LTM Limited (LTM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to LTI Q2 FY '22 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Sunila Martis, Head Investor Relations, LTI. Thank you, and over to you, Ms. Martis.

Thank you, Faizan. Hello, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today to discuss LTI's Q2 FY '22 earnings. The financial statements, press release and quarterly fact sheet are all available in our filings with the stock exchanges and on the Investors section of our website. On the call today, we have with us Mr. Sanjay Jalona, CEO and Managing Director; Mr. Sudhir Chaturvedi, President, Sales; Mr. Nachiket Deshpande, Chief Operating Officer; and Anil Rander, Chief Financial Officer. Sanjay and Anil will give you a brief overview of the company's performance, which will be followed by the usual Q&A session. As a policy, LTI does not provide specific revenue or earnings guidance. And anything said on the call, which reflects our outlook for the future, or which can be construed as a forward-looking statement must be reviewed in conjunction with the risk that the company faces. Let me now invite Sanjay to talk about the results. Over to you, Sanjay.

Thank you, Sunila. Hello, folks. I hope all of you are doing well. I'm frankly very excited to be here in Mumbai, and I'm joined by Sudhir, Nachiket and Anil all in the same room after a long time. Actually, traffic is crazy like pre-COVID, but I truly love it. We have all been through a lot in the last 19 months. And despite all the challenges, we have fulfilled our promises to our clients. I want to thank all the LTI-tes for their grit and determination. During this time, we have also onboarded a record number of new employees. Across the globe, our leadership team is now back in office, and frankly, it feels great to be back traveling and meeting people again. We have planned a gradual and calibrated approach towards a hybrid model of return to office. Our future of work model called Yin-Yang embraces the duality of operating from office and home effectively. We are already seeing encouraging results based on the voluntary rollout of the model. Our employees appreciate the flexibility and many are excited to meet their colleagues for the first time or meet their teams after a long time. Our model focuses on ensuring seamless project governance, consistent productivity and better employee engagement. We would be completing the rollout of this model across most of our customers by end of this year. Moving to our results. We recorded our best ever sequential growth performance of 8.9% in constant currency. In reported numbers, this translates to 8.3% quarter-on-quarter and 25.8% growth on a year-on-year basis. With revenues of $509 million, our quarterly annualized revenue crossed the $2 billion mark. We crossed our first $1 billion in FY '18, and we have had great fun over the last 4 years as we added another $1 billion to our top line. Our quarterly growth is holistic across verticals, service lines, client buckets and geographies. I want to call out some highlights for the quarter. Our largest vertical BFS grew 36.8% year-on-year and Hi-tech and Media and Entertainment grew by 48.5%, while the others which includes some of our marquee clients and services sector grew 38.5%, 4% year-on-year basis. All our service lines grew at or above 20% Y-on-Y with solid 40% plus year-on-year growth in analytics, AI and cognitive and enterprise integration and mobility service lines. We added 25 new logos during the quarter. We opened a new logo in Europe with a TCV of $30 million for a 5-year deal. The other hallmark of our solid Q2 was the consistent upward movement across client buckets. We added 1 client in $50 million, 3 in $20 million, 5 each in $10 million and $5 million buckets as well. Folks, the superior performance that you see is due to broad-based demand that we are seeing in the market. Let me talk a little bit about what I mean by broad-based demand and why do I think this trend is likely to sustain in the coming years. There are 3 key drivers of this secular growth. Firstly, clients today are working on new business models and want partners who can co-create with them and deliver at speed. This demand is coming primarily from discretionary spends on projects that are driving business transformation. The transformation of this happens -- of this scale happens once in a century. We call it the great restructuring. The great restructuring is comprehensive and every enterprise must adapt or see this position. For example, I was talking to an automotive client. Today, they must think of not only new cars, new technologies, new factories, but also new ecosystem partners like battery manufacturers, supporting infrastructure, new sales and marketing and services distribution channels as well. This is required because OEMs need to reimagine the supply chain and channels to offset the high cost of batteries that make EV automobiles expensive. This means either building a new technology stack or revamping your existing stack. Similar transformations are happening across all industries. Clients no longer call these parts of business transformation spends as programs, but these are journeys that they have embarked on to fight and win in the new normal. These journeys comprise of multiple small-sized projects that are continuous in nature, and we are very proud to be part of several such transformation journeys. The second key driver is the new spend areas, changing customer expectations on our new technologies are no longer the only variable driving demand, but we are seeing emergence of new areas of spend. For example, ESG has started playing a key role in business decisions and strategy. Cloud security is also seeing a lot of new opportunities. In these and many more emerging segments, we have barely scratched the surface and there is a long runway for growth. The third driver -- let's touch upon that. While we have been focused on the demand side drivers, there is a fundamental shift that we are experiencing on the supply side as well. It is not only tech companies hiring the tech talent, but companies across sectors, including NGOs, are tapping the same talent pool. There are 10.5 million jobs opening in the U.S., but only 7.7 million unemployed people. The data represents the ongoing trends of employees voluntary leaving their jobs post-COVID. The pandemic gave workers more free time to think about their careers, explore entrepreneurship and save more money, leading many to realize their current jobs were not fulfilling. Management Professor Anthony Klotz, all terms this as a great recession. And we believe the rise of hybrid and remote work has caused the phenomenon. There is a sharp increase in wages, severe talent crunch globally and increase in attrition across industries. This is the first time our clients are witnessing the shortage and attrition of this magnitude that we have always faced in our industry. This is creating opportunities for scale-up, for IT services and also leading clients to turn to tech solutions like automation to solve for supply side constraints, which again create future opportunities. These 3 factors are creating sustained demand in the marketplace. Now let me address how do we benefit from the secular growth in demand. Clients really appreciated our exemplary support to them during COVID and is reflected in our SLA performance and CSAT scores. This is seen by clients as a strong testimony to our execution excellence. Secondly, we are focused on changing the nature of conversations with our clients. To have future-centric conversations with clients, we have further enabled and invested in capabilities and talent in our select focused verticals to have people with the right domain knowledge, capabilities and execution excellence. We invested ahead of time to develop capabilities in cloud, data, Infosec and have implemented our strengths in core transformation. These capabilities have developed -- were developed through a mix of in-house innovations, target acquisitions, including our recent acquisition of QLogic and partnership with the ecosystem players like hyperscalers and companies like Snowflake. In a nutshell, we have the right ingredients in place to deliver on our core purpose of let's solve and deliver amplified outcomes to our customers that we now ship gears from the demand side on how we are managing our talent supply. On a net basis, we added around 2,000 people in Q1 -- in Q4 -- sorry, Q4 of '21, 2,300 in Q1 of this year. In Q2, our net hires are at 4,000 plus. To support the robust demand that we see, we will be increasing our fresher intake in India to 5,500 for FY '22 as well. The industry is facing a sharp increase in attrition. Most of the attrition is in the 3 to 6 years experienced bracket. IT services sector did not recruit enough pressures over the last 3 to 4 years, given the prevailing demand scenarios and uncertainties due to COVID. Industry and academia would need to come together to create talent pool, but it will take some time. In addition to increasing pressure hiring for the year, we have hired 1,000 people in 1 to 2 years experienced bracket and build on their skills in niche areas like cloud, data and digital through the various academies we have set up. Second, upskill and cross-skill the existing workforce. And lastly, we're also thinking of alternate nontech stream talent to be trained and be kept ready for times to come. Let me now provide you with the color on performance for our verticals. BFS continues its strong near double-digit growth of 9.6% quarter-on-quarter. We see spend shift from operational and then the bank projects to modernization. This vertical has seen holistic growth during the quarter across the geos. Moving to insurance. This vertical has been alleged for us over the past several quarters, but is now seeing some pickup in growth since Q1. We saw 5.6% quarter-on-quarter growth here. While we have seen positive momentum with our new leadership, driving opportunities, there still remains a lot to be done here. Manufacturing sees double-digit growth of 12.4% quarter-on-quarter. We have a strong pipeline here as we see demand in industrial manufacturing and capital goods sector with companies continuing to add -- continuing to add digital solutions and embrace new ways of working. Energy & Utility grew 6.3% quarter-on-quarter. Over the past few quarters, we have seen -- we have been sharing our expectations on how spends in oil and gas space have been volatile. While the energy continues to be choppy, we see good traction in utilities. CPG, Retail & Pharma grew by 1.9% quarter-on-quarter. Growth in this vertical will be driven by spends on data-related projects as wholesaler and retailers adjust to new realities to meet customer expectations with curbside pickups and direct-to-consumer outreach. High-tech & Media grew by 6.9% quarter-on-quarter and had a strong year-on-year growth at 48.5%. Others will largely include -- which largely include professional services, Government of India Ministries and other global enterprises and public service registered 14.2% growth quarter-on-quarter. Now before I close, and I want to -- before I talk about outlook, let me recap that we had nearly double-digit growth in FY '21 despite COVID. We have seen a solid H1, strong new growth -- new logo additions and a robust pipeline. For FY '22, we are comfortably placed to cross the milestone of $2 billion in revenues, giving us confidence to deliver on our FY '22 guidance of being in the leaders' quadrant for growth with stable PAT margin and 14% to 15% band. With that, let me hand it over to Anil.

Thank you, Sanjay. Hello, everyone. It is great to be back with you all with another quarterly earnings, and I wish you a safe and healthy days ahead. Let me take you through the financial highlights for the second quarter of financial year '22, starting with the revenue numbers. In the second quarter FY '22, our revenue stood at USD 509 million, up 8.3% sequentially and 25.8% year-on-year basis. The corresponding constant currency growth was 8.9% quarter-on-quarter and 25.5% year-on-year. Reported INR revenue of INR 37,670 million was up 8.8% quarter-on-quarter and 25.6% year-on-year. Now coming to profitability. EBIT for the quarter was INR 6,482 million, translating into an operating margin of 17.2% as compared with 16.4% in the previous quarter. The margin work is as follows. 70 basis points of SG&A leverage was offset by 70 basis margin drop due to utilization. Tailwinds from effort mix and higher working days were partially offset by higher employee costs. Reported profit after tax was INR 5,517 million this quarter, which translated into a PAT margin of 14.6% compared with 14.3% in Q1. We remain comfortable with our guided margin band of 14% to 15% for FY '22. In employee metrics moving to people front, utilization without trainees was at 83.7% as compared to 84.1% last quarter and utilization including trainees was at 81.6% versus 83.7% in Q1. We continue to strengthen our workforce. And during Q2, we added 4,084 people on a net business. The total manpower stood at 42,382 of which our production associates were at 95.3%. In this quarter, attrition is 19.6% versus 15.2% last quarter on an LTM basis. On ForEx and hedge book, our cash flow hedge book stood at USD 1,586 million as of 30th September 2021 versus USD 1,403 million as of 30th June '21. While the -- all balance sheet hedges stood at USD 88 million versus USD 77 million last quarter. Moving on to DSO. In Q2, the billed DSO stood at 61 days compared to 60 days in the last quarter. The DSO, including unbilled was at 98 days unchanged quarter-on-quarter. For the quarter, the net cash flow from operations was at INR 5,041 million, which was at 91.3% conversion of the net income. At the end of the quarter, cash and liquid investments stood at INR 38,403 million as compared to INR 43,314 million last quarter. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 25.6%. The Board of Directors at the meeting held earlier today have declared an interim dividend of INR 15 per equity share. Earnings per share for the quarter stood at INR 31.5 as compared to INR 28.4 in Q1. Diluted earnings per share was INR 31.4 versus INR 28.3 last quarter. Before I end my presentation, I wanted to highlight that we have published our 5th sustainability report for FY '21 during the quarter. This year's report details LTI's approach of solving responsibility all through the pandemic. This approach enabled us not only limit the extent of disruption in our operations but also support the communities we operate in. With that, I would like to open the floor for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss.

[Technical Difficulty]

Sandip, your line is very unclear, man.

Can you hear me now, please?

Yes, yes, yes.

Sir, [indiscernible].

Sandip, we cannot understand you at all. Can you go away from the mic a little bit?

Sir, I have a very bad throat. I'm still trying again, once again.

Okay. Yes, speak.

So...

Mr. Agarwal, we are not able to hear you, sir. I request you to please rejoin the question queue. The next question is from the line of Vibhor Singhal from PhillipCapital.

Congrats on a great set of performance once again. Just a couple of questions from my side, sir. So one is on the manufacturing side. Just wanted to pick your brains. What is the kind of growth that we are seeing in this kind of verticals? Is it led by, let's say, some revival in the auto segment or some other division? And how sustainable and how strong growth momentum do you perceive this to be in the next couple of quarters? And a second question from my side is on the European geography. Basically, Europe seems to be slightly softer than, let's say, how the U.S. market is shaping up. Of course, on a Y-on-Y basis, it's quite strong. But therefore, of course, we saw a sharp fall there as well. So how do you see the deal for momentum, especially from that geography? And any color on which vertical is the growth momentum stronger in Europe would be really helpful.

Sudhir, can I request you to answer that?

Sure. Thanks, Vibhor. So on manufacturing, actually, we are seeing growth across all sectors. So auto, especially industrial manufacturing, as you can imagine, what is happening in both -- all of the manufacturing sectors is 2 key trends. One is -- in fact, 3 key trends. One is core digitization. So we are seeing significant traction in the ERP economy as people look to digitize the core. The second is in the data side of the house, there is significant work happening as manufacturing clients look to leverage the data that traditionally addressed today in ERP system now being leveraged across all parts of their enterprise for real-time decision-making. And the third is all the combinations of the business model changed, right? So whether it's direct to customer. So for example, manufacturing clients investing in warehouse management in a very significant way in order to deliver client -- products direct to customer, right, or investing in e-commerce capabilities or investing in real-time supply chain. So that's why we are seeing broad-based growth in manufacturing across. Now coming to Europe. So Europe grew for us 25.7% on a year-on-year basis. So that's, in fact, the strongest growth that we've seen in a while in the region. So I know you're probably comparing the Q-o-Q number, which is 5.1%, but I think there are good [ potents ] to Europe. Remember, we had a bit of constant currency -- on a constant currency basis, the European growth would have been a bit higher. But we see good traction in Europe. And in fact, as Sanjay announced, we also had a large deal win in Europe. So I think we'll continue to see that going forward.

And in Europe, the main traction is more in, let's say, retail another B2C segment? Or is it across B2B as well?

Across all verticals.

BFS plus other verticals, yes. Across verticals. Yes, that's correct.

Broad-based.

Yes.

Got it. If I can just squeeze in one more question, Sanjay. Just wanted to get an idea on the supply side challenges that we are facing. I think it's just not us, I think the entire industry is facing that right now. The attrition has picked up for everybody across the board, and we're hearing, of course, the very strong salary hike and the challenges that we are facing. So given the steps that you have taken in terms of more freshers hiring, hiring of 1 to 3 years back at kind of people that you are looking. How longer do you believe this -- these challenges could sustain? Could this be a 2- to 4-quarter phenomenon? Or do you believe the supply or the reskilling of these employees is going to take longer time? When could we see maybe, let's say, the attrition coming back to those or real normalized rate or the supply side challenges probably being much -- at least slightly lower than what they are today?

Vibhor, I wish I could answer this question as clearly as you have asked it. I don't think if I were to reflect back -- a few quarters back, we would have assumed that the demand will be as high, right? And it's just a matter of demand versus supply. In absence of the demand, we never actually even thought in the same vein that we would be hiring 4,000 net people which with attrition, spiking up the way it has done. See, in the absence of talent not being there because the industry did not hire, the academies did not create the talent. We had to do with what we could do best, which is to improve on our people supply chain, look at any alternate ways of finding talent, train the talent that we have in-house and drive our productivity. That's what we have done. That is what we'll keep doing. We do expect it will take some time. I suspect it will take at least 3 to 4 quarters for it to have some amount of stability.

The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from JM Financial.

I had a couple of questions. The fact that, the list [Technical Difficulty]

Mr. Taneja, sorry, to interrupt you, your audio is breaking from your line, sir. Please check.

Is it [Technical Difficulty]

Sir, your audio is still breaking.

Yes. Is it better?

Please continue, sir.

Yes.

So Sanjay, basically, I had a couple of questions, is that, while in the aftermath of COVID acceptance and reliance on global delivery, and that is evident both from a shift in effort mix as well as revenue mix, and this is true both for you as well as the industry. So do you think as travel becomes to open, we see some normalization or reversal on this front? And the second question was around realization trends. Do you think that the demand environment twice the industry, the ability to offset the increased cost of talent through higher pricing?

So the first question was, is your -- is our on-site ratios and offshore ratios will change. Is that the question, Manik?

Yes, Sanjay, that's correct.

I don't expect it to change given the 3 things that we talked about, the demand is very high. The attrition that we are used to, clients are facing it for the first time in double-digit numbers. And frankly, they are looking up to their partners who have traditionally faced these kinds of attrition to actually help them scale and solve their problems and make them available in the marketplace, make them be competitive in the marketplace. So -- and in addition to that, with talent not being available, we need to automate a lot of tasks that labor is not available further. That is also creating opportunities for us. And I don't think in the short run, it will change at all. What was the second question?

Second question was on the realization trends. Do you see...

Realization trend is high demand. Right, right. So Manik, I think we are seeing increased rates in pockets. But I think we -- as we keep telling you, you look at us as a growth company. This is once in a lifetime opportunity. We are looking at capturing as much growth and be the growth leaders and at the same time, drive up productivity as well as the rate realization in times. But right now, we just focus to meet up the challenges that we see in front of ourselves on supply side and close the demand. We will -- we are seeing some increased rate realizations as well.

The next question is from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss.

Thanks for again giving me an opportunity. I think partly the problem of the line issue is also to do with the telecom companies. But congrats on a great set of execution and you have been punching as analysts like Mike Tyson every quarter by beating the most aggressive estimates, but I love those punches and I am happy to take them as long as...

You guys don't believe us. That's the problem, Sandip, not believing us.

No, no, I am the biggest believer. You can check my notes of last 2 years, and you will believe what I'm saying. But yes, I will ask only one question, Sanjay, and it is a very simple question. I will not ask you any difficult question. So you know much better than us in terms of where the industry is in terms of demand, margin and everything. So will it be fair to say that the worst of the margins is behind? Because the peak of attrition, I'm sure is behind us because now a lot of talent, which will start coming out of training, we will get them over a period of time. And we have given all the financial interventions, which are possible and which should be given. And on the other hand, demand continues to be strong. And particularly in your case, even the cloud business units and the hyperscaler business units, which you have initiated the process several quarters back is now almost complete, if I'm not wrong. Then will it be fair to say that for next at least 8 to 12 quarters, the growth, the -- I would say the worst of the growth is behind and worst of the margins is behind. So will it be fair to quote -- and I know you don't want to quote anything and give any guidance, but it will be very fair for you to at least guide the whole community, investor community and the analyst community in some sense where you see the industry, if not at all for LTI specifically?

See the -- where we are, we did not anticipate, and I will answer your question as precisely I can, trust me, Sandip. I think we did not expect to hire as many people as we have hired. And frankly, at the same -- in the same vein, I don't think in 3 quarters back, I had the visibility to see that we would have such a strong growth environment as well. But we will continue to make no compromise and continue to invest for growth, whether it's in capability building, whether it's in the sales and marketing investments, whether it's in consulting capability, whether it's building on capabilities like we did in Snowflake case, where we caught that trend a little ahead and we invested then the -- went from there. As for -- I can't talk about the rest of the industry, but there's only one guidance that I gave, which is on the stable margin between 14% to 15%. At least in my watch right now, we are not looking at changing that at all.

And on the revenue front, any direction you would like to give? Because on the margin, you have basically said no answer.

Yes. So in the growth term, if I could find more people, Sandip, if you have a way to produce more people, please let me know, we will hire more people.

Best of luck for the current quarter as well.

Thank you, Sandip.

The next question is from the line of Sulabh Govila from Morgan Stanley.

Congrats on a very good set of results. So I had a couple of questions. One is on the deal construct that is there in the market today. So historically, large deals have acted as one of the key drivers for the industry growth and for LTI as well. However, in the recent times, there's a shift in terms of smaller-sized deals that have been closing, which are part of the larger engagements that you are witnessing. So in this context, how do we get a better handle on visibility on growth over the coming quarters? Is there some data point on the overall TCV, et cetera? Or would you say that the visibility over the year has become less than normal and less than usual?

Sulabh, there are large deals, and we announced one deal. I hope and wish that we could have announced more, but there is enough pipeline and more will happen in times to come. Having said that, I want to be very clear, this is one of the best demand environments I have ever seen, right? And this is what I've been saying for the last 3, 4 months at a consistent basis. Look at our performance and numbers and look at the industry, right? For us, if you look at it, it's very broad-based. It's across verticals, across service lines, across geographies, across client buckets. And this is what we articulated in my speech, and I'll just summarize it. One, there is demand because of great restructuring. Everyone needs to operate in the new normal and make changes because otherwise, there's no winners or losers. If you don't do it, you will not exist, right? So that's -- there's a lot of requirements there. New spend areas like ESG, cybersecurity as well. Great resignation causing talent depletion at client side, plus automation needs at the same time, which is causing more demands for us. And when you look at large deals, typically, the large deals require consolidation, transitions, et cetera, clients have so much to do and so much such high attrition, they have no time to think, right? So this is why we are seeing a lot of midsized deals, small-sized deals, lots of transformation and journeys and parts that we talked about in the marketplace. Whether large deals will happen or not, they will continue to happen at their pace. But right now, the important for the -- important thing for our customers is to be competitive in the field that they play in. And as far as we go, we believe that if we have the right people, capabilities and execution excellence, we continue to invest on that. Just like we navigated pandemic year with 9.5% growth, we are confident we can continue to grow in times to come. You have to have the heart to do it.

Got it, Sanjay. That's very helpful. And another question I had is on the trends in the coming second half of the year. So the usual trend is that we've seen 2H stronger than 1H due to seasonality. So would you say that, that trend will hold through this year as well? Or given that we've had very strong 1H.

Yes.

Okay. Sure, sure.

Simple answer, right, it works.

Yes, yes. And then one last clarification on the pickup in attrition and the employees that we've added through the quarter. Would you say the impact of these on the cost that sort is already baked in? Or will flow through in the next quarter?

Nachiket?

Yes. So we continue -- as I think Sanjay mentioned in his speech as well, we added almost 2,000 in Q4, 2,300 in Q1 and another 4,000 in Q2. So we continue to add at the same pace going forward in the quarters as well. So the cost impact of that is what is there in our P&L already. And that's why, as Sanjay said, we are confident to continue to maintain our margin guidance of 14% to 15% back.

The next question is from the line of Sudheer from ICICI Securities.

Thanks for giving this opportunity and congratulations on a great set of numbers. Sanjay, my first question is if you look at the performance potential between the large-sized companies and midsized companies, right? In the recent past, it has -- the margin of outperformance of midsized companies has increased considerably. So as somebody who has worked in both the, let's say, both the spectra, both in the large company -- in a large company and in a midsized company also. So what do you think might be driving this increased margin of outperformance besides just a base of it. Is it also because of the fact that industry is now seeing more of midsized and small-sized deals, and that's the reason midsized companies are showing better outperformance?

Sudheer, if you look at the record growth on what I handled, frankly, we have grown faster in the large size company as well. So where I stand, I don't think size matters at all. What matters is the capabilities you bring to the market. What matters are the investments you do to go and be a trusted adviser to your customers. how you take people along. And that is the -- and the legacy that you bring in the company and L&T and Larsen & Toubro has huge legacy and capabilities and our biggest playground to experiment before we take to the market. These are priceless differentiations that we have in the marketplace as we go. So I don't think size matters at all. It's all about expertise, capabilities and how we go to market. That's what makes a difference. World is a big leveler. In the new age, it's all about new technologies. If you can continue to focus on fewer verticals like we do, apply technology to it, that will make the world of difference. And that is what is happening in today's times.

Sure, Sanjay. And actually, I think when the acquisition of Mindtree happened, where Mr. Shankar Raman made this interesting comment that, let's say, 3 years down the line, probably we'll be the fifth largest IT company in India and perhaps then might be an interesting time to look at integration. Now if you look at the revenue run rate that is probably the 3 companies put together might be close to that run rate. So again, it depends on L&T's thought process and their perspective. But if you were to take a guess, do you think these 3 companies would grow at the current pace if they are less an integrated or you see bigger synergies if they're integrated? I'm asking your personal view. And of course, we all know that L&T will have the final perspective on this matter.

Sudheer, you're asking me a personal view on a 250 people call. But frankly, this is beyond my pay grade buddy, number one. Number two, all I can worry about is the job and the accountability I have from my shareholders and that is towards LTI. So I think you should talk to Mr. Shankar Raman in times to come. Right now, all of us are single-handedly focused on job at hand, which is to continue delivering value to our shareholders, our customers and our employees. And at the same time, continue to have fun because once you stop to have fun, none of these things work.

Good luck. All the best for the future.

Thank you, Sudheer.

The next question is from the line of Mayur Patel from IIFL AMC.

First of all, congratulations for a very impressive set of numbers. Just 2 simple questions. First, in the previous quarter's conference call, I asked you whether this demand momentum is transitory or you think it's long term and you mentioned that looks like a at least a 3-year kind of -- like the 3-year kind of medium-term demand strength in the cycle. So with this current commentary, I assume that becomes -- is more reassuring thought around the medium-term strength of the cycle. Is it fair to...

Absolutely right, Mayur. I can't see beyond 3 years. I was always told -- my eye sight is poor on the long distance. So I was always told how far I can see. So 3 years all I can see. Yes, the demand will continue to be good for 3 years, at least where we stand today. And this result and what market is showing is a testimony to that.

Sure. Just one more small question. On the pricing front, we discussed about the demand scenario supply side. Any resilience are you seeing on the pricing front also to pass on this supply side whatever pressure every company is having. Are you seeing the client opening up to take some -- absorb some price hikes?

I think we are seeing, Mayur, in pockets, there is an opportunity, but there are long-standing contracts, et cetera. And today, we are frankly held heads down and solving outcomes for our customers, solving the problems that they have and capture the growth. And -- but definitely pricing pressures are not there like they used to be there. But this is also an opportunity, and we need to think on how we can improve the pricing. But right now, we are still continuing, as we have always said, to be a growth company and look at how can we capture the growth in this lifetime of an opportunity.

The next question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

Sanjay, a couple of clarification questions. First, if you look at the last 1.5 years since pandemic started, there is a continuous shift of revenues towards offshore from on-site. Initially, the expectations was that this will be more of a near-term major reaction, but you guys continue to shift more and more things offshore. Now while you have delivered very strong top line growth, this is adding a little bit of a deflationary element to your revenue because an offshore effort usually is less rewarding [ their on-site ]. By when do you think this will stabilize and so that we can actually get apples to apples revenue number, growth number for LTI?

Mukul, frankly, I don't know what a stable thing means anymore. What we have seen is that if you experiment, invest ahead, you can actually execute the new age programs actually 100% from offshore. And there was a time when they talked about Indian industry not doing well because we didn't know how to execute on pods and teams working together in an agile DevOps manner. But today, we see all of that -- those myths go away and able to see scalability come in, in a defined manner. And this is what is going to continue to there. And today, when you go in a COVID, this is the first realization that everyone has because everyone is either on-site or offshore, right? Everyone is working from yes, it doesn't really matter. And this way, you have today global talent axis, you're taking the work to people instead of people to work. And that is what has actually happened. I don't know whether it's the end, whether -- what is the stable? It can still go down in my view, given the way demand is given the way attrition is at even for our customers, right? Customers are not able to hire people. Customers also are losing people in double-digit numbers. And thankfully, for India, we still have the ability to churn out a lot of good quality talent. If we can find some, we will continue to see more offshore movements in some time at least.

Sure. I think that's quite helpful. The other question, and I don't want to nitpick, but cloud infra and security business was a bit modest in terms of the quarter.

You're nitpicking and saying not nitpicking, Mukul. But I'll tell you -- Nachiket, why don't you answer that. This is only the infra business.

Yes. So Mukul, that is only the infra part of the cloud that gets reported under that. But cloud, as you can imagine, is across many service lines. And if we combine the application modernization, cloud engineering work as well as the IP on cloud and data on cloud that we see, it has been actually a growth driver for us in this quarter as well and continues to grow better than the company average.

No, that's clear. I thought the cloud is supposed to be a superstar right now, so I thought I will just clarify that.

It is. It is.

It's actually about time we got to also relook at how we report it and we are looking at it. So hopefully, we'll come back to you with a better classification going forward.

The next question is from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala from IIFL.

Just a couple of questions. Firstly, on these, right? So Sanjay, you mentioned about how broad-based the overall growth environment is looking like a demand environment is looking like. Just wanted to understand, I'm assuming the growth will be across clients. And do that really necessarily need new deal wins that you typically announce? Because your numbers on new deal will we have done better in the past and have grown at a slower rate versus what we are doing today. So high growth rate or a sector-leading growth rate, is it dependent on new deal wins in the current environment and you can still continue to do it without a large number of new wins?

I think revenue is a revenue and revenue is a revenue, Rishi. Frankly, we've always talked about 4 levers, right? Growth accounts, invest accounts, new account openings, large deals, right? And today, when customers are worried about whether their companies can actually compete in the open market, consolidation deals, which are typically cost side, they are low priority items, right? So I think -- and it's not to say the large deals are not there. We ourselves announced one large deal, and we are participating in a whole ton of them. We'll see you in December and tell you exact TCV of large deals. Sudhir will deliver. That's why you come to that event. We will tell you about large deals that we are chasing as well. But nothing -- you cannot grow on -- the resilience of a company comes when you grow on all verticals, resilience of a company happens when you grow on all 4 of those levers. But today, where we are, the way customers are spending, I think we are able to see a broad-based growth in their journeys that they are taking towards dealing in the great restructuring.

So Sanjay, if I were just to add, right? Folks, as you see, there is a -- the demand environment. But I think if you reflect on what we have been able to do even during the last not just the last 6 months in this financial year, but even the 3 quarters in the COVID year, is the ability to navigate real-time demand. So today's world is built on speed. The clients are looking to do things at speed. Speed is the biggest differentiator right now. And that's what's driving a lot of these transformation journeys. And the ability to navigate real-time demand at speed is not something that everybody is good. I mean, I would like to think that we are better than most of our peers is our ability to do that. And frankly, that's what when Sanjay said, we are head down trying to focus on the demand that is there to realize to maximize our returns from it, because once you lose demand, you kind of lose it forever. So this is the time to capture demand, and that's what we are really focused on capture real-time demand at speed.

Just quick follow-up. So given the demand environment and historically, you have done -- your second halfs are sequentially better than first half, but given the kind of growth rates you have delivered in 1H, do you still think that will hold true this year as well?

Yes.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

The next question is from the line of Mohit Jain from Anand Rathi.

Sir, just one question on retail CPG vertical, retail CPG and pharma. So if you could help us understand the diversification and performance there versus some of the peers. And what kind of demand are you seeing in that particular vertical?

Can you just repeat it? We just lost it? Can you just repeat the question?

Retail, CPG and pharma vertical, there is a divergence in performance between us and other companies in general. So what kind of demand are you seeing in that particular vertical? And is it more geography specific? Or do you think that vertical is also picking up slowly.

See, I mean, again, on a year-on-year basis, it's 15.3%. I know [ it fails ] in comparison with the 25% overall company growth. But CTG, Retail, Pharma, I think to the second half of your question, it will pick up in the second half of the year. We will need to see some good programs coming in, and it will start to pick up here.

And any color on the type of assignments you are getting there? Or is this more region-specific that this vertical is picking up, for example, in Europe or in U.S. or something of that sort that you are witnessing?

For us, it's picking up primarily in the U.S. And it's on the back of -- in fact, we are actually seeing some decent broad-based demand across cloud, across security and across ERP, the 3 specific areas, which are the large spend areas in CPG, retail and pharma. Oh, sorry. And obviously, data underpins all of this. So in fact, Sanjay has been personally involved in multiple data conversations with some of our CPG and life sciences clients. As they look -- as I said, their data foundations were typically within the ERP, as they look to take it out of those systems to create the real-time visibility of not just their operations, but also -- and their supply chain, but also their entire demand environment or their own customer demand environment, that's a whole new area of spend.

The next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay Global.

Most of the question has been answered. Just one last question. Can you provide some update about the data product business, I think, which is one of the focus area for us. Last time you indicated about a separate sales team, presales team and on development investment, which we are making. So if you can provide some update on that business?

Sure. So the data product business that we announced in the last analyst meet, we are seeing a very, very good strong traction, and it has also helped significantly differentiate the data decisions conversations. And frankly, for the Fortune 50 clients that we have. And those conversations have really significantly changed the positioning of LTI in the data space, how those customers looked at what we can help them transform. And an effect of that you see in the kind of analytics and data growth that we have seen Q-on-Q and Y-o-Y this quarter. And we're very confident about how it is materially helping us shift the conversations with our clients. And it continues to accelerate and it continues to excite us as we -- and with that, we will also continue to invest in building those capabilities because that has materially changed the profile of our data business with Fortune 500 customers.

And any gross price index kind of thing, let's say, how many clients we have already onboarded for data for that kind of business?

We don't separate it that way. Today, to be honest, it's part of our overall data offering. So it continues to be very strong across all of our customer base.

The next question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities.

Congratulations, Sanjay and the team for a strong execution all around. Yes, just one question, which I ask you as an expert on the industry, and it's about industry rather than the LTI in specific. So you are saying the [ clear ] visibility because of the stronger demand is very healthy for the industry. So I just wanted to understand whether the momentum of growth, which we are witnessing in CY '22 or -- CY '21 and FY '22, will it sustain for the industry? Because I think when you look at the earnings growth of the corporate clients, which we address is looking to come down in CY 2022 as a whole versus CY '21, which had a benefit of low budget spend in CY '20 as a whole. So do you believe the kind of demand, the nature of the demand is such that, the correlation of the IT spend release versus the clients' corporate earnings growth will no longer be valid even beyond FY '22 as a whole? Or do you believe the growth momentum may remain healthy, but there could be some deceleration in the growth momentum, but it may continue to remain better than pre-COVID levels.

Sandeep, by what we see today is demand tech spend will continue. Look at Gartner predictions and it's a good reflection of what we expect the market to spend. In addition to that, if you look at even a simple data point of U.S. demand overall, not only tech but overall job openings of 10.5 million and 7.5 million only unemployed people, it's a reflection of how much automation also and tech interventions need to be dual done for all that to happen. So where I stand today, I can only talk about the conversations that we have with our customers, the demand we are seeing. I wish we had the ability to service our customers and even more than what we can. But I think in a sustained way, this demand is better than what we have seen for a long time.

Okay. But any comments on momentum kind of industry growth rate, can it be maintained like FY '22 going forward?

[Foreign Language] You can cut it in 10 different ways. I don't know how to tell you. I can't -- if we had more people, we'd have staffed more people right now. So today, where we are, there is a demand for us to -- in a sustained way we can service for our foreseeable future.

The next question is from the line of Abhishek Shindadkar from Incred Capital.

Just one question on the seasonality. Generally, we have a better seasonality in the second half. I know I have heard your comments about the demand environment and completely understand. But just wanted to get a sense that anything changes meaningfully for actions for H2 [ for us ] compared to H1 in a normal year. That's one. And the second...

One word answer is no. We are seeing a very robust demand. We will see a good H1 -- H2 over H1, good number of deals, good number of -- good growth across the sectors that we are continuing to see. Okay. Next question, Abhishek?

Yes. So the second question, Sanjay, just wanted to understand that it seems like currently, clients are also creating redundancies in terms of technology, building new and continuing with the old. So should we read that that is creating a more sustainable cycle right now? And maybe that is what is one of the reasons that you're saying a 3-year vision of strong demand. Are we interpreting it right? Or maybe that's not the right way to [ interpret ]?

Yes, I can't see beyond 3 years, to be very honest, Abhishek. There is enough demand that we have today. Clients -- everyone is looking at new technologies and effectively use that technology say in data to figure out how to shrink the time from data to decisions or how to use ERP modernization to solve for new normal, how to go to customers directly for B2B industries. And that's not a trend that I see it coming down in the short term. So these transformation journeys is all across the industries, it's all across all the processes of the company, and they will continue across industries, at least where we stand today, that's what we see.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sanjay Jalona for closing comments.

Thank you folks. It's great, as I said, to be in Mumbai. It's great to be traveling and lovely to be speaking to you again. Thank you for your time and following the company so closely. We are hosting our Annual Analyst Day on 9th of December. My team -- entire team and I look forward to seeing you then. Till we see you or talk to you again, we hope that you and your loved ones continue to stay safe and healthy. Take care, God Bless, bye-bye.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of LTI, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.