Endava plc (DAVA) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Endava Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Laurence Madsen, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Endava's Third Quarter of our fiscal year 2026 conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Joining me today are John Cotterell, Endava's Chief Executive Officer; and Mark Thurston, Endava's Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, a quick reminder to our listeners. Our presentation and our comparing remarks today include forward-looking statements including, but not limited to statements regarding our guidance for Q4 fiscal year 2026 and for the full fiscal year 2026, the impacts of headwinds facing our industry and business, trends in our industry, including with respect to developments with AI, enhancements to our technology and offerings, the benefits of our partnerships demand from clients for our technology services, our ability to create long-term value for our clients people, our shareholders, our long-term strategic positioning and our business strategies, plans, operations and growth opportunities. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Please note that these forward-looking statements made during this conference call speak only as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances other than to the extent required by law. For more information, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 4, 2025, and and in other filings that Endava makes from time to time with the SEC. Also during the call, we'll present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. While we believe the non-IFRS financial measures provide useful information for investors, the presentation of this information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information presented in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations of such non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures are included in today's earnings press release as well as the investor presentation, both of which you can find on our Investor Relations website or on the SEC website. A link to the replay of this call will also be available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Laurence, and welcome, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for our third quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call. I'll address first the issues that are top of mind for the investment community today. This has been one of the more challenging periods Endava has faced in recent years. Demand conditions remain uneven across several sectors, deal cycles continue to be extended and clients are scrutinizing technology spending more carefully than at any point since the [ macro ] slowdown began. Against this backdrop, the primary driver of the quarter's miss and the lowered Q4 [indiscernible] was a slower-than-expected pipeline conversion. Factors impacting the revenue miss in the quarter and the lower revenue guide include clients located in the Middle East, delaying work due to the ongoing conflict, a slowdown in overall client demand due to the macro and economic environment arising from the complex. Finally, large complex outcome-based contracts taking longer to execute than planned. During the quarter, we took a goodwill impairment of GBP 364.6 million, which is a noncash accounting adjustment, which does not impact our liquidity, delivery capability, client commitments or ability to invest in the business. Mark will provide additional details on these items shortly. Although we are disappointed by these outcomes, we believe it's important to distinguish clearly between near-term execution challenges and long-term strategic positioning. Over the past several quarters, we have accelerated our transition towards AI native delivery, expanded relationships with leading hyperscalers, deepened our presence in payments transformation and increased engagement with senior client decision-makers, pursuing enterprise scale AI initiatives. What we are seeing now is a market moving beyond experimentation. Clients are increasingly looking for partners who can help them operationalize AI securely, integrate it into complex enterprise environments and connect investment directly to measurable business outcomes. Each new wave of technology change has triggered the same entrepreneurial reflex inside Endava: move first, learn fast and scale what delivers impact. The rapid emergence of artificial intelligence is simply the latest inflection point. And in recent quarters, we have concentrated talent, investment and partner collaboration on embedding AI across our delivery model to ensure Endava is ready to lead clients through what comes next. Robust enterprise-grade IT services are essential for enabling AI leaders to scale their products safely and quickly. And thanks to our deep AI native delivery framework and expanding partnership with both OpenAI and Google, we believe Endava is well positioned to provide the secure integration, cloud orchestration and compliance layers that make that growth possible. This quarter, we made strides in our go-to-market approach and in the evolution of our business model. We are transforming our go-to-market approach by engaging directly with key decision-makers to show how AI can accelerate their transformation priorities while deepening partnerships. We're moving to outcome-based contracts. For example, PGX and modular accelerate core for next-generation payment platforms delivered through Dava.Flow ties our success to measurable improvements in clients' payment operations. We're continuing to progress selected client engagements as part of our AI native shift with Dava.Flow. We now have 12 clients where Dava.Flow is deployed as compared to 3 last quarter. We're seeing progress in our shift from a traditional digital transformation business towards an AI-driven business. These initiatives and others like them, have moved our AI-driven business, up from 5% of total revenue a year ago in Q3 FY '25 to 15% of total revenue in Q3 FY '26 or GBP 27 million. This shows the scale of the pivot Endava has undertaken during the past 12 months and now gives us an AI-driven base that we believe will continue to expand. Margins on its AI-driven business are higher than our traditional digital transformation business. Let me share a few headlines for progress on this shift in the quarter. As part of our go-to-market pivot, we expanded our strategic partner network enlarging our market reach and solution set. I want to highlight our recently announced collaboration with Mastercard which combines Endava's AI-native engineering and industry expertise with Mastercard's global reach and data-driven products and services. Together, we believe we have a powerful engine to accelerate the adoption and scale of next-generation payments and immersive experiences for Endava's clients worldwide. We aim to unlock value at pace, bringing solutions to market faster for Endava's clients with initial focus on high-growth sectors such as insurance and health care, with additional attention on telco, mobility and travel. On AI adoption, clients are moving beyond isolated productivity pilots. They now aim to create AI native initiatives inside their existing organizations and to launch entirely new businesses that embed AI in both build-out and day-to-day operations. Although these engagements sit at different ages of maturity, we're seeing increasing numbers implemented into production. Adoption is becoming more operational, more open and more tightly linked to measurable results. Over the coming quarters, we will focus on expanding our delivery portfolio with the goal of turning this interest into larger outcome-based programs. As part of our go-to-market strategy, we are investing strongly in partnerships, particularly those with the hyperscale. By combining our depth of industry expertise with the scale of AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft, we are producing accelerators and marketplace dilutions that tackle our clients' most complex challenges. We expect to launch more than 15 marketplace offerings this year, of which 10 are already live. And we are aligning Dava.Flow with each hyperscalers platform. Together, these initiatives are expected to cut time to value and help clients realize measurable returns on their technology investments. Today, I want to share some of the momentum we're achieving with Google. Through our collaboration with Google, we have added new clients this year, particularly in financial services, retail and gaming. Enterprises are partnering with us to accelerate their cloud transformation and harness Google's AI capabilities. The long book insurance, we migrated and set up the AI security guardrails on an AI-driven underwriting platform for warranty and indemnity insurance, making a transformative step forward in digital underwriting built on Google Cloud. The solution uses advanced AI to automate key stages of the underwriting cycle from submission triage and risk assessment to pricing and due diligence while keeping underwriters firmly in control through a human-in-the-loop dashboard. Their innovation in AI-powered insurance and InsurTech is designed to support considerable productivity gains, cost reduction and speed to revenue for Longbrook Insurance. Building on our enterprise AI progress, Google has invited Endava to participate in the Google AI Agent partner program, a program traditionally limited to their largest global system integrators. The initiative now open to a small cohort of AI disruptive partners recognized for expertise at Gemini Enterprise and Vertex AI is already generating new strategic engagements in North America, APAC and Europe. For example, we recently finalized an agreement to implement Gemini Enterprise at a leading U.K. high street bank. The project is expected to deliver an enterprise-grade agent gallery, the less the bank's developer community, register, govern and discover custom-built agents, fully integrated with Google data platforms such as big query and cloud storage. The solution is expected to provide timely, actionable data that improves efficiency and supports revenue growth at scale. A year ago, we began applying our AI-enabled engineering expertise to long-standing client needs in payments, a domain where we have more than 20 years' experience modernizing gateway and merchant services estates. We believe the sector now faces 3 concurrent requirements: one, lowering the marginal cost of scaling; two, tightening operational efficiency and control; and three, keeping room to innovate around embedded commerce, omnichannel acceptance, platform consolidation and marketplace models. Our answer is PGX delivered through Dave flow. PGX provides a reusable core, spanning digital acceptance, orchestration and routing, merchant portals, onboarding, settlement, fraud management, developer tooling, partner/ISV enablement and back-office services so clients can modernize selectively and still differentiate the product and experience level. Shared configurable components cut scaling costs. Standardized orchestration and back-office services boost efficiency and leaves headroom to innovate. Crucially, PGX supplies the data and workflow layer needed to introduce AI-enabled operations and a genetic commerce across the front office, onboarding, servicing and back office. Built with a genetic AI and strict human-in-the-loop governance, PGX demonstrates the accelerated AI-assisted engineering can meet the quality and compliance demands of complex regulated payments environments. Early market reception is encouraging, with new signings in the last 3 months. Interest is already expanding beyond financial services into other sectors where modern payment capability is becoming central to customer engagement, efficiency and growth. First, we have been selected as a strategic partner with Tyl by NatWest, NatWest Group's merchant payments arm to modernize and expand its payments acceptance platform. Under the partnership, Endava will deploy Dava.Flow, together with components of PGX to speed the rollout of new fully integrated products and services while improving flexibility, scalability and and end-to-end performance across the payments life cycle. Working jointly, the 2 companies have mapped a business and technology road map that link specific feature deliveries to defined market opportunities and associated revenue targets. For NatWest, the partnership represents a material investment in strengthening its merchant payment offering. For Endava, this partnership adds an additional and significant large-scale complex engagement with a leading U.K. financial institution, reinforcing our credentials in payments transformation. Second, PDX continues to gain momentum with 2 additional wins, one with a global payments provider and another with a pan-European energy retailer. Both clients chose the accelerator to cut operating costs, simplify estates and accelerate time to market. Dava.Flow supplies the delivery engine that converts these modernization programs into measurable commercial value and seamless [indiscernible] to ecosystem partners such as payment schemes, acquirers, POS hardware and compliance providers. Some other client wins. We have also recently renewed our long-standing partnership with Slovenia's Ministry of Finance and Financial Administration through to 2028, bringing the relationship to more than 2 decades. Under the new agreement, we will continue to operate and enhance [indiscernible], the national tax portal that serves hundreds of thousands of taxpayers, integrates over 200 tax-related services and processes more than 12 million electronic documents each year. [indiscernible] delivers a secure integrated experience that has eliminated postage costs, accelerated processing times and given the authority near real-time visibility across its core revenue systems, demonstrating Endava's ability to modernize mission-critical high-volume platforms at a national scale. The insurance company, North Standard, now regards Endava as a trusted extension of its technology organization, combining strong cultural alignment with deep technical expertise to deliver consistently high-quality outcomes. The success of the partnership and the value delivered by our team gave our client the confidence to extend the engagement for a further 2 years and expand into additional roles and delivery teams. Our collaboration with a global brand and vehicle manufacturer has progressed from stand-alone engineering projects to an embedded partnership that is designed, built and operated cloud-native data platforms for connected vehicle services, real-time performance monitoring provided around-the-clock support services and delivered logistics systems covering more than 80 facilities in nearly 30 countries. We are currently using AI-enabled delivery frameworks to create modern production operation systems designed to improve life cycle management, enhance data visibility and raise efficiency in production critical environments, all underpinned by our disciplined approach to high-performance, scalable and compliant architecture. Let me turn to Dava.Flow and AI projects. Over the quarter, Dava.Flow has shifted from exploratory use to enterprise adoption. We enhanced the framework through a combination of partnerships and by applying it in 2 large-scale live engagements. Firstly, a large-scale implementation engagement in a regulated high assurance environment. And secondly, the TechNexus technical operator program, a previously announced engagement in the payments fiscal. We have also continued to advance an AI-enabled human movement analysis platform for a leading high-performance sports organization with the quarter focused on validation, robustness and operational readiness. Working closely with domain experts, we refined evaluation logic to improve alignment between system outputs and expert expectations, strengthen the core analytics pipeline, and expanded synthetic data sets to improve performance across real-world scenarios. We also introduced more structured measurements through accuracy dashboards, regular comparisons to previous versions and standardized evaluation against label data. Although still early, the increasing level of stakeholder validation underlines that the program is moving steadily towards a production-ready solution. We applied the same agent-centric principles to a very different challenge, streamlining engineering knowledge for a European-based media and entertainment group. The client struggled with fragmented engineering knowledge locked in Jira, Confluence, GitHub and Microsoft 365, which lengthened incident resolution, delayed sprint planning and hampered onboarding. Endava delivered a Google Cloud agent-based pilot that unifies these sources behind a secure role-based natural language interface, automatically retrieving the most relevant tickets, code and documentation in one view. Since go-live, engineers report a roughly 60% reduction in time spent locating material and cut onboarding time by 30%, translating into faster coordinization and measurable gains in overall delivery productivity whilst also validating our agentic approach and further strengthening our partnership with Google Cloud. To conclude, I want to thank our employees across Endava. Our teams continue adapting quickly to technological change while supporting clients through increasingly complex transformation programs. We remain focused on disciplined execution, operational accountability clients' delivery quality and positioning Endava for long-term relevance in the next generation of enterprise technology services. With that, I'll hand the call over to Mark, who will walk through this quarter's financial performance and our guidance for the rest of the fiscal year.

Thanks, John. Revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, was GBP 178.5 million. The revenue miss in the quarter was due to opportunities looking beyond March. As John mentioned, there were several factors that impacted revenue this quarter, along with the revised Q4 outlook. Mainly clients located in the Middle East delaying work due to the ongoing conflict a slowdown in overall client demand due to the macroeconomic environment arising from the conflict and finally, large complex outcome-based contracts taking longer to execute than planned. This compares to GBP 194.8 million in the same period in the prior year, representing an 8.4% decrease. In constant currency, our revenue decreased 6.4% from the same period in the prior year. . Loss before tax for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, was GBP 372 million, which includes a noncash goodwill impairment of GBP 364.6 million compared to a profit of GBP 13.6 million in the same period in the prior year. Our adjusted PBT for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, was GBP 3.2 million compared to GBP 24.6 million for the same period in the prior year. Our adjusted PBT margin was 1.8% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, compared to 12.6% for the same period in the prior year. Our costs increased in the quarter due to higher go-to-market investments and an increase in the bench as we are training staff in AI and Dava.Flow skills. This is a key investment in skills for our new AI-driven business. The market capitalization of the company and the reduced outlook has required us to assess the carrying value of goodwill and the deferred tax asset for U.K. tax losses in the U.K. As a consequence, we have taken an exceptional charge of GBP 364.6 million in relation to the impairment of goodwill and GBP 23.2 million regarding the derecognition of the deferred tax asset. Those charges are noncash and one-off in nature. The deferred tax asset derecognition because it has occurred partly through the financial year impacts our adjusted tax rate, which for Q3 is 17% and is expected to rise to 37% in Q4 leading the estimated full year adjusted tax rate at around 25%. These adjusted tax rates do not change the amount of cash tax we are paying. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share was 5p for the 3 months ended March 31, 2020, calculated on 52.2 million diluted shares as compared to 34p for the same period in the prior year calculated on 59.4 million diluted shares. Revenue from our 10 largest clients accounted for 40% of revenue for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026 compared to 39% in the same period last fiscal year. The average spend per client from our 10 largest clients decreased from GBP 7.5 million to GBP 7.1 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, as compared to the 3 months ended March 31, 2025, representing a 5.6% year-over-year decrease. Office movement FX contributed to a 3.7% year-over-year decrease due to U.S. dollar weakness in the quarter. In the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, North America accounted for 38% of revenue, Europe or 23%, the U.K. for 33%, while the rest of the world accounted for 6%. Revenue from North America decreased by 5.5% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, over the same period last fiscal year. The decrease was driven by an FX headwind of 6.1%. Comparing the same periods, revenue for Europe declined 3.6% due mainly to weakness in payments and TMT, and the U.K. decreased 15.4% due mainly to the reclassification of the large payments client from the U.K. to North America as the relationship with the client is now based there, which was mentioned last quarter. The rest of the world decreased 1.8%, driven mainly by the payments and other verticals. Our adjusted free cash flow was negative GBP 3.1 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, from a positive GBP 17.5 million during the same period last fiscal year. Free cash flow was negative in the quarter, mainly due to an increase in receivables as a large proportion of the billing for the quarter was issued in March. We anticipate collecting the majority of this by the end of June. Our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period totaled GBP 48.4 million at March 31, 2026, compared to GBP 59.3 million at June 30, 2025, and GBP 68.3 million at March 31, 2025. Our borrowings increased to GBP 195.8 million at March 31, 2026, from GBP 180.9 million at June 30, 2025 and GBP 136.5 million at March 31, 2025, primarily to support the funding requirements of our share repurchase program. Capital expenditure for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026, as a percentage of revenue was 1.6% compared to 0.6% in the same period last fiscal year. Turning to the guide for the remainder of the fiscal year, as John mentioned earlier, we have lowered the Q4 guide due to slower-than-expected pipeline conversion, which is most marked in banking and capital markets across all of our regions. Now moving to our outlook. Our guidance for Q4 fiscal year 2026 is as follows: we expect revenue to be in the range of GBP 181 million to GBP 185 million representing constant currency revenue decrease of between 3.5% and 1.0% on a year-over-year basis. We expect adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of 9p to 13p per share. Our guidance for full fiscal year 2026 is as follows: we expect revenue to be in the range of GBP 721.8 million to GBP 725.8 million, representing constant currency revenue decrease of between 60% and and 5.0% on a year-over-year basis. We expect adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of 45p to 49p per share. The above guidance for Q4 fiscal year 2026 and the full fiscal year 2026, assumes exchange rates on April 30, 2026 when the exchange rate was GBP 1 to USD 1.35 and EUR 1.16. This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, we are now ready to open the line for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from James Faucette at Morgan Stanley.

Thank you very much wanted to dig in quickly into 2 topics. -- a little bit unrelated or I mean, always related, but separate. First, in terms of customer decision-making, I mean, obviously, there's a lot of AI and valuation, et cetera, going on. And you talked about projects moving to production. But we're still seeing kind of pressure on the rest of the budget and spend. And you talked about obviously extending decision cycles. Can you just help us bridge those and when or under what conditions you would expect to see that movement to AI production start to benefit you and we can start to see real movement on the bookings side. And then on capital allocation, can you just talk about how you're thinking about what you should be doing around your debt and borrowings, especially -- obviously you've tried to take advantage of where the stock is with buybacks, but just wondering if delevering is an increasing priority, et cetera.

Thanks, James. So let me pick up the customer decision-making question that you had. We are seeing much more substantive AI-driven deals coming through. We announced NatWest and the collaboration we have with Mastercard in the opening remarks. And it's visibly growing as a proportion of our business, time what it was a year ago, taking it to [ $27 ] million in the quarter or 15% of the total business. So it's now becoming a substantive element of the business that we expect to grow from. We're seeing that in respective deals that are coming through. They are more complex in nature, outcome-based, looking at serious transformation across the customers' business, and they've taken longer to close and get started. We do use AI very much as part of that sales process. So actually establishing what is going to be done, is a very AI-driven process. You are correct. There is pressure on discretionary spend. I think in Endava, we are more exposed to that than many of our peers, a lot of our business is more in the discretionary camp. And we continue to see downward pressure on that. You can see that in the underlying shift of our business from our traditional business, digital transformation business, towards the AI-driven business that I highlighted in the opening remarks. So obviously, the digital transformation business has been declining whilst we've been seeing the AI side ramp up. However, that is the shift. That is the pivot that we are deliberately making as a company. And we're very comfortable to be seeing the AI-driven arena growing. Mark, do you want to pick up on the capital allocation?

Yes. So the cash generation in the quarter was disappointing. As I said, most of the billings arose in March. So the collections will take place between now and June. So we anticipate a significantly better cash flow generation in Q4. But notwithstanding that, leverage is something we want to focus on reducing. We do have a refinancing coming up during the course of FY '27. But looking at the wider funding of the business, it is something that we will consider as part of that. .

Our next question today comes from Bryan Bergin at TD Cowen.

So maybe a bit of a follow-up as it relates to the unplanned pressure here. So I understand the Mid East volatility causing the discretionary issues and large deal opportunities taking longer than planned. But in addition to that, is there vendor consolidation and broader shifts in client priorities playing out where the offering just isn't as robust yet as competitors. Really trying to understand how much maybe transitory timing dynamic versus a function of client setting programs and shifting those priorities elsewhere or the consolidation share loss or even other factors like over competitive pricing in the market? If you could just comment on that.

So we're not seeing a huge vendor consolidation headwind. The pressure seems to be coming from as we deliver more productively. We've been talking about our shift to AI native where more than 75% of our staff are now using AI in their daily work, and that is driving higher productivity. Clients are harvesting a little bit more of that benefit than we would prefer as we are not reinvesting it. But I think that is also part of the shift as they're looking to a much more substantive AI-driven transformations and that's very much part of the pivot that we are focusing on. Those projects are taking longer to come through. They continue to take longer. The thing that I'm highlighting is that they are coming through, and we are getting them signed there.

Okay. And then my follow-up as it relates to some of the actions by the foundational model provider. So obviously, with news flow around open AI deployment companies, some of the joint ventures, the Anthropic and OpenAI are looking to set up as well as they're looking for consulting and engineering talent I guess there are a couple of avenues here. But what's your perspective there? Just considering your base of engineering talent, it seems like it would be obviously an attractive potential opportunity for them to lean into partners like you more. But as you think about kind of competition versus cooperation kind of where do you land? What are your thoughts on them?

Yes. So we actually -- number one, I think, the foundational model companies are actually showing that they need services partners for implementation in the real world, and they're looking for how to accelerate that and push it along and that's the reason for some of these deploy co models that they're coming up with. We are in conversations with them very, very much. The expectation is that, that will become a new channel to market for us as they utilize our skills and capabilities in order to drive the commitments that they will be making to clients. . So we see it much more as being a collaboration opportunity, a go-to-market opportunity than a competitive activity. A lot of what they're focusing on is complementary to what we do in terms of the heavy lift engineering capabilities that we've built in the AI space, and they recognize that.

And our next question comes from Puneet Jain with JPMorgan.

I want to follow up on Bryan's question on revenue weakness. I want to focus on both related to your estimates as well as your peers. So I understand that the Middle East surprised you in this quarter, but revenue has come in below your expectations many quarters in the last 3 years. So do you think like you need to change anything in the planning process, like to get a better handle of quarterly revenue or your -- even the quarter as well as full year guidance.

Yes. I mean the Middle East arena was not something we saw coming, we'd actually invested pretty heavily over the past 12 months. and had deals ready to sign literally about to kick off when the conflict kicked off. And it literally stopped all activity across our client base. And that had a noticeable impact on Q3 and a bigger impact on Q4. Your question about the timing of how -- essentially how quickly we get these deals through the pipeline and into revenue is 1 that we're paying a lot of attention to. We're very sensitive to it. If you look at our Q4 guide, we've put a lot of work into the client conversations and the project plan, if you like, of getting these deals signed and the revenue ramping. So it is something that continues to need a lot of attention, and we definitely got caught by that in Q3.

Okay. Got it. And then it's been like, give or take, like a couple of years since you acquired Galaxy, and now you are also pushing ahead with this AI first model, AI first delivery. Talk to us about change management within Endava, like motor employees, motivating them to embrace AI to increase like this new way of delivery while also like the stock obviously has been down so much. So -- and some of those employees might also be worried about their jobs, given like the news flow around AI. So talk to us about the change management with the Endava, like how are you managing all those things?

Our approach to change here has been a pioneer and rollout model. So in each area, as we're driving change, we get a smaller group of people who pioneer what good looks like and then roll it out across the organization. So the first of those that we talked about around 18 months ago was the shift to AI native. That was done by getting small teams across each part of the business to engage with AI at that stage. It was the agentic -- sorry, the generative AI that was in play and how to create GPTs, and how to drive usage across that each part of the business. We then moved into a rollout phase where adoption was pushed right across the business with everyone having access to -- we went for that GPT Enterprise as our standard across the business. And over the following 3 to 4 months, we saw usage across our staff base to move above 75% of people using it every day in their job, which was our objective to have that AI native shift. The big shift that we're pushing at the moment is Dava.Flow. Now we've been developing Dava.Flow over the last 18 months or so. You'd be aware that we came out with our own genic solution ahead of the large vendors coming up with agenetic models. And so we were using that to initially start keeping how Dava.Flow would work. Dava.Flow being our method around how you develop business solutions and ultimately, software and agentic solutions in an agentive world where most of the work is done by agents rather than buy people that shift from agile, if you like. So those pioneering groups actually defined Dava.Flow, created all the prompts, et cetera, that go into it, created the context warehousing, all of the pieces that go to make Dava.Flow work. We pushed that into our payments gateway, which I've talked about on the opening remarks so that we had an internal project where we could really drive not only the payments the way we were building but also the development of Dava.Flow. And then over the last 6 months, we started to shift to spreading that step-by-step across the organization. I highlighted we've now got 12 clients using Dava.Flow in [indiscernible], up from 3 last quarter. So that's the rollout speed. Within the organization, we've got over 1,000 engineers who are actually using a training on Dava.Flow now or over 10% of our direct staff, and that's in anticipation of the greater use of Dava.Flow that we anticipate coming through both Q4 and as we move into Q1. All of that within a change management framework, we call it our Keystone management program that is driving that change.

And our next question today comes from Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank. .

I wanted to ask about another one of the factors you called out is driving the miss and guide down specifically the outcome-based contracts taking longer to execute. So hoping you can give some detail around what exactly is taking longer to execute here. And then I guess more broadly, you've clearly talked a lot about the shift to outcome-based contracts over the last few quarters. So I guess I'm just wondering, if these problems or the things that are taking longer to execute are actually fixable or transitory? Or is there any sort of dynamic where clients just don't want to shift to outcome-based models to try and realize benefits on pricing or efficiency or your traditional time and materials contracts.

Yes. So we're not seeing that latter problem. It's just these are, by nature, very large transformative engagements in the tens of millions type category and nailing down. We're using AI to help give clarity on what it is that we're going to be delivering and getting that much earlier in the cycle and expecting that we would see a 3- or 4-month sales cycle from having shaped what it is that we're going to be delivering and how AI is going to be making an impact. But seeing that turn into 5, 6 months to get the deals closed. There is an element of clients being on a learning curve, their legal departments, worrying about issues, worrying about regulation, worrying about how to contract these deals that is becoming visible and it's taking longer. We expect that to ameliorate as people become more familiar with the issues and can get these things through faster on their side. We're not seeing it being because they don't want to engage on outcome-based deals. These things are progressing. We announced some in the opening remarks, and there are others under the covers that a little smaller. We are seeing them progressing. They're just taking longer than expected.

Okay. Got it. And then for a follow-up, I wanted to ask specifically on 2 of the verticals. So I guess, first, what's happening in banking and capital markets that vertical have been growing nicely for you and the growth fell pretty dramatically in 3Q. I think you mentioned worse pipeline conversion, but more color would be helpful there. And then in health care, specifically, I think on the call last quarter, you talked about a large health care clients slowing down spend in 3Q, but you had expected them to return to spend in 4Q. So it looks like that played out in 3Q, but is that specific client still expected to return to spend here in the fourth quarter? .

On the health care side, yes, we expected one of our larger clients to slow, which they have continued to do. So they came in as expected. And we expect that actually to continue slowing into Q4. There is some offset to a certain extent as we go into Q4 because another client is actually growing quite quickly. The trouble is the decline of the larger client has happened more quickly than anticipated with the ramp-up of the newer client -- larger clients. And then we do have a ramp down from an existing client from Q2 through Q3 and Q4. So you're right, we've sort of come off a good sort of Q2. There's been a step down because of those sort of dynamics, but it stabilizes as we go into Q4 as anticipated in the guide. .

Got it. Anything on banking and capital markets or...

Yes. Sorry. So in banking and capital markets, we were pretty sort of stable through Q1, Q2. We did see a step down. This -- as we went into Q3, I think a [ couple of million, 1.5 million ] or so partly 1 client coming off project work that we've been doing for them and also some lumpiness in the delivery profile for another client. But we do expect recovery in BCM into Q4. But the point is it's not as strong as we were anticipating in the original guide that we set in February. And that sort of slowdown in banking and capital markets is most pronounced in the U.S. and the U.K. although we are feeling it to a smaller extent in the other geographies, but it's more significantly in U.K. and North America. .

And our next question today comes from Jonathan Lee at Guggenheim Partners.

Given what we saw in the quarter versus the mid-February commentary around 95% contract and committed visibility what are you seeing quarter-to-date in April and May on both demand and the slip contracts? And what's the coverage on the 4Q range today? What gives you confidence in that sequential improvement into 4Q that's implied in the outlook?

So if go back to Q3, we had a range of [ GBP 185 million to GBP 182 million ]. We were saying the contractual coverage at the high end I think it was about 90% and it rose, I think, about 92% for the low end of the guide. So the pipeline to convert in both high and low was about GBP 19 million and GBP 16 million, and we converted about GBP 13 million. So you've got a conversion which is below what we anticipate is at the low end, it's about 80%. Now for the high guide in Q4, we have contractual -- contracted and committed of 95% for the low end of GBP 181 million, we have 97%. So that leaves about GBP 9 million at the high end to convert and 5 mill to convert at the low end. We have 3 or 4 opportunities that are sort of sizable. But we have taken a view that -- some of those are not going to convert as part of the high guide and then a severe downside, that's 1 converts when we get to the low end of the guide. So we have been sort of conservative, I believe. I know we have missed in the quarter with that sort of outlook. And in terms of the step-up, it's something like at the top end of the guide about I think, 3.5%. We do have some movement in terms of working days between the quarters, that actually does help us somewhat sort of step-up is not as strong as it may appear when you look at it on an absolute sort of growth basis. But there is always pipeline in our figures, it's the nature of the business model. The issue going back to sort of John's initial comments has been the predictability of when opportunities convert.

Thanks for that color, Mark. And just as a follow-up, can you help us think through some of the earlier comments around AI productivity harvesting. As clients become more aware of the efficiency gains that AI is enabling, how do you think about the structural durability of pricing and contract profitability over the longer term, particularly as clients may look to extract more of those gains at the table. What's sort of the offset mechanism there?

I think the offset mechanism is the change in the business model, John was outlining in terms of AI-driven models, which is basically outcome based. Yes, there's been pressure in the traditional T&M space. We are being more productive. It sort of erodes revenues. But we're moving more to an outcome-based longer-term duration partnership arrangement with large clients, where we have stronger visibility of revenue and we can capture more of that benefit from the rollout of Dava.Flow to path more of that benefit. And therefore, sort of protect margins. I think the sort of key thing. I mean, these are -- we're not going to quote numbers at you, but the new model revenue margins are significantly higher than our existing T&M margin figures, which are under pressure. It's a question of can we accelerate the new AI-driven business to offset that decline that we're seeing in the, let's call it, the traditional digital transformation business, which is largely T&M.

I mean I think the other thing just to add to that, it's not specifically around the productivity and the model style and the pricing attached to it. But our utilization availability is running much lower as we're going through this pivot we're investing in skilled retraining and so on. And actually, we need to do that to prepare our workforce for the enemies coming through. It's not an optional extra, and that is part of the -- or a big part of the margin compression that you're seeing rather than specifically a pricing issue. Pricing has been actually pretty...

It's pretty stable when you look at it also on an average work going measure. I think this is a sort of issue that sort of transition, the usual metrics of billability and average rate per work day are sort of flying a little bit as we go through this change.

And our next question today comes from [ Matt Desert ] at William Blair.

This is Matt, on for Maggie Nolan. I guess to follow up on that last point on AI, how are you defining your AI revenue? I guess what growth trajectory are you underwriting there? When do you expect that could become a majority of the business mix?

Yes. So we've pulled this out as what we're calling AI-driven business where AI is at the core of the business transformation proposition, often outcome-based typically, sold at the top of the C-suite. The 2 examples, NatWest and the collaboration with Mastercard and a number of the Google Cloud deals in the opening remarks fall into that category, and we're very focused on developing this type of pipeline. It needs let me call them forward-leaning organizations who are up for this acceleration, and that is a subset of the market. It's not everyone who's up for that right now. But where we find those people we're getting really, really good traction around the AI-driven change. I would highlight, it's different to the AI native measure that we've previously published which has stabilized in the sort of 75% to 80% mark, which is a measure of how people are using AI in the organization. And if they're using it on a daily basis in their work, we're counting that as AI usage. That enables strong productivity, but it's not the same as the sort of AI-driven business transformation that we are classifying here.

Got it. And then I guess on the margins, what specific levers do you have to protect or expand margins given the revenue pressures you're seeing as you pivot the business? And how do you think about that going into next year?

Margins, well, we sort of managing to 2 dynamics, which is we'll call it the traditional T&M business and the -- which we can call the digital transformation business. So the way you've always sort of managed margin pressure there is actually just looking at cost and getting visibility, which we can do. You do have to have good visibility so that it's not disruptive, but that is definitely a lever. The other offset is to actually build the new more quickly with the AI-driven work where you have longer-term visibility year-to-year. You have more control over how you deliver that work because it's not on a time and material basis. And it's about the deployment of Dava.Flow to capture that sort of benefit. So those are the 2 levers that you can -- you apply basically, is managing that sort of dynamic. And I expect over the coming years, this sort of split between what is fixed price and what is T&M is going to start to shift. We don't have any figures at the moment, but we definitely do know at the moment that our T&M proportion of revenues is starting to come down. So I think last year, it was about GBP 77 million on a full year basis, FY '25. It's probably about 71% of our revenues in this quarter. So that is an indication of the shift that is going on where we are contracting through fixed price outcomes, not all through Dava.Flow. But that is one way that you can protect margin going forward about growing the new more profitable work.

And our next question today comes from [indiscernible] with HSBC.

I just want to ask on the update regarding your go-to-market with OpenAI. You have a partnership. Do you have any update on how it's going?

Yes, we continue to have a really strong relationship with OpenAI. It's global in nature, driven out of the -- out of the U.S. The conversations that we had with the new deploy code, a part of that relationship and through that, putting together thoughts and plans on how we're going to work together with the new deploy code. We continue to get early sight of some of the models and so on that they're putting out so that we can prepare go-to-market capabilities alongside them, and we continue to bid together on opportunities, some of which were in the large complex space. .

And that concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to John Cotterell for any closing remarks.

Yes. So thank you all for joining us today, and I look forward to speaking to you in September. .

Thank you, sir. That concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.