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spk09: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this early morning call. I'm joined by Carol Ferrand, our CFO, and Olivier Sevilla, our COO. So I'm happy to share with you our excellent Q3 results. Our revenues reach a record of €4.5 billion, up 12.9% at constant currency, and 13.2% on an organic basis. So slightly higher than Q2 organic growth of 12.9%, in spite of a much more demanding comparison basis. Bookings remain dynamic, up 15% at constant currency. The book-to-bill ratio is over one, which is a record for a third quarter. And digital and cloud continues to progress at a rapid pace. We have recorded a very strong double-digit growth, powered by our constant effort to push innovative offerings to address client expectations. So in this context, And especially since the health crisis continues to be a challenge in certain regions of the world, I would like to take a moment to thank again all our employees and our leadership team for their dedication and for their sustained performance from quarter to quarter. Now diving a bit more in detail, the strong growth we have achieved, of course, is a great satisfaction. It reflects the strengthening of the positive trends of the past few quarters in all sectors and regions. All regions are growing double-digit on a like-for-like basis, which translates in strong constant currency numbers. This is particularly the case in North America, where we finished rolling out the transformation we initiated a couple of years ago. In this region, we start to fully benefit from the strong positioning on both intelligent industry and customer first, following the integration of Altran. We have also increased our investment in North America in terms of assets, senior talent, and ecosystem of partners. to take full advantage of the great digital transformation opportunities in the market. And we have strengthened our brand positioning, so we are very confident around basically perspective moving forward in our North American business. Performance was strong across most sectors as well for the group, with very high growth, as you can see, in the consumer goods and retail, in manufacturing, but also in services. On the business side, all the businesses are performing well in line with Q3. with the second quarter trends. We have meeting growth in application and technology and in engineering. In strategy and transformation, we are growing at 28% fueled by the client appetite for innovation and digital transformation strategies. We fully benefit from a high level of cloud, data, and AI demand. And it's also the demonstration of the relevance of our strategic choices. We're looking a bit at some of the deals. We can see that we are clearly positioned as a strategic partner for the digital transformation of large corporations and organizations, leveraging, of course, the cloud, data, and AI. Our offering covers the entire value chain today, from product and services design to customer experience. We accelerate on intelligent industry and customer first, and we continue to leverage our strengths in enterprise management. We are today recognized by both analysts and the market for the excellence of our offerings and the breadth and the depth of our know-how. But I would like in particular to highlight something exciting we launched recently, the customer first domain. It is what we call the new frog. With renewed ambition and offerings, part of Capgemini Invent, we intend to help our clients reinvent completely their businesses to stay ahead of the curve and orchestrate what I would consider as being fluid customer-centric journeys. The new portfolio of offerings that we have developed under the new frog will support the continued expansion we are aiming for in the C-suite and our successful positioning in customer experience. In the intelligent industry, we continue to refine our positioning industry by industry. We have now finalized specific strategies by industry to address the needs of our clients. And we tirelessly invest in content, industry knowledge, and offerings, as exemplified by the deals you can see. when we design a smart factory or new intelligent products. We have never been so industry focused than today. Cloud data and AIs are the key pillars of our growth and the primary drivers of technology and business evolution. However, we apply them more and more by industry. Whether it's about building data lakes, cloud apps, move to cloud, or smart AIs, we cover the whole spectrum of expectation. We not only provide best-in-class technology, but we also have clear business value to our clients. So this basically brings us that we have a very solid pipeline for Q4, which makes us really confident. The talent front, which is an important subject today. So this quarter, we had a milestone. We passed the 300,000 employee mark. It's a bit symbolic, of course, as a milestone for us. If I take a moment to look in the rearview mirror, I remember that we crossed the 200,000 Mark, just four years ago. So what a long way we have come in such a short period of time. In a fast-growing industry like in the technology industry, it's a priority to attract and retain the best talent. So beyond the symbolic numbers, of course, our constant headcount growth proved that we are indeed one of the most attractive employers in the market, providing opportunities to work on some of the most exciting digital transformation projects. In the third quarter alone, we increased headcount by nearly 20,000 people, bringing the total growth to 17% in the last 12 months. We are recruiting a significant number of young graduates, as you can see, across the world, while expanding also our leadership ranks. We continue to increase our investment in training and reskilling. Since early 2021, our employees have completed almost as many learning hours as they had completed through 2020. I'm also proud of the fact that we have not sacrificed diversity in any way. And despite the immense recruitment needs and the tight labor market, our gender diversity continues to progress. And of course, I'm very proud of this. The new normal is also a revolution. We talked about it before. It's a revolution in the way we work, we commute, we manage, we onboard people. By the end of this year, we'll have rolled out a full flex policy to 80% of our employees. All across the group, we are taking advantage of the new normal to continue to gain in agility and attractiveness. And this growth is also supported by our new brand promise. It's particularly effective in terms of recruitment and allow us to continue to attract the best talent. Finally, in the context of the COP26, which will open later this week, I would like to say a word about the group's commitment to sustainability. The context, of course, is clear. The recent report of the International Energy Agency estimated global CO2 emissions of the world economy in 2021 will be roughly equivalent to those of 2019. Capgemini commitment is strong and results, of course, are already there. Our emissions during the first half of the year have fallen by more than three quarters compared to 2019, held by the limited amount of travel. We are on track to be carbon neutral no later than 2025 and net zero by 2030. This is first and foremost a result of constant work for the group to control the carbon footprint, notably in terms of travel, commute reduction, work, environment transformation, and quality offsets. We are also investing in sustainability to help our clients achieve their targets. And this is where we can even have an even bigger leverage. So in Q3, we launched two important offerings around green IT and net zero strategy. And of course, we have more offerings in the work that we'll be launching in the coming months. On the subject of sustainability, the demand is there from our clients. The pipeline is getting stronger month after month. We really see good traction across all sectors. And it's very diversified in terms of projects. It goes from product design to analytics monitoring through to green IT projects. We really consider that fighting global warming is a challenge of our generation. It's our responsibility as leaders, and it is also a must if we want to meet the expectation of our talents. We are also accelerating on this topic and will notably disclose in the coming weeks our detailed ESG policy, including priorities and specific objectives. It will be a strong and visible signal of our ambition. You will know more about it during an investor event we will organize by the end of the year. Now coming to the outlook. In this promising context, given our excellent performance and our confidence for the rest of the year, we upgrade once again our outlook for the full year. The second upgrade is substantial and across all our targets. We now target a constant currency growth of 14.5% to 15% versus the 12% to 13% previously. Expected M&A impact remains unchanged at five points. And just a reminder, in February, we were targeting seven to nine percent. On the operating margin side, we expect it to be greater than 12.7 percent versus 12.5 to 17 percent to 12.7 previously. This would represent a margin improvement of more than 80 basis points year on year. And we raise again by 200 million euro our organic free cash flow target to above 1.7 billion euros for the full year. Now, this second upgrade demonstrates the quality of our offering portfolio, the strength of our operating model and our ability to grow in a sustainable way and manage our talent pool. Thank you for your attention and now I'll leave the floor to Carole, our CFO.
spk01: Thank you, Ayman. Good morning. Let's first review the key trends of the third quarter of 2021. As Ayman already pointed out, Capgemini achieved another strong quarter with very solid growth across all our regions and all our business lines. With revenues of €4,552,000,000 in Q3, our growth at constant currency reached 12.9% compared to the same period last year. As in Q2, scope impact was negative but limited in Q3 to minus 0.3%. The organic growth therefore reached 13.2% in Q3. This is slightly higher than the 12.9% recorded in Q2. This is another meaningful achievement given that the comparison base was much more demanding in Q3. Indeed, you might recall that the four-point acceleration were recorded between the second and the third quarter of last year on an organic basis. FX had a slightly positive impact of 0.7 points in Q3, mainly coming from the British pound. This brings the year-to-date impact to minus 1.7 points. Consequently, the group reported growth stands at 13.6% in Q3 and 14.4% for the first nine months of the year. For the full year, M&A will contribute around 5 points to group growth, while the FX headwind should be limited to around minus one point. Let's now look at our revenues by regions. All the group's regions reported double-digit organic growth in Q3 2021. We are particularly pleased with our sustained traction in North America with accelerated over Q2. The transformation plan launched before the pandemic contributed to the strong performance. UK and Ireland and Asia-Pacific and Latam also further accelerated, reporting growth rates visibly higher than the already very strong Q2 growth rates. France grew double-digit organically but at constant currency. This was partially offset by the scoped impact mainly driven by the sale of Odigo. Taking into account the much more demanding comparison basis, the Q3 underlying growth momentum is even stronger than in the previous quarter. You might indeed remember that France's constant currency growth rebounded by eight points between Q2 and Q3 last year. These geographical trends are fueled by positive dynamics in almost all sectors, which are quite homogeneous across all our regions. Actually, sector growth rates in Q3 are comparable to those achieved in Q2, despite a much more demanding comparison basis. Manufacturing and TMT sectors maintained their strong group momentum of the previous quarter. Same for the public sector, whose strong traction has been remarkably steady since Q2 of last year. The consumer goods and the services sectors even accelerated in Q3. Only the energy and utilities sector remained muted with a slight contraction in activity during the past quarter. Now let's have a look at our revenues by business lines. All the group business lines maintained double-digit growth rates in Q3 2021 on an organic basis, continuing the trend observed in Q2. Services in strategy and transformation and applications and technology fully benefited from the strong demand for digital and cloud services. They recorded constant currency growth of plus 27% and 16% respectively in Q3. Services in engineering and operations also maintained this strong momentum with double-digit organic growth, but at constant currency, this is partially offset by the sale of Odigo. As in Q2, this performance was driven by mid-teens growth in engineering services. Business services and cloud infrastructure services also grew nicely. A quick look at our bookings now. Our bookings continue to grow faster than our revenues. Bookings amounting to 4.6 billion euros in Q3 at 15% at constant currency. The book to be for Q3 stand at 1.01 above of last year and above the average of the past four years. Year to date, our bookings amount to 13.7 billion euros at 18.2% year on year at constant currency. And finally, a few comments on the headcount evolution. The total headcount reached 309,000 employees at the end of September, up 16.9% year-on-year. The offshore leverage is now back to pre-altron levels at 57%, up four points year-on-year. Lastly, as expected, attrition picked up. It now stands at 19.5% on the last 12 months basis, up by five points on September 2020. After the low point reached in 2020 due to the pandemic and given the strong demand environment, this was fully expected. With this, I now move back to Ayman to open the Q&A session.
spk09: So, Operator, can you please open the queue for the Q&A? Thank you.
spk03: Yes, sure. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone The first question comes from Adam Wood from Stanley. Sir, please go ahead.
spk00: Hi, good morning, and first of all, congratulations on another great quarter. Very strong performance. So maybe just two questions from my side. The first one, there's a lot of debate in the industry about this whole employee attrition, wage inflation, and the risks it poses both to your top-line growth if it becomes harder to accrue, but also to the margins over time if you're forced to pay more. I guess I just about remember IT services companies having pricing power in the industry. It's a little while ago that I think that last happened. Could you maybe just help us understand the dynamics of how that works in terms of what stage the pricing comes in and you can pass it on to customers and how that impacts the top line and the margins just to give us a better feel for how that kind of flows through if that's what we see as we go through the next 12 months? And then the second one is just thinking more broadly about the top line growth. And obviously, it's exceptionally strong at the moment. But part of that is you're coming off easier base comps. I mean, could you try to frame this? If we hadn't had that collapse last year, what the demand environment would look like? Would it be, you know, at the very high end of your guidance range for the midterm? Or do you think you'd actually be running, you know, above it in terms of what the underlying demand in the market is at the moment? And, you know, maybe put that in the context of the hiring that's continuing to accelerate. Thank you.
spk09: Thank you, Adam. Very simple questions. The first one on attrition definitely is going up because it's clear that there is an imbalance between demand and supply in the market. And of course, this is driving attrition up for almost everybody. The resources are sometimes difficult to find for players in our industry, but also for many clients who are also basically looking for technology resources. I think the strengths come from the ability to attract people. I mean, people are looking for interesting projects to work on. And also, our ability to attract young graduates, to train people, and to deploy them. And I think this is really the skill effect that we have is probably the most important thing. And with that, we are able to continue to fuel our growth. In terms of the cost, yes, of course, you'll have some cost pressure and be more salary increases going into 2022 than than what we had in previous year. But on the other side, you also have to see the positive shift of the portfolio that we have towards the higher end, because all this acceleration is not about growing legacy, it's about growing basically the digital and cloud offering. We tend to have better margin and better pricing overall. And of course, the underlying pricing is going up. As we look at new projects and look at new opportunities, we are in a market where the demand is higher than than the supply and we're able to find ways to be able to leverage pricing in a reasonable way in a number of cases. How does it flow in the top line? To be frank, I don't think it will have a significant impact in the top line, but as we look at the coming years, if our revenue per headcount increases, of course it will have some positive impact, but it will not create more operating leverage from what I see. But overall, I mean, the sign that we raised that, again, our guidance on operating margin to see above 12.7 shows that we are able today to absorb some of the additional cost pressures that exist in the market. And at the same time, we're able to significantly continue to increase basically our talent pool. So continue to remain quite confident. Speculating of what would have happened if there was not a collapse last year, I'm not sure I want to go into that. It's clear that we have an acceleration and we have a structural acceleration compared to pre-COVID, although we're still in COVID. But we really see an acceleration compared to the trend that we saw in 2019 because the demand of technology is across the value chain, is across sectors and across basically all companies and across the world. So that's quite positive. We see it when we look at our numbers across geographies, across business lines. across sectors, of course, you have to be well positioned on the right thing with the right capability and the right offering, which we are today. So I'm quite confident in terms of the future, and it reinforces our confidence about our ability to achieve our mid-time guidance of 7% to 9% constant currency.
spk00: Perfect. That's very helpful. Thank you.
spk03: The next question comes from Amit Archandani from Citi. Sir, please go ahead.
spk12: Thank you. Good morning all. I'm from Citi and congratulations from my side as well on a very robust performance. Two questions, if I may. My first question is with regards to the increase in the free cash flow outlook. You've definitely increased revenues and EBIT, but the increase on free cash flow seems even stronger. Could I ask you to kindly give us some more insights into what's driven this particularly strong increase in the free cash flow guidance, probably even greater than that for the EBIT? And secondly, from my side, in terms of your own performance, how would you assess your competitiveness today versus your peers? I mean, the demand environment is strong, but do you think you're actually gaining shares versus peers, and if so, where would you highlight as the areas of strength, be it in terms of regions or verticals, or anything else? Thank you.
spk01: Carol?
spk09: Cash?
spk01: So thank you, Amit, for your questions, and good morning. So first, no change, as you know, Amit, on the fact that we have full mobilization and discipline around cash. That remains very high, and we have expanded this to the former Altron scope, of course. So the target that we have set and the updated target is in line with the increase in earnings, growth, and margin. But of course, as you mentioned, it also encompasses a good evolution on our working capital in light of a global environment with a strong level of liquidity. But you know, on that, regardless of short-term targets, I'm very much more interested in long-term markets ability to have a constant discipline along the year. And as you know, it starts end-to-end with the good contract structure up to the cash collection. So no change in our discipline there.
spk09: Okay. On competitiveness, listen, I'll give it to you a bit differently. What I look at is where we are today compared to where we were three or four years ago. I do believe we're gaining market share, but I think we're gaining the right market share as well. which I think is important. It's not just a question of volume. There's definitely volume demand in the market. It's the nature of discussions we have with clients. They are much more strategic. I have a number of discussions now with clients who say, this is about digital transformation. This is about the future of our company. It's not about IT and how we run the firm more efficiently. We cannot manage that through RFPs and RFQs. We're really looking for strategic partners with whom we can work on the long term on the digital transformation of the company. And I think this is really what's important is the positioning. The positioning has evolved. I think what we have done around customer first and intelligent industry, the importance of technology across the value chain of company, it's changing the nature of discussion and the positioning overall of the group in terms of strategic importance to a number of our clients.
spk12: Thank you, Carol. Thank you, Armand.
spk03: The next question comes from Stacey Pollard from GP Morgan. Sir, please go ahead.
spk04: Thank you very much. Also, congratulations on a good quarter. And then, of course, I'm going to ask about one area of weakness, maybe just a quick elaboration on energy and utilities. Was that a market-wide weaker demand or something more particular to your situation with customers? And then maybe what could we expect going forward as you move towards 2022? And second question is, looking at the strong margins of over 12.7 percent is this something that is sustainable into 2022 as in and i guess or is there some portion of it that's still t e savings that might not repeat in 2022 so just a sense of what might need to be offset going forward and while we're on that topic uh just your thoughts on travel for 2022 say as a percentage of 2019 how do you expect that to evolve, and then maybe longer term, how much of that is a permanent savings for you?
spk09: Okay, so three very good questions. On energy and utilities, for us, we see that globally. So I cannot say that we are significantly down in one region and up in another region, and this is why we are there. I mean, we have a global weakness for the moment. Now, I'm quite positive about the trend, because here where we're also going to have a big pickup around the work around energy transition, around sustainability. So although I think there have been some weakness in the short term, I really see a lot of opportunities moving forward around energy and utilities. And we start to see some positive sign in terms of what this could look like. I'm not saying that next quarter it will significantly improve, but I'm quite confident around the recovery in ENU in the next 12 to 18 months because of the increased demand around energy transition and sustainability in this industry. Regarding the margin, I mean, we're still benefiting in a little bit, of course, from the reduced travel. So that's one of the elements that, of course, that is playing there. And maybe even in some pockets, still a bit, you know, tight utilization that's also benefiting there. But you know that we'll continue as well to work on improvement of deployment. So I think utilization is something we'll be able to sustain over the longer term because of the other changes we are making. to the operating model through the new normal. Coming back on the travel, travel will, of course, increase next year. Part of it is actually going as pass-through to clients, and that will not have much impact on our profitability. But we will increase the travel. Compared to 2019, it's going to be down. We have set some internal objective that we have to finalize for 2022. But definitely part of our sustainability drive, we see that the travel will be less, our internal travel will be much less than it was in 2022. And we have proven that we can work remotely. So I don't think people will get back to jumping in planes. And we manage that very tightly by countries. In terms of sustainability of margin, listen, I think today we have really moved in terms of the positioning. We have moved in terms of the portfolio. We really continue to see the growth being in high-value areas moving forward. I'm not going to start guiding for 2022, but I think we have a positive fraction on margin that I would like to maintain.
spk05: That's really helpful. Thank you.
spk09: Yeah, and I remind you that it's still 14% to reach 14% by 2025, and that remains basically what we have in line to be able to achieve.
spk04: Perfect.
spk03: The next question comes from Michael from UBS. Sir, please go ahead.
spk06: Yes, thank you. Good morning. And I'll add my congratulations as well. Just a question on the business model evolution, Ayman. I mean, in terms of hiring year to date, I think pre-COVID, it would have been unimaginable that you could bring on 40,000 people. You'd have to equip them with a desk. You know, having a range of facilities available would be a challenge. Is this a structural shift? If you think about Q4 and next year, is it possible that you can keep on at this hiring rate given the ability to deploy resources remotely? And then I guess a little related to Stacey's question, I mean, you set the midterm targets for 2025, an average of 40 basis points a year of margin expansion. Clearly, we're ahead of that. The market doesn't like to have ups and downs. It likes to have nice, steady progression stories. do you sort of anticipate that we should continue to see margin progression year in, year out? Or does the sort of variability of the environment mean that that's not necessarily implicit in your 2025 plan? Thank you.
spk09: So, I mean, let's answer the second one. Yes, we do expect to see margin progression year on year. I mean, this is what we'll aim for, you know. So, again, not going to guide for next year, but we'll aim to continue to see how we can progress. improve the margin year on year. As you know, that's what we have been doing for many years now. We had the year of COVID where we dropped 40 basis points, but besides that, we have continuously improved margins. And you know that one of our aims is to sustainable and profitable growth, which means we need to increase both at the same time. But it's true that today we have to take advantage of the traction that we see in the market in terms of growth, but the aim is to continue to improve margin year on year. around the growth in terms of headcounts. For me here, we will do the right thing in terms of basically growing our talent pool to address the needs of our clients. So the question about feasibility, we have been basically growing significantly our headcounts since the beginning of the year. We have the capacity to continue to do it, but we have to do it based exactly on what the needs are in terms of our clients. What we need to anticipate in terms of building up capacity for the future, which is part of what we do, of course, because we cannot hire as many experienced people as before proportionally, and we have to build more of our own talent because there is a shortage in the market. So, one, I'm quite confident our ability to continue to sustain growth in terms of employees over the coming quarter to address, to be able to support our growth needs. and also to be able to more and more address some of the new capabilities required by our client. Because one of the advantages of the fast growth in a certain way of talent is that a lot of the intellect we're bringing in is basically on new technologies, right? So it accelerates in a certain way the shift in terms of capabilities towards the new and to have also which I like as we hire a lot more young people, a lot more energy in the firm, and of course very good for the future of Capgemini. So yes, confident in terms of our ability to continue to recruit and increase over the coming years. And yes, definitely in the short term, the ability to be able to deploy a lot remotely helps in terms of scalability. But I mean, I don't think that as we bring people back to offices, you know, at 40%, 60% next year, it will basically slow down or prevent us from continuing to grow at the same pace if we need to.
spk06: Will you hire as many in Q4, do you think? Is there an intention to keep it double-digit thousands?
spk09: I'm not going to go forward looking statement about how many people will end up hiring. We have plans, but, you know, they vary depending on the demand. But we'll continue to add definitely headcounts in Q4. Great. Thank you.
spk03: The next question comes from Laurent Dor from Kepler-Chevreux. Sir, please go ahead.
spk02: Yes, thank you and good morning and congratulations from my side as well for the great quarter. Three questions on my side. The first one is on the profitability and the slight hike in margin. I was wondering if your confidence is based on basically the additional volumes having margin leverage or do you start to see even more traction on the gross margin thanks to the change in business mix. The second question is on M&A. Basically, it's a very hot market. Everybody is looking for talent and acquisitions. So do you feel confident that you can add about 400 million of sales every year? How does your pipeline look in M&A? And the final question is back to the employee addition. It's really impressive to see this kind of growth rate. I was wondering, how do you onboard all these employees? Because the utilization rate is as well not moving much. Does it mean that basically everybody that you recruit gets back, gets immediately to clients' new project? Or are you being a bit aggressive and higher thinking about the coming orders of the following months? Thank you.
spk09: Carol, on profitability?
spk01: On your first question, Laurent, good morning. On the split between volume and gross margin, I would say that both are contributing, of course. So we have, of course, some volume impact in our profitability step up. But, of course, qualitatively, our gross margin is evolving favorably as well. So I would answer positively to your two comments.
spk09: Laurent, on M&A, yes, it's a rock market. I said seven to nine percent constant currency. Does it mean that we add two percent of organic growth every year? So overall, we continue to have a pretty good pipeline to Frank on the on the M&A front. You know, we have done a number of acquisition this year. We're still looking at some acquisition. We have become quite active and we also quite attractive, you know, for for especially on the Bolton market, because people want to join us because of what we can. our positioning today and what we can deliver to clients, which is an attractiveness factor that you shouldn't forget in terms of at least the bolt-ons and the M&A market. So can we fuel the 7% to 9% even if we buy a bit less? Yes. I mean, this is basically what we have committed to, and we haven't committed to 2% of M&A addition every year. On the onboarding of people, I think we have become very good at that. in terms of the digital onboarding of our talent. And we have created a lot in terms of efficiency. And now when we hire young graduates, Laurent, we train them. We train them for three months, sometimes six months, before we start shadowing them on clients and deploying them on projects. So the question here is basically some of the hiring, of course, is to anticipate future growth. So it's not people that will be built necessarily in the quarter, unlikely actually. because most people will go through training before they get onboarded or even shadowed on the project before they get billable, if you want, from a client perspective. But again, we have mastered that with the volume that we're able to hire today to be able to digitally onboard to train people and to shadow them and then deploy them at client. And it's part of the core skill that we have acquired and we have perfected that during during the last 18 months to be able to do that even more efficiently on a global basis, because a lot of the training is digital and you don't have to bring people in a classroom or in a physical place to make it happen. So yes, we have gained a lot in efficiencies.
spk02: Yes, great, thank you.
spk03: The next question comes from Nicola David, OdoBHF. Sir, please go ahead.
spk10: Yes, good morning Ayman, good morning Carol, and congrats from my side as well for this very strong performance. I have two questions actually. The first one is which aspects of this Q3 performance and also Q4 ongoing performance surprised you the most compared to the vision you had before summer? Is it demand or your ability to hire or even your ability to gain market share? So any color here would be helpful. And also regarding this acceleration, I mean, In Q2, you were lagging a bit, your largest competitor in terms of growth, and now you catch up most of it, or even you are now outpacing most of your largest competitors. So what, according to you, maybe what was holding your growth in Q2 and what helped you to accelerate so much compared to them? And my second question is regarding the U.S. I mean, you entered recently in the federal US market, which is interesting, thanks to a nice contract and a small acquisition. So what is your strategy here? How big could be this sector for you in the US in the mid-term? And do you expect it to materially fuel your growth in the region? Thank you.
spk09: OK. So on the first question, I think our growth in Q2 of 12.9% organic was already pretty good, even if we're growing a little bit more this quarter. So, I mean, I was already quite satisfied with what you have achieved in Q2. But if you think about, you know, compared to where we guided you in H1 and why some of this upside, the positive things are, from me in terms of sectors, is manufacturing and consumer goods. I mean, I also have to mention public sector, which quarter after quarter continues to be good, but has been for the last seven quarters, so now I'm getting used to it. But 28% growth in... in consumer packaged goods and retail, that was a bit of a surprise to see the strength. And this is really around the customer first. It really shows the strength of our positioning there and our ability to gain market share around the sector, which is really consumer focused and most demanding in terms of the customer experience side. And manufacturing is strong. I mean, here we have, this is really playing to our global strength in intelligent industry. and really see strengths across the world. So that were two positives compared to what we expected. On the business lines, strengths in application and technology, of course, is important because that's still 60% of our business, but also the regain in engineering, the continued acceleration in engineering, that's also driven quite a bit about intelligent industry. On US federal government, again, here it's taking advantage a bit of what I consider as being some of the trends in the market. When we see our growth overall in public sector, We see that the fact that the digital transformation of government is also significant. We have close friends across the world. So we have made a small acquisition in the US in the federal government to continue to increase a bit our positioning there. And it also opens us new contracts and new possibilities in terms of what we can work on with the federal government. a good investment with good pragmatic sense in terms of the fact that there is an opportunity in the market that we probably can tap on. I cannot speculate in terms of how big it can be, but definitely there's an opportunity to help support our growth in the market in the U.S. in an area where we were not necessarily very present today.
spk10: Thank you very much.
spk03: The next question comes from Stefan Slovinski from BNP Paribas. Sir, please go ahead.
spk05: Yes, hi. Thank you very much. Good morning, Ayman and Carol. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two quick ones, I guess. Just first, any update quantitatively on Altron synergies or backlog for joint projects? And then secondly, Ayman, on the strategy and consulting side, portion growing at 27%, quite impressive, but still just 7% of sales. So just wondering with that acceleration, is that just demand driven or is that a strategic focus for you to try to accelerate that business and eventually grow it beyond 7% of sales to something more important?
spk09: So listen, update on Altron synergies. As I said, you know, especially on the revenue side, I said we'll give you your update. So I'm not going to anticipate that. Listen, demand remains strong on synergies, you know. When you see the growth that we have and we see the growth we have in the intelligent industry, it's definitely coming from the synergies between the physical world coming from Altron and the digital world coming from Capgemini. So for me, it has been one of the key strategic aspects of this acquisition. and we are delivering on it, and to be honest, much faster than what I thought initially. On strategy and consulting, on Invent, it's absolutely crucial to what we're trying to do. I mean, the growth is both demand-driven and also the strategic focus. We talked about launching of New Frog. Again, it's really taking all our strengths that we have acquired over the coming years through the different bolt-ons, including the last one coming from Frog, which was part of Arisent, which was acquired by Altran. When you put all of that together, today we have been able to reposition in a very strong way around how we help companies in terms of creating really new businesses and then scaling them. So it's not just the creation, but it's also the scaling. You have to know that we work with startups, you know, that... have potentially coming up with the current status in the coming years. And so we start with them at very early stages, but we also work with very large corporations around completely redesigning the transformation of their business. You take Invent today, Invent works a lot with engineering and R&D. So there's a lot of joint go-to-market there in terms of how we leverage our technology knowledge in engineering in terms of how to help clients transform for example, redesign completely new product. You know, you have this example about wearable apparel, you know, connected apparel as part of the things that we have been working on. We are electric for working on electrification of trucks. All this has Invent component as part of it because we design business plan, we redesign how the model should work, and then there's a technology that comes with it. So for me, Over time, it would be natural to see Invent become a bigger part of the business overall.
spk05: Great. Thank you. Do you have a target percent of sales maybe to come from strategy and consulting?
spk09: Not speculate on that, but you will see it grow. It has to grow. If you're doing the right thing, it will grow over time.
spk05: Thank you.
spk03: The next question comes from Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hi, good morning. Congratulations as well from my side. Just to come back on the strong performance in operation engineering, in particular on, I guess, on the cloud service, if you can spend a bit more time in terms of what type of contracts you're signing there. Are you called in more to deploy native software in the cloud or helping more your customers to migrate from on-prem to cloud? Just trying to understand a little bit the dynamic here and any comments on what the trends is in terms of moving workloads directly to public cloud environments versus more private or hybrid environments.
spk09: Thank you. So I'm going to disappoint me. It's all of the above. You know, to shrink the traction on cloud everywhere, everybody's moving to cloud and the people who are on the cloud are developing in native cloud and enhancing in native cloud and really trying to leverage now all the data aspects when they are in cloud to be able to completely transform their business. I think the common agreement that we have seen now in the market across all our clients is they have to move to cloud now. Depending on the client, depending on the industry in which they are, depending on the country, you're going to have different mix between private and public cloud. But the fact that everybody agrees that everybody will end, to a large extent, in a hybrid cloud environment, that find the right equilibrium. But that equilibrium is quite different depending on the company, the sector, I would say, and the geography as well. You see a higher proportion of public cloud in the US than you will see in Europe. But Europe is gaining fast. But I still believe the proportion of private cloud will remain higher in Europe than it is in the US, and probably be higher in financial service than it is in retail, for example, just to give you some example. In terms of the work we do, we do a lot of work, of course, accompanying clients in terms of the migration. When we sign some large deal, it's really around how to help them transform their current environment and move them to the cloud. I'd say two years ago, the movement to cloud was about cost and how they were going to do cost savings. Today, it's really about modernization of IT and transformation because the realization is that you have to transform your environment as you move to cloud because what you're looking for is the agility to be able to deploy your digital transformation. And it's absolutely paramount that you modernize as you move to cloud. It's not pure lift and shift. It's not sufficient. And this is why also we see now that a larger proportion of what we do with clients is not about migration, it's really cloud native. It's really that modernization aspect, the development of new services, it basically starts really leveraging now that they are all part of the business in the cloud to see how to accelerate the innovation, how to take advantage of launching new offerings, increasing the efficiency of the operation, et cetera.
spk08: Great, thank you. And if I may follow up on that, any industries, where you see the process is extremely immature and therefore there will be a longer run-ray of growth in helping clients on the cloud, so industries which have been very reluctant to adapt so far in your portfolio?
spk09: No, I mean, listen, you know, we see the still slowness in some, for example, in some areas, for example, public sectors in some countries in Europe because of the data issues, but I believe that will accelerate in the next couple of years. We have seen that, again, if I talk to some very senior executive in banks three or four years ago about moving to public cloud, it was over my dead body. It will never happen. We don't need it. Security and confidentiality is paramount. The attitude has changed a lot, also from the regulators. So it's true that an industry like financial services, which was over 20%, up to 25% of IT spend in the past, When we start to see an acceleration, it will be quite big because they are quite big in terms of basically users of IT services and the demand in terms of moving to cloud and data that flows are quite high. So that's definitely boosting a bit, quite a bit as well now, the growth in terms of cloud.
spk08: Perfect. Thank you.
spk03: The next question comes from Gautam Pillai, Goldman Sachs. Sir, please go ahead.
spk11: Thanks for taking my questions. I have one on offshoring, actually. From your standpoint, given the salary inflation levels in India, does it require a change in offshoring strategy, i.e., moving to other locations from the global ID services players? That's my first question. Second question on free cash flow, you did comment on the upside of free cash flows coming from, obviously, the higher margins and better cash management. Is there further to go from a working capital standpoint, or are you kind of maxed out there? Thank you.
spk09: Okay, I will answer on the cash flow question. Listen, in terms of demand, you know, even in India, we all know that the shortage and increased attrition, and of course, everybody says, okay, so where else can we go? I mean, we have a number of other centers that we continue to scale in Poland, in Morocco, in Portugal. We have new show centers in Spain. We are in Romania. You know, we have capacity in the Philippines, et cetera. So, you know, we try to fulfill demand from different locations. And it's quite interesting. Some clients have become location agnostic, where they say, you know, you find me wherever you can, because in some cases there's some urgency in terms of, you know, the need for resources. But we have to be realistic that even in the medium term, India will, in terms of capacity, will remain by far, you know, our biggest capacity. And the net growth in any year will will be a lot coming from India. I don't see any way to be able to compensate some of the growth we have in India today with other locations. So although we continue to look, and we have done a recent strategic study around sourcing, although we continue to look at potential other opportunities in terms of looking at where we can further scale, India will remain the primary platform for the forthcoming future. Carol, on cash flow?
spk01: On the cash flow, as we mentioned, a portion of the step-up is linked to the environment and the working capital positive trends with the liquidity everywhere on the markets. So this trend will not last forever, for sure. But what we are really committed to do is to improve our organic free cash flow with the growth of both our revenues and the margins. So it's in line with what we have said, you know, in our midterms, ambitions and capital markets day. So our discipline will remain.
spk11: Great. Thanks so much.
spk03: The next question comes from Niels Thiers from Edburn. Sir, please go ahead.
spk07: Morning. Thanks very much. Most of my questions have been asked. But, Eman, in your opening remarks, you mentioned that you're launching some new service offerings, particularly surrounding ESG and helping your customers achieve their own ESG and environmental ambitions. Very early days yet, but would you hazard a guess as to how meaningful and significant those revenues could become for Capgemini over the medium term? Thank you.
spk09: Listen, it's a very good question. We really see it as being a growth area. So it's what I call the triple win. It's good for the planet. It's good for business. It's also great for our attractiveness in terms of talent because, as you imagine, our young talents love to work on these kind of projects. It's a bit early stages, Neil, to be able to say how big that can become. I think it will be visible really over time. It would probably, from my perspective, take a couple of years to really scale. But today, what I'm impressed about is the diversity of projects in which we are being involved. And it's a bit like digital at the beginning. It's more projects, it's concepts, it's trying to work. So I think it's still early stages, but it has a very good potential. And it's really an area where we're going to invest a lot, again, in 2022. because we think technology can really have a big leverage in terms of helping on the sustainability subject, and it's part of our duty to try to make that happen. So it's a win-win-win, as I say, as we go forward in terms of sustainability.
spk07: Thanks very much.
spk09: That was the last question. We thank you very much. We look forward for the interactions over the coming weeks. And our next big announcement will be the full year result on February 14, next year.
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