Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Tech Mahindra Limited Q1 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 the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. C. P. Gurnani, MD and CEO of Tech Mahindra. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Good evening, good morning and welcome to Tech Mahindra Q1 FY 2022 results. Thank you all for joining us today. Your company continues to be focused on ESG. Very focused on employees and the families of our employees. Your company also announced an appointment of wellness officer during the quarter because as you know, the wave two in India did create a bit of a distress. I can only say that the initiatives taken by HR, the wellness officer proved that we care for our customers, we care for our society, we care for our communities, but more importantly, employee first and employee families first was practiced during a daily call attended by the whole leadership every morning and every evening to monitor the progress of our community initiatives and employee initiatives.
In a lot of ways, I can only say that we practiced and showed that we are a company with a purpose and we practice what is not only good business but business for good. Sometimes during these trying moments few awards touch you. For our sustained efforts in putting nature, people and planet at the heart of creating global value, we have received the HRH The Prince of Wales' Terra Carta Seal. Again, I want to compliment all our employees, the leadership and people involved in the ESG framework for continuing to demonstrate that a healthy company is a company which believes in healthy communities and CSR and ISR are part of our Rise tenets. Coming back to the business, your company has done well. We witnessed an all-around performance and growth across all our key markets and all the industry sectors.
If you recall, I shared with you that the few metrics that we are monitoring is number of INR 50 million accounts, the volume and value of the large deals, looking at revenue per account. I think that data discipline seems to be yielding results and our large deal wins continue to be robust. I promised some of you that it would be in the range of $800 million-$1 billion. I think we are within that range. Again, thank you for your support. Thank you that we are clearing a 4.1% quarter-on-quarter growth, INR 1,384 million for people in India who believe in this terminology called lakhs and crores. I know Rohit Anand had been pushing our leaders to cross INR 10,000 crores in one quarter. Rohit, thank you for pushing us because we did cross INR 10,000 crores and now this quarter we are INR 10,198 crores.
Yeah, 198 moments to say we did it. I think overall I can say that largest healthcare deal, largest BPO deal this quarter. Healthcare deal is clearly about hospital modernization or patient care modernization. BPO deal is for more digital integrated back office provisioning and fulfillment. I can only say is that I'm happy that the investments that Tech Mahindra made over the last few quarters and let me again remind each one of us here, 5G customer experience management, cloud, AI, D&A, and IoT. These are the areas where we made investments. All your capital was deployed in acquiring companies in these spaces. Each of these acquisitions have now been well-integrated, and you are seeing the results of these either acquisitions or setting up experience centers, setting up centers of excellence.
For example, two years ago, when we set up this Open RAN Center of Excellence in Bangalore, a lot of people questioned us. Will the radio network go on cloud? Will the radio network go digital? Will software-defined network come here to stay? Now we are seeing an increased traction because of some of those investments. I think the other highlight of this quarter is, and I really consider them as highlights. Number one, our high-tech vertical we've been tracking for the last five quarters. We appointed and invested in a management team that we had hired for the high-tech vertical. High-tech vertical for us is hyperscalers, product engineering companies, and some of the unicorns. That high-tech vertical has now shown us the highest growth. Over the last five quarters, this quarter particularly, they grew over 8%.
We will now be formally reporting to you every quarter on high-tech vertical. The second part is, as I said, BPS, digital BPS, customer experience side, we have continuously evolved. We have always shown you good results, but we have shown spectacular results this quarter. They are at 11% quarter-over-quarter. Thank you, Ritesh and Dilip Keshu for your leadership, but definitely a pretty strong demand and a strong performance. The third one is our platforms. Business process as a service and platform is a new business unit, and we do believe that it will become one of our high investment areas. One of the new platform launches that we have done is netOps.ai. Manish Vyas when he speaks to all of you will share why he's excited about netOps.ai. I can only say from the numbers part of the platforms has registered 60-plus new wins.
58 new accounts, 60+ new wins, highest INR PAT in Q1, delivery excellence, and overall growth, working from all vectors. I think overall, the company is in good shape. We are focused on talent. We are focusing on talent supply chain. We are continuing to invest in M&A. Our capital allocation is doing well. I'm sure Vivek will share a lot more with you. Our partners ecosystem is becoming stronger, both with the traditional players and some of the new age companies. Really means is that we are creating new solutions through our partner ecosystem. Your company has also now realized that we need to be known for our thought leadership. We need to be known for our engineering excellence. We need to be known as one of the forward-looking companies. For this, we announced a partnership with FIDE to launch a Global Chess League.
Your brand will now be visible through the Global Chess League, which is in tradition of things to come, is a phygital format, physical Global Chess League played across various countries. We are advised by the three-time Grandmaster, Viswanathan Anand, and we are also blessed is that we would be doing both online and offline. All I can say is huge recognitions by partners, by the community, by the employees, and an incredible work by the employees. Company with a focus, company doing extremely well on ESG. I would need another 20 minutes only to talk about all the recognitions we have received in ESG. Overall, very proud and grateful for an excellent quarter. Thank you all for your support. I will hand over to Milind to take us through the breakup of the revenue and overall the quality of business that we have delivered.
Thank you, C.P. Good evening to everyone. Let me cover the company financials in little more details. Okay. Our first quarter revenue was INR 1,383.6 million which is a sequential growth of 4.1%, and it includes currency tailwind of 20 basis points. Our constant currency revenue growth is 3.9%. What is more heartening is its broad-based growth across all the verticals. Our CME business, Communication, Media, and Entertainment, grew by 3.2%, and that too despite a seasonal decline in mobility business. As you know, normally quarter one is the weakest quarter for us because of the salary increases as well as the mobility business seasonal nature. Okay. Our enterprise business has grown by about 4.7%, with key verticals like manufacturing, technology, high-tech driving the growth.
Our deal wins continue to be healthy. As C.P. alluded to, they are in the range of INR 800 million- INR 1 billion. Our deal wins for the quarter were about INR 815 million. They are both in CME as well as enterprise vertical. I think INR 360 million and INR 450 million are the kind of rough numbers which are there for CME and enterprise vertical. These included one of the largest deals that we have got in the healthcare and also in the BPS segment. The EBIT for the quarter was $209 million versus $219 million in quarter four. As I mentioned, seasonally, this is the weakest quarter for Tech M.
The EBIT margins have declined by about 130 basis points in Q1 versus Q4, impacted by salary hike, impacted by visa costs, seasonal decline in mobility business, and higher subcon cost, which is partially offset by operating leverage and operating efficiency, lower SG&A over the last quarter. Now this has resulted in EBIT margin of about 15.2% for the quarter. We would look to improve the margins in the coming quarters. Okay. There are tailwinds which are expected to more than offset the headwinds which will be there.
The net profit after tax for the quarter was about INR 183.2 million versus INR 147.7 million in Q4. It is primarily led by the higher other income of INR 34.4 million coming out of higher income on our surplus fund invested as well as forex gain which we had in the quarter. One of the other reasons for the higher profit after tax was our tax rate for the quarter was at about 24% as against 22% in Q4, which had two one-offs in terms of higher tax at our subsidiaries. Okay. Our tax rate, as we have always said, will be in the region of about 24%-26%, in that range.
In Q1, it was around the lower end of the rate we have indicated. Okay. Just to give you more details, we had a Forex gain of INR 14.5 million in Q1 against a loss of about INR 8.6 million in the Q4, and miscellaneous and interest income higher by about INR 11.3 million, aided, as I said, by improved returns on investment of surplus funds, which improved from about 2.8% last quarter to about 4.5%. Our cash flow for the quarter was INR 172.4 million, which is 94% of the PAT, quite healthy cash flow for the quarter. Our DSOs, despite our sales growth, are just up by about one day from 92-93 days. We continue to follow the hedge policy which we have, and our hedge book was about $2.2 billion, about 10% higher than the last quarter.
Based on the hedge accounting treatment, the mark-to-market gain that we have taken to the P&L on ineffective hedges is about $7.5 million, and we have carried about $23 million of mark-to-market gain to reserves. Okay. Just to summarize, we are back on strong growth track with strong focus on profitability and operational improvement. Our endeavor will be to continue with the same operational rigor as we embark on a strong growth journey in FY 2022. With this remark, I will now open the floor for questions. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good evening. I have a bad throat, so please excuse me for that. C.P., congrats on a very good exhibition to you and your team, particularly the utmost care which you have taken of your people. I wish you best of luck for your own health as well, for the exhibition. C.P., I have just one question. I am just not able to comprehend one thing that with the kind of tailwind this industry is seeing for the first time in last maybe two, three decades, I would say. Probably you have a bigger exposure to 5G, which may not show you immediately the same thing, but the kind of use cases which are happening in the world will give you that confidence.
The kind of exhibition you are doing, the kind of people you are having, the best team, one of the best team you're having. Why you are not providing us any easy way of modeling your growth and your financials for the future? I know it is against your policy, but if demand has changed in more than a decade, if pricing environment has changed for the first time in a decade, I think you should also be a little generous with the investors, and you should guide us something so that we can build something in our model. You should provide us some kind of guidance. If not quantitative, at least qualitatively that you will be on top end of the industry quartile or something like that. It will be very helpful. Similarly on the margins, what is your aspirational range?
With such a huge growth coming in and if your growth is going to be in double-digit also, you'll start now seeing operating leverage playing out significantly. If you can throw some light on that. Secondly, how far we are where we will see Sorry, 5G picking up very aggressively. If you can help on that. Thanks and best of luck for your future once again.
Hey, Sandip, this is Rohit. Thanks for the question. As you know, Sandip, we don't have a policy of giving guidance. Despite that, in the last earning calls, C.P. has clearly given our goal and aspiration to get double-digit organic. Right? We'd articulated that and a 15% EBIT that we'll go for. If you look at the quarter results, we can break it out. We're 4.1% overall growth, 3.9% constant currency. With that and the deal wins, which we've announced, on the back of a billion-dollar last quarter to $815 million this quarter. The momentum and the qualitative commentary is available, right? We've seen broad-based growth across the sector. It's not isolated to one particular deal. It's multiple deals. Biggest ever in BPS, biggest ever in healthcare. The commentary from that perspective is available, right?
We do talk about the details around it. That's currently where we are. Given the one Q and the momentum, including the deal pipeline that we see, we're pretty sure this trajectory will continue to expand further. Right? That's from the revenue side. Similarly, on the margin, as you rightly mentioned, we've executed 15.2% in one Q. With the revenue growth leverage, operating leverage, that's the tailwind that [inaudible] indicated. We'll continue to drive our operational productivity that we've driven last year, where we invested a lot in that. Including with the leverage, we will be able to manage the headwinds that we see and continue to drive that upside as we move forward.
Now, given the policy, we don't give guidance. We'll continue with that. We give enough qualitative commentary around it that should help you and the peers. Right? That's how I'll put it in. On 5G, I'd like Manish to be invited here. Manish, can you give a little bit of context with Sandip on 5G and our development there?
Absolutely. Sandip, thank you for that question. I appreciate your kind words. There are two things. Transparency in terms of our 5G strategy as well as consistency in terms of what we have said over the last few years on our perspective on 5G and why we are, A, very positive about it and at the same time, what exactly is our framework. Just to remind all of us, our framework for 5G is that we will continue to do transformation work for 5G for the telcos, both in terms of network as well as the digitalization that is needed for 5G, whether it is cloud or the systems underlined. Number two, we will do 5G for ecosystem. Number three, we will do 5G for enterprises which is what you are referring to as use cases. You're right, there are plenty of use cases emerging.
As far as our CME business is concerned, I am happy to say two things right now. One, as our strategy has been that 5G is, and our perspective has been that 5G is not about just network deployment, it is an overhaul from a complete transformation within a telco. I think our strategy and our investments are playing out quite well, and we will continue to see the results of that as we continue to sign and scale these projects around 5G. I am also very happy to report that 5G is pretty much now deeply integrated in every single telecom transformation project.
Just to make it even better, I believe that this year, almost 60%-70% of our new signings are going to be built around either integrating or enabling the 5G together, mind you, with a scaled adoption of the cloud architecture as well as driving the greater intelligence into the network systems via analytics and data and AI. That I think is, you've all been asking for a while, and I'm very positive that this is the year of reckoning in terms of as we go along, what we have seen in quarter one and as we continue to keep looking at our pipeline, this story is playing out. I must also remind that we've also been very clear about not just what we will do within 5G, what we will not do.
We have said that we are not going to go for high volume, but very low margin business in many markets. We remain very focused on that. You all have clearly advised. We are very clear on our game plan and strategy there, and we remain focused. Our 5G for enterprise use cases are getting fantastic response in the marketplace. However, we believe that story still has to play out, and it is still not ready for prime time for some time, because it's more complex and it involves a lot of other architectural changes, not just in the telco, but also on the enterprises side.
I'm reasonably sure as and when that story shapes up, the company will continue to remain at the forefront and from a leadership standpoint. I hope that helps, and I'm sure, if necessary, we can always do an offline and give you more details.
No, it is very, very helpful. Thanks for the detailed answer, and I wish you best of luck for the future quarter. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. It's pleasant to see that this time the performance is all around, not just in sales or margin, it has come in both parameters as a whole. The first question, Manish, again to you on the 5G. I think last few quarters you were saying that lot of discussion around 5G with the clients have started, maybe in terms of small-size deals as a whole. The way we look at and read the transcripts of the OEM on the telco side, I think their order intake on the 5G equipment has also started improving.
Is it fair to say, Manish, that by the year-end, there could be larger deal conversions which can happen around 5G and your order intake on the telecom and communication start inching up, and may pick up the pace starting from FY 2023 as a whole, and this could be a growth accelerator starting from FY 2023? Some colors will help as a whole.
Sandeep, again, thank you for that question, and very insightful. I think it's important to recognize our role, our strategy, and our positioning in the ecosystem. It's very clear, our customers are very, very clear about that positioning. They know exactly what we stand for. What we stand for is a more integrated, holistic transformation. There really are four big levers there. The telecom companies clearly recognize that for them to be able to generate a greater momentum on both their enterprise and the consumer business, they need to continue to transform their customer experience. If you really see the acquisitions and the integrated story that we build, is all directed towards the 5G enablement in that space. It's not pure play network, but it is really a transformation around being even more digital in that space.
We are talking about driving a greater product and product engineering around 5G. I'm happy to report that story has started shaping up quite well. Our engineering business, our product development business, both for the ecosystem as well as for the telcos, is seeing pretty good growth. There is a good, solid demand. I think there are various conversations happening both on the device as well as on the software and equipment side in that area. Number three is where we're talking about the new digital infra, which is really what we are talking about, the OEM models and the stack. In that ecosystem, we have decided on what we would do. We would play very big on orchestrator orchestration. We are building IP in that space as well as we speak. We are integrating a lot of those systems. We are focusing on core.
For example, one of the very interesting case studies shaping up in the U.S. is where we are helping a new operator integrate their 5G architecture, test, and certify that. That's a very scaled, very successful case study that we have for the last few years. Of course, we continue to do integration around O-RAN. We are at the same time very clear that we are not going to get into the low margin, high volume field type activity, except in some cases where it is very integrated as part of our deals. That is the third thing. The fourth is a more inherent digital core, which includes our transformation of their underlying systems as a whole. All of those are absolutely at this point.
I'm just giving you a more detailed answer, and some of this could be an expansion to the previous answer I gave, Sandeep. We're clearly busy across all the four levers, all the four areas. Not just in, like I said, in the last two quarters in conversation, but starting to close those deals. Like I said, 60%-70% of all our new signings are already showing a trend that it will be in the 5G and transformation space.
Yeah. I think, Manish, your discussion clearly implies that the deal activity on the 5G has started moving up. Can you believe that discussion may result into even larger TCV wins for Tech Mahindra? Or you believe the TCV win may be smaller in size, but may be more consistent over next two-three years?
No, absolutely. I get it. Our larger deals will also be predominantly now are already transformation oriented.
Okay. You expect more to close on a consistent basis going forward?
That absolutely is the intent, yeah.
Okay. Just in terms of the question about the guidance, Rohit, what we have said is the double-digit organic growth as a whole. Now with the good start where we are at close to 15 kind of a growth for the first quarter on a YoY. It looks like for the full year also achieving a 15 kind of a growth may not be a big task, including the inorganic as a whole. Is it the right way of looking at it as a whole? Second, the question in terms of margins. I think, yes, the delivery execution is good, but the attrition is a big challenge as a whole.
Where for us, it's not only attrition is higher, but the utilization is at an all-time peak, which could be counterproductive to each other as a whole. In that scenario, you believe lifting the margin may not be an easy task going forward and there could be a possibility of second round of hikes. You believe no attrition can be well managed and utilization can also be well managed going forward as a whole?
Yeah. Sure, Sandeep. On the growth side first. If you look at what we said earlier, we said organic double digit with one Q results and the deal win momentum continued, and the view we have in the pipeline. Definitely from an aim and from a visibility perspective, we see an upside to that case. That's where we're kind of looking at. The good part, as Manish mentioned, the results that you see on the Communications, Media, and Entertainment space is also rallying a similar growth trend, which is helping overall. We will continue to see an uptick there. As we keep on progressing in that journey, we'll keep on updating where we stand on that path. That's kind of on the growth side.
Second, on the margins, while we've done 15.2 in the current quarter, we definitely see headwinds to the point you're trying to make, which will continue given the demand environment we're in. We've very well articulated and discussed our action items to have tailwinds to offset that and manage it efficiently. We have incremental levers that will help us position ourselves in that journey as we move forward. In our discussions and previous conversation also, it's a long-term journey for us. It's not current quarter, it's not next quarter. We will sequentially continue to work towards the productivity levers.
Even if utilization is high, we have other measures that we have significant headroom to work with. We will continue to deploy it. An example we've given is on our strategy change on M&A side, where we centralizing most of the back offices. Projects like those have been identified and well-defined with ownership and outcomes that we're confident to deliver that tailwind as we move forward, including the operating leverage that we'll see with the volume growth. Hence, that gives us the comfort on incremental progress that we'll continue to make in this journey on margins as we go.
Yeah. Just a last question on the order intake. With the demand picking up, also the telecom communication growth may be better because of 5G and the other transformation which Manish has spoken about. One can fairly say that our new business TCV wins can be now approaching a new normal of close to around maybe anywhere between $700 million- $1 billion on most of the quarters going forward, or you still believe it is too early to call out this trend as a whole? Thanks, and all the best.
I think obviously I won't again give a guidance, but what I can say is pipeline is good. The momentum is strong, as you heard from Manish, and you could probably hear from other leaders as well, and you heard from C.P. That's reflective of how we look at the future. The deal closure timelines vary from a time-to-time perspective. Given the pipeline and reflection of that convertibility, we are confident that we'll continue to be below the normal average that we had earlier. We see that trend playing out as we move forward.
Okay. Thanks, and all the best.
Thanks, Sandeep.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pankaj Kapoor from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Manish, again, on 5G. Sorry to persist, but just a clarification. The way you describe 5G is now getting integrated in all the deals that you are seeing in the market. Does this mean that the spend is not really as much incremental, but is more replacement of existing INR? If I just take that logic further, does it mean that the reported growth in telecom obviously will accelerate but may continue to lag the overall corporate growth? If you can clarify that, please.
Well, I think as far as the latter part of your question is concerned, I'm not sure I can comment on that. I don't think that's how we look at anything. Your primary question is, the 5G. An integrated 5G story is one of the transformation programs that we have, and that continues to scale. That continues to be a new set of capital expenditure projects that we are deriving the value from, as far as the telcos are concerned. I think you all know it, and we have been saying it very clearly, that the telcos have always been allocating their total CapEx as a percentage of their revenues. It's not that they are spending 30% more than the previous years.
Most of them predominantly have kept that line flat. Hence there is a repurpose of that coming from what they were doing earlier to two or three things, whether it is cloud, whether it is 5G network or for that matter, data transformation. All of that is stitched together to direct a more intelligent network, which is built on a 5G core. That exactly is the strategy that we are mimicking, because that has been your company's key strength of aligning with how the telco strategies work. That's the strategic part of the answer.
As far as the upsides are concerned, I think we've been very clearly saying that our non-5G revenues will continue to grow as well. Our legacy will continue to remain under challenge, and we continue to replace that with new business. We'll be in a single-digit growth area, but as the 5G revenues excel, we will start scaling our revenues into a double digit kind of a trajectory. We remain very positive on that. More the merrier, no doubt, I think we are very happy with the execution of our overall strategy at this point.
Understood. That's helpful. My next question is on the technology vertical. If you can give some sense of how is the client concentration there. Is it dominated by a few large accounts, very large accounts? In a sense, in terms of how sustainable is the load there? Thank you.
Maybe I'll start off and maybe hand over to Jagdish to add on, Pankaj. Just from a concentration perspective. First, simple answer, it's not highly concentrated. It's quite spread out. There's no concentration risk there. I think the biggest customer as a percentage of the total vertical would be probably 15% odd, broadly. I don't see that as an issue. That engagement journey with all those customers are gaining traction quarter-on-quarter, as C.P. mentioned, and we are seeing a lot of positive progress there, which will continue to reap benefits, including all the pillar penetration.
As you know that we have defined five core pillars from a offering perspective. We see that growth across these customers, across those five pillars, not isolated to IT transformation. It's across the pillars that we have. That's a good story given its broad base, both from an offering perspective and it's highly broad in terms of customer orientation perspective as well. Jagdish, would you like to add anything on top?
Yeah, sure, Rohit. I think, as Rohit said, definitely client concentration is not a challenge. We are quite broad-based on that. As far as the growth is concerned, it's being driven by three areas, primarily. Obviously, a lot of engagement with hyperscalers, an area of work with product engineering, and the third area being primarily our investments and builds in the areas of semiconductor and the way it's starting to play out. We see that as a critical driver. I think we expect this growth momentum to continue because we think that the growth is going to be driven by revival across the globe. Also, the pandemic and geopolitical impact of it, which is primarily focusing lot of offshoring and also supply chain-related opportunities that are coming across in the high tech area.
We see all of that, but also the five pillars that Rohit talked about, including our new age BPS and cloud and D&A and digital engineering driving the growth.
Got it. Thank you and wish you all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manik Taneja from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. While it is good to see the improvement in terms of the order intake over the last couple of quarters, I just wanted to understand if that is enough with regards to your growth ambitions, because when we look at some of your peers, the order book-to-billing ratio essentially seems to be much in excess of one time, while last year it was at still trending below one time. Any thoughts here?
Yeah. I think you've got to look at what we report. When we report the deal wins, we talk about greater than $5 million deal wins, and we talk about incremental growth deal wins. We don't talk about renewals here. These are all incremental to the business perspective. The definition might vary, and hence, the correlation is not as easy to do. Maybe I'll give you a couple of more data points. If you look at our reported wins in the two quarters, obviously when we don't report less than $5 million, there again, we're seeing significant growth broad-based across the geos, which has significantly gone up versus what we've seen in the past. Hence, that's another interesting data piece that is coming out, which demonstrates the growth that we're seeing. Broadly, it's a comparison that you can't do given the definition difference across the board.
Got it. I also had a follow-up question related to margins. If you could call out the bridge for the margin for the factors or the certain margins for the coming quarter, and also help us understand the levers that you think will help us build up further on these margins in subsequent quarters despite the tight supply side environment. Thank you.
Sure. Let's look at maybe the headwinds first. If you look at the challenges on what we've seen from a margin perspective, I would say we will have a supply-side talent situation that will continue in the industry, which we have a focused strategy, as I articulated before, to manage and be ahead of the curve there. That's the first area that we look at. Second, from a challenge perspective is, as we move forward, continues to be travel coming back. If you look at this quarter as well, the travel's not yet back. Some of the regions are getting vaccination drives through. People have started moving around. If you look at the data from an aviation perspective, the takeoffs are almost at a 60%-70% level of 2019. Hence, it's getting back to normalcy. That will get to customer travels, et cetera.
That's another headwind that potentially will come as we move forward. From a tailwind perspective, obviously growth is positive for us. We're strong with all that we're seeing from a pipeline deal win perspective. That gives us the operating leverage. That's a strong one. From a productivity standpoint, the journey we did on automation, the journey we've created digital assets, helps us on that journey strongly on all the space, including IT and BPS, where we'll continue to digitize a lot of our operations. That gives us the upside. Then, if you look at our offshoring also, we've seen substantial growth there from year-on-year and even quarter-on-quarter perspective. As compared to the industry, we still have headroom there. That's another journey we continue.
I had mentioned earlier on the G&A centralization initiative for all the portfolio companies that we have. That's another one. I think we have significant actions there that we'll continue to work on and drive execution on, which gives us the view and the confidence that as we mentioned earlier, it's a long-term journey, and we will continue to work on it and get better incrementally as we move forward.
Thank you, and the best for the future.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Congratulations on good performance. Two questions. On margins, are you also making any incremental interventions in the coming quarters, which is probably leading to margin outlook remaining unchanged despite a very strong performance in 1Q?
Again, from an outlook perspective, I reiterate that we're not giving an outlook. We'd mentioned we will deliver 15% earlier, and I'm saying that we will have plus plus to that. We're looking at continuing to drive better results as we move forward. I'm not calling out a guidance there. In that perspective, as I mentioned, the headwinds and the tailwinds, that gives us enough confidence on the progress that we'll make in that journey.
Okay. Second question is on the pipeline. You have had very, very significant deal wins in the last two, three quarters. After the deal wins, typically the pipeline sees a dip. Just trying to understand better how your pipeline looks versus last few quarters, and what really needs to change within the pipeline for you to be able to get to a double-digit growth in the Communications business. Your win rates are already very strong. Ideally, the things have to change on the pipeline side. Just trying to get a better figure, better color around your pipeline, especially in the Communications business.
Sure. Maybe Manish, you answer, given it's more directed to comms. Why don't you take it on the pipeline comms side?
No, absolutely. It's my pleasure. Thank you for that comment on the deal wins, and we are very happy about the way the deals are justifying for the last few quarters. I'm happy to report that the pipeline continues to look very robust because both the programs were running in parallel. The task of continuing to create proactive proposals and pipelines around our transformation bets. At the same time, whatever deals that were in the funnel to continue to engage and ensure that the clients close those.
With the efforts and the investments that we have made, particularly in the last two or three quarters in our client engagement programs that we put together and categorizing our account relationships into areas where we have a greater potential to get a tailwind. We continue to build the pipelines across all our theaters, whether it is APJ, EMEA, or Americas. Our funnel continues to evolve into a pretty healthy trend.
Okay. Any quantification around the pipeline versus last year or last couple of quarters? That will be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. I think I would even give you better than that. I think overall our absolute pipeline is maybe at an all-time high in comparison to last year or even before. What is more important is, and I'm emphasizing on this word, I'm sure you'll appreciate it, that our qualifications of that pipeline has even further improved. We've become a little bit smarter about what are the areas that we take versus we don't. Even that qualified thing, which we are very clear that it's aligned to the client strategy and our strategy, even that overall trend is even better than the absolute number. In percentage-wise, I don't have the numbers off my hand, but we can provide to you later.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of [inaudible] from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on a decent quarter. Just two questions. Just reiterating a little bit on the guidance side. Given the quality of the deal pipeline or deal wins over the last few quarters. Stronger pipeline and stronger 2Q, 3Q potentially. What stops you from giving a more definitive guidance? I think you also talked about 5G, which could be a way of reckoning, right? Anything that is more like a caveat, which sort of stops us from giving a more definitive guidance versus, I think last time you used to talk about a double-digit, more or less.
Yeah, [inaudible]. It's more a policy that we don't give guidance. Despite that, I think we've given an indication for this year when we started 1Q that we'll be double-digit organic. Based on 1Q and what we see moving ahead, what I've indicated is we're seeing almost all verticals being in the double-digit zone. Right? Comms, as Manish mentioned, has moved from high single-digit to double. Similarly, we see similar traction in all other verticals in the enterprise side. Hence, that's looking favorable. We've also mentioned BPS, which had a stellar quarter. The visibility looks very positive, and we're looking at industry-leading growth there. I think from a narrative standpoint, we are giving a visibility of what we see in the future. Given our policy of not giving hard guidance, we don't want to do that . That's where we stand.
Okay, fair enough. Just if you could provide us any color on the hiring plans for the year, both onsite, offshore, that will be helpful.
Sure, [inaudible]. I'll invite Harsh to take that question. Harsh, who's our Chief People Officer.
Thanks. Thank you for asking that question. Clearly, we've stepped up our hiring engine in this quarter, not only by making sure that we have enough and more recruiters on our rolls, but also stepped up our partner, whether they are RPOs or others. We are very confident that we will hire significantly both from lateral and, as you would have heard earlier, C.P. said that our fresher intake is going to go up significantly. You've seen what we've done in quarter one, but we are going to significantly take it up in this year.
Is there a number that you're alluding to?
Well, I would rather say that we would follow the trend that we've done this quarter and if anything, enhance it significantly.
Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Surendra Goyal from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks, and good evening to everyone. Rohit, just wanted to understand if that there are no one-offs or margins that we should be aware of. Right? And I was just looking at the margin for standalone and consolidated, and the margins look a bit different despite standalone being 80% of consolidated revenues, and hence the question. Could you just assure us that there are no one-offs in the margins and something is more recurring in nature. Thanks.
Yeah, sure. When we look at the P&L across the lines, we do have plus and minus which kind of nets off. At the net off level, we don't see a significant one-off that will give us tailwind or headwind. From a margin perspective, it's quite operational. That's the way to look at it. From certain line aspects, we do have. That doesn't drive the overall result. Manish, you want to add something?
We have certain write-offs of investment in subsidiaries, and obviously that means there is a corresponding credit on the other side. With the net at a consolidated level, there are no write-off. At a standalone level, there are certain write-off. Okay? That's the difference you see in the margins of the year in standalone and console.
Okay. That's very clear. Thank you both. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rishi Jhunjhunwala from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. One question on your deals. Your average deal win over the past two years or so have really doubled from the average INR 800 odd million that you used to do before that. Just wanted to understand, has the tenures or deals or those deals also gone up accordingly? Or is it more that the content have remained the same?
Sorry, there's a little bit of disturbance, but let me articulate it what I got. We have a question on deal wins value, which has gone up significantly over the last few quarters to last two quarters. Is there any change in the tenure of these deals? Is that the question?
Correct.
No. From a deal tenure perspective, and the way we're reporting, we don't see any meaningful or significant change here. The average tenure continues to be the same.
Just a follow-up from the previous question on the subsidiary profitability. You've talked about improving profitability in the portfolio companies as a lever in the medium-term. I could also see apart from the difference between console and standalone, which we talked about, is probably because of write-offs. Could also see that your minority interest for the first time in many years have actually gone into negative. Is this something which we can assume to be more sustainable going forward as well in terms of improvement in profitability of the portfolio companies, or something which is mostly a one-off in this quarter?
Maybe subsidiary and consol, the way to look at it is maybe not the right reflection of portfolio company performance because a lot of the business that we drive through the portfolio company is through synergy and the value that we get on revenues they add on the other entity. If you look at entity to entity there, you won't get the right comparison. Hence, you have to look at the integrated portfolio company, which will be across a multiple entity stream. Hence, that's probably an indication, but that can drive wrong answers also sometimes. While you're linking it this time and you're getting that answer, but generally that might not flow through based on actual operating results of portfolio companies.
You're saying that it will not reflect in minority interest as well. I can understand standalone versus console, but at the end of the day.
Yeah. Those are only legal entity performances. There's a lot of businesses that those entities will drive and enable sales across other Tech M entities. That's the synergy case that you get through that capability building. For example, I'll give you a couple of them. The acquisition we did on DigitalOnUs, standalone, that entity might perform a particular financial, but the deal it helps win Tech M on customer engagement that we're already on. That really is part of the synergy case that we try to drive through that, and that's not going to be built in the legal entity. It's not the complete picture that you get.
All good. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, that was the last question. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rohit Anand for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Thank you. Again, I wanted to just reiterate thank you, all of you, for your support to the company. Our company has delivered a great quarter, 4.5% revenue, the highest we've seen in any quarter. Highest INR PAT. EPS is highest as well at 15.3. Our deal wins are quite spread out between the verticals we have, including the geos where we're seeing growth, which is broad-based. Thanks to all of you for all the support, and thanks for joining and for the questions. Look forward to the engagement. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Tech Mahindra Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.