Endava PLC (DAVA) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Endava Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Laurence Madsen, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Endava's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Joining me today are John Cotterell, Endava's Chief Executive Officer; and Mark Thurston, Endava's Chief Financial Officer.

Before we begin, a quick reminder to our listeners. Our remarks today include forward-looking statements including our guidance for Q4 fiscal year 2022 and for the full fiscal year 2022 and statements regarding our perceived opportunities and anticipated future growth and geographic expansion.

Our expectations regarding digital transformation of businesses and industries and our industry trends, the necessity of digital transformation for many companies and Endava's ability to benefit there from, potential technological advances, our expectations for future partnerships and ability to expand our existing relationships, anticipated client demand for Endava services, our ability to attract and retain employees and be an employer of choice in multiple geographies and our ability to execute on our sustainability objectives as well as other forward-looking statements.

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance.

Please note that these forward-looking statements made during this conference call speak only as of today's date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances other than to the extent required by law. Please refer to the Risk Factors section of our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission or the SEC on September 28, 2021, and as updated in Exhibit 99.2 to our current report on Form 6-K filed with the SEC on March 30, 2022, which contains a discussion of important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements.

Also during the call, we'll present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. The reconciliation of non-IFRS to IFRS measures is included in today's earnings press release, which you can find on our Investor Relations website. A link to the replay of this call will also be available there. With that, I'll turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Laurence. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today, and I hope you're all well. We're pleased to be here to provide an update on our business and financial performance for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022. I'm pleased to report that we continue to be in a very favorable business environment, where demand outweighs supply, and therefore, we remain very selective in the business we take on. .

We carefully balance expanding work with existing clients and taking on new ones. Our ability to service clients from Central Europe has not been impacted by the war in Ukraine, and we remain thoughtful about the locations for our delivery centers and are very mindful of managing potential geopolitical risk in the countries where we choose to expand.

Additionally, our distributed agile delivery model provides for a multisite delivery approach, spreading delivery to individual clients across multiple centers, reducing risk associated with any 1 location and making business contingency planning highly effective, should it be required.

Endava reported revenue of GBP 169.2 million for Q3 of our fiscal year 2022, representing a 50.9% year-on-year increase in constant currency from GBP 112.3 million in the same period in the prior year. We ended the quarter with an adjusted profit before tax for the period of GBP 34.2 million, representing a 43.1% year-on-year increase from GBP 23.9 million in the same period in the prior year.

Our strong revenue growth continues to be driven by both the expansion of work for our existing clients and the acquisition of new ones during the quarter. The continued scaling of existing projects and accounts continues to drive the growth of larger clients and the increased spend by these clients.

We ended the quarter with 717 active clients, up from 567 at the end of the same period in the prior year, a 26.5% year-on-year increase. Importantly, we grew the number of larger clients with a total of 118 clients paying us in excess of GBP 1 million per year compared to 81 in the same period last year, representing a 45.7% year-on-year increase.

Additionally, the average spend of our top 10 clients continues to grow strongly and was up 44.2% year-on-year in the 3 months ended March 31, 2022. Our business in the U.S. continues to expand strongly and revenue from North America grew 75.5% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022. Over the same quarter last fiscal year, with demand particularly strong in banking and capital markets and insurance as well as in tech and mobility.

Revenue in our Payments and Financial Services vertical grew by 46% year-on-year, driven by strong growth in all the subsegments of that vertical. Our Other vertical also grew very strongly, up 77.3% year-on-year, with Mobility being the key driver.

The healthy demand from our clients continues to be driven by technology-enabled transformations occurring in many industries such as autonomous vehicles, frictionless payments, data insights and supply chain pressures. There remains much interest in the topic of the Metaverse as entire ecosystems are emerging around it, while we are seeing a broadening of its applications.

We believe that this represents an opportunity for Endava as an expanding area of digital acceleration. For example, we are already seeing an increasing interest in practical applications of virtual and augmented reality using headsets like Microsoft HoloLens. We have recently developed virtual showrooms assistance applications for logistics workers, 3D industrial training applications and business-to-consumer applications for areas like furniture and toys and virtual experiences for tourists.

All of these applications require a blend of skills, including user experience, 3D graphical design, software engineering, automation and specialized testing and are ideally suited to our cross-functional delivery teams. Such projects also often involve or lead to work on infrastructure, back-end services or data analytics generating work for other teams as well.

We are investing in the space as we see good growth opportunities. Endava recently joined the Unity Certified Creator Network, which leverages Unity technology to solve customer problems with the power of real-time 3D. The membership-based ecosystem is focused on putting diverse, innovative creators such as Endava at the center of the metaverse economy.

As we expand our expertise in the media and telecommunications segments, we'd like to highlight a number of clients, both North American and European, where we are accelerating the evolution of their businesses through the application of next-generation technologies.

In the Media vertical, we're seeing increased demand in building products and platforms in line with the industry's technology disruption wave and early movement towards the decentralization and token-based economics fundamental to Web3. We are also helping our clients monetize the Metaverse, both in North America and Europe.

Endava has been working with a U.S.-based gaming company, building the platform for a virtual blockchain-enabled gallery in the metaverse to view and transact in NFTs. We are also working on enhancing internal tools for their blockchain gaming platform, which will streamline automation when it comes to reviewing and publishing their games.

We're working together with their engineering leads to design and deliver the next iteration of their back-end platform, heavily focused on reusable microservices that will provide a scalable and flexible infrastructure. We've been working with ConsenSys, a leading Ethereum software technology company, on several of their blockchain-based product offerings.

Starting with Komgo, a trade finance platform, backed by 15 of the world's largest banks; trading and oil companies, enabling authorized participants to securely transact using blockchain for trading and for the standardization of documents.

We're also working on Covantis, a platform servicing some of the leading global agricultural commodity providers, with a global network for efficient execution of bulk agricultural trade operations, including notice issuance and visualization as well as user productivity management.

Finally, we're working on MetaMask, the primary way a global user base of approximately 30 million monthly active users interacts with a universe of Web3 applications. They include NFT marketplaces, play-to-earn games; decentralized autonomous organizations, which are software platforms running business processes on transparent blockchain protocols; decentralized financial applications; and metaverse worlds.

We started with a small team, which over the last few years, grew to include many scrum teams. Also in media, Endava works with VideoAmp, a media measurement and optimization software company whose goal is to create a more sophisticated data-driven advertising ecosystem. Our partnership aligns with and supports their goal to redefine how media is valued, bought and sold.

Similar to the scale of the technology disruption wave we see in media, the telco vertical is also moving into a new period of accelerated disruption as the scaled availability of 5G networks has created vast new areas of opportunity for the evolution of mobile experiences.

In line with this theme and supporting a long-term European telecom clients, we've recently delivered a large cloud native gaming platform leveraging 5G technology to enable unprecedented low latency gaming experience. For that same client, Endava is supporting their innovation unit, with application layer and mobile software expertise in the area of time-critical applications over 5G with rate adaptation.

Further, we are currently upgrading and managing the e-commerce platform and payments gateway of another large European telecom clients as they look to evolve their business. We're on track to stabilize and provide direction of travel for this complex platform. I'm also very excited about our recently announced partnership with Stripe.

We joined Stripe's new partner ecosystem as a key strategic partner. This ecosystem allows merchants to grow their business by connecting them with over 800 partners to facilitate new offerings, experiment with new business models and monetize payments transactions. By keeping pace with the escalating adoption of SaaS tools and commerce platforms, merchants are able to reach new customers and increased conversions with a frictionless customer experience.

To service this increased customer demand, we continue our growth from a people perspective. We ended the quarter with 11,001 Endavans from 8,127 in the same period last year. While competition for talent remains intense, our focus on recruiting the best talent in the countries where we are located is unchanged.

And I'm pleased to our success in recruiting and retaining the people we need. We continue our geographical expansion and diversification. We're expanding our team in Toronto, Canada. In Poland, we currently have 2 delivery centers, in Gdansk and (inaudible) and plan to add several more locations in the coming months.

Our expansion in Mexico is progressing well with our delivery center in Monterrey, where we are actively recruiting. We also, very recently, opened a new delivery center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to service our APAC customers and a close to client's location in Dubai, UAE.

Additionally, to meet the continued strong growth and demand in North America, we continue to accelerate our LatAm presence. We ended the quarter with over 1,780 Endavans in the region, up 65% year-on-year. At Endava, we aim to support our staff and give them the opportunity to achieve their professional ambitions.

One of our tools to help them achieve their goals is our award-winning Endava Well-Being program, which we recently offered master classes and workshops focused on mental well-being. As we come together in caring for the environment, we're keen on getting increasing awareness on environmentally friendly practices, both at work and at home through relevant master classes, workshops and digital resources.

As an example of our efforts, I'm delighted that our Endava Thank You Forest Campaign has recently been awarded CSR Program of the Year at the Anis Romania Gala. Under this campaign, we plan a tree for each thank you note sent by 1 Endavan to another, both addressing our ecological aims and furthering our collaborative culture. We have planted 23,000 trees near 5 of our locations and 10,000 more are being planted in May. We look forward to keeping growing our Endava forest as we continue sharing gratitude by ascending e-thank yous.

Endavans wanted to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. So we launched an employee-match donation campaign. And together, we raised EUR 1 million. Our combined efforts will help thousands of Ukrainians with our donations to NGOs working on the ground in Ukraine and at the borders of Moldova and Romania.

As demonstrated by our financial results, demand for our services remains strong. We're navigating a challenging global macroeconomic environment and remain excited about the opportunities in front of us and remain confident in our ability to execute on our objectives.

Let me end by thanking our people for their resilience and adaptability as they continue to deliver innovation, quality and excellence to our clients. They enable the performance and the opportunity for our business that I've just discussed.

I will now pass the call on to Mark, who will walk you through our financial results for the quarter and provide guidance for the coming quarter and the fiscal year.

Thanks, John. Endava's revenue totaled GBP 169.2 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2020, compared to GBP 112.3 million in the same period in the prior year, a 50.7% increase over the same period in the prior year.

In constant currency, our revenue growth rate was 50.9%. Profit before tax for Q3 fiscal year 2022 was GBP 25.9 million compared to GBP 16.5 million in the same period in the prior year. Our adjusted profit before tax for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, was GBP 34.2 million compared to GBP 23.9 million for the same period in the prior year.

Our adjusted profit before tax margin was 20.2% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, compared to 21.3% for the same period in the prior year. Adjusted profit before tax or adjusted PBT is defined as the company's profit before tax adjusted to exclude the impacts of share-based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangible assets and realized and unrealized foreign currency exchange gains or losses, all of which are noncash items.

Adjusted PBT margin is adjusted PBT as a percentage of total revenue. Our adjusted diluted EPS was 48p for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, calculated on 58.0 million diluted shares as compared to 34p for the same period in the prior year calculated on 57.2 million diluted shares.

Revenue from our 10 largest clients accounted for 35% of revenue for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, compared to 36% for the same period last fiscal year. Additionally, the average spend per client from our 10 largest clients increased from GBP 4.1 million to GBP 5.8 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, representing a 44.2% year-over-year increase.

In the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, North America accounted for 33% of revenue compared to 29% in the same period last fiscal year. Europe accounted for 21% of revenue compared to 25% in the same period last fiscal year and the U.K. accounted for 43% of revenue, unchanged from the same period last fiscal year, while the rest of world accounted for 3%, unchanged from the same period last fiscal year.

Revenue from North America grew 75.5% for 3 months ended March 31, 2022, over the same quarter of the fiscal year 2021. Comparing the same periods, revenue from Europe grew 26.9%, the U.K. grew 49.4% and the Rest of World grew 28.8%.

We grew in all 3 of our industry verticals during the quarter. Revenue from Payments and Financial Services grew 46.0% for 3 months ended March 31, 2022. Revenue from Payments and Financial Services accounted for 51% of revenue compared to 53% in the same period last fiscal year.

Revenue from TMT grew 40.0% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, of the same quarter of 2021 and accounted for 25% of revenue compared to 27% in the same period in the prior year.

Revenue from Other grew 77.3% for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, over the same quarter of 2021 and now accounts for 24% of revenue compared to 20% in the same period in the prior year.

We now turn to our adjusted free cash flow, which is our net cash provided by operating activities plus grants received less net purchases of noncurrent tangible and intangible assets. Our adjusted free cash flow was GBP 16.1 million for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, compared to GBP 10.2 million during the same period last fiscal year.

Our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period remained strong at GBP 120.4 million at March 31, 2022, compared to GBP 69.9 million at June 30, 2021. CapEx for the 3 months ended March 31, 2022, as a percentage of revenue was 1.6% compared to 1.2% in the same period last fiscal year.

Our guidance for Q4 fiscal year 2022 is as follows: Endava expects revenues will be in the range of GBP 177 million to GBP 179 million representing constant currency revenue growth of between 29% and 31%. Endava expects adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of 48p to 49p per share.

Our guidance for full year fiscal year 2022 is as follows: Endava expects revenues will be in the range of GBP 652 million to GBP 654 million, representing constant currency growth of between 46.0% and 46.5%. Endava expects adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of GBP 1.91 to GBP 1.92 per share.

This above guidance for Q4 fiscal year 2022 and the full year fiscal year 2022 assumes the exchange rates at the end of April when the exchange rate was GBP 1 to USD 1.26 and EUR 1.19.

This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, we are now ready to open the line for the Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) And your first question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi.

Good quarter, hope you are all well. My question was with regards to headcount growth. Obviously, in the quarter, head count growth continued to be pretty solid. Could you talk a little more with regards to are you having to adapt your recruiting tactics, your approach, your breadth of where you recruit things like that, just given how tough the market seems on that front?

Yes, we continue to focus really hard on how we can recruit great people into the organization. As you know, we seek to be the employer of choice in cities and locations that we operate in.

And that requires constant evolution of the way in which we're recruiting. We highlighted recently that we improved our Sharesave Scheme that actually enables every Endavan to participate in the equity of the business, and that has helped to attract folk into the business.

We are, as you touched on also, diversifying. So a big push ahead over the last 12 months in Latin America. We saw 65% growth there and also pushing into other countries in Central Europe such as Poland; Mexico has been strong and Latin America as a new start-up area.

So by expanding our geographical footprint and refining our employee proposition in different markets, we're continuing to see that success in head count growth that you were touching on.

And then the commentary with regards to demand being greater than supply is consistent with the past. You also had a line in there which said you're being selective as it relates to client opportunities. It might be useful if you could maybe walk through some of the conditions, so to speak, the factors that you look for in terms of that selection. And I'm assuming that also applies as you review business opportunities coming from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus-type clients?

Yes. So I mean just to be very clear, we have no clients or staff in Russia, Ukraine or Belarus and no plans to do so.

(inaudible).

Yes, yes. So our prioritization is actually really clear. So we focus on clients that where we can develop a scaled long-term relationship in industries where we can see that prolonged technical transformation is underway. So we're much less interested on working on a single project for a new client if we don't think the relationship can expand.

And then we want to grow our wallet share by delivering significant positive impact to our clients' business models. So the other dimension is to focus on diversifying that geographic and vertical mix of clients, as that helps us spread the business across the globe and to get into some of those verticals that are experiencing technology-driven change.

Now just touching on some of the opportunities that we're seeing coming through clients, if you like. You have suppliers delivering to them out of Ukraine, Russia in particular a little bit Belarus, who are coming and talking to us, we apply the same criteria to those opportunities that we apply to all of the others. So we're not just reacting to short-term opportunities that are coming from that shift out of those geographies. We're only taking that on where we see that long-term benefit and the others that I touched on.

Okay. Okay. So all of that seems consistent to the prior approach. There aren't new conditions you're putting in there?

No, there aren't. I mean for us, it's very much business as usual in terms of how we're operating. I know there's a lot of global turmoil, but within Endava and within our client base, it all feels very stable.

Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin from Cowen.

First question on the demand front. So like you've just guided to 30% or better 4Q growth on a 55% comp, and I think that's all organic. So very confident on the near-term front. But curious beyond that, as we think through fiscal '23, have you sensed any change in client decision-making pace or just any pockets of caution to be mindful of just particularly in Europe?

Yes, Bryan. No, demand remains very strong across the business, and the pipeline remains very strong as it has been over the past 12 months and that includes in Europe. And it's probably worth just reemphasizing that our clients in Europe are in Western Europe, not in Central Europe.

Our experience over the years has been in these times of global pressures on budgets that where you see clients cut back on their IT spend, they're cutting back on their business-as-usual spend and continuing to prioritize the investment that's going into the key change projects that we're engaged on.

And that pattern is just as visible today as it's been in previous periods of pressure. So we still have that strong pipeline, and we continue to need to prioritize, as I was just touching on with Ashwin as to which projects we take on.

Okay. Very good. And then follow-up on Moldova. So you gave good detail in the release and your commentary. Just wanted to dig in a little bit more on the what if front. So can you first just talk about the nature of the work being delivered from Moldova. Any like specialized services or verticals delivered from there that are different from the balance of operations? How clients are reacting, just specific to delivery there?

And then just lastly on BCP. At what pace could you presumably shift things around from that region if the country became embroiled in the war? So specific activities, client combos and just BCP pace?

Okay. So what we're doing in Moldova is very much the same as what we do across our other delivery locations. As we touched in the release, it's about 9% of our revenue relates to the people in Moldova and the work that they're doing. And we remain very committed to Moldova and our teams and to growing them.

It will come down as a proportion of our overall business just because we will be growing faster and diversifying geographically across Endava in line with the strategy that we've articulated. Client reaction is very positive and very supportive.

We continue to see work going into Moldova and demand flowing in that direction in a positive way. I think on the BCP question, if we were just touching on the war flows on to Moldovan territory, we have our Ukraine situation task force who are monitoring this on it twice a day, morning and evening basis. And we have plans in place, which includes the possibility of relocation of our teams in Moldova.

The -- one of the things that I touched on in my opening remarks is that the way in which we operate is -- our Distributed Agile Delivery Model actually provides for a multisite delivery approach. So we spread delivery to individual clients across multiple centers as a matter of course, which reduces the risk associated with any one location.

And it makes BCP planning easier and more effective should it be required. So for instance, in Moldova, 96% of our people are working for clients for whom we also deliver from another location, which means that if we do need to relocate them, we can relocate them into offices and infrastructures that already exists for those clients in other countries.

Now, in terms of relocation, one of the things that we wanted to highlight is the high proportion of our staff in Moldova have EU passports, either Romanian or Bulgarian passports, which we've encouraged them to do over the years because it has made it easier for them to travel to client sites within the EU and so on. And so if they do need to relocate, they will be relocating as EU citizens to other countries within the European Union where we have locations.

And that will speed up the process regardless of the level of crisis and countries opening their doors from a refugee point of view. So the pace of shift that we see if it was needed in that disaster scenario is actually very fast and much more straightforward than perhaps has been visible with some of our peers who've got operations in Russia or Ukraine.

Your next question comes from the line of James Faucette from Morgan Stanley.

Great. I wanted to ask about given the rate of growth and the current demand acceleration, how are you thinking about that impacting your growth outlook in the next few years? And I guess as part of that, given the hiring environment, is that 30% headcount growth still the maximum you feel comfortable growing in the quarter? Or how are you thinking about like the demand and the ability to satisfy that, and what that means for long-term growth outlooks?

So James, I think as we said, we tend to view the upper limit as being about 30% for us in terms of recruiting quality candidates into the business. We have been able to flex above that as we had more senior distribution in terms of the grade, so we're able to seed teams more quickly -- the juniors, which caused us to accelerate beyond that 30%. But that 30% upper limit really remains in place, and it's is a quality issue for us, which we want to maintain for our clients.

So I mean, with that said, it's been the upper limits. We have seen, of course, demand ahead of that, and we've been meeting it as best we can. And I think the outlook beyond the current fiscal year is we will continue to see, I think, a demand above the sort of 25%, which is higher than we've seen historically over the years where it's been about 20%.

So I think we're looking at elevated levels of demand, 25%, but we still remain within that limit, I think, around sort of 30% because of the ability to onboard quality candidates.

Worth saying that, that 30% headcount growth should convert to slightly higher than that in terms of revenue growth just because of the price increases that we're also able to add year-on-year.

Understood. And then quickly on M&A. How are you thinking about future acquisitions? Obviously, there's a lot of dislocation in valuations right now, and I would think that, that could be creating some opportunities in terms of adding additional capabilities and skill sets to Endava's team. But just wondering how you're thinking about it and what you may be seeing?

Yes. We continue to be very interested in scanning the market for M&A opportunities, particularly ones which are going to offer geographic balancing and diversification. We're pushing on Asia Pac. We're also seeing opportunities within North America that are interesting. The other dimension that we're looking for is M&A opportunities that will give the right acceleration in specific sectors that we're interested in.

And sometimes there's a technology booster that we get from an M&A. And often, deals actually bring some element of all 3 components. So we continue to focus on that, look for it. I'm not sure that I could comment on whether the current market is affecting the pricing expectations of these sort of smaller businesses that we acquire. But certainly, we will keep an eye out for being able to do good and sensible deals as part of any M&A that we'd undertake.

Your next question comes from the line of Maggie Nolan from William Blair.

Congratulations. In the past, we've talked a bit about kind of the build-out of North America compared to some of the other geographies. And when you look at your allocation of resources and your efforts of your sales team going forward from here, is there a particular emphasis on any of your geographies or industry verticals more than others at this point as a particular growth driver for the company?

The -- if we look at the distribution, we've pretty much built an excellent sales team and operation in North America. Our European team, as I've touched on before, is still building up to strength, so more complex market just in terms of languages and multiple countries and so on.

And we've got the sort of presence that we won in the German-speaking regions and Scandinavia, a little bit more to do in Benelux, and we haven't really moved into France, Spain, Italy yet. So that's a future focus.

The other area that we're putting energy into at the moment is the Rest of the World, Middle East and Asia Pacific, and actually getting real traction out of Singapore, Dubai and Sydney and Australia. So those are the areas of focus. From a sector point of view, the -- we continue to push in the Other space, seeing opportunities in mobility, retail.

Health care is reasonably small for us, but actually as we're -- particularly in the North American market, we're seeing good opportunities in that space as well. So we'll continue to push on those as we continue our diversification geographically and sector-wise.

Okay. And then given that nice growth that you've seen in the large client bucket, are you seeing an increase in the typical duration of NSAs or statements of work with clients?

Yes. So the pattern that we tend to experience with clients is that we'll start work with them on a small ideation piece of work, proof of concept will be fairly small. And then as they see the impact that that's going to have on their business, that will engage on the first project, perhaps of getting that into production.

As that has success and they start to pull us into other parts of the business, we will then engage in discussions with those clients around long-term contracts: 3-, 5-year type arrangements, and we'll give up a little bit in terms of the price per day in recognition of the benefit that we get from the utilization out of having the assurance of that business going forward. So as we're scaling, of course, with more and more larger clients falling into that category, we're seeing more of those opportunities mature and come through in larger long-term deals.

Your next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon from Needham.

Congrats, John and Mark, on the quarter. I wanted to ask on the supply side, just in terms of the key metrics around attrition, how that's been tracking across your base? And then also in terms of expectations for wage inflation, when does that hit? And how we should think about the margin impact over the next several quarters?

Thanks, Mayank. So on the attrition, it's fairly stable. We're up about 0.5 point on last quarter at 13%, which is still below the 15% that we target as a sensible balance on attrition. Mark, do you want to cover the inflation?

Yes, yes. I mean Q3 is where we experienced our main pay rise, which goes through first of January. So the gross margin in the quarter stepped down about 2.6%. Most of that is actually due to lower working days in the quarter going from 66 to 64, so you lose about a percentage per day, but there was the impact of cost pressure coming through.

So about -- we lost about 2% on the cost per head, but actually elevation of utilization, of course, offset that. So it was pretty mitigated. But the average sort of wage inflation that we saw as a result of that pay round going to is probably about 4%. And what will happen from now on and is implicit in our guide for Q4 is that we then start to recoup that from conversations with clients about rate increases.

Got it. That's very helpful color. And just a quick follow-up around the new logo activity. Could you talk about competition in general from both the bigger firms in the market? And also pure plays that you compete with head on, (inaudible) rates tracking? And maybe a little bit of color around like different verticals where you have the advantage?

Yes. So that activity continues to be very much business as usual for us. The market remains very large in respect of ourselves and our peers. So we don't run up against our direct competitors, the likes of EPAM and Globant directly very often. And obviously, when we do, we aim to compete strongly and beat them, but it's actually relatively rare. We're more likely to run up against some of the larger players in the market who are more established, the likes of Accenture, in our sales activity across accounts.

And our differentiation against Accenture remains very strong. Our integrated multidisciplinary teams versus their some more separate creative and engineering capability, gives us strong differentiation in the ability to ideate new product ideas, which is where we're operating in the acquisition of new logos.

So the competitive landscape remains very similar to what it has been over the last 3 or 4 years that we've been reporting to market.

Your next question comes from the line of Bryan Keane from Deutsche Bank.

Just a couple of clarifications. Mark, the cost increase from the labor side, I think you said it went into effect from January 1. How are those impacts versus historical? Was it a little bit higher given how hot the demand is and the supply side is?

Yes. It was, but not markedly so. I mean, typically, we've done a sort of 2%, 3%, let's call it, normal times. So a 4% increase on average was elevated. But you can see in terms of the attrition figures that we got out, we said this quarter was 13%, which was up sequentially on Q2.

So I think we've pitched at about the right level. So I think we've got stability in the workforce and they can focus on the job ahead, and we've managed to do it at a sensible increase in packages.

Yes. I think, Bryan, just if you compare the situation that we've got in the geographies that we operate in, whilst there is inflationary pressures, it's nothing like what you guys are experiencing here in the U.S. And so we are able to frame that, control that within the price discussions that we are also able to have with clients.

Yes, it seems quite manageable. And then the pricing you are able to capture throughout the year, will it be north of that 4% or is there a target range of how much pricing you're trying to get for the next 12 months?

Yes. I think that's what we're looking for. I mean, historically, we have been able to put (inaudible) rates at a higher rate than actually in the past. So I'm still very confident that we'll be able to deliver those rate increases through the balance of the current calendar year.

Got it. And then just one other clarification. Are you guys actually taking on additional work from some of those vendors that have been more materially impacted from the unfortunate war in Ukraine, or is it just discussions at this point?

No. We have seen a couple of reasonably sized projects that are very much in our wheelhouse that we've started ramping up. None of that will have hit last quarter's numbers, it's coming through in April-May. But yes, there is work shifting across.

And your next question comes from the line of Jamie Friedman from Susquehanna.

Let me echo the congratulations on the strong results. So I know you had mentioned this in your prepared remarks, you had a press release about it, John, but could you elaborate, if you could, on the Stripe relationship?

Sure. So Stripe is obviously a very exciting player in the payments world and one that we know well. And we've joined the -- their partnership, which essentially enables us to alongside them engage with their clients in implementing Stripe and getting the best out of it. So it's a good route into some of the retail space, et cetera, for us, and we're seeing a good pipeline already coming through from that.

And then maybe for my follow-up, I was just looking at this Slide 15, it's the technology disruption wave that you kind of live by over the years. Did anything change here though? Because it looks to me like some of these got bigger and some of these got smaller. More generally though, how are you thinking about the relative vertical growth between, say, payments and mobility and retail as you look out?

Yes. I'm not sure that -- I think it's more schematic than defined the way in which those waves are drawn. So I wouldn't attract too much attention to the shape of those individual waves. The -- what we're highlighting there is that there are specific industries that are being much more impacted by the new technologies and opportunities that are coming through in the years going ahead.

And on the following slide, just the payments as a single example, you can see all different areas of technology that are -- that we're stepping through. We will push that out next quarter because it's a little bit historic the Payments One, and we've got a strong view of what the future looks like as well, and we'll push that graph out to get more visibility of some of the new technologies that are coming through.

And we might add another one, maybe Mobility just to give a little bit more color on some of the areas where we see that happening. But the strong areas are the payments arena, we see insurance going through a lot of change, the retail banking space with the digitization that's going on there as well as quite a lot happening in the investment banking capital markets arena, just on the financial side.

And then in the Other space, media is going through significant change. I touched a lot on the matters and how that's impacting the media space, games as well as broadcast and so on. Just one exciting new area of technology, 5G in the telco space is opening up lots of opportunities. Retail, of course, there's the e-commerce wave that's been running for years and lots of different technologies and approaches and products that will be created under that banner.

Mobility is a huge one. The whole shift to autonomous vehicles is what we capture under mobility and look to different ways in which people will buy the ability to move or the logistics side of moving goods and so on. So a lot of change continues to drive activity.

Health care, sorry, I just need to touch on that. The diagnostics capability, that digital is going to enable improvements in and so on. We're doing a lot of work in that space as well. So we remain really, really excited about the opportunities that technology is providing to change the way in which business operates and the consumer experience. And that's what's driving our growth and the outlook that we've given you.

Dynamic time. Always appreciate your perspective.

Thanks, Jamie.

And there are no further questions at this time. Mr. John Cotterell, I turn the call back over to you for some closing remarks.

Great. Well, thank you all for joining us today. As you all have noted, demand for our services remains strong, and it's great across all of our verticals and geographies. So we remain very positive about our business position and look forward to speaking to you in a few months on our next earnings call. Thank you.

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