As of August 31, 2024, organic annual subscription value ("Organic ASV") plus Professional Services totaled $2,272.8 million, an increase of 4.8% over the prior year. Organic ASV increased in all our segments, with the majority of the increase in the Americas.

We are focused on growing our global business through three strategically aligned geographic segments: the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific. This approach allows us to better manage resources, target solutions and interact with clients effectively.

We continue to scale up our data ecosystem to provide a comprehensive inventory of industry, proprietary and third-party data. This includes granular data for key industry verticals, real-time market data, fund data and sustainable finance.

Annual ASV retention was greater than 95% of ASV for the year ended August 31, 2024 and August 31, 2023. When expressed as a percentage of clients, annual retention was approximately 90% for the year ended August 31, 2024, compared with approximately 91% for the year ended August 31, 2023.

In our fiscal 2024 employee engagement survey, we achieved an 89% response rate, which is substantially higher than the third-party response benchmark. Our score for 'Action Taking' was above the benchmark, indicating employee confidence that meaningful action will be taken as a result of the survey.

As part of our core values and our efforts to attract and retain top talent, we are committed to building a globally diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ("DE&I") at FactSet is supported by our DE&I Council, comprised of executive leaders and chaired by our CEO, Phil Snow.

We and these third-party service providers are subject to the risks of system failures and security breaches, including cyber-attacks (such as those sponsored by nation-states, terrorist organizations, or global corporations seeking to illicitly obtain technology or other intellectual property and those accomplished by phishing scams, hacking, viruses, denials of service attacks, tampering, intrusions, physical break-ins, ransomware and malware), as well as employee errors or malfeasance.

We use open source code in our software development and incorporate it into our products and internal systems. The use of open source code may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software.

Our non-U.S. operations involve risks that differ from or are in addition to those faced by our U.S. operations. These risks include difficulties in developing products, services and technology tailored to the needs of non-U.S. clients, including in emerging markets; different employment laws and rules; rising labor costs in lower-wage countries; difficulties in staffing and managing personnel that are located outside the U.S.; different regulatory, legal and compliance requirements.

We continue to experience intense competition across all markets for our products and services, with competitors ranging in size from smaller, highly specialized, single-product businesses to multi-billion-dollar companies.

Each year, an increasing amount of free or relatively inexpensive information becomes available, particularly through the internet, and this trend may continue. The availability of free or relatively inexpensive information may reduce demand for our products and services.

We expect it would be difficult for another vendor to quickly replicate the extensive data we currently offer, therefore, we believe there are high barriers to entry to our business. Our current competitive market is comprised of both large, well-capitalized companies and smaller, niche firms including market data suppliers, news and information providers, and many third-party content providers that supply us with financial information included in our products.

Cost of services, when expressed as a percentage of revenues, was 45.9% for fiscal 2024, a decrease of 70 basis points compared with fiscal 2023. This decrease was primarily driven by a decrease in employee compensation costs, partially offset by higher amortization of intangible assets and computer-related expenses.

Employee compensation costs decreased 180 basis points primarily due to a decrease in restructuring charges and variable compensation costs, partially offset by an increase in annual base salaries, net of capitalization of certain compensation costs.

We are currently in the midst of a multi-year project to enhance our information technology disaster recovery processes with modernized tooling and automation to maximize resiliency and minimize recovery time in the event of a service disruption.

Our R&D costs are expensed as incurred and are primarily recorded in employee compensation costs, which are included in our Cost of services and Selling, general and administrative ("SG&A") expenses in the Consolidated Statements of Income, dependent on the nature of the team.

During fiscal 2024, we implemented specialized programming to upskill employees in Generative AI, adopting a tailored approach that catered to varying levels of existing knowledge, ranging from offering foundational insights into GenAI concepts to providing advanced technical training aimed at equipping our engineers with the knowledge to develop cutting-edge GenAI products.

Our artificial intelligence roadmap, driven by our FactSet AI Blueprint, continues to resonate with our clients. We recently launched new AI-powered solutions for generating portfolio performance commentary, analyzing earnings call transcripts, and requesting FactSet data using natural language queries in client-built environments and chatbots.

We returned $385.9 million to our stockholders in the form of share repurchases and dividends during fiscal 2024.

In the third quarter of fiscal 2024, our Board of Directors approved a 6% increase in the regular quarterly dividend from $0.98 to $1.04 per share.

For the year ended August 31, 2024, capital expenditures increased by 41% to $85.7 million, compared with $60.8 million in fiscal 2023. This increase was primarily due to higher expenditures related to the development of capitalized internal-use software.

During fiscal 2024, we continued to publish our workforce demographics and annual EEO-1 Federal data in our Sustainability Report.

Our DE&I efforts included adhering to inclusive hiring best practices and requiring all hiring managers to complete unconscious bias training.

In fiscal 2024 we rolled out our updated "How We Work" policy for flexible working arrangements. Employees in many of our locations, where local laws and regulations and the role and department permit, have the option to work full-time in the office, in a hybrid arrangement (usually two to three days per week in the office) or, in some cases, entirely remotely.

Uncertainty caused by political change globally and complex relationships across countries heightens the risk of regulatory uncertainty.

Many of our clients operate within a highly regulated environment and must comply with governmental legislation and regulations.

Some recent legislative and regulatory changes that we believe might materially impact us and our clients include evolving laws, rules and regulations in a variety of jurisdictions around such areas as climate, data privacy, cybersecurity, AI and data protection.