Accenture PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Accenture's third quarter fiscal 2019 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a 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 third quarter fiscal 2019 earnings announcement. As the operator just mentioned, I'm Angie Park, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today's call, you will hear from David Rowland, our Interim Chief Executive Officer, and Casey McClure, 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. David will begin with an overview of our results. KC will take you through the financial details, including the income statement and balance sheet, along with some key operational metrics for the third quarter. David will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before KC provides our business outlook for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2019. We will then take your questions before David 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 our 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 seems no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Angie, and thanks so much to all of you for joining us on today's call. Accenture delivered another strong quarter and I couldn't be more pleased with our overall performance as we continue to execute our growth strategy and create significant value for all of our stakeholders, our clients, employees and shareholders. We again delivered revenue growth well ahead of the market as well as strong profitability and free cash flow while continuing to make substantial investments for long-term market leadership. Here are a few of the highlights for the quarter. We delivered new bookings of $10.6 billion which was in the range we expected. We generated record revenues of $11.1 billion at the top of our guided range with 8.4% growth in local currency. We delivered earnings per share of $1.93, an 8% increase compared to adjusted earnings per share last year. Operating margin was 15.5%, an expansion of 20 basis points. Our free cash flow was very strong at $2 billion, We returned $1.4 billion in cash to shareholders through our share repurchases and the payment of our semi-annual dividend. All in all, it was another strong quarter by any measure. Looking forward, I feel very good about our business and our ability to deliver a strong fourth quarter, and in doing so, to complete what will be another truly outstanding year for Accenture. Now, let me hand it over to Casey, who will review the numbers in greater detail. Casey?