Hello, and welcome to the Teleperformance First Quarter 2023 Revenue Call. My name is Jess, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, there will be the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over to your host, Quy Nguyen-Ngoc, Head of Investor Relations at Teleperformance, to begin today's call. Thank you.
Yes. Good morning, good evening, everyone. Thank you all for your presence today. Financial press release related to the first quarter of 2023 revenue has been published today at 5:45 P.M. Paris time. Slides of the presentation are available on Teleperformance website in the Financial Publications page of the Investor Relations section. As usual, the presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. A replay of the conference call and the webcast will be available straight after the presentation. Connection details are mentioned in the invitation to the first quarter presentation. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements that address our expected future performance and that, by their nature, address matters that are uncertain.
These expectations are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. For a detailed description of these factors and uncertainties, please refer to the recent control section in our 2022 Universal Registration Document available on Teleperformance website. I'll let the floor to Bhupender Singh, President of Transformation at Teleperformance, and Olivier Rigaudy, CFO and Deputy CEO of Teleperformance. Thank you.
Thank you, Quy, hello, everyone. I'll start the presentation by giving the highlights of quarter one and also our updated outlook for full year. I'll hand over to Olivier after that to give us more detailed information on the quarter one. Can you go to the next slide, please? Yeah. In an uncertain start to the year globally, TP has had a solid start, and we have delivered 8.6% like-for-like growth, excluding COVID contracts. Including COVID contracts, it's somewhat lower. As expected, we have seen some slowdown in the digital commerce sectors, but as TP is much more diversified, that slowdown has been compensated by strong momentum in some other sectors, including social media, financial services, travel, and the government agencies, excluding COVID contract.
Other thing that we have seen is we've seen an acceleration for offshore activities. That has had dual impact. On one hand, it has lowered our revenue. The impact within first quarter is about negative six points on growth. Conversely, it has also improved our profit margins. The other highlight for this quarter is the positive impact we've had both on our specialized services TLS business and the TLScontact business because of opening of China. Most of you would have read about the agreement we have signed with Colombia a few days back, and hopefully that puts an end to that chapter. Next slide, please. Coming to the full year, we expect this growth to continue for the rest of the year also. Having said that, given the uncertain environment, we have seen some slowdown in decisions.
We've actually got some big wins in the last two weeks, but overall, we have seen some slowdown in decisions. We don't know how long this uncertainty will continue, so it's difficult to give a precise number, and hence we are giving a range of 8%-10% for like-for-like growth, excluding the COVID contracts. That translates to around 7% growth rate, including the COVID contracts. What we have greater control over and are more confident about is our bottom line, our EBITDA margin, and we are raising the target for that to 16% compared to 15.5% of last year and 15.7% that we had previously guided. This is driven by two positive dynamics. One is business mix.
Our specialized services and higher profit offshoring businesses are growing faster than the average, and hence that's contributing to this growth. Second, our operating efficiencies, especially in the core business, are kicking in. As a result of that, we have a fair degree of confidence that even at the lower end of our revenue guidance, we should be able to meet or exceed our earnings estimate for the year. We continue to pursue acquisitions to build our Cube, so whether that's for adjacent lines of business, especially the digital services, or domain expertise, especially in the healthcare vertical, or to build out complementary geographies. We continue to build out and deploy our AI in general, and more specifically, GPT capabilities. I'll talk about that in a moment. Next slide, please.
Many of you have asked us about GPT and what's the impact on TP because of that. We thought we'll address that upfront. As we mentioned before, over the past few years, TP has been working on AI and specifically on OpenAI for GPT. We actually have had an application layer connect since 2021, and we have got multiple use cases today, and we have also developed our own product called TP-GPT based on this. This is a bit of crystal gazing because the reality is no one knows the answer as of today. Just a couple of weeks back, there was an analyst report that talked about 30% impact on volume automation or cannibalization over the five years. There are some which say 20% in three years. This is our best estimate.
This is what we have seen, not only in GPT, but also how we have seen the industry develop because this is not new. We have seen this first with RPA, then with machine learning, then with conversational AI, and now generative AI like GPT. In that sense, this is our best estimate as of today, and we expect that somewhere around 20%-30% of our current volumes will get automated because of this over the next 3 years or so. We have anyway seen about 5%-7% volume automation because of RPA, machine learning, and other AI over the past few years. There is somewhat of an acceleration versus what we have seen, but not dramatically different from what we have seen earlier. There are activities that are easier to automate and which have, to some extent, already been automated.
There are activities which are relatively difficult to automate. In addition, as TP has always believed in embracing new technologies, it also creates new opportunities for us, and it creates opportunities for us in three areas. One, it actually is a great enabler for Teleperformance's value proposition, and I'll illustrate that with an example on next slide. Second, it optimizes or it can be used to optimize our own operations. We've already started this for our help desk for HR and IT, and then soon we will be using it for other internal functions like recruitment, training, QA, knowledge management, workforce management. Also it offers an opportunity to be a new service line, either to support our clients in GPT implementation or to educate machines and computers on AI. If you go to the next slide, please.
This is an example how we are leveraging GPT to enable our value proposition. I've deliberately taken a CX example because traditional CX still accounts about 50% of our business. The first one is a standard call flow that you see in an entirely human manner. You start with the greetings and authentication. There is an intent discovery, understanding what the customer's request is. Bases that request, our agent has to have knowledge of the client's processes, systems to be able to address that request. Finally, there is the confirmation. Sometimes it may be a regulatory need requirement, or sometimes it's just to make sure that the customer's needs are met.
Post that, there is a wrap up where the agent has to write notes in the client's systems. At each stage of this, GPT can actually help us both reduce the time that is needed and also simplify the activities. In an intent discovery basis, the text and the screens, GPT can actually summarize to our agent what the customer may be looking for. In fulfillment, our agent doesn't need to have detailed knowledge of client's processes and systems. The GPT can actually help identify the right resolution. On confirmation and wrap up, many of these activities can be done in automated manner.
What's the net result? The net result is that we save about 40% time. The agent doesn't need to have detailed knowledge of client's processes, systems, the training time and learning curve is much faster. Again, because the person doesn't have to manually toggle through different systems and other things, it reduces the number of errors. Because the handle time is less, the end customer experience is much better. Simpler, faster, better. That's what we are seeing, and that's what we will continue to use to enable our operations to be done faster. With that, I'll hand over to Olivier.
Thank you, Bhupe. Good morning, good afternoon to all. I'm going to give you much more detail on the Q1 figures. Next slide, please. Here is a standard slide that you are used to see around these last two years. Just to break down what are the different pies of the growth of the sales. Of course, we had the currency effect that was negative this quarter, mainly driven by the Colombian pesos, the Egyptian pound that dramatically reduced its value, and to a lesser extent, the Indian rupee, despite the potential, the still positive impact from the stronger US dollar. We still have a significant impact of COVID support, around EUR 131 million this quarter, which is a big stuff.
We have a small effect of consolidation due to PSG Global Solutions, less than EUR 20 million. The like-for-like growth is EUR 168 million, which is 8.6%, as shown as presented a minute ago. Let's go much more in detail of the different zone to enter the business. Please, next slide. Here is presentation of the classical presentation. Now, you remember that we are following the business in three dimensions for Core Services: North America and APAC, LATAM, and Europe and EMEA. As you can see, the Core Services and D.I.B.S. is growing at 7.3% like-for-like, excluding COVID support contract.
This, of course, I'll come back later on that, include all the offshorization of some contracts that have been done, notably from North America to Philippines and to a lesser extent, to India. That's the reason why the growth of like-for-like of North America is 0.8. While LATAM is still growing at 7% in this growth, despite the difficult Mexico. I'll come back a minute to that. Europe also growing fast. As you can see, Specialized Services continue to drive a significant growth, close to 20%. 17%, to be precise.
Of course, driven, fed by two things: the continued recovery of TLScontact, and I'm sure for those who are traveling, you are seeing so many people in the plane or in the airport that's going to continue all along the year, and of course, a steady development of LanguageLine Solutions as we are used to. Next slide, please. North America and APAC. The growth is modest, 0.8. Of course, we had, as mentioned earlier on, a continued acceleration of growth in offshore activity in India and Philippines, to clearly the detriment of the U.S. domestic activity.
This, as explained earlier on, has an impact on the sales figure, but which is negative, but of course, has a positive impact on our margin, because the margin that we are, I would say, delivering in this country are significant higher than what we have in domestic countries. We continue to have a sustained growth in Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is still low, is still small, but we have a rapid recovery of business in China, and we have new contracts that are going that just started, that have been a little delayed, as mentioned by Bhupe. We'll come back. We just signed recently significant contract in the BFSI sector. Next slide, please. Please, next slide.
LATAM.
LATAM, here we are. Significant growth again, 7% growth. As you probably remember, we had a high basis of comparison in this region for the last 2 or 3 years. As I told you before, very good, very robust growth in travel, social media, online entertainment, and financial service sector. We had a particularly strong growth in Colombia and Peru, despite what you heard about Colombia over the last months. We are developing very quickly in this country. Where we are much more limited growth is in Mexico offshore segments, partially eats by the level of the Mexican pesos, and partially by the fact that people decided to move to other region like Philippines and India. Next slide, please. Europe.
Europe, of course, has been impacted by the COVID line. Most all of the EUR 131 million were reported last year in Europe. If you take that out, we are growing at close to 14%. What we observed is a sustained growth in multilingual activity, which are significant to the region. We have Greece, we have Portugal, we have Spain, but all of them are growing, and specifically Greece is growing fast. We develop also, as you know, since now, since the beginning of the year, U.K. is part of the EMEA again. We have very significant growth in U.K. for financial service and administration, and also in Germany, notably for nearshore activity in source of Europe, notably Turkey and other country in the Balkans.
Next slide, please. To finish, we have the Specialized Services, as I told you, close to 20% growth, 17% growth. Very good recovery in TLScontact business activity. Just the start of the reopening of China, but we are going to see that probably much more in the second part of the year, specifically with spring and summer. We continue to have a sustained growth of LanguageLine Solutions. We had a better Q1.
Sometimes we have Easier Q1 than other to other region. We have continuing, I would say approach with switch up ramping up of video versus the purely OPI or over the phone interpretation. We have growth in global solution. As a whole, as you can see, specialized service continue to deliver significant growth, good margin in an environment which have been clearly worsened over the last months. That's what we can tell. Next slide, please. About the first quarter, we are of course, available, Bhupender and myself, to answer your question that you probably have.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally as you'll be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one if you'd like to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening or good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two please. The change in the revenue guidance in little over three months suggests that maybe the trends have changed a lot faster than you had anticipated. Can you please let us know the level of caution baked into the new revenue growth outlook for the year? W hat assumptions have you made around client decision-making, for example? Or to put it another way, how much of the growth outlook reflects business that has already been won versus growth that you still need to win? The second question is on the 2025 outlook, there hasn't been an update in this release. Given the trends around AI or offshorization, and obviously the margin, has is coming in a little bit better than expected, should we expect an update on this at the second quarter results? Thank you.
You take the first, I take the second? Or what?
Yeah. Okay, I'll do that. In fact, I was thinking of taking
Of, of
taking the second one first.
Of course. You do what you want.
Suhasini, on the 2025 outlook, no change. We are well underway. We can give you an update now.
Yeah.
We don't need to wait for second quarter. It's perfectly there's no change there. On the 8%-10% guidance for the full year and our confidence there. No doubt there has been some increase in uncertainty in the market, especially post the SVB crash. While we were not directly impacted, but we did see certain degree of delays in decision-making by clients across multiple sectors. We saw that through most of February, March, and early April also.
In the last couple of weeks, some of these decisions, and these are big, huge decisions that were pending for months, have been taken. Now we don't know whether this is the start of other decisions also. Our pipeline is strong, but we are seeing. So that's why we are being somewhat more cautious. Rather than giving a strong number, we are giving a range there. I think that's the best we can say at this stage.
If I can add, probably what was not totally expected at this level is the level of the offshorization that we have lived in this quarter. Because if you take the 0.6 that has moved mostly from US domestic to Philippine, we would have been at 9.2 in term of growth. I prefer to be at 8.6 with a higher margin than to be at 9.2 with a lower margin, let's put it this way. This is exactly what happened because I believe there is a lot of clients that are asking us, given this global environment, to move much more offshore and quicker than what we expected at the beginning of the year.
Thank you.
Next question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking my question. I will take one by one. Again, if you could provide a little bit more color on the new guidance that you're providing. Is the cut to your growth guidance entirely related to more offshoring or is there also an element, for example, of potential impact on volumes in content moderation or a slowdown in your digital clients? If you could please comment on that. I will continue with the other questions. Thanks.
Yeah. Yeah, Simona. more offshoring.
That's
definitely, that Olivier quantified it for Q1, 0.6. There is an impact because of that. Again, it has a negative impact on revenues but has a positive impact on the margins. Content moderation, no, we have not seen any slowdown. That business continues to grow. In terms of other areas, again, yes, there is some slowdown in volumes from the digital commerce and those type of companies, but we are seeing compensation by sectors like travel, by bank and financial services.
The B2C.
Some other sectors are compensating for that, and that's where TP's diversified nature and resilience comes in.
Okay. Thank you very much. Can you please provide a little bit more color on what is underpinning the upgrade to your margin guide? You just said that more offshoring was effectively a headwind of 60 basis points to your organic growth. If I do like a back of the envelope calculation, that should explain only like 10 basis points upgrade to your margin guidance. What are really the moving parts that are guiding for this 30 business points upgrade?
First of all, we are speaking of the Q1. Do we need to make your computation on Q1? I don't know where we will be in term of showing at the end of the year. That's the reason why we spoke with eight to 10. That's the first point. Second point, you understood that TLS and the specialized service with TLS notably is growing fast and is going to be part of the story that we know. We have also a good development in other offshore region. I was thinking to Turkey, I was thinking to Egypt and to a lesser extent from South Africa for U.K. All of that explains this upgrade in margin. Maybe we might say that our margin target is also helped by the consolidation of PSG, that I'm sure you remember that is going to happen for the full year in 2023.
Thank you. Then please one more question. You have been talking about over the past few years as seeing roughly 5%-7% of your volumes being automated. What have been the impact on prices that you have experienced? Now considering that you are expecting an acceleration in terms of automation of your volumes to 20%-30%, what again would be the potential impact here on prices and your discussions with clients? Lastly on
The 20% is for on three year period, huh?
Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah.
Just to be clear, it's not a huge acceleration. We are speaking of 1 or 2% additional potential change in per year.
Sure. How is that impacting prices and how that has impacted prices historically?
The 20% is a 4% or 5%.
Yeah. Simona, the pricing to some extent has not been dramatically impacted because of two reasons. One is that in many cases we have moved to more of a transaction pricing, and because of that you've not seen a deterioration in kind of in our margins and because we've continued to grow, get more business from these clients. You've not seen a big impact of this, you've only seen the net impact. The second thing is that lot of automation over the past few years, we've also leveraged to be able to take care of the inflationary wage pressures. If I put in simple terms, if we, let's say, have a requirement or we have been processing for a client, work worth 100 people.
Now, if we were to give all the inflation related increase and pass that on to our client it's a kind of a lose-lose situation for both us and the client, because they also need to compete in the marketplace. What we've been able to do is that we've been able to leverage automation to be able to keep the net unit cost for the customer for processing a given work to be at a similar level. That's what we have been doing, hence you've not seen a big change in the pricing.
Thank you. Then sorry, just a follow-up on content moderation. Could you comment why you have decided to go back into highly egregious since announcing the exit in November? Thanks.
Yeah. I think, Simona, we have gone through this quite a few times. The reality is we did look at all the different stakeholders, whether it was our employees, whether it was our clients, whether it is for the wider society. We thought that it was best to actually continue doing this activity.
All the audit were positive, as you can remember. Everybody was okay on this decision.
The next question comes from the line of Sucheta Awasthi from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good evening. If I can also ask my questions one by one, I got three, please. The first, Bhupender, I think you talked about some operational efficiencies that are helping the margins this year. Can you talk that about a little bit in more detail? Is there some sort of internal costing program or automation effort? What, what are those, please?
Yeah, it's a combination of three things, Anwesh. One, the just operating leverage is coming in. As we are growing, we don't need to increase our SG&A by that level. Even if we do not reduce, we get more for the same. Number two, as I talked about, we are leveraging automation for our internal activities, whether it's for internal helpdesk and other things. That's coming in. Number three, that is there, but it's not making a big impact. In fact, it's somewhat negative in 2023, is that we are escalating our shared services in lower cost locations. It is a negative impact in 2023. It's not a positive impact. That's something that you'll see the positive impact in future years.
Yeah, that's very useful. Just sort of very interesting comments around the 20%-30% volume automation over the next three years. I think the big debate is will you still be, you know, able to keep those volumes or to provide in a different way, or there's a risk that clients would sort of in-house those activities. If you could provide some comment, would be useful. Of the 5%-7% volume that were automated over the last four years, have they gone in-house, or were you able to keep them? If so, like what's gonna be your view there?
Yeah. Anish, to some extent there is a bit of crystal gazing on that 20%-30% and also the long-term future scenarios. What I can tell you based the experience that we've had so far is it does drive certain degree of vendor consolidation. When we started this journey five, six years back, the client may have had six suppliers, six partners, they may have brought it down to four. Over time, it may go down to two. That's kind of what we expect, in the at least in the next two to three years. Very long term, we don't know.
This 20%-30% is just effectively, sorry, an assumption that is unclear. What is important is to see that this is something that we are leading for the last four or five years by 4%, 5%. It's not a dramatic change. We wanted just to show that. Finally, the group has been able, despite this global trend, not only to grow without COVID, of course. This is exactly what we are seeing because you are going to be more and more complex, more and more accurate, and more and more demanding for our client and the drags consolidation as Rupi was just raising the point.
Maybe just sort of finally continuing the topic again, sorry. If we sort of think about a contract which was let's say 100% voice five years back, and today let's say it's 60/40 voice and non-voice, are you able to make the absolute amount of profit you were making on that contract five years back today as well? I mean, presumably the mix will change, the gross margin might change, but there is more operational efficiencies. When we just think about the absolute profit, are the profits still the same on a contract where the mix has changed from voice to sort of voice to non-voice?
I'm not sure you are comparing April to April.
Yeah.
The product that you were selling four or five years ago has nothing or a few to what we are doing today. Maybe you can.
Yeah, yeah. I think that's the reason I was a bit like thinking through it is it's difficult, Anish, because the product itself has changed, and we also don't measure it that way. One particular contract, when you say a particular line of business, maybe it has because of automation and other things, the margin may have improved, increased. The absolute profit may have to some extent come down. That has been more than compensated by additional lines of business, additional products, and additional activities that we may be doing for that customer. It's a bit more complicated than that.
Product are not fixed. We are not delivering the same product that five years ago or four years ago, even for three years ago.
Okay. I'll leave it there. I'm sure we'll continue to debate this going forward. Thanks for your answers.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Antonin Baudry from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, everyone. Thank you to take my questions. Will it possible to know how you position the performance in Q1 within your full year guidance? Do you think with the ramp up of the big contract you just announced that the Q1 will be the lower quarter, the weaker quarter of the year? What is your visibility about Q2, Q3 on Q4 on which kind of rhythm of growth should we expect during the year? Thank you.
Good question, Antonin. Thank you. Thank you to raise it. This is clearly. As you know, Q2 is not the highest quarter of the year, clearly. What we are seeing is, as was mentioned by Rupi a minute ago, that we have significant contract, notably in BFSI, that are going to start at the end of Q2. We don't know exactly when because we just signed them, so it's difficult to tell you that. Clearly, Q3 and Q4 will be much more geared with this contract than Q2. That's what we see. As a whole, we do believe that we are going to have a guidance that will be around this 8.10% that we just explained to you. It's difficult to tell you.
You know, it's the first time that we give such a large guidance. It's because it's unclear even for us. What we do, we know where we could be at the lowest point, but we could be at a higher point. The idea for us is just to manage as much as we can on margin to confirm, to show that Teleperformance is a resilient business. Whatever the global condition are, and we know they are difficult to read, whether it's a macroeconomic or geopolitical, that's Teleperformance is there to deliver this margin. That's what I can tell you. I don't know if it's-
Thank you. I would, yep. I would have a second question on artificial intelligence, on how we can consider that in the trend of growth on margins. Is it the same than offshoring finally for you on your clients a way to decrease costs at a higher margin that means a lower level of revenues for higher margin? Or is it an EBITDA, the total EBITDA, net EBITDA finally to what you are bringing for clients currently?
Yeah, from a modeling perspective, I think it is not dissimilar from, let's say, the offshorization. Let's say, unit cost may come down 20%, 30%. Unit price may come down by 20%-30%, but your costs are going down by 50%, so there is a margin improvement for you, and there is a margin or a lower cost for the client.
if I may, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
If I may, it's a competitive advantage. I'm not sure that all your competitor are able to deliver such product. Given the size and given the footprint of Teleperformance, the ability to deliver such product on a high level, on a large scale is helping dramatically the growth of Teleperformance. This is something which is sometimes forgotten. That's something which is absolutely key to understand in the dynamics that we are seeing as we speak.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of David Cerdan from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good evening, gentlemen. I have just one question. If we look at your presentation, I would like you to further comment what is. What do you mean by as a new service line to support GPT implementation in client environment? Can you give some example of what you could do or what you are doing? Do you think that ChatGPT and some new or some other artificial intelligence service provider could be your client as those guys should have a large basis of clients? Thank you.
Yeah, David. We are discussing with some of the providers of this platform to be their implementation partner. Yes, that's one of the things. In terms of what does implementation partnership mean? There are upfront design activities. Solution design, where is this capability most relevant? First, prioritizing that. Second, once you prioritize, design the process flows, the different links and connectivity. Number three, quality assurance number and quality control, and then ongoing implementation and refinement of that. These things. There are not that many companies have the experience of actually deploying this. Everyone talks about it.
Yeah.
When you actually deploy to drive real benefit, as I described, 40% reduction in the average handle time, 90% improvement in accuracy levels. Leveraging that actual practical experience to deploy that in client situations is what we are looking at, and which is not very dissimilar for some of the other digital services that we have done in the recent past.
Okay. Thank you.
Maybe we can take a last question. I don't know if there are so many.
Next question comes from the line of Nicole Manion from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Two actually. Got two quick ones. Firstly, on offshoring trend, as I think it's actually started to emerge a bit from sort of Q2, Q3 onwards last year. Should we expect that to be less of a drag as you move through the year? Or has it picked up to such an extent so far this year that you do still sort of see a similar type of headwind? That's the first question.
Headwind or tailwind.
I don't know whether it's a headwind or tailwind because that's the main question at the end of the day. You know, making sales that doesn't bring value or making smaller sales that bring value is probably something that makes sense to us. Frankly, you know, the level of offshoring of Teleperformance has dramatically increased over the last year. Having much more offshore, delivering much more results, I would say, I don't see that as a headwind, frankly. At the end of the day, what matters is much more our EBITDA figure or EPS figures and much more our potential 0.6% or 0.8% or 0.4% that may change from on the sales figure.
That is your point. What I would just highlight, because this is what Teleperformance is doing over the last year, not only we grow, not only we grow, but we are able to deliver better margin. Take the figure over the last years. We have constantly increased our margin as a percentage and as a volume. This is going to continue in 2023 while delivering higher cash. The fact that to be a big I would say animal across the world helps to do that.
This is one of the strength of Teleperformance, to have different option. To move from Mexico, to move from Colombia, to move from India or Filipino or Turkey or Egypt or wherever, or South Africa or U.K., is no doubt a big chance for Teleperformance and for its clients. I'm not seeing that this way. That's what I can. That's the way I can answer. I don't know if you.
Yep. Yep, that's very helpful. Thank you. I'm just more thinking about the, just the headwind on revenue growth. I understand that it's accretive on the margin. Just one final quick question. Could you perhaps give an update on the balance of growth you're seeing across new versus existing clients? Historically, obviously, you've been very good at driving both. I'm just thinking about your comments around some people delaying bigger decisions maybe, and whether or not you're seeing that more on, say, the new client side than existing or... Is there anything you're seeing there really would be very helpful. Thanks.
I don't think we have the exact numbers right now.
Yeah.
The delays in decision-making, what we were referring to were more on the new clients.
It's much more.
Got it.
if I may, bigger client, bigger sales t he fact that Teleperformance has grown over the year enables to catch, of course, longer, more complex deal, different language, different deliver offshore, onshore, different delivery center, different issues that makes such deals that are big, longer to close. They are. We are not speaking of small deals. We are speaking of big deals. That's the reason probably that we are seeing today. To a certain extent, it shows how Teleperformance is, and given its size and given its landscape, is more and more, I would say able to capture the different element of growth across the world and across the verticals, the cube strategies that we just mentioned a minute ago.
Great. Thank you.
Maybe we can take a last question. I don't know if there are so many left.
Two questions left.
Let's do the last two question.
The next question comes from the line of Benjamin Wild from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, everybody, and good evening. Thanks for taking my question. Just one from me, and it's on the capital allocation. In the past, you have made the comment that you would not acquire a target on a higher multiple than yourselves. Given the current multiple, is that still the case? Separately, what is holding you back from a large share buyback following the one at the end of last year? Thank you very much.
Share buyback, this is not today as we speak, the policy. Clearly, I'm not happy to command the stock price, given the low level. I must confess that we could consider it. This decision has not been made yet. Why? Because we are operating in a sector that is growing, where Teleperformance is growing, and need to have firepower to take advantage of this global environment. We do believe and we do believe that the global environment that we are living will probably open new opportunities and we are stick. We will try to stick to our capital allocation rules, which are not going to buy companies at higher multiples than us.
Yes, we have always been disciplined, and we intend to maintain that discipline to buy companies around our multiple. It's true, the current share price is creating some constraints to that. For the right asset, we may need to be a bit more aggressive.
We're trying to take
At this stage, fortunately, not only our share price kind of, fortunately. Even the global market, the valuations are down. We continue to look and evaluate opportunities, the valuation may not be crazy.
Just on AI and GPT, would you consider an organic investment in that area to continue to build out your capabilities?
Yeah. That is part of our Cube strategy. The line of business includes digital services and AI implementation, AI capabilities is part of that. It's a big thing. Answer is yes.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Let's take the last question, please.
The final question that comes from the line of Karl Green from Citi. Please go ahead.
Now. Hi there. Thank you. Thank you very much for taking my question. It is just also with reference to GPT and AI. I just wanted to ask you, so you flag a slight acceleration in terms of automation in volumes. On a net basis, do you see it as a net positive or negative if you also take into account the opportunities that you talk about? What's your feeling? I know it's crystal ball stuff, but do you see it as an opportunity on a net basis or?
Yeah.
Thank you.
Mark, we see it as a positive, as an opportunity more than a risk, for two reasons. One, just our culture of embracing new developments. That I think does help us. Number two, the experience over the last five, six years. A lot of these doomsday scenarios have been painted in the past also. Every time these opportunities, if you embrace them well, they actually become truly opportunities as opposed to risk.
It create new needs to a certain extent. New needs, new features, new product, new whatever. If Teleperformance has shown in the past the ability to size that.
Understood. Thank you very much for your feedback.
We have to thank you. I hope you understood everything. As a final remark, I just wanted to let you know that Teleperformance is not only growing but delivering improved margins. That I believe you understood that, and I'm sure we'll see them, we will see them again together quickly. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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