Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Converge Technology Solutions Corp Third Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then the number two. Your main hosts today are Shaun Maine, Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Lecoutre, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I am required to provide that forward-looking statement respecting forward-looking information which is made on behalf of Converge and all of its representatives that are on this call. All statements made on this call will contain forward-looking information. The actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking information. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or a projection as reflected in the forward-looking information. Additional information about the material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking information and material factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or a projection as reflected in the forward-looking information are contained in Converge's filings with the Canadian provincial securities regulators. Converge does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. Such statements only speak as of the date they are made. Today's discussion also refers to gross revenue, adjusted EBITDA, organic growth, and adjusted free cash flow and adjusted free cash flow conversion, which are non-IFRS measures and have no standardized meaning. Please refer to Converge's filings with Canadian securities regulators for an explanation and reconciliation to IFRS measures. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Maine. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, and thank you for attending today's third quarter earnings call. We recently celebrated the five-year anniversary of Converge's first acquisition, and it's with great pride that I reflect upon the amazing journey that has led to 35 acquisitions in five years and the successful creation of our leading services-led, software-enabled IT and cloud solution provider. I would highlight that the numbers we have just announced show that after 9 months in 2022, Converge's revenue, gross profit, and adjusted EBITDA are larger than they were for the full year of 2021, a testament to both the success of our acquisition strategy and the successful implementation of our cross-sell plan. In what follows, I will provide a business update on the quarter, beginning with a financial summary and a touch point on our recent acquisitions. I will then discuss our customer segmentation and backlog management and expand with the development of our managed services and solution offerings. Richard Lecoutre will then provide a more detailed walkthrough of the third quarter financial results. To wrap up, I'd like to have an update for you on the majority-owned subsidiary, Portage CyberTech. As we celebrate our five-year anniversary, Converge is honored to have secured a top 20 position in the CRN 2022 Triple Crown Award, which identifies top solution provider rankings on all three CRN lists, including the Solution Provider 500, Fast Growth 150, and Tech Elite 250, all of which Converge has secured notable top rankings on. These awards that recognize our growth are an indication of the size and scale that we have achieved implementing our original three-phase plan. You will recall that Converge had the goal of having a presence in every major U.S. city or NFL cities in order to provide an outstanding customer experience in local markets as mid-market companies move to the cloud. I'm pleased to confirm that we now have presence in every NFL city, and last week were recognized by Cisco for selling at least 1 million of Cisco products in 31 regions across the U.S. and selling their products in 46 states. This demonstrates why we are such a sought-after partner from hybrid IT vendors by being the trusted advisor to mid-market companies across the U.S. I'm also delighted that we have finished our 2022 M&A activity with the acquisition of Stone Group, which marks our entrance to the U.K. market and not only strengthens our education footprint, but adds the capabilities of a green alternative through the full recycling of IT hardware, which is a key differentiator in the European marketplace. Converge reported a record Q3, highlighted by 85% growth in our professional services, which is made up of our advisory and implementation services, with managed services growing at 53% and total services growing at 71%, compared to our overall growth rate of 64% year-on-year. Our lower revenue but higher gross profit services resulted in an organic revenue growth in the quarter of 5.9%, but 13% growth of our gross profit. We've continued our industry-leading gross profit growth with 67% gross profit growth to CAD 139.7 million on gross revenues of CAD 731 million, which is three times the industry average. Converge completed 10 acquisitions in 2022, exceeding our CAD 1 billion target of acquisition revenue by closing nearly 1.2 billion of LTM gross revenue and CAD 66 million of adjusted EBITDA, with acquisitions both in North America and in Europe. It is important to note the different types of acquisitions that we have done, particularly focused on our advisory and managed services. In the past two years, acquisitions like CBI and Cybersecurity, Newcomp Analytics, LPA, and CarpeDatum and Analytics, and IDX and Cloud have differentiated us to our customers and have resulted in our rapid professional services growth. In the same manner, the platform acquisition of ExactlyIT and Managed Services has given us a platform to onboard managed services portions of companies like TIG, PDS, Vicom, and Infinity Systems. These capabilities have meant that we bring broader capabilities to our mid-market customers, and now over half of our sales reps sell three or more of our practice areas into our customers. The company has also continued its European expansion with the U.K. addition of Stone Technologies Group, serving both the public and private sectors, expanding on the previously announced German-based acquisitions of GfdB, allowing us to become a leading education provider in both Germany and the U.K. These acquisitions will contribute to enhancing and growing solution offerings and services for our clients in Europe and make us more meaningful to our vendor partners in education like Apple, Intel, and Microsoft. Last quarter, I presented this slide, which shows how Converge's combination of acquisitions and organic growth have resulted in three times the average gross profit growth compared to the rest of the IT services industry. In addition to this gross profit growth, it is important to understand how large our services organization is compared to others in the industry. Although these numbers are based on LTMQ2 numbers, the increased growth of our professional and managed services have resulted in nearly CAD 500 million annualized services business, providing a large talent base of technical resources into our customers at a time when our mid-market customers are struggling to find people to help them implement their digital strategies. As mentioned on previous calls, Converge targets acquisitions, which have mid-market customer bases that are moving to cloud-based services models. Analyzing our sales for Q3, 24% of our revenue came from healthcare sector, 23% from the technology sector, 16% from government and education, 11% from finance, and 26% from other sectors. It is also important to understand the strong demand environment Converge is selling into. When conducting quarterly business reviews last week with our regional sales managers, they reported no signs of reduction in IT spending in Q4, and particularly in the U.S., saw strong demand continuing into 2023. We also have seen large successes in Germany, where this past quarter we announced that REDNET had secured EUR 156 million framework contract, euro framework contract for a large public sector in Germany, allowing public and local authorities and universities to procure needed technology to modernize education. While this is a digital infrastructure-heavy contract, it was another important milestone, driving our German and European growth strategy and securing notable wins in the education sector. Q3 saw a reduction in our backlog for the first time in the past year, with product backlog decreasing from CAD 507 million at the end of Q2 to CAD 433 million at the end of Q3. Whereas last Q3, some vendors were providing delivery dates in two to three months while not being able to deliver for four to six months. Now we see the opposite, where vendors are conservatively providing longer delivery dates but being able to deliver more quickly since lessening consumer demand has assisted the supply chain available to businesses. We are expecting the supply chain to get better in Q4 and normalized by the end of Q2 2023. I will now hand over to Richard to go through a more detailed discussion of our financials. Thank you, Shaun. Good morning, everybody. Hope you're all well, and thank you for joining the Converge Q3 earnings call this morning. Before getting into the financials, I just wanted to say that it's great to be sitting here with Shaun and talking to you today as a member of the Converge team. I've been really impressed by the Converge team and the people I've met thus far, and I'm excited and proud to now be part of it. What the team has achieved in a relatively short time is remarkable. I could already see the ingredients for further success in an IT service provider industry that has proven itself to be pretty resilient to the challenges posed first by the pandemic, and now the economic turbulence that we're currently experiencing. Getting into the financial highlights for Q3 FY 2022. As Shaun has highlighted, we continue to see robust demand for our products and services, and that has translated to strong year-over-year revenue, gross profit, and adjusted EBITDA growth. In what is seasonally a quieter quarter, gross revenue of CAD 730 million was 55% up on Q3 last year. On a year-to-date basis, gross revenue of CAD 2.13 billion is now up year-over-year by 60%, with the growth driven both from acquisitions and organically. I'll be speaking about organic growth in more detail later, but as displayed on the bottom left of the slide, organic gross revenue growth in Q3 was just under 6%, while organic gross revenue growth on a Q3 year-to-date basis is 12.5%. Net revenue after the IFRS 15 principal-agent net down of CAD 603 million was up 64% year-over-year in Q3 and is 71% above last year on a year-to-date basis. Gross profits, our most important trading performance metric of CAD 139.7 million was 67% ahead of last year in the quarter and now stands at CAD 381.9 million on a nine-month year-to-date basis, 66% up on last year. As with revenue, year-over-year gross profit growth was driven both by our M&A activity and also healthy organic growth. Organic GP growth in Q3 was 13% while organic growth of 15% was reported on a Q3 year to date basis. Adjusted EBITDA was CAD 31 million in Q3, up 64% on prior year, and the year to date adjusted EBITDA is now just shy of CAD 100 million, representing 68% growth over last year. Despite completing on the significant TIG and GfdB acquisitions in the quarter completed on the first of August, adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of GP was 22.2%, and that was consistent with last year and in line with expectations, given the operating leverage effect that the Q3 holiday season has on turning Q3 GP into EBITDA, as evidenced in our 2021 reported numbers. Significant revenue growth was generated in all areas of Converge's portfolio of products and services. Q3 product revenue, which includes both hardware and software, increased 64% to CAD 474 million from CAD 290 million in Q3 last year, driven by the 12 acquisitions completed since October 1 last year, and helped by conversion of our prior period backlog as product delivered to customers in the period. Q3 professional and other services, which includes the net revenue from public cloud resale and product support, increased 71% to CAD 98 million in Q3 from CAD 57 million last year. We continue to invest in our key consulting practice areas, including analytics, cloud, and cyber security. Managed services revenue increased to CAD 31 million, a year-over-year increase of 53%, implying annual recurring revenue from managed services now of CAD 124 million. Pleasingly, revenue from our pure professional services, which are our advisory and implementation services, increased 85% year-over-year in Q3. This was the highest growth part of our business in Q3 and is an indicator of Converge's migration to be on a higher value add, higher margin services led business. When combined with our managed service business, we exit Q3 with a pro forma services business approaching CAD 500 million in revenue terms, and we are poised to continue displaying growth in this area heading into Q4 and beyond. Converge now completed 10 acquisitions in the calendar year 2022, including our most recent, the acquisition of Stone Group, the closure of which we announced on Monday of this week. All of these acquisitions performed in line with expectations in the quarter, and this M&A led growth was complemented by 6% organic gross revenue growth in Q3. On a year to date basis, organic revenue growth of 12.5% means that in the nine months to September 2022, an incremental CAD 167 million of revenue has been generated by the existing portfolio of companies compared to the first nine months of 2021. GP performance was strong in Q3 with growth of 67% over Q3 2021. While our acquisition strategy was a clear driver of the reported GP growth, organic GP growth was a significant contributor with organic growth of 13% achieved in Q3. In year to date terms, organic growth of 15% means that our existing portfolio of companies has generated an incremental CAD 34.5 million of GP compared to prior year. Gross margin of 23.2% in Q3 2022 was up 0.5 percentage point compared to Q3 last year, despite the recent hardware focused acquisitions, reflecting the mix impact of our highest growth professional services business. We continue to see opportunity for gross margin accretion as the cross-sell benefits that's Converge adding its higher margin cloud and managed service offerings into those recent hardware focused acquisitions starts to accrue. As an indicator of just how big Converge has become, the end of September last twelve months gross profit is now almost CAD 500 million. If you were to pro forma that number allowing for a full 12-month contribution from the 12 companies acquired since first of October last year, that figure is higher still. Adjusted EBITDA was 64% up on Q3 last year and 68% ahead on a Q3 year to date basis. EBITDA as a percentage of net revenue was in line with last year for both the quarter and year to date. EBITDA as a percentage of GP, a more meaningful measure of how effectively we turn gross profit into bottom line profit for Q3 was 26.1%, 0.3 points ahead of last year. In Q3 itself, EBITDA as a percentage of GP was down 0.3 percentage points, reflecting the expected impact of recent acquisitions and associated SG&A costs. Heading into Q4, we expect to see gross margin rebound in line with the quarterly product mix trends that we usually see in the business, which together with integration related cross-sell and cost optimization benefits, will drive an increase in EBITDA as a percentage of gross profit growth. Moving on to organic growth. The slide that you can see those growth in gross revenue and gross profit for FY 2020, FY 2021 and FY 2022, with FY 2022 shown quarterly and on a year to date basis. There's a lot of data on this slide, but the key takeaway is a consistent record of organic growth and gross revenue and gross profit. As you would expect, and as shown in the bottom table charting where reported GP has come from, our M&A led strategy means the M&A contribution to GP growth exceeds the organic contribution. The organic contribution has nevertheless been significant and consistent. As I've already stated, on a Q3 year-to-date basis, organic gross revenue growth is 12.5% in 2022, while organic GP growth for the first nine months of this year is 15%. Moving on to cash flow and in particular our financial position. Adjusted free cash flow, which we calculate as adjusted EBITDA less recurring CapEx and payments of lease liabilities, was CAD 24.7 million in Q3, representing free cash conversion of 80% consistent with last year on a quarter and Q3 year-to-date basis. Working capital outflow in the quarter of CAD 7.8 million was caused by the impact of acquisitions in the quarter, together with selected advanced supplier payments to secure pricing advantage on a few specific deals. This is a timing issue and cash generation continues to be fundamentally strong. Looking at our balance sheet, we finished the quarter in a strong financial condition after having invested over CAD 354 million, net of cash acquired in the nine acquisitions completed during the first nine months of 2022. At September 2022, when combining our cash position of CAD 172 million with headroom under our updated revolving credit facility of CAD 500 million committed and CAD 100 million accordion. At the end of September, we had approximately CAD 400 million of available funds. The new RCF has a leverage covenant and an interest cover covenant, as shown on the slide. While we don't disclose our RCF covenant levels, at September 2022, Converge was in comfortable compliance with both. Finally, as we previously announced, Converge obtained approval from the TSX to make a normal course issuer bid, which launched on August 11 and will terminate one year after its commencement or earlier if the maximum number of common shares under the NCIB have been purchased or the NCIB is terminated at the option of the company. Under the terms of the NCIB, Converge may purchase for cancellation up to an aggregate of 10.7 million common shares, representing 5% of the issued and outstanding common shares at 31 July 2022. At 30th September, just over 5 million shares have been purchased under the program, reducing our issued and outstanding shares to 210.3 million. Moving to outlook. The company recognizes the uncertain macroeconomic situation as the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and residual supply chain impacts it caused, and also deals with the higher inflation and interest rate environment, as well as geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine. However, we are pleased with underlying trading in the seasonally quietest quarter, Q3, and demand for Converge's IT capabilities remains resilient among our large and well-diversified customer base. As a result, the company expects to see the high demand for our services-led, software-enabled hybrid IT solutions continue for the remainder of 2022, with Q4 growth rates consistent with Q3 year to date, circa 60%, and this high demand continuing into 2023. Now turning to a brief ESG update. When I joined the Converge leadership team, it was important to me to understand the culture and the fundamentals that are driving Converge's success. In my short time at Converge, I'm proud to see that Converge embodies their company mantra, better together. From recruitment to employee retention, from ongoing development of employee interest and awareness groups, to company wellness initiatives and financial success programs provided to our teams, it is evident that Converge is a people company. We continue to strive to offer new up-to-date resources and regularly consult with our employees, inviting feedback on areas in which we can do better. We're really pleased that in our most recent company-wide survey done in Q3, 85% of our employees surveyed responded saying they feel valued at Converge. Looking ahead into Q4 and into 2023, in addition to continuing to promote and protect our social well-being programs, we will also focus on environmental and governance plans and targets, including potential alignment to organizations such as the Science Based Targets initiative and UN Sustainable Development Goals. Reducing energy consumption and consolidation of offices, further improving diversity and inclusion in our recruitment and management level representation, increased community involvement, and the creation of an enhanced risk management framework are all examples of things we will be working on. We recognize that establishing consistent ESG practices with such significant acquisition activity is not always a straightforward task. However, we are confident in our company culture and our ability to extract influences from new acquisitions as we build the ESG roadmap for years to come. The recently announced acquisition of Stone Group is a great example of that as we look to leverage their class-leading sustainable IT asset disposal capabilities throughout the Converge group. Thank you. I'll now turn the presentation back to Shaun Maine. Thank you, Richard. Cybersecurity and identity management product provider Portage, having completed five acquisitions, is having a real impact enabling governments to provide digital identity services. With over 80% gross profit from its products and unique IP in the space, it is poised to provide Converge shareholders benefit through a spin-off when market conditions improve. Portage's incredible journey has been enabled and fostered by the support of Gatineau and the province of Quebec, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them while asking for understanding of my less than perfect French accent. With that, let me open the floor to questions. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session hosted by company representatives Shaun Maine, Global Chief Executive Officer, Richard Lecoutre, Global Chief Financial Officer, and Greg Berard, President and North American Chief Executive Officer. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. 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 your question, please press star followed by the number two. Please keep in mind, if you are using a speakerphone to lift your handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question will come from Christian Sgro of Eight Capital. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one I wanted to ask is on the product backlog. I was just wondering how you would characterize the current product backlog, and if there's any commentary you could share on how it's trended since the quarter end. Sure. What you've seen is, as we stated, the Q3 was the first quarter that it declined from approximately CAD 507 million of product backlog to CAD 437 million at the end of Q3, with our services backlog being kind of standard. What you've seen is the lessening of demand on the consumer side has really provided a lot more availability to businesses. The couple laggards are the network guys and HPE. Those are the ones that are still there. Although, as I stated in my comments, when you were there a year ago, you were seeing companies hoping to be able to deliver in two to three months and actually delivering in four to six. That's churned around now, where they're giving longer lead times and then, they're being able to deliver earlier. We saw the older backlog has the ones that were multiple quarters old has basically disappeared. You're gonna see an improvement in Q4, but there's still gonna be. It won't all come out in Q4. You'll also see that happen in Q1 and Q2. For the next three quarters, we would expect by the end of Q2, notwithstanding anything new that happens, that you would have a normalized supply chain from Q2 onwards. Does that help, Christian? Yes, that's very helpful on the backlog and the cadence there. The second question I'll ask today is more on the core business in North America. I wanted to ask, you know, when you go to market in the mid-market, what's the tip of the spear for Converge, you know, in the current macro? So which practice areas are you leading with? And then where are you seeing the best cross-sell opportunities, whether it's cyber or data? Like what's leading and what's the upsell in your markets? It really depends on the client, right? The fact that we have all these practice areas gives us the flexibility to either go in based on the customer needs. You know, we have a lot of examples where our traditional digital infrastructure clients are leveraging us for our analytics capabilities or our cloud capabilities. We may go in with cloud, and then that may morph into an analytic conversation where we would then bring in our analytics practice, right? It really depends on the client need and requirement. The good news is, you know, our account executives are understanding what we offer and are selling multiple practice areas. As Shaun noted earlier, over 60% of our sellers are now driving three different practice areas into their account set. Perfect. Thanks for the color on the sales strategy there. Yeah. It does help, Greg. Thanks for taking my questions, and I'll pass the line. Your next question will come from Rob Young at Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. I think you said in the prepared comments that there was a bit of a cash outflow to secure pricing. I think, is this going directly to the OEM or rather than through a distributor? Maybe if you just back up from that a little bit, just talk a bit, a little bit about the vendor terms and how, if they are changing, do you anticipate them changing going into a recession? Do you think that, you know, discounting will be harder to get? Two-parter there. Rob, I'll take the first part of that on the supplier payments to distribution. Those were to distribution. Important to note, that's gonna be a timing thing, so expect that to come back in Q4. We do not expect terms to change. When you close large acquisitions like TIG and GfdB on August 1st, it takes a full quarter to get through to the new payment terms. We've seen this in the past. I think when Vicom Infinity was closed on December 31st, that there's a transitional period on the balance sheet before you get to your longer terms. We would expect those to stabilize. What we've also seen, as I think we've mentioned, is that as we're moving people onto Converge U.S. is a common system, so all of our acquisitions are merged into the U.S. structure. Moving them over in that transitionary period sometimes gives customers an excuse to delay things as they put the new details in. Again, transitionary in nature. We do not see the macro environment really impacting that, and we expect that to be normalized in the quarter. Okay. Since we have Greg on the phone, just curious, I've seen a few different opinions through this reporting season on the health of the mid-market. I was curious if you're seeing any change in behavior or any change in the health of the demand. I know you've already said demand is very strong, but just, you know, specific to the mid-market and where that goes relative to, you know, if there's an erosion in, you know, if we're heading into a recession or whatnot. Yeah, we have not. The outlook continues to remain positive for us. I think that the good thing for us is we have so many solutions and capabilities now to offer our clients, right? Where we were traditionally just selling cloud only or security only to a certain client, our account executives now have the ability to sell across the entire portfolio, right? We're not seeing demand slow down at all in our customer base, and we're continuing to see more and more cross-sell happen across North America. I'll just add into that as well. As well as that diverse product offering that Greg's mentioned there, you've also got a very diverse customer base. This kind of insulates your risk because of the diverse customers and diverse industries that we serve. That helps with that too. Okay. Last little one, just if you could clarify the statements on the pace of M&A. Could you just talk about if that's an intentional slowdown, you know, how long you intend to slow down, if there's, you know, opportunistic acquisitions that you might look at through that? I mean, just if you could be more specific around your statements on the pace of M&A over the near term, and then I'll pass the line. Sure. Like, we're very thrilled that we exceeded our acquisition target already this year. We've hit our target. We feel that we've again, when you look at our last year's base was CAD 1.53 billion, and we added CAD 1.2 billion of revenue. That's a lot, and so we'll focus in on consolidating, cross-selling and integrating. I think back in 2020, you'll recall that we took a pause in Q2 and Q3 from acquisitions, and you really saw those percentages go up. One of the challenges we have with so many moving parts through acquisitions is really getting that clarity, and especially around things like organic growth. We feel that really that focus will really help show that. When we target CAD 1 billion a year of acquisitions, as a percentage basis, that goes down over time. Next year, we'll focus on the back half of the year. We're always, we have a very large pipeline, and if opportunistically, as things come up, if they you know, we're there, we would do them. We really feel that the focus on our organic growth and integration is the right one for the rest of the year and the beginning of next year as well. Thanks a lot. Good job. Your next question will come from Rob Goff of Echelon. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. It was encouraging to hear that the Q4 outlook calls for consistent growth versus the year-to-date basis. Could you talk to how that might apply when you look within the revenue line? Are you seeing consistent growth within product versus managed services versus the professional services? The growth of professional services has exceeded the rest of the growth. You've got a few moving parts, Rob, which makes it hard to predict exactly how much of that backlog is gonna come through in Q4. One of the things we've noted is that you see the services backlog doesn't include any managed services, but it does include services to onboard customers to then lead to the managed services. As we talk about our advise, implement, and manage, the leading indicators are advise, then you've got implement, and then you've got manage. You'll see those kind of things go through, where you'll have above average professional services growth followed by your implementation and then the managed services. Again, the services obviously is the most profitable part of the business and the most differentiating part as well. There is a real mix there in the Q4. Does that answer your question, Rob? That does help. On the M&A side, like we understand you're focused on integration right now. Could you talk to the market conditions, though? Are you seeing a greater availability of prospective acquisitions looking further out? Absolutely. The thing that we've really noticed, though, is I think people didn't understand our capability of buying advisory companies in cybersecurity and analytics for VAR-type multiples. I think that's like why we try to call out the differentiation there. We've been very disciplined buyers of companies for right rates, but we've been able to get so much more in the modern climate because there are very few buyers. What are rarer are the platforms. Why I was thrilled to get REDNET last year and Stone this year is there are very few platforms. There is an abundance in a very diversified market of those customer-centric ones that you buy and then implement in your cross-sell. You're buying them for their customer access so that Greg can run the cross-sell strategy. Still, it's an incredibly diversified marketplace, made up of a lot of smaller players. Again, we act like 35 companies in five years is normal. It's not. Our competitive advantage is our buying companies, integrating them, and cross-selling, and most people struggle with that. It's a culture thing as much as anything else and who we know, but there's still a lot of opportunity. We're very mature now with the capabilities in North America. We've hit all the NFL cities. We've got all those capabilities around cyber analytics, cloud managed services. In Canada, we've really added to those offerings, and you'll look to see that same path of growth happen in Northern Europe in the future as well. Rob, I'll just add a little bit of color. I think Shaun kind of touched on it there, but the IT market, whether that's in North America or in Europe, you know, is very fragmented. It has been for years and continues to be very fragmented. So in terms of opportunities for M&A moving forward, there's still a hell of a lot out there as a result of that fragmented nature of the industry. Mm-hmm. Thanks, guys. Your next question comes from Deepak Kaushal of BMO. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple on acquisitions and then one on organic growth. Shaun, you mentioned three different types of acquisitions that you're doing, you know, VARs, boutiques, and platforms. When you first started, you had a target model to bring like a 6x EBITDA multiple down to a 2x EBITDA multiple on a VAR. What's kind of your target in aggregate for these three different types of acquisitions? Or just at a high level, what's kind of the required target return on capital that you look for across your types of acquisitions? You're absolutely right to call it out, and thank you. Your report actually gave me a better framework to communicate with people, so I do owe you for that one. Really, the standard metric of buying, you know, VARs at 3x and moving to 6.5x is really on the implement side. We haven't provided the guidance on the other two areas. We're gonna be doing a capital markets day next March, and we'll really be expanding on that on a more expanded basis at that time, where we'll really go through that. You're absolutely right. You should think about that model we provided to be really on the implement side, and we'll provide further guidance in March when we have our capital markets day. Got it. I'll be patient for that. Following on the M&A side, the level of integration of acquisitions, you talked about back office ERP. Wanted you to talk about the other buckets like front office, technical sales teams, branding, cross-border. You know, what are the big buckets of integration that you've done and what's yet to be done in terms of- This is full integration. We deconstruct these teams. Every single U.S. employee is on a U.S. payroll, every Canadian employee on a Canadian payroll. Like, there is now 11 of the companies we acquired no longer exist. Like, Lighthouse Computer Services no longer exists. Those are all Converge employees, Converge email addresses, you know, BCT, Key Information Systems. Those companies no longer exist. Once you pass that three-year earn-out period, like, first year, we leave the brand and make them a Converge company. We're talking full integration, everything from Salesforce to their expense systems to their. Like, you don't get synergies with your people. Even if they're the same system but different implementations, if an inside salesperson has to log on to one and log on to another in order to support different salespeople, you can't get synergies of a consolidated back office. This is full systems, and this is something that, at the capital markets day as well, we'll really draw out the amount of integration we've done. Because again, it's something I should talk about a lot more because it is a core competency, and it really does drive efficiencies, not just on the cost side, but when Greg talks about, you know, the amount of our sales reps that are able to cross-sell other practice areas, the systems really enable that. In Salesforce, when they reach a certain level, it gives them case studies of other customers doing this. So that's really the details around the systems and the systems integration, which is complete, is very meaningful to our ability to cross-sell as well. Yeah, Deepak, I'll just jump in here too on the, on the services side, right? Every time we acquire a company now, what we do is we go through the technical capabilities of every resource on the team, right? We actually shift those resources into the individual practice areas that they specialize in, right? As we talk about our ability to cross-sell and our ability to drive high-value services with our clients, those skill sets are coming from every organization we're acquiring, right? The mass we have and the breadth and depth of every single practice area continues to grow significantly after every acquisition. Okay, great. Out of the 35, how many would you say are fully integrated? Obviously not Stone yet, but. Yeah. Again, we'll go through it in detail. We do it by region. Like, I separate out the five in Portage because those are not fully integrated. I don't know. Actually, we can get back to you with the full numbers of integration. Again, you know, with the 10 this year, some of them already are. There's a couple that are still in, and obviously, Stone is. We haven't completed the ones on August the first yet, but we can give you. Like, there's a status update that gives by region the integration, so we can provide it to you as well. Okay. My last question, if I can sneak it in, given it's my first call for you guys. On organic growth, there was some slowdown. You did mention the shift in mix to services, which has more of an impact on the top line. How much of that organic slowdown was that mix shift, and how much was seasonality, and how much was just kind of, you know, macro factors? Yeah, so I wouldn't say macro factors at all. I think what you've seen is as the supply chain has normalized, you saw the leading area was devices come out, which are very high revenue and lower gross profit. Now you're seeing the other side. There are a bunch of factors in that, but definitely I'm not seeing this as not a demand issue that we're seeing. It's more of a product mix issue. Again, the very high services growth really shows that demand up. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll pass the line. Thank you, Deepak. Your next question will come from Jérôme Dubreuil of Desjardins. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my question. This is Phil Circo on for Jérôme. I just had a question around cloud growth. We saw cloud growth kind of slow down at Google Cloud, Azure and AWS, and I was just wondering if you saw this slowdown at all felt in your cloud migration demand from your clients. Thanks. Although it's down, say 5% at Azure, it's still a really, really big number, right? We still have mid-market companies that are desperately needing to get to the cloud. When you look at these traditional businesses, they used to grow at GDP growth rates because they were selling data center equipment. Cloud growth rates are so much larger. Just the pace of cloud growth is why companies in the IT services space are even having interesting conversations. It's still, when you look at all the areas of growth, cloud is by far the largest. When you have Amazon, Google and Microsoft providing numbers that are worldwide in nature, they realize there's some currency impacts there, especially in say Europe and Asia. Also the North American demand, I do not see as being impacted like there might be in some other areas. One, it's a very big number, and two, I think you have to remember the U.S. guys reporting on global numbers and in U.S. dollars has an impact there as well. We're definitely not seeing a lowering of demand in the mid-market of companies wanting to move to the cloud. Great. Thank you. I'll pass the line. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one at this time. Your next question will come from Gavin Fairweather of Cormark. Please go ahead. Oh, hey, good morning. Just wanted to start out on the services side. Given the growth that you're seeing in that business, can you just discuss capacity utilization of those teams and your plans to invest in this business with organic hires versus M&A? Yeah, absolutely. Utilization is something we look at on a monthly basis, right? We're always looking at what is the team utilized at today, and then what are the needs coming from the pipeline. Overall utilization is strong across all our practice areas. As Shaun mentioned, we've made a significant amount of acquisitions with LPA, Carpe, CBI, et cetera, for each of the practice areas. We're also organically hiring as well. We're looking at technical resources across the board. As you can imagine, with the environment in the way it is today, demand is high around these resources, but we're continuing to be able to find the right skill sets and the right expertise to deliver on those projects, which is why you're seeing our services growth, right? We're able to leverage the acquisitions we've made, but also, leverage the talent that's out there and leverage our internal talent team too, that's been able to help us recruit and bring in that high-value services people. Gavin, I'd add to that, when you bring in acquisitions, they provide teams of people that work together, so you can augment that with organic. I love our model where we partner with services companies and then acquire them that have pre-built teams. Also when you have that talent, that also attracts other talent. If you go some places and you're the only smart person in the room, then you know that's a lonely place. The culture is incredibly important in attracting and retaining this top technical talent and having the base key resources. Again, we've seen it with, say, the three analytics companies, LPA, CarpeDatum, you know, with the existing teams and now with Newcomp Analytics really working together on that. I think it's the combination, and really getting that kind of the acquisition part that brings in those teams that you can augment with, as Greg says. That's helpful. Good to hear that the sales team is still, you know, hearing strong demand and from your mid-market clients. I guess I'm curious if we did get into kind of mid-next year and you know, demand did start to slow down a little bit, how would you change how you're managing the business in that type of scenario? These businesses are absolutely, you look at how your quarter's gone and you make investments or you take cost out depending on that. If utilization rates go down, again, what we've seen is incredibly high demand for technical resources. When you actually look, people aren't firing cybersecurity and analytics people, right? You cannot find those skill sets. I don't think those are people that you're finding are gonna be out in the street. These businesses, you always watch your cost, and when utilizations are down, then you make changes. When you've got high demand like we have now, you're constantly hiring. It's something on a quarterly basis. That's the way we manage the business. I think the diversification of our solution set helps there too, right, Gavin? We can look at the pipeline now that we have all the sellers on Salesforce and look quarters out and see where are we seeing the demand, where are we seeing the growth, right? Make the investments now, and be able to just keep a real close pulse on the business. That's it for me. Thanks so much. Thanks, Gavin. Your next question comes from David Kwan of TD Securities. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. I guess I want to go back to Deepak's question on your organic growth. I appreciate the gross profit organic growth, which I think is a better way to look at the business. Just given it was, you know, lower than what we've seen year to date, an explanation you gave would seem to make sense on a gross revenue basis. On a gross profit basis, I'm not sure the revenue index is necessarily as applicable here. Just trying to get an understanding if there's maybe something else at play, you know, given what we've seen with the backlog actually decline this quarter and also the tailwind from the stronger U.S. dollar, I'm just wondering if there's something else at play there. Yeah. On the FX side, right, the euro decline kind of offset the U.S. dollar tailwind. But again, you see in the quarter, what you see in a gross profit growth is organically similar to the year to date numbers. What you saw on a revenue is a mix thing. Yeah, Q3 does have its idiosyncrasies around, you know, vacations and things like that. But again, it's the same as last year. There will be some variances, but I say I wouldn't. I definitely don't see it as a demand issue. Let me just add a bit of color to that as well, David. If you look at a constant currency comparison of net revenue and gross profits, so net revenue as reported was 64% up. If you constant currency that increase comes down to 62%, so only a small difference. On the GP side, we reported 67% growth, and if you constant currency that, it comes down to 64%. So again, minor effects of the FX benefits that U.S. dollar Canada offset by Euro Canada. So it doesn't really change the optics of it. There's a small headwind, but it's not really material. It doesn't change the view of performance in the quarter. Thanks for that, the help on and the clarity on the FX in particular. Two more questions. First off, can you talk about what you're seeing in Europe and how that compares to North America? You're kind of talking about very strong and robust demand in North America, but given some of the more challenges that we're seeing in Europe, I'm curious to see what you're seeing there. In the education space, 90%+ of our business is education, those are long-term contracts, and those are very well-funded projects. Both in Germany and now in the U.K., the focus on education, we feel is very resilient. There is a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace around energy prices and, what that's going to mean for various industries, but we don't see that impacting education. Richard, would you like to add to that as well? Yeah. I mean, the European perspective, I've, as you know, come from Softcat. Softcat released their results beginning of last week, and they've reported consistent maintained demand in the second half of their year and are positioning, you know, their outlook statement as that continuing. I think the European position, whilst you'd expect there to be potentially some softening given the macroclimate and what's happening in Europe and the Ukraine crisis, et cetera, cost of living, energy costs, all of those things, that's not translating into demand for, you know, mid-market and IT budgets in European customers. That's certainly what Softcat experienced. I know Bytes came out as well, and they've said a similar thing. The demand picture, the demand pattern that we're kind of talking about, I think that applies to Europe just as it does to North America, is where I'm at. Thanks. Just my last question. On leverage, net debt to EBITDA jumped closer to, I think, roughly 2.5 x this quarter, which is higher than the 2 x you talked about not wanting to exceed in the past. Given your plans, I guess, for a slowdown in M&A, is it fair to assume here that, you know, you're planning to allocate more of your free cash flow to reducing your leverage in the coming quarters? Maybe where do share buybacks fit in, especially given where the shares are trading right now? I mean, our shares are very attractively priced for us to implement the share buyback program. We announced that there's a 10.7 million share program of which at the end of Q3 we had bought back 5 million shares. We'll continue to be buyers of our shares. In addition to that, you know, we generate a lot of cash. Q4 is very cash generative. We've become a very large company generating a lot of cash. That'll be used to pay down debt and to buy back shares until we start the acquisition trail again. Would you go beyond the 5%, Shaun? So, at this time, that's what's been approved by the board. Once that's done, the board can assess the situation and see where to go. Right now there's lots of headroom to complete that program. All right. Thanks. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back to Mr. Maine for any closing remarks. Yeah. Really wanted to thank everyone for joining today and your continued support, and thrilled that Richard has now joined us and able to contribute as well. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference call for this morning. We would like to thank everybody for participating, and you may now disconnect your lines.