Thank you, Benoit. Ladies and gentlemen, good day. I would like to welcome all of you who have joined us today. We are very glad to have you among us. Before we begin, I would like to introduce my colleagues. Julie Godin, Co-President
Julie Godin, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors, Executive Vice President Strategic Planning and Corporate Development. George Schindler, President and Executive Officer. Jean-Michel Baticle and François Boulanger, both of them Presidents and Chief Operating Officers. Steve Perron, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Benoit Dubé, Executive Vice President in Legal and Economic Affairs and Corporate Secretary. In accordance with the notice of meeting that you received, we will address the following 4 items. 1, presentation of financial results and the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023. The election of directors. 3, the appointment of the auditor. Finally, the proposal submitted by shareholder. Following the items of business, we will end the meeting and invite shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders to ask their questions. Please note that I will act as Chair of the Meeting, and Benoit Dubé will act as Secretary.
Benoit, for all the notices and other relevant documents sent to our shareholders.
Mr. Chair, holding CGI made use of the Canadian notice and access rules for the delivery to shareholders of our management proxy circular, management's discussion and analysis, annual audited consolidated financial statements, as well as other documents related to the meeting. Shareholders received a notice of meeting and notice of availability of the meeting materials. The latter notice explains how to access materials online, how to request a paper copy of materials, and present the items of the business for the meeting. Shareholders also receive a voting instruction form or proxy form. We have also received confirmation that the relevant materials have been made available to shareholders entitled to the vote.
As Secretary, I am including a copy of the notice of meeting, the management proxy circular, the affidavit, and other materials distributed in relation to this AGM in the record of meeting. Thank you, Benoit. In accordance with Section 8 of the company's bylaws, I hereby appoint Steve Gilbert and Claire Girard of Computershare to act as scrutineers for the meeting. I've been advised that we have quorum. I ask that the scrutineers submit their report to the Secretary as soon as it is ready. It can then be included in the record of meeting with the minutes of the last annual general meetings of shareholders held on February first, 2023. The first item on the agenda is to reflect the results of the fiscal year ended September thirtieth, 2023, including the financial statements and the auditor's report and the management's discussion and analysis.
These documents were previously made available to shareholders. A paper copy was sent to shareholders who requested them. The documents are also available on cgi.com and are also on the platform. They have been filed with the appropriate regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S. Since you have the opportunity to review them, I would ask the Secretary to include these documents in the record of meeting. The second item on the agenda is the election of directors. Before we proceed, I'd like to highlight that Paul DesRoches and Joaquim West have decided not to stand for re-election this year. On behalf of the board of directors and all of our consultants and professionals, I would like to warmly thank Paul and Joaquim for their valuable guidance, engagement, and outstanding contribution to the success of our company.
On the recommendation of the Corporate Governance Committee, the board of directors proposes that the following 15 nominees be elected as directors of the company. Our board of directors would therefore continue to be composed of a majority of independent directors. I am proud to introduce the nominees for election to our board of directors. Sophie Brochu, George Cope, Jacynthe Côté, Julie Godin, André Imbeau, Gilles Labbé, Mike Pedersen, Stephen S. Poloz, Mary G. Powell, Alison C. Reed, Michael E. Roach, George Schindler, Kathy N. Waller, Frank Witter, and myself. Sophie Brochu and Jacynthe Côté are new nominees standing for election to our board of directors this year. Thank you, Sophie and Jacynthe, for your confidence.
Therefore, I would ask for a motion for the election of the directors, please.
My name is Chantal Thibodeau, and I'm a CGI shareholder. I move that the 15 people who were just introduced by the chair of the meeting be elected to the company's Board of Directors.
Thank you, Ms. Thibodeau.
My name is Robert Brewer, and I am a CGI shareholder. I second the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Brewer. We are now ready to proceed to the vote. Please note that you are asked to vote for each of the 15 candidates proposed for election to our board of directors.
The next item on the agenda is the appointment of the auditor. The board of directors and recommendation of the Audit and Risk Management Committee proposes that PricewaterhouseCoopers be reappointed as the company's auditor.
Ask for the appointment of, the auditor, please.
Yes. My name is Eric McFadden, and I am a CGI shareholder. I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers be appointed as the company's auditor until the next shareholders' annual meeting and that the Audit and Risk Management Committee be authorized to fix its compensation.
Thank you, Mr. McFadden.
I would ask another person to second the motion.
My name is Myrianique Bertrand, and I am a CGI shareholder. I second the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Bertrand.
Madame Bertrand, rather. We are now ready to proceed with the vote. Please vote for the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as CGI's auditor. The last item on the agenda concerns the proposals submitted by the Mouvement d'éducation et de défense des actionnaires, the MÉDAC. They are reproduced in Appendix C of the management proxy circular, along with the responses from our board of directors. As stated in the management proxy circular, it was agreed that only two proposals would be introduced for vote today.
I would like to invite Mr. Canon Delap to introduce the 2 proposals submitted by vote for the MEDAC, and I would kindly ask you to limit your remarks to 2 minutes. Over to you, Mr. Delap.
Thank you, Mr. Godin. Can you hear me?
Very much.
Yes, we hear you well. Proposal number 1, it's proposed that the Board of Directors considers the possibility of introducing a new orientation with regard to remuneration that it be an incentive, and that part of that be devoted to performance of the employees in our organization so that we can reach our objectives. The argument that we have on this is that with regard to the CEO of Mastercard, Michael Miebach, he has already applied this approach because he found that this model had a great reach with employees everywhere, and that it's a way to progress and add value so that it isn't just the Board of Directors that takes advantage of this, but also all employees. That is our first proposal this morning. Should I now go forward with my second motion? Yes, please.
Our second motion is that our annual assemblies of the company be held in person. Right now, virtual assemblies can be a complement, but we don't want to replace our shareholders meetings. If we could meet each other in person again as we did before the pandemic. I'm thinking now about the Metro general assembly. There were 60% of people who voted to come back to in-person shareholder meetings. I would like things to go back to how they were before. Also, the hypertext address on 69, the address that is there is not correct. There's an error there. It should say medac.qc.ca/20. Thank you very much, Mr. Godin. I hope that we can see each other in person in 2024.
Thank you very much, Mr. Delap.
I've been informed that on average, 91.23% of the votes sent by proxy were against the two proposals in question, and that on average, 8.77% of the votes are in favor. For the reasons outlined in the management proxy circular, the board of directors recommends voting against the two proposals. We are now ready to proceed to the vote.
To be voted on at this meeting. We will now take a 1-minute break to allow those who have not already done so to submit their vote. We're back. The poll is now closed. The scrutineers have confirmed the following preliminary results. All directors were elected with on average 98.66% of the votes cast. PricewaterhouseCoopers has been reappointed as auditor of the company with 99.85% of the votes cast. The two shareholder proposals have not been approved with on average 91.23% of the vote cast against them. The resolutions concerning the election of directors and the appointment of the auditor are therefore adopted, and the two shareholder proposals are not.
A report on the final vote results will be available on the SEDAR website. A report on the financial results of the election of directors will be published in a press release. As all items of the meeting's agenda have been covered, I declare the formal part of this annual general shareholders meeting closed.
I will now invite Steve Perron to review the financial results for fiscal 2023. Steve?
Thank you, Serge, and good morning, everyone. We ended fiscal 2023 with strong financial results. We delivered CAD 14.3 billion of revenue, representing year-over-year growth of 11.1% or 8.0% when excluding the impact of foreign exchange. In constant currency, we saw broad-based growth across all of our industries and geographies in which we operate, including 16.7% in our operations in southwestern and southern Europe, 16.4% in Asia-Pacific, 11.3% in U.K. and Australia, 9.4% in Finland, Poland and the Baltics, 5.2% in Scandinavia and Central Europe, 4.4% in northwest and Central East Europe, 4.3% in the U.S., and 4.1% in Canada.
Strong client demand translated into CAD 16.3 billion of contract wins in fiscal 2023. This represents a book-to-bill ratio of 113.7%, up 5.2% from the previous year. Turning to fiscal 2023 profitability. EBIT were CAD 2.2 billion. This represents an increase of CAD 231 million over last year for a margin of 15.4%. Adjusted EBIT was up 10.8% for a margin of 16.2%. Net earnings were up 11.3% year-over-year for an 11.4% margin. Diluted EPS of CAD 6.86, up 13.6% year-over-year. When excluding specific items, net earnings were up 12.9% for a margin of 11.8%.
Specific items for the year included integration and acquisition costs, as well as expenses associated with our cost optimization program announced last November. On the same basis, diluted EPS was CAD 7.07, up 15.3% year-over-year. This performance was driven by a combination of revenue growth and consistent operational excellence. Cash provided by CGI's operating activities was CAD 2.1 billion, representing 14.8% of revenue. Our strong cash generation and capital allocation during fiscal 2023 enabled us to make a number of creative investments, including CAD 409 million invested back into our business, including IP offerings and new managed services contracts, and CAD 788 million to buy back our stock.
Importantly, in fiscal 2023, we delivered a return on investment of 16%, demonstrating our proficiency and discipline on deployment of capital. I will now turn it over to our Chief Operating Officers, François and Jean-Michel, to share some examples of how our consultants and professionals have supported clients this past year. François, over to you.
Thank you, Steve. Welcome, everyone. In fiscal year 2023, we contributed to the growth of our company by providing advice, expertise, and insights necessary to help our clients successfully adapt to the rapidly shifting economy and geopolitical dynamics. Given this environment, clients are focused on optimizing and modernizing their end-to-end business processes and platforms. As such, client demand remains strong for a full range of end-to-end services and solutions, notably for managed services, which represented 54% of total 2023 bookings, up from 50% in the prior year. New managed services engagements awarded throughout the year included: A global leader in convenience and mobility, Alimentation Couche-Tard or Circle K, selected CGI for a 10-year strategic partnership to deliver managed IT services.
To this engagement, valued at CAD 380 million, we will help expand their capacity to enhance customer and employee experience and advance their business goals. In Canada, iA Financial Group renewed its agreement with CGI for 10 years. With our consultant continuing to deliver business consulting, system integration, and managed services to support iA modernization and digital strategy. National Bank of Canada renewed its partnership with CGI for 10 years to deliver a range of technology services and IP to help the bank further enhance their client experience and drive operational excellence. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency awarded CGI a multi-year managed services contract valued at $522 million. We are partnering with the agency to help them reimagine their IT portfolio in support of their mission to protect human health and the environment.
As part of their scope, these large managed services engagements frequently incorporate intellectual property as well as consulting and systems integration services. This combination of CGI's end-to-end services reflects the ongoing rise in client demand for broader and more holistic partnerships that help clients advance their digitalization objectives. In particular, our IP solutions provide clients a digital accelerator with lower capital costs while having the added benefit of integrating security, data protection, and innovation as part of the solution. Given this, the attractiveness of our IP solutions resulted in strong bookings for the year with an IP-based book-to-bill ratio of 110%. Demand for IP solutions was particularly strong in our two largest industry sectors, government and financial services.
For example, new IP awards in these sectors during the year included: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs increased funding to support their implementation of CGI's Momentum IP in support of the agency's financial management business transformation program. Scotiabank, a leading Canadian multinational bank, selected CGI's All Payments solution to advance the bank's payments innovation agenda. By deploying our modular cloud-based enterprise payments platform, we will help the bank accelerate benefits for their global customers and ease payment processes. TD Bank Group, a top 10 North American bank, extended CGI's ongoing services for the delivery of a secure and reliable shareholder management system, which is part of CGI's Wealth360 IP solution suite. Under this four-year agreement, CGI will provide extended support as part of the bank's ongoing modernization strategy.
Most of the time, these large company-wide engagements require a tailored combination of our end-to-end offerings and global delivery services, particularly from our Asia Pacific centers, which enjoy continued growth in client demand. I will now hand over to Jean-Michel, who will give you a few examples of new contracts in Europe during the 2023 fiscal year, with some requiring expertise in artificial intelligence. Jean-Michel?
Thank you, François. Good morning, everyone. In all European countries where CGI operates, client demand remains strong, particularly for missions that help them realize immediate savings that can be redeployed into value-creating transformational investments.
For example, this year, Airbus, a global aerospace manufacturer based in France, chose CGI as one of its key global partners to support them in the end-to-end digital transformation of its corporate and central services over the next 5 years. CGI will support these services through a combination of local and global resources in France, Spain, Germany and India. In the U.K., the agency responsible for revenue and customs selected CGI as a partner in the government framework for the digitization of Crown Commercial Services. CGI will deliver services in user-centered design, application development and application management to support the U.K. government's digital strategy. The U.K. government awarded CGI a 4-year contract to continue managing the cybersecurity analytics platform of one of its government departments to address evolving cyber threats.
Fraport, one of the world's largest airport operators with business activities at 29 airports on four continents, selected CGI as its digital partner under a 5-year framework agreement to continue Frankfurt Airport's digital transformation. Sweden's Social Security Agency selected CGI as its strategic business transformation partner to modernize its operations and deliver a higher level of service to citizens by digitizing core processes. The European Space Agency selected CGI to lead a consortium in the development of a cloud-based virtual flight data recorder, also known as Black Box, to enable real-time access and secure storage of data transmitted by an aircraft in flight. Bankgirot, the Swedish payment clearing house, extended its long-term partnership with CGI by signing a CAD 62 million contract to improve system efficiency, maintain stringent security standards and exploit opportunities for innovation in payment solutions.
Finally, in Finland, CGI partnered with Helsinki University Hospital and a leading manufacturer to develop an AI solution that helps radiologists to interpret medical imaging and detect the most common types of non-traumatic brain hemorrhages. It will also be used to determine if an emergency response is required. At a global level, one of our priorities over the last fiscal year has been to work on these types of initiatives with clients who are looking to transition responsibly from experimentation to large-scale implementation and accelerate the return on investment of their AI investments. Over the past few decades, we have gained extensive experience in implementing intelligent automation and artificial intelligence technologies across our service offerings and solutions, including our intellectual property solutions.
Responsible use of artificial intelligence is also part of CGI's Management Foundation, which governs the ethical and disciplined use of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies by CGI professionals in line with evolving AI regulations.
In a wide range of projects a few of which include improving effectiveness and efficiency of government services, detecting and preventing water pollution, delivering customized customer journeys, predicting cracks in steel manufacturing, and using Earth's observation data to locate, quantify, and track seagrass meadows. George will share more about this important area of AI during his outlook today. I will now hand over to Steve, who will present the highlights of the first quarter of 2024. Steve.
Thank you, Jean-Michel. This morning we announced our result for the first quarter of fiscal 2024. We recorded revenue of CAD 3.6 billion, up 4.4% year-over-year, or 1.5% when excluding the impact of foreign exchange. Bookings were CAD 4.2 billion, representing a book-to-bill ratio of 116%. Earnings before income taxes in Q1 were CAD 527 million, for a margin of 14.6% of revenue. Adjusted EBIT in Q1 was CAD 584 million, up 5.4% year-over-year, for a margin of 16.2% of revenue. Net earnings were CAD 390 million, and diluted EPS was CAD 1.67, representing an increase of 4.4% year-over-year.
When excluding specific items, net earnings improved to CAD 427 million, for a margin of 11.9% of revenue, diluted EPS was CAD 1.83, an accretion of 10.2% when compared to CAD 1.66 in the same quarter last year. Cash provided by operating activities was CAD 577 million, representing 16% of revenue. On a trailing 12-month basis, cash provided by operating activities represented 14.4% of total revenue. In Q1, we used our cash to invest CAD 85 million into our business, including in AI, CAD 49 million in business acquisitions, CAD 126 million to buy back our stock, and repaid CAD 673 million of long-term debt.
In addition, yesterday, our Board of Directors approved the extension of the normal course issuer bid program until February 2025, authorizing us to purchase for cancellation up to CAD 20.5 billion of CGI shares over the next 12 months. 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. Finally, paying down our debt. Our capital resources total CAD 2.7 billion with access to more if needed.
I will now ask George, our President and CEO, to discuss the outlook for CGI's continued growth in fiscal year 2024. George?
Thank you, Steve, and [Foreign language]. Good day, everyone. As a leading global IT and business consulting firm, we are proud of the way our CGI partners engage with clients around the world, helping them responsibly harness the power of technology to deliver meaningful business outcomes. At CGI, building trusted partnerships with clients is intrinsically linked with CGI's culture of ownership and accountability model. Our collaborative working style continues to be a strong differentiator for how we deepen relationships with our clients, attract and retain the best talent, and operate as a responsible and ethical company. CGI's positioning as a partner and expert of choice for clients continues to be recognized by well-known external publications around the world.
For example, in the last year, we were once again named as one of the world's best management consulting firms by Forbes and as one of the world's best companies by Time. Additionally, clients rated their satisfaction with CGI as 9.4 out of 10 last year, reaching 9.5 out of 10 in Q1, demonstrating the high quality of our teams. CGI also earned a Great Place to Work designation in multiple geographies by several external organizations, including by The Sunday Times in the U.K., the Great Place to Work Institute in India and the Philippines, and through many top employer rankings in countries such as Canada, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.S. Today, I'm pleased to share the outlook for CGI in 2024.
Through our annual strategic planning process, we consult with our three stakeholders, our clients, our consultants and professionals, and you, our shareholders, to gain important insights that help inform our business plans for the year ahead. Clients indicated to us that the current market conditions create operational and strategic challenges for many of them. This is requiring them to prioritize cost savings initiatives simultaneously with investments to advance their digitization agenda or improve competitiveness, resilience, and customer experience. CGI, through a well-balanced combination of end-to-end services, is well-positioned to address both of these client objectives. This is evidenced by our strong bookings in the first quarter of fiscal 2024. Critical to our growth agenda remains CGI's talented consultants and professionals, for whom we continue to prioritize training through interactive courses on CGI Academia, with over 840,000 courses completed in 2023.
Importantly, we also continue to invest in our ownership program, which is the anchor of our unique culture and has contributed to our ability to receive record high satisfaction scores from our CGI partners. Our business plan for fiscal 2024 incorporates continued investments in our end-to-end services, enabling our consultants to bring CGI's full offering value proposition to clients. For managed services, we will accelerate growth through expanded capacity in our business engineering function and through continued investments to embed innovation and efficiencies into our delivery solutions. In IP, we will continue to develop new solutions in line with emerging client needs, including with traditional and generative AI. We will focus our business and strategic IT consulting and systems integration capabilities on industries and offerings where discretionary spending remains strong.
Our fiscal 2024 business plan also includes continued M&A investments 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. Finally, our business plan incorporates investments in innovation. Across all industries, generative AI continues to be at the top of innovation discussion agendas with clients, with trust and responsibility as key priorities. Last year, we announced a plan to allocate CAD 1 billion over a 3-year timeframe to continue the expansion of CGI's AI capabilities. The emphasis of this plan is on advancing the next wave of innovation through 4 initiatives. First, expanding our end-to-end offerings. Second, developing new go-to-market strategies. Third, expanding AI use for operational and delivery excellence.
Most importantly, investing in talent, starting with comprehensive training and development for all CGI consultants and professionals. A key element of our business plan remains our focus on building a more sustainable and inclusive world. Our commitments for these initiatives are rooted in CGI's core values. Our targets and progress are shared transparently with all stakeholders through the publication of CGI's Annual Environmental, Social, and Governance Report. In conclusion, our strong performance in the first quarter underscores the continued confidence in our plans for fiscal 2024 to deliver double-digit EPS accretion, incremental margin expansion, and revenue growth consistent with the current IT services demand environment. I will now turn it over to Julie, our Board Co-Chair, to further discuss the elements of CGI's long-term resilience model and perenniality. Julie?
Merci, George.
Thank you, George. We have always been guided by the conviction that the world would change and transform rapidly, and that technology would be at the heart of this evolution. Bearing this in mind, CGI has always focused on attracting and retaining the best talent to enable the company to anticipate and lead change. To be an employer of choice and a differentiated industry leader, CGI has always been supported by strong fundamentals to grow as a long-lasting and profitable company. Two key elements of these fundamentals are a unique culture and our proven operating model. Over time, they have helped us to become a world-class business and IT consulting leader and partner of choice for our three stakeholders, our clients, our consultants, and professionals, and our shareholders.
In addition, over the years, we have developed a strong strategic component to foster the company's resilience, which ultimately led us to our sustainability. Let us first describe how our distinctive culture has been instrumental to our perenniality. As a team, we are united around our collective dream. It is to create an environment where we enjoy working together as owners, contribute to the building of the company that we can be proud of. You will note that the anchor point of this dream is the concept of ownership. As we speak, 86% of our consultants and professionals will collectively own CAD 2.8 billion of CGI shares or 8% of the company. It is the second-largest shareholder group of CGI. This is why we call all of our employees at CGI partners. They are actively engaged in building their company.
As an example, as part of last year's annual planning process, 80% of our partners, which means it is 70,000 people, provided their input in setting up directions and priorities of their company. Such input, as well as insights from our 2 other stakeholders, our clients and shareholders, are cascaded throughout all management instances of CGI. CGI, with the ultimate goal and to exercise a shared leadership. You can see in this action in this picture from our annual leadership conference last June, where we had 1,500 Vice Presidents sharing insights from our 3 shareholders, stakeholders rather, around the globe to establish our strategic orientation. The continuous inputs we get from this annual exercise reflect real-life insights and instill a strong alignment towards our common goals.
This leads to unity of action as we all work in the same direction, guided by one CGI culture, no matter where we are in the world. The second element of our fundamentals is our robust operating model, which is captured in our CGI Management Foundation. It includes elements that define and guide the management of our company from our dream, vision, our mission, and values to our policies and processes and operating principles. We strongly believe that what gets measured-
We have defined a set of metrics for each of these three stakeholders against which we continuously measure our performance, and most importantly, we make CGI results visible to all in our operational instances. That concept leads to clear accountability every year. The Management Foundation and company's management practices that have been developed and refined over the past 47 years. It guides us in delivering all of our commitments and serves as a compass to ensure perenniality. They relate to the distribution of revenue by metro market, by economic sector, and by type of services in our end-to-end offerings. Let me start with our proximity model, which is a decentralized model by metro market. We make it a priority to live and work in the same communities as our clients, as it is by far the best way to build trusted relationships with them.
Today, we have a presence in 300 metro markets spanning 40 countries.
We currently have a critical mass in 70 of these 300 metro markets. As demonstrated by our results, our geographic mix already provides us with a good degree of resilience at the global level, with 47% of our fiscal 2023 revenue in North America and 53% in Europe. Our plan is to eventually establish a significant presence in the 230 other metro markets, namely through our M&A activities, such as the recent acquisition of Momentum Consulting Corp. in Miami, in the U.S. We are convinced that our resilience will keep growing as we continue to diversify by metro market in each of our geographies globally. The second strategic component is our revenue distribution by economic sector. Knowing that each industry reacts to economic downturns in different ways, we take great care in maintaining well-balanced revenue across economic sectors to mitigate risks.
As you can see on the chart, this revenue distribution is already well diversified at the global level. As we continue to grow, our ambition is not only to have a balanced diversification at the global level, but also to reflect the GDP spend by economic sector within each metro market. Having business activities spread across multiple sectors within each geography will further enable CGI to grow profitably in all economic cycles. Finally, the last strategic component of our resilience is related to the revenue distribution among the services in our end-to-end offerings. We believe the right combination of these services is highly strategic, as economic conditions drive different business opportunities for each element of our offerings. For instance, in growing economies, the demand for business and IT consulting and systems integration is strong.
On the other hand, in softer market conditions, while most governments would continue to invest, many corporations would need to reduce their costs significantly, therefore generating strong opportunities for the cost efficiencies provided by managed IT services. Again, our distribution between services is well-balanced at the global level. The vast majority of our revenue is recurring, as a large portion of is generated from managing core business activities of our clients. Our ambition is to also ensure a balanced distribution of revenue across offerings in all our metro markets.
In summary, although we are navigated softer economic conditions, our performance remains strong thanks to a balanced distribution of our activities in various geographies, economic sectors and types of services. Over the years, our model has enabled CGI to become a leading IT and business consulting services firm. With our unique culture, our proven operating model, and our well-defined strategic components, we are confident that CGI will continue to be successful across all economic cycles. As you can see, CGI was built to last, to grow and last. As I turn it over to Serge to moderate your questions, we would like to sincerely thank all of you, our fellow shareholders, for your support and trust over the years.
Thank you for attending our annual general meeting and allowing us to share our passion and commitment to supporting our clients, building a best-in-class work environment with our engaged CGI partners, and delivering superior results for our shareholders. Every day, we continue to strive for excellence to proudly honor our position as one of the world's leading IT and business consulting firms. Serge Godin.
Thank you, Julie Godin. Now let's take some questions. We remind you that shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders may submit questions by using the question box at the bottom left-hand side of your screen. Please note that questions may be asked in English or in French. I will read them in the language in which they have been submitted. I will read the questions aloud and may answer them directly or direct my questions to my colleagues. First question.
There being no further questions or no questions at all, the Q&A session is now closed. I would like to thank the members of our board of directors for their thoughtful advice throughout the year. I would also like to thank our clients, consultants, and professionals, as well as our shareholders for their continued support and trust.
Enjoy the rest of your day, and we hope to see you again next year. Thank you very much.