Capgemini SE (EPA:CAP)
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Earnings Call: H2 2015
Feb 18, 2016
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Capgemini full year results conference call. I now hand over to Mr. Paul Hermelin, Chairman and CEO. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for attending the presentation of our full year results. I will first give you the highlights of our results for 2015 and the outlook for 2016. Then I will leave the floor to a newcomer, Srikanth Iyengar, our newly appointed Group Head of Sales coming from iGate, who will go into more details about our business. Srikanth is replacing Paul Nannetti, who is now leading our infrastructure service business. Finally, Emmanuel, our Chief Financial Officer, will take you through our 2015 performance. Now, the first slide. 2015 was an important year for the group, and we took a solid step forward and delivered very good results. Overall, we deliver a solid performance, landing above our guidance for both current growth, margin, and cash.
As a reminder, note that all the figures we present today include the impact of iGate as of July 1st. Current revenues are growing by 12.7%. We deliver a 1% year-on-year growth organically. This figure being impacted by the Aspire pass-through effect. Our portfolio shift towards digital and cloud continues to progress, as these offers now represent 22% of our revenue in 2015, growing by 23 points. Sorry. On the sales side, we have shown good momentum in bookings, reaching EUR 11,538,000,000. In comparison, in 2014, our bookings were at EUR 10,978,000,000. But remember, it was including a large EUR 1 billion contract with Arriva. In our bookings pipeline, we continue to see a stronger appetite for projects to the expense of managed service deals.
Regarding the profitability, we have reached a 10.6% operating margin, which I think is a significant improvement year-on-year, thanks to the accretive effect of iGate and the first cost synergy release. But I am personally quite glad that we reached a key step in our trajectory, achieving the double-digit margin ambition I set five years ago. I want to stress the fact that we reach 10% operating margin, even with excluding iGate. Our net profit reaches EUR 124 million group share. Once again, we demonstrate our ability to deliver a solid cash performance. Our guidance was to generate more than EUR 600 million of organic free cash flow, and we are far ahead with EUR 815 organic free cash flow, giving us room for maneuver to execute our strategy. For the shareholder return, the board will propose to the shareholder meeting a dividend of EUR 1.35 per share.
Emmanuel and I propose to the board that we confirm our active management of the dilution in order to maintain a stable share count over time outside of major operation. We are then launching a multi-year EUR 600 million share buyback program to offset all instruments to motivate our people and colleagues. Finally, I cannot talk about the highlights of the year without mentioning the impact of our bold iGate acquisition. We now have a more balanced geographical mix and a strengthened position in key markets for IT, North America, and financial service. Overall, iGate continued to grow in the second half, in line with expectation, and the integration is well on track. I will give you a little more detail in a second. The iGate acquisition has also reinforced our delivery capability in India, a key asset for our competitiveness program.
Our offshore leverage now reaches 54% at the end of the year, out of a total headcount of 180,000 people, and more than half of our employees are now based in India, and this will continue to grow. I move to the next page. I would like to give a little bit more about the group situation to assess our momentum going forward. First, our position in the key markets for IT has been reinforced. I mentioned North America. North America represented 31% of the group revenue as of the second half, with a solid 7.8% organic growth in 2015. As everybody knows, it remains the number one market for all services. Financial service, the sector with the biggest requirement in terms of IT, our position is strongly reinforced. iGate has brought us additional key logos and two-thirds of the top global financial institutions are now our clients.
In this sector, we fully leverage our offshore capability. In terms of activity service line, I am glad to report that our consulting activities are back to growth in 2015, +5.8% organic growth year-on-year, thanks to our repositioning in digital consulting, with a high note in the fourth quarter, +8.2%. As you know, these activities are absolutely essential for our positioning in the digital transformation domain. Second, we offer a comprehensive and rich portfolio of offers covering all client needs from growth to competitiveness. In terms of technology, we have accelerated the shift towards innovative offers with the launch of several initiatives in digital and cloud in 2015. I will come back on the new priorities going forward in 2016.
Third, our global delivery capabilities have reached a new scale with nearly 100,000 employees in our global network of delivery centers, of which 87,000 are based in India, which is now the backbone of the group. We are now at par with the best Indian player, and we offer high quality at a lower price to our clients. This is one of the assets explaining our strong performance in some countries, such as Germany and Nordics, where a high offshore leverage has become the standard. To give you some example of our action in terms of industrialization, in 2015, we invested in automation for BPO and infra. We deployed lean distributed delivery tools to 50,000 people and implemented virtual testing factories. Overall, thanks to a solid execution of our strategic priorities, we enter 2016 with a strong momentum. iGate integration. This is going extremely well currently.
Let me give you an update on the integration. The new integrated structure is operational since January 1st. The new organization on each strategic business unit has been defined, and all key iGate senior executives are now part of Capgemini's top management levels. In particular, two iGate leaders joined the Group Executive Committee. Srini Kandula now conducts our operation in India, and Srikanth Iyengar is now our Head of Sales, bringing to the group iGate's passion for client centricity. We now operate under one name and one brand. The rebranding process took place at the end of January, and the iGate brand has been fully replaced by Capgemini. I was in India in January for the rebranding celebration, and I felt a real enthusiasm to work jointly under the Capgemini banner. The operational transformation is on track.
For instance, in Mumbai, we recently inaugurated a joint campus where 3,000 Capgemini employees are joining 5,000 iGate people. This facility will house 25,000 employees by 2019. The go-to-market organization is now fully integrated and operational in our application service business in North America, in our new global financial service vertical organization, and in what I call the business service structure, where we join our historical BPO activities with the iGate offering named as iTOPS. Overall, we are now acting as one company. As scheduled, the remaining work for 2016 will consist of aligning internal processes, in particular with regard to IT systems and HR processes. Regarding performance, iGate went on growing in H2 as planned. We will focus our efforts under the authority of Aiman Ezzat on delivering the identified synergies, both in terms of revenue, cost, and from the implementation of an enhanced operating model.
We today confirm these synergies should be achieved within the three years from closing. In fact, you should know that part of the cost synergies were already delivered in 2015. A group mobilized on digital and cloud. I'd like to focus a bit on our strategic priorities. Our clients are increasingly expecting us to be a key partner in their digital transformation to find new ways to engage with them, or in the, what I would call the cloudification of their information system to gain in flexibility and cost. To remain at the top level of technology trends, we are fully mobilized, and the energy of the whole group is mobilized to build a reference offer in this new field. In the last few months, we have set up a complete portfolio offering in digital and cloud. We have enriched our digital customer efforts launched in 2014.
We have launched a new cybersecurity service line in 2015. We have reshaped our big data named Insights & Data Global Practice. We have redesigned a complete cloud offer named Cloud Choice. In addition, we will launch very soon an offer dedicated to digital manufacturing. Since January, these offers are being coordinated at group level by two of my direct deputies, Olivier Sévillia for digital and Salil Parekh for cloud. We have appointed strong leaders to drive them. Dee Burger transitions from his role of Head of Consulting in North America, where he recorded a big success, and he will now be the Head of Digital. Along with his new role, he joined the Group Executive Committee. Franck Gréverie, that launched our cybersecurity effort in 2015, will in addition lead our comprehensive cloud portfolio, leveraging all our capabilities and infrastructure.
They will, of course, be in charge of joining forces of all group capabilities in every country and across all service line and organization of the group. In addition, we mobilize a global network of applied innovation exchange spaces and a renewed ecosystem of partners. To accelerate this transition of our portfolio, we will make very focused acquisition. In addition to Oinio that we announced earlier this year, we announced this morning the acquisition of Fahrenheit 212, a firm dedicated to innovation consulting expertise in the U.S., and we will go on screening the market for more digital opportunities. A few deals that are worth mentioning. Tata Steel Europe select us as their partner for projects in SAP and BI Work.
We support IKEA e-commerce platform, which is one of the biggest in the world, and we were congratulated by their retail business for supporting the success of 2015 Black Friday, and we won a big three-year digital transformation deal with Faurecia combining the assets of consulting and solutions. On this, I confirm on that cloud and digital will be the growth engine for the group in the years to come. Some more priorities. We will need to transform the group further and accelerate our priorities, thanks to investment. For the first year, because of our strong margin progression, we could release an investment fund that we present its P&L impact of 30 basis points. We had announced that at the TechDay strategic direction for the group, if you remember. So where will we spend these 30 basis points?
First, we want to accelerate our investment internally on cloud and digital that I just presented. Capgemini wants to become one of the top leaders of that digital transformation. I mentioned the launch of digital manufacturing and the launch in the cloud world of three cloud factories in India dedicated to the migration of legacy application to the cloud and the development of cloud native application. We also aim at growing our footprint in business service that can be now considered as the managed service of the digital world. Second priority will be to improve our competitiveness further. You know that I have appointed Patrick Nicolet full-time on competitiveness. It's a new department in charge of reducing production costs, implementing industrial platform coordinated at the central level, and challenging all our operation to release and offer our client the most competitive offering.
Patrick will make substantial investment to upgrade our IT network infrastructure and deploy analytics tool on resource supply chain. Third, we will invest to attract and develop the best talents, a key factor of success in our business. More precisely, we will focus our recruitment plan on hot skills like cybersecurity and analytics, and do an unprecedented reskilling effort in Europe to develop the expertise of our employees regarding emerging technologies. I now end with the guidance. This guidance takes into account the current market volatility, but I think the group has gained a lot of agility and resilience, so we feel comfortable to publish the following guidance for 2016. A growth at constant currency between 7.5% and 9.5%. I repeat, it's a growth at constant currency, but at current perimeter.
For the operating margin, a new step forward and our guidance for margin will be to reach in the range of 11.1% to 11.3%, and a new progression on the organic free cash flow, since we want to deliver more than EUR 850 million. This guidance allows us, of course, to progress well toward our midterm ambition that Emmanuel and I have repeated in our last two analysis. I now give the floor to Srikant.
Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. Full year bookings were similar to last year, but without the benefit of the huge EUR 1 billion Arriva transaction. In particular, Q4 performance was strong, EUR 3.7 billion of bookings and 1.14 book-to-bill. Taking a look at the full year, we are maintaining a win rate of 40% in value terms compared to 25% three years ago. Our strategic accounts have grown in excess of 10% year-on-year. Building on these good results, we will extend this program in 2016 with particular emphasis on our focus sectors. Our strategic offers continue to grow well at around 20%, including deals such as ABN AMRO and Tata Steel. This is faster than last year and substantially ahead of our mainstream business. Overall, market demand for our offerings is continuing to improve, and we start 2016 with a pipeline 5% greater than last year.
Within this, the pipeline for our projects business driven by digital and cloud is at 10% higher than last year. As you know, my prior experience is with iGate and Infosys, and I have spent just over a month in this new role. What strikes me about Capgemini is the strength of the client roster across markets, and also the depth of capability in new areas, especially digital and cloud. For example, I am impressed at how much our cloud business has grown in bookings in 2015. In the Insights & Data space, what we do for the world's second-largest advertising spender is probably a trendsetter for the CPRD space. I believe that these credentials, if taken to our clients and prospects with speed, will enable us to grow quickly and be positioned as a leader in these respective spaces.
2015 was another excellent year for major deals, and we are pleased to report some large multi-tower transformational contracts. For example, at Heathrow Airport, we have renewed our full scope of ITO services, including the provision of mission-critical operations, support of their Q6 vision, and a significant program of investment. We have also secured the renewal of our apps, infrastructure, and BPO contracts with OPG and started a transformative program of work at Sears Hometown and Outlet Incorporated on NetSuite. We signed a new seven-year partnership with Crédit Agricole for the implementation of a transformation program to modernize their IT infrastructure and enable the digitization and securing of banking activities. At the Georgia Technology Authority, or GTA, in North America, we are the multi-sourcing integrator, coordinating the delivery of technology services by multiple service providers in a seven-year agreement.
We are working with Nationwide to simplify and modernize their end-user IT experience in a contract that runs until July 2020. In business services, we continue our integral role in the Warner Bros. transformation of their finance services. The five-year extension also includes more end-to-end finance and accounting functions, for example, controllership. Paul mentioned earlier the strength of our digital services business. Examples of large new projects won in 2015 include ABN AMRO, where we are contracted to provide agile services with a particular emphasis on customer experience and analytics to support their program to evolve to the digital bank of the future. Similarly, we are assisting Bradesco Bank to develop an entirely new platform to run their insurance division, Bradesco Seguros, covering life, health, assets, and several other offerings, all based on Pega.
The Tata Steel deal is an application development outsource deal, including the transfer of people covering SAP support function domains and the entire scope of our digital offers. In summary, 2015 was another very good year for large deals, and in particular, multi-tower deals, underlying the power of the group when combining our lines of business and bringing the first fruits of the successful incorporation of iGate into Capgemini. If I take a look at our growth by sector and I switch to revenues instead of bookings, FS grew by 9% in 2015 with traction across regions and double-digit growth in Europe and APAC. Highlights of the year included several big deals, the closing of our largest-ever consulting assignment with a major U.K. bank, and the acquisition of iGate, which has strengthened our position, especially in North America.
Our strength in both innovation, digital and cloud, and industrialization is fully aligned with sector demand. We now partner with two-thirds of the top global financial institutions. CPRD was our top-performing sector and grew by more than 11% over the full year, with a strong acceleration in Q4. Foreign demand for our offerings in North America and across Europe underpinned this growth. We will continue to strengthen our investment and emphasis on the sector in 2016. EUC grew by 3% despite the softness in H2 due to the slower pace of investment in the energy and utilities sector. In 2015, we launched our utilities industry offering U2ES. Manufacturing is back to growth for the financial year, but we still have disparities across markets and segments. We still see softness in some areas in France, notably aeronautics and in emerging markets.
We have seen positive traction in other markets, notably Benelux, Nordics, and Italy. The reduction in public sector revenues is largely due to the novation of a large contract in the U.K. Aside from the U.K., the sector is growing notably in France and North America. Telco remains challenging in Europe. Overall, the segments on which we have the highest investment focus, financial services and CPRD in particular, but also automotive and utilities, continue to show good promise and look solid bets for growth in 2016. With that, I hand over to Aiman Ezzat.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Let's start with an overview of our results. In 2015, Capgemini has performed beyond expectations. Group revenues total EUR 11,915 million, up 12.7% at current rate and perimeter, slightly above our revised guidance of 12%. Organic growth reached 1%. The difference comes from 5.8% from the integration of acquisition. Primarily iGate that you know, also we had Euriware in fact for several months. And 5.5% come from currency fluctuation, primarily a positive impact from the U.S. dollar and the British pound, and a headwind from the Brazilian real. Our operating margin stands at EUR 1,262 million or 10.6% of revenue, a 30% increase and 140 basis point progression versus last year. This is also above our revised guidance of 10.3%.
In addition to the continuous operational improvement and the iGate integration, we also had some favorable impact from higher weighing of the North America and U.K., which are more profitable due to the appreciation of the USD and the GBP. I will comment later on the other operating income and expenses. The operating profit rose to EUR 1.022 billion, up 20% versus 2014 and at 8.6%, it represents 50 basis point increase year on year. Financial expenses increased to EUR 118 million, primarily driven by the iGate related expenses and taxes is a positive EUR 203 million following the EUR 476 million one time reassessment of our U.S. deferred tax assets. As you remember, the initial estimate we gave in January was EUR 520 million. As a result, the net profit group share surges 94% to EUR 1,124 million and the organic cash flow increases by EUR 147 million to EUR 815.
Now going into more detail around the cash flow. The generation was strong at 815, and that continued to demonstrate Capgemini increasing focus on cash generation. This year's organic free cash flow is impacted by the exercise of the put on CPM Braxis for EUR 76 million. Also to be noted, in 2015, there's only EUR 1 million impact related to the interest on the new bond issued in July to finance the acquisition of iGate, because these are, for most of them, are annual coupons. We will have, however, the full impact of EUR 70 million in 2016 from a cash perspective. Our performance in 2015 is part of a continuous improvement of our financial performance. Now going to the revenue quarterly evolution. Q4 growth was 13.7% at current rate and perimeter. The effect impact was about 3%.
Organic growth was limited to 0.1 impacted by two main items. The first one, Latin America, where we had a revenue decrease and that weighs about 90 basis point if you neutralize Latin America. In the U.K., in addition to the pass-through impact we had in the last three quarter from the large government contract, we also had a stronger base effect in Q4 2014 linked to the one-time revenue generation by the novation of this pass-through. If you remember, we had the growth of 5.5% organic growth in Q4 2014, and that additionally impacts about an additional point. For the full year, organic growth stood at 1%, again after accounting for that novation of that pass-through. Now going by main geography. In North America, organic growth was 5.2% in Q4 in line with Q3 and with 7.8 for the full year. North America was the fastest growing region.
After currency impact and integration of iGate, current growth stood at 49.1%, making North America with 28% of revenues our largest region. In the U.K., organic growth was -13.9% both in Q4 and full year after currency impact. Current growth was however -2.2% for the full year. U.K. organic growth was positive if you exclude the evolution of the large government contract. Thanks to sustained growth as well, the private sector is now larger than the public sector in the U.K. In France, Q4 confirmed the good momentum of Q3 with 2.7% organic growth. For the full year, organic growth was 1.2% and current growth 4.4%. We did see some acceleration in H2 driven primarily by financial services and CPRD. In the Benelux, overall flat in 2015, so in line with expectation.
We had growth in manufacturing and financial services and CPRD which compensated a continuous decline in the public sector. We do expect to see some improvement in 2016. The rest of Europe sustained growth in Q4 of 8% driven by Germany, Nordic and Italy. Growth for full year at 7.4% was similar to North America, and growth was across all sectors with the exception of telco. With notably double digit in financial services, energy utilities and CPRD. Finally, in Asia Pacific and Latin America, Q4 growth was actually -2.7%. Very contrasted picture, driving a double-digit growth in Asia Pacific, but a strong decline in Latin America, notably due to the weakness of the resale business impacted by the depreciation of the Brazilian real. For the full year, we still have a revenue growth of 6.5% organically with double digits in Asia Pacific and a slight decline in Latin America.
In summary, business activity was sustained in Asia Pacific, picked up in continental Europe and stabilized in North America. U.K. was impacted by the government contract evolution and Latin America by a difficult macro in Brazil. Now looking by business. Again, we are now talking organic revenue growth. Consulting focus on digital transformation confirmed with an 8.2% growth in Q4 and 5.8% for the full year. The strong traction was in North America, U.K. and rest of Europe. Local professional services was more or less stable at 0.3%. Good growth in Benelux and U.K. compensated the weakness in the aerospace sector, notably in France and Germany. Application services, which represents 59% of the group revenue, is by far the largest business of the group, is growing at 6.8% in Q4 and 6.3% for the full year. Growth is across all regions, notably in North America and rest of Europe.
Project and application maintenance are both growing, but we definitely saw an acceleration this year in the project business, driven by increased investment in digital and cloud. Other managed services, which include infrastructure, BPO, and transactional services, declined by 14.7% in Q4 and 10.9% for the full year. Again, driven by the U.K. government contract. Decline is more important in Q4, as explained due to the higher base effect linked to the novation of the pass-through. Organic growth is positive excluding this contract. Now, going to Wait, I don't have the slide in the right order. Okay. So on headcount growth side, it was 25.7% in 2015, driven by the integration of iGate on the 1st of July. Excluding iGate, headcount growth was 4.8%, slower than in previous year. Thanks notably, as you will see in the appendix, an increase in utilization across all businesses.
The offshore growth was double digit, excluding iGate, and we continue to see a slight decline onshore. Overall, we ended the year with 180,000 employees, out of which over 97,000 are in our global delivery centers. In North America, we continue to see onshore headcount growth of 6% due to the stabilization of the offshore leverage and the growth in digital and cloud. This onshore volume supports the top-line growth. On the other side, we continue to see decline in headcounts in most European countries, driven by the increasing offshore penetration. In 2015, we recruited 46,000 employees, 230 in our global delivery centers. We are still more than 40% of young graduates. Finally, attrition stood at 19.3% and increased both onshore and offshore with an improvement in Q4.
Okay, on the offshore leverage side, it increased to 54%, supported by the increased penetration in Continental Europe, which increased by four points year-on-year. Notably Germany and Nordic are now anchored above 50%, as well as the impact, of course, of the integration of iGate. Benelux and France are improving in terms of offshore penetration, but remain well below 50%. On the remuneration front, before integrating iGate, so I am giving you a number before integration of iGate, the net increase in average remuneration cost offshore after the Pyramid impact absorption is again less than 1% this year. On the other side, the remuneration onshore has increased by 2%, driven notably by the growth in digital and cloud. As you know, the salaries are going to be higher in digital and cloud. Mix of offshore of project business going up, it drives the salaries up.
But we also had an increase in onshore billing rates that basically mirrors this increase in terms of compensation onshore. Excluding iGate, our average remuneration cost increased by 2.6%. Here we have the impact of the appreciation of the currencies, notably British pound and USD against the euro that play. But at constant rate and perimeter, we continue decrease by 2.4%. As a reminder, we did minus 2.8% last year. So competitiveness continues to increase. Now operating margin by geography. North American margin reaches 14.9% and continues to improve, combined with the integration of iGate for the second half. U.K. and Ireland also confirm the H1 improvement with 13.4% for the full year, an increase of 210 basis points after 260 basis points progression in 2014. The pass-through cancellation with less than 100 basis points in that progression. In France, at 8.1, continues to show some erosion in profitability.
Contribution to that is the integration of four months of Euriware. We do expect margin to start recovering in 2016, supported notably by better organic growth and the shift of the portfolio towards more innovation and projects. Benelux at 11.2 continues to improve as well in spite of low growth, driven by local professional services and application services. The rest of Europe at 9.6, we are getting close to double digit in spite of the low profitability in Spain. The positive news that Spain has improved its profitability and is back to positive margins in 2015. Finally, Asia Pacific and Latin America, the full year margin is at 4.2%, 190 basis points drop from last year. As you imagine, the situation in Latin America is leading to a profitability decline that more than offsets the good progression in APAC. So overall, strong progression of 140 basis points at the group level.
Now by business, consulting operating margin continues to recover after 0.4 point in 2014. It is improving again by 0.9 point in 2015, and we do expect further progression in 2016. Local professional services margin have recovered after the contraction in 2014. It progresses by 1.7 points, thanks notably to better utilization and cost management. Application services, after reaching double digit last year, has improved by another 1.3 point in 2015 to 11.9. The continued drive to industrialization, coupled with the growth of innovation portfolio, is definitely paying off. Other managed services, including infra, BPO, and transactional services, progressed by 0.8 point after the 1.7 point achieved in 2014. Overall, besides the organic improvements in margin, most businesses were also positively impacted by the integration of iGate.
If you look at the operating margin analysis, the very good news is that the growth margin has improved by 1.1 point year-on-year. Thanks again, supporting our innovation industrialization strategy. The selling expenses have stabilized, and our G&A continues to decline by 30 basis points after 40 basis points in 2014, thanks to our globalization industrialization effort. We still aim to reach 7% in the next couple of years for the G&A. On the net financial income and expenses and the income tax. First, on financial expenses, you have a EUR 35 million charge due to the iGate-related debt. So EUR 27 million interest on bonds that you will find in the line interest on bonds, and $8 million of USD euro currency swap that sits in other interest income and expense, which make up the EUR 35 million.
The other financial income and expense increase is driven primarily by the bridge facility that was put in place at the time of the acquisition. The total net financial expense comes at 118, so that is lower than what I guided you at mid-year, primarily because the premium on the iGate debt provision ended up being accounted for in the opening balance sheet. Then, after accounting for the 476 million one-off profit from the reassessment of U.S. deferred tax assets, the total group income tax for 2015 is 203 million impact versus 210 million expense last year. Before the one-off tax income, the effective tax rate for the group stands at 30.1% in 2015, compared to 26.8% last year. Recapping from the operating margin to the net income, the item recognized in other income and expenses are up to 240 million this year compared to 117 last year.
Where does the increase come from? Three items. First, acquisition of integration cost of 55 million, primarily iGate. Not only iGate, but primarily iGate. We also have six months amortization of the charge of iGate-related intangible assets recognized at the time of the acquisition, which drives the related item, as you can see, to 45 million. And the estimate for 2016 is going to be 70, because we are going to have the full year of the amortization of iGate. Last, we have a goodwill impairment charge for Latin America of 40 million based on the sudden evolution of the environment in Brazil and the poor perspective we see in the short term. As you can see, the restructuring charges remain under control at 81 million. The operating profit progresses by 20% at 1 billion 22, and after financial expense and taxes, the net profit is at 1 billion 124.
The normalized net profit is up 22%, but we had the capital increase. When excluding the one-off profit, leading to a 15% increase in normalized EPS to €4.84. In conclusion, we have delivered on our priorities, and 2015 results support our strategy. We have two well-established levers, industrialization and innovation, that have enabled us to fully deliver on our margin expansion ambition, despite limited growth in the past few years. We have maintained a strong cash discipline, which led us to more than double our organic free cash flow since 2010, and we continue to increase our focus on total return to shareholders by a combination of dividends and share buyback. Now going to 2016. Priorities are a natural extension of what we did last year. Of course, the first priority is integration of iGate.
This year, with the objective to finalize the integration by the end of the year and to ramp up the synergies run rate to deliver in 2017 and 2018. We want to deliver another operating margin expansion through a combination of industrialization and innovation and, of course, six more months of iGate. We want to maintain our cash discipline to absorb the 2016 incremental cash out from the new debt coupons and the increased cash tax rate while maintaining our discipline around restructuring. Which pushes the organic free cash flow above 850 for the year. Finally, as we expand cash generation capabilities, we continue to increase our return to shareholder with increase of the dividend to 1.35 and the launch, with the approval of the board, of €600 million multi-year share buyback program, and 150 million have been affected already for 2016.
On the outlook, in terms of revenue growth, taking into account the beginning of the year, as Paul said, we aim to grow 7.5% to 9.5% on constant currency base. The objective takes into account the impact of the integration of iGate in H1, which is estimated for the full year to be less than five point. On the currency front, we currently estimate the 2% revenue headwind from the appreciation of the euro versus the average rates of currencies. Primarily, the impact is coming from the British pound, which is the biggest impact, and the Brazilian real. So far, the U.S. dollar has limited impact, positive or negative. Then just two other elements of our guidance, 11.1% to 11.3% on the operating margin and organic free cash flow above 850. Now we turn to Q&A session. Operator.
Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad. We have our first question from Mr. Michael Briest from UBS Limited. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and congratulations on the outcome for 2015. I am sure there will be a few questions on it, but in terms of the guidance for 5.5%-7.5% growth if you take account of the FX. As you said, Aiman, at the end there, iGate is going to add nearly 500 basis points. It seems to be a slowdown from the underlying performance. Can you talk about the drivers of that and specifically financial services? I thought the tone of your comments on the call were relatively upbeat. Some of your competitors are sounding more cautious there, and obviously, the share prices and performance of some of the companies have been weak. Can you talk about how you expect FS to perform this year? Thanks.
On the guidance side, it is 7.5%-9.5%. Of course, including the iGate impact. As you know, the iGate impact, as I said, when I calculated the H1 of iGate on the full year, will have less than 5%, which mean if you deduct the less than 5% from the 7.5%-9.5%, it gives you an underlying organic growth that we expect for the full year, which continues to be quite strong. On the financial services side, our perspective for the moment are good. We confirmed with our teams again last week. We look at the perspective for H1. In fact, we do not see major slowdown in financial service. We have pretty strong organic growth going into H1, and we are quite comfortable about the outlook so far. Of course, we will be on the watchout as we go through the year.
Sitting from where we are today, the revenue growth in Europe looks strong. The revenue growth in financial service looks strong. Of course, we have not a good picture on Latin America, but that is 3% of our revenues, and we still have the continuous softness on the energy market across the world that we have to watch out for. But this is the main variation that we see and the things we are watching out as we start the year.
Michael, good morning. Just to say, out of Latin America and energy sector, for the time being, we have not seen any slowdown. We watch that very carefully on a weekly basis, but just to confirm, at this stage, no particular nothing to report.
The low end of the guidance is, if you take account of the Aspire effect last year, it is lower growth. What is driving that organic growth?
The two factors that we just mentioned, energy. Energy weighs on our U.S. growth significantly, and Brazil, LATAM.
Can you just say how much energy as a percentage of sales? Thanks.
Energy in the U.S. is a double-digit figure. It is 18%, actually. 18%. So a very strong double digit.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, mister. Next question is from Stacy Pollard from JP Morgan. Madam, please go ahead.
Thank you. Can I dig in a little bit more on the outlook for revenues in terms of seasonality as well, and how we need to think about that through the quarters? Obviously, some of that coming from iGate, and then also any other trends that you might see. Secondly, looking at the operating profit margin outlook, where do you see the biggest uptick by business? Also, if you had any particular comments on geographies. I know you made a few as you were commenting through, but
Okay. First, on seasonality. Seasonality, from operating margin, you know we have always seasonality, so I don't think this is going to change. Seasonality in terms of growth, we look at our perspective for H1, difficult at this stage to decipher between Q1 and Q2. If we look at our H1 and H2, we expect to see something which will be equilibrated, but I think we'll have more visibility as we go through the year. But right now, the guidance seems like something similar in H1 and H2.
I just want to point that the slowdown in Brazil happened in H2. We had a good H1 in Brazil, and the contrast will weigh on our H1 performance. To say it started in H2. If you remember, the U.S. was growing very strongly in H1 and got to the pace where we think they will stay in H2, so you will have a little drag in the difference of the U.S. growth. Just to answer that, we foresee mid-single digit growth in the U.S., including the energy and drag. Not bad, but not comparable to H1 last year. The comparable of H1 will be a little tough on North America and Brazil. You mentioned a question of countries and
The operating margin. What's the operating margin?
We will not comment by country, but I would just say, first, where we increase offshore penetration, there is a direct impact on the margin, and we are very bullish on Nordic and Germany, just because we really think, strangely enough, where we see the Indian pure players succeed, we succeed too. That's in Germany and Nordic. So there you should expect, plus the iGate impact in North America, by definition.
Country base, I will just say situation continues to improve mildly, of course, in France. That's not bad. We have a good trend in Nordic and Germany. No big deviation. Europe has been good in H2, and we have good perspective in the first half.
Okay. I guess my question really on the asking about the businesses was on consulting, and you may not be willing to answer specifically, but it seems like the consulting margins have come a ways, but it seems like there is still room for them to potentially exceed the group average. Is that a midterm goal?
Yeah, midterm. Frankly, we are growing rapidly, but we are recruiting like hell, just to be frank, and we are recruiting heavy weights to reinforce our position. So we drive a steady margin improvement in consulting, but in consulting, we had a very strong January.
Okay, thanks.
Margin will improve. Margin will improve in 2016 in consulting.
Thank you, madame. Next question is from Laurent Daure from Kepler Capital. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Three questions from me. First is, you gave us some pretty reassuring comments on iGate. But in terms of client retention, cross-selling, all the expectation you had at the time of your closing, can we have a little bit more color? I also want to be sure I understood that this part of the business was still growing high single digit. So that is the first point. Second point is on Brazil. I know it is very small now, but what are your action plan to limit the margin pain in 2016 on that regions? Finally, I know you do not like to talk too much about it, but I think there are some question on the market about the transition of your largest client and what could happen after mid 2017. So I was wondering if you had some updates on that. Thank you.
Okay. First on iGate. Client retention is good. We do not have any issue of any large clients walking away. They are there. Srikanth is shaking his head in front of me. On the key people, key talent retention, the second thing we look at, nobody has left from top management. So we kept the top 74, which are the people we have targeted. Besides, of course, the departure of Ashok in October. The third thing is that the economic model stands pretty well and is pretty good. You know that I will not comment on specific organic growth, because I said I would not comment on separate numbers. The only thing I can tell you, it is within our expectation. We reviewed the numbers with the board yesterday. We set the budget in July, and the budget has been met. Okay?
From our perspective, it has delivered according to expectation, and it is in line with what we expect from iGate. Your question on Brazilian margin. Frankly, we mainly, as you can imagine, work on our production costs. We are migrating the workforce from expensive city to Tier 2 cities at an accelerated pace. We had a very strong reduction of our production cost last year, and we accelerate that further. So it is what we can do. We also try a little bit to diversify the client base. We heavily rely on the financial sector. We will try to move more towards consumer goods and retail on top on financial sector to diversify our sectorial presence. Now on the U.K. and revenue and custom, frankly, there are active negotiation. My good feeling is they are planning today something significant to organize what will come after the contract.
Capgemini will be part of that. I have active negotiation. When we will be ready with the client, we will communicate. These negotiation have started with a very good mindset, so hopefully we will be in a position to report to conclusion later this year. As we approach, as you know, the term of the contract is June 2017, so my view, more than 12 months ahead, they will have organized the transition, and I think Capgemini will retain a good position of becoming and confirming its position as a key partner.
Okay, maybe just a quick add up. On your guidance for 2016, have you modeled any significant contract loss or contract wins? There has been rumors on the market recently that you may have lost an important piece of the business in U.K. So that would be interesting to know.
Whatever we have visibility on, as you imagine, is part of our guidance.
Okay, thank you.
Wins, renewal, and contract losses, that is part of the game. Frankly, we have won some contract over competition. We have lost some, and that is part of being in the market. Okay?
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Laurent.
Thank you very much, sir. Next question is from John King from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. Sir, please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. First, with apologies, just following up on iGate again. The contribution Aiman, if you're saying under 5%, I suppose under EUR 600 million, that would, I think, suggest that there's not a lot of growth there. Maybe just help us out as to how we get to the contribution from iGate, which seems a bit lower than I'd expected. The second one was just on the Q4 bookings. Can you comment there? I think you were optimistic going in there that you'd see some good growth. What did you see organically in Q4 from a bookings perspective? Then the third one may be more just around the long-term on the side, the automation side of things. Is that something where you're going to be investing organically in terms of R&D to build up your capabilities in automation?
Or is there some scope for M&A that you see in the automation field? Thanks.
On the iGate, it depends how you make your calculation. What you have to look at is basically what iGate six months is in H1 2015 and how that impacts 2016 numbers. This is how you're supposed to make the calculation. In terms of integration, of course, putting a little bit of growth on that, and if you make that calculation that way, you would get with the 5% with a decent growth rate. Because don't forget all the impact of the currencies. For example, the fact that the US dollar has depreciated compared to 1.06 that we had before, that the Canadian dollar has depreciated against the euro, which means overall the impact goes down. So the less than 5% is not implying a decrease in the iGate numbers. On the Q4 booking, the EUR 3.7 billion is a strong booking rate.
This is typically what we have at the end of Q4. If Q4 is soft, it doesn't bode well for the beginning of the year. For us, it's a good booking rate to be able to start the year.
Francis, we haven't seen a postponement in Q4, so we frankly met our objective, and it was a good quarter. We have a good pipeline evolution, too. Last question was on automation. I don't think we need to do acquisition to deliver our automation. Today, the situation is we test many options in the organization, and it's probably too early to finalize the selection. So we are in a period of experiencing many automation investments organically, of course. We will probably rationalize that either later this year or early 2017. So today, many initiatives that we monitor closely to assess their impact.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Neil Steer from Redburn. Sir, please go ahead.
Thanks. Just three very quick ones, hopefully. Just a point of clarification, following a question earlier on, and your comments, Aiman, about the contribution from iGate. Just to be clear, you're adjusting for iGate and the fully annualized impact. You're signaling underlying organic growth at constant rates and perimeters as you used to call it, of 2.5%-4%. Is that right?
It's 2.5 to 4.5 if you take 5. If you take a bit less than 5, it's a bit higher.
You're certainly not indicating a slowdown once adjusted for currencies and iGate.
No. Let me clarify. You said 7.5% to 9.5% at constant currency. Okay?
If iGate, it gives you the implied organic growth rate, then I have an FX headwind of 2%, and this I cannot do much about. It's a consolidation because today the British pound has depreciated significantly against the EUR, and we also have a significant depreciation of Brazilian real. So that's the two main ones. There is Canadian, I can give you a long list of currencies.
But overall, today, when we simulate that, it's a net headwind of 2% from FX.
Okay. But yeah, I understand.
There's three components. You have iGate, you have organic growth, and then you have a headwind of FX.
Okay. So pre the FX headwind, it's 2.5%-4.5%.
If you take 5%.
Okay, thank you. Just on the comment that was made during the presentation that the pipeline coming into this year was +5%. Was that an organic increase in the pipeline, or was that including the additional sort of contribution to the pipeline that comes from iGate?
Srikant.
We've looked at pipeline obviously on an overall basis, but then what I'd say is that even on the iGate side, the pipeline is healthy going into the new year, and even on the core Capgemini business from before, the pipeline is healthy. I wouldn't differentiate between the two. It's overall a good pipeline.
Okay. Then just finally, Aiman, you spoke about the impact of the, I think you mentioned the onshore wages because of the investments in digital going up 1%, but did you then make the comment that any of the onshore wage increases are fully offset by price increases? Is that the comment that I may have missed?
That's correct. The billing rate, when you look at the billing rates onshore, because something we can track in a number of areas, the billing rates onshore for the first time in many years are going up. It more than offsets the fact that our average remuneration costs onshore are increasing, and this is driven by digital and cloud. It's not the same salaries as when you're doing managed services. It's hot areas. If you want to retain people in cybersecurity and big data, et cetera, you have to up your compensation.
That has a negative impact on composition because they go up, but I can tell you the billing rates are going up quite well as well.
Okay. Just one final one, if I may. The mechanical effect of including iGate for the further six months this year is to increase the operating margin by around about 50 basis points. I think originally when you presented the iGate synergy and cost-cutting plans, we were likely to see another 30 basis points of margin improvement in 2016 on 2015. But you seem to have suggested that you've already achieved some of those cost-saving benefits in the 2015 results. Would you care to suggest how much of that EUR 40 million or 30 basis points margin improvement's already been achieved?
No, because I think it's a bit detailed and, as you imagine, even if you achieve the run rate in Q4, the impact is limited. So we have already achieved some of that, which helps as you go into 2016. But the impact on 2015 itself numbers is going to be minimal because by the time you achieve them and you cut some of these costs and you start getting the benefits, even if you're able to cut some in Q3, the benefits are only coming in Q4. So it's very minimal impact. However, you're basically going to have that now in run rate going into 2016. Also, just an element I think which is important that you take into account when you think about the margin guidance. Remember what Paul said. We did up our investment-
in certain cloud by 30 basis points. We are taking active operating margin improvement to basically fuel a bit the growth in the future. And we did mention that when we did the analyst day. If you look at our margin progression scale, we did say that the additional investment organically to boost innovation would weigh 50 basis points. So we have 30 basis points here embedded in the 2016 guidance.
And that was included in our midterm ambition. I think Emmanuel was extremely precise on that saying, "iGate brings us a large number of new clients, a reinforcement in the U.S., but did not reinforce the group in digital and cloud." And we said we will invest. So that was, I think, fully disclosed to you last June.
That is perfect. Thanks very much. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Next question is from Alexandre Bu from Deutsche Bank. Sir, please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. When you back out the first half inorganic impact from iGate in 2016, plus the synergies that you might have already achieved, I guess that probably gets you a good 60 basis points at least margin benefit for 2016. What is happening kind of underlying within same scope Capgemini? Are you actually guiding for margin expansion in 2016 or not, is the first question. The second one, just the Fahrenheit 212, I do not know if I missed this or not, but whether that acquisition provides any benefit to revenue and margin in 2016. Thanks.
Okay. On Fahrenheit, 70 consultants, so it is negligible. You can make the calculation about what 70 consultants can bring in terms of revenue. I do not think you will see much happening on your overall revenue. If it was significant, of course, as you imagine, we would have mentioned it. On iGate, I think the improvement on the margin, what you have to look at, I am not sure the calculation are completely correct. You have to factor the fact that the exchange rates have changed. So the 100 basis point we are talking about based on 2014 are less. The other thing is the profitability of Capgemini has also significantly improved. So marginally, you are going to get much less than 50 basis points. I think we estimated 40 to 45. You will have some improvement from synergies.
But if you add all of that, I do not know, you can make your own estimate. Do remember that the 11.1 to 11.3, that factors 30 basis point of additional investment. When you add that up, I think we have margin expansion beyond integrating iGate and just delivering some synergies.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Georgios Kertsos from Berenberg. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I have a question regarding the medium-term guidance, the one that you gave, I believe, in your analyst capital markets day vis-a-vis the FY 2016 guidance. So in terms of top line, I think at the time you sort of guided for anywhere between 5% and 7%, the top line CC organic growth, medium term. I am just wondering how that compares, how we should be thinking on the guidance vis-a-vis medium term and the FY 2016 guidance between 7.5% and 9.5% on top line, and in terms of operating margin expansion. That is the first part of the question. Second bit is, can you perhaps share with us, give a bit more color around the expected timeframe of the medium-term guidance that you initially provided in capital markets day?
Then I have a follow-up question, if I may. Thank you.
So listen, on the timeframe, mid-term is 4 to 5 years. We gave the guidance in 2014. That mean when you add 4 to 5 years, you add 2018 to 2019. Okay? So that answers your second question. So for us, in terms of organic growth, we are thinking of pace bit by bit. We still have some structural elements like we will have this year in Latin America, some base impact here and there. But for us, we are way on track to be able to get to the 5% to 7% mid-term. Now, if you look at the 7.5% to 9.5%, the difference, this embeds the acquisition because it had constant effects. So beyond the organic growth here, you also have the impact of acquisitions. The only thing why we are guiding on constant effects versus organic growth, because we saw that all our global competitors guide that way.
In a certain way, if you are only guiding organic growth, you basically nullify the impact of acquisition in the numbers projects. So we are basically doing like everybody.
Understood. Very clear. And the follow-up question regarding your digital and cloud segment, can you share with us the organic growth? I suspect the 23 headline figure reported must be basically includes effects, et cetera. So on the organic growth front, that is part one of the question. Second bit is around how sustainable do you see the growth in that part of the business going forward in the next 3 to 5-year period? Thank you.
The 23% is organic.
Clear.
We've not published. It's organic growth. There is a size effect. By definition, it will slow down at one moment. I cannot give you a detailed forecast for this year, but we still see quite a bit of strength. The important thing is that, remember up to now, we were talking about SMAC. Today, we talk about digital and cloud. I said I will give you a definition. When we start talking about this today, I will say what's in it. What we have in there is digital customer. We have, of course, all the analytics, which for us is Insights & Data. We have digital manufacturing, we have cloud, and we have cybersecurity.
The 22% that we now report as a percent of revenue, that include that big definition of digital and cloud, which is aligned with where we see most of our investment and most of the growth in terms of innovation coming from.
But to answer your question, it's clear that we can be above 20% as long as this represents less than a quarter of the group. The date will be assured. We will probably see something above 15%, and if it goes close to half of our revenue, it will get normalized. That's the story of a portfolio shift now, of course.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. Sir, please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Could you elaborate a little bit around the U.K. and what your expectation is for 2016? You indicated that private sector has overtaken public sector in the mix. I am just curious, are there kind of macro or micro factors, kind of headwinds that you may have built in terms of the guidance as you look at 2016?
From the U.K., if you look at the private sector, we see that pretty positive traction. So far, we do not see a slowdown. On the public sector, we will probably continue to see some decline as we start transitioning some of the elements on some of the large contracts. But on the private sector for us, it is still pretty strong growth.
Do you still anticipate, would it be a flattish growth in the U.K. in 2016?
In aggregate, we would like to see positive organic growth. I think it is a bit early to drive the right conclusions there. But overall, we are targeting today for positive organic growth in the U.K.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Stuart Mafraid from Barclays. Sir, please go ahead.
Hi. I think that is me. Two questions, if I may. First of all, could you help us a bit on the kind of tax, the cash tax guidance for 2016? Secondly, on the LPS division. Historically, this division has always outperformed in times of cyclical kind of improvement. However, over the last cycle, that has not happened. Literally over the last five years, this division kind of underperformed. I was wondering, how do you guys see this? Does this division need to be restructured on the medium term, or do you expect this to continue this slide on the performance versus the group?
Cash tax. It is a tricky one because I do not have a fully detailed forecast yet. We are still working on it. Listen, we expect the cash tax with our U.S. impact to be about 20%. This year, we are going to be below that. I do not yet have a full estimate, but if you want to normalize, you should take 20%, because this is what I would guide you to until I have a more detailed estimation myself.
On the Sogeti LPS, as we have still named it. The underperformance is one unit, high-tech engineering in France that was at 75% relying on aeronautics, and the end of the development of new airplane by Airbus is the only cause. We have seen a wonderful margin, mediocre growth in the U.S. By the way, the growth is significantly higher this start of the year.
H1 looks good, no?
H1 looks good, which is a good sign about the U.S. demand. We had a better performance overall, better than average in Holland, where it's big, and a somewhat mixed situation in Nordic. Because the Nordic market moves toward offshore, which is not Sogeti forte, of course. Overall, my view is the Sogeti people plan a growth that is aligned with the group. So it's the same kind of range, the organic one there. There are no high-gain share. So Sogeti people moderately optimistic for the year.
Paul, just to follow up from that.
Sorry.
the last five years. So you don't think this is a structural issue given how the market dynamics
No.
have changed for this part of the business?
No. It's really Sogeti High Tech in Toulouse.
The rest has been quite okay. They managed a pretty nice transition of the portfolio of activities over the last two, three years.
Okay, clear. Thank you.
Outside the perimeter.
Thank you, sir. Next question is from Adam Wood from Morgan Stanley. Sir, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question, and congratulations on the margins and cash flow at the end of the year. Two, if I could. First of all, on the digital business. I think you'd spoken before, Paul, around this being more of an organic effort rather than driven by M&A, and then fearing making acquisitions in the pure digital space in terms of how you'd manage them. But there's obviously been a couple of deals that have happened since. Could you give us a little update on how you see that progressing? Is this going to continue to be organic investment? Is there more room for M&A? And does that split between the more advertising-driven agencies not being a focus on the M&A side, does that still apply? Secondly, just on free cash flow, again, a great job in 2015.
How much room is there still to optimize on the cash flow side, first of all within the old Capgemini business, but also within iGate, which probably wasn't as strong a cash generator as Cap's been over the years? Thank you.
On digital, frankly, we haven't started any conversation on large digital marketing entities. It's small addition, frankly, on Salesforce. Take an example, we are number one in France, we are number one and number two in Australia. We have some very good countries. We hadn't started in Germany. It's a small acquisition. It gives us a foot into the door, and it was not an expensive one at all. In what we announced today, Fahrenheit, clearly it's more reinforcing our consulting footprint in the U.S. Frankly, we are quite strong in Europe. We are number one in France. I think we are very sizable in Germany and Holland and the U.K. Our U.S. was thin. This group represents a reinforcement by 25% in the U.S., and we want to be big in the U.S., so it's not only digital. It happens that we will do something on digital.
These are small reinforcement when we need one, but the main effort will be organic, and that is the investment we point to that. Okay. You had the question of the organic free cash flow. Just know that part of the over-performance in 2015 is already coming from iGate, because the iGate guys, they say they had the best ever free cash flow quarter in Q4. Because we started, I said one of my objectives as soon as we did the acquisition is to immediately put in place our cash processes and our cash management around operational cash, and this has paid off already in 2015. There is always improvement on both sides to be able to be achieved. However, we have already progressed, as you know, quite a bit in the last few years, but every year we try to do better.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir. Next and last question is from Mr. Brennan. Sir, please go ahead.
Great. If I can just sneak two in, that would be ideal. The first one is just on the attrition rate across the group. It feels like across the industry, we are seeing attrition rates picking up. Have you got any concerns at all about wage inflation as we go into 2016 and what that could mean for margins? Secondly, can I just follow up on some modeling details? There is the $70 million of higher interest charges that you flagged, but is there anything else there that we need to consider? Thanks.
Okay. So inflation. We had this discussion about inflation especially in India for the last 10 years. We absorb. We have gone through cycles of 10%, 20%, 30% growth, get down, back down to 10% growth. There are always pockets which are hot that you have to manage. There are some areas, the question about managing attrition is not linked to overall salary increases. It is linked to surgical management of your attrition, identifying where the pools, where the people. Sometimes it is promotion, sometimes it is being the competitor targeting some of your hot skills. If you do very active management, you are able to manage attrition down, which is what we are working on in a lot of detail without having the big inflation in salaries. We are not concerned at this stage, I can tell you, on inflation salaries, at least in India.
Onshore today, you can have areas like cybersecurity where you have inflation in salaries. But it end up getting translated in clients willing to pay more for this hot skill.
But where would you like to get attrition to? What would be the optimal run rate?
My view, the attrition is a little high in India, but it is in small pockets. We report something as an average ratio that we just published. But there are peaks here and there, and Aiman Ezzat and I were in India late January, and we started a program of fighting in some domain at some level of seniority and skill. It is not just an average 19% everywhere. There were real pockets where I think we had to do something, and we have started that end of January. Cash modeling, besides the $70 million of additional cash out on the taxes, on the coupons, there is also going to be some increase in cash tax. Remember, one of the things that as we increase profitability, at the end of the day, we end up by paying more taxes. Our DTAs are getting completely eroded bit by bit.
We still have the U.S. one, but besides that, the rest is getting eroded. At the end of the day, we'll end up increasing a bit our cash tax. That's why I say, as opposed to what we see this year, as you see, it's going to be quite low in terms of cash tax. We should model something around 20%, which should be more realistic over time.
Just to clarify, the EUR 815 in 2015 is after the payment to Brazil. On an organic basis, it's much higher. Is that the right way to think about it?
Yes, technically, it was an operational debt, so it comes out of free cash flow. I didn't want to improve the numbers by that, but you can make that difference, yes.
Just which line in the cash flow does that appear?
I'm sorry?
Which line in the cash flow?
It was counted as an operational expense, so it was an operational debt, so it had to weigh on the cash flow. Technically, we cannot take it out. It's part of the organic free cash flow definition.
Okay.
But you can neutralize it. Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
It's a one-off, clearly. Okay. Thank you, guys. I think it was a comprehensive session. I think we covered. We will be on the road for several trips and roadshow with several of you. Hopefully, we will answer any question. Emma and Vincent and myself are available to clarify any ongoing questions. Thank you. I think it was a good year, and we expect to deliver something nice in 2016. Next meeting will be late April with our Q1 results. Thank you. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.