Welcome to today's Teleperformance call, presenting the finalization of the acquisition of Majorel and the Q3 and first nine months 2023 revenue of the company. My name is Karen, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Daniel Julien, CEO of Teleperformance, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Karen. So good day, and thank you for joining us as we are celebrating at the same time the finalization of Majorel acquisition and as we are sharing our first nine months actual results. I'm very excited to share my perspective about Majorel and what it means for the future of our group, the new Teleperformance. Then when I will be done, Olivier is going to present you the numbers, last quarter numbers and the nine months, and Olivier Rigaudy, who is the CFO and Deputy CEO of the group. And then we will answer your question, and we will answer as much as we can in the time that we have. And Bhupender Singh, who is the other Deputy CEO of the group, will join us for the Q&A. So next, please. Yes. So the new Teleperformance.
The new Teleperformance with Majorel. It's all about transformation and performance, of course. First, your group remains the number one global leader in customer experience outsourcing and digital integrated business services. We are going to be roughly 500,000 employees. To give you an idea of the integration of the IT, this represents more or less EUR 450 million of IT OpEx per year, and more than 6,500 IT specialists. Besides that, we have a team of 3,000 experts in consulting, analytics, digital product, and Six Sigma processing. This is the new Teleperformance. What are the key financials for 2023 in aggregated pro forma figures? We are going to be at a revenue level a little bit above EUR 10 billion, with an EBITDA that will be a little bit above EUR 2 billion.
Aggregate free cash flow that should be in the range of EUR 1 billion. And, in fact, our debt level will be, versus EBITDA, in the range of 2x. Something important, the cost synergy that we expected have been confirmed, and Olivier Rigaudy is going to explain that more in details later on, very well into the EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million initial range. Last, the new geographical split of our activities is rebalanced, with the Americas being 45% of the business, Europe and Africa and APAC 44% of the business, and our specialized services 11% of the business. Next, please.
What is important today is that Teleperformance will be in a leadership position or in a major competitive position, meaning number two or number three, in nine of the top ten markets of the world by GDP: U.S., China, Germany, India, U.K., France, Italy, Brazil, Canada. Systematic presence in a dominant position or leadership position. Here on the map you can see, in magenta, the TP presence, and in blue, the Majorel presence. Next, please. What is important, and these are the lessons of the map: First, it's the fact that we are an augmented business leader, augmented by geographies. The acquisition of Majorel strengthened our position in the German and French-speaking market.... I always had a lot of respect for Majorel for their strong performance on these two markets.
We scale up our APAC presence, and in fact, we multiply by two our presence on APAC, giving us a very significant position for a non-Asian business. And we become the largest presence partner and player in Africa, whether French-speaking Africa or English-speaking Africa. Then the verticals. Again, Majorel is a very well-run company by talented people with a long experience in business process outsourcing. And this acquisition brings to Teleperformance an expertise and a presence in the banking and financial service in Europe. Teleperformance is very present in banking and financial services in the U.S., in Latin America, in India, but not so much in Europe. This is over. Second, Majorel has a strong presence in managing end-to-end complex business process for the insurance in Europe. This is also an addition to our expertise.
And finally, Majorel has developed a comprehensive digital platform, including social media and omnichannel for the luxury goods industry, specifically on the Chinese market, that we intend to develop on other major market that do not Europe or U.S., but like Brazil or India. We bring also additional expertise. The end-to-end insurance claim management, which is a pretty sophisticated multi stakeholder process. Different insurance companies have to deal together. You need to deal with the expert, you need to deal with the people who got an accident. And in auto and home property, Majorel has a strong expertise. Complex middle and back office fulfillment management coming from this story, and specifically for the automotive industry. Of course, the cloud transformation and integration, where there is a dedicated force based in Europe and Middle East.
A full digital marketing platform for LATAM, and this social media and omnichannel platform for luxury industry in APAC that I was mentioning to- before. And right now, just to give you a sense of, the way we embrace AI, I mean Gen AI and large language model, together, Teleperformance and Majorel, we have more than 100 Gen AI application in development on combined basis, both for internal purpose and to serve our clients. Next, please. So you can imagine that I'm extremely proud, and thankful, to lead such a group of talented people. And in fact, working together, we decided to make it simpler, leaner in terms of organization chart, reducing the layers and getting back to something which is the full P&L accountability by region. We are focused in excellence in delivery and in innovation.
For the core services, Bhupender Singh, who is Deputy CEO and Chief Transformation Officer, leads the two major regions, the Americas, where Agustin Grisanti becomes the president from Alaska to Ushuaia, and the EMEA and APAC, where Thomas Mackenbrock, who was the CEO of Majorel, takes over the region. Of course, we have a significant group of global clients that need to be managed as one, and our Global Chief Client Officer is Miranda Collard, who is a U.S. citizen. On the other side, Scott Klein continues to be the CEO for our specialized services, Teri O'Brien, our Global Chief Legal and Compliance Officer, and Olivier Rigaudy, Deputy CEO and Group CFO. Below this line, a large group of top leaders and managers from Majorel take accountability for many clusters. Next, please.
Now, now, just a quick snapshot on our 2023 revenue. It's a challenging year. Everybody know that. It's challenging on all the macro: social, politics, business. And this challenging year has defined for the IT industry in Silicon Valley what has been called the year of efficiency, and has slowed down many decision process. Still, I'm very proud and happy to report that our revenue like-for-like are up by +6% on the nine months, excluding the one-time COVID business, of course, and our Q3 revenue were up by +4% like-for-like. For the full year 2023, today, with the peak season of the Q4, we continue to have for objective to be around +6%.
Of course, excluding the potential volatility correlated to countries who have hyperinflation that can have an impact of ±0.5%. Olivier Rigaudy will give more explanation later on. We continue to target an EBITA margin around 16%, and we are going to consolidate Majorel from November 1, 2023, as 99.9% of the Majorel shareholder contributed to the operation. My last word in the presentation, and I think it makes sense, is the cash return that we provided to our shareholders. That should be around EUR 600 million by the year-end 2023, resulting from the dividend that we paid, EUR 227 million, and the share buyback.
Today, we are already above EUR 300 million, and we will be probably around the EUR 360 million or the EUR 370 million by year-end. Yes, today, with the valuation of Teleperformance, we are deeply convinced that the best investment that we can make for our shareholders is to buy Teleperformance shares. Thank you very much, and now I'm going to ask Olivier Rigaudy, our talented Chief Financial Officer, to give you in details the picture of the numbers. You are on mute, Olivier.
Yes. Thank you, Daniel. Sorry, I was on mute. Thank you, Daniel. Hi, everyone. I'm going to cover two topic to give you some additional information about the closing of the deal, and after to enter the Q3 figure. Let's start with the final deal closing and the next step. I just wanted to remind you some steps that have been achieved and where we- what are the next one. I remind you that we get the final, last green authorization from the Antitrust Authority, the twentieth of October. At that time, we had two issue, two things that are happening. First, we get finally access to the information that we were not able to get earlier on. I'll come back in a minute to that for the synergy.
And secondly, we get the result of the first acceptance period of the deal, which was 98.45%. Last Friday, so the third of November, we got the finalization of the second offer, where we got 99.91% of the share that was that was underwrite to in this deal. Next Wednesday, we are going to settle. No, no, no, please, stay on the previous. Next Wednesday, we are going to settle the deal and be finally owner. What will be the next step? We have already started the squeeze-out of the company in front of the Luxembourg authority, and I do expect this will be done quickly in the next 15 weeks, 15 days or three weeks.
While in the meantime, we have asked the Netherlands authorities to delist the company from the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange, meaning that probably mid-December we'll be the only shareholder of Majorel, of a company that will be delisted at all, and where we are going to be owner at 100%. Next slide, please. So what are the additional information I want to give you on the deal? First of all, the acquisition costs are going to be around EUR 20 million, which will be below 1% of the deal value, which I believe is acceptable, more than acceptable. Two new shareholder are going to come on the list of Teleperformance shareholder.
Of course, the Saham Group and Bertelsmann, that will own each of them 3.6%-close to 3.60% of our capital, starting the third of November, third of November. These two shareholders are under a lock-up period of six, nine, twelve months by third, and it's expected that Mr. Moulay Hafid Elalamy, founder of Saham Group, should join the board early 2024. Again, I say again, that the consolidation of Majorel will start from November 1. Next slide, please. So what are the cost synergy today? So cost synergy analysis has been performed by your team, not only dedicated Teleperformance, but also Majorel team.
We call it Clean Team, supported by EY, that work all along this summer to prepare the two things: the synergy, the operating model, and the day one action. And we have already, we have shared this information after the antitrust clearance approval, which was done last October. What are the main conclusion of this significant work? First off, first amount. As mentioned by Daniel, we are well into the EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million initial range, and we are reasonably satisfied with that. Secondly, execution calendar, it's going to be executed between 2024 and 2025, mainly. What will be the cost of this synergy? Around one year cost of synergy. What are the key areas of this synergy? There are three of them.
Of course, one of the major is the IT, which is split between license, hardware, and procurement. As you mentioned earlier, on the Daniel presentation, there is a lot of IT in our company, and making that is absolutely key. Of course, operation and account management can be one of the—another target for reducing the cost, including the site, but not only. Lastly, mutualization and organization at central level will also generate savings. There is a team that has been set up with people coming from Majorel and from Teleperformance to follow and to execute this synergy program that we will follow on a regular basis.
As far as revenue synergy, it's too early to tell, but what we are clear is that we have not seen the synergy, the synergy are anticipated. Next slide, and let's move to the Q3 figure. This is a Q3 figure, meaning that we have been able to deliver a 6% like-for-like growth on nine months, excluding COVID, and 4% on Q3. I have two comments, first two comment to make, on this figure. The first one is to tell that Teleperformance has faced an incredible year in term of FX. We are going to see that in a minute, and probably all of you have not kept that in their mind, because this is a big impact of FX, at least for Teleperformance.
And the second one is, despite that, probably Teleperformance delivers the best performance of the competition in this market, and this is something that I want to come back later on. Next slide, please. Clearly, Q4 was not an easy one. Q3, sorry, wasn't an easy one, given the comparison base we had. We had a 14% growth last year in Q3, and of course, it was difficult to beat this year in this global environment. I just wanted to remind you that the Q4 revenue will be easing with a like-for-like growth, which is a little less than 11% in Q4. Next slide, please. Here is probably something which has to be mentioned.
When you look this figure, you discover that Teleperformance has been able to deliver EUR 345 million like-for-like growth over nine months. Despite that, we were facing headwinds that amounts to EUR 451 million, EUR 250 million from currency effect and EUR 200 million from COVID contract that vanished. So this is the biggest stuff. Out of this EUR 250 million, we have plenty of currencies that slipped this year, this year, starting Q2, but accelerating in Q3. I'm thinking of the Egyptian lira, the USD, the Colombian pesos, or Indian rupee. So despite these two major negative impact, we have been able to deliver a growth, which is EUR 345 million in like-for-like, on which you have to add the change in scope starting November 1, 2022.
You remember that we bought PSG, the company that is recruiting on site, on the way. Why we have been able to deliver such a good performance? Next slide, please. Because of that, we are probably the only company that have such a diversified and balanced portfolio. This is true in vertical, as you can see on the left side of this slide, but it's true also on geographical. So when you mix together both approach, it means that the group is able to swallow any hits that it might that is beyond its control, that could happen. But this globality across the vertical and across the region helps to be better. Next slide, please. So what happened over the different region?
Here we are starting with a figure at a constant exchange rate, comparing the nine months 2022 to the nine months 2023. As you can see, you have, of course, this EUR 200 million COVID impact contract that vanish, and we had a growth of core service and D.I.B.S., which is 4.2%, and specialized service growing at 17%. When you look in detail in each segment, you know that U.S. is roughly flat, which is due to two things: the global environment that Daniel Julien explained a minute ago, but also the offshoring impact, moving a lot of business from U.S. domestic to India.
On the LATAM side, where the growth is 2%, this is two things: the same issue about the offshoring part coming from U.S., plus the impact of the increase of the Mexican peso that makes this nation less appealing for U.S. corporate. When you look to Europe, it's a very good growth of 10% like-for-like, EUR 188 million, quite close in every sector. It's true in multilingual, meaning Portugal, Greece, Egypt, or on a lower extent, lower level, sorry, Spain, and all the growth that we have been able to sustain, notably in Germany.
Specialized Services is continuing to deliver its fantastic journey with LLS, LanguageLine Solutions, growing very fast and TLS resuming from, from the COVID period and from the fact that people were not traveling so much last year. So let's move now to the flexi- to the solidity of the group. Next slide, please. I do believe there is one thing which is going to be more and more important in the coming months, is the solidity of the balance sheet and the depth of the group. Everybody is going to look to the level of the indebtedness, the cost of the indebtedness, and the maturity of the indebtedness. When you look these three point for Teleperformance, you see we are absolutely safe.
The amount of debt, as mentioned by Daniel a minute ago, our net debt to EBITDA is going to be around two, based on 2023 aggregate non-IFRS figures after the acquisition and the share buyback program that we just mentioned. If nothing happen, we should be probably able to deliver this to a level of 1.5 by year-end 2024. So no problem of volume of debt. When it comes to the cost of the debt, today, we have also a good situation. The cost of the debt is, before acquisition, below 3%, and of course, after acquisition, is going to climb a little.
The EUR 2 billion are going to be paid, as I told you, Wednesday, and we will be still below 4.5%, which is acceptable in term of coverage, largely acceptable. In term of maturity, we have a maturity which is going to be around four years, with no significant repayment before July 2025. As a consequence, as a result, S&P has confirmed our BBB rating with a stable outlook. That means that we have access, so without difficulty, to the market. Beyond that, we are going to continue to have a CapEx discipline. I strongly believe that we are going to run around to land around 3% of our sale.
Of course, the sites of the university who are work at home will be, of course, a clear point to reduce our empty sites. And we are going to focus our CapEx on IT, AI, and facility optimization versus work at home, as I told you a minute ago. Next slide, please. So next, let's move now to the capital allocation. Clearly, Teleperformance is going to deliver close to EUR 600 million to shareholder by year-end, which is significant when you compare to the cash flow. But it doesn't mean that the group is not looking for M&A at all. Of course, it's going to be much more in specialized service, BPO, ITO, and consulting business.
Mid-sized company with strong management and financial, and we believe that the best case scenario is to resuming in late 2024. Before giving the conclusion to Daniel, I just wanted to come back to the hyperinflation issue, because I'm sure you are going to ask some questions. So next slide, please. What is the story of hyperinflation? The hyperinflation, the principle is to restate financial statement for company located in country impacted by hyperinflation. What does it mean? What is the methodology of that? Flows are denominated in local currency, are translated in euro and adjusted with price evolution under IFRS 29. We have no choice but to do that. We are using the CPI published by the local government and currency exchange rate at closing rate. This is beyond control of Teleperformance.
What is interesting is to say that the restatement is starting, is made each time starting first of January 2023. And the impact of this restatement is, is calculation of the current impact value is recognized at the closing date. That means that this restatement may change dramatically from a quarter to another. As an example, I'll give you the impact that we had in Q2. In Q2, we had a negative impact of on the like-for-like growth of 0.4 on this adjustment. And in fact, why? Because two reason: there is a significant increase in revenue in the Turkish and Argentinian activity that has been coupled with significant and sudden currency devaluation. In that case, not aligned with CPI, that may lead to slight uncertainty on like-for-like growth unrelated to operational performance.
It's exactly what happened, if you remember last year in Argentina, when the currency slid at the very last minute and the CPI was not adjusted... or this first half, when the re-election of Mr. Erdoğan in Turkey generated a decrease of the currency, while the CPI was not adjusted. That is what I wanted to let to tell, and I'm going to leave the floor to Daniel to conclude this presentation. Thank you all.
Thank you, Olivier. So let's go to the conclusion. The conclusion, I would like to come back to the fundamentals. First, in 2023, we are going to increase, to grow our revenue like-for-like basis and our margin in a very volatile environment. Second, with Majorel acquisition, we augment the, the bandwidth of our top management. We consolidate our leadership position on the market, and we have multiple opportunities to leverage. So we consider Majorel acquisition as a springboard to build the next wave of growth of Teleperformance. And the next wave is not just 2024, it's 2024, 2025, 2026, and so on. So based on this fundamental, we are going to have a Capital Day in Q2 2024, where Bhupender, the Head of Region, Olivier, Scott, and I will present you the new Teleperformance 2024-2027, and what are our objectives.
Thank you very much, and now we are ready to answer your question. I think Bhupender Singh was able to join us, so he is going to be with us to answer the question. Thank you, Bhupender.
As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Simon Lechipre from Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening. Three, if I may, first of all, on the top line, your revenue guidance, so it, it implies a slight acceleration of, of the like-for-like growth in, in Q4 relative to Q3. Is it just a matter of comps, or do you foresee some underlying improvements, in terms of volumes or, or business developments? Secondly, could you just share some first comment on, on the sales pipeline for, for next year? And, in this context, how do you feel regarding current consensus forecast of 5% like-for-like growth for, for next year? And lastly, just a quick clarification: does the margin guidance is including or excluding Majorel? Thank you.
Okay, very quickly, Q4 is typically peak time in our industry. The comparative base versus last year is easier than the comparative base that we had in Q3. That's the first point. The second point was: what do we think about the consensus of +5% for 2024? I think it's too early for us, too early to call because we are still working on our 2024 plans, and we have to integrate and consolidate Majorel. Don't forget that until 10 days ago, we did not have access to any information by law. But my personal feeling is that 2024 is going to remain a challenging year politically, socially, economically.
Definitely, we are going to be extremely cautious with our guidance when it will be time to do that.
Also the-
The third... Yeah?
Yeah.
The third point, excuse me. The third point is the around 16% EBITA is Teleperformance standalone.
Okay, and how much of a drag will be Majorel, like, for two months of consolidation?
Olivier?
Too early to tell. As we speak, we are entering. You know, we have a lot of work to be done because we have to make two consolidation, one at first November, one the second one at the end of December. So we are working on that. We'll be able to give you much more detail in one month, one month that. So clearly, the level of margin is different from from Majorel and Teleperformance. That will be probably a reduced or or or published number. So we are going to have three sets of publications, two sets of publications, one with Majorel of two months, and we are going to, to publish a, a 12 months Pro Forma, a real Pro Forma, not aggregate, real Pro Forma figure by the end of 2023. So we need some time to, to, to, to put that in a, in precise and, exact figure in terms of-
That's the picture at T zero. We cannot forget that there is a synergy plan that is well into the EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million that at T plus one, you know, the movie and not the picture, it should be a reality.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Simona Sarli from BofA. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my, my questions. So first of all, regarding the new guidance that you are providing for 2023, what has changed since H1, which resulting into a cut again to your outlook? How conservative is, is your current and new guidance for 2023, and how do the trends in October compare to, what you have seen for the third quarter? And then I have another question on Majorel, so we'll take one by one.
I'm not sure it's a new guidance. We were in the range of 6-8.
Yeah, the midpoint is a cut of 100 basis points.
Yeah, just what I would say, I think that the whole world started to realize that things are not going necessarily, not only for Teleperformance, but for the all in- for more or less all industry in the best possible direction. I would say that for the BPO companies, consulting company, IT service company, CX management companies who were very present in the U.S. market, we started to be hit by the slowdown and the freeze of the decision for, in Q2, mid-Q2. And I would say for those who are less, exposed to the U.S., the slowdown, started to appear more, in Q3. But, right now, the global trend is not to the upside, it's to the slowdown.
We think that the 6% that we give, excluding any hyperinflation hit, is reasonable due to the period of the year in which we are, and in which, for example, we are going to see the development of the enrollment period in the U.S. for the healthcare or the results of the Black Friday and many activities that typically happen in November and December.
Thank you. If I may, there is one more, please, on Majorel. So in Q3, also substantially decelerated, it was -1 like-for-like, so how should we think about the full year? Also, there is no mention anymore of the guidance that was reiterated at the end of August of +6, +11%. Thank you.
I believe that the real without COVID is not negative. Excluding COVID, it's 0% in Q3, to be precise. I don't know, but of course we are seeing the same same trend, but I believe that from what I understood, and I'm—I cannot speak for for Majorel people, but they were absolutely in line with their low level of guidance again also.
Thank you.
I should maybe precise something that is maybe a subliminal question. As much as we have embraced GenAI, and we have focused a specific team to develop internally and externally GenAI solution, I would say that nothing in the slowdown of the activity seems to be related to GenAI, but much more on the trend that we have seen specifically in the IT, in the cutting of the cordon for in the US for the wired industry. And also on the fact that many companies are taking all over the world short-term, extremely conservative budget approach.
Our next question comes from Antonin Baudry from HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good evening, everyone, and thank you to take my question. Three, if I may, the first one, I would want to come back on the cost base for 2023. So you changed a bit the guidance from 16% to around 16%, so I wanted to know what changed in terms of cost base in Q3, and what makes you less confident to be above 16% for this year? The second question is about the cost of debt. I appreciate that your new cost of debt will be below 4.5%, but could you confirm the implied cost of new debt? Let's say, is it 5%-6% range, something like that? And my third question is about the revenue synergies that we could expect from Majorel acquisitions.
Do you have some, some example of what could be done, potentially in terms of revenue synergies, what you see, so far? Which kind of offer, which kind of country, or which kind of verticals? Thank you very much.
I'm going just to answer to your last question, and let's let Olivier answer to your more technical question. The synergies that have been identified in details, line per line, have been identified by the work during several months of clean teams working together, both side of the two companies and with the support of Ernst & Young. I'm not going to give you, of course, the details right now, but it's not just a guess in the wind. Now, Olivier, if you want to answer the other question about the above or around.
I'm not sure we have said above 16%. I'm not. I don't see that. I don't recall that. We said 16%, around 16%. That means that this is marginal, FX stuff or whatever, so it's not really, really something that we can debate on it. As far as the cost debt is concerned, you're probably right. When you make the math, you are between 5.5, 5.7 for the EUR 2 billion expected. As you know, we have not yet refinanced this debt by EUR 2 billion. We'll take the best opportunity, the best timing to take advantage of the market to reduce the cost of the debts versus liquidity and this maturity. But your expectation are not totally wrong.
As of today, hopefully we'll be able to do better later on.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from GS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a few, please. You mentioned that synergies on Majorel acquisition, you have visibility well into the EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million range. Just want to clarify, does that mean you have visibility in the upper end of the range? And how should we think about the phasing of the synergies? Is it that you expect to get, you know, access to most of the synergies by the end of 2024, and therefore, the full impact annualised by 2025? That's the first question. I'll just wait for the answer and go to the next one. Thank you.
You want me to answer, Daniel?
Either you or Bhupender, up to you.
Bhupender, go ahead.
Hi, Suhasini. Yeah, as Daniel mentioned, that we had a clean team working during the summer, along with the EY. So, when we say we are well into the EUR 100 million-EUR 150 million, I won't give you the exact number, but we feel comfortable about this range. That's where we are. In terms of timing, yes, a substantial portion of this will happen in 2024, but also, please bear in mind, a good chunk of it will come from technology, OpEx spend, and some of these may be some slightly longer term contracts, so it will spill over into 2025 also.
Thank you very much. My second question is on the hyperinflation currencies, please. What is the total percentage revenue exposure that you have to Turkey and Argentina?
To make it simple, we are speaking of something around EUR 250 million, but that could change dramatically from one year to another with no control.
Is that EUR 250 million each for Turkey and Argentina?
No, no, total, total, total, total.
Roughly half each, Turkey, Argentina, 125, 125?
Roughly. Not exactly this way, but more for Turkey, a little more for Turkey.
More for Turkey.
Okay.
Nobody... I hope it's just Turkey and Argentina, but the way several countries evolve around the world, nobody can say that it's going to be only limited to Turkey and Argentina.
If I may, I would just add a point, Suhasini. We are probably the only one company in CAC 40 to be facing such a situation. Other companies are working in these countries, but they have been able to meet the criteria to change their currency and functional currency with either in dollar and in euro. As a significant part of our business is working locally, we cannot use a functional currency solution. That would have helped a lot, but this is beyond our control.
I completely understand. Thank you. My last question is on specialized services, please. It's shown amazing growth this year, but is it fair to assume that these trends potentially normalize from next year? Or, do you think growth can continue at decently high levels due to end market demand, or maybe because M&A becomes organic? Thank you.
I think that we are going to continue to have a high growth on the specialized services for and from our two main engine. In LanguageLine, there is the migration trend in the USA that fuels a lot of needs. And on TLS, I would say that China has not really fully reopened to the external world, and so there is still a potential for growth.
Appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Our next question comes from Karl Green, from RBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks very much. Just a few questions remaining from me. But the first one, just very straightforwardly, just in terms of the new organization chart, are you implying that the regional reporting is just gonna move to two segments, next year for core and D.I.B.S. from the current three? That's a pretty easy question first. The second question, it's just around the ongoing deceleration in organic growth, looking at both North America and Asia Pacific, plus LATAM. I think one of the comments you made earlier this year about the reason for the better outlook for the margin was the shift towards offshoring. But it's not evident which region or which countries are actually benefiting from that accelerated offshoring.
And then looking specifically within North America and Asia Pacific, I think you did give some narrative in the statements about the nine-month trends. But could you unpack in Q3 what's happening in the U.S. and India specifically? Let's, let's just go with those two questions to start, please.
I think that technically, Olivier is going to answer you, and then, there is nobody better placed to answer your question than Bhupender Singh.
On reporting this, I would say, change of segmentation is going to be happen not before early 2024. That means that for 2023, we are going to stay on the reporting, I would say geographical reporting that we were using in the past, adding the two months of Majorel. Later on, we will go to this presentation by three main category, one being Americas, the other one being Europe, and the last one, like, specialized service. Not so far from Accenture, in fact.
Europe and APAC.
Europe and APAC, sorry. Not so far from what Accenture is doing, in fact.
Yeah. And in terms of Americas, so as we have said it a few times, you've seen it in all other presentations, whether it's from consulting companies, IT companies, BPO companies, there has been a deceleration in the Americas market, largely driven by one, some of the digital commerce companies that were growing very fast, they have slowed down. Second, many of the big companies, whether it's in the technology sector, telecom sector, they have cut back on new products, new services, scaled back some of their ambitions and much more conservative and more cash conscious. So because of that, either some of the big decisions have been pushed out or there's only kind of some incremental demand that's coming from there. So you've seen that slow down.
But as part of that efficiency, we've also seen increased offshoring. So no wonder while overall market demand may be slow, we are seeing a strong growth for our India business. It is double digit even this year, and it continues... In fact, it continues to accelerate quarter-on-quarter as we see. But it's a zero sum if overall Americas is relatively flat, so that means some of the onshore business has a negative growth rate. Also, as you would remember, it is not a one-to-one revenue transfer.
So when the same volume of activity moves to a lower cost location like India, the revenue is, it's, it's deflationary on the top line, though on the bottom line, both in absolute terms and margin percentage terms, it is okay.
Yeah, and I would like to say that, you don't see it, in our presentation here, but India is a big winner, and we continue to have plans to, grow our India, extremely aggressively in the coming years. Now, I would like to mention something that everybody has forgotten, and that to me explain also some of the element of the year 2023. Remember, 2021, 2022, the year of confinement. People are at home, cannot move, are mostly online, and try to find anything to, remain sane and probably increase their level of interaction with their, with their friend, but also with the companies they buy product and service from. 2023, no more confinement, freedom, much more time offline with the kids in the parks, or doing brick-and-mortar shopping, and so on.
This is major. A lot of people have totally forgotten this element, and that's why I don't think that we are going to see the same dynamic between 2024 and 2023, because 2024 will be similar in global behavior of the end consumer to 2023.
Okay, thanks very much. Just a follow-on question, a very easy one. Just the comment you made about the cost of delivering the synergies. I mean, clearly, it's a fairly wide range for the synergy target for reasons which are understandable, but the cost of delivering that, would you say it's likely to be at the lower end of the EUR 100-EUR 150?
We are going to work to do that. We do not expect the cost to deliver the synergy to be superior to one.
Okay, thanks.
Maybe one or two question-
Our next question-
Two questions
Comes from Nicole Manion from UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. A follow-up question, please, on the 6% organic guidance and then the implied 6% growth in Q4. I get that there's the comp effect to consider, but looking at the multi-year stack, there's also an implied underlying improvement Q4 compared to Q3. I know you've mentioned that Q4 is a big and important quarter, but what actually needs to happen to meet this guidance? I know you've mentioned, for instance, through the year, that clients have been hesitant and pushed out decisions. Do you expect this and need this to change to some extent in Q4 then, given the acceleration there? Thanks.
No, because, I mean, the path of relationship with the client is a long process. It doesn't move from one week to another. What we think is that Q4, we are going to see much more customer interaction because we are going to see a surge in consumption related to the peak season, as usual. And typically, whether it's in healthcare, whether it is a FMCG, electronics, and so on, or fashion, you have so many acquisitions that are concentrated during this last two months period, and then you have so many friction that happened. People who send back what they got, people who are anxious because they are not going to get.
They are afraid not to get what they ordered before Christmas and so on, which make us think that there is no major reason for the Q4 2023 to be different from the Q4 of the last 20 years. And comps are easier.
Yep, got it. That makes sense. Thank you.
Maybe the last question, please.
Our last question comes from Carl Raynsford from Berenberg. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I've only got a couple left on my list, hopefully, fairly straightforward. The first one is, moving into next year, just on Europe. Obviously, Europe's had a good year this year, and now with Majorel, Europe will obviously be the majority of revenue if we spit out Latam, as reporting currently is. So do you have any insight on how we should think about growth next year for the new group, just from a high level, given those strong European comps? And, you know, could those comps cause a drag on a group basis in the way North America has this year? And then the second question, fairly sure, just regarding the acquisitions versus a buyback.
What sort of level would your valuations have to get back to before you begin to target acquisitions more than kind of, you know, share buybacks? You know, presumably those bolt-ons are likely to be fairly AI-based and therefore pretty expensive. So, you know, if nothing changes, a buyback program is something you'll undertake into the midterm. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Bhupender, do you want to answer the first phase of the question, so I can think to the last phase?
Look, it's again, we always say we don't have a crystal ball here to kind of figure out what Europe will be next year. From what we have seen so far, yes, we have seen certain degree of slowdown in Q3 in Europe. What we started seeing in the U.S. starting February, mid-February, onwards, we've seen certain degree of slowdown in, in Europe. But Europe also is multiple markets. It's not one market, and it's not behaving in kind of one uniform manner. So there are markets which are kind of growing slower, there are markets which are still growing fairly fast. So we have to look at it from that perspective.
Secondly, with the Majorel acquisition, we believe that our position has become much, much stronger, and there are additional lines of businesses that we were in Europe and also some of the other delivery capabilities that we needed to be able to convince our clients. So with a combination of having a much stronger team with ability to showcase additional lines of businesses, along with a better mix of countries, we are reasonably confident that we should be able to tide over next year, too.
For the last part of the question, yes, I am sure that every company that AI-washes itself is going to have high multiple. It's not necessarily a guarantee for growth and profitability. We embrace AI, we hire specialists in AI. Maybe we will buy companies with a real specialization, but our preference clearly is, has always been to acquire very profitable, well-run company, niche market, if possible, having a kind of black box in which you have some part of digital, but that can command higher pricing and higher margin. And so really, we consider that the future acquisitions are going to be much more related to the specialized service or the management of end-to-end complex business process that integrates AI, but not only.
Thank you very much. That's very helpful. Thank you.
There are no further questions, so I will hand you back over to your host, Daniel Julien, CEO, to conclude today's conference.
I would like to thank all of you who joined us to listen at what we had to say. We are deeply convinced that the consolidation that we decided in integrating Majorel goes in the sense of the market, goes in the sense of what are looking our major clients, and we believe that we have a springboard to build the next wave of growth of the company. Thank you very much.