Good morning and welcome to the American Express Global Business Travel First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, please note today's call is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Jennifer Thorrington. Please go ahead.

Hello and good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us for our First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. This morning we issued an earnings press release which is available on sdc.gov and our website at investors.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com. A slide presentation which accompanies today's prepared remarks is also available on the Amex GBT Investor Relations webpage. We would like to advise you that our comments contain certain forward-looking statements that represent our beliefs or expectations about future events, including industry and macroeconomic trends, cost savings, and acquisition synergies among others. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made on today's conference call. More information on these and other risks and insurgencies is contained in our earnings release issues this morning and our other SEC filings. Throughout today's call we will also be presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures such as EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted operating expenses, constant currency, workday adjusted revenue, free cash flow, and net debt. All references during today's call as such non-GAAP financial measures have been adjusted to exclude certain items. Definitions of these terms in the most directly comparable GAAP metrics and reconciliation for non-GAAP metrics are available in the supplemental materials of this presentation and in the earnings release. participating with me today are paul abbott our chief executive officer and karen williams our chief financial officer also joining for the q a session today is eric bach our chief legal officer and head of global m a with that i will now turn the call over to paul paul thank you jennifer welcome to everyone and thank you for joining our first quarter 2025 earnings call i'd like to kick off with some key points we want you to take away from today's call

first we continue to deliver really strong results in the first quarter with 15 growth in adjusted EBITDA 260 basis points of margin expansion and a nine percent increase in free cash flow we are delivering on the commitments for strong earnings growth margin expansion and cash generation. Second, we have diverse, resilient revenue streams, very high customer attention, and consistent share gains. Our Q1 performance demonstrates these very strong fundamentals. Third, we have a strong and flexible operating model that allows us to adapt to a range of economic conditions. We have a proven track record of cost control and margin expansion that positions us well to manage through more uncertain economic conditions. And finally, we are continuing to invest to drive sustained growth with confidence in our long-term growth prospects. There is obviously more economic uncertainty, and as a result, less full-year visibility. But we have delivered strong Q1 results and a solid guide for Q2. our approach to a slower growth environment is to remain laser focused on what we can control share gains margin expansion cash generation and driving shareholder returns turning to the first quarter highlights we delivered strong adjusted ebitda and cash flow growth an impressive margin expansion in line with our commitments despite a slower demand environment Our value proposition to provide customers more savings and control over their travel spend becomes even more valuable in a weaker economic environment. We continue to gain share with an accelerated pace of new wins and importantly we maintained a very high level of customer attention. We have previously talked about our capital allocation strategy and we are executing exactly what we said we would do to drive shareholder value. We've lowered our leverage ratio, received two credit rating upgrades, and amended our CWT merger agreement to reduce the original purchase price and the number of shares issued. The current environment doesn't change our longer-term strategy or our earnings power. We believe our resilient and flexible business model will demonstrate that we are the preferred industry investment during this cycle and for the long run. Taking a closer look at the financial highlights of the first quarter, growth rates provided here are on a constant currency workday adjusted basis. Total transaction volume was up four percent driven by increased demand for business travel and our share gains. TTV or total transaction value, which reflects both volume and price, grew 5% to reach $8.3 billion. This was driven by transaction growth and modestly higher average ticket prices and hotel room rates. Revenue was up 4% to reach $621 million for the quarter, driven by solid growth in transactions and TTV, and increased demand for our products and professional services. Although these top-line results were solid, they were roughly one percentage point softer than we expected coming into the year due to a modest slowdown in organic transaction growth. However, our focus on margin expansion and operating leverage resulted in adjusted EBITDA growth of 15% to 141 million in line with what we said we would deliver, with strong margin expansion of 250 basis points. Turning to the workday adjusted transaction growth in more detail, just as a reminder here for organizational purposes, we divide our customer base into two general categories, global multinational and small and medium enterprises. We don't have products or services that are offered solely to one size of customer. Customers of all sizes may prefer different solutions. Some larger customers may prefer a simpler approach, while some smaller customers may prefer a more bespoke high-touch global solution transaction growth was relatively stronger with global multinational customers up six percent in the quarter we saw stronger growth in financial services pharma and industrial sectors and the broad range of industries that we serve brings us diversification to our revenue streams SME growth remains slower at two percent As we've previously described, SME customers have tightened spending controls in a broader trend for SME businesses beyond just travel spend. Growth in domestic air and regional and international air transactions were both up 2%. Our US Air TTV growth was 3% in the quarter, in line with the commentary provided by the major US airlines on corporate spend growth. We are also well diversified from a supplier perspective, with hotel becoming an increasing share of our revenue. Growth in hotel transactions continues to outpace air at 5% versus 2%. This reflects industry trends and also our focus on increasing our volume of hotel bookings as we continue to strengthen our hotel content and display and provide customers with more hotel value and more choice. Finally, on a regional basis, transaction growth was 3% in the Americas, 4% in EMEA, and Asia Pacific continues to outpace the rest of the world at 7%. So turning here to the commercial highlights, our solutions provide complete visibility and control over travel spend, and our marketplace provides access to the most comprehensive and competitive content to deliver customers significant savings. plus we've also maintained our ability to invest through different economic cycles. Because of all of this we have historically seen strong sales performance and a flight to quality during more challenging macro environments. In the first quarter we continued to gain share. We said our total new wins value would accelerate in Q1 and it did to a total of 3.2 billion over the last 12 months and importantly these share gains are on a very strong foundation of impressive customer attention of 96 over the last 12 months our value proposition is clearly resonating with sme customers which represents our biggest growth opportunity sme new wins value totaled 2.3 billion over the last 12 months more and more sme customers recognize the benefit of managed travel program with our number of unmanaged SME wins up eight percent year over year. We continue to invest in technology transformation including automation and AI to improve the customer experience and increase productivity. Let me provide clarity on the actions that we're taking with our operating costs and productivity gains and what makes our earnings less sensitive to softening economic conditions. In the first quarter, 81% of our transactions came through digital channels. Growth in digital channels was 5% year-over-year on a workday-adjusted basis and outperformed overall transaction growth as we intentionally drive a higher mix of these more profitable, higher-margin digital transactions. Over 60% of our digital bookings came through on our own software platforms neo and agencia owning our software platforms is a significant competitive advantage we've proven that we can improve the user experience and accelerate the share of digital transactions using ai and machine learning to improve productivity and reduce costs adjusted operating expenses declined one percent year over year even with incremental investments in future growth. And traveler care productivity went up an impressive 7% year-over-year in the quarter. The end result, 260 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, a powerful demonstration of our cost control and productivity gains. Finally, regarding the CWT transaction, we announced an amended merger agreement. The highlights are an extended deadline to provide the parties with additional time to defend the lawsuit filed by the doj as necessary and a revised transaction value with a reduction in the number of shares expected to be issued from approximately 72 million to approximately 50 million and now i'd like to hand it over to karen to discuss the financial results and the 2025 outlook in more detail thank you paul and hello everyone In the first quarter, we continued to execute against my three key priorities in terms of managing our financial performance.

We accelerated cash flow generation, drove operating leverage and continued margin expansion, and importantly, continued to invest. This formula has driven amazing progress and strong financial results. It gives us confidence as we navigate through a more uncertain macroeconomic environment. So now, let's turn to our financial performance in more detail. We continue to control what we can control and deliver on our commitments. Whilst transaction and revenue growth was about one percentage point below our expectations coming into the quarter, we still delivered adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and free cash flow in line with the expectations we previously communicated for Q1. Revenue reached $621 million, up 4% year over year on a constant currency, workday adjusted basis. On a reported basis, revenue was up two percent reflecting a negative impact of one percentage point from fx and one percentage point from fewer work days revenue yield which we define as revenue divided by ttv with 7.4 as expected this was down eight basis points year on year reflecting the non-ttv driven components of the revenue base and a continued shift to digital transactions which has a positive impact on our adjusted EBITDA margin and as a reminder Q1 is seasonally a lower revenue yield quarter. Now let's turn to total operating expenses. I am incredibly pleased with the momentum we are seeing across the enterprise when it comes to our focus on costs and increasing productivity. we are clearly doing more with less adjusted operating expenses were down 1% year over year driven by our cost saving initiatives and productivity improvements this enabled us to make continued investments in technology content sales and marketing to drive future growth and productivity it is also worth noting that we had a favorable effects impact but as previously discussed, given the natural hedge between revenue and expense, the impact to adjusted EBITDA is neutral. Putting these together, adjusted EBITDA grew 15% to $141 million, and our adjusted EBITDA margin grew an impressive 260 basis points year over year to reach 23%. We saw continued momentum when it comes to cash and generated $26 million of free cash flow in the quarter, up 9% year over year. Moving to the balance sheet, our leverage ratio on net debt divided by last 12 months adjusted EBITDA continued to de-leverage to 1.7 times as of March 31st, 2025. And as discussed on our last earning call, we refinanced the entirety of our debt at the start of the quarter, lowering our interest rate by 50 basis points with the new term loan facility priced at so far, plus 2.5%. And finally, but importantly, I am very pleased that we received two credit rating upgrades in the quarter from Moody's and S&P. These upgrades are recognition of our strong momentum. Our powerful financial model is more important than ever in an uncertain macroeconomic environment, and that is why we believe GBTG should be a preferred industry investment. We have confidence that with our strong financial model, adjusted EBITDA will continue to outpace revenue growth. We expect business travel demand from our premium customer base to grow above GDP. Additionally, we expect to continue to grow ahead of the market by driving share gains with our differentiated value proposition. Our laser focus on operating efficiency, disciplined cost management, and quite frankly, a track record here, creates a significant runway for margin expansion, particularly as we leverage. ai and automation from a capital deployment perspective we are incredibly focused on value creation our strong free cash flow generation can fund important incremental growth opportunities and m a and finally but importantly we are in a very strong position to return cash to shareholders and so building on this in a little more detail there are three key business attributes that make us confident and give us the stability to navigate through a period of uncertainty. First, our resilient and diversified revenue model. As a reminder, when airlines need to use price to stimulate demand and fill seats, 70% of our revenue is protected because it is volume-based or recurring product and professional services revenue, and only 30% moves in line with airfares and hotel prices furthermore our revenue is roughly balanced between customers versus suppliers and the us versus the rest of the world because of this we are less exposed to downturns versus suppliers during the economic cycle the second attribute is a strong operating efficiency and as i just mentioned we have a clear track record in cost reduction we came into this year with plans for 95 million dollars in cost savings but in light of current conditions we have a further increase the cost savings to a full year target of approximately 110 million dollars in 2025. Paul discussed the progress we are making in our technology transformation strategy we are intentionally growing our mix of digital transactions because it is more profitable The efficiency we're achieving on the bottom line results in really strong incremental margins as new volumes flow through our platform. The third attribute is value creation opportunities. We have a strong cash balance of $552 million as of March 31st, 2025, and over $900 million in available liquidity. This enables us to continue our investments in share gains, our software platforms, automation and AI. The macro environment doesn't have us reconsidering these investments. We have strong investment capacity and plan to invest an incremental $50 million this year in these initiatives. this incorporates capex productivity saves where we are doing more with less an updated opex spam phasing versus our previous expectations our business needs investment to accelerate growth in an uncertain macro environment this plays to our strengths we have a strong balance sheet and incremental m&a drives value particularly given our track record in delivering synergies with an experienced integration team. And finally, we have a $300 million share buyback authorization in place. Turning to the current transaction growth trends and customer outlook, we have no direct impact from tariffs. The headwind we are experiencing is from slower macroeconomic growth and its impact on our organic transaction volume. The trends have stabilized and this is in line with the commentary you are likely to have heard from the major US airlines. Transaction growth is currently trending flat year over year. This is down roughly five percentage points versus our expectations coming into the year, but we are not seeing any further signs of deterioration. The trend is based on looking at March and April together to normalize the easter timing impact consistent with our approach in prior years across the top five verticals which account for approximately 70 of gmn transactions we are seeing positive or broadly flat year-over-year growth six of our 15 us gmn industry verticals sequentially improved from february to march and april including i.t business and professional services and pharma however two were largely flat and seven industries declined with a sequential slowdown in the sectors more exposed to tariffs including consumer and automotive a bright spot is our meetings and events business which tends to be a forward indicator we are currently seeing a two percent year-over-year increase in the number of meetings an eight percent increase in spend for full year 2025. Cancellation levels are in line previous years and so in our most recent survey of our top 100 global multinational customers customer sentiment has moderately declined overall six percent of the top 100 global multinational customers have put new budget controls in place since the april 2nd tariff announcement and so in light of this backdrop let's move to our guidance we are hitting the mark on what we can control our expectation for new wins remains unchanged and in fact we've actually increased our cost savings however the macro environment is softer than we expected coming into the year and it is important to reflect the resulting slower organic travel growth so let me be clear about the assumptions we are taking and i will focus on the midpoint of our guidance because of our near-term visibility into q2 we thought it helpful to provide q2 guidance today our approach to guidance is based on a weaker economy and built on the assumption that the flat transaction growth we have seen over march and april continues the flap workday adjusted transaction growth assumption is driven by a modest decline in organic transactions offset by new wins this results in q2 midpoint expectations for 625 million dollars in revenue or roughly flat year over year with adjusted operating expenses down modestly year over year this includes our incremental investments demonstrating rigorous cost control so importantly strong adjusted EBITDA margin expansion continues and therefore we expect adjusted EBITDA to grow faster than revenue we are guiding to 130 million dollars in adjusted EBITDA at the midpoint up two percent year over year and reflecting 50 basis points of margin expansion. So now let's turn to what that means for our full year 2025 guidance. Our updated guidance is changed to reflect the softening in current conditions and its impact on our organic transaction growth. The key message is our strong adjusted EBITDA margin expansion continues. We are bringing full-year 2025 revenue down by just 4% and adjusted EBITDA guidance down by just 6% at the midpoint, with the upper end largely in line with the previous adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint. So our baseline assumption is now the flat total transaction growth for the full year the breakdown is a two percent decline in organic transactions offset by a two percentage point positive impact from new wins with confidence in our new wins and this assumption is unchanged so overall the midpoint of our guidance reflects flat revenue this updated guidance assumes a neutral foreign exchange impact but as we have said previously because of the natural hedge between revenue and operating expenses changes in currency assumptions do not impact adjusted EBITDA accordingly we are also updating our four-year adjusted EBITDA guidance to reflect slower organic transaction growth at a fourth root of about 65 percent so clearly we will exercise firm cost control with a total of $110 million in cost actions to protect our earnings and cash generation. But importantly, we are continuing to invest and expect to continue benefiting from the impressive productivity gains we have discussed. We are now guiding to four-year midpoint adjusted EBITDA of $510 million, representing growth of 7%, strong margin of 21% and margin expansion of 130 basis points. The takeaway is we still expect healthy adjusted EBITDA growth, even with a softer economic environment. And finally, but very importantly, given our focus on cash we still expect to generate a strong level of free cash we are now guiding to four year free cash flow of 140 million dollars at the midpoint which is 190 million dollars on an underlying basis excluding the non-recurring m a related costs we spoke about previously so i want to end by reiterating our capital allocation priorities our first priority is continued cash generation. We are now guiding to the full year free cash flow of $140 million at the midpoint. As just highlighted, this is $190 million on an underlying basis, representing a free cash flow conversion rate of 37% of adjusted EBITDA.

Second, continuing to deleverage.

We expect our leverage ratio to remain at the bottom end of our target leverage ratio of 1.5 to 2.5 times we have a strong and flexible balance sheet with a cash balance of 552 million dollars and over 900 million dollars in available liquidity at the end of march third our strong balance sheet gives us capacity to invest while we are carefully managing our expenses we are still increasing investments in areas that deliver more value to customers and make us a leading b2b software and services company this includes investing in our marketplace and products to continue enhancing the customer experience sales and marketing to drive growth and ai and automation to drive further margin expansion and efficiency as mentioned we expect to invest an incremental $50 million this year. Fourth, with respect to M&A, we amended our merger agreement for the CWT acquisition, including a reduction in the number of shares expected to be issued. We remain confident in the merits of our position in the lawsuit initiated by the DOJ and remain prepared to prove this in court if required. Because the financing is primarily stock, we expect to remain within our target leverage range following the transaction close. And finally, given our current stock price, which we believe is significantly undervalued, as well as our leverage and cash position, we are in a position of strength to execute against our $300 million share buyback authorization and return cash to shareholders. So our capital allocation strategy remains the same And in a weaker environment, M&A and share buybacks become even more accreted. So to wrap things up, our first call to performance was strong. Our resilient revenue model and strong operating leverage positions us to continue to drive shareholder value. We have confidence in our long-term growth prospects, and our approach to a slower growth environment is to remain focused on what we can control. share gains, margin expansion, cash generation and shareholder returns. We can now move into Q&A. Paul and I are joined by Eric Bock, who is our Chief Legal Officer and Global Head of M&A. Operator, please go ahead and open the line.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad.

If you would like to withdraw your question please press star followed by two when preparing to ask your question please ensure your device is unmuted locally first question comes from peter christiansen with city group your line is open please go ahead thank you uh and good morning um a couple questions paul i was just curious have you witnessed any trade down and accommodations by by your underlying clients are people switching to cheaper alternatives lights what have you we seeing in that not really at this stage Pete look thank you for the question if you if you kind of dig into the trends you will see there are premium and

international volume actually held up better than domestic so you are seeing stronger growth you know in premium international routes and also stronger growth in premium hotel occupancy so we are seeing the sort of premium nature of our customer base grow grow faster and as you saw in the presentation we did still see in q1 a very slight increase in overall average ticket price at average daily hotel rate. So one percentage point. So moderate price increase, but still a 1% increase over the quarter.

That's a good takeaway. And then I'm curious if you can just juxtapose. It looks like SME new wins rose in the quarter, which is nice to see. At the same time, I think you called out, you're seeing lower transactions coming out of that segment.

Just wondering if there's two stories there to tell and then finally if you could just comment on what's the next milestone or date for um the cwt uh uh merger process thank you yeah sure um i'll take the first one then i'll um give the second one to eric who's with me here uh with sme um i think it's important to remember that you know really over the last four or five quarters we've seen, you know, a lower level of organic growth within the SME segment. So the new wins are definitely making a difference. And actually, we've gone from flat growth to plus one to plus two. So we are seeing some sequential improvement, actually. But it's off a lower base because SME customers, you know, have tightened their belts. You know, after, frankly, long periods of, you inflation and higher interest costs, we know that that has impacted SME spending more than larger customers. And we see that trend across all industries outside of travel. I've referenced before, if you look at the American Express commercial card payment data, you'll see that the SME spend growth has been lower than larger customers for several quarters.

So we are seeing the impact of new winds but it is off a lower level of organic growth in that segment pete on the cwt transaction we're working through the fact discovery process that'll be complete in early june and then we're into trial september 8th and hope to complete that by the end of september october time frame and close by the end of 2025. that's great thank you both very helpful Thanks, Pete.

Our next question comes from Lee Horowitz with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for the question. And sorry if this movie was mentioned earlier. We're juggling a couple of things. But can you comment at all on how the macro environment evolved intracorder in terms of linearity? Have things stabilized at this point in your customer base? And what are your conversations with your clients indicating as it relates to their expectations in the second half of the year? Is sort of a recession a base case scenario at this point? Are people even entertaining the idea that there could be some growth positive outcomes as we move through the year? And the help across that would be great. Thanks so much.

Yeah, look, thanks, Lee. I think if you step back and look at what we're seeing in our business through Q1, you know, we saw a different pattern, you know, by sector. We saw financial services and tech actually with double-digit growth rates. We saw business services, professional services around the mean. And then some sectors, energy mining, marine, automotive, were softer. And those industries are obviously more exposed to tariffs. So there is a view by sector. But I think when you look at the overall picture, you step back and look at the survey results from the top 100 customers, I would say the main takeaway is most customers are in a sort of wait and see mode. You know, they're not overreacting to the situation. We had a very moderate increase in the number of customers that made changes to their travel policy or changing their approval processes or changed their travel budget. There was just a 6% change in the number of customers that had a change to their policy. And I think what we're focused on, Lee, is not really measuring sentiment, because frankly, how people feel is actually not that reliable. You know, we're trying to be much more focused on what people are actually doing. So are you changing your budget? Are you changing your policy? And when you look at what people are actually doing, there is a very moderate change. And so I think the best way of describing it is that vast majority of customers are in that sort of wait and see mode. And I think another thing I would draw out is our meetings and events business. We have a longer term view in meetings and events because obviously the nature of that business is people are often booking six, nine, 12 months in advance. And so we do use that part of our business as a sort of leading indicator. And when you look at the M&E business, we're still seeing a 2% increase in the number of meetings for full year 2025. It's an 8% increase in spend year over year in meetings and events. And if you actually look at the cancellation rate, it's flat. You know, it hasn't changed. So I think all those data points, when you put them all together, they sort of support that underlying thesis that I shared with you earlier, which is the vast majority of customers are in a weaker but stable environment.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad now. We now turn to Steven Ju with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Just to kind of follow up on the earlier sort of macro backdrop question, I would imagine sales cycles can potentially elongate in the environment as CFOs probably hit the pause button on various things um so it's probably more important for gbt to share the value add especially versus competitors as you you know go into rfps and or you know to renew deals so now what are some of the steps that you can take to potentially increase the value proposition uh to your clients on customers thanks yeah thank you steven um actually we don't generally see

that you know through previous economic cycles and actually you know even through the pandemic we actually saw uh decisions and the pipeline stay pretty robust and um what we have seen in in previous i would say more difficult macroeconomic conditions is we do see a flight to quality you know and we do see our new sales accelerate and you know if you step back and think about what we actually do we help customers save money we give them access to the most comprehensive the most competitive content in the entire travel industry we give them access to savings we give them complete visibility and control over their travel spend and in an environment where customers are more focused on operating expenses that strengthens our value proposition and so you You know, I would expect no change. In fact, I would expect an improvement in our new sales performance through the cycles. And that's frankly what you saw in Q1. I mean, we said that our new sales performance would accelerate coming into the year, and it did. Thank you.

We now turn to Dwayne Fenigerworth with Evercore ISI. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, good afternoon to you probably. I wanted to see if you could play back, and sorry, we're juggling multiple calls also, so apologies if you're repeating this, but can you contrast a little bit U.S. volumes versus rest of world volumes? and then maybe just play back, you know, the cadence of the first quarter and if you've seen any signs of, you know, stabilization or pickup here in April, May.

Thanks. Well, you'll have seen in the presentation that if you look at the growth rates by region, the U.S. was at 3% or the Americas was at 3%, EMEA at 4%, APAC at 7%. And in previous quarters, we've always seen the Americas ahead of EMEA. So you have seen a relative slower performance in the Americas, but you do have to point out that the positive impact from Easter in March is actually greater in Europe than it is in the U.S. Having said that, there's another point that I made earlier, which is that domestic travel definitely was slower through Q1 than international travel. And obviously, domestic is a much larger part of our U.S. sales volume. So for those two reasons, we have seen more of a slowdown in the U.S. than other regions. But there's not much in it, Dwayne. If you actually look at it on a relative basis, it's pretty similar across Europe and the U.S., and really the issue is more domestic versus international for us. That's the bigger theme. As things evolved through March and April, obviously with the calendarization of Easter, if you look at individual weeks or even March and April in isolation, it can be quite misleading. So what we do is we put March and April together to really assess the trend. And then we also look at the individual weeks year over year. So Easter week, prior week, Easter plus one, Easter plus two. And if you apply both those lenses, you end up with the same answer, which is that actually on a workday adjusted basis, normalizing for Easter, that growth rates have been stable through the last seven, eight weeks.

That's helpful. And then just on government, I know you have very, very limited exposure, but I do wonder if you have a window into government adjacent things like consulting or aerospace and it's actually a very similar question are you seeing any signs of stabilization or pickup in government adjacent thank you for taking the questions we don't have a great window into that Duane to be honest because less than two percent of our you know volumes are you know directly associated to, you know, government travel.

So we don't really have, I would say, you know, a clear and accurate read on that. I think probably some of the numbers that have been shared by the US, you know, airlines that have direct contracts with government agencies are probably a better read than what we would be able to give you.

Okay. How about just very large multinational consulting?

Yeah, business services and professional services are kind of, I would say, at the mean. So if you look at the performance by sector, financial services, tech, were the strongest growing sectors in the double digit range. Business services and professional services were at the average through Q1. And then we had sort of energy mining, marine, automotive that was softer. And actually, pharma was a little softer for us as well. But that's been, a, frankly, a structural issue pre-tariffs. So, yeah, business services are essentially at the average in terms of growth rates through Q1.

We now turn to Tony Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Yehuda Silverman for Tony Kaplan. So, you've mentioned that 6% of customers have put new budget restrictions in place. As many are in wait-and-see mode, is this a number that's expected to increase or do you have any insight into how you're viewing this space for the next quarter?

Well, I think that's going to depend on how the macroeconomic conditions evolve. I think if the macro conditions continue to be weaker but stable, then I think we will see limited change to that picture. You know, what we've seen historically for decades is that business travel, you know, frankly grows at or slightly above GDP. So that is going to directly, you know, relate to how the macroeconomic conditions evolve. And as I think we mentioned in our prepared remarks, our base assumption for the guidance that we're giving is that the current environment continues, that it is a weaker but stable environment.

Great. So sort of just a follow up to that about the midpoint of the guide. So what are some scenarios or what are you seeing that would impact the low end or the high end of the guide? What would need to happen to get to either part of it?

Well, I think we mentioned the sort of base case to the midpoint is that the current conditions continue. And that is that we have seen, you know, over the last 60 days, you know, a weaker but stable demand environment. So that's our sort of base case for the midpoint. But look, there is certainly a scenario that some of the uncertainty around tariffs starts to dissipate, that there is a more stable and clearer economic picture, and that growth rates actually begin to improve through the second and third quarter. And if you look at the fundamentals, particularly in the U.S. economy, unemployment is low. The overall economy coming into the year was strong. So the underlying fundamentals, I think, are still very solid. And I think corporate profits have remained strong as well through Q1. So I do think there is a scenario where the macroeconomic environment becomes more stable, companies have greater visibility through the second half of the year, confidence returns, and growth rates go back to a similar level to the level that we saw in Q1.

And that effectively takes us to the upper end of the guidance range that we shared with you, which was essentially the midpoint of our previous guidance great and just one quick clarification question on your incremental spend so i believe you mentioned 50 million in incremental spending to investment um was that 65 million last quarter i was just wondering if you could expand on if there's a difference there but have it incorrectly yeah karen do you want to pick that one up yeah sure I can take that.

So, essentially, we talked about two things. So, one was a $15 million increase in terms of our cost actions. So, last quarter, we talked about $95 million of cost takeout in 2025. This has now increased by $15 million based upon just our continuing focus around productivity efficiency, vendor saves, AI, and how that's helping low-cost locations. So we've increased that by 15 million. On the investment side, we previously talked about 65 million. We've reduced that down to 50 million. You need to think about that as that 15 million reduction pretty much equally split between capex and opex as you think about that and that is essentially it's not about a reduction per se it's about the productivity on capex productivity so we're doing more with less and so we can find those efficiencies and from an opex perspective it is really just the updated phasing in terms of that spend all right thank you we have no further questions i'll now hand back to Paul Abbott for any final remarks.

Great. Well, look, thank you to all of you for joining our first quarter conference call. I'd like to close by thanking all of our teams around the world for their hard work and their dedication to our customers, and we appreciate your interest in the company. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's call has now concluded. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.