Mastech Digital (MHH) 2026年第三季法說會：數據與 AI 重返季成長

重點摘要

• 合併營收為 4,200 萬美元，年減 13.4%，主因 Talent 業務營收年減 16.4%，以及 Data and AI 業務營收較去年同期下滑 6.8%。
• Data and AI 業務營收季增 4.7% 至 1,410 萬美元，為 2024 年以來首次實現連續兩個季度季成長。
• Data and AI 新簽合約總價值 (TCV) 達 1,080 萬美元，較去年同期的 840 萬美元成長 29%。
• Talent 業務單位的平均計費費率自 89.65 美元升至 92.37 美元，創公司歷史新高，反映出 Mastech Digital 專注於退出低毛利且非戰略性的職位。
• Mastech Digital 拿下迄今最大的 AI 專案，為現有客戶打造基於 AWS 的代理型 AI 審計平台，旨在實現供應商與發票審計自動化。
• 截至 2026 年 9 月 30 日，流動性保持穩健，擁有 3,790 萬美元現金、無銀行債務，且循環信貸額度尚有 1,830 萬美元可用。

主要財務數據

業務與營運表現

Talent 業務持續以營收品質優先於規模數量。其可計費顧問人數較 2025 年第 3 季減少 154 人或 21%。管理層將此減少歸因於前十大客戶之一收回自辦，以及 Mastech Digital 主動退出低毛利、非戰略性的人力派駐職位。公司認為這些影響大部分已經過去，儘管這為未來季度設定了較低的營收基期。

Data and AI 業務實現連續第二個季度的營收季成長。管理層將此改善歸功於在 EDGE（Efficiency is Driving Growth and Expansion，效率驅動成長與擴展）計畫下的投資，該計畫將成本效率節省下來的資源重新投入到領導力、人才、技術能力與市場拓展。

Mastech Digital 將其戰略圍繞三大產品與服務進行規劃：應用 AI (Applied AI)、現代數據 (Modern Data) 以及 AI 治理、信任與安全 (AI Governance, Trust and Safety)。公司表示，應用 AI 是一項全新能力，而現代數據與 AI 治理產品則將較新的能力與公司原有的數據管理專業知識相結合。

本季度最大的 AI 專案涉及構建於 AWS 上的代理型 AI 審計平台。該平台將擷取並對帳發票與供應商數據、保留人機協同 (human-in-the-loop) 控制機制，並建立可重複使用的數據基礎。管理層表示，客戶預期在首次運行時即可獲得顯著的成本節省，並認為底層能力可在未來的合作中重複使用。

管理層展望

Mastech Digital 未提供正式的財務指引。管理層預計 Talent 業務將出現典型的第四季季節性效應，包括假期相關的放緩以及年底合約到期結算。

公司計劃在多年內持續投資 AI 人才、技術能力以及 Data and AI 業務的擴展。管理層表示，這些投資旨在提前於需求出現前建立能力，並支持其「知識優先企業」(Knowledge First Enterprise) 戰略。

風險與關注領域

• 在客戶收回自辦以及公司退出非戰略性人力派駐職位後，Talent 業務營收在未來幾季將從較低的基期開始。
• 第四季假期放緩及合約到期結算可能會對 Talent 業務活動構成壓力。
• 儘管 Data and AI 業務出現季成長改善，合併營收與獲利仍低於去年同期水準。
• 管理層正提前於需求進行投資，因此客戶採用速度以及將技術能力轉化為可擴展營收的效率將是關鍵監測指標。
• 客戶越來越多地基於成本和可衡量的投資報酬率 (ROI) 來評估 AI 專案，這可能會影響專案是否能進入正式生產部署階段。

分析師問答重點

分析師關注「知識優先企業」(Knowledge First Enterprise) 戰略如何改變 Mastech Digital 的市場切入 (go-to-market) 策略。管理層表示，公司將以可衡量的商業成果為導向，而非僅靠技術本身，從而協助客戶整合企業數據、商業情境與人類判斷。

管理層表示，AI 相關討論通常從實際應用場景開始，但會快速轉向數據現代化、治理與上線準備狀況。客戶在規模化部署代理型 AI 之前，會優先構建可靠的數據基礎。

在被問及經常性營收的潛力時，管理層表示，隨著成功的應用案例擴展至更廣泛的客戶關係與可重複使用的平台，AI 專案合作黏性會增強。不過，公司未提供具體的經常性營收目標。

關於 AI 成本優化，管理層表示，客戶越來越頻繁地詢問 AI 成果的成本為何，以及預期的回報是否足以支持正式生產部署。其治理產品包括模型路由 (model routing)、評估、可觀測性 (observability) 以及其他旨在提高效率與控制力的工具。

完整法說會逐字稿

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

Operator

Thank you. Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Mastech Digital's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. [Operator Instructions]

Please be advised, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today. Jennifer Lacey, please go ahead.

Jennifer Lacey

Thank you, Operator, and welcome to Mastech Digital's third quarter 2026 conference call. If you have not yet received a copy of our earnings announcement, it can be obtained from the investors section on our website at www.mastechdigital.com. With me on the call today are Nirav Patel, Mastech Digital's Chief Executive Officer, and Kannan Sugantharaman, our Chief Financial and Operations Officer. I would like to remind everyone that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements include our financial growth and liquidity projections, as well as statements about our plans, strategies, intentions, and beliefs concerning the business cash flows, costs, and the markets in which we operate. Without limiting the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, and similar expressions are intended to identify certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on information currently available to us, and we assume no obligation to update these statements as circumstances change. There are risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, including those listed in the company's 2025 annual report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and available on its website at www.sec.gov.

Additionally, management has elected to provide certain non-GAAP financial measures to supplement our financial results presented on a GAAP basis. Specifically, we will provide non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share data, which we believe will provide greater transparency with respect to the key metrics used by management in operating the business. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to their comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings announcement, which can be obtained from our website at www.mastechdigital.com. As a reminder, we will not be providing guidance during this call, nor will we provide guidance in any subsequent one-on-one meetings or calls. I will now turn the call over to Nirav for his comments.

Nirav Patel

Thanks, Jennifer. Good morning, everyone. We appreciate your joining us as we review our third quarter 2026 results. Before Kannan walks through the segment detail, I want to share some updates on our vision for Mastech Digital and how we are investing towards building an indispensable moat that positions us well to deliver on our objectives. This quarter we announced our vision of the Knowledge First Enterprise and introduced a new positioning for the Mastech Digital brand. We believe our differentiator is the ability to turn a client's own data and knowledge into practical, applicable, and scalable AI solutions that deliver outcomes.

Early response to our launch from our strategic partners and customers has been very encouraging, and we hope to amplify the brand further over the coming year. We believe the moat for an enterprise is its knowledge and people, not an AI model. Becoming a knowledge-first enterprise means bringing data, business context, and human judgment together so people and AI can work with the same understanding across the business. Today, knowledge is scattered across an enterprise's people, processes, code, tools, systems, and platforms. It includes tacit knowledge around how people exercise judgment when they make an exception and why a decision was made.

Harnessing that knowledge requires the transformation in the operating model. A strong data foundation, knowledge infrastructure, the right applied AI solutions, and AI-first talent, and adoption working together to produce value and achieve outcomes. To deliver on this vision, we are aligning our offerings, capabilities, and assets around three core offerings: applied AI, modern data, and AI governance, trust, and safety. Applied AI turns enterprise knowledge into solutions for targeted business problems. In this offering, we combine agentic technology with our own engineering talent to move those solutions into production so they scale and are adopted rather than remaining pilots.

They build across the leading frontier models our clients already use, including those available on Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS. Modern data builds the data foundation for insights, analytics, and AI. In this offering, we modernize the data and make it usable at scale, supported by a governance layer that keeps it trusted and secure. We have built this offering anchored by our partnerships in the likes of Snowflake, Azure, and Databricks. Our AI governance, trust, and safety helps enterprises lay an AI foundation to scale AI responsibly. This offering focuses on core building blocks of security guardrails, governed data access, an enriched knowledge base, dynamic model routing, evals, and observability that move AI from pilots to enterprise-wide scale.

Together, we believe these offerings connect a trusted data foundation and enterprise knowledge with practical applied AI solutions. Modern data makes data usable at scale. AI governance, trust, and safety makes the data trustworthy, and applied AI turns the foundation into business outcomes. We believe these offerings and capabilities are fundamental for AI transformation. And we plan to invest over the coming years to pivot and strengthen our play as we help companies become knowledge-first enterprises. Our partner ecosystem supports this direction by strengthening our delivery capabilities with the technology platforms our clients already use. We have expanded our Microsoft competencies to support applied AI delivery alongside expertise in Snowflake, Azure, and Databricks to build the modern data foundation. We expect to continue investing in the talent, skills, and capabilities needed to turn competencies into solutions our customers can adopt at scale.

Turning now to our business segment performance during the third quarter, our talent segment continues to reflect the revenue quality discipline we have described on prior earnings calls. The average bill rate reached another Mastech Digital record high of $92.37 this quarter, up from $89.65 a year ago, even as we continue to work through insourcing activities from one of our top 10 clients and our own deliberate exit from certain low-market non-strategic positions. We are very pleased to share that our data and AI segment delivered a second consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth up 4.7% from the second quarter with bookings of $10.8 million, up 29% from $8.4 million in the same quarter last year. One engagement from the quarter worth highlighting is that we secured our largest AI deal, expanding our work with an existing client through a new initiative. This is our applied AI offering in practice, modernizing a highly manual vendor and invoice audit process through an agentic AI audit platform built on AWS. Leveraging AI to extract and reconcile data, human in the loop controls, and a reusable data foundation, our solution is structured to deliver a secure and scalable platform that will streamline audits, support compliance, and help recover overpayments. The client expects significant savings from the first run alone.

We believe this is an example of how we bring enterprise knowledge and applied AI together to deliver a key business outcome. In summary and in our view, 2025 was a year of reset. We evaluated our strengths as a company and began unlocking efficiencies through EDGE, while 2026 has been the year of putting those efficiencies to work through investments and building true differentiation. We believe our brand positioning, offerings, strategic relationships and investments are all aligned towards the vision of a knowledge-first enterprise. Our main focus is on building differentiation through execution. I expect to share more details as we build on the momentum during the quarters ahead. With that, I will turn it over to Kannan, who will walk you through the financials.

Kannan Sugantharaman

Thanks, Nirav. Good morning, everyone. As Nirav mentioned, data and AI grew sequentially again this quarter. That's two quarters in a row. And the first time we have done that since 2024. I want to thank our team for the work behind it and our clients for their continued support. We believe this growth shows that EDGE is working. As a reminder, we launched EDGE, Efficiency is Driving Growth and Expansion, in Q3 2025 with two phases: an efficiency phase and an investment phase. Last quarter, we said that the reinvestment of those efficiencies into our leadership and talent, our competencies, and our market growth initiatives had started to accelerate.

We believe that the growth we are reporting in data and AI today reflects that investment. It also connects directly to what Nirav shared about our new brand and our vision of the knowledge-first enterprise. We believe EDGE is the foundation that makes that vision achievable. The efficiencies we have created are now being reinvested in the capabilities our clients need to turn their data into knowledge and their knowledge into decisions and outcomes. We plan to continue to invest significantly in talent, in building competencies, and then expanding our data and AI business. And we believe EDGE is positioned as well to build differentiated growth around the knowledge-first enterprise. I will now discuss our third quarter financial results.

During the third quarter, we delivered consolidated revenue of $42 million, a 13.4% decrease year-over-year compared to the prior year period. Our talent segment delivered revenue of $27.9 million, 16.4% lower than the prior year period, though our focus on revenue quality continues. Our bill rates once again reached an all-time high for Mastech Digital at $92.37, up from $89.65 a year ago. Our billable consultant base declined by 154 consultants since the third quarter of 2025, a 21% reduction. This reflects the same two factors we have discussed over the past few quarters: insourcing activity at one of our top 10 clients and a deliberate exit from certain low margin non-strategic staffing positions. We believe the impact of these factors is now largely behind us, though they do lower the baseline going into future quarters.

Separately, as we enter the fourth quarter, we expect the seasonal effects that typically affect our industry, including holiday related slowdowns and year-end contract completion. Our data and AI segment reported revenue of $14.1 million, a decrease of 6.8% compared to prior year period, but a growth of 4.7% sequentially. On the booking side, third quarter bookings total $10.8 million on a total contract value or TCV basis, compared to bookings of $8.4 million TCV in the prior year period. The third quarter is typically a seasonally slower booking period for us. So we view this year-over-year growth as an encouraging sign. Gross profit of $12.2 million was a decrease of 10.5% compared to the prior year period, having seen an improvement of 50 basis points from 40% to 40.5%. GAAP net income for three months ended September 30th was $0 cents per diluted share compared to GAAP net income of $0.9 million or $0.08 per diluted share in the prior year. Non-GAAP net income for the three months ended September 30th was $1.2 million or $0.10 per diluted share compared to $3.5 million or $0.29 per diluted share in the prior. GAAP net income for the nine months ended September was $0.2 million or $0.01 per diluted share compared to a GAAP net loss of $0.4 million or a minus $0.03 per diluted share in the prior year period.

Non-GAAP net income for the nine months ended September 30th was $3.4 million or $0.29 per diluted share compared to $6.1 million or $0.50 per diluted share in the prior year period. During the third quarter of 2026, our liquidity and overall financial position remained solid. On September 30, 2026, we had $37.9 million in cash on hand, no bank debt outstanding and cash availability of $18.3 million under our revolving credit facility. Our day sales outstanding on September 30, 2026 totaled 56 days, which is in line with our day sales measurement a year ago and an improvement over the last few quarters. During the third quarter of 2026, we did not repurchase any shares of Mastech Digital common stock. And as a result, as of September 30th, 2026, the entire $5 million remains available under the share repurchase program. Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks. We will now open the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Marc Riddick with Sidoti. Your line is open.

分析師問答

Marc Riddick

Hey, good morning. Good morning. So I wanted to start with some of the things that you said. The commentary around the new brand and the commentary in the press release regarding the Knowledge First Enterprise. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how we should view that and what that means for Mastech Digital, how that impacts your go-to-market strategy and some of the things that you're trying to accomplish there. And then I have a follow-up after that.

Nirav Patel

Thanks, Marc. This is Nirav. I'll take that question. So thanks for the question. Let me start with the context because it shapes everything we are doing. You know, the pace of AI innovation from the Frontier Labs is remarkable, but as these models become more widely available, the model itself is no longer what sets an enterprise apart. A foundation model doesn't know what your people know. It doesn't know your processes, your customers, or the judgment your teams have built up over the decades. That knowledge is, to us, is the real moat, and it belongs to the enterprise. The challenge is that this knowledge is really, really scattered.

Some of it sits in machines, tools, platforms, systems of records. But much of it actually sits with people in processes, in tacit know-how and in their judgments. A knowledge-first enterprise brings all of that together, connecting data, business context, and human judgment, so people and AI work from the same understanding across the business. Now doing that isn't a single project. It's change in the operating model. Think of it as a well-oiled machine, you know, you need the right data foundation. You build the knowledge infrastructure on top of it, and then you apply the right AI model, and you pair all of that with AI first talent and real adoptions, right? Because that's where the real value is ultimately created.

So that's what it means for Mastech Digital going forward. You know, really as we support our clients and partners, our three offerings really map directly to that machine in terms of how we talked about it. So how we go to the market and the engagement we pursue, we will lead with outcomes, not technology for its own sake. We'll help clients codify their knowledge. So it really, really delivers results that can measure. So sorry for a little bit of a longish answer, Marc, but I think it was important for us to really give you and provide that context of the knowledge first.

Marc Riddick

Okay. No, I do appreciate that. And then maybe we talk a little bit about the pacing of what you're seeing, particularly with the sequential growth that we're seeing in the data AI segment, some of the drivers that you've seen. And maybe you certainly have a customer base that's fairly diverse. I was wondering if you're seeing any differentiation in any particular key client verticals or anything that should stand out currently. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good question. It's going great.

Nirav Patel

No, go ahead, Kannan. Go ahead. No, I was just I was just going to take this in two parts. I think you asked about the pacing of the whole brand and how this is really reflected and and and maybe I can have Kannan chime in on the deal win and so forth. So, but let me take a first part on the deal pacing, right? See, to us, the offerings that we talked about today are very fundamental in terms of how, you know, this will help enterprises become knowledge first. And our objective and vision that we are laying down now is very clearly that we want to go towards a play where these three core offerings, one which I talked about around modern data, which really builds the foundation. Then you talk about the AI governance, trust and safety that lays the foundation to scale AI responsibly because it's important that everything that you build needs to be production ready and needs to scale responsibly. And finally, using our applied AI offerings to convert that strong foundation into business outcomes.

So this is how we sort of thought about the three broad core offerings. And for us, the pacing of this, if I look at the client's prioritization, they disproportionately are spending today in areas around data modernization and foundation, I call it. Because before the agentic world to scale up, I think you need the level of hardness. You need a level of foundation that is stable so that they actually get a more predictable growth with agents beyond that. So I think it's interesting to see that from a client standpoint, we see the conversations really begin with applied AI conversations, but they quickly turn into getting their data ready for AI and then laying a strong AI foundation to scale them better. So I don't know, Kannan, if you want to just chime in with your comments on the deal win.

Kannan Sugantharaman

Sure, Nirav and Marc, I mean, you know, this is a deal which Nirav spoke about, we are really proud of this one. It's our largest AI deal to date. And it's one of our existing relationships and which expands that relationship into a very new initiative. The problem we are solving is a common one, right? So their vendor and invoice audit process was highly manual and depended heavily on auditors working through large volumes of documents and transactions. It was slow, hard to scale, and it meant overpayments that went undetected. That was the business problem. We are building an agentic AI audit platform on AWS.

It has three elements. First, the AI that extracts and reconciles the data across invoices and vendor records. Second, human in the loop controls. So the auditor's judgment stays at the center of the process. And third is the usable data foundation that a client can build on beyond its first use case. So the result, I would say, is a scalable platform designed to streamline audits, support compliance, and help with the overpayment and the recovery of it. And the client expects significant savings from the first run alone. I would say this is a very good example of what Nirav spoke about, which is the Knowledge First Enterprise in practice. We are capturing the knowledge, the judgment experienced by the auditors and then pairing it up with applied AI, which takes a process from a manual effort to a very measurable business outcome because it is built on reusable foundation we see this platform that can grow with client over time and not just a one-off project for our clients so Marc that's how I would be reflect on that that new opportunity there.

Marc Riddick

Okay, great. And the last thing you made mention of as we, on the as far as where we are with EDGE and the investments that you're looking to make going forward and and adding in talent. I think the headcount in Data and AI segment was down a little bit sequentially, maybe you could talk a little bit about that. A bit about the pacing of what we might see there as far as the investments that you see going forward. And do you anticipate gains in the headcount in the near future, or is that sort of a level setting, do you anticipate a level setting of that or are we moving heads from a different place or are you anticipating headcount gains going forward from there?

Kannan Sugantharaman

Right. So, let me address this in two parts. You spoke about EDGE, let me address EDGE first. And then Nirav had commented about it, right? 2025 was our reset year, 2026 has been the year of putting those efficiencies to work through the investments and building the real differentiation and the growth we are seeing in data and AI reflects that and it reinforces our conviction of what we are doing. So that's on the EDGE front, right? So we are making these investments with a multi-year view, Marc. We have spoken about this in the past. We believe this is the right time to build a capability ahead of demand and we would encourage the investors to see them in that light. As you would know, we do have $38 million roughly of cash and no debt. It gives us the flexibility to while staying disciplined.

Let me also talk about the talent part of it right so you're right our headcount for September was down to 580, which was 14% lower on a quarter-on-quarter basis, but actually 144 lower year-on-year. The year-on-year decline in talent reflects, as we have spoken, two factors we have discussed over the past few quarters. The first is the insourcing activity at one of our top clients. And the second is the deliberate exit from certain low margin non-strategic staffing positions, which also reflects how good our bill rates are at this point in time. We believe the impact of those factors are largely behind us. But Marc, you would know, that as we enter the fourth quarter, we do expect seasonal effects typical to the talent industry, including holiday related slowdowns and year end completions, contract completions. But beyond that, we don't necessarily provide guidance, but we are monitoring the market closely, staying disciplined on revenue quality and positioning ourselves to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.

Operator

Thank you very much. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Lisa Thompson with Sachs Investment Research. Your line is open.

Lisa Thompson

Good morning. I'd like you to expand a little bit about things you've been talking about. First off, those three new offerings you talked about, are these new capabilities, are this currently what you're doing and you've just kind of packaged them into distinctive segments?

Nirav Patel

Lisa, I'll take that question. Good morning. So it's a combination of those two. And let me explain what portions of our core offerings and how we really, modeled our core existing work around, particularly around MDM as well as customer experience that we have been actually pretty good at in the past. How did we fold that into the right place? If you talk about for the three offerings, our applied AI offerings, it really turns what I call enterprise knowledge into solutions, business, specific business problems, and we combine agentic technology with our own engineering talent to get those solutions into production. That is a completely new offering. Like in a sense, like we never did that, you know, over the last few years. I think if you compare us from a couple of years before to now, right? So to me, all things applied AI are absolutely new, and some of our DUVs, you know, are very, very encouraging for us that these new capabilities are finding relevancy with our clients and are now starting to get to a certain level of scale, which gives us a feeling that clients are ready and that they want to really accelerate as much as possible with the applied AI offering that we have.

The modern data, and we call the modern data because we have had, like I said, historically we have really been a very strong competitor. MDM play with IBM as well as some of the other partners like Informatica, Reltio, and so forth, right? That area of our core work is now folded under what we call it as the governance, trust, and safety layer. And so essentially that what the clients are like looking at it but I think it is completely AI-fying that core legacy offering. So I think it's getting rechristened. I think so it fits very well for us into that layer. But the client clearly expects us to completely modernize that governance, trust, and safety layer. So for us, you have newer elements of harness, you have newer elements of model routing, evals, and everything that comes along with AI is very nicely folding for us in that.

Modern data is something that we have been more recently building upon, and I think that's also one of our newer offerings, where we are engaging more strongly with some of our data platform partners and more modern data platforms to really say that, hey, is that something that we can really go take across? And I think our Microsoft certification and the expansion that we talked about in our remarks is really a true reflection for us in that regard because as our partners like Microsoft, where we've now become the solution partner for their cloud and AI status, really strengthens our positioning to really accelerate modern data capabilities. So that's also a relatively new capability for us. So these are all new capabilities. That's clearly where we are diverting most of our EDGE unlock or savings to. I mean, I think that's how we have really designed the model but I think the early signs are really, really encouraging that reflects in our bookings pick up as well as in our deal wins.

Lisa Thompson

Okay, interesting. When hearing about these, it occurs to me that maybe these aren't really just projects. Is there a possibility of having recurring revenues from some of these abilities? Yes.

Nirav Patel

So they do, right? Because all things AI are pretty sticky in nature, right Lisa? So when you go into – and we spoke about a deal win with Agent Ecommerce last time. And that's a little bit of a combination of our AI Foundation plus Applied AI opportunity. When customers start to really see success in the early cases of adoption and they see real outcomes, and I think clearly customers are asking us for outcomes and we are pushing for outcomes. The traditional model of IT services was extremely input cost driven. And we are now going towards a business outcome sort of play. And as customers start to do more and more of this, they just want more of it. I mean, I think these relationships expand further when clients start to add it.

So there is a level of platform build that comes along with it. And there is a level of stickiness that allows clients to really lean on the same AI partners that have proven outcome capabilities in the past. So we do believe there is a recurring nature of our business which will help and should help us strengthen and scale some of our clients that we began working with this new offering on to large scale relationships.

Lisa Thompson

Okay. Are you doing any work as far as trying to optimize customers' use of the software? of LLMs. It seems like there's a lot of talk between paying up for the leading edge ones and then just using open source for simpler tasks. Is that something at all you're involved in?

Nirav Patel

So I can't specifically talk about details of the projects, but let me give you a little color, Lisa. See, the AI governance layer, efficiency layer, the foundation layer, is bringing in what I call optimizations. Use of AI, and optimal use of AI is now becoming extremely critical in all of our client engagements. You know, I mean, the board is no longer asking the CEOs and the CTOs of our customers that that show me AI and they're asking the question, show me AI at what cost? As soon as that question comes in that way, the focus is really to say that, you know, is it efficient? I mean, we love the magic, but is the magic efficient enough for what it's costing us? So that is leading to extremely, what I call, efficient AI deployment conversations. Clients are clearly, asking us and taking our help and saying, hey, how can they efficiently reduce cost? But I think there are two groups of clients that you generally face. There are some AI clients who actually feel the pressures of AI maxim. But there are a lot of clients that don't see AI maxing issues, but they really want more ROI to be better on the AI investments. So it's not like that they're running completely short of money to be able to deploy on AI, but the big question mark is if you're producing something in AI, what's the price am I paying to produce the same outcome? And does the ROI justify that business case for me taking that AI project into production?

Lisa Thompson

Okay, that's good to hear. There's some of that going on. And finally, I'd just like you to talk about that project that you were talking about, about the invoicing and billing, the new big one. Is that something that you can take to any industry and any company that just pays bills? And would that be a project you would just move to another company? move from company to company or how would that work? Yes.

Kannan Sugantharaman

So let me take that, Lisa. And this is something that I did briefly cover. It is, as I said, the problem we are solving is a pretty common one, right? And this is where you have, their vendor and invoice audit process, which was hugely manual and dependent on the auditors working through large volumes of transactions, and it was slowing them and it was meaning an overpayment. What we are building is an agent audit platform, which is repeatable from a solution standpoint, but it largely looked at extracting and reconciling the data between. We talk about human-in-the-loop controls, so auditors, judgments, stay in the process, and that's where the reusable data foundation that the client can build beyond this first case. But to your question, we don't see this as one-off. Every new AI engagement and the solution we build for it adds to a repeatable library of agentic skills and tools, solutions span different industries and drive different outcomes, but they can draw on the same underlying AI capability, which is data extraction, knowledge layers, agent orchestration, governance, and human-in-the-loop controls. So we believe that this is, that is, that it will create a compound effect over time each engagement makes the next one faster and deliver more value to our clients and we are pretty excited to see how it scales.

Lisa Thompson

That's great. That sounds really good. Thank you so much. That's all my questions.

Operator

And I'm not showing any further questions this time. I turn the call back to Nirav for any closing remarks.

Nirav Patel

Thank you, Operator. You know, if there are no further questions, I'd like to thank you for joining our call today. We look forward to sharing our fourth quarter and full year 2026 results with you in February.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's presentation. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.

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