Teleperformance SE (TEP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Teleperformance conference call. My name is Jas, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to your host, Daniel Julien, Chairman and CEO, to begin today's call. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. First, I want to thank you to be here listening at this very important conference. Clearly, I'm right now in New York City, and I got in the middle of the night a kind of very violent wake-up call with the news of a massive sale of the Teleperformance stock on the market. And this massive sales came following a tweet posted by the Minister of Labor of the new recently elected Government of Colombia and the tweet was stating that they have decide to start control on Teleperformance Colombia labor conditions and environment. So at this time, the company has not yet been officially notified. In fact, we learned that by Twitter. But clearly, as long as the projected audit will be fact based, managed with integrity and fairness, we welcome it. Teleperformance global policies has always been to be fully compliant with all local laws and we trust the Teleperformance Colombia and Teleperformance LATAM top management team to always have fully respected their duties, which are to respect the Colombian laws. So far, TP Colombia has always been perceived as a benchmark. Benchmark in terms of economic dynamism, strong work ethic and very people oriented. Yes, there have been some challenges. And this agreement with the representant of UNI Global and this challenge is still pending. By the way, Teleperformance Colombia CEO made an offer to UNI Global to open a constructive dialogue, which did not get any answer. So what I expect is that at the end of the day from this very negative situation, this move could be an opportunity to establish a better understanding. But clearly, right now, the aggressive approach has the potential to generate a lot of negative perception for all the parties, and the best testimony of that is the over sale of this morning. Before answering to your question, I want to remind you that in third-party surveys of Great Place to Work, Teleperformance Colombia always got extremely high employee engagement score. In fact, the last one, for the whole company was 85% engagement score, which is way above all benchmarks. And more specifically, 89% engagement score for the content moderators that are part of the topic. By the way, also have an attrition ratio that is half of the standard customer experience [ aging ] population. So clearly, the Teleperformance management team of Colombia and Latin America is ready to answer all questions to open the doors and we are ready to answer your questions. But before, I have to tell you something. With Teleperformance management, we think that after the sale of this morning, the stock is grossly undervalued. And that's the reason why the top management decided to launch the buyback share program. More, there is a personal commitment. The unanimity of the ex com member of the Teleperformance Group, the President of Teleperformance Latin America, the CEO of Teleperformance Colombia, altogether decided at personal level, to also acquire shares as long as we will be in that kind of situation. And this will be, in any case, in a global envelope that will be for several million dollars. And this is a commitment. Now ladies and gentlemen, I'm ready to answer the questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley.

First, can I ask one by one, please? The first is can you explain the challenges that you have with the UNI Global in Colombia? I mean, what is being proposed by the company? And what were the questions they were asking?

Of course. I mean, there is a long going different between -- of perception between Teleperformance Colombia management and the UNI branch in Teleperformance Colombia. I'm going to take numbers, I hope they are exactly accurate. But if there is a slight difference, please do not hold me responsible. Right now, in Teleperformance Colombia, we have, and I speak under the control of the top management of Colombia who is listening to this call, so they could correct me if I'm wrong. Right now, the total employee base of Teleperformance Colombia is 42,000 people. I think that UNI wanted to be recognized as a representative union in this company, stating that they had 53 employees requesting the creation of a branch of UNI in the company. Teleperformance CEO and local management check the list. And I think that unfortunately, some of the employees names that were listed on the UNI list were not anymore part of the company. And so the submission of UNI was not receivable. This is a dispute that is improved for sometimes and where the decision has not been made. I think that -- I think and I hope that I represent very precisely the actual reality. But I would say, it's clearly much more. I think it's clearly much more of a representation and topic done on Teleperformance breaching the laws. But in any case, as usual, when there is this kind of statement, I already asked our Chief Legal Officer and our Chief Compliance Officer to [ delegate ] an internal audit according to the rules of the international internal audit association. And that is going to start as soon as tomorrow. I think I answered your question.

That is clear. The second question is you obviously -- I mean, -- the first -- the issue came in light in August as well when Forbes published something and then you conducted an internal and third-party inquiry. In this instance, will you be willing to make the results of this audit that you're going to carry forward from tomorrow public to essentially make the investors support that?

We clearly will review that with our lawyers. I think I got a clear advice from our Chief Legal Officer, which is -- which said that it's against standard practice defined by the International Audit Association to release externally the finding of internal audits. So I have not made any kind of statement, but we have to be also extraordinarily cautious because some findings in audit can have an impact on some client business with whom we have contractual confidentiality clause.

That's clear. And then finally, I mean, given this is more like a perception issue, are you sort of taking steps to give, for example, access to media to your Colombian centers to see for themselves what -- and see how the business is done as usual?

We are going to organize that for independent trusted media and of course, for the investors who will want to see and touch. Of course, we have an open door transparent policy.

The next question comes from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs.

Just one, please. I think you mentioned in your Q3 call that the entire content moderation business is 7% of sales. Given the share price reaction today, if you note there is going to be an overhang, which is not getting resolved, can it not be possible to consider exiting this entire business because clearly, the share price reaction is so much more than the actual value of the business?

Yes, I understand your point. And it's, of course, something that we will have to carefully balance. There are 2 levels of consideration regarding your question. There is an opportunistic business decision. It is better to stay on a market that grew by 20% to 30% per year and risk this kind of perception issues or is it better to exit it. The second level to consider, and this comes from the fact, and we are going to work on that to make a much better education communication of the general market. The second level of this equation is we do, like some of our competitors, including Accenture, we do a very useful job for the society. The digital world is a negative real world. And our people are the gatekeeper that protect you, the public, your fees and so on. So yes, it's a little bit like the police in the real world. Sometimes, it's challenging in terms of perception, but a real world without police would not be a nice world. The second point is you have to keep in mind that in the content moderation process, the AI algorithm already exclude 97% of the egregious content. So our content moderator review just 3% of the total volume that are typically in gray areas where the social media platform have to make a decision and accurate decision. If the decision is not accurate because you got content that is legal, the social media platform get in trouble and is accused of censorship. And if the content moderator let pass something that can be perfectly acceptable in one society but not in another one, the social media platform is going to be in trouble. I'm going to give you an example. In many [indiscernible] countries, LGBTQ is legal and LGBTQ people have the same rights than the others. In some countries, these people are considered as criminal. What is going to do the platform in the country where this situation is considered as criminal. So there is a real society question that goes way beyond all the skirmish that we see. And I just want to give you another information. I think extremely recently, and I'm sure you can double check, the government of Singapore has made mandatory for all social media platforms to have content moderation to exclude any kind of egregious content. So there is a business case, an opportunity case, an ethical case. The answer is never an answer of principle. The answer is, is it a problem of misunderstanding? And if yes, can we correct it? Or is it definitely a dead-end situation and either we are going to let other people do that or we are going to let the public like some people work in some social media platform, not to our content moderation.

Maybe just as a follow-up. Have you spoken to all your customers in content moderation? Have they expressed any concern that -- about the employees?

Yes. We -- First, we have a very standard policy that is designed with our customers. Typically, the employees have paid significantly above the CX classic agents. Second, instead of working 8 hours, they work 6 hours, and they have 2 hours break and decompress. Third, in the case of the gray pie that we control and we have made a statistic, the highly egregious content has nothing to do with what has been said in the press because the highly egregious content according to the statistics that I got -- from our deferred operations are in the range of 1 case per 1 million reviewed. Then to take your follow-up question. Clearly, the other social platform we are working with know that it is a sensitive topic. They know Teleperformance, they audit Teleperformance, they know what our practice and they have not expressed any concern.

The next question comes from the line of Oscar Val from JPMorgan.

I have three questions. The first one is you said you haven't received a notification from the government. Do you expect to receive one or have you had a conversation with them? Why do you think this is coming from the government? That's the first question. The second question is, at a group level, I think about 25% of top performance is unionized. Do you expect that to increase? Or why are you not unionized in Colombia? And then the third question is on the timing of the buyback. Do you have more details on just the timing of the buyback?

Okay. Great question, and thank you. The first -- what was the first?

Have you received the notification?

Yes, yes. Excuse me. The first -- honestly, I'm not a lawyer, I'm a business guy. But all my life, I saw that government when they want to make an audit, they first send an official notification. And then if they want to communicate, they communicate. It's very strange to suddenly learn something via a tweet. But probably it is a new generation of the way of understanding the duty of an administration. So clearly, yes. And here, probably, we are going to ask our legal people. But first, we have to receive an official notification to start to discuss what is the planning. We are open, we are transparent, but we are not going to start to deal this kind of topic by Twitter. The second point, unionization. Yes, of course, we strictly follow the law in the countries where we are present. And different countries, different laws. U.S. does not have the same law as France. India doesn't have the same law as Colombia. So different situation, different way to address the topic. And we have never been, how to say that, we have never been reluctant to observe the social laws of any country in which we are. If you take by the way Teleperformance France, I guess that probably in Teleperformance France, we have 4 or 5 unions at least. We have unions in Germany. By the way, in Europe, we have European worker councils and we work very well with them. By the way, we worked hand in hand during the COVID time, at a time where UNI was also aggressing us on a topic that had no foundation. I think that there is very much a kind of strategic attack rather than a political -- rather than a natural content. But again, anytime we can discuss, put these things on the table and come to mutually agreeable solutions, I'm super in favor. And I always think that was a lose-lose situation. And I always think that their discussion reflecting legitimate expectation resolve the vast majority of the problem. Now after the unionization, the sales was -- I have no time to...

The timing of the buyback.

Yes, the timing of the buyback. Again, we are a public company. We have to check what our -- what is the legal frame and what are our legal concerns, but we are ready to start that as soon as tomorrow. The only point that could delay something or whatever, would be some specific legal constraints. I don't see anyone because we just released the Q3. So I don't think that we are in a black period. And -- but of course, our corporate lawyers are going to check that.

The next question comes from the line of Edward Pinar from Degroof Petercam.

Maybe just a follow-up on the previous question regarding unionization in Colombia. So at the moment, Colombia isn't unionized at all? Is that correct?

Can you rephrase it, sir, because nobody understood the question.

No worries. In Colombia, there is no union at the moment. Is that correct?

Yes, I think so.

Okay. Do you have a direct philosophy against recognizing a union? Because obviously, some of these issues that are being raised could have probably been handled its working condition issues. So if a union was recognized, surely some of these issues you could have been handled in theory as opposed to through the press.

Okay. First, I understand your question. First, when I say I don't think so, it's because we are in 80 countries. And the topic of unionization of each of our companies are a local matter related to the local laws of the countries. I really do not keep count of where we have unions, where we don't have unions. It might seem strange, but at least it tells you that we do not have any negative agenda behind the line. So I would have to check if we have unions or not. I think the program in Colombia, which is fine. But the problem with Colombia is, we have a very high score satisfaction of engagement, and the unions did not get any traction. And even when UNI wanted to open a union, they -- I think probably you need 50 people. And again, if I'm not correct, don't hold me responsible. But my perception is there is probably a threshold. And this threshold was not met. You just have to meet threshold and it's okay.

I hear you. But don't you think a lot of pain and suffering would have been saved if they were recognized and these things could have been handled internally?

Honestly, maybe probably. Most of the time when you have cracked this is because 2 people stop to listen to each other or to understand each other. So it's probably -- it is clearly based on situation here and there to tell you that again, we respect the law. We are transparent. We welcome an audit as long as it's based on facts, fair. What I mean, sorry, because it's very difficult to speak today about Colombia. And I'm not going to elaborate on that. But it's very difficult today to speak about Colombia without putting the political change that has happened in Colombia in context. The government changed, I think, in Colombia after decades exactly a few months ago.

Sorry. And Daniel, sorry, this is Bhupender, if I can actually add to what Daniel said. Specifically on the question that you asked as a philosophy, do we have anything against the unions? Categoric answer is no. On the contrary, Teleperformance signed the UN Global Compact in 2011. And that clearly recognizes the right for collective bargaining and we have applied it in practice. All over Europe, we have unions that we work with. Most of North Africa, we have unions. Even in Latin America, almost every country we have unions. So it's not that as a philosophy we have anything against it. It's just that it has to be done in a proper manner. And in this particular case, it was not done in a proper manner because it does not meet the right thresholds. So that's the only thing that we have. We are willing to work with the collective bargaining associations of employees in every country in the world.

Can I make a quick comment? I suspect part of the reason of this rapid share sell down is because some investors may fear that you are not complying with the global compliance, i.e., nothing to do with egregious materials, more to do with, are labor being represented and if labor isn't represented, we may end up in a situation where the sustainable funds are not allowed to own the share. So that's just something to consider. I hear there's a legal threshold, but there's something else where you also need to consider whether it's worth it to push the Orange a bit too hard. Just regarding staff turnover levels at Teleperformance, historically it has been very high. That's not perhaps I see the best workplace designation, but does the staff turnover not perhaps cause management to have a look at working conditions a little bit differently?

Excuse me, maybe Bhupender you understood, but the communication is not clear. So we have hard time to understand the comments.

Okay. Sorry, just staff turnover levels are quite high at Teleperformance. Does that concern you?

Bhupender, I believe you understood something?

No, I also did not understand it properly, Daniel. I don't know whether it's a line issue or some other issue.

In any case, I'm going to be clear, we are open. We manage more than 420,000 employees all around the world. Generally, this is a company that is known for its values, it's ethics and not for breaking the law.

Okay. Can we pass to the next question?

The next question comes from the line of Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank.

Just I'll take them one by one, if possible. The first one, what actions can you do and what confidence can you give to investors and indeed your clients that the issues around content moderation and employee wealth are treated in a sensitive and structured way at Teleperformance?

Okay. These are things, I mean, for our clients it's very simple because, of course, they are at all time without giving this access to their own operation, they know in details our process is fully transparent. Now for investors because there is a polemic that has been created, clearly, my plan is to invite investors who are going to be interested to impact to 2 different -- 2 in Europe where we have content moderation and to 2 in Americas where we have content moderation. And these investors, they will see the process. They will speak with field management. They will have the opportunity to speak with a content moderator. And again, all of that subject to the fact that we get legally the authorization of our clients to do it because at the end of the day, it's the client material, the client data belongs -- sorry, the content material, the content data belongs to our clients, not to Teleperformance. But we are going to push strongly because the more content moderation will be understood the right way, which is we are here to protect you and all content moderators are proud of their job. As long as this will not be understood that way, we are going to do a job of education.

Very clear. On the...

Sorry, if I can add one more point because this question was asked earlier also as to the impact on clients. So we announced our numbers last week, Q3 numbers. You would have seen this issue was raised on August 4, and we continue to grow overall across the quarters. And then specifically in content moderation, we can confirm that even after August 4, we have one more business, both with the client that was named and also other global measures in this space. And you can understand these are mega companies. They have teams of people who do an intensive due diligence. And given the publicity, they would have done even more diligence on us before awarding this work, and we have continued to get awarded more of content moderation work in the U.S., in Colombia and other geographies. So there are essentially 2 sides. Yes, there is something that is coming out in the open press, but the clients have full faith in TP's ability to handle all these activities at a large scale.

Understood. In terms of the education program that was just described, why are you so reluctant to publish the results of previous and future audits? And would you consider hiring a top law firm or third-party organization to conduct a publicly available investigation into the issues raised?

Okay. Thank you for the question, sir. I think I already answered in another, maybe in another venue to this question. Clearly, as you can imagine, and it's also the rule of the large auditing firm, I mean the top auditing firm, when they agreed to make an internal audit on sensitive topic, they require a nondisclosure of the results of their audit publicly. And the results of the audit should be reserved for internal purpose or for any kind of official investigation. We made an external assessment on the base -- on the allegation that we have mentioned. And the results -- and this -- but the assessment was made by very highly recognized name. The results of this audit -- they are, of course, information that are confidential to clients. They are available to our management, available to the client and available to officers engaged, they want to know it. They are not available for the public by contract.

Are you categorically saying there is no way you can provide a summary or reduction of any audit?

I have already asked 10 times my Chief Legal Officer who came with an official press release that has been approved by our third-party auditor, which is that the third-party assessment was in line with the filing of the internal audit and I could say that there was no materiality to the allegation that was published in the press. And so they were misleading. The official statement has been released I think Monday or Tuesday. So can we pass to the next question?

The next question comes from the line of Patrick Jousseaume from Societe Generale.

Daniel, can you hear me? .

Very well.

Okay, thank you. So in 2020, 2021, you had a case with UNI Global. And there was an arbitrage of OECD, which, let's say, said that after some difficult time, you were able to handle properly those COVID crisis consequences. The [indiscernible] various recommendation made to you and these various recommendation were mostly about unionization, representation of workers and so on in, I think, 7 countries actually 6 including Colombia. Could you comment on where you are currently with this recommendation?

With great pleasure, I'm going to let Olivier Rigaudy to answer this topic because he is much more accurate on the specifics of your question.

Thank you, Daniel. Thank you, Patrick, for this question. Effectively, by July or early August 2021, we have been cleared by the CN, by the NCP on the way we have, I would say, run the COVID story -- COVID, I would say, a measure to protect the people, and that was absolutely in line with the OECD rules. Beyond that, there were 6 recommendations that was issued by the NCP, of which we spent all the year last year to make them happen. There are 6 of them. We made a meeting. We provide to the NCP early July, all the answer. All of them were mainly [ representation ] of salary of people in the Health and Safety Security Committee in Philippines and India. The fact that we recognize union in Albania. There was also 2 other questions, one on Greece, one on Portugal on which we answer. And there was the last question, which was the fact that to engage negotiation with a union in Colombia that we did because as you know, the Colombia management team met in [indiscernible] with representation of so-called unions that want to be recognized in Colombia. And we've met them, and I'm speaking as the controller of the CEO of Colombia, the 17th of August on an informal meeting to say how we can move on. And that's where we are. So we produce this -- all this information to the NCP, the 7th of July, and we are still waiting a final press release to be issued by the NCP. But we are absolutely on line on this 6 recommendation, as you can see.

Yes. To be clear, Patrick Jousseaume, what Olivier says is the top 5, the box is ticked. We have been compliant with the top 5 recommendations, the only open topic and we see it pretty difficult because it seems that it's not easy to resolve is this topic in Colombia.

And do you think that is because of that, that you have this issue in Colombia? We might...

I cannot make supposition, but I have learned to connect the dots.

Okay, fine. And among the 5 recommendations, there is -- there are number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, which one is it exactly the 6 you mentioned?

I'm sorry, the 6? All of them are Colombian one, the one which we still negotiate. But there was one on Portugal, one on Greece. Well, yes, health and safety committee in India and Philippines that have been done, that have been elected and part of a monthly meeting plus recognition of a union in Albania, which is also...

It has been done.

Which has been done. And there are still this one, which we're spending despite the fact that we made the union to find a way to move on. And so far, we have not been answered on that. And to a certain extent, if you read the press that has been done on that, you will see that the people of this union were recognizing that this meeting were held -- has been held, sorry, and they were recognizing that the negotiations were ongoing.

Okay, okay. Thank you for these details. My second question, you mentioned, Daniel, at the beginning that you are going to launch an internal audit in Colombia. What is the specific topic of this audit, I misunderstood that?

Each time, it's -- I would say, it's a kind of systematic management pursuit that we, the ex com of Teleperformance take when there is an open issue. Even if we trust deeply what plays our local management, we always want to have people who have no vested interest in analyzing the situation to make an assessment and give us a report. And so -- but typically, it's all the question that can be related to the working conditions, the working -- the right of the worker, everything.

Okay. Okay. Fine. And to come back to the unionization in Colombia, should I understand that there is not a single union that is able to get -- I don't know how many people needs to be put together in order to make a union representative. But...

I'm not going to answer because I don't know. If Juan Carlos Hincapie can enter in the discussion, because Juan Carlos Hincapie should be around and he is the President of Latin America. He is going to be much more specific than I can be. Do we have Juan Carlos?

We don't have Juan Carlos at this moment.

I think -- this is Agustin Grisanti, the Global COO for Teleperformance. Juan Carlos is not in the list of the speakers, but I can answer that question. The reality is that there were several issues in the process when it comes to formality to be recognized as a unions. We highlighted there those. Now the union is in the process of correcting those problems. This is what we agreed with them. And once they solve the issues and present with all the formalities required by law, we will seek to negotiate if they have the appropriate representation to understand, more than mere negotiation.

Okay. Two last questions, and I think they are, I think, very very simple. First of all, the 85% and 89% satisfaction rate that you mentioned a few minutes ago in Colombia. Does it compare to the 65% threshold that is usually gets benchmarked by Great Place to Work?

Yes.

And my fourth question is, do you intend to organize, I mean, a meeting, a nice meeting or something about ESG topics?

Probably with this very unfortunate event that made people take probably decisions that are against their interest, it might be an interesting suggestion, and we are going to review that in our next ex com.

The next question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America.

Yes. So first of all, a clarification, the external audit that was completed on content moderation, was that also looking into Colombia? And secondly, following these allegations, have you proactively been engaging with employees in Colombia apart from launching, obviously, the internal investigation tomorrow -- from tomorrow? Some discussion on these and then let's go with others.

Yes. First, I'm going to let Bhupender to answer to the specific about the scope of the different audit that preceded. Second, typically, we manage the business by working around management session. Unfortunately, something happened in the world that you know very well, that is called confinement. So the top management of the group has been able to travel again only recently. By the way, I spent the whole month of October but in the other direction because I was in Dubai, in all our sites in India, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and so on. So of course, with this topic, Colombia becomes on the top of the list. But so far, it was not really at the top of the list because Colombia has always been perceived not only internally, but by the different stakeholders, including the authorities of Colombia as a model company.

And Simona on the specific point, the external audit was, at that time, focused only on the U.S. because it was also in the context of responding to the letter from the Senators staffers. So it was not focused on Colombia. Having said that, when that issue was highlighted, what we did do was we conducted detailed focus groups and audits, both from our side and also, in some cases, clients also did, including in Colombia. And we did not find anything which was -- though at that time, Colombia was not mentioned and other countries are not mentioned, but we did do an internal review at that time and along with our clients, and we did not find anything that was something as for the allegations. So we have done the first level when this thing happened. The second thing is also regarding are we speaking to our staff and other things. We actually do have, as part of our SOP anyway, skip interviews on a regular basis where employees are able to speak to the managers of their managers so as to understand if there is something that we need to improve. In addition to that, there are 2 other channels for employees to raise their concerns, which may not be resolved at a site level because even the skip level interviews are at a site level. One, there is the global whistleblower. And second is an anonymous channel to the ex com. And at least in the last 2 years, none of these 2 channels has heard any of these types of allegations that have been made in these 2 anonymous channels. And it's not that we don't get. We do get messages on these 2 channels, but we've not heard anything regarding some of the allegations that have been made regarding content moderation business.

And so apart from then starting also an internal investigation on Colombia specifically, so are you looking to expand also the auditing that has been done by one of the top 4?

If we consider it necessary, why not? We are going -- it's a very volatile situation right now. Clearly, I think that there has been a kind of earthquake because of something that was not really material. Now if we have to spend a few hundred thousand more to get another third party audit there, I mean, it's not going to stop us.

The next question comes from the line of Karl Green from RBC.

My first question, just going back to this point about you being open minded as to whether to stick with the content moderation business for the medium to longer term depending on how your stakeholders feel about that maybe when they've gone to visit your operations. Could you just help me understand the revenue breakdown within content moderation, specifically how much of the revenues are generated from the AI, which does the heavy lifting and perhaps some of the other services like fact checking or false advertising monitoring? So if you were to walk away from the human-led monitoring content moderation, actually, what proportion of that 7% of revenues would...

Understood. In fact, there is a little misunderstanding, there are 0 revenue that comes from the AI and content moderation because this is not our AI that makes the screening. This is a client AI that makes the screening and the client provide to Teleperformance what is gray zone border line because the clients asked to manage between carry and fill up, not to let something egregious pass and at the same time, not to be accused of censorship. I mean I am sure you know that I'm sure you have read a lot of things about that because it's a hot topic today all over the world, specifically with the change of ownership at Twitter.

Okay. That's helpful. And then so within content moderation, how much do you generate at the moment from the non-content review, so things like fact checking and false advertising, if anything, maybe that immaterial.

Most of our lines are not about egregious content. The problem is that even in lines that are not in egregious content, in the gray stuff, you can have something that finally reveals to be egregious. But again, keep in mind what I told you on the operations that we manage, whether it's in Portugal, whether it's in Colombia, whether it's in the U.S., the statistics of this case is 1 occurrence per 1 million case reviewed. It's 1 per 1 million. It's not all the guys, they are exposed continuously to do a role of disgusting stuff. It can happen, but it's statistically 1 per 1 million. It has been checked, rechecked -- excuse me, Bhupender, am I right or not?

Yes, Daniel, that's -- we have rechecked many times. And in most countries, actually, it's even less than 1 per million.

And just a second unrelated follow-up question. You've mentioned there that you're keen to organize a tour at some of your U.S. and European facilities for investors. What sort of time scale do you think you can organize that on, I guess, therefore, there's going to be a bit of a lag now before investors can make up their minds as to whether to support your continuing work in content moderation.

Obviously, it need to get first, it need to be organized. We need to get first the agreement of our clients. So it's a negotiation also. If we think that it's [indiscernible] then see that the people cannot understand what we say. We can do it tomorrow. Otherwise, reasonably it's something that we are going to shoot for in the Q1 2023.

The next question comes from the line of Antonin Baudry from HSBC.

Two questions, if I may. The Times article speak about compensation on working condition of your employees in Colombia. So should we expect increase of cost or increase of wage related to improved working conditions in the future in this country? And will you be able to pass this potential higher costs to your clients? My second question is why do you do this high-risk business in Colombia and not in the U.S. or in Europe where workers might be better protected with more regulation? A third question that is short. You say 1 occurrence per 1 million case, 1 million case; does it include AI cases? Or is it just human interaction?

1 million cases is just human interaction. It doesn't integrate the AI cases because we don't work on the AI cases. The AI cases is before the work is transferred to us. Is it clear?

Yes, yes.

The second point, content moderation is not different from any kind of business that is outsourced. And sometimes they are made domestic, sometimes they are made nearshore offshore. But in this specific case, I have to make -- give you a precision. The content moderation that is done in Colombia is not for the U.S. because the content moderation that is for the U.S., we do it in the U.S. Content moderation typically has to be very localized because there are things that are acceptable in one culture and not in the other one. So the content moderation in Colombia is for Spanish LATAM and Brazil. I hope this answers your question.

Also so yes, sorry, go ahead.

I'm not finished. Third, right now I do not -- clearly, we do not invent the level of compensation country per country. The level of compensation in Sweden is not the level of compensation in France. That is not the level of compensation in India or the Philippines. But what I can tell you, relatively speaking. And here, I speak also under the control of Bhupender. If I am right, our content moderator in Colombia are paid 50% above the average salary of the normal local customer experience agent for Colombia. And for Brazil, they are paid the double because it's bilingual. Bhupender, am I right or not?

Yes. So this is one of the items that we had audited as part of our internal reviews. And the average compensation for content moderators in Colombia is 115% more than the minimum wage. And somehow the Times article was trying to say that we are paying minimum wage. And it is 45% more than the average compensation of the customer experience staff. So it is paid more than both customer experience and significantly more than the minimum wages. And then also, the point around attrition. The attrition is 3.06% for content moderation staff per month in Colombia versus 8.3% for the normal customer experience staff. So if you combine the 2 facts, they are paid more, they are more engaged and the attrition is lower, doesn't kind of make any point towards increasing compensation.

The next question comes from the line of Nicole Manion from UBS.

The first question would be just about your focus on the results of employee engagement surveys. These are not generally seen as maybe the best way to measure how things are for employees, especially another metrics such as churn and pay, may suggest some issues among the reports that employees might be concerned about job security if they speak about some of the issues they're facing. So is there anything else that you can maybe point to as a metric that might give us some more comfort here on the sort of experience on the ground? And I may have missed this, but could you please confirm what percent of content moderation is in Colombia and also Brazil and the U.S., I guess, as well? That would be helpful.

Clearly, maybe Agustin, you can answer the distribution because we have content moderators in Europe, we have content moderator in Asia, we have content moderator in U.S., we have content moderator in Colombia. I don't -- I -- please -- Agustin you are going to be more precise than I am.

Yes. Today, we do the content moderation out of Colombia for Latin America mainly. And the volumes that we handle in Latin America from Colombia are the [ double ] versus what we handle today for the U.S. This -- you need to understand that also not the same clients that we serve for Latin America, the same clients that we serve for the U.S. and also the lines that we serve are different. But as Daniel was saying also, we have a significant activity additionally in Europe and Asia.

To give some more specific numbers, globally, we've got about 15,000 people on content moderation. Colombia is about 2,400, U.S. is about 2,000.

Coming back to your first point on your question about how we evaluate the employee experience. Not only we, of course, are in a competitive market and we look at salaries and conditions that we do, we also include the wellness part and less hours, that moderator works versus a normal customer agent when it comes to hours per day and break time versus work time for the same salary, of course. Also, we do the Great Place to Work survey we have the focus group, but also we do constantly internal engagement surveys that are surveying our population every single week. And we, again, not only this happens in Great Place to Work, but also in our internal surveys, the content moderators for Colombia rank the experience that they have as our employees, significantly above the rest of the company in the customer experience. And I must say also that in Colombia, we have one of the highest engagement scores in the world when it comes to a sentiment survey or employee satisfaction.

Okay. I've got two follow-up questions, if that's okay. The first one would be, can you sort of clarify where the liability sits here between you and the client when these investigations are launched by governments or whoever else. You've mentioned that the content, for instance, belongs to TikTok, but clearly, you have contractual obligations. So where does the liability sit in a legal sense. And secondly, you've said that the union request in Colombia wasn't done in the proper way and then it was rejected. So what is the sort of conditions here for getting people back to the table? And what is the likely sort of time line around that? Or is it just not likely at all at this point?

Really, I see across many equations that there is a kind of suspicion that we have a switch of factory. We are not -- we are not, and I engage you to come to visit our operation, to visit the mindset, the spirit and you are going to discover that it's far from what you can have in mind. Now on this specific topic, the progress, you need to be to is like in everything in the life. So we are going to try to manage to really avoid this big explosion of information, but we are far from being the guilty people that many imagine. Can we pass to the next question because it's already 1 hour and 15 minutes?

The next question comes from the line of Evan Kurtz from Lord Abbott.

Just on your ability to talk about what was in the audit so far and maybe what's in some of the future ones. I was wondering why it's not possible to just address some of the issues in the press release directly. You kind of did just a few minutes ago talking about the time article and the claims about compensation there. I mean, why not just kind of aggregate all the allegations that are made against Teleperformance in Colombia? And talk about what Teleperformance is specifically doing in those areas and any opportunities to do more?

I understand your suggestion. These kind of things are always very delicate to decide. We are obviously asked the advice of the best professional in terms of crisis management and public relationship. Sometimes it doesn't make so much sense to go back to public debate because you put more oil on the fire. So it's a question of there is no ideological position on that. It's a question of what is the best to manage this aggression?

The next question comes from the line of [ VM Kakao from WCM ].

My question is what is the percentage of your overall labor force is in Colombia? And what is the risk of the contingent? So is this just the beginning? Or do you think you're getting similar probe in the Philippines or any of the other regions? That is my question.

Yes, I understand. Colombia is more or less 10% of our total workforce. Let's be clear. There is no workforce issue in Colombia. This is all again, Twitter, the government decision to make an audit, it would not be the first time that the company gets an audit. And then the way it has been put into perspective. I mean our employees in Colombia are very happy. You go to Colombia, you are going to see a very energetic company. So are we expecting that we are going to see any kind of spillover to the other countries? Oh, my God, I wish that in every country where we are, people would have been satisfied with Teleperformance as they are in Colombia. So really, there is a kind of dual reality, cognitive dissonance that I strongly stand against because Teleperformance Colombia is not a company that is close to the internal social rupture, not at all.

And I'll add one more data point just to support that. We hire about 4,000 people every month in Colombia. So if we were the kind of employer that was being portrayed, we would not be able to hire people at that scale.

So I think that we are going to go with the last question. If you do not mind.

The last question comes from the line of David Cerdan from Kepler.

I have some very short questions. Just one, if I'm right, [ ITUC ] levels of Colombian Trade Union was also in dispute with some of your competitors. I think that [indiscernible] -- so what is the unionization rate of your competitors? That's my first question. And second question is just on the share buyback, what is the maximum size of the share buyback, just to clarify this point.

Okay. I don't know anything about [ ITUC ] level and our competitor. So maybe Agustin knows, but I have no idea. Let's be clear, we have the -- we, not only Teleperformance, our type of services with a lot of employees, we are the natural target in a nice way of these organizations. As long as they respect the law, no problem. And again, we cannot start a relationship on a fight of power with people who do not respect the law. And on top of that, have made fake statement about us. Now the total amount of the share buyback, we will manage it as much as we need to manage it and as long as we are going to consider that it's a very good deal for the company.

But is there a limit to the share buyback? Is it limited to...

Of course, probably, there is a limit of the reasonable resources of Teleperformance. But as you can imagine, EUR 150 million is not the total available resources of Teleperformance. But frankly speaking, I think a lot of Teleperformance managers are going to be very happy to be able to buy Teleperformance shares at discounted price. First, we tried Agustin Grisanti, Global CEO; Bhupender Singh, President of Global Transformation, and I, we tried to give you a fair and accurate representation of the situation. We really think that there has been an over-reaction in a volatile environment. The judgment belongs to you. Teleperformance business is strong, is going to remain strong. And there are no crisis, except the ones that have been created in the media in Teleperformance Colombia. And I would like to thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.