Mphasis Limited (526299) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Mphasis Limited Q2 FY 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Please note, the management would be showcasing a presentation that is available on the webcast link shared in the invite as well as on the Mphasis website, www.mphasis.com. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Shiv Muttoo from CDR. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Thank you, Lizanne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Mphasis' Q2 FY '22 Results Conference Call. We have with us today Mr. Nitin Rakesh, CEO; Mr. Manish Dugar, CFO; and Mr. Viju George, Head Investor Relations. Before we begin, I would like to state that some of the statements in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve certain risks and uncertainties. A detailed statement in this regard is available on the Q2 FY '22 results release that has been sent out to all of you earlier. I now invite Nitin to begin the proceedings of this call. Over to you, Nitin.

Thank you, Shiv. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call this morning. As we close on the first half of our financial year, in the face of an unprecedented pandemic and personal tragedy, I'm thankful to our employees. They have demonstrated dedication and resilience. As a company, Mphasis has met challenges head on and powered through a year like no other that made it uniquely challenging. We are witnessing an accelerated recovery in contrast to the economic uncertainty that the world faced at this time last year. Mphasis has emerged as an even stronger company. In the next few slides, I will walk you through what we are seeing in the market and how Mphasis has performed. As the tech landscape fast evolves in the post-COVID world, we see 3 engines driving sustainable growth for us. The first engine drives growth in global tech spending that has picked up compared to 2020 and is expected to stay at elevated levels vis-a-vis the pre-COVID era. Within that, the overall offshore IT services growth is even higher and continues to drive expansion for the share of Indian IT services market, especially for the firms that are aligned to the digital transformation competencies. According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending is projected to grow at a rate of 8.6% in 2021. The IT Services segment is forecast to grow at 9.8% in 2021. The second engine relates to capturing additional discretionary spending opportunities as enterprises migrate away from a CapEx-driven tech investment model releasing more in the tech budgets in year away from the past amortizations due to tax debt reduction. This is spurring the consumption of as-a-service trend, encompassing all aspects of tech consumption, a theme that Mphasis bet on starting 2016/'17. In the ongoing dynamic of run versus change, the market for change is growing much faster as enterprises relentlessly rationalize run to fund change. In fact, we estimate that the addressable market for change will significantly expand over the next few years. Because we were able to recognize this trend early, we have aligned our offerings with the change paradigm using our tribes and squads-driven competency model, which we have discussed with you in the past. The third engine deals with the technology themes that are closely aligned with the business and play directly into the growth and transformation theme. Increasingly, much larger sustainable opportunities are also now emerging within the other parts of the planned organization outside of the traditional IT orgs. The blurring of boundaries due to the change dynamic, that intersects both business and technology, allows us to expand our total addressable market significantly faster than before. Our recently announced acquisition of Blink is a case in point, we believe, of boosting our credentials and digital research, strategy and design. We will significantly expand our time in the faster-growing upstream phases of digital transformation journey of enterprises, moving to the very front of our front-to-back strategy. Our direct business growth is accelerating on a larger revenue base. In second quarter FY '22, our overall gross revenue was $385.2 million, which represents a growth of 6.1% quarter-over-quarter and 17.6% year-over-year, and 6.6% Q-o-Q and 17.2% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms. This is quarterly decade high annual growth. Direct business continues to power our growth, growing 9.9% sequentially and 31.5% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms. The trajectory of our direct annual growth is consistently rising with Y-o-Y growth topping 30% and about 10% sequentially for the second straight quarter. For first half, direct growth stands at 32% year-over-year in constant currency terms. In absolute terms, our sequential and annual incremental revenue added in our direct business is the highest on record. The contribution of direct at 92% continues to rise. We continue to prioritize our growth and investment in this business. A strong showing here has helped us manage the declines in the DXC business, the contribution of which now is reduced to 6% of revenues. DXC revenue declined 25.5% sequentially and 53.3% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms. This is in line with our commentary of DXC dropping to mid-single digit as a percentage of our revenue by the end of the year. Given the overwhelming contribution of direct to our business, which now exceeds 90%, we expect that our overall revenue growth going forward will start to converge with growth in the direct business. Geography-wise, all our markets have paid well. In our core market of the U.S., we grew 27% year-over-year for Direct. In Europe, our Direct business has grown 44% year-over-year. Our pipeline in Europe is strong, especially with new clients, and we expect this region to continue to be a growth driver for FY '22 and beyond as well. From a service line perspective, Application Services, our largest service offering, grew 39% year-over-year, buoyed by the theme of digitization and third power transformation of applications. Specifically, I would like to call out the sustained growth performance in the Direct segment. Market share gains of the top 10 clients and beyond have helped us drive growth here. Growth contribution from our key clients has been consistent, reflecting increasing depth of key relationships and share gains. While our top 10 client segment has grown at over 20% in FY '22 YTD, what's equally heartening is the consistent growth coming from beyond top 10 customers, including new clients, a theme that we've highlighted in earlier calls and will double-click on shortly. We believe that our broad-based success with clients positions us well for industry-leading growth for Direct for FY '22 on top of industry-leading Direct growth in FY '21, in line with our FY '22 guidance articulated at the start of this year. With our tech-led positioning, we are replicating our performance in our flagship vertical, now renamed to Banking & Financial Services, as well as other verticals. BFS has grown 20% Y-o-Y in constant currency for the quarter, representing the fifth straight quarter of 20-plus percent growth. Our Direct BFS grew 13.8% sequentially and 23.8% Y-o-Y in dollar terms. This growth is broad-based across our segments of BFS. We continue to enjoy market share gains with our key BFS clients. This quarter has also seen robust growth in the now renamed TMT vertical and the Logistics & Transportation vertical within Direct, with TMT growing 10.8% sequentially and 168% year-over-year, and Logistics & Transportation growing 39% year-over-year. Our client stats reflect the strengthening position with several top clients post spend and consolidation. We continue to believe that our wallet share gains emanate from our competency-driven positioning. As our top clients prioritize and execute their spending plans, our preferred partner status places us well to capture additional market share, especially in new areas of expand as articulated in the earlier part of my remarks. Notably, we continue to see stronger growth for the lower half of our top 10 clients as well as robust growth beyond our top 10 clients. Our top 5 and top 10 clients have grown consistently, registering 22% and 28% growth, respectively, in second quarter on a trailing 12-month basis. The average contribution of our top 5 clients exceeds $120 million on a TTM basis. Our top 4 clients are now $100 million plus clients on a trailing 12-month basis, and all our top 5 clients are $75 million plus on a trailing 12-month basis as well, and $100 million plus on a quarterly annualized basis, which we believe is unique for a company of our size. Clients 6 to 10 have grown at 49% trailing 12 months. This is much higher than the average TTM growth of segment, indicating strong growth diversification among our key clients. Our clients in the 11 to 20 bucket have grown at 14% on a TTM basis as well. Notably, all our 7 $50 million plus clients grew sequentially for the second straight quarter. In a nutshell, our strong client performance across the board supports our industry-leading growth in the Direct business. Our new client revenue continues to grow rapidly as well, growing at 63% Y-o-Y in second quarter. We will expand on that segment in a few minutes. We recorded TCV of $241 million in second quarter. This marks the seventh straight quarter of $200 million plus net new TCV. That is not including renewal deals. Our TCV is up 21% year-to-date. Despite strong TCVs racked up over the last few quarters, our pipeline is still up, suggesting that our pipeline generation engine is firing as well. We generated a high percentage of our TCV through proactive bid pursuits where win rates are higher than in competitive RFP situations. As we report our TCV on a net new basis, that is excluding renewals, we find the correlation between our direct TCV and revenue growth to be high, exceeding 0.9. Coming to our client metrics. Our track record in migrating clients from 1 revenue bucket to the next continues to be healthy. Specifically, our conversion ratio of clients from 1 tier to the next tier is solid and improving as well over 50%, representing one of the best rates in the industry. The count of $100 million and $50 million clients at 4 and 7, respectively, is stable on a sequential basis, and is up by 2 and 3, respectively, on a Y-o-Y basis. As I mentioned before, on a quarterly run rate basis, we have added 1 more client to the $100 million plus bucket this quarter. We win 1 to 2 large deals on an average every quarter, marked by an increasing deal size. As this slide indicates, the average large deal size on a trailing 12-month basis at $80 million plus is 2.5x where it was 2 years ago. Our large deals are increasingly multiyear, multi-tower, transformation based and longer tenure. The growing size reflects this capability evolution. I'm pleased to report that we have signed -- our margin philosophy affords us the flexibility to manage our profitability and an environment of rising cost of talent in the heated market. In this quarter, we were able to absorb higher cost of revenue, and in fact, raised gross margins 50 bps sequentially. This allowed us to operate in the stated EBIT margin range. Our reported metric included the M&A-related charges of INR 208 million, that is 70 bps for the quarter. Adjusted for M&A-related charges, operating profit grew 6% sequentially and 15.4% Y-o-Y to INR 4,528 million in Q2. Adjusted operating margin declined 10 bps Q-o-Q and 30 bps Y-o-Y to 15.8% in Q2. This is in line with our stated operating margin band of 15.5% to 17%. Our adjusted EPS for the quarter at 19.09 grew 19% year-over-year, and our EPS growth exceeds our operating profit growth. Our cash generation stood at $54 million in Q4 '21, a 9-year high. Our operating cash flow generation as a percentage of EBITDA is 77%. Cash flow growth exceeds our profit growth. I'm pleased to report that we have signed 20 Fortune 500 firms since FY '20 that are well distributed across verticals. Plus, we've added 10 more in the Fortune 500 category from our acquisition recently. This is not incidental as we have reinvigorated the program with dedicated leadership. We've carved out 5 specifically selected verticals to focus on our NCA, namely BFSI, in which our positioning and track record is already solid. This vertical is large enough for us to continue to provide growth runway in the longer term. Logistics, TMT and Healthcare, each of these 5 verticals has its respective client acquisition strategies led by dedicated sales, delivery and domain leadership. We have an elaborate operating model in place to transition clients to a strategic status with client engagement structure and investments defined in the stages of transition. As our clients move to transition phase and become strategic clients, we progressively bring full force of our secret sauce and dedicated client resources and GTM motions in engaging with such accounts. Our continued strong growth in TMT over the past few quarters as a result of the NCA investment program is encouraging. Notably, our Direct TMT revenue at well over $100 million on a TTM basis is more than double Y-o-Y. More importantly, our clients at pipeline addressing the change imperatives of clients' tech programs is up 13% Q-o-Q and 28% Y-o-Y despite pipeline to TCV conversion of $1.2 billion in the trailing 12-month basis. Our pipeline is well distributed amongst our 8 tribes, indicating our traction across various digital tech stacks. In summary, I will leave you with 3 points. Our Direct strong growth is consistent. For the second successive quarter, we have grown 10% sequentially and over 30% year-over-year in constant currency. Financial year-to-date, Direct growth is at 32% in constant currency terms. Direct performance has helped us mitigate the declines n DXC, the contribution of which has now reduced to 6% revenue in Q2. Second, all our KPIs are moving in the right direction, namely our growth is getting broad-based with Europe, TMT, Logistics & Transportation, aiding the growth in addition to our anchor verticals of BFS and anchor geography of U.S. We continue to drive market share gains with our key clients. Investments in the design and build-out of our NC Architecture, a critical leg of our future growth, is bearing fruit with 20 Fortune 500 client wins in the past few quarters. Thus, we are winning a good share of high potential clients for the future. Our client mining metrics across revenue buckets continues to strengthen. As referenced, our average top 5 client contribution topped $120 million. Our top 6 to 10 clients are now growing well above our Direct revenue growth with 49% growth on a trailing 12-month basis, while the top 11 to 20 clients have also grown strong double-digit percentages. All our $750 million plus clients have grown sequentially for the second successive quarter. Our cash flow generation as a percentage of EBITDA is nicely trending up with operating cash flow of $54 million at a 9-year high and represents 77% of our EBITDA. Third, investing for growth by using operating leverage and operating in a sustained target operating margin bank and we believe our margin stand ensures margin stability in an environment of supply headwinds. Thus, revenue growth translates into sustainable EPS and PAT growth and consistently rising free cash flow generation complemented by improving DSOs. Our growth strategy envisages us making sustained investments in line with our continuity and acceleration team along 4 vectors: Geography expansion, leadership breadth and depth, buildup of digital capabilities, including M&A and NCA scale up. Together with the increasingly diversified nature of our client base and metrics, we believe this will help sustain the magnitude that drives consistency of our Direct growth. Our strong performance in the first half of the year reinforces our confidence in reiterating our guidance for industry-leading growth in Direct in FY '22 on top of industry-leading performance in FY '21. We also expect to see greater convergence of our overall revenue growth with the Direct growth. On that note, I would request the operator to open up the line for questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal.

Nitin, I think, as always, any commentary on how the interactions with DXC have taken place over the last month or 2. Now that MRC is over, would you like to update us on exactly how the future of the relationship is going to be.

Mukul, are you referring to the DXC relationship? I couldn't hear you very clearly.

Yes. I was talking about, after the completion of the MRC, the relationship with DXC.

So I think we've already updated you in the past that we already have 3 successive 2-year terms built into the renewal contract. So we've already kicked out into the first 2-year term of renewal. MRC is a contract that was done for a 5-year period. I think we have just finished the 5-period on September 30, and we're engaged with the audit team to make sure that we are able to find a situation where both of us can continue to build on the partnership and make sure that we have a sustainable revenue line coming through. So nothing more to call out of that at this point in time on the commercial discussion. We wouldn't want to talk anything about it at this point in time. But when we have something that we need to share, we will definitely the street.

Sure. And just to probe a bit more into this relationship, and I know like how there are definitely some sensitivities which are involved here. But your revenues from the DXC channel has come down by 2/3 in the last 8 quarters, now down to $25 million. So a, is this something where you think you can defend your business given your relationship with clients who you are servicing via DXC? Or do you expect this to trend down further from here? And b, is there some Direct win which is happening with those clients, which were earlier part of DXC channel, given that, like in some cases, like TMT, your Direct growth is much better and your DXC business, obviously, is declining at a very rapid pace. So if you can just help us, are you able to convert some of those guys into Direct relationship?

Mukul, I think those are both items that obviously have a bearing on longer-term relationship. So I think the right thing to think about is that we are investing in building our Direct business growth. We've been growing our business quite well in the Direct side well before the DXC decline started. All we've really done is taken the investment dollars that we could to feed the growth in Direct. I think the guidance we gave was to think about the DXC business coming to the mid-single digit mark. I think we are inching towards that as we expected to. The reality is that the Direct business is really where the focus is and will continue to be. But we do expect a line of revenue that will continue to emerge from the DXC side of the house. I think that's probably the best guidance I can give you at this point in time. without getting into the details of a channel conflict or client confidentiality issues.

The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from PhillipCapital.

Just 2 questions. First is on the offshore revenue. So offshore revenue has not increased materially for Mphasis as compared to some of our peers. So is that a conscious strategy to chase more on-site business? If not, can it be a margin lever going there? And second question is on Europe. So you are investing in this geography aggressively in the last couple of years. So any color in terms of deal sizes, I mean in which verticals you are seeing traction?

Yes. I think offshore revenue has actually grown this quarter quite nicely because we have a 1% swing between onshore and offshore revenue. So we guided for the fact that growth will actually be in favor of offshore and that's what is playing out right now. So I don't think there is any change in stance or strategy from that perspective. Of course, the decline in DXC was a little bit more offshore-centric this quarter, so that definitely is showing up in the headcount as well. But primarily, I don't think we expect that our onshore-offshore ratio will move materially. If anything, it will actually be probably a little bit more skewed towards offshore growth. That's kind of, I think, the guidance I can give you. On the Europe question. I think it's fair to assume that our tip of the spear for opening a new market within Europe or a new geography in that market will always be leading with our strength and our strength comes from BFSI. And that's kind of the strategy we have deployed in U.K. in the last 2 years, and we are taking that across the continent over the last 2 quarters as well. So typically, it's the BFSI segment that is the tip of the spear. We have 5 out of the top 10 European banks as our customers today. We will continue to expand on that footprint. We've gone across from U.K. into the continent. We have a decent sized business in Europe, in France. We've started doing business with banks in the Nordics. So I think that's going to be the tip of the spear because that's where our referenceability and our credibility is the highest. In terms of deal sizes, I think we've seen some really healthy deals. We announced a large transaction last quarter as well. So that's kind of the traction and the deal flow is fairly strong in that region.

The next question is from the line of Vimal Gohil from Union AMC.

Nitin and team, congratulations for a good quarter. Just 2 questions from my side. The sharp dip that we've seen in the DXC business over the last few quarters, I'm sure there is a lot of management and employee bandwidth and other resources that have gone behind the DXC revenue or our DXC business. How much of that bandwidth or how much of those resources are sort of fungible and could be sort of used effectively for our growth in the Direct piece. I just wanted to understand that aspect. And then I have 1 more balance sheet-related question.

So I think just to give you an answer, definitely, there is an element of rotation and fulfillment that comes in through the declines. Of course, I'm not saying that we have stopped investing in that segment, because customer is a customer is a customer, and we will provide the best service and the capability to every customer, including that channel. However, when there is a decline and we have run down, that definitely becomes a fuel for us to grow the direct business. Just to give you a sense, YTD basis in the last 2 quarters, our Direct business billable head count has been growing at 20%, and that number was about 38% for the last 4 quarters. But if you look at the net headcount add, that will not add up to that because we've had this internal rotation in place. So very much part of the supply chain ecosystem for us to be able to reskill or redeploy folks that become available, including at a manager level or a leadership level as well. Again, we run the company as a portfolio of businesses and this rotation and migration of talent or deployment of talent across units is not uncommon for us. So it's definitely very much part of the equation.

Right, right. I have 1 more question on the balance sheet. Just a clarification. The sharp increase that we are seeing in the other financial liabilities in the balance sheet of INR 1,400-odd crores. That is related to our payables for the Blink acquisition, right?

No. That's actually the provision for the dividend payout. Since the shareholder approval happened on the 29th of September, we needed to provide it in the books. The payout has happened in the first week of October.

The next question is from the line of Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec.

Two questions actually. One is, on the G&A side, if you could just explain how we should think of the increase in cost on G&A, maybe excluding the M&A sort of expenses there, on a going forward basis? And two, your thoughts on attrition and which part of the employee base is sort of hitting? And how are we sort of mitigating anything in terms of fresher hires for the year that you have done so far and how you're looking at it overall?

Yes. So Nitin...

Yes. Let me take the second question, Manish, and then you can address the G&A issue. So Nitin, the issue on supply side, that's definitely an industry-level issue. The lower down you go in the pyramid, the churn is a little bit higher primarily because that's where the migration mobility is the highest, especially in an environment where people are working remote, the engagement is also the lowest. I think the effort is not just hiring or backfilling, but also taking action for higher engagement, higher value proposition, and making sure that we're able to provide that same level of growth opportunity across the pyramid. We have been very proactive in hiring across the pyramid. I think the issue isn't so much just having freshers, because that's 1 part of equation. I think we've talked about additional supply chain levers in terms of new locations. We've talked about using TalentNext to upskill. We've talked about rotation of people from within 1 unit to the next. And we will obviously also continue to hire across the pyramid, including freshers. We don't disclose numbers for obvious reasons, but I can assure you that a pretty significant effort continues to be made in strengthening and broadening the whole supply chain ecosystem. And of course, in making sure that we are able to retain and deploy the best talent we have. But definitely, a supply-constrained market; demand far outstrips supply for the industry as a whole, not just in India but globally, and we also think that, that's an environment that we have to sustain in over the next 2 quarters, but all things being equal, I would rather take an environment with higher growth than supply than the other way around. So I think that's the perspective we are building that needs skills and capabilities. Manish, you can take the G&A question.

Yes. So Nitin, the G&A expenses, if you see the trend for the last few quarters, has been in the range of 5.4%, 5.5%. Last quarter was actually an aberration when it went down to 2.7%. If you take the base at 5.4% and you look at the reported G&A expense for this quarter, that's close to 0.7% increase. And almost all of that is because of the M&A expenses. As we have communicated, the M&A expense is close to 0.7% of the revenue. So if you look at from that perspective, 5.4% plus 0.7%, is the 6.1% that we reported this quarter.

Sure. That's helpful. Just 1 more follow-up, if I may. From an industry perspective, are you seeing on-site attrition also see a meaningful pickup? Just your thoughts from industry perspective.

Yes. I think it's definitely elevated. It is higher than the historical trends. But I think the real, I would say, bigger uptake really is offshore just given the sudden surge in demand that the industry has seen in the last 2 quarters. So I think we do believe that the shortage will probably be more acute in certain key locations because not only is the industry actually hiring more, but there are other ecosystems within the economy in India that are also very aggressively hiring from the tech markets. So I think that demand-supply situation is probably a little bit more acute than on-site.

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

Just wanted to understand, Nitin, about the Fortune 500 client addition slide. So that's very impressive. Just wanted to understand, is it broad-based? Or is it more focused towards BCM as a whole? So if you can give some color on the same?

Sure. Maybe we can have that slide up on the webcast since I think the key thing to note on this slide is the fact that it's a pretty consistent addition between, I would say, 3 to 4 Fortune 500 customers every quarter. It is very broad-based. It is not just in BCM. And the part of the reason for that is that in BCM we already have a pretty strong coverage. A lot of the recent additions, I would say, especially in the last 4 quarters have actually been in non-BCM. And they are also widespread across geographies even the U.S. actually constitute the bulk of these additions. So again, very pleased with the fact that we've created a very strong foundation for the client pyramid for us to continue to mine these through in converting them from the $1 million, $5 million, $25 million, $50 million, $75 million buckets.

Okay. Okay. And here, we replacing the existing incumbent? Or is it the addition of 1 more strategic vendor like...

Yes, I think that's a great question. So I think every time there is a pretty significant pivot or there is a pivot in tech consumption, the pattern of consumption, tech debt reduction, for example, data center services are declining 10% year-over-year at an industry level. However, there are other things that incumbent provides us too. So I think, we've also seen that the current environment, especially the last 4 to 6 quarters, I would say, post March last year, the ability to actually open new logos, the willingness on the client's side to actually give you an opportunity if you have the right value proposition or a referenceability, the right disruptive construct, the ability to actually get them to be more agile and nimble, get them to launch product quicker, cut cost while applying transformation. I think the ability to open logos is the right competency. This is a great opportunity and a window will probably exist for a few quarters for us to be able to go in and expand on our customer base while taking the referenceability from other customers. In many cases, we are definitely replacing somebody. In many cases, they're adding a new partner because we bring something unique. And of course, over a period of time as we gain wallet share, we'll definitely eat into somebody else's pie.

Okay. And just last question in terms of clarification on target of operating margin band of 15.5% to 17%. Is it also applicable for FY '22? Because I believe full quarter consolidation of Blink may keep your margin at the 15% plus or minus for the maybe second half as a whole. So in that scenario, for FY '22, we may be close to 15%, 15.5% kind of a margin.

So Sandeep, when we made the announcement of the acquisition, we talked about the fact that this transaction could have a potential impact of up to 1% for the first 8 quarters. However, as the scale up happens, as we are able to get the synergy benefits, some of those impacts will get normalized. So you would have seen that this quarter, the impact is 0.7%. And we will work towards making sure that we get into the synergy. So worst-case scenario, you're right that it will probably have an impact. But the range on operating basis continues to be 15.5% to 17% for the current year. When we get to the quarter 1 of next year, we will talk about what we believe would be the range for the future years. Having said that, the principle and the philosophy that we had articulated earlier, that we will maintain margins in a narrow range with a northward bias while investing for growth should continue. And hence, on an operating basis, you should look at the EBIT margins to be northward biased.

Manish, so on a reported basis this band is even applicable for FY '22 as a whole?

For the current year, yes.

The next question is from the line of Apurva Prasad from Elara Capital.

Nitin, any early indications on tech budgets for '22 and your comments on the large deal pipeline?

Apurva, I think it's a little bit early in the cycle, but we do believe that the year will finish with a flourish from a tech spend perspective, just as we've seen in the last 2 quarters. And we don't think that there are many choices for enterprises to actually cut back on tech spending. That's on the, I would say, the traditional way of thinking around discretionary budget versus nondiscretionary budget. However, the key thing to note is the 2 remarks I called out earlier; one, I think as this dynamic of CapEx versus OpEx gathers pace, as more applications move to the cloud, as more data centers get retired, as more applications get rationalized, you will actually see some sort of a suction effect where in-year spending capability actually will be higher than what it is to be in the past years. So that's kind of the -- I would say, in a way, that will release a lot of tech spend capability for in-year spend much more than what it used to be. Second thing you have to keep in mind that I also called out earlier was the fact that almost every part of the value chain in every enterprises businesses is getting digitized from contact center, to customer service, to marketing, product development, almost everything is going through a very massive digitization through buildup of software or platforms or data. Those are areas of spend that traditionally were not seen in the tech budgets, but have started to kind of creep up. And the marketing spend is now 70% digital marketing. And hence, there is a pretty significant software effort that is being done there to actually make it smart and so on. So I think those 2 trends will actually keep spending and the target market for us actually fairly elevated, even if the traditional spending kind of tapers off after a big boost in 2021. So that's on the budget. Hopefully, that gives you more clarity. We'll get a better sense over the next couple of months as we get into the end of the year. On the large deal pipeline, I think, by definition, large deals are lumpy. We called that out last quarter. But I think we are quite pleased with the fact that our pipeline for new gen deals is up 28% year-over-year. And I think that's the chart that we have in the deck as well. And that should give you a little bit of a sense on Slide 11 of the deck. The fact that it's fairly broad-based, it's across multiple tribes. It is not led by any 1 or 2 service lines. So I think the ability to construct opportunities, be proactive, use the tribe and squad competency model to actually generate early engagement with large deals is still very much in there. And the fact that despite having converted $1.8 billion in net new TCV in the last 6 quarters, we are still actually running a pipeline that is 27%, 28% higher than this time last year.

Right. That's useful. My other question is on increased revenue productivity. This is despite the bigger offshore shift. So is that really mix change from DXC to Direct or perhaps higher growth in India? What's really driving this?

I think some of it is, of course, the -- when we do a large term transformation deal, we call this out 2 quarters in a row that the early part of the deal will probably have some element of lift and shift, then you will start optimizing it, then you'll start transforming it. So that's kind of what shows up in some of these revenue efficiency. Of course, the levers that we have on the managed service side of the business, the ability to actually grow revenue faster than headcount, all of that is part of the mix. And of course, there is a pricing element to that as well.

Right. And just finally, on infra services, which seems to be a bit volatile over the past 2 quarters. I mean, again, is that DXC mix? Or from a going forward perspective, do you see more integrated deals and therefore, more steady state between apps and infra?

Yes. If you look at the headline infra number, of course, then that looks very muted. But if you strip out the DXC impact, I think the infra business has actually grown very healthy, if you go back again to the deck of slides that we talked about. The infra business for Direct -- the ITO piece for our Direct business has actually grown at 46% Y-o-Y. So I think it's the impact of the volatility of the DXC in the book of business that is creating a headline volatility. But overall, the integrated deal increases is very much alive.

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

A couple of questions. First, about the seasonality. How do you expect, Nitin, seasonality to play out in Q3? Do you expect furloughs in holiday kind of thing likely to have implication for Q3? Or you believe underlying demand trend will be good enough to have sustained growth even continuing in Q3? Second question is on insurance. Now we are seeing weakness in insurance revenue and margin growth. So if you can provide some perspective? How you expect insurance to play out for us over the next few quarters? Third question is about DXC. I think you indicated we will be closer to mid-single digit by year-end. We are broadly there. So do you expect now relatively stable performance in DXC?

Let me take the first question. I will just remember the 3 questions that you asked me. The first was on the seasonality. The demand environment is pretty stable, but there will always be seasonality impact given the calendar fourth quarter, whether it's billable hours, number of holidays, and in some cases there are certain client furloughs. Too early to call on the furloughs, but the fact that we are still calling for significant growth in the second half of the year purely based on the trends and the fact that we think our Direct business growth will be able to sustain market-leading growth rate should give you a sense that we do expect the demand environment to be tailwinded. On insurance, I think there is obviously certain deal conversion, TCV to deal conversion activity that is causing a temporary dip in margin. We do believe that we've actually got a pretty decent order book right now, not just pipeline, but order book in that business, and you should certainly see sequential growth continue to pick up. On a Y-o-Y basis, it's already performing well given just the way we built that pipeline and TCV book in that business. And thirdly, on DXC, I think the question of DXC stabilizing around a certain percentage of revenue is very much a reflection also of how much we continue to grow the Direct business and at what rate that grows. So I think we are in the ZIP code, but we probably have -- I think the ability to continue to grow Direct is something that will have a bearing on where it stacks in the order rank. It's not in the top 5 today. It was obviously the largest 6 quarters ago. So that gives me confidence as a matter of fact that we have the ability to now start converging the growth rates between Direct and overall company. Of course, we do expect stability in that channel as well. But I think the question really is how much can we keep peeling the Direct growth.

The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital.

Just 1 question, which is like TCV signings have been robust on a TTM basis, but not so strong in the quarter, which has also been the case in many more peers. So is there any specific reason that you could identify here in terms of some small shift of spend towards physical side for some clients instead of spending more and more towards building digital channels, that some kind of trend you're witnessing?

I think -- again, if you look at Slide 11, we are actually pretty pleased with the fact that we have a pretty strong pipeline that continues to give us -- both sequentially, we've actually added 13% in the pipe, and Y-o-Y about 27%, 28% in the pipe. So I don't think there is anything to call out. This is definitely the lumpiness of a large deal that is giving you that sense. But I think on a sustained basis, we are well within the 225 to 250 mark that we've called out for now the successive seventh quarter. We haven't seen any other shift or trend in spend. What we definitely have seen though is the fact that there is a certain sense of urgency with many of our clients, where instead of waiting to construct a 2-year or a 3-year transformation deal, they're happy to construct a 6 months, 9 months kind of a first sprint deal and hand it out, so they can get started, versus taking that additional 3 months' time to go through the process and negotiation and all of that. So I think the sense of urgency and the fact that they are looking for agility and the fact that they want needle movement to happen much faster is definitely creating multiple smaller deals, but there is also a much more in-year revenue growth possibility with some of those deals, while of course, we continue to see large deals with longer tenure as well. But that's definitely a trend that I've seen emerging in the last 3 months or so, where instead of doing the whole transformation bundle as an SOW, they're actually breaking it down into 3 or 4 different phases.

Right, right. So in a way, can we say that the same orders can now be consumed much faster? That is as the clarification? And also just one remark that since we have this Direct business now more than 90% of revenue, do we see any specific need for looking at the business into 3 pieces; Direct, DXC, Others, rather than looking at the other 2 just as the client or deals rather than looking at them as a separate segment per se?

Sure. I think, the first answer to your first question is, definitely there is faster TCV revenue conversion, where the ABR or the ACV uplift is very quick, and that's why you've seen in the last 2 quarters the growth has backed up to 30 plus percent. We expect that trend to continue at least for the remainder of this financial year. I think as we get into the next year, we get a little more clarity on the budget, and of course, the time lines, I think we'll get a better sense of whether this trend will continue. But this is being borne out by many of our industry analysts, who we've spoken to as well, and I think this is very much something that you should think about as you construct your models in terms of the conversion of TCV to immediate revenue. Second, I think on the segment breakup, I think it's a secondary segment for us, which is not the primary segment. So at some point we may decide that it doesn't make sense for us to report it out separately. But for now, from a transparency standpoint and continuity of visibility standpoint, we are still breaking it out. Our primary segments continue to be the vertical breakdown that we give you.

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

Sir, one was on Blink. Like, have you guys already integrated it for 10 days in the quarter?

Actually, we announced the transaction only on the 21st of September or 22nd of September. So I think there wasn't much to integrate from an operating standpoint. Of course, the financial reporting will include the 9 days of reporting, if I'm not mistaken. But from an overall business integration perspective, I think this is a well thought through execution that we are undertaking right now. We want to nurture the current business and the current client base, and of course, find ways to synergize both for our customers and more importantly, to also take those logos that we've acquired through Blink and convert them to broader emphasis competency areas as well. So I think that integration will play out over the next 2 quarters and we have a very strong focus and plan in execution right now. But from a financial perspective, it is only 9 days. And for the current quarter, which is Q3, we will see full integration of financials.

Right. So Manish sir, how much was the contribution in this quarter?

Mohit, I couldn't hear you. Could you repeat that, please?

How much was the contribution for 2Q FY '22?

So the total Blink revenue that we got in the quarter is $900,000, and the costs have already been called out to the extent they are M&A related. Otherwise, the P&L has got consolidated in the balance sheet and then consolidated with the quarter end.

Right. So the second question was related to the adjustments that you have shown in the release. When you say adjusted for M&A, are these onetime expenses at 0.7% that you're referring to, is it like onetime to 2Q, '22. Or is it because Blink got integrated, so you got some cost and this gives you the true picture of margin of the consol entity?

No. Like we discussed when we made the announcement for the transaction, there are charges which are upfront; for example, advisory cost, the cost that you incur for due diligence, et cetera, which are onetime, and those are not going to recur going forward. But at the same time, there is a certain portion of the goodwill that gets classified as intangibles, which gets amortized every quarter. And then there are some costs which are linked to retention of employees. So there is a retention bonus, which gets paid out. A combination of those 2, we called out may have an impact of up to 1% for 8 quarters. And as the synergy benefits come in and as revenue scale up happens, it will keep getting lower and lower. So the 9-day equivalent of that would have come in, in the quarter and the balance would be all onetime.

So that 0.7% we should consider it as onetime and then see how the overall number method for Q3, right?

So there would be some impact of that point for the 9-day cost of retention and amortization, which will come for the full quarter going forward. So 0.7% will -- the other costs which are there in the 0.7% will go away, but this 9-day cost will go up to the whole 90 days for the quarter.

Understood. And the last thing on the outlook that you've given, 15.5% to 17%, that is on organic emphasis basis. And as per the previous con-calls, we should continue to assume that on consol, you will operate at 14.5% to 16% kind of a margin range, right?

I would say, we are continuing with the operating guideline of 15.5% to 17%. And the impact of M&A, we will keep working on it and keep reducing it. Till that point in time, we will give a separate disclosure of how much that cost is.

But in the second half, we should assume that you will be in the target band of 15.5% to 17%.

Yes, from an operating perspective.

Including Blink?

Yes.

The next question is from the line of Vibhor Singhal from PhillipCapital.

So Nitin, just one question from my side on the overall margin direction that we are looking at. So just wanted to get a perspective on exactly -- I mean, if I exclude all the exceptional items and all, what is the kind of margin trajectory that we're looking for the company, either in the near or medium term future? I mean last year, we saw many of our peers earning the benefit of lower travel expenses and marketing costs. We decided to pop basically that for investment into our business. This year, again, we've seen in this quarter, the company has reported very strong growth and that operating leverage helps them expand margin. But one of that seems to be happening with us. Most of the mid-cap companies or comparable peers are now reporting EBIT margins in the 17% to 18% kind of a range. So will we basically continue to stick to this kind of a range of 15.5% to maybe 17% kind of a range that we've called out, much like more towards the lower end in terms of growth? Or do you think there's an uptick at some point of time that could play out in the numbers as well.

So I think philosophically, we've actually been pretty consistent in maintaining the operating EBIT in the band that we've talked about. We have probably the most stable margins with the least volatility while the fastest-growing Direct revenue line. Even in FY '21, we actually grew the Direct business in mid-double digits when many of our peers actually barely grew in single digits. So I think the focus on growth, the ability to actually prioritize growth above all else, required us to take some of the operating leverage that we are generating and investing it back into the business, and that's what we've been doing. I think there are many puts and takes. As some of those expenses have come back, we've started to obviously balance out other investments and we'll continue to do that. But I think at this point in time, it's fair to assume that our guidance band for the margin will be that we will keep margins stable while prioritizing growth. And hence, we are very confidently focusing on the market-leading growth of the direct business.

Right. So just one small follow-up to that. The kind of strong growth that we reported in this quarter, almost 10% Q-o-Q for the Direct core business. Shouldn't that have led to some operating leverage coming to the numbers, even taking into account the acquisition and M&A costs, even taking into account the investments that we've put back into the businesses?

Yes. And that's why you see the gross margin is actually up by about 40 bps this quarter. but we've taken a lot of the investment back into the business. And I think, again, that is the operating leverage that I was talking about, right. If you look at sequentially, gross margin has expanded, which means we are able to actually generate efficiencies despite a very tight labor market. I think I would personally like to see a little bit more stability on the supply side before we can start thinking about expansion in the margin. I think we have said in the past that we have the ability and we have the visibility to an upward bias in the operating margin, but at what point to take it into the P&L versus investing it for growth or making sure that we are able to feed the growth so it doesn't start hurting that, is really the debate that we have almost every day internally. And right now I think our stance is what I articulated to you.

The next question is from the line of Ashish Aggarwal from Principal India.

Sir, most of my questions have been answered. Just wanted to understand. So when you said there are a lot of short-cycle deals, and this is likely to continue for another 2 quarters at least. So that should now support the growth in our seasonally weak quarters. Am I right? That's where your commentary is suggesting?

Yes. And that's why we are still calling out for, I would say, pretty tailwinded growth environment for the next few quarters.

The next question is from the line of Ronak Vora from OHM Advisors.

Sir, can you please highlight on the attrition number?

We don't disclose that number publicly and I think we've got to keep that stance.

Okay. So if you can just give a sense on the whole supply chain and how are we seeing in terms of new hiring in terms of pressure, just give a sense about it.

I think I addressed it earlier on that we have been very proactive in creating new levers of supply chain, including geography expansion. I think we've talked about, I think 2 quarters ago we gave a full description of the fact that we've now added some centers in Taiwan, Costa Rica, Mexico. We announced something in Canada that we are now building out. We've talked about new addition of our centers in U.K. as well as recently in Dusseldorf in Germany. So that's one part of the expansion. Second part of the expansion is the fact that we are hiring across the pyramid. Yes, we have a pretty robust trainee intake program. We also have a very robust re-skilling program using TalentNext. So I think the ability to add talent, while it's such a constrained environment, but I think the fact that we are able to showcase the growth rate that we are showcasing means that we have the ability to make sure we are able to overcome the supply issues. Of course, that also requires investment and that goes back to the point I was making on the previous question that in the current environment, the reason why we are still focused on prioritizing growth and holding the margin is because all of this work that we are doing on the supplies, that also requires investment.

Okay. And secondly, on the demand front. So currently, are we to assume that DXC will be maintained at the same level of revenues going ahead? And our Direct business should continue at the same pace of growth or much faster going ahead?

Yes. I think that's a difficult question for me to answer because you're asking for specific guidance for specific segments. I think I will just stay with the fact that the DXC business will continue to trend towards mid-single digit and Direct business will continue to grow at market-leading growth rates.

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

Congrats on the good execution. Three quick questions, if I may. First is, any color on the initial conversations on joint go-to-market and cross-selling services with Blink. The second one is, how should we reconcile the 6% quarter-on-quarter decline in TMT revenue and a 600 basis point improvement in gross margins. Any color would be helpful. And the third is, what is the target for utilization [indiscernible]. And is that a lever for margins?

I think it's too early to give you color on the Blink integration. It's only been 30 days today. We will potentially give you more update in the next call. But fair to say that we are very carefully and thoughtfully actually executing an integration plan that provides them a level of independence while giving us the ability to cross leverage. So we'll give you more color, very good progress in early first 30 days as per plan. On TMT, I think we've broken out TMT growth by Direct versus consolidated. The decline that you're seeing really is coming out of that issue. And I think the large deals that we've had in that segment, in the Direct side, are now starting to, of course, turn in our corner, and that's why you're seeing expansion in margin there as well. And I forgot what your third question was.

So Nitin, the last question was on the target gross margin. Just to add to what Nitin said, Abhishek, the TMT decline is also reflected in the reduction in rest of the world, and both of them are DXC revenue declines. And as we have talked about earlier, those, in addition to the offshore revenue improvement, give us gross margin tailwinds, which has led to the 0.5% expansion in gross margins. And we work towards an EBIT margin range of 15.5% to 17%. We don't work towards a targeted margin percentage to speak.

Okay. If I can just do a follow-up. The last question was on utilization. And I completely understand the decline in the TMT business is coming from DXC. But what I'm trying to understand is, is that -- this significant contribution to gross margin. So in the remaining 6% of DXC, is that another lever for margins?

So DXC...

Yes, I think the right way to think about it is that we've obviously always called out for the fact that the DXC business is actually margin dilutive. It's not the most profitable part of the business. So it's a combination of the 2 dynamics. The fact that we are growing -- if you look at the TMT business ex DXC, I think it has grown. The high-tech component has grown at 100-plus percent. And combined with the fact that we are actually declining business that is not profitable. So I think it's a commission of both those things. On the utilization front, I don't think we want to give a guidance on the band, but I think we feel quite comfortable with the current levels of utilization. That gives us enough flexibility and room to maneuver for growth. And I think as we onboard, as we continue to work on the pyramid, we may have some movement up and down, but I don't think you should expect major shifts in the utilization stance.

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

Nitin, I wanted to get thoughts on a couple of things. Number one thing is that we have seen the on-site offshore mix move in favor of offshore delivery in the last few quarters. But in your case, the mix seems has been much lesser than what we have seen for the peers. So is that also being driven by the decline in the DXC business? That's question number one. And second thing is that given the sharp decline on the DXC side and given the restructuring or the reorientation from our delivery side that would maintain, is that also impacting our margins over the last few quarters?

So Manik, I think the shift in offshore is very much -- I think there is tailwind towards offshore. We will see that mix shift continuously. I can't comment on peers, but I think for us, this is a reflection of how those large deals get executed, how they get rationalized, how they get normalized. I think we'll continue to have some movement up and down, but I think broadly, the tailwind for offshore is definitely there in the business. On supply chain, yes, you picked up a good point. It is not always feasible to have a one-to-one match, especially when you have significant movement and people coming on the bench. And you need to reskill them. So that's definitely something that has been a headwind for the last 3 or 4 quarters on our business as we've tried to manage the decline in one part of the business and redeployment of the other side of the business. So both of them are actually puts and takes that we have to balance on a quarterly basis.

Any sense on how much would that have been a drag from a margin standpoint over the last 18, 24 months?

I don't know if I want to call it out. Manish, do you think we have a delta number that we can give, or we'd just leave it at the overall level?

No, Nitin, I think it is like we have mentioned earlier, these are antics of business and we work with a range of margin 15.5% to 17%. So whatever upside we have to consume for managing this, we have. But the good news is, most of the supply constraints because of the DXC rundown had been used for growth in the Direct side. Although it ends up becoming additional questions on why the headcount growth is not reflecting in the revenue growth, but we would not call that out separately in terms of the impact of that on the margin.

The next question is from the line of Vivek Guntupalli from ICICI Securities.

Just an industry perspective I'd like to take from you. So most of the companies are essentially talking about demand that can last for several years to come by. A precursor to that sort of a visibility should have been a higher share of large and mega deals, which might be spanning over several years. But that has clearly not been the case. Over the last several quarters, if we see, we have not really seen very large deals or mega deals, barring the cases of some captive takeover so on and so forth. So how do we reconcile this paradox as to if we are talking about multiyear demand visibility, and we are seeing a bigger share of small and medium-sized deals in the mix. What essentially is giving that sort of a longer tenure visibility?

So I think the way to think about it is -- I think what you're trying to do is you're trying to apply Horizon 1 business model thinking to the digital transformation wave under play. That's not going to fit. Your paradox doesn't come from visibility, your paradox is coming from the ability to actually look at annuity revenue because that's what should give you revenue certainty. That is not going to happen in the current environment because the whole dynamic of moving away from run the business means that you are going to find harder and harder to construct 10-year deals, 7-year deals, 8-year deals, that give you the ability to actually run those applications and infrastructure assets. The fact that we are looking at short cycle quick-burst projects is very much aligned to the fact that while there is a lot of spending that is happening in digital dev, platform build, application transformation, cloud adoption, not necessarily you will see the -- by definition, those cannot be constructed as 5-year projects because that's a waterfall way of thinking. So I think it's a little bit of the apples and oranges comparison that you are trying to do from a modeling perspective. My recommendation would be to start thinking about how much of the expansion has happened -- or total addressable market expansion is happening primarily based on the fact that there are large markets of spend that are being opened up given just the fact that there is more money to be spent even if the budget doesn't change, only because you don't have -- as you continue to apply this transformation towards as a service, you don't have pre-committed amortization and spends that hit your balance sheet and the P&L at an operating level. Secondly, I talked about the fact that there are new pockets of spend. Those are traditionally functions that weren't seen as tax spend areas, but they are now being seen as tax spend areas, very, very clearly, especially in the post-COVID world. I would kind of ask you to think a little bit differently about why visibility of growth is happening and it's happening because every part of the value chain of every enterprise is getting digitized and hence, there is a stack investing super cycle that's playing out in the medium term, could even be longer than 3 to 5 years. But right now, the fact that we have visibility into the next 2, 3 years is good enough for us.

The next question is from the line of Vaibhav Chechani from B&K Securities.

First of all, congratulations on a strong set of numbers. Just one of the questions is, do our Logistics & Transportation [indiscernible], that's the question, but we have seen a dip on the margin side on that project. So any color on that, that why the margins have been depleting in those areas?

Vaibhav, we actually talked about the margins quite extensively in the last 60 minutes. So I think what you're looking at is the reported number. I think what I would ask you to look at is the adjusted number purely based on the transaction costs that we talked about. That's one. Two, I think the band that we've given, very tight band. We probably will continue to operate in that band. The guidance for the year is pretty clear as well. So there is nothing to call out beyond that. Of course, this is a headwinded environment from a supply constraint perspective, and that obviously is going to continue to ask us, and it requires us to keep making investment on the supply chain side, and that's probably the reason why you're seeing pressure on that front. But having said that, I think this is a good environment for pricing, and we have been able to continue to improve our pricing metrics. So that should mitigate some of the headwinds on supply. And I think the puts and takes will continue to have to be managed pretty proactively to stay in that band that we've talked about.

The next question is from the line of Ashwin Mehta from AMBIT Capital.

Just 1 clarification. Most of the other questions have been answered. We saw very smart growth in India, almost 22% sequential. So what's the driver for that? And how sustainable is that?

So growth in what, Ashwin. I didn't catch that.

So Nitin, I was talking about there's a 22% growth in India for us in this quarter. So what has been the driver for that? And how sustainable are the revenues here? Because India typically is more lumpy.

Manish, where are we seeing the India growth called out separately?. Ashwin, I think the India numbers should be somewhere in the MD&A because I think we are only calling out Americas, EMEA and rest of the world.

This is in your group overview, MD&A, Page 10, India.

The number is fairly number small. So I'm trying to...

Because on an overall basis that seems to be contributing almost 1% to our overall sequential growth.

Yes. I think nothing to call out specifically in that. I don't think this is a lumpy issue for us. I think we have a good set of customers that have been with us for many number of years. And we are basically applying the same motion that we apply to rest of our clients to that segment as well. So I wouldn't make too much of that, but it's definitely a growth business that we've continued to invest in and it's starting to kind of just give us some returns now.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nitin Rakesh for his closing comments.

Thank you, guys. I think we've had a second straight strong quarter in FY '22. Operating and plan metrics and KPIs are all operating at a higher level than before explaining our performance. We do believe that we have the visibility and the tailwinds in the business to continue the performance to carry on for the remainder of the year. And we look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you all for your continued interest. Take care and stay safe.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Mphasis Limited, that concludes this conference call. We thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. If you have any further questions, please write to us at [email protected]. You can now disconnect your lines. Thank you.