Amdocs Ltd

NASDAQ:DOX

Earnings Call Analysis

Amdocs Reports Record Revenue and Margins, Reaffirms Growth Guidance

Amdocs achieved record Q3 revenue of $1.25 billion, a near 2% increase from last year. Non-GAAP operating margin hit a multi-year high at 18.6%, rising by 80 basis points year-over-year. The company also recorded non-GAAP EPS of $1.62. The 12-month backlog reached a record $4.25 billion, up 3%. Amdocs repurchased $169 million in shares. Strong cloud solution demand was highlighted by new deals with AT&T, TELUS, and Vodafone Ziggo. For fiscal 2024, Amdocs maintained its guidance of 2.3% to 3.1% revenue growth and around 9% non-GAAP EPS growth.

Solid Financial Performance

Amdocs delivered a strong financial performance for the third fiscal quarter, reporting a record revenue of $1.25 billion, representing a 1.8% year-over-year increase in constant currency. Despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, Amdocs managed to maintain non-GAAP operating margins at 18.6%, the highest in many years, reflecting an 80 basis point improvement year-over-year. This margin expansion underscores the continued success of ongoing efficiency initiatives, driven by disciplined resource management and automation strategies .

Robust Backlog and Share Repurchases

The company reported a record 12-month backlog of $4.25 billion, indicating a 3% increase from the previous year. This backlog growth is a positive indicator of future business stability and revenue generation. Additionally, Amdocs demonstrated confidence in its business model by repurchasing approximately $169 million of its shares during the quarter. Year-to-date, the company returned a total of $601 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends .

Cloud and AI Initiatives

Cloud solutions continue to be a significant growth driver for Amdocs. Notable achievements include a 5-year cloud deal with AT&T and new partnerships with TELUS in Canada and Vodafone Ziggo in the Netherlands. These deals emphasize the strong market interest and sales momentum for Amdocs' cloud offerings. Furthermore, Amdocs' generative AI initiatives are gaining traction, transitioning from pilot stages to commercial customer awards. Significant AI projects include an important award with a leading global operator for integrating Amdocs' GenAI MACE platform .

Strong Managed Services Performance

Managed services revenue reached a record $741 million in Q3, accounting for nearly 59% of total revenue. This 3% year-over-year growth was driven by mission-critical support activities and expanding engagements with long-standing customers like Rogers. The company also saw growth in cloud-driven managed services, exemplified by agreements with TELUS and Vodafone Ziggo .

Geographical Revenue Insights

Geographically, the performance was mixed. North America's revenue showed slight sequential growth but a year-over-year decline. Europe experienced weaker performance due to timing differences in project roll-offs and ramp-ups, while the Rest of the World posted another record quarter with nearly 13% year-over-year growth. This diversification underscores the importance of Amdocs' global footprint in maintaining overall revenue stability .

Commitment to Sustainable Practices

Amdocs made significant strides in its ESG initiatives, achieving a 55% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions since fiscal 2019, far exceeding science-based target commitments. The company increased its global consumption of renewable energy to nearly 59% in 2023. This commitment to sustainability was recognized by TIME Magazine, which named Amdocs one of the world’s most sustainable companies .

Guidance and Future Outlook

For the full year fiscal 2024, Amdocs reaffirmed its guidance for non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth of 8.5% to 9.5%. The company expects full-year revenue growth in the range of 1.9% to 2.7%, accounting for an unfavorable impact from foreign currency fluctuations. The guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter includes revenue within the range of $1.24 billion to $1.28 billion. Amdocs remains optimistic about delivering a double-digit total shareholder return for the fourth consecutive year .

Challenges and Strategic Focus

Despite the strong performance, Amdocs acknowledged the ongoing challenges posed by the macroeconomic environment, including industry pressures and capital expenditure cuts by customers. To navigate these challenges, Amdocs remains focused on cloud migration, digital modernization, 5G and fiber monetization, and leveraging generative AI to drive innovation and operational excellence. The company is also actively evaluating M&A opportunities to further bolster strategic growth domains .

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Amdocs Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

Please be advised today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Matthew Smith, please go ahead. .

[Matthew Smith, executive]

Thank you, Kevin. And before we begin, I need to call your attention to our disclaimer on Slide 2 of the presentation. It notes that some of our comments today may be forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including as described in Amdocs's SEC filings and that we will discuss certain financial information that is not prepared in accordance with GAAP. For more information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations of these measures, we refer you to today's earnings release, which will also be furnished with the SEC on Form 6-K. .

Participating on the call with me today are Shuky Sheffer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Amdocs Management Limited; and Tamar Rapaport-Dagim, Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer.

To support today's earnings call, we are providing a presentation, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. And as always, a copy of today's prepared remarks will also be posted immediately following the conclusion of this call. On today's agenda, Shuky will recap our business and financial achievements for the third quarter fiscal 2024, and we'll update you on the continued progress we've made executing against our strategic growth framework, including generative AI and our continued sales momentum in cloud.

Shuky will finish by discussing our financial outlook for the full year fiscal 2024, after which Tamar will provide additional details on our third quarter financial performance, our forward guidance and our continued commitment to ESG. And with that, I'll turn it over to Shuky. .

[Joshua Sheffer, executive]

Thanks, Matt, and good afternoon to everyone joining us on all today. I'm pleased to report solid results for our third fiscal quarter and would like to thank our employees globally for their commitment to help our customers provide seamless connectivity and amazing user experience to billions of end users each day.

The key financial highlights of the quarter can be found on Slide 7. Q2 revenue was a record $1.25 billion, up nearly 2% from a year ago in constant currency and in line with the midpoint of our guidance after adjusting for unfavorable foreign currency movements.

Notably, non-GAAP operating margin was 18.6% was the highest in many years, rising by 80 basis points year-over-year and 20 basis points sequentially as we continue to benefit from our ongoing margin expansion initiatives. Non-GAAP earnings per share was $1.62, consistent with the higher end of our expectation, and we ended Q3 with a record setting 12 months backlog of $4.25 billion, up approximately 3% from a year ago.

Demonstrating our confidence in Amdocs unique business model and the future success of the company, we also increased our pace of buyback activity in Q3 repurchasing approximately $169 million of Amdocs shares. Turning to Q3 operational highlights on Slide 8. Demand for Amdocs cloud solution remains especially strong, highlighted by the significant 5-year cloud deal we recently announced with AT&T and newly signed partnership agreements to support the long-term cloud migration journeys at TELUS in Canada and Vodafone Ziggo in the Netherlands.

Customer demand was also healthy across our broader strategic domain of digital modernization, 5G and fiber monetization and network automation as reflected by significant new deal awards at AT&T and Charter in the U.S. A1 Telecom in Austria and PLDT in Globe in the Philippines. As to generative AI, I'm happy to announce an important award with a leading global operator which is chosen to integrate Amdocs GenAI telco-specific MACE platform in its business operations. From an operational perspective, we delivered consistent execution and a substantial number of deployments, including major project milestone achievements with customers such as AT&T and U.S. Cellular, Vodafone Italy, Vodafone Germany and SCS and European satellite communication provider, in the Philippines and Optus in Australia.

Among the highlights, we successfully transitioned Claro Brazil, on-premise infrastructure to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, for about 48 million subscribers, demonstrating Amdocs capability to efficiently manage the type of large-scale customer projects that underpins our high market win rate and the reputation as a dependable partner. Q3 was also a record quarter in Managed Services, reflecting the ongoing ramp-up mission-critical support activities and new logos and long-standing customers, such as Rogers where we newly expanded a multiyear engagement is creating a pull through of our latest cloud native offering like enterprise catalog and charging.

Now moving to Slide 9, let me add some color around the growth strategy, which to remind you, is designed to provide the market-leading innovation and technology our customers need to accelerate the journey to the cloud, transform the customer experience in consumer and B2B, monetize the future market potential 5G stand-alone networks fixed wireless access and fiber, the leader dynamic connectivity experience by streaming and automation complex network ecosystems and simplify and accelerate the adoption of generative AI.

Starting with cloud on Slide 10. Market interest and sales momentum for Amdocs Cloud solutions remains strong. With a growing list of service providers choosing us as a primary technology partner to support the migration in cloud and surround the systems alike. For many service providers, cloud migration is a complex multiyear journey that is still in the early phases, Amdocs cloud strategy is thereof designed to help service providers simplify and accelerate their journey to the cloud by owning an end-to-end suite of unique products and services delivered under a fully accountable cloud operational model.

The journey typically begin with Amdocs cloud consulting and planning expertise, in addition to which, we also support product deployment, including Amdocs latest CES suite or cloud-enabled classic version. The migration of Amdocs to non-Amdocs application, including mainframe, cloud managed services or cloud rocks and the benefits of our intimate partnership with Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.

Furthermore, we continually enhance our cloud services portfolio with a combination of organic investment and strategic M&A to provide additional beachhead from which to accelerate the industry journey to the cloud, a prime example is the last November acquisition of stadia, which contributed high sophisticated maintenance to cloud migration capabilities that are now supporting the previously announced expansion of our cloud activities, new domain -- in this new domain at AT&T.

Amdocs recently signed deals, TELUS in Canada signed a multiyear managed services agreement with Amdocs to migrate its monetization operations to the cloud. And Vodafone Ziggo in Netherlands choose Amdocs to modernize and migrate its monetization engines to the public cloud, including both Amdocs and non-Amdocs application.

Moving to digital modernization on Slide 11. AT&T's chosen ConnectX cloud-native SaaS platform powered by AWS, enabling it to quickly launch new digital brands and services for different customer segments, reflecting healthy market demand, this win adds to a growing list of connected customers, which includes Vinit in Brazil and Mellon in South Africa. Globe in the Philippines has chosen Amdocs to deploy its AI and data platform for the information data hub. The platform hosted on Google Cloud will enable Globe to access real-time business data from various sources in system and use it to enhance customer experience, optimize operations and large personal services.

In Australia, our B2B Amdocs configure price CPQ platform deployed together with Amdocs catalog to support its enterprise business, while simplify and accelerate the sales journey for Optus agents in Australia, empowering them to offer innovative business solutions to enterprise, SMB and wholesale customer faster than ever.

Turning to 5G and fiber monetization on Slide 12. Telekom Austria recently selected Amdocs for a multiyear project to consolidate, upgrade, and modernize its billing, charging and catalog solution, and faster time to market, new revenue growth, operational efficiencies, and improved customer experience. This key project will also support the launch of new services and products across all customer segments, including 5G, IoT and other advanced services.

Amdocs next generation monetization offerings are also providing relevant -- also proving relevant to telcos and newly emerging fiber operators that are investing to accelerate the rollout of fiber networks in the U.S. and internationally. Our capabilities include a full range of BSS and OSS offering to support all aspects of the fiber customer journey, including fiber service creation, ordering and activation, billing and customer support as well as the planning automation of the fiber network rollout itself.

Moving to Slide 13. I'm delighted to name PLDT in the Philippines as the Southeast Asian service provider that recently selected Amdocs end-to-end service orchestration solution, our key offering that was strengthened by our acquisition of Toco service assurance business last year. As an important component of PTs and OSS and cloud modernization program, Amdocs will deliver unified network inventory, service and network orchestration and business process automation capabilities operating on the public cloud.

Notably, the agreement also includes the customer service solution for case management, which is a component of the Amdocs customer negation platform we built in partnership with Microsoft. Rounding out my strategic review, I would like to brief you on some exciting advancements in Generative AI as illustrated on Slide 14. As you are aware, Generative AI has been a top priority for Amdocs. We have progressed our Gen AI strategy by leveraging our MACE platform to deliver Generative AI super agents that directly address our customers most pressing business imperatives and forging strong collaboration with industry leaders such as NVIDIA, Microsoft and AWS.

I'm therefore happy to share today's news that a leading global operator chosen our MACE platform to create new revenue opportunities, drive efficiencies and reshape customer experience. This important award in partnership with NVIDIA, demonstrate our commitment to innovation and highlights Amdocs' unique role as 1 of the leading technology enablers in the -- in the telecommunication industry with the power to help service providers fully harness the potential of data and Gen AI to deliver real-world value and savings.

For instance, Amdocs is in the heart of helping our customer to accelerate Gen AI technology disruption in their call center operation and to remanaging the care experience, as we showed in a recent production trial with a North American service provider that resulted in a remarkable 60-plus percent decrease in average call handling times for bill inquiry achieving 90% successful solution and almost 100% accuracy. We continue to progress our active engagement running many pilots globally, including with our large flagship customers to enable important GenAI use cases and smart agent capabilities of the future.

Now moving to Slide 15, I would like to comment on our current market and operating position before discussing our fourth quarter outlook. First, we continue to operate in a challenging industry demand environment, the condition of which are yet to improve. Nonetheless, we continue to see healthy pipeline of opportunities across our strategic areas of focus, and we are positioned to maintain a high market win rate by leveraging our pedigree for innovation and technology, market-leading portfolio, best-in-class execution and highly talented people.

I'm especially pleased with our cloud-related activities, which last year exceed 20% of total revenue and which is on track for a double-digit growth in fiscal 2024. Our Gen AI strategy is gaining momentum as we begin to make the shift from production pilots to commercial customer awards and our commitment to operational excellence and ongoing efficiency initiative is also bearing fruit, position us to achieve our targets for accelerated profitability gains in fiscal 2024.

Wrapping everything together on Slide 16. We are on track to achieve the midpoint of our guidance for constant currency revenue growth in fiscal 2024. Additionally, we are reiterating the midpoint of our guidance for non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth of roughly 9% in fiscal 2024, which is within the tightened range of 8.5% to 9.5%, coupled with our dividend yield of more than 2%, we are positioned to deliver double-digit expected total shareholder return for the fourth year in a row.

With that, let me turn the call over to Tamar for her remarks.

[Tamar Dagim, executive]

Thank you, Shuky, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm pleased with our solid financial results for the third fiscal quarter as detailed on Slide 18. With record Q3 revenue of approximately $1.25 billion, up 1.8% year-over-year in constant currency. On a reported basis, revenue increased 1.1% from a year ago and was consistent with the midpoint of guidance, adjusting for a negative impact from foreign currency movements of approximately $5 million compared to our guidance assumptions. .

From a geographical perspective, North America declined slightly as compared with the year ago, but grew on a sequential basis. Europe was weaker, mainly reflecting timing differences between a natural roll-off of completed projects and a gradual ramp-up of new deal awards. Rest of the World delivered another record quarter with revenue growth of nearly 13% from a year ago.

Shifting down the income statement, our non-GAAP operating margin was 18.6% for the third quarter, the highest in many years. Non-GAAP operating margin improved by 80 basis points from a year ago and 20 basis points sequentially, reflecting our continuous drive to improve operational excellence through disciplined resource management, automation, sophisticated tools, and leveraging AI, including Generative AI to push for more cost savings and higher efficiencies across the board.

Interest and other expenses amounted to roughly $7 million in the third quarter and reflected adverse foreign currency movements in the quarter. On the bottom line, non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.62 was the higher end of guidance and included a non-GAAP effective tax rate of 16.7%, which was consistent with the higher end of our annual target range of 13% to 17%. Diluted GAAP EPS was $1.21 for the third fiscal quarter. This includes a restructuring charge of approximately $15 million or $0.11 per share, without which diluted GAAP EPS would have been at the high end of the guidance range of $124 million to $132 million.

We'll provide more context around the restructuring charge when I discuss our financial outlook later. Moving to Slide 19, 12 months backlog was a record $4.25 billion, up approximately $2.7 million from a year ago and $20 million sequentially. Our 12 months backlog reflects a positive mix of project awards, managed services renewals, and expansions with existing customers and new logos and have traditionally served as a new leading indicator of our business.

As an additional point, note that 12 months backlog includes less than a full year impact from the significant new deal we recently signed with AT&T, reflecting the phased ramp-up of activities expected under the current plan of execution.

Turning to Slide 20. Managed services revenue was a record $741 million in Q3, up nearly 3% from a year ago and equivalent to roughly 59% of total revenue. Managed services revenue was mainly driven by ongoing ramp of mission critical support activities with new logos and long-standing customers, such as the extended multiyear engagement we announced with Broader last quarter, that included an expansion into new domains like data and testing services and more.

Managed Services growth is also supported by our customers' migration to the cloud, proven by our recently signed agreements with TELUS in Canada and Vodafone Ziggo in Netherlands and our previously announced 5-year cloud deal at AT&T which expanded our activities in the new domain while extending our existing consumer domain engagements through 2029. As a further highlight, I'm pleased to announce the multiyear extension and expansion of our hosting and managed services agreement with Charter under which Amdocs will continue to provide Spectrum Mobile with hosting and operational support for its mobile billing systems, along with its enhanced services to support the rapid growth of Spectrum's mobile and cable business, enabling innovative offerings for their customers.

Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flow highlights on Slide 21. DSO of 74 days decreased by 5 days year-over-year and by 2 days sequentially in Q3. The sequential change in unbilled receivables net of deferred revenue was $40 million in Q3 aggregating the short-term and long-term balances. As a reminder, the net difference between unbilled receivables and deferred revenue fluctuates from quarter-to-quarter, in line with normal business activities, as well as our progress on significant multiyear transformation programs we are currently running in North America.

We generated free cash flow of $175 million in Q3 comprised of cash flow from operations of approximately $191 million, less $16 million in net capital expenditures, adjusting for restructuring payments of approximately $18 million, reported free cash flow would have been $193 million in the third quarter.

Overall, we ended Q3 with a strong balance sheet, including a healthy cash balance of approximately $502 million, an aggregate borrowing of roughly $650 million. We have ample liquidity to support our ongoing business needs while retaining the capacity to fund our future strategic growth.

Turning to capital allocation on Slide 22. We increased the pace of buyback activity to roughly $169 million in Q3, reflecting our confidence in Amdocs unique business model and the future success of the company. Additionally, we paid cash dividends of $56 million in the quarter. Overall, for the year-to-date, we have already returned a total of $601 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends putting us on track to return more than 100% of free cash flow before restructuring payments to shareholders in fiscal 2024.

For the full year fiscal 2024, we are reiterating our free cash flow target of approximately $700 million before restructuring payments equating to more than 90% of expected non-GAAP net income this year and a healthy free cash flow yield of roughly 7% relative to Amdocs current market capitalization.

Now turning to our revenue outlook on Slide 23. We are continuing to closely monitor the prevailing level of macroeconomic, geopolitical, business and operational uncertainty, which remains elevated in the current business environment, that the fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2024 financial guidance reflects what we consider to be the most likely outcomes based on the information we have today, but we cannot predict all possible scenarios.

On a constant currency basis, we are reiterating the 2.7% midpoint of our fiscal 2024 revenue growth outlook, which we have tightened to a range of 2.3% to 3.1% year-over-year as compared to 1.7% to 3.7% previously. Our annual outlook includes fourth fiscal quarter revenue within a range of $1.24 billion to $1.28 billion, we assumed an immaterial sequential impact from foreign currency fluctuations as compared to Q3.

On a reported basis, we now expect full year revenue growth in the range of 1.9% to 2.7% year-over-year as compared with 1.6% to 3.6% previously. This outlook assumes an unfavorable impact from foreign currency fluctuations of approximately 40 basis points year-over-year as compared to 10 basis points previously.

Moving down the income statement on Slide 24. The gradual sequential improvement in our profitability over the last 3 quarters puts us on track to deliver non-GAAP operating margins around the midpoint of our annual target range of 18.1% to 18.7% in fiscal 2024. As I discussed last quarter, we remain committed to improving the company's long-term cost structure and productivity by leveraging our unique business model, focused on operational excellence, and implementing technology, to achieve our goal of sustained profitable growth. With GenAI presenting a new wave of innovation and technology capabilities, we are proactively evaluating the portfolio of products, services, and business lines in relation to our strategic investment priorities for fiscal 2025, rebalancing our workforce and site strategy to meet our future needs and optimizing resources such as technology, infrastructure and workspace.

On these lines, we look -- we took additional actions under our latest restructuring plan during Q3, which resulted in the previously mentioned charge of $15 million that was mainly comprised of employee severance and benefit arrangements. Looking out over the next several quarters, we expect to incur additional charges as we carry out our current restructuring plan in respect to which we will provide further updates as we move along.

Bringing everything together on Slide 25, we are reiterating the 9% midpoint of our fiscal 2024 non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth outlook, which we have tightened to a range of 8.5% to 9.5% year-over-year as compared with our previous outlook of 7% to 11%. This full year guidance assumes a non-GAAP effective tax rate within our unchanged annual target range of 13% to 17% for the full year fiscal 2024. Although we know that the range is expected to be towards the higher end of this range in Q4.

Overall, we are on track to deliver expected double-digit total shareholder return for the fourth year running in fiscal 2024, assuming the sum of our non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth outlook plus our dividend yield of approximately 2%. Before handing it back to Shuky, I'm pleased to highlight that today, we published Amdocs ESG and CSI report for '23/'24. Among the many achievements listed in this year's report, I'm especially proud of our significant environmental efforts, which have resulted in a 55% reduction in Amdocs Scope 1 and Scope 2 CO2 emissions, since fiscal 2019, far exceeding our science-based target commitments.

Additionally, Amdocs global consumption of renewable energy approached 59% in 2023, way up from just over 19% in 2021. Our progress was recently recognized by Time Magazine, which named Amdocs as 1 of the world's most sustainable companies in 2024, ranking us as 1 of only 500 inclusions out of more than 5,000 large companies initially assessed. For additional information regarding Amdocs recent ESG initiatives and achievements, including our commitments to diversity, equity and digital inclusion, please refer to our report, which is now available for download on our website. With that, back to you, Shuky.

[Joshua Sheffer, executive]

Thank you, Tamar. As I said earlier, I'm pleased with our solid third quarter results. And while we continue to operate in a challenging demand environment, we remain well positioned to monetize a healthy pipeline of opportunities across cloud, generative AI in our other strategic domains by leveraging our market leading portfolio, best-in-class execution, and highly talented people.

With that, we are happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question comes from Timothy Horan with Oppenheimer.

[Timothy Horan, analyst]

I wanted to focus on AI, the contract win. And I think that was separate from maybe the trial that you did with the a contact center. I guess on the contact center, can you just talk about how large the trial was, how expensive it was. And those sounded like some pretty amazing results. Have you been able to replicate them in other places? Or do you think you can roll it out relatively quickly? And any more color you can give around the AI contract 1 would be great. .

[Joshua Sheffer, executive]

So regarding this award, this is a very significant global operators that have many opcos. The initial deal actually consisted of us implement our infrastructure, it's called the Amdocs Max platform and then setting up the first to 1 of these. This is the initial deal with the prospect to continue to enhance it to more and more what we call super agents or use cases in this specific opco and then to other opcos. As we mentioned, we are doing it with the partnership with NVIDIA.

And regarding the operator in North America, this is a good example how we using our technology, actually, we are able to build what we call super agents, especially for the call center, that increases the productivity of the call center agent by tens of percent, extremely accurate. By the way, we are doing similar, I would say, proof of concept like this with other large operators in the world.

The call center operation is highly mission-critical. So our customers want to make sure that this is working consistently in this type of accurate and become like another mission-critical system as part of the call center. We assume that they will start to implement these tools across the call centers.

This is going to completely disrupt the call center operation, because it means that you can take a relatively young or relatively new CSR, working in call center, and immediately bringing to capabilities and experience, someone is working 3, 4 years in the call center. So we believe our customer use it not just obviously to take the cost savings, but it's also going to increase the quality of the call center, quality time, customer -- consumer satisfaction, and we believe that this technology is going to disrupt all the call centers of all our customers.

[Timothy Horan, analyst]

And are you doing that in partnership with Microsoft still or any other partners there?

[Joshua Sheffer, executive]

We have many partners in this domain. And I think this specific 1 we are doing with NVIDIA. But at the same time, we are running several proof of concepts with Microsoft and others. So we are very diverse from this perspective. .

[Operator]

Our next question comes from George Notter with Jefferies.

[George Notter, analyst]

I guess I wanted to ask about just the overall spending environment. if I go back the last few quarters, there's been a running narrative customers focusing on transformation projects versus traditional projects. I think you guys talked about different M&A deals kind of slowing decision-making down, slower to close type situations. Can you just talk about the bigger picture here, what you're seeing? And is there an opportunity to maybe see the business reaccelerate if those conditions get better. .

[Tamar Dagim, executive]

So what we're seeing is on the 1 hand, customers looking for ways to transform. And some of them, as we said in the past, decided to take kind of the bigger approach of taking out legacy and putting in new, some of our large North American and European customers, for example, are going with this. And many more customers are actually looking for the gradual modernization path, which is something we cater to very well given the fact our portfolio is modular, given the fact we are allowing them different ways to modernize, and take the journey to the cloud, whether they want to put the new stack in place, or whether they want to take the classic existing applications and make them cloud enabled.

We can have the migration to the cloud and many other activities around that. Having said that, we do see more scrutiny in decision-making. We do see a tougher environment in terms of the pace in which those decisions are being taken. Our win rate continues to be very high. The relevancy of our offering remains very strong. And in terms of the consolidations, overall, I would say, consolidation in the industry is a good thing for us. We've been historically benefiting from the situation is typically when carriers in the market consolidate, they're looking to provide a different value proposition to their customers.

We are coming with a very strong experience in supporting them and doing that we provide the systems that they need. But in the short term, sometimes when there is a situation, that's like the example of cellular, which is a customer of ours in North America, they are waiting for the regulator to approve the acquisition by T-Mobile, naturally, they will not put a lot of money into long-term investment, so we do see this kind of phenomena from time to time.

But I would say, generally speaking, looking back on merger activities between T-Mobile and Sprint, merger activities that are happening 1 of the big transformations we are running right now is Vodafone Germany, for example, that has been acquiring different assets along the years, and we're helping them to build 1 stack to support our line of business. So if I need to generalize, we are typically enjoying consolidation in the industry, even though sometimes in the short term, it may create some delays in some investments.

[George Notter, analyst]

Got it. And then any insights into maybe when some of these effects might come off? Is it just a question of sort of the business environment? Is it a question of elections? I mean the M&A part, I guess, certainly, but...

[Tamar Dagim, executive]

I think it's about the business environment as a whole. I'm not talking just about the U.S. I'm talking globally. We've been seeing this scrutiny that I've mentioned this phenomenon. So I think it's about the business environment as a whole in terms of the pace and the pickup of investments that we are looking for.

So again, there could be some specifics of some examples of a carrier in a specific situation. But I think it's more about the business demand overall and how we should see that unfolding as we move along.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

Our next question comes from Tal Liani with Bank of America.

[Tal Liani, analyst]

I'm in a public space, whispering. You and the entire bus here hearing me. I have 2 questions. Number 1 is the $20 million increase in backlog, is it related to the AT&T contract that you spoke about last quarter? And the second question is much more philosophical. So if I look at the last 40 quarters or 10 years or 8 years or 7 years, they were the -- needs of carriers never changed, the story changes, but the need to do what you're providing never changed, it's always high in the priority, but when I look at the quarter, there were many more quarters where you grew 2% a year versus quarters that you grew 6% or 8% a year. .

And when I look at your growth rate over the last few quarters, 4 quarters ago, you were at 6.5% growth year-over-year, and now you're guiding to 1.4% growth, which is more in line with kind of the averages are more in line with what we've seen in the last 10 years. So the question I have is, and again, it's philosophical, but I want to understand what drives it, can the environment support growth of 6% to 10%, as you said 3 years ago. Can the projects and what the carriers are doing, can it support growth that is higher than 2% to 3%? And if that's the case, then what drives the growth to accelerate over the next few years?

[Joshua Sheffer, executive]

Considering the fact that you are in a public space, it's a relatively long question. So let me try with the second one. I think that the difference, if you compare us previously, and I think that at the time, I think we have maybe 1 or 2 growth engines, and today, we have 5. Not all of them are working at the same pace.

For example, we highlight again and again, the cloud, the journey to the cloud engine that is more than 20% of our revenue and growing double digit. And obviously, when we expanded to others, so the total addressable market that we are operating today is much higher comparing to what we had maybe 10 years ago. But I think that what we are saying is that in the current -- in a normal demand environment, which is not the situation right now, we believe we can go back to single-digit growth.

In the current demand environment there is some industry pressure, macroeconomic pressure, interest rates and other, customers are cutting CapEx because of this and focusing on free cash flow and other things that the industry, by the way, maybe also some others are going through given the current pressures, it will be difficult for us. It will be more in the range that you mentioned historically, but we believe with some support from the macro and some improved demand condition, we can get back to what you call more like close to middle single-digit like 5% in this area. Regarding the backlog part of it, maybe Tamar.

[Tamar Dagim, executive]

I would say, look, naturally, we always during the quarter in the backlog by recognizing revenue and sign many new deals. So it's definitely part of it. I think the interesting point to make here is that we are talking about the 12 months backlog. And the reason I made the comment that the current 12 months backlog does not reflect the full year of this deal because as planned and as expected, we do not take effective control of that operation of that IT environment immediately, it takes time, we need to learn the environment. We need to transition. We need to set up certain capacities.

So we do not have full 12 months yet of that deal reflected in the number we're reporting as of June 30, but everything I can assure you is going well, according to plan, and we will definitely see the full run rate of that in the middle of probably calendar 2025.

[Joshua Sheffer, executive]

And back to your first question, I said normal demand environment, I think we can get close back to the mid-single-digit growth rate, right now with the industry and everyone is under pressure, I think it will be tougher and you'd expect more of the historical level of revenue growth. .

[Operator]

Our next question comes from William Power with Baird.

[Unknown Analyst]

It's Jan Simoas on for Will. Just to follow up on some of the comments you were making a second ago about the spending environment in the market generally. So when we're thinking about what growth might look like in fiscal '25, at this point, it sounds like we should be expecting similar growth in fiscal '24? Or are there any near-term drivers, I guess, other than an improved spending environment that would lead you to expect some reacceleration? Any guideposts or directional color would be great.

[Tamar Dagim, executive]

Yes. We are not guiding yet for 2025, but we were trying to give some more color on how we see the environment. So typically, for example, our 12-month backlog is a good leading indicator. Don't take it literally, as I'm telling you now, okay, if 12-month backlog grew 2.7%, that's the growth next year. But I think what you're seeing us is hovering around these levels right now, and we need more change in the demand environment to see an acceleration. That's the message we are trying to get across. .

[Unknown Analyst]

That's helpful. And then should we expect continued accelerated buybacks? Or do you expect M&A to become more significant use of cash next year? Any outlook on that front?

[Tamar Dagim, executive]

Yes.I would say, generally speaking, I believe we have the capacity and we are always trying to do both. I don't think it's one versus the other. At the same time, M&A is something we're always looking at. There's always a pipeline that we are actively evaluating, but it's harder to predict the pace and the specific deals that will mature to closing.

So we've been very consistent with our buyback. You've seen us out there always and also believing in ourselves, of course, and in the story of Amdocs, we definitely think that the cash allocation back to shareholders through buyback is definitely an important vehicle. At the same time, we are going to look for M&A, and we will probably do more M&A now strategic domain. So I think the simple answer, both. And I don't think that 1 should really count of the other necessarily.

[Operator]

And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Matt for any closing remarks. .

[Matthew Smith, executive]

Thanks, Kevin, and thanks, everyone, for joining today. If you do have any additional questions, please reach out to us here in the IR group, and we look forward to speaking with you soon. Have a great night. .

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.