Good. Thanks everyone for the wait. As always, a very busy Needham Growth Conference, but I wanna welcome you to this next session. It's my pleasure to be joined by Chegg CFO, Andy Brown. Andy, thanks for joining me.
Good to see you, Ryan.
A little bittersweet. This might be our last one of these, and I always love chatting with you on the stage. We'll have a good conversation, but.
Yeah, I was just reminiscing on the way over here last night, and I first became a CFO in 1998, and my very, very first conference I went to was in January of 1999, was right here, so.
Wow!
Ending it right here.
This is your last one?
Last one.
Wow! Well, then we are very, very proud to be on the front end and the back end, I guess.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Yep.
Awesome. Well, look, I'm sure most people here are-
Mm-hm
Familiar with Chegg, but maybe just a really brief overview of the business, and we'll, we'll jump into some interesting topics here.
Yeah. So hopefully most of you are familiar with what we do, but in simple terms, we are an online direct-to-student educator. And when you think about direct-to-student being B2C, we are the... and we provide subscriptions to students primarily. That's 90% of our business is providing subscriptions to our students. We help mostly college, high school, and to some degree middle school, where we help them get unstuck when they're going through their classes. Help them understand concepts. Initially, it was primarily in the U.S., and more recently, over the last three or four years, it's been more—you know, going outside the U.S., so instead of just being English, it's been multi-language.
Mm-hmm.
As a result, we've become... I call us the leader, but I call us the gorilla-
Mm
In the B2C, direct-to-student, space. As I remind our team at Chegg, you know, we, you know, we're call it $700 million or so of revenue. We drive, significant profits and significant free cash flow. Our free cash flow, I mean, is, is larger than many of our, competitors' revenues.
Revenue streams, yeah.
Revenue streams, so we are the gorilla. Now, having said that, we've had some challenging times over the last, call it, 12-18 months.
Mm-hmm.
It hasn't, you know, as any business goes through cycles, you know, we went through a huge boom during COVID, and when students went off campus, and then they came back on campus. During that time period, we basically doubled our subscribers and doubled our revenues and all of the wonderful things that go along with that. That going back to campus slowed our growth somewhat, particularly in the U.S. But we still continue to be the giant-
Yeah
In the direct-to-student space. Even through these tough times, we're now at a point in our company where we're making some fundamental changes to our product-
Mm-hmm
For the first time in, you know, basically 10 years.
Mm-hmm.
So, for those of you who've been listening, if you haven't been tuned into things, AI is taking over the world, it seems like.
Apparently, yeah.
Apparently, you know, while it was a disruptor for us, you know, maybe 12, 15 months ago, we're embracing AI-
Mm
In a big way. And we've got some exciting things that've started to come out with respect to our product. There's more things coming-
Mm-hmm
As we roll through this year. You know, as we develop the product more, and I'll just say this, you know, I obviously I'm leaving here soon, but there is a huge excitement within the company. I can't tell you. There's, it's, it... You know, we went through a cycle of change back in 2014, 2015, 2016, when we were telling the world we were no longer gonna be a textbook provider, we're gonna be a digital subscription provider.
Mm-hmm.
There was an energy at the company back then that I feel today.
Yeah.
It's kind of like us against the world. We have a chip on our shoulders right now.
Mm-hmm.
It's like, we're gonna show the world that, you know, we're doing it right, and we will invigorate growth at some point. But that will follow the, you know-
Yeah
The new product and the new introductions and the things like that. So I'm super excited about the future. And yeah, that's Chegg. What else?
Well, us against the world really worked for University of Michigan football this year, winning the national title. Maybe this is, maybe Chegg can replicate that a little bit.
Yeah.
Well, look, clearly 2023 was a range of emotions, if you will, in, like, the education space.
You think?
Yeah, right. You know, you sort of starting the year with, you know, concerns from the market about, yeah, ChatGPT was gonna, you know, send the business to zero, replace the market completely. But clearly, as we progressed through the year, you know, it was more of a sort of became apparent that it's a more of being a complementary solution used by students rather than a full replacement.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe just talk through sort of that, how that 2023 progressed from that perspective and sort of what gave you confidence that, you know, there is still a place for Chegg to be leading this market.
Yeah, so first thing is we are leading the market.
Yeah.
We believe that we will continue to lead the market. It's, you know, there was a lot of unknowns going into 2023, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, if you think about, you know, the ChatGPT phenomenon, the AI phenomenon, that really started in, what, late 2022, November-ish.
Mm-hmm.
You know, as we rolled into 2023, it still wasn't clear.
Yep
as to how that would potentially impact our business. But you've gotta be real. I mean, if students think there's a free solution out there, they're gonna look at it first.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, let's just be, you know... You know, instead of spending $15 or $20 a subscription, why wouldn't I try something?
They're resourceful.
They're resourceful-
Mm-hmm
... right? I mean, we've seen that within our business over the last few years, where we had, you know, a ton of account sharing.
Yeah.
They want stuff for free or cheap.
Yeah.
But as the years rolled on, what's become very obvious, whether it be with our student behaviors-
Mm-hmm
As we survey and look at our students, or whether it be folks like you-
Mm-hmm
That have gone in and said, "Okay, I'll go into ChatGPT or Anthropic or whatever it is, and I'll try to replicate what Chegg does," and it's- it doesn't do a good job.
No, yeah.
I mean, those general sites don't do a really good job.
No.
So what we've seen at Chegg is that those students that are on the platform stay, continue to stay on the platform, and-
Mm-hmm
And increasingly longer and longer.
Yeah.
And so the retention rates that we've been seeing over the last, you know, during 2023, have been great.
Yep.
The challenge that we've had during 2023, and we're... you know, is how do we get those students that come to our platform to convert, as it were?
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Yeah.
And that is instead of going and, "Let's just see if I can get something for free," and it's. You know, I look at it, you know, we've always had this challenge about free versus paid, right?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, if we've had this dialogue before. If all the student wants is an answer, you can Google it.
Yeah.
You don't need AI to do that. I mean, five years ago, you just Google it, you get the answer. But what many of our students need is not just the answer.
Mm-hmm.
What they need is how you came to that answer.
Yeah.
How do you understand a concept?
Mm-hmm.
That's where we significantly differentiate ourselves. We believe with the new product experience that we've started to introduce, and as we add more features and functionality-
Mm-hmm
... we implement more of our LLMs, large language models, in case you're... As we believe that the product experience will get better. We'll start to see conversion increase, which is the key to getting new accounts.
Mm-hmm.
We'll continue to see improvements in retention. So, yeah, I'm excited about the future, even though it's been a challenging 2023.
Yeah. Yep.
And so I'm excited to see what 2024 brings to our company.
Now, on the AI initiative, so the original focus was sort of this CheggMate offering that was sort of leveraging OpenAI technology, right? And early in the year, but then it sort of evolved in August, where you sort of started partnering with Scale AI to build out your own LLMs, in addition to what you're doing with OpenAI. Maybe just talk about what the strategic rationale for that shift, and how sort of the partnership with Scale AI can sort of build on top of OpenAI?
Yeah, so CheggMate isn't CheggMate.
Yeah, it's not anymore.
CheggMate... Okay.
Yeah.
So I need to actually make sure everybody... I mean, I've seen, there was a recent Economist article that also referenced CheggMate.
Yeah.
CheggMate is not a product.
Yep.
CheggMate isn't, was, and I use the word was, an internal code for the start of our development of our AI product.
Yeah.
I use the word the start.
Mm-hmm.
Because back in, you know, when we started this endeavor back in March and April, we truly didn't know the best way. And so we started out with, you know, more, you know, with it more focused on an OpenAI solution. But as we've, as our team evaluated-
Mm-hmm
And looked at, you know, the best way for us to serve our students, it evolved into something where we were doing much of the work ourselves.
Mm-hmm.
And so when you think about, when you talk about scale-
Mm-hmm
You know, they're just a resource for us.
Mm-hm
To be able to get to market sooner with our LLMs.
Yeah.
But we own the LLMs, right?
Right.
It's not something that we don't own, and they're being trained-
Mm-hmm
In the hundreds of millions of pieces of content that we have in our database, which nobody else has, right? So-
When you have structured data-
Struct
-M ore accurate when you're feeding off of it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so we're— That's why we get so excited about what our future product can look like. And so it did evolve over a period of time, and that's where, you know, the scale, you know, our sc... No, I don't mean scale as in the company—
Yeah
... so bear with me. That's where us, as a company, our scale, our balance sheet, really, you know, plays to our advantage.
Mm-hmm.
Because we can deploy literally $tens of millions and hundreds of engineers at this new product, like, in a heartbeat.
Mm-hmm.
Right? I mean, literally, we're spending $ tens of millions on this new, new product, whether it be, you know, outsourcing certain things to Scale, but they're ours. You know, our competitors don't have the ability to do that.
Yeah.
They don't have those types of resources.
Yeah.
And so you see that, you know, across, you know, whether it be you know, even outside of education, these developing, you know, large models and these capabilities, it takes resources.
Mm-hmm.
you know, we're in the fortunate position, unlike most any of our competitors I'm aware of, we can do that. We can do it quickly, and I'm... Like I said, I'm super excited about what the new product's going to look like.
Yep
... as we start rolling out the new features.
Yeah, and so you started rolling out some of those features in September-
Mm-hmm
... you know, with a sort of a goal of maybe being more fully rolled out in first quarter of 2024 here.
Yep.
Are you still on track to sort of hit that target? And maybe what's been early feedback from your subscribers?
Yeah, so we've, it's what I call rolling thunder, right?
Mm-hmm.
So, unlike in the past, where you kind of have this kind of everything would roll out at once. You know, you'd have this new product experience, and it rolls out. This is where new features are basically rolling out weekly. Weekly is probably the best way of looking at it.
Mm-hmm.
So we started early on with a unified asking experience, so there's a common user experience that wasn't there in the past. It's there today. Behind the scenes, we've got what's called an orchestrator, which allows, as students interact with our platform, and they ask questions that we don't have an archive for. Does it go to an automated answering-
Mm-hmm
... which is much cheaper, or does it go to our traditional experts, which is more expensive?
Mm-hmm.
And, we've talked on the last earnings call about we start introducing some of the LLMs-
Mm-hmm
In Q4, so I make sure I get the term. That started to happen. We've got LLMs that are in production-
Mm-hmm
That students say they have access. They don't even know. They just-
Yeah
It just happens.
It's just a part of the experience.
It's just part of the experience now.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, those will continue to roll out in Q1, and what we call multi-turn chat, which if you've been on OpenAI site or any of those sites, it's just that ability to converse with... That starts rolling out this quarter. You know, as we get towards the end of the quarter, getting into Q2, we should have most of those things rolled out.
Mm-hmm.
When you kind of do a snapshot of where we were a year ago and where we are, the product looks probably fundamentally different. I was just in a one-on-one meeting, and one of the investors said: "Wow, your product experience is just so different than it was just three months ago.
Yeah.
We're like: "Yeah, that's the point.
Yeah.
He said: "It's just. I love the fact that it's just one access point into it and the way it works." I said: "That's the point.
Yeah.
And so that will continue to roll out through Q1 into the second half. And it just... It will never really end.
Yeah.
But the bulk of what we're trying to get into the product will be most likely, you know, certainly gonna be in the first half.
Yes. You had a question?
Mm-hmm. You rolling? If I can close. Those are.
Yeah, so the one, it is a little bit different, right? Because they offer it through the university. We're a little bit of a different animal, as it were. We go direct to the student. So, to answer your question, it's certainly not perceptible. It's not something that we have been necessarily tracking. And we do track by large, major universities-
Mm
... as far as the penetration, what we have at those universities. There's nothing that we have seen, certainly over the last few semesters, where we've seen a precipitous change. So-
They have a point.
Yeah.
First, those...
Yeah. Yeah, but that's different, right? So they're getting their. We don't provide books anymore. So we're just providing help when students get stuck. So it's just a different animal, as it were. That we don't really compete against that. I think that's Bartleby, if I recall.
Yeah.
BNED does that.
You'll get the course content and all your curriculum-
Yeah
From them.
We don't.
Then, where we find students, at least in our survey work, is they'll have the supplemental, sort of Chegg Study or other study tools to help them get through sort of that course content.
They used to have a service like that, but they recent-
Yeah, called Bartleby.
Bartleby.
Yeah.
They recently sold that. We
To Learneo. Yep.
To, yeah, to Learneo. So yeah, it's just a different animal.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Good. Mm-hmm.
Uh, but-
Of ours?
Yeah.
A very large percentage.
Mm-hmm.
Which-
Oh, yeah, yeah. So the vast majority of the students we serve today are STEM, right? Which is getting into what you just said, it's the hard sciences. It's the-
Yeah.
Oh, God, no, it's more than 50%. The vast majority of our service is STEM. I would, I would say it's. I don't know the exact number, but it's got to be close to 90%.
Mm-hmm.
We're around STEM, right? It's around those hard sciences where it's, you know. And so that's one of the beauties of. You brought up a, I mean, a really good point here, is you go to some of the more generic, you know, LLMs, whether it's OpenAI, Anthropic, whoever it is, is they struggle with those hard sciences. That's where we excel. And that's where when we talk about developing our LLMs, is we're training them against the hundreds of millions of pieces where we've got those, that hard data. That's what is being trained. And so we've got. And so that's what we're doing, and so, and that's where, you know, we. I'm not saying we, we don't even believe. We clearly differentiate ourselves.
You bolstered that functionality backwards, and Math Solver was 2019, 2018?
Oh, my gosh, Math Solver. Yeah, that's taking me back a few years, but yes-
Yeah
... we bolstered that.
Yep.
You know, yeah, and so. So the core of our—Not all of our subscriptions are STEM-based, but the core, the 90% is that hard science, that hard math, that it's less the softer subjects. Yeah. I don't know how ChatGPT does their LLMs, and I'm certainly not an engineer, so let me just say that with a huge caveat. All I do know is that our provider, Scale AI, is a big player in this marketplace. And what we're doing with our LLMs is we're using our own internal database, and not in content. I use the word internal content to train them.
And that content has already been proven to be, you know, high degree of accuracy. And, you know, there's, you know, I think we've got 26 LLMs that are currently under development. We have a few that, I mean, a few that are already deployed. But, you know, as we get to the end of the development of the LLMs, we'll have 26 different subject matters that will have that capability, and more likely in the future, more. I mean, one of the things that we... That is an added bonus to us as far as going down the AI route is, and particularly as we're getting more automated answers, is we do believe that it opens up beyond those STEM hard subjects.
We can, you know, it starts to open up. I'll call it the softer subjects-
Mm-hmm.
The social sciences and things like that. So yeah, so that's, that, that's the route we're taking.
Well, and the value, I would imagine, is when you're creating these content-based LLMs, the data is essentially all the answers, questions and answers you've already answered, so-
Mm-hmm.
If you're training them on that sort of structured data set, that would, over time, limit, you can't really fully eliminate hallucinations-
Yeah.
But it can limit hallucinations.
Hallucinations.
Relative to if you're just pulling answers in from the open internet.
E- exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we're. Like I said, we're. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Right. Love the interaction, though.
I love it, though. Yeah.
Yeah, we've got more questions.
Keep asking questions if you have them.
One of the things I wanna bring up is the strength of Chegg's brand, because it's obviously-
Mm-hmm.
I think how you... The viral nature of the business and the brand is really what I think is a big part of what drove sort of your market-leading share. You know, recently there was a short report out that was starting to question, and again, posting, social media posts that maybe Chegg was falling a little bit out of favor with students and in favor of some free alternatives. I'm just curious, you know, you do a lot of survey work on talking to your subscribers. Where do you think the Chegg brand stands, like, in terms of value with your college students today? I mean, is there any way... What do you need to do to improve it if there's been any degradation?
Yeah, we do brand surveys all the time.
Mm-hmm.
And I can tell you that the Chegg brand, at least as we survey our students, is as strong as ever.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, we've talked about this before. It's, you know, I don't think there's a... Certainly in the US, I don't think there's a college student in the US that hasn't heard of Chegg.
Yeah.
Many students obviously uses, you know, there's, it's, it's not unusual to see in social media, "I Chegged it.
Yep.
You know, when you become a verb, that's a good thing-
Yep
... usually. And so we, it's not something that we have seen.
Mm-hmm.
I do think that there's, you know, it's funny because, right, it's when you think about, you know, where students find us or work with. I mean, things have changed on social media. I mean, TikTok now is a big deal-
Mm-hmm
Whereas five years ago, TikTok was what? I, you know-
Yeah.
So it would've been, Instagram or something like that. So it does evolve.
Mm-hmm.
I do think we're seeing, you know, it certainly evolves towards TikTok, but it's as strong as ever.
Yep.
And it's what drives much of our model. If you think about what drives our financial model, which is unique relative to a lot of others, we don't spend a lot of what I call paid marketing-
Mm-hmm
... to drive traffic to our site.
Yep.
Now, we have some around the fringes, but ultimately, you know, the brand is what, you know, it's either SEO or the brand that drives-
Mm-hmm
Students to our platform. And that allows us, you know, when you look at it purely financial, and I'm a financial guy-
Mm-hmm.
It, you know, that drives, you know, that helps drive margins where, you know, where, you know, I mean, but yeah, you know, you don't see a lot.
Mm-hmm.
But no, brand is strong.
Okay.
Yes. Okay, that's some pretty good detailed questions. So first thing is on the investments. If anything that goes to long-term investments means that the maturity date is beyond one year. It's just a-
Bond.
It's just bonds, right? So I look at that as equivalent... Now, I can't show it as ca- but it's equivalent as cash as far as I'm concerned. And so that's—don't look at that as anything other than that. It's just... And, you know, given some of the interest rate environment that we've seen over the last, call it 12, 15 months, you know, we've been able to do pretty well by locking in some pretty good rates. I mean, it's really interesting. You know, 12 months ago, we didn't—well, 18 months ago, we didn't pay a lot of attention to interest rates or cash on our balance sheet 'cause we're...
But, you know, we're generating close to $50 million of interest income this past year. The year before, I think it was $12 million. I may have the numbers off a little bit, but the point being is, and so we've locked those things in. As far as the convertibles go, we've got two convertibles. We've got the 2025s and the 2026s. The coupon on the 2025s, I believe, is 1/8, so basically nothing, and the coupon on the 2026s is 0. So they're not costing us anything.
Right.
Well, yeah, so the question becomes is, what is the 2026s trading, and does it make sense to buy them back? We have been buying them back. So, we did two large purchases of primarily the 2026s last year. And to the extent that we can buy them back, where the yield to maturity makes sense for us, we will do that. The last repurchase we did of the 2026s was at $0.80 on the dollar, right? So at a fairly sizable discount. Makes a ton of sense for shareholders.
Mm-hmm.
We did the smart thing, and we will continue to evaluate that. What we have found, and you saw a slightly different way of deploying capital last quarter, where we went and did an ASR, an accelerated share repurchase, is that there weren't a lot of sellers of the bonds. That people were happy having a, you know, back then, I forget the exact yield to maturity, around 7%, folks were happy just hanging onto them. So we actually couldn't buy back the bonds where it made sense not to hold onto the cash. So we always make that evaluation once a quarter. We'll do that post our earnings call on February 5th, like we do every quarter.
But if we can buy back bonds at a discount that makes sense to our shareholders, we'll do it in a heartbeat. I just don't know that off the top of my head. I think the 2025s are in the 50s, and the 2026s are above 100. I don't know the exact number, but it's, you know... I hope I have that problem where they convert, okay? Just so you know.
Back to the fundamentals.
Mm-hmm.
So in 2023, with the focus on the AI efforts, you know, other priorities sort of got put to the side for the time being, rightfully so, and I'm talking about international.
Mm-hmm.
A big focus was localization sort of early-
Mm
In the year when we were on this stage last year.
Mm-hmm.
Now that you're sort of at a point where the AI functionality is rolling out, you're feeling sort of maybe more caught up there, where do sort of localization efforts stand, or how do you think about prioritization of those again?
Well, okay, so we're not quite there on the AI side-
Yeah
So I don't wanna get ahead of ourselves here.
Yes, yes, right.
We are still, you know, all the wood... not all the wood, but the vast majority of the wood behind the arrow right now is on AI.
Mm-hmm.
We're singular focused to getting that great new multi-turn chat, interactive experience to our subscribers. On the international slide, a little bit different. So yes, did that take a little bit? Did some of the developments take a little bit of a backburner? A little bit.
Mm-hmm.
But where we, where we really made some strides is in pricing.
Yep.
We went much more aggressive on pricing international, outside the U.S., in many markets.
Mm-hmm.
The goal, and we've said this, you know, if you listened to me a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, the goal right now outside the U.S. is to get subscribers.
Mm-hmm.
Clearly pricing, particularly in the non-English-speaking countries, you know, you just can't charge $15 or $20 in India-
Mm-hmm
-per month.
Yeah.
I mean, it just doesn't happen.
Yeah, it doesn't work.
I mean, just go take a look at Netflix. I think they've got a $3 or $4 dollar equivalent.
They're like 60% discount to-
So yeah
to US pricing, I think.
Exactly. So, we've been more aggressive on that.
Mm-hmm.
So we spent, we did more of that.
Mm-hmm
in 2023 than we would've anticipated when I was here a year ago.
Mm-hmm.
And we've seen some really nice success, and it's a success in two areas, right? One is, you always look, the immediate impact is, what does it do to conversion, right?
Yeah.
Does it convert better? Does it convert better?
Yeah.
Convert better. But the other side is, do they stick around long?
Yep.
And so what we have seen in many, not all, but many of the international countries, is we've had at least as big a benefit from retention-
Oh, nice
than we had as conversion, right?
Okay.
So, you know, if you can get a student to stay on an extra month-
Mm-hmm
-that's huge.
Yeah.
Right? And we've seen that in some countries where they've stayed on an extra month.
Mm-hmm.
and so, you know, yeah, so I think that's an area while it gets kind of clouded in the general subscription, the big pile of subscription revenue-
Mm-hmm
That's been an area where we've seen some really nice successes in 2023.
Maybe the third factor of that is obviously the factor on ARPU. Do you, do you feel like that, with the progress you've made in countries like India, that you're sort of through the sort of ARPU headwinds that the localization does? Or how, how should we think about maybe the impact of ARPU on as we think about-
Well, I mean, I personally hope we have continued headwinds from an ARPU standpoint-
Yes
-because that means we're driving more subscribers outside the U.S.
Yep.
I know it's a-
Yeah
It's an unusual thing to say.
Yeah.
I'll take ARPU headwinds if we start to see some really, you know, some meaningful growth outside the U.S. So I don't get concerned about... You know, when we look at it inside the company-
Mm-hmm
We separate the U.S. from the other countries.
Mm-hmm.
And so we, you know, if you think about the U.S., yes, ARPU is important, right? So, and we've seen ARPU increases over the last several years.
Yep.
A combination of the price increases that we did in 20... Excuse me, in 2022, and then the increase of retention rates. Outside the U.S., it, that's more about how do we drive subscriber growth, and if that hasn't, you know, if it has headwinds on the overall ARPU... truth be told is I'll take that if we can drive more subscribers outside the U.S.
Absolutely. Before we end on, like, financial expectations, I've gotta touch on financial leadership a little bit. There's some mighty big shoes to fill up here. But, you know, with the timeframe of, you know, your impending retirement, you know, where do things stand in terms of finding a successor?
Well, it's... Yeah, they're actually not very big shoes. You've got bigger shoes than I've got, so I'm just, I'm just saying. You know, we're in the process of doing the search.
Mm-hmm.
Obviously, it's ongoing.
Mm.
It's active. I am confident that we're gonna have a really good leader, and I actually think it's good for the company. I've been at the company, in case people don't know, 12 and a half years. I actually think this is a great time to have a new leader.
Mm-hmm.
To have somebody that can bring a different perspective. My guess is my voice is getting a little tired with certain people.
Not with me.
No. Okay. So I'm excited about the, you know, bringing in a new leader.
Mm-hmm.
I think everybody will be. You know, once again, I can't say who that is going to be-
Mm-hmm
... but I can assure you that it'll be somebody that brings a great perspective.
Mm-hmm.
I do believe—I... You know, I've always said this at our company. I like the—there's this real balance between longevity—
Mm-hmm
... and newness.
Yep.
I like having longevity at the company, and if you take a look at our-
Mm
... and even look at our executive team, you know, there's 7 of us that have been there 10 or more years.
Yeah.
Which is interesting, right?
Mm-hmm.
But I also like the newness of having new people come in.
Yep.
The thing about the newness of... You get a different perspective. One of the challenges you have when you've been at a company a long time, the blinders kind of come in.
Mm-hmm.
What happens when you get new people is you get a... And I think that freshness-
Mm
... is important. And so I'm excited about whoever takes that role, have that, that freshness. And I'll be watching from the sidelines as a shareholder.
Mm-hmm.
I will still be a shareholder, and... But, I think it's exciting times for the company. I really do.
Maybe just to end, you know, with a little less than two minutes left. What kind of financial profile would, you know, should we expect this person to be walking into, you know, in terms of how you're thinking about the balance still of growth versus profitability, you know, moving forward for the business?
I think it's both. I mean, you know, I think our immediate priority is to reinvigorate growth.
Mm-hmm.
Right? I think that if you take a look at any metric as far as creating shareholder value, which is... The business we're in is creating shareholder-
Mm
Value. You know, the multiple, you know, at least doubles, if not, it triples-
Mm-hmm.
If you can demonstrate that you're a growth story.
Mm-hmm.
That is the most important. The beauty of our model is that we're, you know, we're a highly profitable company.
Mm-hmm.
Right? And so, I would suspect that if I think about our company over a period of time, you know, once we start to grow again-
Mm-hmm
Do I believe that margins will likely grow? The answer is yes, and I think it's a combination of things. I think as we think about the AI product, other than the fact the user experience I think is gonna be... it's gonna be fabulous-
Mm-hmm
Is t he back-end benefit should even be better, and so-
Yeah
It should help us increase. So if we're starting to do automated answering and more and more automated answering, where it's, call it less than $1-
Mm-hmm
Versus where we're in the past we were spending $2 or more to answer a question with a human being-
Yep
I think there's some-
It's gonna drive the margin back.
Economies, is it gonna? It should translate into, you know, increased margins. And so I, I think that, as I, as I think about, you know, this year and the new person coming in, we've got a very, very, you know, got a great balance sheet. We're, we're at scale.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the only challenge going forward is invigorating growth, and I think the new product and other things we're doing, we will do that.
Excellent. Great place to leave it. Andy, it was an honor to share the stage-
Okay
With you these last few years, and I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, everybody.
Okay
For all the active questions and input.