A good night's sleep. I wanna thank Chantelle for joining us today, CFO of AspenTech. maybe just a little quick briefer, like, what does AspenTech do, your role, and we'll start from there. Yeah, sure. Hi, good morning to everyone. So Chief Financial Officer, I've been with AspenTech about two and a half years. From an AspenTech perspective, what we do is we're a leader in industrial software. We design, operate, and maintain asset-intensive industries with a focus on sustainability. Perfect. Before we kind of get into, like, the quarter and the numbers, because you just reported last week, I kind of want to talk about sustainability. You know, you were at our conference in March, in San Francisco. We talked about how Aspen's addressing Dual Challenge and helping customers achieve operational efficiency and sustainability goals. I guess maybe start here, you know, how is Aspen positioned to address these? Yeah. Great. Just to remind those, we use a framework we call the Dual Challenge, and what that means is, basically, if you think the world's population is growing, and their desires to be- to grow in the sense of their standard of living, and there's a, there's a responsibility to hit net zero targets by 2050 to do that in a sustainable manner. That's the perfect crosshairs for our customers who are asset-intensive industries, to, to provide the demand that their customers have, but to do it in a sustainable manner. Our view is that AspenTech is uniquely- positioned to help our customers, both with their efficiency goals and their sustainability goals. If you look at. There's a few data points I would just give for your consideration. If you look at the IEA, they're expecting the global energy demand to grow by 50% by 2030. There's about $150 trillion estimated for energy transition infrastructure, and by- to reach the net zero targets by 2050, you know, there has to be a whole lot more electrification and other energy transition goals. We find that very exciting, and a great roadmap for AspenTech going forward. Okay. Perfect. Mm. Does Aspen mainly benefit from the CapEx that's being driven from these renewable projects? I'd say we benefit both, for both CapEx and OpEx. I think right now, at the beginning of the energy transition, the reason why our Engineering Suite, which is in the planning and design of CapEx, we're seeing a lot of sustainability funding. That's coming through for LNG, hydrogen, biofuels, et c. We're seeing that starting to come through, and we see that demand going for the next few years. Okay. We'll come back to that- Yeah. In a minute, but... Mm-hmm. I also wanted to ask about your, your Emissions M anagement solution. I know you launched that earlier this year. I guess, how's that going? Then, as we look out to next year, what might else be on the roadmap? Yeah, that's a good question, and we're super proud. Our Emissions Management program is basically a great connection of our OSI acquisition that we brought in for Digital Grid Management, coupled with some heritage AspenTech software. Combined, that gives, for OT enterprise software, one pane of glass for Emissions Management, and it's actually going very well. We're seeing some great adoptions with some of our largest customers, who are making it their framework and their standard for their companies globally. I think it's off to a great start. Okay. It's a great combination of our assets coming together. Interesting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If we think about the quarter you just reported, maybe just give us a high-level overview of the, of the Q4, and then the strong guidance that you just set forth? Yeah. Thank you. We're super, we're super excited by the momentum we had exiting Q4. We use ACV as a company, annual contract value, and that was 3.5 points up sequentially, quarter-over-quarter, so very excited with that momentum. Finishing the year at 11.8% growth, which was basically at the midpoint of our guide at the beginning of the year, we thought was a great landing point, and a good ramp coming into FY 2024, where we guided a minimum of 11.5 points of growth. Okay. I think on the call and on, on the previous call, you mentioned some, some headwinds with, with some of your chemicals customers. Maybe just recap, you know, what are those headwinds that you're seeing, and then what you're kind of expecting for this upcoming year. Yeah. I think that within our guide, we have basically the same sort of environment through our fiscal year. We're not expecting a rebound or a comeback for chemicals generally, and for AspenTech, I would like to discern spec chem, specialty chem, versus bulk chemicals. Specialty chemicals, we think, are actually doing fine. It's the bulk chemical side we're working through, and for that, Jason, to your question, you know, as our customers work through their destocking, restocking, rationalization, you know, we're waiting to see their FY 2024 calendar budgets to see how they feel about the economy, the interest rate environment, et c., to see what they guide, and that will inform our second half of our fiscal year. Okay. One of the questions we always get on things like chemicals is, you know, how do we measure the recovery? How do we think about it? Sounds like we're kind of just waiting for them to kind of set their budgets. Mm-hmm. Are there any other types of economic indicators or, or things like that, that we can kind of pay attention to? Like, I'm a software investor. So, you know, chemicals are not my specialty. Yeah. I have a counterpart that does that. Mm-hmm. You know, help the folks who may not know the end- market that well. Yeah, I think that's great. I think, well, at least the things we pay attention to besides customer conversations, which we obviously take with a lot of emphasis on what they're thinking, you know, you have to think about what are the feedstocks into chemicals, and that's usually an oil price base. If you think about feedstocks into their process, that would be one thing. The second is listening to their earnings calls. What are their focuses? What are their sustainability agendas? You know, there is some sign that from a sustainability, they're still invested in CapEx, which could still come through our Engineering Suite, but generally for running their processes. The thing to think about in our guide and the way we work, we're a critical part to the manufacturing and process for the chemicals customers, so they're still operating. We're not getting attrition on usage. What that means is they just don't invest a lot in growth during this time. We don't lose customers. They don't stop operating. They just buy more once they come out of the cycle. Okay. Great! Then the other dynamic that you kind of talked about on the call, being a little more conservative, was the contribution from Russia. Mm. I think. Why don't we just talk about what you're doing there specifically and why you're doing it? Yeah. I think that we've mentioned a few times in our calls that we have remained in Russia with our customers. We've always signaled that the one thing we're watching is the difficulty to operate, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to operate, whether it's through sanctions and banks, et c. What we've done is decided to take a renewals-only approach and not to expect growth from these customers. That's a bit more of a discrete stance that we're taking. Then we'll continue to monitor the ability to conduct operations there. Okay. These are renewals just at whatever their base level spend was. You're not trying to upsell them on. That's right. Okay. That's right. That's right. Before I move on to Engineering, any questions on the chemicals piece? In Engineering, you talked about the strength, obviously, from renewables. On the call you mentioned it was the highest growth quarter since 2014? Yeah, that's right. Can you just talk about the growth drivers at play here, in addition to, you know, some of the renewables? Yeah, I think, we're, we're excited by what we're seeing by two main growth drivers, excuse me, for Engineering. One is actually there's a, there's a fairly strong energy CapEx, oil and gas CapEx coming through, and we think that that will have a, a few years in the cycle as we need to continue production with the assets that maintain or the ones that need to be new. Oil and gas CapEx is one, that's energy. The other is, all the energy transition things we're seeing. We're excited by seeing logos in AspenTech we've never seen before. New logos is an exciting thing for us. And we, we say that, you know, if you think about some of the Magnificent Seven companies, they're coming to us with sustainability: "Can you help us, do air carbon capture for our data centers? Can you help us model recycling of batteries? Can you help us think of biostocks through our refineries?" There's a lot of new sustainability coming through, new logos, which I think is a very exciting tipping point for Engineering. When Engineering's done a few years later, we usually come back and operate with our MSC suite. Engineering's the land, and then we try to expand through MSC. Okay. If we think about the growth that you reported, and I forget the number, it was like eight- 8.3. 8.3. Then I guess, what was the average over the last couple of years? Oh, they were mid-single- digits. Okay. If we think about that uptick, would you say that that was mainly driven from kind of the sustainability CapEx? I, you know, I think that we would probably give it, because we don't have a concrete way- Yeah. Because our, our customers don't tell us their end customers all the time. Let's say the growth is 60/40, that kind of range, sustainability to CapEx for oil and gas. 60 sustainability, 40 regular operating. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. Antonio mentioned that the expectation for this segment, you touched on this- Mm-hmm. Is kind of upticking to that high single- digit, low double- digit from the mid-single to high single. Mm-hmm. Over what time period? Mm. Is that just the kind of the go-forward, you know, framework? 'Cause you're not at that high single- digit. Yeah. I would say exiting 8.3, I'm not gonna anchor it to a time period, but what I would say, what needs to happen, and which we think could happen, is the oil and gas energy CapEx remains for a few years, like we mentioned, but you start to see a stronger ramp-up of all the funding coming through for the CapEx for sustainability. You know, if every country you see has either an incentive or a stick or a carrot, when it comes to sustainability through tax credits, through incentives. So as we work through all the various countries, those two things together over a couple of years could get us to that point. Okay. Then, as part of the guidance for this upcoming year, attrition is supposed to improve? Mm-hmm. I think by like 90 basis points. That's right. 100 basis points. That's right. Is this mainly coming from Engineering customers? Or, where is it coming from? I would say it's a mix across the portfolio. We have a Chief Customer Officer, Manish Chawla, who, a part of his remit is customer success. So we're looking for that benefit, going from basically 5.9 points of attrition down to five, and further glide in the future years, hopefully down to the three-to-four range. So we've invested in customer success too. Because our contracts are three, four, five years long, we want to ensure that we're getting adoption through that time cycle so that we can further reduce the attrition going forward. Okay. Then switching gears a little bit to SSE, you know, that's been exceeding expectations pretty nicely. I think for the upcoming year, you're expecting it to contribute another 1.5 points. Yeah. Grow roughly mid-teens. Can you just talk about the drivers there, the backdrop, from an end- market perspective, and just generally any milestones we should be thinking about? Yeah, thank you. SSE, to remind, is subsurface engineering, and if you take just basically what they came in to AspenTech doing is subsurface reservoir modeling for upstream. We actually see a fairly good, strong environment in upstream for the next little while, so that's part of it, what's happening, Jason, to your question. The other things we're looking to do with this software, which I think are also very exciting, are a few things. We have interest from customers on geothermal, so that's an application use case. We have it on subsurface hydrogen storage. You know, we've had utilities speak to us about: "Hey, AspenTech, can you bring two or three parts of your portfolio together? When I produce too much electricity, help me make it into hydrogen, and then help me store it below the surface." I think that's a great cross-play across our company. Then we just have carbon capture sequestration as the third element. Upstream and three other things we're gonna bring to force as we work through the energy transition. Okay. Interesting. Mm-hmm. Moving to DGM, the other asset that you recently received from Emerson. Mm-hmm. I think, in third quarter, you talked about some challenges. Fourth quarter, it sounds like you may not have fully resolved those issues, but exceeded kind of the, the expectations. Maybe can you talk about the third- quarter dynamics, and then the fourth quarter ones? Yeah, sure. I think that, for Digital Grid Management, was the software we're referring to, that was the OSI business, Open Systems International. You know, this is a, this is an exciting high-growth industry, industry that, we're getting our arms around, and I think Jason mentioned Q3, where we were learning about the project delivery, the milestones, the go-to-market, all kinds of great things in an industry we're very excited about. I would say, Jason, we feel we've resolved learning about our customers, learning about the sales cycle. We have a great sales team in place. We're seeing great traction expanding globally, especially into Europe. So I think that that perspective, the momentum we saw in Q4 was everything kind of course-correct and coming together, and gave us great momentum coming into 2024, where we're, we're guiding a 40% growth rate. Okay. Yeah, that 40%'s an acceleration from the 30%. Mm-hmm. Maybe if we can just unpack the confidence level, and, and maybe different buckets of strengths. Yeah. I think that, we're confident in the 40% growth rate, because you think about we did 30% in a year where we were learning the asset, transforming the asset. We're term licensed only in kind of the second, second half of the year. We have a full year of full-selling term software. We have, expanded sales investment into Europe. We have a pipeline that we know will get us to our goals. We're clear with the terms and conditions of the industry where we want to play. Then there's other global demand, but all the things that we were looking for as we do this five-year mat role model journey, we feel they're there in 2024, and so we're... If I talk about the drivers of the industry, too, so we're good in the sense of what we can control. If you look at the industry, so there are four drivers. I don't think the electricity companies or institutions have had, ever had such a catalyst on them going faster than they do now. There's cybersecurity concerns, there's grid expansion, and grid expansion is everything from people using EVs to AI needing high computing power. There's outage management, and then there's grid complexity, which is bringing all the renewables online. All those things are putting tremendous pressure for the grids to go faster, and we're gonna be right there with them. Okay, interesting. No, that's a good way to frame it. Yeah. Then when we think about, the other kind of aspects of your partnerships and combination with Emerson... Mm-hmm. you signed a Master License Agreement. Mm-hmm. Help us understand, you know, where we're at today with that, if you're, if you're seeing any cross-sell, and maybe some milestones that we could kind of think forward to. Yeah. Very excited about this other piece that we have going with the working with Emerson. There are three main components for you to consider. There's cross-selling, there's OEM, and there's co-innovation, and those roll in over the next three to four years. Cross-selling is the most immediate. We have seen benefit. We are seeing benefit. We're encouraged to see more benefit from it. Cross-selling means that we work together with Emerson to be stronger, either in certain countries or certain industries. There are places where Emerson definitely can introduce us to, to the people we need to know, and customers we don't have today, and industries where they play, where we don't play today: wastewater management, pulp and paper, power gen. You know, we have transmission distribution. They're very strong in power generation. Emerson has a seat at the table for almost every greenfield site for LNG, lots of opportunity there. We've seen... I would give you at least three deals that are great cross-sell deals working with Emerson. There's Ras Laffan in the Middle East, which is the largest ethylene plant in the region and one of the largest in the world, working together with their Mimic product and our software for simulation. We have the Golden Triangle in Houston, which is where they've committed to 25% greenhouse gas reduction of emissions, where we use our HYSYS product with the DeltaV from Emerson. Then just this quarter, we reported a Caribbean utility. Mm. Where they helped us close the deal with some of their regulatory knowledge to get the deal done faster. I think great wins in the first year. Okay. The OEM's well- underway in the sense of how we do that with some of our product into their hardware, and co-innovation will be the next one. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I understand the, the deals you mentioned, but is there, is there any way we can think about it showing up in the numbers? Mm. Would it just be acceleration or upside? 'Cause it's not like you have a revenue line item that says, you know, "Revenue we generated." That's true. No, we don't have a segment called Emerson Partnership, but, Maybe you should. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I'm good. Okay. I think that, where you'll see it is, you'll see it in the suites we sell. You'll see it in DGM, SSE, and then a lot of the [HAT product] is where we're focused, APM, et c. Okay, perfect. Then the last kind of topic I wanna touch on was capital allocation. Mm-hmm. I know the Micromine acquisition that you previously announced, you've terminated it. Mm. Can you just talk about, one, you know, why that was, and then going forward, how you might allocate capital and think about acquisitions? Sure. Let me start with Micromine, and then I'll come back to the capital allocation, 'cause I think there are two important points from different vantages. For Micromine, it was a mutual agreement. We had a date in July where we had to decide what we did at that point, if we didn't close the deal. Potentia, who was the owner of Micromine, and us decided it was best to mutually separate at this time because we couldn't get the one regulatory approval in Russia, which was becoming very unclear on how that could happen or when it would happen. We are still, AspenTech, very excited in the mining industry, and it's very similar to what we felt about oil and gas 20 years ago, and how we feel about the T&D industry now, an industry that's ripe for digitalization, and we think mining's another one. We're very excited to stay in mining, and we're actively pursuing what M&A can be in that space. That kind of leads into the M&A capital allocation component. We're still, from a capital allocation, focused on M&A. You know, that's part of the reason why we're partnered with Emerson, so we can go after strategic targets, everything from tuck-ins to much larger deals.... in the event we don't have one of those in sight in the near term, and I feel that we are capable of doing so, you know, Antonio, the CEO, and I will discuss it, and share repurchasing will be the next option in capital allocation. You saw that we announced a $300 million, up to $300 million dollar repurchase last week in our earnings call. We'll work between those two things, but we're focused on M&A. Excellent. Yeah. I've just got some closing questions that we're trying to ask everybody. Before I do, are there any final questions from the audience? One question that we're asking all of our companies, yes or no answer, if you are exiting this most recent quarter, so for you, that'd be. Q4 last week. Q4. Yeah. Last week, sorry, the fiscal quarter. That's okay. I know it's different. Versus exiting fiscal Q3, would you say your business has improved? Yes. Probably should've been obvious. Then- We started, yes. Then the, the second question has to do with generative AI. Mm-hmm. Do you think that AspenTech can directly monetize that? Yes. The third question is, since you said yes, is there a time frame that you think those revenues could be impactful? You know, second half this year, first half next year, what- whatever. That's not a yes or no answer. It's not. Sure. Maybe? Okay. Yeah, I think we're still working through what we would put out as that, Jason. You know, let me just give you some examples. I'll close with this example. Sure. The one thing we're excited about, if you look up, so Microsoft, if you know, has a thing called Azure Quantum. That's a, that's a combination with, I think, six other companies in the sense of exploring this topic further. We're pleased we're the only software player in that conversation. Back to industrial software powerhouse, our intent to be in sustainability, our intent to be, you know, very innovative. You know, this is a great sign, I think, of things that we could be thinking about. Excellent. Perfect. Thank you, Chantelle. Thanks, everyone, for coming today. Hope everyone has a safe day and safe travels back. Thank you. Thank you.