00:00How do you know that this is the right way to invest?
00:04How do you know that AI agents are what we should be betting on and what you should be betting
00:08on right now?
00:09Well, we're using it in real time already.
00:11We use agents across our infrastructure to help our customers achieve their business objectives.
00:18We are the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider,
00:21so tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people every day are relying on the banks that we
00:26help.
00:26We help over half the world's largest banks run their systems.
00:28We help eight of the ten largest airlines.
00:31We help the industrial base that makes most of the world's cars, so healthcare companies.
00:37So what we already see today is the technology is very robust,
00:41but it also needs to be controlled and managed properly,
00:45and that's really what Agentec Service Management's announcement today is all about.
00:49How do we help our customers deploy Agentec to get the benefits from it at scale
00:55while still being able to control it and make sure it's secure
00:58and performing the things that you're expecting it to perform?
01:01Everyone's trying to figure out what the benefits of this technology is actually going to be.
01:05You see it day in and day out when you're talking to customers.
01:08How are they using it right now, and what's the return on the investment that they're getting?
01:11So the return on investment, which I'm sure you've seen as well, is sort of very disparate.
01:20So many of our customers are seeing great returns on using productivity from AI within their employee bases.
01:26We see that as well.
01:28Our own employee base now, as we sit here today, has already created nearly 25,000 agents
01:33that they use to be more productive in their jobs.
01:36So our customers are seeing some of that.
01:38At the other end of the scale, many, many customers are struggling to get AI to scale properly.
01:44As you said well in your intro, the world's infrastructure was built for a different time
01:49and probably not really ready yet for Agentec AI.
01:52It's like building a brand-new bullet train that can go 200 miles an hour
01:58but still running on tracks that were built for 30 miles an hour.
02:01And that's where Agentec Service Management comes in to give you that control plane
02:05to allow you to start to modernize your systems.
02:08You know, you have a great view on what these firms are spending when it comes to enterprise tech,
02:13when it comes to this technology.
02:15Just the climate out there right now, with the volatility that we've seen this year,
02:19particularly in the last month with the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran,
02:24are you seeing any change in spending?
02:28Is that market, is that customer base pretty resilient?
02:30Well, the customer base, particularly for the work we do, which is mission critical, right?
02:35The hearts and lungs of these firms.
02:36It is pretty stable.
02:40I'd also say that, look, the situation in the Middle East is creating slight shifts,
02:46making sure that you have resiliency in those operations.
02:49But we also see some other, what I'll call longer-term arcs that are important.
02:53Data sovereignty is top of mind for everybody today.
02:56And we have, obviously, a point of view on that.
02:58We're helping customers think about data sovereignty.
03:00So in the mission critical world, the issues of security and resilience, the issues of modernization,
03:06they're pretty stable.
03:07It's a growing market.
03:09And I don't expect to see massive shifts based on whatever's in the news.
03:13But on budgets, there's sort of a more fundamental question.
03:17And that's about the spend when it comes to what these companies are actually buying and purchasing right now.
03:23And a lot of that in really recent months and even in the recent last year has really shifted toward
03:28AI.
03:29How do you convince them to spend on infrastructure or maybe tie that infrastructure spend to the AI story that's
03:34happening right now?
03:35So we're in the business of creating productivity for our customers, right?
03:40And the way we get to growth is by creating productivity in order to create pools of money that they
03:47can go invest in whatever is sort of top of mind.
03:50And you said it well, AI has been top of mind.
03:53But again, when you have disruption in the world and geopolitics playing a role, it may be resiliency.
04:00It may be data sovereignty.
04:03It may be trying to rebalance your work to a private cloud versus a public cloud.
04:08So the nature of what we do has always been about drive productivity for our customers, do what they're doing
04:16more efficiently, create a pool of money, and then help them invest where they want to be.
04:21You know, on Agentic AI, we hear from people all the time who say we're all going to have our
04:25own AI agents in a really short time.
04:28And the AI agents are already out there acting on behalf of some people who are sort of early adopters.
04:33Is that a view that you agree with?
04:34I think that each of us, I mean, I have agents that do automated work for me, right?
04:38But it's very much a productivity tool.
04:40But you're here with me in person.
04:42I will tell you that in the infrastructure we run for our customers, in the production workloads, we have, as
04:50we sit here right now, 920 trusted proprietary agents doing the work that helps us run the infrastructure.
04:59Compare that to, again, our employee pool has created just under 25,000 agents.
05:04So, yes, there is a proliferation of agents in the productivity space that is going to continue.
05:10But agents doing real running production systems for companies, for the kinds of companies we work, that's at about a
05:1720th of what the others are.
05:20Now, that's going to grow fast.
05:21It's going to grow fast because they're very effective.
05:23They allow us to deliver higher quality.
05:25They do save money.
05:26But it is going to take a while to get into the production environments.
05:30Martin, before we go, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about the volatile year that Kendrell has had and
05:34the leadership changes, the CFO leaving, some accounting disclosure issues that certainly spooked the market.
05:40Given those hiccups, what can you say to investors right now that midterm revenue, profit, and cash flow goals remain
05:46within reach?
05:46Yeah, so we did have a material weakness that we disclosed.
05:51We also are cooperating with the SEC to try to get through the issues and the questions they have around
05:58disclosure.
05:59Keep in mind there was no financial restatement, right?
06:02So the financial position of the firm is the financial position of the firm.
06:05And we will this year continue to make progress toward 28, and we still see 28 as a year where
06:12relative to what we talked about almost two years ago now, we'll be able to triple cash flow and double
06:17profits on our way to sustainable revenue growth.
Comments