Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Coforge Earnings Call, conference call for Third Quarter for FY 2024. Please note all participants' line will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the management's opening remark. Should you need any assistance during the conference call, please raise your hand from the participant tab on the screen. While asking questions, request you to please identify yourself and your company. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to management for opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Mandeep. Good evening, everybody. You will have received our Q4, Q3, FY 2024 results by now. They've been filed with the stock exchanges and also available on our investor sections of the website. We have with us today our CEO, Mr. Sudhir Singh, our Chief Customer Success Officer, Mr. John Speight, and, our CFO, Mr. Saurabh Goel. We'll begin the call with opening remarks from the management team, and post that, we'll open the floor for questions. Before we begin, please note that some of the statements made in today's discussion, relating to the future should be construed as forward-looking statements and may involve risk and uncertainties. Please refer to the disclaimer to this effect in slide number 2 of our, Q3 results web presentation. With that, now I hand over the call to our CEO, Mr. Sudhir Singh. Over to you, Sudhir.
Thank you, Vikas, and a very good evening, a very good morning, and a good afternoon to all of you across the world, folks. At the outset, I would like to wish your loved ones and you a very healthy, happy, and successful 2024. Despite quarter three being a very tough quarter for the industry, Team Coforge has once again turned in a strong performance. During the quarter under review, we faced higher than normal headwinds because of unusually high furloughs in the banking and insurance industries, and you know, these are core industries for us. We also confronted a depressed demand environment generally.
Despite these challenges, I am pleased to report that at the end of quarter three, Coforge has registered an organic YTD growth of 14.7% in CC terms, and we have logged a sequential growth of 1.8% CC during the quarter. The firm closed 3 large deals during the quarter with our 12-month signed order book now hovering around the $1 billion mark. With an organic YTD CC growth rate of 14.7% at the end of this quarter, in a tough year like this, we continue to remain one of the fastest organically growing IT firms.
Finally, and importantly, before I delve into detailed numbers, I do wish to point out that Coforge this year is likely to be one of the very few firms that gave a clear go growth guidance at the beginning of the year, and shall deliver within that revenue guidance range. Our ability to deliver on annual revenue guidance commitments in such a tough year is a testament to the tenacity of Team Coforge and in our ability to execute against plans. If anything, our performance this quarter reflects the exceptional execution capability of Team Coforge. With that broad context, I shall now walk you through the quarterly performance and our assessment of the outcome. Let's start with the quarterly revenue analysis.
I am pleased to report that during quarter three, Coforge reported revenues of $282 million, registering a sequential growth of 1.8% in CC terms, 1.4% in U.S. dollar terms, and 2.1% in Indian rupee terms. With a strong CC revenue growth of 1.8% in a seasonally weak quarter three, a similar CC growth would suffice to meet the lower end of our annual CC revenue growth guidance. On a year-on-year basis, Q3 revenues were up by 12% in CC terms, 12% in USD terms, and 13% in INR terms. And mind you, these are organic numbers. I shall now detail vertical wise growth for the quarter under review.
Despite very high, and I mean very high, furloughs in the BFS vertical, it reported a sequential growth of 3.1% in CC terms and contributed 32.2% to the aggregate revenue mix of the organization. The insurance vertical was flat in CC terms, and it contributed 22% to the Q3 revenue mix. The travel vertical grew 1% sequentially in CC terms and contributed 17.8% to the total revenue. Other emerging verticals saw a sequential growth of 2.5% in CC terms, and they contributed 28.1% to the total revenue mix. During the quarter under review, top five clients contributed 22.7% to the revenues, while the top ten contributed 34.3% to the revenues.
As you know, a majority of our top ten clients are from the banking and insurance sector, which was impacted by unusually high furloughs during the quarter. Offshore revenue contribution continued to climb, and it continues to climb, and stood at 52.2% of the total revenues. Revenue from fixed price projects contributed 51% to the quarter's revenue. W ith that overall summary, I shall now move on to the margins and the operating profits discussion. During the quarter, we delivered an Adjusted EBITDA of $50.6 million, which was INR 4,170 million. This reflects an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 18% for the quarter, an expansion of 39 bps sequentially. The quarter saw unusually high furloughs, which had a higher than anticipated impact on margins.
SG&A, as a percentage of our aggregate revenue, is a space that we continue to invest in, and it stood at 15.1% and saw an increase of 20 bps quarter-on-quarter. We continue to invest strongly in our sales and marketing capabilities to ensure continued and robust growth in the years ahead. We are investing very, very heavily in newer verticals and newer sub-GEOs like California and New York, as standalone market regions, and in scaling up newer verticals beyond the Banking, Insurance, Travel, and Public Sector verticals that we have. The focus now of these investments continues to be on Healthcare, Retail, and CMT verticals. Investments on scaling up the alliances, advisory, and analyst channels continues unabated. We expect SG&A, moving forward, to continue to stay in the 15% range on an ongoing basis.
Reported EBITDA margins stood at 17.3%, saw an expansion of 201 bps quarter-on-quarter. Reported margins have also expanded on account of ESOP costs getting normalized during the quarter. Consolidated PAT for Q3 stood at INR 2,380 million, and that was up quarter-on-quarter by 31.5%. Moving on to order intake. We recorded an order intake of $354 million during the quarter under review. This is the eighth consecutive quarter where the firm has reported an order intake of more than $300 million. In terms of geographic regions, Americas contributed $110 million, EMEA $172 million, and the rest of the world $72 million to the Q3 order intake.
While the macros and the IT spend environment continues to remain challenging, we signed 3 large deals, taking the number of large deals signed to 8 in the first 3 quarters of this fiscal. Our executable order book, which reflects the total value of locked orders over the next 12 months, now stands at $974 million and is up 15.8% on a YoY basis. The firm also signed 7 new logos during the quarter. Moving on to people metrics now. At the end of quarter 3, headcount stood at 24,607, and saw a marginal decline of 31 sequentially. We have added almost 1,400 employees until now in this fiscal. Utilization, including trainees during the quarter, stood at 79.4%, compared to 80% in the last quarter.
The last 12-month IT services attrition during the quarter now stands at 12.1%. With that preamble, with those opening comments, I shall now request John Speight, Customer Success Officer at Coforge, to walk us through capability and delivery highlights. John, take it away.
Thank you, Sudhir. We continue to embrace our position as an AI-first organization. We recently cleared a critical Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program audit, which has positioned us as a recommended partner for shared clients and unlocked dedicated growth funding for us. I will now share a few examples of delivery execution in our key verticals. In BFS, we enabled a leading global bank to go green as part of their initiative to become paper-free in their retail banking operations. We've also started successfully delivering AI-based solutions to our BFS clients. A good example being a global banking product organization, where Coforge is now a strategic partner in their AI Acceleration Hub program. For a leading Middle East commercial bank, we have executed a major legacy modernization transformation encompassing their HR and financial processes. We're driving workflow processing efficiency and improving user experience.
For a Tier 1 Australian bank, we are partnering on their strategic programs to reimagine and transform their financial crime, fraud, lending, corporate, and institutional banking business processes. Moving on to insurance. We recently built and deployed a GenAI-based service for a major supplemental insurance provider to supply competitive intelligence for product and policy features, comparisons across client segments. We also added a major brokerage firm as a new logo, one of the world's largest managed agents. In travel and transport, we secured an enterprise testing contract with a globally recognized cruise liner firm. We executed a UI modernization program for a leading Middle East airport, enhancing customer experience across their websites. We've also created a new nearshore engineering capability for a prominent U.S. airline.
In Public sector, a growing business for Coforge, we secured a $27 million TCV deal to implement a unified data hub, providing a golden source of data to enable monitoring and provisioning of state welfare benefits to citizens. In Europe, we collaborated with a major talent advisory customer to develop their career support system. Using Quasar, our AI platform, we have integrated over 20 LLMs across cloud platforms to help streamline processes and improve client reach. I will close with a couple of notable mentions. HFS positioned us as an enterprise innovator in Low-Code Services 2023, with a special designation of Trailblazer. While IDC recognized Coforge as a major player in their 2023 Worldwide Managed Public Cloud Services reports. With that, I'll pass over to our CFO, Saurabh Goel, for further details on financials.
Thank you, John. L et me now provide some more detail on the financial statements. P rofit After Tax for quarter three witnessed substantial increase of 31.5% quarter-on-quarter, reflecting 229 bps improvement in profit margin. T his was on account of three reasons: one, improvement efficiency, resulting in increase in gross margin by 60 bps in a very tough quarter, which was impacted by very high furloughs. Number two, lower ESOP cost as compared to quarter two. N umber three, lower ETR of 17.5% on account of higher profits that got realized in the current quarter in the lower tax jurisdiction, although we expect the quarter four ETR to be normalized at levels of 21 odd %.
As of quarter ended 31st December 2023, our total cash and bank balances stood at $57 million as compared to $43 million in the previous quarter, reflecting an increase of $14 million in the bank balances. Q3 OCF to EBITDA jumped to 70% or $33.5 million, as compared to 50% in quarter two. We expect to deliver 65%-70% of OCF to EBITDA for the year, which also means that there is a significant ramp expected in Q4 and which is in line with the past trend of the organization. The debtors at the end of quarter stood at 63 days of sales outstanding, compared to 64 days in Q2 of FY 2024. CapEx during the quarter stood at $6.7 million.
With that, I will hand over the call back to Sudhir for his comments on the outlook.
Thanks a lot, Saurabh. As we look back at where we are at the end of the first nine months of the current fiscal, we feel very satisfying, that we've ended the first nine months of the current fiscal with an organic CC revenue growth of 14.7% YoY in a very difficult year. We expect continued revenue growth in Q4 and a very sharp margin improvement as well during Q4. The margin improvement shall be on the back of the new business ramp-ups that we called out recently, and equally importantly, from the reversal of the significant furloughs that we have seen. We gave, and I said this at the beginning of the call, we gave a very explicit annual organic CC revenue guidance range right at the beginning of the year, and we remain confident that we shall deliver within that band.
That should make us one of the very few firms that have been able to deliver upon the yearly guidance commitment made at the beginning of the year. We also expect, given the very sharp uptick in Q4 margins, to be around the Adjusted EBITDA margin range of last year. With that, ladies, gentlemen, I conclude my prepared remarks, and I look forward to hearing your comments and addressing your questions along with my team. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. We will now open the call for Q&A session. We will wait for a few minutes until the queue assembles. We request participants to restrict to two questions and then return to the queue for more questions. Please raise your hand from the participant tab on the screen to ask a question. The first question is from Sulabh Govila.
Yeah. Hi, am I audible?
You are.
Thank you for taking my question. My first question is around the opening remarks that you made with respect to some of the additional environment issues, which we mentioned that it was depressed additionally in the December quarter. J ust wanted to understand what has additionally come in, and if you could provide some context around which areas and which verticals and when would you ecpect this to reverse, or would it be a headwind in the coming quarters? T he furloughs that you mentioned are they reversing completely in the coming quarter?
Thank you, Sulabh. Let me answer the questions in reverse order. Let me take furloughs. That's gonna be a shorter answer, and then let me take up environment, which is likely to be a longer answer. Furloughs have stopped in our context, at least in the context of our clients. We have lost close to 40bps-50 bps by our estimate in Q3 margins because of higher than anticipated furloughs. We expect to recoup all of it back in quarter four. That's answer one to question two. Answer two to question one, I think it's gonna be slightly more involved. Your question was around how does the environment look? The demand environment continues to be tough. Clients have finished their budgeting cycle for calendar year 2024. We finished our global sales workshop, a five-day meeting in Princeton between January 8-January 12.
Everything that we picked up about budgets pulse from clients globally, does not reflect any significant uptick in budgets in CY 2024 over CY 2023. Having said that, that's the broad macro environment. We have been investing very, very significantly on the SG&A side. We talked about the investments even in quarter three. Given the SG&A increase, given the capability built, given the brand salience now, given the growth momentum, we feel confident that we can continue to eke out robust, sustained growth next year and in the quarters to come because of where we stand. More specifically, to your immediate question around how do things look across the three core verticals that we have? Banking financial services, the tightening of expenses, mainly around run the bank, continues. There's no change that's happened there.
Some of the recent studies that talked about IT budgets in banking go up by around 4%-5%. The budgets increasingly are focused on the transformation space, and we believe we are well placed to capitalize on this. The top three drivers within BFSI, as we see in terms of budget spends going in, are gonna be agility and software delivery, it's gonna be new product proposition or innovation, and it's gonna be compliance and regulatory. T hose three areas we continue to focus on. Insurance is a little more nuanced. Most estimates around global insurance premiums have talked about them going up by about 2.2% annually, but it's spread over. U.S. may be going up 2.2%, U.S. is expected to be flat.
Asia Pacific, ANZ, et cetera, are expected to grow up by about 6%, and the focus there continues to be, the spend continues to focus on legacy modernization across insurance, cloud migration, digital transformation, and also supplier consolidation. What we are doing there is we are continuing to invest in our core platform partnership capabilities with Duck Creek, with Bond-Pro, with Origami Risk and with OneShield. That's where we expect growth to come from. And finally, the third, core vertical for us is travel. The demand in travel across the industry is mixed. Airlines, airports are leading the spend when it comes to, travel and the kind of spends that are being seen right now. What we are seeing is relatively lower demand across logistics and hospitality.
Within these sectors, these four sub-sectors, demand is driven by cost takeout initiatives, it's driven by IT productization, and it's driven by focus around security, cloud and data solutions. There is, and this is important to note, there is, we are seeing new interest sourcing activity from some of the travel midcaps for global captive centers. W ithin the Aviation sector, there are newer initiatives around One Order and around digital retailing, which again, are areas that we focused on. T hat, Sulabh, was the answer to question one that you posed.
Thank you for the comprehensive answer. My second question is on the margin outlook for Q4. If I understand, your Q4 margin was close to 19.5% last year and 19.6%, and if I take that as the exit margin, then a full year margin would be close to 17.8% on an Adjusted EBITDA basis, which is 50 basis points lower than last year, versus our initial expectation of a flattish year. Is that the correct understanding that we have for now?
Well, the intent is not just to replicate what we did last year, Q4, because last year, Q4, we were not coming up by, if you can call it tailwinds, the margin loss that we had in quarter three. W hy don't I step away? Saurabh, would you like to answer that?
Yeah. Thank you, Sudhir. Sulabh, we are looking at least around 150 bps-200 bps margin improvement. A s Sudhir pointed out, there was a 50 bps impact of furloughs in the current quarter. Not only that, the same accounts we were ramping up and ramping up people for the demand that was there for Q4. T hat put together, along with the furloughs that were there in the current quarter, we expect the margins to significantly go up from the current quarter and also higher than the levels of what we delivered last year. I f you go even two years before, so our exit rate that time was more than 20%. O ver the last 2, 3 years, our exit rate has been an average of 20% in Q4.
It was 20.4% in FY 2022. FY 2023, it was 19.6%. I think we target to land somewhere between that.
Understood. Thanks for taking my question. I'll get back in the queue.
Thank you. The next question is from Vibhor Singhal.
Yeah, hi. Good evening, sir. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on a great solid performance yet again in a difficult quarter. Sudhir, just wanted to pick your brain on the BFS vertical. I think that is one vertical which has been the most talked about, one of the larger players mentioned in their commentary that they're seeing it bottoming out. Then we've had some weakness, not just for us, but for many other players also because of the higher furloughs. Now, as you said that, of course, furloughs are gonna. You expect furloughs to reverse in the next quarter. F rom an overall demand perspective, are you seeing any kind of, let's say, conversations?
As you mentioned, there are no changes in budgets, but any kind of things coming back into the sector, or by your experience, when do you think we could see some green shoots in the banking segment, down the year, on this slide?
There are, and Vibhor, thanks for the question. There are green shoots in the context of going for growth in the driving agility in software delivery, the new product proposition, innovation, whatever we call it, and in the compliance and regulatory requirement space. Overall macros are depressed, but these three sub-segments within the BFS space continue to see increase in spends. Banks, you and I both know this, do their budgets normally around the October to November time frame. Budgets for now seem to be locked and loaded. Aggregate budgets have not increased. We suspect that if there is gonna be a reversal in that situation, it will take another 4 months-6 months. Somewhere around the middle of the year, we'll know if in the second half there is more money to be released into tech projects.
For now, aggregate spends seem to be flattish. Agility and software delivery, innovation, compliance and regs seem to be spaces where money is getting prioritized.
Got it. As you mentioned, that maybe 4 months-6 months time along, down the line, maybe you might see some pickup. D oes it ever happen like that, that, okay, I mean, at the beginning of the year, the budgets have been frozen and locked in, but if the situation improves, the client then maybe enhances the spend or picks it up by a couple of percentage points? I mean, whatever the number is. Does it actually ever happen, or is it like, because the current scenario is such that you are expecting of that?
No, I'm not expecting it. It very rarely happens. As we finished our planning for next year in Princeton in the week of January 8th, we had 268 of our leaders, and we spent five working days just working numbers up, account by account, prospect by prospect. We are not baking in any improvement into our next year plans from where things are. I've always said this, it's always an outlier. Unless things change drastically, the macros we're looking at are the macros that we should be baking into our planning, and we have baked into our plan.
Got it. Got it. That was quite comprehensive. I just have a second question for Saurabh, if I may. Saurabh, we've had a good cash division in this quarter, and our cash balances also look to be quite robust. Any plans on reducing the debt that we have on the balance sheet that we have taken up, or maybe refinancing, it, in some manner to reduce interest costs?
Yeah. Vibhor, there is non-convertible bonds which are there in the balance sheet of $41 million. This is an offshore debt, a rupee debt, and the average cost of the debt, debt is 9.9 percentage points. It's an offshore debt. W e are looking at we'll pay that off from the cash accruals, and in case, if needed, we will take a working capital, which will come at 300 bps lower than that, 350 bps lower than that, cost. I think we are looking at restructuring the loan in quarter one of next financial year. T he payment is expected in April 2024.
That should bring down our interest cost by almost?
The interest cost will come down, and the working capital optimization anyways is happening, so we'll have a significant cash OCF coming in in quarter four. I think interest rates over next quarter one, because of the structural changes that we're trying to do in the overall debt profile of the firm, one. Second, the better cash management will lead to lower interest costs next financial year.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Saurabh, and thanks, Sudhir. Thank you for taking my questions, and wish you all the best.
Thank you, Vibhor.
Thank you. The next question is from Dipesh Mehta.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. First, just want to get some clarity about the ESOP plan. I think ESOP 2005, again, we have raised some ceiling, so any implication on likely ESOP cost? Second question is about earlier, let's say, during the year, we always used to maintain FY 2025, likely to be better than 2024, with anticipation of some recovery in demand. Considering where we are today, do you think it holds true, or do you think some recovery need to play out for us to see that outcome? L ast question is about capital allocation. Now, if I look, we have hardly any cash on balance sheet, and if next 2, 3 years, we intend to have some M&A, also part of growth strategy. I f you want to tweak some of the capital allocation policy. Thank you.
Dipesh, why don't I request Saurabh to take question number one around ESOP and number three around capital allocation, and after that, John and I will address FY 2025 versus FY 2024. Saurabh, all yours.
Dipesh, currently, the ESOP plan for which was created five years ago, that's all exhausted. T here are, very I mean, no material stocks left in the pool right now. B oard has now approved three percent of the pool to be created, which we will come for the shareholders' approval as part of the postal ballot. A fter that, the grants will be given. It's for the, basically, the leadership team for over five to seven years. T hat is where we are on the ESOP cost. Otherwise, without that, the cost will remain at where we are at the current levels. O nce the new ESOP pool is created, grants are being issued, only then we'll be able to determine what the cost will be. W e'll come back on that, once we are there.
Number 2, on capital allocation, at least the current intent is that we will continue to pay dividends, and we discussed that within our board today. W ith a formal plan for next financial year, we will come back end of quarter four, but as of now, the plan is to continue to pay dividends at the current levels that we've been paying.
Thank you, Saurabh. John, would you like to comment on FY 2025 outlook versus FY 2024 before we saw? John, I can't hear you.
Sorry, sorry. On FY 2025, I mean, my view is that there will be continued headwinds with all the macro dynamics going on. T he other thing is, you've, you've mentioned, Sudhir, a number of times, areas that we're focused on actually do hedge us to a certain extent against some of those. We are in those areas where banks, for example, are investing, the regulatory space, and there's an awful lot of regulatory change coming on down, downstream next, in the next 12 months. For example, consumer protection in the U.S. as a good example, T+1, the payment transformations, all of those areas which we're heavily invested in. Other areas, obviously, you can't have a conversation without talking about generative AI.
Again, that is an area that we consciously decided to invest heavily in, and we've seen an awful lot of pick up on what we're doing there, which we see driving a lot of our growth.
Yeah, and the only piece that I'll add beyond the detailed color that John added, Dipesh, is growth will have to be clawed out next year, like it had to be this year. T hose headwinds are real, and I don't see them, at least we don't see them abating anytime soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Girish Pai from Nirmal Bang.
Okay, thanks for the opportunity. Sudhir, just wanted some comments on what you said in the analyst meet in July of last year. You talked about a competitive situation where there was a lot of price-based tussle going on between various players. Has the competitive situation improved or worsened, or it still remains the same?
I don't know how to classify improved or worsened. All I can tell you, it's highly competitive out there. Everyone is trying to, and I used that word consciously in the last answer, everyone is trying to claw growth out. This year, we've had to, when I talk about a 14.7% year-to-date growth, organic growth that we've delivered so far at the end of the first three quarters cumulatively. It's literally growth that has had to be clawed out from competition. A s you can imagine in that context, pricing pressure tends to be acute. Pricing pressure is not easy. It continues to be really competitive out there. N othing's changed over the last five quarters. We've seen the same scenario play out in terms of both demand, and because demand is depressed, pricing pressure is being high.
It's happened over the last five quarters. I suspect next two to four quarters, it will likely continue.
The other comment that you made in that Analyst Meet was around generative AI, where you kind of hinted at potential deflationary pressures coming from there. Do you see that kind of panning out in the immediate term, or you think it's going to be, like, somewhere down the pipe?
No, we're not really seeing generative AI bringing in deflationary pressures at all. I mean, if I were to look at what we've been doing, and if I just look at the last six months, forget a longer time horizon. Last six months, we've engaged with 60 customers, and for a firm our size, it's material. We've undertaken somewhere around 22 or 23 pilots, workshops, assessments, consulting, live revenue-generating engagements now. To the point that John was making, there's been a clear step-up that has happened. W e're not seeing deflationary pressures at all. What we are seeing is, especially in financial services, which is our sweet spot, active revenue-generating, small projects kicking off over the last, I mean, last few quarters. If I were to give you examples around this, there's a very large bank in the U.S.
We did a very successful pilot with them, where we used a GenAI-based product. It's called Querier. B ecause of that pilot, it's now part of their enterprise workflow, and what that in turn has allowed us to do is it's propelled us to join their customer acceleration hub. I n many ways, what GenAI is doing is it's not just the net new services revenue that is coming in, it's also the integration into existing revenue streams that is helping us drive growth. We've done something very similar for a U.S.-based investment management organization, where we actually worked with them on GenAI in 10 different use cases collaboratively, correct? W e've been leading the entire analysis recommendation. Now, the work that follows may not necessarily be GenAI only, but there is gonna be downstream revenue that will keep coming in.
We've done something very, I mean, just building on that, something fairly similar for another bank, where we've come up with a very novel solution for check fraud detection using GenAI. T hat, again, is positioning us well for downstream revenues, not just from the GenAI service line, but from cross service line. S hort answer to your question is no, we have not seen a deflationary impact. We do see a revenue creation exercise here. John did talk about the fact that we've invested for a firm our size, very, very heavily. When we finish the Princeton meet, 40% of the incremental investments next year will be in AI. I said that from the stage with 268 of our leaders there.
I think, and I just build on what John said, the work that we've done in creating our own platform, Coforge Quasar, the work that we've done in terms of creating the GenAI Accelerator, the Document AI, the MLOps, the Predict, Graph, the Speech AI, the Vision AI, and so on and so forth, the 120+ jump starter use cases we've created, has just proven to us that, A, in the short term, this is not deflationary, and B, in the medium term, this can be a significantly, a significant credibility booster and also potentially a downstream revenue enhance.
If I may squeeze in a last question, this is regarding leakage in your TCV numbers. Are you seeing any leakage? If there is one, is that higher compared to, say, what you saw 12 months back?
No. This is the one thing that I think we do well, Girish, is execute. I f there's one one thing that we pride ourselves on as a team, it is execution. Once we bite into a project, once we land at a client site, the one thing that always sets us apart, and John can talk about it because he's led global delivery, is our ability to deliver on our commitments, is the nature of the resources and the employees and the SMEs and the architects who land in. W e do not see that leakage. You can look at our order executable numbers over the last four quarters, and you will, I suspect, not see that leakage. John, do you want to build on that?
Yeah, I, that's a good segue. Execution, execution, execution. I'll give a couple of examples in this last quarter. We had one program where there was a large cloud migration going on in a a major airline. 18 months this program had been going on, not delivered. We stepped in, 8 weeks, done. Another case which again shows the commitment of our teams, a problem, our team stepped in, even though we weren't contractually obliged to, but as a partner, we did. W ith the teams worked nonstop, 96 hours, to resolve the problems and turned around saving the customer having to make a major fallback invocation, invocation. I think that is key to us, key, key to our delivery.
Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Girish.
Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Sandeep Shah, from Equirus.
Yeah. Thanks, thanks for the opportunity. First question is, if looking at the demand commentary, it's slightly mixed across verticals. O s it fair to assume with the headwinds which we are still witnessing in the macro, versus some of your consulting peers are actually talking about discretionary spend revival, which could happen in the BFS as a vertical. Is it fair to assume, in a worst case scenario also, what we achieve in a constant currency growth in FY 2024, we can actually replicate that in FY 2025? Why I'm asking, Sudhir, is, at the end of last calendar year, the 12-month executable order book has grown at 20%, versus this time we are at the end of the calendar year, it is growing at 16%?
Correct. W hat we'll do, Sandeep, is we give our guidance at the end of the year, and we've done that over the last three years. We'll talk about guidance after factoring in everything that we see, with hopefully demand settling down a little bit more by the time we have a conversation, end of April. At this point in time, I can just tell you what we've always said. We believe that the number one, number two, and number three objectives of Coforge are driving growth as a commercial enterprise. T hat is a, that is an idea to which we adhere very, very strongly. We shall use, leverage the execution that John talked about to continue in the years, not just the quarter or the next year, to drive robust growth, sustained growth, and profitable growth.
I will, along with John and Saurabh, try to give you hopefully, try to give you a broader range next quarter, when we give our annual guidance for next year.
Okay. Okay. T he second question is in terms of margins. I agree, there has been a good pickup in terms of the gross margins, but the kind of utilization increase, the kind of offshore increase, is it fair to assume FY 2025 could see slightly higher tailwinds in terms of average resource cost, as well as some amount of SG&A leverage versus the investment which we are doing in S&M?
Absolutely. I think the one thing we're very clear on, and we can say it straight off the bat, without waiting for next quarter end, is next year margins will clearly be higher. They'll be higher because, what we start off next year as offshore revenue, as a base, offshore revenue percentage as a base, would have gone up. We've already hit the 15% mark around SG&A, which is where we said we wanted to be at, and then stopped further investments as a percentage of revenue. T here are clearly tailwinds around, what we internally call the average resource cost. N ext year margins will be higher, no question about it.
Okay. Okay, and just the last bookkeeping observation. One suggestion, please don't stop giving a separate line item on cost of revenue as well as the ESOP cost, because we guide on Adjusted EBITDA margin. Yeah.
Point taken. All right. Thank you, Sandeep.
Thank you. People who wishes to ask questions can click on the Raise the Hand button on the bottom of the bar. The next question is from Shradha Agrawal from AMSEC.
Yeah. Hi, Sudhir. Congrats on a good quarter. A couple of questions. First is on the three large deal wins that we've spoken about. Can you quantify, is it more of renewables or is there some new deal component involved in it? I f yes, what could be the quantum of new deal signing? W hat verticals are they spread across?
Sure. Let me take both questions, Shradha. The out of the three deals, one is 100% NN, Net New. The second one is essentially EN, but most of it is new revenue, incremental revenue. The third one was an interesting one, where we had a certain amount of real estate at an insurance client, and we were able to push out the second-largest there, so half of that is new for us. Just summarizing, one is clearly, clearly just new business, the second one, again, is largely new business, and the third one, half of it is new business. Verticals for these three would be insurance, banking, and Public sector in U.K.
Got it. Got it. I n terms of our performance, geography-wise, it seems that the furlough impact in Europe this time around was not as significant as what we saw in the U.S. I f that was the case, and if at all in general, how are the growth dynamics between the two geographies?
Furloughs were, as always, very client-specific, so I won't generalize our experience across what's happened in the broader industry, across the two continents. At this point in time, we are equally, I would say, as we finish the first cut of our planning in the week of January 8th, I haven't seen our teams come up with materially different numbers across the two continents. T hey've come up with both numbers, and those both numbers are not very different from each other right now.
All right. That's helpful. Saurabh, just, one question. Would it be possible for you to give the breakup of other income?
I will not have that handy, but I'll share that separately.
Sure. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next, next question is from Ravi Menon from Macquarie.
Hi, thank you very much. Y ou, you talked about how BFS continues to be having a difficult time, but, you know, last four quarters you delivered good growth in BFS. C ould you give us some idea about what sort of programs are you seeing, and what's the pipeline looking like over there?
The pipeline from our vantage continues to be good, Ravi. One of the 3 deals that we signed was from the banking space. We continue to see spends, and I think I spoke about this earlier as well in the innovation space. We're seeing a lot of interest around introducing agility in software delivery in banking, which is somewhat new for this sector. W e continue to see one of the 3 deals we signed, this, the one from banking, actually came from the compliance and regulatory space with one of the central banks in Europe. I nnovation, speed, agility in software delivery and compliance reg. Those are the 3 spaces where we are finding happy, happy hunting grounds from our vantage point.
Thanks. It looks like Europe did really well this quarter. I think even year-on-year, Europe is up a lot better than the U.S. A gain, any color on the verticals, what's really contributed to growth there and can this sustain?
Yeah, Europe for us is essentially a banking and a travel play. The travel vertical for us globally on the Europe side has done significantly better than it has across the States. Banking has been slightly better than it's been in space, so that's how I would call out the things that have worked for us. Europe also, for us, has been a very happy hunting ground in the public sector space, and that continues to be a growth driver, and we are not that present in that vertical in North America. I f I were to contrast our four key verticals, that's how three out of the four have cleaned up.
Thank you so much. On Utilization, how much headroom do you think you have to improve that?
Best case, maybe another 150 bps, because the way we calculate utilization is we also count our trainees into our calculation. W e think we're not going above 81% anytime soon. We're at about 79.4, so maybe on 150 bps-160 bps.
Thank you so much, and best of luck.
Thank you, Ravi.
Thank you. The next question is from Abhishek Kumar.
Yeah, hi, thanks for taking my question. This is Abhishek from JM Financial. Sudhir, as you rightly mentioned, the story of Coforge has been to eke out growth in a challenging environment. But when I look at the performance across verticals, even if I look at, you know, the nine months of this year, it seems to be again driven predominantly by BFS. While I think at the beginning of the year, you had said that probably most of the verticals will grow in a narrow range. J ust wanted to understand, you know, if the demand in other verticals have kind of surprised us negatively, or we have not been able to eke out the growth in other verticals as well as we have been able to do in BFS, any color?
You know, the question really is because if this trend continues, does it become a headwind in next year?
All right. Let me start off by saying. Let me, let me just step in there. In our defense, we haven't eked out growth, we've plodded out, and it's, it's been tough, but it's been, far better than eking it out. A nswering your immediate question, Abhishek. See, if you look at our growth, banking, you're right, year- to- date, at the end of quarter three is growing 15.5%, but insurance also is doing extremely well. Year- to- date, at the end of the third quarter, CC terms insurance is growing 11.5%. T o that extent, in the environment that we have today, both banking insurance are doing well.
Travel is growing 3%, and that's largely because of issues that we've seen with some of our largest travel clients, most of whom are based in North America. I would suspect that travel, especially airlines, the softening that we saw, clear softening that we saw, in the travel tech and the airline space in North America, has bottomed out. Travel should only be rebounding back. H ard numbers show banking having grown YTD cumulatively, the first three quarters, 15.5%, insurance 11%, 11.5%, and travel 3%. Travel, we would expect to start ramping up here on.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Kawaljeet Saluja, from Kotak.
Hey, hi, thanks, you know, for giving me the opportunity, and Sudhir, congratulations on once again a robust quarter. Couple of housekeeping questions and then a question for you, Sudhir, you know, but first for you, Saurabh, a couple of questions are like first, it's that have you locked in on the type of instruments or ESOP that you want to give out? You know, because I look, I mean, the approval that you're taking is 3%, which seems to be largish. Y ou know, are you going to go in for an RSU structure or more of a ESOP structure, which is a discount to the market price.
Kawaljeet, it's not locked in right now. I think before we come for the postal ballot, I think we will have a response to that.
Okay. Y ou have to basically have a preference between the two ESOPs?
Absolutely.
Where would you, you know, what would you prefer?
It will be a mix of both this time. L ast time it was more of a heavily discounted ESOPs. This time it will be a mix of both. W hatever it will be, once it is finalized, we will come back to shareholders with, with the proper explanation as part of the postal ballot.
Okay.
Yeah.
The other question is for. Thanks for that, Saurabh. O ther question is for Sudhir. Sudhir, you know, I just saw a couple of changes, you know, at the Board level. You know, is the Board re-refresh, complete, post the change in post exit of Ba ring, or that's something which, you know, will materialize, completely at a later date? S econd, is that if there are going to be additions, right, what's the type of, additions you would love to see here? Of course, for the board, but nonetheless, I understand that. Go ahead.
Sure. T he immediate Board size that we will be going forward with will be a Board constituted of six members. At this point in time, we have line of sight to all six. Yesterday, we announced Mr. Anil Chanana has joined in as the Audit Committee Chair, who shall take over from Mr. Ashwini Puri, who retires after his second term with the firm on March 31st. Mr. Chanana is already on the Board. He attended the board meeting today, and once Mr. Puri steps down, he will take over as the audit committee chair. Mr. Pradhan, be, as everyone knows, will be stepping down after his second term at the end of June.
Mr. Pradhan and the NRC have been working very closely together, and we have a clear line of sight to an identified candidate, who is gonna be stepping in as the chair after Mr. Pradhan steps down. He will, of course, be onboarded before Mr. Pradhan steps down. T he third, Non-Exec Director that we need, again, we've identified the gentleman. He's based in the United States, and he's in all probability gonna join us in the next, over the next three weeks. T he immediate plan was to have a board, with six members and, everyone has been identified. W e should be good to be in that configuration over the next two months.
Okay, fantastic. The third question, again, for you, Sudhir, is that, you know, when I look at the composition of our revenue mix, of course, you always had a different mix courtesy the, you know, strength in Europe. W hen I look at the growth in ROW, that's been quite remarkable. Just wanted to get a little bit more, what I would say, insight into the type of, type of programs that you are winning in the ROW world. This question is more in the context of the fact that for the industry, ROW has never been a very happy hunting ground there, so?
Yeah, so for us, ROW has, compared to other firms, been a happy hunting ground because travel for us has always been a very strong vertical. Every place, I mean, all the way from the Middle East, all the way down to Australia and New Zealand. APAC, ASEAN, let me call it ASEAN and ANZ, have also done extremely well for us on the banking side, and especially given our partnership with Duck Creek, we found Australia to be a very happy hunting ground for insurance as well, increasingly. O ur growth is coming, A, from insurance, largely off the back of our partnerships with the platform players. It's coming in banking largely off the back of our DPA capabilities, and also from the fact that a lot of the European banks are very strong interconnects with ASEAN and ANZ banks.
Of course, travel has always been a strong space for us in, in that area. That's how ROW is playing out. We have taken increasingly a very strong geo sales-based approach to how we operate. Verticals continue to be prime, but we're also trying to set up geo-based pods. The establishment of these pods across the world, including what we call Middle East, India, ASEAN, ANZ, is working well for us.
Yep. Thank you so much, and all the best in the future.
Thank you, Kawaljeet.
Thank you. The next question is from Manik Taneja, from Axis Capital.
Thank you for the opportunity, and once again, congratulations for the steady execution. Sudhir, while you've already answered a few questions around the outlook, let me try my luck, once again. G iven the macro backdrop, given the exit arithmetic this year, heading into FY 2025, and both looking at your order and executable order book, how should one be thinking about FY 2025 growth compared to FY 2024? Any initial remarks on that front? That's question number one. The second question was for Saurabh with regards to our segmental margins. While you've provided some outlook around the Asia Pacific business mix, but when I look at your segmental margins, both India and Asia Pac essentially are a drag on margins. If you could talk about what's ailing that, and how should we be thinking about the trajectory going forward?
Right. Let me take number one. Why don't you take number two, Saurabh? Outlook, you're clearly a betting man, Manik, and I'm a very mulish man. L et me just repeat what I said. I think, we'll wait till the end of next quarter, and then we will, endeavor to provide the best possible guidance that we can for FY 2025. I'm sure, Saurabh, you want to pick up question number two.
ROW, Manik, continues to be a drag. It is lower than the what we call is America as an EMEA region, and it's coming because of two reasons. Number one, there is significant investments that have gone in building the geography because we have ramped up the sales team in Australia. It used to be a geography which was operating with one or two resources, and over the last one year or so we have hired 9-10 people there. W ith Australia ahead, and along with him, we have now a full sales team ramped up across insurance, across travel, across BFS, and focusing on newer sectors as well. I t's largely coming in from the point that these are ASEAN, Australia and Middle East.
These are three reasons wherein we are investing, and these are identified as growth levers. T hat is why you're looking at lower margins there. I nitial investment phase and, the margins will not be as good as the Americas or Europe, but you will see margins uptick happening over the next, six months or so.
Thank you, and all the best in the future.
Thank you, Manik.
Thank you. The next question is from Sudheer from Kotak Mutual.
Hi. Hi, Sudhir. Congrats on yet another good quarter. On the budget comments that you said, you were saying, budgets in CY 2024 may be flattish versus CY 2023. I n CY 2023, the complete amount budgeted at the beginning of the year would not have been actually spent throughout the year by many clients, given some of the macro shocks like SVB or Credit Suisse happened 3 months-4 months into the year. E ven if the amounts budgeted at the beginning of the year look optically flattish on a year-on-year basis, is there a possibility that the actual amount spent may see an increase?
Well, I hope it does. O f course, our intent, despite whichever way the budgets fall, is not to be flattish when it comes to driving growth from the banking sector. You're right, the scenario that you talked about might play out, but there's a might attached to it, Sudheer. If it does, it'll be great. Even if it doesn't, we'll have to figure out a way of driving growth, even in a flattish demand scenario.
Okay, Sudhir. All the best. Thank you.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question is from Jalaj from Svan Investments.
Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Saurabh, I have 2 quick questions with regards to the numbers. I see that there is a drop in people cost to an account of almost INR 70 crore. Could you please break down between ESOP cost and the otherwise, what is the other component?
Yeah. ESOP cost has gone down by roughly $4.5 million, which would be 35 crores-40 crores, maybe 40%, almost 50% of that.
The balance would be?
Balance would be, obviously, we are looking at ARC correction, so there are levers wherein we are controlling bench, we are controlling average resource cost of the people. There was an initiative that we started in the beginning of the year, wherein we were looking at controlling the average resource cost, because it has gone up very, very significantly over the last two years or so post first phase of COVID. T the balance reduction is the function of that cost.
Got it. I n the notes to accounts, it mentions that there is almost INR 13.7 crores of reversal from an Indian client, which has come.
Okay.
Where is that amount sitting?
Yeah, so it is not a reversal. It was an exposure the firm was sitting at, and the amount was not provided in the books of account because there was a dispute with one of the clients. T hat dispute is resolved, so there is no more exposure. I t's not an upside, it's not a downside. There was an exposure the firm was sitting at, it's gone now. The settlement is done.
Okay, so no impact on the PNL also?
No impact on the PNL in the current quarter.
Thanks a lot, and best of luck.
Sure.
Thank you. The next question is from Rahul Jain, from Dolat Capital.
Hello.
Hi, Rahul.
Yeah, hi. Just two questions. Firstly, on the travel, of course, you gave some insight to us, but would appreciate if you could help us reconcile that why these spends would have taken hit? Is it because there were a lot of one-time spend they did in the past that was not getting in this year, or this is higher market competitiveness or any other factor that you would highlight?
I'm sorry, I don't think I got the question clearly, Rahul. Would you mind repeating it, please?
Yeah. I'm saying that in the travel vertical that we have seen relatively weaker performance or flattish performance. Is it because there were a lot of spend that happened in the previous calendar, which were like one-off, one time in nature, and that's why we could see this? Or this is simply a function of higher competitiveness that we observed in the previous calendar? For otherwise, this has been our strength area. W hat explains that?
Yeah, I mean, clearly, competition continues to be high across the space, and also equally clearly, you're absolutely right when you say last year there was a significant rebound in spends, and there's been some, some normalization. H aving said that, we didn't expect to be only at 3% YTD growth at the end of quarter three, when BFS is growing 15.5% YTD organic and insurance is growing 11.5% YTD organic. A lot of it has to do with the two of our largest clients in North America, one of whom has had significant budget cuts, and the other one also is currently going through a potential merger, so tech spends are under pressure, though that's the fundamental reason.
Right. S econdly, you know, since we are at the end of the quarter three, would it make better sense to narrow down on the top end of the band for our guidance, given the visibility that we may have for the future?
Yeah, we're very clear it's 13%-16%, but we clearly aren't coming at 16%. We are equally explicit around the fact that we will come towards the lower end of the margin cap. I t's gonna be somewhere around 13%, 13%+. W e aren't trying to tighten margin, but we are equally clear that it's the lower end of the revenue guidance band that we gave at the beginning of the year.
Sure. That's helpful. Thanks a lot, and best of luck for the time ahead.
Thank you, Rahul.
The next question is from Ashwin Mehta, from Ambit Capital.
Yeah. Can you hear me?
Clearly.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Just one question, Saurabh. In terms of other expenses, there was a INR 69 crore increase this quarter, and this was- more than our revenue increase. J ust wanted to get a sense in terms of the nature of this increase. Is it more any bought out items or pass-through elements which are driving this?
Ashwin, what we are doing is in the current quarter, so we are, we actually won a contract wherein we are trying to. We are not trying, we are actually building up the treasury module for the clients, for a bank in India. T hat's the reason. T here is a subcon part included into it. There is an implementation cost, which is going into the other expenses. There is infra buildup needed for the, for the, treasury module that is being implemented for a bank within the India and the ASEAN region. T hat's why you saw even after the furloughs, the banking, revenue for the current quarter was, higher. There was a growth in the current quarter. I t is to do with couple of contracts that we have got within the banking space, in the APAC region, ASEAN and India region.
Thanks, Saurabh. That explains. All the best for the future.
Thanks.
The next question is from Ashish Das, from Mirae Asset Capital.
Hi, good evening, thanks for the opportunity. M y question is on your top accounts. L ast two consecutive quarters, I see that your top five, top 10 accounts declined sequentially. N ow you are, though you explained that, furloughs is one of the reason, and also you mentioned that BFS is doing well, your TTH vertical has bottomed out. C an we expect that these top accounts will start growing in coming quarters?
Just to correct you, quarter two, our top accounts did grow. It's only quarter three that you've seen a very marginal decline. Please don't conflate revenue contribution from top accounts with actual growth. Correct? The revenue contribution can come down, but in a growing firm, that doesn't mean the accounts have degrown. Only in this quarter there's been a marginal, very marginal, I think for the top 10 accounts, - 1.2% degrowth, and that is largely because the majority of our top 10 accounts are from financial services, and the furloughs have been very extreme. It will 100% come back in the next quarter, which is quarter four.
Right. Thank you.
John, do you want to add anything to that? You might have some more perspectives there.
I mean, the only other comment I would make on that was the, you've mentioned it on a number of the other prior questions, that we have within the TTH industry, a number of, U.S.-based customers that have struggled a bit, which have had a, a slightly negative effect, but that's it. I agree with what you said.
Sure.
Okay. Just last question on the gross margin side. In the investor day, you mentioned that there is a possibilities that, if I'm not wrong, so gross margin would improve 100 bps in FY 2025. T hat guidance, that aspiration continues?
Are you talking about FY 2025?
Right.
Yes. I said this earlier, also, revenue, we will wait for another quarter to give a guidance. Margin, we are very comfortable giving a guidance. There will be a significant increase in FY 2025 over FY 2024. John, any views on that?
No, no further comments there on that one.
Saurabh, anything from you?
No, Sudhir, I think, we had mentioned that we will grow, we will improve margins in the current, gross margins in the current year and also expand margins next year. N ot just at a gross level, but EBITDA level and EBIT level, we, we will, look at coming back with a formal guidance. Y es, the, the expectation is that gross margin will improve, and it will flow down to the bottom line because the SG&A is now peaked out at 15%. We don't plan to expand SG&A beyond a 15% level, so it will grow in line of the revenue growth now going forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Chirag, from Ashika Group.
Hello.
Hi, Chirag.
Yeah. Sudhir, if we exclude the furlough, then what would be the sequential growth, if you give some rough idea, like?
I'm sorry, are you talking about sequential growth in quarter four?
Yeah, in quarter three. Let's say if furloughs are not there, then what would the numbers look like? Next.
I can't give you a hard number on what the revenue growth would have been, but I can tell you that our margin clearly would have been about 40, 50 bps higher in Q3 had the furloughs not happened.
Okay. F or fourth quarter, what we are expecting, is it similar or, we might see some recovery in terms of revenue?
No, revenue is still pretty robust, so I don't think we're talking recovery after a decline.
No, I'm asking, like, a normal trajectory on sequential basis build there or, will the repetition of 3Q?
Yeah, no, Chirag, we don't offer quarterly revenue guidance normally. O verall, when the year is over, as we've said, we will come within that 13%-16% band, towards the lower end of that band.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you, Chirag.
Thank you. We have a follow-up question from Manik Taneja from Axis Capital.
Hi, thank you again, once again for the opportunity. Sudhir, just a clarification question, when you mentioned that we should be coming in closer to the lower end of the guided range, that implies almost only about a 1.2% sequential growth, which is going to be lower than what we achieved in Q3. In the backdrop of what you are suggesting in terms of furloughs going away, some improvement, et cetera, et cetera, how should, what is dragging the implied or what is dragging the Q4 performance for us?
No, I haven't said we'll come in exactly at 13%, Manik, but we clearly aren't coming to 16%, right? T hat is a very broad range that we started the year with, 13%-16%. We'll be towards the lower end of that range. The intent will be to, o f course, we think 1.2% is imminently possible, which is why we started off the call by saying that we are possibly the only firm that gave a revenue guidance, which was clear at the beginning of the year, and that we have met that guidance. Having said that, within the 13%-16% band, we'll be lower. Exactly where we will be is not something that we can call out very explicitly, but clearly, the intent is not to just touch 13%. We might be slightly higher. Difficult to quantify that slightly at this stage.
Sure. Thank you for that clarity.
Thank you, Manik.
Thank you. We have one more follow-up question from Girish Pai from Nirmal Bang. Hi, Girish, requesting you to unmute, please.
Okay, thank you. Thank you. J ust a question on color on the spending slowdown that we've seen in the industry. How much do you attribute this to macro worsening versus the normalization of heightened spending that we've seen during the pandemic? W hat does this have in terms of implication for a pent-up, demand-driven pickup in growth, say, in FY 2026?
John, do you want to take a stab at that?
I can start. I'd actually do believe that both levers have had an impact. Certainly the macro situation has created significant tailwinds, well, sorry, headwinds. Y es, there has been a shift away following the spending during the post-COVID and post-pandemic period. T o my mind, firms, especially in BFS, TTH, they're all watching a bit, and that is meaning they're being a bit conservative. T he areas, as I said, we're focused on are very specific areas in which many of our customers have to invest. And then the overlaying all that is the AI space, which is generating significant traction for us.
In one area, and I'll give one good example, a lot of our customers are actually looking at AI, and what they're now realizing is for them to leverage the benefits of that, they're having to relook at their entire engineering platforms, their data layers, because those have to be in place, and that's where we're seeing quite a lot of traction and growth. Hopefully, that answers your question.
I was just asking, what is the, suppose it's like 100% is, you know, how much of that is contributed by the heightened spending that we saw during the pandemic versus the macro concerns that you can see? Broadly, I mean, for a-
Sorry, Sudhir.
No, it wasn't me, John. Go ahead. If you want me, I can step in.
No, I would say significant impact is more on the macro situation.
Okay.
I would second what John is saying. We are past the stage where we can point to normalization as a reason for it. There's still a lot of tentativeness around spend. Macros from a growth, et cetera, perspective, clearly are stressed, but there's just a lot of ambiguity that clients are dealing with in terms of what they believe might be future scenarios. That's what we would point to.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, Girish.
Thank you. I now hand over the call to Mr. Sudhir Singh, CEO, Coforge.
Thank you. Thank you very much, folks. I have always said this, and we've always meant it sincerely. We learn a lot from our interactions with you, from your questions, from your comments, from the follow-ups that you do. Thank you very much for making time for us. Thank you very much for following us, and we look forward to seeing you once again, three months from now. Happy New Year, and I hope it's full of health, it's full of meaning, it's full of success for all of you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Good night.
Thank you. Thank you once again.