Accenture PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Accenture's third quarter fiscal 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct the question and answer session. If you would like to place yourself in the question queue, please press one then zero at this time. If you should require assistance during the call, Please press star then zero. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations, Ms. Angie Park. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today on our third quarter fiscal 2021 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. 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. Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before KC provides our business outlook for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2021. 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, our 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 assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Julie.

Thank you, Angie, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. We had another outstanding quarter. reflecting our laser focus on creating 360-degree client value and the importance of our scale, experience, industry knowledge, and trust to the world's leading companies and governments as they continue to digitally transform their enterprises. We had a record 20 clients with bookings over $100 million and a total of $15.4 billion in bookings, We delivered 16 percent revenue growth in local currency, 3 percent above the top of our guided range, with outstanding profitability and free cash flow. We estimate that we continue to take significant market share. Our growth was broad-based across geographic markets and industries, with 11 out of 13 industries growing double digits this quarter, and reflects our ability to bring together our unmatched breadth of services from strategy and consulting to interactive technology and operations, to create the solutions which achieve the value at speed that makes a difference to our clients. We continue to meet our clients' strong demand, adding a net 32,000 talented people this quarter alone. We offer an employee value proposition that allows us to attract top talent, develop our people with world-class training, and provide them with vibrant career paths. We are pleased with our record 117,000 promotions year-to-date, including almost 1,200 promotions to managing director. And while delivering these results, we have raised the bar again in terms of investments. We now expect to invest about $4 billion in strategic acquisitions this fiscal year, with 39 acquisitions closed or announced year-to-date. This includes announcing this quarter two acquisitions with purchase prices over $1 billion each, the acquisition by Accenture Federal Services of Novetta in the U.S., an advanced analytics company, which we expect to close in August, and of Umlaut, a world-class engineering services company headquartered in Germany, which we expect to close in Q1. These 39 acquisitions are well-balanced, with 10 in North America, 17 in Europe, and 12 in growth markets. Our level of investment demonstrates as well how scale, experience, and trust matters. Scale in terms of our financial capacity, experience in terms of our track record of the successful integration of approximately 200 companies since 2013, and the trust we have earned in the market that attracts leading companies to want to join the Accenture family. We invest in acquisitions to scale in areas where we see a big market opportunity, to add skills and new capabilities, and to further deepen our industry and functional expertise, all to drive continued innovation and the next waves of growth. Finally, because we believe strongly in our commitment to shared success with our communities, we recently announced that we would donate $100 for every one of our then 540,000 employees or $54 million to urgently address the needs of our communities due to the pandemic, including $25 million for India. Kasey, over to you.