Tata Consultancy Services Limited has informed the Exchange about Transcript of earnings conference call
TCS/SE/14/2022-23
April 16, 2022
National Stock Exchange of India Limited Exchange Plaza, C-1, Block G, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra (East) Mumbai - 400051 Symbol - TCS
Mumbai - 400001 Scrip Code No. 532540
BSE Limited P. J. Towers, Dalal Street,
Dear Sirs,
Sub: Transcript of the earnings conference call for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2022
Pursuant to Regulation 30 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, please find enclosed the transcript of the earnings conference call for the quarter and year ended March 31, 2022 conducted after the meeting of Board of Directors held on April 11, 2022, for your information and records.
The above information is also available on the website of the Company: www.tcs.com
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
For Tata Consultancy Services Limited
Pradeep Manohar Gaitonde Company Secretary
Encl: As above
TATA Consultancy Services Limited 9th Floor Nirmal Building Nariman Point Mumbai 400 021 Tel. 91 22 6778 9595 Fax 91 22 6778 9660 e-mail corporate.office@tcs.com website www.tcs.com Registered Office 9th Floor Nirmal Building Nariman Point Mumbai 400 021. Corporate identification No. (CIN): L22210MH1995PLC084781
Tata Consultancy Services Limited
Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call. April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
Moderator:
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the TCS Earnings
Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only
mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the
presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference
call, please signal an operator by pressing ‘*’ then ‘0’ on your touchtone phone.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference
over to Mr. Kedar Shirali, Global Head, Investor Relations at TCS. Thank you,
and over to you, sir.
Kedar Shirali:
Thank you, Steven. Good evening and welcome, everyone. Thank you for
joining us today to discuss TCS' financial results for the fourth quarter and full
year fiscal year 2022 that ended March 31, 2022. This call is being webcast
through our website and an archive, including the transcript, will be available
on the site for the duration of this quarter. The financial statements, quarterly
fact sheet and press releases are also available on our website.
Our leadership team is present on this call to discuss our results. We have with
us today, Mr. Rajesh Gopinathan -- Chief Executive Officer and Managing
Director; Mr. N.G. Subramaniam -- Chief Operating Officer and Executive
Director; Mr. Samir Seksaria -- Chief Financial Officer. Our Chief HR Officer --
Mr. Milind Lakkad, could not join us today due to a personal emergency, but
Samir will be speaking on behalf of Milind.
Our leadership team will give a brief overview of the company’s performance,
followed by a Q&A Session.
As you are aware, we do not provide specific revenue or earnings guidance.
Anything said on this call, which reflects our outlook for the future or which
could be construed as a forward-looking statement, must be reviewed in
conjunction with the risks that the company faces. We have outlined these risks
in the second slide of the quarterly fact sheet available on our website and e-
mailed out to those who have subscribed to our mailing list.
With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Rajesh.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
Rajesh Gopinathan: Thank you, Kedar. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all of
you.
We are closing fiscal year 2022 on a strong note, our full year revenue growing
at 16.8% in rupee terms, 15.4% in constant currency terms and 15.9% in dollar
terms.
We added $3.533 billion in incremental revenue during the year, our highest
ever. Our operating margin for the year was at 25.3% and net margin was at
20%.
Having crossed the $25 billion milestone this year, we are now focused on
ways to get to the next $25 billion. Towards that, we are rolling out a new
industry-first organization structure that adds customer relationship stage to
the existing three-dimensions, that is the geography, industry vertical and
service lines.
The new structure is more customer-centric and will enable curated
experiences to our customers based on what stage they are at in their
relationship journey with TCS. We believe this would ease the path for us to
become a growth and transformation partner for more of our customers.
I will now invite Samir and NGS to go over different aspects of our performance
during the quarter. I’ll step in again later to provide more color on the demand
trends we are seeing. Over to you, Samir.
Samir Seksaria:
Thank you, Rajesh. Let me walk you through the headline numbers. In the
fourth quarter of FY'22, our revenue crossed `50,000 crores mark, reaching
`50,591 crores, which is a Y-o-Y growth of 15.8%. In dollar terms, revenues
were $6.696 billion, a Y-o-Y growth of 11.8%. And in CC terms, our revenue
growth in Q4 was 14.3%.
For the full year, our revenue was `191,754 crores, which is a growth of
16.8%. In dollar terms, revenue was $25.707 billion, a growth of 15.9% and in
constant currency terms, this translates to 15.4%.
Let me now go over the financial performance. Our operating margin in Q4
stayed flat sequentially at 25%. As in the previous quarter, we had headwinds
of about 90 basis points from ongoing supply side challenges, which were
mitigated from operational efficiencies and 10 basis points of currency
support.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
For the full year, our operating margins continue to be industry-leading at
25.3%. Annual increment, tactical interventions and increased subcontractor
usage represented a headwind of 330 basis points, offset to some extent by
operational efficiencies, improved realization and some currency support.
Net income margin in Q4 was 19.6%, and for the full year, 20%.
EPS grew 16.1% during the year, excluding the provision we made towards a
legal claim in FY 21. Effective tax rate for the year was 25.6%.
Our accounts receivable was at 64 days DSO in dollar terms down 3 days
sequentially and 4 days Y-o-Y. Net cash flow from operations was `110.51
billion, which is a cash conversion of 111% of net income. Free cash flow was
`102.59 billion. Invested funds as on March 31st stood at `560.53 billion.
The board has recommended a final dividend of `22 per share. For the full
year, this represents a shareholder payout of `31,424 crores, and this does
not include `4,000 crores of buyback tax which has an outflow in the month of
April.
Now, since Milind could not join the call today, let me go over the people
metrics as well.
On the people front, this has been a standout quarter where we set many
benchmarks. We had an all-time high net addition in the quarter as well as for
the full year at 35,209 and 103,546 respectively, bringing the total headcount
to 592,195. The record net addition reflects the strength of our employer brand
and our ability to draw talent across the world.
We received several accolades and external validations this quarter for our
commitment to excellence and talent management. We were recognized by
the Confederation of Indian Industry, (CII), with the Role Model in HR
Excellence and Prize for Leadership in HR at the CII HR Excellence Awards.
The Role Model award has been given only twice before in the last 12 years.
TCS ranked #1 in the LinkedIn Top Companies list of the Best Workplaces for
Career Growth in India, with top scores in providing the ability to advance, skills
growth, company stability, external opportunity, company affinity, gender
diversity and spread of educational backgrounds.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
Lastly, we were recognized as the Global Top Employer for the Seventh Year
in a Row by the Top Employers Institute.
Our focus on diversity and inclusion and localized hiring in all our major
markets has resulted in a very diverse workforce in 153 nationalities
represented and women making up 35.6% of the base.
We continue to invest heavily in organic talent development. In Q4, TCSers
clocked 22 million learning hours. For the full year, TCSers locked 60.3
million learning hours and acquired 3.5 million digital competencies.
The number of contextual masters, that is, individuals who have demonstrated
deep contextual knowledge of their customers business and IT landscape, hit
a new milestone crossing 50,000 in Q4.
Moving to talent retention, we have a track record of consistently maintaining
the highest talent retention in the industry, even in the face of high levels of
churn across the industry. Our attrition in IT services continues to rise on an
LTM basis and was at 17.4%. However, the quarterly annualized attrition is
plateauing.
Lastly, we have announced a salary increment with effect from April 1st similar
in quantum to prior years.
With that, I’ll request NGS to give the segmental and product commentary.
N.G. Subramaniam: Hello, again. Thank you for joining us. Let me begin by providing the segmental
performance result for the quarter. All growth numbers are on Y-o-Y constant
currency basis.
All our industry verticals grew in the mid-to-high teens in Q4 and for the full
year. Q4 growth was led by Retail and CPG, which grew 22.1%, Manufacturing
and Utilities grew 19%, and Communications and Media grew by 18.7%,
Technology and Services grew 18%, Life sciences and Healthcare grew
16.4%, and Financial Services grew by 12.9%.
For the full year, growth was led again by Retail and CPG, which grew by
20.6%, Manufacturing and Utilities which grew by 19.4%, Life sciences and
Healthcare 19.2%, Financial Services 15.1%, Technology and Services 15.8%
and Communications and Media by 14%.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
On an accounting segment basis, including revenues from emerging markets
and products and platforms, our BFSI segment crossed the $10 billion
revenue milestone this year.
Moving on to geographic markets, growth in Q4 was led by North America,
which grew 18.7%, UK at 13% and Continental Europe at 10.1%.
Among emerging markets, Latin America grew by 20.6%, Middle East and
Africa grew by 7.3%, India by 7%, and Asia Pacific by 5.5%.
On a full year basis, North America grew by 17.5%, Continental Europe by
15%, and UK by 14.3%. Moving on to emerging markets, Latin America grew
18.2%, India grew by 16%, Middle East and Africa grew by 12.9%, while Asia
Pacific had 6.7% growth.
Our portfolio of products and platforms continue to do well in the market.
ignio™, our cognitive automation software signed up 36 new clients in Q4, and
we had six clients went live with ignio™ during the quarter. For the full year,
ignio closed over 100 deals and had 27 go-lives.
The Digitate Academy has trained over 11,500 professionals in the
marketplace and certified more than 4,100 professionals on ignio.
ignio continues to transform operations across domains using AI and
automation, to enhance resilience in delivering superior business outcomes.
For a leading energy generation and distribution company in North America,
ignio is managing over 100,000 incidents autonomously, with 100% successful
resolution rate, covering 30% of their overall IT footprint.
A global professional services provider has gone live with ignio’s Digital
Workspace, proactively managing the health of over 11,000 laptops globally
for better user experience and productivity. ignio also manages group policies,
privileges and updates for improved compliance and reduced vulnerability.
TCS BaNCS™, our flagship product suite for the financial services industry
had 4 new wins and 3 go-lives in Q4. In FY 22, TCS BaNCS won 22 new
customers and had 16 key go-lives. Half the wins were for the SaaS model,
demonstrating the growth adoption of cloud, and more importantly, TCS
BaNCS’ cloud readiness for large and niche projects.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
During the quarter, TCS BaNCS Global Securities platform was selected by a
leading South African Financial Services group for their personal and business
financial banking, business banking offerings catering to investor services and
it includes custody and corporate actions as well. With this new deal, almost
95% of the custody transactions in South Africa will run on TCS BaNCS™ in
addition to the Central Depository.
Quartz blockchain platform had 2 new wins in Q4. The Quartz brand has
extended its presence across multiple industries, ranging from financial
services to the energy sector and pharmaceuticals.
A leading corporate depository in India has selected Quartz for markets to
implement a solution for corporate bond issuance and covenant monitoring.
The solution will facilitate the creation of bond instruments by bringing together
different stakeholders, including CSDs, debenture trustees, valuation firms and
exchanges into a blockchain based ecosystem. The solution is designed to
enable greater transparency in the issuance process by eliminating potential
double counting of underlying assets, enabling real-time information updates
from various stakeholders and providing a single source of truth through the
shared ledger.
TCS HOBS™ suite of products for communication services had 2 deal wins in
Q4.
TCS TwinX™, our AI-based digital solution had 6 wins and 3 go-lives during
the quarter.
TCS OmniStore™, our AI-powered universal commerce suite had 3 new wins.
TCS Optumera™, our AI-powered merchandise optimization suite had 2 new
wins and 3 go-lives.
TCS iON has now onboarded over 700 corporates to enable job outcome
linkage. In FY’22, TCS iON conducted 45 million in-center and 2.9 million
remote assessments at national and regional scale.
Let me now spend some time on our client metrics. As you know, our customer-
centric strategy entails continually investing and building newer capabilities to
create value in newer parts of our clients business, so that our relationship
keeps expanding and deepening over time.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
Measuring our customers’ upward progression across various revenue
buckets is that surest validation of our strategy. So, we track these metrics very
closely.
In Q4, we added 10 more clients over the last 12 months in the $100 million
plus band, bringing the total to 58.
We added 19 more clients in the $50 million plus band, bringing the total to
120; 40 more clients in the $20 million band, bringing the total to 268; 52 more
clients in the $10 million band, bringing the total to 439; 69 more clients in the
$5 million band, bringing the total to 638 and 86 more clients in the $1 million
plus band, bringing the total to 1,182.
With that, let me hand it over to Rajesh for some additional color on the demand
drivers and the order book.
Rajesh Gopinathan: Thank you, NGS. We have spoken about three broad growth drivers this year
-- increased outsourcing, cloud adoption and growth and transformation.
When we talk about cloud adoption, it’s not a single event, but a multi-horizon
transformation journey that begins with migration and other Horizon 1 activities.
G&T is often the primary driver of our customers’ Horizon 2 investments and
so partnering customers in the initial stages of the cloud adoption is also
opening the doors to us to their G&T initiatives.
As in prior quarters, we had several new wins around Horizon 1, initiatives such
as cloud migration, application and data modernization, etc., I’ll give a few
examples of such instances.
• Coop, a leading Swedish retailer, engaged us to migrate critical logistics
applications to the public cloud. This migration has future proofed Coop’s
core systems and enhanced its agility and scalability.
• For a large Australian power utility, TCS helped execute the end-to-end
transformation, including cloud discovery and assessment, foundation
services, cloud migration, application modernization and operations
management. Using our factory approach, we helped migrate more than
150 applications and over 1,800 servers
to
the cloud, helping
decommission its IT infrastructure, reduce technology debt, enhance
resilience and provide a solid foundation for the company’s Horizon 2
plans.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
• Similarly a large U.K.-based communication service provider has engaged
TCS as its strategic data and analytics transformation partner, to help build
a common and simplified data platform on a public cloud, enabling future
use cases around hyper-personalization, micro marketing, differentiated
customer experience and even new revenue streams
like data
monetization.
While such initiatives help improve the organization’s operational resilience
and give it greater agility and scalability to handle future growth, the real value
unlocking of the cloud investments comes from Horizon 2 initiatives, which use
the native capabilities of the cloud to try out new ways of working, innovations
around products of business models and new customer experiences.
Let me share a few examples to show what we mean when we talk about new
ways of working.
• A leading European Financial Services firm engaged us to transform their
time-consuming and error-prone financial spreading process used for
determining the creditworthiness of corporate clients. Our TCS FSaaS, the
Financing Spreading-as-a-Service Solution on a hyperscaler cloud,
digitized the spreading process, extracting data from financial statements
and regulatory filings using ML-based models 7x faster, with 99%
accuracy. This enabled more accurate credit scoring, quicker lending
decisions and higher throughput and business growth.
This engagement also highlights how we are originating and winning such
Horizon 2 deals. The idea itself came up as a visible manifestation of
contextual knowledge during an Innovation Day Hackathon we had
organized for the client. The account team then proactively pitched the idea
to the client’s risk management organization, eventually leading to an
engagement.
• For Rabobank, a leading European bank, has partnered with TCS to build
a modern data warehouse platform on a public cloud for their wholesale
customers’ KYC business domain. The platform will ingest, curate and
generate KYC reports to view customer data in a consistent way across
the globe, using cloud-native analytics and reporting tools, and enable
faster forecasting and business decisioning and onboarding.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
• We have been selected by a leading Swiss building materials provider as
a strategic partner
for
its `plants of
tomorrow’
initiative, digital
transformation and journey to net zero goal.
TCS will leverage its Neural Manufacturing™ framework to develop IoT-
based digital solutions, enabling predictive operations and maintenance,
intelligent automation and robotics. These are expected to improve asset
and plant performance, and reduce energy costs and carbon footprint.
A recurring theme in Horizon 2 initiatives, is product and service innovation to
enable new business models, generate new revenue streams and to drive
growth. Here are a couple of examples.
• For an American corporation that specializes in water treatment,
purification, cleaning, hygiene and infection prevention solution, TCS is
helping to develop a cloud-based connected products platform that will
remotely monitor multiple equipment and related sanitizing consumables
at customer sites.
Using this, the company can launch innovative products like digitally
connected appliances
for hand hygiene, surface sanitization and
dishwashing. That will enable as-a-service business model in the facilities
management area and drive new revenue streams. Actionable insights
from the platform leveraging AI and predictive analytics will enable timely
refills, proactive maintenance and unlock the ability to cross-sell and
upsell.
• Similarly, we have been selected by Hartmann, a leading surgical and
medical instrument manufacturing company to work on a future product
line to add to their high compression bandage products portfolio. TCS will
conceptualize, design and co-develop a digital health solution for
healthcare professionals and patients using IoT to simplify the patient
monitoring process. TCS will develop the sensor patch and its associated
software components to detect the pressure sensor data and transmit it
using NFC to the patient monitoring mobile application and cloud back-
end.
Lastly, with the idea of metaverse catching on in the enterprise world, we are
seeing growing interest in providing customers and users with immersive
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
online experiences using XR or extended reality. Let me give you a couple of
examples.
• A leading U.S.-based communication service provider faced with the
challenge of driving retail sales while physical stores were seeing lower
footfall during the pandemic, partnered with TCS to provide a personalized
at-home experience of a real store.
TCS organized the design thinking workshops to conceptualize and design
a virtual replica of a store using passive VR, which customers can enter
and virtually navigate on
their mobile devices. Built using TCS
Avapresence™ foundry and the webAR technology, the virtual store is
accessible from any device with virtual try-on and try-out features.
It has integrated commerce capabilities so customers can purchase the
products and accessories on display, just as in a physical store. The cloud
native framework made it easier to integrate with existing e-Commerce
platforms, provide real-time insights and scale the solution. The virtual
store has resulted in better customer engagement, a 30% increase in
sales conversion and an 80% growth in digital channel sales.
• For marketing of their newly launched product, a prefilled injection, a
leading medical devices manufacturer engaged TCS to provide an
immersive experience for its healthcare partners to show them how the
model can be conveniently self-administered. TCS came up with various
options using AR experience and recommended the best approach to the
client. It used WebAR to create a realistic virtual 3D model of the injection
which provides users with usage instructions through an immersive
experience, obviating the need to go through lengthy user guides.
The successful use of AR to market has sort of just led to interest in
building similar experiences around their other products as well.
These are some examples of the continuing demand trends that have been
filling our order book and driving strong growth over the course of the year.
In Q4, we had very strong deal wins, resulting in an all-time high order book
with TCV of $11.3 billion. This includes two mega deals of roughly $1 billion
each. Even excluding these two mega deals, our order book TCV in Q4 is at
$9.5 billion, which is also an all-time high.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
By vertical, BFSI had very strong TCV of $3.2 billion, while retail posted an
order book of $2.6 billion. The TCV of deals signed in North America stood at
$6.1 billion.
For the full year, our order book TCV was $34.6 billion, a growth of 9.5% over
the prior year.
With that, we can open the line for questions.
Moderator:
The first question is from the line of Kumar Rakesh from BNP Paribas. Please
go ahead.
Kumar Rakesh:
My first question was around the margins. So, we had set our aspiration band
above 26%. In the current context of the supply side constraint and especially
for FY'23, how do you see that aspirational band panning out and what are the
headwinds and tailwinds we are looking at immediately in the next few
quarters?
Samir Seksaria:
Hi, Kumar. So, the 26% to 28% remains our guiding base, and our long-term
cost structures are very well placed and we firmly believe that we can operate
in the 26% to 28% band based on our long-term cost structures.
If you look at the near term, we will double down on our operational levers to
help us get closer to this band. From a short and near-term perspective, given
what we are seeing in terms of the churn, until it goes back to our normal levels,
we will see some volatility on margins. So, that’s our view. And if I look at FY
23, at least initially we would be seeing some churn and pressure on margins.
Kumar Rakesh:
Given that now we’d be ramping up the onsite as well with the travel resuming,
how would be the wage hikes on the onsite side? And how are we looking to
mitigate that impact?
Rajesh Gopinathan: Rakesh, this is Rajesh here. Overall, we think that salary hikes will be similar
from a medium perspective to what was there last year with a slightly upward
bias. While there will be pressures in individual markets or individual capability
side, the hiring and the pyramid rebalancing that has happened will also give
a significant support. And we think that, as travel opens up more and more, our
optimization levers will also increase. So, there is no one specific answer to it.
If you take a given variable, of course, those variables have their own
unidirectional impact. But in aggregate, we believe that the portfolio can lend
itself for some optimization, but short-term volatility is to be expected.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
Kumar Rakesh:
Rajesh, one clarification. So, early this month we had announced one large
material deal win from a large American company. So, this quarter deal win
which we have announced of $11.3 billion, so that includes that or –?
Rajesh Gopinathan:
It happened on the cusp of the quarter so this $11.3 billion includes that deal.
Moderator:
The next question is from the line of Diviya Nagarajan from UBS. Please go
ahead.
Diviya Nagarajan:
Couple of questions from my side. NGS, earlier on the press conference you
had talked about some of your customers stepping back and you kind of
described that as backing up. Could you kind of explain what that means in
terms of the budget expectation or spending trends that you're seeing with
some of those customers? That’s question number one. Question two, from an
overall perspective, if you were to look at your demand outlook and the
confidence that you have on the outlook versus last year, how would you kind
of rate that -- is it the same, are you seeing more risk, or how would you
characterize that?
N.G. Subramaniam:
Thank you, Diviya. I think I answered that in the context of the Europe
performance in the current quarter compared to the previous quarters.
What we see in Europe typically across verticals is that they are the ones which
were most impacted by COVID, because different countries were affected by
COVID at different times, and they are a fairly integrated economy, number
one. Number two is that they are just about to also manage the Brexit which
happened during the last 18 months or so, and now the war situation. All of
that put together, there is some thinking about what should be the investment
areas. At the same time, there is enormous focus on sustainability across
verticals. Everybody in Europe is looking at putting sustainability on the
agenda.
Looking at all of this, there is a kind of stepping back and see where are the
investors, what should be the priorities for technology investments and so on,
so on. In that context, some readjustment and re-orientation of budgets are
taking place. But, as we explained in the press conference as well, that
technology is the solution for the majority of the issues that they are facing. In
that context, the technology spend continues to happen, but there are some
reallocation in terms of where they actually go and they spend on technology.
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
To your second question on confidence in the overall demand outlook, it looks
very good. The kind of deal wins and the momentum that we have, we are
clearly in a better position now compared to where we were same time last
year. So, that should augur well for our growth and our aspirations for FY 23.
Moderator:
The next question is from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss. Please
go ahead.
Sandip Agarwal:
I have only one question on the manpower side. So, just wanted to understand
that the situation we are going through is led by high demand and the supply
is not matching it. So, basically, there is kind of poaching from one another.
So, the real solution probably is the supply increasing. So, how will supply
increase in next two quarters – will it be completely through this fresher hiring
which has happened in past and the way we are hiring right now or you think
that there are other ways to increase the supply, like cutting down the training
time through accelerated training programs, are there some other options by
which we can increase the supply because I think that is where we are right
now most hurt and probably demand environment remains robust, so what is
your sense on supply issues cooling off, by when you think it will happen?
Rajesh Gopinathan: Sandip, Rajesh here. As you rightly pointed out, what we’re seeing is a
demand-supply mismatch in our industry. Fresher hiring and productive use of
freshers is a long-cycle activity. But you have seen the industry step-up hiring
over the last four quarters. We expect that as that supply hits productive use,
that will ease up a lot of what was going on over the last few quarters.
So, that’s why when we say that as we look forward two quarters ahead, we
think that attrition will flat line and then start tapering.
The expectation is that the bulk of this hiring that has gone on across the
industry in the last calendar year will start coming in and playing a role. So, it’s
very similar to what you are saying; just that there is a little bit of a lag and by
middle of the year we should see it.
Moderator:
The next question is from the line of Apurva Prasad from HDFC Securities.
Please go ahead.
Apurva Prasad:
Rajesh, a couple of quick ones. So, the changes in the operating structure that
you mentioned and the participation across a wider spectrum now, how does
that intersect with the hyperscaler deals? And as a result of this, likely to reflect
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Tata Consultancy Services Q4 & FY22 Earnings Conference Call April 11, 2022, 20:00 hrs IST (10:30 hrs US ET)
more in the $100 million client bucket or do you think it’s probably going to
reflect more in the $10 million category initially?
Rajesh Gopinathan: Apurva, let me explain what we are doing and hopefully that will answer the
question, because the services, our focus on cloud and hyperscalers is
independent of what we’re doing on the structure side.
On the structure side, we are realigning our governance to bring in focus on
our engagement model for customers across different points of their
relationship journey with us.
We are creating three new groups. One, focused on customers who are at the
early stage of the relationship with us. Typically, in that stage, a customer is
very focused on assessing whether TCS can deliver the specific project given
to them.
As they go forward in their relationship with us, typically the focus shifts and
many of our customers try and see if TCS can be a strategic vendor around
whom they can consolidate. Typically, most customers prefer to have one or
two or three large vendors and vendor consolidation is a common theme
across our customer base. And at that time, the question is, does TCS have
the full spectrum of services? Do they have an ability to deliver those services
in a consolidated manner? Can they manage the relationship at a stepped level
in terms of an enhanced support to them across both services as well as across
geographical markets that they operate in, etc.? So, the focus shifts to the full
services model and our ability to scale up to be a strategic supplier to them.
And as that phase passes through, the focus then shifts again to whether we
can step beyond being a scaled strategic vendor to being a vendor who can
participate well in their transformation initiatives and across a wide spectrum
of their CXO initiatives.
Now I’ve laid it out in a very kind of a time-bound manner. Many times, it might
happen in a different sequence, but broadly this is the sequence in which a
relationship develops over time. So, we are standing up different organizational
groups that are focused on ensuring that the engagement models are aligned
to these three stages of the customer relationship.
The specific service that we offer, for example, at an early stage itself, the first
project might be a product implementation or it could be a TCS IP being
delivered or it could be a transformative engagement on the G&T side. It
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doesn’t matter what that is. That project has to be executed well because that
is the proof point of the early part of the relationship. So, whether it is
hyperscaler, not hyperscaler, whether it is G&T, that is not actually pre-decided
based on any of these three structures. It is more the way the engagement is
governed that is being set up. I hope that answers your question.
Apurva Prasad:
Yes, Rajesh, that clarifies. I was also actually trying to understand how does
that reflect in the $100 million versus $10 million and I am assuming it’s the
latter initially, but I get the point. My second question Rajesh is, you did earlier
mention of TCV reverting to $8 billion, $8.5 billion. So, I want to understand
from you how is the mega deal pipeline looking and any additional color on the
two mega deals?
Rajesh Gopinathan: Apurva, that point was in a context, I will come to it. So, if you look at our
commentary through the last few quarters, we have consistently maintained
that the pipeline distribution of deal sizes is fairly even, and similar to earlier
periods. But when a very large mega deal will close is very hard to predict.
This quarter’s numbers are a validation of the fact that there is no skew to the
pipeline. It’s not that the industry is shifting towards very large deals or very
small deals. So, the quarter’s results actually validate the point that we have
been emphasizing over the last few quarters.
The point about $8.5 billion was different. A better way to think about the overall
pipeline progression and demand outlook is to look at the long-term trend line
of our TCV. We used to be in the $6.5 billion range eight quarters back,
whereas we are now well into $8 billion+ range currently. So that’s the context
of that $8.5 billion. It is not to say that $11.3 billion will immediately step down
to $8.5 billion.
I was saying that we have seen a steady expansion of our base TCV levels,
which is an indication of the robust demand environment and the relevance of
our services and market presence to the target customers that we have.
Apurva Prasad:
Just the second part of that, on the two mega deals and does that mean better
line of sight to replicate the $3.5 billion incremental next year?
Rajesh Gopinathan: That is a very leading question, which I shall skip.
Moderator:
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal
Financial Services. Please go ahead.
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Mukul Garg:
Just two questions from my side. The first one is on the pricing and its impact
on margins. You guys mentioned earlier on that you are seeing some impact
of pricing in part of your business. So, if you can zoom in a little bit on that
segment, is there a way to quantify the change of pricing which is happening
at this point of time versus maybe a year or two prior to this? And just moving
that forward, is that something which can help you mitigate the margin pressure
which is there? And can that be more of a H2 event or is that impact going to
flow through in FY 24?
Rajesh Gopinathan: Difficult to put a timeframe to it, but let me try and give you some color on
what’s happening on the pricing side. Typically, in renewals and other aspects
of ongoing relationships, there is a slight uptick in terms of the pricing that we
are seeing. It could manifest itself as COLA clauses being better enforceable,
or in terms of renewals at a slightly increased price points from customers with
whom where we have had a good relationship and also who have seen us
stand by them during the pandemic period. So, that’s the nature of the pricing
there.
Whereas if you look at fresh new deals that are coming in, the competitive
intensity is quite high and the price points there are reflective of the nature of
the work. If it is a very wide field, with lots of competition, the pricing reflects
that. So, there is no one single answer to it. It is more the smaller aspects of it
are where the slight uptick of pricing is happening. The cumulative impact of it
will take some time to come through.
For the full year, of course, gaining from the base effect of last year, we have
had a net improvement in realization. But for the quarter per se, actually the
realization has been flattish. So, as I said, the cumulative effect will take some
time for it to become a material impact.
Mukul Garg:
And the second question was on the net adds. You guys have done an
incredible job of adding over 100,000 employees this year. How should we look
at this given that you don’t share broad utilization levels? How much of that
adds this year was more to do with the future growth which you have visibility
on? And was there a cushion which was to kind of ease out the stressed deals
which saw very strong growth last year and hence got consumed there?
N.G. Subramaniam: Mukul, NGS here. Overall, we had about 100,000 people who were freshers
during the last financial year. Initially we thought that we would add about
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40,000, but then we remained agile and our hiring model allowed us to source
the required number of people at the right levels through the year.
Taking that into account, we are planning to do the same thing. We will start
thereabouts with 40,000 freshers for the target for of this year. But having said
that, I think our utilization levels, including the freshers has come down in this
quarter. So, that is an opportunity for us to improve the utilization in the coming
quarter as well as probably in H1 also.
We are also looking at other levers, right. The whole productivity will hopefully
improve in the coming quarters. Our approach to bringing people to work
should see a certain amount of better utilization and also, better ways of
structuring the teams as we move forward as well. All this should contribute to
better utilization and better overall realization, while we continue to look for the
right talent and majority of them will be organically grown as well.
The new organization structure and operating model that we have put in place,
also means that there are additional investments that we are making, and the
talent is aligned to that curated customer journey that we are putting in place.
So, at the entry level, the focus is more on the right amount of technology skills,
the process orientation, making sure that the rigor in delivery is in place and
the overall quality of experience is improved at the entry level.
While at the top of the business transformation growth, we look for talent
specifically contributing to the growth and transformation programs that we
look at, partly from the contextual master programs that we have and then
partly from the local market knowledge that we’ll be acquiring.
So, it’s a very well-rounded thinking process by which a good amount of talent
is sourced fresh, upskilled internally, as well as hired laterally and it aligns the
right team and putting together horses for courses or courses for horses as the
situation demands for it.
Moderator:
The next question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities.
Please go ahead.
Sandeep Shah:
Rajesh, just the first question is in terms of this new operating model. TCS is
always best known in terms of client mining efforts. So, whether this new
operating model will take into consideration in acceleration of a client mining
efforts and whether the variable incentives of the sales and the delivery and
the other subject matter experts will have a laser-sharp focus in terms of mining
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across all the buckets? So, how this will provide an incremental benefit to TCS?
Just that is what I wanted to understand.
Rajesh Gopinathan: Thanks. The model is more designed to ensure that the right talent in TCS is
brought to bear at the right stage of client relationship so that we can maximize
the value that we add to our customers. So, that’s the main focus.
More than incentivization, it is about choosing the right people and also setting
up their support structures appropriately, and investing in those aspects of the
engagement model, and also the distribution of people and customers and the
kind of concentration that we have of relationships. That’s the focus.
So, a), more than incentive, it is about finding the right people for the right roles
and structuring the roles in a more concentrated way; and b), it is about making
sure that we maximize the value that we add to our customers.
Sandeep Shah:
NGS in his comments has also said, while entering FY’23, we are more
confident versus FY’22. While what we foresee in FY’23 is there could be lot
many macro related issues. So, is it client discussion indicates that this time
the co-relation of the IT spend versus macro issue would no longer be that
direct and the IT spend may not get impacted despite the macro related issue
as a whole? So, just wanted to understand any client discussion which gives
you even concern in terms of reprioritization of spend, delay in terms of project
starts or ramp up as a whole?
N.G. Subramaniam: Sandeep, I mentioned that comment in the context of comparatively speaking
as we were last year and where we are this year. Comparatively speaking, I
think from our momentum that we see, the demand environment that we see
and the pipeline and the deals that we have contracted, all that when I compare
it, I think we are in a better wicket compared to what we were in the same time
last year. That is the context in which I made that statement.
Having said that, on the macro issues, there are many comments are being
made, economists, IMF has made a series of comments on this. World Health
Organization has made certain comments, the war situations are there. We are
tracking all of this and then we will have to stay agile and course correct
ourselves as we execute our operations, one.
Secondly, what we see is that, whether it is in good times or bad, technology
is the answer. The investment buckets might change from one to the other, but
the technology spend itself is likely to remain robust. That’s the way that we
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see things. That’s the way that we also try and measure the impact on
geopolitical risk and other macroeconomic indicators.
Sandeep Shah:
Just lastly bookkeeping. For these two large mega deals, is it possible to share
the tenure of these two deals? And also, in cost of revenue line, this time the
absolute travel cost has been one of the lowest in the fourth quarter of FY'22.
So, will that remain in this level because work from office is starting across
most of the vendors as a whole, so what is the reason for such a lower cost on
travel?
Rajesh Gopinathan:
I will answer the first part and then Samir will take the next one. Typically for
larger deals, the deal tenure is somewhere in the five to seven range and for
deals which are closer to $1 billion there upwards of seven years. Both these
deals are in the seven to 10-year kind of a range.
Samir Seksaria:
On travel costs, travel was sluggish in the first two months of the quarter, and
there was also moderation in visa cost during the quarter. As we have called
out, we expect discretionary expenses to increase, so to that extent, this is an
abnormality. We have been seeing travel expenses increasing through
previous quarters and that trend should continue.
Moderator:
The next question is from the line of Ravi Menon from Macquarie. Please go
ahead.
Ravi Menon:
Typically in Q3 you have furloughs and lower number of working days with a
lot of holidays and Q4 you really get the benefit of that despite fewer days in
the quarter. At this time, that absolute incremental revenue has declined
compared to what we had in Q3. So, what were the headwinds? And did we
not have any furloughs in Q3, usual seasonality, the focus on it like?
Samir Seksaria:
One thing to look at in Q3 is that Christmas was on a Sunday. So, technically
there was one more working day than usual. Furloughs did continue in Q3. But
if you look at it from a working days perspective, Q3 had one more day because
of the global holiday being on a weekend.
Ravi Menon:
And then in Europe, we had a slight revenue decline in absolute terms. So, I
think you mentioned in your press comment about the deal answer at
Postbank? Is there anything else, do you have any programs put on pause by
clients because of the war situation in Ukraine or anything else that you see as
temporary or is there anything specific that you’re concerned about?
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Rajesh Gopinathan: Ravi, you have got to see it in the perspective that Q3 had very strong numbers.
The current growth is off that base. It’s a normalization from the Q3 growth. In
Q3 we had a 6%-plus sequential growth in Europe. So, it’s in that perspective.
Ravi Menon:
In the first half of FY'22, the trainees you onboarded, I would assume have
been largely deployed if not wholly deployed. So, why is there a large gap
between the employee addition and revenue growth? Should we say that this
is just capacity that’s built up because of attrition and preparing for better
growth so that you’re not really short of people, are we just playing safe?
Rajesh Gopinathan:
If you are asking why is there a mismatch in terms of when there is employee
addition happens and where the revenue comes, we have been long-term
focused especially on our fresher hiring.
It’s a programmatic hiring approach that we have taken. We were one of the
few companies that hired through the pandemic, honored every offer that we
made and continued to hire through the pandemic. So, our approach to fresher
hiring has always been medium-term focused and EP hiring is the one that is
more short term one.
But short term side, as you can see from our subcontractor expenses, we are
anyway running very tight on that. So, the EP hiring continues, fresher hiring is
more medium to long term focused.
Moderator:
The next question is from the line of Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley.
Please go ahead.
Gaurav Rateria:
The first one is, just your comment around Europe. You talked about some re-
allocation and reorientation of technology budgets. Just trying to understand
how did this manifest in client behavior in terms of timing of deal closures or
decision-making cycle?
N.G. Subramaniam:
I think the re-allocation of budgets comment was made in the context of again,
Europe, right, where there are multiple scenarios are emerging there. In certain
verticals, sustainability is important, pretty much in across the client base that
we see. Most of them have made some very strong commitments on the
sustainability front and the goal front. From that perspective, one of the things
that happened is, every program that they are doing, there is a very strong
alignment to the sustainability goals and how the technology that they are
implementing is going to be contributing to their sustainability goals. To that
extent, some amount of reallocation takes place.
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The other thing is actually the war situation currently, means, should we really
look at it in the context of where we should invest or how we should do? And
as a conscious thing on the customers are asking us to see whether we could
actually execute it from our Eastern European development centers, because
that is the skill sets that are coming and then they are available. Number two
is that also, the least that we can do at this point in time is to be meaningful to
the communities in those countries. So, in that sense, some amount of
reallocation, rethinking in terms of how the technology can take place, how the
allocation of the technology, from where the spend has to take place. These
are things that have been deliberated.
Gaurav Rateria:
The second question is around margins. So, you talked about volatility in
margins in fiscal ’23. So, is there any threshold level below which you would
want margins to not go or the focus will be largely to fulfill the demand without
caring too much about the volatility in the near term?
Rajesh Gopinathan: We don’t have any specific floor or cap on the margin front. Our commentary
on margin has always been about where we think the overall opportunity is and
where we think we can stabilize it. But per se, as you said, we have never put
margin over given business or growth opportunity. But we stay very disciplined
in chasing growth and we prefer profitable growth over everything else.
Moderator:
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the
conference over to the management for the closing comments.
Rajesh Gopinathan: Perfect. Thank you. As I said, we had a strong well-rounded growth in Q4,
which helped us close FY 22 on a strong note, growing 16.8% in rupee terms
and 15.4% in constant currency terms and 15.9% in dollar terms.
Our margins continue to be industry leading.
The strong growth came from our customer-centric model, which visibly shows
in our clients metrics where we have had strong addition across all revenue
band buckets. We are now doubling down on that customer-centricity by rolling
out a new organization structure that will enable curated experiences for our
customers depending on what stage their relationship with TCS.
The strength of demand for our services showed through in an all-time high
order book during the quarter, even after excluding the two mega deals we won
in Q4.
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We have hired fresh talent in record numbers this year in India and in our major
markets, while taking tactical measures to retain our best talent in the midst of
an elevated churn across the industry.
Thank you all for joining us in this call today. Enjoy the rest of your evening or
day and do stay safe.
Moderator:
Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of TCS, that concludes
this conference call. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect
your lines.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Note:
This transcript has been edited for readability and does not purport to be a verbatim
record of the proceedings.
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