WNS (Holdings) Ltd (WNS) 2024 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and welcome to the WNS Holdings fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes.

And now I would like to turn the call over to David Mackey, WNS Executive Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. David?

Thank you, and welcome to our fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and full year earnings call. With me today on the call, I have WNS' CEO, Keshav Murugesh; WNS' CFO, Sanjay Puria; and our Corporate Financial Controller, Arijit Sen. A press release detailing our financial results was issued earlier today. This release is also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.wns.com.

Today's remarks will focus on the results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year ended March 31, 2024. Some of the matters that will be discussed on today's call are forward-looking. Please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements.

Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors set forth in the company's Form 20- F. This document is also available on the company website. During this call, management will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP results can be found in the press release issued earlier today.

Some of the non-GAAP financial measures management will discuss are defined as follows. Net revenue is defined as revenue less repair payments. Adjusted operating margin is defined as operating margin, excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition related expenses or benefits and impairment of goodwill and intangible assets.

We are also excluding costs related to our ADS program termination and costs associated with the transition to voluntarily reporting on US domestic issue reforms. Adjusted net income or ANI is defined as profit excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition related expenses or benefits, goodwill and intangible asset impairment, ADS program termination costs, the transition to voluntarily reporting on US domestic issue reforms and all associated taxes. These terms will be used throughout today's call.

I would now like to turn the call over to WNS' CEO, Keshav Murugesh. Keshav?

Hey, thank you, David. And a very good morning, everyone. In the fiscal fourth quarter, WNS' business delivered solid results despite the very challenging macro environment. The company posted fourth quarter net revenues of $325.9 million, representing a year over year increase of 6.9% on a reported basis and 5.9% constant currency.

Sequentially, net revenue increased by 3.2% on a reported basis and 2.4% on a constant currency basis, after adjusting for foreign exchange. Demand continues to be healthy for business transformation initiatives, leveraging digital and analytics while tried volumes and project-based work remain pressure. During Q4, we added nine new logos and expanded 40 existing relationships. New logos include four large technology-led transformational deals, which are expected to begin ramping towards the end of fiscal Q1.

In the quarter, WNS delivered adjusted operating margins of 22% and grew adjusted EPS by more than 8% versus last year. On March 28, the company completed the first step towards improving access to capital, exchanging our ADSs for ordinary shares. We are also on track to voluntarily ship from foreign private issuer status reporting under IFRS to domestic filer status reporting under US GAAP in the fiscal first quarter of 2025.

These initiatives are expected to improve our ability participate in the US indexes and certain active investment funds and reduce share price volatility. Despite company-specific headwinds and the weak macro in fiscal 2024 WNS delivered top line growth of 10.5%, driven by our differentiated domain focused strategy, maintained our industry-leading adjusted operating margins at 21.5% and grew adjusted earnings per share by 13.5%.

Other full-year highlights include the implementation of our SBU organizational structure, the successful integration of three acquisitions, reduced corporate attrition, a healthy pipeline and good traction in large, digitally led transformational deal signings. During the year WNS also continued to make the investments necessary to drive sustainable market differentiation and help our clients compete in a rapidly changing world.

These strategic investments are designed to enhance our capabilities across domain expertise, advanced analytics and data management and cutting edge technology with a heightened focus on leveraging artificial intelligence as well as Generative AI. In fiscal '24, we created a robust pipeline of use cases, built digital assets with Gen AI capabilities and successfully deployed customized solutions, integrating AI and Gen AI across multiple service offerings and verticals.

All of these solutions are underpinned by deep domain expertise and combine human intelligence and artificial intelligence to deliver business outcomes for clients that go beyond cost reduction. In fact, many of these use cases are focused on driving our clients' top line through new offerings, improved customer retention and enhanced quality of service.

During the year, we forged strategic partnerships with AI leaders as well as hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Azure, OpenAI, AWS and Google, and continue to make progress in proactively hiring talent and training our global employee base on AI as well as Gen AI technologies. WNS is also receiving positive recognition for our AI capabilities from the analysts as well as the advisor community.

And last month was named a 2024 Artificial Intelligence Award winner by the Business Intelligence Group. WNS was one of only 11 companies cited for having the products, culture and people consistently delivering innovative solutions in the Gen AI space. While it is clear that AI and Gen AI will be critical components of driving transformation and automation and delivering improved outcomes.

It is also important to understand that clients are proceeding cautiously with enterprise-wide initiatives, given the many uncertainties that exist today. Key concerns impacting clients willingness to adopt and implement at scale include data quality and data privacy underlying model bias, evolving regulations and costs associated with data preparation, technology setup and integration.

This measured approach was confirmed in the recent Gen AI market impact report conducted by WNS and HFS, which solicited insights from enterprise leaders across industries and miller's comments from the largest hyperscalers, global systems integrators and industry analysts. Despite these challenges, the company continues to believe that our ability to help clients properly leverage these technologies presents more opportunity than threat.

Today, in addition to working closely with clients on pilots, proof of concept and customized use cases, we are also seeing AI and Gen AI, improve the quantity and quality of conversations and increased focus. And on driving collaboration innovation, competitive differentiation as well as business outcomes. In response to this evolving opportunity and the contraction in our share price. WNS accelerated our buyback programs in fiscal '24 repurchasing 3.3 million shares, but almost 7% of the company's outstanding flow.

Looking forward to fiscal 2025, demand for digital transformation and cost reductions is healthy, and our new business pipeline remains robust. WNS is extremely well positioned in several large industry-specific deals focused on operating model transformation, which have the potential to materially impact our fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 growth rates.

That being said, our full-year visibility today is challenged by the timing of these deals and macro weakness, which continues to impact business volumes as well as project-based work. In addition, as you are aware, the company announced on February 2, that a large healthcare client had notified us of their intent to terminate our contract for convenience.

This cancellation, which will create a headwind of 3.2% to revenue growth in fiscal 2025 was driven by client changes in leadership, strategy and business model. As a result, at this point in time, we expect revenue growth to be in the 0% to 5% range on an organic constant currency basis, which assumes no improvement in volumes or discretionary spending during the fiscal year.

We also expect our industry-leading margins to remain in the 21% to 22% range. In fiscal '25, the company plans to repurchase up to $150 million of stock. Given the current share price weakness. To do this, we will likely require shareholders to override certain proxy adviser recommendations and to vote against our repurchase proposal.

So again, I want to clarify that we expect proxy adviser recommendations to work against and we want you're supposed to work for these recommendations in an upcoming EGM planned for late May. We are requesting your support as the company believes the proxy guidelines or repurchase price, maximums and program duration are just not practical, given our share price movement over the past years.

This morning, WNS also issued a press release announcing an upcoming CFO transition. Sanjay Puria, who is with me today in London, will be stepping down at the end of July for personal family reasons, but we'll remain with the company in an advisory role through the end of April 2025. Arijit Sen, our current Corporate Financial Controller will formally become CFO on the July 25, of this year.

Arijit has been with WNS for over 15 years in progressively responsible roles, acting as Sanjay's right-hand and bringing both company-specific experience and BPM industry expertise to the CFO function. We will be introducing Arijit, to our analysts and investors in the coming months. As a trusted partner to myself and the entire organization.

I would like to sincerely take this opportunity to thank Sanjay for his, 14 plus years of dedication, leadership and contribution to our success. Thank you, my friend, Sanjay and my happiest, congratulations to you Arijit. And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to Sanjay to further discuss our results as well as outlook. Sanjay?

Thank you for your kind words, Keshav. In the fiscal fourth quarter, WNS net revenue came in at $325.9 million, up 6.9% from $305 million, posted in the same quarter of last year and up 5.9% on a constant currency basis. Sequentially, net revenue increased by 3.2% on a reported basis and 2.4% on a constant currency basis. The sequential revenue improvement was driven by healthy demand for cost reduction, focus initiatives and favorable currency movements, which were partially offset by volume reductions with certain clients and continued weakness in discretionary project-based revenues

In the fourth quarter WNS record $8.7 million of short-term high margin revenue. Adjusted operating margin in quarter four was 22% as compared to 20.6% reported in the same quarter of fiscal 2023 and 20.6% last quarter. Year-over-year adjusted operating margin increased as a result of higher revenue, improved productivity and favorable currency movement.

These benefits were partially offset by the impact of our annual wage increases. Sequentially, margin expanded as a result of higher revenue, improved productivity and currency favorability. The company's net other income expense was $2.7 million of net expense in the fourth quarter as compared to $0.4 million of net expense reported in Q4 of fiscal 2023 and $2.8 million of net expense last quarter.

Year-over-year net interest expense increase due to $2.1 million of nonrecurring interest income on tax refunds recorded last year, and the combination of higher debt levels and lower cash balances, driven primarily by our share repurchases. WNS' effective tax rate for quarter four came in at 21.5% as compared to 15.8% last year and 6.6% last quarter.

Year-over-year the effective tax rate increased as a result of $1.7 million of nonrecurring tax benefit booked in quarter four of fiscal 2023. Sequentially, the tax rate increase was the result of a one-time tax benefit of $9.5 million, resulting from the reversal of a deferred tax liability on intangibles figure in quarter three. Both year-over-year and sequentially other changes in our effective tax rate was the result of shifts in our geographical profit mix and changes to the mix of work delivered from tax incentive facilities.

The company's adjusted net income for quarter four was $54.1 million compared with $52.4 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2023 and $58.2 million last quarter. Adjusted diluted earnings were $1.12 per share in quarter four, up from $1.04 in the fourth quarter of last year and down from $1.18 last quarter. As of March 31, 2024, WNS balances in cash and investments totaled $244.3 million, and the company had $179.2 million in debt.

In the fourth quarter, WNS generated $67.6 million of cash from operating activities incurred $10.4 million in capital expenditures and made debt repayment of $8 million. The company also repurchased 1.2 million shares of stock at an average price of $59.62, which impacted quarter four cash by $71.5 million. DSO in the fourth quarter came in at 33 days as compared to 32 days reported in quarter four of last year and 35 days last quarter.

With respect to other key operating metrics, total headcount at the end of the quarter was 60,125 and our attrition rate in the fourth quarter was 33% as compared to 40% reported in quarter four of last year and 29% in the previous quarter. We expect accretion to average in the low to mid 30% range, but the rate would remain volatile quarter to quarter in the current labor environment. Built seat capacity at the end of the quarter four increased to 41,599 seat and WNS average, 70% work from office during the quarter.

I would now like to provide you with a brief financial summary for fiscal 2024 before discussing our outlook for the coming year. Net revenue in fiscal 2024 came in at $1,284 million, up 10.5% on a reported basis and up 9.9% on a constant currency basis. Acquisitions contributed just under 3% to the company's growth rate. Organic revenue growth was broad-based across geographies, services and verticals, and driven by strength in both new logo additions and existing client expansion.

Revenue growth during the year was partially offset by random in the healthcare business, the transition of a large internet client from on-site to offshore delivery, softness in transaction volumes and macro related reduction in discretionary project work. The company's fiscal 2024 adjusted operating margin came in at 21.5%, up 50 basis points versus fiscal 2023.

Margin favorability from operating leverage on higher volumes, improved productivity and currency movements was partially offset by wage increases and return to office costs. In fiscal 2024, net other income expense was unfavorable by $11 million as a result of increased interest expense on debt, high operating lease cost and reduced interest income driven by lower average cash balances during the year.

The company's effective tax rate for the year was 18.2%, down from 19.1% last year. As a result of a $9.5 million one-time benefit from the reversal of a deferred tax liability in quarter three and changes in the mix of profit by geography and the percentage of both delivered from tax incentive facilities.

Overall our full-year adjusted diluted earnings per share improved 13.5% coming in at $4.38 in fiscal 2024, WNS generated $229.2 million in cash from operations, spent $54.3 million on capital expenditures and made debt payments of $37.1 million. The company also repurchased 3.3 million shares of stock at a total cost of $215.3 million or $65.24 per share.

We ended the year with a net cash balance of $65.1 million or approximately $1.35 per diluted share. Our global attrition rate reduced from 39% to 31%, work from office increased from 54% to 68% and revenue per employee expanded by more than 3%. In our press release issued earlier today, WNS provided our initial full year guidance for fiscal 2025.

Based on the company's current visibility levels, we expect net revenue to be in the range of $1,293 million to $1,357 million, representing year-over-year growth of 1% to 6% on a reported basis and 0% to 5% on a constant currency basis. As Keshav mentioned, guidance factors in known client ramp-downs and reduced visibility to client volumes and discretionary projects.

Guidence does not include short-term revenues, incremental revenue from our large insurance captive on an improvement in the macro environment. Top line projection assumes an average British pound to US dollar exchange rate of 1.27 for the full year. Full year adjusted net income for fiscal 2025 is expected to be in the range of $206 million to $218 million based on an INR83 to US dollar exchange rate.

This implies adjusted EPS of $4.34 to $4.59, assuming a diluted share count of approximately 47.5 million shares. Excluding the $0.21 of one-time benefits to tax and interest income in fiscal 2024 the midpoint of guidance represents a 7% increase in adjusted EPS. With respect to capital expenditures, WNS currently expect our requirement for fiscal 2025 to be up to $65 million.

We'll now open the call for questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions)

Surinder Thind, Jefferies.

Thank you. I'd like to start with a question about the forward guidance here. When putting that together, you talked about perhaps a healthy pipeline, but there's also maybe some what I would call it sounds like increased lumpiness in terms of that pipeline or the potential for some large wins. Can you provide a bit more color there and how that compares to maybe historical pipelines at this point?

Sure. Let me take that Surinder. So I think when you look at the pipeline as Keshav mentioned, in his prepared remarks, that the pipeline remains extremely healthy. What we have seen over the past year as a steady build and the number of large transformational deals that are in that pipeline. So obviously, we've got a healthy amount of opportunities for small deals for client expansions.

But what we are seeing is that clients are looking for transformational kinds of solutions that span multiple towers in multiple areas of their business. And those deals inherently are much larger and much more complex to deal with. As a result, the sales cycle for those deals tends to be longer. Now again, what we're seeing is that clients are making decisions they are moving forward.

As Keshav mentioned, we closed four large deals in the fourth quarter alone, but I think part of the opportunity as we move forward into fiscal '25 and beyond is that we're participating in several additional very large deals where we believe the company is extremely well positioned for success. And the timing of how and when those deals closed and what our success rate is on those deals could have a material impact on the back half of this fiscal year and fiscal '26.

So certainly the big deals do create a little bit more lumpiness. But obviously, once they do close, create good visibility into long term, steady growth across a two to three year period.

That's helpful. And then as a follow-up, there's some commentary around just clients being a bit more cautious about adopting AI for a number of reasons, whether it's data quality bias regulations, costs, tech stack. When you put all of that together and you look at kind of these big transformation deals, is that also impacting the decision making in the sense that, if you think about trying to entry into new contracts with new workflows.

Our client has to even commit because they're fearful that maybe AI solutions will change a year from now or some of the types of things that they're thinking about will be to be revisited. How does that work into the equation here in terms of the slowdown that we're seeing?

Yeah, that's a great question, very deep question Surinder, thank you for that. So the first thing I want to mention is that I think the current macros that we're all seeing and which has now extended for quite a while. It's causing significant changes in terms of clients own ability to plan, project and along with that business model disruption that a number of clients or number of businesses actually, though in a market I've seen.

Means that clients and prospects who are looking at, dipping their toes in the model are accelerating their journeys are taking much more time, to get their arms around it. That's really the core of how people are looking at some of these things and why going into the year also we are also being -- we are also looking at our guidance very carefully.

In our case, we've also had a specific situation that some specific clients that we spoke about will continue to play out. But as Dave said, the large deal pipeline, four of which have more or less already been had been signed during Q4 and many of which are in progress. Actually on the new opportunity we are seeing irrespective of where the macros are, irrespective of what pressure as clients are going through because they all understand that with the big changes that are taking place in the world, the big changes taking place in technology and transformation and tech and ops kind of an environment.

Gen AI or no Gen AI mean, the first have to take decision soon and therefore people who have not actually dip their toes in the model are people who realize they have to be far more aggressive. Actually you are engaging very well with us right now. And I think that's the core of the discussion here on the one hand, while disruption and the macro issues causes some uncertainty, which I think play out.

It is also creating new opportunity for us. And like I said before in my prepared remarks, and Dave said, the size of those deals are much larger. Now somewhere along the way as people get comfortable with using some of these Gen AI models and getting comfortable that WNS is the right partner to help them navigate those opportunities.

All of that will come to bear. But in our planning, we assume that when we introduce some of these offerings, it will cause some kind of revenue cannibalization for us it will cause some kind of short-term impact. But in spite of that, we expect significant growth and profit.

I think just to add to that Surinder, I think it's important to understand that when clients are coming to us for transformational solutions, they are not looking for Gen AI specifically what they are looking for our business outcomes. And they're looking for us to deliver those impacts those outcomes to the business.

Now over time, we know they're going to hold us accountable for leveraging whatever the latest and greatest technology is. And in a year to that may mean productivity coming from tools and technologies like Gen AI, but they also realize that they don't have two to three years to wait to see how that entire rollout will play out.

So clients are moving forward. But I think that the biggest issue here is the fact that clients are looking to do things that are transformational, that are inherently disruptive to their business models. And that's really what's driving the length of the sales cycle, not which technology is going to be deployed to deliver those results.

Thank you. That's actually very helpful.

Bryan Bergin, TD Cowen.

Hi, guys. Thank you. One of the thing a bit more on the '25 growth outlook here. So coming off a year with some known client-specific headwinds, how do you think about building this out will potentially provide for more flexibility, just given the uncertain environment out there? And can you help us with what incremental year-over-year headwinds may be factored across the portfolio as you enter the year through productivity and normal ramp down?

Sure. Bryan, let me take a crack at that. So I think as we look into fiscal '25, what we're seeing today is about an 18% headwind to the business right now. We know that in a typical year, we're going to have a 10% or 11% headwind that comes from productivity that comes from the known ramp downs. It comes from the short term project related work.

I think as we look into into fiscal '25, we've got another 6%, 7% headwind that we're dealing with that's creating the big challenge for us. Now, I think most of most of us know and understand based on the conversations and the disclosures that we've made over the past six, nine months that, 3%-plus of that is coming from the large health care client that terminated their contract.

Another 1% is coming from the annualized impact of the large internet client moving from on-site centric to offshore centric. The piece that I think is different relative to where we would have been three months ago, four months ago is really that deterioration in the visibility and the commitment levels that clients are willing to make to transaction volumes and to projects.

And that's probably cost us another 3% here. As Keshav alluded to, we're seeing that primarily impacting us in the travel and in the insurance space. But the reality is, I think the volatility in the macro environment has created challenges for our clients in projecting what's going to happen over the next six to 12 months. And we're seeing that manifest itself in projections that they're providing to us.

Yeah, but I just wanted to add that while that's the state of the nation as of today, as we know uncertainties all around us anyway, that's also creating new opportunities. And I just want to underline the fact that a number of these clients are also, therefore moving ahead with decisions which may take time to implement. But in our decisions on expansion in completely new areas where maybe in the past, we may have said we'll hold on to some of these processes or operations ourselves.

We are also seeing new prospects and new clients are moving aggressively in terms of wanting to get involved in much larger scale kind of interactions with us. Again, some of these things take time to close, but I'm delighted to say that in the last quarter, we have to close four already, right. And therefore, our ability to do more of that timing irrespective is high, which means this uncertainty is also creating a massive new opportunity for us that should play out well in the second half of that during 2026.

Okay, understood. And I guess just given all the moving parts here. Any important considerations for kind of quarterly cadence as you go through fiscal '25 on, I guess, both growth and margin?

Yeah, let me let me take that Bryan. So I think obviously, we know Q1 is typically seasonally soft for us. In addition to that, we've got the volumes that continue to ramp down. So we are looking at a sequential decline in fiscal Q1, probably in the 5% range. And in addition to the productivity improvements that we give and the headcount utilization challenges and the operating leverage issues that we're going to see Q1 margins, we're expecting to be in the 18% to 19% range.

That being said, despite the large health care ramp down in Q2 and some of the challenges that will create. The expectation for us is that as we move across Q2, Q3, Q4, we should see good steady acceleration in both the top line and the margin line.

And maybe I'll just add to what Dave has mentioned because right now some of the visibility, which is not there from a client perspective and because of the seasonality in the Q1. Where we expect the revenue to be lower than compared to Q4. And that mathematically also create a compression on the margin because of the operating leverage, what will not be able to get that, right.

You know, the investments has been done for the scalability as we move forward for the growth, but it's going to be just a seasonal impact in Q1 because of that.

Yeah. So just to reiterate, our expectations in the neighborhood of like $310 million-ish for Q1 and the operating margin in the 18% to 19% range.

Okay, thanks very much.

Nate Svensson, Deutsche Bank

Hi, guys. I kind of wanted to talk about the mix of your bookings, obviously been a lot of focus on the shift towards larger deals and obviously the pressure remaining on shorter project-based work. So I'm guessing and how this is impacting sort of average contract value and how much of a change there has been kind of from your historical contract average annual contract value level versus what we're seeing now.

So kind of just as an example, if you have [1 billion] in bookings over five years. That's $200 million a year, but it's all short term, [$1 billion] in one year. So I'm just kind of trying to understand how that's evolved over time and any impact to the models of the shift to larger transformational deals?

Yeah. I mean, it's a good question, Nate. I mean, clearly, what we've seen across the last couple of years is a meaningful increase in the average contract value and the total contract value of the deals and more specifically the clients that we've signed, right? So there's kind of two ways to slice that one is when you're signing a new relationship, what does that initial value look like, right.

So what we've seen is that clients are willing to take bigger bites on the front end, that ACV, TCV number is up meaningfully over the last couple of years, but we also have clients to proceed in under a different route right they'll give us one or two statements of work to start the relationship. And then the year to end with they'll give us another two, three four, right.

So that's kind of the expansion side of the business. Both are extremely healthy, but the Surinder's question earlier, the large deal profile does create a little bit more lumpiness in terms of the visibility of how and when those revenues come on to the P&L. But very clearly what we are seeing across the portfolio and it's across verticals and across geographies, is that clients understand that the need for transformation and automation and cost reduction is best provided by multi tower multi-process types of solutions.

Got it. Appreciate the color there. My other question that I had was on headcount growth. I think going back to last quarter, I think there might have been an expectation for maybe a slight uptick in headcount growth in 4Q, but looks like there was actually about one point contraction in headcount sequentially. So maybe given your new updated fiscal '25 guidance on sort of what are your expectations for headcount, your need to grow sort of when you might have to ramp or how much you might be able to lean on utilization as opposed to headcount growth? That would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, you know, so as we move forward into FY25, we expect the headcount to grow. It can be lumpy a little bit between the quarters, but based on the seasonality, what we spoke about quarter one, you will see that, you know, the growth is going to be a back half loaded. And accordingly, the headcount growth is going to be there as we move forward to support that growth, not only for FY25, but also a early ramp up for FY26.

Yeah, I think to Sanjay's point, what you'll see in the first half is, while the overall numbers may remain somewhat static, there's going to be a mix shift going on under the covers. We've got ramp-downs in certain verticals and certain types of services like we talked about with travel and with the health, the large health care client.

But offsetting that we've got these four large deals that are going to be ramping up. So you are going to see while the overall headcount numbers look relatively similar, you're going to see under the covers, there are mix shifts going on that allow us to kind of support the changes in the business going forward.

I wouldn't miss the opportunity also talk about the fact that when all of business happening, we are also implementing internally a number of tech-enabled kind of solutions that we are using to drive even more efficiency. We deliver on the promises we made to our clients and continue to manage the margin requirements in a constrained macro.

And at the same time also ensure that as a result of that, manage the headcount that may be required for the long-term. So with all these solutions being deployed, what's happening is we're also moving some of our people to higher value kind of work. And some of this will also impact the headcount. So you should realize a number of moving parts.

Appreciate all the color. Thanks.

Moshe Katri, Wedbush.

Thanks, Moshe Katri from Wedbush, Sanjay, good luck on your future endeavors. So I want to go to a couple of questions here. Can we get an update on the captive client where are we in terms of generating revenues, the phases, et cetera? Thanks.

Letting me take that one motion. I think the short answer to the question is no change at this point in time. We've been given about 25% of the phase two, we continue to engage with the client in discussing not only the rest of the transition for the phase two work but also new statements of work with that customer. So we also know that they're not going to hit their full year five year commitment unless they find new things for us to do so.

Actively engaged with this customer in terms of how and when we can get them moving forward with the rest of the phase two work, but also actively engaged at this point in time with other streams of potential revenue for us to take to enable us to get to where we need to be three, four years from now. It just to reiterate, none of that potential is included in our guidance.

Right. And then going back to fiscal '25 on the guide, as I understood. I just wanted to confirm that I understand that the right way. If we normalize the guide for captive and the healthcare client tenant engagement together, it's about 6% to 7% headwind. Is that the right way of looking at it for this year?

You're right. Absolutely. It's together around that 6% to 7%. I would say the health care, the captive as well as the internet applying from an onshore to offshore more altogether, it's going to be somewhere around 8%.

Okay. Understood. And then final one. Can you talk a bit about what you're seeing the travel vertical in terms of volumes? And then in general, can you remind us which part of the revenue base is actually exposed to more discretionary project work? Thanks a lot.

Sure. So let me let me talk a little bit about the travel side and then get to the discretionary spend side. The pressure that we're seeing in travel is kind of across the board. I would say we're seeing it in the airline space we're seeing in the OTA space, and it's a combination of factors, to be honest with the motion, some of it is macro related where clients are experiencing limited growth.

Some of it is that they had over hired or over projected recoveries coming out of the pandemic. And we're seeing rightsizing some of this is travel challenges within the corporate world where we have, for example, a number of our OTA customers where we specialize in the corporate travel side as opposed to the retail travel side. So those have created challenges for us.

And that's really, I think, overall what the story is relative to the travel space. It's customer-specific issues, it's macro related issues, it's changes in strategy and business. But at the end of the day, we continue to see losses in terms of volume. We're not losing customers, we're not losing ownership of processes, but what we are losing is transaction volumes within those customers.

On the discretionary project side, I think obviously we've seen that number come down. And when we did the acquisitions about a year and a half ago, the peak, I would say the discretionary component of our business from a project perspective was around 12% of company revenue. That number today is probably down to just below 10% of company revenue.

And based on the projections that we've currently embedded for fiscal '25, that number's probably coming down to like 8% of revenue. So we continue to see this as a long-term opportunity as and when discretionary spend comes back. The businesses, the capabilities of these assets that we have, both in terms of the new acquisitions that we've done and in terms of our historical capability in areas like procurement and analytics are strong.

So we do see that as upside, but at this point in time, the visibility and clients willingness to commit to those types of initiatives is very, very limited.

But I must say the green shoots coming out of all of this is while disruption and the macro issues are creating these impacts and travel. We are also seeing that they are extremely receptive in terms of our strategic messages in terms of helping them with some of the other corporate functions, not pick them much more nimble in our model for the long term.

In fact, some of the recent large deals that we are talking about actually come into the sector for the future. So that is a very interesting development that we're also seeing. So these guys are all getting ready for the business to come back. And in the meantime, we are also looking at reengineering that internal functions as well.

Thank you.

Mayank Tandon, Needham.

Thank you. Keshav or Dave, I wanted to ask about the large deals. So as you approach the market, but you changed your go-to-market strategy in pursuing these large transformation type deals, and does that mean incremental investments in the sales force or how you go about your comping your sales force to any changes that you're making to make sure you win more than you lose in this type of market dynamic?

Yeah, Mayank, that's a great question. So first and foremost, I think the fact that our organization restructuring has all come together very well over the past one year or so, is one of the very important reasons for the change in this dynamic I must first say about that because, today we go to the market with four very focused SBU units, right.

And therefore, within those SBU units, we have strong leaders who can actually make effective decisions on what kind of sales challenge talent they want, what kind of changes they want in terms of the market orientation for some of these people. And also making sure that the capabilities that we acquired for the past at all four or five quarters had also be integrated well, when we go into having a business and a transformation of a conversation with clients.

It therefore means that a bunch of very smart people from within WNS as well as a bunch of smart people who are being trained even more in a high-risk of capabilities. And another bunch of people who may have been higher in the recent past. As well as the repositioning of talent across geographies is actually helping us with this strong pipeline that we are seeing one.

Second thing is what we are seeing is our ability to have much higher quality conversations around transformation, around digital, around analytics, around giving comfort that we are the right partner to help them navigate AI and Gen AI kind of outcomes when they are actually ready is resonating extremely well. We are elevating all these conversations now to CEO, CFO, COO level on the other side.

And therefore, the size of some of these deals being discussed are much bigger than what we have traditionally discussed before. So that's (inaudible), so there are a lot of changes that are happening, but a lot of it, I would give credit to the acquisition strategy that this company has pursued and more importantly through the reorganization, which I think we have successfully now implement.

And just to just add to that, Mayank, where the rubber hits the road, we're exiting fiscal '24 with a sales headcount sales force, that's about 10% above where we exited fiscal '23. So those investments have been made, those investments were back half loaded in fiscal '24. So I don't think we've fully seen the benefits of this investment, but I think you're starting to Keshav's point.

See it in terms of the successes we've had recently are large deal signings and the large deal pipeline that we have, where the company is extremely well positioned for success going forward. So yeah, the investments are taking place kind of behind the scenes to drive the pipeline and drive the success in selling these larger deals.

So very helpful. And then as my follow-up, I wanted to ask about the capital allocation side. Keshav you mentioned, upfront that you're pursuing this large buyback opportunity, which makes all the sense given where your valuation is, but would you also be considering M&A or do you have a lot to digest at this time with some of these headwinds you're tackling that might put that on hold. Any thoughts around that? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks. Let me first introduce yourself, as mentioned by Keshav, this is Arijit by the way, as mentioned Keshav working with WNS for 15 years now, and a significant part of why Sanjay would suggest so. Sanjay, is a big shoes to fill, but it all sort of hoping a subsea well, say, to sort of take over this role and move ahead. specifically to your question on M&A, no, M&A continues to be a key component of our capital allocation strategy.

Our M&A philosophy, as you would recall from our prior sort of earnings call could be used to be around additional key capabilities in chosen areas, investment areas like data analytics, digital and industry specific competencies. We definitely have a very healthy M&A pipeline right now, and we are continuing to evaluate all of these assets based on the strategic fit and appropriate valuations.

Yes, Mayank, and thanks Arijit, that was a great introduction to the street, but must tell you upfront that Mayank, we are going to continue to execute very well, the super confident about our large deal pipeline. We are going to continue to focus on aggressive buybacks like I spoke about because we think our stock is definitely not appreciated or undervalued at this point in time, and we will continue to invest in the business.

So we always talk about a $65 million kind of CapEx program for this year. And we continue to invest in sales marketing in terms of creating new capabilities, and we will keep our radar on while looking at the right, capably led acquisitions that can keep enhancing our market positioning at a time when companies like us should be doing that to deliver great outcomes for our shareholders over a period of time.

So thank you so much for the color. Appreciate it.

Maggie Nolan, William Blair.

Thank you. So I think it's important to just clarify the large health care client and the internet clients. Obviously, those are our different circumstances. Do you have any concerns that there might be something structural here to consider or whether there might be a risk of similar situations across the client base or are these more one-off in nature?

Yeah, let me take that, Maggie. I mean, look, I think the company has a very good track record of being transparent with issues and challenges within the business. And when we evaluate what's gone on in these two instances, both with the large health care client and the internet client moving from on-site to offshore, there's nothing within those two customer-specific decisions that we believe gives us pause or gives us concern relative to our other clients, other relationships, right.

Other than the fact that we understand that clients' businesses in this environment, are being disrupted, I'm sorry, and that they're going to be taking decisions across everything that they do in order to manage that disruption, right.

So if you really look at what's at the core of the large health care client. It's the fact that there are material changes in their business model, right. If you look at why the client need and the internet side move from on-site to offshore. They're still doing this work with WNS. It's not a change in vendor, it's not a change in strategy.

It's the change in how they want those services to be provided and services to be. So as a partner, we're going to have to be flexible to do what our clients want. But both of these situations from our perspective represent one-off types of scenarios, and we see nothing in them today that gives us concerns about other clients other relationships or something structural, either within the company or the BPM industry.

Thank you. That's very helpful. And then on the strategic partnerships that you mentioned, as you're opening a high Google, are you starting to leverage these across your employee base? And across your client base?

Yeah. So obviously, in conjunction with the strategic partnerships that we've put in place, we've got very aggressive training, reskilling, upskilling programs that are underway within the company. And it's across all areas of the company. So when you look at what we're doing functionally and cross-functionally within the company, focusing on trying to make sure that our teams from entry level agents to senior leaders are thinking about and understanding how to leverage these tools and technologies.

And we are working with not only the hyperscalers and kind of the big name partners and providers there. But we're also working with other industry types of organizations and agencies in terms of supporting our training programs and training plans. And we'll certainly be providing more of that, but across things like awareness, evangelism, practitioners for AI thought leaders for AI.

These are all areas where we've got aggressive training programs in place right now. And leveraging organizations and institutions to help with these training programs, whether that's Google or LinkedIn learning or mind map consulting or looking at universities like Oxford. These are all institutions that we've had engaged with in our AI training programs.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Ryan Potter, Citi.

Hey, thanks for taking my question and wish Sanjay all the best. You talked about, the 10% to 11% and normal headwinds at the end of the year. But could you double-click on the productivity portion and provide some color on if you're seeing clients ask for higher levels of productivity given the environment, should I think about it the macro or things like AI is maybe pushing clients to maybe ask for higher levels of productivity than normal or disposals of helps to break assistance?

Sure. Across the portfolio, Ryan, I think we've probably seen a little bit of a change, but nothing that's going to move the needle materially. I think the productivity improvements. The commitments that we're baking into our contracts are still in that 3% to 4% range. The reality is that while there's a lot of talk and a lot of conversation and as Keshav spoke about in his prepared remarks, use cases, pilots, proof of concept.

The reality is clients willingness to leverage these technologies at scale across an enterprise is still extremely limited. So to the extent that we're not able to deploy these tools because clients won't allow us to deploy these tools, the productivity that we're able to deliver today is still limited to traditional approaches, traditional tools, traditional technologies and our domain expertise.

We certainly believe and we've said it multiple times in the past that as these technologies and their adoption improves that we believe that productivity number can continue to creep up, but the reality is we believe it should also be offset by an increase in the opportunities for us to get into new areas of our existing customers' portfolios. And as Keshav has mentioned multiple times today, the ability to bring new people to the table.

Yeah, I think it's important to just underline this because I think with all of these new technologies and all this excitement being created about some of these new technologies and new models. First and foremost, the potential penetration of new white spaces for the industry, I think will be increasing. There will always be some parts of the existing industrial that will go through a massive change that we have see.

I'm calling it disruption, I'm calling it maybe affected by macro issues, but also it is getting clients are much more focused on what they want to invest in against what they want, the partner to be focused on and invested. And so when Dave spoke about how we are training and getting our people ready. It is also because a number of our clients and prospects are telling us openly that.

Listen, we want to focus on our core business, and we would like to work with a trusted partner that use training that people is getting, you know, all of the model is in place and we can deliver the ROI that we need. But it's also allowing us to move up the value chain go into white spaces, which traditionally this BPM industry may not have addressed in the past. I think that's the exciting opportunity for the next decade or so.

And maybe I'll just add that in or just taking a step back with the multi-point technology evolution that Dave was talking about of around 3% to 4% productivity, if you will, recall earlier, if I just 1% to 2% productivity, right. For the technology evolution, that increased to 3% to 4%, but it also increased the expandable market. And that is where the net-net growth and just getting a capital climbing up.

So I think there are multiple of those, you know, examples going to the entire evolution of this technology, and that is where we believe that is going to continue to drive and help us to address the white space what Keshav, alluded.

Got it. The kind of stuff into got some opportunities in the large deal pipeline that you talked about, but just want to be clear, some of the assumptions around large deal opportunity. Are those included in our or does that represent potential upside to the outlook. And then I guess on top of that, what kind of success rate have you had in these types of large deals? And do they tend to have different ramp times for cycles than some of your more traditional deals?

Sure. So let me take a crack that, Ryan. I think you know, from a success rate perspective, obviously, we think we're doing extremely well. For the deals where we have the domain expertise where we're well positioned, I would say we're winning more than our fair share of deals. And obviously, having four large deals in the bag at this point that were signed in the fourth quarter and having in the pipeline today seven or eight opportunities where we believe decisions could come in the next two to three months.

These are exciting things for us because we believe we're extremely well positioned in terms of capability, in terms of solution, in terms of relationship to win these deals. Are they somewhat more lumpy kind of going back to the surrenders question earlier.

Yeah, these deals are a little bit more lumpy. Because the timing is a little less certain than, for example, an expansion of an existing relationship, or a small FNA process that we take over. So I think there's a little bit of that uncertainty relative to the guidance.

I think when you look at what we've done here, we have not specifically said, hey, we've baked in seven large deals, and that's how we've gotten to where we are. The reality is we know that there is a business that needs to be signed as we progress throughout the year. We believe we've been realistic in terms of our ability to close that new business relative to what we've been able to do in the past, relative to what's in the pipeline today.

But it's not specific to large deals, signings versus expansion signings versus the potential for a macro, right. These are all potential sources of filling that gap, but we don't say specifically. Okay, we don't sign these three large deals. We're not going to be able to make our numbers.

And maybe, you know, I just I'll add to what Dave was mentioning. Basically as these are the pipeline deals done at various stages of the discussion and, a bit it can be large due can be multiple other new prospects, what we are discussing expansion. So it will based on the stages where they are and the probability what we internally follow is a mix of all that stuff, what nobody becomes the basis for our guidelines.

But as some of the larger deals may get close and you know, if the transition is going to be at a much faster pace, maybe some of those things may change, and that is where it helps us also to move that up to either the upper end of that, right.

Yeah, it's up. It's a little bit. It's a little tough to kind of nail down, right. And I guess that's kind of the commentary around lumpiness. We've signed one large deal here in the fourth quarter. That's going to ramp very aggressively. That's certainly kind of what the plan is right now. But as we discussed, for example, with the captive carve out a year and a half ago, there's a second phase to that deal that was contractually committed, that's still moving slowly.

So it's going to be client-specific and there's no rhyme or reason to that other than organizationally, whether or not they're ready to take on that change.

Got it. Thank you again.

Puneet Jain, JPMorgan.

Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. Quickly on the internet and tech clients, can you talk about like how large those clients are and what outlook is?

So if you look kind of across the portfolio, Puneet, internet and tech clients today represent about 17% of company revenue. But certainly when you look at the expectation for this year, some of the volume pressures, especially relative to, for example, the travel vertical, some of the volume pressures that we expect this year will be in that area.

Obviously, we had a large internet client last year that's split into this year, moving work from on-site to offshore. That's created some headwinds there, but I think where we're comfortable at this point in time is that when you look at our exposure to internet based clients and you look at that 17% of revenue. What you'll see is that it we don't have meaningful exposure to any one client anymore at this point.

So we meaning part of the upside, if you will, if there is any of some of the challenges and the pressures that we've had on the volumes over the last year or so. And relative to the guidance for fiscal '25, some of the good news if you will, is that I think we've derisked the ability for any one single client to have a meaningful impact and what our numbers look like for fiscal '25 and beyond.

Got it. Got it. And also, if you can talk about like the headcount reductions you had this quarter, it seems like it's been a while since your head count was down on a sequential basis. So if you can double-click on like the technology that helps reduced headcount dependency as well as what should we expect for headcount over the near term?

So Puneet, Sanjay here. So headcount reduction is a mix of various initiatives, including the Q1 seasonality. What we saw and what we alluded as you know, it's going to be revenue is going to be lower as compared to quarter four. And so that's causing that and also, I have to recall the impact of our large healthcare client is going to start from Q2, right.

So those are couple of things which are impacting, but driving technology interventions, enterprise, the productivity and those, obviously the mix of various things around it. But as we move forward and as I mentioned earlier, from an FY25 perspective, the growth is going to be back-half alluded. And accordingly, we expect the headcount to keep on growing, from Q2 onwards.

And I think relative to the deployment of technology and automation, what you've seen and Sanjay mentioned it in his prepared remarks. What you're seeing pretty consistently from WNS is that each year we're delinking the growth in revenue from the growth in headcount by anywhere from 2% to 4%, right. So this year, on a constant currency basis, we had about a 3.5% change in revenue per employee, right.

Which is kind of where this is really manifesting itself. And I think that should be expected going forward that we should see disconnects between the number of people we need to deliver revenue and that revenue growth in the 2% to 4% range, obviously doing much more than that in any given year. It's going to be very, very difficult as clients migrate to these new models into these new types of services and solutions.

But that productivity improvement that we're able to deliver is part of how we are able to keep our margins stable right. I mean, if we're giving 3% to 4% productivity to clients, we've got to continue to do more work with fewer people in order to be able to maintain our margins. And this is part of when we talk about productivity from a customer side, yes, it creates a revenue headwind, but this is productivity from the operations side that allows us to reduce costs at or above the same rate as we're reducing revenue.

Thank you.

Vincent Colicchio, Barrington Research.

Yes. Are you seeing any pricing pressure in any of your horizontals,?

No, at this stage, not no pricing pressure. I think our as we discussed earlier, the focus is all about the total cost of ownership. Instead of bill rate or a traditional model, so it's all going to be a modern solution, the value creation, what we are able to create for our clients. So no pricing pressure at this stage.

And in fact, we are seeing a very solid pipeline filled with some of these horizontals. So we believe the verticals will benefit with some of the pipelines being generated through the horizontals, which are now integrated well post restructuring that I spoke about.

And then just one last one here, and I know again late on the call, what caused the large sequential increase in transaction contracts. Is there anything to call out there?

Transaction-based contracts, though the percentage contribution increased quite a bit sequentially. And I you know, I think the transaction will close tracking of the increase sequentially. What we have with a moment of what one of our clients, you know, which was on the cost-plus kind of a models are they just use a model to the transaction base as we move forward.

Again, it's going to be more normal technology interventions, and the larger aspect, what we are working what about.

What you'll see, Vince, if you look is that you'll see kind of on a percentage basis a corresponding reduction in the outcome-based revenues. So essentially what we did is we had a large customer that moved from one type of a engagement model to another.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Vince.

Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions in the queue. This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.