Hello everyone and welcome back, you know, for the next session of the AutoTech and AI Conference. Chris McNally here, Evercore ISI, Head of Auto and Mobility, and it's our pleasure to have the CEO and CFO of Cerence, Stefan Ortmanns and Tom Beaudoin. Obviously, Rich as well. Thanks so much for joining, gentlemen. I think most of you are somewhat familiar with Cerence, spun off from Nuance in 2019. You know, a software Pure Play, Tier 2 automotive supplier fully levered toward the in-cabin vehicle experience with auto grade voice recognition, mobility, interior focused AI. Cerence is really the largest player inside the automotive grade voice recognition, working with over 80 OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers with their tech in over 450 million cars.
you know, being a software company within auto service can also generate very high gross margins while levered to an expanding user and reoccurring base. Stefan, Tom and Rich, thank you so much for joining us today. Stefan, you know, maybe in your own words, you can kind of just, you know, give a brief introduction of your long history at Cerence, you know, your more recent history of taking over as CEO and what are the major things that, you know, we should be looking for, not only just this year, but the multi-year forward path, you know, for this exciting area of software and AI in the car?
Thank you so much for the great introduction, Chris, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I'm actually based in Germany and traveling frequently to the States and also to Asia Pacific here. As you all know, Cerence is a global leader in voice assistance for the transportation market. When saying transportation market, our core business is related to cars, yeah, but also trucks, two-wheelers, and we see also some appetite for recreational vehicles, and so on, so forth. Since the spin off from Nuance, where I was running the automotive division, and prior to this, I was also running for Nuance R&D and professional services, we really have accelerated the number of innovative products for this market, especially for the transportation segment.
We are providing the OEMs with conversational AI solutions and going now also beyond voice. For example, Multi-Seat Intelligence, right. We are creating bubble zones for every single place in the car. emotional AI based on our neural net technology, embedded and cloud, and the detection also of to recognize the emotions of a driver and passengers, right. Even the interaction with objects inside and outside the car. For a year ago, we have launched Cerence Look, for example, with Mercedes, right. We launched also EVD, the detection of emergency vehicle cars, with various companies now, with OEMs now. In general, we see that conversational AI-based applications are a strategic priority for more or less all OEMs across the globe. The digital car, the software defined car is also driving our roadmap.
As we said also at our analyst day in November, we are moving towards a more immersive in-cabin experience. This go far beyond conversational AI, far beyond speech. As you already know, we are working with more than 80 OEMs across the globe. We have really a diversified network of partners and OEMs. That was actually very important to me. We have advanced ourself from a component supplier to a real innovation partner for most of the OEMs. We have actually designed together with OEMs new applications.
To give you also an idea what we did recently, again, with Mercedes, Ola Källenius mentioned also a couple of weeks ago when he had this roadshow in the Valley, he said, "Okay, the most innovative feature for the new cars is the so-called JustTalk." It's a natural interaction with the digital assistant, the so-called MBUX system, right? Here there is no need for having a push to talk button or a predefined wake word anymore, right? It's just a typical interaction like talking to a person, you're talking to a car, right? The intelligence we brought in is really based that the systems, the digital car can detect whether it's a command or it's just a conversation.
Again, for us, what is important is that we need to drive, that we need to accelerate the speed for innovation, and we're doing pretty well. That's also the feedback from all of the OEMs. We're doing a lot of innovation days with OEMs that we have this interaction and roadmap alignments here. This is actually also the roadmap towards the so-called immersive in-cabin companion solution from us. In the past, a couple of years ago, we started from technology, then we created the Cerence Assistant. Now we are in the phase of the Cerence Co-Pilot bringing in proactive AI. Also the future is about also teachable AI. Maybe I stop here for the introduction.
Yeah. That's perfect 'cause you touched on a lot of the questions I'm gonna dive into. Maybe, you know, Tom or Stefan, you know, if we look at the last, you know, two years, I think it's been no secret, right? That the, you know, the road for Cerence has been, you know, somewhat windy. We're really starting to see that 2023 is this transition year. You know, maybe you could talk about, you know, some of the improvements, the operational changes that have been made over that time period, you know, some of the changes to prepaid and fixed revenue orders and how the organization has changed.
Really, you know, how much have you also thought about, you know, that in terms of getting investors to then refocus on, you know, the strong secular trends within Cerence? You've provided some of these pro forma royalty metrics, you know, et cetera, that have been very helpful that we found to track the underlying business. Maybe you both could you take a stab at that question.
Yeah, Chris, maybe let me start first, then I will also ask Tom to share his view. Tom and I are pretty much aligned. As you know, we have a long history. We are more or less friends, right? We're working really well together here. Now, as said before, right, so for us, for Cerence, what is the most important thing to do is driving innovation, right? That's really essential to our long-term success for the company, right? At the Investor Day in November, we unveiled our so-called Destination Next strategy and plan for growth, right? You know, we have a really global footprint. We are working on-site with teams in Korea, in Japan, in North America, in Europe, in China, actually everywhere, right? We have this strong vertical expertise, right?
Also a strong portfolio, yeah. I think now our collaborative innovation approach with top OEMs and new EV makers like NIO is actually paying off. To give you also some ideas here, right? In the first half of our fiscal year, we're now in Q3, we had various strategic design wins against the big tech players, right? Also three important win backs in China, in Europe and North America. Yeah. We see also that based on our scalable AI technology, we can leverage those technology also for other adjacencies, right? Like two-wheelers. Also here last quarter we launched the first two-wheelers with our solution in China. We are expecting two more this quarter, one in India and one with a legendary two-wheeler manufacturer in North America, right?
And also for becoming more effective, more productive, and also driving even more innovation faster from innovation to implementation. We have also reorganized our R&D team, right? As you maybe have seen from one of our latest announcement, Iqbal Arshad, who is well known, he brings in a lot of ideas and expertise and capabilities. He worked for Motorola, for Google and Lenovo, right? He is running the CTO office. Under the CTO office, we have all core technologies and platforms, including Connected Cloud. Six, nine months ago, we hired Nils Schanz, who is a real expert from Mercedes, who was driving actually the digital in-car experience at Mercedes, right? He is running all of our products, solution and professional services.
We're seeing now that we are also much, much faster in the deployments of our new solutions. Maybe I stop here. Tom.
Yeah. Chris, thank you for that. You know, I have a long history with the company going back to 2008, and then actually led the program to spin the auto business from Cerence, and then joined the board at the time of the spin. Became the CFO just about a year ago in early May, and really spent the first quarter, you know, getting down to a level that you don't necessarily get to as a board member and having long conversations with Stefan and the team. We're in the process of getting ready for, you know, guidance for FY23. It was pretty clear that it was difficult for people to truly see the strength of the business, right?
During the pandemic in the auto, we had these requests for higher prepaids that we accommodated some of our customers with. Even though there was a lot of transparency around those prepaids, it was difficult for people to understand the burn-off and when that was going to happen. We made the decision actually, for Q4 last year that we would not do any last Q4, and that we would on a go-forward basis, manage the fixed contracts to about $40 million.
That was a level that Stefan, myself, the head of sales thought we could manage to and maintain the strong customer relations with the small group of Tier 1s, mostly Japanese and Koreans, that had used this mechanism to help drive down cost, and we get the cash benefit of it for many years. We knew that was gonna have an impact as we held those to that level and as we burned through the consumption of the higher level during, as I said, the auto production decline and the pandemic. We stuck to that, right? You know, we laid out our long range plan for, well, our guidance for 2023 and our long range plan for out to FY 26.
One of the things we said is, you know, this is a fairly predictable business, particularly in the short term. We've had now 3 straight quarters of achieving the high end and slightly above the high end of our guidance. We've stuck to the $40 million commitment.
We'll do some more in Q4. We'll probably be in a range of, say, 29-40. We might be a little bit lower. The reason for that is, we're trying to control the discount levels that of course those customers ask for, and we wanna be in a position to potentially say no. You know, these are strong relationships and we'll see. We understand these customers very well. All the things that Stefan, you know, the focus on innovation, driving strong operations, I think we're in probably, and Stefan can talk about this, a really good competitive position.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe even stronger than back in November. We, we did, as you said, increase some more data and information to try to help our investors. You know, I think, you know, directionally we're on track to that multi-year plan. Exactly how it'll, you know, play out, because, you know, we're dependent upon the OEMs to hit those start of productions that drive the higher revenues, the higher connected services, you know, it's a, an effort amongst the OEMs and the chip manufacturers and us and the Tier 1s. But, you know, the strength of the portfolio, the customer relationships, the global reach-
Mm-hmm
I think still position us in the medium and long term, you know, to get to what we really laid out in that multi-year plan.
Mm-hmm
is, you know, double-digit growth and 30% EBIT is. There's no reason in the medium to long term that this business can't achieve that. We'll lay out the guidance for 2024 and an update to that multi-year plan when we do our Q4 earnings in November.
That's great, Tom. I think you've been very consistent about, you know, FY23 takes the brunt of that, you know, that burn-off. There may be some left in FY24, but FY24 we'll be able to start to draw that line between the big growth of FY24 and FY26. Really appreciate that. You know, there's always a lot of generalists on the line, so maybe we could revisit, you know, the age-old topic which, you know, we would get this. The number one question we've always get on Cerence from day one, you know, how do we think about, you know, the sort of the assistants, the Apple CarPlays, the Alexas, you know, the competitive voice, but, you know, particularly when we think about Apple and Google.
You know, could you discuss the advantages of automotive grade? You know, again, this is, this is ad nauseam. You've done this before. Also how some of these, you know, sort of consumer applications, you know, are collaborative of with you. You know, one of the things that we're actually seeing, which is very topical now, is you're sort of seeing this binary reaction to Apple CarPlay, where many wanna use it, but then you're seeing some who wanna move away because they want everything to be, you know, internal proprietary to themselves. So,
Mm-hmm
it's an age-old topic, but it's sort of getting a, you know.
Yeah.
a second life. If you could just review it maybe, Stefan, because
Yeah.
It always comes up to the generalist of how do these two things work together? You know, frenemies versus collaborators.
Yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right, Chris. Yeah. I think for us, and we developed this model already a couple of years ago, it's a kind of coexistence, right? My understanding is that most of the OEMs want to own the business logic, right? Finally, also the branding and the stickiness to their customers, right? That's very important. Now, based on such an approach, right, I think also we as Cerence are well positioned for providing the OEMs with our so-called OEM-friendly platform, right? Embedded cloud, we can share the data, which is also very important, the cloud data, that they can monitor the data maybe afterwards, right? We see also first attempts here from various OEMs, yeah.
You know, CarPlay is, in my view, still an important add-on for a car, right? I mean, yeah, we have seen the discussion with GM. We saw similar discussions a couple of years ago with Polestar/Volvo, right? I mean, CarPlay is a nice feature, is a nice application. On the other hand, I believe with all the new innovations we are bringing in, or even others, right, I think, we are moving towards a so-called immersive in-cabin experience. Then, of course, it's very important that the OEM, as I said, owns the business logic, right? We are helping the OEM for the branding and everything, right?
For example, in most cases where users are leveraging, for example, CarPlay, it's actually based on our predefined wake word. Yeah. Similarly with Alexa, in various OEMs', car lines, right? Then the OEM has the full control, right? Even more importantly is we bring in all the practical expertise. You know, we have a lot of discussion of ChatGPT and so on and so forth, but this is just generalized, yeah? Here we bring for every single car line, for example, car knowledge, into the game based on our own language model solutions and advanced with generative AI. Yeah. I think that that's the future, and we see a huge appetite for, from all of the big, top OEMs.
Stefan, maybe just if we could, you know, sort of unpack that a little bit more. In a very practical application, could you give a, just a generic example of where CarPlay sort of the limits are over, and then sort of everything immersive from Cerence begins? Like, the functionality of, "Okay, you want this is all CarPlay does. Cerence will be the voice, but can't do X, Y, and Z from Cerence.
For example, just think about proactive AI. Yeah. CarPlay doesn't have all the access to the sensors in the car, right? We have. Yeah. When a warning light is blinking in the car, right, we can ask the system easily and say, "Hey, what's this?" Yeah. We can combine it with this, with Look, with gaze, with gesture, right? We can also say we're driving around, we have the GPS information, say, "Hey, tell me more about this building, about this castle or this restaurant over there." Yeah. These are the cool features which are coming more and more in the new cars.
Perfect. That leads really nicely to my next question, which is, can you just give us a roadmap of some of these next gen products which, you know, essentially everything. I think of Cerence as everything exciting I've ever seen sort of to come in the car, and it's a question of when it comes in the car in layers of when the OEMs will adopt it, and some of it is turning your bookings into start of production. Could you just maybe, I don't know, rank order some of the new features that are coming in sort of order of we'll see first in the car versus maybe takes a year or two to, you know, get enough cars that will deploy it?
You know, we have, we are now at our so-called Cerence Co-Pilot. Yeah. We had, what I said, various strategic design wins in the first half of the fiscal year. That's actually the interaction with the car, with the centers of the car, but also with the surroundings. For example, bringing in information of road conditions, traffic conditions, right? Then the system can trigger an interactive discussion with the driver, with the passengers. Yeah. We see also huge appetite for emotional AI, detecting the emotions of a driver and responding in the right way here, right? This is also coming in the next two years, right?
We see the long term is actually this so-called immersive entertainment in-cabin experience, where we bring in a lot of new features, right? Not just the Multi-Seat Intelligence, where we have bubble zones for every seat in the car, right? That we can also interact with the car simultaneously in the back, in the front, the co-driver, the driver, right? This is coming also within a time horizon of 1 to 2 years, right? For doing this, right, so we have our scalable AI stack, we have the Teachable AI stack, and the Teachable AI stack is maybe a bit new here because we understand that we also have to learn from the consumers, from the drivers and passengers in the car, right?
The goal is to do this kind of adjustments within a week or within days, right? Also here we have 2 pilots ongoing, one with a well-known EV maker, and one with a well-known luxury OEM. These are the opportunities we have, right? Our strong interaction and our strong collaborative approach with those OEMs across the globe brings us also to a very crisp, rock solid roadmap. The team and the CTO and the CPO are working against this roadmap and milestones.
Stefan, on some of those products, we talk about the hardware partners, to the extent that you can. I mean, when I think of emotional AI, I'm thinking of DMS, you know, hardware that also would go with gaze. When I hear bubble zones, I'm thinking, you know, Harman and, you know, hi-fi audio and individual sound zones. You know, any of how you work with other, you know, Tier 1s...
to partner to be sort of the software or the AI on top of hardware that may already be in the car?
First of all, our solution is hardware and operating system agnostic, right? We are collaborating with NVIDIA or with Qualcomm or other semiconductors here. We are also leveraging the expertise, for example, of microphone companies here, bring in more microphones, for example, exterior microphones will help us also to have this interaction with pedestrians, outside the car, yeah, by closed windows, right? I mean, this is also coming or just talk to your car outside, being outside the car. Here we have also some partnerships, you mentioned it, for example, DMS here. Also here, we're collaborating with companies like Seeing Machines, Smart Eye.
There are many more for bringing really for driving and creating this immersive experience and for to give you also some more concrete examples from one of the top three OEMs in terms of volume, right? They have asked us to drive the complete implementation and interaction, including DMS. Then of course, we are working also across the globe with all first tier supplier. It could be a Bosch, as you mentioned, a Harman, a Visteon, right?
Mm-hmm.
It depends actually on the OEM.
And then-
On the preferences.
you know, you showed some of these at, you know, at your Analyst Day. You know, when I, when I think about, you know, like a immersive companion, can you talk about consumer reception has been, you know, how you monitor and sort of update, right? 'Cause that's one of the great things is the continual ability to OTA here. How are you observing? Are you doing surveys? Are you getting feedback from the OEM itself?
Yeah.
You know, how, what's the feedback loop?
We are doing our own analytics. Yeah. In some cases we're doing this also for the OEMs. We're doing also joint service with OEMs, yeah, to get also first-hand feedback from their consumers. OEMs are also coming back to us. What I said also, teachable AI based on our multisensory AI platform. That's the future. Here we have already some collaborations, as I mentioned with two big OEMs. Yeah.
Hey, Stefan. Hey, Tom. I have a little question here on sort of the topic du jour and AI and large language models and ChatGPT. You know, maybe you can discuss how some of these latest advancements in AI and, you know, bringing to the forefront of the consumer mind, you know, these large language models, how are those gonna drive improvements in both, you know, your core bread and butter voice technologies and then, you know, broader in-car applications that you may be able to implement now with this sort of conversationalist generative AI?
Good questions. Thank you. I think overall, we have a lot of experience also for this language modeling stuff, right? We're doing this now for many, many years also at Nuance, the early days here. We see actually ChatGPT and other platforms here and China is quite different, as a great opportunity also for us for improving the user experience. Yeah. We have created a so-called car knowledge, right, that goes far beyond car manual with generative AI. 90% is coming from us actually, where we have brought in our expertise and leveraging ChatGPT for the feedback to the drivers or to the passengers here.
Also here, I mean, that actually is another breakthrough because in terms of high accuracy and also our solution is quite effective because we have some knowledge. We're doing all the AI at the beginning as a front end. Yeah. Now we're working also with 10 OEMs on POCs, right? They're really excited about this solution.
Okay. It sounds like you're gonna partner, you know, with an outside third party, for some of the things you'll do with large language models and ChatGPT.
Exactly. That's right.
Excellent. On Cerence Copilot, advancing from this sort of proactive AI to a teachable and then proactive AI, what's the difference? How is it going to improve, the endpoint cabin experience for the driver? Is it?
Mm
going to be this big material shift, or is it going to be more incremental and it's gonna be something that the system learns, and grows with time?
There are actually two parallel tracks, right? First of all, proactive AI means bring everything together, what you know about the situation in the car, right? The surroundings here. As I said, for example, weather condition, road conditions, right? Driver behavior. We launched also a product, especially for this topic, driver behavior, we call it Cerence Link here. If you bring this together, you will have a different interaction, a more personalized interaction with the driver and with the passengers. Teachable AI is, for example, if you have a situation where the system cannot understand or cannot translate the intent of a driver, maybe something is missing in the NLU, that can be always the case, maybe whatever, right? We are learning from the consumers.
That means we are looking into those issues, right, together with the OEMs, with the turnaround time of a week or even less, right? We bring these new intents to the system. Yeah. This is actually also a very important aspect for keeping the solution up to date, right? Always fresh and sexy. Yeah.
Stefan, just a follow-up, 'cause when I think of Copilot, I also think of, you know, sort of the ADAS applications for the, you know, this handoff problem, which we, you know, typically have discussed for, like, level 3 and above. What we've seen with, you know, sort of the Consumer Reports, discussions of things like Ford BlueCruise, you know, there's also this collaborative driving. You change lanes, right? You know, you, am I holding the wheel for that? You know, can I change my mind halfway through? Do you see, you know, as we start to do more of this highway assisted driving, that it's those customers that are very much interested in Copilot? 'Cause it's not only cabin experience, but it's also safety.
There's also an aspect here, right? It's just one aspect of the Copilot, right? To give also some guidance for a driver. If you hand over or have this handoff situation here, with L2, L3 cars, right? That's an important aspect. On the other hand, you see also the detection of the emotional situation of a driver is also very important, right? I mean, then we can also say, "Hey, give him a wake-up call," whatever, right? That was also mentioned in our long-term roadmap where we said, "Okay, we need to go also into health functions here," right? What can we do to detect actually the blood pressure, whatever, or the heart rate of a driver here. We're doing this also, this is still in research, right?
This part also of the next generation of our Co-Pilot.
Perfect. Tom, maybe we shift it back to you a little bit on the numbers. You know, what I'm going through, I'm seeing the questions starting to come in. Could we talk a little bit about bookings in the first half? How you think about it compared to, you know, internal expectations? They could be quite lumpy. You know, you win a gigantic VW, it's a big number. But, you know, what are you seeing in terms of bookings? It's still a very hectic macro environment. Just a little bit about this idea of turning bookings into converting it into revenue. What's that typical lead time? I know there's no one answer, but any guidance that you can give.
Is there a quicker conversion now on some of your newer products than maybe some of the products in the past?
Sure. Thanks, Chris. You know, the first half was still up about, I think, 11% over the second half of last year. It was down a little bit versus the first half of FY22, but I think that goes to the point you raised that these can be lumpy, and they can be large deals. We do have a very strong pipeline for the second half. I think the important thing to look at in Q1 is the 7 strategic deals, including the win backs. As Stefan talked about, one of those win backs we can even deploy quickly to your other question, and replace the incumbent on cars that are shipping. Typically our conversion model from kind of bookings to revenue is kinda 12-18 months.
I think we have seen some slippage to some larger programs. Stefan talked a little bit about that. Some of it's driven by the Tier 1, some of it's driven by the OEMs. Usually when they slip, they extend the current product with us, so we still get revenue-
Mm-hmm
but we might not get the revenue at the higher value of the more feature rich, you know, new platform. Stefan alluded to, you know, we're driving initiatives and opportunities to shorten that, right? As we, you know, strengthen the deployment of those technologies. I think that's why we don't see medium and long term, the PS being a big growth driver, but a continuing important element of the business. Just lastly, at the Investor Day we introduced the five-year backlog view of the business going out and how that provides kind of strong visibility to the business. We will update that with our guidance and our update to the multi-year plan in November. I think that's an important metric.
because unfortunately, inside of bookings, you can have bookings deals that are 3 years long or 10 years long, right?
Mm-hmm.
Every variation in between. Whereas the five-year backlog really shows how you, how that really plays out through, you know, I think a reasonable planning horizon. Not to minimize bookings, because I do think it really shows that we're continuing to win, that we're taking advantage of new solutions in the competitive environment. Then we've tried to create some information around, you know, the strength of those bookings from a strategic position.
Tom, the last one for me. Doug's going through some of the questions that have come in online. If I think about the competitors in those RFPs, right, you know, obviously you have a really high share, right, you know, on core. you know, it could be in the 70% range. Could you talk about are you seeing more competition from sort of the Google Automotive Services type, where there's a multi-product, or, you know, your iFLYTEKs and SoundHound AI in U.S. and China? I know that's a, it's a high level question, but is it? If I had to look at those two buckets, I think of them as two different types of competitors.
Oh.
Which one is coming up more in RFPs?
I'll let Stefan take this, 'cause he's.
Yeah.
he's working daily with our sales teams.
It's actually a mix here, right? I mean, we see, in the RFQs, of course, Google, Amazon. We see also SoundHound and others in China. It's iFLYTEK, iFLYTEK, Baidu and others, right? They are all in. Nevertheless, I think, what plays in our favor is our collaborative approach, right? In some cases we are defining actually with the OEM, the RFQ, right? We need to know what we have to do, right? On the other hand, it's also a philosophy, right? I mean, not all OEMs want to give their heart, the future to a Google or to an Amazon, right? Who owns the data again, right? That's the key question. Who owns the branding, right?
I mean, you can easily detect there's a Google solution, there's an Amazon solution, right? And here I think we have some huge advantages, right? And what I said also, right, so I think we made a tremendous boost in terms of performance over the last three years.
Tom, I'll go ahead and get in here with a macro question. You know, in your mind, and, you know, I think, you know, in our mind on the desk here, we believe that autos is the one cycle that never really got started post-COVID. There's a lot of recovery still to come. We think, you know, 2024, 2025, 2026 going to be strong years, pending no more black swan events. We just wanted to get your take. Do you feel the macro is getting better? Do you see that reflected in, you know, some of your bookings and the growth that you're seeing? Then, you know, how you feel about the supply chain. Is it easing? You know, do you have visibility from your level into, you know, what maybe the OEMs are seeing right now?
Thanks, Doug. We, you know, we get a lot of information. I mean, we track IHS, we get royalty reports from all of our customers every quarter. You know, our sales teams and our PS teams are talking to our customers all the time. We're seeing gradual improvement, right? When we started our planning cycle, I think IHS was at 7%. We planned about 3% for FY23. They moved down. They're at 4%. We're pretty much on top of them for the rest of our fiscal year. They're not projecting.
huge growth, but a continued growth over the next year or 2. That's pretty close to what we had put in our multi-year plan, so I don't think there's any major differences there. You know, auto, I think, just there's regional differences that we're seeing, right? There's continuing supply chain issues. There's, I don't know, an article I read a 1 week or so ago that the age of cars is increasing in the U.S.-
Yeah.
quite substantially. you know, and then you've got all the financing issues. The good news is that there's growth but, you know, who knows? I think the real issue, though, is we can continue to grow based on increasing our features and functionality in our embedded product, attaching more connected services to those platforms, and increasing that PPU across the, our... At 53% penetration, that's not what's gonna drive our long-term growth. It's gonna help, all of this innovation, all of these relationships with the automobiles and getting more value for our solutions is, to me, the much bigger driver.
Tom, as a follow-on, it's asked a couple different ways in the question list. Maybe as our last question. You've mentioned the regional difference. China is always the hot topic because we see price wars, we see the rise of a very strong domestic multi-OEM base, you know, particularly BYD, Geely, in the mass market. Could you just talk about your client and OEM exposure to China? Does this represent a positive trend or do you know, have a strong history with some of the legacies so you have a transition? Anything you can mention about how to think about, you know, Cerence and China, particularly with these big new OEMs like BYD starting to really grow.
I'll do the first part, and then I think Stefan can add a little color. I mean, we've had a strong presence in China for years, even going back to Nuance. We had done some acquisitions. We're in three cities within China. We have a number of R&D and sales and technical teams there, and we're quite closely aligned with those companies. I think Stefan can talk a little bit about some of the success we've had there.
Yeah. We are working literally also with all of the key players in China, BYD, Geely, SAIC, Great Wall Motor, right, and many others, right? We are working also with their software houses together, like, for example, Banma, right, or ECARX. We see also that now the OEMs are adapting also to kind of the oversea approach, where they see that we have huge value in our broad language portfolio, yeah. I think there's a positive trend, and I mentioned also that we had also in the first half of our fiscal year a strategic win back for a big OEM for a domestic solution.
Great. Well, gentlemen, unfortunately, I think that's, that is time. Thank you so much for coming on today, you know, congratulations on the seven, the recent win back. And we look forward to, you know, seeing this next era of Cerence products. For those on the line, if you wanna learn more about Cerence, you know, feel free to email the team. We can send over our models and our recent reports, and also happy to put you in touch with the company. But once again, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining today, and look forward to speaking again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. Thank you.