Open Text - Q1 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the OpenText Corporation Q1 fiscal 2024 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, simply press star and one on your touchtone phone. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. I would like to turn the conference over to Harry Blount, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Harry Blount (SVP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to OpenText Q1 fiscal 2024 earnings call. With me on the call today are OpenText's Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer, Mark J. Barrenechea, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Madhu Ranganathan, and also joining us is Paul Duggan, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer. Today's call is being webcast live and recorded, with a replay available shortly thereafter on the OpenText Investor Relations website. Earlier today, we posted our press release and investor presentation online. These materials will supplement our prepared remarks and can be accessed on the OpenText Investor Relations website, investors.opentext.com.

I'm pleased to inform you that OpenText management will be participating at the following upcoming conferences: RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media, and Telecom Conference on November in New York, Needham's Virtual SaaS Conference on 16 November, CIBC Securities Technology Conference on 21 November in Toronto, Bank of America Securities Leveraged Finance Conference on 28 November in Boca Raton, Wells Fargo Technology, Media, and Telecom Summit on 29 November in Rancho Palos Verdes, UBS Global Technology Conference on 30 November in Scottsdale, Scotiabank's Global Tech Conference on 5 December in San Francisco, NASDAQ's Investor Conference on 5 December in London, and Barclays Global Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference on 7 December in San Francisco. Now on to our safe harbor. Please note that during the course of this conference call, we may make statements relating to the future performance of OpenText that contain forward-looking information.

While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment, actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking statements made today. Certain material factors and assumptions were applied in drawing any such statement. Additional information about this material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from a conclusion, forecast, or projection in the forward-looking information, as well as risk factors that may project future performance results of OpenText are contained in OpenText's recent Forms 10-K and 10-Q, as well as in our press release that was distributed earlier this afternoon, which may be found on our website. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law. In addition, our conference call may include discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures may be found within our public filings and other materials, which are available on our website. With that, it's my pleasure to hand the call over to Mark.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Harry, thank you. Thank you for joining us today. It's an exciting start to our new fiscal year, 2024. We had record Q1 revenues of $1.43 billion, double-digit cloud revenue growth, and Adjusted EBITDA of 34.7%. It was another quarter of cloud organic growth, ARR organic growth, and strong renewal rates in the mid-90s. Customers showed tremendous trust and confidence in OpenText during the quarter. Bombardier chose OpenText for their legal tech AI platform. CNH chose OpenText for large contract AI analysis, and Infosys chose OpenText for developer testing, automation, and generation. Great information management is a prerequisite for great AI, and we intend to compete in and win both information management automation and AI. The OpenText business is best analyzed and measured on annual performance. We manage the business to longer cycles than 90 days, thus our quarters do vary.

Based on our strong Q1, our strong product cycle and forward visibility, we have confidence in our FY24 constant currency targets: $5.85 billion to $5.95 billion in revenues, 36% to 38% adjusted EBITDA, $800 to $900 million in free cash flows, including total revenue organic growth, 15%+ enterprise cloud bookings growth, and returning Micro Focus to organic growth. We are shifting from growth primarily driven by M&A, to growth driven by product innovation and go-to-market execution. You can see our new total growth model with our FY26 aspirations on slide 21 of our investor relations deck. It includes 15%+ enterprise cloud bookings growth, 7% to 9% cloud revenue growth, 2% to 4% ARR growth, plus any future M&A and margin expansion, plus dividends and buybacks, and when all combined, yields return to shareholders.

We are focused on the fundamentals that drive shareholder value. Slide 13 of our investor deck highlights our new shareholder value approach and how we intend to create value through six fundamentals. First, expand our competitive differentiation in information management. Expand customer consumption. unlock new value areas such as SaaS and AI, expand our go-to-market, realize higher profits and cash flows from those higher revenues, and continue to return capital to shareholders via our dividend programs and future share buybacks. Let me walk you through each one of the value drivers. Competitive advantage is everything. We offer the most comprehensive information management platform in the market, affording customers many paths to value and paving the way for new value as the world embraces AI.

And to accelerate these outcomes, we expect to invest up to 16% of revenues in R&D, and we expect these investments to support our FY 2026 growth aspirations of 7% to 9% organic cloud growth. Second, expanding our customer consumption is a threefold strategy. First, by being the market leader in each of our business clouds and driving more consumption within each: content, experience, business networks, applications, automation, IT operations, and security. Second, by embedding security and content across all of our business clouds. And third, by providing customers choice and continuing to provide them choice: off cloud, private cloud, public cloud, API cloud. We provide the flexibility to prepare to pair the right workload with the right consumption approach, so our customers can focus on the right model for their business.

Third value driver, we have new value areas to unlock, very focused in SaaS and AI. While we are executing well overall, and we have many programs to enhance value, we are very focused on unlocking new value from SaaS and AI. Titanium was SaaS driven. Titanium X is both AI and Micro Focus cloud driven. Expect us to spend disproportional time in these areas. For Q2, we expect to see 20% year-over-year growth in enterprise cloud bookings, another positive sign of unlocking new value. We will expand our go-to-market. We have one of the largest enterprise sales forces in software, and we enter FY 2024 with clear market lanes and resources across strategic accounts, enterprise accounts, corporate and business accounts, as well as the home. We are making it easier for customers to connect with our products to consume more.

Over 500 partners attended OpenText World as we relaunched our partner network focused on cloud and AI. You can already see our progress within strategic accounts, such as Microsoft and SMB, SAP and enterprise business applications, Google with cloud infrastructure and AI, and AWS with mainframe modernization. A remarkable level of interest in our long-term strategy. We also intend to realize higher profits and higher free cash flows from higher revenues. With our expanded mission in information management and greater operational scale, this provides us greater opportunity to automate and to use AI to drive even greater operational synergies. Higher revenues and higher EBITDA translates to increased cash flows, which is reflected in our FY26 aspirations of Adjusted EBITDA of 38% to 40% at $1.5 billion+ in free cash flows.

We anticipate the operating leverage in future years to only get stronger. As well, and finally, capital allocation as a strategic value driver. Our capital allocation principle is to return approximately 20% of trailing 12 months free cash flows via dividends. Since fiscal 2013, we have returned $2.2 billion via dividends and share buybacks, and we expect that as our free cash flows grows, so do our dividends. And as our net leverage decreases below 3x, we would expect to return to our share buyback program. This is our new growth model and our new value creation approach as we shift from growth primarily driven by M&A, to growth driven by product innovation and go-to-market execution. Let me close on a few points.

OpenText is in a great position to help our customers build the next generation of work, the next generation of experience, the next generation of service management, business fabrics, and supply chains, and to do this with the highest levels of trust and security. I'm excited about our growth agenda, helping customers modernize their businesses and their information platforms, helping them consolidate customer data into our information cloud, providing cyber tools to create trust and security, consuming more SaaS applications, helping developers be more productive and at the highest levels of quality, and building AI platforms for humans. The promise of AI starts with great information management. Our Aviator AI software is built into our business clouds. Aviator platform, embedded into our automation with pluggable language models. Aviator Thrust, building smarter applications. Aviator Search, interacting with information in whole new ways.

Aviator IoT, embracing the next generation of device-generated information in our individual Aviator business clouds. We are already working with customers to create exciting new AI personas via Aviator, such as the next generation tech support assistant, a mortgage advisor, a claims adjuster, an HR business partner. As well, we're working with customers to simply get more efficient via AI. You can start to see us unlocking AI value with our expected Q2, 20% year-over-year growth in enterprise cloud bookings. Our shift to a new total growth model, driven by innovation with emphasis on high quality growth, will enable us to deliver strong metrics for profitability and cash flows at scale. Our six fundamentals of new shareholder value will uniquely position us as a choice investment in the technology sector.

My deepest appreciation to our 24,000 colleagues at OpenText, who live our mission every day to make our customers wildly successful. Our hearts pray for the hostages and innocent everywhere, and we join the global community in the hope of a peaceful and prosperous future for the Middle East region. May the one that brings peace, bring peace for all. Let me turn the call over to Paul Duggan, our Chief Customer Officer, who will speak to our renewal business, which grew organically in Q1. Then Paul will hand the call over to Madhu, our CFO, who will speak to our financials and outlook. Over to Paul.

Paul Duggan (EVP and CCO)

Great. Thank you, Mark. It's a privilege to be with all of you today to talk about our renewals business and the work we're doing to unlock value for our customers and shareholders. Before I do, let me tell you about my team, the customer success organization. We're responsible for renewals of cloud and off-cloud subscriptions, professional services and cloud delivery, and technical support. We brought these functions together following the Micro Focus acquisition and took on an enhanced mission called OpenText LOVE: Land together, Operate, Value, Expand. OpenText LOVE means focusing on customer outcomes. It's all about turning promises made into promises delivered. When it comes to renewals, we believe if you deliver on those promises, customers succeed, and when they succeed, they stay with you, and those relationships will grow over time.

Today, I'll speak to three areas: the strength of our renewals, an update on Micro Focus, and a few of the goals ahead for our team. First, OpenText has a strong record of maintaining exceptional and predictable renewal performance. Despite historic and disruptive world events, economic uncertainties, and unprecedented tragedies of the last decade, our renewal rates are unwavering. Q1 was no exception, finishing at 94% for cloud and off cloud, excluding Micro Focus. Of course, renewal rates directly correlate to the value of products and services to our customers, but it's also a measure of operational excellence. From our renewal systems, processes and controls, to pricing and programs, to the automation simplifying the transactional elements, collectively, these also create a lifting force on renewal rates and help us protect and grow ARR over time. It's not just renewal rates either.

All of our primary indicators are trending positively: on-time renewals, past due contracts, cancellations, pricing at the point of sale, and our annual price adjustment at renewal. These trends are the hallmarks of customer confidence and a tightly run, world-class renewal function. Second, as we shared before, raising the renewal rate on Micro Focus is a critical value unlocker. We started on day one of the acquisition, immediately bringing the business onto our internal standards. We also implemented a risk identification and mitigation playbook, growth programs like an extended support offering, and deep engagement with our sales and engineering leadership to shape overall consumption and expansion strategies. By the end of Q2, we'll have touched roughly 75% of the Micro Focus cloud and off-cloud subscriptions. We expect to touch 90% by 1 February.

As a result, we'll increasingly see the positive impacts of running the business in all the ways I described. And I'll give you two proof points on that impact. One, back in February, we took on a business operating in the low 80% on renewal rate. Q1 ended in the mid-80%, and it gives us now two consecutive quarters of improvement. We remain confident we'll end in the high 80% this year and expect to operate in the 90% in fiscal 2025. Two, we did it for Documentum, taking renewals from the low 80% to the mid-90%, where we are today, and now we are doing it for Micro Focus. And finally, looking to the future, it's all about growth. We already have a successful cloud renewal expansion motion in business networks and SMB.

We're adding new offerings like a premium support upsell on our OpenText install base, taking a very successful offering within the Micro Focus business, understanding the profile of customers that consume it, and extending that to similar OpenText customers. We also announced a new customer renewal portal last month. More than 90% of our cloud renewal business is auto-renewed, and with this new portal, we'll bring an automated and self-service option to our off-cloud customers as well. As we do that, we plan to shift more renewal professionals to customer management versus renewal management and drive expansion across the entire customer base. Our overarching goal is to position renewals and the entire customer success organization to play a more prominent role in consumption, AI adoption, and public cloud expansion. Let me close by saying thank you to our customers.

Success is a team sport, and the fantastic results we saw in Q1 ultimately represent your trust in OpenText. That trust is earned, not given, and we're committed to delivering on the promises we make to you every day. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Madhu.

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, Paul. We appreciate all of you joining us today. Let me summarize the key points for today.

Regarding Micro Focus, we expect to return Micro Focus to organic growth this fiscal year, driven by successful integration. In particular, today, you all receive an excellent overview on renewals from Paul. In addition, we are delighted to share that we expect Micro Focus to be on our target operating model of 36% to 38% Adjusted EBITDA this fiscal year as well. In Q1, OpenText executed extremely well in a volatile world, with record Q1 revenues and year-over-year growth. Turning to our outlook, our outlook fully reflects the performance we expect, bringing together two businesses with different seasonality trends and growth cycles. With Q1 actuals and Q2 quarterly factors, we remain on target for our internal plan. We expect a stronger second half and a seasonally strong Q4 as we end our fiscal year, including a return to organic growth for Micro Focus.

These are important factors for our quarterization, and we encourage the analysts to better balance your quarterly models. We remain fully on track to meet our fiscal 2024 targets and fiscal 2026 aspirations. You are hearing today that we're shifting from growth primarily driven by M&A, to growth driven by product innovation and go-to-market execution. This is our new total growth model with our fiscal 2026 aspirations led by cloud and ARR. My final summary point, we remain highly committed to shareholder value, and today we're sharing with you our new shareholder value approach to the six fundamentals that Mark outlined earlier. So moving to our Q1 results, please refer to the investor presentation as posted on our IR website.

Starting on page 24 of the presentation for the slide titled, "Q1 Fiscal 2024 and trailing twelve-month financial highlights," all references I will be making are in millions of USD and compared to the same period as the prior fiscal year, and are on a reported basis, stated otherwise. On a year-over-year basis, enterprise cloud bookings of $121 million, up 8% year-over-year. We had record Q1 cloud revenue of $451 million, up 11.5% and 10.9% in constant currency. Q1 ARR revenue of $1.15 billion, up 59.1% and 57.5% in constant currency, and this represents over 81% of total revenue. This is the 11th consecutive quarter of organic growth in constant currency for both cloud and ARR.

It's record Q1 total revenue of $1.43 billion, up 67.3% and 65.4% in constant currency, with Micro Focus contributing $563 million in the quarter. Moving to other financial metrics, GAAP net income was $80.9 million, and this reflects increased operating expenses, amortization, special charges, and interest expenses related to the acquisition of Micro Focus, driving GAAP EPS of $0.30. GAAP gross margin of 71.4%, up from 69.7%, and this reflects increased relative revenue contribution from customer support and license. Non-GAAP gross margin of 77.3%, up from 75.2%, also reflecting increased relative revenue contribution from license and customer support.

Adjusted EBITDA of $495 million, an increase of 62.8% year-over-year, and 58.2% in constant currency. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 34.7%. We expect Micro Focus on to our adjusted EBITDA model by the end of this fiscal year. Adjusted EPS of $1.01 continues to reflect this progress. Turning to DSOs, our DSOs of 43 days, down slightly by 2 days compared to Q4, given Q1 seasonal factors. Micro Focus continues to perform well, and our overall working capital performance remains strong. As stated in our last call, we expected Q1 free cash flows to be neutral to slightly negative as a result of interest, special charges, and integration costs, as with a seasonally lower working capital at the start of the fiscal year.

We generated $47 million in operating cash flows and $10 million positive free cash flows in the quarter. Starting from Q2, we expect free cash flows to grow on a year-over-year basis in each subsequent quarter. We remain on track to realize our fiscal 2024 FCF targets of $800 million-$900 million and achieve our fiscal 2026 aspirations. Now, turning to the balance sheet, please refer to page 26 of the investor presentation. We finished Q1 with $920 million in cash and $8.9 billion of total long-term debt. Our net leverage ratio was 3.6 times for the quarter.

In Q3, and in our last call, we mentioned the net leverage ratio would fluctuate slightly over the next few quarters, while we remain on the path to a net leverage ratio of less than three times by the end of fiscal 2025 or sooner. We have completed approximately $560 million of debt repayments since the close of Micro Focus transaction. Our revolver is now fully paid, and we have begun to make discretionary principal payments on the term loans. Turning to our dividend program, on 1 November, our board of directors approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.25 per common share. The record date for the next quarterly dividend is December 1, 2023, and the payment date, December 20, 2023. Let's turn to our targets and aspirations.

As Mark highlighted, for Q2, we expect enterprise cloud bookings to grow 20% year-over-year. Let me comment on the SMB market. The SMB market has been the most impacted by the current macro environment. This trend has an impact on our cloud revenues, not on enterprise cloud bookings. During Q2, we expect to have a $10 million to $15 million revenue headwind from SMB. Our enterprise cloud business remains strong and expected to grow revenues organically in Q2 and the rest of the fiscal year. As the SMB market gains more strength, we are well positioned to capture share and accelerate cloud revenue growth.

Starting with our Q2 fiscal 2024 quarterly factors of our investor presentation, on a year-over-year basis, we expect revenue of $1.45- to $1.50 billion; ARR of $1.1 billion to $1.13 billion; FX revenue tailwind of approximately $10 to $15 million. Adjusted EBITDA year over year, the margin between 36% and 37% and reflects Micro Focus integration costs. FX adjusted EBITDA tailwind of approximately $5 to $10 million. Our fiscal 2024 targets and constant currency are provided on page 30 of the investor relations presentation. Mark spoke on fiscal 2024 targets in his comments, and let me provide a full summary. Total revenues of $5.85 billion to $5.95 billion. Enterprise cloud bookings growth of 15%+. Cloud revenues up 6% to 8%. Customer support revenues up 40% to 42%.

ARR up 24% to 26%. Total revenue growth of 30%+, with organic growth in the range of 1% to 2%. Non-GAAP gross margin in the range of 77% to 79%. Total operating expenses of 42% to 44% of revenues. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 36% to 38%. Two changes to our fiscal 2024 targets. At current exchange rates, we expect FX to be neutral, but also reducing our net interest expense for the year to be $550 million to $570 million, and this reflects a 75 basis point reduction in the interest on our acquisition term loan. Our free cash flows are on track to achieve $800 million-$900 million, which is our fiscal 2024 target range. Our fiscal 2026 aspirations remain unchanged. These are included in page 32 of our investor presentation materials.

We are reaffirming fiscal 2024 FCF aspirations of $1.5 billion+. We expect to realize higher adjusted EBITDA margins and free cash flows from higher revenues. Let me put these in numbers for you. Relative to fiscal 2023, our fiscal 2026 aspirations show revenues to be 40% higher, adjusted EBITDA to be 67% higher, and free cash flow to be 129% higher. Our fiscal 2026 aspirations show a highly predictable and growing business at scale, led by cloud and ARR. Acquisitions will remain additive to our future growth as we delever and capital flexibility returns. Lastly, please refer to our financial integration framework slide on page 31. We have updated to reflect timing on system integration and global entity simplification.

So in summary, our Micro Focus integration is ahead of plan, and we expect to achieve important milestones in fiscal 2024. It's a return to organic growth and renewal rates in the high 80s, and Micro Focus business to be in the on the OpenText operating model of Adjusted EBITDA of 36% to 38%. Also, as Mark mentioned, our shift to a new total growth model driven by innovation with emphasis on high quality growth, will enable us to deliver strong metrics for profitability and cash flows at scale. Our six fundamentals of new shareholder value approach will uniquely position us as a choice investment in the technology sector. Our OpenText team members have proudly delivered a solid Q1 kicking off of fiscal 2024. On behalf of OpenText, I would like to thank our shareholders, our loyal customers, and partners.

I will now request the operator to open the call for your questions.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Operator?

Operator (participant)

Pardon me. We're experiencing some technical difficulties. Please stand by. My apologies. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch tone telephone to join the question queue. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please ensure you lift the handset before pressing any keys. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Richard Tse with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Richard Tse (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Yes, thank you. Can I ask Paul a question here?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Richard, go right ahead.

Paul Duggan (EVP and CCO)

Okay. Paul, so from your vantage point, you know, you've obviously been in the role and been successful at... Like, what do you think has been the biggest, I guess, most meaningful driver to increasing Micro Focus's renewal rate here?

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Oh, hi, Richard. Great. Thank you for the question. Look, I think it comes down to three things. First, we move fast to get Micro Focus on our OpenText practices for renewals, as I discussed in my prepared remarks. Second, that also meant moving quickly to integrate the teams doing the work, you know, getting renewals, doing renewals, and sales, doing sales. And we believe that when those lines are not clear, renewal rates tend to underperform. And I'd say, you know, third, as I speak to customers, I think that they also see our product roadmap and the other things we've unveiled in terms of our AI path.

Paul Duggan (EVP and CCO)

And they recognize that information management is becoming really a gating factor to fully embracing those step functions. So I think all of those play a significant role in the decision to renew, and we can already empirically see that in the renewal rates, and the improvement we've made since February.

Richard Tse (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Okay, great. Thanks. So, Mark, you know, your recent OpenText World was a, you know, a great event. Certainly, a ton of excitement around Aviator. What's sort of been the follow through since, you know, the event last month? And maybe kind of give us a sense of, you know, the momentum from a product perspective.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah. Thank you, Richard. As I said in my notes, the product cycle, customer engagement, clarity of our ability to provide practical value all fed into our comments today in the call of increasing our bookings outlook for the quarter of 20% year-over-year growth. So we're definitely getting to the next phase of engagement to specific use cases. Product delivery in October. It's just November, is it November second or third? So somewhere in early November. We have the next wave of product delivery in January. We've engaged with customers, with fantastic feedback from OpenText World, including 500 partners who were with us in Vegas. And we're in engagements now, and we're gonna win our first business.

And, you're gonna see it reflected first in bookings, and thus our 20% year-over-year growth expectations for the quarter.

Richard Tse (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Okay. And then just a last one for me. Certainly appreciate the shift here to an organic growth focus, but I imagine you still have a fairly robust M&A team evaluating transactions. And so I'm just kind of curious, you know, and given the backdrop today, what's your sense of the acquisition landscape, perhaps from a valuation standpoint? And, you know, if you came across, like, a great opportunity, would you be in a position, you think, to move on something within the next, you know, 12-18 months?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah. Thanks, Richard. I have the organization focused on a singular, powerful concept: information management. It's a $200 billion market. We are transitioning from M&A-driven growth to organic growth, and that starts with a rich product pipeline, unlocking value in the cloud and new value areas of SaaS and AI. And that is an enhanced motion for us, with expectations of 20% year-over-year growth in our enterprise bookings. So that's where we're focused on a singular, powerful concept, and we'll remain focused on a singular, powerful concept. For sure, if we find an opportunity like we did recently with KineMatik, that can enhance a specific aspect of our product, in the context of our strategy, we won't be bashful at all.

But we're focused on the singular, powerful concept and our expanded mission in information management, and being driven primarily by organic growth.

Richard Tse (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Okay, thanks for taking my questions.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Thanos Moschopoulos with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thanos Moschopoulos (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hi, good afternoon. Also a question for Paul. So just, just to be clear, what remains on maximizing the renewals at Micro Focus? Is it primarily a question of going through the annual renewal cycle with all the customers, or are there still some key steps that need to be done internally to really drive that organization to its potential?

Paul Duggan (EVP and CCO)

Yeah, great question. It's a number of things. So, you nailed the first one, right? We actually gotta get to each of the renewals. And like I had said in my remarks, you know, we'll be mostly there by February. And look, you know, I think the step functions for us from there are really kind of gonna be value driven, the product roadmap, the conversations we're having around that. I think those are the things that really go into decision points on renewal. The things that we see today are really, in large part, decisions that were made, you know, 12 months ago.

So you gotta go rewind the clock back and look at the product roadmap at that time, and look at what was out in front of the customers at that point. So there's gonna be some run out here, I think, of you're gonna get these initial improvements and benefits from all the systems and all the processes and those sorts of things. And then the longer end of this is gonna be all about the intrinsic value of our offering. And you saw it with Documentum. Like I'd mentioned, we started in a very similar place, low 80s. You know, the Documentum business is running ahead of our average renewal rate. So we're in the mid 90s, and we've been there for some time. So you know, there's confidence in our playbook.

We've done it before. You know, there's a scale with this, but it's still—it comes down to these fundamentals.

Thanos Moschopoulos (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Great. And then, Mark, just in terms of integrating the go-to-market, it sounds like you- you've done the heavy lifting for integrating your, your internal teams. But as far as integrating the Micro Focus and OpenText channels, where does that stand? How much opportunity remains on, on that front, and when do you expect to start capitalizing some of that?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah, thank you, Thanos. Thanks for the question. Yeah, certainly our direct sales forces are fully integrated and fully aligned as we kicked off the fiscal year. We have, in the investor deck, I think it's slide 18, where we talked about that segmentation. Really important. We've really matured as we, as we've scaled up to, you know, our current revenue level, levels and looking well beyond, the near, the full coverage out into the global 10,000. We now have very formal segmentation, and it's very well aligned to how Oracle thinks of the world, SAP, Microsoft, we're now in that category. Strategic accounts, enterprise accounts, corporate accounts, business accounts, and home accounts. Very well-defined stratification, very defined go-to-market.

We are one sales organization pursuing those market areas. Where we have more work to do is on the partner network that we launched in July. You know, partner networks by definition, they're networks, so they got a lot of tentacles that go out over many, many years. We announced where our landing zone for all our partners, including Micro Focus partners, of deal registration. We announced where they can engage on selling cloud. We began the AI discussion with them and where we want to be kicking off July one next year. Takes systems, takes contracts, takes execution, but we announced where we want to land come July one.

So there's a little work to do there, you know, between here in November and June, July, June of next year. But on the direct enterprise side, we're fully aligned, we're united, we're one organization. We have one organization on the new partner network, and we defined our landing zone of where we want to be July 1, announced it to partners. We're working on all the details behind it. So that's the remaining work, Thanos.

Thanos Moschopoulos (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Great. Thanks, Mark. I'll pass the line.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Paul Treiber with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Paul Treiber (Canadian Software Analyst)

Thanks very much, and good afternoon. Just, your outlook to achieve 20% cloud bookings growth this quarter is great, and it seems like an inflection from Q1, which is only 8%. Is that the right way to characterize it? Is that, you know, new AI products are likely to drive an inflection in growth for OpenText, or, you know, is that reading too much into it, and there's maybe just quarterly dynamics between Q1 and Q2?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Paul, thanks for the question, and thanks for your first question to me. So I appreciate that. Just kidding. No, our 20% bookings growth, we're gonna see our first AI bookings in that number. So, AI is gonna contribute. As we talked about two quarters ago, you know, we announced our direction. We have a strong history, over a decade of innovation in AI. We presented for customers how to get practical value. We announced our roadmap. Now we've delivered wave one, we're delivering wave two. And it's being very well understood where we can start to unlock value across our platform being built in, our trust services, Search, IoT, and each of the Aviator business clouds.

It's interesting, kind of a new language we're hearing from customers, and we're helping them get there, is that through our business clouds, we're helping them build these AI personas, right? So they have contract administrators today, but now they're gonna build the AI persona of the contract administrator, or mortgage advisor or technical support assistant. So now that 20% expected bookings growth year-over-year has AI contribution to it. And look, our Q1 is always seasonally light. And that's just, it's our Q1. I know it's the world's Q3, but it's our Q1, and so our customers are trained that way. But no, that number reflects our next set of wins in AI, and I can't wait to present them to you.

Paul Treiber (Canadian Software Analyst)

You've had product releases and product cycles in the past. You sound, you know, quite enthusiastic about AI. Could you give us some context around, you know, how customer interest and the sales pipeline for your new AI products compare versus previous product releases?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Oh, well, sure. I think this is, I'll say two things. The first is, I don't have to spend a dollar of marketing on AI. I mean, the whole world's talking about it, so that's sort of an interesting new dynamic, right? So, customers are proactively engaging. The world is very focused on generative AI. We, of course, think the landing zone is a general AI, because there's a lot more to it than just the generative aspect. So, Paul, dynamic number one that's different is the world's talking about it, and it's got a big awareness aspect built in. Second is, we have very relevant product sitting on top of very large data sets that we've helped to build for our customers over the last year.

You know, we believe this is the inflection point, the singular powerful concept that unlocks information management to its next level in the enterprise. There was inflection points for ERP, and CRM of integrated, e-business suites. This is an inflection point for information management, to unlock the value of those data sets. So you've got natural demand, being driven by market, and, breakthroughs in technology. The baby speaks. And number two, we have very relevant and very timely, technology on top of our platform. And as I said at OpenText World, it is okay to speak this way. We were late in SaaS, we are not late in AI, and we're gonna capture the opportunity here for the company.

Paul Treiber (Canadian Software Analyst)

Thanks for taking the questions.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yes, thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Kevin Krishnaratne with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Kevin Krishnaratne (Director of Equity Research Analyst)

Hey there. Good evening. Just a couple of clarifications. You said Micro Focus contributed $563 million in the quarter. Is that correct? And if so, you know, was that sort of within your expectations, or is it, is it going better? And do we have a margin for Micro Focus in the quarter?

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Yep, Kevin, it's Madhu here. Thank you. So yes, $563 million in revenue. As we mentioned, the integration is going very well. We are ahead of our internal plan, and from a margin perspective, I would point you to the fact that, being ahead of the plan, we are able t the projected Micro Focus will be on our 36% to 38% this fiscal year, which is really the first full fiscal year since the transaction closed.

Kevin Krishnaratne (Director of Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And then a second clarification here, just on the SMB dynamic. I think you'd mentioned a $10 million to $15 million year-over-year revenue headwind. Is that correct? I'm just curious, if you can dig into that a bit more, and then remind us, if you can, on how big SMB is in your base.

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, I mean, I'll comment, and I'm sure Mark will chime in as well. So $10 million to $15 million revenue headwind is what we see in Q2. We pay attention to a couple cycles, obviously the PC cycles and of course, all things associated with, with you know, Microsoft as it intersects with our SMB business. Now, having said that, I think Paul also mentioned in his notes that we do have some products and innovation and new items to bring to market, and we factored those into account for the second half of the fiscal year. Overall, we remain on target for our fiscal 2024 revenues, including the cloud revenue. Mark, anything to add?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah, sure. Thank, thank, thank you, Madhu. This is not an OpenText challenge. This is a market challenge, and we all read the same headlines about the challenges, in SMB. And, you know, SMB is, is, you know, less than 10% of our business. It's an important... It's a new area for us. We've only been in this area 2 to 3 years. We're never gonna realize our full potential information management if we can't get to that mid-market. And we're much more interested in the mid-market than the, than the S, the small part of the market. So as, you know, Micro Focus, excuse me, Microsoft has recently said, it's the most important sector for them, and as they do well, we will do, we will do well. As PC shipments rebound, we will do better.

We're also bringing new product into this area, like our service management, mid-market, business network, capabilities. So, it's really not our challenge, it's the market's challenge right now, and we're so well positioned that as the market picks up, we're gonna be a beneficiary of it. But we wanted to call it out, just to be, you know, clear on our cloud momentum, and help you model the business.

Kevin Krishnaratne (Director of Equity Research Analyst)

Good stuff. Yeah, appreciate the color. I'll pass the line. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Stephanie Price with CIBC. Please go ahead.

Stephanie Price (Executive Director of Equity Markets)

Hi, good evening. I just want to circle back on the focus on achieving organic growth at Micro Focus in fiscal 2024. Just curious if you can share what organic growth at Micro Focus was this quarter, and how you expect to trend over the fiscal year. As you work towards organic growth at Micro, obviously, maintenance is gonna be the key driver, but also curious if there's anything else we should be thinking about there as we think about organic growth in business by the end of fiscal 2024.

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Yes, Stephanie, it's Madhu here. So I'll take the first part, how to think about Micro Focus organic growth in the quarter. It's gonna be a hard year-over-year compare. As we said, in the last couple calls, our starting point is $2.3 billion of revenue. You take IFRS to GAAP, you take a Digital Safe, you know, divestiture, and we did decide to shed some contracts and not carry them forward, and $2.3 billion is really our baseline. And at $563 million, we've done well. It is our Q1 of this fiscal year, and we do expect to grow organically in the entire year.

Everything you've heard so far on the Micro Focus integration, the customers, the partners, all of that is gonna play a role for us to exceed the $2.3 billion number.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah, and Steph, let me, let me jump in as well. We're doing exactly what we said we would do, and we're gonna show you Micro Focus every quarter for this fiscal year, so we don't have to through disclosure, but we're going to. You take $2.3 billion, divide it by four , that's $575 million. Our Q1, seasonally slow, a light quarter for us in Q1, we delivered $563 million, and you'll see that momentum build. And it's really that simple. We are very confident we're returning Micro Focus to organic growth. We're off to a great start....

As you know, Paul talked about the renewals, our strong product cycle with private cloud, new SaaS offerings, and SMAX, Fortify on Demand, NetIQ, UCMDB as SaaS, a first set of AI on top of Micro Focus, which they would never been able to get to if not part of OpenText. So, we're doing exactly what we said we'd do. We're gonna show you every quarter along the way, and we're off to a great start at $563 million.

Stephanie Price (Executive Director of Equity Markets)

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for the color.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Thank you.

Stephanie Price (Executive Director of Equity Markets)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Jeremy Wilson (Vice Chairman)

Great, thank you. This is Jeremy on for Raimo. Just wanted to follow up on the SMB headwind that you called out. So is it having, like, maybe an outsized impact on any of the business lines, like with security, having Zix and Carbonite, which is more SMB focused? Is it sort of showing up more there, or really anything you can call out there would be helpful? Thank you.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah, Jeremy, I think I would call it a headwind, maybe a light breeze. And, we provided the additional color to help you model. Really simple, right? So, there's no product to point to across the portfolio. Again, it's not us, it's the segment, right? PC shipments are clearly down, so there's less to sell into. Microsoft had delayed certain programs. They, they've now recently declared this is the most important segment, so it's gonna build momentum. So no, nothing specific to point to. I would not call it a headwind, maybe a light breeze, and it's the segment, it's not us, it's not something specific.

And we're excited about being a beneficiary as PC shipments go up, as Microsoft builds their amazing machine here.

Jeremy Wilson (Vice Chairman)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Adhir Kadve with Eight Capital. Please go ahead.

Adhir Kadve (Principal of Equity Research and Technology)

Hey, good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. You know, maybe outside of the AI showing up in bookings and driving that 20% growth, is there any other particular areas across the six markets that you've defined, Mark, that are really driving that confidence in the 20%?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

SaaS, So SaaS and AI. You know, Titanium was focused on many things, but top of the stack was SaaS applications. Having Core Content, core signature, Core Capture, core archive, starting to get into the machine, a SaaS-based service management, which we call SMAX. SaaS-based security through NetIQ, SaaS-based access management, with the universal configuration management database, or UCMDB. So getting additional products in there as well. Mid-market, SaaS, and business network. So, Adhir, I'd say it's two things. It's Titanium, deliver the product, start to get on the market, build demand, win business, and it's the second value unlock for of AI, starting to get its first win.

Adhir Kadve (Principal of Equity Research and Technology)

Thanks, Mark. And then just on AI, you know, you guys introduced a fairly robust product roadmap, as well as products that are in market right now. Mark, any of those that are really kind of driving excitement or really driving undue excitement from your clients that you could speak to?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Oh, I have to pick a child, which one I like? No, the... We're gonna follow. I think it's gonna follow where the data sets are and the value that we can unlock. I'll start right in kind of our heritage in content management and building these Aviator personas next to the human persona for claims, the claims manager, the claims adjuster, the contract offerer. So content certainly is up there. I'd also say in ITOM, we have a very large install base around service management and the ability to create that AI Aviator persona around the technical support assistant. So content, ITOM, I would probably shout out, we're gonna lead the way early.

Now, with that said, the general applicability of search, very interesting for us, and a lot of workloads out there for machine-generated and device-generated content via IoT. But I would, I'd look for content in ITOM here in the early days.

Adhir Kadve (Principal of Equity Research and Technology)

Excellent. Thank you, guys. I'll pass the line.

Operator (participant)

Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Steve Enders with Citi. Please go ahead.

Bellino George (President and CMO)

Thanks for taking the questions. This is George on for Steve. I want to talk about the, you know, the AI products at the Aviator, set of products. You know, you guys were fairly quick out to market with them, which I think is, you know, a testament to that 90-day release cycle. But maybe you could just talk about the decision to monetize these when maybe some of your competitors, customers are in an experimental phase. And I guess, you know, how are, how are we thinking about the kind of timeline to revenue contributions? Thank you.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yeah, George, thank you for the question. As I said last quarter, you know, until we have, you know, revenue signals, we're not gonna kind of change our our outlooks, if you will, until today. You know, I look at Q2, and we're seeing, you know, we've gone through this whole cycle of, you know, the the baby speaks through generative AI in the consumer world, the rise of algorithms, the ability to do that in the consumer world. We've worked with our partners, Google and others, to ensure they're gonna be private environments. We have our own technology that we've advanced to do certain aspects of the AI preparatory work for customers, embedding, vectorization.

We've worked through a lot of the technology hurdles to have pluggable language models because they're gonna get very specific. And we've now, you know, with 23.4, have wave one of very practical capabilities. 24.1 brings the rest of the business clouds to very practical capabilities. And we're demonstrating how within content management, business network, in the ITOM space, in the developer space, where you can apply these Aviator personas to sit next to the human to add significant value. So this is the next step, and we're seeing the first demand signals, and thus calling it out that we expect to see 20% bookings growth year-over-year.

Bellino George (President and CMO)

Got it. Yeah, it's a really encouraging number. Maybe just to double-click on that 20%, you know, kind of loud and clear that AI and SaaS are the top two drivers. Is there any contribution from Micro Focus adoption of private cloud in there? Or is that maybe a little farther down the pipeline?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

There'll be some. There'll be some in there, sure.

Bellino George (President and CMO)

Got it. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on the quarter.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Thanks, George.

Operator (participant)

The next question comes from Daniel Chan with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Daniel Chan (Technology Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, Mark. Earlier, you were mentioning that your customers were trained on your fiscal year end. Micro Focus's fiscal year end is in October. I know you've been trying to move some of those customers onto your timeline, but should we still expect a large number of their customers to still be on the Micro Focus fiscal year end?

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Look, Dan, I think it's gonna take a year or two to kind get the, the full quarterization from, from the Micro Focus install base. And thus, you know, Madhu's comments on, paying attention to the quarterization. And, we've spent a lot of time, Madhu and team spent a lot of time on the quarterly factors for Q2. And just a clear shout-out to, you know, balance models in the second half of the year. So, look, we're making progress. We're gonna always default to the customer and what the customer wants to do. But we're gonna get to the OpenText cycles. You know, take a year or two, but we'll get there.

Daniel Chan (Technology Equity Research Analyst)

Sounds good. Thanks for that. And then appreciate the color on the SMB impacts on the macro. Just wondering if there's any update on the enterprise side of things. Last quarter, you said things were still looking good. Just wondering if there are any updates on the enterprise customers. Thank you.

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, from the enterprise customers, Dan, thank you again for the question. And I assume you're referring to the cloud side. Things are looking strong. And, and certainly, that's why we called out, called out SMB, going back to all that Mark said. In addition to the AI, the core solutions that we continue to build upon and innovate, there continues to be strong demand for those, all business clouds included, right? So the enterprise side, cloud, non-SMB, you know, continues to be strong.

Daniel Chan (Technology Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Madhu Ranganathan (EVP and CFO)

Thank you.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Yep. Thank you, Dan.

Operator (participant)

I will now hand the call back over to Mr. Barrenechea for closing remarks.

Mark J. Barrenechea (CEO and CTO)

Very good. Madhu, Paul, thank you, and thank you everyone for joining today. Look, we're very excited to engage with you and tell you more of our story and on our new model for growth. We're gonna be participating at many upcoming conferences, as Harry noted. The RBC conference, 14 November, New York City. The Needham SaaS conference, virtually on 16 November. CIBC Securities conference, 21 November in Toronto, which I'll personally be at. The Wells Fargo Technology Summit, the 29th in Rancho Palos Verdes. The UBS Global Tech Conference, 30 November, Scottsdale. Scotiabank, 5 December in San Francisco. The NASDAQ Investor Conference in London on December 5, Madhu's gonna host, and we'll be at the Barclays Global Tech Conference, 7 December in San Francisco.

We look forward to connecting with you, telling our story, and may the one that brings peace, bring peace for all. That ends the call today, operator.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.