Nice (NICE) CEO on A.I. Growth, International Expansion & What’s Next

Yeah, look, we were really pleased with the quarter, Diane, and great to see you again. Our total revenue was at the upper end of the range. So was our EPS where we were also at the upper end. So we grew total revenue at 9%, grew cloud revenue at 12%. But the thing that I love the most and the thing that is most important for our company and our future is our AI growth. Our AI and self-service ARR grew at 42%, at record levels. It was up 39% on Q1, continues to grow. And as the market pivots in customer service, it is an AI market now. And as companies transition, they want an AI capability to be able to serve their consumers easier, faster, more conveniently than ever before, and we've got the platform to deliver on that.

Yeah, no doubt. Look, I think for our shareholders and for our investors, they're very much looking for what does the growth look like in the midterm and into the longer term. How do the moves with AI enable us to be the disruptor versus being disrupted? Our move, we announced our intention of the acquisition of Cognigy, market leader in conversational AI. Our existing growth in AI that I already mentioned before at the 42% and growing rapidly. They want to see what that looks like in the midterm where we've already shared that we've got a capital markets day in October where we're going to provide that midterm guidance and really give the confidence to the financial markets that NICE is the winner in CXAI. The market's pivoting. We've taken the leading role. We're making bold moves and clearly they want to see that in the financial performance in that midterm to give confidence in us as a company.

Yeah, two sectors that I would call out from an industry point of view. Financial services, we had great wins in both banking and insurance, triple and seven-digit wins all with AI related but also with our core CX platform. And service related industries whether it be in medical, in pharmaceutical, whether it be in travel and transport, also in telecommunications. So industries which have got a strong interaction and they're really trying to protect their relationships with their customers right now with a lot of uncertainty. So their interaction through their service platform becomes critical. But the one that I will call out is our growth internationally. We had a tremendous quarter again, big wins. We already talked about last time the big win at DWP with Route 101, our partner, 100 million plus deal. Where big organizations internationally in UK, in Germany, in France that are looking to NICE to be able to expand. And it's in those same industries and others that is driving our growth and positive outlook as well.

Yeah, the best way I can describe it is this. We are the largest, most critical platform when it comes to interactions. 20 billion interactions on our platform between consumers and their brands of choice, their customers, their companies of choice. And it is primarily through the contact center today. Cognigy are the market leader when it comes to conversational and agentic AI. A human connecting with a brand on an AI agent to be able to self-serve, be able to automate that and be able to fulfill a consumer's needs easily, but in a human-like way. You take our data and our platform and their conversational AI capabilities, you bring that together. It's unmatched. Nobody has that in the market. And that's why it was so important. It wasn't about the short term. Strategically, the market is moving to an automated model in delivering to consumer demands. That's why the move with Cognigy was such an important one. And we're really looking forward to closing, obviously subject to regulatory approvals, in the early fourth quarter.

Yeah. So I guess there's a few things. Number one, we're in a quite a resilient business at the end of the day. Whether it's a market where you've got high demand with consumers or you've got an uncertain market where whether it be through tariffs or other levels of uncertainty with brands to their consumers, the demand engagement between customers and their service provider is relatively consistent and in fact grows. And in periods of uncertainty, it actually grows even faster. So we've got a higher number of interactions on our platform. What we're now seeing is companies are using that engagement channel. Usually it's inbound. Consumers are interacting with them. They're using it to inform, to guide. So not only resolve the question but to ensure that the loyalty of those consumers are maintained especially when their customers are quite uncertain. So that's the value of our platform and why we don't see from a business point of view much of an impact. I think as we look more forward, I think the importance of interaction and engagement platforms and how you inform your customers and how you're able to navigate those uncertain environments going forward, more predictive outbound information becomes a really critical part of the arsenal companies have to be able to keep brand loyalty and keep customer loyalty despite an uncertain macroeconomic environment that we're all trying to deal with at the moment.

Yeah. So first of all, our investors can rightly expect consistent performance delivering and meeting and exceeding on our expectations over the next two quarters. But what we're really looking for our investors to look at is let's look at the midterm as the market pivots to AI and the CX platform NICE positioned both organically what we built and also our acquisition with Cognigy and other pieces. How that then looks like in the midterm in '26 and '27 because these are long range. This is a market shift, we being the leader and then what we see in terms of not only growth but profitable growth. And I think our investors will be delighted when we share with more details in our capital markets day in October about what that mid-range looks like and our confidence in our future growth and success.