Accenture PLC

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.

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.

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.