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Q3 24/25 (Media)

Jan 16, 2025

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

A very good evening everyone and a very happy new year. Thank you for joining Infosys third quarter financial results. My name is Rishi and on behalf of Infosys, I'd like to welcome all of you today.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

I typically would have said one question per media house. Should I say that?

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

With that I invite our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Salil Parekh for his opening remarks.

Over to you, Salil.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Thanks, Rishi. Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for joining us here in person. Very happy New Year to each one of you. Our revenue grew 1.7% quarter on quarter and 6.1% year on year in constant currency terms. In Q3, all verticals and most geographies grew year on year. We saw double-digit growth in Europe and India and in our manufacturing business. Large deals were at $2.5 billion. Operating margin at 21.3%. Free cash flow for the quarter was at an all-time high of $1.26 billion. Headcount grew by over 5,000 sequentially where we are now over 323,000 employees worldwide. Financial services in the U.S. continues to grow strongly in this quarter. And over the past few quarters we've seen a revival in European financial services.

During Q3 we are seeing an improvement in retail and consumer product industry in the U.S. with discretionary pressures easing. Automotive sector in Europe continues to remain slow. In generative AI, we have built four small language models for banking, for IT operations, for cyber security and broadly for enterprises. In generative AI we are also developing over 100 new agents. These agents are for deployment within our clients, many of them already using agents that we've developed. Based on our strong performance in this quarter and our view for the rest of this financial year, we are revising our revenue growth guidance to growth of 4.5%-5% in constant currency terms. Our operating margin guidance remains unchanged at 20%-22%. With that, let's open it up for questions.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you, Salil. We will now open the floor for questions. Joining Salil is Mr.

Jayesh Sanghrajka, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys.

The first question is from Ritu Singh, CNBC-TV18.

Ritu Singh
Deputy Editor, CNBC-TV18

Hi Salil. Hi Jayesh. Happy New Year. You know, let me just start with that revenue growth that you've posted. Because Q3 is typically a seasonally weak quarter, the market estimates were about 1% growth, but you've been able to deliver 1.7%. You know. So is the environment significantly better than what you saw three months ago? If you could give us a commentary on that and on raising your revenue guidance to about 4.5%-5% was an expected lines. But you know, what is the implied growth rate for the fourth quarter then are you expecting a degrowth of about 2.5% given this margins that you've given, also your wage hikes? I think last time we asked you and you said it may happen in the fourth quarter if that is on track.

What will be the impact on margins once you do undertake that? Hiring again has been going up for the last two quarters. How should we read into that? Again, coming back to your revenue question, if you're expecting a degrowth in the second quarter, will you continue this pace of hiring? What is the demand outlook? And if I may add, deal wins? While they've been steady, they've not really accelerated. You know, if you could give us a sense of what the pipeline looks like from here on. Thank you.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

So thanks. I'll try and go through the question and some Jayesh will also answer. On the first, I think the sort of view in Q3 and it was the growth at 1.7%. What we saw was the last quarter we had seen discretionary becoming good in financial services in the U.S. now this quarter we have seen financial services in Europe, also the discretionary showing signs of improving. And on retail and consumer products in the U.S. it's showing that signs are improving. So that coupled with how we delivered in the quarter was the reason where we changed the guidance to increase. Now the second I think was about if that is the guidance, what is the Q4 and so on. So there first, as we've always shared our Q1, Q2 in a typical financial year are strong, a Q3, Q4 typically weak.

That's the sort of seasonality that we see in Q4, nothing more or less. Jayesh will give a little bit more color on some of these points. On the hiring that you mentioned there, I'll say a few words and I'll pass it on to Jayesh. We've had a strong hiring in Q3 with this expansion of over 5,000 employees. We see that based on some of the discretionary, this will continue, but it will have seasonality as we see in our revenue for the next financial year. We are obviously not giving the growth guidance, but what we do see is that many of the things we've put in place across the whole company focus on large deals, focused on small deals, focused on artificial intelligence, making sure we're doing cost takeout for clients.

All of these things combined are helping the company to execute as well as doing so. Let me pause here if there's anything else.

Ritu Singh
Deputy Editor, CNBC-TV18

How much of it was organic? How much inorganic because of the in-tech acquisition? That as well.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

So in-tech. Let me just answer that and I'll go back to other questions. in-tech was last quarter we had pretty much two and a half months of in-tech. So this quarter the in-tech was roughly around 20 basis points in revenue. Coming back to the other points, if you look at large deals, our large deals, while the overall large deal number you will see is remaining same, within that the net new has increased significantly.

So last quarter our net new was 40%. This quarter our net new is 60%. Which means that the large deals per se or the net new TCV of the large deals have gone up one and a half times between Q2 and Q3, our large deal pipeline has become stronger as we see. So all of that has led to our increase in guidance just to add to the points that Salil was making.

Coming to the other question on comp. You know we had announced earlier that comp will happen in two phases. One phase from the 1st of January, the other one will happen from 1st of April. We are on track with that. The first part of the comp is getting rolled out in this quarter and we are working with HR on that. Sorry, HR team is working on that.

Ritu Singh
Deputy Editor, CNBC-TV18

The question rather was what will be the impact on margin?

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

We don't define the impact on comp. I mean, exact impact on the comp in terms of margins. So we will have some headwinds coming from the comp in Q4 and Q1 based on it. But you know, broadly the comp that we are expecting is 6%-8% in India and you know the overseas comps will be in line with the earlier comp reviews.

Ritu Singh
Deputy Editor, CNBC-TV18

I think Salil, the question on discretionary spends on high tech telecom, some of these areas that you would continue to flag in the last quarter, if the outlook on that is improving and if the BFSI momentum you expect to continue into the new year.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

So on high tech and on telecom, we've not seen a change. What we've seen the change is really on financial services more in Europe and on retail consumer products in the US. Will it continue at this stage? That's what we are seeing in terms of what we saw in Q3, but we'll wait and see how it looks beyond.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. The next question is from NDTV Profit. Haripriya.

Haripriya Sureban
Correspondent, NDTV Profit

Hi Salil.

On the discretionary spending part that you mentioned, is this kind of change that you're seeing only sentimental or do you see this translating in the budgets, in the upcoming budgets for the companies across the sectors that you mentioned? And also with the new administration coming in the U.S. what's the kind of impact that you're expecting from that? The market expects the stability to bring in a lot more budgets to open up a lot more. And also on the employee headcount, the attrition is also rising a little bit more, if not gradually as well. So how do we read into that? And on the margins, what's the kind of impact the cross currency headwinds have had? There's a lot of movement that has happened in the currencies and also would there be any furloughs or spillover?

In the long term, like you have had a guidance band for margin and it is there, but also it's quite narrow. So in the long term, what is it, how, how is it that you choose to improve on the margin part, given that there's also a project margin, project improvement that you have.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

So let me start off with some of them. The first one was on the discretionary. The budgets for our clients will be on a calendar year basis which will start now. So we'll get a sense in this quarter itself. Our commentary is mainly on what we've seen in Q3 and how the discussions have been going and that seems to indicate the changes that I mentioned in terms of the new changes in the U.S. We'll wait and see how it goes. Generally speaking, most people who are the economists and so on have a view that the economy there will do better. That's what our clients are saying. But we'll wait and see how it goes. We have a business that works in those growth situations, in the cost situations, so we're feeling quite confident in terms of the outlook there.

Haripriya Sureban
Correspondent, NDTV Profit

What's the dependency on the H-1B visas? Do you see any impact there?

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

So, there, maybe I can answer that. So if you look at over the years, our dependence on H-1B's as H-1B visas have reduced significantly. Right. First and foremost, our onsite mix has reduced significantly. We used to be in the 30% range, we are now at 24% range. Within that, our nearshore has increased significantly and within the onsite, the U.S. onsite population that we have, our H-1B dependent or our H-1B independent folks are now 60-plus%. So we are pretty much, we have now built a pretty resilient model from that perspective and we are therefore much more confident from where we are versus where we used to be earlier. Yeah. So coming back to your other questions, you know, attrition at this point in time has remained at 13.7%, which is one of the lower attrition that we have.

We have seen in the last multiple years. It's range bound and we don't see a challenge there at this point in time. We have already added last two quarters, we have added net new employees and our campus hiring program is also as per our plan. So we don't really see a challenge there as well. You had another question on margins. So if you look at our margins this quarter, we have expanded our margins by 20 basis points during the quarter. If I just take the puts and takes of that, 40 basis points came from currency benefit, both rupee depreciation as well as the cross currencies. 20 basis points came, 30 basis points came from Project Maximus, mainly from the pricing benefit that we got.

20 basis points came from the expected credit loss provisions and lower provisions on post-sale customer supports offset partly by higher third-party costs that we had. And the headwind of 70 basis points was furloughs and lower working days and other costs. So that's our margin work for the quarter. As we get into the next quarter we will have headwinds coming from.

The.

Compensation increase that we have rolled out already. So that would be a headwind. Currency. We'll have to see how it pans out at this point in time. Looks like currency will give us some benefit in terms of margin, but we'll have to see how the currency progresses through the quarter.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. The next question is from The Economic Times, Bindu.

Beena Parmar
Assistant Editor, The Economic Times

Hi, I want a question on the, you know, hiring commitment. I think you'd committed to 15,000-20,000 freshers. Is that on track and how much have you hired so far under that? And what's the outlook for the next fiscal. And if you can just give us maybe this calendar year as well. What's the sort of hiring that you're looking at both freshers and overall hiring on the deal momentum? Just if you could just give us a sense which sectors are likely to in the next two quarters. While financial services is seeing a lot of pickup, could you delve into the other segments as well? And you know, with the deal cycle closing, a lot of other peers have said that that is sort of shortening.

If you could also give us some sense on how the cycle has been and how is the large and mega deal pipeline going forward for the next near term, maybe next two quarters. And the last thing, you know, what sort of impact do you see because of the recent lawsuit that has been made public, you know, in one of your court filings. What is the business impact because of that lawsuit? And could you give us some color on, you know, the charges? Because I think some of it is very serious. So that's it.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Okay. So if you look at the headcount, we are on track in terms of headcount or the fresher hiring. This year we will be hiring 15,000 plus. We are expecting for FY26 at this point in time, 20,000 plus fresher hiring. We do not really give an outlook in terms of the lateral hiring that is dependent on multiple factors, you know, how the demand grows, how the attrition pans out, etc. But it's also a factor that over the years we have now moved to a very agile hiring model. So, you know, we can pretty much fill it in India in two to three months on site in less than a month in terms of the demand. So we don't really therefore give out an overview or outlook in terms of the lateral hiring.

But in terms of freshers, 15,000 plus for this year and 20,000 next year is what we are looking at its part.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Part of in terms of the industry and the next few quarters. As you mentioned, we don't give industry specific views which are forward. We have that overall guidance which we've increased. We, we've given a view more on what we've seen in Q3 and we think that is something that's a good sign because financial services, which was strong in the U.S. is now strong. The discretionary has come back in Europe and with the retail and consumer products expanding beyond that, manufacturing still remains slow and the other industries are at the same place where they were. So that's the way we are looking at it, but incremental. We see that it's a better situation in Q3 than what we saw in Q2 in terms of the large deals and the pipeline. Our pipeline is strong.

We typically don't give the value of it, but it's a strong pipeline with large deals and some mega deals. These are deals we feel good about given the way that some of the conversions have happened. In terms of the timeline of the closure, the deal timeline, we've seen essentially similar situation from what we saw in Q2. That is where we accept, which is not just on the large deal, it's on the discretionary where in those few industries that I mentioned the discretionary moves a little bit faster, but the large deal movement is about the same in the pipeline. In terms of any of the legal things, we have no additional comments here.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. The next question is from The Times of India, Veena.

Veena Mani
Special Digital Content Specialist, The Times of India

Good evening gentlemen and happy New Year. So your contribution from the top five clients has dropped to 12.7 from 13.4 a year back and compared to the previous quarter, 13.7 is there, what are the reasons for that? So the street has been expecting a more nuanced metric to call on, you know, for a call out on the gen business. So what would those metrics be? Metrics for Infosys. And also there's a term in the industry called AI washing, you know, where people generally, you know, you use AI to the bare minimum and then give it an AI tag. Is that happening? And can you tell me a little bit about that? And also is the headcount growth the same pace going to continue with generative AI being one of the main things being talked about in the industry?

Also, one clarification, you mentioned 6%-8% in India. So that's the quantum of hike or is that, that's the quantum effect. Sure.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Yeah. So if you look at, you know, the contribution from the top five clients, many of them had furloughs this quarter and this is typically the seasonal quarter from furlough perspective that has impacted the contribution from the top clients.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

So on generative AI, I think you mentioned the AI washing. So I'm not aware of that within Infosys, but you may be aware of that outside with some other companies. We are very clear on what we're doing on generative AI, this small language model, just as an example. So today we have several discussions with clients where they would like to use the small language models that we have built. So how are they built? They are built by using the proprietary data that we have, let's say on banking or on IT operations. It then uses some very standard industry or in this case a horizontal data and then the client builds their own into that small language model. Some clients are asking us to, for them to build a small language model of their own.

So for example with a telco client, they want to build their own, let's say Company X Telco, their own small language model which we are helping them because we have the platform for it and this is real generative AI work that we are doing. Then you look at agents. So to give you some example, we have built for a client. This is actual work, not just like a proof of concept where we have built a research agent for a client, a large tech company where they are now using that in their product area to support how queries are looked at and where their own people and their own customers can look at this, use this agent. And some of the statistics are quite impressive. From going from something like 18 days of time to do things to eight days of time to do things.

So these are real examples. We see real benefits with clients. Another example of an agent. We built an agent for audit work for a professional services company. Three different agents. They are now helping that company to more efficiently and with fewer errors do what they're doing in their audit activity. So the work we're doing in generative AI we feel is leading in the industry. We are very clear in how it's being used across. Because these are real projects with clients. Almost every discussion with clients has some element of it. So let's say the overall work is large but there's always some element of generative AI in that discussion that we are involved in.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. The next question is from Moneycontrol. Rishabh.

Thanks Rishi. Good. Happy New Year. Gentlemen. A couple of questions there. So first of all on the deal cycles, you know you highlighted that the North American market is, is already better but even Europe is getting better. So on that front are you seeing these cycles getting shorter and shorter? You know. Second on, you know, on the, your trainees, the you know, Mysore campus. This case is now I think the forest department has said the leopard has been, has not been spotted. So when our trainees be going to be back on the campus, I hear that they'll be back by 25th or 26th. Also on the, you know, Bhupendra person who's, who went out on LinkedIn and said a lot of things on you know, the culture, work culture. So what are your views on that?

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

First on the deal cycle. Where we've seen, for example, the discretionary work coming back where we talked about financial services or retail in the specific geographies there for the discretionary work things move relatively quickly. But the overall deal cycle if you look at large deals has remained about the same. In terms of our Mysore campus with the sighting of the leopard we engaged with the Karnataka Forest Department now and made sure that the safety of our employees and also to make sure there was no harm to the leopard. We had taken all the appropriate steps. In fact all the employees, we moved them outside the campus as of today the Karnataka Forest Department has had a view where there's been no sighting or signs or whatever indications of the leopard for several days.

Now we are in the process of looking at what the next steps will be in terms of the employee question that you mentioned. Within Infosys, we have a very clear approach to make sure that everyone is treated fairly. We have a well-defined process of looking at how the performance is driven. We are equal opportunity in making sure that everyone gets the benefits of that, and we hold ourselves to this high standard. Thank you. We are now in the process of looking at that update and putting together the next steps for that.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thanks, Rishabh. The next question is from Reuters News, Hritam.

Hritam Mukherjee
Correspondent, Reuters News

Hi, gentlemen.

Congratulations on a good set of numbers. Sir, I wanted to know what is the latest update on the McCamish cyber security incident. We had a couple of banks coming up saying that they were impacted. If you can give us some color on what is the latest and if there is any estimated impact to top line from that. And secondly, Mr. Parekh, you gave some comments about the U.S. economy, but I want to ask you if you see if you are feeling particularly confident about Trump's return to presidency and now that his inauguration is a few weeks away, how do you look at U.S. economy now that Trump is back? That's all.

So on the first point, we have made several disclosures on that in the past which hold. In addition, the e-discovery process for that is complete. Recently in December, there were six different class action suits that were filed. The court has decided at the end of December to club or join all of them and allow for what's called a mediation process. And that is the step that is underway today. In terms of the U.S., I think the U.S. market or the economy is done incredibly well in the past few quarters with the way it has been managed post the COVID situation and everything we see in terms of what the outlook is, especially with what we saw on the inflation and the interest rates, gives us a view that the U.S. will remain a very good and strong market for us.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you.

The next question is from Mint, Jasmine.

Good evening.

Three questions. If you can just throw a little more light on whether you're seeing deal tenures get shortened. Does this imply that every year you're seeing more deal renewals come up than say in the last 36 months? Then if I look at the sequential figures, the client contribution not just to the top five but also to the top 10 and top 25 clients from the top of those clients have been coming down if you can help me explain that. And third, are you seeing any sort of a pricing pressure in your conversations with clients going forward? If yes, which businesses are most affected?

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Let me start with the first one, Jayesh. We'll have some points on the second and the third.

On the deal cycles, we don't see a change from Q2 to Q3 as we've seen the market in what we are seeing. On the large deals, we do see because the discretionary is slightly better on financial services or retail in different geographies. Those are typically deals which get done a little bit quicker. But if you take the appropriate deals for them, it's remaining the same in that Jayesh will handle through. I just want to say one thing on pricing. We have some very strong positive momentum in pricing. But Jayesh will share the details.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Yeah. So if you look at our margin expansion program, one of the tracks there is value-based selling and that is pricing in a way. And that has delivered great results. Over nine months pricing has improved by 3.6%. That is one which has helped us expand margins. If you look at our margin expansion over nine months has expanded by 30 basis points. Despite the fact that we had multiple headwinds, headwinds coming from the comp increase that we did last year in November, so full year impact came. This year we had furloughs. This quarter we had impact of increased third-party costs. We had impact coming from an acquisition that we did on account of the amortization of intangibles, so we have subsumed all of that and despite that we have been able to increase our margins.

One of the reason is the pricing benefit that we got. Coming to the next question you asked about the reduction in revenues in multiple brackets, I think it's the same answer. The furloughs do impact clients across multiple brackets and the clients in the top five clients do reflect in top 10 and top 20 as well. So that's the main reason of the reduction there.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. The next question is from The Hindu Business Line, Sanjana.

Sanjana B
Analyst, Hindu BusinessLine

Hello gentlemen. Okay, so I just wanted to understand what the demand trends are in key verticals like BFSI, retail, manufacturing. Because analysts had estimated that for Q3, you know, BFSI will aid growth while weakness in manufacturing will weigh on this growth. But this is the opposite for you where you know like manufacturing has worked, you know, like done better than BFSI. So just wanted to understand, you know, like how these dynamics played out. And also, you know, in a previous conversation with the company I learned that Infosys cloud arm Cobalt enjoys better margins, you know, than your conventional services, but with a lot of focus on AI. I just wanted to understand, you know, like do you think Topaz will sort of, the margins of Topaz, will outpace this growth?

Another question in Q2 you'd mentioned that you had double-digit growth in deals below $50 million. So do you see existing and incoming clients sort of shifting their preferences towards smaller deals? Yeah, thank you.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

I'll take, I'll take the second and the third maybe. Jayesh, you go on the first one. On the margins, you know, for cloud or other things within the company, we typically don't share that externally. So we have no real view on that. However, the way Anjaya shared a little bit of that, we have a program where we look at margins across the company in different components. So all of those things are helping us to make sure that the margin appropriately is growing and we have an ambition in the long term of having better and better margins. So that's something that is we look at but we don't have this sort of external sharing of the cloud and so on.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Sorry, what was the question?

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Financial services.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

So if you look at industries, you know, within industries, our financial services has continued to grow stronger, especially the US financial services. We are seeing, you know, revived interest in the European financial services. The retail we've seen again better predictability in terms of US Retail especially the retail and CPG on back of the better holiday seasons and better client sentiment. So those are the positives that we are seeing. Manufacturing while has delivered double-digit growth. We still continue to see softness in Europe manufacturing and that continues. High tech continues to remain soft for us, you know, communication similar commentary. We have not seen any challenge from that perspective coming to geographies. You know the US has shown positive year-on-year growth after four quarters of decline.

Europe, as Salil said earlier, we have now had a double digit strong double digit growth on back of multiple large deals. Overall we do see those challenges and those changes in the environment. Sorry, the question on smaller deals. Overall the smaller deals, the deal pipeline has continued remain stable. The large deal pipelines has grown as Salil said earlier. Overall deal pipelines have become stronger between Q2 and Q3.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. The next question is from Fortune India Rukmini.

Rukmini Rao
Consulting Editor, Fortune India

Thank you. Salil, I have three questions. One, if we are to look at the corresponding quarter two fiscals ago December 31, 2022 if you are to look at the rate of growth of number of clients in the $1 million bucket and the $50 million bucket, it's been the, you know, fastest about 85 and 10 odd clients. How do we read this is, you know, are deals coming only in this kind of bucket now? And the ten plus million dollar are the kind of deals that would have come are no longer there or you know, they're fewer in the market itself. And also your days sales outstanding on December 31, 2022 was about 68 days, which is now up to 74 days now six days of.

I mean, and given that you have an improved cash flow now, is it a lot of collections that have happened and that is reflecting in the free cash flow? And third is given that you have such excellent free cash flow, would it make you guys a lot more adventurous look for bigger acquisitions perhaps. Thank you.

I'll take the first and the third and the DSO. Jayesh will look at. So on the buckets of clients, I think the way you looked at it. So we have a strong focus on making sure that all the different levels of clients we expand and some of that is what you're seeing in the data that you reference. Now the deal size is a slightly different parameter because the deal size will be like in a specific client which will be over multiple years. So part of it will get reflected into the one specific year or a quarter or so on. So the deal size as Jayesh was sharing there's and even we shared last quarter, we saw a good increase in that smaller deal size, not the large deal only. And then this quarter, as Jayesh had, we've seen also the larger deal pipeline becoming bigger.

So that's one huge positive that we are seeing in the change of the pipeline in the deal side. And the earlier point was on the size of our clients. We want to make sure that at all levels we have approach that builds up the client. Because today when a client trusts us with X million, you know, tomorrow it could be 3x or 5x and that's something that grows year-over-year. And that's part of something we've done internally, which is being reflected from the outside and the numbers. So typically there's a progression over time that happens and part of some of the activities we do inside is to make sure that we share with our clients what other services we have that takes clients from that level to a different level once they become comfortable with it.

Now, on the point of having so much cash and being adventurous, I think it's highly unlikely that we'll be adventurous.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Yeah. Coming to the DSOs and the cash flow question, if you look at this quarter, as Salil said earlier, we had one of the highest cash generation and that is on back of the multiple intervention that we have been doing for last multiple quarters. We have had a razor sharp focus on cash conversion. Our unbilled and unearned has come down significantly in this quarter. Our unbilled minus unearned has come down by $300 million. So typically that first converts into AR and then converts into cash. So while you see an AR increase, if you look at AR net of unbilled and unearned, it's come down by six days and that has reflected in our cash flow. Of course we also had a tax refund which has helped our cash flow in the nine months.

Even after that adjusted for tax refund, our cash flow for the nine-month period has gone up by 50% on a nine-month over similar nine months last year. As we collect. That's the endeavor.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you, Rukmini. The next question is from The Financial Express. Padmini.

Padmini Dhruvaraj
Senior Correspondent, The Financial Express

Hi. So, was your revenue contribution from the rest of the world and 10-20 million category customer affected due to dollar appreciation? And so, why, where is the India growth coming from and why is the rest of the world declining? And are you seeing any challenges in contract renewals with clients seeking expanded project scopes at same price and or same scopes at reduced values? And is there lumpiness in mega deals because of AI's fast evolution? And your 9-month margin average is already above 21%. So, is there a particular reason for retaining the guidance?

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Let me start with some of them. The first you can come back to Jayesh. The question around what we do with the margin guidance. I think we will keep the same margin guidance which is 20%-22%. We are not changing the margin guidance even as you mentioned with the 9-month outlook. Sorry, what was the one before that?

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Dollar appreciation.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

The rest of the world. You can do that.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

I'll answer that. So if you look at rest of the world, the reason for the decline in rest of the world was because we had some one-time in the last quarter last year, same quarter, which was, you know, the third-party related cost and therefore the revenue that we got out of that. So that has helped. Those quarters' underlying growth has still remained strong for us, and we don't see any challenge coming from there. India is a very small segment for us. So you know, any small change there will show large in percentage terms. But you know, it's a very small segment for us. So these projects will have some spikes and bottoms depending on seasonality on those projects. As I said earlier, the client segmentation is mainly impacted by furloughs in this quarter.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you.

The next question is from the Deccan Herald, Sonal.

Sonal Choudhary
Business Correspondent, Deccan Herald

Hello gentlemen. Congratulations on the result. A few questions here. One of your peers had highlighted that CY 2025 will be a better year. How are you looking at it? Also, how have third-party pass-through revenues been this quarter? Second, thirdly. Also on the median salary package, if you could shed some light on that. Has it increased for freshers? How has it been?

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

Yeah, so on the first one we give a guidance, you know, for the financial year and we have increased our guidance for this financial year. Even with one quarter outstanding. We don't have a view beyond that. But what we are seeing is a clear change in the discretionary activities in financial services in retail and consumer products. So it gives us a good confidence that overall we are executing very well within the company and clients are seeing tremendous traction with us. So we feel that as a positive thing. But we don't have a view which is going beyond this financial year.

Jayesh Sanghrajka
CFO, Infosys

Also the third party cost has gone up. You know, this is a seasonal quarter again where the third party cost as a percentage of revenue goes up. It's gone up in line with that.

Sonal Choudhary
Business Correspondent, Deccan Herald

Also, no median salary package.

Salil Parekh
CEO, Infosys

So on that we have no change to announce at this stage. No comment on that.

Rishi Basu
Head of Corporate Communications, Infosys

Thank you. With that we come to the end of this press conference. We thank our friends from media for being here today. Thank you Salil and thank you Jayesh.

Before we conclude, please note that the.

Archived webcast of this press conference will be available on the Infosys website and on our YouTube channel later today. Thank you and please join us for high tea outside.

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