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spk10: And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Accenture's second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in 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. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the 1, then 0 command. Once again, if you have a question, please press 1, then 0. And if you should require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katie O'Connor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk03: Thank you, Operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today on our second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings announcement. As the Operator just mentioned, I'm Katie O'Connor, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today's call, you'll 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 2023. 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 assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Julie.
spk12: Thank you, Katie, and thank you to everyone joining today. And thank you to our 738,000 people around the globe for your incredible work and commitment to our clients, which has resulted in our delivering another strong quarter of financial results and the broader 360-degree value we continue to create for all our stakeholders. Let me share a few highlights of value we created in our continued discipline execution. I'm very pleased with our record bookings for Q2 at $22.1 billion, our highest ever, including 35 clients with quarterly bookings greater than 100 million, our second highest quarter on record for such bookings, representing the continued trust that our clients have in us. We delivered revenues of $15.8 billion, representing 9% growth in local currency, bringing us to $31.6 billion of revenue at 12% growth through H1, and we continued gaining market share, growing approximately two times the market. We continued our inorganic investments with six acquisitions in strategic areas, including cloud with the acquisition of SKS in Europe, which will expand our specialized technology, consulting, and regulatory capabilities, enabling us to better serve our financial services clients. Security with the acquisition of Morphys in Brazil, a cyber defense risk management cyber threat intelligence service provider. and supply chain with the acquisition of Inspirage in the U.S., which will enhance their technology capabilities to accelerate innovation for clients through emerging technologies such as touchless supply chains and digital twins. We also continued our investment in our people with 10.3 million training hours, a 12% increase year over year. We are optimizing our business to lower costs in fiscal year 2024 and beyond while continuing to invest in our business and our people to capture the significant growth opportunities ahead. Casey will be giving you more detail on these actions. Finally, we believe our focus on creating 360-degree value differentiates us in our market. We earned the number one position in our industry for the 10th year in a row and number 32 overall on Fortune's list of the world's most admired companies. We ranked number one in our industry and number four overall on the just capital list of America's most just companies. And we have been recognized by Ethisphere as one of the world's most ethical companies for the 16th year in a row. I'm very pleased that our results demonstrate once again that our strategy to be the execution partner of choice for transformation, lead in the five forces, and have a diverse business across markets, industries, and services continues to allow us to lead and take market share. And in a world in which all strategies lead to technology, we have distinguished ourselves in our impact in the markets.
spk02: Thank you, Julie, and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us on today's call. We were pleased with our overall results in the second quarter, setting a new bookings record at $22.1 billion, $2.5 billion higher than our previous record set in Q2 of last year, with consulting bookings close to matching our previous record. We delivered revenue growth for the quarter at the top end of our guided range as we continue to deliver on our shareholder value propositions. Before I summarize results for the quarter, let me spend a moment on the business optimization actions we are taking to reduce costs for fiscal 24 and beyond, which includes streamlining operations, transforming our non-billable corporate functions, and consolidating office space. We estimate costs of $1.5 billion through fiscal year 2024, of which we expect to incur approximately $800 million in FY23 and $700 million in FY24, comprised of approximately $1.2 billion in severance and $300 million for the consolidation of office space. These actions are expected to impact roughly 2.5% or 19,000 of our current workforce of which over half are non-billable corporate functions and include over 800 of our more than 10,000 leaders across our markets and services. Nearly half of the 19,000 people will depart by the end of fiscal year 23. Now let me summarize a few of the highlights of the quarter. Revenues grew 9% local currency, driven by broad-based growth across all markets with more than half of our 13 industries growing double-digit. We also continue to extend our leadership position with growth estimated to be about two times the market, which refers to our basket of publicly traded companies. In Q2, we recorded $244 million in costs associated with a business optimization action, which impacted operating margin by 150 basis points and EPS by 30 cents. The following comparisons exclude these impacts and reflect adjusted results. We delivered adjusted EPS in the quarter of $2.69, reflecting 6% growth over EPS last year. Adjusted operating margin of 13.8% increased 10 basis points, with 20 basis points expansion year-to-date, and includes continued significant investments in our people and our business. Finally, we delivered free cash flow of $2.2 billion and returned $1.8 billion to shareholders through purchases and dividends. Year-to-date, we've invested $1.1 billion in acquisitions, primarily attributed to 15 transactions. With those high-level comments, let me turn to some of the details, starting with new bookings. New bookings were a record at $22.1 billion for the quarter, representing growth of 17% of local currency, with an overall book-to-bill of 1.4. Consulting bookings were $10.7 billion, with a book-to-bill of 1.3. Managed service bookings were also a record at $11.4 billion with a book-to-bill of 1.5. We were very pleased with the strength of our new bookings, which were broad-based, delivering a very strong book-to-bill across all of our geographic markets and across our services, with a book-to-bill of 1.5 in operations, 1.4 in technology, and 1.3 in strategy and consulting. Turning now to revenues. Revenues for the quarter were $15.8 billion. a 5% increase in U.S. dollars and 9% in local currency, and we're at the top end of our range, adjusting for a foreign exchange headwind of approximately 4% compared to the 5% provided last quarter. Consulting revenues for the quarter were 8.3 billion, a decline of 1% in U.S. dollars and an increase of 4% in local currency. Managed services revenue were 7.5 billion, up 12% in U.S. dollars and 16% in local currency. Taking a closer look at our service dimensions, technology services and operations grew double digits, and strategy and consulting declined mid-single digits. Turning to our geographic markets, in North America, revenue growth was 5% in local currency, driven by growth in public service, health, and utilities. These increases were partially offset by declining communications and media and high tech. Revenue growth was driven by the United States, In Europe, revenues grew 12% in local currency, led by growth in industrial, banking and capital markets, and public service. Revenue growth was driven by Germany, Italy, and France. In growth markets, we delivered 14% revenue growth in local currency, driven by growth in banking and capital markets, chemical and natural resources, and public service. Revenue growth was led by Japan. Moving down the income statement. Gross margin for the quarter was 30.6% compared with 30.1% for the same period last year. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter was 9.9% compared to 9.4% for the second quarter last year. General and administrative expense was 6.8% compared to 7% for the same quarter last year. Adjusted operating income was $2.2 billion in the second quarter, reflecting an adjusted 13.8% operating margin, an increase of 10 basis points from operating margin in the second quarter of last year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 20.4%, compared with an effective tax rate of 19.2% for the second quarter last year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $2.69, compared with diluted EPS of $2.54, in the second quarter last year. Day service outstanding were 42 days compared to 48 days last quarter and 41 days in the second quarter of last year. Free cash flow for the quarter was 2.2 billion compared to approximately 400 million last quarter, resulting from cash generated by operating activities of 2.3 billion, net of property and equipment additions of 108 million. Our cash balance of at February 28th was $6.2 billion, compared with $7.9 billion at August 31st. With regards to our ongoing objective to return cash to shareholders, in the second quarter, we repurchased or redeemed 4.1 million shares for $1.1 billion, and an average price of $273.55 per share. As of February 28th, we had approximately $4.2 billion of share repurchase authority remaining. Also in February, we paid a quarterly cash dividend of $1.12 per share for a total of $708 million. This represents a 15% increase over last year. And our board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.12 per share to be paid on May 15th, a 15% increase over last year. Finally, turning to the $363 value we are creating for all our stakeholders, We are partnering with Save the Children to connect with new audiences and invigorate donors through fundraising and creative campaign excellence. So at the halfway point of fiscal 23, we are pleased with our results. Now let me turn it back to Jolie.
spk12: Thank you, Casey. I will start with the overall demand environment, which is more of the same. We believe that the ongoing volatility and uncertainty in the macro environment is making it even clearer to clients that they need to change more, not less. and that two of the five key forces of change that we have identified for the next decade, the need for total enterprise reinvention and the ability to access, create, and unlock the potential of talent, are critical to succeed in the near, medium, and long term. We see two common themes. First, all strategies continue to lead to technology, particularly cloud, data, AI, and security. This is reflected in the latest market estimates, which are down slightly but are still hovering around 5%. And second, companies remain focused on executing compressed transformations to achieve lower costs, stronger growth, more agility, and greater resilience faster. We remain laser-focused on pivoting to our clients' changing needs and being relevant across the enterprise, from the front line to core operations to corporate functions. Our ability to advise, shape, and deliver value-led transformations leveraging the breadth of our services from strategy and consulting to our strategic managed services across all industries and geographic markets is what differentiates Accenture. Now I will give you more color on the quarter, and in particular, how total enterprise reinvention and talent are critical to our clients. For example, we are helping Shinogate and Co. Limited, a Japanese pharmaceutical company with a compressed transformation to improve its business process efficiency and create a more agile organization. We will enter into a joint venture with the company that will provide a managed services capability to oversee back office functions such as human resources, finance and accounting, public relations, facility management, procurement, and marketing. The joint venture will also be charged with the management of the pharmacovigilance function, from safety management operations to post-marketing operations to regulatory compliance. As part of this transformation, we will upskill over 400 employees, enabling them to play a greater role in the growth and development of the wider business, hence demonstrating the value of all our services from strategy and consulting, our deep industry knowledge, to technology and operations coming together to enable the client's transformation. I would like to take a moment to recognize Igao Asan, our head of the Japan Market Unit, and our extraordinary people in Japan for how they are consistently creating value for our clients with double-digit revenue growth for each of the past five years. As clients focus on building their digital core with a modern cloud-based infrastructure, our cloud business continues to grow very strong double-digits. For example, we are working with the state of Missouri to replace its legacy applications and infrastructure with a modern ERP in the cloud, introducing new capabilities in finance, supply chain management, human capital management, payroll, and budgeting. As the current ERP system no longer fully meets the business needs of the state, they are looking for a modern system that is efficient, scalable, and flexible, all delivered by a best-in-class implementation partner. This compressed transformation, one of the earliest and most complex ERP implementations for any state, will help reduce operating expenses, provide opportunities for upskilling, and improve customer experience and services. We are partnering with minority and women-owned businesses on this transformation, and we will bring in apprentices to the program's life cycle, part of our shared commitment with the state of Missouri to foster diversity and inclusion. With our cloud-first strategy, our approach has been to help clients migrate to the cloud, and then partner with them on their journey to grow and innovate in the cloud. Our cloud growth is driven by both migration and clients who are moving forward on this journey, such as Enel, one of our largest utilities clients who's taken their mass migration to cloud a few years ago to the next level, changing their operating model, tools and talent, and largely automating IT operations. We are now helping them accelerate the modernization of their application landscapes, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%, support a significant acquisition and divestment agenda, and pivot to platform-based business model for integrated retail delivery beyond meter services, grid, and renewable energy. Using cloud as their operating systems is helping this market leader manage increasing levels of complexity by bringing together data, AI, and applications to optimize their operations and accelerate growth. A strong and secure digital core also is essential to total enterprise reinvention. We're seeing continued very strong demand for our security services, which experienced another quarter of very strong double-digit growth. We're working with Empress CMPCSA, a Chilean pulp and paper company, on a cybersecurity transformation of their plant operations. We will implement a security program across its 48 industrial sites focused on threat detection, management, and response, as well as governance and workforce training. Through our global and local Industry X capabilities, we will help strengthen the company's cybersecurity fences through continuous monitoring of its physical locations and equipment. We continue to lead in managed services, which experienced strong growth again this quarter at 16%. Managed services are strategic for our clients because they enable clients to move faster, leveraging our digital platform expertise and talent, as well as delivering cost efficiencies. And our clients are turning to Accenture because of the depth and breadth of our industry, functional, and technology expertise that we bring together into the transformation journey. Our approach to managed services is to both run and transform and run and modernize. We deliver cost savings as table stakes. For example, we are partnering with the UK's Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy for to modernize its legacy systems, eliminating backlogs and delivering a better experience for citizens and employees. We developed a cloud-based intelligent optimization platform that combines robotic process automation, AI analytics, and machine learning to provide bots as a service to create the equivalent of a virtual workforce available 24-7. With routine tasks now automated, the organization has already saved 2.4 million human hours, which can be reallocated to more complex, higher value tasks. Let me pause to thank our global H&PS colleagues for their amazing contributions as evidenced by 14 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. As our clients continue to prioritize cost optimization as well as growth and resilience, Song is more relevant than ever. In Song, which grew strong double digits this quarter, clients are focused on more capital-efficient growth that creates efficiency, drives short-term growth, and optimizes existing assets. with clear outcomes and shorter time horizons to keep up with the pace of change with customers and technology. We've moved quickly to help clients seize new opportunities and contact centers, not only for enhanced customer service, but also customer acquisition and growth. We are working with a global biopharmaceutical leader in North America to reinvent digital marketing at scale. Driven by data and using technologies integrated with Synapse, the company will be able to create, produce, and deliver consistent world-class content that informs and educates healthcare providers and patient communities around the world, helping to deliver innovative health services. We are working with the Prada Group, the Italian luxury fashion player, to offer its customers an entirely new customization experience through an online 3D configurator. Accenture Song created a digital twin of Prada's iconic shoe called America's Cup, which allows shoppers to fully customize it from material to color to trim across the overlay, lining, sole, and other parts. With more than 50 million possible configurations, more than any web platform could handle, this innovative approach allows customers to see high-resolution 3D models of their custom builds with the same quality and fidelity as a physical shoe. Song's solution to online product customization is fully scalable through the cloud. It gives Prada the flexibility to apply the same strategy to other products, ensuring the outstanding experience that their shoppers expect. As I continue to move across the enterprise, industries, and markets, I want to also highlight Industry X, which grew very strong double digits again this quarter, and which we believe is the next digital frontier, where our digital engineering capabilities are advancing sustainability services. For example, we are working with Recharge Industries, a battery research and production company in Australia, to help design and engineer one of the world's largest lithium-ion battery facilities. Once built, the facility will generate up to 30 gigawatt hours of storage capacity per year. Finally, moving to the metaverse and the ongoing tech revolution, we've talked about the importance of artificial intelligence in building the digital core for our clients. While generative AI has recently burst into the popular imagination, at Accenture, we've been working with the technology from its earliest stages and are already applying it at clients. For example, we're working with a multinational bank to transform how it manages high volumes of post-trade processing emails every day. We are leveraging a generative AI solution as it is built to understand the context of emails with high accuracy. It automatically routes large numbers of emails daily to relevant teams and drafts responses with recommended actions and related information. Our work will help reduce manual effort and risk, boost worker efficiency, and improve interactions with customers. And finally, on that note, we will release our Tech Vision 2023 on March 30th. The fourth and fifth key forces of change we have identified for the next decade are the metaverse and ongoing tech revolution. And this year's tech vision is particularly relevant and actionable, as our clients face a rapidly changing landscape in which generative AI, metaverse, cloud, science, tech, and other technologies are driving more opportunities for change and reinvention. This year's vision will explore how these technologies and more are blending the physical world and the virtual world into a shared reality, creating a huge opportunity for our clients and for Accenture.
spk02: Now turning to our business outlook. For the third quarter of fiscal 23, we expect revenues to be in the range of $16.1 billion to $16.7 billion. This assumes the impact of FX will be about negative 3.5%, compared to the third quarter fiscal 22 and reflects an estimated 3 to 7% growth in local currency. For the full fiscal year 23, based upon how the rates have been trending of the last few weeks, we now expect the impact of FX on our results and US dollars will be approximately negative 4.5% compared to fiscal 22. For the full fiscal 23, we now expect our revenue to be in the range of 8% to 10% growth in local currency over fiscal 22, which assumes an inorganic contribution of 2%. We expect business optimization actions to impact fiscal 23 gap operating margins by 120 basis points and EPS by 96%. we expect our anticipated gain on our investment in Duck Creek Technologies to impact EPS by 39 cents. Our guidance for full year fiscal 23 excludes these impacts. For adjusted operating margin, we expect fiscal year 23 to be 15.3 to 15.5%, a 10 to 30 basis point expansion over fiscal 22 results. We expect our adjusted annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 23 to 25 percent. This compares to an effective tax rate of 24 percent in fiscal 22. We expect our full-year adjusted earnings per share for fiscal 23 to be in the range of $11.41 to $11.63, or 7 to 9 percent growth over fiscal 22 results. For the full fiscal 23, we now expect operating cash flow to be in the range of $8.7 to $9.2 billion, property and equipment additions to be approximately $700 million, and free cash flow to be in the range of $8 billion to $8.5 billion, $300 million higher than our previous guidance. Our free cash flow guidance continues to reflect a very strong free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.1. Finally, we continue to expect to return at least $7.1 billion through dividends and share repurchases as we remain committed to returning a substantial portion of cash to our shareholders. With that, let's open it up so we can take your questions. Katie?
spk03: Thanks, Casey. I'd like to ask that you each keep to one question and a follow-up to allow as many participants as possible to ask a question. Operator, would you please provide instructions for those on the call?
spk10: Of course. And once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the 1, then 0 command. Once again, if you have a question at this time, please press 1, then 0. Our first question comes from the line of Tianjin Huang with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, thanks so much. I have to ask, given the great bookings here today, your confidence in being able to replenish those bookings as we look to the third quarter and ahead. I'm sure a lot of people are thinking what's going on in the months of February and March as well. I know your guidance applies to reacceleration in the fourth quarter, but just curious about, you know, your ability to replenish on the booking side. Thanks.
spk02: Yes, thanks, Kenjin. So we do feel good about our pipeline, even after our record bookings this quarter. And our sales outlook for the next quarter, Q3, is solid. We expect to have slightly lighter bookings than what we've had compared to the record quarter that we just had.
spk12: And maybe just to add a little color, look, you know, as you can see in our bookings, there is just continued strong demand for the larger transformational deals, right? And... and the need to, in particular, build the digital core. And I'm personally working right now with clients across insurance, healthcare, consumer goods, banking, and telecom, all of whom are very focused on how do we upgrade or get rid of our technical debt? How do we build more resilience? They're trying to build digital products, but they've got really old systems. you know, we remain in the early innings of, you know, building the kind of digital core that's really need to transform every part of the enterprise. And so we continue to feel good, not just about our pipeline, but about the demand we're seeing, you know, really rooted in our view that all companies are going to have to do total enterprise reinvention across the enterprise, that it's really a continuous cycle of starting with a strong digital core. And there's a lot of work to do on building those cores out.
spk08: That's good. That's good to hear. Very encouraging. So given that, given both your comments and the optimization, I'm just trying to think about is it more playing offense versus defense? I'm just trying to think about I know a lot of your clients are going through similar optimizations. efforts as well. How does this one fit, given that, and should we still think about this within the 10 to 30 basis points of typical margin expansion that we think about sort of philosophically, or could this be incremental? Thanks.
spk12: Yeah, so just let me answer the last part first, is you should view this as creating the room in our P&L to ensure that we can continue to deliver on that enduring shareholder value model, including the 10 to 30 basis points, which, you know, for a short period of time will be on an adjusted basis. So, and if you think about it, it is, you know, I like that, is it offense or defense? It is offensive. I mean, if you look at where we are today, right, we've got record bookings, you know, a strong quarter of eight to, strong view of the year, eight to 10%, 91% chargeability. We're going after structural cost, right, to ensure that we're in a better position. You know, as you know, we've been dealing with the difficult challenges of compounding wage inflation. We've been doing that with pricing, but we've also been doing that with, you know, cost efficiencies and digitizing. And we have identified an opportunity to to go after more structural costs to kind of create that resilience in that room in the P&L as we look forward. So very much, in our view, getting ahead of and dealing with these structural issues that have been created over the last couple of years.
spk08: Awesome. Great results, guys. Thank you.
spk04: Thank you.
spk10: And our next question comes from the line of James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk11: Great. Thank you very much. I wanted to follow up on a couple of those items. First, can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing around the actual conversion and decision cycles? Obviously, the bookings themselves speak well to being able to do conversions, but are we seeing any changes in the sales cycle times or or the types of projects that customers may want to engage in?
spk12: Well, let me just start with the type of projects. I mean, what we've been seeing over the last several quarters is just a, you know, a laser focus on cost, right? So, you know, most, you know, most programs, you know, clients want to see a shorter return on investment, right, more focus on cost. They love cost and growth, but it has to be, you know, in most cases, a shorter return on the investment. At the same time, you know, it's important that not all industries are in the same place, right? So if you've got industries, like, say, in the high-tech area, in some spots on, you cost optimization is very dominant, right? You've got some of the other less effective industries, say insurance, energy. Everyone wants to be more resilient and lower cost, but they're really trying to deal with their technical debt. They're thinking about growth. You know, how do you reimagine the customer experience? And so I would say a common theme is that, you know, in this kind of an environment, everyone does want to be optimizing costs but where they're focusing is different by industry is what I would say first. And then to your first part of your question about are you seeing changes in decision-making, I'm going to let Casey talk to you about the yield in our pipeline because you also are, in general, seeing a trend toward these larger deals. So there is, and we talked about this in the last couple of quarters, we're seeing – you know, less of the smaller deals in S&C and to some extent SI, particularly in North America, where we're seeing more caution. North America had record sales this quarter, but in areas tending towards the bigger transformational deals, not the smaller S&C and to some extent SI deals. And those, that transformational pipeline is which is our strategy, right? Like if you think about it, what have we been trying to drive for the last few years? We want to be at the center of our clients' business. We want to be able to be relevant, really help them transform, and then be well-positioned to continue to be that partner. And I would just say Enel and MyScript is a great example of that. I mean, they're a hugely innovative utility. They were very early developers. We helped them get to the cloud, and now they're modernizing and once again being super innovative. That's exactly the way we want to work with our clients, be at their core and then be there for their next big transformation. Maybe, Casey, do you want to just comment on the yields real quick? Yeah, sure. No problem.
spk02: So let me focus really on consulting bookings because it's important to understand the impact of S&C and our consulting bookings and also how that relates to what we're doing in our larger transformation deals because they do convert to revenue at a slower pace. So as I mentioned in my script, I was very pleased with our S&C bookings and our overall consulting bookings, which were very close to the record that we had last year. And S&C participates and is a critical part of winning the larger deals, which we have 35 clients, over 100 million. And so what you'll see is in S&C, you may see a conversion that's a little bit slower than we typically have because we still do have some pressure in our smaller deals, particularly in North America. And so maybe I'll just, how does that all work in terms of yield then? What that means for next quarter, as we look at S&C, I mentioned that we had a modest decline, a decline in mid-single digits this quarter. We think we'll be in the same zone overall in Q3, and we're going to look to reconnect with S&C growth in Q4. It may take us a little bit more time than that, but I just want to make that connection to your question as it relates to our very strong consulting bookings in S&C. They were definitely part of that discussion and clearly part of the reason why we were able to get the 35 clients at 100 million, but you'll see that come into our P&L at a little bit slower conversion.
spk11: Thank you. That's really helpful. And then just quickly on VNA, it seems like we've seen a little bit of a deceleration there. How are you thinking about VNA going forward? And what was inorganic contribution in the quarter? And how should we think about that for the year? Thanks.
spk02: So I'll just maybe reiterate the contribution for the year. So we now see inorganic contribution to be about 2%. And, you know, acquisitions can be lumpy, and we, as you know, we can't always really control the timing, but there's no change to our strategy. And any given year, you'll hear us kind of go up or down, you know, a bit on the percentage of contribution. No change.
spk11: Great. Thank you.
spk10: And our next question comes from the line of Brian Keene with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, guys. Good morning. I wanted to just ask about Good morning. I just wanted to ask about the communications media and technology group that did come in at flat local currency and is kind of a standout versus the others. Can you just talk a little bit about what's happening there and what the outlook might be?
spk12: Yeah, that's primarily happening in North America where we've got, you know, comms and media and high tech are more challenged there. you know, cutting back spending for sort of obvious reasons. And then our software and platforms business, which has been, you know, really a strong business for us for the last few years, is still slightly positive, but has come down a lot. And I think, you know, for kind of obvious reasons that we're all reading in the press. And so, you know, we do think this will last for a bit of time as, you know, you look at sort of some of the ways they're approaching spending and that, but it'll, you know, eventually come back, and these are great companies, and, you know, we're helping them in many places, but their spending is just lower right now. So that's, you know, I think long-term, we're very positive. These are all great companies, and... This is why it's so great that we're diverse, that we serve so many, and not just diversity in industries but in markets because you're seeing a different picture, for example, in comms and media in Europe where it was growing double digits last quarter and in growth markets where it was positive. So the diversity of our business really plays to our strength and why we're continuing to deliver strong financial results.
spk07: Got it, got it. And I was just trying to reconcile in my head the strong bookings, but the actions also taken to lower costs in fiscal year 24. What does that signal, I guess, for the demand environment in fiscal year 24? Should we expect slightly lower growth rates than typical as a result of the actions taken?
spk12: No, I mean, the actions again just kind of reground you in, like, what we've been saying, right, which is – you know, we've been achieving hyper growth and there's been wage inflation like none of us have ever experienced and it's compounding. And we've been addressing that through a combination of improved pricing, cost efficiencies. And so, you know, this is really us taking a step back and being able to more structurally address the impact of compounding wage inflation. So it's a real positive for, you know, how we're moving forward and, you know, think of it as really being you know, creating more room in the P&L so that when you think about our enduring shareholder value proposition is we still expect next year to grow faster than the market. We expect to invest at scale in our business to deliver 10 to 30 basis point margin expansion on an adjusted basis to have a disciplined capital allocation, including meaningful return to our shareholders. So that is a commitment. And this is a, you know, an offensive mood to say, Yes, today we've got great demand, we've got great utilization, and we can take out more structural costs to put us in a better position as we move forward.
spk07: Okay, great. That's really helpful. Congrats.
spk12: Thanks.
spk10: And our next question comes from the line of Lisa Ellis with Moffitt Nathanson. Please go ahead.
spk00: Terrific. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe just to kind of follow up on these sort of connecting the dots questions, I noticed that your headcount growth slowed a bit this quarter, up 6% year on year and was flat sequentially. Can you kind of connect the dots outside what you're seeing and sort of what you're thinking about on the hiring side with the fact that you have record bookings in the quarter and then typically those two things kind of move a little bit more in tandem? Thank you.
spk02: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Lisa. So maybe I'll just first start with just looking back over the last two previous quarters. We added 28,000 people in the two previous quarters. So let's first start there. And you're right, Lisa, when you take a look at what we were able to accomplish this quarter, first of all, we had record bookings. We drove 9%, 9.3% revenue growth, and we had 91% utilization of our people. So we had the skills and all the people we needed to deliver to the demand in the market. And if I look, answering your question, looking forward, we sequentially did not add headcount from Q1 to Q2. We see that being about the same from Q2 to Q3. And then looking forward, based on the outlook that we have now, we do see that we would add additional heads in the fourth quarter.
spk00: Okay, great. And then my follow-up is related to AI. Maybe this one is for you. Can you talk a bit about how you apply AI in your own operations? I know every time this topic kind of stirs up, there's this question of whether it's a positive or a negative for the operations of IT services firms. Can you just talk about how you sort of apply it internally and how you think about that over the long term? Thank you.
spk12: Sure. In fact, you know, it's funny. I was just at a client this week where we're helping them really transform their whole IT department. And one of the things they want, you know, from us is our MyWizard platform, which is a great way of explaining how over the last several years, you know, we've built a platform that integrates the best-in-class technology. So we didn't write our own code, right? We used the best technologies. And the way it uses AI, for example... is that when a ticket comes in to address something, an IT issue, AI looks at it, identifies whether or not it's been a problem solved before. In some cases, can solve the problem. In other cases, routes it to the right people. And then it learns from every ticket. So in the past, when we've talked about with you about, you know, why is it, you know, how do you think about revenue and people? We said, look, we've already been breaking that for years now because we We are using so much technology and AI in how we're delivering all of our technology jobs. The same thing is true, for example, with testing, which is incredibly automated, using different technology, including AI. We're continuing to use AI in the way we run our business, for example, and how we look at our accounts payable and receivables and finding ways where we can automate to have better efficiencies there. We're using it today in the way we're delivering our consulting services as well, and definitely very much so in how we look at sales and being able to predict you know, based on lots of factors. Should we be running after this sale or not? Or can we show the data that these, you know, this is not the right kind of sale? We're not the right fit. So we've increasingly been using AI both in how we deliver services as well as in how we run ourselves. Of course, our Synapse platform for operations is also very AI enabled. It's one of the reasons why clients turn to us because it's, helping them digitize faster. They're not having to build these things. So long-term, we see these technology changes, things like generative AI, as playing to our strengths because to use these technologies, it requires deep understanding of the industry, the use cases, the process changes. When people talk about the new kinds of generative AI, which we're super excited about, being like a co-pilot to human beings, the entire process has to be changed in order to make that work. You've got to upskill the people, and you have to be able to do all of that in a very responsible way. So we're already working with, there's been a lot of demand to understand this, and in understanding it, understanding actually how hard it is to be able to implement at scale in an enterprise versus, you know, I'm assuming we're all having fun playing with it, but how you build that into an enterprise is very different and a great opportunity, and we're partnering with all the major players to help them take the technology, go from technology to implementation to impact. Thank you. Thanks, Lisa.
spk10: And our next question comes from the line of David Toga with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you. Good morning. Could you delve into demand trends in the financial services vertical in a little greater depth, especially given the evolving banking crisis we've seen in the last month or so, particularly with some of the regional banks struggling? And maybe as part of that, if you could just remind us of your profile within bank-related IT services, you know, smaller banks versus regionals and money centers?
spk12: Sure. As a client base, we skew toward the larger banks across all of the markets. So, you know, we don't comment on individual clients, but we don't have any big exposure to kind of the smaller regional, you know, banks in general. So as you sort of think about the stepping back. Obviously, the developments on the banks are still early in the last couple of weeks. So as I talk about demand trends for our clients, which are generally the bigger banks, a couple of things really stand out. So first of all, there's a lot of focus on their technical debt because, you know, the banks, a lot of them are still in the mainframes. Our mainframe practice really across industry is growing like gangbusters right now as clients across industry are really having to take on some of that harder technical debt, which they need to do because the more and more they digitize their services, which is a, you know, continuing trend in financial services today, If the systems behind it aren't agile, then it can take a lot of time to introduce new services. Oftentimes, we'll have multiple systems. You'll have to test things. You can't go as fast. And so the banks are kind of reaching their limits in terms of what they can do without touching their core. So we expect the sort of addressing the core to be a really important driver for We're seeing in asset management more and more views, more and more companies in asset management really digitizing. They had been kind of slower behind the banks. And then insurance, we are working with leading insurers across the world who not only are kind of trying to catch up because banking was ahead of insurance, but finding sort of new and exciting opportunities on how to use data in particular to to grow their business, how to transform their experience and claims. So, you know, financial services, which covers banking, capital markets, and insurance, we continue to see as a, you know, as a vibrant area. Where things are slowing down a bit in the U.S., where we've been a big player, is in integration. You know, we'll see that might pick up again. You know, let's just see how all of this shakes out. But that has slowed down for a bit. Hopefully that gives you some color.
spk01: It does. Thanks so much.
spk10: Great. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk06: Good morning. Thanks, guys. I just wanted to ask about Q3 bookings, if you can discuss consulting versus managed services, just expectations there. I mean, I think the year-over-year comparison for consulting at least gets a bit easier.
spk02: Yeah. Thanks, Jason. I'm not going to comment specifically on the individual breakout of the bookings, but maybe I'll just reiterate, you know, what I mentioned to Tingen. So, you know, we had record bookings this quarter. We do see that next quarter we will have lighter bookings than what we had this quarter in terms of the record bookings. Overall, what you can see, Jason, you know us well, is that the mix right now is much more favored halfway through the year to manage services for all the reasons that Julie talked about. We were really pleased with consulting this quarter. We thought it was going to be strong, and it came in even stronger. And so we're very encouraged by that, and we do have a strong pipeline, and we continue to see solid bookings for Q3.
spk06: Okay, understood. And then just on the cost side, what's the estimated savings from the cost takeout program. And I know the charges will aggregate to one and a half billion, but just wanted to understand kind of what the fully annualized rate of savings is. And are you essentially reinvesting the savings? I mean, I know at least for this year, we're not changing the underlying margin guidance. So just wanted to get a picture of, you know, how much of this is being reinvested or are you essentially just offsetting some, some other headwinds around wage inflation, et cetera.
spk02: Thanks for that question. Let me just first start with FY23. So the actions that we're taking are not about FY23. They're about FY24 and beyond. So in terms of what we'll do with those savings, it really is going to depend, Jason, on how the market develops, the growth opportunities that we have next year. And, you know, as Julie said, the key part of what we're really focused on, it's just going to give us more room to continue to execute our enduring shareholder value proposition, which he mentioned. And I know you know well.
spk06: Yes. All right.
spk12: Just to be clear, keep your model 10 to 30 basis point adjusted, margin expansion. We're going to invest in our business, and we're going to grow faster than the market.
spk06: Well, we love the consistency. Thank you.
spk12: Thanks.
spk10: And our next question comes from the line of Darren Peller with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hey, thanks, guys. You know, I mean, when you put the pieces together with the bookings we're seeing and the actual changes in the efficiency, it really does sound like we're finally seeing more of a divergence in linearity between headcount growth and bookings capabilities and revenue contributions. So, I mean, I know you mentioned AI obviously is a big theme, but is there other factors that we can point to that are structurally part of the model now, or is it a function of a mix type of bookings or anything else?
spk02: Yeah, maybe I'll just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of headcount, Darren, and what we're recording in revenue in terms of how we're generating our revenue today. And, Julie, if you want to add in, you certainly can. But, you know, in terms of what you're seeing is we've been very focused on hiring, you know, balancing our supply and demand to what we need to both sell and drive the revenue to meet our client demand and continue to take market share. And part of what you're seeing throughout the year is, you know, we've been continued. You've heard us talk about us really focusing on, you know, continued strong pricing and And again, reminder that when we talk about pricing, it's the margin on the work that we sold. And that has been improving over the last five quarters. It's now stable, which we're really happy with. And so some of that is part – there's a part of that that's helping to drive our revenue production as well.
spk12: Yeah, and I would just say, you know, a lot of it's mixed, right? If you have longer transformational deals, like the numbers of people that you need to drive are different. So I wouldn't say there's some big, wait a minute, we've got some new inflection point where, you know, you've disconnected more. As I talked about earlier, we've been disconnecting to some degree, you know, for a while now, but there's no big change in that perspective. It's just as we've executed our strategy... You know, and I think it's so important to understand that it has been a deliberate strategy to say we want to do transformational deals. We want to take our S&C people who have deep industry and functional knowledge, put them together with our technology people to do either... big implementations, right, that are changing the digital core or transformations that are coupled with managed services. And so how that works out. And so while we love when the economy is booming and S&C and the small deals are also booming, the strategy is to be at the core so that we continue. We help them with one big project. We understand their company even more. We take them on the next big project. And we're really, you know, getting that kind of stickiness in our relationships. And so we'll kind of deal with, you know, the sort of softness and the smaller deals. But over, you know, over time, this is exactly what we want to do. And, in fact, when you think about this year, you know, consulting – You know, last quarter we thought consulting this year would be mid-single digits to high-single digits. You know, we now see it as mid-single digits for the year, and we're fine with that, right, because that's about kind of lower S&C and SI smaller deals. You know, North America... In December, we thought it was going to be mid-single to high single digits. We now see that as a mid-single digits for the year. Again, it's because sort of the caution that's impacting the smaller deals, record sales, great large, you know, transformational deals, and that's just going to how it, you know, how it deals with. And that's why, as Casey said before, you know, S&C, we're going to see a very similar performance next quarter probably, and it may take a little bit longer to – you know, to reconnect with growth. But remember, we don't look at that as separate. We see S&C as a competitive differentiator for these larger transformational deals, which is our strategy.
spk09: Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. One follow-up on that and related is just the cyclicality of the business is, you know, it's not surprising you would see some of the smaller deals get impacted first by pause or concern among enterprise spending. When we think about the larger transformational side, the pipeline is longer. The sales cycle is longer in there. So having that strong still is probably not. If you do, you know, given how well you guys execute, it's not shocking, I guess. But on the same side, the magnitude of strength was better than I think we expected. And so looking ahead, what, in your experience, cyclically, when do you see that sort of slow down if the economy does take a step down?
spk12: You know, look, it's... And never say never against the economy slowing down and what we do. But I really stay focused. We try to stay focused on our strategy being relevant across cycles and basically growing. you know, stronger than the market. And so, the market is still, you know, faster than the market is still kind of hovering around 5%. And so, that's what we kind of watch more than the economy because, you know, technology is so core to every strategy that when the economy goes down, what are you seeing? Well, people are saying we got to optimize, we got to lower costs, we got to do managed services. So, You know, we watch more the, you know, the economy can kind of do an uplift, right? But what we're trying to always do is grow faster than the market. So that's a big indicator for us. And you see it's a very strong market. And it makes sense, right? I will just tell you, like, the amount of the just technical debt across these industries and how much work to do is we are still very much in early innings of what needs to be done. You know, to take advantage of cool things like generative AI, you know. You've got to have data. Awesome.
spk09: All right. Thanks, Julie. Thanks, Lucy.
spk03: Thank you. Operator, we have time for one more question, and then Julie will wrap up the call.
spk10: Thank you. And that last question comes from the line of Brian Bergen with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, guys. Good morning. Thank you. I wanted to ask on vendor consolidation activity and, you know, how much this has helped to really offset some of the areas that have pulled back in the shorter cycle work. And I guess, has that picked up meaningfully? And if you were to step back and look at those 35 deals over $100 billion, can you give us a sense of the mix of those that might include an aspect of vendor consolidation?
spk12: You know, vendor consolidation is certainly a part of what's going on in the market. But, you know, there's some... industries that did that a long time ago, you know, in some clients. So I don't have the numbers offhand of what we have in our 35 clients, but I'm not seeing that as sort of the big driver of our growth right now. We are often telling clients who, like, basically, you know, need to get revenue faster, but more – It's interesting. The vendor consolidation for many of our clients is less about cost and more that a lot of the industries, like, say, consumer goods, telecom, where they have lots of different countries, it's very hard to move to a platform business and sort of build things consistently if you have a ton of different vendors, right? Because you want the stuff done in the same way. And so... It's interesting. The vendor consolidation play for many is more about how do we actually implement a strategy of kind of moving to global platforms, being able to have a single approach to data. Super hard to do if you've got 50 to 100 vendors. So I would just say it's a it's tied to exactly the kind of strategies that we're advising clients on, but no big theme for us.
spk05: Okay. Okay. And then just a quick follow-up. With the record bookings and managed services, any near-term margin impacts we should consider as you ramp up and invest in those? Any considerations on adjusted operating margin cadence as you go through the second half?
spk02: Yeah, no, there's nothing unusual.
spk05: All right. Thank you.
spk12: Thank you. So in closing, I want to thank all of our shareholders for your continued trust and support and all our people for what you're doing for our clients and for each other every day. Thanks, everyone, for joining.
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