CSGS
#Thanks, <UNK>.
I appreciate you being on today.
Yes, going through the first quarter and it's kind of an interesting thing after 20 years of being here feeling new in the role, but it's 20 years of running to get to the starting line, which is what ---+ the way I feel the new CEO role is.
But to answer your question more directly, is that the first quarter what I really did is just strengthen my affirmation in the business and how strong the business is and the business model is.
And what that does, and the strengthening of the balance sheet really gives us the opportunity to be smart about the decisioning when we go through it similar to the discussions that <UNK> shared on the ASR.
We can be prudent and we can be smart, the part that we're not going to take our eye off of is being relevant and growing the topline.
So we are absolutely focused on that.
We're aligning the team to focus on that and what that's doing is the organization is getting closer and closer to the marketplace and to our customers.
And the closer we get to our customers, the more we hear about their challenges which create opportunities for us to help solve them.
We're very open-minded to the M&A activity, but it's going to be wise M&A that we've been thoughtful for and/or incredibly opportunistic.
So we're keeping an open eye to the opportunistic items right now and we're working diligently through the potential investments along the lines of build, buy or partner.
And either way we're going to do it with a focus on our markets and our investors so that we're sure that we solve for them.
So we're open minded and we'll look for those opportunities to solve for the market.
Well, <UNK>, we see those markets somewhat coming together as far as the overall IP, video and telco space as those start to blend where you see the OTT players, being the cable companies and vice versa.
However, completely agree of what you're saying about the challenges to software in the international market space and the evolution of those business models.
So we're incredibly focused on creating longer term, more recurring in nature relationships with our clients internationally, which allows us to be very sticky and identify additional opportunities for us to help them solve their problems and capitalize on the opportunities in the market.
So the managed services internationally is still something we're very committed to.
We've had good traction with that and the more time we spend with our customers in solving their problems, the more interest we're getting from them, the more they're coming to us saying, wow, you can do that.
So we know our heritage, our heritage was in cable in North America, but we're leveraging what we.
ve learned in that domain expertise internationally, and you're going to see us continue to focus on our heritage and honor that, but we're pretty inspired by the opportunities that it presents for us internationally.
But what we won't do is we won't allow it to be dumb business either for our shareholders or for ourselves.
So we're being thoughtful and the investments will be balanced, but it will be in that focus for our heritage with driving the future.
Yes.
As a cloud-based digital platform, it really opens it up because the opportunities that we're seeing in some of the customers where we're actually utilizing the Ascendon platform in Europe as we mentioned last quarter for a content provider to distribute video that they're then tying digital services to that.
Meaning additional things like couponing and other activities.
What that does is, once we get to success with them, it starts to prove out the value in that market.
And when we were able to take a victory for our client there and share that, then clients all over the world see that, and we start seeing more interest in it as we go that helps to build.
So we're not going to do, if you build it, they will come, activity, but what we will do is continue to invest in Ascendon, which isn't about the international market and it's not about the North American market, it's about the global market.
And it positions us well to put our investments in Ascendon to solve for a much broader market, answer our customers' business challenges to help them to be successful.
And we're getting traction.
And traditionally, we've made these up starts internationally and then we come back to you later and talk to you about the challenges, but we're starting to get some traction on it.
So I'm not going to over-commit to international versus North American cable, but what I will commit to you is we're going to continue to invest in the Ascendon platform and we're going to leverage it in the markets where we can bring success to their business and ours.
It's a combination of those things that you just referenced as far as internal versus external.
And as I mentioned, we have not done the best of jobs with marketing into the market and we have been positioning a great deal within the internal activities as we go through it.
If you're truly ---+ I'm just putting a thumbnail up in the air here right now, if you're looking at the customers that have seen it and gotten a deep debrief on it, my gut feeling is it's 15% to 20%.
We're barely starting to get out into that area and each time we do, we're getting more and more positive feedback in that area.
However, we're also going to be very wise about how we go after that market, but we see great potential and opportunity.
The other thing I would share with you is, this is not a ---+ we're just going to swap out everything we've got to move to the next generation platform, this is the next-generation platform that brings incredible flexibility and digital opportunity to our customers.
And so we deploy it when it makes sense for them.
Some of them are using it in tandem with the legacy platforms as we go through.
We will never put our customers through a forced march, we will work very hard to support their businesses and drive it forward.
So we're very early in the going to the market, use the metaphor you choose, the second inning of the game or the first quarter of the game, whatever it is, but we're just really getting into the market area and we're going to get closer to our customers to understand more about their business challenges and their architectures.
They each have their own different technological architectures and we don't want to go in there thinking we're the geniuses, so we work with them to deliver on the areas that we do have great domain expertise on.
So early in the market activity with it, but getting great traction with it and we'll continue to serve our customers.
Yes.
For Q2, we don't provide quarterly guidance, we provided full year, <UNK>.
So our full year guidance I believe was 32.7 million shares.
So which is down about, I believe about 750,000 from the original guidance with a lot of different factors in there driving that, it's the buyback of the converts, it's the stock price increase, it's the ---+ not doing the ASRs.
So there's a lot of different factors in there, but I think it was 32.7 million was the number we use for the full year.
Yes.
I'll give you just the impact of 2016 and then you can annualize it for ---+ if you want to use it for 2017.
But the impact to 2016 is expected to be about a $5 million revenue headwind and profitability headwind.
And that we should start ---+ and should go somewhat ratably, so whenever the deal closes, and Charter decides to merge the contract.
So I would look at the either the month of the merger or the month following the merger and then run it ratably across the end of the year, okay.
Right now, I think in the $5 million, I think I'm assuming seven months, I believe.
Seven months or eight months, I can't remember sure, but it's ---+ that will get you pretty close.
All right, with no more questions, we'll go ahead and bring this to a close.
I'd be remiss though in closing the call, if I didn't say thank you to everybody for being here.
Thank you to all of our customers for their continued business and most importantly, thank you to our incredible employees for their passion and their efforts to continue to solve for our customers' challenges and opportunities we move forward.
So thanks, guys.
We appreciate it.
