Capgemini Se Ord

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Capgemini Q1 2024 Revenues webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ayman Ezzat, CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for this Q1 revenue call. So I am joined today by Nivi Bagat, our CFO, and Olivier Silja, our COO. So the first quarter came in line with our expectation. We continue to see Q1 as a low point for growth this year. At 5.5 billion euros, our Q1 revenues is consistent with traditional seasonality and brings the year-on-year revenue growth to minus 3.3% at constant currency. As anticipated, the market remains soft but stable in the first quarter. Bookings total 5.65 billion euros, so leading to a healthy book to build for Q1 of 1.02. If I look now perspective by geography, sector, and business, from a geographic perspective, Europe continues to demonstrate more resilience, recording a slight drop in growth as expected with minus 3.2%, for example, in the UK, and Ireland minus 2.8% in France, and almost stable in the rest of Europe. In North America, we continue to be penalized by the less favorable mix, but we have stabilized and the signs of recovery are there as we look at Q2. Regarding sectors, as in recent months, TMT and financial services are still suffering from constrained spend, while energy and utilities and public sector remain more dynamic with 2.5% and 2.4% growth, respectively. Finally, on businesses, I'm particularly pleased with the performance that we have in strategy and transformation, which clearly outperformed the market. Again, this continues to reflect our continuous involvement in client strategic digital transformation initiatives, including the strong push on AI and Gen AI. And that also perfectly illustrates the strengths of our strategic positioning. Looking at some of the deeds we have with clients, the demand for large-scale digital transformation projects remains strong. In a macro environment which remains soft, clients are still prioritizing operational agility and cost-efficiency programs with fast payback. as well as digital and sustainable transformational needs at the expense of non-strategic and discretionary spend. We are perfectly positioned to meet this demand thanks to our high value added service offerings, most notably in the intelligent industry, cloud, data, and artificial intelligence. So let me put that in context by taking a couple of examples. On intelligence industry, we are leveraging our end-to-end model from consulting to engineering including insight and data, to support the digital journey of a U.S. manufacturing company. We implemented a scalable solution set of IoT technologies to provide real-time operational data to engineers, operators, maintenance team, and leadership, enabling data-driven decision and analysis. We're also working with L'Oreal in shifting to a global delivery model to enhance IT operations, supporting both sales and marketing, and accelerate growth. focusing on fast and flawless deliveries. To lead to fast productivity gains, GNI is leveraged on top of Salesforce marketing and Commerce Cloud application. Generative AI will be used as a productivity lever for optimization and performance, advanced support assistance for complex issues, and automating tasks to streamline the software development lifecycle. We see sustained investment in growth area from our side. We indicated during our annual results in February that Q1 would be the trough. I confirm it is behind us. The final growth has been strong, and the number of large deals increased, and we see more optimism in the U.S. market. As a business and technology transformation partner of CXOs, we are well positioned to cast the demand for large-scale digital transformation projects. We continue to invest in our people, in our portfolio of skills and offers, while strengthening and expanding our technology partnerships and our focus industry skills. If you look at the underlying trend that we observe in the market, we see traction in intelligent industry and the beginning of rebounding customer first. More and more clients are looking for complete solutions and not just technology. Thanks to our end-to-end model, our industry expertise, and our strong ecosystem of partners, we are well positioned to catch this demanded scale. Clients are also increasingly relying on technology to progress on sustainability. We are supporting them in their journey towards net zero emissions, assisting in designing products that are more sustainable, helping in the implementation of more environmentally friendly supply chains, scaling energy transition in gigafactories and renewables, And we are also enabling the acceleration of the journey towards a more digital and sustainable economy. On cloud technology, which underpins the digital transformation, we combine end-to-end cloud services with industry-specific expertise from technology partnership to help our clients in their cloud transformation journey. On artificial intelligence, continues to be, of course, as you imagine, major subject of interest and fuels a lot of discussion with our clients. In terms of generative AI, we keep investing in solutions. We launched a new platform a few weeks ago to allow our clients to experiment with industry-specific use cases and to industrialize them at a controlled cost. We also continue to strengthen our skills in terms of capabilities around generative AI, leveraging our dedicated campus, and expand our portfolio of offers to create the maximum impact for customers. Appetite for digital core. notably underpinned by ARPs and SAP. Transformation is definitely there, and we see more structural business cost take-out initiative and strong demand for transformation. So at the end of this first quarter, I would like to confirm the growth trough is now behind us. We expect the market to gradually pick up toward an attractive exit rate in Q4, ranging from mid-single-digit to high-single-digit at cost and currency. setting up for a more tangible acceleration in 2025. And in this context, we confirm all our objectives for 2024, revenue growth of 0% to 3% at constant currency, with up to one point of scope impact at the top end, an operating margin of 13.3% to 13.6%, and an organic free cash flow of around $1.9 billion. Thank you for your attention, and I now leave the floor to Nili Bagat, our CFO.

Thank you, Ayman, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share with you our Q1 2024 performance. Q1 revenues slowed down in line with our expectations. We confirm this was the growth trough, and we expect a gradual improvement from here. Group revenues amounted to 5,527 million euros, down minus 3.5% year on year on a reported basis. With a negative currency impact of 20 basis points, our growth at constant currency was minus 3.3%. Excluding a positive scope impact of 30 basis points, organic growth was therefore minus 3.6% in Q1. The FX should have a slightly positive impact of around 20 to 30 basis points in Q2 and likely to be the same for the full year. Q1 performance by region also came in line with our expectations. At constant currency, revenues in North America region declined by minus 7.1% year on year, a rate similar to Q4 2023. The financial services and TMT sectors contributed the most to this decline, partly offset by growth in the manufacturing sector. Revenues in the United Kingdom and Ireland region were down minus 3.2%, also mostly driven by the financial services and TMT sectors. Conversely, The services and energy and utility sectors enjoyed solid momentum, as did the manufacturing sector to a lesser extent. Revenues in France declined by minus 2.8%, with some softness in the manufacturing and financial services sectors and a dynamic public sector. Revenues in the rest of Europe region were almost stable at minus 0.5%. the underlying performance by sector showed more contrast with good momentum in the energy and utilities and public sectors and a visible contraction of the TMT sector. Finally, revenues in the Asia Pacific and Latin America region were down minus 1.7%, almost entirely driven by the financial services and TMT sectors, while the consumer goods and retail sector proved quite dynamic. Moving on to revenues by sector as constant currency. While all verticals decelerated in Q1 as anticipated, we see a persisting contrast in our performance across our sectors. The energy and utilities and public sectors enjoyed a good start to the year with a growth of plus 2.5% and plus 2.4% respectively. Conversely, TMT and financial services sectors are still lagging behind with a negative growth of minus 11.1% and minus 7.3%. However, to note, this does not change the sector's respective weight in our well-diversified mix. Moving on to revenues by business line at constant currency. Total revenues of strategy and transformation services are up plus 1.6% year-on-year at constant exchange rates. This growth reflects client focus on strategic initiatives to transform, optimize, and adapt their business and operations to a challenging economic environment as well as investment in Genia. Total revenues of applications and technology services, Capgemini's core business declined by minus 4%. Lastly, operations and engineering total revenues contracted by minus 3%. Moving on to our bookings. Bookings amounted to 5,655 million euros in Q1, down minus 3.5% at constant currency. However, The book-to-bill ratio stands at 1.02, which is the second highest over the last 10 years. In a challenging environment, this demonstrates that our offerings portfolio is aligned with client priorities. Finally, a few words on the headcount evolution. Total headcount stands at 337,200 employees at the end of March, down by 6% year-on-year. This is marginally lower than at the end of 2023 as we remain focused on improving resource productivity and utilization. The offshore leverage stands at 57%, one point lower than in Q1 2023 and stable since the end of last year. Lastly, attrition decelerated further over the past months. This brings the last 12-month attrition rate to 15.9%, at the end of Q1, down by almost seven points compared to a year ago and fell in our optimal operating range. With this, I hand back to Ayman to open the Q&A session.

Thank you, Nivi. So let's now open the Q&A to allow for a maximum number of people in the queue to ask questions. May I kindly ask you to restrict yourself to one question and one single follow-up. Operator, could you please share the instructions?

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star, one, one on your telephone and wait for your aim to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star, one, and one again. We will now take the first question. One moment, please. From the line of Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Hi, I'm Anivi. Good morning. My question was just your commentary around obviously crossing the trough now, and as you think of the shape of growth, should we think of kind of stabilization by the middle of the year and then kind of hitting that sort of positive growth into that back half, which then has that accelerating trajectory? So if you could help us provide some sort of color around that sort of shape And the follow-up was just on the bookings. That was sort of negative on a year-on-year basis. Was there anything in the comparison or in the quarter that sort of impacted that number? And should we think of bookings kind of resuming that kind of positive trajectory from kind of Q2 onwards? Thank you.

Yes, so two questions. The question on the booking and the question around the slope of recovery. So Q2, if Q1 is a trap, which Q2 will improve, but Q2 will remain soft. So it's an improvement. We see the trajectory. We see also trajectory to Q3. And we're still confident about our exit rate at the end of the year. But as you know, The slope of recovery is the one where they continue to say basically we are careful about the slope of recovery, even if in the ending point we know pretty much where we're going to end. So Q2 is an improvement towards compared to Q1, but it's soft. Good sign of improvement, for example, in the U.S. market, we really see an improvement in terms of Q1 and Q2. It's really visible, for example, in the U.S., so that is positive. And the pipeline is higher. We see more large deals, but we don't see, for example, yet the resumption of discretionary spending. So on the moving scale. I mean, frankly, it's in line with what we expect for the year. I mean, we look at the book-to-bill. Of course, the growth, when the growth will improve with a positive book-to-bill, we'll see growth in the booking. So we see a solid book-to-bill expect for the second quarter that will basically underpin what we have been telling you around the recovery and the slope of the recovery. But we don't see Q1. Yes, year-on-year is decreasing, but our revenue is also decreasing. So what we look at is the trend of the book-to-bill because that's what underpins basically the reliability of our forecast.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. from the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Great. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I mean, first maybe on the quarter itself. Obviously, the timing of Easter this year fell into the first quarter. Has there been a meaningful impact on growth on this? And if so, could you quantify that? And will it have any implications?

Yeah, can you re-clarify? Sorry, I did not understand.

The timing of each fell into one rather than two this year.

Yeah, yeah.

OK. And whether it had an impact on growth, and if so, if you could quantify it, please.

Yeah, nothing significant that would have come to my attention from that perspective, because I've had recently some impact, but I haven't. I don't see it as a factor, basically.

OK, understood. And just following up on the comment earlier that Q2 will be still soft, do you have already kind of a view whether it will be back to growth or not?

Again, you know, as you know, I'm not going to comment quarter by quarter the numbers, but overall Q1 is a trough and we will see basically improvement in Q2, but it remains soft. Because this question is still not there. But again, there is a clear, basically, slope recovery that we'll see in Q2 and Q3 to lead us to our exit rate, where we still have the same confidence about the mid-single digit to a high single digit exit rate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, Ayman. Good morning, Yves. Good morning. If I can ask a question around, first of all, your guidance range for the year. I mean, it's a fairly narrow revenue range, but if you can spend a moment on the different assumptions you've taken, low and high end. And then a follow-up around AI. I mean, you mentioned putting this platform together to test use cases. What are the kind of big areas where you see, you know, clear use cases for your clients, you know, strong engagement, probably the highest opportunity? Thank you.

Good. Listen, so on the low and high end of the gun, it's really, listen, the slope of the recovery is underpinned by speed of reacceleration in terms of client decision making and the level of resumption of discretionary respect. Okay. That's a clear two things that basically come short term and are not really something that we can predict. This is why we have that range. It gives us a bigger, wider, basically, exit range in Q4. You know, with two high single digits, still a wide range, because basically that's what defines a bit the slope. But for the year, that's what will define the difference between being on the low end or high end of that guidance. But these are the main factors. I mean, right now, what has been happening is exactly what we expect. We see the pipeline increasing, which shows basically clients are accelerating the review and the appetite for what they want. There's still a lot of cost transformation deals in the pipeline, but there are more transformations. It's not cost avoidance. Most people from cost avoidance to cause transformation, which is not the same. So they're looking at how to improve the agility, the effectiveness. But it's more transformational deals. That's why we see an increase, which is quite significant, in the number of large deals in the pipeline. On the AI and Gen AI traction, the number of deals continues to increase. The large size of pipeline continues to increase. The focus has still been around the front end. a lot around sales, customer service, marketing. That's where we see the maximum amount of deployment. The part around the efficiency of software products in real, et cetera, is picking up as clients start deploying in their environment. And still a lot around how to leverage when you have huge amounts of data, manuals, et cetera, and content, how to leverage that. We have started shifts and starting to see more interest in specific use cases by industry. So right now, we are basically deeply involved in a number of use cases around manufacturing, supply chain, engineering, consuming new products. So we see a pickup, I say, of industry specific use cases, which starts to increase. They're not at scale. There's another area which is quite interesting, where we have done a number of large POCs. and we start to see some potentially larger deals coming, is all the area of mainframe modernization. Wherever you have a high amount of legacy, the level of automation we have seen in terms of potential migration to move out of legacy start to be quite high. And this is quite promising, of course, in terms of enabling clients to move to a more agile and more effective, basically, technology base.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Toby Ogg from JP Morgan, please go ahead.

Yes, hi, good morning, and thanks for the questions. Perhaps just coming back on the discretionary spending environment, obviously you mentioned they're still seeing some pressure. Just thinking about the guidance for the full year on the growth side, could you help us with what the low-end and the high end of the guidance implies for discretionary. And then just as the follow-up, I just wanted to come back on the financial services growth, minus seven and a quarter. Could you give us a sense for whether you saw any incremental softening in that vertical versus your initial expectations? And then just on the look forward here, I know it's a vertical you're expecting to see a degree of improvement in. So what level of visibility do you have on that recovery at this point? Thank you.

OK, first, on the discretionary spend on the low end and high end, I think on the low end, I don't expect an awful lot of discretionary spend, so maybe a little bit, but not a full recovery. On the high end, yes, we'd expect that a lot of discretionary spend is back. OK, but on the low end, it's not based on the fact that suddenly people have resumed normal level of discretionary spend. We expect some to come back. We have to be optimistic about that. probably not a full recovery. And for the one, there are limited signs. So we still see clients really focusing. So there's deals, there's investment. We have a book to build that's positive, which basically shows that clients are making decisions. But we really see them really putting still on the back burner whatever is non-strategic or whatever is discretionary. So they feel the pressure. to drive the transformation. So they're really focusing the deals and the discussion on what really has bigger impact and visible impact. We showed that there's still some constraint around the spend that we see not fully there, and that's what will drive. And of course, as I mentioned, see a lot of large deals in the pipeline. And on the FS growth. So FS, I think it's the banking sector that's still that still are basically really putting a lot of pressure on financial services. There is no bad news. It's just the continuous impact of the year-on-year that we see in financial service, you know, with the normal seasonality in terms of some of the spend. There are quite a few large deals we see in the pipeline, and there is a ramp-up of what we have won in the consolidation, which is starting basically to see positive signs. And to be frank, we see that positive sign. We see, of course, financial service has a high offshore leverage growth. So we start to see now the re-acceleration of the hiring in India to basically sustain some of the scale-up of some of the consolidation that we have won. So I remain positive on the fact that we expect to move to a stabilization at some moment around financial service, which means it will not have any more of a negative impact, although I don't expect a big reacceleration this year. I expect it to not impact the growth anymore as we go quarter after quarter.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. from the line of Laurent Doré from Cap Le Chevre. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Good morning. Two questions or so for me. The first is back to the exit rate on the market. Shall we read an attractive exit rate to be equivalent to what you said earlier, which was mid to high single-digit growth? And when you look at the last 10 weeks, Was there anything that had worried you or that was different from your expectation that could impact your degrees of confidence on this exit rate at the end of the year? And my follow-up is on the manufacturing sector. It's been a very strong sector for years. Now it's softer. Is it aerospace that is having a soft start? And do you expect some recovery later in the year? Thank you.

Thank you. So the mid to high single digits, it is mid to high single digits as being basically attractive. So it is not the high, it's the mid to high, which for us underpins the acceleration in growth for 2025. That's for the exit rate. I mean, whatever happened in the last three months is really in line with what we expected. Probably, I would say the pickup in terms of the pipeline was probably better than what I would have expected. Of course, clients will have to decide, and we need to have a good win rate. But in a certain way, it has comforted us in our perspective for the full year, and it's comforting us that things are going in the right direction, and we will see the quarterly improvement. The manufacturing sector, there is some, how do you say, The question is not so much, there's not as much growth. So yes, there's a bit of softness in aerospace. So that means there's not as much growth. Same thing in auto. It's not growing as much because the perspectives are not as good in auto. But the cycles of investment are still there. The appetite is still there, but it is not the same levels of growth that we had previously. So of course, it does have a bit, it shows a bit of softness overall in manufacturing. But we see also a lot of positives in terms of new clients and new areas in manufacturing, not only by intelligent industry. So I remain positive. So I think it's kind of temporary softness. I remain quite positive around basically the manufacturing sector.

OK, great. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question. from the line of Charles Brennan from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. There's been lots of focus so far on the top line. I was wondering if you could just say something about the margin outlook for the year. I feel like we've got a bit of a two-way pull at the moment. On the one hand, headcount's drifting down, which is presumably good for utilization and margin. On the other hand, you're talking about continued investments into the business. and maybe some deals that are more cost-focused, which presumably are lower margin rather than higher margin. At this stage, is there any reason to believe that we're trending towards the lower or the higher end of that margin target? Thank you.

Hi, thank you for that question. So I think two bits over there. Number one is that we stick with the range of guidance that we're given between 13.3 and 13.6. Number two, I don't think you should read into the fact that because there is a decline in the headcount, it changes anything at all. We have a number of different diverse levers that we adopt. And number three, I think the important point to consider is that our mix is what we focus on when it comes to margin improvement in terms of the value-added services that we sell to our clients. So these three things put together gives you a good perspective. And then, of course, I think in terms of H1 and H2, I think it's important to understand that we don't expect to see a change in seasonality in margin evolution between H1 and H2 as well. So that gives it some perspective, Charles.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Balaji Tirupati from Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions, Balaji Tirupati from Citi. Two questions from my side. On generative AI, how has engagements been progressing? And as the pilots move to production phase, are they being financed from repurposing of spend? And a second question again on Gen AI, what are the efficiency password expectations you see from your clients and competitors at this early stage? Thank you.

So in terms of Gen AI, in terms of terms of growth. You know, pipeline continues to increase. We continue to sign more deals. Still many of them are small. We start to have larger deals. Last week we signed one which was about 6 million, so it's growing. You know, some increase. Repurposing of spend, you know, I think, yeah, there's probably a little bit of it, for sure. You know, there is probably, you know, as people are cutting, but we're not in big spend yet. You know, if you talk about When you talk about $6 million deal for a company that probably spent $2 billion on technology per year, it's not a big repurposing of spend. So I don't think it's huge at this stage. Over time, it might have some impact, depending on the growth of spend and the cost of scaling up some of this GNI. But at this stage, based on the level of spend, I don't think it's a big effort in terms of repurposing of spend on GNI. In terms of where the efficiency, see, there is efficiency, but I have said from the beginning of this wave around Gen AI that the expectation, especially around productivity gains, et cetera, and cutting heads, I'm sorry to use this term, is over-anticipated. People expect too much and too fast. And I think we will, over the coming months, normalize a bit the expectations. As I say, we start to see a lot of more deals now which are more industry focused and more value focused that will lead tangible results but do require quite a bit of transformation in companies. So some of the quick wins I think will be fast behind us and we really get into more the deeper transformation that also will be the most value generating for companies. And we start to see some of the discussion happen. So when I discuss with clients, we start to see the hype about the initial phases, about how fast and how much productivity they're going to get, who, yes, we understand there is more tangible value coming from Gen-AI, but it's going to require more change, but also potentially more value creation.

Very clear. Thank you. And congratulations on another steady set of results.

Yeah, thank you. And just to show also, the same people that were saying 12 months ago and pushing the hype Some large consulting firms about the amount of savings, et cetera, and productivity gains in IT, notably, and so on, have changed fundamentally their numbers in the last 12 months. The 50-60% has come down to 10-15%, so we start to see more realism coming in the market, which I think is good news for everybody.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Michael Breas from UBS. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Just curious on the regional profile in Q2, are you saying that Europe has passed the trough as well? Because North America obviously shrank for three quarters. Do you think we're going to see an improvement in Q2 or could Europe still be shrinking even in Q3? And then on hiring, Eamon, I think you said that you're starting to ramp up again for some of the financial services contracts. Do you think Q2 will see headcount growing quarter on quarter?

Two questions. So first on the regional profile, I mean, you know, I think Europe is stabilizing and So we might see some improvement somewhere, maybe a little bit less in some countries. But I think overall, I don't see Europe degrading in Q2. And we clearly see the North African market basically improving compared to Q1. So that will drive basically a lot of the improvement in Q2. After going the rest of the year, I don't want to speculate on Q3 and everything, but we'll have to turn positive, of course, as we go in the rest of the year to get to the attractive exit rate that we talked about in Q4. On the headcount growth, again, I don't like to base too many things on headcount growth, but we clearly see acceleration of recruitment, notably in India. The level of demand is increasing to fuel some of the deals that we are winning. As I said, as things progress during the year, the headcount growth will come back. But I clearly see first from a very soft now attrition rate and the level of hiring that basically we will start trending in the coming months, not mentioning Q2 specifically, in the coming months in headcount growth.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question.

I think it will be the last question.

From the line of Ben Castillo-Barnaus from BNP Paribas.

Good morning. Thanks for choosing me in. A question on utilization. So it looked like it ticked higher year over year, but there's still quite a bit of headroom if we look back to historic peak utilization levels. So assuming demand kind of pans out as you expect this year, How feasible is a return to those historic sort of high utilization rates? And if so, what sort of timeframe is reasonable? Thanks.

Yeah, I mean, the historical high utilization rates were also quite a bit tense, if you remember as well. These were not easy periods. So I'm not sure we want necessarily to push all the way there. Over the long term, yes. As you know, we're working on efficiency of deployment of resources, so over the long term, medium-term, sorry, we basically expect utilization to be more in the short term, not necessarily pushing for that, because if you want to create scalability, we would need to try to balance basically the ramp-up of resources to be able to fuel the growth. So I'm not pushing for very high utilization. What I'm pushing right now is to make sure that we start to build the scalability to be able to address basic needs as we have as we go to the second half.

Understood. Thanks very much.

OK. Thank you very much. And looking forward to interact with many of you in the coming days and weeks. Have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.