A very good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining Infosys' fourth quarter financial results. My name is Rishi, and on behalf of Infosys, I'd like to welcome all of you. Before we begin, I know we are slightly delayed, apologies for that, but I do request one question from each media house. Though there's lots of news today, let's see what we can do best. With that, I'd like to invite our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Salil Parekh, for his opening remarks. Over to you, Salil.
Thanks, Rishi. Good evening and welcome. Thank you all for joining us. We've had an excellent year and financial year 2025: 4.2% growth, constant currency terms, 21.1% operating margin, $4.1 billion free cash flow, and $11.6 billion in large deals. We feel the performance has been solid all around across the year. We're seeing growing demand from clients to partner with them on AI. They're moving from a use case approach to an AI-led transformation approach. This is using AI agents, which are playing more and more of a critical role, and we believe we have a very leading position in AI agents with over 200 agents we've developed. We continue with our strategic expansion and acquisition in the energy and consulting space in the U.S., acquisition in the cybersecurity space in Australia, and a new strategic partner becoming part of our joint venture in Japan.
All three areas are areas where we have strategically looked to expand, and we are further committed with this expansion in the U.S. in a very critical area for that market. We have a set of capabilities that support clients in their growth, whether it's AI or cloud or digital, and in their efficiency, whether it's automation, cost reduction, lean, and consolidation. We feel well positioned in this environment to look at both growth and both cost areas as clients look at them. Based on what we see in the environment today and building on our large deal wins in the past quarters, our guidance for growth in financial year 2026 is 0%-3% in constant currency terms. The environment is uncertain, and we will execute our plans with agility while keeping a close watch on changes.
Our margin guidance for the financial year 2026 is at 20%-22%. Thank you, and then let's open it up for questions, Rishi.
Thank you, Salil. Joining Salil is Mr. Jayesh Sanghrajka, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys. With that, the first question is from Ritu Singh from CNBC TV 18.
Hi, Salil. How are you, Jayesh? Quick word: with your guidance, almost no growth in this year, 0-3%. If you could give us more in terms of commentary on what you're seeing. For instance, from TCS, we heard about delays in decision-making. From Wipro, yesterday, we heard one of the large clients paused a transformational deal. What are you hearing? Are there ramp-downs? Are there delays? Are there any sort of cancellations in large deals? Also, for Infosys, in the last 12 to 18 months, we've not seen any mega deals being announced. What's happening in the market? Are some of these large deals drying up? What's your sense? Given that this puts larger reliance for you on discretionary spend picking up. Also, in terms of sectors where you'd started to see issues of recovery, for instance, last quarter, you spoke about BFSI, etc.
Is that continuing, or given the uncertain environment, do you expect some sort of a reversal there? Just one question on the hiring and wages. The wages that were expected to be rolled out in the second phase in April, are you on track to do that? Your hiring plans for the year, 20,000 that you'd indicated, if that's also on track? Thank you.
Okay, thanks. A few questions. First, on the environment, I think we see there's uncertainty in the environment. We have several deals that we closed in the last quarter and the quarters before. Those are today moving into the appropriate next phases. We've not seen a change in that. We are seeing in areas where there's focus on changes which may come. There could be in industries where there are changes that could come because of the changes in the regulations. There could be an impact. Jayesh will comment a little bit about how we've constructed the guidance based on that. In terms of mega deals, we had two mega deals in the last financial year. We have a pipeline of mega deals today. What is sort of what we saw in the past when things of this nature happen, which is changes in the environment?
There's also an interest with clients on cost takeout, automation, and efficiency and consolidation. We will see how it plays out because it's only a few days as clients have looked at it. We have seen our large deals moving, meaning which we have closed, moving into the next phases as was evident.
Yeah, so adding to what Salil said on the guidance, look, we run multiple models which run up to the guidance at various ends of the guidance, bottom end, middle end, or the top end. The fact that we gave a three-point guidance reflects there is uncertainty in the environment. At the bottom end of the guidance, we have baked in some deterioration in the environment, some heightened uncertainty. At the top end of the guidance, we have assumed steady to marginally improving environment at this point in time. Coming to the second question on wages, we are on track on our wages. Large part of the wage increments were rolled out in January, and the balance is rolled out in April, effective 1 April. We are on track on that. In terms of FY2026 hiring, we are expecting to hire 20,000+ freshers.
Sorry, can you clarify? Given the reports that Salil, can you repeat the hiring pressure?
20,000+, what we had said earlier. We are on track of that.
You know, there were reports of Infosys laying off some of these fresh campus recruits because, according to your own statement, there were 337 of these as opposed to media reports of 700+. And you said that was because of their weak performance. If you could clarify, I mean, what exactly happened there? Are you not able to find the right talent? Is the number still what you'd said in your statement? Is it larger? Just a statement from you on that.
Let me take that one. First, we made some statements. We stand by those statements. In addition to that, within Infosys, we have an approach for making sure that we have a rigorous way to train and then to assess and test individuals. This is a process that has been ongoing for the last 20 years within the company. Every time that the training batch comes in, they have three opportunities for testing. At each time, if they succeed in that, they stay on. After three attempts, we have now found a way that we have found other opportunities for them and also supported them outside of Infosys in some training that can be offered to them. That is the approach we have taken. In terms of the numbers, whatever the statements we have made in the past remain as they are.
Thanks, Ritu. The next question is from Haripriya Sureban from NDTV Profit.
Hi, sir. Salil, give us some idea on, like you said, you remain confident on the current deal wins that you have. Do you see any kind of changes going forward in your conversations with the client? Any possibility of ramp-downs or cancellations that you have visibility on right now? On the fresh deal wins that you'd try to bank on further, what kind of deal wins would mostly come in? Is this most towards the cost takeout side that you'd be expecting? What's your read on the discretionary spending? Do you see that go down at least in terms of the sentiment? Would it pick later towards the year? Also, how many quarters are you expecting this uncertainty to stay on? Because one of your competitors said at least towards the second part of the year, things should get better.
Jayesh, on the margins, stayed on the narrow band, what are the levels that you'd have going forward? How do you plan to, what are the impact that this current environment will have, and how would that be baked in?
On the environment, what we see is it's an uncertain environment. As Jayesh shared, we've taken different scenarios to look at the way we've put together the guidance. In terms of specifics, as of now, we have seen the deals that we have won in the recent quarters are now continuing to ramp. My view is we will see, because of the changes in the economic outlook, there will be some discussions which will be focused on more consolidation, more cost pressures with clients. At this stage, we have not seen a change in that. However, the guidance has factored in what we anticipate in different scenarios because all of this is happening in the last few days.
Yeah, question on margins.
On the margins, if you look at FY25, we have expanded margins by 50 basis points. That is a clear reflection of our endeavor, which we had said at the beginning of the year, to improve margins. We have improved margins despite multiple headwinds. We had a full year impact of the comp that we did in the previous year in November. We have paid higher variable pay to our employees. We had many of the large deals ramping up during this period. We did an acquisition, so there was an acquisition-related impact. Despite all of those headwinds, we have been able to increase our margins by 50 basis points. That is just a clear reflection of what we have been doing.
We do see opportunities in terms of increasing from VBS in terms of pricing, etc., in terms of lean automation of doing more productivity, increasing nearshore in multiple of our geographies, etc. There are opportunities to improve margins from where we are today.
Thank you. The next question is from Chandra Srikanth from Moneycontrol.
Hi, Salil. Just wanted to understand the 0-3% guidance. Does it bake in impact of tariffs? How much of it is happening because of GCCs? Have there been any project delays, cancellations? If you can give us a sense of that. Are there verticals or niche platforms that you're building which has outcome-based pricing? Is it time to let go of this 20% margin threshold? How are you sort of going to win deals in the current environment? Between U.S. and Europe, where do you see more uncertainty right now? Thanks.
On the guidance, Jayesh will give a view on the platforms. Let me start off, and then we can come to the other ones. I think we are very clear with AI that there's a huge change in how agent-based platforms are being created. We have now work we are doing with clients where these are being leveraged. We have examples in telco clients. We have examples in financial services clients. We have examples in services companies. It's quite broad-based what we are seeing on platforms. It's also building on the small language model that we built in financial services, leveraging Finacle. We have also started to do work across other industries where we will build these sort of models. We see a lot of the platform activity expanding, and we think that that's something that we are well-positioned to execute on.
On the guidance.
Yeah, so on the guidance, as I said earlier, there are multiple models that we have built. At the bottom end for the guidance, we have assumed heightened impact from all the macro environment. At the top end of the guidance, we have assumed steady to marginally improving environment. It's very difficult to split out how much of that is because of tariffs, how much of that is because of GCC. On the overall environment, when I look at the bottom of the guidance, we have factored in some increasing uncertainty.
Hi, Rishabh here from Money Control. In the last fiscal, you said you'll hire 15,000-20,000, which you're on track. This year, we see that you have added over 6,000 personnel for this fiscal. Where did are you losing out mid-management to GCCs? If you could add a color on that.
Yeah, overall headcount has increased by 6,000. We have hired 15,000 freshers. The balance is obviously the attrition at various levels that has happened. The attrition is across multiple factors and multiple opportunities that people get outside. It could be GCCs. It could be competition. It could be employees going for further studies. There are multiple of those factors that play out there.
Thank you. The next question is from Shilpa Phadnis from The Times of India.
Hello, sir. We hear that Infosys has set up an internal business unit focused on GCCs specifically. It's called Project Altius. Can you share more light on that? We hear there's a new internal leader who's also going to be there. The cost of deploying AI is also huge. If you can talk about the economic benefit of AI, it has a longer gestation cycle. Is it too early to read into it whether there is an impact at the developer level and the project level? Can you throw some light on that? Secondly, the gestation cycle, especially for productivity gains, more and more customers are demanding that. Is it putting pressure on IT companies, especially with forward pricing on productivity gains? More customers are asking that. This is going to put more pressure on the run part of the business.
Can you throw some light on that?
Let me start off with respect to GCC. Over the last several years, we've had attention on working very closely with GCCs and working with clients either to help to set up or to scale or do different models for GCCs. Recently, we announced a very large win in GCCs with a services business, with an airline business. We feel quite good. There is no new unit or anything. It's something which is there across all of our go-to-market areas and also with many of our service lines because the interaction with GCC is quite spread out. I think the question was on the productivity. Most clients are looking for significant productivity benefits. Now, in the area of customer service, it's quite clear what that is. We are participating. We don't have a large voice business or anything.
We are participating in joint ops and tech projects with clients where those types of benefits are visible. We are in a position to commit. What we are doing is making sure we share with clients what we are able to deliver and what is visible for us. They might sometimes meet with or not meet with what the clients are looking for. In terms of the investments in AI on the productivity of the developers and so on, there are some good examples. If you look at Finacle, it is our own product. There we have seen, because the code base is very uniform and we have built it over the years, in different places, 20%-25% productivity benefit with tools that we have built on public models. We have also seen, for example, with some clients on user interface development, similar types of benefits through AI.
We see huge impact to that. Overall, it's different because then we are working with different client situations. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes lower. But we know that this sort of AI work, we have some great opportunity in. There are about 400 AI projects that we are working on where we see a lot of these sorts of benefits that we are sharing with clients.
Thank you. The next question is from Beena Parmar from The Economic Times.
Hi, Salil. A few things. You mentioned about productivity benefits being passed on. Could you tell us what kind of percentage of revenue cannibalization are you seeing because of that? You mentioned about mega deals as well. Which sectors and spaces are these in? What is your outlook on the different sectors? Which sectors are likely to be the most impacted because of the ongoing uncertainty? Jayesh, you mentioned about increase in pricing, a probable increase in pricing that's still there for you. While you've seen active loss of clients in your number of clients, and this is also across most deal sizes, where do you see this increase in pricing that you are likely to see given the competitive environment and the uncertainties that continue? Lastly, what is the impact on the margins? What really led to the margin impact in this quarter?
What are the headwinds or tailwinds, rather, headwinds in the quarter ahead?
Let me start off on the productivity side. I think there is no sort of number specifically in terms of what is changing in that. There are productivity benefits that we see, for example, in customer service in the range of 30%-40% that we mentioned. On software development, there are different ranges. In each situation, clients look at it from a different perspective. Some of it becomes part of a discussion where they want to consolidate multiple partners and where we are a beneficiary. That changes how much we can apply automation, lean, or AI into that. In general, we have seen last year 4% growth. When you put everything together with all this, we have still seen growth. That is the sort of momentum that we have seen with the deals that we had.
We have then put together the guidance, as Jayesh was sharing, on what we look at different scenarios like that. On the industries, Jayesh will share a little bit of how we see the perspective. What we do see, for example, with the current situation, there is starting to be some impact that we will see in consumer products with what are the changes that are coming about. However, we see in many of our industries, for example, in energy, utilities, we see continuation of what is going on in financial services. We still see with deregulation and strong first quarter that the clients have had, the calendar first quarter, we see that continuing on. All of this, however, we will have to sort of watch on a regular basis because not all the analysis and decisions have been made.
As those play out, we will see what other impact there is. Yeah, if I go back to your other question on pricing, I think pricing is across all the sectors. It's about how do you price it. We have had multiple tracks that we are running under Project Maximus, whether it's about new age pricing, whether it's about change requests, rotating our employees, deploying heightened lean automation in projects to get better productivity, which would mean better pricing in a way. All of that has reflected in the pricing. It's not necessarily going and asking a higher price of what we were doing yesterday. It's about all of this coming together and reflecting in our pricing. That's what has helped. We do see opportunity going forward as well.
On the margins for this quarter, our margins were 30 basis points lower quarter on quarter. The biggest headwind we had was because of the comp that we had announced. A large part of our employees got compensation increase effective 1st of January, and that impacted by 140 basis points. We had 40 basis points on account of amortization of intangibles for the acquisition that we made. Those were the headwinds. That was offset by lower post-sale customer support, 80 basis points, 20 basis points on currency, 30 basis points on Project Maximus, and 20 basis points because we had a lower third-party cost. All of that put together reflected on 30 basis point decline on our margins.
Thank you . Sorry.
Outlook on margins.
Outlook on margins, as Salil said earlier, our margin band remains 20%-22%. We ended the year with 21.1% with an endeavor to increase margin going forward.
Thank you, Beena. The next question is from Jas Bardia from The Mint.
Good evening. Just a couple of questions. One, if I look at your large deal TCV, it's down 34% year on year. Now, does it imply that FY2026 can be a little choppy in terms of growth considering the company started off strong in terms of deal wins? The question is on how India and growth markets kind of offset the slowdown blues for one of your peers. Now, suppose this happens in two of your largest geographies, say the U.S. and Europe. Is there a plan B in place to keep the growth going for Infosys?
On the large deals, what we have seen in this past year is we've had $11.6 billion of large wins with 56% of net new wins. Now, what that translates to is, as Jayesh was sharing in another point, one of the highest we've seen in several years and higher than the previous year. We feel it gives us some outlook into the future in this financial year with that sort of a win mix. Having said that, again, as Jayesh was sharing earlier and I shared, on the guidance, we've taken a view on different scenarios, building from the low to the high and slightly broadening, expanding to three points the range of the guidance. In terms of other markets, first, we had a very strong growth in Europe in the year that has just finished.
We see that we have increased the percentage of our revenue in Europe over the years. We've made several investments and scaled up in different geographies in Europe. That's a good market for us. With the changes in the environment, we will sort of see what develops. We have a good business in India, but it's a small business. We have a good business in other markets, for example, in other parts of Asia. Relative to our overall size, still a small business. The way the environment develops is what will drive. As the range that we shared, how we've constructed the scenarios, will drive the guidance there.
Thank you. The next question is from Avik Das from The Business Standard.
Avik this side. A couple of questions to you and a couple to Jayesh. Salil, if you can throw some light upon the BFSI business while you did talk about some green shoots emerging in the third quarter, small deals coming back, which shows discretionary spend. Considering the impact of the tariffs, mainly perhaps on the manufacturing and the retail, do you see any impact on the BFSI as well as turning conservative in terms of spending both in cost optimization as well as in the discretionary spending part? Also, as you bank on large deals and you have a pretty robust pipeline, given the uncertainties, do you think that large deals, at least for this fiscal, will take longer time to actually materialize? Will that going to be a challenge? Jayesh, one question was, will margins come under pressure as vendor consolidation takes place in this uncertain environment?
What sort of margin pressure do you anticipate, if at all? Considering the guidance that you have provided, and also you talked about hiring 20,000 freshers this fiscal, just trying to balance these, what gives you the confidence that you can actually go ahead with that strong hiring numbers for this year? Thank you.
On financial services, again, the first point is that we are in an uncertain environment. Having said that, what financial services for our end clients, their own results, what have been declared, have been fairly strong. In some ways, that volatility has helped some trading business and so on. We see from our client base looking into the first quarter that there is activity, there is a good amount of work that we are seeing. We are not seeing something that has changed in financial services. Now, as things stabilize on the overall economic environment, we will get a better sense of what the eventual full year will look like. This is what we see on financial services today. I think on the deals, typically, first, the pipeline is we have a good large deals pipeline.
What typically we have seen in the way we build our business portfolio is when there's high economic growth, we have digital, we have cloud, we have new AI now. When there's more cost focus, we have efficiency, automation, consolidation, and productivity through AI. We have both of those levers. Typically, when there's more cost attention, as there might be in this environment, we will see large opportunities for cost takeout and consolidation. We feel quite well positioned, as we have done in the past, to benefit from that.
So far, again, things have changed in a short period of time in terms of what can happen with the economic outlook. In that period of time, we have not seen anything, but it is a very short period of time. For us to get a sense, we will see how it goes. Sometimes, again, this is from the past, when there's a cost imperative, also sometimes decision-making is quicker to say, "Look, can we get a cost takeout done quickly?" We do not know. We will see how that plays out.
Yeah. On the other two questions, I'll answer the last one first, which is on the hiring. If you look at the 20,000 hiring that we are talking about, it's not necessarily the growth. It's a combination of backfilling the attrition and the growth. We had 14% attrition this quarter.
If you look at the math, it adds up with the guidance that we have had. We are very confident at this point in time of hiring 20,000 freshers through the year in line with our guidance. On the vendor consolidation and the pricing impact, I think if you look at last few years and we've been gaining market share, it's a clear reflection that we have been on the positive side of the vendor consolidation. That gives us the confidence that we would be able to retain the pricing and the pricing power there.
Thank you, Jayesh. The next question is from Sanjana B from The Hindu Business Line.
Hi, good evening, gentlemen. Salil, are you at all looking to reduce your reliance on the U.S. markets amid all the uncertainties that are prompted by the tariff discussion? If yes, what are some other geographies that you're concentrating on? From a sectoral perspective, are you at all seeing some initial tailwinds? If yes, what are those? While some of your peers reported some softness in Europe, you yourself said that you've seen some growth in the geography. Could you elaborate on what worked for you to prompt this growth? Yeah, thank you.
First, on the U.S., I mean, we've just announced an acquisition in the U.S. in energy and in consulting. We remain, in a longer-term view, positive on tech technology changes and positive on the markets we are in. We may see some uneven activity in the short-term or medium term, but in the longer term, we do. That's one of the signals for us that we made the acquisition. Having said that, we are looking to expand in other geographies in addition to what we're doing in the U.S.. For example, the Japan announcement, we have a new partner who's joined our joint venture on the acquisition in Australia. We are quite positive in the medium to long term on technology, how it will change, how AI will impact it, and our role in all of that.
We will see how it develops with the current uncertainty and how long that takes to change. On Europe, we also commented last quarter, which holds today, that while Europe overall, we have done well for the year, the automotive sector in Europe, we had already talked about, we are seeing some slowness. That continues in what we are seeing, even as we see the outlook today.
Thank you. The next question is from Sai Ishwar from Reuters News.
Hi, gentlemen. My first question is that I wanted to know why you've just given 4.2% CC growth last year. It is kind of below the guidance. I just wanted to know what went wrong in that aspect. It has not met the guidance given last quarter. It has been repeatedly asked. I just wanted to know, in terms of projects, have you seen any delays or pauses or any ramp-downs or anything of that sort or cancellations? Thank you.
I'll start with the second one. At this stage, we have not seen. Having said that, all the changes have happened in a very short period of time. The large deals that we've won in the last few quarters are continuing in their trajectory as we had anticipated at this stage.
On the guidance for this quarter, we declined 3.5%, which was obviously higher than what we anticipated at the beginning of the year. A large part of that was on the back of third-party costs and revenues because pretty much two-thirds of our decline was on the back of that. Those are the deals which typically happen towards the end of the quarter, and some of them slipped through that. That is what has reflected both in lower third-party cost and lower revenue for us.
That's what I'm saying. Because you had a lower third-party cost, you had lower revenue towards that. That was one reason. The second reason was Q4 generally has a seasonality in terms of lower working and calendar days, and the volumes were lower. Two-thirds of that 3.5% decline was on the back of lower third-party cost and revenue.
Thank you. The next question is from Padmini Dhruvaraj from the Financial Express.
Hi. Are you seeing any structural changes in large or mega deals in terms of tenure, scope, or pricing, especially with GenAI? Since this tariff talk started, did you see any changes in your client's budget for CY 25?
On the large deals and generative AI, it's been, let's say, an ongoing change through the last several quarters where almost a lot of large deal discussions have some part of generative AI in it. There is not now too many deals, large deals, or any deals that we are doing which has not got some part of generative AI. That's one sort of qualitative change because it's part of every discussion, whether it's on productivity, whether it's on solving a specific area which is related to process, on engineering, customer service. A variety of elements, generative AI is very much part of it. They are making a big difference in how those deals are developed now. In terms of the budget and the clients, there are client discussions where clients are starting to see maybe some initial pressure.
We have not seen any changes, but there are ongoing discussions on what could be the nature of those things. As it has been quite recent, as we see the time moving on, we will have a better view on it. Keeping that overall change in the economic environment is how we've built the guidance with the broader range that we've put in place.
Thank you. The next question is from Rukmini Rao from Fortune.
Gentlemen, a few questions. One, Salil, could you please call out how much of business does Infosys do when it comes to public sector in the U.S. and current exposure, maybe in the quantum of revenues from the U.S. geography? How much of it is what kind of exposure you essentially have to public services contracts with the U.S.? Also, given that we saw Accenture and others probably contracts getting rescinded, are there any such fears? Being a non-U.S. headquartered company, do you see any sort of disadvantage going forward in bidding for contracts which may involve U.S. government or, in general, if there is any sort of disparaging sort of if it's going to be difficult for non-U.S. headquartered companies to compete? Two, also, can you specifically call out which are perhaps the gloomiest of the business segments given the guidance?
Are there any specific business segments that you see probably doing really badly in FY26? Also, Jayesh, the technical subcontracting cost has gone up by about, what, 3.5% year on year, right? Is that some sort of a strategy where your headcount remains low? As and when you require, you get people to do work that needs to be done? If some sort of color that you can give on the correlation, if there any exists? Also, your top five client revenue has declined by about 50 basis points. Any specific reason? Is that a client-specific thing, or are there ramp-downs or anything happening with those top five clients of yours? Thank you.
Let me start off. I think we have very small, almost immaterial in terms of public sector U.S.. In that sense, we have, let's say, no impact from some of the things we've seen or read about other peers. We feel, in that sense, we don't have something large. We have something very small and therefore no impact on that at all.
In the U.S. as an Indian company, non-U.S. company.
We do not have a lot of those. We do not have a lot of work in that area. We have a very, very small business in that area. It is not really material whether the impact happens or does not happen. We are not in that space that much.
Salil, also, the U.S. subsidiary sort of services both U.S. as well as Canada, right? Would there be need for any special subsidiary if you need to do business in Canada that needs to be set up now given what's happening with both those countries?
I think, so first, our structure is not exactly that, but our structure is well designed today to work with Canada and the U.S. and actually across North America because the individual is not one box, the structure we've set up, but it's not a subsidiary in that sense. Yeah. On the subcontractor cost, I think the better way to look at it is on a full-year basis. If you look at full-year basis, our subcontractor cost has come down. If you look at percentage terms, because our revenue has declined this quarter, you will see a slightly distorted picture there. If you look at full-year basis, our subcontractor cost has consistently been coming down, and that's been one of the tracks of Maximus that we've been driving as well.
We use subcontractor pretty much where there are short-term projects or where there are niche skills, where the talent needs to be fulfilled. That is the reason we use subcontractor, and that is nothing.
Why are there top five clients?
Yeah, I'll come to that. Why are my top five clients? I don't think there's, again, anything specific to read there. It's, again, a factor of the lower revenue that we got because of seasonality or the third-party cost. That's the reason why you would have seen similar drop in the top five clients as well.
Thank you, Rukmini. The next question is from Uma Kannan from The New Indian Express.
Hi, good evening. Given the present uncertainty and yearly transformation that you spoke about, are you finding it challenging to retain your existing clients? I mean, number of projects from your existing clients. Another one, you spoke about SLM and agentic AI. I want to understand what kind of opportunities are you seeing and what is the overall scale of this? What is the nature of work? Is it more discretionary oriented or cost or efficiency?
First, on the AI, I think there's a huge move, and we are part of it in terms of working with our clients on AI transformation, which is driven a lot by agents. We built 200 agents. They're being deployed within clients. There are different areas where these are being used. Take an example. We are doing something with a global company, a European-based company, helping them look at AI as a platform across their entire workspace and looking at where they can improve or make benefits, which could be in the range of 70% in some of their processes. We're working with a telco where we're doing this, constructing a complete generative AI platform using agents that we've developed to make sure that the whole enterprise is improving its customer service activities. The work we're doing in agents, I feel, is quite leading.
It's part of our Infosys Topaz, and we have a lot of attention with our clients where we're making those transformations. The other question.
Yeah, the first question was about, are you finding it challenging to retain more projects from your existing clients?
We are working very well with our existing clients. The projects are going on. This change in the environment has happened recently. We will see there are discussions, as I mentioned, where on anecdotal basis, clients are looking at how that will impact their business. We want to make sure that we see that through as more clarity emerges on what the overall impact will be. Taking all that into account, we've made sure that we put that into the guidance that we've provided.
Just one question on employees. Now, 10 days of work from office is mandatory, right? Are you planning to make it like five days like some of your competitors have done it? What kind of feedback that you're receiving from your employees?
First, what we have done is there are several clients of ours who have a different sort of prescription on work from home and work from office. At the company level, we are flexible with our employees on what they can do. There are some parts where there is a department or a division where we've given flexibility to that department to say that in certain projects, we would like to have people coming in. Having said all of that, the flexibility has been hugely appreciated by the employees. We are seeing on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis an increase in the employees who are coming into campus and working. We feel with the progressing today.
Thank you, Uma. The next question is from Sonal Choudhary from the Deccan Herald.
Salil, hello, Jayesh. I wanted to ask that even though you've given guidance and you will continue to watch out whatever's going on in the macroeconomic environment, when do you foresee a recovery if you could shed some light on that? You've said that there's no pressure in European markets. Oh, as for Energy is also doing well. However, will you play with caution given whatever's going on right now? On margins, again, that would be hard to play out given that Rupee is also depreciating and among other factors. Is there any strategy at play to make it better? Yeah.
On the time horizon, what your first question is, we don't have a view on it, but we will keep track of what is going on and how that plays out and how it affects economic growth or other factors which then will have an impact on our business. We don't have a view on the time horizon. Yeah. On the margins, currency would generally benefit. If Rupee is depreciating in the short term, it does benefit. Outside of the currency, we have launched Project Maximus, as we have said earlier, and there are multiple tracks within that, right, from value-based selling to efficient pyramid to challenging portfolios, etc. All of those tracks are working well, which has resulted in margin expansion this year of 50 basis points. Our endeavor is to improve margins from where we are today.
On the European market and any of the segments, if you would play with caution?
On Europe, as I said, first, we had good growth in the financial year that just ended. We also shared that there are areas, for example, automotive in Europe where there is some slowing, so that we are watchful of. Outside of that, we've not made any other comments on that.
Just one quick question. This is regarding the layoffs and sort of a behavior that was called out by the employees who failed the test and were sent out. During the last quarter, Rishabh had asked you a question regarding one of the folks who had spoken something over LinkedIn, and you had said that an equal treatment is given to everyone. The behavior here was entirely different. Anything that Infosys would like to comment on that?
What we've had at Infosys over the years has been an approach where we want to make sure that the new employees that are joining from college get the appropriate training. Then they have three attempts to make sure that they have taken that training in and then can contribute to our clients in the way we want that to happen. As we have now looked at what has been going on with the employees, we've made sure that they have other opportunities sometimes within Infosys, and we have supported for them if we can find a way for them to do training outside Infosys.
We are making sure that we do everything to get them ready and yet be at the standard that Infosys has kept, and this has been going on for the past 20 years in the way the high quality of delivery that Infosys is known for and that our clients are expecting from us.
Thank you, Sonal. With that, we come to the end of this Q&A session. We thank our friends from media. 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 some high tea outside.