Infosys Ltd (INFY) 2022 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Infosys Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sandeep Mahindroo. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thanks, Margareth. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Infosys earnings call to discuss Q2 FY '22 release. I'm Sandeep Mahindroo, Investor Relations in Bangalore. Joining us today on this call is CEO, Mr. Salil Parekh; COO, Mr. Pravin Rao; CFO, Mr. Nilanjan Roy; along with other members of the senior management team. We'll start the call with some color on the performance of the company by Salil, Pravin and Nilanjan before we open up the call for questions.

Please note that anything which we say that refers to our outlook for the future is a forward-looking statement, which must be read in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. A complete statement and explanation of these risks is available in our filings with the SEC, which can be found on www.sec.gov. I'd now like to pass it on to Salil.

Thanks, Sandeep. Good evening, good morning to everyone on the call. Thank you for joining us today. I trust each of you and your families are safe and healthy. I'm delighted to share with you that we had another exceptional quarter with increased market share gain and demonstrating more and more trust that our clients are placing with us and the strength of our digital and cloud capabilities.

Our growth was 19.4% year-on-year and 6.3% quarter-on-quarter in constant currency terms. I would like to thank the entire 270,000 employees of Infosys for their incredible dedication and world-class skill that makes the work we do for our clients so impactful. Our year-on-year growth was the fastest we have seen in 11 years and builds on the quarter that was a growth quarter this time last year.

Our growth has been accompanied by resilient operating margin at 23.6%. To deliver these margins while we kept in the forefront, our focus on employees with increased compensation and benefits. Our digital business grew by 42% and is now 56% of our overall revenues.

Within digital, our cloud work is growing even faster and our Cobalt cloud capabilities are resonating tremendously with our clients. We are working with a large global company, for example, on their private cloud deployment. We're working with a large bank on their public cloud expansion. We're working with several of our clients on SaaS transformations and cloud-native developments.

Some of the other highlights of our results are: revenues were $3.998 billion, which is a growth of 19.4% year-on-year and 6.3% sequentially in constant currency. Our digital business grew by 42.4% year-on-year and now constitutes 56.1% of our overall revenues. We had broad-based growth across all our sectors and service lines. All our sectors reported double-digit growth. Financial Services grew by 20.5%. This, of course, is our largest sector and growing exceptionally well. Manufacturing grew at 42.5%, Retail by 17.2%, Life Sciences by 26.1%.

In terms of geography, North America grew by 23.1%, Europe by 19.6%. Our large deals were strong at $2.15 billion. Our on-site mix moved to 23.6% and our utilization to 89.3%. And operating margins were resilient at 23.6%. Free cash flow was strong at $712 million.

Our attrition moved up to 20.1%, and we will talk a little bit more about that later in the call with Pravin. We had a net headcount increase of 11,664, attracting leading talent from the market. We remain comfortable with our ability to support our clients in their digital transformation journeys.

We are rapidly expanding our global talent pool and we have increased our college graduate hiring to 45,000 for this year. Last quarter, we have this number at 35,000 people. I'm also delighted with our increased focus on ESG. As many of you know, we have already been carbon neutral since 2020. Our ambition for 2030 is well articulated and we are building on the momentum to create impact. We are accelerating our goals with the launch of Infosys Springboard to bring digital skills to millions of students.

With a strong start to the financial year, good deal momentum in Q2, robust pipeline, we are increasing our annual revenue growth guidance from 14 -- which was at 14% to 16% previously. Now we move it to 16.5% to 17.5% growth in constant currency. Our operating margin guidance remains the same, 22% to 24%.

We have a very special moment in this quarter. It will be Pravin's last full quarter before he retires after an incredible journey of 35 years with Infosys. Pravin's contributions to the company are innumerable. We will, and in fact, I will personally miss his tremendous depth of knowledge of the business and his contagious sense of humor. My best wishes to Pravin in all his future plans. We will announce our future structure in the coming weeks well before Pravin steps down. With that, let me hand it to Pravin for his update.

Thank you, Salil. Hello, everyone. Hope you and your family are doing good, safe and healthy. Growth acceleration continued in quarter 2 with year-on-year constant currency growth of 19.4%. Quarter 2 witnessed broad-based double-digit growth across all business segments and both North America and Europe. Operating parameters continued to improve further. Utilization improved to a new all-time high of 89.2%. On-site effort mix reduced further to a new low of 23.6%.

We won 22 large deals of over $50 million, totaling 2.2 billion TCV, 5 each in Financial Services and Energy, Utilities, Resources and Services, 3 each in Retail and Manufacturing, 2 each in Communication and High Tech, and 1 each in Life Sciences and other segments. Region-wide, 15 were from Americas, 6 were from Europe and 1 from Rest of the World. The share of the new deals in quarter 2 was 37%.

Client metrics improved with $100 million client counts increasing to 35, an increase of 5 year-on-year. We added 117 new clients in the last quarter. Voluntary last 12 months attrition increased to 20.1%, while attrition has increased on the back of high industry growth and supply tightness, especially in the niche skill areas. We continue to fulfill client commitments through increased hiring, talent reskilling and higher usage of subcon.

We have stepped up our hiring program and have added more than 11,600 talent employees on a net basis, highest ever in a single quarter. In H1, we onboarded over 25,000 college graduates. And for the full year, we have increased the college graduate hiring target to 45,000 globally.

The vaccination rate for our employees and their dependents across locations continued unabated. Currently, over 86% Infoscions have received at least 1 dose of vaccine.

Moving to business segments, starting with Financial Services, I'm happy to share that in the last quarter, Infosys was ranked #1 by HFS in the banking and financial services providers top 10 2021. As you are aware, our year-on-year growth was over 20% on a constant currency basis this quarter, and this industry-leading growth has sustained over the past several quarters. We are seeing strong demand and momentum across all regions. North America, however, continues to lead growth as we execute our loss transformation programs and win market share.

Banks are increasingly focusing on virtual branches, improved customer experience through AI and analytics and digital transformation-led cost takeout agenda. Our focused investments in building strong subvertical and platforms capabilities in regional banking, retirement services, mortgages, asset management and payments are working as a differentiator in winning large deals and digital transformation programs. We are well positioned as full-stack digital transformation player with a combination of our domain technology plus operations plus digital transformation capability.

Performance of Retail segment remains strong as clients continue to make investments in new digital capabilities in commerce, marketing and supply chain areas. We are seeing focus on areas like digital consumer, analytics, digital promotions, personalization, cybersecurity, et cetera. Our recently launched Equinox platform is seeing significant traction from both our existing and prospective clients. We have a strong pipeline and expect steady performance for this segment in the coming quarters.

Communications segment performance improved meaningfully on both sequential and year-on-year basis on the back of ramp-up of earlier deal wins. We are witnessing increasing momentum for CapEx rollout for 5G deployment across regions. Our 5G leading labs with its capabilities and the promise of future innovations is a key differentiator in the 5G space for CSPs and OEMs.

Energy, Utility, Resources and Services vertical growth accelerated further with continued large deal wins. Clients in various subsegments are seeing return to normalcy and are prioritizing projects around cloud transformation, customer experience, data analytics, automation, cybersecurity, et cetera.

In Energy, we have made good progress in developing the integrated Energy as a Service solution which aims to enable clients to access reliable low carbon energy, use energy more efficiently and to optimize supply and demand across multiple users and assets without having to invest in additional energy infrastructure.

Growth in Manufacturing segment accelerated significantly with the Daimler deal starting to ramp up. Growth in the last quarter was broad-based across Europe and U.S. as well as across industrial, automotive and aerospace industries. We are seeing traction in engineering, IoT, supply chain, cloud ERP, digital transformation and cloud migration areas. The pipeline continues to be strong, and this provides us confidence that growth in manufacturing for Infosys will continue to be market leading.

Infosys BPM performance remains stable as most of the geographies are witnessing slow return to normalcy. We see a good deal pipeline with a healthy share of digital deals.

Share of digital to overall revenues increased further to 56.1% in quarter 2 with continued strong growth of 42.4% year-on-year in constant currency terms. We continue to see big focus on digital transformation, especially around cloud, commerce and employee experience as customers adjust to the permanent changes in both shopping habits and hybrid working. Cost takeout has been surpassed by the improvement of digital experiences that increase sales and drive customer or employee loyalty.

In the last quarter, we have been ranked as leader in 9 digital service-related capabilities in the areas of cloud services, experience and design, in data and analytics, IoT and engineering, modernization and artificial intelligence.

To conclude, I want to thank you for the wholehearted support and wishes that you have extended to Infosys over the years. Personally, I have thoroughly enjoyed the discussions with you and felt enriched from your insights. I wish you good health and success in your future endeavors. With that, I will hand over to Nilanjan.

Thanks, Pravin. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. Hope all of you and your families are safe and well. Revenue growth accelerated further in quarter 2 on the back of a very strong quarter 1. We had strong double-digit growth in all the business segments led by Manufacturing and Financial Services which grew at 42.5% and 20.5%, respectively, year-on-year in constant currency. Our largest geography, North America, also grew year-on-year at 23.1% in constant currency.

Consequently, constant currency year-on-year growth increased to 19.4%, which is the highest growth in any quarter in the last 11 years. Sequential growth in Q2 also saw an acceleration to 6.3% in constant currency, which was the higher sequential revenue growth in any quarter in the last 6 years.

Q2 margins remained resilient at 23.6% despite headwinds from salary increases for most of our employees, higher subcon costs and supply side challenges, which were largely offset by improvement in operational parameters and scale benefits resulting from growth.

The major components of the sequential margin improvements are as follows: 1.1% impact due to comp hikes given effective July to most of our employee base; a 0.5% increase in subcon costs. These were offset by 80 basis point benefit due to cost optimization and improvement in operating parameters. A 50 basis points due to SG&A scale benefit and a 30 basis point benefit due to rupee and cross currency movement. Overall, leading to a 10 basis point drop in sequential operating margins.

Q2 EPS grew by 13% in dollar terms and 12.7% in rupee terms on a year-on-year basis. DSO stood at 66 days, an improvement of 4 days versus the last quarter on the back of robust collections. Free cash flow for the quarter was healthy at $712 million, and as a percentage of net profit was 97.1% for Q2 and 109.5% for H1. Yield on cash balance of 5.1% compared to 4.9% in Q1.

We have completed the buyback of INR 9,200 crores on September 8 at an average price of approximately INR 1,649 per share compared to a maximum buyback price of INR 1,750 per share, leading to a 1.31% reduction in share capital. With this, the company has returned approximately 82% of the free cash flow for FY '20 and FY '21 through dividends and buybacks, close to the 85% stated in our 5-year capital allocation policy.

Even after the capital return, we continue to maintain a very strong debt-free and liquid balance sheet. Consolidated cash and investments at the end of the last quarter were $4.42 billion. Return on equity increased further to 29.8%, an improvement of 3.1% over Q2 last year, driven by consistent performance and increased capital returns.

The Board has also announced an internal dividend of INR 15 per share, an increase of 25% over prior year internal dividend and equal to the final dividend of prior year.

We see a robust demand environment, coupled with tightness on the supply side, which will result in higher recruitment, compensation and retention costs in the near future, along with seasonal headwinds relating to furloughs. However, we remain confident of our ability to partially offset some of these cost headwinds through the structural cost efficiency improvement measures and deliver well within our margin guidance for the year.

With a strong Q1 and a robust deal pipeline, we are increasing our revenue growth guidance for the year to 16.5% to 17.5% from 14% to 16% previously. We reiterate our operating margin guidance of 22% to 24% for the full year. With that, we can open the call for questions.

(Operator Instructions) The first question is from the line of Ankur Rudra from JPMorgan.

First of all, Pravin -- clearly, very good results. I just see the margin execution and the guidance upgrade. To start off with Salil, if you could give us a sense about how you feel about demand visibility given where you see the visible -- increasing guidance, but we continue to see a drop in the large deal side. So how do we think about that?

Thanks, Ankur. This is Salil. In terms of demand, we continue to see a good pipeline in terms of large deals. We are participating more and more in areas which relate to digital transformation, which relate to cloud work, which relate to data and analytics work. We see this across all industries. And we see that large enterprises are accelerating their spend. Their trust in us is strong because of the capabilities we have built. So the demand from that piece, which is the large deals, is looking good.

Then there is a demand which is from our existing client base, where we are seeing a tremendous expansion in all of our large clients. Some of the stats on this are the number of clients over $100 million and number of clients over $50 million, both of which are expanding quarter-on-quarter and as you look back at this time last year, year-on-year.

With that, we feel good today to increase the revenue growth guidance, and that's the clearest indication that the demand is looking quite good right now. So overall, still in a good shape with the demand and feeling quite confident with the way we've increased the guidance.

Just one thing on the talent supply side. How do you feel about the ability to meet with this continued strong demand? And maybe a comment on the graduate onboarding. Have you been, for example, able to reduce the time taken to billing from onboarding for that part of the supply?

Yes. Ankur, this Pravin here. I think we have been -- I mean, if you remember earlier last quarter, we had talked about 35,000 campus hires for this year. But based on the demand outlook and increased attrition, we were able to quickly ramp up to 45,000 for this year. And in fact, this quarter, we added about 15,000 campus recruits, which was probably the highest ever in Infosys' history.

So today, we have the ability to recruit campus hires because of the investments we have made in assessment platforms, the InfyTQ and other things, which allows us to access talent anywhere in India even globally for that matter. And the turnaround time is much faster. So we are pretty confident and if there's a need to revise it further based on our needs, we are more than equipped to deal with it.

Understood. And just a last question on margins. Nilanjan, clearly, very good execution this time. In terms of the headwinds and the tailwinds you see for us now, would it be fair to assume the headwinds are behind us? And could you also comment about why not narrow the margin band while the revenue band has been narrowed?

Sure. So I think as we've talked about, we've done this compensation hike in Q2 and we will continue to do what is necessary. And in fact, Pravin also mentioned in Q3, we have also rolled out skill-based plans. Also, cost of hiring is going up. So we will see some headwinds along with the seasonal headwinds of furloughs and working days in the future, near future.

But overall, I think from a margin guidance perspective, we are quite comfortable to stay within the 22% to 24%. And I think historically, as you've seen, we've never changed the margin guidance. This is more of an operating band we are comfortable to be in. So we don't narrow that down historically.

The next question is from the line of Moshe Katri from Wedbush.

Also, congrats on very strong results. And Pravin, we're going to miss you. It's been really a great experience working with you and best of luck.

Two questions. One, can you talk a bit about what we're doing to contain the attrition rates that remain pretty high? Maybe there's a way to also break down attrition by voluntary and involuntary.

And then the other question is more broad-based, Salil. Looking at the budget cycle for calendar '22, maybe it's a bit too early, but are we getting any specific indications about budgets for next year? And in that context, the strong growth that we're seeing this year, do we feel that this is still part of that multiyear spending cycle that the entry has been talking about for a couple of quarters?

This is Pravin. Thank you very much for the wishes. From a voluntary attrition perspective, as we mentioned, on an LTM basis, it increased to 20.1%. Most of the attrition has been for people in lower JLs, between 3 to 6 years of experience. And this has been the trend in this industry because in this experience levels, people are still not emotionally connected with the company and sometimes it's easier for them move around. And that's what we are seeing this time around as well.

And as I've mentioned earlier, there is -- I mean part of this is also due to unprecedented demand. As well as in some geographies, we have also seen a lack of talent mobility that has also restricted fewer attrition in some of the countries. What we have done -- I mean, obviously, we expect this to probably perhaps continue for a couple of quarters or so. But once we have more talent available in the system, we should ease and get back to the earlier level.

But having said that, we have done significant interventions to contain this. We have had 2 rounds of compensation reviews, skill-based corrections for like the high-demand skills, targeted retention for new skills, a higher number of promotions and so on. We have also focused a lot on mobility of people. We have hired a lot of IJPs. We have focused a lot on employee engagement, we are close to 5,000 employee connect sessions.

A lot of focus on career development, continuous learning. We have introduced new career paths like digital specialists. We have BITs programs as well. And we have also launched several wellness initiatives as well. And as we talked about, we are also ramping up our entry level hiring in an aggressive way so that we are able to meet some of the demands that are out there.

In the long term, we are also taking a fresh look at the talent strategy approach. This not only -- given the current high attrition, but also our belief is there will be fundamental shifts in employee thinking, behavior in the post-COVID world. And that means that we have to relook at the employee value proposition and fine-tune that. So that's something we have started taking a look -- a hard look at it. So that's from an attrition and talent perspective.

In terms of the budgets, I think in the current context, budgets are no longer relevant in that sense because there is a lot of pent-up demand. And at least this will continue for a few quarters, if not years. And there are various reports, we talk about tech intensity increasing from 3 to 5. In fact, one of the Gartner reports talked about the kind of spend in the next 2 to 3 years will probably -- have to go back to 2010 or to see that kind of demand and so on.

So in that context, my own sense is -- I mean -- but that maybe an operational thing where people may still do that. But it may not have relevance because there is enough and more demand at least for the next few quarters.

The next question is from the line of Diviya Nagarajan from UBS.

Congrats on a strong execution in the quarter. Just a couple of questions from my end. Could you kind of talk about the puts and the takes that you had for margins this quarter? I believe there were some headwinds as well. So run us through how you've managed to maintain margins in terms of the puts and takes. That's question number one.

Yes. So Diviya, I think in my opening remarks, I think I was quite straightforward in the margin walk. The comp pipe, which was broad-based across -- this is sequentially, that was a 1.1% impact. We had a 50 basis point hit on subcon, we've seen costs going up due to higher fulfillment.

These were offset by about 80 basis points due to cost optimization and other operating parameters, 50 basis points on scale benefits on SG&A, and finally, a 30 basis [point] benefit on rupee and cross-currency movement. So I think the comp hikes and subcons were negated by cost optimization and scale benefits.

Got it. That's helpful. And from the -- I think, Pravin, you talked about the Daimler contract having started to ramp up this quarter. Could you kind of give us some sense on how many months or weeks of revenue contribution came in from that? And was there any impact at all from that contract on margins? Was there any pass-through revenues or anything that is yet to come? Or how should we think about that going forward?

Yes. So I think, of course, Daimler has kicked in during the quarter and quite a significant impact, like I said, you can see on manufacturing. But even if you strip that out, we can't give the numbers really, but even if you strip that out, you can see very broad-based growth across all sectors, both on a sequential and a year-on-year basis. So it's like I said earlier, just more icing on the cake rather than impacting the underlying growth.

Got it. Got it. So my last question is that how should we think about seasonality going into December and March? Should we expect some kind of normal seasonality? Your guidance seems to suggest that you're looking at a fair amount of seasonal slowdown coming in at the top end as well. Is that something that's driven by holidays or whatever? Or do you think there's some normalization of demand that's coming in as well?

This is Salil. So there's always seasonality that you referenced, which I know you're aware of, in Q3 and Q4. Especially in Q3, we will typically see some level of furloughs. And typically, we add, at least at Infosys, in our Q4 less strength historically.

Having said that, the demand environment today looks extremely strong. So we've tried to balance those 2 things in increasing our guidance significantly from 14%, 16% to 16.5%, 17.5%, yet making sure that we have everything that we know of today to deliver to that high level of growth. So we will see some seasonality, but there is a good overall demand outlook as well.

Pravin, it's been a pleasure working with you. Hope to stay in touch, and I'll come back in the queue if there is time.

Thank you, Diviya.

The next question is from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss.

So congratulations on a great set of numbers. And best of luck, Pravin, and for your long -- for a great stint and for ahead. I have only one question. And now, Salil, if you see our composition of business, we have more than half of the business coming in from Digital. And the way the growth is coming, it looks like that next couple of years, we will be probably 3/4 of it (technical difficulty_.

I'm sorry to interrupt you Mr. Agarwal. Your voice is breaking up. We cannot hear you well.

Yes. Can you hear me now? I'm actually on hand phone only. So my question is that by in the next couple of years with the same growth continuing in Digital, we will be probably 3/4 in Digital. So does it not mean that structurally, the industry is moving towards high growth if we see it from a longer-term perspective? Or you think that there will be some saturation also in the Digital growth, which we may see after a couple of years? Any thoughts on that front?

So thanks for your question. This is Salil. In terms of what we are seeing with clients today, the capabilities that we have built out, so for example, Cobalt. We've also launched and announced another capability called Equinox, which is relating more to everything which is online in the e-commerce space. Other areas of Digital, which we have invested and scaled up over the past few years. Those areas, we are seeing the demand very strong in today.

It's difficult to say in that 2-year horizon that you are mentioning, our growth guidance really is for this year, where we have expanded it. But everything would indicate to me that this scaling up the digital work transformation is something which is ongoing. And many large enterprises are at the early stages of their digital and cloud journey.

So I don't see -- I don't get the sense that we are in the late stage. But in terms of really the guidance, we are focused on this year. But overall, I'm quite optimistic that this is a good place to be in terms of the future.

The next question is from the line of Pankaj Kapoor from CLSA.

Pravin, this increase in the pressure intake to 45,000, is this a onetime because of the current situation? Or do you think there is a structural shift in the way we are going to hire? If you can give some sense of what kind of plans you have for offers for say next year.

Yes. This is obviously based on the current demand outlook that we are seeing and high attrition. It's too early to comment whether this will be a structural shift. But if whatever we are seeing and hearing, if this demand continues for the next several quarters, then you could potentially see -- given the shortage of talent, you will probably see a higher number of special recruitment globally.

It's a bit early to think about next year. But at this stage, we believe that it will be on similar lines of what we talked about this year, but we'll take a look at it on a quarter-on-quarter basis. And as I mentioned earlier to one of the questions, today our ability to recruit on a dynamic basis is much higher given the virtual ways, our investment in platform's, ability to assess candidates all through the year through the online platform. So we will take a look at it. So at this stage, our sense is next year also will be on similar lines and difficult to comment beyond that.

Understand. And Salil, my question was also on the renewal that we have been seeing, which have been obviously pretty dominating in the last 2, 3 quarters. Our new deal wins seems to be just around less than 40% of the deal wins. Any sense in terms of what could be the reason behind it? Are you seeing fewer number of those mega contracts, which were there, say, 4 quarters back? Are clients taking slightly longer term in terms of time to decide on them? Or are you seeing them getting restructure more into smaller contracts?

This is Salil. There on -- the renewals -- the way we look at it is, first, where we have an existing relationship and long-term work. We are very clear that we want to make sure that the clients trust in us, gives us a longer stay, extension and typically some level of expansion. And that's why it's more critical for us certainly to look at the renewals in absolute value because that is -- depending on when those contracts come up, we want to make sure that that continues.

In terms of the new work, what we are seeing -- Pravin shared earlier, we had 22 large deals, large deals for us being deals over $50 million in this quarter. And that number is very robust. When we compare the number for H1 versus last H1, that's very robust. The one distinction is a mega deal that we had last year in this quarter. Those things in terms of mega deals are things which are difficult to predict which quarter they will show up in. In our pipeline, we have a good representation of those.

Overall, the pipeline is quite strong. So at this stage, given all of those things, we've chosen to increase our guidance and therefore, remain quite positive on how the outlook is there for our business.

The next question is from the line of James Friedman from Susquehanna.

Let me echo the congratulations, Pravin. I've learned a lot from you over the years, and I appreciate it. I just -- I know you keep getting asked about this, but we do, too. Any sense at this point when or if you would see stabilization in the attrition at the industry level? And where is the industry losing the people to? Are they going to tech pure plays, to your customers, to captives? We're just wondering about that.

Thank you. It's Pravin here. I think at this stage, maybe in next 2 to 3 quarters, perhaps the attrition will stabilize given such influx of talent. The demand is far outstripping talent supply that's available even globally, and that's why we are seeing this phenomenon not only with us, but across the industry, and we have seen this even in other industries as well.

In terms of where they're going, I mean, it's a common thing, right? I mean, typically, we lose people to competition, and we also recruit from competition for one part of it. But again, we are also seeing losing people to captives, we're losing people to -- the hyperscalers have also started recruiting. We are seeing -- losing candidates. And of course, in India startup now again has become very attractive with a lot of [unicons] and so on.

It's a combination of things and I think the only way it can stabilize is to influx more talent into the mix. And that, we believe, probably in the next 2 to 3 quarters, that will happen with aggressive reskilling, we could be able to bring it back under control.

The next question is from the line of Sudheer Guntupalli from ICIC Securities.

Congrats on a good quarter. Firstly, Nilanjan, on the effort mix, right, on-site, offshore effort split. It's a little -- I'm just curious as to why the on-site share of effort has come down in this quarter despite a Daimler deal ramp-up. And in the beginning, in the initial phases, I would have expected that the ramp-up would show up as higher share of on-site. That is number one.

And then a little bit of travel has also opened up, if not completely. So despite these 2 reasons, I think you are able to show higher offshore effort -- offshore share of effort in this quarter. Any sense on what might be driving that?

Yes. So I think, like I said, Daimler is not just one fact we have. I mean it's a large business which we run and we also had Daimler ramp up in the last quarter. It's not suddenly that everybody is on site on 1 day. So you will see these blips in the on-site offshore mix and last quarter, it was more tighter, but now you've seen a movement.

But I think more importantly, to see a secular trend, like I said, the demand at global level. I think where is it going to get really the scale from in the long run? Is it going to be some talent here because that quantity and scale and digitally skilled talent is largely available in India.

So whilst we continue to hire locally in large numbers, our localization in the U.S. has already reached 70%. We announced more than 10,000 additional hires over 2 years. But despite that, as you see the volume growth and the mix within that, they do continue to [technically] move towards more offshore.

And Pravin, my second question, if you actually look at the experience bucket you spoke about where we are seeing the highest attrition, which is in the 2- to 6-year bucket. So at this level or perhaps at the entry level, if you had seen in last 10 years, industry has not seen much of salary revisions, right? On a real basis, if you see -- real rupee basis, if you see perhaps it could have been in the negative territory. I'm not talking just about Infosys but for the entire industry.

Now given the kind of demand we are seeing for this experience bucket, can we expect some sort of a structural increase in the salary levels, which can have a longer-term impact on margins, let's say, 1 or 2 years down the line when the demand might not be as robust as it is today?

So I think, see, on the salary at entry level, it's a function of -- because when we recruit people, we also -- companies also invest a lot in training and enabling them. They take a while before they become productive. But as they move up the system, the salaries increase dramatically. So for the people between 2 to 6 years who are quitting, they would have got good salary gains along the way as well. So I don't see the entry-level salary dramatically changing in any way. I mean there will be some corrections here and there.

At the same time, at least from our perspective, we have also started differentiating at entry level sense, we have created 2 set of teams. One is called power programmers. Another one is called digital specialists. And these teams, we are recruiting them at a much higher compensation. And we are also attracting -- and there is a very, very stringent criteria for selecting these candidates based on their background as well as passing a couple of tests. So if people are able to pass that, then we repeat them in these 2 streams and that's a much higher compensation.

So going forward, rather than -- because at the entry level, we are recruiting in scale, right? But within that, we are trying to differentiate and where we feel that people come with very strong skills, capabilities that can be deployed immediately, we are looking at a different compensation rate.

As always, interactions with you have always been very insightful. Congrats and all the best for your future endeavors.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Keith Bachman from BMO Capital Markets.

I wanted to also ask about attrition. And you did make the comment that you think attrition improves next year. And I wanted to -- I don't disagree with you, but I wanted to understand your thinking.

And more specifically, is it because demand slows across the industry and, as you referenced, it's an industry issue, and that allows attrition to improve? Or there's something fundamentally that you think demand can stay at these levels or maybe moderate a touch, but that you can continue to hire more freshers to meet that.

But it is an industry problem. Your numbers increased substantially quarter-to-quarter on attrition. And so I just wanted to understand a little bit more about why you think attrition improves because it is such a significant industry problem, not just an Infosys issue? And then I have a follow-up, please.

Yes. This is Pravin here. I think it's -- I mean we are saying that the attrition will stabilize primarily because of influx of talent. The demand will continue, we are not seeing -- at least in the [near-term] -- demand coming down by all accounts. But today, there's a shortage of talent and particularly in some of the geographies. Because of travel restrictions, we are not even able to deploy people from India in those geographies where there's a need.

So -- but over a period of time, I think not only Infosys, but almost every company, many of our peers have also started announcing, talking about aggressive hiring from campuses, right? So that will result in higher availability of talent.

And once we are able to hire this talent and skill them appropriately, then they'll be available to be deployed and to meet the demand, and that's when we expect the attrition to come down. Right now, demand far outsupplies -- I mean far outreaches the supply and that's what we're telling you. Outstripping the supply, yes.

Okay. Do you think this suggests a different headcount management strategy? In other words, do you think you need to diversify? Because it sounds like it's -- the problem is much more significant in India versus other markets. Does this you think suggests a broadening of your reach in terms of supply capabilities, Eastern Europe or otherwise? Does it suggest a different strategy on managing your headcount?

There are a couple of things, right? One is, of course, in terms of talent availability, in terms of scale and quantity, I don't think any other country can match that. But from that extent, I think most of the noise and other things we are hearing in India only. So that is one part of it because I don't see any other countries being able to provide such kind of talent with scale. So that's why you're seeing higher thing.

And the second one is this is a very unusual phenomenon. We have not really seen this kind of war for talent for a long period of time. And I might have been in the industry for over 35 years. I can hardly think of the time when we have seen this kind of thing. And despite anything -- I mean, many people, when we talk to them when they are leaving, most of them are very complementary about Infosys, they talk really highly about the culture, the kind of training, kind of opportunities they get and other things. But they're also saying at the same time, the kind of compensation they are being offered is significantly higher and different.

So today, despite all the HR interventions and other things, compensation seems to be a very big criteria. And particularly for some of the companies who are just scaling up or are setting up centers here. There is no option but to go aggressive on compensation to attract and get the talent.

So I would say that is the reason. And this is an unusual thing because some of your normal HR levers don't seem to work and people do acknowledge that they are happy otherwise, but the kind of offer they're getting is too attractive for them to refuse. And these are all junior people. They are not really emotionally fully connected with the company.

Whereas at the senior level, mid-level and senior levels, they are much more connected with the company. They understand the culture, they understand the industry and other things. So there, some of your HR practices work better. But at the junior level, while we try, what is out there is very, very attractive and that becomes the challenge.

Okay. One more, then I'll cede the floor. You mentioned a number of times that you don't see attrition improving over the next couple of quarters. But does your reported number get worse over the next couple of quarters, just so we can manage investor expectations.

I didn't get the question, but I just wanted to clarify that it will probably take a couple of quarters before attrition easing because that's when -- because we have to onboard supply, we have to skill them, train them and other thing, right? So that will take some time before the supply is really available to be deployed in projects. So that is a time that will take before attrition eases. That's what I meant. But I didn't get your question. So if you can repeat and I'll be happy to respond.

Does attrition -- does your reported attrition number get worse in September and December than -- excuse me, than the December and March quarters? Does it -- can attrition get worse before it gets better?

It's difficult to predict. We hope it's not the case, but it's difficult to predict. But as I said earlier, so far, we've been able to manage all the client expectations through hiring, through reskilling and through usage of subcontract. So at this stage, we are comfortable to meet all our client commitments.

Okay. Congratulations on solid results.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Kawaljeet Saluja from Kotak.

Pravin, I learned a lot from you, and let's hope we stay in touch. I have a couple of questions, one for Pravin and one for Nilanjan. Nilanjan, for you, the question is that you mentioned that the impact of wage increase is approximately 110 basis points. And if we just do the back at the envelope math, your offshore wages as a percentage of revenue is 20%. So that equates to just a 5% wage increase effectively. I mean, is that sufficient in the current environment?

Yes. So a couple of things. One is, of course, they were on-site and offshore, both a mix of that, and it is only up to JL6s. So we are -- we plan for the senior and title holders in October. Also from October, we are rolling out more skill-based intervention compensation changes. So as you know, this is -- we did something in January, then we've done something in June.

And like we said, we are going to do something in September as well, although not at the same level. But like I said, we need to do whatever is required to keep key talent back, hire laterals as well because, as Salil mentioned, even the cost of lateral goes up. I mean the churn is rotational in the industry, right? It's a zero-sum game, somebody else's lateral is somebody else's churn.

So we will do whatever is required to even onboard laterals. But at the end of the day, I think from an industry perspective, it's only once the pressures come in, can you -- will you start seeing this thing really easing up. But we are quite comfortable in that sense in terms of our guidance, in terms of fulfilling what the clients are asking for. And one of the ways is, of course, the subcon increase is not the best from a margin perspective, but we have -- you've seen our cost on subcon actually going up just to fulfill that gap.

What was the impact of wage revision, let's say, in December, because that will be rolled out at a senior level? So it would impact or rather -- I mean, the impact of that would be a higher percentage of your overall competition number. So what is the impact of wage revision in December?

So we can't -- we don't call out, but the overall wage impact of the senior level is definitely lower than -- I mean, the headcount is a much, much smaller amount than what we have rolled out. But we can't really give a number of what's the margin impact.

Got that. And the second -- and thanks for that, Nilanjan. And the second question I had is for Pravin. Now Pravin, we have been wired through your performance historically that whenever the attrition rates go up, utilization rates go down. But this time around, they seem to be moving in the same direction, which is rather unusual. When do you think that this divergence really starts playing out, the way logically, it has done historically?

Thanks, Kawaljeet, for the question. I'm not sure about the correlation you are talking about. And because if attrition goes up, the natural correlation would be utilization also improving to -- it will [lead] to fulfillment, right? So I'm not sure where -- I mean you are talking about contracts, I'm not sure of the application.

Sorry to interrupt you, Pravin. Sorry about that. But the logic is straightforward. I think the attrition is higher. Normally, you require a greater project bench to fulfill customer demand. And it also indicates a healthy growth environment. A high attrition growth environment also indicates a healthy growth environment for a gain, which need a larger branch. So that was the logic behind that statement.

Yes. Okay. But anyway, in the current situation, there is no supply, right? So the only way you can -- I mean, as I said, you have to recruit people, train them and then deploy. That will take some time. You have to look at your existing people, reskill them and deploy, that is the fastest thing for you to do, that means higher utilization.

And wherever there are gaps, we also look at subcon, and we have seen increased subcon as well. So the high utilization is definitely a function of lack of availability of talent, and we are squeezing as much as we can to meet the demands of our customers.

Okay. Fantastic. And congratulations to all of you for a great quarter.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley.

Congratulations on great performance and all the best to Pravin. Two questions. The first question is to Nilanjan on margins. We just want to understand the puts and takes on margins in the second half. When we look at the various headwinds, there are continued rising attrition rates, higher travel expenses potentially, wage hike for a section of employees, full impact of the large deal ramp up, which is likely to take place in 3Q as well. So just trying to understand what are the tailwinds that can help to offset some of these impacts and keep the margins within the bag?

Yes. So I think you answered half the question yourself which makes it easier for me. But we're going to have these headwinds, like you said, I mean, on retention, on hiring, et cetera. But I think like we demonstrated this quarter as well, I think we have a very strong cost optimization program also ongoing, automation, on-site offshore mix, broad basing of the pyramid, both on-site and offshore.

I mean, like I mentioned, I mean, we are among the 2 companies who have these DCs and global DCs now in the west, where we can pump in freshers, right? So I mean, actually, it was -- usually, we would not have had freshers in an on-site business, but now we are having more than 3,000-odd freshers a year in on-site locations. So this also helps in the pyramid. And as you know, 75% of our people cost is on-site. So unless you really address on-site costs, you can't really make an impact on the overall cost structure.

So all this is going on. We are also looking at pricing much more holistically at this time. Although it's not easy to go and get price hikes just on the basis of a rate card, but basically working with our sales force on how to sell on value, how to sell on more innovative commercial construct. And the idea is not to leave those cents and pennies on the table. And in this market, be a bit more bold in terms of our pricing. But this is a long haul, but I think if there's any time to start something on this it's now.

Got it. My second question is to Salil, with respect to visibility as we enter calendar 2022. Is it fair to say that when we entered calendar 2021, the visibility was higher than usual, given the large amount of the new deals already in the bag, which may not necessarily be the case as we get into the calendar 2022? So fair to say that the visibility will be relatively lower than calendar 2021, which was at a very, very high and elevated level?

Thanks for the question. This is Salil. I think the way we see our business, we look at it from the financial year perspective. When we started this financial year, you will recall the COVID situation was quite really within all of us in all the geographies. And while we had a healthy pipeline because of the digital work, that was always something of an overhang that was there.

Then you've seen that from our initial guidance, we increased the guidance last quarter. We've now further increased the guidance this quarter. So we have extremely good visibility for this financial year with the guidance we've given.

Now as we finish Q3 and start to get into Q4, we will start to have a good idea of what the following financial year will look like. My own sense is the demand that we have is really quite comprehensive, and that will certainly continue to help us as long as we build out the new capabilities well and be part of the clients' digital and cloud journey. So the increase in guidance gives us more confidence now for this financial year.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

Thank you, everyone. This is Salil. So I'll just spend a couple of minutes in closing. First, we've had the best quarter in terms of growth, 19.4%, than we've had in 11 years. So we are extremely delighted with that outcome. The demand is strong. There are multiple components of demand. One is large deals, which is still looking good with the pipeline we have, including the $2 billion that we have sold in this quarter.

There's a huge amount of existing client base that we have where we're seeing incredible demand. This doesn't come into the large deals bucket. It will be in different sizes. Some are large, some are not.

But every client that I talked to last week in a meeting with the CIO, we were looking at multiple thousand people expansion at a client where we already have an account base of over $100 million today. Then we see the capability set in our demand in digital and cloud clients are really extremely thrilled with our capabilities, and we see good traction in that.

Second, the operating efficiency is strong, the margin resilience that we talked about. We've done really well in doing that. Of course, as Nilanjan mentioned, we do see some additional costs that will come, but we are very comfortable with our margin guidance that we've given.

Third, we talked a lot -- Pravin gave a lot of detail. We are expanding our supply capacity that we are taking in. And that is the medium-term play that we have because the demand is long term. And we will make sure the supply with our incredible brand and training will continue.

Fourth, we've increased our guidance. So we are extremely optimistic and bullish with 16.5% to 17.5% on growth. And overall, I personally remain positive about the future in our tech services business growing at 19% today. So thank you, everyone, for joining us, and please stay safe and healthy.

Thank you very much, members of the management. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Infosys, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.