AudioCodes - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings, and welcome to the AudioCodes Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Roger Chuchen, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Roger Chuchen (VP of Investor Relations)

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

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

As well as the possibility that this could develop into a broader regional conflict involving Israel with other parties may affect operations and may limit our ability to produce and sell our solutions, any disruption in our operations by the obligations of our personnel to perform military service as a result of current or future military actions involving Israel, and other factors detailed in AudioCodes' filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

AudioCodes assumes no obligation to update this information. In addition, during the call, AudioCodes will refer to non-GAAP net income and net income per share. AudioCodes has provided a full reconciliation of the non-GAAP net income and net income per share to its net income and net income per share according to GAAP in the press release that is posted on its website. Before I turn the call over to management, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded. An archived webcast will be made available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website at the conclusion of the call. With all that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Shabtai. Shabtai, please go ahead.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

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

Niran Baruch (VP of Finance and CFO)

Thank you, Shabtai, and hello, everyone. Before I start my formal remarks, I would like to remind everyone that in conjunction with our earnings release this morning, we will post shortly on our Investor Relations website an earnings supplemental deck. On today's call, we will be referring to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results. The earnings press release that we issued earlier this morning contains a reconciliation of the supplemental non-GAAP financial information that I will be discussing on this call. We will be comparing our fourth quarter 2024 result to the prior quarter as we believe it provides a better gauge of our financial performance. Revenues for the fourth quarter were $61.6 million, an increase of 2.2% over the $60.2 million reported in the third quarter of the current year. Full year 2024 revenues were $242.2 million, a decrease of 0.9% over the $244.4 million reported in 2023.

Services revenues for the fourth quarter were $34.2 million, an increase of 5.4% over the $32.5 million reported in the third quarter of the current year. Services revenues in the fourth quarter accounted for 55.6% of total revenues. On an annual basis, service revenues were $130.2 million, an increase of 8.2% over the $120.4 million reported in 2023. The amount of deferred revenues as of December 31st, 2024, was $84.4 million compared to $78.6 million as of September 30, 2024. Revenues by geographical region for the quarter were split as follows: North America 47%, EMEA 34%, Asia-Pacific 14%, and Central and Latin America 5%. Our top 15 customers represented an aggregate of 64% of our revenues in the fourth quarter, of which 48% was attributed to our 10 largest distributors. GAAP results are as follows: Gross margin for the quarter was 66.2% compared to 65.2% in Q3 2024.

Operating income for the fourth quarter was $4.1 million, or 6.7% of revenues, compared to operating income of $4.9 million, or 8.1% of revenues in Q3 2024. Full year 2024 operating income was $17.2 million compared to operating income of $14.4 million in 2023. EBITDA for the quarter was $5.2 million compared to EBITDA of $5.9 million for Q3 2024. Full year 2024 EBITDA was $21.1 million compared to EBITDA of $17 million in 2023. Net income for the quarter was $6.8 million, or $0.22 per diluted share, compared to net income of $2.7 million, or $0.09 per diluted share for Q3 2024. Full year 2024 net income was $15.3 million, or $0.50 per diluted share, compared to $8.8 million, or $0.28 per diluted share in 2023. Non-GAAP results are as follows. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 66.5% compared to 65.6% in Q3 2024.

Non-GAAP operating income for the fourth quarter was $7.5 million, or 12.2% of revenues, compared to $7 million, or 11.7% of revenues in Q3 2024. Full year 2024 non-GAAP operating income was $28.1 million compared to operating income of $28.9 million in 2023. Non-GAAP EBITDA for the quarter was $8.5 million, compared to non-GAAP EBITDA of $7.9 million for Q3 2024. Full year 2024 non-GAAP EBITDA was $31.4 million, compared to non-GAAP EBITDA of $31 million in 2023. Non-GAAP net income for the Fourth Quarter was $11.6 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, compared to $4.9 million, or $0.16 per diluted share in Q3 2024. Full year 2024 non-GAAP net income was $27.3 million, or $0.87 per diluted share, compared to $25 million, or $0.77 per diluted share in 2023.

At the end of December 2024, cash, cash equivalents, bank deposits, marketable securities, and financial investments totaled $93.9 million. Net cash provided by operating activities was $15.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 and $35.3 million for the year 2024. Days sales outstanding as of December 31st, 2024, were 106 days. During the quarter, we acquired 635,000 of our ordinary shares for a total consideration of approximately $6 million. In December 2024, we received court approval in Israel to purchase up to an aggregate amount of $20 million of additional ordinary shares. The court approval also permits us to declare a dividend of any part of this amount. The approval is valid through June 14, 2025. Earlier this morning, we also declared a cash dividend of $0.18 per share. The aggregate amount of the dividend is approximately $5.3 million.

The dividend will be paid on March 6, 2025, to all of our shareholders of record at the close of trading of February 20, 2025. Our guidance for the full year 2025 is as follows. We expect revenues in the range of $246 million-$254 million and non-GAAP EBITDA in the range of $34 million-$38 million. I will now turn the call back over to Shabtai.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Thank you, Niran. I'm pleased to report solid fourth quarter performance with healthy growth in key business lines. Now, before I delve into reporting the fourth quarter financial and business, I would like to start off by offering a perspective on our journey over the recent years, reflecting on our past, current position, and our future direction. First, let's take a moment to acknowledge the achievements of 2022. It was an exceptional year for us, with revenue reaching a record level of $275 million and profits at $45 million non-GAAP EPS. However, in 2023, our business experienced a slowdown. The challenging economic, environmental, and global crisis had a significant impact on sales of all hardware products, primarily due to the high interest rates environment in our transition from perpetual sales to a recurring business model driven by shift towards cloud services.

This has resulted in an 11% decrease in revenue and notable decline in earnings in 2023. Then, turning to 2024, while we anticipated similar trends continuing, I'm pleased to report that year 2024 has significantly provided a stabilization in comparison to the drop we faced in 2023, with a minimal revenue decline of about 1% and a comparable effect on earnings. 35% of net cash flow from operations further underlines our success in 2024. Furthermore, in 2024, we began a new journey driven by combining the power of AI and business source application to explore new opportunities for the company. As you will hear shortly, we are embarking on a new direction, gradually shifting our focus from connectivity business to a new AI and generative AI-powered value-added services business. This area appears to hold significant potential for our growth.

Consequently, we are optimistic that 2025 will mark a year of reversal, with plans in place for renewed revenue growth and increased profits. More importantly, we aim to establish a leading position in the emerging market, focused on AI-driven value-added services within the UCaaS and CX segments. Now, to fourth quarter results. Our enterprise UCaaS and CX business did very well in the quarter. Related revenue accounted for 92% of revenues in the fourth quarter, highlighted by Microsoft business at 13%, up 30% in the quarter. This represents the highest quarterly growth rate this year. Full year, Microsoft business increased 6%. In the Customer Experience business, we made progress as planned, and our growth in our CX Live business and healthy pipeline for CX Live services supports positive outlook for 2025. We also did very well in our Services business.

Overall, services grew 10.9% year-over-year and accounted for 54.5% of revenues. Professional managed services grew 23.1% year-over-year. With the UCaaS market continued growth of above 15% CAGR for coming years, we expect our Live managed services growth to continue at such rates in coming years. Going back to enterprise, Live Teams grew 30% in the quarter and accounted for 47% of the overall Microsoft business. Full year 2024 Live Teams increased 33% and represented 47% of Microsoft business. This growth, coupled with 30% growth in VoiceAI business for the full year 2024, contributed to us ending 2024 with an annual recurring revenue at $65 million, representing 35% year-over-year growth. It is important to note that at this stage, the majority of revenue from the UCaaS and CX markets are associated with our connectivity gear.

What's been developing already in 2024, and we should see more of it growing in the years ahead, is a shift in the market demand to focus on complementary value-added services for the same UCaaS and CX markets. Just to name a few such services, these include, among others, call analytics, contact center solutions, recording solutions, meeting room solutions, CRM connectivity, and more. As such, with the shift in our focus to offer business voice applications coupled with value-added services, we expect to see a rising demand for our VoiceAI applications. We are preparing to launch services based on Live services platform, a SaaS unified service delivery platform that has been in development in our company for the past three years. This platform integrates connectivity, management, and value-added services into a single adequate solution, which we believe positions us with a competitive market advantage.

As previously mentioned, our land and expand strategy, supported by our leading SBC connectivity solution and complemented by additional solutions and services, has consistently demonstrated our potential growth. We are now moving into the second phase of this strategy, utilizing our strong network of enterprise customers to cross-sell value-added services, specifically within the realm of voice applications that we classify broadly as conversational AI. To provide some context, our investment in conversational AI began back in 2018 with the establishment of our VoiceAI business unit, well before the rise of GenAI. With the introduction of GenAI, we've observed a notable increase in customer interest and expansion of use cases, which has justified a significant portion, approximately one-third of our R&D budget dedicated to this area.

We believe that our VoiceAI portfolio has reached a level of maturity and is now receiving increased market recognition for our solution, leading us to expect accelerated revenue growth starting in 2025 and continuing thereafter. Consequently, as we approach 2025, we will concentrate our internal operation on managing two distinct business units: connectivity and value-added services. Now, I will provide an overview and outline some financial characteristics of these two business units to enhance investors' understanding of the AudioCodes current operations. Starting with our connectivity business. This business encompasses our traditional voice infrastructure solution and service operations, which are designed for large enterprises in the UC and CX markets. In 2024, this segment has generated approximately 95% of the company revenue.

Operating for the past 15 years, this is a well-established operation that holds a strong market position, particularly within the Microsoft Teams and Genesys ecosystems, and achieving attractive non-GAAP operating margins that are between 16% and 18%. Fairly mature and solid business, which continues to grow roughly at above 10% annually. As a leading player in this area, we anticipate consistent long-term growth in years ahead. With the advancement of cloud services, we have adapted our voice infrastructure solution, shifting from hardware-focused products to software solutions and services. Transitioning from traditional capital expenditures or perpetual sales to a recurring managed services model is expected to improve both revenue visibility and stability while supporting sustained long-term growth.

Consequently, we view this business as highly profitable, with promising growth potential and significant cash flow from operation, which will allow us to invest and fund the evolution for our value-added services and VoiceAI. Now, let's discuss our VoiceAI business. We initiated investment in this area back in 2018. From an operational standpoint, we are still in the investment phase as the number of VoiceAI applications we support is rapidly increasing in the value-added services sector, largely due to the emergence of GenAI technology launched by OpenAI back in November 2022. In 2023 and 2024, we allocated around $8 million-$10 million of investment each year, which has influenced the company's overall financial performance and bottom line. The VoiceAI business saw growth of approximately 30% in 2024 and contributing about 5% to total revenue.

We expect that this continuous annual investment will further facilitate annual growth rates of 30%-50% for the VoiceAI business in coming years. As the VoiceAI business offers its voice application and SaaS solution, we foresee an increase in gross margins that will exceed the current company average, resulting in enhanced gross margin over the next few years. Over the last year, our VoiceAI business lines have gone to multiple industry accolades, including Voca CIC winning the award for the best Microsoft Teams contact center solution from CX Today in February 2024, recognition for best use of AI by the Meeting Insights solution by UC Today in July 2024, and just yesterday, an award for Meeting Insights from Frost & Sullivan for competitive strategy leadership in the AI business meetings market.

Why do we believe we will emerge a leader in the conversational AI field among established players and startups? We are uniquely positioned to succeed due to several key factors. First, we possess extensive domain expertise in voice telephony and networking built over the past 20 years. Also, since 2018, we have made significant investment in cognitive services technology and AI. Our team has vast experience in developing and delivering SaaS, cloud, and on-premises services. We have proven record in UCaaS and CCaaS managed services, and we have extensive experience in deploying AI solutions that will further strengthen our position. Moreover, the brand trust that we have established with major enterprises in North America. Our voice solution deployed in mission-critical UCCX voice infrastructure of 65 out of the Fortune 100 companies and four out of the top 10 multinational banks.

We believe this strength collectively positions us favorably within the competitive landscape of conversational AI for business voice application. Now, before turning into more detailed business line discussion, let me quickly shift into the fourth quarter profitability metrics. Our non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 66.5%, falling within our long-term target range of 65% to 68%, and an improvement from the previous quarter of 65.6%. In the fourth quarter, non-GAAP operating expenses rose to $33.4 million, up from $32.5 million in the third quarter. This increase is mainly attributed to increased investment in marketing, travel, and cloud services aimed at bolstering business growth as we move towards 2025. The hike in expenses can be primarily linked to enhanced participation in marketing events and expanded sales team and higher travel costs, all focused on driving revenue growth, especially in live managed services and VoiceAI.

In terms of workforce, we concluded 2024 with 946 employees and increased from 935 in the third quarter, but a slight decline from 950 in the fourth quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $8.5 million, reflecting a 13.7% margin compared to $7.9 million or 13.1% in the previous quarter. For the entire year, adjusted EBITDA reached $31.4 million. Lastly, in a positive development, net cash from operating activities was $63 million for the quarter and $35.3 million for the full year 2024. Clearly, this robust cash flow generated supports our positive outlook regarding our capacity to keep investing in and expanding our business moving forward. Now, to the guidance front.

Concerning our growth strategies for connectivity and value-added services sector in 2025, we aim to sustain growth of 20%-26% in the connectivity sector with a target annual recurring revenue of $78 million-$82 million. In the value-added services sector, we anticipate booking will increase by over 40% year-over-year to exceed $17 million. In light of this planning, along with operational momentum and strong pipeline in our Live managed services and VoiceAI, we are setting our guidance, as Niran mentioned earlier, to revenue guidance of $246 million-$254 million for 2025, with full year non-GAAP EBITDA guidance of $34 million-$38 million. These projections take into account continued strong growth in the conversational AI space and stable connectivity outlook, assuming no significant changes in the macroeconomic landscape. Let me move a bit to give more background on Microsoft business.

Regarding strategic business segments, as previously noted, Microsoft Teams experienced a 13% increase year-over-year in the fourth quarter, marking the highest quarter growth of the year. The full year growth for Microsoft business was 6%. Looking at the recurring versus capital expenditure aspects, our Live booking in fourth quarter surged by 30% year-over-year, with Live booking constituting 47% and increased from 40% in the same year last year. Consequently, this time CapEx segment of the Teams accounted for 53%, down from 60% in the previous year quarter. The activity regarding new Live Teams contracts remained robust in fourth quarter, with total contract value booking exceeding $20 million. For the entirety of 2024, we observed annual contract value growth surpassing 25% compared to prior year. A significant factor in success within this domain is the Live services platform, which combines connectivity management and value-added services.

This platform facilitates faster development for large enterprises, large enterprise accounts on one end, and then enables quick onboarding for small and medium-sized businesses. As we look ahead to 2025 and beyond, market forecasts indicate that the UCaaS market will likely continue to expand its rates, exceeding 20% throughout 2027. The Microsoft Teams phone ecosystem has shown robust growth, adding over three million new seats in the past year, reaching a total of about 22 million, which is a small fraction of the estimated 300 million potential for Teams seats. Also, I'm pleased to share that we have recently been focusing on creating a valuable opportunity for ourselves as we prepare to offer a comparable successful connectivity solution for the Cisco Webex Calling program.

With an estimated 16 million seats and an additional 3 million seats in the past year, we view this new market segment as an excellent chance to expand our market presence. In a previous discussion, we highlighted the ongoing strengths of the Microsoft ecosystem, especially within the education sector. I'm happy to report that this momentum has not only persisted, but has also intensified. Here are a few significant achievements from the quarter. The first success involves a major state university system comprising of over 50 campuses. Recently, we finalized a master agreement with the IT administration, which designates us as the preferred communication partner as the campuses aim to enhance their UCCX infrastructure in coming years. In the fourth quarter alone, we secured contracts value in the low single-digit million, which includes Live professional managed services, professional services, and capital expenditures for IP phones.

Notably, this figure represents the initial commitment from nine campuses only out of the 50 and is just a small part of the total number of universities available. We anticipate that more campuses will join us in upcoming months. Getting to our CX business, in fourth quarter, CX revenue increased by 12% compared to the third quarter. Throughout the fourth quarter, we successfully finalized several significant agreements with partners and clients across North America, Canada, and India. Despite the challenges associated with migrating call center voice infrastructure to the cloud, many customers are choosing our Live CX service. During fourth quarter, we secured a contract exceeding $1 million for Live CX in Brazil with a banking institution to assist in their network migration to the cloud. In North America, we established multiple Live CX agreements in Q4 with leading banking and financial organizations.

By the beginning of fourth quarter, we established a CX partnership with an Indian BPO to transition their multi-region voice infrastructure to the cloud. They went live within a few weeks using our Live service delivery platform, which typically takes months with traditional deployment methods. Our efforts to encourage partners to adopt our Live Platform resulted in a new contract with a North American Tier 1 SI system integrator that has major Genesys and Cisco CX practices. We will continue working to onboard more partners onto our platform to expand the reach of our Live CX service. Now, moving to details about VoiceAI business. VoiceAI business, as mentioned before, grew 30% in 2024, contributing nicely to the overall company revenue growth. Development of GenAI technologies and increasing customer demand for AI-driven business voice applications played a significant role in the adoption of VoiceAI applications.

With new opportunities emerging in this sector and booking nearly reaching $15 million in 2024, it is anticipated that demand will remain steady, and this segment is projected to grow by 40%-50% in 2025. Let me make a quick run through two or three businesses in the VoiceAI area. The first is the VoiceAI Connect, a primary target of large enterprises in North America and Europe that develop and deploy multiple custom voice bots and agent-assist solutions to serve contact center solutions. Following over three to four years of development, the solution, which is SBC-based, has reached a mature stage and is highly appealing to large corporations. Additionally, we've created a derivative product, a cloud self-service application named Live Hub. This platform enables both developers to rapidly test or onboard both applications within minutes, making it highly attractive to developers of both solutions.

Another exciting development is our recent soft launch of our real-time translation capability in mid-November. We have seen strong market interest, resulting in multiple proof of concepts with existing and new customers. In 2024, sales grew by over 30%, and we anticipate maintaining the same growth rate in 2025. Turning to Voca CIC, this is our AI-first Azure-based contact center solution for Microsoft Teams. When combined with our calling solution for Microsoft Teams Phone, Voca CIC offers a comprehensive and advanced calling and contact center solution. In 2024, we successfully delivered an expanded deployment with large enterprises in North America, EMEA, and APAC. In some of these deployments, we were successfully displacing and winning against key competitors. In its third year of operation, this business booking grew by approximately 35%. We're now planning for a growth of 50% in 2025.

Now, turning to Meeting Insights, this has been an eventful past few months for Meeting Insights on all fronts. First, we are thrilled to have Frost & Sullivan present us with the Best Practices Competitive Strategy Leadership Award in the AI for Business Meetings market. The announcement was made yesterday and will make it public in a few days. We believe this validates the vision of serving a centralized organizational knowledge hub, breaking down silos by unlocking valuable insights from meetings across major UC platforms. Even before this recognition, we already saw a step function increase in customer interest in Meeting Insights across all geos, with four-quarter proof of concept trials at nearly 2.5x the level from the previous quarter. January proof of concepts off to a new good start, and so we would expect another record for proof of concept in the first quarter of 2025.

In terms of product development, operational updates, I'll name a few. We recently unveiled an intelligent room solution by powering and populating our own video conference devices with Meeting Insights such that all meeting participants will automatically receive auto-generated AI meeting summaries. This move enhances value proposition to users by bringing to bear the full capabilities of our portfolio and can spur further interest in the adoption of Meeting Insights. We're also adding a bring-your-own-storage option, which expands the addressable market to customers who are required to have the recording storage on their preferred or private cloud. Since the announcement of Zoom Meetings support in late October, we've seen a good number of meetings conducted in Zoom environment, validating our vision and value proposition of a centralized knowledge repository. In the next few weeks, we will look to offer integration with major CRM platforms, starting with Salesforce to Meeting Insights.

We believe this will be a very important functionality meeting high demand in the market. We have announced a week ago a new and quite exciting solution in Israel. We're talking about operating Meeting Insights on-prem. This is a meeting solution for organizations seeking a highly secured environment for meeting solutions and complete disconnect from the internet. It is in first stages of evolution, already selling nicely in the government application area in Israel, and we intend to operate in international markets in coming months. A very unique offering. We have seen high demand for the solution. It touches the most sensitive areas for management in the government, defense, finance, and healthcare markets. To wrap up my presentation, we exited 2024 with good operational momentum, particularly with the continued strong growth in our two primary engines, our Live family of managed services and VoiceAI.

With the progress we are making in increasing our recurring revenues and that Live currently nearing half of Microsoft Teams bookings, we believe we have laid the foundation to support sustainable and strong top-line and margin expansion in 2025 and beyond. And with that, I've concluded my presentation and I'd like to move over to the Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. And for participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you.

Our first question is coming from Ryan MacWilliams with Barclays. Your line is live.

Eamon Coughlin (Analyst)

Hey, guys, this is Eamon Coughlin on from Ryan MacWilliams. Thanks for taking the question. Great to see solid growth in services revenue in the quarter. Can you help us understand what is driving your confidence for improved top-line growth in 2025 and beyond? Are customers more optimistic about their spend in 2025, or is this being driven by AudioCodes' AI opportunity?

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Thanks. As I've mentioned in my previous presentation, we have seen a pickup in the fourth quarter in new projects and bookings. And I believe in the fourth quarter, we saw a record backlog of total contract value signed for more than $20 million that comprised roughly to an average of $15 million throughout the year. So we have seen a nice pickup in the fourth quarter.

Again, we believe that with the advent of GenAI and Copilot technology, there will be more reason for enterprises to adopt AI and GenAI to deal with Teams meetings and Teams calls. And therefore, we believe that there will be more deployments of Microsoft Teams Phone in the market.

Eamon Coughlin (Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Shabtai. And then for the CCaaS in the quarter, how did that fare compared to 3Q? And then are you seeing increased attention from buyers on VoiceAI?

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

So the answer is yes. But first, we are substantially increasing the capacity of the Live CX services we are offering. Prior to moving to cloud, enterprises were usually aided by partners who really took care of most of the installation and operations day two and on. With the move to cloud, much of these partners were left with no ability to support the enterprises.

And therefore, that support needs to come from the vendors themselves, which created kind of a gap in the market. We have identified that mid-2024. Now we have a substantially fuller portfolio of Live CX services. And I think we just had a very substantial win. I think I've mentioned it. It is with one of the largest North American system integrators that deals with CX projects, mainly in the Genesys and Cisco environment. So that offering really represents substantially faster deployments of voice networks within the move, the migration from on-prem to cloud. And this is where we find a lot of interest. Also, as you have mentioned, there's a trend of applying AI to contact center recordings. GenAI technology allows analysis and analytics of all those calls just to find out more information.

Analysts that will be analyzing agent calls will be able to hand over to management trends and more important insights into what's going on. And we're not talking about single sessions, but also when you talk about multitude of sessions, you can talk about tens and hundreds of sessions where GenAI helps you to identify patterns and trends.

Eamon Coughlin (Analyst)

Great. Thanks, guys.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Ryan Koontz with Needham & Co. Your line is live.

Ryan Koontz (Analyst)

Great. Thanks for the question. Great to hear the traction on Microsoft picking up there around Teams. And what kind of trend are you seeing relative to operator voice connections into Teams? Are you seeing a trend over toward this new Operator Connect capability, or is it still a lot of Direct Routing? And how does that impact your attach rate for Teams? Thank you.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Right.

We've seen a shift in the encouragement of using Operator Connect over Direct Routing. We do see organizations, small organizations mainly, interested more. Is it an overwhelming trend? We've not been exposed to such trends. Yes, the trend is moving from SBC Direct Routing to Operator Connect. But at this stage, we still do not see a big increase in usage in the market.

Ryan Koontz (Analyst)

Got it. Great. Just at a high level, you talked about some big customer wins here in Brazil and the system integrator in North America. I wonder if you're seeing a trend toward fewer larger customer wins, or are you seeing more activity down market where you maybe have a higher number of smaller customer opportunities in the pipeline? Thanks.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Okay. Thanks for the question because that really allows me to elaborate a bit about segmenting the market into two key areas.

On the enterprise space, we see here a continued trend of large enterprises adopting Teams year by year. And as I've mentioned before, we believe that the advent of AI and Copilot solution will drive more enterprise seats toward using Teams meetings and calls. But in this space, we are generally a very dominant leader, and we do not see much competition. So here, the growth is well. Now, touching the SMB space, as you alluded to it, there's definitely competition over there, right? I mean, we know that Cisco is leading the space with its relationship with the world's largest service providers. And then you have Zoom playing in that area, and Microsoft Teams also trying. There, I believe it's going to be more competition.

However, we believe that the platform we will be introducing second quarter, the Live Platform delivering value-add services with so many unique AI-driven applications such as contact center, recording, meeting solution, analytics, CRM connection, and stuff. We believe that being very strong technologically, we do have an advantage with coming up with one of the best platforms you'll see in the market. And therefore, we believe that we will be a strong player in that. So all in all, I mean, we have a two-pronged strategy, and we believe we will be successful in both.

Ryan Koontz (Analyst)

Great. Thanks, Shabtai.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Samad Samana with Jefferies. Your line is live.

Billy Fitzsimmons (Analyst)

Hey, guys. This is Billy Fitzsimmons for Samad. Maybe to start, a couple of months back, you announced support for AudioCodes Meeting Insights for Zoom Meetings. Obviously, Zoom also has their internal AI Companion.

Shabtai, can you just talk about differentiation between your solution and Zoom's in-house solution and maybe traction you're seeing since launch with customers?

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Right. So Meeting Insights is targeting to become a UC-agnostic solution, meaning that our solution is an enterprise-level solution. And in every enterprise, no matter what type of UC solution that enterprise has adopted, take us as an example. We're using Microsoft Teams. We have often a lot of Zoom calls. We are called in, and/or sometimes when we need to talk to the government here in Israel, it's a Google Meet session. So you want one centralized solution, enterprise solution that should be able to basically contain all of the different sessions from both Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex calling, Zoom meetings, and Google Meet meetings. And therefore, our solution will allow that.

Anyone using just Zoom will simply not be able to add to it calls coming from different environments. So that is a major strategy in our solution of becoming UC-agnostic. And also, we believe that the fact that we are dealing with larger enterprises which have finer requirements, and you can find executives with different research and market and business-driven questions that we can answer within Meeting Insights because we use custom prompts. We believe that we will see that less in other solutions. One of them could be Zoom AI Companion. So we believe that the fact that we're dealing with large enterprises will make our solution substantially more extensive and providing more detailed solutions.

Billy Fitzsimmons (Analyst)

And then more broadly, obviously, the business has been going through this kind of subscription transition, shift to more recurring revenue.

Can you just help us think a little bit more next year about kind of the revenue mix? And longer term, is there a point where the product revenue and some of the legacy stuff in there should start to bottom, or should we expect perennial declines there for the services support side to make up for that in terms of growth?

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Right. So as I mentioned earlier in the call, we're glad that in 2024, we saw the drop in legacy business stabilizing, meaning contrary to the 11% drop in 2023, we went down only 1% in 2024. We believe that the trend will continue in 2025, meaning we'll have less and less drop in legacy gear such as gateways and hardware-based routers and SBCs. So on that front, the business will stabilize. We then see increased use of services.

And as I mentioned before, I think we're stepping into a new era of business voice application, which is all software and cloud services, SaaS solutions. And for example, we ended 2024 with VoiceAI revenues at about, I believe it was $12 million, and we're targeting $18 million. So we're targeting 50%. And quite frankly, I believe that we are not yet in a phase where those solutions are mature enough. So as those solutions get more and more mature, I believe that the growth rate will intensify. So we're building much upon our ability to drive VoiceAI business revenue. So combining the two, offset the drop, decline in legacy, and emergence of VoiceAI. And obviously, as we stated before, the Live business, which is growing 35% a year, I think we're set for a good year in 2025.

Billy Fitzsimmons (Analyst)

And then if I could sneak in one final question, you guys obviously got it to EBITDA for next year, but could you maybe go a step further and just help us think even higher level about kind of the individual OpEx lines next year? Where are you making kind of incremental headcount investments? And maybe where are you kind of paring back spending? Obviously, there have been a lot of AI products, but R&D spend is actually down over the past couple of years. Could we expect that line, for example, to pick up a little bit next year in terms of OpEx spending?

Niran Baruch (VP of Finance and CFO)

Yeah. In terms of OpEx, we are planning to invest more only at the area of sales and marketing. Definitely not at the G&A and the R&D. And all in all, OpEx, in 2024, we ended at $131 million.

We believe for 2025, and that's how we budgeted it, the growth at OpEx will be 1%, maybe 2%, not more. It mainly will be at the sales and marketing area.

Billy Fitzsimmons (Analyst)

Awesome. Super helpful. Thank you, Shabtai and Niran. Appreciate the answers.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As we have no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Adlersberg for any closing remarks.

Shabtai Adlersberg (President and CEO)

Thank you, Operator. I would like to thank everyone who attended our conference call today. With continued good business momentum in our enterprise operations and good underlying market growth trends in the UC/CX and VoiceAI, we believe we are transitioning the business towards growth and growing profitability in coming years. We look forward to your participation in our next quarterly conference call. Thank you all. Have a nice day.

Operator (participant)

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.