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M&A Announcement

Mar 4, 2021

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Wipro Limited conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Aparna Iyer, Vice President and Corporate Treasurer. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.

Aparna Iyer
VP and Corporate Treasurer, Wipro

Thank you, Amaan. Good morning and good evening, everyone. A very warm welcome to the Wipro conference call, and thank you all for joining at short notice. We will begin the call with opening remarks by our Chairman, Rishad Premji, followed by an overview of the acquisition by Thierry Delaporte, our CEO and Managing Director, and Lance Levy, the CEO of Capco, will share his perspective after that. Post that, the operator will open the bridge for Q&A with our management team. Before we commence, let me draw your attention to the fact that during the event, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are associated with uncertainties and risks, which may cause the actual result to differ materially from those expected.

The uncertainties and risk factors are explained in our detailed filings with the SEC. Wipro does not undertake any obligation to update the forward-looking statements to reflect the events and circumstances after the date of filing. I'll now call upon Rishad Premji, Chairman of Wipro Limited, for his opening remarks. Over to you, Rishad.

Rishad Premji
Chairman, Wipro

Thanks, Aparna. And good morning and good evening to all of you. As always, it's a pleasure to speak with all of you, and I hope you guys have been keeping well and staying safe. And for those of you who can access the vaccine, hopefully have a chance to access it soon. There's been a lot of exciting and positive change at Wipro over these past few months, and many of you have heard about this from our analysts way back in November. You heard more about this during our Q3 results call in January. We've really moved into execution mode on several significant changes happening in the company. We are executing on our new five-point strategy that Thierry had clearly outlined. We have transitioned to our new and simplified organization structure, which is market-led and market-first.

And we've also had several new leaders joining our leadership team over the last few months. Today, we are thrilled to share another important announcement of a transformational acquisition, the largest in our history as Wipro. We will be acquiring Capco, which is a leading consulting, digital, and technology transformation partner in the banking and financial services space for a value of $1.45 billion. Capco will bring to us over $700 million in revenue and over 5,000 consulting and domain specialists based across the globe. With this acquisition, we believe we will join a select league of service providers that bring an integrated and end-to-end consultative, digital, cloud, and IT transformation solution at scale to our customers. The banking and financial services industry is one of our largest sectors globally and a high priority and growth segment for us.

Capco will bring Wipro's significant scale in our BFSI business, a highly complementary set of service offerings creating a unique combination of consulting and domain-led expertise with scaled digital technology and operations depth. This, we believe, will drive accelerated growth. It will also expand our presence into a set of large strategic customers that are uniquely complementary to our existing customer base. In addition to the complementary capabilities and customers, it will give us a platform to leverage the deep and enduring relationships that Capco has built over the years with CXOs and business leaders of several large customers. While this is important, what we view and believe most critically is that Capco is the right fit for Wipro from a culture and values perspective.

I have been very encouraged with the commitment shown by Lance Levy, the CEO of Capco and his leadership team, to make this partnership a success. The last time I spoke to you all, which was in November at our Analyst Day, I shared with you that you will see a bolder Wipro, a more ambitious Wipro, one that will be more risk-taking, one that will not be afraid to shake up the apple cart, to make tough calls, to invest deep, and to think big. This acquisition fits well into that strategy and will pave the path of building a bold tomorrow for Wipro. This has been a remarkable team effort in a short amount of time, and we are collectively incredibly excited about this new chapter and to welcome our Capco colleagues to Wipro.

With this, I want to hand over to Thierry to share more details around the strategic rationale and our thinking behind this acquisition and to also take your questions down the road. Thierry, over to you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Rishad, thank you. Good evening, really. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining this call invitation on short notice. We have indeed great news to share, and we wanted to be able to share it with you in person. We are delighted to share with you the largest ever acquisition made by Wipro till date. Earlier today, as you know, we signed an agreement to acquire Capco, which is a focused management and technology consultancy offering digital transformation solutions to global financial institutions in the US, in Europe, and in Asia-Pacific. This is an all-cash deal for $1.45 billion. The transaction will be financed through internal cash and debt. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals, of course, and is expected to close in the quarter ending June 30, 2021. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Capco. They were founded in 1998.

They have a global presence headquartered in London. Capco has a distinct and very strong market positioning around high-value business transformation services. They have known them for years. They have long-standing and trusted relationships with their clients and strong C-suite relationships. In the calendar year 2020, Capco's turnover was over $700 million, and their top 30 accounts contributed 79% of their revenues. As part of the acquisition, we will be onboarding over 5,000 colleagues, including consultants with deep domain expertise and a passion for consulting and, obviously, financial services. We are extremely excited to welcome them to Wipro and really look forward to making their Wipro experience meaningful. Now, if we reflect on the rationale for the deal, there are five key reasons why we believe this is a strategic acquisition.

One, acquiring Capco helps us grow our global financial services business, which is our largest segment, from $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion with a strong consulting footprint. Scale matters, and it reinforces our market relevance, the depth of our business solutions, and also the talent available to us at the leadership level. The second reason why this is such a compelling proposition is growth acceleration. There is a huge potential for synergy because of a highly complementary customer profile between Capco and Wipro's BFSI business. Given that BFSI is such a major sector, we know that it's tough to break into a new account. In that context, through this acquisition, we will be adding over 30 prominent financial services clients, which will significantly enhance access to industry spend.

The third reason, we believe the acquisition of Capco is highly complementary to Wipro's service offerings in the banking and financial services domain. It's absolutely aligned with our strategy to be a trusted partner. If you remember what we've shared with you back in November, be a trusted partner to our clients in their digital transformation journey. The unique combination of Capco's consulting-led financial services domain expertise and Wipro's digital technology and operations capabilities really positions us well for large-scale transformation deals. It definitely helps Wipro become a true end-to-end integrated consulting digital technology services and operations provider to the BFSI industry. On these three points, let me give you a couple of examples of what this will mean for our customers.

One, Capco provides consulting and advisory services in the risk and regulatory compliance area to Chief Compliance Officers and Chief Risk Officers, which leads to a significant technology architecture, design, and build effort to be able to support the changing needs within the CIO organization. With Wipro's capabilities in the technology domain, architecture, design, build, and operate, the Wipro-Capco combination can definitely offer end-to-end cloud-native solutions to our clients, right from advisory and design to build and operate. Second example, Capco works extensively in the business operations space, providing advisory and consulting services for target operating models, strategic cost transformations. This allows significant business operations and, frankly, artificial intelligence automation opportunities. With Wipro's strong capabilities in operations and AI automation, the Wipro-Capco combination will be able to offer the subtle end-to-end solutions to our clients.

In both of those examples, by the way, it will benefit our clients from three perspectives: the global delivery model, scale of end-to-end capabilities, and the single-owner approach from shaping to execution. Now, going back to the five reasons I was giving you about why this is a strategic acquisition for us, let's go with the fourth. We believe we will be able to leverage the deep and enduring relationship that Capco has with key decision-makers at the board level, CEOs, CIOs, business heads in the BFSI space, which naturally provides a tremendous boost to our market position. Finally, none of this will be possible without the exceptional talent we get to onboard through this acquisition. We've met a lot of the leaders of the team. I'm very excited to really welcome a team of highly experienced, diverse leadership team to Wipro.

Besides, there's a very significant millennial and Gen Z workforce as well that we will bring on board, and we really look forward to this unique culture of collaboration and the proactive account management. Now, I'm sure you will ask about the integration. Let's see. We see the transaction as a merger. This is the mindset we have in this transaction as a merger between Wipro and Capco. The merger brings scale, complementary capabilities, clients, talent, leadership to the combined entity. Capco will continue to operate as a separate unit under Lance Levy's leadership together with his global leadership team, by the way, and partners, all, as I said, highly experienced professionals in their own right. However, to ensure that we leverage relationships, the expertise, and the capabilities, we will have an integrated strategy and execution approach for common clients.

While we work in the model, we will learn together and certainly evolve an integrated and synergistic operating model over the next few quarters that enables us to cross-leverage our capabilities seamlessly, but also bring the best of Wipro and Capco to our clients and prospects. From a margin standpoint, Capco's operations are comparable to what we find in other consulting firms. This acquisition will definitely affect Wipro's IT services margins by 2% in FY 2022, a large component of which is a non-cash charge, by the way. We will turn EPS accretive in year three of the acquisition, and obviously, we'll continue to focus on improving margins in our existing business while driving cost synergies in all our acquisitions. So, summary, we are extremely confident that the acquisitions will create one of the world's prominent integrated consulting technology operations players to banks and financial institutions.

This will accelerate growth led by huge potential for synergies. We will increase our presence in some of the major global financial services customers, accelerate our time-to-market for sought-after capabilities, and also increase our relevance to our customers in the segment. With that, I will hand it over to Lance Levy, the CEO of Capco, with whom I have had the real pleasure to develop very strong connections and trust over the last months and who will be a great leader in the new construct. Lance will share his views on the acquisition now. Lance, over to you.

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

Thanks.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Lance, you might be on mute.

Operator

Yeah, requested to please unmute.

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

Thank you, Thierry. And good evening, everyone. Let me start by saying how incredibly excited I am to be here today with you and specifically with Rishad and Thierry to share our strategic vision and rationale for our two companies coming together. Before I go further, I would like to add that our entire leadership team is incredibly excited about this deal and committed. Our partners, our leaders in the business really see the benefit of this union, and we're incredibly committed for the next part of the journey of Capco within the Wipro family. Let me echo some of the strategic comments made by Rishad and Thierry. Capco has been in the fortunate position over the last seven years of being able to build itself and position itself as a real challenger and an alternative to the large established consulting brands in the market.

We've become a preeminent choice as a management and technology transformational consulting services provider for, quite frankly, the best financial services clients around the world. It's become clear, however, over the past years that our clients are increasingly asking us to not only advise on strategies, to not only architect strategies and processes, but to take them through the full spectrum of their transformational journey and journeys. That involves technology at scale, which we've not been able to provide. As the market has moved and consolidated in this way, the opportunity for Wipro and Capco to create a new market leader for financial services, offering a full spectrum of transformational change to our clients, is hugely compelling. For me, for my team, for our partners, this transaction is huge.

It offers a real opportunity for both companies to drive and accelerate significant change and significant growth, and by so doing, offer an even more special company and offering to the market. To put it in very, very brief terms, as my partners in Capco have described to me, we want to now take on the larger competitors on their own turf. We believe that through the combination of consulting and consulting transformational skills and Wipro's deep technology expertise and scale, we have a very, very attractive proposition to take to market for the first time, and we feel extremely good about that. Let me talk a little bit about culture and our people, and one thing to know is that our people know Wipro people. We've worked together on various engagements, and I can say that our cultures are a natural fit for many reasons.

Thierry and I have known each other for many years, and I'd like to say I have an extremely good relationship. Immediately, in regards to the discussions around this deal, I saw the strategic opportunity and the cultural opportunity in bringing both organizations together. I believe strongly that not only do we share the same vision for growth, the same ambition for growth, but also the same value and the same integrity in respect of how we go to market. By way of summary, in respect of my comments, I will emphasize again the commitment of our team, our leadership, to the next part of this journey. Our partners all have very long tenure at Capco. We're very much a family, as is Wipro. My commitment, my partner's commitment, is absolute in regard to the next part of this journey.

We believe our cultures are connected and powerfully aligned. And most of all, we believe that by bringing these two companies together, by bringing these two value propositions together in an end-to-end offering for our clients, we become something unique in the market, and we become something that can face off against the big brands in a meaningful way. At Capco, we like to win in an appropriate way. And I can say that both I and my partners can't wait to get started on the execution phase of this transaction. So thank you, Thierry. Thank you, Rishad. And it feels really good to join the Wipro family. Let me hand back to you, Thierry.

Operator

Thank you very much.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Thank you, Lance.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sandeep Agarwal from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.

Sandeep Agarwal
EVP, Edelweiss

Yeah, hi. Good evening to the management team and congrats on the acquisition. So I have only one question which I would like Thierry and Lance to probably answer. Why you are right now going for such a big acquisition when the demand environment is so good? Do you really think that adding this consulting piece will add a substantial delta to us in the sense that we will be able to target many more clients? And because the environment is very good, it will be probably a right timing of the acquisition. Is that the thought process behind it, or do you think that there were some gaps strategically in the FSI which we are trying to fill through this acquisition?

So what is the real intent, whether we want to be prepared for the next four, five years in terms of the cycle which has turned around, or it is more to do with filling of the gap which we have seen in our offering? So what is the real intent behind this acquisition?

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Thanks for this question. You're right that the market is. There's a rather good environment, and financial institutions in particular are investing more in technology than they've ever done in the past, and we know that, as we've discussed several times, it's not only limited to their IT sphere. They are investing in technology to connect with their clients to allow better efficiency and employee experience to create new streams of revenue and obviously improve their profitability, their productivity, and address their compliance challenges. There is also a very clear direction that is being taken by those banks that are going one after the other for more fundamental transformation programs because their industry has been disrupted by technology and technology players over the last years.

And so if you remember, when we spoke about our strategy for the next years at Wipro, we really insisted on our conviction that to be relevant for our clients and our partners in this industry, we really need to be able to help them drive their transformation agenda. Not only be a technology provider, but truly be at the CXO level discussing with them priorities and business issues, and from there, start to think, design, elaborate, build, and drive transformational programs for them. So that is, in fact, if you reflect on that, the acquisition of Capco is absolutely right at the heart of our strategy, the way we had it articulated. Today, to be more relevant in our industry, you have to play at these different levels.

On the think side, which is really discussing strategic transformation topics with CXOs and multiple different stakeholders from financial institutions all the way down to developing and executing complex transformation programs with and for them, and so the nature of this acquisition is extremely strategic. There's absolutely no question. The timing is right because I think this is now, discussions at CXO level are happening now, and we felt that it was just the right time for our two companies to get closer. Lance, you want to add something on your side?

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

I couldn't agree with that more, Thierry. We work with our clients to advise on critical projects and strategic initiatives, and I'd make two points. One is that demand is strong in the market, partly due to what we have been and are going through in respect of COVID. Financial institutions have realized they need to put certain digital infrastructure in place faster, and strategic decisions have been made at our institutional clients, which have really a long tenure ahead of them, so I expect, we expect, and we're seeing that that demand will continue for some time, and more and more, our clients are asking us, and we see that they're asking other providers for a single provider, as Thierry said, not only to strategize, conceptualize, design, and architect solutions, but then to implement them and run those solutions.

Now, with this deal, with these two companies coming together, we feel strongly, our partners feel strongly, Thierry and I have talked about this a lot, that we can confront the big players who have end-to-end transformation and skill to develop and to take up the demand that is coming quite strongly from the institutions, the financial services institutions, in respect of transformational outcomes, especially aligned to digital, which are so important to them. This, in my view, will make growth exponential. We see the growth, but we don't have the technology downstream skills to really capitalize on it. We get ahead of that growth by strategizing with our clients, at times writing those RFPs with our clients. This deal, in my view, makes absolute strategic sense and will accelerate growth.

Sandeep Agarwal
EVP, Edelweiss

Yeah. Thanks a lot for the detailed answers. Thank you and best of luck for the future. Thank you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Thank you, Sandeep.

Operator

The next question is from the line of Moshe Katri from Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Moshe Katri
Managing Director Investment Banking, Wedbush Securities

Thank you. I have a couple of follow-up questions here. First, maybe you can talk a bit about how has Capco evolved since its separation from FIS back in 2017? And then on the integration front, what is the company doing to retain top executives and talent at Capco? And then the follow-up here is maybe some color on Capco's growth rates and profitability during the past few years, including throughout the pandemic. Thank you very much.

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

Sure. Let me take that one. So in respect of, I'd say, the last four years well, under FIS's ownership and then under CD&R's ownership, we have moved Capco from a consultancy, which I would describe as predominantly capital markets with some banking, and a consultancy, which I would describe as responsive to the market, into a broad-spectrum management and technology consultancy, which operates in a highly efficient and structured way with a much larger banking and payments practice and a much larger wealth and asset management practice. And now we've launched an insurance practice. We've made some tuck-in acquisitions along the way. We have restructured our go-to-market model and our leadership team in many respects. And we have increased and improved all of the traditional management consulting metrics that you would expect. A lot of that work was done, completed prior to COVID.

And as a result of that completion, the completion of that work, as a result of all of the effort we put into building a highly structured, highly disciplined, market-focused company, we were able to grow during the COVID period by some 6%, which was at the lower end of our expectations for the year prior to COVID. One of the reasons we were able to do that, some of the reasons we were able to do that go back to the original heritage of what makes Capco special, which is deep domain expertise. We walk, talk, eat, sleep, and breathe financial services, and our people are highly motivated in this regard. And we connect with the C-level as a result. The second reason is the connect with C-level and business leaders. We speak with business leaders. We walk the halls to connect with CXOs.

Yes, we sell to CIOs, but that's predominantly not our business, so our intimacy with our clients, our intimacy with their strategic initiatives, our conversations with our clients, and helping them develop future demand, future initiatives helped us to grow during COVID. In respect of talent, we've all been together for a long time, and that's the first point to make. We're somewhat of a family at the leadership level. We have an extremely low voluntary attrition rate among the partnership and the leadership. We commit to each other, and we've made the commitment to each other, to Thierry, to Wipro, to take this next step forward and move this journey forward, and equally, there are various long-term incentive plans that will remain in place and have carryover, which provide their own retention in the deal.

I feel very strongly about my commitment going forward, about wanting to certainly spend the next years and years building a new offering and a new proposition in this partnership, and I know that my partners feel the same way. It's difficult to explain the level of excitement right now in Capco, but it is all based in business and clients and the ability to drive growth, which is fundamentally the vein of the rationale that runs through our company, growth.

Moshe Katri
Managing Director Investment Banking, Wedbush Securities

Just to confirm, EPS accretion you said wasn't year three?

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

Sorry, I didn't hear that.

Moshe Katri
Managing Director Investment Banking, Wedbush Securities

Just to confirm, the expectation is that we'll see EPS accretion in year three, post-transaction?

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Lance, I can take that.

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

That's just Thierry, yeah.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah. Yeah. No, Jatin. Jatin, go ahead. Yes. Yes. That is right. The deal will be EPS accretive from year three.

Moshe Katri
Managing Director Investment Banking, Wedbush Securities

Understood. Thank you for the color.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ankur Rudra from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Ankur Rudra
Head of APAC Telecoms and India TMT Research, J.P. Morgan

Thank you and congratulations on the interesting deal announced here. Maybe a few questions for Thierry to start with. Thierry, could you maybe elaborate on where do you see the immediate and medium-term synergies from this deal? Is it primarily scaling Capco's top 30 clients, or is it more cross-selling to the broader Wipro client base? And the second related question is about your longer-term vision you outlined, where you see yourself as a big player. As I understand, financial services is relatively consolidated despite being a big market. So what are the key challenges to achieve your vision here? Is there really an appetite for another scale player there? Thank you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Okay. Okay, Ankur, two really good questions. So the first one is really regarding the integration. And you're right. I mean, where are the synergies? Where are the first synergies? I think it's very clear for us that we will leverage our relationships on both sides. Okay? So we will drive streams day one on our existing accounts, whether they are Capco accounts, some we have one bigger than the other one, or complementing each other, or Wipro account. And we will absolutely align our governance. The first thing we will do is, before we do anything around integration or whatsoever, is going to review the governance for us in the accounts where we have common position, not common position, but where we both operate. And also define some specific strategies of growth in our respective accounts.

It is clear that on one side, Lance will be very keen to connect with our BFSI leaders in America, in Europe, in Asia-Pac to really understand and see, and we've started to do that already, to be honest. We've started to explore, not to work on this, but to explore opportunities to really look at where we can leverage the relationship Wipro has developed over the years and really start to position Capco as an addition, as a new opportunity to speak to different stakeholders in the banks, financial institutions, and obviously, it will be the responsibility of the leaders, BFSI leader of Wipro in America, Europe, and Asia, to really reflect on how we can develop our technology services and our expertise and our capabilities and our solutions in the accounts where Capco has developed over the years strong footprint.

It is clear in my mind. I think we all share this view, that in the BFSI sector, scale matters. And so combining our forces will make us stronger. And I think it's connecting with your second point, which is how we are competing with the large BFSI companies in this industry. Scale matters. Ability to address multiple stakeholders is critical. And certainly, the combination of annuity business, volume business, and value services, positioning us as at the same time strategic and important in size, is absolutely critical. So we'll reinforce our position not only in the accounts where we are or where Capco is, but also in some cases into accounts where we have no presence, but where suddenly the joint forces of the two entities will put us in the position to be a very credible partner for this entity.

So frankly, we are a different player in the BFSI space with this acquisition, and we will play fully this. One thing to be clear also, Ankur, you didn't ask, but just want to be clear. This is a strategic move. It means we will be obsessed about driving accelerated growth. We will be obsessed about driving top-line opportunities. For sure, there will be synergies of cost as well. But the main driver is definitely developing new streams and new opportunities inside our combined accounts in priority.

Ankur Rudra
Head of APAC Telecoms and India TMT Research, J.P. Morgan

Okay.

Thanks for the color. If I could, a question or two for Lance. Lance, you've been at a big services firm before and extended probably to a large part of your leadership team at Capco. Doesn't the Wipro transaction take you back to that size and culture again? What will keep you and your leadership team motivated as part of Wipro? And as a quick follow-up question is, it looks like the high watermark for Capco's revenues was in CY18 versus 19 and 20. Was there a divestiture that explains the difference? Thank you.

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

I didn't quite catch the second part, but let me deal with the first question, if I may first, and then you could perhaps repeat the second part. Yes, we've been part of large organizations. Many of my management team, my leadership team have been part of large organizations in the past. I worked for Accenture for a long time. I was also part of the FIS business when it owned Capco. I will say emphatically that my partnership team, my leadership team, can work in either environment, in a private equity independently owned smaller-scale environment, but also in a larger-scale, more corporate environment. We proved that at FIS, which was a success, although the different services that were offered by both companies were not quite strategically aligned.

I see a real pull and push from my partners to be part of a final home, as it were, for Capco. This has been the discussion amongst us for the last two years. Where do we find a home where the cultures match, where we've worked together before, where the ambition and the vision is shared for an end-to-end service provision to the market? I'd flip that question on its head a little bit in that I don't see it as a negative at all. Our people all have experience of large corporate and have enjoyed it. The fact that they're at Capco is because we are now a sizable company. Becoming part of Wipro, I feel, will be. No transition is easy, but it will be a relatively seamless transition.

All the discussions I've had with my partners and so on so far indicate that to be the case. Could I ask you to repeat the second part of your question?

Ankur Rudra
Head of APAC Telecoms and India TMT Research, J.P. Morgan

Sure. Thanks for the color on the first one. The second one was, when I look at the revenues that's been disclosed, it seems like CY 2018 revenues in U.S. dollar terms were higher than both 2019 and 2020. I was wondering if that was because of a divestiture?

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

No, that wasn't because of a divestiture. In 2019, as you know, because of the capital markets at the end of 2018, in quarter one, some of the institutions pulled back on spending. So our results were affected by a handful of clients, and I'd say no more than four. We built the business back to growth in H2. And then in 2020, clearly, we were hit by COVID. We tracked the revenue lost because of COVID in a very detailed way. We grew by just over 6% last year. Had COVID not come along, we would have achieved close to 12%.

Ankur Rudra
Head of APAC Telecoms and India TMT Research, J.P. Morgan

Understood. Thank you and best of luck for the transaction.

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that management is able to address questions from all participants in the conference, please limit your question to one per participant. The next question is from the line of Kawaljeet Saluja from Kotak. Please go ahead.

Kawaljeet Saluja
Head of Research, Kotak Institutional Equities

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My question is for Thierry. Thierry, if you look at the IT services options, if you look at the offshore pure players, all of them have attempted to build consulting practice over the last 20 years. But the results have been fairly mixed or rather disappointing. As an industry leader, what is your view on why consulting has struggled in offshore pure players, including Wipro? And what are the steps you are taking to ensure that the results, especially on the integration, are different this time around?

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yes. Kawaljeet, you're absolutely right. You know from my past as well that I've experienced, I would say, both aspects of the integration, the pain and the successful aspect of the integration. The world has completely changed, Kawaljeet , for one reason. If you look at consulting, say, five years ago and more, it was too far away from technology world. There was very little technology in the consulting space. A lot of consultants were not even comfortable with technology, right? Things have completely changed. Digital has completely changed. The world of consulting has forced a lot of, sorry, the world of technology has forced a lot of consulting firms to shift into digital and digital transformation. Now, so that's one aspect. And that's my comment on a challenge. I'm not saying the challenge goes away.

I'm saying it's absolutely not comparable with the situation you would have seen, say, years ago, seven, eight years, ten years ago, when a technology company would be requiring or merging with a consulting company. Second, if you look at Capco, Capco is definitely far away from this traditional consulting company you would think of years ago. It's 50% consulting. It's 40% digital. It's 15% technology action, 14% technology. So you have this continuum already within Capco. So this is, and then the final point I would make is, don't forget, Kawaljeet, that we today, inside Wipro, we have a consulting practice that represents about 7% of our revenue, and we have it. And it already represents a different family inside our organization. So I think it's not comparable to the situation that some of the other companies in our industries might have been facing many years ago. Things have changed.

Kawaljeet Saluja
Head of Research, Kotak Institutional Equities

Thanks. That's very helpful, Thierry. Just a quick follow-up. If you look at the consulting approach, the entire industry has relied on consulting at the tip of the spear and then hoping for big downstream revenues, which actually has been a fairly limiting factor in integration or utilizing the two synergies of consulting business. What is going to be Wipro's approach in this particular acquisition? And then the second question, you mentioned that Wipro will be focused on profitable growth. Just wanted to be clear that when you said profitable, it's going to be GAAP, or is it non-GAAP profitable? Yeah. Go ahead, a couple of questions. Thank you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

I'm trying, Kawaljeet, to reflect on your first question again and try to see how I can respond differently than when I covered it the first time in my mind.

When you're able to, the problem a technology company might have in front of a bank when we talk about the large transformation program is, if he's coming ahead of the curve in discussions with the client, he's much more able to really influence the evolution and the development of the transformation plan. And that drives more large deals. It's difficult to imagine having an impact to really design this transformation program if you are coming later downstream, if you like. And that is the logic of having a Capco and Wipro going end to end to a client and say, "We understand your infrastructure environment. We understand your applications environment.

We've been working with you on your cloud journey and so on." At the same time, we are working with you on some strategic program in terms of defining your go-to-market or your ability to drive more profitability or more growth, which are business challenges. And you really realize that you can really connect all the downstream programs that we can drive on the IT side or on the business side with the main business drivers that are discussed at the CXO level. And so for me, my conviction is very clear that we are much more impactful, much more credible. And frankly, it's not my opinion only, Kawaljeet. You know I've met, and I continue to meet four or five clients every single day. I'm connecting with them. And I hear what they say.

And they really want to have a partner who can reflect not only on the technology standpoint, but from a strategic standpoint as well. And that's what we will be able to do now.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pankaj Kapoor from CLSA. Please go ahead.

Pankaj Kapoor
Investment Analyst, CLSA

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I had two quick questions. One, if you can just elaborate more on the integration plan. Will there be a transfer of your consulting resources to Capco or any other changes? And related to that, who will Lance be reporting to formally? Will it be to you, Thierry, or to someone else? And a second question is on the retention plan for the Capco employees. Are you planning for any retention bonus for them? That's all. Thank you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Okay. And Thierry, the first one is integration. So one, we don't want to talk about integration. We're going to work on how we are creating business together in the market. So it's really the starting point for us is the clarification of the governance where required and aligning our strategy on the market, okay? So from a client standpoint, we will see down the line how we can optimize things here, maybe get people going in the same offices when it makes sense, or maybe if we have some small potential duplication of services, making sure that they are all in the same place. Those will be addressed. But down the line, that's not the priority. Capco will operate as an organization in its own entity, right? But obviously, connecting with our go-to-market everywhere across the world. Lance will lead that. It's very clear.

As I said, I know Lance for years. I've seen his impact. I've led myself the FSI business in my past, and I've also had the opportunity to connect with customers. This is a market I know well. So I have entire trust in Lance, but also on his leadership team. So he has a very strong team who's going to lead that. And reporting line, Lance will report to me. He will report to me directly. This is a big enough project, if you like, for us. It's a big enough adventure that we will drive it myself, of course, with the Wipro leadership team and Lance and his team. Did I miss one question? Yeah.

Pankaj Kapoor
Investment Analyst, CLSA

Yeah. Sorry. My second question was on the retention bonus. Do we have any plan?

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Retention. Correct. That was your third question, in fact. Okay. Retention, yes, of course, we have a nice retention program that we've put in place. We've worked together. Saurabh and Lance have worked on that in detail to really make sure that we are doing the right thing now. Saurabh, you want to say a few things about it?

Lance Levy
CEO, Capco

Thanks, Thierry. Three points here quickly. One is a very comprehensive plan which covers the leadership and the critical resources across Capco. Second is it is a three-tier. One is at the Capco performance. Second is linked to Capco plus overall BFSI performance, Wipro performance, and third is Wipro performance. So it's a three-tiered kind of a program which is both retention and performance linked, which covers significant critical resources. But I think the key is what Lance said in the beginning, that there's a high level of commitment, and we have spent a lot of time with the entire leadership team, and they're really excited about this opportunity and to take it forward. Over to you, Thierry.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Thank you, Saurabh.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Diviya Nagarajan from UBS. Please go ahead.

Diviya Nagarajan
Head of Indian Research and APAC Product Manager, UBS

Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the big bold acquisition, if I may put it that way. My question, first question to you, Thierry, is you've outlined a lot of the rationale and the synergies and the plans for the acquisition. If you were to kind of highlight a couple of the key execution risks that you would be looking out for in the next two to three years in your journey to get to that target that you've outlined, what would those be? That's question number one.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Diviya, I hope I heard your question right. So, key performance indicator or what I want to see over the next years. I mean, clearly, growth.

Diviya Nagarajan
Head of Indian Research and APAC Product Manager, UBS

Sorry to interrupt. I wanted to understand the key execution risks that you'll keep an eye out for so that the integration and, sorry, the revenue synergies and so on are put in place.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Execution risk. Okay. The number one execution risk, Diviya, and I take that from my experience in integrating companies. The number one risk is when people are.

Operator

Sorry. Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that we have lost the line for Thierry. Request you all to stay connected while we reconnect him. Thank you. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the line reconnected. So over to you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Okay. Thank you very much. Sorry for that. I am back. I got kicked out, so the first execution risk for me is losing the focus on the market. It is always being the same. By the way, it's not specific to this deal. It is always the same. Keep the focus on the market. And Lance and his team, our team.

Operator

Sorry. It seems we have lost the line for Thierry once again. Participants, please stay connected while we reconnect him again. Thank you. So over to you.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah. Okay. I hope it's going to be fine now. I hope you can hear me so third attempt, keeping staying away from the market so the focus on the deals, focus on the client is priority number one. Priority number two is similar. It's really looking at complex integration models and so on. This is the last thing I want to do. I want us to be in the market and really make sure that we are delivering the ambition in terms of creating new opportunity, going after large deals in terms of developing new solutions, new offerings, and reinforce our impact in our client. That is, for me, the real risk but I know it's not going to happen because I know how we are and how we will be focusing on the market every day.

Diviya Nagarajan
Head of Indian Research and APAC Product Manager, UBS

Got it. Clearly, the telecom company didn't like my question. But just to follow up with that.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Yeah. Yeah. I think it was.

Diviya Nagarajan
Head of Indian Research and APAC Product Manager, UBS

In terms of.

Thierry Delaporte
CEO and Managing Director, Wipro

Sorry.

Diviya Nagarajan
Head of Indian Research and APAC Product Manager, UBS

Sorry. You spoke about the significant non-cash charge. Could you kind of maybe Jatin can take this? Explain what that is. And should we assume that the operating margins of Capco ex this charge should be positive? And could you give us a range of what that number would look like?

Rishad Premji
Chairman, Wipro

Sure. Diviya, so I'll answer that. The non-cash charges are related with typically the acquisition accounting where you create intangibles. And based on the type of intangible asset that is created, you will have a higher charge earlier and a more steady and stable charge later years. So we do expect that it would be a large component in first year of integration compared to second and third year. So we will see improvement from that perspective. But for first year of 2% dilution, a large component is made up of this. Yes. To your second question, Capco has healthy margins. They are positive. They are, I would say, comparable to running on-site business that we have.

Therefore, we are confident that over a period of time, we should be able to catch up because this is very similar to adding a large chunk of revenues on-site at a particular margin and then slowly, as the synergy starts kicking in on revenue side. We also look at what we can do on the cost side. We should be able to see margins sort of coming back to a better number.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that would be the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Aparna Iyer for closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.

Aparna Iyer
VP and Corporate Treasurer, Wipro

Thank you all for joining the call. In case we couldn't take any of your questions, please feel free to reach out to the investor relations team. I hope you have a nice day and stay safe. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Wipro and Capco, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.

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