Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Q4 and FY 2026 earnings conference call hosted by Birlasoft Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then 0 on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Abhinandan Singh, Head Investor Relations, Birlasoft. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Singh.
Thank you and welcome, folks. By now you would have received or seen our results that were announced earlier today. Those are also available on our website www.birlasoft.com, in the investors section. Joining me on this call this evening are our CEO and MD, Mr. Angan Guha, and our CFO, Mr. Chandrasekar Thyagarajan, or Chandru as we call him. We will begin the call today with opening remarks from both Angan and Chandru.
Before I hand over the floor to Angan, a quick reminder that anything that we say on this call on the company's outlook for the future could be a forward-looking statement involving significant uncertainty and therefore that must be heard or read in conjunction with the disclaimer that appears in our investor update which you would have received and is also uploaded on our website as well as filed with the stock exchanges. With this, let me hand over the floor now to Mr. Angan Guha, our CEO and MD. Over to you, Angan.
Yeah. Thank you, Abhi. Good morning and good evening to everyone wherever you are, and thank you for joining us today as we share some perspectives of our fourth quarter and full year FY 2026 performance. Before I delve into our results, I would like to point out that our performance during the quarter and year under review reflects a very soft demand environment due to sustained macroeconomic headwinds leading to some client-specific issues and as a result, erosion of revenue. In that backdrop, we remained focused on strengthening our AI-led capabilities, our domain expertise, while also driving operational efficiencies and focus on order booking. At the same time, we've continued to invest in our management team. We recently onboarded Vikram Puranik as our Chief Operating Officer. Vikram joins us with a strong background in engineering services, delivery operations and capability building.
Having served as a senior leader at leading engineering services organizations. He comes in place of Selva, who's decided to step down on account of personal reasons. In addition to that, in recent months, we have brought on many more leaders across various levels in the company. We brought on a leader for our data and AI practice. We brought on a leader for our overall ERP practice. We've got a leader for our global partnerships and alliances based in San Francisco, and we also now have a new leader for our life sciences vertical. As you know, we had inducted Komal Jain as a leader for our Americas business back in Q3.
These leaders that we have added have all come in from tier- 1 companies, we hope that they will bring a lot of expertise to the growth orientation that we want to look going forward. Our ERP leader is a 25-year-old veteran from SAP, with the addition of this leader, we hope to look at our ERP business and get that back to growth as well. At the same time, we are also making significant efforts to further strengthen our sales team and expect to see a substantial increase in that over the next few months. By the middle of FY 2027, I reckon that our sales team strength would have gone up by 30%-40% on a year-on-year basis. Many of these additions are in line with our intent to pivot to a growth-oriented AI-first organization.
With that background and context, I would like to draw your attention to our Q4 results and our full year performance. On the revenue side for Q4 FY 2026, our revenues grew 0.1% quarter-on-quarter and 2.4% year-on-year in rupee terms, reaching INR 13,486 million. However, our revenues declined sequentially in dollar terms. For the full year FY 2026, our revenues were down 1.2% in rupee terms to INR 5,300 million. That reflects the challenging demand environment that I had earlier alluded to. Some headwinds because of that in account-specific issues that we have faced, upfront productivity benefits that we had to pass on because of AI deals that we have won.
Also adding to that, some bold decisions that we took of walking away from several non-profitable revenue streams that affected our overall revenue but contributed in our margin expansion. Consequently, our EBITDA margins expanded further in Q4 on back of expansions recorded in Q2 and Q3 to 18.5%. EBITDA margins for the full year FY 2026 increased to 16.3% from 13% in FY 2025, a 333 basis points expansion. The strong margin performance has led to a 46.7% QOQ rise in our PAT for Q4 to INR 1,759 million. The PAT for the full year FY 2026 adjusted for the one-time impact for labor court changes and higher U.S. federal tax is up 27.6% YOY, which came in at INR 6,595 million.
Chandru, our CFO, will provide some more color both on the margins and cash flows in his remarks. On the deals front, I am pleased to observe that after a significant spike in TCV volumes during Q3, we have recorded a further sequential increase in total deal signings in Q4, making it a second quarter in a row where we have registered order booking above the $200 million mark. We have signed deals worth $208 million TCV during Q4, which is 3% higher than what we signed in Q3 of FY 2026. Across many of the deals that we have won and the engagements we are working on, we are deploying our AI-powered solution, including our Cogito platform, which is designed to accelerate enterprise software development, automate processes, and enhance decision-making through smart agents.
For instance, Birlasoft is executing a multi-horizon AI and data modernization program for a Fortune 500 med tech customer leveraging agentic AI to enable them automate and orchestrate complex workflows across multiple business domains such as supply chain, commercial, sales, finance, and manufacturing. This positions our engagement as a flagship multi-domain AI-led transformation in the med tech sector. Similarly, in BFSI, a vertical we are scaling our GenAI services across the North American P&C market to help clients process more submissions and realize measurable efficiencies and business gains. Looking ahead, as I had mentioned earlier, the demand environment has been quite challenging, marked by a lot of uncertainty and added to it, developments related to trade, tariffs, and geopolitics have made the situation even more volatile.
From that standpoint, FY 2026 has been somewhat unprecedented, where we fell short of our own expectations on the revenue front while improving margins significantly. That said, we've taken measures to strengthen our growth engine. We've made significant investments in our teams with the addition of several leaders. On the sales front, we've completed hiring of multiple additional sales talent across both U.S. as well as Europe geos and across verticals and service lines. We are looking at expanding our sales teams further over the next couple of quarters. With these additions, we will significantly enhance our capacity and capability of our sales teams. We've made significant investments in our AI platforms, and we have won some marquee deals around our AI push.
We are further strengthening our AI-first operating model with significant changes in our delivery mechanism and should be able to see benefits from that over the next couple of quarters. We continue to invest in our people to build an enterprise for the long term. Our focus going forward will only be centered around sales, pipeline generation and order booking, which will be around outcome-based and managed services engagements. At this point, I will ask Chandru, our CFO, to share his perspectives on the quarter and the year under review. Chandru, over to you.
Thank you, Angan. Good day, everyone. It's a pleasure to talk to you again. Let me take you through the financial highlights for the fourth quarter of FY 2026 and then for the full year FY 2026. First, the fourth quarter performance. As Angan said, our performance during the quarter has been mixed. While the top line reflects both macro and some client-specific issues, we've seen our margins continue to expand. We also have had healthy deal signings. In Q4, we had fewer working days than Q3. Additionally, an operational issue at one of our customers affected our volume growth.
These factors, combined with the prevailing soft demand conditions that Angan spoke about, where customers have been holding back on discretionary spend and are pushing for productivity benefits, resulted in revenue for the quarter declining 3.7% quarter-on-quarter at constant currency and in dollar terms to $145.3 million. In INR terms, revenues have been flat, up 0.1% quarter-on-quarter to INR 1,348.6 crores. Among our verticals, E&U registered a sequential growth and was up 1.8% during the quarter. The other vertical witnessed a degrowth on account of the reasons I just mentioned.
Margin performance has been strong, reflecting the series of decisive actions that we have been taking over the past three quarters to enhance our quality of revenue and optimize our cost structure. In addition, we have benefited by incremental one-off in Q4 versus Q3. Also, we saw continued upside from currency tailwinds. As a result, EBITDA margin for Q4 increased to 18.5%, which is an expansion of 30 basis points quarter-on-quarter. We continue to make investments in our business, including in the areas that Angan alluded to, i.e., augmentation of our sales team, focus on our AI orchestration layers, and enhancement in our domain and service line capabilities. PAT for the quarter increased from $13.4 million in Q3 to $19 million in Q4. This was driven by two factors. One, there was a strong margin expansion at the operating level.
Two, we took the benefit of available tax concessions in some of our global operations. Now to the full year performance. For the full year FY 2026, we have reported consolidated revenue of $597.5 million and INR 5,310 crores, representing a degrowth of 6% in dollar terms and 1.2% in rupee terms, respectively, over the previous year. On the margin front again, we have delivered significant expansion on the back of previous efforts that we have put in to drive operational efficiencies and to improve the overall quality of our revenue. The measures we've taken included rationalizing those tail accounts that were not profitable or where we did not see potential to scale up.
Our EBITDA for the year, which stood at $97.5 million, is up 18.2% year-on-year, translating into an EBITDA margin of 16.3%. This is a 333 basis point expansion over the previous year. PAT for the year stood at $58.3 million, lower than $61.1 million in the previous year due to the combined impact of changes in labor code, which affected our Q3 numbers and a provision made for incremental U.S. federal tax in FY 2026. The tax concession that came in Q4 did act as a tailwind. The elevated ETR due to incremental U.S. tax that I called out on our earlier calls was limited and will be limited to FY 2026, and we expect ETR to settle closer to our historical ETR level starting FY 2027.
Adjusted for this incremental provision for U.S. federal tax and a one-time provision made on account of changes in labor code, normalized PAT for the year would have been $74.2 billion, up 21.5% year on year, or INR 659.5 crores, up 27.6% year on year. This would translate into an adjusted basic EPS of INR 22.14 per share. Balance sheet and conclusion. Let me conclude with a few observations on the balance sheet. We ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of INR 2,637.3 crores, up 19% year on year. While our DSO for the period under review increased sequentially to 62 days, the increase was caused by an unanticipated spillover of some collections in the first couple of days of April.
If we were to adjust for the collections realized by 3rd of April in 2026, our DSO would have been 55 days. We remain committed to staying focused on sustained cash flow generation. In line with our track record of rewarding shareholders and allocating capital prudently, the board of directors have proposed a final dividend of INR 4 per share, subject to shareholders' approval. This, combined with the interim dividend paid out after our Q2 board meeting, takes our overall dividend for the full financial year to INR 6.50 per share. We are entering the new financial year with a strong margin profile and a robust balance sheet, allowing us to make continued investments in AI capabilities and in talent required to steer our growth. With this, I open the floor to questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. The first question is from the line of Girish Pai from BOB Capital Markets . Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Angan, revenue was down negative 6.5% in constant currency terms. How do you see FY 2027 play out? Do you think growth in FY 2027 will be positive? If so, how will that growth play out across the four quarters or the two halves?
Yeah. Girish, thank you. Thank you for your question, and thank you for your interest in our company. If you really analyze our six and a half % degrowth, like we called out, a part of it was because we ourselves walked away from some revenue that was non-profitable, right? That is one. Second, like I said, that because a lot of our deals are now AI related, where we have to give productivity benefits right up front, that also dented our revenue. Quite frankly, we were not able to win too much business to compensate for the negativity that happened, which are very account specific.
Now going forward, as you know, Girish, we do not give our guidance. If you look at the investments that we have made, we've gotten almost a large number of leaders who have come in at the leadership level, like a new leader for our life sciences vertical, a new leader for ERP, which has not been doing well over the last so many quarters. We've got a new leader in Vikram himself. We've got a lot of new leaders. Even the sales motion, like I said, almost we'll have a 40% increase in our sellers in the market. We are hoping with that our pipeline will improve, our order book will improve, and eventually the revenues will improve.
We are hoping that the bad news is behind us now, and FY 2027, you know, will be better for us. We will not give a guidance in terms of how much revenue going forward, and the market is also very volatile, but at least we are getting the input parameters corrected, Girish.
and H2, which would be a better half?
In order booking, Girish, as you know that H1 is always soft and H2 is better from an order booking perspective. I don't see that changing. From a revenue standpoint, it's hard to say at this stage, but, you know, our endeavor will be to first get the pipeline fixed and getting the order booking going. Revenues will automatically follow.
You spoke about sales engine, you know, being ramped up. How will this impact the G&A related costs and the EBIT margins in FY 2027?
I'll ask Chandru to comment on that part. Look, we've done a lot operationally to, you know, increase our EBITDA. As you have seen, our EBITDA performance has been very, very strong over the last four quarters, and the team has done an excellent job, which enables us to kind of invest in our business going forward. Going forward, our entire endeavor will be, the entire focus will be to generate more pipeline, more order booking. It'll be a completely growth-oriented, sales-oriented organization going forward. We'll make a lot more investment. That obviously will have an impact on our margins. To quantify that, I'm just gonna ask Chandru for his comments. Chandru.
Yes. You will recall, Girish, that in the past quarters as well, we said that a steady state EBITDA margin performance for us would be in the 15% range, right? Now we, if you look at our numbers, we are at 18.5% for Q4. My expectation is that as we make some of these investments, we will continue to do that for the required growth that we need. Our business model already bakes in this ramp up in sales and the investments that, you know, we committed to make, you know, for while I spoke about the 15%+ that we will make on a consistent basis.
My last question is regarding your ERP business. There have been comments made by Palantir on compression and efforts and stuff like that connected with SAP migration, SAP implementation. What are you seeing in the market today or what are you seeing yourself in terms of AI impact on your ERP business? Is that compressing or deflating your ERP revenues in a material fashion? Do you see that happening going forward?
Girish, first of all, you know, our ERP business has been very challenged irrespective of the Palantir announcement or the AI related stories, right? We've consistently not performed on our ERP business. The good news is, I think, finally, we've been able to get a leader to lead our ERP business. He's gonna be based out of New York. Like we said in our earlier commentary, he's worked 25 years with SAP, and we are quite delighted to welcome him to lead our ERP business. We strongly believe our ERP business will only continue to improve from here. System of records is not going away. We of course, we have looked at the Palantir announcement. We are closely monitoring it.
At least in our conversations with our clients, we are seeing a lot of interest in terms of the overall ERP landscape, whether it is SAP, whether it is JDE, et cetera. We will continue to stay invested in this business. We see a lot of long-term potential here.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. A request to all the participants. Kindly limit yourself to one question per participant and rejoin the queue for a follow-up question. The next question is from the line of Sudheer Guntupalli from Kotak Mahindra. Please go ahead.
Hi, Angan. First question is, if you can throw some more color on which exact vertical you face this operational issue with the client or a client-specific issue impacting your overall revenue. Is it BFSI or life sciences?
It is life sciences, and within life sciences, it is the med tech sector, medical devices sector. It is, it is more manufacturing-oriented. That's where we face the issue, Girish, which is why it is reflected in our life sciences business. Our life sciences business, as Sudheer, you know, that, you know, it is, it is more manufacturing-oriented. That's where, that's where our biggest de-growth has been.
Sure, Angan. Is this issue completely behind? That is question number one . Question number two is, the net new TCV booking seem to be a bit on the softer side for this quarter. Any further color that you may want to add on that?
Yeah. Sudheer, I intuitively feel that the bad news in both manufacturing and med devices sector is behind us. We've taken a lot of hit because of the macroeconomic situation. Also situation related to the operational issues of some of our clients, which I can't delve into too much. Suffice to say that it's very client-specific, which is why we are now seeing a turnaround there, and we feel that this will not occur going forward. That is point number one. Point number two is, from our perspective, the entire focus now, having delivered strong margin performance, will be growth orientation. All the investments that we are doing are only to deliver greater growth going forward.
Yeah. Also.
Sudheer, sorry to interrupt. Can I request you to come back please for a follow-up?
Sure. No, no. It's okay. Let him please answer. Yeah, Sudheer, please go ahead. Please go ahead with the other question.
Yeah. No, no. My question is more specific to the TCV, net new TCV, which appears a bit soft in this quarter. Is there any particular reason or deal slippage into the June quarter because of which this happened? Or is there any other specific issue? Last question from my end is on margins. For the last two, three quarters we have been consistently surprising on the positive side on margins. 15%+ is looks like a bit of a low ball expectation at this stage. We understand that there is a bit of a Forex benefit that we have gotten in terms of this margin expansion.
Even if you exclude that, Chandru, if you can help us understand what is the more sustainable level of margin since we are way above the aspirational range of 15%+ . That would be from me. Thank you.
Yeah. Sudheer, first let me talk about the TCV performance. I, first of all, you know, second quarter in a row we've delivered above the 200 million mark. Now I agree with you that only, at an overall year level, roughly about 38% of our, of our order booking is really from existing new and net new. Which to my mind is a reasonably good performance. Q4 specifically, our net new is obviously very soft. I don't think there is anything more to read towards it. It is only because, so many of our clients are delaying decision-making because of the uncertainty. It's not that we have lost any deals. It's just getting pushed to Q1.
You know, our entire focus will be to kind of convert all those deals in this current quarter. On the margins, I will just ask Chandru for his comments.
Thanks, Angan. You know, back on the margins, one of the points that I did make to Girish's earlier question was that we are making the investment not only in sales but also in leadership across our service lines and our partnerships. We are making investment in our AI orchestration layer and in some of our capabilities. All of this is going to be a drain on our margins, and that is why I did mention I continue to believe that our steady-state margins that we should expect is gonna be upward of 15%. There will be an erosion from where we are today, right? Obviously, because of these investments.
Secondly, you should also recognize the fact that when we're looking at additional growth, there will be ramp up, which will be natural from the way we do our business. Third, when you're looking at some of the productivity benefits that some of our existing and new clients are expecting of us, there will be some, you know, front-ending of some of those benefits, which will have an initial drain on our margins. Taking all of this into consideration is why I said that 15% would be a sustainable number as I see it at this point in time.
Yeah. Thanks, Chandru. That's it from me. Thanks. All the best.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Just two question. First is about can you give or quantify impact of exit from low-margin business on FY 2026 growth rate? Second is, what kind of deal intake required for you to get confidence on QOQ growth resuming for us? Some ballpark number in terms of deal intake number. Thanks.
Dipesh, thank you for your question. Look, we cannot give exact numbers because that is very client specific, Dipesh. We can only say that at least 200 basis points of growth roughly went away because we walked away from low margin non-strategic deals. There are two aspects to it. One is low margin deals. The others are also non-strategic deals, where we didn't see any further opportunity to grow. Now exact numbers we can't obviously give, but it is around that figure. What was your second question, Dipesh?
Before you get to the second question, Dipesh, just to add to what Angan said. We also talked about the lower working days in the fourth quarter versus the third quarter. The 200 basis points that Angan just spoke about, they are taking into consideration that one element as well.
Yeah. What was your second question, Dipesh?
What kind of deal intake on quarterly basis are required for you to get confidence about QOQ growth on sustainable basis returning?
Dipesh, look, first quarter always is a little soft on order booking, correct? From our perspective, our endeavor will be to deliver strong order booking performance. Again, I can't give you exact figures on this. Internally, obviously, we have a target, which is why we are hiring 30%, 40% more salespeople. Now the focus of the company is gonna be clearly revenue growth. That's important for us because we've not performed for the last almost six, seven quarters. I would not like to give the exact number, but it will definitely be substantially better than the order book we delivered in FY 2026.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. Angan, as you rightly said, this is the sixth quarter in a row where the CC QOQ growth is flat or declining. Macro issues are common for the industry. At our base, it should not have impacted so much. Despite that, the decline of 6.5% is one of the highest in the revenue across many stocks. In terms of creating a team around sales, delivery, AI, when you joined, we also done a restructuring round by making investment in new leaders, churning leaders, both on sales and delivery. What has gone wrong in a previous restructuring cycle, and why you are confident this time in terms of the, again, a second round of restructuring?
Sandeep, look, we ourselves are pretty disappointed with our performance. Let me start by saying that. There's no hiding away the fact that six quarters we've not grown, right? Clearly the leaders that we had hired earlier have not delivered, and we had to make changes at multiple levels. Correct? From that perspective, the reason why I'm now Let me not even say from a confidence perspective, but the one thing that I can tell you is the following, that we have invested for growth, right? We are hiring leadership. We've already hired a lot of leadership. We'll continue to hire more sellers. By end of Q2, we'll probably have 40% more sellers than we have today.
With the objective that, you know, as we have more and more sellers, our pipeline will improve and eventually our order booking will improve. That's what I'm betting on. Now, if you look at the kind of talent that we've been able to attract, right, the leaders in data and AI, leaders on our ERP business, I at least feel and I get great confidence from the kind of talent we have got, right? So from that standpoint, I am confident that with the kind of talent that we have got, the bad news being already baked in, having the money to invest in our business, in our AI-first operating model, can only get the company better. Because quite frankly, we are at the bottom of the pit right now, as you said.
I'm only hoping that the company will get better from here on, and which is why we continue to stay invested, and we are putting in so much more investment as we go forward. Sandeep, I don't know whether I've answered your question exactly, but at least the management team is confident that with all the investments that we are making, the company should turn around sooner or rather than later.
Thanks. Thanks. Just a follow-up. You said most of the client-specific issues are behind now entering FY 2027. Second, as you have said, the team expansion on the sales will be over 40% by the middle of this financial year. In that scenario, pipeline creation and TCV conversion may not happen in the starting one year of FY 2027. Is it fair to assume because of all these changes, the benefits would be visible in FY 2028 rather than FY 2027? Most of the pains on the client-specific issues are behind, or you still believe those client-specific issues to continue in FY 2027 in the near term?
Sandeep, if the situation continues as is today, then the client-specific issues are behind us. We don't know what we don't know. If something more drastic were to happen going forward, you know, we cannot comment. I can only tell you two things, that we've already done a lot of the hiring. They're already behind us. We will continue to add sellers as we go forward by end of Q2. You're correct. Some of these sellers to settle down, build a pipeline, and then get the order booked is gonna be crucial, and then the revenue will follow. We'll have to see how the sequencing happens. Look, our view is that, you know, quarter-on-quarter pipeline improvement we are already starting to see.
Now we have to show that up in order booking and eventually revenue will come.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Ravi Menon from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Again, your top five customers have been growing, you know, and finally this quarter we're actually seeing that flatline. Just wanted to check, is there anything that's temporarily stopping this, when we can expect growth to resume?
Sorry, Ravi, your voice broke up. I couldn't quite understand the question. Sorry, can you repeat the question again, please?
Oh, yeah. I was saying that the top five customers have been growing quite well, you know, and now we've had a quarter where business flatlined. Just wanna check if there is anything that's within the top five that's been a client-specific issue this quarter and when we can expect this to resume growth.
Yeah. Ravi, I don't think we have a client-specific issue in our top five clients. I think the top five clients are pretty strong. It is a seasonal issue. I don't see that to be a problem. The growth will be back on the top five. I think our the next five and the next ten is where we need to put a lot of focus to get new real estate and new clients, which is why we are investing so much more in sales than we've ever done before.
Thank you. I saw that, you know, although you talked about investment in sales this quarter, the sales and support headcount is slightly down. Should we think about that as more a G&A cut and, you know, while you're actually adding sales and marketing personnel?
That is correct.
All right. Thank you so much. Best luck.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Priyank Chheda from Vallum Capital Advisors. Please go ahead. Priyank, may I request you unmute your line and proceed with your question, please.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you. Sorry, I was on mute. A few observations which has been quite a bit of contrasting, when it comes to IT sector. First is, we've been generating INR 500 crores of annual cash flow, which is after tax, after all the working capital requirement, and still the dividend payout has been flat for the full year, right? Which ultimately what happens is we load up a lot of cash on our balance sheet, and then we have a restructuring program which is going on internally, wherein we plan to grow organically, right? When it comes to the industry, the same pattern, a lot of such our players or the players in this industry have returned the cash on balance sheet to the rightful owner, which is the equity shareholder.
What's our thoughts around this trend and the contrasting observation that I have observed? The second observation that I would like to share is again within this industry, be it from a $20 billion size of revenue company, to $40 billion, almost everyone would share the pipeline numbers, guidances, maybe even more granular details. While it's been difficult for us to judge what could be the trend that we should also judge, because we also are responsible to answer our principals. These are the two contrasting observations, and would like to know your thoughts on these two, sir.
Let me take the question on cash and dividend, Priyank. You know, I think this question had come up earlier too, right? Clearly, the dividend payouts that the board has recommended, which is as Ravi said, in line with what we did declare in FY 2025, is based on the premise on performance. If you look at our PAT, right, it's been a very similar PAT on a year-on-year basis. Therefore, the consideration was on the dividend in relation to our PAT and therefore the dividend payout ratio, right? That was one.
Second, overall, the cash in the balance sheet, you know, you're right that it rightfully belongs to the shareholders and this is a call that the board is taking on behalf of the shareholders and recommending to the shareholders. Everything that you said is certainly in consideration and is in play with the board and, you know, we are sure as a leadership team that the board will take the right call on the cash on a go-forward basis.
Priyank, on the second question, in terms of the guidance, look, the situation is very, very volatile currently. Specifically for a smaller company, the volatility is hard to predict, which is the reason we do not give guidance. Like we have said in the last half an hour, you know, Priyank, we will continue to focus on investing for growth and investing for sales. We've done a lot on the operating margin front on the last four quarters. We've done significant cost takeout, and we now feel more comfortable and have the money to invest in sales. That's all we can do. Our focus will be to generate pipeline and onboard, automatically revenues will follow. We are trying to get the company back on the growth track, and that is what the management will stay focused on.
Sure. Just to add on this, again, back, Chandru sir, by when should we expect that board would start thinking about a positive generation on incremental return on capital? Which means that to the cash that we generate doesn't just sit on the balance sheet, whether it's either used for a growth or maybe it's given back to the rightful owners. I just want to know what would be the timeline that we should think of it, by when board would think of, in the favor of minority shareholders. As of now, it doesn't look like. On second observation, again, sir, on just a follow-up. We completely trust your strategy, there's no doubt, and hence we have been remain invested.
What we would like to now know is, after a series of restructurings that we have done, what would be that timeline that we should think of it? If not the numbers, if not the guidance or if not maybe any specific metrics that you would like to call out, maybe you would like to call out what would be the timeline that we should think of it, wherein we start witnessing the growth, or maybe the aspirations that you would hold for a company to be a part of a successful company within the whole of the IT system. What would be the timeline that we should also think going ahead? That, that's all. Thank you and all the best.
Yeah. Priyank, the second question I'll take, and then I'll ask Chandru to comment on the first question. Priyank, as you will know, right, which you already know, that revenue is a manifestation of the pipeline and the order book that we can generate, right? Now we are fixing the basics. We have hired leaders, we are hiring sellers, we are adding more sellers as we go into Q1 and Q2 with the hope that, you know, all the sellers who are coming in and will generate more pipeline and hence generate more order book. Then the revenue will come. Now, it's hard to say which quarter onwards it'll happen, but at least Well, we've recognized it and we earlier did not have the margins to invest, but now our margin situation is better, so we are investing for growth.
Give us some time. Our endeavor as a management team is to focus and get the company back to quarter-on-quarter growth, which we will all be focused on, and we will deliver that. On the cash part, again, I'll defer to Chandru for his comments.
Yeah. On the cash, Priyank, rest assured that we will immediately let the shareholders know as soon as a call is taken. Unfortunately, at this time, I will not be able to, you know, say anything on behalf of board. We will certainly let you know as soon as we get more information.
Just if I can may just within the Q4 quarter for specific one question. Just on the manufacturing side, I'm just referring back to the notes of Q3. wherein in Q3, we did said that manufacturing had a previous deal ramp up and so should not be the Q4 witnessing that growth. Instead we have seen that growth coming up in manufacturing. What should be that consistency that we should think of it when it comes to manufacturing? Again, a contrasting thing in BFSI, wherein in Q3 had a furloughs, and we did mention that, from the base of Q3, Q4 will see a definitely a good growth coming up in BFSI which we are yet to see. These two again are contrasting observations which you would like to clarify.
Priyank, on manufacturing, the issue is more about more macroeconomic headwind rather than anything else. Hard to predict. We are so many sellers that we are adding a large portion of it is going to be added in the U.S. in the manufacturing domain. On financial services, though Q3 had furloughs, Q4 had lesser working days. As you know, in the BFSI business, it is more time and material than anything else. There is a natural effect. I am not so worried about BFSI. BFSI will be a strong growth, you know, vertical for us going forward. We are fixing our life sciences and manufacturing businesses which has been a drag on us. That is where most of our investments are going in.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Gaurav Nigam from Kotak Investments. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir, for taking my question. I just have one question on the demand environment. I mean, leaving aside the one-off client discussion issues and the client trimming that we are undertaking, I wanted to hear your comments on the overall end client spending in the BFSI sector specifically. Are we seeing any sustainable uptick in spending in this client segment? Any color on what would drive that? I think in the previous question you mentioned that you are not so concerned about that segment. Any color further drill down would be useful.
Gaurav, I'm sure you know that our BFSI business is more tuned towards, you know, payments, asset management and more, you know, non-life which is the P&C business on the insurance side. That is what we focus on.
We don't focus on traditional banking. We don't focus on, you know, a traditional investment banking business, right? We are very focused on these three segments. Now from a client perspective, the spending is continuing to be stable. The spending is shifting from more traditional businesses to more AI-related work. Which is why in my opening commentary we talked about doing a lot of marquee AI-related work on a P&C insurer in the U.S. We are doing the same, not only on the asset management side but even on the payments and the card side. I don't see a spending pattern change per se. The spending remains to be strong.
Only the shift of the Spending pool is moving from the more traditional side of the businesses to more AI-oriented work, and we are participating in that, yeah, and winning our own share of the business.
Got it. Just a quick follow-up, sir. While this shift of pool from one bucket to another, are we seeing any increased pool size or the pool size remains similar across the end client industries within BFSI?
Within, again, not BFSI, but the markets that we serve and the sub-sectors that we serve.
Yeah
we don't see an increase in spending. We see the spending to be pretty much even Stevens, only the shift that I spoke about from traditional services to new age services. That's our view at this stage.
Got it. If I may ask a second question. On the productivity deflation part which you mentioned, just wanted to get a sense that when we are seeing this net new TCV wins as well, this productivity deflation, how it will characterize in terms of a revenue growth. Any sense or any color on that would be useful.
Yeah. Gaurav, you know, as AI is becoming more and more prevalent in our industry and most of the deals that we are discussing with our clients is infused with a lot of AI, which means we have to commit and deliver a lot of productivity through our AI tools that we are, you know, we are working with our customers with. What happens in an AI deal is we have to commit to the savings and underwrite some of the savings right up front, which is why you see revenue deflation in the immediate and the medium term. More and more as we do these deals, Gaurav, you will see the revenue catching up in the future quarters. That is our hope.
Which is why, you know, we are pretty confident and investing in people or investing in sellers to drive some of those kind of conversations with our clients.
Got it. Got it. That's helpful, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants, you may press star 1 to ask a question. Next question is from the line of Girish Pai from BOB Capital Markets . Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Angan, one of your peers, of a similar size, said that the competitive intensity has gone up so much that some of the larger players are coming and competing for the smaller orders, which it had not seen in the past. Are you seeing something similar happening where because of market, I mean, the demand not increasing or remaining stagnant, you're seeing larger vendors competing with you on smaller deals?
Yeah. So, that is absolutely happening, Girish, because what happens is in an AI world it becomes a level playing field for all partners to try and bid for all kind of work because it is more outcome based or, you know, non-linear kind of revenue streams. We are absolutely seeing larger players also bidding for mid-sized deals. Equally it also is an opportunity for mid-sized companies because for the first time, I guess there is a level playing field between the larger companies and a smaller company. If we invest and get our AI story right, which we are doing and which is why we are making so many investment at every level, we are hoping that we will be able to compete and win our fair share, as the AI, you know, scene goes ahead.
When you talk about outcome-based deals, are these fixed price deals or are they based on some operational outcomes that you're talking about or some financial outcomes that you're discussing with clients?
It is operational outcome, not so much financial outcome. These will be more fixed price deals, which would also mean, you know, you deliver an outcome to a client and your fees is linked to that outcome. Which to me, in the medium term, is a revenue deflation kind of a situation. Over a longer term it'll help us control the work, will help us deliver an outcome and eventually hopefully help us make more money.
Is there an upside and a downside to these outcome-based deals? Do you, if you outperform you get more? Is that the situation?
Yes. Yes, absolutely. That's the situation. Which also means that if you don't execute well, right, it could mean that you will not be able to make the kind of money. If you have a great execution engine and if you deliver well, that can augur very well for the client as well as for ourselves.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Pulkit Chawla from 360 ONE. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Angan Guha, my first question is, if I refer to your commentary on each of the verticals where you mentioned that Life Sciences and MedTech, the bad news seems to be behind, and, you know, BFSI really should grow well from here on, and the fact that Energy and Utilities continues to do well, what really stops you from committing to sort of saying that, you know, Q1 there should be growth coming up? Is there something that you're seeing or some client-specific issues that you're still seeing in some of these verticals which really stops you from committing to that? My second question is on the margins part. If I heard correctly, you did allude to the fact that Q4 margins also did have some one-offs.
If you could just quantify them and what was the nature of those one-offs. Thank you.
Pulkit, first let me answer the first question. The only reason I am holding back on committing anything is because the market is very uncertain and it's volatile. Every quarter I come and say something, and there is a market event that happens that, you know, disrupts the equation. Our game plan now as a management team is to focus on the input parameter. Investing in sales, driving order book, in driving pipeline is the first port of call as an organization. Chandru talked about the work that we have done in terms of fixing our margins, right? Now the entire focus is going to be to do what I just said, right? Fixing sales, driving more, you know, order book, driving more pipeline. The margins will eventually follow. We are confident.
If we get these three things right, margins will come. We have to get these three things right. Now, on the one-off, as far as margins is concerned, I will ask, Chandru for his comments.
Sorry, I have next up question.
There were one-offs in margins in Q2 as well as Q3 and Q4.
Yeah.
Will the one-offs continue, or what is the sustainable?
Uh, so-
If you could just please quantify them also.
I will be able to quantify them in a moment, Pulkit. Before that one-off, for definition, we do not expect for them to come back, right? We will obviously. We have not baked in the one-off when we talk about the steady-state margins going forward, right? There are some one-off, you know, I'll give you some of these items, right? While I may not, you know, be able to give you line by line, you know, line by line data points, but I will give you the total impact and some of the items that caused the one-off, right?
One, we have made lower provisions, and you should expect that based on the performance-based compensation which are at a certain level until third quarter. Then in the fourth quarter, we did take a reversal of those provisions because of based on the performance. That's one. Also, there were some leave encashment provision that we make on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Given the fourth quarter and where we landed in the fourth quarter, we did afford more leaves than third quarter. As a result of that, the amount of leave encashment provision that we had to take also consequently came down.
Of course, we talked about the Forex tailwind. In addition, we also had a lower employee equity compensation expense, again, coming from the fact that we had three exits in the past quarter to know and that we had called out earlier. All of this told, I would say the Forex tailwind gave us a 170 basis point benefit. The other items that I talked about gave us another 130, a 170 point benefit. It's about a 340 point benefit that we got in the fourth quarter. While Forex, given where it is, I, you know, I don't know what will happen in the first quarter, we're not fronting on it.
The other part of it certainly will not repeat itself in the first quarter and beyond.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Angan Guha, CEO and MD Birlasoft, for closing comments.
Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank all of you once again for joining us on this call today and your insightful questions. I appreciate your interest in Birlasoft. While the demand conditions have been challenging, we have seen an uptick in our deal wins during the second half of the year. We won several marquee AI-led engagements and a noticeable expansion in our operating margin. We continue to generate strong cash flows and have a solid balance sheet. We are investing in our people and our capabilities, including significant enhancement of our sales teams. This collectively strengthen our confidence as we start the new financial year. I'm looking forward to speaking with you again next quarter. In the meanwhile, please feel free to reach out to Abhinandan for any clarifications or feedback.
Thank you once again, and good evening, everyone.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Birlasoft Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.