Automotive-focused AI specialist Cerence Inc. continues to pick up speed in its latest fiscal report.

For its second fiscal quarter of 2020, Cerence reports GAAP revenues of $86.5 million and an adjusted EBITDA of $29 million. Those are considerable year-over-year improvements, with the company having seen GAAP revenues of $70.3 million and an adjusted EBITDA of $18.7 million when it was still a business arm of Nuance Communications in the comparable quarter last year.

The results remain impressive in comparison to those of Cerence’s first quarter as an independent company; in its Q1 update, Cerence reported GAAP revenues of $77.5 million and an adjusted EBITDA of $21.8 million.

Despite the strong results, the cloud of the COVID-19 pandemic nevertheless loomed over Cerence CEO Sanjay Dhawan’s comments on the report; yet he still struck an upbeat tone in discussing the conversational AI company’s future prospects.

“While the business environment in the near term will be challenging, the largest first-half fiscal year bookings in the company’s history is a strong indication of Cerence’s long-term growth potential,” he said. “These bookings and the strategic wins in the quarter give us confidence that we will emerge a stronger company once the automobile industry begins its recovery.”

That having been said, Cerence noted in announcing its results that most of its customers and partners are no longer offering fiscal guidance for the rest of the year due to the uncertainty around the impact of COVID-19, and the company is therefore following suit and withdrawing its previous guidance for the fiscal year.