Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Danae, and I will be your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining today's conference call on the nine-month figures in 2022 for GFT Technologies SE. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press Star followed by one on your touch tone phone. Please note, questions can only be asked via telephone and not via webcast. Please press the Star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Andreas Herzog, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Well, thanks a lot, Danae. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome also from my side for the first time today. I think you all followed the release of our figures this morning. With me is our CFO, Jochen Ruetz, who will walk you through the numbers and, of course, will be available for your questions afterwards. In case any questions may arise after the call, please do not hesitate to contact our IR team. I will be more than happy to assist. Without further delay, please let me hand over to Jochen. The floor is yours.
Thanks, Andreas. Thank you very much. Welcome everybody to our nine-month call. I think the presentation is available in the stream. It's on our website, so many ways to get to it and follow the presentation. We've taken a bit of the juice out of today's call by giving the talk on the 20th of October with the already upgraded guidance for profitability. Therefore, let's be efficient. I know it's a lot of numbers coming out today, right? Let's directly jump into the numbers. Which is starting at slide number three. We do see continued growth in the first nine months. Well, it's kind of the same headline like last quarter, but it is the same situation. We have further upgraded our earnings outlook, which also happened last time. I'll come back to that in a second.
Our growth trend is intact. We do see clients going into digitization strongly, just like the last 18 months. It is an unchanged trend. Growth driver are long and complex modernization projects. Another highlight, we're now more than 10,000 experts at work for our clients. And we continue our successful and cost-efficient management of the P&L. Which leads me to the outlook for 2022, which we have adapted not for revenues. That's stable at EUR 730 million, but the EBITDA we adjusted to EUR 87 million. It was EUR 81 million before, and the EBT at EUR 66 million now. Last number we gave was EUR 60 million. The KPIs on the right side I will ignore for now because they are all coming up on the next slides again.
Let's move forward and go for slide number five, where we're looking at the main KPIs. Revenue after nine months is up 34% versus last year. Quarter-over-quarter, Q3 versus Q3 last year is up 28%. The order book is up 23%. Again, above previous year. It is pretty much in line with the quality of the 13th of September of last year. It covers Q4, and it covers part of Q1 of 2023, so quality is pretty decent. Most of 2023 pipeline needs to be moved to order book in the last three months of the year, and that's what we're currently working. Adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA this year are identical because there's nothing to adjust for. We only adjust for M&A effects like earn-outs, et cetera. There was nothing in adjustments in 2022.
In 2021, we still had an earn-out running for our Canadian acquisition. Therefore, there we have an adjustment, not in 2022. Still, I compare Adjusted EBITDA to previous year, which is up 37%. On the right side with the smaller bullet points, you see some comments. While utilization was good last year, it's good this year, not a driving force. We have always some capacity adjustments. We are hiring more than 3,500 people this year. You don't always get it right, and therefore there's always 0.3%-0.4% of capacity adjustment costs in our P&L. That's very normal. The next one is not always happening. FX effects on the positive side. The weak euro helped us for these FX transaction effects.
Last year it was negative, so some tailwind from the weakening euro. The last point is pretty new. Our share-based compensation gave us a positive. You might remember when you follow the stock, it was EUR 47 at the end of last year, when we went into 2022. We have to always go for the actual price, plus a bit of Monte Carlo. Share price at the end of September was 31, and therefore overall, we had a positive effect from our virtual share program of EUR 2.36 million. Going a bit down, EBT up 70%, strongly, disproportionately, and also reflected in our net income, which is a bit burdened by a higher tax rate. The distribution of our profits leads to a tax rate of 29%.
For the full year, we guided 28%-29%. That's where we see us coming in. Let's go forward. Slide six, and let's look at the diversification of our portfolio. On the left side, we see our portfolio based on client size. On the very left, the only client above EUR 50 million is still Deutsche Bank, and it now counts for 13% of our total revenue. Deutsche itself this year is slightly growing, so it's more than stable. It's growing roughly 7-8%. But it's still share-wise, the total portfolio reducing 13% this year, 16% last year. The trend will continue. We do see all other clients growing faster, especially the clients above EUR 10 million revenue per year. They now stand for 41%.
The next smaller group, bigger than 5 million, they combined represent 60% of our revenue. They are the key drivers to our growth and especially profitability. The smaller clients, which is smaller funnel, represent 28%. We're quite happy with the development in that area. Now let's go to the right side of the chart. We do see our all sectors growing. We have three sectors, industry and others this year growing by 51%, now representing 12% of our total revenue. The insurance business is also growing by 51%. That's a coincidence, same number, representing 18% of the GFT revenue. Last but not least, the big banking business up 27%, still standing for 70% of the GFT business. Let's move forward, slide number seven, and looks at the quarters more in detail.
If we compare Q3 2022 to Q2 2022, obviously, there's not a big jump in revenues. It's 0.4%, so it's more or less flat. When you look at previous years, the jump in Q3 versus Q2 is always the smallest during the year. Why is that? Well, while we're growing our team size, it's summer holiday season and therefore there are less billable days in the third quarter. The main reason why there's always the smallest growth in Q3. When we look at profitability, we see a jump despite nearly flat revenues, and it is supported by those two tailwind effects I was mentioning. We were also mentioning in the ad hoc message, which is FX transaction effects, which stood only in Q3 for EUR 1 million, and those virtual share effects, which also stood for EUR 1 million.
If you take them out, the margin doesn't improve that much. Still it's improving, but not that jump that seems to happen on the right side. Second bullet point, revenues quarter-over-quarter versus 2021 are up 28%, EBITDA up 39%. Now easily you can do the math for Q4, as we have given full year guidance. We're expecting EUR 180-190 million in revenues. the Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be EUR 24 million, but without any of those tailwind effects. There should be a small improvement in margin in the last quarter versus Q3. Let's move forward. Slide eight, revenue by segment. Let's start at the top. The biggest revenue driver in the GFT entities is Americas, U.K., and APAC.
It's standing at EUR 342 million. That's up 53% compared to last year. This divides into 40% organic growth and 13% FX growth. We've highlighted the bullet point which countries are growing how fast. Maybe let's use Brazil, which is growing 84% on a euro basis, to describe the local currency growth, which is only 60%. 60% local growth in Brazilian real, roughly 60%, 84% on a euro basis. That's the FX tailwinds we're currently seeing and we are showing in that FX column. Also good growth rates in other banking markets like Mexico, U.S., and U.K., and the Canadian market where we mainly serve insurance companies, also growing by 54%. Continental Europe, we didn't make the two digits yet, right? 9% up all organically.
There's obviously no FX effect because the non-euro countries, Poland and Switzerland, are quite small. Although Switzerland is giving us the biggest growth in the nine months of this year, up 9%, which brings us to the GFT Group, up 34% of which 8% come from FX effects, 26% come from organic development. Brings us to slide number nine. Same view for earnings by segment. We don't have it as highlighted as in the revenue side yet. Something we might change for next year's communication that you see the FX effects better already on this slide. Let's comment on the EBT because it's all the same kind of commenting. Start with Americas, U.K., and APAC. The EBT increase is 91% for Americas, U.K., and APAC.
We have the strong growth is also delivering good margins. Of the 91%, 21% are FX related and 70% are, as we would call it on the slide before, organic. That's the distribution between FX tailwind we're seeing and 70% is true margin improvement. When we come to Continental Europe, we're up 19% based on a 9% revenue growth on the slide before. Obviously, there is no FX impact for Continental Europe. When we look at the group, the overall growth of the EBT is 70%, of which 13 come from the FX tailwind of the weaker euro and 57% are coming organically. This brings me to slide number 10, which is again, the revenue breakdown now by countries. All countries you see here are in growth mode.
Only one shows a negative, which is France. Seven markets grow by more than 30%. Again, this is all euro basis. Like everybody in the Americas, Brazil, Mexico, U.S., Canada, show somewhat smaller growth in local currency, and the euro is kind of speeding it up a bit. Brazil, our biggest market, more than EUR 100 million after nine months. U.K. is number two. Let's comment on U.K., that we have moved. Now, it was not us. A client wanted us to start invoicing him no longer from the U.K., but from Poland. We anyway deliver to that client from Poland. Now the invoicing is happening from Poland. That's why Poland is growing deeply, because we moved EUR 7 million from U.K. to Poland to deliver into HSBC, this will continue.
Next year it will probably be roughly EUR 25 million, which we move from U.K. to Poland. Nothing else changes, not pricing, not delivery structure. It's simply a moving of invoicing entities. This brings me to slide number 11, which is our income statement. As always, not so much to talk about maybe cost of purchased services, which are up 40%, while our personnel expenses are only up 29%. If we combine the two, which with numbers we do in the fourth bullet point on the right, this means an improvement of our efficiency of these two cost items combined versus revenues from 82%- 80%. We're reducing the share of those costs versus the revenue, usually benefiting the EBITDA.
We see an increase in operating expenses, primarily for higher personnel-related expenses, but also we see travel costs coming back. We have nearly a doubling from 5- 11 million of our SaaS licenses, which in the past often went through depreciation because you bought the licenses. Now they are more and more moving into the variable operating expenses, and we pay them on a monthly basis. That is the trend that some of the depreciation and amortization costs are moving into the other operating expenses. The depreciation and amortization is only growing by 2%, which shows the high scale it's contributing. Bringing me last but not least to the income tax. Again, the 29% is due to the distribution within the GFT countries today. We foresee 28%-29% for year-end.
Let's go to slide number 12, cash flow analysis. We have an unchanged solid financing structure. We have credit facilities in place. We have M&A hunting lines on top, which we don't show here, if we find adequate M&A targets. Well-financed. The thing that we talked about in the six-month numbers was the operating cash flow, which after six months stood at exactly zero. I was explaining that, the main reason is that clients are coming back to their 2019 behavior, meaning, because of COVID and because of negative interest rates, they paid their suppliers pretty early and pretty fast. Now with the normal world again of positive interest rates, and we see payment culture coming back to normal, which means like in 2019.
We're negotiating payment terms with clients again, which was not happening for two years. This brings our working capital up somewhat in 2022. We were not sure if it would take all of 2022 or if most of it would be done by half year. As we can see, the full cash flow that we now represent here, EUR 22.9 million, happened in Q3. It looks like the major part of this adaption of working capital happened in the first half year, and now we're back to normal. Now we have, again, the situation like in 2019, and we should continue from here. That's good news, and we see strong cash flow in the third quarter. All other cash flows are related either to loan paybacks, dividends, or our investments, which usually represent 1% of our revenue.
Overall, net cash positive at the end of the quarter, with EUR 7.35 million. Let's move forward. Slide number 13, very short one, balance sheet. Well, it just grew by 8%, mainly because the growth of our business, which drives receivables. Two reasons, the working capital effects I already mentioned, plus additional ones coming from growth. Growth usually leads to somewhat more working capital. Plus this little jump we see this year getting back to the 2019 payment culture. Equity ratio of 36% on the right side. I think everything else is not worth discussing in this round today. Let's move forward to slide number 14. The GFT team. Overall, 10,000 experts is what we state. This is all our heads plus all our freelancers.
If we add them up, it's more than 10,000 by today. If we do the IFRS way of calculating, we have to calculate in full-time equivalents. Here we have 8,766 at the end of September, which is 20% up compared to a year ago. The number of contractors, this is now the third bullet point, is slightly up from 1,160- 1,280. It shows a trend of slowing growth with contractors. We favor, of course, whenever we can, own personnel. Looking at utilization, it was very good in Q3, 91% year to date, 90.2%. Strong numbers. Not much we can improve here at the moment, especially in a period where you grow so heavily. On the right side, attrition. We see a reduction, right?
We were talking about the 20% for quite a while, 19, 20. Now we are coming back to 18%. This is trailing twelve months attrition, and to come down by two points is quite a steep reduction. It means people are reacting to the current situation, insecurity, recession discussions, and people leaving is kind of reducing a bit, at least a bit. 18% is better than 20% for us. This brings me to slide number 15 and finally to number 16, our outlook for the year. Let's start on the left. Revenue, 29% growth to EUR 730 million. This is the unchanged number. When we look at Adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA, this is the number we updated in our ad hoc at the end of October. EUR 87 million expected.
Main drivers continue to be efficient programs with our clients, cost containment and the tailwind topics I was already mentioning. EBT is up to EUR 66 million. Just to give you a flavor, this means a 9% EBT margin. Last year was 7%. If we take out two of the three tailwinds that we have, which is the FX effects, which you can't plan to have again easily, and the virtual share program, if you take those two out, plus the reduced M&A effects, we're closer to 8.0% as a true operational margin improvement. Good news is the M&A part will remain, right? It will not change until we do further M&A. This already pushes us to 8.5%.
We have achieved the 0.5% EBT margin improvement we usually want to do per year from 7%- 8%. We already see 8.5% because of the M&A. We're looking positively into the next year when it comes to the margin side. This brings me to 2023. Again, as said after the H1 numbers, it's still too early to call, right? We see clients in some markets a bit more cautious. This is like in U.K. and APAC. We have some of those discussions. We also see clients in an ongoing investment mood, and this is especially in Americas, from top to bottom, from Canada to Brazil. This makes us eagerly work on turning our pipeline into order book in Q4, which is what our teams are working on.
We're really curious to see what this growth potential will mean for 2023. Too early to call. As I said, we will have to wait this time until March. We usually give the preliminary numbers. But let me highlight, we're not pessimistic. Although the recession discussions out there are existing, we're not pessimistic for the year 2023. Now I'm ready to take your questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Please note, questions will only be asked via telephone and not via webcast. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch tone telephone. If you wish to remove your question from the queue, you may press star then two. The first question we have is from Andreas Wolf from Warburg Research.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on Q3. I have a more general question on the client behavior in the banking industry. What are the implications of the new environment of growing interest rates? Do you see budgets on the client side increasing, supporting IT investments? Then maybe quickly on the order backlog, it's still impressive how fast it's growing. However, if you look at the growth rate over the last couple of quarters, it seems to grow at a slightly slower pace.
That would be probably linked to my first question. If you see a changed client behavior right now, which might explain the somewhat slower growth pace, although it's still impressive. The last one is on attrition. Seems to have declined slightly compared to Q3. Many tech companies are already laying off personnel. Is this putting pressure from wages? Thank you.
Good questions. Good morning. Yes, let's start with the client behavior. It's a bit early to call, right? It is just happening that the interest rates are coming back. At the same time, everybody talking about the recession. I would still be positive on the answer, and I would rather not use the clients in Europe, where we see that change really happening. I would use the clients in Americas, where we saw that change happening faster, in South America. Yes, interest rates, which benefit banks and insurance companies, our main client group, if the interest rates grow, profits grow, and this means IT budgets can grow. Already the opportunity to grow is helping us a lot, and we see that happening in the Americas side.
If Europe now also follows this trend and has higher, better profitability, which everybody is a bit skeptical for 2023, right, because of credit risk, which might happen in that year. For the years after, it should be a positive for the IT budgets of the long-lasting zero interest rate European banks, where we have seen that trend for a long time. The American banks had their way out of it earlier, not only because of interest rates, but because of fees and other business they did. They are spending. The same is true for Brazil, where we never saw negative interest rates. Following the trend of banks and insurance companies having the ability to be more profitable should be beneficial for IT budgets. That's what we expected.
We don't really know how much of this will happen in 2023 because of the already discussed reasons. For the future, that's a positive, clearly a positive. Order backlog, yes, correct. When we looked at the revenues and actuals, it is kind of slowing down, and the order backlog also represents the same trend. We're not at zero, right? We do see a positive trend into 2023, but the 29% revenue growth we are experiencing in 2022 is probably not the number we will aim for easily when we go into March and give you guidance. Therefore, it is visible in the order book as well, of course. Attrition, last but not least. Yeah, we saw the number go down.
It's mainly linked to the months after the holiday season, the European and North American holiday season. It's maybe a bit also too early to say it's really changed. From our perspective, it might have a bit of a positive impact on the wage inflation we will see next year. Still inflation rates are there. We can't just ignore them. Our people will not ignore them. It will be an interesting combination of the two when we go into the salary rounds of 2023. Still it's gonna be probably one of the highest we've ever seen. 2022, 2023 combined will be the highest salary increases in the GFT Group since I've joined, and that's quite some time ago. I hope I answered your questions.
Yeah. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up for me. If I look at the order backlog, you should be able to turn this into revenues within one or two quarters. Is there a potential threat coming from higher wages that might put pressure on the margin that is built into the order book when you negotiated prices with your clients for those orders?
A clear yes to that, right? Just like if you asked me a year ago. Well, we wouldn't have talked inflation yet, right, a year ago, because we didn't see it coming that much. Then when it was happening, and we had probably 6%-7% average salary increase in 2022, we achieved it with our clients. The challenge in 2023 might be that the overall growth in the market isn't as broad as we saw it in 2022. We're still optimistic we will achieve pushing the increased salaries to our clients. Is it a challenge? Yes, it is. Absolutely. It was in 2022. We achieved it mostly. It will be in 2023, and it will in the end determine the margin that we will be able to guide.
How good do we expect to be on moving increased salaries to our clients? Absolutely. We still need a bit of time for that, and see how this evolves over the next, well, it's probably even six months. We usually do salary increases in April, so four more months to go.
Okay. Thank you.
Well, happy to take more questions.
Thank you. The next question we have is from Knud Hinkel from Pareto Securities. Apologies. The next question we have is from Sven Sauer from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good morning. I have one question, also regarding the client behavior. I mean, is it fair to assume that if we see increasing economic or recessionary pressure going forward that clients would rather postpone or interrupt long-term and complex modernization projects compared to shorter-term projects? On top of that, I mean, is it technically feasible and would you offer or what would you respond to your client if, in the middle of such a long-term complex modernization project he would ask to postpone? What is this possible?
That's not what we're seeing from our clients. Usually when they go for a long-term change, which has a business value, right? They don't do it just because they love tech change. They do it because they see a business value saving money after implementing that major change, which will drive their profitability in three, four, five years. Usually those business cases are pretty solid, especially in banks in Europe that anyway have a lower profitability. Therefore, we don't see them shut down long-term initiatives in a moment of crisis. We didn't see that over the years. It's more the short-term things, the things that have a payback that might be in two, three years or further out. There they might push it out by a quarter, half a year. This has happened in the past.
The long-term initiatives and especially in insurance companies, but also in retail banks, they are usually not reduced. They are just performed. Investment banking might be a bit different. They react faster. It's a small part of our overall revenue, but investment banks tend to react faster to market trends while retail and corporate banks, and especially insurance companies, when they have a long-term change program running, they don't stop it. No, absolutely not. That's not what we have seen in the past. That's not what we've seen in 2007, 2008, which is kind of the mother of all crises for us as somebody who only delivers into banks and insurance companies. That's not what we're expecting this time.
Okay. Thank you. Very helpful.
Thank you.
No, understanding.
Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The next question we have is from Knud Hinkel from Pareto Securities.
Here we go.
Finally. Good morning.
Good.
Yeah. I have two questions, or no, a little bit more left. I would discuss a little bit, yeah, spending mood. What we've seen in the most recent quarter. Some software companies were giving profit warnings. That seems to cool down a little bit. I think now that you're lucky enough to grow the insurance and industry business that much, it makes sense to discuss maybe these customer segments in separation. We already talked on banking, what the outlook might look like there. Insurance companies, I would say they probably also not so happy about inflation and higher interest rates. What is your outlook on that segment?
I would also assume recessionary fears might prevail here. Maybe you can also say something on the outlook for that segment. Furthermore, we already talked on working capital. If I look at the 2021 balance sheet, net working capital, so taking all together, inventories, due payments, receivables, stuff like that, and also the, what is it called, the contract assets and contract liabilities all taken all together was at 16% of revenues. What should we expect for 2022, given that you expect a normalization of payment behavior in the coming years, maybe? Furthermore, I would be interested to learn now we're talking about projects.
How long does a typical project last within GFT, and does that differ in the different customer segments? That would be my third question. If we got still time, maybe also you can say a little bit, now we're talking about cost inflation and stuff like that. How are these structures structured? Are there certain milestones to be met and then they are re-negotiated? What is, can you talk a little bit about the structure during the process? Thanks very much.
All right. Let's start from the top. What is the expectation going by our industrial sectors? Yes, banking, absolutely. I think we agree on that. Growing interest rates should be supportive for banks. Probably one of the few industries out there who benefit from increasing interest rates. Insurance companies do too, because they have a strong cash flow into their systems, which they then have to invest well. So far, the investing was no fun. It was sometimes negative or zero interest. Getting some interest again for insurance companies is also helpful. Therefore, we don't expect a different development in banking and insurance. Both will benefit from the interest rates at some point in time.
Again, 2023 might for some be a year they fear or they have thoughts about, but the interest rate itself should be supportive. In the industry, I fully agree. The recession scenario will probably most bother the industrial clients. Here we will need to see how it's working out. When we say industry, it's industry and others. This includes healthcare providers and other industries as well, which might not be that hampered by any interest rates, for example. Yes, the industry segment would maybe not show the same growth rates that we have seen in 2022. For the other two, we're more optimistic because the interest rate increase should be supported. On working capital, we have not done the full math on the calculation you just did.
As I said, we see ourselves going back to the ratios we saw in 2019. That kind of the pre-COVID situation, which was. Well, it wasn't perfect. Interest rates back then, right? I think it was already negative or zero. They were negotiating all kinds of payment terms with us and pushing it out wherever possible. We're back to that situation. Therefore, the ratios should be similar to 2019. When you use your logic on the 2019 numbers and compare it to the revenue growth since then, you should get to a decent percentage in your calculation. Typical project. It's not that different between bank and insurance.
Insurance tends to be even more long-lasting, longer-term change projects. It doesn't mean the contract necessarily is long-term. Usually, it's rather shorter term. It is using the modern agile way of developing software with all the buzzwords, Scrum Masters and Scrum way of doing it, very agile, six-week sprints. Therefore, often projects are handed out for eight weeks as kind of an indicator. That doesn't mean it's not a three-year change project for that insurance company. That's the difference between the detailed contract and the long-term project. We have a lot of those long-lasting, especially insurance, long-lasting programs where we are part of, where we're not afraid for 2023. In banking, it's a bit shorter, right? They are more agile in their handing out projects, but it's the same logic.
It's mid to long-term programs. Let me take one example that in the German market is quite popular or known, which is the Deutsche Bank journey into the Google Cloud. It's a 10-year journey, overall, and they are now in their third year, if I'm right. There is way to go. We don't see them adapting it for the 2023 noise on the horizon. It might not be a good year. They will continue investing into their Google transformation. It is then again handed out in smaller pieces, and we're part of that. Therefore, it's a mixed bag. Long-term programs handed out in shorter pieces. The cost inflation then, how can you then include price increases in those kind of programs? Well, you have to discuss with your client.
With some clients, you might have a contract on pricing for 12 months. Therefore, you have to go into negotiations at the beginning of the year or at the end of the old year, to talk about salary inflation. You go to new clients, or you go in the same client for a new program, then you go with new prices, right? You try to bring in new prices. If you suddenly do cloud in a client where you used to do back-end services, you go with new pricing. Very simple.
Therefore, one of the reasons GFT is trying to always be at the front end of the technological expertise and development is it's easier to negotiate prices in new technologies, which are sought after where the resources are scarce. That's how we have been able to increase our prices pretty much in line with the cost increase in 2022, and we plan to be able to do the same in 2023. I hope that helped.
Yes, it did. I just looked into my model, what you said on 2029. According to my logic, it was 90% of sales, so that would be a major leap to jump from around 16% in 2021 to 90%, given that your top line has increased that much. That would be a big outflow. Is that what you want to say?
Yeah, exactly. Probably when you take the nine month 2022 numbers, we are already pretty much there.
All right. Okay. Maybe one follow-up question on the question Mr. Wolf asked. Yeah, we've seen a lot of layoffs by also by the big tech companies in the U.S., which made it into the newspapers and so on. My question would be, what do you expect these guys to be? My suspicion is that they don't lay off that much software engineers and IT experts, but more management guys and marketing guys and so on and so forth. Is that also what you see or don't you have any more insight than us in that regard?
Honestly, I don't have more insights into what the tech guys are really doing, and it is not that much impacting GFT. We're usually talking people in the U.S., and our team in the U.S. is 60-70 people. U.S. for us is a nearshore country, right? We offshore from other locations into the U.S.. We're not so dependent on the U.S. labor market, and therefore, this is not a big impact for us. For us, it would help or be of impact once it ripples through the whole global system and it reaches India, Poland, Brazil. Last week I saw Cognizant numbers, and they talked about an attrition in India of 30% or their attrition of 30% comparing to our 18%.
This doesn't sound like people are not moving jobs, and it's not easy to find the next role. This ripple through obviously needs some time, right? Statistically, for the big guys who in the US also buy nearshore to buy less nearshore. First, they start in their countries, which is probably the big part of their cost base, and therefore it takes a bit of time for those effects to go through the global IT cosmos.
All right. Thanks very much.
Okay, let's go for more questions.
Thank you, sir. We have a follow-up question from Andreas Wolf. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thank you. A quick follow-up on the 2023 pipeline. Last year, you were able, Dr. Ruetz, to give a 2023 guidance pretty early on, i.e., in H2 already. This time, you did not make such a step. Was this basically because there is more uncertainty or do you still feel very optimistic about next year? I know the guidance will be issued as usual probably next year, but maybe you could share with us your level of optimism for next year in general. Thank you.
Well, last year was kind of the exception. I think we didn't do that in a long, long time.
Yeah.
We were kind of forced to by regulation because our analysts, right, of which some are in the call and asking questions, back 12 months were not optimistic enough. We did see more growth in our visibility for 2022, which have not been the analyst consensus back then. That was why we were kind of forced, and we wanted them also to give the market information on how we see 2022 going. Now, we're not doing this for 2023, which also carries the message, right? Obviously, the guidance seems to be closer to what we are expecting, discounting all the uncertainty that we still have and the budget process that is still ongoing. Maybe the current analyst estimates are pretty well in line with what we believe is correct.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question we have is from Stefan Winterling from Isar Holding. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking the question and congrats on another great quarter. Only one question on geographies. Which regions are you planning to push for growth? And can you comment on Brazil now after the elections? Has anything changed? Do you foresee any changes? How are you looking at Brazil specifically? Asia. Singapore has grown a lot, Hong Kong not so much. How is your push into Asia going, and are you considering potential acquisitions in that region? And you mentioned India. Are you planning to tap into the Indian labor market at some point?
Hello, Winterling. Oh, good questions. Regions. The growth region of 2022 will most probably also be the growth region of 2023, which in our case is Americas, U.K. and APAC, with a strong focus on all countries in Americas. We want and we believe we will heavily grow the U.S. in the next four years. It is compared to the size of the U.S. market, inside GFT it's too small, right? We need to at least triple or increase it four times, which will take some time, right? It's EUR 60 million now.
We should rather be at EUR 200 million in the EUR 730 million company, which shows we've been, of course, starting in Europe, and we're a bit late in the U.S., so we just started there on the day when people were carrying out boxes from Lehman Brothers, which was in 2008. Maybe not the perfect starting point. Since then, we've grown it. Now we will take an extra push, and we're strengthening all our nearshore capacities in Latin America, Brazil and Mexico to leverage into the U.S. The U.S. is our key growth market for the next years. We believe the Brazilian growth rates will. We thought so before the election, right? No matter who won as president, will come back somewhat, right? These 50%-60% in local currency are not sustainable.
It will probably halve in 2023. This shows we're still optimistic. The president doesn't have so much of an impact on the demand side. Bolsonaro opened when he won four years ago. He opened investments. Companies suddenly became very optimistic and started an investment wave. We don't see it necessarily now stopping because Brazil is on the right track. For the first time, I have a higher inflation in the rest of the world than in Brazil. We never had that since we started Brazil, right? That's like a curiosity. We believe Brazil will be an attractive onshore and nearshore to U.S. market for the years to come and continue growing. I think we have a lot of potential in Mexico. We just had a management change there, so we have restarted.
From that perspective, it's one of those global countries, which should grow among the fastest in your portfolio. This is why we believe the region, Americas, U.K., and APAC, will drive growth in 2023 and the years to come. Asia, here we do a lot of new banks, right, so-called neobanks that we built. This might be a bit more up for discussion for clients if they do that investment in 2023 or if they push it out. We don't think Asia will be our major growth market in the year 2023. We're well-positioned. Once demand and investment willingness is back, we see us growing there strongly again. We come from zero to four years ago. It's now EUR 40 million. We would like to grow it in 2023, but maybe Asia is not the right market for that.
We will continue focusing on Singapore as the main hub and then on Hong Kong as the second hub. We just went live, at least for families and friends, for a bank in Malaysia. We also deliver into other Asian markets from our hubs. We deliver mainly from Vietnam, which is our offshore hub in the Asian market. It's different to India, right? We want to be different. Therefore, we don't see us going into India in 2023. Would I say no forever? No, I will not. Right? It is a market we will always have on our radar, if it is worthwhile going there. Currently, we don't see us going there in the year 2023, where anyway growth rates are a bit more moderate than in the years before.
Thank you. Can I follow up on especially London, U.K.?
Go ahead.
I mean, there has been a lot of discussion and turmoil in the U.K.. In a way, it doesn't make a big difference whether your clients are literally based in the city of London or somewhere else. Do you get any feedback on London and your London-based clients?
Yeah, for sure. Per unit feedback, we had higher hopes for growth in the U.K. this year, and it's probably not linked to the political environment. It's linked to our positioning inside the clients and some clients being a bit, I was talking about the investment banks, right, who react faster when they will see something like a recession on the horizon. We saw that happening in the U.K.. It's the market where we have most investment banking clients compared to the total revenue in that market. Therefore, we saw some kind of a reaction. We believe, therefore, we will see growth in 2023, but it will not be very strong growth in that market.
Because we have a lot of investment banking clients, we want to push more into insurance, more into retail banking, which would then broaden the base there. Overall, we believe the U.K. will continue to be an attractive market. No matter, they are outside the European Union, it is the banking market in Europe, still the case. We don't see that change shortly. Therefore, it is still our biggest market inside Europe, and it will continue to be also in 2023.
Okay.
Right.
Thank you.
You're welcome. I see maybe we have one more question.
Of course, sir. The last question we have is from Sven Sauer. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just one follow-up question. I was wondering if you could provide some color on the penetration of the cloud transition of your clients, depending on each of the regions. Do you see more of your clients in Europe already transitioning to the cloud or more in Americas? Yeah, that would be it.
Yeah. Well, this is now the tough one for the CFO, right? Maybe something to really come back to in our full year numbers where we always go a bit more deeper, and Marika Lulay could dig into that. There's a simple answer from my perspective, which is regulation opened for U.K., U.S. two or three years before Europe. Therefore, those, banks, insurance companies are on their journey into the cloud two, three years ahead. Europe was only able to join after the ECB clearly said, "Okay, this is a rule. This is not. You can use the public cloud." The journeys in Continental Europe, in the European Union started. Because of these two to three years inside the banking and, especially the banking sector, also insurance, we are in Europe somewhat behind, the Anglo-Saxon players.
Of course, Brazil never had so tough regulations on that, and therefore they are also ahead. That would put those two regions into context without being able to now give more details in which country is how fast. That would be something we would have to go deeper into. I think the answer on the regions is what you really meant, right?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. You think that this is just pushed by regulation?
The main reason was regulation. The European banks were not allowed to go for the public cloud. Again, it's about the public cloud. You remember our Europe discussing a lot about data protection, and everything surrounding that, and this was just taking more time on the American and the British side. They are a bit more laid back on this, and they were faster. Simply faster.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
There are no more questions.
That was our final question. I will now hand back to Andreas Herzog for closing comments. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Thank you all for joining our call, and I will hand over for final remarks to Jochen.
Well, not much to say, right? Maybe we meet at the Eigenkapitalforum or another event in the coming weeks and months in this call. We will meet again early March for the preliminary figures, so this will take a bit of time. If you have questions, come our way. Andreas and myself are always happy to support. Thanks for listening today. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Thank you, gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, that ends today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.