Concentrix Corporation (CNXC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

June 5, 2024

NASDAQ US Industrials Professional Services conference_presentation 41 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#1

Thanks, everyone, for joining us today on the second day of our Global Technology Conference. My name is Ruplu Bhattacharya. I'm a Director with the equity research team at Bank of America. Today, we have Concentrix with us, and we're honored to have CFO, Andre Valentine, join us on stage. So Andre has been CFO since October of 2018, but he has a long history in this industry because he came from Convergys, which I think he joined in 1998. So I mean he's seen many ups and downs and many cycles...

Andre Valentine

executive
#2

[ You're dating me. ]

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#3

So we hope to have a great discussion. We also have Sara Buda in the audience who recently joined as Head of Investor Relations. So we're really happy to have everybody here.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#4

Andre, maybe I'll start with a high-level question. Can you talk about the macro, talk about verticals? Which verticals are strong? Which markets are weak?

Andre Valentine

executive
#5

Yes. Kind of putting the macro aside for just a minute, we feel really good about the fact that we grew 2.8%, which was a constant currency pro forma in our first quarter, which was at the high end of our guidance range. And where we're seeing strength is in travel. E-commerce certainly led the charge from a growth perspective; seeing strong growth in enterprise tech; seeing strong growth in banking, financial services and insurance. Health care is coming along pretty nicely. And then we do have pockets of weakness that we do think are caused by the macro. Certainly, consumer electronics volumes are under pressure as people are just not switching out their devices as quickly as perhaps they were at one point. So we see pressure on transaction volumes there. And then we see a bit of a phenomenon within the North American communications clients where they've reduced service levels where they just cut their staffing needs for a bit. We saw that back in the global financial crisis. That's something that typically lasts for a few quarters and then -- but it eventually sort of comes back. And so then from a regional perspective, we're feeling really good about the strong growth we're seeing in Europe, including Africa as well as in EMEA, in Latin America and in Asia Pac, offset by -- there is reduced demand for delivery out of North America. So as clients want to reduce costs, they are maybe moving work either nearshore or offshore. Frankly, we're fine with that. The -- while there's a little bit of revenue compression, the margin dollars are the same, and the margin percentage is higher.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#6

Okay. We're going to get a little bit more in deep -- in-depth into the mix by onshore/offshore. But before I get into that, can you talk about the overall CX market? To me, it seems that coming out of the downturn, the market was growing faster. How do you see CX market growth today? And can you comment on Concentrix, your own growth organic versus inorganic? What have you said about calendar '24 growth?

Andre Valentine

executive
#7

Yes. So we're really kind of operating -- for those who don't know, we closed our combination with Webhelp in September of 2023. And so as we think about how we're managing the business on a very integrated base way, we're really not talking about the piece parts and how they are growing. What I would say is we feel really good about the 2.8% constant currency growth we put up in Q1. And not surprisingly, this was part of our thesis in combining with Webhelp is we're seeing strong growth in Europe and in Latin America where they -- the majority of their presence was and they had very little presence in North America where I already alluded to some of the softness.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#8

Okay. Let's talk about sales cycles. I mean, in this macro environment, what are you seeing customers doing? Are they taking longer? Or are certain verticals taking shorter? Like, what's the sales cycle look like?

Andre Valentine

executive
#9

Yes. I'd say it's been pretty consistent where it is. A great example of that is we closed on the combination with Webhelp late September, and yet by this first quarter, we closed a fairly large deal with a former client of Webhelp, which is a European retailer selling the capabilities, frankly, of now the combined company in there. And so that gives you a feel for how transactions can come up pretty quickly and they can close within kind of the next quarter, if you will. And so that's what we're seeing. Now one thing we are seeing, where we see some sales cycles that will be longer, and we feel really good about this, is we're seeing some larger deals around transforming the way our clients think about and deliver their customer experience. And so this is a combination of people and technology kind of rethinking how they deliver. Those take longer, but frankly, we'd love to see those coming back into the portfolio -- the pipeline because they really haven't been there, and we feel good about how we're positioned in those deals. Now those will take longer, those likely won't contribute to revenue here in 2024, but it gives us some confidence as we think about 2025.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#10

And does it differ by Concentrix versus the core business? I mean are the deals structured differently? Are the sales cycles longer for -- for Catalyst, Concentrix -- Catalyst versus the core business?

Andre Valentine

executive
#11

We've kind of repositioned, and we'll talk about this maybe later when we talk a bit more about Catalyst. We've repositioned how we're going to market with Catalyst being focused much more -- much less on kind of where Catalyst was maybe 2 years ago, where they were doing larger kind of 3- to 5-year projects with very long-term ROIs. We're just not seeing those deals come to fruition anymore. Where we've kind of repurposed the business is really focusing on shorter, quicker-to-ROI deals, selling into the existing Concentrix client base, if you will. And we're seeing real success there. And you see that in the 10% constant currency growth we drove in that business in Q1.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#12

Yes. One area of focus for clients has been the new economy clients because these are typically smaller clients, but they have higher growth and potentially can become larger over time. So talk to us about that. Can you give us -- can you describe what you consider a new economy client and talk about their growth rates.

Andre Valentine

executive
#13

Sure. So a new economy client to us is really a client that didn't exist 10 to 15 years ago. They've kind of changed the market. They've come at it in a different way. What we like about them is they are natural-born outsourcers. They have a core competency. And they -- when they look to the customer experience, if they're going to have advisers, they outsource that and don't have in-house operations. That represents roughly 25% of our revenue today. It's growing faster than the whole. But certainly not the way it was as we're coming out of COVID where we're seeing growth rates in the 30%, 40% range, I'd say it's more kind of in the mid- to high single digits. So certainly accretive to the overall growth rate. What we feel good about is -- and I always have, is the breadth of vertical penetration in those new economy clients. Basically, if you look at our 10 largest new economy clients, they hit every strategic vertical that we're in with the probable exception of health care. And then if you look at 10 of the geo mix as to where they're headquartered, if you look at our top 20, half of them are not U.S. companies. So that spread between companies that are headquartered in Latin America, in Europe and Asia Pac.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#14

Yes. This, I think, is a competitive advantage for Concentrix because all of your competitors target this segment, but I think you guys have done a great job making a profitable business out of even new economy clients in the East, in developing economies. So can you talk about how you're able to do that? Like I mean is there -- how do you filter out the right kind of customer to partner with?

Andre Valentine

executive
#15

Yes. We're very focused on working with customers who care about their brand experience and are willing to invest in it. We certainly look at -- we do work looking at their business model, what their offering is going to be. So we try to back the winners as much as possible, and we've had great success in doing that. And particularly when you're doing that work for new economy countries, companies in developing countries, you've got to bring something special to the table to get them to work with you. And so what we bring is our domain expertise. We bring our technology. And frankly, as they look to build their businesses outside of that country where they started, we bring our knowledge about how to help them scale globally. And that knowledge comes from our enterprise -- from serving our enterprise client base and the large multinational corporations.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#16

Are you seeing more concentration of these clients in specific verticals? Like what verticals span your new economy client base?

Andre Valentine

executive
#17

Yes. As I indicated, they're really in all of our strategic verticals. So we have large technology companies in there. We have large e-commerce companies in there, travel aggregators, et cetera, fintechs. So again, kind of hitting the gamut, particularly at the top end, again, hitting almost all of our strategic verticals.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#18

Like you said, the growth rate used to be very high, like 40% year-on-year. What do these clients care about? What are they saying there? Are they focused on revenue growth? What do they need to see to outsource more?

Andre Valentine

executive
#19

Yes, the volume they have, they are outsourcing, right? They're not doing this work in-house. What we need them to do -- so what's happened in the last couple of years, certainly, a lot more focus on cost. And so a headwind or that -- the growth rate has come down as they've looked to move work to lower-cost geographies. They've done that with us. But obviously, that compresses revenues a bit. Obviously, what we need to do to grow our new economy clients is, first of all, have the ones that we are working with continue to prosper and grow their volumes and then continue to add net new logos there, which we've had some success with.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#20

Okay. Maybe I want to move to the pricing environment and how contracts are priced. Can you talk about like what is the typical method of pricing contracts in this space? And have you seen any progress with outcomes-based pricing?

Andre Valentine

executive
#21

Ruplu, we've been talking about outcomes-based pricing now for 10 years in this industry, and the progress there has been very slow. So while we have tried and continue to try to suggest more outcomes-based pricing in our deals and are having some success and are seeing more of that in our pipeline, it is still a fairly small portion of our current revenues and a small portion of the pipeline. So pricing is still largely input-based whether that be ours or FTE or so forth. We are seeing a bit of a move towards more transaction-based pricing, where, obviously, that has an outcomes-based component, where, if we can be more efficient in driving processing time out of the transaction processing, we can see some margin improvement.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#22

And why would a company go in for outcomes-based pricing? What is it for the customer to go for such a pricing agreement?

Andre Valentine

executive
#23

That certainty of outcome. So we, in that case, will be guaranteeing kind of a total cost of ownership, maybe a ceiling for a total cost of ownership with gain sharing between the 2 of us, but below that. And so that's what they would -- would be the benefit for them. What we find is that only works for us and for them if we're able to control more of an end-to-end process. And so that sometimes is a barrier to them getting to the point where they're willing to do that.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#24

One thing that clients care about in this sector is labor rates because that impacts your cost. Can you talk about what type -- what are you seeing in terms of labor rates across the globe? And I want to tie it back to the previous question on contract. What -- how long are the contracts? I mean, how many years? And if you're seeing increases in labor rates, are you able to reprice the contracts? Can you go back to the customer and ask for more money because of that?

Andre Valentine

executive
#25

Yes. So the contracts tend to be 2 to 3 years in length, and that really hasn't changed. The environment around pricing and labor rates has been very dynamic over the last couple of years. If you go back to 2021, 2022, we saw pretty heavy wage inflation in North America and throughout parts of Europe, and clients who are fairly receptive to price increases, and they understood that the labor rates had to come up. What we've seen since then in the current environment, fortunately, we've seen labor rates in North America and parts of Europe really come down. So we're seeing modest wage inflation, call it, 3% or so. Unfortunately, not much ability to pass that along to clients. So the expectation is that we will make that up by efficiency gains. And so that's what we're seeing in that part of the market. As we think about Asia Pac, Latin America, seeing relatively consistent wage inflation as we've seen over the years in certain areas like India and the Philippines, some of that impact is offset by currency. And then certainly, again, an expectation that we will try to offset most of the rest of that with efficiency gains. So the pricing environment is stable and competitive, but that's kind of where that all stands.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#26

Maybe this is a good time to segue into your delivery mix. Can you talk about like nearshore versus offshore? And there was some point last year where you had some European customers wanted to move more offshore. Are you seeing customers asking for that more? And what is the trade-off between revenues and margins longer term? I mean what is your mix today? And what do you think it's going to be 5 years from now?

Andre Valentine

executive
#27

Yes. So I'll start with the kind of the revenue mix. So work performed onshore, think of that as being $1. As work moves nearshore, think of that as becoming $0.75. If it moves fully offshore, think of that as becoming $0.50. The good thing about each of those is the margin dollars are consistent. And so as you move from onshore to nearshore and then offshore, the margin actually goes up and the profit dollars stay fairly consistent. Current mix, I need to describe that a little bit to you. So roughly -- first of all, we've got our Catalyst business. That represents about 8% of revenue where shore mix matters, but I think it's a little different than the rest of the business. I take the remaining part of the business, roughly 42% is onshore. And then the other 50% is split. It's like 35% offshore, 15% nearshore. Now we need to understand though that 42%, what I talk about as being onshore, a lot of that is in-country delivery in Japan; in China; delivery for Indian clients in India; Brazil, et cetera. And so the -- as I think about where the opportunity for more shore movement is with revenue compression, but margin accretion, that's really North America, which represents about 15% of revenue. And maybe Continental Europe, excluding Eastern Europe, which we view as a nearshore offering, that might be about 12% to 15% of revenue as well.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#28

Okay. Maybe I want to move to the Webhelp acquisition because this was, I think, a very strategic acquisition on your part. Talk to us about how the integration is going. I mean what is involved in putting these 2 large companies together?

Andre Valentine

executive
#29

Yes. So the first thing you have to do is bring together your leadership team and your go-to-market motion and the way you deliver for clients because the clients want to know who they're going to be interacting with and they want to know who's going to be delivering for them. And we did that almost instantly. Obviously, we started working on the integration to the extent that we could prior to the transaction closing. We had 6 months to do that given various things we had to go through with regulatory approvals, et cetera. So we kind of hit the ground running there. And so we feel really good about the fact that by -- shortly after closing the transaction, we're selling as one and delivering as one organization. What's left now, as we sit here 8 months post close, is really back office, things like we're moving on to one general ledger system. We'll do that here. We're targeting December 1 for that, the beginning of our fiscal 2025. That is coming along very well. I feel good about that. We're moving to a single instance of our HRIS solution. That will happen in stages over the remainder of this year. And then we've started the process, but it takes time, of consolidating data centers. And each of those remaining 3 things that we have to do are gating factors to getting to more synergies. So we're very anxious to get through that and get to more synergies. We feel good about how we're trending on the synergies. We've said we'd get to $75 million this year with an aggregate number of synergies by year 3 of $120 million, and very much have line of sight to the $75 million and the $120 million. And yes, so we're progressing well.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#30

So one thing that Concentrix has done a great job in the past is you've exceeded the synergy targets you have put out. And you've taken underperforming businesses and you really turned them around. Can you talk to us about what do you see the opportunity here? Like the synergy targets that you have, are those conservative targets? Do you think there's an opportunity for you to exceed them? And can you also talk about any costs that are associated that you're having to bear this year or next year?

Andre Valentine

executive
#31

Yes. So Webhelp is a little different from some of the transactions we've done in the past. It was not an underperforming asset by any stretch of the imagination. It was growing quite nicely, expanding margins, had great client relationships and real diversity of those relationships. So in that regard, it is different. And so I don't want to give the impression that it was an underperforming asset that we're trying to turn around. It's an underperforming -- it was a well-performing asset, sorry, that we were very, very anxious to add to the portfolio and are pleased with how it's performing and how it's growing. It's also different in that the level of overlap between the 2 businesses was less than in some of our past transactions, which makes getting the synergies a bit harder. All that said, we had very good line of sight to the $120 million target, and Chris will be disappointed if we don't try to do better than that. But certainly not committing to that. But you've mentioned our track record. We overperformed on the Convergys acquisition by $70 million or so against a target of $150 million. I don't want to suggest we're going to overperform to that percentage on Webhelp, but we're certainly going to work to do better than the $120 million.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#32

One of the thesis points for the acquisition was that it gave you better footprint in Europe and Latin America. So have you seen any benefit from that? How are the win rates trending? Have you seen any revenue synergies so far?

Andre Valentine

executive
#33

Yes. So certainly seeing the revenue synergies with a few things. I mentioned the one deal, the large European retailer, which is a relatively small client of Webhelp that we have sold Concentrix technology into and Concentrix footprint into. And frankly, neither 1 of the 2 companies could have won that deal at that size as separate companies. So that's a great example. We've also seen North American clients have real interest in delivery out of Africa, including South Africa. And Concentrix really didn't have much of an offering there, Webhelp did. And so there's another place where we've seen synergies where we're selling a Webhelp footprint, if you will, to existing Concentrix clients.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#34

So the main competitor that we always think about is Teleperformance. So from a geographic coverage standpoint, do you think the footprint of Webhelp Concentrix is now equivalent to Teleperformance plus Majorel?

Andre Valentine

executive
#35

Yes, we really do. I mean, to be fair, we're in 70-plus countries. They're in more countries than we are. We think we're in the countries we need to be in to be able to offer our clients the most optimal cost-effective footprint. And so we're very pleased with the footprint that we have. I did skip over a part of your question on the synergies. I want to come back to that. You asked me about costs. And so we are incurring $80 million of integration costs this year. Those will step down meaningfully next year to $20 million to $25 million, which, as you think about free cash flow and how that will trend from '24 to '25, gives us reasons to believe that we can move free cash flow up as we reduce the spend there.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#36

Maybe the last thing I want to ask on the Webhelp transaction is, is there an ERP integration? And what was the schedule for that?

Andre Valentine

executive
#37

Yes, there is. So that's moving on to 1 general ledger system. So 1 ERP system for the entire business. As you can imagine, as CFO, I sit on the steering committee of that. That is coming along very nicely. And we go live, are targeting to go live at the beginning of fiscal 2025. So that's December 1.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#38

Okay. Maybe now I want to move into generative AI because that's been a topic that a lot of clients have focused on. Last I heard, you had -- Concentrix had about 100 proof of concepts with customers. How are those progressing? And when do you think we'll start to see some results from those?

Andre Valentine

executive
#39

Yes. So we're seeing results of the proof -- you're right, we have well over 100 now proof of concepts with our clients with 90% of those being focused on how we use the technology to augment a human adviser to drive better customer experience, to have a more personalized interaction with the client customer, knowing -- being able to -- having access to more data about your history with that brand as our adviser interacts with you. They're progressing well. What we do see is that clients are being cautious with the technology. And so if I was sitting up here with you 3 or 4 months ago, I would have said we'd start to see things graduating to scale at the tail end of 2024. I think it's now 2025 before we'll see that. The barriers are the cost of the technology, the concerns about data privacy and security, concerns about regulation across various industries and various countries. Those are the -- so it's giving people pause while we continue to work on proving out the proof of concepts.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#40

So in this environment, given the proof of concepts that you have going on, has your thinking around the impact of generative AI on Concentrix revenues changed? And what are you thinking about the impact on revenues?

Andre Valentine

executive
#41

No. We continue to be very bullish about the impact. So what we see is we're going to embrace the technology. We think that it can generate new sources of revenue for us as we help clients implement the technology, starting with helping them with their data, using the Catalyst capabilities there around data; certainly looking at how then we can build application layers that sit between client systems and the model so they can query the model most effectively to drive the best customer experience. And then all things around data privacy and security and governance are all areas where we think there are net new sources of revenue for us as well as doing the work to train, tune the model, et cetera. So net new sources of revenue, there, we think whenever we see technologies like this, clients don't want to try to figure this out by themselves, they turn to people who have domain expertise. We have that. We have it at scale within Catalyst. So we think that leads to share gains, net new outsourcing of services. So we're pretty bullish about it. Will we see some of our lower complexity work automated? We will. But I think people need to understand that the low complexity piece of the revenue that we have now is down around 10% of our total revenue. And frankly, we look to try to automate 10% to 15% of our client transactions each year. So this just gives us another tool to help us do that.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#42

So could the impact be in that range, 10% to 15% of transactions? Or do you think it could be a little bit more or less?

Andre Valentine

executive
#43

I think over time, again, it will just -- gen AI will just be a tool that we use, as we have all along, to get to that 10% to 15% of transactions that we try to automate each year. A great example of this, we talked about this in our Q1 earnings call, is the work we've done with a regional airline where we put in -- admittedly, this was a machine learning chatbot that now we're going to replace over the gen AI-powered chatbot. It initially took our staffing down by roughly 20%, and yet roughly a year later, our revenue with that client -- our headcount with that client, our revenue with that client and our margin with that client was higher. Why is that? Well, they paid us to implement the technology, maintain the technology. They saw that we were being more efficient than other providers so they gave us share of outsourced volume, and they gave us new stuff that they were doing themselves. They outsourced that to us as well. That's how we've always seen automation working and playing out in this business. We don't think that gen AI really changes that.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#44

Maybe this is the time to segue into Catalyst because you talked about higher level work that you can potentially get. So for our listeners, can you talk about what is Catalyst? And what are the type of services that the business provides? And what is the competitive advantage?

Andre Valentine

executive
#45

Yes, really unique in the customer services space. Catalyst is a digital IT services company focused solely on customer experience. And so it would compete with companies like EPAM and Globant, et cetera, except with a monolithic focus on just the customer experience. And so it would also compete with the Accentures and Deloitte Digitals in that space as well, and often win. What it does is it really starts from everything, from strategy, design and implementation of CX. So we help clients with their CX strategy, design what they're going to do, implement it on platforms like Salesforce, Adobe, Azure, et cetera, and then a very, very big data practice which is kind of key to kind of feeding the engine, if you will, and it becomes even more key as you think about generative AI.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#46

So one of the things, as you were naming all of these competitors, EPAM and Globant and Accenture and Deloitte, I mean, obviously, these are big competitors, some of them are, and it's a very competitive space. So when you think about the Catalyst business, I guess I have several questions, but the first one would be, do you think you have enough staff? Do you think you need to hire more? Or do you need to enhance the capabilities of that business to be able to really compete against this set of competitors?

Andre Valentine

executive
#47

We're very specific in where we choose to compete, right? So we are not trying to be a digital IT services player to everybody. What we're trying to do is be focused solely on customer experience. And so that, we think, is a competitive advantage for us as is. Now when you marry that with our CX operations experience, not only do we have people who are solely focused on CX within digital IT services, but then they can kind of marry that with all the domain expertise in CX that comes from the fact that we run this for all these global brands around the world. And so a great example of that, a big piece of the core of the Catalyst business was our acquisition of PK Global at the end of 2021. Its largest client was also a fairly large CX operations client of Concentrix. And when we brought that together, the client's reaction was, wow, this is great. I can get out of the middle. I don't have to be the general contractor here, and you guys can really use the domain expertise to drive to a better spot. So that -- we really view that as a competitive advantage. If we're not going to win, we're not going after large ERP implementations against those people or other things. If it's in the core CX space, and particularly, if we're selling it into a client that we do CX operations for where we really know the domain and everything about the client, we're well positioned to win.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#48

So talk about what you see as the revenue growth of -- growth rate of Catalyst business today. And how do you see revenue growth and margins progressing? I mean, how do you plan to increase margins in this business?

Andre Valentine

executive
#49

Yes. So we feel really good about the fact that we grew in double digits, right at 10% in Q1. Again, with most of that being focused into selling those capabilities into our core CX business as well as starting to see that large project that we talked about in the fall of 2022 start to slowly contribute to revenues as well. From a margin perspective, our opportunity there is as we grow that business to do more of the work, more of the development work offshore. As we said when we acquired PK Global, their onshore/offshore mix was a bit of an outlier in the industry. It's about 50-50. Others are much more heavily weighted offshore. We've always seen that as a margin toggle for us as we grow, and that's what we're looking to execute. And we -- and remember, this was a business, the digital IT services space, prior to the macro turning, was growing at -- that business is growing at nearly 20%. And so there's an opportunity to get back there with an improving macro.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#50

Got it. Did Webhelp have its own digital IT services business? Has that been merged into Concentrix Catalyst? And what is the total revenue of the total company in terms of digital IT services?

Andre Valentine

executive
#51

Yes. Yes, it did. And so something else that we feel about -- your question actually reminds me of other ways that we're going to grow -- is now, with Webhelp, we have this capability in Europe. And so we really did not have that before. And so being able to marry the existing Catalyst capabilities with what was in Europe with Webhelp to really penetrate that market is a real opportunity for us. The business is roughly 8% of our total revenue, so call that roughly an $800 million business and something that our core CX competitors really don't have at that scale.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#52

Right. Well, that makes sense. In terms of generative AI, is Concentrix using generative AI internally? And are you able to save some costs with that?

Andre Valentine

executive
#53

Yes. We think about generative AI in kind of a horizontal way and a vertical way. So the horizontal way is it kind of cuts across all the verticals around how we recruit, hire, train, supervise, monitor the quality of and coach our advisers. And that's, historically, a very labor-heavy function supporting the front-level advisers. A lot of that cost can be taken out and made far more efficient with generative AI. We're doing that -- starting that process with machine learning AI, and now we can do it with generative AI. And so there's a meaningful cost opportunity for us there.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#54

Okay. So now that you have Webhelp and you're going through this integration process, how should we think about future M&A and future allocation of dollars? I mean, can you talk about capital allocation?

Andre Valentine

executive
#55

Sure. So we were very specific. When we closed the Webhelp combination, we said that we took our leverage up to over 3x, and that we would -- our primary use for free cash flow for the next 2 years would be to delever down to close to 2x within 2 years. And that's what we're focused on doing. That will be a major use of cash flow for us. As will be our dividend, and you've seen us be a bit more active in share repurchases as well, committing to effectively do $120 million of share repurchases here in fiscal '24. From an M&A perspective, it really won't be about scale for us anymore, and it won't be about footprint for us anymore. It will be about domain expertise in verticals, client sets that we can grow, and technology. And so -- but yes, I think in the near and medium term here, you'll see anything that we do be relatively small because our focus is really on delevering. And then as we get our leverage down close to 2x, we could look to do something different.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#56

Okay. One question that we keep getting is attrition rates because that's a statistic that people follow in this industry. I mean, how are attrition rates -- does it depend on the vertical that you're talking about? And attrition rates of senior management or middle level management, is that different or less than?

Andre Valentine

executive
#57

Yes. So really good retention. We focus a lot on employee satisfaction across the business. It is one of the key metrics for management that we report out to our Board each year. So we're very focused in everything we can do to engage all the way down to the frontline employee to retain them, right? So senior level management, very, very high level of retention. Same is true throughout middle management. The industry does see decent levels of attrition at the kind of frontline level. Those have been relatively stable as we've come out of COVID. They've not gotten back to pre-COVID levels. So meaning they've been below those levels. And so not really an issue that we're tremendously focused on. I mean we're focused on engaging with our staff and retaining them, but we don't see attrition as a major issue for our business.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#58

Another question we keep getting is, is there a margin difference between voice and nonvoice services? is that still a distinction that is meaningful to talk about now or not?

Andre Valentine

executive
#59

It really isn't. So what we focus on more is the complexity of the transaction, right? And so -- and we do very, very complex transaction across both voice and nonvoice. And margin will tend to be higher with that higher level of complexity, and then with the higher level of complexity, there will also tend to be more technology involved, also driving the margin higher.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#60

Can you talk about some of the nonvoice services like IVR and analytics and Voice of the Customer? Like what is the revenue contribution from those?

Andre Valentine

executive
#61

Yes. So I'll put them in kind of stack rank order for you. So the Catalyst business is a nonvoice business in and of itself. And that's -- that will be the largest of the things that you just mentioned. And as I've said, 8% of revenue. Next up would be kind of trust and safety. So everything around content moderation, probably about 5% of revenue. And then the other items, IVR, Voice of the Customer, smaller.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#62

Okay. We have about a minute left and maybe I'm going to have this as the last question. What do you think the market is missing? Or what is most misunderstood about the Concentrix story?

Andre Valentine

executive
#63

Yes, I think it's really 3 things. One is the breadth and complexity of the services that we provide. And so we do claims adjudication work in health care, fraud management in health care and financial services, credit scoring, all that kind of stuff. We call that all CX, but it's under -- it's a pretty broad umbrella. So that would be one thing. Two, people don't understand how much automation is already in this, right, how much of the work has already been automated or been touched by automation. And so they overestimate what's left to be automated there with new technologies. And lastly, they don't understand that we really see generative AI as a real opportunity for our business. We have the capabilities to where we can leverage it to have net new sources of revenue. We think it will drive more outsourcing because clients don't want to figure this out themselves. We think we can gain share because of our capability set. And so for all those reasons, we think we're very, very well positioned to have it be accretive to our business.

Ruplu Bhattacharya

analyst
#64

Okay. So I think we're out of time, and we've covered a lot of different things. So Andre, I'm really happy. It was great to have you here. Thanks for all the details you gave, and then good luck on the...

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