Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the L&T Technology Services Limited Q4 FY 2022 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pinku Pappan, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you, and over to you.
Thank you, Stanford. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fourth quarter FY 2022 earnings conference call of LTTS. I am Pinku, heading Investor Relations. Our financial results, investor release and press release have been filed in the stock exchanges and are available for your review. I hope you have had a chance to go through them. This call is for 60 minutes. We will try to wrap the management remarks in 20 minutes and then open up for Q&A. The audio recording of this call will be available on our website approximately 1 hour after this call ends. Let me now introduce the leadership team available on this call. We have Amit Chadha, CEO, Abhishek, COO, and Rajeev Gupta, CFO. We will begin with Amit providing an overview of the company performance and outlook, followed by Rajeev who will walk you through the financial statements and performance.
Let me now hand over the call to Amit.
Yeah, hi. Pinku, I'm audible?
Yes, sir, you are.
Perfect. Thank you, Pinku, and thank you all for joining us on the call today. I hope all of you are keeping healthy and safe. With that, let me start with the key highlights of our Q4 performance. In USD terms, we had a sequential revenue growth of 3.6% in constant currency, with transportation and plant engineering leading the growth. We sustained the EBIT margin with 18.6% with operating margin efficiencies. Our large deals engine continues to fire with a $100 million+ win in this quarter, and our total deal TCV win in Q4 was the highest ever as well as in the FY. As we wrap up the financial year, let me outline the highlights of our performance vis-a-vis our stated six-dimensional strategy. Growth.
As you have seen from the results, we have met our guidance, and we are happy to have achieved the 20% growth mark in constant currency dollar terms. More importantly, the growth was broad-based with all segments growing in double digits. Second, technology quotient. We had more than twice the number of own patent filing in FY 2022 at 98 versus 28 in the previous year. This is a sign of the growing number of innovation and solution building programs that our engineers are working on and the results of our investments into labs and new age technologies. This is also showing up in our digital engineering revenues, which were 57% in Q4 versus 56% in quarter three. Third, customer centricity. Our client focus and proactive investments has helped us make progress across our six bets.
We are participating in strategic transformational programs with our customers, leading to bigger scale and market share. The $100 million deal with Joby is a good example of this, and I will talk about this in detail shortly. Fourth, people engagement. We started many new programs during the year to drive greater employee inclusion in the areas of career progression and development and fraternity building. Over the last three quarters, employees across the company went through an extensive exercise to refresh, revisit, and define our vision, mission, and values in line with our long-term aspirations. I urge you to visit our website and take a look at it. We are very passionate about this particular area. Fifth, operating model. We improved EBIT margins by nearly 400 basis points in FY 2022 through operating efficiencies and better quality of revenue led by digital.
This resulted in an overall 44% increase in PAT to INR 957 crores for FY 2022. For ESG, finally, we launched our first sustainability report in March and unveiled our ambition to be carbon and water neutral by 2030. Additionally, we look at sustainability in a very holistic manner, and this means we are also working with our customers to build innovative digital solutions that will accelerate their transformation to net zero. Let me now provide a segmental performance and outlook. Starting with transportation, we had a strong quarter with sequential growth of 7.8% with all three subsegments, auto, truck, off-highway, and aero firing well. Our EACV big bet is playing out well with two large deal wins in Q4.
The first one was a $100 million+ deal with Joby, where we will be their strategic partner, engineering partner, to build an all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. As part of this deal, along with our center in Chennai, we will be setting up an engineering R&D center in Canada to provide end-to-end engineering support which will involve multiple areas like flight control systems, battery management, power electronics, cockpit display, etc. This deal is an example of how we have taken our eACV strengths in auto and truck off-highway to the aero segment. We believe our aero segment will be powered by the same trends towards alternative energy, electrification, hybridization, which are seeing massive spending today. I'm also happy to note that we won back-to-back, a second $100 million deal between FY 2021 and FY 2022, as you will recall.
We further won an INR 25 million deal with a new age company focused on autonomous and self-driving cars. Here, LTTS will be the exclusive engineering partner to design the autonomous and connected car platform. We are increasing our traction with traditional OEMs and Tier 1s as well as these customers pivot towards autonomous and electrification and kick off various programs. We recently got empanelment with the U.S. auto major to work on both advanced and conventional areas and expect this to ramp up quickly. Overall, we are extremely pleased with our performance in transportation. It is now an INR 300 million+ segment on an annualized run rate basis, and in FY 2022 delivered industry-leading growth of 23% and nearly 19% EBITDA margins. We see a good pipeline of deals in electrification, connectivity, autonomous, especially on the software side, and we remain bullish on the outlook in transportation.
Moving on to plant engineering. We had a good quarter with 3% sequential growth, which was broad-based across FMCG, O&G and chemicals. A common trend across the three segments is the investments being made with the companies towards capacity expansion and plant modernization as people look to do alternative sourcing, et cetera. As a result, we are seeing good demand for EPCM services, digital asset management and automation. As an example, for a U.S.-based food company, we are providing engineering support for their greenfield plant expansion happening across U.S. and Europe. On the sustainability front, we are seeing growing traction in projects related to carbon capture and wastewater treatment. Summing up, we remain positive on the outlook for plant engineering and expect steady growth to continue.
In Industrial Products, while we saw demand across our customer base, the supply chain disruption and commodity price inflation faced by a few of our top customers had an impact on our overall growth in this segment. We do expect this to be temporary as global compan ies in the industrial sector are spending more on new product introductions. This, along with rising product digitalization, digital products backed by digital manufacturing, is giving us growth opportunities in the software and platform development side. In addition, our expertise in circumventing supply chain challenges through component re-engineering and Semcon repurposing, including FPGA, is being leveraged by customers. As an example, in one of the large deals we won with a U.S. customer, we are working closely with their Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers to identify and resolve supply chain bottlenecks.
We also established a digital twin center of excellence in partnership with Microsoft and Bentley recently that will address and accelerate digital twin and digital thread requirements of new age manufacturing companies. For the year, industrial products had an impressive 21% growth, which is a faster pace versus the past years. The pipeline addition continues to be heavy, and we expect growth to be strong in the current fiscal too. Moving on to Telecom and Hi-Tech. As we evolve with newer technology, we have launched a new business unit for metaverse and believe that this will help us with both growth and profitability in the medium term. In Q4, in spite of the decision that we made on not renewing a legacy program in the interest of better profitability for the segment, we grew 1% sequentially.
We are seeing good demand across all key segments, Semcon, Telecom and Hi-Tech . The 5G lab that we set up in O-RAN, private network design and device engineering for paving the way for deeper conversations with a few large Telecom service providers and Hi-Tech customers. We will be shortly launching a 5G lab at couple of our global R&D centers too. Our play in 5G is to leverage the expertise across the spectrum. For example, in metaverse, we will be combining our 5G consumer electronics product and software engineering to build out solutions in the virtual augmented domain. The empanelment that we had signed in the previous quarter with one of the world's largest technology companies has opened up multiple new opportunities, and we are expecting a good scale-up in the coming quarters.
We see a gradual improvement in the pace of sequential growth at Telecom and Hi-Tech as some of the recently signed engagements started ramping up in full effect and our portfolio shift towards more advanced technology areas like 5G and AI. Lastly, Medical. We are seeing a gradual increase in the pipeline led by opportunities in software and digital platform where customers are investing. In Q4, we won a few remediation projects where we will be helping companies streamline quality management systems across product families and in component re-engineering. We are also expanding in the software as a medical device, SaMD space, and assisting med tech companies in clearing FDA compliance. Last quarter, I talked about a sepsis detection device that we developed based on a microfluidics infection management platform.
Happy to share that this has won the Big Inno vation Award for the most innovative product of the year in the U.S. Overall, we expect a pickup in the growth pace in medical and definitely expect a better performance in FY 2023. Let me move on to outlook. Over the past year, I had opportunity to meet face-to-face with multiple customers across Europe and the U.S. The world has opened up. Clients have started meeting in their offices. Our customers are looking at us as partners for their strategic product roadmap, and I believe our investments and solutions being developed in the six bets are in alignment with their needs. The large deal traction and pipeline continues to scale up well across the U.S., Europe and Japan.
Our pipeline is higher than previous years, and we expect this momentum of deal closures to continue. On the supply side, we have wrapped up our fresher hiring and the training in new technologies with almost 18,000 people having gone through our Global Engineering Academy training and reskilling in FY 2022. In FY 2022, we hired about 3,000 freshers in our GEA faculty led by our head of Global Engineering Academy and our COO, plus the infrastructure that we have developed to hire and train. Believe that this will help us to get better scale and pyramid in the current fiscal and beyond.
As we look at FY 2023, the two areas we will keep focusing on to keep a close watch will be how global growth will be impacted in the backdrop of high inflation and supply chain disruption, and secondly, attrition, which we believe will continue to be elevated in the short term. I am fortunate to be leading a very engaged workforce of 20,000+ people, engineers, technologists, who are excited about the possibilities at LTTS. I'm thankful to my leadership team, the entire extended leadership team and the employees at LTTS for their commitment, their passion, and look forward to reaching many new milestones. Our mantra of profitable, sustainable and inclusive growth across our sixth dimension continues to be our guiding path. We reaffirm our earlier guidance of reaching $1 billion by Q2, Q3 of FY 2023.
I'm also saying for FY 2023 we are guiding organic dollar revenue growth of 13.5%-15.5%. With that, I wish you good health. I'm around for questions. I thank you and I hand over now to Rajeev.
Thank you, Amit. Good evening to all and hope you all are doing well. Glad to share our FY 2022 performance. It has been a year of consistent performance through the quarters and strong results across parameters. Broad-based revenue growth, good improvement on EBIT and PAT margin, and healthy cash flows and a high return on equity. With that, let me walk you through the details of our Q4 FY 2022 and full year financials starting with the P&L. Our revenue for the quarter was INR 1,766 crore, a growth of 4.1% on a sequential basis. Our double-digit year-over-year growth trajectory continues with Q4 revenues of 22% on year-over-year basis. We deliver EBIT margin at 18.6%, flat compared to Q3.
During the quarter, we had headwinds from utilization and revenue mix changes, which were offset by operational efficiency gains, economies of scale and currency depreciation. Moving to below EBIT, other income at INR 31 crore, slightly higher on sequential basis due to higher forex gains. Effective tax rate for Q4 was 26.7%, and for FY 2022 it was 26.6%, which is in line with our expectations between 26.5%-27%. Net income for the quarter stood at INR 262 crore, which is 14.9% of revenue, up 5.3% on a sequential basis, driven primarily by higher revenues. For the year FY 2022, revenue was at INR 6,570 crore, a growth of 21% over FY 2021.
EBIT margin at an all-time high of 18.3%, an improvement of 380 basis points over FY 2021. Net income for FY 2022 at INR 957 crores, up by 44% primarily from higher revenues and operating margin. Now moving to the balance sheet, let me highlight the key line items. DSO was at 87 days end of quarter four compared to 84 end of quarter three, while unbilled decreased to 15 days in Q4, which is a six-day improvement over Q3. The combined DSO, including unbilled, stood at 92 days, slightly above our target range of less than 95 days, and we continue to work upon improving this. Let me talk about cash flows. In FY 2022, free cash flows was INR 851 crores, a healthy 89% of net income.
Our cash in investments rose to INR 2,152 crore by end of Q4 FY 2022. On capital return, the board today recommended a final dividend of INR 15 per share, taking the total dividend of FY 2022 to INR 35 per share. This translates to a dividend payout ratio of 39% for FY 2022. Our return on equity stands at 25% for FY 2022 versus 21% last year, higher on account of increase in net profit to INR 957 crore in FY 2022 versus INR 663 crore in FY 2021. Moving to revenue metrics. On a sequential basis, dollar revenue growth was 3.1% in reported terms and 3.6% on constant currency basis, primarily led by transportation and plant engineering segments.
The segmental margin performance was better in three out of five segments on a sequential basis. In respect of operational metrics, utilization was at 75.1% in Q4 on account of full quarter impact of the strong hiring done in Q3. Going forward, we expect this to gradually move up to 78% levels.
On-site offshore mix has shifted towards on-site due to the initial ramp up of new deal wins and sale of solutions. Offshore percentage now stands at 54.6%. However, we expect this to be in the 57% range going forward. T&M revenue mix increased to 71.4% in Q3 and is likely to maintain at these levels. Client profile, which indicates number of $1 million plus accounts, has shown a sequential improvement in the $5 million and $1 million+ categories. The client profile numbers have seen an improvement over the past few quarters. This trend will continue in the coming quarters. Client contribution to revenue, all three categories, top five, top 10, and top 20 continues to be broadly in the same range as Q3.
Headcount increased sequentially by 743 employees, while attrition moved up to 20.4%. We believe the attrition trend will likely stay higher in the short term while we continue on various employment engagement measures to contain attrition. Our realized rupee for Q4 was around 75.7 to the U.S. dollar, a depreciation of 1% versus Q3. Before I conclude, let me give some visibility on the EBIT margin trajectory going forward. A key part of our six-dimensional strategy is to build a sustainable operating model. We've seen good results in FY 2022, and our aspiration is to maintain EBIT margin at 18%+ levels. The headwinds in the coming fiscal will be intermittent wage hikes in a high attrition environment, likely increase in travel and administrative expenses.
As part of our strategy, we will continue to make organic and inorganic investments to enhance capabilities and also to enable growth. We will look to offset these headwinds with growth, better quality of revenues, and operational efficiency gains. With that, I conclude. Moderator, now we can take the questions, please.
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 please press star then one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star then two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Also, as a reminder, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all participants in this conference call, please limit your questions to two per participant. For any further questions, you may come back for a follow-up. The first question from Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for taking my question. Amit, I think good show on winning another $100 million deal this quarter. I just wanted to dig a bit deeper into your FY 2023 guidance of 13.5%-15.5%. If you look at the kind of deal flow you guys have been doing, as well as, you know, the growth which you have been delivering, it seems a little bit subpar. You know, if you also look at your long-term guidance around 19%-20% range, this you know looks like quite below that. If you can just help with the pulls and pushes of the, you know, the revenue growth over FY 2023, the impact of macro and you know, does this imply that your long-term growth will be more back-ended?
Mukul, thank you so much for that. I take you back about 12 months when we had started with a guidance of 13%-15% last year as well. Mukul, there's a mantra that we are using outside of profitable, sustainable, inclusive growth, and it's very simple. Commit what you can deliver and deliver what you just committed, probably do more. Right? We are confident of 13.5%-15.5% at this stage, in spite of what we are seeing coming out on a macro scale as well as, you know, what you've been hearing about, inflation, recession, blah, et cetera. We'd be comfortable with that range right now. As things change, we'll let you know, number one.
Number two is that we do see deal velocity has picked up for us through the year. Like I mentioned, our pipeline is at an all-time high. Deal closures are there as well. As you are aware, Mukul, there are variables that are there. We do expect broad-based growth across from here on, like I've said. We'll continue to stay engaged, continue to try and do the best we can and take things forward.
Right. Amit, sorry to push back a bit on this. I do understand and appreciate the conservatism which you are, you know, putting in numbers. It would be great help if you can just kind of give some color from, you know, different verticals perspective because over last two quarters you have won $200 million+ deals and, you know, your vertical commentary continue to remain very, very good. If you look at the lower end of the guidance, it does imply a very, very tepid kind of a performance throughout FY 2023. While, you know, it's fine to be conservative, but, you know, is this something which you feel that is a realistic number right now?
Mukul, if I look at... it's okay to push back. There's no problem. Right? We are having a conversation here. Mukul, if I look at transportation, right? I do see the EACV segment as being a tailwind. I see the differentiators we have created, the labs we have created, the traction we've got, the excellent client relationships. If you go out across U.S. and Europe, plus the empanelments you've done, et cetera, continue to be bullish on this segment in terms of growth as we move forward. That's in each sub-segment, right? It's auto, trucks or highways, air. In the area of plant engineering, again, I know the market has changed in terms of people wanting smaller plants, local plants, right, alternative. From just-in-time, they have gone to just-in-case.
I do expect plant engineering also to continue to deliver heavy growth on an ongoing basis. Don't see a problem in spite of the war, et cetera, right? Now, in the Hi-Tech segment, Semcon will grow. But again, you know, you are aware this is the most competitive segment, red ocean, if I may, for the engineering world. We are establishing metaverse as a vertical to get out of this red ocean part and get to a blue ocean part. It'll take some time. Therefore, we are a little watchful there. Though I've said that there are deals, there are closures, et cetera, it'll take a little bit there. In terms of industrial products, last two quarters or last quarter, we've been tepid.
The broad reason is not that we don't have deals and we don't have people or we don't have you know client relationships. It's a function of our discrete manufacturing clients facing various headwinds in their businesses because of supply chain. Now, I do believe short-term they will overcome it, but will they come back to a great extent, et cetera? To be seen, right? Finally, Medical. We've again made investments. In fact, I would rate my own solutions in Medical to be at par with EACV, which has grown the fastest. But there are you know certain challenges because Medical segment by nature is a little more conservative. I am bullish about my own prospects, if I may, and our own capabilities, our technologies, our engineers.
At the same time, I'm mindful of the fact that we have a full year to go by. I assure you, Mukul, that as we go through the year, and when I come back and talk to you again at the end of quarter one, I will provide whatever updates I can as I have done in FY 2022. Rest assured, we are baking a lot of this plus and minus to provide you what we've provided. Of course, like I always say, internal aspirations and targets are higher.
Thank you. The next question is from Vib hor Singhal from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good evening, sir. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on great execution, once again. I have just one question I wanted to basically get your idea on, basically how we are looking at the business in terms of the commodity price hike and the growing inflation. I mean, if I see most of our business is basically pertaining to the manufacturing industry. You mentioned in your comments about industrial products that that segment is facing those headwinds. I think at some point of time, the transportation vertical and other plant engineering verticals too will probably start feeling the heat as well. In terms of your conversation with the client, has anything started on that front that the clients are kind of expecting some kind of headwinds?
Because the primary concern in the industry today is not what the clients are looking at today, but that inflation today could lead to lower cash flow tomorrow, which could lead to a lower IT spend day after tomorrow. Anything on that front that you are getting from the client in terms of the conversations. It would be really helpful. Then I'll ask my second question on the margins front.
Sure. If I may share with you. See, when I was recently in Europe, we've got three countries, five days, 18 meetings. Similar stuff happening in the U.S. In fact, our CSO, our CBOs there continue to travel. In fact, there are meetings happening every day now that people are meeting, right? What we're hearing is, right, number one, what we're hearing is people talk about the invasion of Ukraine, but they are yet figuring out the impact. In fact, one client told me that I actually have boarded up my factory in western Ukraine and I continue to work. People go in the morning, come back in the night, and they have put blackout windows, and they continue to work inside the factory. I was surprised, right? But they do that, right?
Another customer told me that he has actually sent out food, cots, medicine to his employees in China, where they are in the office for the last five days and will be there for another two weeks. For their families, they have been providing food, vegetables, et cetera, et cetera, because he has to do it for his employees. You think about the extent to what people are doing to continue to stay normal. This is a new normal, unfortunately, right? What we're hearing is, one is invasion of Ukraine, but people are not sure where to go. Second, we're hearing people talk about inflation. Believe me, some of these guys, I've met a CEO two weeks ago of a $15 billion revenue company.
The gentleman was sharing with me that I've already taken cost actions to help me with some of the commodity pricing increase I'm seeing, right? Then he was talking. Those are three things that are coming out with all this, right? One, clients continue to turn towards digital to take care of absenteeism at factory and workplaces, as well as further reliability of operations and predictability of operations. Second, people continue to look for alternative sourcing, alternative material, alternative components to make sure they're able to continue to deliver.
Third, we are seeing that there is a workforce gap that is there between demand and supply at this stage, so they continue to look at companies like ourselves to provide them with that extra talent and burst of projects to be able to take things forward. If I was to look at, and I said this when I was talking to Mukul, but EACV is a tailwind right now. I do see this carrying on for the next three years for sure, right? Digital products, digital manufacturing, both of these have not played out yet. I do believe that will continue on. Med tech is starting off, and you can see, you know, peer results, others. Med tech will grow, right? It'll take some time to pick up speed.
Sustainability, people are talking about alternative material, alternative sourcing, zero liquid discharge, carbon neutrality, energy storage, et cetera. Again, this will take a little bit more time to come up. I do believe that some of these are right now peaking or are at high and will continue for the next two years. There are others that will pick up. From a demand standpoint, I do feel fairly optimistic. I have not heard of any reversals or anything in knock on wood as I say it, at this stage.
Got it. That's really helpful. Just my last question is on the basically the salary hike and the margins front. If you could just basically share a plan as to when do we intend to give salary hike in this financial year? What is expected to be the quantum? And is the on-site salary hike as again we have seen across the board is it do you expect it to be higher than earlier years because of the higher inflation in the in U.S. and the Asian countries?
I take a part of the question, and then I'll hand over to our CFO, Rajeev, to answer the other part. One, I want to tell you that we did do some corrections and positive corrections, right? Somebody told me when you say corrections, they will think of negative. Negative doesn't work in our industry. It's only positive. We did positive corrections in January for critical talent in the company because that was required. The margins that you see are after that correction, number one. Number two, our regular hike cycle, increment cycle is July. We are right now in the middle of working out all those details and taking that forward. We will make sure we are looking at ring-fencing talent.
We are looking at various options and various ways to do it. We will continue to do that because finally we have to build, you know, look at a sustainable ongoing growth enterprise rather than worry about really just the short term. With that said, Rajeev, you want to add this, please.
I think you also talked about the margin part. I think as most of you all would have seen, we continue to, or rather we have improved on the EBIT margins over the last five quarters, and in quarter four we've held at the same level as quarter three. Now, like I said in my opening commentary, I mean, we will have headwinds and tailwinds to manage. The tailwinds will continue to be growth and quality of revenues. Second, if you look at some of the operational metrics, we did hire close to about 3,000 freshers during the year. You've seen that utilization has come down in Q4. We believe, many of these freshers will become available as we enter into FY 2023. Operational efficiencies, I think we talked about sustainable operating model.
A large part of FY 2022 really has been about building fresher talent and improving on the pyramid. Our C&B cost as a percentage of revenue has indeed come down, so we feel that's going to be another lever that should play in our favor. These are some of the tailwinds. While I talk about the tailwinds, of course, I should also talk about the headwinds. We believe that you will see feelings that we had in FY 2021 and 2022 with COVID almost settling down now. Travel will start. It's almost beginning to show up, as Amit talked about. Most of our sales force are traveling, meeting clients. We expect that it will almost normalize in FY 2023. Attrition and wage hikes, intermittent wage hikes, that will be another headwind that we will have to manage.
Last but not the least, we will continue to invest both in organic and inorganic. All in all, our aspiration will be to maintain 18%+ margin levels going forward in FY 2023 as well.
Thank you. The next question is from Nitin Padmanabhan from Investec. Please go ahead. Go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. First is, on the large deals, is it possible to give the rough tenure for these deals? You know, so that's one. Second is the number of large deals seem to be accelerating, right? You also mentioned that the pipeline also looks very strong. So just wanted your sense, if you just compare, maybe the last many years. I think this is the last year and this year, the last two years, we're actually seeing a lot more large deals. Your commentary suggests that it's picking up. So from a growth perspective, fundamentally, if you think longer term, does this add a lot more predictability for you when you think about it? Just wanted your thoughts on both these, please.
Sure. Number one, on the large deal, this is a $100 million + deal. As we've explained in our, in fact, the press release has details of it, right? $120 million + , that's there. Generally, these are, you know, aircraft design cycles are across six to eight years, right? That's the period that this deal will run through, starting up sometime in Q2 as we start. Right? That is number one. Now, in terms of traction, look, there are a couple, three things that we have fundamentally tried to change here. Number one is that as we look at solutioning, we actually step back always and see what are the white spaces that we should be investing in, right, and spending time on.
For example, if I look at the EV space, EACV space, we worked on developing in-house EV components. We also worked on creating our own integrated e-axle solution. If I look at medical technologies, we worked on creating a cuff-less, non-invasive BP algorithm. We created our own chest X-ray AI. If I was to take the example of and I can go on and on, but broadly what I'm trying to explain is that we look at the white spaces, we look at the technology, we do a build-up. What that does is that rather than being known as a commodity supplier, we end up trying to gain mind share before we gain market share, right? Once you've gained mind share, then market share becomes a by-product of that.
In addition to that, while we do that with our CTO team and our practice teams that we are doing, our CSO, CBOs have actually got a large deals engine full-time focused, which has got finance participation, delivery participation, et cetera. It's a cross-functional team working 24/7 globally to continue to seed new ideas, create new ones, answer, et cetera, et cetera. Knock on wood, I do have confidence that the momentum is there. Like I said, again, blessed to have a team that continues to think every day on newer ideas, newer things, on how we can add value to customers. How do you unlock? Because once you unlock value for customers, what we get is a by-product of that. With that said, I do believe that the momentum will continue.
One thing I will tell you that we learned last time, and I was sharing with some of you, that we now realize that a INR 9.5 million deal should not be done. It should be a INR 10 million deal, right? A INR 20 million deal should not be done. You should aspire for INR 25 million. The whole feeling in the company is to do bigger, better, more, and we'll continue to strive towards that.
Just as a follow-up. Are you suggesting that this is something that's more LTTS driven focus in terms of the large deal engine, or is it that the market itself is more has more large deals by nature? Is it both?
Look, my first answer is it's only us and nobody can do it. Here is where we are. I do believe that deals are being done across the board. The engineering segment itself is seeing more mature traction. I, however, do believe the differentiator LTTS brings is the cross-pollination innovation that we talk about and the proactive nature of trying to bake in proactive ideas. That, I believe, is a differentiator. I do think the engineering industry overall stands to benefit.
Thank you. The next question is from Salil Desai from Marcellus Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
On the DSO days, when you look back at the year and the target versus what the actual numbers are, what are the specific areas where, you know, the miss happened, and how would that change in the next one year for you to go back to the target?
Can you please repeat? Were you talking about deals or DSO?
DSO days, sir. DSO.
Yeah. Salil, let me take this one. Clearly, if you look at DSO, our focus is that we should be in the 95-day range, both for billed and unbilled. You, as I mentioned in my opening commentary, we have come down in terms of unbilled DSO to 15 days compared to where it was 21 days in previous quarter. That's an additional six days, right? What eventually it does is it adds to the DSO bill. Having said that, yes, at about 102, we continue to work upon it. Despite the fact that DSO is where it is, our free cash flows are at 89%-90% of PAT, right? It has clearly been an area of focus. We want to ensure that the free cash flows continue to improve.
It also helps us to build a war chest for inorganic growth, in future. Having said that, Salil, our focus continues to be to improve DSO, and you will see that over the coming quarters, we will bring more stability in the DSO.
Yeah. The miss last year was it something specific from even some, like, particular clients would give you confidence that things will not recur next year for you to kind of achieve the target or-
No, there is.
-you're waiting-
Yeah.
on collection?
Why don't you complete the question, Salil?
I think, was there any specific areas where you think things will improve this year for you to achieve the target, or was there something?
We did talk about in our commentary back in quarter one, and also follow through in quarter two. We've been through systems implementation during this year. Clearly, the idea is to bring more efficiency in the whole chain in the order to cash cycle. We believe that should be an area which would help us to improve DSO in the coming quarters. There is nothing specific that I will communicate, either as a cause of concern or as a miss.
Thank you. The next question is from Kawaljeet Saluja from Kotak. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hi, everyone. My question is on profitability, rather, you know, trying to understand the employee cost, Rajeev. Now, when I look at your blended employee cost, you know, that is down 13%, you know, compared to where it was six months back. This is happening at a time wherein your on-site mix in revenues has gone up from 40.3% to maybe 45 % odd. I'm just trying to reconcile, you know, how this has been achieved. Now, I understand that you have recruited freshers, but still the disconnect in numbers is quite sharp. Can you just help me with the same?
Hi, Kawaljeet. I think two points, and I will also have our Chief Operating Officer, Abhishek, add to it. We did talk about the fact that we have hired close to 3,000 freshers during the year. I would have to step back, Kawaljeet, to really unfold the story. In FY 2021, it being a COVID year, we did not hire employees, and that clearly led to the pyramid bloating. FY 2022 gave the opportunity to course-correct on the pyramid. It also gave us the opportunity with the growth to build for future capability. We hired close to 3,000 freshers, which is what led to the reduction in the C&B as a percentage of revenue.
Your point around the growth in on-site, of course, and also trying to add back to the reduction in C&B, the fact being that the growth in on-site is more of a Q4 phenomena. That's more because some of the deals have started in Q4. You will see the follow-through and growth in offshore happening over the subsequent quarters. I will also have Abhi share in terms of the operational aspects around the C&B.
Yeah, I think Rajeev has covered it all. I mean, we clearly saw two quarters back, actually more than a year back, I would say, that the way the industry is moving, including the attrition part, if we do not invest in the freshers, we will not be able to have the right kind of operational excellence. Also the engine we have built on training these freshers, because we are not just hiring them and then hoping that they'll start delivering. We start engaging with the freshers at least six months before they join us while they're in their colleges. When they come into the company, the quality of freshers, quality of training is to the liking of our businesses and customers, if I may. I think that strategy has really paid off for us. The fact that we started this more than a year back is what is showing the results now.
Okay, thank you. If I may ask a follow-on question, and that is for Amit. You know, Amit, I'm just trying to understand the guidance philosophy, because I mean, you have given out a guidance of 13.5%-15.5%. At the same time, you have said that, you know, implied in many different ways, that the guidance is conservative. Now, I'm just trying to, you know, understand that, you know, at a philosophical level, do you think the guidance should be always, you know, based on the way you see the demand? Or do you think that, you know, we should try and guess every year what's the kind of cushion that you have built into your margin or rather, you know, revenue growth assumption? You know, how does that change every year?
Sure. Kawaljeet, when we set up guidance and when we go through, we always look at all the positives, the negatives that are there, the certainties, the deals won, the execution cycle, the supply side. We look at macroeconomics, et cetera. It's a fairly intense exercise that we do. It's an algorithm that we leverage internally to do that. With that said, like I was explaining earlier also that, see, in some of the segments, I'm fairly comfortable, confident. I can see it. I mean, I have plans right up to the end of the year, believe me, on some of those. There are certain areas which I think are spotty at this stage from a variability standpoint, right? Not our capability.
The variability standpoint, things could change, et cetera. That's where the guidance is coming from. Believe me, Kawaljeet, we'll continue to work on this on a continuous ongoing basis and continue to provide an update to you. I find it safe, but I'm truly thankful to everybody on the call that has worked with us through this past year. It's not been easy. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Abhishek Shindadkar from InCred Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity and congrats on good execution. So one question, and partly answered by, you know, Abhishek in the previous answer. But it seems like, you know, our guidance, you know, it seems like there is no challenge on the demand, but it's more on supply. You alluded to the fact that, you know, you start training people six months ahead, or when they are part of college. But just trying to understand that, you know, are they kind of billable immediately when they join? Or, you know, there is still a second level of training once they join. You know, is there another way to kind of, you know, get them billable early or, you know, if you can explain this process, that would be really helpful.
Yes, sir. Thanks for the question. See, the way it works is, yes, while we start engaging with them while they're in college, because we also engage with the faculty, by the way, of the colleges, so that they also train them in the areas what industry needs. When they join us, we have them go through a more structured training process in our academy. Do understand that while they're in college it's still online virtual training, but we insist on these students working from our Mysore, Baroda campuses, and do more in-person training because we are engineers, right? I mean, the work we do is hardcore. I mean, they have to apply what they learn. We have all these investments labs we have created. We make them go through the labs that we have.
Our practice heads, practice managers engage with them and show them the kind of projects we do. There's a lot of hands-on training that we do while in the first many months that they're with us. There is no specific timeline or something where we say they join and then in next month they will get billable, but it varies from technology to technology, customer to customer. That's the way it works. Yes, there is a lot of investment after they join in them before they can get into billable work.
More than billable, if I may add, I think our philosophy is we're doing engineering and technology work. It's not a lot of commoditized work. You know, you are working on products, you're working on designing a plant, you're working on, you know, a digital twin concept, et cetera. Unless we are satisfied that the work product will be beyond defect, right, will be super skilled, we don't want to deploy the people out. At times, we will ask them to do a little bit more retraining in a certain area. Look, we want to make sure that our customers love us for the work that we do because growth will happen, profits will happen if clients love the work that we do. If we get into delivery issues and all that, it's all a mess for us.
Just one last point. We also put many of them through internal projects, practice projects that we run, which creates a technology assets on one hand, also in the process they get trained. That's the way it works.
No, this is really helpful. The second question is more about, you know, captive. With the challenges, especially in the Eastern European part, you know, based on your conversation, you know, with customers from Europe, is there any, you know, heightened conversation about setting up, you know, incrementally or making India as a probable, you know, alternate destination right now, which may not be in their, you know, current setup?
This data is available across Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. There's about 275,000 engineering jobs that have gone offline, if I may, right? That therefore has people moving. Some of those to LatAm, some of those to India, some of those to other parts of Europe, right? We continue to work with our key clients to support them through this difficult time. There are certain areas we have started to work with them. We have also established a center in Poland last quarter. We are working, engaging with people that are moving from these countries into Kraków, where we can offer them employment as well. We're working on various parameters in this area.
I don't want to comment on one specific area or another. I also want to behave like a good corporate citizen, where I don't want to try and, you know, do this in the wrong way. We are working with our clients, strategic clients, to help them. Some of them have their own centers there which are no longer operational, so we are supporting them on some of the programs. We continue to engage. I don't want to put a number to it yet, but yes, there is stuff that's happening in that area.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take the last question from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Evening. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on good execution. I have just one question on the supply side. While you know, you have given a lot of detail on that front, but the key aspect which I wanted to understand, how much is the difference between you know, recruiting fresher to get them on billing in our ER&D industry versus the services industry? Is that gap a couple of weeks or it is almost similar, or it is higher?
No. Look at it this way. Answer will potentially vary, right, in terms of the areas we're putting them on. See, some of the best analytical brains we are getting actually are people that are masters that are coming out in specific areas. In some places, some PhDs. Now they will immediately get recruited to projects with a very short term. There are others will be doing build plans with them, getting them up to speed, et cetera. There's no one answer. What I can definitely tell you, because I've played both sides of this, I've been in the IT industry and now in the engineering industry for more than a decade, it takes a little bit more, but it varies depending on vertical, skill set, technology area that we have got.
Okay.
We can't.
Can that-
We do want engineers, we do need people with masters. The technology, the engineering pedigree, et cetera, is very important. Can't do it with just bachelors, et cetera. That's a fact.
Yeah. If I can ask one more question. We are hearing that, you know, some of these companies which have got impacted because of the geopolitical situation have become very aggressive in recruiting from some of the key supply cities in India. Has it impacted us or you are also seeing the same trend? Or so you don't think it is something to be called out yet?
We've got centers in six cities. Our primary focus to grow will be Chennai, Mysore and Baroda. Our secondary focus on Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and then Pune if as needed. Right?
Mm-hmm.
We have centers in these places. We're fairly diverse from that standpoint. Yes, there is a talent war out there, and we do believe it'll take some time to shake out. The only answer here is to go through with it. You know, two things. One, if we can offer a differentiated technology, career path, roadmap, projects to our employees and our associates, our people joining us, they'll be excited, right? Kind of projects, et cetera, we have them do. The second thing is that, can we be inclusive? Can we offer them opportunities outside of what they're doing right now? That's why I mentioned go up to our website, look at the values, mission, vision values, that we are doing now. We are working on various parameters to see how we can get the excitement up.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Pinku Pappan for closing comments.
Thank you everyone for joining us on this call today. We hope we were able to answer most of your questions. Please reach out to me in case you have follow-up questions. Well, here's wishing you a great and safe time, and hope to meet you soon in person. Thank you. Have a good day.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of L&T Technology Services Limited, that concludes this conference. We thank you all for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.