Accenture PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Accenture's second quarter fiscal 2022 earnings. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press 1 then 0 on your telephone keypad. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star then 0. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Ms. Angie Park, Manager-Director, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thanks everyone for joining us today on our second quarter fiscal 2022 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 Chair and 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 second quarter. Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before Casey provides our business outlook for the third quarter and full fiscal year 2022. 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, et cetera, 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 10Q 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 thank you, everyone, for joining. I would like to begin by honoring the incredible bravery of the Ukrainian people in the face of the unlawful invasion by Russia and extending our deep sympathy and concern over the horrific losses of life. While these words don't feel adequate to capture what is happening, we are taking actions to help in the small ways we can which I will share more about later in the call. Turning now to the quarter, I will start by thanking our almost 700,000 people around the world for your incredible dedication and work to create 360-degree value for our clients and all our stakeholders. Thank you to our clients who are making bold moves to transform and putting their trust in us to help them. Finally, thank you to our technology ecosystem partners who we work with every day to innovate and create more value for our clients. Now, a few highlights from the quarter. We had record bookings of almost $20 billion and continued improved pricing, which refers to contract profitability or margin on the work that we sell across the business, with 36 clients with bookings over $100 million. We had record revenue growth of 28% in local currency, bringing total revenue added through H-1 to $6.2 billion, which is what we added in all of FY21. And our EPS grew 25% year over year with flat operating margin and continued significant investment in our business and our people. Our workforce grew by 24,000 people, demonstrating, again, our ability to attract top talent at the scale needed by our clients. We were the top-scoring company on the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index out of more than 400 organizations globally. We were recognized in Ethosphere's World's Most Ethical Companies for the 15th year in a row, and by Just Capital for the sixth consecutive year. Our people completed another 9.2 million training hours this quarter, and we continued to gain market share, growing more than three times the market. With such an exceptional quarter, I would like to particularly recognize and thank the incredibly strong delivery teams that underlie these results. Our clients know that our commitments are backed by the outstanding work our people do every day, working side by side with them, from shaping the future to building the best systems and platforms to creating amazing new experiences and brands to running critical functions for our clients and everything in between. Before handing over to Casey, let me pause to reflect on the current macro environment. It was almost exactly two years ago that we did earnings only eight days after the pandemic was declared. Then, as now, the world faced incredible uncertainty. We are all watching the events unfold in Ukraine, and there are many potential scenarios which are difficult to predict. While the circumstances are very different, Our focus is the same, on the well-being of our people, serving our clients and staying close to their evolving needs, and helping our communities. We emerged from the pandemic an even stronger and more relevant company, and we will use this strength to successfully navigate this environment and fulfill these same three goals.