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Specialist
Former Director at Beyond Limits
Agenda
- Overall operating environment and market positioning for enterprise AI
- Value proposition, product offerings and product roadmap
- Revenue drivers and growth outlook amid macroeconomic headwinds
- Go-to-market strategy and customer demand trends
- Industry trends and consolidation outlook
Questions
1.
Could you describe Beyond Limits as a company and highlight its value proposition and what’s differentiated about its approach to AI?
2.
AI is getting a lot of attention in the market right now, ever since generative AI with ChatGPT was released. We hear about it all the time, but Beyond Limits has a long history in AI and the company describes its approach differently with some of the descriptions you just provided, such as its approach to cognitive AI. What’s different about the company’s approach to AI vs what we might typically think of as an AI solution, thinking about enterprise AI platforms from other companies?
3.
What are Beyond Limits’ core offerings?
4.
It sounds as though most of Beyond Limits’ offerings are industry-specific, which makes sense, given what the company does. Could you give a very rough estimate of how the company’s revenue breaks out across the various industries you described and the Refinery Advisor product for O&G [oil and gas]?
5.
Could you expand on the point solutions and the consulting aspects? It seems it’s 60-70%. Where would you put the rest of those revenue drivers?
6.
Do you think the 80-85% revenue concentration in O&G will remain relatively stable over time, or is Beyond Limits trying to grow into any adjacent markets or verticals?
7.
In September 2022, it was announced that Saudi Aramco signed an agreement valued at USD 250m with Beyond Limits. Could you comment on the significance of this deal and your expectations for how Beyond Limits is delivering on that deal today?
8.
The USD 250m value for the Saudi Aramco-Beyond Limits agreement is very large. What’s the typical spend of a customer to Beyond Limits?
9.
I saw one report that placed the enterprise AI TAM as growing in 2022-30 at a CAGR of approximately 34.6%, to reach USD 155.2bn by 2030. Another report put that TAM at USD 3.1bn in 2021, while some enterprises such as C3.ai estimate much larger TAMs, such as USD 596bn by 2025. What’s your opinion on the TAM for Beyond Limits? Do you think it mirrors this overall TAM or is it a smaller subsegment?
10.
What are your expectations for how Beyond Limits will improve and overcome the challenges you’re describing? Is this an existential threat for the company?
11.
In March 2022, Beyond Limits announced its acquisition of Altec, an integrated document management and workflow solutions provider. Could you talk about the strategy of that acquisition and how the integration of that acquisition might have progressed?
12.
C3.ai provides enterprise solutions, with a large concentration in the industrials vertical, and 33.8% of revenue is in O&G as of FY23. The company’s total revenue in FY23 was USD 266.8m, an increase of 5.6% compared to FY22, putting its FY23 O&G revenue at about USD 90m. How would you characterise Beyond Limits’ growth over the past year, given its large concentration in the O&G vertical?
13.
You mentioned most of Beyond Limits’ growth is coming out of the existing customer base. How sticky would you say the company’s products are? Would you say it’s common for a customer to churn, or is it hard to do so once they’re acquired?
14.
I think the standard for very strong retention for AI vendors is a gross retention rate of around 90% or greater. Would you say that’s around what Beyond Limits’ gross retention rate is?
15.
Other enterprise AI vendors such as C3 have struggled to sell their products, given the complicated nature of these products, their high cost and the strain on new logo acquisition. How is the dynamic of having challenges gaining traction with new customers playing out for Beyond Limits? How is the company able to demonstrate ROI for new customers, and is that also a challenge?
16.
Is there anything Beyond Limits can do or is doing in its go-to-market strategy to improve its ability to acquire new logos?
17.
Who do you see as Beyond Limits’ key competitors, looking at other vendors that also provide cognitive AI solutions or more classic AI vendors such as C3?
18.
Do competitors such as C3 or Palantir ever come up in an evaluation?
19.
What’s your view on Beyond Limits as an acquisition target? What type of company profile would represent a potential buyer in such a case?
20.
What’s your opinion on the operating environment at Beyond Limits? Is it a fairly efficiently run company?
21.
What are your thoughts on Beyond Limits’ current management team?
22.
What’s your opinion on generative AI being incorporated into Beyond Limits? Do you see generative AI as an opportunity for the company to improve on some of the challenges we’ve been discussing? On the other hand, is it a potential threat to its current approach to AI and cognitive AI? Is it possible that generative AI could supplant the need for the company’s approach to cognitive AI?
