Appreciate the opportunity to share more about her story. As you said, I've been here a few months, and I'm actually currently here in the new downtown Toronto office for OpenText. We're still just finishing up the new space, but OpenText has been here for over 35 years in Canada, formed and headquartered still right beside the University of Waterloo, actually. We're a world leader and, in many cases, a world beater in Enterprise Information Management. We're operating a portfolio of products.
Thank you, Madhus. Particularly. Thanks for helping us anchor this off into.
Sorry, I think there was something that came off there.
Yeah, we're back.
We operate a portfolio of products, particularly in enterprise content, security, and multi-cloud integration overall with six core business clouds. We are focused on three strategic priorities: competitive advantage, total revenue growth, and operational excellence. We are about 20 software companies in the world, that operate with over $5 billion in revenue per year. A lot of scale that we earn by being the top right in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, particularly Enterprise Content Management. That is the lifeblood of businesses and governments, particularly foundational to the future of AI. We focus and will focus on building wealth for investors with a reignited kind of really meta sharp lens on stable and consistent long-term shareholder returns.
Great. What have been some of your initial learnings and observations coming into the business with fresh eyes? As someone who is very familiar with running large complex businesses, but maybe new to OpenText specific end markets.
Yeah, again, as a very proud Canadian, I'm very proud and excited to be serving this Canadian company. You're right on the large side and complex side of businesses. I ran a very large global transformation at Scotia. Of course, as you noted, being the CFO of EQB, a real digital first leader in the country, and I'd say the best bank in the country, even though I'm on with BMO. The shift here, what I saw in OpenText is similar to what I saw in the last company, which with huge unlocked potential. That was my hypothesis of, this can't be right. This current trading value, what I see from the disclosures on the revenue side, something seems to be off. The surprises are and learnings are this is truly systemic in nature for companies. OpenText is literally everywhere.
I think that's why I use the word, it's not always that simple, but it's like ubiquitous. We're benefiting directly and indirectly the lives of, I think, hundreds of millions of people through enterprise customers that we serve. We're the wiring and plumbing, almost, of companies and governments. It's like the wiring, plumbing, security system insight, enabler of sovereign capacity, growth for companies and governments with our products. We have a lot more products than expected, would be one learning and surprise, like many more than I expected. On the surprise side, we are bigger than I even realized. Complicated, probably in a way that's a little bit self-inflicted because we became so big with so many verticals. I think it's been harder to follow the narrative and the simplicity of what we do and why we win.
We're definitely AI first, which has been a great assumption, but I definitely see it internally. Not only do we enable it with that content and data, but AI first in every single thing that we do. I've learned and believe that it's a great company with a great runway in those in particular outperform swim lanes of that enterprise content, enterprise security, and really that multi-cloud integration. One of the learnings I've seen is it's essentially almost agnostic to LLM, to cloud type, to whatever a customer needs. That robust level of customization is actually both fascinating and an interesting learning. Your question of how can you continue to win and beat competitors so well? When you're in there, when you're under these hundreds of thousands of customers and you really have those strong products, it's amazing what's possible.
I really do believe we have a long runway of growth, and it's validating the hypothesis I had coming in.
Great. Let's talk about organic growth because clearly your company with amazing margins, amazing cash flow generation, and organic growth would seem to be the key investor pushback on the stock. I realize it might not be a simple answer given that you have a very broad, extensive product portfolio. What's your take on the challenges there? Is it the macro? Is it some aspects with Micro Focus? Is it license cloud transition? Is it a bit of everything? What's your take on that and what can be done to improve organic growth?
Yeah, and I think we'll come back to that in terms of organic growth and total revenue growth. I think that's an important discussion thread as well around how OpenText has grown over the years, over 80 acquisitions, where our muscle is and where our thought is. I know on the organic side, I think you hit on a couple of the threads. Primary factors I do think have been around the strategic repositioning of some of our businesses, especially since the Micro Focus acquisition. Some of what's happened with ADM and ITOM underperformance and some of the client attrition has impacted that. Then combined with some of the macro factors, FX, and then even the multiplier, obviously, of some of the macro uncertainty in U.S. government actions, which can impact it.
What you'll see, though, I think when it comes to simplicity and clarity, is when we report in August with Q4, we'll have even more transparency around the businesses. I don't think we actually have enough right now, clarity. Where I think for organic growth, where people expect to see it, they can't see it because we're not disclosing it. For example, the biggest case in point being content. Content is what we're best known for. It's the grassroots, top of the Magic Quadrant. We're really, really good at the best. You can't actually see the precise level of organic growth. I think some of it is we have some businesses, but we also haven't had the reporting to show that clearly. That will help because is it where you expect it to be is really important.
Where it's not, what are you doing within those businesses to ensure you're driving up continuous improvement and free cash flow margins and reinvesting in those businesses where there should be growth? Some of the challenge has been a lot of products, some more mature than others, some getting an outweight as they should in R&D to keep growing. Some of it otherwise has been, I think, the Micro Focus impact. We're addressing a lot of that, especially through businesses like ADM and ITOM. Kind of macro, Micro Focus, and disclosure. The muscle is there for organic. The muscle is there for inorganic. I'd say we're even more focused on total revenue growth and ensuring we're getting all the benefits we expected from some of those acquisitions as well.
Maybe drilling a bit into ADM and ITOM, recognizing you're the CFO, not the CTO, but high level, what's your understanding in terms of what remains to be done to stabilize those businesses and what the challenges have been?
Yeah, it's a fair push. We have a strong go-to-market program, and we have a well-trained sales force. We've made a lot of changes. Micro Focus has taken probably twice as long as expected, which Mark shared very openly in the last call as well. It's being addressed. It's being solved for, I think, by far. The biggest challenges are behind us. Our growth challenges, I think, have been a few things for ITOM and ADM. I'd say ITOM is more stabilized now. ADM, we have some more work to do on the positive side. It's things like, do we have continued execution on annual price adjustments and premium services? Are we selling more licenses for ITOM and ADM? Are we selling new advanced customer services? We actually just appointed Savinay Berry to be our new Chief Product Officer in January.
He has exceptional talent that's very focused on that. With ITOM, with Titanium X, actually, that's where we're really differentiating now in observability and IT service management. We're expanding to corporate service management. We're ramping sales in our go-to-market and professional services here in ITOM. We are expanding outside of traditional IT workflows and deploy customer and industry workflow emerging with IT. ITOM is getting there. It's the ADM side where I think we do have more work to go. We've reoriented our entire go-to-market strategy as a top market of focus. It's really moving that up market for ADM. I think it was too wide and unfocused previously. ADM is differentiated really for large-scale organizations who are writing software. That's underway, more work to go, but I think that's been one of the larger drags as well.
We also have secret weapons working on things like this, like our Chief Digital and Information Officer here in Canada, people like Shannon Bell, that are driving a lot of focus and investment and a lot of trade-offs in these businesses together with the Chief Product Officer. We have a lot been underway, a lot of change. We had some client attrition, we had some this, we had some of that. I'd say the focus is there because now when you think about it, kind of what's been diluting the overall organic and total revenue growth has been businesses like this. I'd say there's a lot now underway and already underway that's addressing that to close that off and ensure it's net net total revenue growth.
Great. Let's talk about AI. It would seem that you should be very well positioned given the role that you play for managing the unstructured content for so many of your clients. Clearly, you've released a bunch of Aviators using AI across various application areas. We haven't seen the growth overall at a corporate level. Is that just a function of maybe some of the underperforming segments diluting that? Is it because it's kind of early days? Is it because you deal with highly regulated customers? They're taking a cautious approach to AI? What are you actually seeing in the business as far as AI adoption from a revenue side perspective?
I'd have to still say in many ways, it is still early days. It is some of the things you mentioned. I think our customer base, from what I'm seeing, is excited. I think they're excited about the potential of the Aviators and Titanium X, which again, we've booked many Aviator wins already, but it's early days. That just launched in April. I think we're seeing that momentum build, especially to get Titanium X and then to enable the Aviators. We've declared AI first, obviously. We announced our up to $400 million recent savings program, so even internally of how we're operating with it. That's a vital part of our growth. We've noticed many customers taking additional time to review the use cases and the ROI for AI and how that's impacting a lot of companies' kind of large-scale AI deployment, not just OpenText.
In some cases, you find a surprising caution still in AI and what does it mean and what's the payback. Either way, you need the enterprise content. You need the capability if you're going to turn on the AI. That's the benefit of OpenText still. As the wiring and plumbing of these businesses, it all really starts with that content. What you noted earlier, we're bringing together all that unstructured data into a single source of truth. That unstructured data, that kind of 90% plus, is what will really enable that key capability for a lot of the businesses. I think there's a lot more to come. I think it's just early stages of what will be a huge impact. The good part about OpenText, I think, is we grow either way.
To grow with AI, you need companies like OpenText to enable all that, especially when you think of trusted data, compliant data, government data, and secure data. It's all really vital as part of the AI equation.
Is it fair to assume that the content pillar is really where AI is most relevant, where you see the most opportunity?
Huge component. Yeah, huge component. It is just, again, you cannot have that is sort of your house foundation. If you connect it and integrate and secure it, capture it, make sure it is compliant, all of that, I think, comes back to that outperform side. That is why that content is so vital. Absolutely.
Yeah. Given that you're not in quiet period yet, I'll ask you about the macro. Clearly, we're in a dynamic environment. The tariff news keeps changing. Would you say customer behavior has been status quo in recent weeks, or are there any general patterns you'd call out across different vertical geographies?
Yeah, I get us right down here to the wire. We go into quiet period on close of business Friday. Look, our view hasn't changed. I honestly don't think since our Q3 results that we reported last month. We'll provide for sure more detail in August. It's a particularly interesting period of time, as I've learned in software, especially for this last month of the last quarter of the year. A lot of activity and a lot of learning comes especially in June. What I could say so far in my general view is that there's been no significant surprises. I think the only thing consistent is inconsistency in the market. I think we're all learning to adapt with that.
The good thing that we are seeing, I think some customers, some large enterprise customers for sure, are moving beyond the uncertainty and taking back control, continuing now with more of their strategic priorities. In some cases, it's just there's still some reduced near-term spend. I think we're getting back to some momentum. That includes some really important ones, like we even mentioned on the last call around the auto sector as well and some of the government side. It is a positive trend, I think kind of neutral to positive. Also for companies that might be looking to deploy local clouds while reducing dependencies in the U.S. in some cases too, that happens. I think not only in Europe, in many countries and Canada, our home here is a huge opportunity for growth and sovereign capabilities. That's a great growth opportunity.
I think if anything, that's increasing. Generally, it's kind of steady with some positive offshoots of growth and then some caution, which I think we all have. The good part is, again, the nature of OpenText being able to do essentially whatever our customers need us to do and wherever they need us to do it.
You mentioned software and data opportunities. Maybe just touching on that. You're one of the, I guess, few remaining large enterprise software companies that invest a lot in your own infrastructure. I mean, clearly, you support public cloud as well. If we look at that CapEx and OpEx investment you're making in your own data centers, what are your thoughts with respect to continuing that investment long term? I mean, does it make sense? Are you seeing the ROI on that investment? Why are you doing that? Whereas other software companies have chosen to go public cloud?
Yeah, everything starts with your customer. We've made a lot of investment the past two years to get even more on the data centers in place part. We have 74 data centers globally, 49 cloud landing zones, 99.99% uptime. It's a significant advantage for us giving customers the option. Again, it's a customer first to deploy however they want and wherever they want it, on-prem, public cloud, private cloud, SaaS, etc. Private cloud gives us an advantage because our global enterprise customers may not want to obviously deploy externally sensitive data in the public cloud. That's like governments and healthcare. Our CapEx levels have been consistently, I think, low as well for years. We built out, we really already built out our private cloud infrastructure. Many customers are examining, I think, their long-term strategies for cloud, but we're still selling licensed and cloud products.
I think it's this aspect as well of data sovereignty in the public cloud. It's an important ongoing discussion, I think, among a lot of organizations and governments. I think there's a lot of, there is more investment. I think there is great payback for us. I think it's really, really necessary for us and our competitive advantage, especially leading in enterprise content. I think when you think of the overall capital allocation framework, this has been really smart for our customers. I think you'd also expect to see even more investment in these capabilities here at home in Canada too.
Yeah, so I guess maybe the fact that you have a higher weighting of highly regulated industries versus some other companies is a key factor, right?
100%. Yeah.
On margins, you clearly have best-in-class margins. And historically, you've guided for ongoing margin expansion. Just given that organic growth has been problematic, how do you think about the right level of investment? Might it make sense to turn the dial a bit more towards growth versus margin maximization? I mean, should we wait until you update your long-term targets next quarter? What are your thoughts?
I think it all starts with your capital allocation framework. Everything comes back to how you allocate the capital. I think there are a couple of things when you think of margin. Best-in-class, you can always say things are best-in-class, but what matters most is continuous improvement no matter what for any company. I think we have the means and the scale to have continuous improvement in free cash flow margins and even the margins and gross margins, all of it. There are two things when it comes to capital allocation. We started going down this path in the last quarter around your primary way of deploying every dollar because I'm an every dollar matters person. How do you deploy every dollar primary and then secondary?
Primary, first in the primary bucket of dollars we must spend is ensuring we have every dollar invested into the business that we should to ensure we have continuous improvement in our products, that we're expanding the moats around the products where we're winning. Now we're investing smart, especially with AI first. Are we investing enough in R&D and the internal capabilities of the products and then paying that good steady dividend that will increase on a steady basis as part of our total shareholder return? That's kind of the primary. The secondary side as well is really around, do we deploy capital thoughtfully that might impact margins or just grow the business overall to programmatically acquire tuck-in companies that will outperform? If those opportunities aren't available, we'll buy back the shares every day of the week, especially at these prices dramatically below intrinsic value.
There is a debt ratio. There is a capital allocation framework, but then there is also what are we doing either way for continuous improvement? That is part of the business optimization program that we announced last quarter. We have done them before, but this would be one of the larger ones now. That is both for margin and reinvestment. That was up to $400 million in additional incremental savings. That might be what we are going to come to your point with more guidance over how much is reinvested versus how much flows through directly to EBITDA margin expansion. There will be more clarity, but I think you will see a good proportion across both. Even with our EBITDA margins, we are not where we were before Micro Focus.
I think a company of our capability should continually expand that every year and making sure we're putting all our investment, especially AI first investment, into the right places and the outperform places. Continuous improvement should be strong consistency in how we allocate capital. We'll keep driving growth here and thoughtfulness in how we spend every dollar. Every dollar needs to be spent very, very thoughtfully.
Internally, you're using AI more and more. You said that's a reason for the restructuring you're doing. As far as the efficiencies there, is it primarily making the coders more productive and automating customer support? What are some of the key areas you're using AI?
Yeah, all those. It is now more, I'd say, central to a corporate DNA and culture. So all AI, all new hires even, we're operationalizing and have operationalized even more testing around AI skills being an important part of their capabilities. What are we doing? I won't say necessarily how much yet of our code generation is by AI versus individual humans. I'd say that's an important internal metric that we're expanding on as well. I think we'll probably come out even with more clarity on that. That kind of new code generation is a very important metric that we're being thoughtful about together with Savinay and all of our engineering teams. My Aviator is just underway of complete deployment internally across 22,000 employees.
When you see and understand something like that, when you test it and what it's capable of and how it can multiply the capacity and turnaround that you have as an employee trying to synthesize a research report to putting together a PowerPoint presentation to generating the code, it's wild our internal capabilities now. That is underway. That is a must, a must, a must, a must. The data is obviously very protective for us. AI for engineering, for customer support, for professional services, sales, the general knowledge worker, AI is right across the board in all these cases. I think, like I said, the synthesis of information is key even in the finance function. We're using that and deploying that and using that to take on even more manual work. Files right across databases, all of it is going to be really important.
I think you'll see it show up through more sales efficiency, assessing suitability, qualifying leads, helping us respond faster. I think ultimately closing deals faster, you'll see it show up. It is a real movement. It's not just face value. It's a real operational movement internally that everyone's feeling and participating in.
Great. On the capital allocation, you talked about programmatic M&A and buybacks. I did not hear deleveraging. Where does deleveraging sit in the list of priorities? What do you see as the optimal leverage ratio for a business like this?
Yeah, I get that question a lot. I've heard, I've been listening a lot. Our entire senior team has been listening a lot. I've spoken with many, many investors over the past couple of months. I know everyone has views, different views around what is an appropriate leverage ratio in the capital stack for a company like OpenText. In general, I am comfortable with this level of this kind of, call it three handle. You do not want it there forever. You certainly do not necessarily want it higher depending on the point in time. What I would say in the capital allocation framework, as I outlined it, it is over to the secondary side of how do you deploy capital flexibly between acquisitions, buying back shares, and then paying down debt.
I'd say if our share price wasn't so dramatically discounted, and we can talk lots about that and the reasons why you'd hold, buy, or buy more of our stock. Once, if we don't have the acquisitions that specifically meet our criteria, our strategic criteria, we will fully maximize all the buybacks possible. Once we get back to a fair intrinsic value, I think you'll see us accelerate the debt reduction. We have the whole debt tower that's disclosed. We'll look at that continuously. I think that will accelerate once it's there. Now, I can't say a precise number. Is it two times it's better, two and a half times, etc.? I think a certain amount of debt for us makes sense because we're such a free cash flow generating machine, frankly. We're very, very strong at generating free cash flow.
When you think of the kind of weighted average cost of capital, it makes sense for us. I think it's the acquisitions and the buying back shares at this steep discount comes before that. Absolutely, we're talking about it regularly of how we pick up the pace for it.
When I think about acquisitions versus buybacks, I'd have to think that it may be challenging to find attractive M&A opportunities, valuations below where your stock is trading. I mean, am I wrong? I mean, would that prompt you to lean a bit more heavily towards the buyback versus M&A? Or through your lens, are there actually opportunities that you could deploy as that would make sense?
Yes, there are opportunities. There are opportunities. Again, it's back to the page. If anyone hadn't had a chance to look, even from our financial results page, I think it was 19 in the deck from the financial results presentation or investor presentation, we had the outperform and the perform side. What I would say is our focus is more on acquisitions, tuck-in-size acquisitions, not Micro Focus, no more Micro Focus, not that scale and complexity. Elegant, Brennan or Wheelhouse. Again, we've done over 80 deals. It's that kind of one core business unit acquisition in the outperform side of the business. Then you think through, do you pay for growth or value depending on how you want to operationalize that acquisition? There are absolutely options around that enterprise content, security, multi-cloud integration, outperform side of the page that we could acquire. We're not rushing anything.
We're being very thoughtful. There are options both in buying. There are options as well for when we think of divestments on that perform side. We're not going to overpay. We're not going to fire sale. It's absolutely something we're very focused on. We have an incredible team internally, internal corporate development team and a very, very strong muscle that's been built over decades. We're on it. There are options. You should see it. Otherwise, absolutely every day of the week, the stock is at this price. We will continue to buy it as a great deployment of capital.
The math isn't as simple as saying, oh, our stock price is trading at X times EBITDA or cash flow valuation. This acquisition has to be that or below, whatever. I mean, you're thinking about more in terms of framework of maybe ROIC or longer-term payback or synergies. Yeah.
For sure. But it's also, yeah, you're right though. If we're at, what, in the ballpark of a seven times EV/EBITDA, if we're selling companies at double digit, for example, high single to double digit, I think that makes sense because we were at a 13 times multiple pre-Micro Focus. And we're very focused on getting back to a fair intrinsic value, which is that or more. But I think you're looking at the multiples. But for us, for sure, it has to make sense from an overall hurdle rate perspective and the overall DCF and then the synergies we can realize on that to keep accelerating and performing at or above market in our outperform categories. So it's not just, yeah, you have to hit this specific price tag because it's so varied depending on the companies and the shape of the companies.
We are not focused on or thoughtful about overpaying for any assets right now. That's for sure.
Okay. The word divestiture has come up in the last couple of calls. I presume there's not a whole lot you can say on that until if and when you have something to announce. Is there some color you can provide in terms of how you'd go about considering a divestiture? Will a lot of it come down to whether you view a business as a growth business versus not a growth business? Is it more about the cold math in terms of cash payback and ROIC? How would you evaluate such a transaction?
I'm always a hurdle rate person, so for sure. What do we believe to be true as a team about the long-term potential of each business that we're looking at? We have multiple use cases we've looked at. I'd say you can think of it particularly on that perform side of the page where revenue might be at a more advanced or mature stage. We may or may not believe we're the best owner for that long-term to really get that back to above market growth. If we have assets that are, say, zero, slightly negative, slightly positive revenue growth, but good margin, we have choices where do we invest a lot of R&D? Do we continuously improve and really drive high free cash flow and make sure that's invested in the outperform side? Otherwise, can we monetize that at a much higher multiple?
You might see businesses on that side of the page where we could attract much higher trading multiples than we're currently trading at today and then divest that and get that currency back into our capital allocation framework. It is more just think of that right side of the page where we were very open and honest at our last call about how we would think about it. I'd say there's lots of inbound interest and lots of proactive thinking. For a company like us, as we acquire companies, we integrate them in very thoughtfully. It is just having the thoughtfulness behind kind of connecting the plumbing of all those businesses. If we sell any products specifically, let alone any businesses, we have a really good clean cut approach. We are certainly not saying, hey, we are going to sell the right side of the page.
That's not the intent. These are excellent businesses, a lot of free cash flow margin, but we're very focused on winning where we can win best. I think I'm just generally one of those believers that the best companies in the world do two, three things really well. We're really, really strong, particularly on the left. We're really good on the right as well. I think we want to make sure we're very thoughtful about tomorrow. That's where you'll see more of that type of activity potentially come on.
You mentioned more disclosure coming next quarter. To clarify, are we talking about kind of revenue by product pillar or ARR by product pillar? Or is that kind of in the process of being determined?
Yeah. My expectation is things will synthesize back to what we outlined at Q3. You would see more revenue or the overall growth rates for those businesses, especially. I think where I've seen a significant appetite is more clarity around how we're growing and growing, not just the actual revenue, but how we're growing in something like enterprise content. Where are we? Number one, you got to show where we're number one and why. The expectation would be growth in revenue and that overall recurring stream of that for the products that we outline there. Those six business clouds, especially, and then some of that split between enterprise security and the SMB side of it as well, I think we'll show more clarity. That will help. We will keep expanding.
I think we should be in continuous improvement of transparency and clarity because there's certainly been an appetite for that. The story of our going forward should very much be consistency and simplicity because I think otherwise people try to make sense of it. We've grown to a significant scale. Again, we have a lot of business units, great business units, great products. We just need to make it easier to understand the story and make sure we're very consistent in that. We're very focused on that.
Specifically, I mean, you still have a significant license maintenance business. Would you say the license to cloud transition has been a key headwind for growth? Is that much more of a secondary factor compared to some of the other things?
Yeah, I think it's too early to say it's been a headwind to growth. It's certainly a transition that happens. We don't force our customers to cloud. We do what customers want in a significant component. They want the on-prem. They want the license. They want to continue that business growth. We're certainly selling license in both on-prem and cloud or off-cloud, on-cloud, but not the significant headwind one might imagine. I know people might do the math and think, okay, well, I know the margin for the on-prem. I know the margin for the cloud. Is that the headwind? I think there will have to be thoughtfulness as we continue to grow, for sure. For now, I think we can get back to growth just in that CS maintenance side.
It's been choppier to get to because of some of the activity and the changes since Micro Focus. I think there is a path there. In the longer term, it'll be a debate point. I think we have the overall economics and businesses to make sure it's overall total revenue growth either way.
You have to share a bit of SMB exposure. Has that been a bit of a challenge as well with the current macro? Or is the growth rate not much different from large enterprise?
I think they are high-margin businesses. I think our largest strength is enterprise. SMB, we have some great products. We have some great partners to sell. Yeah, it's been, I'd say we have been open about some of the challenges with it. I'd say the growth is not where we have wanted it yet. From what we have seen and what I have participated in, we certainly have a path to the growth that can be expected for SMB. It's not the number, it's not where we are kind of that world beating. We have great products, great customers, and a lot of optionality with it, yes.
Okay. Since you talked about resuming programmatic M&A, maybe it's worth touching on the corp dev team and kind of just how big is the team? What's your approach to sourcing the deals? Has it been a relatively consistent team? Have you been expanding it, kind of ramping it back up in terms of since you're applying to re-accelerate M&A? Would any color on that be helpful?
Sure. A great internal team, absolutely. It's remarkable. We have some talent that have been with us for, I think, literally decades. It is a team of skill. I won't say the precise headcount, but I'd say it's a large internal team, one of the largest ones that I've seen because it's such an innate capability for us. Michael Acedo, our Chief Legal and Corporate Development Officer, drives that now directly in partnership. He sits down the hall from me here. We do it in partnership. It's, I'd say, very advanced backgrounds, as you'd imagine, in M&A, investment banking. We source directly. What I could say is we see a ton of inbound. We have a lot of great partners that bring us deal ideas because the more we're open about our strategy, the more you see a lot of the inbound options.
There are a lot of buy and sell options. Our muscle's built. As soon as we see a deal, we can ingest, think it through, and get to yes or nos pretty quickly. That happens weekly, especially for a company like us. Again, we serve customers in 180 countries. We're all over the world. You're seeing a lot of activity all over the world. We're isolating the focus really down to the buy side again on that outperform and then any of the interests we might entertain on that perform side. Very strong internal capability. Otherwise, we'll work with external partners on larger complex ones. Generally, we're focused with our internal talent.
Coming in as a new CFO, how would you characterize, I guess, the internal financial systems? I mean, given it's a big, complex, global company, multiple product pillars, on day one, are they where you would like them to be? Or I guess, is it always a process of continuous improvement? How would you characterize it?
I'm always about continuous improvement. I'd say the team is the finest capability. Off the bat, it's one of the first things you do as a new CFO, and I've been CFO a few times, kind of lift up the hood and make sure everything is as you believe it to be and 100% it is. The quality of the caliber of the reporting, the talent. My team is across dozens of countries, very well trained, really, really strong capability. It's an A-plus in that capability. Where I think the opportunity, though, is there's still more manual than you might expect. There's still an opportunity to automate and operationalize even more simplicity and consistency. That's some of what you've seen recently with some of the announcements around kind of doing more in fewer countries.
We're underway, have been underway for a little while of more rapidly scaling automation of processes and enabling even more AI in the teams. Even the investor relations team, for example, using AI and Aviator to synthesize a lot of reports that we're seeing, a lot of economic reports, internal reports, technology reports, synthesize it down to a page in an instant. It's things like that that need to happen. Now, we've had some complex work underway as well, finishing up Micro Focus and the integration of that GL system into ours. Some of that had real lifting. It's always really clean and streamlined. Overall, I'd say just more rapid sprints of automation and the capabilities there otherwise. It's going to be continuous improvement as it should for any big global finance function.
Okay. I had an inbound question on AI and the potential impact on gross margins. Maybe as your clients start using more of your AI offerings in Aviator, how are you thinking about just kind of managing the compute associated with that and the margin impact? Any challenges on that front? How would you think about that?
I'd say opportunity. That's where Savinay is very focused and Shannon's very focused on ensuring. It's kind of back to even the cogeneration, for example. I think that's what we were speaking about earlier of how do you automate even more of that cogeneration? How do you think about the engineering team? And how do you expand that gross margin? The overall cost of revenue, I think, is where probably the question is going. I'd see meaningful opportunity ahead to expand consistently the margins there. I'd say it's early innings for it. We're getting a lot of accelerated momentum. I don't think we've been as public about how we're doing it and what tools we're doing it. We have a lot of our own tools. I'd say that is a huge force of velocity and focus right now.
I think it's a meaningful opportunity with our own tools and tools that we're enabling for customers to keep growing profitability and margin. It is very real, very tangible, and very much underway for us.
As far as managing the compute that's associated with doing AI, maybe it's too early days to really matter at this point? Or is that something you have to watch closely?
Matters, but not matters enough. I do not think it is making us significant yet. It is picking up momentum, yeah.
Great. I think we're on time. Any parting words?
No. We really appreciate the attention. I think, again, we're a very proud Canadian company. I think we have openly acknowledged that we need to be more simple and consistent and clearer in our strategy. You're going to see a lot more of that going forward. I think it's a very exciting time to be part of OpenText as a teammate, as an investor, as a customer. I think we have very compelling reasons to hold, buy, and buy more of the stock for a lot of the reasons we've discussed. We have our investor presentation on the website. We'd be happy to come see any of you anytime, share a demo, share more of the story. I think this is one of the most talented teams I've ever seen globally. We're collectively very focused on tomorrow and a great path ahead.
I think it's a very exciting time for OpenText and a lot more to come.
Great. Thanks, Chadwick. Thanks, everybody, for listening in.
Thanks, everyone.