Mphasis Limited ($526299)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining the Mphasis Q4 FY 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Nirav, your moderator for the day. We have with us today, Mr. Nitin Rakesh, CEO of Mphasis; Mr. Aravind Viswanathan, CFO; and Mr. Vinay Kalingara, Head of Investor Relations. As a reminder, there is a webcast link in the call invite mail that the Mphasis management team will be referring to today. The same presentation is also available on the Mphasis website, www.mphasis.com, in the Investors section under Financial and Filing as well as both BSE and NSE websites. I request you to have the presentation handy. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to state that some of the statements made 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 in the Q4 results release that was sent out to all of you earlier. I now hand over the floor to Mr. Nitin to begin the proceedings of this call. Thank you, and over to you, Nitin.

Thank you, Nirav, and thank you all for joining us today. As we close another financial year of delivering meaningful value to our clients while strengthening our AI-first capabilities, I want to take a moment to thank all of you for your continued support and partnership. This marks my 10th year at Mphasis. And as I look ahead to the next phase of this journey, it's been a privilege to lead the organization. I remain deeply committed to building on this momentum together. In my recent conversations with C-suite dealers across industries and geographies, one theme stands out clearly. AI, data and technology platforms are no longer viewed as stand-alone initiatives. They are becoming the foundation of enterprise transformation. Clients increasingly recognize that the value of true AI lies not in isolated use cases, but in systematically embedding intelligence at scale across applications, processes and decision flows. This shift is enabling enterprises to re-architect themselves around what we describe as Agentic AI, systems that are not only predictive but capable of driving decisions and actions in a governed autonomous manner. We are also seeing a decisive move from experimentation to scale deployment. Enterprises are now focused on operationalizing AI, automating end-to-end workflows, accelerating modernization efforts and embedding intelligence directly into day-to-day operations. Importantly, this is being done with explainability, governance, security and accountability built in by design. Another consistent priority is the need to drive structural efficiency in a self-funded way. Enterprises are leveraging technology platforms to automate manual processes, streamline operations and reduce unit costs, freeing up capacity to reinvest in AI, cloud and digital innovation while maintaining financial discipline. At the same time, AI is increasingly being viewed not just as a productivity lever, but as a growth engine. It is enabling new business models, enhancing customer experiences, deepening client relationships and unlocking new monetization opportunities alongside efficiency gains. Clients are also prioritizing modernization and simplification of complex technology estates. This includes consolidating fragmented systems into cohesive, scalable architectures and establishing unified high-quality data foundations, where consumer, enterprise and operational data can be contextualized, governed and activated end-to-end. Overall, what clients are looking for is platform-led execution that simplifies and shrinks the core, accelerate AI adoption at scale and deliver sustainable productivity and agility. This is what will position them to compete effectively in an environment defined by constant change and volatility. In this context, clients are increasingly seeking platforms that can orchestrate AI-led execution across the enterprise, moving beyond isolated deployments to coordinated end-to-end transformation. Our NeoIP platform plays a critical role in enabling this shift. It accelerates the orchestration of modernization, automation and AI-driven transformation, helping organizations move decisively from experimentation to production. More importantly, NeoIP provides the foundational layer of context, traceability and intelligence across data, processes and decisions, ensuring that AI outcomes are explainable, trusted and actionable at scale. While we continue to build differentiated assets and IT across the IT value stream, our strategy is evolving beyond IT-centric transformation. We are building a stack that enables true business and operational transformation where AI directly impacts our enterprises create value. Recent research from McKinsey & Company highlights a powerful and somewhat counter-intuitive insight. Nearly 80% of AI-driven transformation will occur outside of the IT function. Historically, enterprise transformation has largely meant technology transformation, cloud migrations, ERP upgrades, cybersecurity modernization and data platform investments. These are predominantly IT-led initiatives with business functions acting as internal stakeholders. AI fundamentally changes this paradigm. AI does not primarily create value by upgrading systems. It creates value by upgrading work. It transforms how decisions are made, how customers are served, how revenue generated and how costs are managed. We are seeing this play out across domains such as supply chain optimization, revenue growth management, pricing and promotions as well as demand and inventory planning. Similarly, in areas like underwriting modernization and payments transformation, AI is driving measurable business impact, improving underwriting throughput, reducing fraud and lowering loss ratios. In many cases, this value is unlocked without replacing core systems but by layering context-driven orchestration and decisioning on top of existing tech stacks. This does not diminish the importance of IT. On the contrary, it elevates it. IT becomes a critical enabler, providing secure architecture, robust data foundations, integration frameworks and governance. However, ownership of value creation increasingly shifts to business functions with AI-driven decisions directly translated into measurable outcomes. The build-out of our AI stack has been significantly accelerated through the acquisition of Theory and Practice and its decision intelligence platform, Continuum AI. By integrating Continuum AI into architecture, we are extending our capabilities beyond system modernization into enterprise decision transformation. Continuum AI is a modular and scalable decision intelligence platform designed to support real-time high-stake enterprise decision-making across domains such as demand forecasting, pricing, marketing and supply chain. What differentiates Continuum AI is its ability to move beyond traditional analytics. It spans the full spectrum from descriptive insights to predictive modeling to prescriptive optimization, enabling enterprises to harmonize intelligence across these functions while preserving the complexity of consumer behavior and business context. As a decision intelligence layer, Continuum AI leverages causal modeling, optimization and behavioral economics to translate business objectives into actionable intervention strategies. It accelerates time to value through prebuilt machine learning models and reusable model ontologies across key areas such as revenue optimization, marketing and promotions. With this acquisition, Mphasis brings together the critical layers required to drive, deliver AI at scale from enterprise memory and data foundations to decisioning and execution, enabling measurable outcomes. Importantly, we've also onboarded a set of Tier 1 enterprise clients in the CPG and retail sectors who have already validated the platform in production environments. We're equally excited to welcome a highly specialized team of AI practitioners and domain experts who will accelerate our product road map and further strengthen our ability to deliver differentiated client outcomes. Turning to our pipeline. We are seeing strong validation of our AI-first strategy. Sustained investments in AI, including our new IP platform, have expanded our pipeline to 2.6x its initial size since the launch of Mmpahis.ai, reaching an all-time high at the end of March '26. Today, 69% of our pipeline is AI-led, reflecting the structural shift in client demand towards AI-driven transformation. This growth is driven by new IP-led solutions embedded across our offerings and supported by a differentiated full stack AI approach. Importantly, this pipeline strength is translating into tangible outcomes. Over the past year, we've achieved our highest ever annual net new TCV of over $2.1 billion, representing a 68% increase year-on-year. Our pipeline growth remains broad-based and well balanced across multiple dimensions. Overall pipeline increased 38% year-on-year with strong momentum across verticals. BFS segment led with an 89% increase, complemented by continued expansion across non-BFS sectors as well. We are also seeing healthy distribution across deal sizes. Large deals with TCV greater than $20 million grew by 40%, while midsized and smaller deals below $20 million increased by 34%. This underscores that AI-driven demand is pervasive across enterprises of all scales and deals of all sizes. From a solution perspective, modernization and ZA archetypes have driven the strongest pipeline growth, reflecting early-stage AI-led opportunities as client's re-architect their tech and operating models. As mentioned earlier, our net new TCV for the year reached $2.1 billion, our highest ever. We continued this momentum in the quarter, delivering $407 million in net new TCV, including four large deals. 64% of our wins were AI-led, further reinforcing the central role AI is playing in driving client demand and deal conversion. Moving to our revenue performance by segment. Q4 FY '26 revenue came in at USD 463 million, reflecting a growth of 2.5% quarter-on-quarter and 7.1% year-on-year in constant currency. For the full year, revenues grew 6.7% in constant currency terms. Our direct business continues to be the primary driver of growth. Direct revenue for the quarter was $456 million, crossing an annualized run rate of $1.8 billion and contributing to 98.6% of total revenue. Direct revenue grew 3.3% sequentially and 9.2% Y-o-Y in constant currency during the quarter and 8.7% for the full year. We expect this momentum to continue, supported by strong deal conversion and increasing traction in savings-led AI-driven transformation programs. From a geographic perspective, our anchor market, the U.S., delivered strong performance with direct growth of 3.6% sequentially and 10.7% year-on-year, driven by ramp-ups in recent large deal wins. EMEA continued to show healthy sequential momentum, growing 6.9% Q-o-Q, while Y-o-Y growth was 0.8%. This was impacted by revenue structuring for a large global client in the logistics vertical. In the rest of the world, direct revenues grew 2.6% Y-o-Y in constant currency, supported by our expanding presence in the GCC markets and increasing participation in globally structured deals. From a service line perspective, enterprise apps remains our core growth engine, contributing 76.5% of total revenue. Direct revenue in this segment grew 5.1% sequentially and 14.8% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms, driven again by AI-led modernization programs. The ITO service line declined 21.6% Y-o-Y, reflecting our strategic decision to scale down our noncore ATM business and reallocate towards higher-value AI-led opportunities. Moving to our vertical performance. Our BFS and Insurance verticals continue to lead growth, driven by strong execution and increasing adoption of AI-led transformation programs. At the overall company level, BFS grew 5.8% quarter-on-quarter and 15% year-on-year in Q4 FY '26. Growth was partially moderated by the ramp down of nonstrategic ATM business. Within direct, BFS delivered stronger performance, growing 6.4% sequentially and 17.4% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms. For the full year, direct BFS grew 18.6%, supported by wallet share expansion in large existing accounts and strong conversion of new wins as well as new logos. In Insurance, momentum remained robust with 7.2% sequential growth and 46.5% Y-o-Y growth in direct revenues in constant currency terms. This reflects increasing traction of AI-driven decisioning use cases across underwriting, claims and risk operations. The TMT vertical saw some near-term softness due to project completions and delayed decision cycles due to macro and geopolitical uncertainty. We expect this segment to return to sequential growth in the coming quarters. Other segment grew 5.3% sequentially in constant currency terms, driven by recent large deal wins in health care. Overall, growth remains broad-based and aligned with expectations with AI-led transformation increasingly acting as a primary driver across verticals. Our client Pyramid continues to strengthen, particularly across the middle tiers, reflecting both deeper relationships and successful scaling of new wins. Year-on-year, we've added one new client in $100-plus million category, one client in the $75 million-plus category, two clients in the $50 million-plus category and four clients in the $20 million-plus category on a net new basis. In addition, we also added a new client in the $150 million-plus category this quarter. This broad-based expansion is driven by consistent wallet share gains in existing accounts, combined with disciplined ramp-up of large deal wins. On a last 12-month basis, our top 10 accounts grew 13.7% year-over-year and 3.6% sequentially. The next 20 accounts grew 15.2% Y-o-Y and 3.3% sequentially. Notably, our top client has outperformed company average growth for the third consecutive quarter in Q4. We are proactively engaging these clients with AI-led propositions, enabling us to not only expand existing engagements, but also participate in emerging spend areas such as SDLC transformation, AI infrastructure build-out and modernization of foundational tech stacks. Turning to our financial performance. We continue to execute on our strategy of maintaining margins within our stated band, while investing for growth. Q4 FY '26 EBIT margin expanded by 20 basis points sequentially to 15.4%, while full year EBIT margin remained stable at 15.3%. Operating profit for the quarter grew 7.2% Q-o-Q and 15% year-on-year to INR 6,525 million. EPS increased 8.6% sequentially and 13.7% Y-o-Y to INR 26.7. Operating cash flow for the quarter was USD 21 million, temporarily impacted by approximately USD 17 million due to system-related delays in customer remittances. These collections were realized in early April and adjusting for this, normalized operating cash flow for the quarter was approximately USD 38 million. Q4 reflected a clear acceleration in growth momentum supported by disciplined execution. We delivered 2.5% sequential and 7.1% Y-o-Y growth in constant currency alongside a strong operating margin of 15.4%. Our direct business now comprising 98.6% of total revenue, grew 9.2% Y-o-Y in constant currency terms. We also delivered strong TCV wins of $407 million in the quarter with the majority driven by AI-led propositions. Across FY '26, our AI-first strategy drove significant pipeline expansion, up 38% Y-o-Y with 69% of the pipeline now AI-led. Consistent conversion of this pipeline has resulted in record net new TCV of $2.12 billion, representing a 68% growth over prior year. This performance reflects the strength of our NeoIP-led differentiation and our ability to deliver IP-led AI native solutions at scale. We also strengthened our client Pyramid, adding four new clients in the $20-plus million category, two clients in the $50 million-plus category and one client each in the $75 million and $100 million-plus categories. As a result, we exceeded our initial guidance of better-than industry growth, delivering more than 2x industry growth while maintaining margins within our target stated band of 14.75% to 15.75%. I'm also pleased to share that the Board has recommended a dividend of INR 62 per share for FY '26. Turning to the outlook. We'll continue to strengthen our competitive differentiation through sustained investments in our Neo platform with the integration of theory and practice accelerating the build-out of our AI stack, particularly in Decision Intelligence. We remain focused on maintaining strong pipeline momentum and deal conversion, building on FY '26 record TCV performance as we enter FY '27. Despite ongoing macro uncertainty, we expect to deliver high single-digit to low double-digit growth, supported by disciplined execution and increasing demand for AI-led transformation in FY '27. From a margin perspective, we remain committed to operating within our target band of 14.75% to 15.75%, while continuing to invest in platforms and capabilities. We also expect to maintain an operating cash flow to net income conversion ratio of approximately 80%. With that, I will open the call for questions. Operator, over to you.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question is from the line of Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec.

Congrats on the quarter. A couple of things. So, first, a very high-level question, and then there's a nuanced one. So, you mentioned 80% of the transformation happens outside of IT. And obviously, that requires budgets for clients at the end of the day. And are you, how are clients actually sort of managing this? There are thoughts around whether IT and Ops budgets can be combined, but there are nuances to this even happening. So just your thoughts on when the budget unlocks can really happen. And if you're thinking about the top 100 enterprises, where are they in their thought process on this and your thoughts on the same as well? And the second is primarily on the working capital intensity. Obviously, we are in a phase where you have the BFSI, which is growing strongly, they have increasing budgets. And you're growing pretty strongly there as well. So obviously, conversion can be lower. But in that context, when we look forward, while you mentioned 80% sort of conversion, if that includes the $16 million, which sort of passed out from last year to this year, which is FY '27, what do you, how should one think about, how are you thinking about free cash flow conversion in the near term? And how should we think about that sort of normalizing longer term? In that context, also this contract assets moving to DSO and when does, what should be an ideal DSO? Because obviously, DSO will come off over a period of time. What should be the ideal DSO one should think about? Those are the 2 questions.

Thanks, Nitin. I'll take the first one, and Aravind will address the second one. I think if I rephrase the question you asked, I think it's a little bit around the budgets and the propensity of decision-making at the client side on how they make decisions on where to invest. So, if I think about where the client sentiment is, I don't think we have seen any major cuts in pure tech budgets, but that's only part of the story. There's definitely a sense of urgency to act at the enterprise side, given the pace of innovation. Some of it is obviously to do with applying that innovation to get efficient and drive business outcomes, but some of it is also very defensive. We think about the whole Anthropic Mythos case, they will have to invest to make sure that they're able to defend and protect their business and their data. So, the way I would think about it is that there is urgency to act. What we are seeing is reprioritization or prioritization where spend is continuing to shift towards AI-led programs with clear ROI. But clients are going to be selective. However, they're not pulling back on spends. For a good ROI, the business is willing to fund even if it wasn't in the tech budget, because the reason it is important to understand that 80% of the AI adoption will happen outside of tech, basically means that many of these programs will be able to drive a certain business outcome that the business wants. I think I gave many examples of that in the script, revenue optimization, marketing and promotion, supply chain optimization, demand forecasting, even underwriting modernization is not a cost play or a budget play. It's a revenue expansion play. More throughput means you actually get more, underwrite more business because you're not constrained by underwriting capacity. So, to me, the budget discussion of this sector, our industry being on the cost side of the equation, I think we have an opportunity to break out of the cost side and actually play across the entire spectrum of an enterprise transformation playbook. So hopefully, that gives you a sense. Having said that, we haven't really seen 100 enterprises coming into 2026 by saying I'm going to cut my tech spend anyways. The tech spend has gone up low single digits. Some of it will be repurposed. Some of, a lot of it is going towards building the stack for AI. That is definitely an area we are playing in very strongly. And there is a very large spend pocket that we will also see opening up, which will again be outside of the typical annual tech budget because those will be large infrastructure CapEx-driven spends, because they have to all modernize their compute environment if they have to compute AI stacks. So, watch out for those. That's probably one of the biggest opportunities that we will see opening up over the next 2 to 3 years. We are already having significant momentum in that segment from a deal-making perspective. Aravind, you can answer the second one.

So Nitin, a lot of questions on the working capital, right? Let me start from the receivables side. If you look at from a receivable side, things have actually, DSO improved by a day. You've seen current receivables go up, but you've also seen contract assets come down, which means basically the unbilled on fixed price prior to milestone has actually moved to a situation where the customers have accepted the milestone. And to us, from a DSO standpoint, we anyway include the contract assets. And you will also see a reasonably steep reduction in noncurrent receivables, which has again moved to current receivables in some way, right? And there is also a currency impact on the receivables as well as a growth impact. Now despite that, you see a DSO which kind of covers all of these, and that includes contract assets. So, DSO is in the right direction in that sense, right? Obviously, it would have been better by another 3 days if we factored for the 17 million, we showed the adjusted amount. These are payments which we usually get by quarter end, and it has been initiated before the quarter end but in some form due to some kind of banking issue, it got credited on first. And therefore, we've not called it in our financials. But we've not given you an adjusted DSO day but adjusted the DSO days will probably come down to 86 or something like that. If you look at from a cash flow standpoint, there are two-three elements to keep in mind. We had talked about contract acquisition cost and created a liability against it. Some of those have got paid to the clients in this quarter. And despite that, we would have still been at, I would say, closer to 80%, even in 76% in this year despite all of those. So, it's not very far from the 80% we have talked about in the future. So, I think we are reasonably confident on that.

Sorry to interrupt you. I request you to please hold on.

Nitin, does that answer your question?

Sir one moment, the line has dropped.

Nitin, I don't know at what point did you drop, did he actually get the answer or should we repeat the second answer.

Nitin can you hear us?

Next question he will. I'm sure we'll get the question again.

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

Congrats on a good set of execution and the increasing order book Y-o-Y. Nitin, first question is, if I look at your deal pipeline, 26% has been towards modernization. So, we do agree AI is accelerating this side of the spend, but most vendors are turning bullish on this side. So how one can differentiate to win the wallet share in this side.

Good question. I think I probably used the word NeoIP and the AI-led platform approach quite a few times in my script. And I think that truly is the ability to create a modernization roadmap executed at scale with very fast very fast time to market compared to a typical modernization program that would have taken us years. We are now managing to deliver these in a fraction of the time. And of course, much higher complexity, which means the certainty of outcome is higher as well. So, the biggest differentiation really comes out of the stack that we've built and continued investment in deploying that stack at enterprise clients and delivering value that comes out of that stack. And that, I think, is it's not an easy catch-up to make if someone starts making that investment. Of course, there are third-party tools and assets available. You can stitch a solution together. But I think we've had a pretty significant time-to-market advantage given that we started on this journey years ago. And as of, even in 2024, we launched the first set of our IP assets, and we codified all of that into a platform called the NeoIP that year. So just staying ahead, building on the stack. And now with the recent acquisition, we believe we've created another competitive advantage because now we're extending the stack to go beyond just systems modernization. Second thing to note is you can take an approach of IT modernization or application modernization or legacy modernization. But if you think about modernization in a broader construct, you can actually start doing business transformation using the same stack as well. I think I gave the example of underwriting in my script. And I think that to us is quite a big breakthrough if you managed to break through into some of those conversations where you're driving more than just tech.

And just a follow-up. Is it fair to assume this side of the spend is not that sensitive to the macro headwinds because if you want to scale up the AI adoption, this spend is necessary. If yes, then why for the sector as a whole, the growth is not turning net accretive rather than it's been dilutive. So people are asking more savings to have the budget on this side, while spending they are more cautious in terms of the lead.

So I cannot tell you why the rest of the industry is not tapping into the spend, but I can tell you that we are definitely tapping into that spend. But to tap into the spend where you're enabling AI at scale, you need to have the capability to actually deliver that to the customer. And you also have to have the maturity of constructing commercial models that are linked to outcomes. And I think a lot of the commentary in the sector has been focused a lot on things like productivity fast-tracks and AI deflation. I mean I can address those as well. But if you really think about AI and the impact that is having on businesses, you can play it 2 ways. You can either say, I have increased productivity gains versus last year, and hence, I need to pass them all back to the customer, particularly in areas like testing or maintenance. However, in our case, the pass-through to clients is very measured and structured because in most cases, we are partially passing it but we're also using the meaningful portion of the spend, of the saves, in asking the clients to reinvest into the expanded scope, additional automation, additional AI layers and modernization work. So I think it's a question of not just having the ability to tap into the spend, but also having the ability to structure a deal construct and having the ability to demonstrate to the client that you can deliver on the construct. So I think it's a little bit of, again, a differentiation related question. I mean, I wish I could answer it for the rest of the industry. But sitting there, I'm sitting in my chair, I can only tell you what Mphasis is doing.

And last question to Aravind. If I look at the EBIT margin, excluding the hedge gain or loss, it has expanded by 80 bps in the FY '26, but that is not reflected in the reported margin because of the hedge losses. So how to model this considering the rupee is depreciated?

So Sandeep, our hedge book still continues for the next 4 quarters. So I think you will see continued impact of hedge losses in at least the first half of FY '27 and then it will kind of taper down a bit. So you would still see this headwind in FY '27, we will not see the full benefit of the rupee depreciation. And typically, you know what happens, right? By the time the hedge losses come off somewhere there are adjustments in the business that kind of consumes this. But I think you will see some of it reflect into, in terms of lesser hedge losses only in H2 and not in H1.

Next question is from the line of Vibhor Singhal from Nuvama.

First simple questions from my side. The BFSI vertical reported very strong growth in this quarter. And for the full year also, I think the vertical has reported very strong growth, shielding the company from the kind of the sharp reduction that we saw in the logistics revenue. Sitting where we are today at the end of FY '26 and given the pipeline that you see and the deals that we have won, do you believe this growth momentum of BFSI can be sustained in FY '27? Or do you believe the kind of growth, 17% kind of growth that we have seen would be a little difficult to kind of pull off again in coming quarters? Any headwinds or tailwinds that you're looking at the vertical would be really helpful.

So Vibhor, I think firstly, we are very, very happy that we managed to grow our BFSI business in healthy double digits, and our insurance business actually grew even more than that. Both of those have been fairly broad-based. I think you saw the client pyramid and the activity. There are clients that sit in those segments that are driving that growth as well. Bulk of this growth is driven through in account action, dealmaking and ramping up those deals. I think the fact that we sold a large chunk of deals in Q1 definitely helped accelerate the growth towards the second half of the year, especially in this segment. If you look at the pipeline that I showed in the deck where we talk about BFS and non-BFS, you can see that there's a pretty rapid buildup of pipeline in BFS even at this, after this kind of year. So, for us to be able to grow to the aspiration and the guidance that we are showing, we have to make sure that BFS and insurance both continue to play a role there. And hence, we are fairly confident that we'll be able to sustain the growth momentum. Now whether the segment continues to grow at the same rate or faster than FY '26 remains to be seen based on how we convert those deals and how quickly we convert them to revenue. But given the large client, segment is very stable, again, you've seen pretty strong growth in top 10 and next 20 clients. I think at this point, there's nothing to call out that gives us any caution, especially in these sectors.

Got it. Really heartening to hear that. On the Logistics vertical, we know basically we took a big hit in the Q1 of this year itself. But for the past three quarters also, the vertical has been hovering at around that $24 million mark kind of a number. Anything that you can probably work, maybe you can probably take us through any outlook on this vertical? What exactly are we looking at? Any chances for it to basically support the kind of growth from this, of course, would be much higher, chances of positive momentum building up in the logistics vertical in FY '27?

So Vibhor, I think I can give you the answer in two ways. Firstly, yes, there's been a churn internally within the vertical because we've had to add new customers, we had to win deals outside of the ramp downs. And some of that is the reason why the business actually stabilized in the second half of the year. Given the size of the vertical, we can actually make it swing pretty quickly with one or two large deal wins. So for me, it's the glass half full type of discussion where instead of focusing on whether the growth will come back and whether it will grow faster or slower than the other segments, just given the size, I think it has a propensity to show an impact with one or two wins. We have high-quality logos. We have built them up. In addition to logistics, there is transportation, airlines and railroads in there. So quality of customers is not a problem. We definitely have the opportunity to continue to make deals in those segments. And we do expect this to gradually recover through FY'27.

Right, right. Any sectoral headwinds from the war in Iran that is, might be visible in initial conversations with maybe airlines or any other companies or nothing as of now?

I think at this point, given the bulk of the business is in the U.S., we haven't seen a lot of cross-border impact. Yes, of course, we are keeping an eye on what happens to oil prices purely based on the sensitivities in transportation and airlines. But too early to say whether it's going to have a long-term impact on FY '27 or not. I think [Indiscernible] making is continuing to happen. We are still sitting on large deals in the pipeline. And hopefully, we'll manage to close them with the same propensity that we expect.

Vibhor, we request you to join the queue for a follow-up question. The next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay Global.

Just to continue to some extent prior question. I just want to get your sense on the diversification part. BFS is doing very well for us. Rest of the BFS pipeline growth is slower than BFS. So I just want to understand to, let's say, get more diversified, more sustainable long-term growth, what kind of investment you envisage plans in terms of leadership capability, pipeline buildup in the remaining part of non-BFS business? That is question one. Second question is OCF to profit. We indicated 80%. But if I look at your last 10-year average, it's always above 100% kind of number. Now it is obviously a step different than what we used to operate at. So if you can provide broad thought process around it, whether the new way of working require relatively weaker cash conversion. So broad thought process on that. And last question is Everything as a Platform. Their pipeline also grown significantly, whether it is linked with the cannibalization of ERP kind of offerings and your overall thought process on it?

Sure. Sure, Dipesh. I'll answer the first and the third and then Arvind can throw more light on the FCF and the outlook going forward. I think on diversification, given that a large portion of the business dealmaking today is happening with AI-led propositions, you have to understand that most forward-leaning companies in enterprise segment will be banks and to some extent consumer companies as well as any consumer-facing companies, including retail CPG and telecom. So we will go make deals where deals are to be made. There are obviously certain other segments that either will be fast followers or slow followers, and we'll continue to take propositions to them as well. So, I think to me, the color of money is just the same. We will continue to operate the business with a mindset of operating at a micro level. I think the fact that despite the large conversion of $2.1 billion, obviously, a lot all of that didn't come in BFSI, right? There was a pretty healthy mix of non-BFS in there as well in terms of the deal wins and that obviously showing up. When you look at TMP, it has grown healthy double digits Y-o-Y for FY '26. And that segment was basically a very small business for us 3 or 4 years ago. We didn't really have an airlines or transportation vertical outside of one customer. So, I think we will continue to operate in a model where we add new clients to these industry verticals. We've made significant investments in leadership. We've obviously announced some to the market recently. As early as this Monday, we announced the appointment of a new leader for our global insurance business. We've also very intentionally talked about adding CPG and retail into our mix as of two weeks ago when we announced the acquisition. So, I think the efforts will continue to operate in a manner that we strengthen our client portfolio, but we're very focused on driving almost every segment of that client portfolio across the pyramid, across industry segments and across geographies. On the third question around Everything as a Platform, as we call it XaaP, I think that is linked to building up of platforms that become the foundational stack for a customer. There is an element of infusing the Neo stack in there. In fact, a large portion of the Neo stack, especially around NeoSaba and a bunch of other assets that were built under the XaaP tribe. And that gave us the foundation to actually include them in the stack as well. We don't really have a very big ERP business. So, I don't think for us, that is cannibalizing anything on the ERP side. I think that's probably a little bit of a bigger problem for companies that have big ERP practices, which might get cannibalized because either through a declassification play or shrink the core play, you might see an impact to core systems. But in our case, we're really more custom application business versus a core platform deployment or integration business. So that effect is not there on our book. On OCF and outlook, Arvind, you can answer that.

So Dipesh, if you look at it, you're right. We used to operate at an OCF to net income at more than 100%. But as we kind of pivoted to a lot more annuity large deals with savings that we are passing on to clients, that has necessitated certain amount of investments from a working capital standpoint, where customers ask for year 1 savings and things like that. And therefore, there is a transition period where you have to make that investment, and we have chosen to make that investment from a cash flow standpoint and a working capital standpoint to drive growth. What happens in subsequent years, Dipesh, is that you start unwinding these, and even when you do fresh funds, you don't see an incremental impact. But right now, we are in that phase where we are kind of moving, and you've seen this reflect in our fixed price business going up substantially Y-o-Y. So that's a pretty conscious decision. But at the same time, we want to retain a discipline that we will still be at 80%. That's the line we will not cross, and that's what we are targeting. So it's a little bit of a trade-off. And right now, this is the level we are comfortable to operate at.

Next question is from the line of Abhishek from Incred.

Congrats on a good quarter. My question is regarding the revenue by delivery locations on-site has gone up. [Technical Difficulty] So can you just, maybe part of it could be utilization, which probably is not reported this time. But Nitin, I would like to get a color in terms of if you can just give a color in terms of the nature of services and the nature of projects that is driving this. The reason to ask is because we have seen an improvement in the gross margins despite this mix shift towards on-site. So, your thoughts on this would be very helpful.

Yes. I think, Abhishek, it's a little bit of a business model transition question versus a metric on-site revenue versus on-site utilization question. I think Arvind just talked about the movement we've seen in our fixed price component many of the large transformation programs, including deployment of the stack requires the forward required capability that typically happens in client location onshore. And as we scale, we probably will see a little bit more normalization. But we are not charging by headcount or by effort. So that kind of gets lost in the translation of numbers. So I think as we transition more and more towards these kind of solutions and propositions as we link more to either outcomes or large programs with milestones, I think we'll also have to adjust our own understanding of how to value the business and how to evaluate the business from metrics that are probably dated at this point. So, we'll continue to report what we feel is appropriate. At this point, we're still reporting on a lot of these metrics. But my view is you should be mentally prepared that over the next year to two years, we will see addition of these other metrics and some of these probably will not be as significant as they used to be five years ago. But that's kind of really what's happening where most programs are getting kicked off where the clients are. And of course, because we are reporting it and tracking it and capturing it, we're capturing it that way.

Very helpful. Just a follow-up to that, Nitin. Most of the companies that reported earnings, had highlighted deferrals to project starts. And what you are highlighting and what the data is suggesting is contrary to this thesis. So just trying to understand, was there anything that you saw differently versus what the peers saw?

Abhishek, the environment is the same, the client sets are very similar. I think it all depends on the propositions. And I think I have actually been calling out for this kind of divergence for the last 4 or 5 quarters. Again, I cannot answer for the rest of the industry, but the ability to drive value and the ability to do value-based deals while having the capability and the competency, both from a people standpoint and from a tech standpoint becomes important. So, it's not an easy environment for sure. There is a lot of noise around AI. There is a lot of noise around macro and geopolitics, but staying very focused on the micro, staying very focused on the value of the propositions, making sure that we invest so we maintain whatever differentiation we think is appropriate and continue to double down on making those investments is really what's driving a lot of this discipline. Of course, remember, we made a very intentional investment in building up our large deals capability about 18 months ago when we brought on a new leader and a team built around it. That's definitely created some scalability and repeatability in our ability to drive these propositions as well. And I think we still don't think the full impact of the teams played out in the numbers because there is always a ramp-up time. And that's what excites us about FY '27 as well.

Next question is from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala from IIFL Capital.

From what we understand when it comes to AI adoption or productivity demand, some of the large BFSI firms are the ones who are actually asking for it more apart from the hyperscalers, at least that's what we get to understand. Given your exposure to large clients and where you yourself are fairly large, it exposes you to that both in terms of new growth opportunities as well as productivity-led compression. So just wanted to understand, given the kind of growth you have seen in BFS how are things playing out for you? And how are you seeing those clients behaving when it comes to asking for productivity, as some of your peers have already mentioned, they had to pass it on. And whether are they ramping up rapidly on AI adoption and you gaining wallet share out of it?

So Rishi, I think I talked about it very briefly earlier on. I mean if you think about AI productivity, we are definitely seeing increased productivity gains versus maybe a year or two ago, especially in areas like engineering or testing or maintenance. However, the pass-through to clients at least in our case, is very measured and structured. And I'll tell you how it's structured. We may pass a part of the productivity back to the customer or they may choose to actually shift to a commercial model that incents both parties to operate and align on the outcomes. But a meaningful portion of that productivity gain has to be used and offered in additional automation or AI layers of modernization. So, while productivity is real and increasing, the net effect at least for us is not pure deflation. It's driving both efficiency and growth within client accounts. But again, for that, what's important is the ability to show them a path to driving the transformation. We've seen this in top banking accounts already, where we've gained wallet share because the delivery of productivity through our teams, through a commercial construct that we believe work for both, was superior to our peers. And hence, we were able to consolidate a lot of SDLC work that came, that was available in that account to consolidate. So, this is a theme that we have to continue to play out. There are parts of the business that are more exposed and parts that are insulated, but it is less about exposed versus insulated and more about the type of work and the commercial construct. So to me, I think if you're able to get more resilient platform-led transformation programs, modernization work around data and stitch it to outcomes, I think the ability to then grow the account is much higher.

Got it. The other thing is, if we look at your margins in this quarter and if I strip out the hedging losses, which are, of course, temporary, we are probably at multiyear high in terms of EBIT margins ex FX. As per my calculation, it's like 16.5%; how do we think about, so firstly, I mean, how do we think about margins given that you've given a band, otherwise, which I'm assuming includes ForEx impact, but still you're effectively running above that. So are we looking at increase in investments in FY '27 that could have some impact on this, given that your growth is also accelerating. And as a result, some of the investments you've been making in large deals and others would also start paying off. So how do we think about margins going forward within that band?

So Rishi, I'll give you at least my view and then Aravind can definitely add on that. The way we've constructed the business at least over the last 2, 3 years is if we can hold margins steady despite all of the pressure and noise around productivity and deflation and pass backs, we should have the ability to invest back in the business. And I think you've seen the amount of AI investment we've made, the amount of sales and GTM investment and now we are actually making leadership investments as well. So I think just having that operating leverage gives you the flexibility to either pass it through the P&L or actually have the ability to make these investments. But so far, we managed to maintain the margins, expand them slightly, as you said, despite all the ups and downs on currency. The thesis hasn't really changed by FY '27 either. If this platform-led proposition model continues to operate, I definitely think we have operating leverage that will become available because the cost of goods sold equation can be impacted very nicely if we can deliver the same outcome without necessarily pricing for the same effort, which is kind of what I was trying to explain earlier when it comes to the metrics that we were tracking in the past versus today. On hedge impact, I think part of the reason we hedge is to not have volatility in the operating margin. But Aravind, maybe you can add a little bit more color.

So I think, Rishi, that sudden depreciation does result in an uplift in margins and sudden appreciation will have a reverse problem. And in this kind of environment, right; we don't know which, you don't want that kind of volatility in your P&L, and that's why we kind of stick to a pretty consistent hedging policy. And when rupee depreciates sharply, these losses are a tailwind. And if rupee suddenly were to appreciate, you would ask the same question saying your margins have probably not moved despite hedge gains, right? So I think it's a tricky slippery slope. And in general, you guys don't like it if we give anything in our commentary, and we don't look at anything in that sense. So ForEx is a realistic part of the business. And that's a reality we have to live with. We don't look at it saying if rupee depreciates, we will improve margin. And if rupee appreciates, it's okay to drop margins. You've seen situations as early as four quarters back when rupee went to INR 85, I don't think we changed our margin commentary then. So I think it is important to give that comfort, that rupee is just another variable like utilization and billing rates and things like that, and that's how we approach the business.

Fair enough. I was also asking it because this was a year where you had significant headwinds in the Logistics and Transportation vertical from a profitability perspective also. And going forward, if rupee stabilizes, ideally these hedging losses will also come down. So that will be a tailwind on the reported margin. So that's where I was coming.

That's true. That's true. That will play out I think the only point is we keep discussing that, but rupee never lets you settle down to a point where we reach stability. So sometimes it's a pipe dream to think it will stabilize and something will flow in. But yes, mathematically, yes.

Next follow-up question is from the line of Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec India.

Aravind, I lost you while you were explaining. So just an add-on as you continue on that, where we lost you is, you essentially mentioned that contract assets have come down, it's moved to DSO and which means customer has accepted the milestone and you were giving context there. Just to add some flavor of what I'm seeking is that, see, there are a lot of questions that we're getting on this. So just your thoughts around from a high strategic perspective because obviously, when you're growing at BFSI at maybe 18%, for that, it will consume working capital. And strategically, when you're looking at participating on the AI side of things, you need to be there and get market share to be able to participate there. But just to hear your thoughts on a high level and some granularity on a question, which is that the $16 million is leased this year, which was supposed to come last year. So overall, that 80% looks lower. So just a high-level view there would be very helpful to sort of some concerns there.

So Nitin, first point, right, $16 million is probably what, maybe 4% of or maybe 7%, 8% of your PAT, right? So yes, you can presume that will be 80 excluding that because that you're kind of covering as part of FY '26. So I'm not, it's not a material number in that sense, but it's semantics and we are looking at 80 on a consistent basis, right? So that is the first point. Two is from a contract asset standpoint, it is not coming into DSO's coming into debtors. It was always part of DSO. So from our disclosure perspective, we've always been consistent to include contract assets even when it was, when it kind of spiked up, our DSO reflected it. And it's just an internal movement between one part of DSO to the other part of DSO. In fact, in general, quality of debtors, I would say, is better because your contract assets have come down and our noncurrent debtors have come down, right? So you've actually seen an improvement in the debtors. And you've also seen DSO improve by a day. And the improvement by a day is without the 17 million benefit, right? If you include that, it is actually improved by about 4, 5 days. One of the elements from an operating cash flow standpoint that has played out in Q4 is that if you remember, we had other liabilities go up, and I explained it, I think, in our Q1 call vis-a-vis our contract acquisition cost. Some of those payments have happened to clients, right? And whatever we are showing as operating cash flow for FY '26 reflects a reasonable reduction in other liabilities, which were attributed to the contract acquisition cost for large deals. So there is an element in the base, which already factors in the investments that we have made for large deals. And I think we will continue to make those investments. But the way to look at is, I think Dipesh asked this question, from historic levels of 100% plus, we think we would operate at 80% in FY '27, and that's largely because of these reasons.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will have to take that as the last question. While there are more questions in the queue, we would have to wrap up the call on time. With this, I now hand the call to Mr. Nitin for closing comments.

Thank you, Nirav. To close, while the macroeconomic uncertainty persists, our strategic direction remains unchanged. We will continue to stay focused on execution, accelerating our tech-led differentiation and scaling up our AI capabilities to deliver measurable outcomes for our clients. We will also be scheduling an Investor Day in Mumbai over the next few weeks, and we will be informing you shortly about the exact location and the dates, and we look forward to engaging with many of you in person at that time. Thank you.

Thank you very much. On behalf of Mphasis Limited, that concludes this conference. If you have any further questions, please reach out to the Mphasis Investor Relations at [email protected]. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.