TaskUs Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
November 7, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Neutral Sentiment: The proposed take-private merger was mutually terminated after shareholders did not approve the $1,650 offer, leaving Taskus as a public company and highlighting high shareholder valuation expectations.
  • Positive Sentiment: Taskus reported a record Q3 revenue of $298.7M (17% YoY), adjusted EBITDA of $63.5M (21.2% margin), adjusted EPS of $0.42, $210M cash and a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio below 0.2x.
  • Positive Sentiment: AI Services is the fastest-growing segment (60.8% YoY in Q3) with partnerships (Regal, Decagon) and multiple client signings, and the company expects >50% YoY growth in the service line for 2025.
  • Negative Sentiment: Management expects near-term margin pressure from higher holiday pay, a Philippines minimum wage increase, new facilities and increased AI investment — guiding Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin to ~19.8% and noting possible short-term revenue headwinds as AI automates some services.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Taskus raised full-year 2025 revenue guidance to $1.173–$1.175B (midpoint ~18% YoY), expects ~ $248M adjusted EBITDA and ~$100M adjusted free cash flow, and plans to reinvest cash flow into AI transformation while retaining flexibility for shareholder returns.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
TaskUs Q3 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

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Operator

Greetings and welcome to the TaskUs Third Quarter 2025 Investor Call. My name is Donna, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If anyone requires operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I would like to introduce Trent Thrash, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Trent, you may begin.

Trent Thrash
Trent Thrash
VP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at TaskUs

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for today's TaskUs Earnings Call. Joining me are Bryce Maddock, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Balaji Sekar, our Chief Financial Officer. Full details of our results and additional management commentary are available in our earnings release, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir-taskus.com. We have also posted supplemental information on our website, including an investor presentation and an Excel-based financial metrics file. Please note that this call is being simultaneously webcast on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that the following discussions contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including but not limited to statements regarding our future financial results and management expectations and plans for the business.

Trent Thrash
Trent Thrash
VP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at TaskUs

These statements are neither promises nor guarantees and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed here. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements can be found in our annual report on Form 10-K. This filing, which may be supplemented with subsequent periodic reports, is accessible on the SEC's website and our Investor Relations website. Any forward-looking statements made on today's conference call, including responses to questions, are based on current expectations as of today, and TaskUs assumes no obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise, except as required by law. The discussions throughout today's call contain non-GAAP financial measures.

Trent Thrash
Trent Thrash
VP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at TaskUs

For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP metric, please see our earnings press release, which is available in the IR section of our website. Now, I will turn the call over to Bryce Maddock, our Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Bryce?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Thank you, Trent. To begin, I want to briefly discuss the termination of the proposed take-private transaction we first announced in May. Please note that outside of these prepared remarks, we will not be responding to questions regarding the transaction during our Q&A session. During our October 8th special meeting of shareholders, the requisite company shareholders did not approve the adoption of the merger agreement. As a result, on October 9th, upon the recommendation of the special committee and the approval of the company's full board of directors, the company and the buyer group entered into a mutual agreement to terminate the merger agreement. This mutual decision to terminate was not entered into lightly and followed true adjournments of our special meeting of shareholders.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

The buyer group used this time to have multiple discussions regarding the level of price increase required to obtain the approval of certain shareholders who believed that the $1,650 offer price undervalued the company. Ultimately, we did not obtain the necessary shareholder vote because the valuation gap persisted despite this engagement. While we recognize the uncertainty the take-private attempt created, we're encouraged by the high valuation expectations of our shareholders and see it as a testament of their belief in TaskUs and the opportunities ahead. Throughout this process, I challenged our leaders and teammates to remain laser-focused on delivering the best-in-class specialized services that our customers have come to expect from TaskUs. I believe our Q3 financial results and Q4 guidance are a direct reflection of this focus.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

I want to thank all of our shareholders, our board members, and most importantly, all TaskUs teammates for their focus, effort, and support during this process. With that, let me turn briefly to our strong Q3 performance before outlining our plan for the future. In the third quarter, we once again set a record for the highest quarterly revenue in TaskUs' history and generated solid adjusted EBITDA. We delivered $298.7 million in revenue, reflecting a 17% year-over-year growth rate, and $63.5 million in adjusted EBITDA, or an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.2%. We generated $0.42 in adjusted earnings per share, reflecting approximately 14% year-over-year growth. We ended the quarter with a very strong balance sheet. We have $210 million in cash and a net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio of less than 0.2 times. I'm very proud of the strength of our performance in this current environment.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Growth across the BPO industry has slowed as clients aim to reduce their costs by leveraging generative AI to automate workflows previously done by employees and outsourced vendors. In 2025, TaskUs has performed significantly better than many of our competitors because of our relentless focus on operational excellence and strong client relationships. Going forward, this will not be enough. To thrive in the AI era, we must shift from selling time-based services to selling solutions delivered by a combination of technology and talent. Our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation position us well to make the investments required for this transformation. We will begin this journey by significantly increasing our spending on our agentic AI consulting organization. We've already signed multiple clients leveraging these capabilities. Here, we support the development, training, and maintenance of AI agents from our partners, Regal and Decagon.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

These AI agents are able to automate a portion of our client support volumes, but TaskUs' human teammates continue to deliver premium support services where the AI agents are unable to solve customer challenges. Unlike pure technical solutions, our combined human and AI offering can address 100% of customer issues at launch while dramatically reducing the cost to serve. In the next few years, the quality of customer support will meaningfully improve, not only as a result of AI agents being able to quickly solve simple customer issues, but also because human support agents will be free to provide hyper-personalized support in the most critical moments. As evidence of this, our customers are reinvesting a portion of their cost savings to deliver better human-led support in the moments that matter or to their most valuable customers.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

The best customer support offering today is a combination of AI agents and human talent. By perfecting this combined offering, we aim to continue to take share and grow our business. In addition to expanding our agentic AI consulting practice, we will also increase our investments in AI services like AI safety and autonomous vehicle and robotics support, and continue our investments in our own generative AI development to automate internal processes. These are the first steps in a transformation from a company that sells human-centric services to a company that combines agentic technology, consulting, and talent to deliver solutions. This journey will not be a straight line. Our increased investment will reduce our margins in the near term. We may face short-term revenue headwinds as we increase the use of AI agents to support our clients and, in some cases, automate services that our teammates previously provided.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Throughout all of this, we will remain laser-focused on long-term results. Our goal is to increase revenue, EBITDA, and earnings per share over a multi-year horizon at a rate that is higher than the rest of the industry. While our primary focus will be on reinvesting our free cash flow into the business to drive transformation, our strong balance sheet and cash flow will also allow us to pursue a capital allocation strategy that enhances shareholder returns. I look forward to sharing more details on our annual earnings call early next year. Next, I'll go through some of the highlights of our Q3 performance and 2025 outlook, then hand it over to Balaji to walk through our financials in more detail. Q3 revenue was $298.7 million, an increase of 17% on a year-over-year basis.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Diving into service line growth for the quarter, our Digital Customer Experience service line saw single-digit year-over-year growth of approximately 6%, consistent with the year-over-year increase we saw in Q3 of the prior year. Given our year-to-date revenue and signings performance, we expect to report full-year 2025 DCX growth in the high single digits. In terms of DCX signings in Q3, we saw broad-based strength in bookings across most of our vertical markets, including retail and e-commerce, travel and transportation, technology, financial services, and healthcare. Turning to Trust and Safety, we had another great quarter with revenue increasing 19.1% year-over-year, largely driven by the performance of our social media vertical. Earlier this year, we were pleased that our investment in our Trust and Safety specialized service line continued to garner industry accolades.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

For the third year in a row, we were recognized as a leader in Everest Group's Trust and Safety Services PEAK Matrix Assessment. This recognition spotlights TaskUs' full spectrum of services across the trust and safety value chain, including AI safety, proprietary technology, and our Wellness as a Service offering. Moving on to AI services, as expected at the end of 2024, AI services has remained our fastest-growing service line throughout 2025. In Q3, AI services delivered 60.8% year-over-year revenue growth, compared to just 17.8% in Q3 of 2024. Here, the strong growth was partially attributable to the ongoing ramp of the new social media client we discussed on our Q4 call and the demand for AI services across multiple other client verticals, including travel and transportation.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

We continue to be pleased with the results of the investments we've made in the service line and the resulting demand for AI services we're seeing with industry-leading clients in the generative AI and autonomous vehicle and robotics industries. The nature of our AI service line is more project-driven than the rest of our business, but given our expectation of well over 50% year-over-year revenue growth from the service line in 2025, it is clear that our investments are paying off. Before handing it over to Balaji to provide more details on our Q3 results, I want to touch briefly on our 2025 outlook. As mentioned earlier, in light of our strong year-to-date operational execution and sales momentum, we now expect full-year revenue of between $1.173 billion and $1.175 billion.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

At the midpoint, this is $64 million, or approximately 6% higher than the $1.11 billion midpoint of guidance we provided at the start of the year, which was subsequently withdrawn in connection with the proposed take-private transaction. It also represents approximately 18% year-over-year growth at the midpoint, which compares favorably with the 7.6% growth we saw in 2024. For Q4, we expect to set a new TaskUs record for revenue at $302 million-$304 million, resulting in approximately 11% year-over-year revenue growth at the midpoint. This deceleration to low double-digit growth was expected due to the significant increase in revenue we saw from our largest client during the back half of 2024. I'll note here that in Q3, our revenue growth excluding our largest client was approximately 11% year-over-year, and our forecast for Q4 revenue growth when we exclude our largest client is approximately 9% year-over-year.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Given the overall macro backdrop in the BPO industry, we're very pleased with the enduring strength of our performance. From a margin perspective, we expect Q4 to be impacted by seasonal expenses related to holiday pay and employee benefits, and by a minimum wage increase in the Philippines. Our strong sales and top-line revenue performance have also required us to continue investing in new facilities, hiring, and training initiatives. We're also beginning to see some margin impact from our strategic growth investments in AI and other areas. As a result of these factors, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins in Q4 to decline to approximately 19.8%. This drop is consistent with the size of the sequential Q3 to Q4 decline we saw in 2024, leading us to forecast Q4 EBITDA margins that are slightly better than those earned in 2024.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

For the full year, we expect to deliver approximately 21.1% adjusted EBITDA margins. This is consistent with our expectations at the beginning of the year, despite some of the factors mentioned earlier, as our efficiency initiatives and G&A leverage continue to pay dividends and bring stability to our margins. With this margin outlook, we now expect to deliver full-year adjusted EBITDA of approximately $248 million, representing an increase of more than 18% when compared to 2024. We also expect to generate adjusted free cash flow of approximately $100 million in 2025. As we look to the last quarter of 2025, we are pleased that the tireless work of our team has set the company up for a record-setting year of top-line revenue and profitability, a performance that we believe to be among the best in our industry.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

I look forward to updating you on our Q4 results and providing our initial 2026 guidance during our call early next year. With that, I'll hand it over to Balaji to go through the Q3 financials and our 2025 outlook in more detail.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

Thank you, Bryce, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter, we earned total revenues of $298.7 million, reflecting an increase of 17% compared to the previous year, well ahead of our expectations entering the year. This was primarily the result of strong volume performance with existing clients and new client ramps exceeding expectations across a broad range of verticals during the quarter. While our DCX growth moderated to the mid-single digits for the quarter, growth in Trust and Safety and AI services delivered strong year-over-year growth of approximately 20% and 60%, respectively, in Q3 of 2025.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

This marked the eighth consecutive quarter of approximately 20% or higher growth in our Trust and Safety service line. It was also the fourth consecutive quarter in excess of 30% revenue growth for AI services. We continued to grow across all our client cohorts, including growth in excess of 20% across our top 10 and top 20 cohorts. Our top 10 and top 20 clients represented 60% and 71% of total revenue in Q3, respectively, compared to 56% and 68% in Q3 of the previous year. Our largest client accounted for 27% of total Q3 revenue, up from 26% in the previous quarter and 23% in the prior year. We also saw growth from clients outside of our top 20, which grew approximately 6% year-over-year. Excluding our largest client, revenue from the rest of our business grew approximately 11%, accelerating from approximately 8% growth in Q3 of 2024.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

We are pleased with the strong broad-based growth across the business. In Q3, we saw approximately 20% year-over-year growth in the number of clients engaging with multiple service lines. Revenue from these multiple service clients increased in excess of 20% compared to the prior year period, highlighting the effectiveness of our cross-sell strategy and the growing demand for our integrated suite of specialized offerings. In the third quarter, we generated 54% of our revenues in the Philippines, 13% in India, 11% in the United States, and 22% from the rest of the world, primarily in Latin America and Europe. In Q3, we saw particularly strong revenue growth in Colombia, India, and Greece. We ended the quarter with approximately 63,800 global teammates and an increase of approximately 3,400 teammates from the end of Q2. Now, moving on to our service line performance.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

In the third quarter, our DCX offering delivered single-digit growth, generating $164.2 million for a year-over-year growth of 5.8%, of which more than 30% was attributable to clients we ramped within the last year. Overall, DCX growth was primarily attributable to strong performance from clients in our technology and healthcare verticals. Our Trust and Safety offering, which includes our content moderation and financial crime and compliance services, grew by 19.1% compared to Q3 of 2024, resulting in $75.8 million of revenue. As discussed earlier, we are excited about the progress in the service line, which continues to be driven by the strength in our social media vertical. Our AI services service line topped 50% growth for the third quarter in a row at 60.8% year-over-year, resulting in $58.7 million in revenues.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

This was primarily as a result of expansion in services we provide to clients in our social media vertical, led by a client signed in late Q3 of 2024, supporting their generative AI and process automation initiatives, as well as from increasing demand from developers of large language model-based technologies in our technology vertical. Now, moving on to the income statement. In the third quarter of 2025, we earned adjusted EBITDA of $63.5 million, a 21.2% margin, beating our expectations, primarily due to strong 17% year-over-year revenue growth and our disciplined cost management. Our cost of service as a percentage of revenue was 62.1% in the third quarter, compared to 60.2% in Q3 of the prior year. The increase was primarily driven by the impact of merit increases, investments in physical and information security, and ramp costs associated with our year-over-year revenue growth.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

In the third quarter, our SG&A expenses were $59.7 million, or 20% of revenue. This compares to SG&A in Q3 of 2024 of $62.7 million, or 24.5% of revenue. The decline as a percentage of revenue was reflective of our continuous efforts to optimize overhead costs across our business, a reduction in stock-based compensation expense, and lower mitigation costs. These declines were partially offset by higher personnel costs, including merit increases, as well as transaction costs and costs related to our operational efficiency initiative. Adjusted net income for the quarter was $39 million, and adjusted earnings per share was $0.42. By comparison, in the year-ago period, we earned adjusted net income of $34.3 million and adjusted EPS of $0.37.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

Our adjusted EPS included the impact of our higher share count resulting from equity issued on our equity incentive plans, which were partially offset by a reduction in shares from our stock repurchase program earlier in the year. Now, moving on to the balance sheet. Cash and cash equivalents were $210 million as of September 30, 2025, compared with the June 30, 2025, balance of $181.9 million. Our net leverage ratio continues to be healthy at less than 0.2 times at the end of Q3. As a reminder, we calculate this ratio as total debt less cash divided by adjusted EBITDA for the trailing 12-month period. Cash generated from operations on a year-to-date basis was $107.5 million through Q3 of 2025, as compared to $98.2 million through Q3 of 2024.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

The increase was primarily due to the flow-through of higher margin dollars in 2025, partially offset by changes in working capital. Year-to-date adjusted free cash flow was $76.9 million, or 41% of adjusted EBITDA. Our Q3 year-to-date capital expenditures increased to $43.8 million compared to $18.8 million through Q3 of 2024, primarily due to increasing revenues. As a result, we now expect CapEx to be approximately $65 million for the year. In terms of our financial outlook for the remainder of the year, we now anticipate full year 2025 revenues to be in the range of $1.173 billion-$1.175 billion, resulting in a midpoint of $1.174 billion. We expect to earn full year 2025 adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 21.1%. We expect to generate adjusted free cash flow of approximately $100 million for the year.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

Our adjusted free cash flow guidance includes the impact of incremental capital expenditures related to our strong growth in certain new and existing geographies. As a reminder, adjusted free cash flow excludes the impact of certain costs that are non-recurring and outside the ordinary course of business. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenues to be in the range of $302 million-$304 million, reflecting growth of 10.6% at the midpoint. We expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to be approximately 19.8%, which includes the impact of seasonal expenses that we typically see in Q4, minimum wage increases, and continued investments to support our revenue growth and AI transformation. Our margin guidance is based on current foreign exchange rates.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

Further deterioration in the value of the U.S. dollar would put downward pressure on our margin guidance. I will now hand it back to Bryce.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Thank you, Balaji. Before we open for questions, I'd like to share another TaskUs teammate story. At TaskUs, we often talk about people and performance in the same sentence, and for good reason. The work our frontline teams do every day, especially in Trust and Safety, is both operationally complex and emotionally demanding. As part of our video series highlighting our teammates, Ayana, one of our content moderators in Greece, recently shared her perspective. AI-supported tools and structured workflows enable high-volume moderation decisions to be made quickly and accurately. When it comes to edge cases where nuance, cultural context, or intent matter, human judgment is critical for accurate and effective moderation. In her own words, "AI can't feel what people feel. Only a person can make that type of call." Ayana also takes pride as a parent, knowing her decisions help protect children like her own.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Since our last call, I'm now the father of three young children, and nothing makes me prouder of working at TaskUs than the trust and safety and AI safety work that we do. TaskUs teammates are protecting all of our children from the internet's most harmful content. This sense of purpose is powerful, but it also underscores the toll that this type of work can take. That's why we've invested in programs that build resilience and support our teammates' well-being. Our in-house team of Ph.D. researchers and wellness and resiliency clinicians provides teammates with research-based wellness services, including confidential counseling, peer support groups, and software-based tools that help them stay clear, focused, and grounded. Last year, our experts at sites around the world conducted 79,000 individual employee sessions and more than 22,000 group sessions, supporting the well-being of the people who protect all of us online.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

These programs also support our operational performance. They help us reduce burnout, improve retention, and sustain high levels of quality in the most sensitive areas of our digital operations. With that, I'll ask the operator to open the line for our question-and-answer session. Operator?

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. Again, that's star one to register a question at this time.

Operator

Our first question is coming from Jim Schneider of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

James Schneider
James Schneider
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Bryce, as you think about maybe the plans operationally you had contemplated as a potential private company, maybe talk about some of the operational things you had considered and which of those you may bring to an ongoing operation as a public company that you considered having gone private.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. Thanks, Jim. I think given the outcome of the take-private transaction, I feel confident in following a strategy that will largely mirror what we would have done as a private company. As I shared on the call, we're planning to ramp up our investments and accelerate our transformation for the AI era. That starts with our investments in our agentic AI consulting practice, where we're deploying AI agents on behalf of our clients to automate aspects of their customer support.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

We've announced partnerships with Decagon and Regal, and we've signed multiple clients to this service. In 2026, we plan to make some key hires to lead this organization for us as an independent entity that will transform a large portion of the work that we're doing in the customer service space. We're also going to accelerate our investments in our AI services business line, which is where we're working with foundational model developers, doing AI safety work for social media companies and supporting companies across the autonomous vehicle and robotics space The success there has driven growth of over 50% year-over-year for this service line. We are really excited about what we're going to be able to do next year there.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Finally, we're using AI to drive efficiency internally. We're developing both proprietary technology and partnering with AI providers to automate everything from recruitment to training to quality. As a result of these investments, we're enabling the members of our support organizations to do more so we can stretch the ratios, the number of teammates per quality analyst, or the number of hires per recruiter. We've seen some encouraging early signs and look forward to reporting more on that next year.

James Schneider
James Schneider
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Thank you. As a follow-up, maybe you could talk a little bit about the broad scope of your business pipeline right now and specifically talk about what the pipeline looks at within your largest customer. Thank you.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

The pipeline is strong. We're seeing strong demand from both new and existing clients. As we head into Q4, we're seeing strong demand in the autonomous vehicle and robotics space. We have two large deals with new clients in the robotics space, as well as a very large scale-up with the leader in the autonomous vehicle industry. We've also seen significant growth at our large enterprise healthcare client, which is a testament to the success of our strategy to diversify into the healthcare space. The relationship with our largest client remains very strong. As everyone knows, we went through a large ramp with them in the back of 2024 and into 2025. I think, like all clients, there's a budgeting process that's going on as they're looking ahead to 2026, and we're deeply engaged in that process with them.

James Schneider
James Schneider
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Jonathan Lee of Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Lee
Jonathan Lee
Managing Director of Equity Research at Guggenheim

Great. Thanks for taking my questions, and good to hear from the team again. Can you talk us through what's contemplated in your outlook, particularly around sequential growth contemplated in Q4? We're typically used to seeing a seasonally better Q4 driven by DCX, and we wanted to better understand the modest implied sequential growth there.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan. As always, our goal is to meet or exceed the guidance we provide. Coming back into being a company that's doing earnings calls on a quarterly basis, we wanted to make sure we set the bar at a level that we felt like we could deliver and exceed. In the back half of last year, we started a very large ramp with our largest client, which creates some challenging comps in Q4. Despite that, we're forecasting 11% year-over-year growth in Q4. When we exclude our largest client, we're forecasting 9% year-over-year growth, which we think is amongst the best in the industry.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

There are about $5 million worth of seasonal revenues that are contemplated in the forecast. Most of that is driven, as you say, from the DCX portion of our business from retail and healthcare. At this point, we're going through the budgeting processes with our clients and just looking to ensure that we're providing guidance that we feel very confident we can deliver.

Jonathan Lee
Jonathan Lee
Managing Director of Equity Research at Guggenheim

Great. Thanks for that color. Just as a follow-up, how should we think about your philosophy around the appropriate margins as we think about the level of investment needed to advance your AI initiatives versus what the industry sees as potential deflationary pressure from AI?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. I think ultimately, there's going to be a significant investment needed to transform our business. We plan to be bold in that investment. We're very lucky in that we're starting from a place of EBITDA margins that are well north of 20% or just EBITDA margins that are well north of 20%. We want to continue to be one of the more profitable players in our industry, but also have the courage to trade short-term margins for long-term growth and margin expansion.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

I think you'll see things like us beginning to break out those AI investments, which in 2024, the amount of money we're spending on these AI initiatives—sorry, in 2025, the amount of money we're spending on these AI initiatives runs well into the multiple millions of dollars and will continue to increase into 2026. We'll do our best to call out those investments independent of the core of the business.

Jonathan Lee
Jonathan Lee
Managing Director of Equity Research at Guggenheim

Awesome. Thanks for that, Bryce.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Dave Koning of Baird. Please go ahead.

David Koning
David Koning
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thank you. Good job. I guess kind of going back to that margin question a little bit, this year was a lower gross margin year, but a better SG&A year, and it netted to margins being reasonably flat. I guess we just saw 6% employee growth, so you're definitely investing. I would imagine that reflects a good pipeline, but that comes with some cost of employees, which hits the gross margin line. Kind of getting back to how does this balance out over time? Does gross margin keep falling, but you offset it with SG&A? I guess secondly, could margins actually go down somewhat, or do they stay around the same?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. I'll have Balaji comment more on this, but let me just sort of say what we've seen. Certainly, there has been a decline in the gross margin over the last few years. It's a combination of diversification of geographic delivery and just a more dynamic pricing environment that we've seen as the industry itself has slowed in terms of growth. I'm very proud of the disciplined approach our team has taken to optimizing our G&A spending in particular and being able to more than offset any gross margin decline to defend the adjusted EBITDA line. That is something we're going to continue to do. As I discussed in a previous question, we have a huge initiative to use AI to automate internal support functions, and we've seen some very encouraging signs.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

As an example, in this last month, the number of hires per recruiter at TaskUs was the highest it's been in our company's history, and that's because we've automated the entire candidate pipeline up until a face-to-face interview. Everything from getting a candidate's information to putting them through testing to doing background screening and ID verification, that process has been entirely automated. That's a large administrative lift that allows us to further optimize our recruitment team and push the number of hires that we're making per recruiter.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

That's the type of initiative that we'll see as we go into 2026, which will give us better G&A as a percentage of revenue. The investments we're making in terms of actually deploying AI for our clients and moving up the value chain in the service offerings into things like the AI services business, where we're seeing pretty significant growth this year, should defend the gross margin and potentially expand the gross margin of the business over time.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Balaji, you want to add anything to that?

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

Yeah. There's just a couple of factors that allow us to the gross margin trend. One is we do see the impact of annual merit inflation, including some certain statutory changes. As an example, one of the things that Bryce called out earlier in the call was the minimum wage increase in the Philippines. Items like that are captured in the forecast. Second, we did have a significant ramp this year from a revenue growth perspective, which includes ramp calls, building of new facilities, which also is reflected in our CapEx numbers.

Balaji Sekar
Balaji Sekar
CFO at TaskUs

That does impact gross margins. The last is what Bryce mentioned in terms of the geography mix. As we continue to also see growth in geographies like Colombia and Greece, we do see some impact from a gross margin perspective. We did see an offset. We did kick off an efficiency project in the early part of 2025, which Bryce spoke about, that impacted both the gross margin line item and also G&A line item. This program delivered millions of dollars in savings. That kind of reflected in our adjusted EBITDA dollars, which grew year-on-year compared to 2024.

David Koning
David Koning
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird

Gotcha. Thanks for that. Maybe just a quick follow-up. Your balance sheet has become very clean. You're roughly a neutral cash debt position now. You could kind of take next year's cash flow, put it all into buybacks, and buy back almost 10% of the shares at the current price. Does that start entering your mind, or are there other uses of cash you're thinking about?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. Thanks, Dave. I think right now, the primary use of cash is going to be on this AI transformation. We're very fortunate to have a very clean balance sheet and a net debt position that, on the current trajectory, we think will basically be net debt-free at some point in Q1. I think the first thing we're going to do is take the healthy cash flow the business generates and invest a significant portion of that into our agentic AI consulting practice, into growing our AI services business, into continuing to transform the core of our business, and really be as aggressive as we can in those investments.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

As I said on the prepared remarks, we are fortunate enough to have enough cash to be able to do that and look for other ways to utilize our cash flow in a way that is the most constructive in terms of creating long-term returns for our shareholders.

David Koning
David Koning
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird

Awesome. Great job. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Maggie Nolan of William Blair. Please go ahead.

Margaret Nolan
Margaret Nolan
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Hi. Thank you. And Bryce, congrats on your growing family. It's fun to hear that kind of stuff. I wanted to ask about the sustainability of the AI services growth into 2026. There's a decel implied in the fourth quarter. Maybe just talk about the pipeline and whether or not that can sustain double-digit growth over a slightly longer time frame.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. We're very confident that AI services is going to be a double-digit grower over the long term. The challenge we have in this service line that's different from the core DCX and some of the trust and safety business is that work. The work we're doing here supporting the foundational model developers and the social media companies on projects around AI safety tends to be more project-based and sprint-based in nature. Some projects can spin up and then spin down, and there can be these sort of lumpiness of revenues. This is pretty common across the entire AI services industry.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

We've got a lot of competitors that are more privately held businesses, but consistent with the information that we've been able to gather on how the industry is performing. It's just more project-based in nature. With that being said, at this stage, we do anticipate that AI services will be a strong grow for us over the course of 2026. As you point out, there's a deceleration as we head into Q4.

Margaret Nolan
Margaret Nolan
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Understood. Maybe still thinking a little bit more kind of medium term, some of the expectations you have for how year-over-year comps will be impacted by some of your larger customer sets, ones that were ramping up last year. How difficult is it to lap that this year? Help us think through those dynamics. Thank you.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. Thanks, Maggie. Ultimately, we're going to provide the full 2026 guidance on the next earnings call. I'd say that we're really proud of the results that we've put up in 2025, and our goal is certainly to continue to grow well above the industry average while also embarking on a transformation that's going to require us to make some short-term trade-offs for long-term growth and margin expansion.

Margaret Nolan
Margaret Nolan
Equity Research Analyst at William Blair

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from James Faucette of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Antonio Jaramillo
Antonio Jaramillo
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. It's Antonio on for James. I wanted to focus on your largest customer. Could you just give us a sense on the durability of that spend as we head into next year? And then as far as their spend goes, how that's trending within AI services and within Trust and Safety?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. Thanks, Antonio. As I said, we've seen massive growth at our largest customer over the course of the last 18 months, and we continue to have a very strong relationship with them. I was with them just yesterday down in our site here in New Braunfels, and we'll be with them again in December in Dublin. Right now, I think we're very well positioned in their vendor network. Clearly, like all of our clients, there's big investments that are going into AI.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

A lot of those investments we're benefiting from as we're helping to support the development of their AI models. Then there's also trade-offs that will happen as a result of some of the work that we're doing automating other parts of our business. As we head into 2026, we feel very confident in the enduring relationship that we have with our largest customer. Clearly, the growth that we've seen in 2025 is unlikely to happen again, but we don't have a significant amount of concern that we would see the opposite in 2026.

Antonio Jaramillo
Antonio Jaramillo
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

That's helpful. As a follow-up, I wanted to ask on your investment strategy that you outlined. How far along are you guys in that investment cycle? Based off of the investments that you've already made, where have you really seen that really shine within the P&L?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Sorry, Antonio. I lost you there. Do you mind restating the question?

Antonio Jaramillo
Antonio Jaramillo
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Yeah. No, I was just asking on the investment strategy and how far you are in your investment cycle and then where you've seen that shine within the P&L.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Great. Yeah. Ultimately, when it comes to the AI transformation strategy, I feel like we're still very much in the first inning. We've made some serious success in 2025 as we've looked to transform internal aspects of our business, as I mentioned, improving recruiter productivity significantly with the use of AI and scaling our use of AI across things like quality workforce management and other elements of the business.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

When it comes to our implementations with customers, we're really encouraged that our partnerships with Decagon and Regal are beginning to pay off, and we're seeing clients begin to adopt this technology and be open to contracting in a way where we're able to deliver meaningful cost savings upfront in exchange for a longer-term transformation program.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

We think we'll see the impact of that beginning in 2026. Again, it's not a straight line. There is going to be the cannibalization of some of our own revenues in order to position ourselves to be a long-term beneficiary of that AI transformation. But we're in a position now where we feel very confident and courageous in being able to go out and make those bold decisions to trade off some short-term growth for long-term results.

Antonio Jaramillo
Antonio Jaramillo
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. That's helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from Puneet Jain of JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Puneet Jain
Puneet Jain
Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan

Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. And good to be back on these calls. So Bryce, perhaps talk to us about, as clients embrace AI and automating some of the processes you service for them in digital customer care, talk to us why they need your agentic AI solutions, especially I'm thinking about the large technology customers. Many of them have their own significant AI capabilities. Why do they need TaskUs agentic AI solutions to automate some of their customer care processes?

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. I think there certainly is going to be different classes of customers. The big technology companies, the big tech, the Mag 7, are probably going to develop a lot of this technology in-house. Certainly, we've been helping a number of our customers in that category with their own AI transformation. We've got lots of customers who are medium to large-sized technology companies that have shown a real appetite for working with partners and consultants to drive their own AI transformation.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

At this stage, more than three years on from the launch of ChatGPT, I think leaders are getting frustrated with the slow speed at which AI is being adopted and truly completely transforming their operations. We've seen our clients announce partnerships with agentic AI firms even in the last few weeks where maybe previously they would have tried to develop that technology themselves.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

The unique offering that TaskUs has is an ability to manage both AI agents and human agents. Unlike pure technology solutions, we can come in and solve 100% of our customers' issues from day one. For existing clients, we have spent the last 17 years training and managing human agents. We are taking our expertise in doing that, taking our expertise in our clients' processes and policies and applying that to training agents on their behalf.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

We have seen a real appetite amongst our clients for help with these types of transformations. Puneet, to answer your question directly, the largest of the large technology companies are not going to turn to TaskUs or any of the AI agent companies to do this work for them. Most of the other companies have shown a willingness and eagerness and an appetite to work with partners on their AI transformation.

Puneet Jain
Puneet Jain
Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan

That's great. On your trust and safety, like a year ago, there was a big focus on diversifying some of that revenue across multiple clients. Can you talk to us of that segment, how much of that revenue stems from your largest customer? You did announce a few things in that space this quarter. Maybe talk to us about that effort to diversify revenue in that segment.

Bryce Maddock
Bryce Maddock
Co-Founder and CEO at TaskUs

Yeah. We've been very focused on that. In the trust and safety space, there's a high concentration of spend amongst the largest buyers, which are the largest entertainment and social media platforms. We've done a good job of diversifying. We've gone from working with our largest client to working with the two other largest players in the space. One of those clients has become a very significant client for TaskUs in the tens of millions of dollars and driven significant growth over the last year. In all of these initiatives now, we're helping clients with both trust and safety and with AI safety workflows. I'm encouraged by the enduring relationship, the enduring nature of those relationships.

Puneet Jain
Puneet Jain
Equity Research Analyst at JPMorgan

That's good to know. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the end of the question-and-answer session and today's conference. We would like to thank you for your participation and interest in TaskUs.

Operator

This concludes today's event. You may disconnect your lines or log off the webcast at this time and enjoy the rest of your day.

Executives
    • Trent Thrash
      Trent Thrash
      VP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations
    • Bryce Maddock
      Bryce Maddock
      Co-Founder and CEO
    • Balaji Sekar
      Balaji Sekar
      CFO
Analysts
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