Deep Intelligence Across Industries

Block occupies an unusual position in payments: it is simultaneously a merchant acquirer, a vertical software vendor, a consumer neobank, a consumer and commercial lender, a BNPL network and a bitcoin infrastructure business — and it owns the customer relationship on both sides of the counter. That two-sided ownership is the strategic asset. Square supplies roughly 4.5 million sellers; Cash App reaches 59 million monthly transacting consumers; the Neighborhoods product is the first serious attempt to convert the two into a single network rather than two adjacent businesses. Financially, Block has pivoted from a growth-at-any-cost profile to disciplined margin expansion, culminating in a February 2026 decision to cut headcount by more than 40% and rebuild the operating model around agentic AI. The result is a company with mid-teens-to-low-twenties gross-profit growth, a rapidly expanding lending book, unusually volatile GAAP earnings, and an equity story now hinged on whether AI-driven operating leverage is durable. Block, Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated financial technology company that operates two connected commerce and financial-services ecosystems — Square for businesses and Cash App for consumers — alongside smaller TIDAL (music) and bitcoin-hardware franchises. As of the fiscal year ended 31 December 2025 it generated $24.19 billion of net revenue and $10.36 billion of gross profit, and it is the parent of a Utah-chartered industrial bank, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, and one of the largest buy-now-pay-later networks outside China. | Metric | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Full-time employees (number) | 8521 | 12428 | 12985 | 11372 | 10205 | | YoY change (percent) | 55.6 | 45.9 | 4.5 | -12.4 | -10.3 | --- ### The company's own description Block states in its FY2025 Form 10-K that its purpose is "economic empowerment, helping individuals and businesses manage, move, and grow their money through simple and connected tools." It describes itself as designing and operating "connected ecosystems that integrate commerce solutions, financial services, software, hardware, and networks to serve individuals and small businesses, primarily through Cash App's consumer network and Square's business ('seller') network." Management stresses that the two ecosystems share common infrastructure for payments processing, risk management, identity and data. ### Independent characterisation Block is best understood as four businesses stacked on one risk-and-payments substrate: **(a) A vertically integrated merchant acquirer with embedded software (Square).** Square is the merchant of record and payment service provider for its sellers, holding the contractual relationships with acquiring processors and card networks and reselling that capability at retail terms. It layers more than 30 software and hardware products on top. Economically this is a spread business — Square earns the difference between what it charges sellers and what it pays the networks and processors — plus subscription software and hardware. In FY2025 Square processed $250 billion of Square GPV across 5.9 billion transactions for more than 4.5 million sellers, originating from over 800 million payment cards and more than 300 million buyer profiles. **(b) A consumer digital bank and payments network (Cash App).** Cash App monetises consumer money flow at three points: interchange on Cash App Card and Cash App Pay; fees on instant transfers and business receipts; and interest/fee income on savings, deposits and lending. Management runs Cash App on an "inflows framework": transacting actives × inflows per active × monetisation rate on inflows. In FY2025 Cash App brought in $316 billion of inflows from 59 million monthly transacting actives, averaging $1,410 of Q4 inflows per active. **(c) A credit business (Square Loans, Cash App Borrow, Afterpay).** This is the fastest-growing profit pool and the largest change in Block's risk profile. Square Loans has facilitated over 4.0 million loans/advances totalling more than $32.8 billion in principal since May 2014. Cash App consumer lending origination volume reached $18.5 billion in Q4 2025 alone (+69% YoY), with Cash App Borrow originations up 223% YoY in that quarter. Loans held for investment on balance sheet grew from $365 million at end-2024 to $3.38 billion at end-2025 — a nearly tenfold increase, and the single most important balance-sheet development of the year. **(d) A bitcoin franchise.** Cash App bitcoin buy/sell is a high-revenue, near-zero-margin flow business (FY2025 bitcoin ecosystem revenue $8.50bn against $8.08bn of cost). Bitkey (self-custody wallet), Proto (mining systems and firmware, first units shipped 2025) and Spiral (open-source development) are strategic bets rather than current profit centres. Block also holds bitcoin on its own balance sheet: 9,117 BTC as of 30 June 2026, carried at $777.5 million at 31 December 2025. ### Revenue model mix | Revenue category (USD M) | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |---|---|---|---| | Commerce Enablement revenue | 9530 | 10512 | 11514 | | Financial Solutions revenue | 2717 | 3251 | 4177 | | Bitcoin Ecosystem revenue | 9668 | 10358 | 8503 | | Total net revenue | 21916 | 24121 | 24194 | | Gross profit by category (USD M) | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |---|---|---|---| | Commerce Enablement gross profit | 4838 | 5599 | 6161 | | Financial Solutions gross profit | 2425 | 2940 | 3837 | | Bitcoin Ecosystem gross profit | 315 | 418 | 419 | | Total gross profit | 7505 | 8889 | 10360 | Block realigned its revenue disclosure at its November 2025 Investor Day, abandoning the legacy transaction / subscription-and-services / hardware / bitcoin split for three categories that map to economics rather than instrument type: *FY2023/FY2024 category gross profit derived as category revenue less category cost of revenue per the FY2025 audited statements; total includes amortisation of acquired technology assets ($72.8M FY2023, $68.4M FY2024, $56.9M FY2025) which is not allocated in the sum above, so components will not tie exactly to total.* The structural point is stark: Bitcoin Ecosystem produced 35% of FY2025 revenue but only about 4% of gross profit. Excluding bitcoin, Block's FY2025 revenue was approximately $15.7 billion and its blended gross margin roughly 63%. Any analysis using headline revenue or headline gross margin is measuring the wrong thing; management guides and is judged on gross profit. ### Value-chain position, customers and end markets Square sellers span services, food-and-beverage and retail, from sole proprietors to multi-location mid-market operators (defined as >$500,000 annualised Square GPV). No single customer accounted for more than 5% of Square GPV in FY2023, FY2024 or FY2025. Food and beverage was the strongest vertical in Q4 2025 (+16% GPV YoY). Cash App's customer base skews Millennial/Gen Z with a growing teen cohort (the app is available from age 13 with parental oversight), and management's stated ambition is to become a top provider of banking services to US households earning up to $150,000 per year. Geographically Square operates in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, the UK, Ireland, France and Spain; BNPL operates in the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK; Cash App is essentially US-only.

HCLTech is the third-largest India-headquartered IT services company by revenue and the only one of its scale that operates a genuine, owned enterprise software products business alongside services. Its FY2026 revenue of $14.66 billion divides into roughly 91% services — split between IT and Business Services and Engineering and R&D Services — and 9.5% HCLSoftware, a portfolio assembled largely from IBM's divested product estate and the Actian data platform. That structural asymmetry is the company's defining feature: it produces a software segment earning 26.5% EBIT margins and $1.05 billion of annual recurring revenue, an engineering business with genuine German and aerospace depth, and an infrastructure services franchise built on the remote-infrastructure-management model HCL itself pioneered. The trade-off is a blended EBIT margin of 17.2%, structurally below Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys. Management is now betting the next cycle on "Advanced AI", which reached a $620 million annualised run-rate by the fourth quarter of FY2026. | Metric | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2026 | |---|---|---|---| | Total headcount at fiscal year end | 227500 | 223420 | 227181 | | Net headcount addition during the year | n/a | -4080 | 3761 | | Freshers added during the year | n/a | n/a | 11744 | | LTM attrition (%) | n/a | 13.0 | 12.5 | | Women in workforce (%) | n/a | 28.8 | 29.6 | The FY2024 closing headcount is derived, not directly cited: management stated on the FY25 earnings call that the employee base shrank 1.8% during FY2025 while revenue grew 4.7%, which implies a 31 March 2024 base of approximately 227,500. The three-year arc is unusual and analytically important: HCLTech grew revenue by roughly 10.5% in USD across FY24–FY26 while ending the period with essentially the same number of people it had at the start. Revenue per employee reached $65,500 per annum in Q1 FY2027, up 3.3% year on year. --- ### The company's own description HCLTech describes itself, in the boilerplate appended to every FY2026 and Q1 FY2027 release, as a global technology company with more than 223,000 people across 60 countries, delivering capabilities centred on AI, digital, engineering, cloud and software, powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products. It states that it works with clients across all major verticals, providing industry solutions for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Technology and Services, Semiconductor, Telecom and Media, Retail and CPG, Mobility and Public Services. The FY2025 Annual Report characterises the ITBS segment as enabling global enterprises to drive agile, sustainable business transformation that enhances client and employee experiences, and describes it as the most significant contributor to the revenue mix. HCLSoftware is described in the same document as one of the largest enterprise software product businesses headquartered out of Asia, built on a legacy of product heritage, innovation and engineering excellence. ### Independent characterisation HCLTech is best understood not as a single business but as three businesses of very different economic character sharing a delivery workforce, a client list and a balance sheet. **The first is a large-scale IT and business services franchise** (73.8% of FY2026 revenue). Its historical differentiator — and the origin of the entire company's modern shape — is infrastructure management. The remote infrastructure management proposition was built inside HCL Comnet in the mid-1990s by a team that included the current CEO, and it took share directly from EDS, CSC and IBM Global Services. HCLTech's own executive biographies state that this business now contributes approximately $5 billion of the group's revenue. Around that core the company has layered application services, enterprise applications (SAP, Oracle, ServiceNow, Salesforce), data and AI, cybersecurity, digital workplace, networks and digital process operations. Economically this is a labour-arbitrage-plus-automation business: revenue is recognised on time-and-materials and managed-services contracts, backlog is expressed as total contract value, and margin is a function of pyramid shape, utilisation, offshore mix and automation intensity. It earned a 16.0% EBIT margin in FY2026. **The second is Engineering and R&D Services** (17.0% of FY2026 revenue), which HCLTech operates at a scale few peers match. This business sells to clients' R&D budgets rather than their IT budgets — semiconductor physical design and VLSI, embedded firmware, aerospace certification and technical publications, medical device engineering, automotive software, and product engineering for software and internet companies. It is anchored by the ASAP Group in Germany (automotive engineering consulting) and Butler Aerospace in the United States (a Special Security Agreement entity serving classified US defence work). ERS grew 9.8% in constant currency in FY2026 — comfortably the fastest-growing of the three segments — at a 16.8% EBIT margin. **The third is HCLSoftware** (9.5% of FY2026 revenue, before intersegment elimination), a genuine software products business with its own president, its own revenue architecture and its own margin profile. Its revenue model is disclosed in three lines: perpetual licence upfront and compliance revenue ($127M in FY26), subscription and support including SaaS ($1,190M), and professional services ($78M). Annual recurring revenue was $1,045 million at 31 March 2026. This is the segment that gives HCLTech a claim no other large Indian IT firm can make — but it is also the segment currently contracting, down 4.1% in constant currency in FY2026. ### Revenue model composition (FY2026) | Revenue type | Approximate share of group revenue | Basis | |---|---|---| | Services (time-and-materials, managed services, outcome-based) | 90.8% | Disclosed segment mix | | Software subscription, support and SaaS | 8.1% | $1,190M of $14,664M | | Software perpetual licence and compliance | 0.9% | $127M of $14,664M | | Software-attached professional services | 0.5% | $78M of $14,664M | | Intersegment elimination | -0.3% | Disclosed | ### Value chain position, customers and end markets HCLTech sits between the technology producers (hyperscalers, semiconductor firms, software vendors, network equipment makers) and the enterprises that consume technology. It monetises both directions: it is an implementation and managed-services channel for AWS, Microsoft, Google, NVIDIA, OpenAI, ServiceNow, SAP, Salesforce, Red Hat, Intel, Lenovo, HPE and IBM; and it is an engineering supplier *to* those same producers, which is why "Technology and Services" is now HCLTech's third-largest and fastest-growing vertical at 14.3% of services revenue and 15.0% constant-currency growth in FY2026. Customers are large enterprises. At 31 March 2026 the company reported 23 clients each generating more than $100 million of trailing-twelve-month revenue, 60 above $50 million, and 976 above $1 million. Client concentration is low and falling: the top five accounts were 11.9% of revenue (down from 12.7% a year earlier), the top ten 19.1%, and the top twenty 28.5%. End markets served, by disclosed vertical, are Financial Services (banking, capital markets, insurance, fintech); Manufacturing; Technology and Services; Life Sciences and Healthcare; Telecommunications, Media, Publishing and Entertainment; Retail and Consumer Packaged Goods; and Public Services (which HCLTech defines as including Energy and Utilities, Travel–Transport–Logistics and Government). Aerospace and Defense, Semiconductor, Mining and Natural Resources, Oil and Gas, and Private Equity are additionally maintained as distinct go-to-market industry practices.

Charles Schwab is the scale utility of American retail investing. Fifty-five years after it helped invent discount brokerage, it sits at the intersection of four businesses that most competitors run separately: a self-clearing broker-dealer, a savings-and-loan holding company with three chartered banks, an asset manager, and the largest custodian for independent registered investment advisors. That combination is the whole thesis. Client cash swept into Schwab's banks funds an interest-earning balance sheet; client assets generate management and administration fees; client engagement generates trading revenue; and the same platform serves both channels, spreading fixed costs across USD 13.08 trillion of client assets and 48.0 million accounts as of 30 June 2026. Management estimates U.S. investable wealth exceeds USD 80 trillion, framing Schwab's roughly 15% share as an incumbency rather than a ceiling. The model's strength — and its principal vulnerability — is that revenue is levered to interest rates, market levels, and client cash behaviour, none of which Schwab controls. --- ### The company's own description The FY2025 Form 10-K states that CSC "is a savings and loan holding company" that "engages, through its subsidiaries, in wealth management, securities brokerage, banking, asset management, custody, and financial advisory services." At 31 December 2025 the company reported USD 11.90 trillion in client assets, 38.5 million active brokerage accounts, 5.7 million workplace plan participant accounts, and 2.2 million banking accounts. The three principal operating subsidiaries named in the 10-K are Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (CS&Co), a securities broker-dealer incorporated in 1971; Charles Schwab Bank, SSB (CSB), the principal banking entity; and Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc. (CSIM), investment advisor to the proprietary Schwab Funds and Schwab ETFs. Two further depository institutions — Charles Schwab Premier Bank, SSB (CSPB) and Charles Schwab Trust Bank — are Texas- and Nevada-chartered savings banks respectively. Charles Schwab Futures and Forex LLC (CSFF) is registered as a futures commission merchant and forex dealer member with the CFTC. Management's stated strategy is described in the filings as "Through Clients' Eyes," summarised in the 2026 proxy as offering a broad product range "with a focus on transparency, value, service, and trust," combining scale with expense discipline, and building stockholder value over time. ### Independent characterisation Schwab is not primarily a brokerage in economic terms; it is a spread lender wrapped in a distribution franchise. In FY2025 net interest revenue of USD 11,750 million represented 49.1% of total net revenues, and in the first half of FY2026 net interest revenue of USD 6,501 million represented 48.0%. The company's principal funding source is uninvested client cash — a liability it obtains at an average rate of 0.19% on bank deposits in Q2 2026 — deployed into securities, margin receivables, and bank loans yielding 3.47% on average. That spread, not commissions, is the profit engine. The distribution franchise makes the funding cheap and sticky. Because clients hold assets at Schwab for custody, advice, trading, and banking, the cash balance is a by-product of a relationship rather than a rate-shopped deposit. This is why the 10-K identifies "Operating Structure — Providing bank, wealth, and asset management services to broker-dealer clients" as a stated competitive advantage. ### Revenue model composition | Revenue line | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |---|---|---|---| | Interest revenue (gross) | nd | 15537 | 15504 | | Interest expense | nd | -6393 | -3754 | | Net interest revenue | 9427 | 9144 | 11750 | | Asset management and administration fees | 4756 | 5716 | 6506 | | Trading revenue | 3230 | 3264 | 3921 | | Bank deposit account fees | 705 | 729 | 977 | | Other revenue | 719 | 753 | 767 | | Total net revenues | 18837 | 19606 | 23921 | | Revenue line | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |---|---|---|---| | Net interest revenue (% of total) | 50.0 | 46.6 | 49.1 | | Asset management and administration fees (% of total) | 25.2 | 29.2 | 27.2 | | Trading revenue (% of total) | 17.1 | 16.6 | 16.4 | | Bank deposit account fees (% of total) | 3.7 | 3.7 | 4.1 | | Other revenue (% of total) | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.2 | Schwab reports four principal revenue lines plus "other." The mix is a useful map of the business model: roughly half spread income, a quarter recurring asset-based fees, a sixth transactional, and the remainder off-balance-sheet deposit fees and miscellaneous items. **Revenue by category (USD millions)** **Revenue mix as percentage of total net revenues** There is no subscription or licensing revenue of material scale. Bank deposit account fees are earned under the Second Amended and Restated Insured Deposit Account Agreement (the "2023 IDA agreement") with TD Bank USA, N.A. and TD Bank, N.A., under which eligible uninvested client cash is swept off balance sheet to deposit accounts at those institutions and Schwab receives recordkeeping and support fees. ### Value chain position, customers, and end-markets Schwab occupies the custody-and-distribution layer of the U.S. wealth value chain. It manufactures proprietary product (Schwab Funds, Schwab ETFs, collective trust funds, managed portfolio strategies), distributes third-party product (Mutual Fund Marketplace, third-party ETFs, alternative investments), and provides the plumbing (self-clearing, custody, settlement, banking, trust). Customer types are three: (i) individual retail investors from beginners to ultra-high-net-worth, served through the Investor Services segment; (ii) employers and their employees, served through Workplace Services within Investor Services; and (iii) independent registered investment advisors, independent retirement advisors, and recordkeepers, served through the Advisor Services segment. RIAs are notable because Schwab charges them no custody fee — the economics are earned on the underlying client assets through spread and asset-based fees. End-markets served are essentially domestic. The 10-K describes more than 380 domestic branch offices across 48 states and the District of Columbia, plus locations in Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Cross-jurisdictional activity at 31 December 2025 was approximately USD 31 billion against total consolidated assets of approximately USD 491 billion — under 7%.

ServiceNow is the dominant workflow-orchestration layer of the modern enterprise, and it is now attempting the most consequential repositioning in its history: from "the digital workflow company" to, in management's own 2026 language, "the AI control tower for business reinvention." Its structural advantage is architectural rather than functional. A single data model, a configuration management database that most large enterprises already trust as their system of record for technology estate, and two decades of accumulated process knowledge give ServiceNow a privileged position as the execution layer beneath generative models that can reason but cannot act. That advantage is being pressed hard through capital deployment — $10.2 billion of acquisitions announced or closed between March 2025 and April 2026, principally Moveworks, Veza and Armis — which converts a debt-free, cash-rich balance sheet into a levered one and moves the company into direct competition with the security platform vendors. Execution risk has risen materially; so has the addressable opportunity. ServiceNow, Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated enterprise software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that sells a single multi-tenant cloud platform — now branded the ServiceNow AI Platform — on which customers automate, orchestrate and govern cross-functional business workflows. Founded in 2004 by Fred Luddy as Glidesoft, Inc., renamed Service-now.com in 2006 and ServiceNow in 2011, the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2012 and has compounded revenue at roughly 22.5% annually over the last four fiscal years (derived from Forms 10-K FY2021–FY2025). --- ### The company's own description ServiceNow describes itself in its FY2025 Form 10-K in terms that have shifted decisively toward artificial intelligence. The company states that it delivers solutions helping public and private organisations govern, secure and manage artificial intelligence while digitalising and streamlining workflows to drive collaboration, productivity and better experiences across the enterprise. It offers a suite of products, including AI-powered applications, and services designed to automate workflows, integrate systems and empower employees regardless of existing systems, cloud environments or collaboration tools. At the core sits the ServiceNow AI Platform — a cloud-based platform facilitating delivery of workflows and driving digital transformation across all departments and personas. The 10-K articulates a specific and defensible strategic thesis about where value accrues in the AI stack. Management's argument is that AI excels at analysing data and generating information, but converting that information into business outcomes requires infrastructure capable of orchestrating action across systems, enforcing governance policies and managing complex workflows. Models can identify patterns, recommend and surface insights, but cannot independently execute transactions, route approvals, update systems of record or enforce compliance with business rules. ServiceNow positions its platform as the infrastructure connecting AI-generated insight to the operational systems where work actually happens — the capability to direct, control and manage what happens after information is generated. In the company's framing, this represents a substantial share of the value enterprises seek when adopting AI. By the Q2 FY2026 release the corporate boilerplate had been rewritten again: ServiceNow is "the AI control tower for business reinvention," a platform that integrates with any cloud, any model and any data source, unifying legacy systems, departmental tools, cloud applications and AI agents into a single pane of glass, with more than 100 billion workflows running annually. ### Independent characterisation Stripped of marketing language, ServiceNow is a horizontal workflow platform-as-a-service business with three distinguishing economic characteristics. First, it is a land-and-expand seat-and-consumption hybrid. The company began in IT service management, a category with an unusually clear buyer (the CIO), an unusually measurable ROI (ticket deflection, mean time to resolution) and an unusually sticky artefact (the CMDB, the configuration management database). Having established that beachhead it has repeatedly extended the same platform into adjacent functional domains — IT operations, security operations, risk, HR, customer service, legal, procurement, facilities, and most recently sales and order management. The economics of that expansion are extraordinarily favourable because the incremental product rides on infrastructure, sales relationships and implementation partners already paid for. Management disclosed at its May 2026 Financial Analyst Day that 91% of net new annual contract value in 2025 came from deals containing five or more products, which is the clearest single quantification of the cross-sell engine. Second, the revenue model is overwhelmingly subscription. Subscription revenue was $12,883 million of $13,278 million total in FY2025 — 97.0% of the total (Form 10-K FY2025). Professional services and other revenue was $395 million, or 3.0%, and is deliberately run at or below break-even; the FY2025 GAAP professional services gross loss was $19 million, a negative 4.5% margin (Q4 FY2025 earnings release). ServiceNow does not want to be a services business; it wants systems integrators to be the services business, which is why Accenture, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, Infosys, Cognizant and NTT DATA are named partners in the FY2025 10-K. Third, and newly material, pricing is migrating away from seats. Management stated at the May 2026 analyst day that half of net new ACV had already shifted to non-seat-based pricing models, and that new AI-native bundles were expected to drive average price lift of roughly 20% or more. The FY2025 10-K confirms that certain AI and data solutions now include a consumption-based component that applies when customer usage exceeds the fixed number of service credits under the subscription agreement. This is the company's structural answer to the "seat compression" bear case: if AI reduces the number of human agents an enterprise employs, ServiceNow wants to be paid for the work performed rather than the people performing it. ### Customers, value-chain position and end markets ServiceNow sells almost exclusively to large enterprises and government. As of 31 December 2025 the company had approximately 8,700 customers (Form 10-K FY2025). Concentration among very large accounts is high and rising: 603 customers with more than $5 million in annual contract value at 31 December 2025, against 502 at 31 December 2024 and 420 at 31 December 2023 (Form 10-K FY2025). By Q2 FY2026 that count had reached 658, approximately 23% year-over-year growth (Q2 FY2026 earnings release). Go-to-market is a global direct sales organisation supplemented by managed service providers and resale partners; the FY2025 10-K explicitly notes that an increasing portion of revenue is generated through the partner network, and that a substantial majority of United States government sales are made indirectly through distributors, resellers or service providers. End markets served, per the FY2025 10-K's industry solutions disclosure, are financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, public sector, retail, technology and telecommunications. Public sector is a disproportionately important and disproportionately risky vertical: it drives contract-duration mix effects that management repeatedly calls out in cRPO guidance, and it is the source of the company's principal open legal exposure. In value-chain terms ServiceNow occupies the orchestration and governance layer: above the infrastructure providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, on which an increasing share of ServiceNow instances are hosted), above the frontier model providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, NVIDIA-enabled inference), and above or alongside the systems of record (SAP, Oracle, Workday, Salesforce) whose data it federates without replicating. That position is simultaneously its greatest asset and its greatest dependency, because the same hyperscalers and model providers are its most credible long-run competitors.

Company Headquarters: Madrid Founded: 1996 Workforce: ~ 25,000 Company Working: Applus+ is a leader in the testing, inspection, and certification sector. Applus+ is a trusted partner, enhancing the quality and safety of clients’ assets and infrastructures while safeguarding their operations and improving their environmental performance. Its innovative approach, technical capabilities, and highly skilled and motivated workforce assure operational excellence across multiple sectors in more than 70 countries. Applus+ offers a complete portfolio of solutions that address a range of needs, from asset integrity management to statutory compliance-based inspections. It places a strong emphasis on technological development, digitalization, and innovation, as well as having the latest knowledge of regulatory requirements.

Company Headquarters: Germany Founded: 1866 Workforce: ~26,000 Company Working: TUV SUD is a global testing, inspection & certification provider company. TUV SUD divided its operations into three segments including industry, mobility, and certification. Further, it offers auditing & system certification, testing services, product certification, inspection, technical advisory, global market access, training, risk management services for chemical & process, manufacturing, retail, consumer goods, energy, mobility & automotive, infrastructure & rail industries globally. TUV SUD provided more than 605,000 certificates to approximately 1,000 locations worldwide.

monday.com is an Israeli-domiciled, Nasdaq-listed enterprise software company that has repositioned itself during 2026 from a horizontal "Work OS" into what it now calls an AI Work Platform. Its core asset is a schemaless, no-code/low-code data infrastructure — mondayDB — on which four end-customer products (work management, CRM, service, dev) and a native agentic execution layer are assembled from common modular components. The commercial model is pure subscription SaaS, historically seat-based, now migrating toward hybrid seat-plus-consumption pricing as AI usage is monetised. The company crossed one billion dollars of revenue in 2025 and 1.5 billion dollars of ARR in July 2026, with a structural gross margin near 89 percent, zero financial debt, and consistent free cash flow generation. Its defining strategic tension in 2026 is deliberate: management has traded near-term growth optics and roughly a fifth of its workforce for an aggressive, capital-intensive bet that agentic AI, not seat expansion, is the durable growth engine. | Metric | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | |---|---|---|---| | Total employees (period end) | 1854 | 2500 | 3155 | *FY2023 headcount per third-party compilation of the FY2023 20-F (electroiq); FY2024 headcount of approximately 2,500 per Calcalist/Ctech reporting of the FY2024 results call, which described 35% headcount growth in 2024; FY2025 headcount of 3,155 is taken directly from the FY2025 20-F and is the only figure in this table confirmed against a primary filing.* ### FY2025 employee distribution by region (FY2025 20-F) | Region | Employees | |---|---| | Israel | 1729 | | Americas | 755 | | Europe | 514 | | APAC | 157 | | Total | 3155 | --- ### The company's own characterisation The FY2025 20-F describes the business as follows: "With the monday.com AI work platform, organizations can build software applications and work management tools to fit their needs and execute on their behalf. Our no-code and low-code platform consists of modular building blocks that are simple enough for anyone to assemble, yet powerful enough to build solutions that drive the core business of any organization in any vertical." The corporate boilerplate used in all 2026 press releases is materially different from that used in 2024, and the change is itself a datapoint. The FY2024 descriptor read: "The monday.com Work OS is a low-code/no-code platform that democratizes the power of software so organizations can easily build work management tools and software applications to fit their every need." The August 2026 descriptor reads: "monday.com is the AI work platform that not only helps manage and orchestrate work, but also does the work for you… where AI doesn't just assist, it executes." Note 1 to the Q2 2026 interim financial statements confirms the shift at the accounting-disclosure level: "The Company operates an artificial intelligence ('AI') Work Platform that consists of modular building blocks that can be easily used and assembled to create software applications and work management tools and serves as a connective layer to integrate with other systems and applications across an organization." ### Independent characterisation monday.com is best understood not as a project-management application vendor but as a *general-purpose relational workspace with a shallow adoption curve*. Three structural features explain both its historical growth rate and its current strategic position: **First, a single codebase across all products.** The 20-F is explicit that products "share a common code base." monday work management, monday CRM, monday campaigns, monday service and monday dev are configurations of the same primitives — boards, items, columns, views, automations, dashboards — rather than separately engineered applications. This produces very high incremental gross margin on new product launches and explains how the company added CRM, dev, service and campaigns inside roughly four years without a corresponding step-change in R&D intensity. It also explains why cross-sell is the dominant expansion mechanic: as of 31 December 2025, 29% of enterprise customers (those above $50,000 ARR) had multiple products, versus only 6% of sub-$50,000 customers. **Second, a two-motion go-to-market.** The company runs a self-serve, performance-marketing-fed funnel alongside a direct enterprise sales organisation under a Chief Revenue Officer, supplemented by 300 channel partners across approximately 50 countries. The self-serve funnel is what made the business capital-efficient historically; it is also the source of the company's most acute current vulnerability, since management confirmed on the Q2 2026 call that guidance "does not assume a rebound in performance marketing or top-of-funnel activity." **Third, the data layer as the AI moat.** Management's central argument in 2026 is that agents that operate on live, permissioned, typed operational data are structurally more useful than agents operating on documents and chat logs. The 20-F states that mondayDB "was natively built in a manner to deliver this context, and offers a unique competitive advantage." Independent commentary has echoed this — Moor Insights & Strategy and Greyhound Research analysts, quoted by CIO in July 2026, described monday.com's "structured substrate" of boards, permissions and typed workflows as giving agents "something firmer to act on than just documents and chat history." ### Revenue model | Revenue model component | Characteristics | |---|---| | Subscription (seat-based) | Historic core. Free plan limited to two users; 14-day free trial of the Pro plan; four paid tiers | | Subscription (product-based) | Separate SKUs per product (work management, CRM, campaigns, service, dev), enabling multi-product attach | | Add-ons | Guardian security add-on (tenant-level encryption, bring-your-own-key, multiple SSO); monday sidekick monetised as an add-on for most tiers from 2026 | | Consumption / usage-based | Introduced 2025–2026. AI actions were initially bundled (500 free actions per customer) then metered; monday vibe pricing launched mid-October 2025; broader shift to consumption-based pricing announced with Q1 2026 results | | Marketplace | 869 apps at 31 December 2025, of which 704 with native monetisation; partners monetise via in-platform payment processing. monday.com's own revenue share is not separately disclosed | | Agent marketplace | Agentalent.ai (launched March 2026), a managed marketplace for enterprise AI agents. Constellation Research reported pricing "from $2,000 a month and up" with 17 agents available at launch | Revenue is derived, per the 20-F, "mainly from monthly or annual subscription agreements with our customers for access to our cloud-based Work OS products." There is no perpetual licence, no hardware, and no material professional-services line — implementation and training services are deliberately pushed to the partner ecosystem. Customers do not take possession of the software. ### Customer base and end markets The company defines a "customer" as a unique web-domain-based account on a paid subscription plan. Concentration is negligible: no single customer accounts for more than 1% of revenue, and the top 100 customers accounted for less than 10% of revenue in both FY2025 and H1 2026. Verticals are deliberately horizontal. The 20-F notes that "a majority of them work[s] in traditionally non-tech industries, such as real estate, banking, journalism, and construction," alongside IT management, software development and e-commerce customers. Marketing materials cite over 200 industries and over 200 countries and territories. ### Value chain position monday.com sits in the application layer, above cloud infrastructure (AWS and Google Cloud Platform, multi-region) and increasingly above third-party foundation models. The 2026 AI Platform Gateway makes this explicit: rather than vertically integrating model development, monday.com brokers access to multiple large language models and offers one-click connectors to Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini. This is a deliberate decision to compete on data context, workflow governance and distribution rather than on model capability — with the corresponding consequence that AI compute has become a cost-of-revenue line item and a stated cause of gross margin compression.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 2009 Workforce: ~2900 Company Working: Slack Technologies LLC. is a software development business that creates a communication platform for teams that includes real-time messaging, transferring files, archiving, and searching. Slack is a workplace platform that empowers industries such as retail, IT & telecom, BFSI, education, media, and others through no-code automation and AI, streamlines search and knowledge sharing, and maintains connections between teams and businesses. Slack has more than 200,000 paid consumers and has operating users across 150 countries globally.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 2008 Workforce: ~1,666 Company Working: Asana Inc. is a work management tool that assists teams in orchestrating their work, from regular tasks to larger objectives. Asana gives structure to unstructured work, bringing clarity, transparency, and responsibility to everyone in an organization, including individuals, team leaders, and executives. Asana is used by over 100,000 paying organizations and millions of teams worldwide. The company has its operations in more than locations across North America, Asia, and European region. Major companies such as Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, P&G, others integrates Asana for their operations management.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1994 Workforce: ~355,300 Company Working: Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (Cognizant) is a professional services company. it operates through four segments: financial services, healthcare, manufacturing/retail/logistics, and other. The financial services segment caters to customers providing banking/transaction processing, capital markets, and insurance services. The healthcare segment caters to healthcare providers and payers, as well as life sciences customers, including pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies. The manufacturing/retail/logistics segment caters to manufacturers, retailers, travel, and hospitality customers, along with customers providing logistics services. The other segment comprises information, media & entertainment services, communications, and high technology operating segments. Its service portfolio comprises consulting and technology services and outsourcing services. Its outsourcing services include application maintenance, IT infrastructure services and business process services. Cognizant has more than 270 office locations across 40 countries worldwide.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 2015 Workforce: ~60,200 Company Working: Hawlett Packard Development LP. is a worldwide edge-to-cloud corporation that is designed to transform organisation by assisting them in connecting, protecting, analysing, and acting on all of data and apps, from edge to cloud. Hewlett Packard Development LP offers products & services to IT infrastructure and provides solutions for software, servers, systems, data storage, networking, and cloud computing to different industrial sectors such as Healthcare, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Public Sector. The company provides its solutions and services under six segments includes Compute, HPC & AI, Storage, Intelligent Edge, Financial Services, and Corporate Investments and Other. The company has its geographical operations in North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa and South America region includes different countries like US, Puerto Rico, Czech Republic, Mexico, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1872 Workforce: ~135,000 Company Working: GXO Logistics, Inc. is a contract logistics provider and a leading innovation in a sector with significant structural tailwinds. The company’s objective is to provide high-value-add storage and distribution, order fulfilment, ecommerce, reverse logistics, and other supply chain services to the customers. The company deliver technology-enabled, customized solutions to Aerospace & Defense, Agribusiness, Automotive, Healthcare, food and beverages, chemical & energy, retail, consumer packaged goods, public sector, industrial sector, etc. GXO operated in about 970 locations worldwide, totaling roughly 200 million square feet of space, mostly on behalf of multinational enterprises that had outsourced their warehousing, distribution, and other associated services to the company. In Addition, GXO Logistics, Inc. finalized its separation from XPO, Inc. on August, 2021, and listed on New York Stock Exchange as “GXO” traded symbol.

Company Headquarters: Sweden Founded: 2007 Workforce: ~37 Company Working: IMINT is an enterprise that is involved in intelligent sensor and data analysis. The company provides leading video enhancement software platform Vidhance that is currently deployed in 250+ million. This software is also used in body-worn camera devices. It has 15 years of experience developing cutting edge video enhancement software for the consumer and industrial market.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1979 Workforce: ~ 29,900 Company Working: Mastercard is a global payment technology company that enables transactions and financial services across multiple channels, including credit, debit, prepaid cards, and digital payment solutions. Mastercard's main business is processing transactions between merchants and banks. It provides payment processing services to financial institutions, merchants, governments, and other organizations around the world. The company operates in more than 210 countries and territories and serves over 2.7 billion cardholders. Mastercard's products and services include credit and debit cards, prepaid cards, commercial payment solutions, mobile payments, fraud detection and prevention services, loyalty and rewards programs, and consulting services. The company also offers a range of digital payment solutions, including Masterpass, a digital wallet, and Mastercard Send, a platform for real-time payments. Mastercard has a global presence, operating in more than 210 countries and territories around the world. The company has regional headquarters in various locations, including the United States, Singapore, Dubai, and Belgium. Mastercard's network connects financial institutions, merchants, and consumers, enabling electronic payments and transactions across borders. The company has partnerships with various banks, retailers, and technology companies to provide a wide range of payment solutions

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1968 Workforce: ~293,723 Company Working: JP Morgan Chase & Co. is a financial holding company engaged in investment banking, financial services and asset management. It operates in four segments, as well as a Corporate segment. The Company's segments are Consumer & Community Banking, Corporate & Investment Bank, Commercial Banking and Asset Management. The Consumer & Community Banking segment offers services to consumers and businesses through bank branches, automatic teller machines, online, mobile and telephone banking. The Corporate & Investment Bank segment, comprising Banking and Markets and Investor Services, offers investment banking, market-making, prime brokerage, and treasury and securities products and services to corporations, investors, financial institutions, and government and municipal entities. The Commercial Banking segment provides financial solutions, including lending, treasury services, investment banking and asset management. The Asset Management segment comprises investment and wealth management.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1975 Workforce: ~4,000 Company Working: ACI Worldwide develops, markets, installs, and supports a line of software products and solutions primarily focused on facilitating real-time digital payments. Its segments include ACI On Demand serves the needs of banks, merchants, and billers. These on-demand solutions are maintained and delivered through the cloud via its global data centers and is available in either a single-tenant environment for software as a service (SaaS) offering, or in a multi-tenant environment for platform as a service (PaaS) offering; and ACI On Premise serves customers who manage their software on-site or through a third-party public cloud environment. Its solutions include ACI Acquiring, ACI Issuing, ACI Enterprise Payments Platform, ACI Low-Value Real-Time Payments, ACI High-Value Real-Time Payments, ACI Omni Commerce, ACI Secure eCommerce, ACI Fraud Management, and ACI Speedpay. The Company offers implementation, product support, technical, and education services.

Company Headquarters: Norway Founded: 1855 Workforce: ~16,000 Company Working: Globally, Telenor ASA (Telenor) and its affiliates provide telecommunications services. Mobile, fixed-line, and broadcasting services are some of its main goods and services. The company's mobile communication services comprise voice, data, Internet, content services, consumer equipment, and messaging. Telephony, Internet, TV, leased lines, data and managed services, and broadcasting and data communication services via satellite, terrestrial radio, and TV transmission make up its fixed-line services. The business also offers financial services, internet-based services, and machine-to-machine communication.

Company Headquarters: Pakistan Founded: 2008 Workforce: ~449,934 Company Working: China Mobile owns CMPak Limited, which operates a mobile data network out of Pakistan under the brand name Zong. China Mobile has established its first international operation after purchasing a license from Millicom to run a GSM network in Pakistan. China Mobile Limited offers mobile phone and multimedia services throughout Hong Kong and mainland China via its extensive mobile telecommunications network.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 2009 Workforce: ~305 Company Working: Boku, Inc specializes in mobile payments and enables companies to accept online payments via carrier billing and mobile wallets. With its specifically designed payment network of more than 250 local payment methods that reach 7 billion accounts across 65 countries, global brands like Apple, Amazon, DAZN, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Sony, Spotify, and Tencent rely on Boku to reach millions of new paying consumers who do not use credit cards.

Company Headquarters: Switzerland Founded: 1998 Workforce: ~19,157 Company Working: Swisscom telecommunication (Swisscom) offers telecommunication services in Switzerland, Italy, and other countries. Fastweb, Other Operations, and Swisscom Switzerland comprise its three operating segments. The business sells terminal equipment, provides telecom and communications solutions for major organizations and small and medium-sized businesses, and fixed-network services like telephony, broadband, TV, and mobile products. Additionally, it offers a variety of services to the banking industry, Internet of Things solutions, healthcare industry digitization services, IT systems for health insurance companies, fixed-line and mobile networks by other telecommunication service providers, roaming to foreign operators whose customers use its mobile network, workplace, mobile phone, networking, business process optimization, SAP, and security and authentication solutions. Additionally, it offers cross-platform retail media and security communication services, IT and network services, online and telephone directories, and the construction and maintenance of wired and wireless networks.

Company Headquarters: UK Founded: 1999 Workforce: ~232 Company Working: Bango.net Ltd provides a platform for mobile internet payments. The firm creates, markets, and sells technology that allows mobile phone users to pay for entertainment and media on connected devices. Its main product is the Bango Payment Platform, which connects app stores and content producers to mobile operators worldwide. Furthermore, it has created Bango Boost and Bango Dashboard. Bango is driving this expansion, ensuring that mobile operators and businesses can provide the best payment experience to more people. It provides carrier billing for prominent mobile carriers such as EE, Verizon, BT, Vodafone, Softbank, NTT Docomo, Deutsche Telekom, and others, and leading merchants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. It caters to industries such as retail, telecommunications, and app developers. It consists of 60 Operators and 30 Merchants. Bango has 310 customers spread throughout 36 countries. The corporation operates in the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States and Canada, Indonesia, and the rest of the world.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1994 Workforce: ~75,000 Company Working: T-Mobile USA, Inc. is Deutsche Telekom AG's wireless operation in the United States. It provides telecommunications services. Customers can use the company's cellular telecommunications services and various additional services such as voice, text messaging, video calling, and data communications. T-Mobile offers postpaid, prepaid, and wholesale services. The company supplies commercial facilities with wireless internet connectivity and other data services. It also sells mobile phones, wearables, tablets, and phone accessories from well-known brands such as Apple, Google, Motorola, OnePlus, Samsung, Alcatel, Beats, and LG. T-Mobile USA's cutting-edge wireless devices and services enable customers to stay connected to those who matter most. T-Mobile USA is among the top wireless customer care and calls quality providers in different locations across the United States.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 2011 Workforce: ~500 Company Working: Matterport, Inc is a software development company. The company focuses on its 3D platform, enabling anyone to design, build, operate and understand 3D spaces accurately. It operates in more than 150 countries and offers an innovative computing platform. The company’s core specialty areas are 3D models, Computer Vision, 3D Capture, AEC, 3D Data, Virtual Tours, and Engineering.

Paramount Skydance is the reconstituted form of one of American media's oldest asset stacks — Paramount Pictures (1912), CBS (1927) and the Viacom cable portfolio — now controlled by the Ellison family through a non-voting public float. It is simultaneously a declining legacy business and an aggressive consolidator. Roughly half of revenue still comes from linear TV Media, which is shrinking mid-single digits annually but throwing off 30%-plus segment margins under severe cost discipline. Growth is concentrated in Direct-to-Consumer, where Paramount+ reached 81.6 million paid subscribers in Q2 FY2026 on the back of an exclusive seven-year UFC rights deal. The defining strategic fact is the pending $31-per-share, roughly $111 billion enterprise-value acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — signed February 2026, cleared in 65-plus jurisdictions, and now blocked pending a March 2027 US antitrust trial. Everything about the equity story is subordinate to that binary outcome. *FY2023 figure is Paramount Global's employee population as of 31 Dec 2023 (approximately 22,300, comprising full-time, part-time and temporary employees), disclosed in the FY2025 Form 10-K/A pay-ratio methodology. FY2025 figure is from Form 10-K FY2025, Item 1 (Human Capital Management). Note that the FY2023 and FY2025 populations are not defined identically. Separately, the Q4'25 shareholder letter states that the Telefe and Chilevisión divestitures together streamlined operations by roughly 1,600 people.* **Shares outstanding** *Source: Form 10-Q for Q2 FY2026, cover page.* **Market capitalization.** Approximately $9.8 billion as of 5 August 2026 per Macrotrends; approximately $12.9 billion as of a Barchart note earlier in 2026; $11.96 billion at a $10.69 share price on 12 May 2026 per WallStreetZen. The Class B closed at $13.40 on 31 December 2025 (Form 10-K/A, used for equity-award valuation). The 52-week range as reported in May 2026 was $8.62–$20.86. The wide dispersion across sources reflects genuine, extreme price volatility through the Warner Bros. Discovery contest and the subsequent antitrust litigation, not a data error; market cap should be re-marked at the time of use. --- ### The company's own characterization The FY2025 Form 10-K opens with a deliberately brand-led description: Paramount is a global media and entertainment company whose portfolio includes Paramount Pictures, Paramount Television, CBS, CBS News, CBS Sports, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, Showtime, Paramount+, Pluto TV and Skydance Media's animation, interactive/games and sports divisions. The Q2 FY2026 Form 10-Q updates the roster to add Paramount Sports Entertainment and Paramount Games Studio and to re-label the Skydance units as Skydance Animation, Film and Television. In its own filings the company describes itself as "fundamentally a content company," a framing it uses specifically to justify the weight it places on trademark, copyright and other intellectual-property protection. ### Independent characterization Paramount Skydance is best understood not as a single business but as three businesses with divergent economics, bolted onto a holding-company balance sheet that is currently being used as an acquisition vehicle. **First, a cash-generative melting ice cube.** TV Media — the CBS Television Network, 29 owned-and-operated stations, the domestic cable portfolio, and international free-to-air networks — produced roughly half of group revenue in FY2025. Its revenue declined 9% year-on-year in Q2 FY2026 while its adjusted EBITDA margin *expanded* from 26.4% to 34.0%. Management is explicitly running this segment for cash extraction, cutting average production cost per episode by nearly 10% for the 2025-26 broadcast season while, on its own account, increasing its share of the top-20 series. This is the classic late-cycle linear playbook and it is being executed well. **Second, a scaling subscription platform.** Direct-to-Consumer combines Paramount+ (subscription, two tiers), Pluto TV (free ad-supported streaming, or FAST) and, until its Q2 FY2026 absorption into Paramount+, BET+. Paramount+ revenue grew 16% year-on-year in Q2 FY2026, with management attributing roughly one-third of growth to subscriber additions and two-thirds to ARPU expansion. DTC adjusted EBITDA reached $366 million in Q2 FY2026, a 14.8% margin, up 44% year-on-year. Critically, part of that margin gain is a non-recurring accounting benefit: the pushdown revaluation reduced the carrying value of content assets, mechanically lowering amortization expense. Analysts should discount reported DTC margin improvement accordingly. **Third, a studio in acknowledged rebuild.** The Studios segment (film plus television production plus games) swung from a $31 million adjusted EBITDA loss in Q2 FY2025 to a $36 million profit in Q2 FY2026. Management has been unusually candid that it inherited an underperforming slate, doubling theatrical output from eight releases in 2025 to 15 in 2026 and targeting 15-plus annually thereafter — but with CEO David Ellison stating on the Q4 FY2025 call that the two-year tentpole development cycle means franchise economics do not materially improve until 2027 and beyond. ### Revenue model | Revenue stream (USD M) | FY2024 | % of total | |---|---|---| | Affiliate and subscription | 13150 | 45.0 | | Advertising | 10300 | 35.2 | | Licensing and other | 4950 | 17.0 | | Theatrical | 813 | 2.8 | The company disaggregates revenue into four contractual streams. Using the FY2024 mix as the last clean full-year proxy (aggregator data derived from the Paramount Global 10-K): The FY2025 disaggregation is complicated by the Predecessor/Successor split. The economic implication is that roughly 80% of revenue is recurring or contractual (affiliate fees, retransmission consent, reverse compensation, streaming subscriptions) and roughly 35% is cyclically exposed advertising. Advertising is also structurally biased: political spending in even-numbered years and marquee sports events (Super Bowl rotation, NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament) create material year-to-year swings that management repeatedly flags as comparability headwinds. ### Value chain position and customers Paramount Skydance is vertically integrated from IP creation through to owned distribution, but it is not fully self-sufficient at either end. Upstream it competes for creative talent through first-look and overall deals and acquires third-party content, including a strategy — new under the current leadership — of commissioning Paramount+ originals from external studios (A24, MGM Television, SISTER). Downstream it distributes through owned platforms (Paramount+, Pluto TV, CBS, cable networks, O&O stations) *and* licenses aggressively to direct competitors: recent named counterparties include Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Tubi and Tencent. Customer types are therefore fourfold: (i) consumers paying subscription fees; (ii) advertisers and media agencies; (iii) distributors — MVPDs, virtual MVPDs, affiliated broadcast stations and international platform partners paying carriage, retransmission and reverse compensation; and (iv) other studios and streamers licensing content. End-markets served are US broadcast and pay television, global SVOD and FAST streaming, theatrical exhibition, home entertainment, consumer products and licensing, live events, publishing and, newly, interactive games.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 2004 Workforce: ~189,000 Company Working: Meta Platforms, Inc. builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. Meta Platforms, Inc., doing business as Meta and formerly named Facebook, Inc., and TheFacebook, Inc., is an American multinational technology conglomerate. The Company's products enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, virtual reality (VR) headsets, and wearables. The Company operates through two segments: Family of Apps (FoA) and Reality Labs (RL). FoA segment includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other services. RL segment includes augmented and VR-related consumer hardware, software, and content. Facebook enables people to connect, share, discover and communicate with each other on mobile devices and personal computers. Instagram is a place where people can express themselves through photos, videos, and private messaging, and connect with and shop from their favorite businesses. Its RL products include Meta Quest virtual reality devices, as well as software and content available through the Meta Quest Store, which enable a range of social experiences.

Discovery Limited is a South African-founded financial services group whose defining asset is the Vitality Shared-Value insurance model — a behavioural-economics engine that rewards customers for healthier living, safer driving and better financial habits, and converts those behaviours into lower claims, better persistency and higher lifetime value. In South Africa it operates a vertically integrated ecosystem spanning health-insurance administration (the country's largest open medical scheme, Discovery Health Medical Scheme), life assurance, investments, short-term insurance and a digital bank that turned its first full-year profit in FY2026 and is now being repositioned as a "Super Bank" orchestration layer. Internationally, the Vitality composite owns VitalityHealth and VitalityLife in the UK, holds an equity stake in Ping An Health Insurance in China, and licenses Vitality to tier-one insurers such as AIA, Sumitomo Life, John Hancock and Manulife. FY2026 normalised operating profit reached ZAR 17.75 billion with a normalised ROE of 16.5%, positioning Discovery as one of Africa's most valuable insurers by market value. --- ### Company's own description Discovery describes itself as a South African-founded financial services organisation operating in healthcare, life assurance, short-term insurance, banking, savings and investment, and wellness markets, guided since 1992 by a core purpose of making people healthier and enhancing and protecting their lives. It states that the Vitality model is active in 36 countries with over 50 million members, exported through the Global Vitality Network of large insurer partners, including AIA (Asia), Ping An (China), Sumitomo (Japan), John Hancock (US), Manulife (Canada) and its wholly owned Vitality Life & Health business in the UK [S1]. Profile's Stock Exchange Handbook (2026 Issue 2) characterises Discovery as a diversified financial services organisation operating in health insurance, life insurance, long-term savings and investments, short-term and commercial insurance, banking and behaviour-change programmes [S29]. ### Operating architecture (FY2026) Since FY2025 Discovery has run the group as two composites [S13]: 1. **Discovery South Africa (Discovery SA)** — Discovery Health (medical scheme administration and managed care), Discovery Life, Discovery Invest, Discovery Insure, Discovery Bank, Discovery Vitality (SA), plus Discovery Corporate & Employee Benefits and smaller initiatives such as Discovery Green. 2. **Vitality (global composite)** — VitalityHealth UK, VitalityLife UK, Vitality Global Markets (Vitality Network partner fees, Vitality Health International "other", Vitality USA/Vitality Group), the equity-accounted share of Ping An Health Insurance (PAHI), and Vitality AI. In FY2026 the composite completed a regionalised operating model with the UK as centre of excellence [S1]. ### Revenue model | Revenue model | Where it sits | Characterisation | |---|---|---| | Administration and managed-care fees (service) | Discovery Health (fees from DHMS and closed schemes) | Capital-light, annuity-like, high cash conversion | | Risk premiums (insurance) | Discovery Life, Discovery Insure, VitalityHealth UK, VitalityLife UK | Underwriting margin plus Vitality-driven claims advantage | | Asset-based fees (savings) | Discovery Invest | Tied to AUM and net inflows | | Net interest income and transaction fees (banking) | Discovery Bank | Scaling; ZAR 3.1 billion revenue in FY2026 [S1] | | Licensing / partner fees (IP licensing) | Vitality Network, Vitality Group (US) | Capital-light, USD-linked | | Equity-accounted earnings | Ping An Health Insurance (China); associates such as CMT | Share of after-tax operating profit | Discovery does not publish a conventional consolidated "revenue" line as its headline metric; under IFRS 17, insurance revenue, fee income, net interest income and investment income are presented separately, and management steers by normalised operating profit and new business annualised premium income (API) [S5], [S12]. The mix by economic model: ### Value-chain position, customers and end markets Discovery operates as product manufacturer, administrator and distributor (through a large tied and independent adviser force), and increasingly as a digital platform owner (the Discovery and Discovery Bank apps). Customer types: affluent and upper-middle-income retail clients in South Africa (Discovery SA served 6.4 million clients in FY2025, up 6% [S14]); corporate employers (group risk, retirement funds, employer health); UK retail and SME customers (VitalityHealth and VitalityLife, over two million UK customers in FY2025 [S13]); global insurers (Vitality Network licensees); and US health plans and employers (Vitality USA, now augmented by Icario) [S23]. **Independent characterisation.** Discovery is best understood as a behavioural-data platform monetised through regulated balance sheets. Its moat is the joint ownership of the client across health, life, short-term insurance, investments and banking, which lets Vitality status reduce risk in every product while the bank captures the daily engagement data. The key strategic question for the next five years is whether the bank-centred "Super Bank" orchestration can lift multi-product penetration among Discovery SA clients (management notes that roughly 75% of Discovery members are not yet bank clients [S7]) while the international Vitality franchise scales capital-light.

Company Headquarters: United States Founded: 1976 Workforce: ~6,847 Company Working: Jack Henry & Associates Inc. (JHA) is a company that provides technology solutions and payment processing services. The company provides solutions and services for transaction processing, business process automation, and information management. It provides services under the labels Jack Henry Banking, Symitar, and Profit Stars. In collaboration with respective firms, JHA also sells hardware solutions such as IBM Power Systems, Canon, Epson, Digital Check, and Panini check scanners, and Lenovo, HP, and Dell workstations and servers. It also provides digital products and services via the Banno digital platforms. The organization offers its services through direct sales teams and sales personnel. Jack Henry works with over 1,000 banks and 800 credit unions. In 2014, Jack Henry & Associates’ Symitar division introduced Episys Anywhere, a native app that enables credit union employees to conduct common branch activities on a tablet.

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1968 Workforce: ~65,000 Company Working: Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) is one of the leaders in financial services technology and provides solutions and services to clients in retail and institutional banking, healthcare, hospitality, capital markets, wealth management, asset, and retirement markets. The company operates in three segments, namely, Merchant Solutions, Banking Solutions, Capital Market Solutions, Corporate and Other. The Merchant Solutions segment focuses on providing technology and services to merchants, including point-of-sale (POS) systems, payment processing solutions, e-commerce platforms, and fraud detection and prevention tools. FIS helps merchants accept various forms of electronic payments, such as credit cards, debit cards, mobile wallets, and alternative payment methods. This segment serves a wide range of industries, including retail, hospitality, healthcare, e-commerce, and more. Banking Solutions segment offers a comprehensive suite of technology solutions and services to banks and financial institutions. These solutions include core banking systems, digital banking platforms, risk management tools, payment processing, wealth management, and regulatory compliance solutions. FIS helps banks automate their operations, enhance customer experiences, manage risk, and comply with regulatory requirements, thereby supporting their end-to-end banking operations. Capital Market Solutions segment provides technology solutions and services to capital market participants, including investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds, and exchanges. FIS offers trading and execution platforms, risk management solutions, post-trade processing systems, data and analytics services, and investment management software. This segment helps capital market participants streamline their trading operations, manage risk, optimize post-trade processing, and make data-driven investment decisions. Corporate and Other segment includes certain corporate-level activities, such as corporate overhead, shared services, and other unallocated costs that are not directly attributed to the other three segments. The company has its major operations in North America and has a limited presence in other countries. In July 2019, FIS acquired Worldpay, Inc., one of the world's biggest worldwide eCommerce and payment technology companies. The goal of the acquisition was to build a global leader in technology and solutions for merchants, banks, and capital markets

Company Headquarters: US Founded: 1884 Workforce: ~38,000 Company Working: NCR Corporation provides enterprise technology solutions, primarily through software and services, to manage operations for its clients in the retail, hospitality, and financial industries. Its business is divided into different segments, including Payments & Network, Digital Banking, Self-Service Banking, Retail, and Hospitality. The Payments & Network segment provides access to a retail-based ATM network for credit unions, banks, digital banks, fintech, stored-value debit card issuers, and other financial service providers. The Digital Banking solution assists financial institutions in implementing their digital platforms for various transactions. The Self-Service Banking segment offers a range of ATM hardware and software, along with installation, maintenance, and professional services. The Retail segment provides software-defined solutions to retail customers. Finally, the Hospitality segment offers technology solutions to restaurants of all sizes, such as table-service, quick-service, and fast-casual establishments within the hospitality sector.