Accenture PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Accenture's first quarter fiscal 2020 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, Operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today on our first quarter fiscal 2020 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 Julie Sweet, our 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. Julie will begin with an overview of our results. Casey will take you through the financial details, including the income statement and balance sheet, along with some key operational metrics for the first quarter. Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before Casey provides our business outlook for the second quarter and full fiscal year 2020. We will then take your questions before Julie 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 seems no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Julie.

Thank you, Angie, and thanks, everyone, for joining us. Today we are very pleased to announce strong financial results for the first quarter, continuing our momentum from fiscal year 19. We are especially pleased with our revenue growth of 9% in local currency, well ahead of the market, which is broad-based across all dimensions of our business. We also delivered strong profitability and again returned substantial cash to our shareholders. Our strong results across industries and geographic markets reflect the diversity and scale of Accenture's business around the world. We are very well positioned to continue creating value for all our stakeholders. We're off to a great start in Q1, and we feel confident in our ability to deliver another strong year and fiscal 20. Now, let me hand it over to Casey, who will review the numbers in detail.