Mike Thomson
Analyst · BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yes. Look, Arun, thanks for the question and I'm glad you pointed it out. I do have a couple things I'd like to add there. So, we talked a little bit about the softness in discretionary spend in general in the sector, but what we also talked about is this increase in pipeline and the increase in backlog. And based on the increase in backlog and our renewal schedule, I think the way that you've characterized your question even is really great in the sense that it gives us a tremendous amount of confidence that the growth trajectory that we had put forth for that business is starting to be underpinned in our backlog, right? So really the strength of that business and starting to see some of that softening and the contracts we already signed for that business in the year is really giving us that high degree of confidence. And I would almost tie it into Anja's question a little bit. We've seen the margin improvement in that Ex-L&S business, to the tune of, as Deb indicated, about almost 300 basis points of improvement across the Board I think, when we look at the overall kind of Ex-L&S space. And to Peter's point, a lot of the future is coming from increased revenue. So, we've been able to prove the dynamics of our delivery, drive that margin benefit and do that on a fairly flat revenue base, you indicated. And now, we're seeing the backlog really support revenue growth, which will help expand those margins in the future. I think Deb talked about 150 to 200 basis points improvement over the next two years in that Ex-L&S space. To Peter's point, some of that's from top line growth, which we feel like is embedded in our backlog, and then some continual delivery. So that's the reason why we feel very strongly, about that market in general. Think we got our strategy right. Think that the kind of external efforts that Peter mentioned around our selling, and our go-to-market are starting to really resonate. Peter talked about the industry analyst component of that, so that the visibility, the introduction to RFPs are also building up our pipeline and our backlog. And then ultimately translating that to win. So again, feeling pretty, pretty comfortable and strong about returning to that growth trajectory on the top line, and having that enhance the profit that we've already seen.