Cerence - Q3 2023
August 8, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cerence Quarter Three 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one on one again. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now Luke to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Rich Yerganian, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Rich Yerganian (SVP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Brittany, and welcome to Cerence's third quarter fiscal year 2023 conference call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may involve certain forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact, including statements related to our expectations, estimates, assumptions, goals, targets, and plans, should be considered to be forward-looking statements. Cerence makes no representations to update those statements after today. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from such statements as described in our SEC filings, including the Form 8-K with the press release preceding today's call, our Form 10-Q, filed on August 8, 2023, and our Form 10-K, filed on November 29, 2022. In addition, the company may refer to certain non-GAAP measures, key performance indicators and pro forma financial information during this call.
Please refer to today's press release for further details of the definitions, limitations, and uses of those measures, and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the closest GAAP equivalent. The press release is available in the IR section of our website. Joining me on today's call are Stefan Ortmanns, CEO of Cerence, Tom Beaudoin, CFO of Cerence, and Iqbal Arshad, our Chief Technology Officer. As a reminder, the only authorized spokespeople for the company are Stefan, Tom, and me. Before handing the call over to Stefan, I would like to mention that we will be presenting at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Tech Investor Conference in San Francisco on September 6th, and the Raymond James Virtual Lean, Mean, and Green Vehicle Investor Conference on September 18th. Now on to the call. Stefan?
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Thank you, Rich. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter results. There were several important developments in the quarter I would like to highlight. First, we delivered solid results with revenue of approximately $62 million, coming in at the high end of our guidance. In addition, our strong focus on operational excellence contributed to all profitability metrics performing better than expected, except for GAAP net income, which included a charge associated with our convertible debt financing. Operationally, we delivered on everything we committed to investors on our last call. I'm extremely pleased with the progress the company has made in the last 12 months, creating an organizational structure committed to three key principles. First, continue to lead innovation in AI for the transportation space. Second, delight our customers with on-time and quality products. Third, win strategic accounts that support our long-term growth.
At the core of our commitment to innovation are the enhancements we are making to several Cerence products using large language models and generative AI. Iqbal will detail these important product updates in his remarks. At a high level, our deep expertise in AI for automotive and strong OEM relationships put us in a unique and favorable position to partner with our customers to deliver game-changing application of these technologies, bringing us one step closer to our future product vision, the Immersive Companion. As a result, Cerence remains well positioned to capitalize on the transformative trends within AI, incorporating new inputs into our versatile mobility AI platform as we continuously strive to enhance customer experience and expand product functionality. Our core auto business continues to perform well, with our global auto penetration rising to 54%.
That means that 54% of total new global live vehicle production includes some level of technology from Cerence. This is the third consecutive quarter of increasing penetration, and this figure is now the highest we have seen in nearly 2 years. This elevated level of penetration continues to be a straightforward endorsement of Cerence's superior technology. Tom will comment on the product mix associated with this market expansion in a few minutes. While there are some crosscurrents creating a level of uncertainty about the macroeconomic environment, we remain quite confident in our visibility and our ability to deliver a strong Q4 and full fiscal year. While semiconductor shortages for the auto industry are becoming less of an issue, the uncertain effect of rising interest rates and the slowing global economy remain a modest concern on auto demand and production.
We are monitoring this closely and have considered this for our Q4 and full-year guidance. Also in the quarter, we successfully restructured our debt through the issuance of new convertible notes. We use the proceeds to pay off the term loan that was at a high variable interest rate, and to buy back half of the existing notes at half the coupon rate. The net effect is cash interest savings of approximately $8 million a year, while moving a sizable portion of our debt from a 2025 maturity to 2028. We're very pleased with the result of the transaction. Overall, we continue to make solid progress across key areas. As we advance toward Destination Next, our vision for the future for all aspects of our business, product innovation, target markets, and the financial model and performance.
We believe in our ability to achieve our long-term objective of double-digit revenue growth with strong EBITDA margins. Of course, one of the keys to achieving our long-term objective is winning new business with customers. Securing new business and next-generation platform wins is key to our future success. As many of you know, once designed in, you are the supplier of the technology for the program's life. This means a new contract can generate revenue for many years. I'm happy to say that in Q3, we had several strategic wins, and I'm expecting additional ones in Q4. In our core auto business, we had two strategic wins. The first was for a major Japanese OEM, where we displaced a competitor to provide connected services. The second was for our emergency vehicle detection technology for a major Korean car company.
We also continued to make progress in the two-wheeler and truck markets. We were excited when an iconic motorcycle brand chose our technology over several other competitors, including niche players and consumer tech. While revenue contribution from the two-wheeler segment is expected to be small this year, 4 two-wheeler solutions started production in Q3 and should support revenue growth in this segment in FY 2024 and beyond. Our sales team is laser-focused on finishing the fiscal year strong, and I'm confident we will win key strategic pipeline opportunities to drive our business forward. We continue to be extremely pleased with our continued success in building upon our strong core and capitalizing on adjacent market opportunities. On our Q4 earnings call, Tom will provide you with an update on bookings and their expected contribution to backlog and revenue growth.
While it may be repetitive for some of you, I want to again highlight our operational priorities as they are vitally important to our near and long-term success. This means meeting or exceeding our customers' expectations for our technology, maintaining a strong competitive advantage, continuing to focus on operational excellence, and locking down the new business opportunities in front of us, including several win-back opportunities. We believe very strongly in meeting our commitments to our customers, employees, and you, our investors. We are on a strong track to deliver fiscal year results better than we anticipated at the beginning of the fiscal year. With that, I'm excited to have Iqbal Arshad, our Chief Technology Officer, on the call with us today.
Since joining the company three-plus months ago, Iqbal has had an immediate impact, and we were excited about how he and Nils Schanz, our Chief Product Officer, are teaming up to execute the future vision and direction of our technology. Iqbal will brief you on how we are leveraging the latest in generative AI and large language models to enhance our product offerings. I'm looking forward to how these advancements can help us deliver a truly Immersive Companion experience to our customers. I look forward to the role Cerence can play in continuing to unite a wide array of technology in the car, while maintaining a uniquely branded experience for our customers and delighting our end users. Iqbal?
Iqbal Arshad (CTO)
Thank you, Stefan. With decades of extensive vertical expertise in the automotive industry and a rich history of leading AI innovation, Cerence is uniquely positioned to bring the latest advances in AI into the car. We bring unmatched experience and knowledge to the application of generative AI and large language models in transportation, as well as a strategic, methodical focus on creating groundbreaking user experiences. As we envision the future of in-car experiences, we are keenly focused on solving user problems by harnessing transformer-based foundational AI models. These models enable us to develop intuitive voice and multimodal user interfaces, as well as generative AI applications that empower our customers to deliver high-value user experiences. These new capabilities seamlessly extend our existing AI-based product portfolio. At the core of this offering is our next-generation Cerence Assistant, powered by generative AI.
Through the implementation of large language models in our architecture, we are taking significant strides towards realizing our vision of an Immersive Companion. The next-generation Cerence Assistant is optimized to provide users with more natural, intuitive, and accurate interactions. Cerence Assistant adeptly handles complex queries and multi-step tasks within a single request. The assistant's deep customizability caters to both our automaker customers and end users, effortlessly adapting to their preferences as it learns. Please allow me to show you some of Cerence Assistant's new generative AI-powered capabilities.
Speaker 9
Introducing the next generation Cerence Assistant. The assistant will be fully capable of handling various scenarios, ensuring you will no longer hear, "Sorry," again.
It's starting to rain outside.
Got it. I will close the windows and the sunroof for you.
Next generation Cerence Assistant's capability of handling multi-intent will be increased significantly. You can ask your car to perform a theoretically unlimited number of tasks by saying just one single sentence.
Please turn on the AC, set temperature to 24, increase the fan speed to maximum, and navigate to work.
Got it. Turning on AC, setting the temperature to 24 degrees for driver, and increasing the fan speed to the highest level for the driver. I will start the navigation for you.
Your conversation with your car will be much smoother with the system's powerful contextual awareness.
Which song was written by Paul McCartney for his wife?
Paul McCartney wrote the song Maybe I'm Amazed for his wife, Linda McCartney. The song was released in 1970 as part of his debut solo album. It is considered one of his most heartfelt and enduring love songs dedicated to his wife.
Great. Can you please play it for me on Apple Music?
Sure, I will play it for you.
Iqbal Arshad (CTO)
Designed to be friendly, helpful, and enjoyable, the next generation Cerence Assistant adds meaningful value to drivers' daily journeys. These capabilities will be available to our existing Cerence customers, who will greatly benefit from these new generative AI-powered features. In addition to Cerence Assistant, we continue to gain traction for our generative AI-powered Car Knowledge product discussed during our last quarter's earnings call. Cerence Car Knowledge offers users real-time contextual answers to all car-related queries. We are engaged with customers globally to adopt an expanded Car Knowledge product that leverages large language models and the specific data associated with a car supplied by the OEM. This is just the beginning.
We are expanding our architecture with fine-tuned LLMs based on our curated transportation data and leveraging our industry leading-edge technologies like audio AI, automatic speech recognition, neural text-to-speech, biometrics, emotional AI, and in-car communications to create the future of automotive user experiences. I will now turn it over to Tom to review the Q3 results in more detail.
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
Thank you, Iqbal. I will review our guidance for Q4 and the full fiscal year in a moment, but first, I want to share more details on our Q3 results. Our Q3 results continue Stefan and my commitment to consistently deliver on our guidance. Q3 revenue came in just shy of $62 million, at $61.6 million, at the high end of our guidance. This is due to strength in our core business. As we guided on our last call, we closed a new fixed contract in Q4, originally planned for Q3. Consumption of fixed contracts was higher than expected. I will explain why in a few minutes. As revenue came in at the high end of the range, combined with our focus on operational excellence, we exceeded most of the key profitability metrics we guided for the quarter. Non-GAAP gross margin was 66.5%.
Non-GAAP operating margin was a positive 0.5%. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.8 million, or 4.5% margin. Non-GAAP loss per share was $0.04. Except for GAAP net income, which was impacted by the refinancing of our convertible debt, most key financial metrics came in above the high end of our guidance. During the quarter, we had negative cash flow as expected. Cash flow from operations was approximately -$8.2 million. We expect positive cash flow in Q4 and for the full fiscal year. Our balance sheet remains strong, with total cash and marketable securities of approximately $116 million. Here is our breakdown of revenue for the quarter.
Variable license revenue was up 16% from the same quarter last year, down slightly quarter-over-quarter, due to a higher than expected level of fixed contract consumption. As you will see in a few moments, our penetration of global auto production rose to 54% as we continue to maintain a strong position in the market. The higher level penetration is partially due to single component solutions in emerging markets, which yield a lower revenue per car. We view this as a strategic market expansion opportunity and potential launching point, for gaining further business and eventual higher PPUs with OEMs in emerging markets. New connected services revenue was up 3% from the same quarter last year, while down 3% from the last quarter. You may recall last quarter, we had a true-up of approximately $700,000 from a customer.
Adjusting for the one-time true-up, new connected revenue was up quarter-over-quarter. We expect our new connected services to continue to ramp up in FY 2024, as several key programs that have been delayed by customers go into production. Finally, and as expected, our professional services revenue was down 24% year-over-year and down 8% quarter-over-quarter. As we have stated previously, professional services will vary based on the progress or completion of customer projects. We do not project professional services as a revenue growth driver for the company, but instead as an enabler for future license and connected revenue. Additionally, our newer products and solutions include improved implementation and integration features, which lowers the requirement for professional services. Moving on to the details in our license business.
Overall, the license business remains strong and is indicating improvement from the issues that have plagued auto production over the last few years. While the semiconductor shortage seems to be receding, the macroeconomy, and especially higher interest rates, have the potential to slow demand and production growth. Other factors have led IHS to reduce their calendar year production growth to 1%. Pro forma royalties were up 7% year-over-year and 6% quarter-over-quarter due to increased auto production and penetration of our technology. Part of the growth in pro forma royalties in the quarter was due to a one-time true-up with a customer that had underreported royalties of approximately $1 million. Most of this upside revenue was reported in consumption as this customer was operating under a minimum commitment deal.
As a result, you can see higher than expected consumption in the quarter. Our Q3 pro forma royalties represented the highest amount in over 2 years, even when adjusting for the true-up. As we discussed in the call last quarter, we pushed out an expected fixed contract from Q3 to Q4. As a result, we did no fixed contracts in Q3. Since the quarter closed, we have signed the expected fixed contract and will be staying within our commitment of $40 million for the full year. As you may recall, we have previously stated we model prepaid fixed contracts based on a assumed 6-quarter consumption period. We have also noted the Q1 fixed contracts we signed had an expected consumption over 8 quarters, leading to lower consumption in FY 2023 versus our model and extending consumption through FY 2024.
The fixed contract we signed in Q4 has an expected consumption period of 4 quarters, shorter than our model. The net effect of the prepaid contracts we signed in FY 2023 will yield lower FY 2023 consumption versus our model, an estimated higher consumption of approximately $10 million in FY 2024. We are providing you with an additional data point this quarter regarding fixed contracts. We expect the inventory balance of fixed contracts at the end of fiscal 2023 to be approximately $98 million, down from approximately $125 million at the end of fiscal 2022. We currently estimate the balance of fixed contracts to be approximately $70 million at the end of FY 2024 and approximately $57 million in FY 2025. The balance at the end of each year assumes the addition of $40 million of new fixed contracts, less expected 6-quarter consumption.
The majority of our KPIs continue to indicate strength in the business. Our penetration of global auto production for the trailing 12 months increased to 54% from 53% last quarter. This means over half of global auto production includes some level of Cerence technology. 12.2 million cars with Cerence technology were shipped in the quarter. This is up 25% year-over-year, and reflects the improving production environment and our continuing strong competitive position. Cars produced that use our connected services increased 50% year-over-year, and reflects the trend of more and more cars being connected, and the growth in our ability to successfully provide our customers with innovative cloud-based solutions. We also saw a large increase in monthly active users, 29% year-over-year, indicating increased popularity among consumers of our technology.
Billings per car KPI declined 6%, including a negative FX impact of 200 basis points. The decline is primarily due to the product mix. Some of the new business contributing to growing license and increased penetration is coming from emerging markets, where OEMs initially are adopting components of our full software stack. These are important wins that are driving penetration and the opportunity for these customers to drive higher revenue per car over time as they adopt additional components of our technology. The other factor, which we mentioned on our last conference call, are macroeconomic and OEM-driven delays in the start of production for higher price per car next generation platforms. We see a positive trend in this KPI and expect it to trend higher over the next few quarters. Turning to revenue guidance for Q4 and fiscal year.
As I mentioned earlier, as expected, we closed the Q4 fixed contract of approximately $13 million. For Q4, we are guiding revenue from $72 million-$76 million for Q4. The tight range is due to knowledge of the fixed contract already closed and strong visibility to our other revenue sources. With our strong first 3 quarter results and strong visibility to Q4, we are providing a narrow range for our full fiscal year guidance of $286 million-$290 million, raising the midpoint of our full year guidance to $288 million. You can see on this slide the revenue guidance and the effect of the associated financial metrics. Overall, the business continues to perform.
As we outlined at the beginning of the fiscal year, we remain focused on innovation, operational excellence, and strong bookings in the second half to achieve our long-term goals. This concludes our prepared remarks, and now we will open the call for questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank, thank you. We will now conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Colin Langan (Equity Research Analyst)
Oh, great, thanks for taking my questions. I did want to follow up on the-- I think you made some comments on billings. They, they were down again year-over-year. I think at your investor day, you talked about, you know, kind of going from $380 to $480 in 2023 to 2024. How are you tracking now? I mean, is the 2023 actually lower because the billings are coming in lower, and is there a risk to, to 2024 sales targets if some of these launches get pushed out too much?
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
Yeah. First of all, the metrics are related but different. The numbers that you talked about were the embedded PPUs. As we've talked about, we have seen some production delays across OEMs, and we'll provide updated-- we'll provide our guidance for 2024 in November. With respect to billings per car, which includes both embedded and connected, it's, it's a, it's a factor of that, which, you know, some of those higher PPUs and get delayed. It's also a factor of, I think, you know, this is a trailing 12-month metric, and I think during some of the supply chain shortages, some of the OEMs were, were leveraging to the, to the higher, higher cars, which have more of our technology.
As we just pointed out, some of our higher penetration is driven by winning new opportunities in emerging markets where they start out with 1 or 2 of our components, and therefore it has a relatively lower billings per car, but does provide, you know, an opportunity for accelerated penetration, for winning additional business with those OEMs in those markets, and then adding additional components and features over time, in association with those OEMs.
Colin Langan (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. All right, thanks, again, thanks for the color. Just a second question. The other KPI that sort of stood out is the contract duration was 6.4 years. I think it was in Q4, it was, you know, over 7 years. What is causing the, the contract, average contract to shrink? What is driving that?
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
It's just a mix issue of deals and how those deals play out. I mean, it still depends on how OEMs sign up for production schedules. But it's still a quite a long commitment level for OEMs.
Colin Langan (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. All right. Thanks for taking my questions.
Operator (participant)
All right. Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. All right, our next question comes from the line of Luke Junk with Baird. Your line is now open.
Luke Junk (Equity Research Analyst)
Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to start with a follow-up question on the billings per car metric. Again, really through the lens of what you're expecting from a content per vehicle standpoint in fiscal 2024. And specifically, I'm just wondering, to what extent the single component solutions that you've spoken to today were already contemplated in your outlook, or just how they impact the outlook for fiscal 2024 in general, for starters. Thank you.
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
Thanks, Luke. I really can't comment much on, on FY 2024. We'll provide our 2024 guidance, and we'll take a look at the, the longer-range plans, when we do the Q4 guidance in, in November. I think if you look across, you know, almost all the KPIs, it does show that we're continuing to win new business, we're continuing to get, you know, more active users. The connected and, and embedded are, are continuing to grow. You know, the, the billings per car, I think, is, is just a factor of all the things that, that I mentioned. You know, it does provide some growth opportunities for us with some of these, newer OEMs and some of these emerging countries. I don't think it's a, it's a bad thing.
Luke Junk (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. For my follow-up, maybe just a bigger picture question, a question of revenue models going forward. The press release discussed the idea of positioning Cerence as an enabler for large language models and consumer tech in the car, sitting on top of the white label proposition that we all know. Just wondering, to what extent you think you can get paid for that incrementally, and just any thoughts you can share on what that revenue model might look like? Are you conceiving in something that's more license-like that would be one time, or could we see more connected, like, sort of subscription models come out of this? Thank you.
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Yeah. Maybe let me take this, this question. Good morning, Luke, here. I think what we just said and what Tom mentioned, right? Overall, we have a very high penetration rate. That's our foundation. We have a strong IP for conversational AI and a rock-solid business model, also a good relationship with OEMs. Now, how we can further improve the quality of our products, right, and what you have seen also in the video, I think that's based on the integration of large language models and generative AI. We are working across the globe with all big OEMs on our new applications, for example, Car Knowledge, right? We are prototyping with them. We are also in discussion on the business model, right?
I cannot go into the details here, but we have huge opportunities. You know also that ChatGPT is quite expensive, and Iqbal and team are working on a very efficient, cost-efficient solution, also covering privacy topics. Maybe, Iqbal, do you want to add a bit from your side on the technology here?
No, I think, you covered for the most part, unless there's any other specific questions, I'll be more than happy to answer that.
Luke Junk (Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks for that, Stefan. I think I'll go ahead and leave it there for now.
Operator (participant)
All right. Thank you so much for that. One moment for our next question, please. All right, our next question comes from the line of Nicholas Doyle with Needham. Your line is now open.
Nicolas Doyle (Equity Research Analyst)
... Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask how you're thinking about the two-wheeler contributions next year. You had talked about production, total production around 50-60 million units, and kind of making up the difference in your longer term assumptions. That difference is coming from these transportation adjacencies. Just wondering, you know, what, how big are these, these 3 models? Do they make up a decent portion of those units? Then also, you talked about 7 design wins, I think, in the first quarter this year. Are these 3 wins coming out of that pipeline? Thanks.
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
So-
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
Yeah, we've had Stefan, let me, and then I'll hand it over to you. Yeah, we've had a number of design wins. I think it's, it's a, we had some go in production in Q3, and we have some more going in Q4. The two-wheeler market is about half the size of the auto. You know, this is a new market for us, so we'll have to see how these ramp. As we said in some of the comments here, it's not gonna be a big contributor to FY 2023.
As these go into production and they start ramping and we get royalty reports, and, and these are kind of hybrid solutions, so some of it will get, you know, some of it, the connected side of it, will have to get amortized over the, the service life, of the agreement. Again, we'll provide some updates on this particular, transportation adjacency market, in November.
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Yeah. Maybe let me also just add here that we have in total 8 design wins, 4 went live, so into production in last quarter. I think it's also distributed across the globe in China, in India, there's mass volume, right, in Japan, North America, and also Europe. I expect that we will see also revenue growth in FY 2024, as Tom mentioned.
Nicolas Doyle (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, then for the emerging market wins, they're adopting, you know, 1 or 2 components. Is that related to the 2-wheelers? 1, like, side question, can you just tell us more, maybe what the 1 or 2 components are, what the customers really are liking, taking to? Then how they're working with the software component and how much of that is related to the Immersive Content? Thanks.
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Overall, I think that was actually a contribution to this high penetration, right, in the emerging markets here. That's cars in the mid to low range, cost range. They're starting with typical audio AI, let's say for speech signal enhancement, for enabling third-party opportunities, like CarPlay. This gives us also a huge opportunity for bringing in our future solution, for creating with those new OEMs, also OEM-branded conversational AI solutions.
Operator (participant)
All right. Thank you so much for that. As a reminder, everyone, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. All right. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Hip- I'm sorry, I can't pronounce your last name. Hibshman? Sorry.
Daniel Hibshman (Associate Analyst)
You're all, you're all good.
Operator (participant)
Crai Hallum.
Daniel Hibshman (Associate Analyst)
Hey, this is Daniel for Jeff, Craig Hallum. Just on, on the connected units, you know, really strong perf- really strong performance. I see it up, you know, 50% year-over-year, the number of units. Just wondering, would you view that sort of as lumpy numbers or indicative really of a larger trend there in terms of the strength of connected? In terms of if that is more of a larger trend, you know, more success than we've been seeing in a while, would you view that as a change in buyer behavior? Is that the product sort of reaching a critical mass on the capabilities? Just how would you see that momentum?
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Let me start first, and then I will hand it over to Tom. Overall, we reported over the last 3, 4 quarters, a couple of design wins and win back also on connected services. Again, this is our foundation. Also across the globe, I think we have clearly improved the quality for connected services, and also we are in discussion for more because we have, as I said, also in the last call, these OTA opportunities and, and we're driving quite a lot of new innovation, especially on the connected side. Clearly, this is our advantage also in various benchmarks with OEMs across the globe. Tom?
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
Yeah, I mean, as we've said, I mean, connected is a great opportunity for us 'cause it sits on top of our embedded, and it provides, some of the key elements of, you know, of our Destination Next and Immersive Cabin. You do have to adjust a little bit the previous quarter, where we had a $700,000 true-up from a customer that, that underreported. Even when you adjust for that, you're right, it, we're starting to see growth there. That's, as Stefan said, that's some of these programs going live. We've also talked about over the last few quarters that there were some older contracts that were coming to the end of their amortization schedule, and they weren't, they weren't up for renewals. They're, they're just older programs.
They're separate from the legacy one that we, we split out separate. For the most part, we probably replaced newer technologies on newer platforms going forward. As those continue to wind down, that, you know, that, that kind of tailwind, you know, gets minimized and the effect of the newer platforms, you know, start to take effect. We're, we're, we're pretty excited about the connected opportunities, and a lot of it plays to what Iqbal was talking about, around, you know, the enhancements there that are being made to the products.
Daniel Hibshman (Associate Analyst)
Thanks for that. Just one follow-up for me. Actually jumping back to the press release that you guys had out in July, talking about, you know, working with a partner on IoT use cases. Can you just re-refresh us, reiterate what the nature of the agreement with Nuance is, what the freedom is to enter adjacencies? You know, is this just sort of tech development, or is there an ability to really go in actually to customers or where we're at in that kind of timetable?
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Also here, I think, you know, we have a restriction here, the field of use restriction, with Motherco, with Nuance, now Microsoft. This OU expires in a year from now, October 2024. As you can imagine, we are already planning here, the areas where we can go in. There was also recently a press release from us that we have also optimized the embedded AI stack for new devices. Yeah. We see huge potential for us also in the future beyond 2024.
Tom Beaudoin (CFO)
In the short term, there's two or three technologies that were developed and owned by Cerence that we can play. Some of it's in our audio, our audio stack, some of it's in our text-to-speech. We also have developed our own voice biometrics technology separate from what came over at the time of the spin. There are opportunities that we're pursuing in those particular areas that are exempt from the FOU for the next year. Then, as Stefan said, pretty much a year from now, there are no restrictions.
Stefan Ortmanns (CEO)
Yeah. We have also established a team, fully dedicated on non-transportation opportunities for us, yeah, business development and R&D people.
Daniel Hibshman (Associate Analyst)
Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Great quarter. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
All right. Thank you so much, Daniel. I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Rich for closing remarks.
Rich Yerganian (SVP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Brittany, and thank you for everyone joining us on the call this morning. We look forward to having further discussions. Enjoy the rest of the summer. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
All right. Thank you so much. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.