Enghouse Systems (TSX:ENGH) reported second-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company's second-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

This transcript is brought to you by Benzinga APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/ for a consultation.

View the webcast at https://onlinexperiences.com/scripts/Server.nxp?LASCmd=AI:4;F:QS!10100&ShowUUID=A673095F-D7AB-4560-AF5C-D31965E1BDBD&Referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fpro.benzinga.com%2F

Summary

Enghouse Systems reported Q2 revenue of $114.3 million, an 8% decline year-over-year, primarily due to churn in recurring revenue and cautious customer purchasing behavior.

Despite revenue challenges, the company maintained profitability with an adjusted EBITDA of $26.5 million and a 23.2% margin, supported by disciplined cost management and operational efficiency.

The company ended the quarter with $269.7 million in cash and no debt, facilitating shareholder returns through dividends and share repurchases.

The Asset Management Group showed stable performance with slight revenue growth, while the Interactive Management Group experienced declines due to churn and a transition towards cloud and SaaS models.

Enghouse continues to explore AI applications for efficiency improvements but notes challenges in monetizing AI in its markets.

Management highlighted a cautious approach to potential acquisitions, focusing on maintaining a strong financial position and navigating the current market uncertainties.

The company expressed concerns about the market environment, particularly for mid-sized and small business clients, and emphasized the importance of maintaining cash flow and operational resilience.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

At this time all lines are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stephen Sadler. Please go ahead.

Stephen Sadler

Good morning everybody. I'm here today with Rob Medved, Chief Financial Officer and Todd May, VP Legal Counsel. Before we begin, I'll have Todd read our forward disclaimer. Filing, such as its events, which could cause the company's actual results and experience to differ materially from anticipated results or other expectations. Undue reliance should not be placed on forward looking information and the company has no obligation to update or revise any forward looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Thanks Todd. Rob will now give an overview of the financial and business results.

Rob Medved (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Steve. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. I'll begin with a high level overview of our second quarter results. Fiscal 2026 overall, the quarter reflected continued market caution and the variability that we have been managing across our business. Customer decision making remains measured in some areas, with certain larger or discretionary projects delayed rather than lost. Despite these headwinds, our results demonstrate ongoing profitability, disciplined cost management and strong cash generation.

Revenue for the second quarter was $114.3 million compared to $124.8 million in the same period last year. The year over year decline of about 8% was primarily driven by continued churn in parts of our recurring revenue base, particularly within the Interactive Management Group, including some expected runoff from prior acquisitions, along with lower software license and professional services revenue as customers paced purchases and projects started cautiously.

The Asset Management Group delivered relatively stable performance with acquisitions contributing incremental revenue that helped offset softness in certain areas and the timing of one time product transactions. Sequentially, revenue was down around 4.8% from Q1, which was $120.1 million, reflecting reduced software sales and continued pressure in recurring revenue streams. This sequential change also reflects the timing of deals and the inherent variability in customer purchasing patterns as well as ongoing transitions in our business model.

Recurring revenue, which includes our SaaS and maintenance streams, was approximately $79 million in Q2, representing about 69% of total revenue. This is roughly in line with the prior year's level, although slightly lower year over year. Our recurring revenue remains a significant and stable part of our business, helping to underpin the predictability of our results. Maintaining and supporting the space of recurring revenue continues to be a core focus as we navigate the current environment From a profitability perspective, our bottom line remains solid despite lower revenues.

Adjusted EBITDA was $26.5 million, representing a 23.2% margin, marginally higher than the same period last year. Operating income was $23.6 million and net income was $16.3 million, or $0.30 per diluted share, up from the $13.5 million or $0.24 per share in Q2 of last year. These profit results reflect our continued emphasis on cost discipline and operational efficiency across the organization. We have proactively aligned our cost structure with the current revenue trajectory, taking further cost actions including targeted restructuring expenses in the quarter to manage expenses.

Operating expenses were reduced by about 13.5% year over year, highlighting the progress of these efforts. Importantly, these cost alignment initiatives help mitigate the impact of the revenue decline on margins and we expect to benefit further as they fully annualize over the coming quarters. We remain focused on maintaining healthy margins while preserving flexibility to support key investments in our products and customers. Net cash provided by operating activities, excluding working capital changes and income taxes paid, was $28.7 million in Q2, an increase from $25.5 million in the same period last year.

We closed the quarter with a robust $269.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and short term investments and we carry no external debt. During the quarter, we returned capital to shareholders by paying $16.4 million in dividends and repurchasing $2 million of our shares, reflecting our ongoing commitment to shareholder returns while balancing investments and growth. Our strong balance sheet and consistent cash flow continue to provide ample flexibility to support internal initiatives, consider acquisitions with our disciplined approach and maintain our dividend and share buyback programs.

Yesterday the Board of Directors approved an eligible quarterly dividend of $0.31 per common share payable on August 28, 2026 to shareholders of record on August 14, 2026. Looking at our performance by business segment, results were mixed but continued to demonstrate the value of our diversified portfolio. In the Asset Management Group, revenue was 51.4 million, a slight increase over the same quarter last year. This reflects steady core performance with acquisitions contributing to growth.

Some variability in AMG results was due to the timing of a few larger one time transactions, which underscores the inherent seasonality and elements of this segment. In the Interactive Management Group, revenue was $62.8 million, lower than the same quarter last year and down from Q1, primarily due to declines in recurring revenue as we experienced churn in portions of the portfolio. Part of this was expected attrition from certain prior acquisitions we made in recent years, coupled with what we believe is a continued transition of customers towards Cloud and SaaS models.

Additionally, software license and professional services activity in the IMG segment were softer this quarter, reflecting ongoing customer caution and the evolving mix of our business. Importantly, we have adjusted costs in both segments to align with these revenue trends and each group remains profitable and focused on serving its customer base. Turning briefly to technology and operations, we continue to see growing customer interest in AI powered capabilities, particularly around solutions that can enhance efficiency, automation and analytics in our products.

In practice, many of the industries we serve tend to adopt new technologies in a measured, use case driven way. Our approach remains disciplined and focused on practical AI innovations that provide clear value within our software offerings. Rather than pursuing AI as an isolated initiative internally, we are also leveraging AI selectively to improve productivity and reduce costs in functions like development and operations, further supporting our efficiency initiatives.

In summary, the second quarter demonstrated Enghouse ability to deliver solid financial results in the dynamic market environment. Revenue declined as expected given market conditions and known churn factors, but profitability remains strong supported by proactive cost management. Our high recurring revenue base continues to be a stabilizing factor for our performance and our balance sheet and cash flow provide a foundation for resilience and strategic flexibility.

We are operating with discipline in cost and capital allocation, focusing on margins, cash generation and delivering value to our customers and shareholders. The fundamentals of our business remain sound and we are well positioned to navigate the current environment while pursuing opportunities for long term growth in a prudent manner. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Steve for his remarks.

Stephen Sadler

Thanks Rob. As noted on our last call, the markets in which we operate continue to be challenging with respect to AI. Although there's a lot of interest and promotion by major AI players, it continues to be difficult to monetize enterprise AI investment in our markets. We continue to Explore and use AI's leading models for internal productivity and building practical solutions which provide a return on our investment. Monetizing AI with Customers like the many items and solutions noted on our last quarterly call, we continue to improve to benefit ourselves internally and our customers with respect to capital deployment.

We continue to see a lot of opportunities in the private and public markets in our business sectors, but it's a little unusual that valuations are higher than the public market valuations. We did not complete any acquisitions in the quarter other than to continue to purchase Enghouse shares using our internally generated funds under the TSX defined normal course issuer bid. We Continue to believe the purchase of our own shares is a good use of our funds and better value than many of our acquisition opportunities that we're seeing, especially in the private markets.

I would now like to open the call for questions.

OPERATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw a question, please press Star, then the number two again. That will be Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll just pause for a moment to compile the Q and A roster. First question comes from Erin Kao from CIBC. Please go ahead.

Erin Kao (Equity Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to just dig into the hosted and maintenance revenue in the quarter. It was down 8% year over year this quarter. The decline is larger than what we had been expecting and it's an acceleration from Q1. So maybe can you dig into what's driving that? Is the pace of churn accelerating here? Is there anything one time in the Q2 numbers that we should be aware of or just how do we think about the pace of revenue decline in the recurring revenue base of this point?

Rob Medved (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, the decline's a little larger than what we would have thought, but we're still hitting decline for some of the acquisitions. It takes time for people to move off. We have a pretty sticky solution and we keep mentioning the life size, which we said before. So there's still some decline there. There's also decline generally in the marketplace. We're not in the large language model or the big accounts. We're generally in that medium sized accounts or small business accounts and they're struggling more in this market. I don't think it's well promoted in the marketplace. But you know, they talked about is Canada or the world even in a recession. And a lot of people are holding back a little bit because there's a lot of uncertainties in many areas, including with the wars going on, et cetera.

It's not affecting us in the sense of us as a company, but it does affect our customers. So yeah, it's down a little more than we thought. That's something we have to work on to improve.

Erin Kao (Equity Analyst)

Okay, maybe, maybe just a follow up for that. Steve, what do you think needs to happen then for that organic growth to re accelerate for your customer base here? Do you expect the pace of decline to continue at this rate, at this point in the current environment, or what do you need to see to see that come back?

Rob Medved (Chief Financial Officer)

It's a little baffling to me that we aren't doing better because a lot of our major competitors are having financial difficulty in the market. That means they can't afford to lose any revenue, so they're cutting their pricing, trying to keep their revenue up. And when I mean financial difficulty, I'm talking went into receivership several and I'm talking billion dollars, especially in the IMG area. So we do have that dynamic in the marketplace where.

Where all the deals we do are tougher to do because they're trying to survive. We're not in that position. And again, it will only go so far in looking at that. Some of the maintenance revenue we talked about is some of our customers are having financial difficulties as well in that small business market. And everyone talks about the large businesses. They all talk. ETFs example, a lot of people are investing there. They're all generally large companies.

But in that medium and small business area, it's much tougher right now. And we're seeing some of that especially in Europe, but also in the United States.

Erin Kao (Equity Analyst)

Okay, that's helpful. And then maybe last one from me, just on the profitability side, the gross margins contracted year over year and we're also below what we had been expecting in the corner. I expect that's due to the churn and hosted maintenance and some of the factors you called out on professional services as well. But how should we think about gross margins going forward? Is 61% a new run rate here? Can you get back to the 63% from last quarter?

Yeah. How should we think about that?

Rob Medved (Chief Financial Officer)

It's another area that we'd like to get back to where we were, which might even be higher than 63%. But the market is such. Remember what I just said about our competitors, all the big ones are facing pretty serious financial problems right now. I would say it's a general market problem. It's not because of AI, although we could say it is, but it isn't. It's generally because the market's a little bit more in a recession. It's sort of hidden by the big Magnificent Six plus one, the one being Nvidia, who supplies chips to the Magnificent Six, who are again raising prices and making it more difficult, especially in a cloud or SaaS model, to make money. So there's good news and bad news. The good news is that it makes the environment should be better for acquisitions. The bad news is it seems investors don't think contact centers are going to be around, for example, in five years. We disagree, but it Makes it difficult to deploy money in that area when investors won't give any credit for doing so. So again, that impacts some of the acquisitions, which are generally at all time lows right now.

But then what do you do, especially when it's in the public markets and they're bigger. Do you bet the farm on that when you're investors? Shareholders. That's why we do this for all our stakeholders, one of which is shareholders. Do we do something in that area when they're really telling you don't? So we're watching it closely. We have the cash to do things. Our cash is accumulating. So it's a little easier to do larger deals without getting any financing, including bank financing.

But it is a tricky marker right now and we're just trying to sort through it and make sure that we stay resilient. And I would just say to everyone, even when you're looking at the platforms, I'd watch more the cash flow than the ebitda. Be careful because as you capitalize things, it doesn't go into ebitda. We're very much into cash flow. So it's a little tougher right now, but it's okay. We're one of the best in our industry, which is good. In a bad industry, which is bad.

Thanks, Steve. I'll pass the line.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from Kevin McVeigh from UBS Financial. Please go ahead.

Kevin McVeigh (Equity Analyst)

Thank you so much. I wonder one of your comments was that you think some of the revenue's been delayed as opposed to lost. Can you help understand what gives you that that level of confidence

Stephen Sadler

generally? I'm not sure I said it's delayed or lost. I think Rob mentioned that. I'm not sure that is the case. We don't know if that's true. What we're basically looking at is it's a tough market and what will change that is some of those larger players, I'm talking billion dollar. And if you go to contact center customers that are having financial difficulty, you know, that only lasts so long until they hit even more serious financial difficulty, which would help us. We're one of the few that have good cash flow and make money and have money and no debt. So from that side I think that's an advantage. But it's relatively new. I would say 20, 26. And again, it's something we have to sort through. We don't have all the answers.

We just watch everything very carefully and can react very carefully or quickly when we see what's happening in the market right now, it's a tough market with again competition many times our size, especially in img, having difficulty in amg, which is our network side. It's pretty steady, it's okay. But even that's a little slower because 4g to 5g has not been as the uptake hasn't been as good by network companies. And you can look at Telus in Canada or you can look at bce, you can see their stocks are down. So they slowed a little bit their purchasing as well because everyone's trying to get through these uncertain times and aren't sure where it's heading.

Kevin McVeigh (Equity Analyst)

That's helpful. I was going to actually be. Yeah, no, understood. And that was actually my next question. With some of the difficulty of the larger players. Do you wait, do you need to see the bankruptcy before you start to see share shift or do clients, are they more proactive to the extent some of the competition is, you know, there's real solvency fears or I guess clients,

Stephen Sadler

are you know, is there wonder why are you're not picking up more share already? That's what I ask my team every day. Why aren't we picking up more share in some of these areas? I think it takes time to move to a new area. I also think, you know, some of the problem is not just our competitors having financial difficulties. In the small business market, customers and our clients are having financial difficulty, that is some of them are going out of business.

I know the markets look great and they're all up, but it isn't the market we're in. We're in that middle and lower end market. They're struggling and trying to survive through this period. Right now, the high end, especially the platform guys who are doing very well, but they're doing very well charging more to the middle guys and the big guys. And if you look at the industry, and I'm sure the analysts do that, there's a lot of larger companies and especially ones who are doing AI where they haven't monetized it.

So it's a cost with no revenue. So there's a lot of things going on right now in the marketplace and we're trying to manage all that. And right now it's more let's see where it goes before we start taking a position one way or another. So it takes some time. But we've done that in the past. We did 208. We've done it in the past. We think that's the right thing to do. And again, if you go with some of our competitors in the contact center space, even in the Network space or the AMG space as we call it.

It's tougher out there than the public markets are telling you. And the public markets in some ways are down. The privates are much higher because they don't have to sell today. So investors are moving to the big platform. They're all spending on maybe saving their money for the big IPOs that are coming up, but the funds aren't really going into that mid market sector and they're all basically looking at where is it going from here. I think investors are trying to sort it out as well right now.

Kevin McVeigh (Equity Analyst)

A lot of sense. My last question then. I'll get back in the queue. Are you seeing clients behavior change at all as they start to. To kind of get their bills, if you would.

Stephen Sadler

Right. In terms of as token costs are really starting to rise, are they starting to kind of recalibrate thoughts as to what the AI is really going to mean from an adoption perspective internally, or is it still too early? I think it's probably too early. What we see generally is the tokens they're buying. A lot of them, a lot are spending money and the executive who read the press are saying, hey, we got to get more in this area. And the staff doing the work are saying there's no payback and they're having a difficulty getting a payback on it right now.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing it because you got to be in the area. The platform guys are doing well because they make their money whether there's a payback or not, because you're just processing on their servers, etc. They're all spending a lot of money, therefore we watch cash flow. I would be a little scary at some of the cash that's going out from some of those. It better work or they could have problems. And I don't know how much more they're going to get from the mid market.

So maybe the big guys will. All those EFTs that I'm talking about in the public markets, maybe they'll spend enough that will make all this work. The concern I would have going forward is is AI going to be more expensive for everybody when it all ends up because they got. Somehow they got to get a return on all the data centers that they're spending money on today. I don't know the reaction of that, but I know the Magnificent Six and I'll say plus Nvidia.

I know they're doing pretty well because they're charging more on the captive audience like us for some part of our business where we use their services. So it is an interesting dynamic right now. We got to make sure we keep our cash flow. I would say watch cash flow. It's very more important now than ever. Accounting can fool you sometimes. Remember ebitda? You don't count the da, okay? You don't count the capital. You got to subtract it off. I'm sure you all know that.

But we're very careful. We don't know where all this is heading. We've seen it before. At least I've seen it before because I'm old, so that's a reason why I can do that. But in 208, you saw a lot of, you know, it can blow up and therefore you have to be in the game because it could also be very good. So we set up two small groups to do AI and a lot of our people are trained on it. So it's pretty good to. We're pretty well positioned on that. But right now, the monetization isn't really coming from selling solutions, but there is some for cost reduction, making people more efficient in using that technology.

Like happens with every technology over the last 50 years. You get some efficiencies by using it. So we certainly are using it and we're certainly out there looking to see if we see that application that can be a real winner for us. We haven't seen it yet. And that's especially true, as you know, some of our contact centers, the bigger ones that laid off staff because of AI, they're hiring them back because there's also people aspect of do you want to talk to a machine?

So we're trying to figure out where all that goes. But you've got to stay in all the games because we're not at the bleeding edge. But we like to be in the game, so we're waiting and we've got the resources to handle it. A lot of our competition, especially in contact center, are struggling and no one's giving them money. That's the good and bad news. Okay? They're not getting money. So if they don't start making money and they'll have an issue and the only way they're going to make money is raise prices because their costs aren't changing that much, especially if they're using, you know, one of the major hyperscaler platforms.

OPERATOR

Next question comes from David Cowan from TD Cohen. Please go ahead.

David Cowan (Equity Analyst)

Good morning. I was wondering, just trying to dig into the churn and kind of the source of that, like how much of that is coming from customers renewing for say a lower acv. For whatever reason though you've talked about financial challenges of the S and P customers, you know, how that compares versus potentially competitive losses. Or maybe the customers developing their solutions in house using kind of the generic tools like quadco, Codex, Cursa and the like.

Stephen Sadler

We don't see many in our space, remember smaller customers, we don't have the big contact centers, we have that middle to smaller end. We don't see many of them developing in house solutions that would compete with what we do or what our competitors do. And you know, the competitors, you know, saw Mitel, they were doing well, they hit trouble. You know, there's a lot of that in the industry, especially in that smaller area the big guys tend to do okay. That's really. We, although we have some large customers, it's really not our market. We do have large ones like British Telecom for example, that they use our contact center system to sell to their customer base. So that helps. But their customers aren't necessarily big. They're people that use their, the telco, which might be smaller.

So they, they are using it generally for their customers. Whether that works. Right now it's a confusing, unsettled market that's making it tough for M and A and also the capital market activity in general. So again, we have good cash, we have good cash flow, we like it that way and we gotta make sure we deploy it effectively for our shareholders.

David Cowan (Equity Analyst)

Like are you, are you seeing when customer contracts come up for renewal, are they renewing for, you know, whether it's less seats for seat based pricing or just lower ACVs, because maybe they see lower cost, develop these solutions, they expect that value to be passed along to them.

Stephen Sadler

You know, I think customers are always looking for the best deal. And so we have what they call upsells and down sells. We think generally the upsells beat the downsells. That's not the problem. It's the ones that hit trouble and can't pay. Okay, they generally are. That's in the industry in general. I think the general economy is not quite as good as it's made out to be. The larger big players which dominate the index, etc. Are doing fine in the market. We're in the mid market, it's tougher. I'll give you an example. One of our competitors, and I'll let the analysts go through and tell you which ones. One of our competitors won't sell any contact centers below 250 anymore. They're saying no, not doing the small end. Some of our competitors are saying they aren't going to do anything on prem. It's got to be in the cloud. You know, in particular, a supplier doing that.

They're doing that because they think investors, you guys on the phone, probably will pay more for in the cloud. And you have been doing that. But now that's coming up to a bit of a challenge with AI as well. But what they're doing is saying we're not doing on premises and they have a brand base. We will do both and we will sell on prem or we will sell in the cloud, as does make sense. So we're giving our customers some options that might be good, but it might cause confusion to some degree as well. So we're trying to get through that whole dynamic in this marketplace. And you know, I'm talking a lot about contact center because it's a big.

It's the majority of our revenue, but it's not as big as it used to be because a lot of the declines there and our other business, our transportation business and our networks business are doing fine. They're not seeing the same issues because they're bigger customers. If you're in networks, you're doing the telcos. It's 4G to 5G is sort of the issue there where they spend their money, because they spend a lot going to 4G to 5G and. And it may not have worked out like they thought. Transportation, which was a problem a year ago, 18 months ago, it's profitable now and growing. We had two large contracts that are being rolled out, especially in the Nordics. So that part's okay. I emphasize the two areas that are tough. Video still an issue as people are mandated back to the office, which actually does take down video revenue. Not as much for us anymore because ours is pretty steady.

But we're in. And we're in the healthcare and a little more stickier video than some of the others. And also then the contact center, which, you know, I'm just going to give my view, which, let's say three, four months ago, contact centers are going to be eliminated. Maybe a lot of people think that's still the case, but if you'll notice, there's been a pivot because it hasn't been happening. What the pivot is to is that all software is going to be eliminated. They won't need to have programmers anywhere and lots of layoffs in that area. I'm not sure the layoffs are because of AI or for what I just said. I think they just had to get lower staff because they hired too many during the pandemic and they're now right sizing what they have to do. There's a term they call AI Washington. I think you see some of that in the marketplace.

And I'll say what I said last time, if you're in one of those situations and a customer or a software person is saying, we're eliminating because we're using more AI, Ask them, what AI? What AI system did you put in place that allows you to reduce that many staff? You might get an interesting answer. We keep asking people, we don't get a good answer. They're saying, well, it's coming well, but you're letting people go now. If it isn't here now, it isn't because of AI. It might be because of the hope of AI. That could be true. So you've got to keep on top of it. It does help software programmers program faster. You still look at around to how do you keep it up? How do you change it in the future? If someone changes their platform, you got to rewrite it again. A lot of that is a little easier if you know how it was written in the first place. And with AI, you really don't. You put it in and a machine writes it for you. But you still have to keep that software up. So we're seeing a lot of that. We're seeing, especially for new companies doing new software. It helps. We're certainly using it, we're certainly trained our staff and know how to do it. But there's a lot of other, I would call small issues for investors, big issues for companies that still haven't been resolved, including what about cyber?

If cyber gets into that system somehow, what are you going to do? How are you going to solve that problem as you put it through all your systems? So there's a lot of things going on. We certainly keep up on them, we're certainly aware of them. We don't have a strong direction right now in that regard. We're just trying to wait and see what happens. And we're happy to be slightly behind the leading or bleeding edge. And you can catch up pretty quickly once you know what you're trying to do. Because the one thing that is true, things can be developed faster. And so that's what we're trying to do. It might be a different strategy. Does it impact our revenue to some degree? A little bit. But there's a lot of factors that go in that I can't blame AI for our revenue decline. It's a bit on execution, on Our part, we're just not executing well enough in some areas.

And by the way, I'm not sure you know this. We hired a new head business leader for our IMG side, which is our contact center side. We've also just hired a new person to run our transportation side where we didn't have someone before because it's in with our networks group. But I wanted to spend a little more time now that we've got it back to profitability. And we think we can grow a little bit in that area as well. But time will tell. I mean, I always say that and I get disappointed. So we'll have to see how it goes.

David Cowan (Equity Analyst)

I appreciate the colors. Thanks, Steve. Just a couple more questions on M and A. So just given, I guess the negative investor sentiment particularly released the contact center market, are you predominantly focused on AMG opportunities?

Stephen Sadler

You know, right now we're focused on everything, okay, IMG and amg. When it comes to closing img, then we get really more focused. So the opportunities come. A lot of them think they're still worth more than they are, especially in the private marketplace. The publics, they're pretty attractive, but they're big. So now you're betting the shop that AI won't disrupt it totally in five to 10 years. I'm not there yet, so I worry about the risk because if AI works, then I shouldn't be doing a big deal in that area. So we're watching it. We don't see others really doing it. We have seen a couple of larger companies in that sector in the US and they're basically hitting hit trouble and going out of business. And the people who buy them have. They call it.

There's a name for it, but they've got very high revenue multiples and they're using stock to put them together. That could end up being a big problem, but it might work. So again, we're just watching everything. We're a little bit, you know, staying the course right now, but watching everything. It doesn't mean staying the course that we're not watching what's happening out there because we do have to improve what we're doing.

David Cowan (Equity Analyst)

And how big of a deal would you be willing to take on at this point?

Stephen Sadler

In terms of size? Yeah, in terms of size. I mean, we have, I would say, you know, we can do a fairly large deal and are looking at doing such, but I don't want the risk. I'm not going to bet, you know, 20 years of hard work and making what we have, good cash flow and good Cash and betting it on something that shareholders do not appreciate today. They might in the future, but right now they don't. So we got to make sure we pick the right ones. And generally if you pick bigger, like you're asking, you're taking on that big risk.

I think that's too tough to do. I do and I've had recent conversations with our shareholders both at CIBC and Summit td and generally they're very nervous. If I asked them would I do something in contact center, I got a good deal at a good price, they would say no. And there are shareholders. You got to listen to your shareholders. So we're not saying we won't do one, but we're very cautious and I don't want to do a big one. Therefore, how much bigger one we can do, we can get.

The banks want to lend us money. Money's not a problem. We got over nearly 270 million cash and no debt. So we have the capability of doing something bigger. The key is it isn't a matter of being cheaper. It's where's all this going? And we need a little more time to see that, I think, before we take. It's the risks, the problem, not the value.

David Cowan (Equity Analyst)

That's great. Oh, just one last question on capital allocation. Just given where the balance sheet is free cash flow generation and where the shares are trading, why not be more aggressive with the buyback, including maybe doing an sib?

Stephen Sadler

Well, we are. We're doing what they call normal course, as you have been. I'm sure you know what that is where you're limited to a certain number of shares. But we're also have blackout periods, for example, while we're going through the whole quarter. We could not buy any shares. As of tomorrow we can and we probably will. So we are still buying what they allow under the normal course issuer bid. We don't find it's necessary. And why not? Because of any other reason that it's a better buy than some of the opportunities we're seeing out there. That is, when I say better buy, it's value and risk. We know where we're at. We've already gotten punished because our revenue hasn't grown. We get that, we're working on how to fix that. But our risk is out of the thing. I mean, look at our cash as part of our value. We're in pretty good shape in a market that really likes cash.

I mean, a lot of people talk to us because do they love our systems? No, they love our cash and they love our Cash flow. And a lot of people, I mean, talking about that, I mean, talking about spending billions on data centers and all these things instead, I think that concern could come up if one of those blow up. But right now, we've always been look at cash and we're trying to match our cost of revenue and continue to be resilient and generate cash is so that when the right time comes, we can deploy that cash in a prudent manner. But it takes time. So I would hope that we could have done more things, especially in the network side, because that one's pretty stable and the customers are all big, so they'll be good. Okay. They're not little.

Network telcos aren't little. They're all big. In the IMG side, there's more middle and small size for us. So I got to be more careful there. If things get worse and blow up and you hit a big recession, some of those guys won't make it. Okay? So we've got to make sure that we stand strong. And a lot of our competitors, again, you can do the analysis. You can find out who they are. They're having difficulty right now and have had starting in May, you started earlier, but certainly you see it now. I mean, difficulty to the point where they hit receivership in some cases. Some of them smaller ones we bought that way. But the big ones are having some issues that way too. And they're changing around. Some of the big. One of the biggest ones is saying, we want to do all cloud, not on Prem. Well, that's good for us.

But the questions earlier, I'm baffled by it. Why am I not selling more than on Prem? They're going out. I'm about the last man standing I could do on Prem or in the cloud, so I can do both. Why am I not doing better if people are going out of that business and they have some good customers and some of the regulated industries won't go in the public cloud for sure. They might do a private cloud, but they also, like, understand that being on Prem and having your own system is actually less expensive over time. Magnificent Seven aren't magnificent. Magnificent Seven don't have that capability because they're giving away their services at a low price and they have you pretty captive. So you got to be careful when they come up with increases. What they want to do tie you into longer contracts.

So again, we've got to watch that. But that's the rule of the game. And we want to do what our customers want and need, both on Prem or in the cloud, be it a local contact center that they do or be it in one of the public using one of the public suppliers. But they do well. Yeah, they do well because they are in a good spot. They got people tied in. What's not so good is in our marketplace, we're in a lot of customers that use that are struggling and that hurts us. We don't want to be in that category. We want to make sure we do okay. We're trying our best to do that.

David Cowan (Equity Analyst)

Appreciate the color. Thanks, Steve.

OPERATOR

There are no further questions. Presenters, please continue.

Stephen Sadler

Well, thank you everybody for the for attending the call and your continued support. Enghouse has a good positive cash flow and overall a strong debt free financial position. We're careful in how we're deploying our money and we want to make sure we have a long, good future. In a business that's changing or people believe it will change over the next five to 10 years, we'll just have to see. It never actually works out. Quite the hype generally exceeds the results.

I have a phrase I use, I'll throw it out. AI sometimes real intelligence is better, which is real intelligence. And we've got to watch it because it isn't just finding things that everyone puts out there and adding them up, saying that's what you should do for the future. Sometimes the future is a little different than the past. But we're strong. We want to keep strong for shareholders. We do have to improve and we're looking at ways to do that because what we're doing now isn't good enough.

But we don't want to end up making it worse. We got to make sure we take things in the right direction.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.