronger compliance with regulatory requirements, and the ability to clearly evaluate investments in such initiatives as the mitigation of climate risk, all leading to material additional return on investment. Verdantix concluded that with Excel no longer viable, due to the ever-increasing complexity of the problem and existing asset management solutions failing to cover the space, AIP software has emerged as its own category, providing capabilities to create investment plans that take into consideration financial and non-financial objectives and drive superior ROI. We have a lot of respect for Verdantix as a trusted technology advisor to our clients, and we're obviously delighted to see them recognize Copperleaf, placing us in the leading top right position in the Green Quadrant. In addition to this recognition by Verdantix, Q3 saw further progress in the development of our partner ecosystem, which is a key plank of our strategy. Further to the announcements in Q1 and Q2 regarding the developing global relationship with SAP under the Endorsed Apps program, Q3 saw the official and co-commencement of cooperative go-to-market activities, resulting in material incremental pipeline for 2024 and beyond across all regions. Q3 also saw the deepening of Copperleaf's global relationship with Accenture to a more programmatic level. This is a direct reflection of the scale of the opportunity that Accenture sees with Copperleaf, and is the next step towards a coordinated approach to cooperative go-to-market activities in the intelligent asset management space. Our partners play a crucial role in our global scaling strategy, and we're pleased to see concrete progress resulting from the focus and resources we've recently dedicated to building our ecosystem. Copperleaf continues to innovate and extend the competitive advantages of our solution. In Q3, we were granted a new US patent for an advanced software optimizer, which enhances our comprehensive asset management portfolio, particularly for large numbers of assets across all stages of the asset's life cycle. This patent highlights Copperleaf's dedication to R&D, developing pioneering solutions that facilitate better investment decisions and higher ROI for our clients. Reminding everyone on the call that we maintain a cadence of four quarterly software releases per year. During Q3, Copperleaf released version 23.3 of its product suite, which included numerous new capabilities, including a new modeling module for complex asset relationships and asset interventions in the Copperleaf Value Model Library, visualization of predictive analytics asset strategies in our interactive GIS experience option, and significant enhancements to our popular Dashboard Library, which helps our clients to clearly communicate their value-based decision-making outcomes more effectively to their stakeholders. For the remainder of 2023, we will remain focused on executing our go-to-market strategy while continuing to prudently manage company expenses as we navigate uncertain economic conditions. We anticipate our growth in ARR and pipeline for the remainder of the year will be driven by our reputation for driving value for our clients, ongoing refinement of our go-to-market model, the maturation of our sales force, and of course, our increasing partner traction. In summary, I'm very pleased with our progress and the way that our new operating model is starting to perform, and I believe that we're on track to meet our strategic goals. We continue to focus on prudently managing cash and innovating across our whole business with the aim of driving execution in the near to medium term, and at the same time, laying down a sustainable global foundation for future profitable scaling and growth. I'll now turn the call over to Chris to review our financial results in some more detail. Chris? Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased to report that our third quarter 2023 results continued to deliver growth across our key financial metrics. Revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, was CAD 19.9 million, an increase of 10% compared to CAD 18.1 million in the comparative period, driven primarily by an increase in subscription and perpetual revenue, and partially offset by a decrease in professional services revenue. Subscription revenue for the third quarter was CAD 13 million, an increase of 30% from the prior year, representing 65% of Q3 total revenue, as compared to 55% of total revenue in Q3 2022, and highlighting our continued transition to SaaS. In addition, this reflects the benefit of timing, as we were able to recognize a full quarter of revenue from a few SaaS deals that closed late in Q2 and early in Q3. By contrast, we expect to see our deal timing more traditionally back-end loaded in the fourth quarter. Professional services revenue for the third quarter was CAD 6.1 million, compared to CAD 7.6 million in the prior year, and this segment represented 31% of our Q3 2023 revenue. And finally, perpetual revenue for the third quarter was CAD 0.8 million, a 100% increase compared to CAD 0.4 million in the prior year, and this segment represented 4% of our Q3 2023 revenue. Our annual recurring revenue at September 30, 2023, was CAD 53.3 million, a 26% year-over-year increase compared to CAD 42.3 million at September 30, 2022. As of September 30, 2023, our net revenue retention rate was 111%, reflecting expansion within our client base on our strong renewal history. Revenue backlog was a record CAD 114.2 million at September 30, 2023, a 23% increase from CAD 93.1 million as at September 30, 2022. Gross profit was CAD 14.5 million, representing a gross margin of 73% for the quarter, a 9% increase from CAD 13.3 million and a gross margin of 73% in Q3 2022. As is typical in Q3, we saw increased vacations through the summer months, fewer conferences, and less travel, which resulted in a temporary decline in quarterly expenses, but we expect this to normalize in the fourth quarter back to Q2 levels. We had an adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD 5.9 million for the quarter, compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of CAD 8.1 million in the prior year. Net loss for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, was CAD 5.2 million, or a loss of CAD 0.07 per share, compared to a loss of CAD 7.5 million, or a loss of CAD 0.11 per share in the prior year. We finished the quarter with a strong balance sheet, with CAD 46.3 million in cash and equivalents and CAD 82.2 million in short-term and long-term investments, placing us in a strong financial position to build on our advantage and further penetrate the investment planning and decision analytics market. With our strong unit economics, we remain focused on making thoughtful, long-term investments that will drive accelerated growth through 2023 and beyond. As we continue to expand our reach, we're confident that our focus on operational excellence will drive best-in-class margins, expand our leadership position in the growing decision analytics market, and accelerate our path to profitability. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now hand the call back over to the operator and open it up for questions. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be polled in the order they are received. If you would like to withdraw from the question queue, please press star two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Doug Taylor of Canaccord Genuity. Your line is already open. Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon. I'd hate for my first question on this call to be on something as mundane as operating costs, but it was an area of significant surprise in this quarter, with OpEx down year-over-year. So, I mean, I guess my question is, despite everything you said about vacation and normalization in Q4, having expenses down year-over-year, does that speak to any change in your strategy towards spending levels in the current environment? I'll take that one. Hi, Doug. No, I don't think it changes our view. I think through 2023, we've been actively managing our costs and our headcount down. So I think, you know, as we've said in prior calls, and maybe you haven't been part of those, Doug, but, we feel that we've got the, you know, the right footprint in place basically now to effectively execute on our strategy. So we feel that, the minimum global footprint, as we like to call it, is in place and is operating well. Again, as I said in my, you know, my comments, Q3 was a little bit anomalous and that it was down because of fewer conferences, less travel, but we expect that to tick back up in Q4, you know, more, more akin to what we saw in, in Q2 as a run rate. Thank you for clarifying that. Historically, Q4 has been a seasonally strong period for ARR build. So my question is: do you think that the macroeconomic headwinds and the slowing buyer behavior that you've referenced as extending into the new year would prevent this from being the case this year? Oh, hi, it's Paul. No, look, it's puts and takes. We've got terrific following winds in the space that we're in. And, you know, as part of the remarks that I just made, I think, you know, highlighting some of the following winds that we've got. We don't see any, I mean, we're not economists, but we don't see any worsening of the environment, and we get better and better at executing. So, you know, we're always back-end loaded into Q4, as are many software companies of a similar profile. And we don't see anything that's necessarily going to impede us from putting another good Q4 on the table. All right, and one more question for you then, Paul. I mean, you've confirmed here you're up and running within the SAP ecosystem with the endorsed app and your go-to-market cooperative go-to-market activities. You said you're already seeing, you know, pipeline build on the back of that. Can you perhaps expand upon that to talk about the geographies and potentially the markets where, you know, you're seeing that impact most, even though it's early days? Yeah, it is early days, but. And, you know, it's worth reminding ourselves that our traditional deal gestation periods are pretty long, you know, in the order of a year and a half. So with the early indications that we've seen are very positive, there is incremental pipeline over and above what we would have normally seen ourselves build as a standalone. So it's incremental benefit. It's pretty global in nature. You know, we've been engaged globally, the SAP teams and the Copperleaf teams, as mismatched as they may be in size, are globally engaged across EMEA, APJ, Americas, and also LATAM. SAP operates a global organization and a global organization structure. They have specialists associated with product and industry, and we're part of their landscape of what they're putting forward in the intelligent asset management space. And, you know, we're finding ourselves increasingly positioned in those deals and cooperating across the region. So I couldn't pull out any one specific geography or even any one specific industry. Obviously, we're very strong in utilities, but one of the good things about SAP is their install base is massive. It runs across most industries, and they have referenceability and traction in industries that would take us a long time to penetrate, and we are starting to see some movement in those places. So, good news in the early stages, and we'll continue to drive it. Thanks for that color. I'll pass the line. Thank you. Your next question comes from Faith Brunner of William Blair. Your line is already open. Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter. A lot of good stuff here. Obviously, you guys have a lot of opportunity ahead of you. Going forward, can you just provide some color on how you guys are gonna continue balancing, investing to capitalize on all the momentum, while also maybe accelerating or just moving towards that path of profitability? Like you called out, those earlier investments are gonna begin to scale, but what else can we expect in the coming quarters from maybe an operating margin perspective? Chris can chime in in a moment on operating margin. You know, we've obviously got our long-term plans, but, you know, it's worth looking back a little bit in history, Faith. I mean, we, we, you know, we saw, you know, an increasing adoption of asset investment planning software and methodology sort of leading into the IPO in 2021. You know, we, we know that we're on the somewhere on the third part of that asset total adoption curve, and we put in place, you know, a lot of capacity globally. You know, we put in place that, that global footprint that we like to talk so much about. There's a lot of capacity in there for us to grow. So a lot of that investment is already in place, and we're sticking to that strategy. The strategy was always to accelerate in you know post-IPO. We think that we're starting to see that now, and then we chart our path back towards profitability. But we've got pretty good capacity for this year and even next year. So it's really about execution more than it is about additional investment in the near term. And then when we get into the end of next year, obviously, we need to start looking at capacity for 2025. But in the short term, we're certainly focused on ensuring that we're getting the ROI on the investment that we've already put in, rather than putting in a lot more investment. So, you know, we're driving to back towards profitability, and that's probably a good place for Chris to chime in on operating margin. Yeah. Thanks, Paul. Obviously, we don't provide guidance on any kind of specific point in time where we're gonna break even, but just as Paul was saying, we, you know, looking at our performance, we believe 2023 will be our, you know, our biggest loss year. And in 2024, with the investments that have already been made and, you know, the acceleration, I'd say, of the machine that we've built now, the minimum global footprint, will take big strides back to our path to profitability in 2024. I can tell you that we're absolutely committed to that internally. And just as a reminder, I mean, that's where we lived most of our life prior to the IPO. We were, you know, spent a decade effectively break even and growing at nearly a 50% CAGR. So I think that's, that is our history, and we're all eager to get back there. Yeah, that's... I'll leave it there. All right. Thanks, guys. That's it for me. Thanks, Faith. Thanks, Faith. ... Your next question comes from Maxim Matushansky of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is already open. Great, thanks. Good evening. Just following up on the SAP partnership, it's great to see an improvement to the incremental pipeline. Just wondering whether you or SAP have a higher confidence in closing these leads, given SAP's go-to-market expertise, or potentially Copperleaf coming into the process at a later date. Is that the case, or is there just as much uncertainty about these incremental deals to close as it is for the ones you source yourself? Yeah, it's a good question. Hi, Max. So, if you look a little bit into the history of things, I mean, we used to effectively, in a strange way, kind of compete with SAP. You know, so we would quite often walk into deals and SAP would, you know, be very confident because they're a big company with lots of software on their books, and they would tick the functional specs, and then we would, you know, we'd have the argument as to which company was better suited to the to solving the problem. That doesn't happen anymore. So SAP, when they're confronted with an AIP-shaped problem, point directly towards Copperleaf and say, "Look, you should use this." And in addition to that, we're more integrated with their thinking on either side of us. So, you know, they're very strong in EAM, they're very strong in PPM, they have an emerging APM sector, and obviously the backbone of a lot of these companies is, you know, driven by SAP in the FICO space. So being part of that environment and being part of a buying process where the incumbent solution across a lot of the digitized environment of the client is SAP, and they're used to buying that and buying things that fit in with that landscape, can only help us. So I think to the extent that we get past this point where it's like, Copperleaf, you know, who are you and where do you fit in? And we're actually part of a bigger environment, I think it will help us to accelerate. We certainly hope so. You know, we're cautiously optimistic about that, but you know, we're working hard on ensuring that SAP are fully educated as to what we do, where we fit, how they position us, and how they advocate for us. And yeah, we're pretty confident that that will bear fruit in due course. I do think that it will accelerate our closes. I think it will definitely accelerate our entry into some of those market sectors where we're not traditionally strong and aren't fully referenced. So, you know, in terms of shortening the sales cycle, particularly in those newer industries, and also, you know, ensuring that we're not scaling our internal resources directly in line with our growth, and we're starting to see some leverage out of that, I think it's gonna be very useful. Early days, though. Just, I guess, on the partnerships other than SAP, can you maybe provide an update as how those are going? I know you mentioned you deepened the relationship with Accenture, but just in general, are the consulting partners growing the pipeline or maybe even at this point, closing deals at the pace that you'd expected? Do you feel that you have mostly the right partners in place, in order to do that, and now it's just about deepening and kind of expanding the existing partner base? Yeah, another good question. You know, we tend to announce things that are concretely announceable, so the milestone events, and the milestone event with Accenture is a good one. You know, in Accenture's estimation, we have done enough deals with them, and we have enough forward-looking pipeline for them to, you know, give us a partner manager and introduce us to a much more programmatic approach to, you know, building a practice around Copperleaf and going to market together. So that's a big milestone for us, rather than the past, which was, you know, a very good relationship, but it was a little bit more ad hoc around specific accounts. So, you know, that is moving forward. We have other partnerships that are building, and we have a partnership strategy. You know, we can't be all things to all people, and there's a limit to how much we can do with how many partners. We want to avoid channel conflict because that's always an issue. But with so much TAM and so much white space, and, you know, to the extent that we're penetrated at the moment, it's a really good blank canvas for us to build strong partners at the top end of town, really, really credible partners like SAP and Accenture, just first-tier companies that we're working with, and not have them overlap. And in fact, those two things converge because Accenture is one of SAP's biggest partners globally, and, you know, they're, they're strong implementers of the intelligent asset management landscape particularly, and that includes a lot of SAP software, and it now includes Copperleaf. So all of these things come together, and we have a strategy for ensuring that we're getting the best out of that. We're not putting massive resources into trying to be everywhere at all times, and we're being very, very selective about who we work with and where we put our enablement resources. Does that answer, does that answer your question? Yeah, that helps, and it leads into my next question, more broader. But just in terms of how you position yourself and brand yourself in the marketplace, the Value Framework methodology is clearly a very sticky part of that product for customers, and customers that are more advanced in their asset management programs. I can see how that would be attractive. I'm wondering if there's any, in your view, revenue being left on the table, from customers that maybe aren't mature enough? To want to sign up for a new way of doing business with a Value Framework, and, you know, are not as sophisticated enough for that at the moment. I'm just curious how you think about that, and is that something that maybe it's a more rapid start solution it might be able to address, but curious how you think about it? Yeah, and it's a great question, and it's always a very tempting thing to try and go top to bottom in the market. You know, at the moment, we're largely a large enterprise sales company, and we work with big critical infrastructure companies, and that is still largely white space for us, even in our core. So even in power, the integrated power utilities, or the component pieces of that in generation transmission or distribution, we're still single digit penetrated even in our core markets. So we don't want to distract ourselves. But the second part of your question is a really interesting one, and you have seen things like the Copperleaf H2O solution, which was very specifically tailored as a low configuration, rapid deployment solution for the UK and Ireland water utilities. That has given us quite a lot of experience in that area, and we've been able to take that on the road. Similarly, the CNA methodologies for, you know, asset risk modeling, which was originated in the UK through Ofgem, the regulator there. That's been a very, very popular methodology, and we've built some rapid start solutions for that, which have been adopted in many countries globally as well. So, that in addition to increasingly a phased approach to implementation and also sales, so going to clients and diagnosing, you know, the highest value, minimum spend place to start, using that as a phase one, and then employing a land and expand approach to phase two, three, four, and getting our clients more and more and more value as we go. But giving them a place to start, which is a consumable buy for them. You know, those things are definitely on our agenda, and they're actually now successful strategies across Copperleaf. Going after the mid-market or the lower end of the market is probably a step for later. We really do need to focus on our core market segments, and we're pretty clear about what those are. Great. Thanks for the opportunity. Your next question comes from Thanos of BMO Capital. Your line is already open. Hi, good afternoon. Paul, it's the case for a lot of enterprise software companies that pipelines are skewing more towards expansion opportunities versus net new logos, just, you know, as a function of the macro. Is that a dynamic that you're seeing in your business as well, or not as much given where you are in the growth cycle? No, as well, I think you, you kind of answered the question for me at the, at the end there, Thanos. I mean, you know, we're, we're largely white space and, you know, we need to be very, very focused on bringing new, new logo deals into the, into the pipeline. I mean, that's the lifeblood and the, and the future of Copperleaf. You know, we have a lot of opportunity in the installed base for cross-sell and up-sell, and we constantly develop more software as well. So, you know, there's a, there's a big opportunity in the installed base, but we're very, very focused on, on new logos, and we're not, we're not seeing, a skew towards, you know, having to sell into the installed base to make up our numbers. We are very focused, though, on ensuring that the installed base is, you know, happy, retained, and engaged with us, and continues to develop their, their Copperleaf environment. We've got specific resources allocated to those efforts, internally. So, you know, as we scale, you start to get into that classic model of having a dedicated group of salespeople that are focused more on cross-sell, up-sell, and increasing the value that we're getting our installed base clients, and others that are very, very specifically focused on bringing new logos in to feed the front end of that future revenue pipeline. But we're not seeing, we're not seeing, you know, with our point in, in the evolution and all of the white space that we have in our, in our TAM and SOM, we're not seeing a, a, an issue like you're, you're describing. You know, what you're describing is super recognizable, but it's more in the mature businesses, I think. That's helpful. Can you update us with respect to the key pushbacks you tend to encounter in a sales cycle? So to the extent you have a good prospect and you can't get that to a deal that's closed, does that often just have to do with, you know, budget availability? Is it still that there's a lot of education that has to be done to persuade the customer of the value proposition since you're kind of unique in what you do? Or just what are some of the hurdles that you're encountering most commonly? Yeah, it's a great question, and I think the points of objection vary depending on where you are in the pipeline. You know, we very rarely have a bad conversation in the early stages. You know, people are intrigued about the possibilities that value-based decision-making present them. They're all wrestling with the problem. They're generally using Excel and a team of people to try to solve the problem. They inherently know that they're not doing it as well as they possibly could be. So the early stages, you know, it's more about who are you? What do you do? You know, how do you, you know, can you—how do you convince me that you can actually, you know, optimize across large sets of assets and huge portfolios of investments and make that a practical thing? You know, how do you actually come in and, you know, help our CapEx committee to make better decisions? We're pretty good at that discussion. It sometimes then pivots into a data conversation. It's like, okay, well, how much data do we feed this? You know, Copperleaf is in a very good situation with our bottom-up approach, you know, which is largely around that asset data, but also the ability to implement the top-down approach, which is really portfolio optimization. So it's effectively making the processes that they currently have better and more effective, and taking the bias out of their decision-making and taming complexity for them. We can start that straight away. So there's a couple of elements there where people kind of think that there's some kind of or companies think that there's some kind of a precursor event around either process or data that they need to get to before they can start a Copperleaf implementation, and that largely isn't true. We meet them where they are, and we immediately generate value. The software is so configurable and so flexible that we can then add more complexity as we go, and more data as we go, and their payoff in terms of ROI or the benefit that they get from the system just increases, which is a little bit counterintuitive for many clients. You know, to the data point, it's quite an interesting feature of Copperleaf that we design the algorithms and calculations into the value framework that help them make decisions. Those algorithms obviously require inputs. And perversely, if you actually design those algorithms up front, and then you go back and you start to implement the EAM systems or APM systems, you can be very surgical about how you deploy those systems in order to make better decisions later on. So starting with the question and effectively the mechanism for answering those questions clearly defined really focuses their processes around collecting data and putting systems in place, which is more system of record for investments upstream of us and also assets. So doing us first is probably better and saves them a lot of money and time when they're deploying their downstream or their upstream systems from us, and also the downstream systems. So we get those objections quite a lot of the time. Obviously, price comes up, and we have to position value as a function. So we certainly don't like putting price on the table until we've made a clear value statement that's associated with the specifics of our client. So value engineering, which we've started to build and fund internally, is a key mechanism for that. So, you know, those are the kind of stages of the cycle. And then closing are some of the things that you talked about. You know, it's, you know, they've got budgetary requirements, and quite often they budget annually, so you need to be part of the budgeting cycle, so there's money put aside for what we do. We're not usually naturally part of that, so because, you know, we're quite a new solution, so we need to get way upstream of that and make sure that we're positioning ourselves well to be budgeted for before we can close those deal. And then, you know, it's just competitive. You need to get through the RFPs, respond appropriately, and outsell the competition, which is often not directly in competition with us, but just to outsell the competition in terms of being a better solution across more of the space. So it's, you know, what I'm describing is a large enterprise software sale. You know, it takes a village. You've got to have multi-point contact with the client. You can't be single thread on any one specific champion in the client. It's too big for that. It tends to be a transformative event, taking on Copperleaf. They transform their culture from a kinda my project at all costs, to much more of a value-based portfolio, optimized approach, which is quite a shift for many of our clients. It involves a cultural shift, which takes leadership, and you need that leadership to be all lined up around it before it truly gets across the line. Again, which is true for many of the big ERP companies and other large enterprise software companies. So it's a recognizable track, and you know, I've been down it many times before, and Copperleaf is a little different, other than the fact that we really don't have too much direct competition, and you know, it's once you get to the point where the client is bought in, it tends to be quite good. That's good color. Thanks, Paul. I'll pass it on. Your next question comes from Koji Ikeda of Bank of America. Your line is already open. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just I got a couple here. So in your prepared remarks, you called out a couple of big deals, you know, the US. Natural Gas Distribution company and an integrated power utility company in Brazil. So can you talk a little bit about how long those sales cycles were, and how are you thinking about overall sales cycles today, and maybe the ability or the potential to shorten them in the future? Yeah. Thanks, Koji. I mean, it's you know, if there was a key focus of Copperleaf, I'd say that particularly on the go-to-market side, it would be that one. We're doing everything we can to shorten sales cycles. You know, it's not like our clients don't want what we do. They do want what we do. We just need to be the highest priority thing for them to do next, particularly in the constrained environments that we're living in. That's on us. You know, we need to prove value and just prove that a Copperleaf implementation is going to be of higher value strategically in the long term, but also monetarily in the short term, than the other things that they could potentially do. I think we're getting good at value engineering. I think we've got a very strong industry team now that speaks the language of the client. You know, we're collecting up our references, and our installed base clients are working for us. You know, we're completely humbled by the presentations that are made by our clients to our prospective clients about the value that we generate. You know, that's a key thing for us. The fact that we've never churned a client, so everybody who's actually deployed and switched on the software and started to use it is still using it is a good endorsement for us. And you know, we're making much of that. You know, it's a key focus for us to try to shorten those sales cycles. I don't want to necessarily comment on those two in terms of how long they took. No longer than average, I would say. Huge congratulations to our team in LATAM. You know, they're getting Brazil done and getting off the mark with the first, you know, core utility and providing that as a reference point in Brazil, will accelerate our progress in Latin America. And the team's done an amazing job getting that done. So, big shout-out to the LATAM team. Sorry, Koji? Your next question comes from Gavin Fairweather of Cormark. Your line is already open. Oh, hey, good afternoon. If I'm understanding your commentary right, it doesn't sound like the sales environment has gotten much better or much worse, but you feel better equipped to kind of execute in this environment. So I guess I'm, I'm curious what's driving that. Is that, you know, the global growth office, is that what you're seeing in the Salesforce product, Salesforce productivity data? Maybe just unpack your feeling about the ability to execute in the current macro. Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Gavin. The team is settling in. You know, we talked about, you know, we grew pretty fast, you know, from 2021 for 18 months or so, brought a lot of new people in. This is, you know, large enterprise sales in general, but particularly Copperleaf's, is something you need to build some muscle memory on and settle in, and tenure is important. We haven't been hiring aggressively over the past 12 months. And, you know, the people that we have are starting to get more and more tenure. They're starting to work it out. You know, in conjunction with that, we've put a new operating model in place, as you know, for the company, and that includes the go-to-market side. The global growth office is a big enabler of the field. You know, the ability for a single account executive to have all industries, all product, the ability to value engineer, and the ability to leverage partners, it's not a reasonable expectation on an account executive, and you do need to build in those mechanisms to ride to the aid of the account executive when they need those specific things. So all of those things are starting to gather a bit of tenure and gel together. It was a new operating model in January with new personnel at the heads of many of those things, and those people are kind of hitting their stride now. It's been very good for us to have a consolidation year, where we haven't been introducing a huge number of new people into the organization and giving that team time to come together. In conjunction with that, our marketing organization has been building new collateral around the new operating model. We've got, you know, we've got new and refreshed industry collateral. We're running our AIPM forums. We're a little bit bigger, you know, so there's a bit of critical mass there where we can run specific... We used to run one big client forum globally, and we'd bring all of our people together. We can now do that in markets and in industries as well. You know, we have a, we have a pipes forum and a wires forum, where people come together to discuss much more granular, elements, which just gets us more and more embedded as trusted advisors into specific segments of the, of the market. And all of that comes with a bit of scale and size. We're still pretty small, compared to most ERP companies, but it doesn't stop us from having those elements in place in some form to ensure that we're covering all of those, all of those places, and I think that we've got that now. Okay, that's helpful. And then just on the partner side, I'm curious, how many of your deals would be kind of partner, partner influence now? And do you have any thoughts about where that might be able to go over the kind of medium term, maybe kind of the next two, three, four years? Yeah, I wouldn't like to necessarily throw out a number, but it's an accelerating proportion. You know, our partners come in different flavors. You know, we've got the GSIs, the General System Integrators, we've got the ISVs, the independent software vendors on either side of us. We've got very specific, what we call, content providers, you know, people who help with asset risk models and the specifics around doing regulatory submissions, and more and more companies are building practices in their own way around the Copperleaf platform, which is exactly what we want. You know, the recognition amongst a big group and a much broader group of trusted advisors to our clients, advocating for Copperleaf in specific and different use cases. And that's much more powerful than us going and trying to sell software. You know, so we're seeing more and more of that, and we intend to pursue that, like I said, in a planful way. We can't be everywhere or all at once. But we seem to have hit a certain level of critical mass and notoriety in our space, where we are the go-to solution. So we are starting to, you know, to get some of those first-tier players interested in what we're doing, and building material resources and practices on their side, specifically focused on Copperleaf. So I think we can only expect that the proportion of partner influence and hopefully partner-led deals will increase. More of the services will be taken up by partners, which is good for us. It smooths the resource requirements. You know, we will always have an internal customer group, field services group doing that work, but it's good if we've got that as a core group, as the tip of the spear, and we've got a big ecosystem wrapped around us doing that work. It just makes us much, much more scalable. And you can just expect that to increase over time. So hopefully what that means is that software sales and subscription particularly becomes a much bigger proportion of our revenue over time. While, of course, the dollar number on those services is going to grow, it just won't grow in proportion to the software number. That's it for me. Thank you so much. Thanks, Gavin. Your next question comes from John Shao of National Bank. Your line is already open. Yes, thanks for taking my question. It looks like your partnership ecosystem is gaining momentum this quarter, and Paul, you already mentioned the channel conflict earlier. So I'm just curious if that has anything to do with this quarter's, you know, year-over-year decline in professional services? No. Not really. I can jump in on that one, John. No, it's nothing to do with partners. This actually goes back to some of the commentary that we made in Q2, just talking about some of the delays that we're seeing, not only with deals, but actually even closed deals, where client resource availability has pushed some services out and delayed a little bit, and that's the big driver for the reduction in services this quarter. Okay, that's helpful. Regarding your new customers in the US and Brazil, maybe could you give us some additional colors regarding their size of deployment and maybe their current spending relative to, you know, to their wallet share potential? Yeah, we don't throw out numbers around specific clients, but it's, you know, both of those deals are land and expand deals. You know, we'll get through our first phase. You know, generally speaking, we have a proportion of the software, not everything, in a proportion of their business, you know, not everywhere. And so, you know, there's lateral opportunities for us to grow, either across their lines of business and in more and more of their spend, and hopefully to the point where we're competing everything that they want to do for share of wallet on a value basis, you know, at the enterprise level, like some of our clients have got to. That's nirvana for us, and hopefully, we end up managing their existing assets, lead and running through predictive analytics and long-term asset lifecycle management in conjunction with the top-down portfolio optimization of the projects that they want to do on a shorter term basis. You know, that's where we wanna go. But both of those clients are land and expand clients, and then it provides us with big opportunity in the install base going forward, as is true with almost every client that we've brought on board. Okay. Thank you. I'll pass the line. Thank you. Your next question comes from Todd Coupland of CIBC. Your line is already open. Great. Thanks. Good evening, everyone. My question is, I guess, a little bit of a derivative of the last one. With the 30% increase in subscription revenue in Q3, it sounded like you said that took some from Q2. Did it also take some from Q4? No. Yeah, I'll jump in there, Todd. Hey, how are you doing? Hey, there. My comment on that was really to illustrate the timing. So what I was trying to illustrate there was, we did have a couple of SaaS deals that closed right at the end of Q2, 2023. So obviously, we see no revenue from that SaaS in Q2, but we managed to get a full quarter of it in Q3, right? And likewise, if we can close a SaaS deal right at the beginning of Q3, we also get a full quarter of it. And that's what we were fortunate enough to see in Q3 was, like I said, just a couple of SaaS deals, and that's really all it takes, if they're large enough, a full quarter of it. And in, you know, contrary to that, or, you know, the opposite of that is what typically happens and more or less what we generally see every quarter, which is most of our deals do close at the end of the quarter. ... So we just typically don't see a full quarter's revenue recognition from those SaaS deals, and that's, as I mentioned in my comments, probably what we'll see in Q4. Okay, great. Okay, thanks for that clarification. Lots of questions on the pipeline, so I'll take all the comments that have been made. I wanted to talk about the product a little bit. Just wondering, you know, you've had now a couple quarters to think about how generative AI might impact your customers and your product line. Maybe just talk a little bit more about that. You know, I think you talked last quarter about how, you know, you got everyone in account, but I'm just curious: how does it affect product demand in the market? Is it disruptive? Is it additive to what you're doing? Does it bring on new competitors? Just give us your thoughts on that. Thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks, Todd. Yeah, it's, look, we've, we are progressing with our plans. Like, like we said, you know, we, we introduced everybody to it early in the year, and that happened very quickly after, after the year, the year opened, and, and generative AI was, was generating a lot of press. Since then, we've formed a team internally. We've done a review of our product roadmap, and, and various elements of the product roadmap include generative AI and, and the ability to leverage that to our clients' advantage. We did flag as a risk internally that we might see our clients kind of sit still and sit on their hands a little bit while they tried to work out whether generative AI would come in and solve their problems, which, you know, we're very confident knowing something about the technology, that it won't replace us in any way. But we haven't seen that, quite honestly. You know, everything's moved ahead, and we're seeing very little objections associated with we're gonna wait and see whether generative AI can solve this on its own, which would have been a completely misguided path for our clients to be on, but a very natural, you know, expected situation with the hype that was surrounding it. We think it's gonna be really additive and it'll enhance, particularly the user experience for Copperleaf as we go forward. We're actively working on releasing features that will leverage that, you know. You know, many, many of these features come with the migration to being a very strongly differentiated cloud-first solution, which is our direction, which I'm sure doesn't come as a surprise. It's the direction of every software company. So as we get more into that, we'll build in more features around generative AI, and it's just gonna enhance the usability of the solution for our clients. Thinking about it a little bit more long term, if you don't see it as disruptive, do you see it as an accelerant to helping your clients ultimately see the benefit of the product, if you think about what it might do to your platform over time? Yeah, I definitely think so. You know, we deal with a very complex problem. And, you know, one of the interesting things about AI is it can attain complexity quite nicely. You know, set up in the right way, you can use natural language requests to ask very complicated problems, which would take a super user to sort of interpret into normal enterprise software speak. And I think that we'll bridge that gap substantially, and it'll just open up the power of Copperleaf to many, many more users who aren't necessarily technically savvy enough to be able to use the more complex solution by themselves. Any idea when you might pilot something like that? Wouldn't like to say, but we're well aware that if we take too long about it, all of that benefit will arbitrage itself out, and we'll find ourselves behind the market, so we're, we're trying not to be in that situation. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, from our perspective, I guess, any color along... I mean, natural language definitely moves a lot of things a long way. So helping us understand- Yeah- that leverage would be Generative AI aside, it's worth remembering that we do have artificial intelligence and machine learning inherent in the current set of solutions. So we've been on this stack of ML for a while, and we've got some pretty good expertise internally on it. So, you know, generative AI and large language models are getting a lot of press, but the enhancement that are brought by the incorporation of more traditional AI and ML is substantial, and we've been baking that into the product for some years. Okay, great. Appreciate the color. Thank you. Yeah. There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Paul Sakrzewski. Please proceed. Yeah, I'll just close the call by saying thank you for your interest in Copperleaf. We always really appreciate the questions and the attendance, and looking forward to presenting again once we put Q4 in the bag. We'll look forward to catching up again then. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.