All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Oppenheimer's 26th Annual Tech Conference. I'm Ed Yang, research analyst, Oppenheimer's Cloud and Communications team. We also got Tim Horan, our group lead. Today, we're very pleased to host Brian Shepherd, CEO, and John Wray, IR of CSG. This is a fireside chat format, please send us your questions into the dashboard. Brian's kind enough to take some time off from his family vacation to join us. No, CSG has not relocated to the Adriatic Sea. Hold off on sending those employment applications just yet. It looks very nice there, Brian. Thanks for spending some time with us.
Yeah, thanks for having us, Ed. Look forward to the discussion today.
Okay. Well, let's just start off with your surprisingly strong first half performance, which you reported last week, stepping up to double digits top line growth. I think that took a lot of investors by surprise. You know, what accounted for the acceleration?
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things. First, it's not surprising to us. We expect to raise our performance each and every quarter. We knew we had a good first half lined up. Now we're focused on a strong Q3 and Q4. I'd, I'd say a lot of investors have asked, every part of our business is performing well. We saw in Q2, our North American cable, our top two customers, grew 7%, even above the top end of our range. We saw global telecom continue to perform well. Then in our digital CX space and the integrated payments, both strong double-digit organic growth. We love what we're seeing in the business.
We love the shape of our sales pipeline and the continued win rate. We also know it's, it's all about the consistency with which we can continue to put up strong numbers. We were excited to raise guidance, but now we've got to deliver a strong Q3 and a strong Q4.
Just talking about technology, you know, obviously AI, that's on everyone's minds. How are you integrating AI and automation into your service offerings?
Yeah, there's a I'd say it varies across a couple different parts of the business. First, at the core, in our digital CX business, we launched CSG Xponent going back about a year ago. It is an AI-driven decisioning, journey analytics, journey orchestration platform that's helping big brands in a wide variety of industry verticals, very targeted use cases, make it easier to do business in a digital world and save costs and improve the ease of their customer experience. What, at the heart of that is it takes customer data and actually all associated with transactional engagement, helps identify next best action in targeted verticals, so it is an AI-driven platform. I'd say that's the area that we've been focused most.
How do we work with our customers to help them understand how they can use data using our decisioning platform and SaaS capability to then improve the ease of how to do business? That's a place I feel like we're ahead of the curve. Now we just got to exploit that opportunity more. The area that we're doing a lot of work, but we have not yet felt the benefit, is how could we run CSG even more efficient in terms of improved efficiency of our R&D and our engineering output, speed and cost of customer deployment, easier and lower cost, c- technical support for our customers, or running our G&A platforms? We've got all of our teams in those various functions now look- working with partner companies to understand how we can leverage it. Hasn't yet rolled through in terms of the results.
We think we can do a lot more around AI, both internally and the value that we could unleash and unlock for our customers' data.
Are you seeing an impact right now, both on the revenue and the productivity side, and how much do you expect in the long term?
In the digital CX side, we're seeing a lot. I mean, we've, we've embedded the capability, whether it's conversational AI, whether it's Assist, whether it's, it's the journey analytics capability, that is a cornerstone of our competitive differentiation. If you look at The Forrester Wave, their equivalent of the quadrant, who's upper right in that? It's actually CSG Xponent, and we're there ahead of Adobe, ahead of Genesys, ahead of Qualtrics. I think this is one of the areas we could do a better job of telling our story. We are industry leader in this space, and we can do more with these big verticals. That part, I love where we're at.
I think in our core business around North American cable and global telecom, I think the industry can do more to leverage the data they have to also improve the, the experience they give to their customers and do more with. I'd say that's an area we're trying to work with a lot of our biggest customers and do more in that space.
Is that what, what sets you apart in AI? Is that your moat, the data, or is it the applications?
For us, it's really. We use a phrase a lot in the sales cycle: "The customer's data makes a lot of things possible." It's CSG's platform that takes that data and turns it into real-time, next-best-action capability in a wide number of use cases, targeted to individual industry verticals, that unlocks the value of their data. For us, it really is more about the journey orchestration and the decisioning platform that we've built, leveraging their data in more powerful ways, and breaking down a lot of the silos we see in a lot of these businesses.
Has, has your AI strategy changed at all with, you know, generative AI, or is this more evolutionary for you and your underlying AI products?
... It's more, I'd say it's more evolutionary. We're also doing, trying to do a lot more with partners. I mean, we work with a lot of the bigger players in this space as well, because we understand we're not gonna have all the largest large data models in some of these industry verticals. We look at, same way when we were an early adopter of cloud and BSS and revenue management, we were gonna leverage the, the giant investments, the tool sets, and the infrastructure of cloud. We're actually doing similar things on the AI, where we think these larger players take advantage of their scale and what they're good at, and be very targeted on the application, the platforms that CSG builds, and that's how we differentiate. I'd, I'd say it's just an acceleration of what we've been doing for quite a few years.
I do think that there's a more applicability in core cable and telecom as well.
outside of, AI, everyone's just focused on the economy. You know.
Yeah
... a bit of an uncertain outlook there, but, you know, but, you know, you reported very strong results. What's the pulse at CSG? What are your clients telling you, and, and what are you seeing?
Yeah, I, I mean, it's true of CSG, and I think it's true of every one of our customers. First, everybody is preparing for potential rainy day scenarios. So far, lots of businesses aren't feeling it in their business, but that doesn't mean they don't they aren't worried one quarter, two quarters, three or four quarters out, including us. I mean, we put up lower profitability back in Q2 of 2022 than we expected, therefore, we had to really get after redirecting costs to driving growth and delivering on our customer commits, and driving more efficiency back into our business. We haven't lost sight of that performance a year ago. We're trying to apply those same things inside our four walls, and I would say every customer is trying to do the same thing. If they can take out cost, they're trying.
Fortunately for us, our software and our SaaS platforms are mission-critical. It's driving order activation, it's driving billing, it's driving, driving payments, and improved customer experience in a digital world. So far, CSG's been above the cut line in almost all of these transactions, which is what's driven a lot of that accelerated top-line revenue growth and improved sales performance. We don't take that for granted because we also know if the economy does start to slow, we may see the cut line change. We gotta be able to deliver improved profitability and strong revenue growth, even if we see some dialing back. We're prepared for, for both. So far we see really good signals in the market right now.
Your customer base, you know, the cable giants are, are major clients. You know, some investors might not view global telco or cable as, as the best neighborhood per se, but you're obviously driving significant growth from that base and also diversifying away from that base. Your thoughts there, and then also just on the recent Comcast extension that you had.
Yeah, I mean, A lot of investors ask me, you know, "What's the one of the misunderstood parts of our, of our thesis?" I think one of it is, there is a lot of nervousness about telecom and North American cable. What we see is it's a business that drives long, sticky revenue, fantastic profitability, high recurring revenue, and it's kind of this bond and a call option. That part of our business has never performed better on the top line and the bottom line, and we think that's a gift that keeps on giving. As long as we are easier to do business with and we bring them more value, there's still a lot of spend in addressable market that we can win inside of our core, and we think that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
I think the second part then is, how do we actually accelerate the revenue growth and the scale in digital CX and payments? That's maybe the, the call option that we think is not priced into the stock, and so the best thing we can do, keep selling more, keep driving more organic growth, and find and unlock good, disciplined acquisitions in each one of those core areas of our business that just add scale and operating leverage to where we are. We, we love what's going on in North American cable and global telecom. We think we can drive a lot of growth and a lot of profitability. That's good news for investors, not bad. On Comcast, they triggered... They had a one-year extension option, so they, they, they triggered that.
It moves the end of the term out from December 31st, 2024, out to December 31st, 2025, at the same pricing. It was expected. It was similar to what they've done before, now we're kind of in that renewal window. We've been there many times over the last 3 decades, and our focus is the same: serve them well, bring them value, outperform any competitor, and it usually works out really well. That's kind of where we're focused at this stage.
Can you remind investors, you know, last time you've had renewals like this, obviously, the, the Charter renewal was, you know, very positive for you, but, maybe the Comcast situation is a little bit different or, nuanced. On a longer-term deal, what have you typically seen in terms of, pricing and, you know?
Yep
expanded service offerings?
Yeah, when I, when I joined the company in 2016, the track record the prior 5 or 6 years had been to give low double-digit discounts. We just said, "That's actually not in our customers' interest," because it meant we weren't going to invest in the, in the kind of future-ready platforms and improved capability. We said we can do better than that, and we think it's good for customers. We just have to help them understand that. Since 2016, we've averaged between 3% and 6% renewal discounts for a 5 or 6-year exclusive long-term relationship. We've also started to talk about, "Let CSG prove how we can save you money, not just by cutting our price, but by displacing a competitor's solution, increasing the land mass that we might give," which has actually driven a lot of growth.
We converted 11 million subscribers off a competitor at Comcast and have 100% of their triple play business running on our order management product catalog billing solutions. Charter followed suit a couple of years later, where they moved 14 million subs off a competitor onto us as part of a great long-term 6-year contract we announced about a year and a half ago. The focus is bringing value. They expect good value, and they expect industry-leading technology platforms that are mission-critical. That's what CSG does. What we're trying to do a better job is help them understand it's not just a procurement exercise of driving our price per sub down, it's actually about how we can unlock value if they do more with us. If we do that, they get great value, we get revenue growth and profit growth, and everybody wins.
That's our focus, that's what we've done well executing the last six or seven years. Now we're in the next cycle with one of them.
Are your customers, looking mainly at this point for productivity benefits or revenue expansion? You know, how does it differ among the three different segments that you serve?
Yeah, I, I, I think it's similar. I think every brand that, that I'm interacting with all around the world, first and foremost, "How do we drive revenue growth? So how could CSG help us grow our revenue faster?" I think that's a given. Secondly, the world's gone digital. "How can you help us simplify our business processes and simplify our tech stack, and be more agile and easier to do business with in a self-assist or in a, an employee-assist environment?" Third, there's a lot of focus on: How could we leverage our data in new and interesting ways? That's really driving the core of our strategy. I'd say it's similar, Ed, whether we're talking about our revenue management solutions for cable and telecom or digital CX or payments in any of these industry verticals.
You touched on it, but, you know, how do you continue to diversify your revenue streams? Is, is the main growth driver gonna be Digital CX? Is payments in there as well, global telco?
Yeah. Yeah, you know, we really talk about our, our revenue management for global telecom and cable kind of together.
Okay.
Then Digital CX can be sold into those same cable and telecom customers, but we've also sold into some of the biggest retail, healthcare, pharmacy, retailers, big tech, government, financial services. We love the faster growth, bigger TAMs of those other verticals, both with direct sales and through channel partner and the integrated payments. You know, as a reminder for some investors that may not be as familiar with the story, in 2017, 7% of CSG's revenue came from a vertical outside of telecom and cable. A few short years later, in Q2 of this year, 28% of our revenue, so we 4x the percentage of revenue coming from exciting, faster growth industry verticals served with our SaaS platforms.
The way we get that even bigger, continue to drive strong double-digit organic growth and continue to do smart, disciplined acquisition in digital CX and payments, so that those faster-growing parts of our business have a higher percentage of our overall revenue, so the compounding effect of that great organic growth can actually accelerate even more of the top-line growth of the overall company. That's what we're laser-focused on doing and what we keep reminding our investors. As we do that, it's not because our cable and telecom is growing slower. Those parts of our, parts of our business have never grown faster. We want both, kind of and, not or.
You mentioned SaaS a couple of times, you know, how, how, how scalable and portable are your offerings? Because, you know, there, there are some solutions where you need to have a lot of, you know, systems integrators or consultants in there, tweak things and customize things. Like, if you have a product that's really working, how easy is it to port it over from a software company to a bank or.
Yeah
... and also within the verticals as well?
Yeah, if you, if you look. I would break, there are some distinctions between, I would say, Digital CX and payments from then the revenue management BSS platforms for telecom and cable. First, if you go to the core, we were the first that had a multi-tenant. Our platform that runs 76% of every subscriber, North American broadband cable, runs on a multi-tenant platform and has for decades. We were, even before it was called cloud, we've been multi-tenant. We also built the first cloud-native solution for the industry, even before the industry was ready to adopt cloud. We've got great capabilities. In that case, these are sticky solutions. They're highly complicated, with lots of integration to dozens, in many cases, hundreds of edge systems.
Typically, you'll see a conversion last 12-18 months, and if you're replacing a billing system for a large telecom company or a cable company. For digital CX and payments, you can see solutions being deployed in 30-60 days. Much faster, much less complicated open API structure that can be easily integrated with the customers working with an SI or us doing it direct with their technology teams. We, we deploy under both models. Little difference between those two.
Got it. I see a, a client question, and, you know, it's a, it's a bit timely, but, you know, DISH is a customer of yours.
Yep.
Guess there was the merger between DISH and EchoStar announced this morning. In that type of scenario, is that additive to your business?
No, I, I would say at this stage, one, DISH has been a customer for going on 3 decades. We, we renewed the contract, we, we... Before DISH launched their first satellite, they were a customer of CSG's. That's how far back we go with DISH, and we renewed the contract, I think it was a 4-year renewal, about 18 months ago. There's more than 2 years left. We run all of their video business. What we don't have is when they acquired the Boost, it ran on a competitor's billing platform, so we don't have the wireless today. We have all the video business. You know, we- it was a good... I think it was a good decision.
Everybody knows the massive investment that Charlie and John and team have been making in building out their wireless network. I think it's a good capital infusion in terms of where they are. We were excited to see it. We just stay focused on trying to help them however we can. If we could help them on the wireless side, we'd love that opportunity. Today, that part of the business is going to a competitor. We'd love to maybe have a shot at that business down the road.
Got it, and, just, staying on wireless, you know, every year there's news of Amazon getting into wireless, and the reports are, you know, often very specific and detailed enough that you get the sense it's a matter of, you know, when and not if. If Amazon were to step into wireless, you know, how would that affect your business?
Yeah, I mean, this kind of goes to an inflection we saw in the market when I joined back in 2016, when CSG had a much smaller footprint and wasn't seen as a leader in wireless. The strategy that the teams put together, that I really helped lead, was the inflection point is the commoditization of voice and data in consumer wireless meant that the complexity that's always existed in the industry around business process and technology was not sustainable. Therefore, a services model, like one of our competitors deploys, was actually an antiquated, outdated business model. What the industry needed was simpler process, simpler tech stack, more agile, take costs out, put more to the bottom line, and we started investing in a big way to actually bring those products to market.
Second big inflection was this big growth in enterprise, not just consumer wireless, and that was one of their most profitable, fastest-growing segments, and a lot of the monetization BSS platforms weren't built for the complexity of enterprise. We, we invested smartly in that, and we invested in cloud, and we said that commoditization, that price pressure was gonna start outside Western Europe, outside U.S., which is why we focused on winning MTN in South Africa, Telstra in Australia, big deals in Southeast Asia, South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and now we're seeing some of those same pressures come to North America and Western Europe.
We think the bets we made and the investments we made back in 2016, 2017, and 2018 can serve us and enable us to win meaningful business in North America, just like we've done outside, where some of those pressures were felt 5 or 10 years ago, that are now getting felt in the US market. I think Amazon, you know, we see Comcast and Charter. Charter is the fastest-growing wireless. We see fixed mobile wireless coming from T-Mobile and Verizon, taking some of the broadband subs. The competition in the US market is intensifying. That's a net good thing for us, not a bad thing, and as long as we can help prove that our platforms bring more agility, lower cost, and solve and address the market challenges, we think CSG will perform quite nicely in the period ahead.
And your selling proposition is your solutions are just simpler and less expensive?
Yep, it's, it's redesigned the business process, therefore, take out the customization, therefore, you don't need the tens of thousands of bodies and all the services hours that some of our competitors sell. You can run your business lower cost in a more efficient way and be easier to do business with, driving improved, customer NPS scores, and, and it's resonating. Every deal we win, we then deliver. It brings value, and they become some of our best spokesmen for then our next sales pursuits that we're driving. Obviously, one of our bigger competitors is formidable. We don't take them for granted. Good people, trying to do good things, but we think our business model does bring differentiated value, and they will enable us to grow at or above the midpoint of our organic growth range.
You know, again, the cable giants are, are very loyal customers to yours, but not on the wireless side because they're, they're pursuing an MVNO strategy, currently. As they grow in scale, do you think they'll take more of an infrastructure-driven wireless approach at some point?
You know, it's a, it's a great story, and, and it's... I guess what I would say is, you know, look at the deal that, you know, that Comcast and Charter were able to negotiate. They have all the flexibility and choice, so as long as it's a great deal for them, they're able to, you know, continue to drive great wireless growth on the business without having to own the network. I think they have choice. You know, might you see them try to go for owner economics at some stage? I'd be guessing like any other investor out there. The key is, I think they have flexibility, and they could go left or right, depending on which they think is better in their long-term interest at any point in time.
What we're focused on is, for a long time inside Triple Play, it was believed that you actually needed to run two billing systems to keep each, the competitors honest and getting the best service. We just relentlessly kept saying, "You can take costs out, you can improve your operational performance." A few years ago, Comcast decided to move 11 million subs off our biggest competitor to CSG. We performed well. A couple of years later, Charter made the same decision. Today, we have 100% of the Triple Play. Our competitor has the wireless. Our view is, as long as we just bring them value, serve them well, be easier to do business with, maybe someday we'll get a chance to earn their wireless business. Time will tell, right?
Got it. Maybe just focusing on the digital CX side again, you know, your largest competitor announced a CRM/a CX partnership with Microsoft, and they're very focused on the telco space. Would you explore something similar within the MSO vertical?
Yeah, I mean, first, you know, we don't really compete with Amdocs in the digital CX. You know, that we tend to see Adobe, Qualtrics, Genesys, and again, on The Forrester Wave, we're the upper right in the, in the quadrant, the best performer with the best platform, but those are big companies, so we gotta continue to bring value every time we deploy to one of these giant customers that we're winning quarter in, quarter out. We do partner with inside of cable and telecom, we have a good partnership with Microsoft, we've got a good partnership with AWS on the cloud side, and we can leverage a lot of the capabilities they can bring, and we can deploy some of the same capabilities.
One thing I would give Shuki and his team credit, they do a nice job of sometimes being ahead of the curve on some of the early trends in identifying and announcing press releases like this, and they invest in that. I would just tip my hat, and, and, and then just focus on what CSG can do, though, to, in addition to the press release, bring more value with the solutions we deploy and make sure that we are seen as the leader in the industry that can solve those. Long way of saying, yes, there's a lot we are doing, and there's a lot more we can do. Stay tuned.
You do have a, a, a, I believe you do have a commercial relationship with the, the large...
Yes
... software company.
Both Microsoft and AWS on both those, yes.
Got it. You know, outside of your traditional BSS competitors, you know, who's on your radar, and are you running into new competitors as you're growing in digital CX?
Yeah, I mean, every market has competition, right? On the digital CX side, you know, it's, it's people like Adobe, Qualtrics, Genesys, Pegasystems sometimes. Where we try to really differentiate and add value, though, is all around the transactional engagement of harnessing that data. Easier onboard, improved cross-sell and upsell, next best action, propensity to churn when a customer may be getting frustrated. How can you use the data that our customers have in these targeted industry verticals and bring solutions to get ahead of the curve, to get the outcome that they need to either get a bigger share of wallet or improved retention and loyalty or a lower cost to serve? That's really where we're focused.
Where some of our competitors might focus more on the marketing sales generation side or the customer satisfaction and support side, that's really where we differentiate around that. We just have to continue to invest and outperform and, and prove that with the win rate in the market. In the telecom side, it really is head-to-head with us and Amdocs. They'll win some, we'll win some, we've got to continue to perform and raise the game with our differentiated approach with more of a product base. On the payment side, we focus predominantly in the U.S. market. Our real secret sauce is high recurring revenue industry verticals. We came from the ACH side. We've added the full integrated payments with card and all the different payment types. ACH, in a lot of cases, is a lot harder.
If it's a straight-up card not bringing a recurring payment, then sometimes we might lose more of those, even though we've got good capabilities. When a customer needs or a merchant needs both, we're really seeing a much higher win rate in terms of that capability. You know, again, as a smaller player, we describe ourselves, you know, as more of a small market. If you compare to baseball, we'd be more like the Oakland A's than New York Yankees. We can't just spend our way. We've got to punch above our weight, be smart about where we invest, and get a better return for what we do spend, and that's where therefore, we try to really play to our competitive strengths in each of these markets to keep that faster organic revenue growth going.
On that theme of being smart where you invest, you've always said M&A would be a, a, a significant part of the growth story, but just been very patient. You know, what's-.
Yeah, well-
your thinking now? You know, the Nasdaq's run up, 35%. You know, do you wait for valuations to come in or just stay patient?
You know, it, we think the best way you unlock value is being a disciplined buyer. If, I, I was excited by the 3 or 4 acquisitions we did in the first 12 or 15 months when I took over. If you'd asked me back then if I thought we'd go 5 or 6 quarters without announcing another acquisition, I would've said, "No way." We, we just believe that the best acquisition is we look at strategic fit, financial fit, risk-return profile, and then cultural fit and integration, and we are very disciplined on what we think the right strike zone is for various deals. If it gets in the strike zone, we'll try to go quickly, close, integrate, and extract value from those acquisitions. If it doesn't come within our strike zone, then we're just gonna stay disciplined.
Question I get is: Can we still get to $1.5 billion by 2025? The flip side is, "Brian, are you and the team gonna lose discipline and maybe overpay for deals because you get antsy?" What we're trying to prove with our actions are, we absolutely believe we'll get to $1.5 billion by 2025 and have bottom line grows faster, faster than top line. No, we're not gonna lose discipline. We're gonna try darn hard to make sure that it, it hits our strike zone, and when it does, we'll close deals. When it doesn't, we'll just say, "You gotta be patient and go." That's probably the best I can share on that right now, Ed.
Just, staying on the theme of, you know, margins and profitability, as, as you grow, Digital CX and also, AI becomes more infused in your business, is that margin accretive for you? Because there's, you know, some concerns that the cost, cost of AI, and the ability to price for it.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, AI, I mean, one of the big things that is the untapped potential, I think for every company, including CSG, we have not yet reaped the benefit on our operating structure of using AI to run CSG more efficiently. We've got dozens of initiatives across every aspect of our business to do that. With scale, do we need to invest in these platforms? Of course we do, but there's no reason, as we add scale, faster organic growth, good disciplined acquisitions where we pay the right price and, and sign up to the right terms, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to expand our operating leverage with an improved non-GAAP adjusted operating margin. That's something we're laser-focused on and driving faster growth as we do that.
A mentor of mine, as well as one of my competitor's mentors, used to talk a lot about, "It is the quarter turns of the wrench." It's not one initiative that drives ongoing margin expansion or ongoing improved operational performance. It's a mindset and a capability of doing the small discipline things well, like clockwork, and it's the small, relentless quarter turns of the wrench, and that's what we see on the operating margin side. I couldn't be more pleased to have a CFO like Hai, who is an in the business CFO, who's also working with our teams constantly: "How do we get gross margin 10 basis points up in every parts of our portfolio? How can we expand G&A operating leverage even more?
How can we cross-sell to get a better return on what we're doing with sales and marketing? I do like what I'm seeing, and we do expect to expand operating leverage over time from all those various initiatives.
We've got time for one more question. So I'll put on my Charlie Rose hat for a second. You know, Brian, you've been CEO for 2 and a half years, I believe. You know, every leader has a unique style. You know, so how would you describe yours? I also noticed that, you know, you have been a little bit more on the forefront of remote work versus RTO as well. So maybe that plays a part into it as well, but obviously a big transformation at CSG.
Yeah
... maybe some thoughts on your leadership style.
Yeah, I mean, I, I just believe life is short, so set big goals, you know, use the time we have on this planet or in the seats we have as executive leaders of CSG, and that's a privilege, and it's a joy, and it's fun. Is it hard? You're darn right, it's hard, but there's a reason we do this. What I try to do is just bring more of that growth mindset, bring more of that "let's dream big every day," because it sure beats the alternative. Then when we put something out there, let's, let's, let's act like it means something. Let's not just give promises, let's actually deliver against those and have some fun while we're doing it.
What I'm really proud of is CSG has always, well before I ever joined the company, it was a people first, culture first organization. We're gonna keep that, and now what we're trying to do is get the company to dream bigger and understand we can be more relevant, we can still have a grow or die mindset, and have fun in the process. That's, that's really what we're trying to do. Yes, we're, we're a hybrid environment. We've got 6,000, almost 6,000 employees all around the world. We have allowed them to come into the office and work from home. We trust them, and we expect them to dream bigger and take this company to new heights, and that's the environment we're in, which so far, it's, it's played out well for us. We think the way of working is gonna evolve.
It's a constant evolution. We don't think it's gonna go back in to where it's just 9:00 to 5:00 in the office, 'cause this is a 24/7, 365 days a year. If that means you do it from home or from vacation in Croatia in some, some weeks, no problem.
Well, that makes a lot of sense to me, Brian. Well, we, we do have time, I guess, a kind of a adjacent question. You know, the long-term guidance-
Yeah.
You've obviously just kept that in place, but the current growth is well above that. You know, is that part of the, the, the leadership style as well as kind of underpromise, overdeliver? You know, do we need to revisit that long-term revenue growth guidance?
No, I mean, if, I mean, we constantly look at it, right? If we actually think our business gets to a stage where, you know, over a sustained period of time, several years, and quarter in, quarter out, we could have something higher than 2%-6%, you'll see us do that. Right now, we see quarters and years like we've got now, where we'll probably be and expect to be above the top end of our guidance. We also look at 2024 and 2025, again, one of the most misunderstood parts of our story is, run your financial models, and if you think if you forecast CSG growing 4%-5% like clockwork, what would the valuation of this company be? It'd be a heck of a lot higher than $55.
People don't believe we're even gonna grow consistently at the midpoint yet, which is no problem, I respect that. We're just gonna keep churning out results until people come to expect that and build that into every one of their models. If we get to the stage where we can raise and elevate, we will, and we expect to do that. We use a base and stretch. Most people know my objective is not to get the company to $1.5 billion. The objective is to get to $2 billion and double this thing in a short period of time. That's our stretch. We also plan for base. Our expectation is we'll come in somewhere between base and stretch most of the time.
That is the mindset with which we're running the company, because what we've also seen, if you only focus on the top end, you sometimes then lose operating discipline, on how you actually run the business, and that's where sometimes good management teams maybe get a little more comfortable with the more extreme level of risk, and they lose operating discipline. We wanna make sure that we can dream big and never lose our operating discipline.
Well, very informative chat, Brian. Thank you so much.
Thanks a lot, Ed. Really appreciate the conference and those listening in.