The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Kash Rangan - Goldman Sachs - Analyst
: A great hire with Abhey, great guy, known them for a long time. It looks like you have a pension for hiring former sell-side people starting in Mitesh.
So great job. On the business itself, I wanted to just get a better understanding as to how you would evaluate your own AI strategy. So we have a
bunch of hypotheses we develop and we develop these products, we test it out of the market.
What are the things that you have learned from the introduction of your AI products into the marketplace? And what is your best prediction as to
when we hit an inflection point where the good is good enough, that is AI and growing parts of the portfolio, including RingCX, et cetera, that you
could get a reacceleration in top line growth rate, which is something I know that is very near and dear to you and you've sort of intimated that
that's your plan ultimately. But how is it all playing out near term with respect to AI and how that could be a positive for your business? .
Question: Siti Panigrahi - Mizuho Securities USA - Analyst
: Great to see Abhey joining us as new CFO. Now Vlad, looks like a lot of emphasis on CCaaS and you talked about RingCX and this partner Verint. A
few questions. What kind of trends are you seeing on the CCaaS SMB versus enterprise? And now that you have RingCX with Verint partnership,
how are you going to position the solution against -- versus nice?
How are you going to position in the market?
Question: Siti Panigrahi - Mizuho Securities USA - Analyst
: Vlad, thanks for that color. And a quick follow-up. We see gross margin downtick in the last two quarters. I'm wondering how should we think about
that going forward? What drive that?
Question: Michael Turrin - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC - Analyst
: I appreciate all the color this far. Vlad, you had a comment on ARPU expansion that I wanted to spend some time on, Can you just speak to the
drivers of that? How much of that is cross-sell from some of the newer products you're focusing in on? Or are you seeing base price improvements
as well? And as you continue to focus in on selling the newer products -- can you continue to also drive leverage on the sales and marketing line?
Question: Samad Samana - Jefferies - Analyst
: This is (inaudible) on for Samad. Maybe if I could double-click on some of the macro and go-to-market dynamics. If I go back to the second quarter
print, the strengths were cited as large deals and upsells at the high end with maybe some relative softness in how do those dynamics progress in
the third quarter? And what's kind of implied in the fourth quarter guide? Any material changes positive or negative in terms of enterprise versus
SMB demand?
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