Hello and a very warm welcome to everyone joining us. I'm Kritika Saxena. Welcome to the first quarter FY2026 Earnings Press Conference of Tata Consultancy Services. As always, we'll start with introducing the management. We have with us our MD and CEO, K. Krithivasan.
Hi, greetings to everyone.
Our Chief Operating Officer, Aarthi Subramanian.
Good evening, everyone.
Samir Seksaria, our CFO.
Hello.
Of course, Milind Lakkad, our CHRO. As always, we're going to start with the CEO address, and then we'll throw the floor open for questions. Kritika, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Kritika. Good evening, everyone. As you all know, Aarthi has joined us as President and COO. And this will be her first media interaction with all of you. Prior to this role, she was a Group Chief Digital Officer at Tata Sons, and she was leading Group's digital technology and innovation agenda across diverse portfolios of industries in Tata Group. Aarthi, welcome. Coming back to our performance, during our last press meet, we had spoken about delays in decision-making and project starts with respect to discretionary investments. This trend has continued and intensified to some extent in this quarter, and global businesses were disrupted due to conflicts, economic uncertainty, and supply chain issues. In this backdrop, our quarterly revenue declined by 3.1% year-on-year and by 3.3% on a sequential basis. Our INR revenue grew by 1.3% year-on-year to reach INR 63,437 crore. Our operating margin stands at 24.5%.
Representing an expansion of 30 basis points over Q4 of FY2025. This translates to INR 15,514 crores of operating profit. Our net margin for the quarter has come in at 20.1%, translating to INR 12,760 crores. Consequently, our EPS reached 35.27 per share. Cash from operations was at INR 12,804 crores, representing a strong conversion at 100.3% of net profit. On a sequential basis, North America was flat at about 0.1% growth, while U.K. and Europe declined by -0.3% and -3.1%, respectively. Amongst new growth markets, Asia Pacific remained flat, while Middle East, Africa, and Latin America declined sequentially. India declined by 32.6% in this quarter. Among the verticals, on a sequential basis, technology and services grew by 1.1%, and manufacturing grew marginally by 0.2%. BFSI declined by 0.5%, consumer business declined by 2.2%, life sciences and healthcare declined by 1.2%. Communication and media declined by 3.1%, and ERU declined by 0.6%.
TCS banks and BFSI products and platform continued their growth momentum. The number of customers from whom we make more than $100 million declined by one to 62 customers on a year-on-year basis. However, we saw good addition of clients in the $10 million, $5 million, and $1 million revenue bands. Our customer base of $1 million stands at 1,336, an increase of 26 over last year. We had a strong order book closure again this year. Our order book for the quarter stands at $9.4 billion, up by 13.2% on a year-on-year basis. North America TCV came in at $4.4 billion, BFSI at $2.5 billion, and consumer business at $1.6 billion. Most geographies and business groups had strong order book closures. By the end of Q1, our net employee count stood at 613,069, a net increase of 5,090 associates since Q4 of FY2025.
Our IT services attrition stood at 13.8%. In this quarter, we also saw new service lines delivering growth. Essentially, amongst our services, AI, data, TCS Interactive, and cybersecurity led the growth. On AI, clients are accelerating their focus to scaling AI across enterprise. We are increasing our investments across the AI ecosystem, including infrastructure, data platform solutions, AI agents, and business applications. Our AI solutions, such as TCS was done next and Sovereign Cloud, are seeing good traction across industries and markets. We are also scaling AI expertise across the company. Our 114,000 associates with higher order AI skills as of this quarter represent one of the highest numbers in the industry. In Q1, we applied for 171 patents and were granted 119 patents. The board has recommended an interim dividend of INR 11 crores per share. Also, this will be Milind's last quarterly press conference. He has been a distinguished.
Colleague and had a stellar record of service over 38 years in the industry, part of the integral part of our management team all these years. Joining TCS as a trainee in 1987, he rose to lead the manufacturing business group and subsequently became the CHRO. On behalf of TCS, I would like to thank him for all his contributions. Thank you, Milind. As announced last quarter, Sudeep will be taking over from Milind. Where is Sudeep? Nobody can miss him. With that, I hand it over to Kritika. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Kritika. We'll start with Reema Tendulkar from CNBC TV 18. As always, we want to accommodate everybody, so two questions, and feel free to take your questions one by one.
Kritika, let's start with growth. Break up this quarter in terms of BS&L ramp down and how international markets did, and the outlook. Does growth come back in Q2, or the deals which were paused are still paused? What about your guidance for the full year, which you stated last time, that growth will be better in FY 2026?
Okay. Reema, like Birk gives out, as we said, the sequential growth was 3.3. Out of that, - 0.5 would be attributed to international, and remaining 2.8 would be attributed to BS&L winding down. From an outlook perspective, we are still confident and optimistic that international revenue in FY2026 would be better than our FY2025 revenue. Overall, it will be too early to call out when growth will resume, which to a great extent depends on more clarity emerging in the macroeconomic scenario. I think with all the trade discussions coming to a close, the new bill that's been enacted in the U.S. gaining presidential sanction approval, I think things should become clearer, maybe towards the end of July or early August.
Aarthi, great to see you and look forward to more conversations with you. New service lines have done well. Can you quantify the kind of growth and provide some color on the deal wins? Samir, if you could just tell us a little bit about the margin, the breakup. What was the tailwind that you got on account of the BSNL ramp down? Milind, explain to us the 5,000 headcount addition and the timing of the wage hike.
And the?
Wage hike when you planned.
Reema, from a new age service line perspective, when you look at AI, data, cybersecurity, interactive, some of the modernization services in terms of momentum, cloud application modernization, these service lines have grown well this quarter. We see, especially on AI and data, strong demand from our customers. Customers are investing in industry-specific solutions. AI for modernization is coming across as a strong theme because Gen AI is now becoming the tool to really understand the legacy code and use Gen AI to convert and forward engineer to a modernized architecture and application. These are all new opportunities. When you look at enterprise solutions modernization with SaaS platforms, there is significant demand there as well.
Can you quantify growth for us in new age service lines?
We don't call out service line specific numbers, Rima, but.
The deal width, I mean, we know the deal width number, $9.4 billion, but the outlook going forward, how's the pipeline?
The pipeline across these services looks pretty strong.
Our Q1 margins were at 24.5%, sequentially improved by 30 basis points. That's despite building for capacity, or we invested into capacity and continued our other investments for long-term growth. The tailwinds which you talked about mainly came in from reduction in the quality of revenue or reduction in third-party expenses and support from currency.
5,000 addition, which you see it in every quarter. There is no difference here. It means we obviously started the quarter the way we started and realized that there are some business challenges towards later in the quarter. Yes, the number is here. We will obviously leverage some of these resources for future quarters, obviously. With respect to wage hikes, we have not made any decision so far on wage hikes, and we will let you know as soon as we do that.
Thank you. Next question from Sajith Mangar from NDTV Profit.
Hi, Kriti. In your statement, you mentioned about demand contraction. Can you give us a sense of what exactly you're seeing at this point in time? Because in Q4, you said that it's a wait and watch for you. Now the commentary is much more. In the sense, it's more bearish in nature when you're talking about demand contraction there. Because when you spelled out your Q.Q.C.C.C., see constant currency numbers, you said only 0.5% decline was from international and 2.8% was because of BSNL. Just if you can elaborate more on what exactly you mean when you say there's a demand contraction, which is there.
Yeah, see. As I said, international was - 0.5. There are two, three levers at play, like we discussed last time also, where clients have decided on a project, but where they think the ROI is not immediate. There seems to be a discussion, but only the bar on ROI goes up. You find more projects are getting paused or delayed. In some places, we find the decisions where we thought a transformation project, the decision would be taken in this quarter so that we can start the project. Those decisions get delayed where the ROI clients are not clear about the return on investment on those projects. The overall framework on which the projects are getting delayed or paused are very similar. Again, as you would see, we had a minor, very small growth of our small. It's a growth in North America. U.K. and Europe had a degrowth.
How much of that is linked to what's happening in the U.S. with respect to tariff negotiations and other? Because North America grew for you on a quarter-to-quarter basis. How much of that is linked to that?
It will be very difficult to quantify saying that X% of growth was impacted by tariff discussion. If you look at industries, for instance, consumer industry is more impacted by tariff. Manufacturing, auto industry is more impacted by tariff. Certain industries like banking are not directly impacted, but have a second-order impact because consumer confidence is low. It will be very difficult to quantify X% to a particular event or a situation.
Aarthi, hi, can you give us a sense of the kind of AI deals which are coming in? Because $9.4 billion of total contract value in this quarter, how much of what percentage, if you can, put to AI? If you can also give us an indication of what is the kind of productivity gains that you are bringing into the clients? Because what we are hearing on the ground is that the gains are very limited to the extent of 10%-15%. Are you able to bring in more productivity gains when you are engaging with your clients with respect to new orders?
Sure, Sajith. When you look at AI, I think first the nature of opportunities, right? Customers are looking at building industry-specific solutions with AI, domain solutions. That is an area of opportunity where we are seeing increased demand. The second area, I would say, is modernization, which I briefly talked about earlier. How do you leverage Gen AI to really modernize your legacy applications? I think there is again strong demand there. The third area is customers are looking at, now that they see the ROI from the AI projects as they move from pilot to really delivering value, customers are looking at how do we scale AI within their enterprise. They are looking at how do I set up an AI office, setting up AI centers of excellence jointly with us?
How do they create AI platforms so that their AI initiatives can scale across their value chains and functions? Those are the areas where we see the demand coming in. In terms of when you look at where AI is being applied from a service delivery perspective, right? These are the bespoke new builds that you do, new application development. When you look at application operations or infrastructure operations, that is where the productivity gains are starting to show. Also, all of us are hearing so much about coding assistance for development. The productivity gains are there for the coding. When you look at the software being built, there is much more end-to-end, right from conceptualization all the way to testing and delivery. The coding part of the value chain, we are seeing productivity gains.
Samir, 30 basis points jump in margin for you. Your SGN expenses came down by 2% on a quarter-to-quarter basis, if I'm not wrong, INR 9,300 crore, right? It's fallen there. And your other income has gone up by nearly INR 600 crore. If you take these off, then you have a flat net profit, which is coming on the bottom line. Can you give us an indication of why SGN expenses, I mean, where do you get that gains from SGN expenses and the addition in other income?
Okay. On the SGN expenses, there is nothing one off to call off. We'll continue to drive productivity. Overall, if you see sequentially, it has been flattish, as you have been calling out. Again, as a percentage of revenue, it has been flattish. We will be focused on driving efficiency across our various line items. On the other income, the INR 600 crore which you called out as a one-time, we have received some interest on income tax reference that is accounted out there.
Milind, 6,000 net employees, if I'm not wrong. Your attrition is at 13.8%, which is a two-year high. Are you seeing attrition inching up again?
I think definitely it is a little more than our comfort level. 11%-13% is our comfort range. It is a little more than that. We continue to make efforts to bring it down. Through continuous employee engagement, doing all the right things which we normally do with our people, we continue to do that and bring it down. It is what our aspiration is always. That is what we continue to do.
The gross target remains the same, 40,000?
I think we are on target as of now. Depending on the business situation, we'll decide and calibrate how we take it forward.
Thank you. Anurag Joshi from ET Now.
Hi, Krithi. So the share of BFSI in your revenues, there's been a slight increase. Whereas if you look at some of the other industries, they've been steady. Do you expect discretionary spending also from BFSI sector to rise?
See, the share of BFSI increasing is more technical because BSNL going down has an impact on. That is a significant chunk. That going down increases the share of BFSI. I do not want you to read anything immediately out of that. From a discretionary spend, I think it is applicable. At this time, in this quarter, we see it is almost circular across all verticals. Once there is greater clarity, I think discretionary spend should come. Our underlying belief has always been that there is a lot of pent-up demand. Clients, like Aarthi talked a lot about the opportunities that come through Gen AI. Clients want to do a lot of work, but being held back because of the lack of clarity that is in the market. Once there is better certainty, you would see discretionary spend coming back.
Yeah. Not going into specifics, but how would you characterize the momentum of the order pipeline right now? Right now, if we see the TCV, that's almost reaching $10 billion. It is a very optimistic kind of a pipeline you see, at least in this market.
We are comfortable with this number. We previously also called out that $7 billion-$9 billion is a comfortable number. As long as it is a good number, as long as there are no scope reductions, existing projects or processes do not happen, then it reduces the immediate quarter revenue. Overall, we are comfortable. The pipeline continues to be strong for the coming quarters also. In fact, across all geographies, which gives us confidence that the order book and then, sooner than later, the revenue should follow through strongly.
The wind down of the BSNL contract, again, the impact on your revenues. Are you confident of overcoming that? Are there, I mean, going ahead, what are the factors that can offset this?
See, we try to offset the wind down. Both, as I said, we are confident that our international revenue will be better than last year. We are also looking at. See, BSNL itself is giving us a new set of offerings that we can take to the market. That is a new capability we have that we also would like to take to the market. We have diversified further in many other emerging geographies than before. Collectively, it should help us bridge the gap, if not completely offset.
My question to Milind. Over 100,000, I think it is over almost 112,000 of your employees, they have capability of AI. As a human resource strategy, is that something TCS is looking to instill? Make this broad-based across the organization? What are the plans over there?
Absolutely. Absolutely. As you've been seeing from the last so many quarters, we have been sharing with you in terms of how we are building AI competency across the organization. Now we are telling you how we are basically taking it and building a pyramid around that. Building higher-order competencies will continue to improve quarter after quarter. That is the path.
Thank you, Kritika.
Thank you.
Thank you, Milind.
Ekta Suri from ZBusiness.
Good evening. मेरा पहला सवाल, Krithi, आपसे होने वाला है। आपने अभी insist किया कि इस FY में आप growth strong देख रहे हैं। लेकिन अगर हम बहुत से verticals की बात करें, तो इस समय हमें numbers negative में दिख रहे हैं। अगर geographical areas की बात करें, तो वहां से भी हमें negative में numbers दिख रहे हैं। तो आपको यह जो growth का confidence दिख रहा है, यह किन वजहों से आप. कहां-कहां से दिख रहा है और किन वजहों में आपको दिख रहा है?
As I said, Ekta, I am confident of the international revenue in FY2026 to be better than FY2025. It's based on the order book we see, customer conversations we have, and there is interest that we see in multiple service lines. Customers are interested in data modernization, application modernization. There is an ERP transformation that many of the customers are interested in doing. There are a lot of cost optimization proposals. There is a leveraging AI for business outcomes. There are a number of opportunities. As I said, the only thing that's a bottleneck at this time is a certain amount of lack of clarity in the market. Once that lifts, we believe the spend should come back.
By when do you think there'll be a little bit clarity?
I will not put a timeline to that, Ekta.
आपसे यह भी समझना चाहेंगे, Aarthi कि हम AI projects की बात कर रहे हैं। क्या AI projects TCS deliver करना शुरू हो चुका है? क्या उससे revenue आना शुरू हो चुका है? Also, do you see a scope कि अगर किसी company ने एक बार अपना AI project बना लिया है या फिर अगर coding की अगर हम बात कर रहे हैं, तो आपको लग रहा है कि आगे जाकर उनसे वही business मिलेगा? You see there is some kind of lag because right now, at the stage we are, most of the people, I mean, they want AI, but उसके आगे क्या करना है, अभी उतनी clarity नहीं है।
Ekta, if you really look at AI, Gen AI, and look at it over the last three years, right? Gen AI was new and showed us the promise. Everybody was trying to experiment with it, and there were individual use cases. People were wanting to see what the power of this technology is. Almost three years later now, the power of the technology is understood, and people see how they can reimagine their businesses, their processes, their ways of working with AI. I think the whole shift from doing experiments to doing real projects that deliver value, that shift has happened. The revenue is coming, right? This quarter, when you look at it, AI revenues have grown. Like I said before, when you look at AI revenues, AI is pervasive, so you'll have business industry-specific projects. You'll have AI, which is embedded when you're doing engineering or doing IT operations. I would say that across the board, there is momentum.
Okay, thank you. और Milind, आपसे समझना चाहेंगे, क्योंकि हम उतने promising numbers इस quarter में नहीं देख रहे हैं। तो इसको लेकर आपने hiring को इससे कितना connected है? और दूसरा यह कि to boost more confidence or happy emotion amongst employees, wage hike कब तक आप expected दे पाएंगे, आगे pass on कर पाएंगे?
ऐसा है, मैं जैसा हमेशा बोलता हूं कि पूरा जो hiring है, उसको पूरा quarterly growth से connect नहीं करना चाहिए। क्योंकि hiring हमारा yearly इससे होता है। और दूसरी बात, जैसे Samir ने भी पहले कहा कि हम लोगों ने hiring starting of the quarter से किया, उसके बाद थोड़ा सा business, हमको थोड़ा सा issues आए हैं उसमें। उसके कारण थोड़ा सा imbalance दिखता है। लेकिन ऐसा, it is not something which we bother too much about, because we anyway will leverage these resources going forward. Regarding wage hikes, जैसे मैंने कहा, अभी यह सब इतनी बातें होने के बाद समझ में आ रहा है कि अभी भी हम decision नहीं लिया है अभी तक। जैसे ही decision लेंगे, आपको बताएंगे।
Thank you. और आपसे समझना चाहेंगे कि हम देख रहे हैं कि constant currency जो है, वह negative में हमें दिख रही है। हमें operating margins negative में दिख रहे हैं। उसके बावजूद जो हम net income में 6% की growth देख रहे हैं, वह किन factors की वजह से?
I answered Sajith earlier, first, the operating margin is positive, sequentially 30 basis points. In other income, there was a one-off. Overall, the PAT growth has been, on a sequential basis, 4%, which is INR 12,700 crores PAT.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Shivani Shinde from Business Standard.
Hi, good evening. Krithi, a question for you. We have been seeing on a quarter-on-quarter basis the client from the $100 million, $50 million, reducing. What is the reason? Especially if I look at the $50 million, of course, you've spoken about the $100 million. In the $50 million, and I'm not going back to the other quarters, just this quarter and the year-over-year comparison, there are some nine clients that are not there. What is the reason for clients? Because these are supposed to be the clients which are supposed to stick around for a longer period of time.
Shivani, the clients have not gone anywhere. They are continuing to be with us. For instance, I think I did explain this last quarter also. When there is a degrowth, I assume that there is an average degrowth across the board. If some customer was previously on an LTM basis, $50 million, and $100,000, if the revenue falls by even in the last four quarters, if it falls by $500,000 because of the degrowth, then they will count them not as a $50 million client, they will become into the lower band. So the clients do not go away anywhere. It is because the revenue drops, which you should expect, because when there is an overall revenue drop, there will be a revenue drop across multiple accounts. If a particular account happens to be just a borderline account in the $50 million band, you would see some of them falling behind.
On the BSNL deal, when do we see the next ramp up? Because you've got additional work from them.
We are also waiting. We have the advance purchase order, but we need a final purchase order to proceed. We are waiting for the opportunity.
Thanks, Krithi. Aarthi, to you. We are all talking about Gen AI. Tata Group is such a big, big group. If every business is going through this AI roadmap, I'm quite sure all the Tata companies are also, which the chairman has always said, what's the potential for TCS to be a part of that? Do we already, I mean, does TCS already work substantially on some of these AI journeys that some of these companies would have gone through? Anything that you can share?
TCS is very actively working with a set of companies across industries within the group. Across retail, automotive, steel, and other industries. Also some of our new businesses, right? Whether it's some of the Tata Electronics and other businesses. We have a very active partnership. We work very closely with them.
Right. And just one more bit. The new buzzword is, of course, agentic AI.
Yes.
Anything that you can tell us in terms of the deals that you're already working with, if not numbers, at least some nature of work?
Sure, happy to. When you look at agentic AI, all of you will agree that this is something that is a term that is fairly new, about maybe six to eight months since we started hearing about it. What is interesting is it is becoming part of all our client conversations. Where are the opportunities? These are all rapidly evolving and early-stage technologies. Because of the power of these technologies, people are very keen on experimenting and seeing what they can achieve with it. There are two areas where we are already working with customers. One is industry value chain solutions with agentic AI. Just to give you an example, in BFS and manufacturing, right? We have started building our own agentic AI solutions, which we are now, we have agents which are already built and many others which are part of the roadmap. Those initial anchor customers in these segments are coming in. We'll see more of these across industries. The other area is business process services, where agentic AI, again, offers very exciting opportunities to look at how traditional automation has been done.
Would you look at an acquisition as well, since you spoke about business process?
I'll not comment on this question. Thank you.
Milind, Aarthi said in the comment that one of the impacts of AI is, of course, on the software coding, where there has been a huge productivity gain, and it is happening across the industries. What has been the impact on hiring when you are looking at engineers now?
Like I said earlier, and we said this earlier also. I think the point is we continue to expect to hire the way we've been hiring. And the kind of jobs and the roles they will do is different. We do not expect a reduction in hiring at this point in time as a result of AI.
Next question from Aarshih Agashe, PTI.
Thank you so much. Sir, last time you had said that, okay, there would be other opportunities in India which would possibly come up. What are those as we speak right now? Probably it will help you as well, given BSNL winding down. We speak a lot about supply chain and India emerging as an alternative there. Are there any specific things which you can share? Probably this is excluding the work which you would be doing with state-run enterprises or with the government.
See, we look at both the state-run and the public sector and other enterprises. One area where we, in fact, in this quarter, we made an announcement about accelerating India, like how do we participate in multiple digital and AI initiatives the government has. We announced a Sovereign Cloud offering. We also made an announcement on the offering around the Cyber Defense Suite. We also had an announcement around Digi, where we essentially e-governance could be a. So there are a number of areas where we are working at to enhance our participation both with governance and enterprises.
Sir, secondly, we have been seeing the TCVs for a good time now, broadly holding up, possibly rising as well as this quarter. Just an elementary question, sir, where is this really coming from at a time when you are saying that you see sort of some bit of demand impact because of macro issues? Also, sir, if you can help us with some color on the pricing front, we have not discussed it.
So Ashish, the overall TCV fine comes primarily from where these customers are interested. See, it's not that the transformation projects are completely shut off, right? Like what we are talking about is there is a balance between transformation and cost optimization projects. During times like this, you would find more TCV coming from cost optimization than transformation programs. Your other question was on.
Pricing.
Pricing. Pricing has been largely stable. We have not seen any pricing pressure. Samir, if you want to add, yeah?
No, that's it. We could see aberration at client level, overall portfolio level. Pricing is stable.
Thank you.
Himanshi Lohchab from The Economic Times.
Hi, Samir. I would like to repeat a question here. This has been one of the weakest quarters in terms of revenue growth, one of the strongest in terms of profit growth. Can you help us understand how did that come about? What are the internal levers that the company is pulling during times of these uncertainties?
Sure. As I said, on the EBIT margin level, on the operating margin, we saw a sequential improvement of 30 basis points. That primarily came in through a combination of savings in third-party expenses, as well as some support from currency. Further in, other income has been good. We had a greater investable surplus, and we also had some one-off in terms of refunds, which are interest in income tax refunds. That is an INR 600 crore number. Overall, PAT growth then has been about 4% sequentially.
Okay, thank you. Also, Milind, any color on wage hikes, especially now that attrition has been edging a little up?
No, I said this before. I think we have not made a decision on that front yet. We will decide during the year. As soon as we know, we'll let you know.
Thank you.
Krishn Kaushik from Financial Times.
Hi, Krithi. Can you help us provide some details about the investigation into the hack in M&S? Because TCS name had come up earlier.
Krishn, we discussed and disclosed during the AGM as well. One, we can confirm that none of the TCS systems were compromised or impacted, which means that none of our customers were impacted, other customers were impacted. Two, we can also confirm that TCS is not under investigation, while the clients are continuing their investigation, but we can confirm our associates followed the process. Third is we are not directly under investigation from the customers also. I think we have been. At the same time, their overall investigation is continuing. It will take some time for them to close the whole thing. We are collaborating with them.
Second question, there is degrowth in our contract, like demand contraction domestically as well, and a higher attrition rate. Is the impact of GCCs visible in any of these things?
See, domestic demand contraction, as you see, is primarily you would see from BSNL. If you take BSNL out, our services revenue actually had a good strong growth in this quarter. Other part, I leave Milind.
Yeah, I think this is, I've been there for many, many years. I don't think that is the reason for any attrition. Yes, this is definitely more than what we normally would. Beyond our comfort zone, we need to be working on that and see how we can bring it back to the levels.
Next question from Debangana Ghosh from Moneycontrol.
My first question is, given the kind of surge we are seeing in Gen AI and AI, I think there was a point in TCS's annual report which said that TCS has a partnership through its co-innovation network with nearly 3,000 startups. I wanted to understand if TCS will further look to invest into any of these startups or perhaps do an M&A or an acquisition for additional capabilities in that space.
Overall, we can't keep looking at opportunities for M&A. This actually gives us more access to talent, more access to technology, more access to clients. We also look at what should be value-accretive to us, to our shareholders, to our customers, all stakeholders. We constantly look at, like in fact, we have been expanding the horizon to see where all such opportunities exist.
Sure.
Quite open to that, though.
What's the overall outlook on mega deals in FI26 in the upcoming quarters?
See, we have never provided the outlook on mega deals, and we always said mega deals are very lumpy. Like sometimes you'll have them in, if I remember right, FY 2025, we did not have, Samir, we did not have any mega deal in FY 2025. FY 2024 we had. It is very difficult to provide an outlook on mega deals. We do continue to work because they tend to be a long gestation, right? We are working on a couple of them. Definitely, if mega deals happen, we will disclose.
Sure. Samir, what's the view on cross-currency benefits in the upcoming quarters? Will we see the margins continue to inch up to that aspirational 26%- 28%?
Cross-currency this quarter at least has been quite volatile. Rupee, in fact, appreciated in the early days against the dollar, but depreciated against most of the currencies. Dollar depreciated against most major currencies. Difficult to call out in terms of how it's going to stack up. That's where we have a stable hedging program, which helps us at least hedge or balance the short-term volatility which could come in the coming quarters. Your second question was in terms of.
Operating margins.
Operating margins or what are the levers for the future, right?
Will we reach that?
Okay, all right. Absolutely. See, our long-term average is, or our long-term goal, and what we believe is 26%-28% is what our long-term cost structure should help us operate into. Given the current uncertainty environment, we have been investing into a few things, looking at what our client priorities are. Our focus is to capture demand in its first place.
Sure, thank you.
Urvi Malvania from Financial Express.
Hi, Samir, you had said that there is no pricing pressure on a portfolio level, but there are some client aberrations. Now, are these clients from a particular category or are these individuals?
No, it's generic. Usually, in a competitive situation, you would have some aberrations. That's it. No specific thing to call out as a specific vertical or geography.
Thank you. Milind, given what you said about how you started off with hiring and then things slowed down, does this change your outlook for fresher hiring in this year? Because you had said last year 42,000, this year more.
See, first of all, let me, I say it all the time and I will say it again, we honor all the offers. It's very important that we honor all the offers that we will do. That process is gone and we have offered, we'll go through that. How and when that will happen and how many will come in each quarter will depend on the business situation.
Okay, and the fresher hiring exercise you do this year, would that be affected?
We will decide based on, obviously, we'll go to the campus, but how many and what is that we need to do from a volume standpoint is something we'll decide during the year.
Because you had said that at the end of FY25, you said that FY26 you will look to more than the fresher hiring of FY25. That's where I want to.
FY26 onboarding happens based on the campus hiring that has happened last year. FY26 going to campus will basically bring in trainees next year. These are two different things. What we do next year depends on the business situation right now.
Thank you.
Next question from Vallari from The Hindu Business Line.
Yeah, hi. I wanted to ask, how are you guys planning for the regional market? Because I understand BSNL is ramping down, but then what exactly is your expectation right now? Are you expecting for the trend to persist or how exactly are you planning for the regional market?
We are focused on all regional markets, like I say emerging or regional markets. India is one of the important markets for us. Similarly, we are very focused on Middle East, Africa. In fact, ASEAN countries are proving to be very good, like we've been having strong wins in ASEAN countries as well. It will continue to be a growth driver.
Any specific names in the ASEAN countries?
See, always we have been strong in Singapore. In the last few years, we increased our focus on Malaysia. Now we have been here also participating in good opportunities in the Philippines and Indonesia as well.
Is this specific to any particular vertical or?
Depends. I don't think it's vertical specific. You find in Malaysia, we work very well with one of the resources company. In the Philippines, we had discussions with a banking provider. It is not very domain specific.
Okay. Aarthi ma'am, on the agentic AI that you mentioned with the BPS, did you mean that you guys are planning to expand in the BPS sector or could you just give more color on what you had said just now?
Valeri, what I meant earlier was when you look at business process services, how we deliver, right? How you automate and bring more accuracy, predictability to the delivery. Earlier, if you look at it, all of us heard about robotic process automation. Now with generative AI, you have new avenues to how you run the business process operations. Those are the new opportunities of how you can look at automation very differently.
Would you say BPS is very important in terms of the agentic AI services that you guys are working on right now?
I think I would say equally important. All service lines, we are infusing AI because the opportunity is indeed across every service line.
Last question in terms of the new services that you mentioned in your statement, is it only focused towards agentic AI services or are there any other services?
All services, AI, data, cyber, cloud, digital engineering, all these are new-age services which are getting transformed.
Thank you.
Anjana Anthony from Informist.
Hi, thank you. My question is about the BS&L deal. How high was the expenses for that deal? Not the latest one, but the BS&L deal, how high was the third-party expenses? Did it exceed your estimates? If you can give a quantum, it would be great.
Give out profitability or expenses at a customer level. We do not divulge the details, but if you do the maths, we have called out that the margins on that deal were lower than our usual margins.
Did it exceed your estimates by any chance?
No.
Another question is about, I know you have already given the comment about hiring and wage hikes. If the macroeconomic environment turns in favor of the company, how much would be the hike that you will be announcing or any color on that?
So many ifs here. If the macroeconomic environment improves, and as a result, if our business improves, we'll definitely give the best possible hikes we normally give.
Any quantum that you're looking at?
We don't give away that also.
Thank you.
Varun Sood from Mint, last question from a journalist in person, and then we'll take two questions online to everyone who's patiently waiting.
Hi, Krithi. A clarification. When you said there has been a delay and that delay in decision-making has intensified. Last quarter, I believe you had about $12.2 billion TCV. This quarter, you have about $9.4 billion. Would it be fair to say that a delay in decision-making is leading to fewer contracts coming for third-party IT firms? At the same time, the scaling up of some of those projects, that is also getting delayed. The delay in decision-making is happening on both fronts. Would that be a fair conclusion? Thank you.
Yeah. One is when I said delay last year, comparing it last quarter to this quarter. That is not a like-to-like comparison. As I keep mentioning, the TCV number by itself is lumpy. It is very hard to compare it from one quarter to another. Even sometimes even difficult to compare same quarter last year. You need to look at the overall trend and what we are doing on an LTM basis, then comparing it on just a quarterly basis. At the same time, the fact that there is a delay would have an impact on, because there is a delayed decision-making, you would see a reduced number of orders closed, which means that the number will decrease.
The contracts, what you have won, those are also taking time? Start again.
There are some places where the contracts have been about to be signed or where we have been selected, shortlisted, where the signing takes probably more time than what otherwise it would have taken. Yes, a few, not many, few.
Aarthi, the question on Gen AI. When you mentioned that case-based approach to ROI led scaling, in the immediate term, 12- 18 months, can TCS just share, is it leading to some kind of revenue cannibalization or impact on profitability, say, like-to-like basis, if that work was being done by engineers and now with agentic tools and AI, is it leading to some kind of a revenue loss or what is the impact on profitability in the 12- 18 months, the near term? Thank you.
Varun, when you look at how AI is being leveraged by enterprises, right? One side of it is you're trying to solve a business problem or a business opportunity. You're saying that how can I do things differently, right? The entire human plus AI model, right, as the technology evolves, right? There is a work that a human today does. Today, it is augmented and assisted by AI, right? To that extent, there is productivity or enablement for the same job to be done better, improving accuracy or turnaround times and things like that. That's one aspect of AI being applied to business. There, I would say that it's a growth opportunity, right? Because newer projects, this is more discretionary spending around AI.
Varun, if there is an opportunity to cannibalize our revenue and give benefit to our customer, we will always do that.
Thank you.
Just one last question.
We have to go to the journalists online.
Just one last question.
Last question.
Samir. The margin, 24.5, does not take into account the wage hike which you gave last year. And last year, you had a margin of 22.7. So you actually, profitability is a little, what should I say, worrying because you did not factor in over two quarters like you do. Now, assuming if TCS gives a wage hike sometime later this year, and as you have at or listening or reading TCS, you always improve your profitability during the course of the year. Is this going to, is there a downside risk that that trajectory may not follow? Assuming you give a wage hike?
Varun will factor all of it in. With that, we'll be committed to improving our profitability. As we have said, long term, we want to move towards closer to our 26%-28% band.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. We will go to the journalists online now. Hari Vishwanath from The Hindu. Hari, you can unmute your mic and ask your question.
Hi. Good evening. Hi, Krithi. My question is. It's been a tough two years, not just for you, but some of your close peers also. Specifically for TCS, when I actually look at the way FY 2026 is trending and combine it with the last two years, this will be your weakest three-year performance on record. Even more challenging than what you went through in FY 2016 during the digital transition and a short period during COVID also. There are reasons to believe this slowdown is structural. In the last two years, although there are challenges in FY 2026, in the last two years, the global GDP growth has been quite robust. Global technology companies have fared pretty well. In this context, my question is on your payout ratios. Your payout ratios were amped up in 2017 after your revenue started recovering from the digital transition.
Hiccups in 2015-2016. At that time, it was a good time to hike up your payout ratios. Now with this kind of a slowdown that you are enduring, and it's three years, which is quite, you could call what is a medium term, do you think that it's a case to revisit your payout ratios? The industry itself is changing. A lot of things are happening, AI and without AI also. Has there been any thinking within TCS to reconsider payout ratios, increase investment in allied technology areas? The shareholders have also been sending a message in the last three or four years that growth matters over payout ratio. I just want to hear what you have to say on that.
I think I'll give you an overall philosophical stand we have, and then Samir can provide more details. We believe like if there is an opportunity to invest, we would invest. If we do not see an opportunity to invest, we will not hold the cash with us. We will return it to the shareholders. We always also kept a commitment is between 80-100% of the cash flow, we will free cash flow will return to the customers. That philosophy does not change. At the same time, if we see a good opportunity to invest and then thereby increase shareholder return, we will then hold back and make those investments. Samir, if you want to add.
Go ahead, Hari.
I just have one follow-up, so then I'll take Samir, your views also. See, my doubt is, do you think like 2021, there was outlook that double-digit growth is sustainable for a foreseeable future? Now it's been low single-digit growth. I'm not saying double-digit growth, but high single-digit growth, is it possible without investing aggressively?
We are optimistic. Okay, like if you ask me whether this year we will get a high single-digit growth, this year may look tough. As I said, given the order book we have, given the customer conversations and our belief that many customers have to undergo a technology transition, we believe like we are quite optimistic. Like I do not want to put a year whether it will happen next year or year after or whether we will do an acquisition or not. Theoretically, it is possible.
Okay, thank you. Next question and last question from Bala from Analytics India Magazine. Bala, one question, please, really tight on time.
Yeah, hi. Hi all of you. I just have a question. There's been a decline in expenditure cost of equipment and software licenses. Does AI have anything to do with that?
That line item which you called out is purely because of the last transformation deal which we are executing coming to a closure.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Big thanks to everyone who were patiently waiting online, to all our stakeholders joining us on our social media channels, and of course, to everyone here. Please join us for refreshments and have a very good evening. Thank you for watching.