We don’t view each other as competitors. We think we enable Microsoft teams’ deployment in the enterprise. And we can do great things for it. And we embrace it. And I’m sort of a big fan of Microsoft teams. And so for that it was just a matter of going out and getting partners, that when they’re selling teams know that we have a great direct routing solution. Stay tuned on the operator Connect side. But there’s, lots of great things to talk about on that. And since Lisa is here, Lisa anything you care to add on Microsoft and the partnership?
Lisa Martin: No. I mean, I think you covered it Sam. I would also just add the Elevate program in general really drives loyalty and rewards our partners for working with us whether that’s our solution or jointly with Microsoft.
Catharine Trebnick: All right. Thanks.
Samuel Wilson: Thanks Catharine.
Operator: Our next question comes from Josh Nichols with B. Riley. Your line is open.
Josh Nichols: My question great to see the company coming in above the guidance range pretty much across the board with good cash flow. So I think most of the questions have been hit on at this point. One thing I did want to touch on a little bit is, I know longer term you’ve talked about one seeing some more revenue growth acceleration next year and maybe ultimately getting back to somewhere around like 10% growth longer term as some of these AI and ML investments come to fruition. Like what’s the timing on potentially monetizing that? And how are you approaching it differently whereas you’re not really competing with hyperscalers relative to some of the peers and what makes you kind of unique in that factor.
Samuel Wilson: I appreciate it Josh. I laughed, as you were saying that, because whatever answer I’m about to give you know in my heart, I’d like it to happen faster. But I just have to be realistic, right? So I think that you’re asking a great question. And the question is really around, we are changing fundamentally. We’re transforming as a company. And we’re being innovation led. And the place you see that the most is today we can sell eight products to a customer. And just a couple of years ago we sold two. We sold UC & CC. And unlike some of our competitors they fundamentally sell one UC, we can sell eight UC CC, ICA digital, ICA Voice, Workforce Management and on Professional Services, CPaaS and SecurePay. And so what — now the question we’re doing is we’re restructuring our go-to-market motions around becoming that portfolio sale.
As we sell more of the portfolio to a given customer, we see higher retention rates and higher ARPU, higher stuff. Some of these are usage-based and I don’t want to get into all the sort of minutia details. The timing behind that is a lot of the products are in beta or exiting beta now. So, we saw — as I mentioned on my prepared remarks, we saw for example in ICA the number of interactions doubled 50% quarter-on-quarter and accelerate on a month-on-month basis throughout the quarter as we’re starting to expand out the number of customers. And the number of customers in the pipeline is up triple-digits, a couple of hundred percent quarter-on-quarter as that moves to GA. And so I think we’ll start to see — but we see it internally the question, you’re really asking is when will it be on the income statement?
I think later this fiscal year early next year I’m hoping, knock on wood, it will be big enough that you’ll see it in the income statement as moving the needle and starting to drive that reacceleration.
Kevin Kraus: And I think the important thing here is that we’re really getting a positive response from the customers who are using some of these products in beta today. And it’s really, really great to see the traction that we’re developing internally starting out with small numbers, but the acceleration of this can be significant and the sooner the better.
Samuel Wilson: Okay. Your second question is great which is like how am I not competing with the hyperscalers. So, what we’ve done is we’ve built a platform that allows a series of integration — native like feeling integrations with this host of next-generation start-ups. And you’re seeing these start-ups that are raising. I mean it’s now has to raise $250 million rounds or $500 million rounds on these next-generation technologies, but they need a contact center to work on. They need a contact center workflow to ride on top of. And we’ve developed and we’ve reengineered our platform over the last three, four years to enable those next-generation technologies to ride on top of our platform. This is very much different than most of our competitors in the contact center space who haven’t reengineered their technology stack and therefore, mainly forced to fight a native battle, which means they buy companies, they hardwire in the integration, and they basically have to use their in-house solution.
For example we offer three or four different agent assist platforms and we can offer a few more that are coming shortly. We offer our chatbot ICA, which is based on Cognigy, but we also have customers running Balto and Awake and others that are phenomenally successful. And so what’s that enabling us is that we’re not competing with those companies they all want to partner with us. Lisa anything you had to add?
Lisa Martin: I mean I think what these partners allow us to do is really continue to blur the lines between customer and employee engagement with those native integrations. And that really gives the end customer the right toolkit to be able to deliver that experience.
Samuel Wilson: Yes. I think right now we as a company can handle or a set than just about anybody out there with our ecosystem. Thanks Josh.
Operator: Our next question comes from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.
George Sutton: Thank you. Sam I wondered if you could walk through the math of the — or the thought process of the push and pull between this $250 million return to shareholders, which is great, against the potential for growth investments. How are you kind of driving that line?
Samuel Wilson: Yes. So, let me tackle a couple of these things. So, first off, to investors not to shareholders we all share buyback and my lawyers always like me to say that the bondholders are not considered shareholders. So, I have to correct that because I’ll get a nasty gram from my GC. Look the push and pull, it’s a fair comment. I think I would invest more in growth after we get our GTM engine sort of retooled for our next generation of portfolio selling. That’s why I always leave the optionality out there. Now look, I think I want to strengthen the balance sheet. So I want to get rid of term loans, that’s the $250 million. We get that taken care of plus the 63 and 24 and we’ll be like financially well set. We want to have a lot of interest costs those kinds of things.
