Thank you to everyone for joining our upcoming fireside here. I'm pleased to say that we have with us the management team from Tenable, the CFO, Steve Vintz, as well as the head of IR, Erin Karney. Just for quick logistics, but you guys should have a chat box of some sort on your interface. So if you have questions, please feel free to send those in. I'll do my best to make sure that we're getting to those while we have the management team here. And with that out of the way, Steve and Erin, thank you very much for setting aside the time today. We definitely do appreciate it.
Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having us.
Yeah. I think just for a quick review, as far as Tenable, who they are, what they do, maybe for people who are newer to the name, I think most people are, but maybe dusting off the name, can you just give us a run through for Tenable as far as how it's providing value to customers today? Who are the primary incumbents that Tenable is displacing when a customer does choose to consolidate vendors to your solution?
Sure, Mike. Again, thanks for having us. You know, for those of you who are not familiar with Tenable, you know, in terms of the problem we solve, Tenable helps companies understand and reduce their cyber risk. At a basic level, we answer the question: how secure are we? Companies today have an attack surface that looks very different than a few years ago. It's not just about securing servers, desktops, and laptops anymore. IT environments today are much more complex, from web applications, to containers, to cloud, to OT. Organizations really struggle to understand their true exposure and determine how to best manage their risk.
At Tenable, we discover and assess devices for vulnerabilities across a very broad surface of attack, from IT to OT to web apps, Active Directory deployments, to public cloud environments, you know, and whether it's on-prem, in the cloud or hybrid. We also have a massive data lake that we've built over the years that, you know, that takes all of this data, all of these insights, and plus hundreds of threat feeds. And we help companies prioritize and focus on vulnerabilities, flaws, identities, and misconfigs that matter the most, and consequently, prioritizing what attackers are likely to exploit. Over the years, we have broadened the product portfolio. Our roots are really in traditional VM.
We believe we're the market leader by most any measure, whether it's in terms of you know, revenue, customer base, number one, zero-day research, you know, device coverage. We're leveraging our strength in VM and, expanding our, those capabilities across a very broad surface of attack. And we're leveraging our customer base. We have 40,000-plus customers, and over the years, we've demonstrated ability to bring new product to market and, and expand the relationship with customers. Competitors have can vary, you know, in terms of VM. There's, you know, two notable, you know, public companies. And then when it comes to you know, public cloud or OT or even identity, you know, there's a combination of some private and, and public companies in which we compete against.
But our goal here is really to sell, you know, a broader platform in Tenable One, which we've been doing, and having great success over the years. You know, it's growing over 100%. It's 10% of our... Or 20% of our total new enterprise sales. Selling prices are 70% higher, and, again, helping customers understand risk holistically.
Great. Great. And that's, that's actually bleeding into my next question here, which was on the platform, right? You guys have obviously made strides, either organically or inorganically, in building out this broader platform, which expands well beyond your, your traditional, roots in VM. And so on that point, can you discuss maybe the contribution or penetration of those more recent offerings, to Tenable today, as well as what the, what the market feedback has been like as this platform has continued to, build out its capabilities?
Sure. You know, Tenable One includes some of our VM capabilities, but it also includes web app security, cloud security, both pre-production via infrastructure as code, as well as kind of post-production and looking at configs and the runtime of some of these assets in these public cloud environments. It includes digital identities via our Active Directory security product. It also includes cloud identity and entitlement management in these public cloud environments. Of course, it also includes... We can sell also as an add-on, OT security. So it's a very expansive product.
You know, what we do really well is discover and assess vulnerabilities across a very broad surface of attack, and increasingly, customers are looking to, in a market that's been historically very fragmented, and dominated by best of breed, you know, looking at a time like this to consolidate some of these point products. Tenable One is our platform that integrates a lot of these standalone capabilities. We have much higher selling prices, and we look at Tenable One today, as we mentioned, 20% of our total new enterprise sales are coming from Tenable One. 45% of our total new enterprise sales are non-VM related. You know, but these are newer types of products or exposure offerings.
It includes cloud, it includes web app, selling that standalone, as well as OT. So we're having tremendous success selling incremental capability back into the base, whether it's on a standalone basis to address a tactical use case for a customer or more recently, integrating all of those data sets in a way where we can deliver greater insights to a customer via a platform sale. And it also obviates the need to buy some of these products standalone, whether it's cyber asset management, whether it's Attack Surface Management, of course, you know, Active Directory security, and many others. So, you know, we think a platform matters in a market like this, especially in a market where customers are carefully evaluating their spend, looking for a compelling payback and a very attractive ROI.
And it's really the ability for us to connect these vulnerabilities across all these different asset types and understand the contextualization of these different devices and systems, and combining that with threats, as well as the digital identities to provide a, you know, likely path of exploit for our customers, which will drive remediation and, you know, corrective action. So, super excited about the platform and what it's brought to us, and our ability to address larger and fast-growing markets.
Got it. And I know we were talking about organic versus inorganic. I think one of the things that has caught a lot of investors' attention is the more recent acquisition of Ermetic, right? And so with that acquisition, can you maybe discuss what was brought to the table that Tenable either didn't have or was building in some capacity, and this accelerated? And in addition to that, I guess, where are we in terms of communicating this acquisition to the broader market as far as making sure the customer base is aware of these capabilities that you guys now have in-house?
Sure. Super excited about the acquisition. You know, cloud security is an area, is a market we've been in now for a couple of years. We're having great success. As I mentioned, we have 40,000 plus customers, and this was market-driven and really customer-driven for us. And increasingly, customers want us to provide additional capability. If you look at Ermetic in particular, they have a unified and agentless solution that automates asset discovery, risk analysis, accelerated remediation, and compliance. It's a very intuitive UI, which is really important for customers, and it minimizes complexity and increases speed of adoption. For us, Ermetic has solved one of the most, you know, one of the toughest and most complex problems in cloud security, which is identities and entitlements.
It provides a comprehensive solution for managing human and service identities and cloud infrastructure, whether it's via AWS, Azure, or GCP. It also visualizes all identities, entitlements, and reveals these toxic combinations, if you will, such as privileged access to publicly exposed vulnerable workloads, and automates analysis to reveal and help prioritize risk. You know, where we are strong... They're strong in areas, where we're, you know, they have strengths in areas that are complementary to us. You know, previously, you know, we are strong on doing active scans in these public cloud environments and discovering your assets. We also have an agentless solution there.
We also, our cloud security offering inspects container registries, and we also have a capability that addresses these pre-production issues for a lot of customers, which is via infrastructure as code and inspecting the Terraform scripts for errors and risks that may not be compliant with your policy. Ermetic complements certainly a lot of these offerings and accelerates our roadmap in new and dramatic ways. And so for us, we're super excited about combining our capabilities with the Ermetic offering and going deeper and wider, and arguably, and what is, not arguably, but what is our largest and fastest-growing TAM, which is cloud security, is 40% of our total addressable market, 40%+ . And we're pretty excited out of the gate. It's been well-received. Engagement levels are high.
And, you know, it's gonna be an important part of what we do going forward, where we're gonna sell cloud security on a standalone basis, whether it's to address a specific need, or sell it more broadly as part of the Tenable One offering, as cloud security is an important part of the attack surface that we're helping secure.
Got it. Got it. And I think you had teased at this earlier when we were talking about the platform being, I guess, built out to a certain degree versus where we were with traditional VM. This is something that we get frequently, so I'd appreciate your input here. But can you give us a walkthrough as far as with these more recent acquisitions and organic product developments, how has the competitor set changed? And really, kind of frame it out almost by product or capability, but who is it that you're seeing from a vendor standpoint when we think about these individual products?
Yeah, obviously, when it comes to helping customers understand risk holistically, we believe that's a market we own, and that's a question we specifically ask for our customers. In terms of selling it on a standalone basis, we will see different competitors, and certainly across different products. You know, I think the VM market's well understood for someone who's following Tenable. You know, when it comes to things like OT, there's, you know, there's a couple of smaller private companies that we'll compete against from, from time to time. Though, if you look at OT in particular, you know, one of the major, or one of the big investment thesis behind the deal is the convergence of IT and OT.
And where we're having great success is selling OT, really isn't an extension, it's an expansionary opportunity to either Tenable One or standalone VM. That market's undergone a lot of change over the years. It was analog, a lot of these systems and industrial control systems and assets, and then became digital, but it was air-gapped, and now they're all interconnected. And that increasingly, you're seeing the responsibility to secure those systems shift away from a plant manager to a security professional, the Chief Information Security Officer, who's our buyers. And we've had great success there. In the case of Active Directory, which came to us via you know, our acquisition of Alsid a couple of years ago, there's this recognition that you know, AD environments have been really tough to secure.
If you look at a lot of the high-profile data breaches, you know, a lot of them, and there's been congressional testimony about this, have, you know, started with, you know, started in Active Directory environments. But AD is very much connected to the rest of your IT environment, and Colonial Pipeline is something that comes to mind. It was an attack on their AD environment that led to the disruption of oil on the East Coast. But identities is important. It's an important part of what we're doing here, helping understand privilege access, those who have over-provisioned accounts, those who can make lateral movements, and doing that not only in traditional AD environments, but also doing that in public cloud environments, which is what, you know, the Ermetic acquisition helps us do.
And, you know, there are, you know, companies that certainly have some AD capabilities. I think SentinelOne is one that comes to mind, even CrowdStrike. But again, for us, it's not only selling it standalone, but selling it part of a broader platform that addresses a bigger question, which is, how secure are we in helping customers understand their risk? So you know, and then in the case of cloud security, which is certainly a very sizable market for us, and it's early innings in cloud. And if you look at cloud, our belief is, like, this is not a zero-sum game. There's not gonna be one company that owns cloud security. There's gonna be multiple winners here.
We have a massive customer base, and we've demonstrated an ability over the years to sell these capabilities back into our base. Now we're adding expansionary capabilities and accelerating the roadmap. And, you know, you'll see the likes of, like, Palo Alto or Wiz. But we're very excited about what the Ermetic acquisition will bring and our ability to sell a more expansive cloud security offering into, you know, our largest addressable market.
Got it. I think one of the things I know we're talking about this platform, too, and how you guys have these increased capabilities. Would be interested in hearing, like, for the broader platform, how has that impacted win rates versus some of these competitors we're talking to? Like, is there tangible evidence that because we have these broader product capabilities, that win rates are actually improving? Are they relatively the same? How do you frame that out?
Yeah, well, I think first and foremost, we're getting more at bats. I think increasingly... And I will say this, and I've got to be careful not to pontificate here, but I do think, I think the security market's undergoing a dramatic change. When rates were historically low, spending was high. You know, there's, you know, security professionals were quick to deploy a lot of point solutions, and I think I read one survey a while ago that said the average CISO has over 100 different providers in their security stack. And I do think security will continue to be best of breed, but I think there's a little bit of vendor fatigue. And increasingly now with, in, we're in an environment where spending is... Corporations are spending more cautiously.
They're looking to, and specifically within security, I think this notion of value-based selling, ROI, vendor consolidation is really important. And so I think there's when security professionals, you know, are serious about security, they turn to a handful of companies, and they want to expand that relationship. And Tenable, we believe, absolutely is one of those players. We have a strong relationship with customer, massive customer base, and as a result, customers want more utility from us. So when you look at specifically Tenable One, you know, it obviates the need, we believe, for things like cyber asset management. We believe that even attack surface management, web app security, which, you know, these are standalone products and markets, but really are an expansion of the core VM proposition.
So for us, the ability to integrate all of this data from all these different siloed security functions into a platform that's able to provide greater insights and address a major pain point for our customers, it's just really important here. And, you know, I think going forward, and customers want to expand, want additional capability from, you know, from a handful of core vendors in their cyber stack. And, you know, we've been successful to date in doing it.
Got it. Got it. If I could just shift gears to the more recent earnings call, and this is really looking at the calendar 2024 guide, right? So one of the things I've gotten from folks is the 3Q call, Tenable provided this initial outlook for mid-teen CCB growth in 2024, which includes the Ermetic acquisition. I think there's two pieces here, but the first, I guess what gave management the confidence to offer that commentary on the 3Q call? Just because I don't believe the company's historically gone out on Q3 before to talk about the out year. So if you could just clean that up from our perspective, and then I have a follow-on to that as well.
Yeah. So in the third quarter, we said here, in terms of the underlying performance of the business, we're very happy. I'm happy to talk about CCB at some other point, but very happy. We saw major outperformance in public sector, wasn't reflected at CCB. But as we look at this, you know, look out in the fourth quarter, what we noted is this, number one, you know, our business is very balanced and diversified. You know, we sell in, you know, in enterprise, you know, large customers, mid-sized customers. We even have a flow business in Nessus that sells to smaller companies and consultants and standalone use cases. We sell in, you know, the public sector as well as the private sector.
And if you look at, you know, headed into the fourth quarter, one of the things that we took into consideration was really the selling environment in the mid-market. You know, if you look at some of the conversion rates that we've seen in the mid-market over the past couple of quarters, it's fluctuated. It was higher in the fourth quarter of last year, and then a little lower in Q1, and then notably higher in Q2, and then lower here in Q3. And, as we look in the fourth quarter, we weren't expecting, we are not expecting the level of outperformance in public sector that we saw in the third quarter. We also don't want to assume that the selling conditions will change.
While there's the potential for budget flush, you know, each quarter is different, and in its own right, we're not assuming that in our guidance. And at the same time, you know, we believe, you know, what we saw in the third quarter in the mid-market will continue in the fourth quarter. So as a result, given kind of the print in CCB in Q3, looking at Q4, where we felt the need to rein in the expectations a bit, you know, that would leave an obvious question about like, what about next year? And we also wanted to make sure we created a clear consensus in the stock in terms of estimates for next year. You know, one thing I want to be clear about is that we will give guidance for 2024 in our February earnings call.
Q4 is an important data point for us. It's our largest quarter in terms of absolute dollars, and so we'll talk about the business in more specific terms on the February call with regard to the upcoming year in 2024. That said, we wanted to provide directional comments now, so people understood kind of what we're expecting here, because certainly, as you're changing your expectations in the fourth quarter, it's a fair question to ask, "And what about next year?" So what we said was mid-teens growth, you know, whether that's 14% or 15% or whatever that number is, and we said 25% growth in free cash flow. In the mid-teens growth, we said our outlook for Ermetic has not changed.
We're super excited with the engagement out of the gate here, as I mentioned earlier, and we said that'll contribute about 2 points of growth. So if you unpack that, that's really kind of would imply a 12%-13% growth for Tenable standalone next year. Keep in mind, with some of the larger, more strategic contracts that we closed here in the third quarter in the public sector, they have milestones and deliverables over the next year, right? That provides higher levels of visibility into CCB. That will create a slight tailwind for us. So we took all that into consideration in setting the expectations, and if you unpack it, what it's assuming is roughly the same level of growth that we would, for next year, that we would experience in the fourth quarter.
Okay. Okay.
Slightly lower levels of growth. Sorry.
Got it. And I did. This is another thing that I've gotten from folks and just wanted to see. Is there any way to think about a Tenable's renewal base? Like, again, I know we're out here talking about that mid-teen CCB growth next year, call it 12%-13% organic, but is that being influenced by calendar 2024 having a smaller renewal base, or is that less of a concern when you guys think about that guidance's construction?
When you're asking the question about renewals, I'm assuming, like, gross dollar renewal rate, and like, our renewals have been exceptional for us over the years. They don't change. You know, there may be a customer here or there that can skew things based on the timing of renewals, but our gross dollar renewal rates have been absolutely exceptional. We're not assuming significant changes, either for the better or for the worse, in our gross dollar renewal rate for next year.
Got it. And for the mid-market comments as well, again, we heard about that on the Q3 call, and that's bleeding into your Q4 outlook and your 2024 preliminary comments. But with that, I guess the question is: when did that mid-market weakness really start to show up? Where we are today, midway through November, like, has it persisted? Is there any deviation from where we were just a couple of weeks ago?
Yeah, it's fluctuated a little bit for us, the conversion rate in the mid-market over the past couple of quarters. But what we saw was something just notably lower in the third quarter. And like I said, each quarter is different in its own right, but as we look out in the fourth quarter, we don't want to assume that things will change. You know, the good news is that, you know, pipelines remain healthy there, but it's just taking longer to convert opportunities in the mid-market, and we believe that's a segment of the market that more susceptible or has been more susceptible to changes in macroeconomic conditions. You know, on the same time, we've seen major strength really at the upper end of the market, and specifically with transacting large deals.
We had a record number of seven-figure deals. We had a record number of $500,000 deals. You know, that is no coincidence. We've broadened the product portfolio. We're delivering incremental value to customers. We're closing larger deals. But certainly, you know, in the mid-market, you know, they've been more susceptible to the market that we're experiencing now.
Got it. And maybe on that last point, I know that we're talking about this seeming dichotomy between the mid-market versus the strength that you guys have seen at the upper end. Just as a reminder for folks, like, given you guys play at the high end, you have that flow business with Nessus. You are also in the mid-market. Like, how much of the business is tied to enterprise versus mid-market?
Yeah. What we've just disclosed in the past was approximately 25% of our total sales is what we call, you know, the mid-market. And within the mid-market, what we're talking about is roughly 500 employees, up to, depending on which theater you're in, 3,500-5,000 employees. You know, north of that would be the enterprise market. So it's, we sell primarily to mid and large organizations. Obviously, we have a business in Nessus that allows us to land cost-effectively with organizations of any size, and it also serves as a cost-effective on-ramp into a larger platform sale. And then once we sell the platform, we have an asset-based pricing model. When customers renew, they, they add on average, you know, 10%-20%, historically, you know, more, more assets.
So, you know, this really, this size of, you know, how we define the mid-market, and relative to our expectations, it was just a little different than what we experienced in the third quarter. As we look out in 2024, there's nothing structural. We're saying, "Hey, that what we saw here is going to..." There's nothing we're seeing today that says what we saw in the mid-market will absolutely play out in 2024. What we're saying is that we wanna set expectations at a reasonable level. If you unpack the guide, we believe we're setting the right expectations at the onset. Again, we'll talk about 2024 in more specific terms on our February call, though.
Got it. And maybe just one more on that mid-market component, but was... Like, what we're talking to here, was it in any way more tied to a specific vertical, or this was really across the board as far as the evidence that you guys were looking at on your side?
Yeah. No, we, it was not tied to one specific vertical. In the mid-market, it tends to go, you know, certainly broader. So it's in the large markets when you can see different market dynamics and buying dynamics across verticals, and we actually talked about that in the large market in Q1. But in the mid-market, it's more, you know, it's more agnostic.
Got it. And another thing I'd like to unpack here as well is this divergence that we saw in the most recent quarter between the CCB and revenue. And I guess, as a reminder for folks, first, can we just start with why CCB is understandably the best, if not an imperfect, proxy? And then secondarily, what did drive that divergence?
Yeah, and, you know, we provide a leading indicator. We realize as a SaaS company that, you know, investors often want a leading indicator of revenue growth. You know, that can come in a lot of different flavors, whether it's ARR or CCB. Historically, we've or even, you know, RPO. So we guide to annually, not quarterly, calculated current billings, which is the change in current portion of deferred revenue, plus revenue recognized. That gives you a close, but not perfect, proxy of what we sell, and because there's a lot of factors that can include, that can skew CCB growth.
And, you know, we've been very clear about this on a lot of our calls, such as deal timing, early renewals, but lots of things can cause CCB to fluctuate or vary relative to what we measure internally. And what we measure internally is bookings. It's annual contract value. That's how quarters are set, that's how management's compensated. And in our years as a public company, you know, the corollary between CCB growth and bookings growth has been very close. It can fluctuate maybe 200 basis points -300 basis points a quarter. This quarter, it was dramatic. And so what we talked about on the earnings call was that Calculated Current Billings growth was 15%. That was a much closer approximation to the underlying performance of the business.
CCB growth was 8%, and because of the outperformance in public sector, some of the things there are some things that are different there, given our leadership in the public sector, this, that you don't type that you see there, that you don't see in our traditional enterprise business. For example, higher levels of perpetual license sales. That's just how the Fed has historically, you know, purchased some of our solutions over the years.
Let's see, I don't wanna go too deep here for this call, but we recognize revenue when we sell a perpetual license, not upfront, but over the course of five years, which is deemed to be the life of the portfolio of those customers, in part because we provide a vast database of plugins and vulnerabilities, and we're constantly refreshing that, and so it's really a de facto subscription. So we get minimal CCB contribution. So four-fifths of every perpetual license deal we do is not included in CCB because it's included in long-term deferred revenue. And then, also, these deals that we talked about in the public sector that were much larger, well above seven figures, very strategic, what they have deliverables that'll span over the course of time.
Professional services, related to some of these deals, unlike our enterprise business, is not billed upfront. It's billed in arrears, and so that's something that will be delivered, you know, over the course of the next several quarters, over the course of the next year, that will benefit CCB in the future. But it's not included in CCB because it's not invoiced upfront. So in summary, we believe we had a good quarter, driven by the outperformance in public sector. It's not reflected in CCB, and that's what created the disparity between CCB growth and the true underlying performance of the business.
... Got it. A follow-up on that, and I know, again, we're all looking at as many metrics as we have that are externally facing, but one of them that comes up is obviously CRPO. So is it fair to think that in this current quarter, maybe CRPO told a truer story? And should we be looking at CRPO a little bit more now that you guys have this sort of public sector exposure, or no, that's not necessarily the case?
Yeah. And so for this quarter, you know, current RPO is a closer approximation of the performance of the business. I'm really reticent to say, "Okay, that is now our new metric going forward.
Right.
No matter whether it's current RPO, long-term RPO, ARR... By the way, whether even if we were guiding to ARR and not CCB, you would have had the same issue with regard to perpetual licenses or professional services. No one number, is, you know, is going to be perfect every quarter, you know, over the course of years. This is the first time where we saw a major disparity. We were very transparent about what we saw. I think some of the deals that we've won in public sector, large deals, are on these public procurement sites, and there's clear evidence that we had a saw a major upside in public sector. So, and short answer is, you know, we're gonna continue to talk about CCB, at least in the short term.
We'll continue to look at better ways to communicate the overall health of the business. But no one number is going, is going to be perfect all the time.
Okay. And for public sector, I think you made mention of it a little bit earlier, and I know it came out on the earnings call, too. But just as a reminder, like, how much of the business is typically from public sector? And just for comparison purposes, what was it in Q3? Just to get a sense of, like, why that delta between CCB and revenue widened to the extent it did.
Yeah. You know, we didn't disclose the exact mix in the third quarter, but what we said it was more than double. So I think a lot of analysts would estimate that it's 15% ± in any given quarter. And we said, and if you look over the last, you know, since we've been public, over the last several years, the mix that we saw this quarter in public sector was more than double. So certainly, that's a great thing, by the way.
Yeah.
You know, we're well positioned in public sector. It's an important theater for us. Success there translates to success in the enterprise market. And arguably, the U.S. federal government in particular, is one of the most demanding, sophisticated cyber consumers in the world. So, we're really excited about what we saw in the public sector, and this is, we believe, a gift that will keep giving. We're not expecting this level of outperformance in the fourth quarter. You know, and one of the... And if you look at some of these opportunities that we closed, you know, we probability weight our forecast all the time, but if you look at the beginning of the quarter, the probability of closing some of these deals was low.
So during the course of the quarter, what we saw was the opportunity to close these deals. We talked about how deals in the public sector can be bought at the agency level or more broadly across multiple agencies, across the procurement arm of the federal government, which is called SEWP. Kinda later in the quarter, we were engaging with SEWP, and it was clear that there was budget dollars to spend. The good news is, you know, we're, you know, a major partner with the federal government, and we were able to close the deal within the quarter. There's a ton of opportunities in public sector going forward, a ton of larger opportunities, and we're gonna continue to be aggressive there and expand our leadership position.
Great. And probably just given time constraints, probably the last question we have time for, but just wanted to see... I think some of these public sector contracts are also in their earlier phases, with potential to scale and become meaningful over time. If that's the case, like over the next 12 months or even beyond that, when some of these projects scale up, is there potential, I'd imagine, for that delta between CCB and revenue to actually widen, or should we expect compression over the next 12 months until we start anniversaring some of these contracts? How do you guys play that out?
Yeah, no, that's a good question. So, we don't expect it to widen. I think some of the deals, if you look at one deal in particular, which is well over seven figures, and included software as well as professional services, and I think we said, okay, two-thirds, almost 70% of one deal was professional services. You're like: Well, okay. Well, that doesn't sound good. But what you have to note is this: number one, gave us an ability to sell some software. This is phase one of a multiple-phase contract. We're securing 35 sites, includes VM and OT. There are hundreds more sites for us to secure.
A lot of this, these are larger strategic deals, and there's a lot of program design work that we're doing out of the gate here, and that will create the opportunity for us to sell additional software in the future. So we know that when we sell professional services, ASPs go higher, it's stickier, we sell more product down the road. You know, we have the ability to expand with customers, and that is a very good thing. So, again, you know, we saw something unusual in the third quarter, given the outperformance of public sector that did weigh on CCB, but we believe some of the deals that we did close will create an opportunity to sell more software down the road. Just requires a little more program design and, you know, planning work up front. So yes.
Got it. Got it. Okay, and with that, I know we, we are at time, but I just wanted to express my gratitude. Thank you again for joining us today, and thank you to the audience for tuning in as well, but really appreciate it.
Thank you, Mike, for having us.
Thanks, everyone.
Take care.