Accenture PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Accenture's first quarter fiscal 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations, Angie Park. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Greg, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today on our first quarter fiscal 2019 earnings announcement. As Greg just mentioned, I'm Angie Park, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today's call, you will hear from Pierre Nunturm, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and David Rowland, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope you've had an opportunity to review the news release we issued a short time ago. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today's call. Pierre will begin with an overview of our results. David will take you through the financial details including the income statement and balance sheet along with some key operational metrics for the first quarter. Pierre will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before David provides our business outlook for the second quarter and full fiscal year 2019. We will then take your questions before Pierre provides a wrap-up at the end of the call. Some of the matters we'll discuss on this call, including our business outlook, are forward-looking and as such are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those factors set forth in today's news release and discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in this call. During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures where appropriate to GAAP in our news release or in the investor relations section of our website at Accenture.com. As always, Accenture is no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Pierre.

thank you angie and thanks everyone for joining us today we are very pleased with our first quarter results continuing our strong momentum from fiscal year 18. we again delivered revenue growth significantly ahead of the market solid new bookings and expanded operating margin while investing significantly in the business we continue to see excellent demand for our services especially in digital cloud and security as well as new technologies, confirming the relevance of our growth strategy and the differentiated solutions we bring to our clients. Here are a few highlights for the quarter. We delivered new bookings of $10.2 billion. We grew revenues 9.5% in local currency to $10.6 billion, with continued broad-based positive growth, including double-digit growth in many parts of our business. We delivered earnings per share of $1.96, a 9% increase. Operating margin was 15.4%, an expansion of 20 basis points. We generated a strong free cash flow of $950 million, and we returned more than $1.7 billion in cash to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. So we are off to a strong start in fiscal year 19. I feel very good about the momentum in our business, and I am confident in our ability to deliver our updated business outlook for the year. Now let me hand over to David, who will review the numbers in greater detail. David, over to you.