Good morning ladies and gentlemen and thank you for joining the Mphasis Q1 FY 2026 earnings conference call. I am Nirav, your moderator for the day. We have with us today Mr. Nitin Rakesh, CEO of Mphasis Limited, Mr. Aravind Viswanathan, CFO, and Mr. Vinay Kalingara, Head of Investor Relations. As a reminder, the webcast link to join the call invite is in the mail that the Mphasis management team will be referring to today. The same presentation is also available on the website of Mphasis, i.e. www.mphasis.com in the investor section under Financial and Filing as well as both on BSE and NSE websites. Request you to have the presentation handy. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an option for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes.
Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your touchtone 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 risks and uncertainties. A detailed statement in regards to this is available in the Q1 results release that was sent out to all of you earlier. I now hand over the floor to Mr. Nitin to begin the proceedings of this call. Thank you and over to you Nitin.
Thank you, Nirav. Good morning, everyone. Good to have you all on the call again. The tech industry is evolving rapidly, driven by innovation, while global uncertainty, macroeconomic complexities, and geopolitical tensions shape a cautious business environment. Technology remains a top priority for enterprises, navigating this environment while balancing growth with operational resilience. The rise of Gen AI is driving a global shift toward AI-first, digital native business models. Enabled by the democratization of intelligence, both legacy enterprises and digital native companies are accelerating investments in feature-ready technology. Over the past quarter, the demand environment has demonstrated some resilience but only selective strength. Despite sustained macroeconomic uncertainties, decision making continues to be more deliberate as enterprises navigate the current environment. With the overhanging threat of sophisticated cybercrime and need to comply with legislation, it's an urgent priority for organizations to defend and protect.
Clients are reprioritizing their spending, focusing on must-have capabilities and creating efficiencies and cost savings to programs that demonstrate a clear ROI, while at the same time minimizing project execution risk. Business teams are wanting to move forward with at-scale AI programs, embedding AI into products, into decision making, and customer experience within tight budgets. Since there is now an imperative to fund these AI programs from within the existing overall budgets, the demand for enhanced value at a reduced cost continues. At the same time, they seek continuous release of new features, faster time to market, and the ability to quickly launch innovative products and services to stay ahead in the competitive environments. Technology teams are looking for means to modernize their legacy monolithic systems with disjointed data architectures while servicing the high technology debt that has built up over decades.
At the same time, tech teams are also under constant pressure to deliver enhanced value at a reduced cost while moving forward with their transformation agenda. GCC is an evolving theme with multiple models at play, including carve-outs, build-outs, and managed captives. Traditional people-based service models are under pressure to reinvent and survive. AI is recalibrating how IT services operates. By broadly published estimates, it's believed that 25%- 30% of all working hours could be impacted by large language models. It is fast becoming an imperative for businesses to move beyond experimentation and establish the structures and processes needed to turn AI into tangible impact reality. At Mphasis, we understand that differentiation and investments are needed to pursue large AI-led opportunities. We continue to drive deal making that needs planned investments as rapid changes in AI tech are leading to services being delivered as software.
We continue to invest in areas where we see long-term demand even in the face of economic uncertainty. We remain committed to disciplined execution at a micro-level, ensuring that every client's engagement is solution is holistically to capture efficiencies, accelerate speed to market, and reduce risk. New developments in AI, particularly in Gen AI, are radically recalibrating the costs and benefits of this, modernizing legacy and reducing tech debt as part of a larger set of changes in how IT operates. This is resulting in opportunities where multiple initiatives are brought under a unified transformation program, leading to larger outcome-driven deals with a self-funded approach to transformation. This is an integral part of our savings-led transformation thesis and platform-led construct that we discussed over the last few quarters. As we drive our growth initiatives forward at Mphasis, we are expanding and deepening our AI-led offerings.
Instead of applying broad strategies across entire industries or regions, we focus on specific needs of individual clients, particular deals, and meaningful conversations. This clarity at the micro-level, combined with our commitment to innovation and IP-led platforms, positions us to navigate today's challenges effectively and support our clients in successfully doing the same. As AI-led deals take center stage, we are doubling down on our proprietary next-gen platforms Mphasis NeoZeta, Mphasis NeoCrux, Mphasis NeoSaBa, to name a few from the Neo suite of platforms. These solutions combine generative and agent AI to boost human performance, modernize critical systems, and accelerate next-gen application development for business transformation. Through AI, we are shaping forward-looking deals and reinforcing the value of our platform-led strategy, which is clearly evident in our AI-led deal pipeline and TCV wins.
We are early adopters and implementers of AI-led solutions for clients, which has positioned us well to help with their AI journey, create efficiencies, cost savings, and minimize project risks while at the same time accelerating our business. This is reflected in our highest developed quarterly TCV of $760 million, of which 68% is AI-led. Since the launch of Mphasis AI, we have over 250 plus of our AI/ML models available on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Marketplaces. As I said in my previous slide, clients are interested in seeing solutions and the value Mphasis AI brings to our end-to-end expertise, which helps organizations to strategize, build, and institutionalize these solutions. The timeline of milestones and our development of AI assets listed at the bottom of the slide are all a testament to Mphasis' long history of AI innovation and our unique positioning to deliver innovation to clients at scale.
To give you a sense of how we are making this, using this video as an example, we took on a core cards platform organization for a large financial firm. Our AI interventions boosted overall efficiency by greater than 40%. We took a big monolithic platform using COBOL, assembler, VSAM, and a growing mixed environment in a high tech debt situation and modernized it into a composable business capability-driven architecture that is cloud ready. We took a single code-based platform built over 40 plus years ago with 50 million lines of code using complex Sysplex architecture and modernized it into a new core design built on BIAN with ISO 20022 compatibility. We transformed 1.4 billion accounts on file, 900 CPIs, 25 billion authorizations processed annually, extremely low latency of less than 40 milliseconds, and re-engineered it into an event architecture with real-time event-driven streaming to replace targeted batch processing.
In a sense, we transformed bespoke implementations requiring specialized domain and in-prem talent into faster building of composable capabilities and value streams using modern engineering platforms. On the back of this program approach and AI delivery, this has been one of our fastest growing relationships at the company and has already crossed the $50 million annual revenue threshold. Since the launch of Mphasis AI, our pipeline has grown 2.2x. We currently have the largest ever deal pipeline driven by these platforms as well as the largest ever TCV wins in this quarter led by large deals. As I previously mentioned, AI is table stakes for us whether it is for new deals that are AI-led or AI-infused existing clients or even for our own employee productivity.
We solution what we call the Mphasis AI Superhighway, which accelerates enterprise AI enablement and adoption of AI at scale, securely delivering models from experimentation to production with organization guardrails. This enables 50% to 60% faster time to market, up to 90% accuracy rates, and 50% increase in productivity at times. Mphasis AI Superhighway comprises prefabricated AI strategies, methodologies, and innovation lab operating models and includes orchestration of cloud, data, and security platforms plus our own proprietary accelerators. It delivers an agentic workforce, integrated LLMs, predictive decisions and knowledge graphs, model testing for ethics, trust, explainability, security, end-to-end value stream observability, and synthetic data creation. It's not a surprise that AI is supercharging the pipeline, which in Q1 of FY 2026 was 68% led with AI deals. BFS pipeline was up 47% year-over-year and non-BFS pipeline is up 108% year-over-year.
Large deals pipeline is up 40% sequentially and 154% year-over-year. Traction in AI archetypes includes AIOps, AI modernization as you can see on the.
Chart here.
We also continue to see a higher share of proactive deal wins as we largely stay focused on deal making. As I said earlier, TCV wins for the quarter were at $760 million, our highest ever new TCV wins in a quarter. We won four large deals in Q1 for a cumulative 14 large deal wins in the last 12 months. Of the four large deals, three of them were over $100 million and one is over a $50 million deal. These few events have been led by BFS Insurance and TMT. Our TCV to revenue conversion pace has remained steady. Customer propensity to spend budgets on cost takeouts, efficiency, and vendor consolidation is increasing, and we continue to make investments in the right areas where we expect customer demand. To give you a sense of the kind of deals we won, I'll specifically call out one large win.
A large North American life insurance company chose Mphasis as the sole provider to consolidate application development and application management vendors to achieve alignment to a new operating model, managed outcome-based delivery, improved performance and service quality, and predictable cost while driving significant savings. Mphasis will be deploying its new suite of AI platforms as part of this transaction. We have in the recent past called out the fact that AI is a great leveler, especially in areas where we did not historically see a right to win such as large run engagements. This deal is a testimony to that thesis starting to play out, and we expect it to repeat across multiple other deals as well. Moving to revenue performance by segment, we continue to push for revenue growth which is anchored in our strong client mining model and tech-led offerings.
Q1 2026 revenue was $437 million, reflecting a growth of 1% sequentially and 6.5% year-over-year in constant currency terms. We had an impact of a decrease in revenue from our non-strategic ATM business, which is reflected in the other secondary market segment. Our direct business contribution continues to inch higher and accounted for 97% of our overall revenue for the quarter. We expect the pace of revenue and deal conversion to remain strong, propelled by our savings-led transformation team. Direct revenue for the quarter increased 1.6% sequentially and 8.1% year-over-year in Q1 in constant currency terms. Growth momentum in the Rest of World continues to be strong. In our geography, the U.S. grew 3.2% sequentially and 10.3% year-over-year in direct. EMEA region declined by 15% sequentially in constant currency terms.
The impact seen in EMEA is due to a ramp-down of a global customer in this region. In our Rest of World segment, we grew 6.8% sequentially and 30% year-over-year in constant currency terms in the direct business. This metric also includes our increasing presence in the GCC play since many of these deals are structured in the India geography. Our overall reported revenue for Q4 and Q1 for Rest of World includes the impact of decrease in our non-strategic ATM business. Earning contribution from our core service line enterprise apps has increased by 2 percentage points in this quarter. We grew applications by 3.6% sequentially in constant currency terms in direct. BPM and ITO service lines for direct declined by 2.7% and 5.3% sequentially. Moving on to the vertical performance, our BFS, insurance, and TMT verticals continue the growth momentum.
Specifically in direct, all three verticals delivered a 20+% year-over-year growth in constant currency terms. At an overall company level, BFS has grown 6.7% sequentially year-over-year in Q1, while direct BFS grew 8.1% sequentially. BFS growth was also driven largely by wallet share gains in existing accounts, ramp-up of new deals won in recent quarters including early in Q1, and continued strong execution in new account wins. As called out in our previous earnings calls, our insurance vertical turned into a growth engine and is expected to continue the momentum. In FY 2026, insurance vertical grew 20+% sequentially and 27.5% year-over-year. In constant currency terms, direct TMT vertical grew by 2.4% sequentially and 20.6% year-over-year, driven by continued deal wins and conversion from recent large deal wins to revenue. The logistics and transportation vertical was impacted by some customer-specific investments.
We believe the impact from these is largely behind us, and we expect this vertical to gradually recover through the remainder of the year. We have significant new deals in the pipeline across a broad set of clients in this vertical and across a broad set of sub-verticals to support this growth overall. At the company portfolio level, our performance has demonstrated resilience and is in line with our expectations. Our client pyramid continues to improve across the board year-over-year. We varied one client in the $100+ million category, two clients in the $75 million+ category, two clients in the $50 million+ category, and one client in the $20 million+ categories respectively. We have successfully ramped up a couple of new accounts. We signed recently into $50 million plus accounts as I stated earlier as well with additions to multiple customer bands.
The middle of the client pyramid has expanded, gaining from deal wins and our keen focus on next category of growth accounts. On an LTM basis, top 10 accounts grew 7.6% ROI and the next 20 accounts grew 7.4% YoY. Moving on to our quarterly financial metrics, we delivered to our philosophy of maintaining margins in a stated band while making investments for growth. Our EBIT margin remained stable at 15.3%. Reported operating profit for the quarter grew 0.7% sequentially and 11.2% YoY. Our EPS of $23.2 represents an 8.5% YoY growth sequentially. There was an impact from higher ETR due to certain minimum tax expenses in certain subsidiaries which we believe we normalized through the remainder of FY 2026. Operating cash flow generation was at $24 million for the quarter.
Cash flow for the quarter was impacted by marginal delay in collections from one of our top customers due to changes in their internal systems, which has since been resolved, and due to the annual incentive payouts which are typical in Q1. Adjusting for these, normalized cash flow is around $46 million for the quarter. As noted, the delay in collections has impacted our DSO. This increased by 9 days to 84. In summary, we are seeing growth momentum through resiliency and deal wins which was led by the BFS Insurance and TMT verticals. We are also seeing ramp up from our recent large deal wins. Playing into this outcome, we are focused on investing in AI-led growth initiatives and as I mentioned my pipeline is at record levels. 16% growth sequentially and 84% growth.
Yeah, very pleased with the highest ever TCV wins of $760 million in Q1 which included $300 million plus and $150 million plus deal and as I mentioned we also continue to deliver stable margins. Coming to the outlook, we remain steadfast in our commitment to client centricity and technology-led transformation, an approach that has consistently delivered results for us. We will continue to focus on the virtuous cycle grounded in micro-level execution, pursuing winning and executing at the account level while continuing to build the propositions using our tech tribes and Mphasis AI investments. This model has been instrumental in driving momentum evidenced by robust deal wins and consistent execution across quarters even as the macro environment remains uncertain. As we focus on investing in AI-led growth initiatives, we continue to strengthen and expand our Airlight offering and propositions.
We will continue our efforts on conversion of pipeline to TCV and TCV revenue for FY 2026. We expect to be at 2x the industry growth on the back of our Q1 performance and steady conversion of TCV to revenue as well as a steady ramp-up of large deals in ongoing quarters. Our target EBIT margin operating band would stay within 14.75% to 15.75% as stated earlier. With this, I'd like to open it up for questions, please.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with 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 participants. You may press star and onw to ask the question. The first question is from the line of Sudheer from Kotak Mahindra. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity and Nitin. Congrats on great dealings and outlook. First question, it looks almost like 80% of your revenue seems to have grown at 20% less on an average, probably the highest growth rate in the industry on an organic basis. Now that you are calling out that in logistics and transportation also will be growth recovery going ahead, do you think with the current very good intake, the order intake in this quarter, do you think we'll have a real shot at converging with the growth rates of some of our similar sized peers where their growth rate has been significantly higher in the last couple of years compared to.
I think the way I would address that is that the direction of travel is absolutely in the right direction. I think we've recovered the business. We've had some headwinds to deal with in the last couple of years. Most of them, at least as we stand today, seem to be behind us. There's no reason to believe that this trajectory will not continue. The only reason why we are at this point guiding to what we are guiding to is that the environment hasn't really changed. There is still a bunch of uncertainties. There are still things that require a significant push.
At a micro level, I think we're very pleased with where we are, and as I mentioned in, I think, the last quarter call, leading indicator of pipeline turned into a great quarter close for TCV, and if that execution continues, then I think we will potentially be in a better place this time next quarter. We want to take that time to make sure that we have the same rigor and the same outcome to drive that confidence as we go forward through the remainder of the year. Still too early in the year for us to have a definitive view on what the next three quarters will bring. The direction of travel is absolutely what you just mentioned.
Sure. While you are guiding for a growth recovery in logistics, are there any, let's say, weak spots in BFS or insurance or BPM at this stage where we are concerned that some of these micro definitely will push these weak spots into a slippage kind of situation.
As we stand today, the answer is no, we don't see any of those weak spots. I think our approach to dealing with any headwinds has been sell our way out of that by actually creating deals using the propositions and differentiation, and using that momentum to work around these issues. As we stand, nothing is imminently missing.
Sure, Nitin, and $760 million kind of net new TCV variance this quarter, almost 2x that of your run rate in the last two quarters. Is there any signs of a fatigue in terms of deal booking, or given that especially these two, three verticals, BFS, Insurance, and Tech have been doing well in the last few quarters, any fatigue of client spending here that you're picking up, or things are still going on strongly in these areas?
Sudheer, I think again lead indicator is pipeline. We've broken out the pipeline by BFS, non-BFS. We've broken out the pipeline by top 10, non-top 10, and I don't think we use the word fatigue in deal making in our lexicon because that's just not the way we can sustain the growth. Remember when we bottomed our business in December 2023, we called for BFS and TMT to lead growth. A couple of quarters ago we called for insurance turnaround visible, and as you can see, Insurance has grown 20% plus sequentially this quarter because we converted deals. I think pipeline is fairly active across multiple segments, including logistics, including healthcare. All we have to do is just diligently work. Each of these verticals operates at a different rhythm.
I would not say that we are at a point where, despite converting $760 million in the quarter, our sequential growth in pipeline is 16%, which means our propensity of originating conversations, turning them into qualified deals, and running them through the qualification, the solutioning process continues to be fairly high. That virtual cycle of originate, solution, sell, and execute is something that we're very focused on.
Sure, sir. One last bookkeeping question to Aravind. What is this other assets increase? It increased very sharply during the quarter. Any color on this?
Sure.
There are two, three factors coming in, right. One is that under IFRS 15 where you have a fixed-price project where you have completed deliverable on a percentage of completion till the deliverable is accepted, it comes as contract cost. As you know, you've seen a sharp increase in our fixed-price revenue. That is one of the big contributors for this. This will get translated to unbilled as soon as the deliverable happens. Most of these are completed projects and we expect that to move to unbilled in Q2. The second element is some of the large deals require savings to be kind of given up front, which ends up being a contract acquisition cost. You've seen the kind of PCBs that we have declared in this quarter. That has kind of come in, but there is not the similar level of cash outflow.
If you really look at it.
You would see the other liabilities also go up because it is more a balance sheet item in that sense, both from an asset standpoint as well as the liability standpoint.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks everyone. All the very details.
Thanks.
Thank you very much. A request to all the participants. Kindly restrict to one question per participant and one follow up question. The next question is from the line of Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec India. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Congrats on a solid quarter. It looks like a very tightly executed quarter, and quite impressive at that because if you look at EMEA, it has sort of declined. We have had the top customer decline where the ATM business has declined, and still we sort of delivered this solid growth. If you could just contextualize the growth that we saw in both BFS and insurance. All of these are disclosures of the earlier wins, or they were something that incrementally came through the quarter which surprised positively, and just as a follow up is from a deal win perspectives.
Overall.
I know you said this in different bits over the quarters. What's driving this change for us structurally, wherein our deal wins are extremely solid, our pipeline continues to grow. From an organizational perspective, if you could just quickly summarize the changes that you made that's sort of really driving this in a quick short summary, it would be very helpful.
Thanks Nitin. Both great questions. On the first one, I think as I mentioned in my script, it was expected that we should be able to mitigate any headwinds because we saw the momentum of deal closures even in Q4, early in Q1, and some of that's definitely played into the conversion of revenue. Now every deal is not the same. Some deals convert quicker than the others. If there's an element of large scale transition, you will see that deal will have some element of one to two quarters of conversion. If there is an element of taking over an existing asset that is a set of applications that move to you as a provider or you consolidate a bunch of providers out, then the revenue impact is much quicker.
I think that's played into the revenue impact that you've seen in all the three verticals that grew more than 20% ROI. The only correction I want to make to your comment is that the large client decline and EMEA decline are actually linked. That's really what's driving the EMEA because we classify GEOs by origin of contract, so it could be a global customer, but if there is a bunch of work that we do for them out of Europe, it'll go under EMEA. It's an anomaly, but that's just from a consistency standpoint. That's just the way we've continued to report.
Net net, the reason we were fairly comfortable in giving you a certain outlook three months ago and all through the quarter was based on the fact that we had a visibility into the pipeline and the deal conversions and we did execute it very tightly, as you rightly said, through the quarter. The second question that you asked me around what's changed and what is driving the growth, I think the reason I geeked out a little bit on this call when I explained to you what we did with the large financial services customer was to give you a peek of what kind of technical expertise is driving these kind of opportunities.
I think gone are the days where clients had a need, you would meet that need through potentially a series of engagements that were in one shape or form a combination of capacity, ride shoring, and even if it was a fixed-price or a managed services contract, it was really P x Q + margin pricing. Today, I think we are bundling a fairly sophisticated technology solution into every proposition. This doesn't happen overnight. It's taken us seven or eight years using our tribes and squads construct starting 2018, 2019, infusing our Next Lab starting 2017-18, and then 2023 we announced Mphasis AI. I think they're all coming together, combined with the extreme account-based focus that we've been talking about for many years now, where we have a three-in-a-box model at every account.
We have a high-touch model, a high-tech model, and we make sure that we have to deliver to what we commit to the customer as well. That's a high-trust aspect of that as well. A bunch of things that we've done over the years, bringing them all together, making it real for the customer in solving a problem that sometimes a customer didn't see, or many times we co-created or co-ideated into creating the right set of problems to solve for. The shift left that we talked about with front to back is actually playing into our strengths today, and the productive deal making is what's really driving a change and a differentiation.
There is a certain degree of fatigue with customers where they have incumbent providers, large providers, the quote unquote tier one providers, who have really in a way started to become a lot more stale because they haven't kept up with the level of investment and the level of high touch and intimacy required for transformation programs. I gave you a long answer, but it's a bunch of things that have come together. At heart, it's the tech depth and the ability to bundle that tech capability into a proposition that the client sees valuing.
Perfect, that's helpful. I have a lot of questions, but if I can just slip in one more from a margin perspective, I think this quarter has been pretty solid. We have had utilization more up like 400 basis points, and then we also have these large deals coming through. Is it fair to assume that one should, at least from a modeling perspective, assume the lower end of the band, or do you think you still have room to sort of deliver on margins as well?
See, we've given a range, Nitin. Right. We've largely operated in the midpoint of the range. I think there are always puts and takes.
Right.
We had utilization go up, but we have made some investments with clients, which kind of set each other off. Growth is good, but it also, if you hear what Nitin talked about, there are a lot of investments that we are also doing on areas which are important for growth.
Right.
We built a large deal team, done a lot of investments in our platforms. I think, you know, it will be range bound.
Right.
Is what we think at this point of time.
The philosophy doesn't change within the prioritization for growth by holding margins. That's kind of the North Star that we're still following. That philosophy doesn't change.
Thank you, very helpful.
Thanks.
Thanks, and all the very best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Two questions here. Firstly, you know on the deal pipeline, right? We have $1,760 million this quarter and still we are talking about pipelines well enough on a QQ basis. I know we formed a large deal team and there's been a lot of focus around that. Given where the macro is and what the other peers are suggesting in terms of deal pipeline as well as conversion, what do you think is specifically driving this significant growth for.
Rishi, again, I think Nitin asked a very similar question. The answer is not very different except that at this point in time, at least for the last four to six quarters, we've been trying to focus on individual account-based activity, highly contextualized solutions while making sure that at a broad level we continue to invest in areas where we think there's going to be broad adaptability, themes like application transformation using cloud, native tech, legacy modernization, mainframe exit, infusing AI into the way you run operations, both IT and business operations, predictive, preventive, self-healing. I think investing in broad themes that we think will cut across segments and customers, but then customizing those very highly into the account using our account CTO model, that level of intimacy and customized solution to the customer is very attractive.
Combine that with the fatigue that they have with some of the legacy providers, that actually makes it a very happy, fertile hunting ground for us. The role that the large deals team has played really is in institutionalizing the process of ideation, deal origination, deal qualification, deal solutioning, pricing, price benchmarking, and then of course the deal dynamics of how you actually run the deal through a process including reactive deals. We've seen an uptick in our win rate on the reactive side as well where we participate in RFPs. Not every segment or every industry or every geography is conducive to proactive only. You may originate a deal but then go to RFP.
I think it's the culmination of all the work that we've done over the quarters and over the years and we finally kind of managed to get that virtual cycle going and we want to just keep feeding it as much as we can. By the way, what you're seeing in the pipeline growth is the qualified pipeline, right? We obviously have a top of the funnel pipeline that we start the deal discussions with. I think that's the best way for me to explain it to you. I know it's a little bit of a qualitative answer, but our business services, our product is trust and we are expanding that product by actually infusing platforms and repeatability and execution capability into it.
Got it. Second question, if you look at last three, four years, right, I mean we've had issues around DXC, DR, SVB, and then this overhang around the logistics client. Is it safe to say that as things stand today, we do not have any major risk around any parts of the businesses and from here on growth would be normal and completely based on how we are executing on our overall business?
Yeah, I think that's fair to assume. I think I answered to Sudheer also earlier. As we stand today, we don't see any of that. Again, that's a point in time today, and part of the reason why, despite this kind of deal wins, we are still focusing on executing in Q2, Q3, and Q4 is because of the environment. It's not like there's any tailwind in the environment at all. We have to go and create those opportunities and run them through. As more and more clients adopt these kind of solutions, we just have to make sure that we keep refreshing our existing contracts and engagements with them as well.
I guess from next quarter onwards we don't have to look at business X of any other concern.
We never looked at it that way.
We did so.
I know, I know.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from Neha Gaddam from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi.
Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the strong deal win number. My first question is on the revenue conversion of these deal wins, the ramp up schedule that you expect on the deals that you won. Should we expect the best ever deal win reflecting in a strong bunched up quarter in the coming quarters, or would you say that the benefit of these deals would be spread out through this year in FY 2026?
Again, I think the—sorry, I didn't catch your name, so excuse me for that. The way to think about it is that it depends on the type of deal. There is a nuance to certain deals; some can ramp quick, certain deals require a period before they can ramp, and I think this is a fairly balanced set of deals that we won. If you look at the four large deals, not all of them will have the same trajectory of ramp up, while some of them already actually contributed to Q1 as well. It's fair to assume that on an average, 1-2 quarter is a decent assumption to take for conversion from this TCV to revenue.
Understood. My second question is with respect to some of the operating metrics. Your headcount seems to be largely flat on a sequential basis, and the utilization levels have inched up quite a bit, which is a level we've not operated in the last many quarters. In the context of the deal wins, which are very strong, how should one think about the divergence between the two?
We have been kind of talking about the increasing divergence between airport and revenue growth. If you look at it, there are a couple of shifts that have happened. One is that we've seen a significant shift towards fixed-price compared to what used to be only T&M.
It's interruptive.
Your audio is not coming clearly.
Is it better now?
Yes, sir. Go ahead.
If you look at it, like I said, this is not something that is new in terms of a divergence between revenue growth and headcount. If you've seen our business, we've seen a significant shift towards fixed-price, which kind of lends itself towards more productivity and ability to drive revenues with lesser headcount. Supply chain parameters are a little different than how we have historically looked at it. It's a little more nuanced. It's not a single strategy of just hiring freshers and, you know, playing the entire pyramid in that sense.
Right.
You may have to invest in very differentiated skill sets, but that may not be at scale. To that extent, it's a pretty dynamic approach that we take to supply chain. I don't think our growth will be limited from a headcount. It's no longer a lead indicator. We will do what it takes on the supply chain to deliver what our customers need at the most efficient cost price.
I think also keeping in mind the environment from a supply standpoint, I think it's fairly conducive for us to run this rolling 90-day plan on supply chain with a certain element of internal rotation combined with just-in-time onboarding. I don't think we need to run a large bench as we used to do historically because the model itself is shifting from just being people-based services to platform or technology new services. That gives us a little bit more operating leverage.
Understood. Very clear. Thanks for taking my question.
Thank you. Thank you. Next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I actually had a question, just a transition question on the logistics segment. While you talked about expectations of recovery from here on, there was some large transaction that you are facing outside of a large customer for the top customer there. If you could talk about progress on that front. The second question is how should we be thinking while due to the change in our hiring or delivery model, but given some of the newer opportunities that we are essentially trying to target to a combination of AI and the legacy modernization piece, should we probably be thinking about our utilization rates being sustainably better compared to what we've seen in the past?
I think on the first one I don't recall that we talked about any specific deal. Normally we don't talk about deals before they actually close. Maybe there is a little bit of confusion as to whether it was us or somebody else. The reality is that pipeline continues to be pretty robust and we have visibility into deals that exist in verticals including logistics and travel. Part of the reason why we believe that we will see a gradual recovery through the remainder of the year is because we think we should be able to move the needle with some of these deals that are in the pipeline and they have been for the last few months. On the second question, I think it's fair to assume that utilization will probably be elevated compared to, let's say, the last three-year average.
As I mentioned earlier, it is not a control metric for us. It is actually an outcome of the actions we take on how we onboard and how we manage the supply chain. We typically don't manage to a utilization, we manage to the visibility of demand on a rolling 90-day basis and between internal rotation, reskilling, upskilling, and external hiring. We try to meet the 90-day rolling basis through our supply chain teams. Utilization is a metric that has been important for the last 25 years but I think it's not going to be as important. Not that we will not have people or we will not add people, but it's just that it's not going to be a linear correlation between utilization and revenue growth.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from Abhishek Gupta from Axis Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Congratulations for the strong quarter. Just wanted clarification on the deal gains. Like what were the components from the new clients or from the existing clients or while like the global capability center part in the deal. What are the natures of this deal?
Actually, we have called out the four deals in our press release as well, and they are quite widely spread between existing customers in the top 10 category, customers that we acquired over the last two years, and potentially the pipeline also is fairly widespread across BFS and non-BFS as well as top 10 and non-top 10. I think it's not one vertical, one customer, or any specific item. I think it's been an attempt for us to broad base that over the last many quarters, and that's kind of what's playing in. Given that BFS, TMT, and insurance have led it, you can assume that that's kind of been the growth drivers from a deal being perspective as well, and we'll hopefully, as I said, expand that to other segments soon.
Got it. Lastly, you might have answered this question, but what we saw was a huge uptick in the insurance vertical in this quarter. What led to that group?
If you can just clarify it. Sorry, it's okay. Our business is very simple here. You sell more, you build more, you build more, you grow more. We sold more deals and we managed to convert them to revenue over the last three months. I think we have a lot more in the pipeline that we'll continue to focus on closing in that segment as well, both combination of existing clients giving us a large deal as well as new logos that are being signed, which again give us the confidence that we will see some more growth in the coming quarters. Of course, the quantum of growth on a sequential basis may not look as much because now we are already at the new baseline for Q1.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. Congratulations on a great execution, especially on deal wins consistently. The first question is on the logistics. I think within your initial remarks, you indicated we have made some investment in a few top clients within this segment. That could have resulted in a gross margin decline in this sector versus gross margin improvement in the others. I just wanted to understand, with this investment, do you believe the worst in this segment and our top client is behind, not just in the near to medium term, but beyond one to two years in terms of longer term outlook?
I think again I broadly answered it. Fortunately or unfortunately, long term is very difficult to call given just the dynamic nature of the environment and every customer going through their own journey of change and transformation. I think it's fair to assume that bulk of the impact is behind us. I think a resumption around gross margin and investment is fairly concise and reflective of what the status is. We'll take it quarter by quarter. We'll continue to operate in every account with a view that we should be able to grow, create those opportunities that are talked about in terms of adding value and showing the value to those customers. That approach doesn't change for this vertical and all plants in this segment.
Okay. Just a question in terms of your outlook growing 2x the industry. If I look at the large peers, they may be growing at 3% to 4% and for us the kind of deal wins to go to 7, 8% we just require 1.8%- 2.2% compounded Q on Q. That number looks conservative looking at the deal wins or you believe the deal wins will have a greater impact next year rather than this year because it may take some time to transition. Aravind, just wanted to understand in the margin, despite a gross margin decline being massive in the logistics, margin has been stable. Is there any one-off which we should be aware of? There are some investments which we highlighted on the 3rd of July. As per the notes to the accounts, can you brief the nature of these investments?
Let me take the first one, which is your question around CQGR growth. I think we're just trying to make sure that the fact that we had to thread a needle this quarter and have pretty tight execution, we just want to make sure that we continue to find ways to keep that execution up, especially in an environment where things change on a daily basis. As this visibility improves over the next quarter or two quarters, you will get a pretty good idea of how this ramp up is happening. It's also fair to assume that not every deal will convert very quickly just because some of those will require setup time, transition time, ramp up time.
We're just baking all of that in an environment where most of our peers are seeing pressure either on top line or on bottom line or on both, as well as, you know, the decision times. We just want to make sure that we don't go out on a limb, you know, and try to be brave. We just want to make sure that we continue to execute, and as execution-led visibility improves, you will see that on the Arjun and other questions. Aravind.
You know, Sandeep, we've seen a drop in gross margin at the logistics level, but we've also seen improvements in every other vertical in many ways. Right. One of the things that has happened is while there has been some kind of investment in the vertical, we've been able to, on the back of growth, use our internal talents to fulfill a lot of the project-based growth.
Right.
You have been able to offset that impact through better utilization in the interest of the business. Given that some of those have come in at a halt, you've seen higher revenue at marginally higher cost, which means margins are effectively flat. There is no one-time in nature. There is no reversal of sort, which is other than the usual anomalies that happen but not meaningful at a collective level.
Okay. Just the investment on July 3, those are small, but just wanted to understand the details.
That is an investment of a capital nature, Sandeep. It is not a P&L kind of investment. What we've done.
Let me take that one. Sandeep, I think we made a strategic investment in a venture called IOKA, which is essentially a GCC advisory firm being set up by the ex-founder of the NEO Group. He still is a shareholder in the NEO Group, but they've decided to set up a separate venture to advise enterprises in the global GCC space. We made a minority investment. We put in $4 million for our 24% stake with a view that—26% stake, sorry, my bad—with a view that we will essentially have an opportunity to shift left in helping shape deals as clients start thinking about GCCs and the various shapes and forms that it takes. That is not a business that we think will fit well if it was within Mphasis.
We decided to take a strategic investment approach and use that opportunity to create new plan engagements not just in the GCC advisory, but then in the follow-through execution of those deals as well. I think we made a detailed press release on that earlier today. You should be able to find more details in the press release.
There was a second investment in Locate Software. Is it M&A, small M&A, or?
That is one of the other consolidation deals, Sandeep, that we've done as a customer. It's a very small deal, right?
It's not an acquisition.
It's not an acquisition. It's basically a vendor consolidation initiative where we have taken over the people, and the contract has been given by the customer to us.
Right.
Of course, the accounting treatment and the disclosure follows an M&A accounting. This is typically we don't take over an entity. We are not even rebadging, we are hiring people and the contract comes with the customer and there is a contingent consideration for the person who used to run that business. Therefore, it takes the nature of M&A accounting. There will be no goodwill. It all flows through the P&L and the deal economics factors this cost which gets amortized and meets the margin threshold. It's something that we've done in the past and it's one more of that.
Thanks, thanks, congratulations again and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. I request all the participants, kindly restrict to one question per participant and join the queue again for a follow-up. The next question is from the line of Kawaljeet Saluja from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey, congrats on fantastic deals right here. My question is for Aravind. Aravind, you know, is a INR 12 billion increase in the current quarter in other assets, entirely deferred contract cost.
Like I told Kaval, there is a split between what I would call will go into an unbilled revenue, right? Because it is unbilled revenue of the fixed-price projects which goes into contract cost right now. The rest of it would be a combination of some of the investments we have made on building IP as well as contracted cost.
What will be your receivables if you include the contract costs as well for the quarter?
The only point I will make with respect to that cover is there is also a liability against it, because these are accounted but not paid.
Okay, on a gross and net basis.
Actually, there is.
It.
It doesn't change, to be honest, because you will see the same kind of increase on the liability side with respect to contract acquisition cost.
The third thing is, Aravind, there is a massive increase in contract other assets in the non-current part, which means that there are certain fixed-price contracts in which maybe it will remain unbilled or remain in contract assets for.
More than 12 months.
What is the nature of engagements which is causing such a big shift on a quarter basis?
Typically, the fixed-price unbill that I talked about comes in the current assets. Typically, a contract acquisition cost comes in non-current assets. These are deal savings which get spread over the term of the deal and therefore that gets into non-current. The fixed-price kind of example is more the contract cost and not the contract acquisition cost. The nomenclature is a little similar. Both come in other assets, but what is in non-current is more what is the amount back to which will get recovered over the deal value as a contract acquisition cost. The other one will be more on the current side.
Right.
The other financial liabilities is just the other part of what I would say revenue in which there are unearned, et cetera, lying in presumably. Is that correct?
Yes, that would be correct.
Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much and congrats once again on great leaders.
Thanks so.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. We will take that as the last question. I now hand the consent over to Mr. Nitin Rakesh for closing comments.
Thank you again for another interactive call on your interest in Mphasis. We really appreciate the early login, and we do believe that we had a good start to the year and that sets the stage for the year ahead. Our achievements are a direct result of the dedication and talent of our incredible employees and leadership team, and the continued trust of our clients and shareholders. I'm deeply grateful for their unwavering commitment to excellence. Thank you again, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Mphasis Limited, we conclude this conference. If you have any further questions, please reach out to the Mphasis Investor Relations at investor.relations@mphasis.com. Thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.