Jason Kupferberg: Very helpful. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Maggie Nolan with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Analyst: Hi. Good morning. This is Jessie on for Maggie. Thanks for taking our questions. So first how do you feel EPAM is performing compared to the market? Do you think that you’re starting to take share?
Arkadiy Dobkin: I think we started to return to taking some share, okay? I think in existing clients, we stabilized while again there are some long-term — like longer term policy some clients make and they have a plan that they will be executing according to the plan. As Jason mentioned that there are several clients in Europe which we know was going to happen. So on the other side in existing clients I think we stabilized and then some of the clients we started to take share back.
Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Thanks, Ark. And then — were you going to say something else?
Arkadiy Dobkin: No. That’s good.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. And then for my follow-up Europe appeared to be a bright spot. But Jason you mentioned the incremental ramp downs there. Have you seen any changing behaviors or sentiment from clients in that geo? Or are there just some client-specific challenges that caused those ramp downs?
Jason Peterson: Yes. We saw Europe actually, declined somewhat sequentially between Q2 and Q3. And so we are seeing Europe, is a little bit more mixed but generally, it has been positive relative to North America. And then we’ve got a couple of these customers that we talked about. So, it’s not what I would call broad-based, and I would call it more customer specific.
Arkadiy Dobkin: I think we are looking at this, almost year-to-year comparison becoming less meaningful, at this environment because there is no big change between these two years. So, right now, the quarter-by-quarter comparison really showing what’s happened. And from this point, actually [indiscernible]
Unidentified Analyst: Got it. Thank you, both
Jason Peterson: You’re welcome. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Jamie Friedman with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
Jamie Friedman: Hi, I had a slightly longer-term question Ark. I was wondering, how would you compare the relevance of — and the mind share of some of the key services that you’re known for especially application development? In terms of the tech stack is application development more or less meaningful relevant in today’s technology architecture? How do you see that evolving if at all?
Arkadiy Dobkin: I think this is — we will try to predict obviously, future. And from this future point of view, I think the application development and build function, will become even more important with everything was happening. So it’s very easy to optimize, yourself to in-time environment the whole point, and that would happen quarter from now or a couple of years from now. And from this point of view, we still believe that this is what started this conversation this morning and we still believe that application which we build and build function and strong capability would be extremely critical will all get stuck which is changing. We don’t know where all this will be impacted, but even I mentioned multiple times. I do believe that there is a huge technical debt on within cloud environment in the world.
And right now, it’s taken kind of second priority in this environment, but it couldn’t be done for too long because there are some companies which not in Western will be presenting their share. So, I think it will come back. And as we said what’s happening with AI will be changing the whole application, infrastructure new opportunities will have to be rebuilt together. So that’s why I think it’s — for us still probably as to how to maintain this advantage.
Jamie Friedman: Got it. Thanks for that. I’ll drop back in the queue give someone else the chance.
Operator: Your next question will come from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
James Faucette: Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to ask quickly a couple of questions. First on pricing Jason you mentioned, a little bit of discounting et cetera. Can you help us think through kind of the longer-term implications? I know you’ve alluded to it in terms of, at some point, being able to recover that. But can you just help us think through what that mechanism typically would look like? And what would make sense over the medium to long run?
Jason Peterson: Yes. And this is one, we’re probably using Ark’s responsive with barrier or it depends is probably appropriate, but I’ll just give you some conversions of it. Certainly, as you — as people wanted to be more cost efficient India has been a more attractive play. We do think that India, will continue to be an important delivery location for us, but that you’ll also see more demand over time in our other geographies. And so what you may see in the next couple of quarters is still a more pronounced mix of India delivery, but we don’t think that that’s necessarily permanent. At the same time from a pricing standpoint, oftentimes it does take probably a year to reset. And so, it’s hard to kind of go demand is higher tomorrow and now your price is higher.
Oftentimes, the relationships are sort of set over a year. And so that’s why in some of the earlier calls I’ve said, I think you’re going to enter 2024 with an environment that where it’s difficult to take up price. And then, we’ll probably end up somewhat locked in during 2024, okay, not in all clients and not in all roles. And then we’ve got more opportunity to adjust price probably later in the year. And of course, we’ll be exposed to wage inflation during our traditional compensation campaign in Q2.
James Faucette: Great. I appreciate that Jason. Then my second question was just, how do you think about and this is for Ark and/or Jason obviously. But how do you think about any changes that you need to adjust to long term, if we’re in a higher interest rate for longer environment. I guess, I’m just thinking that historically, EPAM has been really good at doing acquisitions and acquiring new technologies to stay at kind of leading edge. But with the cost of capital now being higher, do you have to adjust how you think about the importance and the role of acquisitions and future strategy and capability development? Thanks.
