ExlService Holdings, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the second quarter of the 2023 EXL Service Holdings Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1-1 on your telephone and you will hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, John Christoph, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, John.

Thanks, James. Hello, and thank you for joining EXL's second quarter 2023 financial results conference call. On the call with me today are Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer. We hope you've had an opportunity to review the second quarter earnings release we issued this morning. We've also posted an earnings slide deck and investor fact sheet in the investor relations section of our website. As a reminder, some of the matters we'll discuss this morning are forward-looking. Please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to general economic conditions, Those factors set forth in today's press release, discussed in the company's periodic reports, and other documents filed with the SEC from time to time. EXL assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call today. During our call, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP can be found in our press release, slide deck, and investor fact sheets. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Rohit.

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EXL's second quarter 2023 earnings call. I'm pleased to be with you this morning reporting another strong quarter. We continued our growth momentum in the second quarter with total revenue of $405 million, representing growth of 17% on both a reported and constant currency basis. We grew adjusted diluted EPS 21% to $1.82 per share. Our balanced portfolio across data analytics and digital operations and solutions makes our business resilient by focusing on both growth enablement and cost management for our clients. This has enabled us to generate continued strong double-digit growth despite a slow growth economic environment. In analytics, we delivered revenue of $182 million for the quarter, up 13% year over year, which included strong growth in decision analytics services, data management, and payment integrity. This growth was driven by clients leveraging analytics to drive cost efficiencies, manage risk, and increase effectiveness. Analytics growth was impacted by a decline in marketing analytics, which is a trend we have highlighted previously. In a slow growth and high interest rate environment, banks and insurance companies have slowed down their investments for new customer acquisitions. We have been successful in diversifying our marketing analytics client portfolio across other industry verticals. We have already won some new business in healthcare in marketing analytics for Medicare Advantage, which will converge to revenue later this year. Overall, our analytics business continues to show strong growth across industries and geographies which we expect will be further boosted by our focus on generative AI. Looking at our digital operations and solutions business during the second quarter, we generated revenue of $223 million, with a growth of 2% sequentially and 20% year-over-year. This is the ninth consecutive quarter where we have grown this business by double digits. This strong growth was driven by momentum across all of our digital operations and solutions businesses as our new and existing clients focus on lowering costs, improving efficiencies, and enhancing end customer experience. Our data-led strategy combined with our deep domain expertise continues to resonate with our clients and fuel our growth. This has significantly increased our total addressable market and grown our sales pipeline, particularly in large transformative deals. I'm very encouraged by the size, scale, and complexity of the deals we are winning, which is driven by our ability to embed market-leading data analytics, digital, and AI competencies into our clients' core operations. Looking at the overall demand environment, we continue to hear from our current and prospective clients that their priorities over the next 12 to 18 months include cost reduction, increased efficiency, and improved customer experience. There is strong demand from clients for using generative AI to achieve these priorities. As our clients plan their generative AI investments, They need a partner who has deep business domain knowledge, can harness the data, create the appropriate use cases, and implement them as part of the workflow. Our clients view eXcel as an ideal partner who combines all these capabilities. During the quarter, we launched our new generative AI platform, which builds on our strength in analytics, AI, and digital operations and solutions. It includes our AI workbench, plug-and-play AI accelerators, data security and compliance framework, and our enterprise data management capabilities. Our platform launch attracted more than 1,000 attendees and has created a very strong pipeline. As we engage with our clients, we are helping them in three areas. First, we help them evaluate, select, build, and roll out generative AI use cases. Second, we help them make their data AI ready, which includes data engineering, unstructured data management, data security, and data and cloud operations. And finally, we help them reimagine and design new AI-enabled operations with human in the loop. I'd like to share a couple of real-world examples where we are already deploying generative AI solutions for our clients. The first is with a large international insurance client. The client's objective was to streamline their claims process to reduce cost and improve customer experience. We developed a generative AI-based smart claim solution. It uses open source large language models and leverages the latest retrieval augmented generation architecture. Our innovative AI solution swiftly accesses end-to-end claim information and delivers accurate and concise insights through a user-friendly interface. This streamlines the claim agent's workflow and reduces the amount of time needed to process a claim resulting in lower costs and improved customer experience. Another example involves a large energy company in the UK, where EXL is implementing a generated AI-led agent assist solution across all of their contact center operations, which will run on our cloud. This solution provides live assistance to the contact center executives, while they are engaged with end customers. It monitors conversations in real time using large language models to extract relevant information and provides both proactive nudges and on-demand procedural guidance. Our solution not only helps improve compliance and first-call resolution rates, but also reduces the amount of time customers spend with contact center executives thus improving customer experience. These are just two examples of how we are currently deploying generative AI-based solutions, differentiating ourselves in the marketplace and creating value for our clients. We expect generative AI to create new revenue sources for us, as well as augment our existing data analytics and digital operations and solutions businesses. We will continue to invest heavily in our generative AI capabilities, including creating a center of excellence with more than 1,500 dedicated generative AI specialists. With our continued focus on talent, I'd like to recognize two new leaders that recently joined our senior leadership team. First, Pam Harrison joined as Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer. Pam has helped execute HR strategies for large and complex global organizations. Her extensive domain expertise will make her an invaluable resource in developing HR strategies as we continue to grow and recruit top talent, particularly in digital and AI. And most recently, Vishal Chhibber has rejoined EXL as our Chief Growth and Strategy Officer. You may recall that Vishal served as CFO from 2009 to 2019, when he instituted some of EXL's foundational growth strategies. In his new role, Vishal will spearhead our growth initiatives, leading strategy, marketing, sales governance, M&A, and strategic partnerships. As our business continues to grow at a rapid pace, Vishal's practical insights and keen instincts will be tremendously valuable. I'm thrilled to have both Pam and Vishal on our team. Looking ahead, we are encouraged by the momentum in our revenue and EPS growth, our growing sales pipeline, and the resiliency in our business model. We are making significant progress on our generated AI offerings, and we will continue to build off that momentum as we invest further in advancing our capabilities in the coming quarters. I want to extend my sincere gratitude to every member of the eXcel team for their unwavering dedication and relentless pursuit of innovation to better serve our clients. Given these factors and our current visibility for the remainder of the year, We are raising our 2023 revenue and EPS guidance. Maurizio will walk you through the details in a few moments. Finally, I want to reflect on our recent decision to execute a 5-for-1 forward stock split. This split brings several expected benefits, including increased liquidity, improved transparency, and lower trading costs for our stockholders. Additionally, the lower post split share price enhances accessibility for our employees to participate in the company's employee stock ownership program. But perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates the confidence we have in our ability to continue to grow the company and generate long-term stockholder value. We have a highly resilient business model with long-term clients a large percentage of recurring revenue, and a balanced portfolio of business across data analytics and digital operations and solutions. Coupled with our increasing total addressable market and leading position in data analytics, digital, and AI in the markets we serve, I am very excited about the opportunities that lie ahead of us. And with that, I turn the call over to Mauricio.