Coforge Limited ($COFORGE)

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Coforge Limited Q4 FY '26 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the Coforge leadership team are Mr. Sudhir Singh, CEO; Mr. John Speight, President and Executive Director; Mr. Saurabh Goel, CFO; Mr. Lalit Wadhwa, CTO; and Mr. Vic Gupta, Head of AI Practice. Before we begin, please note that some of the statements made in today's discussion relating to the future should be construed as forward-looking statements and may involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the disclaimer to this effect in the company's Q4 FY 2026 earnings press release. With that, I now hand the call to Mr. Sudhir Singh. Over to you, sir.

Thank you, Emma. Good evening, and thank you for joining us today. Please allow me to start the call off today with a quick reflection. This month marks the beginning of my 10th year at Coforge. It will also mark the 10th year since John, Saurabh, Madan, Vic and I started the turnaround of Coforge. We were a $400 million firm when we started 9 years back. We hope to close this, the 10th year of our turnaround story, with the firm having grown almost 7x in just 10 years. The turnaround of Coforge has been driven by an execution intensity that is uniquely our own and also by an insatiable hunger to make a mark on the industry. Today, as we look at fiscal year '27 and beyond, that execution intensity remains undimmed. Our hunger for growth remains unquenched. Our margins are poised to take a big step up starting fiscal year '27, and we believe that our growth story is not even half done. During these last 9 years, we have, as a team, delivered a revenue CAGR over 9 years of 21.7%, an EBIT CAGR of 24.6%, a PAT CAGR of 24.1% and EPS CAGR of 22% and a free cash flow CAGR of 19%. That is over 9 years. There is no firm in our industry that can present metrics at that level for the extended 9 year period that we have. During these 9 years, there were periods when we made contrarian bets and shared positive contrarian growth outlook even when the macros were bleak on calls like these. We approved each one of those contrarian bets and backed each one of our guidance statements and made sure they came through on the basis of our subsequent performance. Illustratively, 5 years back, when COVID struck, we shared that despite our material exposure to the travel vertical, we would grow smartly in that year itself at a time when our peers were projecting declines on account of COVID, and we did grow, and handsomely at that. Again, 2 years back, on a call like this when we acquired Cigniti, there were concerns that a publicly listed testing services firm with a 12% EBITDA would kill the Coforge growth story. However, 2 years later today, that portfolio operates at a 19% EBITDA and the growth of the constituent clients that came into Coforge from Cigniti has exploded on the back of very effective cross-sell. The top 2 clients of Cigniti that offered USD 25 million to USD 30 million revenue per year when we acquired them 2 years back have scaled up to $75 million per year collectively. I say this because as you hear our commentary today and as you reflect on what we share by way of our expected performance trajectory going ahead, we would urge you to please remember that we are the team that has delivered unfailingly for 9 years on all plans that we have shared with you. We have every intention of coming through on all outlook commentary that we shared today with you on this call. With that preamble, I shall now cover our performance for quarter 4 and fiscal year '26. Last quarter, during our quarter 3 results call, I'd shared that we believe we were on course to close a very successful fiscal year '26 and that we were headed for an exceptional fiscal year '27. We are pleased to report that fiscal year '26 has panned out as indicated. And equally importantly, fiscal year '27 too is poised to deliver on that promise of exceptional performance. Moving on to the annual performance review. I'm pleased to share that FY '26 was a very successful year for the firm. The firm grew 29.2% in U.S. dollar terms. We signed 21 large deals through the year with 11 of them coming through in the second half of the year. The quality of our growth was remarkable in that all our key industry units grew strongly through the year, and the growth was led by our top 10 and top 20 client relationships. The reported EBIT of the firm grew by 370 bps in FY '26 over FY '25. Beyond these immediate metrics, the real highlight of fiscal year '26 has been the quiet yet vital work that was done at our back end to truly automate and AI enable our back-end processes and functions and to reshape and rightsize our delivery and G&A organizations. That quiet effort, unshared till now, has now structurally reset the margin profile of Coforge for fiscal year '27 and beyond. Coforge was always an industry leader on the revenue growth front, yet our EBITDA and EBIT numbers were middle of the pack. Starting in FY '27, that is this year itself, we believe we will, along with retaining revenue growth leadership, emerge as one of the highest EBITDA and EBIT performers across the mid-cap segment. Moving on to the quarterly performance review. The quarterly sequential CC growth, revenue growth of 2% in Q4 followed the sequential CC growth of 8%, 5.9% and 4.4% that we recorded between Q1 and Q3. The quarter 4 year-on-year growth rate was 21.2% in U.S. dollar terms. Free cash flow to PAT for the quarter came in at 110%, significantly ahead of our guidance of around 70% FCF on a sustained basis. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Q4 FY '26 EBIT of the firm is 16.6%, while it was 12.3% in the same quarter a year back. More detailed revenue commentary is as follows. In Q4 FY '26, the firm registered a sequential revenue growth of 2% in CC terms, 1.7% in U.S. dollar terms and 5.2% in INR terms. For the year, as noted earlier, we have grown 29.2% in dollar terms. Our ability to grow at this rate in a very challenging environment is driven by our ability to increase wallet share, particularly across our key accounts. An exceptional market-based industry solutioning and AI specialist product drives this by staying laser-focused on continually crafting business solution-led proactive deals and solutions. 21 large deals in FY '26 is reflective of the success of that engine and that product. In FY '26, in U.S. dollar terms, the healthcare and the hitech vertical grew by 98%. The travel vertical grew 62%. The BFS vertical grew 12%. Government outside India grew 17.5% and other emerging verticals, which include retail and manufacturing grew 27%. Our key accounts drove significant growth this fiscal, outpacing the broader business. The top 5 accounts of the firm grew 45.8% year-on-year in U.S. dollar terms and accounts ranked 6 through 10 grew at 30%. Collectively, these 10 accounts contributed 30.8% of the total revenue, and they grew at 40.4%. We would like you to note that the top 10 clients are spread across industries, 5 are BFS clients, 3 are travel clients, 1 is an insurance client and 1 is a public sector client. On an annual basis, and this is information that we are sharing starting this quarter, Coforge now has 1 client with revenue greater than $100 million. 3 clients with revenues between $50 million to $100 million, 9 clients with revenues between $20 million to $50 million, 23 clients with revenues between $10 million and $20 million, 42 clients with revenue between $5 million to $10 million and 167 with revenue between $1 million to $5 million. This client set, the addressable wallet is going to expand now that Encora integration is complete. Order intake, Q4 was a very strong quarter, both from an order intake and a large deal closure perspective. During the quarter, we signed 5 large deals. The total order intake during the quarter was USD 648 million. The executable order book, which reflects the total value of locked orders over the next 12 months stands at a record USD 1.75 billion. This number is 16.4% higher than at the same time last year. This number does not include the impact of framework agreements that we have already signed and are nearly assured revenue streams for FY '27 and beyond. We expect revenue realized in FY '27 from those signed framework agreements not accounted for in the signed order book to also be material. On the people front, our total headcount at the end of Q4 stood at 35,777. We saw a net people addition of 436 during the quarter. Utilization during the quarter stood at 82.5% and last 12 month attrition for the quarter remains one of the lowest in the industry at 10.8%. We remain, as always, one of the lowest attrition firms across the industry. With those remarks, I shall now hand over the call to our CFO, Mr. Saurabh Goel.

Thank you, Sudhir. I would like to begin with 2 accounting matters that had impact on the financials in the current quarter. Effective FY '26, realized gains and losses on cash flow hedges are reported under other income expense within ForEx gain loss. Earlier, they were adjusted to revenue. The change aligns our presentation with prior practice and isolates revenue and EBIT margin from currency fluctuation. Profit before tax and profit after tax are unchanged. All comparatives have been restated and reported revenue and EBIT margins reflect this change. The second accounting matter is related to reversal of deferred tax liability due to Cigniti merger. Following the effective implementation of the Cigniti amalgamation scheme in FY '26, deferred tax balances on the merged entity were remeasured. A deferred tax liability of approximately INR 181 crores has been reversed and credit to provision for tax in Q4 FY '26. This adjustment has resulted in an ETR, which is effective tax rate for the quarter of negative 7%. Normalized effective tax rate for the quarter is 22%. Reported effective tax rate for the year is 13%, while the normalized effective tax rate for the year is 23%. This is a noncash one-time benefit. Cash taxes paid in quarter 4 remains unchanged. Steady-state effective tax rate guidance for FY '27 is between 23% and 24%. Moving to margins. In FY '26, EBITDA expanded to INR 30,464 million, up 77% versus previous year. EBITDA margins came in at 18.6% compared to 14.3% a year ago. EBIT margins expanded EBIT expanded to INR 23,645 million, up 83% versus previous year. EBIT margin came in at 14.4% as compared to 10.7% a year ago. More important to note is Q4 exit rate of EBIT margins. EBIT margin came in at a record 16.6%, up 231 basis points quarter-on-quarter, driven by following tailwinds. SG&A leverage contributing 100 basis points. Foreign exchange fluctuation adding 80 bps. Direct cost reduction due to third-party cost added 50 basis points. Lower marketing spend added 40 basis points and lower ESOP cost added 20 basis points in the quarter. This was partially offset by the headwind related to provisions we made on account of certain doubtful debts, which is to the extent of 60 basis points. Moving to cash flows. FY '26 FCF of USD 135 million experienced a 68% Y-o-Y increase. In FY '25, this metric was USD 80 million. Please note that quarterly phasing of free cash flow was negative $21 million in quarter 1 to $37.5 million in quarter 2, followed by $45.7 million and $73.7 million. The Q4 FCF of $73.7 million marked the highest quarterly FCF in any quarter in the past. Net cash improved to USD 117 million from $93 million year-on-year despite a $36 million reduction in our working capital line and paying dividends of $61 million. Quarter 4 FCF to PAT ratio incorporates impact of DTL reversal resulting from the Cigniti merger. On a normalized basis, Q4 FCF to PAT is actually 156%. Looking ahead, we anticipate free cash flow to PAT to be maintained at 100% from fiscal year '27 onwards in contrast to our earlier guidance of 70% to 80%. In summary, fiscal year 2026 witnessed significant improvements in all the financial parameters. Revenue grew 36% in INR terms, EBITDA grew 77%, EBIT grew 83% and PAT grew 92% and FCF 68%, resulting in structural profitability and cash flow enhancements. With Q4 FY '26 EBITDA margins at 20.5% and EBIT margins at 16.6%, we are confident of achieving EBITDA margins of 20.5% to 21% in FY '27 on a consolidated basis, which is including Encora and EBIT margins of 16.5% to 17% on a standalone basis, that is excluding Encora and 15.5% on a consolidated basis, which is including Encora. This increase is coming largely on account of following factors: adoption of AI at scale, not just in delivery, but in functions, resulting in capping of G&A in absolute terms, G&A synergies of 20% to 25% in the combined business coming because of Encora acquisition and a planned closure of $20 million low-margin portfolio of India business. With this, I would like to hand over the call to Sudhir Singh.

Thank you, Saurabh. Mr. Lalit Wadhwa, Chief Technology Officer of Coforge, who has joined us as part of the Encora merger and I shall now share our plans around what we are doing to address the AI imperative. These are exciting times indeed. In our industry, labor as a default has been disrupted and is being replaced by AI native process redesign and domain specialized agents. We are moving from a world of IT delivery to one of business orchestration. And as this happens, firms who are engineering outcomes for customers are compounding while firms who continue to bill hours are getting left behind. Just like the advent of cloud created downstream opportunities for tech services, AI too is creating its own set of new value pools. As agentic systems rise, there is a growing need for tech firms who can help clients address the following asks at scale: one, a need for AI-ready data pipelines; two, agent life cycle management; and three, recurring high-margin managed services to monitor models and govern agents. We believe there are 6 moats that will define the model winning firms who will capture this massive, fast-growing AI opportunity. Coforge has not just identified the moats, but also built proprietary assets and differentiators to back each one of them. Moat number 1 is deep domain expertise. As firms upskill that staff on AI, the horizontal AI skills will commoditize quickly. In a world where everyone has access to Claude or GPT-5, where does the value sit? We believe it sits in the domain. Generative AI is a commodity. Applied AI is a clear differentiator. We are driving deep specific knowledge of business context, workflows, regulations and operating reality. With more than 150 scaled AI engagements completed across BFS, insurance, travel and healthcare, delivering production-grade outcomes, this is an agenda we are pushing. The second moat is strong client intimacy. AI will never commoditize relationships. Trust, context and proximity to decision-makers still shape demand. Clients value firms that understand their business, and that takes time to develop. And there is no better example, we think, of a firm that is closer to its clients than Coforge's. Moat number 3, reinvented delivery models are needed that orchestrate and monetize humans along with AI agents to deliver faster and more powerful outcomes. Our hybrid AI mod squads that we announced earlier, our unique delivery units comprising of AI agents and senior AI specialists, driving 40% to 50% faster time to market for clients. Moat number 4, agility at scale, which means being built for agility with AI-first offerings. It warrants internal adoption of agentic AI and a lean talent pool to adapt to each stage of AI evolution. Moat number 5, scalable AI platform with purpose-built agents, enterprise-grade governance. In this context, Coforge's One AI platform is a composable enterprise-grade agentic AI platform with 100-plus domain-specific solutions and 75-plus horizontal capabilities. And finally, moat number 6, an AI-enabled workforce with specialized engineers, forward deployed engineers and an agile management team. We have more than 30,000 AI-enabled trained workforce members, more than 11,000 data and AI practitioners, more than 600-plus advanced AI practitioners, all created using significant investments in AI upskilling. These assets have enabled us to move quickly to capture emerging opportunities across 5 growth vectors or value pools. Opportunity number 1, mod squad monetization. It helps redefine how clients buy from us. These are hybrid delivery pods that are priced on outcomes, not hours. Opportunity number 2, upstream advisory. Part of this is helping clients, enterprises plan multimodal AI strategy across LLM providers and AI tools without a vendor lock-in. Opportunity number 3, brownfield modernization. Accelerating legacy modernization via proprietary platforms such as Coforge's CodeInsightAI that are delivering more than $40 million plus in client savings as we speak. Opportunity number 4 is AI-led engineering transformation. This warrants improving productivity and quality while lowering costs. And in our case, is backed by Coforge's multilayer knowledge graphs, pre-built agents and enterprise-grade governance. And finally, opportunity number 5 is the agentic AI platform-related opportunity. Out here, we're redeploying engineers from routine work to agentic AI orchestration. This is the highest margin and the most strategically valuable work. Finally, we are eating our own cooking by embedding AI across both the SDLC and our internal operations. On the SDLC front, AI is deeply embedded into how we build and deliver. We are driving 25% to 35% productivity uplift in development, 40% to 60% in code generation and up to 10x faster modernization time lines. Internal operations and Saurabh talked about this, we are always client zero for our AI interventions. We are using AI to drive 40% to 60% lower effort spent on financial analysis and 30% to 40% lower screening cost for recruitment. The market is clearly recognizing our momentum on AI. We have received over 25 AI recognitions from leading analyst firms, including 7 leader positions from firms such as Everest, HFS, Constellation Research, ISG and Avasant. With that, I will now hand over to our CTO, Mr. Lalit Wadhwa, to provide further nuances of how we understand and are approaching the AI opportunity.

Sudhir, thank you very much. Most enterprise AI pilots never reach production. The gap is not just the model, it is the surrounding architecture and the way the work gets delivered. Pilots run in controlled conditions that mask the structural issues production really exposes. We have closed this gap with 2 things built together. Number one, a reference architecture designed for production rate behavior; and number two, a delivery model that leads with business outcomes. Our reference architecture enforces deterministic guardrails around probabilistic LLM outputs, solving the 2 failure moats that trap clients in pilots, hallucinated domain logic and lost agent coherence in long-running processes. This architecture, the reference architecture has 3 layers. The top layer is called the business architecture layer, and it consists of business goals, high-impact use cases and organizational change management or the OCM led operating model redesign. The middle layer is the decisioning engine or the decisioning atlas, which is a differentiated proprietary asset that enforces domain-specific reasoning change with ontologies and coding business entities, a knowledge graph mapping cross-system compliance hierarchies and a temporal context that maintains state coherence across multistep agentic workflows. And then finally, the bottom layer is a composable AI backbone swappable with hyperscalers compute or a sovereign AI cloud or any model provider. It also contains an AI gateway used for model routing, model context protocol that's called as the MCP gateway, TokenOps and the ability to do canary releases in AI deployments. We have operationalized this reference architecture with our proprietary AI mod squads and the forward deployed engineers also called as the FDEs. In mod squads, we implement agent harnesses for long-running durable agents. The harness or the scaffolding has a Ralph loop with planner, generator and evaluator agents all tied together with warrants or contracts and anti-leniency or adversarial patterns by design to ensure that agents do not go off the rails. A governance protocol for human-in-the-loop checkpoints is implemented with templates, registration, versioning and life cycle management of the 11 -- sorry, 110 agent archetypes that we have. Now let me contextualize the above 2 key ingredients with brief case studies of systems in production. Number one, for a large Tier 1 bank, we executed an AI-led COBOL to Java 21 for this modernization of a module with 11,000 lines of mainframe COBOL code, which also had copybooks, VSAM and the similar dependencies in half the time that the client gave us. Our highly specialized decomposition agents, reverse engineered legacy structure, legacy logic and the intent directly from the source artifacts. Our forward deployed engineer pod, which consisted of 1 senior FDE and 2 junior consultants along with the coding agents generated production-grade code into a hexagonal architecture with non-blocking reactive I/O, JWT authentication, open telemetry, distributed tracing and container native deployment. In the second example, a large group insurance benefits provider deployed our architecture on Azure with TrustAI, enforcing responsible AI guardrails at inference time, Model Garden extracting multi-LLM routing and enterprise retrieval augmented generation or RAG, services orchestrating retrieval across multiple vector databases using a combination of BM25 algorithm and the semantic search. The platform enforces governance as code, automated security policies, token-level FinOps and operational kill switches across LLM access, agent orchestration, vector databases and CI/CD pipelines. Combination of FinOps, governance and increased throughput resulted in productivity benefits of 40% and velocity gains of 50%. So to summarize, the path from pilot to production runs through architecture and delivery, not through model selection. The 3-layer reference architecture and the mod squad delivery model that you just heard of are the 2 key ingredients that close the pilot to the production gap and both of now are now proven in production at enterprise scale. With that, back to you, Sudhir.

Thank you, Lalit. And the final section, the outlook section, ladies, gentlemen. And before we do that, before we share our outlook, we would like to offer our views around the recent commentary around our industry. We believe that the true cost of AI code is an important concept to be understood in the context of the evolving AI landscape. The deflationary argument assumes code generation is the entire job. It is not. AI-generated code is cheap to build, but it is expensive to own, it is expensive to secure, and it is expensive to maintain. Just like cloud migration, agent AI will create a massive managed services layer. And once these systems are in production, someone has to monitor the models, retrain the agents and ensure governance. That is a recurring high-margin revenue stream for firms that can seize it. For Coforge, the demand tailwind is structural and pure. We were built for agility. We have no bloated delivery pyramid to manage. Every AI advancement accelerates our growth. We are positioned for the near-term modernization search. We are positioned for the medium-term agent deployment wave. And finally, for the long-term expansion of the global technology market. All 3 phases, ladies, gentlemen, play to our strengths. We shall lean on our exceptional record of creating value through acquisitions, which in turn rides on an execution intensity that is uniquely our own. SLK is an example. Cigniti is an example, and Encora will be the defining example. We plan to compound on our success focusing on 4 key priorities: number one, building pipeline momentum in AI transformations across our top verticals; number two, expanding our AI client base rapidly through both hunting and farming; number three, scaling vertical agentic workflows in verticals like banking, insurance and airlines; and number -- finally, number four, continuing to invest in talent, growing our specialized pool of FDEs while upskilling 100% of our workforce in AI. To conclude, fiscal year '27 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for Coforge despite the significant AI-driven flux. We believe revenue growth will be robust. We are confident of achieving an EBITDA margin of 20.5% to 21% in fiscal year '27 on a consolidated basis. EBIT margins are expected to be in the range of 16.5% to 17% on a standalone basis and 15.5% on a consolidated basis. We believe FCF to PAT metrics going forward will be 100% plus. That concludes our prepared [indiscernible]

[Operator Instructions] We take the first question from Abhishek Pathak of Motilal.

Team, am I audible?

Yes, sir.

Congrats on a good quarter. So a couple of questions. Firstly, if I apply a conservative revenue conversion multiple to your 12 month forward order book, it does point to a very kind of punchy FY '27 growth guidance to start with. On top of that, you've mentioned that there's still a few sort of deals that are kind of waiting to be incorporated into it. So just trying to understand, does the previous conversion relationship hold? And how does that play with the current geopolitical market or sort of the whole AI anxiety around it? And can we build in that growth rate, which kind of implies almost 18%, 19% organic growth ramp for FY '27? That's the first question. The second question is...

Abhishek, can you hear us?

Yes.

Yes. Abhishek, why don't you repeat your question? There's some issue with the Internet, so we were not able to hear you.

Okay. Am I audible now?

Yes, you are. Yes.

Yes. So I was saying if I were to apply a conservative revenue conversion multiple to your 12 month forward executable order book, I arrive at a very, very punchy FY '27 growth number of almost 18%, 19%. So trying to understand sort of does the previous sort of 1.3, 1.4 multiple to your 12 month order book still hold? Should we assume a higher conversion rate, lower conversion rate depending on the global macros or the AI deflation, et cetera, et cetera? So that's the first question. And the second question is sort of how much of the EBIT margin sort of upgrade is kind of down to sort of AI usage internally? And how much of it is down to, let's say, pricing and sort of getting into more agentified solutions that can lead to better pricing, so to speak? And lastly, very curious despite sort of on the hedge front, on the hedge book reclassification side, sort of what prompted that change? And any sort of guidance on that would be helpful.

All right. Thank you for the question, Abhishek. I'm going to request Saurabh to take the hedge question towards the end. As far as revenue is concerned, Abhishek, last year when we started off the year, we had indicated that we would deliver robust growth. The intent always is to grow as much as possible, and that's how we landed up at 29.2% USD growth. This year, again, the intent is to deliver a robust growth, but the intent is equally not to classify that or to offer hard numbers around it, which you well know. The environment is challenging and yet the confidence is high that we should be able to deliver industry-leading growth. And I'll leave it there. As far as the EBIT is concerned, we believe the EBIT reset in quarter 4 has been a structural reset. It has come off the back of the automation and AI-led interventions. Second, it has come largely off the back of a deeply held conviction that in an AI-infused era, our G&A costs have in absolute terms to be held constant. And it is AI-based interventions that are allowing us to do it. Saurabh, number three.

Yes. So Abhishek, on the hedge front, we were anyways working with our auditors. I think we thought it is better to do it towards the year-end wherein you look at this change. And so that at least the reporting gets aligned more to market peers, and it was more around that rather than anything else. And just to mention that the -- if you add back the hedge losses against to revenue in the current quarter, the EBIT margins were 15.2% as against our guide of 15%. So we did better off than even if the hedge losses were being reported where they were being reported earlier. So the improvement that has come on the margins in the current quarter is operational. And that's why we believe that going forward, we'll be able to not only sustain but kind of improve on in FY '27.

We take the next question from Sulabh Govila of Morgan Stanley.

Thanks for the detailed presentation. So I just had a couple of questions. So first is on the revenue growth. So last year -- when we entered the last year, we had a tailwind of the mega deal, which we had won in the month of March. And this year, given that we do not have a tailwind of that level, how should we expect the growth to pan out, particularly from a perspective of the cadence given that 1H was quite strong last year versus the 2H. So how do you think about -- not from a number perspective, from a cadence perspective, how do you expect the 1H versus 2H in this year? And if you could also provide some color on the framework agreements that you talked about, are they different versus the usual? And then I have a second question after that.

Right. You're absolutely right about your observation around the fact that we had the $1.56 billion tailwind that we had. This year, we believe the tailwind comes from framework agreements that we have signed and not recognized under the order executable that we've shared with you. These are agreements where the MSA does not spell out a specific amount, and hence, we do not add that to the order executable number. We've already signed a material framework engagement. We think we will in reasonably short order, sign bigger framework agreements. The pipeline closure there is in its near final stages. So that's how we see this. A lot of our confidence around revenue growth also comes not just from order executable, but how balanced the portfolio is. At this point in time, whether it is travel, whether it is healthcare, whether it is banking, insurance, we feel good about all of them. So we're not hitching our wagon to -- I mean, to one star. The entire constellation seems to be moving in the right direction from our point of view. Any other questions?

Understood. Just second question for Saurabh on the free cash flow. So Saurabh, just trying to understand this change of 60% to 70% going to 100%, what are the specific drivers to that? I'm sorry if I missed that earlier.

So see, we had earlier last year mentioned that we'll start -- and this was starting end of quarter 1 or beginning of quarter 2 when we said we'll maintain 70% to 80% FCF to PAT. But I guess the rigor that we have brought in within the organization in terms of the way collections are being followed, the way payables are being managed and the way contracts are being structured, we believe that 100% is the bare minimum FCF to PAT we'll deliver in FY '27, along with the significant step-up in the profitability that we mentioned in our prepared remarks.

We take our next question from Vibhor Singhal of Nuvama Equities.

Congrats Sudhir, Saurabh and team for the solid performance again. A couple of questions from my side. Sudhir, on the entire AI opportunity, you mentioned about the fact that while the AI code might be easy, it might be cheaper to write, but it is much more expensive to maintain and implement and basically overall integrate into the system of the existing companies. So from a broader industry point of view, I know Coforge has been the growth leader and will probably continue to be. But from an industry perspective, do you believe that this AI opportunity will actually lead to an overall expansion for the industry also? So let's say, the -- in the IT industry today is around $250 billion. Will we actually see this much bigger than what $250 billion today is, let's say, 2 or 3 or 4 years down the line? And a related question to that is, if you go back to the last cycle, which was the digital and the cloud cycle, large part of that was -- of that opportunity was initially captured by the Tier 1 players because the Tier 2 players were quite small at that point of time. Do you believe that in this cycle, because those mid-tier players in which we basically classify ourselves and our peers as well because we've now reached the size and the capabilities and all, do you believe the winners or, let's say, the beneficiaries of this cycle could actually be different than what we were in the last cycle?

So the AI opportunity that we see is multifold, and I'm going to request the Head of our AI practice, Mr. Vic Gupta also to add on to what I chime in with. As we've said, we are seeing immediately a very, very significant near-term modernization surge using AI technologies. That is real, that is now. There is one that is building up very strongly, which is the whole agent deployment wave. Firms that ride those waves are firms that will continue to do well. It's difficult for me to talk about whether the Indian IT industry will do well or not, but the tech services industry perforce has to do well. There is a clear need for AI-ready data pipelines. There is clear need for service providers that can do agent life cycle management. There is a clear need for service players that can do recurring high managed, high-margin managed services to monitor models and to govern agents. Vic, would you like to add more color to AI demand?

Sure. Thanks, Sudhir. I think if you look at the ecosystem, we find, at least in our client base, there's a lot of application entanglement, a lot of opportunities around brownfield migrations of the applications to modernize systems and to agentic systems. I think no Fortune 1000 company has no integration problems. Every one of them has an integration problem. They need to identify their workflows, but they need to integrate with their existing systems, existing system of records, systems of engagement and systems of interaction. We also feel that responsible or governance of AI is a nonnegotiable for regulated industries which we operate in. Each one of them offers us as a value pool that brings us closer to our clients and delivers value to them. We feel for us, we are faster to execute, nimble to change. And as Sudhir mentioned earlier, client intimacy is an important aspect for our moat. With that, we feel that there is great opportunities around the brownfield modernization and migration and agentic areas. Back to you, Sudhir.

Vibhor, thank you for the question. Do you have anything else for us?

Yes. Just one more question from me, and then I'll probably have couple of bookkeeping for Saurabh. From a near-term perspective, Sudhir, just wanted to pick your brain that travel vertical has been a very strong force for us. And given the Gulf war that is going on right now, given where crude is, do you foresee a headwind in that vertical in the immediate future? Have any client conversations started around that and the airlines specifically have started talking about pulling -- temporarily pulling back their expense or anything on that? Any color on that would be really helpful.

At this point in time, Vibhor, from our perspective, the travel vertical continues even in the short-term to do really well. We saw a press report yesterday, which talked about the impact of Spirit Airlines on Coforge. We just want to reiterate the impact is negligible to none. The budgeted revenue from that airline was about 10 bps for fiscal year '27. So that -- near-term, the travel business is on the up and up. Saurabh talked about earlier in his commentary about the fact that there is a low-margin portfolio in India that we will discontinue immediately and the negative impact of that will flow into Q1. Despite that, that's a significant portfolio. We expect to be flattish in Q1 and to be on a very fast growth trajectory from Q2 onwards. But travel, healthcare, banking, insurance, public sector and even hitech, the new vertical we've started should do extremely well in FY '27.

Got it. Just 1 or 2 bookkeeping questions for Saurabh. Saurabh since Sudhir mentioned about that basically discontinuing the India business operation. Could you quantify what would be basically amount of that business, which we are intending to discontinue from Q1?

So it should have an impact of roughly $15 million to $20 million in pass-through in quarter 1 itself.

Got it. So revenue for Q1 from whatever we are expecting should be down by $15 million, $20 million because of this discontinuation of business operations.

Because of India business, but the other deals that we had signed in the current year and the order book that we have will still make up for it and probably nullify the impact of this downfall.

Got it. But net-net, we are expecting a flattish quarter next quarter.

Yes.

Is that on a Q-on-Q basis.

On a Q-on-Q basis, on a reported front.

On a reported front. Got it. Just last question from my side. There is a 150 basis point of margin gap that we are talking about in FY '27 between our standalone and our consol margins. That I would assume will be because of the amortization of the...

You're absolutely right. It's because of amortization. Otherwise, we feel very good about hitting maybe 16.5% to 17-odd percent EBIT margins if there was no amortization.

And what is the amortization that we are looking at on an annual basis in terms of absolute dollars or rupee amount?

Roughly $40 million a year.

We take the next question from Dipesh Mehta of Emkay Global.

A couple of questions. First, just want to understand what will be the hedge losses sitting in OCI considering the way we now change the accounting practice. If you can provide some sense on it, what would be the OCI number? Second yes, sorry.

So Dipesh, number one, the OCI won't change. I think it's just that the hedge loss in the other income will be INR 164 crores, which is already there as part of fact sheet.

No, I understand, but what is the number? I understand it will be...

INR 164 crores. INR 164 crores. Sorry, INR 164 crores for the year, INR 70 crores for the quarter.

No, my question is what is the balance sheet number, considering the whatever hedge position we might be having at the end of the quarter?

I'll come back to you on that. I'll come back to you on that.

Okay. And the second question, which I want the framework agreement. How one should understand that to convert into order book in coming quarters, whether it will be very gradual conversion, which will not have a much impact on order book? Or you expect some of it to be a relatively large deal kind of thing. If you can give some sense how it is different than usual and whether this is something different than, let's say, 12, 18 months kind of the way deal used to get structured because I'm not very clear on that part. And second question on the BFS. BFS relatively remained softer than, let's say, company average in '26. Even in quarter 4, it is relatively softer. If you can provide some sense how one should expect BFS growth trajectory? And what are the puts and takes in terms of some of the demand drivers playing out there?

I'm going to request our President, Mr. John Speight, to address the framework question because that demand comes from the U.K. public sector, and that's a business that he shepherds.

Thank you, Sudhir. Yes. It's not your atypical framework deal in the mutual state. This is a typical way that the U.K. public sector business works. You'll have seen the press that we were awarded in Q4 $150 million-plus deal in the U.K. public sector, it's in the press. That is a sole award to Coforge structured over 5 years and the expected run rate as a base is sort of $4 million to $5 million a quarter. And it's basically -- what happens during the quarter is it's multiple TSRs or SOWs against that award purely to Coforge.

As far as the BFS question is concerned, Dipesh, we see structural demand drivers ahead of us. BFS in our case, came in at 12%. In relative terms, it was low, but I guess by -- in absolute terms, that was still a solid performance in a year like this. We expect performance around BFS to improve in FY '27 over FY '26.

We move to our next question from Ravi Menon of Axis Capital.

Sudhir, while I appreciate the long-term bullish commentary on AI demand and thanks for the really detailed remarks on that. Just to understand if there will be some near-term headwinds, especially in the product engineering side more with Encora than for the Coforge portfolio. But then some of the smaller, let's say, SaaS companies perhaps, would we see some revenue headwinds near-term even if we are being very early to the game in adopting AI for coding, we will win market share that offsets it longer-term. But near-term, could we see some pressures.

Ravi, thanks for the question. The answer is no. The Hitech business of Encora that we've taken over is under a new leader based out of the -- out of a new office that we were planning for and have already established and is functioning. We expect the Hitech business, which is where this was most likely to start in Q1 itself start growing and grow handsomely through the fiscal year '27.

Great. Saurabh, the FCF conversion, rough math indicates that EBITDA to -- EBITDA conversion will be about 60% or north of that given you're saying more than 100% conversion. That's pretty good, but still a little lower than, I'd say, the best-in-class, right? What do you think we need to do to move towards best-in-class?

So Ravi, I think it's a step up that we're doing from where we were, whether it is margins or free cash flow. And I guess it's the investments that we have been making in our client relationships and in our business because of which in the past, whatever investments we made, one can see results in whether it's profitability and cash flow. I think another couple of more years and then you can see that this will start moving towards 110%, 120-odd percent. But I guess it's a gradual move that we're making from not focusing on FCF to PAT to giving a guidance of 70%, 80%, delivering on to that to moving to 100% and then we look at how next year goes by and probably then start upping it up.

And one more question on the ESOP side. How much should that be next year as a proportion of overall compensation or as a proportion of revenue?

It will stay where it is. I mean 0.8%, 0.9% is where it will stay. It's not going to go up or it's not significantly going to go down. I think ESOP cost, we had already mentioned that when we signed up, when the new plan was rolled out, we were close to 2-odd percent, and it's come down gradually and will stay where it is, 0.7%, 0.8-odd percent.

Right. So you're not envisaging that to move up even with new leaders from Encora being on.

No, we're not expecting that to go up.

Our next question is from Sandeep Shah of Equirus Securities.

Congrats on a good executive. Just Sudhir wanted to understand relating to workflow deal -- framework deal from the U.K. government. So is it fair to assume the potential which we may consider in our budget being $150 million TCV with 5 year what John Speight has disclosed and that $4 million to $6 million additional revenue start flowing from 1Q itself?

Yes. The revenue, as John said, is going to start flowing from quarter 1 itself. We believe the potential -- the $150 million deal is already signed.

That's the award.

Yes, that's awarded. But John has strong conviction, and I'll let you speak about the future as well, more deals in the pipeline.

Yes. I mean we're very well placed in the U.K. public sector space. We've had significant successes in engagements. You've seen one in Scotland not long ago. It's been in the press about the rollout for the 111 services there. So our reputation across the public sector is very high. And we have a number of opportunities at the moment, many of them in the $10 million to $100 million size.

So that's only -- yes, so that $150 million is signed, and there are others that we think are locked and loaded, and we will be awarded those as well in addition to what's signed.

Yes. And this would be again in U.K. public sector.

Yes.

I mean, as I said earlier, as John has confirmed in U.K. public sector plus the momentum across every vertical at this point in time, healthcare, which, as you saw, grew 98%. Travel, where the secular tailwinds around one order, one offer, airport reconstruction as retail malls are secular tailwinds. They will not fade away despite what is happening, banking insurance is very, very strong.

So Sudhir, are you trying to say framework deal would be not just restricted to U.K., it could be in other sectors also?

No. Framework deals only come from U.K. public sector in our case.

Okay. And just some clarity, there is -- this is for Saurabh. The CapEx looks like there is an inflow in the cash flow statement. What has led to that? And second, the discontinued business, $15 million to $20 million run rate is on the quarterly basis or on a yearly basis?

So 2 parts. So one, the cash flow positive inflow that you have seen is because of the part of the assets, which were pertaining to the AI-led data center that we had built up in quarter 1. So part of those assets have been sold. They've been bought back by the client. So because of which there is an immediate inflow that has come to us during the quarter. I didn't get the second part of the question.

India discontinued business $15 million, $20 million, is it a quarterly run rate or a yearly run rate?

It was the quarterly run rate for last couple of quarters, and we are now going to close that and not sign up such deals and which this business had generated $40 million, $45 million last year, out of which $40 million came in over the last 2 quarters.

And we can afford to do that, just to make sure that if we offer further color on this, we can afford to do that given the confidence that we have in our revenue pipeline right now. And second, the fact that we think we will structurally and permanently reset the margin to the levels that Saurabh talked about. If we were stressed on revenues, if we were not confident of the materiality and if we weren't convinced around revenue pipeline, we could not have pulled the trigger, but we have because -- every business is firing. We feel very good about revenue growth in FY '27 and also because this would be another lever to make sure that a business that delivered 14.4% reported EBIT in FY '26 will on a standalone basis jump to 16.5% to 17%.

Yes. Got it. And just the last question, Saurabh, on the minority interest in this quarter, there is a quantum decline. Is it fair to assume you have already taken a 100% stake effective FY '26 and on the minority, while charge on the P&L still reflects a bigger charge. So is it fair to assume this entry could have happened at the end of the financial year, which is 31st March 2026?

So going forward, you will see that minority interest will come down from INR 53 crores, INR 54 crores in 1 quarter to almost like INR 9-odd crores. So the reduction in minority interest is yet to happen. It will happen from quarter 1 onwards because the share allotment is happening, the record date for the share allotment is 16th of May. And hence, the minority interest is being carried in the P&L up till that time.

Okay. But in 31st March, it shows INR 143 crores versus 31st December 2025, it shows upwards of INR 2,000 crores.

We are looking at that in the balance sheet. If you look at the P&L, the minority interest is INR 539 crores because the DTL reversal has happened because the deferred tax liability reversal has happened. If you look at the P&L, the minority interest is INR 54 crores in quarter 4, which will come down to INR 9-odd crores, which will give upside from a profit after tax perspective, but the number of shares will also go up when the allotment of shares to Cigniti shareholders will happen, but that will still give you an upside on the EPS front. That is more to come in next quarter.

Okay. So effective merger entry will happen from 1Q?

Yes.

We take our next question from Kawaljeet Saluja of Kotak Securities.

Great to see the margin focus and the free cash flow guidance. Just a few -- just 2 to 3 questions. The first question is for Sudhir. Sudhir, when I look at the banking vertical, the revenues of that vertical has stuck in that $120 million to $123 million range now for 5 quarters. Now anecdotally from the market, we keep on hearing about some of the clients in that banking set expanding their captives. So anything that is kind of hurting that portfolio of business, which, in fact, used to be quite a big growth driver for you?

What's slowed down our growth to only 12% for the current year, Kawaljeet, was the fact that one of our top 3 banking clients did not grow this year. That client account has now been transferred over to John's personal stewardship, and we feel far more positive about it. It has nothing in our mind to do with the GCC movement. It's more to do with a client-specific issue that we had, and we believe we've addressed. But John, would you like to address growth prospects of that client?

Thank you, Sudhir. Yes, it's -- we've completely refactored how we're -- with that client, how we're engaging. We've got a brand-new team. And what we're also recognizing is that we have to disrupt in that account. We've got a large footprint, and we're actually using our AI capabilities to actually completely transform how we engage, how we run. And on the back of that, we expect significant growth [indiscernible]

Well it was one single large client-specific issue, Kawaljeet, it's reversed. So next year, FY '27 banking, you should see better numbers.

Got that. That's encouraging to hear. The second question is on durability of margins. So it's great to see consolidated EBIT margin going up to 15.5%. Any thoughts on durability of it? And the context of this is when I look at the numbers, let's say, certain numbers like sales and marketing headcount, those dipped sharply. So I'm just trying to think through that. Is this guidance largely for FY '27 or there's a greater runway that you have in mind?

We should be able to improve FY '28 over FY '27, obviously, not by this quantum, but at least incrementally, Kawaljeet. The threshold that we've shared for FY '27 will be the minimum that should be expected from us starting FY '28 onwards.

Got that. The third question is for Saurabh. Saurabh, I see a big decline in hedges for the quarter, on a sequential basis, I think it's down materially. So anything in terms of a policy change that you have been able to push through?

Yes. So we have taken a dollar loan of $550 million, Kawaljeet, and it gives us natural hedge and that loan has been taken in India. So it is just to make sure that the cash flow and the balance sheet is aligned to the liability that we have in the balance sheet, and we're moving towards the balance sheet hedges. And that is why you see a decline in the cash flow hedges.

Okay. I fully get that. Maybe I'll ask you separately. But sort of just on that, let's say, loan point USD 550 million of loans is actually good. The headline interest rate is 4.5%, but do you intend to hedge that given that rupee has been on a depreciation spree. And without that, it might end up causing some burn on your P&L in the process?

So, Kawaljeet that's where we get the natural hedge because the receivables are in dollars in India. And that's why the number of hedges have gone down because of a natural hedge because receivables are in dollars, the payable is in dollars, and that's why the number of hedges have gone down purely because of a natural hedge that we have got.

Right. And final question for you, Saurabh, when I look at your P&L or when I look at the cash -- the hedges again, the average rate is [ INR 90 ] for $300 million, just back of calculation at the current spot rate means that you are having a hedge loss of around INR 140 crores to INR 150 crores at the spot. Is that a correct assessment right now?

That is the correct assessment. That's the mark-to-market. And I guess 1 or 2 quarters more, there will be losses. And then I think third quarter, it starts tapering off, and that's where we are. Yes, you're right.

Thank you. We take that as the last question for today. I now hand the call back to Mr. Sudhir Singh for closing comments.

Thank you, Emma. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your time, for your interest and for the insights that you've shared with us. As we said at the outset, these are exciting times. These are steady times, and we look forward to staying in touch and to delivering on the outlook that we've shared with you today. Thank you once again.

Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of Coforge Limited, that concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now click on the leave icon to exit the meeting. Thank you for your participation. Goodbye.