Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to CGI's first quarter fiscal 2024 conference call. I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Kevin Linder, SVP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Linder. Thank you, Sylvie, and good morning. With me to discuss CGI's first quarter fiscal 2024 results are George Schindler, our President and CEO, and Steve Perron, Executive Vice President and CFO. This call is being broadcast on cgi.com and recorded live at 9 A.M. Eastern Time on Wednesday, January 31, 2024. Supplemental slides, as well as a press release we issued earlier this morning, are available for download, along with our Q1 MD&A financial statements and accompanying notes, all of which have been filed with both SEDAR+ and EDGAR. Please note that some statements made on the call may be forward-looking. Actual events or results may differ materially from those expressed or implied, and CGI disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The complete safe harbor statement is available in both our MD&A and press release, as well as on CGI.com. We recommend our investors read it in its entirety. We are reporting our financial results in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards or IFRS. As always, we will also discuss non-GAAP performance measures, which should be viewed as supplemental. The MD&A contains definitions of each one used in our reporting. All of the dollar figures expressed on this call are Canadian, unless otherwise noted. We are also hosting our annual general meeting this morning, so we hope you will join us live via the broadcast at 11:00 A.M. I'll now turn it over to Steve to review our Q1 financials, and then George will comment on our business and market outlook. Steve? Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share with you the results of our first quarter of fiscal 2024. In Q1, we delivered CAD 3.6 billion of revenue, up 4.4% year-over-year, or up 1.5% when excluding the impact of foreign exchange. The growth was balanced between Europe and North America. From an industry perspective, we had particular strength in government, with 7.5% constant currency growth, and in communication and utilities, with 6.7% constant currency growth. As anticipated, we experienced softness in the banking subsector. Government continues to be CGI's largest vertical market, representing 36% of Q1 revenue, up 100 basis points when compared to the prior year. As a reminder, CGI delivers recurring services and business solutions to support our government clients with their mission-critical functions such as citizen services, cybersecurity, logistics, and financial management. IP, as a percentage of total revenue, was 22% in the quarter, up 30 basis points when compared to the prior year, with the vast majority contracted as longer-term recurring engagements, increasingly as software as a service. Overall, IP revenue growth was 4.2% in constant currency. We had, once again, a strong quarter of contract wins across all service offerings, booking CAD 4.2 billion in the quarter for a robust book-to-bill ratio of 116%, led by U.S. C ommercial and State Government at 152%, Finland, Poland, and Baltics at 137%, and Western and Southern Europe at 127%. Importantly, managed services, which is longer-term recurring revenue for CGI, represented 57% of total bookings for a book-to-bill ratio of 122%. With respect to IP, we continue to see ongoing demand for our business solutions with a Q1 book-to-bill ratio of 126%, led by our U.S. segments with a combined IP book-to-bill ratio of 164%. Finland, Poland, and Baltics with an IP book-to-bill ratio of 116%, and Canada with an IP book-to-bill ratio of 110%. Global backlog remains strong, reaching CAD 26.6 billion, representing 1.8 times revenue. Turning to profitability, earnings before income taxes were CAD 527 million, for a margin of 14.6%, down 40 basis points year-over-year, primarily as a result of expenses associated with our previously announced cost optimization program. This program, which is focused on SG&A, has been expanded by CAD 26 million for a total of CAD 100 million and is expected to complete as planned in the second quarter. The cost optimization program, along with our ongoing management discipline, will provide incremental margin improvement in the second half of the year. Adjusted EBIT in the quarter was CAD 584 million, up 5.4% year-over-year. This represents a margin of 16.2%, up 10 basis points year-over-year.... We delivered strong margins in the following segments: Asia Pacific at 33%, Canada at 24%, U.K. and Australia at 17%, and Northwest and Central- East Europe also at 17%. Our effective tax rate in the quarter was 26.1%. We expect our tax rate for future quarters to be in the range of 25%-26.5%. Net earnings were CAD 390 million, up CAD 7.4 million, for a margin of 10.8%, down 30 basis points year-over-year, mainly impacted by the investments in the cost optimization program. Diluted EPS was $1.67, representing an increase of 4.4% year-over-year, when compared to $1.60 in Q1 last year. When excluding specific items, net earnings improved to CAD 427 million, up 7.3% when compared to Q1 last year, for a margin of 11.9%, up 40 basis points. Specific items for the quarter included integration and acquisition costs, along with expenses associated with the cost optimization program. On the same basis, diluted EPS was CAD 1.83, an accretion of 10.2% when compared to Q1 last year. In the quarter, cash provided by operating activities was CAD 577 million, representing 16% of total revenue. On a trailing twelve-month basis, cash provided by operating activities was CAD 2.1 billion, representing 14.4% of total revenue. DSO was 41 days in the quarter, below our target of 45 days, mainly due to improved collections and the variation in foreign exchange ending rates. In Q1, we used our cash to invest CAD 85 million into our business, including in AI, invest CAD 49 million in business acquisitions, invest CAD 126 million to buy back our stock, and repay CAD 673 million of long-term debt. In the quarter, we continued to deliver a strong return on invested capital at 15.9%, up 40 basis points year-over-year, demonstrating our proficiency and discipline on deployment of capital. Looking ahead, our focus continues to be on delivering value to our shareholders with the following cash allocation priorities: First, investing in our business. Second, pursuing and closing accretive acquisitions. Third, repurchasing our stock. And finally, paying down our debt. In line with this capital allocation strategy, yesterday, our board of directors approved the extension of the NCIB program until February 2025, authorizing us to repurchase for cancellation up to 20.5 million shares over the next 12 months. CGI balance sheet is strong, with a net debt to capitalization ratio of 17.6% at the end of December, as well as CAD 2.7 billion of cash readily available and access to more if needed. Moving forward, we have the strength and capital resources to continue to execute on both our Build and Buy profitable growth strategy. Now, I will turn the call over to George to further discuss the insights on the quarter and outlook for our business and markets. George? Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. We started fiscal year 2024 in a strong position by harnessing the inherent value of our resilient business model and by employing disciplined operating practices in the execution of our plan. In the quarter, our team delivered financial results in line with our full-year plan for revenue growth, consistent with the current IT services demand environment, double-digit EPS accretion on an adjusted basis, and incremental margin improvement year-over-year on an adjusted basis. With cash from operations at 16% of revenue and first quarter bookings at 116% of revenue, CGI is well positioned to deliver on our Build and Buy profitable growth strategy. The continued strength of our financial performance is anchored by the ability of our consultants to earn clients' trust every day, on every engagement. Again, this quarter, our team earned higher client satisfaction ratings on every dimension we measure, an overall rating of 9.5 out of 10, a record high. The continuous improvement in client satisfaction reflects clients' ongoing confidence in selecting CGI to innovate and support their most critical digital priorities. As anticipated, at all levels of government, demand continued to rise in Q1, as clients focused on progressing their key policy initiatives through the transformation of mission-critical applications and systems. In the quarter, government awards represented 39% of total Q1 bookings, up from 37% in the prior year. CGI's IP solutions were a main contributor to the strong government bookings, particularly in the United States segments. Governments are increasingly interested in solutions to improve their operational efficiency, leveraging the built-in security and innovation, including with AI, of CGI's intellectual property. Across all industries, CGI's end-to-end services and solutions position us well to deliver the right mix of offerings as clients continue to prioritize initiatives that will deliver the highest financial returns and drive tangible organizational benefits. CGI's outcome-based value propositions for managed services and IP are specifically designed to help clients generate cost savings and accelerate transformation with lower capital costs. In line with CGI's compelling value proposition for clients, Q1 bookings were mostly comprised of managed services and IP engagements, which generate long-term recurring revenue. Managed services bookings were driven by strength in government, communications and utilities, and health. Recent managed services and IP wins include the Virginia Department of Social Services, selected CGI to modernize their statewide child support system through a platform-based solution, which incorporates AI and expands our global alliance with Salesforce. Under the agreement, we will partner with government executives to simplify and innovate the end-to-end processes for delivering citizen services. Posti Group, the leading postal and logistics services provider in Finland, Sweden, and the Baltics, expanded their long-term collaboration with CGI through a new 10-year engagement to develop, modernize, and deliver secure digital messaging services across multiple channels and countries. A global multi-energy company renewed and extended its partnership with CGI to modernize the delivery of the company's business applications, primarily for their downstream operations. Our engagement takes an end-to-end approach to help the client drive their energy transformation strategy. In 12 state and local governments across the U.S., including Los Angeles County, the most populous county nationwide, CGI was selected to upgrade their core business platforms. The engagements leverage CGI's Advantage IP, a modern cloud-based solution for permitting, procurement, HR, finance, collections, and performance data management. In the quarter, consulting and system integration bookings were 110% of revenue, up on a sequential quarter basis, with strength in build and run projects in the government and national critical infrastructure sectors, and platform modernization projects, particularly in the insurance industry, leveraging CGI's insurance IP portfolio and our partnership with Guidewire. Notably, in the first quarter, CGI was recognized by Guidewire for outstanding market growth in both the Americas and Europe, and for our delivery excellence. Looking ahead, our overall pipeline for managed services is up year-over-year and sequentially, which we expect will contribute to ongoing booking strength and future revenue growth. Client demand within the government sector continues to drive strength in our overall pipeline. On a sequential quarter basis, the managed services pipeline for government is up by more than 40%. The pipeline for government SI&C projects is up 20%. We continue to see strong demand related to government priorities for cybersecurity, data analytics, and modernization to drive efficiencies and enhance citizen services. While we are beginning to see improving client pipeline for systems integration and consulting across commercial industries, clients continue to exercise caution in their discretionary SI&C spending decisions, given ongoing market uncertainty. These market dynamics continue to favor CGI's managed services and IP to help these commercial clients generate cost savings and operational efficiencies. For example, within the manufacturing, retail, and distribution sector, interest in platform-based solutions to drive operational efficiencies continues to rise. Interest in generative AI is also on the rise in this sector, with clients focused on data preparedness and exploring pilots related to knowledge management, research and development, forecasting and replenishment, and production automation. In health and life sciences, we recently signed industry partnerships in the U.K., Germany, and Denmark to accelerate pipeline growth through joint go-to-market offerings. In addition, we announced last week a global partnership with Körber, focused on improving the production processes of pharma and life science clients around the world. This partnership will leverage CGI's business consulting and system integration services, and Körber's unique portfolio of integrated pharma solutions. In financial services, the overall pipeline is up 12% sequentially, with clients' primary focus on driving cost savings, specifically through new managed services engagements that are increasingly focused on both technology and business operations. Interest remains high for CGI's IP solution—business solutions to modernize and manage payments, enable trade finance globally, and detect and combat financial crime. Our ability to meet the demand associated with our increasing pipeline and to deliver incremental margin improvement is underpinned by our quality delivery and operational excellence, as guided by the best practices and frameworks in CGI's Management Foundation. We continue to make investments to drive our Build and Buy profitable growth strategy. For example, in line with client demand, we've been driving broader diversification of our footprint, growing our global delivery network at an even faster pace than our proximity operations. This strategy has enabled us to continually build deep relationships and proximity with clients and expand the optionality CGI offers clients to balance their cost, risk, and quality objectives.... Over the past three years, CGI's global delivery capacity expanded from 31% of total consultants worldwide to 38% in Q1. This includes in our onshore, nearshore, and offshore delivery locations, and is contributing to incremental margin improvements. In the first quarter, we progressed several of the AI investments we previously communicated, investments which are already strengthening our end-to-end service offerings. These initiatives include the launch of training for all consultants globally on AI. Industry initiatives utilizing available AI tools, including Microsoft's Copilot offerings, consulting offerings to assist clients in their AI strategy, and a new IP solution, CGI Machine Vision, which enables clients in multiple industries to use AI for improved asset and physical infrastructure monitoring. While overall adoption of AI remains in the early stages, CGI's bookings, which incorporated these technologies, totaled more than CAD 200 million in Q1, up double digits on a sequential quarter basis. The initial focus of these deals is aligned around three areas: setting an AI vision and roadmap to drive business value, preparing the data strategy to build a future fit and adaptive foundation with responsible use of data at the core, and piloting a variety of use cases, primarily focused on operational efficiency. We are investing in M&A as part of our Build and Buy profitable growth strategy. The strategy deepens our resilience and serves as a catalyst for future organic growth. We continue to focus on building critical mass in strategic metro markets within all CGI geographies. Our goal is to gradually grow this presence to mirror the economic sector distribution in each metro market and to deploy our full range of services and solutions. We remain in dialogue with a number of merger targets, both metro market and transformational opportunities. As always, we will be disciplined to make sure that all CGI mergers will be accretive to each of our stakeholders. In closing, we are off to a strong start for the year and reiterate our confidence in our fiscal 2024 plan. We have a resilient model with a diversified mix of geographies, economic sectors, and end-to-end services to enable profitable growth now and in the future. We have trusted client relationships and value propositions that are well aligned to meeting current demand for cost savings, digital acceleration, and ROI-led innovation. We have a strong balance sheet, and the improving M&A conditions enable us to act rapidly on accretive merger opportunities. And we have a proven track record for operational excellence and for taking proactive actions to deliver continuous incremental margin expansion. Thank you for your continued interest and support. Let's go to the questions now, Kevin. Thank you, George. Sylvie, please share with the participants the logistics for the Q&A. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. And if you would like to withdraw from the question queue, simply press star followed by two. And if you are using a speakerphone, we ask that you please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you do have a question. And your first question will be from Stephanie Price at CIBC. Please go ahead. Good morning. Congratulations- Hi, Stephanie. On the strong bookings number this morning. You know, it seems like it's been skewed towards managed services and we're lapping Q1 2023, when that was the case as well. Just help me to understand the time to convert to revenue and has it played out as expected over the last year? And how should we think about the pacing of that backlog conversion going forward? Yeah. No, thanks for the question. And yeah, the managed services continues to drive the strength and the overall bookings, and even as we lap some of those tougher comparisons, and I think that's just the nature of where the market is right now. Having said that, yes, it has taken a little bit longer to translate that from bookings to revenue, just given the nature of those deals. They're larger. They have more global delivery involved in them, and so the transition takes a little bit longer, and it takes a little bit longer, therefore, to convert into revenue. The other thing that you are seeing so but we are converting that into revenue, but it's counteracted by some of the softness that you've seen in the SI&C side, particularly in the banking sector. We believe that's beginning to stabilize, and so I think you'll see more of that revenue coming online in the quarters to come. Thanks for the color. And just one more for me, just on the cost optimization program. Sounds like it was expanded a bit in the quarter. Just curious how it's progressing and what areas of business you're looking at and how we should think about it rolling out in fiscal 2024. Yeah, the cost optimization was primarily focused on the SG&A, both some of the individuals as we move more of that to global delivery and automation, but also the real estate, and so we accelerated some of the real estate. So, that's really the focus. It's over two-thirds of that is focused on the SG&A. It's progressing very well, and we believe you'll start to see some of that in the margin improvements in the quarters to come. It also frees up the ability for us to continue making the investments that we're making in training and hiring talent in AI and our IP offerings. So it's a twofer for us. Some of that you'll see in margin improvements, and some of it frees up the ability to make those investments for the future. ... Great, thanks so much. Yep. Thank you. Next question will be from Jérôme Dubreuil at Desjardins. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the read-through from hyperscalers. We've seen the results from last night. But, you know, previously, when growth was slowing on the cloud side from them, you still had optimization and cloud leveraging work to do. Now, good news, last night we've seen some stabilization and even improvement at Google. Does that mean there could be additional work for a company like CGI, and that's related to this leg of growth? Yeah, clearly, we're working with with all the hyperscalers in partnerships, particularly on the on the opportunities associated with AI. We announced we announced one last quarter with Google. I mentioned this quarter, we're working closely with with Microsoft on t he Copilot. So, yeah, I mean, it it certainly... I think it's a it's a sign that we're starting to to stabilize in some of those areas, and we'll continue to work with those with those partners as channels for future growth for for CGI in tandem. Okay, great. And then, another one, you had a lower headcount sequentially in the quarter, you know, obviously related to your cost optimization program. But a lower headcount despite very good bookings in the last 12 months. Are you happy now with where utilization is, or are you still looking for more improvement? No, our utilization is where we'd like it to be. It's pretty high. We did have a small increase in employees year-over-year, but a small decrease quarter-over-quarter. But again, majority of those decreases were in SG&A. I'll just remind you that the growth is not CGI's growth is not linear to people because of the intellectual property, and you see the intellectual property continuing to grow in some of those bookings, but also those ROI-led engagements. So it's a little bit different for us, but yeah, we're pretty happy where we are on the utilization. And of course, we're in an environment where turnover is down pretty sharply, which means we have less replacement hires to make. But we're being very careful not to hire in advance of demand, but we're in a pretty good place to be able to grow as the market demands bring themselves out to be. Great, George. Thanks. Yep. Thank you. Next question will be from Thanos Moschopoulos at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. George, could you expand on what you're seeing from your commercial clients from a demand perspective? And so I presume a number of them have just gone through the annual budgeting process, heading for 2024. And so as you speak to them about their planned spend, you know, could areas like AI be drivers of incremental spend versus last year? Or is it still very much the case where perhaps you're trying to keep spend flat and you know, use savings from outsourcing to invest in areas of AI? Yeah, it's a good question. It's a bit all over the map. I think, in general, the discussions that we've had is that, they'd like to hold their budgets, if not increase their budgets, but that's all still in discussion. So the interest is rising, our pipeline is rising with the commercial clients, but they're still buying the cost optimization projects. They're still buying in smaller doses as they wait to see kind of where some of this uncertainty goes. So, we would see- you know, again, interest is rising. We're playing into that interest because we wanna be positioned for that, but we're selling the cost optimization projects, and you see that in our bookings. So that's kind of our approach, is to engage them in the discussions, to prepare for when the spending decisions come. We don't see them coming yet, I mentioned that in my remarks, but, but we certainly see the pipeline growing. The interest is there, but they're not pulling the trigger quite yet. But they are pulling the trigger on the cost optimization, which will only help them, to spend more in the, in the back half of the year. Great. And, can you expand on how you're hearing with respect to the war on talent to build up the AI capabilities? You know, how much of that will be new hires versus training? Will that be, you know, mostly within the business unit level regionally, or will there be some centralization of the AI capability? Yeah, all of the above. It's... As I mentioned, we're rolling out training for everybody in the company. Of course, focusing different training for developers, different training for the business analysts, and different training, again, for the leaders and the business developers. So, because everybody needs to be literate in AI, and of course, we're a company where people run towards that. And so, that's been very positive for us. Having said that, of course, we need to bring in expertise. We actually developed, established a global AI enablement center of expertise. And we do have in there PhDs and the like, steeped in AI to make sure that we have that. And then, and again, like I said, it's all the above, that's centralized, but then we have a network of AI experts, spread throughout the business units, but then, driven, from a vision standpoint from that, global enablement center of expertise. Likewise, in each of our intellectual property business solutions, we're introducing AI. And again, that's our built-in R&D, lab, if you will, because, again, with the 22% of our revenue in IP and, over 150 different solutions, we're able to really test out use cases and work to and collaboratively with, with our clients as part of our investment. So it's, it's really all of the above, which is why I answered initially that way. Great, George. I'll pass the line. Thanks. Thanks. Next question will be from Paul Treiber at RBC. Please go ahead. Oh, thanks very much, and good morning. Just a question on the U.S. federal space. You know, you've seen good bookings momentum over the last year or so, but this year, you know, it's coming up to an election in the U.S. How should we think about bookings, you know, through this year? And then also, how do you see revenue growth progressing through this year, just given the upcoming election? Yeah. So it's more than just the election, right? Because we get that continuing resolution, the battles in Congress, both in the Senate and the House, so lots going on in federal. Having said that, here's what I would say, and it 's true not just in U.S. Federal, but it's true in a bit in the U.K. and Canada, as well. We see deals accelerating in advance of upcoming elections. So what happens is the bureaucracy, if you will, wants to keep things going during that election period, and so the deals tend to get a little bit accelerated, tend to be a little bit larger, and tend to engage a little bit longer just to get some of that stability. So I think you'll see a bit of a run-up here in the next couple of quarters on the bookings, then that will drop off, right, during the election period. And then we have the change introduced in the aftermath of the election. So, regardless, even if it's, even if the incumbent gets reelected, there's typically new initiatives that, that occur, after the election. So a little bit of a run-up on the bookings, then we'll eat into some of that backlog for, for growth during a short period of time, and then, new opportunities arise. So that's kind of the general cycle, and like I said, we're seeing that not just in the, U.S., but also a bit in the U.K. and, in Canada. And then looking at your Asia Pacific business and then more broadly, just around the trend towards offshoring, Asia Pacific is slowed. The growth there has slowed in the single-digit range, where it's been in double digits for a number of quarters. Are you seeing that the trend towards offshoring in your business begin to slow down, or is it just some other factors that were mixed in there, and you expect Asia Pacific growth to ramp back up? Yeah, actually, believe it or not, the Asia Pacific was also impacted by some of the slowdown in SI&C, including in particularly in banking. So, but the continued strength and demand on these managed services deals, they're facing the same thing. Some of those deals take a little more time to transition to global delivery, but global delivery was a big part of those deals. So I think you're gonna see over time, as SI&C stabilizes, and I think you're gonna see some of that growth coming back to Asia Pacific. Like I said, it has been a push. It gives our clients optionality and gives them some of those cost optimization they're looking for. So we're actually seeing that grow, including in parts of Europe, even in France, we're seeing more take up on a global delivery, offshore specifically. Whereas they've been more nearshore focused, we're seeing more of that go offshore in France. Okay, thanks for taking the question. Yep. Thank you. Next question will be from Richard Tse at National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Oh, thank you. Yeah, given you have such great strength in government, certainly over the years, would it be kind of unreasonable to say, you know, looking forward to lean harder in that market with acquisitions, or are you kind of looking to diversify the business, a little bit away from that? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, we are looking at M&A in both government and commercial. I wouldn't say we're favoring government because we like having a good mix of industries out there, but at this point, yeah, government, we're gonna play into that, and so we do have a set of government opportunities in our active funnel right now. Okay. And then, you know, with respect to the rise of AI, just kind of curious to see, you know, what proportion of bid engagements are asking you to address that, and how would it eventually kind of impact, you know, the margin profile? Like, does it have kind of incremental margin upside in those types of engagements? I'm just trying to understand like, you know, where we are with your enterprise customers. Yeah. So there's kind of two aspects of AI, right? Introducing AI into the solutions, and like I said, I think everybody's interested in seeing how they can leverage that particularly in the operational type solutions. And so that's a lot of our IP, right? We do a lot of our IP is in the operational efficiencies for our clients, and so we're introducing a lot of AI, and that's very welcomed by them in those types of solutions because they're interested in kind of proving out some of these cases and business cases. And so that's something that we're is an element of those. And of course, given that it's in high demand, yeah, there's an element where accelerating those comes at a slightly higher margin profile. So that's the good news there. But there's also the opportunity for us to use AI in our own delivery, in the delivery of everything that we do. So we're looking at that from bid and proposal support to code design and testing, documentation, code generation, code migration. So that's the opportunity for, I think, margin improvements, especially as you do that on an outcome-based solution sale. So that's really the opportunity I think for us. It's twofold, right? It's introducing that for our clients into the profile. Now, what I would say is we're still seeing pilots that some of the enterprise clients are maybe doing that at a little more of the scale, larger implementations. We are seeing that at some of the larger implementations, but there still tend to be smaller point projects and absolutely still experimentation when you're talking about customer-facing AI use. So this is our clients to their customers. So, I think it's still... That's why I mentioned it's the early days, but, it's certainly, there are opportunities here, for sure. Okay, great. Thank you for the insight. Yep. Yep. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, a reminder that if you have a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question will be from Jason Kupferberg at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, George and Steve. This is Tyler DuPont on for Jason. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start by asking about visibility into calendar 2024 client budgeting decisions. It seems like based on your comments that, you know, backlog is rising quite steadily and nicely, but some clients are more cautious on pulling the trigger, on converting some of those budgets into actual spend. I'd be curious- Right sort of how this current environment compares to previous time periods and when you believe the visibility to firm up more substantially as we look through the year? Yeah, well, you know, I've said this for several actually years, I think is that I think that IT, just given the nature of how important it is to the business, it's in general not seen as discretionary. Of course, within the spend, of course, there's discretion, but in general, it's not seen that way. So I think you're gonna see a more rapid... You didn't see as deep of a slowdown, despite some of the uncertainty, and I think you'll see a faster ramp back up. When that happens, I can't call. You know, I think you're gonna see some of that in the back half of the year, but that's the discussions we're having. So you're right, we're building that pipeline and not pulling the trigger yet, but I really believe it's gonna be a little bit faster. I think everything happens faster in today's world, but I think you're gonna see that happening a little quicker than than some of the the prior prior cycles. Even their buying is different, right? The way we execute projects, the way they buy projects is different than it was in previous economic slowdowns. So that's kind of what I see. Of course, I can't call that, but that's what I would anticipate. Sure. Sure. That's, that's super helpful. Thanks. And I guess as- Yep a follow-up, I'd be curious to hear more about the pricing dynamics you're seeing, given the current demand environment. I know based on, again, comments, it seems like SI&C projects are a little bit softer, with clients favoring more managed services at the moment, understandably. I'd be wondering if there's any pricing concessions being made in SI&C to secure the deals that do exist, and maybe if you can sort of juxtapose what you're seeing there versus the strength of the managed services deals. Yeah, we're not, we're not really seeing that. I mean, I guess there'd be two things, right? There's, there's the SI&C deals that are more focused on cost optimization, so we're selling those as ROI led, and so we're pretty good at doing that. And so it's still, although it's not a managed service, it's still driven kind of outcome based, and so so you can... You know, the pricing is different in those situations. And then the other SI&C that's going on is pretty important, and quality becomes very important, the time to deliver becomes important, and so we're not really seeing big concessions on those projects wholesale. Of course, there's always, you know, bad behaviors, I would say, by in any given bid, but in general, we're not seeing that. You see our actual bill rate efficiency is holding pretty steady. We're not seeing a rising rate environment like we saw a year ago, but we're not seeing degradation right now. Great. Thank you. I appreciate the color. Yep. Sure. Thank you. Next question will be from Divya Goyal at Scotiabank. Please go ahead. ... Good morning, everyone. George, I wanted to get some color on this variance between Europe versus the North American growth that we've been seeing. I know the peers have been commenting on it. We have an outlook on it, but it's – I'm just curious, is the variance because Europe is doing better than North America, or is it because North America undertook those business transformations sooner than Europe did, and it is because of that macroeconomic conditions that is driving this variance at this time? Yeah, you know, I got to tell you, I mean, we mentioned our growth is pretty balanced between the two. And in general, I see it less being about the geographies and far more being about the industries and the services that you're offering. And of course, we talked about SI&C versus managed services and IP. And even in IP, it depends on what solutions you're offering in your business solutions, right? And then, you know, from an industry perspective, clearly, banking has been hit by this interest rise. And so that's certainly a pretty dominant factor, particularly in North America. So I think that's where you might see some of that with some of the comparisons. But of course, given our strength in government and national critical infrastructure industries, including utilities, that's strong in all geographies, both North America and Europe. And so I think that's why we have a little more of a balance. To your specific question, no, I don't think it's that necessarily one is ahead of the other. I think and especially when you look at some of the newer technologies and the new opportunities, I think you're going to see a little more of similarities than you see differences. That's, that's helpful. Just from your M&A pipeline standpoint, you did mention that some of the government-led businesses are in the pipeline. Do you see any allocations to certain geographies as well? Again, going back to this Europe versus North America growth trajectory that we've been noticing over the recent quarters. Yeah. Yeah, what I would say is that it... We're always looking in all locations, as I meant to, as I mentioned already, to gradually grow in each of those metro markets. But certainly, the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K. are areas that if you look at our active funnel, they're probably more opportunities in those areas. And like I said, both government and commercial in each of those geographies. That's helpful. And I'll ask one last question here. On the cash flow from operations, so over the past two quarters, the CFO has been trending higher than the historical norms here, and obviously, you're undertaking now these cash optimization initiatives as well. Could you help us understand the go-forward trajectory for the CFO? Steve, do you want to- Look, the cash flow, I would say, the best thing is to look at it from a last twelve-month point of view. That's really how we look at it also internally. But obviously, when the margins are improving, the cash flow will improve. We are investing in the business right now and with the objective to improve, right, the future earnings and also future cash flows. That's helpful. Thanks, George. Thanks, Steve. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, Divya. Next question will be from Robert Young at Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. I wanted to put that CAD 200 million in incremental bookings related to AI into context. Seems like a good number. Thanks for sharing that. But if I think of that as a relative percentage of the SI&C bookings, it's over 10%. If I just think of it as a percentage of the new bookings from new business, it's, you know, a larger percent. And trying to put that into context, with the comment you gave on an earlier question around how some of that is embedded into IP delivery, like, I'm trying to get a sense of what, how much of this is new business is completely driven by AI, and how much of it is embedded into other parts of, you know, existing delivery? Yeah, and thanks for the question, and you're right, and you heard correctly. It's not all brand-new business. It's some of that is embedded. Of course, it helps us continue to grow our relationship with our clients and be part of where the business is heading, and that's why I highlighted that. But it's some of that is part of existing deals or would be part of existing deals. I don't know if I... You know, I'd say roughly, maybe 60% within deals, 40% new, but that's just a rough estimate. We could go back and give you some of that. But again, given what we see, lots of deals with AI, but not necessarily big, large-scale implementations yet. We're starting to see that, again, focused on the operations, efficiencies. We're starting to see that in some of the larger, engagements that we have with the, with the largest of, of customers, but most are still, smaller point solutions, you know, proving this out. Most of our clients are being very cautious. I think, we would, we would agree with them, being very cautious in how they use this, how they keep humans in the loop, and, and doing this in a, in a, a modified way. That's why I say it's the early, still the early days of this. ... Yeah, thanks. A lot of color, that's still great numbers. Yep. I'm curious if you could help me maybe summarize all the different drivers of margins that you're looking at right now. You know, just based on the comments on the call, it sounds like the cost optimization, maybe some utilization benefits, given there's lower attrition and maybe slightly lower hiring, the IP growth, global delivery still growing as a percentage, if I heard that right. And, like, are there any other pieces that you would highlight that would be supportive of margin expansion here in the near term? That's pretty good. That's pretty good, Robert. You know, if I think about it, I would say, for me it would be managed services growth, particularly with the global delivery, because you see the, the margins that drives. IP as a percentage of revenue, certainly the cost optimization program for SG&A, including that, the real estate. One of the areas that maybe we didn't talk about is continuous improvement in, in geographies. You saw Scandinavia improvement, we can see continued improvement there. That's through a combination of SG&A revenue mix, but also growth. And then I did mention productivity from, generative AI. I think that's that will be a tailwind in the quarters to come as we leverage AI for our own operational efficiencies, including in leveraging it for some of our own IP development. You know, we've got CGI has over 500 million lines of code in our own ownership. And to the extent that we can turn AI loose on our own intellectual property, our own software, it's not open to anybody else, we can maybe see some benefits there. So we're looking at that as well. So all those are opportunities for us to continue to provide the incremental margin improvement as we continue to grow the business. All right. Thanks a lot for taking the questions. Sure. Thank you. Next question will be from Daniel Chan at TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. George, you mentioned- Hi. Interest rates may have affected the banking sector. Just wondering if there's anything else to call out there, that you think could be affecting it? And then as a follow-on, given that the view that interest rates may decline later this year, do you think that would be a driver to growth back in that sector later this year? Yeah, I do think, you know, it's a bit of wait and see, and I think just the uncertainty is what's driving some of this. And so I think when there becomes a little more certainty of, not if but when that occurs, I do think you'll see more loosening of those actions. Like I said, the interest is there, and what we're doing is building the pipeline, making sure we're part of the conversations, but I do think you'll see some of that. In general, that's the landscape that I see. It's one, it's really the interest rates, but it's also, you know, dealing with the increase, if you will, in regulatory elements. There's a lot of focus short term on making sure the regulatory is dealt with, and I think that's been a main focus, which kind of removes the focus from some of the other areas, but I think you'll see that loosening up. Like I said, I can't call when, but I do think that that's on the horizon. And you're already seeing it stabilize. It's not getting better yet, but it is just- That's helpful. Thank you. And then you've been pretty- Okay ... optimistic on the M&A opportunities over the last couple of years. Anything to call out in the current environment that changes your level of optimism relative to last year? No. Well, I would say it's. I'm even more optimistic that there are opportunities. Of course, we're gonna continue to have the focus that we have to make sure that we're bringing the right companies in, that can be that catalyst for growth that we talked about and provide the accretion to our shareholders. But I become more and more bullish on the opportunities, just given kind of where the market is, where the valuations are, and where we are as a company. You see our balance sheet. So, but we're gonna continue to be disciplined on that approach. Great. Thanks, George. Yep. Thank you. At this time, Mr. Linder, we have no other questions. Please proceed. Thank you, Sylvie, and thanks everyone for participating. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available either via our website or by dialing 1-877-674-7070, and using the passcode 827836. As well, a podcast of this call will be available for download within a few hours. Follow-up questions can be directed to me at 1-905-973-8363. Thanks again, everyone, and look forward to speaking soon. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending, and at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Enjoy the rest of your day.