Earnings Labs

Pegasystems Inc. (PEGA)

Q2 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 25, 2024

$36.36

-1.12%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by my name is Celine, and I will be the conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Pegasystems 2Q 24’ Earnings Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be question and answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the call over to Vice President, Corporate Development and Investor Relations of Pegasystems, Peter Welburn, please go ahead.

Peter Welburn

Analyst

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Pegasystems Q2 '24 Earnings Call. Before we begin, I would like to read our safe harbor statement. Certain statements contained in this presentation may be construed as forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words expects, anticipates, intends, plans, believes, will, could, should, estimates, may, forecast guidance or variations of such words and other similar expressions identified forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statement was made and are based on current expectations and assumptions. Because such statements deal with future events they’re subject to various risks and uncertainties, actual results for fiscal year 2024 and beyond could differ materially from the company's current expectations. Factors that could cause the company's results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements are contained in the company's press release announcing its Q2 2024 results, and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, and in other recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, and there are no assurances that the matters contained in such statements will be achieved. Although subsequent events may cause our views to change, except as required by applicable law, we do not undertake and specifically disclaim any obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. And with that, I turn the call over to Alan Trefler, Founder and CEO of Pegasystems.

Alan Trefler

Analyst

Thank you, Peter, and to everyone who has joined today's call. I'm very pleased with our performance for the first half of 2024. We continue to improve execution, and I'm happy to see that our focus on profitable growth is working well. We're accomplishing our financial goals while continuing to deliver breakthrough technology innovation. Our cinema architecture and approach to statistical AI and generative AI continue to be significant differentiators that we think our competitors can't easily replicate. Our newest offering, especially Pega GenAI Blueprint have captured the imagination of clients, prospects and partners, allowing them to identify new possibilities and help us drive deeper engagement. Client discussions I've had since launch of Blueprint are some of the most positive I've had in the Pega 40-year history. In fact, when our clients see what we delivered they quickly recognized for power and the opportunities. I believe that the energy and confidence in our vision is increasing -- and is helping to drive the kind of results we're talking about today. With tens of thousands of Pega Blueprints created over the last few months, we're identifying opportunities to accelerate growth and creating additional momentum for Pega Cloud, which will contribute to monetization. And we've barely scratched the surface of what we, our clients, and our partners can do with this game-changing technology, and we're really energized by this. I do believe that Blueprint is fundamentally changing how we engage, sell and deliver with our clients. Now I want to take a few minutes to remind you about what makes our approach to AI unique and powerful because a lot of the language we see in the industry is very busy and sounds very similar. But at the core, if you strip away all the text, we're moving our clients way beyond…

Ken Stillwell

Analyst

Thanks, Alan. Our execution was truly exceptional in the first half of the year, and I'm really proud of the way our team is improving profitability, but also focusing on driving growth. This success reflects our continued commitment to delivering efficient growth and demonstrates that we're fully pleasant to Rule of 40 mindset in the business. The most important metric to measure the success of our business is growth in annual contract value. ACV grew 13% year-over-year in constant currency, exceeding $1.3 billion. Our ACV growth reaccelerated from Q1 to Q2 for three reasons. First, we significantly increased client engagement thanks, to the go-to-market changes we’ve made in 2023 and the enormous interest in what we're doing with artificial intelligence. Clients are very excited about our AI vision and execution. We've reinvigorated their enthusiasm about Pega and its driving strategic conversations. More specifically, Pega GenAI Blueprint is dramatically changing the way our field teams engage with our clients and prospects. Nailing down an app design used to take weeks or months now it takes hours. Pega GenAI Blueprint helps businesses and technical teams align on a vision quickly. We've seen tens of thousands of new blueprints created so far, a strong sign that Blueprint is transforming our overall selling process. Our decision to permit our product line with AI is really energizing clients to make them more amenable to moving forward with us, which is also transforming our selling cycle and culture. To be very clear, we don't view the monetization of Gen AI primarily as the selling of new priced offerings. Although we did see some of that activity in Q2. Instead, we see Gen AI as a totally different way to engage and ideate with clients to modernize legacy applications and enable digital transformation. The second reason ACV…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Steve Enders with Citi. Please go ahead.

Steve Enders

Analyst

I guess maybe just to start, I mean, pretty impressive ACV, new ACV ads in the quarter here. Can you just maybe talk a little bit about what's helping drive performance in 2Q specifically? And I think looking back, it looks like one of the better 2Q from an ACV ad perspective in quite some time. So can you just give a little bit of clarity on maybe what's going on in the deal environment? And if there's any pull forward or kind of like what drove the strength in the ACV as here?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst

So I'll start, and then Alan, feel free to jump in. I think that one of the big changes, Steve that we made in 2023 that is really paying off is because of the focus on dense coverage of target orgs and really the approach of selling Pega Cloud we're not as dependent on very large kind of episodic deals to actually -- for our sales team to make numbers. That's not to say that they don't happen and they won't happen. But our sales team is in a motion of much more of continual prospecting, selling, pipeline development advancement. And we really embrace that because it helps to put less dependency on back end of the year and larger deals. That's not to say that we will be a completely linear business. It just helps to keep that focus quarter in and quarter out to produce and get numbers on the board. I think that's kind of well ingrained in our culture right now. And I think you're seeing that in the first couple of quarters. So that's just from an operational execution. I'll also let Alan touch on just Gen AI and Blueprint and how that's really reinvigorated the discussions.

Alan Trefler

Analyst

I think if you go back post a year ago, we made organizational changes to bring together what we used to call the Catalyst Group, which was a distinct group at that with our solution consultants, the people who actually do the demos and touch the sort of systems our customers used to figure out that they want to buy something with our professional services people who actually would do work on the delivery and with our partner teams because our partners are obviously, absolutely critical to delivery. When we saw what was going to happen with GenAI last July, and what's happening. We said we're going to bring these teams together and really use generative AI as a way to rethink how we engage with the customers. As a result of that, I think, make their ability to see what an application might look like and understand what will take the deliberate application much, much clearer to them. And I think this is still a process, but I think it's working really well. And I believe that the energy that we're seeing from our clients really has a lot to do with having connected that chain together but also reduce something into that chain, which previously we’ve really didn't use to do all that much, which is to actually have our account executives, the frontline people who are in the field actually be able to participate in the demoing and the seeing and the real invigorating of the clients was a hands-on level of involvement, all based around GenAI empowers people to think differently. I -- look, we need more than 1 quarter or 2 quarters here to make us feel that we've got this all nailed. But the early signs of what I see as evidenced by the enthusiasm and the results from Q2 are actually pretty exciting.

Steve Enders

Analyst

That's great to hear and helpful context there. I guess, maybe as a little bit more pointedly, I think at the Analyst Day on the GenAI front, you've maybe expected some contribution coming in, in Q3 from Blueprint. Are you kind of feeling the same way from that? Are you seeing the pipeline -- are you seeing those conversations built in the pipeline? And how are you kind of feeling about that pipeline converting over to deals at this point?

Alan Trefler

Analyst

Well, no, I think one of the things that's different about Pega's approach is -- and if you look -- if you go back and listen to my 20-minute keynote at Pega World, we talk about the three forms of GenAI, Statistical AI, machine learning. We've done that for 15 years, really, really critical to next best action, making recommendations, doing process improvement. The second form being these productivity tools of which we've got several dozen that do a nice stuff like summarization and other sorts of it that are -- can be important. But the third time of AI, we spoke about was AI who was transformational, which is using generative AI to profoundly change how the organization did its very processes. And we had an enormous opportunity to do that because we're modeled we don't go from the Gen AI input from customers to code, which candidly more code is just more mask. We go into the model, the same model that we've been perfecting for decades. And that means that we've got GenAI plugged in, in a way that is not just faster, but it's also transparent to the customers, you can see what's happening and also changeable. So I think that this energy from Gen AI represents a fundamental change to all aspects of our business, we really -- we woven it in everywhere, which is why we go so around talking about GenAI SKUs. I would say that there's not a single sale anymore or a single pursuit that does not have GenAI at the heart of it because that's now the way you use our products.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Kumar with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Kevin Kumar

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Alan, you had mentioned the federal segment. So maybe if you can give an update there, kind of the trends you're seeing with the federal business. How is growth trending there relative to kind of the broader Pega growth. And maybe, if you can touch on kind of the strategy there. Is it similar to the broader Pega strategy of going deeper into the existing accounts? Any color there would be helpful.

Alan Trefler

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yes. I think that one thing you need to realize, when we go deeper into an existing account, that actually involves things that are as much new pursuits and new accounts as anything else. I mean the Department of Commerce is an existing account. Department of Justice, the U.S. Army, those are existing accounts. The IRS, the ability to do massive new things for them is it, Right? I mean, we're only doing it inflection of what that potential landscape is. So we definitely have a target or strategy. I think that's something that helps our business be more reliable in the business, but also, frankly, helps us do a better job for our clients, which is key. So we've definitely taken a target strategy there. And I'm thrilled with what I'm seeing. I'm filled with big organizations themselves experiencing success and looking for ways to get broader. By the way, not just in the U.S. But we've had massive work recently with Majesty's revenue and customs doing work well across the globe in governments, and I think it's going to continue to be really important for us.

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

So Kevin, just to add one thought on. So what -- an interesting dynamic that may be kind of similar to what happened a few years ago is that the government went from being a little bit more skeptical of SaaS and cloud, say, 10 or 15 years ago to really embracing it in the last, say, 5 years or so, maybe a little longer. So they're really -- and I think you're seeing that same trend around GenAI, right? The government -- companies are always skeptical of kind of like the risks of something like GenAI because they want to understand how to control it, how to risk changes to their business that they might not have anticipated. But I do think you're going to see the public sector, the U.S. government and other governments really leverage Gen AI. So we're focused on the impact of Gen AI into our government solutions as well because we think it's going to be relevant there, too, including Blueprint.

Kevin Kumar

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yes. No, that's great color. And then, Ken, you had talked about license term license maybe being a bit stronger this quarter, but it doesn't sound like your full year expectations change. So was that just really kind of pull forward, maybe you see a weaker 3Q and you see that typically strong 4Q. Anything else you can add there? Or any changes in customer buying patterns?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yes, that's a great question. And you actually caught that in my script. So I was consciously trying togive you guys some insights on that. We actually think, if anything, our turn license will be lower for the year as opposed to hire. There's more and more clients are moving to Pega Cloud. What happened in was just timing of renewals, right? It's just -- so what you should anticipate, Kevin, is exactly what you said, Q3 will be pretty weak in terms of renewals on the revenue side because it's just -- you know how that is. It's just our business isn't linear on the timing of renewals. Q4 will still have term renewals in it, but Q3, not many. And we think -- we still think that term revenue is likely to be down low double digits, right, for the year because more of it's moving to Pega Cloud.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jacob Roberge with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Jacob Roberge

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

It was great to hear the traction that you're seeing with those Gen AI blueprints. I'm curious when you think these blueprints actually go live into production. Like are you seeing -- starting to see some customers take the blueprints in the live run time today? Or is that still a few quarters away to actually really impact that ACV growth?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

So it's interesting, Jake. We actually just met yesterday with one of our key partners, who has actually closed two engagements where they were driven from Blueprint. So like they've actually done Blueprint and they've turned into engagements for them. Now it doesn't necessarily mean their license orders for us, but that's okay. Those are the engagements that lead the license orders. So we see our partners really on the front end of this, which is really amazing because typically companies like Pega. We have -- we typically move fast and we have to help enable our partners to keep up. Our partners are actually kind of out in front on this in a lot of cases and really leveraging blueprint to be able to deliver solutions to our joint -- our mutual clients. So we're already seeing that. And I think that momentum is going to pick up.

Alan Trefler

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Yes. I've seen it also with some direct clients who have used blueprints to accelerate products applications that they brought live. When Ken talked about these always don't lead to an immediate license sale. We've been moving for a number of years, our customers to more of a kind of consumption model based on levels of consumption. So that it's easier for them or candidly years ago, I think we made it really hard for our customers to get started on a new application. Now we want a customer to be able to find it easy to start on a new application to not have to sign a piece of paper with us to be able to do that in most cases. The side effect of that is we've got a real interest in them getting benefit in them using our system. So we're thrilled with increases to this consumption whether it leads to an immediate license or to the next time in new agreement, will we take a look at what they're doing and true without it. Both of those are fine outcomes from our point of view here. And I think that the level of enthusiasm that we have that's touching the entirety of the Pega products suite, both where we've got Blueprint implemented and where we've talked about putting Blueprint in the third and fourth quarter. But this is generating a level of excitement and understanding about how AI can really help their businesses that's unlike anything I've seen before.

Jacob Roberge

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Yes, that's great to hear. And then also good to see Pega Cloud representing 81% of net new ACV growth. How are you seeing GenAI impact the cloud migration timeline for your customers? Are you seeing any of those customers accelerate the journey to Pega Cloud? And then, Ken, how should we kind of think about that mix heading into the back half of the year just in terms of Pega net new ACV growth.

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · William Blair. Please go ahead.

Sure. So you're going to see, Jake like they -- the clients were already on a pace of migrating to Pega Cloud. And we have been I would even say more patient with that move and not really pushing anyone. And I think there's just a lot more incentive for clients now with GenAI. They want to move to cloud anyway, Right? This is part of their digital transformation plans. So I think GenAI just gives them another reason and a very important reason to actually make that transition. So I think you'll see the pace of our clients migrating to Pega Cloud accelerate as we go into 2025.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Pinjalim Bora with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Pinjalim Bora

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Alan, what are you hearing from customers around kind of that last mile implementation of Blueprint. It's clear that to create Blueprints, its pretty easy and people are probably getting a lot of value from creating those blueprints, but I'm thinking about actual go-live from creation of blueprints to the actual go-lives. What are -- are there any hurdles people are facing? Is that actually easy? What is the feedback from customers at this point?

Alan Trefler

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Well, the feedback continues to be very excited. What we're seeing customers tell us is this has fundamentally changed the way they do design thinking about new applications. They're able to take harvest practices, their input, things were able to glean from the Internet, bring them together and use that to challenge the conventional way that they would have thought about doing a business process or build the system. And it's really as you have seen and everybody is welcome to use it on pega.com. It's very innovative. I mean even if it never made it into the application. The fact that this changes the way you think about a business process and does it literally in hours as opposed to weeks all by itself use advantage. And I do know of some customers who are playing with this for systems that may never actually become a Pegasystem, which by the way, I think is just fine. Now having said that, the ability that we introduced at Pega World, so realized how incredibly new this is to be able to import this into an actual new or existing Pegasystem, have a blend with their existing rules and processes that's got a tremendous amount of excitement. Unsurprisingly, it's led to a lot of enhancement of us from clients. And we are pounding those in, which we're able to do because Blueprint is a SaaS system. So we're able to do this weekly and biweekly release cycle, which is adding value. So the feedback we're getting from the clients is they love what they're saying they want some more stuff, which is always a good thing with telling customers were really interested, and we're providing it. So I would say unlike many things I've seen in my life and technology rollout, this is all good.

Pinjalim Bora

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

One question for you, Ken. You just in the previous answer before me, I think you said the pace of migration to cloud should continue to accelerate. In that context, how should we think about kind of the maintenance line going forward? And kind of the dollar of maintenance converting to cloud that multiple that you typically get, how should we kind of think about that as we think about the next couple of years?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes. So it is a tough one even for us because not every situation is exactly the same. But if you think about $700 million of term -- of non Pega Cloud ACV, if you just think about that number. And if all of it converted, Right? You should see somewhere between a 25% and a 50% expansion off of that number. Now in some cases, the number will be two to one, right, or more. And in some cases, it will be more modest. It really kind of depends on the actual situation with each client. So we do have to. Now there will be some markup for all clients because naturally, there's a managed service that we're providing and infrastructure, et cetera. But I think just using a rule of thumb, I'd say 25% to 50% across that you're talking about a few hundred million dollars of incremental opportunity.

Operator

Operator

Hi Rishi, I think your line is mute.

Rishi Jaluria

Analyst

Yes, sorry, I did not hear my name is getting called. Thanks Alan. Thanks, Ken. For taking my question. Maybe to starting with Blueprint really exciting to see the momentum here. Can you talk a little bit about some of the more common applications and workflows that you're seeing going into production? And maybe if we think about some of those use cases over time, maybe over the next 1, 2, 3 years, how do you see that evolving?

Alan Trefler

Analyst

So a lot of the uses, as you would expect, have to do customer service and aspects of it like the onboarding or the dealing with addition of a new product and how you make those choices and how you get the right approvals and implement that. Those are very common types of workflows. But we're seeing the lots of workflow uses that fall into what you'd call the master data management space. That's kind of how do you sit in front of an SAP system or some old, big system that is maintaining the records of your business and make sure that your products have defined correctly or part of business are defined directly, really putting those types of workflows in front which leverage our ability to work so well with some of these big, old back-end systems, but give them a state-of-the-art workflow that brings AI to how they want to operate. So it's incredibly broad is the way I would describe it.

Rishi Jaluria

Analyst

And then if we just think about kind of the increasing mix towards consumption and then Blueprint's probably going to accelerate that. How should we be thinking about just kind of the overall revenue mix of kind of more traditional subscription versus this consumption component over time? Or is that just not the right term to use.

Ken Stillwell

Analyst

So I don't -- I understand your question completely, which is fixed versus variable revenue, Rishi. And I don't know that that's necessarily the right way to think about it. Because what Alan said was the way that this works is think about it as a commit with flexibility, Right? Clients are committing to a certain amount of usage because that gets them better economics on pricing, they have the ability to flex up as they flex up, they typically commit to higher levels that gets them once again better economics as they scale as you get volume discounts. And it's very similar to Amazon or Google, where they actually have pricing discounts, but then there's better discounts you can get by making annual commitments. So it's a very similar model for that. There's still going to be a commitment level, but there's going to be this ability to allow clients to all those grow organically within their arrangements as opposed to having to go through a contracting and paperwork process every single time they want to get a new application, a new workflow, a new case type started. So I don't think -- we're not bifurcating those numbers because we view it as all part of a continuum of how we grow with our clients.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Patrick Walravens with Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

Austin Cole

Analyst · Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

This is Austin Cole on for Pat Walravens. Ken, I think at the Analyst Day, you made a comment that the kind of long term getting to that $2 billion ACV in 3 to 5 years, that there's an upside case that's driven by Blueprint. Did you mean that, that upside case with Blueprint is getting to that $2 billion and kind of closer to the 3 years rather than 5 years?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

Yes. That's -- naturally, we're going to do everything we can to get there as fast as possible. And we think Blueprint could help us get there faster, which is where that range came up Austin.

Austin Cole

Analyst · Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

And then just -- I know it's super, super early days, but following that event in the 1 month since that event where definitely was very centered on Blueprint. With the interest you're seeing, I mean, is there anything in these early days to suggest that we're not going to be close to that 3 years rather than 5 from a blueprint standpoint?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Citizens JMP. Please go ahead.

I would say we -- given where we are now, Blueprint excitement momentum, even the improvement of the advancement of some of the capabilities of Blueprint are really on pace with what we had hoped. Jumping to the -- it's 3 years versus 5 years is probably a little premature to start to predict when we think we can get there. But I would say we feel great about the opportunity. And naturally, we're -- internally, we're pushing to get there as fast as possible. And in 3 years would be our -- that's like -- that's our desired state. But once again, we're months in from when we talked.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Raimo Lenschow with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Raimo Lenschow

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead.

Perfect. I have two quick questions. One, given the uncertainty that we had on the software spending side, with the off-cycle Q1, I don't know if you followed what we saw at Salesforce, Workday, et cetera. How -- what did you see this quarter kind of playing out? And did you change anything in terms of kind of penciling like being a little bit more sharper on sales execution, et cetera, because you delivered a very, very strong quarter. So the questions that we all have is like are there certain pockets in software spending like yours that is with GenAI is doing better than others? Or like can you talk a little bit what is slightly broader in terms of sales? And then I have a quick follow-on.

Alan Trefler

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead.

Yes. They were -- this is an example of a quarter where they were really know what we used to call whales. We love whales, but it's okay, being able to have a good quarter without any. That's we'll take lot's of tuna is the way we think about it. The -- so there weren't any whales. There weren't regional differences that were massive or driving the outcome. And I do think our sales execution has improved as we really moved to adopt the target or model, and as that has now become part of the DNA of the company. And what we need to make sure is that as we grow, as we continue to go forward, that the organization continues to basis, its energy on the things we've learned about doing it in a more efficient manner and paying attention to the cost that envelop as well as the getting the growth target. But no, it was a broad brush outcome.

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead.

So Raimo, can I -- let me add one little piece of information that I know you're aware, just to remind you. We are not as dependent on licensing at the user level. And so I think a lot of software companies that license at the user level actually do have poor risk with this whole like automation, Gen A, trying to get efficiency. And quite frankly, our entire solution it's about automating end-to-end to drive efficiency and optimization and consistency. So we think that -- and not to say that we are insulated from good global economic trends because we are absolutely subject to all of that. I do think our licensing model being more of a consumption value-based licensing model where the amount of transactions that Pega does tie to the value ties to our business helps us. And also the net space in which we sit, is very congruent with what we're trying to -- what the market is trying to do with AI, which is to drive efficiency and automation. So maybe that helps us a little those two levers.

Alan Trefler

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead.

Our philosophy is, the more work the system does. If the system is doing more work, then the customers should be willing to pay more. The folks who are doing this based on users I think that's just an antiquated model. That's -- our full point is we're going to go to an autonomous enterprise that is more self-driving. And the number of users is going to massively reduce doubled with self-service. So I'm really happy that we have the right thinking when it comes to a model.

Raimo Lenschow

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead.

And then Ken, on the cash flow number, very strong for the first half, obviously, like the Q1 was a strong one, Q2 is never the strong one because of the seasonality. Like if you think about the cash flow performance so far this year, is there any thinking from you that the trajectory is changing? Or are we still kind of good with what you kind of communicated before?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Raimo. So I think -- so first off, I think, we'll try really hard to have positive cash flow in Q3. I think it will happen. But when you have lower billing quarters. It is harder to generate lots of cash. Q4 is always a figure billings quarter. It doesn't always mean that cash flow is big as some clients may pay you in Q1 or Q4. So I think that teetering of when you get collections continue to make Q1 and Q4, the biggest quarters for the year, we still see the year like kind of shaping up as we thought it would be but Q1 gave us a really good start. Q2, quite frankly, was better from a cash flow standpoint than we thought. I think Q3, we will try to keep our positive cash flow momentum, but it is hard when you don't have as much billings in the quarter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Schappel with Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Mark Schappel

Analyst · Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

And nice job on the quarter. Ken, during the Investor Day, it was noted that the company was planning to target new logos that have the potential to be 1 billion ACV accounts. It's a little bit of a departure from the past. I was wondering, if you could just provide some additional details on how you plan to go about this market -- go-to-market wise. So for instance, should we expect like a dedicated sales team to go after these new clients?

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Sure. So let's go back a year or two ago. We wanted to transform our go-to-market team. We knew that by doing that and changing the way we sold to add a bunch of new logos was going to be terribly disruptive to the progress on that. So just a reminder of why we are where we are. We really limited net new logos. It was a very small amount, a very targeted. And when we go forward, we are going to be just as targeted in terms of the new logos, but we are feeling like it is time to add more focus on new logos. Those new logos will not be a new team that we have our teams already segmented where some of our teams actually focus on more prospecting more logos. We call that major accounts, which is an account that is very significant it typically looks just like one of our existing organizations that we feel like we can sell into. So it's going to be very target or model, and it will be focus in some of our teams right now globally that already have prospected for some new logos. But once again, they're going to be targeted.

Alan Trefler

Analyst · Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

And what targeted means is that you don't give somebody some random territory and say, go hunt. You basically say, hey Paula, John, here are six org. This is where you're going to fly, get one of these or maybe even here's one org that we want you to break into. So a very target forward driven so that we don't have this investment in general purpose marketing expense which we found when we did it before, we just get the returns from. We're very comfortable that on a hand-and-hand with org, we can work our way through that.

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

And one last little piece of color there. Mark, organizations that we will target will probably look like the organizations that we already have and also may have former Pega buyers and influencers that have moved to those organizations, which actually helps as well, meaning somebody that already used Pega at another organization and took a new role, that's kind of how we're thinking about that strategic targeting.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Ives with Wedbush. Please go ahead.

Daniel Ives

Analyst · Wedbush. Please go ahead.

Can you talk about on these AI cycles, how that's changing your overall spending environment? I mean, are you getting brought into more, what I'll call AI-driven deals?

Alan Trefler

Analyst · Wedbush. Please go ahead.

Yes, we are -- people have seen what we've done and are intrigued. And so we're really being seen by our customers in many cases as the way that they should go about implementing AI. I mean what's a better way to implement AI to make the way your workflows work better or to cut down on manual steps or to make better decisions for clients. Those are perfect use cases for AI. So we're a way for companies to incorporate AI in the core of their business without having to craft it by hand, from something from Azure or AWS. This is a way for them to incorporate AI as part of something that's very [Indiscernible].

Daniel Ives

Analyst · Wedbush. Please go ahead.

And of those, how many tend to be more new customers versus existing?

Alan Trefler

Analyst · Wedbush. Please go ahead.

Well, yes, we -- our strategy is very much about expanding into other areas of existing customers and that has been our strategy. But I consider another area of a new customer. I mean another part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. That's really kind of breaking into something new. So it's not as clean as you might want. But we're definitely going to be looking at taking out how do we open that aperture and bring it to more new organizations, but do it in the style we're already using.

Ken Stillwell

Analyst · Wedbush. Please go ahead.

And by way, Dan, just to add one, just to add one other piece of color. Our partners are actually very helpful in assisting us in the selection of some of those target organizations because they may actually be talking to those exact organizations and make recommendations for ones that we should cover. So that's where another helpful connection to AI as well.

Operator

Operator

That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Alan Trefler, Founder and CEO of Pegasystem for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Alan Trefler

Analyst

Thank you, everyone. We're working hard. We're seeing our customers engage with us, which is enormously invigorating, when we talk about GenAI excitement, I will say that it is palpable and we're going to continue to improve it, to drive it and hopefully continue to show the good results. Thank you very much, everyone.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.