Persistent Concall Jan 2023
Persistent Concall Jan 2023
Persistent Concall Jan 2023
Dear Sir/Madam,
In continuation to the above-referred intimation and Pursuant to Regulation 30 of the SEBI (Listing
Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, please find attached the Transcript
of the investor/analyst call held on Thursday, January 19, 2023, for your information and records.
The transcript of the Analyst Call is also made available on the Company’s website
Thanking you,
Yours Sincerely,
For Persistent Systems Limited
Digitally signed by
Amit Amit Murari Atre
Murari Atre Date: 2023.01.24
18:52:14 +05'30'
Amit Atre
Company Secretary
ICSI Membership No.: A20507
Encl: A/a
Persistent Systems Limited, Bhageerath, 402 Senapati Bapat Road, Pune 411 016, Maharashtra, India
CIN - L72300PN1990PLCO56696
Tel: +91 (20) 670 30000 | Fax - +91 (20) 6703 0008 | E-mail - info@persistent.com | Website - www.persistent.com
Persistent Systems Limited
MANAGEMENT:
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Persistent Systems Limited
Operator: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Good day and welcome to the
Persistent Systems earning conference call for third quarter of financial
year 2023 ended December 31, 2022. We have with us today on the call,
Dr. Anand Deshpande, Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Sandeep
Kalra, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Sunil Sapre,
Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Saurabh Dwivedi, Head
of Investor Relations, and Mr. Amit Atre, Company Secretary. Please note,
all participants’ lines will be in listen-only mode and there will be an
opportunity for you to ask questions after management’s opening
remarks. Should you need any assistance during the conference call, please
raise hand from the participant tab on the screen. While asking questions,
request you to please identify yourself and your company. Please note, this
conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr.
Sandeep Kalra. Thank you and over to you, Sir.
Sandeep Kalra: Thank you, operator. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon to all
of you, depending on where you are joining from. I would like to start by
wishing everyone a very happy, healthy, and prosperous new year 2023
and I hope the new year has started well for all of you. With this, let me
come to the quarterly financials. We are happy to report yet another solid
growth quarter across all major business and financial metrics, despite a
dynamic and rapidly evolving macroeconomic environment.
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Persistent Systems Limited
Coming to the order book for the quarter, Q3 was a record high for us in
order of TCV order wins. The total contract value for the quarter came in
at $440.2 million, with new bookings TCV coming in at $239 million. This
implies a robust growth in TCV of 20% on quarter-on-quarter and 30%-plus
on year-on-year basis. The annual contract value component of this TCV is
of the order of $326.3 million, of which the new booking ACV component
contributed to $143.8 million. We've surpassed the $400 million-mark in
our TCV bookings for the first time, reflecting robust pipeline conversion.
Please note as always, these TCV-ACV numbers include all bookings small
and large, renewals as well as new bookings across existing and new
customers.
Coming to the client engagement buckets, let me give you some color on
the client engagement size and the behavior we saw in the last quarter.
Coming to the top two customers, our top customer contributed to
revenue decline in this quarter per the planned ramp down initiated on
some programs in the last quarter. We are hopeful of reversing this trend
and getting the top client back on the stable and growth trajectory over
the next several quarters. Revenue from our second-largest customer
declined slightly on account of seasonal furloughs that happen every year.
Outside of the top two customers, we saw a broad-based growth on our
other customers in top 50.
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Persistent Systems Limited
I'm pleased to note that in Q3 FY23, the top-50 customers other than the
top two contributed to a very healthy 7.7% sequential quarter-on-quarter
and 53.8% year-on-year growth. Also, it is very heartening to see the
progression of our clients across important thresholds, with two additional
customers moving in the greater than $30 million and three customers in
the $10 to 20 million revenue bracket. In terms of the geography breakup,
from a geographical perspective, we saw a 1.5% sequential growth in
North America market, 12% in Europe, and 10.4% in India. The lower
growth during the quarter in North America during the quarter was
predominantly on account of top customer decline and furloughs in couple
of other large customers, as spoken before.
Coming to the people front. In Q3, we are happy to share that as a result
of our significant investments in training our freshers over the past four to
six months, we were able to deploy about 600-plus freshers. Just to remind
everyone, we had brought on board 3,000-plus freshers in H1 of FY23. As
a result of this, we were able to reduce our dependence on lateral hires,
adding a net of 93 technical lateral hires while balancing our talent
pyramid. This was an important margin lever for us in Q3 and will continue
to provide us tailwinds on the margin front over the next several quarters.
We believe that the TTM attrition will continue to moderate going forward,
aided by better outcomes on our employee value-related interventions
and a general moderation of hiring across the sector.
Coming to planning and road map for our future - Building on our culture-
related initiatives, we did a two-week planning workshop in Poona and
Goa called The Persistent Huddle 2023 in which 300 of our global leaders
brainstormed about our FY24 plan as well as the $2 billion road map.
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Persistent Systems Limited
This further contributed to energizing the team and has brought clarity
about our goals and the journey to our next milestone. We plan on doing
an investor day in second-half of calendar 2023 to share more details on
our $2 billion road map with you.
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Persistent Systems Limited
take our score on this important metric up to 65 over the next three years.
Also, for the first time, we participated in the public disclosure category of
the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Now, I'll turn over the call to our CFO, Sunil Sapre to give a detailed color
commentary on quarterly financials and related matters. I'll come back
after Sunil's comment to give you some more details on key client wins,
analyst awards, and other recognitions for the quarter. Sunil, over to you.
Sunil Sapre: Thank you, Sandeep and good evening and good day to all. I wish you a
very happy new year and thank you for the time that you're spending with
us today. Sandeep has walked you through the market outlook and
business performance. I will take you through the details of financial
performance for the quarter ended December 31.
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Persistent Systems Limited
The revenue for the quarter at $264.4 million registered growth of 3.4%
quarter-on-quarter and 32.8% year-on-year. Within this revenue, the
services revenue grew by 3% quarter-on-quarter, while IP-led revenue
grew by 8.6%. You will notice that our IP revenue continued to grow this
quarter on the back of 18.1% QoQ growth last quarter. As you're all aware,
the quarter Q3 witnesses furloughs and lesser working days due to festival
season, due to which services revenue grew by 3% vis-à-vis 4.9% quarter-
on-quarter last quarter.
Our total revenue for first nine months stood at $761.4 million, with Y-o-Y
growth of 38.9% with services revenue registering growth of 47.3% and IP
revenue showing decline of 17.6%. You will recall that last year's nine
months included royalty revenue from one of the contracts that was
restructured at the end of Q3 of FY22 and was converted into a T&M
contract with a revised scope. Thus, IP revenue for nine months of this year
does not include any revenue from the restructured contract and the
revenue billed on T&M basis is included in services revenue.
Coming to segmental growth for the quarter, BFSI grew 2.6%, Healthcare
3.1%, and Technology companies grew 4.2% quarter-on-quarter. In
respect of linear revenue, the offshore linear revenue grew 3.3%
comprising of volume growth of 5% and billing rate decline of 1.6%. The
onsite linear revenue grew 2.5% on account of volume growth of 4% and
billing rate decline of 1.3%. The slight decline in the billing rate is also a
result of our presence in nearshore centers in Costa Rica and Mexico,
which get classified as onsite.
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Persistent Systems Limited
In terms of YTD nine months, EBIT margin stood at 14.8% as against 13.8%
for the corresponding period last year. Coming to items after EBIT, during
the quarter, we have reversed export incentives worth ₹297 million
relating to earlier periods of 2015-16 to 2017-18. The company believes
that its services are eligible for export incentives and the dispute is purely
an interpretation issue, given the highly technical nature of this matter.
With the intention of avoiding prolonged litigation and settling the dispute,
the company has requested the relevant authorities for settlement of the
case and has submitted an application before Settlement Commission on
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Persistent Systems Limited
The treasury income was ₹87 million as against ₹60.8 million mainly on
account of increased interest rates and treasury size. Forex gain was
₹105.4 million as against loss of ₹91.3 million in the previous quarter. Profit
before tax was ₹3,227.9 million at 14.9% as against 14.4% in the previous
quarter and so far as ETR is concerned, it was 26.3% as against 25.6% in
the previous quarter. With this, the PAT for the quarter was ₹2,379.5
million at 11% of revenue as against ₹2,200 million in the previous quarter
at 10.7% of revenue. For nine months, the PAT was ₹6,696 million as
against ₹4,894 million, reflecting growth of 36.8% and in terms of
percentage to revenue, PAT is 11% of revenue as compared to 12% in the
corresponding period of previous year.
EPS for the quarter was ₹31.9 as against ₹29.61 in the previous quarter.
The growth in EPS is 7.7%, while growth in the reported PAT was 8.2%
quarter-on-quarter. As you know, for purpose of EPS calculation, shares
held by ESOP trust are excluded.
Coming to some other items, firstly the DSO, which came in at 67 days as
against 60 days in the previous quarter. There are three key reasons for
this increase. Firstly, in case of certain customers, there was spillover of
payments to first week of January due to holidays, causing an impact of 2.5
days. In respect of certain IP deals we have in the Accelerite portfolio, we
have deferred credit arrangements with certain large enterprise
customers. This has an impact of 3.5 days on the DSO. While this will take
a few quarters before it starts getting normalized, these are with very good
customers of good credit quality.
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Persistent Systems Limited
Other than this, for certain customers who have December as the fiscal
year-end, the services for December also got converted into invoicing,
which would in normal course pass through unbilled stage for a month.
This is reflected in lower unbilled revenue and this had an impact of 1.1
days in billed DSO, while there is a decrease in unbilled DSO.
Next item on the operational CapEx for the quarter, was ₹292.4 million and
the cash on books is ₹16,907.9 million as compared to ₹15,719 million at
the end of last quarter. Forward contracts outstanding as at 31st December
was $214 million at an average rate of ₹81.55 per dollar.
Sandeep Kalra: Thank you, Sunil. I will now talk about the key deals for the Q3 quarter by
industry segments. Starting with Software, Hi-tech, and Emerging
industries, Persistent was chosen by a leader in online retail in the US to
set up a dedicated Global Technology Center across multiple technology
tracks including infrastructure and platforms, marketing technologies,
search and recommendation, and fintech and loyalty. This is one of the
largest deals in our recent history with a TCV of about $70 million over
three years and embodies the key tenants of our systematic large deal
program. This is a proactive deal with scope for further growth on account
of vendor consolidation. Cross-functional collaboration between the
various teams from acquired businesses was a key to winning this deal with
significant collaboration between our data and integration business as well
as Google business unit, since this online retailer has chosen Google Cloud
as their predominant cloud. This also entails cost optimization play,
leveraging globalization, and vendor consolidation as I mentioned earlier
of smaller vendors over time while driving enterprise digital
transformation at scale.
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Persistent Systems Limited
Persistent was chosen by a global technology leader that has some of the
most well-known brands used by millions of people around the world. We
would be partnering in the development of niche virtualization product of
the company. This is a double digit million deal spanning across three
years.
Moving on to the awards and recognitions for the quarter, Q3 saw us get
continued recognition from industry-leading analyst firms and
associations, to mention a few. Persistent was named as leader in Everest
Group Software Product Engineering Services Peak Matrix 2023. For the
10th consecutive year, Persistent was identified in the Leadership Position
in Zinnov Zones 2022 Engineering Research and Development Services
ratings. Persistent was named as a Leader in Agile Application
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Persistent Systems Limited
With this, I would like to conclude the prepared comments and would like
to request the operator to open the floor for questions. Operator, over to
you.
Operator: Thank you very much, Sir. We will now open the call for the Q&A session.
We will wait for a few minutes until the queue assembles. We request
participants to restrict to two questions please and then return to the
queue. For more questions, please raise your hand from the participant
tab on the screen to ask a question. First question is from Abhishek
Bhandari.
Abhishek Bhandari: Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. A happy new year to the
management and congrats on good result. Sandeep, I had two questions.
First, in the TV interview today in the morning you said the top client seems
to be bottoming out over next few quarters. That, coupled with the strong
tailwinds, should we assume that we should go back towards 4% to 6%
kind of growth what we were doing before Q3?
Sandeep Kalra: So, two parts to the answer. The first part about the top customer
bottoming out, it is pretty much bottomed out there may be a small bit of
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Persistent Systems Limited
decline maybe and we will try to avoid that in the next quarter and there
are some very good discussions, which may also over the next several
quarters bring that trajectory back to growth in the top customer as well.
So, that's the first part. Second, in terms of the growth, look, we don't give
forward-looking guidance, but the endeavor would be to reach whatever
percentages you said.
Abhishek Bhandari: Sandeep, the second question is on your medium-term margin guide or
your margin aspiration rather, where you said you want to lift the EBITDA
margin by almost 200 to 300 basis point over medium-term. So, if you
could clarify what does that medium-term mean and also what are the big
levers you have in terms of improving the margins significantly from here?
Thank you.
Sandeep Kalra: Sure. So, if you look at it when we talk about the medium-term, we're
talking about the next two to three years and if you look at our track record
over the last two to three years, every quarter we have attempted to
stabilize and improve the margins. So, our attempt would be to go up by
200 to 300 basis points over the next two to three years. Obviously, the
levers in that are right from the scale of revenue, as we scale the revenue,
some costs are not proportionately scaled with that. Second, if you look at
it, we have brought in freshers at scale, we have trained them, we are
deploying the freshers, and building our own talent pipeline for the longer
run, building our own talent rather than going out and hiring people from
the market. So, that would be the second piece of it. Third piece of it if you
look at it, if you look at our client mining efforts, so even in this quarter we
have moved from greater than $5 million customers being 30 last quarter
to 34 this quarter. So, that is the other part of it where we are trying to
bring more service lines into the same customer, leverage our SG&A much
more effectively. Last, but not the least, our ability to do larger deals,
longer term deals, it also has an annuity component built up, which also
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Persistent Systems Limited
reduces our start-stop effect of the bench that may be and so there is a
bunch of these and a few other operational things that we will do including
building more and more solutions and some amount of IP, not as in a
product-product, but IP that can make us better, faster, and more
profitable in implementation of services. So, hopefully that gives you a
color.
Abhishek Bhandari: Thank you, Sandeep, and you have a good 2023.
Operator: Thank you very much, Sir. The next question is from Mr. Bhavik Mehta.
Bhavik Mehta: Yes. So, couple of questions. Firstly, just on the margin bit again, you did
15.5% this quarter, and assumption is that without furlough you could
have even touched 16%. So for CY23-FY24, how should we look at margins,
where do you think is the sustainable level of margins given the growth
you're projecting. So that's one and second is on hiring. So, hiring has been
slowing down over the last couple of quarters. Obviously one way to look
at it is that you are increasing the fresher utilization and making them
billable, which helps, but given the kind of growth you see, given the dea
wins which you have, do you think you will have to start ramping up hiring
going ahead or is this the new normal of hiring and the focus will be on just
improving utilization further from hereon?
Sandeep Kalra: Sounds good. So, I'll briefly answer both of these. So, as far as the margin
is concerned, look, we have been working on improving our margin over
the last several years and we have made significant progress. Now, we will
endeavor to do incremental progress, but that will not be at the cost of
growth. So, we have to make sure that we have a pretty good growth even
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Persistent Systems Limited
So, there has been a significant investment right from hiring the people,
training the people. Obviously, we are intending to deploy them and the
whole attempt is to create a longer-term cycle where we not only for the
last year, this year also just to give you insights, we've already offered
1,200 freshers and this will come over the next several quarters and I'm
very proud to say, we are among the only companies in India today who
have hired 100% and given full credence to all the offers we have given
and onboarded all the people. So, from that perspective, rest assured, it is
not lost on us that the growth has to be the priority, but we have to build
our own talent for the longer run and look our engine. If it can hire 800
laterals to 1,200 to 1,500 laterals, we have that engine and we can activate
that any day if we need to hire more laterals and our focus for the next few
quarters first is to take the inventory and then we can keep bringing
whatever number of laterals we need to.
Bhavik Mehta: Okay. Got it. Thank you and congrats once again for another good quarter.
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Persistent Systems Limited
Operator: Thank you very much, Sir. The next question is from Mr. Manik Taneja.
Manik Taneja: Thank you once again for the opportunity and congratulations for the
resilient performance. Sandeep, I wanted to pick your brains around the
comment that you made around top customer growing going forward, so
this is a customer which in absolute terms of revenues has gone nowhere
for us. We've had some down years, last year it grew and this year once
again it has declined sharply. So, there is some element of the IP
restructuring that we did in this customer account, but if you could help us
understand what's happening from a services landscape at this customer,
that was question number one. The second thing is the industry essentially
has seen significant tailwinds from price increases over the last couple of
years. If I'm thinking now over the next 12 to 18 months timeframe, just
wanted to understand how do you see the situation play out? Yeah, thank
you.
Sandeep Kalra: Okay, let me take the second one first. It’s an easier question and I can
wrap it up quickly. So, little known fact, for the last 12-18 months we were
at it in terms of price increases. And look, nobody has a crystal ball. But,
when the inflation was so high, the customers were amenable before the
real cloud of macroeconomic, etc, started coming in. And thankfully, with
respect to our customer cooperating with us, we had done good amount
of price increases earlier itself. And that’s also in a way, to add to what I
said earlier, been a margin lever for us. So that has panned out well. I don’t
think the market would be very ripe for doing a lot or price increases in the
next 6-12 months, maybe things will change after that. So, we are well
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Persistent Systems Limited
Now, coming to the top customer, look, it was a very conscious decision,
as you know well. And for other investors on the call who don’t know,
there was a fairly large contract which we had with a top customer, which
was not very profitable for us, and we requested to kind of terminate it at
the culmination of 5-year period of the contract. So, that’s where it also
contributed to the top customer revenues coming down for us
significantly, to the extent of roughly about $25-30 million impact is just
because of that contract itself in terms of the decline.
Now, the top customer of ours has been, obviously they have seen a CEO
change, the company has done well over the last 12-18 months. If you look
at their results and performance, they are stabilizing and doing very well.
So, there are many discussions which are also aligned with their forward-
looking path that we have, and we are confident given our 18-plus years
of history with this customer and the strong relationship we have across
the leadership, that we should be able to go back in and grow over the next
several quarters. I’ll just leave it there with pride that our relationships are
fairly strong. Our revenues may have gone a bit sideways for certain
quarters. But as long as our relationship is strong, I’m confident our
relationship will lead to revenue growth as well.
Manik Taneja: Thank you and all the best for the future.
Operator: Thank you very much sir. The next question is from Mr. Abhimanyu
Kasliwal.
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Persistent Systems Limited
Abhimanyu Kasliwal: Good evening, sir. Thank you so much Sandeep ji. Congratulations for the
wonderful performance in this quarter. My question was regarding Other
Income. I mean, I’m not really speaking about operations, they’re going
brilliantly. But I’m curious that Other Income has jumped up this quarter
QoQ. Is this a sustainable increase? What does it consist of? Because, the
Other Income was a good percentage of the Net Profits, at least 10’ish or
slightly more. So, what would be your take on that.
Sunil Sapre: So, Abhimanyu, if you’re referring to Other Income the way it appears in
the newspaper advertisement, it has two components – one is the income
on surplus funds i.e. treasury income, and the other is the forex gain. So, if
you see the last quarter, what happened was, the appreciation in the dollar
that led to loss on hedges that we’d booked in the earlier year, whereas in
this quarter, the way hedges panned out, that loss was less, whereas the
actual gain on realisations, that when we collect the money from the
customers, that came in at the spot rate which at elevated to almost 82-
83 levels, as you know during this quarter. So, against a loss of 9 crores last
quarter in terms of forex loss, this quarter there is a gain of 10 crores. So,
that’s where you see almost a 20-crore swing and that’s what is leading to
that number that you’re referring to as jump in Other Income. I hope that
helps you get a perspective on that.
Operator: Thank you very much sir. The next question is from Mr. Vimal Gohil.
Vimal Gohil: Thank you for the opportunity, sir. My question on your acquisition has
already been answered, so thanks for that. Another question that I had
was on subcontracting costs. They’ve been unusually sticky despite the fact
that the company has made a lot of efforts on opening up on-shore
centres. So, I just wanted to get a sense on that. Plus, it was quite… I was
quite surprised to see that particular element of our subcontracting cost
not there, it did not have a mention in your margin levers. There probably
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Sunil Spare: I think what I would like to mention is, subcontracting costs for us have
been in the range of 12 to 14%. And the way it has happened is, if you look
at the furlough impact in this quarter, what happens is, you may have
subcontractors who are continuing on these engagements, and just the
fact that revenues are not there, and in terms of that, that is why it reflects
in higher percentage to revenue. In terms of absolute levels at which we
are operating with the subcontractors, yes, definitely there is a reason and
room to see how we can optimize this. But these are across geographies
and we will take the rightful approach to see how this can be consistently
reduced. So, it has to be sustainable and that’s where some of the
challenges in the midst of people’s willingness to move across zones,
within the US also, has been a challenge, and we have had to continue with
some subcontractors. Sandeep, if you want to add anything?
Vimal Goel: Sir, just on macros plus how we are sort of reacting to it, product ER&D is
relatively, does it seem to be more insulated in terms of how the macro is
panning out in the west? And the related question to that is, the reaction
from enterprises v/s ISVs. Enterprise product roadmap may have some
delays, while ISVs may continue to spend on their existing bread & butter
products, which will help us. So, if you could just take us through how will
both of these segments pan out for you, and how will it also impact our
TCV and ACV tailwinds going forward?
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Persistent Systems Limited
Sandeep Kalra: I’ll try and keep it brief, but please bear with me, because this is a very
philosophical and a bigger level question for us. So, if you look at the
enterprise side of the house, now there are multiple things that are
happening there. On one side, the enterprises are trying to conserve cash
while making sure that they are able to do the digital transformation that
they had started. So, a number of these exercises started about a year, 2
years back during the COVID period. So, they’re not going to be
immediately stopped or anything. So, they are trying to squeeze the
business-as-usual cost and still keep the transformation going.
Second part, when I talked about even, if you look at the biggest deal that
we announced, so what is happening there? People are continuing on the
transformation journey, but they are using more globalization. Earlier,
people were willing to pay anything to get cloud, data, AI kind of technical
talent here in the US. So, that is now moving, for saving cost, all of that will
move to offshore or a significant amount of that will move to offshore,
near shore and so on. What does that mean for the enterprises? It means
cost saving. What does it mean for people like us? It means more business.
Same way, if you look at it, if the enterprise spend is going to be slightly
squeezed, or squeezed in different forms and shapes, whether it is
transformation or BAU on software vendors, the software vendors’
revenue will go down. And we have talked about it on our earlier calls as
well. As far as the enterprise software companies are concerned, they go
by a rule of 40, which is basically your revenue growth and profitability
growth. As long as it’s more than 40, you are golden. That’s a very thumb
rule metric. Now, if the revenue growth is not going to happen because
enterprises will try and squeeze the product vendors, maybe they will
spend lesser for the next 6-12 months or more, the enterprise software
companies’ revenues will come down, and their imperatives for again,
optimizing their profits will go up. And if they have to continue to be
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competitive and they have to be on their roadmap, they need to work with
people like us and optimize their costs. And again, while they optimize,
there’s opportunity for us. So, we have to be clearly seeing, yeah there’s a
cloud called the macro, there’s a headwind, but there’s a tailwind, the
silver-lining where we can help, whether it is the enterprise or the
enterprise software companies, optimize while delivering to their goals.
I’m keeping it at a very high level because we could go on, on this topic for
long. But the headline news here is, if we are able to analyze the trends, if
we are able to work with the enterprises or with the enterprise software
companies, there’s enough for a company like Persistent to do, and we are
very differentiated as far as it comes to enterprise software and taking the
same tenets in terms of digital transformation to the enterprise. That
should hold us very well along with the acquisitions that we have done
over the last several quarters. Hopefully that answers.
Operator: Thank you very much sir. The next question is from Mr. Ravi Menon.
Ravi Menon: Thank you. I just want to congratulate you for a great show this quarter. I
wanted to ask you two things. One is on the enterprise side. You have
rightly said that you have seen some more move offshore for some of
these, but are people cutting back on any programs at all? Are they putting
some things in cold storage or shelving some of it when they are trying to
conserve cash? Are there any programs that we should think about as
discretionary at all, or have most of the cutbacks already happened as
people worried about recession even entering as they were going through
CY22?
Sandeep Kalra: So, Ravi look, even in the digital transformation programs, these are not
programs that are monolithic programs. Today everyone does these
programs in phases, it’s all based on agile development. So, people are
definitely prioritizing within digital transformation itself. If they had a plan
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of let’s say spending $100, they may spend let’s say $85. Part of it may be
functionality decrease, part of it may be more globalization and so on and
so forth. So, definitely I would be amiss if I was to say, no, everyone is doing
100% of the programs the way they were thought, 1 year, 2 years back.
There is a certain amount of rationalization that is happening there.
There’s a certain amount of support-related rationalization that is
happening, and that is happening even in the enterprise software side,
where products that are not necessarily the biggest margin earners, there
are certain things that are being reduced on those as well. So obviously,
whether it is transformation or business as usual, there is reprioritization,
reducing of dollars, and then within that dollars, seeing how much of that
dollar can be shaved off by doing more globalization and outsourcing to
people like us. So, all of that is in the play as we speak.
Ravi Menon: Thanks. And one follow up on the deal that you won with vendor
consolidation. Who are the vendors that are getting consolidated? Are
these local subcontracting outfits or people who are just skills providers
who have slightly higher billings rates and are just part of this move
offshore that you mentioned?
Sandeep Kalra: So, it is both. So, this deal, basically one of the largest system integrators
in India, one of the largest of our peers was also involved. So, part of the
work is moving away from them, part of the work is moving away from the
niche vendors here in the US. It’s a combination of both.
Operator: Thank you very much sir. The next question is from Mr. Mohit Jain.
Mohit Jain: Sir, I have 3 questions. One is, is there a difference that you guys are seeing
in say ACV v/s TCV? ACV growth in this quarter was slightly on the lower
side. Should we read it as an aberration or is it more like people are moving
towards higher TCV and lower ACV kind of a setup for next year? Second
was, I did not fully understand your remarks on receivable days, which is
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Sandeep Kalra: Sounds good. So, I’ll take the ACV-TCV question and I’ll have Sunil answer
the other two. So, on the ACV-TCV, I don’t think you should read anything
into it. The only thing, if I was you, I would read is, look, all of you want us
to do larger deals, annuity business and so on, and we are heads down on
doing longer-term deals. The more longer term deals we do, the TCV will
be much higher than the ACV, and that’s what is reflected in some of the
quarters where we have had better longer-term deal wins. ACV-wise, we
are comfortable with the ACV that came in; I don’t think there’s any worry
there or anything much to be read into that. Overall, it’s a healthy pipeline
conversion over time.
Sunil Sapre: Mohit, on the question on receivables, the situation is like this that, you
will see that out of the 3 items that I spoke about, the spillover of
collections and conversion of unbilled DSO into billed DSO, these are not
something that are recurring, and this is where we have the opportunity
to reduce the DSO. So, from a level of 67, in the near-term we would target
to be around 65. The reason for the slight increase is, as I mentioned about
the 3rd item which is deferred credit deals, where it will take some time
before they normalize and the repayments start coming in. So, they may
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take a little longer time to come off. So, the levels that we had seen earlier
of around 60 days, it will take a few quarters to get down to those levels. ,
And on the question on capex, see there are two aspects playing out. In
certain locations we have capex incurred on our own, and in certain
locations we have plug and play kind of facilities being rented out. So, the
fit-outs are done by the service provider, and that capex is not reflected in
our books. If you have anything else, you can connect offline. I don’t have
the exact details of that right away, but I can update you on that later.
Operator: Thank you very much sir. The next question is from Mr. Chirag Kachadia.
Sandeep Kalra: So, I’ll answer the first part quickly. The second is more philosophical and
we will park that question if we have time, because we only have 12
minutes and there’s a bunch of questions on the side as well. So, if you
look at the first part, the lessons learnt and so on. Look, when you build a
business, you are building a set of customers that you build over a period
of time. If you look at our client concentration, right from Q4 FY21, if I was
to give you a data point, our top 10 customers were 46.3% of our revenues.
As of this point in time, they are 35%. So, we have brought in far more
vibrance as we have gone along, and this is an ongoing exercise. And, if you
look at the number of customers in the greater than $5 million revenue
bucket, for the same period Q4 FY21, there were 17 customers in greater
than $5 million annual revenue. Today, we have doubled that to 34. So,
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there’s a lot of growth that is happening in logos, which are not among the
top few. So, if you look at my earlier comments, I’ve given the numbers of
the growth between the top 3 to top 50, and that’s a fairly good sequential
growth, whether it is on a QoQ basis or whether it is on a YoY basis. So
QoQ top 3 to 50 grew 7.7% and 53.8% on YoY basis. So, there’s lots that
going on and that’s how good businesses are built. So, we are comfortable,
and at the same time, we are comfortable that our top customer will also
start growing back over a period of time. So hopefully that answers.
On the budget question, we’ll just part it because there are many
questions on the side panel as well. Operator, if we can take some of the
questions that have come online and then go back to the queue, that
would also be good. So, let me answer a few other questions here and then
we’ll go back to the queue.
So, Abhishek, the attrition rate is stabilizing because, if you look at it, there
are multiple things panning out. One of the biggest things that is panning
out is, the macro part for some of the companies, obviously not every
company is growing at the same rate. So, for some of the companies they
may be company-specific, client-specific or they’re own growth-related
things and so on. So, the demand for talent in several buckets, it’s kind of
moderating. Now, is lower headcount addition a sign of weakness in
demand? For some sectors it may be, but for a company like ours, if you
look at our order win, it is at an all-time high. So, from our perspective, we
are not seeing a moderation in demand. But I can also tell you this - the
harder we work, the better the demand gets. And so, we are at it through
proactive proposals and so on. So, we don’t see right now at a company
level, lower headcount addition as a weakness; it is moderated between
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fresher deployment and laterals, and we have the engine to hire whatever
we need to hire over a period of time.
Now going back to the operator, we can take some more questions and
then we’ll come back to the queue here as well.
Operator: Thank you very much. The next question is from Mr. Vibhor Singhal.
Vibhor Singhal: Hi Sandeep. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on great
performance in a seasonally soft quarter. I had a couple of questions. One
is, of course, on the overall, you mentioned about the top client bottoming
out and probably even take up a growth trajectory going beyond. I just
wanted some clarity on the top BFSI client, where we had also probably
seen some kind of rundown. Is that also close to bottoming out, and do we
see that trajectory there as well? And overall, I just wanted to get your
perspective on these two sets of clients, specifically the top client, as you
mentioned, why it has bottomed out. What will our endeavour be going
forward? Do we see a percentage of its revenue come down over a period
of time, not necessarily because the client might de-grow, but because the
other parts of the company might grow stronger than the top client? Or,
do you think this top client could also start growing in a few quarters and
that is what we might be looking at?
Sandeep Kalra: So, a number of questions there. Let me just start by reverse order. As far
as the top client is concerned, our endeavour is to grow that top client. We
have fairly good relationships and we are confident we’ll turn it around
over the next several quarters in terms of bringing the growth back. Now,
the percentage part of it, so there was a time when this top customer used
to be literally 25% or more of our revenues. Today, with the diversification
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that we’ve seen and the overall growth that we have seen in our customer
base, for the last quarter, it was 7.4%. So, our endeavour would be to make
sure we grow the customer, we grow all other customers, and as someone
asked before this, so there is always prudence in having a set of client
buckets so that, there are times when different customers have different
priorities, we are not overly dependent on any one or the other. So
hopefully, that gives you the answer on the top client part. And if you don’t
mind, we’ll take your other questions in a little bit because there’s a queue
and there are only 6-7 minutes left. So, we’ll come back to your other
questions in a bit.
Operator: Thank you sir. The next question is from Mr. Nitin Padmanabhan.
Nitin Padmanabhan: Hi good evening, congrats on the quarter. I just wanted your thoughts on
Accelerite. How are you thinking about that business? It looks like there
are decent wins and all. So, I just wanted your thoughts on how that
business is evolving. And, obviously, with that business growing, obviously
it’s an additional margin lever. So, I wanted your thoughts there. The
second thing I wanted to understand was, from an overall business
perspective, this quarter obviously furloughs across the board. But on a
going forward basis, do you think most of the weakness is done with and
at least on a sequential basis, things should start improving, or are there
continued headwinds one should expect even on a sequential basis?
Sandeep Kalra: So, I’ll try and answer these questions in brief. So, as far as the Accelerite
business is concerned, for people on the call who are not familiar with
what Accelerite means for us, it’s basically the IP business that we have,
the product business that we have. Now, there is obviously growth in that
because we are able to give a roadmap to the customers using those
products and they are sticking more with us. And even as they grow, they
are doing their through ups, so we get a revenue stream out of that. We
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are also able to sell in a few of our services customers on these products
as a part of our solutions, etc; that’s are second stream. And third, we are
trying to repurpose the IP. So, there is definitely much more work going on
to see how we can maximise the return from each part of our business,
Accelerite being one of them as well.
Now, you talked about the furloughs, the weakness, etc. So, I’ll just give a
macro answer to that, being respective of time since there is only 5 mins
left in this call. So, if you look at it, are there going to be headwinds going
ahead there? There are definitely going to be headwinds going ahead.
There are headwinds even now, there were headwinds last quarter as well.
So, the way we are looking at it is, within these headwinds, there are
patterns. There’s a good intersection of Persistent capabilities and
strengths and revenue pools that are available in the market. So, if we can
figure out the silver-lining to the cloud of macro, and I’ve talked about it
earlier as well, whether it is the enterprise, whether it is the software
companies, I think there are deals to be had, which is a win-win for our
customers and for us. And thankfully, our capabilities are pretty
differentiated, especially on the digital transformation side, whether it is
doing product development to support that or taking those products and
doing professional services. So, look, there will be headwinds. Our task is
to make sure that within that headwinds, we are proactive and we are
growing to the best of our capabilities. So, I’ll just leave it there.
Operator: Thank you very much sir. The next question is from Madhu Babu.
Madhu Babu: Hi sir. So just on the portfolio, what percentage of the portfolio you see as
a higher risk because of macros, let’s say 15-20% of the portfolio which you
can assess internally? And second, even in a slowdown, can you see 3.5 -
4% kind of sequential growth can be maintained in the next 4-5 quarters?
Thanks.
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Sandeep Kalra: Look, we keep doing our portfolio-related analysis, etc. I can’t give you a
percentage of this is more prone to macro and this is not. All I can say is,
we are trying to be as close to our customers, trying to understand their
thought process of how they are looking at the macro, how they are
optimizing for macro, how we can help them? At times, even if it to
cannibalize our own revenue in the shorter run to be able to do more with
them in the longer run, we’ve even taken those steps. Now in terms of
growth, our endeavour will be to deliver somewhat what you said. All I can
commit to you and other investors here is, we are at it, we are proactively
working with our customers and will continue to grow in the top quartile
of the industry. If it is X, we’ll be at X + Delta X, whatever is that X as an
average in the industry.
Operator: Thank you very much. The next question is from Mr. Rishi Jhunjhunwala.
Rishi Jhunjhunwala: Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Sandeep, just one question on ACV-TCV.
So, in your experience in the past 3 years, have you seen any deviation of
what you announce as ACV versus what eventually ends up being in terms
of revenues? And the reason I also ask is, that even if you assume a 30%
kind of attrition in your existing revenue book, based on your past 12
months ACV when you should comfortably do more than 20% growth in
the next 12 months. I just wanted to understand whether either the
revenue conversion could potentially be different from what you initially
end up announcing as ACV, for any reason.
Sandeep Kalra: Right. So Rishi, very valid points. Yes, there is always a little bit of difference
that happens in the ACV we announce and the actual revenue realization,
and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for every company. Now when we book
a deal, there is a time to ramp up, and at times, that may get delayed a
little bit, at times, different program phases may get delayed a little bit.
We typically get about 6-8% as the impact of that, especially when the
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Operator: Thank you very much sir. The last question is from Mr. Anmol Garg.
Anmol Garg: Yeah hi, thanks for the opportunity, sir. Just one question on the Europe
part. We have seen very strong growth in Europe in this year as well as the
last year. So, what is the outlook over there going in the next year? And
particularly within the deal wins, do you think that we have enough deal
wins from the European side to grow the European revenue similar as the
company’s average revenue for the next year as well?
Sandeep Kalra: So in terms of the deal wins, some of the larger wins we announced over
the last several quarters were from Europe. So, from that perspective yes,
about a $100 million-plus TCV over the last 3 quarters to 4 quarters has
been won from Europe from big deals itself; forget the renewals and
anything else. So definitely, there is certain amount of focus that has come
in in Europe. We have invested in sales, sales leadership and otherwise as
well in the geography. We will have to be a little cautious about the macro,
how the Russia-Ukraine thing pans out. A lot of these things are also
dependent on that, because it has downstream impacts on gas and other
pricing in Europe, and the inflation and many other aspects. So, we are
watching it cautiously, but we are optimistic of having Europe grow at the
company average. I think we are at end of time, so Operator, if we can take
one last question, then we’ll stop here.
Operator: Thank you very much. The last question is from Mr. Sameer Dossani.
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Sameer Dossani: Any outlook on the second largest client, because that is one of the clients
that you highlighted. What is the outlook, and if you can share what has
been the journey over the last few quarters? And, do you think growth will
come back in this account? Thanks.
Sandeep Kalra: So, for the second largest customer, it has been a stable customer. Except
for the furloughs that were there in the last quarter, it has been a fairly
decent customer in terms of the revenue size, the engagement, the kind
of programs etc that we do. So, no concerns there for the time being.
Obviously, no one has seen the future, but good relationship, good thing
going from the last, I think we started the relationship in about 2010-2011
timeframe. So, it’s been a fairly long relationship at multiple levels,
multiple business units, fairly stable.
So, with that we will stop. Let me once again thank our 22,500-plus team
members, our customers, our partners and our investors, all of you for
your support in our growth journey. We remain optimistic in our prospects
for FY23 and beyond, even as we are very closely watching the
macroeconomic developments and staying close to our key customers. We
continue to aspire to maintain industry-leading revenue growth combined
with healthy levels of profitability. Thank you for spending time with us on
the call today. We wish you the best for the new year and we look forward
to connecting with you again in 3 months’ time to provide an update on
our ongoing process. Stay safe, stay healthy. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you very much to the Persistent management. Ladies and
gentlemen, on behalf of Persistent Systems Limited, that concludes today’s
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conference. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your
lines and exit the webinar.
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