Good morning and thank you for joining Bentley Systems' Q2 2023 Operating Results. I'm Sandra-Ann Morency, Bentley's Investor Communications Manager. On the webcast today, we have Bentley Systems' Chief Executive Officer, Greg Bentley; Chief Operating Officer, Nicholas Cumins; and Chief Financial Officer, Werner Andre. This webcast includes forward-looking statements made as of August 08, 2023, regarding the future results of operations and financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives for future operations of Bentley Systems Incorporated. All such statements made in or containing during this webcast, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. This webcast will be available for replay on Bentley Systems' Investor Relations website at investors.bentley.com. After our presentation, we will conclude with Q&A, which I'll moderate in Eric's absence. And with that, let me introduce the CEO of Bentley Systems, Greg Bentley.

Good morning, and as always, thanks to each of you for your interest. I will start today by sharing my observations of some notable directions within our strong '23 Q2 operating results and then as usual, I will briefly remark upon some corporate developments. In preview, our growth in the quarter was more broad and balanced, which I consider to be better, ranging from E365 accretion across our largest enterprise accounts, through broadening and compounding penetration within our large SMB opportunities. Among infrastructure sectors, resources by way of mining and hence sequent [ph], slowed down and lost its lead for now to strongly growing public works/utilities. Despite the countervailing dip in global CapEx for new mines, our platform acquisition is growing considerably faster than BSY otherwise, following only our other platform acquisition, Power Line Systems. And as to our key metric year-over-year ARR growth, this all nets out, while broader and better, to a narrower full year 2023 range, considering that in China, which is where all relative security is concentrated, virtually any second half new business outcome will continue to erode our ARR there. In '23 Q2, we were BSY busier than ever before, beating or surpassing our own expectations on all corporate outlook metrics. Of course, we all primarily focus on constant currency business performance ARR growth year-over-year, which we sustain within the robust level of 13%, our high watermark. However, going behind this headline, I consider that our ARR growth has directionally improved. One aspect in the math is that programmatic acquisitions happen now to be contributing only minimally. But while acknowledging this year's favorable end market conditions, I think that strong rational execution by Nicholas' teams is ever broader and better. Although such balance and consistency increasingly characterize virtually every access of our business, an example…

Thank you, Greg. We had a strong quarter and a strong first half of 2023. Demand remains very positive, and we continue to build a pipeline with market dynamics and government investments playing in our favor. Project delivery firms are dealing with an extremely tight labor market, an aging workforce and increasing costs due to higher interest rates and inflation. All factors that lead them to seek new ways to improve productivity and efficiency. Bentley Systems is well positioned to help. Additionally, government programs around the world continue to invest in the resilience and sustainability of critical infrastructure. We expect this to be a long-term trend that benefits our markets. Looking at related performance across infrastructure sectors, Q2 reflected some reordering from previous quarters. Leading the way growth in public works and utilities remain very strong. The sector being the biggest beneficiary of infrastructure investments around the world. Industrial improved, while resources normalized from record levels, with commercial and facilities remaining flat. Next, looking across regions. Growth remained very solid in North America. The trends follow the direction of the previous quarter with strength in public works and utilities, indications of IIJA funding flowing through some more broadly and project that reaffirms having more work than they can handle with their project backlogs extending further out. We achieved steady growth in Europe with EU funding of transportation, water and green initiatives and purposeful targeting of the ecosystems of large infrastructure projects, which drives our software adoption across both owners operators and their product that firms, large and small. We're also getting good traction and achieving notable wins with water utilities in the U.K. In Asia Pacific, India remained a major growth driver even after many quarters of accelerated growth as it continues to benefit from strong tailwinds, in particular, large…

Thank you, Nicholas. We are pleased that we started the first half of the year strong. Total revenues for the second quarter were $297 million, up 11% year-over-year or 10% on a constant currency basis. Year-to-date, total revenues grew 12% or 14% in constant currency. ProjectWise subscription revenues grew 12% year-over-year or 11% in constant currency, and represented 87% of our total revenues. As a reminder, Q2 is typically our lowest revenue quarter, and we discussed last quarter that we saw a shift in revenue seasonality from the continued expansion of our consumption-based E365 program, which yields a more ratable revenue recognition when compared to the accounting treatment of our traditional software subscriptions. That shift benefited Q1 and was a drag on Q2. Therefore, the more meaningful comparison to the prior years or first half in which subscription revenues grew 13%, or 15% in constant currency. The onboarding of Power Line Systems at the end of January 2022 accounts for about one percentage point of this year-to-date improvement. Our E365 and SMB initiatives continue to be solid contributors to our subscription revenue growth. Perpetual license revenues remained essentially flat, reflecting our preferences for recurring subscription revenues. While license sales continue to play an important role for us, especially within SMB, what they serve as a competitive differentiator helping to attract new logos and in China due to local preferences as we go to market increasingly indirectly. Our professional services revenues benefited from the acquisition of [indiscernible], which we acquired within our cohesive digital integrator group in '22 Q4. Moving on to our recurring revenue performance. Our last 12 months recurring revenues increased by 12% year-over-year or by 16% on a constant currency basis. On a constant currency basis, the acquisition of Power Line Systems contributed about two percentage points to…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Matthew Broome from Mizuho Group. Matthew?

All right. Thanks very much. Good morning, everyone. So I guess just to get started, how are your customers really thinking about the longer-term demand environment? Is the increase in government spending, giving them the confidence to commit to larger investments in software? Or is there any sort of broader uncertainty we see across other areas of design sort of increasingly creeping into that thinking?

I would say that nothing from other areas is creeping into the thinking of those in infrastructure engineering, and the confidence you can see in the surveys that things are getting better and they expect to continue to get better. And that's broken down by subsector as well. One of the things I noted this time in the surveys. And by the surveys are those of the ACAC is the U.S. group, but I don't think it's different in our perception across the world. But in the U.S. expectations are thought to be better in the water sector now. And indeed, some IIJA funding, recall the other half of the IIJA funding beyond transportation is only starting to flow, but water is where it's starting. So yes, I think there's not any bleed from other macro concerns into infrastructure engineering that's perceptible. Now when you talk about confidence of our accounts generally, I think in the mining sector, as we mentioned, there is some bleeding and it's perhaps by way of volatility and prices having to do with demand fluctuations from China in particular, and that is notable in renewals in mining somewhat. They still need to use a lot more technology and consumption is increasing well but not to the same extent of a couple of quarters back. And we think that's a cycle sort of overlaid on the general super cycle there. But other than mining, now infrastructure engineering is quite comfortable.

The only thing I will add is in our conversation with engineering firms, in particular, the discussion is more about capacity and supply than demand. They're very positive about the demand. But that's the point, they see their backlogs that are getting bigger and longer and expanding further out. The question is how exactly can it execute on that backlog, how do they cope with that demand when they're not able to hire fast enough. And obviously, our conversation then goes into how can we help them make more with what they have, with the capacity they have, how can we increase the productivity of their engineers.

In digital.

Right, absolutely. Makes sense. And then we did notice some recent price increases on the Virtuosity website, fairly consistent with what we saw in the prior year. I guess, how are you thinking about pricing currently? And how much pushback are you seeing from customers to increase this?

Yes. As you said, it's aligned with the previous year. So we can defend those price increases because of the value that we're bringing with our software, and that's why we're making sure that there is no disconnect between the price and the value that we are delivering with our capabilities. And that is for both our accounts in SMB and in enterprise.

Our next question will come from Joe Verwing from Robert W Baird.

Maybe just on the ARR outlook being narrowed to 12% to 13%. Can you bridge what changed and maybe quantify the growth factor for M&A in China? And then also what got better or went up to offset those two items?

Yes. And the offset the programmatic acquisitions are nil for the quarter and our outlook is consistent with that for the remainder of the year. So that's a major component of the math. As far as China, what's interesting is even though we're more or less satisfying with our INA [ph] with our business in China in the second quarter, it has shifted to SMB and to perpetual license sales already. We have in mind further things that will shift it yet further in our new go-to-market strategy. But what we're measuring here is ARR growth and ARR growth where ARR from China is already for the first half, down by 0.4% from what would have been if China were merely at the average. And I think we're extrapolating that and may even increase that rate of impact on the ARR growth during the remainder of the year, even though we're still hopeful for a good turnaround in China. So those are the major bottlenecks. What's broader and better is everything else and especially the balance in general, large accounts and small accounts globally and among sectors relying less in particular on resources and more on the broader for us, public works and utilities. Nicholas, anything to add?

You've answered it quite well. The narrowing is really because of the uncertainty in China and in the fact that we haven't done as much programmatic acquisitions that we've done in the past, yes. The -- everything else is indeed balancing itself.

Okay. That's helpful. And then I wanted to go back to comment on Open Road and Open Bridge doing well within SMB. I think one thing that's been happening is as state DOTs are looking to qualify and build out kind of a larger supply chain as engineering firms just see infrastructure as one of the better end markets to be associated with now and going forward, you're seeing growth in these supply chains. Is the strength in those product areas in SMB kind of related to new customer opportunities surfacing for you? And then how do you see that playing out as these other infrastructure subsectors kind of spring to life with some of the IIJA money getting more broadly deployed.

Let me answer this. So Open Roads and Open Bridge, we have more and more transportation authorities, including DOTs in the U.S. that are standardizing on it. And then when that happens, the entire ecosystem starts to use the software as well. So what's happening and what we're seeing is in the U.S., but not just in the U.S., we see a lot of new accounts that are subscribing the Virtuosity to Open Roads or Open Bridge individually or together as part of our open civil suite in order to be able to serve those transportation authorities. And I think we're getting better and better at understanding those dynamics and working across channels in order to leverage those dynamics, to win entire ecosystem, not just the owners operators, but all the product firms working with them, whether they're large or small. Whether they're large, we will go after them with our enterprise sales accounts. Whether they're small, we go after them with our SMB teams or even our channel partners accounts. And yes, you could argue this is a good playbook that could be applied to other industries. In fact, it's a similar playbook we are following with the water infrastructure in India, where we're winning not only large projects with the owners/operators, but also with their ecosystem. And in fact, open flows, which is used by hydraulics, hydrology engineers is in the top three products that we're selling through Virtuosity in India because of those large ecosystems.

So next question will come from Matt Hedberg from RBC.

Good morning. Thanks for the time. On the industry surveys that you guys noted on the call, why do you think that engineering firms are feeling better about their position in the economy? Do you think it's just a function of capacity from a headcount project perspective, they see in their pipelines. But just any more color on what sounds like good results from that survey?

Well, when the backlog is a year, and they're confident about winning new business, and if they could do it, the period of time you're confident about goes out for longer than what you might think is true in the economy in general. And I guess it's the stability and duration of the funding of the public works and utilities programs that makes that dichotomy prevail, persist.

Got it. So it sounds like just like -- it feels to me like it's a really good leading indicator on maybe sentiment from those buyers, which could be good for the next 12 months, 18 months to that effect.

Well, we know they're not going to be able to add capacity because the demographic is such that their workforce is retiring, and there are not sufficient replacements in engineering schools now and there can't be very quickly.

Our next question will come from Devin Au from KeyBanc.

So yes, my one question is on the renewal rate in Virtuosity. Nice to her that 80%. And you also mentioned that you continue to develop the self-serve and also the automation motion there, you could see that bigger improving. So I'm just kind of curious where do you see this figure improving in the long term? And how should we think about kind of the pace of improvement?

Well, so I might say that the SMB subscriptions are new enough to us that we didn't have a clear view of where this would settle out. And even now, it's aspirational to grow above that. But we have really strong plans and budgets for our digital experience projects and perhaps Nicholas you'd like to comment on some of what that will accomplish.

Yes. It has improved because we've increased the number of touch points during the terms of the subscriptions. And we've done it at scale. Obviously, we actual data scale because we're talking about a very large account base now with Virtuosity. And we have started to automate the renewal process itself. It's not fully, fully automated yet. The automation is not fully deployed. So we do expect to be able to improve yet again the renewal rate. But as Greg said, we don't think it will get close to the kind of renewal rate we have with enterprise. And that's the nature of the companies that we're dealing with. They are smaller organizations. They will use the software for a project as opposed to enterprise accounts who will use our software across projects, going from one product to the other. So it will -- it's a very high renewal rate, actually, we think, for SMB. We think we can still improve it, but it won't reach the kind of levels we've seen in enterprise.

Our next question will come from Joshua Tilton from Wolfe.

Thanks for sneaking me here. We've definitely talked in the past about how important this whole pricing dynamic is to the story. You guys mentioned the accretion in the prepared remarks. Can you just maybe give us like a sense or a flavor of what the ASP uplift is for these customers as they start to choose some of these higher-priced applications?

Right. So of course, this is we do have pricing escalation per se for the same product, and there was a question earlier about that. That tends to be in the inflation range of 2% to 5% depending on which year it is. But the application mix accretion holds the pricing constant then measures the pace by which engineers begin using more specialized products and the potential uplift there is an order of magnitude actually. MicroStation, our most generic modeling product in E365, the price might be per day might be half of Open Roads or Open Bridge and then open flows, open wind power, et cetera, could grow by a factor of five or even 10. But the more specialized modeling applications include the appropriate simulation engines and so forth, takes the place of needing a number of different products, but it's a broad range. And this is where I say the potential to go from what I referred last time one note that, on average, are the top design firms spend $1.41 per hour on our applications, and that can grow via magnitude as they need to have their engineers use more specialized applications to increase the throughput and quality as a going digital to make up for not having the increased number of hours to do the same and more work in backlog. So there is quite a quite an order of magnitude potential there over the long-term item.

And if I could sneak one more quick follow-up in.

If it's quick.

Super quick. Just I know you guys obviously have a really strong competitive positioning in transportation, but you're talking about some of these funding dollars starting to be allocated towards water projects. Like how do you feel about your competitive positioning in water may be compared to transportation? And how should we think about your ability to capture these dollars as more of that funding starts to get allocated?

In water, I believe we are also the leader, but it's much closer. And of course, you know that our competitor Autodesk did an acquisition there of the other leader. In water, we're broader. We have a lot more to do with processing plant with plant design, process plants and so forth, not only the modeling of the networks. But it's a great market worldwide. There's a lot of digital twin potential in water operations and maintenance, improving energy, reducing nonrevenue water to leakage and so forth. It's just something great for infrastructure engineers to work on and going digital.

Our next question will come from Andrew DeGasperi from Berenberg Capital Markets.

I guess first, just could you elaborate a little more in terms of the Seequent resource deceleration? I know you mentioned it was growing around two times the Bentley Group ARR growth. I'm just wondering like what should we expect at this point in terms of that growth, should would still exceed Bentley's Group revenue? And if so, how much would the swing be?

Well, it's because online record saying their growth is twice as fast as the company as a whole that I wanted to report when that was no longer quite the case. And of course, definitely otherwise is growing by percentage points faster now than a couple of years ago when the acquisition occurred. So it would have been required that they grow twice that increment in order to keep pace. But the market -- so all over that time, as we mentioned, Seequent has doubled in scale. It's taken on attention to the broader civil market, which is good for incorporating subsurface modeling to derisk infrastructure projects in general. And it's good to balance and spread out what Seequent does. So that has -- that has taken away some of the mining focus, but the mining market also had a significant change this quarter, and that's what it took to have it be less than that imager multiple of the growth of the company otherwise. It is still very significantly faster growth than the company overall. We don't expect that to change, and we're simply observing that it is converging to a degree as the rest of the company grows, but only PLS is growing faster than Seequent still. And we are very satisfied with the Seequent business, the Seequent management, lots of opportunities, fantastic that it has doubled in the two years since the acquisition. But mining is going to go through some fluctuations on the super cycle, we think, and we're in one of them now.

Our next question will come from Jay Vleeschhouwer from Griffin Securities.

Greg, Nicholas, Werner, I'm appreciative of the comments you've been making about current momentum with regard to parts of the business getting directionally better. That was a very interesting commentary. I'd like, however, to ask a longer-term question, specifically about the extensibility of or the preparation of your portfolio for the next half decade or more. And the reason I'm asking is at last November, Keith and Nicholas and Mike made some very interesting comments around your software development. You announced infrastructure cloud. You announced various flavors of iTwin. We've not really heard much about any of that since then. More recently, in June, it was a very interesting AEC conference in London. Bentley was there. There were some really interesting indications of what I would call customer ferment or interest in new technologies and processes related to AEC and BIM. So I know that's perhaps a too large a technology question for an earnings call, but maybe talk about where you think the company is positioning itself over the next half decade or more building upon the current momentum.

I know we're preparing, of course, for year-end infrastructure. So we're going to some power dry for that. But go ahead, please.

We will need to give a more comprehensive update at -- so Jay, what we explained at [indiscernible] last year is resonating extremely well with our accounts. And we see not only a lot of interest with the Infrastructure Cloud and some of the iTwin products we talked about, but we see a good uptick as well of the capabilities that are powered by iTwins. So the fundamental change to the industry, as we discussed before, is going from far based to becoming data-centric. Digital twins are critical to make this happen. Digital twins are the way we can actually get to the data, which is locked in too right now, which is becoming dark because it's on different for formats, different systems, et cetera. So the evolution of the industry overall is how can we break free from those files? How can we get to data? And then by data, how can we improve efficiency, improve effectiveness, potentially also change -- evolve the business models and offer new things to owners, operators as engineering firms. And it's quite fascinating in our conversation with engaging firms, not only are they talking about how exactly they need to go digital in order to close the gap between demand and capacity but they're also telling us help us with all of that data, that data is growing stale and help us. We want to use in your products so that, that data can be reused from one project to the other. And that data potentially could be used as well for AI and ML who knows Yes, for design assistance, as I explained in your prepared remarks. So I won't say too much today, but yes, we'll give you a comprehensive update at YII. .

Our next question will come from Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer.

I was hoping you could break down some of the performance a little bit more in the public works and utilities space. How much uplift you're seeing from PLS? And since my follow-up is related, I'll ask it now. Just what permitting reform in the debt ceiling legislation can mean for your business coming into the back half of the year and in 2024?

I happen to think that electric transmission, especially is forthcoming super cycle, but it's still worth coming. PLS' growth leading the company at the moment is still in anticipation of that. It isn't yet actually due to major transmission projects having been permitted in the world. But I do think that the engineering firms are adding capacity for transmission engineering and contemplation of that. By the way, it's not possible to hire new transmission engineers. They're all busy. So one project that's underway is cross-training some -- several structural engineers from other disciplines to be competent in transmission engineering and applying the tools to that. So I will mention as far as permitting, where we tend in the U.S. to be waiting for major legislation, but there was over the past month rulemaking by our FERC, Federal Electricity Regulations Commission that did start to continue to improve, I'll say, the permitting environment. But it is being measured that there is a multiple of renewals capacity coming on stream or ready to come on stream that's in a queue waiting to be interconnected and depending on transmission capacity being extended and augmented and that's bound to happen and to be a strong driver for PLS. Now PLS is still a fraction only of the size of Seequent among our platform acquisitions, but it's on the launching pad, I think, still.

Our next question will come from Claude Jeffries from Piper Sandler.

Can we come back to Claude after a...

Okay. So let's move to Michael Funk from Bank of America.

So one for you, Greg, if I could. Can you help me conceptualize the potential benefit to NRR growth from application uplift, digital twins and IIJA? Do you expect them to be beneficial to that growth rate in '24 and '25?

Yes, I think each of them would be probably not individually any of them in their own right, but collectively, I think we could aspire to increase NRR. I'll point out that NRR, of course, also includes escalation and inflation. And I think all of us would be glad to see the end of that, but each of the factors you mentioned, digital twins, application, mix accretion and broadening of the IIJA in the U.S. are going to benefit the existing -- our existing accounts that are in our NRR.

And then related to that, Greg, you previously spoke about several ready projects obviously getting off earlier and then kind of the majority kind of awaiting more work approval. How close are we that point in the process where that long tail begins to pick up spending that you start seeing benefits?

Well, I remember reporting after the third quarter that in the U.S., we saw rather a sudden uptick in our ARR growth rate, and that's been sustained, but I've been reporting it hasn't. Yes. And I'm beginning to think that the second half of the IIJA, the broadening beyond transportation to grid and broadband and in water, although water has begun, it's going to be something where it's going to be spread out for so long and such a that won't register in quite the same way, although it should prevail for longer. But it's -- even now, water funding is occurring, but broadband, while it's been allocated, that will be next year. Grid while it's been allocated, won't start, I think, till next year. And from our standpoint, these may not be bad things if that means they last for longer and are more spread out, given the capacity issues in the infrastructure engineering space anyway.

Our next question will come from Matt Martino from Goldman Sachs.

Question here on for Kash. I just wanted to get a quick update on Europe and just kind of geographic distribution and kind of the performance that you guys saw there in each quarter.

Nicholas, if you wouldn't mind.

Yes. So steady growth in Europe overall, the growth drivers, primarily, I would say, transportation and industrial. The trends are very similar to what we've seen in the previous quarters, maybe with We clearly see a linkage here between the large funding from the European Union that is going to the countries, to the projects. So there's a number of projects in water and in rail, where we -- our software is being used, and we know that they are funded by the -- so steady is the word.

I might say that when I look at this as between Northern Europe and Southern Europe and Central Europe, it always seems to fluctuate enough from quarter-to-quarter that steady is the right way to put it over the course of...

Our next question will come from Blair Abernethy from Rosenblatt Securities.

Just a question on India. Greg, I just wonder if you can give us a sense of -- it seems like things are going well there, maybe even better than in China. Is this domestic driven? Or is it helping to make up for capacity in, say, North America or Europe where civil engineering is pretty constrained with these big backlogs?

Well, it's much better than China. And we ask the same question because it's for both reasons, the domestic programs in India and of course their need for infrastructure is greater than any other country in the world. At the same time, they had this greater source of capacity with students and universities and so forth coming into the engineering professions. So we have studied it closely with a bulk of the faster growth in India these couple of years is domestic to do with the programs there. And I might say that it's our impression that the programs there have been very well received by the population in India, and we hope are likely, even though they're reaching in a year or 2, their stated expiration, we like to think there will be successor programs, what would you add, Nicholas?

You answered it. Again, perfectly, the is indeed local infrastructure projects. I will say the share keeps getting higher actually. So the growth is really primarily coming from those local infrastructure projects, but not only, as you were asking, and as I also mentioned in the prepared remarks, India is also benefiting from global firms tapping into the local engineering talent to help for projects. When they do that, it's interesting. By the way, it's not just outsourcing some of the functions. They outsource entire let's say, responsibility for technical delivery, including project management, which is a change from the past.

And maybe we haven't had a question about demand in China. But China historically has had the higher spending on infrastructure. And I think the government there intends to resume that, but it's in fits and starts, do you want to comment further on that, Nicholas?

Yes. In China, the infrastructure plan, sorry.

Yes.

Yes, yes. So it's -- it was discussed multiple times last year. We saw it coming into action in Q4. It was mostly for products already under construction. And then it has shifted to fund projects in design in the first half of the year and primarily with airports, new airports and expansion of existing airports. And we -- our software is used there, right? So we're benefiting from this somehow, given the difficult, let's say, overall business environment in China. This actually is a tailwind.

And I just want to emphasize that we feel pretty good about China. China this year has been reassuring so far compared to last year. But almost anything that happens isn't going to register in ARR except probably as a decrement to ARR because of the preference there for perpetual licenses and in SMB, especially. So we'll need to look more broadly at how we measure tone of business in China. But it's not a bleak picture there necessarily. And we think our structural changes in go-to-market are timely and worthwhile, not particularly bearing fruit yet, although we see some instances of what we've been expecting and leading us to emphasize it's going to increase the pressure on ARR while the overall business can grow.

We will move on to Clarke Jeffries from Piper Sandler.

I wanted to ask, when you reflect on the year so far, where do you specifically expect to invest most incrementally for the rest of the year? And then maybe beyond that for the next 12 months will be the highest investment priority in terms of OpEx investment.

Well, let me just say first that the year so far really has been reassuring that without very much a pace of programmatic acquisitions, without the extreme reliance on mining and Seequent with everything broadening out and especially the SMB and E365 doing better than ever, it feels to us broader and better behind the numbers as we've emphasized. The principal investments on our mind in OpEx, and it's also CapEx are for the digital experience. The SMB opportunity is so large, and we're getting such reinforcement I say way we think there's competitive takeaways going on there. It's as Nicholas described learning that where there is a major project, there's an ecosystem of Tier 1 and Tier 2 for us to fully penetrate and help as well. And digital experience is a lot of how you do that. And it's a lot of different projects. Maybe you might even want to mention some of them Nicholas during the remainder of the year in the 12 months, as you've asked about, Clark, we had a number of major new digital investments coming onstream and some of them have so far already this year, we've implemented ServiceNow and a couple of other broad digital experience, things we're integrating rather than inventing.

Yes. We've seen most of the marketing tech stack, the marketing automation platform, the account-based marketing platform, the website itself. We are in the process of switching our commerce platform as well, which so far has been used only for SMB with Virtuosity, but we intend to use the same capabilities in enterprise as well. So I'd say when it comes to our front office systems, it's almost a complete overhaul and that we're doing in order to be able to scale. And by the way, it's an investment in systems and people as well. So if you look at the openings we have, you will see that the biggest function where we're hiring is actually a functional department is digital experience. So we are -- and not just implement the systems but to actually operate them, right? So that our user experience, our customer experience is becoming more and more digital first. And only when the users, the accounts want to talk to real colleagues, will they say will this happen and across SMB and enterprise?

So we're engineers and we love working on this, and it's just getting a sweet spot scenes in SMB. So we definitely have to say. So by the way, this is the first quarter that I had looked myself, net licensing in SMB. And that's 300 new logos alone from the license sales, first-time names for us. So we really are seeing that license sales are an outright competitive differentiator for us perpetual licenses. And again, consternates this notion that we measure ourselves by ARR growth. We're very comfortable about that. But when we expand our sites to SMB and for instance, to China with local preference for perpetual licenses, we need to appreciate that doing broader and better will be reflected beyond ARR growth.

And then just one follow-up. Just curious about...

Sorry, Clark, the webinar will finish in one minute.

We're going to come back to you, Clark. The first time, conclude on time. Thank you all.

That concludes our call today, and we thank each of you for your interest and time in Bentley Systems, and look forward to updating on our progress in coming quarters. Have a great week, everyone.

Thank you.