AudioCodes Q1 2024 Earnings Report

AudioCodes EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.12
• Consensus EPS: $0.10
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.02
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

AudioCodes Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $60.08 million
• Expected Revenue: $62.66 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$2.58 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

AudioCodes Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2024
• Date: 5/7/2024
• Time: N/A
• Conference Call Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

AudioCodes (NASDAQ:AUDC) Ltd is a global provider of advanced voice networking and media processing solutions for enterprises and service providers. The company designs and manufactures a comprehensive portfolio of products, including session border controllers (SBCs), media gateways, IP phones, management and monitoring software, and cloud-based communications microservices. Its offerings support a wide range of unified communications (UC) and contact center deployments, enabling secure, high-quality voice connectivity across on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments.

Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Rosh Ha’Ayin, Israel, AudioCodes serves customers in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. The company has built strategic partnerships with leading unified communications platforms, including Microsoft Teams, to deliver certified Direct Routing and Operator Connect solutions. AudioCodes’ products are widely used by enterprises, service providers and system integrators to facilitate digital transformation initiatives and to modernize voice infrastructure.

AudioCodes has a history of innovation in VoIP and data networking, with numerous patents covering voice processing and signaling technologies. Over the years, the company has expanded its portfolio through organic development and targeted acquisitions, broadening its software capabilities and cloud readiness. The leadership team is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Shabtai Adlersberg, who oversees global strategy and operations, supported by a management team with deep expertise in voice networking and unified communications.

AudioCodes Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• AudioCodes reported Q1 revenue of $60.1 million, up 1.5% YoY, with non-GAAP net income of $5.2 million ($0.17 per share), and updated full-year revenue guidance to $240–$250 million and EPS to $0.85–$1.00.
• The legacy gateway business declined over 25% YoY, leading to a sequential revenue drop of 5.5% and a $15 million cut to FY 2024 revenue expectations.
• Recurring revenue momentum continued as services accounted for 52.5% of Q1 sales, with live managed services ARR up 45% to €53 million and conversational AI bookings rising ~50% YoY.
• A second phase of cost reductions, including a 6% headcount cut in legacy R&D, is expected to yield $6 million in annualized savings by early Q3 2024.
• Strategic areas saw strong growth, with Microsoft Teams business up ~9.6% YoY, a record pipeline increase of over 30%, and Voca CIC named best Microsoft Teams contact center solution by CX Today.

Presentation

[Operator]

Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Roger Chuchen. Roger, over to you.

[Roger Chuchen, Head of Investor Relations at AudioCodes]

Thank you, operator. Hosting the call today are Shabtai Adlersberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Niran Baruch, Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that the information provided during this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to AudioCodes' business outlook, the future economic performance, product introductions, plans, and objectives related thereto, and statements concerning assumptions made or expectations as to any future events, conditions, performance, or other matters are forward-looking statements as the term is defined under US Federal Securities Law. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those stated in such statements.

[Roger Chuchen, Head of Investor Relations at AudioCodes]

These risks, uncertainties, and factors include, but are not limited to, the effects of global economic conditions in general, and conditions in AudioCodes' industry and target markets, in particular, shifts in supply and demand, market acceptance of new products, and the demand for existing products, the impact of competitive products and pricing on AudioCodes and its customers' products and markets, timely product and technology development, upgrades, and ability to manage changes in market conditions as needed, possible need for additional financing, the ability to satisfy covenants in the company's loan agreements, possible disruptions from acquisitions, the ability of AudioCodes to successfully integrate the products and operations of acquired companies into AudioCodes' business. Possible adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and results of operations.

[Roger Chuchen, Head of Investor Relations at AudioCodes]

The effects of the current terrorist attacks by Hamas and the war and hostilities between Israel and Hamas and Israel and Hezbollah, as well as the possibility that this could develop into a broader regional conflict involving Israel with other parties, may affect our operations and may limit our ability to produce and sell our solutions. Any disruption in our operations by the obligations of our personnel to perform military service as a result of current or future military actions involving Israel and other factors detailed in AudioCodes' filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. AudioCodes assumes no obligation to update this information. In addition, during the call, AudioCodes will refer to non-GAAP net income and net income per share.

[Roger Chuchen, Head of Investor Relations at AudioCodes]

AudioCodes has provided a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP net income and net income per share to its net income and net income per share, according to GAAP, in the press release that is posted on its website. Before I turn the call over to management, I'd like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded. An archive webcast will be made available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website at the conclusion of the call. With all that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Shabtai. Shabtai, please go ahead.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Thank you, Roger. Good morning and good afternoon, everybody. I would like to welcome all to our Q1 2024 conference call. With me this morning is Niran Baruch, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Finance of AudioCodes. Niran will start off by presenting a financial overview of the quarter. I will then review the business highlights and summary for the quarter and discuss trends and developments in our business and industry. We will then turn it into the Q&A session. Niran?

[Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO at AudioCodes]

Thank you, Shabtai, and hello, everyone. Before I start my formal remarks, I would like to remind everyone that in conjunction with our earnings release this morning, we will post shortly on our investor relations website an earnings supplemental deck. On today's call, we will be referring to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. The earnings press release that we issued earlier this morning contains a reconciliation of the supplemental non-GAAP financial information that I will be discussing on this call. Revenues for the Q1 were $60.1 million, an increase of 1.5% over the $59.2 million reported in the Q1 of last year. Services revenues for the Q1 were $31.5 million, up 3.3% over the year ago period. Services revenues in the Q1 accounted for 52.5% of total revenues.

[Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO at AudioCodes]

The amount of deferred revenues as of March 31, 2024, was $80.5 million, compared to $77.6 million as of March 31, 2023. Revenues by geographical regions for the quarter were split as follows: North America, 43%; EMEA, 38%; Asia Pacific, 14%; and Central and Latin America, 5%. Our top 15 customers represented an aggregate of 50% of our revenues in the Q1, of which 38% was attributed to our 11 largest distributors. GAAP results are as follows: Gross margin for the quarter was 64.44%, compared to 61.7% in Q1 2023. Operating income for the Q1 was $3.3 million or 5.5% of revenues, compared to operating loss of $0.8 million, or 1.4% of revenues in Q1 2023.

[Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO at AudioCodes]

Net income for the quarter was $2.1 million or $0.07 per diluted share, compared to net loss of $0.2 million or $0.01 per diluted share for Q1 2023. Non-GAAP results are as follows: Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 65.2%, compared to 62.1% in Q1 2023. Non-GAAP operating income for the Q1 was $6.3 million or 10.5% of revenues, compared to $2.9 million, or 4.9% of revenues in Q1 2023. Non-GAAP net income for the Q1 was $5.2 million, or $0.17 per diluted share, compared to $2.7 million, or $0.08 per diluted share in Q1 2023.

[Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO at AudioCodes]

At the end of March 2024, cash, cash equivalents, bank deposits, marketable securities, and financial investments totaled $106 million. Net cash provided by operating activities was $15 million for the Q1 of 2024. Purchases of property and equipment were $6.8 million in the quarter, significantly higher than historical periods, related to leasehold improvements of our new corporate headquarters in Israel. We expect CapEx to remain elevated in the Q2, after which we expect this line item to return to historical levels. Days sales outstanding as of March 31, 2024, were 100 days. In December 2023, we received court approval in Israel to purchase up to an aggregate amount of $20 million of additional ordinary shares. The court approval also permits us to declare a dividend of any part of this amount.

[Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO at AudioCodes]

The approval is valid through June 18, 2024. During the quarter, we acquired 302,000 of our ordinary shares for a total consideration of approximately $3.6 million. As of March 31, 2024, we had $10.2 million available under the approval for the repurchase of shares and/or declaration of cash dividends. On February 6, 2024, we declared a cash dividend of $0.18 per share. The dividend in aggregate amount of approximately $5.5 million was paid on March 6, 2024. We have recently embarked on the second phase of cost reduction plans that involves reducing our head count by approximately 6%. This program is expected to result in $6 million annualized cost savings, with full run rate expected in the beginning of the Q3, 2024.

[Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO at AudioCodes]

We are updating our guidance for full year 2024 as follows: We now expect revenues in the range of $240 to 250 million, and non-GAAP diluted net income per share of $0.85 to 1. I will now turn the call back over to Shabtai.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Thank you, Niran. Our Q1 2024 results were highlighted by healthy revenue growth of 1.5% year-over-year, and executing on our strategic plan to evolve the company to become a leader in voice services in the UCaaS and CCaaS markets. We continued the transition of our business to a recurring revenue model and transformation from a network equipment vendor to software and services company. On the other end, while growing nicely in strategic business lines, such as Microsoft Teams, the customer experience market, and conversational AI applications, we saw continued decline in our legacy gateway networking business in the Q1 2024, similar to trends seen in 2023.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

As reported by other communication equipment vendors, we believe that the high interest rate environment continues to have an impact on muted business spending, especially when it relates to hardware products. These two factors, transition to a recurring business model and larger and earlier than anticipated decline in legacy gateway business of above 20% to 25% year-over-year, led to sequential quarterly revenue decline of 5.5%, about 2.5% lower than anticipated earlier in the year. Coming back to discuss the positive developments in the quarter, we enjoyed a very substantial positive cash flow from operations, $15 million, and strength in our Live Managed Services operation, in which annual recurring revenue grew 45% in the quarter. We have also enjoyed increased services backlog.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

These developments in the quarter provide us with a conviction about our growth prospects and puts us solidly on a track to successfully transform efforts to focus on software and services in our markets. In terms of key growth areas, our Q1, Microsoft and Teams business grew 8% and 9.6%, respectively, year-over-year. Customer experience business grew 15% year-over-year, and conversational AI bookings grew around 50% year-over-year. Another sign of continued strength in core areas where we focus, is the marked increase in our pipeline or created opportunities. For example, within Microsoft ecosystem, which makes up close to 60% of our business, our pipeline reached an all-time record, up over 30% year-over-year and over 20% sequentially.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

We believe the secular trend of unified communication and customer experience convergence is cementing our already strong competitive moat in UC voice and driving additional opportunities in customer experience within the Microsoft Teams ecosystem. We are now the leading Microsoft Teams Phone partner to lead a, quote, unquote, "complete Microsoft Teams calling and contact center combined offering." A lot of you already know that we are the number one Microsoft Teams phone partner, enabling a significant share of the current 20 million+ Teams phone PSTN seats. I'm sorry. What may be less clear is that Voca CIC, our Teams-based contact center as a service platform, is now recognized to be best in class, having recently been awarded the best Microsoft Teams contact center solution by CX Today, based on majority votes of customer experience industry experts.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Our unique Teams-based UCCX offering is increasingly getting more market awareness, as evidenced by the buzz we receive about our complete Microsoft Teams calling and contact center offering at Enterprise Connect in March 2024, one of the largest UCCX industry trade show events. Regarding the weakness in top line in the quarter and why we believe it is short-term in nature, I'd like to know the following. Ongoing software spending due to macro uncertainty and continued elevated interest rates, likely cause enterprises and service providers to underspend in the context of annual budget in the early part of the year. The software spending impacted mainly legacy and hardware portions of our business, where sales of legacy products such as gateways, declined above 25% year-over-year.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

We believe that this is similar phenomenon to what we saw in 2023, in which our Q1 2023 gateway business was slow out of the gate, with stronger spending to come over the course of the year as customers looked to put unallocated annual budget to work. As discussed, growth in strategic major business such as Microsoft, customer experience, and conversational AI, continue to be healthy. We believe that our growth in software and services and conversational AI-related solution, which grew again above 50% year-over-year, should fully offset declines in legacy pieces of the business starting in 2025. I should point out that 2024 is the year in which we are continuing strong growth in our live business for Microsoft Teams, which grew around 45% year-over-year in the quarter.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

In addition, with our new Voca CIC solution, enabling us to be the first in the industry to offer a complete Microsoft Teams calling and contact center combined offering, we're looking to proactively cross-sell our subscription-based Voca CIC Teams-certified CCaaS to our already significant Microsoft Teams installed base, base of customers. The other factor contributing to muted growth at this stage is the shift in our revenue model, which trends increasingly towards recurring revenue in lieu of historical CapEx model. This obviously impacts our near-term revenue growth and creates headwinds. I should mention, though, that this shift is clearly accretive to our long-term top line growth. Shifting gears to services. Services revenue overall accounted for 52.5% of revenues and grew % year-over-year, on top of strong services revenue generation in the year-ago period.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Importantly, our professional services bookings remain strong and up 24% year-over-year, which portends re-acceleration of services growth over the balance of the year. What has fueled our ongoing momentum in services is headlined by our live subscription business, which ended the Q1 at $53 million annual recurring revenue, putting us on track to achieve our guidance for the year of $64 to 70 million, exiting 2024. Another positive development on the live services front is the emergence of new live CX services for the past 2 to 3 quarters. This new area of activity for us in the CX market seems to represent growing potential connected to the continued shift of enterprises to CCaaS in the CX industry.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Other positive developments in the quarter were continued strength in our SBC product line, which grew 15% year-over-year, and where we kept our top leading position with more than 25% market share in enterprise space. Most notably, growth came mainly from increasing our SBC managed services, which should further cement our strength in this market. And then we saw very nice progress in the conversational AI business. Live bookings grew above 50%, and, basically, we see that growth, in the future. Reference our profitability metrics. Our Q1 2024 non-GAAP EPS was $0.17, which was below our internal budget, primarily on lower revenues.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Our non-GAAP gross margin in the quarter was, came at 65.2%, lower than the 65% to 68%, long-term range, and compared to 67.6% in the Q4 of 2023, and 62.1% in Q1 of 2023. The sequential margin decline is primarily attributable to less favorable product mix. Q1 non-GAAP OpEx was $32.9 million, in line with our planning and expectation. Net cash provided by operating activities was $15 million. We ended the quarter with head count of 959 employees, up from 950 employees in Q4, and compares to 978 employees in the Q1 of 2023.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

We expect our head count figures to come down from current levels as our second phase of cost reduction initiative takes effect in second and Q3 2024. Now to budget trimming. Let me discuss steps we have already initiated and are taking as part of our long-term commitment to drive significant margin expansion and operating leverage. In the Q1 of 2024, operating expenses were in line with the original budget for the year. Anticipating now further industry muted business spending in 2024 and continued transition in our revenue model from CapEx into recurring business model, we took budget cut steps to adjust our operational expenses to lower forecast of revenues in 2024. We've recently initiated the second phase of the cost reduction measures that we previously communicated a few quarters ago.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

This current phase encompasses head count rationalization of more than 6%, primarily related to R&D functions dedicated to legacy areas such as gateways and multi-service business routers. Once fully implemented, which is expected to occur by mid Q3 2024, this program is expected to yield $1.5 million of quarterly run rate savings, or $6 million annually. This action does not impact our R&D spending on core strategic areas of our business, such as Microsoft Teams, CX, and conversational AI, which continue to be robust. In fact, while reducing positioning in legacy-related R&D, we kept hiring and growing our R&D, product management, marketing, and sales resources in our live and conversational AI operations.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

On the guidance front, as Niran suggested, in view of the continued decline in our legacy gateway revenue and market outlook, I'm sorry, for the rest of 2024 in our market segments, we are updating our 2024 guidance, as earlier stated by Niran. We believe that the continued shift to software and services, coupled with cost-cutting measures we took already in Q1 2024, should allow us to continue to expand our margins and grow earnings by about 15% compared to 2023. The top-line outlook assumes continued success in our UCaaS, CCaaS, and conversational AI operations, in line with the growth that we have demonstrated already throughout the whole of 2023 and during the Q1 of 2024. In terms of our key business line, I'll touch a few areas.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Microsoft, as discussed previously, Microsoft business increased 8% year-over-year in the Q1. Microsoft Teams business grew higher, reaching 9.6% growth year-over-year. Skype business continued to decline close to 20% to a rather, very low level of about $1 million a quarter. As such, solutions for Microsoft Teams consists now 97% of Microsoft quarterly revenue. Exit Q1 2024, Live for Teams annual recurring revenues reached a level of $53 million, in line with our plans. We're thus confident that we are on track to achieve our stated goal of achieving Live annual recurring revenue of $64 to 70 million for the whole year. Live Managed Services for Teams represent now nearly 45% of Microsoft Teams business, compared to just 25% in the year ago quarter.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

And thus, we believe that the impact of the shift to recurring revenue model should ease in coming quarters. We have also enjoyed growth in total contract value of live services, which grew about 45% year-over-year. From geo perspective, EMEA bookings registered modest growth for the first time in multiple quarters, while North America experienced steady growth. Given the robust growth in our pipeline or created opportunities, we remain optimistic about the long-term growth potential for our Microsoft business. In addition to the multi-year opportunity of Teams Phone Connectivity, we can see clear signs of growing potential for a new source of revenue based on voice-related business application.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Among these, they include components such as Voca CIC as a contact center solution for the Teams environment, SmartTAP 360° as a compliance recording solution for the Teams environment, and Meeting Insights as a central hub solution for capturing and sharing meeting information across the organization. Moving to CX and conversational AI. Q1 contact center business grew 15% year-over-year, led by North America and the Asia Pacific regions. Conversational AI, as I've mentioned before, conversational AI bookings grew over 50% year-over-year. Voice services for enterprise CCaaS deployments continue to be the center of our activity. With the integration of our live platform into these opportunities, we see a steady rise of revenues associated with our live CX activity.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

We now see strength in the CXAi on all fronts, emanating from sales of our solution in support of enterprise customers and leading vendors of customer experience platform and cross-sell our own AI-first Voca CIC contact center platform to the Teams Phone install base. Staying on the topic of Voca CIC, over the past 12 months, we have significantly stepped up our product development resources and investment into the Teams contact center solution, highlighted by our recent addition of the omni-channel capabilities. We are thrilled that the industry analysts and market alike are starting to notice, as evidenced by us having recently been awarded by CX Today the best Microsoft Teams contact center solution, based on the evaluation of 16 top industry experts.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

While still a small portion, still a small percentage of our overall business, we expect Voca CIC to be a major growth catalyst, a growth pillar for our CX and overall long-term future, arising from both direct revenue contribution and pull-through of the rest of the conversational AI business lines, such as SmartTAP, compliance, recording, and call summarization. Now, let's quickly go through highlights of other conversational AI business segments. First, on Meeting Insights. Just to remind us all, Meeting Insights for Teams is an enterprise-grade software-as-a-service solution that enables organizations to capture, analyze, and share business meeting information across the company. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and conversational AI technologies for recording, transcribing, indexing, and analysis, making it easy to search and retrieve information from past meetings.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

With Meeting Insights, users can quickly find and review key points and decisions from previous meetings, improving collaboration and decision-making across the organization. In the Q1 of 2024, we have achieved a key development milestone, where the solution was upgraded to become a cloud-based true SaaS solution, providing multi-tenant service to enterprises. Roadmap for the solution in 2024 includes, among others, additions of automation capabilities, more languages, European languages, enhanced mobile operation, and extending the function of Meeting Insights to more UCaaS solutions. As for sales, we have seen nice growth in new accounts in the UK and US, adopting the tool for their ongoing daily operations.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

On SmartTAP, in Q2, 2024, we plan to launch SmartTAP also as a SaaS solution for enterprises, a platform that will expand our go-to-market opportunities, enabling service provider and resellers to offer their own branded recording services, powered by AudioCodes. This new platform shares the same infrastructure as Meeting Insights, and we have plans to unify the services in 2024, given growing synergies between these two business lines. To wrap up our discussion, relying on the nice progress we see in our strategic clients around Microsoft Teams, CX, and conversational AI, and despite the slower than expected start to the year due to legacy decline, we have strong conviction about our long-term business fundamentals and have made significant progress in our transformation to a software and services company with strong profitability.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

This optimism is supported by record pipeline of created opportunity in the Q1 of 2024, particularly in the Microsoft and contact center environments. Growing momentum of Voca CIC is a major long-term growth driver for the company, and ongoing strong annual recurring revenue growth for the Live Managed Services for the company. With that, I've concluded my section of the call, and I'd like to move the call to the operator.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. We will now be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you can press star one on your phone keypad now. We ask that while you're posing your question, you please pick up your handset if you're using a speaker or phone. Just please give us one minute while we poll for any questions. Thank you. Your first question is coming from Samad Samana of Jefferies. Samad, your line is live.

[Mason Marion, Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies]

Hi, this is Mason Marion on for Samad. Thanks for taking our questions. I want to start with guidance. Of the $15 million reduction to the full year revenues, what amount is from lower than expected gateway revenue? And, did you lower revenue expectations for any other products or services as well?

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Okay, well, we've seen about $3 million, you know, decline in the Q1. As you know, just relying on the experience we had from 2023, we believe that we will not see major, you know, improvement throughout the year. So taking $3 million for a quarter, we took $12 million for the full year for the gateway decline. And then, you know, based on, you know, our assessment of the ongoing continued, you know, slowdown in the market and muted, you know, spending in the market, you know, we left room for another $3 million.

[Mason Marion, Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies]

... Understood. Thank you, Shabtai. And then, so you've been talking about this transition towards more recurring revenue for several years now. Are we reaching an inflection point? How big is your legacy business still, and when could we start to see your total revenue growth more closely reflect your recurring revenue growth?

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Right. Okay, so let me repeat some of the stat I mentioned before. The most important business, when you try to analyze, you know, recurring business versus CapEx, is Microsoft Teams. Now, what I've stated is, in this Q1 of 2024, recurring revenues, Teams recurring revenues reached 45%, compared to just 25% a year ago. So our expectations are that within the next two, three months, you know, the decline of, I would say, CapEx teams will be substantially less meaningful. So, you know, in general, you know, we view 2023, 2024, and probably the first half of 2025 as the years of transitioning our revenues from a CapEx model to an OpEx model.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

So, we do expect that, you know, this quarter, maybe, another quarter or two, will still suffer from that, but I think, entering towards the end of this year and early 2025, I think we'll have a very strong base of ongoing, accumulated, you know, pipeline for our recurring revenues, and therefore, I believe that, we should be safe from that point on now.

[Mason Marion, Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies]

All right. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you very much.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Sure.

[Operator]

Your next question is coming from Ryan McWilliams of Barclays. Ryan, your line is live.

[Pete Newton, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Hey, thanks for taking the question. This is Pete Newton on for Ryan McWilliams. Just, I'm, I'm trying to look into what dynamics you're seeing right now in terms of CCaaS versus UCaaS-driven demand, and how would you characterize those demands for both, and if that's similar to what you saw in 2023?

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

So actually we do see, we do see a shift. I mean, I think the turning point was probably somewhere in the beginning of 2023. Until then, I think UCaaS was primarily the biggest market and CCaaS was less. We all believe, and I think anybody who attends, you know, industry trade shows and events such as Enterprise Connect, and figure out that UCaaS is kind of, you know, taking a slower growth path, although still big and strong. However, the majority of the interest, and I think this is mainly due to the impact of, you know, AI and Gen AI and conversational AI technologies, we definitely see substantially more opportunities in CCaaS.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Also, take the fact that the CCaaS market is substantially more fragmented compared to UCaaS. UCaaS, you know, just take the top three accounts, it's Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex and Zoom, and maybe you have another one player or two, you know, that comprise about 70% to 80% of the market. So, the opportunities there are becoming, you know, kind of narrow and limited. While the CX industry is growing fast, substantially higher rate, and is substantially more fragmented and also broken into different functionalities and solutions. So our ability to take our, you know, deep technology base and experience and expertise in many networking and cognitive services and conversational AI technologies, this will allow us to substantially be more creative and successful.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

So for us, starting 2023 and this year more, definitely the CX, the CCaaS industry, is much more interesting for us, and this is where we will put most of our efforts.

[Pete Newton, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Great. That's very helpful. Thank you, Shabtai. And then just maybe following up-

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Sure.

[Pete Newton, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

How should we think about the shape of product and service revenue for the rest of FY 2024, just given the commentary around the legacy business, and then also the service pipeline looking good? Just anything you can talk about in terms of shape of revenue for product and services for the rest of this year.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

So just like, you know, on the heels of 2023, we believe services will continue growing. Last year, I think, we ended around 50%. This year we'll probably grow, probably towards, you know, the 50% to 55%. Product portion of our sales will always come down, also due to the fact that the, you know, still very high impact from the high interest rates. So, we may see further, you know, product decline, but in essence, we've crossed, you know, the line where products are as important as they were, you know, back in our history. Services is now the—Any new project we are initiating, be it in UCaaS, in CCaaS, and also conversational AI, tends to be services and long-term booking.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

So the shift is occurring. I would expect, you know, just as we provided in our guidance, that we will, you know, either keep or even grow beyond where we are in the Q1.

[Pete Newton, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Sure.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Just a reminder, if anyone has any remaining questions, you can press star one on your phone keypad to join the queue. Our next question is coming from Ryan Koontz of Needham & Company. Ryan, your line is live.

[Ryan Koontz, Managing Director and Research Analyst at Needham]

Great, thanks for the questions. Let me ask about, generally, the exposure to service providers here, traditional service providers. Weakness in gateways, I assume, is due to that exposure and, you know, beyond just their weakness in cloud, so their weakness in CapEx, you know, they're also putting up some pretty awful growth numbers in their wholesale and business services. That seems to be an accelerating decline. So I assume that that's also an impact on your gateway business there. Can you confirm?

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Yes, that is indeed, you know, what you know has hurt or, you know, gateway business back in 2023 and now. In essence, you know, we definitely view, you know, the giants in the software industry capable of investing in growing their offering and therefore spending more and, you know, allowing enterprise to be beneficial. Service provider, according to what we see, are playing a very safe and minimal play, trying to hold where they are, but we cannot see any growth from that side of the business.

[Ryan Koontz, Managing Director and Research Analyst at Needham]

Right. Okay. And then when it comes to Teams, it seems like their growth numbers on PSTN adds are, you know, continue to be real healthy, if anything, accelerating in that 20 million subscriber or seat number. You know, how do you read your attach rate there for the Teams adds? Is this primarily through service provider solutions, where they're struggling a bit to stay relevant relative to the new Teams deployments?

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Okay. So yeah. Yeah, well, Microsoft Teams phone business seems to be growing nicely, you know, about a few million every year. We are definitely enjoying that trend. You know, when we cite growth in our Live Managed Services growth of 45% growth, that is attached to business in the Microsoft Phone business. And therefore, yes, we definitely benefit from that. We actually see growth. You know, our backlog is growing, our Live services are growing, bigger companies who just did the first step of deploying a project now enter a more meaningful phase of moving.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

We also believe that Gen AI, Copilot and others will drive more use of Teams Phone, simply because once you get those great analytics capabilities from Copilot on meetings and calls, that would definitely drive, we believe, you know, phone users from legacy telephony systems to move to Teams Phone in order to be able to benefit from the capabilities Copilot brings. So, yeah, we believe Teams Phone is growing nicely, our business is attached to it, and I can definitely see a very long runway for this activity.

[Ryan Koontz, Managing Director and Research Analyst at Needham]

It's helpful. One last quick one, if I could, on Voca for Teams. What are you seeing as your use cases there? Is this primarily in the kinda tier two use cases? A lot of companies, your peers that roll out, you know, contact early contact center products, early generation products, are seeing internal use cases and kind of the second-tier use cases. Is that similar for Voca, or what sort of use cases are you seeing? Thank you.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Yes. Yes, indeed, you know, with, with Voca CIC being, you know, a new entrant, obviously, you know, we need to go for the low-hanging fruit. So, yeah, lower number of seats, you know, a contact center that serve, you know, internal desks and or, you know, small offices. But then, you know, I can tell you of, you know, we just won, end of 2023, a huge project with one of, the leading universities in the US. This university has, you know, tens of thousands, more than 50,000 students. All in all, with, you know, staff and other functionalities on the campus, I think they all in all have, like, you know, above 150,000 users.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

But, that means that contact center is going to be used in variety of application within that campus. And, you know, in many cases, you know, you have many, you know, let's say one application, you know, that is serving about 25 contact center out of, you know, substantially larger number in that campus. So Voca definitely serves that need. So we are growing, we are investing. You know, we just added, as I've mentioned, omni-channel capabilities, you know, on top of voice, where we already achieved 90% coverage of what's needed. So, yeah, we're gaining a lot of...

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

The fact is that, you know, due to the fact that we have such a very large install base of customers in Microsoft Teams, and because the solution is Azure native, you know, relies heavily on the state-of-the-art, the deepest level of technology available from Microsoft Azure, which is not available in other contact center solution in the market, makes our solution for Microsoft Teams and Azure substantially, you know, more advanced and preferable. So the solution is very unique in that environment, and we believe we're gaining a lot of traction in that space.

[Ryan Koontz, Managing Director and Research Analyst at Needham]

Thanks for all that, Shabtai.

[Operator]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

[crosstalk]

[Operator]

Well, that appears to be the end of our question and answer session. I will now hand it back over to Shabtai for any closing comments.

[Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO at AudioCodes]

Okay. Well, thank you, operator. I would like to thank everyone who attended our conference call today. With continued good business momentum in our enterprise operations and good underlying market trends in UCaaS, CCaaS and Gen AI growing, we believe we are transitioning the business towards continued growth and prosperity in the future. We look forward to your participation in our next quarterly conference calls. Thank you very much for being with us today. Have a nice day.

[Operator]

Thank you very much, Shabtai. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time.

Participants

Executives

• Niran Baruch, VP of Finance and CFO
• Roger Chuchen, Head of Investor Relations
• Shabtai Adlersberg, President and CEO

Analysts

• Mason Marion, Vice President Equity Research at Jefferies
• Pete Newton, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays
• Ryan Koontz, Managing Director and Research Analyst at Needham