Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Q1 FY 2024 earnings conference call of Coforge 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 the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Vikas Jadhav, VP, Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, [Inaudible] Good evening to all. You would have received our Q1 FY24 results by now. They have been already filed in the exchanges and also on the investor section of our website. I have with me today our CEO, Mr. Sudhir Singh, our Chief Customer Success Officer, Mr. John Speight, and our Deputy CFO, Mr. Saurabh Goel. Mr. Ajay Kalra, our CFO, was unable to join us today because he's indisposed. He's thankfully well on the road to full recovery, and we expect him to rejoin work by, you know, next week. He shall join us, of course, you know, for the next quarterly call. We'll begin the call with opening remarks from the management team, and post that, we'll open the floor for the questions.
With that, now I would like to hand over the call to our CEO, Mr. Sudhir Singh. Over to you, Sudhir.
Thank you, Vikas. A very good afternoon, very good morning, very good evening to all of you across the world, folks. Thank you very much for making time to attend our Q1 investor call. I shall start off by reading from my prepared remarks, shall lead with a quick summary of our performance in Q1 before we get into section-wise details, then, of course, as always, we'll take questions. On with the prepared remarks that I shall read out. Exceptional execution by Team Coforge in a testing environment allowed us to deliver another quarter of sustained, robust and profitable growth. We have registered a CC growth of 2.7% quarter-on-quarter and 18.4% year-on-year in Q1, the quarter under review.
This continued growth follows our performance in the last two quarters, where we had recorded sequential CC growth of 3.7% and 4.7%, respectively. Growth in Q1 also came on the back of a 5-year, $300 million TCV deal and yet another 5-year, $65 million TCV deal in the BFS vertical. During the quarter, we increased our net headcount by 1,000 employees exactly to support future growth. We fully rolled out the annual salary increments for all our employees on the 1st of April. We honored all commitments to onboard all campus and lateral hires. We met our commitment to distribute around 21,500 iPads to employees to mark our $1 billion milestone. We paid out in full the annual bonuses of FY23. We saw our attrition drop down further to 13.3%.
The quarter saw a record quarterly order intake of $531 million, has set us up very well for meeting our annual revenue guidance of 13%-16% CC growth and the annual Adjusted EBITDA guidance of around 18.3% Adjusted EBITDA. With those opening comments from my prepared remarks, I shall now take you through the quarterly performance and our assessment of the business outlook. Start with revenue analysis. I'm pleased to report that during the Q1, Q1 FY24, the firm registered a sequential revenue growth of 2.7% in constant currency terms, 2.8% in US dollar terms, and 2.4% in Indian rupee terms, respectively. You will recall the last two quarters we've grown sequentially CC by 3.7% and 4.7%, respectively.
On a year-on-year basis, our revenues grew by 18.4% in CC terms, 13.9% in USD terms, and 21.4% in INR terms. During the quarter, our BFS vertical grew 3.1% quarter-on-quarter in CC terms, and it contributed 31.1% to the revenue mix. The insurance vertical registered a second consecutive quarter of strong growth, and it grew 4.3% Q on Q in CC terms. It contributed 22.6% to the revenue mix. The travel portfolio grew 1.3% QOQ in CC terms and contributed 18.5% to the total revenue. The others vertical portfolio saw a growth of 1.8% in CC terms in Q1 and contributed 27.8% to the total revenue mix.
Within the regions, America grew by 5.6% sequentially in CC terms, the EMEA region remained flat, and the rest of the world grew by 1% sequentially in CC terms. We saw strong growth across our top customers during the quarter. During the quarter under review, our top five and top ten customers grew 12.2% and 9% sequentially, respectively. The top five clients contributed 25.1% to revenues, while the top ten contributed 37.7% of the revenues. Our resilient performance under an uncertain macro has been underwritten by our continued ability to expand our footprint within our key accounts. During Q1 of FY24, the offshore revenue saw a further pickup and this stood at 51% of the total revenues.
Once again, as noted earlier, the shift towards higher offshore revenues over the last 2 years has been an important structural margin support for the firm. With that, I shall now move on to the margins and operating profits discussion. During the quarter, we delivered an Adjusted EBITDA of $43.4 million and INR 3,544 million. This reflects an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 16% for the quarter. Our gross margin in the quarter has gone up by 30 bps year-over-year, and our SG&A has increased by 80 bps year-over-year, reflecting in a 50 bps decrease in Adjusted EBITDA year-over-year. The margin decline quarter-over-quarter in Q1 is in line with our usual quarterly margin progression through the year, where we see a decline every year in Q1 over Q4, and we see a strong subsequent ramp-up thereafter.
Basis of performance in Q1 on Adjusted EBITDA margins, we remain confident of delivering on our annual margin guidance of around 18.3% Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2024. The decrease quarter-on-quarter in Adjusted EBITDA in this quarter, Q1, was on account of four key factors. They are, I'll walk you through those. Global salary hikes, which were affected from day one of Q1. It is to be noted that we have taken a conscious call not to defer annual salary hikes. It is pertinent also to note that Coforge has dispersed the annual variable pay for all its eligible employees in Q1 with absolutely no cuts. Second, the firm's net headcount has increased by 4.3% during the quarter, and it went up by exactly 1,000 employees.
This has been done to support our efforts to deliver an annual CC growth of 13%-16% for the year, which is our current revenue guidance and which we feel confident about. Third factor was a year-over-year reduction in the margins. For the margins, was on account of hedge gain and losses, which we take in revenue. Adjusting for hedge gains in Q1, fiscal year 2023 versus the losses in Q1, fiscal year 2024, the impact of hedge loss in the quarter would be around 60 basis points. Finally, fourth, we book all our annual visa costs in Q1, and we have done so in this year as well. Lastly, our Q1 consolidated PAT, adjusted for the $1 billion milestone celebration cost, stood at INR 1,825 million, which reflected a year-over-year increase of 21.9% in INR terms.
I shall now move on to the order intake commentary. I'm very pleased to report an all-time high order intake of $531 million during the quarter under review. This was a tough quarter, and yet this was a record order intake. This is the sixth consecutive quarter where the firm has reported an order intake of more than $300 million. An unimpaired large deal signing velocity based on an exceptional focus on execution, has allowed Coforge to deliver continued growth even in a tough demand-constrained quarter like Q1. In terms of geographic regions, Americas contributed $155 million, EMEA, $346 million, and the rest of the world, $30 million to the order intake. As mentioned earlier in my commentary, we signed a large deal of $300 million TCV with an existing BFS customer.
With this signing, we have locked business over the next five years period, with a minimum commitment of $60 million per annum. Another $65 million TCV deal, with more than 50% of it representing new business, was signed with an existing customer, again, in the BFS space. The first one that I talked about was a consolidation opportunity that we led discussions around, the second was a proactive cost takeout deal where we have taken over the wallet from an existing vendor. We believe that signing these two large BFS deals in a challenging environment like Q1 reflects the strength of our capability stack and the execution intensity that marks our culture.
Our executable order book, which reflects the total value of locked orders over the next 12 months, stands at $897 million, almost $900 million, and it is up 19.1% year-on-year. On the people front, at the end of the Q1, our headcount stands at 24,224, repeating that, and we've seen a net addition of 1,000 people, as I said earlier. Utilization, including trainees during the quarter, stood at 81%, compared to 81.5% in Q4 FY23. Last 12-month attrition during the quarter stood at 13.3%. Employee attrition at Coforge, and I've said this many times, continues to remain amongst the lowest across the Indian IT services industry.
I shall now request John Speight, Chief Customer Success Officer at Coforge, to walk us through capability and delivery insights. Over to you, John.
Thank you, Sudhir. Today, I'll be focusing just on our AI capabilities. Over the last 4 years, we've invested significantly in building out our capabilities in areas such as natural language processing, NLP, machine learning, and deep learning. During this time, we have developed and deployed in excess of 100 solutions to more than 40 clients. Solutions in areas such as investment recommendations, fictitious travel bookings, and underwriting decisioning. To make this real, I will talk you through 1 of our AI implementations. For a leading airline, we implemented Graph AI and machine learning to enable a leading airline to capture analytics, highlight inefficiencies, and propose changes that could reduce the gate turnaround times for their airplanes. We believe that effective application now today of generative AI using large language models, known as LLMs, such as ChatGPT, can drive exponential value for our customers.
As such, we are accelerating our AI strategy to position Coforge as an AI-first organization. We are embedding AI into all of our service offerings, including BPO, software engineering, product engineering, and quality engineering. Our AI strategy consists of six levers. One, we are leveraging our partnerships with leading U.S. universities, working together on AI research and training. Two, we are co-innovating, developing, and monetizing solutions with our customers. A good example was Quasar eBOL, where we've actually used AI to automate the end-to-end processes for tracking Bill of Lading, and we're going to market with this. We are creating accelerators that allow us to build, train, and implement AI solutions at speed. Four, we are focusing on relationships with the hyperscalers and the low-code, no-code providers such as Salesforce, Pega, ServiceNow, we've identified as are infusing AI into their platforms.
For example, today, we are the first partner to have solutions available on the Azure Marketplace. Five, we are ramping up our training and certification programs. We have a core team today of around 1,000 trained AI specialists across the hyperscalers and the partner platforms. We plan to train in excess of 1,000 more over the next 2 quarters. Six, we are investing in our AI innovation lab to build out more industry-specific use cases. I'll quickly highlight a recent implementation using generative AI. For a US healthcare provider, we have actually integrated GPT large language model for triaging incoming patient requests, then summarize and storing the findings within their electronic health records, or EHRs, as they're known. Lastly, we've recently developed a solution using Smart Glass for insurance clients.
It helps property inspectors in the field capture videos and convert to documents, then provide risk scoring related to policy issuance and claims adjudication. I would now like to hand over to Saurabh for further details on the financials.
Thank you, John. Let me now talk about the balance sheet. Cash and bank balances at the end of Q1 stood at $45 million as compared to $73 million previous quarter. This reduction in cash actually was on account of additional stake that we took over in Coforge BPS, which was 20%, and for which $41 million was paid out. The borrowings in the quarter stood at $110 million as compared to $41 million previous quarter. CapEx during the quarter stood at $8 million. Bill debt is at 61 days, and as compared to 72 days, same quarter last year. Unbilled were same at 14 days. Last quarter, it was 12 days, in the current quarter, it was 14 days.
OCF stood at -20%, at $20 million, which actually reflects the total bonus payout that we have done in Q1, and the payout related to the billion-dollar celebration. This is pretty much in line with what we see every year in Q1. For the full year perspective, we expect the OCF to be 70% of EBITDA. With this, I would now like to hand it over to Sudhir for the comments and outlook.
Thanks a lot, Saurabh. Summing up and outlook, we came into Q1, ladies and gentlemen, you know this, on the back of 2 very strong quarter growth, with the previous 2 quarters having seen the firm register a CC growth of 3.7%. Q4 was actually 4.7%. Q1, the quarter under review, was a challenging quarter for the industry. Record intake, strong deal conversion, continued strong growth in key accounts, an exceptionally committed global team that we continue to invest in, and you've heard about what we've done. Upfront investments that we made with the addition of 1,000 more employees to service future growth, has set us up well for the remainder of the current year. To conclude, we reiterate our annual revenue growth guidance of 13%-16% in constant currency terms fiscal year 2024.
We reiterate our conviction that our gross margin will improve by 50 basis points over FY23 and FY24, and we do reiterate that we remain committed to delivering an Adjusted EBITDA of around 18.3% in FY24, bases the performance that we've already clocked as a firm in FY23. With that, I conclude my prepared remarks that I just read out, and I look forward to hearing your comments and to addressing your questions. Thank you very, very much for listening.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Participants connected on the video link, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on Q&A icon to raise hand. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We have our first question from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. I just want to get sense about the $300 million deal which you suggested. If you can provide some more detail about the kind of work and whether any new component into it, because you indicated about consolidation deal. Related question is, if I look next 12 months order intake, it is showing relatively moderate growth despite $60 million ACV kind of addition. If you can provide some detail on that part. Second question is about the overall demand environment. Compared to last quarter when we entered into Q1, and now compared to that when we are entering into Q2, any change in demand environment, either positive or negative or neutral, whichever, if you can provide some color. Last question is about the vertical.
If you can provide some sense about underlying demand momentum. I understand because of very strong deal intake in BFS, obviously near-term growth may be strong, but if you can provide some sense about underlying demand driver. Thanks.
Thanks, Dipesh. Just noted down the questions you came up with. I understand you have four questions. The first one, specifically, the question that you had was around the $300 million deal. Obviously, a very, very welcome deal from our perspective. As you can imagine, this came from a client relationship which started less than 3 years back, hence the importance of this deal. Other aspects of the deal that I do want to share with you is, of course, you know, it's in the banking space. It ensures that $60 million minimum from this specific client is locked in.
A lot of what we've started with is consolidation of revenues that were already aligned with us or were about to be aligned to us, but we plan to use this as a bedrock around which to grow further revenues on a go-forward basis. It clearly establishes us within this client in that specific country as the preeminent partner for them, hence this is of value to us. $60 million per year over the next 5 years, as we see it, is a short from a client relationship that started less than 3 years back. This deal also, interestingly and finally, is not one that is margin dilutive. It's been done at running margins, which again ties back to my assertion around a lot of confidence around delivering on the Adjusted EBITDA guidance for the year.
The second question that you had was around order executable. Order executable actually is very strong, Dipesh. If you look at our numbers at about $897 million, that's almost $900 million. Our order executable year-on-year is 19.1% higher than the same number in the same quarter last year. We feel very good. We feel very solid about order executable. The third question that you had was around the demand environment. I said this in last quarterly call, and I maintained that in an investor conference that we did in Mumbai in the middle of the quarter. The demand environment continues to be stressed. That's one factor, cannot be denied.
The second thing that we think is, again, as immutable as the fact that we remain confident that we will continue to find avenues for growth to deliver on the annual revenue guidance that we've given. Those are the two, the two assertions that I will make around the question around demand environment. Continues to be tough. We will deliver on 13%-16% CC revenue growth for the year. The fourth question that you had, I believe, was the BFS vertical specific commentary. BFS vertical, we continue to see banks struggling with coming up with decisions in the short to medium term, given these somewhat uncertain macros and maybe macros that are resolving somewhat, but macros that they continue to observe very, very clearly and closely for the time being.
Certain segments, retail and commercial, outside mortgages, do seem to be seeing a slight uptick. Asset wealth management continues to be resilient, but overall, the sector is still in a wait and watch mode. I trust I answered all four of your questions. Those are the four that I had noted down.
Sure. Just one follow-up. About the next term month order book, I was referring to more from quarter-on-quarter perspective, because $16 million get if I did. Is there any material inter-incremental component part of the ACV?
Well, I mean, if you look at last quarter, Dipesh, our order executable was 20% higher than the same quarter, the same corresponding quarter. This year, it's 19.1% higher than the same quarter last year. Our guidance is only 13%-16%. Our track record over the last 6 years has been that our order executable growth very closely mirrors the actual revenue that we deliver, growth that we deliver in the subsequent 12 months. 19.1% is a number that we feel good about.
Thanks.
Thank you, Deepesh.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Abhishek Pathak from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. My question was, you know, BFS for Coforge has grown by almost 5% last quarter, again, 3% sequentially, despite an industry-wide slowdown. You know, we also have pretty healthy deal activity here as well. Are the offerings for Coforge meaningfully different as compared to peers? That's number one. You know, the other way to look at it is, what's the split for discretionary versus non-discretionary in our portfolio, if we may look at it that way? The second question is, you know, most IT companies have talked about deferrals or discretionary cuts in BFS lines, but the technology spends expense in the P&L for most large banks reporting have not seen any such dip.
I mean, could you help us reconcile, these two things and, you know, what's missing here? Thank you.
Sure, Abhishek, thanks for the questions. The, I noted down what I believe are 3 questions. One is BFS, the continued strong growth and the drivers thereof. If you look at us, Abhishek, for 7 quarters running. For us, 5% and 3% sequential growth is actually slow growth, because if you go back 7 quarters before that, we were growing double digits sequentially for 7 straight quarters. The 5% and 3% in relative terms, I suspect, is very solid performance. I would submit it's not great performance, by the yardstick that we hold ourselves to. We have, like the rest of the industry, slowed down. Of course, we slowed down from a higher base, hence 5% and 3% right now.
The second question that you had was, is there something about our client offerings in the BFS space that sets us apart? I suspect it's less about client offerings, it's more around the strategy that we've built over six years. This isn't something that's happened over the last two, four or six quarters. This firm, Coforge, materially with roughly about 24,000-25,000 consultants across the world, largely focuses on BFS, essentially financial services and travel only. Everyone across the organization, or at least two-thirds of our organization, three-fifths of our organization, whatever cut you take, the graduate engineer training all the way to the front-end consultant, they keep moving around the financial services space itself.
The client experience, the relationship depth that we have, is what allows us not just to sustain volumes, but to actually go and start eating up wallet share at a time like this when consolidation deals are in play. We are stepping out there, we've carved out some of them, and we keep winning them. That $65 million second deal that I talked about, more than half of that was new revenue for us. It was revenue that we wrested away from another partner that the bank has, it's largely come because of the acute focus that we have on BFS across segments, right? It's across the full nine yards: asset wealth management, payments, commercial, retail, mortgage. So that's number two. Number three, your comment, the question was around deferrals and do we seek deferrals? The answer is yes.
As I said, that's why our growth has slowed down relative to that, 3.3%. Number four, I think your question, if I remember that right, was around expense cuts are not very visible in the financial statements of large banks, and why is growth slowing down? I wouldn't know the answer to that. We aren't really slowing down too much, and I would need to hypothesize about it. We feel good about BFS. I said this at the beginning of the year.
We said we'll grow 13%-16% CC as a firm, and we said that all our three core verticals, BFS, despite the slowdown, travel with the tailwinds, insurance with the resilience that it has and the differentiated offerings we have, all of them will broadly be also again, evenly balanced in terms of growth and deliver the same. We continue to maintain that. Did I answer your questions?
Yes, thanks. Thank you.
Thanks, Abhishek.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Rishi Jhunjunwala from IIFL Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for the opportunity. Can you know, give some color in terms of the two large deals that you have separately talked about, $300 million and $65 million? Guess, you know, since it's 5 years, effectively, the ACV is almost $73 million. In terms of ramp-up and contribution, say, to the next 12 months, is the entire $73 million flows through, or these are deals where, you know, the, you know, there is a step up every year in terms of revenue accrual?
All $73 million is going to be more or less evenly spaced out, Rishi. I mean, there's going to be a little bit of an up and down. This isn't the kind of construct where we start off very slow and then ramp up over time. Out of the $73 million, $60 million, as I said again at the outset, has been a consolidation deal where a big element of what we've talked about was already with us, so it's not going to be a step jump. The step jump will be from the remaining portion that comes in. The revenue stream is going to be uniform almost right through over the next five years. We do expect on top of that $60 million revenue stream every year over five years to build a lot more, now we end up being the primary partners with the bank.
Understood. Sorry if I missed out, but have you called out how much of that 60 was already there versus new scope?
No, we haven't, and we don't do that for large deals. What we did call out was the $65 million, more than half of it was taking over the wallet share of another partner who we were competing with at that specific bank. A significant chunk of this, $300 odd million was revenue that was with us already or was about to be aligned with us already.
Understood. The other thing is, on the margin trajectory through the course of the year, you know, effectively to maintain guidance, you need probably a 400 basis points margin expansion through the next three quarters. Just trying to understand, given that, you know, some of the large deal ramp-ups that you have and the hiring that you have done in that backdrop, what will be the key levers which will drive such a meaningful expansion? I know that, you know, you typically have this kind of a trajectory, you know, on an annual basis, but are there any specific tailwinds that you can call out beyond the normal expansion that you see?
Rishi, we are not expecting to do anything spectacular this year compared to what we've already done in the last two years. If you look at the last two years, Q1 has always been between 16%-16.5%. Q4 has been around 19.5%-20.5%. That's the natural ramp. It's also a function of how we are set up. We ensure that the full annual increment happens on the first of April. We ensure that the full annual visa cost is taken up in Q1 itself. We ensure that all our investments in terms of setting up a bench for future growth is taken at the beginning of the year, which is, again, something that we've done by doing a net headcount addition of 1,000 people in this quarter itself.
Hereafter, it's not gonna be something that we haven't done operationally, repeatedly over the last two years. The ramp will be more or less in line with what we've talked about. Two years back in Q1, if I remember right, our quarter, our margin was 16.1%. That year, we closed the full year with an Adjusted EBITDA of 18.7%. This year, in Q1, our Adjusted EBITDA is 16%. We plan to follow the same ramp. The guidance we've given is only 18.3%, around 18.3%. The trajectory is gonna be the same. The levers will again continue to be the same. The fact that offshore revenue is going up as strongly as it is, this is, I guess, the ninth or the tenth quarter of offshore revenue expansion.
It is again going to be the fact that our pyramid will continue to get flattened. Out of the 1,000 people that we added this quarter, 200 are graduate engineer trainees, fresh campus hires again. I said this earlier, we honored every offer that was there in the market for campus, for lateral, because we feel confident about the growth. The same ramp as always, nothing new. Quarter 1 margin also has been more or less in line with what we've done in the last 2 years. Overall margin for the year will also stay in line, Rishi.
Understood. Last question on travel and transportation. Basically, we have seen some bit of moderation in growth over the past, you know, two quarters. More I'm talking about from a YOY and even QOQ, this quarter was slightly soft. We have, you know, some of the industry research firms have talked about contracting activity in travel and transportation slowing down. You know, given the kind of exposure that you have, which is more around, say, airlines, airports and, you know, all that, can you give some color in terms of how the, you know, the underlying environment, demand environment in that segment is?
Sure, Rishi. When we look at travel, airlines and airports, the demand environment continues to be strong. Those sectors continue to be more supply constrained. When we look at surface logistics and hospitality, we are seeing initial signs of softening. Clubbing all of this together, we still maintain, and we still believe that our travel, transportation, hospitality growth will be more or less in line with the company's growth. This year, all three core verticals should be fairly evenly balanced out.
Understood. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you, Rishi.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Saurabh Sadhwani from Sahasrar Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. I just wanted to understand, what are your hiring plans going forward for this fiscal? Has the cost reduced for the talent? Basically, we have seen attrition go down, but also has the cost reduced for skilled talent?
Sure. Our hiring plans for the year continue to be in line with the growth that we anticipate. You can work out the growth numbers to land between 13%-16%. What we need to do is clock a growth number of sequentially, somewhere between 2.5%-3.5% for the remaining three quarters. Going forward, we continue to hire. We've already built up a solid bench to provision for the growth that we see, especially to service some of the large deals that I was talking about. Our hiring will continue in time, because we feel confident about the fact that the growth will continue as per the plan that we've shared with you.
As far as cost is concerned, yes, you're right, attrition has fallen, gives us more leeway in terms of how we operate, though how we operate hasn't changed and never will. We continue to be employee-centric. We continue to make increments on time, pay bonuses on time, honor every commitment that we make to the market on time. We have initiated cost containment exercises. We've finished the first tranche. We feel good about the plans that we make to take cost out for the rest of the year. That's also another place where a lot of the confidence around replicating what we've done in terms of margin ramp through the year, last year and the year before last, comes from.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, sir. Thank you, Saurabh.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Vibhor Singhal from Nomura Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, sir. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on a very solid performance once again. My basic couple of questions that I have. One is, of course, if you look at the executable order book that we have, it's at around $8.97 million at this point of time. I know you've mentioned it before, that this is basically, I mean, we've rarely seen any slippages in this. Given the kind of uncertainty that we are facing at a macro level at this point of time, could this very well be assumed as the minimum amount of, let's say, the executable that we will have in the next coming 12 months?
With a fair degree of certainty about none of the deals in this part being put on hold or being pushed out in future.
Vibhor, if you look at our record, not just over the past few quarters, but over the last six years, the reason why our order executable number, declared order executable number growth, has a very strong correlation with actual revenue that we deliver in the subsequent, 12 months, is largely because of, A, how we calculate that order executable, right? We don't take framework contracts, generic contracts, and put that into order executable. We only look at signed contracts when we aggregate this. We believe the, almost all, despite what is happening in the macro, almost all of the signed contracts that we have, their integrity will hold. It has held in some. It's obviously clearly getting augmented over time, so we feel confident that we will not see slippages, and we have not seen slippages, material slippages, over the last 6 months even.
Got it. That's definitely a lot reassuring. My second question to me was just on the banking segment. I know, I think maybe we talked before. I'm sorry, I maybe I probably want to tell a bit more on this. I mean, for us, of course, the banking continues to do well in this quarter also, and has been quite stable. Just wanted to check what is your outlook on the overall banking industry per se, not just specific to our clients. Look, our clients are doing good for us, but overall, do you think there is still a lot of uncertainty or hesitancy and volatility in the banking segment, which could impede the overall banking sector spend?
Our set of clients might continue to do well for us, which is a great thing, and then as we've seen that in the results as well. For the overall industry, do you see that continuing? How have you seen that change over the past three months, if I could maybe ask that?
Well, last, if I look at where, what we saw a quarter back versus what we see today, I would say things haven't changed materially, though anecdotally, basis client conversations that I've had as recent as Thursday last week, with the CIO of a large bank, there do seem to be silver linings that seem to be appearing. I talked about it earlier in the call. Retail and commercial outside mortgage spend confidence-.
Right.
seems to be increasing, especially for next year. The CIO, who I had a conversation with last Thursday, seemed far more confident. I'd say far, far more confident than the same gentleman was three months back. I know it's anecdotal. I'm sorry, I can't give you something that's more targeted, but that's how I would characterize the demand and the macros as we see it now.
Got it.
Happen to mortgage markets.
Got it. I mean, great to hear that. Thank you so much for taking my questions. I wish you all the best.
Thank you, Vibhor.
Thank you. A reminder to participants to press Star and One to ask a question. For participants joined through the video link, please click on the Raise Hand icon available on the toolbar, or you may click on Q&A icon to raise hand. You may also post text questions on the Q&A tab. We'll take our next question from the line of Shradha Agrawal from Asian Market Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. We have two questions. One is on your insurance vertical. We've seen two good quarters, two good consecutive quarters in insurance. What really is driving growth for us in this space? Are there any material differences between demand trends in U.S. and Europe? These are my two questions.
Shradha, we are seeing a strong growth, particularly in the P&C SMB sector of our insurance services business. A lot of it is getting driven by the alliances that we have in this space. The older ones that we have, like the one with Duck Creek, also the newer ones that we formed, which are doing well for us, like the alliance that we have with Bond-Pro in the surety space. P&C SMB clearly doing well. Some of our partners are foraying outside, aggressively outside North America, and we are traveling along with them on those journeys and picking up new clients and new revenue streams. That again, is doing well for us. Our AdvantageGo business revenues again have rebounded, and that again, is adding to the momentum that we see in insurance.
Insurance, I'd said this three quarters back, and there were a lot of questions around, what is the outlook? We had maintained that the insurance business will grow in tandem with the firm's growth in FY 2024. We'd also said that because of the uncertain macros, it was very important not to bank on any one core vertical, but make sure all three were growing, to offset any unexpected issues which are likely to crop up anytime, anyhow, anywhere in 12 months. That's, that's how I would characterize insurance. US and Europe at the current point in time, for us, both seem to be doing well. I've seen a lot of commentary around the fact that demand in the US is subdued, but if you look at this quarter numbers, our US, our US geo grew 5+%.
While Europe was flat, but Europe was flat after some very strong quarters, and Europe is likely to rebound again. For us, both continue to be happy hunting grounds.
Right. Just one last question. I don't know if I missed it, but your balance sheet shows your other borrowings, the number has moved up quite a bit. What is it related to?
Saurabh, can I request you to take that, please?
Yeah. Yeah, Sharda, this is related to the additional stake that we had bought in Coforge BPS. This was an acquisition which was done in 2021. We had only bought 60% stake then. $41 million have actually been paid out to buy additional stake in Coforge BPS. Largely that amount. Then, in Q1, typically, our bonus payouts happens, and then there are other capital commitments that gets paid out. I think more around that, but large portion gets allocated to Coforge BPS.
Great. Thanks, Saurav. Thanks, Sudhir. That's it from me.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Abhishek Bhandari from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Sudhir, I just had one question. you know, you shared a lot of details around your initiatives on AI. Thanks for that. In terms of, you know, revenues, when do you see a material contribution, you know, coming from, you know, this particular line of business? Also, you know, in the analyst day, you had hinted at, you know, initially, a deflationary kind of scenario, possibly in, you know, voice-based BPO in general, and also sometimes somewhere in testing. Do you still think the opportunity is going to be on a net basis positive from a revenue perspective? I mean, happy to hear your thoughts on when do you think we could see real, you know, contribution from this AI-related business for us.
Abhishek, there's a lot of commentary around AI investments. Let me just put it this way: the line that I see between AI, automation, analytics is very diffused, right? Specifically to call out something and call it out as pure play AI is a little difficult. I think it's still early stages for doing it. If I were to go back to my leaders and ask them what is the revenue that they're deriving from AI, you'd be surprised at how high the number would be. Everybody in the automation service line, everybody in the AI service line, everybody in the analytics service line would raise their hands and talk about... Even the cloud service line and the product engineering service line, would talk about how they're going with an AI-first approach.
I won't get into the investment piece of it just yet. Have we delivered GenAI or cognitive AI-based engagements? The answers are very clear, resounding yes. The cognitive AI-based work that we've been doing has been going on for the last four years. GenAI, we have four projects, small projects, AI-only projects that have been delivered. Everything else that you touch, when you look at cloud, the business that we have around Helios, that whole thing is AI first. When I look at product engineering, again, there's a very strong injection of AI-based technologies. The Copilot equivalent side is going on. As far as the deflationary piece is concerned, the second question that you had, we believe overall, from a company perspective, AI should be a growth enabler. We feel very solid about growth on a go-forward basis.
Certain aspects will obviously get impacted more. We do maintain the BPO industry, even our own BPO business, we're keeping a very strong eye out for what impact AI interventions can have around processes that we handle. Testing, again, continues to be an area where we believe AI-based interventions have a way and a possible route to disrupting a lot of revenue streams. We're keeping an eye out for it. If you ask me overall, how do we feel about AI coming into the space? Do we see more opportunities than deflationary impact? The answer is net, we do expect it to be positive. What is the investment? I think it's still very premature for us to be calling out numbers.
Thank you, Sudhir. Sudhir, my second question and the final question is, you know, while you have addressed, you know, you are very confident of this, you know, 20% growth in 12-month executable order book translating to 13%-16% growth. My question is, you know, given all this uncertainty, what is prevailing, you know, which is beyond anybody's control, you know, what kind of stress testing have you done, you know, amongst your client? Do you think this 4%-5% gap, what you've kept between your growth of order book to revenue is enough, you know, to manage those exigencies? You know, things are evolving fast, and, you know, we have been seeing, you know, certain guidance cut by some of your larger peers.
Just, you know, want to ensure that, you know, your stress testing is strong enough for you to maintain that 13%-16%.
Trust me, the stress testing is about as strong as it can be, our view of the world doesn't come top-down from order executable. It goes grounds up from projects slash accounts, and then we start aggregating it. When we look at our numbers, last quarter was a 4.7% sequential growth. This quarter's been a 2.7% sequential growth. When I look at 13%-16%, we really need to do very badly to come anywhere below 13%. I don't think, and you can see that from the net head count addition that we've done and the deals that we've signed, we will come there. Even at about 2.5%, Saurabh, please keep me honest on this.
Even at a 2.5% sequential growth for the next three quarters, only 2.5%, we will still come to about 14.5% CC growth. We've tested this just about every which way, as you can imagine. Most years, the guidance that we give is more or less in line with the executable growth. This year, we are trying to be extremely conservative, given the uncertain macros, and giving a lower guidance. That guidance we maintain, and that guidance we will deliver on.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you, and all the best for the full year.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Ravi Menon from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for the opportunity. We congratulate you on good numbers on your top accounts. I want to check, you know, what's giving you confidence on this guidance? Is it that there are less of some might say, project-based, you know, application maintenance sort of deals that you have where there is a possibility of some of those being seen as discretionary, and the kind of work that you're doing is a lot more, some might say, you know, quick ROI. Is that what gives you confidence that clients will continue with these programs?
No, I mean, what gives us confidence is our track record over the last six years. This is not a new team. We came together six years back. Quarter on quarter as a firm, even through the pandemic, when 30% of our business was in travel, we gave a guidance and we delivered, actually over-delivered on it. Our confidence stems not from the nature of the breakup of the project-based business versus any other cut you can apply. It comes from a grounds-up aggregation of the SOWs that we have signed. It comes from daily conversations that we have with our clients. It comes from the fact that our large deal velocity has continued to be unimpaired. It's actually accelerated even in a quarter like Q1.
It comes from the fact that I think more than to anyone else, we've proven to ourselves that every time there's a consolidation, we come out on the right side of that mix. INR 300 million was a classic example of it. Our confidence doesn't stem from forward-looking plans. It comes from our past record. It comes from the experiences that we as a team have gone through repeatedly over the last six years, and comes from the fact that every time we've given a guidance, we've met it, and in almost every case, exceeded it. This time, we have been, by our standards, very conservative. Our executable is 19.1%. We're giving a guidance only 13%-16%. This year, Q1, we've done 2.7% after doing 4.7% growth in Q4.
All we need to do is 2.5% to come at the midpoint of our guidance. I mean, we really can't, having stress-tested our numbers, think of any scenario. We will not deliver on our revenue guidance. That's how I would put it, Ravi.
Thank you so much. It's very heartening to hear that. best of luck. and one more just add that, you know, very good decision to give the wage hikes now. It looks like the quantum is also off normal, right? I mean, you've not really cut back on this, not saying that overall, you know, the hiring environment is not great.
I'm sorry, Ravi, can you repeat that question once again, please? I'm sorry, I lost you for a second.
Asking about the, you know, that it looks like the wage quantum, the wage hike seems to be a normal year wage hike, prevalent. You know, you're looking at the demand in the in the hiring market and, you know, kind of toning it down a little bit compared to normal years.
We've toned it down, but only a little, because the low attrition rate that we have helps us in just about in more ways than just the financial computation, right? The fact that our employees are staying longer with the clients that we assign them to, delivers growth for us. We've just dialed it down a little bit, not very materially. What we have ensured is that we haven't delayed it, which is the point that I made. What we've also ensured is that we haven't paid only a part of our workforce and not the other parts. Everyone's got it, not just the increments, but their full annual bonuses with no exceptions.
Great. Thanks so much. Best of luck.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Abhishek Shindadkar from InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Thanks, and congrats for a good quarter. I just have one question. The new client addition number has multiplied substantially. I know we are signing large deals, but is this a function of more about the environment? You know, is it a conscious effort to pursue smaller number of clients, but the large deals within those clients?
We, so, I mean, let me make sure I get this right. We've been signing. Saurabh, feel free to jump in and come up with numbers. We've been signing. If you look at our record, we've normally signed about 8-11 large clients every quarter. Over the last four-six quarters, ever since John took on his role as the Customer Success Officer, we've talked about very consciously focusing equally on the farming side of the business, and making sure that the clients that we sign are only high-quality clients with large wallets where we think we can scale up. A lot of investments have gone into supporting that strategy. John's team is in play, driving growth on the lines of what I talked about earlier at large accounts, and that strategy has worked for us.
Saurabh, would you like to add to that?
Yes, I think couple of more things, what we've strategically changed is that the hunting team have been given us to actually go after tail accounts, which are long tail, were sitting with farmers and not growing. What we have done is, we've asked them to actually focus on those accounts where you already have MSS, wherein you're doing some work, some SOWs are already in place, and you're doing some work with them, but those accounts have not grown. The whole hunting orientation has been to grow these tail accounts, flat accounts which have not grown.
... moved, and that's why you see that. The focus has been only to open the MHS, which is must-have accounts, and very specific named accounts which are called out in the beginning of the year. All the incentives of the hunting team are actually linked to either grow the tail accounts which are assigned to them in the beginning of the year, or focus on the must-have accounts, which are again listed, agreed in the beginning of the year, so that you have focused hunting strategy rather than trying to open number of locals.
Thanks. That's helpful. You know, where I was coming from is that for the past six, seven years, six years or so, we've been adding almost 40 accounts a year for [Inaudible . Last year's Q1 number was roughly 12 accounts. New accounts I'm talking of, and, you know, this year we are starting with six. That is what, you know, I want perspective, but really helpful.
Thanks, Abhishek.
Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Ruchi Burde Mukhija from Elara Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. My question is, building on the earlier question regarding AI. Thank you for the details that you have shared. Here I just wanted to get your understanding. In terms of the timeline, how would you think it will evolve? Do you expect enterprise adoption and this revenue to start earlier, and the deflationary pressure then will take some time and the maturity of these AI applications to develop before clients start to ask for some concessions from that?
John, since you talked about AI in your conversation, would you like to take that and I can layer it?
Yes. Could I just have the question repeated? It was a bit garbled for me. Could you repeat, please?
Ms. Ruchi, can you use your handset, please, and repeat your question?
Sure. Here, I'm trying to understand in terms of a timeline between the revenue incidence versus the deflationary pressure from the AI, how that will unfold. Will it be something like this, where the revenue incidences starts earlier with the enterprise adoption and new cases being experimented? Maybe for clients to ask for concessions because of the AI evolution in coding, the deflationary plays out with little slight lag. Is that something to think on these line, or you think both will evolve in tandem?
I think they will evolve both in tandem. I mean, the thing what we're seeing now with AI is that it's actually becoming an amazing productivity play for many of our customers, and hence why we're embedding it within all, not just in the solutions, but in the ways we work, which will drive that productivity, will actually, I mean, we can deliver more it, with less. That combined with moving to a much more outcome-oriented structure, where we're deliver, where revenue is tied more to actually outcomes and deliverables, we see as a positive for us.
Let me add on to what John said, Ruchi. We expect over the next three to five years, our analytics service line, our automation service line, our cloud service line, to be driving growth for us. They will be driving this growth because analytics is going with an analytics plus AI approach, automation is going with an automation plus AI approach, cloud is going with an AI-embedded approach. Net-net, we believe for Coforge, this is going to be a clear positive. Now, if the question is, will AI only as a new service line be a great revenue booster? I think still early to say. Will AI plus our existing service lines of analytics, automation, and cloud be a great revenue booster, and therefore will revenue for Coforge go up overall? The answer is a very solid, resounding yes.
Did we answer your question, Ruchi?
Yes, absolutely. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think, yes, Jesse, we can actually, you know, close the call because it's already 5:00 P.M. now. Maybe you can hand over to Sudhir again. Sudhir, your closing comments, please.
Thanks. Thanks very much, Vikas. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very, very much for your time. Late evening in India. Really appreciate your time, your interest, your questions, and your comments. You've always helped us in the past to refine our strategy and to repivot ourselves as required. Thank you once again. I look forward to speaking with all of you next quarter. Stay safe.
Thank you. On behalf of Coforge Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.