Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining the Mphasis Q4 FY 2024 earnings conference call. I am Zico Pereira, your moderator for the day. We have with us today Mr. Nitin Rakesh, CEO of Mphasis, and Mr. Manish Dugar, CFO. As a reminder, there is a webcast link in the call-invite mail that the Mphasis management team would be referring to today. The same presentation is also available on the Mphasis website, www.mphasis.com, in the Investor section under the Financials and Filings as well as on both the BSE and NSE websites. Request you have the presentation handy. 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 * then zero on your touch-tone phone.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to state that some of the statements made in today's discussion may be forward-looking in nature and may involve certain risks and uncertainties. A detailed statement in this regard is available in the Q4 results release that has been sent out to all of you earlier. I now hand over the floor to Mr. Nitin to begin the proceedings of this call. Thank you, and over to you, Nitin.
Thank you, Zico, and thanks everyone for joining us today. I appreciate your interest in Mphasis, and I know it's early morning. I trust everyone's had a chance to review our earnings release documents. I'd like to start by discussing macro trends as always, and then we'll double-click on the Mphasis performance numbers. As we've been calling out for a few quarters now, the market continues to be characterized by duality. On one hand, the global business world is dealing with an unprecedented situation of high interest rates, supply chain wars, labor market dislocations, record inflation, and a fragile geopolitical environment. Consequently, the level of uncertainty in the environment stays high, leading to a high degree of indecision on investment decisions, keeping pressure on discretionary spends.
On the other hand, full technological advancements and increased focus on sustainable practices are some trends that have the potential to change how businesses operate. Worldwide, IT spending is expected to total $5 trillion in calendar year 2024, an increase of 6.8% from 2023, according to the last forecast by Gartner, who also states that IT services will continue to see an increase in growth in 2024, becoming the largest segment of IT spending for the first time. This is largely due to enterprises investing in organizational efficiency and optimization projects. These investments will be crucial during this period of economic uncertainty. We now are seeing new pockets of spend opening up in organizations that are looking to invest in modernizing legacy systems, leveraging AI and automation to improve operational efficiency.
Efficiency and cost optimization plays are gaining traction as organizations look to find short-term wins to fund longer-term technological priorities. As GenAI dominates discussions on tech spend, its increasing adoption will spur additional growth. In our conversations with customers, we continue to see them trying to balance cost-savings priorities in the current microenvironment with a need to stay relevant, tech-forward, and competitive. As we advise our clients, we also continue to evolve internally to stay ahead of the curve as technology adoption rapidly changes. The market continues to evolve and at a rapid pace. There is a need for service providers to go beyond the current and not just apply AI. Our ability to orchestrate the ecosystem by bringing in technology and people together to solve for customer needs strongly positions us in this tech-first environment.
At Mphasis, as every tribe was getting AI-enabled, we now see our solution and deal archetypes getting rapidly supercharged. We have been investing to stay ahead through an AI-led archetype approach. Our prominent AI partnerships across hyperscalers and the overall ecosystem are seeing rapid growth and solving for customer needs. To quote a few examples, we were recently engaged in an AI-driven IT production support engagement to improve reliability and uptime for a top-three U.S. bank. We helped accelerate claims processing efficiency by 85% for a large benefits admin provider using an AI-driven zero-touch approach. We also helped set up an AI security platform based on zero-trust principles for a Canadian healthcare provider. If you recall, Mphasis was one of the first to create an AI business unit called mphasis.ai.
We've been working with our customers to build a point of view, helping them think through their AI journey on productivity and consumer experience, and we've now evolved to modernization as well. Modernization is one of the bigger opportunities, and we have developed an archetype that is now enabled by GenAI-centered platforms. We are starting to see every archetype from customer experience transformation to productivity, modernization, or zero-cost transformation being AI-enabled. Tech providers and the market are moving rapidly. We are invested in continuous development of the ecosystem to stay ahead of the curve in our ability to orchestrate tech, people, services, especially in the ecosystem of the market with AWS, Microsoft, and Google. We recently announced a strategic collaborative agreement with AWS focused on GenAI in financial services. Mphasis will also set up a GenAI foundry to develop POCs for industry-specific use cases.
Similarly, Google recognized us for our deep engineering capabilities. We recently built a hybrid multi-cloud operating platform that will leverage AI using Gemini Code Assist to accelerate the software development lifecycle. Mphasis also launched a GenAI blueprint on Microsoft's Azure Marketplace in collaboration with Microsoft and OpenAI. This will help organizations seamlessly integrate and adopt GenAI solutions to boost efficiency and scale operations. For instance, we've been building a GenAI platform for automating and reimagining complex processes, including reverse engineering, application relearn, and reengineer things that have traditionally been manual. Consequently, we have introduced two new platforms as part of our mphasis.ai business unit: modernization and developer experience acceleration. Additionally, we have introduced an AI adoption framework which enables our customers to move beyond POCs and adopt AI within the business.
The modernization platform helps in modernization of legacy applications written in languages like COBOL and Java using GenAI LLMs and LAMs with the objective of reducing the relearning time by over 50%. Building on the foundation laid by the modernization platform, the developer experience platform takes the next step by generating the target state for the modern application, accelerating this phase by about 50% as well. Moving on to the AI adoption framework, enterprises today are doing lots of POCs but struggling to adopt GenAI at scale in their businesses. Our comprehensive framework simplifies adoption by bringing people, process, and technology together. We are extremely excited about the capabilities that these platforms and solutions will bring to our customers.
Looking back at our journey through this past year and where we were versus where we are, as indicated at the beginning of FY 2024, we entered 2024 with a strong pipeline in cloud transformation and consolidation. Our TCV closures in a challenging year reflected our ability to see pipelines through to deal closure. We indicated that we would achieve revenue stability in DXC, and to that effect, DXC is now roughly 3% of our revenues. In keeping with our message to drive the non-BFS and the non-U.S. markets growth, we have built strong verticals in healthcare and TMT and continue to consolidate wins in these verticals. The share of our emerging verticals, such as insurance, TMT logistics, and transportation, and others, has increased from 49%-52% of revenue.
In Canada, we started with a set of financial services-focused customers, and we now have a well-diversified clientele across verticals, and we recorded a 42% year-over-year increase in revenues in FY 2024. We continue to be driven by innovation-led growth and operational excellence for our clients. We invested in our nearshore model and increased headcount by 27% in regions such as Taiwan, Mexico, Poland, Costa Rica, Canada, etc. On technology, we made strategic choices to invest in capabilities and skills. In 2024, we were able to quickly acquire and rapidly integrate our AI, Salesforce, and other capabilities with our tribes and archetypes and deliver a more well-rounded suite of services to our customers. Our top 11-30 customers ex-mortgage grew 13% in FY 2024 versus the previous year. The large deal wins outside of our top 10 customers grew by 73% in FY 2024 versus the previous year.
Specifically on revenue growth, in April 2023, we called out a Q1 2024 softness in the BFS segment, which unfortunately lingered through the first half of the fiscal year. We indicated in April last year that the mortgage segment was close to bottoming out and that we expected incremental stability throughout the later part of 2024. Though the interest environment hasn't changed as we anticipated, the mortgage segment has broadly stayed stable, especially over the recent two to three quarters through FY 2024. We also indicated that direct is likely to be growth in direct is likely to be back-ended with sequential growth starting the second half of FY 2024. And while the growth came in later and slower than expected, however, investments have been in place to drive and capitalize on green shoots as they emerged.
We are pleased with our pipeline growth outside of the top 10 accounts, which has grown by 10% year-over-year, as well as 19% growth in our BFS pipeline. Our proactive deal pipeline is strong with about 76% of our deals from proactive pursuits. Our healthy composition of large deals in the pipeline underscores that digital transformation and accelerating digital adoption continue to be core themes for our clients, which are now getting supercharged by AI adoption as well. Almost all our pipeline continues to be tribe-driven, archetype-led, and is well-distributed across verticals and key themes such as data, modernization, cyber, agile ops, and platforms. We see AI-enabled opportunities in several of these archetypes, and especially in areas that are opening up new addressable markets for us, such as agile IT ops, next ops, and further acceleration in data engineering and modernization.
As I mentioned earlier, our pipeline remains strong and conversion has been steady, though still slow given the impact of seasonality and the macro factors. Large deals continue to show up in our pipeline, and we've also seen an uptick in smaller deals as well, especially in Q4, providing clearer visibility to some revival in discretionary deals while also boosting the pace of revenue conversion with shorter duration, quick burst deals. We continued with a higher share of proactive deal wins as we stayed focused on deal-making in a challenging year. We saw broad-based TCB wins across verticals and across the client pyramid with several strategic customers. We closed the year with new TCB wins at $1.38 billion in FY 2024 and closed deals worth $177 million in Q4 2024. Notably, significant TCB wins continue to be from our beyond-top-10 accounts and are well-distributed between our various service lines.
77% of our deal wins in this quarter were powered by next-gen technology adoption. We saw 15 large deal wins in FY 2024, including one large deal in Q4, and we remain focused on ramping these to revenue. We are seeing conversion to revenue pace pick up, and our deal archetypes are further strengthened by capability acquisitions made during the year, enabling us to offer a larger breadth of services. We continue to be structurally forward-leaning, making investments where we expect demand. We continue to push for revenue growth, which is anchored in a strong client mining model and tech-led offerings. Our Q4 FY 2024 revenue came in at $410.7 million, a growth of 2.1% over previous quarter in constant currency terms. For the full year, we closed FY 2024 at revenues of $1.61 billion, a decline of 6.5% over previous year in constant currency terms.
Direct business accounted for about 95% of our overall revenue in Q4 2024 and for the full year. The mortgage business remained stable this quarter, driven by new deal wins from previous quarters. Our clients continue to look for best-in-breed solution providers for a combination of cost takeout and transformation programs. We expect the pace of revenue and deal conversion to pick up, especially in transformation deals through the remainder of the coming year. Our direct revenue for the quarter increased by 2% sequentially in CC terms and by 0.4% year-over-year in Q4 FY 2024. For the quarter, our anchor geography, the U.S., improved 2.9% sequentially and grew by 0.4% in direct year-over-year in Q4 2024. EMEA region also grew on a year-over-year basis. We have been seeing good client wins and continue to see traction there. Our core service line, enterprise apps, constituted about 71% of revenue.
We grew 2.8% sequentially in constant currency terms in direct apps. The BPO segment grew 1.8% sequentially and stayed flattish on a YOY basis. We expect this segment to see stability ahead as well. Moving to our vertical performance, as guided in Q3 earnings call, growth was led by BFS and TMT. BFS was up 2.6% sequentially in Q4, and TMT and logistics were up by 4.5% and 2.2%, respectively, driven by client and deal wins in recent quarters. Similarly, our others vertical indirect is growing quite well, as reflected in the 21.6% year-over-year growth in Q4 FY 2024. We see good ramp-up in new customers added across segments, including in healthcare in the last few quarters in this segment. Our top 10 accounts declined 10.8% YOY on an LTM basis, mainly impacted by macro conditions, seasonality, and the regional banking issues in the early part of the year.
Our top 11 to 20 clients increased by 10.5% YOY, and 21 to 30 client segment grew by 17.3% YOY on an LTM basis. Our new client acquisition revenue continues to grow well, sustaining its strong growth trajectory at 27%. Client-minded stats remain steady both sequentially and year-over-year. Our wallet share with key clients continues to be stable, and we are well-positioned with consolidation opportunities and share gains. This is particularly visible in the recovery in growth in BFS in Q4 revenues for us, as well as our pipeline growth in BFS. Coming to our financial metrics, our margin philosophy affords us the flexibility to manage our profitability in the face of revenue headwinds. In this quarter, EBIT margins stood at 14.9%, and Silverline acquisition costs impacted our margin by 0.8%. Reported operating profit for the quarter declined 1.4% year-over-year and grew 2.2% sequentially.
Losses in cash flow hedges impacted margins in Q4 FY 2024 by 10 basis points. For the year, our reported margins stood at 15.1%. Our EPS at $20.8 for this quarter represents a growth of 5% sequentially. For the year, our EPS stood at $82.4, a decline of 5.3% annually. Cash flow generation at $55 million for the quarter was 116% of net income. Year-to-date, cash flow was at about $237 million, continuing the trajectory of 100%+ of net income and a growth of 56% year-over-year. Our DSO of 66 days was better by three days over the previous quarter by five days over the previous year. The Board of Mphasis has also recommended a final dividend of INR 55 per share to be placed before shareholders for approvals.
In summary, we've continued to retain our focus on the micro through FY 2024 and on ensuring operational stability amidst the duality in the macro environment. I'll leave you with a few points on the summary chart. We continue to focus on building for growth and have made investments for a tech-led, strategically diversified, and transformative growth. We exit FY 2024 with a resilient pipeline across TCB archetypes, including in our anchor BFS vertical. We grew capabilities through our strategy of build-by-partner with the launch of Mphasis.ai platform and business unit, continuing strengthening of partnerships ecosystem across hyperscalers, as well as specialist players such as Kore.ai and WorkFusion. We also expanded our Salesforce capabilities through the acquisition of Silverline. We continue to diversify our revenue and pipeline beyond BFS and our top 10 clients.
We revitalized our leadership in core geos, verticals, and technologies, and have expanded our addressable market with new and enhanced capabilities. We're starting to see early signs of TCB to revenue conversion pick up, as reflected in the performance in Q4. FY 2024 margin stayed expanded to the upper end of the guided band on a normalized basis, coming in at closer to 16% towards the second half with our continued focus on productivity and operating levers. We had strong operating cash flow through the year and showed continuous improvement in DSO, with operating cash 56% higher than FY 2023. Coming to the outlook for FY 2025, there are a few key messages that I would like you to take away. Firstly, we continue to integrate our capabilities and execute to capture growth opportunities as provided by the new environment, as I mentioned in the previous few minutes.
We're also very focused on converting our past and current deal wins to revenue. Despite uncertainty in spend and sentiment, FY 2025 outlook is better than the previous year. We expect that in FY 2025, we will be at above industry growth with visible gains from tech-led and account-focused strategy, including share gains, consolidation, and continued active mining of clients, especially in the 11 to 30 and the NCA categories. We will continue to execute in areas of growth and invest across capabilities and verticals. On margins, we retain our message of sustainable and steady margins in a narrow band while investing for growth. Our operating margins will remain in the stated band of 14.6%-16% in the upcoming year, with a continued focus on operational rigor, giving us increased confidence on the trajectory of our performance. On that note, Moderator, let's open up for questions, please.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone 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 Nitin Jain from Fairview Investment Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity.
Sorry to interrupt, sir. May I request you to use your handsets so your audio is not clear?
Yeah. I'm speaking from the handset, actually.
Yes, it's better now, sir. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity, and I wanted to dwell a little deeper on the TCB win. Despite the strong positioning of the company on AI and the sequential improvement in the BFS industry, the TCB wins have been sequentially declining over the year. How do we see this trend going forward? How are we able to leverage our positioning in AI in terms of deal win? And the next question is also related to deal win. A lot of industry players have started providing numbers in terms of their AI deal pipeline and revenue generated from AI. Would you also be in a position to share any quantitative data? Thank you.
Sure, Nitin. I can take both the questions. Actually, they're pretty linked to each other. Firstly, I think we had a very bunched-up early part of the year with some very large deals getting bunched together in late Q1, early Q2. We guided that we'll have to continue to move deals through the pipeline through the remainder of the year. That's the reason why the pipeline is up 5% sequentially just Q4 over Q3. A large part of the growth came, obviously, from the rebuilding of the pipeline in BFS as we've seen opportunities open up. There are two nuances to think about the TCB number. One, I think on a full-year basis, we've still grown the TCB wins by about 5% in a challenging year.
Second, a lot of these deals are, as we guided, especially in the early part of the year, were multi-year deals, have not yet fully ramped up, and we continue to monetize the opportunity provided by those deals to ramp up. So, that's one thing to keep in mind because the linkage between order book and revenue growth is much clearer for us given that we only report net new deals. Secondly, especially in Q4, we've seen a number of short burst deals. These are typically, while we are reporting TCB, they're typically even shorter than the ACV. The duration is even shorter than one year in many of these deals. I think the $0-$10 million category deals for us, the contribution, even on a dollar basis, is actually very high this quarter. And that gives us the ability to ramp up these deals very, very quickly.
Hence, you've seen some of that already show up in Q4 numbers, and we expect that to also show up in the following couple of quarters. I think that's one thing to keep in mind when it comes to the shape and nature of the TCB. Your second question around how are we using capability and how are we driving that competitive advantage? I think the ability to orchestrate the tech ecosystem, the ability to provide a solution that leans on application of tech versus pure capacity or T&M basis, I think is really where the market is headed. We have the reason we broke out the overall TCB, and we basically said about 28% of that was AI-led. A combination of examples I gave you in the presentation are all pointing towards those AI-led deals.
I think it's a little bit too early to start creating a metric that we can report every quarter given that we are heading to a point where almost every archetype, every solution will have some element of tech orchestration. But I think we'll continue to work towards figuring out what's the best way to represent growth in that business. I mean, it's not just us. Even the hyperscalers are having the same challenge with the two earnings calls that I heard and listened to today between Google and Microsoft. I think it's not very easy to differentiate how much is AI-led and how much is cloud-led. So, we'll continue to find ways to give you a representation. But for now, I think the takeaway message is that lead indicators are pipeline.
Pipeline in AI-led deals is directly linked to the four archetypes I talked about, which are Agile ITOps, NextOps, data engineering, and modernization. Those are the four very, very large pockets of opportunity, and those are the four biggest buckets of our pipeline at this point as we speak. We do expect the TCB conversion rate to show a much healthier number as we start FY 2025 as well.
On the reporting of the numbers, Nitin Rakesh, we did talk about winning TCB of AI business being one-third of our $700 million TCB win. Wherever relevant, we will provide that information. At this point in time, we are not calling it out separately in the revenue sphere.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mohit Jain from Anand Rathi. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. One question. In margins, was there some benefit that you guys received during the year from a note reversal or other things, which is accounted for in EBITDA, or how should we look at it for 4Q and for FY 2024?
So, Mohit, there are investments and programs that are created to drive growth, and some of them fructify with the cost actually getting paid out. In some cases, since the performance does not match up, those monies don't get paid out. I mean, there's nothing which is out of the ordinary from a business-as-usual perspective. The reporting had to happen because, technically, how the accounting works for some of these transactions. But think of it as some portion of the incentives that were planned did not get paid out. As that got reversed, given our philosophy of puts and takes and investing when there is an opportunity, we found other areas where we could invest it in. So, it should not be seen as something which is either directionally positive or negative from an EBIT perspective.
We need not adjust EBITDA for the INR 200 crore kind of figures?
No, it means there will be, see, a lot of these investments are one-time, like we said, right? Short-term savings go into short-term investments, long-term savings go into long-term investments. So, as that savings accrued, we invested in equivalent areas. So, there is nothing that will upset the guided range. As you would have seen over the last 16 quarters, we have ensured that we maintain the margin to a stable range, and any upside or downside is adjusted through either dialing up or dialing down the investments.
Okay. And second, as a follow-up of the previous, when should we expect TCB to start growing again? Because that number is coming off quite sharply. It started with 700. Now, we are below 200.
Yeah, but I think, again, as I said, right? Yeah, as I said, right? Large deals, by definition, will be lumpy. I think when you consume such a big number and there is a windfall quarter, you will see rebuilding of the pipeline through the phases, and that's what we are focused on. I think on a steady-state basis, the LTM average is something we are very confident that we'll reach back as we get through FY 2025.
So, your LTM average will take us to industry-leading growth for FY 2025. You don't think we need to pull off?
Above industry growth is what we are calling for right now. I didn't say industry-leading yet. If we get through the next couple of quarters as planned and expected, then we will definitely update that guidance. But at this point in time, what we are saying is if we get back to given the nature and duration of some of the deals that we are starting to see, we do think that if we get back to our LTM average, we should be in a good place for FY 2025.
Thank you, sir. That's all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta from MK Global. Please go ahead.
Yeah. A couple of questions. Starting with the medium term, let's say you indicated about increase in TAM by 57%-58% in the last three years. If I look at our performance, our revenue growth trajectory will be broadly in line with industry. We are not seeing any benefit from TAM expansion. So, if you can help us understand how one should reconsider these two numbers, which you said. Second thing is about the margin range.
New revenue given for.
We indicated fairly wide range now.
Right.
Sorry? Yeah. We indicated fairly wider range for EBIT, but.
Yeah. Manish, why don't you take the EBIT question first, and I'll address the three-year revenue question?
Sure. Sure.
Yeah. So, Dipesh, as you know, in last year, our guidance on the margin was 15.25%-16.25%. The primary reason why we maintain that range is because of the uncertainties. We are, as we speak, at 14.9% while we are driving to a range of 14.6%-16%. The only reason for that is we believe there are some one-timers in this 14.9% like last quarter, and we had called it out specifically. We do believe that as we go forward, we will have opportunities both from an operating leverage perspective and from the perspective of all the productivity and operating levers that we are working on, which should help us further move towards the top end of the margin other than the fact that some of the impact of acquisitions will get neutralized.
However, given the uncertainty, we wanted to make sure that our guidance does not get breached either at the bottom end or the top end, and hence, the guidance of what the normalized margins are. We expect that unless something drastically goes wrong, we should be more towards the middle or the top end of the margin range.
So, Dipesh, to answer your first question around the three-year revenue growth rate versus TAME expansion, again, off the top of my head, FY 2022, FY 2023, and FY 2024, FY 2022, direct revenue growth was 36%. Industry revenue growth in that year was in the 16%-18% range. FY 2023, direct revenue growth was 14%. Industry growth in that year was in the 6%-8% range. FY 2024, direct revenue growth is minus 2.3%. Industry growth's probably in the 0%-2% range. If you do a CAGR analysis, you will actually see that we probably grew 2x the industry on a three-year CAGR basis. So, we'll be happy to publish these numbers for everyone's benefit. And by the way, this includes the impact of DR on the mortgage business because, obviously, that was included in FY 2022 and 2023 numbers as well.
I think if you do the longer range CAGR analysis you do, the better the performance will actually look. Obviously, this performance is getting muted by the impact that we've taken on two large hits in the last 12 months, mortgage and regional bank. I think coming out of that, the TAME expansion is actually working in our favor, as also driven by the large deal wins and the fact that we had a record 15 large deals in FY 2024. Happy to share more data as you wish.
Okay. I have a few follow-ups. First about, let's say, data-wise, depreciation has inched up sharply this quarter. Whether this would be new normal or there is any one-off in this quarter, which one should we be aware of? Second question about if I look at new-gen TCB, which was always a focus area for us rather than total TCB. Now, new-gen TCB, if I look on TTM basis, it is showing YOY decline. So, if you can provide some context to it, how one should read it. And last is, let's say, vertical-wise, if I look at it, if you can provide some sense about how you expect growth trajectory to be led by in FY 2025 and if any puts and takes you would like to highlight across vertical. Thank you.
Manish, you want to take the depreciation question, and then I can address the vertical outlook. I didn't understand the second question, which was around TCB.
The TCB trailing 12 months, Nitin Rakesh.
Yeah. Okay. You can take that too.
New-gen TCB. Yeah, I'm not referring to total TCB. New-gen.
Okay. New-gen TCB. So, on the depreciation, Dipesh, as you would have seen, the EBITDA expanded from 18%-18.7%. And while the EBIT margin remained at 14.9%, the primary reason for that is some of the savings that we accrued were in the nature of non-cash. And some of the savings that one-time the depreciation increase that you are seeing is not normal. You should expect it to be in the range as it was in the prior quarters. Nitin, you want to take the new-gen TCB?
Yeah, I'll take the other two. I think the new-gen number in the 75%-80% range is kind of the average. The rest of it actually comes from organic. As I mentioned, existing programs get ramped up, ramped down, and hence, you will see a tail of 15%-20% that will reflect. I wouldn't read too much into the new-gen number. I think as we go forward, as I mentioned, given the tech orchestration, people plus platform play, if anything, I think that will become the primary source of deal construction and deal wins. On outlook by vertical, I think we mentioned in the last quarter call that at least for the short term, we expect growth to be driven by BFS and TMT. And I think that is still the case, at least in the very short run.
We do think that the worst is behind us in the logistics business. Travel business has already actually been growing well for us between airlines and railroads. I think even insurance business has grown well on a year-over-year basis, and we do have a pretty good view into trajectory for that business. I think most of the businesses are pointing towards a pretty decent picture purely based on the in-account actions and the bottoms-up work that the teams have done across all geographies.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chirag Kachhadiya from Ashika Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Nitin. I have one question on margin front. So, the margin roadmap, which we fill as an outlook in FY 2025, have we gone to drive that? And what is our outlook on hiring as well?
So, I'll take the question on margin. Chirag, the constant philosophy for Mphasis has been that of investing for growth while maintaining margin in a narrow band. The narrow band, we believe, will have a northward bias as the revenue scales, and that is demonstrated in us continuously increasing the margin delivered on a year-on-year basis. Even the range this year, if you see, is the lower end of the range has gone up. If you normalize for that position, means our reported margin is 14.9. If you take the impact of acquisitions, the new one and the earlier ones, adjusted for that, the margin is about 16%. And the range that we have called out will eventually look like 15.7%-17.1%.
Most of this is driven by the philosophy that as and when we have opportunities in terms of short-term investment capability or long-term investment capability, we will invest in ideas and areas that help us broaden our spider chart, which we presented in the investor deck, which are all the dimensions in which we want to continue investing to prepare the business for the future and for long-term growth. If and when there are some constraints, we have the ability to dial those investments down. So that enables us to ensure that the delivered margin remains in a stable range. That is how we will continue doing it. Based on what we see today, 14.6%-16.5% delivered margin is something that we believe we will be able to deliver in the coming years.
On the headcount front, I think still a little bit unclear picture as to where the immediate-term discretionary demand will end up. So we are not really building any large capacity at this point in time, given that we do have the ability to apply multiple levers. Just like you saw in Q4, we were able to actually show a pretty decent revenue ramp-up. Of course, we ate into some of the utilization, and we got the benefits of seasonality back in as well. But I think, at least the short-term view on hiring trends is that we will have to really be in lockstep with the demand forecast. And we are very focused on doing a rolling 90-day forecast at this point. We still, obviously, have utilization that can further be improved.
But at this point, I think we are sitting pretty comfortable with the capacity required for us to grow. And this will really have to be a very dynamic in-quarter decisions to be made around how much to invest in ramp-up of capacity. However, a significant investment is already going into upskilling of the people, especially around some of these GenAI platforms, both internal and third-party platforms. So I think there's a bit of a revolution or evolution going through in the supply chain as well. Supply chain will have to be very much in lockstep and, in a way, kind of highly automated way of operating so we can make quick moves with short-term heads-ups.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manish Taneja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. I just wanted to get your thoughts on.
Sorry to interrupt, sir. May I request you to use your handset, sir? Your audio is not clear, sir.
Yeah. I hope I'm audible.
Yes, sir. This is better. Thank you very much.
Thank you. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on two things. In the past, you've spoken about, from a financial services standpoint, you've spoken about strength on the retail side, strength in wealth management and retail banking while pressure in investment banking given the lack of deal activity. Given what we are seeing in the more recent past in terms of new IPOs coming up in the developed markets, do you think this part of the business segment also starts to do well for us? And if you could provide us some broad context of your split-up business across some of the industry segments within banking. And the second question was with regards to the org structure or the GTM change that we did last year.
If you could help us understand where are we in terms of settling down of the new GTM structure and also talk about the progress of the new client acquisition-led growth?
Sure. I think on the first one, interestingly, the reference I made to some shorter-term quick-burst deals is actually a direct reflection of a little bit of the improved landscape when it comes to capital markets. We've seen some bank earnings, and we've seen the impact of trading and capital markets businesses actually surprise on the upside to the street. Some of that is translating into actions that they're starting to take because the belief is that the street is in the early stages of capital markets reopening. So I think some of that is definitely good news for the capital market segment. Consumer banking, I think a lot of transformation work around experience transformation for customer experience, cost takeout from operations, both business ops and IT ops, as well as.
Is there some disturbance?
Sorry. There was some disturbance. I think there is.
Manish, may I request you to self-mute your line, please?
Yes. Sorry.
So I think capital markets and consumer bank I talked about. Asset and wealth is actually an area of investment because a lot of large firms have strategically decided to diversify towards asset and wealth given the annuity nature of those businesses. There, I think a lot of work's going on around data as well as adoption of GenAI in the way they think about research and trading as well. So I think, obviously, the consumer lending segment is still a little bit stressed, the direct linkage of that to mortgage and auto loans. Both of those are either there's not enough volume or the delinquencies are higher. So those are actually a little bit of hotspots that we haven't yet found a full answer to. So that's kind of within the BFS segment what's going on.
On insurance, since BFSI is kind of typically talked about, I think there is decent demand for modernization solutions across life and annuities players. P&C guys are a little bit more cloud-specific stories given that their own internal dynamics are very different. The brokers are also very rapidly refreshing their tech platforms, consolidating them, and driving forward. That's the reason why we have started to see some decent activity both in deals and in revenue on the insurance business as well on a YOY basis. Can you repeat the second question?
What second question was?
The second question was org structure, GTM.
Yeah, GTM structure. I think the structure is fully settled, Manish. I think it's been four quarters now. We are starting to reap the benefits of these go-to-market account cohorts by vertical in the U.S. That was kind of the only change we made. I think our regional structure in Europe and emerging continues. I think the synergy benefit of having a set of accounts run by the same leadership team is what is driving our rapid expansion outside of the top 10 accounts and outside of the top five accounts, actually. I think there is a very interesting set of logos that were acquired in the last three years that are actually supercharging the overall book of business in BFS. And that's partly also one of the reasons why we are fairly confident about the short-term prospects in that business.
Same thing for things like travel and airlines. A very similar outcome that is being derived through the synergy that is generated in that unit as well. So I think we achieved the objectives that we set out to achieve. Obviously, FY 2024 was a headwind year for the industry and for our clients. But I think as we are seeing this uptick and recovery in growth, I think that structure will probably become a fairly strong go-to-market pivot for us, a pillar for us. And not to forget that there is a very strong layer of solutions and tribes that actually cuts across all units, all markets, all geographies. So that continues to provide that consistency and scalability in deal archetypes. So I think everything is settled in. Even the ability to take a new capability and bundle into a deal archetype is well established at our end as well.
Sure. Thank you. All the best for the future.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hope my line is audible.
Yes, sir. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. So basically, I have a couple of questions. One is, I know there's no easy answer to this, but just to understand, what is the industry growth benchmark for you? Is it more around the Gartner IT services forecast number, or this is more to do with what the average of top 10, 15 players in the Indian market may potentially do for this year?
That's an easy answer. It's the latter. It's not the Gartner number. It's really the, quote-unquote, "the NASSCOM forecast" of the top 20 player average.
Understood. To the same point, if we see the number that Gartner is producing in their forecast looks much better than what NASSCOM did last year and what they are expecting now, so is it more to do with corporates investing in AI where probably at this point Indian players have less role to play or maybe some other technology where we have lesser play at this point, which explain the difference of Indian IT growing slower than Gartner, which has never been the case historically?
Yeah. I think I would take the Gartner number for what it is. It's a forecast. Even into a calendar 2023, I don't think there was that level of growth as they forecast. They started the year with a 9% forecast. They ended the year with a 3% forecast. So I think they will revise it based on how the market evolves and develops. At this point, I do believe, though, that Indian IT is actually going to grow faster than global SIs. You can see that with some of the larger global SIs numbers and their forecast or consensus or guidance for 2024, you'll still see that that number is actually lower than the average of the Indian SI growth number. And that has been the case for the last 25 years. I think the value migration in favor of India-centric IT delivery is continuing.
Of course, the gap has narrowed. It used to be a pretty big gap. But given that the overall industry growth has come off in the last couple of years, that gap has, of course, narrowed. So I think the right way to think about the growth rate is as we go through the year, where we end up with the forecasts. Of course, that is a line in the sand that we follow because that's a benchmark that gets set at the beginning of the year. Some of that is also, by the way, consumed by the hyperscalers because of the early consulting services work that needs to get done before it turns into execution deals that actually come to SIs, both global and Indian.
Right. Right. And just last bit, since we've been early into this AI theme, is there a way to understand the precise time within the or SAM within the $40 billion-$50 billion AI market that is defined, which would be more related to the kind of work which we may eventually do?
I think the short answer is that there are wide-ranging forecasts of the size of the AI market depending on what segment of AI you're talking about. If you look at machine learning, different estimate. GenAI, different estimate. Conversational AI, different estimate. Still very, very early days. So I think it's like the 1995, 1996 time frame with internet. I don't think anybody has a clear handle. One thing, though, is very clear that things are moving very rapidly, and evolution is very fast, at least in the tech landscape. So I don't think it's going to take five years. Within the next couple of years, it'll be pretty clear. The way I see it is, as we talked about during the commentary that I gave over the presentation, I think there is potential for almost every archetype, every service type to get enabled by some adoption of tech.
Not all of it will be GenAI, but if you look at something like agile IT ops, production support, service desk, there is a pretty significant combination of conversational AI and machine learning, pattern recognition, predictive, preventive, self-healing mindset that is actually driving a lot of adoption of tech platforms and AI in those service lines. So I think, to me, just like digital was in the early days, there was a lot of tagging and retagging and redefinition. I think this is a phase we'll have to go through, painful, but we'll have to go through it over the next few quarters. And then, to me, almost everything you do must be touched by some form of tech. Otherwise, it's going to get completely disrupted or it'll disappear as a service line. And we've seen that with many, many past service lines. One really good example is standalone testing.
It's pretty much nonexistent today. So I think it's refreshed those services, almost every service type, every tribe, every archetype, and effectively approached the business as if almost everything will get touched by some element of tech. Now, again, GenAI is a hype cycle issue, so I'm staying away from saying everything will be GenAI, but almost everything has the potential of getting converted into a tech play.
Understood. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. The first question Nitin wanted to understand, I think you are the first one to highlight that these small tenure, small-sized deals are also forming part of the deal pipeline and the deal wins. So is it concentrated with few clients in one vertical, or it has been widespread across many verticals?
I wouldn't say it is concentrated in one vertical, but given the outsized share of BFS for us, I think it's most visible there. And remember, banks are almost always power-leaning and early adopters of almost all new tech. So some of that is playing in there as well as they are starting to think about how these new tech platforms are going to impact their overall programs. Many of them were already in a journey for cloud migration or transformation. Now, this gives them another lever to not just accelerate their journey but actually fund that journey. So I think it is more broad-based than just one or two verticals. But at the same time, I think I'm very enthused by the fact that the level of activity in BFS, at least for us, is pretty strong right now.
That gives me a certain degree of confidence for the short term.
Okay. Fair enough. Nitin, is it fair to believe now most of your client-specific issue, large accounts across many verticals, which has impacted your growth in the last couple of years, are largely behind, especially in the top clients within your BFS as a vertical?
Yeah. I think not commenting on any one particular customer. I think I did call out when we talked about the vertical outlook. I wouldn't say all, but most of client-specific issues seem to be the worst seems to be behind us. As capital market activity recovers, I think whatever is left will probably get addressed through that. Then the only thing left to recover will be the interest-rate-sensitive business around mortgage. There, I still don't see any pickup in volumes. I think whatever sustainable revenue we are generating is being generated through either the fact that we are a lot more efficient than our clients' operations or we are actually gaining share from some other providers and new customers. So I think buying that segment, I think the large account issues seem to be at least the worst seems to be behind us.
Okay. Okay. And just clarity in terms of your earlier comment, FY 2024 TCV is not fully reflected in terms of the conversion into revenues. So do you believe the first quarter FY 2024 TCV, which might not have been converted fully into revenues, now may not delay going forward and start looking in terms of conversion to revenues in the coming quarters? So despite the fourth quarter TCV being low, one cannot judge the softer revenue growth. It could be vice versa where earlier quarters' deal wins are converting into revenue, and the growth could be better.
Absolutely. I think I called for that. It's not just the first quarter TCV. I think we had $1.38 billion in the last four quarters. A lot of that, we are consuming through. Some of the earlier deals are still not fully ramped up, and we've been calling for that delay happening over the last two quarters. This quarter, we've seen some pickup in activity, and it's still not fully ramped up. So I think we'll continue to consume what order book we have as we also focus on closing new order books.
Last clarification, Manish, just wanted to understand, this G&A cost has gone down materially on an absolute basis by 24%. What has led to this, and what would be the normalized run rate?
So Sandeep, the real metric that we kind of track and look for is the EBIT number. And when you have some one-time reversals and one-time charges, it may come in different pockets. So we do have a disclosure that there is a reasonable amount of money that we reversed in this quarter. A large part of that actually came in as a reduction in the G&A cost and in the gross margin line item, while the investment that we made corresponding to that saving actually went in SC and gross margin. So you would see a reduction in the G&A number because of that while the SC looks higher. However, the real way to think about it is a longer-term trend. And there, I think the number is a little higher than the 5% that we reported. And that is what the normalized margin will look like.
A normalized G&A will look like going forward.
14.9 as a reported margin does not have anyone else to call out. Right way to understand?
14.9, last quarter, also we had said that there is some bit of upside because of one time, and so is the case this quarter, which is why we have guided a lower end of 14.6. However, the endeavor and the view is that if things remain stable and we are able to get operating leverage, we should be able to deliver 14.9 or higher.
Okay. Thanks and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Vibhor Singhal from Nuvama Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for giving my question. Nitin, my question was on BFS direct excluding DR. What is the, I mean, of course, in this quarter, it was down 9% YoY, as we can see from the presentation, but I'm sure it was a sequential improvement in the business as we have seen. So if you could just basically give some ideas to what is happening in that segment, what are our key trends which we should look at? And going forward, in the next two to three quarters, how do you see that segment playing out?
Yeah. I think I actually addressed it in a couple of different ways, both through my comments and through the previous questions. But just to kind of sum it up, the ability of enterprises to look at how they can redesign operations and technology using some of the newer capabilities that have been made available in the last 12 months is driving one pocket of conversations and deals. Not many of those deals are fully supersized yet because somebody will roll out a certain number of POCs or pilots, or certain teams will actually adopt that first, and then they will scale it. So that's one pocket of opening that we are seeing. That's why we've been very power-leaning on, for example, the AWS SCA around FS in the U.S. with a foundry approach.
Second, I think the ability for us to create deals. I gave an example of a production support COE for a large U.S. bank. That was not something that we would have been able to win 18 or 24 months ago because that was a scale game, per-ticket pricing, how many different locations do you have people in, what's the per-ticket reduction you can commit over the next 12, 24, 36 months, and how many thousands of people are in that operation for you will drive your ability to win that business.
Today, that playing field has been level set because clients are not focused or at least our approach to that business is to not get the customer to focus on per-ticket cost but to focus on reduction in overall ticket volume because you can actually automate a lot of that intervention by using AI-led ops or machine learning combined, pattern recognition combined with self-healing. So that's a completely asymmetric opening of TAM. I don't know if that places everybody in the same position. The answer is probably not because that market by itself is going to get very heavily disrupted with automation and AI ops. But for us, that's definitely adding both to pipeline and to deals. And third, I think I talked a little bit about green shoots of activity coming out of these short burst deals. Some of it is linked to the capital markets recovery.
Some of it is just linked to the fact that one quarter into the year, I think there is a little bit of change fatigue. They didn't really do much last year. They have to do a certain number of programs this year. Question is, what does the macro do to that spend on a 6, 9, 12-month basis? The answer is we don't know. We just have to focus on in-account action and bottom-up driving of volatile gains. I think given that we've also added a number of marquee logos in BFS in the last 18-24 months, 36 months, that's a massive opportunity for us to gain share. I think it's really a combination of all of these things. None of this is macro-dependent for us because we really can't take a call on that.
All of it is dependent on our actions and what we control. That's what's driving our confidence in the fact that at least for the first half of the year, we have decent visibility. We'll upgrade that visibility as we get into the next quarter or two because that will give us a little bit more sense of whether these green shoots on short burst deals are sustainable.
Got it. Got it. But on the demand side, just to wrap it up with last question from my side, on the demand side, I mean, how are the BFSI customers again, excluding mortgages that I'm talking about, how are the BFSI customers reacting to the interest rate cut scenario being pushed out further and further? Is there any dependency on the tech spends on this thing, or do you think we are well past that and now tech spends have hit a bottom and from there, they should recover?
Yeah. I think some of it is kind of just baked into the acceptance that higher for longer is here to stay. Question is whether July happens, September happens. I don't know. I don't think anybody knows. I think at this point, obviously I mean, you saw the bank earnings. There was very little to call out there saying higher interest rates are hurting bank earnings. Yes, they're paying more per deposits, but also NIMS have been expanded for the last couple of years. So I think it's, in a way, kind of an uncomfortable equilibrium, so to speak. Question is, can that equilibrium be tipped in favor of higher spends? I think it's too early for us to call. That's why we are really, really focused on in-account actions.
Got it. Great. Thank you so much for taking my questions, Nitin. I wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Nitin Rakesh for closing comments.
Again, thank you all for your continued interest and emphasis on your questions. I know it was early in the morning. We are very, very pleased with the way we've executed over the last few months, very focused on continuing to execute, as I mentioned, on a bottoms-up micro basis. While the environment stays uncertain, we are cautiously optimistic. Thank you again, and I'll talk to you all in the next quarterly call.
Thank you. On behalf of Mphasis Limited, that concludes this conference. If you have any further questions, please reach out to Mphasis Investor Relations at investor.relations@mphasis.com. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.