Welcome to the Coforge Limited Q4 FY 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. We will open the floor for questions post the management's opening comments. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the Coforge Leadership Team are Mr. Sudhir Singh, CEO; Mr. John Speight, President and Executive Director; Mr. Saurabh Goel, CFO; Mr. Lalit Wadhwa, CTO, and Mr. Vic Gupta, Head of AI Practice. 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 statement and may involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the disclaimer to this effect in the company's Q4 FY 2026 earnings press release. With that, I now hand the call to Mr. Sudhir Singh. Over to you, sir.
Thank you, Emma. Good evening, and thank you for joining us today. Please allow me to start the call off today with a quick reflection. This month marks the beginning of my 10th year at Coforge. It will also mark the 10th year since John, Saurabh, Madan, Vik, and I started the turnaround of Coforge. We were a $400 million firm when we started nine years back. We hope to close this, the 10th year of our turnaround story, with the firm having grown almost 7x in just 10 years. The turnaround of Coforge has been driven by an execution intensity that is uniquely our own, and also by an insatiable hunger to make a mark on the industry. Today, as we look at fiscal year 2027 and beyond, that execution intensity remains undimmed. Our hunger for growth remains unquenched.
Our margins are poised to take a big step up starting fiscal year 2027. We believe that our growth story is not even half done. During these last nine years, we have, as a team, delivered a revenue CAGR over nine years of 21.7%, an EBIT CAGR of 24.6%, a PAT CAGR of 24.1%, an EPS CAGR of 22%, and a free cash flow CAGR of 19%. That is over nine years. There is no firm in our industry that can present metrics at that level for the extended nine-year period that we have. During these nine years, there were periods when we made contrarian bets and shared positive contrarian growth outlook even when the macros were bleak on calls like these.
We have proved each one of those contrarian bets and backed each one of our guidance statements and made sure they came through on the basis of our subsequent performance. Illustratively, five years back when COVID struck, we shared that despite our material exposure to the travel vertical, we would grow smartly in that year itself at a time when our peers were projecting declines on account of COVID. We did grow, and handsomely at that. Again, two years back on a call like this when we acquired Cigniti, there were concerns that a publicly listed testing services firm with a 12% EBITDA would kill the Coforge growth story. Two years later today, that portfolio operates at a 19% EBITDA, and the growth of the constituent clients that came into Coforge from Cigniti has exploded on the back of very effective cross-sell.
The top two clients of Cigniti that offered $25 million-$30 million revenue per year when we acquired them two years back have scaled up to $75 million per year collectively. I say this because as you hear our commentary today, and as you reflect on what we share by way of our expected performance trajectory going ahead, we would urge you to please remember that we are the team that has delivered unfailingly for nine years on all plans that we have shared with you. We have every intention of coming through on all outlook commentary that we share today with you on this call. With that preamble, I shall now cover our performance for quarter four and fiscal year 2026.
Last quarter, during our quarter three results call, I had shared that we believed we were on course to close a very successful fiscal year 2026 and that we were headed for an exceptional fiscal year 2027. We are pleased to report that fiscal year 2026 has panned out as indicated. Equally importantly, fiscal year 2027 too is poised to deliver on that promise of exceptional performance. Moving on to the annual performance review. I'm pleased to share that FY 2026 was a very successful year for the firm. The firm grew 29.2% in U.S. dollar terms. We signed 21 large deals through the year, with 11 of them coming through in the second half of the year.
The quality of our growth was remarkable in that all our key industry units grew strongly through the year, and the growth was led by our top 10 and top 20 client relationships. The reported EBIT of the firm grew by 370 basis points in FY 2026 over FY 2025. Beyond these immediate metrics, the real highlight of fiscal year 2026 has been the quiet yet vital work that was done at our back end to truly automate and AI-enable our back-end processes and functions and to reshape and right size our delivery and G&A organizations. That quiet effort, unshared till now, has now structurally reset the margin profile of Coforge for fiscal year 2027 and beyond. Coforge was always an industry leader on the revenue growth front, yet our EBITDA and EBIT numbers were middle of the pack.
Starting in FY 2027, that is this year itself, we believe we will, along with retaining revenue growth leadership, emerge as one of the highest EBITDA and EBIT performers across the midcap segment. Moving on to the quarterly performance review. The quarterly sequential CC growth, revenue growth of 2% in Q4 followed the sequential CC growth of 8%, 5.9%, and 4.4% that we recorded between Q1 and Q3. The quarter four year-on-year growth rate was 21.2% in U.S. dollar terms. Free cash flow to PAT for the quarter came in at 110%, significantly ahead of our guidance of around 70% FCF on a sustained basis.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Q4 FY 2026 EBIT of the firm is 16.6%, while it was 12.3% in the same quarter a year back. More detailed revenue commentary is as follows. In Q4 FY 2026, the firm registered a sequential revenue growth of 2% in CC terms, 1.7% in U.S. dollar terms, and 5.2% in INR terms. For the year, as noted earlier, we have grown 29.2% in dollar terms. Our ability to grow at this rate in a very challenging environment is driven by our ability to increase wallet share, particularly across our key accounts. An exceptional market-based industry solutioning and AI specialist cadre drives this by staying laser-focused on continually crafting business solution-led proactive deals and solutions.
21 large deals in FY 2026 is reflective of the success of that engine and that cadre. In FY 2026, U.S. dollar terms, the healthcare and the high-tech vertical grew by 98%. The travel vertical grew 62%. The BFS vertical grew 12%. Government outside India grew 17.5%. Other emerging verticals, which include retail and manufacturing, grew 27%. Our key accounts drove significant growth this fiscal, outpacing the broader business. The top five accounts of the firm grew 45.8% year-over-year in U.S. dollar terms, and accounts ranked six through 10 grew at 30%. Collectively, these 10 accounts contributed 30.8% of the total revenue, and they grew at 40.4%. We would like you to note that the top 10 clients are spread across industries.
Five are BFS clients, three are travel clients, one is an insurance client, and one is a public sector client. On an annual basis, and this is information that we're sharing starting this quarter, Coforge now has one client with revenue greater than $100 million, three clients with revenues between $50 million-$100 million, nine clients with revenues between $20 million-$50 million, 23 clients with revenues between $10 million and $20 million, 42 clients with revenue between $5 million-$10 million, and 167 with revenue between $1 million-$5 million. This client set, the addressable wallet, is gonna expand now that Encora integration is complete. Order intake. Q4 was a very strong quarter, both from an order intake and a large deal closure perspective. During the quarter, we signed five large deals.
The total order intake during the quarter was $648 million. The executable order book, which reflects the total value of locked orders over the next 12 months, stands at a record $1.75 billion. This number is 16.4% higher than at the same time last year. This number does not include the impact of framework agreements that we have already signed and are nearly assured revenue streams for FY 2027 and beyond. We expect revenue realized in FY 2027 from those signed framework agreements not accounted for in the signed order book to also be material. On the people front, our total headcount at the end of Q4 stood at 35,777. We saw a net people addition of 436 during the quarter. Utilization during the quarter stood at 82.5%.
Last 12-month attrition for the quarter remains one of the lowest in the industry at 10.8%. We remain, as always, one of the lowest attrition firms across the industry. With those remarks, I shall now hand over the call to our CFO, Mr. Saurabh Goel.
Thank you, Sudhir. I would like to begin with two accounting matters that had impact on the financials in the current quarter. Effective FY 2026, realized gains and losses on cash flow hedges are reported under other income expense within Forex gain loss. Earlier, they were adjusted to revenue. The change aligns our presentation with prior practice and isolates revenue and EBIT margin from currency fluctuation. Profit before tax and profit after tax are unchanged. All comparatives have been restated and reported revenue and EBIT margins reflect this change. The second accounting matter is related to reversal of deferred tax liability due to Cigniti merger. Following the effective implementation of the Cigniti amalgamation scheme in FY 2026, deferred tax balances on the merged entity were remeasured.
A deferred tax liability of approximately INR 181 crores has been reversed and credit to provision for tax in Q4 FY 2026. This adjustment has resulted in an ETR, which is effective tax rate for the quarter of -7%. Normalized effective tax rate for the quarter is 22%. Reported effective tax rate for the year is 13%, while the normalized effective tax rate for the year is 23%. This is a non-cash one-time benefit. Cash taxes paid in quarter four remains unchanged. Steady-state effective tax rate guidance for FY 2027 is between 23% and 24%. Moving to margins. In FY 2026, EBITDA expanded to INR 30,464 million, up 77% versus previous year. EBITDA margins came in at 18.6% compared to 14.3% a year ago.
EBIT expanded to INR 23,645 million, up 83% versus previous year. EBIT margin came in at 14.4% as compared to 10.7% a year ago. More important to note is Q4 exit rate of EBIT margins. EBIT margin came in at a record 16.6%, up 231 basis points quarter on quarter, driven by falling tailwinds. SG&A leverage contributing 100 basis points. Foreign exchange fluctuation adding 80 basis points. Direct cost reduction due to third-party cost added 50 basis points. Lower marketing spend added 40 basis points, and lower ESOP cost added 20 basis points in the quarter. This was partially offset by the headwind related to provisions we made on account of certain doubtful debts, just to the extent of 60 basis points.
Moving to cash flows. FY 2026 FCF of $135 million experienced a 68% Y-on-Y increase. In FY 2025, this metric was $80 million. Please note that quarterly phasing of free cash flow was -$21 million in quarter one to $37.5 million in quarter two, followed by $45.7 million and $73.7 million. The Q4 FCF of $73.7 million marked the highest quarterly FCF in any quarter in the past. Net cash improved to $117 million from $93 million year-on-year, despite a $36 million reduction in our working capital line and paying dividends of $61 million. Quarter four FCF to PAT ratio incorporates impact of DTL reversal resulting from the Cigniti merger.
On normalized basis, Q4 FCF to PAT is actually 156%. Looking ahead, we anticipate free cash flow to PAT to be maintained at 100% from fiscal year 2027 onwards, in contrast to our earlier guidance of 70%-80%. In summary, fiscal year 2026 witnessed significant improvements in all the financial parameters. Revenue grew 36% in INR terms. EBITDA grew 77%, EBIT grew 83%, and PAT grew 92%, and FCF 68%, resulting in structural profitability and cash flow enhancements.
With Q4 FY 2026 EBITDA margins at 20.5% and EBIT margins at 16.6%, we are confident of achieving EBITDA margins of 20.5%-21% in FY 2027 on consolidated basis, which is including Encora, and EBIT margins of 16.5%-17% on a standalone basis, that is excluding Encora, and 15.5% on consolidated basis, which is including Encora. This increase is coming largely on account of falling factors. Adoption of AI at scale, not just in delivery, but in functions, resulting in capping of G&A in absolute terms. G&A synergies of 20%-25% in the combined business coming because of Encora acquisition and a planned closure of $20 million low margin portfolio of India business.
With this, I would like to hand over the call to Sudhir Singh.
Thank you, Saurabh. Mr. Lalit Wadhwa, Chief Technology Officer of Coforge, who has joined us as part of the Encora merger, I shall now share our plans around what we are doing to address the AI imperative. These are exciting times indeed. In our industry, labor as a default has been disrupted and is being replaced by AI native process redesign and domain specialized agents. We are moving from a world of IT delivery to one of business orchestration. As this happens, firms who are engineering outcomes for customers are compounding, while firms who continue to bill hours are getting left behind. Just like the advent of cloud created downstream opportunities for tech services, AI too is creating its own set of new value pools. As agent ecosystems rise, there is a growing need for tech firms who can help clients address the following asks at scale.
One, a need for AI-ready data pipelines. Two, agent lifecycle management. Three, recurring high-margin managed services to monitor models and govern agents. We believe there are six moats that will define the model-winning firms who will capture this massive, fast-growing AI opportunity. Coforge has not just identified the moats but also built proprietary assets and differentiators to back each one of them. Moat number one is deep domain expertise. As firms upskill their staff on AI, the horizontal AI skills will commoditize quickly. In a world where everyone has access to Claude or GPT-5, where does the value sit? We believe it sits in the domain. Generic AI is a commodity. Applied AI is a clear differentiator. We are driving deep, specific knowledge of business context, workflows, regulations, and operating reality.
With more than 150 scaled AI engagements completed across BFS, insurance, travel, and healthcare, delivering production-grade outcomes, this is an agenda we are pushing. The second moat is strong client intimacy. AI will never commoditize relationships. Trust, context, and proximity to decision-makers still shape demand. Clients value firms that understand their business, and that takes time to develop. There is no better example, we think, of a firm that is closer to its clients than Coforge is. Moat number three, reinvented delivery models are needed that orchestrate and monetize humans along with AI agents to deliver faster and more powerful outcomes. Our hybrid AI moat squads that we announced earlier are unique delivery units comprising of AI agents and senior AI specialists, driving 40%-50% faster time to market for clients.
Moat number four, agility at scale, which means being built for agility with AI-first offerings. It warrants internal adoption of agentic AI and a lean talent pool to adapt to each stage of AI evolution. Moat number five, scalable AI platform with purpose-built agents, enterprise-grade governance. In this context, Coforge's One AI platform is a composable enterprise-grade agentic AI platform with a 100+ domain-specific solutions and 75+ horizontal capabilities. Finally, moat number six, an AI-enabled workforce with specialized engineers, forward-deployed engineers, and an agile management team. We have more than 30,000 AI-enabled trained workforce members, more than 11,000 data and AI practitioners, more than 600+ advanced AI practitioners, all created using significant investments in AI upskilling. These assets have enabled us to move quickly to capture emerging opportunities across five growth vectors or value pools. Opportunity number one, moat squad monetization.
It helps redefine how clients buy from us. These are hybrid delivery pods that are priced on outcomes, not hours. Opportunity number two, upstream advisory. Part of this is helping clients, enterprises plan multimodal AI strategy across LLM providers and AI tools without a vendor lock-in. Opportunity number three, brownfield modernization. Accelerating legacy modernization via proprietary platforms, such as Coforge's CodeInsight AI, that are delivering more than INR 40+ million in client savings as we speak. Opportunity number four is AI-led engineering transformation. This warrants improving productivity and quality while lowering costs, and in our case, is backed by Coforge's multi-layered knowledge graphs, pre-built agents, and enterprise-grade governance. Finally, opportunity number five is the agentic AI platform-related opportunity. Out here, we're deploying engineers from routine work to agentic AI orchestration. This is the highest margin and the most strategically valuable work.
Finally, we are eating our own cooking by embedding AI across both the SDLC and our internal operations. On the SDLC front, AI is deeply embedded into how we build and deliver. We are driving 25%-35% productivity uplift in development, 40%-60% in code generation, and up to 10 x faster modernization timelines. Internal operations, and Saurabh talked about this, we are always client zero for our AI interventions. We are using AI to drive 40%-60% lower effort spent on financial analysis and 30%-40% lower screening costs for recruitment. The market is clearly recognizing our momentum on AI. We have received over 25 AI recognitions from leading analyst firms, including seven leader positions from firms such as Everest, HFS, Constellation Research, ISG, and Avasant.
With that, I will now hand over to our CTO, Mr. Lalit Wadhwa, to provide further nuances of how we understand and are approaching the AI opportunity.
Sudhir, thank you very much. Most enterprise AI pilots never reach production. The gap is not just the model, it is the surrounding architecture and the way the work gets delivered. Pilots run in controlled conditions that mask the structural issues production really exposes. We have closed this gap with two things built together. Number one, a reference architecture designed for production-grade behavior. Number two, a delivery model that leads with business outcomes. Our reference architecture enforces deterministic guardrails around probabilistic LLM outputs, solving the two failure modes that trap clients in pilots: hallucinated domain logic and lost agent coherence in long-running processes. This architecture, the reference architecture, has three layers. The top layer is called the business architecture layer, and it consists of business goals, high-impact use cases, and organization change management, or the OCM, led operating model redesign.
The middle layer is the decisioning engine, or the decisioning atlas, which is our differentiated proprietary asset that enforces domain-specific reasoning chains with ontologies encoding business entities, a knowledge graph mapping cross-system compliance hierarchies, and a temporal context that maintains state coherence across multi-step agentic workflows. Finally, the bottom layer is a composable AI backbone, swappable with hyperscalers compute or a sovereign AI cloud or any model provider. It also contains an AI gateway used for model routing, model context protocol, that's called as MCP gateway, TokenOps, and the ability to do canary releases in AI deployments. We have operationalized this reference architecture with our proprietary AI Mod Squads and the forward deployed engineers, also called as the FDEs. In Mod Squads, we implement agent harnesses for long-running durable agents.
The harness or the scaffolding has a Ralph loop with planner, generator, and evaluator agents all tied together with warrants or contracts and anti-leniency or adversarial patterns by design to ensure that agents do not go off the rails. A governance protocol for human-in-the-loop checkpoints is implemented with templates, registration, versioning, and lifecycle management of the 110 agent archetypes that we have. Now, let me contextualize the above two key ingredients with brief case studies of systems in production. Number one, for a large Tier 1 bank, we executed an AI-led COBOL to Java 21 focus modernization of a module with 11,000 lines of mainframe COBOL code, which also had copybooks, VSAM, and the similar dependencies in half the time that the client gave us. Our highly specialized decomposition agents reverse-engineered legacy structure, legacy logic, and the intent directly from the source artifacts.
A forward deployed engineer pod, which consisted of one senior FDE and two junior consultants, along with the coding agents, generated production-grade code into a hexagonal architecture with non-blocking reactive IO, JWT authentication, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, and container-native deployment. In the second example, a large group insurance benefits provider deployed our architecture on Azure with Trust AI, enforcing responsible AI guardrails at inference time. Model Garden abstracting multi-LLM routing and enterprise retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, services orchestrating retrieval across multiple vector databases using a combination of BM25 algorithm and the semantic search. The platform enforces governance as code, automated security policies, token-level FinOps, and operational kill switches across LLM access, agent orchestration, vector databases, and CI/CD pipelines. Combination of FinOps, governance, and increased throughput resulted in productivity benefits of 40% and velocity gains of 50%.
To summarize, the path from pilot to production runs through architecture and delivery, not through model selection. The three-layer reference architecture and the Mod Squad delivery model that you just heard of are the two key ingredients that close the pilot to the production gap, and both of now are now proven in production at enterprise scale. With that, back to you, Sudhir.
Thank you, Lalit. The final section, the outlook section, ladies, gentlemen. Before we do that, before we share our outlook, we would like to offer our views around the recent commentary around our industry. We believe that the true cost of AI code is an important concept to be understood in the context of the evolving AI landscape. The deflationary argument assumes code generation is the entire job. It is not. AI-generated code is cheap to build, but it is expensive to own, it is expensive to secure, and it is expensive to maintain. Just like cloud migration, agentic AI will create a massive managed services layer. Once these systems are in production, someone has to monitor the models, retrain the agents, and ensure governance. That is a recurring high-margin revenue stream for firms that can seize it.
For Coforge, the demand tailwind is structural and pure. We were built for agility. We have no bloated delivery pyramid to manage. Every AI advancement accelerates our growth. We are positioned for the near-term modernization surge. We are positioned for the medium-term agentic deployment wave. Finally, for the long-term expansion of the global technology market. All three phases, ladies, gentlemen, play to our strengths. We shall lean on our exceptional record of creating value through acquisitions, which in turn rides on an execution intensity that is uniquely our own. SLK is an example. Cigniti is an example. Encora will be the defining example. We plan to compound on our success focusing on four key priorities. Number one, building pipeline momentum in AI transformations across our top verticals. Number two, expanding our AI client base rapidly through both hunting and farming.
Number three, scaling vertical agentic workflows in verticals like banking, insurance, and airlines. Finally, number four, continuing to invest in talent, growing our specialized pool of FDEs while upskilling 100% of our workforce in AI. To conclude, fiscal year 2027 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for Coforge despite the significant AI-driven flux. We believe revenue growth will be robust. We are confident of achieving an EBITDA margin of 20.5%-21% in fiscal year 2027 on a consolidated basis. EBIT margins are expected to be in the range of 16.5%-17% on a standalone basis and 15.5% on a consolidated basis. We believe FCF to PAT metrics going forward will be 100%+. That concludes our prepared remarks.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click on the Raise Hand icon from the Participant tab on your screen. We request participants to restrict to two questions and return to the queue for more questions. To rejoin the queue, you may click on the Raise Hand icon again. We will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. We take the first question from Abhishek Pathak of Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, team. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Hi, Sudhir. Saurabh, and team. Congrats on a good quarter. A couple of questions. Firstly, if I apply a conservative revenue conversion multiple to your 12-month forward, you know, order book, it does point to a very kind of, you know, punchy FY 2027 growth guidance to start with. On top of that, you've mentioned that there's still a few sort of, you know, deals that are kind of waiting to be incorporated into it. Just trying to understand, does the previous conversion relationship hold? How does that play with, you know, the current geopolitical market or sort of, you know, the whole AI anxiety around it?
Can we build in that growth rate which kind of implies almost an 18%- 19% organic growth ramp for FY 2027? That's the first question. The second question is.
Hello?
Sorry.
Abhishek? Abhishek, can you hear us?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Abhishek, why don't you repeat your question? There was some issue with the internet. We were not able to hear you.
Okay. Am I audible now?
Yeah. Yeah, you are. Yeah.
I'm saying, if I were to apply a conservative, you know, revenue conversion multiple to your 12-month forward, executable order book, I arrive at a very, very punchy FY 2027 growth number of almost 18-19%. Trying to understand, sort of, you know, does the previous, sort of, you know, 1.3x-1.4x multiple to your 12-month order book still hold? Should we assume a higher conversion rate, lower conversion rate, depending on the global macros or the AI deflation, et cetera, et cetera? That's the first question. The second question is, sort of, you know, how much of the EBIT margin, sort of upgrade, is kind of down to, sort of, you know, AI usage internally?
How much of it is down to, let's say, pricing and sort of, you know, getting into more agentified solutions that can lead to better pricing, so to speak? Lastly, you know, very curious, despite, sort of, you know, on the hedge front, on the hedge book reclassification side, sort of what prompted that change and, you know, any sort of, you know, guidance in that would be helpful. Thank you.
All right. Thank you for the question, Abhishek. I'm gonna request Saurabh to take the hedge question at towards the end. As far as revenue is concerned, Abhishek, last year when we started off the year, we had indicated that we would deliver robust growth. The intent always is to grow as much as is possible, and that's how we landed up at 29.2% USD growth. This year, again, the intent is to deliver a robust growth, but the intent is equally not to classify that or to offer hard numbers around it, which you well know. The environment is challenging, and yet the confidence is high that we should be able to deliver industry-leading growth. I'll leave it there.
As far as the EBIT is concerned, we believe the EBIT reset in quarter four has been a structural reset. It has come off the back of the automation and AI-led interventions. Second, it has come largely off the back of a deeply held conviction that in an AI-infused era, our G&A costs have, in absolute terms, to be held constant, and it is AI-based interventions that are allowing us to do it. Saurabh, number three.
Yeah. Abhishek, on the hedge front, we were anyways working with our auditors. I think we thought it is better to do it towards the year-end, wherein you look at this change so that at least the reporting gets aligned more to market peers. It was more around that rather than anything else.
Just to mention that the If you add back the hedge losses against to revenue in the current quarter, the EBIT margins were 15.2% as against our guide of 15%. We did better off than even if the hedge losses were being reported, where they were being reported earlier. The improvement that has come on the margins in the current quarter is operational, and that's why we believe that going forward we'll be able to not only sustain, but to kind of improve on in FY 2027.
Very clear. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you. We take the next question from Sulabh Govila of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Am I audible?
Yeah.
Yeah. Thanks for taking my question, and thanks for the detailed presentation. I just had a couple of questions. First is on the revenue growth. Last year, when we entered the last year, we had a tailwind of the mega deal which we had won in the month of March. This year, given that we do not have a tailwind of that level, you know, how should we expect the growth to pan out, particularly from a perspective of the cadence, given that 1H was quite strong last year versus the two edge. How do you think about, not from a number perspective, from a cadence perspective, how do you expect the 1H versus two edge in this year?
If you could also provide some color on the framework agreements that you talked about. Are they different versus the usual? I have a second question after that.
Right. You're absolutely right about your observation around the fact that we had the $1.56 billion tailwind that we had. This year we believe the tailwind comes from framework agreements that we have signed and not recognized under the order executable that we've shared with you. These are agreements where the MSA does not spell out a specific amount, and hence we do not add that to the order executable number. We've already signed a material framework engagement. We think we will, in reasonably short order, sign bigger framework agreements. The pipeline closure there is in its near final stages. That's how we see this. A lot of our confidence around revenue growth also comes not just from order executable, but how balanced the portfolio is.
At this point in time, whether it is travel, whether it is healthcare, whether it is banking, insurance, we feel good about all of them. We're not hitching our wagon to one, I mean, to one star. The entire constellation seems to be moving in the right direction from our point of view. Any other questions?
Understood. Thanks. Just second question for Saurabh on the free cash flow. Saurabh, just trying to understand this change of 60%-70% going to 100%, what are the specific drivers to that? I'm sorry if I missed that earlier.
No. We had earlier last year mentioned that we'll start. This was starting end of quarter one or beginning of quarter two when we said we'll maintain 70%-80% FCF to PAT. I guess the rigor that we have brought in within the organization in terms of the way collections are being followed and the way payables are being managed and the way contracts are being structured, we believe that 100% is the bare minimum FCF to PAT we'll deliver in FY 2027, along with the significant step up in the profitability that we mentioned in our prepared remarks.
Okay. Okay. Understood. Thanks, Saurabh, and thanks for taking my question.
Thank you. We take our next question from Vibhor Singhal of Nuvama Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Congrats, Sudhir, Saurabh, and team for the solid performance again. Couple of questions from my side. Sudhir, on the entire AI opportunity, you mentioned about the fact that while the AI code might be easy, it might be cheaper to write, but it is much more expensive to maintain and implement, and basically, overall integrate into the system of the existing companies. From a broad, broader industry point of view, I know Coforge has been the growth leader and will probably continue to be, but from an industry perspective, do you believe that this AI opportunity will actually lead to an overall expansion for the industry also? Let's say the IT, the Indian IT industry today is around $ 250 billion.
Will we actually see this much bigger than what $ 250 billion today is, let's say, two or three or four years down the line? A related question to that is, if you go back to the last cycle, which was the digital and the cloud cycle, a large part of that opportunity was initially captured by the Tier 1 players because the Tier 2 players were quite small at that point of time. Do you believe that in this cycle, because those mid-tier players, in which we basically classify ourselves and our peers as well, because we've now reached a size and the capabilities and all, do you believe the winners or let's say the beneficiaries of this cycle could actually be different than what they were in the last cycle?
The AI opportunity that we see is multifold, and I'm going to request the head of our AI practice, Mr. Vic Gupta also to add on to what I chime in with. As we've said, we are seeing immediately a very, very significant near-term modernization surge using AI technologies. That is real. That is now. There is one that is building up very strongly, which is the whole agent deployment wave. Firms that ride those waves are firms that will continue to do well. It's difficult for me to talk about whether the Indian IT industry will do well or not, but the tech services industry perforce has to do well. There is a clear need for AI-ready data pipelines. There is clear need for service providers that can do agent lifecycle management.
There is a clear need for service players that can do recurring high margin managed services to monitor models and to govern agents. Vic, would you like to add more color to AI demand?
Sure. Thanks, Sudhir. I think if you look at the ecosystem, we find, at least in our client base, there's a lot of application entanglement. Lot of opportunities around brownfield migrations of the applications to modernized systems and to agentic systems. I think no Fortune 1000 company has no integration problems. Every one of them has an integration problem. They need to agentify their workflows, but they need to integrate with their existing systems, existing system of records, systems of engagement, and systems of interaction. We also feel that responsible or governance of AI is a non-negotiable for regulated industries which we operate in. Each one of them offers us as a value pool that brings us closer to our clients and delivers value to them.
We feel for us, we are faster to execute, nimble to change, and as Sudhir mentioned earlier, client intimacy is an important aspect for our moat. With that, we feel that there's great opportunities around the brownfield modernization and migration and agentic areas. Back to you, Sudhir.
Vibhor, thank you for the question. Do you have anything else for us?
Just one more question from you, and then I'll probably have one a couple of bookkeeping for Saurabh. From a near-term perspective, Sudhir, just wanted to pick your brain that travel vertical has been a very strong force for us. Given the Gulf war that is going on right now, given where crude is, do you foresee a headwind in that vertical in the immediate future? Have any client conversations started around that the airlines specifically have started talking about temporarily pulling back their tech spends, or anything on that? Any color on that would be really helpful.
At this point in time, Vibhor, from our perspective, the travel vertical continues even in the short term to do really well. We saw a press report yesterday which talked about the impact of Spirit Airlines on Coforge. We just want to reiterate the impact is negligible to none. The budgeted revenue from that airline was about 10 basis points for fiscal year 2027, so that near term, the travel business is on the up and up. Saurabh talked about earlier in his commentary about the fact that there is a low-margin portfolio in India that we will discontinue immediately, and the negative impact of that will flow into Q1. Despite that's a significant portfolio. We expect to be flattish in Q1 and to be on a very fast growth trajectory from Q2 onwards. travel, healthcare, banking, insurance.
Et cetera.
public sector, and even high-tech, the new vertical we've started, should do extremely well in FY 2027.
Got it. Just one or two bookkeeping questions for Saurabh. Saurabh, since Sudhir mentioned about that, basically discontinuing the India business operation, could you quantify what would be the, basically amount of that business which we are intending to discontinue from Q1?
It should have a impact of roughly, $15 million-$20 million in pass-through in quarter one itself.
Got it. Revenue for Q1 from whatever we're expecting should be down by $15 million-$20 million because of this discontinuation of business operations.
Because of India business. The other deals that we had signed in the current year. The order book that we have will still make up for it and probably nullify the impact of this downfall.
Got it. net-net, we are expecting a flattish quarter next-
Exactly.
... next quarter-
Yes. Yes.
... on a Q-on-Q basis?
On a Q- on- Q basis-
Got it.
... on a reported front.
On a reported front. Got it, got it. Just last question from my side. There's a 150 basis points of margin gap that we are talking about in FY 2027 between our standalone and our consol margin.
Yes.
That I would assume will be because of the amortization of-
You're absolutely right.
... Encora.
You're absolutely right, it's because of amortization. Otherwise, we feel very good about hitting maybe 16.5%-17% odd EBIT margins if t here was no amortization.
What is the amortization that we are looking at on an annual basis in terms of absolute dollar or rupee amount?
Roughly $40 million a year.
Roughly $40 million. Great. Thank you so much for taking my questions. Wish you all the best.
Thanks.
Thank you. We take the next question from Dipesh Mehta of Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of question. First, just want to understand what will be the hedge losses sitting in OCI, considering the way we now change the accounting practice. If you can provide some sense on it, what will be the OCI number?
So-
Second. Yeah, sorry.
Dipesh, number one, the OCI won't change. I think it's just that the hedge loss in the other income will be INR 164 crores, which is already there as part of fact sheet.
No, I understand, but what is the number? I understand it will not change.
INR 164 crores. Sorry, INR 164 crores for the year, INR 70 crores for the quarter.
No, my question is what is the balance sheet number, considering the whatever hedge position we might be having at the end of the quarter?
I'll come back to you on that.
Okay. The second question, which I want the framework agreement. How one should understand that to convert into order book in coming quarters, whether it will be very gradual conversion which will not have a much impact on order book, or you expect some of it to be relatively large deal kind of thing? If you can give some sense how it is different than usual, and whether this is something different than, let's say, 12, 18 months kind of the way deal used to get structured, because I'm not very clear on that part. Second question on the BFS.
BFS relatively remain s ofter than, let's say, company average in 2026. Even in quarter four it is relatively softer. If you can provide some sense how one should expect BFS growth trajectory, and what are the puts and take in terms of some of the demand driver playing out there?
I'm gonna request our President, Mr. John Speight, to address the framework question, because that demand comes from the U.K. public sector and that's a business that he shepherds.
Thank you, Sudhir. Yes, it's not your atypical framework deal in the usual sense. This is a typical way that the U.K. public sector business works. You'll have seen the press that we were awarded in Q4 $150+ million deal in the U.K. public sector. It's in the press. That was a sole award to Coforge structured over five years, and the expected run rate as a base is sort of $4 million-$5 million per quarter. It's basically Well, what happens during the quarter is it's multiple TSRs or SOWs against that award purely to Coforge.
As far as the BFS question is concerned, Dipesh, we see structural demand drivers ahead of us. BFS in our case came in at 12%. In relative terms it was low, but I guess by in absolute terms that was still a solid performance in a year like this. We expect performance around BFS to improve in FY 2027 over FY 2026.
Thank you. We move to our next question from Ravi Menon of Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. Sudhir, you know, while appreciate the long-term bullish commentary on AI demand, and thanks for the really detailed remarks on that. Do you understand if there would be some near-term, you know, headwinds, especially in the product engineering side, probably more with Encora than for the Coforge portfolio, some of the smaller, let's say, SaaS companies perhaps? Would we see some revenue headwind near-term, even if, you know, being really early to the game in adopting AI for coding? We will build market share that offsets it longer term, but near-term could we see some pressures?
Ravi, thanks for the question. The answer is no. The high-tech business of Encora that we've taken over is under a new leader based out of the, out of a new office that we were planning for and have already established and is functioning. We expect the high-tech business, which is where this was most likely to, starting Q1 itself, start growing and grow handsomely through the fiscal year 2027.
Great. Thanks so much for that. Saurabh, the FCF conversion, you know, the rough math indicates that EBITDA to free cash conversion would be about 60%, or north of that, given you're saying more than 100% conversion. Right? That's, that's pretty good but, still a little lower than I'd say, you know, the best in class, right? What do you think we need to do to move towards best in class?
Ravi, I think it's a step up that we're doing from where we were, whether it is margins or free cash flow. I guess it's the investments that we have been making in our client relationships and in our business, because of which in the past whatever investments we made, one can see results in whether it's profitability and cash flow. I think another couple of more years and then you can see that this will start moving towards 110%- 120% odd. I guess it's a gradual move that we're making from not focusing on FCF to PAT to giving a guidance of 70%- 80%, delivering onto that to moving to 100%, and then we look at how next year goes by and probably then start upping it up.
One, one question on the ESOP side. You know, how much should that be next year as a proportion of overall compensation or as a proportion of revenue?
It will stay where it is. I mean, 0.8%- 0.9% is where it will stay. It's not, it's not gonna go up, or it's not significantly gonna go down. I think ESOP cost, we'd already mentioned that when the new plan was rolled out, we were close to 2 % odd, and it's come down gradually and it will stay where it is, 0.7%- 0.8% odd .
Right. you're not envisaging that to move up even with new leaders from Encora being on boarded?
No. No, we're not expecting that to go up.
Oh, thanks so much.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's all.
Thank you, Ravi.
Thank you. Next question is from Sandeep Shah of Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity, and congrats on a good execution. Just Sudhir wanted to understand relating to workflow deal, framework deal, from the U.K. government. Is it fair to assume the potential which we may consider in our budget being $ 150 million TCV with five-year what John Speight has disclosed, and that $ 4 million-$ 6 million additional revenue may start flowing from 1Q itself?
Yeah. The revenue, as John said, is going to start flowing from quarter one itself. We believe the potential, the $ 150 million deal is already signed.
That's the award.
John Yeah, that's awarded. John has strong conviction, and I'll let you speak about the future as well, more deals in the pipeline.
We're very well placed in the U.K. public sector space. We've had significant successes in engagements. You've seen one in Scotland not long ago. It's been in the press about the rollout for the 1-1-1 services there. Our reputation across the public sector is very high. We have a number of opportunities at the moment, many of them in the $ 10 million-$ 100 million size.
That's only one-
And-
Yeah. That $ 150 million is signed, and there are others that we think are locked and loaded, and we will be awarded those as well in addition to what's signed.
Yeah. This would be again in U.K. public sector?
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, as I said earlier, John, as John has confirmed, in U.K. public sector plus the momentum across every vertical at this point in time. Healthcare, which as you saw grew 98%. Travel, where the secular tailwinds around One Order, One Offer, airport reconstruction as retail malls are secular tailwinds. They will not fade away despite what is happening. Banking, insurance is very, very strong.
Sudhir, are you trying to say framework deal would be not just restricted to U.K., it could be in other sectors also?
No. Framework deals only come from U.K. public sector in our case.
Okay. Okay. Just some clarity, this is for Saurabh. The CapEx looks like there is a inflow in the cash flow statement. What has led to that? Second-
S-
The discontinued business $15 million-$20 million run rate is on the quarterly basis or on a yearly basis?
Two parts. One, the cash flow positive inflow that you're seeing is because of the part of the assets which were pertaining to the AI-led data center that we had built up in quarter one. Part of those assets have been sold. They've been bought back by the client, so because of which there is an immediate inflow that has come to us during the quarter. I didn't get the second part of the question.
The India discontinued business.
Yes
$15 million-$20 million.
Yes
Is it quarterly run rate or a yearly run rate?
It was the quarterly run rate for last couple of quarters and we're now going to close that and not sign up such deals and which this business had generated $40 million-$45 million last year, out of which $40 million came in over last two quarters.
We can afford to do that.
Yeah.
We offer further color on this. We can afford to do that given the confidence that we have in our revenue pipeline right now. Second, the fact that we think we will structurally and permanently reset the margin to the levels that Saurabh talked about. If we were stressed on revenues, if we were not confident of the materiality, if we weren't convinced around revenue pipeline, we could not have pulled the trigger. We have because every business is firing. We feel very good about revenue growth in FY 2027, and also because this would be another lever to make sure that what a business that delivered 14.4% reported EBIT in FY 2026 will on a standalone basis jump to 16.5%-17%.
Yeah. Yeah, got it. Just the last question. Saurabh, on the minority interest in this quarter there is a quantum decline. Is it fair to assume you have already taken 100% stake, effective, FY 2026 end on the minority? Why charge on the P&L still reflects a bigger charge? Is it fair to assume this entry could have happened at the end of the financial year, which is 31st March 2026?
Going forward, you will see that minority interest will come down from INR 53 crores-INR 54 crores in one quarter to almost like INR 9 odd crores. The reduction in minority interest is yet to happen. It will happen from quarter one onwards because the share allotment is happening. The record date for the share allotment is 16th of May, hence, the minority interest is being carried in the P&L up till that time.
Okay. In 31st March it shows INR 143 crore versus 31st December 2025 it shows upwards of INR 2,000 CR.
We are looking at that in the balance sheet. If you look at the P&L.
Yeah.
The minority interest is INR 539 million because the DTL reversal has happened. The deferred tax liability reversal has happened. If you look at the P&L, the minority interest is INR 54 crores in quarter four, which will come down to INR 9 odd crores, which will give upside from a profit after tax perspective, but the number of shares will also go up when the allotment of shares to Cigniti shareholders will happen. That will still give you an upside on the EPS front. That is more to come in next quarter.
Okay. Effective merger entry will happen from 1Q?
Yeah.
Okay, thanks. All the best.
Thank you. We take our next question from Kawaljeet Saluja of Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. You know, great to see the margin focus and the free cash flow guidance. Just two to three questions. The first question is for Sudhir. Sudhir, when I look at the banking vertical, the revenues of that vertical are stuck in that $120 million-$123 million range now for five quarters. Now, anecdotally from the market, we keep on hearing about some of the clients in that banking set expanding their captives. Anything that is kind of hurting that, you know, portfolio of business, which in fact used to be quite a big growth driver for you?
What's slowed down our growth to only 12% for the current year, Kawaljeet, was the fact that one of our top three banking clients did not grow this year. That client account has now been transferred over to John's personal stewardship, and we feel far more positive about it. It has nothing in our mind to do with the GCC movement. It's more to do with a client-specific issue that we had and we believe we've addressed. John, would you like to address growth prospects of that client?
Thank you, Sudhir. Yeah, it's, we've completely refactored how we're, with that client, how we're engaging. We've got a brand-new team, what we're also recognizing is that we have to disrupt in that account because we've got a large footprint and we're actually using our AI capabilities to actually completely transform how we engage, how we run. On the back of that, we expect significant growth over the next-
Right. Well, it was once a single large client-specific issue, Kawaljeet. It's reversed, so next year, FY 2027 banking, you should see better numbers.
Got that. That's encouraging to hear. The second question is on durability of margins. It's great to see consolidated EBIT margin going up to 15.5%. Any thoughts on durability of it? And the context of this is, when I look at the numbers, let's say certain numbers like sales and marketing headcount, those dipped sharply. I'm just trying to think through that, you know. Is this guidance, Sudhir, for FY 2027 or there's a greater runway that you have in mind?
We should be able to improve FY 2028 over FY 2027, obviously not by this quantum, but at least incrementally, Kawaljeet. The threshold that we've shared for FY 2027 will be the minimum that should be expected from us starting FY 2028 onwards.
Got that. The third question is for Saurabh. Saurabh, I see a big decline in hedges for the quarter. You know, on a sequential basis, I think it's down materially. Anything, you know, in terms of a policy change that you have been able to push through?
Yeah. We have taken a dollar loan of $550 million, Kawaljeet, and it gives us natural hedge, and that loan has been taken in India. It is just to make sure that the cash flows and the balance sheet is aligned to the liability that we have in the balance sheet, and we're moving towards the balance sheet hedges, and that is why you see a decline in the cash flow hedges.
Okay. I couldn't fully get that. Maybe I'll ask you separately.
Okay. Sure.
You know, Saurabh, just on that, let's say loan point in itself, U.S. dollar, $550 million of loans.
Yeah.
Is actually good. The headline interest rate is 4.5%, but do you intend to hedge that, given that the rupee has been on a depreciation spree, and without that it might end up causing some burn on your P&L in the process?
Kawaljeet, that's where we get the natural hedge because our receivables are in dollars in India. That's why the number of hedges have gone down because of a natural hedge. Receivables are in dollars, the payable is in dollars, that's why the number of hedges have gone down purely because of a natural hedge that we've got.
Right. Final question for you, Saurabh. When I look at your P&L or when I look at the cash, the hedges, again, the average rate is INR 90 for $300 million. Just back on your calculation at the current spot rate means that you are having a hedge loss of around INR 140 crores-150 crores at this point.
Yep.
Is that a correct assessment right now?
That is the correct assessment. That's the mark to market, and I guess, one or two quarters more there'll be losses and then, I think third quarter it starts tapering off, and that's where we are. Yeah, you're right.
Okay, cool. Thanks. Yeah, all the best.
Yeah. Thanks.
Thank you. We take that as the last question for today. I now hand the call back to Mr. Sudhir Singh for closing comments.
Thank you, Emma. Thank you ladies, gentlemen, for your time, for your interest, and for the insights that you've shared with us. As we said at the outset, these are exciting times, these are heady times. We look forward to staying in touch and to delivering on the outlook that we've shared with you today. Thank you once again.
Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of Coforge Limited, that concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us. You may now click on the leave icon to exit the meeting. Thank you for your participation. Goodbye