All right, welcome back. So we are very happy to have CGI next with François Boulanger, the COO. François, thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So let's start with the question on demand on the IT side. It kind of feels like the industry is approaching a bottom here. Pretty much every one of your peers is guiding for acceleration towards the second half of the year. Is this also what you're seeing? And maybe related to that, what are clients waiting for before maybe pulling the trigger? Yeah, thanks for the question. You know, we're close to the bottom. You know, if I'm going sector by sector, you know, and let's start with the financial, because I think that's where we struggle a bit more, and this one is really linked to the interest rates, right? And you know, when interest rates started to go up, we saw some banks starting to slow down on some of the expenses, especially the more discretionary or short-term investment, and because, again, you know, CEO of banks, if they cannot increase their top line, they need still to increase their EPS, so naturally, they'll look at the cost and see how they can reduce the cost, and an easy way is to reduce some short-term mandate or short-term project, so you know, we are seeing that coming back a bit. For sure, it's linked to the interest rate. So we were hoping that the interest rate would start to go down in spring. It seems now it will be pushed perhaps in the summer. But the discussion started, but we don't necessarily see still some revenue pickup coming from that side. So last quarter, we were down by 5%. And it's really on the financial sector, and it's really related to these short-term discretionary expenses. On the other side, in the banks, they're still very eager to see how we can help them to reduce their costs. And so managed services is big. I was with a bank in India a month ago. They want to learn more about India, more about how we can transfer more activities there, reducing the cost, and taking some of that saving to reinvesting in the business. Because even for CIO, even if the short-term projects are going down, there's still needs to do some investment on the regulatory purposes. And so they still have some pressure to spend some money. So that's on the financial side. On the government side, that's actually the reverse. You know, last quarter, we had 7% growth on the government. It's 35%-ish of our business. And it's going well on that side. And as we know, right, in these times when it's a bit tougher on the economy, government has a tendency to spend more to dynamize a bit the market. So we see it in federal government, where we have a U.S. federal government where we have good growth. And we're seeing it also in the U.K., where we have still some good growth. So long story to say that us too, we're seeing the bottom of it. We'll see some improvement, but perhaps more in the Q3, Q4 than actually Q2, for example. You're talking calendar or fiscal here? Calendar mostly. That That I'm seeing it. Again, depending how fast they'll go also with the rate reduction. Right. You know, obviously, businesses can't always afford to wait for moves in the interest rates as well. So do you think maybe there is pent-up demand that has accumulated during that slowdown we've seen last year? For sure. Like I was saying, in the banks, it's a great example. You know, they can stop spending, but at a certain point in time, you know, with the pressure that they have on the regulatory front, they won't have any choice to spend, so that's for sure one of the places where we are seeing some discussion on that side. You saw in Canada, for example, you know, a lot of pressure from the federal government with new regulation and all that. U.S. is the same thing, so they don't have any choice to come back on that side. Historically, CGI has made bets on the government sector, as you alluded to, which is a differentiator with regards to your global peers. Where do you see government spending over the long run going? Because it's probably always going to be a differentiator for CGI or for the foreseeable future. Where do you see that growth going? First of all, we like, you're right, we like to be in that business. You know, they're good clients. They're paying well. You don't have any issue with government. So that's not an issue. And naturally, like I was saying, when it's time like this time, you know, where it's tougher on the economy, they have a tendency to spend more. But even when the economy will come back, you know, they are behind in several places on their own digital journey. And so they won't have any choice to continue to invest. I'll take just here in Canada, the government in Canada, Ottawa, has a lot of initiatives going out in the next couple of months related to IT because they invested so low in the last couple of years that they don't have any choice now. They need to continue on the investment. We are in good aerospace, defense, especially in the U.S., but also in Germany and U.K. A lot of spending there also. You know, and that despite the fact that you're in a recession or not, they'll continue to spend on that side. Obviously, one of the next legs of growth that could happen for the sector is AI. You've made significant investments over the last year, but it's still a nascent business. I think you could agree with that. What's a typical customer request related to AI, and when should we expect it to move the needle for you guys? You know, AI, for now, when you're talking about client, it's a lot of business consulting, right? You know, AI, the clients, especially the CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, want to understand, you know, what is AI, where in their business AI would make sense to be implemented, how to implement AI, and what's the risk related to that, how to manage the data. I don't know you saw, but you had some company with bad surprises by using ChatGPT. They had some industrial secret that went out of the company because people, they didn't realize that actually the data was going out of their company. So that's for some CEOs, it's very stressful, and they want to be sure that, and you know, people inside of companies are using ChatGPT every day. So they want to be sure that, you know, they have the right environment and the right, you know, car itself, if I can say. Parameters.[Cross talk] Parameters to play in so that, you know, we cannot have risk of data going out of the company. So that's mostly what we see for now on the market. Some are starting to do some implementation, but we're still far from big deployment yet. Internally, you know, that's where we're using a lot more on the AI side. Two things. In the managed services side, we were already using AI like machine learning, but we continue to do some investment on that side. And we are seeing generative AI to help us to be more efficient on our managed services. So that's where we're putting some focus. And actually on the SG&A side, I think internally we can use more AI to be more productive on the financial side, on the HR side. And that's where we're putting focus also on AI. When you were a CFO, I remember you saying, "Drink our own champagne. Exactly. Right? Exactly, so no, that's where we're working. Example, even on the marketing side, you know, like I was giving the example this morning, you know, just in the bids, right? When we're doing a bid to our client, we like to know where we did it elsewhere, how we did it, and all that. So we have a lot of data internally in 40 countries across the world. And when you want to bid on something, you know, you're looking at the database, and you have people looking at the database to understand what you did elsewhere. A tool like AI will help you a lot to find the information faster and will do a lot better than anybody that would do the research themselves. So that's example one place where we're implementing AI now to help us. That won't necessarily be better cost, but at least, you know, hopefully at the end, better bids and more relevant bids and with the right information. Right. And you know, no one exactly knows what AI is going to be eventually. Do you see it as being as important of a revolution as, for example, cloud has been or mobile has been in terms of IT services? I would think so. I would think so. Like I'm saying, some of it, like I was saying, was existing already. But I think you'll see for sure it's a revolution, and I think we'll see, like any other tools, capable of bringing productivity gains in everything that people are doing across the world. We're strong believers that it won't make people specialists. It won't make people a doctor, but will make doctors more productive. Will make lawyers more productive. Will make IT specialists more productive. So it's a tool like any other tools, but I think it, yeah, it will be something very important on the market. Next question, obviously, M&A. We have to talk about it. Historically, I think it's more than fair to say that you've prioritized discipline. You've made a transformational deal as well in the past. Question is, you know, CGI now trades at a higher multiple. Is that a driver of you potentially accepting to pay more on a transaction as financially it would be more accretive from a shareholder perspective? For sure. For sure, that, you know, the fact that we have a high multiple is a good currency and a good way of looking at it. One of the problems is that when you're looking at companies, they feel that they value the same multiple that we are, and that's some of the problem, especially when you're working with private companies. They'll look at your multiple and say, "Why not the same for me?" So you need to explain why you're different and why, you know, a smaller company or in one region or just one country, you cannot expect the same selling price. I would have thought that we would have done more this year with the interest rate, and you know, we see less competition from private equity, for example, but it's, you know, it needs two to dance. And while we are ready to pay more when it's making sense, we'll still be disciplined. And where it's not making sense, we won't do it. And I would say that lately we have more due diligence. We have more activities that we had even a year ago. But again, we're not able to close because not making sense. We're finding stuff in the due diligence that's saying, "No, we need to stop this." So we'll continue. We'll work hard. And hopefully we'll be able to close some of them in the near future. Right. And you're seeing that activity has ramped up. What exactly are you looking for in terms of targets? Is it more geography, new capabilities, what type of size? I would say we're more geographic than anything else. The target geography is for sure U.S. U.S., now we're $3 billion, but we can easily be way bigger than that, and a lot of markets where we're not, and when I'm saying market, I'm talking about metro markets. I'll give you an example, Chicago. Chicago, big market, a lot of headquarters based in Chicago. We're not there or very minimal there, so that's example, a target, a place where we're trying to understand who's the local player, who has relationship with large companies in Chicago, and that will become, you know, potential targets. West Coast, a bit the same thing. Seattle or California in general, a place where we would like to see what's the local players and which kind of relationship they have with companies and headquarters, and that will become some of our targets. So the U.S. is a big one. Germany is another big one. You know, we're what, five-ish thousand people in Germany. We're 11,000 in France. We can be easily as big in Germany, perhaps even bigger. So that's another big market that we're looking at. And the third one is the U.K. The U.K., we're very strong on the government side. We need to be as strong on the commercial side, so on the banking or the manufacturing side. So that's another place where we're putting a lot of focus and trying to see if we can grow faster there. Not saying the other markets are not important. We are looking at all the markets, but that's where our sweet spot if we can find some smaller, but large one. I know we're talking a lot about metro market acquisition, but we are looking also for the larger ones, some of the public ones in these areas and public ones in other areas. We're still bullish that we can do some large acquisitions. Again, we won't be hostile takeover. It's not our, you know, in that business, you cannot do that. We need to have an agreement between parties to do it. Business of people. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. All right. You've guided to double-digit EPS growth for this fiscal year, which ends in September. However, you know, the market has been slower this year. Does that mean we're going to be seeing accelerated buyback on top of what we've seen from sales? Yeah, yeah. So perhaps for sure, you know, share buyback is a way to allocate our cash and our capital in a way that it's generating some EPS growth. For sure, like we're always saying, acquisition is also a big one. But if acquisition is not happening or we think it will slow down or take a bit more time, for sure share buyback will be a way of bringing some EPS growth to the shareholders. On the margin side, you know, historically your strategy has been to prioritize onshore delivery. That's been one of your differentiators. However, we've seen the offshoring part of your business grow faster than the rest of your business. Do you think that could keep going in the future and potentially help margins further? I would think so. And I think it's not, you know, some people think it's a change of model or strategy. It's not, right? We are proximity and we still think proximity is important. It's important to have people in the same geography, our people in the same geography than the client, and be sure that the relationship is there. But India is a big part of our delivery also. And it's not just on the cost side. It's also the fact that more and more when you need expertise, that's a place where you can find the expertise easier, faster than, example, in Toronto or in Montreal. So we'll still have a lot of our business industries' knowledge at proximity. But when it's time for technology and all that, you know, that's where we're tapping more to India. You saw, for example, again last year we finished with 7%-8% organic growth or constant currency growth in the company. We finished at 20% in India. Really, that's because when it's time to find talent, you can find it easier and faster in India versus perhaps in some other geography. Probably the pandemic helped in terms of making the customer accept offshoring as a method of delivery. For sure. For sure, pandemic changed a lot on that side. And again, you know, you still have per year, what, a million of people going out to universities in India in IT. So it's a big pool that you have there versus other countries. And you know, it's easier also to bring some of that capabilities also onshore when needed or when clients want to have people closer to them. So we are capable also to bring some expertise from India to Toronto or to US or to anywhere else in the company. I come back a bit to your comments on the banking sector when we started. You know, U.S. banking is coming back in the headlines in the last few weeks. You know, there has been a slowdown. If you can talk about maybe your exposure into what type of banks you're dealing with in the U.S. and what does that mean in terms of your position with regards to where the banking in the U.S. might be going? Yeah. Well, in the U.S., we are dealing with the top Tier 1 bank. We are dealing with some big, I would say Tier 2 banks. I'll give just an example, PNC. Some people can say it's a Tier 1 or a Tier 2 bank, but PNC example is a big client of ours. And you know, these banks, you know, because they have some financial challenges, again, they want to see, they need to reduce their costs. And so, you know, we have good conversation with these banks on managed services. And they are the ones that want to find ways of reducing their costs, their IT delivery costs. So we have several of them that came to India in the last couple of months. We have even one that is there, I think was there last week, again, to understand what we have there and how they can push even more activities there, so the managed service in the financial sector is very active. The challenge there is that, you know, since we're talking multi-year, bigger contract and all that, it's taking a certain time to close them because it's a big decision for them, but they have the pressure, and in the U.S., they have a lot of pressure, like you're saying, and so it's pretty active on that side. Interesting. And then maybe last one, if you can share with us some of your longer-term objectives and aspirations, what should be the main drivers of your performance in the next three to five years? Good question. We're still bullish on the growth. I think, you know, we are in the right industry. You know, technology is everywhere and it's more and more, you know, in the day-to-day activities of every client. So I think AI is the great example. So we still think we'll be able to have good growth in the future. Our strategy of growing from acquisition and organic growth, we're still a strong believer of it, 50/50. And we are seeing good growth, I would say, at market or even better than the market. So I think we still have the space to double the size of this company in the next seven years, so seven to ten years. And that's really what we're trying to achieve. Interesting. Well, thank you very much, François Boulanger. Thank you. Hope this was helpful. Thank you. Next is Éric Dabeck.