Earnings call transcript: Alithya misses EPS forecast, revenue beats in Q1 2025

Alithya Group Inc. reported its Q1 2025 earnings, revealing a mixed performance. While the company posted a significant revenue beat, its earnings per share (EPS) fell short of expectations. The revenue for the quarter reached $124.2 million, surpassing forecasts of $123.65 million. However, the EPS came in at $0, missing the anticipated $0.0063, resulting in a 100% negative surprise. According to InvestingPro data, the company’s market capitalization stands at $170.94 million, with analysis suggesting the stock is currently undervalued. This discrepancy in performance led to a notable decline in Alithya’s stock price, which dropped by 9.06% to $2.31 in pre-market trading.

Key Takeaways

• Alithya’s Q1 2025 revenue of $124.2 million exceeded expectations, marking a 2.7% year-over-year increase.
• The company missed its EPS forecast, reporting $0 against an expected $0.0063.
• Stock price fell by 9.06% following the earnings release, reflecting investor disappointment.
• Strategic focus on AI and enterprise application services continues to drive growth.
• US market performance remains strong, with 17.3% year-over-year growth.

Company Performance

Alithya demonstrated robust revenue growth in Q1 2025, with a 2.7% increase from the previous year. The company attributes this success to its strategic focus on enterprise application services and AI-driven solutions, particularly in the healthcare and financial services sectors. InvestingPro analysis reveals the company has maintained a strong financial health score of GOOD, with particularly impressive YTD returns of 71.62%. Despite these gains, the company’s EPS did not meet expectations, which has raised concerns about cost management and profitability. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 8 additional key insights about Alithya’s financial health and growth prospects.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $124.2 million, up 2.7% year-over-year
• Gross margin: 32.1%, up from 31.9% last year
• Adjusted EBITDA: $11.6 million, up 15.6% year-over-year
• Adjusted net earnings: $6.5 million, an increase of $1.6 million from the previous year

Earnings vs. Forecast

Alithya’s earnings report revealed a mixed picture. While the company achieved a 0.41% revenue surprise, the EPS fell short by 100%, coming in at $0 compared to the forecasted $0.0063. This performance contrasts with previous quarters where the company had generally met or exceeded EPS expectations, highlighting potential challenges in maintaining cost efficiencies.

Market Reaction

The market responded negatively to Alithya’s earnings miss, with the stock price dropping by 9.06% to $2.31 in pre-market trading. While the current P/E ratio of 189.27x suggests a premium valuation, InvestingPro data indicates strong fundamentals with a positive free cash flow yield and expectations for net income growth this year. This decline positions the stock closer to its 52-week low of $1.40, reflecting investor concerns about the company’s profitability and future earnings potential. Get detailed valuation metrics and comprehensive analysis with InvestingPro’s exclusive research report.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Alithya remains committed to expanding its presence in the US market and integrating AI technology into its service offerings. The company has outlined revenue projections for upcoming quarters, forecasting $90.17 million in Q2 FY2026 and $367.79 million for the full year FY2026. These figures suggest a continued focus on growth and innovation.

Executive Commentary

CEO Paul Remo emphasized the importance of data consistency for AI solutions, stating, "If you do not have data, consistent data, enterprise-wide data, it’s very difficult for you to roll out any scalable AI solution." He also highlighted the company’s strategic focus on profitable growth, noting, "Growth is good, profitable growth is better."

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility and macroeconomic uncertainties could impact sales cycles.
• Rising competition in the AI and enterprise services space may pressure margins.
• The company’s slower adoption of AI in Canada compared to the US could limit growth.
• Seasonal business patterns, with slower summer quarters, may affect revenue consistency.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the slower AI adoption in Canada and the company’s plans to improve margins. Executives responded by highlighting ongoing efforts to enhance data consistency and pursue higher-margin projects selectively. The Q&A session underscored the importance of strategic focus amid market challenges.

Full transcript - Alithya Group inc Class A (ALYA) Q1 2026:

Conference Operator: Good morning. Welcome to Alethia’s First Quarter of Fiscal twenty twenty six Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Alethia’s management team. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Speaker, Management Representative, Alethia: Thank you for joining us today for Alethia’s First Quarter Fiscal twenty twenty six Results Conference Call. The press release, along with the MD and A containing condensed financial statements and related notes, was published this morning and is now accessible on our website. The webcast presentation can also be found on our website in the Investors section. Please be advised that this call will contain forward looking statements, are subject to various risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These statements include our estimates, plans, expectations and statements regarding future growth, operational results, performance and business prospects that do not solely relate to historical facts.

These statements may also refer to future events, including expectations around client demand, business opportunities, leveraging our services, IP, AI and expertise to meet client needs, excelling in a competitive market, achieving our three year strategic plan and deploying our Smart Charing capabilities. For more information, please refer to the cautionary note included in our presentation and the forward looking statements and risks and uncertainties sections of our MD and A, which are both accessible on our website. All figures discussed today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated and may refer to certain indicators that are non IFRS measures. Please refer to the cautionary notes included in our presentation and to the non IFRS and other financial measures section of our MD and A for more details. Presenting this morning are Paul Renmont, Alethia’s President and Chief Executive Officer Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer and David Decregorio, VP Finance.

Also present is our new CFO, Pierre Blanchet.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: I will now turn the call over to Paul Remo. Paul? Thank you, Nathalie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I’m very proud to be here to present our team’s achievements for our ’26.

We will also provide an update on eVerge’s integration status and talk about some of our exciting client projects. I will start with a few notable highlights before turning things over to Bernard Darko, our Chief Operating Officer, for more color on our operations. Bernard will be followed by Debbie DiGregorio, who will go over the financial highlights. So back to the results. Our disciplined approach and commitment to our long term strategy has enabled the Alethia team to deliver another quarter of year over year improvements in many key areas in 2026.

So first, we delivered another year over year improvement of our adjusted EBITDA. Secondly, we also grew year over year’s gross margin as a percentage of revenue. Both of these are a direct result of our ongoing focus on higher value services and efficiency gains. Thirdly, I’d like to highlight our year over year growth in revenue in quarterly revenues and sequential growth on a constant currency basis. Again, this growth is mostly driven by our higher value service offerings in The US, which showed double digit organic growth.

These offerings, which are designed to help clients consolidate disparate and older systems, enables our clients to leverage better enterprise wide data to ultimately achieve greater efficiency and flexibility in their mission critical system, which in turn enables them to use AI based solutions. As I’ve stated in the past, decisions to start these projects can sometimes be delayed, but given their business value and benefits, they are necessary investments for our clients during these turbulent times. We saw this accelerate in The U. S. In the past few quarters despite slower adoption in Canada.

Finally, we were able to leverage our financial position to execute the eVerge acquisition with a 100% cash approach. I will now turn things over to Bernard to provide some specifics on our first quarter performance, as well as an update on the integration of our latest acquisitions. Bernard?

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for being with us today. I would like to start by thanking all our employees globally for your dedication and commitment to our clients and executing our three year strategic priorities, which has resulted in another quarter with strong results. As we remain focused on the four pillars of our growth plan, leading with our deep industry knowledge, developing our strong partnerships with industry leading solution providers, accelerating time to value for our clients, leveraging Alethia proprietary IP, and increasing our access to talent with our SmartShore delivery centers, we have, again this quarter, generated year over year improvement on revenue, gross margins and adjusted EBITDA. Within our US operating segment, we have achieved double digit profitable growth of 17.3%, which I will discuss further a little later.

As for repeat business, 84.8% of our revenues came from clients that worked with Alithia in the first quarter of last year. Our recent acquisitions of XRM Vision announced last December and eVerge announced in June are contributing to our growth as complementary offerings, increased scale, are generating new opportunities. As I mentioned last quarter, the addition of XRM Vision has enabled us to pursue opportunities that neither party would have been able to pursue prior to combining forces. The new engagements that I spoke to last quarter are ramping up, and we should see their impact on revenues in future quarters. Ebers joined the Elliptia family on May 31, and we’ve seen early signs that our combined entities will enable us to deliver greater value to our clients.

Our acquired capabilities with Salesforce are resonating. For example, our deep US healthcare provider capabilities are positioning Adlithia to deliver additional services within this portfolio of accounts with Salesforce Health Cloud. With our expanded healthcare offering, we have identified opportunities within our existing client base to strengthen patient focused engagement, enable more personalized data driven experiences, including leveraging Agingforce. We continue to expand our SmartShore capabilities and reached a new high of 13% of Alethia employees in our SmartShore locations as of the end of the first quarter. Both the acquisition of XRM Vision and eVirge have had a positive impact on our SmartShore centers with the addition of talent in Morocco and India.

Turning to our Q1 results. In the quarter, we delivered double digit growth in The U. S. Market, primarily driven by our Oracle and Microsoft practices. Our strong performance in The US market highlights our differentiated value proposition for enterprise application and transformation services in our targeted industries with our partner solutions.

This includes our data and AI services that drive operational efficiencies, support new ways of working, and maximize the ROI for our clients. For example, in our Oracle practice for Virtua Health, an academic nonprofit health care system in Southern New Jersey that operates a network of hospitals, surgery centers, physician practices, and more, we completed a fifteen month Oracle Cloud ERP and supply chain management implementation, empowering Virtua to deliver exceptional care and service with leading edge tools. Virtua will soon leverage Alethia’s purpose built healthcare, cost of care analytics solution, proprietary framework of artifacts and preconfigured capabilities built on Oracle EPM Cloud and Oracle Cloud Analytics Cloud. This will enable South Jersey’s largest health system to identify opportunities for profitability and efficiencies through the integration of financial, operational, and clinical data and better understand the true cost of care. For Mosaic Life Care, we are implementing a full suite of Oracle Cloud based business applications.

After a troubled engagement, the hospital canceled their previous implementation and turned to Alethia based on our deep healthcare qualifications. We will modernize back office systems, enabling greater agility, enhanced insights, streamlined operations to support their long term growth and innovation goals. Like so many of our Oracle clients, the hospital seeks to leverage real time data and embedded AI to optimize operations, accelerate decision making, and adapt quickly to industry changes. For Cigna, a leading US based healthcare payer and number 13 on the Fortune 500, we recently completed the second phase of their Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management implementation. This effort retired multiple legacy applications and delivers enhanced financial reporting, streamlined consolidations, improved account reconciliations, and advanced profitability analysis tools with governed master data, empowering the controllership and finance teams to operate with greater efficiency and insights.

In our Microsoft practice, for Prichard Industries, the largest privately held facility maintenance provider, we supported them with their implementation of Dynamics three sixty five across multiple divisions. The integration of finance, supply chain, and customer engagement facilitated the automation of manual processes, streamlined operations, and enhanced business visibility. I share these examples to give you a better perspective on the work we are performing with our partners to realize our clients’ digital transformation objectives. As technologies such as GenAI and AgenTeq AI continue to evolve, the demand for enterprise applications and transformation services will increase, and our industry depth, technology partners, IP accelerators, and SmartShore delivery model should position us well. Before I move to our Canadian business, I would also like to share that once again, for the twentieth time, Alethia has been selected by Microsoft for a twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six Inner Circle Partner from Microsoft AI Business Solutions.

In Canada, and more specifically in the Quebec market, our strategy to increase our revenues from higher value consulting and projects continues to be a priority. During the quarter, Canadian revenues fell year over year as we maintained our rigor and did not pursue or renew some lower margin contracts, namely within the public sector. This, in addition to the successful completion and ramp down of a large engagement, accounts for most of the decrease in revenues. With respect to our efforts to secure higher value projects, we have engaged with a Quebec based financial institution who have taken a leading role in modernizing their legacy systems. Similarly, for a large Canadian mutual insurance company, we’re implementing a scalable migration factory to accelerate the transition to the AWS cloud.

These are two examples of the higher value work we continue to pursue in Quebec. In the Canadian energy sector, we continue to leverage our nuclear industry knowledge and have renewed and expanded our revenues for key clients. Turning to bookings. Although the uncertainty in the global economic and geopolitical environment continue to result in longer sales cycles, we continue to see demand for our enterprise application and transformation services. Bookings in the quarter were $118,100,000 which translated into a book to bill ratio of 0.95, compared to $98,200,000 which translated into a book to bill ratio of 0.81 for the same quarter last year.

Bookings for the trailing twelve months amounted to $440,600,000 which translated into a book to bill ratio of 0.92.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: If revenues from

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: the two long term contracts signed as part of an acquisition in the 2022 were excluded, the book to bill ratio would be 1.06 compared to 0.92 for the same quarter last year. For the trailing twelve months, the book to bill ratio, excluding revenues from the two long term contracts, would be 1.03. Again this quarter, more than half of bookings were in The US market and our backlog at the end of the quarter was approximately fifteen months of revenue based on our trailing twelve months. And now, I’ll let Debbie provide financial highlights for the 2026. Debbie, over to you.

Unidentified Speaker, Management Representative, Alethia: Good morning, everyone. I am very happy to join this conference call and to highlight some of the company’s significant achievements this past quarter. As mentioned, our first quarter fiscal twenty twenty six was highlighted by continued performance improvements on many levels. Let’s begin with a review of those improvements. In the first quarter, consolidated revenues came in at $124,200,000 up $3,300,000 or 2.7% on a year over year basis.

Looking at profitability, we are reporting another quarter of year over year improvement on gross margin in dollars and as a percentage of revenues. Gross margin reached 32.1% in the quarter, up from 31.9 last year. This performance comes from our increased efficiencies and continued evolution towards a higher value business mix, two key priorities of our long term plan. Looking at adjusted EBITDA, we are reporting $11,600,000 a 15.6% increase over last year. I will now turn to a review of our performance by region, starting with Canada.

Revenues in Canada reached $59,600,000 in Q1, down $5,500,000 or 8.5% on a year over year basis. The decrease in revenues was primarily due to reduced revenues from government contracts, one customer’s major transformation project reaching maturity, and one less billable day in the period. This was partially offset by the continued recovery in the banking sector and the contribution of XRM Vision acquired on 12/01/2024. Looking at our gross margin in Canada, we saw a decrease compared to the same quarter last year, mainly due to a decrease in the utilization rates and tax credits and salary increases which came into effect at the beginning of our fiscal year. This was partially offset by the positive gross margin contribution from XRM since its acquisition.

In The US, revenues increased $8,800,000 or 17.3% to $59,500,000 The increase is due primarily to the organic growth in the enterprise application and transformation services, namely our Oracle and Microsoft practices. Higher billing rates as we continue to evolve towards a higher value business mix. Revenues from Everage acquisition on 05/31/2025, and a favorable US dollar rate exchange impact of $700,000 between the two periods. On a sequential basis, US revenues increased by $5,300,000 despite an unfavorable U. S.

Dollar exchange rate impact of $2,200,000 from the fourth quarter of last year. Our U. S. Gross margin as a percentage of revenues increased compared to the same quarter last year, primarily due to increased efficiencies, higher hourly billing rates, and the increased use of our Smart Shoring capabilities. In our international business, revenues were slightly higher versus the prior year, with lower gross margin as a percentage of revenue, mainly due to lower utilization.

Overall, from a geographic perspective, we continue to see a higher proportion of revenue growth in The US versus the rest of our business. This, along with our ongoing efforts in expanding our SmartShore capabilities, positively impacted our consolidated gross margin and is in line with our strategic plan. Now, looking at SG and A expenses, we are continuing to focus on optimizing our cost structure to ensure greater efficiency and long term performance. In the first quarter, SG and A expenses amounted to $30,600,000 an increase of $1,100,000 or 3.4% year over year. This is despite the additional expenses from XRM Vision and eVerge since their acquisition.

The decrease in SG and A expenses was driven mainly by decreases in employee compensation costs stemming from variable compensation and severance in the same quarter last year. SG and A expenses as a percentage of revenues decreased to 24.6 in Q1, compared to 26.2% for the same period last year. On a sequential basis, SG and A expenses increased by $900,000 from $29,700,000 This increase takes into account salary increases that came into effect at the beginning of our fiscal year on 04/01/2025, and expenses from eVerge since its acquisition. Thanks to our US growth, increased revenue margin due to higher efficiencies, and our performance on cost management, the adjusted EBITDA margin reached 9.4% in Q1, up compared to 8.3% last year. Our first quarter adjusted EBITDA amounted to $11,600,000 a 15.6% increase year over year.

Again, this reflects the continued progress we made on operational performance and on cost optimization. Our adjusted net earnings came in at $6,500,000 representing an increase of $1,600,000 or $07 per share year over year. Finally, let’s review our cash flow and financial position. Cash generated from operating activities adjusted for non cash items amounted to $8,700,000 in the quarter, an increase of $1,400,000 compared to the prior year, primarily due to net income in the current quarter compared to net loss in the prior year. Net cash used in operating activities was $4,200,000 in the quarter, compared to net cash from operating activities of $16,700,000 in the prior year, representing a change of $20,900,000 This is primarily due to unfavorable changes in non cash working cap items related to a couple of items.

The first, dollars 1,200,000.0 increase in in tax credits receivable compared to $7,900,000 decrease in the prior year, representing an unfavorable change of $9,100,000 due to timing of the receipt of tax credits. The second, a $9,100,000 decrease in accounts payable and accrued liabilities compared to a $3,700,000 decrease from the prior quarter, representing an unfavorable change of $5,400,000 mainly relating to timing of payments. A third, a $6,500,000 decrease in deferred revenue compared to a 1,500,000 decrease in the prior period, representing an unfavorable change of $5,000,000 due to timing of client invoices. And finally, other changes amounting to $1,400,000 As of 06/30/2025, net debt amounted to $118,300,000 and our leverage ratio increased to 2.4 times net debt to trailing twelve months adjusted EBITDA, all within Alethia’s targeted leverage levels. On a sequential basis, net debt increased by $24,300,000 to $118,300,000 from $94,000,000 as at 03/31/2025, primarily due to an increase in long term debt of $27,500,000 despite a favorable U.

S. Exchange rate impact of $3,500,000 The increase is mainly due to an increase of $18,400,000 in amounts drawn under the credit facility resulting primarily from cash paid on closing of the eVerge acquisition and the addition of a $9,200,000 balance of purchase price payable also as part of the acquisition, partially offset by an increase in cash. I will now pass it over to Paul for closing remarks.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Thank you, Debbie. As you can see, we are pleased with our quarter and our key indicators are moving in the right direction. We delivered year over year revenue growth with double digit organic growth in The U. S. We also delivered year over year gross margin and adjusted EBITDA growth.

Finally, before opening the lines for questions, I’d like to officially welcome Pierre Blanchet, who is with us today. We’re looking forward to setting up follow-up meetings to meet him for you. And I’d also like once again to thank Debbie for stepping up and leading the team through this exciting period. Thank you, Debbie. We will now open the lines for questions.

Joelle?

Conference Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by the one on your touch tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Your first question comes from Gavin Fairweather with Cormark Securities.

Your line is now open.

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start out on The U. S. I mean, certainly very impressive results here in the Q1.

I’m curious when you speak to the business leaders in healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, e verge and kind of look into the pipeline and backlog. What’s your confidence you can maintain these types of levels of growth and how do you kind of characterize the business environment and outlook from here?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Thank you for the question, and congratulations on your transaction.

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Thank you.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Appreciate it. The best way I think to look at it in terms of the business environment, most of the growth that we’ve had in The US has come from our ERP business with Microsoft and Oracle. I think a good way to look at it is if you look at Microsoft and Oracle themselves, the results they reported were record results. They’re seeing significant growth in their businesses, which basically drives growth on our side as well, because we implement those solutions. So I think a good way to look at it is to track those two companies and see how they’re doing on their ERP, cloud and AI rollout, because that’s what drives our business.

So many of our leads come directly from them. As Bernard mentioned, we’re in the inner circle on the Microsoft side, we’re a very close partner with Oracle, we’re helping them develop their own AI interfaces for their solutions, so we’re very close to what’s happening. And usually we tend to follow what they do. So I think that’s a good way to look at it.

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Yeah, I appreciate that. And then maybe coming north of the border in the Canadian Financial Services business, it sounds like the revenue was up year over year. Do you think that business has normalized now? Do you see some further upside for that business? And maybe you can characterize the project mix and gross margins that you have coming out of that practice.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Yeah, so maybe I can, a few reference points that could help, you, know, next quarter we’re going to be lapping probably our lowest quarter in revenue. So if you look at our run rate, mean I don’t want to give any guidance or anything, but we’re going to be lapping a pretty low quarter last year. At the same time it is the summer, which is slower just in general. Financial services specifically in Quebec specifically, so as we’ve been saying for quite some time now, we’re really focusing on changing the business. So we are seeing growth in our financial service business, but the growth that we’re seeing is in the right stuff, right?

So as we grow our financial services business, we’re very selective on what we bid on to make sure it’s the higher margin business and the transformative type stuff. We’ve exited many things in the past, are exiting a lot of government business that like we’ve said, but we’re replacing this with better margin business. You know, we’ve gotten rid of most of the very low margin stuff. I think what you’re seeing now is tweaking, right? So as we bring in new business, we’re going to incrementally improve the situation in Quebec, but we need to get it to the same level as The US, which means we need to do more of the transformational type, ERP type large projects, but the adoption in general and without the focusing on financial services, but the adoption in general in Canada is slower than what we’re seeing in The US.

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Yeah, and then maybe just on a related point, I mean the gross margins in Canada, think were down a little bit year over year in Q1, I think that was just tied to a bit lower utilization. I’m not sure who wants to take this, you or Bernard, but how do you think about the pathway of getting back towards target gross margins and utilization? Are you seeing what you need in the bookings and the pipeline, or are you thinking about maybe some capacity coming out?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Maybe talk about the pipeline.

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: Yeah, so first of on the utilization side, are changing, so there’s a little bit of a transition period, you saw a little lower utilization. The other thing as Debbie mentioned in the Canadian gross margins, the

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: impact of the tax credits, the tax credits were lower in the

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: quarter that had an impact on our gross margins. I think Paul, covered it very well when you talked about the adoption being a little slower in Canada, but I do expect that we’re going to stick with our priority and the rigor. I think we’ve seen good results where we’re going, and we are continuing to build the pipeline of this more higher value transformational work. And as we’re weaning off a lot of that lower margin business that we had historically. So I think you’ll see more of the same, it’ll be incremental growth on profitability side in Quebec.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Maybe to add to that, Gavin, I’d just say for the first time, our revenues in The US are same size as our revenues in Canada, which was part of our plan. The long term plan is actually to get The US larger than the rest of the business. It’s the largest market in the world and the fastest growing one. So we kind of like where we’re at right now in terms of our positioning, given the growth that we’re seeing.

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Great, and just lastly for me, I mean, you’ve been highlighting automation as one of your levers to drive efficiency gains and project delivery. I’m curious how far along you are on that journey and and whether you still see, you know, some really good low hanging fruit, you know, to to go and and capture as you continue to to put more automation into the delivery aspect.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Are talking about our clients or internally for ourselves?

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: No, internally, yeah, on delivery.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Yeah, I think there’s still opportunities there. We’re doing it for our clients. It’s something that we look at continually internally as well. Both automation and global delivery, so we’re looking at both options. And as you’ve seen, you know, we’re showing year over year improvements and even if you remove the acquisitions sequential as well, so these are incremental things that we do every quarter, some are longer term initiatives, some are short term ones.

We have Pierre who just showed up, so I know we have other initiatives planned on the financial side, but we look at every option. I mean, we use it in every department today. Our legal team uses AI tools to help them be more efficient, our human capital use it, financial services. Yeah, I mean, it’s used in every area and we keep finding new stuff. And as we’re helping, so for example, internally, we use Oracle and Microsoft as well.

And we’re helping Microsoft and Oracle develop new new tools within their own applications. So we have a great test of that here to try new stuff before we actually roll that out to our clients. So we’re gonna keep doing that.

Gavin Fairweather, Analyst, Cormark Securities: Thanks so much for the past one.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Jerome Dubreuil with Desjardins. Your line is now open.

Jerome Dubreuil, Analyst, Desjardins: Good morning, thanks for taking my question. First one is on the AI impact. What we’re seeing with the larger caps now that the market seems to have a bit of concerns on the AI, but it’s not clear to me if it’s the slower growth is caused by macro uncertainty or AI, but it’s kind of difficult to prove, so I’d really like to kind of give you a chance to to update us on what what you are seeing out there, and if you can discuss what you think the kind of medium to to long term impact of AI will be on your business.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: The long term impact of AI on industry in general, the market or clients, maybe a bit What more

Jerome Dubreuil, Analyst, Desjardins: do you think the impact will be on your business from AI specifically?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Well, if I just take AI on its own, forget the rest of the world or whatever. I mean, if you look at our business today, everything that we do today, 95% of it we didn’t do ten years ago. Right? So we’re consistently innovating in what we do because we need to be a step ahead of our clients, because our clients are going through these changes, whether it’s cyber, cloud, AI, Gen AI, AgenTeq AI, you name it, whatever the next thing is going to be. Our clients need our help to roll out whatever it is that they’re going to do.

The key thing with AI is data. If you do not have data, consistent data, enterprise wide data, it’s very difficult for you to roll out any scalable AI solution. So if you see the growth that Microsoft and Oracle reported in the last quarter, that’s what’s driving our ERP business. So that the companies are trying to consolidate disparate systems to have consistent data enterprise wide data, so they can leverage technology and AI and data analytics and get efficiencies and whatever. That’s what’s driving our business today.

Once that’s rolled out, which is just at the beginning by the way, the opportunity, the market is huge for this, there’s going to be something else. So once we do this over the next several years, we help our clients do this, Then it’s how do we leverage AI at scale? And we’re doing a lot of stuff around agentic AI. Will it impact? It’s going to impact everything the same way cloud impacted everything.

If you go back ten years ago, where you mean if you had cloud in the name of your company, you had these crazy multiples, then it was something else. And then it was something else. Every four or five years there’s a new technology, there’s something else that’s going to impact what we do. AI will impact everything. It’s going to be gradual, some people are going to get there faster than others.

We think we’re in a great position to help our clients get there. So we have a front row seat to what’s happening. And I like the business that we’re in, there won’t be less technology in our lives ten years from now, and our clients will still need us ten years from now. So I like where we’re at.

Jerome Dubreuil, Analyst, Desjardins: Yeah, makes sense, thanks for the thoughtful answer. My second one is on the margins, significant improvement again, maybe a bit less than last quarter though, so I know there were contingency last quarter, but if you can help us maybe in terms of the puts and takes you’re seeing on margins direction we should be expecting in the coming quarters?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Well, said our long term plan was to keep improving the gross margins. I mean, I think the gross margin is the result of our strategy to focus on higher value services. So as we continue to do that, the gross margin should follow. I mean, it’s our ERP business, our US business is now half of it’s as big as our revenues in Canada, it’s only going to grow faster given the size of the market, and if you look at our gross margins between The US and Canada today, they’re much higher in The US, so if that grows faster, the gross margins would grow faster, we’re much more selective on the business that we do in Canada, to Bernard’s point earlier, to focus on a higher margin business, so that in itself over time should be generating higher gross margin, so you know, growth is good, profitable growth is better, right? That’s where we want to focus, increasing our revenue per headcount, which means we’re doing higher value business, leveraging our tools and AI and IP.

Again you’re increasing the revenue per employee, so all these things that are part of our strategy we’re focused on. And it’s also driving our acquisition strategy. If you look at the last two acquisitions that we did, very high gross margins, very specialized higher value type offerings that are complementary to what we’re doing today, which are generating growth, because we’ve won some deals in the past few months that we could not have won on our own and the acquisitions XDR and Vision and eVerge could not have gone after on their own. So our theory is actually working out in these acquisitions, so that’s what we want to keep doing. We’ve got the cash position to do it, just saw that you know we were generating good cash, we’ve been able to do the last acquisition 100% in cash, and we still have you know powder to do the next one, so I think we’re in a good position.

Jerome Dubreuil, Analyst, Desjardins: Your

Conference Operator: next question comes from Rob Joffe with Ventum. Your line is now open.

Rob Joffe, Analyst, Ventum: Good morning and thank you for taking my question. My question would be forward looking and just could you talk to any RFPs that may be outstanding, what you are seeing looking forward in the pipeline that way?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Thanks for the question, Rob. I can’t give you any kind of forward looking thing, but maybe Bernard, you could give some color on the funnel of what we’re seeing.

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: Yeah, I’d say Paul, continue our focus on these deals and one thing you mentioned before, if you take a look at the results of our partners, they’ve had good quarters and our revenue follows that.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: As

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: they’re growing, we’re in partnership with them on the implementation side of the sales of their solutions. So that feeds into our pipeline. So as you see growth in those companies, it kind of gives us a leading indicator

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: there. But I think it’s

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: more consistent of what we’ve seen. I don’t have any one time material things that would change it either way.

Rob Joffe, Analyst, Ventum: Okay, thank you. And I know you’ve been busy on the acquisition front, but is this a time of integration or do you look to continue being busy on tuck in acquisitions?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Well, I think Bernard had talked about the integration of the last two, which have gone extremely well. The interesting part of the last two acquisition is they were complementary to what we did today. So they can roll in rapidly into the organization and they have a home and they have a team that’s there to work with them. We like those types of acquisitions. We have a healthy funnel, we have the resources to execute on them, we’ll again, like I say, we need three things, right?

The right acquisition at the right price, that’s actually for sale. So, we’re, we’re, we’re actively looking and when we find the right one, we’ll be ready to pull the trigger.

Rob Joffe, Analyst, Ventum: That’s great. Thank you very much. Good luck.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Thank you, Rob.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research. Your line is now open.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Yes, any thoughts on when we may see the government contract business improve in Canada? Thanks Vince. I think you have to look at it two ways, Vince. The profitable government contracts are doing very well and growing, we’re just exiting a lot of lower margin stuff that we’ve had over the years, so as those contracts finish, we don’t go after them. There’s particular situation I’d say in Quebec specifically, where there are a lot of subcontractors going after business at ridiculously low prices, and of course the government very often has these lowest bidder wins rules.

We stay away from those RFPs. There are other RFPs that are value driven, like the one that we won with the Department of Health, where they go after the best solution and not the lowest price. Those are the ones that we go after and the ones we prefer, and we’re going to keep doing that. We think it’s the best way to create value for the company. We’re not very present in the rest of Canada and at the government level, it’s something that we’re always looking at, it’s something that we said in the past for market acquisition targets, we’d like to have more business in government, but right now I’d say given how well the private sector is doing, we like where we’re at.

Thank you for that. It’s nice to see the offshore contribution improve. Was that solely from acquisitions or are you also benefiting from hiring organically? Yeah, it’s a bit of both, more from the acquisitions in the last six months because both of them had a significant presence in Morocco and India, but we also have organic growth over there. Would you say you’re getting better at organic growth offshore?

Well, it’s driven by, if you remember offshore organic growth is 100% driven by our local business here, right? So we had 17% year over year growth in The US, which is incredible. That is driving some growth offshore as well. If you look at our headcount, you know, The US is 48% of our revenues today, it’s 27% of our headcount, which means that the balance of people that we need to do those projects are somewhere else around the world. So when you see significant growth like that in The US, you know it’s going to drive some growth in our global delivery centers as well.

Thank you. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from Divya Goya with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Divya Goya, Analyst, Scotiabank: Good morning, everyone. Paul, could you talk to us a little bit more about the higher value offerings? And you I know you mentioned a few times on the call today, and we broadly have talked about in the past. Could you talk to us a little bit more about what exactly drives the higher billing rate with these higher value offerings? And how exactly are they differentiated from what is getting broadly offered across the market?

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Sure, if you come back to our four pillar strategy, Vidya, one of the things that we said we wanted to do was lead with industry expertise. Right, so there’s a lot of companies out there selling Oracle, selling Microsoft, selling SAP, all these things. If you look at what we do, it’s extremely specialized in a certain vertical. So in healthcare, I mean we’re the number one partner for Oracle in healthcare in The US. Bernard gave a few examples, I mean for one healthcare system in the past few months, we actually rolled out a new module for Oracle for their solution around scheduling for nurses.

It’s the first rollout on the planet of this new module for Oracle, and they came to us because of our expertise in healthcare. We signed a deal with them to help them. We’re helping Oracle, Oracle the company, build AI APIs for their platform. They came to us because of our expertise in that domain. I mean, I had so many examples like this for Oracle and Microsoft and some other IT, where we are the leader on the planet for these types of things.

So when you do that, I mean, you have a pricing power that clients come to us, not because we’re the cheapest, but because we’re the best. And that’s where we want to be for the whole company. That’s where we’re trying to get to in Canada as well. We’re there in the nuclear sector, we’re working on it on the financial services side, we’re there in Oracle, in ERP, in HCM with the latest acquisition we’ve done with the CRM piece as well, so we now cover all of the CRM platforms that are out there, whether it’s the Oracle platform, Salesforce, Microsoft, and we have the industry expertise that goes with it. So we’re really in a very, very unique position that I don’t think people realize.

I mean, we’re not seeing it reflected in the value of the share, I can tell you that. I mean, we’re trading at half the average of companies in our sector. So I mean, I think we’re in a great position. We just seen the growth that we’ve had in The US because our clients are seeing what we can bring to the table. And as somebody asked a question around AI, AI is driving significant growth for Oracle and Microsoft because these companies need data.

They need consistent enterprise wide data to be able to leverage these latest and greatest AI solutions, and this is how they can get there faster. So we really like where we’re positioned right now.

Divya Goya, Analyst, Scotiabank: That’s that’s incredible. I’m just trying to understand. So it’s it’s it’s incredible that, the company differentiates in so many ways, and I would like to think it’s fair to assume that Microsoft and Oracle obviously bring the company, Alethia, into a lot of engagement, how can we expect to see a significant traction on the top line considering this differentiation despite the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty? I think that’s where a little bit of disconnect is with respect to all the offerings versus where the stock price is right now.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Yeah, I think if you look, I mean, if you look at our 17% year over year growth in The US, that’s not too shabby. If I look at our competitors and what they’re showing for organic growth in the past year, I mean, we’re at the top of the pack right now. So given our size, I mean, is going to be the biggest challenge, think, which is a good thing. That’s where I wanna be. I wanna have a growth challenge instead of the other way around.

I kind of like where we’re at. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But I like the trend.

Divya Goya, Analyst, Scotiabank: That’s incredible. I’ll just ask one last question. You help us remind yourself, Bernard or Debbie here, help us remind the seasonality of the business in the top line and from a profitability front, considering the ongoing restructuring and recent acquisitions? That would

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: be all for me. Thank you. Yeah. Usually, the summer is our slowest quarter and it’s just a billable hours type thing with vacation and holidays and all that good stuff. If you look, provided the last 12 quarters, think eight quarters, and you can see the trend there and that’s why we try to compare year over year instead of sequentially just because of that, but Q2 was traditionally low, last year was very low, So we kind of follow it that way, Divya, if that helps.

Divya Goya, Analyst, Scotiabank: That’s fair. Thanks a lot.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: And this quarter, also this quarter, there was a lot of timing on working cap stuff that should reverse next quarter, so I think that’s probably one of the areas where you’re going to see a big difference next quarter. Maybe just if I can add Paul,

Bernard Dacreault, Chief Operating Officer, Alethia: on the bookings side, Q2 tends to be a lighter bookings quarter for us just based on our key partners and their fiscal years when they just had a fiscal year end and they’re in their first and early in their fiscal year. So that tends to be a lower bookings quarter in those areas of our business.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: You’ve got July and August in there, so that’s usually pretty quiet.

Divya Goya, Analyst, Scotiabank: That’s helpful. Thank you, everyone.

Conference Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Paul Remont for closing remarks.

Paul Remo, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alethia: Thank you, Joelle. So as you can see, our trailing twelve months adjusted EBITDA is now over $49,000,000 and over 10%. We’re growing our business in a pretty uncertain market. We completed another acquisition, it’s our second in the last twelve months, which increases the Oracle AI and SmartShore capabilities, and also added a new world class partner in Salesforce. And we maintain a good cash position which enables us to act on future acquisition opportunities as they arise.

So we are on the right track, as I was saying. I also wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone we will be holding our annual general shareholder meeting on September 10 coming up. And thank you again for being with us today. Goodbye.

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.

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