Paymentus Holdings, Inc. (PAY) November 10, 2026 Conference Transcript

Jason's talking about those DPD and charge-off metrics. That's how we look at it, again, is on the static pool basis because for our business, the provision can move around quite a bit irrespective of credit performance. Because with a single-pay product, whether, you know, if the period ends on, say, a Friday, your receivables are going to draw down pretty significantly, because that tends to be when people get paid, that creates a lower provision, all else equal, and the reverse can be true in other periods where you might end on a day of the week earlier on in the week and have higher receivables, and, again, kind of drives the provision mechanics accordingly. But, you know, with respect to the provision in the third quarter, coming out of the spring and into our second quarter call.

One of the reasons why is that just ends up driving more churn of customers who can't pay back. And so we like this healthy dynamic of being in this, call it 2% 28-day DPD rate, and then from there really trying to grow the total dollars we can lend out.

And so where should the operating leverage show up below the gross profit?

And basically on every dimension, with the exception of marketing, which we think about differently, we think about marketing spend more from the standpoint of capital allocation as an investment decision, because those dollars are so directly attributable to cohort cash flows. But outside of that, you know, our product development, our overall headcount, you know, we have been driving significant leverage there. I mean, the remainder of the cost structure is relatively fixed. And You know, given the technology that we build, every incremental user, you know, the unit economics thereof kind of flow through directly from gross profit down to the bottom line. And so, I mean, this is not an exaggeration. I mean, we could double the size of the extra cash business and not add a single person to the business. You know, a lot of the investments and headcount that we've made over the last 12 months are really around going after new product adjacencies like our flex card. And there's just a ton of operating leverage built into the business and the technology that we've built where our incremental EBITDA margin largely mirrors our gross margin.

Got it. And as we think about those growth vectors, Jason, maybe just as extra cash. I know you guys have been testing it, raising the limits, I think up to 600 bucks, you know, how big is that opportunity for you guys to maybe increase the limits?

I think it's pretty large, you know, both in tandem with our new credit card and just raising extra cash limits itself. That's just a lot of room for us to run on average origination per user. And that's what's ultimately driving, you know, more of those gross profit dollars that we can, again, keep lawsuits where they are and get the origination sizes up. We talked about getting to 600 from Q2 to Q3 was our new limit there, and we're now in Q4 testing 600 up to 1,000 for some members as well. And through our efficient pricing structure where we're charging 5% for members to get there, we are incentivized to get people up the limit curve as high as possible versus some of these other subscription competing businesses where they're optimizing for the lowest amount you can give to a customer to retain. as a subscriber. So we're heavily incentivized and Cache AI is working on raising limits for members and we have now the higher limits to work with there.

And then what about Dave Flex? Does that cannibalize extra cash, and what could that be, or a separate niche kind of product?

Yeah, that's our new credit card that marries the flexibility of a credit card with the duration of buy now, pay later. And we've always thought the subprime credit card model to be broken for consumers and investors. You know, if you're a consumer just making a minimum payment, you're, you know, really paying a lot of money in late fees and compound interest payments. And so we like the idea of letting people shop wherever they want, but mirror this duration of BNPL, where we're actually not extending credit for, you know, more than about 45 days. And the monetization is not on compound interest. We charge a modest origination fee for purchase of 3% in addition to a $9 per month monthly fee. And that product is already seen really nice early traction. Importantly, we're not seeing any cannibalization of extra cash, which was our hypothesis, that people were going to use this in parallel for different types of purchases. Extra cash, because it's a single-pay credit product and is largely a, you know, cash advance, people tend to use it for things like gas, groceries, and rent. And then now with Flex, because of the expanded duration and more utility with the card, people are starting to use it for, you know, for more discretionary items. It allows us to more compete with credit cards and BNPL, whereas with the extra cash product, it's more competitive with, call it, borrowing money from friends and family or from, you know, traditional overdraft of which people are vastly overpaying for fees.

Yeah, yeah. And then other options outside of Flex, you know, as for new products. I'm Brian Keene. I cover fintech here at Citi, and we're excited to have the Paymentus team with us. And these guys have shown impressive growth in Deshaunton's team, and thanks for being here, I guess, first of all. Maybe just before we even go into the questions, Deshaunton, maybe you guys should just kind of briefly introduce yourselves and tell the quick elevator pitch on Paymentus, and then we're going to dive into a bunch of questions.

Sure. I'll start. My name is Dushant Sharma, CEO of Paymentus. We are essentially a cloud-based bill payment platform for non-discretionary household bill payment service providers, or billing service providers, like utilities, insurance, telecom, consumer finance, and other areas. And The last five years, since our IPO, we went IPO, I think, around $300 million of revenue. This year, we are doing about 1.45 at midpoint, somewhere around there. And EBITDA was 28 or so. This year, I think it's somewhere between 180 to 185 as the midpoint of our guide. Feel great about how far we have come. But to us here, it appears we're just getting started. If you think about it from our perspective, there are about 16, 17 billion payments, consumer payments, let alone the business-to-business payments in the U.S. And we have less than 5% of those. So the market is big. And even with our existing customer base, there's a bigger opportunity. So we are feeling great about where we are sitting.

I'm Sanjay Kalwar. I'm the CFO in the company. As Dushant gave in the opening remarks, the company is doing really well. It's been five years since IPO, but every year is exciting. Every year is a good growth story. We are getting into more and more verticals, more and more into bigger-sized clients, enterprise clients, profitable growth, very good free cash flow. So we feel very good about where the business stands.

Yeah. Well, Dushant, Sanjay, thanks for being here.

Oh, thank you for having us.

So, um... You know, you guys have discussed increasingly winning large enterprise customers and historically kept their billing and payment options in-house. And as you pursue these opportunities today, what typically final hurdle it is to get an enterprise comfortable moving such mission-critical functions on a payment is?

I think what we have found is... In the enterprise, the larger end of the space, one of the reasons they never thought about outsourcing before was because of the level of sophistication. They're not just large, they're also more sophisticated. In terms of their workflows are more sophisticated and complex, and the type of integration requirements they have with their different systems, they have a lot more complexities there as well. And historically, they always have this belief that because they are so bespoke in terms of the requirements, it's not easy for anyone to actually take care of it. And the old adage that no one washes a rental car, so in the mindset of the large enterprises, you say, you know what, no one is going to look after our business the way we would because we have our own technology resources and so on. And what has transpired over the last several years is that Pementos, because we crowdsourced our platform, asking our customers for the feedback, and building the platform in a way that was one code base, one infrastructure, regardless of the vertical or the size of the customer base, that has allowed us to become such a nimble platform and being able to meet requirements for a small customer as well as a large customer. So these enterprises are beginning to feel more and more comfortable with our platform, and on top of that, the financial profile of our business has become increasingly stronger. And as a result, we've become more deal-worthy at the larger end of the market. So, from that perspective, you know, historically, we were good, platform was great, but financial profile, I'm talking about five, seven, eight years, ten years ago, wasn't there where they could say, you know what, we can trust the company with our business. Now, with the public profile, seeing a strong balance sheet, seeing profitable growth, and the size, which is one of the largest in the space, in bill payments, we are feeling good about where it is headed in the market segment.

What about pricing and margins with those enterprise customers? How different is that dynamic?

Yeah, so we are actually, one of the interesting things, what we have found is that the pricing, these large enterprises, and Sanjay mentions almost every call, that we give discounts because there are larger enterprises. But even with discount pricing and so on, we are still charging more per transaction many times, the same or more than what they're used to paying. And one of the other things as well is that some of the large enterprise, they have interchange cost is a lot higher for them. So it appears that we are giving them a lot more discount, but it's actually not the case. So we are able to hold our own there because the value chain is so strong for them. In terms of a lot of the workflows which get automated because of a platform and the simplification of the experience, it becomes pretty interesting where a scale matters and based on the scale we're able to also give the type of pricing which is very attractive to them even though on a per transaction it might be higher than what they're currently paying.

And if I may just add, most recently we, in our previous call, revenue per transaction was $1.70. If I just take a longer-term view and go back three years, we were operating at like $1.30 or around that. So over time, pricing has improved, but at the same time, the profitability has also improved. Over the past three years, we have consistently improved our adjusted EBITDA margins by 500 basis points annually. So overall, both have worked in the right direction for us.

So Payment has mentioned that the potential end user base across your existing clients could be almost twice the number currently using the product. So what do you see as the biggest opportunity to reach those remaining customers and which capabilities can drive greater payment penetration?

I think that's a, as we analyze our customer base, we realize that not only we don't have 100% of the customers, the end users, on top of that, the end users who do use our platform, they're not using every single month. They might be using three or four times a year. So the opportunity is two-dimensional, multi-dimensional, actually, but let me just cover the two. First one is that you actually get the people who are using the platform to use more frequently our platform. And for that, and the reason I call that out is because to everyone it appears that... So if I went one time to the platform, I'm making all the time the same payment the same way. That doesn't happen. Consumers... The consumer experience or consumer behavior for folks who are in this room and similarly situated, which is basically 10% of a typical billing companies or 15% of typical billing companies population, 85% of the people are making a decision, you know, am I going to pay it this way today? Am I going to pay this payment method? Am I going to use this particular, am I going to send a check this time? This time I'm going to make a payment online. So those type of things go on. So there is an opportunity there for us to continue to grow. And other opportunity is to continue to attract the remaining customers. And for that, we have multiple opportunities, multiple execution plans. First is just continue to promote our services within the customer base. And we have a customer adoption success team that works on that specific initiative with the clients. And the second one is the Bill Wallet itself, which we have launched. I mean, it's the early stages, but eventually Bill Wallet will become an easier way to make a payment, and folks will be able to use it more frequently, and we'll see more growth in that.

I know historically you guys have emphasized helping billers lower their costs to serve while improving the customer service. So beyond transaction processing costs, what measurable benefits are resonating the most with the customers today, and how is AI changing that value prop, Sanjay, maybe for you?

Yeah, overall, I think the billers which we acquire more and more, the biggest value proposition is not just the transaction price itself, but it's the entire workflow from starting point to the end point. It's the customer service, it's the value-add services they get, it's the ease of use, it's the various dashboards, for example, which the billers get, it's the real-time information. I think there's a lot of value adds which come in which not just the transaction processing costs, which might be one data point, which generally people would notice, but it's the overall value which all the team derives, various functions within the billing department drives. Security is a big feature, for example. So all these things in together, when they look at, I think they see a lot more value from Pementos versus what they're doing today. Exactly.

And then I know increasingly you guys have highlighted the B2B payouts and disbursements as longer term growth opportunities. Where does Pementos have the greatest competitive advantage in those markets and what needs to happen in B2B to become a meaningful part of the business?

I think, so, the way we designed our platform, to us, B2B is just another vertical. But one of the most interesting aspects, I think, which is not as well appreciated by, in generally, by the investors, is that... Almost all of our customers serve businesses as well, and we are currently receiving payments from the businesses as well as we are receiving from the consumers. That's why whenever we are calling out that, hey, we got, last year we reported 53 million unique users to use our platform, we call it out that these are households and businesses. If you think about it, a local utility, they might be supplying energy and gas to the apartment upstairs, but But also the pizza shop downstairs. So both of those things are being serviced by the same utility. So if we got that customer, we are serving both of the constituents. So there's a great opportunity for us to just actually, in some ways, dig deeper into our own customer base and monetize those relationships a little bit better. But on top of that, I think we see the disbursements and payouts, which we also currently offer. And we are doing a lot of transactions in that area right now. But there is a big opportunity for the rest of the customer base. And more directly on the B2B, where it's small b, small b to small b, big b to big b, all of those opportunities where we see the biggest opportunity is just Automating all the workflows when it comes to sending out invoices, receiving the invoices, adjudication processes, getting the payments back, making sure that all the systems are updated, all the team members have the workflows automated in such a way that from the billing company's perspective or the business perspective, that they're getting all of the information at the right time and the right place. So all of those opportunities exist, and we believe that that will continue to be the case. So when we talk about our market right now, and we say we have 5% of the market and so on, or under 5%, we are only talking about B2C. B2B is a very big opportunity on its own.

Got it. You know, the PayMendis recently announced your first sizable interchange monetization agreement through the instant payment network. What made that opportunity possible, and then, you know, what needs to happen for that model to be a broader part of network issuers and partners?

I think the number one thing I would say is the scale. The payment is a scale business right now. Our interchange expense itself is like this year, close to a billion dollars, if not more. So scale matters. And the pervasive nature of the usage of the platform itself is very attractive. So we already have a very productive relationship and very strong partnership with a lot of the networks, per se. But the issuers themselves, who are the beneficiary of the interchange revenue, some of the issuers actually could see more of their adoption in our platform, especially using the instant payment network. So we identified that as an opportunity, let's try one or two deals and see how that goes. So we were successful in this deal, primarily just, like I said, because of the scale. And the way we architected it is that more benefit they get from interchange revenue, we will participate in it. But the end user and the billing companies, it's neutral economics to them. So they continue to have the same services as they always got. So that part of the attraction and why we believe this is actually scalable. And long term, this could be something pretty interesting, but it is early stages still.

Got it. The bill wallet has doubled to more than 200,000 users, despite it being somewhat a limited rollout and limited on the marketing spend. What have you learned about the consumers who are using that product, and what do you see as the biggest challenge in scaling adoption there from hundreds of thousands to get maybe to millions of users?

Well, that's the goal in coming years, to get to millions of users. Eventually, we hope it will be a household name. First of all, the name itself is good, Bill Wallet. We were surprised we got the name. I mean, when we were trademarking it, Bill Wallet. At least we don't have to explain to anyone what kind of a wallet it is.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty easy.

Self-explanatory.

So we got lucky with that one.

But the feedback has been phenomenal. In fact, I was almost going to read one of the comments from one of the customers who sent us a message back after they signed up and they used the service. And we were so pleased with that comment that we actually sent them a small gift. He said, hey, thank you. We appreciate you using our service. And that's one of the reasons I didn't call that out in the public. I said, you know what? If someone asked me, did you pay anything to those users? I said, well, we did pay it after the comment. But so the comment was actually that they have never used a financial product, which was that easy to sign up and that effective it was. Because eventually, if you think about it from the bill payment perspective, there never has been a time that you could go in and make a one-click payment. For shopping, you could do it. And you could make, you set your shopping cart and you pay, and it remembers a bunch of your stuff. But on the bill payment, that was never the case, where the service provider identifies you, also has your payment credentials, you can make one click and make the payment. So that, actually, long-term, we believe it would be a very interesting avenue for growth of... First of all, interchange monetization, and potentially the contribution margin expansion, as well as EBITDA margin expansion. And I said, well, our EBITDA margins are already over 40%, right? So it's pretty remarkable that we have that much operating leverage still, while we are just at the nascent stage of bill wallet. So, So, learnings from the customer cohort is that this will be a useful product for folks, and that's why we have been very thoughtful in how we're executing, and long-term, in the next couple of years, I think we believe that we might be able to get to a couple of million users or more than that, depending on how we roll out and if we continue to observe positive trends as we are seeing right now. Now, eventual monetization of Bill Wallet from a actual making an impact on the profitability, acceleration of the contribution profit, that's still years out because you want to get to millions of users before we start getting there. So that's the goal.

And you guys haven't done really much marketing. So is it something that you guys will push more marketing dollars? Or how do you push this out?

Actually, right now, our customer acquisition cost for Bill Wallet is negative, actually. So We are generating revenue as customer is making a payment. So the way we plan to roll it out is the way we have done it for 200,000 customers, to get the 200,000 customers, is that we want to just literally let end users know, small businesses as well as consumers, that, hey, there's a better way to pay these bills. And that's as simple as that if you want to sign up. And here is, you click to sign up for Bill Wallet while you're making the payment. So we don't plan. We could, but we don't plan to spend a lot of money in marketing. That's part of the appeal of the ecosystem we have built here. It's just that. But we'll see. We will get excited, you know, depending on if sitting here next year, let's say, if you were here and we had supposedly millions of users, you might be, hey, let's go a little bit. Let's press the pedal. But right now, you know, we feel like that. But our focus on continued EBITDA dollar growth and profitable growth will remain the DNA of the company.

So Baleo has the potential to extend Pimentis further into customer service and other enterprise workflows. Are you beginning to engage with different decision makers or budgets within your clients' organizations, or which use cases are generating the most interest there?

I think we have started to engage with our clients. Right now, I think in our minds, the AI itself is creating enough of a panic frenzy, if you will, in the minds of the service providers where there's plenty of concerns there from a security perspective and so on. So we are actually letting that itself play out in our favor in some ways, because we are saying that- Clients need a product and the platform that allows them to continue to engage with their customers in a better way than ever before and more close proximity than before. And on top of that, not be able to have not have the risk of getting disintermediated, meaning I'm paying my insurance bill. The last thing I want to see is some other ad in that same agency channel that, hey, you can sign up for another insurance company, and I can save you 50 bucks. Well, that was the last interaction the insurance company had with you from that perspective. So no service provider would want that. So from that perspective, we feel like that communication is already taking place. In terms of where we are seeing the biggest opportunity, I think, is the customer experience site right now. Can more interactions take place through agentic channels in a way that a lot more questions can be answered before they're asked to a human being? But this is very early stages still on Billio. But as we go forward, we see potentially playing a bigger role in being basically an AI revenue-generating company in some ways.

Yeah, and how would the pricing be for that?

So our model has been consumption-based pricing, and that's what we do right now. And in fact, in some ways, we believe that the market has moved in our direction in that way as well. So we will primarily maintain it that way. So even the interactions that don't result in payments, we might be able to get paid for them just on a per interaction or per transaction basis. It will be a communication transaction as opposed to like an agent interaction. As opposed to always resulting into a payment. So we'll primarily will be consumption-based. That's the focus right now. Eventually, we'll see how it will work out.

So a lot of fears in the marketplace about AI eating up software and development and integration being more accessible. How do you think about that for the durability to take it around, I guess, both offensive and then defensive for AI for Paymentus?

I think we think AI, at the net of it, AI will be an enabler for us, for continued growth, durability of our growth algorithm. So if I take a step back, the... A lot of times what, and AI risks are real for certain businesses, and I empathize with those businesses who are having to deal with those challenges. So, for example, a workflow that would require you to have eight months of efforts could actually be done very quickly from automating the workflow and so on. But Pementos always took the position that entire workflow has no pricing to it. We were already giving away our software at no cost to the customer. Our software has no cost. So for us, it was actually designed for this day, that pricing. So the software itself has no value without a transaction. So we went to a CFO like Sanjay and said, we are going to give you a solution which will have no expense associated with it related to all the ensemble we are giving you, all the infrastructure, all the 24-7 monitoring, all of the workflows which we are automating, all of the integrations we are doing for you. There's no cost. Only pay us for a transaction after you've been paid. And that model will continue to exist because payment transaction itself is not going away, regardless of how agentic the interactions get. Payment transaction will still be required, all the compliance, the security, all the elements of risks that come with it. Ann, if you were to ask me... Our clients today, the service providers, their concern is not how they can use AI to reduce their cost for the software that never cost them any money to begin with. Their problems are if a cybersecurity attack is happening through AI against the energy infrastructure, the water infrastructure, against their insurance back-end systems, and so on, and changing certain dynamics of the system, how do you prevent that? How do you make sure that you're able to address customer service in a way that is still secure while improving efficiencies? So we feel like we're actually going to be the net winners here. In that AI perspective.

So I know Paymentis has highlighted the strong demand in utilities, insurance, government, and several other industries. I guess looking at the broader service opportunity, are there any particular verticals where you think the AI-enabled workflows now can drive incremental adoption?

I think all of them. We don't see any specific vertical getting more than others. All of our verticals are non-discretionary. All of our verticals are recurring, and all of them cater to a more interactive communication with the customers, and all of those could use more efficiencies in how customers understand the information they're being presented and what they're being asked to pay, And more and more, or more simplification around how those payments take place. So we don't see any differences. Do you want to add anything?

I mean, in this, I think, over a longer period of time, we believe AI could actually help us improve our same-store sales. Because that's, like, earlier Dushan mentioned that one of the areas where we may see growth in the transactions is customers who come and pay, say, two or three or four times a year, and their monthly payments, they could actually come 12 times. We would like them to come more often than they come. And I think that push could come from AI, because once the customer starts paying through AI, we expect that that might become a regular way of making the payments for those customers, and we could, as a result, see more transactions. So I think it's favorable to us.

What about adding channel partners? And then most recently, I think you've done that, so in utilities and mortgages. Are there other partnership ecosystems? That, you know, you can do or a greater opportunity coming from acquiring new billers or capturing more transactions across the existing customer relationships.

The partnership ecosystem actually has become increasingly more contributive to our pipeline and backlog and obviously revenues. Historically, Paymentos actually used to be a direct sales team primarily. That was our focus. And we didn't know at that time that that actually will help us become extremely efficient in partner ecosystem side. So what happened with us, we changed our perspective as we started to introduce, historically in my past lives, I never saw partnerships really produced. They get all great press coverage when you sign them, but to get them to actually produce revenue is a lot harder than it appears initially. But we cracked the code on that one when we realized that, you know, why don't we get... Our sales involved in the sales process initially. To help, because every business has nuances. Bill payment has a lot more than nuances to it, just because each industry has their own vertical-related nuances, but then also the payment transaction, the interchange rates are different, and so on. Some are emerging market rates, some are regular rates and complexities, and some have compliance requirements of different types from card associations as well as from the regulators for those industries specifically. So we felt that if we can actually become a great coach for our partners, it will become a lot better for us to monetize those. So that has become an increasingly more efficient and important channel for us to drive more sales.

You know, as you think about, you've outlined a potential path towards $2 billion in combined revenue with the backlog and described Pimentis as having kind of multiple dimensions of growth that we've talked about today. If you look three to five years ahead, what do you expect to be the most different about the company and the role it plays in the broader ecosystem?

I think a lot of the things which appear sort of today sitting here to our investors that, you know, somewhat futuristic, they will all come to pass, I think. So, and that's just my opinion, but let me describe what that will look like. Pimentus will be a champion of... Setting a new paradigm for service commerce. And I was actually, to be candid, I didn't reflect on it this way until one of the investors asked me a question at this conference. And it triggered a thought in my mind that payment has actually been, has changed paradigms before. And we were successful at it. And they were not easy. It was actually sitting there at that time. If you would have asked me 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that really, are you going to go to each and every biller and tell them to sign up with your system? And that will actually make customers who are making a payment at the bank site go away from them? No way. Not going to happen. Not in this lifetime. And I had a recent conversation with a bank executive who actually said that we're just waiting for these people to, actually, I don't want to say that right now, but I'm going to say that these folks who are still using bank bill payment, they're passed. They are not, even banks know that they are just, it's only out of habit, not because of the value they're getting from it. So the paradigm has been changed. So when I'm sitting here and saying that in five years looking back, if you were coming in here, you would see that bill payment will no longer be viewed as the industry it is today. It would be part of a service commerce ecosystem. In some ways, Shopify does to the retail commerce perspective, or that whole ecosystem, Paymentos has an opportunity to do the same thing on the service commerce side. That's what we do for our clients. We provide them an entire platform that brings revenues, plays a central nervous system for revenue collections for them. And as the world becomes more agentic, a lot of the ecosystem and the native elements we are building, like Bill Wallet, Billio, and so on, they will play subject to us, payment us actually executing against it and being successful in executing. We could actually be the paradigm, the champion of the catalyzing force behind the paradigm shift.

Yeah, it's kind of amazing how it's changed, huh?

Yeah, I mean, and I have been walked out of the investor meeting, VC meetings, when the argument ensued, and they basically, in their mind, I'm arguing. I'm simply saying the paymenters will actually win against the banking model, and they will say I'm arguing against the point which is sort of like in those days fighting against Microsoft in the 90s. It's sort of like that type of argument. Who is going to go to a billing company? I've never gone to my utilities website or my insurance company's website ever. I've never done it. Why would I do that? And it didn't hit me. Like, a couple of years ago, I was in a meeting, and I asked a question to the folks. I said, raise a hand how many of you are making payment to the bank, and not one person raised their hand. I said, where were you guys when I was pitching all this story? And many of them, I calculated they were in high school. The problem is the paradigm has shifted. And it was this conference when it hit me that actually we have seen that paradigm shift before. So when I say I'm meant to actually have the potential to change a paradigm, we'll see whether it happens, lightning strikes again or not, but we'll see.

Sanjay, I wanted to ask on the operating leverage. You continue to invest in the tech platform. The opportunities are on AI, B2B. We talked about the interchange monetization. How do you think about prioritizing investments while preserving the company's attractive margin profile?

Well, in all the areas you mentioned, we are already investing today. And at the same time, I think wherever the investments are needed, where we see the ROI for our investors makes more sense and is more durable, we will tilt our direction and calibrate our spending there. At the same time, even today, every quarter, we look at where should we spend more. And although mainly we are diverting more towards sales and marketing, which is our biggest growth vector, but all these areas you mentioned are already a part of our grand strategy of spending. So it's ongoing.

And then just finally for me, Sanjay, just thinking about the fourth quarter guide, kind of the key drivers to think about, and then as we get into 2027, any kind of factors to think about as we set our models for 2027?

Sure. For this year, this year has gone really well. We, in fact, are ahead of the guidance we gave, right? If you look at the guidance we gave at the beginning of 2026, we've updated our guidance two, three times already. And we are performing much ahead of our expectations, of our own internal expectations. And at the same time, for Q4 specifically, I think we just raised the guidance compared to the implied guidance we gave in our Q2 call, which came out of Q4. So we are on the right path, but quarterly variability can always occur, and, you know, growth rates could vary at times, especially we have strong comps. Last year, Q4 was very strong, but we keep performing and keep delivering great results. And coming to 27, the business looks good. We've done really well, and when the time for guidance comes in our February 27th call, we'll give the guidance, but we feel very good about it.

And if I may say... A key message to the investors I would like to leave with is that give us an opportunity to make you money. And what I mean by that is... But one quarter and one year is too short a period of time. Buy and give us a few years and see how it happens. I mean, we have done a great job in the last several years. And my personal desire would be to make for public investors the same type of returns as I've done for the private investors.

Well, awesome. With that, we're going to leave it there. Thanks, Dushant. Thanks, Sanjay.